THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: Civil Rights Series
INTERVIEW WITH: Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1 of 3)
DATE: 18 October 1993
PLACE: Marshall, Texas
INTERVIEWER: Cheri Wolfe
TAPE I, Side 1
W: ...just put a header on the tape. It's October 18,
1993 and this is Cheri Wolfe and I'm talking with Dr. Lamothe, here at his home on University Ave. in Marshall, Texas. And we're going to be talking about the civil rights movement here in Marshall, his role in it, and some of his views of where we are today.
Are you a native?
L: Of Marshall? No. No, no, no. I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana.
W: Really? When? What year?
L: Long, long, long time ago. 1924.
W: Uh-huh. And what did your parents do?
L: Well, my father was a small time contractor, a building contractor. And my mother was the secretary to the princi-pal of the elementary school where I went, which gave just a free ride to all of the teachers to just whip me whenever it came time [laughter] that they felt like it!
W: [laughter] I'm sure you deserved it!
L: Well, I don't think so, all of the time. I felt like I L: got too many whippings. But in any event, she was the principal's secretary. And my father, of course, came from ...his own father who was a, actually, head of a demolishing company down there in New Orleans that they called The Chicago Demolishing Company. And I sort of am kind of proud of the old fellow, 'cause I think he probably was respon-sible, in part, for my becoming a doctor.
W: How so?
L: Because he was a proud old man, who was...well, I don't ...he was not formally educated, but educated, because he spoke five languages...
W: Gosh!
L: ...and he was an interpreter for the Federal Government in Haiti for about five years. And he owned a demolition company, as I said, that demolished many of the great big-name buildings in downtown New Orleans, and did well. And of course, he used to carry me around as his grandson who, "that boy is going to be a doctor." [laughter] And every-where he went, he said that, and I presume there was some-thing that sort of set into my brain, [laughter] that said I'd better do this. But in any event, he also was a - I guess - a lover of wine, women and song, and by the time he died, he had become an alcoholic and had cirrhosis of the liver and had dispensed of most of his earthly possessions, just...so that left us a little bit destitute almost. And it was kind of rough after then.
And then came along the depression. And so, we moved L: out of this big nice fine house into a little shotgun house Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
3
on the outskirts of town, and actually, when I finished high school we didn't have electricity. We did have an indoor toilet and running water, but we had a cesspool; there was no city sewerage. And I studied by lamplight, finished high school by lamplight.
And then went on because I...my father wanted me to come and work with him and I had been doing that during the summers and week-ends and things like that. But he didn't think that I needed to go to college, anything like that. I ought to stay and get into the business and work with him. And, of course, that wasn't my bag. 'Cause, I guess, maybe I was a little lazy or something; I just didn't like that kind of hard work! I'll tell you! [laughter]
And so I went on and took all of the competitive examinations that I could find around, where they were giving away scholarships to college. And finally got into college and went into pre-med immediately. And, of course, I always had little jobs on the side, and I never have been wanting for pocket change, because I could always get a little job here, and I always used to like to take the little girls down to the sno-cone stand and buy 'em a sno-cone! [laughter] And be able to act as if I were in much better shape than I really was. [laughter]
But in any event, after I finished college...oh, I played music too, incidently. I played a trumpet all the L: way Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
4
through high school and college, and was director of the band and drum major and all those things you do while you're in college. Because I was too little to do anything else; I couldn't... I went out for football one time and a guy hit me the first day and knocked me cold, completely out! And that was my last day [laughter] on the football field. So, I took up the trumpet, and we had a good time playing. It kept me busy. Aside from getting...I had a part-time teaching job in the chemistry lab when I got to be a senior teaching - I'll never forget - chemistry lab to home-ec girls and freshman chemistry students. [laughter] So that afforded me a little bit of a stipend toward my tuition. And then I had a couple of kids that I was teaching music after school. I'd get about 50 cents an hour and they'd stay for about an hour, so I had a dollar when I got through. [laughter] But one of them was a girl who was learning to play the trumpet; and the other one was a boy who was learning to play the saxophone. And I didn't know how to play any saxophone. But at least I could read the notes and I knew the fingering and could tell him when he was doing wrong, or when he was doing right either! But it was that kind of a life.
And so, finally, along came World War II, because that was in - when did I go to college? - I went to college in 1940 and World War II came along and everybody was going to the Army except those who had been accepted into profes-L: sional Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
5
schools like medicine and dentistry, and the ministry, too. And so, I've often said, if I hadn't gotten into medical school I probably would have been a preacher now. [laughter] I wasn't planning to go out to fight anybody! I had no enemies, a'tall! [laughter]
But in any event, I was, well, I was accepted at two places; I was accepted at Columbia in New York first, but the acceptance wasn't until the following fall. I had stayed in school all of the time, went to school straight through because in the summers if you weren't in school you were subject to be drafted anyway, so I just went to school and finished early. And I finished like in January of '44 instead of June like ordinary; I was a semester early. And I would have had to stay out from January to September to get into Columbia, and that wasn't going to cut it with the Army. So I then quickly applied to Howard University in Washington D.C. and was accepted for March, for the March class. So I went in. Worked in the post office in the meantime, til I got into school.
And then came along draft notices, but I had kept putting the draft board off, telling them, you know, I was going to get into school. I kept my trunk packed. And so, as soon as I got the draft notice, even though I hadn't got ...school had not started as yet, I got on a train in New Orleans and went to Washington, and then I wrote the draft board back and told them I had moved; my address was not in L: New Orleans Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
6
anymore, it was in Washington, and that I needed to have my draft board changed. Well, that gave me a long lead [laughter], a long time, and so finally they did. And then I had already gone up to, been accepted into the medical school, and had gone up and made all of the arrangements to get in and all that sort of thing. And then I was going into the Army's Specialized Training Program, which was a program that the United States Army had to train and educate professional students in medicine, dentistry and engineering. And so, I'm going into the service, now to get into the ASTP and come back to school.
I get down to Fort Lee - it was Camp Lee then - in Virginia, down in Petersburgh, Virginia, and I got down there and told them I was, you know, just coming in to get in to go back to school and they said, "Go back to school, where?" And I said, "At Howard University in the ASTP." And the guy said, "The ASTP program's closed." I said, "Well, look, I have volunteered into this Army [laughter] to go to school!" He said, "Well, I'm sorry about that, but ..." And I found out at that time because I could speak French fluently, said, "With two languages, we can use you." I said, "Not in the Army; you don't mean that!" [laughter] So I got on the phone and called the Dean of the Medical School back and told him, "Look, now, you all told me if I came down here and joined, volunteered for this Army, I'd come right back to school. Somebody's got to do something L: about me!" Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
7
And lo and behold, I stayed and waited. It was an induction center, and in an induction center everybody who comes in is processed in about three days and then shipped out to some base or other, some other place. Well, I stayed there a whole week and wasn't shipped out. I mean, ship-ments came and went, and here I was still there. And finally, on about the 7th day, I guess, they called my name and there were only two of us shipping out that day. One guy was going to dental school at the same school, and me.
So that's how I got to medical school a week late and they had given the...the professor in one of the courses - histology or something like that - was giving the test, and all I could write on his paper was, "I just got here. I don't have your book. I don't have your lecture notes. I don't know anything about what you're talking about". [laughter], and so, he understood and went on.
Well, we finally got through medical school and then ...
W: At Howard?
L: At Howard, yeah. Well, in all of that, I guess, I... what was I? - 22 years old - when all of this happened, when I got through, because I had gone... See, in New Orleans elementary school was seven grades and then went on into high school, so we only had 11 years of primary and secon-dary education. And so, that cut off one year of the usual L: time. Then with the college bit, I just went right straight on through; Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
8
so I finished that in 3 1/2 years. So by the time I got to Howard, I was - to medical school - I was just 19 years old.
W: Wow!
L: And they had an accelerated program; we were on a trimester system that went year around. So, in three years I was through with that. So that's why, at 22, I was out of medical school. Then I went on and I interned. At that time, again, there were only so many places where blacks could do internships or any kind of residency programs, and one of them was Homer G. Phillips Hospital which is in St. Louis, or which was in St. Louis - it's now closed. But I went on to St. Louis and did an internship. And in the meantime I got married the day after I graduated from medical school. Because I had already calculated that my mother and father were going to be there for my graduation, and I was going to be marrying this young lady from Washington that I... I have to tell you about that, too. So I figured, you know, may as well kill two birds with one stone; graduate today and get married tomorrow. Well, that didn't set too well with my mother. But, she said, "How are you going to take care of any wife? You don't have a job? You never know when you're going to have children. And all that sort of stuff, you shouldn't do it!" Well, anyway...
But, I met this little lady that you saw right there, L: who was in nursing school while I was in medical school. I really met her roommate first. And her roommate was a kind Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
9
of prudish girl from up-state Pennsylvania some-where - Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And she might have been related to the Amish or somebody like that; but she was a real conservative type, you know. And she made the mistake of introducing me to her roommate, who was a lot more regular. [laughter] And so...and then, too, Grace, my wife, lived in Washington, her home was in Washington. Well, in my kind of financial circumstances I couldn't get home for holidays like Thanksgiving and things like that; and so I started talking with her and found out she lived in town, and Thanksgiving came along and everybody else was going wherever they were going, and she invited me to Thanksgiving dinner at her home, and I went. And, boy, it was a feast. She had a big family. In fact, that's a bunch of them right there - all the sisters.
W: Wow!
L: There are seven of them.
W: Uh-huh.
L: In fact, this is the whole bunch, because there were nine children all together; there were two boys and seven girls.
W: Uh-huh.
L: And they were all young at the time, of course.
W: Oh, you were in heaven then, seven beautiful women!
L: And boy, let me tell you... No, well, it wasn't that, it was just when I got there and sat at this table, they didn't know that I was there. [laughter] and her daddy was at the head Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
10
of the table over there, and he looked down and he..."Son, welcome." [laughter] Her mother served out of these great big pots - they had so many of them - and they always teased me about it. But at the end of the meal she said, "Son, would you like to have dessert?" And I said, "Yes, ma'am. What do you have?" And she said, "I have pumpkin pie, I have mincemeat pie, and I have a sweet potato pie. Which would you like?" I said, "I'd like to have a piece of each, please." [laughter] And so, afterwards, her daddy, I understand - he didn't tell me, he told them later on, after I'd gone, that, "That's the most sensible boy that's been here" [laughter] So I made it right big with the family.
And so finally we got married, like I say, the day after I graduated from medical school, and immediately I went on out to St. Louis to intern. And at the same time Grace went to Chicago to do an affiliation in pediatric nursing at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. Then after that year, we went on to Tuskeegee, Alabama, to the Veteran's Hospital there, and I was in internal medicine there. And that's where our first child was born, Michelle, who was born - what was that? 1949, I guess. And from there, I did not complete the residency because, first of all, I wasn't L: making but $4800 a year and I had to pay rent and buy food and take care of a wife and child. And at that time it wasn't very popular for both parents to be out working. So, mother was supposed to be a mother and housewife, Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
11
and all that kind of thing. And she was - good one. And so, consequently, I said, "I need to go out and make some money, somewhere."
So I started asking people all around the hospital there in Tuskeegee, "Where's your home town? What's the medical situation in your home?" And I must have written at least 50 different letters to cities around and towns around the country asking them about their situation there, after I got contacts from the people. Well, this one girl who was a ward clerk, and she said, "I'm from Marshall, Texas." And I said, "Marshall, Texas? Where is Marshall, Texas?" Now here I come from Louisiana, but I had never heard of Mar-shall at that time. And she told me about where it was, and I said, "Well, what's the medical situation there?" And she said, "I don't know but I got...my father is a minister there, and he'll be able to tell you." Well, I wrote to him and he wrote back and told me that there was another minister in town who'd probably be able to tell you better because he owns a drugstore downtown, and he also is a pastor of one of the churches in town.
So I wrote to him and, lo and behold, he...oh, he wrote back this glorious letter about how they'd been looking for L: a young doctor. And at that time, and it started with the letter, started quoting, there were some 60,000 people in the county, 40,000 of them were black, negro, at that time. And so, they needed some black doctors. So, I had a friend, Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
12
too, that I had been in college with, who had gone to another medical school, gone to Maharie Medical School in Nashville, and we wound up at the VA Hospital in Tuskeegee together - he was a resident in pathology and I was in internal medicine. So...and we were both from New Orleans, so,...and we lived together, he had gotten married; the two couples of us lived together.
