Biography

Mr. Wilbur Scott Griffin was born on October 15, 1913, near Mantee, Mississippi, in Webster County to Virgil Homer Griffin and Martha Elizabeth Davis Griffin.

He was reared on his parents' farm and graduated from Cumberland High School in 1933. After working in the Civilian Conservation Corp for one year, he enrolled in Wood Junior College at Mathiston, Mississippi. In 1936 he accepted a position as a teacher and coach at Woodland High School in Chickasaw County. While teaching at Woodland, Mr. Griffin continued his education at the University of Mississippi. He received his B.A. degree in 1940.

Mr. Griffin became principal of Walthall Elementary School in Webster County in 1938. He left this position in 1942 to join the U.S. Navy, and he served in the armed forces until 1945. Upon his return to Mississippi, he began his master's degree program at the University of Mississippi and worked on campus as a vocational counselor to veterans. In 1946 he became assistant registrar at Ole Miss, an office he kept until 1949 when he became superintendent of the Springhill Consolidated School District.

In 1952 Mr. Griffin joined the Mississippi State Department of Education as director of the state's school lunch program. In 1958 he became director of the Division of Administration and Finance at the state department of education, and in 1974 he was appointed Assistant State Superintendent of Education. He retired in 1979.

Mr. Griffin is a Mason and a member of the American Legion. He is a member of several professional organizations, including the American Association of School Administrators, the American School Food Service Association, and the Mississippi Association of Educators. He is married to the former Myrtle Oswalt of Webster County, Mississippi, and they are the parents of two daughters. Mr. Griffin is a member of the Broadmoor Baptist Church. He and his wife currently reside in Jackson.


Transcript

This is an interview for the Mississippi Oral History Program for The University of Southern Mississippi. The interview is with Mr. W.S. Griffin of Jackson, Mississippi, at his home in Jackson on July 19, 1978. The interviewer is Tom Healy.

Mr. Healy: Mr. Griffin, I wish you could tell us something about your family background in Mississippi, how long they've been here and what they've done for the past years and so on?

Mr. Griffin: Thank you, Mr. Healy. The Griffins came into Mississippi in the 1830's from Georgia. My immediate Griffin family has lived in Webster County, Mississippi, since that time. As a matter of fact, the Webster County Historical Society is looking into moving my great-great-grandfather's [cabin]; it's one of the original log cabins that was constructed in Webster County. They are looking into moving it to the campus of Wood Junior College as sort of an example of the type of buildings that were constructed in the county in that period.

I was born and reared on a small farm in Webster County, Mantee, Mississippi. One of six children, five brothers and one sister. Sister died at eight years of age. My father was a farmer and I grew up on a farm. I finished high school at Cumberland High School in Webster County in 1933. Went through high school during the most severe part of the Depression. My father had difficulty in keeping his taxes paid. As a matter of fact, for about four years he couldn't sell his cotton to pay taxes.

Upon finishing high school, I didn't have any money at that point in time to go on to college, so I entered what's commonly referred to as the CCC camp, Civilian Conservation Corp, for one year. We received thirty dollars a month, twenty-five of which was sent home to parents. After one year there my parents saved some of that twenty-five dollars and I started Wood Junior College. Using that twenty-five dollars as sort of a cushion, plus working for two years there, carrying the mail or raking leaves or doing whatever on the old NYA Program. I finished two years of college at Wood Junior College in 1936.

In 1936 I was employed as junior high teacher and coach, girls' basketball, boys' basketball and boys' football at Woodland High School. I'd never played a game of football in my life. [laughter] We had played some touch football in college, but really - at any rate, at Woodland High School in Chickasaw County. [I] had some unique experiences, but I won't take the time here to go into that except to say I was there for two years.

During the summers I started attending the University of Mississippi to try to complete my bachelor's degree. At Woodland I stayed for two years. Then in 1938 I went to Walthall Elementary School in Webster County - which is the county seat of Webster County - as principal of the elementary school there. I still was not married. I was continuing to go to summer school at Ole Miss each summer between teaching. Finally in 1940, summer of 1940, I did get my bachelor's degree from the University of Mississippi.

Mr. Healy: Okay, let me go back a little bit here. I wanted to ask you some questions about growing up in Mantee. Is that where you said you were from? What kind of school did you go to in the primary grades?

Mr. Griffin: In the primary grades I attended the Mantee Elementary School. At that time I started in at Mantee, Mantee is a town of around two hundred and fifty, three hundred population. I didn't live right in Mantee; I lived [laughing] west of town. My father later bought some property there. At any rate, there were no gravel roads whatsoever in that area of the county in the '30s, at the time I started in elementary school. We either walked or rode a school wagon to school. Many times I've seen the roads so muddy that it took four mules to get the wagon up and down the hills. Many times they'd have to blaze a new road around the worst part of the hills to get the school wagon up the hill, or through the worse part of the road.

Of course, obviously there was no school feeding program at that time. We all brought our lunches. There was no indoor plumbing. Had an outdoor toilet.

Mr. Healy: What would the curriculum be like?

Mr. Griffin: Well, the curriculum was obviously just reading, arithmetic, history, and I believe a course in health, civics, and that type of thing. That's about all it consisted of.

Mr. Healy: Did most of the children go to school in your community?

Mr. Griffin: Yes, they did. You know, one of the things that you reflect back on, some didn't but most of them did. There were no wealthy people. Some had more than others but there were really no elitist class in communities of that kind. As a matter of fact, where the same families came in that part of the state - I'm sure this is true all over the state - the same families came into that part of the state at approximately the same time, probably in twenty-five or thirty years, out of Georgia and South Carolina, et cetera, and they inter-married. One family married into the other until eventually [laughing] 75 or 80 percent of the people became relatives. They were closely-knit people with an Anglo-Saxon background. They had a terrific work ethic. They had a desire for their children to get an education, so that hopefully their children could have it a little bit easier than they had it because these people had not had it easy. Everything is relative, of course; they had not known anything too much better than that. In retrospect you can only think about how really tough they did have it, because these people came in and nothing but woods and built farms and tried to dig a living out of the soil.

Many times my mother, there were no washing machines, no modern conveniences whatsoever when I was growing up in my early years there such as women take for granted now. She used washboards and rubbed those clothes out on the washboard. What we referred to as a battling stick.

Mr. Healy: A battling stick?

Mr. Griffin: Yes.

Mr. Healy: I had never heard of that one.

Mr. Griffin: Well, they put the clothes on a bench and take that stick, a paddle, and beat them out. They'd beat that dirt, loosen it up. They did that first then dropped them into the pot. The worse dirt would be out before they dropped them in the pot for boiling.

Mr. Healy: Okay, I wanted to ask you a little bit, you mentioned a little bit about the Depression. You mentioned you finished high school or went to high school right through the worst of it. Your father was trying to eke out his existence. You mentioned growing cotton, was that his primary crop?

Mr. Griffin: That was the primary crop, right.

Mr. Healy: Those were tough years, the price of cotton, was that right?

Mr. Griffin: Right. I think the price fell down around four or five cents a pound. One year there I don't think he could even sell it. I recall it five or six bales stayed stacked up out under a shed. There just wasn't any market for it at all.

Mr. Healy: What other crops did he grow?

Mr. Griffin: Well, corn, peas, potatoes, sweet potatoes. And we always kept a number of milk cows and so on. We had a cream separator, a hand-cranked cream separator. Milked ten or twelve head of cows most of the years there and had a cream separator. From that milk we had the cream separated. The split milk would come out on one side and the cream on the other and you'd sell that cream to a creamery. Had a truck came through and picked it up, or else we carried it to Mantee and shipped it.

Mr. Healy: Now, did you feel any pressure at home when you went to high school during these times to stay and help out on the farm? Or did you, at the same time while you were going to high school, do a lot of work there?

Mr. Griffin: Well, I never had any pressure. My mother and father always determined that we were going to school. That was just taken for granted that you were going to school. But during the fall session the schools ran fairly short days. We got home at 2:30, the wagon obviously couldn't get home as quickly as they do now when they ride a bus. Immediately when you came into the house you came in pulling off your school clothes and putting on your work clothes to get on to the field to pick cotton or do whatever was pressing at the moment.

Mr. Healy: Okay, you mentioned after you finished high school that you went into the Civilian Conservation Corp for a year. Is that correct?

Mr. Griffin: Yes.

Mr. Healy: What did you do with them? Is this a matter of doing road work?

Mr. Griffin: No, I don't know whether you - let me give you a brief of what the Civilian Conservation Corp was. It had a two-fold purpose: obviously it was to give something for unemployed youth to do whose parents couldn't send them on to college. The secondary purpose was conservation.

At the inception of the Conservation Corp they formed companies, two hundred and fifty, two hundred boys, seventeen and eighteen years of age. At the inception they were sent to a military installation. In our case we were sent to Ft. McClelland, Alabama. There we were under the auspices of the United States Army. The Army, without any guns or anything of that sort, put us through drilling, using sticks and whatever, marching around those mountains near Anniston, Alabama. There we stayed about five or six weeks and then were sent to Tyro, Mississippi, which is about twenty miles east of Senatobia. When we went out there, there wasn't anything there. We pitched tents and subsequently did build some barracks. But we had to live the first three months, while they were building the barracks, in tents.

But what we did there - now, while you were on the base you were under the Army. But when you went out to work you were under the Department of the Interior and Agriculture. I believe it was the Interior. That part of Tate County at that time was eroded tremendously. We built little erosion dams in those gullies, set out black locust trees. Just did whatever the engineers that were supervising it thought would help with the erosion problem. The last three months we were sent to Vicksburg, to the military park there to do some work at the military park in Vicksburg.

Mr. Healy: You mentioned that you got paid thirty dollars a week?

Mr. Griffin: A month.

Mr. Healy: Oh, a month. That's a big difference there, isn't it? [laughter]

Mr. Griffin: Yes.

Mr. Healy: Twenty-five of that was sent home. Was that the case for almost everybody?

Mr. Griffin: Yes, that was the case for everybody. They didn't give you a choice in that.

Mr. Healy: So that didn't leave you very much for free time.

Mr. Griffin: Left you five dollars a month for buying your toilet articles and doing whatever. Of course, your parents could sneak you back some.

Mr. Healy: Well, they needed it.

Mr. Griffin: They sent it home, you know. After all thirty dollars a month might give a kid so much money that it might create a problem for them. [laughter]

Mr. Healy: I'm kind of interested in how you were recruited into this or how you found yourself in the CCC?

Mr. Griffin: Well, when I finished high school in '33, that was the year, that spring there was a lot of publicity in the news media about the - of course we didn't have television, but what news media we had - we had a lot of publicity about the Civilian Conservation Corp. Franklin Roosevelt had recommended and Congress enacted legislation sometime around January of '33 or February somewhere, and I don't know the date. But at any rate it had a great deal of publicity to it.

I talked to my dad and mother and told them I thought I'd like to try it. I knew that we didn't have any money to go on to school at that time. So he talked to some of the county officials there. I think you had to be recommended, as I recall, by a member of the board of supervisors from your supervisor's district. To recommend to someone, I don't know who. My dad went and talked to the board of supervisors, then there were several other families there in the general area of the county. I guess there were four or five of us, at least that, from the Mantee area there that went in together. And stayed in pretty much the whole time together.

Mr. Healy: In 1933 there really wasn't anything for you to do other than do this?

Mr. Griffin: No, there was no jobs. I mean, you know, in 1933 in Mississippi there were no factories.

Mr. Healy: That's right.

Mr. Griffin: You know, there was nothing to do. I'd just pick up little jobs; I picked up jobs while I was in high school working at a sawmill. I doodled sawdust one summer.

Mr. Healy: What is doodle dust?

Mr. Griffin: Out there hauling the sawdust away in a wheelbarrow. We'd go in there and scoop it out and haul it away. I think I made a dollar, dollar and a half a day. That's what they paid you. There was no job opportunities in that part of the state.

Mr. Healy: Okay. During those times had you thought about going to college?

Mr. Griffin: Yes, I had an ambition to go.

Mr. Healy: You went to Wood Junior College.

Mr. Griffin: Wood Junior College. I finished high school in '33, enrolled in the CCC, and entered Wood Junior in fall of '34. As a matter of fact, they started operating a little panel truck from up in the Mantee and Cumberland area down to Wood Junior College. The public schools operated eight months at that time. The county paid a truck to go up there and carry the kids on down from Cumberland, it's about ten miles from Cumberland down to Mathiston, where Wood Junior College is. Well, the county paid one of the truck drivers that went into Cumberland a little more money to carry kids on down to Wood Junior.

Mr. Healy: Now, Wood Junior was a state supported school?

Mr. Griffin: Oh, no. It's a Methodist school. It started way back, I don't know when, before the turn of the century, the northern Methodists trying to help out with education in the South. I'm Baptist but that never made any difference about where you - everybody attended school, obviously.

Mr. Healy: Sure. While you were at Wood Junior did you have any memorable experiences that you'd like to bring out right now? Or any personalities perhaps that you encountered?

Mr. Griffin: Well, I think that one of the greatest personalities, perhaps one among the greatest that I've ever known, was a gentleman by the name of Dr. Jasper Weber.

Mr. Healy: That's W-E-B-E-R?

Mr. Griffin: W-E-B-E-R. He was president of Wood Junior College at that time, and had been for - I don't know how many years it was, maybe sixteen, eighteen, maybe twenty years, such matter. This old gentleman was a Methodist minister from Ohio. He was a very quiet, dignified individual that you'd never associate with being a dynamic character at all. But one of the most compassionate men I've ever known in my life. Any youngster that went down there to talk to him that wanted to go to school, he'd see you through. One way or another, you know. He'd just find something for you to do. How the school survived - the rumor around there was that he got around sixty dollars a month or something like that. He and his wife had a home, she worked, they both worked. She was a librarian.

I owe a whole lot to him because I went to him and the second year there my money had run out from the CCC camp. The second year after we laid by our crop more or less, I went down to see him and told him I'd like to work. That was the summer of '35, I guess. He gave me a job there along with some other boys. We painted buildings all over the campus, oiled the floors, fixed windows, and did whatever. General maintenance work for most of July and August. Didn't give us any money but he gave us credit for the subsequent year schooling.

