ARLINGTON COUNTY LIBRARY Oral History Project

CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT COMPLETED: 06/04/94

NARRATOR: Edmund D. Campbell INTERVIEWER: Cas Cocklin DATE: 04/12/91, 05/8/91, 05/13/91 NAME: camp-ed.int TRANSCRIBERS: Pat Johnston, Bette Cohen

INTERVIEWER: This is April 12, 1991. We are in the Columbia Pike branch of the Arlington County Library with an oral history interview. This is Cas Cocklin interviewing a very distinguished Arlington resident and one who has contributed greatly to the community as a whole and specifically to the oral history program because he has been doing these interviews for a number of years. Now he's on the receiving end. However, in 1975, he did do an interview from the Zonta Oral History Project, interviewed by Theda Nichols. So we will skip a few of the early details which were covered by that interview and let Mr. Edmund D. Campbell talk today about his various activities without so many questions

1 to interrupt. But I do have one specific question. The original interview mentioned your educational background. You were an economics major--graduate--from Washington and Lee. And then you switched later to law. Why was that?

NARRATOR: I really didn't know what I wanted to do in a profession. I was not at all sure that I would like the law, and I was interested in the possibility of economics, the study of economics, and possibly the analysis of economics in, shall I call it, economic systems. But economists did not make a good living. And there were very few of them who could operate in society, that is, the business society. I did get this masters degree at Harvard in economics, but not knowing what else to do, I came back and finished my law at Washington and Lee.

INTERVIEWER: It was in law, then, that you perhaps could have more of a hands-on effect on things than an economist whose view is very long-range?

NARRATOR: Yes, but I still wasn't sure I wanted to practice law, and I got this job with an economist in Washington. That was after I'd become a member of the bar. And I was with him for two or three years. The question came, how did I get into law. Well, I got into law because my economist employer went broke. And I had to get into law to make a living.

2 INTERVIEWER: And what year was this?

NARRATOR: This was in 1925. I really didn't like the law for a while. It was not until I got actually trying cases and using the law as a vehicle for getting into civic work and matters affecting community generally, that I became really enamored of it as a profession.

INTERVIEWER: It seemed a more useful profession?

NARRATOR: That's right.

INTERVIEWER: When you first started practicing law, what were you involved in at first?

NARRATOR: Simply routine cases, claims against people who didn't pay their debts, and drawing wills, and learning to draw trusts for people who wanted to set up trusts for their assets, and getting a general knowledge of general law from very distinguished lawyers, Mr. Douglas and Mr. Obear in Washington.

INTERVIEWER: Which Mr. Douglas?

NARRATOR: That's Charles A. Douglas of Winsboro, South Carolina.

3 INTERVIEWER: And you eventually set up your own law practice?

NARRATOR: No, I became a member of the firm of Douglas Obear and Douglas, later known as Douglas Obear and Campbell, and practiced as a member of that firm, oh, until 1975 when we merged with another firm, now known as Jackson and Campbell.

INTERVIEWER: And what brought you to Arlington? You originally had gone to Washington.

NARRATOR: I suppose I came to Arlington to live, because my first wife's family was in Arlington. And we acquired a little house there.

INTERVIEWER: So you came to civic life through what medium?

NARRATOR: Well, after Esther, my first wife, and I, came to Arlington, I got to know Charles Fenwick quite well. Charles Fenwick was very much interested in Arlington politics, served Arlington for two generations really, as a member of the House of Delegates in the Virginia General Assembly and the state Senate. And he got me originally interested in it. Arlington was in the early throes of a mammoth change in 1930. Hugh Reid was an Arlington lawyer of real intellectual caliber. He was a member of the House of Delegates, the lower branch of the General Assembly. And he got the idea that this old rural small county,

4 which consisted then of isolated neighborhoods in three different districts, ought to be a single developing county with a county manager form of government. There was only one county or city manager form of government in the United States at that time, and that was in Stanton, Virginia. He had the idea that Arlington could use a county manager form of government. And he introduced really a revolutionary form of legislation in the General Assembly, which was adopted in 1930 as a Special County Manager Act.

Reid was able to get the General Assembly to adopt this Act as special legislation denoted as general legislation. Counties who by referendum wished to adopt it must have had a population of at least 500 persons per square mile. When you think of 500 persons per square mile, it doesn't sound like many people. But it gives you an indication of how rural Virginia was at this time. We now sometimes have almost 500 persons per square block in Arlington. In any event, this special legislation for Arlington was approved by voter referendum, enacted by the General Assembly in 1930, and in 1932 the first elected County Board took office. At that time, there were five members of the County Board elected at-large and serving at- large. I got interested generally in that election, though not really participating much in it, largely through Charles Fenwick. The Chairman of the County Board was Charles Fenwick's father- in-law, Harry Fellows. He arranged to have me appointed as a

5 member and Chairman of the Arlington Public Utilities Commission, which was a volunteer, non-salaried, part-time commission.

INTERVIEWER: It had been in existence before this?

NARRATOR: No, it had just been created. It was charged with the duty of seeing what we could do with high gas rates, charged by the Washington Gaslight Company, which served Arlington. And these were Depression days, as you know, here in 1933. Well, we filed a petition with the State Corporation Commission, for a reduction in gas rates and argued the matter before the Commission.

INTERVIEWER: Were you handling that matter as a lawyer?

NARRATOR: I was handling that as a member of the Arlington Public Utilities Commission, acting as a lawyer too. We were able to get the State Corporation Commission to agree, or to use its weight to get the Washington Gaslight Company to agree to a compromise reduction of rates. That reduction in rates, although it affected only a minority of the people in Arlington, brought me into some prominence, and gave me some public recognition. I got to talking a number of times with the members of the Arlington County Board on political matters, at their request.

Now let me turn to the episode, which was referred

6 to in my earlier interview, in which the County Board of Arlington sought to ignore the judge's appointment of two people to fill vacancies in the County Board. In the Virginia Statutes, if there is a vacancy on a County Board of Supervisors, that vacancy was to be filled by the circuit judge until the next election. There were two vacancies on the Arlington County Board, due to resignations in 1933. Young Judge Walter McCarthy, the circuit judge in Arlington who had been appointed by the conservative Virginia General Assembly, appointed two people who actually were quite distinguished, to fill those vacancies. One was Ben Smith, who did so much for Arlington in making contributions of land for old people's homes and whose son, Ed Smith, has already given his interview in the oral history project. The other was Christopher Garnett, a rather distinguished lawyer. Both of them were quite responsible appointments, and I didn't really realize at the time just how responsible they were. I was a little fresh, and hadn't gotten completely dry behind the ears at that time. But anyway, Chairman Kelley, as shown in my previous interview, declared Judge McCarthy's appointments to be invalid, on the theory that the County Manager Act of Arlington said that the County Board would have all the powers of councils of cities and towns, which had the right to fill vacancies. We took the position that that Act applying to Arlington superseded the other statute, which gave the circuit judge the right to fill such vacancies. So, at this meeting of the County Board they declared by motion that

7 Judge McCarthy's appointment of Mr. Garnett and Mr. Smith was invalid, and proceeded to name me and a man named Joseph May as replacements for these two persons who had resigned.

INTERVIEWER: Let me interrupt. Your objections to this were not really based originally on possible illegality but on the fact that they were appointments by a very conservative judge.

NARRATOR: That was the reason the other three members of the County Board wanted to get into the matter. And obviously the persons who were knocked out didn't care for it, and proceeded to file suit a mandamus in the Supreme Court of Virginia to have it declared invalid.

INTERVIEWER: How long did that take?

NARRATOR: Oh, it took only a couple of months because a mandamus proceeding is filed directly in the appellate court and not in the lower court. This was filed by Lawrence Douglas, who was Commonwealth Attorney, and I felt a very brilliant man and whom I came to know very well over the period of a generation. He was Commonwealth Attorney, he was at that time attorney for the County Board as well. He, I felt then, was one of the reactionary old guard members of the County. And he filed the mandamus petition, argued in the Supreme Court of Virginia. I had as my counselor Albert Bryan, who later became a very

8 distinguished federal judge in Alexandria. But the Supreme Court of Virginia proceeded in short order to kick me out of office, by its opinion in Smith vs. Kelly, a copy of which I have and will file as Exhibit 1. I came later to have great respect for Lawrence Douglas, who called things as he saw them and who was on my side in many cases as well as being opposed to me in cases where he thought it was proper.

I did not mention in my previous interview the fact that within a few months after this incident, Lyman Kelley himself was charged with improper conduct as a member of the County Board. He was in the insurance business, and he and his company, the A.L. Kelley Company, sold insurance to the County, in fact had most of the insurance that the County had at the time, and received commissions as insurance agent on the insurance sold, while he was Chairman of the County Board. He was charged with improper conduct under a statute which said that the person could be removed for acting under conflict of interest. He got me to represent him. This was the first case that I proceeded to lose as a lawyer there for a public official.

INTERVIEWER: On what basis was the case decided against you?

NARRATOR: The case was decided against me on the ground that it was improper for Lyman Kelley to make a profit in selling goods or services to the County while holding public office.

9

INTERVIEWER: Does that ruling still stand today?

NARRATOR: Yes it does, and is applied most strictly. Kelley was removed from the County Board. The judge was Judge Coleman from Fredericksburg, who took the place of Judge McCarthy who disqualified himself from hearing the case.

