DW: This is Doris Wesley of the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at UM-St. Louis. I have with me today Judge Theodore McMillian, who has agreed to make a tape recording with me for our St. Louis African American Heritage Oral History Project. Good morning. Judge McMillian.
JM: Good morning, Doris.
DW: Well, let's start. When were you born?
JM: The 28th of January, 1919, in the city of St. Louis.
DW: Where did you grow up?
JM: I grew up here in the city of St. Louis, in the public schools, the local high school here was Vashon, Vashon opened in '27, and I think I came here in '38. And I grew up in the vicinity of Jefferson and Lucas.
DW: Would that be considered the Mill Creek area?
JM: Jefferson and Lucas would be the Mill Creek area. But over around Webster and Thomas, around thirty hundred on Cass or Francis, that was more or less the Central...It wasn't even the West End, really, because at that time blacks were just starting to move west, and they probably hadn't even gotten to Grand, because I can remember George Vaughn filed a lawsuit to just live in about the 35 or 36 hundred block on Finney. 36 hundred on Finney and Cook now look like a disaster area. It looks as if it's a war zone. But at that time they did have to file this suit that they eventually won to allow blacks to live in that area right off of, one block south, I mean west of Grand.
DW: Tell me about the schools you attended in the city.
JM: Oh, I started over here at Lincoln Elementary Grade School and moved from there over on Lucas. We were constantly moving because at that time we were trying to stay one step ahead of the rent man. I can remember many times coming home from school, running ahead of my friends to see if we had been set out. By the evening or the nighttime we would get there. I left from there and went over from Bannaker to go to the Wayman Crow School. And Wayman Crow at that time was up on Leonard and Bell. Right across the street from it was one of the finest, most elaborate, and most luxurious vocational schools for whites, the Hadley Vocational School. I was also there in 1927 when they had the tornado, and I can remember. And both of the teachers that I had in my fourth and fifth grade class are living. I have contact with them now. Anna Canell, she's now Anna Canell Rigby. And Burton Barrows, Burton sent his girls, just recently, to a home. But I remember that during that tornado, she had us all to kneel down, put our heads on the table, and pray. And just about that time a wooden telephone pole came through the window, and I said, "This is it." And I stopped praying and I ran out of there because I had to get over, get home, because I had a puppy, a dog that had just had some puppys, and I had nothing on the roof and I wanted to make sure that they were safe. By the time I got over there the chimney had been knocked down. A number of the homes in that area... I never really understood those tornados...It just took the front of the house off. It was almost like little girls' doll houses where they're open and you can see all into the rooms. And that's what had happened. But strangely enough my little poppies were all safe.
DW: Did you have any brothers and sisters, or were you an only child?
JM: Oh, my mother and father... There were two of us. I had a sister. And she and my real father, my natural father were divorced about 1925 or 26. And she remarried and from that marriage she had five children. And Daddy, he remarried and he had about five, so there were a lot of us running around. I can remember my step father, who always reminded me of this player who played in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, another words when the rent was not paid or the lights were about ready to be turned out, he'd bring home candy and flowers or roses or something of that nature. He came home one day and he said, "Joy, come in here. Your children and my children are beating the hell out of our children." Because he had two children too. He was quite a person.
DW: It sounds like you had a very interesting childhood.