Of course, I carried the mail the second year I was there, had a mail bag and go down each day to the post office. I'd go to the girls dormitory and the boys dormitory and pick up the out-going mail and take it down and bring back the incoming mail. I always enjoyed going to the girls dormitory because as soon as I walked into the parlor there, here would come all the girls down, you know, [laughing] in various stages of attire [laughing] out of their rooms. That was a fringe benefit. [laughter]

Just to relate one humorous experience, we had Wood Hall which is where the boys lived. We didn't have any bathrooms on the floors. We had the basement and two other floors. Had a shower down in the basement. You'd go down to the basement and wash your clothes and take your shower down in the basement. Well, I lived on the corner room on the third floor. Right below me on the second floor was a lady by the name of Miss Curry, who was the librarian along with Mrs. Weber. Miss Curry was never married; she weighed around two hundred pounds, I'd guess. And a very brusque individual, I guess from years of working in the library. At any rate one day I was down washing my clothes; I was in a hurry I think for something. So I came bounding up the stairway, and I forgot what floor I was on, her room being one directly under mine. I went bounding down the hallway and [laughing] opened the door and walked into her room. [laughter] There she stood getting dressed. She said, "What do you want?" Obviously I backed out of there as quickly as I could.

Mr. Healy: Stayed out of the library for a while?

Mr. Griffin: Stayed out of the library, yes, I couldn't look at that woman for two weeks.

Mr. Healy: I wanted to ask you about Dr. Weber again. Did he dominate this whole school, his personality, that is?

Mr. Griffin: Well, I'd say yes, to a large degree. He was fairly strict in his quiet way. He was quite a strict disciplinarian. He laid down some pretty strict rules and regulations.

Mr. Healy: With a church-affiliated school there would be some strict conduct expected.

Mr. Griffin: Right, right. Although those of us who were there respected him, we also feared him a little. If you broke the rules very much he wouldn't fool around with you. He'd send you home. I mean you either behaved and observed the rules or you didn't stay around there.

Mr. Healy: I wanted to ask you how Wood Junior College prepared you for your time at Ole Miss? Was there a good education there? Did you feel it prepared you?

Mr. Griffin: Yes, by and large, yes. Strangely enough, they had some well qualified people there. I had a very poor preparation as far as high school is concerned for freshman English in college.

Mr. Healy: I think everybody does [laughing] in a sense.

Mr. Griffin: [Laughter] Mine was atrocious. But they did the best they could, I guess. But at any rate, this lady who taught English there - I don't know how he got a lot of those people there. Some of them had retired from up north, highly qualified people who came in there with sort of a missionary zeal to teach. You know, they were retired and they wanted something to do. This gave them a chance to go down south and this didn't affect their retirement pay to get money from this private institution. But this lady who taught English there, she knew her subject, and she was demanding. She'd make you write themes over and over and over until you got everything right.

I had a good French teacher. A lady who had spent several years in France. I don't recall where she was from. She was from up north some place.

Their offerings were not that broad at Wood Junior, but what they did offer - now the library was not too adequate. But by and large it was pretty good. The answer to your question would be that I thought I had pretty good preparation there.

Mr. Healy: You went to teach then after Wood Junior?

Mr. Griffin: Right, I went to teach after Wood Junior.

Mr. Healy: At Woodland High School?

Mr. Griffin: At Woodland High School, right.

Mr. Healy: Now, was this common in those days for someone with a junior college education to be an instructor?

Mr. Griffin: Right. Well, it was fairly common, I wouldn't say very common. Those days we didn't have near as strict certification requirements or accreditation requirements as we have now. So I could get a teaching certificate then with two years college to teach in the elementary or junior high. So I got my teaching certificate and starting teaching. I taught seventh and eighth grade history, seventh and eighth grade science, [laughter] and I think a course in arithmetic. You know, you teach across the board then, you know, whatever.

Mr. Healy: You went to Ole Miss then following Woodland High School, is that right?

Mr. Griffin: Woodland High School, right.

Mr. Healy: What did you study at Ole Miss?

Mr. Griffin: Well, I went in with a major in history, a minor in math. I was preparing to take education courses to get a school administrator or teaching certificate, you know. I was enrolled in the school of education at Ole Miss.

Mr. Healy: Did you have any experiences you'd like to tell us about while you were at Ole Miss?

Mr. Griffin: I recall the first year I went up there I didn't even have a car. [laughter] I caught a ride to go up there. The thing perhaps that stands out most vividly in my mind up there during the summer terms - see, these were the days before there was any air conditioning - was the terrific heat in the dormitory rooms and in the classrooms. It seemed particularly so at the library.

Mr. Healy: Nice place to sleep.

Mr. Griffin: You'd go over there, you had to study in the afternoon because you had class in the morning. I can recall sitting over there and trying to work on my paper some and the perspiration running down your arms [laughing] onto your paper. I wouldn't recommend it, you know, as the most desirable way to get a degree. You lack some continuity in your work, just going to summer school. At that time I really had no alternative.

Mr. Healy: Okay, after Ole Miss you went to Walthall Elementary School as a principal?

Mr. Griffin: Right.

Mr. Healy: Now, you mentioned earlier that there were a couple of incidences there that you thought would be amusing to tell or perhaps worthwhile to relate.

Mr. Griffin: Well, I think I made that in reference to Woodland High School. You always have things happen and many of them you even forget. At Walthall Elementary School they had a teachers home. I wasn't married. We rented the home out to a couple with the understanding that - I think the agreement was that I was to get a room free and they were to have the house and I think paid a little bit extra for it, plus giving me a room and board at the teachers home there. I went there in 1938.

The thing that I remember most vividly that we did that first year that I was there, they didn't have a school lunchroom. They didn't have one at Woodland either for that matter. About that time the WPA began to have soup kitchens as they called them in the schools. The primary purpose of it was to give people employment. Secondary was feeding the children.

Mr. Healy: I hadn't realized that.

Mr. Griffin: That really was the school feeding program. The history of it was to give people employment. Certainly a benefit was nutrition for children. We struggled with that for many years because of the historical background that it colored the whole program for years. It was looked on as a welfare program.

But we organized a good PTA there. We got those ladies interested in having a lunchroom. So they in turn I guess got their husbands interested. So just by people donating labor and lumber, nails or whatnot we built a little lunchroom, sitting off to the north side of the main building there. The ladies brought in silverware and china, dish pans, whatever, to equip it. Everything, I don't know, there wasn't a dime spent except maybe somebody might have bought some nails or something out of his pocket. At any rate there was no money spent. I don't know how we got the cooking range. To tell you the truth, I don't remember, but we got one somehow. Opened up a lunchroom. The school board and myself, we had no authority over who was going to work in there. The WPA [laughing] certified and sent somebody out there to work. If the work was not satisfactory we could complain back to the authorities and maybe get them out. But we got that lunchroom going. You'd have to go into town about once or twice a month to Eupora and pick up your commodities.

Mr. Healy: Now, who would pay for the commodities?

