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 was in the Marines and was discharged in December of 1945. I had been

 overseas twice and still wasn't twenty-one. So, when I turned twenty-one

 in July, I went down to the court-house to register Republican and they

 didn't know what the hell I was talking about. And they had to find

 somebody who knew the probate judge, they had to get him and of course, I

 was very insistent that I was going to register Republican and they said,

 "Well, you can't. There's no such thing." And this was -a nice old fellow

 and he told me, said, "you know, there's no such thing as a Republican

 Party." They had to scratch their heads to find, to even think of .

 W.D.V.: Where was this?

 Thomas: In Birmingham. And finally, they said, "Yeah, there is a

 Republican state chairman and he's the vice-president of Alabama Power

 Company." And they told me where his office was. And he was the

 titular head since then, I've found out that he is what we know

 as a "post office Republican." I believe that the only reason that

 man was a Republican was that if there ever was another Republican

 administration, he'd get to name the postmasters.. Because, they had

 no organization, none whatsoever. They didn't even have a paper organization.

 And when I went to checking around,of course, being twenty-one years old,

 these older people, the few of them that were Republicans, they weren't

 anxious, they didn't want anybody and they sure as hell didA't want any

 twenty-one year old smart alec, you know, helping them. They were polite to

 me, but that was about the extent of it. I mean, they allowed as how they

 didn't need any help from me, you know, and they had been running things

 pretty well all these years and weren't bothering anybody or anything like that.

 So, I lived in Alabama for many years and .






From the Southern Oral History Program, #4007, Interview R-t0 in the Southern Historical Collection,
University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill. FOR REFERENCE ONLY: PERMISSION TO
PUBLISH MUST BE REQUESTED. WARNING: MOST MANUSCRIPTS ARE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT.