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about it, is rather interesting.
P: Surely.
L: Recent developments. During the war years when I was at the
university, Beverly wrote a letter to President Tigert and
asked if they wouldn't give him his diploma. I didn't
see the letter, Bill Carleton told me about it. In it
he said that Dr. Murphree was unfair to him and that what he had
done was no more than what is done in business every day.
And Dr. Tigert was inclined to give him his degree until he got
to Klein Graham. And Graham, so I hear, just exploded. He
revered the memory of Dr. Murphree and hewas involved in all
this and he knew what had taken place. So they didn't give him
his degree.
I knew a boy named Percy Revels on the campus, and he was a
member of the Beefsteak Club. We had run our campaign on
the basis of one of the platforms that we would not have
any cheating or stealing on student body publications. We
had the F Book, the Seminole and the Alligator. That was a
point in our platform. One day Percy Revels met me on the campus
and asked me to go see Dr. Murphree on his behalf. I thought
to myself, "Well, you were here on campus and you knew what
a battle we had over this matter. Now you're asking me to
go ask Dr. Murphree to spare you." Ididn't say that to him,
but that's what I thought. I says, "Well, Percy,I didn't
know anything about your work with the Seminole," he was
supposed to be the treasurer of the Seminole. Bev was editor-
in-chief. Then,,later on, well, I knew that he didn't come
back to school. I didn't know why, because the names of boys
expelled were never published; the boys who were expelled from
the university. I knew there were several. One was named
Kenneth Pratt, from upstate New York somewhere. But I began to
see in the paper that he was circuit judge over in the Palatka
area.
P: This is Mann? Or Revels?
L: No, Revels. So, Beverly had asked for his degree back and I had
felt in recent years that maybe the university ought to give him
his degree. I don't know whether he'd want to accept it this
late or not.
P: Where is Mann now?