INTERVIEWER: Was that a shock in the community?

NARRATOR: Oh yes, yes indeed.

INTERVIEWER: Tell us what it was like among the people who were interested in County government. What were the reactions?

NARRATOR: Well, of course it's a shock if a public official is removed from office. It's almost like impeachment of that official, in fact it was a form of impeachment. Of course the impropriety was not gross, he had not stolen money or anything like that, he hadn't been bribed. It was something of a technical violation because the County would have had to pay the same amount of premium for insurance.

INTERVIEWER: It's the perception that is there.

NARRATOR: But the perception there--

10

INTERVIEWER: Not necessarily of wrongdoing, but of the opportunity for wrongdoing.

NARRATOR: Correct. Well, that brought me still further into public view. And then about 1938, I think it was, members of the General Assembly from Arlington had reached the conclusion as a result, I think, of pressure from the civic association, that it was not wise to have the County Board members elected all at once every four years. That you couldn't get public policies changed in four years if people thought they should be changed. And so there was another enabling act passed by the General Assembly, providing that if a referendum decided to do it, and this was on a referendum, that there would be a staggered term election of members of the County Board, one elected every year for three years and two elected on the fourth year.

INTERVIEWER: You mentioned earlier that there were three districts in Arlington.

NARRATOR: Correct.

INTERVIEWER: And I would like you to mention them, but I have another question. Was there also at this time in the '30s, any impetus to elect members of the County Board from districts? But first, what were the three districts, just as a matter of record?

11

NARRATOR: You know, I don't recall the names of the districts. I think one was the Cherrydale District, one was the Southern Arlington District, and the third nearly to Falls Church, the western. The County Manager Act provided as you know for the election of Board members at-large.

INTERVIEWER: But was there any impetus to try to change that at that time?

NARRATOR: No, I really don't recall that. But they did change the Act and provide for the election on staggered terms. I think some fifteen or eighteen people put their names in the ring for election to the County Board on staggered terms. It was provided that the two getting the highest number of votes would be elected for four year terms, the next for three, two, and one, respectively.

INTERVIEWER: Was there a great deal of response from the community on this? I mean, do you recall what percentage of registered voters were voting in these County elections?

NARRATOR: No, I don't recall. I can tell you that there was a comparatively small turnout because I recall that in a later election when I was defeated on a third term as a member of the County Board, that there were some 6,000 votes for my opponent

12 and some 5,000 for me, so that was only approximately 11,000 thousand total, and that was in 1946.

INTERVIEWER: I don't know how many were in the County at that time.

NARRATOR: Well, in 1940, the population of the County was approximately 50,000. Well, in any event, this election of Board members under the new staggered term act was held and I became one of eighteen candidates. During the campaign I got a call from Hugh Reid, whom I got to know quite well. Hugh Reid was a very good friend of Mr. Harry Green, who was the Commissioner of Revenue of Arlington County, and a high principled man but who was a member of the Byrd political machine and almost a political boss of the County. Hugh Reid thought I was all right, and he was a good friend of Mr. Green's. Reid said to me one day that if I would talk to Mr. Green, he thought it would help me. So Reid had previously talked to Mr. Green and Mr. Green was ready to support me in this election.

INTERVIEWER: So what was your little interview like? Do you remember?

NARRATOR: Mr. Green said, "I've heard very good things about you from Mr. Reid, and I think you would probably make a good member of the County Board, and I believe I'm going to support

13 you." I said, "That'd be great, Mr. Green." It would make all the difference in the world! He did not ask me anything about my views, not one word about how my votes would be.

INTERVIEWER: Perhaps he didn't want to hear it. Or did he think that you--

NARRATOR: I think he thought I would be all right. In any event, the election was had, and I came out third which meant I had a three-year term.

INTERVIEWER: You had a three-year term? Oh, you were one of the three, I see, this was the first election.

NARRATOR: The first election of all five, you see, under the staggered terms.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, I understand how they are elected.

NARRATOR: And the first two, the two getting the highest votes, were elected for four years. The third would be elected for three years, the fourth for two years, and the fifth for one year. And I got the three-year term. I served for seven years as a member of the County Board. At the end of my first three- year term, I don't know how it happened, but I was reelected with no opponent. This was during the war, you see, we had gotten

14 into the war in 1941. And Arlington was, even before that time, beginning to expand quite rapidly. I think Colonial Village was built in '39, as I remember. At the time, the war employees came in.

INTERVIEWER: What were the issues that you were involved in mostly, on the Arlington County Board during those years?

NARRATOR: Well, we were having a very hard time keeping up with the burgeoning population. And we just had to do the best we could in developing highways, putting in a modern sewer system, providing for sewage disposal, everything else. I have possibly three things I can point to that I was particularly interested in in Arlington, or two, and the third one an incident I would like to comment on. The first was the adoption of a master zoning plan. Arlington had never had a master zoning plan. I, and other members of the County Board, worked with Frank Dieter, who was our zoning administrator and a very high type man, in trying to develop a master zoning plan. And one was developed, and I think I had the great honor of signing it, the first zoning plan, I believe, in 1942. And I was Chairman of the County Board for that year. The second was the establishment of a park program. Believe it or not, Arlington had not developed any parks.

INTERVIEWER: That's not hard to believe when you have counties

15 that have been rural and have lots of room and few people.

NARRATOR: But we had trouble getting a park program through the County Board. I remember Ms. MacGruder, who was a member of the County Board, said it was much more important to develop our streets than to develop parks. And I said, "Well, if we don't get them now, we'll not get them." And I was instrumental in getting through the first County bond issue on parks. Well, I was able to get through, over some opposition on the County Board, the first bond issue for parks, which was in the total sum of only $500,000.

INTERVIEWER: $500,000 or $500?

NARRATOR: $500,000. Not $5 million or $50 million, but $500,000.

INTERVIEWER: Well, a half a million back in 1945--

NARRATOR: That was helpful. And then after, I remember real difficulty in getting Mr. Frank Hanrahan, who was the County Manager and in many ways a very good County Manager, to spend the money. It was two years before I could get him to buy any land under that bond issue.

INTERVIEWER: What were the first purchases?

16

NARRATOR: I honestly don't remember now. But we were working on it.

INTERVIEWER: You didn't have then the baseball diamonds and all the things like that?

NARRATOR: No. We also developed, when I was on the County Board, the concept which had not been developed before, of having the school properties used for recreation purposes by the general population after school hours. We had great opposition from the old school administration on the adoption of such programs.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, I'm sure. What were the first uses?

NARRATOR: There were the baseball diamonds for athletic purposes after school hours.

INTERVIEWER: And for meetings and things like that? Public meetings.

NARRATOR: Oh, yes. And this had not been done before. Let me mention a little incident which occurred, or a series of incidents which occurred when I was on the County Board, which certainly shocked my conscience, but which apparently did not worry some of my colleagues on the Board. At that time, there

17 was a so-called numbers, anti-numbers racket legislation, ordinances, existing in Arlington. These ordinances--I say "ordinances," there may have been only one--prohibited engaging in gambling on numbers. I suppose everyone knows what the numbers racket is, you pick your own number and if it happens to have a number that is on the Washington Post that day, you win. The chances are greatly against you, but it was a form of lottery, and was prohibited under ordinance in Arlington. And people were hailed before the Trial Justice and if found guilty, were sentenced to thirty to sixty days in jail. Defending people charged with violation of the numbers racket was a lucrative business for, let's call them small-time lawyers, in Arlington County.

INTERVIEWER: You never did this?

NARRATOR: No, I was not engaged in that business. There was a lawyer named Alfred Jones, now dead, in Arlington, who was Associate Trial Justice. That is, he would sit as Trial Justice as a nominee appointee of Benjamin Hedrick who was the Trial Justice of Arlington, when Hedrick was away. He was also a practicing attorney, and as a practicing attorney represented a number of these people charged with violations of the numbers racket when they were hailed before the Trial Justice. I recall that on a half-dozen occasions, he had represented persons charged with violations of the numbers racket--who engaged in the

18 numbers racket--who had been found guilty by Judge Hedrick. And that on several occasions, when Judge Hedrick was away from Arlington or not sitting as Trial Judge, Mr. Jones was sitting as Associate Trial Judge. And on a number of these occasions, people that he had defended and had been found guilty came before that court for sentencing. And Associate Judge Jones would look down at the defendant for whom he had previously acted as counsel--

INTERVIEWER: And about whom he knew, presumably, a lot of details?

NARRATOR: Yes. And proceeded to sentence him, either lightly or heavily, I generally thought quite lightly, for fine for violating the law from which he had previously defended him.

INTERVIEWER: And did no one at the bar association question this?

NARRATOR: The bar association did not, had not objected to it, but I raised Cain when I found out about it, and made some real public utterances which found their way into the front pages of the Washington papers. Thereupon I suggested to the County Board that if the practice didn't stop, we should move to cut Jones' salary, or see that he got no salary as Associate Trial Justice.

19

INTERVIEWER: And what happened?

NARRATOR: The bar association appointed a committee to investigate it. On that committee was Miss Anna Hedrick, the sister of the Trial Judge. And I remember the committee got me before them, and Miss Hedrick said, "There's nothing wrong with this." And I said, "There is." And we just disagreed. The bar committee did not do anything about it, but he stopped the practice.

