00:00:00 He was an angry man, and he would get mad with everybody, and they would infringe upon his dignity, and the mills couldn't take that.

00:00:11 God, you wonder what motivated people like that to achieve so much with so little.

00:00:22 In terms of discussions, and...

00:00:25 This mic is not plugged in.

00:00:27 Which one, Mike?

00:00:28 No.

00:00:29 Dr. Knox.

00:00:30 Knox, okay. Out of your pocket.

00:00:32 Good point.

00:00:35 There we go.

00:00:36 Walt and I plugged ours in.

00:00:38 Yeah.

00:00:40 Are we on?

00:00:56 I wonder if you could tell us about the way in which your work on new coding compositions fit into the overall research and manufacturing process at Kodak.

00:01:06 What implications did that work have?

00:01:08 Well, I think that there were very advantageous implications insofar as the speed of coding was concerned.

00:01:16 This came as an added value to the replacement of saponin, because with saponin, the speed of coding was probably limited to the speed which they were using at that particular time.

00:01:34 And, as a matter of fact, with surfactants, the speed of coding could be increased tremendously, so much so that they had to then begin to study ways and means by which...

00:01:50 by means of which they could more rapidly set the gelatin and dry it.

00:01:56 The drying trains and the setting trains and drying trains were set to correspond to the speeds which they could get with saponin.

00:02:07 But with higher speeds, they had to change all that, because not only did the emulsion have to be chilled more rapidly, but it would have to be dried more rapidly if they were going to coat more rapidly.

00:02:22 And I don't know what the speeds are now, but they have increased tremendously over what they were when we started this program.

00:02:30 And partly that enabled Kodak to keep up with the growing demand for photographic papers.

00:02:35 That's right.

00:02:37 So it really did have direct implications for the business, unlike some research projects.

00:02:42 That's right. Not only as far as papers were concerned, but also as far as films were concerned.

00:02:49 Actually, the paper people were more cooperative than the people who manufacture film.

00:02:57 I guess the reason for this was probably because paper manufacturing was a little more competitive than film manufacturing, and these people had to keep up with the competition.

00:03:10 And much of our work was done in collaboration with the people in paper sensitizing.

00:03:18 So one of the important aspects of saponin and other surfactants that you were working with, you could coat at high speeds without the defects normally encountered, such as streaking and so forth.

00:03:34 That's right.

00:03:37 So you're streaking and repellency, you see.

00:03:40 And actually, there were some very interesting aspects of these things.

00:03:46 That is, how do you remove a repellency?

00:03:48 How do you introduce a surfactant which will at once give you re-wettability and also solubilize whatever oily globules might be present,

00:04:00 which will give you a coating defect which might turn up in a picture where one's eye is supposed to be.

00:04:12 It sounds like this area of work was very different from your experience on the Manhattan Project and your earlier work at MIT.

00:04:20 Well, for example, one of the advantages is that frequently things which are disadvantageous and which are inimicable to one's progress can be used as a benefit.

00:04:43 Because I was not admitted to the circles, I had to do a lot of things on my own.

00:04:50 For example, in my studies in both of these institutions, I had to rely on myself because it was very difficult to get help.

00:05:02 Consequently, if it is written, I can read it and understand it.

00:05:09 I became interested in surface chemistry because of the assignment which I had.

00:05:19 I could read it and I could understand it.

00:05:22 Consequently, I could move from one area into another area without having to go to school somewhere because I was used to doing things on my own.

00:05:37 I had an independent way of understanding things.

00:05:43 See, after all, all education is self-education.

00:05:49 That's true. It's important to be able to do that on your own, to be able to rely on your own abilities to bone up in a new area if you have to.

00:05:58 Did the environment at Kodak help in any way?

00:06:01 I know there were the conference systems probably. There may have been conferences that were relevant.

00:06:06 Well, yeah. That is, there were not many.

00:06:11 There were ways in which I could.

00:06:16 I had conferences with people in the manufacturing end.

00:06:20 This was important because, you know, it was one thing to find a surfactant which would work.

00:06:26 It was another thing to get somebody who would test it and somebody who would take a chance in putting it in an emulsion.

00:06:32 Because if you put it in an emulsion and coated a thousand feet of film, actually the thing went bad.

00:06:39 Somebody's head would have to roll.

