Oral histories
Dr. Rodgers told his story on tape twice. In April 1995, a Jacksonville State University student interviewed him about the civil rights movement in Anniston. In April 2002 he sat for a longer conversation about his childhood, his parents, World War II and the NAACP. Both recordings are shared here in full, with credit to the libraries that preserve them and links to the originals.
Press play, or select any line of a transcript to hear it from that point. The current line is highlighted as the recording plays. Use Link beside a line to copy a link to that moment.
About the transcripts. Machine-transcribed with Parakeet and lightly cleaned up; not yet fully checked against the audio. The recording is authoritative. Timings come from the speech recognizer and may be off by a second or two. Where memory and the record differ, his words are kept as spoken; see His Lifeand the Timeline for what other sources show.
A few moments to start with. Each link cues the recording to the moment he says it.
Looking back
“But they're all pleasant, and I would gladly do them all over again.”
Listen: 1995, Tape 4 of 4, at 11:04
Jacksonville State University, Houston Cole Library. Alabama Oral History No. 93. Original
Dentistry
“…once a dentist, always a dentist. I came back from World War Two and opened a dental office here in Anniston, Alabama, in nineteen forty-seven or forty-eight, one or the other. And I've been here since.”
Listen: 1995, Tape 1 of 4, at 10:41
Jacksonville State University, Houston Cole Library. Alabama Oral History No. 93. Original
Sacrifice
“But you can't run — you got to sit there and offer your body as a sacrifice if you wanna achieve your goals.”
Listen: 1995, Tape 2 of 4, at 10:16
Jacksonville State University, Houston Cole Library. Alabama Oral History No. 93. Original
Persistence
“And you don't get discouraged if you see behavior which is not productive of achieving our goals. Get up the next morning and try again.”
Listen: 1995, Tape 3 of 4, at 2:17
Jacksonville State University, Houston Cole Library. Alabama Oral History No. 93. Original
Childhood
“…he supported the NAACP, and I learned how to read with the NAACP mail coming to our house.”
Listen: 2002, Side A, at 20:18
Public Library of Anniston-Calhoun County. Dr. Gordon A. Rodgers Jr. on Blacks in Anniston. Original
The NAACP
“So they got on to me, and I said, ‘Hell, yeah, I'll be the president.’”
Listen: 2002, Side B, at 13:10
Public Library of Anniston-Calhoun County. Dr. Gordon A. Rodgers Jr. on Blacks in Anniston. Original
1995 interview
Recorded when he was 79, for a Jacksonville State University oral history project on the civil rights movement led by Dr. Suzanne Marshall. Over four short tapes, Shaun Simmons asks about his schooling, his family, leading the Anniston and state NAACP, voter registration, and what he thought was still left to do.
Interview by Shaun Simmons for Dr. Suzanne Marshall’s oral history project, April 12, 1995. Courtesy of Jacksonville State University, Houston Cole Library. View the original in the Jacksonville State University, Houston Cole Library collection.
16 min
Schooling in Anniston, his parents, his older sister and his younger brother’s public-health work in Kansas City; coming home from World War II to open a dental office; Anniston under Jim Crow and his call for fair law enforcement.
Jacksonville State University, Houston Cole Library. Alabama Oral History No. 93, April 12, 1995. Original recording.
15 min
Running for office; leading the Anniston NAACP from the late 1940s and later the state conference; why he joined the movement; the mass meetings; the dangers his family faced.
Jacksonville State University, Houston Cole Library. Alabama Oral History No. 93, April 12, 1995. Original recording.
17 min
What the movement asked of people; the first statewide voter-registration drive; measuring progress like a batting average; Dr. King’s visit to Anniston; segregation downtown; trips to the Montgomery bus boycott.
Jacksonville State University, Houston Cole Library. Alabama Oral History No. 93, April 12, 1995. Original recording.
13 min
Why he stayed in the South; the Brown decision; how far things had come; NAACP awards; his closing words, and a newspaper story about his daughter in Columbus, Georgia.
Jacksonville State University, Houston Cole Library. Alabama Oral History No. 93, April 12, 1995. Original recording.
2002 interview
Recorded when he was 86 and preserved in the Frederick Burger Research Collection. This is a longer, looser conversation about his birth and parents, learning to read from NAACP mail addressed to his father’s house, his Army service as a dentist with the 92nd Infantry Division, and the NAACP years.
Interview recorded April 17, 2002, Frederick Burger Research Collection. Courtesy of the Public Library of Anniston-Calhoun County Digital Collections. View the original in the Public Library of Anniston-Calhoun County collection.
The 2002 transcript was smoothed more than the 1995 one: false starts are trimmed and some short prompts from the interviewer are folded into his answers, so the text follows the recording less closely. Dr. Rodgers’s dates are kept as he said them, even where they conflict with other sources.
47 min
His birth in 1915 on Anniston’s west side; his parents and grandfather; early schooling; learning to read from NAACP mail sent to his father’s house; his brother and nephew in medicine; entering World War II.
Public Library of Anniston-Calhoun County. Dr. Gordon A. Rodgers Jr. on Blacks in Anniston, April 17, 2002. Original recording.
44 min
Army service in Texas, Italy and France; Anniston’s “caste society”; his father’s New Era Pharmacy; the NAACP leaders before him; a 1956 newspaper story read aloud; the state’s ban on the NAACP; voter registration; running for city council.
Public Library of Anniston-Calhoun County. Dr. Gordon A. Rodgers Jr. on Blacks in Anniston, April 17, 2002. Original recording.