And so, I said, "Joe, let's...I'm going to go look at this little town in Texas, and we can go home that week-end, but it'll be a round-about way. Come go with me and we'll wind up at home." So we came on together. And, oh, there was the big reception; this man had contacted folks all around.
At that time, it was...everything was completely seg-regated, really, except I guess, I can go back to the VA Hospital where it was... It was kind of a peculiar situ-ation, because it was a Federal institution and so, conse-quently, there was no shenanigans going on...
W: Even in the late '40s?
L: Yeah.
W: ...talking about?
L: Yeah. You're talking about '48 and '49. Yeah. And, L: oh, and that particular part of Alabama was terrible.
W: Uh-huh.
L: I mean, that was Macon County, I believe, where Tus-keegee is. But, in any event, it was one of those kinds of situations Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
13
where the town of Tuskeegee itself was, the downtown area, was so completely segregated that I remember one of the fellows, one of the black fellows, going down-town, going to a filling station and the little house that...where, you know, where the filling station is and where the people have the cash register and all that kind of stuff; he walked up to get a pack of cigarettes and went to step in the front door and the lady says, "Don't come in here." And he said, "I just want a pack of cigarettes." And she said, "Go around to the back." And she...so, he said he thought that the floor had been painted, [laughter] or something like that. That she didn't want him...I mean, it was just that segregated. One of the coaches there told the story of, you go downtown to shop in a store, go in a clothing store or something, he'd take his hat off - he couldn't walk in the store with a hat on. So, it was that kind of a town.
So much so until...when long after I left there, eventually when the sixties came around and the sit-ins and all that came about, those people were forced out of business completely, because the kids from the college, from the Institute, just had boycotted everything and so they L: eventually were forced out of business and, really, the place became almost an all-black town. But it was terrible, horrible at that time. I mean, the whippings and the mis-treatment, actual physical abuse, really, that went on was horrible. Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
14
But, it was such a good feeling to be out, and maybe apprehensive and everything, and then to get right to the gates of the VA Hospital and get in and say, "Whew, boy, that sure feels good and I dare 'em to come in here!" [laughter] That kind of thing, you know.
So, anyway, we finally decided to come here. And...
W: You and your wife, or you and the other doctor?
L: Well, I guess, we had their consent. I mean, actually, maybe coercion did it. [(laughter] But, in any event... Oh, after we got here - I started to tell you - the red carpet was out. There was one black doctor practicing actively, and there were two others - two other older doctors, two or three, three, maybe - three other older doctors; no, there were two others, because there were three here already, and when we came there were five. But, there were three; the two older guys were well-heeled and they weren't doing very much.
This one guy was just swamped. The man who owned the drugstore downtown, which was on the square right where all these people are that you see in the picture, was also a property owner in town. He had, like, two other homes L: besides his own, and he offered us the opportunity to rent or buy or whatever, lease, whatever we wanted to, for a place to stay. And this one active guy, had an office above the drugstore, on the second floor. People were lined up all the way down the stairs to the sidewalk, waiting to see this one doctor up Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
15
there. So, we edged our way up through to meet him. And got up there and he was sitting at a little desk, with people all around, and he was writing prescriptions and that sort of stuff, and said, " Hello, hi, how're you doing? Why don't you just go on out to the house? Geneva is there." That's his wife. So we finally went out to the house. And she was one of these who was just a socialite, who loved to entertain, just loved to - always had company from everywhere, all over the place, party, party, all of the time. And that kind of thing. So she entertained us well, that week-end. And after he got off from work he came on, and they invited a whole bunch of people to the house that night, and it was a big gala thing. And I never have heard so many times the numbers that I quoted to you before - 60,000 people, 40,000 blacks, 20,000 whites - we need you! That kind of thing.
So it wound up that both of us came here. The man who owned the drugstore had this office space above his drug-store and he says, "We'll...I'll let you have that rent-free for two years." And so, you couldn't beat that anywhere in the country, you know. So, we came on and started out. L: First patient I ever saw was, I'll never forget, was a beautician from Karnack, Texas. Karnack is where Lady Bird Johnson comes from, you know. And she came in and here I'm a hot-shot, right out of a residency program, and she had a little lesion on her elbow and I looked at that right fast and immediately saw that Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
16
it was a vitamin A deficiency, and I told her. And she said, "Okay." And I called down to the drugstore and got her, ordered her some vitamin A, and she said, "How much do I owe you?" I said, "Two dollars." And she said, "For what? You didn't do anything!" And I said, "Well, I diagnosed your case." [laughter] And she said, "But you didn't...I just sat here, and you looked at me and you said...and that's it." And then I realized, well, maybe, you know, I should have been doing something else, like, taking her temperature and maybe her blood pressure. [laughter], or something to make her think... But I never got that two dollars; she never paid me. First patient I ever had, never paid me. [laughter]
But anyway, we stayed around and things got a little better. Not too long ago I looked over some of my old books, and I can remember now, even, when I got up to bringing home $75 in a day, oh, I was in tall cotton. I was riding high. I mean, things had come about.
And it was pretty good, except for the fact now, that...and I guess, it was because of the times...
Come on in... [background talk] I guess it was just L: the times and the way we were able to adjust, I guess, or something of that sort; we might have been dumb, stupid or something. But in any event, I was not allowed to practice in the hospital here.
There were a couple of little private hospitals in the Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
17
area - one in Jefferson that was owned by a Dr. Raymond Douglas, seven or eight beds, something like that. And accreditation wasn't nearly as stringent, and it probably wasn't even required or mandated at that time, to operate a clinic or hospital like that. Then there was another one in Longview, that was owned by an oil corporation or something like that; but there was a Dr. O.J. Moore who operated that one. Well, we could deliver babies in those from people who were able to afford it, either had...and insurance played a little part in those days. Didn't play a real great big part, because a delivery in that day and time was $35. And so, if you had the money, it would be alright, if you didn't, we'd go on and do it anyway, really.
But in any event, this hospital here, Memorial Hos-pital, would have no part of us, whatsoever. And for 15 years I practiced here, doing hospital medicine in the homesk. There were times when I was giving IV fluids and nailing a nail upon the wall and hanging the bottle from the nail and starting...
END OF TAPE I, Side 1, ABOUT .. MINUTES.
TAPE I, Side 2.
W: So there weren't black doctors; there weren't blacks going into these hospitals? Right?
L: Oh, yeah, yeah, well, black people, black patients were going into the hospital, sure, but they were segregated; they were on the bottom floor. And from what I under-stand...and Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
18
talking about deliveries, the deliveries were being done and they were put in these little rooms and their babies were put in the dresser drawer. No cribs or nothing like that; no special facilities for babies at all, no pediatric unit or anything like that. No incubators, no anything for the black kids. And I understand that a number of them just didn't survive.
But, in any event, we could...we got to the place where we could call a white doctor, if we wanted to, or if we knew that a patient needed to be admitted. Refer that patient to the white doctor and he would admit the patient. Now, when the patient got better he could either keep the patient if he wanted to, or he could refer back. Well, some of them kept the patients, and we had no control over that.
W: The patient didn't have any control over it?
L: Well, you know, this has been a kind of a community where people, particularly blacks, have been so, I guess, just made afraid of the system. They didn't contest any-thing. If somebody white said, "You do this," you do it. Because you have some kind of an innate fear that something L: is going to happen to you, impending doom. And many times it had to do with jobs; other times it had to do with being able to get loans, maybe, the little bitty loans that they got, because they didn't get but a pittance. No black folk could get any big loans, whatsoever. But, in any event, they had that unfounded fear. And so, consequently, when the white doctor Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
19
says, "Okay, you come back to see me next week, or the next week" after they get out of the hospital, they come back. And I don't see 'em anymore. And there were a few who would not accept our patients at all.
All of them had segregated waiting facilities, and I say waiting facilities, not necessarily waiting rooms. Because I know of one who had a...his office in this building, and the black waiting facility was on the back porch. And the back porch had no heat, so that when wintertime came it was cold back there and people would go back and sit on that back porch and wait for this guy. And they'd see all of the white patients first, and then if the evening came along and there was still some time, they would open the back door and say, "Come on in, Susie or John" or whoever. And if they got to the point where they were tired and didn't want to do anymore, they'd tell the rest of them to come back tomorrow, sick or no sick. It didn't make any difference. But that was the kind of system that we were in.
Well, we did the practice that was necessary; we L: delivered babies galore, in the homes, in all kinds of situations and circumstances. And did well. I don't recall a lot of mishaps or deaths, stillborns and things like that. There were some difficult ones.
But we were...I found out later, you know, when you come into a situation like that, having come up in an all-black school Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
20
system - elementary school, secondary school, college, medical school, internship... Iin fact, during the internship, we had one in St. Louis - St. Louis was segregated as well - because this was an all black hospital I was in. City Hospital Number 1 was an all white hospital, but they did have black patients. And they had an agreement where we from Homer Phillips Hospital, as interns, would spend one month out of the year at City Hospital Number 1 in infectious diseases.
And I was so petrified when I went to that place, that it was a traumatic experience...
W: Why?
L: Because everything in that hospital was white. I mean the cooks, the janitors, the nurses [laughter] everything. And there were quarters up top for the interns, on the top floor, about the 5th, 6th floor, something like that, and I'd come out to the door and peep out to see who was around, you know. [laughter] And I'd leave the place in the evening, if I were not on call that night, and I'd go all the way across town, get a streetcar or bus or whatever it L: was, all the way across town to Homer Phillips Hospital and sit up and talk with the guys there until I got sleepy and then come on back. [laughter]
But it was horrifying. I'd make rounds with the group and everybody there was white. I just had not been asso-ciated with whites, except for the fact that in my high school I had Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
21
white professors, white teachers. In my college, my university, I had white teachers. But to be associated on that basis, like that...
W: ...kind of intimacy...
L: ...yeah, I mean, it was just a petrifying feeling. So then, of course, I went on to Tuskeegee, which again was all black, the VA Hospital, and then came here.
Well, of course, I guess, after all those years I had learned to "live black." And not...and learned to be able to get out of the system what I needed. I mean, you know, I went down and talked to the banker because I needed to borrow some money, and he told me I had to have an endorser. So I went on to one of the black dentists here, who endorsed a note for me for $500 to get started. And I went on and paid the money back, regularly, like I was supposed to - on time. And finally established myself that way.
Now, I knew well, because I had heard it with my own ears, that as soon as I was not in their presence I was just another "nigger doctor." That's all, you know. And I did hear that. I remember one time taking my car to be serviced L: at the, it was the Plymouth dealership, I guess. And I walked around, and they didn't know I was coming, just walked around and I heard the guy say, "Oh, that one belongs to that nigger doctor" - talking about my car, you know.
And so that was the kind of thing that I knew existed over Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
22
there, and I knew, I had learned, as I say, to get along with the people with whom I was associated. And of course, that went onm and we still didn't get into the hospital at all.
So, came about 1953 - because I came to Marshall in '49 - in 1953 I was just getting on my feet after that $75 day [laughter], and then comes along the Korean War and they decided they wanted me back in the service. So I tried to maneuver around that, and an interesting conversation... the guy who was the chairman of the draft board here was another prominent white man who owned the same Plymouth dealership, and his name was S.E. Woods. And so I had been told, said, "You know, Mr. Woods would be able get you out of going into the service, if you talk with him." So, I called him; I said, "Mr. Woods, this is Dr. Lamothe." "Yeah." Said, "I had been referred to you to, concerning going into the service, and I understand you're pretty influential and you can...you'd have some say about whether or not I went or didn't go." And we talked and he asked a few...and I'd say, "Uh-huh." And he said, "What did you say?" [laughter] I said, "I don't understand." He said, "You said 'uh-huh' to L: me?" I said, "Well, yeah, I guess I did. I didn't realize it." He said, "Well, I'll tell you what; my sons don't even say 'uh-huh' to me; they say 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir.'" Said, "Maybe a good tour in the service would do you some good." And I said, this dirty dog [laughter], you know, and so... Boy, you talk about wanting to jump through Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
23
the phone. It was...
W: ...arrogance.
L: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, but, see, my partner now, the guy, the young guy that I told you was the one who was all over-worked and over-crowded and that sort of thing; we got to be partners. And he was of a different ilk. He came from a little town here in Texas - Palestine, Texas.
W: Uh-huh.