00:06:42 So you had to work in close cooperation with those people.

00:06:48 There were some people who were daring and who were willing to take a chance.

00:06:53 Other people were conservative and wouldn't take a chance.

00:06:58 You had to wait for an opportune time to persuade the more reckless of the manufacturing people to take a chance on these things.

00:07:10 They were much more conservative in filming emulsion than they were in paper.

00:07:15 We did have a use of temporary coating machines over in the paper department.

00:07:27 We also had a coating machine of our own, which was designed and built for us in a research laboratory.

00:07:36 So overall, though, the research laboratories was kind of a resource-rich environment which would allow you to accomplish the objectives of U.S. research.

00:07:52 It was a matter of pulling the political strings and making the contacts that would enable you to achieve, say, coating samples and have someone test the surfactant.

00:08:07 This was one of the great advantages of working with a fellow like Kenyon.

00:08:11 Kenyon would let you do these things.

00:08:15 You could make your own contacts.

00:08:18 Consequently, he never bothered to inhibit your activities.

00:08:25 During your years, you worked with polymeric systems, the polyethylene oxides, and one of your colleagues was Maurice Huggins.

00:08:41 Oh, yes.

00:08:43 The polymer scientist. Did you have much interaction with Dr. Huggins?

00:08:49 No, I didn't have much interaction with Dr. Huggins.

00:08:53 He was supposed to take an active part in some areas which had been of interest to us, but I don't know that he ever became very active.

00:09:07 Did your group have much contact with academic surface scientists over the years?

00:09:14 No, not very much.

00:09:19 For example, we followed the work of Adamson and some people in the Bureau of Standards who were doing work on surface activity.

00:09:37 These were largely theoretical people, and we had to set up rules of our own because it's not always possible to predict how the surface active agents will behave.

00:09:50 One has to set up a model which may or may not be an actually correct model, but it's a model that will frequently work sometimes.

00:10:04 We were able to establish models which would work for us, which probably were not in agreement with models which were established in academic laboratories.

00:10:17 Bill, wasn't it also the fact that the work had proprietary implications that mitigated against your really being interfaced with a large number of people in academic work?

00:10:33 That's right. For example, we weren't supposed to talk about these things at all.

00:10:40 It was a matter of industrialists being us, and they were afraid of people who would steal ideas.

00:10:52 One had to be sure that there were no spies around, so one couldn't talk freely.

00:11:01 We didn't have very much contact with academia in this work.

00:11:08 That's an important point to keep in mind about a lot of industrial research and new process technology.

00:11:18 That's right.

00:11:19 It was and continues to be proprietary, and that does have an impact on contacts with academia.

00:11:26 Let me ask you a slightly different question.

00:11:29 If you reflect for a while on life at Kodak, that is, the everyday patterns of work and the resources that were available, the kinds of interactions with other colleagues,

00:11:40 how did that compare with the environment at Columbia and the Manhattan Project and, say, at MIT when you were doing your graduate work there?

00:11:48 Well, for example, I think that there was a gradual improvement from MIT to the Manhattan Project.

00:11:57 After the Manhattan Project, of course, one had to start all over again in a new environment.

00:12:06 There were some people who were very helpful to us and some people who were not very cooperative.

00:12:13 But the problem was to win them over, and we did our best to win them over.

00:12:21 Actually, some people proved to be very helpful.

00:12:27 For example, Kenyon was very helpful to us because he didn't bother us.

00:12:32 Dr. Lehrmakers was very helpful to us because if we appealed to him, we could get things done, which ordinarily we couldn't get done.

00:12:44 But many of the things we could get done, we could get done on our own because we had contact with people in the plant who we had established a friendly, cooperative relationship.

00:12:59 We could get them to do things that even Kenyon couldn't get them to do.

00:13:07 We had this kind of relationship between the people who worked in the plant.

00:13:14 It's interesting because the implicit thing in what you've been saying is that research at Kodak was very much a team effort.

00:13:24 Of course, in the Manhattan Project, it had been a team effort as well, but there you didn't have, because of the compartmentalization of the Manhattan Project,

00:13:32 there wasn't as broad a collaboration as you had at Kodak where you'd get manufacturing people involved and people from other divisions as well.

00:13:40 How was access to resources at Kodak relative to the other places where you did research?

00:13:46 Access to what?