INTERVIEWER: So you accomplished your purpose?

NARRATOR: Accomplished the purpose. One other matter that occurred in my tenure on the County Board, had to do with the assessment of real property in Arlington. At that time, real property was assessed only every four years. With the war coming on, property values were skyrocketing. They had been assessed in 1941, and came up for assessment four years later. Nothing had been done on that. Property values had skyrocketed, and the County Manager had not taken any steps, nor had the County Treasurer or, in this instance, Mr. Green as Commissioner of Revenue, taken any steps to get a new assessment. Mr. Green asked, and I thought he was quite wrong in this, that the legislature which was in session that year, permit the assessment to be postponed for a year, because they were late in getting

20 started on it. I vigorously opposed it, but my colleagues went along with Mr. Green and voted to ask the General Assembly to postpone the assessment. And it was postponed for a year. And I think to great harm to Arlington. I mention it because the matter came up when I was running for a third term on the County Board, and I didn't want to do it, I didn't want to run for a third term.

INTERVIEWER: Why didn't you want to run on the third term?

NARRATOR: I had had enough. Judge Howard Smith was a very conservative member of Congress and was representing Arlington, Fairfax, Alexandria and Loudoun Counties in the so-called 8th Congressional District, and he was coming on for reelection. My friend Charlie Fenwick urged me to run again as a Democratic nominee, thinking that as a liberal Democrat, I might help Judge Smith who thought he might have some serious opposition. Well he did have some opposition, in the 8th District. This was my great mistake. A nonpartisan group had just gotten started in Arlington.

INTERVIEWER: Now what group was this?

NARRATOR: This was a group headed by Harley Williams. And they did not like Judge Smith, did not like the fact that I was on the County Board, running as a Democrat. They thought that

21 there should be a nonpartisan member of the County Board, and they got Dan Dugan to run against me on the nonpartisan ticket. You see, under the Hatch Act, federal employees could not then campaign for political party candidates. Dugan was a federal employee. I mentioned my opposition to postponing the assessment, because it was Dugan's great platform that the assessment had been postponed for the sake of real estate operators. I was not able to get out to the County adequately the fact that I had voted against the postponement of the assessment. It was one of the great factors in that loss. I was defeated for a third term by a margin of 1,000 votes.

INTERVIEWER: Before we started taping this, you mentioned the word "hectic" describing the years of the late thirties to forties and the fifties, and "turmoil" was another word to use. There were a lot of struggles going on in Arlington in those days. Could you give us a feel of what it was like, and who were the people who fought a lot of these struggles that helped make Arlington what it is today?

NARRATOR: Well, Arlington was changed enormously in a very short time.

INTERVIEWER: Just as it is today in the last ten years or so. But in a different way.

22 NARRATOR: In a different way today. The changes today are changes in building structure, but Arlington has been a municipality for some time, a real municipality, a form of a city for the last ten or fifteen years. But in 1939, it was still a group of small communities. In fact, you know, from my previous interview, we had rural post office boxes in Arlington for a while. It was some time before we had one single post office, believe it or not.

INTERVIEWER: And there was not a uniform street system or anything like that. There weren't that many streets.

NARRATOR: That's correct. But here came the war. And Arlington tripled in population, almost, within ten years. And the old guard, the small businessman, the people who had been here some time, the old Virginians resented the influx of newcomers with different ideas.

INTERVIEWER: Many of whom were "Damn Yankees."

NARRATOR: Damn Yankees. Had no feeling for the old Virginia and were much more interested in good streets and good schools than they were in holding taxes down to a minimum. And they were not concerned with the traditions of old Virginia in the same sense that some of the old guard had been in Virginia. And it's difficult for us today to understand the great turmoil, political

23 and civic turmoil that existed between these groups of people during really a period from the time I got on the County Board or soon afterwards, until well into the fifties and then continuing on on another basis, that is on the segregation issue, until the early sixties. Turmoil existed and I was often thought to be a traitor to my clan, if you please, because my friends thought me to be extremely radical and going over to the new group. This view was held despite my long Virginia heritage, discussed in my previous interview. It made things somewhat difficult for me.

INTERVIEWER: Why were you like that and why were they not? Was it your family or was it your education up north, however brief up there? Was it reading you had done that made you look at things from a broader perspective?

NARRATOR: I suppose you really ought to get that from someone else. I think I, I hope I have an open mind, and keep an open mind, and like to be on the forefront of things rather than always having things as they were. But Elizabeth and I were always interested in education and I think that if you take one single factor, it was because we were so horrified with the education system as it existed, and continued to exist in Arlington and Virginia as a whole until the late forties.

INTERVIEWER: And it still isn't very good, in parts of Virginia, after all these years, in some of the southeast,

24 southwest counties, and downstate.

NARRATOR: And then the turmoil continued into the segregation era, but I'll come to that later.

INTERVIEWER: Before we come to that, you're talking about the old guard. Now this old guard must have been almost exclusively members of the Byrd machine. Would you like to comment on the Byrd machine just briefly, and what its impact was on Arlington and how much of it extends today, not very much into Arlington, but how much extends into the Virginia legislature today, which of course affects Arlington?

NARRATOR: Well, the late Senator Harry F. Byrd was a legend for thirty years or more. He had been Governor of Virginia in the twenties and a very efficient governor. He got a remarkable control of Virginia politics because of a system by which the state supplemented salaries of local elected officials. The so- called Compensation Board could supplement the salaries which the cities and counties awarded to judges, commissioners of revenue, to treasurers, and sheriffs. You must remember that if you try to pick out the leaders of a community who control the politics of the community you get the judges and the sheriffs, and the county or city treasurers, and the commissioners of revenue, and with those you've just about got it. Well, he had established the State Compensation Board and one way or another, controlled

25 it for a generation. And so his influence was very strong. Byrd was a man of integrity, in the sense that he would not tolerate any direct venality in the state government. And Virginia to this day has a heritage of clean government, which I attribute largely to Byrd. Byrd's political was somewhat indirect, through the State Compensation Board. But Virginia was a naturally conservative community. Byrd got Virginia to adopt a pay as you go policy on the government highways at a time when most states were borrowing heavily to develop their roads. This kept Virginia back, undoubtedly, in its industrial development compared with, say, the state of North Carolina which went way ahead of it, but when Virginia's roads were finally developed, they were better than those developed in the neighboring states. In any event, Virginia became, and the conservative Virginians became proud of Byrd. And he controlled Virginia's Democratic politics and state politics as a whole.

INTERVIEWER: Conservative politics of status quo. Don't rock the boat?

NARRATOR: He had a policy of status quo. And during this period, Virginia's educational system dropped to forty-ninth out of the fifty states.

INTERVIEWER: Only Mississippi, I think.

26 NARRATOR: Only Mississippi ranked below it.

INTERVIEWER: Well, its mental health facilities, I know, during that period, dropped. It was forty eight in the amount of money spent on mental health.

NARRATOR: Byrd would not tolerate unions, labor unions, and would favor any possible way to prevent labor unions. This included the welfare system.

INTERVIEWER: So now, how did this affect Arlington?

NARRATOR: Well--

INTERVIEWER: And when you were on the County Board?

NARRATOR: It meant that the public officials, the existing public officials, were voting the way Mr. Byrd wanted them to vote. It meant they were voting for small taxes. It meant they were not interested in school development, except to the extent that he liked, it meant they were not interested in bringing Virginia into what I consider to be the twentieth century. And so I rather early developed a sort of free lance position in it, and became a, after I got on the County Board, considered to be somewhat of a maverick. It really developed, came to a head in two areas. One was in the development of the school system. And

27 the second one some ten years later in the desegregation fight.

INTERVIEWER: Well, perhaps, we can move onto that now. So why don't you start in on the schools?

NARRATOR: Well, I did not get really involved in any way in the school fight until after I'd been defeated on the County Board, at which time I said, "Well, if I can't beat 'em, I'll join 'em." And I felt I'd been a little misunderstood as far as my views were concerned in the last part of my County Board tenure, but in any event, it was about this time that both Elizabeth and I got extremely interested in the matter. And started working with Oscar LeBeau, who got so provoked at some meeting with the superintendent of schools, Fletcher Camp, that he started writing the names of a bunch of people on an envelope, as he told me later, to form a new citizen's group to see what he could do for schools. He was the founder of the Citizen Committee for School Improvement ("CCSI"). Elizabeth and I were early charter members of that group. We, by some miraculous stroke of luck, got J. Maynard Magruder, who was our delegate to the General Assembly at that time (we only had one delegate), to introduce legislation providing that Arlington would have a right on referendum to elect its own School Board. That was enacted in 1947. I think he thought nobody would pay any attention to it. But there it was. The Citizen Committee for School Improvement immediately started this campaign; it had the referendum in 1947,

