Abstract
Pharmacist Dick Raney wore many hats in Lawrence, a town he had called home since he left Osborne, Kansas, in 1945 to enroll at the University of Kansas. The owner of several drugstores in Lawrence, in the early 1960s Raney and his father built the Hillcrest shopping center on the western edge of town, a venture that foreshadowed the town’s growth in that direction. A moderate Republican, Raney was elected to the city commission, was mayor for four years, and served on the board of directors of Headquarters (a drug counseling center), the Ballard Center (a black-oriented community center in north Lawrence), and other community organizations. The coffee shop in his south Massachusetts Street pharmacy was like an informal town meeting, where people of different backgrounds and perspectives met to discuss politics, problems confronting the city, or the latest scientific discoveries. As a pharmacist, Raney had a broad range of customers, but he knew little about them and their problems, especially his black customers. Raney recalled that he had been aware of some protests over racial exclusion in Lawrence, but he and other whites who frequented the coffee shop believed “those were isolated events.” He noted that he and other Lawrencians “were not well enough acquainted with the black perspective” in the early 1960s to fully comprehend matters of race. In time, however, as a civic leader Raney was forced to examine racial issues in his community.1
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Notes
Dick Raney, interview by author, tape recording, Lawrence, Kansas, 8 October 1996.
Quoted in Bill Moyers, Listening to America: A Traveler Rediscovers His Country (New York: Harper’s Magazine Press, 1971), 88.
Although there were distinctions between the Black Power and civil rights movements, I use Clayborne Carson’s formulation and consider them to be part of the same freedom struggle. Many blacks did not distinguish between the two, and, for most whites, there was no difference between the rhetoric and ideas of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, or between the goals of the civil rights movement and the black power movement. Additionally, as Timothy B. Tyson has recently suggested, many of the tenets of Black Power—“independent black political action, black cultural pride, and … armed self-reliance”—sprang from the same soil as more traditional struggles for African American freedom. See Tyson, “Robert E Williams, ‘Black Power,’ and the Roots of the African American Freedom Struggle,” The Journal of American History 88:2 (September 1998): 540–570; quotes from p. 541.
Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 44.
Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 244.
Kathy King and Marilyn Beagle, “The Historical Development of Obtaining a Public Swimming Pool in Lawrence, Kansas,” (paper prepared for Sociology 165, fall, 1970, University of Kansas), in “Swimming Pool File,” Douglas County Historical Society, Lawrence, Kansas (hereafter, DCHS); Jesse Milan, interview by author, tape recording, Kansas City, Kansas, 27 May 1994; “Lookout,” Lawrence Outlook (hereafter, LO), 1 August 1963; “Club-Hotel at 23rd and Iowa St.” LO, 3 August 1961.
Lawrence Human Relations Commission (hereafter, LHRC), minutes of meeting, 6 April 1966; “Tuesday Voting Sets City Mark,” and “The City Election” (editorial) both in Lawrence Daily Journal-World (hereafter, LDJW), 3 April 1963.
“Advisory Group Set to Move,” LDJW, 5 January 1967; “Bond Project Given Okay,” LDJW, 13 January 1967; “City’s Move on Pool Aid Is Rejected,” LDJW, 25 July 1967; “Bond Voting Setup Given Dual Okay,” LDJW, 12 September 1967.
John Spearman, Jr., telephone interview by author, tape recording, 9 October 1994.
Milan, interview; Spearman, Jr., interview; “Cleanup Starts for Swim Pool,” LDJW, 10 August 1967; “Public Pool Plan Inaugurated Here”; Dowdell’s complaint in Moyers, Listening to America, 96.
Mrs. V. R. Rody to the editor, LDJW, 17 August 1967; Roberts quoted in “Cleanup Starts for Swim Pool.”
“Police Policies Topic of Meet of Rights Body”; Verner Newman, interview by Marian J. Weeks, Lawrence, Kansas, 9 March 1989, in Marian J. Weeks, “Lawrence, 1970: A Narrative and Oral Histories Surrounding Three Crises” (master’s thesis, University of Kansas, 1990), 195–198.
Charles Greer, interview by Marian J. Weeks, Lawrence, Kansas, 1 September 1990, in Weeks, “Lawrence, 1970,” 144.
Raney, interview by author; Bill Simons, interview by Marian J. Weeks, Lawrence, Kansas, 20 September 1989, in Weeks, “Lawrence, 1970,” 178–179.
Milan, interview; King and Beagle, “Public Swimming Pool,” 9, 10; Dick Raney, interview by Marian J. Weeks, Lawrence, Kansas, 1 September 1990, in Weeks, “Lawrence, 1970,” 253–254; James L. Postma to the editor, LDJW, 24 November 1967, 4; “‘Hall’ Meeting a Hit,” LDJW, 20 September 1967; “Churches Back Pool,” LDJW, 16 November 1967; “Swimming Pool Can Give Community Total Aquatic Program,” LDJW, 17 November 1967; “The Bond Vote,” LDJW, 20 November 1967; see also several letters to the editor, LDJW, 24 November 1967.
Milan, interview. The headlines can be found in LDJW, 5 August 1967; 7 August 1967; 1 August 1967.
Roy Hicks to James B. Pearson, 6 April 1967, and Pearson to Hicks, 9 April 1967 (emphasis mine), James B. Pearson Papers (hereafter, JBP), 52.9.
Carson, In Struggle, 227, 244; Carmichael and Hamilton, Black Power, 41, 52–3.
William L. Van Deberg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965–1975 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 9, 17, 28.
Gretchen Cassel Eick, “‘Lift Every Voice’: The Civil Rights Movement and America’s Heartland, Wichita, Kansas, 1854–1972” (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1997), 217–218; “No Black Guard Exists, According to Attorney,” Wichita Beacon, 31 October 1968. Harrison’s criminal record is taken from a memo from Raymond Nichols to E. Laurence Chalmers, 13 January 1970, which Nichols reportedly received from Douglas County Attorney Dan Young. See Chancellor’s Office, E. Laurence Chalmers, Correspondence, General, 1969–70, box 1, “Leonard Harrison” folder (hereafter, ELC General), University Archives, University of Kansas (hereafter, UA); Harrison’s pardon in “Coming Home.”
Stephanie Coleman, interview by author, tape recording, Lawrence, Kansas, 24 September 1996.
Harrison quoted in “Coming Home”; Simons, interview by Weeks, 170–171, 172, 175; Ocoee Miller telephone conversation with author, 4 November 1998; “Oral History Interview with Ocoee Miller,” by Louis George Griffin III (transcript) 19 September 1975, in Douglas County Community Improvement Association Papers, (hereafter, DCCIA), box 18, Kansas Collection, Lawrence, Kansas (hereafter, KC); Milan, interview; and Spearman, Jr., interview. An anecdote in David Ohle, Roger Martin, and Susan Brosseau, eds., Cows are Freaky When They Look at You: An Oral History of the Kaw Valley Hemp Pickers (Wichita: Watermark Press, Inc., 1991), 113–116, tends to support Miller’s assertions. The speaker tells about “Major M, the big bad black man in town, the one who had all white liberals absolutely, completely snowed,” which in all likelihood was Leonard Harrison. The story also suggest that “Major M” coerced and hoodwinked whites into giving him money to run the Ballard Center and other programs, “[a]nd a lot of that money disappeared. This town was taken for a ride.”
Helen Kimball, interview by Mr. Nether, n.d., Douglas County Historical Society, Lawrence, Kansas (hereafter, DCHS); Karen Marie Byers, interview by Mr. Nether, 5 July 1977, DCHS.
Byers, interview transcript; Kenneth Newman, interview by Mr. Nether, n.d., DCHS; Medley quoted in “Negroes At LHS Air Concerns,” LDJW 22 May 1968.
William Medley, “A Report to the Parents of Lawrence High School Students,” n.d. [probably October 1968] (hereafter, Medley “Report,” 1968), in Max Rife, personal collection of materials related to student activism at Lawrence High School, 1968–1970; LHRC, minutes of meeting, 4 September 1968; Robert D. Ramsey to Jack Zimmerman, 1 May 1968; and “Note-o-gram” to Dr. Knox, 17 April 1968, both in “Black Walkout 1968” folder, DCHS.
Spearman, Jr., interview; “KU Group Meets to Discuss LHS,” UDK, 27 September 1968.
Bill D. Haas to Carl Knox, n.d.; and miscellaneous phone messages and ephemeral material, both in “Black Walkout, 1968” folder, DCHS; “On the Street,” LO, 26 September 1968; “Ed Abels’ Column,” LO, 30 September 1968.
