Interview with W. W. Law, [Part 5?]

TAPE: 22

[BARS AND TONE: [22]22:00:25]

[B-ROLL]

[22]22:01:13

W. W. LAW : Bowed by the weight of centuries, he leans upon his hole and gazes on the brow. The emptiness of age in his face and on his back the burden of the world. Who made him dare to rapture and despair, a thing that grieves not and that he never hopes, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) stun, a brother to (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Who loose and let down this brutal jaw? Who was the hand that slanted back his brow? Whose breath blew out the light within his brain? Is this the thing the lord god made and gave to have dominion over sea and land? To trace the stars and search the heavens for power?

[22]22:02:15

W. W. LAW : To feel the passion of eternity? Is this the dream he dreamed, who shaped the sun and pillared the blue filament within, with light? Down all the straits of hell to its last drop, there is no shape more terrible than this. No turn with sensor of the most blind greed, more filled with signs and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for the soul. More fraught with menace to the university. What (UNINTELLIGIBLE) between him and the serrefine (SP?). Slaves of the wheel of labor. What to him are Plato and the spring of Palades? What the long reaches of the peaks of sounds or the wrath of dawn and the reddening of the nose, of the rose.

[22]22:03:25

W. W. LAW : (UNINTELLIGIBLE) this dead shape, the suffering just look through times. I've messed that portion up. (NON-INTERVIEW DIALOGUE)

[22]22:03:44

W. W. LAW : What (UNINTELLIGIBLE) between him and the serrefine. Slaves of the wheel of labor. What to him are Plato and the spring of Palades? What the long reaches of the peaks of sound, the wrath of dawn, the reddening of the rose, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) this dread shape, the suffering ages look. Times, tragedy is in that aching stoop through this dread shape, humanity betrayed, pillared, profaned and disinherited. Cry protest to the judges of the world, a protest that is also prophetic. Oh masters, lords and rulers in all lands is this the handmade you gave to god? This monstrous thing distorted and soul quenched. How will you ever straighten out this shape? (UNINTELLIGIBLE) blend with immortality. Give back the upward looking and the light. Rebuild in it the music and the dream.

[22]22:05:24

W. W. LAW : Make right the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) immemorable infamies, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) wrong and immutable (UNINTELLIGIBLE), I better do that again. Immutable--

[22]22:05:50

INTERVIEWER : Hold on a second. (NON-INTERVIEW DIALOGUE)

[22]22:06:04

W. W. LAW : (UNINTELLIGIBLE) wrongs and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) woes.

[22]22:06:10

INTERVIEWER : It's a hard word. (NON-INTERVIEW DIALOGUE)

[22]22:06:20

W. W. LAW : Give back the upward look and the light. Rebuild in it the music and the dream. Make right the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) wrong on that again. (NON-INTERVIEW DIALOGUE)

[22]22:06:48

INTERVIEWER : Immemorial, infamies.

[22]22:06:49

W. W. LAW : Infamies, immemorial infamies, perfidious wrongs and immedical woes. All right, starting these four lines.

[22]22:07:01

W. W. LAW : Give back the upward look and the light. Rebuild in it the music and the dream. Make right the immemorial infamies, perfidious wrongs and immedicable woes. Oh masters, lords, and rulers in all lands, how will the future reckon with this man? How answer this brutal question in that hour when whirlwinds of rebellion shape the world? How will it be with kingdoms and with kings? Who, with those who shape him to the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) when this dumb terror shall reply to god, ask for the silence of the centuries. (NON-INTERVIEW DIALOGUE)

[22]22:08:27

W. W. LAW : What it's talking about is all humanity.

[22]22:08:32

INTERVIEWER : Right.

[22]22:08:35

W. W. LAW : The surfs, you name them, all of them. Yeah. All of them.

[22]22:08:43

INTERVIEWER : Who were some of your favorite authors?

[22]22:08:48

W. W. LAW : Favorite authors would be W.B. Dubois, Soul Of Black Folk, John Hope Franklin, From Slavery To Freedom, Langston Hughes, A Collection Of Poems. And I love his conversations where Simple speaks his mind. It is the most humorous thing with a whole lot of wisdom. But I knew Langston Hughes. He came through Savannah once and, uh, had to be early '30s. I was the lone NAACP office and his train backed up and it was going to be a while here in Savannah and he got off the track and walked up into the city and came to the NAACP office.

[22]22:09:47

W. W. LAW : And, uh, we talked for the rest of the hours and from then on, after that meeting, everything he wrote he signed a copy to me and sent it to me. And when I got in trouble and they tried to fire me from my NAACP work, he took an assignment from the NAACP and did a little story to raise money for the freedom fight called The Story Of The NAACP I think or the Story For Freedom.

[22]22:10:24

INTERVIEWER : Fight For Freedom.

[22]22:10:25

W. W. LAW : Fight For Freedom, that's what it was, The Fight For Freedom. And in that he included a case study of how people were persecuted, uh, who were standing up for Black rights and I'm one of two people I think that are cited there. But I knew him and then there was Paul Lawrence Dunbar. I admired him greatly and, uh, I didn't know we were going to be here because I would have loved to read, uh, Miss Harper who was the first Black woman to distinguish herself. She wrote a poem about the newly freed who says and when the Yankee teacher come to give us schools, uh, if I could bring that tomorrow, I'd like to read it.

