Kenneth G. Neigh interviewed by Susan Miller, 1989-1990, tape 2, side 1.

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    This is Susan Miller interviewing Kenneth Neigh on December eighteenth of
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    January eighteenth. This is part two of the interview begun
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    December sixth. If this is in his home in Princeton Junction.
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    Last time we left off
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    basically, we were in the early fifties and talking a little bit
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    about Cuba. Before I turned on
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    the tape recorder, you were saying that La Progressiva
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    was a very important school. Was that
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    before then Castro took power?
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    Well, La Progressiva had been there for a long time
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    one of the things that the church did
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    when it established churches in Cuba was
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    to have both school and
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    a medical center as adjuncts to the church.
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    So that the educational program was an
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    important part of the mission
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    program and
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    La Progressiva was established for these youngsters
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    to have formal education, after they had
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    their rudimentary part
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    in the church adjunct.
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    And, I haven't any idea of the top of my
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    mind when La Progressiva was established. But it was a long, long time before me.
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    and
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    I don't know
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    when Castro came to came back to Cuba
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    and went to the Sierra Madre Mountains
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    quite a number of the students at La
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    Progressiva went to the Sierra Madres and
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    became a part of the July twenty sixth movement, which
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    was Castro, you know.
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    Were they? Did the school close down at that point or?
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    No. The school. This is the
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    kind of a sidelight. The
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    school of
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    was nationalized by Castro when he nationalized all the
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    education system shortly after.
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    One of the highlights or one of the lowlights, depending on your
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    point of view. Castro
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    offered to pay us seventy five thousand dollars
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    for La Progressiva. and
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    We turned it down in a somewhat dramatic fashion,
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    saying that we had built schools for the people of Cuba. And, we
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    wouldn't take any money for them. As I say, it depends
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    upon your point of view whether that was a good or a bad thing. and
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    It's one of the things that the conservatives followed me into retirement with.
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    Three or four years ago, the
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    Alliance of Reformed Churches.
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    One of its committees met in Havana
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    had a big meeting of all denominations and so forth.
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    Raoul Fernandez, who had been the head of the
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    literacy program and, at the time, minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Havana,
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    in a speech told the story that I just told you about our refusing. And
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    I guess there was some kind of tumultuous
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    applause and stuff like that.
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    So.
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    So, the school does still exist then? It's still there but it's
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    not under Presbyterian Church. When it was nationalized
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    in the early sixties.
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    Did you travel back and forth to Cuba during
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    the nationalization of the school?
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    Yeah.
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    I was I was in Cuba at the time that Castro
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    nationalized the oil industry.
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    At the
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    time he introduced his program
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    Now, that was a curious
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    thing of. Castro's program at that
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    time was much less centralized and programmed
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    than MacArthur [General Douglas MacArthur] interested, introduced in Japan. It was
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    much, much more liberal at that time.
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    I was. I was able to. Now, very few people
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    knew that I could understand Spanish, so I could. I heard a lot.
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    than I would have otherwise. And, I could read these documents, you see, in Spanish.
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    Did you deal with Castro
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    one on one at all? Did you ever meet him? Yeah. I met him, but I
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    never did. The gal behind the throne, and I've forgotten her name,
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    she's still there. And, she
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    was a Presbyterian to and one of the important figures was
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    a gal from Flint,
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    Michigan, Lois Kroehler, [Kroehler, Lois C.] who was. Oh,
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    she went down there to head the Christian Education
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    work in those churches which I just described.
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    And, Lois is still down there. We both
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    came back from Cuba one time. This was the
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    I don't know.
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    Sixty, something like that. And, of course, as you know, I was from
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    Detroit, and Lois was from Flint.
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    And, there was a great
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    I was going to say big article, but it was sizable in The