JM: He worked with the C.W.A. He was a waiter by trade, but at that time he worked for various . He was working at the P.W.A., the Progress Work Administration, it started out as the C.W.A., the Civil Works Administration. He worked there and I can remember how proud he was when he brought home his first pay check, government pay check. And basically all worked for them. I was living about two blocks from the school up on Garrison and Thomas, and for some reason they transferred us over to Montgomery, which was Montgomery Grade School, which was old Bannacker School over on Leffingwell and Montgomery. And I had to walk about twelve or thirteen blocks to get there, and in doing so the thing that I really noticed, I passed about three grade schools, beautiful schools, Dunbar, old Madison, and there was another grade school. I don't recall the name. These were all for whites. And they had very few people in them. Each one would accommodate, I'm quite sure, anywhere from six to seven hundred kids. But at that time we had this racial segregation in the schools, so I would have to pass by them walking to get over there to Montgomery. I remember the first day there, on January 31st, it was raining and it was cold, and they put us in a portable. And in this portable they had a big old coal stove, and soot and smoke were everywhere. The kids were called on all the time to put coal in the stove. And for our teacher we had a woman by the name of Anne Sicker. And Miss Sicker, she was quite a person and quite a personality. She had been teaching for years down at the Beliefountaine Farms, the reform school at that time, for black kids. And she ran that classroom just like a Nazi general.
DW: Did she teach all the subjects to you?
JM: All of the subjects. Actually you had two grades in one room. You had 7A and 7B. And then the next year you would move to another classroom where you had 7A and 7B. I have a picture here of some of my classmates who were in the sixth grade over there at that school.
DW: Let's talk about high school.
JM: I graduated in '33. I went over to Vashon High School. I can remember my first job, just about this time, when Roosevelt had all of his alphabet programs. To keep kids in school from dropping out, he had the N.Y.A., which was the National Youth Administration, and I was given a job, at that time, tutoring other students who were somewhat...blacks were behind in Latin and mathematics.
DW: Now, this was in high school, when you were given this job?
JM: Yes. Teaching.
DW: You were pretty intelligent.
JM: I graduated in three and a half years with a different class rather than my class. That's why it was so surprising that another class, the class that I graduated with, would select me to be the president rather than... not being an enrolled member in the beginning with that particular class. I got a Harvard Award, which was a book that they passed out.
DW: A Harbor Award?
JM: A Harvard Award. And I was in the National Honors Society there.
DW: All this was during high school?
JM: High school. I had several teachers who were very interested, you know, in kids. They were people that really pushed you forward.
DW: Do you remember their names?
JM: Yes. One was H. P. Sander. He would die if he knew that I know what he was called. His real name was Hannibal. H. P. Sander.
DW: What did he teach?
JM: He was a history teacher. He was the one that was constantly pushing me along to get further education and to go to college or something of that nature. I had another one by the name of Miss Armstrong, Marguarite Armstrong, Armstead. And Miss Lane, she was my supervisor, teaching the Latin course.
DW: Miss Armstead taught you that?
JM: Miss Armstead was my homeroom teacher. She was an English teacher. I never had her before as a classroom teacher. But Miss Lane, I had her for about two years of Latin, and she was the supervisor for the N.Y.A. program, for the Latin classes that I taught. There was a Mister Bowler. I've forgotten his first name. But I remember that he was the supervisor for the N.Y.A. classes in algebra and geometry that I was teaching.
DW: That is like, we have an honors society at the University and smart students are eligible for those type of programs. Is that the type of program that the N.Y.A. was?
JM: Yes. It was kind of a tutoring program to teach slower students and then to keep the students from dropping out and going to work. Roosevelt had started this National Youth Administration program and the head of this program, you wouldn't believe it, was Lyndon Baines Johnson. He was Roosevelt's fair haired boy at that time, the representative out of Texas. An I think that was one of his first big jobs.
DW: LBJ?
JM: LBJ.
DW: This is really interesting.
JM: After I graduated I went up to Lincoln University. The first year there I got a job working in the kitchen washing pots and pans. No, before I went to Lincoln, I went over here to Harris Stowe. And so many of the teachers over there... See, Harris Stowe was there, but Lincoln University, which had its school there which would accept credit when you would go for law... My memory over there is Dr. Turner and Dr. Ruth Wilder. They looked upon all of the junior Lincoln school attendants as dirt. They really did.
DW: Why?
JM: They just looked down on them because these were the Harris Stowe elite coming out of the Ville.
DW: That was before...
JM: Desegregation.