28 and it was rather overwhelmingly adopted by a 2-1 margin. Thereupon the CCSI proceeded to try to see what it could do to elect School Board members. I remember we had a mass meeting in the old Lyon Park Community Center. Somehow they got me to act as chairman of that convention. I remember the convention took place in summer of 1948. The place was packed and jammed in a very hot summer night and no air conditioning and five persons were nominated to serve on the School Board. They were Barnard Joy, Draheim, my wife, Elizabeth Campbell, Curtis Tuthill. There was a professor, I think, of Psychology at George Washington, and Colin McPherson, who later became Treasurer of Arlington County. This team had a vigorous campaign against the existing appointed members of the School Board, who I felt had not done very much, and defeated them by a two to one margin. They had run in the fall election. The party members had run for election and were rather overwhelmingly defeated. Those members, at the risk of repetition, had been appointed under an old system in Virginia which provided that they would be selected by a school trustee electoral board which in turn had been appointed by the circuit court of Arlington County who was Judge McCarthy, and who was then still conservative. And certainly the School Board as it then existed was not doing anything to further the promotion of the schools, to really bring them into, as I say, the twentieth century. So they were not elected, and our group was elected by a rather overwhelming majority. But that was only the beginning. Because within a few weeks after the election, before the School

29 Board was to take office, Harry Porter, who was the chairman of the old School Board, filed a suit against the new School Board. Harry Porter, as I was saying, was chairman of the old School Board, filed a suit for the declaratory judgment against the newly elected School Board members, saying that the act which provided for the elected School Board with special legislation was invalid, was unconstitutional, and asked Judge McCarthy to rule that the School Board was improperly elected. You can imagine what that did to the County. The new School Board did not know whether to take office, it did not know who would pay the teachers. The County was, if I may say so, in a hell of a fix. The whole County was in rising turmoil. It wasn't too long before the School Board got me to represent them. The names of Frank Ball and some of my partners also appear on the list of attorneys named in the opinion of the State Supreme Court. Meanwhile we had reached an interim agreement, because we had to, with the old School Board, by which the new School Board would temporarily take office under this cloud, during the period when the litigation was going on and that by that agreement the teachers could be paid. Well, Judge McCarthy decided then in favor of the new School Board. Mr. Porter appealed to the Supreme Court of Virginia which heard the case and affirmed Judge McCarthy's decision that the law was constitutional and that the new School Board properly held office.

INTERVIEWER: Now, when was this?

30

NARRATOR: That was in the summer of 1949. The School Board meanwhile had taken office in '48. A copy of the Supreme Court's opinion may be interesting to people who want to know about these times. And I have a copy which I will file as Exhibit 2.

After the Supreme Court decision establishing official status of the newly elected School Board, the new School Board got hard at work. They had meetings dozens of times, many of them in our house, and I informally helped Elizabeth and the others, discussing constantly with School Board members the work that they were doing. Because the overcrowded County schools were on double shifts, the School Board proceeded to offer school bond issues, all but one of which were approved by substantial majorities.

INTERVIEWER: The school population was burgeoning?

NARRATOR: Burgeoning. It's interesting that voters do not want to vote for bond issues until the emergency becomes so acute that it can't be ignored. But, in this case, that was the situation in Arlington. The School Board was working with new forms of schools, new forms of school buildings, which had not been used in Virginia.

INTERVIEWER: Could you describe what some of those were?

31

NARRATOR: Simply more modern techniques, the types of buildings that spread over more ground, and did not go up, but spread, and the board had some trouble with the Virginia Architectural Review group that was handling public schools generally through the state. Finally that group began to respect the new techniques that the School Board was offering in its buildings, and I think came to change its own rules for school building, its own procedures as a result of that.

INTERVIEWER: Were you working with local architects or did you have to follow the state plans slavishly?

NARRATOR: They were working with local architects. They were to some extent restricted by state regulations, and they were able to get some of those changed. I was not actively engaged in that. I was consulted from time to time.

INTERVIEWER: I understand. When I said, "you" I didn't mean you personally. I meant the people at the time, Elizabeth....

NARRATOR: This was really indicative of the general situation with respect to the relationship between Arlington and the state government. Arlington, as I think I previously said, had doubled in population in a decade and there was a real feeling in the state government that Arlingtonians were a bunch

32 of radical newcomers and were not good for the old established state of Virginia. We cannot really get a real understanding of this situation until you consider the power of what I call the Byrd machine. The Byrd machine represented the establishment in Virginia. Everybody who was anybody was a supporter of Harry Byrd. I was in difficulty and my wife Elizabeth was in difficulty, because although we were established Virginians from the point of view of length of time that we'd been in the state, and of course I was born in the state, we had gone over to the radical or the new element from the point of view of the old residents, and I think were considered by many traitors to our background, much as Franklin Roosevelt had been considered a traitor to his established background from a national point of view. This really did not concern us, but it will be pointed out a little more in detail later the effect of it. The State Supreme Court decision legitimizing the new School Board was in 1949, and then, as I say, these acts of the new School Board proceeded in the next few years and were really transforming the schools into first rate schools which received national attention. There was also, as you know, a change in the superintendent of schools during this period. Mr. Fletcher Kemp, who was trying to cooperate with the new School Board, was replaced with a man named William Early who acted very effectively in helping the schools. I can't let this period pass without paying a special tribute to the late Barnard Joy, who has already been interviewed here on tape for the Arlington Library,

33 he was an enormously effective power in the school system. He was a brilliant man. I don't know how he continued to find time to do his very responsible work in the Department of Agriculture in the United States Government. But he was a great leader in the new school movement.

INTERVIEWER: Well, he had a way of pulling people together at times that perhaps someone who might have been more acerbic couldn't have done.

NARRATOR: He was a consensus builder. Well, during this period, from 1949 for a couple of years after that, I as a so- called liberal democrat, an anti-Byrd democrat, had been active in attempting to get the status of the democratic committee of Arlington changed. I became a member of the democratic committee and we were trying to get progressive or liberal or anti-Byrd democrats elected to the committee so that, if possible, we could have control of it. I really had not succeeded by that time, but I was working with the nonpartisans then in trying to get the liberal members elected to the Arlington County Board. In 1950, I think it was, we got Bob Cox elected to the Arlington County Board, and in 1951, I believe it was, the fall of 1951, Alan Dean was elected. Bob Cox, Alan Dean, and Daniel Dugan were all federal government employees. But they, in 1952 constituted a majority of the Arlington County Board. And the Arlington County Board, from my point of view, at

34 that time, began to operate in a different fashion for the benefit of the County. Well, all at once, without any prior notice, a suit was filed by a man named Paolicelli, obviously with the backing of the Arlington old guard, the suit was filed before Judge McCarthy in the Circuit Court and heard by Judge McCarthy. It claimed that the federal employees could not serve on the County Board, that a special act of the Virginia Assembly which permitted federal employees to serve on the County Board, even though there was a constitutional provision, which said generally speaking that federal employees could not act in local office, whereas in reality this was a stupendous political gambit, because if it succeeded it would change the whole character of the Arlington County government. Judge McCarthy heard the case. Alan Dean and Bob Cox asked me to represent them. I did, and argued the case before Judge McCarthy.

INTERVIEWER: Who was representing Dan Dugan or was he still--

NARRATOR: No, I appeared for Dan Dugan too. I appeared for all three. And Judge McCarthy heard the case before a rather packed court room. I remember Judge McCarthy used to love to dig up cases that nobody had ever heard of. Counsellors on both sides had argued the case before Judge McCarthy, and he said he would take it under advisement. He came back one day with his opinion. And he said, "I've found another case that the counsel had not cited." The case was in re Galilee. It was decided by

35 the Supreme Court of Virginia but it was in a special volume, not those regular volumes where reports are generally found.

INTERVIEWER: Is that Galilee?

NARRATOR: Galilee. "I think this case is important," Judge McCarthy says. "And, like the man of Galilee, I hold that no man can serve two masters. And therefore, I decide that the three members of the County Board who were federal employees were improperly serving two masters in office." With one fell swoop he changed the entire status of the County government. Judge McCarthy said to me one time, because I thought this was an awful judicial coup d'etat, he said to me, "I consider that when I am acting to appoint County Board members or School Board members to replace persons who have been out of office, that I am acting here not in a judicial capacity but in a political capacity." And there was no question that Judge McCarthy was an ardent supporter of the Byrd machine. Well, three other members of the County Board were appointed, there was an election shortly after that, and the conservatives were put in the majority of the Arlington County Board. With one fell swoop the whole nature of the Arlington County government had been changed. The liberal element of Arlington, I would call it the progressive element, which was willing to spend tax money for good schools, was shocked, in a way.

36 INTERVIEWER: Disenfranchised.

NARRATOR: Disenfranchised. This decision was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Virginia in a long, labored opinion, which I am going to file as Exhibit 3. This decision was not rendered until 1953. Meanwhile, as a result of the 1950 census, the state of Virginia had granted that it was entitled to another Congressional district. And created a new tenth district, composed of the counties of Arlington and Fairfax, and the cities of Alexandria and Falls Church. And there was to be an election for Congressman for this new district, in the fall of 1952. That was the year in which Eisenhower was Republican nominee and Stevenson was the Democratic nominee for president. Although Stevenson was a Democrat the old guard, if I may say so, in Virginia could not find their way to support him, and, as I'll point out in a minute, Byrd finally said that he could not support Stevenson for president. But there was a substantial group of liberals, I say progressives, in northern Virginia, who sent representatives to see me to ask me if I would run for Congress that year.

INTERVIEWER: These people were people who had been active in politics, or did they represent civic associations?

NARRATOR: No, they were active in politics, but they were not there in any official capacity.

