Interview with Bill Ship April 22, 1987 Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library

Georgia Government Documentation Project

Series D: Politics and the Media

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CITATION:

Shipp, Bill, Interviewed by Clifford Kuhn, 22 April 1987, P1987-05, Series D. Politics and the Media, Georgia Government Documentation Project, Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

GEORGIA GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTATION PROJECT

GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY

SERIES D: POLITICS AND THE MEDIA

NARRATOR: BILL SHIPP

INTERVIEWER: CLIFFORD KUHN

DATE: APRIL 22, 1987

[Tape 1, Side A]

KUHN: So, why don't we just start really by asking what is your political background and

your journalistic background? How did you manage to get into journalism, and what kind

of political influences did you have growing up in your own family?

SHIPP: Well, I grew up in Georgia, and I am a native of Marietta. I was the editor of my

high school newspaper, The Pitchfork, at Marietta High School. I guess the first political

assignment I ever had was covering a youth assembly, sponsored by the YMCA. I guess I

got interested in that. And I went to the University of Georgia, after spending a couple of

years at Emory. I went to the journalism school there and became the managing editor of

the Red and Black. During that time, Horace Ward--this was in 1953--

KUHN: Right.

SHIPP: Horace Ward, a black man, attempted to enroll in the law school at the University

of Georgia. And just as it appeared that he was about to win all his court cases, he Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library suddenly and mysteriously lost all his deferments and was drafted into the Army.

KUHN: Right.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

SHIPP: The student editor--we decided that would be a great campaign to launch; and so

we launched the campaign and attacked the governor of the state, the--Roy Harris, who

was his political mentor had been Speaker of the House, and was chairman of the Board

of Regents. This cost me my job on the Red and Black. I was to become editor the

following quarter. I was kicked off the paper, and it was suggested by a professor it

might be a good thing if I left the University. I did leave the University and join the

Army. Horace Ward came out of the Army and went to Northwestern Law School--

KUHN: Right.

SHIPP: --and is now a federal district judge in Atlanta.

KUHN: Right.

SHIPP: So, that's how I got into politics.

KUHN: Well, what had caused you or others at the Red and Black to take that particular

stand in 1954?

SHIPP: It was 1953. This was even before the '54 school desegregation--This seemed to

be the right thing to do. I grew up, and until I was about twelve years old, I grew up in a

neighborhood near a black neighborhood; and we played with the black kids, and I didn't

particularly see anything wrong with that, nor did my family, as far as I know. But, of

course, I went to a segregated public school and never thought much about it until I got to

the University; and suddenly this man wanted the same opportunity that I had, which was

to enroll in the state university. And it just struck me there was something unjust about Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library this great hullabaloo about denying this man the right to do what every other citizen,

every white citizen certainly, had the right to do. In retrospect, I was a little naive, but--

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

KUHN: Meaning what?

SHIPP: The right--What?

KUHN: Meaning what?

SHIPP: I mean I did not fully realize all the political ramifications, and how thoroughly

ingrained race was in the political structure of the state, and how race was used as a

subterfuge and a dodge so that politicians would not have to promise what they really

should have been talking about, which was improved education, improved public health

for all the state's citizens. Instead, they talked about preserving our way of life. Well, as

it turned out, if you look back, our way of life down South in the Depression was the pits.

Anybody who stood around and listened to a politician promise to preserve our

way of life--in retrospect, they should have been throwing rocks at the son-of-a-bitch. I

mean, who wanted to preserve that kind of life? I remember coming up in the

Depression, my father worked for Southern Bell Telephone Company. He was always

one step away from being laid off; and he would tell stories of people trying to pay their

telephone bills with eggs and produce, and having to go to their houses and take their

telephones out because they couldn't pay their bills. People, the Talmadges and people of

that ilk, who promised to preserve our way of life--that was just total bullshit.

KUHN: What was your family's political background, vis-a-vis, say, the Talmadges or the

New Deal?

SHIPP: My father believed, as did his father, my grandfather, believed that Roosevelt was Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library the great savior. They liked Roosevelt very much. My mother also liked Roosevelt and

liked Ed Rivers, a governor of the state who came in with what was known as the "Little

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

New Deal," and later turned out to be something of a crook, but that's another story; and I

was so small I don't remember a lot of that.

KUHN: In the late thirties, yeah.

SHIPP: Right. And she also later became an ardent Talmadge supporter. And I'm

wondering, in looking back now, a little pop psychology, if some of my efforts in the

other direction were not something of adolescent rebellion, late adolescent rebellion,

maybe.

KUHN: Um-hm--

SHIPP: Maybe. I don't know.

KUHN: Do you remember discussions in, let's say, the forties or early fifties, political

discussions around the house?

SHIPP: On, in the early fifties, I remember some loud arguments about this Horace Ward

matter. I also remember that, while I was involved in this and this became a national

cause--

KUHN: Yeah.

SHIPP: It was in Time, and Ralph McGill wrote about it--it really attracted me to the

Constitution. He was the only voice who defended these students at the University of

Georgia in what they were--And my mother started getting--at that time, my mother and

father were divorced--And my mother started getting hate telephone calls. Someone

threw garbage all over her porch one night. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library KUHN: Right. I remember seeing a column--

SHIPP: Right. You've looked all this up, eh?

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

KUHN: I've done some work.

SHIPP: We had an artist, who is now a very famous local artist, named John Collick, who

was our cartoonist. And I wanted him to draw a cartoon depicting the tyranny of the State

against the free student press at the University of Georgia, and he drew it. He drew a very

fine cartoon, but he made us put under the cartoon an agate line saying that this was

assigned and commissioned by the editors of the Red and Black, which seemed to relieve

him of any responsibility. When I see him, I still kid him about that.

KUHN: Who else were the editors at that time, and were you all of one opinion?

SHIPP: No, we were not. I was the--I was the--not only the managing editor, but I was the

staff radical. Walter Lundy was the editor. He did share my opinion but kept a very low

profile. He is now with the State Department. I believe he is the charge in Seoul, Korea

now. Tracy Stallings, who was my roommate, was on the staff. He is now the mayor of

Carrollton, and I think he has been a dean over at West Georgia College. Priscilla Arnold

then, now Davis, is Harold Davis's wife down at Georgia State. She was very

sympathetic. Gene Brittain, who was our news editor, later was a reporter here, I think he

is an Episcopal priest now. So, we all kind of split up and scattered to the four winds.

KUHN: What was the 'Talmadgites', you know, specific response? What kind of specific

things did they do during those years?

SHIPP: You mean what did they do to me or--

KUHN: Yeah, I mean interacting with-- Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library SHIPP: Oh, they called the University of Georgia. They called the President, O. C.

Aderholt, and told them they wanted the student newspaper silenced. And O. C. Aderholt

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

called the dean of the journalism school, John Drewry, supposedly a great legendary

figure. And John Drewry called me in and informed me to get off that topic, and then had

my advisor to tell me that I was not going to be editor of the newspaper. And this Dan

Kitchens, who is just retiring as professor over there, told me that I was not going to be

editor, and it might be a good thing if I left school, which I subsequently did.

KUHN: Hm. And you left precisely because you felt--

SHIPP: Well, I felt isolated, left out. Suddenly, I was a pariah on campus. The faculty

didn't want to have any--with some exceptions; there were exceptions--the faculty didn't

want to have anything to do with me. A lot of the kids looked at me as, you know, "This

is a big party school. What is this socialist radical doing causing all these problems?"

I had been a Sigma Nu at Emory.

KUHN: Um-hm.

SHIPP: When I went to the University of Georgia, I decided I didn't want anything to do

with fraternities.

KUHN: So you went to Emory for a couple of years and then went to Athens?

SHIPP: Right.

KUHN: What other kinds of elements entered into your particular decision to take up

Horace Ward's--

SHIPP: I just--simply, I just thought it was--well, in addition to thinking it was a just

cause, I was trying to enliven the newspaper. We took up a lot of causes. We took up Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library veteran's housing, for instance. The veterans coming back from the Korean War and

World War II were put in totally inadequate housing over there, and treated shabbily. We

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

think now the Vietnam veterans were treated like dirt. Well, the Korean veterans were

treated much the same way. Sometimes we forget that. We think the Korean War was

fought by an ambulance corps and a field hospital, which was really not--But we took up

a lot of things. So part of that, in addition to helping Horace Ward because I thought it

was a just cause, was trying to enliven the newspaper and make it a--kind of the social

conscience of the campus.

KUHN: And what kind of relationship did you have with the people at Time, or with

Ralph McGill? I mean, what did that--what influence did all of that have on you?

SHIPP: Well, I read McGill every day. Time--I had no relationship with Time; I just

mentioned that in passing. But I read McGill every day, and McGill was my hero. The

Constitution editorial page was, by far, the most enlightened voice in the South. And as

far as I was concerned, anywhere, at that time. To do what McGill said and wrote at that

time was an act of bravery that, at the time, I just thought was unsurpassed. Now, when

you look back now, in the context of 1987, and what he was writing, you would think,

"This man was frightened and scared, and this is not very strong stuff." But in the context

of that time, it was very strong stuff. He was putting his life on the line every day. As I

subsequently found out, the general manager of the newspaper was constantly trying to

fire him because the advertisers wanted him fired.

KUHN: Was that Tarver or--

SHIPP: No, Tarver was his assistant; and Tarver intervened. And, you know, Tarver gets Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library a bum rap for what he did to these newspapers; but, in fact, Tarver was McGill's Savior.

And he stood between the management of these newspapers and McGill and saved him,

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

as I--I found this out after I came to work. I interned at the Constitution in 19--in the

summer of 1953.

KUHN: After--

SHIPP: No, this happened in the fall.

KUHN: Okay.

SHIPP: So in the summer, I was an intern here.

