| Summary: | (7:47) Houston Cobb discusses various aspects of the civil rights movement. This interview is part of an oral history project funded by a grant from the Alabama Historical Records Board, managed by the Alabama Department of Archives and History staff, using funds provided by the National Historical Preservation and Records Commision.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Huston Cobb
May 27, 2009
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Patti Hannah
Clip 8 of 9
Clint Alley: Ah, well do you remember the Montgomery Bus Boycott?
Huston Cobb: Yeah.
CA: What did people think about that around here?
HC: They, everybody was in, in favor of it.
CA: Well, what did, what did you think of Martin Luther King when he first came out in leadership there?
HC: Good man. Just happened to be at the right place, at the right time. Not that he, ah, not that stuff hadn't been going on. Like Marcus Garvey, you ever heard of him?
CA: Yes, sir.
HC: Marcus Garvey, now that's what you call sacrifice. John Lewis, I know you know about him. John Lewis would be a hero, that got his head beat. King was leading the thing; they wouldn't let him get out there and get hurt if they can keep him from it. Malcolm X, folks, everything about him, but you had to have Malcolm X before you could, ah, ah—I'm trying to find the—appreciate, what King was doing. You had to have King; you had to have George Wallace to appreciate King. The greatest three things that ever happened in the twentieth century was World War II, George Wallace, and Martin Luther King. And I told this to George Wallace's son when he was up here. He made a speech for them. I was telling him, I made the statement in the meeting, George Wallace wasn't a segregationist as such. Everybody prejudiced, you, me. If you don't think you are, tell them this over yonder at UNA. A lot of times I see prize fighters fighting, and they're black and white, and I'll be rooting for the black, and I don't know neither one of them!
[laughter]
HC: I didn't want, I didn't want Pearl Bailey to marry Lewis Bellson, who used to be the drummer for some of those boys. Now, what did I have to do with them folks, they didn't know me, and didn't care nothing about me. But George Wallace done what he had to do. Came up here campaigning, and my brother, the one I was talking about live in, where that house is, was there, and he gave him a card. Came back after he got beat, and he said they, what you call, 'out-segged' him that time, and that would never happen again. Came back the next time, my brother happened to be there, up on the back of the truck talking, passed by and didn't even look at him.
[laughter]
HC: He gave all the white folks cards. But, ah, he wasn't, we, we needed him. Foreman—Folsom was down there. He let Adam Clayton Powell come down to the mansion and, ah, drink some scotch, and everybody raised Cain, 'That old nigger come down there drinking scotch in the, in the Governor's Mansion!' So? What happened because of it? Nothing.
[laughter]
HC: What happened when Wallace stood in the door? Lot of stuff happened. Wallace knew what he was doing. Just like, ah, he made the Federal government—he's better for us than the Federal government. When I first started to work out there at TVA, the credit union, well I'll go back further than that. When my daddy first started out there, blacks had to go up to get their checks and pull their hat off to get the, their check. When I first started out there, they had a credit union wasn't, credit union wasn't famous like they are now, but they had one. They had a little window. You'd go in there and, ah, if you wanted some money, if a black wanted some money, he had to go by Goldsten, this black guy, and he, he’d keep the other black folks in line, if Goldsten said you got it, you’ve got it. But you had to go to that window on payday to get your check. Course they'd take their money out. Here's a line over here, where the regular folks that didn't know of, all of what, one white in that line over there, he was, ah, you know, kind of a moron type guy?
[laughter]
HC: But that's the way it was. So I goes up there to Goldsten one day, I think I wanted $300. And I said, “But I don't want to stand in that line. I want to get my money like, pay my debt like everybody else, like I pay all the rest of them.” He said, “Well, brother, you don't have to stand in that line.” Cause Goldsten had known my daddy from way back, of course, so I got, I didn't have to do nothing. But you, you'd have to stand in that line, and you see that line over there and you know what it is, here are all the black folks who know it; if you wanted to borrow some money you had to get about, say you wanted $600, you had to get about fifteen or twenty folks to sign with you. The boy just going around, “Would you sign a note with me?” So I never did have to do none of that. Matter of fact, I told you I always could make an A?
Patti Hannah: Yeah, yeah.
CA: Yeah.
[laughter]
HC: Now my worst experience out there was, ah, they got me for the Hatch Act. You know what that is, don't you?
CA: No.
HC: If you work for the government, you can't participate in politics openly.
CA: Oh, yeah.
HC: Endorse. You can participate in issues, but no endorsement. Well that's when I was telling you I was president of the Voter's League. And, ah, [name purposely edited out of audio], a man that owned about a third of all those old raggedy houses there in Sheffield, used to be, well he got to be a drunkard. He was a rich man at one time, got to be a drunkard, an alcoholic. He was pulling for one man and I was for somebody else. And he wrote Knoxville, and they sent a man down here, a lawyer, stayed about two or three weeks investigating. Went all over to the courthouse and everywhere. And a lot of big white folks came to my rescue on that. Folks that I didn't hardly know. And they told me—Goldsten saw me coming by one day, going to work, he came out and stopped me and said, “You look like the weight of the world is on your shoulders.” Said, “I know you're worried, but don't you get worried till I get worried, and I'm not worried.” Cause the man had told them what he was going back to Knoxville and recommend, that I didn't violate the Hatch Act, I almost did, but I didn't. Cause this guy claimed I made speeches in Sheffield, Tuscumbia, Muscle Shoals, Cherokee, drove two cars hauling folks to the polls, I hadn't done none of that. I did what I told you, had all those folks down there asking them those questions, and that's when they thought, “Well, he's getting too powerful; we've got to do something here!”
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