00:13:47 To resources, to the journal literature, to ancillary services of all kinds.

00:13:52 Well, it was excellent at Kodak. It was excellent at Columbia, as a matter of fact. It was excellent at both of those places.

00:14:00 They have an extensive library at Eastman Kodak Company. They also had an extensive library at Columbia.

00:14:09 Well, at the end of the Manhattan Project, it was moved to Carbide, and the library at Columbia was still open to us.

00:14:25 But Carbide and Carbon took over from Columbia.

00:14:29 How did those resources compare to the schools that you'd been teaching at?

00:14:34 Oh, they were far superior. For example, the schools that I taught at had no equipment at all.

00:14:38 I mean, these were very poor institutions, and they had no scientific tradition whatsoever.

00:14:45 And the scientific traditions of those schools were established by the young people who went from the North down there to teach.

00:14:53 They couldn't bring with them any equipment, but they could bring them some theoretical knowledge and some expertise in building equipment,

00:15:02 which would help them in simplified research.

00:15:06 But there was not much time or much money for research activities in those institutions.

00:15:15 Of course, well, one of the most important things that you and your colleagues could bring was also a role model for students who then went off to scientific careers of their own.

00:15:26 The contrast between the resources really does pinpoint the personal influence more.

00:15:38 Well, you were at Kodak then for 25 years, from 1945 to 1970.

00:15:44 And also in those 25 years, you were very active in a variety of civic organizations, and I wonder if we might talk about that for a little while.

00:15:52 Well, for example, any black man, you know, I have difficulty with this black business, because in my day these people were referred to as Negroes.

00:16:03 And I have difficulty with this black description. It doesn't mean a whole lot to me.

00:16:09 Because black has taken on a variety of colors, from pink to dark brown to black.

00:16:21 And I think that, as I don't know how much blood makes a Negro or how much blood makes a black.

00:16:27 But anyway, any man who cannot escape the designation of black or Negro is in trouble as far as the society in which he lives.

00:16:43 And when I went to Rochester, the problem of getting a job was solved, but the problem of finding decent housing was not solved.

00:16:53 And while I was there, when I was looking for a house, I was offered an abandoned house of prostitution from myself and my family.

00:17:05 And this necessitated going in through a little bit of a social education in order to find a decent place to live.

00:17:15 So this is how one got involved in the social problems in the community. It was a matter of survival.

00:17:23 I mean, how do you survive without a place to live?

00:17:26 That is, you're in a situation where you can't live in the community and you can't leave because if you leave, they won't hire any other black.

00:17:34 So you're between a rock and a hard place.

00:17:40 So you have to enter into the business of trying to bring the community to the point where blacks can live and live decently and carry on their professional activities.

00:17:58 And this is how I got into this work, trying to find a decent place for myself and my family.

00:18:08 And as I say, if you work in these areas long enough, you'll find some people who are dedicated to fairness and you can get some help.

00:18:21 And one of my colleagues came to me when I first came and he said,

00:18:27 look, you're never going to be able to buy a house in this community.

00:18:31 He said, now you may not believe me, but I'm telling you what I know because I've investigated it.

00:18:37 And he said, if you will let me and if you will go with me, we'll go out and see if we can find a house and I'll buy it and sell it to you.

00:18:47 And this is the only way I got a house to live in at that particular time.

00:18:52 And the work that I have done with Walter has opened up that community.

00:19:00 I mean, now people can live where they want to live.

00:19:07 And this was the result of putting in much time, much more time than we had time to put in.

00:19:14 As a matter of fact, a work day was a full day.

00:19:19 It was a work day at Kodak and it was a work night in the community,

00:19:23 trying to persuade people to actually adopt policies of fairness and of intelligence in treating minority problems.

00:19:37 Bill is rather modest in the role he has played in this community and making an open housing policy a reality

00:19:50 because I can remember the first house I purchased for me and my family in 1958.

00:19:57 And it was directly attributable to some work that Bill had done in the community.

00:20:04 And in fact, a retiring physician had called him up and said that she was leaving to go to Arizona.

00:20:13 And she had seen his comments in the newspaper about the difficulties faced by professionals of color in terms of the housing market.

00:20:23 And so she asked Bill, did he know of any professionals who were having problems in solving their housing situation?