KUHN: Okay.

SHIPP: --Working for a very, very, rock-ribbed, conservative Republican managing editor

named Bill Fields.

KUHN: Um-hm--

SHIPP: Strangely enough, well, I did a good job for them. I was proud of my

accomplishments that summer. And then I got into all this trouble. Then I went into the

Army in the summer of '54; came back in the fall of '56. I'd been working in a radio

station when I left Athens. I asked for my job back, and the radio station had been sold;

and I was told I didn't have a job.

Well, as a veteran, I had a right to demand a job, but that was not a good thing to

do; and I was trying to bring my wife-to-be, who was a Czechoslovakian, who refugeed

into Germany--I was trying to get her into this country. I had to prove that I had gainful

employment in order to do that. So I went to the managing editor, William Fields, for

whom I had been an intern, and said, "Hey, I need a job here, at least temporarily, so I can Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library show Immigration and Naturalization Service that I have work to get my wife here on a

visa." So he hired me. I went to work on the state news desk.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

KUHN: Did you actually--did you serve in Korea?

SHIPP: No. I spent my entire military career, except for training, in Western Europe.

And not a single Chi-Com got through while I was there.

KUHN: Okay.

SHIPP: [Laughing].

KUHN: What kind of work did you do here in that summer as an intern?

SHIPP: I worked on the state news desk, mainly writing headlines, rewriting handouts,

doing a variety of things.

KUHN: Was that your first work on a daily?

SHIPP: No, I had worked on the Marietta Daily Journal some when I had been in high

school, and I'd covered sports for the Cobb County Times, which was a weekly

newspaper.

KUHN: Right. So you came back here in '56?

SHIPP: Right, and I worked here until, and in a variety of jobs--I was--eventually became

state news editor. And I did some investigative reporting. Well, what everybody says

now, that there was a sweetheart relationship between the newspaper in the sixties and the

Ivan Allen administration--there was a sweetheart relationship between the editorial page

and the Ivan Allen administration. Jack Nelson devoted part of his career poking at

police corruption in the Allen--in the Hartsfield and in the Allen administration. I won

the AP Sweepstakes Award in 1965 for showing that the lottery squad at the Atlanta Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library Police Department was, in fact, running the lottery. I got no editorial support. Gene

Patterson was the editor of the newspaper.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

KUHN: Well, who else were the corps of reporters--obviously, Nelson and others--in, say,

the late fifties, early sixties that you--

SHIPP: Well, let's see. Reg Murphy came along, and he was a political editor. There was

another political editor named Bill Bates before that. He went to work for Dick Russell.

M. L. St. John was a political editor--writer. Al Riley was a political writer. Celestine

Sibley was covering the House and doing even a more magnificent job, though, covering

her colorful murder trials of that era.

KUHN: I've interviewed--

SHIPP: What? Pardon?

KUHN: I've interviewed Celestine Sibley--

SHIPP: Have you? So she probably told you some of that.

KUHN: She told me some great stories.

SHIPP: Yeah, and--

KUHN: Well, so what was the--I mean, you were talking about tensions between the

editorial staff, the business department, the reporters. Maybe you could elaborate about

some of those dynamics here at the newspaper in the late fifties when you came on board.

SHIPP: Well, I was not aware of them in the late fifties. In the early sixties was--

particularly when Gene Patterson moved from the spot of executive editor to become

editor, which was essentially editorial page editor, of the Constitution, those tensions

became really marked. There was a story that Patterson once came around in the Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library newsroom and wanted to start meeting the reporters each day. And the managing editor,

Bill Fields, informed Patterson, "This is my sandbox on this side of the building, and your

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

sandbox is on the other side of the building. Why don't you go over there and play in it?"

There was a lot of that kind of thing. Even worse, the pay--and I was married and having

children. I had two children in two years, and the pay was abysmal. I mean, it was

starvation wages. Looking back on it, the corporation is rich; how they could treat people

like that is beyond me, but that's another story.

KUHN: Okay. What was your relationship with McGill at that time? What sort of

position did he play in all this?

SHIPP: Well, McGill, by that time, he had risen above the fray. He had almost nothing to

do with the day-to-day operation of either the news side or the editorial page. He wrote

no unsigned editorials; and I was later told that that was by the decision made by the

business office that McGill would not write unsigned editorials. He rose to publisher.

But in that same time, while we had a rock-ribbed conservative management in the

newsroom, there was a determination to--that was the sort of roast I was in--[indicating]--

to cover Civil Rights. Jack Nelson was sent to Little Rock. He also was sent to

Monteagle, Tennessee to write about the--what's the name of that school up there?

KUHN: Highlander.

SHIPP: The Highlander Folk School and wrote a five part series calling these people race

mixers and Communists. Jack doesn't like to remember that now, but I think that was--

KUHN: Of course, that was at the same time that--

SHIPP: --that a photographer hired by Talmadge, named Ed Friend, went up there and Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library shot a lot of pictures, including the young MLK, Jr. attending there. There was an old

Communist--He must have got tired of seeing his own--his name was Dombrowski, as I

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

recall. He'd be everywhere you went. You would then think it was Stalin and

Dombrowski. But they put out this huge flyer and, unhappily, the great liberal

Constitution played right into that.

KUHN: How so? I mean, how did that work?

SHIPP: Well, Nelson went up there, and the series seemed to confirm what Ed Friend had

found. And I'm sure there were Communists. I'm sure there were Marxists up there.

Hell, that was--for people who grew up in the--and who were adults in the Thirties, that

was certainly an alternative, because it didn't look like this republic was going to survive.

So, I--

KUHN: That's something that you've mentioned, occasionally, in your columns and

writings over the years, you know. How did you learn that there were left-wing elements

within the Civil Rights movement, and how does the media--I mean, you've written, as I

recall, a column sort of talking about what the media's role ought to be or has been--

SHIPP: Oh, I've preached about that several times.

KUHN: Yes.

SHIPP: You learned about the left-wing elements, which I certainly wrote about, because I

thought they were part of the story. And I thought that whatever their motivations were,

that they ought to be detailed. I learned about them, as did many reporters, from leaks

from law enforcement; the FBI among them. I remember, I used to meet with an FBI

agent out at Grant Field. We would both take off our coats in the spring and summer, and Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library walk around that track. And he would tell me all this stuff. Presumably, we took off our

coats to show each other we weren't bugged. I--

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

KUHN: Well, when was this, and--

SHIPP: This was in--

KUHN: --what kind of thing?

SHIPP: This was the early sixties. He talked about King. He talked about the old Mine,

Mill, and Smelter Workers who were operating--

KUHN: In Birmingham.

SHIPP: --with Hosea Williams--down in Savannah--

KUHN: Oh, yeah.

SHIPP: --at that time. But they had been an outlaw union because it was outlawed by the

CIO, I think.

KUHN: Right. Right.

SHIPP: Because of Communist influence or some kind of Marxist influence.

KUHN: They were the left-wing CIO?

SHIPP: Yeah, but looking back on it, that seems kind of petty, but I'm sure those Marxist

outfits have their own motives for whatever they were doing. And I'm certain that the

civil rights people, who were leaders, needed all the help they could get from whatever

source. So, I, in retrospect--

KUHN: So, he talked about--you all talked about Mine, Mill and Hosea's--

SHIPP: Yeah, and Hosea's efforts in Savannah, and what else did we talk about? Oh, and

he talked--I remember getting a story from him about Jack O'Dell. Are you familiar with Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library that name?

KUHN: Yes. NAACP Defense Fund.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

SHIPP: Well, now, at this time he worked for King.

KUHN: Okay.

SHIPP: And O'Dell had a past as a Communist sympathizer or Communist--I don't

remember the details. But I remember talking to Dr. King about it, and he told me he had

fired the man. And I called his New York field office, and Jack O'Dell answered the

telephone. That was a pretty good story. It certainly was something worth reporting. But

I don't want to give you the impression, though, that this was the tail that wagged the dog.

These were sidelights to the Civil Rights Movement and certainly not a major thrust of

the coverage here.

KUHN: Oh, yeah.

SHIPP: Right.

KUHN: Yes, I saw a story that you wrote about a woman named Sirney [sp?], I think, a

teacher at Spelman who was involved in the Leb's--

SHIPP: Yeah, I don't even--there were the Sirneys, and there was another couple. I can't

remember their names, now; but that was not mainstream things.

KUHN: What was the--or were there debates or what types of debates were there about

that type of coverage, about the types of things we are talking about, the left-wing

connections?

SHIPP: I can't remember that there was any real debate. In retrospect, I think that some of

the editors wanted that put in as a--to impede the Civil Rights Movement, you know. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library They never said that to me, but I think that was at least implicit, in retrospect, in the

assignments. But, as I say, it was not a major part--

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

KUHN: Yeah.

SHIPP: --of the coverage.

KUHN: How does that work? I mean, you say, you know, without naming names, you are

saying that it was the implicit design or aim or whatever?

SHIPP: Because, in retrospect, those kinds of things were footnotes to footnotes to the

CIvil Rights Movement. There was no way of knowing that at the time because, in fact,

had this been a Marxist movement, I don't think it would have been a non-violent

movement. And I think it would have been a revolutionary movement. And, in a sense,

it was revolutionary. But it was, up until the Civil Rights Movement turned into the anti-

war movement, it was, by and large, non-violent. And it was simply people seeking

rights that they should have had three hundred years ago.

KUHN: What about the Selma march? I've heard a fair amount about, you know, the

tensions.

SHIPP: Do you want me to tell you about the Selma march?

KUHN: Sure.

SHIPP: How can I tell you about the Selma march? They wouldn't send me.

