Morgan Stanford oral history interview, 1994-12-07

MARCIA FISHMAN: This is an interview with Morgan Stanford, Attorney, conducted by Marcia Fishman for the Voices of Labor, oral history project, Southern Labor Archives, Georgia State University on December 7th, 1994. The interview is being conducted in Stanford's home in Atlanta, Georgia. Testing, this is a level test to see how we are picking up sound, if you want to say a word or two to see if it will work from where you are sitting . . .

MORGAN STANFORD: Oh yeah. Yeah. this is Morgan Stanford, I'm sitting here with Marcia Fishman on this morning of Pearl Harbor Day.

FISHMAN: Good. All right. We will get started. Um, I wanted to ask you a few personal questions

STANFORD: Yeah, sure.

FISHMAN: Like about your birth date

STANFORD: Yeah, yeah.

FISHMAN: And where you were born and all that sort of thing.

STANFORD: All right.

FISHMAN: Were you born here in Atlanta?

STANFORD: Born in Atlanta, June 2, 1918.

FISHMAN: What…what neighborhood?

STANFORD: In Midtown.

FISHMAN: Oh really.

STANFORD: Yeah.

FISHMAN: What was it like living there, then?

STANFORD: Um, well, I was born in…the apartment where I was born is still there. It was on 7th Street between Piedmont and Juniper. But my father bought a house down on Penn Avenue which my sister lived in until just here…a few months ago, they moved out. They are trying to sell the property, she and her husband.

FISHMAN: Did you grow up in that house?

STANFORD: Yeah, I did, right there, grew up there, went to public schools here in Atlanta.

FISHMAN: Were your parents native to Atlanta?

STANFORD: Ah…no, no. My father was from west Georgia around Concord, Georgia. And my mother was from Putnam County. Edenton's the county seat.

FISHMAN: What did they do?

STANFORD: Well, my mother was unusual for those days, she actually worked as a 00:02:00secretary in the early 1900s with Georgia Power. And when she married my father, she quit working and had three children. And my father was a cotton broker. Yeah.

FISHMAN: Where did he work in those days as a cotton broker?

STANFORD: Of course it was King Cotton in those days, the biggest thing in the South though. The biggest money crop. He was well, hell, he was instrumental in starting the Atlanta Cotton Exchange. He died very prematurely in 1923. He was only about 43 years old. Yeah.

FISHMAN: So your mother raised three children alone?

STANFORD: Right.

FISHMAN: She never remarried?

STANFORD: No.

FISHMAN: That must have been hard.

STANFORD: Yeah.

FISHMAN: Especially with the Depression.

STANFORD: Well yeah, but he…he…um, yeah, he -- our circumstances changed -- growing up I wanted spending money, so I had to get out and work, but we didn't have it as hard as many did under the depression.

FISHMAN: Were you the youngest or the oldest?

STANFORD: I was in the middle. Yeah, my brother was the oldest.

FISHMAN: And, um, did you have grandparents that were around?

STANFORD: Grandparents?

FISHMAN: Yes.

STANFORD: No, well, I knew one, my father's mother was living, and I can barely remember her. She quote, "outlived her son" who was my father. And that was the only one I knew. My other three, her husband and on my maternal side both of those grandparents were deceased at the time I was coming along.

FISHMAN: Were they all Southerners?

STANFORD: Yes, all.

FISHMAN: How far back do they go in the South?

STANFORD: Oh, in the South, I guess they go back six generations, way back on both sides. I was named after a fellow named Morgan Callaway. He was an Artillery Battery Commander under Lee in Virginia during the War Between the 00:04:00States or the Civil War. And, um, he came back and, um, was a professor at old Emory College at, they called it, Oxford, Georgia. He was a minister in the Methodist Church, and he had something unusual about his career. He was sent by the Methodist Church…Methodist Episcopal Church South; the Methodist Church split during the Civil War. It became a northern part and southern part. The Methodist-Episcopal Church South sent him down to Paine Institute. They started that in Augusta, Georgia, a black school. And he was the president there. He didn't stay but a year. I have never found out the circumstances under which he left. But I think he might have been a little too liberal for the times, but 00:05:00then he was back at Oxford where he died in about 1894 along there.

FISHMAN: Did, um…just looking at the years, did your father serve in World War I?

STANFORD: No, he didn't, he didn't serve in World War I.

FISHMAN: Where did you go to school?

STANFORD: I went to, of course, public schools in Atlanta. I went to Clemson University and then to the University of Georgia Law School. Yeah.

FISHMAN: Which is in Athens?

STANFORD: Athens, yeah. Of course I had a lapse there of time when I finished college in '41 at Clemson. I had to go on active duty, and I was gone for over four and a half years in the…in the military, army.

FISHMAN: What years were those?

STANFORD: That would have been from the later part of June 1941 until February 1946. FISHMAN: Where did you serve?

STANFORD: Oh, I was in the West Indies for two and a half years, Antigua, British West Indies and the state side here at several bases. And I also 00:06:00attended Alston's advanced class at Benning. I was with the 4th Infantry Division in combat in Europe. Yeah.

FISHMAN: In Europe?

STANFORD: Yeah, I was a Rifle Company Commander there.

FISHMAN: Where were you?

STANFORD: I was in the fighting in the Hürtgen forest right outside of Aachen. And I got one of those million dollar wounds down in Luxemburg. And, um, this was on December the 9th just before the Battle of the Bulge.

FISHMAN: Wow, did they send you home or send you back somewhere?

STANFORD: Sent me -- laid on a damn hospital cot in a school in France for about four days or more. The cast put onto my back, I would rather have been back in combat. Then, they flew me over to England. Then the war was over about the time I got back to join my division.

FISHMAN: Right.

STANFORD: Yeah.

FISHMAN: Then, you came back to Atlanta?

STANFORD: Yeah.

FISHMAN: You never lived anywhere besides Atlanta?

STANFORD: Um, except in the service and been away at school four years.

FISHMAN: Did you know that you wanted to go to law school when you were in college?

STANFORD: Not…well…sorta, what convinced me was, down in the West Indies I was a advocate for defense counsel and court-martial. I liked that. I enjoyed it and it convinced me to go to law school.

FISHMAN: You weren't a lawyer doing court-martial?

STANFORD: No, you didn't have to be a lawyer to do that.

FISHMAN: I didn't know that.

STANFORD: Yeah, you even had law members of the court that weren't lawyers.

FISHMAN: How many of those did you work on?

STANFORD: Oh, I must have had…our soldiers were pretty bad about drinking and getting into trouble, oh we had…I had…, I imagine 10 or more.

FISHMAN: That's what got you interested?

STANFORD: Yeah, right.

FISHMAN: So when did you start law school?

STANFORD: Oh, when?

FISHMAN: Yeah.

STANFORD: In January 1946.

FISHMAN: Did you work while you were in law school? Or…

STANFORD: No, I was on the GI Bill. I went through in two years.

FISHMAN: Wow.

STANFORD: So the…of course a lot of these soldiers wanted to get it over with and get on through. I was in the last class that was allowed to complete the requirements in eight quarters. Before that and after the American Bar Association of Law Schools required a minimum of nine quarters residence in order to get your degree. But we just went straight through each summer, you know.

FISHMAN: What was it like being in law school then?

STANFORD: Oh, it wasn't bad. It was very good.

FISHMAN: What were the…your classmates concerned about?

STANFORD: Wha…

FISHMAN: [inaudible]

STANFORD: They were concerned about getting out of law school as quick as they could.

FISHMAN: Making a lot of money?

STANFORD: Well, I guess so, they didn't talk about it much, I don't think it was as oriented then, as they are now.

FISHMAN: Did you know you wanted to do labor law at that point?

STANFORD: Well, I kinda thought I would like to get into that, yeah.

FISHMAN: It was brand new -- really hasn't been any for very long.

STANFORD: Yeah, you are right.

FISHMAN: Who taught you labor law there?

STANFORD: Ah.

FISHMAN: [inaudible]

STANFORD: I had a guy down there named Abbott Nicks, he was a local lawyer, and he had run for governor in 1937, got defeated. He was a big alumnus. He would come and give you -- he should have been there just giving you practical pointers on the practice of law because, hell, we didn't accomplish much in the labor law. He didn't teach it because he didn't have time to be get well prepared.

FISHMAN: And when you graduated, where did you go first after law school to work?

STANFORD: Um, I went to work for the National Labor Relations Board. Yeah.

FISHMAN: Those must have been interesting years.

STANFORD: Yeah. Yeah, they were.

FISHMAN: How long were you there?

STANFORD: I was with the board from February 1948 until September of 1953.

FISHMAN: What kind of cases did you work on while you were there?

STANFORD: Oh, I worked on unfair labor practice cases.

FISHMAN: All around the region? Or…

STANFORD: In the region? Yeah, all around. Our region in those days was about 7 or 8 states. We had all of Florida, all of South Carolina, we had North Carolina. Had Tennessee as far west and it included Nashville, and we had the northern half of Alabama.

FISHMAN: Who were the people like who worked on the board? Were they neutral or more pro-union? Or…

STANFORD: Of course you had various types, some that were one way or more than 00:11:00another. Yeah. I think most of the lawyers were looking forward to trying to get on with a management firm. I think it's fair to say that.

FISHMAN: How many lawyers were there?

STANFORD: Oh, we had about over 20 lawyers, we covered all that area. We had sub-offices in Miami; Chattanooga; Birmingham; Knoxville; Columbia; South Carolina; Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

FISHMAN: What were some interesting cases that you worked on, if you remember?

STANFORD: Well, I worked on Happ Brothers, which was a manufacturer down in Macon, Georgia. It was a strike, um, unfair labor practice strike. The District 50 of the United Mine Workers was the union involved. And the company had fired all these trackers. The, um, and we tried that case, and it lasted, I 00:12:00think it was about over 2 weeks time. And we won it. The judge…um…let me say law judge ordered all reinstated. Before then, we tried to settle it. We could have settled it, if the one person that became the leader that the employer was willing to . . . we sat down, he said he could take so many back, and we put them on preference and hindlisted the others. I thought maybe we might work something out. The criteria would be production plus seniority, they would be the two things, how long they had been there plus good production. Well the woman that had started the union was the best producer in the whole plant. She would walk out at 2 o'clock in the afternoon because she had made her production. And so we followed the criteria and got down to her name and they wouldn't want to follow me. The whole thing broke down over that and so we went on into trial.

FISHMAN: What did they manufacture?

STANFORD: Um, slacks, pants.

FISHMAN: How is it spelled, the company name?

STANFORD: Um. Happ, H-A-P-P, Happ Brothers.

FISHMAN: So was the woman a steward or a leader?

STANFORD: Oh yeah! She was quite a gal. Crawford was her name. She was real good. Yeah, she was a real leader, she was a real leader.

FISHMAN: Did the union have a lawyer in the case?

STANFORD: No, but we got them all ordered, reinstated. The funny thing, we won before the board when they appealed the judge's decision. Then, it went to the court of appeals. The court of appeals dismissed the whole case on technicality. I always thought it was just too much money, they didn't have -- the back pay that had been a huge sum for those days. It probably would've been over 400 hundred thousand dollars or more. What it was – you had your…they had your non comments affidavit that they had under the Taft-Hartley 00:14:00Act, which required the union to file either in the condition of the file and representation of the cases. And of course, John L. Lewis said that hell would freeze over before he ever signed a non comments affidavit. They didn't ask the employers to sign a non-fascist affidavit. The Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans pitched the whole thing on that. Said that she was fronting for a non-compliant union. This is Miss Crawford--they even pitched her case, her individual case. She filed on behalf of herself and 90 others. They pitched the whole thing. The funny thing at the time, they pitched it, there was another Court of Appeals, it had held that it was a noncompliant union. It was nothing that prevented an individual for filing unfair labor practice on behalf 00:15:00of him or herself and others. They had this division among the Court of Appeals. The board never tried to take this to the Supreme Court, just dropped it.

FISHMAN: That's amazing. What happened with the people getting back to work and all that?

STANFORD: After they got back, they were just hired individually because nothing -- I would think that they never got back because there was no requirement that they had to hire them. They might have hired some, you know it's doing along just as kind of protection against the back pay running. But my best memory, they didn't hire but a very few of them.

FISHMAN: Remind me, did that affidavit ever get struck down at some point?

STANFORD: Yes, they amended the law later on. At one time under the law, you had to -- If the union wanted to be able to discuss the union shop, they had to file a petition for an election, have an election and if the majority voted to allow the union to discuss putting in a contract for union shop provision, then 00:16:00the union could so bargain for it. Of course they didn't guarantee they'd get it, just that they could sit down and bargain for it. And, um, the union was winning 99 plus percent of those cases. And even Taft, senator Taft proposed the amendment to get rid of that.

FISHMAN: That was part of the compromise?

STANFORD: Yeah. Yeah.

FISHMAN: How did you feel about working all that time on the case, then it getting thrown out?

STANFORD: Oh, it was a terrible setback, damn, very discouraging. Of course, I blamed the board. Of course, I was just a free attorney for not going on ahead and taking it to the Supreme Court. They caved in.

FISHMAN: Who was it that made that decision? General Counsel in D.C.? Or..

STANFORD: No, it would have been the board itself. I think that the board through its Solicitor can decide whether they want to appeal or not, it would be the board itself.

FISHMAN: They probably never did appeal that issue anywhere in the country, I guess?

STANFORD: No, they were split so far as I can say, they never got it resolved. Of course those people where they ruled, the other case, when they ruled their way, they got their back pay reinstatement and everything.

FISHMAN: Circuit by circuit?

STANFORD: Yeah.

FISHMAN: Any other interesting cases that you can remember at the board?

