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INTERVIEWER (INT): Okay. Mr. Lavelle, tell the
story about how you came to work for the Courier.
RL: Well, in 1935, or thereabouts -- it was
1935 -- ahm, we were still in the midst of the Depression
and I had -- one of six children -- I was one of eight
children. I was the sixth of eight children who -- whose
dad had died and there was no welfare and I'd quit school
and had gotten whatever jobs I could. And I was working at
a department store washing dishes in a restaurant and Ira
Lewis, Ira F. Lewis, the president of the Courier, knew me
because we -- I lived near him. In those days, well, people
who were pretty well off lived around the people who were
not as well off because the segregated patterns of housing
kept people from living out at different places and -- but I
knew him and he had daughters my age and so he, ahm --
watchin' me at his home cleanin' and so forth, ah, asked me
if I would like to work for the Courier. And I asked him
when could I start. (Laughs) And he told me Monday. And
that was, I think, Friday or so. So I was there that next -
- that following Monday at eight in the morning and then I
was put to work in the press room, was given the job of
oilin' the press and, you know, you walk around it with an
oil can. There was just one press at the time, and I helped
wrap the papers to send out to the various places where the
newspaper went. And so that's how that started.
DIRECTIONAL
INT: Tell me about that first day.
RL: Well, I'll never forget the first day that I
came to work there and they put me to work doin' all these
things. Whatever needed to be done, that's what I did. You
know, I was the general flunkie, whatever. And, ah, they --
ah, we started to work at eight o'clock that morning and
that evening, Joe Lewis knocked out Max Behrer. And when
that happened, well, Joe Lewis was the only hope that we black people had
and -- and here he had knocked out the former champion of
the world. And he was gettin' -- just gettin' a start. And
so we were just all elated and we were in a really a buoyed-up
high, sort of every one of us. And that was about nine in
the evening and we had been there since nine that morning.
But people were calling from all over the country. The
Courier was a national newspaper and, ah, 10-cent a copy.
People took 'em on assignment and, ah, they were callin' for
papers. And so we kept working. And we worked all night
and the next day and I -- we stopped the press at -- at noon
the next day. I worked 27 hours the first day. And then we
went across the street to the YMCA to sleep for about four
hours and we came back to work and the Courier fed us.
There was a little cafeteria in the YMCA there and they fed
us and so we had the same clothes on, of course, when we
continued working. And, ah, we worked, I guess, that
evening until late in the night.
INT: Where were those people calling from and
what did they want?
RL: (Laughs) People called from, well, places
like Chicago (sic), places like, ah, Cleveland, and places
like Nashville, Tennessee and, as I remember, the one place,
Midnight, Mississippi, I thought, or one of those places
like that. And they would call askin' for newspapers.
They'd ask for 10 or 12 or 20 and some of 'em had got in the
hundreds. And the, ah, Courier would send 'em out on, ah,
assignment. They would send a paper. We'd wrap the paper,
put a label on it, and I would take it down to the station,
ah, train station, and put it on a baggage, ah, car by, ah,
baggage to go to these various destinations. Well, a place
like Chicago, you could just route it direct to Chicago on
the PRR. But a place like, ahm, Mississippi, you might have
to go through Chicago to the Illinois Central and send it
down the Mississippi to that place. And, ahm, so I -- I was
given the job of tryin' to find these routes, these train
routes, in order to send these newspapers. And that became
another function, another assignment in addition to my other
duties to do at The Pittsburgh Courier. (Clears Throat)
INT: Why did they want to see the paper?
RL: Yeah, The Pittsburgh Courier, although
Pittsburgh's a very small city, so to speak, 400,000,
ah, people in the city. And, ah -- but the Courier had a
name among black people because it had tried to reach out to
black people, no matter where they were, and we would try to
send papers to those people. And as the people in those
places became more numerous in terms of circulation, then
those people would get a column in the Courier and maybe
even on the front page of the Courier, ah, and pretty soon
that place had an edition of the Courier. So the Courier
developed 13 editions and we would send papers to these
various, ah, regional places and the people in those 13
places, 13 edition places, Like the Midwest edition, the New
England edition, the Chicago edition, the Philadelphia
edition, and the Southern edition and all, we'd send 'em
down by seaboard airline, Atlantic coastline railroad, down
through Florida and all those places. And my job was to try
to find routes to put those papers on trains to send. And
so I became quite aware of the country. (Laughs)
INT: Tell me about how the Courier got agents.
RL: Yes. Right. Every Courier had a big ad in
it for agents, and "Become an agent and become your own
boss. And, ah, (Laughs) and you will make 40 percent of the
cost of this paper." And so the agent would get four cents
for every ten cent that they sold, every paper they sold for
10 cents. And if the people couldn't sell all the papers,
they didn't have to send back the whole paper; they would
cut out the masthead, "Pittsburgh Courier", and send it
back. And many times they would send it back with a roll of
stamps and the stamps would be to pay for them, (Laughs) you
know, postage stamps. Ah, didn't have money orders or
checks or whatever, but they would -- whatever -- however --
whatever means they had, they would pay for those papers.
DIRECTIONAL
INT: How many hours had you worked by the end of
that first week?
RL: Well, at the end of the first week I figured
up I had worked about 80 hours, (Laughs) and my pay was ten
dollars. And R.F. Lewis, the president, would sit there and
he would count out the money, a five dollar bill and five
ones, and he gave it to me. Boy, I was elated to have this
ten dollars and went out the door. And there was Daisy
Lampkin. Daisy Lampkin was the first vice president of the
NAACP nationally at the time and on the board and a very
prominent figure. And, ahm, I knew her and I knew her
family. You know, everyone knew everybody, blacks. And,
ahm, she stopped me. She said, "Wait a minute, young man.
Give me a dollar." I said, "A dollar? What for?" "NAACP
membership." "Well, that's a tenth of my salary. I've
worked 80 hours. You want a dollar?" And she said, "Yep!"
I said, "But I can't give you that. I need carfare and
lunch money and I have to give some money at home." And I
started namin' off (Unintell.). She said, "You could be one
of those Scottsboro boys." I said, "Scottsboro boys?"
"Yeah! You know," -- I said, "Oh, yeah, Scottsboro boys."
The Scottsboro boys were about 10 or 12 kids -- I've
forgotten how many there were -- blacks kids who were
accused of rapin' two white women on a train in the South in
Alabama. And, ah, they were, ah, bein' tried and they were
convicted. They were sentenced to death. And they were my
age! And she's tellin' me that I could be them and I'd be
wantin' someone to send money down there for them. She got
the dollar and I become an NAACP member and a very rabid
NAACP fan. I mean I was for the NAACP. They got -- they
took a tenth of my salary. (Laughs)
INT: What did your job at the Courier represent
to you?
RL: The Courier meant everything to me. It was
my way out, my way out of poverty, my way out of, ah, the
feeling of hopelessness and helplessness, and a feeling of
not havin' any merit, any worth, ah, as a black kid, you
know -- because I had, as a black kid, tried to -- I would
hire myself out to people, ask them to take me one, and one
white man said he wasn't goin' to teach a nigger anything.
And I offered to work for nothing for him! And that was the
type of milieu that we -- that we were living in at that
time. Ah, and this was a nice man, you know, that was
talkin' to me. (Laughs) But "nigger" was a common
expression and -- and that's what we were. And -- and I
just -- I didn't like it, but -- and I wanted to learn and -
- and I didn't have the ability to pay to go anywhere and
yet a person -- I was denied the opportunity even to learn
for workin' for nothing. And that was something that really
hurt me.
INT: What did the Courier represent to you?
RL: The Courier represented hope for me. The --
ah, the hope that things could be better for me and the hope
that, ah, some of the things that I knew needed to be done
could be done and I recognized the, ah, power of the press
at that time. There wasn't television and, ah, there
wasn't, ah, ah -- radio, you know, was certainly present,
but, ah, we didn't have access to it. But we did have
access to newspapers. And there were several black
newspapers that were doin' fairly well. But it represented
to me an opportunity for me to advance and it gave me the
incentive to go back to school and to finish my high school
education at night while I worked at the Courier, and even
to get the two college degrees at the University of
Pittsburgh, I got, workin' every day at the Courier.
INT: Talk about the role models at the Courier.
RL: Yes. The Courier had everything that you'd
want, really, at that time, a young black. Not only did the
Courier itself have talented people, such as engravers and
such as linotype operators and pressmen, and I'm at that
time a mailer, you know, and doin' other things and also
able to work in the circulation department, able to do a lot
of other things. And, ahm, ah, to see editorial writers and
people like George Schuyler, who would come and I'd get to
meet him and Nat King Cole would come and everyone would
come to the Courier because the Courier would be writin' up
people. And Joe Lewis would come and, of course, Joe Lewis
was the only hope we had in terms of national, ah, prestige
and national economic opportunity. You know, here was a man
makin' a lotta money and no one else was. And so, ah, the
Courier just represented all of that to me. But there was
one element of it that disturbed me. Ahm, the accounting
department was all white. People would come in from other
places. Dukane(?) University had a professional staff that
they sent up there. And I would see that and I would, ah,
say, "Huh, we ought to be able to do that, too," and, ahm,
so I would -- I spoke to Mr. Lewis about it and he said he
would talk to Mr. Vann about it. And Mr. Vann was the, ahm,
publisher of the Courier and he was a very prestigious man.