L: And he was very subservient. I mean, hat in hand kind, you know, behind his back. And yes, sir, yes, sir. And he had apparently gotten to this same man, and the man had kind of delayed his induction. And that was the reason that he had referred me to him. And so, consequently, he never did go back to the service. But I went. [laughter] And that was another one of those things that I pulled, because they kept writing to me saying that they wanted me to volunteer for one of the branches of the services and, if not, they were going to induct me as a buck private. And so, I waited and waited and waited until I got my induction papers and they said report to Barksdale [Air Force Base], over there L: in Shreveport, for induction. And then I called them and told them, you know, they probably hadn't gotten the notice yet, but I had already volunteered for the Air Force the day before. [laughter] So again, I squeezed out of that. And I went on and volunteered for the Air Force then. And so I went into the Air Force. Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
24
I cried all the way because I had to go to Montgomery, Alabama, for indoctri-nation - they didn't call it for basic training or anything like that; they called it indoctrination.
W: That's probably what it was.
L: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I went. And I cried half way there, because I did not want to go and leave my family. By that time I had a little boy besides the girl. And my wife was pregnant then. She was pregnant with the third one. Because he was born while I was in the Air Force, in the service. But anyway, got there, went through the indoctri-nation course, then got assigned to West Texas - Big Spring, Webb Air Force Base.
And so I left my wife here and drove all the way out there and got into that base at night, and had already com-municated with the base, and the commander of the hospital met me. Well, I guess, I got to the gate and the Air Police wanted to know who I was, and I told them I had been assigned there and that...what was his name? - Dean, Guy Dean, Major Dean was the commander of the hospital and he was to meet me. So they called him and he came in his L: little station wagon, and we drove on to the BOQ, the Officer's Quarters, Bachelors Officers' Quarters...
W: Uh-huh.
L: ...and we parked right outside, and he said, "Come on over here and get in the car." So I went in and sat in his car, out in the dark; and he started relating to me the... all of Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
25
the...everything about the base and about who the personnel were and about the population and that they did dependent care, which meant that they delivered babies as well as took care of kids. There were no black officers on the base at all. So here comes another traumatic experience! [laughter]
And so, anyway, he tells me that means that I will have to be on...I'll be Officer of the Day, be on OD period-ically, and I've forgotten how often now, but each one of us took a night, and I don't know, there were 13, 14 guys on staff or something like that, so you come up every couple of weeks. But when the guy's on call, no matter who it is, he delivers any babies that come in, and I would appreciate it then, that if, you know, when you were on call, if you would call one of us to help you.
W: With the white babies?
L: Yeah, yeah. I said, "Well, you know, I've been deli-vering babies, a whole lot of babies, you know." "Well, we just think it would be better if you'd do it that way."
And so, I started; it was a little different experience L: because I wasn't as mesmerized and traumatized as I was in St. Louis. But I still was uncomfortable. And the first night that I was on OD I had three deliveries that night - all whites. There were black enlisted people there, you know, and there were some blacks who...but these were all whites. And every morning at 9 o'clock we'd have our little staff meeting Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
26
and coffee break and all that kind of stuff there. So I got there the next morning and he said, "See you had a busy night last night?" I said, "Yeah, that's right." He said, "Well, you didn't call any of us?" And I said, "No, I just didn't think I needed anybody, you know; I did alright. I didn't have any problems." And, boy, he turned red. And I guess, he was at a loss of what to say or do because he knew, too, that he was in the Air Force, just like I was. But from then on, I didn't have any trouble out of that part of it at all.
W: How did the women feel?
L: They had no problems, no problems. In fact, you know, I even got gifts from the people, from some of them, you know, as we went along.
W: Uh-huh.
L: Because I remember resuscitating little babies and, boy...and at that day and time, they'd roll the incubator into the delivery room and you'd do all the stuff right there with the lady on the table. I mean, you don't even bother about the mother; she's doing all right. So you go L: and work with the baby and the lady will be laying up there crying, thinking the little baby is not going to make it, and resusitate the baby and, then, they just want to hug you and everything else after then, you know. So, anyway, no, they had no problems with the women at all, none whatsoever. But anyway, we went on and I, finally, I guess, got to, call it "feeling my oats," Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
27
because I had been out in practice now about three years, four years, something like that. And there were guys in the Air Force there who had just come out of residency programs, had never been out in practice, and they were coming and asking me what I would do in a situation like this.
W: Uh-huh.
L: And they were guys, there was some guys...was one guy from St. Louis, one guy from Wisconsin, another from Rhode Island, Illinois, all over the place. And I said to myself, now, you know, I never had realized it but we studied out of the same books.
W: Uh-huh.
L: Even though we were in different institutions, and they don't know anymore than I do!
W: Uh-huh.
L: In fact, in a lot of cases, they don't know as much, you know. So, okay, the second year I was there, I got to be Chief of the Medical Services, which had...at that base Medical Services meant X-ray, meant laboratory, and all of L: the medical services. And of course, did well.
When I came out, now, came out, I said...well, this is '55, that was six years after I had come to Marshall...I said, now, the Texas Medical Association has dropped the word "white" from its constitution, which means that I should be able to become a member of the Harrison County Medical Society and then Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
28
the Texas Medical Association. So I got here, and I went to one of the older doctors, not my partner, because, you know, he was not going to be too forward in a situation like this; so I went to one of the older doctors, he said, "No, no, no, Son, they're not going to be ready for you." Said, "Well, I mean the law almost says this, you know, that we ought to be able to apply and join." "Oh, well, you could apply, but you'd be wasting your time." So I...that kind of hurt me a bit, so I stayed around and waited around awhile, and then we talked, got to talk to several of the physicians on the staff and they were all sympathetic, you know, yeah...
W: These are white doctors?
L: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those were all they had; there were only white physicians on the staff then. And they would do what they could, you know, but nothing ever happened. So, then along came the Hill-Burton Act that the Federal Government had passed, which supplied monies and funding for building of hospitals and additions to hospitals and renova-tions and all that. This hospital got a great big Hill-L: Burton loan; and I found out that this was federally subsidized and so, consequently, I thought that, you know, we ought to be able to practice in a place that is using federal monies.
W: Uh-huh.
L: And so we went and we told them that; and they said, "Well, you know, we didn't think that that was mandatory." So I just Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
29
got tired of the stuff. By that time Lyndon Johnson had gotten to be President of the United States and things, even though, you know, you never know how really effective that kind of thing is, it makes you feel better.
W: Uh-huh.
L: Makes you feel that maybe you've got a voice somewhere, that somebody will help.
W: An ally somewhere.
L: Yeah, an ally. Right. Okay. So I called the Justice Department and told them what the problem was; and lo and behold, they sent a little sharply-dressed black guy down here from Washington, who came in and came by the office and talked with me and my partner, incidently, and he found out what the real story was. So then, he went on down to the hospital. And there was an old guy down there who was the administrator of the hospital. He had been city...he'd been mayor, I believe, before then. He was on the city commis-sion; I know that. And I think had been mayor. But anyway, he was then hospital administrator. And this little guy L: just told him that since you've had the use of Hill-Burton funds and this place is federally subsidized, you have to admit to your staff every qualified physician that comes along. And the next day the administrator resigned. Big headlines in the paper - Oscar Jones was his name - Oscar Jones resigns and his reason was that things were moving too fast for him and that he thought that that job should Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
30
be undertaken by somebody younger who could cope with it better.
W: Hmm.
L: And so, then the staff, of course, met, and they decided to invite us to come in on the staff. Well, in the meantime, there was something else going on. They had what they called the "Central East Texas Fair." And this fair, you may have heard...I don't know whether Charles got into that part of it at all. It's just like all these other county fairs that you have around. But the Central East Texas Fair was held here, same kind of format, all week long, white events; Friday night was black night. And this was the night that was most attended and where the money was made by the fair people. So, that was a great big affair for money-making, as far as the fair was concerned. Well, but then, everything still was segregated at the fair. I mean, when they displayed all of the, you know, the housewares, household stuff and the cakes and all of the sewing and all those kinds of things that they display at a L: fair...
W: Uh-huh.
L: ...they had to have them in a separate building. You couldn't put them in the same building with where the whites had their stuff.
W: Amazing.
L: But the building that they used for the blacks leaked! It would rain and be leaking all over the people's stuff in Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
31
there. The...even the hotdog stands, you couldn't... They had two different hotdog stands [laughter] and... But the hotdog stand for the blacks was over by the cowpens, and it smelled to high heaven there. The toilets were separate. Those for the blacks were on mud floors, and you know how toilets get wet around and it was just messy in there and smelly and everything. So we got a little committee of us here together; I remember several of the people who were on there - there was a Catholic priest here who was... We had two churches then, incidently - the Catholics had two churches, one was black, and one was white. And we could not even go into the white church at all, I mean, to hear mass, no way. There were people in that church who...I remember one guy, one man who was training the altar boys, the acolytes, and oh, he had some derogatory kind of... I can't remember the exact words to it now, but it was a derogatory phrase that he used, that he impressed the boys with, the boys that he was training with, that no blacks L: should ever come around there or something of that sort. But, in any event, it was just completely segregated. So, anyway, but the Catholic priest on the other side, at the black church, was white, but he was completely civil- rights oriented. So we used to meet at his house, at the rectory there, this little group. And we decided we were just going to bring about a boycott to the fair.
W: Good.Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
32
L: Yeah. Because we had written to them and pointed out all of these deficiencies and discrepancies and asked them to just repair them - stop up the holes in the roof and fix that, move that stand away from the cowpens, things like that. Never even got the courtesy of a reply. So we said, well, if they don't want to reply, then let's just say we won't go at all. And so,we talked and finally decided that we'd get some little stickers, and all the stickers had was "No Fair". [laughter] And we pasted those stickers all over town. Go down at night, downtown, and paste them on all the store windows and automobiles, everything. And then we got around to the black churches and spread the word that comes Friday night on such and such a date, there will be "No Fair"; we are just not going to attend. Of course, we did get somebody, at least a scout, to go out that night to see what was going on. And whereby they had had 12, 1500, 2,000 people out there at night, they could not count more than about 13 people that night.
W: Um. [laughter]
L: And apparently they hadn't heard, they hadn't gotten the word. But it was a complete disaster to them. But it at least got us heard. And of course, those of us who par-ticipated, now, got to be marked. And there was supposedly, and I still believe it was true, supposedly files that were kept downtown by those people who wanted to be considered the powers that be, I guess. And they had files on all of us and kept account Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
33
of activities and that kind of thing. And it made it so that they would warn people, "Don't be associated with him; he's dangerous."
W: Uh-huh.
L: Anyway, we got the idea of the fair over to them. And, as I can recall now, that was probably the most significant thing that we ever pulled off in this town.
W: When was that?
L: That had to be late '50s. It was before the sit-ins. Because the sit-ins were...
W: That was in the '60s.
L: Yeah. That's right. That's right. It was before then. And, well, several of the people who participated are dead now and I guess, a couple, maybe a couple of us left here in town now. But, anyway, following that, came along the 1960s and the civil rights era, I guess.
W: Uh-huh.
L: I don't know, we got...before we leave the staff we L: got on...when it came time for us to get on the staff there, because this had happened - this "No Fair" thing, I'll show you what came as a consequence. My partner, Nolan Anderson, was admitted to the staff, and although we came up for vote the same night and we were sitting out in the hall waiting and the guy came out and says, "Just came to let you know that Dr. Anderson has been admitted to the staff, and Dr. Lamothe has Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 1)
34
been denied admission." And I said, "What's the difference?" You know, I mean, " What?" "Well, now, it wasn't my decision, you know. That was the decision of the staff and you always have the right to appeal, if you want to appeal. And I sorta, you know, I kind of told them that you might want to appeal." And I said, "Boy, now here we go again."
W: Uh-huh.
L: And so, I had to go back to the Justice Department and go that way, because I knew it wasn't any sense in my going to talk to them, at all. So, I just went back and told them what had happened and they came back and told them, you know, they had to show them some reason for this. So...
W: What was their reason?
L: They didn't have any; they didn't have any. They just went on and said, "Okay"; they wrote a letter saying that they had accepted me. Didn't call me back to...
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 2, ABOUT .. MINUTES.THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: Civil Rights Series
INTERVIEW WITH: Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
DATE: 18 October 1993
PLACE: Marshall, Texas
INTERVIEWER: Cheri Wolfe
TAPE II, Side 1
L: ...yeah, well, you asked how I felt working with people like that? Well, you know, I've always been one to feel that I had a goal in whatever I did. And once I reached my goal, people don't bother me, one way or the other, which is altogether different from my wife, because she feels like if there is somebody who is obstructing your path, and obstruc-ting it firmly enough, that you have to do something to overcome them. Once you overcome them, you ought to smash them into the ground! [laughter] Well, as far as I'm con-cerned, once I overcome them, that's past; I could care less what happens...