STANFORD: Yeah, I had one called, "Stilley Plywood Company," this was a case over in Horry County, South Carolina. Conway is the county seat, Myrtle Beach is in that county. Course it is a lot different today than what is was then, this is 1949, the beach wasn't as near developed. Stilley Plywood was just what the name implies, they manufactured plywood. It's a pretty big independent operation. A local fellow owned it and had about 400 employees. They have never been an organizing campaign in that county before. This was the 00:18:00Pulp, Sulphite, and Paper Mill Workers. And they began organizing, and there was a strike, and they were discharged. I'm sure there were unfair practices filed. I went over to try the case and investigate it and so forth. Stilley, he was a really aggressive individual, he had been the king there, he had run that whole county and everything. So we were there in the courthouse and trial examiner walked in there and told me that there had been some complaint that all though we were using a local courthouse, but the blacks were not up in the balcony where they were ordinarily sent to sit, you know, had the seating, segregated seating. I had them all lined up right behind the bar in the front 00:19:00row. And I told him, I said, 'You know the federal rule, we are not going to move, I mean we are not going to comply with that, hell - we'll just have to move it here, and I'm not going to go along with that.' So any way, they never pushed that. So the union wanted to have a, um, meeting - having no meeting hall around there, so they wanted to have a meeting there at the courthouse. The union representative went to see the Clerk of the Court and asked for, um, permission to hold a meeting in the courtroom there. The Clerk of the Court was the custodian of the building, and he told them, "Sure," he said, "Hell, it was open to the public, available." It was all agreed, he would sit here. The union said, 'Well look, we know the custodian will have to stay over later to clean up and we'll pay the extra money for that.' They went there for their appointed time, the courthouse was locked up as tight as a drum. There was an old bachelor there, he was the Clerk of the Court. He stayed at the local hotel, so the union went running over there. He was either 00:20:00at the courthouse or that hotel all the time, but they couldn't find him anywhere. So they turned on the union representative who was behind the 8-ball on that, so he had several cars to line up in a row and turn their headlights on. They were going to hold a meeting there. And even then, they had two supervisors from the company that appeared in the crowd, which of course was alleged as unfair labor practice, and began to question the speaker. Then, I went to the courthouse as part of my investigation and found out from the local clerk why he didn't follow through with his offer that they could use the courthouse. Of course, what I was really trying to do was tie that in with the -- if I could tie the company into that to allege it as unfair labor practice. 00:21:00He was telling me that the union representative had misled him. That he thought this was going to be some sort of meeting, NLRB meeting, and that he found out it wasn't, and that was the reason. I said, 'I don't understand that. You'd already had the hearing here on the unit question.' Then this little fellow standing behind us listening to us, 'Besides that, we don't want the union meeting in the courthouse.' I said, 'Who the hell are you?' He said he was the local editor of the local newspaper. I said, 'Hell, this is public property, who asked you to speak anyway?' That was the end of that. [laughter] We started the trial, and of course, half the witnesses were illiterate. I was calling them Jones, Smith . . . This local lawyer, he had known all of them in fact all his life. He said, 'Joe and Ed and Bill.' 00:22:00Before the hearing was over, he was addressing them, Jones, Smith.

FISHMAN: How did you convince them to do that?

STANFORD: I was bringing these witnesses through the hotel lobby right on up to my room, and I'm sure that was quite an experience for the hotel and the people there. And…and…then, the union went to get another meeting place. This was not long after the Second World War. There was a new American Legion Post there. So he…Post Commander said, 'Sure, you can use it, we have been trying to raise money, we will rent it to you for this.' Two days later, they called up and said, 'Sorry, but there is something that has come up and you're not going to able to have that.' So then, they decided--some of them were Masons. In the Masons, you had black Masons, and you had white Masons. 00:23:00The Masonic order of blacks is referred to by the whites as clandestine, so they don't have anything to do with them. The union meet in the black Masonic temple there. The white members went there, it was quite something, see.

FISHMAN: I bet they had never been there before.

STANFORD: The funniest thing happened, this fellow Stilley, who owned the business, he showed up. I guess he was a white Mason, which would be most unusual, see. And he sat in the back of the room just for the purpose of intimidating those employees.

FISHMAN: How do you spell his name by the way?

STANFORD: S-T-I-L-L-E-Y, Stilley.

FISHMAN: Was the workforce integrated or mostly black?

STANFORD: Well, um, it was mostly black. One of the most unusual things that occurred in that case was -- as retaliation against the workers, they would…you had these kilns that heated the wood and these employees would have to feed the kiln. And, um, so, um, if you and I were worked adjoining kilns, if 00:24:00you wanted to take a rest break, then I would watch your kiln plus mine and you would do the same thing for me when I went to take a bathroom or rest break. The foreman told them, 'Look, nobody can leave for any reason without getting personal permission from me.' And then, he would go out to the wood yard, look around and be gone for 45 minutes, an hour, nobody find him. This woman needed to go to the restroom. And she couldn't find a supervisor and she was afraid to leave 'cause he told her she couldn't leave and she started crying. This was told by another worker that worked alongside her. And of course I thought that was good. I wrote that down as a complaint and called her to the witness stand. This unusual thing was that I swore her in and asked her 00:25:00name. She gave her name and that was the last word she was able to speak.

FISHMAN: What did she do?

STANFORD: She was so afraid that she couldn't speak, I kept trying . . . The judge finally told me, he said, 'It is obvious to me that this woman is afraid to death…scared to death.' I said, 'I'm beginning to realize that myself, judge.' What I wanted to do, I wanted to let her step down without prejudice. My right was to recall her if she recollects her wits, but she never did--I never did call her back.

FISHMAN: Good lord…what happened to her later?

STANFORD: I don't know, but that was it.

FISHMAN: Did she ever talk to you after the hearing?

STANFORD: No, I don't think I remember. Yeah, I…well, yeah, I did talk to her briefly. She never composed herself, she was just too afraid.

FISHMAN: Amazing. Whatever became of that union?

STANFORD: Um, well, it just merged into the Paper Workers here.

FISHMAN: That's what I thought.

STANFORD: You had the United Paper Workers, then you had the Pulp, Sulfide, and Paper Mill Workers, they merged. Yeah. Mmhmm.

FISHMAN: Going back a little bit, what made you decide to go work with the board and do labor law at all?

STANFORD: Oh, well, I thought it was a good purpose. I had sympathy with the working people, and sympathy with the labor movement, which is the best way to help working people in our so-called free economy, free enterprise economy.

FISHMAN: Had you known growing up? Or…or…

STANFORD: No, I hadn't known anything. There was no labor anywhere on either side of my family, no background at all.

FISHMAN: Is there anything you read that influenced you? Or…

STANFORD: I think the Great Depression influenced me. I saw things there, you know. Then, when I was about 16 years old, you could not find a job in Atlanta, you know, summer job that kind of thing. I hitchedhiked down to Florida, my mother had a sister 00:27:00that lived in Titusville, that's Cape Canaveral now. I was around there swimming and everything for about 2 weeks, then I hitchhiked back up to Jacksonville. I heard about the Transient Relief Administration. I checked in, they had a dormitory there in Jacksonville. They sent us out to Camp Fosters, now the Jacksonville Naval Air Station. This was 1934. And, um, from there…we got 90 cents a week and clothes. And then I heard they had one camp down at Welaka, Florida, that's down below Palatka. They were making a state fish hatchery and a deer farm, so I volunteered to go down there, and you got 3 dollars a week down there. They had a…they had a doctor down there that ran the clinic, he got 3 dollars too. They didn't discriminate against anybody. Then, the latter part of August, I left, came on back to Atlanta, because 00:28:00football practice was getting ready to start. That was a good experience. I saw these fellows, men, some of them had these jobs, maybe a little business or something, all thrown out of work. A lot of people went to Florida because they knew they would be hungry, but you didn't have to be cold too. And, um, so that impressed me, that we had a situation in the government where this many people would be unemployed. And, you know, things.

FISHMAN: Was your mother still alive at this point?

STANFORD: Yes.

FISHMAN: Was she supportive of you going into labor law?

STANFORD: Yeah, not quite as liberal as I was, but she was. Yeah.

FISHMAN: How about the rest of your peers? Did they think it was a good thing or a strange thing to do?

STANFORD: Oh, I don't know whether they'd made much comment. I'm sure most of them thought that it should be better than getting into something else.

FISHMAN: What about when you left the board, who did you go to work with then?

STANFORD: I left the board, and I went to work with an individual here and had just a general practice. Yeah. And he did some criminal law.

FISHMAN: Who was that with?

STANFORD: His name was Francis Fife. F-I-F-E.

FISHMAN: So what did you do then?

STANFORD: Oh, I did some general practice and I began to get some labor clients and went from there.

FISHMAN: Who was your first labor clients?

STANFORD: I think it was a packing house worker in the Retail/Wholesale Department Store union.

FISHMAN: Where was your office when you were with Fife?

STANFORD: It was in the, um, Hurt Building, and then we moved to the Fulton Federal Savings and Loan, 22 Marietta Street Building right at Five Points.

FISHMAN: So, Packinghouse Workers, um, and who else?

STANFORD: Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, then I was representing Local 613. As a matter of fact, the guy who was the active in 613 had passed the bar exam and went to one of the night law schools. And he was interested in doing law practice part-time and maybe getting full- time. So we welcomed him to come up and be in our office. And I represented 613. Mmhmm.

FISHMAN: They were all construction?

STANFORD: That was a construction local. Yeah.

FISHMAN: How big was it? It was bigger then, than it is now, I'm sure.

STANFORD: Yeah, it was a good size. Funny thing in those days, this would have been in '54, most of the commercial jobs within in the Atlanta city limits were union, they never got into residential -- they were pretty much…you knew that. I don't think it's that way today, but it was that way in those days.

FISHMAN: Did you have…I mean, were there people that were mentors to you when you were a young lawyer…

STANFORD: No, no, he was a little older. He was a bit older.

FISHMAN: I didn't know if he'd ever come through Atlanta or ever had the opportunity toward that in his career.

STANFORD: I never met Debs either. Real [inaudible]

FISHMAN: I noticed, um, [inaudible]. Let's talk about the Packinghouse Workers 00:32:00a little bit and what they were like. That's an interesting union.

STANFORD: Mmhmm. Packinghouse Workers, oh the Packinghouse Workers, I enjoyed representing them more than any other union because they were very militant, very aggressive. If they had any faults, they were a little too aggressive. Out on Peter Street, you had some branch houses there. Armour and Swift and so forth - They used to be on the street quite often over issues. They didn't fool with arbitration. They just kind of went to the street. On the racial matter, it was very advanced for the times, '53, '54. As a matter of fact, there was a plant here in Atlanta. I think it was a fertilizer plant, Armour, as I recall. It was organized, contract with United Packinghouse Workers. They 00:33:00had a black president and a white vice-president. They insisted on integrated restroom facilities, '54, when it wouldn't be anywhere. I never heard of an employer ordering restroom facilities integrated before the Equal Accommodations Act. But this union insisted on it, they had it and they had a lot of southern whites in it.

FISHMAN: Did they manage, did the employer go along with it?

STANFORD: Yeah. Now the Southern whites that I noticed, a lot of them, you know, when they were making this good money, the good union wages, they didn't have any problems with the blacks going to meetings with them, being with them or anything. I heard a story out there about one worker, he didn't like it because they had this black president of the local. He was going to leave and he left. He couldn't get any money anywhere like he was making there. So, 00:34:00hell, a few months he was back and enjoying it. [laughter]

FISHMAN: They had some of the membership integrated?

STANFORD: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

FISHMAN: Their leadership too?

STANFORD: Yeah. Let me tell you a little story about this. The district rented, needed some space, so over on Luckie Street, they found this building there. The fellow that demolition guy that had, um, owned the building. I can't think of his name right now. Downstairs was a Beaudry automobile showroom, Beaudry Ford. And upstairs, he had this big, good bit of space up there and he just had one little office. And so this suited the Union fine. They came to me about getting a lease out. I took the uniform standard lease except I added to it that there would be no…no discrimination concerning race, 00:35:00color, or creed. All facilities would be equally available to all persons regardless of race or color. There was a men's restroom up there and there was a ladies' restroom. Well this guy that ran the demolition company, he had a secretary that had been with him about 30 years, I found out later. And she was in the office up there, of course she was there full-time. He would be gone a lot. She saw one of the black union members going in the female restroom. So she immediately called a locksmith and had the locks changed. She got a sign painter and had a sign put on there -- Hudgins was this guy's name.

FISHMAN: [inaudible]

STANFORD: Hudgins Demolition Company. He had a sign put on there, "For Hudgins employees only." So, the union called me, and I called up Hudgins. I said, 'Look, the ink hadn't hardly dried on our signatures, when here you 00:36:00are breeching the damn contract.' He said, 'You just have to know my secretary, she has been with me for 30 years, she's just kind of set in her ways and everything.' I said, 'Hell, that's not our problem, that's for you to work out, but we insist on this, live it up.' He said, 'Let me talk to the union representative.' I said, 'Maybe you better, you do that.' So he and the union representative agreed to put in, at of course Hudgins' sole cost, another restroom for the ladies, so they put that in. Ok, the union had a secretary that worked there for the district, a white woman, and she went on a pregnancy leave. They hired as her temporary replacement, a black lady who had a couple years or so out at Morris Brown, black college. And, um, then, the 00:37:00Hudgins secretary got to know this black secretary. Hell, they would go out shopping together, they go out and eat lunch, bring each other this or that. They got along fine. The only way I analyze it, this was probably the first time this white woman had met any black that she figured was her equal. See? First thing you know, this white secretary called a sign painter, and had the sign taken down, and, um, had the locks opened, and it worked out fine. Of course, I never did take up the matter that left the women with two restrooms and the men only had one.

FISHMAN: Also unequal.

STANFORD: [laughter] But that was very interesting.

FISHMAN: Along that issue of integration, how did you…how did you come to be comfortable with that yourself? A lot of southerners weren't in the '50s.

STANFORD: Ah, well, I think, take it to my mother and growing up, I never heard the word "nigger" at any time. Yeah. It would have been her influence.

FISHMAN: Yeah.

STANFORD: She was very well liked by all the black people.

FISHMAN: Did your family have a lot of friends?

STANFORD: No, that was pretty much even today, you know, no blacks or no this. When it comes to socializing it seems to be a different ball game. No, we didn't on that basis.

FISHMAN: Was that hard? I mean, you must have been different than a lot of your peers, as a child and an adult.

STANFORD: Oh, yeah. Mmhmm.

FISHMAN: What did they think of you?

STANFORD: Well, I guess they might have thought that I was a little radical, but 00:39:00that of course never bothered me. I, you know…I never gave it a second thought.

FISHMAN: It's hard to be different.

STANFORD: Oh, yeah. Never a second thought.

FISHMAN: I would like to hear other stories about the Packinghouse Workers. First of all, what industries did they work in?

STANFORD: All meat packers. Packing industry was very well organized. Armour, the big four. Armour, Hormel, Swift, Wilson and Cudahy.

FISHMAN: [inaudible]

STANFORD: All organized.

FISHMAN: Did they have places here?

STANFORD: Swift Company had a right big one here, yeah, that was the biggest.

FISHMAN: Wasn't a slaughterhouse, was it?

STANFORD: Yeah, Swift had a slaughterhouse, yeah, Swift did.

FISHMAN: Where was that?

STANFORD: Over on 14th Street and Northside Drive. Chicago was the real center. 00:40:00Of course, the union was weakened somewhat when the packinghouse industry left Chicago and went out to Canada and Iowa. It didn't have the strength that they did at one time.

