The HistoryMakers® Video Oral History Interview with Andrew Brimmer



Overview of the Item

Repository: The HistoryMakers
1900 S. Michigan Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60616
(312) 674-1900
info@thehistorymakers.com
http://www.thehistorymakers.com
Interviewer: Larry Crowe
Videographer: Scott Stearns
Title:Video Oral History Interview with Andrew Brimmer
Dates:April 24, 2003
Abstract: (ABSTRACT)
Quantity: 8 Betacam SP videocassettes, 1 half-Hollinger box containing (NUMBER) folders of accompanying materials.
Identification: A2003.090
Language: The interviews and records are in English

Biographical Note

Noted economist, academic and business leader Andrew F. Brimmer was born in Newellton, Louisiana, on September 13, 1926. The son of sharecroppers who had been driven off of the land by boll weevils, Brimmer attended local, racially segregated elementary and high schools. Upon graduation, he moved to Bremerton, Washington, with an older sister and worked as in a navy yard as an electrician's helper. In 1945, Brimmer was drafted into the Army, and served until November 1946. After completing his military service, Brimmer enrolled in the University of Washington, earning a B.A. in economics in 1950. In 1951, after receiving an M.A., he won a Fulbright grant to study in India. In 1952, he enrolled in Harvard, earning a Ph.D. in 1957.

While working on his doctorate, Brimmer went to work for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as an economist. During that same time, he traveled to Khartoum, Sudan, to help the country establish a central bank. During the John F. Kennedy administration, Brimmer became assistant secretary of economic affairs in the U.S. Department of Commerce, and served until 1966. That same year he began an eight-and-a-half year term on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. While there, he became the first African American governor of the Federal Reserve. In 1974, he left to take a post at Harvard University, where he stayed for two years. When he left, he formed his own consulting company, Brimmer & Co. In 1997, he returned to the governorship of the Federal Reserve, and in 1999 became vice chairman.

Brimmer was elected to the Washington Academy of Sciences in 1991, largely as a result of his published works on the nature and importance of central banking systems. He has served as vice president of the American Economic Association and president of the Eastern Economics Association. Currently, he is president of the North American Economics and Finance Association and serves on a number of other corporate boards of directors.

Selected Bibliography

Brimmer, Andrew. International Banking and Domestic Economic Policies: Perspectives in Debt and Development. University of California Press: 1986.

----------. Economic Costs of Discrimination Against Black Americans. Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies: 1995.

Biographical Note by The HistoryMakers®

Scope and Contents

This life oral history interview with Andrew Brimmer was conducted by Larry Crowe on 2003-04-24 in Washington, D.C. and is recorded on 8 30-minute Betacam SP videocassettes. Access copies exist on Betacam SP, VHS, DVD and MPEG-1. The interview contains information on (COMPLETE ONE SENTENCE DESCRIPTION OF INTERVIEW). Accompanying materials in the collection include Andrew Brimmer's correspondence with The HistoryMakers® related to the interview; a copy of the signed release form and the production report; the biographical information used by the interviewer to prepare for the interview (DETAILS); paper copies of the interview transcripts, 3 1/2" floppy disks with electronic copies of the transcripts; selected quotes for video clips; photocopies of photographs captured on video; XML files with metadata created in editing and cataloguing the interview for The HistoryMakers Digital Video Library; and paper copies of these XML files.

Restrictions

Restrictions on Access

Access to paper records is restricted. Other restrictions may be applied on a case-by-case basis.

Restrictions on Use

All use of materials must be pre-approved by The HistoryMakers® and appropriate credit must be given. All use credits must be pre-approved by The HistoryMakers®. Copyright is held by The HistoryMakers®.

Index Terms

This record series is indexed under the following controlled access terms.
Contributors:
Brimmer, Andrew
Crowe, Larry
Stearns, Scott
Persons:
(PERSONS)
Corporate Bodies:
(CORPORATE BODIES)
Family Names:
Brimmer
Places:
(PLACES)
Subjects:
(SUBJECTS)
Document Types:
Video oral history interview
Titles:
The HistoryMakers® Video Oral History Interview with Andrew Brimmer

Related Material

Accompanying materials: Accompanying materials are filed in (NUMBER) folders in a half-Hollinger box and shelved at The HistoryMakers® Archives and Collection Library by accession number, separately from the videos.

Administrative Information

Location of Originals

Betacam, VHS, DVD and MPEG-1 access copies are held for in-house use at The HistoryMakers®; Betacam SP, VHS and DVD playback hardware is provided for in-house viewing of the access copies; MPEG-1 copies are searchable and viewable via a digital video database.