Medley “Report,” 1968, 5; Martin Modricin, “The Black Student Movement at LHS: A Study of the 1970 Black Student Demonstrations” (unpublished history honor thesis, University of Kansas. n.d.), KC. Assistant Superintendent Dr. Robert Ramsey, in a September 30 memo, told LHS vice principal H. C. Stuart to “inventory materials in the LHS library” for a black history course and to set up the course; see memorandum, Ram-sey to H. C. Stuart, 30 September 1968, “Black Walkout 1968” folder, DCHS.
Quoted in Moyers, Listening to America, 104.
See, for example, Harambee 1:2 [1970]. The University of Kansas Archives has several issues of Harambee. I am not sure how many issues were published. Many issues are not dated but can be identified by the topics they cover. On the BSU’s campus speakers, see Black Student Union, Records (hereafter, BSU), box 1, “1968” folder, UA; the quote is from Van Deberg, New Day in Babylon, 26.
The demands are in BSU, box 1, “1969/70” folder; K. S. Adams to E. Laurence Chalmers, 11 November 1969, and Fred Benson, Jr. to E. Laurence Chalmers, 4 November 1969, both in Chancellor’s Office, E. Laurence Chalmers Correspondence, Departmental, 1969/70, box 1, “Black Student Union” folder, UA (hereafter, ELC Departmental).
This paragraph is taken from the following: E. Laurence Chalmers, interview by author, tape recording, San Antonio, Texas, 1–2 April 1994; Chalmers to Daryl Bright, 14 November 1969, in ELC Departmental, box 1, “Black Student Union” folder; untitled, unsigned manuscript, 26 February 1970, and “Press Release” from the Chancellor’s Office, undated [5 March 1970], both in BSU, box 1, “1969/70” folder; Francis Heller, “K.U. Notes 1948–1972” (unpublished manuscript, n.d. [19731), 727–728, UA; and Spearman, Jr., interview. Spearman admitted that he and the BSU had put so much pressure on Chalmers that it probably contributed to the chancellor losing his job a few years later.
The background information on Penn House is taken from the following: Human Development and Family Life, department files, “Penn House” folder, UA; Douglas County Community Improvement Association, assorted correspondence, box 1, “1969–1971” folder; Ocoee Miller, conversation with author; “Oral History Interview with Ocoee Miller”; “Penn House Helps Women to Help Themselves,” LDJW, 5 September 1969; “‘Penn House’ Plans Ahead,” LDJW, 26 March 1970; “Young Rules Bomb Cause in $100 Fire,” LDJW, 6 July 1970.
Simons, interview, 168; Leonard Harrison and Lenore Findlay to “Gentlemen,” 4 December 1969, and Keith Miller, “Relationship Between Ballard Center and Penn House,” both in DCCIA, box 1, “Correspondence: C.C.B.C. (1969–1970)” folder; “Oral History Interview with Ocoee Miller.”
Simons, interview, 168; Harrison and Findlay to “Gentlemen,” 4 December 1969, and [Keith Miller], “Relationship Between Ballard Center and Penn House,” both in DCCIA, box 1, “Correspondence: C.C.B.C. (1969–1970)” folder.
Vernell Sturns to Keith Miller, 17 December 1969, and Keith Miller, “Very Brief Summary of Relating with CCBC,” both in DCCIA, box 1, “Correspondence: C.C.B.C. (1969–1970)” folder.
Keith Miller, “Rumors Regarding Penn House and Its Staff,” in DCCIA, box 1, “Correspondence: C.C.B.C. (1969–1970)” folder.
“Oral History Interview with Ocoee Miller”; Leonard Harrison to Keith Miller, n.d. [January 1970], in DCCIA, box 1, “Correspondence: C.C.B.C. (1969–1970)” folder; “peckerwood” in Harambee, n.d. [probably May 1970]; Margaret Wedge, “Grass Roots in Action,” (unpublished paper for Social Work 969, December 1978), KC; “Young Rules Bomb Cause in $100 Fire.”
Herbert H. Haines, Black Radicals and the Civil Rights Mainstream, 1954–1970 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988), quoted in Van Deberg, New Day in Babylon, 306.
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© 2002 Rusty L. Monhollon
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Monhollon, R.L. (2002). “Our Way of Life”. In: “This is America?”. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403982407_6
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