 The San Francisco Public Library presents part two of a conversation with Thomas Fleming, writer and co-founder of The Sun Reporter, San Francisco's African American weekly newspaper. Welcome to the San Francisco Public Library to part two of Who Knows with the New Millennium coming up, maybe a long ongoing series with Mr. Fleming because he keeps us engaged and he reminds us of things that we may have forgotten or never knew, and he has been with us so long and done so much and experienced so much that it's always worth taking time to listen to him and experience life through his eyes. It's just been wonderful for me having the opportunity to know him and I appreciate the fact that he was willing to come back to the library and do this again. My name is Daphne Holmes and I'm with the Office of Exhibitions and Programming and I welcome you on behalf of that office as well as the Friends and Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library without whom we could not do this type of programming that people seem to enjoy so much. We have today a number of things on the table to the right of you at the back of the room, materials for sale about Mr. Fleming, his new book, his earlier piece, some audio tapes, all of which are available for purchase. We also have some literature from the library of upcoming events and programs that you might be interested in and then there's another table outside as well with some of the library information and additional information. Two things that I wanted to bring to your attention before we get started is that upstairs on the sixth floor the shades of San Francisco western edition branch photography show is wonderful. Take an opportunity to see it. It will be up through March 25th. It gives you another aspect of the history that Mr. Fleming discusses here today and in his prior programs here at the library and at other locations. And we will be doing another photo day for shades of San Francisco focusing on the mission area. And so there's flyers and information about that on the tables and I encourage you if you lived in that area, no people and so forth to have them participate because it's just a wonderful thing to see history unfold in that way. For February, our large screen videos in the Coret auditorium which happen every month, Thursday at noon. On February 4th, the Black Press, Soldiers Without Swords. February 11th, Richard Wright, Black Boy. February 18th, James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket. February 25th, we'll have a double bill for my people, the life and writing of Margaret Walker and Toni Morrison, Profile of a Writer. Again, these are all free and open to the public and I hope you will be able to attend. Today, Mr. Fleming is still writing, still sharing his experiences and thoughts with us. He is the co-founder, 1944 of The Sun Reporter, Northern California's largest weekly African American newspaper. He continues to write articles for the paper from his home in addition to his syndicated column, Reflections in Black History. He was born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1907, raised by his grandmother who he believes was a former slave. He lived in New York before he moved to Chico, California in 1919. In 1944, he was one of the founding editors of The Reporter, which later emerged with another black paper, The Sun to Become the Sun Reporter. And for almost 50 years, The Sun Reporter was published by his close friend, the late Dr. Carlton Goodlett. In July of 97, Mr. Fleming retired as an executive editor to The Sun Reporter to concentrate on his memoirs and the culmination of those are those books that he and Max Millard have been putting out for a couple of years now. And I hope that you have a chance to look at them and to purchase them. Today in conversation with Mr. Fleming is Max Millard, who worked with him at The Sun Reporter for about two years before they realized that they had an incredible project that they needed to pursue. And so Max will be interviewing, talking with I should say more of a conversation than an interview with Mr. Fleming this afternoon. We will be doing question and answers and hope that you will enjoy the afternoon. Max. Thank you, Daphne. I regret that I'm not Noah Griffin for those who were hoping to see him here. I have the highest regard for Noah and he's been very supportive of this column and the books and the speeches. So he happens to be in Washington, D.C. this week, so he asked me to take his place. After I talk to Noah then he refers to Mr. Fleming as the voice of history. I think that's a wonderful title. And a few days ago when the Carlton, Dr. Carlton B. Goodlet Place was dedicated, I think you see that there's no exaggeration because Dr. Goodlet was Thomas Fleming's best friend for going all the way back to 1935. So, Thomas, to start with, I'd like to ask you about when you first met Dr. Goodlet and what were your impressions? Carlton graduated from Howard University in the spring of 1935. He came to Berkeley in the fall of 1945 to enter graduate school. His original plans was to enroll in the master's degree program on a Berkeley campus. Well, I was in a pressing and cleaning shop and they were on ASP Ave and you listened to a football game. I was a University of California very rabid football fan. I followed the Golden Bears very closely, although they never did have too many winning seasons. And Carlton came in this pressing and this cleaning shop and a man who operated was a man who lived in Omaha before he came to California because Goodlet, like me, was born in Florida and this family went to Nebraska instead of coming to California like my mother did. And so he came in walking in there and had on this suede jacket had bygones written on the back of it. I think that's the team name for the Howard University athletic teams. And he's very cocky when he walked in and Macklin and I was cooking some, I mean, heating up some, a couple of cans of that Italian American spaghetti and we had about a dozen Rinnies we'd put in there. We were going to eat because he had this coal oil stove in the back of his place. So he woke, I noticed Carl walking and how cocky he walked so I thought to myself, so who in the heck is this cat? Come out here from Howard University. Who in the hell do you think he is? He was asking a lot of questions so he looked down at me and he says, he says, how long have you been around here? I said, I came to California in 1919 so I was talking to Macklin about coming over to San Francisco on the weekends because I had a friend who was a mailman over here who gave me his commute tickets for every Friday and Saturday because the ferries were still running there. Well, they might have started a bridge in 35. Well, so I was telling Macklin I was coming over to San Francisco because I had these free tickets so he says, you're going over to San Francisco? I said, yes, he says, well, why don't you ride over with me? So I'm going to drive over and he says, he gave me a phone number in Berkeley so I called that phone number that Sunday morning and I didn't get any answer. So I used my commute tickets and came on over to San Francisco where I joined a friend of mine and incidentally his client Wilson, I was his best man when he got married in 1936, I think it was, at Third Baptist Church. He and his wife are sitting here. So I came on over the next day on the campus between Wheeler Hall and the library and Goodluck came rushing up there and said, God damn it, I thought you told me he was coming over with me. I said, well, I couldn't find you. So he said, why didn't you ask operated by the address? I said, I didn't think about that and I said, I had tickets so I came on over to San Francisco. So that's when he asked me again, how long you live here? I said, I repeated it again. He says, well, maybe you know some nice people living here, some family people. He said, the guys I go over to see say all they do is drink a lot of booze on weekends and play poker. And he said, I'd like to meet some nice people. So I said, okay, meet me after around three o'clock this afternoon. So