37

INTERVIEWER: I understand that, but did they come from civic associations or PTAs--

NARRATOR: No, I would say they came more from the committees. There were only about four of them. They came to see me. They were members of the Democratic committees of the different areas, except for Virginia Stitzenberger from Arlington. They asked if I would run for Democratic nomination for Congress in this new district. My law firm didn't like it, but I finally decided to do it.

INTERVIEWER: Why did you decide to do it?

NARRATOR: I suppose it's a mixture of personal ambition and, really, a feeling that somebody had to go ahead and see if they couldn't break the stranglehold that existed in the state of Virginia.

INTERVIEWER: At that time Congressmen from Virginia were all members of the Byrd machine.

NARRATOR: We had quite a vigorous primary. There were three candidates. I was one. Maynard Magruder, who was a delegate from Arlington to the General Assembly, and a member of the Byrd machine, was the preferred candidate. He was also in the race.

38 And the third candidate, Charles Carlin.

INTERVIEWER: The editor and publisher of the Alexandria Gazette.

NARRATOR: He was the real determinate in the primary race, because he took votes away from Magruder. In this three-way race I was successful and became the Democratic nominee. I had a very hard time getting any active support from the old guard membership, the Democratic committee in the final fall race. And this was a very hectic and somewhat bitter race in many ways. Our Joel Broyhill, who as you know, won and held the office in Congress for some twenty years, was our opponent. The race was a hard but very rewarding experience, because enormous groups of the newer people in Arlington rallied on my side. Eisenhower, as the Republican nominee, carried the district by 15,000 votes but Broyhill, who was on Eisenhower's ticket, won the race in Congress by only 200 votes. Actually, we won in Arlington, we won in Alexandria, and we won in Falls Church, by narrow margins. But the margin of victory for Broyhill came from the rural areas in Fairfax.

INTERVIEWER: Let me append a footnote to this. I was president of the League of Women Voters of Alexandria at the time of this campaign, and we had a Candidate's Night, and you appeared and so did Joel T. Broyhill appear. And I can't remember, it seems to

39 me there was someone else, but perhaps it was another office. And Mr. Broyhill made his pitch, and of course there were to be questions afterwards and he said, "I am sorry. I have so many engagements I cannot stay. Thank you." And he marched off and we were furious because he or someone on his staff had agreed that he would stay for questions. And you did, but he did not, and it left a rather bad taste.

NARRATOR: Well one of the things that helped me in that campaign was the fact that Broyhill did not want to answer questions and after four or five of our debates, he said he couldn't engage in any more, so we stopped the individual debates. Let me say, in connection with that campaign simply a personal word, and that is though, of course we were bitterly disappointed, quite disappointed at the beginning, after about two or three months I began to be glad I wasn't elected.

INTERVIEWER: Well, if you had been elected, you probably would have had to have another vigorous campaign in two years, and another one in two years, and who knows what the future would have brought.

NARRATOR: Broyhill developed a very effective office, for the point of view of handling constituent complaints, and that was the critical factor in his getting reelected over and over in this area. I want to add one thing in connection with this race

40 and the decision of Judge McCarthy in the Supreme Court of Virginia, which came almost at the same time, within a year, knocking out our whole new County Board team. It was, of course, quite a hectic period in my life. It left, shall we say, a permanent physical wound. In 1953, after the final decision in the Supreme Court of Virginia, I proceeded to lose my hair, and I have not had any since on my head.

INTERVIEWER: That made quite an effect, didn't it?

NARRATOR: There was one another incident I might mention, indicating the intensity of the feeling in Arlington. I had in the 1930s been a member of the Washington Golf and Country Club. I'd resigned later in the '30s, really because of financial reasons. But after these events in 1953 I thought I would apply for readmission. I had a sponsor and applied for readmission to the Washington Golf and Country Club. Also one of my active supporters, Collier by name, had applied for membership in the Washington Golf and Country Club. It was interesting that I was turned down, and admittedly because of political activities. I really haven't regretted it since, but shows to some extent the general situation which existed there.

INTERVIEWER: Now, the school situation, let's go back to that briefly. There was a second suit, wasn't there? What did that consist of?

41

NARRATOR: Well, John Locke Green, the Republican Treasurer, the rather maverick Treasurer of Arlington County, then filed another suit against the Arlington School Board members, claiming that the three members who were employees of the federal government could not serve on the Arlington School Board. This case also came before Judge McCarthy. Strangely enough, in this case Judge McCarthy ruled in favor of the School Board. He declared that federal employment was no bar to service on the School Board. This case was also appealed to the Supreme Court of Virginia (this time by Green). I did not participate directly in that case, but was consulting constantly with the attorneys who were representing the School Board. I believe Jim Simmonds was one. He is a lawyer who has already been interviewed here in this Oral History Program and I think Frank Ball was the other. The Supreme Court of Virginia, in this case, distinguished the School Boards from County Boards, and decided in favor of the School Board, the existing School Board. This made me feel better about the judicial process in Virginia, because I really had been feeling quite low in what I considered to be an archaic attitude of the state judiciary and the state legislature. Well, that was the helpful development, from our point of view.

I want to come now to the election of the County Board in 1954 and the resulting development of Arlingtonians for a Better County, ABC. I was still an active Democrat in local

42 politics, rather than a nonpartisan. My feeling that somehow we needed the Democratic Party in state elections and we had to use them also in County elections in order to get the best effect in those elections. In the 1954 campaign I promoted the candidacy of Brian Bell, the young man who had helped me in my Congressional campaign and who was a very able young progressive who was willing to get into County politics. I tried to get him approved also in the nonpartisan mass meeting which was to be held to nominate a candidate and talked to some of the leaders of these nonpartisan movement then. They said they would be glad to have Mr. Bell run in the nonpartisan mass meeting, but there was another person that wanted to run, and he was going to run come hell or high water, and they could not guarantee that he would be, in any sense, nominated and that, of course if he was not nominated in the mass meeting he had to agree that he would not run in the Democratic Primary. Well, both the nonpartisan leaders and I and some other progressive active Democrats were stubborn in the matter.

INTERVIEWER: Would you care to name them?

NARRATOR: Well, actually, I don't know if I can. I think Virginia Stitzenberger was one and, that's holding back, but I'm not sure I can name them now. Well in any event, we decided that Brian Bell ought to go ahead and run. The nonpartisan group held a mass meeting and nominated Ivan Booker, who was a fine man, but

43 I thought completely lacked any effective personality if he became member of the County Board. The Republicans nominated Mrs. Buckholtz, who had been a member of the County Board before, who was then a member of the County Board. She ran for reelection. The election was hard-fought as many of these are. Alan Dean, who I believe had also been interviewed here in this program, was campaign manager for Mr. Booker, and a more effective and able campaign manager never existed. Mr. Booker ran rings around Brian Bell in many ways in the door-to-door canvassing of the newer apartment areas in Arlington. I didn't have the time or the disposition to get in that kind of campaign and therefore I wasn't really, I think, very effective . In any event, the votes were in. Booker led Bell substantially. But trailed Buckholtz and Buckholtz came into office by a narrow margin, much to the chagrin of both Dean and myself. One of Booker's most active supporters had been Ruth Cox, wife of Robert Cox, who had been a member of the School Board--did you know her?

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

NARRATOR: I remember that two days after the campaign and the election, Virginia Stitzenberger called me up and said, "Ed, I want you to come down to my home. Ruth Cox is down here. And there are some things I want to talk to you both about." I went down there and Ruth and I hardly spoke to each other. We were nursing our wounds. And Virginia said, "Something's got to be

44 done about this thing." She said, "You all have got to find a way to get together." And finally as the evening wore on, it was agreed that we would try to see if we could form some sort of a coalition, because this made no sense, just tearing each other apart in these elections.

INTERVIEWER: Now this was when?

NARRATOR: This was just after the election in 1954. So we arranged to call a meeting, we said we've got to have a coalition here and see if we couldn't be a little different from the strictly nonpartisan thing, and have a something that Democrats could legitimately get in, and Republicans if they want, and we would have it a three-way thing, a coalition of progressive Republicans, progressive Democrats and progressive nonpartisans, all nonpartisans being theoretically progressive. So we arranged for this meeting of 15 people, and I think Allen Dean was very active in that. We had 5 Democrats, 5 Republicans, and 5 so- called nonpartisans.

INTERVIEWER: Can you name those people? I know Fuller Groom was one of them.

NARRATOR: No, Bob Groom. Fuller Groom I guess was one too. And Allen Dean was head of the nonpartisan area, and I was the head of the Democratic group. I'm sorry I can't name all 15.

45 But we had a very good meeting, and we called another one of 55, of which 15 were to be Republicans, 15 Democrats, and 15 nonpartisans, and 10, oh, leaders of the community if we could. They were not particularly active in any group. And we had this group, and it was one of the most successful things you could imagine. We formed this Arlingtonians for a Better County, ABC.

INTERVIEWER: Where were you meeting?