He was, ahm, one of the -- one of the, ahm, Assistant
Attorney Generals under Franklin Roosevelt. And, ah, he was
a powerful man. And so Mr. Lewis had to speak to him, the
publisher, about what I'd proposed to him, that they'd send
me to get -- to learning accounting so that I could be their
accountant. And, ah, he said, "Well, that'd make you a
specialist." I said, "But I'll be your specialist. I'll
sign in -- I'll be your indentured servant. I'll be
whatever you want. Just send me to Pitt to learn accounting
so that I can be your accountant." Well, ah, Mr. Lewis
talked to Mr. Vann about it, but he didn't say anything to me
about it and he would -- ah, we would ride home every
evening together. I would drive him home in his car and he
would -- ah, then he would get out and I'd go to my home and so
I was just hopin' that I could have that happen for me. But
it did represent, ah, all the hope that anyone could want
was right there in that Courier.
INT: What happened?
RL: Ahm, they -- ah, finally Mr. Lewis told me
that Mr. Vann had said that, ah, that would make me a
specialist and they needed me more in a general capacity
because I was very valuable that way. And, you know -- and
that sounds good, but -- but it still meant that I was the
guy that they could call on to run errands or to do
whatever, but I wasn't the guy who could be trusted to keep
those records and to, ah, to help the Courier to be
projected into the future because its recording say this and
records say that. And, ah, so that hurt me very deeply, but
it made me realize that I wanted to become an accountant.
And so my going on the University of Pittsburgh to -- I
started my freshman year accounting and freshman English.
INT: Talk about J.A. Rogers.
RL: J.A. Rogers was, ah, the historian that, ah,
would have a picture of the art history, black history, in
the Courier every week. And that was the title of it. I
think it was "Black History" was what it was called. And we
would read that and sometime we would laugh (Laughs) because
he'd have it that we were royalty, you know, and all that.
And we didn't know anything about royalty. You know, when were
blacks royal anywhere. And we were -- we were the pharaohs
of Egypt and we were the chiefs of all the tribes, you know,
of Africa and we were all these things. And, ah, he was
really right in many instances, but we had such a poor image
of ourselves that we would ridicule that. "We," I'm talkin'
about the people that I knew, you know, who would look at
J.A. Rogers. But yet I would find myself not missing -- you
know, readin' it and readin' it and pourin' over it and I
would find some things that were substantive in terms of my
historical understanding from my textbooks that, you know,
made sense. And so, ah, it just started me on my growth, my
maturation process, I guess, of -- of not denigratin' self.
INT: What was the role of Afro-American
newspapers, the Courier, in building and maintaining
community?
RL: Ahm, yes, it did. It -- ahm, but I don't
think it was quite aware of -- of that role as much as it
was of tryin' to get the advertising that was necessary to
sustain it to keep it going because the circulation wasn't
sufficient to -- to pay, you know, to keep the expenses of
it going. Ahm, so -- ah, but we would often put on
different things like cooking schools and that would bring a
lot of women, you know.
INT: Talk about how you felt as an 18 year-old
kid being influenced by those role models.
RL: Well, it gave me the incentive to want to
emulate and exceed them, ah, and to, ah, help them to be the
role models they are. I always wanted to, ah, try to be
with 'em and, ah, I never wanted to be a Nat King Cole. I
knew I couldn't sing, ah, or I never wanted to really try to
be a linotype operator because I didn't seem to have that
type of dexterity. But, ah, I did want to somehow have a
say in what was happening and to, ah, help, ahm, formulate
plans to try to reach out to do more and more of what we
were doing.
INT: What was the Double V campaign and why was
it important?
RL: Ah, durin' World War II, the, ah, Courier
was, ahm, very active. In fact, the Courier became a focus
of investigation by the FBI at one point. The Courier, to
deviate a little bit from your question, to show that the
Courier was always tryin' to deal with issues that were
germane to not only black people, but to everyone, ah, such
as the Supreme Court justices. Hugo Black was put up as a
former Ku Klux Klan person and we were opposed to him. But
he became a great jurist, you know, but yet we opposed. The
different things that occurred, we would always be on the
front pages with it and in this instance the war was on,
World War II, and I was drafted by -- finally in 1943, ah,
and I had to leave the Courier for four years and come back.
