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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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You've got to do it on the level of facts, not of glittering, dramatic situations.

Interviewer:

of course, this must be said--that a Civil War was fought almost a hundred years ago.

Perkins:

But not for this purpose. No, it wasn't.

Interviewer:

Take away one thing--the color question--and do you think we would have had a Civil War?

Perkins:

No--but the Civil War was fought to abolish slavery, not to abolish segregation. Abraham Lincoln certainly expected segregation. He asked people to set up some schools for them, you know. It never occurred to anybody.

Oliver O. Howard, you know, undertook to raise a school out here, because Lincoln and he talked it over and thought it was one of the things that was needed. There had been a couple of Negroes who had gone to Harvard College and done very well. One of them was Roscoe Conklin, wasn't that his name? No, what was that man's name? Roscoe Conklin befriended him.

So, it was a kind of proof that some Negroes, an occasional Negro, could take education. Wouldn't it be fine to have a school where they could go? So General Howard just thought of one, you know, and so he started one.





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