Mr. Griffin: The Welfare Department furnished the commodities through the Department of Agriculture. I don't know what arrangements they had there to where we would be notified that we could come in and pick up a bag of potatoes or something of that sort. It wasn't nearly as sophisticated a deal as it is today, the school lunch program in the state.

Mr. Healy: The children wouldn't have to pay for their lunches, would they?

Mr. Griffin: I think that we had five cents, maybe it eventually went up to ten cents for children to pay. See, you had to have some money. The foods that they got from the Welfare Department were only a few staples. You had other food that you had to have in addition to that, you see. I believe it was five cents at first and then it went up to ten cents.

I stayed there at Walthall for - it was in '38. I got married in March of 1941. I started the school session at Walthall in '42-'43. My wife started teaching with me there. We had the teachers home then, you know.

Mr. Healy: Oh, you took it over then.

Mr. Griffin: Took it over then, yes. That's when World War II was heating up, you know. So in October of 1942 I volunteered for the United States Navy. I decided I wanted to make the choice. I knew I'd have to go. So I went on and volunteered in October of '42 for the United States Navy. I stayed in the Navy till November of 1945.

Mr. Healy: Could you briefly review your experiences during the war?

Mr. Griffin: Well, I volunteered and I went up to Memphis. I went up to talk to the Navy and the Army and Marine Corp, all, about the possibility of getting a commission. And they all said they'd make the application but it would take four to six months to be processed. So I talked to the Navy there and the Navy, having a little education background, said, "If you'll go ahead and sign up with us, when you finish your basic training at Great Lakes, Chicago, we'll send you up under orders to be sent back down to - they are opening up the naval training station out in Millington, just north of Memphis. We'll send you up there with orders to be sent back to work there at the Naval Training station in Memphis." So this sounded like a pretty good deal. So I signed and went up to the Great Lakes. I was there for basic training from October until January. Three months. I got roped in to - because I reckon I had a little college work - they wanted me to be one of the, what they called an acting CPO. Go out with the boys on drill field. My CCC camp, too, maybe. Out there in those drill fields there on Lake Michigan, that water and air coming into your voice hollering, "Right turn, left turn." Counting, you know, till I got so hoarse I couldn't talk.

At any rate I came on back down to Memphis upon completion of basic training. I think I was there about eight months. Of course, the Navy will tell you they will send you, they don't tell you how long they'll keep you there, you know. Well, that's okay. A bunch of us, the ship's company there, they had to have more men at sea. Pressing things, new ships being built. So I was pulled out and sent to Norfolk, Virginia. I was assigned to a Navy tanker, convoy duty. We were going across the Atlantic, fifty or sixty ships to a convoy. In the hold of the tanker you carried some oil and gasoline to North Africa and over to where the fighting was taking place. Another big purpose of the tanker was to refuel the destroyers and the escort vessels on the way over. We'd drop back behind the convoy and two of them would come alongside and you'd run your hose over and refuel them. They were out on the periphery of the convoy guarding against submarine attacks.

During the year there we crossed the Atlantic Ocean eight round trips in a little over a year. Had some submarine alerts, but never any serious attacks. They'd take anywhere from eighteen to twenty days to cross the Atlantic because the convoys were no faster than the slowest ship in the convoy. We had those old liberty ships that make about nine knots, you know.

I was on that ship a little over a year or fourteen months. I don't recall. I was pulled off and sent down to Charleston, South Carolina. They were building ships at Wilmington, North Carolina, shipyards at Wilmington, North Carolina. I was in the supply department of the Navy. I went down there along with a lot of other fellows and our purpose was to help outfit a new AKA, attack cargo vessel.

Mr. Healy: Excuse me, let me just change the tape.

Editor's Note:At this point there was a brief interruption. The interview continues on Tape one, Side two.

Mr. Healy: Okay, go right ahead, Mr. Griffin.

Mr. Griffin: To outfit an AKA that had been built up at Wilmington. Which was some miles up the river there in North Carolina from Charleston, South Carolina. I was there about six or eight weeks. Then we got the ship outfitted. I, along with some other supply people, was assigned to it permanently. We went on a shake-down cruise for a few days and went up to Bayonne, New Jersey, and took on cargo, among which was around, I think, three hundred thousand cases of beer. [laughter]

Mr. Healy: [Laughter] Very valuable cargo.

Mr. Griffin: Yes. And we headed for Guadalcanal, which is near the other side of the world almost. Took us about thirty days to get there, down through the Panama Canal. The thing about the beer though, we couldn't keep those - the beer was down in the cargo hold in the ship. We couldn't keep those sailors out of that beer. We finally posted an armed guard down there. [laughter] Still we got to Guadalcanal and the Army sent trucks over to pick up the beer. A whole line of trucks. We spent about two days getting it unloaded, I think. I think we still checked out around a thousand cases short.

Mr. Healy: Short. [laughter]

Mr. Griffin: I recall that the Army lieutenant who was in charge of getting that picked up. He said, "Oh, hell, I'll go on and sign for all of it. It's all for the armed forces anyway, wasn't it?" So he signed for the whole thing.

Mr. Healy: I'm sure it was quite usual.

Mr. Griffin: Yes, quite.

Mr. Healy: So after the war you went to Ole Miss, is that correct?

Mr. Griffin: Yes. I was discharged in November. My wife, while I was away in the Navy during World War II, didn't want to continue to teach at Walthall. She said that she just didn't want to be there, you know, under the circumstances. So she got a job over at Clarksdale. Fortunately they had a vacancy over there right after I left. She went over to Clarksdale to be an elementary teacher. Taught there during all the years that I was in service. When I came back out of service, I went to Clarksdale. She and I got us a little apartment in Clarksdale. I had the GI time, of course, coming from them and I utilized that. So I went over to Ole Miss in January of that year, '46 I guess it would be. Entered the master's degree program there.

Then I started working. My wife continued to finish out the school term over at Clarksdale. So I went on over there and got a room in a married couples dormitory there. So she would come over and spend the weekends.

They opened up the Veterans Guidance Center there on the campus. I got a part-time job as an appraiser, there at the Veterans Guidance Center. You know, the veterans would be sent in more often from central Mississippi in there to be given a battery of tests and set up a training objective for them. Some going there to school and others were set up for everything from watch-makers, shoe cobbler to automobile mechanic, et cetera, depending on what his aptitude showed on the test and the interview.

Mr. Healy: This was set up by the U.S. Government or the University of Mississippi?

Mr. Griffin: No, set up by the Veterans Administration. The Veterans Administration entered into a contract with the University of Mississippi. The university furnished the facilities, and the university furnished the personnel. Then they paid the University so much per veteran who went through there, you know. We were assigned to go there out of the - see, the veteran would make an application to the V.A. in Jackson for benefits. Then the V.A. would set him up for a date to go to the Veterans Guidance Center there to go through the process of setting up his training objective. I worked there as an appraiser, part-time. I would do my class work in the morning and I would go down there and work in the afternoon.

When I finished my master's there, the university offered me a full-time job there. I became what they called the head-appraiser after I finished my master's degree there. Then after about a year there as a full-time head-appraiser, I was offered a job as assistant registrar at Ole Miss. I accepted that position because it looked more permanent to me than the other job. So I worked there as assistant registrar and handled admissions for about two years.

