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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Griffin African American Oral History Project
Subject
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Georgia--History, Local
African Americans--History
Georgia--Communities
Description
An account of the resource
The Griffin African American Oral History Project is a collaboration between the Griffin Branch NAACP, the Griffin Campus Library of the University of Georgia, and the Richard B. Russell Library. The seed was planted in the meetings of the Educational Prosperity Initiative which is also chaired by the president of the Griffin Branch NAACP, Jewel Walker-Harps. Collaborators on the project include: Griffin Housing Authority; Spalding County Collaborative; Fairmont Alumni Association; University of Georgia—Athens and Griffin campuses; and the Educational Prosperity Initiative, which is an affiliate of the Spalding County Collaborative and others. Interviewers on the project include: John Cruickshank, librarian at UGA-Griffin Campus Library; Jewel Walker-Harps, President of the Griffin, GA Branch of the NAACP; Art Cain, coordinator of Continuing Education for UGA-Griffin; Be-Atrice Cunningham, project manager for College of Agricultural and Environmental Science for Griffin; and Ellen Bauske, senior public service associate at the Georgia Center for Urban Agriculture in Griffin. Rich Braman was the sound engineer for this project. <br />The Griffin African American Oral History Project intends to document the experiences of people who lived in Fairmont Community in Griffin, Georgia during the civil rights era and through its transformation to the present day.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
Creator
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
Publisher
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
Date
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2015-2018
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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Oral histories
Identifier
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RBRL418GAA
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Griffin, Georgia
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
OHMS Object Text
Contains OHMS index and/or transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable.
5.4
Interview with Cheryl Head Rashad and Raymond Head III, June 22, 2017
RBRL418GAA-015
RBRL418GAA
Griffin African American Oral History Project
Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia
Cheryl Head Rashad
Raymond Head III
Be-Atrice Cunningham
Jewel Walker-Harps
Ellen Bauske
Rich Braman
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0
Kaltura
audio
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79
Parent's careers / Fairmount High School
If you all could start off telling...
Rashad talks about her childhood and describes her mother's job as a teacher and her father's job as a tailor. Rashad recalls finding out about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the impact it had on her world perception as a child. Rashad describes Fairmount High School, and the quality of the teachers.
Fairmount, Georgia;Griffin, Georgia;Philander Smith College
489
Fairmount High School (cont.) / segregation in Griffin
Wherever we went, there was first place...
Rashad talks about the nature of the teachers at Fairmount High School. Rashad mentions how they still enjoyed recreational activities despite the disadvantaged developments innate to segregation. Rashad describes her parents' upbringing and the effects segregation had on their childhood.
Fairmount High School;Griffin, Georgia;Juanita Morris;Mississippi Delta;segregation
917
Businesses in Griffin, Georgia / Impact of Fairmount High School
Being a business man himself...
Rashad talks about her maternal grandmother, Pauline Head, and the impact she and the rest of her family had on the businesses of Griffin, Georgia. Rashad recalls the cultural impact Fairmount High School had on the Griffin community.
Cleanwell Pressing Club;Fairmount High School;Griffin, Georgia;Pauline Head
1304
Dealing with discrimination
I had a neighbor next door to me...
Rashad talks about ways in which the Griffin community promoted moral standards in the children. Rashad recalls how community recreation was completely segregated and describes some of her earliest memories of segregation. Rashad mentions the ways in which her mother confronted discrimination.
discrimination;Fairmount High School;Griffin, Georgia;segregation
1718
Dealing with discrimination (cont.) / Desegregation
She said, " I am a married woman...
Rashad relates some instances in which her mother, Ceiola Head, responded to discrimination during Rashad's childhood. Raymond describes the cultural shift in Griffin towards a desegregated community. Raymond talks about the Ku Klux Klan's impact on integration efforts, and their retaliation towards black businesses and residents.
discrimination;Griffin, Georgia;integration;Ku Klux Klan (KKK)
2128
Desegregation (cont.) / Attending Griffin High School
Can you tell us a little bit more...
Cheryl talks about the Biracial Committee of Griffin Georgia, which was created to ease tensions between blacks and whites during mandatory integration. Raymond explains how he came to attend Griffin High School and the difficulties that came with integration.
Fairmount High School;Griffin High School;segregation
2615
Assimilating into Griffin High School
Now, how did the kids take us?
Raymond recalls the strategies he used to stay safe as one of the first black students to attend the newly integrated Griffin High School. Raymond mentions other strategies used by the other black students to promote assimilation. Raymond describes his first impressions of Griffin High.
Griffin High School;integration
3009
Assimilation (cont.)
And I recall a situation...
Raymond recalls some interactions he had with different students at Griffin High School, and some of the subtle discrimination methods used by some Griffin community members after integration. Raymond mentions of his regret at not being able to attend Fairmount High School.
Griffin High School;integration;Tennessee State University;University of Tennessee
3416
Reflecting thoughts on integration
My only concern after I went through...
Raymond reflects on his time at Griffin High School, and mentions his wish for more individual instruction at the school. Raymond describes how his experience at Griffin High School has impacted his adult life and career. Raymond expands upon the integration process in Griffin.
Griffin High School;integration;Spaulding High School
3765
Effects of integration on the black community / Black businesses
Well, your family was...
Raymond reflects on the Griffin African American community's reaction to integration. Raymond recalls some of the black businesses located around his hometown of Griffin, Georgia.
desegregation;Griffin High School
4280
Clubs in the Griffin community / Running for office
Your mom was a member of the...
Raymond and Cheryl recall some of the community clubs around their home town. Cheryl lists some of the clubs her parents regularly participated in. Cheryl relates some of the memories she has about her father, and his decisions to run for office in the city of Griffin.
Busy Matrons Leisure Hour (BMLS);community clubs;Griffin, Georgia
4741
Raymond Head Jr.
So it took a couple of tries...
Cheryl talks about her father's rise to the position of city commissioner of Griffin. Cheryl discusses her father, Raymond Jr.'s, impact on the Griffin community.
city commissioner;Griffin, Georgia;National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP);Raymond Head Jr.
5168
Raymond Head Jr. (cont.) / Concluding thoughts
When I look back at what my dad wanted...
Cheryl recalls her father, Raymond Head Jr., receiving the General Griffin title by the Griffin community. Cheryl talks about her father's passing and recalls the presence Raymond Jr. had on the community. Cheryl and Raymond share their thanks for their supportive community members.
General Griffin;Griffin, Georgia;Raymond Head Jr.
Oral history
rbrl418gaa-015_rashad_head RICHIE BRAMAN:Okay, perfect. Anytime you're ready. JEWEL WALKER-HARPS:Be-Atrice. BE-ATRICE CUNNINGHAM:Today is June 21, 2017, and I'm Be-Atrice Cunningham, and I'm joined by. WALKER-HARPS:Jewel Walker-Harps, Griffin branch, NAACP. ELLEN BAUSKE:Ellen Bauske, Center for Urban Agriculture. BRAMAN:Richie Braman, also with the Center for Urban Agriculture. CUNNINGHAM:And today, we'll be speaking with Ms. Cheryl Head Rashied and Raymond Head III, the children of the late Raymond Head Jr. We're at the University of Georgia, Griffin Campus in the Center for Urban Agriculture's conference room in Griffin, Georgia. And we're conducting this interview as part of the Griffin African American Oral History Project. Thank you both for joining us today, and thank you for coming in just to share your story as well as your family's story. If you can, please just start off by stating your name and your birth year. CHERYL HEAD RASHIED:Good afternoon, thank you. My name is Cheryl Head Rashied. I was born in 1948. RAYMOND HEAD III:And my name is Raymond Head III, and I was born in 1950. CUNNINGHAM:All right. And if you-all could start off by just telling us a little bit about your early life, if you can tell us about your childhood. Like where did your start off, where did -- where were you born, and where did you grow up? RASHIED:Thank you, Be-Atrice. Because I am the oldest of the Raymond Head children -- I'm the oldest sibling, one sister, Raylanda, and my youngest brother Raymond. We are stairsteps; we are a year apart. Born in Griffin, Georgia, at 438 North Fourth Street in Griffin right in the Fairmont community, which was the center of our life as children. Everything took place in this community. We were a small community. My mother, Ceola Johnson Head was a teacher. My father at that time, as a child, was a tailor. He worked at what we call the shop. It was Cleanwell Pressing Club. He was there. My mother said that he spent most of his time at the cleaners, and that's where we knew him to work. Mother was a very good mother. Being a teacher, she wanted us to do the things that she thought were best for us. My brother Raymond was in her class in the second grade? HEAD:Third grade. RASHIED:Third grade. She was a third grade teacher and so we grew up as teacher's children. Then you always said, "Preacher's children and teacher's children, they had to walk that straight and narrow," so... And she was very strict about us doing homework and being the best little children that we could be. I think my brother was in her class at one time, is that correct, Raymond? HEAD:That is correct. RASHIED:And when those grades weren't quite what he wanted them to be, what happened? CUNNINGHAM:(laughs) She didn't spare the rod. (laughter) RASHIED:She didn't spare the rod. She got him straight before he could get back to the class, and when he was back into the class, he fell in line. So we had a very happy childhood in Griffin. My mother was a -- she called herself a U-All girl. She was born in Arkansas; she grew up in Mississippi. She was raised in Mississippi, so she -- growing up in the '40s, she knew about being a child of the South. And my bro-- my father, also a Griffin boy, growing up in Griffin. They met each other at Tuskegee Institute, which is now Tuskegee University in Alabama. And they started their romance right at the end of my father's schooling there. So I had a very -- a good childhood. Fairmont, as I said, was the center of my world. I was a pretty good student. I was considered an honor student and enjoyed my friendships with my friends. I think everything was all well in my world until maybe 1963, and that was the year that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And I can remember my biology teacher making that announcement to the class. And she came into the biology lab and said, "The President has been shot," and I thought this is the most terrible thing, how could the president of the United States be shot? And she was quite disturbed by this fact. And so I can remember quite distinctly walking home that day thinking that if this can happen, anything can happen, anything terrible. My world seemed to be changed in a sense. And maybe right about that time in 1963, we started to have this upheaval all across the country in terms of civil rights. But up until that time, my mother and my father -- I would say we were maybe sheltered from most of the woes of the world, and we had a happy childhood. I went on to graduate. I married out of high school. I was what you would call a child bride to Reverend Shropshire's son. We were high school sweethearts and so we had one child, but I continued my education and graduated from Philander Smith College in Little Rock, and that is where, you know, I became an adult. But up until that time, everything was a good, good life for me. Fairmont -- you've asked about Fairmont, Fairmont High School to me was like a prep school. We had very professional teachers who were concerned about us as young black students, and they wanted the best for us. If you look in any of the Fairmont yearbooks -- and I have started a collection of them -- you will find that we were all well groomed. They wanted us all -- we dressed alike. In the choral pictures, all of the young ladies, your legs were crossed the same. If you had on gloves -- the hair, the dresses were all made the same. The young men dressed a certain way. We wanted to show that we were good and decent people and so our activities, we were outstanding in everything that we did. We -- wherever we went, it was first place whether it was in sports or chorus or dramatics. The teachers were -- they were young teachers themselves. A lot of them were just out of college and so they made us want to do the best we could there. And the record will show that even now that most of us have continued to go on to uphold those standards. I don't want to ramble. I know you've asked me about early childhood but anything in particular? Then, I can refocus on that, so I can stay -- JEWEL WALKER-HARPS:Who was the biology teacher (inaudible) -- RASHIED:Ms. Crew. WALKER-HARPS:Crew. RASHIED:Crew. WALKER-HARPS:Beuna. RASHIED:Beuna, Crew, Ms. Beuna Crew, C-R-E-W. Yeah, she was the biology teacher. I had many teachers that I was very fond of. I know that you interviewed Juanitress Morris and her mother Mrs. Juanita Morris. I remember she asked me to come into her class to do a dramatic presentation one day. I -- they said that I poured water on the house. I made them cry that day. And so I had to do this performance for all of the classes, and her class was one of the classes, so I do remember that. But that -- as I said, Fairmont and the Fairmont community was the center of our lives. My late grandfather -- paternal grandfather Raymond Head Sr. was a prominent businessman in Griffin. And there was a park in the community that was named for my grandfather, so not only did my -- was my father honored to have a park named after him, but my grandfather also was the first Head Park, and that was there in my community. And it was all that we had for our reco-- recreational activities because everything was segregated. We, every Fourth of July, have a very vivid memory of being in that park, and families would spread out all through the park with their blankets and picnic baskets from the top of the hill all the way down to the pool. And because the pools were segregated and even in Atlanta, some of the kids were not able to swim in these pools, and they would come down to Griffin by the busloads. And they would be lined up at the pool on Johnson Pool Road, and it was the happiest time. Those were really happy times. So we were a very close-knit community because everything was segregated. We played together, we went to church together, we went to school together, all of our social activities were together. It was just us. And so little did we know at that time, the tide would change, but I was used to segregation. Of course, we're not talking about that now, but that -- it was a happy childhood. WALKER-HARPS:Very clear. RASHIED:Thank you. CUNNINGHAM:So you did mention that your -- both of your parents were childrens of the South. RASHIED:Yes. CUNNINGHAM:Did they tell you anything about what life was like for them growing up? RASHIED:Yes. My mother was an only child. She grew up in the Mississippi Delta, Swiftown, Mississippi. She went to high school in Greenwood, Mississippi. Her father had a country store, and I can remember that. I remember my maternal grandfather. He came to Griffin, had a stroke, and died when I was five years old. That was quite devastating for my mother. But he was very fond of my mother and called her Sister. She had a lot of nicknames growing up as an only child. But she knew about segregation being an only child out in the country and being an only child -- my maternal grandmother was from Arkansas, and they met in Arkansas and moved to Mississippi. Her grandmother lived with her and so I think she was probably a spoiled child. She always told me she had nice clothes. They were able, my grandmother, to dress her in nice things and so she had a good childhood. I can remember traveling back with her to Mississippi, and we would always have to travel during the day. You couldn't travel during the night going back in that part of the country nor could you get a hotel. And people would put up their homes where you could stay. I remember staying -- I don't know if you remember that, Raymond or not -- but staying at a house as a little girl. These were strangers, but there would be certain homes that you could stay with because it wasn't safe to travel during the day. And I remember once going through Mississippi, and we stopped at a little hamburger shack, and I remember us getting out going to get these -- try to get a hamburger. And the man said, "You-all need to go back to the back," and I remember my mother saying, "We don't do the back," and we got back in the car. And I remember I wanted a hamburger, but we did not. And so that was life as what I know of my mother growing up in Mississippi. My father and his brothers because there were three little boys, they had, I think, a happy childhood. And I think because my grandfather was a prominent businessman during that era that they were able to have a pretty good life during that time. I recently found out that my paternal grandfather had gone to Savannah State College. I did not know that, and I'm going to have to do research. Up until that time, I only -- I really didn't know, but I just found that out. But being a businessman himself and my maternal grandmother, they all wanted the best for these three little boys. And by him opening this business, the Cleanwell Pressing Club, afforded them these opportunities that a lot of kids did not have. Some would say they were lucky; I say that they were blessed that our opportunities... Because my mother being that only child and they wanted to send her to school and give her that opportunity, gave her an opportunity that a lot of young girls did not have and so that was a blessing. The same thing for my father, his mother and father wanted the best for him. They were just afforded an opportunity that a lot of people were not able to have, and that gave them this gift of an education that allowed them to help us and further us along. So -- WALKER-HARPS:So that was -- excuse me. Ms. Pauline was your paternal -- RASHIED:My paternal grandmother. Pauline Phillips Head was my paternal grandmother. That was Raymond Jr.'s mother. She was a wonderful grandmother and mother. She was a Griffin girl. She came from a family of about 17 children if I'm not mistaken on that number. And so she met Raymond Sr., and they made their home there in Griffin. She was also a part of the Head businesses. Raymond Sr., my grandmother, Pauline Head, Otis Jr., and Phillip made up the Head Enterprises businesses of that day, and so... CUNNINGHAM:Earlier, you alluded to some fond memories of growing up in the Fairmont community with the picnics. Are there other memories that you'd like to share with us of what the community was like? RASHIED:As I said, the community was very close-knit. I had my little friends, girlfriends there in Griffin. I can remember us doing things that children do, making mud pies. And I was always creative coming up with parties, creating little clubs and those types of things. But Fairmont, the school provided many extracurricular activities for us. I was in the drama club, so I definitely enjoyed that part of it. Mr. Felton Stringer was one of my favorite teachers, and he had me to join the drama club and so I enjoyed going to a lot of the competitions for dramatics. And I remember one year, we took first place, and I took best actress, and a friend of mine took the best actor part. So I always like to say I have a little actress in me. I miss my calling on that, but I did enjoy that, and so... But there were the football games, and one thing, we had a very fine band. I would say one of the best in the state and one of the best directors probably in the country, Mr. Rufus Tucker. And that band would come down Fourth Street, on my street, on their way to the stadium on Saturday nights. You remember that? HEAD:Mm-hmm, right. RASHIED:Tray and you were -- were you in the band during that time? HEAD:In the ninth grade -- RASHIED:In the ninth grade? HEAD:-- I was in the band. RASHIED:In the band. And they would come down. HEAD:Right. BAUSKE:What did you play? HEAD:I was a trumpet player. BAUSKE:Great. (laughter) RASHIED:But they would put on a show when they -- see, when they got in front of our house, they knew that they would have a big crowd of people. Because people would come from all of the streets over because they knew they were coming down Fourth Street. And they would go all the way down Fourth Street because it ran straight to the stadium. And their majorettes, I always thought we had the prettiest girls were the majorettes, and they would be stepping, and they would start to play, and that was a very fond memory of the band. And so we were outstanding and everything. I would say the cheerleaders, the band, the chorus, the organizations that we had, I enjo-- WALKER-HARPS:So you know Bogarsette? RASHIED:Bogarsette, I was a Bogarsette. That was a social club that was formed by Mr. -- the late Mr. Philip Hood who was a favorite teacher of many, and I believe Ms. CJ Motley?. It was a club that was formed based on the sororities and fraternities of the colleges. And so you had to -- you were invited to join. You had to go through an initiation just like you would in a sorority or a fraternity. And I was invited to become a Bogarsette, and thank you for reminding me of that. That was a fun time because we looked up to the older girls. Once we got down to Fairmont, we just thought Fairmont was the world. Fairmont was such an impressive school even back in the '50s before I got there. As I said, the teachers just instilled in us that you have to be the best, you have to give your best, you want to look the best -- your best. You had to act your best when you were out in the street so to speak. I had a neighbor next door to me, and you just did not get out in the streets and act any way. She would come out -- one of the neighbors, she would come out and reprimand you. She didn't like the girls with shorts too short. She didn't like the boys playing in the baseball field across the street. Is that right, Raymond? HEAD:That is correct. RASHIED:And so you had to straighten up. And another thing about our community, we say it takes a village, it was a village in those days. If I did anything at Fairmont that was not correct, I didn't have to wait to get home or wait a week or so for my mother to find out about it. She knew it when I got home. It was already known, and believe me, I found that out quickly, and so... And plus, I had my uncle Phillip Head's wife was a teacher, and she was a librarian. And she called me into the library once. I think I was talking to my daughter's father, that high school sweetheart and called me into the library about it one day, so... So needless to say, things got back home pretty quickly in those days, so... But there were -- Fairmont, as I said, there were dances and all of the wonderful things that you can think of in that community. And the church also was quite vital to us during that time. That's -- a lot of people's social activities were there in the church, so the church and the school played a major part in my life, so -- CUNNINGHAM:So those major events like the marching band coming down the street, did that bring in other ethnic groups to join in, or was it still very segregated? RASHIED:No. We're talking about segregation. No, that was strictly -- we played football teams in the local vicinity. Everything was totally segregated. I never -- we had no interactions with Griffin High School or, I didn't realize, Spalding High School during that time, but Griffin High School was the high school that I knew the most about. So there was no interaction there at all. It wasn't until much later on during the civil rights era that I even had an opportunity to talk to anyone of another race, so to speak. I would be with my mother if I had an opportunity to say something, but I don't recall ever having a conversation. So no, we were living in a segregated society at that time. CUNNINGHAM:Can you tell us about your earliest memory of segregation in Griffin? RASHIED:Yes. I remember my earliest memories because of little things like the water foundation. You did not drink from the white fountain that we had our own water fountain. We had our own entrances in certain places. My mother -- my father was soft-spoken. My mother, she -- I think coming out of that segregated Mississippi, and Mississippi was notorious in those days with this reputation for, in said terms, the segregation. But my mother, I would be with her sometimes, and she did not mind speaking her mind. And we would go into the local stores downtown and we would -- there were no black salesclerks. They were all white. Everyone was white. You may see a black person running the elevators or doing some janitorial work or those types of things. Those were the jobs that we held. We'd go into the store, and a white clerk would say, "May I help you girls?" The wrong thing to say to my mother. She would immediately say, "There's only one girl standing here, and that's my daughter." She was quick to point that out. That was thought of -- whereas now, you may not think anything about that, but that was thought of as an affront. We were taught to address everyone by a first -- not by a first name but as old folks would say, "Put a handle on it." You were Mrs. Harps or you were a Ms. Rashied or a Ms. Whomever or a Mr. Raymond, but you did not address adults in that way. But during that time, the social mores were that black women were called by their first names, black men were called by their first names. There was no such thing as Mrs. Head. But she also went into a pharmacy. This was written in a book. A pharmacist in Griffin wrote this story that my mother went into the pharmacy. She and this pharmacist had cordial conversations with each other. He would always fill her prescriptions. But on this particular day, I don't know if my mother had just become tired of this or not, but the point was that she... When he filled her prescription on the labels, he would put Ceola Head. Now, the doctor who was Dr. Releford -- Charles, Releford who was a black doctor, the first black doctor -- well, not the first but he had come to Griffin to practice -- would put Mrs. Ceola Head. And my mother told the pharmacist that she wanted to speak to him in private. And she pulled him to the side and told him that -- she called him Dr. B? -- "I noticed that you fill my labels as Ceola Head." Oh, and then my mother, this part of her came out. She said, "I am a married woman. I am legally married, I have a husband, and my children are not bastards. Why do you not address me or label it as missus?" In fact, he addressed her as Ceola whenever she came into the pharmacy and so, as he wrote, that changed his life. From then on, their relationship was not quite the same. But he stated that this was the beginning of a change for him -- that he had never addressed a black woman by the title, missus. That was something they were not used to. He even stated in his book that if he felt close to a black woman, she was an -- well, I would say auntie?, they would say antie. (laughs) But she was never addressed with a title. So that was my mother and some of the things that we encountered or I encountered growing up. But I was very much aware that we had our place. We knew that we couldn't eat at the lunch counters downtown. HEAD:Correct. RASHIED:You want to add something to that? HEAD:Right. We could not eat at the lunch counter. In fact, there were different lunch counters in the five-and-dime store, one was on one wall and one was on the right wall, and you had to choose. You didn't -- really didn't have a choice, so you either ate where you were supposed to or you didn't eat, and that was a part of that segregated period. And that led up to a lot of the picketing that eventually came forth when we decided that it was time for a change. CUNNINGHAM:Well, can you tell us a little bit more about the racial climate during the early days of desegregation? HEAD:The racial climate, I think when we all -- when things began to change or there was a movement for change, well Dad was very instrumental with other black leaders in the community to, in fact, change. And, in fact, they put together a group -- a biracial committee that met often to smooth things through in Griffin because they did not want the hostilities or the violent climate that you had in some of the other southern cities. But there were, were tensions. In fact, there was an active Klan group in Griffin that made it known that they were against any type of possible integration in the city. So when the actions actually began, we started picketing, a group started picketing the five and ten-cent stores, and that was more observed by the populace because most of the downtown businesses were owned by whites. And it got a lot of press in the Griffin Daily News, so you had a lot of people that would fight against that. For instance, our business was a cleaning business and tailoring business. We had a lot of whites that brought their alterations to Cleanwell cleaners because as she just said, my dad was an excellent tailor. But on some days, you would have an individual, a white individual have a bundle of clothes in his hands, and he will walk up to the door and then he would turn around with the clothes and return to his car. Now, either he was a customer or he was not a customer, and a lot of times, we thought he was not a customer. He was sending a message. And some of the messages that were sent really concerned us because I was there a day when the Klan drove up to the business, got out the car, put a cross in front of the business, and set it on fire, and left. I remember when the Klan came and picketed our businesses. I'm on a picture now with one of my nieces, she was a baby, I was holding her in my arms, passing the Klan. Not only did they burn a cross in front of our business, we also had a cross burned in front of our residence one night. Also that cross was burned in front of one my relative's home, my uncle Otis's home. So that really brought the community to be more security conscious of what's going on, and they would patrol during the night the neighborhood to assure that the community was safe. So, yes, there were some hostilities that were there. And I believe there were situations where the police, local police did capture groups that had guns, that had no idea, but they were on a watch list in Griffin, and they were concerned. The Klan was the real concern that we had. And then they met at the local church a lot of times, my father and the other leaders, and they would come by and throw tomatoes at us as we were coming out of the church. So to answer your question, yeah, there were tensions and there were concerns for our safety during that particular time. But as me being a part of the integration of the schools, eventually, it went on without a hitch because of that biracial committee. Because it brought whites and blacks together, the clergy, and civic leader to work through the difficulties that could possibly come up during that time. CUNNINGHAM:Can you tell us a little bit more about the biracial committee, maybe who it was made up of? HEAD:I really can't say who all was on the committee. CUNNINGHAM:Sure. RASHIED:I do know that Mrs. Mary Fitzhugh was one of the white members of the commu-- of the committee. I recently saw their names. I know my father was a close friend of hers, and she was quite active. St. Stephens Episcopal Church was active in helping. The church provided -- were having meetings there at some point. And, also, I believe UGA here may have had some -- was a positive -- like had a positive influence towards the integration process. But I'll think a minute. Go ahead, I just -- HEAD:I'm all right. RASHIED:-- know Mrs. Fitzhugh. WALKER-HARPS:Do you remember those persons who were -- (clears throat) excuse me -- on the committee from the school? There was a committee established between Griffin High and Fairmont High that were -- a plan of integration as far as the students were concerned? HEAD:No, I don't remember. All I know is my dad was very active in a lot of different areas during that particular time. I was still just a student, (laughs) you know? WALKER-HARPS:Oh, what was life like for you as a student, once you were in that group that transferred? HEAD:Right, I was in the first group they transferred, and it was definitely eye-opening. Now, how did I come to that point? I'll explain that. We did have a great family, and growing up, we had loving parents, and they were educated, and I'm blessed that my dad was in the household. And we also experienced a lot because we traveled a lot. Traveled down to Florida to the beaches, and every summer, we would go to the Little Rock, Arkansas, to visit my grandmother, my mother's mother. And while visiting there one day, and I must say that my grandmother would take us all around Little Rock, Arkansas. She liked to walk (laughter), and that's the hardest place that I've ever been. RASHIED:Yeah, -- HEAD:But I do recall during that time she took us over and showed us Central High School who had the Little Rock Nine integrate at the school. And I thought I have never seen a high school as huge as this particular place. It was just awesome. And then I kept thinking about the nine that had to go in there and integrate and had the guards on their side to go in there. I saw that school. Now, here I was in Little Rock, Arkansas, at my grandmother's house, and my mother said, "I just talked to your dad, and he wants you to go to Griffin High." and I said to her, "Go to Griffin High for what?" (laughter) "See, he wants you to integrate Griffin High," and I said, "What? Is Daddy crazy?" RASHIED:(laughs) HEAD:"Integrate Griffin High? I've been with my friends from the first grade all the way up to the ninth grade, been to Fairmont just that last year, the ninth grade, and you want me to transfer to Griffin High?" I said, "I'll have to talk to him when I get back home." (laughter) So when I got home and I approached my dad -- and sometimes, you just have to listen. And he said, "Well, the reason I want you to do it, there have been a lot of families who have committed their kids to doing things in the movement, particularly those that have gone uptown and walked the picket line and chanted and did different things. And I don't want it to seem as if we have sheltered you-all, your sisters" and me. "And I want you to be a part of something, and I want you to do this." Well, he put it that way. (laughter) I said, "Well, I can understand your point," and I said, "I'll do it." Well, that day finally came during the fall of '66. I'm leaving Fairmont High School, and of course, my sister has explained how -- vividly what a great school that was. Now, my take on leaving my community high school to go to Griffin High was like being between two worlds. One world of familiarity where I knew everybody, a world where I had support, a world where I knew I could get academic success to another world that I knew nothing about. There was a fear factor, and the fear factor was the unknown. The fear factor was not knowing what I didn't know. I didn't know what I should know. But I recall that day that I walked into Griffin High, and I said, "Wow, this is a big school, never seen a school this large other than Central," and it makes two or three of Griffin High. But I recall walking down the hallway -- I don't even know how I got to school that morning. I'm sure my mom and dad dropped me off. But as I walked down the hall, one of the students, white students saw me coming down the hall, and he said, "There goes Martin Luther King." (laughs) Now, I didn't know if that was an insult, but when I processed it, it made me feel real good because if he had to say something, that's what he said to me, "There goes Martin Luther King." And at that particular time, that's when I realized exactly what I was there for -- to show my integrity, the people behind me that had to come through behind me. I knew that I had them on my shoulders, and it was important, (clears throat) excuse me, for me to go in there and do my best under the circumstances that I had. It was not easy. It definitely was not easy because at that particular time, I think Griffin High had about 2000 students or maybe more, and there were 12 of us in that first wave in '66 to go in there. Now, I can't name all 12 because I had no idea who was coming into that school that day. But there were individuals that came in as seniors and juniors. I came in as a pure freshman, the 10th grade. It was an interesting experience. Now, how did the kids take us? Well, first thing you wanted to do was just be observant. You had also a concern for your safety because I knew what had gone on previously out in the community, the forces that did not want this, and I didn't know the forces who agreed with it, so I was in a land of unknown. So in order for us to feel that safety net, what the administration decided to do during our lunch hours was to segregate us, in a sense, at one table in the cafeteria adjacent to the teaching staff so as we could be viewed, assuming for safety reason. And I'm sitting at the table, and I'm looking out at all the student. Well, that lasted for about two months, and I recall telling my tablemates -- and this was an all-black table. I said, "If we are going to be students here, we are going to have to assimilate." I said, "So today is the last day I'm sitting at this table." Well, the next day came, I got my tray, went out into the masses, and set my tray down. I cleared about 10 or 15 (laughter) students when I sat down and ate my meal. And then the others started joining different tables, and, I don't know, we cleared out the cafeteria (laughter) that day. But we had to do what we had to do because if we were going to be a part of that school, then we wanted to assimilate. Now, the next thing I know, I'm getting a call to the principal's office. And the principal asked me what was the idea of us leaving our table to go it sit out in the cafeteria and asked me if I was the leader. I said, "No, sir, we -- I'm not the leader. We all agreed that if we want to be a part of this school, we had to assimilate in this school," and I heard no more from him. But going forth in the classrooms, a lot of the classrooms, I was the only black in the classroom. And I always sat along the wall, and of course, my mother told me that would be possibly a safer place to sit because I could observe things around me. Now, I had to go in and sit in the classroom, worry about my safety, worry about the academics, worry about not being communicated with, just being there feeling alone, away from all of my friends. And that was kind of hard to get through. Also at Griffin High, I was in awe of the academic selection that they did have -- Latin, humanity programs, humanity class, and a speech class. And I chose to go into the speech class, and I never would forget that one of my first speeches to the class -- I don't recall what the topic was, but when I got up to speak and I looked out and saw all these white faces, I froze. I couldn't say anything. And I recall -- I'll never forget; Ms. Elliott was the speech teacher. Afterwards, she pulled me to the side, and she said, "It's going to be all right. Next time just take your time." Ms. Elliott was the one who actually named -- won the contest that named the Atlanta Falcons; I'll never forget that. But the next time, I recall doing a speech on the sinking of the Titanic, and I think I had them crying in there, but that was an experience. Now, there were other experiences that were positive and negative. I can say from a positive experience that there were kids in there that were friendly, and there were kids in the class that were not so friendly. I did observe and notice that you-all aren't that much different from the kids in my community or the overall community. There were different socioeconomic backgrounds in that population. I could tell the kids with the parents who had the businesses and had the money. I could tell the blue-collar kids, the kids whose parents either worked at the mills, or the kids that were struggling because I noticed the division that they had in their culture, and I had to adjust. So the person who worked at -- parents worked in the business and they're the popular kid, they would speak because what did they have to lose? But I had the haters over here who would leave notes, the KKK on your desk or in study hall, the massive study hall with 50 or 60 people and you're sitting there trying to study and spitballs come at you and what have you. But I always held my integrity in the situation because I knew that was important, that was important, and those were some of the things. And I recall the situation, a biology teacher that took the class out on a field trip. Behind the football stadium, there was a cemetery, and we were looking at plant specimen. And after we had completed that, he pulled me to the side and said, "I'm -- Raymond, I'm going to take the class to this soda café before we come back to the classroom. And you can go up to the gym and wait till we get back," and I said, "Well, why is that?" He said, "Well, they don't accept blacks in the soda café." I said, "Okay." So as I walked off, this white student came up to me and said, "Raymond, I'm sorry that had to happen." And there were those students that sympathized with the situation knowing the difficulties that I had to go through in that environment, but I kept my head high and kept doing what I had to do. By my senior year, I pretty much had conquered all my fears and what have you. I did go out on the baseball team, made the team as the first black baseball player. Didn't get much playing time but I recall one day at practice, I was in the batting cage -- well, I was waiting to go into the batting cage, and the sheriff for the city was out there to practice. And the coach -- in my earshot, the sheriff told the coach, -- I'm waiting to go in the batting cage -- he said, "I see you got a new batboy," and I said, "Wow." Those were the little things that I had to do-- deal with. And then it came a time when the team got a new uniform and when it got to me, I got an old uniform. Well, I had to tell my mom that, and of course, she went and got that taken care of. I ended up getting the new uniform. (laughter) But those were little things. I don't want to, you know, harp on all the negative things because I did get a lot from the experience. But when I got to be a senior and it was time to decide what you want to do once you left there, I went to my counselor and sat with her, and she said, "Well, what are you interested in doing?" I said, "I want to go to college," and she said, "Well, where do you want to go?" I said, "Well, I like to go to Tennessee State University." And she said, "Well, you know they got some good trade schools available, and I think you'll be more cut out to go to a technical school. I said, "Well, that might the case, but I really would like to go to Tennessee State, can you get me some information on that?" She said, "I can get you some, come back tomorrow." I come back the next day, and of course, you know through the counselor, you get the application, and they have the -- well, the book on the school. And when she handed it all to me and when I got the time to look at what she had given me, I said, "Okay, Tennessee State University," and I said, "Wait a minute. Listen, Tennessee State University is in Nashville." She had given me information on the University of Tennessee." (laughter) CUNNINGHAM:I see. HEAD:Now, that didn't quite -- (laughter) That's in -- so I actually took it back and said, "You know what, I appreciate it, but this wasn't the university I was speaking of," (laughter) but I ended up graduating in that class. I think there were more like 600, 700 in that class, and out of my incoming 10th grade class, I don't remember how many that were in that class, but we graduated. In that class, there were eight blacks, six females, and myself and another male. There was eight of us, and I always said that I knew how Custer there at the Little Bighorn felt having had that experience. But all in all if I look back, I don't know if I would do it again, but they say I broke a barrier. I -- I'll take it. You know I re-- when you-all mentioned the Bogarsette, the male opposite of Bogarsette at Fairmont High was the Bogarsun, and all my friends were in there. And I never -- I hate to this day, I wasn't a part of that. And as far as clubs or any organizations at Griffin High, I was never in anything. I was in the band from the third grade up until the ninth grade, but I refused to get in Griffin High Band because of not wanting to play Dixie. And I mean it is what it is in that respect, so I didn't get in the band. And at no time during my three-year matriculation there did any of my classmate ever invite me to anything. CUNNINGHAM:Can you share with us about some of the differences that you saw at Fairmont High versus Griffin High as far as racial equalities or racial inequalities? HEAD:Well, I think if you just say what other differences were, as I said, there might have been on the academic side some different courses that were offered there. For instance, I say, Latin was over there that might not have been at Fairmont High School. But everything else that they participated in, the different extracurricular activities that they were at Fairmont. My only concern after I went through the experience is that I didn't get the one-on-one that I would have gotten with the instructors. And that mentoring, I didn't get that, so I actually felt I was somewhat behind in leaving Griffin High. I do recall going back to my 40th class reunion, and my wife said, "Well, why are you going back? Nobody is going to know you." She said, "You aren't going to know anybody." I said, "Well, that might be the case, but I want to know that I -- I'm still a Griffin High" -- and at the time they were the Eagles -- "I'm Griffin High Eagle." And I did show up, and I'm on the picture, the only black on there, none of the other black classmates showed up. But it was interesting, I got a lot of people that came up and spoke to me that remember me from the class. But there were a lot of people in the class -- and we were -- my wife and I, we were the only blacks at the event -- that came up and asked me about my experience and applauded me for that. And they said, "That had to -- you had to have a lot of strength to do that" because they want to know was I the only one at Griffin High? I said, "No, I wasn't the only one." But there weren't too many differences that I can see. As I said, it was probably more close-knit at Fairmont High in the fact that, as I spoke earlier about, the socioeconomic of the groups at Fairmont High, it was all one. Whether you -- your income level were below poverty line or you were very well off, it didn't matter, we were all one family. Griffin High, you saw the division, and you saw who dealt with each other. And I recall that in my observance, I always would hear the students talk about, "We're going to Daytona, going to Daytona." I said, "Well, what's in Daytona?" but that was where they would go for their breaks and have a good time. And even though I didn't get to Tennessee State University after graduation, I ended up at Bethune--Cookman College, which is located at Daytona Beach, and I say, "Now, I know why they (laughter) there down there." I had a great, great -- we had a great time there. I felt I had to go back home, and that was where I went when I left Griffin High. But for the experience, I'm able to deal with people of different culture, race, ethnicity, and all, it was a great learning experience for me. And it has helped me in my career. I'm retired now, but it has helped me along in my career. Because I've dealt with the different people in the positive side and the negative side, and through that, kept my head and was able to resolve issues. And it was a good experience. BAUSKE:I have a -- you went to Griffin in 1968? HEAD:No, in '66, I graduated in '68. BAUSKE:Okay. When was Fairmont High School fully integrated and closed as a high school? HEAD:I'm thinking it was around '70, wasn't it, 1970? RASHIED:Seventy -- between '70 and '72. I -- HEAD:Nineteen seventy -- RASHIED:-- but the last -- maybe '72-- HEAD:Two. RASHIED:-- was the last class that I know from Fairmont. Yes, That's about right. WALKER-HARPS:Well, it was at that time when you de-- when they decided that the, oh, the football team would be the Bears instead of the Eagles -- HEAD:Right, right, that was the compromise. RASHIED:The compromise. HEAD:And I am -- I also might add, too, that after my junior year -- I'm sorry, after my whatever would've been my sophomore year, the 10th grade that all the classes or groups started coming into Griffin High like from Spalding Junior High. And then there's -- we were -- it began to multiply in a sense and have a sense of camaraderie there to help everybody through. Because I said one of the first athletes who played football was Marvin Martin, and he was a great athlete over there. And once they found out that he could play, and they played him, and he broke a lot of Griffin High's record, and that kind of softened things up and made it lot better. WALKER-HARPS:Was that the Fernando's brother? Was that -- HEAD:Right. I believe it is, yeah. WALKER-HARPS:Fernando's. HEAD:Right. And that kind of lightened things up, but it was a good experience. CUNNINGHAM:Well, your family was definitely supportive of desegregation, but what about the rest of the black community? What's your sense in how everybody else felt about desegregation? HEAD:Well, I think it was inevitable. They knew that it was coming; it's just that they weren't pushing their kids to go in there. And it was just a certain group, for instance Ms. Denson, her daughter Hanthi, she came over. And so there were the families, and these were some of the families that were leaders in the community saying that "If we're going to do it, we got to sacrifice our kids to step out and do it." And once we were able to test the waters and break the ice, then they came. And then eventually, as I said, a few years later, it was -- everybody was coming. CUNNINGHAM:But when you first went in, were you concerned about any backlash? HEAD:Backlash in the sense of? I'm not -- CUNNINGHAM:Backlash from other cultures. HEAD:Well, the -- well, you know, I was too focused on trying to get through there, too concerned as