FISHMAN: Did you help them with negotiating the contracts, locally?

STANFORD: No, I was strikes. As I said, they were on strike quite often, we had injunctions thrown at us. It was that, plus some arbitration.

FISHMAN: What was the attitude of the courts in the injunction cases?

STANFORD: Um…

FISHMAN: State court representatives?

STANFORD: Yeah. Atlanta, was better than the others, and it wasn't too good. You were just behind the eight-ball. A lawyer representing the unions would soon find out that you are wasting your time to go in there and litigate all this stuff unless…unless you could prove it. They claim that people were on 00:41:00the picket line, but nobody was there. What you want to do is sit down and get the best deal you can, you know, instead of trying to get in there and fight it all out, get all the evidence put up and then the judge ended up signing the damn order just like the company attorney presented it. Then, you got in there before taking any testimony and get in there and see if you could work out and get the best deal you could. Of course, the judge would probably be pushing, instead of having to hear the whole case to do that. The judges sometimes were sensitive about not having workers turn against them because they were voters too in that community. Of course, some places…that is one thing about the South. In the rural South, the unions just didn't have the employer to contend with, which they naturally are going to have opposition, they have the 00:42:00whole damn community.

FISHMAN: Yeah.

STANFORD: Over and over again, places that I've been in.

FISHMAN: Who were the best and the worst of the judges in terms of being fair?

STANFORD: Where, here in Atlanta?

FISHMAN: Yes.

STANFORD: I can't think of any of them, I was trying to think of one, but he was retired not long ago. He wasn't bad. Shaw, Judge Shaw. He was pretty good. We got some pretty good decisions.

FISHMAN: Were the Packinghouse workers active politically?

STANFORD: Ah…of course not in the South too much in those days as I recall, but they would get out to vote, the national vote. I don't think in the local elections they were as much as they probably should have been.

FISHMAN: How many…how many strikes do you think you handled for them?

STANFORD: For them? Oh, I would guess about through the whole time, nine or ten.

FISHMAN: When did they merge into the Meat Cutters?

STANFORD: They merged with the Meat Cutters, um, ah, I would think it would have been back in the early '70s.

FISHMAN: Did you keep…you kept representing them after that?

STANFORD: Yeah, we represented the Meat Cutters Local 442 here in Atlanta. Yeah. They were a different approach.

FISHMAN: How was it different?

STANFORD: Well what I mean, is that the Packinghouse is mostly industrial. Meat Cutters, we will see a retail set up and different problems and different feelings and so forth.

FISHMAN: How about the retail, wholesale RWDSU. That is a long name.

STANFORD: Yeah, yeah.

FISHMAN: What did you do with them?

STANFORD: I represented them on some arbitrations and some strikes again and so forth. They were not as near as strong as the Packinghouse Workers.

FISHMAN: Who is the strongest union you think you represented?

STANFORD: Um, Atlanta Federation of Musicians.

FISHMAN: Oh really?

STANFORD: Yeah.

FISHMAN: [inaudible]

STANFORD: Well, that's the only time I had the feeling that you are bargaining from equal strength there. I was bargaining with them some years back and of course they are affiliated with American Federation of Musicians. There was a young attorney from this management firm. He was talking about some kind of strong talk and so forth. And, hell, the musician committee just got up and started walking out of the room. Stet said, 'Well, hell, maybe we just don't need a symphony this year.' [laughter]

FISHMAN: That's how they stopped them.

STANFORD: [laughter] This lawyer said, 'Come on back, come on back.' 00:45:00That's where I felt you really had equal bargaining in this thing. You can't just go out here and find a skilled symphony player. If you could, they are not going to cross the picket line. All of the symphony musical conductors have a American Federation Musicians Union card in their pocket. Which reminds me -- had negotiations and the union committee kept asking management of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to bring conductor Shaw into the meeting, bring conductor Shaw. And, um, he oughta be here, he should hear what is going on, so they did. And, um, the attorney representing management and the discussion thing. Of course, we have a provision in there that union musicians will not play with non-union musicians, you have to be a union musician. And this lawyer looked at that and he says, 'That is in violation with the Georgia 00:46:00right-to-work law.' And I said, 'So what.' Shaw heard this, you know, I said, 'Hell, we have had this in that contract all these years and we are not about to change that. Hell, yeah, they ought to be a member of the union if they are going to come out here and make a living playing in the Atlanta Symphony.' So then, after Shaw heard all this discussion, they asked him, 'Would you like to say something?' He said, 'The only thing I can say, I want the best musical product that I can get. And if it takes having the best possible human relations to get it, then that's what I want.' He, um, he said, 'If that means that every member of the symphony will be in the union and pay union dues, that's what I want.' Needless to say, he was never 00:47:00invited back by management again.

FISHMAN: [laughter] That was his only appearance.

STANFORD: Yeah.

FISHMAN: When did they organize the symphony?

STANFORD: Um, when it first started, I think. Way back when it was part-time, that's when they came back.

FISHMAN: The musicians did the ballet orchestra too?

STANFORD: Yeah, I think so. That's different, it's not the same group. They're supposed to put in full time. You know they don't have much time in the Atlanta Symphony between rehearsals and everything.

FISHMAN: That's interesting. So what other employers did the Musicians Union work with?

STANFORD: Atlanta Ballet and some of the others. [inaudible] I mean, that Pops thing they have every year. You know?

FISHMAN: At Chastain?

STANFORD: Yeah, yeah. [inaudible] Well, now, Atlanta's night club is not nearly organized at all. I think it's better organized 15 years ago than it 00:48:00is now. Well, I mean, they switch back and forth. One gig is union, then the next gig is non-union. I never have understood it.

FISHMAN: Did they ever go on strike, the Musicians' Union?

STANFORD: Yeah, we put up picketing. It's been a good while, but I was representing them. We had up a consumer picketing, you know, this is not a union stunt. And I had some success with that.

FISHMAN: When was that?

STANFORD: Well, that would have been back in the '70s, late '70s.

FISHMAN: How did you work with your clients, it may have varied, but some lawyers sorta sit back and wait for the union to come to them with problems, and others almost become like a…like a member and organizer themselves.

STANFORD: Hell, I used to get them calling up a lot asking questions, and you get personal problems every once in a while, too you know. Union representative, he don't mind asking you for a freebie, which I can 00:49:00understand. Yeah, yeah.

FISHMAN: Let's talk for a minute then about Southwire

STANFORD: Yeah.

FISHMAN: And that campaign.

STANFORD: Yeah. Southwire first started in 1961 with IBEW, local 613. Roy Richards started that. Richards got his start, he's a graduate of Georgia Tech. Got his start in the '30s through government largesse. He got the contract to put rural electrification wiring cable all around. That was a big thing in the late '30s in the South. And from that he had the foresight to see 00:50:00the cable business, you know, the electrical transmission wire. He got into that, which is unusual to locate that in Carrollton, brilliant businessman. But on a scale of 1 to 10, it would be 10 in business. If you judged him on human relations and feelings, his score would be minus 10. Coldest man I ever saw. I took a deposition from him and questioned him on a witness stand several times. Well, he was determined and they was pretty brazen about violating the law. He was held in personal contempt twice in the United States Court of Appeals and never has suffered anything. The NLRB, all they did was ask the court to require Southwire to pay the cost of the government bringing the proceeding. 00:51:00That's about like asking me to finding a dime, that's what $40,000 dollars meant to him. It's a closed business, family owned. I'd been over there for over 20 years in various campaigns. And a fellow with Barron's Financial Magazine called me one day and said it was the damnest thing, h wanted to write an article on Southwire, but he couldn't find anything out about them, not a damn thing. He says, 'Nothing, it's so closely held. And I can't find it, I wanted to say what I thought Roy Richards was worth.' And I said, 'It's well over $200 million dollars.' That was back then, several years ago, and that's what they put in the paper 'cause it is. [laughter] It's closed, he owned it. Funny thing is that he had a guy there that's vice-president who 00:52:00had wanted to leave. I think he is deceased now. Of course, Roy Richards is deceased. But when he got this stock, very valuable stock, It had a provision in it that if you wanted to sell it, you had to offer it back to the corporation at book value, which was nothing. So this guy wanted to leave, but he was never able to leave, he just had to stay there to protect his investment.

FISHMAN: They call it "golden handcuffs."

STANFORD: Yeah, he, yeah, that was Richards. This first case there, as I recall, a, um, some of the guys worked at Lockheed there and commuted from Carrollton to Marietta. It made good money, you know, and they were talking to those working there and everything. Their wages were so low, so what they did was get a committee if you have to work out of Carroll County, do your buying 00:53:00and trading out of Carroll County. That got the Chamber of Commerce upset, so they had a mass meeting there, you know. This one fellow got up and spoke very much about it and everything, against the company and so forth, so he was a marked man. They fired him, and it's kind of stupid what they put on his separation notice, that his attitudes and beliefs were not consistent with what the company thought, some silly thing. And, um, anyway, he was discharged. He was a plant, he was put in there as a plant, and the guy was telling me that when he saw this fellow weld -- he was a welder with IBEW local 613 and went on a construction job, but he was… he was sent in there to try to organize. This guy told me, he said, 'I saw him welding in there, and he was getting a $1.15 00:54:00an hour.' I knew something was up.

FISHMAN: He'd earn a lot more than that at a construction site.

STANFORD: Yeah, sure. Anyway, those people got reinstated, but Roy Richards just kept firing and firing. And, um, on further down the line, several years later, a fellow told me to, um, that a guy had gone to work at Southwire and he'd been recruited to go to work there and might have something, so I went to see him, see. And he told me this story, he was working at this -- met this fellow at the bowling alley and was interested in a job, and the guy ran a detective agency in Rome, Georgia. His name was Lovell. He asked if he wanted to go to work at Southwire. He said, 'Yes.' So, I, um, so, he said, 'You 00:55:00go down there and you tell them I sent you, you give them my name, and they will put you to work. One thing about it, we have been having all kinds of safety problems there. And, um, what we want you to do now, when you go to work, I want you to observe throughout the plant whatever hazardous conditions you see or employees that are not safety conscious or bad safety practices, and I want you to send me a report on that.' And, um, he said, I went down there to get the job. They said, 'No, we're not hiring anybody.' I had forgotten to give him his name. I called them and went back and the guy asked me, 'Why the hell didn't you give me that in the first place?' He said he had been on the job for about a week and the guy called him and said, 'Look, there's another thing that I want you to do. They are organizing a union there, we want you to observe and who's involved, who's favoring the union and so forth and 00:56:00add that to your report. Now if…if you don't have anything about a union, just write on your report to me, 'no special report this week.' So, then, um, they had just started a contempt proceeding when I got that affidavit, and I gave it to the board. They subpoena Lovell, and he was doing this. They had about 25 agents in there. And they were getting extra money to spy on their fellow employees. That had been going on. And the…the judge that had written that up for the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit saying this read like a CIA cloak and dagger, saying that is the way he started this signing off. Well that was another contempt thing that had all these people in there doing that.

FISHMAN: Why do you think that one of the agents at least came to the union and told about it?

SANFORD: He didn't come to the union, I went to him. As a matter of fact, he gave me all this stuff, see, and I wrote it up. I said, 'Don't sign it.' He said, 'No, I'll sign it.' And his wife had not said a damn word. She hadn't said a damn word. You know women most of the times don't get involved. She had been over there reading or doing something and didn't say a word. And I said, 'Now, let me get you to do this. Do you see anything in there that is wrong? Please change it, we will go over it, very carefully. Anything wrong?' 'No, nothing wrong.' 'Well, then there is nothing in there that is not true?' 'Oh no, it's true, but I'd rather ask . . .'His wife said, 'By God, if it's true, go ahead and sign it!' [laughter]

FISHMAN: Think she is a zinger!

STANFORD: Yeah. So, he signed it. That was the end of that.

FISHMAN: Once you have exposed it, did they have to stop using the agents, or did they keep it up?

STANFORD: Oh, I don't know, the way the Board operated, I don't know. Hell, 00:58:00I had to go up to Washington, to get the Board to go for a 10J, back in those days after all those civil cases. Had one guy named McCoully there, Jerry McCoully. He was a little Irishman who didn't weigh about 140 pounds and about 5 feet and 5 inches tall, just as tough as a hickory nut. And he got fired 5 times between 1961 and when he died in 1982 or 3. He, um, at the time he died, the company was under order of the National Labor Relations Board to reinstate him. And his case was pending before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. And, the judgement was entered after his death, and his wife got his back pay. I finally got the board to go on a 10J on that. We got down there and they had 3,000 employees over there. This jury, heavy set jury, I don't 00:59:00know what the hell is the name, federal jury, I think. They got up and said, 'Your honor we don't have a vacancy, we don't have anywhere to put this man.' And he bought it!

FISHMAN: Oh no!

STANFORD: And…and…and, of course, he was eventually reinstated, but hell it would have been nice to have him go back in there alive.

FISHMAN: How large of a plant was it?

STANFORD: It was over 3,000 employees, just didn't have a vacancy. No way, it just filled up.

FISHMAN: How many different unions worked on trying to organize that place?

STANFORD: Well, they had the IBEW, and then the IUE made the biggest effort, they missed it by one vote. Then, you had the aluminum workers that came around and looked at it, surveyed it and didn't do anything. Then you have the Communication Workers Union. Um, one of the other things there, they passed an 01:00:00ordinance. You know, one of those ordinances that you had to come down and take out a license in order to distribute leaflets. Then they have another ordinance - even if you had a license, you couldn't distribute leaflets, silliest thing. And, um, so Harold McIver was with IUD then, he and another guy named Best. We immediately challenged it and they got thrown in jail. I went to see the Recourt and advised him that he was going to have a good opportunity to test his manhood. And he said, 'Well, what do you mean?' I said, 'Well, we got this case coming up, and it's going to be all kind of damn pressure on you. And Southwire is interested in having this damn ordinance. It's clearly unconstitutional.' And he said, 'We will see.' He ruled it, quote, 01:01:00"unconstitutional" even as recorder. That was never tried before. During that, I went to see the mayor. I said, 'Look, you know this ordinance is unconstitutional, why in the hell don't you quit enforcing it. Why don't you appeal it?' He didn't know. I said, 'Well, why, why don't you?' He said, 'These guys here, they tell me…of course, I know who he is talking about Roy Richards now…if it is on the books, I should enforce it.' That was the deal on that. McCoully, he was something, he, um, he would tell all the guys, it was about 2 or 3 times there, he went 2 years or more and got back pay, didn't work. And of course, he couldn't, nobody would hire him, he was known as notorious within 50 miles. So, hell, [inaudible] He told them that on one occasion, he got this new International truck, he would get up in union 01:02:00meetings and tell them, 'Roy Richards has been good to me, see that new truck out there, he bought it for me.' [laughter]

FISHMAN: What were the issues out there? Were they money issues or working conditions?