00:20:36 And Bill at that time knew that I was looking and so I contacted her and indirectly it led to my ability to purchase a house.

00:20:47 And at that time, and I'm talking about the latter part of the 1950s and even into the early 1960s,

00:20:57 Bill was very instrumental in opening up pathways for people to purchase homes of their choice.

00:21:07 He had also served on the Housing Authority in this area and one of the unpublicized facets of Bill's activities in the community

00:21:21 is the fact that in 1948, and this is kind of interesting, the president of the NAACP Rochester chapter was Professor John Slater

00:21:34 from the University of Rochester and he had been either the father of Professor Slater who had taught Bill at MIT.

00:21:47 Well, under his presidency, Bill and another colleague actually wrote the precepts for the Ralph Bunche Scholarship Committee

00:22:02 based upon his knowing Ralph Bunche during the Harvard days and that committee has been in operation almost 40 years.

00:22:11 It has enabled a large number of minority students and students from the majority group to pursue careers in higher education.

00:22:24 Well, how did you find these activities in social organizations infringing on, or did you find that it infringed on your Kodak time?

00:22:37 Was there a tension between those kinds of activities?

00:22:40 One had a responsibility, one had a job, and one had to do this job and do it well, but there were other demands on his time

00:22:51 which required him to move out in the community and do what he could in order to improve the quality of life in the community.

00:23:02 Not only for himself, but for the other people who might have difficulty.

00:23:07 So actually it was impossible in those days and to some extent is impossible now for black men and women to live comfortably in a community

00:23:22 without monitoring attitudes which prevail and trying to impose upon the community a fairness which is not always there.

00:23:33 One has to be sure that things that are done are not things which are the result of bigotry or prejudice.

00:23:46 And one has to be discerning in these matters because a lot of things can happen to an individual which are pure discrimination

00:23:54 and he has to be able to recognize these things and has to be sure that he doesn't permit these things to happen to him or to anybody else.

00:24:02 Because if he lets them happen to anybody else, they can happen to him on the next day.

00:24:07 Do you think there has been real progress in Rochester over the years?

00:24:13 Well, I think there has been real progress, but there's still a lot more progress to be made.

00:24:19 A lot more progress in every community to be made.

00:24:22 As Walter said, if one looks at the record of your participation in these kinds of organizations,

00:24:31 the New York Committee Against Discrimination, the Housing Advisory Council in Rochester, the Urban League in Rochester, the NAACP,

00:24:40 you were on the New York Advisory Council to the Federal Civil Rights Commission.

00:24:45 It's really an impressive record of involvement.

00:24:48 Well, that is, I knew a lot of people when I came here.

00:24:52 For example, I am involved in the Urban League because I knew the heads of the Urban League,

00:25:00 fellows like Lester Green who was the head of the Urban League when I came here.

00:25:05 And they said, well, if we want the Urban League here, you have to get in touch with Lester Granger.

00:25:11 Well, who can get in touch with Lester Granger?

00:25:14 Knox can get in touch with Lester Granger.

00:25:17 I see.

00:25:19 In fact, Knox is essentially the father of the Rochester Urban League.

00:25:27 I don't think there would have been an Urban League here without the persistent efforts of Dr. Knox and his contacts.

00:25:38 I think we're, at that time, we're legion within the country.

00:25:44 For example, he knew Elmer Carter who was at one time an assistant,

00:25:51 administrative assistant to Governor Nelson Rockefeller

00:25:55 and who became later on the first director of the New York State Division for Human Rights.

00:26:04 And Bill had known him for a number of years.

00:26:09 And I, whenever Elmer Carter came to town, almost invariably he would visit Bill.

00:26:15 And Bill would invite some of us to his home and it would provide me, personally,

00:26:22 with the opportunity for an evening of stimulating and motivationally driven conversation.

00:26:33 This was a provincial community.

00:26:36 Not many people, until we started to come in here, not many people came from the outside to wake this community up.

00:26:44 They didn't know how things were going on in other places.

00:26:47 Actually, I was amazed to find in this community that there were no policemen.

00:26:52 I didn't know any community in which there were no policemen who were black.

00:26:59 For example, the community in which I was born, there were six of them and this was only a small community.

00:27:08 People were not advanced here at all.

00:27:12 When I got here, I had the feeling that they had never seen a black who could read or write.