Okay. We had covered everything up to that point. The paper's got a bad rap

saying, "Selma is an example of things you did not cover." That is a lie. Selma is the

thing we did not cover. We covered Albany. In fact, Bruce Galphin fell out of favor with

the managing editor of the newspaper because he refused to go to Albany when Martin Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library Luther King, Jr. returned to be arrested. That was my first Civil RIghts assignment, the

first major one. And I went to Albany and stayed down there so long that I almost was

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

eligible to vote. But we covered all the big stuff. Old Miss, I was at Old Miss, and that

was the one assignment I thought I was going to killed over.

KUHN: Right.

SHIPP: You've never seen such violence as I saw that night at Old Miss. We rocked on

and covered a whole series of things. So, we get up to Selma. Before Selma, General

Walker, as a result of what happened at Old Miss, filed a multi-multi-million dollar libel

suit against every newspaper down there.

KUHN: General Walker of Mississippi?

SHIPP: Yes. As a result of a report put out by a stringer on the Old Miss campus that

General Walker had led the charge against the Lyceum Building. In fact, I was standing

at the foot of this monument when General Walker stood and congratulated the kids on

what they were doing, told them he thought it might be a good idea if they could cut the

power lines, that that was a tactic that he recommended; but he didn't lead the charge. He

walked away, and the assault was led by others, including a man who drove a bulldozer

up the steps of the Lyceum and was knocked whacky by the marshals.

Anyway, as the Selma thing developed and the marchers approached Pettus

Bridge, and I was hot to go; and I was looking at the wire, and I turned to William Fields,

and I said, "We have got to send somebody to Selma." And he said to me, "Wait until

something happens." By that time, it was already happening. We never sent anybody to

Selma, and I was later told that we did that on the advice of our libel lawyer, Barmore Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library Gambrell. He thought that we were--that part of the suit was going to be that we were too

aggressive in covering Civil Rights activities. I don't know whether that was true or not.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

That sounds like a bullshit defense. The case was later thrown out of court. We never

went to trial with it. I think one newspaper or wire service did go to trial, and they

prevailed.

KUHN: The suit was based on, well, libel, but--

SHIPP: Well, it was based on that General Walker had been libeled by the falsity of the

report that he had led the charge.

KUHN: --which, in turn, stemmed from this 'overzealous coverage.'

SHIPP: From this overzealous coverage and over--and even advocacy coverage. I think

that was a term that may have been used, that we were not simply covering the news, but

that we were advocating the social change that was occurring.

KUHN: Uh-huh. To what degree, if any, do you think that there was a grain of truth in

that?

SHIPP: Oh, I think there was more than a grain of truth to it. Editorially, we were

certainly advocating social change, with one exception. I need to tell you about this

exception, I think, because the historical revisionists also overlook this. Gene Patterson,

a fine editor, a very articulate man, one of the most articulate people ever to come through

here, wrote a series of columns in opposition to the Public Accommodations Act, which

is somehow overlooked in the retelling of the history of the Constitution.

At the same time he was writing the series of columns, McGill was writing

columns advocating its passage. My assumption is that that had something to do with our Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library advertisers. [Laughing]. Now, I don't know that, but that is the assumption that that was

some kind of trade-off. Patterson was not against granting public accommodations or

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

granting equal access to blacks; he simply was opposed to legislation that would demand

it.

KUHN: Especially federal.

SHIPP: Especially federal, and that was the Chamber of Commerce line--that we didn't

need federal legislation, that these barriers would voluntarily fall.

KUHN: Didn't Ivan Allen testify?

SHIPP: Ivan Allen--and Patterson wrote a column commending Ivan Allen for the bravery

he showed in testifying. But he said that Ivan Allen was wrong-headed, and the phrase I

think he used here was "getting the cart before the horse"--whatever that meant. But that

was kind of interesting.

KUHN: Meaning education first and change--

SHIPP: Meaning education and gradual change; and we don't need federal legislation to

tell us at the state level what to do. And this pill will be easier to swallow if the feds do

not force it down our throats. At the same time, you had over at the state Capitol, people

like the attorney general of the state, Eugene Cook, going to Harvard Law School and

delivering a lecture on why miscegenation should be a capital offense.

KUHN: Well, let's get back to the ways in which the Constitution, in fact, was a force for

change, the ways that--I mean, you said, "There's more than a grain of truth to that

charge." And, you know, you talk about the editorial position. What about the types of

assignments that people got--in fact, the impact of the Constitution? Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library SHIPP: The Constitution had great impact here, I think, because on the business side,

Robert Woodruff, and because of what McGill was writing, Patterson was writing, and

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

Tarver, occasionally, was writing, we simply created an atmosphere, at least in this city

and most of this state, that violence would not be tolerated; that the Ku Klux Klan was

the sorriest kind of white trash, and what they were about was not what we were about. I

think they created an atmosphere that just made resistance to integration socially

unacceptable, even among the 'necks, to some extent--that that was something you didn't

do.

KUHN: It's also intangible. You know, clearly, you are saying that there is an impact, and-

-What kind of a relationship was there between, say, Woodruff and McGill, and

Patterson?

SHIPP: Very close. Particulary, Woodruff was very close to Tarver. And that was very--

and when Woodruff spoke, and you've got this power structure that met down here at the

Commerce Club, which I think our main rep at that time, Tarver, had moved into the

corporate, the business part of the operation, the Cox corporate board. And he was kind

of the newspaper representative on the board of directors of the power structure. If you

interview him, he will deny that, but when he denies it, he is lying to you. You can tell

him I said that. [Laughing.]

KUHN: This is by the mid-sixties or early sixties?

SHIPP: Yeah, we are talking about the early sixties, now.

KUHN: Okay.

SHIPP: And these guys decided, probably for business reasons, but also because it was the Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library right thing to do--

KUHN: Yeah.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

SHIPP: --you shouldn't take a whole segment of your population and isolate them

economically, socially, illegally, and every other way. It didn't make sense. And so the

racial barriers in this city, and most of the state, fell rather quietly, compared to what

happened in Alabama and--

KUHN: Sure.

SHIPP: --Mississippi. And, if you look at the newspapers in Birmingham and in

Mississippi, they were sympathetic with the segs. And they had a lot more trouble as a

result, partly as a result of that.

KUHN: How did all this trickle down to the reporter level?

SHIPP: Well, I'm not sure that it did trickle down to the reporters. Most of us worked

here, and in the sixties, most of us were veterans, and most of us were, by nature, pretty

liberal anyway. I can't remember any hard line arch conservatives. There may have been

a couple, but most of us were fairly liberal guys. So it didn't have to trickle down. We all

admired McGill, to some extent or another.

KUHN: What kind of relationship or what kind of interaction would you have with McGill

at that time? You said he had sort of risen above the fray, but, still, what kind--

SHIPP: Well, you'd go in and, you know, or see him down at the Dinkler or somewhere

having a drink with Patterson, and Harold Martin and that group. You'd go in and sit

down, and they would regale you with these great stories about the old days and how

Gene Talmadge on his death bed sent for McGill to come in because he had an idea for a Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library book. Have you heard this story?

KUHN: No, I haven't.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

SHIPP: The book was--he wanted him to write a book entitled The Life of Eugene

Talmadge by his Enemy Ralph McGill. And when Talmadge died, McGill wrote this

most flowery obit that you have ever seen, and you would have thought that Talmadge

was a political God and saint incarnate. I guess it simply was that he had a fondness for

the man, although in his editorial policy, he damned everything that Talmadge stood for,

which was a little before my time.

KUHN: Yeah.

SHIPP: But that was kind of interesting.

KUHN: Were you ever privy to whatever debates might have gone on within the so-called

power structure about--

SHIPP: No.

KUHN: --which way to go?

SHIPP: No.

KUHN: Or--

SHIPP: No, because at that time I was functioning as the state news editor, and as a

reporter, which was pretty far down on the totem pole.

KUHN: What do you remember about that first assignment, (telephone rings), that Civil

Rights Movement--the Albany assignment?

SHIPP: I just remember--well, I remember first being thrilled to get it and not being able

to understand why Bruce Galphin declined it. But I knew Albany, being the state news Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library editor, I pretty well knew the lay of the land anyway and knew the characters involved,

and immediately moved into the area. And I'd done some work by telephone on it. I

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

remember setting up shop in the Holiday Inn; and while I was unpacking, the telephone

rang, and Laurie Pritchett was on the phone, wanting to know what was going on. Did I

know anything he didn't or was there any way that he could help me? Which was, as I

later found out, that was really unique. And Pritchett--

KUHN: --Was pretty savvy.

SHIPP: Pritchett was a very savvy guy. He understood what was happening. He

understood that if he met King with total hard line resistance, there was only one thing

that could happen. He would lose. He, Pritchett, would lose whatever he was trying to

maintain, which, presumably, was segregation at the insistence of the city fathers. Bull

Connor didn't learn that, but a lot of funny things happened. I remember there was arrest

down there, a mass arrest. And they took a lot of kids over to Baker County because the

jail in Albany was overflowing. And Gator Johnson, the sheriff over there, locked the

kids in the jail on the banks of the Flint River. And it rained; the Flint River began to

rise, and Gator went off and left those kids. And they felt they were going to drown. It

was awful. He let them out. But they--Anyway, it was a long summer.

KUHN: So what did--What was your relationship with Pritchett?

SHIPP: Oh, good. I had good relationships with King. I had good relationships with

everybody and felt pretty good about the whole assignment that summer because I felt

that both sides were looking to the Constitution, certainly not the Albany Herald, to give

an account of what was happening. There was a doctor there, leading the Albany Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library movement, named Abernathy--I'm not talking about--

KUHN: [Inaudible]--

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

SHIPP: I can't--I don't think it was Abernathy. It was something like that. But Abernathy

was there, I suppose--

KUHN: Yeah.

SHIPP: Andy Young was there.

KUHN: Yeah.