I took him down to a friend of mine's house who was an attorney over there. In fact, I guess he was the most successful black attorney in Northern California then, Leonard Richardson. I see another old friend here probably knew Leonard Richardson, Josephine Cole. She's the first black teacher hired here in San Francisco. Stand up, Joe. I took him by Lynn's house and I walked in the house. I knew they were like family to me. He walked right in behind me. I walked back to the kitchen. He came in there too. Lynn's wife was sitting there. My wife was having her hair done at home by Lynn's sister. So she just had a slip on. Well, you know, I was like family. So when Carlton walks in there, she jumped up and started screaming. He said, what the hell are you screaming about? So you ain't the first woman I've seen dressed in a slip on. And then we started going there from then on. And we went everywhere together. The three years is over here. And I forgot to mention, man, as I told you earlier, he was going to work for the master's degree program. After he got out here at Berger, he decided to take the comprehensive for the PhD in psychology. And damn it, he didn't do it. Did it in three years. He was 23 years old when he got his doctorate over on Berger. And he was always in a hurry. We always walk very fast and a young male a black doctor with their name would come up and say, what's he running so much for? Tom, I said, I don't know. Because he would sit up and study all night. Because I used to go up to the Institute of Child Welfare. I was taking some classes at Berkeley then myself. I would conk out about two o'clock in the morning. I'd come on down where, you know, where I had a room in another part of Berkeley. Carlton was living up at I-House right off the campus, International House, what they call I-House. And so in three years he accomplished his goal. That's when I met his mother. He sent for her one of the things he did was in 1936 when the brand-new Chevrolet came on here because he drove on a Chevrolet a 1934 car. He decided he was going to get a new car. So he trades that car in and buys a brand-new one. And he told me, he said, if my old man knew I was buying a new car, he said he'd start working in the slaughterhouse in Omaha. He couldn't go to school too. So I met his mother when she came and in those days the commencement at Davis the medical school over here and all of Berkeley held their ceremonies over to Memorial Stadium and the football stadium on the Berkeley campus. Well the seniors from med school and from Davis who were going to get their diploma came down to Berkeley. It was a huge affair because even then Davis was just called the College of Agriculture. It wasn't called the University of California at Davis. Over here it was called the College of Medicine not the University of California at San Francisco. So when they called Gilles' name out I was sitting up in the stadium with his mother he ran across there to get that diploma I said that cat's still in a hurry, isn't it? So he got a job teaching at West Virginia State University at first year and of course he got in some problems after he got there because he was only 24 then and I don't think there were very many other PhDs on the campus and Gilles at the age where he could mingle very freely with the students. He stayed there for a year and then they left they got rid of him. So that's when he decided he'd go go into med school and go into pediatrics because he got his PhD in child psychology. So he went to enter fifth that next fall and I meant not fifth he was doing some work at fifth and going to Meharry taking classes in the medical school. The man who was president of Fisk at that time was Charles Johnson some of you might have heard his name he was this distinguished black sociologist who taught at Howard and later became president of Fish University and so he knew Charles because when he was another graduate at Howard Charles found something for him to do there the fifth so he could earn some money so while he was there he got married because I got one of matter of fact we wrote to one another every week to seven years he was going from here. We talked about the same things we used to talk about here when he was a student out here about what girls was going on what was happening I kept him well informed so after Pearl Harbor and the black population showed that started growing so much I started telling him then I said man this is the place to come I said go black support out here about a thousand well at the time when he was out here as a graduate student he didn't like California he said this was the last frontier he didn't think much it was out here and I looked at him with skeptical eyes I said because heck you just came from Florida up to Omaha and Omaha was a frontier town too because it started funny to me saying that about city pharma pharma college in Omaha well my army grabbed me after we started the the report of the in 1944 a man named Frank Logan put up the money I had worked for the Oakland Tribune for a short while I had done that radio program over on the other side for a short while called Activities Among Negroes and I had worked for the spokesman over here a friend of mine I met when he was a graduate student at Berkeley started the spokesman well John was he was a communist and never tried to hide it so but I used to write for him so because I know when John was so radical he used to call us the little people's world I don't know how many of you recall the people's world that was the daily communist paper over here he used to call us the daily people's world so when the strike happened in 34 we started writing editorials supporting the striking workers although I knew a lot of my friends over there in Berkeley a lot of students even came over here to work because they were paying 75 cents an hour then in 34 that was a lot of money and you could work as many hours as you want the ship owners would put a dock one ship over there which would serve as a dormitory ship you could eat and sleep on there and then work as many hours as you want well the enterprise gentleman I know I used to call himself John L. Bertone I think Eddie knows him he promoted dances over there sweet small room in Oakland he came over here with a pair of friendly dice that's what he came over here they used to have some of the biggest crap leaves on that dormitory ship you've ever seen and Johnny stayed over here about three weeks and he came back he was quite independent I know so so I was writing for them as I told during the strike we were supporting the Strakas there were some vigilantes going around the bay they were beating up some people I don't know who they were but they were beating people up they thought they were anti anti-union particularly if they caught in the scabs because I remember one night I heard the guys talking about it so much over in Berkeley I came down instead of truck with meadles down there at 35th and San Pablo so a bunch of us came down from Berkeley we were sitting there waiting for this truck to come by well a truck did come by but all them long showmen jumped up armed with baseball bats and everything and they started swinging as soon as they got off and we started running and I never did try that again I was a little bit too risky I didn't think that even though the money was good at that time but that's the only time I ever tried to scab and well I did it because there were a lot of students at Berkeley doing the same thing because they could come over here and earn enough money to take care of almost the whole semester because that time Berkeley you know what the tuition was over at Berkeley 26 dollars a semester and if you joined the student body that's ten dollars 36 dollars semester then you had to get your books and get a place to live well I knew at the time when I was a student over there I was paying 250 wheat and got getting two meals out of it so that money seemed pretty good over here so well the spokesman drew the hour of some right-wing people I guess they were we never knew but they came by one