Oral History Interview with Oscar L. Chapman Assistant Secretary of the Interior, 1933-46; Under Secretary of the Interior, 1946-49; Secretary of the Interior, 1949-53. Washington, DC August 2, 1972 Jerry N. Hess [Notices and Restrictions | Interview Transcript | Additional Chapman Oral History Transcripts] NOTICE This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word. As an electronic publication of the Truman Library, users should note that features of the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview, such as pagination and indexing, could not be replicated for the online version of the Chapman transcript. RESTRICTIONS This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library. Opened 1980 Harry S. Truman Library Independence, Missouri [Top of the Page | Notices and Restrictions | Interview Transcript | Additional Chapman Oral History Transcripts] Oral History Interview with Oscar L. Chapman Washington, DC August 2, 1972 Jerry N. Hess HESS: Mr. Chapman, to begin this morning, let's discuss an occurrence that took place in June during the trip to the West, and that was the flooding of the Northwest at that time. What difficulties arose because of the flooding just before the President’s trip? CHAPMAN: Well, you understand the psychology of the public when there is a tragedy of such moment, as this was. There were many people who had lost their lives in this flood. The flood was around Portland, and extended down the river a considerable way. The measure of damage in dollars would be almost impossible to estimate at this time. You can't estimate the loss of life in terms of dollars. The people were very much disturbed, very much concerned, about some immediate help right now, to help these people, because some of them were wiped out completely. It was similar but on a much smaller scale than the recent flood we have just had down in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. HESS: From Hurricane Agnes. CHAPMAN: Yes, Hurricane Agnes. That one was not as large as Agnes, but it was, nevertheless, extremely heavy and a number of lives were taken in that flood. Actually the people were very unhappy and disturbed. They needed help and they needed it quickly. I got there into Portland, traveling for the President, trying to make arrangements for his appearance at each one of these towns that we stopped in, and there we had to change the program a little for this reason: We had a program set up where he would march in what we called the Rose Parade. Portland is noted for its beautiful roses at that time of the year, and they were gorgeous. The roses all over Portland were just beautiful. They were in full bloom. The schedule was set up for him to make a little brief talk at one of the halls down in town, then getting cars and starting to march behind the parade, or in front of the parade rather. As they went by they came by this hall. But I saw the atmosphere that had been created because of this terrible tragedy, and I saw the President and I told him that I would recommend strongly that we cancel what we called the Rose Parade and let him drive out in a car, or we could take his train if necessary to Salem. So instead of going to some building downtown to a couple of those meetings with the officials of the Rose Festival, we went over to Salem that morning and the regional Red Cross man met us there and he set forth the things that they were doing and would try to do immediately for them, a strict emergency thing, and it showed us right where we had to pick up on the Federal Government side. I had his speech. He gave me a copy of his speech, and I had several of the men that were helping me on the train take that speech and outline the things in it that we could do as a follow-up to what the Red Cross representative had said. They took it and picked out the things that could be done immediately and fast, such as the Corps of Engineers sent in quite a crew of people to help clear the debris and the other things away from the river channel, and keep the channel open. There were trees and logs rolling down that river and some of them were hitting houses and knocking them over completely. If you have never seen a flood, real damage like that, it gives you a shock when you first see one. I had never seen one of that size before. The local people’s homes, you'd see them turned over sideways and mashed up against the banks and over in the trees. These men took that speech of the Red Cross man and we analyzed it very carefully where we could pick up and go in. I had these fellows to stay on the train until we got down to San Francisco. By that time they had it all outlined, the whole thing. Then we put some orders into effect, the President did, to have the Corps of Engineers to send their crew in immediately and start to work and see what they could do, the Reclamation Service of the Department of the Interior to see what they could do in the way of help, and to help immediately. We did it and in several cases we didn't overrun our budget; we just simply overspent for the emergency of this, some extra money that we had that we were saving for other things, and we took it and turned it into this and started into helping those people. For instance, they went into such detail of helping them. They went down and bought a lot of bedclothes and things like that for them to sleep on. Some of these families didn't have anything. They were just wiped out. They were people who had lived comfortably and had nice little houses, and they were people that were well-organized in life and worked hard for their living and they had nice little homes. They were small homes, as a rule, but they were nice houses. They didn't have, in some cases, any furniture whatever. Then they got them some furniture. The Red Cross did this part. Another thing they needed which people didn't think of, they needed groceries. They had to have some food. They didn't have any storage to keep any that hadn't been wiped out. So they got them adequate food supplies and what they did, they gave some kind of credit at two or three of the major stores in town where they could go and get what they wanted and just charge it. What they did, they gave them a limit, I think, so much, and they could go in and get their groceries and pay for it by just letting them tear off a little piece of paper off of this ticket that they had. Of course, this record just simplified it down to the nth degree, I honestly don't believe that there was a single case of unfair or dishonest taking of groceries or anything else that could have been so easily taken through that system. You couldn't use that system widespread. But those people there used it as conscientiously as if it had come out of their own pocket, and they bought just what they had to have, what they needed, and that's what they did. HESS: Did you ever later talk to any of the Oregon Democratic politicians to find out or to ask what effect on the election Mr. Truman's handling and your handling of matters there might have had? CHAPMAN: Well, I talked to several of the political leaders and was asking and inquired of them whether the flood and the effort we made to take care of the emergency had had any effect or changed those people's minds about Truman's competency in handling a real problem. There wasn't any question; everyone, to the last man, gave him, in a complimentary way, a comment as to how decent he was to do this without trying to get a lot of publicity out of it, which he didn't try to do. He spoke over the radio with this Red Cross man. I didn't put anybody else on that program. I just had the Red Cross man. The Governor was not there or I would have put him on. I think it was Governor [Douglas] McKay who later became Secretary of the Interior. HESS: I think he was Governor at that time. CHAPMAN: I think he was Governor at that time. Well, he was not there, or I would have had him. But the other officials all showed up and we spoke around 12 o'clock on the radio right on the steps of the capital. The checkup that I had made, I had asked two or three of the leaders there to make a little checkup for me to give me any idea as to whether this was having any effect on us one way or another, if we were lacking in anything we should do, to let me know. They came back with glowing reports about the appreciation of the people. They were just thrilled, because by coincidence of facts that happened, I was in Portland before the water got through going down, and so consequently we were there on the grounds getting things lined up and I got the President's program outlined for him as far as what he had to do and should do. We got that straightened out for him and then I had several of the agencies of the Government that I had worked closely with and I contacted some of them direct and talked to them, and they started right in to help. They did it very quickly and very fast. It was one of the most efficient jobs that I ever had the pleasure of working on. I like to work on a job that moves smoothly and nicely. This didn't have any crossing up of orders, and what one group was going to do and the other one was not going to do. And there wasn’t one bit. Just each group went ahead and did just what it was supposed to do. It was outlined to them very easily, because it was very easy to outline to the Corps of Engineers what they should do, and the Reclamation Service. Even the Grazing Service was brought in to this because there were so many sheep up through the valley; they run a lot of sheep, and they lost nearly all of them. There again is where your money value loss comes in. The poor fellow doesn't have anything coming in for the next fall for his income, for the loss of his sheep. Some cattle were lost, but not many cattle. Sheep was the biggest loss in that area. All in all, I was very pleased with the reports I had gotten that the people had appreciated what the President had done so quickly, because he arrived there. I stayed there to meet him in Portland. I couldn't meet him in Denver. I stayed there to meet him in Portland, because I, by telephone, had pretty much lined up my San Francisco meeting anyway, and my plans I wanted to work out. I'd gotten men I wanted to help me down there and I got so much better support and help than the press was giving us credit for having. There was a lot of gossip about the coolness of the people and so on. Well, you did have some of this. You had some of that where the politician was scared to get too close to Truman, afraid it wasn't going too well. But by the 15th of October, you couldn't hold them back. I could tell by the change in the mood of the crowd that Truman was really coming to the top. He was surfacing to the top, to the lead, in this program. I could tell by the mood of the crowds from one town to the next. HESS: That things were progressing and getting better. CHAPMAN: Oh, absolutely. It was