00:27:20 You used to have a kind of rather humorous comment about the inability for blacks who could read or write to stay here.

00:27:32 I think you used to put it in terms of those who were smart left, they didn't stay.

00:27:40 Those who came into the community, and if they were smart, they would leave also.

00:27:47 I'm very glad that, from a personal viewpoint, that Bill Knox stayed,

00:27:52 because he certainly was a stabilizing influence in my staying in the community.

00:27:59 I know that was a situation for many other young professionals of color.

00:28:07 Even those who were of the majority group often depended upon Bill for guidance and stimulation.

00:28:16 I know perfectly well that while our careers overlapped in the Kodak Research Laboratories,

00:28:24 there were many of his colleagues who depended upon his sage advice and urbane sophistication and wisdom

00:28:35 to carry them through some of their traumatic experiences, both related to and related from the job.

00:28:44 Walter and I used to do many of these things together.

00:28:54 They gave us a hard time, but as a result, I think this community is a better place to live in than it was when we arrived.

00:29:04 I don't mean to get up on a soapbox, but there's an important lesson here for everybody,

00:29:09 which is there's a tendency among especially young people who look at opportunities available to them

00:29:15 and might contemplate going into a scientific or engineering career.

00:29:19 There's a tendency for people to have a stereotype that scientists and engineers are only technical people,

00:29:25 that they aren't involved in social life in the broader world, that they aren't involved in their communities,

00:29:30 that they don't have a responsibility to be involved in their communities.

00:29:33 And I think the example of your work in Rochester, in these many organizations,

00:29:39 and for a very important cause, helps to break down that stereotype.

00:29:43 And it's not just for black professionals, it's for all professionals.

00:29:47 Well, this is a new world, and actually if you look at the changes in curriculum in engineering schools,

00:29:54 they have introduced courses in humanities and in the social sciences,

00:30:02 because quite often, captains of industry are drawn from the ranks of engineers and scientists,

00:30:11 and they have to have some kind of a social background, some acquaintance with the humanities,

00:30:19 in order to be able to function effectively as leaders of industry,

00:30:23 because frequently the reputation of a corporation depends upon its reputation for good citizenship

00:30:32 in the community in which it operates.

00:30:35 And the people who run those organizations have to have the type of background, the type of insight,

00:30:41 and the type of leadership which will enable them to keep social problems from festering

00:30:50 so that they become harmful to progress in the community.

00:30:56 And mentioning corporate leaders, Kodak was embroiled in a number of controversies in the mid-70s, weren't they?

00:31:06 In the mid-60s and the latter part of the 60s with the FIDE organization.

00:31:13 That's what I was thinking of.

00:31:14 But I think when Bill joined the company early in,

00:31:18 I think the leadership at Kodak might have had a little more vision about community problems

00:31:29 and maybe even worldly problems because the chief executive officer was William Vaughan,

00:31:35 who had served as treasurer of the local chapter of the NAACP in 1952 or so

00:31:44 and had also been a Rhodes Scholar, if I'm correct.

00:31:48 But I think what evolved in the 60s, some of us were fortunate enough to see what was happening

00:32:00 and we were interfaced with enough young people to not only recognize their rising expectations,

00:32:08 but also their anger.

00:32:10 But I think one of our failures in the community was our inability to convince some of the leaders of industry

00:32:26 that there was a festering problem which they should address.

00:32:31 We were somewhat ignored.

00:32:33 There were people like the late Manny Goldman and people who functioned in the settlement agencies,

00:32:41 especially Baden Street Settlement,

00:32:44 who understood the potential implications of the many visits to the community of a Malcolm X

00:32:53 and the problems associated with alleged and real cases of police brutality.

00:33:00 But undoubtedly, there were others who thought that they could live above and beyond

00:33:08 what was happening within the community and the rest of the country.

00:33:13 You see, this problem of rising expectations was a worldwide phenomenon post-World War II

00:33:20 and it also affected not only particularly the surge of nationalism

00:33:30 and thrust for independence of countries in Africa,

00:33:34 but it also invigorated the thrust by the non-white population in this country.

00:33:42 But we were unsuccessful.

00:33:44 In fact, we used to talk over, Bill and I, we were in the same building in the mid-60s.