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    Detroit Free Press. And, the heading was
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    "They like Castro." And, oh, it raised an awful duststorm
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    out in the midwest.
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    We lost some important can
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    contributors to the Presbyterian Church. So it was "they," meaning Presbyterians, is
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    that what you are saying?
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    As I said before I was on the airplane when
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    Castro's sister defected.
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    I think one of the reasons that I was able to go back and forth
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    was because the
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    Secretary of State at that time was
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    from Scarsdale.
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    And, he and he and his wife were the
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    co-chairmen of the Program Committee of our
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    P.T.A. So, I had a leg up on the stuff.
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    Right.
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    I know that Cuba used to be a vacation land for
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    Americans. Then that got turned around drastically.
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    Did that affect anyone that you know?
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    When Americans were basically kicked out of the country?
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    Well, Yes yes and no. You see one of, one of
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    the first things that Castro did was shut down the casinos. And,
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    Americans. It was a vacation because of the
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    gambling and that kind of thing. The
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    proximity. As a matter of fact, George Raft, the old
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    movie actor, ran the casino in the Hilton hotel down there at the time.
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    And, as I say, one of the reasons it
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    turned around drastically. And, this was before
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    much of the hostility started. It was because of the
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    new moral climate that Castro brought,
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    brought to the country when he took over.
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    He
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    Are you interested in a funny story? Yes definitely. I think this was funny.
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    Tom Andrews
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    was a bit of
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    Spanish word. Don Harris. [Harris, William Donald] Someone should write a book
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    about him. His father [Harris, John Will]
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    was
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    the man who founded the InterAmerican University
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    in San German, Puerto Rico.
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    but he was it was it was and still is a wild. One time
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    and we always took things with
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    us.
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    Medicine and this particular time,
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    we had some tires for the
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    car of the
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    Francisco Garcia, who was the
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    executive for the Presbytery of Cuba.
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    And, we came into the airport with
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    all this stuff. And, they had a
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    member of the G two, who was
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    a Presbyterian, oversee us through customs and all that stuff. And, Don
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    said to him, I have a new camera. Can I take pictures? He said, "Well, of
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    course, you can take pictures. This is a democracy. Well, we got
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    everything through but the tires. And, I don't remember
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    how long we were there. And, they changed the
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    rules in terms of landing permits in Mexico
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    so we had, flew around a long time and
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    Don got acquainted with the wife of the Mexican ambassador. And,
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    we got our land, landing permits. And, that day before we
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    left was a. They called us from the airport
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    saying that they were going to release the tires. so
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    Francisco [Garcia, Francisco] and Raoul
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    Fernandez came and picked Don and me up and we go out to the airport to
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    pick up the tires. On the way back,
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    right next to this sports palace, where Castro makes all of his
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    big speeches, you know, there is this big parking lot
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    and that time it was filled with Skoda automobiles. Czechoslovakian automobiles.
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    And Don says. slow down
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    while he took some pictures. And, he shown out of the window taken pictures of these Skoda
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    automobiles. And, we got a siren. And, it was the G-2
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    in back of us. And they, of course, will
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    were radioing into G-2 headquarters.
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    And Don, in Spanish, was asking them
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    why they were stopping us, and so forth.
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    And they said, you can't take pictures.
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    And, Don said, who says I can't take pictures? And, they went through this
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    thing that we've gone to the airport. And, finally, he said, "Well, can I
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    take pictures of the clouds and he adjusted his camrea upward. This didn't
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    help with public relations wise much, but anyway
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    they had called G two
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    headquarters,
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    took us back into the new headquarters,
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    which was an old Roman Catholic monastery.
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    And at the same time, that week, there
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    was a new head of G two, a very attractive
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    young guy. They had picked up
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    seven alleged CIA spies and were shooting one a day out in this
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    monastery. Really isn't funny, except the story was. So