night and in our office we had one line of type machine we set our own type and then took everything to the printers to get it done and we had one line of type and the store front building was at the corner of Baker and Sutter yeah Baker and Sutter Street some of the vigilantes came by one night and broke out a plate glass wonders they got inside the place smashed up the keyboard on a line of type machine and wrote notes all over there telling us you niggas go back to Africa I guess they didn't like our editorials but we prevailed even that until the war came and then by the time 1940 came by John it ran out of money you know that effort so John did go to work for the people's world I think he was the managing editor of the people's world when he came to work for them but I continued to see him then after that so in the war started I started you know they had black outside here in the west schools too and I thought about World War One I was living in New York City and World War came and if some of you remember the Germans were bombing London they called it the Zeppelins and there was a lot of speculation in the New York papers then that the Germans were going to fly across the Atlantic and bomb New York City too well my dad was quite a prankster he came in that bed we lived in a tenement there I think it was five floors he hit the first floor and started yelling Germans over in New York poor guys in the building but they come out and they want to get my old man's scalp but he got his apartment to stay inside you know in 1940 there were blackouts here along the Pacific Coast because there were rumors that the Japanese was going to bomb the Pacific Coast so I saw two blackouts in two cities on each coast in my lifetime during two world wars well I went to work I I started taking them when I saw the direction the country they started President Roosevelt seemed to be aware of what we might get into one day so they started spending a lot of federal money they started opening up shipyards even before we got into it and they started offering our defense training courses technical high school machine shop over there is where WP was furnishing supplying the money for that and I enrolled in the machinist program and after Pearl Harbor came I'd been taking that program for about a year after Pearl Harbor came I got a job up at Maryland in the Navy yard as the third class machinist although I didn't know any more about being a machinist than I do now and I didn't know anything before then but you could get by because they would put you on one machine and you'd learn how to operate that and that's all you did in there anyway so one Sunday I was standing at the corner post and film and I met a man named Frank Frank Logan someone introduced me to him and he had been successful in business in San Francisco in the western edition and he taught my starting in a newspaper so a friend of his who I'd met that both came from Texas introduced me to him so he found out that I had had some experience on newspapers because even before the spokesman I wrote both the Wildcat Chico State University that was the name of the paper up there there then because as I tell everybody I went to every school in Chico Grandma School High School in Chico State and then before that I wrote on the red and gold that was the paper at Chico High School I used to write humor columns then so I told Logan about my experience he said you want to work on this with me I said yeah so that's when the reporter started I was with him for the first issue and I started writing articles writing editorials in there about protesting the transit system over in Oakland which was called the key system they operated the free cars and the buses over across the bay and also the ferries in competition with the Southern Pacific the Southern Pacific had about 20 ferry boats in the bay the key system had about four boats but the key had disadvantage over the SP the SP had to go all the way over to Oakland to Oakland mode the key had their dock out there almost out of Treasure Island it came out their tracks came out over Trussell all the way from mainland out to the you know where the docks were and they crossed the bay much faster and they were newer boats too because most of their boats were diesel and the SP had them old paddle and side wheelers and all the other types of vessels they used you know steam days on ships so I started to work for Frank and then I was noticing that the key system wasn't hiring any blacks the the muni was hiring blacks even to Marcus Street Railway because that was before the city bought out the bought out the Marcus Street Railway and incidentally Josephine Cole's husband was the first black man hired to operate a streetcar in San Francisco stand up loudly Cole so they can see you and because of that nobody wanted to train him because he's black only one man agreed to take him out tell him how to start and stop a damn streetcar and the rest of them drove him away from the muni then and turned him into a hopeless drunk because after I started to report he used to come by there almost every day talking to me well apparently my draft board didn't like the other tools I was writing about the key system not hiring any black operators because I got greetings I thought I was pretty safe then because I was 37 they said they didn't want anyone over 35 plus I was supporting my mother I thought that was my favorite too I got greetings so I went by the draft my draft board was an M reveal and I was talking to one of the clerks and she told me she thought that somebody didn't like the other tools I didn't even know anybody read the son I mean the reportable blacks so I made my plea but it didn't do any good because they told me when to report over here for induction so I came over and I called my mother I said I'm not coming back home I said you'll hear from me when I get wherever they're going to send me to well and then my correspondence still continued with Carlton Goodard I have to tell you that when I went into the army Goodard had just finished my Harry he had gone to a little town in Tennessee called Columbia a medicine neighborhood before he could get representing the practice here in the state of California so I kept him aware so he started to tell me about things I could do to get out I said I done started something man I better not change my story I told him I couldn't eat army chow so they kept putting me out of the hospital because I remember once after I finished basic training at the Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri they sent me to Fort Francis and right outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming and by that time Goodard had finished his year in Tennessee he told me that he was going to come to California anyway and start the practice of medicine he got to Omaha he told me he was going to leave there on a Monday night driving to California he changed his mind and left Omaha on a Sunday night well after they kicked me out of the hospital then I was still going over to the hospital because the Fadge had been over there and I stayed hit out over in the hospital every day all day long until well all the duty hours had gone by so I came over to the barracks there and got my mail I was writing very steady to a young lady she happened to be Dr. Daniel Collins assistant though she's teaching now in West Virginia so I would write to her every day and write to Goodlard every day and then Gussie, that was her name Augusta James, she couldn't get cigarettes as hard so I could get a cartoon of cigarettes a week, I was buying the cigarettes and sending them to her in West Virginia so that particular Monday I had gone over to the barracks read Gussie's letter and wrote her answer and was coming over to the post office dropped the letter in the mailbox and I saw this gray car coming over somebody leaning out the window shaking their fists like that so when that car got close to me Goodlard leaned out the window and said god damn it man why in the hell don't you just stay where somebody can find you I've been here ever since 7 o'clock this