NARRATOR: We met in one of the school buildings, I don't recall where that was. But it got to going very well. So we formed this group in 1955. We agreed on 3 co-chairmen, so that each group would be represented. Dean for the nonpartisan group, Bob Groom, the son of Fuller Groom, for the Republican group, which was having a hard time filling 15 spots, and me for the Democratic group. We won that election handily, with two very able candidates. One was Ralph Kaul, and one was David Krupsaw. So that was the beginning of ABC, which has been a very effective movement in the County ever since. Well, that was in 1955, but I want to go back to 1954, and the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, which of course changed all our lives, and was a very powerful force in the politics of Arlington County for the balance of this decade. That was the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Brown against the Board of Education, in which the Court held by unanimous vote, that the public schools of the nation must be

46 desegregated with all deliberate speed. The state of Virginia-- in fact the entire South--reacted emotionally and generally quite negatively to that decision, although in Arlington, because of the influx of a large number of people from areas where schools had already been desegregated, the County was much more closely divided than the rest of the state. There was a great deal of opposition to any form of desegregation in Arlington, but also a great willingness on the part of a great many to desegregate the schools, as you know.

INTERVIEWER: And also to try to do the whole thing without any violence, which was occurring in--

NARRATOR: Virginia, being a genteel state wanted particularly to do it without any violence. The legislature of Virginia appointed the so-called Gray Commission, which was asked to recommend what should be done. The Gray Commission recommended that there be a lot of local autonomy in the desegregation of schools, whether and when they should be desegregated, and provided also that there should be tuition grants for people who did not want to send their children to public schools if they were desegregated by local authorities, tuition grants to help pay the tuition in private schools. The legislature had not taken any action on this. But the Arlington School Board decided that it would desegregate the schools under the Gray Commission plan, and do it slowly, beginning I think in

47 the first grade. The moment the Arlington School Board announced that this was its intention, the rest of the state of Virginia reacted very violently. The legislature was in session. Representatives of our conservative groups in Arlington, led by Bob Peck, who I believe was the only conservative member of the School Board, went to Richmond and persuaded the legislature, in a very unusual act, to pass legislation abolishing the elected School Board, which it had previously authorized some years before. This is again, a shocking example of state interference with local autonomy and the conduct of business. In the abolishment of the School Board, it did provide--and in fairness to them I should say it did not oust or seek to oust the existing School Board members--but that they should serve out their terms. Legislators in the state, in northern Virginia, were able to get a provision modifying for Arlington, and a certain few other areas I believe, the proviso that members of the School Board should be elected by a School Trustee Electorate Board, which in turn had been appointed by the Circuit Judge. And the legislature provided that in Arlington in the future, the members of the School Board should be chosen by the members of the County Board.

INTERVIEWER: Who were elected by the people.

NARRATOR: Who were elected by the people. And I think that was a very substantial improvement, in fact real arguments can be

48 made that this is a very good way to proceed in these matters. Well, as a result of that, the program for desegregation of Arlington public schools was stopped in its tracks. There was great debate throughout the state on the Gray Commission report. My wife and I participated, in many instances, in that debate, particularly Elizabeth who had been, as I say, on the Arlington School Board. We were supporters of gradual desegregation of the schools. I recall one winter evening when Elizabeth was asked to go to the heart of Byrd country to speak against the Superintendent of Schools of the state of Virginia, who was going to speak in opposition to the Supreme Court decision and to wave the flag of resistance throughout the state on the subject of desegregation. And we drove up to Berryville in the snowy evening, and Elizabeth was politely but quite coldly received, not only by the weather but by the audience, when she said the schools must abide by the edict of the Supreme Court.

INTERVIEWER: What other areas did you go to? Did you find any sympathy anywhere?

NARRATOR: I did not speak outside of Arlington, and I got some sympathetic response, as you know, sort of 50-50 response in Arlington. Elizabeth spoke in two or three other areas, in Fairfax and elsewhere.

INTERVIEWER: But not in other parts of the state?

49

NARRATOR: No, that was the only one outside of the northern Virginia area. Well, as you know, Mr. Byrd persuaded the legislature to adopt what they call the Virginia Massive Resistance Laws. And I think it may be best if I just continue on that rather than get into another subject at the moment.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, because this is certainly something that affected everyone up here.

NARRATOR: The Massive Resistance Laws provided that if any school was ordered to be desegregated, that the title of that school would be immediately vested in the Governor of the state. That school would be closed. It would not be reopened unless and until every parent of every child in that school, said that he or she was willing to operate on a desegregated basis. The schools in Prince Edward County were closed, or just decided to close. There was no great agitation to reopen them. Meanwhile, in the late 1950s, suit was filed in federal court by Mrs. Dorothy Hamm, I believe it is, who has also given her interview here in the Oral History Project, to desegregate the, particularly the Stratford Junior High School, where her proteges were enrolled.

INTERVIEWER: Or were going to be enrolled--or wanted to be enrolled.

50

NARRATOR: Wanted to be enrolled. That case came up for hearing in the late '50s, before Judge Albert V. Bryan, District Judge in the United States District Court for the eastern district of Virginia in Alexandria. He heard it, or was hearing it, in early 1958. He rendered a decision in September 1958, a rather strange decision, distinguishing between pupils whom he thought were qualified for Stratford Junior High School and pupils whom he thought were not qualified. But in any event, he ruled that under the Supreme Court edict, black children in Arlington were entitled to admission to Stratford Junior High School, and provided that they should be admitted in the beginning of the second semester, which would be the first semester in 1959. This was a decision which would have far- reaching impact. Would the schools of Arlington have to be closed? Elizabeth and I called a group together in our home, and some twenty people came, to talk about forming a Save Our Schools Committee, based on the fact that we ought to be able to get substantial support from groups of people who might prefer segregated schools, but who if the chips were down, and they had to choose between no public schools and desegregated schools, would prefer to accept desegregation. I recall with real appreciation, that one of the people who came to that meeting was Mrs. Leon Buckholz, who had been a very conservative member of the County Board. She was, in a sense, our token representative of that group, but was quite effective later in building up

51 support. Another person there was Bill Lightsey, who became enormously effective in the Save Our Schools movement, and was later, having formed as a result of that meeting a so-called Save Our Schools group, was employed in a limited-pay basis, to see if he could develop support through the state. And we were able to do that. We formed a so-called Save Our Schools Committee, we had another meeting in Arlington in one of the school buildings, I forget which, and 600 people came. And we got great support in Arlington for the idea of keeping the schools open regardless of what happened, and it sort of caught hold. Bill Lightsey went to Norfolk, got Norfolk's support, and formed a Save the Schools branch. In Richmond he also got it. And in various other areas of the state. And when the chips were down in the winter of 1959, this group had representatives--and claimed some 20,000 members throughout the state. I never did know whether it was 2,000 or 20,000--but, in any event, it became quite an effective lobbying force as I'll point out in a minute. Meanwhile, with the idea of the Arlington schools being closed in February of 1959, things were getting quite acute in the County. In October of 1958, I believe it was, a group of businessmen from Norfolk came to see me, and said the Norfolk schools had been closed, and they were closed under edict of the Massive Resistance Laws in September of 1958, and put 15,000 Norfolk children on the streets. This group came to me and said that they could not get, showing how agitated the emotion of people was throughout the state, a reputable lawyer to represent them in an attempt to

52 attack the Massive Resistance Laws in Norfolk. They had a committee of some 1,000 people who wanted the schools reopened and who were willing to litigate the matter, and would I act for them. I decided that to be true to myself, I had to get into the case, and I did so. I tried the case before a three-judge federal court in Norfolk, news of which was followed closely in Arlington, because it was going to be determinative.

INTERVIEWER: When was that?

NARRATOR: That case was heard, I think, in late October or early November of 1958, before a three-judge federal court. I remember the big federal court there was jam-packed with people, and I had a local Norfolk attorney who was doing the paperwork and things like that for it, and we argued the case before this three-judge federal court. The court came out with an opinion, as you know, it was on January 19, 1959, which was General Lee's birthday incidentally, declaring the Massive Resistance Laws unconstitutional. About this time the General Assembly of Virginia was in session. Governor Almond, who was the defendant in my Norfolk case, first made a very rebellious speech in the General Assembly, but later capitulated in a sense and said the state of Virginia should go ahead and proceed to desegregate its schools. That is, reopen its schools on a desegregated basis. The Charlottesville schools had been closed under the Massive Resistance Laws, and the Front Royal schools had been closed.

53 The matter came on before the state Senate, on whether or not there should be an appropriation for the public schools--and I don't think this is generally realized--this is when our Save Our Schools Committee did enormous lobbying on behalf of the school system.

INTERVIEWER: Say something about the work of the Save Our Schools organization.

NARRATOR: Well, the Save the Schools organization had sent representatives to Richmond on the idea of keeping the schools open. Despite the ruling in the Norfolk court outlawing the Massive Resistance Laws, there was real agitation in Virginia to close the whole public school system, believe it or not. And as I say, Bill Lightsey and his group did very valiant work in Richmond on the subject. The matter came on for hearing before the state Senate of Virginia as to whether or not there should be an appropriation to the public schools, and the vote in the Senate was very close. Senator--state Senator--Byrd, who succeeded his father later in the United States Senate, led the opposition to any appropriation for public schools, and as I recall, the vote in the state Senate was 20-19 in favor of keeping the public school system open.

INTERVIEWER: That's pretty close.

54 NARRATOR: Pretty close. After that, I'll say this for the state of Virginia, it behaved responsibly and effectively and the schools were reopened without incident. I remember in Arlington Ralph Kaul and Dave Krupsaw and other County Board members got me to meet with them on the subject of what they should do about the order to reopen the Stratford Junior High School on a desegregated basis in January or February, I guess it was early February in 1959. The County Board did not know whether there was going to be any violence or not, and they had police-- plainclothes police--all around, to see that the schools were properly reopened. And they were reopened without incident. Virginians and Arlingtonians could be proud of the way they were reopened. We have some reports here in the Oral History Program on it, but as Theda Henley has said, and Ms. Hamm has said, and others, the youngsters were received well. And as I said, I think we can be proud of the way Arlington acted in the desegregation of the Arlington public schools.