SHIPP: Relationship with him was good; relationship with King was excellent. I always

remember him walking up, and he was on his way to jail saying, "How are you, Mr.

Shipp? How are things?" and shaking hands and passing small talk and then being locked

in that--

KUHN: Jail.

SHIPP: --little matchbox of a jail.

KUHN: How would both sides--I'm using "use" in a--in a--you know, in a certain kind of

way. How would they turn to the newspaper, use the newspaper, try to get things to the

press at that time?

SHIPP: Well, of course, they were very, both sides, very accessible. The mayor was Asa

Kelley, who is now a Superior Court Judge down there. Pritchett--anytime you wanted

any information, you could get either one of them on the phone. THe same with King's

people--if you couldn't get King, you could certainly get Andy Young or Wyatt T.

Walker, who was then--

KUHN: Yes. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library SHIPP: --King's--

KUHN: Yes.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

SHIPP: --executive assistant. And Hosea Williams was in and out there. There was never

any problem there. And the SNCC kids were there. Later, as the Civil Rights Movement,

the whole Civil Rights thing kind of heated up, the access to information on both sides

became tougher. But in the Albany movement, particularly in the early days, it was easy.

KUHN: Now, I guess you were gone in the Fifties during Brown v. Board of Education

and also during the Morris Abram/Jim Davis Congressional race, or were you back by

that time?

SHIPP: Let's see, what--

KUHN: I can't remember the dates--

SHIPP: The last thing--

KUHN: Around '56--

SHIPP: Brown v. Board of Education happened in--

KUHN: --'54.

SHIPP: --'54, and I went into the service in the summer of '54.

KUHN: Okay, and then you were gone during the Montgomery bus boycott?

SHIPP: Yeah.

KUHN: And, then--but locally, here, there was the Morris Abram Congressional race--

SHIPP: I think that was ending just as I came back. And Jim Davis, or Judge Davis, was

regarded, even in the middle Fifties, as a troglodyte. I mean, he was just awful. The city

government, under Hartsfield, despised him; and, of course, he maintained his power Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library through the county unit system (telephone ringing) back when he would take DeKalb and

Rockdale Counties, whose units offset Fulton's, four and--is that right?

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

KUHN: Six to four, I think.

SHIPP: Six to four, right. And, of course, the big change in politics--we talked about race,

but the big change in Georgia politics came in 1962, when the Supreme Court struck

down the county unit system. And that meant, I thought, that we'd have no more

Congressmen like Jim Davis. That was not true. We later elected Fletcher Thompson

and some others who were not much different than Judge Davis.

KUHN: Well, let's go back to those days and your memories of the change in both the

county unit system and malapportionment, more generally, in the legislature.

SHIPP: Well, of course, that forced the re-apportionment of the legislature. It ended the

county unit system. It meant that henceforth we would elect Congress with primaries--the

Democratic primary was the election, if you will recall--and that we assumed that from

then on, we were going to have a very progressive government. And, indeed, the first

governor we elected without the county unit system was a very progressive governor,

named Carl Sanders, probably the most progressive governor that we've had--We haven't

had as progressive a governor since, in my judgment, as Sanders. And we thought he was

going to set the tone from then on. That did not turn out to be the case.

KUHN: So you feel that Sanders was elected directly as the result of the--

SHIPP: He was the--

KUHN: --result of the overthrow of the county unit system?

SHIPP: Absolutely. Without the county unit system [overthrow], Marvin Griffin would Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library have been returned to office. And you can look at the map, and you can see that Griffin

won the county unit vote, which didn't matter at that time, but that Sanders won the

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

popular vote. In the last Talmadge election, we had a progressive candidate in Jimmy

Carmichael, and he won the popular vote but lost the unit vote and, therefore, lost the

election.

KUHN: You were a child at that time?

SHIPP: Yeah, I was in high school at that time.

KUHN: In high school--what do you remember about that race?

SHIPP: I remember that my parents were very much in favor of Carmichael, who had been

an executive at the--I think it was Bell Aircraft. And my father had been Southern Bell's

telephone representative at Bell Aircraft. My mother had worked there, and they admired

Carmichael, et cetera, et cetera.

KUHN: So, even though your mother was a Talmadge supporter--

SHIPP: She was a Talmadge--She had been a Talmadge supporter in some earlier races

and was a Herman Talmadge supporter later. But in that particular race, she was in favor

of Carmichael.

KUHN: Did you, as a high school kid, have any awareness of the black voter registration

drive that took place in--

SHIPP: No.

KUHN: --1946. Did that--

SHIPP: Nothing.

KUHN: --reach consciousness at all? Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library SHIPP: Nothing. THe only thing that reached my consciousness as a school kid was I

remember going to the town square and seeing Talmadge popping his red suspenders and

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

making all sorts of demagogic remarks.

KUHN: He went to the Marietta town square?

SHIPP: The Marietta town square, and spoke from the old bandstand.

KUHN: --even though--

SHIPP: Oh, yeah, even though--

KUHN: --even though the streetcar went to Marietta?

SHIPP: Even though the streetcar went to Marietta, and he would say that he didn't need a

vote anywhere where the streetcars ran; and, indeed, he didn't, under the county unit

system.

KUHN: Well, it must have been fairly exciting on the state desk covering the overthrow of

the county unit system?

SHIPP: Oh, the state desk--seeing the state desk and seeing the legislature change,

although it didn't really change that much--I thought it would change much more. It still

hasn't changed. Today, we are talking about what--'62? Twenty--twenty-five years after

the demise of the county unit system, the Georgia legislature is still dominated by rural

forces. We thought that would end that.

We thought there would be a coalition of suburban and urban legislators,

particularly as the urban and suburban areas grew. That hasn't happened. The

suburbanites generally ally themselves with the rural legislators. They maintain mostly

rural leadership, although the rural part of Georgia in agriculture is no longer the Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library dominant factor in the state's economy or its social life, or political life.

KUHN: Why do you think that has been, that the suburbanites have aligned themselves--

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

what are the elements in suburban development that have caused that kind of alignment?

SHIPP: Once again, it's race--that somehow they see the cities as symbolizing black power

and black political force allayed against white political suburbs around Atlanta and

around most of the cities are generally white. And, so, I think it boils down to almost a

white-black thing.

KUHN: Going back to '56, you said you were on the state desk originally when you came

back on?

SHIPP: Yeah.

KUHN: Who were sort of your guides and mentors to the ins and outs of state politics at

that time?

SHIPP: I'd say Celestine was, certainly, Jack Nelson, M. L. St. John, Al Riley; and a lot of

it because I was on the telephone constantly talking to people all over the state all the

time, I just think, osmosis, as much as anything. I just picked it up.

KUHN: Uh-huh [ringing]. You weren't editor, though. At that time, you were--

SHIPP: I was assistant editor, but I was still on the telephone a lot of the time.

KUHN: And general assignment?

SHIPP: And general assignment.

KUHN: How about people who sort of introduced you to the ins and outs of the legislature

itself or your first--first--

SHIPP: You'd be talking about the legislators themselves, I'd say the former, the late Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library Speaker of the Georgia House, George L. Smith.

KUHN: Right.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

SHIPP: I admired him a great deal. He was a wheeler-dealer and had a lot of bad things.

He was a creature of the county unit system, but he had a superior intellect; he

understood, I think, where he wanted the state to go, even though he certainly wanted to

get his retainers a safe travel there (laugh). But he introduced me to it and the way things

were doing, and he would let me sit in on certain kinds of meetings in which he was

trying to arrange votes and make sure that things came out right. And he took great pride

in being able to tell you exactly what the vote on a particular issue would be and exactly

what time it would be. He was a very powerful Speaker of the House.

[End of Side A, Tape 1, 4-22-87]

[Tape 1, Side B, 4-22-87 transcript follows.]

KUHN: So you are talking about in terms of these meetings, these--or do you recall

particular encounters?

SHIPP: Well, usually it would be special interest things dealing with railroad leases or

changes in the bank laws, nothing that had great social impact. I'm talking about things

that you and I normally would not see, but things that many of the legislators considered

most important. And, George L. particularly liked to take care of First Atlanta, and he

always saw that whatever kind of legislation they needed was worked up.

KUHN: Such as?

SHIPP: Well, the extension of branch banking was always a big fight. At first you had Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library county-wide branch banking. We don't even think about that now. But you had huge

fights back in the late fifties and early sixties about whether a bank in the city of Atlanta

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

could have branches in other parts of Fulton County. That's almost, you know,

inconceivable now.

KUHN: What's the rationale?

SHIPP: The independent banks, the banks in Roswell and Sandy Springs and Union City,

did not want encroachment or competition from the big city banks, who had the

wherewithal to put those branches in there.

KUHN: Kind of a replication of the--

SHIPP: Oh, we've seen it fought over and over.

KUHN: --the opposition to the national banks in the early--

SHIPP: Oh, this is it. Right. It kept extending to, first, it would be county-wide, state-

wide, and, now, of course, we are trying to get into total deregulation of banking; and

look how the regional banks are screaming about it. Same thing, exactly the same kind of

issue.

KUHN: But you're saying that, with the assistance of George L.--

SHIPP: Those things, those barriers fell, in the big banks, and--

KUHN: What other kinds of--How would you describe sort of who the powers that be

were, in the state legislature in the late fifties; you know, who were the most powerful

people there?

SHIPP: Well, let's see.

KUHN: How did things get done, and so forth? Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library SHIPP: Frank Twitty was a major power, and I can't remember exactly when his time was.

I think he was in the Griffin administration. Cheney Griffin, of course, and Marvin--

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

KUHN: How was Cheney a force, or was he a legislator?

SHIPP: Cheney--

KUHN: Or was he an editor?

SHIPP: Oh, no. Cheney was the cousin--

KUHN: Yeah.

