NVCR 2
Page 5

K: It was [linked to the TFCG]. I'd totally forgotten about it until you mentioned it.
 The School Preference Committee was simply concerned with the fundamental
 right of the parent to select a school to which his child should go, within reason,
 preferably the closest school to his home. I think that plan is in operation today
 [only in theory]. I think the school bus companies run the schools. Somehow it's
 considered a great blessing to ship children by bus many miles in order to have a
 certain racial proportion in the school. All this [is] in the name of the theory that
 there's no such thing as race, which is a little bit contradictory.

H: What about organizations such as the Tennessee Society to Maintain
 Segregation? What was the relationship between groups such as that and the
 TFCG?

K: The Tennessee Society to Maintain Segregation was, I think, an East Tennessee
 phenomenon, and I don't think it amounted anything. They wanted to do what
 the title said. They had an animosity towards the blacks, whereas the Tennessee
 Federation for Constitutional Government had no particular animosity towards
 blacks. Really, we felt that the blacks were being denied a great opportunity to
 perfect their own schools and education and leadership. All that, they've now
 lost. The most ironic and amusing [thing], in a bitter sort of way [is that] the first
 thing that the black groups did when the University of Wisconsin integrated [was
 to say], well, integration is fine, but we want our own dormitory, and they were
 getting their own dormitory.

H: Were there any African-American members of the TFCG?

K: Yes, there were one or two, not many.

H: Do you recall who off-hand? I don't know if you feel comfortable giving their
 names.

K: No, I don't, because they certainly didn't play an important part, but there were
 blacks who understood what we were after. You ask about how Nashville was in
 the 1950s as compared to now. Nashville in the 1930s and during the war, there
 were black communities, like in all Southern cities, where blacks congregated
 and lived. There [was] a thriving commercial area on what's known as Granny
 White Pike, going into town; it becomes 12th Avenue when it gets downtown.
 There [was] also a thriving black commercial development on Charlotte Avenue
 on the north side of town. Both of those [free enterprise] developments have
 been obliterated with housing projects and similar things. Housing projects
 specifically on Granny White, [and] university expansion and other such things
 on Charlotte. But the forced integration movement denied, in practical terms, the
 development of a lot of black business leadership, [which was instead]
 eliminated or given no opportunity. Of course, blacks have developed a position