There's one other comment I might make on segregation, where I particularly participated. That was in connection with the segregated seating laws in Virginia. Virginia had an archaic law, like most other southern states, that whites and blacks could not sit together in public gatherings. It's hard for us to understand that now. But it was accepted, and I think generally approved by the people of Virginia in those days. Theda Henley, head of the League of

55 Women Voters in Arlington, came to me and asked if I wouldn't act in an attempt to knock that segregated seating law out in the state of Virginia. I believe it had already been knocked out by a federal court in North Carolina. I said I would. She has previously told us in this Oral History Project of her efforts to get, and did get, some black person to come to a meeting of the League of Women Voters in Arlington. Faith Vissell, a white person, sat next to the black visitor and Faith Vissell was arrested. I represented her, and argued the case before Judge Emory Hosmer. Judge Hosmer decided, greatly to my surprise, against me. I say to my surprise, because the court in North Carolina had decided the other way and knocked the law out. But he decided that he wasn't going to be the judge to knock out the segregated seating law. I appealed that case to the Supreme Court of Virginia, and had a very unhappy experience, in that I won the case but lost it. This might be a matter of just a little interest. I argued the case before the court, and one of the judges said, "I'd like to see the warrant in this case." And the arrest warrant was brought before the court, and the justice looked at it and said--I'm sure this had been set up in advance-- "I don't see any allegation in this warrant that Faith Vissell was white. How do we know that she wasn't black and sitting by a black person?" I said, "Your Honor, you got no argument on that, of course she was white." "The warrant doesn't say so." And the court reversed of Judge Hosmer, let her off on the grounds that it didn't show that she had violated the segregation law. So as

56 I say, we won the case but lost it. Shortly after that, another case was brought before Judge McCarthy, and Judge McCarthy acted responsibly and held the segregated seating law to be unconstitutional. It was not appealed.

Incidentally, I want to make a couple of remarks about Judge McCarthy. When he decided the Dean case against us, and had acted as he had on appointments in a political manner, he and I became real political enemies. I came, however, to have a great respect for him. I reluctantly reached the conclusion that, in judicial matters, including the Dean case, he had decided as he thought best--I mean he thought the law applied-- and then proceeded in a political manner in matters that he considered to be political. He and I differed but became very good friends, particularly in relation to the formation of St. Peter's Episcopal Church, in which we both actively participated. And while we differed substantially on economic and political matters, we respected each other in our different political views. I want to pay that homage to him now. You want me to now talk about the litigation I was involved in?

INTERVIEWER: The One Man One Vote litigation, yes.

NARRATOR: I think the next case, and a very important case, where I was asked to act for Arlington residents, was the so- called One Man One Vote cases. As a result of the 1960 census,

57 Arlington had practically doubled in population during the '40s and again in the '50s, and it was grossly under-represented in the Virginia General Assembly. The Virginia General Assembly, like most state legislatures, where it came to reapportioning their legislatures every ten years, did not want to reapportion their own members out of office. If Arlington were granted additional legislators, it would mean somebody else would lose, because the law provided that there would be only 100 Delegates in the General Assembly, and 40 members of the state Senate. Arlington became, as a result of the 1961 reapportionment by the Virginia General Assembly, underrepresented on the basis of about 3-to-1. They only had one-third of the number of Delegates and Senators to whom they would be entitled under a strict population basis. It gave their representatives very little clout in the state, and we were still subjected to, I call it discrimination, in that very little of our proposed legislation could ever get adopted. Harrison Mann, with whom I had many disagreements, but who was a very earnest legislator in northern Virginia--

INTERVIEWER: In Arlington.

NARRATOR: In Arlington. --and Kathryn Stone in Arlington, and John Webb, a Delegate from Fairfax, came to me and said they would like to attack the constitutionality of the reapportionment by the state of Virginia. The Supreme Court of the United States, in the so-called Baker case a year or so before, had held

58 that federal courts had jurisdiction to see that state legislatures were properly apportioned. That was a monumental case in itself, but no suits had been filed--oh, I think one had been filed, but no cases had been tried under that ruling, as to whether or not legislatures had acted improperly in reapportionment. So we filed this suit called Mann against Davis. Harris Mann was the first person named, Davis was the head of the Election Board in the--

INTERVIEWER: Do you remember what his first name was?

NARRATOR: Levin Nock Davis. This case came on to be heard before a three-judge federal court in Alexandria. One of them was Judge Albert Bryan, who was then Circuit Judge. Another one was Judge Lewis, who was then a District Judge. The third one, oh I haven't got it here, was a judge from Norfolk. We argued that case, we heard testimony in the case, and the three-judge court finally unanimously came out holding that Virginia's reapportionment had violated the Constitution. Meanwhile, other cases had been filed in New York, Delaware and Alabama. Some of them had been decided one way and some the other. But they were all appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Court heard them all together. We argued the case before the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Supreme Court did something I don't think it had ever done before, or since. It took three days to hear arguments on those cases, because they

59 did consider them to be enormously important from the point of view of the state government. And finally came out in 1962 or '63, declaring that the apportionment by the state of Virginia, and the other states that were involved, were unconstitutional, and directing that these state legislatures reapportion their membership. And if they did not reapportion them properly, the federal courts could have authority to make reapportionments. They remanded the case to Judge Bryan and the others in federal court. Our Judge Bryan gave the General Assembly notice that it would have to reapportion properly or he would do it. The legislature had a special meeting, a special session, and did reapportion the General Assembly, giving to Arlington three delegates, instead of the one which it previously had, and giving it a special Senator to itself, which was something it had not previously had. And thus, in Fairfax and in Arlington and in Alexandria, the same procedure having been followed in Fairfax and in Alexandria, resulted in entirely changing the power of northern Virginian legislators. The same thing applied in Norfolk, because there was a shortage of representation in the Norfolk area. Over the years, northern Virginian legislators have doubled and tripled in number as a result of this case.

INTERVIEWER: That perhaps handles that particular suit, and you certainly can feel self-congratulatory for your part in that. I think that's a very important area?

60 NARRATOR: Well, I do feel proud on that. And I think I might say, if you don't mind that in none of these cases, except the Norfolk case, to which I referred, did I get any fee for my services.

INTERVIEWER: Oh really? Well, that's something that the community and the state and the public can certainly be thankful for.

NARRATOR: I was practicing law and making a very good living in Washington and had been active in bar associations there and felt I could afford to do it, and it was something I wanted to do.

Let me turn to some of my other activities during this general period. I served at the request of the County Board on several commissions which it had appointed including a fiscal affairs commission, a "charter" commission (to recommend whether or not Arlington should become a city) and continued to be generally active in local political affairs. I also was president of the Community Chest in Arlington one year. The Community Chest was the forerunner of the United Way, and I enjoyed that work very much.

INTERVIEWER: Did you get involved in any youth activities with your children?

61

NARRATOR: No, not particularly. My wife was involved in the Cub Scouts, but I had not been involved in youth activities. I think that covers, generally speaking, the specific activities in which--

INTERVIEWER: Why don't you tell us a little bit about your own personal career? You were a lawyer, an attorney. What firm, firms were you with, and what sort of--

NARRATOR: Well I became a member in the early '30s, of the law firm of Douglas Obear and Douglas. It was a distinguished firm and Mr. Douglas and Mr. Obear were both so Carolinian, so it was a southern firm. We had an excellent practice and I was able to make a good living and this enabled me really to do the things that, to me, make the practice of law worthwhile, that is engaging in litigation or service for the community. Such as the litigations in which I worked for Arlington. In 1962, I believe, I was elected president of the District of Columbia Bar, and having served my year there, the Bar elected me as one of its delegates to the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association, in which I served for a number of years. And the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association chose me as a member of the National Board of Governors of the American Bar Association, a group of some twenty lawyers that was really the governing body for the lawyers of the entire nation. That was

62 very interesting and it was a very rich professional experience.

INTERVIEWER: Now, at that time were there any black members of the ABA?

NARRATOR: Oh, yes. And there had previously been black members of the District of Columbia Bar Association. There was a time while I was there that there were not, and some of us fought to have them admitted. And they were admitted, I believe, in the early 1950s.

INTERVIEWER: What sort of litigation were you involved in, in your firm or with you personally?

NARRATOR: We were engaged in general business practice of law, our litigation involving wills, a little bit of personal injury litigation, very little from my point of view. Trusts, titles, titles to property, contract disputes, things of that type.

INTERVIEWER: Patent law?

NARRATOR: No, we were not patent specialists. I did have the honor of being chosen as a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, which is a rather distinguished group, limited to the maximum of one percent of the practicing Bar, and I do

63 treasure that.

INTERVIEWER: It sounds like a very elitist group.

NARRATOR: It is sort of an elitist group. And I do treasure that. But the practice of law has been interesting and I've been very fortunate in the type of career that I've been able to have.

INTERVIEWER: Now, I first saw you when I started attending St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Arlington. You were always being an usher or perhaps you were on the Vestry at that time, I don't know, but I know you've been quite active in church affairs over the years. Could you elaborate on that a bit?