so obvious that you could see so clearly what was happening. For instance, if he stopped at the littlest place, little town, there was nothing but a train stop once in a while, not necessarily a big town or anything of the kind. Remember, when the President goes anywhere and stops, the press has to be there, and they are there. I don't care if he spoke out there to just three people, if he made a speech and there was only three there, they'd have to write about it, even if they did have to write it about three people being there. They'd have to tell you why. HESS: It would get in the papers. CHAPMAN: It would get in the papers. And we got it in the papers by the sheer force of the office, you see. We moved from that stand in Portland, which gave us a wonderful backdrop for the mistakes we made in Omaha. HESS: Tell me about that. CHAPMAN: Well, the Omaha situation just simply got crossed up between several people trying to set up the President's program. HESS: Ed McKim was in charge of setting that up, was he not? CHAPMAN: Well, he took charge. He took charge of it and was setting it up and the local people, because he had just been at the White House, had been working there; they thought he was really running the thing and they had gone to him and he had talked with them and he had lined up the program in such a way that it was impossible for the President to meet that evening, to have spoken. It was humanly impossible. He couldn't do it. He had doubled his program for that evening on a timetable that you couldn't possibly keep. HESS: Did you point that out to him beforehand? CHAPMAN: I did. HESS: What did he say? CHAPMAN: He said, "Now, I'm handling it. Now, you just don't understand Omaha. I know these people and I can handle them." I said, "Ed, it's all right with me. You can handle it, but I'm going to leave tomorrow and go on to Cheyenne." That was Saturday and I was going to be in Cheyenne on Saturday night to get a lineup for the Sunday meeting. Sunday afternoon the train was to arrive at 4 o'clock. The new mansion that was built in the capital there for the Governor to live in is, I would say, two or three hundred yards (I'm not a good guesser on distances), from the station up to the Governor's mansion. HESS: In Cheyenne? CHAPMAN: Yes, to the Governor's mansion. The setting was perfect. We didn't plan for him to stay there. We didn't want him to take his time there, because the press we knew would be there. The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, all from Denver, sent their reporters up there to cover it. Our newspapers from over the areas sent their local reporters in, and then practically all of them, the major papers, I think, had someone on the train going with us. We had quite a good representation of the press on the train, better than I had expected, and it picked up as it went. By the time we got back to Washington we had... HESS: Why do you think so many papers sent reporters along on this so-called "nonpolitical" trip? As you know a large number of reporters went along. CHAPMAN: Yes. They were expecting to see a complete flop and they wanted to write about it. They got so disgusted after two or three of them. They, of course, wrote the one up in Omaha. Life magazine took pictures of that empty hall, and he wasn't even supposed to be at the hall. The schedule that this fellow had worked out for him didn't have him going to the hall at all, but a little handbill had been passed out by his Army buddies... HESS: The 35th Division Association. CHAPMAN: The 35th Division, and he marched with them that afternoon for a little ways. Then he couldn't go that night because what Ed had done, he had set up a cocktail party without telling me. I didn't know anything about it. That was the first I learned about it. After I called the President, I left on Saturday morning early and went on over to Cheyenne. The situation was obviously going to be very difficult to handle there under the circumstances and I wanted to get out of the way of it. HESS: Did you communicate your feelings to President Truman? CHAPMAN: Oh, yes. I talked to him personally over the telephone, direct, through Matt Connelly. I talked with Matt and then talked with the President. I talked with both of them. HESS: And you told them that it looked like things were going to go wrong? HESS: I told them that I was very concerned about it. He had a schedule that I didn't think could possibly be worked, and he would just have to play it by ear when he got there, and take what he could and the rest he'd have to--Matt being with him all the time, would just have to watch it and "make changes that you'd have to make when you get here, because you'll just have to make some changes, because you can't keep them all." Well, they got there and they had it that way, but they got with their empty hall because he didn't go out there to the hall at first. He was a little late. It had been put in the press that only the 35th Division were to come to this meeting. Well, they thought the place would be so packed, and half of them didn't come. HESS: And the public thought that they were not invited. CHAPMAN: That's exactly what happened. They didn't come. That's one time that the public listened to the newspaper and read that article. It killed me. Well, we decided we'd just make the best we could out of it and let it go and not worry about it. "Well do something to cover that some other way." And we did later on get a chance to recoup that in Omaha. The whole program in Omaha was simply not the feeling of the people at all. They were in perfectly good spirits and as friendly with him as they could be. They were just not given the opportunity to see him in any way. Ed kept him completely surrounded with his own friends. HESS: Kept him isolated. CHAPMAN: Well, for instance, this is one of those things that has been printed. He took the President out to some place around 5 o'clock in the afternoon to meet some people and to see a hall or some new building. I never did know quite what that was. But he leaves there and brings them all on by his house to a cocktail party that he had set up there at his house, and he had invited a lot of friends. What Ed didn't know was that invitations to something for the President have to be scrutinized so closely that I thought the Secret Service boys would go crazy. They were just wild. HESS: They were taken by surprise? CHAPMAN: They were taken by surprise, and so was I. Of course, I had left and I was in Cheyenne working on that meeting by that night. Matt called me in Cheyenne that night, at midnight or later, and he said, "Well, your predictions came true to perfection. You were exactly right." HESS: It was a debacle. CHAPMAN: But he said, "I'm sure glad you called the President and told him about it because he would have been surprised." He said, "You had put him on notice and he was kind of ready for it, and he didn't let it bother him, and he just went on and handled it." HESS: It didn't take him by surprise. CHAPMAN: It didn't take him by surprise, so it didn't give him a chance to think what he wanted to do and say. He handled it in such a way that he didn't leave any implications on anybody that didn't handle things right, because this man was a friend of his family's and was a friend of theirs. HESS: He used to work for him in the White House. CHAPMAN: That's right. So he had all those credentials back of him. So that's what happened there exactly. But I'll tell you what I did when we reached Cheyenne on Sunday afternoon. The plane arrived in there between 4 and 5; I can't remember the exact time. Between 4 and 5 it arrived in there. I had arranged for the National Guard to line from the train to the Governor's mansion, and we had a soldier every ten or fifteen feet apart on each side of the street, Maxwell Street. It was fixed up nicely. We had one on each side about every fifteen feet apart, and it looked like a lot of people. We got them all set and we had several hundred like that. Then, besides that all the National Guard people had been notified that they and their families could come and be there, and that they might get a chance to shake hands with the President. They might not, but they could come and see him. Well, it followed through so nicely. The train arrived on time. The crowd had gathered down at the station, and there was a crowd. It was the biggest that was ever together in the State of Wyoming, even for one of their rodeos. It was on Sunday afternoon. A lot of people from Denver had driven up there. I had worked on that. See, that's a one hundred mile drive, and a very beautiful highway; a lot of people from Denver drove up there. And these little towns in northern Colorado, a lot of people drove up to Cheyenne for a little Sunday afternoon holiday. It was a very pleasant little town for them to go to. So we had a crowd from the northern Colorado areas that had come in there that the people were not dreaming were coming. The local people would never have thought of such a thing, that that many would come. They thought a few would come, maybe forty or fifty. But there was some four or five hundred of them that were in there from Denver on up. The press caught that that way, and I made it a point to introduce two or three of the editors, the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News and the Greeley newspaper, and one other newspaper editor was up there on one of those papers. These were two of the small papers and then two of the biggest papers. Then one of the newspapers from over in the West, the Grand Junction Sentinel, which was the biggest newspaper outside of Denver. The man who owned that had been a great supporter of Truman. He had been worried about all the things he had been hearing. He said, "I think I'll go on over to Cheyenne anyway." This was by telephone. I was on the telephone, when I wasn't talking with one locally, I was on the telephone. So he went on up. When I left Cheyenne primarily the next stop for me was Portland to organize that Portland situation and to be there in plenty of time to get it lined up. In the meantime, I had the chance there in Cheyenne to introduce a few of these editors to Truman and I gave a list of names to Clark Clifford and Clark knew one or two of them, like Palmer Hoyt at the Denver Post. I gave a list of them, the people there, the local people, to Clifford. He in a very astute way just made it look like it was just as casual as it could be. He said, "Come on and meet the President." He would take in two or three of these reporters at a time to see the President and after they had stayed a few minutes he would motion for one of them that he knew, and he would take them on out. He handled that beautifully. He filled in the little finesse that you needed to have to make it look nice, and that overcame the Omaha thing so beautifully. We had pictures of the Omaha thing in Life