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    we went out to. They took us out to this old monastery.
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    All of a sudden. People came out of the walls.
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    the young guy, who was the director, came out. and
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    he said, "Well, what's going on?"
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    Don said, "I want to know who says we can't take pictures?"
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    I don't know how long we were there.
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    Maybe I died a thousand times.
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    The guy all of a sudden broke out laughing. He said, "Of course, you can take pictures."
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    And. Don said, "Ok. Line up."
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    This in the place, and again
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    and then the G two men started laughing,
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    and he gathered people around. And, Don took pictures of them inside the G-2 headquarters.
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    And, then Don said,
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    Now, you're going about this all wrong.
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    He said this is a building that is been consecrated to God and
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    you're shooting a person every day. Well
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    it was tense for a while. Then he
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    started to laugh again.
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    He said, "OK you can go." and Harris said, "No. You
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    brought us in. You take us back out."
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    The guy. Courage. Well,
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    I didn't!
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    The upshot of the whole thing was that the people who had brought us in
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    had to guide us back out, back in the old city.
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    Francisco and Raoul, had. Well, they hadn't
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    They were not familiar with the area at all. So, we needed somebody to get us back out.
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    Just out of curiosity, why wouldn't they let tires through?
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    Well, They needed them themselves.
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    This was. This was an Oldsmobile.
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    There were a lot of General Motors cars, so that
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    they were without tires.
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    We used to send tires through Canada
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    down there. But they
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    just weren't allowed from the United States? Is that what you are saying?
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    No. We thought. I don't know why they were released.
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    But, they were
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    valuable to the government. They were going to keep them.
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    I think that there was some pressure came from
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    somewhere. I don't know where it would be, but
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    So when was the last time that you were in Cuba? Last trip?
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    Did you go
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    frequently when you were with the Board of National Missions?
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    Well, it had to do with the
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    what was critical at the time.
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    Don was there much more often than I was
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    Um
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    We talked about a little bit last time, but the
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    child development group in Mississippi was started in fifty-
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    nine.
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    And then, it was attacked
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    in sixty-six. I read a little bit
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    more about this since the last time
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    I saw you. When it was
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    started, it was attached to, through
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    the college, Mary. Mary Holmes Junior College?
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    Uh
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    Or does that come later? That came later. It was a
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    We were involved
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    In C.D.G.M
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    but, it was after the funding
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    became difficult.
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    We discovered in the
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    oh
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    O.E. O. [Office of Economic Opportunity] papers. And, the curious thing is that
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    some of our people helped write that that program.
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    and
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    part of the Chicago connection.
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    But anyway we discovered
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    and didn't. And, this wasn't consciously written in, I don't think.
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    Discovered that, if the funding for Head
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    Start program went to an educational institution,
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    the
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    local politicians would have no control over it.
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    This was the source of the, of the conflict,
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    because the local politicians, were well aware
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    that to get this program, which was in almost
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    all counties in Mississippi. If
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    it succeeded, it would change the
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    nature of politics in Mississippi, which indeed it did.
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    And, so that the. One of the curious things is that
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    Senator Stennis [John Stennis] and Senator Eastland [James Oliver Eastland], who were the ones from Mississippi
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    were both
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    Presbyterians. Oh, yeah.
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    So that that
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    made it all the more difficult. I don't know how much of this you want to get into.
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    I think it's very interesting, very important, because to me from what
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    I saw and what I read, this really tied the Presbyterian
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    Church into the racial issues that were going on during that time.
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    And, I even saw a full length
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    page ad in The New York Times. That was come out
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    against Sargent Shriver. I have the boiler plate