Mr. Healy: Now, this was a time when most of the students or a lot of the students would be veterans, correct?

Mr. Griffin: Oh, yes, the biggest percentage of them were veterans, right.

Mr. Healy: Would you usually accept them for admission regardless of, let's say, some of their past academic records?

Mr. Griffin: No, not regardless. That was before they had the GED test, you know. Most of them that were accepted, as I recall, were high school graduates. Now we might have accepted some training that they had in the military service in lieu of some high school training.

Mr. Healy: They would have already gone through your veterans -

Mr. Griffin: Yes, most of them would have already gone through if they applied for veterans benefits. That was one of their requirements, that they had to go through the screening center there, you see, to set them up a training objective. We gave them a battery of intelligence tests, interests test, the Kuder Preference [Scale] - I don't know if you've heard of that or not?

Mr. Healy: Yes, that's the one you punch the holes in.

Mr. Griffin: Yes, that's the one you punch the holes in, right. Gave them a battery of tests. Then you interviewed them and ran a profile on him, going into what his interests was and then what his aptitudes and his score he made on the intelligence test and all that. You try to take that and if his interest ran high in mechanical, showed a strong mechanical interest, and he didn't score high on his aptitude and intelligence tests like to go into law or accounting or engineering or something, you tried to discourage him from it, you know. They could appeal it, you know, if they didn't like the objective. You usually tried to give them options and talk about it with them. Let them ultimately make the choice themselves rather than just arbitrarily say, "Well, you are going to have to do this, that, and the other," you know. Try to lead them to make the decision themselves.

Mr. Healy: It must have been difficult deciding in some of those cases, considering they were older than your normal student.

Mr. Griffin: Yes. It was difficult deciding. Many times they came in there - I never will forget - something humorous happens. Many times those boys had not been long out of the military and they had under gone some traumatic experiences in the military. The V.A. also had a person assigned to this center. Although the contract from the university to furnish facilities and the appraisers, the V.A. had a man there who was really in charge of the center. We'd know who was coming in each day. The folders had been sent on in advance so we could review their folders. I recall this day, the V.A. representative, who was a Mr. Hooker Coen, he had the tendency to talk pretty loud. I think he might have been just slightly hard of hearing. This particular day this fellow came in and Mr. Coen, after he talked to him, would bring him on over to whichever appraiser was not busy. So he talked to him and brought this fellow on over to me. I noticed that the fellow had started talking to him, you know. He filled out a little personnel form on them first, you know, getting background data, et cetera. I noticed that he seemed agitated. He wouldn't answer my questions. I looked at him and I said, "What's your problem?" He said, "Who is that blankety-blank fellow over there?" I said, "Well, that's Mr. Coen, who is the V.A. representative here at the center." He said, "Why in the hell is he talking so loud to me." [laughter] He said, "I had enough of that when I was in the military; I ain't going to put up with that." I tried to reassure him that he was a little bit hard of hearing, that he really didn't mean anything personal about it.

I think the point that you were making was that you had to deal with these fellows, they were not seventeen, eighteen years old, you see. They were twenty-three and twenty-four year-old men that you had to deal with in a diplomatic and tactful manner.

Mr. Healy: Sure, especially after coming out of the theater of war.

Mr. Griffin: Right, right.

Mr. Healy: How long did you stay as the assistant registrar?

Mr. Griffin: A little over two years. From 1947 to '49.

Mr. Healy: Then you did what?

Mr. Griffin: I was a little bit unhappy in my work there because the person that I had to work under, he and I just didn't get along too well. I won't go into that.

At any rate, my wife lived at Bellefontaine, Mississippi, which was in Webster County, not too far from Walthall where I had previously taught, and she and I had met while I was teaching at Walthall.

I was back home visiting my in-laws one weekend and about four miles down the road there from where they lived was Springhill Consolidated High School. That was back when they still had all the consolidated districts in the state. When I got down there on Saturday afternoon, for the weekend. We were going home to spend the weekend. Mrs. Oswalt, my mother-in-law, said, "Some of the trustees of Springhill want to talk to you while you are here. They are coming up tonight to talk with you." The superintendent's position was open down there. So they came up and talked with me. Had a teacher's home there on the campus. The salary wasn't big, but it was there near and back home. So I went back and talked to a few people at Ole Miss, and I resigned and accepted the job. This was in August.

Mr. Healy: Now, what was your position at Springhill?

Mr. Griffin: Superintendent.

Mr. Healy: Superintendent.

Mr. Griffin: Superintendent of the consolidated school district there. That was in '49.

Mr. Healy: How long did you stay at Springhill?

Mr. Griffin: I stayed there three years. Three years. I left there in 1952 to come to the State Department of Education. I'll give a little background on that because that leads into subsequent political campaigns and some of the prevailing issues and controversies that were prevalent at that point in time.

I went down there as superintendent of that school district and it was a small high school. At one time it had been a real large high school, but as most did over the state, the rural population had been moving into town and so the rural high schools had been losing enrollment.

The second year I was there the state accrediting commission adopted a regulation that if you didn't have - and I'm not sure the exact number - but they set a minimum number of students that you could have in grades ten through twelve without losing your accreditation. Well, a bunch of us didn't like that. We recognized that something needed to be done but they were going about it, we thought, in the wrong way, without any concern about where the kids would go. That consolidation had to be approached through a plan, phased-in type operation without just saying, your meat axe approach and saying, "You are not going to have accreditation because you don't have X number of students."

So a bunch of us got together and we organized against that thing.

Mr. Healy: Was this a legislative activity?

Mr. Griffin: No, no. The accrediting commission then was under the MEA. The State Department of Education had nothing to do with it. I say it had nothing to do with it, there was no statutory basis for accreditation at that time.

Mr. Healy: So the MEA is a teachers association?

Mr. Griffin: That was the Mississippi Education Association. Up until about ten years ago, ten or twelve years ago, the MEA was in charge of school accreditation in the state. They set the standards and appointed the commission members and everything was handled through the MEA. The legislature finally took it out and put it under the State Department of Education, ten or twelve years ago, I don't recall the exact year.

But at any rate this became a terrific fight among the school people over the state. The thing boiled down to where you had on one hand some of the bigger separate school districts who were pushing this numbers deal. Some of the college professors and some of the schools of education over the state, including Ole Miss and Southern and all around. I do know some of the names at Ole Miss who were on the accreditation commission at that time that pushed through this regulation that you had to have a certain number of students or you would lose your accreditation.

Well, I got active in that organization, I think we called it Rural Superintendents Association or something like that. The precise name [laughing] I don't remember. But at any rate, we got active in that thing to try to defeat that particular regulation in the accreditation commission regulations and were subsequently able to do so. We got it out.

Mr. Healy: Now, I just want to go back to this MEA bit for a minute. Was this just a commission set up by the MEA that would set up accreditation or was it body politic, let's say? Did it have to be voted on by all the members to get something like that passed?

Mr. Griffin: Yes. Now, the accrediting commission itself was set-up by the MEA. I believe the accrediting commission regulations had to be voted on by the delegate assembly. Not the entire membership of the MEA, but the delegate assembly. You know what I'm talking about?

Mr. Healy: Yes, sir, I do.