SHIPP: --of Marvin.

KUHN: Yeah.

SHIPP: He was in the legislature, but, mostly, he was the bagman and the manipulator.

He understood how government did not have to be unprofitable. And he did a lot of

things in his brother's name that would cause some problems. But, Marvin Griffin, while

I think he got the reputation of being a crook, was the most good humored crook that I

ever saw. And he was a great story teller, a great guy.

Jack Nelson and I later met him one night at a night spot up here; and we sat there,

and although Nelson had tried his best to put him in prison, we sat, oh, I think it was until

two or three o'clock in the morning, just listening to him tell one story after another of all

the things they did, including, they opened up the port at Bainbridge; and the first vessel

they brought in was a vessel loaded with rum from Cuba, and it was greeted by the

minister of the Baptist church, and he went on and told all--

KUHN: And he said, "What's your cargo?"

SHIPP: "What's your cargo?" And I can't remember what the retort was. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library KUHN: "Rum," I think.

SHIPP: "Rum." Right. But those were good and interesting, very colorful times.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

KUHN: So how did Marvin Griffin view the Atlanta press corps in particular, you and

Nelson and whomever?

SHIPP: Well, he knew, of course, the Atlanta press corps was out to get him and wreck

him, and he coined the term, "Joree," and I'm sure you've heard of that.

KUHN: The "Joree" birds, right.

SHIPP: Right. But, in addition, he viewed them as a convenient target, for they

symbolized the City, and they symbolized Atlanta, so they were a good thing to run

against.

KUHN: So you had to have them around, so that you could--

SHIPP: Yeah, you needed them. If you didn't have the Atlanta--If Marvin Griffin had not

had the Atlanta press, he would have had to have invented it. [Laughter.] Because it was

good for him. And it symbolized everything that was wrong with the city and made the

country folk side with him against these big city millionaires, and the Ohio-owned

Atlanta newspapers and all that stuff. But, then, he went out of office. And Nelson,

about that time, picked up the Pulitzer Prize for what he had done at Milledgeville State

Hospital. That's what it was for.

KUHN: Was that--I didn't realize it was that late, the Milledgeville--

SHIPP: Let's see. Nelson wrote that series in 1959--

KUHN: Uh-huh--

SHIPP: --and was awarded the Pulitzer, I believe, in '60. Vandiver came in, another Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library county unit system governor, partly on a platform of reforming Milledgeville, but also on

a platform, "No not one"--a slogan dictated to him, I am told, by Peter Zack Geer, who

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

dreamed that up. And he was later to rue the day that he came up with that. During the

early part of his administration, he saw that would be an impossible promise to keep, or if

he did intend to keep it, that it would just wreak disaster on the state.

KUHN: Right. He was caught.

KUHN: And he was advised by B. Brooks, an old Talmadge henchman, that the time had

come to abandon that. And B. Brooks went to his house and wrote a speech to get him

off the hook of "No not one." And as B. walked out, he picked up an umbrella, as he

walked out of the house, and said to the people there, "There will be peace in our time,"

doing the Chamberlain bit. [Laughter.] What else?

KUHN: You were talking about Marvin and Jack Nelson, in particular. Did either you or

Jack cover the highway stuff?

SHIPP: Jack covered a lot for the highway stuff, and I usually covered the fall-out from it,

some of the court things, and the court hearings and everything. But Jack was always at

the cutting edge and uncovered a lot of it: the Baxley Road scandal, the implement

salesman who was photographed picking up--taking up a bribe at a telephone booth.

Candler Jones was his name.

KUHN: Yeah, I--

SHIPP: He got off by--He was photographed, I mean dead to right, and he beat the rap by

pleading entrapment, not pleading he didn't take a bribe.

KUHN: Wasn't liquor the other big-- Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library SHIPP: Well, there was a big deal--There were--I can't remember--five families or six

families in Atlanta who controlled all the liquor licenses in the city. That was a big thing

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

in the city. And Nelson did some work on that, but a reporter named Marion Gaines

uncovered most of that, and broke up the liquor monopoly in the city. But there was also

a state liquor problem, and the liquor dealers had--there was a state revenue

commissioner named T. B. Williams, I believe. And the liquor people funneled money

into the Griffins through T. B. Williams' camp, through the state revenue commissioner.

There was a lot written about that.

KUHN: So, would, say, Griffin and his henchmen or--well, Griffin and his henchmen,

would they, you know, try to cut the newspapers off, or would they--I mean, you say they

had a kind of peculiar relationship, that they needed the newspapers in a sense, but then

here everybody is digging up the dirt.

SHIPP: Yeah, they even had wire service reporters. And in one case, and I'd rather not use

his name, after Griffin went out of office and Vandiver went in, they started looking over

Griffin's payroll and found the AP correspondent on the governor's payroll--the AP

capitol correspondent.

KUHN: Is that right? Whatever happened to that man?

SHIPP: That man was moved immediately, and he later retired. I don't--I think he may

still be alive.

KUHN: Without naming names?

SHIPP: Yes.

KUHN: Huh--you're saying, though, that Vandiver knew that he was swimming against the Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library tide, as it were?

SHIPP: Yes.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

KUHN: And I think in one of your columns you've even hinted that Herman Talmadge

knew the same thing.

SHIPP: Herman Talmadge hired a lawyer named Buck Murphy, and he said, "Buck," and

I've been told this by people who were in the room, said, "Buck, I don't want"--he was a

Constitutional lawyer, said, "All I want you to do is to keep delaying this thing," meaning

integration, racial equality, equal opportunity. "I want you to keep delaying this thing

until I get out of office. That's your job." And he did.

KUHN: How did you hear that story? It's a fabulous story. I mean, where did that--?

SHIPP: B. Brooks may have told me that. He was very close to Talmadge. Bill Burson

would know some of these stories, who works with Zell Miller now. Brooks and Burson

put out the most scurrilous newspaper that has ever been published in the state, called the

Statesman. Have you ever seen copies of that? It's just terrible. But they were two of the

most talented guys I ever saw, and they really knew how to do certain things.

KUHN: What was your contact with either Brooks or Burson?

SHIPP: Well, later I got to be fairly close with both of them. Burson later became State

Treasurer, and Brooks was in and out of the state government and had a very promising

career, I thought, in elective office ahead of him, until he got into a scrape with--he was

with a woman one night, and her--either her husband or boyfriend tried to break into the

apartment where he was, and he killed him through the door. Although he beat that rap,

that ended any political ambitions; and he later moved in and out of state government. He Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library was the number two guy to Sam Caldwell. In fact, for many years, he kept Sam from

going to jail because B. was a straight guy and a good administrator, and he handled the

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

federal part of the state labor department, the unemployment compensation.

KUHN: I've heard other stories about him. Jamie Mackay has told me some stories about

him.

SHIPP: Yeah, Brooks was a--had a first-rate mind. You ought to talk to Burson, too.

KUHN: Where is he now?

SHIPP: Burson is the back office guy, a very invisible kind of guy, to Zell Miller.

KUHN: But he was a Talmadge man?

SHIPP: He was a Talmadge guy, and then he--he was also the youngest correspondent in

the Korean War. He worked for UPI.

KUHN: How does he--how does somebody like that move from a Herman Talmadge to a

Zell Miller over the years?

SHIPP: Because when he was down and out, and he went to Talmadge for help after he

had been--He was--Jimmy Carter, in the reorganization of the state government, did away

with the state Treasurer's office. Bill Burson ran for the Senate and was thoroughly

beaten. He was down and out, and he went to Talmadge and said, you know, "I'm broke.

I need help." Talmadge wouldn't help him.

Talmadge was--I think that finally beat Talmadge. He sometimes forgot to look

after his friends. And, in politics, if you don't look after your friends, you're short-lived,

because that's what politics is: taking care of your friends, and taking care of your

enemies. And Talmadge always took care of his enemies, but sometimes he forgot to Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library take care of his friends.

KUHN: And you think that that was a contributor to the downfall of--

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

SHIPP: Well, it was part of it, certainly.

KUHN: Maybe, I mean, obviously, you've been intertwined with the Talmadge family,

with Herman, for twenty-five or thirty years or more, and maybe you could chronicle

something of, you know, that relationship, as it were, over the years, going back to the

Horace Ward days and up to the '80 campaign deal.

SHIPP: You know, back in the seventies, I think Talmadge had forgotten all about the Red

and Black incident, or maybe he didn't even remember the people. He asked me to come

out to his house, and I went out there for breakfast, and we talked about writing a book.

And I had no interest in getting that involved at the time, but he cooked breakfast for me

that morning, and we--this was back in the early seventies.

KUHN: At Lovejoy?

SHIPP: Yeah, out at Lovejoy. And we talked about writing a book and what we might do

to write about his father and him and their relationship. In retrospect, it would have been

a hell of a book.

KUHN: Fascinating--

SHIPP: I wish now that I'd done it. And then later, Peachtree Publishers--about a year

ago, Talmadge was talking about writing his memoirs, and they mentioned my name.

And he said some very unflattering things about me, but he was nice--

KUHN: That's post--

SHIPP: Pardon me? Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library KUHN: That's post-1980?

SHIPP: Yes, this is post-1980. I heard that he told someone that he felt that I had done as

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

much as anything, as much as anyone, to beat him. I hope that's right.

KUHN: Okay, I was going to ask, again, to what degree is there a grain of truth in that

statement?

SHIPP: I don't know. We wrote a lot about it. The management here felt that we wrote

too much about it. Tom Woods was then in charge. I didn't think we ran too much

about--wrote too much about it. I thought the time had come to put Talmadge away,

politically. I felt the time had passed.

KUHN: How was that decision, internal decision in the newspapers, made or what went

on?