[22]22:11:25

INTERVIEWER : Uh-huh.

[22]22:11:27

W. W. LAW : Charlotte Hawkins, uh, whatever that was. But those were the beginning people and after that I had just wide, uh, taste for information, Paul Robeson. Uh, for example, Paul Robeson did a testament when he began to have his troubles. And I still believe it's one of the most moving things I've ever read. He says here I stand and he give very clear his convictions. Say you do what you want with me, but this is what I believe and I've never read that statement of Paul, of Paul Robeson without bringing tears coming to my eyes.

[22]22:12:17

W. W. LAW : But it was a conviction and he was willing to suffer his career, his health, everything by taking a stand that he felt that he had to take.

[22]22:12:30

INTERVIEWER : Anyone else?

[22]22:12:32

W. W. LAW : Then I went into great deal of the painters. I was fortunate to meet Hale Woodruff in 1943 when he was teaching at Atlanta University. I was sent there by the Army during World War II to learn only administration. And I walked over to his office to meet him. He was the man who had done the famous mural at Taladega College and it was a mural and it's the only likeness we have of the Armistad incident. Went over and saw him and he was kind enough to give me a copy of the Armistad mural and, and personally signed it to me in '43.

[22]22:13:30

W. W. LAW : I met all of the people. There were a great number of newspaper men who were writing it just like they saw it. The, Emery Jackson of the Birmingham World, outrageous guy. I don't know why, but some of his fingers were missing on one hand. But he, a young man, I'd sit and talk with him and he said when he went off to Moorehouse College his daddy told him, said all right boy, I'm sending you up to that school and I, you're going to do well you say, but whatever you do, take a side, take a, a stand on something.

[22]22:14:20

W. W. LAW : And you say if ever I come over there and find you straddling the fence, I'm going to knock you off. Uh, and then of course there were C.L. Harper, uh, a courageous old man who had one of the fearless school principles at that day and time, one of the few I knew. He, we here in Savannah wanted to go to the state and complain because we weren't getting anywhere with the local school board and we drew up a group of indictments against the Board of Education because up until 1930, every school in Savannah was a cast off building that had been used for something else.

[22]22:15:22

W. W. LAW : Or they had been only one Black school built for school purposes and that was the Calla School in 1914. And then they had the Florence School in 1930, but all the rest of them were antebellum houses, labor union halls that had been abandoned, abandoned churches and all that type thing. And the state was coming out with a program that was called the Minimum Foundation and they were going to be putting money into education. But on the basis of how Savannah High had been built, where they got a million dollars and spent it all on Savannah High. We were trying to move in such a way that we would not fair in that condition again during this separate but equal place.

[22]22:16:19

W. W. LAW : So Walter Scott who was President of the Guarantee Life Insurance and had branches throughout the state, highly intelligent man, who had been taught by Booker Washington in the last class that Booker taught at Tuskegee himself. And I prevailed upon Mr. Scott who was now elderly, I prevailed upon him to come back and assist me and would be the educational chairman.

[22]22:16:53

W. W. LAW : He made a survey of all the schools and, uh, he went on to show that Thompson School was a depression (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and that the Paulson School had been a shirt factory and then we went right on down and we got Mr. Harper who was in Atlanta and had Had the Black teacher organization to get an appearance before us, for us before the State Board of Education. And that was the first time that a group of Blacks, Blacks had appeared before the State Board on school conditions.

[22]22:17:40

INTERVIEWER : What are your favorite types of music?

[22]22:17:48

W. W. LAW : All types. I stocked mainly with folk music, particular earliest of the folk music. The early New Orleans things of Pit Orey, Buddy Bolin, Louie Armstrong, all of the very early New Orleans, particularly when they had the slide trombone. Loved when they played those, fellahs would swing those slide trombones. Then the folk singers, the people who were dying out, uh, Lead Belly, Big Bill Bronzey, uh, his Bill Bailey is a classic.

[22]22:18:30

W. W. LAW : Won't you come home Bill Bailey, won't you come home. (SINGING) He (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the whole night long. Uh, then in the classics, (STAMMERS) my favorites there are Bach, Beethoven, Lilly out of the early period, Handle and Veraday especially. But (STAMMERS) we go on to many others including Pitini and Mozart and the like, but if I wanted to, uh, release myself and result of tension, I would either play Beethoven because of the heavy thumbing and the refuse to buckle under and he would end up everything with boom, boom, you saw that this was a giant and a determined man.

[22]22:19:30

W. W. LAW : Also I would go to the Bach pieces where the melodies were moving in and out of each other, the rhythms were weaving in and out of each other and of course there were a great number of choral works. But, uh, every genre, all of the, I'll never forget, very early I think it must have been 1950 I had never been north, but I went to a board meeting of the NAACP in New York. And one of the board members was a man who had controlling interest in Quaker Oats and, uh, his son born in that kind of money had obtained all of the records in jazz that you could shake a stick at.