Mr. Griffin: The delegates from each -

Mr. Healy: That's what I meant originally.

Mr. Griffin: From each, you know, whoever had a chapter. Then I was elected, I guess as a result of this activity in this thing, I was elected from that district in the state to the board of directors of the MEA. Some of my rural friends from all around that part of the state, I was elected to the board of directors of the MEA. In the spring of 1951 I was in Jackson, I think it was around March, attending a board of directors meeting of the MEA.

I came out of the meeting, one of the girls there said, "Mr. Tubb and Mr. R.W. Griffith" who was assistant superintendent of education at that time, "have called over here and would like for you to come by the department before you go home." I had no earthly idea what they wanted. I thought I was in trouble from the [laughing] school up there or something. But any rate, I went by. That was an election year. They hold elections in odd years and take office in even years. That would be for the term '52 to '56, but the election would be held in '51. Well, after I had been by and visited with Mr. Griffith - I knew him up at Ole Miss back in the summers up there when I was attending and after the war. After the preliminaries he said, "Let's go in and talk to Mr. Tubb." I went in and I still didn't know what they wanted. But they said, "Would you consider managing Mr. Tubb's campaign for state superintendent of education?" I still had a good deal of GI time left and I had written the University of Florida. As a matter of fact I was going down there to work on my doctorate. I had GI time left and summers where [laughing] I could go to Florida.

So we talked about it at length there and I had never thought about managing anybody's political campaign, you know. They said, "Well, the criteria we want, we want a young man, we want a veteran, and we want somebody from a rural school district. We think you meet those criteria." So anyway I told them I'd let them know. I went back home, talked to my wife, and drove around and talked to some of my school friends in that area and they all encouraged me to do it, you know, so I did.

That was one of the, I guess, most heated campaigns I was involved in with all the others over the years that Mr. Tubb had after I came into the department. And Garvin Johnson too. But that was probably one of the most heated campaigns that we've ever had in the history of this state for a state superintendent of education.

Mr. Healy: Who was Mr. Tubb running against?

Mr. Griffin: T. N. Touchstone.

Mr. Healy: What were the major issues of his campaign?

Mr. Griffin: The major issues grew out of just what I've been talking about. They were all issues of - these would be the bigger school districts, et cetera.

Mr. Healy: And I gather Mr. Tubb would be in favor.

Mr. Griffin: Yes. Now the thing that happened there, Mr. Touchstone had been director of instruction in the State Department of Education. He had been superintendent of schools at Amory. Mr. Tubb had appointed him director of instruction for the State Department of Education. Mr. Touchstone was an ambitious man, which there is nothing wrong with that. But behind the scenes he had helped to get through this regulation about requiring X number of students to have a high school. Mr. Touchstone, so it emerged really, while he was in the department had been building a political base to run against Mr. Tubb who had appointed him to the position in the first place. So he resigned from the department to make the race, obviously, to run against Mr. Tubb. The thing that made it particularly bitter was the relationship that had been there between Mr. Tubb and Mr. Touchstone. The campaign boiled down to the rural school districts and the vocational agricultural teachers on the one hand supporting Mr. Tubb and the larger - by and large with some exceptions, of course, there were exceptions both ways, but I'm talking about generally speaking - the larger municipal separate school district superintendents supporting Touchstone.

Mr. Healy: Could you go back to your activities as campaign manager and how did you run that campaign?

Mr. Griffin: Well, I knew nothing about running a campaign. But we opened a headquarters down on Capitol Street. I began to learn rather quickly. We had some committees that worked with me. Of course, you had a secretary and one helper, a part-time girl that helped. First of all you started trying to get your literature written up. Promotional literature, all the printing done. Cards, hand-outs to be printed. You stayed on the telephone probably - again, didn't have any air conditioning - I stayed on the telephone so much there that summer until my left ear really became raw with the perspiration on the telephone rubbing up against that ear. You try and set up your county organizations over the state. You were calling superintendents and others all over trying to get them to set up an organization.

Then what I had to do with the gubernatorial candidates, had about four or five people running for governor. I don't recall who all, but four or five running for governor. Well, we got each gubernatorial candidate's speaking itinerary for the week. They'd bring it to the headquarters. Well, obviously Mr. Tubb couldn't be at all those. Four or five men running, he might make one but we planned his itinerary too. So say a gubernatorial candidate would be speaking in Greene County at Leakesville, and people turned out pretty much in those days to these speakings much more than they do now. Another candidate would be speaking in Coahoma County and another one in DeSoto County. Well, you wanted somebody there at each of those speakings, they gave opportunities for each candidate for a minor political office to make an announcement or to have a proxy there to make an announcement for him. So you tried to get somebody lined up at each of these spots everyday to make an announcement for Mr. Tubb. Well, you know you didn't want some local fellow making an announcement for your opponent and nobody there to make one for you. This has an impact on people, as little as you may think about it.

You are trying to buy ads in papers. I never realized until I got into a political campaign, managing a political campaign, how many publications we have in the state. They'd walk in off the street saying, "We put out the foxhunter's paper," or a musician's, you just name it, I mean they all had a trade publication of some sort. Many of them you never heard of. They would say, "We reach five thousand people in this state. How about an ad in our paper?" Well, you didn't have enough money to buy an ad in everybody's paper. So first of all you had to develop your ads. You had to write your ads and try to make them catchy. I think I developed, I thought I did at least, a good deal of expertise in writing ads just out of a necessity.

Mr. Healy: Did you have any responsibility for fund raising also?

Mr. Griffin: Well, we had a committee that - I served on the committee but we had a committee that worked on the fund-raising activities.

Mr. Healy: I wanted to ask you right now, could you contrast the campaigns of the two men? Was there a difference between them and their approach.

Mr. Griffin: Well, there was a difference between them because there was a difference in their personalities altogether. An aside to that campaign which was interesting was Merl Hawkins, who is dean of the School of Education at Mississippi State University now. You may have heard of him or may know him, I don't know. He and I finished Wood Junior College together. He managed Mr. Touchstone's campaign. [laughter] During all the bitterness of the campaign, and it became quite bitter, he and I remained friends and have been all the years. He and I had many a laugh about it, a fellow would come in and walk in off the street - you'd have them walk in and say, "Well, I'm a piano tuner. I'm going up to northeast Mississippi to tune pianos. You know, when you get through tuning a lady's piano and it sounds good to her, and you are getting ready to leave and you say to her, 'I'd like for you to vote for my friend, Jack Tubb.' " [laughter] But said, "I need bus fare to get up there."

Mr. Healy: I see.

Mr. Griffin: Well, sometimes I'd tell him, I'd say, "Now, I don't have any money, but you go up the street here to Hawkins at such and such a place." [laughing] And he'd, you know, we'd have practical jokes on each other like that. Back to your question about the personalities in the campaign. Mr. Tubb, I don't know whether you ever knew him or not?

Mr. Healy: No, I didn't.

Mr. Griffin: As a personality, Mr. Tubb was not a strong administrator. But his great strength was in his affinity for people. He had one of the greatest memories that I've ever known any man in my life to have for remembering names. Called people by name. And he cultivated people, he loved that. He did just what come naturally to him. He'd go out, you'd see the both of them at a political campaign or rally, Mr. Tubb would be working the crowd just like a beaver. Going through the crowd shaking hands, handing out his card, having a word for everybody.