magazine. They were two-page pictures, terrific pictures, and the front page, that is, the outside, like this, had a picture of the hall with the vacant seats. Then I got an opportunity to get some pictures with the President at the Governor's mansion because all these people at the station walked up there, you see. As I said, it was 250 yards or more, about that. They all walked up and at the Governor's mansion there was a little balcony out over the front porch that three or four people could stand out on. There was the Governor and two or three other local citizens, including the head of the Press Association for the State of Wyoming, and he runs a radio station, so he had him connected up and we had free time on that. He handled that local situation for me and I knew him well. I knew he could do a good job of it, and I had talked with him beforehand about the kind of thing we should set up up there, and he did it. He did a good job, a very good job. He's a typical, slow-moving fellow, but he stops to talk to every one of these cattle people he'd see from around the country. He stopped to talk to every one of them and he had the President meet every one of them. Well, fortunately, we had a time schedule there that gave us plenty of time. We could hold the train there for another hour if we wanted to. So, I told Clark before I left--I took a plane out of there and went on to Portland--and I told him, "Just don't worry about it, this Governor. He's all right. You may get a little nervous about him the first thing. He's too slow but he's exactly the pace that these people are in, and when he introduces you to one of these old farmers up there, cattle people, it means something to you and it's worth something. So don't shortchange him on anything if you can help it because it's too valuable. You've got to keep pushing him." He pushed him to get him through. Clark caught that exactly and he handled it just to perfection with the President for me. He just handled it beautifully with the press. Clark has a facility and a talent. His first meeting of a person, of making an impression; it's like Judge Lindsey, whom I used to work for in Denver, who ran the juvenile court there. I worked with him for seven or eight years; he used to tell me, he'd call me in and he'd say, "Son, I want you to understand that the artistry of approach is the finest approach you can make to those people that will be lasting." And he had always lectured me about the artistry of approach, your first meeting with people. Clark Clifford had that just by nature; he had it to perfection. What Lindsay had been lecturing to me about all those eight years, Clark had it. HESS: And he still has it today. CHAPMAN: He still has it today. He could bring those people in and he would handle them in a crowd so easily, and he could get the President out of a crowd without any commotion or any apparent disturbance, so everything was running just fine. He handled that so well. We got terrifically good publicity on that one, and the reporters on that really caught the picture that something went wrong in Omaha that had nothing to do with the President at all, and so they really wrote that story up beautifully. They corrected that Omaha story, correcting what they had written before, saying the problem that they ran into in Omaha was nothing but a faux pas that had been pulled by a local man (they didn't mention his name), who wasn't familiar with handling a President. He just didn't know how to handle it. They made another reference to me in the press at that time: "Oscar Chapman or Clark Clifford, had either one of them been there..." Well, it was too late for Clark to do anything. He couldn't do anything but help get him through the night, and I had gone. So that covered the part of the program, for the atmosphere we started off with was bad from Omaha. We had a little bit of a flap in Chicago, a little mix-up; the program there got mixed up a little bit by too many ambitious local politicians trying to take the lead, and that's a tough place to handle them in Chicago if you don't know the leaders. If you don't know the leaders and which ones you're talking to you can foul up a meeting terribly. HESS: Who were the principal leaders in Chicago at that time that you had to contend with? CHAPMAN: [Richard J.] Daley was coming to the forefront; right then he was coming to the front, and I spotted Daley as being the brains behind--putting his friends together and making them come to what he wanted to do. HESS: You saw him as a comer at that time? CHAPMAN: Oh, yes. I saw him and I used him. I used him heavily. HESS: How did you use him? CHAPMAN: Oh, I had him to get certain people. I said, "I want you to get so-and-so and so-and-so, get them to come in to see the President. You see Matt Connelly and talk to him." I gave him a list and he took care of it. Clark followed it on through like that. I mean, our coordination worked out perfectly and all because Clark had such good common sense. HESS: That was the address in Chicago before the Swedish Pioneer Centennial Celebration? CHAPMAN: Yes. That wasn't serious, or it wasn't big. I mean, there wasn't a serious error, but we could have gotten a little more out of it had Clark and I been able to be there all day that day beforehand, you see. I had to leave before to go into Omaha. Of course, it was a good thing that I did. But that was the one he spoke at there. Governor Green. Let's see, who was the mayor of Chicago at that time? HESS: He'll be identified in the Public Papers. The mayor was Martin H. Kennelly. CHAPMAN: Martin H. Kennelly. HESS: "In his opening words he referred to Vilas Johnson, General Chairman of the Chicago Swedish Pioneer Centennial, Dwight H. Green, Governor of Illinois, and Martin H. Kennelly, Mayor of Chicago." CHAPMAN: That's the one. I had given those names to Daley. HESS: To Daley. To see that they showed up? CHAPMAN: To see that they were at the right place at the right time.' HESS: What was Daley at that time, do you recall? CHAPMAN: I don't recall what his title was or what he was doing, but he acted more or less as a public relations man for the mayor. They were quite friendly apparently, and he was helping the mayor on public relations matters such as this. He had had a good deal of experience on this kind of a program, and that made him very useful and helpful to us. HESS: One of the most powerful black men in the House of Representatives at that time was William Dawson. CHAPMAN: Right. HESS: Did you work with William Dawson? CHAPMAN: Oh, yes. I worked with William Dawson and I'll never forget his speech up there on the back of the car or automobile out at the community there, in the black community. I know, Dawson had set up (Daley had done this for me), he had set up a meeting for Truman to stop there in an automobile and make a speech at 5 o'clock in the afternoon as they got off from work, most of them. We caught the right hour. Dawson was riding in that car with the President. I had him riding with the President and the mayor was in the car with him. The Governor had been with us before. He was not with us at that particular meeting, but he was with us before during the day. The Governor had been very courteous and had been a little more helpful than some of them had been. HESS: Was this during the regular campaign? CHAPMAN: No, this was on that first trip, nonpolitical trip. But Dawson's speech up there, I will never forget the phrase that he used. He had a deep, heavy voice as so many black people have, and he got up, introduced the President, and he said, "Now, the press is telling the public that this man has been in the White House too long, that he shouldn't be there any longer." He said, "I want to ask you, how long is too long when it's good?" That crowd just roared with that. He said, "How long is too long when it's good?" He got a terrific ovation out of that, and Truman got a wide ovation there. They just tore the town down for him almost. HESS: That must not have been in the... CHAPMAN: That might have been on the second trip. HESS: I can't find anything about Dawson in the notes. The President also spoke at Gary. CHAPMAN: Yes, he was in Gary. HESS: I can't find anyplace where Dawson would have introduced him in Chicago, but quite probably it was just not released to the press. CHAPMAN: I'll tell you, this was nothing, this was purely a… HESS: Off-the-cuff remarks? CHAPMAN: I would say off-the-cuff remarks. The whole thing was informal. HESS: It didn't go through the press office? CHAPMAN: It was not on any program, you see. So, we did this at the last minute because Dawson was feeling like he was being left out a little bit. I caught that feeling. I had caught it before I left there, and I had tipped Clark off to it. I said, "Some way or another get him in the car with the President if you can and drive down through the black district. You can stop the car on any one of about five corners. He'll have 5,000 people there," He passed my guess by a long way. He had far more than 5,000. HESS: So this was away to give recognition to Congressman Dawson and also to have the President appear and speak before a group of black people. CHAPMAN: That's right. He did. HESS: How important to his victory in 1948 do you think that the black vote was, particularly the urban black vote? In Chicago for instance? CHAPMAN: Oh, very definitely it was a real asset. They gave us a margin for victory. There isn't any question in my mind that they gave us the margin we got. Remember, that was a close election out there. HESS: Why do you feel that most blacks were voting for the Democratic Party in 1948? Was this a holdover from the Roosevelt era when they voted overwhelmingly for Roosevelt? As I understand, the black vote was still dominantly Republican in 1932, right? CHAPMAN: That is correct, and that was principally because it had not been organized sufficiently. HESS: Then four years later in 1936, we see a definite switch, a definite change, after four years of the Roosevelt administration. CHAPMAN: That's the part I want to tell you about. People didn't realize what Truman had done those first four years. He had done things for the poor people and for the Negroes. He had supported the Negro position right straight down the line. He was against segregation. He expressed himself. That word got around among people everywhere. And besides, Truman had done some things legislative wise. He had put himself on record on two or three important issues for them that he publicly had supported, which had never been done before by any President for the Negro people. He had put himself on record in such a way and on such important issues that affected the black man very deeply, and they began to realize that "This man is really with us. He's really trying to help us." They got the feeling, the Negro group. The black man got the feeling that after his four