to what was going on outside of the wall. I was just trying to be safe, hope this environment was safe. And, of course, that was on my dad's watch as far as the backlash and was going on. I think all of us that went there, we represented our community very well. There were no problems or concern that the police had to be called in because of something we did. I'm not -- and I don't know if anything -- any -- no -- nothing came in because of anything that was done to us, I mean physical harm. So I think it was really a peaceful transition for us. And it was -- and I think the record will state that Griffin was in the forefront of a lot of communities around here as far as integrating their schools and their public accommodations. And then that was, you know, a great success due to the contribution of the biracial committee for getting ahead of this and doing exactly what needed to be done because they had the vision to see. CUNNINGHAM:That's true. WALKER-HARPS:But you were not -- students were not volunteers to go. They were pretty well selected and were pretty well screened students and teachers, am I right? Were pretty well screened to make sure that they would be the ones who could do what needed to -- HEAD:I don't know if... Either you volunteer or wanted to go because my dad wanted me to go. But as far as screening, I would've much preferred just to have stayed. (laughter) Because -- and I say this because I knew I had some deficiencies. Well, math was one of mine, and I knew that if I was going, for instance, to a situation where I didn't get really -- had issue with some of the fundamentals, what would that do for me? Because I got all these other issues that I've got to deal with, and I will fall back academically. And I don't have the support to help me along over here. I would have to kind of go back and because my mother was a teacher, so that was a big help on the problem that I did have. But I think more so, everybody that went to the various schools volunteered to go, and no one said, "Well, we're going to send him because his academics are great and he can go and handle the thing." Now, in the group that I went over with at Griffin High the first year, there were some seniors that went over that were great in academics. And, obviously, they wanted to go for whatever their reasons were, but I can't speak for them. But everybody gave their best. And I don't think no one can say that, hey, they were ill prepared when they came over here. Just as I had deficiencies in math, I looked over at some of my counterparts, and they had problems too (laughter) they were dealing with. I said, "Why are you in here, you know you need to be in here. You hating on me? (laughter) You need to be listening to the teacher." (laughter) But so it's -- it's no di-- we were all kids, you know? And we were coming up in a time period of change, and some folks didn't want to see change and some people did. WALKER-HARPS:I have one other question, and you may not know, you may have been too young, yeah, but do you remember the other businesses that were around in your community, immediate community as well as downtown where your dad's business had been -- your family businesses were? Because it was not just the Pressing Club, it was the café -- well, (inaudible) of the café, the sandwich shop, and maybe something else that I don't even know about. But do you remember other businesses that were prominent during that period? HEAD:Oh, sure. You had Ms. Denson who had her salon, hair salon. RASHIED:Ralph and Mary's. HEAD:Yeah, Ralph and Mary -- RASHIED:Ralph and Mary's. HEAD:He was my barber and then you had several barbers in that -- in the area. Then, you had your cab drivers who had their businesses and what have you. You had the shoeshine parlor there. They -- there were businesses, and of course, the church was there in that area where the cleaners were, and they had a lot of things going on. WALKER-HARPS:Eighth Street. HEAD:Eighth Street. RASHIED:Eighth Street -- HEAD:Right, you have a lot -- RASHIED:-- yeah, that's right, yeah (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) -- HEAD:-- going on during the weekend and what have you. But that's just in that little pocket because if you go into the community, you had your local grocery stores and mom and pop, Simmons -- RASHIED:Simmon's Grocery HEAD:-- Grocery -- RASHIED:-- in our -- HEAD:-- on Fourth and Tinsley, -- RASHIED:-- neighborhood. HEAD:-- what have you. RASHIED:Oh, yeah, that was the -- there was a bamboo shack, yeah, a bamboo shack in our -- CUNNINGHAM:What was sold there? RASHIED:That was a little -- it's little snacks, cookies and then I think they had a little -- you get sodas and pig feed and (laughter) pickles and different little things like that. And also, I know Snow's? Rib Shack, that was popular over -- HEAD:Around Solomon. RASHIED:-- on Solomon Street. HEAD:Yeah, and Touchstone had -- RASHIED:Touchstone had their -- HEAD:-- a lot of eateries, what have you. RASHIED:They had their own service stations. There were quite a few black businesses, Van Field's service station and I'm just trying to think. HEAD:Touchstones' gas station. RASHIED:You know there, they had their gas station. WALKER-HARPS:Funeral homes. HEAD:Yeah, the funeral home. RASHIED:We have Miller's Funeral Home and that -- so there were -- WALKER-HARPS:Crockett's. RASHIED:The Crockett's yes, yes. WALKER-HARPS:Stokes. RASHIED:Stokes, yes, they had the funeral home and beauty shop. They were in business. I'm just trying to think of this -- I don't remember -- forget anybody, but there were quite a number of black businesses in Griffin at that time. HEAD:Right. And, of course, the auto dealers-- not the dealerships but the auto repair, a lot of businesses. You took your car in to be serviced and what have you in the community. RASHIED:Yes, yes WALKER-HARPS:Did either of you go to Bowden's Nursery? HEAD:No. RASHIED:No. I know where that was but never -- and I remember when it opened, but no, we did not go to the Bowden's Nursery, so... And that was over in the Fairmont community over in the projects. WALKER-HARPS:Because your mom was a member of the Confederate Women's Club. Did she speak about that, or do you remember? RASHIED:Now, that one I don't remember. There were quite number of social clubs in Griffin. My mother, they started what was called the BMLH Club and that was the Busy Matrons Leisure Hour. That was a bridge club. My mother and my grandmother and a number of teachers and different women were a part of that. There were a number of other social clubs. There was the Lacey Oak club and then you had a garden club. And my father, they had their -- WALKER-HARPS:Cavaliers. RASHIED:-- Caballeros. The Caballeros was started. They also had the Mr. and Mrs. Club that was the married couples clubs. So there was your social Griffin, and there were your -- HEAD:Bridge club. RASHIED:-- bridge club, well as I said, that'd be on the leisure club is your bridge club. You had your businesswomen that had their clubs. So there were a lot of activities going on in Griffin. The veterans club was the center for entertainment at the VFW Post 8480, and my father Raymond was a veteran and one of the first commander and quartermaster. But that's where all of your entertainment was up at the VFW club sitting up on a hill. And that club, also my father would book a lot of acts for VFW. So we saw the likes of James Brown, Otis Redding, you name it, Little Richard, Gladys Knight & The Pips. All of these people came through Griffin, as they say, cut their teeth right there in Griffin. And I would always ask my dad to get autographs of people when they would come to the club, and it was quite a popular spot. We didn't have any other entertainment. Of course, I wasn't able to go. This is in my mother and father's day, and they were -- you know, would go in and enjoy that. But there was -- that was fond memories of knowing that these famous people would come through with their acts right in little old Griffin, Georgia, yeah. WALKER-HARPS:You'll often hear people today talk about Raymond's prominence with the VFW and the professionals, musicians who came to Griffin as a result of him, his work, and Jimmy Holland and (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)). RASHIED:Yes, yes, Mr. Jimmy Holland, a musician, and he and my daddy were great friends. And they -- there were so many memories there that I wish that I had recorded from those days when the club was the hot spot in Griffin. I'm just trying to think of some of the other acts, but if you name some of these -- Ike & Tina Turner Revue, that's one. I had -- did a Motown Revue for the Fairmont Alumni Association for one of our reunions and put on a Motown show. And I took a letter that came from a booking agency out in Texas where they had written to daddy and they had included this flyer about the Ike & Tina Revue. And they were getting started back in those days, and they were right over there at the VFW. So that was another one of Daddy's favorite places, so he did a lot of work over there with the vets. He was a veteran of World War II, and he served in the Pacific Theater. He went to Hawaii, and I think he did about two years, but he went out right after college. He was drafted. And in fact, all of my brother -- his brothers also were vets, so they were all members of the veterans club, the VFW. BAUSKE:Can you turn up?-- WALKER-HARPS:One of -- BAUSKE:Go ahead, I'm sorry. WALKER-HARPS:One of his other sacrifices -- I consider a sacrifice -- was his serving as the first African American elected city commissioner. At that time, it would have been a sacrifice. It was not something that was common to us, and I'm sure it was not an easy deal for him. But we remember and appreciate him for having given to us -- that service for us rather. RASHIED:Well, thank you. My father, I always think of him as just a hometown boy. He loved Griffin, and he was a regular person, a very even-tempered man, very patient, very kind. And so when the opportunity came available, I understand that he was drafted in a sense to run for office. But he would not have shied away from the opportunity to do so because, as my brother said, they were testing the waters on a lot of fronts at that time. And that was about 1968, and the office for city commissioner, they wanted to try to see if we could get some blacks into office. My father knew that there were a lot of needs in the black community. You know with sidewalks and all types of services that we just did not have. And he, I feel, was the right man for that job. As I look back, that was his calling to do so. He said that he wanted to see Mr. A. C. Touchstone that was a local businessman and prominent in the black community, wanted him to run, but Mr. Touchstone thought Daddy should, and he did. And I remember my dad telling the story how he went over to the garment plant and passed out some handbills and cards to a lot of women over there. You see, he had about 500 and went in there and passed them out to all the ladies, and I guess he was feeling pretty good about that. And then he decided to go and thank the manager for letting them come into the plant to pass them out. He said he saw all of those business cards on the floor, you know just about all 500 of them. He said probably they had tossed them. So it took a couple of tries. Sixty-eight and '69, he did not win, but by 1972 was the right timing, and he became the first black city commissioner for the city of Griffin at that time. WALKER-HARPS:Well, he helped to make it the right time because I'm not sure if his (inaudible) is on the lawsuit, but I know that he worked with those very diligently to bring about or to outlaw all the process of having to elect by at-large, the single-member districts. And that allowed the opportunity to exist so that we could elect an African American, and that was the door opening that brought in all of the African American who served as (county?) and city commissioners. RASHIED:Yes, yes. It -- you're absolutely right. You have played such a major part in that story also, Mrs. Harps, to me-- be commended also for your service to the community. I hope you've been interviewed because she's been on the forefront forever as I was talking to my brother about her work in the NAACP. I know that my father thought the world of you in terms of your works and just as a person and as a teacher also, one of the teachers that was most admired in our school. And so we have to thank you for all of your contributions -- WALKER-HARPS:Well, thank you. RASHIED:-- also. WALKER-HARPS:Thank you. But Raymond was my backbone. I spent many hours down there either sitting talking or standing at the counter talking. When I would go in, Phillip will usually say, "Raymond, Ms. Walker's here" (inaudible) say, "Ms. Walker's here." (laughs) You know (I'm glad?) to do that. I was there for advice and assistance or whatever, and he was always willing to give and then to share. I will always be indebted to him and to the services that your mom did as being a very well-known, solid teacher. RASHIED:Thank you. WALKER-HARPS:Yeah. She was select-- when time to select our outstanding teacher, she was in my number. RASHIED:Thank you very much. HEAD:Thanks. RASHIED:We appreciate that. My father Raymond Jr., he had that about himself and often go to the shop, as I said, Cleanwell, and someone would be sitting next to that sewing machine talking. He had a mild manner, a way of talking, and people seem to enjoy just talking and having conversations. I think my brother has that gift. I always enjoy hearing stories that he tells. And my father also had that gift, and he'd be sewing at the sewing machine, and someone would be sitting beside him, and they were talking. He was very generous with his time and his gifts, and as I said, he was just a hometown boy. And as they say a homeboy -- town boy that made good at -- I'd like to think of him like that. He loved the city of Griffin, and he loved the people of Griffin right up until the time in his last years. Eighty-nine years old when he passed. I will be taking Daddy to church, and he'd have his Tuskegee cap on. He loved his school, and he loved his school, and we buried him with his hat in the casket. But Daddy would be sitting on the passenger side, and he'd see some of the local home folk on the street or something. He'd raise that one finger up to let them know that he was acknowledging them, and that was just the type of person that he was. He -- WALKER-HARPS:A very giving person. RASHIED:Very giving. I -- WALKER-HARPS:Never wanted anything for himself. He's always going to welfare, to (Medic-- to Medicaid?). RASHIED:Hmm, well, I thank you. He was very generous and is giving. There was a man that would come to the house a lot of times, and he'd want a little loan, and Daddy always would be very accommodating with his gifts. To whom much is given, most -- much is expected and so he certainly lived up to that. He wanted to give back to his hometown, and I think he did his very best and so did his brothers and father and mother. And my mother and the aunts, the whole family gave us or left us a wonderful legacy, and it's just our prayer to try to live as good a life as we can in memory of them and all that they left for us. WALKER-HARPS:Yeah. Well, we appreciate this, sitting here with Raymond III, (laughter) reminding me -- I almost came to tears because it just took me back some years. HEAD:Right. WALKER-HARPS:You're so much like your dad; I can almost see him in you. It's wonderful. CUNNINGHAM:Is there anything else you-all would like to share that we haven't covered? RASHIED:I'm trying to -- HEAD:Well, no. I just really appreciate the opportunity to express something that pretty much has been held in check for many years. I've never had the opportunity to really tell, you know, a side of my story other than to my sister here of what really went on and... But it wasn't all about me. The other people that walked that path with me, you know I respect their sacrifices. And when I do run into them, we'll talk about it, and I let them know that we did something that we didn't think that could be done. And we all ended up having great careers. And we have been blessed since that time. And so when I look back at what my dad wanted, I can understand the day why it is the requested that of me. It has made me a better person, and that I appreciate. WALKER-HARPS:I wonder who had (inaudible). You filled the gap that I was trying to locate someone who actually had those experiences. HEAD:Right. WALKER-HARPS:And I didn't -- so like I said well, I thought, maybe Raymond Head Jr. was one of those persons, and I said, "Okay, I'm going to have Cheryl with me there also," yeah, sure. HEAD:Right. WALKER-HARPS:We appreciate it so much. I mean you don't realize just how much you helped fill the gap in terms of history for this community. And as we said, it will be here for your grandchildren or granddau-- their grandchildren forever and ever we hope. And thank you. CUNNINGHAM:Before we wrap up, I just want to touch on one item. I understand that your dad was the first African American General Griffin. Do you-all recall being -- him being named that by the community? And if so, can you tell us a little bit about that? RASHIED:Yes, I do recall it. And that was quite an honor for my father. There was a General Griffin Ball, and I did attend the ball. And my father, we found him a uniform that he could wear. I think that he thought it was the best that would exemplify how he thought General Griffin would look. And he had a big hat, and he had a sword. And my mother had on like a southern belle gown, and we were at the General Griffin Ball. But that was a very high honor to be chosen as General Griffin, and a black General Griffin at that because, as we know, that is the founder of our beloved city. And so the General Griffin group chose him that -- bestowed that honor upon him that year. And he... And when they had their other activities in the city, they would wear their red coats, and they had their red blazers. And so when my father passed, they were all sitting on a row there at the funeral services, and they were all really, really nice gentlemen. And always Daddy was quite fond of them and thought highly of one or two -- WALKER-HARPS:Yeah, Elmer George. RASHIED:Thank you. I can remember Elmer, but I could not remember his -- Mr. Elmer George was a very -- WALKER-HARPS:Very special -- RASHIED:-- very lovely man. WALKER-HARPS:-- man. RASHIED:Yes, he was. WALKER-HARPS:And to meet him because of your dad. RASHIED:Well, he was a very nice man. Yes, I had talked to him on a couple of occasions, and thank you for giving his last name. I didn't want to mention the first name; I couldn't remember the last. But that was a highlight of Daddy's career, so to speak, to be chosen to be General Griffin. And when they erected the General Griffin statue downtown in front of the bank, -- well, it's not the bank anymore but the city -- it's at the city of Griffin building down there -- Daddy was there. He had on his General Griffin jacket. He was in a wheelchair by this time, but he was right there with his General Griffin -- other General Griffins, and that was quite a special moment for him -- WALKER-HARPS:At that time, -- RASHIED:-- and honor. WALKER-HARPS:-- it was tremendous. It was a very, very special because even though we have black now, but at that time -- period of time it was unheard of. RASHIED:Yes. WALKER-HARPS:I mean we were astonished in the community. RASHIED:Yes. WALKER-HARPS:What year was that, around if not exact? RASHIED:Let me see a moment. I had a copy of something that may have had that on it. I didn't have a copy of that page, but I -- that was -- let me think. That would've been maybe between... My father passed in 2010, so I'm going to say somewhere maybe 2007, '08, or '09, somewhere along in there. CUNNINGHAM:That he was the general? RASHIED:No, not when -- no, no. I'm getting confused. That would have been early -- let's see, all right, oh, gee -- when -- late '90s, somewhere in there, late, late '90s or -- WALKER-HARPS:It's quite a while. RASHIED:It's been quite a while ago, sometime in the '90s, yes. And yes, that was quite an event. CUNNINGHAM:Well, is there anything else that you-all would like to share to wrap up? RASHIED:Well, as my brother had stated, I'd like to say thank you to all of you, to the committee for the African American History -- Oral History Project. It has been quite an honor to sit and talk about our memories. There's so much that I could never tell once you're telling your story. And we touched on a little of my story and then you've got your father's story, your mother's story, and all of these different stories that make one. And there's so many branches on the family tree that you could never tell the story. But we are thankful that we had the parents and the (four?) parents that we had that have brought us to this day. You can't do anything alone. As the song goes, "No man is an island, no man stands alone." And so it has taken a lot of people to bring us all to this moment. But, again, we're thankful and appreciate you. My father lived by a very simple rule, and that was to treat everyone with a sense of fairness and a measure of respect, and that is what takes us through life. We have not accomplished any great things. I'll never accomplish what my father has accomplished, but we live by that rule. And the Bible just has a very simple rule, to love one another, and if we can do that, then I think we will be -- we'll be okay, but we're still trying to learn that. We're in some very troubling times today, but it's a very simple rule. If we can just treat each other fairly and respect each other, I think we will do so much better. And those are the things that helped us to get to this point. And we were a lot closer back during those days as kids, and those were happier times for us, a lot more carefree. But we continue, we that are left behind, we grow older and wiser, and we continue to try to live out the legacy that we were left. And that's pretty much it. HEAD:Well, I think my sister pretty much wraps it up. I again thank you all for this opportunity. And we are from -- our dad and mom that left us a great legacy that we are passing on to our children, and what have you. And as we are still getting a little up in age now, I like to end it by saying, and we still rise, thank you. CUNNINGHAM:Thank you so much, both of you thank you so much for your time. RASHIED:You're so welcome, so welcome. BAUSKE:And all -- what did I miss? Oh. (laughter) (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) WALKER-HARPS:We talked -- END OF AUDIO FILE
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audio
0
purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL418GAA/findingaid
Location
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Griffin, Georgia
Duration
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95 minutes
OHMS Object
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https://purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL418GAA-015/ohms
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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Interview with Cheryl Head Rashied and Raymond Head III, June 22, 2017
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RBRL418GAA-015
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Cheryl Head Rashied
Raymond Head III
Be-Atrice Cunningham
Jewel Walker-Harps
Ellen Bauske
Rich Braman
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audio
oral histories
Subject
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Civil rights
Segregation
Discrimination
African American women
United States--Civil rights
Description
An account of the resource
Cheryl Head Rashied and Raymond Head III were born in Griffin, Georgia in 1948 and 1950, respectively. Cheryl and Raymond are the children of civil rights activist Raymond Head Jr., and experienced first-hand the effects of discrimination on the Griffin community. In this interview, Cheryl and Raymond discuss their experiences with mandatory integration, retaliation by Ku Klux Klan, and remember Griffin during the 1950s and 60s.
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2017-06-22
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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sound
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Griffin, Georgia
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-
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Title
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Griffin African American Oral History Project
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Georgia--History, Local
African Americans--History
Georgia--Communities
Description
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The Griffin African American Oral History Project is a collaboration between the Griffin Branch NAACP, the Griffin Campus Library of the University of Georgia, and the Richard B. Russell Library. The seed was planted in the meetings of the Educational Prosperity Initiative which is also chaired by the president of the Griffin Branch NAACP, Jewel Walker-Harps. Collaborators on the project include: Griffin Housing Authority; Spalding County Collaborative; Fairmont Alumni Association; University of Georgia—Athens and Griffin campuses; and the Educational Prosperity Initiative, which is an affiliate of the Spalding County Collaborative and others. Interviewers on the project include: John Cruickshank, librarian at UGA-Griffin Campus Library; Jewel Walker-Harps, President of the Griffin, GA Branch of the NAACP; Art Cain, coordinator of Continuing Education for UGA-Griffin; Be-Atrice Cunningham, project manager for College of Agricultural and Environmental Science for Griffin; and Ellen Bauske, senior public service associate at the Georgia Center for Urban Agriculture in Griffin. Rich Braman was the sound engineer for this project. <br />The Griffin African American Oral History Project intends to document the experiences of people who lived in Fairmont Community in Griffin, Georgia during the civil rights era and through its transformation to the present day.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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2015-2018
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Oral histories
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RBRL418GAA
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Griffin, Georgia
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
OHMS Object Text
Contains OHMS index and/or transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable.
5.4
Interview with Curtis Jones, June 27, 2017
RBRL418GAA-016
RBRL418GAA
Griffin African American Oral History Project
Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia
Curtis Jones
Art Cain
Jewel Walker-Harps
Ellen Bauske
Rich Braman
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audio
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47
Mandatory and voluntary integration
I am Curtis Jones, superintendent of the Bibb County School System...
Jones talks about how his parents' careers affected his upbringing. Jones recalls his experience in being one of the first black students to integrate into Sacred Heart Elementary. Jones relates his transition to Junior High School and talks about some of the friends he had growing up. Jones details the process of mandatory integration and his first days attending the newly integrated Griffin High School.
Bibb County Public School District;Griffin High School;mandatory integration;Sacred Heart Elementary School;Spaulding Junior High School
511
Griffin High School experience
So I will tell you what my thoughts are...
Jones describes the differences between voluntary and mandatory integration, and his experience with both. Jones recalls how his mother helped him with the transition to attending a white school. Jones mentions how his experience at Griffin High School had an impact on his future career. Jones talks about his decision to run for president of the student body at his school, and how he built a following among the students for his campaign.
Fairmount High School;Griffin High School;Griffin-Spaulding County;mandatory integration;Sacred Heart Elementary;Virginia Ball;voluntary integration
957
Football and the Army
Athletics did that, and when...
Jones talks about how his experience on Griffin High School's football team assisted him in gathering support for his student presidential campaign and also influenced his decision to go into the Army. Jones recalls how he came to attend West Point Military Academy. Jones mentions his friends in high school and how they impacted his high school experience.
Air Force;Griffin High School;military;United States Military Academy West Point
1329
Integrating Griffin High School / Returning to Griffin
Now, I'll tell you when there was competition...
Jones recalls how the consolidation of the Griffin and Fairmount High School football teams spurred competition, as players from the historically black and white schools initially viewed each other as rivals. Jones talks about returning to Griffin, Georgia after graduating from West Point Military Academy and how he came to lead the ROTC branch at Griffin High School. Jones mentions how he became the first black principle of Griffin High.
competition;Fairmount High School;Griffin High School;integration;Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC)
1772
Becoming the Superintendent of the Griffin School System
So when I joined the staff in '97...
Jones relates how he rose from the position of ROTC leader to the position of principal of Griffin High School in 2005 to finally the position of Griffin Spalding Superintendent. Jones shares how he was received by the white staff at Griffin High School. Jones adds how his experience attending Griffin High School eased his experience of transitioning into the role as principal.
Griffin High School;Walter Pyron;William Walker
2169
Administration issues
And the principal who was going...
Jones talks about how opening Spalding High School proved to be a contentious subject for the employees of Griffin High School. Jones relates an experience he had with an angry mother who felt threatened by the majority African American administration of Griffin High School. Jones mentions how he dealt with a problem among staff concerning dress code.
Griffin High School;Spalding High School;Todd McGee;Walter Pyron
2601
Experience in the Army / Integration and merging
So, in the military, I was an...
Jones talks about his twenty year career in the military. Jones explains the process of merging the staff of Fairmount and Griffin High School. Jones emphasizes how creating separate schools for grades 6-8 assisted with the distribution of staff after mandatory integration. Jones shares how this integration method was also applied for the sports teams of Griffin High School.
Albany State, Georgia;Fairmount High School;Fort Benning, Georgia;Fort Leavenworth;Germany;Griffin High School
3080
Family and career experiences
Mom and Dad came from Texas...
Jones talks about his upbringing and recalls his experiences visiting his grandparents. Jones talks about his family's history and his father's career in the army. Jones shares how his parents upheld their beliefs in the Civil Rights movement in their decision to allow him to integrate to Spalding Middle School. Jones relates some of the decisions he had to make as superintendent of the Griffin school system.
Kiwanis Club of Griffin;Sacred Heart Elementary School;Texas;Trinity CME Church;University of Georgia
3569
Concluding thoughts
Here's a story about Dr. Bradley...
Jones recalls some of the interactions he had with Dr. Bradley, while trying to become the principal of Griffin High School. Jones shares how, despite his lack of formal education in the way of administration, he managed to make improvements in the Griffin school system.
Dr. Bradley;education;Griffin, Georgia
Oral history
rbrl418gaa-016_jones ART CAIN:Okay, it is June 27th, about two o'clock, in 2017, and we're here in the conference room for the Center for Urban Agriculture. We're here with Colonel Jones, who is the former superintendent of -- should say Curtis Jones, who's the former superintendent of Griffin Spalding County schools and currently superintendent of schools in Macon, Georgia. My name is Art Cain. I'm here at the University of Georgia in the Office of Continuing Education. CURTIS JONES:Hi. I'm Curtis Jones, superintendent of the Bibb County school system. I'm also a resident of Griffin Spalding County, and I am a former superintendent here for six years. JEWEL WALKER-HARPS:Jewel Walker-Harps, president of the Griffin branch NAACP, and cosponsor of the African American Oral History Project. ELLEN BAUSKE:I'm Ellen Bauske. I'm with the UGA Center for Urban Agriculture. RICHIE BRAMAN:I'm Richie Braman. And I'm also with the UGA Center for Urban Agriculture. CAIN:Okay, I'll start. Curtis, I have considered you a literal icon here in Griffin. You've had many distinguished accomplishments over your career, being the first African American principal at Griffin High School, first African American superintendent of schools here in Griffin. Prior to that a distinguished career in our military. And now currently superintendent of Bibb County schools. And what we want you to do is just kind of reflect back and tell us how you got -- how you were able to be able to set yourself up to have such accomplishments as you've had over the course of your career. JONES:I appreciate that. Truthfully it's not about me, it's about a lot of folks. And I'll tell you it begins with my mom and my dad. Mom was a teacher here in Griffin Spalding. She taught at -- as far as I can remember the first school was Annie Shockley Elementary. And I'll tell you, being a child of a teacher at the school can be hard, right, Richie? We were able to get in trouble, and whenever I got in trouble in second grade, they said, "Boy, I'm going to tell your mama." I learned to get straight. I will tell you that my dad was a minister here at Trinity CME Church. And because of that it created a foundation. After going through an experience at Anne Street and being in segregated schools for grades one through four, voluntary segregation -- integration occurred, and I was allowed to go to Sacred Heart Elementary School. And while at Sacred Heart I learned a lot of different skills. I remember my brother, my sister, and I were usually the minorities in our class, and it was the first time you had to wear a uniform. At that time it was a white shirt, navy blue pants, and black or brown shoes. As you've already mentioned though, I learned to wear a uniform for 20 years after that, when I joined the army. That became though part of the experience that my parents put us through, because while I stayed at Sacred Heart for two years, what I found was that when it was time to go to seventh grade, I had to make a decision. Was I going to go to what was called Spalding Junior High or go to Kelsey? One was a majority black school, one was majority white. We currently at that time lived in Barnesville, and we commuted back and forth every day. And so like most kids I just turned to the people who were in my class and said, "Where are you going?" And the majority of them said Spalding Junior High. So I went too. I think at that age it was trying to be, you know, know who your friends are and go. I also will tell you though that I think part of it started with my parents allowing me to play football when I was in sixth grade. Eleven years old, never played organized sports, but I will tell you that I still remember this, but at the end of that first season I got the most valuable player award. (laughs) And I still remember what it looks like. But it was different, because I truthfully had more fun practicing than playing the football games. Practice, you know who your friends are, you're competing with them, you talk to them about what you're doing. After that I went to junior high, and that was a very unique experience. And I will tell you it was unique in several ways. There was one individual named Wayne K. who was -- I'd known when I was in first grade. And then Wayne and I separated. We came back together in seventh. And Wayne was in advanced classes and I was in regular classes. But we were both able to compete. Later on Wayne went on to Howard University and became a lawyer. Another person I met when I was there was Randal. Randal came from Pike County but Randal also went on and became a state legislator. And -- WALKER-HARPS:Randal Mangham? JONES:Yeah. Randal Mangham. And so he and I became friends at that point. It was interesting when we went through that. But learning football and learning who people were and creating relationships I think was key for me at that point, because it was interesting, but during that time of voluntary integration, I remember in eighth grade I ran for student body president. And I was riding home in the car with my mom one day. She said, "Boy, you ran for president of that school?" (laughs) And I said, "How did you know?" And she said, "I know. You going to win?" I said, "Mom, I don't know." Turned out I came in second. But it was surprising to Mom that, you know, we even came that close at all. And she also thought it was funny because -- I'll say this to you, Jewel -- I ran. Randal ran. Wayne ran. A girl named Michelle R. ran as well. A bunch of us ran. We were just kids going to school. And then I think, Art, what happened for me also though was I went to Griffin High. And Griffin High, when now you had mandatory integration of schools, and that for me was in the tenth grade. And what I remember distinctly about that summer is this. At the time the integration of schools was based on the seventy-thirty percentage. Seventy percent black, 30 percent -- no, 70 percent white, 30 percent black. And there was a guy who I knew, Danny Wayne. Danny Wayne was the copresident of that class. And Danny Wayne was another student who was with me at Annie Shockley. He was two years ahead. He was a person I looked up to. I said, "Like man, I want to grow up and be like Danny." So I come back after all these years and I see him for the very first time and he's copresident. And Danny is writing on the blackboard. And he puts twelfth grade seven white three -- seven Griffin High three Fairmont. And then he -- eleventh grade, seven, three. He got to tenth grade. And he wrote six parentheses one, three. And I remember sitting there looking at that and saying, "What?" And a friend of mine, Tony Head, who I played with later, said, "Curtis, why are you looking at that like that?" I said, "Why'd he put six, one in parentheses?" He says, "Because it's seven white but you came from Spalding. They voted you in so they're trying to figure out how to count you." (laughs) And I felt like holy cow. And so Danny then went over -- yes, sir. CAIN:I just -- JONES:Am I talking too much? CAIN:Can you tell us a little bit (inaudible) continue but I just wanted you to tell us a little bit about that distinction between voluntary integration and mandatory I guess. JONES:Okay. So I will tell you what my thoughts are. Mom was a teacher. And I remember when I was going to Annie Shockley, which was an all-black school -- now it's called Anne Street -- Mom was a teacher there. And I think teachers were required to send their children to public schools. Was -- that was my impression. But that year Mom said, "Curtis, you don't have to go to Anne Street any -- to Annie Shockley anymore, we want to put you in Sacred Heart. And -- but it's voluntary. You don't have to go." That was what she said. And I said, "Is anybody else going?" And I said, "I don't know." And so that whole idea of voluntary was you were able then to go to a white school if you were black or a black school if you were white. But you volunteered to do that. And really it kicked in for me when -- between that Spalding Junior High and Fairmont. Because I didn't know at the time there were two different middle schools. I just didn't. I just stayed in my class or stayed in my lane. And so when we got there it was probably -- if it was seventy-thirty when I got to high school, it must have been ninety-ten (laughs) when I was in junior high. But I will tell you, the people who were there wanted to be there. And we kind of band together a little bit. But it was interesting. When I got to tenth grade there was no longer that option. And I'll be honest with you. My experience now tells me that Griffin Spalding did it well. They decided to have one school where all seventh graders went, one school for all eighth graders, one school for all ninth graders. And then one high school for grades 10, 11, and 12. That didn't happen all over the South but it happened here in Griffin Spalding. And I remember my mom telling me -- she came back from a board meeting and she said, "You know," and she named the principal, he was the principal up at Beaverbrook. And he just said, "You know, we've been dragging our feet on this for about 15 years, they just told us it's time to do it, so we're going to do it." CAIN:So it was that transition from that voluntary period until -- JONES:To mandatory. CAIN:-- full. Yeah. JONES:Full integration. WALKER-HARPS:The law insisted that you do it when it became mandatory. When we consider prior to then when we -- teachers and students transferred that it was voluntary. But I never did because I went -- and I didn't volunteer, I went because -- JONES:(laughs) You were told. WALKER-HARPS:(inaudible). JONES:Well, you know, the thing that was interesting is my mom was told that same year that I went to Sacred Heart. She ended up being assigned to Beaverbrook and I remember she was scared. And it's interesting when you're a child and you see your mom worried about that. Didn't know about the north side of Griffin or Spalding County and she ended up going there for that one year. And I remember hearing, heard Mom and Dad just talking about it. But she went. And my impression was -- now this is where I may get in trouble -- the black schools picked who they thought were some of the very best teachers that would go, that would not embarrass them. And then later my impression was that some of the white teachers who went to the black schools may not have been the very best but they were some -- the ones with the best attitudes about I can go and I can make a difference. And that ended up being key. Part of what made it work for me though was Mom. Mom went to Beaverbrook. Later she went to Jackson Road with a principal, Gladys Harden. Stayed there for about 20 years I think. WALKER-HARPS:At least. JONES:Became a part of that family. And was special. But I think that experience in Griffin High worked for me. When you talk about being the first black principal or the first black ROTC, I will tell you it started for me back in high school. In high school when I was in eleventh grade I ran for student body president. Truthfully it was I think having white friends and black friends, playing football, being somewhat, you know, known. And that same guy who was with me who said, "Curtis, they're trying to figure out what to do with you," that was Tony. He got elected vice president. I got elected president. And after that my mom came to me and said, "I'm just surprised. I never thought that would happen at this point in time." But I also remember a Ms. Ball. Ms. Ball was the counselor at the school. WALKER-HARPS:Virginia Ball. JONES:Virginia Ball. I wasn't sure how much names I could use. I can use them? WALKER-HARPS:(inaudible). JONES:Okay. Virginia Ball. Had been my second grade teacher when she was Ms. Hodo at Annie Shockley. Then when I was getting ready to go to fifth grade she'd gotten married, became Ms. Ball, was going to be my fifth grade teacher. Well, I get to high school, and there she is the counselor. And I remember Ms. Ball saying, "Curtis, you're fortunate, you're going to be president of the student body. But you need to work something out. What's going to happen when you leave? We always need to have some kind of representation. And so I think you ought to do something like the president is black, the vice president is white, or vice versa. But they need to do that." I said, "Ms. Ball, how can I do anything about that?" She says, "You're the president of the student body, the first one that we've had, just talk to the principal." And so I did. I went and talked to Coach Gray and I just shared that idea with him and he said, "Curtis, why would we do that?" And my response was, "You run for president of the United States, you're on the ticket, let them run on tickets. And doesn't have to be mandatory but if things are like they are I think people are going to see diversity as a good thing." I was surprised but when I came back to Griffin after 20 years in the military, people running for student body council at Griffin High were running on tickets. One black, one white. And that's who was winning. Not mandatory. But people were still electing that way. That was surprising to me. CAIN:Just to back up a little bit about your run for president, student body president at the time. Was that -- how did you -- because you were kind of in two worlds. How did you cultivate the kind of relationships in both worlds that allowed you -- allowed for you to get that kind of vote from your student body colleagues? JONES:I think in a lot of ways it was athletics. When I played football I started off in the city league. And back in that day elementary schools had their own football teams. And so we played and I learned who the players were, they learned who I was. That second year they stopped having school teams but they just had rec teams and you signed up. But truthfully the athletes knew each other. And that group of us in that particular year, we were pretty special, I'll be honest. We got together in eighth grade. So and that just became the nucleus I would say. But that group of us, we stayed together. We were undefeated in eighth. Undefeated in ninth. About four of us made the varsity as sophomores. And then when we became seniors our team went nine, one, and one, won the region championship, beat R. E. Lee for the first time in recent history and people were happy. And I just think it was just a special group that came together. Randy Pass was on the team, ended up playing for the New York Giants, went to Georgia Tech on a scholarship. Tony Head ended up going to Georgia Tech, doing very well. Terry Willis, who was -- went to Fort Valley. David Wolfoff, who became a city policeman here, went to Fort Valley on a scholarship. Setter Jun, Keith Tubble. I mean we were just -- we were pretty good. But I think athletics did that. And when I got to West Point what I learned was that it's on those fields when you're struggling with something that is unique -- not unique, but common to everybody. You form a friendship. And I think that happened for us at that time. We were special. I'll tell you now. It was scary. I remember my sophomore year when we were playing one of the very first games. Might have been like the third game of the season. It was a home game and there was this guy who was walking on this guy's yard and he got killed. Shot, because he was trespassing. After that they changed all our games to day games. We started playing on Saturdays. Coach Dowis, who was our head football coach, Johnny Goodrum, who was an assistant coach, made a difference though. That next year they took us up to summer training camp and they said, "Look, forget what's happening there. This is about us and what we're going to do." And that training experience for us just bonded us in a way that you can't imagine. You ever seen the movie Remember the Titans? CAIN:Mm-hmm. JONES:It was just like that experience where we went up and went to camp and we came back. And we were just unique. So anyway I think living in both worlds worked for me. It made it easier for me to then decide to go to West Point. That was probably life-changing for me in more ways than I realized. Now I'll tell you, I only did one year of ROTC in high school. Didn't want to be in the military. (laughs) No. Didn't want to wear a uniform. But West Point was unique. And when my dad found out about the opportunity for me to go, because Congressman Jack Flynt gave me a nomination, he said, "Son, if that works for you that's the thing to do. I'm trying to save money for you to go to college. But if you do this it'll help us out a whole lot." And that by itself was unique. Just, you know, sometimes it just turns out how things happen. I was in a French class. Mr. Russell was my French teacher. And Mr. Russell said to me -- he was absent one day -- and he said, "Curtis, what did you say with that substitute teacher who was in here?" And I said, "Sir, I didn't say anything. (laughs) I didn't do anything. I'm sorry." He says, "No no no, it's good." And he was out again and she came back. Turned out later I found out she was really a vocational teacher that they had sent in. And -- but we were talking about race and issues like that. And she just came up to me one day and said, "What are you going to do when you graduate?" I said, "I think I want to fly airplanes, maybe be a pilot." And she said, "You think you can do that?" And I said, "I guess." So she said, "I got a person I want you to meet and I'm -- he's going to give you a call." That person was Jack Flynt. She had been his teacher. And so he called, asked me to come out to his house, he lived down there on Poplar Street. And he told me. He says, "Curtis, you impressed my former teacher. I still listen to her. She asked me to give you a nomination for West Point. I don't -- I mean for the Air Force Academy. I don't have any. But if you're willing to go to Military Academy I can get you one of those. And if that doesn't work out for you, I have a friend named John Conyers," a guy from I think Michigan, or Pennsylvania. CAIN:No, Detroit. JONES:Detroit, Michigan. "He can get you a nomination to the Air Force Academy if you like that." And I said, "Yes, sir." I'm thinking like man. That was how I ended up going. But West Point changed and it was all because of football and being willing to work with people. So a long answer to a short question. CAIN:Great answer. WALKER-HARPS:You talked about several young men who went to Spalding with you. Did you bond as a unit or was there rivalry among you? JONES:Well, Randal was on the football team and Randal Mangham is the one who became a state legislator and he and I ended up being -- we continued to be friends. With Wayne, Wayne and I had been -- Wayne came to Anne Street -- Annie Shockley -- for like two weeks. His mom was my first grade teacher. And he then left and went to Moore Elementary and attended school there until we got to junior high. There was no competition among us. Wayne was just smart. I was an athlete. And so I don't think we had any kind of competition among ourselves. What I learned is that there was safety. And so sometimes you see somebody in the hallway and they would just give you a look or a nod and you felt like it was okay. I remember though there was a -- in middle school, you know how you have bullies? There was this one family moved in. And they were fighting everybody. (laughs) They were fighting everybody. There was one black boy there who was, what's his name, James Leeks. James said, "Look, I'm not going to fight you." But these three brothers that moved in, they were Caldwells, they were going to fight everybody. And so they did. And we had a big fight in the gym between James and the middle Caldwell boy, first name was Joe. And it just happened. You know, but to be truthful, whenever that happens, teachers aren't around. (laughs) Principals aren't around. It just happens. And everybody knew that fight was going to happen. And when it was over, I remember the Caldwell boy looked at me and said, "All right, I'm going to fight you tomorrow." (laughs) I looked. And I said, "Why?" He says, "Because I'm going to