DW: Yeah. I've heard this story.
JM: And then after I finished two years there then I went on up to Lincoln. I think I got there about '37 or '38. I worked the first year in the kitchen washing pots and pans, and after that I got a job tutoring and teaching physics, which took care of tuition and room and board.
DW: That was at Lincoln University?
JM: Yes.
DW: And you got your law degree from there?
JM: From St. Louis University. That was after I came back from the army. When I left Lincoln I started running on the road trying to get some money because I had made an application and was eventually accepted into the graduate physics program at the University of Chicago. But in the meantime, after the war started I was drafted and stayed there till November of '46. In the army I was in the Ninety Third Division which was kind of like ... it was supposed to have been the elitist division for black troops. I was in the Signal Corps. And I left there and went to Officers' Training School and was sent back to the same company, which was unusual. But they didn't have too many places where they could place black Signal Corps officers.
DW: What is the Signal Corps?
JM: The Signal Corps... this was the communication officer. We operated the radios and all things like that, all communications. And we operated... You may have seen something like it on TV. We operated the radio over here and we had direction lines and so forth that would locate and find out where you are and then direct the artillery to go in where you are and bomb out the area, something like that.
DW: Did you have to fight when you were over there?
JM: Oh, after I left the Ninety Third I went to the Buffalo Division. Remember, this was the old black cadre from the Ninth Calvary of Fort Riley, Kansas. I went to that division. And the Ninety Second, eventually, when they got ready to go over seas, I was transferred to the ordinance company. They didn't have too many places that they could place black signal officers. They still had a lot of prejudices. I remember when I first went to officers' school, while they were looking for an assignment, I was assigned to Red Bank, New Jersey, and Asbury Park. I was sitting around just... hopefully I was a nice student having a good time, and somebody realized that white troops were out there getting killed and there was this black officer sitting up here having a good time. So they eventually sent me back to the unit that I was in. I said, "Now listen to me. See the problems that that would cause." Cause those were my old drinking buddies and people that I'd been with dodging work and getting around authority for years and now suddenly I was sitting back there as an officer who was going to have to exercise some control over someone.
DW: I bet that was hard to do. Was it hard to do?
JM: Oh, yeah. You know the army was interesting in a way because as an officer when you would go to the post theater there was always some seats reserved for officers.
DW: And there were seats in the theater separate?
JM: Yeah. They'd always provide a place so that the white officers would have to line up to get their seats, but there were so few black officers that I could come any time I wanted and just walk and sit in my seat.
DW: How did they feel? Was there any riots about that?
JM: No. They had some riots. I remember when I was down in Fort Hood, Texas, some black troops had gone in Belleview, Texas, not far from Waco, right down there, and they had gone into town and this particular soldier had gone into a drugstore and he had asked one of the women clerks in there for a condom, a rubber. And one of the white guys in there overheard him, and he confronted him and..."What do you mean, asking the girl, the white woman, for a condom?" And they beat him up. What they did, in his company, the guys came back in trucks loaded with guns and everything and started their riot, to shoot up the town.
DW: But nothing ever happened in the theater where you could just go and sit down?
JM: That was the same way with the officers. See we had our own officers' club and officers' mess. And so what they would do, rather than permit us to go to the white officers' club, they'd set up an individual and a seperate club for us. And sometimes I would be in this club and there would be only me and two or three officers, and we had all of the services. They would give us...and to keep us away from the white club, where they had to pay, but they would send us free liquor and our food.
DW: Just to keep everything segregated?
JM: Yeah, everything was really segregated. And I could go into the mess anytime and just sit down as if I was in a restaurant. I didn't have to have scrambled eggs, and they'd fix it to order. I never will forget, after the war was over, and we'd come back to Fort Hood, and then they sent us on recreation down in Galveston. And we took a motor convoy down there, and carried the company. We got down there, we had the officers, there were about six of us, we had this whole officers' club to ourselves. And they had sent us a band. They sent us all of our liquor and everything. And we could go into town and we could bring whomever we wanted and just have a good time. But down on the beach, that was the funny thing. Somebody had put a rope out there and black troops swam on one side and white troops... But somebody made the mistake and they suddenly discovered that the water was passing over the black troops and coming to the white troops, and so they changed sides.