morning looking for you and he had his wife with him I've never seen her yet so I said god damn it I said you told me to go get here Tuesday this is Monday so I said coming over to shake hands man I've seen you in seven years so we set up all night long and the chaplain on the post got a quarters for them to sleep and they had what they called guest barracks so too so I set up all night talking with him and it's the first time I got drunk cause he had a couple of gin a couple of bottles of gin in the car with him first time I got drunk since I went into the army and I've been in the army then about three months so he told me his plans I said well one of the guys in the hospital told me I was slated for discharge well he came on here and the first place he went by was to see my mother I think she was sick I think she took the bed right after I went went into the army I think she thought I was going to go overseas and so in August they told me I was coming back to camp that's right outside of Marysville for discharge and then when I got to the depot there they said the train was supposed to pass through Shire and I think about five o'clock you know that train didn't come by until about midnight and I said these guys are going to try to keep me in the army I got real upset and I got I got to camp a day later I was slated to come through the other day before so everybody else that came in the day I was supposed to come through that day they pushed them on they made me go back and sleep in the same barracks I slept in the first night I got there they let these guys go in the ones I came in with so I talked to the sergeant he said you ain't been in the army enough to be getting out because it was six months and so a lieutenant came by and I asked him about that so he said who told you you couldn't go pass on I pointed the sergeant out he chewed that sergeant out he said you don't he said this isn't your business this is an army business but how we have a personnel well I was a day behind and I think the second day I was there that the Germans stopped fighting I was in Camp Beale when armistice started happening and of course I called my mother right away on the phone and I got in I got in three nights later so when I got in I asked my mother the first thing I asked my mother where are my clothes she said they're hanging up in the closet I changed clothes right away my sister was out when she came in she said oh I'd like to see you in your uniform I said you didn't see me when I came in you ain't gonna see me with that suit on anymore Thomas I'd like to move ahead a little bit when Dr. Goodlett moved to San Francisco at that time what was his first involvement with civil rights here as soon as he got here he became involved of course he'd done a little of that over on the Berkeley campus too when he was a graduate student over there you know in the student union they had the barber shop over there they wouldn't serve black students over there and so he got the black students together and they protested so much they started cutting they started cutting black students' hair on the campus and ever since I've known him looked like he'd been deeply committed to equality of opportunity let's put it that way he'd been deeply committed to that I don't think he ever sought anything for himself because as he said he never sought an appointment for a job here after he got to San Francisco he was always working to get the tax and the jobs where they hadn't been before because he looked at racism the same way Paul Robson did equality of opportunity they never asked for any more than that because Ross Connelly failed to see that but there was inequality of opportunity because when he talked out so hard against affirmative action here in California I couldn't understand where that cat was coming from and he was a black man too and it became successful by getting a contract from the State of California on affirmative action but it was all right for him to do it and goodness always been that way that's one of the reasons why I guess we like one another like that another reason why we had such admiration for Paul Robson you know Paul I think everybody was aware of what happened to Paul Robson and Dr. Boyce when they came out and let it known they were opposed to racism the way they were the first thing they did was take the passports away from them because Robson, I did most singing in Europe than he did here in this country because he knew how it was here in the United States so I used to talk to Paul when he came at that time when he didn't have any passports the longshoreman brought him here he said they held a concert for him down in the Longshoremen Union and then Goodlett persuaded Dr. Haynes to let Robson sing in his church because a lot of the black ministers were scared they thought he was a communist but we had convinced Haynes that that communists weren't devils so and so Robson sang there before he sang at the Longshoremen's hall and then he persuaded Dr. DuBois to speak in his church and so and anyway Paul and I sat out there on the corner feeling more instead of talking about the problem well you know what I mean when I say the problem inequality of opportunity let's put it that that's what we were talking about and I asked him one time I think many of you have probably been reading in the people what the black kids have what they call them zip guns in Harlem they're killing one another and I asked Paul I said why are those kids doing that Paul he said they don't have any hope so they locked in where they are so I said well we got to work on that all of us have and it so from then oh well well Paul gradually finally got his passport back and so did Dr. DuBois and Dr. DuBois went to Europe because he said he was going to stay over there for the rest of his life he went over and started compiling that Encyclopedia Africanus incidentally I read a long piece in the New York Times as we did Dr. Louis Gates at Harvard University he's head of the black studies department is going to continue that Encyclopedia Africanus he's going to also add video tapes with the work he's doing there and I'm looking forward to that coming out because I'm getting old but I'd like to see that before I leave here and I thought it was time to mention that because you can be on the lookout for Louis W. Gates he's head of the black studies department at Harvard University very brilliant man Thomas asking about Carlton Goodlett what were some of the ways that he fought against racism here opening doors for black people to get good jobs did he ever have any run-ins with the police with his attitude well I don't know exactly what you could say attitude but he was driving out Gary Boulevard one Sunday and then he came the cop said later on he had followed him for about 15 blocks he stopped for red light somewhere out there way out on Gary and the cop told him that he'd been speeding he'd been following him for about 20 blocks but Goodlett says why didn't you stop me before now so he says you know where you have your license on your study you got his name and he said well Carlton he said get out of the car he said my name is Dr. Goodlett to you it's like you're an officer to me and say you're going to respect me he grabbed Carl and put him like Carl swung at him they brought him down to the hall of justice down on Kearney street and I was over in Berkeley but Will Edd his wife knew where I was she called me and I came right over here and got him out to jail well another time he's unloading a lot of Christmas presents he had it was off his own film on street and I guess the cop thought that this black man in this nice looking Kirk was all he had was a Chevrolet I thought he was a thief or something some sort of unlawful ax he's doing he started asking where he'd get all the paper he said they're Christmas gifts there's none of your damn business with there anyway so when they arrested him that first time the cop didn't show up down in judge Matt Brady's court the next day Monday because he found out who Goodlett was I guess because there were only witnesses he had so