NARRATOR: Well, our family has been active, and was active, and is still active in the Episcopal Church in Arlington. And for many years we were members of St. Mary's Episcopal Church. Judge McCarthy, to whom I have previously referred, was also a member of that church. As I say, he and I had become very good personal friends. We were no longer members of that church. We were members of a new church which we participated in forming, St. Peter's Episcopal Church.

INTERVIEWER: Would you tell us how that developed?

NARRATOR: Well, in the late 1950s we acquired a new rector

64 by the name of John Reinheimer. Mr. Reinheimer was a good preacher, he turned out to be an extremely high Church man. The Episcopal Church is often referred to as either high Church or low Church.

INTERVIEWER: Depending upon the ritual.

NARRATOR: Depending upon the ritual, and the similarity to the Roman Catholic service. Reinheimer was a dictator, a complete dictator as far as the operations of the church were concerned. He also had a serious alcohol problem. Under his administration, things went from bad to worse as far as the, let's call it, ecclegiality of the church members was concerned. And they were quite bitterly divided over a number of things. Judge McCarthy, a man named Allen Adams, and I had been delegated, or requested by the various substantialist segment of the congregation, to go and talk with Reinheimer on some of the problems. We were all three on the Vestry and each of us had been Senior Warden at one time or another in the Vestry. I remember going to see Mr. Reinheimer on that occasion, and we were chatting. I felt that Reinheimer was almost impossible in his dominating and dictatorial attitude with how the church should be run. And I remember in the middle of the conversation he turned to Judge McCarthy and said, "Judge, I think you are a fraud." There was a dead silence. And all three of us got up and walked out. Judge McCarthy and I had many disagreements, but

65 he was as honest a man as you can find in the world, and nobody could ever consider him a fraud. Well, this was a sort of culmination. Elizabeth and I, living in this big house, in which we lived at 2912 Glebe Road, across from Marymount College, a house which has since been torn down, as you know, we decided that we just could not stay in St. Mary's any longer. And yet we felt that we owed it to our many friends there to see how they would feel about the general situation. We called an informal meeting. I think there were some twenty friends that we knew had been concerned about the situation there, and met in our house. Instead of twenty showing up, there were about fifty. They were piled all over the steps and everywhere else inside our house, and it was a very emotional and prayerful session. It was one of the types of meetings you would never forget. I personally thought we would just move to one of the other churches, probably St. Andrew's in Arlington. But as the discussion went on the group said we must stay together and have a new church of our own. And that's what they decided. So all of us left St. Mary's. We started with a group which grew very, very rapidly, holding church services informally in a school, I believe it was called Stafford School.

Well we started holding these informal services in Madison School, near Old Glebe Road, not far from Walker's Chapel Church. And then we petitioned to the Diocese of Virginia for recognition as a mission church. After some problems, we were

66 admitted as a new church, and thus formed St. Peter's. This is not a type of experience a church member enjoys. But in this instance, St. Peter's is thriving and all of us were sure we did the right thing under the circumstances.

INTERVIEWER: The other thing that I would like to get your comments on, I don't know if you were directly involved in it, but is the enormous new development in Arlington, the whole change of the community from a series of little separate village communities, so to speak, to the high rises and the newcomers who've come into Arlington. There's been such a change with Metro's development and other development, and if you'd like to comment on that, perhaps.

NARRATOR: Yes, let me say that when Elizabeth and I were married in 1936, Arlington was really a series of disparate communities, each with a separate post office. Not one Arlington post office. There was a Washington post office, a Cherrydale post office, we had a Clarendon post office, I think we had a Glencarlyn post office, we had an East Falls Church post office, all in Arlington. All these little communities you might say were joined together by small farms, and it was hard to consider it as a single county, and yet that's what it was. And through the genius I think of Hugh Reid, a young lawyer who was a member of the House of Delegates in the 1920s, the Virginia Legislature had adopted this County Manager Plan of government, a unique and

67 enormously effective form of government in 1930. And Arlington had become, I think, the second community in the nation to have the County Manager or City Manager form of government. The County had grown substantially in the 1930s, but not overwhelmingly. However, when I got on the County Board in 1940, it was burgeoning so fast that the County government simply could not keep up with the services that were demanded. In 1940 to 1950 it doubled in population, and in 1950 to 1960 it practically doubled again. So during that time, it was really an overwhelming daily change and overwhelming daily stress in County affairs and continual political conflict between the old residents and the new. The new ones demanding more services and being willing to pay more taxes than the old ones were accustomed to or wanted. And so we found the stress existing about which I've already testified. Through it all, I think the County had good government in the sense that it was responsive to the will of the people, and I don't think, from the beginning to this date, there's been any real political financial scandal under the County Manager form of government. There were indictments of the County Treasurer and one other official in the early 1930s, but they were for acts committed before the County Manager form of government came in. Under this special form of government that we have, with a small county board elected at large, highly visible, one elected each year (with two every fourth year) inherently makes them responsive to the people who can kick them out almost overnight. The County Manager himself is removed from

68 any real partisan politics. The County staff is specifically removed from politics. All of this has resulted in a very unusual public arrangement. And you couple that with the fact that Arlington has been almost the best educated community in the country.

INTERVIEWER: I don't know. Cambridge or Princeton might question that.

NARRATOR: Well, they might, but I think the average education level in Arlington, until the recent influx of immigrants, included at least one year of college, very high. You see, Arlington has been a home for the higher level of federal employees and the higher level of the military, and as such has had during this period from the Second World War on, people who could assist in government in various commissions and committees, and who demanded the best in government. I think, forexample--I get euphoric sometimes on the subject--My wife, as you know, has worked for WETA for almost thirty years. For the last twenty years WETA, its television studios have been on Four Mile Run in south Arlington. We live presently in Sycamore Heights, which is on Tuckahoe Street, between Washington Boulevard and Lee Highway. Elizabeth has often said to me that she enjoys so much her drive down George Mason Drive to Four Mile Run and to the WETA studios because she says she passes seven different parks in this relatively short distance. Arlington is

69 remarkably full of parks, both large and small. It has many mini-parks. It has a County Board highly sensitive to the needs of the type of people that are in Arlington. There are many social services for the elderly, Arlington having a large elderly population. In the last few years Arlington has had an enormous influx of, let's call it immigrants for want of a better word.

INTERVIEWER: Foreign born.

NARRATOR: Foreign born. I think at Key School, Key Elementary School in Arlington, if my information is correct, there are almost 50 different languages--not languages, but dialects at least, that are involved in the student body. At Wakefield Senior High School, now, I've been told that the student body can be roughly divided into four almost equal groups. One, native white; second, black; the third, the Asians; and the fourth, the Spanish-speaking Central Americans. Arlington is really being transformed that way. The control of Arlington--the voting control of Arlington and the public participation or civic participation of Arlington residents--has still been largely confined, almost entirely confined, to the white and black populations, with some interjection of Asians, but very little interjection in civic life of Spanish born. The County Board, I think, is proceeding extremely wisely and with extreme sensitivity, in attempting to meet these issues. And the School Board is doing the same. They are difficult issues. The

70 situation in Arlington will undoubtedly be transformed over the next generation. But I can only speak well of the Arlington in which we live, and I think it's a great community.

Recently, I attended an annual meeting of Arlington volunteers that the County government puts on, a sort of thank-you meeting for the work that the many volunteers in Arlington--I say "volunteers," I mean civic volunteers, volunteers helping the Arlington County government. Many volunteers are involved. And it is astonishing how much volunteer work there is for the Arlington County government. I think it was estimated, at the meeting this past week, that there were several million dollars' worth of time being given by volunteers in the Arlington government. If the County government doesn't do right at any particular time, or the County Board, it will be swamped at the next meeting--and the next election--with people complaining. So we almost have to have good government. And we do have a good government, and I'm really very proud of it. I think I've really said all I want to say at this interview. I appreciate your giving it to me, and I'm really proud to be an Arlingtonian.

INTERVIEWER: Well I think Arlington's proud to have you as a citizen. You did a short little interview several years ago, and we're very grateful that you have taken the time to, three different mornings, explore in much greater depth the various

71 activities you've been involved in. And I know that for the historian in the future, this is going to be a rich resource in many different fields. And we are certainly grateful to you, Ed. Thank you very much.

72 INCLUDED IN THE FILE ARE THE FOLLOWING EXHIBITS:

Benjamin M. Smith, et al. v. Lyman M. Kelley, et al. 162 VA 645. June 19, 1934. Syllabus, Statement and Opinion.

Harry W. Porter, et al. v. Barnard O. Joy, et al. 188 VA 801. January 10, 1949. Syllabus and Opinion.

Alan L. Dean, etc., et al. v. Rocco Paolicelli, et al. 194 VA 219. September 10, 1952. Syllabus, Statement and Opinion.

Barnard Joy, E.R. Draheim and Warren Cox v. John Locke Green. 194 VA 1003. June 8, 1953. Statement and Opinion.

Levin Nock Davis, Secretary, State Board of Elections, et al., Appellants, v. Harrison Mann, et al. 377 US 678, 12 L ed 2d 609, 84 S Ct 1453. Argued November 14 and 18, 1963. Decided June 15, 1964. Summary, Headnotes and Opinion.

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