STANFORD: Oh, yeah, money, every damn thing.

FISHMAN: Really?

STANFORD: Yeah, he was a no good bastard.

FISHMAN: When did they finally organize? Was it CWA that finally did it?

STANFORD: No, it's not organized, still not organized. Nah, it's not organized, yeah, and um…

FISHMAN: Okay, what other kinds of tactics was the employer using down at Southwire besides firing this one fellow?

STANFORD: Um, oh, anything. Threats, everything. They had as part of their orientation course, they had this scurrilous movie they would show. It was a home movie produced by anti-union people obviously, called, While Women Must 01:03:00Weep. This is a film that shows a real aggressive, pugnacious, short hair, crew cut guy who looks like he's a sergeant marine. He's the union president of this thing and he says, 'We going to strike.' And he just ramrods a strike through. Well, in actuality, and this was actually a case that they took, it was an actual case. The actuality of the President of the local union was a woman in her late 50s who was half blind. They used that and they chose to have that in this community, this minister, you know, is saying, "Well, they are on strike, to his wife he said, you and the children better sleep in the basement tonight." All that sort of thing. Every employee hired had to sit down and watch that. Now I filed an unfair labor practice charge on that. The board held that it was unfair labor practice charge and held it in other places. And this 01:04:00thing came up, the company at Southwire appealed it to the Court of Appeals. Griffin Bell wrote the decision. During the argument, I argued for the union in during the argument on that point, he says, 'Very seldom does a lawyer have an opportunity to go outside of the record.' He gave me a wonderful opportunity. He said, you know, 'We have got free speech in the Act, why don't the union put a billboard up and show a guy's strapped down to the table with a…with an armband over it. This is what happening to you at Southwire, you know, the freedom of speech.' I said, 'We'd love to do that, judge, but hell, they have got an ordinance set up to prevent us from doing any damn thing. We can't hand out a leaflet, anything.'

FISHMAN: Educating Judge Bell.

STANFORD: And that bastard came and still ruled it was free speech. I mean I tell you they took that to the nth degree. You know, They did get the employer 01:05:00to consider the plant was going to close, if the union comes in. As long as you, you know…that is a predictable result that often could happen, we are not saying that it will here, but plants do close when unions try to organize, you know, that sort of thing.

FISHMAN: How do you think they kept going, the union organizers and the activists? How did they keep after it for 20 years and not just give up?

STANFORD: I don't know, they just, um…there were different ones, there were 10. McIver retired the other day, and he had promised that that was what he was going to do before he retired. Unfortunately, he retired without having done it.

FISHMAN: You mean organize Southwire?

STANFORD: Yeah. Of course, he got a lot of people, rural people there that never had -- there's a university that's over there and so forth that gets closer to Atlanta, they may have a chance of getting in there.

FISHMAN: Now these days, is it mostly men or women who are working out there?

STANFORD: Why both. Both.

FISHMAN: How about race, was it always mostly white?

STANFORD: No, there are some black. Yeah.

FISHMAN: It's just hard to imagine keeping on trying over and over.

STANFORD: Yeah. Yeah. Um, but he was strictly no good.

FISHMAN: Did you ever get involved in the outside support activities for the union like going to meetings, having support committees, or auxiliaries or did you mostly . . .

STANFORD: No, I didn't get into too much of that.

FISHMAN: Who…was there a lot of it that went on that the unions did at Southwire?

STANFORD: Not over there, of course, they do in some towns they will take over an issue. Of course, the CIO is always better at that than the AF of L. Yeah, they were a lot better.

FISHMAN: Any other stories you can think of that came out of Southwire?

STANFORD: I was just trying to think. Yeah, I know a story now that came out of Southwire. One of the discriminatees wanted a reinstatement of back pay, he had the damnest story. He had been a roughneck working in the oil fields. And during the service he met his wife, who happened to be from Carrollton, Georgia. After that, he left the service, they came back and located in Carrollton, Georgia. Now he worked at Southwire. He was down there in the local honkey-tonk there one night. It was a local lawyer that was in there, and they got to drinking, talking and they closed the place up. And the lawyer says, 'Let's go back to my office, I've got a bottle there and we can have a drink there.' So, he went back to his office and they started drinking and everything. And they started talking about the union. The guy says, 'Trying to get a union down there.' The employee. The lawyer says, 'They're too 01:08:00damn stupid to ever have a union. These people down around here, they're not smart enough, they're stupid as hell.' And he says, 'Well, I wouldn't talk that way about my local people.' Well, if both men are drinking enough there and the lawyer said 'You don't know what the hell . . .' He shoved him and the he shoved back. Then the guy went out and got in his car. He lived in a trailer camp off of 166 right outside of town, or it might have still been in the town, probably was. As he pulled up and was getting ready to get out of his car, this damn cruiser came with the lights running. He says, 'What's the deal?' 'Well, we are going to put you under arrest, you are driving under the influence.' He says, 'You can't arrest me without a warrant, where is your warrant?' 'We don't need a warrant.' 'The hell you don't.' And so they got down, he um, they grabbed him and hell he fought 01:09:00back. They got the handcuffs around one arm and they couldn't get it around the other. He broke loose and ran into the damn trailer and got his shotgun and shot it up in the air. These policemen took off running. So, it was like this, they left the car. This blue dome light was -- so he took the bloody rifle and just broke it out. Okay.

FISHMAN: Did they ever come back after him?

STANFORD: Yeah, hell yeah. Then he knew he was in for it. So, he…he got up and walked around on the damn fence and came around and came up under the house trailer where he lived and threw dirt back up where he went. And it wasn't long after that here the damn patrolmen come back and they had damn bloodhound dogs with them or something. And, um, his wife was worried, thought he was out in the damn woods, been hit, see. He said one time, he could nearly reach out 01:10:00and touch one of those dogs, sniffing around there. So, then, the dog came and he crawled out from under the house. He went to the phone and called his lawyer, he knew. The lawyer came out and meet him. He says, 'Hell, you don't need a lawyer, you need a doctor' so they put him in the hospital. Then, the damn company found out where he was and came running over there. And, um, the damn police...I mean the sheriff's office, they wanted to arrest him right there, but they couldn't take him out of the hospital. The vice-president of Southwire asked him, he says, 'What happened?' He says, 'Don't worry, what you did is entirely justifiable and the job is waiting for you to come back.' Well, this guy had been strong as hell for the union, but he hadn't let anybody know it much. I mean, [inaudible] Then, the company, two or three days later, the company's vice-president came back and 01:11:00said, 'Well, um, what do you know about this union?' 'I don't know anything.' 'Anyway, well your job is waiting for you.' Then, he got out and the doctor cleared him to go back to work. He says, 'Well, you have to come later…you'll have to come later in the evening.' They waltzed him around the mulberry bush for about a month there. He realized that they weren't going to hire him back. Then, they filed an unfair labor practice charge. Then, um, he went down and plead guilty, assault with an attempt to murder. They put him on probation. I was raising hell with him, 'What the hell did you do that for?' He'd been given legal advice. They would say, 'He just did.' Probably the best thing he did because they were really saying that he would have gone to jail if they thought that he was going to be faced with an unfair labor practice charge. He got reinstated. We showed that 01:12:00other people had all kinds of charges against them, and had been found guilty and returned to work. That was an unusual case.

FISHMAN: Who was the other lawyer that he called before he called you?

STANFORD: This was a criminal lawyer. He wasn't interested in labor law. In other words, he got me through the union. Yeah. That was the most interesting series of events.

FISHMAN: I should back up a moment too, cause I realize that we talked about your being with early on with, um, with the one attorney, the name I'm forgetting. What did you do after that in your career?

STANFORD: I went out and was on my own.

FISHMAN: Really, how long?

STANFORD: Oh, for about, I'd say….about three and-a-half to four years.

FISHMAN: That was with union clients?

STANFORD: Yeah, mostly union clients, I had some general practice too, yeah.

FISHMAN: After you were by yourself,

STANFORD: [inaudible]

FISHMAN: Who did you get together with?

STANFORD: Then, Dale and Goldthwaite were moving their office to the Candler Building. They asked me to join them. They had the extra space up there, you know. Of course, they were interested in doing that; um, defray expenses and it was a good deal for me, good secretarial help and everything. I went there, and after I had been there about a year or so they asked me to become a partner, which I did and took it from there. Yeah, mmhmm.

FISHMAN: Was it Dale, Goldthwaite, Stanford and Daniel for a while.

STANFORD: Yeah, yeah. It was just Dale, Goldthwaite, and Stanford when I joined. Then we got Al Horn. Do you remember Al?

FISHMAN: I know the name.

STANFORD: He was something. I was…

FISHMAN: I met him once.

STANFORD: He was something. I had a contact, somebody knew that he wanted to 01:14:00come to Atlanta, he was a great guy. He finished number one in his class at Alabama Law School and never received an offer from any law firm. [laughter]

FISHMAN: Why?

STANFORD: He had been all mixed up in that Arthurine Lucy case, you know, to integrate.

FISHMAN: Oh, that's right. I knew that.

STANFORD: Yeah, yeah, and then…

FISHMAN: So then, you were with them, that lasted 'til about, what year?

STANFORD: Yeah, let's see, '77.

FISHMAN: When did you meet up with Jim and…?

STANFORD: They had been brought on board with the law firm. Yeah.

FISHMAN: Okay, so you all left together?

STANFORD: Yeah, three of them.

FISHMAN: It always has been labor law then, really, most part of your career?

STANFORD: Yeah. Yeah. Hmm.

FISHMAN: Getting back to some of the unions, I have talked to Jim or either I read some information about IBEW 613. You represented them for only a few years, right?

STANFORD: Yeah, right.

FISHMAN: What happened? You mentioned something about some differences?

STANFORD: Oh, well, of course I'm active in the Unitarian Universalist Church of Atlanta. And we had called a new minister named Ed Cahill. He was up in Charlotte. Ed is quite a guy. Ed in Charlotte, um, the Unitarian Church there. It disturbed him that you had a, um, two ministerial associations. You had a white and a black. He worked very hard, and he got it integrated. And then everybody joined the new association except Ed because they had the Christian doxology which he couldn't subscribe to. He got them all together, then he couldn't join himself. Also, he ran on the ticket up there. He ran for 01:16:00public office, school board. If he was elected, he was going to stop the praying in the public schools. And, of course, you know he didn't get elected. We had him coming to Atlanta. We wanted to make it a good formal affair. We had the head of the Universalist Church, head of the Unitarian Church. They merged in '61, which was about '56 or '57. And, um, I invited Mayor Hartsfield down. And these guys there with robes on. He welcomed Ed Cahill to the city. Then, we had a couple who had a nice new home right outside of Avondale Estates. New big home, they offered their home as a reception. It was 01:17:00all set and it was in May, I think, latter part of May, early part of June. And we wanted a good representation from around the city, you know? We invited Mays, who was president of Morehouse, we invited Clemmons, President of Atlanta University. We invited a fellow who happened to be a black member of our church. We were the first integrated church in Atlanta. A black man named Frank Cunningham who was a professor at Morehouse who later became president. We had this guy, Whitney Young, who was the Dean of the Graduate School of Social Science, Atlanta University. He later became the executive director of the Urban League when he left Atlanta. He was on our board of trustees at the church and a member, he was there. And these next-door neighbors where we had the reception saw these blacks arriving and called the Avondale police. "Do 01:18:00something about this." So the Avondale police came and found out where the Hamlins, that was their name, lived, which was just outside the city limits, so they reported that back. So then, I was City Attorney and the next night generally was court night, we had a little traffic court. I would go up there just to stand by. And the judge was there and one of the policemen says to me, you know, when I walked up, 'You know at the goddamn Hamlins, they had a bunch of "niggers" down there last night. Drinking, carousing, disorderly.' I said, 'Wait just a damn minute, I was at the . . . first, you pronounce that Negro, it's spelled N-E-G-R-O.' I said, 'For your information I was there. And, um, it was a very orderly affair, and there was no drinking, no disorderly anything.' So, that was everything said that night. The next day, I got a call from the City Manager who said I was no longer City Attorney. [laughter] The charter provided that I would serve at the pleasure of the 01:19:00council. So, hell, there wasn't anything that I could do. Anyway, the guy at whose house that was held, he was a furniture representative several lines in Georgia. They had a pretty good business. And they asked him to resign from his furniture association. His wife was in the Bridge Club, they wouldn't meet with her any more, and all that stuff. That's the kind of crap we had there anyway. Talking about 613, I represented 613 a good bit right up until this time. After this meeting at Avondale, I headed home. I was discharged by the city. I never heard another word.

FISHMAN: How did they hear about it all?

STANFORD: I'm sure it spread like wild fire. I never went around and told 01:20:00people, it just spread. You know how it was. I had put my membership [inaudible] if I agreed to get somebody to sponsor for the Atlanta Lawyer's Club and so had Maynard Jackson, so that's why my claim to fame was that I was blackballed the same time that Maynard Jackson was.

FISHMAN: Were you…both of you at the same time?

STANFORD: Yeah. At, um, it was at…

FISHMAN: Was it…did the newspapers mention that you were removed from City Attorney? They might have…

STANFORD: No, not in those days. They did…they did here recently.

FISHMAN: Yeah. Huh

STANFORD: There was a write-up there.

FISHMAN: Um, how about…well the other thing…

STANFORD: [inaudible]

FISHMAN: Go ahead.

STANFORD: Anyway…that had some play over into the building trades.

FISHMAN: Did it?

STANFORD: Yeah, of course, this is '57. Things were still crazy.

FISHMAN: Did you actually lose any clients over it?

STANFORD: I can't recall. Yeah, I'm sure there were some, I might have 01:21:00gotten it, that I didn't on account of that. I remember one time this guy with the IBEW Utility March, he was, you know, he's pretty much a racist. They were saying, 'Don't do any liberal talk around him.' I said, 'The hell with that business.' Yeah.

FISHMAN: I wonder what they thought of you? You know, when you would insist on having a right to your beliefs?

STANFORD: Oh yeah, that's right.

FISHMAN: Yet, they needed a lawyer. How about, um, I know the one thing that I was for sure wanting to talk about was Monroe

STANFORD: Yeah. [inaudible]

FISHMAN: Auto Equipment up in Hartwell. I have brought an article with me that is about them. Hang on one second.