courtroom was full of people there well Tom Lynch was the he was the chief assistant of Pat Brown then and I was working in the DA's office because the paper still wasn't making enough money to pay me and Pat Brown was kind of good enough to give me a job I came to work at five every and got off at eight the next morning well what they did then they kept the complaint office in the district attorney's office San Francisco County was the only county in the state where the district attorney took the bail every other county in the state the courts took the bail well I had learned very fast there because the first night I started working on it the old hall of justice on the county street everyone in the billbrocker bookers came by and gave me ten dollars so I said what's this I didn't question them but that's what I said to myself well we looked down the list and every time somebody got arrested and their friends wanted to get them out friends or relatives cops would all tell them go down to the district attorney's office on the county street they'd come and they'd ask us we'd find out what the charges were call up in the prison or call out the station is there still out the station to find out what the bail was called if it was a felony the judge had to set them on the bail all the misdemeanors the bail was standard you knew what that was so I remember many a night if it was a felony I'd call up some judge he says I said the people said man's got a good job judge he's behind a home here I said I don't think he's going to run so he said how much you think it should be well I'd tell him what their amount was it was never over five thousand dollars and of course the bail bar broke because you know what his fee was five thousand dollar bail I think was five hundred dollars well they gave me fifty dollars whoever was working there even the deputy district attorney was taking that money one of them asked me says another thing I found out you do when I was working at D's everybody who was going to have some connection to the court was fixing traffic tickets well I was the only black down there who had that on trace so I started fixing tickets for people I knew I'll take him an old judge Matt Brady he was he was generally drunk up there on the bench and the judge said do you know these people talk much they got good jobs he'd write on that SS suspended sentence that's what it meant a DS discharge and then sign his name well it was all over with well I really like that job because because I was making I was picking up probably about well averaging probably around three hundred dollars a month off that bail and the city was only paying two seventy five they took it away they made San Francisco like the other counties in the state the courts took it over they got rid of that part and that's what I left the DS office came to work with a paper full time because at least by then I could earn about fifty dollars a week which most of the many of the reporters on the daily paper at that time could only earn about sixty five dollars a week I know how it was for them too Thomas around nineteen sixty three or sixty four that's when you say the civil rights movement started in San Francisco would you say that the demonstrations against the palace hotel and auto row were the real beginnings here that's when you started having the demonstrations at that period uh good of the service two consecutive turns as the president then to see people before this period started and then between him came I think Terry Francois and I think Cecil Poole service president too and uh then Nat Burbridge Dr. Thomas N. Burbridge very bright young guy he was a guy who was a doctor here in medicine at the university California medical hospital school here and on top of that he got another doctor in pharmacology well Max didn't Nat didn't mix too much with the general public like he did later on and looked like most people didn't know the fire that uh was within his body they didn't know that he was fire easy was because Terry Francois grew up with him and New Orleans Terry thought he could have him that he would be the president indeed so Nat was elected and that's when it started then really started of course all other presidents had similar problems but they weren't doing it the same way they were doing in the period you talk about we were NAACP has always protested racism in this country always saw equal rights that was their primary reason for being an organization it looked like to me so uh they decided they go uh the blacks they didn't have any blacks working in the big hotels here so they picked the palace out as a target and they got uh strong pickets they marched up in front of the hotel protested their non-employment of blacks in any capacity well uh Terry Francois was supposed to be one of the lawyers for the NAACP NAACP that he came over to Nat's house one day said you let those kids go into the hotel you say I'm not going to defend you well Terry forgot there were a lot of good liberal lawyers here in San Francisco like Charlie Gary and uh and his pardon and many others the halons were very liberal then at that time and there were a lot of so uh they went in one night and of course the cops made the buses well I went down there the next day and I told Nat I said I can get you OR I said you don't have to put up any bail he said if they OR all these kids too I'll take the OR to get out that's a you know your own recognition why they let you out of jail so I admired him for that and uh so they finally let him OR a lot OR all of them I think the rest of them about 50, 60 in the radical part of that you know who most of those demonstrators was down there on that picket line there were white students from San Francisco State and University of California I was surprised when I didn't see many blacks out there on that line those are the ones who followed Nat and then uh of course you know Arturo came later on after that where they you know they demonstrated out there in front of them until Cadillac decided to hire a black salesman and uh and that went off and on because uh during that period in the 60s too that's the time when they had a sort of minor riot yeah it was right after that big thing down in Los Angeles when they did have a big riot down there show you how active Nat was a 16 year old kid stole a car and uh in Huntersport area and went joy riding with another kid well the cops got it on the radio and they started pursuing him when he got out there where there's a lot of vacant land out there he jumped out of the car and started running across the field well one of the cops jumped out and pulled a gun and hollered ho instead of just firing up there he fired and hit him killed the kid well those kids were going bonkers out there that afternoon Huntersport and Nat came out of the pit he said I think you and I ought to go out there and take a look so we went out there and see we saw a lot of angry young black males out there on the streets and uh they were talking about they wanted to see the mayor so Nat went in and called Jack Shelly who was the mayor then and told him he thought it was time for him to come out there and talk to the kids the mayor refused to come so Nat told me when he brought me back by the paper the paper obviously said we might have to come out here again this evening well sure enough around about six o'clock he called me he said I think we ought to go out there because it had started what they call a riot and those kids had started turning over cars out there and setting them on fire breaking plate glass windows we went out there and we stopped at a particular police station we got in the police station Jack Shelly was there the mayor Tom Kay who was Chief of Police who was there the district attorney was there so when Nat walked in the mayor turned and looked at him Nat said don't turn and look at me so I advised you to come out here this afternoon and talk to the kids and you wouldn't come so the kids kept demanding at least that's what we heard anyway that they wanted the mayor to come over to that old opera house out there on 3rd Street