years in there that he had really tried to do something for them. They had felt that he was trying to carry on the Roosevelt program, which was in their favor, and they believed that and some of the carryover was from that. But his record supported it. That's what made it solid. HESS: Did political expediency enter into Mr. Truman's view of civil rights to any degree? CHAPMAN: No, no. Truman--on that issue, I had talked with him dozens of times, because he knew my background. I came from Virginia and came here from Colorado, but he recognized my background from the South, and that atmosphere around me. He knew that I was up against a tough situation. I couldn't go and make a speech down in my home county where I was born. They wouldn't pay any attention to me; they wouldn't listen to me then. They'd be very reluctant to speak to me. Except there was one factor involved there that was very interesting. The Governor of the State of Virginia at that time was a close, personal friend of mine. We were both in grade school together. HESS: Who was he? CHAPMAN: Bill Tuck, William Tuck. And Bill had the Governorship. See, they can't run again after they run down there for Governor. HESS: Just one term, is that right? CHAPMAN: No. I think they can fill two terms. HESS: They can succeed themselves one time. CHAPMAN: One time, then that's all. But when Tuck got through serving his time down there, there came a vacancy in his district in Congress, because one of the Congressmen in that area died, just exactly in time for the machinery to be put in motion for his name to be put on the ballot, and he was put on the ballot and he got elected, of course. Halifax County is one of the most reactionary counties in the whole United States. People don't know that. HESS: Where is that located? CHAPMAN: It's down on the border of North Carolina and Virginia. HESS: How far west? CHAPMAN: Well, it's right in the center of the state; I mean, center that way, not the center of the state, but if you're crossing from the seashore over to the mountains, your line goes like this. HESS: About halfway across the state. CHAPMAN: And here's North Carolina. Right in the middle of this are the connecting highways. It puts you right through the little towns both in Virginia and in North Carolina on just a line. HESS: Southern Virginia. CHAPMAN: Southern Virginia, Halifax County. I was born in that county, and it was about the most conservative, reactionary county in the whole United States. There isn't another one like it. I'd go down there and Bill Tuck invited my wife and me to spend the weekend in the Governor's mansion there in Richmond. One of the cute stories that I always remember; when we got to breakfast, he brought us all out on the portico there and then walked out into the yard. It was beautiful, beautiful. There's a big stone there, about as high as your shoulder, about as high as a man's shoulder, and kind of oval shaped at the top. He had the name of every President that had ever slept there. As he went down the list reading them off to me, he was reading them off to me [as if I couldn’t see them), but he was reading them off with great glory to himself because he was following those great men. And he got down the list and they didn't put the first names of any of them; they just had the last name, and they had Roosevelt. He said, "That was Teddy, that wasn't Franklin!" HESS: He wanted to make it very clear that you knew that wasn't FDR. CHAPMAN: He wanted to be sure that I didn't make a mistake, that he never had Franklin Roosevelt down there in that place while he was there. And he caught it quickly. "That was Teddy, not Franklin." HESS: Coming from Halifax County, how did you develop your liberal feelings, your liberal leanings? CHAPMAN: I'll tell you what brought it on. It was brought on by degrees, the life itself that I lived down there, where I saw the mistreatment of Negro, and he was mistreated so brutally, and it was to me, so unfair, I couldn't contain myself even as a boy. HESS: What mistreatment did you see? CHAPMAN: Well, for instance, one of my uncles tried to have two little boys, fourteen or fifteen years old, put in jail because they took some wood for their house from his woods. It was old dead wood that they had picked up. I was the only witness because I was with them. We were playing together, and they would run back to the house and they always tried to pick up some wood to take back to the house. It was a natural thing, one of the little things of life. He had them tried before the magistrate. The magistrate was the postmaster there, and he tried them in the back of the grocery store there around the old, big-bellied stove which you had in those days. He started off the hearing, the magistrate did, and said, "Dave"--this was my uncle. This was my uncle that was no good, so I'll be honest with you and tell you. I did have one uncle that was one of the finest men, and was the greatest example I've ever had in my life, this one uncle, and I just worshipped him. I thought he was perfect. HESS: This was another uncle? CHAPMAN: This was another uncle, and a brother to this one that was no good. Of course, he drank too much and everything else. But he tried to send those two boys to jail. He was scared of my mother, my youngest uncle was. He didn't get in her way about anything. If he did he'd get a dressing down, because my mother would take him on, and he knew it. But up there he lost his temper when I was on the witness stand, sworn in as a witness. He said, "Now, I want you to tell this magistrate how much wood these boys had when they came out of those woods there," right next to their little house they had down there. "How much wood did they have?" I said, "I didn't see any wood." He said, "Now, you know you're a liar for saying that and I'm not going to let you get away with it. I'll have you put in jail." I said, "You better tell my mother about that first." HESS: You better clear that with mother. CHAPMAN: I said, "You better clear that with my mother." Well, he just turned white. He was terrible. Now, that is an example, and that was no incident isolated to itself. That was the common practice. Throw them in jail for a week, anytime, over any kind of a charge, whether it had any basis for it at all. Put them in jail and hold them for a week so they'll have a hearing, and disrupt what they were doing to make a living, whatever they were doing. Things of that kind were so distasteful to me and so unjust. I couldn't stand it, I just couldn't stand it. I graduated at the little two-room schoolhouse there and the two weeks before school was closing we always had the family come to the school and we had a little program, picnic or something. Two weeks before the school closed I was notified by the teacher that I had been expelled from school and I wouldn't graduate from the class, so I should not come. HESS: What were the charges? CHAPMAN: No charges. The school board didn't tell them anything. They just told her to notify me not to come back to school. The school board consisted of two Democrats and one Republican, and this is the funniest thing in this world. The Republican was out of the community at the time. He was an Internal Revenue man, and he was watching the stills around in those mountains. HESS: He was a "revenuer." CHAPMAN: He was a revenuer, and he was watching those stills around in those mountains and he'd catch one... HESS: That's not the safest occupation in the world. CHAPMAN: I'll say it isn't, not down there in those hills, because those birds would shoot you like a squirrel down there in those mountains and pay no attention to you. They had no more feeling about it--I honestly can say that they had no more feeling about shooting an Internal Revenue man than they would a squirrel. And they'd throw him in a ditch and leave him and not do anything, and you couldn't get a witness to testify. This man, that was his work. Well, that didn't endear him to the local population. Well, then he got back to town, oh, about three or four days before school was to close and have its little exercise, and those of us who graduated. When this Republican member of the school board got back to the community, the word got to him (I don't know how) about my being expelled. Well, he sent a little colored boy down on a horse to get me, to bring me up to his house. So the little colored boy came down on the horse and he said, "Mr. Wolfe wants to see you. He asked me to come and get you." I went in and washed my face and combed my hair and then jumped on the back of the horse, no saddle or nothing, jumped on the back of the horse with him, and he took me up to his house. It was about a mile and a half, something like that, I got up there and he took me to his library. He was a man with some education; he read a lot, and he was a great worshipper of Lincoln. I looked at his library there and I picked up a book, Beveridge's Life of Lincoln (Beveridge, Albert Jeremiah. Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1858. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1928). I picked it up and I'd never seen it before, and I can tell you to this day I had never seen Lincoln's picture up to that moment. It was in this book, but I had never seen this book. We didn't have money enough to buy groceries, necessities, let alone to buy books. HESS: Lincoln's photo was not on the wall of too many homes in that area. CHAPMAN: It wasn't on the wall of any home in that county, not in that county. His picture wasn't anywhere, Magill's History of Virginia (Magill, Mary Tucker. History of Virginia for the use of schools. Baltimore: Turbull Brothers, 1873) is the history book we studied out of, and that book didn't have Lincoln's picture and it had one line about Lincoln in the whole book of Magill's History Of Virginia. That was the name of it. It made one reference which consisted of just one line, a reference about Lincoln. HESS: Do you recall what that line was? CHAPMAN: I had memorized it by heart, but I've been so busy these last few years practicing law, I've really forgotten the line; but it was a reference to the change of the era, some reference to the change of an era. What he was saying, I think, was the change of the era the Civil War had brought an end to, and so on. And he was talking about the Civil War, the writer was, the author. So he brought that in that way. As I say, there was only one line. That was the history of Virginia as far as they were concerned. That's all he amounted to. And there was no other book that I ever saw that had his name in it as all, nothing else that I had in school. Well, Mr. Wolfe, then I told him the story of what I had done, and I had done a terrible thing for that county. My little cousin and I had been picked to go to town to buy a picture for the schoolroom. Of course, we had raised $5 out of our families' pocket, from a candy pulling