STANFORD: Great guy.

FISHMAN: We are going to talk about Monroe Auto Equipment which started in, what, the late 50s.

STANFORD: 60's, along in there. '62, '3, along in there, maybe '64.

FISHMAN: What was your first contact with that organizing company?

STANFORD: Um, well, I had heard that they had about four guys that went up there committed to handing out leaflets. What happened, Monroe Auto Equipment had a plant in Holland, Michigan. They were on the contract with UAW, and they moved south. Of course, UAW was compelled to follow them down here and to organize them. And they got some aid from Hart County, some tax deductions and things, inducements to move here. And, um, so they were there, and they added these four. One of them was Chupko. He was the Secretary-Treasurer of the United 01:23:00Textile Workers as I recall. And…and he was one in three or four others. One was Moonie with UAW, IUD deal. They were going to turn it over to UAW when they wanted. And they out there handing out leaflets. It was…the personnel director had a brother who worked as a master mechanic. He was allowed to go around and agitate the employees in there. Three hundred of them piled out of that damn plant and came out. And Jim Pierce who was the IUE director for North and South Carolina was in town. He was the one who was handing out leaflets. They hit old Chupko over the head with a stick, one of the guys did. They pulled a knife on Jim Pierce and order him to give them what leaflets he had and then ordered him to open his trunk to his car and give them what leaflets he had in there. They struck a match and burned them right there. Then they cut his tires up. He called a garageman. They told this garageman, these local workers 01:24:00did, that if he fixed those tires or did anything to help him, he wouldn't have a station the next day. So, Jim got a guy from out of South Carolina, a serviceman…this is near the South Carolina border…to come with some new tires and fit him up with new tires. Then, he got the highway patrol to escort him out to the state line.

FISHMAN: Excuse me, what year was that?

STANFORD: This would have been about 1963. 2 or 3. I got in on it after this. They called me, and then I sent a letter to the Governor. I sent a letter to the director of the State Patrol. I sent a letter to the County Commissioners of Hart County. I sent a letter to the mayor of Hartwell. I sent a letter to the Sheriff of the County, Hart County, all these people. And I said that we are 01:25:00going to be at the plant entrance on such-and-such a date at such-and-such a time and we insist that our civil rights under the Constitution be protected. We were all there. I heard later that the IUD had brought down 30 or 40 representatives out of the Carolinas to…just in case we had any trouble. Here we are . . .

FISHMAN: Excuse me, you were there too?

STANFORD: Yeah.

FISHMAN: Did you ever get any response back from your letters from the politicians.

STANFORD: No, no, I didn't get anything. I wrote one to Governor Sanders, too, yeah. I was up there, head of time of course. And, um, this guy who had led the damn bunch to storm out of there--by the way, they posted a notice that said, 'We will not request our employees to kill union representatives.' That was in the news. And then anyway, they came, this guy that I had said that 01:26:00came after the other time and was all this rough stuff; he pulled his truck on this day and parked it right diagonally across the road and was going to block it. The damn State Patrol had to tell him to move. He, um, he…the State Patrol at first, before the shift changed, had told me that they had to stay up on the highway. I said, 'Hell, this…there's a fourth of a mile or more from the highway to the plant.' What good are you up on the highway when somebody is getting the hell kicked out of them down here.' And he said, 'That's our rule.' I said, 'Don't give me that 'cause I have seen companies call you out here, and you have been right there the whole time.' So, he came on down and to the plant gate. The local editor of the newspaper 01:27:00was there. And when the employees were coming in, there was a photographer there that would put a camera up and take a picture of each employee that stopped to get a leaflet. We had the election set aside, the first election we lost, had a picture of the Monroe Plant in Monroe, Michigan. And this newspaper was sent not to just the subscribers, but to every address in the county. It had a picture of this plant in Holland with an X through it on the front page saying that, 'UAW put an X through this plant, don't let them put an X through your plant here in Hartwell .' And so we got our leaflets distributed. That was about it for that day. If we hadn't gone back in there, I don't know what would of happened. Of course this is an area about a year before then, this Lieutenant Colonel, fellow named Penn, who was doing active duty down in Fort 01:28:00Benning was driving home to Washington. He was murdered there on the highway by some klansmen that were driving around. Yeah, so that was kind of the atmosphere.

FISHMAN: What happened after the leafleting?

STANFORD: After the leafleting, we went ahead and had the elections. The first election was set aside. The second election we won, the company took up sections and we finally got certified [inaudible]. They had a little fellow over there named Tate, William Tate, a lawyer out of Nebraska somewhere. He committed, you know, violations in what he told the press rather than the newspaper, you could pick up the violation of the Act. And, um, he testified there. We filed a complaint with the Labor Management [inaudible] Closure Act 01:29:00if the lawyer gets involved in persuader activity, he has to file. And he…they asked him to file. Now I had forgotten about the damn -- About 3 years later, I get a stack that must have been 5 pounds. This law firm that he had been with, he left them since then, filed every case that he had for 3 or 4 years. And it was the damnest thing. I didn't have time to look through all that. I just packed it up and sent it up to UAW in Detroit. They might have some use for it.

FISHMAN: Do you remember after…when the first election was lost that was the time that they hung Walter Reuther in effigy?

STANFORD: Oh, yes, I remember that. As a matter of fact, I was there. I was there for the objections on that election and the unfair labor practice charges were combined. You are correct, that was funny. They…they had Walter Reuther at the courthouse square. These guys at night went around there and would shoot 01:30:00at that figure with their guns, you know, driving around the courthouse square. Well, the next day, the company encouraged all their employees to go up to the courthouse square at noon because Walter Reuther was going to be buried, they were going to have a funeral for him. So, um, we alleged that they allowed some of them to stay over beyond their lunch hour, and they got paid for it. [inaudible]

FISHMAN: Were you there when it happened?

STANFORD: No, I wasn't there. Anyway, I don't know why they put him on the stand. They put this damn coroner on the stand. I had to cross examine him. I said, 'How did this come about?' He said, 'I was coming out of the restaurant.' I said, 'You are the coroner, the official duty, you are acting--In suspicious cases you have decide the cause of death and so forth, that's his duty. And he said, 'I was coming out of the cafe, just had lunch and somebody waved for me to come over to the courthouse square, and I went over 01:31:00there. He said somebody pointed to something over on the ground and said, 'would you pronounce that dead.' 'I said, 'it never looked to me like it had any life anyway, so I pronounced it dead.' [laughter] Walter Reuther…he didn't pretend, he didn't even know anything about the union whether it would make do or not, he just pronounced the thing dead that was on the ground.

FISHMAN: The second time that you were there watching them do the leafleting, were you afraid for your own safety?

STANFORD: No.

FISHMAN: Even though the highway patrol wouldn't come off the highway?

STANFORD: Yeah, no, I never had any much sort of that.

FISHMAN: You ever had a case when you were afraid for your own safety?

STANFORD: I can't recall, no. I stayed in the infantry for five years, what the hell.

FISHMAN: Yeah, right. In comparison to that, it wasn't so bad?

STANFORD: Yeah. Only thing, closest thing when I was over with NLRB, I was taking an affidavit from the son of a supervisor at Stilley Plywood Company. And 'course, I was trying to get the truth and was writing it up. I was saying, write down what he told me, one question was contrary and would be detrimental to his father's position. And when this dawned on him, he reached over and grabbed this damn paper out of my hand and tore it in two. I told him then I was very sorry that I was there as a government agent and that I couldn't attack him. And I couldn't take any steps to redress what he had just done, but I wished to hell we had…could change the circumstances so I 01:33:00could. So that was it, yeah.

FISHMAN: Did he calm down?

STANFORD: Yeah, but he wasn't going to do anything, he didn't want the affidavit. If he hadn't been that crude, he could have simply said, 'I'm not going to sign that thing,' but he was willing to talk.

FISHMAN: Going back to the Monroe, the article that Stillman mentions that you were involved along with Josephn Rowe in that.

STANFORD: Yeah, Rowe never came down, he was up in Washington. I was the only one on the scene.

FISHMAN: Did you work with him much?

STANFORD: No, not this one really.

FISHMAN: Rowe…

STANFORD: When involved, they had employees of Monroe Auto Equipment to come up to Washington and tes…testify before a Congressional Committee on labor. Yeah, I think they shepherded that through.

FISHMAN: Which committee was that one, I wonder?

STANFORD: I don't know. Of course you know the Acts' set up the watch dog committee.

FISHMAN: Right.

STANFORD: One of them.

FISHMAN: Um, and who was the other one mentioned in there [inaudible] Was he from Atlanta?

STANFORD: No.

FISHMAN: Where was he from?

STANFORD: I don't know, I really didn't know him.

FISHMAN: Did you have any other contact with that Monroe situation there?

STANFORD: Um, yeah. Later on, they filed a decert, and decertification 01:35:00petition. I was up there on that. And the big issue there was that they had had a lay-off of quite a few employees, economic lay-off. And the question was whether or not they had a reasonable expectancy to return to work. If they did, they got to vote, if they didn't, they don't get to vote. Of course, the union didn't think they had any reasonable expectations to return to work, they had been off all this time. And, um, we, um, showed where the maintenance crew was working a standard 77 hour work week. And I…I beg your pardon, it was just the opposite way. The union was arguing they did have a reasonable expectancy to return to work and the company was arguing that they didn't.

FISHMAN: Ah, the union was?

STANFORD: Yeah, they wanted them to vote. I called witnesses, they were working a standard 77 hour work week. I called one woman to the witness stand who worked a hundred and nine hours one week. I said, 'This is outrageous that these people…that they would work these kinds of hours, and also there was some testimony there that the employees couldn't keep that up. Some of the foremen had agreed to one of the employees that I had on the stand that something had to give, they can't go on like that.' I put that in a brief and everything. I believe the reason might have rode in our favor that they were not eligible to vote. I think it did that they were eligible to vote 01:37:00because they did have a constituency. Anyway, it got up to the board and they said, 'It wasn't any of the unions' business how many hours the employer wanted to work its employees. That was ridiculous that the union thought they could have some say-so in that. If they wanted to work them a certain number of hours that wasn't any sign.' Then, they said, 'They couldn't vote.'

FISHMAN: With UAW again, Jim had mentioned that I should ask you about the situation out at Saginaw Steering, you had once at Decatur, Alabama, involving the Klan. A guy by the name of Lloyd Darby. He's, um, does that ring a bell?

STANFORD: Yeah, Lloyd Darby.

FISHMAN: What happened with that?

STANFORD: I can't even recall that one. I remember Saginaw, but I don't remember the Klan part too well.

FISHMAN: He thought there was some Klan involvement and slander of some sort. [inaudible]

STANFORD: There was Klan involvement up here at Zody.

FISHMAN: Yeah, let's talk about that. That wasn't UAW, that was, who was 01:38:00that? That was [inaudible]…

STANFORD: That was the United Food and Commercial Workers.

FISHMAN: What happened with that?

STANFORD: United Food and Commercial Workers was a meat packer up there. The biggest business was the school lunch progra And, um, he…damn runaway outfit, I just didn't -- the way they operated, it's terrible. Employees had all kinds of horror stories about meat falling on the floor, they would pick it up and throw right back in. The meat would be old and everything, turning green, they would wash it and food process it right on. [inaudible] All kind of horror stories. And, anyway, they, um, they hired a bunch of Mexicans. They had a guy there that was the chief engineer that had done a murder rap in the -- convicted 01:39:00murderer and done time in the Illinois State Penitentiary before they came down, Benedicto or something, I'm trying to think of his name. But, anyway, he must of had a contact with someone in Mexico because they were bringing in these illegal aliens by the big truck loads.

FISHMAN: Hmm.

STANFORD: He bought a bunch of old trailers and incorporated a corporation which was exotic spelled backwards.

FISHMAN: [inaudible]

STANFORD: Anyway…anyway, he put 3 and 4 of these Mexicans in the trailer, charged them fifty dollars a piece. They would deduct it from their pay. That was it, just to give you the flavor of how they operated. The employees there 01:40:00that I talked to later, they came to Atlanta and saw me, but anyway, they didn't know anything about the union. And somebody told them about the Klan there. They went to see the Klan.

FISHMAN: Oh.

STANFORD: And the Klan agreed that they would support them. Of course, the Klan didn't like all those aliens being in there, you know and everything. I think the Klan told them that they could help them on this, but they weren't prepared for an on going relationship like the labor union. So the Klan got out there in their full regalia and everything and "El returno Mexico" you know and all this stuff. [laughter] And they went into court, the company did, to get 01:41:00the Klan removed. And, um, it so happened that the Klan had only been there a few days just before they went into court. And they came to see me, and I sent them over to the United Food Commerical Workers. Of course, I told them, you know, 'Hell, you're just screwing yourself up, the damn Klan can't do anything but get you fired, this is ridiculous.' And so I think they called up the Klan, the Klan said they would pull out, you know. Of course, the whole company wanted to smear the whole thing, 'It's Klan, illegal, wanting to do this and that.' And anyway, they didn't, we won, the Court of Appeals, they didn't buy that argument. That was the thing there. They were on strike for a good long while. They didn't want to hire them when they made an 01:42:00unconditional offer to return. They didn't want to hire them back. But that, um, was a funny situation. What happened in Atlanta, I understand they had – it went all through the newspapers that a couple of black guys there that marched on the picket line with the Klan. [inaudible] And when that hit the Associated Press Article, the NAACP in Atlanta jumped sky high.

FISHMAN: I'll bet. What year was that?

STANFORD: Oh, that would have been in, oh, I guess about '80, '81.

FISHMAN: The Food and Commerical finally did go in and organize them, though?

STANFORD: Um, yeah, but we never got a contract.

FISHMAN: What other work did you do with Food and Commerical?

STANFORD: Well, let's see, I think that is a lot of other smaller cases.

FISHMAN: Probably did a lot of arbitrations over the years?

STANFORD: Yeah, yeah. Let's see. In the South, like Kannapolis, North 01:43:00Carolina, owned by Cannon Mill, union representatives didn't go in there.

FISHMAN: Oh really?

STANFORD: No.

FISHMAN: Including union lawyers?

STANFORD: No, I don't think the lawyers, but the representatives, you know, in there. They would assign a policeman to follow the union representatives, just try to tail him wherever he went. And Plaquemines Parish down in New Orleans with Leander Perez that big [inaudible] had oil in there, Plaquemines Parish, no unions were allowed in there until just recently.

FISHMAN: Really?