Preferred Citation

The HistoryMakers® Video Oral History Interview with Andrew Brimmer, April 24, 2003. The HistoryMakers® African American Video Oral History Collection, 1900 S. Michigan Avenue Chicago, Illinois.

Detailed Description/Tape Listings

Video Oral History Interview with Andrew Brimmer, Tape 1, April 24, 2003, TRT: 00:29:50.

Economist Andrew Brimmer recalls his childhood community of Newellton, in Tensas Parish, northeast Louisiana, where he was born in 1926. He shares oral history passed down from relatives and a neighbor who was a former slave, born in the 1830s. Brimmer talks about his father, a farm laborer who tried to make it as a tenant farmer but was defeated by the boll weevil and the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, and later worked as a "straw boss" at a grain elevator. Although he had only gone to school through the second grade, Brimmer's father later used his children's textbooks to educate himself further.


Video Oral History Interview with Andrew Brimmer, Tape 2, April 24, 2003, TRT: 00:29:31.

Economist Andrew Brimmer recalls growing up in the small town of Newellton in Tensas Parish, northeastern Louisiana. He remembers church and school experiences and also comments on the "rowdy types" partying in town on Saturday nights and on cases of "race-mixing" that were well known locally.


Video Oral History Interview with Andrew Brimmer, Tape 3, April 24, 2003, TRT: 00:28:41.

Economist Andrew Brimmer remembers his experiences at Tensas Parish Training School, a small secondary school for blacks in a rural area of northeast Louisiana. He recalls relatives who had left the area in the Great Migration, heading to northern cities or to Nevada to work on the Boulder Dam. Brimmer's brother-in-law moved to Washington state in 1942 to work at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and helped Brimmer to get work there after high school in 1944. The following year he was drafted, and Brimmer describes his millitary training and his service with the ammunition corps in Hawaii just after World War Two had ended.


Video Oral History Interview with Andrew Brimmer, Tape 4, April 24, 2003, TRT: 00:28:46.

Economist Andrew Brimmer recalls studying economics at University of Washington, meeting Robert C. Weaver, serving in an internship with the Economic Cooperation Administration in 1950, and studying at the Delhi School of Economics and the University of Bombay as a Fulbright scholar in India in 1951-1952.


Video Oral History Interview with Andrew Brimmer, Tape 5, April 24, 2003, TRT: 00:29:38.

Economist Andrew Brimmer talks about his time as a doctoral candidate and teaching fellow at Harvard University where he studied with economists such as John Kenneth Galbraith, Wassily Leontief, Alvin Hansen and John Williams. While still finishing his dissertation he began working at the Federal Reserve in New York, and in 1956 he was one of a trio of economists who spent several months in newly-independent Sudan, helping them to set up a banking system.


Video Oral History Interview with Andrew Brimmer, Tape 6, April 24, 2003, TRT: 00:29:17.

Economist Andrew Brimmer recalls a mission to the newly independent Republic of Sudan in 1956 to help set up a central bank. He talks about having received several offers for federal positions while he was teaching at universities in the early 1960s, and eventually accepting a position as Assistant Secretary of Economic Affairs in 1963. Brimmer details one of his first assignments, gathering evidence in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and testifying before Congress about how discrimination in public accomodations affected interstate commerce.


Video Oral History Interview with Andrew Brimmer, Tape 7, April 24, 2003, TRT: 00:29:42.

Economist Andrew Brimmer talks about his work for in the Department of Commerce in the Johnson administration. He discusses President Lyndon B. Johnson's commitment to appointing African Americans to high ranking positions, and analyzes the politics involved in the appointments of Robert Weaver and Thurgood Marshall as well as his own appointment as the first black governor on the Federal Reserve Board where he served for eight years before accepting a position at Harvard Business School and then forming his own consulting company. Finally, Dr. Brimmer talks about Congress' creation of the District of Columbia Financial Control Board and his appointment as chair.


Video Oral History Interview with Andrew Brimmer, Tape 8, April 24, 2003, TRT: 00:27:00.

Economist Andrew Brimmer talks about his work on the federally appointed Control Board for the District of Columbia and the activities of his nearly 30-year-old consulting company. He shares his concerns about the problems faced by those in the black community being "left behind" especially young black males, and he calls for an investment in human capital along the lines of the GI Bill. . Finally, Dr. Brimmer assesses his greatest accomplishments and considers what his legacy may be.