and that was all we could get--$5. And they gave us $5 to go get a picture and they gave us no instruction as to what to get. They had no idea what they wanted, and I tried to get some instructions from the teacher and she said, "No, you and your little cousin Grace have got to pick this yourself. I'm not going to have anything to do with it." Well, on Saturday, that's the kind of a day you go to town anyway, her father got in his wagon, and had his two pretty horses and Grace, my cousin. But we got in his wagon at the little meeting place which was the country store there, and we got in there as early as he told us to, and the distance is about four miles from Omega; that was our post office address. Route 1, South Boston, We went on over to South Boston, and we passed by a terrible looking little junk shop, but a little art place that had a lot of pictures. The man I was with was my cousin and he said, "Now, here's a place that's got a lot of pictures, and you haven't got much money but you can buy one in here with the money you've got. So you kids get off here and look and I'll be back in an hour. I’ve got to do some business uptown and I’ll be back to pick you up." Well, we looked around. We had a wonderful time looking at all those pictures. The gilt on the frame was the thing that attracted my attention, and it looked pretty. It was very pretty. Believe it or not, this is what happened. We were in this little kind of a basement store. Like this, you went down two or three steps to go into the shop, and the pictures were lined up against the walls, and some were hanging. There was one hanging over here in this corner as I remember, and it attracted my attention because his appearance, the whiskers he had, made him look distinguished in some ways, and somehow or other he attracted me and he was more than just an ordinary man. HESS: Did you recognize him? CHAPMAN: No, I never saw him before. I had never seen him before. You see, it was after that when I went to Mr. Wolfe's library during this little interval about two weeks separate. I said to Grace, "Grace, that's a good looking frame. Look at it, it's gold." It was a gold frame. It was nothing but gold leaf stuff painted on there, I said, "That's only $4.95. That's right within our limits. And that will give us a nickel over and we’ll take that back to the school." I said, "I like that. Do you see anything else you like better?" Well, we looked around at three or four other pictures; they didn't mean anymore than the rest of them, than Lincoln did, because we didn't know them either. We looked at many pictures. She said, "Really, Oscar, I think that first one we looked at is just as good as any. That's a fine looking personality in that frame. I mean, his face. I like the looks of his face." I said, "I do, too. He looks distinguished with those whiskers." One of my good uncles used to wear whiskers like that and I thought they were great on my uncle and I was real fond of him. She said, "Let's get that." I said, "All right." So, we asked the fellow to get it for us and I had his name written down. Well, Monday morning we went on over to school with the picture. We got over to school a little before school time in time for me to hang this picture, and I hung it right on next to the blackboard, at the end of the blackboard. I hung this picture. Well, about half of the kids went home from school to lunch at noon. The other half had a little too far to go for lunch. They brought their lunch with them. I took mine with me. They went home to lunch, of course, and the children of these two school board members told their parents about how I bought a picture and they didn't seem to mention my little girlfriend that went with me. They didn't seem to mention her. I was the only one. They'd had their eye on me as a radical anyway. I was about 12 years old, not quite 12 when I finished there. To get the sequence of this story straight, it was the next afternoon that the teacher came down to our house, driving down on a horse, to tell me that I was expelled from school by the school board and that I couldn't come back anymore. I said, "What did I do?" "Well, they said that you had disgraced the school by bringing in a picture of Abraham Lincoln." I said, "Abraham Lincoln?" She said, "Yes. Now, I want you to know that I'm on your side and I'm with you, but there's nothing I can do. I just have to pass the word on, what the school board has told me." They had a meeting that night and I slipped away from home and drove back over to the schoolhouse where they were meeting just to see what they were doing. I was looking through the school window, on the backside looking through watching them, and I saw that school board member take that picture and break it up over the wood box we had there for wood. He broke that picture up and left it in the wood box thinking that we'd burn it up. Well, I waited until they left and I got the big wire screen off of the window, pulled it out far enough that I could get through it, and I got in and went back into school and took the picture and hung it back up on the wire on the nail up there. Of course, they knew I did it. Everybody knew I did it. I didn't talk about it and I wouldn't admit that I did. I wouldn't talk about it at all. But that was what they had done. The school board members didn't come to my mother; they didn't come and see her. But Mr. Wolfe came to town, came back to this community within those first few days, and therefore I hadn't been out of school but a few days then, and that's when he sent for me. He heard about this story and he sent for me and asked me what I'd done. I told him all with the exception of telling him about going to the school window. He said, "Well, now, Oscar, tell me the whole story. Did you do something there that could be considered a violation of the law?" Well, I don't know whether it's a violation of the law or not for a boy to crawl through the window of the school and get in and hang his picture back up. I said, "That night after they got through their meeting, I crawled through that window, pulled the screen off and crawled through and got in and hung my picture back on the wire they had left hanging together, and I hung it back up," He said, "Did you do that?" I said, "Yes, I did." He said, "I'm glad you told me. I will see that they are going to reinstate you, and I am going to get on my horse right now and I'm going down and catch each one of them at home while they're having dinner. I'm going to sue each one of them for their farms, the price of their farms. I'm going to sue them for depriving you of your rights." He was a fighter; he was a scrapper, too. He notified these two farmers--he was the third member--he told them that if they didn't reinstate me that night, have a board meeting right now--"We're all three together. Let's have a board meeting and reinstate this boy, cause if you don't, I'm going over to South Boston." The Halifax County office--the court house--is in the little town of Halifax. There's Halifax County and then there's a little village or town called Halifax there right outside South Boston. He says, "I'm going over there tomorrow and file suit against both of you, and I'm going to sue you for every piece of land you've got, take your land away from you. And if you don't think I'll do it, I'm going to put the money up myself and pay for this suit. I'm going to take every piece of land you've got away from you." So, he scared them into reversing themselves that night and they reinstated me. HESS: As you know, Mr. Truman was from rural Jackson County, and back in the days when he was growing up it had a very southern atmosphere. CHAPMAN: Very much so. HESS: Coming from that background, why do you think Mr. Truman developed views concerning the rights of individuals as he did? CHAPMAN: Well, I was going to tell you in answer to your first question to me, whether I thought he was doing this for political expediency. I had had this experience and I was very sensitive to reacting to anybody in anything like this, and I can tell when a person is just kidding me, whether they mean it or not, when they're talking about Negroes. I can talk to him five minutes and I can find out whether he's anti-racial. Those people down there don't even know it. That's the trouble; they don't even know that they're anti-racial. They think that they're wonderful that they even let these folks live there. They think they're doing them a favor, yet they need them to work the fields in tobacco and cotton (tobacco down there). They had to hire them and they were the only people they could hire, and yet they thought they were doing them a favor to let them live there. So, it was the craziest thing. When I think back over some of those days, my boyhood days down there... Truman had some of the same experiences I did--almost identical. He spoke with a deep feeling when he was talking to me about some of the things he had seen them do like I did, some of the same things. He told me about some boys being put in jail without giving them a hearing first. They waited a week or so to give them a hearing but they had them in jail in the meantime without any bail. They had no money for bail anyhow. He told me about that. It just identically followed what I had seen, and I think those people in Halifax County were pretty close together, except Halifax is in the lead. It's the worst reactionary county in the United States. It's still behind, but it's gone a long ways. They've been forced to go a long ways and so they have not violated the law, but they still carry the feeling in their heart down there like in Kansas City. HESS: On the subject of civil rights: Mr. Truman established the President's Committee on Civil Rights and in October of 1947 they came out with their report, "To Secure These Rights." Then, on February 2, 1948, he had his ten points message to Congress on civil rights, things he thought should be done. Some were carried out, some were not. FEPC he couldn't get through, but other programs were more successful. CHAPMAN: That's right. HESS: At the time there was quite a reaction growing in the South, a reaction that finally did culminate in Philadelphia after the Humphrey-Biemiller plank was put in the platform, and part of the Southern delegates walked out. When did you think there was a real danger of the South bolting and starting their own third party? CHAPMAN: I had a feeling from the very beginning that they were going to start this thing. I had talked with some of my friends down in Halifax County; you don't hear about them, and they were the ground supporters of those people. Truman had had these same experiences that I had had, and I had sat down with him over there in his office, several nights in his office, and when we were by ourselves and we would talk about these things, and he would talk with great fervor about them. He'd get