STANFORD: Yeah. It was quite a thing. Back, um, as I said, it's seldom a 01:44:00fight, in my experiences just between the employer and the union. Then, the Chamber of Commerce gets in there and the others. They did have here for a while, a guy named -- who was putting out a magazine, newspaper called The Militant Truth. This was if the union would start organizing, all of a sudden each employee would start getting a copy of this through the mail. The Militant Truth was a theme, there were two themes they had. You couldn't be a Christian and be a union member one theme. Another theme was that all unions were crooked and I guess these union organizers around philanderizing and smoking big cigars, and gambling, getting drunk and spending all your dues. You 01:45:00know, and this was in textile mills, you know. I went over to see the editor of that, this was many years back, he was in the Carnegie Building, Carnegie Street, and talked with him. Sherman Patterson was his name. And I said, 'Look, do these employers sent you the money? How do you support it?' 'Oh no, we don't take anything from the employer. These are donations that just come through the mail. These are civic-minded people that send money in for us. They believe in our cause, you would be surprised how many just…just send it in anonymously.' Then, Southwire started sending this out in the 60s to its employees. So I filed a complaint with the Labor Management Board in Closack. And they sent a representative out and I went with him. So we went in and talked 01:46:00to the woman who is secretary of the corporation, I think. She pulled out some bills and showed us where she had paid Militant Truth. So we had them then. And then, they had to file their returns. I mean they had to file their returns. And, also, the IBEW had lost out on a strike over in Athens, Georgia. They had a manufacturing plant there, it was a wildcat strike, it was a silly strike. Anyway, people lost their jobs, they didn't get them back. Southwire had to hire two of those employees to come over and make house calls on their employees. They had to file a report showing how much they had paid them. So this was the only time I remember getting that information against this Sherman Patterson.

FISHMAN: [inaudible] I heard, as a labor union attorney, I have heard management 01:47:00attorneys complain about the disclosure act and having to file these things.

STANFORD: Yeah.

FISHMAN: I have never seen them to be a real hassle or much help to the union, but ever so often.

STANFORD: What they do is exclude attorneys, of course. Attorneys have gone way out there before they have to file anything.

FISHMAN: How about…Jim had mentioned that he thought that you had represented Bill Usery in a case once and Avery.

STANFORD: Yeah, I did.

FISHMAN: Did you?

STANFORD: Yeah.

FISHMAN: How did that come about?

STANFORD: Well, um, I was an attorney with the National Labor Relations Board. This was the Armstrong Cork Company. It was Willy Usery then. He was a young fellow. This was in 1950, '51. He was a leader of the Machinists. Um, the 01:48:00Machinist union was trying to operate the machine shop and Bill was a local employee there. They filed a petition for a maintenance unit only, they didn't want a production unit. In those days, that was when you had wage stabilization. The employer in order to give a wage increase had to get approval, that was the wage stabilization board. The employer had sent in a petition for wage increase for all production and maintenance employees. After that petition had been filed, the employer found out that the Machinists were organizing. Surreptitiously without any notice to anyone, they sent a letter to the wage stabilization board in Atlanta asking to delete that portion that asked 01:49:00for a raise for the maintenance employees. They were asking for a raise for production employees only. It was approved, they gave the raise to the production employees. Well, the union won the election. They go into negotiations, the union says, 'We want you to put into effect the wage increase for the maintenance employees, retroactive back through the days that gave it to the production employees.' And they said, 'No, oh no, that's a bargainable issue, you got to bargain from scratch.' Of course, the board that ruled it as a condition of employment. I mean, it had been offered to them. The only reason they withdrew it was because they were organizing. So they ruled that they had to go back and give them that increase, give them that back pay.

FISHMAN: Usery was . . .steward…

STANFORD: He was a leader, he was a Machinist.

FISHMAN: What was that like working with him?

STANFORD: Oh, he's a pretty good guy.

FISHMAN: He was really young then, I suppose?

STANFORD: Yeah. He always tells some of them, hell, I had some white shoes there. I had some white shoe polish, you know. He always tells them, hell I asked him, if he's sitting around there not doing anything, how about polishing my shoes? [laughter] Or something, I was busy talking to these employees, I think he kidded about that ever since.

FISHMAN: He must be in town this week, they say because they are working with an employment agent here in town.

STANFORD: Yeah, I haven't seen him in years. I did see him, I went down and made a statement before the committee that was in town.

FISHMAN: On labor management, whatever its goal?

STANFORD: Yeah.

FISHMAN: We need to put this on hold for 1 second….Resuming after a short break. We had been talking about a number of things. I wanted to ask you, did 01:51:00you mention Athens Manufacturing? Is that what you mentioned that you wanted to touch base on. Is that the name?

STANFORD: No, all I remember was a letter that I sent to the Archives on Athens Manufacturing.

FISHMAN: Any other unions that you worked with that you can remember stories that you would want [inaudible].

STANFORD: Let's see.

FISHMAN: Didn't you work with Textile Workers Union much?

STANFORD: Yeah, did some work with some Textile Workers Union.

FISHMAN: The old TWUA?

STANFORD: Yeah, they combined it, it was United Textile Workers, later they combined. I had a…when I was with the board, I had a case involving Chicopee Corporation, Chicopee right outside of Gainesville, Georgia. That was the most 01:52:00interesting case. They had a fellow there named Cecil Chastain. He was a tall, lanky guy. He had not been very active when the campaign first started, then they kind of stretched him out. He was a weaver, that kind of upset him. He was giving him more work than he could handle -- he joined the union. This is an unusual case. This is a housing village there owned by the company. And these were put up about 1925 or '26. The old brick units, most of these used to be the old shotgun houses, clapboard you know, these were brick. And of course, like in most mill villages, there were two churches, the churches are owned by the corporation. There was a Baptist Church and a Methodist church. And, um, the employees -- it's a nice village and everything, but there's a little price they might pay. The employees were telling me if you drank beer 01:53:00or maybe had a bottle of whiskey or something, when you got through with it, you didn't dare put it in your ordinary garbage because the plant had the garbage collection here on the private property. If you did, the word would be out that you drank whiskey or you drank beer. Anyway, so, Chastain went to his next door neighbor there, they had an older couple that invited Chastain, his wife, and 6 year-old kid over there to have watermelon. And this was in July of about '46 or '47. My involvement with the case started in '48. And, um, they went back home, early evening and got to talking, some girl that Chastain had known 01:54:00before they got married had sent him a letter or something. Something was said about his wife in it. He told his wife, he said, 'Let's go on in there and get that letter that she sent me and we'll sit down and write her, tell her I'm married now and not to contact me anymore.' His wife went in and instead of getting a letter, she got this woman's picture that he had and tore it in two. She had an old fashioned ice-pick. She was chopping a block of ice for ice tea. He went over and said, 'Oh, don't get upset.' 'If you don't get away from me, I'll stick you.' He grabbed the ice-pick, and she supposedly hollered. The company police came, and they called the sheriff's office, and they take him down. They charge him with being drunk on US Highway Number 23. The only time he was on Highway 23 that night was in the custody of 01:55:00the officers on the way to jail in Gainesville. The next day, the company police and the sheriff's office and deputy came out. Chastain had testified that he was underweight, and the doctor told him if he drank beer that would help him gain some weight. And he said, 'Hell, on my wages and what beer sold for, I couldn't afford it.' So, he got a home brew recipe from somebody and he had a vacant room there and he bottled up this home brew there and it didn't fizz properly, and he said it wasn't any good, but he had some of it in the bottles there. The police looked in there the next day, and they gave him another charge, they added manufacturing malt beverages without a license. Of course, Georgia law allowed you to make malt beverages for your own consumption, you don't need no license - that was the only thing that he intended to do. He had been in jail about 2 or 3 days and the union 01:56:00representative came back in town at this Textile Workers Union, found out from his wife that he was in jail and asked him where he was -- went into Gainesville. His bond was $185. Chastain had about $75 - $80 dollars on him. So the union representative got up the other money, and had the $185. So they got him…he's getting out on bond, he goes up here to be released, the deputy sitting up at the desk says, 'Sign this paper here.' Chastain read it and says, 'Look, this paper says I'm pleading guilty. I don't intend to plead guilty, I'm not guilty. I want to get a lawyer and contest this.' He said, 'well, all I know is that you gotta sign that if you want to get out of here, 01:57:00you have the right to be in court, don't worry about that.' Well hell, he pled guilty, they got a local lawyer. Six months later they were in court to go to trial. They got up, and the lawyer says, his lawyer, you know, 'When are you going to call that case?' His calendar was about to be over with. The solicitor there called the district attorney. He got up and said, 'That was disposed of at the last time, you know, the man pled guilty and we forfeited the bond as a fine.' His lawyer moved to vacate any plea of guilty, and the court refused to do it. He had to take that all the way to the Court of Appeals. They ruled that you can't sentence anybody in absentia and ordered the state to go to trial on that. On the other case, he had a jury trial, manufacturing 01:58:00malt beverages without a license, [laughter] and they found him not guilty. Back then, he found a job, I think, with a meat plant there, a little branch house, Swift. And they found out that he had been fired over there at Chicopee. Of course, the company fired him for these things that were related back and then they fired him. He was blackballed throughout the South, he couldn't get a job anywhere. He had to go to Virginia, and he got a job in Virginia. Well, they, I recommend his complaint issue on that by the board and I tried the case. And, um, we showed all kinds of other things. The company said they had the character and the morals of the employees demanded that this man be discharged. Other employees didn't want to be in the village with a man who would do these things that he did like that. This was – and therefore they were compelled. 01:59:00Then, I showed all these discrepancies, one guy said he saw this scratching on his window one morning about 3 am in the morning, went to the window, it was the foreman's wife. She had a big fight with her husband, he had threatened her, she had run out, he pulled her into the house and she stayed there overnight. Anyway, all of that. The judge evidently was impressed by the village and he ruled against Chastain. This was during the wage stabilization, rent control days. As soon as he was discharged, the company gave notice to vacate. So he went over to the rent control office there and said, 'I filed a charge with the board, I'm still an employee.' The local office ruled against him. But, the…the rent enforcement agency there in Atlanta, they overruled the local office in Gainesville, said they couldn't fire him. So there he was about 3 years later, he went to hand them his rent, each month, they wouldn't 02:00:00take it, said he was holding over. And he says, 'I can't pay it if you let it accumulate.' The company, when it came down, he wasn't going to be reinstated from the board, they sent him a bill for about four thousand dollars in rent or something. Of course, he didn't pay that and he went on. So, they got that. Anyway, that was this [inaudible] speak of textile mills, I had a charge against United Merchants and Manufacturers when I was with the NLR Board over in Buffalo, South Carolina, that I handled. And over there, the local church again had a Baptist church and a Methodist church owned by the village. The Baptist church minister had put on the marquee in front of the church what his sermon was going to be the following Sunday. It would be 'How to vote in 02:01:00the CIO election." Well the union had Lucy Randolph Mason who was a blueblood from Virginia at the center of the Randolphs and the Masons and who was interested in organized labor going out of the First World War. Her interest was in helping the mine workers. And she was a good will ambassador to the CIO Operation Dixie. She was dispatched up to speak to this minister. So she evidently did a very good job. He got up on Sunday and advised his congregation to vote the way they wanted to.

FISHMAN: What year was that?

STANFORD: This would have been 1950, '51. Yeah. Mason was also involved down in -- near Columbus, Georgia. The big lumber mill down there. Um, this was near 02:02:00Cusetta, Georgia. And the town council had when the lumber workers began organizing, passing an ordinance, you had to have a license. Come down to City Hall and get a license in order to organize in that town. So the union disobeyed it. A fellow named Gillman who is State Director of the CIO went down and violated the ordinance, they were promptly arrested. They were before the mayor's court. And the mayor, who presided in the mayor's court, city court there, he found Gillman guilty of violating the ordinance, fined him $50. Mason told the judge, said, 'Your honor, you have just destroyed Gillman's civil rights.' He says, 'Mason, I don't understand, what do you mean, civil rights?' She said, 'The right of Gillman to come to Cuthbert, Georgia, 02:03:00where it actually really was not Cusetta, Cuthbert, Georgia. Come here, meet with employees, hand out leaflets and ask them to join the union, do things like that.' He says, 'Mason, is that what you mean by civil right?' She said, 'Yeah.' He said, 'We don't need any of that around Cuthbert, Georgia.' [laughter]

FISHMAN: Did you meet her ever?

STANFORD: Yeah, I did.

FISHMAN: You did.

STANFORD: Yeah.

FISHMAN: When did you meet her?

STANFORD: She died in the 60's. This was around '51, '52.

FISHMAN: So were you there in the case?

STANFORD: No, I wasn't there.

FISHMAN: What was the union in the local?

STANFORD: It was the lumber workers.

FISHMAN: Woodworkers.

STANFORD: Yeah, woodworkers, yeah.

FISHMAN: She must have been a real character.

STANFORD: Yeah, she was.

FISHMAN: Was she still working when you met her?

STANFORD: Yeah, yeah, she was there. She was getting older, I think she died here in Atlanta. She had retired and she was up in her 70s when she retired in her early 70's.

FISHMAN: Did you meet her at work or some social setting?

STANFORD: Ah, Social setting. [inaudible]

FISHMAN: How do you remember her?

STANFORD: Well, oh, Very nice. Very nice lady. Yeah.

FISHMAN: She really was a blue blood?

STANFORD: Yes, she was.

FISHMAN: Into Robert E. Lee in all that?

STANFORD: Yeah.

FISHMAN: Let me ask you about CWA some, too.

STANFORD: All right.

FISHMAN: Did you work with various locals of the union all through the district?

STANFORD: Well, CWA is set up here mostly working for the International, CWA pays for all arbitrations. It would be very seldom that any lawyer representing CWA under their set-up would be working for the local. It's what you call high per capita union. They have a high per capita tax that the International assesses on the local union per member. They do give a lot of services for it. But the interest of unionism served best for the International to be in the 02:05:00picture and pay for the arbitration costs and so forth because it gives uniformity. If you don't, you have got one local arbitrating the case that another local has just lost on the same issue. Things like this helps for the administration and uniformity of the results.

FISHMAN: When did you first get CWA as a client?

STANFORD: Um, well, it was when I went with Goldthwait…Dan Goldthwait. I had represented him in the 50s strike, in '53 or somewhere along that. I represent the local here in Atlanta on some picket line incidents.

FISHMAN: What was a strike like that, you remember?

STANFORD: Um, well, the big one that I remember was in '55. That was a strike in 9 states, it was a big system wide strike against Southern Bell that lasted 72 days, as I recall. As a result of that strike they had one of the biggest arbitrations ever run. They agreed to -- the cases couldn't settle for alleged picket line misconduct and stuff. They couldn't bargain them out and get them settled. The union and company agreed the union would have the right to arbitrate. It was over 200 and some odd cases that we arbitrated in the 9-state area. Yeah.