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    hanging on my wall. Oh! Do you? So it really I think it brought
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    You know, I may be mistaken. And, I didn't live through that time, but it seemed to me that that really
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    brought brought the Presbyterian Church. It was one of the things to bring us to the forefront of the
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    racial issues.
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    Or got us into the conflict. Well, we
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    were in
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    long before that.
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    On a national level?
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    Chronologically, as you
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    and Jim probably talked
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    about.
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    I remember those things in terms of
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    episodes instead of chronological order. Well, that is different
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    so that no
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    you are. you're right in
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    in one respect,
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    It it became an issue
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    about which our great Northern liberal church
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    could involve itself and especially the people
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    in the pews. It was a fine thing
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    because Mississippi was.
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    It was dramatic.
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    It was separated from us up here in, by convenient distance,
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    and engaged in by someone else. And, it was when
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    it moved north. It was when that kind of thing came north that the
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    Presbyterian Church got intp trouble, when it came next door.
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    As I said earlier, Sargent Shriver was a part of the Chicago connection.
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    He had been on the Board of Education out there. And, a
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    lot of our people, including Dave Ramage [Ramage, David, Jr.], who is now President of McCormick Seminary.
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    And Dick Boom, who for a
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    time was a real moving spirit in O.E.O.
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    was also from Chicago, and a whole bunch of our people like
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    that. And, that boilerplate.
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    This is. this is another funny story, I think it funny anyhow.
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    But if you read that thing, it.The
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    Headline that he has to "Say it isn't so, Sargent Shriver."
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    Well. They were. Sarge was brought up in
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    in Chicago. One of
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    the great dramatic stories, took
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    people who are in sports
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    was the Black Sox scandal, in the late. I guess
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    it was, in nineteen nineteen, twenty
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    in the World Series. One of the heroes was a guy by the name of Shoeless
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    Joe Jackson and so.
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    After he was convicted, he
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    came out in handcuffs, and some little kid said to him,
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    "Say it isn't so, Joe."
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    And this. When Sarge saw this,
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    he blew his stack. And, it really
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    happen that that we were having a board meeting that day.
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    and I was going back and forth to Washington, arguing about this
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    And Bob Barrie, who was the head of our Education Division,
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    and Dick Powell [Powell, Richard R.] , who was a
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    senior partner in
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    Sullivan and Cromwell, one of the bluestocking
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    law firms in New York trailed this one down. And, Sarge was was
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    pacing. Oh and he was furious
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    He said to me,
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    "Why doesn't a damn Presbyterian Church take
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    over the whole Head Start program?"
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    and we got him calmed down. But that was
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    was really the thing that licked him.
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    He did. That newspaper article. Did you know him before that?
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    No. The first time together?
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    And. Funny
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    thing about that. Funny thing about that.
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    is the.
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    people that devised that ad were from
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    Bobby Kennedy's public relations firm.
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    Really?
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    Did you get a lot of response from that ad then? Did a lot of people read it?
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    Obviously Sargent Shriver did, but? Yeah. Well, we had him on the
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    run.
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    From the church at large. Did they respond to
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    that ad?
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    Negatively, or did it work to your favor? I don't know
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    whether it worked to our favor in the church or not, because the church was,
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    at that point, pretty well committed to it.
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    Thirdly
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    it certainly had its effect in Washington. As I
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    say, we had them on the run then.
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    Well, there were a lot of factors. The
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    hearings, where we tried to prove
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    incompetent
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    use of funds and things like that. They couldn't do that.
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    Another of thing. Did you ever hear of Marian Wright Edelman [Edelman, Marian Wright] ?
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    She's the head of the Children's Defense Fund. You will now that you
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    remember the name. Marian Wright.
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    She graduated summa cum laude from, I
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    think, Harvard Law School. Smart as all get out. She's the one who
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    did the research that, that defeated Carswell [Carswell, G. Harrold] for the Supreme