worked up when he started talking about them, about what a bunch of hypocrites these people were. Then he would tell me a story about something that happened in his boyhood days that he knew about, and he'd tell me the story. Now, in connection with that, I want to tell you another story on civil rights while we're talking about it, to bring it in. Now, in 1939, on Easter Sunday of '39, Roosevelt was still in the White House, of course. He ran for reelection for the third term that fall. HESS: Yes, the [Wendell] Willkie term. Willkie ran in '40. CHAPMAN: This was in ‘39. And Roosevelt was in the White House. Howard University out here, through one of these peculiar quirks of the Government growing like Topsy, they didn't know where to put it and they put it under the Interior Department, but the Office of Education was at the Department of Interior when I went there as Assistant Secretary. It didn't belong in there. Of course, it belonged in a setup like they've got now. This is what I helped push and recommended, and I worked like the devil to push that thing through, to get that department, Health, Education and Welfare. The Office of Education, being under the Department of Interior, that threw Howard University into our jurisdiction, and that meant that the Director of Education had charge of our education program in the Department, had detailed charge of that school. That meant that we had to look at their budget and go over their budget as they presented it to the Bureau of the Budget here, and in every detail of that we had to follow that through. The Secretary of Interior assigned everything over there practically to me, even anything on civil rights or human rights, anything of that kind. He’d assign them to me, until Jebby [C. Girard Davidson] came in later. When Jebby came in later he was given some of that work. He found out, and I told him that Jebby was as strong for these things as I was. I said, "As a matter of fact, he probably goes faster then I do on some areas, but I'm with him, and he is doing a good job in that field." So, the Secretary was very pleased. Jebby came from Louisiana you've got to remember, to start with; and I came from Virginia. Here we were, the two southerners in there that had everything to do with civil rights matters, anything to do with Negroes and their rights. Now, the school of music at Howard University had invited Marian Anderson to sing here anytime that they could get her, and they had gotten her lined up. To give the full picture or the impact of the picture itself on civil rights as a whole, I think the story of Marian Anderson's lack of reception here in Washington to be given a place to sing, a hall to sing in, was one of the most disgraceful things that I think our Government ever tolerated in my lifetime. And it was the first time that I ever came up against a real, solid case of discrimination to the extent that they wouldn't even allow her to use one of the high schools to sing in. We tried to get the Roosevelt High School. It wasn't big enough, but it was the biggest thing we had. HESS: Where was the first place she was expected to sing? This was the time they wouldn't allow her to use Constitution Hall, is that right? CHAPMAN: That's the time. They wouldn't let her come because she was black. HESS: Where were they planning to have the concert first, Constitution Hall? CHAPMAN: Yes, that's where we had planned it. HESS: I understand it is the Daughters of the American Revolution who have charge of Constitution Hall. CHAPMAN: They own it. It's theirs and they have a board of directors, and they have a director here that stays here full time that sets the management and rules. They kept the rules supposedly approved by the whole body, but whatever this lady recommends to them they usually do. They turned her down after they had given us, we thought, approval. We thought they'd give us approval first, and we were proceeding to begin our work on this, and I was keeping an eye on it because I knew it was going to be a rather tight situation here with some of the people. Well, anyway, they turned us down, wouldn't let her sing in there at all. I went over and talked to one of the men who was on the board there and he was here at the time, and I saw him, and he wouldn't give me any help at all. So what I did, Walt [Walter] White, head of the NAACP, was in my office along about 11 o'clock and he was going to catch a train, a train back to New York. He said, "Oscar, wouldn't it be a ten strike if we could have her sing at the feet of Lincoln, at the Lincoln Memorial?" I said, "You know, Walter, that monument has never been used for a public meeting since it was built, since Harding dedicated it, and it's never been used." The Park Service had a policy that you couldn't use it for any purpose. It had no racial overtones. They just didn't want to use it. I said, "That would be a ten strike, and that's the place she ought to sing. And if we're going to do that, let's do it with all the support we can get. Let's not get fouled up. I've got the Secretary; he'll get Roosevelt right away, and we'll get clearance, because this kind of thing can cause trouble on the Hill. Our budget is there every day at the Capitol and on something of this kind I always want to get clearance and the Secretary would already be on notice as to what I'm doing." I went into the Secretary's office right then and Walter headed for the train and he said, "Oscar, I'm going to call you before I get on the train to see what the Secretary says." I went right on down to the Secretary's office and he went on to the train. I said to the Secretary, "Mr. Secretary, you've seen all the publicity on the front pages of these newspapers around here for the last two or three weeks, and it's getting hotter each day, because the Constitution Hall turned us down on that invitation for Marian Anderson to sing there. We thought we had it there but we didn't, and anyway they turned us down, and they won't let her sing at Constitution Hall." He said, "They won't?" I said, "No, they won't. I've tried the high schools and I can't get the school board to give us permission for her to sing at one of the high schools." HESS: The school board stopped that, is that right? CHAPMAN: The school board stopped that, just cold. They didn't even listen to us. We couldn't think of anything else. I said, "Mr. Secretary, you know what I'm thinking that I want to do. I'd like to have her sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which would be on Easter Sunday afternoon which would have a religious aura or background to it. We'll build a platform on that low level of steps so cameras down here can take pictures of Lincoln right straight through from the platform we build for you and Marian Anderson who will be sitting there. And when she's singing, they'll be taking pictures; we can get the picture of Lincoln, you, and Marian Anderson all the time." Well that pleased him. He said, "That's a good idea." He picked up the White House phone and he got "Missy"--Marguerite "Missy" LeHand--FDR's personal secretary--on the phone, and he said, "Missy, is there anybody in with the President that it would matter whether I just asked him a question or not?" She said, "No, he could speak to you on the phone briefly." He said, "This will be brief," She said, "All right." She put him through to the President. I was hearing all this. I was standing close enough that I could hear it. President Roosevelt came on, and I forget what comment the President made when he came on, but he made some comment about him getting in. He said, "Mr. President, I am planning on wanting to do something here, and Oscar Chapman is standing here with me, and he wants to let Marian Anderson sing at the feet of the Lincoln Memorial, at the feet of Lincoln, on Easter Sunday afternoon. He'll be the one in charge to look after it for the Department and the Government here, and I'd have to issue a permit for her to sing. But before I do that I wanted to get your approval of it, because of the Department's budget hearings on the Hill." In a moment (it looked like to me it was ten minutes, but it wasn't), Roosevelt came back, "Good for him. Tell Oscar to let her sing at the top of the Washington Monument if she wants to. I think that's a wonderful idea. Let her sing at Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday afternoon." And Ickes said, "That's my plan now and we're going ahead and we're going to put it on there." "Go right ahead. I'll back you to the finish." Ickes turned to me and he said, "You've gotten yourself a job. You may not know it, but you've got a job. In the first place you may have some difficulty with the Park Service." I said, "I know I will. The two top men down there are opposed to this, and when they know I want this for Marian Anderson, they're going to come up and start making excuses. They can't get this and they can't get that, and I want them to get us some lumber to build a platform and have it wired for outdoor sound, and I want speakers along the reflecting pool, in the direction of the Washington Monument." She has a heavy voice; she can sing outdoors beautifully, because she's got too big a voice for a small room, really. To sing in a small room is too small for her. "And outdoors will be just perfect." Well, all day that Easter Sunday it looked like it was going to rain and I thought, "It just can't rain: Just please hold off until after this is over." Well, do you know that at exactly 3:30 the sun in the west had just cleared the way and it was as pretty a day as you would ever want to see for about the next two hours. Just perfect. The sunlight came through and it came over and I looked at my watch and it was 3:30 and I said, "This will just be right. This will be beautiful. And the boys can get some good pictures of this, too." I had the platform built for us; and I want to give Ickes credit for this, too. He supported me on that in every way. I did all the work; I did the planning, and I handled it. HESS: Did Mrs. Roosevelt have any involvement in that episode? CHAPMAN: She was out of town. She was not here. She was traveling in the Pacific at that time. She was somewhere out of the country. She was somewhere else and wasn't here for that, but she let me use her name as a sponsor. And I had a good bunch of sponsors. Marian Anderson got on the platform; I introduced her to Secretary Ickes and he picked it up from there and carried the program and introduced her. She sang these religious spirituals and I'm telling you, there wasn't a dry eye in the whole audience as I looked around, not a dry eye. And I had put every one on the spot by sending them a telegram on the Hill, all of the Congressmen and Senators that I could think of. There were a few 1 may have missed but I sent telegrams so I would know I had delivery and I told Western Union that I wanted a receipt to show