W: [inaudible]
L: Yeah, I could care less what happens to them. And by that time, as I told you, I had had the experiences of the Service, where I had gained a whole lot of confidence in myself, and I knew I knew as much as these guys knew about medicine. In fact, I knew I knew more than some of them knew about it, because I had been watching them from the outside. And I...the devil, you know...I could practice L: medicine with anybody. [laughter] I thought! And so, consequently, I felt that it was my job, then, to show them that I could. And another policy that I had...some of the biggest bigots in the world were there. And I can remember one - old man Granbury - that everybody just idolized. He was such a benevolent kind of a fellow, and all that. But the biggest devil in the world! And I would go up to him -because he hated my guts! - but everytime I'd be in the hall and he'd, "Hello, Dr. Granbury, how are you!" Boy, he'd turn blue. [laughter] And wanted to make another door in the wall, you know. But eventually, he came around, and it was after several years. I remember sitting on the ward, writing on the chart, he comes around, puts his arm around my neck, "Hi, Lamothe, how're you doing? How's old Anderson doing then?" I mean, got to be buddy, buddy. At least, wanted to make believe he's buddy, buddy, you know. But it was that kind of thing. I didn't...I had, as I said, had no fears, whatsoever. I never feared any of those folk. But I just felt like I...it's like, almost, a baseball player who is hit by a pitch and instead of going out and fighting, he comes back up the next time and hits a homerun.
W: Uh-huh.
L: And he says, "I'll show you". You know, that kind of thing. So that's how I felt about it. And that's how I've always felt. I don't have any problems with those folks. Because this same Granbury, after we got on the staff, there was a black dentist, lived right across the street over L: here, I said, "Claude, we're on the staff now. You ought to apply for the staff and come on and get on." So his application came Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
3
up that night. I'm sitting here, another doctor sitting here, Granbury sitting in the next one, "Well, we don't need...I don't think we need to admit him." Said, "We've got enough niggers on this staff any-way." Now he just [inadible] two away from me now. Ordin-arily you'd want to say, pop him in the nose! But I didn't say anything a'tall. I just went around and talked to some of the guys that I knew, you know, had gotten to know, and there were some good ones. There were a few little good ones on there. But they, I don't know, they were just scared to disturb the establishment.
W: Uh-huh.
L: Don't want to get into the bad graces of the estab-lishment; don't want anybody to think that I'm too liberal, you know. That kind of thing. Although you get them aside and talk with them, and they make you believe they are the most liberal people in the world, you know. "Yeah, I voted for you to get on the staff, but you know,..." Then when you talk to the real - they had about two doctors on the staff who were, I believe, were very sincere and would, at least bring the news to us as to what happened in the staff meeting.
W: Uh-huh.
L: And these guys who were telling me about, "Yeah, I L: voted for you." And he'd say, "That guy didn't vote for you. He's just telling you that. He voted against you just like all the rest of them." So it was that kind of thing. Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
4
But, I had no problem with that.
W: Did the dentist get on? Claude?
L: Oh yeah, eventually. Eventually he got on. Sure. Yeah. And they did the same thing with a podiatrist, a black podiatrist who practices in Longview now; they wouldn't let him on the staff in Longview at the hospital. So after I got to be...after I got on the staff I said... his name was Isaac Willis...said, "Isaac, why don't you apply over in Marshall? We can get you on. I'm on the staff now." Got to his...that meeting where his application came up, this same guy, Granbury, was chief of staff, and so I had presented the application, you know, as a sponsor, and they voted, and they voted like eleven to ten to admit him. Granbury said, "Wait, wait, wait a minute, I didn't see that count." Said, "Let me see those hands. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eleven against and ten for." Says, "His application is denied." Just right...oh, that was the night that I was mad! [laughter] I got really mad! I mean to the point where I was cussin'.
W: Uh-huh.
L: And I...a couple of the guys...I got...and I called Granbury all sorts of things to him. They said, "Well, wait a minute, now, don't...he can always re-apply." I said, L: "Re-apply?" [laughter], you know, and but then again I got him...
W: How'd you do that?Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
5
L: Actually, well, I got to be chief of staff.
W: Um.
L: That was the next thing that came along! [laughter] Because, see, following all of this, as I say, I did my work, I didn't leave a stone unturned, I...and, you know, I mean it wasn't difficult, to me. The paperwork was there, the devil, you just do the paperwork, that was all. And everything that had to be done, so that when time came to rotate around for committees, and I chaired committees...I chaired the emergency room committee, I chaired the quality assurance committee, I chaired the credentials committee, the pharmacy committee, everythin... And eventually somebody says well, you know, would you accept being vice-presidentl? No; first they start secretary of the staff. Well, that means you're secretary, the next year you're vice-president, and the next year you're president.
W: Uh-huh.
L: And I said, "Well, yes, I will." And so I got to be secretary, and when I got to be chief of staff, then, I told Isaac, "Send in your application; you're in." [laughter] See, I wasn't going to have anything else to happen in there. But it...that year was not a bad year either, be-cause I got some things done that needed to be done. I had L: established a library in the hospital, got county society money that had been sitting up there. I'd been chief...oh, Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
6
I got to be county society president first, and then, I guess, a year or two later, got to be chief of staff at the hospital.
W: So when would this have been? About?
L: Now, you know, I'm sorry you asked, see, 'cause you're a historian and [laughter] I'm...I've got the poorest memory for dates that you ever want to see!
W: Well, just about. I mean, was...do you think? [inaudible]
L: It had to be. It had to be in the '70s. Yeah. It had to be '70s, because it was whatever year that Marshall, Texas...Marshall, Texas, thing came out. Because it was at the same time that I was chief of staff that Bill Moyers came through here with that thing. Because he followed me through the hospital with all the cameras and things and all these people. And his opening statement to that segement of it was that, "He never would have believed that there had been a black doctor who was, who had been president of the Medical Society, chief of staff of the hospital in his hometown, Marshall, Texas." So it was that same year.
W: Uh-huh. I'll check.
L: I'll bet it was like...
W: '73?
L: '73, something like that. Yeah, it was like about '73 L: or so. But anyway, I just went on and did everything that I had to do and as a result just moved along and took advantage of every opportunity that come along.Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
7
W: Uh-huh. Oh, you were doing a lot more than that though. And when I was going through some of Charles Wilson's files I saw...what's this lawsuit by Bradbury?
L: Oh, yeah. Well,...
W: Was that "The Marshall Nine?" Or was that something else?
L: Well, that's what they called it. I don't know. I never have been too fond of all of these labels and things. It was a matter of fact that this guy downtown, Bradbury, who owned a clothing store, supposedly found a black guy who was trying to steal something from his store.
W: Uh-huh.
L: Now, I don't know how the real incident happened or what the details of it were, but he wound up kind of pushing the guy, throwing him through the front plate glass window of the store. And there were some blacks who were outside who saw this and who reported that they just thought that it wasn't fair, that he had mistreated this guy and the guy wasn't trying to steal anything at all. And, of course, we got a number of us together and decided to call him and ask him to come down and meet with us and explain to us what happened. Well, he was arrogant and belligerent, and he denied the fact that he was unnecessarily brutal, that he L: was just protecting his property and that this guy had come to steal stuff from him and he just wasn't going to have that and blah, blah. And he wasn't going to apologize to anybody, 'cause he didn't think Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
8
he'd did anything that was wrong. So, excuse me, if that's the way you feel about it, we just won't buy at your store either. And then there was a big boycott that went on for awhile and there were all kinds of little incidents of shovings and... He grabbed one guy out on the sidewalk one time, Sam Andson - I don't know whether his name came across...
W: Yes. Yes.
L: [laughter] And Sam's about that big and Bradbury's about twice that big [laughter], so he [inaudible] and grabbed him. But all those kinds of things went on. And of course, I have not been in Bradbury's since then. Of course, the man is dead now, has been dead for a long time.
W: What happened as a result of that lawsuit?
L: I don't remember what happened with the lawsuit now. I don't know what happened there. I don't really know. I don't really know. In fact, when you say lawsuit, now, I wasn't...in fact, I'm not sure [inaudible]...
W: ...copy of where Bradbury was, you know, accusing, you know, this "Marshall Nine" of slander and...?
L: Well, nothing never happened, as far as I know. I never have...
W: Never went to jail?
L: No, I never went to jail, and I never paid any fine or we never settled, as far as I know. I vaguely remember that there was something like that. Because it looks like to me, Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
9
now that I recall, that we got a lawyer from Shreveport [background comment]...No, it wasn't...from where? Amarillo, yeah; there was somebody from Amarillo, too, come to think about it. You're bringing back a whole lot of cobwebs.
W: ...something like that [inaudible]...
L: Yeah, something like that...
W: [inaudible]...
L: Yeah.
W: ...Walter or [inaudible]... I was surprised that you had a lawyer from so far away.
L: Yeah. Well, you had to do that. In fact, almost now...you know, with the system like it is now, if something happens that a black person has a grievance against some county official or some very prominent person, white person, in town, there's no lawyer here that's going to take that case.
W: Um.
L: You've got to go out of town.
W: Yeah.
L: To get a lawyer.
W: Things haven't changed very much?
L: No, that hasn't changed a'tall. No, I mean, shoot, L: that's the most surprising thing. Not too long ago I was talking to a lawyer, and there was a case that came along and another young lawyer who had just come here had his name on this thing, and this lawyer said, "Boy, I'm telling you, he Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
10
doesn't know what he's doing; he's cutting his throat." He said, "However legitimate it might be, however right he might think he is." Still the same way. Still the same kind of way. But anyway, with that suit, nothing ever came of it, nothing ever came of it.
W: Do you think...in San Antonio I hear that there wasn't much of a civil rights movement in Texas. That's what people down there think. I'm wondering if that's a perception in the state, and I'm wondering what's your perception is?
L: Well, as far as a movement was concerned, I think probably the biggest movement had to do with the sit-ins when they came along because...and that was almost spon-taneously brought about by the kids more than anything else, although I was accused of having started the sit-ins here. It was...that was front page, Marshall News Messenger.
W: Why would they...why would you be accused of that?
L: Well, because I was kind of active in the community. It was me, and there was a black lawyer here at the time, who's name was Romeo Williams, and the thing says, "Dr. Lamothe and Romeo Williams were the perpetrators of this, this sit-in," when actually we did not have any part to L: play with it at all, except for the fact that he was a lawyer who was helping to get the kids out of jail, and I was helping to bond them and to do whatever I could to keep them out as well. Although after awhile they denied, they refused to recognize me as a Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
11
bondsman.
W: How could they do that?
L: Just to say so! Just did it! [laughter] So, they didn't have to have any reason to do anything.
W: You had the money to put up...
L: Well, that didn't matter. That didn't matter. We don't recognize you as a bondsman; that's it. You can't bond this one out. That's all.
W: Why do you...do you think if it wasn't a movement, do you think...why not? I mean, why do you think that in Texas there doesn't seem to have been that real explosive ...?
L: Well, Texas is, you know, so diverse that this has never has been... I guess, there's some action that went on in Dallas and in Houston. But in these other places there never was a concentration of black folks who had that kind of impetus and motivation. They, for long, long years, whites have had blacks coerced, by one means or other, and usually it was, like I said before, revolving around jobs, around money and around freedom to walk the streets or whatever, but they have kept them to that point. Because right now, we've got a black Buick dealer here, Jerry L: Stallworth - Jerry Stallworth is still receiving some of the same kind of [inaudible]...a string of habit that occurred 40 years ago, because at that time the Buick distributorship was owned by, oh, a guy by the name of, it was Frye-Pope, now which was Frye...two people - one was Frye and Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
12
one was Pope; they owned the Buick dealership. Pope, I belive, was on the schoolboard, chairman of the schoolboard, president of the schoolboard, whatever they call them, and he directed that every black teacher or principal who wanted to buy a car had to buy a Buick.
W: When was this?
L: Oh, when I first came here! When I first came here. And not only that, they bought them! And they kept buying them. And they got into the habit of buying Buicks. And so now, even 40 years later, there are people buying Buicks be-cause they've been buying Buicks for so long. [laughter]
W: Yeah. See, that's what interests me. Because...why, I mean, I can't imagine that East Texas is any different from rural Mississippi or rural...
L: Well, it's not. It's really not, because, you know, the legend is that when the migration started west, those whites from Mississippi who were dissatisfied, maybe, with Mississippi, wanted to, supposedly, to better themselves, started west - those who had the biggest amount of money and wherewithal, got all the way to California. As they got poorer and poorer and poorer, they stopped shorter and L: shorter and shorter. And so, those that landed in East Texas were probably the lowest class there was.
