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TI: So I'm wondering, was there ever confusion about what was happening in terms of the Civil Rights Movement in the South in the United States in terms of... because it's about the same time?

RD: Well, I had... Harry and I were both on, one of the other things we did in common was we were both members of the very important faculty committee on racism on campus. Don't know what it was called, but that's what it was about. And we tried to spur the campus into doing more, and we each had roles in doing that. I know when the Johnson administration -- and I can't date this precisely -- first put forth opportunities for federal money to get disadvantaged persons into colleges, I was put on the committee to establish the criteria for the University of California, who we would be looking for. I remember having, not an argument, but a discussion, because they'd come in with these lawyers, had the kinds of groups who out to be considered, and they had left Filipinos out. And I said, "How can you leave out Filipinos?" The lawyers didn't know what I was talking about. They said, "Are there many of them? Are they disadvantaged?" And I was able to demonstrate that this was the case, and there was federal data to support it, so there was no problem about it, but the university could set up its own criteria. So the university people had to be educated to these administrators, and some faculty had to be educated about these matters. It wasn't always easy; they didn't like it.

I got involved with a number of civil rights activities. The one I'm, guess I'm most proud of that isn't involved with Japanese Americans or Asian Americans was that I helped organize a delegation of UCLA historians and one UCLA sociologist who flew down to Atlanta and then got on the kindergarten bus of the Free For All Baptist church in Atlanta, Georgia, a black Baptist church, because both Greyhound and... what was the other company? Trailways had refused to charter a bus for people going to Montgomery for this thing. And a very distinguished group of professors went. The UCLA group had the only assistant professors in it, simply because at UCLA -- and I don't know who started this -- I brought the word to the department, because I knew the historian who was organizing the whole thing, a then-University of Chicago professor named Walter Johnson, who was a real political wheeler dealer. One of his books was called How We Drafted Adlai Stevenson, which will give you an idea of the level that he was working at. He called me up on the telephone and said, "Why don't you see if you can get somebody else to come?" And the department, or some of the department held a meeting, and they decided not only that they would come, but that they would ask every department member to make a donation. More for professors than for associate professors, and more for associate professors than assistants. We didn't have any instructors yet. And we'd see how many people we could finance to go, because a large number of people wanted to go. And some of the full professors went, John W. Caughey went, who was a distinguished professor. But most of us were assistant professors. Well, there was another one, a European professor named Jerry came. But I couldn't have afforded that. It would have eaten up a year's royalties, and we didn't have that kind of loose money lying around.

So we went, and we marched, we walked slowly in a procession the last day, which didn't go very far. It was several miles, although the crowds were nasty, and we were well protected with regular army troops, Alabama National Guardsmen who had been federalized, lots of FBI and U.S. Marshals around. But it was quite an experience, and then there was a long wait, long, long, standing in the hot sun, listening to long speeches, and eventually to one superb speech by Martin Luther King. But none of the speakers were terse. [Laughs] And, of course, on the return, we didn't get back to the airport in time for a plane, so we had to spend the night there in a motel just outside of the airport. I went into a diner and I picked up a paper, I didn't look at it. I sat down at the table, and I remember a loud voice saying, "Well, that served the bitch right," at about the time I opened the paper and read that Viola Liuzzo -- I don't know if her name was in the paper -- but that a woman had been shot and killed leaving that, driving a car with a young black person in it, he wasn't killed. I sort of halfway got up, and then sat down right again. That wasn't the place to make a speech.

But a fascinating thing happened as we got back. We spent the night at the "black school," Tuskegee. There was no way you were going to get public accommodations if you want to sleep in there. But after the march, we went back, it was still daylight when we got to Atlanta. As we left on the bus, as I got off the bus, Walter Johnson said, "Roger, go back and look through the bus. These guys are careless, they'll leave all kinds of things." And I went through the bus, and I guess he was right. There was a briefcase, there were sweaters, there were a couple of lunches, and I had an armload. And they've all gone, and I'm walking back, and two things happened at about the same time. I realized that I was jaywalking, not across a runway but across a fairly busy street, and that two policemen were bearing down on me. One a very stout fellow who was sort of a stereotype if you were going to cast a southern sheriff, and next to him a real raw-boned younger man. This guy was a sergeant, the other man was red-haired, wasn't wearing a hat. And I thought, "Oh, boy. Went through all that stuff with no problems, and now here I'm going to get a ticket." But what happened was they came up to me, and the sergeant looked at me and he said, "Did you men get off that bus?" And I said, "Yes, we did." And the fellow who looked so mean to me, looked at me and said, "Did those rednecks over there give you any trouble?" These were Atlanta policemen, and understood certain things. So they said, "Well, listen, there's a press conference over here for you folks. Let us help you with the stuff you've got." So they reminded me again that you shouldn't make stereotypes. I really thought that I was in big trouble.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.