what we went over there with the mayor and all of his party the mayor went in and got on the stage and he got on those kids' tusses out of throwing eggs out of his vegetables it cursed him very loudly they didn't give him a chance to say anything because right out there in front of that place there was two automobiles overturned on fire so I said man this is going to be a tough night when we came back over to the police station we heard Shelly called Pat Brown he was governor then he better come down here and Brown said he would meet us at the Hall of Justice everybody so we got there and the governor came in at about 11 o'clock that night called out the National Guard so I told Nat looked like we were going to have a long night we better go out there to San Francisco to warn those kids if those guardsmen come along today to move and get off the streets to move most of them are guardsmen and young kids and I say they're crazy, they're like you are and I say when they shoot to kill well sure enough the guard I think started propelling the streets of San Francisco with a 30 caliber machine gun mounted up in the back of that jeep and two men in his jeep so we started doing what we said we were going to do we started telling those kids if they tell you to get off the streets get off, don't argue with them we went out to Sunnydale, did the same thing go over the jeeps was out there too when no one hates you, they would do it we warned them the same way and along Philamo Street so and then of course the other events I can't recall all of them I'll tell you about the things that happened the Civil Rights Movement not only gripped San Francisco but it gripped all of the United States because as you know the Civil Rights Movement produced Martin Luther King and many others whose names I've probably forgotten and probably you've forgotten too and and at that time how I felt I felt that we were really going to have a change because I saw the black and white kids moving together on those bus rides and everything those things like that I said there are going to be some changes here but I was just fooling myself because we're still undergoing the same fight Well Thomas in what way do you think things have improved for African-Americans here in California since you started the reporter in 1944 Well I've seen blacks working in more places I feel like the black population about four times the size it was then in those days it goes to tell you in 1940 it wasn't 5,000 blacks living in San Francisco there were more blacks living in Berkeley and Oakland it wasn't San Francisco in 1940 census so the black population over here was always been smaller than Oakland and I imagine the reason for that because Oakland was a railroad terminal if none of you don't know it all the transcontinental trains came into Oakland they did not come to San Francisco they came to San Francisco I mean Oakland you got up with Oakland Mail got on the ferry and the ferry brought you over here to San Francisco those trains did not come in here the only train that came in here you could say was transcontinental was the Sunset Limited that operated between New Orleans and San Francisco because that the Sunset didn't come in Oakland through Santa's Inn came in in San Francisco so Oakland was a big because blacks not only work for the Pullman on the sleeping cars but they work for the western Pacific in the Santa Fe and in the maintenance yards for keeping those trains up and things there were a lot of blacks working in the yards the Pullman Company had their repair yards out in Richmond they employed quite a few blacks out in Richmond so Oakland really was a big except for you know C-Train you know there's all the ships docked over on this side to me I never didn't understand why the city fathers let that ship and get away and go with Oakland I never didn't understand that that didn't quite clear to me yet why that happened but Oakland decided to build on those types of pairs those container ships they didn't build any over here in 1944 or let's say in the early 40s what was the situation if let's say a black person wanted to go to a restaurant in San Francisco or sleep in a hotel or get a job working for the city how of those things changed since then there was a up until about 1944 I knew one black two blacks were on the city payroll I said that I know Walter Sanford was the receptionist in the mayor's office Floyd Green was working as a social psychiatric social worker out of San Francisco General Hospital those were the only two I knew of as I said Josephine Cole was working over here teaching but she was working in the Clark Hill school when she first started the public school system wasn't hiring then not any of us when she got her job and when did that change well there was a manpower show that developed during the war you know and the money started hiring blacks they had to hire them and then a lot of other places the industry started hiring blacks here and now I notice when I go down to the financial district I notice quite a few blacks coming out of those tall office buildings down there I didn't see that back in the 30s and the 40s I can tell you that I didn't see it many times I've walked down Market Street and the only black face I could see is looking at them plate glass windows and looking at my reflection that's all I saw down there and you talk about public accommodations there was one man here you had a lot of money I imagine most of you here have heard of the feeling buildings down on Market Street that was built by a man who was a former mayor of San Francisco named James Fielin he went on and was elected United States Senator Senator Fielin owned a 12,000 acre ranch right out of Chico where I used to do a lot of hunting and fishing on there when I was growing up he had another 12,000 acre ranch down there right out of Ridley about 22 miles south of Chico along the Sacramento River Fielin never married he had a nephew and a niece when he died they inherited everything including a big mansion on it at Carmel and a big mansion up on Telegraph Avenue Matthew's name was Noel Sullivan he thought he could sing but he couldn't sing but he was a patron of the arts and how I met him well what happened being a patron of the arts people like Mary and Anderson Paul Ropes and Roland Hayes couldn't get a hotel down here they stayed at his mansion up on Telegraph Avenue that's where they stayed when Langston Hughes came here that's where he stayed I first met Langston over the sweets ballroom over in Oakland Jimmy Lunsford I guess a lot of you heard Jimmy Lunsford he had one of the best dance bands in the business and he'd been over there when Ellington and all of them played Oakland they played one night for blacks and one night for whites that's the way it was and I met Mason Ropes on that that night there when Jimmy Lunsford was playing and he asked me you met Lang Hughes and he was with him I said no so I had to do a very affable little guy and the first thing he asked me was did you know that Bautista the dictator the Fidel drove out of Canada and said did you know he was black? I said no I didn't he said well he is he invited me over there I went by Sullivan's house several times when Langston Hughes was staying there I remember the first night I met Sullivan I told him he said I fished on your ranch and hunted on your ranch a lot up there in Chico he said yes my man Murphy's a good farmer and I said I knew him from Murphy I said that's why I was able to get over there and fishing on on there so but he made it comfortable for most of the black artists who came through here I'm talking about the international annulments that's where they stayed in his place because none of the hotels down here would hurry I think some of us can remember who was around here then when there was a Dr. Nelson came up here from Los Angeles this thing was black surgeon down here he married a Zeke Field Folly Show girls you know a lot of big men like to marry show girls in those days back in the 20s and he came up here from Los Angeles got reservations and when he and his wife came to