DW: I'm trying to imagine how I would have reacted to segregation if I was born in that time period. I guess I would have handled it just like you all did.
JM: Well, you take right here in St. Louis, I never will forget Buddy Lonesome.
DW: I know of him.
JM: He was one of our first DJs and then he was very active and somewhat like Percy Green in civil rights. And at that time, on the corner of Kingshighway and Natural Bridge, there's a Kentucky Fried Chicken there now, but it used to be a Howard Johnson's. And he had gone out there and he'd been refused service, they'd put him out. Then he had gone and he put on one of these salome hats like a black arab, and he sat down, and he was given service then. You take in this St. Louis community, it was something because downtown the only place that blacks could eat...you couldn't eat at Famous, you couldn't eat at Stix, but on the corner of Sixth and Washington there was a Kresges Five and Ten cent store. You could eat but you had to stand up at the counter. You wern't permitted to sit down. And like Percy Green used to say when he was demonstrating, "You went downtown and you had to carry a lunch."
DW: Did you participate in any of the March on Washington with Norman Seay?
JM: I was on the bench at that time.
DW: Oh, you were on the bench?
JM: I went on the bench in 1956, long before Norman and them, let's see they started in the sixties. Bill Clay and Norman, Floyd Kimbrough and Bennie Goins and all of them.
DW: Tell me about some of your civil rights cases that you've had while you've been on the bench.
JM: I'm into school cases. Those are some of the biggest civil rights cases although we get a lot of employment discrimination work. This case that the Supreme Court just recently reversed, the Saint Mary’s.... (not able to understand).
DW: Did you integrate Webster?
JM: Yes. I was practicing law then. And, see, Webster had the swimming pool out there. And Benny Gordon ... and we filed that lawsuit out there. We won that lawsuit, but rather than letting blacks in the swimming pool, they just closed it. And then right after that they had an extremely hot summer. And the people out there, they opened it but for them to get in, old Appel, who was the mayor over there of Richmond Heights (Webster Groves), said if you had any identification to show that you were a local resident and you weren't some black coming from Meachum Park or from downtown St. Louis...
DW: They still do that; Clayton does it and University City does it. But there are a lot of African Americans in University City so it's not a big thing. But Clayton, when I drive through Clayton, going to the Galleria, I don't see anyone but whites in there.
JM: I know the one you're talking about, Charles Shaw Park, up there. I've never seen anyone but whites in there.
DW: The only time I've been in there is when a girl invited me to a party in the city, some type of party in the city of Clayton, and it was in the summertime. But I never get invited to that pool.
JM: No, I pass by and see them ice skating but I have seen very few blacks out there.
DW: Tell me how did you become a judge?
JM: I was a prosecutor and had gone into the circuit attorney's office as an assistant circuit and had pretty much success, because it was the first time Eddie Dowd was the Circuit Attorney, and up to that time I think Dave Grant had been in the circuit attorney's office. But in the circuit attorney's... They had a rule: they only let blacks prosecute blacks, they'd never prosecute white people.
DW: In the Circuit Attorney's office?
JM: Yes. And then Dowd broke down that practice. If you were assistant circuit attorney you prosecuted people. So I had a prior record of strict victories, and then John Green, who was one of the early representatives in the General Assembly at Jefferson City, was accused of selling pardons to inmates in the penetentiary. And I knew John. As a matter of fact I had grown up with John and his brother Jim, his brother Ted... They both of them had gone to Sumner and that's how I knew John. And both of them were outstanding athletes. John was out there with Jack Dwyer. They're still out in the Ville and in Tandy. And the governor had sent an intern by the name of Shapecotter down to see me and wanted to have me come up to see him. Phil Donnelley was the governor at that time. And I met Phil Donnelley in the '52 re-election, when they were running on the "Good Government" platform, against the Shenker-Calahan Machine. And I had vowed to run in the 19th Ward against Jordan Chambers and Mel Troupe, who recently died.