be king of the hill." And I said, "Okay. You can be king of the hill." He says, "That's it? We're not going to fight?" And I said, "No." He threw his hands up in the air and said, "Yay, I'm the best." And for him that was a big deal. So that's what he wanted to do. But there was no competition for us. You know, we were just trying to make honor roll, trying to do well. And that's just -- that was what it was. But again when I played football I'll tell you this. Mom was driving a Simca, and practice would be after school. And I could see the car up on the hill every day just waiting to -- waiting for practice to be over so I can get my stinky behind in the car and ride 17 miles to get home. But there was no competition for that. Now I'll tell you when there was competition was when we integrated the schools in high school. That first year when we came together, you have to think about it this way. You had two football teams, one black, one white, one Fairmont, one Griffin High. And you had two returning quarterbacks, two returning centers. Everybody was a starter who was coming back. And the question became how's that going to work. Johnny Goodrum, who ended up being assistant coach, had been -- and Coach Hiram Whitaker had been the head football coach over there. They made him the assistant coach for Coach Dowis. Trying to pull staff together, trying to pull teams together. I mean that was hard. It was very hard. Because people thought they were going to start. For me it ended up being a little bit more difficult. And I'll tell you why. Those black boys who were at Fairmont, they didn't know me. This was just a little black boy who was over there playing with those white boys, who can't play. And they were going to show me they could play. And I tell you what. (laughs) We had drills. And they lit me up. Day after day after day. But eventually I think I won them over by just keep -- I just kept coming back and just kept trying to learn. And I'll say this. Coach Goodrum, who was the backs coach at the time, he was setting me up too. Curtis, go over there and run the ball. Oowee. But after that, turned out to be okay. Here's what else happened though, Art, that made things work for me. After going to West Point and coming back after 20 years, and I found out that Mom was sick, and she needed help transitioning from the hospital to come home, and for me it was a transitional period. I had three children. We wanted them to learn their grandparents. I came back to Griffin. And I went into a meeting with one of my friends down in Barnesville, Carl Ogletree. And Carl said, "Curtis, go find out about ROTC in Griffin. My wife is a teacher and she can find out if we can start one here in Lamar County. You go up to Griffin and find out how to do it." Well, I did. And in Griffin they told me, "It's a federal thing, you just can't start one. They're not starting any more. But our guy Colonel Imes is getting ready to retire. Why don't you come interview for that job?" And I said, "Like whoa, okay. I don't have a uniform." "You don't need a uniform, just come on up." This was like on a Tuesday. I got home, I got a phone call. "This is Colonel Imes. Is this Curtis Jones?" "Yes, sir." "I understand that you're interested in Junior ROTC." "Well, I really don't know a lot about Junior ROTC." "Well, I'm getting ready to retire. I've been here for 20 years." And I'll tell you that caused me pause. And I'll tell you why. When I was in high school at Griffin High ROTC started in 1966. Major Pelt came aboard in 1967. And then they had a couple other people that came on. But I'm talking about in '97 when I got back, Imes had been there for 20 of those 30 years. That's how long he had been at Griffin High. He was an institution. And he called me up, interviewed me, and said, "Look, I'm going to recommend you for the job." As I was getting ready to leave I saw this guy. And he was a black NCO. And he said, "Hey, sir, how you doing?" I said, "I'm fine, how are you?" And he said, "I'm good." He said, "You Curtis Jones?" And I said, "Yes, sir, I am." "One that played football at Griffin High, number 21?" "Yes, sir, I am." "One that used to play for the Saints back when you were in the sixth grade?" "Yes, sir, I am, how do you know that?" He said, "I used to be a recruiter back in Griffin, I saw you then. My name is Lee McRae. And you up here interviewing for this job?" I said, "Yes, sir, I am." He said, "I think you're going to get it because they're looking for somebody from Griffin to come on back and you're just a Griffin kind of guy." Because of Lee I think I helped get the job. Went in for an interview with the principal, who was Mike McLemore, was the incoming principal. And Larry White was the outgoing principal. They did a joint interview. McLemore said, "I'm going to recommend you for the position," so we started out together. And I'll just tell you that that just turned out to be a blessing for me with Lee McRae and how that turned out. But again I think it was part of having my being in both worlds because when I found out I was going to be recommended to be the principal -- this is four years later -- I needed some recommendations. And he was one of them. And so was Dr. McLemore. But I will tell you something that worked for me. Having done ROTC for four years at the school, and having done the interviews, I'll be honest, I was scared. I mean Griffin High was a big school. It was like 1,900 kids, one of the biggest in the state. And people used to come to Griffin to see what a school looks like. And this is from a guy who's been in the army for 20 years but didn't really know a whole lot about what to do. I'll tell you Mom said to me, "They going to make you the principal? What are they thinking about?" (laughs) I said, "Well, Mom." I said, "I don't know." And so what happened was I ended up interviewing, got the position. And during one of the very first meetings we had -- this is another thing that worked for me -- we went out on the football field to talk about what happens during a bomb threat. And when we were coming back in all the black staff peeled off to the right and went down the 600 -- down the 800 hallway into a room. And Doc Richard Beaton was walking in with me, and he said, "Where are all those folks going?" And Kay Moore, who was my secretary, about to be my secretary, said, "Oh, the black staff wants to meet with Dr. -- with Colonel Jones." And he said, "Well, I want to go." And she said, "No, you can't go, this is just for them." And he said, "Oh. Okay." Well, he said, "When you finish that you come talk to me." I said, "Doc, I'll come see you." So I went into the room. And they said to me, "Look, you're the first black principal for Griffin High School. We want you to be successful. We don't want you to do anything stupid. We're going to support you. We're going to do our very best. We ask that you do your very best as well." And I said, "Okay." And we kind of came to that common understanding. Never met like that again. Never had that conversation again. Until I was asked to speak at a black history program and I shared that story probably, I don't know, it may have been 16 years later. Where that group just said, "We're going to support you." And I can tell you I can remember occasions now that may not seem significant where they helped me. I'll give you one. I was asked to make morning announcements when I was the principal. And, you know, going through school, you learn phonics and how to speak, but there was this word that I said that was wrong. I would always say, "And this," how did I say it? I said, "And this Saurday I want you guys to come in and talk to us about how to do this." Or, "This Saurday we're going to do this." Jewel McCann was one of my English teachers. She came down and she said, "Look. If you're going to be principal of this school you're going to stop saying Saurday. It's Saturday." I said, "Yes, ma'am." That was the small kinds of things they did to help me out that, you know, in some ways will take away your credibility but in other ways -- and so she helped me with that. BAUSKE:I'm confused about ROTC and principal. JONES:Okay. BAUSKE:Can you talk about that (inaudible). JONES:What happened? BAUSKE:Yes. JONES:So when I joined the staff in '97 the principal made me the chairperson of the discipline committee for school improvement. The next year, he made me the -- a -- I guess I was the cochair a second time of that committee. Then my third year, he put me in charge of the school improvement. And that fourth year he retired. And so based on that and working on SAT improvement, the superintendent and others asked me if I'd apply for the position. And so I then moved from after four years of doing ROTC, I became the principal of the high school. And then after being principal of the high school for four years I was talking to Walter Powry, who was then the assistant superintendent. And I was saying, "Dr. Powry, you know, I've been doing this now for about four years, I'm trying to understand. Where am I going?" And he says, "Curtis, I'm probably going to retire in about two years and I think you're going to be taking my place." Turned out he retired that year, and I applied for that position and I got it as well. BAUSKE:And what year was it? JONES:That was 2005. So I was assistant super -- so ROTC for four years, high school principal for four years, and then I became the assistant superintendent for administrative services for four years. And then after that I applied to become the superintendent and I got that as well. That was another story too. I'll just give you the short part about help. I was a member of Trinity CME Church, that's where my dad had been a pastor. Johnny Goodrum was a member of that church as well as some other folks who were educators. And one day I was -- got a phone call from Johnny Goodrum, and he said, "Curtis, can you meet me down at the church?" And I said, "Yeah, coach, I can meet you down there." Told you he was my previous coach. He says, "There's some people want to meet you, they understand you're going to be -- you're applying to be superintendent and they just want to talk to you." "Okay." I told my wife about it and she said, "What are they going to do?" I said, "Dear, I don't know." So I went down to the church and inside the church there was William Matchett, Dr. -- was the principal at Moore -- WALKER-HARPS:Nesbith. JONES:Dr. William Nesbith. Johnny Goodrum. Mr. Walker. WALKER-HARPS:William Walker. JONES:William Walker. Were there. And Coach Goodrum. And Coach Goodrum introduced them all. Truthfully I'd never really met any of them before except Goodrum at the time. And kind of knew Matchett. And he just told me, said, "They want to talk to you because you're going to apply to be the superintendent." And it turned out they didn't -- I thought it was going to be an interview. It turned out them just telling me stories about what happened with them as they were administrators and going through and lessons that they learned. So I was there for about an hour and a half just listening to these wise guys tell me about what they had learned and some of their experiences. And then after that I told my wife about it and she said, "What'd they ask you?" And I told her they just talked to me. Later I found out though that that group had actually called the superintendent and some board members and they endorsed me for being superintendent. And Jesse Bradley, who at that time was the superintendent, said, "Curtis, I want to be honest with you. You got people on the north side of town and people on the south side of town. You got people on the north side of town, that's the black side, and they're supporting you. You got people on the south side of town," and they're supporting this other internal candidate who was there who turned out -- who was white. And he says, "But the advantage you have is you also got some people on the south side of town calling for you as well." He says, "I don't know if that's going to make a big difference or not but it means something to me." And I ended up getting the position. So that ended up being unique as well. And I'll be honest. As superintendent I fully felt supported by everybody. And I was worried there for a while, you know. Ms. Harps scared me for a while. She was president of the NAACP, I said, "Oh Lord, what is she going to call and ask me? What do I have to do? I'm trying to raise the graduation rate. Just give me some time." (laughs) WALKER-HARPS:You had advantage. Your mom and I were very very good friends. And your dad had been a good friend. JONES:And he was also friends with Calvin Hill, who was my ninth grade science teacher. Remember I told you when I was in first grade, when I was in elementary? I was in tenth grade biology class with some students. And I'll be honest. Biology was hard. And Mr. Hill was the teacher. And I remember one day we were getting ready to do some -- cut some frogs and that kind of stuff. And people were just acting silly. And so I started acting silly with them. He just grabbed me and took me aside, said, "Look, boy, I know your daddy, you keep that up, I'm going to call him." And I said, "You know my dad?" He said, "I know Curtis. And I know Roberta." And I said, "Ooh." (laughs) Didn't get out of line anymore after that. So for me I think that helped me out some so -- CAIN:Can I -- WALKER-HARPS:How well were you received by the white staff at Griffin High? Because that was their first experience having to receive orders from a black person? And particularly a black man. Were there challenges? JONES:Well, yes and no. So the first part of it is Mr. Johnston, who had been the French teacher when I was in high school, Jim, James Johnston, was one of the ones who wrote a letter of endorsement for me for going into the position. He had been Evelyn's teacher when we were in high school, and so he still remembered, he was one of the ones who I visited when I came back. Mark Fenezee had been my ninth grade science teacher, and so now Mark was the head of the counseling department. There was also Ms. Jackson, who was my ninth -- my tenth grade math teacher, who was there for that one year, who introduced me to Evelyn, who I -- became my girlfriend and my -- now my wife. And so I was not a total stranger to some. And so that helped when I first got there. And when I became the principal, because I'd been on the staff and had led the leadership, there -- most of them were willing to come on board. We had another issue that divided us more so than being a black principal, and that is that we were opening Spalding Junior High -- Spalding High School at that point in time. And the principal who was going to be for Spalding High was located in that building and was actively recruiting people. And at this point now I'm going to be the principal and he's telling people, "Come on over with us to Spalding High School because we're going to have a great school." And people are like, "Well, wait a minute, you saying we're not great?" And so -- and well, you're great, but you're going to stay here, we're going to go do this other thing. And it was like oh. And so it just divided the staff. And it started before we even had opened Spalding High. And so that was difficult because I'm now the person who's going to be the principal of the school. Todd is the -- yeah. Well, put his name -- was -- WALKER-HARPS:(inaudible) it's okay. JONES:Todd McGee was going to be the principal of Spalding High. And he pulled in one of our assistant principals who was out who was making this. That's what was hard. And then trying to figure out how do you divide a staff and keep things going. And wondering are you losing -- and who you're losing. It turned out later, what I realized is that a lot of the people who went to Spalding had come from Spalding Junior High and were ninth grade teachers and they had never really felt as if they were a full part of the staff at Griffin High anyway. And so they were able to go and create that environment, that school that they wanted to have. Now here's a story though that was hard. One day I was principal of the school, and I walked out of the main office into the hallway and I looked down. And classes were going on. And I saw this group of people come out of the building. And it was a mother, her child, assistant principal, teacher. And the mother said, "Look, I'm not going to talk to you anymore. I'm just going down. I'm going to see the principal." And the boy looked up and said, "Well, there's the principal right there." And she says, "I ain't going to talk to him, I'm going downtown." And so they left and went downtown. Wally Snell, who was my assistant principal, and Clint Middleton came, who was the teacher, came, told me what had happened. They said, "Son is not doing well, he's failing, we tried to tell them that. But, you know, they wanted to talk to you but we just said going downtown." So they did. Little while later I got a phone call from Walter Powry and Walter said, "Curtis, just had this parent come see me. And she's not happy. But I told her she got to follow chain of command, she's coming back to see you. But I'm going to tell you now race is a part of this issue." And I said, "Oh, okay." So I thought about it. She was white, her son was white. Clint Middleton was a black male. Wally Snell, the assistant principal, was a black male. I was the principal of the school, a black male. She got downtown and saw the assistant superintendent Walter Powry, a black male. (laughs) She came back in and saw me. What I did though was Jamie Cassidy, who was an assistant principal I had, was on campus, and I called Jamie in, who was white. We met, we had a great conversation. But the conversation started off with the student looking at me and saying, "Colonel Jones, just want to tell you, I don't really have a problem with Negroes. I mean I have a lot of friends who are." And I said, "No problem." And so that was -- we had situations like that, I guess, you know, but Cassidy was great, he helped that environment. And I'll tell you I learned something. People want to take care of their kids the very best they can. And they just want to believe that somebody understands. And what that parent was looking for was somebody who she thought understood. For her that was Cassidy. WALKER-HARPS:I would think that more so than race your military background and your procedure, your attitude would have had more effect than race. JONES:(laughs) WALKER-HARPS:(inaudible) after having come back from the military, and your sternness, and your being so adamant about what you believed. JONES:Well, that did get me in trouble. We were coming back from a meeting in Macon one day. And it was my first year. And my secretary called and said, "Colonel Jones, I have a petition from some teachers." "A petition?" "Yes." "What is it about?" "They don't think you're enforcing the dress code with students and so they're mad. And so they --" "How many people signed that?" "Oh, 25, 30." "Are you serious?" "Yes, sir." I said, "Tell you what. We're going to have a faculty meeting. We're on our way back now. I want everybody to meet me on the JROTC rifle range." "The rifle range?" I said, "The rifle range. I want you to take the chairs in the rifle range, I want you to divide them in half, I want them facing each other, one on one side of the room, one on the other. We'll be back in about 35 minutes." Got back to Griffin High School. Ms. Moore met me at the door and said, "They're all down on the rifle range." (laughs) I said, "Okay." Went down to the rifle range. My assistant principals were waiting for me. I walked in. I said, "Look, I see this petition. People say that they're upset about dress code. I am too but here's the problem. If you have a child for first period and the child is not in dress code, you didn't do anything about it, and that makes second period, third period, fourth period, and fifth period teachers all upset because they think everybody's breaking dress code just because you didn't enforce it. So right now in this room we got the people on this side who are the ones who signed this petition. And on this side is those who didn't. I will do whatever it is you want me to do, I work for you, so here's the deal. All of you who think we're not enforcing dress code, you need to talk to these on this side about what it is you need to do. And you-all finished having that conversation come get me and my assistant principals, we'll be waiting on you in the hallway. Just tell me how you want to do it." I turned around, I started walking out. And one of the teachers said, "Colonel Jones, can I ask you a question?" I said, "No. You need to ask them over there." We walked on out. About 5 minutes later, maybe 10 minutes later, Dr. Beaton came out and said, "We worked it out. We have a way. We're going to enforce the dress code now. We understand." And the other thing that we did though was at that point we were starting to record all of our faculty meetings because football coaches couldn't be there. And so later on I went back to look at the tape. And this one teacher I had said, "Turn off that camera, they're trying to turn us against each other." (laughs) So but so that sternness did get me in trouble. I still have teachers today who remind me of taking them down to the rifle range. But that was the way we tried to approach things. Just straightforwardly and dealt with it. Now if I had to do it over again I may take them to the cafeteria. But the rifle range (laughs) -- WALKER-HARPS:(inaudible). JONES:But I wanted them close. I didn't want them spread out. I needed them to be able to see each other and engage. WALKER-HARPS:(inaudible) called the rifle range. (laughs) JONES:It was called the rifle range. WALKER-HARPS:I thought you were going to say they were going to shoot (inaudible). JONES:(laughs) So that got us into a little bit of trouble. Dress code. But, you know, but we worked hard. We worked hard. BAUSKE:What'd you do in the military? JONES:So in the military I was an infantry officer for 20 years and -- BAUSKE:Start and finish? The dates? JONES:So -- okay. So I went to -- graduated from Griffin High in 1973. Started at West Point that summer for what's called Beast Barracks. Graduated four years later in 1977 and became an infantry officer. And just to tell you how much I am a Griffin boy, so Evelyn, who was still my girlfriend at that time, and was still a member of Trinity Church, my dad a pastor, we got married at Trinity, Dad did the marriage. My brother was my best man. Barbara, my sister-in-law was the maid of honor. Or Mycie was, the other sister. But it was in the infantry for 20 years. Was assigned to Fort Benning, Georgia for one tour of duty for three, assigned to Albany State College for three to teach Senior ROTC. Was assigned to Hinesville, Georgia where I did -- was an infantry officer. And then I also did one year at Fort Leavenworth as a just school, Command and General Staff College. And did a total of six years in Germany. Three of those as an infantry officer, our very first assignment, and then three years as a comptroller. Very unique experience for me. I was a new army major, was going to Heidelberg, Germany, I was a comptroller. And I found out that the budget I was responsible for was $1.1 billion. (laughs) And there's my first assignment. The army just threw you in there and said, "Figure it out." Later on I also had my last tour of duty in the Pentagon. So I retired in '97. But I was a comptroller there for the Joint Chiefs of Staff for fighting counter drugs and that budget was like $1.3 billion. So at least then I had some experience. So that was what I did but -- while I was in. CAIN:Can I back you up one more time? JONES:Sure. CAIN:Okay, you said when -- that when mandatory integration hit -- JONES:Okay. CAIN:-- and you had the two football teams come together that there was obviously a quarterback from one team was competing for -- from both teams were competing for one spot. If I take that and ask about integration between the two schools, Fairmont and say Griffin High, okay, or merging almost two districts together, you have that same kind of scenario, I would think, where you would have to decide who was going to be the English teacher at Griffin High, and you've got an English teacher at Fairmont and English teacher at Griffin High. You had that same kind of scenario as you merged those two entities together. Do you know anything about how that was dealt with? And whether there was fairness, the idea of fairness, in trying to do that merger? That had to be a little bit of a challenge. JONES:I don't have a great deal of knowledge about that. But here's what my initial thoughts are. Remember I said that we had one school that was for seventh, one school for eighth, one school for ninth, and then one school for 10, 11, 12? If you had the approximate correct class size you probably needed all the teachers you had, you just had to decide who was going to teach what. And so I don't think it was a -- I don't remember hearing any issues being discussed about somebody not being able to get that particular position. I mean you're -- almost always you were looking for some teachers who would come. And I remember even when I was there we had turnovers of black teachers and white teachers. So it wasn't quite the same in that regard because on the football team you only have 11 starters. Here it could expand based on the number of teachers to accommodate what you, you know, what you need to have. CAIN:Enrollments (inaudible). JONES:Yeah. I think it expanded. Made it easier to accommodate. What was hard was I think when you -- who was going to be the principal, who was going to be the assistant principal, who was going to be the head coach, and that kind of thing. And I do remember thinking that you had a football coach at Fairmont who became an assistant. And the new coach who was in charge had his own system that was different. And I'll tell you though. That quarterback situation was hard. Randy Jones had been a student that I knew at Sacred Heart who was now the quarterback. Eleventh -- he started as a -- I think he started as a sophomore and as a junior. Now he's coming back for senior year. And then you had Greg Wellmaker who started as a sophomore and as a junior at Fairmont who was coming back. And they were different. And the offense the coach wanted to put in. Because he was new too. It was only his second year. Was hard for them to figure out. And so you had to -- they had to figure out how they were going to make it work. I'll tell you though, my senior year, that whole idea though about -- I'm just going to say skill takes over. It was interesting. Our starting quarterback that first year when we got there was a guy named Charles Buckaloo. He broke his leg in the first game. The backup quarterback was David Sprine, who broke his leg in the third game. So now we're down to our third-string quarterback who was a guy named Willie Jordan who was a black kid who was a sophomore. Willie was a better athlete than both those guys. And Willie could throw the ball at least 45 yards on the fly. Came in, started as a sophomore, continued to start as a junior, and finished as a senior. Went on to Tennessee and played football. And so but people were just about winning. And I'll tell you. Football pulled this community together back then better than anything you can imagine. And I take pride in the fact that we were part of that group that started that whole process of just making it work. But it was, you know, kind of like making sausages. Didn't look good when it first started. You had to have the right people there to do it. WALKER-HARPS:Were you a part of the group that decided what the team would be called (inaudible) Bears or whatever and the colors or whatever? Were you a part of that group? JONES:I was not a part of that group, that was -- Danny Wayne was the president. And what they did was they pulled together a group of students from Fairmont and a group of students from Griffin High and those students had to come together, what those ideas were going to be. Now I think suggestions were made to them, but it's -- truthfully it was pretty much an equal compromise. If you remember, it was the Griffin High Eagles and the Fairmont Bears. And so they decided to make it the Griffin High Bears. Fairmont's colors were blue and white. Griffin High's were green and white. And so we ended up becoming the green and gold because Fairmont also had a gold color. And so it was just a compromise. Now some people said, "Why does a black school got to get the mascot? Why can't we be the Fairmont whatever?" But for the players when we got those new uniforms -- and I'll be honest, they gave us a bus. It was painted green and gold. And they started feeding us pregame meals. (laughs) Hey, we were doing fine. And we thought we were going to be pretty good, and we were, we were. All righty. Anything else? Have I talked about what you wanted me to talk about? CAIN:You've covered a whole lot and it's been -- I guess I could ask one more question, and it gets -- this goes back to early years. I know you're going to have to run here. Grandparents' influence. Influence from grandparents, great-grandparents on you, on the family. JONES:Okay. Mom and Dad came from Texas. And Dad was a minister as I said. Initially lived in Pike County. He got his church at Trinity, which is still here, where I currently attend. And so I didn't really know a lot about grandparents. I can remember the first time that Mom would take us back to Texas and spend time with our grandparents on her side of the family. I now know it was because she was working on her master's. And she was going to University of Georgia. And so she had to find something to do with us, because during the summers when Dad was having his church, either vacation Bible school was going on or it was revival. And so had to figure something out. So we would go stay with my mom's mom. And truthfully that's when I learned my cousins and my uncles, and that's when I learned a lot about them. And then later we would go visit my dad's family. And so that was a support. But what I came to realize is that on both sides of the family they had been down as sharecroppers. They moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area which is what we then recognized. And then the idea though was that -- that I came to recognize is my mom went to college. My dad went to college because of the G.I. Bill. Learned to cut hair. He was a barber. And then he had been in the field artillery. My dad's brother was a career army man, a sergeant. And I remember him talking to me about running a basic camp. And I had a picture. It was him and all these trainees and he was the only black person in that picture. And he said, "Curtis, in the army is the only place where I can tell white people what to do." I was teaching Junior ROTC at Griffin High and Sergeant Major Lang, who was one of my instructors, told me about a time when he was working with one of his cadets the year before I got there. Cadet did something and Sergeant Major Lang was in charge of rifle team. And Sergeant Major Lang had told him he couldn't stay on the team. Was kicking him off. He said the boy got up and said, "You know, there'd have been time back there when my uncle just would have hung you up for that." He said, "Like okay, well, your uncle ain't here so it's time for you to go." (laughs) Interesting times. So but Mom went to college, Dad went to college. But I also recognized as I thought back on that Mom at some time drove up to Jonesboro to get to work on her degree after school, and they had to make sacrifices. And so when Mom asked us to go to Sacred Heart and then said, "You need to go to Spalding," it was really them putting their values about the importance of integration with their own children to what it is they believed. When the March on Washington happened Mom and Dad didn't get to go in '63, but when it happened that second time around they went, because they wanted to be a part of that process. And so I think in some ways I recognized that and kept up with it. But it wasn't like they, you know, they talked about it all the time. It's just who we were and what we did. I didn't tell you, but we grew up on Railroad Street down in Barnesville. And it's just a way of keeping humble and knowing where you came from and what you're doing. WALKER-HARPS:What challenge or challenges did you face when you first -- from the community when you first became superintendent? Because the schools are usually the focal point of the community and of particular interest to businesspeople. JONES:Yeah. WALKER-HARPS:And special challenges or just in general (inaudible). JONES:Well, for the most part it was good. Jesse Bradley, who had been superintendent kind of set me up by when it was time for him to have -- he had a seat on the chamber of commerce, in the Rotary. He put me in Kiwanis. We built a -- we started working on this idea of -- it wasn't the College & Career Academy. It was a different idea. Oh, I know, it was UGA was working with the school system to try to approach this poverty issue. And so with Archways. And so Dr. Bradley put me on that. So that put me in good stead to create relationships. I remember he said, "Curtis, I need for you to join Kiwanis. And we'll pay for your membership." It's like oh, okay. And he -- in order to be fair he then went out to the other people in the senior cabinet and offered them the same opportunity. But I eventually became president of the Kiwanis club here in Griffin. And one of the members was about 90 years old, had been a former I think county commissioner -- county manager. And he was getting married and -- at 90. And he invited me to his house for a party that was going on. Turned out his granddaughter had been one of my students when I was the principal at Griffin High School, and I went over. And Evelyn went with me and at this point now I've been named to be the superintendent. And he came up to me while we were at his house with this celebration and he said, "Curtis I'm just going to tell you now. Never had a president that looked like you before but I'm going to support you." And it was like okay. And I told that to Evelyn. And things I think were okay. I was a member of the chamber, and so they were pretty supportive of me. Bonnie Pfrogner was a -- was I would say a supporter. And so if there was resistance I think it was this. If it turned out I'd done something that they didn't approve of, then I'm not sure that leash was too long for me that was out there. And so they may have been willing to pull back. I'm trying to think. Do I really want to tell you this? WALKER-HARPS:Sure. CAIN:(inaudible). JONES:So at one point when I was superintendent it was time for me to name an assistant superintendent and I had a couple people came to me and said, "Curtis, you have support on both sides of town, north and south. But I don't think this town is ready for two blacks to be superintendent and assistant superintendent. So before you make a recommendation you need to think about what your choice is going to be." That was a reminder to me that things had not progressed as much as we -- as -- maybe as much as I'd thought they had. That was different. But I don't remember. Fundraising kept going as strong as it had been. Anna Burns was on my staff. She was very good. Worked very hard. And in fact it increased. She worked very hard to increase the number of partnerships we had. I was able to name a number of people to be principals of schools. And I didn't -- I only got pushback on one, my very first one. But overall I think Griffin -- I think because of the background and even though I didn't live in Griffin, I think most people thought I did. And I think most people just saw me as a Griffin person from -- for, you know, forever. And so I don't think it was a lot. I cannot say I had any issues. Dick Brooks, who was at First National Bank, was very supportive as well. So I think it went pretty well. WALKER-HARPS:(inaudible). CAIN:(inaudible) Jerry Arkin was supportive too. JONES:Dr. Arkin was very supportive. CAIN:Very supportive. JONES:In fact I didn't know how to use him enough. (laughs) And so were you. To be quite truthful, Art. WALKER-HARPS:Much of that probably, would you agree, came about because of the personality and the people person that Jesse Bradley was and his willingness to take you on and take you in (inaudible). JONES:I would agree with that. I will tell -- here's a story about Dr. Bradley. When I was interviewing to become principal he -- it was just a one-on-one interview. And he said to me, "What kind of principal you want to be? Just a general." And I said, "Dr. Bradley, I just want to be a good principal. I don't want to be a black principal. I want to be a principal who happens to be black that does a good job." And he talked for the next 20 minutes about wanting to be a good superintendent. Not a white superintendent, but a superintendent who happened to be white. We bonded from that moment on. And it was -- I don't know if something was going on with him at that point in time but I will tell you that I do know that some board members ran initially to get rid of Dr. Bradley when he first got there. But all I ever saw him trying to do was what he thought was right. He made hard decisions. Some weren't always popular but he worked hard. WALKER-HARPS:Yeah. I had an issue with him when he first came. But then we became very good friends, very supportive of me and I liked him a lot. And I see him occasionally now. But (inaudible) Curtis. JONES:(laughs) Well, that's because you're not -- people weren't sure what the agenda is that people get hired with or what it is they're trying to accomplish. And if you don't have great communication then people will fill the gaps. But I'll tell you. He was very supportive of me. He even was the very first person through Mike McLemore who asked me if I wanted to become an assistant principal. I went home, told that to Evelyn. She said, "You only been in this for two years, you going to be an assistant principal?" (laughs) Said, "No." And then he encouraged me to go to a conference to learn about how to improve SAT scores. I came back, I briefed them on the plan. We implemented the plan. And I do believe that was another key reason for why they decided to go ahead and let me apply to be principal of the high school. And then I mean truthfully, if I -- as I look back on it, it was that, then assistant superintendent, and then putting me in places so I could develop relationships. So Dr. Bradley I think just wanted to do the best. And truthfully he will tell you he only came here for four years -- for three years. They hired him to come in to clean things up. And then he just stayed. He was good. WALKER-HARPS:(inaudible) you came to the system with little education background (inaudible). JONES:Correct, I'd been in the army for 20 years, and -- but what I think was happening -- well, you got to understand now. Dr. Bradley came from the prison system. WALKER-HARPS:(inaudible). JONES:(laughs) And so the idea is that you're looking for leaders. WALKER-HARPS:Clean things up is (inaudible) about. Yeah (inaudible) system. BAUSKE:(inaudible) army. JONES:Well, and I did have somebody come back and tell me when my time was up to leave Griffin, they said, "Okay, we've had Bradley and now we've had you. Now we need a real educator." I said, "Okay." I thought we did pretty good. We made some improvements while I was here, and I'm very proud of the time and the people that worked with me. But -- and I'll be honest. James Westbury, who was the board president when I left, said, "Curtis, we trained you well. Now you're leaving us." And I had to apologize for that. But I'll be quite honest, they did train me well, gave me a lot of opportunities. And I feel very fortunate. I feel very fortunate to have been in Griffin too. And I say that. Very proud of what's happened the 18 years that I was here. For me it's the American dream to be quite truthful, 20 years in the army, and now 20 years in education. WALKER-HARPS:Well, we're proud of you. America is. I am. I'm not always agreeing, but we manage to coexist. So but we are proud and thankful. Your contribution that you made to this community. JONES:Well, appreciate it. WALKER-HARPS:Wish you well. And there's no point in wishing you well in Macon because you're already doing so well that we -- JONES:Well -- WALKER-HARPS:-- just need to commend you on how well you have been received and the progress that you've been able to make. JONES:We appreciate it. But again I'm really proud of the work that we did here in Griffin. And the people who were principals, assistant principals. And, you know, and I'll be remiss if I didn't say something about my wife who was a -- truthfully an inspiration. I used to go home and say, "Evelyn, what is this stuff? Evelyn, what is this?" She was a teacher at Anne Street for a little while. Then she moved to Jordan Hill only for a couple weeks. Went on over to Orrs. Then became a gifted one teacher here in the system. And then an assistant principal at Anne Street again. Became the principal at Anne Street. And now she's at Orrs. But she's the true educator. Evelyn has worked in Department of Defense schools, Fairfax County, she just solves so much. And has been able to contribute so much. And truthfully if I ever was successful in any ways while I was here, a large part of that would be because when I was about to do something Evelyn would say, "What are you doing?" (laughs) And I would explain some of it and she'd say, "Well, all right, now, you know what you're doing." And just gave me reason to think. So I have to thank her as well. WALKER-HARPS:Evelyn was always destined to be an educator. When she -- eighth grade, and my student, you could see the potential of that girl. JONES:Well, I truly admit that she's not as smart as I am. Well, she's not. I married her. (laughs) WALKER-HARPS:Oh, okay, I think that's (inaudible) that is a wrap-up. So again we say thank you for taking time and the interest to come and share with us on this project. JONES:Thank you. WALKER-HARPS:Appreciate it. JONES:I appreciate it. CAIN:(inaudible). JONES:Thank you, sir. I didn't recognize you, sir. END OF AUDIO FILE
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audio
purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL418GAA/findingaid
Location
The location of the interview
Griffin, Georgia
Duration
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66 minutes
OHMS Object
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https://purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL418GAA-016/ohms
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Curtis Jones, June 27, 2017
Identifier
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RBRL418GAA-016
Creator
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Curtis Jones
Art Cain
Jewel Walker-Harps
Ellen Bauske
Rich Braman
Format
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audio
oral histories
Date
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2017-06-27
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Type
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sound
Coverage
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Griffin, Georgia
Subject
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Discrimination
School integration
Military education
United States--Veterans
African American veterans
United States. Army--Officers
Education
Description
An account of the resource
Curtis Jones grew up in Griffin, Georgia during segregation. As a child, he was one of the first students to integrate into Sacred Heart Elementary and later was one of the first to integrate into Griffin High School. Jones attended West Point Military Academy before he served in the army as an infantry officer, a position he held for 20 years. After retiring from the army, Jones became the first African American superintendent of the Griffin School system. In this interview, Jones talks about his school experience, military and educational career, and he discusses integration and discrimination.
OHMS
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Griffin African American Oral History Project
Subject
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Georgia--History, Local
African Americans--History
Georgia--Communities
Description
An account of the resource
The Griffin African American Oral History Project is a collaboration between the Griffin Branch NAACP, the Griffin Campus Library of the University of Georgia, and the Richard B. Russell Library. The seed was planted in the meetings of the Educational Prosperity Initiative which is also chaired by the president of the Griffin Branch NAACP, Jewel Walker-Harps. Collaborators on the project include: Griffin Housing Authority; Spalding County Collaborative; Fairmont Alumni Association; University of Georgia—Athens and Griffin campuses; and the Educational Prosperity Initiative, which is an affiliate of the Spalding County Collaborative and others. Interviewers on the project include: John Cruickshank, librarian at UGA-Griffin Campus Library; Jewel Walker-Harps, President of the Griffin, GA Branch of the NAACP; Art Cain, coordinator of Continuing Education for UGA-Griffin; Be-Atrice Cunningham, project manager for College of Agricultural and Environmental Science for Griffin; and Ellen Bauske, senior public service associate at the Georgia Center for Urban Agriculture in Griffin. Rich Braman was the sound engineer for this project. <br />The Griffin African American Oral History Project intends to document the experiences of people who lived in Fairmont Community in Griffin, Georgia during the civil rights era and through its transformation to the present day.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
Creator
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
Publisher
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
Date
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2015-2018
Rights
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Format
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Oral histories
Identifier
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RBRL418GAA
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Griffin, Georgia
Oral History
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5.4
Interview with Gail Reid Hackbart, May 22, 2017
RBRL418GAA-011
RBRL418GAA
Griffin African American Oral History Project
Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia
Gail Reid Hackbart
Be-Atrice Cunningham, Jewel Walker-Harps, Art Cain, and Ellen Bauske
oral history
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English
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Introduction / Family, Early Life
I’m Beatrice Cunningham, and today we’ll be speaking with Gail Reid Hackbart, the daughter of Gary Reid. We’re at the UGA Griffin Campus in the Center for Urban Agriculture Conference Room.
In this segment, Reid opens by discussing her family history and her early life in Griffin. She details her family’s move to Detroit, MI, her uncle and father’s military service, and the influence her grandmother Vera had on her as a child. Reid also discusses her father Gary’s passion for public service and her early memories of the Civil Rights Movement.
82nd Airborne Division;A&P Grocery;Gary Reid;Georgia Institute of Technology;Georgia Tech;Glen Reid;Non-violent direct action;Non-Violent Protest;Peaceful Protest;Pickett Line;United States Army;Vera Reid;Woolworth's
1196
Discussion of her father’s passion for public service
ahhh …. Lets see, what else can I tell you guys. Oh! You were talking about … they were talking about my father’s involvement with the PTA …
Reid discusses her father, Gary Reid, and his passion for public service, saying that he was the first African American County Commissioner in Griffin and the President of the NAACP Griffin Chapter.
American Federation of Government Employees;Labor Rights;Labor Union;National Federation of Federal Employees;Plurality-At-Large Voting;Single-Member District;Spalding County Board of Commissioners
Segregation in Griffin / Integration of Schools
You grew up in Griffin as a segregated community.
Reid recalls the two segregated swimming pools that existed in Griffin during her childhood, saying that they were both filled with cement to prevent the integration of the pools. She also recounts her experiences attending an integrated school for the first time when she was ten years old, and her experience being one of the only fifty African-American women who were students at Georgia Tech.
Georiga Tech;integration;Northside Elementary School;segregation;separate-but-equal
2038
African American owned businesses in Griffin
Do you remember … since your dad had a business down town … do you remember any of the other black businesses that were there other than the … I know HHH …
Reid recalls some of the businesses owned by African Americans in Griffin while she was growing up. She talks about a sandwich shop owned by Otis, Raymond, and Phillip Head and a barber shop owned by Ralph and Mary Stenson.
A.C Touchstone;Atlanta Life Insurance Company;funeral homes;post office;pressing club;Solomon Street
2323
Relationship with her brother
Obviously you’re very accomplished. You went to GA TECH, you had that mission from 13 and you seem like you were very focused on that. Tell us about … in your household was there sibling rivalry?
Reid talks about her relationship with her brother who is 13 years younger than her. She says that they didn't fight a lot because she was his "built in babysitter", but she recalls fighting with her cousins who were closer in age.
exploring;family;Georgia Tech;outdoors;rocks
2468
Father's activism in the Civil Rights Movement
You’re dad was also kind of an entrepreneur.
Reid discusses her father's liquor store, and says that he also had a day job with a large trucking company in Atlanta where he did not have to worry about his civil rights activism causing problems with his work. She also discusses attending strategy meetings in the basement of the 8th Street Baptist Church when she was ten years old.
Bourbon Street;Civil Rights Movement;Georgia Tech;Hill Street;Ku Klux Klan;package store;peaceful protests;protests
3394
Discussion about her son and family
Can you talk a little bit about your family? You mentioned your son.
Reid talks about moving to California while she was working for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and getting married to a white man. They had a son and moved back to Griffin, Georgia. She recalls being concerned about how her son would be treated because he looked white but had a black mother. She says that her son passed away in a dirt bike accident when he was fourteen, but she later adopted a little girl because she felt like she wasn't done being a mother.
Daytona, Florida;Foster to Adopt Program;Georgia Power Company;Griffin High School;machete;SoCal
4315
Accomplishments at Georgia Tech
Oh by the way, when we were at Georgia Tech we were protesting.
Reid talks about some of her accomplishments during her time as a Georgia Tech student. She recalls participating in sit-ins on the president's lawn and protesting professors who did not want to teach minority students. She also discusses founding the Alpha Kappa Alpha Georgia Tech chapter and becoming the president of that chapter. Reid also says that she believes the current student body at Georgia Tech is not as connected with the history of the school and the Civil Rights Movement.
<i>Hidden Figures</i>;Black House;Georgia Tech Afro-American Association;GTAAA;Office of Minority Educational Development;Omega Grad Chapter;Rosa Parks;Spellman College
5421
Relationship with her father
So before we wrap up today is there anything else that you would like to share with us that you have not talked about?
Reid talks about her relationship with her father, and says she was always "daddys little girl." She says that her son and her father were her support system and she goes to visit their graves often.