But the Courier instituted -- there was a man that sent in a
letter to the Courier sayin' that what we need, black people
need, is a Double V campaign, "V" for victory at home and
"V" for victory abroad, see, but the victory at home is just
as necessary as the victory abroad. And so the Courier came
out with this Double V Campaign. And, of course, it
spread -- oh, we embraced it! Hugged and loved it, yeah!
(Unintell.) That's right. That's what we did everywhere.
But, of course, ah, the -- some white people start sensin'
that to be a -- a threat, ah, to, ah, the, ahm, unanimity of
agreement that's needed by a country that's at war. You
know, it shouldn't be fightin' anything within itself, that
it should be just fightin' the enemy abroad, you know. But
the whole purpose was that we're gonna fight this battle
simultaneously because we're needed -- you know, we are
black people and we're out here fightin' and dyin' just like
everyone else. And, ah, therefore, we're -- we're gonna get
victory at home as well as abroad. So, ahm, the, ah, J.
Edgar Hoover and others, you know, were very interested in
the fact that the Courier was, ah, ah, institutin' something
that they felt had a tendency to be subversive and,
therefore, was a threat.
INT: Why would people in Midnight, Mississippi
want to see the Courier's coverage of Joe Lewis?
RL: The -- the Courier represented power for
black people and we don't -- we'd never had any power. We
were always subservient to whomever. And, therefore, the
Courier represented not only power, but then to see Joe
Lewis standing over this white man after knockin' him out
and, ah, that represented everything, you know, at that
point. And it wasn't that they hated the white, but it's
just that they -- we never -- we were always the guy down
there and the other person up over us. And so the Courier
represented something entirely different. And so did the
people who ran the Courier represent something different.
DIRECTIONAL
INT: What do you think was the main reason for
the decline of the black press?
RL: The main reason for the decline in black --
the black president, in my opinion, was television, the
onset of television and the technologies that were coming
about. Although the Courier at that time would come up with
color, ah, sections, you know, (Unintell.) review sections
and, ah, different things that people would buy a paper for
that was different, but, ah, the fact that someone could buy
a television and look at news and see it in other parts of
the country and all, all at the same time it was going on,
started the decline, I think, of the press, black press.
INT: Tell me about the circulation and the power
of the Courier.
RL: The fact that, ah, people could read about
themselves in a national newspaper was a phenomena. And,
ah, they, ah -- a marriage, you know, a wedding just like
the white papers would have the socialites, you know, the
big people, the, ah, Kennedys or the, ahm, Roosevelts at the
time, you know, whatever they were doin', well, the Courier
had the elite, so called, of the Courier -- of the black
people on their pages. And, ah, everyone could be on those
pages and there was really no class, so to speak, but yet
there -- there was some, you know. But yet the people liked
the idea of bein' able to read about themselves while
they're readin' about others and while they know the issues
of the day are bein' discussed. And so there was relevance
all the way, plus hope, and -- and plus incentive, you know,
to -- to try to do and to be and to relate to. And the --
the Courier had that -- that -- the knack. That was a
unique situat-- what the Courier had that others didn't
probably have. And I don't know how to describe it
otherwise.
DIRECTIONAL
RL: Well, The Pittsburgh Courier attained a
circulation of 400,000 nationally and no paper had ever
gotten anything like that. No other, ah, media, black media
that I know of has had 400,000 circulation. And it was a
weekly thing. And we were just -- it looked like the sky
was the limit and, ah, everyone was excited and I was
excited and -- and even the people, you know, that weren't
big people, so to speak. We were all excited about the fact
that we related to. But the thing that brought it out to me
was when I was drafted in the Army and I was sent to all
these different places and people would find out I worked at
the Courier, I became an important person, yeah, no matter
what, because I worked at the Courier. They couldn't get
over the fact that I worked at the Courier. "Did you know
Jess Washington?" "Sure, I know Jess Washington, know him
well." Jess was sports editor for the Courier, you know,
friend of Joe Lewis. And, of course, I knew Joe Lewis even.
Joe Lewis recognized me once. (Clears Throat)
INT: Did the Courier have power?
RL: Oh, yes. And the Courier knew it had power,
too. But that's why it stood the, ahm, onslaught of the
power of the government in the Double V Campaign when --
when we were sort of intim-- threatened and -- and tried to
be intimidated to not run that because it was divisive --
de-- de-- divisive, (Laughs) and it, therefore, should not
be done and we were unpatriotic.
INT: Did you ever see FBI agents come to the
paper?
RL: Ahm, I never knew them to be such as that,
but -- but I was investigated by FBI, very sensitively. I
became an officer and there were a lot of things in my life,
you know, that they were investigating.
DIRECTIONAL, CUT
(END OF THIS INTERVIEW)
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