Use audiocassette

Lowell Howard Bennett recalls the influence of former principal Benjamin F. Cox, his teaching philosophy, fundraising efforts, as well as discrepancies with the American Missionary Association, especially conflicts with Fred Brownlee and Ruth Morton. He also mentions debates over Avery becoming a public school, in particular the argument that as long as the Black elite had the Avery Institute to send their children to, they were reluctant to put pressure on the City of Charleston to improve the public school system. Bennett then refers in great detail to the beginning of his involvement with social activism during World War II, especially the War Bond Drives as well as his trip to the 1944 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which ultimately led to the ending of all-white primaries in South Carolina. Further, Bennett mentions efforts to open up employment at Charleston’s Naval Shipyard for Black workers, which was accompanied by several racist incidents. Bennett continues by recounting his involvement with the United Service Organization (U.S.O.), which caused his resignation from Avery in 1944. As racial tensions were escalating, he soon became involved with the American Council on Race Relations before returning to the University of Chicago Law School in 1947. After being unable to find employment at any of the white law firms in Chicago upon graduating in 1950, Bennett went to Minneapolis to become a partner at Hall, Smith, and Merlin. In 1956, Governor Orville Freeman appointed Bennett as the first African American judge in the entire Northwestern United States to a municipal court. In 1963, he was the first African American elected to the Minneapolis School Board. The interview concludes with Bennett recalling conducting Hubert Humphrey’s first presidential campaign in 1960 before serving in the Department of Defense under President John F. Kennedy to solve issues of racial conflicts in the armed forces.

The oral history is conducted by Dr. Edmund Lee Drago and Eugene Hunt.