FISHMAN: You didn't do all 200?

STANFORD: No, but I did do quite a few of them.

FISHMAN: What were the issues about in that strike?

STANFORD: The issues were whether or not the conduct on the picket line or we could be away from the picket line, it was egregious enough to warrant discharge. Of course, you know, a certain amount of animal exuberance, as the court has said is bound to happen in any strike that would maybe warrant 02:07:00official reprimand or maybe a one day suspension or something. But, um, the arbitrators carefully distinguished between those kinds of cases and some vicious attack upon the employee with intent to physically really injure.

FISHMAN: Why do you think it was that so many of those wouldn't settle? That you had to arbitrate all those cases against . . .

STANFORD: Um, well, of course you are talking about 80,000 employees or more, more than that in a 9-state area, it's not such a big number when you consider the whole system-wide. Both sides' feelings were hurt and they were mad.

FISHMAN: How come they got so angry with each other?

STANFORD: Well, hell, in '72 they striked, course the company, they didn't like that striking business at all. That's where they were. That varied from locality to locality, it might depend upon the state director or something, who might want to be more tough than another place.

FISHMAN: Did Southern Bell use scabs in that strike? How did they operate?

STANFORD: Oh, yeah. They advertised. Yeah, they hired whoever they could hire.

FISHMAN: Did they run it pretty much a hundred percent?

STANFORD: No...no…no, the service suffered here. At that time in '55 you had an automatic dial in, already pretty much more than you would have, say, 20 years before that.

FISHMAN: You still had a lot of long distance.

STANFORD: Yeah, right, you had to do that.

FISHMAN: That time it was all one, all the service was done by Southern Bell?

STANFORD: Yeah.

FISHMAN: Then, there was another strike in the '60's?

STANFORD: Yeah. I didn't have anything to do with that one. I wasn't involved in that one.

FISHMAN: What else did you have to do with that '55 strike? Remember when it was going on, did you have any involvement in it?

STANFORD: Yeah, I tried a bunch of cases in, um, in West Palm Beach and so forth. The attorneys in West Palm…I mean the local in West Palm Beach had hired this local attorney, his name was--can't think of his name. He had represented the local concerning picket line conduct. He contended that after the strike, the company and he agreed, they had an oral agreement that the company would reinstate all these people. They wouldn't hold it against them because they had done such a thing. And they would all be reinstated. Well the company denied that. So…Peel was the guy's name, P-E-E-L. Of course, we got before the arbitrator, the arbitrator said, 'Hell, this is just an old 02:10:00agreement. And, um, the company said they didn't agree to it. I had nothing to go on, I can't say there was any agreement.' So we tried the case. I called Peel, and he testified [inaudible] name. We then tried their cases on their merits. I remember Peel, I talked with him, a day before then, hearing something or I met with him maybe a couple of weeks before, during the investigation. He seemed a little nervous. I remember, he had a right to be because later on he was indicted for having…for murdering the local judge and his wife. [laughter]

FISHMAN: Ooh.

STANFORD: He got sent up to Raiford for a life sentence. I can understand. The judge was after him about some of his divorce cases, whether the court actually had jurisdiction, whether he misled the court or something. Anyway…[inaudible]

FISHMAN: Trying to remember…where you involved in the union's political activities over the years, working with them on elections and so forth and so on?

STANFORD: No.

FISHMAN: How active are the unions? I think they used to be more active than they are now, perhaps, giving money and supporting . . .

STANFORD: Yeah, I think so. I would have to say CWA has been one of the most progressive ones. And of course the CIO.

FISHMAN: Yeah. Well, the CIO had. We were talking yesterday, it used to be, I wouldn't say influential, but more active than it is now.

STANFORD: Oh yeah. They were. It depends on locality, but some places they did. Roosevelt, you remember that back - Sidney Hillman, head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, big thing then. You had to clear it with Sidney. He had a big influence.

FISHMAN: Was there influence in Georgia or in the South?

STANFORD: Ah, no, not so much.

FISHMAN: Certainly not with any of the governors here?

STANFORD: No, of course, labor in the South, when you are talking about influence, never had the, you know, the ability to influence like you did where 02:12:00they have got work forces, 50 cents to organize that way. We always were working from a position of very minority status.

FISHMAN: How about the unions in relation to local, to the…to the various mayors in Atlanta?

STANFORD: Yeah, well, I do remember, um -- well, I give you about the state representatives. Back in the 40's, maybe going back to the late 30's, it was understood that organized labor would have the right to…to appoint 1 of the 3 representatives in the State House of Representatives from Fulton County. Um, that was just understood and they did that. In those days, you might recall, we had the county unit vote, you know. Fulton, although the most populated county in the state, had only 3 unit votes, whereas Echols County had only about, less 02:13:00than a thousand voters, had 2 unit votes. Anyway, um, but now, I understand of course as soon as the Taft-Hartley Act was passed, it…it allowed under the 14-P, I believe. It allowed the states to prohibit any form of union security. And, um, Georgia promptly did that. And, I heard…the word is out, 'course we had the battle of the governors, you might remember that we had three governors at one time and they stayed anyway. They threw this into the legislature that decided the governor. And Jesse Walton who was a business agent for the amalgamated Transit Workers; I mean the transit system in Atlanta then, he was a representative over there. He voted to see Talmadge. Talmadge won by 1 vote. I think later, he had to step down by the Court said, the 02:14:00Lieutenant Governor should be the Governor. Talmadge won later on [inaudible], but this occasion he was in there quite a few months. The deal was that Talmadge was to vote against the right-to-work law, but he never did it. And they always claimed that organized labor got shafted with that by Herman Talmadge on that deal. Um.

FISHMAN: Did they support him after that?

STANFORD: Yeah, I was kind of amazed that Herman Talmadge used to, down in Lovejoy, had what they called his B-B-Q for…for labor. They would all flock down there. They would come back bragging, a lot of union people bragging, 'I had B-B-Q with Herman.' Herman never did a damn thing for organized labor. 02:15:00The whole time he was in the Senate, he cut their throat every chance he got.

FISHMAN: Were there some who did? Who were any applicants of labor in the House or the Senate, Statehouse or Senate?

STANFORD: Well, you had a fellow named Mackey, he was a liberal from back in the 40's, 50's from Dekalb County. By the way, he testified recently about the flag dispute in federal court. He was called as an expert witness. Jim Mackey, from…representative from Dekalb County. And, um, you had some others and names. I can't place them right now. You had some that were pretty liberal.

FISHMAN: How did they help the unions out? What did they manage to get passed or anything?

STANFORD: Oh, well, there's not much that legislation in Georgia, that favors unions, that is the answer to that. We had organized labor back in the '50's. The big deal was repeal the right to work. And that's…the right to work 02:16:00law is the most mean-spirited, ridiculous law that is ever passed. It's…it's…it's… obscene, it's so terrible. Imagine here, people being entitled to representation from a union without paying any money for dues or to support the union. As a matter fact -- reveling in the fact that they don't pay dues, but still gets the same representation that a dues-paying member gets. And under pain of having unfair labor practices charge filed against them and litigated before the board and…and all of that, they have to represent everybody.

FISHMAN: Was there ever a concerted campaign to repeal right-to-work?

STANFORD: No, it never did get too far. You'll have to give the conservative forces credit in…in…in tur…designating that law right-to-work, you know. 02:17:00A guy named Joseph Goebbels, who was a Reich, a Nazi Reich minister for propaganda. He's spinning in his grave because he never thought up a propaganda piece like the right-to-work.

FISHMAN: How about, um, the mayors again, we were mentioning them briefly. Do you remember having much interplay with them on behalf of unions, either, I won't call names, Hartsfield, and who is after him? Is that…

STANFORD: No, I didn't, I didn't have too much.

FISHMAN: How about with Mayor Jackson, you mentioned knowing him. You were both blackballed from the club at the same time. Do you have any other encounters with him?

STANFORD: No, well except he sent me a letter, wanting to go to work with Stanford Fagan, I mean, there I go [inaudible] Stanford. And…I…the guy had 02:18:00an impressive resume.

FISHMAN: Where did he go to law school?

STANFORD: He went up in North Carolina, a black law school up there.

FISHMAN: Is that just after he was out of school? Or.

STANFORD: Huh?

FISHMAN: This was just after he was out of school?

STANFORD: Um, yeah, no, he had been out for a little while. As matter of fact, he was attorney within NLRB for a while. He was getting ready to leave the Board, and sent me that. Of course, I thought it was a damn good idea. And I presented it to the firm. And I couldn't get anybody to support me, back me up. They, um, they…they…what the two of them said was that they didn't think that our clients would accept a black attorney. Of course, I never associated Maynard Jackson with being very black. Anyway, that, um, that was their response.

FISHMAN: He would have been the only black union attorney probably in the city.

STANFORD: This was in 1966, yeah. But I was able to help him. There was a guy here from, um, -- it was in this, um, when they had a legal dispute that the government would set up legal help for people. You remember back then, the Legal Corporation.

FISHMAN: The old Legal Services Corporation.

STANFORD: Yeah, uh huh. This fellow was from South Carolina, he was interested in getting a black attorney in Atlanta. He was with that legal corporation. I mentioned Maynard Jackson. He called Maynard up. He wanted somebody out on the west side. So he put Maynard out there. I think Maynard had plenty of time to politic and get paid at the same time. He was elected mayor from that position.

FISHMAN: Maybe we can talk about that too for a minute, when you talk about the race issues and the times you dealt with the union clients on the race issue. How did it come up and when? [inaudible]

STANFORD: Well, of course, I never had any problem with the United Packinghouse Workers. And of course, I didn't go around challenging people to this or that, or be that way. Of course, even those that were staunch segregationists still got along with me very well. They liked me, the fact that we had different views didn't keep them from -- some of them, now others took a different tack, but some of them didn't mind that.

FISHMAN: Do you remember the period of time when the AFL, for example, was telling unions that they had to start integrating, did you have any interplay with that one issue?

STANFORD: No, I didn't, of course, none of them would have called me to do that. Most internationals wouldn't push their locals to do anything in that 02:21:00field. They were afraid the locals may, um, pull away, secede. And so they did. During my lifetime, the greatest mistake organized labor in the South has ever made was that they didn't gather…grab a hold of Martin Luther King's shirt tail and go with him right through the South. Look what happened up in Memphis. You know…I'm sure King would have been more than glad to join up with organized labor. But organized labor just didn't have the vision.

FISHMAN: Were there any overtures in Atlanta that you remember?

STANFORD: No. No. No. Uh uh. We just have to remember how tight it was. You take the Martin Luther King's funeral march from downtown out to Morehouse. I didn't see any local representatives around, union people. As matter of fact, 02:22:00I remember walking with a Maritime guy from New York. Who was, um, he and his fellow unionists had chartered a bus, maybe several buses. They had ridden all night to get here. And they were marching, and the buses were waiting for them as soon as the march was over, they were going to get back in them and ride all the way back to New York.

FISHMAN: But, there weren't any of the local leaders?

STANFORD: No, and I didn't see many. Uh uh. Which was understandable. A lot of union representatives did not want to be and think it would hurt them to be associated with King. Yeah, at that time.

FISHMAN: I remember those years, I was 14, but I remember them. How about issue of women in membership and leadership, when that started to hit. Do you remember your relationships with the unions and the unethical . . .

STANFORD: Yeah. I remember, um, the, um…you had separate seniority lists. I know even in the Packinghouse Workers which I can understand in some jobs then. Some of the…some of the people that would tell you the strongest, this job is a man's job, this is not a woman's job were women. After they -- it's been rather amusing since the law restricting, you can't limit lifting, they have got to be sex-neutral jobs that women don't like some of that at all. The say, 'Why they have got me doing a man's job.' That has a…has a two-edged sword. Not only that, they used to have a black seniority list. Yeah. 02:24:00The L & N case, one of the first, way back -- was a black fireman who could not get on the locomotive seniority list where he could have no chance, where no black firemen have ever been a locomotive operator.

FISHMAN: Steel or something?

STANFORD: Yeah, L&N or something. And, um, that was the situation with that.

FISHMAN: Who were the unions that adapted the most easily, you think, to integration?

STANFORD: United Packinghouse, International UE, of course, you know, IUE split from UE.

FISHMAN: That was the '40's.

STANFORD: Yeah, of course, you know that was after the purge, and CIO purged 'em. By the way, a lot of people in the South who were against unions said CIO stood for "Christ is Out." [laughter] Anyway, yeah they had the purge in 02:25:00'51. The United Electric…Electronic Workers; Food workers; Mine, Mill and Smelter; Novelty Workers, I think and one or two others.

FISHMAN: You came in after that, but did you experience . . .

STANFORD: No, I was there at the time,

FISHMAN: [inaudible]

STANFORD: Yeah, I was with the NLRB. Right, yeah.

FISHMAN: In your private practice, did you come across red baiting at any time?

STANFORD: Yeah, you can see that in some of the things. Well, I remember you can get some of these AFL trade unions in the construction phase. They hated Walter Reuther more than they did any of the worst employer that they dealt with. At least that was my impression.

FISHMAN: Than was in the '50's, certainly.

STANFORD: Yeah.

FISHMAN: I supposed by the 60s, he must have been accepted, but maybe not.

STANFORD: Yeah, maybe not.

FISHMAN: Um, what about…well, the other…other ism that we had talked about briefly was the anti-semitism. Did you ever see that in the unions that you were dealing with? Probably not much of it around here?

STANFORD: No. [inaudible] Well, actually, I think there is less anti-semitism in the South maybe than any part in the country.

FISHMAN: Well, you have fewer Jewish organizers and lawyers than the rest of it, anyway.

STANFORD: Yeah, and so I never witnessed that. I do remember a campaign photograph that some textile employer put out. It had a picture of--who was head of the Amalgamated [inaudible] with the textile workers? Who was the Amalgamated--with a goatee?

FISHMAN: Was it Hillman?

STANFORD: No. I can't think of his name, but it had a side view of that. 02:27:00These guys, and they all have big noses, look at those noses, can these guys have…can you have…can they have any interest in you?

FISHMAN: Who put this out?

STANFORD: Some employer, I remember seeing that.

FISHMAN: When was that?

STANFORD: Oh, that was back in the '50's, early '60's. Of course, up in…up in the Highlander Folk School was run up in Tennessee, Miles Horton operated it. And that's where you see that -- he had classes up there, so both integrated. This is back in the early 60's, '61 maybe. And they took this picture of Cayley, who was the IUE President at the time, dancing with a black woman. And that was used around, the first case it was used in was over at Breman, Georgia. And that was Hubbard Slacks Manufacture over there. And 02:28:00the board said, for the first time, set the case aside for an appeal to racial prejudice. You know, the board for a long while, would…would not involve and say, 'Look, it may be terrible, but if it is for race, it's not for unionism.'

