SRC 17 Page 22 S: Yeah, but we didn't integrate schools until the 1970s. Actually, because of this Human Relations activity we really, even with them making all this noise about massive resistance and stuff, on the surface there was fairly good human relations in the community. There were a group of us that just interacted very well; but during the week before the schools were getting ready to open, and we didn't anticipate any problems, up came Birth of a Nation in one of the theaters, The Byrd Theater. We did our research and found out who owned the theater and found out it was the Talhonas. W: The people who owned the store? S: Well, it's a member of that family but it wasn't the [same person]. Anyhow, a group of us went to visit him and he was saying that if they called the film off that the Times Dispatch would not carry their ads and they could not operate the theater without the ads in the paper. Alright, we got on the telephone with Ray Boone, you've heard of him, he owns the free press. At that time he was editor of the Afro American newspaper. I also used to write for the newspaper. I had a column called let's talk about it and therefore responding to various things. That was later. I've always been for the paper, but I had that column. Anyway, we got in that office and we called all over the world trying to find the owner of that film. We found him in Europe. We actually could do international calling to ask them to tell him how much damage that would do in a city that was getting ready to integrate. It had done a lot of background work and it was getting ready to go through without any problem. With this movement coming in brought another set of ideas here. They kept claiming it was not for the content, it was for the cinematography. We knew that was a lot of bull. They finally decided to put a preview on or to have someone make a statement about the things that concerned the community and how we should look at the cinematography and not the content and item because the film had Ku Klux Klan stuff around and folks looking ignorant. It was a terrible film, but we went to see it anyway. It ran about three days and then it was pulled. I think that had to do with our national contact with the people who owned __ But anyway, it finally went away from here. It was supposed to be like a week or so and it was gone in two or three days. Then, we also had people like Bula Heubank she was an interesting lady. Have you heard that name? W: No. S: [She was a] very busy lady and she could watch the papers and know more. We really didn't know that much about the community, but she could tell you when you get the letters in the paper. This is the Grand Dragon or the Ku Klux Klan, or this letter is from the White Citizens Council. She knew who all these people were and you would see that these letters were not just ordinary people writing in the paper. She had a house full of papers of when it was written, what articles