Cecil A. Partee Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Q: How did you get back and forth?
A: I took public transportation.
Q: You did.
A: Yes. I made arrangements for dinner. There were a couple of young ladies,
one of whom I knew who had gone to my school who had met another young lady
here at the University of Chicago. They were both working on their masters,
and they shared an apartment, a very small efficiency. I made arrangements
with them to help supply the food and I had dinner with them each evening. So
I had a good meal every day, the dinner meal, in an atmosphere with young
people who were in the same kind of boat I was, going to school. So then, I
met their friends and so I got a chance to meet nice people, people who were
progressive and people who were doing things.
Q: Were there other people from the school that came up to the law school
here that you knew?
A: Yes, there was a fellow here from West Virginia who's now a lawyer for the
government and there was a fellow in my class from Washington, D. C., who
had been a real estate man out in Washington. He came here. He started when
he was thirty-nine years old. There were very few blacks in my class, I
think there were maybe three or four. And then, the next year, there was one
or two, you know, so I met those fellows. One of the fellows that I knew
during that era was a fellow named Hooks who went to De Paul law school. He's
from Tennessee and he went to De Paul law school and he's now the national
president of the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People].
Q: oh? Yes. (pause) When did you join the NAACP?
A: Oh, I suppose after I got out of law school, I took a membership.
Q: So you weren't active while you were in the university?
A: No.
Q: 1 noticed also that you belong to the Chicago Urban League. Were you
active at that time?
A; Yes, I always have kept a membership in the Chicago Urban League, yes.
Q: When did you get started with that?
A: Oh, probably after I got out of school sometime or the other.
Q: Yes. You mentioned the one professor, Leon Green. Do you recall any of
the others that were of particular significance?
A: At the law school?