00:33:55 We used to discuss with a vice president of Kodak the magnitude of social problems

00:34:02 and some potential solutions and a proper role for Eastman Kodak Company.

00:34:08 We were willing to provide whatever insights and experience we had.

00:34:13 But someone higher up in the company instructed this vice president not to discuss such problems with us.

00:34:22 And so I think when the company ran into conflict with the Alinsky-based organization,

00:34:32 which was known as FITE, Freedom, Integrity, God, Honor Today,

00:34:40 they had no one with expertise to be able to diffuse the problem or to ameliorate it.

00:34:47 I personally thought at that time that Kodak was doing some things, dealing with job training and so forth,

00:34:55 but they took a rather hard-line stance instead of going to the public

00:35:02 with a one-hour television program to explain Kodak to the community.

00:35:08 I think the operating philosophy those days was to be low-key and not go to the public with your public relations.

00:35:19 And I think that that was a flaw in the company's approach to dealing with social problems

00:35:32 which manifested itself with a thrust for employment by minorities and other elements in the community.

00:35:41 Well, those issues in the 60s are a background element to one other question I wanted to ask Dr. Knox

00:35:50 about the very major changes in the aspirations and opportunities available for young people,

00:35:59 young blacks contemplating careers in science and in engineering.

00:36:04 We heard at the beginning of the interview this morning about the kinds of plans

00:36:13 that you and your friends at Harvard had in the early 1920s,

00:36:17 and you told us about the attitudes that were common among people in your generation

00:36:23 about just wanting to have a chance to have an opportunity for success,

00:36:29 to really just, as you put it earlier, that you just wanted to know what the requirements were

00:36:35 and you would compete on your merits.

00:36:37 And in the late 60s, I think things really had taken a turn, that there was a very different attitude.

00:36:43 I wonder if you'd just reflect on what some of those changes have been and what implications they have.

00:36:48 I think probably this is true.

00:36:49 I think that actually young people don't seem to be made of the same metal

00:36:56 that they were made of in the early part of this century.

00:37:04 I think that actually what has happened is that they have a feeling that things are a little freer today

00:37:17 than they were then. Things are not freer today than they were then.

00:37:21 Achievement is made on the basis of hard work. There's no substitute for it.

00:37:28 It's becoming less and less who you know, even as far as labor is concerned,

00:37:35 and more of what you know and what you can do.

00:37:38 These corporations today are in productive difficulties.

00:37:46 They're in productive difficulties because they've got to have more efficient people working for them.

00:37:53 And efficiency doesn't come with one's name or the color of one's skin.

00:37:57 It comes on the basis of attitude and determination and the desire to be successful.

00:38:06 Actually, if these young people today would assume the same attitude that prevailed when I was going up,

00:38:16 they could make strong headway in the industries of today,

00:38:22 because they need productivity more than they need anything else.

00:38:30 And unless they're willing to do this, they can only accept failure

00:38:36 as a result of their unwillingness to pay the price to be successful.

00:38:42 They have to learn that this is going to be an integrated society.

00:38:47 This is not going to be a separate society.

00:38:49 There's not going to be any team of black astronauts going to outer space.

00:38:58 It's going to be a team of people who are competent to do the thing that the space program needs to do.

00:39:05 It's got to be a mixed society in the future of space.

00:39:17 And if blacks want to compete, they're going to have to compete with all of their contemporaries for a place in the sun.

00:39:27 If they're unwilling to do that, they might as well forget it, because they don't have a chance in the world.

00:39:34 They've got much more chance now.

00:39:36 They have accessibility.

00:39:38 They have the opportunity of getting jobs at the entry level.

00:39:44 There's still a ceiling over their heads as far as accomplishment and rise in corporations is concerned.

00:39:52 The problem for them now is not accessibility.

00:39:56 It's not the problem of getting into a corporation to do a job.

00:40:01 It's the problem of rising in the corporation to higher levels of expertise and employment.

00:40:08 And this is not going to be solved by passing a civil rights law or raising your fists in the public square and shouting black power.

00:40:19 It's not going to be done that way.

00:40:21 It's going to be done on the basis of personal integrity, aspiration, dignity, and determination to succeed.

00:40:30 You have to win friends, and you have to win friends not by sacrificing your dignity,

00:40:39 but you have to win friends by compelling them to understand that you as a human being can do the things that any other human being can do.