DW: You ran against Jordan Chambers?
JM: Yes. I want to tell you about this. At that time I wasn't making too much money in the practice of law, and so I had been out there, I was the manager of the Auburn Theater. And that was the first time that the St. Louis Amusement Company had had a black manager, you know, in one of its theaters. And so I would operate it all evening and then I would go over to the Muni which was up on Easton in that part of town. And then we had an Uptown over on Delmar, Morgan. But anyway, when I ran against Jordan Chambers, I carried Phil Donnelley on my ticket, also, to run for governor. He was successful. And after I'd been in the circuit attorney's office, he told me, they were very fair about this stuff, he said, "Ted, I want you to prosecute this case and I don't really care whether you win it or lose it, but I don't want it white washed. I don't want it to blacken my administration." And he put Shatter Collier and some pilot and a plane all at my disposal to go around to get the witnesses to prosecute this case against John Green. That was an interesting experience, too, because most of my witnesses... One thing you could say about them, they were consistent, because they had left the institution in Jefferson City and were in some other penitentiary in some other state. And I had to go talk to them and get them back. And next we brought them back and the prosecuting attorney said we are going to commute this crime.
DW: And he was selling pardons?
JM: Selling pardons, yes.
DW: Selling pardons to the inmates? Promising that they would get out?
JM: No, if you come over there and give me a certain amount of money I'm going to see that you get a pardon.
DW: Well, you're promising that he would get them out for so much money.
JM: Yes. For so much money.
DW: Oh, my goodness, and he really was doing this?
JM: Oh, yeah, he was doing it. It was better than buying absolution for sins in the Catholic Church.
DW: So you were appointed by, nominated by...
JM: I was nominated by the nonpartisan commission at that particular time, and it just so happened that in addition to knowing the governor, the chairperson was Lyon Anderson, who was the chief judge of the Missouri Court of Appeals, and while I had been a student at St. Louis University, I had participated in a moot court, and he was the presiding judge, and so I got to know him through that. And so I had a regular string of victories over there in the circuit attorney's office. The governor was really given a Hobson's choice on that because he had a black Catholic, he had a Catholic, and he had a Jew, Henry Stoller. And at that particular time he picked me.
DW: Who was governor then?
JM: Phil Donnelley.
DW: And he nominated you and you were appointed by...
JM: No, the commission nominated you, and put you on the panel. And it sent three names to the governor, and the governor would select one. I never will forget, the night before that appointment, the St. Louis Argus was located up here on Market, and I had received an indorsement from Dave Grant, which was like the kiss of death, because the governor hated him, because he had run against the governor, and he was on Jordan Chambers' ticket, at the time they had that "Good Government" campaign going on. And so when I found out that the Argus had put this in, we were up there in the Argus, digging in all of this mail, to make sure that no Argus would go to Jefferson City.
DW: I wish I could have been a fly on the wall.
JM: You should have seen us up there. It was about three or four o'clock in the morning. We were up there in these boxes throwing out papers to make sure that no Argus reached Jefferson City.
DW: Cause you were doomed if it had. So when you became a federal judge, who...
JM: Carter.
DW: Carter. He was a good man. I liked Carter as a president.
JM: I liked Carter. I think history will say that he was one of our better presidents. He's the only president in recent times that's actually going out and doing something to help people. This Habitat thing that he has going...
DW: Isn't it wonderful?
JM: It's wonderful. Here's the president out there getting his hands dirty building a house and carrying hod and all that.
DW: I like his wife too. Rosalyn. She was busy too. Not that I don't like the president, I think Clinton is OK.