the delivery of these and I wanted them. They said, "All right," and they got receipts for me all right. When they took one to Garner's office to deliver it to him, he took the telegram all right, but he wouldn't sign the receipt. HESS: Vice President John Nance Garner? CHAPMAN: Yes. The Western Union man said, "Well, I can't deliver this telegram to you unless you sign this receipt." Well, he fumbled around a few minutes and cussed a little and he said, "Give me the receipt and I'll sign the receipt." He tore the telegram open and looked at it and wadded it up and threw it down on his desk and said, "They got that squirt down there, Oscar Chapman, stirring up all the trouble he can with these niggers. He's doing everything he can to stir up trouble with these niggers." HESS: Who told you what he said? CHAPMAN: The Western Union man. I made him get me every receipt, and he had that receipt. Garner was talking to the press that he hadn't gotten one, and I gave his receipt to the press. So I had called him a liar to the public. And it was emphasized very nicely, just enough, just right. That's what he said. Now, the Western Union man knew there was trouble brewing with these crowds, and so he delivered this one to Garner; he went up and delivered it himself because he knew there would be trouble. Marian Anderson got up and started to sing her religious spirituals. You've heard them, the old familiar ones, "Nobody knows the troubles I've seen." She put all she had into that song. She put it into that song, and I could see those colored people down there. Most of them had driven in here from Philadelphia; about 3,000 came in in buses from Philadelphia. I had a picture made of the whole audience and I had an official estimate to check it. It all checked out both ways. It all squared that I had a minimum of 75,000. We had never had 75,000 there before except with Lindbergh, when he was here that time. She did such a good job with that thing. She got terrific publicity. In the first place, we had the networks; all of them carried it on the radio, they all carried it, no charge, everything was free. The press gave it the most wonderful coverage I've ever seen in anything. Ickes was very pleased. He was very pleased. The next morning was Monday (this was on a Sunday afternoon). I had a hassle with a lot of people about whether we should have the National Guard around there or whether I should bring in a company of soldiers in here from Ft. Myers. Ickes sent for me on Saturday afternoon (we were working on Saturday afternoon in those days), and he sent for me on Saturday afternoon. He said, "Now, listen, are you sure you've got this thing organized for security and protection?" I said, "I don't know; what do you mean?" He said, "You've got sufficient police protection down there?" I said, "Mr. Secretary, if we show a policeman down there it will start a riot. I wouldn't have a policeman on the place, and I don't want one around, not even the traffic police down there. I don't want them any closer than up here on Constitution Avenue. I don't want one in sight or close enough to be able to converse with anybody that's close to the monument. We're going to have to have a traffic cop but I want him placed." And I told him that I had already looked over where I wanted to put them, and that was the way I wanted to do it. I said, "If you want to assure having a riot here, you bring a company of soldiers in here with guns on a Sunday afternoon, on Easter when she is singing these religious songs of hers. You're going to create a riot, and I won't be responsible for it, because I just will not take responsibility for that kind of a thing. I think I know people; I know the Negro; I know how they feel, and they've got a hundred years of justification of feeling the way they do. If we do something like that and on a Sunday afternoon with a religious aura back of this, and Marian Anderson is singing these spiritual hymns, you're going to cause a riot. I won't be responsible for it because I won't even go down there." He said, "You want to leave me up there and let me get shot?" I said, "If you're fool enough to have a man down there with a gun you're going to get shot. So don't make any mistake about it; you'll be about the first one they would shoot, because they'd blame you for having the police out there, because they know I have opposed having the police. I have expressed my opposition; I don't want any police up here at all." I had so instructed my own police in our department. We had 150 or 175 and we had instructed that we didn't want one of them around, not even the police for the traffic. I wanted them to move themselves up out of the way, clear to the edge of the crowd, way back.. Well, they didn't show up. Ickes said, "All right, if you want to take responsibility for that." I said, "I'll only take the responsibility if I can handle it right, but if I'm going to be forced to have policemen down there, I'm going to drop it. I'm going to be through with it." He said, "Well, you can go ahead and run it. Whatever you want to do." I said, "All right, but I'm not having any police down there, so don't be disappointed." He said, "All right, I'11 leave that to you." The thing went off so well. I don't think I've ever known Ickes to even go so far as to halfway apologize to anybody for anything. He called me in Monday morning and he said, "I just wanted to tell you that that was a good program yesterday and you handled it well, and you were right. No policeman should have been there. Where did you learn the psychology of black people so well? You seem to have an inside track with them." I said, "I lived with them. I lived with them and I know. I know their grief, grievances, and their troubles. We still haven't corrected them. You'll be satisfied when this is all over." That's what I had told him on Saturday. I said, "You'll be satisfied when this is all over, if you just let me go on and finish it." So, that was it. HESS: One brief point. She couldn't sing in Constitution Hall, but could she have eaten in a cafeteria, say, in the Department of Interior? CHAPMAN: Yes, we opened the Department of Interior to the public, to everybody. That was almost one of the first things that Ickes did. That's what made me really work with him, be able to work with him, because he was so good on that. HESS: During this period of time, didn't many of the Departments have segregated cafeterias in their lunchrooms? CHAPMAN: Yes, every department in Government had them almost. There was one or two that weren't segregated. I forget which ones they were. But ours had been desegregated long before the rest of them had, almost as soon as Ickes came in office. Ickes put out an order, oh, less than six months after he went in there. Now another thing we did. We took it step by step, I organized this with him. I took it step by step. I said, "Now, Mr. Secretary, you've opened the cafeteria; you've opened the parks up to the public now by letting Marian Anderson sing down there, and if I have any occasion to compare it with her importance I'd use it again. But not just for tinhorn picture outfits that want to come down there and put on a flag-waving show. I'm not doing that kind of a thing. I want something of this kind. This is the kind of an image that I want to see of you, for you, as Secretary of Interior." That kind of touched his heart. He said, "What are we going to do?" And I raised the money for him. I raised some money to have a mural painted in the hall downstairs leading to the cafeteria, a mural of Marian Anderson's event, and it's a big one. They only showed two faces that you could identify. One of them was Mrs. Bethune, Mary McCloud Bethune, and old man [Dr. William J.] Tompkins, an old friend of the Negro. He was an old-timer. He was about out of operation at this time. This experience of having this broke the front lines of the diehards here concerning the use by Negroes of public facilities. HESS: The swimming pools in the District of Columbia... CHAPMAN: I opened the swimming pools myself. They just had no ghost. He opened the golf course and we found out that the man down there at this little shed that issued tickets for the fellows to play, every time a Negro came up he said, "I'm sorry, but we haven't got anytime left now until next week." He always put them off, whatever day they wanted to use the golf course. I set him up so I could catch him at it. I had a Negro man and a white man to go in there together and the white man went in the front, got his ticket and this fellow didn't know me. I don't play golf, but I went down there like I was going to play, and he gave the white man ahead of this Negro a ticket to play now. He took his bag and started on out. He said, "I want a ticket for my partner here," and the partner was a very fine looking Negro man here in town who played golf, and he could play golf too. He was one of the men out at Howard University that I knew very well out there. Do you know that fellow had the gall to say--and I could hear him, I was close enough to hear what he was saying; I was close enough to hear him say to this fellow, "I'm sorry, but that's the last ticket we've got for today." This other man handed his ticket back and said, "Well, take mine back. If this isn't open to the public I don't want to play." Then he got a little flustered and he didn't know what to do. He said, "No, we've got this period open for one man." I stepped up at that time and I said, "I'm Oscar Chapman, Assistant Secretary of the Interior. I want a ticket to play." He tore one off right quick and handed it to me. I turned right around and handed it to the black fellow and I said, "I'm going to let him play in my place. Since you haven't any other time I'm going to give him my time." I gave him my ticket and he went on and played golf with this fellow. The next day we had a big hassle with the Park Service . We raised hell with them. We took that fellow from down there; we took him out and put him back on the beat, a policeman out on the beat, and got him away from that job where he was meeting people every day. HESS: Why did the Park Service seem to be so reactionary? At the National Park areas there were even segregated picnic grounds. CHAPMAN: They had those signs: "Colored Area Here." HESS: Wasn't the Park Service in charge of the swimming pools here in town? CHAPMAN: Yes. HESS: And they were segregated. Why was the Park Service at that time so reactionary? CHAPMAN: They were still opposing everything that had anything to do with integration. They were opposed to it. That's really what it was. But I got ready and prepared myself for a knockdown, dragout. I expected to have it when I got ready to open the pools. I was appointed Secretary of Interior in '49, I believe it was. I think that's when it was, in '49? HESS: That's right. CHAPMAN: I was appointed in ‘49. I got ready to open the