Isaiah Miller;VFW;Westwood Gardens Cemetery
RBRL418GAA-011_Hackbart BE-ATRICE CUNNINGHAM: I’m Be-Atrice Cunningham and today we’ll be speaking with Gail Reid Hackbart, the daughter of Gary Reid. And we’re at the University of Georgia Griffin Campus in the Center for Urban Agriculture conference room. So today we’ll be conducting an interview as part of the Griffin African American Oral History Project. And today with us is -- JEWEL WALKER-HARPS: Jewel Walker-Harps as president of the Griffin Branch NAACP. ART CAIN: Art Cain, University of Georgia Office of Continuing Education. ELLEN BAUSKE: And Ellen Bauske, University of Georgia Center for Urban Agriculture. CUNNINGHAM: All right, well thank you so much for joining us today Gail, and if you can just start off by telling us a little bit about your history -- your family history. GAIL REID HACKBART: My family history, there is so much. Hopefully I can remember enough that this interview is read for a while. My father, Gary Reid, had a twin brother, Glenn Reid. They were children of a family of 12 children living here in Griffin, Georgia. They were born and raised here in Griffin, Georgia. When I was two and a half, my parents moved to Detroit and so did my uncle. He moved there also for a while. Apparently the job situation was better there, so they moved there and when it got better they moved back. So that was when I was five and a half. I recently had to do some paperwork for my mom about VA benefits and things. And I knew that my father had been in the Army. He and his twin brother both had been in the Army and they were part of the 82nd Airborne. What I didn’t realize is that my dad had signed up for the Army two times. Not just once, he was in twice. Then it was -- he was a Korean veteran, Korean wartime veteran. And so why that happened I don’t know that. I guess that my mom would have the details on that. But that was a surprise to me. But growing up with my father and my uncle, the Civil Rights Movement for me started at the age of 10. My awareness of the Civil Rights Movement started at the age of 10 because they had me out working picket lines. And these were places like -- A&P, Woolworths -- A&P being a grocery store -- because of their hiring practices and the way they treated the African American customers that came in to their stores. And then by the time I was 12 I was working boycott lines, and I remember specifically working a boycott line in front of Woolworths department store in downtown Griffin. And we were of course walking back and forth in front of the store and encouraging African Americans not to go in and shop. And I remember having someone come up and say, “I want to go into the store because they’ve got that picture of Martin Luther King there in the window. And I want to go get that picture of Martin Luther King.” And I looked at him and I said, “Go.” (laughs) It’s like if that is really that important to you that you’ll fall for that just because they have that picture of him in their window but you can’t go in and sit down at the counter and eat lunch, that’s on you. That’s not on me. My father and my uncle -- my father, Gary, and my uncle, Glenn, their thing was to make things better for the next generation. So in my life that’s always been what I think about too is what do you do to make things better for the next generation. Like I said, they grew up in a family of 12 kids. My father had a scar on his cheek because when they were growing up and you’ve got 12 kids around the table trying to eat, you better be fast (laughter) getting to the food. So the scar on his face was from a burn mark he got because he was trying to grab a sweet potato off the table before anybody else got it and it was hot. (laughter) And he was funny too. He and my uncle, if you ever got them in the room together with another person they would cut them to ribbons. I would just sit there and just laugh because they were just -- they were awful. But my father believed in everybody’s rights. It didn’t matter whether they were black or white or Asian or even what their sexual orientation was. He fought for everybody’s rights. He was in court for all kinds of stuff. And he just never -- he just didn’t look at it as, “Oh I’m --“ and when he became president of NAACP, he didn’t look at it as just, “Oh they’re not black. They’re not African American so I’m not going to help them.” It wasn’t like that. It was like anybody who needed help, he wanted to stand up for and help them. Yes. CAIN: Can I interject a question? BAUSKE: Sure, sure. CAIN: Okay. You know, one of the things that I read in an article about you was you gave your grandmother a lot of credit for influencing you. HACKBART: Yes. CAIN: And I assume influencing her children. HACKBART: Yes. CAIN: Could you also talk about that as you move for-- as a part of the narrative? HACKBART: Her influence on me? CAIN: Yes. HACKBART: My grandmother, from what I understood, was an educator, which probably came in handy with the 12 kids. But as I was growing up and I was learning how to do different things, like my father was an excellent tailor. He could sew very well. WALKER-HARPS: I didn’t know that. HACKBART: Huh? WALKER-HARPS: I did not know that. HACKBART: You didn’t know? He had an alteration shop downtown for a number of years up on Eighth Street right across from the (Head’s?) businesses up there. And so when I was seven I started sewing things and I would sew by hand. And so I would come up with my own patterns and I would sew different things. So when I turned 12 he had the shop downtown. So he would let me come in and there was somebody that was working in there with him and they were helping him do the alterations and stuff because he was still -- he still had a day job. So they would be in there while he was at work and then after work he’d come in and he worked there too. And then on the weekends he would be there the whole time. And I’d walk from our house downtown and go hang out at the alteration shop with them. CAIN: Was it -- was your father’s shop patronized by everybody in the community or just primarily African Americans? HACKBART: It’s hard to remember, but I think it was patronized by a lot of different groups. But that particular area of Griffin was primarily black businesses, so it’s hard to remember right now. There wouldn’t have been a problem with anybody else being in there, but I don’t -- there’s not anything in my mind that says that it was only African Americans that patronized that business. WALKER-HARPS: Probably not since the Heads had a business and they were patronized by both. HACKBART: Yeah, so it’s possible. I wasn’t necessarily taught to look at color when I was a child. And my brother who’s also named Gary but his name is Gary Wesley, and so he wasn’t Gary Jr. Everybody thinks he’s Gary Jr. but he’s not. His name is Gary Wesley, Gary Wesley Reid. I remember when he went to kindergarten and he got a culture shock because he actually ran into people who were little five year olds who were discriminating against him because he was African American, because he was black. And it was a shock because he had not been raised to look at color and that was the first time that he’d ever experienced that there was something different about people. That they just -- it wasn’t -- they didn’t think of themselves as just being people. And I wasn’t raised that way either. But of course I did become aware as I got older, especially working in the picket lines and the boycott lines. But getting back to being 7, being a little girl, another one of the things I liked to do was I liked to draw a lot. And I was pretty good and I could just -- you know those little matchbox things that says draw this picture. I used to do those things. And my grandmother would see -- my Grandma Vera, she would see me doing all the drawing and stuff and she said, “I don’t want you to be -- to grow up to be a starving artist. So I want you to look at becoming an architect.” I said, “Okay.” Of course I didn’t know what that was. So at some point I said okay let me research this. So I started going to the library and looking it up and seeing what exactly is an architect, what do they do, how much money do they make. (laughter) So I found out what they did and it was a thing of being creative and you could make a decent salary. And I also found out that Georgia Tech was a school that I could go to to get a degree in architecture. And it was right up the road. And at the time that I made the decision on Georgia Tech I was probably 12. And at that time I think they had probably just started accepting women into their college. So I started looking at what I needed to do in order to get there. And what I had to do was do a whole lot better on my grades than I was doing because I wasn’t doing that great. I mean I was average. I was like okay I got to step this game up. So I just went from 0 to 60 (laughs) in a years’ time. And from that point on it was on. It was on. So that when I got to high school I was in the Beta Club. And when I graduated, I graduated 11th in my class and I had a grade point average of 3.92. And I’d already been accepted at Georgia Tech during my junior year. As a matter of fact, they had told me that if I wanted to I could just go ahead and come early right after my junior year and not have to do -- not do my senior year in high school. But I wanted to have fun so I stayed in Griffin to enjoy my senior year in high school because I knew it was going to be a breeze. (laughter) And I knew once I got to Georgia Tech I was not going to have that breeze anymore. Did you want to hear any more about that part or you want to get back to -- CAIN: Well, I -- just for documentation purposes, I always like to know kind of when your father was born, when your mother -- when your grandmother was born. That kind of syncs up the eras. BAUSKE: And your mother too because we (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) as well. CAIN: Yeah and your mother. We want to hear about your mother. HACKBART: Okay, okay. When my grandmother was born, that one’s going to be kind of hard to backtrack to. My father was born in 1932, in January of 1932. He was one of the three youngest children. He, his twin brother, and my Uncle Sam were the three youngest. And by the time they came along, the older kids were old enough to take care of the younger kids. So the sister that took care of my brother was my Aunt Christine. No that took care of my father was Aunt Christine. Aunt Stell took care of Glenn. (laughter) So, wow, I’m trying to figure out when she was born. I don’t know. It has to have been around the 1900s or something. I’m just not sure. CAIN: But that gives us an idea. If we know when the children were born you can kind of figure out -- you can kind of go back and figure out in and around where their mother was born. HACKBART: Right. CAIN: And gr-- CUNNINGHAM: Did your parents -- go ahead. I was going to say did your parents tell you anything about what their life was like growing up? HACKBART: Let me see, I have to think about that one. Well for my mother it was not hard at all. (laughs) She was the oldest of four children. She was born in April 1935. And they lived right down on Solomon Street down the street from where my dad and his family lived. But my grandfather worked for -- he was really good friends and worked with the Cheathams. As a matter of fact I’m named -- my first name is Ashley Elizabeth, I’m named after Elizabeth Cheatham. So he worked for them in their house. He was their chauffer and he was a great cook and everything. But he also worked in some of their mills. And the house he had down on Solomon Street, they helped him buy that house. So I remember doing an interview with my grandmother about -- my mother’s mother, about what they did during the Depression, how the Depression affected them. And it was -- I’m just sitting there looking at her going, “What?” She had a job. My grandmother who as I was growing up I never knew her to work. But during the Depression, she had a job. But what they did with her money was she’d go out and buy a new dress every week or they’d go to the movies. It wasn’t oh yeah we had to use that money to buy food or pay for this or pay for that. No, they went to the movies or she bought a new dress okay? So my grandmother’s parents were -- her father was a methodist minister. And people would just give them food and stuff. They just really didn’t have it that hard. I don’t remember talking to my father’s mother about what happened with them during the Depression, but I know that they weren’t that well off. They were kind of poor. But I don’t remember my dad sa-- other than the thing about them having to fight for the food at the table and some little antics that he and my uncles would get into, you know going down the street messing with people or whatever. My grandmother apparently ran a tight ship. None of them were in trouble. None of them went to jail. CAIN: Did they all go to Fairmont? HACKBART: Yes they did. My mother included went to Fairmont, yes Fairmont High School. WALKER-HARPS: Your mom was a majorette. HACKBART: Yes she was a drum major. She was -- yeah, she was a lead majorette. We have old pictures of her in her uniform with her baton yes. WALKER-HARPS: And your dad had followed along on the sidelines to protect her. HACKBART: Oh okay. (laughter) Are you sure it was to protect her? Because as I recall, in his earlier years he had a bit of a jealous streak, yes. WALKER-HARPS: Yeah. HACKBART: (laughs) He was protecting what was his. WALKER-HARPS: Right. (laughter) HACKBART: I’m sure. WALKER-HARPS: Now your family, your mom’s family I believe or which one was it, your mom or your dad who was almost a part of the Cheatham family? HACKBART: It had to be mama’s family. WALKER-HARPS: Okay, mama’s side. CAIN: And when you say a part of the Cheatham family? WALKER-HARPS: They were -- the Cheathams were -- HACKBART: They were very close. WALKER-HARPS: -- very, very close yeah. BAUSKE: Who were the Cheathams? HACKBART: Yeah, my grandfather and -- WALKER-HARPS: The Cheathams was a prominent white family in Griffin. HACKBART: Right, right. My grandfather and Elizabeth they were friends. And that’s why he named me after her. And her son, Jackson, is still in contact with us, with the family. WALKER-HARPS: I remember when somebody died then they stepped in and offered their services and kind of took over. HACKBART: Right, right. But he lives in San Diego now but he’s still in contact with the family. She passed away a few years back. CUNNINGHAM: Earlier you mentioned that your father was in the military. Can you share with us any of your recollection of his remem-- anything that happened during the military? HACKBART: That they told us about? CUNNINGHAM: Sure, (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) share. HACKBART: Well stuff like they were both in the 82nd Airborne. If one of them had KP duty and needed to go somewhere, the other one took his place. BAUSKE: And no one knew? HACKBART: No. BAUSKE: Good job. (laughter) HACKBART: As a matter of fact, I guess I can tell this now too. Even when they were here in Griffin and they were working in the Civil Rights Movement, if one of them had a meeting and couldn’t get there because they had to go to work or someplace else the other one took his place. BAUSKE: That’s how he got around so well. HACKBART: Because there were two of them. CAIN: That’s amazing. HACKBART: Shane used to say that all the time. My son Shane, when he was about three -- because my uncle had left and moved to North Carolina. And when -- then -- and we were living in California and we moved back when my son was one. When he was about three my uncle moved back from North Carolina so my son would see the two of them, the two twins together. And he would say, “That’s two grandaddies.” (laughter) He couldn’t tell the difference and they didn’t care. (laughs) Let’s see, what else could I tell you guys? Oh you were talking about my father’s involvement with the PTA. CAIN: Well and also just his passion for public service. He apparently -- he was NAACP president, he was a commissioner. HACKBART: He was the first African American county commissioner yes. WALKER-HARPS: Not only was he that, but he worked very hard to make that possible. It didn’t just happen that he was elected. There was a court case and we’re going to bring somebody in who hopefully will talk about that. That came as a result of Gary, myself, and -- matter of fact they’re all dead now -- but who worked awfully hard to get away from at-large voting to single-member districts. And that allowed Gary to be elected (inaudible). HACKBART: I think there are some things in the scrapbook on the newspaper articles about that. WALKER-HARPS: Probably so because that changed a phase of political life in Griffin. CAIN: But it took courage -- WALKER-HARPS: Oh yeah. CAIN: It took courage. WALKER-HARPS: Our lives were threatened many times. CAIN: And so just that passion, that courage, where it came from, how you viewed it. HACKBART: Well you know what, it’s hard sometimes. I guess it’s hard for me to say where it came from because it was just there. Because even though they left here and went to Detroit and stayed there for a few years and then came back, I can’t tell you what the catalyst was for what they did. Maybe it was the idea that they had to make things better for their children. My Uncle Glenn had five children and we grew up living next door to each other. And it was like we were living in each other’s’ houses because we were just back and forth between each other’s houses. But I can’t tell you what it was. I don’t think he ever even said to me what it was. But I know that the idea in his head was you have to make things better for the next generation. And I also think that it was a sense of what is right. You have to do what is right. And that affected me even years later because I was for many years when I was working for the federal government, which is what I -- I just retired from working with them about a month or so ago. I was a union rep and one of the main reasons I did it was because of the way I grew up. With my father is it’s just when things are not right you can’t just sit there and just look. You need to move out and do something about it. Now granted at some point in time I got tired of that battle. WALKER-HARPS: Well they were firing. Let me tell you that they were firing. They did not back off from a fight. If you were to see the sparks and put Gary and Glenn at the table, and they always had my back. So I was the (meek?) one but the power was really behind me in them. HACKBART: And they knew what you had to do to get something done. When I started working -- when I graduated with my second degree and went to work for Georgia Power Company and I was down at Plant Vogtle in Augusta and I was just -- they were just giving me a hard time because I was a woman. And so I called Daddy and I was like, “They’re doing dut, dut, dut, dut, dut, dut, dut, dut, dah.” And he says, “Write it down. Whatever they do document it, write it down.” He says, “If you don’t write it down, it didn’t happen. But if you write it down and you have to go before a judge you can hand them the paper saying this is what they did. And that counts.” WALKER-HARPS: You grew up -- go ahead. CAIN: Go ahead. WALKER-HARPS: You grew up in Griffin as a segregated community. You were around at the time swimming pools were closed right? HACKBART: Oh yeah, oh yeah. I never did learn how to swim. (laughs) I ended up taking drown proofing in college but I never did learn how to swim. Yeah that was interesting because we had a swimming pool at Fairmont, which was at Fairmont Recreation Center, which was the swimming pool that was primarily used by African Americans, black people, in Griffin. And we would go over and get in the swimming pool and splash around. And then they had the swimming pool over at City Park, which we didn’t go to because that’s where all the white people went to swim. And I don’t think I was even thinking about going over there to swim with them. But apparently somewhere along the line when we started doing desegregation, somebody realized that we were going to all end up swimming in the same pool together. And the next thing I knew we had no swimming pool because they filled them both up with cement. CAIN: Both at Fairmont and at City Park? HACKBART: Both at Fairmont and City Park. BAUSKE: Got rid of the problem. HACKBART: Yeah, well yeah they took the apple away. Nobody could get a bite of that. (laughs) CAIN: How did that get resolved ultimately? HACKBART: Ultimately there is one public swimming pool and it gets very crowded. (laughs) CAIN: But what brought folks to their senses? Was it just over a span of time where there were civil rights -- HACKBART: Yeah I think over a span of time people just decided that it just didn’t make any sense that there was no public swimming pool in the city. Do you -- WALKER-HARPS: They unpacked around -- what is it? Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The fallout from that really started to boil over. And that was the period -- the beginning of the period of integration of the schools and what have you. HACKBART: That would’ve been when I was 10 because that was my first -- that was the first year that they had integrated schools and that was the first, and I went. In the fifth grade I went to an integrated school. CAIN: That brings up another issue. WALKER-HARPS: (May not know that one?) CAIN: So you went into integrated settings for the first time at 10. Could you talk about some of those experiences and where the school was, which school you went to, et cetera? HACKBART: I went to Northside Elementary School. And it is -- while the building is still there, it’s on Hill Street. It’s on Hill Street and Cherry. It’s right there in that area. And when they did it, it was not -- it was never a question for me of whether or not I would go, whether or not I would do it. It was like it’s here, we’re doing it. We’re doing it. It was my duty to do this, to step out and do this. And it was -- everything was pretty cool. I had really good teachers. I didn’t have teachers that were going, “Oh well you’re this, you’re that. We’re not going to work with you.” My teachers were pretty good. The only really negative experience I can remember was one day on the playground where another kid said to me, “Oh you’re just a piece of burnt bacon.” And I said to him, “I’m the prettiest piece of burnt bacon you ever saw.” (laughter) We weren’t really taught to back down. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. It could be a bad thing in some situations. But at that point in our lives we were kind of taught to tackle it, taught to tackle whatever the issue was. CAIN: Were there other African Americans who entered that school at that time with you? HACKBART: Yes. Now I can’t tell you -- right now I can’t tell you who they were but yeah there were. There were a few of us there. There were quite a few of us there. CAIN: That had to be a decision your parents made. HACKBART: No. (laughs) It wasn’t really. It was never -- they never looked at me and said, “So we’re going to make this decision. You’re going to go here.” But they also didn’t look at me and say, “Where do you want to go?” It was, I -- it was like -- for me it was like I was in the fight, so this was just a next step in the fight. I was going. There was not a question. It was not them forcing me to go because they didn’t -- because Vernell, my uncle’s oldest daughter, she refused to go. She refused to go to Griffin High School. But I mean I have to understand that because if I was going to the 5th grade that meant she would’ve been in the 10th grade. She wanted to stick with the kids she’d gone to school with all her life and graduate with them. So she didn’t go. She didn’t go to Griffin High School. She stayed at Fairmont High. But like I said, for me it was like I was in the fight. And I didn’t really have this thing of yeah I’ve been with these kids since the first grade because I’d already moved from Moore Elementary to Atkinson. This was just another school for me. CUNNINGHAM: So after you entered the integrated school were there any noticeable differences between the integrated school versus these segregated schools? HACKBART: What was still being talked about was still the inequalities in educational material. I don’t -- I can’t give you specifics on what I may have noticed when I was going to Atkinson as opposed to when I went to Northside Elementary. But I know that there was still some controversy about the materials that were being provided. WALKER-HARPS: And Northside was located pretty close to a mill, so I can imagine that that school even though there were whites and blacks, the quality and the atmosphere would probably have been different from what would’ve happened on the south side of town because of the mills, the proximity to the mills in that area, (Thomas Doug Collin?). BAUSKE: Would the mill schools not be as good as say the south side? Is that what (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). WALKER-HARPS: I’m thinking that. BAUSKE: Okay. HACKBART: Yeah it’s possible. BAUSKE: Then you hit Georgia Tech as a black person and as a woman. HACKBART: Oh yes. Yes, there were -- BAUSKE: Talk about that please. HACKBART: There were probably 50 black women on campus at that time. And we probably apparently all knew each other because there weren’t that many of us there. And the ones that were there they brought us in. They took us under their wings. They helped us to get around and try to understand the culture of things. And yes there were a lot of professors -- white professors there who didn’t want us there. But we basically had the mindset was, “We don’t really care what you want. We’re here and we’re going to do this. So do what you will. We will be doing our thing and we will get through it.” Because I had a faculty advisor who was very questionable as far as I’m concerned. I mean of course they don’t say anything but they are not encouraging. And for me he was very discouraging. Like I said, I knew going from high school and having easy street and going to Georgia Tech, it was not going to be easy at Georgia Tech. So occasionally I got grades that I would’ve preferred not to have, but hey it happened. I wasn’t stopping. As my dad would tell me -- as Daddy would tell me, “If you don’t get it the first time do it again. Keep going until you get it.” Mama on the other hand was like, (inaudible). (laughter) So two totally different personalities as far as that was concerned. But once this guy who was my advisor. CUNNINGHAM: We need to stop for just a second. BAUSKE: Until they get done (buzzing?). CAIN: I’m going to go tell this man to hold off on -- going whenever you’re ready. HACKBART: Okay. I’m ready. CAIN: Ask the question about business. BAUSKE: You were asking about -- WALKER-HARPS: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) Do you remember, (inaudible) says your dad had a business downtown. Do you remember any of the other black businesses that were there other than the Heads. I know Triple H and -- the Triple H Sandwich Shop rather. And (Watson Drycleaners?) there and it was a pressing club. HACKBART: Yeah there was a pressing club and the -- wasn’t there a restaurant down near their restaurant? Wasn’t there a restaurant that belonged to the -- wasn’t that the Head’s restaurant too? WALKER-HARPS: Yeah they had a restaurant. HACKBART: Okay and then that was where the original Eighth Street Baptist Church was down -- was right down the street. WALKER-HARPS: Across the street from Triple H Sandwich Shop -- HACKBART: Right, right. WALKER-HARPS: -- competing with them for -- at that time the church did food and peddled it out for the meals. And it was a booming business which competed with Triple H. And finally had to stop because Triple H could not allow them to undersell the restaurant. HACKBART: Yeah and I guess that must’ve been where -- because I know Daddy’s shop was there. I’m tr-- well after Daddy’s shop left there, it was a taxi stand. It was -- that building down there now on the corner, it’s a restaurant. I think it’s a Japanese restaurant or something? WALKER-HARPS: Yes, uh-huh. HACKBART: His building was next to that one. WALKER-HARPS: Oh okay. HACKBART: Right between where the post office driveway is and that building starts or something or that business starts. It was in there. WALKER-HARPS: And there was Atlanta Life Insurance company there too. But that section, that block, apparently belonged to the Heads and the Touchstones across the street from where the post office is now. HACKBART: Right, yes. Yes, and I’m trying to remember what was directly across the street from the shop and I don’t remember. But I remember the restaurant was kind of up like where the post office is. And then the pressing club was across the street from that. And then Ms. Stinson had her hairdressers around the corner from the -- WALKER-HARPS: On Slaton Avenue. HACKBART: -- from the pressing -- from the pressing club. WALKER-HARPS: The mecca -- really that area was the mecca of black business. We’re going to bring somebody in who’s going to -- who can remember and talk about those businesses that were there. HACKBART: Right, but when you -- if you were African American and you were going out to eat, you were going to that restaurant. (laughs) WALKER-HARPS: Triple H. Otis Head, Raymond Head, and Phillip Head, the Triple H’s from Tuskegee, Alabama. They were in school at Tuskegee I understand. HACKBART: Right, yeah. Who else was down there? WALKER-HARPS: I was interested because somebody was telling a story that the pressing clubs were called pressing clubs because of the fact that you could -- the men could walk in and have their clothes pressed while they waited. Take their pants off and sit around and talk and have their pants pressed and then put them back on. HACKBART: Okay, well I didn’t have to experience that part of it. (laughter) WALKER-HARPS: They declared that that (inaudible) and that I do not know. But that’s how the name came about of pressing club. CAIN: Well I know there was a barbershop someplace. WALKER-HARPS: There was. CAIN: When you mentioned coming in and talking and then you just mentioned -- but there definitely was a barbershop. HACKBART: I think the beauty shop and the barbershop were in the same place. WALKER-HARPS: The Stinsons, yes. HABCKBART: Yeah Ralph and Mary Stinson. WALKER-HARPS: Ralph was the barber and Mary was the beautician. HACKBART: And I think it was Mary’s brother Milt that -- he was the one that got my brother into cutting hair yeah. WALKER-HARPS: And there were a few others down, (Snow Callaway?) further down. HACKBART: Yeah he was further down on -- well I remember him having one on Solomon Street. Did he ever have one up on Eighth Street? WALKER-HARPS: I don’t know. And funeral homes, there were the funeral homes. And naturally there had to be funeral homes because block folks didn’t get to go to white funeral homes at that time unless it was in the middle of the night and through the back door. HACKBART: Yeah I think the only one I remember from way back then was probably McDowell’s. WALKER-HARPS: I don’t remember. I remember McDowell’s. I don’t remember others but somebody’s coming in who does remember the Crocketts and a few others. Okay we can move on. Go ahead Art. CAIN: Well I was just thinking, obviously you’re very accomplished. You went to Georgia Tech. You had that mission from 13. And you seem like you were very focused on that. Tell us about in your household was there sibling rivalries? Tell us about -- HACKBART: No, my brother is 13 years younger than I am. He was born about a month and a half before my 13th birthday. So I was the built-in babysitter. And for him it was like having two mothers. So no we never -- we didn’t fight. He would go hang out with me. And as a matter of fact, he was kind of our class mascot when we had our graduation. We have pictures somewhere. But when I graduated, he was with me. He had his little graduation thing on because everybody thought he was so cute. No we didn’t fight. We didn’t fight. I fought with my cousins, with my uncle’s kids. CAIN: Cousin rivalry. (laughter) BAUSKE: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) looked alike. HACKBART: But I fought with them like they were my brother and sisters yeah because we spent a lot of time together. And we went romping through the woods together and exploring because we moved -- when we moved down there on Bourbon Street there wasn’t a whole lot of development around the area. WALKER-HARPS: Rocks, a lot of rocks though. HACKBART: A lot of rocks. We found this huge rock that had an indentation in the middle of it. And the moisture would get in there and it was like moss growing inside of it. It was really beautiful. And we’d just go romping through and picking plums and berries and muscadine and crabapples. And there was a stream down further from where we lived. We’d go trumping down through there and looking at the stream and stuff. We didn’t get in it. We were just looking at it because that’s where we got our water from that stream at that time. We didn’t have -- they didn’t have running water out there so it was pumped up from the stream, yeah. WALKER-HARPS: Your dad was also kind of an entrepreneur. You talked about his ability to sew, but if I remember correctly he also had another business during his lifetime -- HACKBART: Oh yeah, oh yeah. WALKER-HARPS: -- which proved to be quite a challenge. HACKBART: Yes. My parents owned -- initially they owned a package store selling beer right on the corner of Bourbon Street and Hill Street. And my mom would probably have to give you more of the details on it but I’m sure they didn’t have an easy time getting a license for that store. But they -- I don’t remember how long they were there but they stayed at a building that was on that corner. Well that building is gone by the way. But they worked and they rented that building out and they worked that package store. And then after a few years they bought property just a few yards up the street and they built a liquor store. So they had beer, wine, liquor, they had all of it. And they had in the back -- the extra property in the back -- they planted corn on the extra property in the back. So it was kind of weird for me I guess because it seemed like they were just doing very well, you know, which they -- for the most part they were. My dad would still work his day job and in the evenings he’d come home and work at the liquor store. And my mom would be there primarily when he wasn’t there. At some point, he did stop working the regular job and worked there -- just worked there at the liquor store. And when I would come home from breaks from college I would work in the liquor store. So it was easy money. WALKER-HARPS: That was also a challenge though. His work was really a challenge because most of his jobs were out of town. HACKBART: Yeah they -- he and my uncle worked for many years with a company called -- can I say the company name? I don’t even know if they’re still in business anymore. But it was a company that did repairs on trucks, on tractor-trailer trucks. And this was -- they were with a particular trucking company and it was in Atlanta. It was over by Atlanta University, over by Spelman and Clark, all those places over. And when I was -- so when I was at Georgia Tech I would take MAADA and go over to where he worked. And he would give me money and tell me, “Don’t tell your mother.” (laughter) Okay, so yeah they -- and it was around that time I think everybody was -- a lot of people were doing that because there were -- the jobs here just weren’t paying that much. The jobs in Griffin weren’t paying that much. So they would take that drive. They would carpool and take that drive up to Atlanta so they could make the extra money. WALKER-HARPS: And if they were paying they weren’t hiring civil rights workers. They weren’t hiring anybody who was as (fiery?) as -- HACKBART: Right, and at that time you know they’d go to south -- this is Griffin. They’d go to south Atlanta and down in south Atlanta. Down in south Atlanta they don’t know who they are. At Griffin everybody knew who they were, but in south Atlanta they didn’t know. So he and my uncle both worked there. CAIN: And you don’t want to say what the trucking company’s name was? HACKBART: I can. It was (Few Hoff?). WALKER-HARPS: You would’ve thought that they would’ve had booming businesses here. But that was not the case. Because they were civil rights workers and they had done favors and gone out on a limb for many, many, many of us. You would’ve thought that any business, any self su-- any personal business or whatever that was established here that they would’ve had the full support of the black community. But that was not the case. That was one of the challenges and I don’t know why. And we used to say, “Well the beer’s not as cold as the beer down the street,” or whatever. But for some reason -- and I guess it was a mental thing. HACKBART: But that also probably just made it easier for them to do what they did because by working there they didn’t have to worry about whose toes they were stepping on in Griffin because the influence wasn’t going to reach them where they worked. WALKER-HARPS: And they did not worry about whose toes they stepped on. I know Gary didn’t worry about whose toes they stepped on. The sacrifice was great because I can remember when we were having a program at Eighth Street Baptist Church, and the night before the program the news came out that there had been threats on two of our lives. And so we had to halt the program and get -- I don’t remember if it was FBI, some law enforcement agency out of Atlanta to come down. And there was a -- Earl Shinholster was the person coming to speak at that time. He said, “Well they don’t need to come down and walk through there just to look and say it’s okay because they’re going to have to (bring the door up?) and do an extensive search of the church before we decide to go on. But that’s just one of the examples of the challenges and the way of life that I knew -- I am aware of that happened to Gary (inaudible) as president. He had many other threats. And there were many deals offered to him that would have been beneficial to him had he been that kind of person. But he wasn’t. You didn’t hand him anything under the table. You didn’t set him up. He’s, “What the heck? (inaudible).” Well we used to call it mother wit but wisdom in terms of being able to read people. So there were many times when he was set up. He was invited to go places, somebody else would go -- would be out investigating or looking around to find out exactly what it was so that we did not walk into a trap. So I’m saying that to say there were many, many challenges that faced him and the rest of us during that period of time. HACKBART: And he was -- he would be a peacemaker in some cases because -- there may be even a story in here about a situation where something was going on or some program or something was going on and the Klan showed up and they were marching and protesting. And he just went out and just had a face-to-face conversation with whoever their leader was that day and they went on their way. And it wasn’t threatening or anything, it was just a very peaceful conversation and they parted ways. CAIN: I would be curious -- I know when you look at sort of the national Civil Rights Movement and student involvement and folks at leaderships involvement, there was a lot of planning that went on so things would come off the way it was intended. Was there that kind of planning, that kind of strategy among folks here in Griffin when you kind of had identified a goal of what you were going to do? HACKBART: Now that I wouldn’t know. WALKER-HARPS: In the basement of Hicks Chapel Church yes there was. People who were mostly active are no longer around, but yes there was. And most of it happened in the basement of Hicks Chapel because I believe Reverend Shropshire was here at that time. And he was -- he was very hated. But Mary Stinson, Reverend Shropshire. Oh gosh, a lady who was a hairdresser, many others were there that are no longer with us now would meet and plan, strategize, yes. And that was a little bit before my time too. I was -- I might have been here working here but I was not living here. And if you were living here and you were a teacher you didn’t do it anyway. I was just crazy that it did not matter to me that I worked for the school system that I also worked with NAACP but you just did not -- you did not do that. But somehow or another I hooked up with Gary and went to work. But you didn’t do that. And that was where Reverend Shropshire was from. He was also an educator and president of NAACP, so I guess that’s probably why he had to leave. He had to go too. But yes, the answer to your question is yes there were strategy sessions. HACKBART: And I was a soldier, so basically it was like, “Okay this is what we’re going to do. This is what I need you to do. These are your instructions.” So yeah, because, like I said, when I started I was 10. So I wasn’t really in on the planning part of it. WALKER-HARPS: Were you out there with Linda Weems is all I can remember who were out there on the streets and they were getting beaten and whatever. And their daddy standing on the sideline saying -- HACKBART: No. WALKER-HARPS: -- “That’s my daughter and you hurt my daughter,” or whatever. HACKBART: No, I was shielded from that. I did -- I never experienced the thing of being beaten or having to watch people being beaten. BAUSKE: That happened in Griffin? WALKER-HARPS: When I say beaten maybe that’s too strong a word but law enforcement pulling you out of the way or trying to calm you. BAUSKE: Ms. Jewel when you said you were afraid you were going to be set up, did you mean -- WALKER-HARPS: People were always coming to you call-- about this meeting and come here and do that and whatever. BAUSKE: And then were you afraid physically to go to those meetings? WALKER-HARPS: Oh yeah, you were afraid physically to go. You made sure that -- yeah, you -- BAUSKE: Did they try to set you up legally or politically like, “Here have this.” And then if you take it, come down with the law. Did that sort of thing happen? WALKER-HARPS: We were always aware of that. We didn’t take things. We didn’t take favors. And that’s another thing that I can give Gary credit for. Don’t do favors and we don’t take gifts because then there’s always that obligation. So there was -- and hopefully somebody will come in who can talk about the human relations committee. It wasn’t called human relations but it was an integrated group of women. Ms. Crossfield and Ms. Cheatham are -- were two that I can remember who helped to bridge the gap during the civil rights period so that it was no more violent than it was because of this group. And it wasn’t called human relations but that’s the kind of work that they were doing. And (Raymond had?) to have a meeting of the minds so to speak so that they could work -- peacefully work out conditions that would’ve been otherwise much more violent. CUNNINGHAM: So is there anybody around from that period that -- WALKER-HARPS: No, nobody that I know. No, they -- as far as I can remember they all gone. So it would be secondary information that we would get. And there are probably some people around who would know. Phillip Head may know because his brother was a part. HACKBART: But you can’t talk to him. WALKER-HARPS: He won’t talk. His brother was a part of it but he won’t talk. And Frank Touchstone perhaps would know also because of his uncle who was -- whose income came from the black community. And as a result of that he was able to funnel money into the Civil Rights Movement when people went to jail or whatever or to be a lot more active than those persons who worked for the system. And he would -- he probably would remember but he’s not talking yet either. HACKBART: Okay. WALKER-HARPS: Well he’s physically unable. CAIN: Now I was just going to ask her since her father was in such a high profile role in Griffin, do you remember specific threats like Klan threats to him? I know there were Klan threats but do you recall any of that? WALKER-HARPS: Were you all ever afraid? HACKBART: I don’t recall being afraid. WALKER-HARPS: I guess that was your question in essence. CAIN: Well you know we’ve had folks come in and say there was a cross burn on a lot or something like