00:40:50 And this will mean success for them.

00:40:54 And unless they want to pay this price, they might as well forget the whole thing.

00:41:01 Well, that's sage advice.

00:41:06 Let me just ask you in closing, Walt may have a couple of other questions he'd like to ask,

00:41:11 but what would you say, just looking back on your long and distinguished career in science and in social action and all the things you've been involved in,

00:41:22 what would you say are some of the major changes in the opportunities available for young blacks starting out in science?

00:41:32 Well, I'd say accessibility to the best schools in the nation.

00:41:38 After they get in those schools, there is an effort on the part of all these schools to create an environment in which the playing field will be equal, will be level,

00:41:50 and there is an opportunity for them to associate and learn from the fellows.

00:41:57 It's not a problem of isolation now.

00:41:59 It's a problem of being able to get the full benefit of education in a first-rate institution.

00:42:06 It's not a problem of their not being motivated because they can get a job in industry today if they're qualified.

00:42:14 And they do have to recognize the fact that there's still a limit on the extent to which they can rise,

00:42:22 but this is the next item on the agenda, to push that ceiling higher and higher and higher.

00:42:30 And they're the only ones who can do it.

00:42:32 This cannot be the result of passing a civil rights law.

00:42:36 Attitudes don't respond to civil rights.

00:42:39 It's only winning over of people who have yet to be educated to the fact that all men are created equal.

00:42:52 This can't be imposed upon people by law.

00:42:55 It has to be imposed upon people by education and the people who must do the educating,

00:43:01 the individuals who have the opportunity of entering into the field of science

00:43:07 and making their accomplishments and their competence known to their fellows.

00:43:14 This is the only way I see that this can be achieved.

00:43:21 Bill, Clifford Wharton, Jr., the recently retired or resigned chancellor of the State University of New York,

00:43:35 in an address given before the National Urban League Convention last year,

00:43:42 stated that we might be dealing with the first generation of black youth

00:43:48 who do not place, who do not have faith in education as a means of dramatically transforming their lives.

00:43:59 Now, if this indeed is true, then it would be contrary to what your generation experienced,

00:44:08 what your generation believed in, and what my generation also believed in.

00:44:18 What would be your comments to a young person who is caught up in this kind of environment or this kind of attitude?

00:44:31 What advice would you give to a young person nowadays?

00:44:36 Well, for example, it's interesting that you brought up Wharton.

00:44:39 You know, Wharton's father was a contemporary of mine.

00:44:42 He graduated from Boston University Law School when I was a student in college.

00:44:46 He went directly from law school into the diplomatic service and ultimately became the ambassador to Norway.

00:44:54 Actually, the young person today who does not have this attitude that education is not the way out

00:45:05 is a lost ball in tall leaves.

00:45:08 Education is still the way out, but he has to pay a price.

00:45:13 He has to pay a price to get an education.

00:45:16 Even a bank robber has to case the joint before he's successful.

00:45:24 In order to get anywhere in life, you have to have the tools with which to do it.

00:45:29 You have to know what the score is.

00:45:32 These people who think that life is just a bowl of cherries are mistaken.

00:45:38 This is going to be a much more competitive world than it was in our day.

00:45:45 It's a much more competitive world than it was in our day as far as the whole population is concerned.

00:45:52 I don't believe anymore it's going to be a matter of who you know.

00:45:56 I think it's going to be a matter of what you know.

00:45:59 My advice to these young folk who are now growing up is to take advantage of the accessibility to education that is yours,

00:46:09 that is theirs, and to go on to do the best they can.

00:46:16 They have to adopt some healthy attitude toward excellence or performance

00:46:22 if they are going to be successful in the world which they will know as they become adults.

00:46:29 They've got to learn to live in a pluralistic society.

00:46:32 That is, it's not a country like Japan where all people are of the same race.

00:46:37 This is going to be an integrated society.

00:46:41 It's going to be a society in which all races and all colors have to learn to live together and to work together.

00:46:51 Otherwise, this country is going to blow apart.

00:46:54 And not only the non-whites have to recognize this, but also whites have to recognize this

00:47:00 because this country can be restored by Indonesian warfare

00:47:04 if there is not a level playing field for all people regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin.

00:47:12 No, I agree. We can't afford not to use all the talents we have.