the St. Francis the clerk looked at him and he asked could I help you? He said yes I got reservations I got it confirmed by mail he said we don't have that here that's what happened to him but he was a heck of an insult for a man to come up here with his bride to stay in San Francisco a part of his honeymoon and when did that policy change Thomas I think it started in the war years because I had noticed that a lot of black war corresponders came through here even some of the black news papers were sent in correspondence over in the Pacific because what I met was Charlie I forgot Charlie's name but he worked for that big black Daily Pippet in Cleveland he was going over to the Pacific area and he stayed in a hotel here I think the Mark Hopkins and that's the first time I heard of it then that was right about 1944 then when I first heard that and I think there were a lot of black officers coming through here from a lieutenant's own up to a higher level as they went in those days it was very hard for them to refuse them accommodations when they came through here although they didn't find it too hard to refuse enlisted men because I remember when I was in basic training in Fort Leonard Wood they had one big PX there they had a little dumpy place over there for blacks then so I went into the big PX one night because they had booster telephones all alone over in the little place they had two telephone booths in there because I used to call my mother all the time and I know it was hopeless they were going there for the black only and then they shipped over a lot of Italian prisoners of war that they had captured in North America they sent them over here to the United States they were going in PX number one the German prisoners they were going in PX 81 so I went marching there one night so the girl there told her, well you can't come in here I said what do you mean I can't come in here I said I'm wearing a uniform in the United States Army they're probably going to send me over there to face the Germans or the Japanese might get shot, save your butt so she called an MP they took me outside told me to go to the color area and I saw the Italian prisoners of war going in there and the German prisoners of war going in there but I couldn't go in there with the uniform on well Thomas I know that some of your stories they kind of end like that where you tell what you tried to do but you didn't have any success but just to move ahead let me say two words Jim Jones what are your memories of him when Jim first had a church up at UCI we noticed that we had heard coming to the paper about a lot of blacks are going up to UCI for Sunday services well I later learned a lot of black ministers down here was very unhappy because they were losing some of their flocks he finally came down here that's when I met him and I went over there and had some meals over there, Gillett went over there in fact Diane Feinstein went over there for lunch and so did Rosalind Carter when she came through here she went over there and ate over there I liked the program they had over there so I thought Jim had some head problems then because he used to call me up every once in a while and tell me about he had received threatening letters, you know the temple they had over on Gary Boulevard either by mail or telephone so I said Jim I said you don't know who they are I said we get threatening letters here at the paper and I said I assume the chronicles the same thing every once in a while you just got to learn to roll with the parts that's all and then I saw the program the dormitory service they had for a lot of people there he created a new way for them to live they might have been very lonely before they came there they had that nursery there for working mothers and they had a little clinic in there and I thought it was good because I didn't know about what was going on within the church and so he finally went over to Guyana well I remember after he went to Guyana Eleanor Orman who was here she was Dr. Goodall's confidential secretary Eleanor and I was invited to lunch over there I mean dinner one night and Jim had a short range of wave radio station there in the church so they called him over and told him I was in the church so he had told him to tell me to come and he wanted to talk to me so I went up there and he said I'd like for you to come down here and do a story on on the colony down here and I said well Jim I said I got a better idea than me coming down there I had a friend she's a friend of Goodall's too she's a good photographer she does work for television station I said I got a friend here a camera person I said that would be better if she would come down there I said she'd probably get on channel 9 and he said how much would it cost I said well I'll talk to her he said well I'll get back to you later on I think a few days later after we were over there the mass suicide occurred wasn't very far away from there and of course Terry Francois thought we were responsible for it for not exposing Jones he came by the paper I was one day and started yelling as soon as he was walking over I said I don't want to hear that no he was still acting on the sidewalk and he said I want to talk to Carlton and I said well if Carlton wants to talk to you he will so I went out and found some wine old somewhere and they made some placards you know and brought them over there saying that we were responsible he said we should have informed the community about what was going on over at the church I said I didn't know anymore about what was going on at the night church and I was doing the other church I said one thing I don't go to church and I said what them people doing at church their own business it ain't mine and uh so uh then Goodlett finally came out then we'd give him a year a man of the year award was a watch he said give it back to Goodlett said things to quit running anyway well after that mass suicide took place or some people say it was partially a murder then where did you hear the news about it and what happened right afterwards I read it over news I forgot which part it was a television I listened to television news every night I've been doing it I read four daily newspapers every day I've been doing that for about 30 years I read the New York Times every day the Oakland Tribune and the Chronicles exam and what happened to the temple immediately after the mass suicide well I wasn't a member but you mean right after doing that period well I went over there to see what was going on because they wouldn't let the media in you know in the temple and of course the cops were inside I forgot the police captain who was inside the temple and so I told him I said I think you ought to let at least one media person come in and take a look because rumors are going around that there had been some suicides in the church too so the captain said you think that's correct I said I think it's the best thing for you to do he said well I'll let in one he said you can pick the one so I went outside with one of the temple people and I picked Susan Sward she's still writing for the Chronicle I picked Swiss Susan out to come in because I knew her she came in and made the investigation come out to other reporters what it was like inside and looking back do you think Jim Jones was really evil incarnate I don't think he was evil I think he was a little daffy because you know Gullet went down to division Gullet looked at that little clinic they had then Jonestown and he saw it was very inadequate he tried to get him to go what's the capital city not in Georgetown isn't it tried to get him to go into Georgetown and go into the hospital he refused to go do you think then that people have reason to hate Jim Jones now or do you think that he did anything which is still remaining I thought he did a lot of good for a lot of people who were very lost people and whatever happened now nobody forced him to go into that organization nobody did they went on their own will and that's their business period okay that's quite an alternative viewpoint that we got in the press on this last 20th anniversary Daphne