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    Court. And she had been around Washington. And, any way
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    Marian and I,
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    I think, were the ones to do the heavy work
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    about it.
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    uh
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    Finally
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    the
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    Johnson [President Lyndon B. Johnson] discovered that it was not politically a desirable thing to
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    do. To, You see he. Stennis [Senator John Stennis] and Eastland had
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    gone to him. And, Stennis was head of the
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    Manpower Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee. And, he
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    simply said to Johnson, "Look, you put an end to this or you aren't going to get any people for Vietnam.
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    That's a big stick.
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    I also think that the fact that Vietnam
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    becoming less and less popular
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    may have had something to do with it, too.
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    And, there were times when Shriver [Shriver, Sargent] wouldn't talk to me.
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    And, there were times when I wouldn't talk to Shriver. I remember
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    one time. This is one I wouldn't talk to him.
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    Called the house.
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    And
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    Jane [Neigh, Jane Baldwin] didn't fear God or man, believe me.
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    He said, this is the White House
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    calling. And, you know that most anyone when the White House
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    is calling, you drop your teeth. Jane said,
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    "No. He isn't here." And, he
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    said, " Well, can we call back?" And, she said, "Yeah, but don't
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    call during the Dean Martin Show."
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    That's great! That's a good story.
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    So
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    that was resolved in sixty-six? They eventually did give,
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    the O.E.O. did give money to the Head Start program, but it. It was a
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    lot less than they used to or they had given in the past?
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    Well. Well, it varied. The
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    One of the, one of the deals that
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    resolved, resolved it was
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    Mary Holmes [Mary Holmes Junior College] taking over
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    the administration.
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    So to speak of
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    that Head Start. Head Start program. So it was. To say that any
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    one thing was
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    not accurate, although
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    I'd like to think that the Presbyterian Church did it. Yeah.
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    And, did spearhead the thing. Well,
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    jumping around a little bit chronologically, but
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    in sixty-three was when Kennedy [President John F. Kennedy] came out with his
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    comprehensive new Civil Rights and the March on Washington.
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    and
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    At that time the N.C.C. formed their
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    Committee on Church and Religion.
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    Church and Race. Church and Race.
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    And, at the same time.
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    Am
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    I right on this, was that when the
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    Presbyterian Church had their Commission on Church and Race. Ours was first.
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    Okay, it was first. It was first. By how much time? Well.
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    We had one on the Board of National Missions three or four years before.
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    Three or four years. Yeah.
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    And the
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    However, our Church and Race denominational one
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    again I'm. I think, and that was
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    it happened at the General Assembly in
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    the
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    in
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    Des Moines [1963]
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    I wonder what will happen to this.
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    There's a very interesting
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    story about that too. Before the Committee on Church and Race
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    The prototype for the denomination.
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    Well, we stopped the Stated Clerk. Anyway
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    Ken Clark [Clark, Kenneth B.], the head of the
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    New York Mission Society, were in contact
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    with these black intellectuals.
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    They got, they had a bunch of us together in
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    a YMCA in Harlem one night. And, oh,
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    Andy Young [Young, Andrew] was there and
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    Martin wasn't it, his attorney was there.
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    Clark, Jim Baldwin [Baldwin, James]. Everybody came along.
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    The Episcopal. the Black Irvin was one of the hostages
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    Much I guess.
Details
Title

Kenneth G. Neigh interviewed by Susan Miller, 1989-1990, tape 2, side 1.

Description

Kenneth Neigh, general secretary of the UPCUSA Board of National Missions, interviewed by Susan Miller of PHS.

Creator

Neigh, Kenneth Glenn, 1908-1996. (interviewee)
Miller, Susan, 1963- (interviewer)

Date

1989
December 7, 1989-January 18, 1990

Type of resource

sound recording-nonmusical

Genre

interviews
oral histories
sound recordings

Form

audiocassettes

Extent

3 audiocassettes : analog, 1 7/8 ips

Language

English

Subject names

Neigh, Kenneth Glenn, 1908-1996.

Geographic subjects

Princeton Junction (N.J.)
North and Central America--United States--New Jersey--Mercer--Princeton

Rights status

IN COPYRIGHT; http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Note

Side 1 of tape 2. There are 3 audio cassettes. Side 2 of tape 3 is blank.

Physical location

CASSETTE 557; Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA

Related item

[Interview with] Kenneth Neigh [sound recording] / [conducted by] Susan Miller.--https://catalog.history.pcusa.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumb...

Identifier (local)

cassette557_neigh_tape2_side1

PID (Persistent Identifier)

islandora:116427

Bookmark

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