SHIPP: By that time, I was the associate editor of the Constitution. That was the decision

that was consciously made by Hal Gulliver and myself. And I was on the cutting edge of

it.

KUHN: I've seen and I--

SHIPP: Right.

KUHN: --remember the columns. But maybe you could talk about how you and Hal

Gulliver arrived at that decision and then what strategy ensued?

SHIPP: Well, first of all, we were interested in seeing--first of all, I was interested in

seeing Talmadge defeated. Gulliver was interested more--and you'll have to ask Gulliver

this--I think he was interested more in seeing Zell Miller elected to the Senate. I certainly

was interested in that, too. In fact, when Miller tried to back out of the running, Gulliver Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library became irate and told him that he didn't have any balls, that this was a chance of a

lifetime, that he ought to run for the Senate. And I think Miller still says that that's--that

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

Gulliver browbeat him and intimidated him and made him run when he really, his heart

wasn't into it.

KUHN: Yeah.

SHIPP: But that decision, we decided we would support Miller and fight Talmadge, and

that Talmadge had disgraced the state by that time with all that overcoat business, and he

was showing up drunk at the Senate. And while the drinking thing was a health problem,

the overcoat thing was an ethical and a moral problem. Talmadge kept saying that we

were sticking him because he was a drunk. And I tried to write several times that that

was not true, that he had faced that problem headon, and taken care of it. But he didn't

face the other problem, which was simply taking bribes, or what amounted to bribes. By

the time--and we tried very much to help Miller. We attacked Talmadge because the way

to elect someone like that was to attack the entrenched incumbent. That was the only

thing to do, as did Miller.

By the time that Talmadge finally defeated Miller, we had so much invested in

attacking Talmadge that we just switched our support immediately to Mattingly and

continued the attack. And I remember Gulliver and I going to bed on the night of the

elections saying, "Oh, shit. We're probably going to lose our passport, our citizenship."

And waking up the next morning, I remember waking up and turning on WGST, and they

said that the computer problems in the metro area had been straightened out, and that

Mattingly had gone ahead. And I immediately just called Gulliver, and I was--Gulliver Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library said I was squealing over the phone. I was so elated. So that's how that came about.

KUHN: Why--well, obviously, you think the columns and the Constitution's coverage of

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

that campaign or the slant of the editorial--

SHIPP: The editorial slant.

KUHN: --played a significant factor.

SHIPP: I think we set the tone for a lot of the other papers--followed suit. We also

showed that Talmadge was vulnerable, and there was nothing about him--In the past the

papers, and including these, had taken a hands-off, you know, Talmadge was sacrosanct.

He was the holy--he was a sacred cow of some kind, which we showed in that campaign,

early, that he was not a sacred cow, that he betrayed the public trust. And I think other

newspapers in the state then felt free to go on and--

KUHN: Now, you were talking mainly about episodes of the 1970s in that campaign as I

recall. In other words, there weren't too many references to the Fifties or Sixties?

SHIPP: We would make references to the Fifties and Sixties, but, after all, by that time,

Talmadge had seen the black vote. He saw in the late Sixties that the black vote was a

significant force in the state. So he had to change his ways and his rhetoric in what he

did. So, mainly, we were talking about special deals and special interest deals in the

Seventies.

KUHN: It's sort of a curious process to see not only Herman Talmadge but other

politicians of his generation change their tune.

SHIPP: I remember how Jim Eastland changed his tune. If there was ever a guy that you

felt, "How could he do that?" or Strom Thurmond, over in South Carolina changed his Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library tune. That was an interesting thing to watch.

KUHN: To see these guys-

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

SHIPP: But most of those guys now are dying out, so you won't have those. In another

five or ten years, you won't see any major politician who went through that total flip-flop.

KUHN: What did you feel on that morning, you know, on that election morning?

SHIPP: Well, I felt relieved, and I felt that we'd been vindicated. If Talmadge--I gave

Mattingly almost no chance of winning. I mean, I thought it was such a long shot. But as

it turned out, Zell Miller, in killing himself, had also killed Herman Talmadge. It also

turned out that Talmadge gave Mattingly almost no chance of winning. So he ignored

him. He treated him like they did in the old days and looked at the general election as just

a nuisance you had to endure. Talmadge was told by his principal advisor, Tommy Irwin,

there was nothing to worry about. So they refused--the fatal mistake I think they made,

from a political standpoint, was refusing to debate Mattingly. Had Talmadge debated

Mattingly, he probably would have destroyed him.

KUHN: So underestimating Mattingly, not really being cognizant of the demographic

changes that--

SHIPP: The demographic changes and underestimating the damage that had been done to

Talmadge himself. I mean, they did not realize while he'd beaten Miller, that Talmadge

still had great negatives, that he had defeated Miller only by trying to prove that Miller

was some kind of liberal, not proving that Talmadge was a very good senator.

KUHN: So, when you say--maybe you could elaborate on the statement that Miller in killing

himself also helped kill-- Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library SHIPP: Because Miller did exactly what the newspapers did in its editorial columns. He

enumerated the sins of Herman Talmadge, the recent sins of Herman Talmadge, over and

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

over and over. And Miller also appeared with black leaders, with the implication that

Talmadge--and that brought up the old Talmadge past--That also helped to defeat Miller.

There is an axiom in the state that works almost every time. It's worked every time

except in the last Senate race. You've got the blacks on your side and the cities on your

side, you make the run-off and then you lose.

KUHN: How do you assess the last Senate race, because, obviously, in many ways, it runs

against certain streams in Georgia politics?

SHIPP: Well, I think the main thing in the last Senate race was Georgia really finally

elected a quality person. I thought a great deal of Wyche Fowler. I thought he was the

best possible candidate, from an intellectual and an ethical point of view, that the

Democrats could have offered. From a political viewpoint, I thought he was the worst

candidate because he defied all these rules I'm talking about, which he had an urban base

and a black base, which usually means you get beat. But the demographics had changed

by that time to such an extent that it did not mean you would get beat. Mattingly also

played into his hand by running an absolutely terrible campaign. Nationally oriented--and

you would go to places all over the state, like Waycross; and they'd say, "We've never

seen our senator." And he was going to do the whole thing by video. And it just played

right into Fowler's hands. That was a happy election.

KUHN: Let me go over a few things that we just touched on. One is sort of the emergence

of the suburbs and the Republican Party, and the second one will be, you know, the Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library emergence of video and different campaign strategies. When, in your experience, do you

really see the suburbs becoming a significant force, either in metro Atlanta politics or in

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

state-wide politics?

SHIPP: I think the time they became a most significant force was in 1970, in the battle

between Carl Sanders and Jimmy Carter. Carter, for reasons I still don't understand, was

able to mobilize the suburbs against Sanders. If you'll go back and look at the numbers,

Carter beat Sanders in the suburbs. Sanders took the cities and took much of the rural

vote.

KUHN: How do you--What accounts for that?

SHIPP: Carter was a new face, appeared to be fairly progressive, and yet not so--And yet

he pictured himself as very much to the right of Sanders. As a matter of fact, I think

Carter, in that campaign, contended that he was related to George Wallace, something he

later forgot about. And Sanders took the rural areas, partly because he took the old

courthouses. And he took the black vote, and he took the cities because he took the black

vote. And Carter played into that--that Sanders was kowtowing to the black vote, but also

Carter, in his own right, and that racial overtone aside, was pictured as pretty progressive

and stand up guy.

KUHN: He was running on a, quote, "good government"--

SHIPP: Good government, and we're not going to let the money boys get back in there,

and with the implication that somehow Sanders had been very corrupt, which Sanders had

not been very corrupt. That was also the emergence of television. Carter used television

very effectively, with Gerry Rafshoon doing a whole series of some of the best negative Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library advertising I've ever seen, aimed at Sanders. And Sanders' own advertising campaign

played right into their hands. Sanders had an advertising--had a TV spot in which he was

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

wearing a blue sweat jogging suit and was out jogging. And he was with his family in a

speedboat that at the time must have cost twenty-five thousand dollars, and he just

exuded wealth in his own TV spots.

Well, Carter's TV spots capitalized on that. They had a guy--they had a hand

opening a mahogany door to a board room; and the guy was wearing French cuffs with

these huge cuff links on it. And they had huge rings on, and they were grubbing in money

and all that kind of thing, with the implication that this was Sanders. Sanders also flew

around the state in a Lear jet. Rafshoon sent his brother out once to photograph--

KUHN: Charles Rafshoon?

SHIPP: Charles--to photograph Sanders' Lear jet. Sanders started to get off the jet, and

Charles didn't quite get it right. So he asked him if he'd do it again. So Sanders did it all

again, and sure enough, a week later, that was in a spot for Carter. That was a tough--that

was a mean campaign.

Carter had a guy named Bill Pope who was going around the state going to Ku

Klux Klan rallies. Pope and I were classmates at Emory; still a good friend of mine. He

would go to Ku Klux Klan rallies and pass out these flyers picturing Sanders with the

Hawks basketball team, and one of the Hawks pouring a magnum of champagne over

Sanders' head after they had won some tournament or title or whatever. That also was

mailed out to all of the Baptist ministers in the state, all the white barber shops, and all of

the white beauty shops in the sate. Once Sanders had a plane load of literature, I believe Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library it was flown from here to Augusta; and the Carter people found out about it, met the

airplane, pretended that they were Sanders' people wanting to pick up the literature. They

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

picked it up and threw it in the river. (Laughter.) That was a tough campaign. I don't

think Sanders ever quite recovered from that.

KUHN: Although he seems to be having some sort of renaissance these days; he was

featured in a couple of magazines.

SHIPP: Well, of course, he is now a very wealthy man and a big-time lawyer. And I think

he thinks, now, he's moved beyond politics.

KUHN: What--How do you think Carter had the acumen to use the media so effectively?