JM: I think Billy Diddle is going to be all right if they give him a chance. He has a lot of good programs. I think his health plan is a good program. On reason I know that it's good is because all of the insurance companies and big buisness are against it.
DW: That's how I can tell when something is really good, when you see these big businesses and corporations against it.
JM: And just like they said, some of them are accusing it of being just a gimmick. And as one of the representatives said, if it was a gimmick we wouldn't have to worry because Congress would have passed it a long time ago.
DW: I like Hillary too.
JM: Hillary is good. She's going to do a lot for women. She's going to bring some diversity, really she is.
DW: If they stay there she is.
JM: And she's smart.
DW: Exceptionally intelligent. I really like her style.
JM: Warren Hearnes, when I was on the Circuit Bench, he was the one that appointed me to the Missouri Court of Appeals.
DW: I understand you knew Josephine Baker. Do you want to talk about her a little bit?
JM: Yes. Josephine stayed right over here on Papin, see, where we were and where I was born, on 14th and Papin. And my mother was a friend of theirs and Josephine... My mother was, when I was born she was 14 and Daddy was 15. And I often wondered though I never said anything to them, whether this was a shotgun wedding, an unexpected pregnancy, or not. But anyway, she used to pay Josephine who didn't babysit to much, and my uncle...
DW: How old was she when she would babysit for you?
JM: Let's see, Josephine left here in 1921, so, and I was born in 1919, so I was really pretty young. But anyway, my uncle, who was kind of like an exploiter, he used to have what you called these Penny, Peanuts, Poppys Shows down in the basement, and he would have Josephine, we always called her Tumpy, and my mother.... Her father was around there. I didn't know him. I was too young, but I heard my mother talk about it. Josephine was one of his star performers. My uncle learned how to play a piano early, that's why he listened to the tunes and could play them. He would charge people pennies to come in and watch her strutting. And then Martin, he worked when I was the chairperson of the Basement Theater. Martin, he was a nephew. I attempted to see her when I was over there, to get a chance during World War II. But I never did. But I do have one of her pictures framed over there, surrounded by all those Rainbow Coalition of kids that she had, all different nationalities.
DW: Oh, I sure hope you find it. I would love to get a copy of it. I like her. I want to learn more about Josephine Baker. I saw a program about her and one of her Rainbow children. He's written a book about her.
JM: Yes, I saw that, too. This lady, Elizabeth Gentry Sayad, whose husband is dead now but he used to be president of the police board, she has got that book, and she was a friend of Josephine Baker's. As a matter of fact, she's also one of the board members of the Katherine Dunham Foundation.
DW: That's really going to be nice. I hope she stays healthy.
JM: Well, she's something right now. Katherine Dunham is up in age. She has gotten very heavy.
DW: Yes, she has. Well, let's see what else we are going to talk about. We talked about civil rights. Would you like to add anything. Judge McMillian? To this interview?
JM: You know, we started in the Sixties when Johnson got in his Great Society programs, then Kennedy had started his juvenile delinquency program. But at that time, we only took in the City of St. Louis, but when Johnson came and in we started the poverty program, we kind of raised our sights and took in the whole metropolitan area. I thought it was a good program. It had accomplished a lot of things. It created a number of black leaders. Betty Thompson had come through that program, L. N.
Vaughn, Clyde Cahill, Sam Bernstein. But I remember the fight that we had with the school board at that time. We wanted to start the Head Start program, which I thought was one of the better programs we had. And I felt that after a number of other programs had been forgotten, that this program, it may not be in the same form, but it would be here. And the school board, they wanted to operate the whole thing and they didn't want any of the archdioceses or any of the other religions... But the thing about it is that you take the archdioceses and the Lutheran synods and the Baptist churches, they had been in this area before, you know, dealing with these younger kids. And they had the space.
