W.W. Law oral history interview, November 15, 1990

Interviewed by Cliff Kuhn and Tim Crimmins. Among topics discussed: Early childhood memories of family and church; early twentieth century Savannah; segregated schools in Savannah; Dr. Ralph Mark Gilbert and the revival of the NAACP in Georgia; the establishment of a Georgia Federation of NAACP Branches; Gilbert, Primus King and Dr. Brewer's fight to end the white primary; YMCA; Gilbert and voter registration drives; John McGlockton; Ella Baker in Savannah; NAACP youth organization; voter registration "schools"; Johnny Bouhan and the Savannah political machine; John Kennedy and the birth of city management; desegregation of the police force; segregated lines for the "Freedom Train" (1948); Savannah's progressive race relations; Jackie Robinson; NAACP and the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers union; Gilbert and A.T. Walden, John Wesley Dobbs, and C.L. Harper; Georgia's attacks on the NAACP in the 1940s; NAACP youth organization and its concentration on black history and philosophy; John Clifford Hardwick III; Walter J. Leonard; learning to speak in public; World War II service; lobbying for youth causes; historical preservation; Mills B. Lane IV; early NAACP leaders; Dr. William Madison Boyd; D.U. Pullum and "Terrible" Terrell County; John Wesley Dobbs; Reverend Shropshire; NAACP and Martin Luther King Jr.; Churches and the NAACP; lunch counter sit‑ins (1960); mass meetings; Hosea Williams and voter registration; Rev. Oliver Wendell Holmes; grass roots movement. Mass meetings and the boycott of white stores; the Ku Klux Klan; Law fired from the U.S. Postal Service; Elliot Hagen; being named to the NAACP national board; Brown v. Board of Education; desegregation of Savannah's schools; Donald Hollowell; desegregation; reinstatement to the Postal Service; historic preservation of Savannah's black neighborhoods; voter registration campaign of 1946; Bouhan machine; Kelly Bryant; voting in Savannah; election day slow downs; the Mingledorf election; Judge Emmanuel Lewis; T.J. Hopkins; Colored Citizens Committee of Chatham County; political payoffs; desegregation of public facilities; redistricting Savannah; NAACP voter recommendations; block voting; mass meetings; Reverend Gilbert's early fights for equality; speaking styles of A.T. Walden, Dr. Benjamin Mays, Reverend Gilbert, and John Wesley Dobbs; Adam Clayton Powell and Gilbert; Frank W. Spencer and efforts to train black river boat pilots; black Savannah history.