Mr. Touchstone was a rather dignified type person. He'd stand back under a shade tree with his arms folded while somebody else handed out the cards. I don't mean that as a reflection on Mr. Touchstone, because Touchstone was a very able man. Had a lot of good qualities. But there was a difference in their personalities and in their style of campaigning. I think Mr. Touchstone had an idea but it wasn't easy for him to mix and mingle with those people out at Pelahatchie or down in Greene or George County somewhere out there in the rural areas as Mr. Tubb. I think that he thought that with the background of support he had among the school districts in the state that he could win with that.

Mr. Healy: But he didn't.

Mr. Griffin: But he didn't. It was a close campaign but he didn't.

Mr. Healy: I just wanted to ask you one more question about that campaign. You mentioned that it was especially bitter. Was this because of personal attacks?

Mr. Griffin: Well, it was personal, it did get personal some. Mr. Touchstone would accuse Mr. Tubb of lack of leadership and various and sundry charges. Then Mr. Tubb's people would come back and call him a traitor, you know. That he had accepted Mr. Tubb's appointment and then turn around and run against him, you know. And they were both [from the same area]. Mr. Tubb was a native of Monroe County. Amory, Mississippi, is in Monroe County. Mr. Touchstone was superintendent of the schools at Amory when Mr. Tubb put him in. See, Mr. Tubb became state superintendent of education via appointment. Mr. J.S. Vandiver, who had been superintendent during the latter years of World War II, resigned, I believe, in 1946, somewhere along there during his term. And Governor Tom Bailey, ex-governor Tom Bailey, appointed Mr. Tubb to fill out the unexpired term.

Mr. Healy: So this was his first campaign. Is that correct?

Mr. Griffin: No, no. He had had one other campaign prior to that, after the expiration of that term. For the moment I can't think of the name of the individual who ran against him that first time. This was his second campaign.

Mr. Healy: Okay, we can find that out and put that in later.

Mr. Griffin: This was the campaign of 1951 for the term of '52 to '56, Touchstone-Tubb campaign.

Mr. Healy: Okay, I wanted to ask you about the results of the major issue of that campaign. That is about the rural schools having enough students.

Mr. Griffin: As a result of that campaign that regulation was taken out of the accrediting commission standards. None of us ever - I didn't personally and many of my counterparts who were in the rural organization - did not object to the school district consolidation. We recognized that it had to come. But about that time the desegregation issue was beginning to emerge. We had organized in the state a citizen's council on education.

Mr. Healy: No affiliation with the other citizen's council?

Mr. Griffin: No, not with the White Citizen's Council having to do with desegregation.

The organization, I say organization, it was jointly sponsored by the MEA, the State Department, the PTA, Mississippi Farm Bureau, Mississippi Economic Council, and a number of organizations saw the necessity for trying to do something in education. Sometimes we do the right things, maybe for the wrong purpose.

It began to emerge then that integration might be in the offing.

Mr. Healy: This is before the court decision?

Mr. Griffin: Before the court decision even. But they knew it was before the court, you see. Knew the thing was before the court.

So they organized this to try to improve education, specifically to try and provide separate but equal. Thinking that if we could get separate but equal this would help stave off integration.

At any rate the citizen's council on education was formed and they made an exhaustive study, sent out questionnaires to thousands of Mississippians. They employed Dr. Johns, of the University of Florida, to work with them. They came up with a recommended program to the legislature. This must have been about 1952, early '52, somewhere along in there. While the legislature, as usual with legislatures, they don't want to take somebody else's study, you know. They want to make one of their own. They made one of their own but came up with virtually the same results that the citizen's council study had emerged with. So in 1952 as a result of this study of the legislature - and a lot of people worked on that. Some fellows from Southern and John Phay at Ole Miss. At any rate an extraordinary session of the legislature was called.

Mr. Healy: Excuse me, let me change tapes right now.

Editor's Note:At this point there was a brief interruption. The interview continues on Tape two, Side one.

Mr. Healy: This is tape number two of the oral history being recorded with Mr. W.S. Griffin.

Mr. Griffin: They called an extraordinary session of the legislature to take up these recommendations of the study the legislature had made along with the council's study. As a result we had an almost complete re-writing of the school laws of the state. All school districts in the state except the municipal separate school districts were in effect abolished. But they were allowed to remain as a legal entity for three years. During which time each county was to have a study made. The legislature appropriated money for the counties to use to have the studies made. Teams were certified and the Educational Finance Commission was set up, which we still have, to oversee and supervise this reorganization. These study teams were set up. They were college and university teams.

So the result of that, the legislature adopted the minimum foundation program of financing that we still have, with some refinements over the years, of course. County unit systems emerged from that as opposed to consolidated school districts and county school boards for entire counties. We went from twelve hundred school districts to a hundred and fifty-one.

Mr. Healy: I want to stop here and ask you a couple of questions before you go on about the black schools. Were they originally included in the consolidated districts? For example, when you were superintendent did you have control over the black schools?

Mr. Griffin: No.

Mr. Healy: They would be separate?

Mr. Griffin: Separate. See, under the consolidated district setup you had trustees in each consolidated district. Counties had, depending on the size of the county of course, would have anywhere from four to eight or ten consolidated districts in the county. Each one had a board of trustees. Each district put on a district levee to support the white schools in the consolidated district. You had a county school board, but the county school board had no authority over the consolidated district. They had authority over the transportation. In each of those consolidated districts there might be - and in the Springhill consolidated district there was a black school about two miles down the road there from Springhill. But they did not share in the Springhill school levee. The legislature had authorized at that time that they could put on a three mill county-wide levee to help support the black schools in each consolidated district. The county superintendent of education and the county school board ran those. They determined who was going to hire the teachers and the principals, and the consolidated school board and the superintendent had nothing to do with them.

I recall one morning at Springhill, I had met this black principal who was the principal of the school there in that district. I went out early every morning and turned on the heaters and got the building warm. But at any rate I was in the office and somebody knocked on the door. I went to the door, it was a little after seven o'clock probably, and it was this black principal. He asked me if I could give him a box of chalk. He said, "I don't have any, and no money to get any with." So I did. I gave him a box of chalk.

Well, there were good men on the school board, and they were good men. But they were products of their time, you know. The next school board meeting I mentioned this to them. They reacted negatively to it.

"Not any more," you know. [laughter] They let me know that they didn't necessarily approve of that, you know.

Mr. Healy: Let's go back then. So this reorganization changed that whole system.

Mr. Griffin: It changed that whole system. Up until that time the state had what they called the "per capita" fund for state monies for public education. The money was allotted to the counties based on what they called "an educable enumeration." Every two years an educable enumeration was made of all the school aged children in the state. Well, they'd divide that number of school-age children in the state into the total state appropriation and that worked out to a per capita for each educable child.

Mr. Healy: This was just for white children?

Mr. Griffin: No.

Mr. Healy: Oh, white and black.