The schools didn't have the space. And then another thing, schools, just like police stations, they weren't good places to put them, because in the black community they had stayed away from schools and they sure wanted to stay away from police stations. So, in addition to some of the dioceses and the church organizations having the space, they had the technical know how for dealing with these young kids. So eventually we made some kind of adjustment, and the schools would permit the nuns, the church people, to come in, but they wouldn't allow the nuns to wear habits, or anything like that, or have any kind of icons.
Those programs, I think, are good. I think one of the things that they're going to have to do... They need a better follow up, because after you raise them to a certain level and then they go into the schools they get lost. They don't have any continuity. Now the alcohol program, the drinking program, they're starting, I thought that was one of the better programs. I saw in the paper not too long ago that Mae Bakoe, who was one of our first directors of that program, had died, over on Main and Gardenia. And a fellow by the name of Barnes who started the alcohol program eventually went into the drugs. Another program that we had... Dr. Smiley and I organized one needed program, and I see that the Board of Education is carrying it on now, because I had a group of girls who went to one of the girls' schools in high school and had gotten pregnant and they were interrupted in their education. So we set up a school and took them out of the regular school track and put them in a special school and took care of their needs in so far as training, learning about motherhood, and all like that. And clinical training to make sure that they're being properly treated, but at the same time carrying on their education. And then afterwards putting them back into the school system so that they can get their grades.
DW: I think Soldan High School has a program like that.
JM: Yes. They have a program like that. Who's the guy now? Downtown? He used to be the principal of that school?
DW: That's where I graduated from.
JM: Where?
DW: Soldan High School.
JM: Soldan? I was out there not too long ago for some of their programs and I went out there as part of an inspection team...I was really amazed to see the extent of deterioration, windows broken out, paint peeling.
DW: I can see it from the outside, and it breaks my heart, because that was my high school.
JM: But anyway, I thought that that program was an excellent program. And then our jobs programs. And I never will forget the time that we had trained all these people how to organize and how to get and make things happen, and we woke up one day and they were all down here at the Eighth Street Precinct, on strike, sitting out, lying in, a sit-in. We had information, we had trained them, but we didn't have any jobs for them. And Cervantes was the mayor. And they wanted to know about calling the police. And I said, "Why call the police? This is what we taught them. We taught them how to reference our program and how to get things done and organize and strike and all this and make things happen. At least we were successful to that extent."
DW: You saw the improvement that you had actually...
JM: Yes. And then I was on the Junior College Board. The fact of the matter is I've been trying to get on the Board of Curators or the Regents for Harris Stowe or either for the University of Missouri, because Oldham was on there and she tried to stir up something but she just never was able to get a good handle on it so as to really change things, and there's a lot to be done. I talked with Gwendolyn Stevens the other day, and they had a vacancy on the Junior College Board, but it was in another district so I didn't get into that. The last time I was on that...
DW: What are your chances for the University of Missouri-St. Louis?
JM: As a matter of fact I'm trying to work through Mike Rourk, who is one of the administrative assistants and a school teacher out at St. Louis University Law School, and he's up in Jefferson City working with the governor. Do they have a separate board of regents or are they administered by the same ones that administer the college in Columbia?
DW: I believe its by the same one that administers the college in Columbia.
JM: I notice that Stowe has got a board of regents that...Harris Stowe has got theirs and it's all separate from the main college.
DW: No, it's all one, because we're all a family. It's just that Columbia is the main campus, and we're like sister campuses.
JM: Columbia has always fought everything. I remember when we were trying to get a law school out there, on your campus, Jim Olsen was the chancellor, and then Barbara, what was Barbara's name? When she was president or chancellor or something, they opposed it. They fought tooth and nail because they figured it would detract from the Columbia campus but I tried to explain to them that the kids that would be going here would never go up there to Columbia. And then you take the business people here, they didn't really want to practice law but they wanted to help them, in business, corporate law.
WESTERN HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPT COLLECTION
222 THOMAS JEFFERSON LIBRARY
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