00:47:17 But you make the comment about Japan. Yes, indeed, it's a homogeneous society.

00:47:22 Yet the pressures of a global economy must cause Japan itself to reassess what it does,

00:47:33 even within the constraints of this homogeneous population.

00:47:37 They have to learn to live in a pluralistic world.

00:47:39 They have to learn to live in a global economy.

00:47:42 And the global economy may compel us to think in terms of the global village.

00:47:48 And so I think those who figure that they are going to survive in a global economy

00:47:57 by a homogeneous grouping or withdrawing within a group,

00:48:04 I think they are out of step with the times and the realities of the economic interdependence of the world.

00:48:11 See, one of the great problems that Negroes today have is that they don't like to feel uncomfortable.

00:48:17 So they withdraw into black enclaves.

00:48:20 There they can't learn anything. Nobody is going to tell a black enclave anything.

00:48:26 They've got to get out into the society and learn what's going on.

00:48:31 Well, I wonder if there are any questions that you think we should have asked that we didn't ask.

00:48:42 None that I can think of.

00:48:44 You think we covered the waterfront.

00:48:47 That's right.

00:48:48 Well, we've come a long way from New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1904,

00:48:52 but it's been a very interesting conversation.

00:48:55 And I'd like to thank you very much for taking part.

00:48:57 I'm glad to be here.

00:48:59 And Walt, thank you, too, for helping me with the interview.

00:49:03 And we enjoyed it very much.

00:49:06 So, thanks.

00:49:10 Okay.

00:49:14 Okay.

00:49:18 They want to sign off.

00:49:26 We didn't talk about Jesse Jackson.

00:49:36 We didn't talk about him.

00:49:37 Well, he covered him when he talked about preachers.

00:49:42 Well, maybe they can flip the tape on again.

00:49:47 Tell us about Jesse.

00:49:49 That might be too inflammatory.

00:49:51 No, that's too inflammatory.

00:49:53 Jesse picketed the headquarters of the American Chemical Society.

00:49:58 That would make the news, wouldn't it?

00:49:59 Oh, yeah.

00:50:02 At least the people would know that the society is there and that it's doing something.

00:50:11 That worked out very well, I think.

00:50:13 I hope so.

00:50:15 I'm not very good at this kind of thing.

00:50:18 Oh, you're doing an excellent job.

00:50:19 You're remembering.

00:50:20 You're sharp, Bill.

00:50:21 Don't tell me you're getting older.

00:50:23 You're sharp.

00:50:24 Just to roll credits so they can find the way they are.

00:50:27 I think one of the things that...

00:50:30 Well, you gave kind of a summary of what your siblings had done.

00:50:35 But somewhere I felt that maybe we should have brought that up to date in terms of kind of a parallel experience.

00:50:46 For example, when you were not able to get a job in industry, it seemingly didn't have any impact on what Larry wanted to do.

00:50:55 That's right.

00:50:56 You see, that indicated a great belief and faith that the system would change eventually.

00:51:02 That's right.

00:51:04 Actually, we might have covered some of that.

00:51:06 I wonder if...

00:51:08 Does Robert have any tape left?

00:51:14 Does he have a couple of minutes by any chance?

00:51:16 Oh, you're...

00:51:17 All right.

00:51:18 We're all impressed.

00:51:19 That's okay, but that's...

00:51:22 Well, one thing we can do is in the...

00:51:25 When Robert edits this, he'll be adding...

00:51:28 I think he'll want to talk to you whether you have any photographs from your family album.

00:51:33 He has copies of his grandfather's manumission papers.

00:51:37 Well, Robert should get together with you then.

00:51:39 1846.

00:51:40 And what he can do is incorporate all that into the video so that at points in the conversation, he'll cut to photographs and other things.

00:51:48 And there's also...

00:51:49 At the beginning, they'll have a voiceover introduction.

00:51:53 And in that, he can work with you to incorporate things about your brothers.

00:51:59 Walt's right.

00:52:00 We might have covered more of that explicitly because they had very interesting careers.

00:52:04 Like you were telling us last night about your brother who ended up cleaning latrines when he had a PhD from Harvard.

00:52:10 Oh, yes.

00:52:11 World War II.

00:52:12 Yeah, that's remarkable.

00:52:15 Okay, we can get up?

00:52:16 We can get up.