[22]22:20:30

W. W. LAW : And he had just a room full of music and they decided that they would have me come up and stay over night, uh, until the board meeting the next day. I didn't sleep that night. I went into that room and sampled every piece of music from that evening until 6:00 and seven o'clock the next morning. And there I got a chance to get acquainted with a whole lot of jazz people that I did not know. I now know, for example, there's a, the rag time guys, but the guys who went up from Mississippi to, uh, Sadelia and then into Kansas City and then into Chicago. And the great, great numbers of them who are not even mentioned now, but who did great, beautiful music.

[22]22:21:24

W. W. LAW : And then of course, uh, I picked up the field recordings of Lomax and, uh, all of the others and, uh, this is very precious for me because once an artist becomes popular and becomes an entertainer, his music changes. He has to keep an interest and what have you, but when you take those old field recordings where the people are just singing and for their own, uh, edification rather than somebody else. But I learned real early the work songs which nobody talks about now.

[22]22:22:11

W. W. LAW : (SINGING) Taking me down, taking me down, oh. (SINGING) I'm trying to make a living, but my money is all gone. My head is underwater, but I ain't going to drown and you ain't going to pity me down, pity me down, pity me. Don't pity me down. (SINGING)

[22]22:23:06

INTERVIEWER : Any others?

[22]22:23:07

W. W. LAW : Oh, plenty, plenty.

[B-ROLL]

[22]22:23:42

INTERVIEWER : Tell me how you work with Walter Leonard.

[22]22:23:44

W. W. LAW : Walter Leonard, Clifford Hardwick and myself were buddies in the Youth Council of the NAACP. There are two things that were unique about Walter. Each of us, the three were buddies, but each of us had different styles. (COUGH) He was on a track. And everyday you saw Walter Leonard, he had a new word from the dictionary to throw on you. Everyday lord sent, he come to us with a conversation, taking some long word that none of us had ever heard before. That was one of his unique ways, but he built a vocabulary.

[22]22:24:40

W. W. LAW : All right. The other thing he was, the three of us practiced public speaking. And we found a Seventh Day Adventist Church whose membership was dying off and the church remained unlocked. And we got their permission that when they were not in service on a Saturday, that we would like to come in and practice public speaking. And we was going to the church, two of us would sit in the back and one would go to the platform and he would began to speak and deliver his message.

[22]22:25:37

W. W. LAW : And we stopped and said can't hear you, louder. What did you say? And, uh, we, we developed clear articulation and things of that sort. We decided that we were going to do this radio program that Dr. Hall talked about. And lo and behold Leonard was our public relations guy on that project. He went at his own expense and typed up some calling cards indicating that the program would be starting, such and such a date, twelve o'clock, uh, on WJAR and, and what have you.

[22]22:26:28

W. W. LAW : And we didn't know he had done it, but in that day and time if you got on one trolley car or one bus, you could ride all day, uh, just getting transfers. And he rode all over town giving everybody on every bus one of the announcements about, uh, the show. And went from bus to bus all over the town spreading the word over the entire city. It surprised me, but we found it humorous. I must have ran into him somewhere. Here, we're stepping on another bus, giving everybody one of the things.

[22]22:27:09

INTERVIEWER : Tell us about Walter Leonard's experience on the bus.

[22]22:27:16

W. W. LAW : Well, I wasn't there. He, he can do that story. Uh, but, but we, uh, we, we developed outside of the classroom, and Leonard had, uh, another feature where he and I both went to temple, a congregation (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Israel because they had a Jewish rabbi who was an authority on race relations. And Leonard and I went to the synagogue expecting to go in and listen to the talk on race relations, but they blocked the door and would not let us in.

[22]22:28:13

W. W. LAW : We, as we were leaving, we looked around and we see that on the side of the synagogue there was an open window. So we climbed up on the side of the synagogue and listened to the lecture from the window on the outside. And years later Walter Leonard came in contact with the rabbi up north somewhere and he says, you know, when you spoke in Savannah, we were turned away. We wanted to hear you and, uh, he was able to remind the rabbi of our incident. But we climbed on the side of the building and listened anyhow. I'll never forget that.

[22]22:29:03

W. W. LAW : But we were great, his company was great because we would get together, listen to jazz. In his case I think it was more jazz, uh, but, uh, if I went north to a meeting and stayed overnight, sometime they would let me sleep on the sofa in their house and we would stay up all night talking, nobody was asleep that night. He'd know we'd be talking and with philosophical things and we've always tried to stump each other. But, uh, pretty soon we were at the point where we disagreed on most things and, uh, whenever I came across something that I thought was of value to him I would send to him.

[22]22:29:52

W. W. LAW : And anything, I just got through sending him a book on the first Black person at Powell University. But we would stay up all night talking and, uh, when he got to Fisk University, he sent me paintings and other artifacts, uh, statute of Dubois and one thing right after another, but we, we developed each other through our individual tastes. (NON-INTERVIEW DIALOGUE)

[22]22:30:35

W. W. LAW : The thing I remember most of all--

[END OF TAPE: [22]22:30:39]