Mr. Griffin: White and black. That worked out to, say, twenty dollars a child or something in Webster County. So the state would send twenty dollars up there. Well, 90 percent of it would be spent on the white schools. The white schools operated eight months and the black schools about four.

Mr. Healy: Now, the counties would give each consolidated district a certain amount of money?

Mr. Griffin: A certain amount of that per capita money.

When they adopted the minimum foundation program, at that time the state didn't follow-up on the money to see how it was spent, you know. The counties could take it and spend it all on the white schools and nobody ever questioned it. The county superintendent of education wouldn't dare spend very much on the black schools; he wouldn't be re-elected next time around, you know, realistically.

But with the coming of the minimum foundation program law, which went into effect in '53 -

Mr. Healy: This is the activity in legislature -

Mr. Griffin: Right, after the extraordinary session was [called], the minimum foundation program, the whole reorganization and laws were adopted, giving them so many years to get the reorganization plans in. The minimum foundation program law went into effect immediately as a method of financing, and the money was allotted to each school district based on average daily attendance in school. Had to be in school to get the money. Then money was allotted based on teacher units. That for each, at that time, each thirty pupils in average daily attendance, the state paid for a teacher. It was written in the law that every school had to get - whether it was black or white - had to get one teacher for each thirty pupils. Every attendance center, you know, it wasn't left to the discretion of the county superintendent or the county school board as to how they would use the money. The money had to follow the child. Then a local contribution was required as part of the minimum foundation program that each district had to put up based on an index of taxpaying ability. For the first time, the school finance was based on a fairly objective and scientific basis for financing public education in the state.

Mr. Healy: You mentioned the one teacher for every thirty students. What about the distribution of the textbooks and facilities and so on?

Mr. Griffin: Well, the state had free textbooks prior to that time. The state had set up the state textbook board during the Governor Paul Johnson Sr. administration. He was from Hattiesburg, as you probably know.

Mr. Healy: Yes.

Mr. Griffin: I think they first set it up for the first eight grades. Then subsequently for all grades. This was handled in a separate - and still is - a separate appropriation by the legislature outside the minimum foundation program, a program which finances the state's part of the current operating expenses of public education in the state, teachers salaries and administration and supply and equipment, teaching supplies and et cetera that the state helps the local school districts. All of it is allotted based on a formula for the school districts.

Mr. Healy: This minimum foundation program was set up in 1952 or '53.

Mr. Griffin: Yes, right, 1953.

Mr. Healy: How did it work in the next few years? I guess the court case was in '54 and '55?

Mr. Griffin: Now, let me go back a little bit while I'm on this and tell you how I came into the department.

Mr. Healy: Okay, we did skip that.

Mr. Griffin: We did skip that back there. Now when I managed Mr. Tubb's campaign they didn't promise me a job or anything.

Upon completion of the campaign in '51, that fall I went back to Springhill and taught there that full year in '51 and '52. Well, in fall of '52, I got a call from Mr. Tubb or Mr. Griffith, I don't recall which, asking me would I be interested in coming to the department as state supervisor of the school lunch program. School was already underway at Springhill in the '52-'53 session. Ultimately I went down to talk with them about it. Mr. Ben Middleton had left that position to go to the state textbook board.

But to make a long story short, I talked to the school board there at Springhill. They had a fine young man there as high school principal and they agreed to release me if I wanted to go. So I came to the department in October of '52 as state supervisor of the school lunch program.

Mr. Healy: Okay, I want to back up a little bit. Now you were involved with the lunch program at Springhill earlier. Were most of the lunch programs set up like that community's was?

Mr. Griffin: Well, I'd say that probably the majority of them followed on that general pattern. But the schools, yes, they got their inception as part of the WPA background there. Schools improvised all kinds of rooms in order to set it up. They'd go and find a room underneath the gymnasium bleachers or somewhere down in there, you know. [laughter] They'd set up a lunchroom, you know, and get it started.

Just to skip around here, one thing makes me think of another. Going back to this extraordinary session in '52, when they set up the reorganization they set up the EFC to supervise the reorganization.

Mr. Healy: What's the EFC?

Mr. Griffin: Educational Finance Commission to supervise the reorganization. The legislature also adopted, for the first time, allotting state money for school house construction. Allotted so much, about ten or twelve dollars per child, I think, initially there. Then school districts could borrow what they could borrow from the state. The state would sell bonds on this program. The school districts could borrow against their entitlement for the next twenty years and use that for school house construction. But first they had to get the reorganization plans completed and all that before they qualify for this building money.

Out of that building money that was made available through the Educational Finance Commission in subsequent years, for about the next ten years there, had a tremendous school house construction program over this state. During my tenure there of six years as state supervisor of the school lunch program, '52 to '58, these cafeterias that had been underneath the bleachers in the gymnasium, or whatever empty space they could find to get one, began to build these fine, modern cafeterias that you find in the schools over the state.

Mr. Healy: How long had the state Department of Education had control of the lunch program?

Mr. Griffin: I came in '52. I can't be precise on these dates, but I believe it was about 1947. I believe that's right, '47 or '48, and I believe it was '47. Up till that time, the school feeding program had strictly been a USDA, U.S. Department of Agriculture and Welfare program. Operated by and financed all together by those two federal agencies. School people had minimum input into it, except as parents gave of their time to get one started and this type of thing. But in 1947, Congress enacted legislation placing the school lunch operation in state departments of education. The legislature was not in session at that time to accept the program. I think Fielding Wright must have been governor; I'm not sure. I think he polled the members of the legislature as the story goes and got them to agree to accept. In the next session they adopted a brief enabling legislation. It's still on the books. It's about a two-paragraph statute the legislature adopted authorizing the state Department of Education to administer the school lunch program to avail themselves of all the federal benefits thereto, authorizing the superintendent of education to appoint a state supervisor for the school lunch program and such other staff as necessary to administer the program. This was in 1947.

Mr. Healy: Could you describe your duties and responsibilities as the head of the school lunch program? All the difficulties and problems that you faced?

Mr. Griffin: Well, you had a lot of difficulties and problems in those days with school lunch programs, the difficulty and problems growing primarily out of the nature of its origin as a welfare program. It was difficult to get the professional people in the state, school superintendents and principals, to accept it as part of their professional responsibility.

Mr. Healy: Was it mandatory for a school to have lunch?

Mr. Griffin: No, it was not mandatory. That was discretionary with the schools, as to whether or not to have it. As a practical matter all of them did. Because the parents pretty much demanded it when it became available. The duties of the state supervisor and his staff, we were allotted federal funds to the state Department of Education. At that time the federal money was somewhere in the neighborhood of three million dollars a year. We had to administer the disbursement of those funds to all the school lunch programs all over the state. It was on a per meal basis. At that time we reimbursed the school districts around eight cents a meal for each type, what we called Type-A lunch that they served to school children. We had to see to it that the meal requirements were met. We had five, and at the time I came in we had four, area supervisors in the state that called on all the schools in the state. They looked over the menus and lunches and tried to see to it that the lunches met the required meal pattern. They did administrative reviews of all the lunch programs and turned them in to me.

transcript continued on page 2

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*USED WITH PERMISSION BY

Stephen Sloan, PhD
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The University of Southern Mississippi
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Hattiesburg, MS 39406