just gave me a note saying 10 minutes about 5 minutes ago Daphne does that mean that we have time for a few questions okay alright we have a few minutes left I'd like to ask you about Willie Brown when did you first meet Willie Brown and did you think right then that he had these leadership abilities that he's shown since then I didn't think that way I knew he had he wasn't impersonal I guess you could use that term because I met Willie one night at a liquor store at the corner of Fillmore, California they used to call the town the town gossip place that place closed up late at night the clerks would let me and some other people they knew we were coming in and we would open the bottle back in the back not up in the front part and and some guys who were two of the clerks and we were going to San Francisco State at the time they brought Willie over there and I met him and I kind of like his personality and when he said he was going to intend to go to law school I thought that was good too I think Willie was one of the smartest politicians ever occupied the mayor's seat in San Francisco I remember I asked him right after he was elected office I said Willie I said Sam Rayburn's from Texas I said Jack Johnno's from Texas and I said then there's Lyndon Johnson I said all of those Texas politicians knew how to exert political power I said now there's you I said what kind of water do you catch straight down in Texas he said Bradford and Berber and Whiskey was Willie Brown's uncle very well known in the black community here I guess among those people who fingered the gambling clubs I I never did go to the gambling clubs I I always thought there's a better way I could spend my money but I met Willie's uncle before I did him and he sent for Willie to come out when Willie graduated from high school since Willie Brown has become mayor he's had a lot of triumphs and also some things people are criticizing him for how do you think he's handling the homeless situation here I think he's handling it the best way he can I think the homeless problem is a national problem I can't ever forget the WPA did it was the federal government that came in there and fed all the hungry people out there then it's going to have to be the state governor the federal government either one to do it again because I don't think any city can do it by itself and if you want my real answer I think the whole system has got to turn socialism I think we all if we want to survive would you say that there's still a need for a black press here in San Francisco without a doubt not only in San Francisco all over the nation and what can the black press offer that you can't get from the so-called mainstream press what can it offer to the mainstream press well the mainstream press the only way they've changed they heard more blacks than they did long time ago I know they didn't start hiring blacks in San Francisco I think till the late 40s or early 50s they didn't have any working over here there's one instance where Oakland was ahead of us old Joe Nolan as reactionary as he was heard a black woman back there and she was working at the Oakland Tribune when I came here in 1926 it was just a weekly column called Activities Among Negroes and other people around here doing anything about as far as blacks are concerned and Oakland was ahead of San Francisco then also in other ways they had a black fire company over there and a black better not even apply to be a cop or a fireman over here that was a different thing because Oakland I don't know what's happening over there the political business leadership kind of bewildered me at times because the way they give money away to Al Davis over there they act like they're insane over there well I think that wraps it up for your regular presentation but Daphne you say you're going to let people ask questions now you have questions please raise your hand I have a portable microphone tell me what you remember about the poor Chicago disaster during World War II the reporter hadn't been open very long when that happened I never went down there because I didn't have transportation to take a first-hand look so all I could do is read and other people and try to make a composite story about what I got from other media here locally I never went down there but I and from the things I've heard I don't think the government should have had those young kids down there unloading that ammunition down there who didn't have the training that the professor Longshoreman had about handling that type of cargo and I did I did writing that editorial based on that about that about why I put these 1918 old kids on there but I've talked to you know Dr. Burbridge was a most of those people there who were working in the cargo and Portia cargo they slept in barracks at Maryland Dr. Burbridge hadn't been at medical colleges he was a sailor over at Maryland then he just missed it by one day he might he would have been on there too hi Tom I'd like to know in the days of Miss Baker from France came over from France you and her played a role in integrating the key system at that time I believe what was the name of the dancer Josephine Baker or what role did the two of you play well the first shot that Joe took was the key system they still hadn't hired any blacks because I went over there with her that time and she told the brass over there at the key system that a blast can drive those big army raids they can drive buses and of course none of them liked it but that's the contribution she made seeing Gillett became very friendly and when Gillett went to the World's Fair to one of them in Brussels I think in the late 50s you remember the year Illinois was a 55 yeah that's when Gillett met her you know she had all those orphans you know she had about 24 kids that she had adopted was keeping them in this big place and she was having some some problems you know keeping them together when Carl came back here he started sending her I forgot how much but he sent her money every month the young man who was with him who was a dentist who was practicing dentistry down in Bakersfield started sending her money also every month she first came here you know she appeared at a theater here when she came back that first place she came was by the Sun reporter that's where she came this whole afternoon has been really wonderful I wanted to ask some questions about Jonestown I understand the evaluation your evaluation of Mr. Reverend former Reverend Jim Jones and I agree with your evaluation but what was your evaluation of his advisors and the people around him I have trouble hearing I wish you would repeat that over again see if you can see what you're saying maybe I could say the question Thomas was what did you think of the advisors who around Jim Jones did you meet any of them I don't know who was an advisor there I really don't know who was an advisor to Jim Jones because I looked over the you know the clinic that they had in the nursery I looked over I guess those people who were conducting those activities were staff people I know one thing if you I don't know whether you know the Richesons or Marcus Booksthor or Ray Richeson's sister was one of those who went over there and took her life but the way Ray looked at it she says I think my sister did what she wanted to do she didn't blame Jim Jones because she thinks he had nothing to do with her sister taking her life sir where's the most complete archive of the complete issues of the Sun Reporter for research purposes because I believe the library doesn't have it here as she said she asked where the most of the back issues of the Sun Reporter can be found fortunately we've been very careless very dumb either one the first I think about the first 20 years we bound them that in addition for each year and then we quit doing it and then a lot of people come by and borrowed those bound volumes and they didn't bring them back I think if you want to find a lot of back issues of the Sun Reporter I think you'd have to go to Bancroft Library they'd probably have better service than we would have over here thank you so much Mr. Fleming thank you all