W: Um.
L: And so, this is what we were built upon - that kind of Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
13
person. Because antebellum and...this place was terrible. It was, actually, the capital of the Confederacy one time - I guess you know - so that it has never had any reputation for being liberal. In fact, word everywhere that I've been is that East Texas is a horrible place for race relations and has been! Tyler and Longview. Smith County was, oh, they were lynching in Smith County when I first came here. In fact, it hasn't been too long since there's been a lynching here.
W: When? When was the last one?
L: I don't know. It had to be in the middle '40s, somewhere around in there.
W: So right before you left?
L: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, it hasn't been pleasant for a lot of people. And then there's...I mean, there are stories like, and this happened, I know, shortly before I came here. There's a family of Andersons who live right outside of town, big property owners, dairy people and farm people. Cain Anderson was the big name, old man Cain Anderson. Cain Anderson had a lot of black people working for him, and there are two stories that come out of there. One, that one of the fellows said, "Mr. Anderson, I'd like to go to town L: to get a haircut." "Come here, boy, I'll give you a haircut." He pours gasoline on his head and lights it.
W: Oh, my god.
L: And I've seen the guy, because the guy was still living Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
14
when I got here. And his head was all scarred and bald, you know; he just burned all the hair off, "Here I'll give you a haircut." The other one was, that there was a black woman who kind of decided that she would not acquiesce to his ad-vances, and he just got one of these big two by four things and hit her across the back, broke her back, and she stayed paralyzed the rest of her life. And nobody...there was no prosecution or anything like that. Nobody even complained about that kind of thing. I think Cain Anderson's, what?, grandson now, I guess it is, is a lawyer here now, and one who tries to be all buddy, buddy and nice and I believe he's sincere. I believe he's sincere. This thing never comes up with him. But he's a descendent still, and then, you know, when we talk about Richard Anderson, folks will say, "Hey, well, you know, his uncle was Cain Anderson, don't you?" Those kinds of things were going on.
W: So that kind of tradition you think, when you live with that...
L: Yeah. Sure. Sure. And really and that's why there never was a movement, so to speak. We had...when we had that "fair" thing, I remember so well a school principal... now we weren't living here, we were living up the street...a L: school principal, a black school principal, came to the back door and knocked and said, "Here; here's five dollars for you all. You all might need this. Don't let them know where it came from." Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
15
And went on back home. I mean, just that scared that word was going get out that he had been, at least contributing to this movement. So that's the kind of thing. And then when you look at the educated people in a town like Marshall - 90%, I would venture to say, of those who had college degrees, were in the school system. The other 10%, I guess, comprised the professional, the physicians. There was one lawyer, might have been a couple of business people who, most of the business people had never had college degrees; they were all just boot-strap people. So that educatiion was circumscribed, and con-trolled to the point where they had better not do anything, and so consequently, you never had anything.
W: What about the ministers, did they play a role?
L: No. No. They didn't either. The ministers didn't play a role. And I'm sure it had to do with their congre-gations, because, you know, these other people belong to these churches, and when you look around at most of these churches, particularly the prominent ones, you had the school teachers and the principals who were deacons on the church and trustee board members and that sort of thing; and they were the ones who controlled the policy. And if the preacher got a little bit out of line, they'd get rid of L: him. So there was nobody to voice, and really with us; as independent as we were supposed to have been, we only felt that we could do so much. Because of the fact that we knew that if we got out and did too much, Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
16
according to what people thought might be too much, we'd be left out there on the limb.
W: Um.
L: No following, you see. So, it just was a situation that just...and it's somewhat still that way.
W: Did you, I mean, sit around and think about how you could educate people to...or encourage, literally...
L: Yeah. Yeah. The biggest thing was getting them out. We used to have NAACP meetings where we'd get six people out, this was the annual meeting. And get six people who snuck out. And Charles Wilson, let me tell you, bless her soul, she is to be commended highly, because even though she'll talk forever, never quit,...we had a little with her last night... But, anyway, I told her about what you'd told me - it had taken 2 1/2 hours to interview her. [laughter] Anyway, we go back, and we think about the days when, we'd have these NAA...now, we have Martin Luther King Day Celebration, banquet and that sort of stuff that bring 600, 700 people out, I mean, fill up the Civic Center with people; at least they come out now.
W: Were you involved in that little report, that sheet called "Like It Is?" The newspaper...
L: Yeah. We used to have that thing. In fact, we talked about that last night. And somewhere around here we've got a whole stack of those things.
W: Uh.Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
17
L: And, Grace told me this evening that she went out and looked in the storage room out there, and she saw the boxes had been placed up, and she said she just looked at them and shook her head; she hadn't tackled them. So maybe over the week-end I might decide to get in there and look and see ... W: Well, that's important stuff.
L: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We had a whole stack of them. Well, Charles' got burned up, she said. So we're going to look for that and see what we can find there.
W: Do you think that did any good? I mean...
L: Some. You know, that kind of thing helps to, at least open peoples' eyes. But it takes a lot more than that to give them the impetus to want to get up off their butts and do something. When they start thinking about...and you've got to think about the basics. You've got to think about, you know, where your food's going to come from, where your house is going...where you going to get your rent from, and clothes and what your children are going to be and do and all that kind of thing. I guess that's a normal, basic instinct. But, you know, if you can at least find some kind of security that would give you the idea that you can take care of those things, then you can get up and say what may L: be down in your hearts to say. Then too, there has been so much of the domination and the brain-washing and the stuff like that in this community, until there are many, many of those who believe that this is Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
18
the way to go.
W: Uh-huh.
L: This is the way to...I mean, we're not doing badly, why should we want to change? You know. And you get all of that kind of thing and, I guess, the other thing, being a professional, being dependent upon the public for a liveli-hood, you don't want to cross too many people. At least, I guess, maybe now, I've got more folks that I've crossed and don't appreciate me, than I ever thought I'd have. [laughter] But, you know, it's just...I just don't agree with that old basic philosophy, and it gets next to me now.
W: Uh-huh.
L: Because I feel like I've been here all of this time, and I've done a little here and there, and I just feel like somebody, more people should have felt the same way. And, I mean, I can think of, now, when Charles started up the thing to get University Avenue re-named to Martin Luther King.
W: Uh-huh.
L: There were school teachers...
W: [inaudible]....
L: ...on the block, I mean, I can understand the profes-sional building down there where all these white doctors are, by the hospital. They didn't want to have their L: addresses being on Martin Luther King Drive, no doubt. We can understand and I know why, 'cause, you know, they just... I guess it's not Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
19
nice to say, but they're just a bunch of honkies. And...but, to see a black school teacher - and there wasn't just one, there were a bunch of them living up and down here - to come out and say, "Dr. Littlejohn was right. We shouldn't do this. He'd have to change all of his stationery and..." [laughter] and all that kind of crap. Well, see, now, you know, I can't associate with people like that, I'm not a hypocrite. And so consequently, I guess that's why there are some who don't particularly agree with me and care with me. And I could care less, because I figure I've done, you know, well for myself and my family and my close friends. Because it's just difficult to get out and please...and you know, I guess that's...
END OF TAPE II, Side 1, ABOUT .. MINUTES.
TAPE II, SIDE 2,
W: ...that's becaus...
L: It's because, I believe it's because that they burn out from lack of support. Because they start out big and you've got a great big pitch and appeal to get a lot of people to-gether and maybe doing the same kind of thing. But then after you do that for awhile and people start feeling the pressures that come from that kind of activity, they tend to draw back.
W: Uh-huh.
L: And if you can't keep a movement going, then it's not going to stay in the same place. It's going to either go forward or backwards. So consequently, they kind of burn out. I don't Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
20
know.
W: Did you pretty much find the NAACP, people who were involved in that, to be the people you could count on?
L: Usually. Usually they had the same kind of philo-sophies. I think that's important - to be able to get into peoples' minds and see what they think about certain things. And if your philosophies sort of jell, then you feel like you can go along and depend upon them. Because otherwise if you, you know, get into a situation where you've got to de-pend on somebody and you say, "Okay, I'm going to depend on you to do this and be there." Shoot, if that philosophy is not there, you're not going to see that person much longer.
W: So you think you all were more kind of re-active than active?
L: Oh, yes, yes, yes. Much more re-active than active. Because, like, even with the fair business, if those folks had just cleaned up the place, given us a little bit of facade, and made it look kind of good, we would never had done that! We would never had...we would never have called a black, a boycott.
W: So, you would have been okay with separate but equal?
L: I think...
W: Because that's what it was.
L: I think that's what, at that period of time, that was what we would have done. Sure. Yeah. Because, like I say, we had Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
21
learned to live with the situation. Though I don't believe it and I never did believe, but there are those now, even as you might know, who believe that separate schools were better for blacks than are the integrated schools.
W: Uh-huh.
L: Now, I never believed that. However, I never was so naive as to believe that integration of schools was the utopia...
W: Uh-huh.
L: ...because I know well, that even though the doors are open, there's a whole lot of segregation that goes on inside of the schools anyway, in spite of all of that. But the fact remains that if in the event that we were serious about integration, then we would be doing something to remedy those things that are going on that keep it from being so idealistic.
W: Uh-huh.
L: But that's not happening, and that's one of the big things that I've been trying to talk about here recently with the little group that we have together - that we do need to do something about making relationships better, particularly in the school system. Because, you know, when you go to a basketball game and all of one side is filled up L: with black folks and the other side is filled with whites, there's something wrong!
W: Uh-huh. What do you think you can do?
L: Education. There's got to be real education! There's got to be real education. There's got to be the matter of Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
22
relationships. And there are people, there are programs, there are available facilities that provide that kind of thing. We've got a lady here, be interesting for you maybe to talk with - she's white, Mrs. Sally Gullion. Sally is a ...she's the wife of one of the local physicians and she also is a certified lab technician, she's a certified...I think she's an adolescent counsellor, and she works for the Mental Health-Mental Retardation people now. She managed their...her husband and that group - they've got a group - managed that clinic for years and decided she was tired of that, so then she went on and got another masters in social work or something, and then went on in to this thing. And she's been involved with the politics of Marshall for a long number of years. In fact, she has been threatening to run for one office or the other for awhile and even just last night was talking about maybe running for county commis-sioner. But in any event, she is in the process of getting a program that comes out of Austin, I believe, that has to do with community relations or something like that.
W: Um.
L: Something that is endorsed by Barbara Jordan. I don't L: know exactly.
W: I haven't heard of this.
L: No. No. But she's real attuned to the situation and is very disturbed about the lack of something to really attempt to remedy it.Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
23
W: Uh-huh. Did very much change? I mean, even after the whole country became aware of Dr. King and the movement, even if it wasn't here, it was elsewhere? I mean, in terms of, like, housing and where people lived - did neighborhoods become integrated in Marshall?
L: Well, the changes came by virtue of law. I don't know of...there may have been some voluntary changes, but I don't know of any. They came by virtue, mostly, of federal law.
W: Uh-huh.
L: And if it hadn't been for those various laws, we'd still be in the old separate but equal facilities.
W: Uh-huh.
L: And of course, here, there was not a lot of resistance to the law, at all. When the law came about, they went on and complied. Which brings about the public accommodations law. When that happened, we still had our little group together, and we decided we were going to test all of the restaurants, particularly, when that came about. And that was an interesting kind of adventure. [laughter]
W: [inaudible]...
L: Two or three of us decided we go to this restuarant, L: another two or three to that one, another one to that one, another one to that one. And, I remember, we went down to the...Marshall Hotel was in operation then and they had a restuarant and we went in there and sat down. And all of the Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
24
kitchen help was black, and you could see the little black girls comes out and they'd look and...[laughter]... what is going here? [laughter] Trying to see whether the place was going to be blown up or not. But they went on and served us; we had no problem. And we went around...there's another one that's still in operation, because the Marshall Hotel is closed, but the Gables Restaurant over there, we went over to that one and sat down, and the manager came and sat at our table and proceded to try to tell us how he was so happy that this law had come about because he had wanted to do this for a long time! But he was afraid to do it. [laughter] So we just had a good time. And had no problem. No problems with it. There were, you know, apprehensions.
W: Doesn't that surprise you? I mean, since they had been so entrenched the other way?
L: Yeah, it did. Because, you know, we figured we'd have more problems than that. But it just showed me also the fact that these people who carry on all of this stuff and all these segregated and mean policies really were either hypocrites or they were cowards. Because as soon as something came along, they said, you know, "I'm bigger than you, and you...this is what you're going do, or else."
W: Uh-huh.
L: Then they'd go right on and do it, you know.