FISHMAN: When they set that aside, you were with the board?

STANFORD: Um, no, I had left. It was about '60, '61.

FISHMAN: Had you ever been up to Highlander?

STANFORD: Yeah, I have stopped by since they moved over to Stet, yeah.

FISHMAN: They moved for security reasons, why?

STANFORD: Yeah, you know the story on that, don't you? Where they were located, Monteagle, it's a dry county. And, um, Miles Horton had bought a few six packs of beer. And they would sell it to the student there going to school at the actual cost to them, they didn't make a profit off of it. The Attorney General of Tenessee brought an action because they were selling, um, alcoholic 02:29:00beverages in a dry county. And they moved to condemn the property and sell it for public auction, which they did. They sold his property, everything. And Miles relocated over at New Market, Tennessee. That is in the more eastern part of Tennessee, east of Knoxville.

FISHMAN: [inaudible]

STANFORD: Wiped him out. Of course, Miles is deceased now, but he was a stalwart, he's a big man. A lot of unions didn't avail themselves of his workshops and things because they thought he was too leftist.

FISHMAN: Was there some of your union clients that did use stet?

STANFORD: Yeah, I think the Packinghouse Workers had some things up there. Yeah.

FISHMAN: A lot of them, didn't, I'm sure.

STANFORD: That's right, yeah. Well, you would be surprised. United Automobile Workers, I think it was about '52, maybe it was a little later 02:30:00maybe [inaudible] . . . The local at Hapeville built a new union hall. Walter Reuther came down and dedicated it. And Reuther heard that their black members would not be invited there to the building. And Reuther took the position, if it is not open to everyone, I cannot speak there. So they had to find another place for Reuther to make his remarks.

FISHMAN: They didn't integrate, they just let him speak somewhere else?

STANFORD: Yeah, wherever he said, it had to be open. Wherever he spoke, it was open to the black members. Yeah.

FISHMAN: Um, how about, do you remember in your work with union clients, any interplay with clergy in and around town. Either you support or non-support 02:31:00either one?

STANFORD: Hmm, no, the clergy stayed clear of that especially in the rural sections. A lot of the clergy speaking against the union most of the time. One of the most moving speeches I ever heard or read rather was a Unitarian minister in Miami, Florida, before a group of strikers there. Miami, a CWA local, his remarks that he made were exceedingly good. Most ministers would not have accepted an invitation in a small town to come out. Look at Billy Graham, I never heard of Billy Graham being on any union picket line. I never heard -- as a matter of fact, he was very late coming into the civil rights era. He admits 02:32:00it today. Yeah.

FISHMAN: You mentioned earlier that you had been at the first integrated convention.

STANFORD: Yeah, well, this was when I was an attorney with the NLRB, the CIO was having its state convention, it was still separate at that time. At the old Atlanta Municipal Auditorium. It is right there near Georgia State over on Courtland Street. And, um, we were in Taft Hall there and we had all the black and white members there together in this room, which was the first time. It was 1951.

FISHMAN: When was the first time that they got together that they had an integrated convention after that?

STANFORD: Um, oh, I think it was some time later on after that. Well, if the blacks were delegates, they would have been allowed to go to convention. I'm 02:33:00sure that for many years that they couldn't get into a white hotel. You know? [inaudible]

FISHMAN: Do you remember talking to union members about how they felt about that, one way or another, either white or black?

STANFORD: No, I don't remember talking about it. I remember talking to a black union representative named John Henry Hall. They had an educational director that the Packinghouse Workers sent in here. Hall, who's an Alabama native, black man, talked to this guy who said that he wanted to integrate yesterday, that he was really in his zeal to get it integrated, really hurt the method. And…and…um, John Hall was critical of what he did. Well they were down in Moultrie, Georgia, with a meeting of the plant there, Meat Packing Plant 02:34:00there at the local hall, you know. And one of these fellows was getting up. Telfer was his name, T-E-L-F-E-R. Get up and tell them it was the international's position, had to integrate this, had to integrate that and so forth. And he got those employees and members so irate that they got up and kicked over his easel board that he was demonstrating on and told the international representative who was president, they were giving him about 30 minutes to get his butt out of town. And he said we had to get him to his car, and I got him out of town. And then, that local disaffiliated from the Packinghouse Workers that had represented them for many years and joined the 02:35:00Amalgamated Meat Cutters. Where, you know…..but this guy was just too pushy, just too rapid, you know. As a consequence, he lost that local.

FISHMAN: What do you recall the union's relationship to the, um, you know, years of freedom rides and all that activity?

STANFORD: No.

FISHMAN: Was there much of a relationship at all or was it just left alone?

STANFORD: Yeah.

FISHMAN: Well, let me ask you a few questions about your work or whatever 40 years or so with the labor movement, about your impressions and about where it is today in the South.

STANFORD: Oh, well when I went to work with, you know, if anybody had told me that organized labor would have descended to its present status, I would have said, 'No way, this is ridiculous.' …..Was the union of any and they were 02:36:00around pretty close to 40 percent. I don't think Georgia ever got over 15 percent, 16 or 17. South Carolina, North Carolina always stayed at 6 percent. Ah, but, things were moving. You could see organizing and winning elections, main thing, getting the contract. And, um, the employers were resisting unions, a lot of damn bad things. But they weren't quite as mean as they are now. They were not out to completely destroy the labor movement. My impression back then, as anybody in organized labor will tell you, this replacement of economic strikers, which the Supreme Court ruled the employees could back in 1938. It was no big problem because once the strike was over, no matter how strong the 02:37:00feelings have been, there was no thought that the company wouldn't want these strikers to come on back to work. Sure they came on back. The supervisor wanted them because they knew the job, they wouldn't have all this trouble changing people. And they knew them personally, they probably liked each other. And, um, but then, you got these spindoctors, these psychologists, and these lawyers that want to sell the employer on the idea that, 'Look, you don't need to get the best deal you can, why, you know, just leave it up to me and we will get rid of the union for you.' That is what they set out to do. Of course, Reagan put the word out that it was open season to get all the union that he could and get rid of unions with the action that he took to control this 02:38:00thing. There it's ridiculous, you see in a lot of publications that employees don't want a union like they did at one time. That was the reason, they don't see any need for union. That hadn't been my experience. My experience that the employers don't want the union because they are scared. They are afraid that they will lose their job. Maybe they have a right to be; to see all the terrible things were going on, plus the change in the National Labor Relations Board that just gutted the board and the precedents that had been going on for 40 years. It is just the combination of all of that is just hard to overcome.

FISHMAN: Where do you think it's headed?

STANFORD: Where it's headed? Oh, I think it is coming back. I think there are certain signs here in the last months it's beginning to come back. TWUA won a big 4 thousand unit employee unit up in Virginia that's…that's encouraging. They can just hold on, but there has been so much badmouthing. Of 02:39:00course, I think it also goes back to the educational system in this country. That, um, in the public schools and, I guess in the private too, children have no concept of the union. They don't…they don't get taught what a union -- only thing you'll see is about some strike that could -- and not any of the other things, like labor movement is responsible for the public school system in the country. It started that when they saw that their kids couldn't get an education because they couldn't send them to private schools, then they'd push for the public school. So many things, the 8-hour day, many, many things that organized labor evidently is not getting credit for. This old crap about, you know, oh we can see, it was necessary to have unions a hundred years ago, 02:40:00but not today. That's a bunch of crap, you can find plenty of sweatshops all over Georgia and everywhere and the bad working conditions.

FISHMAN: What do you think is the answer about unions keeping on…keeping on getting stronger, how is it going to happen?

STANFORD: I think by more radicalization – maybe of, um, of the attitudes and thoughts on TV labor advocates, you know, the union that Toni Zerochi is starting maybe just through that. Maybe the double [inaudible] I mean that the Democrats may face, may help organized labor eventually because now that things are shaken down and a lot of the Democrats that weren't really Democrat, now with the Republican party, maybe the Democratic party can be the Liberal party. 02:41:00And that…that may be a good development that is coming.

FISHMAN: A lot of people say that the Democrats looked like the cheap version of the Republicans, imitation of the Republicans.

STANFORD: Yeah. Yeah.

FISHMAN: Is that what you think?

STANFORD: Yeah. I think we need to get back to party loyalty. We need to get back to a party that you vote your ideology, you vote for what you think.

FISHMAN: How about younger attorneys or people thinking about going into law, how about labor law, what would you say to them?

STANFORD: Oh, well….well, that I think…I think that on the management side, I don't think it's any doubt that they are motivated by economic gain and hope to…hope to make big bucks. Maybe some of them will. I am amazed at some of the money they make. It's amazing to me when I see what union attorneys 02:42:00make and some attorneys with management. I don't think they are as competent as I was when I was practicing and so forth. They will make two or three more times what the union attorney makes. They can scare these employers with what a 15 cents an hour increase will mean with overtime and everything. To…

FISHMAN: You can always call attention to their three hundred dollars-an-hour bills.

STANFORD: Yeah, the, um, well the idea that the unions are alien. I attended a meeting here, the labor law section of Atlanta four years ago, five years ago, very interesting. The West German Chamber of Commerce people who were stationed 02:43:00here in Atlanta representing the West German Chamber of Commerce spoke. They were talking about how the code determination plan in Germany works so good and how they would have less strikes and everything. These management attorneys in the office - their mouths just flew open. You mean that this is it? He said that over there the one thing that the employer failed to give the union was adequate notice on a shut-down. With the ramification and so forth, it came out that the employer only gave the union six months notice. This was ridiculous, you know, they knew what they were going to do. The union is entitled to notice sooner than any six months. And so they, um, they set aside the employer action. They said that they worked well. I had a Scandanavian trade union 02:44:00leader visit me here in Atlanta. And I was showing them some of these union leaflets in union campaigns. He just couldn't…couldn't begin to understand how the employer could say those things about a union. He said, 'It just wouldn't be tolerated in Sweden. Couldn't do that.'

FISHMAN: I believe it. What was the best and the worst of working for unions all these years?

STANFORD: Huh?

FISHMAN: The best experiences and worst experiences?STANFORD: Oh, I think the best, you mean, the best experience is to experience the fact that you are doing some good for people. You get some people who have been discriminated against, their rights have been denied, and, um, you can vindicate their actions, get them re-instated, get them back-pay, it makes you feel good up holding their right and the law -- that thing. Um, that's, a thing. Of course, the other 02:45:00discouraging part is that you don't see anything new. The old garden variety unfair labor practices, if their employers don't mind framing an employee, if necessary, to get rid of him. And, it's, um, a lot of times it is not necessary. They are going to mess up. You and I both know the employer would never had discharged him in the absence of the union. The employers put with all kinds of stuff when there's no union around that they claim they discharge for. That is the disappointing parts of it. Disappointing, yeah. There doesn't seem to be any desire to--the demeaning of--the workingman in American is demeaned. I hate to say that, but I think it is true. Not given 02:46:00the respect that he is entitled to. You take here in Atlanta, you know, I think the workingman needs more recognition. They have a labor awards thing here in Atlanta that they give each year to the local trade unionist who has been prominent, I think they break it down to a woman and a man, it used to be just one. I never understood why they didn't give that to the worker. Why that award went to these people that get recognition, they go to banquets [inaudible], they have experiences that the rank and file workers never get to be entitled to. I never could see why they couldn't have the "Best Worker of the Year." Give recognition to the dues payer. Give recognition to the dues payer, the guy that works. I have often wondered and I have mentioned this to several people, and I get an affirmative response, but it never seems to change. Yeah.

FISHMAN: Um. [break]

STANFORD: This is a little statement about Ovid Futch, F-U-T-C-H, he's a professor at Morehouse back in the late 50's and early 60s. Futch is the author of the definitive work on the Andersonville Prison back in the Civil War days in Americus, Georgia. His little book there is on sale and it tells the story of the Andersonville. And it is referred to by the Park Service as a definitive story on the Andersonville. He was a professor out at Morehouse College, and back in the 50's took his class to observe the Georgia Legislature in session. Class was seated and the balcony was reserved for the public. A legislator looked up and observed that they were not sitting in the segregated seats where the blacks were designated to sit. And he asked the Sergeant of Arms to go up 02:48:00and make them move. Rather than move, Futch took his class and just returned to the campus. I also…I represented Futch on a traffic case back in the late 50's, early 60's. He was coming down Forest Avenue, it is Ralph McGill Boulevard now, where it comes into North Avenue near Manuel's Tavern. There is a sharp turn in the road there and a stop sign on North Avenue where coming from Forest you have to stop. And he…after he made that turn, a police car was there and flagged him down and said he didn't stop and asked for his driver's license. In getting out his driver's license, Futch dropped his 02:49:00NAACP membership card, and the police reached down and picked it up off of the street and said, 'Does this belong to you?' He said, 'Yes.' Then, the police said, 'Well, you may…we believe you might be driving under the influence', um, and asked him to walk back and forth, which he did. And then, although he was a professor and lived in Druid Hills, had a permanent address, they arrested him, called a wrecker, and had his car pulled in. Um, he called me on a Sunday morning, he was in jail, I went down to just get him out. And, um, he spent the night there. He told me when he went to get out, of course, when you checked in jail they take your personal belongings and safeguard them when they put you back, you don't have them when you are back in the lockup. So, on the way out, they were giving him his personal belongings and the NAACP card 02:50:00was there and the policeman on duty there said, 'You got the wrong kind of card. This is the kind of card you should have.' Then, he slapped a Ku Klux Klan membership card down on the table. I went to court, Atlanta Traffic Court with Futch. The officers claim they never saw any NAACP membership card, claimed that they never questioned him about that or anything. They, um, he had been charged with about four or five things, never did charge him with driving under the influence, charged him with improper lane, charged him with failure to come to a stop, and maybe one other thing. Well, anyway, Futch testified that he couldn't swear that he had come to a complete stop, so the judge had all the other charges dismissed and fined him a small amount on that.

FISHMAN: Speaking of the civil rights issues, did you ever…did you ever see or hear Dr. King speak in town?

STANFORD: Yeah, had him over at our church, in 19….not at our church, but we had a meeting, a joint meeting, I think it was at the Congregationalist church there at Auburn Avenue and Courtland, he spoke, yeah. Yeah, mmhmm.

FISHMAN: He talked some about unions from time to time depending on who came?

STANFORD: Yeah. Yeah. Um.