Oral History Interview With William W Clary

Interview with Alla Clary, former secretary to Representative Sam Rayburn. Clary shares her personal recollections and experiences from her many years of service in the office of Congressman Rayburn in Washington D.C.

As a young man, Malcolm Douglass talked with his father Aubrey about the difficult formative years of "Claremont Colleges," Phoenix in Academe grew out of those intimate conversations with his father and others, like William Clary, Jerry Voorhis, E. Wilson Lyon, Robert Bernard, his mother Evelyn Douglass, and of course the author of the "Claremont Plan," James A. Blaisdell, who had inspired so many. Why did Blaisdell's Plan fail? Why did Aubrey Douglass abandon Claremont? And how did the Claremont Graduate School (now University) emerge from its ashes. This is a personal history in the best sense, founded upon a forty-year commitment to the Graduate University and upon years of work in the Claremont archives. Phoenix in Academe is an elegy for and a celebration of the dream that almost was—and the vision that took its place.

Longtime civil rights advocate Reverend William W. Finlator speaks powerfully about decades of activism and the future of rights in America. Finlator's activism was wide-ranging: he marched for integration in the 1950s and 1960s, joined vigils protesting capital punishment in North Carolina, and advocated for the rights of migrant workers. During a life of activism, he developed strong opinions about capital punishment, racism, the neglect of the poor, and what he saw as the pernicious influence of religion over politics. His most passionate language, however, is devoted to the defense of working people.

Interview covers early life, school experiences, and interviewee's career as a professor of law at Stanford University, the University of Minnesota and as a member of the Sixty-five Club at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.