W: What about where people lived, though? I mean, peoples Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
25
...
L: The same thing. Because they...
W: ...still live in segregated [inaudible]...
L: There...you know, that comes from just long years of being and property ownership.
W: Uh-huh.
L: Because you know, if our parents owned [property?]... here and grandparents and so forth, that belongs to you now. This is what you have, you don't have anything else, so you live here.
W: Uh-huh.
L: But there's a number of people who live, blacks who live in so-called white neighborhoods now.
W: Uh-huh.
L: Around here. But...
W: But that's pretty recent, though, isn't it?
L: Yeah. Fairly recent. Fairly recent. But as you see the stuff down there in Vidor where HUD has come over and taken over and, you know, that kind of thing down there, that still goes on.
W: What about...I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
L: No, go ahead.
W: I was just wondering about, I would think if anybody W: was going to move out of a black neighborhood, it would be somebody like you. Who, upwardly mobile, has the money, Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
26
has the prestige, to move out?
L: Well, I mean, I don't see anything wrong with this place.
W: Well, I guess, no, I'm not suggesting that you did. I guess I was wondering if it ever occurred to you to maybe...
L: No.
W: ...move over into a white neighborhood, to a better...
L: No, no, no, I don't think there's anything over there better than this. I've got everything here that I ever could want.
W: Uh-huh. But you weren't here in the '50s?
L: No.
W: Or the '60s?
L: No. No. Yeah, well, when we...yeah, we've been here since '65, in here.
W: Is this an all black neighborhood...?
L: Yeah. There's a plant down the street there that is American Norit, which is a...it used to be...it was actually - what do you call the stuff? - lignite, a lignite refinery, over here.
W: Um.
L: And it employes a whole bunch of people; so people go in and out of here. But, see, having come from New Orleans, I grew up in a city, and I come to Marshall and Marshall is L: a little town. And one of the things that I had figmented into my mind was that I didn't want to live in the country.
W: Uh-huh.Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
27
L: And yet, I didn't want to be in a congested area. So here I get a paved street out front and woods in the back. [laughter]
W: Uh-huh.
L: So I've got, you know, that kind of thing all put together. And then, as I say, first of all, my father having been a contractor, he built this house.
W: Um.
L: And would come up here...in fact, he directed it; he didn't do it himself, but he directed the building. And it is probably one of the best-built houses in Texas.
W: Uh-huh.
L: I mean, there's stuff in this house that you wouldn't find in a whole lot of other kinds of houses. So, what I'm saying, again, is that as far as the house is concerned... We added on because it ended right here, but then we added on this and then we'd go back to swimming pools and so there's no reason to move, ...
W: Uh-huh.
L: ...no reason to move. Neighbors - got the best neigh-bor in the world right over here, next door. He's a former elementary school principal.
W: Uh-huh.
L: But he's the best neighbor you could have. I mean, one night I went to New Orleans and - the whole family - and I found out while I was gone...I told Fred that we'd be gone for the Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
28
week-end - it was a Easter week-end. Got a call from my accountant saying that I needed to come back to sign these papers for IRS or else I was going to penalized. [laughter] And so, I get on a plane and come back up here and came in the door and turned on the light. And not too long, there was Fred Lewis from next door with his shotgun at the back door, [laughter] coming to see who was in this house.
W: Uh-huh.
L: So, you know, you can't have a better neighbor than that!
W: No. So there...I mean, in your experience, there wasn't any, like, out-migration from black neighborhoods over to the whites?
L: No. No, there wasn't. There wasn't. There were a lot of people... See, we had bought these lots long before there was ever any idea of integration. So I never had even the slightest inkling of desire to want to go over to the other side of town at all. I never had that inkling at all.
W: What about the church? I mean...
L: Church. We had, like I told you, as far...we are Catholic - we had two Catholic churches. We had St. Joseph L: which was the black - mission, really it was - church. Well, they had a school; they had an elementary school and three of our kids finished that elementary school. We went...they went from the first grade through the eighth grade, which meant that after they left the eighth grade, then they went on into high school, Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
29
because they hadn't separated the ninth grade out then, by that time. So, any-way, that meant that all of our activity, all of our church activity, was right there. As I said, St. Joseph over there had no blacks, whatsoever, and would not allow blacks to even enter the church. Now, where I come from down in New Orleans, and grew up, there were...all of the churches allowed blacks to come in, but they had a sign on the back two pews or so, saying, "For Colored Only."
W: Uh-huh.
L: Just like they had on the streetcars. So that we never even mingled for no activities together or anything. All white priests, we had, and all of those were probably of the same denomination - The Josephites, who were specifically formed and organized to serve minority communities.
W: Uh-huh.
L: And so, they were very sensitive to the cause and were helpful. But then came along the integration of schools and funny thing was that the nuns, who were the teachers, and the principal at St. Joseph School - the white school - became so disenchanted and disgusted with the parents, L: because those parents over there felt like they should be running the school, and they were going to tell the teachers how to teach and the principals how to administer and all that kind of thing. And they quit! I mean, that all that group of nuns quit and left the school and left the school empty. And that school Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
30
stayed empty for a year. Well, in the meantime, St. Joseph over here, who had the little frame building, and who had...at one time the basketball court was on the dirt, but they finally asphalted it, and had the little wooden church, had become accredited by the Texas - what it is? The Texas Association of Teachers?
W: No, I don't know.
L: ...TEA...Texas education in this state, okay. And by the Catholic school system had accredited them. So, we decided, we got together with a couple of the people from over at St. Joseph. Like I say, there are good people everywhere, you know, here and there, and you get to know them. And we got together with one guy who was fairly wealthy and - Carlos Cacioppo was his name - and Carlos says, "Now, you know, it's a darn shame we put all this money in the St. Joseph School and it's closed." And so, he came over; he was the one who approached. He said, "You know, I just think we ought to just come together and move St. Joseph, move Holy Spirit", which was our school, "move Holy Spirit over there into that building." I said, "Well, L: you know, we've got the accreditation, and you've got the building. And if we take the accreditation and put it with the building and use our nuns..." because we had all black nuns, "and use our nuns as teachers and the principal, then we ought to be able to do it." So he pondered on that, and then he got a few people together and had meetings and meetings Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
31
and meetings and was always a matter of who would have the most say [laughter] in the situation, who would have the control and all of that. They were very, very cautious about wanting to have black teachers teaching their children - they wouldn't come out and say it, you know, but you know how you get that impression. So, anyway, it finally happened, that we put them together. Now, before that happened and even before the school closed, which was another thing that the school integration had come about, and so we had what was our fourth child, I guess, who was starting out into, I guess, the first grade. Mimi was in the first grade, and so Grace took her over there to enroll her in school, and these women stood in the door of the school and said she wasn't coming in. [laughter] And so, if you look at it, if you ever get a chance to see that Marshall, Texas thing where Grace relates the fact that she knew where she was going that day, she had her umbrella with her, and it was not raining, [laughter] but she was going get into that school! [laughter] And she said, "And I got in!" Well, we...she got Mimi into the school, and shortly L: thereafter the school closed, 'cause it was that same year that the nuns decided to walk out. So then when we went back together and opened the school again, and the kids ...the last two kids of ours went in, and they went there for the rest of the time. But it was one of those kinds of things where you just had to be firm, and we knew what we wanted, and they again went over there. Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
32
And I was president of the PTA and, you know, I always felt
that if a position opened where I felt that I could serve and
serve effec-tively, that I was not going to turn it down. And
that went all the way through everything that I've done. Now,
I've never run for anything, I never plan to run for anything,
because I had never wanted to be obligated to any group of people,
any constituency. I...if you ask me to do something and I feel
like I can do it, I'll go ahead and do it. But don't try to
elect me and say that we voted for you, because I don't need
that.
W: Uh-huh.
L: And that's been all along. Now, go ahead...
W: Do you think it's good that, I mean, it sounds like the
town is still fairly segregated?
L: Fairly? It is fairly, and it's fairly because of, I guess,
lack of anything else, to various interests that come about.
You find the cultural activities, like the arts council and
the...what have they got?...the symphony league, and people
like that, you don't find blacks interested in L: that kind
of thing. And why I don't know; it's just because they haven't
been exposed to it, obviously. And so, when you look at the
society page and see all of these people at the symphony ball
or whatever there is, it's all white. And it's just a lack
of interest in that area. Now, I don't know what kind of
interest there would be among whites to come into the black
Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
33
situations, because there is a lot that goes on. There is not a lot of social activity that goes on among blacks here anyway.
W: Uh-huh.
L: The colleges have a limited number of events. And it's just not...in fact, this college has been so lax in commun-ity involvement that it is not even funny. See, I served on its trustee board for 17 years, but it got to be just unbearable. I mean, I could just could not stomach the kind of stuff that was going on up there. They hired a president who was just a pure thug. And just coddled him, you know, and accepted the fact that he was a thug. I mean, the kind of guy who...there was all sorts of evidences of his involvement with female students...
W: Um.
L: I mean things, you know, that ordinarily would not be tolerated anywhere. But the dumb bunch said, "Well, you know, we don't have any direct evidence of this, and we, you know, we have to be tolerant and we...there's such a thing as forgiveness, you know," and all that kind of bull. L: [laughter] So after a number of those kinds of incidents I just said, well, to heck with you, you know; I don't need to be here. Ain't nobody paying me to do this in the first place, and I felt like I could make a contribution in the beginning and have made, because we did a whole lot of things up there. But you've just got to be... But right now, Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
34
absolutely no involvement in the community at all. They've got a radio station that is, plays some good music, I admit that! But it's not used to influence the community or to attract any kind of community relationships, you know. It's just...and it really should be the hub of the black community. But, it just doesn't happen. So, I don't know why there isn't more, I don't know why there isn't more.
W: Is most of your social life with other black profes-sionals or other...?
L: Most of our social life is with our family out of town. We go...see, we've got a son who is a dentist in Atlanta whose got a wife and two little girls; We've got a daughter who is a...she's with NBC TV in Washington, D.C.; she lives in Silver Springs and she's got a little girl and a little boy, and whenever we get the chance we're on somebody's plane going to Atlanta or Washington and...or they're coming this way. And then, we've got a little bit of a social gathering here in Marshall. We've got what's called The Regular Fellows' Club, which is composed of about, I think, eleven men now. And it's strictly a social club, except for L: one little thing. But we meet monthly, at each other's home and sometimes the wives come on and they do their little...whatever they do...aside...and have fun. And we just have a meal and talk about everybody in town [laughter] and we do have a scholarship fund to which we contribute. And we give scholarships to kids at the end of Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
35
the year. But...and then, we give one social affair every New Year's Eve night and we enjoy each other, really. And it's that kind of thing. There's no political background to it or ramification. Now we talk about some politics and things like that, but nothing concerted or nothing organized. And that's about the size of it.
W: What happened to businesses here in Marshall as a result of desegregation? I mean, did suddenly you could go shop wherever you wanted to. the black community?
L: Well, the same thing that happened to a lot of black businesses, they just faded into the woodwork. At one time we had a negro chamber of commerce here and we identified some 95 - 96 black businesses.
W: You're kidding? Wow!
L: No, no, that's right. In this town. There is no longer a negro chamber of commerce, of course. And I would doubt if you'd have more than a handful of black businesses around anyway. They just went into the woodwork. There's ...now, Lawrence Moon has got a couple of cleaning esta-blishments - washaterias and one cleaning and pressing shop. L: And has been a tightwad all of his life. [laughter] And he probably is the most well-heeled black in the com-munity right now. But recently he has been contributing a little bit to Wiley College, but, for many years contributed nothing. Funny story...I remember one time... I have been active with the Boy Scouts; Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
36
we haven't gotten into that... And I could go on forever talking about Boy Scouts, but in any event, we were collecting monies to give subscriptions of Boy's Life to indigent kids, and we got down to, I guess, the last $25 we needed - $25 - so I called Lawrence Moon and I said, "Well, Lawrence, we've been soliciting funds for Boy's Life and we just need $25 more to be able to complete our goal." And he said, "Well, yes, yes, well, I want to help. I'll take $15 of that!" [laughter] Now, that's the kind of... [laughter] Now, if that's not tight, boy, I'll tell you! So, anyway, he's probably the most well-heeled guy in town.
W: Uh-huh.
L: Very selfish. Uh! Anyway, he doesn't belong the The Regular Fellows' Club, either. But other than that, other businessess - you've got a couple of taxi cabs, you've got a couple of barbershops, I guess, one, two, that's about all, three barbershops, maybe, no more filling stations, we used to have some filling stations. Got...oh, probably the biggest one is the automobile dealership - Jerry Stallworth with Buick, Pontiac, GMC trucks and Toyotas. He's doing L: real well, but, now he's only been here about ten or eleven years now and doing exceptionally well. Very, very active in the community. That's somebody you ought to talk with...