that. And again, anytime you have change it -- you can get a reaction to that. And if he’s a high profile person initiating some change, and I know he was kind of a peacemaker too and that kind of thing. But I just wondered if there was any kind of threat or any -- any kind of reaction from a group like the Klan during that time that you can recall? HACKBART: I can’t really recall that there being any such thing. We -- it was when we first moved back to Griffin from Detroit we lived on Chapel Street. And the Heads lived across the street from us. And I think they had an incident at their house while we were there. WALKER-HARPS: They did, they did. HACKBART: But I don’t recall when we moved out on Bourbon Street there being any incident with anything near. What my -- my dad and my uncle were very -- how do I put this? You didn’t mess with them okay? They weren’t opposed to beating you up if you caused a problem. (laughs) I mean they believed in protecting themselves and protecting their own, so if that was known by groups like the Klan or something they may not have bothered us because of that. I don’t know but I don’t recall anything ever happening or him saying that we needed to watch out for something or that anybody was threatening him. BAUSKE: Can you talk a little bit about your family? You mentioned your son? HACKBART: Okay. My family, my son okay. So after I had finished my second degree and I went to work for Georgia Power Company. And I worked for them at their nuclear power construction in Augusta and wasn’t real happy with being down there. I was able to get a job working with the federal government working with FAA. So my first assignment with them was in Daytona Beach during spring break. (laughter) So I worked for them in the southern region, which -- the southeastern part of the United States for three years. And then they moved me from being in Florida to being in Alabama and I was wanting to do something different anyway. And I had a cousin who was living in southern California, (Bev?), Uncle Glenn’s youngest daughter. She was living in San Diego at the time. And I went out to visit her and I decided I wanted to move to California. Luckily I was able to transfer there with the FAA to a job out there. And progression was much faster out there than it was here as far as moving up into different positions. Because here I was in the field, I was in the field, I was in the field. And people that were in the field with me were moving into the office. It’s like, “How are you guys moving into the office?” Because they would know about jobs that I didn’t -- they weren’t telling me about. But once I moved to California, I was like -- I was there a few months and I was in an office job. Because there they told you what was going on. And here it was still that good old boy system, they’re picking and choosing who they’re going to tell that this job exists. And so I was able -- out there I was able to move up more quickly in the organization. I even was in a management position for a while while I was there. Well I got married while I was living in California. And my husband was white and I had my son while I was still out there. And his name was Shane because his father’s -- he liked that movie -- CAIN: Oh Shane. (laughter) HACKBART: Yeah, yeah. So his father was on a (tie rug?) team so he really wasn’t really home that much. He was different places and so I was basically there with my son by myself. I mean although I had friends who would come over and my husband’s mother would come and help us out and things like that. I decided I wanted to come back home and be closer to my family here and so we moved back here when my son was about a year old. And we stayed with my parents for a couple years and then we built the house over in Carriage Hills. And my son and I moved into the house and my husband was still travelling around. And at some point I decided the marriage was not working for me and so we ended up getting a divorce. When my son was probably about five we got divorced. And he and I still stayed over in the house in Carriage Hills. And he -- my son, he was just a sweet, special, little blonde-head, blue-eyed, angel face kid. And he just attracted attention everywhere he went and it was just a very interesting thing to be with him here in Griffin. Because my husband was here with us for a while and we would be riding around in the car and I just had to learn just look straight ahead. Because if I looked to my right or to my left there were people like going -- (laughs) “Wow.” And I would take Shane we’d go -- I’d go to the grocery store and he’d be in the little car seat and the little kids, little white kids especially, would come up and just stare at him, look at me and look at him. And they’d say, “Is that your baby?” (laughter) “Yes.” Of course their parents would just be going, “I’m not touching that.” So yeah that part was interesting. After a few years of he and I being here -- of Shane and I being here people kind of backed off on that. Of course I was still concerned about him because he did look like a little white boy, and you know a little white boy with a black mom. And I didn’t know all the time when we went places how people would react to that. And he went once without me to a -- to one of those -- those parties they used to have, those block party kind of things they used to have. I forget what they called them now. WALKER-HARPS: I’m older than you. I really forget. HACKBART: They had -- they used to have -- CAIN: Is it outside? HACKBART: They used to have these community parties where the community would just get together and have a party because they just wanted people -- WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm I remember but I don’t know what they called them. HACKBART: -- in the community to get to know each other. So they went to one over by Aunt Stell’s house. I wasn’t with them. I was traveling or something. So he went with I guess Gwen had sent some of them. And when I got back from wherever I was they said, “Oh well he was over there and he got into a fight.” I said, “What?” So basically it was like here’s this little white boy in this black neighborhood and you know little bad boys are going, “Why you in our neighborhood? Why you in our neighborhood?” He’s like, “Man what you talking about?” So he was probably eight or nine or something at the time. Was he that or was he a little bit younger? I think he was eight or nine. So they decided they were going to beat up on him so they went after him. And after that I put him in karate classes. But he had -- he had a lot of his grandfather in him. They said, “We don’t know what you’re complaining about. He was giving it to them just as bad as they were giving it to him.” (laughter) But he, like I said, was a special little boy. I had him in private school for a few years and then I decided we could probably just save that money for college. So for his freshmen year he went to Griffin High School. And it was during the fall of that year that he -- well he had this dirt bike. And when I bought him the dirt bike I wanted to buy him something that was going to hold up for a while and be a good thing for him to have. And where we were we were in the city so it wasn’t a whole lot of room for him to really ride around on it. So I took it to Mama’s house, to Mama and Daddy’s house, because they were outside the city and he could ride the bike up and down the street and nobody would care. So he’d been given certain restrictions of you can’t do this, you can’t do -- you can’t cross the street, you can’t do this, whatever. And he had the helmet and the breast thing and all the pads and everything and the gloves. And he told me that when he was at her house if he put that stuff on that -- and he was riding wherever. He said the kids said, “You look like something out of Star Wars.” So he got to a point where he wasn’t wear-- he wouldn’t wear that. But I forgot to tell them about the -- let me tell you about the machete story first. One of the private schools he went to they only went to school four days a week. They went to school Monday through Thursday. Fridays were reserved for field trips but he didn’t do a field trip every Friday. So the Fridays that he didn’t do a field trip he would go and stay at Mama’s house because I had to work so he’d be at Mama’s house. Well he was old enough that he could be by himself and she’d have something to do like she’d have to go to the hairdressers, which that particular day she had a hairdressers appointment and she went to the hairdressers. And I’m in my office working and I get a call from him on my cell phone. And he’s like, “I’m dying.” “What? What is wrong with you?” [01:06:00] “My foot is bleeding. I’m dying. I’m dying.” “Did you call 9-1-1?” “Yes I called 9-1-1 but I’m dying. There’s blood on my foot. I’m dying.” And one of the guys in the office was hearing this because of course he’s telling me this and my voice is getting elevated there in the office you know? And so I was like, “Okay just call 9-1-1 and I’ll call Mama and we’ll get them there.” And so I called her and she’s like, “What?” -- called my mom like, “What?” because she’s got to get from wherever she’s doing back home to see what was going on with this kid. So one of the guys in the office heard me with the elevated voice and he came over and he says, “Okay I hear what’s going on.” He said, “When they get there, when your mother gets there tell her to take him not to the emergency room tell her to take him to his doctor’s office.” I said, “Okay, okay.” So I call the doctor’s office and I tell them. And the reason he said that was because if you go to the emergency room he was just going to sit there and wait as opposed to going to the doctor’s office and they say, “Okay let’s get him in here and do this right away,” which is exactly what happened. Well what happened was we had this machete at my parent’s house that I played with when I was growing up, okay. I had gotten it from one of my uncles, one of my great uncles. And it was not -- it wasn’t sharp, so I would just mess with it, just play with it. Well after I left home Daddy got hold of it and he sharpened it up and he’d use it to chop down things. Well after Daddy was gone it was still there at the house and Shane found it, okay? So what he had done was he had gone down into the woods and he was chopping at trees and everything. And he was doing these karate moves and chopping at the trees and kicking the trees and stuff. Well he made a mistake and kicked and chopped at the same time. And so the point of this machete hit a seam -- and he was wearing boots too -- hit a seam on the boot just right that it cut through the seam and went into the boot into the top of his foot. So he was bleeding out from this. But I think the fact that the boot was on there was kind of helping it contain itself a little bit. And that’s what had happened, why he thought he was dying because he was bleeding out on the boot. So when he called 9-1-1 they sent the sheriff’s department out there. And my mom’s fussing at him about being down to the woods with the machete and stuff and they said, “Ma’am, you see those kids down the street in the flat hanging out?” They said, “You should be grateful he’s out in the woods playing instead of hanging on the corner with these kids down here trying to do drugs.” BAUSKE: Good point. WALKER-HARPS: Very good point. HACKBART: So yeah and he was -- that was the kind of antics and stuff he would get into. But he got to a point where he didn’t want to wear the helmet and all that stuff with the dirt bike because the kids in the neighborhood were making fun of him. And he went out one day, and I saw him and it just didn’t dawn on him that I was at Mama’s house. And I was sitting there at the kitchen table and I saw him go with the bike out to the street and drive off. And I didn’t -- just really didn’t think about it until he didn’t come back. And so I’m calling him on his cell phone and he’s not answering and I said, “Let me go find him.” And when I went to go find him I found that he’d been hit by an SUV riding the dirt bike. And he did not pass away instantly. It was later on that night at one of the hospitals -- children hospitals in Atlanta that he passed away later that evening. He was 14-1/2. So one of the things that he loved to do was he loved to play soccer. And we knew that there -- at the time, I don’t know how it is now, but at the time that there weren’t a lot of scholarships for kids playing soccer. So we do a scholarship fund. We did a -- what is it, 50C-3? CUNNINGHAM: 501(c)(3). HACKBART: Yeah 503(c)(3), the nonprofits. And we do a scholarship fund annually in his memory. WALKER-HARPS: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) planted a tree. HACKBART: Sunday was his 23rd birthday. WALKER-HARPS: Somebody planted a tree in his memory. Was that -- where was that? HACKBART: At Griffin High School they have a memorial garden where they plant -- they put trees and plants out for the children. So we planted a tree there in the garden for him. CAIN: And after you told that story I almost feel like I need to say I express my condolences even now. HACKBART: Okay. But behind that I wasn’t through being a mother so I got into the foster-to-adopt program. And in 2010 my little girl, Sharah, came to me. She was three days old. So she’s in school now today. CUNNINGHAM: Seven year old? HACKBART: She’s six. CUNNINGHAM: Six. HACKBART: She’s six. She was born late in the year. It was August 30, 2010. Oh by the way, when we were at Georgia Tech we were protesting. We were doing sit-ins on the president’s lawn and that good stuff, all that good stuff. CAIN: Now that’s always interesting to me. I’m not too far from your era in college. I’m a little older than you. But students protest a lot of times for a lot of reasons: conditions on campus and injustices on campus and things out in the community that’s going on and things that are going on nationally. Tell us maybe a little bit about your protests. HACKBART: It was a lot of the same things. Like I said, we did have professors that didn’t want us there. So we were protesting those things. We were protesting the dropout rate for the minority people, the minority students. And we recognized the fact that a lot of the minority students were coming there already behind the curve because we didn’t come from high schools that had the same level of education, the advanced levels of knowledge that a lot of the other kids had. And there were gaps there. Because we were -- so we were facing the discrimination of teachers and (unintelligible) in the class and then you were facing that gap of trying to catch up. So out of that they did develop having an office called Office of Minority Educational Development, OMEN, that started the same year that we chartered the sorority there. So they’re still going with that, and that program was to help fill that gap. That if students came in and found that they were not able to keep up because they didn’t know that much about calculus or whatever then they could go to that office to get help to be able to catch up and to fill the gap in. BAUSKE: Can you tell us a little bit about the sorority? Your mother spoke a while back with great pride. HACKBART: Okay. So at Georgia Tech there were a lot of sororities and fraternities, traditionally white sororities and fraternities. And I think timing is a really interesting thing because if I had taken them up on going to Georgia Tech a year earlier I may not have run into the people that I ran into. So when I got to Georgia Tech I met two people who became really good friends of mine at the time. They were just very opposite people, and they still are very opposite people, but they were good friends of mine. And they both were legacies in that their mothers were AKAs. And it was not really something I had really thought about, but when I met them and we would talk we said -- the three of us said, “We’re going to do this. We’re going to do this.” So since they were legacies they had the contacts. And they were able to talk to their mothers and find out about the grad chapters and we were able to get on the radar for Kappa Omega, which was one of the grad chapters for Alpha Kappa Alpha in Atlanta. And us with 70 young ladies from Spelman, because they didn’t have a chapter either at the time, ubiquitous 73 became that line that was the seed for the chapters at Georgia Tech and at Spelman. WALKER-HARPS: So Kappa Omega now has a rich history. HACKBART: Yes. WALKER-HARPS: Did they recognize it I don’t know. HACKBART: Yeah, well they -- it seemed to be pretty rich at the time anyway. So then there were the three of us there on campus. And we said, “Okay, we’ve got some work to do,” because you needed a certain amount, you needed a minimum of 20 members in order to have a chapter. So we started recruiting and I think it may have been -- I don’t know if it was the first or second line. It must’ve been the first line that we recruited to get to our minimum of 20. Now -- I won’t tell you guys all that. (laughter) BAUSKE: Oh come on. WALKER-HARPS: You can tell us. HACKBART: You know when you put a bunch of people in a room together and they make a decision, I don’t know why you put the same people in the room together and expect to make a different decision. (laughs) And I say that because when we started working in -- actually it must’ve been the second group that we had that actually made enough for us to do a charter. But when we started working we did the first group. For some reason they told me that they wanted me to be in charge. I’m the leader of this thing here. Okay, so that’s why all the articles because they put it all on me. It’s like, “Okay, now we want you to be the foot soldier.” So I was the one going to the meetings and doing this and doing that and making applications and finding people and all that other stuff. And then when we had our chartering, the ladies from Kappa Omega said, “Okay now you guys need officers. We want you guys to go over here. We want you to pick this, this, this.” And one of those of course was for the president. And so we walked into the room and they’re like, “Why do we waste a vote on a president? It’s you.” And so everybody said, “Yeah it’s you.” So that’s how I got to be -- (laughs) the first basileus for the chapter because it was like they just all agreed it was just going to be me. So I was like, “Okay, I’ve been doing it this far. I may as well take it the rest of the way.” CAIN: You know on many white campuses during that era, there was a movement to have what I’m going to call “black student unions.” And they kind of evolved during that time. What was the case at Georgia Tech? HACKBART: We had the Black House. And we did -- and they still have it. They have the -- oh man, it’s called the GTAAA. I guess that must -- I think it’s the African American Association. CUNNINGHAM: That’s it. HACKBART: Yeah, so yeah we had that. And like I said, we had the Black House. So we had -- every week we’d have meetings. And at the Black House we’d have parties. So was that supposed to be our substitute for a sorority -- fraternity/sorority thing? It didn’t work. (laughs) It didn’t work. But I mean we had fun. We definitely had fun. And we had a support system. CAIN: But it was a place where folks could congregate and talk about issues in addition to having a social outlet. HACKBART: Right, we knew what was going on. And that was where most of -- the stuff about us doing our protesting, that’s where it came from. That’s where we would get together to talk about what’s going on and what we need to do about it. And that’s why we end up sitting on the steps outside the president’s office and stuff like that. Because we were there together communicating, talking about what was going on and what needed to go on. If they created that for us as a fraternity/sorority substitute, they just shot themselves in the foot. Because we used that as a platform to figure out what we needed and to go after what we needed. WALKER-HARPS: Is there still a need today for such? Do you know whether we continue to have such new groups? HACKBART: I hear stories about what that group is like these days and what the students are like. And the students just they’re not connected to the past on what’s gone on at that school. They don’t get it. They think it’s all about them right here and now. They don’t get that it wasn’t always as easy to get into that school as it is right now or I mean to even be considered to get into the school. They don’t get that it’s a big deal to actually get your degree and go out into the world. So many of them fail because they don’t seem to have the drive to succeed and they don’t seem to be able -- they don’t understand that they need to help each other. WALKER-HARPS: But isn’t that a carryover from what -- from their home life? You see the same thing here in your local community. So would they not take that to college and it would have the same meaning to them? HACKBART: Yeah maybe so. WALKER-HARPS: Yeah this is the same practice. This is what we were talking about earlier Art. There’s a subtle -- or a disconnect. HACKBART: But I -- but the thing is, is it because they didn’t see it happen? I don’t -- but you’re saying though that their parents are like that though. Well yeah, and it -- there were even, back when I was growing up I’m sure, a lot of people who were just so disengaged that they wouldn’t know. WALKER-HARPS: Somewhere along the line we failed to teach our children. We have not taught them well and there’s this break in the chain. And they either don’t know or have an appreciation for it. HACKBART: It’s -- they have -- it’s an apathy. They don’t recognize it. They don’t know it. It doesn’t relate to them. It’s got nothing to do with them. And it still actually has a lot to do with them because whether they realize it or not they’re still facing a lot of discrimination. They’re not thinking about the fact that even though they don’t remember it, some of their professors do and they -- the professors may be okay with them flunking out. Some of them actually may be glad that they’re flunking out. BAUSKE: Confirms expectations. HACKBART: Right, right. It’s unfortunate but it’s like you can’t seem to get through the wall to say, “Hey, you have something that you need to guard. You don’t need to be taking it for granted.” I don’t -- maybe it’s that we didn’t -- we haven’t taught them that they should value this -- these things. I hope that with my son that I was at least teaching him -- I know that he was a little bit political. He didn’t like it when he went to school and they would sit there and they’d talk about President Bush and how wonderful he was. And he’d be sitting there going, “No he’s not and stop talking about it. I don’t want to hear it.” (laughter) Of course they’re probably looking at him going, “Why is this child talking to us.” And that was when he was in private school. CAIN: But he came home and told you. HACKBART: Hmm? CAIN: He came home and told you. HACKBART: He came home and told me yeah. And I never heard anything from them about it so I guess they figured that if he knew enough to say that to them that they were not going to say anything to me about it. And I hope that with Sharah I can get her a sense of what’s going on. But it’s been interesting because she likes that movie Hidden Figures. I had to buy the movie because she wanted to see the movie again. I took her to see it the first time. And she’s a hyper little thing and I was actually really surprised that she sat there to see it. And she fidgeted a little bit but she likes that movie. And she would tell me about parts of the movie, so she got it. And she read the little storybook on the Rosa Parks story. And so she’s got that this stuff happened, that these were things that happened in the past, that things weren’t always as nice as she sees them right now, that they were different. And it doesn’t make her hate anybody because she’ll tell me about little friends at school. And it’s not -- it’s never this little black girl or this little white girl or anything. It’s just people. So she gets it. She gets that this is something that happened in the past but things for the most part are different now. I don’t know if she gets that she still has to watch out for what might happen. But she is very much aware of what happened in the past. CAIN: How old is she? HACKBART: She’s six. CAIN: Wow. That’s truly amazing. WALKER-HARPS: Apparently she’s getting the same teaching and training that you received, which allowed you to go to California. And your daddy -- you come home and your daddy wonder why would you marry a white person. Well because of the way you were raised and because of what you were taught. And I had to -- HACKBART: He never -- he never -- that was never even a question. WALKER-HARPS: I never -- (Hackbart laughs) I never understood until today. We would wonder well why would -- they came out of a family a part of the struggle and they would go and marry of the opposite race. HACKBART: Because they told us even as children they didn’t care. They didn’t care what color the person was that we married. WALKER-HARPS: I see now. I hear you now. (Hackbart laughs) But I’m saying that there were many blacks who wondered -- HACKBART: Why, yeah, yeah. WALKER-HARPS: -- why. HACKBART: Yeah, what she’s speaking of is that there are -- we do have a few interracial marriages in our family yeah. WALKER-HARPS: Yeah well all of the families (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) in your family. CAIN: In many families, African American families, I think that was the message folks got that folks were kind of human first. And that this whole thing about racial division, you deal with people how they deal with you and so forth. HACKBART: Right, right, right. Exactly, how they deal with you, you feel them out to see whether they’re on your team or they’re just going to be just total opposite all the way down the line. And that’s how you deal with them yeah. So my dad was not one to give people a whole lot of chances in that area. Once he figured out where you were coming from, that’s the way he reacted to you. And he was not one to -- if you were going to mess up and continue to go in that direction, he was going to be sure to cut it off quick. (laughs) WALKER-HARPS: That’s how he looked at it. He did not look at it in terms of color, but he did look at it in terms of whether it was good for you. HACKBART: So I picked up a lot of things from my dad in that respect. Mama tends to give people that two or three different chances, so does my brother. And I was just one -- I am just one if I see that it’s just not -- it’s just going to go the wrong way or it’s just you’re going to be somebody that’s going to always be tripping me up, I’m going to cut that off, shut that down as quick as I can. So the one thing that slowed me down on that was I went to a training class with FAA. And they taught me that if you were dealing with a person and you only had to deal with that person for that day that moment and you’d probably never see them again for the rest of your life, just let it go. (laughs) Let it go. If you don’t have to get into -- if you can get your issue resolved without having to get into really going to battle with them, let it go. Don’t waste your energy. Save your energy for the battles that really matter. BAUSKE: That was good advice. WALKER-HARPS: Yeah that’s kind of my philosophy too. CUNNINGHAM: So before we wrap up today, is there anything else that you’d like to share with us that we haven’t talked about? HACKBART: Well there’s probably a whole bunch of stuff. (laughter) My -- I was always daddy’s little girl. And he was always the support system for me. Like I said, from being in college and the different classes and things that I had and the issues I had and even going into the workplace, if I had a problem I was going to call him and say this is what’s going on what should I do? And, like I said, he was the one who told me, “If the class -- if you’re failing the class don’t worry about it. Just do it again. Just do it until you can -- until you get it. Don’t quit.” He was my serious support system. And whenever I go to visit his grave and Shane’s grave, that’s the thing that just gets me every time I go there is that two people -- the two men in my life who were my support system are gone, (crying) I’m sorry. WALKER-HARPS: Yeah he was my support system too. He was like a brother to me. He was always there had my back. CAIN: Would you like to say where they were laid to rest? HACKBART: They’re in -- over on Everee Inn Road, that’s Westwood Gardens. Yeah I was just there a couple days ago. And he liked that idea too because when I bought the plots for -- I bought four plots, two of them for him and my mom. And at the time there weren’t a whole lot of white -- a whole lot of black people buried over there. So when I did that he liked that. (laughter) WALKER-HARPS: And I remember you pointed -- you pointed that out me at that time. Yeah I remember now you doing that. Well I can remember when we had the fair for him when we were recognizing him. And we had an envelope and we were going to give him a donation because that was our tribute. So I took it to him. “No, what are you doing?” (laughter) “No.” He would not accept it. He wouldn’t accept anything. HACKBART: That’s what this one -- this -- when I did this one, -- WALKER-HARPS: Okay, oh (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) oh okay. HACKBART: -- this scrapbook, that was the one that was at -- we had that at -- in that program. Growing up the way I did with him, with my uncle, with my mom, that’s what made me the person that I am. And I thank God that he put me where I was with the people that I was with and the way that I grew up. Yeah, I have accomplished a lot in my life. But it’s because of the way they raised me and the things that they taught me and that you move forward, that you made things better, that you fight for other peoples’ rights, and you try to do the right thing. WALKER-HARPS: Wonderful. CUNNINGHAM: Thank you so much for being with us today and sharing your dad and your mom’s story and your story as well. HACKBART: Thank you. Thank you for letting me do it. Sorry about the tears. But, like I said, I was at the cemetery a couple days ago and it was my son’s birthday so -- CAIN: We can all relate to the emotion of losing folks and what they meant. WALKER-HARPS: And he was loyal to friends. I don’t think he ever got over the death of Isaiah. HACKBART: No. Yeah that was -- I don’t think -- I wasn’t here then. I think I was still in California. WALKER-HARPS: Yeah you were. HACKBART: He -- I think they had stopped -- they stopped working the store for a while or something. WALKER-HARPS: Yes. HACKBART: But he -- when he finally fully retired and he was working in the liquor store, he had a best friend. I can’t remember Isaiah’s last name. WALKER-HARPS: Miller. HACKBART: Okay yeah. And Daddy would be at the store closing up -- getting ready to close up the store. And Isaiah was working at the -- was he at the American Legion or the VFW? WALKER-HARPS: VFW. HACKBART: Okay. He’d be working -- he was working at the -- would work the bar at the VFW. And he would leave earlier than Daddy was finishing up at the store so he would leave there and go over to the store and keep my dad company until my dad closed up the store. And one night they were in there and they were -- my dad was getting ready to close up. And three young men walked in with guns and they were wanting to rob the place. And my dad had -- he had a gun in the store of course. You know back then businesses, you keep guns in there. But he was not going to reach for the gun because Isaiah was standing out in the front of the counter so he was fully exposed to these three guys. And so my dad just went in the register and he gave them the money. And as they were leaving one of them turned around and just started shooting, so he shot my dad’s best friend. And he lingered in a coma for a week or two and then passed away. And my dad could never go back into the store again. CAIN: When was that? WALKER-HARPS: About 30 years ago, 20 years anyway. HACKBART: Yeah maybe 20 because I was still in California. So it could’ve been 30 but maybe 25. WALKER-HARPS: Perhaps. Perhaps because I don’t think I was president at that time. I think we were in the process of transitioning at the time that that happened. So it was pretty close, about 25 years. Your mama said to me, “Okay,” at Jimmy Holland’s funeral, “Okay, then have you thought about the fact that all of your little group is gone? You’re the last one here.” (laughs) I think about that all the time. “They’re all gone, all except you.” I said, “Yeah, I hadn’t thought about it but you’re right. Don’t want to think about it either but you’re right.” Isaiah, Jimmy, Blake, Glenn, Richard. HACKBART: And Richard was a cousin of mine too. WALKER-HARPS: That’s it. BAUSKE: Thank you very much. CAIN: Thank you. HACKBART: You’re welcome. END OF AUDIO FILE
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audio
0
RBRL418GAA-011.xml
RBRL418GAA-011.xml
http://purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL418GAA/findingaid
Duration
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98 minutes
Location
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Griffin, Georgia
Repository
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Gail Reid Hackbart, May 22, 2017
Identifier
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RBRL418GAA-011
Creator
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Gail Reid Hackbart
Be-Atrice Cunningham
Jewel Walker-Harps
Art Cain
Ellen Bauske
Format
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audio
oral histories
Coverage
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Griffin, Georgia
Rights
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Type
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sound
Subject
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Civil rights
Segregation
School integration
African American women
Civil rights demonstrations
United States--Civil rights
Discrimination
Student movements
Date
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2017-05-22
Description
An account of the resource
Gail Reid Hackbart grew up in Griffin, Georgia as the daughter of Gary Reid, a prominent Civil Rights activist in Georgia. Gail attended Georgia Tech, where she started the Alpha Kappa Alpha chapter and participated in marches over the unfair treatment of minority students. In this interview, Reid Hackbart discusses her childhood, education, and her work in the Civil Rights movement.
OHMS
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Griffin African American Oral History Project
Subject
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Georgia--History, Local
African Americans--History
Georgia--Communities
Description
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The Griffin African American Oral History Project is a collaboration between the Griffin Branch NAACP, the Griffin Campus Library of the University of Georgia, and the Richard B. Russell Library. The seed was planted in the meetings of the Educational Prosperity Initiative which is also chaired by the president of the Griffin Branch NAACP, Jewel Walker-Harps. Collaborators on the project include: Griffin Housing Authority; Spalding County Collaborative; Fairmont Alumni Association; University of Georgia—Athens and Griffin campuses; and the Educational Prosperity Initiative, which is an affiliate of the Spalding County Collaborative and others. Interviewers on the project include: John Cruickshank, librarian at UGA-Griffin Campus Library; Jewel Walker-Harps, President of the Griffin, GA Branch of the NAACP; Art Cain, coordinator of Continuing Education for UGA-Griffin; Be-Atrice Cunningham, project manager for College of Agricultural and Environmental Science for Griffin; and Ellen Bauske, senior public service associate at the Georgia Center for Urban Agriculture in Griffin. Rich Braman was the sound engineer for this project. <br />The Griffin African American Oral History Project intends to document the experiences of people who lived in Fairmont Community in Griffin, Georgia during the civil rights era and through its transformation to the present day.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
Publisher
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
Date
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2015-2018
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Format
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Oral histories
Identifier
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RBRL418GAA
Coverage
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Griffin, Georgia
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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https://purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL418GAA-010/ohms
OHMS Object Text
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5.4
Interview with Haskell Ward, March 22, 2017
RBRL418GAA-010
RBRL418GAA
Griffin African American Oral History Project
Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia
Haskell Ward
Jewell Walker-Harps, Be-Atrice Cunningham, John Cruickshank, and Ellen Bauske
oral history
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English
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Introduction / Early Life
It’s March the 22nd, 2017. We are at the University of Georgia, Griffin Campus … continuing interview session.
Ward discusses his childhood and talks about his experience going to school in Griffin, Georgia. He talks about several of the people who had a major impact on his life, and says that he was very successful in school and finished 3rd in his class despite failing the first and second grades.
A&E;A&E Network;A.C. Epps;Arts and Entertainment;Corrine Prothro;Ella Phillips;Ellen Charaker;Harold McNeely;In Search of The Dream;Louise's Cafeteria;Reverend Shropshire;Rotary Club of Griffin;Rotary International
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5W1FyXzy04
In the early 1990s AMI produced a documentary series on the history of African-Americans called "In Search of the Dream," for the Arts & Entertainment Network. This six-hour program chronicled the life of host Haskell Ward amidst the events and history of African-Americans from the 1940s to the 1980s. This insightful and informative series was nominated for a Cable Ace Award (now part of the Emmys).
1136
Segregation in Griffin / Horace Tate
So anyway, I could go on like that but what was life like? Griffin was two different communities.
Ward discusses his experience attending segregated schools, saying that most African-American children did not want to go to school with white children. He also talks about a man named Horace Tate, who encouraged him to read.
Brown v. Board;Huckleberry Finn;integration;segregation
1580
Housing in Griffin
This picture of me, when I was here, this was in the projects. We left Solomon Street and moved into the projects.
Ward talks about how his family were some of the first people to move into the public housing community now called Fairmont Homes. This was the first time he had had electricity, air conditioning, and running water with an indoor bathroom.
affordable housing;public housing;Solomon Street
1852
Values in Griffin
By that time I had begun to realize that I was a little bit more serious in school than other kids.
Ward talks about the values that the Griffin community instilled in him. He further describes the paradox of the South being racially segregated by law but at the same time many close relationships existed between blacks and whites such as the one between his Mother and Harold McNeely.
athletics;nannys;Oakland Cemetery;positive reinforcement;sports
2705
Tenure in the State Department under the Carter Administration
There’s an interesting thing … I was in the State Department … Jimmy Carter was president. I was living in Lagos, Nigeria
In this segment Ward discusses his tenure as Africa Adviser to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance in the Carter Administration. Ward was the first African-American to serve in the Secretary’s office. He talks about the issues he dealt with such as the independence movements in Zimbabwe, Angola, and Mozambique.
Angola;Angolan Civil War;Angolan War of Independence;Cyrus Vance;Ford Foundation;freedom fighters;Jimmy Carter;Lagos;Nigeria;Secretary of State;State Department;United States Department of State
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angolan_War_of_Independence
The Angolan War of Independence (1961–1974) began as an uprising against forced cotton cultivation, and it became a multi-faction struggle for the control of Portugal's overseas province of Angola among three nationalist movements and a separatist movement. The war ended when a leftist military coup in Lisbon in April 1974 overthrew Portugal's Estado Novo regime, and the new regime immediately stopped all military action in the African colonies, declaring its intention to grant them independenc
2952
Civil Rights Activism / Social life in Griffin at the VFW
And so … The same thing here … we decided to Act.
Ward discusses his civil rights activism at Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University). He cites the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the death of Emmit Till as galvanizing events for him and for the African-American community in general. He also talks about the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) run by Phillip Head in Griffin.
Aretha Franklin;B.B. King;Clark College;Clark-Atlanta University;Diana Washington;Emmit Till;Etta James;James Brown;Montgomery Bus Boycott;Sam Cooke;Veterans of Foreign Wars;VFW
3600
Economic conditions faced by African-Americans in Griffin
So you mentioned the Heads … so who were some of the other prominent black business owners around that time?
Ward discusses the economic conditions faced by African Americans in Griffin before, during and after the civil rights movement. He says that as a student he was encouraged to leave the south if he wanted to be successful. He also discusses his academic achievements, including starting a debate team at Clarke College.
Atlanta Life Insurance;Auburn Avenue;Emory;Frank Touchstone;Harvard;Igbo;Louis Ward;Nigeria;Ron Touchstone;sewers;Slaton Avenue;Stan Lovett;Yoruba
5275
Visits to Africa
When I went to Africa in 1962 it completely transformed my direction in life.
Ward details his many trips to Africa and the impact his first trip to Kenya had on his life. After visiting Kenya, he went to Ethiopia where he taught for the Peace Corps. When he returned to the United States he attended UCLA for graduate school.
John F. Kennedy;Peace Corps;Selective Service;The Kennedy Airlift;Tom Mboya
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kennedy_Airlift
The Kennedy Airlift occurred in 1959 and 1960 and saw hundreds of east Africans get scholarships to study in the US. It was arranged by Tom Mboya and Senator John F. Kennedy
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Return to griffin
We can see that with you now in your life. You've gone all over the world....
Ward discusses returning to Griffin to become a judge and realizing that there are still very significant barriers between black and whites, although racial communication has improved over the years. He also talks about how he feels like African Americans, including himself, need to dress a certain way in order to be perceived as professionals.
income inequality;justice system;New York City;racism
6778
Important influences on his life
What do you consider your most valuable achievement?
Ward talks about some of the people who have taught him important lessons throughout his life, including C. Eric Lincoln at Clark College and his wife, Leah.
Benjamin Mays;James Hermann Robinson;Martin Luther King;Morehouse College;Operation Crossroads Africa
7100
African American professionals in Griffin / Politics in Griffin
Mrs. Jewell has he covered the period he wanted to be covered?
Ward discusses some of the professional jobs that African American people had in Griffin during the Civil Rights Era. He talks about Dr. Blaton, Dr. Atkinson (a dentist) and some of the first black police officers. He also discusses the political atmosphere in Griffin and the reorganization of the municipal government of Griffin-Spalding County.