swimming pools that summer, the first season. I had it all ready and I had brought a man here from Chicago, a nice fellow. He was an expert criminologist, and he was an expert in race relations. He had been in St. Louis and worked with them about a year, with their police on race relations, and he had done a lot of good. He had a good record and a good personality, and he really helped beautifully. I brought him here in January and put him on the payroll. He went to work, talked to every preacher or father or rabbi, whatever their religious leanings were, in the entire community, particularly Anacostia, because we were expecting some trouble at Anacostia and down on the point. That point, that pool, carried a thousand people. They could swim a thousand at one time. They had it filled, too. Well, I had organized that thing up to the hilt. I got a phone call, an anonymous phone call over the telephone, about 11 o'clock Saturday morning, that the Communists over in Baltimore were planning to raid the park swimming pools when I opened them the next day on Sunday, and that they were coming over here in cars; they were going to park down here at the Progressive Headquarters, which was a little building down back here on one of these streets. They were going to park their buses and they would have cars arranged to take them over to the swimming pools. That was just what I wanted, because I had not had the support of the local police at any other meeting I had had. On this particular occasion I went to see Archbishop O'Boyle and he was glad to help, and he was good on these things. I told him what I wanted to do, that I wanted to open the pools, and "I don't think I'm getting the full support from the chief of police." I said, "He's a good friend of yours and if you could call him and have a talk with him, it would be a good religious act to do, and this would be putting into practice what you preach on Sunday." He said, "All right. I'll call the chief of police." He sent for him and the Archbishop talked to him about the full impact of the church. He said, "Now, I'm talking to you as a high official of your church. I have the authority to do so, and I want to tell you that I hope that you will cooperate and work with Chapman to see that he gets those pools open without any trouble and you help him coordinate, give your help, and work with him," He said, "Yes, sir, Bishop. I'll do it." He came back and it was the first time he ever turned a hand for me. He hadn't turned a hand before. He wouldn't even send any extra people out there. Now, you can put the police in certain places and there are certain places you can't, depending on the atmosphere and what you've got and where the location is. So, this is the kind of a place; they could get in the water and a black boy would be amorous with a white girl, and vice-versa, just to make both sides mad, you see. And the first thing you know, you'd have a fight in that pool and somebody would get killed, because they had about 150 altogether that came over in a bunch of buses. We had cars parked at a two-car distance behind the other car with an opening for two cars between each car. We put them there long before they came over here, you see. A policeman on a horse was riding around and not letting anybody park there. If they came in to park he would just tell them, "There's no parking here today. It's just temporary. It will be all right tomorrow." We then got cars and we had plainclothes people, not regular police, but we had plainclothes people, and put them in two cars in between all these other cars, and I had enough cars to take everybody from Baltimore from over there by car if I wanted to. I didn't go down there. I wasn't at the scene, but I had a man reporting to me by telephone every ten minutes. He would telephone me what was happening from the other end of the Anacostia Bridge. We took this up to block the traffic on the bridge and tie them up for an hour there. By that time, the pool would be open and they would have been swimming, and some of them would be through, going home, but as long as the pool was full, we would keep the bridge tied up. We kept that traffic tied up there. Of course, nobody ever did know what in the world it was all about, why this traffic was tied up so here. They just assumed that somebody had a breakdown on the bridge, and couldn't get through. That's, of course, what we let go by. We let that pass for what it was. Then we blocked another incoming road on the other side the same way. Do you know, not more than five or six blacks got in there, and they got out of their cars and walked over there. The rest of them didn't want to do it. These five or six walked all the way over there. We had it organized to the extent that if a black boy would get amorous with a white girl, or attempt to in any way, a black policeman would tap him on the shoulder and just quietly say, "I'm a policeman. Now, we don't allow that in here, in this pool." He'd say, "You haven't got your uniform on." "No, but I got my badge and I got my fist. You do that again and you're not going to get a dunk in here. I'll throw you out of this pool. You can stay in here as long as you want to if you behave yourself." Well, there was no more trouble from him. Then, a white boy got amorous with a black girl. This thing played itself out just like a stage play. I never saw anything like it. It just played itself out. And the thing that carried it out to such perfection--one couldn't imagine it being done this way because it went so naturally that nobody would dream that we had this thing--I had more policemen, or as many policemen in that pool as we did anybody else swimming that day. I had policewomen in there, white and black, and always a black policewoman or policeman would call attention to the black person that was trying to get amorous with a white girl and vice-versa. If it was a white person, they'd tap them on the shoulder; if it was a white person attempting to get amorous with them. You know, they stopped that thing in five minutes. We never had but three cases, and we made one black get out of the pool, and they got out of the pool. When they got out of the pool there was a policeman standing back there in his coat sleeves and he had his gun out of sight and when this boy got out he took him by the shoulders and he said, "I am a policeman here and if you go in that locker room to break anything or cause any trouble I'm going to come right in with you. I'll take you right on to jail from here." All of this happened on a Saturday afternoon, not Sunday. This happened on Saturday. Do you know, we stopped that thing. It was so organized with the number that I had in that pool. The public never did know. They thought I had a few in there. They didn’t dream what I had in that pool. I did the same thing for the big pool down on Hains Point that swims a thousand at one time. We had truckloads of kids coming in from Virginia to go to this pool, and they had no Communist connection. At least, I had no tip on them. But I got this anonymous call as to what these crowds would do, and sure enough, they did. They came in. HESS: They came in and tried to cause trouble? CHAPMAN: They tried to cause trouble. They wanted to create trouble so that they could get pictures and they had a photographer around there looking for a place to take pictures. And after a while we got him out, made him leave. He told us where he was from. He was from Baltimore. "You’re not here to take pictures, except for trying to find a picture that would look like trouble. We’re just not going to tolerate that. We’re going to stop it before it starts." He went out of there. He left. And I had asked the press; I had had a meeting with all the newspapers, see, and I had asked them not to play up the pool opening, just give it a little notice. I said, "Somewhere inside the paper put it that the pool will open on such-and-such a day, and the hour; give them the hour, the time. Don't write an exciting story about it. Just 'The pools will open."' They did. That calmed the local people down so that no local people got involved in it at all. They just didn't go along with it. Those that went down wanted to go swimming, and they went swimming. The interesting thing is, I never could get Ickes to do that. HESS: Why? CHAPMAN: I don't know. I think he let the Park Service man over-influence him, because that would be the one place that he'd have so much trouble. He thought he'd have a riot on his hands. Well, I said, "You won't, if you control it. If you want to control it you can." I got ready to open the pool and then as soon as I was sworn in, one of the first things I did was to call this man, Mr. Lohman, from Chicago and ask him to come down here. He came down and I put him to work, working on this particular plan. He worked it out, and we had no problems with any of them since. I had all the signs taken down from the park areas, and I had those taken out when I was Under Secretary under Krug. Now, Secretary Krug, I had sympathy for him. He was the most uncomfortable man you ever saw, for a man the head of a department. Here he knew I was sitting there under him as Under Secretary, just appointed as he was, and he was sitting there knowing that I had something to do with all the major appointments that had been made in that department. We had sixty thousand people in that department, across the country and here; and especially all the key people I knew personally. I knew who they were, and in most cases I had something to do with bringing them in. But the people that I'd appointed, when I became Under Secretary, ran it completely and handled personnel. But Krug liked to travel, and he didn't like to work at that desk; that desk just frightened him. When he'd see a stack of papers this high, he had no more idea what they were than anything in this world. There were some contracts mixed up in there in those papers, and some personnel cases, memoranda between bureau heads, and memoranda for him to approve or disapprove something, and they were far-reaching in some instances. He really was frightened of things. I didn't like to travel. I was tired of that. I had gotten enough travel, and I'd stay here and run the Department from inside. I told him, "You go wherever you want to. I'll take care of the Department here. You go on and go there won't be any problem here at all." Well, I protected him all I could, but he got reckless with what he was doing and I couldn't protect him. So I tried to run the Department to protect the Government services for what it was so I could protect it, and protect Truman. The only way you can protect people like that is to be sure and do your job right and then nothing dishonest or crooked breaks out on you. That's the only way you can protect them. HESS: Is that enough for one day? CHAPMAN: Yes. 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