W: Um.
L ...incidently, if you haven't before.Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 2)
37
W: No, no, I haven't. I've tried to get back to San Antonio tomorrow. Sounds like I need to make another trip up here.
L: Yeah. When have you got to have all of this done?
W: By February 1st.
L: Oh, yeah, you've got plenty of time.
W: Well, but I'm going all over the state, you know. This is just my first...
L: Yeah. Well, Marshall is a significant part of the state.
W: I went here first! I...
L: Oh, this is your first trip? Yeah. Yeah.
W: Yeah, my first research, you know, for this exhibit, this is my first...
L: Yeah, yeah, well, you need to make another trip. Because Jerry now is president of the chamber of commerce.
W: Uh-huh.
L: And this is first, as far as blacks are concerned.
W: Uh-huh.
L: And he's been extremely...
END OF TAPE II, Side 2, ABOUT .. MINUTES.THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: Civil Rights Series
INTERVIEW WITH: Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 3)
DATE: 18 October 1993
PLACE: Marshall, Texas
INTERVIEWER: Cheri Wolfe
TAPE III, Side 1
L: But, anyway, what I'm saying is that Stallworth has done right, plus his wife has been very active. She...they have a... Now, there you're talking about doing something for the community. They have a organization that she belongs to called The Top Ladies of Distinction. It's a national organization.
W: Yeah, I've heard of it.
L: And they have the top teams of America, which are the kids or teen-agers. She is the sponsor of those kids; they've got a hundred and twenty five kids, and they have an average of 80 of them that meet every month at their home.
W: Gosh.
L: Can you imagine 80 kids in a home?
W: No.
L: They take them to various events; they take them to...and the cultural events...the kids have organized themselves. They run their own operations. It's fantastic. And, of course, I assisted them in getting a motivational speaker down here from Boston, who's vice-president of John L: Hancock Insurance Company that I work with in the Boy Scouts - we've been on the national board together. And so, I got him to come down and, boy, he really delivered a whale of an address. It was the most interesting thing that you ever want to hear. The guy's a former professional football player and he talked about how he grew up as a poor kid, alone all of the time, but always at odds with people. He said he'd fight every day.
W: Hm.
L: And he'd lose every day. Every day he got in a fight, he got beat up. But...and never thought that he could get to be anything at all. And finally, he went out for foot- ball and he didn't make the team - coach wouldn't accept him on the team because he wasn't good enough. And so, he decided he was gonna just run and train and run and train and run... He said when all the other kids were out during the summer, doing whatever they were doing - they weren't doing any training at all - he was running and he was running and he was running. And when school opened and he got out there - he went out for the football team again - he beat everybody running because he was the only one who was in condition. So then the coach put him on the team. And that kind of thing. It was, you know, real good. But any- way, they are the active people; they're doing a lot for the community.
W: Is that kinda like Jack and Jill, the same kind of W: work?
L: It's a little different; it's a little different from Jack and Jill. Jack and Jill does have a more social program. They put on a big social event every year, and they recognize these LAMOTHE
3
beau's, I believe they call them - Beau's and Belle's. And they dress them up in tuxedos and they have a big formal affair, and they do have a lot of family stuff - picnics and things like that that involve families. Yeah. But this is a little bit different because it deals with different kind of clientele. See, in Jack and Jill you had to have a little money to be able to be in there because you gotta afford the activities.
W: Right.
L: Whereas with the Top Teens they don't...they're poor kids, most of them. And they instill in them the fact that just because they're poor doesn't mean that they don't have to be somebody. They can make it. You know, that kind of thing.
W: It's interesting to me that...I mean, the idea that we as a nation or a state or a city are still very [inaudible]...
L: Oh yeah.
W: [inaudible]
L: Yeah. That's true. And I think another thing is that there are probably different kinds of conversations that go on and different kinds of interests that come about with L: different groups.
W: Um hm.
L: Now, if I get with a group of only blacks, I feel like I can more freely talk about white people - bad, like I want to talk about them, than if I were with a group of whites. Except that there are whites that I can talk with just like LAMOTHE
4
I can talk with blacks. For instance, I don't go around calling people 'honkies' all the time, but that's what...you have to be reserved, in a fashion. And consequently what happens is when you go to an affair and you find your friends or like people. And I don't know, I don't flock to all black people that I see. I don't go in a restaurant and go sit over by the black folks at a table. But it just so happens that I know a lot of black people. So when I know people, I go and associate with them. And, I don't know, that has something to do with this kind of dichotomy that exists. It's just a matter of having been associated with one group of people for so long, and being a little... feeling a little more comfortable.
W: Um hm. Do you think that's true for younger...your kids?
L: No, I don't. No, I don't, I don't. See, because they came up in a different atmosphere...
W: Right.
L: ...and with different relationships. Because I can look not only at my kids, but my grandkids - they've got L: white friends, and they run around together and talk about each other bad and do everything else, without any kind of qualms whatsoever. And even sometimes get a little bit irritated when they get into a conversation which says, "Well, now, you know, you can't trust all white people." There's just that kind of thing that goes along. "But why can't you?" You know. And they get their dander up a little bit. So, it's different. LAMOTHE
5
They're different. And this is what I was talking about when I said the integration situation that I've been in favor of all of the time. There are many things that kind of misdirect and you stumble over and all that kind of thing. But the process if just inevi-table if you gonna ever have any kind of decent society. It's gotta be.
W: You're optimistic?
L: Yes. Eventually. I think...the other thing that happened was that we were thinking that this was gonna happen overnight. And we were too anxious and too antici- patory.
W: Um hm.
L: And didn't give enough thought to long term, rather than short term answers.
W: There was something else I was going to ask you. I mean, during the civil rights movement...
L: Yeah.
W: ...were you consciously thinking of what it was going W: to be like?
L: Well, I was! But I guess there weren't a lot of people thinking about it. Because what they were thinking about were quick fixes.
W: Um hm.
L: You know. We do this, pass the law, and everything's gonna be fine. Open the doors of the school, and they will all walk in. Well, that's true, but then we weren't think-ing about LAMOTHE
6
what was gonna happen on the inside. Because say what you will, or may, on the insides of these class-rooms, of many of these classrooms, black kids are still being ignored, they're being directed into the lower echelon of the courses that are being offered - all of this track system that they've got - and it's ridiculous.
W: Um hm.
L: It's ridiculous, because I have seen incidents of re- search that has been done that have shown that kids who supposedly were slow and could not get the basics of math- matics, being given calculus problems and excelling. If they're just allowed to go ahead and do, without going through all this remedial stuff. Because that's another thing that I understand is detrimental. All of these remedial courses...the first thing you tell a kid is "You're dumb." So you've gotta have this remedial thing. Well, what do you do to their self esteem and his ego and that sort of stuff? It starts him out in the hole. So, that L: kind of thing needs to be sorta reshuffled. And I don't know how many people are doing that kind of thing. Just doesn't seem like there are a lot of people who are in-terested in really getting down to the roots of this stuff and doing something about it. It's all...well, we're a quick-fix nation, anyway, you know. And re-active rather than pro-active. So, I guess we go along with the pattern.LAMOTHE
7
W: Um hm. Did you have any other expectations from the civil rights movement other than the schools - what was going to happen. I mean, did you have a special...what society was gonna be like?
L: Well, I was always in anticipation of a better society. I knew that if...and early on in the process, when I was able to maybe attend some of the facilities, the physical facilities, that had been denied me, I was disappointed. I mean, here we've got a country club outside of town here - Lakeside Country Club - got to be...that's when I got on the staff for the hospital or in the medical society, one. It must have been the medical society, because they had a meeting out there, and that was the first time that any black had had any chance to even go into the place. And so, I went, and I walked in and looked around this place, and I asked one of the guys, said, "Is the thing that you all have been keeping me out of?" [Laughter]. I mean, what kind of thing is this? I mean, I thought I was going to be going into heaven or somewhere, you know. I mean, I was really L: disappointed. There were about two or three places that I was disappointed with. The Blue Room of the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans. I used to lay up in bed and listen to my radio and listen to WWL on the radio, coming from "the beautiful Blue Room of the Roosevelt Hotel." And when I got to go into that place, it was nothing but a great big old room with blue walls. [Laughter] I said, "This is LAMOTHE
8
the Blue Room?" [Laughter]. Of all things! So, you know, I was not...I guess maybe I was in awe of what I thought was going to happen, but when I got to the mountain and looked over there, it wasn't much there. So, I don't know. And, really, I...it didn't take me long to realize that if you're gonna, you know, be able to appreciate and take part in any of these kinds of places and things, you gotta have money. And the thing that you're really looking for is the money.
They didn't care what color I was. Just so I could pay my way. But, no, the schools, I think, probably were the things that have concerned me most. Because, see, you know, that involves and influences so many, not only people of now, but people of future generations. It just perpetuates the same thing that's going on, because a lot of this violence that comes about is racially motivated. There gets to be black on black crime and all that sort of thing, sure, that happens, but much of that stuff is racially motivated. And it may not be directly motivated. We had...and Charles Wilson probably told you about the summit that she had - the L: male summit that she had...
W: Yeah.
L: ...up there the other day. Well, I participated in that, and had a group of teenagers - one was 11 years old, he's almost a teenager, but he was probably the smartest one in there - but in any event, they know what the problems are in the schools, and they told us. They told us many of the problems that were LAMOTHE
9
going on in the schools. And when you walk in a restroom in a high school and see somebody has written up on the wall, "Go home, Niggers" on the wall in this day and time...
W: Yeah.
L: ...then you know there's something wrong. It's got to be. So, I don't know; there's a lot of work that needs to be done.
W: What advice did you have for those kids?
L: Well, my advice to them was that... Now, look, you know, 'cause all that we had in that group were intelligent kids. They weren't rich kids or anything like that, by any means, but they did have a keen insight into what was going on. And my advice was, "Look, you know what is right and what is wrong by now". And, you know, they even say...it's amazing to see a l0th grade kid tell you that "Look, by the time somebody gets to be in the 7th grade, you can forget them," says, "'cause they're not gonna do right. If they're not gonna do right, you can't do anything with 'em." Now, L: here's a kid, himself, only 3 years away from this kind of situation, to be able to tell you that kinda thing. So, I said, "OK. You know what's right and what's wrong. And you know what is gonna happen if you do what you're supposed to do. You go on and succeed. So, your sole aim should be to stay away from those things that you know are not right. You don't have to...when we were talking about the sex part of it...you don't have to have sex. LAMOTHE
10
I mean, why do you have to have sex? Why do you have to go and jump on a girl? W: Um hm.
L: You don't have to do that. You realize what the conse- quences could be if you do it? A whole lot of bad things can come from that, so why would you want to jeopardize yourself? Why would you want to be in that kind of situation when it could be so much better by controlling yourself. You got self-control. The good Lord didn't make you just an animal. He made you an animal with a brain. Now you can see a dog going around jumping on another dog, but the good Lord also fixed that. There're only certain times of the year that he can do that. But he let you go ahead and do it whenever you want to, but he gave you a brain to be able to decide when it was good and when it was not. When you're supposed to and when you're not supposed to. So, you use your head! And think before you do anything. Don't just jump into a situation - stop, back up a little bit, and say, "Is this best for me? Or should I do L: something else?" I mean that kind of thing. We went on; we had a real good, good discussion.
W: [inaudible]
L: Yeah.
W: Do you ever get impatient with the pace of change in this country, or the...?
L: Yeah, yeah. I get impatient with the politician, par- ticularly. They really disturb me. I was very, very LAMOTHE
11
disturbed during the Ronald Reagan administration. [laughter]. I mean, there was...I said, "Lord, please don't let me die yet. Let me at least be able to live out the rest of my life with something better than this." Oh, that was horrible. And those are the things that distress me, and all. Yet, those are the things that I just feel so inadequate about, because I can't do anything about it. I mean, I can talk, and I can vote - I got one vote. And, you know, what does it do? I guess maybe talk does better than anything else, try to influence people. But it's a dis-tressing kind of thing to hear this kind of stuff going on, and it's out there. Just like you say, it's amazing how much segregation there still is.