BJ Jackson;city limits;Marvin Barrow;Mobile, Alamaba;NAACP;Reese Colbert;single member districts
RBRL418GAA-010 Ward JEWELL WALKER-HARPS: March 22, 19 -- 2017. We are at the University of Georgia Griffin Campus with our continuing interview session. We will be interviewing today Mr. Haskell Ward, a Griffinite who is going to tell our -- take us through his life and through the major events which have had some impact on African American history. Today we have sitting at the table -- BE-ATRICE CUNNINGHAM: Be-Atrice Cunningham. JOHN CRUICKSHANK: John Cruickshank. ELLEN BAUSKE: And Ellen Bauske. RICHIE BRAMAN: And Richie Braman. WALKER-HARPS: So now, Haskell, we will allow you to begin to tell us about your early life and whatever else you deem to be important that you would like to share with us, as we interject some questions along the way. Haskell WARD: Okay. [00:01:00] So thank you, Jewell, and those who are also here at the table. It’s an honor for me to be here, and to speak a bit about growing up in Griffin, and the Griffin in which I grew up. Related to that, I have made a copy of a DVD of the Griffin series in the “In Search of the Dream” that I recorded off of the television; that in 1990, we did a six-part series on A&E called “In Search of the Dream,” and Griffin was the first hour of that series, and by all accounts, the most popular hour of that series. It was nominated for best documentary of the year in 1990, and that also is related to how I came back to [00:02:00] Griffin, as well. But this is a copy of it from the television, including the ads in it, that I think is worthwhile being a part of your collection here. WALKER-HARPS: And we have your permission to -- WARD: Yes, yes. I don’t have the copyright authority, but you can have that. It’s recorded in 1990. WALKER-HARPS: Okay. WARD: I was born in Griffin in 1940, March 13, 1940, so last week, I celebrated my 77th birthday. On 429 East Solomon Street. Four twenty-nine East Solomon Street was where the old Louise’s used to be, across the street from where the Louise’s is today. I will show you a picture of the house that was from a product of my [00:03:00] memory, because there were no photographs of it, but it was a product of my memory, and it was drawn by -- what’s her name -- Joyce Perdue. This is the house, and it’s from my memory, from right in Solomon Street, where the children’s care -- the childcare center is. All of those houses were torn down. But I was born there in that house in 1940, by Miss (Carrie Causey?), Rodney, his great-grandmother. Rodney McCord’s great-grandmother was the midwife. And most of the African American babies who were born in Griffin were not born in the hospital. They were born by midwives, and Miss Carrie Causey, who lived up on Taylor Street, [00:04:00] was the one who did most of the deliveries. That was 1940. I lived in a house that was my grandmother’s house, and there were two of us in there with -- my mother had two children, me and my sister (Yvonne?), two years older than me. My mother and father divorced a year after we were born -- I was born. He went to Cleveland, where he stayed the rest of his life, and she also eventually went to Cleveland, but we lived in that house until about 1950 with my grandmother, and then we moved up a few houses up Solomon Street, across the way from (Richard Duke’s?) and Miss (Vera?) Duke’s. Clifford Phillips [00:05:00] and his family, the Phillips across the way. Next door immediately to us was one of the black funeral homes. Sometimes a funeral home, sometimes not. And most of the people who were around there -- (George Reed?) lived around, down the corner. My fourth grade teacher lived two doors down, Miss Prothro, and many of my friends for the rest of high school were right on that little corridor. We went to -- when I was in school, to the Broad Street School. We walked under the bridge, which has been covered, under the railroad. And the Broad Street School burned down when I was in about the second or -- maybe third grade. And we built the -- we moved to a new school, Fairmont -- not -- Moore’s Elementary School, in, [00:06:00] I’d say, ’47, ’48. Forty-eight or somewhere around there, Moore’s was built. I was in Griffin a couple of years ago, visiting, and I was -- I stopped in to say hello to Billy Reeves. And when I -- Billy and I were in Rotary. I was the first African American in Rotary in Griffin, and Billy was a very good friend of mine, and I would often say hello to him. We were very good, close friends. And when I finished talking with Billy, I said, “You know, I think I’ll go over to the Board of Education and see Curtis, Curtis Jones.” And it was interesting. When I went to see him, they were doing a recording for a promotional piece on the Griffin-Spalding County School System. And Curtis said, “Well, here, why don’t you introduce [00:07:00] one -- interview one of our outstanding graduates, Haskell Ward?” And I talked with them for about a half an hour. And at the end of it, I said to Curtis, “Look, I’d be interested in seeing my school records.” And he said, “Well, I don’t know. That’s a long time ago,” but he said, “I’ll look.” Before I got back to -- by the Atlanta Motor Speedway, he called and said, “We found your records.” CUNNINGHAM: Oh, wow. WARD: These are the records (inaudible) that he sent me. And it was a startling discovery. (laughter) This is about two years ago. CUNNINGHAM: Yes. I was thinking, this could be scary. WARD: This is a startling discovery. I looked at my record, and I discovered something that, in -- and as I’m 75 years old, 74, 75 years old, I found out something that I never knew in that [00:08:00] 75 years. The first was that I failed the first grade. You go through and look at my records, and you’ll see all this, and the best grades were D’s (down there?) except for health, I got C’s. And so I was retained. And you go through. So I repeated the first grade. You go to the second grade, and you find the same thing. All of the D’s and F’s, and I didn’t even -- this -- the only grades I got beyond that were in health. And I was retained in the second grade. So when I graduated from high school, I often wondered why it was that I was 19 and everybody else was 17 or 18, and I never knew. I never knew until that day that I had repeated. Now, the end of that story really is, when I graduated from high school, if you look at my -- I was third. I didn’t get to be [00:09:00] number one or two, but I was third in my class. I was president of the junior and senior class, president of the district-wide 4-H club. I saw something about 4-H club in today’s paper. I won the state oratorical contest, third place, best all-around student, assistant band director, outstanding (bass?), best all-around, best student in math, best student in English, best student in social studies, most likely to succeed. And I thought, what an amazing story. What an amazing story. Here, a kid comes out of that circumstance, illiterate mother, illiterate father, illiterate grandmother, and coming out of that circumstance. Now, that fits into a kind of conservative mantra about the -- one could make a very strong conservative case that is (argued?) about the greatness that is [00:10:00] the opportunities in the country. But it really, in my mind, had a very big interpretation that I placed on it. When I left the third grade, I became the student of Miss Corine Prothro. Corine Prothro had a reputation of being a very tough lady, a very tough teacher, and she lived two doors down. I worked for the woman that she lived with, Miss Ella Phillips. Miss Ella Phillips lived on the corner of Fourth and Solomon Street -- on Third and Solomon Street. And both of them had a major role -- played a major role in my life. My grandmother was a maid, worked for Miss (inaudible). My mother was a maid later, and worked for (Harold McNeely?) And [00:11:00] my grandmother would say to me, when she was away at work, to sit on the porch until she came home. And I would sit on the porch, because I know that if I didn’t, Miss Prothro knew that that was what I was supposed to be doing. And so she would walk -- she walked from school over to her home, and not only was she my teacher, but she knew what the instructions were. There’s (an?) important questions about that, because I wondered in my later years in life why I sat on the porch and other kids didn’t, and the impact of Miss Prothro and Miss Ella Phillips on my life during that period. By the time I finished the sixth grade -- my sixth grade teacher was Mr. A. C. Epps. [00:12:00] Mr. Epps was my minister. And an important thing happened to me. If you look at my record from the first and second grades, I was clearly on the path to being a total failure in school. But if you look around the fifth and sixth grade, there began to be signs of excelling. And I trace those to the impact of my -- Mr. Reverend Epps was the minister at Heck Chapel. When I was in the fifth grade, Miss Ella Phillips took me to Heck Chapel and made me join, and I underscore made me, join the church there. Heck Chapel became a very important part [00:13:00] of my life, because Reverend Epps was not only my minister, but he was my sixth grade teacher. And not only was he my sixth grade teacher, but the other members were the head brothers and other teachers in Griffin. So Raymond was there, Phillip was there, Otis was there, that I grew up with under their tutelage there, so I knew them. They knew me as a member of the church. When Reverend Epps left the church, Reverend Shropshire became the minister, and most of my later years in life, I was with Reverend Shropshire. Reverend Shropshire and his sons and daughters were contemporaries, and Reverend Shropshire played a very important part both in my life and in the life of Griffin as a leader. Those -- WALKER-HARPS: Excuse me. Is he the Reverend Shropshire who [00:14:00] had to make a choice between teacher and the NAACP? WARD: Yeah, yeah. And his wife was also a teacher. WALKER-HARPS: Yes, (Hester?). WARD: Yeah. Now, those descriptions of my growing up really was the way all of the kids grew up. We were all very poor. There were -- those who were not poor, they were the sons or the daughters of the teachers or the ministers, but there weren’t very many, particularly because many of the ministers were not college educated. They were ministers, but they hadn’t been formally educated beyond being called to the ministry. So they weren’t very -- most people on Solomon Street were like me. Most grew up like me. Most were in the same economic circumstance. [00:15:00] Now, a couple of guys behind me, (Glen and Frankie Lee?) behind me, lived in the house. They had a credit relationship with the (Morrison Rowell?) grocery store right under the bridge where you go up. And so they would, on days when they went there, give me a nickel, and I could get a big (wheel of?) cracker and bologna meat. In the third grade, I had a teacher who would give -- who would ask the kids who were in school to go and get her lunch, and she would give you an nickel if you did. And I was always excited about doing that. Anyway. BAUSKE: Why were you on the porch? Why did your mother tell you to sit out on the porch? WARD: So that I wouldn’t go out anywhere. BAUSKE: Okay. WARD: So that I wouldn’t go running around the street, and getting in trouble. Just, “You sit here on the porch, and then when I come home, then you come in. But don’t go running around the neighborhood [00:16:00] and doing anything.” And it was reinforced by Miss -- also down the street from me, who also was my fifth grade teacher, was Miss -- what’s the name, whose husband was the Atlanta Life Insurance -- Miss McDowell, Miss Prudence McDowell. She had two daughters, and they were very close to me. Miss McDowell had a practice that if you went to school each year, and it was -- she did it on a monthly and a yearly basis -- if you went to school without being late or absent, she would give a party for you. And I had never had anybody who would ever give a party [00:17:00] for me, so my aspiration was to have a party. And she -- that was a very, very big deal, that she had a party for me when -- because I otherwise wouldn’t have had a party. And so -- but it had the effect of keeping you in school. Those were important elements. There was an important element of Reverend Epps’s influence on my life. When I had gotten to the sixth grade, I was the captain of the school safety patrol. And the captain of the school safety patrol was different from the regular school safety patrols, in that you didn’t have to stand on one spot. You went around and saw whether the other ones was standing in the spots where they were to be. And then one day, one of the [00:18:00] guys was late, and I asked him why he was late, and he didn’t tell, and I slapped him. And as a result of that, Reverend Epps demoted me from a captain to a private. That incident had an enormous impact on me and my attitude toward power and responsibility. It had a -- all through the rest of my life, his having done that, I could cite for any number of things as not -- how not to abuse power and responsibility. It was a huge, huge thing, because being a school safety patrol was a real, real, real big deal. I mean, it wasn’t -- I think I had a picture. I think you saw the picture, Jewell, online, of me with the school safety patrols. WALKER-HARPS: Yes. WARD: So anyway, I could go on like that. But [00:19:00] what was life like? Life was -- Griffin was two different communities. Not just two different communities, but Griffin was a community in which we lived on our side of town, even from -- different from the south side of -- we stayed away. Blacks on Solomon Street didn’t hang out with blacks on Boyd Row. We didn’t have gangs, but we didn’t -- we were very, very different, from the interactions. They had elementary schools over there, Cora Nimmons, and we had our school over here. They didn’t tend to come over here. We had little or no interaction, except my mother, when I -- my mother worked for Harold McNeely. Harold McNeely had two sons, Jim and Harold Jr. We saw them now and then. But we had no interaction with whites. [00:20:00] Zero. We didn’t play sports. We didn’t -- nor did we see any great yearning to play. I can remember, and before Brown vs. Board of Education, we had begun to hear rumblings that we would have to go to school with white kids. And I underscore, we would have to go to school with white kids, because it was not the general desire on the part of us as black kids to want to go to school with white kids. That was not an aspiration. We knew that we were not getting the same treatment, because in our school, we had the desks that came from Griffin High School, we had the books that came from Griffin High School. We had all of the things that came from Griffin High School, and we didn’t ever get new [00:21:00] things. We got whatever there was. But we didn’t -- we were -- it was not a general yearning for trying to go to Griffin High School because we wanted to go to school with white kids. It was more the reality that there were all kinds of things that they had at Griffin High School that we knew. They had different machinery. They had different (shops?). They had different kinds of things that we knew they had over there, but we didn’t want -- that we didn’t see it as something that we were aspiring to, just because we wanted to go to Griffin High School. There was a benefit that most people did not understand about the segregated system that I thought was one of the great strengths of the segregated system. Our teachers appealed to our racial aspects, and they could in a way that today would be illegal. So that [00:22:00] our teachers, from very early on, they were not -- they were not advising us versus white kids. They were saying, you are good, you can achieve, and you -- if you are going to achieve, you will have to excel. There was always a sense from my earliest years that if you were going to succeed, you would have to excel. It would not be good enough for you just to be good. You would have to be better. And that -- and they were also aware that at some point in the future, life is not going to be as it is now. And so in order to realize the possibilities, you’ve got to prepare yourself. And so -- and it often took a, sort of, racial encouragement. You are as smart as the other kids. [00:23:00] You are -- you can do this, and you need -- but in order to do it, you’re going to have to work, and you’re going to have to work very hard. And that was a drill that -- you can’t really do that in schools in the same way today, but it was a very important aspect of our growing up. And then there were leaders. One of the most important school leaders in my early years was Horace Tate. Horace Tate actually came from the same city as Miss Prothro. They knew each other from Elberton. They knew each other from there. Graduated both from Fort Valley. Tate was the first really strong, firm man that I -- leader that I had -- that I [00:24:00] experienced growing up. And he saw in me the potential, and he used me for getting the water out of his basement, for picking up golf balls. They couldn’t go to the golf course, but he went way out on North Hill Street. There were big pasture, and he would hit golf balls, and I would be on the other side getting his golf balls. But he did something that was very important for me. He forced me -- and I say force, underscored -- to read. And he would give me a book, and he would tell me to read this book, and he said, “Come back tomorrow, and I want you to tell me about it.” And he would give me another book, and he’d, “Come back tomorrow,” and then read about it. And then he was the only person who did. He just gave me book, after book, after book, after book. This is very important, because I grew up in a family that, I was in my 40s before I knew somebody [00:25:00] like Dr. Seuss, or, you know, things like other childhood -- there was nobody sitting around reading books to me. There were no -- my -- there was none of that. And it was Horace Tate who introduced me to the literature as a young kid. It didn’t come out of the home. It didn’t even come out of the church. It came from someone looking and saying, you know, this is -- you need to start reading, and reading needs to be a part of your life. Horace Tate. And he was very important. I would say from the -- 1950 to 1957, when he left, he was a very strategic part of my life. BAUSKE: What kind of books did he give you to read? WARD: General kid -- you know, the -- BAUSKE: Was it kids’ books? WARD: -- Huckleberry -- yeah. Huckleberry Finn, history books. He would just take -- he would go and get a book out of his library, and [00:26:00] give it to me, and he’d go into -- and so some of the first books that I read that were beyond school, he was the one who introduced me to reading. Those are important things. This picture of me when I was here, this was in the projects. We left Solomon Street and moved to the projects. We were the first people to move into the projects. They’re now called Fairmont Homes. WALKER-HARPS: And that’s Fairmont Homes. WARD: Now, we were the first. In this building, that was the first time we had ever had running water in our house, a bathroom, a toilet, central heating and air. It was like we had died and gone to heaven (laughter) That we had electricity. On Solomon Street, we didn’t have electricity. [00:27:00] I don’t have the pic-- do I have the picture? Yeah. This picture, when I showed this picture to my mother -- my mother died some years ago -- when I showed it to her, she looked at it, and she said, “That’s not right.” (laughter) And I said, “What’s wrong with it?” She said, “It doesn’t have the pecan tree in the back.” (Joyce?) did another picture. This is a duplicate, and she put the pecan tree in it. This house had no electricity, no running water, no anything. We sat there, and that was the life. We didn’t know any other life. This was the outhouse, the house that’s in the back right here. That was the life. That wasn’t different from any other kid on the block there. So when we went to the projects, this was an enormous change in our life circumstance. It was a major [00:28:00] advance for us. Most of the people who I knew -- Phillip Hood and his family, everybody that I knew in my generation who were lucky enough to get there. The interesting thing about this, though, this is 220 Blanton Avenue. I have a -- I am a judge, and I am in my chambers, and there is a young black woman who comes in bloodied. And I ask her her address. And she says, “220 Blanton Avenue.” (laughter) And I thought, my goodness. I just sat. Two twenty Blanton Avenue, apartment C. That is the middle apartment next door to Annie Stephens and her daughter Gertrude Stephens. [00:29:00] Now, down the hall from this is (Kilitha?) Daniel and all of her kids, Keith Daniel and that whole group, right there on the corner right there. This was the -- right here in the middle of this building was (Joseph Harris?) and his family. This was like we had died and gone to heaven, that we had those homes. And so when they asked -- they wanted to name a street after me, I said put it out there, (as the?) kids, they can see that the kids who were -- when they were -- these were all -- this was a wonderful advantage for us, that we had housing. We never dreamed that we could have a house with a bathroom inside it, with a toilet inside it, with heat that you didn’t have to put in the fireplace. And I had -- when I was a little kid on Solomon Street, in the morning, I had to get up and go and find some (lighter?) wood, so that we could start a fire in the [00:30:00] stove, so that we could get the whole stove started. We got a wagon. The wagon wasn’t for fun. It was to put the coal on, and to run around the neighborhood and see if you could put things in it, to bring the wood back to start the whole fire. And here we were with a house that had heat, and all you had to do was to put (inaudible) -- and it had lights. Because we had lamps. We had a little kerosene lamp on Solomon Street, and we had to put our clothes on us to keep us warm there. And so that was an enormous -- this is 1952 that we had this. And it was one of the best things that happened in our growing -- we were so proud of that. It was just, sort of, like Alice in Wonderland. Anyway, that’s growing up. By the time I got -- I had begun to realize that I was a little bit more [00:31:00] serious in school that other kids, but I was -- and so I tried to differentiate myself. When I was in school in the seventh grade, I start playing the tuba in the high school band. And I didn’t -- and I tried not to do athletics and other things that other kids did, because I wanted kids who were not interested in being athletes to know that you could be popular or significant without doing that. And these are deliberate decisions in seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, that I decided. That I wasn’t going to sing, even though I had a good voice. My voice was a very -- there were two things that my mother was responsible for. One, I had a good voice. Early on, I knew that, because people told me. It’s, sort of, like, enough people just keep saying it. And the [00:32:00] other thing that I knew was that people thought that I was serious at an early age, and they began to encourage me. My success was a Pavlovian success. It was the reinforcement of positive, positive, positive, positive reinforcement. So that when I was in school, I wasn’t a teacher’s pet, but what I realized was that if you did your lesson, the teachers treated you better. And if you did your lesson, you -- they started to acknowledge you. And that was the sort of reinforcement that you got from -- that if you were doing that, the teacher would ask me to go and get her lunch, so I would go and get her lunch, and she’d give me a nickel. So there were a lot of things like that that I began to understand [00:33:00] that a certain kind of behavior carried with it certain kind of rewards, and vice versa. There were other kinds of behaviors where you didn’t get any rewards. That was probably a product of my teachers, because -- and my minister, but my teachers. It was not a product of the home. It was a product of my teachers, where it was very critically important for values. And so the value structure in my life came from my teachers. __: (inaudible) (value orientation?). WARD: (inaudible) stereotypical upbringing of kids being reared by grandmothers. What made the difference, I think, was the community. And this is where the African proverb does kick in, that it takes a village to raise the kid, because the other people did take a responsibility and saw a responsibility [00:34:00] for seeing you. When I read this thing about my first grade, my first grade teacher was still alive. And I asked her. She said she didn’t remember retaining me, but what she did say (laughter) was -- what she did say was that, “I remember that you were walking around with no shoes on. I always thought (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) (barefoot?), and I put you in school there.” So there was that kind of circumstance. Then there were -- so I never saw -- in fact, when I was at Clark, Sam Cook wrote a letter for me, for going to school, and he said, “For a kid, like Haskell, [00:35:00] from a deprived background, he has been remarkable successful.” And I thought, that was the first time I’d ever heard that I was deprived. (laughter) It really was quite a remarkable thing. In 1962, I was on a panel at Atlanta University. Haskell Ward, Clark student; (Robert Allen?); and Howard Zinn. Some of you may know Howard Zinn. BAUSKE: Oh, I do, yeah. WARD: Howard Zinn was a sociologist that had a -- I was on a panel with them. This is February 8, 1962. The next day, February 9, 1962, Sam Dubois Cook wrote me a letter. He said, “We were so proud of you last night. You did a magnificent job. Your presentation was instructive and stimulating. You were poised and articulate. Please accept my deep gratitude for a job well done. You have genuine abilities. I only hope that you will work hard and develop them. You have the making of a distinguished person. Please [00:36:00] keep up the good work. I am very proud to be your (inaudible). All good wishes.” This is Sam Cook. This kind of encouragement I started to get in the sixth and seventh grade. But that was the other side of the admonition, which also became a part of my character, and that was, don’t get the big head. This was very important that teachers (would say?) that they would -- and character building. They would encourage you and compliment you, but they would also say very quickly thereafter, don’t get the big head. Don’t get arrogant and don’t let your ego take control. And so if you look at my life, as I have gone through my life, you will see a characteristic of me that I have never thought that I was better than other people. [00:37:00] And a component of my behavior in life, public and private, has been to never appear that I was better than somebody else. This was a very important value that was instilled in us as kids. You are not better than somebody else. You’re not worse. You’re not less. But you’re not better. And those values were very, very, very significantly imbued. And you have a responsibility that is larger than your individual self. Now, people who were important had characteristics like that. Tate, for example. Tate’s interest was in social justice, and he didn’t call it social justice. He wanted us to achieve, and he knew that if we were to succeed, we would have to work. So he pressed us to work. So did C. W. Daniels. He pressed us [00:38:00] to work. But they -- we didn’t have class divisions with us. If we were poor, it was never something that I ever found was used as some reason for not getting attention. I think that that was an important element. When I was in -- when I was at -- a member of Reverend Shropshire’s church, I was the president of the Methodist Youth Fellowship. His son, James Shropshire, (who is now a?) PhD, he didn’t put his son above me. He allowed my leadership to be a part of the church family, even while his son was a year or two younger, because of this thing, you see. But he treated me with the kind of affection that he gave to his kids. [00:39:00] He had five or six kids, Reverend Shropshire. Raymond was very attentive to me, and to other kids, but he was attentive to me because I was in his church, and I was around them. And if they ever saw me doing anything untoward, they would call me on it. But these were reinforcement mechanisms that were in the community. So when I see this girl from 220 Blanton Avenue, and she’s got blood coming off of her, she’s getting a -- we didn’t have that. I mean, I’m not creating an idyllic life, but we didn’t have kids on cocaine. We didn’t have kids on marijuana. We didn’t -- geez, this is stuff we heard blacks in New York did, but not in Griffin. But then when I was a judge in Griffin, I see, whoa, this is stuff that they do in Detroit, and New York, and other places. [00:40:00] We had so much of that. That’s the texture of the change that had occurred. When I was a judge here in Griffin, the impact of drugs on our city and our county was so substantially different from anything that we’d have heard of. We would have just completely died of thinking if somebody -- that this kind of behavior would have been anywhere tolerable or acceptable. Those are the school years. My wife said, “Don’t talk too much about these -- your early years. There are other things you’ve done in your life.” But that’s the -- those are some of the observations that I had. I was different only to the extent that, in terms of objective outside measures, I achieved more than many. But it wasn’t different. [00:41:00] If I look at my high school and my college, we were the generation that came. And I went to -- when I went to Clark, we started the sit-ins in my freshman year. And that was a whole -- that was a chapter that -- we could have. When I was in the eighth grade, Herman Talmadge came to our school here at Fairmont and said, “You know, we know that you little negro children don’t want to go to school with whites, and you know also that blood will flow in the street.” He’s telling us this in our auditorium. He spoke to us in our auditorium here. This was the life that it was. That all changed when I went to college. Almost overnight, the circumstances of our life changed. But I think that when you look at where we came -- from what -- from where we came [00:42:00] in the period of the ’40s and the ’50s, the lives were so separate that it was almost as though we were living on two different planets. And yet, the curiosity about the South -- and it’s always -- I spent 30 years in New York. But the curiosity about the South is that, in the South, blacks and whites have always been very close, for circumstances that are very obvious. My mother worked for Harold McNeely. CUNNINGHAM: Right. WARD: She was right there in his house. She raised his kids. She put -- she buried his mother. She was there when Harold McNeely’s wife died. There was a fire in the house. We were the closest people to them. You had this paradox in the South of very, very close relationships with blacks and whites, and yet it was a hierarchical [00:43:00] relationship. In some towns -- we didn’t do it here, but in some towns, blacks went to church with the whites. And so -- we’re going to be -- I’m going to buried. I wanted to be buried here, but I’m going to be buried in the cemetery in Atlanta with my wife, Oakland Cemetery, where Maynard Jackson is. And there was -- we were on a little tour. My wife is on the board of Oakland Cemetery. And we did a little tour. And one place in the white section of the cemetery, there is the black nanny in the same burial family plot. And this is, sort of, the paradox of life. They were so close, that when they -- even though blacks were not allowed in that section of the cemetery, they insisted. She’s going to be buried here with us. And then [00:44:00] that’s where she’s buried. You have that kind of duality in the South. You have this. And of course, you have the brutality of the relationships. That is the well-known and well-deserved opprobrium. But the other side is that if you had -- now, I’ve lived all over the country, east and west. Blacks probably are closer to whites in the South than they are in any other part of the country. I spent 30 years in New York. I was deputy mayor of New York. I was in -- I saw, when David Rockefeller -- David Rockefeller was a friend, (when I saw that?). But that’s very unusual. That’s very unusual. The relationships are way out. [00:45:00] And so you’ll see in the duality here. There’s an interesting thing. I was in the State Department. Jimmy Carter was president. I was living in Lagos, Nigeria. I was with the Ford Foundation. And my friend, classmate, Ben Brown, was Jimmy Carter’s deputy campaign manager. And he sent me a note. He says, “I think we’re going to win, and you’d better come home.” And why did he tell me that? Because I was the only one from our group who was in international affairs as opposed to civil rights. And he said, “You’d better come home.” And so when Carter became president, I was Secretary Vance’s Africa advisor in the State Department, the first African American in the secretary’s office at that time. We were dealing with some very important [00:46:00] African issues in the first year. Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique. I pressed for the president to meet with the delegation from Angola, the first time the president has met with what they call the freedom fighters. When they came to meet, this is a big deal. And Carter was meeting with them. Carter had never met with -- no president had ever met with these freedom fighters from Angola and Mozambique. The guys from the Angolan African side began the meeting with the statement that, “We heard the shot fired around the world at Bunker Hill, and we took our inspiration from the shot fired around the world from Bunker Hill.” He started very [00:47:00] much like this. “And yet you have been arming our oppressors.” He’s telling the president. I think, oh, my God, this was a mistake. This was a great mistake to go through -- (laughter) to put this meeting, you know, then. And we looked. And we were arming Angola -- I mean, Portugal. We were the major arms supplier for Portugal. Portugal was in charge of Angola and Mozambique. Portugal was the first European country in Africa and the last one out. What did Jimmy Carter say when he finished talking with him? This guy is -- Carter said to him, “We, too, were surprised that you stayed under the Portuguese for 500 years. It was not for us to fight your war. It was for you to fight your battle. And when we saw that you were succeeding, then we would assist you.” [00:48:00] And that’s very interesting. This is very interesting throughout, throughout, because we were led to believe that the Africans didn’t want -- they -- the ones here, they were better off. They were better off. They were better off here than they were -- even in slavery, they were better off. We never -- we always knew that was just propaganda. But the reality was that when you decide to act, things change. Providence takes over. And things began to act. All manner of things began. The moment you say that you can, you will. Then providence takes over, and things began to act in your favor. Whatever you think you can do and believe you can, begin it. Begin it now. That’s one of my speeches, that things change. [00:49:00] Carter, a Southerner, telling these guys, “You guys were dumb to be under the Europeans for 500 years.” And so the same thing here. When we decided to act -- one day, it just started. We were -- in fact, in Atlanta, we were embarrassed that the guys at A&T beat us to it. They beat us to -- because we thought we were the top of the roost in Atlanta, and then when they started sit-ins in February in A&T, we thought, that’s something we should have done first. So when we looked at, were we just going to repeat? We decided not to just repeat, and start sit-in right that -- we -- (break in audio) WARD: -- (listed?) our grievances in that [00:50:00] document, and we started the sit-ins after that. And the sit-ins started in March 1960. The results of that were very significant in the history of our country. WALKER-HARPS: You had just left Griffin, or you probably had gone about a year. So you are part of the sit-ins at Clark in Atlanta. WARD: In Atlanta. Right. WALKER-HARPS: Let me ask you what you think about the fact that the relationship of blacks and whites in Griffin, as described by you earlier, impact the civil rights movement. In other words, the people who had to participate in the action were a part of those families. Many of them had mothers or sisters who worked in the homes of the whites that they were rebelling against. [00:51:00] How did that play out, or was there -- are you aware of it -- the relationship among the blacks and the whites, I would think, would be different in Griffin than it would have been in a larger area. WARD: My grandmother and mother were often asked what they thought of all of this. It was most often framed as outside agitation. Well, you know, you’re not in favor of that, are you? My sense is, there is a long, well-known history that blacks who were working as domestics or in subservient roles knew that it was not in their interest to tell whites what they were thinking, even though they were thinking just the opposite of what they were [00:52:00] saying, in many cases. It was not uncommon for blacks to say, do you expect me to say X, Y, and Z? Well, that was not to their economic advantage. There was not any -- it was not in the interest of blacks to have an open dialogue with whites about their feelings, because otherwise, they would be -- they wouldn’t be working. And that was a part of a system of control that played out from the earliest days of the slave period. And it played out into -- I think, probably, if anything, even many of the blacks were surprised. We were surprised at the [00:53:00] unity, because blacks had not -- had been often criticized for not being unified. But we were surprised. And I think it was a big impact, the Montgomery bus boycott. I was, I think, in the tenth grade, or in the ninth grade, when the bus boycotts started. And we were really very proud at the fact that the blacks in Montgomery could stay together for over a year, and develop a system of transportation and getting about. And I think it would be very important to not underestimate the impact of the Montgomery boycott. [00:54:00] I think it would be very important to not underestimate the impact of Emmett Till’s death in 1955. It was such a brutal thing. I was 15. I was -- I think Emmett Till was about the same age. That that occurred -- and so we began to see that we needed to move away from the reticent behavior, and to move more aggressively for our own wellbeing. I think that when we were in school, it was also very important for us that we all [00:55:00] acted together. I know that it was very difficult for the leaders at the colleges, and President Brawley called me in several times about being too aggressive. But I think it was important for us. I think it was important that people such as Reverend Shropshire, Mr. Tate, some of the older blacks who were not threatened, who didn’t see this as a threat to their own commerce. Now, in Griffin, we didn’t have a lot of commerce. Raymond and his brother owned the sandwich shop. They called it (Triple-H Sandwich Shop?). And they -- WALKER-HARPS: Raymond and (Phillip?) Head. WARD: Yeah. They had a sandwich shop. It was a lunch counter and booths. Raymond owned the (inaudible), [00:56:00] they called it, and (inaudible) dry cleaning and tailoring shop. Raymond went to Tuskegee. Raymond was a veteran, and social life with blacks was at the -- what everybody in Griffin called the club, and that’s the VFW. The club. Now, this is an aspect of my life that most people didn’t know. I played drums in the club, in our band. We had a swing band. We used to play at white fraternity houses, and different -- that’s how I got money. At the club one night, James Brown comes in, and he comes right up to the stage, and he says to me -- he had a hit song called “Please, Please, Please.” (laughter) And he comes up to me. I’m playing drums. And he says, “When I say hit it, I want you to hit it.” And [00:57:00] he started saying, this is -- “Please, Please, Please.” That’s about ’55 or ’56, somewhere around. But we played all around. And everybody in the club -- Aretha Franklin, James Brown, B. B. King, Sam Cooke, you name it -- they came to the club. Raymond was in charge of the club. It was the big -- it was -- BAUSKE: Is this the VFW? WARD: Yes. Yeah. BAUSKE: Right through that little -- WALKER-HARPS: Yes. BAUSKE: Wow. (laughter) WARD: Etta James. Dinah Washington. B. B. King. I played directly with James Brown, when James Brown had his first hit. This -- and they would come to Griffin. We had -- they -- we had the big stars all the time. And they would play in Atlanta, and when they weren’t playing in Atlanta, they’d come down to Griffin, and they’d come to the club. The club was full. It was always -- this was [00:58:00] the one big social thing for people around there. And I don’t know. They probably still do it, but I don’t (inaudible). WALKER-HARPS: So Raymond Head and James -- (Jimmy Holland?) were the leaders, the musical -- well, Jimmy was music, but Raymond was just business. WARD: Yeah, Raymond was the business. He was in charge of it. Raymond’s dad was a businessman before. I remember Raymond’s dad died. But Raymond’s dad used to bring -- Raymond brought -- right where I was born, right across the street was an open field, and Raymond’s dad brought Joe Louis here. He would bring stars here. They were enterprising guys who introduced us to different people. Right in the middle of [00:59:00] what -- Miss (Clara Lovett’s stands?). She had a little stand that (Oscar Calloway’s?) dad (bought?), snow -- (Dewdrop Inn?). She had a little stand there. We used to go over there and get a hot dog. She was -- you ate hot dogs and pig feet. (laughter) And she had it so clean that you couldn’t even go in there. She was very particular about how you kept it. But Raymond -- Miss Clara Lovett owned the stand on the corner, and Mr. (Evans?) was a white guy who owned the grocery store right on the corner, across Third Street. On the Third Street, right across from Trinity Church, there’s two businesses. One is a black restaurant. The other one is a white grocery store. And I used to carry grocery -- deliver grocery in my wagon for Mr. Evans, (Bill?) Evans there. CUNNINGHAM: [01:00:00] So you mentioned the Heads. So who were some of the other prominent black business owners around that time? WARD: The significant business professionals -- probably the most significant in terms of assets was Lon Touchstone. Lon was an officer with Atlanta Life, and so was Miss McDowell’s husband an officer with Atlanta Life. But Lon began to buy lots of property. In fact, even to this day, his estate under Frank Touchstone is probably the largest individual property owner in Spalding County. (And he was?) very, very big. I remember seeing him once, back early ’60s, and I was telling him I wanted to buy some property, and he said, “Well, it’s a good time to buy. You could buy an acre for a dollar back there.” But he was very big. Miss Clara Lovett’s [01:01:00] stand was right there. There was a very popular club in the middle of -- on Solomon Street, all the way down before you get to First Street, there was a place, there was a nightclub, right in the middle of the place, where they had a jukebox, and a lot of people hung out there. Most parents -- (mine?) didn’t know good from bad in terms of telling you what to stay away from, other than don’t get out in the street. They drank a lot of beer and wine down at that place down there, and so if you had any admonition at all, it was to stay away from places like that. Now, most of the black businesses were right up in behind Raymond -- WALKER-HARPS: Slaton Avenue? WARD: Slaton Avenue. So that was a little strip that on Friday -- there were a couple of beer saloons, they call them. There was the black movie theater there down on one end of the corner, [01:02:00] and on the other end of the corner was a barbershop. What’s-her-name and her husband owned the barbershop. WALKER-HARPS: Stinson. WARD: Mary and Ralph, yeah. WALKER-HARPS: Ralph and Mary Stinson. WARD: Ralph and Mary Stinson had a barbershop. There was a taxi company on the other side. There was a pool room that most good boys didn’t go to, because everybody thought pool rooms were bad, and so you didn’t go to that. But the business strip, the Griffin version of Auburn Avenue, was a one-block strip between Hill Street and Eighth Street. That little strip in there was bubbling with activity in the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s. It was the center of activity. Beyond that, there really weren’t any commerce of any note there, if you had anything at all. Now, [01:03:00] the way a lot of blacks got money in commerce was (inaudible) in fish fries, and selling moonshine. They would sell little things of little -- and they would have -- Friday night, they would have house parties. (In fact?), when my mother came back on the scene, she would have fish fries and things like that. This was a -- and people would come and sit in the house, and they would drink, (you know?), and they would sit, and that was a very popular kind of activity. Enterprising people (learning how?). The other thing -- the other way that blacks made money was in putting people up who were traveling. Because the hotels and other public accommodations were not available, blacks who had a room had people in as rented -- you know, like this modern version of -- CUNNINGHAM: Bed [01:04:00] and breakfast. CRUICKSHANK: B and B. WARD: Bed and breakfast. CUNNINGHAM: Sure. WARD: This was very popular amongst blacks throughout the country, but especially in the South. And people knew where you could stay. WALKER-HARPS: (At Miss Connolly there on?) Solomon Street. WARD: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. They had places like that. They would put you up, and they had a room. And the word went around as to who could take them, if guys came in. For example, one time, Bobby “Blue” Bland stayed with us on Solomon Street, once we moved from our -- and now we were living with our mother. The word went around that there are places where you would stay in. Somebody’s going to be in town. If Ray Charles is going to be in town, and he needs a place to stay at night, (laughter) they would stay. The Heads often had -- Joe Louis stayed over at their house when he came into town. That was how you [01:05:00] were accommodated. CUNNINGHAM: Can you tell us a little bit more about the other types of economic opportunities for the folks in the black community? WALKER-HARPS: Perhaps the funeral homes and... WARD: The established places that you had that were necessary was, you always had to have a funeral home. And in many communities, you also had associations that were established to accommodate death, so that you had burial societies that were, sort of, ad hoc associations that were put together. You always had a funeral home. You always had a barbershop. If you were lucky, you had a cleaners. When I was growing up, Griffin was more centrally strategic economically. [01:06:00] Places like Fayetteville and McDonough were way, way in the boondocks, so everybody in those places came to Griffin. Griffin was the center of commerce. It was -- for just as a general proposition. Even when I was in high school, the black kids from Pike County and other places went to school in Griffin. So they tended to come around here. But from a business standpoint, blacks as late as my late ’60s were still doing most of the work on yards, most of the work on repairs. I remember (Danny Kane?), for example, who was the last of those who could do cane in chairs. That was [01:07:00] an area of skill that blacks had, that they still have in Charleston, for example. You had a thriving industry. It never was a thriving enterprise here, but you had that kind of thing. Manual semiskilled labor, semiskilled to unskilled, was basically that. Anything that required an infrastructure or financial activity was usually behind. Blacks in comparison to whites, in terms of the economy, were always a half to two-thirds less, and that continues to this day. If you look at the median family income, for example, in Spalding County, you’re not much beyond $20,000 in your aggregate income, and if you looked [01:08:00] at the aggregate income for blacks in Spalding County today, you are still under $20,000 for the family of four, for blacks (inaudible). (coughs) The disparity continues, the economic disparities continue. And to be disproportionately the case with the African American communities in the city. One of the disturbing things about small towns, in small towns -- a lot of people deliberately want to live in small towns. A lot of people don’t want to live in small towns. But the economic disparity and inequality in small towns, especially black versus white, continues to be a very striking difference, [01:09:00] and it -- the circumstances -- for example, I was active for a while in trying to get sewer service in the northern part. I dare say that if whites were impacted the way blacks are impacted in the northern part of the city, this issue would have been resolved 15 or 20 years ago. So that even today, when you talk about economic development, it isn’t economic development that is designed to lift all boats equally. It is more designed to accommodate whites than it is to accommodate -- and if you raise that, it’s usually an adversarial issue when you raise it, so that the economic parity continues to be a matter of business as usual in our small towns, and I think that’s one of the unfortunate [01:10:00] things here. I think most ambitious kids want to leave and not stay, because of the circumstance. And when I was growing up, my teachers advised me to leave Griffin if I wanted to succeed. And they said it would be in my interest to leave, because you will not have the opportunity here. And so you have this anomaly of a kid growing up in my circumstance, and he goes out and becomes the deputy mayor of New York City, where everybody is saying he’s really quite one of the significant leaders in our city, and I had been a significant leader in New York before I was deputy mayor. But this is the price that the South was paying for the exodus of its citizens. There were people like me [01:11:00] who were fully capable of making a contribution in the best years of my life, in Georgia, in Griffin, even, but who didn’t have the opportunity here. If I wanted to make a mark in life, it wouldn’t have been possible here. And that’s the great tragedy of the South. The South produced the better part of our national leaders, especially African American leaders. And I think that there are parts of it -- and there some really interesting sociological issues involved here. But I think the coherence, the cultural coherence of being from Africa was very important. [01:12:00] I think it’s more important even than African Americans understood, and even today, fail to understand the significance of the cultural impact of Africa on our lives. Now, these are people who were (wrenched?) out of Africa and brought here, and who are deliberately divided, and said that anything African is bad, and you are better off here than you would have been there. And you have -- my friend Basil Davidson said that the cultural dispossession of African Americans is one of the great cruelties in human history. That they brought here, were not allowed to learn English, began to speak English but didn’t speak it the way the King spoke English, and were ridiculed and laughed at their ebola -- or what is the [01:13:00] language pattern -- WALKER-HARPS: Ebonics? Ebonics? WARD: -- that you went through. Not allowed to learn, because it was a crime in the earliest years to learn. And so you go through this cultural dispossession, and yet what people say is Southern hospitality really is a African hospitality. It is the remnant of -- I’ll tell you something. Everybody notices, if they come from outside of the South, that Southerners speak to each other. Black or white, they speak to each other. And that’s not Southern. That’s African. It comes from -- and if -- one of the greatest slights that one could visit of one person to another is to walk by [01:14:00] somebody and not speak. And you would hear the person say, “He didn’t even speak to me. Didn’t even even speak to me.” That’s African. I was doing a lot of research, and I was talking to the former prime minister of what was then Southern Rhodesia, a guy by the name of Garfield Todd. We had been talking. I was staying at his house for about four or five days. And he -- and I said, Garfield Todd had been in Rhodesia for 50 years at the time I was talking with him. And I said, “You’ve been here for all these years.” In fact, he went (on his honeymoon?) -- he was originally from New Zealand and went to Southern Rhodesia. “You’ve been here all these years. What has Africa taught you? I mean, what have you learned from being (out here?)