SHIPP: I don't know whether it was Carter or whether it was Rafshoon. Rafshoon had

been around the media for a long time. Rafshoon was an old movie guy and had worked

in television promotion and that kind of thing. Rafshoon saw the potential, saw what had

been done in some other campaigns around the country when television was really

beginning to come alive. But I think they blazed some trails in that campaign, with what

they did with the media.

KUHN: So that's really one of the first that you recall where TV advertising made a

significant--

SHIPP: --What I thought made a significant difference, a very significant difference.

KUHN: Ten or eight years before, say, in '62, what was the campaign style then?

SHIPP: Well, they were doing TV then, but it was--they were doing TV as if it was TV

photographing them on the stump, making the--it was the talking head and making the

dynamic stump speech. It was Rafshoon who saw it as a cool medium and how it could Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library be handled, and how various dramatic techniques could be used to--against your

opponent.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

KUHN: What about campaigners'--candidates' use of TV news, in essence, as thirty-

second commercials?

SHIPP: Free media, yeah--

KUHN: When did that emerge? Who began to realize--How did that emerge?

SHIPP: Well, some of that emerged in '66, and, again, it was--

KUHN: Maddox and--

SHIPP: Maddox. Maddox, of course, I don't think even knew he was doing it. But

Maddox was always good for free media because he would do some of the crazy things

he did, because he was already a nationally known personality, so he just got automatic

coverage.

KUHN: By riding the bicycle?

SHIPP: By riding a bicycle, by doing bird calls, by having the guys go back and get the

film. He would make some outrageous statement, and they would go back and get the

film clips of him waving a pistol at the black guys and the black kids in his restaurant. So

he got a lot of just automatic coverage--back in '66.

KUHN: He was running against--

SHIPP: Well, he ran against a whole field of--

KUHN: Yeah, right.

SHIPP: --Democrats.

KUHN: And Callaway, right? Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library SHIPP: And Callaway, and Callaway beat him, but did not get a majority of the vote. It

was thrown into the legislature. The legislature elected Maddox; and the legislature,

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

since the election of Maddox, has been independent of the governor's office. Before

Maddox, the legislature was controlled by the governor. In fact, Carl Sanders, when he

was governor, had a telephone on his desk connected directed--connected directly to the

Speaker's podium. And Sanders would do things like, well, once I remember he had

about ten legislators who were going to vote against him and make a big fuss on some

sort of education tax bill. He called the Speaker and said, "Send so-and-so down to my

office. I want to talk to them and see if I can convince them to turn." And so they got the

guys up and said, "The governor wants to talk to you." While they were walking down

the stairs, Sanders picked up the telephone and said, "Are they out?" They said, "They're

out." He said, "Call it to a vote." I mean, it was that kind of thing.

KUHN: In clear view of everybody?

SHIPP: Clear view of everybody. He would also have--A guy up in Brunswick, whose

name escapes me for the minute, walked in and said, "Carl, I want you to know that we

have a honest difference of opinion, and I'm going to vote against you"--on whatever

reasons, and Carl said, "I respect that, and I respect that in your coming in and telling me

this." And as the guy went to the legislature the next morning, he got a call, and all of a

sudden they've closed the highway office in my district and the Appropriations chairman

says, "We are taking the welfare appropriation away from your county. We're closing up

one wing of the hospital." And, you know, Sanders used the power of his office to

control the legislature. Well, after the election of Maddox, that disappeared. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library KUHN: And why?

SHIPP: Because Maddox, first of all, didn't understand the workings of state government;

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

and, secondly, he was completely--he was a creature of the legislature. He was elected by

the legislature. So how could a creature of the legislature command the legislature to do

anything? Also, they had a very powerful Speaker in George L. Smith at that time.

KUHN: Well, after Maddox, what impact do you think--What do you recall about Carter's

reorganization efforts and, in fact, what do you think the effect has been of that?

SHIPP: Very little. Carter got into the reorganization of state government, and, in

retrospect, what difference does it make how state government is organized? Why didn't

Carter get into some of the things that needed doing, such as further improvement of

education? Shortly after he--Carter got into the same thing that Maddox did. He got

turned crossways in the General Assembly. It was constant fighting during the Carter

administration. And half-way through the administration, Carter lost interest in being

governor and suddenly started concentrating on the presidential campaign. So, in some

ways, his governorship may have been a throwaway.

KUHN: Now, the Atlanta newspapers, as I recall, were somehow involved in this sort of

publicity for the reorganization plan and the effort to get that plan?

SHIPP: Well, I was the political editor through part of that, and city editor through part of

that. When I was political editor, we generally endorsed it. Reg Murphy, who was editor

of the paper then, was Carter's avowed foe. He didn't like Carter at all.

KUHN: For what reasons?

SHIPP: Going--well, he didn't like his politics. But going back to this 1970 campaign, Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library Reg went down to that big golf club down in South Florida.

KUHN: Um-hmm.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

SHIPP: I can't remember the name of it. It'll come to me in a minute.

KUHN: Sure.

SHIPP: The Doral Country Club.

KUHN: Okay.

SHIPP: He went down to the Doral Country Club with Larry Lloyd, who was Carter's top

guy, and some others--I mean, Sanders' top guy, and some other Sanders people. And

they spent a weekend playing golf down there. The weekend was paid for by Carl

Sanders' credit card. That somehow--the receipt fell into the hands of the Carter people,

and they threatened to use it throughout that campaign. And they would call you over

during the campaign and say, "Hey, look at this." And they had that, and Reg's name was

written on it. It was a hell of a big bill. Reg, of course, said that Larry Lloyd used that

credit card, and he reimbursed him. But Reg had a permanent grudge against Carter for

that--

KUHN: Because of that?

SHIPP: Because of that; and I remember when I broke the story, broke the national story

of Carter going to run for president, went over and talked to him. We ran a story on page

one saying that this was going to occur. And Reg Murphy, the next day, wrote a column

the headline of which read, "Jimmy Who is Going to Run for What?"

KUHN: I remember that line.

SHIPP: And Carter always thought that Reg and I had conspired--that I had set him up, Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library and then Reg had knocked him down. And that was not true. We were operating

independently.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

KUHN: So Reg had that animus against Carter, and, you said, political differences?

SHIPP: And political differences, and, of course, he liked Sanders very much. And he felt

that Carter had run a dirty campaign and a deceitful campaign, that many of the tactics

that Carter had used to defeat Sanders had just been outright deception. And he was

right. But, I mean, that's part of the game.

KUHN: So, then, the reorganization plan comes up, and then what's Murphy's

involvement?

SHIPP: I think, you know, I don't even recall much of it. They endorsed parts of it, and

they were opposed to parts of it. But, in retrospect, the reorganization of state

government didn't matter a hell of a lot. I mean, it simply streamlined some things that

probably needed streamlining. But how could that have been the centerpiece of a major

administration in a state that is backward as this one? Why were they worried about

those little boxes and everything? That should have been something that should have

been taken care of almost as a sideline. One thing, the Sanders administration, the

centerpiece of his administration was improvement of higher education in the state.

KUHN: The university system primarily or--

SHIPP: Primarily, the university system. And he came up, I believe it was his

administration that came up with a minimum foundation. It may have been the Carter

administration that came up with something called APEG.

KUHN: I don't remember that. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library SHIPP: The Adequate Public Education--

KUHN: Grant or whatever?

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

SHIPP: Right. But neither of those programs were ever fully funded. We are just seeing a

replay of that now over QBE.

KUHN: I was going to say--

SHIPP: Yeah.

KUHN: --I mean, I've been reading a fair amount about the involvement of the state

government in state education. And, obviously, that's a theme that goes back to,

certainly--

SHIPP: And it's always an empty promise. And, once again, we are seeing an empty

promise. We've got to do something about education in this state. But, then, when it

comes down to funding it, they never quite want to fulfill the promise. And, once again,

this has racial overtones.

KUHN: So what you are saying is that over the thirty odd years that you've observed state

government, in some ways the continuity is as striking as the change?

SHIPP: Yes. And it's the leaders of state government, which I think we are going to have

to break away from. The governors always seem to be creatures of the legislature, even

Sanders and Vandiver. THey come out of the legislature. For some reason Georgia in

twenty-five years, has had only one real strong governor, and that was Sanders. And yet

the states around us, very often, with the exception of Alabama, very often, have this

magnificent chief executive. Tennessee has had one. Florida, in Bob Graham; the recent

governor of South Carolina. And yet we seem to have a blind spot there. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library KUHN: What do you think are the elements of the structure of Georgia politics that

[inaudible]--

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

SHIPP: The legislature is so powerful over here that we do not produce the caliber of

leadership that's produced in the other states. Sanders came out of the state Senate, and

was a strong guy and a smart guy. Maddox was a product of the legislature. He was

elected by the legislature. Carter came out of the state Senate, dependent on the "good

old boy" network to help him. Busbee was a team player in the legislature blessed by

house Speaker, Tom Murphy. Joe Frank Harris, the same cut. At some point, we're

going to have to break away from that.

KUHN: What type of alternative? I mean, how do you do that?

SHIPP: Well, with a strong two-party system or an element within the Democratic Party

that says we've had enough of this "good old boy" relationship over in the state house

where you have a philosophy of, "If you want to get along, you've got to go along." We

need a business-type, as Lamar Alexander was in Tennessee. We need a business-type

governor. We need a progressive-minded governor. We've got to make a quantum leap

forward if we're going to continue in the competition for economic development in the

region.

KUHN: Now, over the years, speaking of the Republican Party, you've forecast different

things, and stated different things about the strength or lack thereof or [inaudible]--

SHIPP: Really, you've researched this. I'm really, yes, that's nice to be interviewed by

someone who's researched it.