Now, the financial world is another area, although there are a lot of country who are in much better financial shape than they ever have been, and who are in corporate positions and who are in positions of power, so to speak. It still has not filtered down to the masses of people. The L: average person, the average black person looking for a loan, hell, you would not even believe the kind of... I talked about my daughter at NBC up there. She and her husband went to buy this home; it took them 6 months to put together a loan that could have been done in a week, if the bankers had wanted to cooperate. But it was a matter of discouraging, discouraging, discouraging. Every time they...well, theyLAMOTHE
12
started out and they told them how, what they needed. They got what they said - it came. "Well, it didn't...you need just a little bit more of this, or you need a little of this, and go back..." And it was just a constant adding, adding, adding, adding...until they were just like I am, I guess. Mimi is just like I am, I guess. I just felt like...I've always felt like if you deny me today, I will be back tomorrow. And tomorrow you deny me, I will be back the next day, and you will get so tired of seeing me until you say, "Well, here, go ahead and take it", you know. And, of course, they persevered and persisted until they finally got it, but that kind of thing. It was a matter of trying to get them to just get disgusted enough to say, "Well, I just don't want this. I just let it go." And I imagine many people do; they probably do get discouraged.
W: [inaudible]
L: Yeah, yeah. So that kind of thing is not good at all. Again, Jerry Stallworth, he's on the Board of Directors of the East Texas National Bank here - the first black who's L: every been on a bank board in East Texas, but he's put him- self into a position where he can do those things.
W: Didn't you say he's an outsider?
L: Everything that has been done constructively here in Marshall, Texas, has been done by an outsider - except for Charles Wilson.LAMOTHE
13
W: Um hm.
L: I don't know where she came from; she grew up from something other...but...
W: Why do you think that is? Not Charles Wilson, but the outsiders?
L: Well, it's because those who were here...I told you, they've been so coerced and so brain-washed and they just are not the kind of people who will be active at all. They're satisfied with the situation.
W: So, the Black Panthers or anything like that would just...
L: Oh, Lord! Whoo, whoo!
W: [laughter]
L: They'd a gotten killed by black folks here. You talking...[laughter]..."Don't come in here disturbing our peace!" No, Lord, they never would have had a chance. No, that kind of thing... And, really, that was kinda in jest, but to even mention those kinds of groups and those kinds of people... I mean, the best I could say to at least get a hearing was to say, "Well, you know, we need all kinds of L: people in this world and if we're gonna do anything." Because, now, those people attract attention, and they serve a purpose. But, Good Lord, they'd want to castigate 'em in a minute. Ah, I don't know. I just...I wonder sometimes, and I guess I have to abide by my own philosophies... But when we decided, when I decided to come to Marshall to stay, Grace, LAMOTHE
14
as I said, had been, was from Washington - she'd never been in a little town except to Tuskegee where we were in Alabama. And it took me 5 years to convince her that I was serious about staying here. And I always used to say, you know, you gotta stay somewhere, you gotta live somewhere. And what difference does it make where you live if you can go where you want to go when you want to go?
You're only gonna have a certain amount of friends, no matter where you live. You're gonna be circumscribed. You can live a city, you can live in the real rural. You don't have...you can't have but a certain amount of people that are, that you call your friends. So, what difference does it make where you live? And so, I guess, I was kind of swallowed up by my own philosophy. [laughter] Anyway, here I am. So, I don't know what there is to say, except if we get into the Boy Scout movement.
W: I have one question about Juneteenth, and that is...
L: I never had heard of Juneteenth until I came to Texas. I knew nothing about it. And, of course, I was just like the rest of the nation, really, 'cause that was a Texas L: holiday. And it never was a serious celebration for me, at all, because, you know, it had no roots, as far as I was concerned. And I'm not sure how much it really meant to Texans, 'cause...
W: Why do you say that?LAMOTHE
15
L: I've seen the celebrations that they have, that they have had in just certain spots. Now, it has come recently to be a more expansive celebration. But it used to be just a few little communities that would get together and they'd have a big...I mean, I guess the going thing was supposed to be watermelon and red soda pop. And I mean, to me that didn't give me the impression that it was the 4th of July or something that really was taken to heart as a real celebration.
W: Wasn't...[inaudible]...community gathering where people got together and...
L: Yeah, that's what I could see, too, but I don't know that they really appreciated the real meaning. That's what I'm saying, or trying to say. I think it was more for the party and picnic or whatever that was than for the real meaning of the date. You know, I mean I guess it was because you didn't have people going around preaching and describing what the historical connotation was, like you do people talking about 4th of July and Emancipation and all that sort of thing. I just never seemed to be a serious celebration to me. And, of course, there were many places L: that didn't allow their employees to get off to even parti- cipate, and of course, it's gotten to be...it's gone nation- wide, I guess, now. There are a lot of places that are talking about Juneteenth. But I never was attached to it at all. In fact, we didn't have any...I don't know of any Juneteenth celebrations that we had LAMOTHE
16
here even.
W: Hm. I was going to ask you if it changed at all during the civil rights thing.
L: What?
W: The Juneteenth celebration.
L: Not that I know of.
W: Ok.
L: I don't think so. If so, I was kinda left out of it.
W: Is there anything else I should know about civil rights in Marshall? It seems to me...like the fair I hadn't heard before.
L: Is that right?
W: Um hm.
L: Yeah. Well, we did the fair. Bradbury's was one of the things there. I don't know. I don't know of any-thing...well, there was the integration. We talked about integration of the restaurants and those facilities. The hospital and the hospital staff and the Medical Society and all of those. Just a little wee bit about the Boy Scouts. I started out working with the Boy Scout back in 1951 when my oldest son now was about 2 years old, and I decided L: that if anyone was gonna give him that program that I had looked at and I thought was a great program that it had to be me, because I didn't think anyone else was going to do it. Of course, I had never been a Boy Scout, because they wouldn't let me be a Boy Scout in LAMOTHE
17
New Orleans at all. They had no black kids in the Scouts down there. And this black District Executive came into my office and asked me to help them with the Boy Scouts. And I said, "Well, I don't know anything about Boy Scouts; I've never been a Scout." He said, "Well, you're just the kinda guy we need." And so, I started and worked all the way through. Then stayed as a Scoutmaster for about 20 years and got to get my two oldest sons to be Eagle Scouts and the youngest one, he never cooperated with us too much anyway, but he got to be a Life Scout. I couldn't get him over the hump. And then I went on and finally got to be president of the East Texas Area Council which never had been heard of before and never had been thought of. And went on the the Regional Board and now I'm on the Executive Board of the Boy Scout, which was another kind of thing that I got into and got up to that level, and looked at the National Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America had 72 members on it and 2 blacks. And I just went to the chief Scout Executive and told him that I just thought he ought to be ashamed. [laughter] I think this is disgraceful, you know, to have a 72 member board and only 2 blacks. He said, "You know, I think you're right." L: I said, "Well, why don't you do something about it?" And he said, "Well, yes." I said, "Well, look," - his name was Ben Love - I said, "Look, Ben, I don't know of anybody who is more qualified to be on this board than I am." And he said, "Well, I think you're right; I think you're right." LAMOTHE
18
I said, "Well, why don't you put me on then?" And he said,
"Well, I'll take it on to the board." And he did, and that's
how I got on. But I had to force my way on, but that's the
kind of thing. What are they now? I've been on that board
about about three years now, four years, and there are 4 blacks.
[laughter] Can you imagine? So this is the kind of progress
that we make. And I can ahead and blow my little stack and,
you know, make noise, but it only brings about a miniscule of
progress.
W: Um hm.
L: And it's a shame, I guess, that life if so short and I
can't but think of my poor mother used to say, you know, when
I'd get ready to do things, she'd say, "Life is too short, Child,
to be thinking about that." But it's a shame that life is so
short that you don't have time to do so many other things that
could be done.
W: Um hm.
L: I guess you gain wisdom as you go along, and you find,
maybe, better ways, better ideas or something like that, but
then time gets short, and you just have to be satisfied with
that that you've been able to do while you were doing.
W: Um hm.
L: And then, you get tired.
W: I would think so.
L: You get...you do! You get tired of fighting; you
LAMOTHE
19
get...because anytime you go into any of these movements at all, you're gonna create animosity and enemies and dislikes and things like that. And that's not a comfortable way to live; that's not a comfortable way to live. I can list the events where I don't care whether he likes me or doesn't like me, or who comes around or who doesn't come around. But it kinda gnaws on you a little bit when you realize... because everybody like to be liked, even to the point...
END OF TAPE III, Side 1
TAPE III, Side 2
W: ...their kids, their boys, are not...
L: I never had that experience. My troop was an all-black L: troop.
W: Um.
L: So that I never had to take white kids. Now, this past August, I was the, what they call the Regional Chief or the Chairman of the Southern Region of the Boy Scouts of America, at the National Jamboree in Virginia. And we took, like, 8400 kids to the Jamboree. And I say we took, the scoutmasters took them, troop by troop by troop, but I was over the whole deal. And of course, you know, I didn't have any direct responsibility for the kids, although I did have L: contact with some. But there's no...I have not seen any kind of reason for resentment at all, not of me of course, but I mean even on lower levels where there are black scoutmasters who have whites in LAMOTHE
20
their troops.
W: Uh-huh.
L: For instance, the troop from Memphis was there, and there was a black assistant scoutmaster there. Their gate-way was Elvis' Gracie Mansion.
W: Oh, Graceland?
L: Graceland thing. Yeah. [laughter] And he was working as hard on that thing as anybody else. And, of course, as you know, Elvis is not a real great favorite of the blacks anyway. But it didn't make any difference. Didn't make any difference. They were all just there working on the same project. So I haven't seen anything there. I was concerned about the fact that there weren't more minorities there at the Jamboree but it costs a bunch of money, costs a heap of L: money, although we, as a Southern Region, had a pool of some $110,000 that we used for scholarships for under-privileged kids, most of whom were minorities. And that helped some, but still that was just a drop in the bucket.
You know, it's a rewarding experience, because there again, I feel like if we could have those morals instilled into kids that are perpetrated by the Boy Scouts of America, we'd have much fewer problems with [inaudible]...they just don't have any morals. I mean the things that we see are L: not right; they figure, well, so what?...they work. Why aren't they right? I'm making more money out of this, I can make a $1,000 on the Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 3)
21
corner selling dope, when you make $5.25 at McDonald's shuffling hamburgers, you know. So, the morals are just not there.
W: What do you make of the L.A. riots? Do you think it can happen in Marshall?
L: No, it couldn't happen in Marshall. You don't have that disturbed a population. The people in L.A. are disturbed. They are disturbed because they've been mis-treated and because they are in a climate that says, "You have a right to protest, and you don't have to be afraid of anybody" and all of that sort of stuff.
And Boy Scouts...again, I put on a workshop out there in Anaheim about two years ago, and I had a black scout-master from south central L.A. who had 60 boys in his troop and who was a former gang member, himself, and who decided that he, well, he did everything he said - he sold dope, he grabbed women and his, I think, his son - he had a son when he was 14 years old or something like that; I mean, did everything that you could think of that wasn't right. And then, all of a sudden decided that he was doing wrong and that he should be doing something else. And how he got hooked on to the Boy Scouts I haven't learned yet. But he got to be a scoutmaster, and he said he'd go out on the streets and grab on to these kids off the corner and say, L: "Come here, boy, what's wrong with you?" And shake him and he'd pull that earring out of his ear [laughter] and said, "Turn that cap around!" Said, Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 3)
22
"Come on over here and get in this Boy Scout troop!" [laughter] And he said...but now, he also never deserted a kid. Never let a kid get into trouble and not try to help him to get out. Said if a kid got in distress and called him at 2 o'clock in the morning, he would be there to help that kid. And he did everything. He took and he financed much of the stuff out of his own pockets. Said he took 35 of those kids to summer camp, himself, that summer and paid for their summer camp fee.
W: Wow!
L: Yeah. And said that, well, he'd gotten him a good job. He was over a whole transportation system. And he said that his whole idea was that they needed to be out of that envi-ronment and see that there was something else outside in the world, other than where they were.
And of course, that kind of philosophy, you know, is very helpful. But now, he's talking about 60 kids in a city of ten million. So, how much do you get done? And that's what I was talking about - do your little bit. But the Christopher philosophy has always been a philosophy of mine.
W: What's that?
L: That it's always better - you've heard it, I'm sure - to light one little candle than to curse the darkness.
W: Uh-huh.
L: For if everyone lighted just one little candle, what a bright world this would be. And so, I guess I go along lighting Dr. I.J. Lamothe (Tape 3)
23
my little candle and hoping that... That was another Boy Scout thing, too. I went...my first National Jamboree was back in 1964 where I took a troop of black scouts from East Texas, because ever