?” [01:15:00] Just as he was about to answer it, his house lady, who is managing his house, an African lady, came in, and he started telling her what she is to do during the day. And she says to him, “Good morning, Mr. Todd.” And he says, “Damn it!” He says, “This is what I’ve learned here. And yet I fail every time. The humanity of the African, the relationship on a personal level. They would never begin the day without greeting. They would never engage you without greeting.” And he says, “This is what I see.” So what we see, despite the centuries of [01:16:00] separation, there is a lot of the humanity of Africa that went over the oceans with the African American -- into the African Americans. And it’s that humanity that you see, because if you look at the way in which Africans, by and large, were not disloyal. By and large, stayed. By and large, took care, even in the war. Even in the war, they were staying with the families in the war period. And it is a kind of loyalty that mystified people. How could you do that? Now, having spoken about the war, my family, as far back as I can determine, was always from here. And in 1867, [01:17:00] we traced my great-great-grandfather to an Ira Ward. Died in Lynchburg in 1865 or somewhere around that period. We didn’t trace my great-great-grandfather until we were able to look at the estate records from his estate. And you will find my great-great-grandfather (Louis?) Ward in his papers. And we can’t go back before that. We can do DNA in my record, and I have done DNA in my record, and on my father’s side, you will find my mother from the Yorubas in Nigeria, and -- my mother’s side the Yorubas, and my father’s side the Igbo in Nigeria. Most of the African [01:18:00] Americans in this area came from Nigeria, right along the coast, so it’s not uncommon, that. But I didn’t know this until about a year and a half ago. (I’d?) been doing genealogical research to try to figure out, where did the Wards come from, and where am I? I don’t know where Haskell came from. I think that -- I was about to say that the gift my mother gave me, one of the best gifts that she gave me, was my name, Haskell. It’s usually a Jewish surname. It is not very -- the first first-name Haskell I ever met was in New York, and it was the first first-name Haskell he ever met. He was in charge of the New York Jewish Committee. But that was a -- it was interesting, because it has always been significant in my life to have been born with a unique name. And I am aware of that, that it is something that -- it’s like Cher, you know? You could have [01:19:00] one name like that. So my mother, I could never get clear where she got it from. I think it was a white guy who she knew, and she named me Haskell. But it was very important in my own sense of self, and distinctive, because throughout the rest of my life, I’ve never met another black Haskell, for example, and it’s very rare that I’ve met another Haskell altogether. Now, this is a little bit, sort of, off the path, but I think there are things like this, when you look at the composition of your life, that if you look at all of the aggregate elements of your life, it mattered. My name mattered. I was gifted with a voice that people liked. So it was something that was an attribute from the earliest. My first speech was at Trinity Church, right down on Solomon Street, here, and my -- I was a little three-year-old saying, “[01:20:00] What you looking at me for? I didn’t come to stay. I just came to say today is Easter Day.” (laughter) This is down (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) I forgot that -- my sister had to repeat the lines for me, this sister right here. Anyway, you know, there are some things -- and so there are some attributes that I have that are Southern. One is storytelling. This is Southern. It’s also African, but it’s also Southern. It’s Southern. And Southern speakers are very good at weaving in different stories and coming back to the original story. And it’s very, very -- it’s a very intricate kind of thing. Southerners are very good at this. The best ones are very good at it. And I can notice now, in the last several years, I’m losing the ability to start off on one story and take it a long way around and come back to the [01:21:00] original point. That’s where I can begin to see the effect of aging. But I’ve always been in speaking. I started the debating team at Clark College. If you ever saw that movie The Great Debaters? CRUICKSHANK: Yeah. WALKER-HARPS: Yes. WARD: I did something. By the time I get to Clark -- this is very interesting. By the time I get to Clark, President Brawley was our president. And I went to the president. Now, look at this little kid who failed the first and second grade, and I tell the president of Clark, “I don’t like the academic environment here. This place doesn’t look like a college. I mean, it doesn’t feel like a college. Everybody’s out joining fraternities and sororities, and they’re not studying.” What did the president say to me? He says, “Look. I’m raising money to run this school. Why don’t you improve the academic environment?” (laughter) So I (said, “I don’t know?”?), and we started [01:22:00] the Clark College Forum and Forensic Society. Exists to this day. Exists to this day. We beat Harvard. We beat Emory. We beat NYU. We were all over (the country -- it’s?) The Great Debaters. That still exists to this day. But it taught me something. Don’t just criticize. Go out and do that. That I started the -- I never joined a fraternity, but I understand from Rodney that the Bogarsuns still exists. I started that at Fairmont when I was here. WALKER-HARPS: Oh, really? WARD: Yeah. Me and Phillip Hood. WALKER-HARPS: Phillip Hood. BAUSKE: What is that? WARD: It’s just a men’s social organization. I never joined a fraternity in college. I had already moved away from that. But I was always very keen to not just complain about things. Just go out -- just go ahead and do it. WALKER-HARPS: What other changes did you make at Fairmont? [01:23:00] You’re right. The Bogarsuns and Bogarsettes still exist. WARD: Yeah. I think probably when I was a student, by the time I had got -- so we went to the sixth grade in Moore Elementary School, and by the time you got to the seventh grade, you were already at Fairmont, so that it was seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. You were quite young in that. But I think by the time I was already in the ninth or tenth grade, kids started calling me Head, and they were alluding to my intellectual preoccupations there. And so I think it became possible for kids to be interested in studying without being -- [01:24:00] without it being a problem. WALKER-HARPS: We’re going to take a break. WARD: No, we can -- as you can -- (break in audio) WARD: -- sort of intellectually directed, that I was more cerebral. I was never antisocial, asocial, in school, but I deliberately didn’t do -- I didn’t play around a lot. I think I was -- by the time I had gotten to high school, I’d realized that life was pretty serious, and that I had a lot of work to do if I was going to get on in life. And that -- I figured out very early on that school was a time to learn and not to play, and that if I did play, it should be subordinate to learning. And that -- [01:25:00] that took place all the way through. When I graduated from high school, my ambition was to be a psychiatrist, and I think that was part of a trend. People tended to confide in me when I was in high school, even older people. In college, the same thing. There was some advice that I was given by teachers in the early years, elementary school, to not gossip, and to not involve myself in other people’s lives and other people’s -- the things that could be detrimental to your own growth, to stay away from interacting about other people’s lives. Especially in small towns, it could be a liability, that everybody knows your business. Stay out of people’s business. So I grew up with a very strong [01:26:00] animus toward engaging myself in gossip and things like that. We had a reputation for being -- we, as blacks, had a reputation for being envious of blacks who succeeded, so much so that we were often compared to crabs in a barrel, that blacks would pull you -- once they saw you going up, they would try to pull you down. And so the way to avoid that is to stay out of engaging in a lot of -- what are the TV shows, the reality TV type stuff. The less you put that in your life, the better. The less you tried to be like everybody else, it also would be better for you. If you tried to emulate other people, that you’d probably be better off following your own star. The fact that I [01:27:00] did not go into civil rights, as most of my -- I was contemporary with Julian Bond, with John Lewis, with Jesse Jackson, with -- in a different time period, but I was with Martin Luther King when he was in Atlanta. I made a strategic decision there. We don’t need another Jesse Jackson. I couldn’t be another Martin Luther King. Julian Bond was very good. So I took a different path. Ben Brown was very good. Lonnie King was very good. It wasn’t that I thought I was better than them, but how many do you need? They were very good, very good people. It was looking at what trends there were, so when I went to Africa in 1962, it completely transformed my direction [01:28:00] in life. I went to Kenya. BAUSKE: Was that in the Peace Corps? WARD: It was before the Peace Corps. I went on a program called Operation Crossroads Africa. I went into Kenya having met President Kennedy. And President Kennedy came up to me and said -- he saw my name -- “You’re going to see Tom Mboya. Tell him we’re going to bring another group here.” Tom Mboya and Senator Kennedy started something called the Kenya Airlift, and they brought over students to study in American universities. In the first group, my first year in college, 1959, they brought Barack Obama Sr. He went to Hawaii. I did meet Tom Mboya. In fact, his daughter works as a senior person at the Coca-Cola today. Her husband, of Mboya’s daughter, [01:29:00] is the governor of Nairobi province. I (inaudible) met a lot of significant Kenyans. And when I came back from Crossroads in 1962, I wrote Sargent Shriver a letter, saying that I would like to go back. And he wrote me a letter. It’s somewhere in my papers. “We don’t have anything in Kenya, but we do in Ethiopia.” So I went to the Peace Corps in Ethiopia. That was a huge impact on my life. It was a direction that I think -- it was unfortunate that more African Americans didn’t do it, because I think it expanded our horizon of the world, in a way that we are now seeing the impact of the globalization in the world. But I spent two years in Ethiopia, teaching. Then I left Ethiopia, and then I went to UCLA, and I spent two years at [01:30:00] UCLA. I was at UCLA when I saw Lew Alcindor play his first basketball game. I think he stayed Lew Alcindor until after he graduated. But I got to know him. I lived next door to Arthur Ashe at UCLA. Arthur Ashe is in this video that I (left?) here. When I was there, I said to Lew -- we used to send basketball teams to Africa. And Lew and -- they had two other guys. UCLA won 10 straight. Ten straight titles. And this was the beginning of that run. He had the other two guys, Mike Warren, who became a TV star, and Lucius Allen, and then Lew Alcindor, who, later, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. But I saw them in their first game at UCLA. [01:31:00] I came back to UCLA, and I talked to the basketball coach, the world-famous Johnny Wooden. And the athletic director was J. D. Morgan. And I talked with them about letting them go to Africa. And they said no. You know, they might get sick. I was invited back to UCLA in 2011, and this was because they were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, and they invited what they considered outstanding UCLA graduates to be on a panel. There’s an interview with me on -- put my name and UCLA, and there’s a half an hour interview with me on that, the impact of UCLA, and my having come from Griffin, Georgia. [01:32:00] There is a discussion that’s relevant to this discussion, because I talk about the impact of going from Atlanta, Griffin, to Westwood. That’s a very interesting interview. And I’ve been very much involved in UCLA activities in the years following. I’ve been very much involved in the Peace Corps. We give a lot of money to the Peace Corps, just because we believe that it’s a very important organization. Those are, sort of, the parameters in (our life?). And I would say the city has a -- [01:33:00] has underappreciated the role of people like Jewell in our civil discourse. And Jewell and I have now known each other for 25 years or so. But without the work that she does personally and that she does institutionally, life would be a lot more difficult, and the society would be under even greater strain. She takes a lot of grief. What most people don’t know is that she takes a lot of grief from blacks, as well. And it’s a, in many ways, a thankless job. But it’s one of the remaining jobs that, [01:34:00] until our society is more equal, you’ve got to have somebody who is pressing the point, and you’ve got to have somebody doing it in a way that carries some force with it. And so I’ve always respected and admired her, because it’s a job that I know from years of living what a thankless task it is. WALKER-HARPS: We can see that with you now, in your life, and you can’t -- you’ve gone all over the world. You’ve traveled all over the world, and you held most prominent positions here and abroad, but when you came back to Griffin to spend some time, and you became a judge and whatever, you -- I would think, in my [01:35:00] opinion, that you, too, discovered that Griffin was not receptive of you as it ought to have been. Was that your impression? WARD: I think people underappreciate the impact of white privilege. That’s a concept that we’re hearing now, and we’re hearing it more because of the direction of the country. But I think it is axiomatic, automatic, the hierarchical relationships that have existed, that are difficult -- we [01:36:00] still -- let’s see. It was 1863 that the Emancipation was proclaimed. And there has, in our region, and not just in our region -- my wife would be the first to point that out, throughout the country -- a resistance to equalizing opportunities. So, yes, in Griffin it is difficult. It’s easier for Griffin to accept me, but it is still difficult for the city. I think the city is proud. I’ll tell you, speaking about Griffin. When I went to the Peace Corps, you had to have the permission of the Selective Service to leave the country. [01:37:00] We had the registration. The Selective Service draft boards had to approve your leaving the country. And when I -- there was a woman in charge of the draft board. It was a long time ago, so I don’t know who it was. Nineteen sixty-three, 54 years ago. She was very proud. She was very proud that I was going to join the Peace Corps. And there was a civic Griffin pride that transcended beyond race, that you were doing this. There is a paternalism that people who are not the object of the paternalism don’t even know that it’s paternalism. [01:38:00] So that there’s a lot of behavior from something as innocent as, where’d you learn to speak English, that people will ask you. They think it’s a very nice and generous thing. And I’m -- Southern -- the part of the South that is Southern in me is that we don’t try to insult people, just as a rejoinder. And a lot of that comes from Africa, as well. Africans don’t want to insult, and we don’t insult, and so we don’t try to insult. And if you do insult, it’s deliberate, and it’s aggressive, and it’s intended that way. But by and large, my sense is that there was a place that was -- that you were supposed to stay in, and if you moved outside of that place, [01:39:00] then you got into trouble. I don’t think -- there is a part of the South that is also out of Africa. People don’t believe in being straight and telling the truth. They talk around issues. They talk around issues. They don’t say what is really -- they mean. They talk around, and they say -- that is something that is less the case in the East, where I spent 30 years. People will go right straight to the heart of it. And so you don’t get deliberate. You don’t get deliberate. There is an obfuscation in the communication system in which people don’t tell you what they really think, and they are proud of the fact that they didn’t tell you what they -- didn’t tell you the way it was. [01:40:00] And in some ways, the South thinks it’s insulting and revolting -- not something you do, when you are directly, quote, honest with somebody about something, so that there is a lot of missed communication in the way in which people communicate, because we don’t want to be direct in the way. This goes back to the question about whether or not -- what did blacks tell whites when they were working for them and the civil rights movement was going on? They don’t tell you what it is, because it’s a threat to their own person that you can do that. So a lot of the things are threats like that, that people just don’t want to visit. I think that, [01:41:00] by and large, racial communications overall are probably better, but there is still very significant barriers to communications in the South. I think it’s less with me. I think that it’s less with my wife, for example. I think that there is a role that she can play, that I could play, that’s different than we could have played when I was growing up, but the inequality is there. And the glaring disparity [01:42:00] in the way in which the justice system treats African Americans and whites is really one of the most difficult remnants. In some days, I wake up, and I think that the justice system was designed as a way to control the behavior of blacks and nothing else. And that the system wasn’t meant to apply to whites. And that’s a pretty strong statement. BAUSKE: Especially for a judge. WARD: Yeah. But as I’ve seen the [01:43:00] assumptions that accompany the system, the assumption -- I was on a jury in New York. And there were a couple of black guys who had been charged with selling drugs. And when the police came, they had -- in New York, there are air spaces and air shafts in buildings, and all around, you can actually look out, and you can see all the way down to the bottom. They were on the ledge on one of those when the police came, but the drugs were inside. They didn’t have the drugs with them. So the case is in court, [01:44:00] and the jury -- and I’m on the jury. And the jurors said, several of them, that as soon as the defendants walked into the courtroom, they said, as soon as they looked at them, they said they were guilty. And we were talking about this. And they were saying -- they said, he’s guilty. I could tell when I looked at him that he was guilty. That attitude that you are automatically guilty if you are -- and unfortunately, what plays into that is the dress that a lot of black kids walk around with now. It almost advertises that, you know, that I am somebody who is an automatic target. But the jury was -- [01:45:00] the jury decision was leaning in the direction that this guy looks like he’s guilty because of the way he looks. And I can tell the way he looks. And so much of that ingrained attitude in people’s minds that this kid is this way because he is dressed that way. And so, having said that, I am aware of people’s attitudes, so you will see me dressed like this. And I have dressed like this all of my life. So that my wife says, “You don’t have to dress like this.” I said, “I know I don’t have to dress like this, but if I don’t dress like this, there is a perception that you are something else.” And so if I can be responsible on something as simple as dress, to change people’s attitudes and behavior [01:46:00] toward me, that’s a compromise that I am prepared to make as I negotiate my way through life. WALKER-HARPS: It’s interesting that you would say that, because that’s a message that we’re trying to send now in the community. And when Leah, your wife, came and spoke, she alluded to that, to the traditional values and necessity of the role that you play, and how important it is. I intended to send her a note to indicate how I appreciate her reinforcing the kinds of things that we are trying to instill in young people today, that are -- there is a certain way that you need to, or you almost must, carry yourselves in order to be recognized for who you really are. WARD: Yeah. Well, I began to learn that here in Griffin early. And so [01:47:00] my -- even though I would defend the right of any person to wear a dress, or their hair, their clothes, their whatever. This is America, and that’s what we stand for. You can do that. But if you are an African American, and you decide that you want to dress in a very expressive way, that’s your right, and then society shouldn’t penalize you for it, but society does penalize you for that. And you have to be aware that society penalizes you for that. And you will get people such as myself who will defend you in a court of law for your self-expression, but you also have to realize that that behavior carries with it subtle penalties [01:48:00] against you. And if that’s okay with you, and it doesn’t matter, then that’s fine. And if you can afford the penalty that you get, then that’s fine. CRUICKSHANK: But you can’t say that as a judge in a court of law to a defendant. WARD: You can’t say that any more than I could say to a student in a classroom that you are as good as white kids. That’s against the law. You can’t say that to a black kid in a white school, in an integrated school, you are as good as a white kid, and you should behave this way as opposed to that way. No. You don’t say that, nor should you be making racial characterizations of that kind. But I think that it’s important for people to know that there are perceptions [01:49:00] that become a part of an operating system of thought where people judge you before they hear you say anything. And if you are already a millionaire, and if you are already a billionaire, it doesn’t really matter what people say. But if you are an aspiring person who wants to go somewhere in the business world, there are certain kind of business habits -- and even mimicking the behavior or dress codes of young white professionals may not be the thing that you want to do, because the dress code in businesses is changing significantly, and it’s not as formal as it was 20 or 30 years ago, but the standards are not applied equally with respect to behavior. And that’s just something -- WALKER-HARPS: That’s a fact, yeah. WARD: -- that you have to recognize as you negotiate [01:50:00] your way through life. You have to decide, where is it that I’m going to challenge the system behavior-wise, and what is it worth for me in so challenging the system? This is something that is something that you learn, that we begin to learn, that I learned as I was growing up here in Griffin. Where do I challenge? At what cost do I challenge? What’s the reward? What’s the penalty? And those are decisions that can often make the difference between success and failure in life. Where do I challenge behavior? It starts in the home. When do I say know to my parents? When do I say -- when do I acquiesce? In the school, [01:51:00] when do I challenge the behavior? When do I acquiesce? Where is it appropriate? Those are decisions that occur in almost every aspect of life. In some cases, people get into a fight on the highway, one driver to another driver, and it leads to death. Somebody challenging somebody else’s behavior in a car. And that’s one of the things that makes for one’s growth, in a sense, in society. How does one accommodate? When does one say, I’m sorry? When does one say, excuse me? When is it necessary? Can one defuse by just saying, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that? These are aspects of our civil [01:52:00] society that I think are very important for us to gauge as we negotiate through life. And they are things that I’ve always -- I’ve always had the advantage of very, very, very wise people, I’ve thought, advising me, from my earliest years. Because I thought, if I had wanted to, I could have made my birth circumstance my justification for being a drunk on Solomon Street, and saying that it wasn’t my fault, it was my dad who didn’t stay with my mom, my mom who didn’t stay with me. And I could have made up all kinds of reasons why I had failed in life, and I chose not to. WALKER-HARPS: What do you consider your [01:53:00] most valuable -- what would you consider your most important achievement? And I know there may not be just one, and it also may not be just one area. WARD: I think, as I look back in the totality of my life, I think surviving the first and second grade, and the way in which I survived the first and second grade, was a testament to -- not me, but people who saw in me a worthy investment of their time and counsel. I’ve been very, very blessed with [01:54:00] people who have given me the benefit of their insights on life, and it started here. My most important learning took place here in Griffin. It was expanded by my experiences around the world. Almost 200 trips to Africa alone, for example. But my most important years of learning about life occurred here, and it was with people who were not the richest, not the smartest, but in many cases, the wisest people that I’ve run into. The greatest satisfactions were the early years here. I was prepared. I never blamed the world [01:55:00] for my circumstance, and I’ve challenged the world and a lot of its suppositions and attitudes. And I think the ability to do that I can see in different people. C. Eric Lincoln, for example, at Clark College. WALKER-HARPS: Oh, yeah. (inaudible) teacher. WARD: Was a huge influence -- WALKER-HARPS: He was great. WARD: -- in my life. He’s the one who told me I had to go to Africa. James P. Brawley, who was of huge import. Benjamin Mays, who was not my president, but I looked up to him. These were people -- James H. Robinson, who started Crossroads. Huge, huge influence on my life. Mandela. Martin Luther King. I [01:56:00] could see in them examples of conviction that were very, very important. And my wife. Leah has been a very big inspiration. She has been a very courageous woman. We are very different. We come from very, very different social backgrounds. Her dad was a colonel at a time when there were no black colonels. She was born on a military base. But for her to have withstood the slings and arrows of being the first woman in so many different categories, and to have been so successful in doing [01:57:00] what she did, and to walk away from it and play a different role, I think, is going to be a very, very important lesson for other women. She is a very courageous woman. And I’m also proud of the way I’ve helped her as we have spent the last 20-some years together. We met in Griffin, (which is?) also a part of the Griffin legacy. WALKER-HARPS: At the post office. WARD: Yeah. (laughs) BAUSKE: The downtown one or the experiment one? WARD: No, the -- it’s actually the Rotary Club. (laughter) We’ve gone on. Those -- you’ve tolerated my musings. CUNNINGHAM: It’s been fascinating. WALKER-HARPS: I [01:58:00] did not know that you could sing. Were you inspired my Mr. Tucker, or you were not in the band with Mr. Tucker? WARD: I was with Mr. Tucker. That was -- I could have listed Rufus Tucker as one of the inspirations in my life. BAUSKE: Miss Jewell, has he covered the period you wanted covered? WALKER-HARPS: Basically. You have -- one of the questions that you might be able to answer me now. You left Griffin, but during that same period of time, we had a few professional persons other than those you’ve named, like doctors, or -- particularly doctors. I don’t know if there were other professional people here in our community other than the teachers and the principals. WARD: I’m told that Dr. [01:59:00] (Blanton?) was actually distantly related to me, and he was my doctor. In fact, he used to (want?) -- when I was born, I didn’t have a birth certificate, and he had to certify my birth later on when I needed a birth certificate for getting a passport. Dr. -- what’s his name, you mentioned him -- lived out on my street. WALKER-HARPS: Dr. (Atkinson?)? WARD: Dr. Atkinson I did know. Dr. Atkinson was a dentist here. He lived on our street further down. He lived on Solomon Street. His wife was a second grade teacher here. Very dignified person. And he died early, as I recall. Now, I left Griffin in 1959. The real civil rights work in Griffin occurred [02:00:00] after that. In fact, some years after that, in terms of activity. And Dr. -- Reverend Shropshire was one of the leading figures in that period. CUNNINGHAM: How do you spell his name? WARD: S-H-R-O-P-S-H-I-R-E. CUNNINGHAM: Okay. S-H--? WARD: R-O-P-S-H-I-R-E. His son James Maynard is still alive. We were classmates at Clark. He was a year behind me, but we went to Clark together. The first black policeman, Marvin, was in my class. B. J. was a year or so ahead of me, B. J. Jackson. B. J. died. B. J. lived on Solomon Street. Marvin lived on Taylor Street, Marvin Barrow. Marvin lived on Taylor Street. And then Reese Colbert. Reese was in my -- and they were the first three black... The interesting [02:01:00] thing about the first black policemen in this town, they could not arrest whites, and that was the same in Atlanta. WALKER-HARPS: Yes, I remember. WARD: When the first -- the first black policemen in Atlanta could not arrest. And the interesting thing about that, as well, is that a lot of blacks didn’t think that they were real police, so they didn’t want to arrest them, either. So that was not an easy -- you can’t arrest me. You can’t arrest me. They wanted only white policemen to arrest (me?). But that was a difficult -- I’m not sure that I would have taken that job at that time. I think the other people, other than Reverend Shropshire -- Reverend Epps had already left [02:02:00] here. Reverend Epps became significant in the north Georgia district of the United Methodist Church. But Raymond was, I’d say, probably the closest thing -- Raymond had a difficult role, because not only was he the first black on the council, he had a mediating role of troubleshooting. And when the Klan came, they came to his shop. When they wanted to take out grievances on blacks, they came to Raymond’s place. He didn’t have unified black support. But he was, in my judgement, a very sober [02:03:00] and solid citizen, and I always had great respect for him, for each of them. And the third brother is still alive. (You ought to?) talk to him. He’s a great -- they were -- I always liked them, Raymond and Phillip and Otis. I interviewed both of them in that TV program. WALKER-HARPS: Yeah, I’ve spoken to Phillip about coming, but he’s not going to do an interview. He’s going to leave that to (Cheryl?). Cheryl is his niece, and she’s going to take his place. But Raymond wasn’t available. We cannot underplay the role that Raymond played, because he was really prominent during that most turbulent period. And you’re right, he was a mediator. He worked with -- what was it -- the human relations, or that biracial group, that was [02:04:00] so sobering for the community at that time. WARD: Raymond was a very, very solid person. He was -- I always thought he had very good judgement. And you could count on him. If he said he was going to do something, he would do it. WALKER-HARPS: We did not -- and perhaps we won’t, now -- but Raymond and those persons who sit in political offices now are all there as a result mainly (of?) a political change that occurred after the NAACP filed a lawsuit that outlawed at-large voting to a single member [02:05:00] district. (I guess you were?) gone at that time, too. Yeah. You were gone. But we -- it’s one of the areas that we don’t want to ever leave out. We want to pass on the significance to our children, because the people who are sitting now in offices, who maintain positions, have no clue as to the shoulders upon which they rest, and the turmoils that came about during that time, just as we don’t want to overlook the period of time when we were trying to consolidate the governments, when you worked so hard -- (inaudible) me, too, I guess, because I was put out there on a limb, to get the city and county consolidated. And it didn’t happen, and has not as of this point happened. It creeps up in conversations once in a while. So I’m sure the issue [02:06:00] will come back. WARD: When I was in college, I majored in psychology and English. And my major professor was Wiley Bolden. Wiley Bolden’s father was the leader in breaking down the at-large voting system in Mobile, Alabama, and was a very important person in Alabama politics as a result of that. One of the big issues in the consolidation program here -- effort -- was related to the participation in the governance structure. Griffin has now a majority African American population in the city lines, and substantially less than a majority in the county wide. There were [02:07:00] some things that were important in the consideration of the governance structure, and many of them had to do with code issues. For example, out in my property in the county, I could have cows and chickens, and shoot my gun if I wanted to. I remember in 1947 or ’48, the city of Griffin passed an ordinance that you couldn’t have chickens (in the?) city. We used to have chickens right there on Solomon Street. We used to have pigs here. And they outlawed that, ’47 or ’48, somewhere around that. So there are certain kinds of lifestyle [02:08:00] issues that are more important in the county than they are in the city, and I recognized that, when we were going through this, that they mattered a lot. Who was going to be the police chief, who was going to be the law enforcement chief, was an important issue. (And that?) always is. Who was going to be in charge of the government, the final power position, was important. The county is really too small to have two separate functioning governing units in it. And at some point -- and I don’t know if race is the overarching issue. It was an important issue. It was more important, I think, [02:09:00] in terms of the representation of African Americans in a consolidated government, and it would have had to be worked out. But eventually -- we have 159 counties. There’s too many counties. And we don’t need that many counties. What we need to be doing is consolidating some of the counties, not just the internal consolidation, but the consolidation of some of these units. Some of them are very small, throughout the state. But if you deal with politics, once somebody gets in power, you start having to deal with that reality, and so it’s very difficult to deal with it. Race is an interesting element in the whole equation. I think that -- my wife, for example, [02:10:00] demonstrates that you run statewide. And even though she’s a judge, and judges have a sort of built in advantage, an African American woman running statewide in Georgia is still an African American woman running statewide in Georgia. And that she won three or four times statewide is a significant indicator that if you got the right kind of person, with the right kind of appeal across different kinds of sectors -- I think that Georgia is probably moving in a direction. Somebody will get smart enough. Somebody will get smart enough to know how to have appeal, and it’s going to take push, and it’s going to take appeal. (inaudible) push, and then somebody’s going to come (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). WALKER-HARPS: [02:31:00] Perhaps one day it will. Anyway, we’re going to have to stop. WARD: You guys are going to push, and the all of a sudden, somebody’s going to pop up. And they’ll take care of... WALKER-HARPS: Okay. We’re going to have to stop. It’s the end of the workday for some of us, anyway. Is there any last word that you would like to leave with us before we say our thank-yous? WARD: No, I thank you, Jewell. It is not a thankless job. I do thank you. WALKER-HARPS: Well, thank you, and thank you for always being there and having my back, and answering my needs when I have those, that I know that I can call you (and?) you will answer, and that’s needed. Last year was a pretty rough year. And I almost called on you (two?) [02:32:00] again, but I didn’t. But anyway, we got through it, and we’re here, and we want to stay thanks to UGA and my partners in crime who are always so willingly to say, yes, we will help, or we will assist, or we will take it over, or whatever needs be. We deeply appreciate you. We’re going to look at what you said. It may be that we will ask you to come back, and maybe -- we certainly want to (inaudible) see some of the documents that we will probably want to scan. But on behalf of myself and the NAACP, we say thank you for taking the time out to come and participate. Are there anything -- are there other things that we need to say? BAUSKE: Thank you. CRUICKSHANK: Thank you very much. CUNNINGHAM: Yeah, very much. END OF AUDIO FILE
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audio
0
RBRL418GAA-010.xml
RBRL418GAA-010.xml
http://purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL418GAA/findingaid
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
133 minutes
Location
The location of the interview
Griffin, Georgia
Repository
Name of repository the interview is from
Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Haskell Ward, March 22, 2017
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RBRL418GAA-010
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Haskell Ward
Jewel Walker-Harps
Be-Atrice Cunningham
John Cruickshank
Ellen Bauske
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio
oral histories
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Griffin, Georgia
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Subject
The topic of the resource
Segregation
Public housing
State governments--Officials and employees
Civil rights
Judges--United States
United States--Civil rights
Politics and Public Policy
African American politicians
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-22
Description
An account of the resource
Born in 1940, Haskell Ward grew up in the segregated Griffin, Georgia. Throughout his childhood, Ward was encouraged by peers and friends to attain an education. Ward has held a multitude of positions throughout his life including working as Peace Corps volunteer, Africa Advisor to the Secretary of State, and judge in Griffin. In this interview, Ward talks about his work in Africa and the United States, his experience during the Civil Rights Movement, and his reflections on the state of Griffin.
OHMS
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Griffin African American Oral History Project
Subject
The topic of the resource
Georgia--History, Local
African Americans--History
Georgia--Communities
Description
An account of the resource
The Griffin African American Oral History Project is a collaboration between the Griffin Branch NAACP, the Griffin Campus Library of the University of Georgia, and the Richard B. Russell Library. The seed was planted in the meetings of the Educational Prosperity Initiative which is also chaired by the president of the Griffin Branch NAACP, Jewel Walker-Harps. Collaborators on the project include: Griffin Housing Authority; Spalding County Collaborative; Fairmont Alumni Association; University of Georgia—Athens and Griffin campuses; and the Educational Prosperity Initiative, which is an affiliate of the Spalding County Collaborative and others. Interviewers on the project include: John Cruickshank, librarian at UGA-Griffin Campus Library; Jewel Walker-Harps, President of the Griffin, GA Branch of the NAACP; Art Cain, coordinator of Continuing Education for UGA-Griffin; Be-Atrice Cunningham, project manager for College of Agricultural and Environmental Science for Griffin; and Ellen Bauske, senior public service associate at the Georgia Center for Urban Agriculture in Griffin. Rich Braman was the sound engineer for this project. <br />The Griffin African American Oral History Project intends to document the experiences of people who lived in Fairmont Community in Griffin, Georgia during the civil rights era and through its transformation to the present day.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-2018
Rights
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Oral histories
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RBRL418GAA
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Griffin, Georgia
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
OHMS Object Text
Contains OHMS index and/or transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable.
5.4
Interview with Walter Pyron, June 1, 2018
RBRL418GAA-020
RBRL418GAA
Griffin African American Oral History Project
Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia
Walter Pyron
Jewel Walker-Harps
Be-Atrice Cunningham
John Cruickshank
Ellen Bauske
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1:|21(11)|37(14)|51(4)|59(4)|74(8)|85(14)|98(4)|105(8)|113(10)|122(7)|131(14)|149(3)|158(11)|168(3)|184(11)|194(2)|223(6)|231(10)|248(11)|260(2)|281(2)|286(12)|300(4)|313(3)|322(12)|338(12)|350(4)|364(12)|381(13)|393(12)|404(6)|412(16)|422(14)|448(5)|467(8)|481(7)|490(14)|505(7)|521(6)|532(14)|545(5)|552(12)|560(2)|589(9)|601(2)|623(5)|656(8)|681(12)|712(12)|730(14)|768(10)|799(2)|849(2)|883(6)|914(8)|948(4)|963(12)|992(5)|1018(13)|1045(13)|1067(13)|1080(2)|1095(2)|1109(8)|1115(9)|1128(12)|1169(8)|1205(5)|1235(11)|1249(6)|1263(7)|1281(13)|1321(12)|1343(4)|1360(12)|1367(9)|1379(13)|1407(11)|1423(9)|1440(4)|1461(11)|1478(13)|1499(13)|1508(4)|1516(6)|1533(12)|1544(13)|1554(10)|1566(10)|1575(6)|1593(5)|1606(5)|1624(7)|1662(12)|1674(4)|1685(6)|1696(11)|1716(12)|1725(9)|1740(6)|1755(8)|1788(4)|1809(2)|1818(13)|1825(9)|1831(5)|1842(6)|1854(10)|1887(12)|1910(6)|1918(13)|1926(4)|1940(3)
Kaltura
audio
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48
Growing up in Griffin, Georgia
I was born in an area...
Pyron talks about his early childhood and his experiences growing up in the black community. Pyron recalls how he was not aware of racial discrimination throughout his childhood as the result of his upbringing and the homogeneity of his community.
Annie Schockley Elementary School;Griffin, Georgia
459
Growing up in Griffin, GA (cont.)
There was another minister that lived across the street...
Pyron talks about how his father became the minister of a church in Griffin, Georgia. Pyron talks about the ways in which the community's children would innovate to keep entertained despite having fewer resources in comparison to wealthier communities.
community;Griffin, Georgia;ministry;religion
879
Teachers of the Griffin community
She said that she asked my parents...
Pyron talks about how his first grade teacher and describes the community of his elementary school, Anna Shockley. Pyron talks about the ways in which the teachers participated in the Griffin, Georgia community.
community;Margaret Kendell;teaching
1255
Pyron's mother / The Griffin mill
My mama was the PTA president at...
Pyron talks about his mother's job as a maid, and how she eventually became a nurse after graduating nursing school. Pyron recalls the ways in which Georgian hospitals were segregated. Pyron explains the ways in which his mother pushed their family towards better housing and education. Pyron mentions that a local mill eventually started hiring African Americans shortly after mandatory integration.
Griffin Technical School;integration;nursing school
1653
Pyron's father
But blacks could get those kind of jobs...
Pyron talks about how his father's work as a custodian eventually led him to save enough money to own enough machinery to build an independent cleaning business. Pyron recalls how he would often assist his father in cleaning.
business;cleaning;Presbyterian Church
2005
Moving schools / Attending Fairmont High School
And we had to move up to Court Nimons...
Pyron talks about the series of moves his childhood family made after his elementary school burned down. Pryon describes his sixth grade principal of Moore Elementary, Mrs. Domidick. Pyron talks about how he eventually moved to Fairmont High School and some of the staff he knew growing up.
Dr. Tate;Fairmont High School;Moore Elementary;Mrs. Domidick
2392
Civil Rights Movements / Intimidation by the KKK
You talk about a school where it was family...
Pyron talks about how Fairmont High School's community urged a sense of professionalism. Fairmont recalls how members of the Griffin community participated in civil right events. Fairmont mentions some incidents he experienced concerning civil rights and interactions with the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Fairmont recalls how members of the Ku Klux Klan worked to intimidate progressive members of the black community of Griffin, Georgia.
civil rights;Fairmont High School;Ku Klux Klan (KKK)
2869
Intimidation by the KKK (cont.)
Crosses were burned at their homes...
Pyron describes how after the mandatory integration of the Griffin community, leading members of the black community were targeted by Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members. Pyron talks about how African Americans who moved in predominately white neighborhoods had crosses burned in their front yards. Pyron recalls how integration led to the death of many black businesses due to the competition of local white businesses.
business;Ku Klux Klan (KKK);Triple 8
3249
Working in the Spalding School District
The Ku Klux Klan at one point...
Pyron and the interviewer discuss how the KKK threatened the Griffin, Georgia sector of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Pyron talks about how he eventually became the Assistant Superintendent of Spalding High School. Pyron explains that the process he went through to achieve his position. Pyron mentions how he was still treated fairly even in leadership positions at the school.
Ku Klux Klan (KKK);National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP);Spalding High School
3739
Challenges of administration
So can you tell us one of...
Pyron talks about some of the challenges he faced as the principal at the newly integrated school, Griffin Spalding. Pyron mentions an encounter he had with one of the teachers who attempted to frame him for the purpose of removing him from his position.
administration;Griffin Spalding;Griffin, Georgia
4170
The integration of Griffin High School
See, first they started sending...
Pyron talks about the integration process for Griffin High School. Pryon recalls how his brother, who was sent to Griffin High School, experienced prejudice at the school despite being an advanced math student. Pyron explains how, despite mandatory integration, discrimination lived in Georgian culture. Pyron talks about the impact of the Civil Rights movements on his college experience.
Civil Rights Movements;Fairmont High School;Fort Valley State University;Griffin High School;Hosea Williams;integration
4606
Band directing in Griffin, Georgia / The Vietnam War
And the first job I got in Griffin...
Griffin talks about how he became a band director at Griffin High School. Griffin explains how he was drafted into the Vietnam war after refusing to work at a schooling institution that was promoting unfair integration.
Fairmont High School;Ford Motor Company;Fort Valley University;Griffin, Georgia;Warner Robins, Georgia
4991
The Vietnam War (cont.)
I went to the army...
Pyron talks about how he avoided being drafted into Vietnam, as the war was ending around the time of his deployment. Pyron explains how he was instead sent to Germany, where he witnessed the affect the Vietnam War had on soldiers who were transferred to Germany for medical attention. Pyron talks about how he went back to school after the war, and received a masters in counseling and music.
Ford Motor Company;Ft. Louis, Kentucky;Germany;infantry;University of Georgia;Vietnam War;West Georgia College
5444
Administrative experiences / Attending university
After doing seven years as a band director...
Pyron talks about how he became the assistant principal of schools in Griffin before he became the first black principal of Futral Road Elementary School. Pyron recalls how he attended many schools. Pyron describes how he still gets compliments from some of his students for his work as a principal.
Futral Road Elementary School;segregation;University of Georgia
5871
Integration challenges / Religion in education
When we were working on...
Pyron talks about the difficulty of the process of dividing resources for schools during integration. Pyron also speaks about the difficulties of integrating religion into schooling, and opines the importance of religion in creating moral standards for students. Pyron talks about his wish for religion integration in public schooling as an option for parents who can't pay for religious private schools.
public schooling;religion;Spalding High School
6326
Concluding thoughts
With the changes in...
Pyron explains his belief that the separation of school and church has led to unsustainable family structures in the black community. Pyron talks about how the low-income community of the United States has developed a culture that is unstable.