KUHN: But maybe you could talk about when the Republican Party, when and how the Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library Republican Party, metro-wide and then state-wide began to make some sort of a presence

and what type of a presence that really was.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

SHIPP: Well, of course, they began--And the first real movement, of course, was a total

disenchantment with Lyndon Johnson, and the state dropping out of the Democratic fold

for the first time in 1964 in the presidential election. The Republicans you saw rise then

cast aside the old Taft Republicans, who had been the post office Republicans around, the

token Republicans.

KUHN: Yeah,, point taken.

SHIPP: These were seg Democrats who had been kicked out of their own party and

became Republican. Bo Callaway, a very rich man, came out of the textiles--but had

been a Democrat; and now he's formed this new powerful Republican--

KUHN: In '64?

SHIPP: In '64. No, he had not been a Democrat in '64, I don't believe--

KUHN: Right, so even before '64?

SHIPP: Even before '64. But, anyway, the early powerful Republicans were all former

Democrats, disenchanted because of racial things.

KUHN: That's the base, rather than new suburbanites?

SHIPP: Rather than new suburbanites, at that time in the Sixties. And it looked like the

trend was so much in their favor that the Republicans were able to convince a number of

important state officials, Jimmy Bentley being one, to switch parties. Well, it turned out

that on a state level, we are still very much a Democratic state. And, if you'll remember,

all those guys, except Phil Campbell was the only one, all of them were killed off in one Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library way or another.

KUHN: So Phil Campbell was a Republican?

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

SHIPP: Yeah, he was one of the switchers who--but, then, he went into the Nixon

administration. And that's how he survived. Jimmy Bentley ran for governor, and he

didn't even win the Republican nomination, if you'll recall, in 1970; Hal Suit won, the

television newscaster.

KUHN: Another person who had shifted.

SHIPP: Another person who had shifted. But then, in the Seventies, you also had a

different kind of Republican, not just a disenchanted Democrat. But you had the people

coming in from other regions of the country, moving into the suburbs, who were genuine

Republicans, many of them moderate. Many of them were a hell of a lot more moderate

than the Democrats were here. And you see that tide--you see those demographics

continuing, but you see the Republican Party remaining in state level in such disarray they

can't capitalize on it. They spend so much of their time in infighting and really not caring

whether they win the election as long as they win the chairmanship--

KUHN: --of the state--

SHIPP: --of the state, that they ignore the big picture. Or they are worried about helping

the presidential ticket. In this last election, the '86 election, why did they go all the way

for Mattingly and decide not to run anybody else, when you had states all around us

electing--while they were turning out Republican senators, they were electing Republican

governors?

KUHN: Including Alabama. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library SHIPP: Alabama, South Carolina--

KUHN: North Carolina, but that came out of a particular situation.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

SHIPP: Well, that was a different situation. But you had--South Carolina elected a

Republican. Florida elected a Republican. And, of course, North Carolina, two years

earlier, had elected a Republican governor. Then, Tennessee, of course, was different in

that they elected--But Georgia could have very easily because we've got the same

dynamics in population working here as those states have. It's just we have a different

kind of leadership here, a less aggressive Republican leadership.

KUHN: Now, what was interesting to me about the '86 campaign is that Fowler did

surprisingly well or did quite well in the suburban areas, you know, compared to--

compared to Mondale in '84. And, in DeKalb, he lost but he--

SHIPP: Well, he lost DeKalb, but he won the election in DeKalb; Fowler did.

KUHN: That's right.

SHIPP: The failure of those North DeKalb Republicans to turn out, that was the

difference. Fowler worked. Fowler had a couple of things going for him. Fowler first

had media exposure and was well known in the Atlanta suburbs--And, I think, held in

generally high regard, regardless of what his constituency may have been in his Fifth

district. But I think he was generally regarded very well. Secondly, the Republicans in

North DeKalb failed to organize, failed to see the need to get out the vote. They believed

polls that were being produced here that were simply not true; even the Channel 5 poll

which was being touted as showing Mattingly ahead, showed him ahead like fifty-two per

cent. An incumbent Senator coming up on an election ahead by only two percentage Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library points? That should have raised a flag right there that this guy is in serious trouble. But

it didn't.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

[End of Tape 1, Side B 4-22-87]

[Tape 2, Side A 4-22-87]

KUHN: Why were the Republican campaign strategists not picking up on these types of

signals?

SHIPP: Well, one thing, the Republican campaign strategists were all operating from

inside the Beltway in Washington. They were trying to organize a national strategy.

They didn't have any feel for what was happening locally. Quite frankly, the newspapers

did not do a good job covering that campaign either.

KUHN: Meaning?

SHIPP: I don't think they got out and felt all the nuances, and we had a couple of

columnists here who were contemplating their navels and saying what they thought

(telephone ringing) was going to happen rather than getting out and getting the feel of

what was happening.

KUHN: What types of details are you talking about now?

SHIPP: Well, like the blacks. I mean that was a fantastic organization out there to get out

the black vote for Fowler, run by Stoney Cook out of Young's office. That was a major

factor in this election. And that was almost--very little was written about that. Some of

the Democratic bosses, like Maloof out in DeKalb, was working like hell. That was not

reported on very much. And it was not reported very well that the Republicans were kind Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library of asleep at the switch and were letting the national guys carry the ball.

KUHN: As part of the national Republican--

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

SHIPP: Right. As part of the national Republican strategy.

KUHN: So, say between 1970, when you say both the suburban vote emerges on a

significant scale in the state-wide election and also television becomes a significant

factor--

SHIPP: Right.

KUHN: --in elections. Between then and now, what changes have you seen in state-wide

Georgia political elections?

SHIPP: For one thing, since '70, Carter won on the basis of that negative campaign

because it was a new and fresh approach to politics. I don't think you can ever do that

again. I think this '86 election showed us if you're running a negative campaign, it doesn't

work. If you're running a total media campaign, that doesn't work. It's got to be a mixed

campaign. It's got to have a lot of positive--if you're running a campaign for governor or

senator, it's got to be a local campaign. You can't run on national issues. I think that's a

big change that we've seen in the state. I also sense a swing back toward Democratic

politics, and I think the Republicans may now be descending, in descendence, at least on

the state level.

KUHN: What about the role of money in campaigns that you've witnessed over the years,

you know, how--the financing of campaigns. When you began on the state desk in the

Fifties or early Sixties, how were campaigns financed; who did the financing; what effect

did what interest groups providing money into the campaign have? Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library SHIPP: Well, there were the same people then as now. They're just doing it in a different

way. The banks and special interests; the utilities--they bank-rolled the campaign. They

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

do that now through the PACs. I think, at some point, though, money has gotten so--and

media has become so expensive, that at some point, we're going to have to put some

controls on spending. However, in the Mattingly/Fowler race, Mattingly outspent Fowler

something like six or eight to one. And Fowler still beat him. So even if you have a great

supply of money, and you can outspend your opponent, if you don't spend it wisely, or if

you overspend and appear to be overspending, that works against you. So that's one kind

of check on spending.

KUHN: I meant, who had been the big contributors? I mean, say in '62 or, say, in '66, or,

say, in '70?

SHIPP: All right, in '62--'62 was a good example of a money strategy adopted by Sanders

in which he not only told the banks to--asked them to give him money, he asked them not

to give his opponent money, meaning Carter--well, this was Carter in '70. He asked them

to give him money and not give Carter money. That became an issue in the campaign,

that he froze the--

KUHN: In '70 or '62?

SHIPP: In '70, I'm sorry, in '70. That became nn issue in the campaign and worked to

Carter's advantage, because of--by not hedging their bets, as they did in '62--In '62, they

gave both sides money, just in case; so no matter who won, they would have a winner,

see? But in '70, they gave only one side money, which made Sanders, by definition, a

pawn of the special interests. Law firms give a lot of money to campaigns. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library KUHN: I've been reading a book recently about campaign financing of the Democratic

Party over the last--since '76, and now, and actually, since the New Deal. And this

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

particular book I'm reading is talking about how certain types of corporations or certain

types of international interests and so forth, you know, finance in certain ways and

contribute in certain ways.

SHIPP: Oh, yes, bonuses and all that kind of business.

KUHN: Yes. How does that work on the state level?

SHIPP: The same way because--you don't have the controls on the state level that you

have on the national level; but, you know, they can give old Joe over here a three

thousand dollar bonus or whatever; and he can contribute two of it to a candidate and it

doesn't appear that it is coming from the corporation.

KUHN: I'm talking more, I think, about which groups connected with which plans or

alternatives for economic development in the state are contributing to what types of

candidates, or is it that sophisticated?

SHIPP: It's not that sophisticated. What happened in the governor's race in 1982 is that

Tom Murphy called in all the registered lobbyists of any significance to the state house

and assessed each one of them, according to the ability of the organization they

represented, to put into the campaign of Joe Frank Harris.

KUHN: How do you know that?

SHIPP: Believe me, that is true.

KUHN: Okay. I think--

SHIPP: Two lobbyists who were retired told me that. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library KUHN: Okay. That's pretty--

SHIPP: Yeah.

GGDP, Bill Shipp, Date: 4/22/1987

KUHN: --clear and straight.

SHIPP: Right.

KUHN: Yes. I don't know if you've ever seen a study that, actually, Jamie Mackey and

Calvin Kytle did in the late Forties on who runs Georgia?

SHIPP: Yes, I've seen that.

KUHN: I was wondering if you have read it, and--

SHIPP: It's been a long time; and they were talking about that--back then, it was railroads-

-and that goes back into the old--the power of eminent domain fights they had. Do you

remember that?

KUHN: Um-hmm--

SHIPP: --reading about that? With the railroads fighting the pipelines and all that mess?

Of course, that was before my time.

KUHN: This is a good time to stop right now.

[End of recording on Tape 2, Side A of 4-22-87 interview.]