African American community;education;religion
Oral history
rbrl418gaa-020_pyron BE-ATRICE CUNNINGHAM: All right, well, good afternoon. Today is June 1st, 2018. My name is Be-Atrice Cunningham, and I’m with the University of Georgia, Griffin campus. And joining us today is Mr. Walter Pyron. And we’re also joined by -- JEWEL WALKER-HARPS: Jewel Walker-Harps, president of the Griffin branch NAACP. JOHN CRUICKSHANK: John Cruickshank, librarian, Griffin campus library, University of Georgia. ELLEN BAUSKE: Ellen Bauske, program director for the UGA Center for Urban Agriculture. CUNNINGHAM: Very good. And today we’re conducting an interview as part of the Griffin African American Oral History project. So thank you, Mr. Pyron. Thank you so much for joining us today. And we’re just going to start off by talking a little bit about your early life. So if you could just tell us a little bit about your childhood. WALTER PYRON: Okay. I was born in an area of Griffin called Spring Hill. Now Spring Hill -- and we lived on Smith Street. Spring Hill is an area over near the Griffin Golf Course, and is not extremely far from the hospital. One of the things about the area is that you enter one row at the top of the hill, which is -- that’s called Spring Hill. CUNNINGHAM: Okay. PYRON: And you go down, it goes all the way around and comes back out at the other part of it. From where we were living, we could see the golf course, and we could watch and see the golfers out there. Now blacks were not allowed to be on the golf course. CUNNINGHAM: Okay. PYRON: If any time -- because being children, we would run out there and play on it when no one was looking. But if they saw us, they’d run us off. But between where I lived and where the golf course was located, there were some pine trees. So we could go into the pine trees and kind of hide and watch the golfers. It was all you know, it was just a beautiful sight out there, to be able to look at the golf course and to see all those people in those little carts riding around. It was exciting. But we would go out there and play. Spring Hill was -- I was born there, and we stayed there until I was 11 years old. But it was a place where the community was close-knit. It was segregated; there were no whites anywhere in the area. The elementary school that we attended was called Annie Shockley. Annie Shockley was an all-black school. It was a nice school, it was a brick school. CUNNINGHAM: Okay. PYRON: And we -- everybody who lived in my neighborhood would walk there every morning. We did not see a whole lot of white people over there at Annie Shockley. We, as children, we didn’t hear a whole lot about racism or separation. My parents didn’t talk a whole lot of negatives about white folks, because my dad was one of these -- my dad was a custodian. My mom was a maid. And they worked for a lot of rich folks, and worked for a lot of white folks. So we never, early on, heard a lot of negatives. Now my dad had a place next to the house, and you would have called -- you would have said there was a “juke joint.” CUNNINGHAM: Okay. PYRON: Okay. So he ran the juke joint. A lot of times policemen would come over there, not necessarily because anything was going on, but they just kept an eye on it. And that’s when I would see the white policemen come down. To my knowledge, now -- and they wouldn’t share everything with us, I’m sure -- to my knowledge, there was never any real trouble at the juke joint, but it was one of those places where people went to enjoy -- I’m not aware of any alcohol being sold there, but I was a kid, so I cannot say for sure if those kind of things went on. I’m sure sometimes there may have been some skirmishes there. But none that I’m really aware of. So we were not exposed to a lot of that. My older brother, however -- CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm? PYRON: -- would go down there and was aware of the place. He was more aware, I think, than any of us. We were -- there were six of us, five boys, one girl. My sister was two years older than I am, and my brother, oldest brother, was four years older, and the rest of everybody was four years apart. We had a set of -- there was twins, so the rest of us, with the exception of my sister, all the boys were four years apart. And we had what would be a modified shotgun house. CUNNINGHAM: Hmm. PYRON: We had maybe -- to this day, I try to remember where did eight people, counting my parents, where did eight people go in that house? (laughter) Now we were smaller, so I imagine my sister had a room by herself. My older brother slept on the couch -- there was a couch that we could let out in the living room. And the rest -- and probably my brothers and me, my brothers and I all probably slept in the bed together. I would imagine there were three of us, maybe four, in the bed together, my sister and my oldest brother slept in separate quarters, separate beds. Again, my older brother probably slept in the couch. So that’s how we met -- my parents had a room. CUNNINGHAM: Right. PYRON: One of the four rooms. And when I say it was a modified shotgun house, meaning that you could look straight through it, but there was a room off to the side. And that, I think, is what we called a “modified.” The juke joint was in a building below. Over the 10 years that I was there, the juke joint became a store. My dad stocked, and became a store. Then he became a minister. It became a church. So by the time that we moved from that area to a better area, he was a minister. And when he went into the ministry, he held church at the building below. There was another minister that lived across the street, and often he would come over there and preach, and different folks in the community would come over and we’d have service there. Going to church was not an option, even when he had the juke joint. But that’s what happened. We lived -- Spring Hill was on a totally red clay street. We actually learned how to skate from the top of the hill down on that smooth clay, red clay. And actually, we were pretty good at it. But that was the innovation, the kind of things we made and enjoyed. They -- that was not, in that whole area, not a whole lot of people making a lot of money. But most of ev-- mostly everybody there worked, had a job. All of the neighbors that I interacted with, they were married. There were two people, two persons in the house. Most folks, we were six there were six children -- most folks had three, four, five children. Most of them had a garden in the yard because there wasn’t a whole lot of money coming in, but the people were hard workers. So most of them had a garden. We had chickens, and there was -- a hog would be slaughtered, and sometimes it would be shared with the neighbors, and so forth and so on. So we were basically happy children, having a good time. We used Chinaberry limbs to play Cowboy and Indians. We were fortunate enough to finally wind up with a television. Well, to have a television in the neighborhood then, it was a very popular thing. So everybody would gather around during the day when the parents were working and we weren’t in school, we’d gather around and look at television and just have a lot of fun. We had fights in the neighborhood, in terms of disagreements between young folks and the older folks, but they were all friendly fights. And we were all very -- we all got along fairly well. There were, in the neighborhood, some folks who occasionally would overdrink or get into a fight. One of the worst ones I ever saw was when I was going through the neighborhood, and two ladies were arguing. One of them had an axe, and the other one had a big stick. And so how she did it, I don’t know -- we were curious children, so we watched. And the one that had the stick somehow -- no, the one that had the axe somehow talked the lady who had the stick to put it down, and then she hit her with the blunt side of the axe. She did not die. CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm? PYRON: Pretty tough folks. But it was -- I was always amazed at how she talked her out of that. And yet, we could go through the neighborhood, and folks didn’t bother us -- even my eyes were everywhere, and they would make sure your parents knew. It was a close-knit community. CUNNINGHAM: Right. PYRON: We were a diverse group of folks. But the children were watched. If anything happened, anything -- they would get on to you for doing anything wrong, you know, if you were in somebody’s yard and you shouldn’t be there, they were going to tell you. And they were going to let your parents know. And we were very -- the whole neighborhood was very close-knit. And that was one of the amazing things. Another thing that you don’t see as much of today as you once did, the neighborhood was clean. We had those straw brooms -- all the parents made sure that you kept your area clean, and you didn’t drop paper anywhere in somebody else’s yard or place. If not, they would make sure you pick it up. So it was amazing how clean it was in that area. You go down the street now, and you see paper everywhere. But part of that, too, was your parents teaching you. The other part was, when we went to Annie Shockley, you always cleaned your area. We had those broken-in shoes and hand-me-down clothes from older brother to younger brother. We was -- one of the things we cherished was to get one of those free lunches. And how you got the free lunch was, you worked in the cafeteria. Because most of the time we were taking potted meat and spam sandwiches. But every once in a while, you know, we couldn’t afford the cafeteria food. (laughs) So every once in a while -- I couldn’t wait for my turn, so I could go in there and clean up the -- wash whatever it was that we had to do in the cafeteria, and they’d give us a free hot lunch. Now that was a treat. Could you imagine the days when I wanted to clean up, to get a free lunch? (laughter) But that’s the way it was. And the staff over at Annie Shockley -- you talkin’ about protective folks, you’re talkin’ about a family kind of atmosphere, you’re talkin’ about everybody making sure that you were doing right and wrong, clean up your space. And dare you to be in a fight, because mom wouldn’t do it, or dad wouldn’t do it before you got home. And we all reacted to that, we all respected that. And we respected the teachers over there amazingly. They were unbelievable. Michael Kendall’s mom was my first-grade teacher. WALKER-HARPS: Margaret? PYRON: Uh-huh, Margaret Kendall. And I don’t know if you know Michael, but he’s -- WALKER-HARPS: Yes. PYRON: Okay. But she was my first grade teacher. And she didn’t have any children at that time. So -- and I didn’t know this, because she told the story later on at my retirement, she said that she took -- she asked could she asked my parents, could she take me home with her? At the time, people could do that, and it was no big deal. A teacher would take a child home, and there was no problem with the parents for allowing it. So she took me to the house. She lived over there off of 4th Street at that time, in one of the nicer houses that were around at that time. So she took me in there, and I got to meet her husband, Mr. Kendall, who worked at Griffin Tech in Fairmount for a long time, and got to meet him. She just treated me royally. And I was another big-headed, skinny boy at that time. I was just delighted. Loved Miss Kendall. Well, at my retirement, Miss Kendall told the rest of the story. She said she had wanted some boys. And she said, “I’m going to take Walter home,” well, may have called me Lawrence then, it was my middle name. “I’m going to take Walter home with me, and I’m going to pray that I get some boys.” True enough, she says she wound up with three. CUNNINGHAM: Oh, my. PYRON: She had her first child not very long after my staying at her house. She told that at my retirement. And I said, “I wondered about that.” But it was those kinds of things all throughout my time at Annie Shockley. In case you didn’t know, Annie Shockley is now called Anne Street. CUNNINGHAM: Okay. PYRON: Okay. Anne Street is where Annie Shockley was. WALKER-HARPS: Did you know Ms. Shockley? Did you hear stories about her, what was it about her that had a school name for her? PYRON: No, I hadn’t. WALKER-HARPS: No, I don’t know, either. PYRON: No. Mr. Barty was the principal there. WALKER-HARPS: Oh, yes. PYRON: You know, he married Ms. Butler later on. WALKER-HARPS: Yes. PYRON: And she became -- Ms. Butler was a teacher there, at Annie Shockley. And Mr. Barty had another son that also went there, we used to all play over there at Annie Shockley. But he married one of the teachers later on, I think his wife passed, and he later married Ms. Butler, who is my second grade teacher over at Annie Shockley. And so it went through to the fifth grade, and once again, the protection, the encouragement, you know, we didn’t have a lot of parents there that had finished school. My dad, I think, went to the sixth or seventh grade, my mother went to the eleventh grade. And some of the students that were there, the parents didn’t even stay that long at school. But the teachers knew that. And most of the teachers live in the Griffin community. That’s something that’s a big change now. But they lived in the Griffin community, and particularly they were hold up mostly in the black community. It’s not like now where you can get an apartment or a house anywhere you want. Basically, they were around, not only at school, but you would also be around in the community. And many of them lived in some of the communities -- WALKER-HARPS: They have a choice. PYRON: It would be, like, the nicest house in that community. But -- or one of the nicest. But that was the restriction. But in some ways, having the teachers that close actually wound up being a plus. CUNNINGHAM: Okay. PYRON: Because they became involved in the community in a different way than you might see now. So many of the teachers don’t live in Spalding, or they don’t live in the community where they teach. So that, I thought, was a plus, because they had a kind of a care for us that was so different sometimes than you may even see now. They were involved. They could come to your house, and would come to your house. They aren’t afraid to go anywhere in the neighborhood. And I think that’s a plus. I think that was a plus at that time. You could also see them at church. Parents could interact with them in a different way. And like I said, many, many teachers took students home with them, which you just wouldn’t see nowadays. That’s very difficult for some to do now, because it’s -- so many things are viewed differently than they were then. WALKER-HARPS: Do you know if any of those teachers are still alive today? I know there are a few from Cora Nimtz, but are there any from Annie Shockley that you know about, that are still living today? PYRON: That are still alive? WALKER-HARPS: I don’t know. PYRON: The last one I saw, well, besides Ms. Kendall, who (inaudible), she didn’t live too very far from there when they moved to their new house, the last one I saw for sure was Ms. Patrick. WALKER-HARPS: Yes. PYRON: Ms. Patrick was my fourth-grade teacher. And I ran into her over at the apartments. And she remembered me. (laughter) Yeah. I was over at her apartment, I’m trying to think -- I was over there, I can’t remember, it was, like, while I was in the area, but I was trying to find somebody, and ran to Ms. Patrick. And we had a good reunion there. And she talked about “parrot boy.” (laughter) WALKER-HARPS: Yeah. PYRON: But and mama was -- my mama was a PTA president at Annie Shockley. She was PTA president there. She later on became PTA president for Dr. Tate when he was at Fairmount. She was president for a year. Mama was -- started out as a maid. She then went to the Griffin Hospital as a aide, basically she would take care of the pans and so forth, and so on. Griffin Tech wanted to have a black class to learn nursing. It was going to be the first black class. Mama wanted to take that class, but she only went to the 11th grade, so she needed to do something in connection with, like, a GED test, or something like that. Anyway, she passed it. She was in the first black class to enroll at Griffin Tech -- it was called Griffin Tech at that time -- Griffin Tech, and she finished top in her class. Mama became a, what, LE -- LPN, Licensed Practical Nurse. WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm? PYRON: She was an LPN. She worked at the hospital for 15, 16 years. She was in charge of a night shift floor. See, when they first started over at the hospital, all the black folks were on the first floor. Second floor is where white folks were. Third floor was just -- I think it had something to do with ladies. WALKER-HARPS: Gynecologists. PYRON: Yeah. WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. Obstetricians. PYRON: The fourth floor was where you had surgery. And when black folks needed surgery, they could go up in a particular room up on the fourth floor. When I was a senior at Fairmount, I worked -- I applied and worked as an orderly at the Griffin Spalding Hospital at that time. And again, the segregation was still there on the floor, but I worked as an orderly, and when I went to college -- the first time, I still worked as an orderly. It still had not integrated fully at the hospital. And sometimes worked in the emergency room. She stayed there, continued there, and eventually when the hospital started to change owners, she wound up going out working at Brightmoor, she was in charge of the floor there at night. She loved the night shift. As a matter of fact, when I worked at the hospital, I worked at the night shift sometimes with her. And then later on, she went out to Renaissance -- it wasn’t called Renaissance name -- the other nursing home. And she finished her career out there. Mom was smart and a pusher. And her whole determination was for all of us who wanted to go to college to go to college. And so four of us went to college, and four of us finished. That was her push. The other push she had was, she wanted dad -- my dad loved cars, so he was one of the few that had a black 1949 Hudson. It was talk of the neighborhood. (laughter) And but mom was determined that we were going to move in a better neighborhood. And as I say, when I was 11, we’d be at one of the few brick houses that blacks had over there on North 5th Street, not too far from where Ms. Molette used to live. WALKER-HARPS: Okay, right around that curve. PYRON: Yeah. Uh-huh. Ms. Molette, who’s the teacher, her husband had been a principal, hadn’t he? WALKER-HARPS: Yes. Mmm. PYRON: So we moved there, and of course, we -- my dad and all of us, we put in a floor, the hardwood floor, and things like that, and paint, and whatever we could cut corners on, you know, because that was a big move. And it was very hard for blacks to get a job at Dundee Mill. It was very difficult at that time, because Dundee Mill was employed the most people in Spalding at that time. I think the teaching was -- education had the second highest single population. Now, with the mills all closing in Griffin, I think education has the largest number now. So but that was the difficult -- now, if you were cleaning up and things like that, you could get jobs. Now, little by little, the industry began to change, and it began to employ black folks at the mill. But in terms of that process, it took a long time before they started employing folks at the mill. WALKER-HARPS: Except the Pepper Plant. PYRON: Except -- yeah, the Pepper Plant. The Pepper Plant, which was not very far from where we live, the Pepper Plant would employ. WALKER-HARPS: Yeah. PYRON: But it was quite a challenge to work in the Pepper Plant. WALKER-HARPS: Yes. PYRON: And sometimes some people would say it’s somewhat dangerous. That was -- the Pepper Plant, you could smell, almost all over Griffin, when it operated. So you can imagine how it was to work in it. But blacks could get those kind of jobs pretty quickly. My dad cleaned -- was a custodian. As people used to tease, and they’d say to him, “Well, save some jobs for me. You’ve got all the clean-up jobs all over Griffin!” And we knew that, because as the boys got older, when I turned 10, it was my time to start going with him in the morning. And what would happen is, I don’t know if you know where Burger King is located now. CUNNINGHAM: Yes. PYRON: The Presbyterian Church used to be where Burger King is now. CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm. WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: My dad, because the activities at the church and nursey then, all those kind of things, back in the day, my dad would take one of us, sometimes two, and every morning before we got ready to go to school, we’d go over there and help him clean up. He cleaned up -- he had that place, on Sunday morning after they had early worship, even though we would go to church, we would go by to straighten up so they can have a second worship. He had First National Bank, it was called some -- it was called First State Bank back then. Later on it became First National. He cleaned that up. We had several doctors’ office. And when I got a little older, I used to clean up for Dr. -- the optometrist who owned -- he was the only one in Griffin that owned a Rolls Royce. And I used to clean his office. And all of us had jobs. So like I say, there’s one guy, older, (inaudible). Dad’s dream was -- and he worked a lot of places and kept his money, he was stingy -- (laughter) but that was a good thing. It made us find jobs. CUNNINGHAM: Right. PYRON: When he -- he always wanted -- he worked on them until they finally built the First National Bank where it is now. We used to -- on Fridays, he served coffee to the customers coming in. He had a white coat, I would come up there after school and I’d go upstairs with him, because when they cleared out, we were going to clean up. But when he served coffee, I would go out there with them. And he started serving the coffee on Friday, and I think he started -- because Friday they stayed open until 6:00. I think we started serving the coffee around 4:00. People would come in there to get a cup of coffee, whatever, tea and so forth -- tea and so forth, and we would serve the coffee. Then we would clean up. Well, he wanted his own business. He said, “I’m going to have my own business one of these days.” And as he saved his money and so forth and so on, and as he had churches and really had a really good ministerial career, he bought machinery. He bought the big ones where it cleans and washes at the same time, fairly expensive machinery, and so forth and so on. He also owned tractors, and he would go down and had a garden -- had bought -- I don’t know if you know where the cemetery is in Milner, it’s a old -- it’s 100 confederate soldiers buried there, and they all have their little slabs. Well, there’s a property above there that my grandfather owned. When he died, the property was split up among the 14 kids that he had, that my granddaddy and grandmamma had, of the remaining ones. And so he did a -- he had a garden in that acre, acre and a half in Milner. And we were going to go down there and plow, and so forth. And he had a garden, he was in a new place where we moved on 5th Street, had a garden in the back. He still maintained a garden. My mother would do canning, and all those kind of things. But when he got the machinery and got the equipment and a carrier, and a truck, and all those kind of things, he had his own business. And therefore, he became an independent cleaner. And he cleaned stores like Piggly Wiggly, Big Apple. And he contracted with those folks. And of course, I finished school and was back working in Griffin, and I used to go with him, because I knew (inaudible) would take mom. But mom was still working. So I would be the one to go with him, because I wanted her to get her rest, yeah, even though I was working in Griffin. I’m going to stop now, so I can go -- CUNNINGHAM: Sure, go ahead, take a break. WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. (break in audio) PYRON: Well, one thing that did happen at the Annie Shockley, Annie Shockley caught on fire. CUNNINGHAM: Oh! PYRON: I guess it must have been fifth grade. And we had to move up to Cora Nimtz. WALKER-HARPS: Okay. PYRON: Cora Nimtz was a small school, but thank heavens the building didn’t have a whole lot of folks. So we had to go there while they repaired Annie Shockley, and then we were able to return. When I left, when we moved then, and we went over to, like I told you, the property that’s near Ms. Molette -- WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm? PYRON: -- oh, okay. That’s right, because I keep turning that way. CUNNINGHAM: That’s okay. That’s fine. I just need to move it (inaudible). PYRON: Okay. CUNNINGHAM: When you moved to Molette? PYRON: Oh, when we moved over on 5th Street, then the school that I was going to have to go to then was Moore Elementary. Moore Elementary, I don’t know necessarily the history about it, but almost all -- behind it, but almost all of the schools were named after some person. And Moore Elementary I think may have been -- WALKER-HARPS: The Reverend Henry Moore. PYRON: Right. I don’t know if that was the same area where the old Cabin Creek school that my dad went to may have been located, but somewhere in that area, the Cabin Creek area, the older kids had gone to that particular school. But anyway, I went to Moore Elementary, and guess, of all, who was my sixth grade teacher? Mrs. Tate. WALKER-HARPS: I was going to ask if you knew Dr. and Mrs. Tate. PYRON: Yeah, Dr. Tate’s wife, very excellent, very excellent teacher, was my sixth grade teacher. There was a principal there, a female principal, named Ms. Dominick. WALKER-HARPS: Yes. Terrified of Ms. Dominick. PYRON: This Ms. Domenic came down the hall, she had a booming voice. And everybody moved. I mean, she was just intimidating, just to hear her talk. And we were little sixth graders, you know, we knew the move when she was coming. As a matter of fact, there was a guy in the room one day, and he’s Eddie, Eddie was much bigger than I was. Like I say, I was a little skinny thing with a big head. And Eddie was approaching, and just cutting up, you know, I guess because I was little at that time. He was just going to bully. And I got tired of Eddie. He just was going on and on and on, and I got tired of Eddie. And I stood up to him, like that, and I slapped him. And I figured he was about to pulverize me. By that time, we heard Ms. Dominick’s voice on the outside, and everybody froze. And Eddie didn’t do anything. He told me later on, “You did that because you heard her coming.” I said, “That may be true.” But nothing happened after that. Eddie went on about, just never bothered me again. I don’t know if it was because I stood up to him, or what. But he never bothered me. Actually got to be fairly decent friends. But anyway, Ms. Domenic was a tough lady, and respected by everybody. The fear, I think, was more in her voice, but she was very kind to students, especially as long as you behave and you were not cutting up. So she ran a tight school. But Mrs. Tate was just an amazing teacher. From that, I went to Fairmount. WALKER-HARPS: Was Dr. Tate the principal at Fairmount, where you went to Fairmount? PYRON: Mr. Daniels had taken over. WALKER-HARPS: Okay. Okay. PYRON: Dr. Tate had moved on to Fort Valley, where he became a he had a position down there, and later on he became the GAE president, and so forth and so on. And he was a part of my life at a earlier time, before I got to know him. You see, I wound up staying in Dr. Tate’s house. WALKER-HARPS: Yes, I know. PYRON: All of the folks who had been before me had become either principals or assistant principals. WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: Mr. Walker stayed in Dr. Tate’s house, before finally moving out. That was the house up on 4th Street, which was across the street from Raymond Head, who later on became the mayor, the first black mayor, of Griffin. But it was Fairmount was a good experience. When I started at Fairmount in seventh grade, went through seven through twelve, and the school had -- it was about 1958, so the school hadn’t been built too long. It was a fairly new school. I’m thinking it was built ’57, ’56. But it was a fairly new school, because they moved from the old building up on the hill -- WALKER-HARPS: Vocational. PYRON: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And Mr. Daniels was there, I guess he would have been the first-year principal, because Dr. Tate had just left. And Mr. Daniels was the principal. Ms. Foster was my teacher that particular year. She was part of the county Foster, I think, family. And we had some tough boys in there. I saw her grab one of them one day and put him in a hug, and he couldn’t get loose. (laughter) She was a pretty tough lady. And he was a big boy. But we -- you talk about a school where it was family; the people wanted everybody to achieve. The expectation was, you behaved. I don’t know when the last time any of you may have been in a school where the seniors in the school all dressed up on certain days, they would put on suits -- WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: -- ties. And nobody was making them do it. This was just a part of the image. The teachers wore sharp dresses, suits, high heels. And those old ladies wore them all day, up and down those halls. Their professional look, their professional behavior, again many of them, most of them, were still in the communities, were still in the churches. And the professionalism there, the camaraderie there, the feeling of community, it was almost like you were living in a neighborhood with these folks, and you had that interaction to them. You tried your best not to get in trouble, because you had great respect for the schools. We had a very good football team. We were certainly more aware of segregation, because we’d all gotten older. We had -- there was participation in some boycotting. We had a store, McLellan’s, that was Downtown Griffin. And McLellan’s, it was like a 10 cent store. And they had a black-white fountain. You could go in, you could buy anything you want. You were watched very carefully, they generally had a cop, a policeman in there, and he particularly watched -- you were aware that he was watching you when you came in. And they would particularly watch black customers, young and old. You couldn’t eat at the -- it’s a little café they had in there. And it was boycotted. My younger brother was a little more outspoken about that at that particular time. And they staged a boycott, we stayed out of there. Finally, the store decided to get rid of the black-white, some years later, get rid of the black-white water fountains. And I think for a while they just took them both out, and nobody could use them. They then started serving blacks. So a group of us went in there just to test it, you know, we were high school. And we were all bold and brave. So we went in there to test it, and they served us burned hamburgers. WALKER-HARPS: Hmm. PYRON: And you know, but we knew -- we had already been told not to cause a ruckus, not to be over -- you know, impolite, and those kind of things. CUNNINGHAM: Were you told that by your family? Or were you told that by the teacher? PYRON: Well, it was a little bit of the organizers. WALKER-HARPS: Organization, yeah, when they were -- PYRON: It was the -- the communication was not to be violent, or anything. CRUICKSHANK: What year would that be, now? PYRON: That would have been -- WALKER-HARPS: Sixty-one, sixty-two, somewhere like that. PYRON: Somewhere there, ’61, ’62, because I had yet to go off to school. I didn’t go off to school until ’63. CUNNINGHAM: Okay. PYRON: So it was ’61, ’62, right in there. Right in there. And there was -- those -- they were tense times. See, I mentioned about the neighbor, that Mr. Head, Raymond Head had a Clean Well press, laundry, served by blacks, whites would send all their stuff to him, because he was just -- WALKER-HARPS: The quality was worth -- PYRON: The quality. It was quality service. And he later on, like I said, became the mayor, the first black mayor of Griffin. Well, the Ku Klux Klan would do a parade where the post office is now. I don’t know if you ever been to the Griffin -- where the post office is now, the street coming up in front of the post office, the Ku Klux Klan would come there, making a lot of noise, and they would go right in front of Clean Well, which was on the corner at that time, facing the post office, I believe. And they would come up and they would march, and they’d just raise just a whole lot of saying. And they particularly, I think, targeted Clean Well. WALKER-HARPS: And the Triple H (inaudible). PYRON: And Triple H, that’s right, the Heads on Triple H. WALKER-HARPS: Yes. Mm-hmm. PYRON: And -- WALKER-HARPS: The three Heads, the Triple H’s. PYRON: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. WALKER-HARPS: Raymond, Otis and -- it was Philip. PYRON: Yeah. Yes. And they would come in front of it, with all the colors, the masks, or some without masks. And they had a parade right in front of Clean Well. They would do that several times a year, trying to, I guess, intimidate, and so forth. CRUICKSHANK: Why were they targeting Head in particular? Because he was doing (inaudible)? PYRON: These were prominent blacks, Mr. Head, the Head family. CRUICKSHANK: Was he seen as being a leader of -- a Civil Rights leader, or something? PYRON: Well, I don’t know if they considered him a leader. But they were progressive blacks. CRUICKSHANK: (inaudible), yeah. WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: And sometimes that brought about reactions. They were progressive. They were kind of downtown, so to speak. It was -- I know, well, it was Wall’s Alley? WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: Wall’s Alley -- WALKER-HARPS: Because there were tight businesses at the time. PYRON: But they were on the corner, and it actually faced the CRUICKSHANK: That was not -- if that was where the post office is now, that was not in Fairmount community, was it? PYRON: No, no. This was strictly downtown. CRUICKSHANK: Okay. PYRON: Clean Well’s was located -- see, the post office used to be on the corner of where Clean Well was. But they built a new one across the street -- WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: -- where Clean Well would have been facing the new one. But it was right on the same corner of the old one. And therefore, it was downtown, where you got a black business downtown. WALKER-HARPS: Right. CRUICKSHANK: So you’re talking about where the main post office is right now? PYRON: Where the main post office is now, Clean Well would be just across the street, would have been just across the street from it. You know, the old post office, I think, they turned into a DUS, you know, something like that. But that was where Clean Well and Triple H was there, too. And these were two prominent businesses, and these were two prominent families, the Head family and the -- WALKER-HARPS: Crosses were burned at their homes. PYRON: Crosses were burned in their home. WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: And it was touch and go in Griffin -- CRUICKSHANK: This was Raymond Head and Otis Head? PYRON: Raymond Head, Otis -- WALKER-HARPS: And Philip. CRUICKSHANK: How did they take it? I mean, how did they -- PYRON: How did what? CRUICKSHANK: How did they take it? I mean, were they intimidated? WALKER-HARPS: Not really. PYRON: Not really. WALKER-HARPS: Hmm-mm. PYRON: And I look at you, because she’s connected with NAACP. WALKER-HARPS: Not really. PYRON: Not really. WALKER-HARPS: And some of it perhaps had to do with -- if you remember when we talked, we are trying to get information on that biracial or human relations, or whatever, biracial committee which existed at that time. That had a lot to do with the paving of a semi-peaceful -- but they was not being any worse than they were. There were white folk who were working for, well, maybe not integration, but for peaceful survival of the races, as well as black people. So it wasn’t that they were just out there on their own. Miss. Millie Crossville, (inaudible), Raymond Head, and there were other white folk and black folk meeting together, Gary Reid, to ensure that it didn’t just blow up as it were happening in some parts of the country. So that had a lot to do with the fact that there was an alternative to being out there all on your own. You knew that they were -- PYRON: Yeah. CRUICKSHANK: So at the time, did you know any African Americans, like in Griffin, who really were in fear of their safety? PYRON: They burned, what was it, a cross that the teachers, the -- WALKER-HARPS: There were several cross burnings. PYRON: Yeah. But he had moved -- the gentleman -- the (inaudible) gentleman had moved over on -- over into what would have been a predominant white neighborhood. WALKER-HARPS: You’re talking about the Calhoun’s? PYRON: Calhoun. WALKER-HARPS: Calhoun, yeah. PYRON: Yeah, they burned a cross in his house. WALKER-HARPS: Yes. Yeah, we hope to bring her in here. Yes, that was Brooks? Wasn’t it Brooks? Somewhere in that neighborhood (inaudible). PYRON: Somewhere in that neighborhood, going down where -- what’s the street -- it would be over that area, there was a change in area. And -- WALKER-HARPS: And black folk were moving in. PYRON: Black folks were moving in. And the cross burning was an attempt to keep -- you know, to intimidate. WALKER-HARPS: To intimidate. PYRON: And the Ku Klux Klan going through downtown so boldly. Do you remember about when the Ku Klux Klan wanted to be in the Christmas parade? WALKER-HARPS: Vaguely. PYRON: Vaguely. WALKER-HARPS: Yeah, vaguely. This is -- PYRON: They went to the superintendent’s house. CUNNINGHAM: (inaudible)? PYRON: And they wanted to be in the Christmas parade. True story! CUNNINGHAM: I believe you. I believe you! (laughter) PYRON: It’s good you edited. But they wanted to be in the Christmas parade. CRUICKSHANK: That’s crazy. PYRON: And they went to Dr. Greene, and they went up to the central office and they were trying to get Dr. Greene to allow them to be in the Christmas parade. And I’m thinking that -- what I cannot remember is whether he refused them, or they actually participated in it. WALKER-HARPS: I don’t remember. PYRON: Dr. Greene was superintendent at that time. CRUICKSHANK: Okay PYRON: Uh-huh. WALKER-HARPS: I don’t remember. But I do remember -- PYRON: But it was definitely requested to be in the Christmas parade, definitely. It’s a true story. WALKER-HARPS: Some of us were intimidated. I remember when we were having -- the NAACP was having something, some kind of program. PYRON: Yeah? WALKER-HARPS: And the Ku Klux Klan had threatened us. They had threatened. Where he’s talking about, where Triple H was, that was sort of the mecca of black business. Lon Touchstone had a (inaudible) building there. PYRON: Right. WALKER-HARPS: And that whole area -- PYRON: Area. WALKER-HARPS: -- was a growing black mecca for business. PYRON: They were thriving at that particular time, very successful. We all used to go to Triple H and eat. WALKER-HARPS: Yeah. PYRON: And we’ve all used Clean Well. But Clean Well also brought in quite a white population, because they did very good service. WALKER-HARPS: Quality work. PYRON: Yeah, quality work. BAUSKE: I’m sorry, I don’t understand, what did Triple A sell or do? What was that business? PYRON: Oh, it was food. BAUSKE: Food? Grocery store? PYRON: Mm-hmm. Well, no, no, no, it was -- BAUSKE: A restaurant? PYRON: -- restaurant. BAUSKE: Okay. PYRON: Uh-huh. They were a very popular restaurant. WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: Yeah, very popular. But almost -- so many of the black businesses died. WALKER-HARPS: Oh, yes. Yeah. PYRON: Died. WALKER-HARPS: And no more existed. PYRON: As integration came in, there were black-owned service stations, there were cleaning, just a number of businesses, Triple H. WALKER-HARPS: All along Slaton Alley. PYRON: All along Slaton Alley. And -- WALKER-HARPS: From here, straight down to that Street. PYRON: -- and some -- and a few of them were on the front street, facing that post office. And I think that is what just riled the Ku Klux Klan. And they really -- they really had problems with businesses being downtown, where other white businesses were located. And actually right next to the post office, it was -- CRUICKSHANK: The white business had to start competing with black and African American businesses, did they? PYRON: I’m sorry? CRUICKSHANK: You’re saying that black businesses were moving into other areas, so that meant the white businesses had to compete with African American businesses? PYRON: Well -- WALKER-HARPS: I don’t know if it was competition. PYRON: I don’t know if it was competition. WALKER-HARPS: But we (inaudible) us. PYRON: It was just the location. CRUICKSHANK: Yeah. WALKER-HARPS: It was prime. PYRON: I think the location of those businesses -- WALKER-HARPS: It was prime location. PYRON: -- being downtown -- CRUICKSHANK: Yeah, oh yeah. PYRON: -- with other white businesses riled the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan, at one point, was fairly active about presenting themselves. I don’t know, other than going across, I don’t know if anybody was just -- WALKER-HARPS: Well, I know we were intimidated, and almost not having a program during that period of time, the NAACP, because of the threats to me and to Jimmy Holland, who also owned a business on the corner, right there at the side. PYRON: Yeah. WALKER-HARPS: Triple H businesses. And we were the ones who were named. So we had to get the Atlanta, the state, to come down, and they demanded that the building be swept with dogs, and whatever. PYRON: Yeah. WALKER-HARPS: And every precaution taken before we were allowed to go in that building, not to get that -- CRUICKSHANK: How were you threatened, like, in what form did the threats come? WALKER-HARPS: Well, if they -- I don’t know what the writing was now that was on thee -- PYRON: Yeah. WALKER-HARPS: -- and whatever else. CRUICKSHANK: Writing on walls? WALKER-HARPS: On the businesses. CRUICKSHANK: Yeah? WALKER-HARPS: And names -- you were named. That’s how I happened to get in everything, my name was used. So I knew I was not about to (inaudible) -- CRUICKSHANK: Maybe they were writing on business walls, or what -- WALKER-HARPS: I believe there was a message left, if I remember correctly. CRUICKSHANK: Oh, okay. WALKER-HARPS: Yeah. At the stores. PYRON: You would tend to receive things in the mail. CRUICKSHANK: Oh, okay. PYRON: I’ve never mentioned this before, Jewel, you remember back when I think you were down talking to Board of Education? And at that particular time the position was open for superintendent. WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: Well, I had applied for it. WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm? PYRON: And not really expecting to get it, but I had applied for it. And I received a letter. I never mentioned this before. I received a letter, and what they did with the letter is, it had -- they had cut out stuff from somewhere else and probably had gone -- maybe mailed it from Atlanta somewhere, some other town, and not Griffin. And what it said was, “No nigger who’s a part of the NAACP will ever be superintendent in Griffin Spalding school system.” And that letter came to me in the mail. It had to be somebody who was somewhat -- I always had my suspicion, but that came to me in the mail. Now I had never had mentioned it before. WALKER-HARPS: Well, you may not have mentioned it, but there were people at my school watching my car, who would check my car before I got in it every evening, every afternoon, before. Once (inaudible) and went in, there were people who monitored my car throughout the day, and checked it before I got in, for the bomb. CRUICKSHANK: Checking for bombs? WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: Because you never know. But whoever it was certainly know where I stayed. And but nothing -- nothing else happened after that, because the election was over, and it was done. WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: And we wound up with a superintendent, that we because best friends. He was from Tattnall County. But things -- interesting things happened. BAUSKE: Did you ever end up working in the central office? PYRON: Oh, yeah. BAUSKE: In the superintendent’s office? PYRON: Yeah. I wound up being assistant superintendent. BAUSKE: Okay. PYRON: Uh-huh, yeah. And Dr. Bradley, when Dr. Bradley came, I had been what Mr. Walker was, administrative assistant. CUNNINGHAM: Okay. PYRON: And the first thing that Dr. Bradley did after he got there was, he promoted me the first black assistant superintendent. CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm? PYRON: So I was the first black assistant superintendent. CUNNINGHAM: Okay. PYRON: Then the guy who re-- I stayed over there 10 years. Then the gentleman who came to take my position as assistant was Curtis Jones. CUNNINGHAM: Okay. PYRON: I trained Curtis Jones into my position, then I retired. And after when Dr. Bradley left, then Curtis Jones became the first black superintendent of Griffin Spalding. CUNNINGHAM: How does that make you feel? PYRON: I’m very proud of that. Very proud of that. Curtis was a good guy. And he did a nice job before moving on to Macon. But it was -- see, when I applied, it was 10 years before -- 14 years before Curtis finally took over. So the time when I applied, it just wasn’t right. It just wasn’t going to happen. But I did it anyway, to put the name out there, because I think the effort needed to at least be made. But Curtis came 14 years later, and things had changed a little bit. CUNNINGHAM: It sounds like you paved the way. WALKER-HARPS: Having been there, he paved the way. CUNNINGHAM: Yes. WALKER-HARPS: But also, Dr. Bradley opened some doors that would not have opened. PYRON: He sure did. Because he immediately made me assistant superintendent. And I was the first to have that position. So I -- and Dr. Bradley and I, we still go out to eat now. We’re good friends. Good man. CRUICKSHANK: Mm-hmm? WALKER-HARPS: That spoke millions, because having come from a rural, Southern area in Georgia to come and be able to (inaudible) -- PYRON: Not only that, he worked for Paul at the prison system down in -- WALKER-HARPS: Reidsville. Reidsville State Prison. PYRON: Reidsville. He worked in Reidsville prison. But he wasn’t -- he was a very open man. WALKER-HARPS: He even liked me. PYRON: Yeah. (laughter) I mean, he was different. He was a guy that you would like. CUNNINGHAM: Well, it sounds like Dr. Bradley was different. But what about everybody else within the system where you were working? How were you received as being the first black superintendent? PYRON: Assistant superintendent. CUNNINGHAM: Assistant sup-- that’s what I meant to say. PYRON: What happened was, I had been a principal at the ninth grade for seven years. I was the first black principal at the ninth grade. Before that, I was the first black principal at an elementary school called Fourth Ward. So I had gone through, you know, about -- I was well-known in the system. CUNNINGHAM: Okay. PYRON: And most of my staffs at those predom-- the white schools were white. So the interaction was good. I -- we -- they were just treated fairly, and believe it or not, I was treated very fairly, even in schools where I walked in and, you know, 70, 80 percent of your staff is white, and same things in the eighth grade, 70 percent of your staff is white, or 75 percent. But when they were trying to decide who to hire because the white gentleman, Mike Bryans was leaving, the staff that knew me when I was there as an assistant put in a word for me, that we’d like to have him back over here. WALKER-HARPS: Oh. PYRON: So it was a good transition. Not to mean that you didn’t run across a person here and there that you had to deal with, and the parents had to adjust to them, you being the first black guy -- CUNNINGHAM: Sure. PYRON: -- in the school. And as one parent told me at the ninth grade, he said, “I was so sure that you were going to be prejudice toward me.” And he said, “But I have to admit, I was wrong.” He said, “I have to admit I was wrong.” CUNNINGHAM: So can you tell us one of the greatest challenges that you faced as a principal at an integrated school? PYRON: When I first went into the integrated -- to the first school, the elementary school, it was one of those elementary schools where it was fourth grade through sixth or third grade through sixth. Because at that time it was split up. And part of the kids were going -- children were going to Anne Street, which used to be Annie Shockley. And the upper part were going over to the school where I took over. Well, there, I was warned of one lady to be very wary of. The woman was -- and I got it from one of the administrators -- the woman was, she would take you down. Be very careful. She had all kind of attitudes. BAUSKE: That’s not a good warning. PYRON: It’s not -- (laughter) no, it’s not. And you’re going into your first principalship, too. BAUSKE: That sounds like a threat, not a warning. PYRON: Just be careful. Well, lo and behold, I remembered that. And the administrator told me that. He said, “Now be careful. She would take you down.” Very pretty lady, pretty blonde lady. Said, “Be careful.” So I went there, and lo and behold, before you looked around, she was causing trouble. She had a run-in with one lady, she had caused some difficulty. Well, I had to discipline a situation where she was involved. I had a counselor, very good counselor. And she was white. But I loved her to death, she was, I mean, just a good lady. And I told her, I said, “Now if ever I have to call you and I’m in my office, come immediately. Something would be up.” I said, “I don’t want to get set up.” BAUSKE: Hmm. PYRON: Something will be up. Well, she came in my office one day in a rage. And she bent over my desk. By that time, I hit the button to Nana, Nana came in right away, because I knew where this was about to head. Nana came in right away, and she stayed there. And she stayed there the whole time. And the lady had no choice but to calm down. But I knew I was about to be in the process of being set up. After that, at the end of the year -- by the way, she had come in with a lawyer, and all that kind of stuff, later on. Later on, she came in with a lawyer and all that kind of stuff. But end of the year -- but nothing came of it, because she had nothing, because I had Nana. Nana’s one of those persons, if you want to trust, Nana was rock solid. At the end of the year, guess what she did? And I think one day she came in with a lawyer and her husband. She resigned and became a stewardess. BAUSKE: A stewardess? PYRON: Yeah. A stewardess. CRUICKSHANK: Was it African Americans she had a problem with? Or just people generally? PYRON: It was an African American administrator that warned me. She was difficult in general. CRUICKSHANK: Yeah? PYRON: But I think I brought rage out of her. WALKER-HARPS: But Nana was a fair-minded -- PYRON: Huh? WALKER-HARPS: Nana was fair-minded. PYRON: Oh, Nana -- Nana. WALKER-HARPS: She was white. And you couldn’t ask for a better person. PYRON: Lord, have mercy. Mmm. BAUSKE: Just for clarification, she was trying to set you up with sexual harassment, or something? PYRON: I -- BAUSKE: That was your guess, then? PYRON: -- believe that’s what it was. BAUSKE: Yes. PYRON: Because she -- you know, people don’t come in your office and just come all over your desk like that. BAUSKE: Right, right. PYRON: And I was pushing back. BAUSKE: Yeah. PYRON: By that time, Nana was in the corner. (laughs) BAUSKE: Yeah. Yeah. PYRON: But I -- CRUICKSHANK: All she would have to do is start yelling and make a scene, and (inaudible) questions -- PYRON: Yeah. I told Nana, say, “Any time I hit that buzzer” -- CRUICKSHANK: Yeah? PYRON: -- “you come immediately, because something’s going on.” And see, she -- what happened, I knew something was coming. She walked -- you know, people don’t generally walk in your door and slam your door shut. And I knew there was about to be a problem here. So thank heavens for Nana. Yeah. Yeah. If Nana hadn’t come, I wouldn’t have gotten out of that. No way I was going to stay in that (inaudible). CRUICKSHANK: So that was the end of it? Just that (inaudible), that was all it took to clear the whole thing? PYRON: That was the end of it. She had nowhere to go with it. And I wouldn’t -- and after that, I wouldn’t be -- if I had talked to her, it was out in the open. CRUICKSHANK: Yeah. PYRON: Yeah, I’d go down -- Nana would always travel with me. WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: See, that was early on, we’re talking about 19- maybe ’85? WALKER-HARPS: Probably, yeah. BAUSKE: Nineteen eighty-five? PYRON: Mm-hmm. CRUICKSHANK: That recent? PYRON: Mm-hmm. PYRON: That was just about the year or so before I finally went to the ninth grade to become the first black principal over there. CRUICKSHANK: Yeah. PYRON: Then ninth grade was a whole different animal. The people, the teachers there -- ninth grade had a very good reputation as being an excellent staff. And it was. The ninth grade had a very excellent staff. It was a whole different staff. WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: Whole different attitude. They embraced me in ways that I never thought they would have. Yeah. WALKER-HARPS: Would you think that the fact that the choice was eliminated because there was one ninth grade, one seventh grade, one eighth grade, one ninth grade? Or what was it, the way we had it, it was structured? During the planning of the integration, yeah. PYRON: Oh, during the planning of integration, and like I said, 1970 when they started making those changes -- WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm, ’70, ’71, ’72. PYRON: -- because my brother -- see, first they started sending -- to be perfectly honest with you, they sent some of the smarter black students from Fairmount over to Griffin High School. That was the beginning of it. And my brother, one of my younger -- my younger brother, Wayne, was a -- was a very good math student. Matter or fact, he went on to later on have a career in technology and math, and stuff like that. But anyway, he was one of the ones that went over to the Griffin High School. They were sending -- like some of Fairmount’s brightest. And it was just a few of them. He hated it. He hated it. He was smart, very good at math. And he just couldn’t understand the treatment, the subtle treatment, the little jabs in the language. And he absolutely hated it. CRUICKSHANK: Was it coming from teachers, or --? WALKER-HARPS: Wayne was not the comeback county kid, either. He was -- PYRON: Huh? WALKER-HARPS: -- Wayne was very mild-tempered. PYRON: Right. WALKER-HARPS: And he would not have been -- out (inaudible), he would not have made an issue out of it. He wouldn’t have. PYRON: No. It just -- I think it just really threw him back. I had to talk to him later, because he had a kind of an anger that -- CRUICKSHANK: But who was the treatment coming from? I mean, the teachers, or the students? PYRON: You know, sometimes it can be so subtle, and just sometime that students would tend to be a little more open. CRUICKSHANK: Oh, yeah. PYRON: Teachers can do it subtly. And I think -- I think it just wore on him. He was having a great time at Fairmount. All of a sudden, the whole atmosphere changed. CRUICKSHANK: So did that continue after integration? WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: For a while. CRUICKSHANK: Yeah? WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: For a while, when all of them got together. My first job, it happened during the time, the ’70s, my first job in Griffin was around ’74. And -- WALKER-HARPS: Do you remember the young man who earned the right to be valedictorian, James Walker, and that was (inaudible)? PYRON: Yeah. WALKER-HARPS: Yeah. PYRON: Stuff like -- WALKER-HARPS: They didn’t have a valedictorian, rather than to have him. Things like that. PYRON: Things like that. It was just subtle -- BAUSKE: How did they deny that to him? PYRON: Well -- BAUSKE: They just named some other kid? WALKER-HARPS: They just decided they wouldn’t have a valedictorian. BAUSKE: They didn’t have one that year. PYRON: See, you don’t -- now you could fight it differently. BAUSKE: But you couldn’t -- PYRON: Back then it was still not a whole lot of control you had. Segregation -- I mean, segregation was ending, but full integration was still a slow process. There are subtleties that you can do that you can carry out anger for years, and resistance for years. You know, resistance can be a very subtle thing. CRUICKSHANK: How long did that go on? Like, what year would you say it disappeared, if it disappeared at all? PYRON: Well, when I went to the seventh grade in ’74, I went as a band director. I came out of the Army in ’72, and that’s another story. I have to tell you why I ended up in the Army. BAUSKE: We skipped college here somewhere, too. PYRON: Yeah. BAUSKE: (inaudible) PYRON: Okay. Okay. Well, of course I went to Fort Valley State. BAUSKE: Uh-huh? PYRON: And a lot of things were going on even at Fort Valley State. Hosea Williams came down to Fort Valley State because some -- because there was some concerns happening in Fort Valley at that time. Hosea and different folks were traveling a whole lot of places. And so they were doing some kind of (inaudible), or something, in Fort Valley, as I recall. I remember being at a meeting. Once they see people with their -- Gary Reid was down there once, wasn’t he? WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: But anyway, there were -- that was, you know, subtle things going on, resistance at this place, resistance in this plant, resistance I this job -- those things still happened, even though laws had been passed. So sometimes, to get things going, people still had to visit the places (inaudible). But I finished Fort Valley, and I had gotten a scholarship for band. Mr. Tucker -- Mr. Tucker, who was an outstanding teacher at Fairmount and a very good band director, and a gentleman, a man of class you just loved. But he looked out for and got scholarships for a lot of band students, because Fairmount had a very good program on -- we went to the stage on Friday night Saturday night, excuse me -- Griffin High School used the stage on Friday night, we had it on Saturday night. Fairmount was on 3rd Street. So we always lined up, and we would march from 3rd Street, where Fairmount was located, all the way to the stadium, which was a pretty good walk. WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: But along the way, to show you black pride, it was like a parade. The streets were filled on the side. They watched us as we marched, the blue and white. And it was an excellent band. That was -- so every Saturday night we played in Griffin was like a downtown parade. But Mrs. Tucker just had a respect in that community, that just was amazing. And the first job I got in Griffin was Mr. Tucker’s, he had retired and I became the band director at the seventh grade. At that time, he was no longer Fairmount, because the integration made it all seventh-grade school, and an all eighth grade school, and an all ninth grade school. WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: They just said, look, we’re just going to pile them together, and be through with it. BAUSKE: Mm-hmm. PYRON: And that’s what school -- BAUSKE: Your degree was in music education? PYRON: Was in music education, to start off. BAUSKE: Uh-huh? PYRON: Yeah. And -- oh yeah, thank you. When I -- I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, the humidity and heat -- WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. PYRON: So I was -- thank you. I was at the seventh grade, and then what happened, the reason I got the job was, Laymon Hathaway, the principal of the school, I was working -- when I came out of the Army, I was working at Ford Motor Company. You know, I couldn’t find a teaching job when I came out of the Army. So I worked at the Ford Motor Company. At that time, the plant was up in Hapeville. And I worked there for two years. We were doing 10 hours a night, 5 days, 8 hours a night on Saturday. Ford was putting out cars left and right. And that’s all I did. I went to work and I slept, ate, and went back to work. CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm? PYRON: Finally, Mr. Tucker retired. And we went to his -- they gave him a great retirement. And I had taken a day off from going to Ford to substitute at the seventh grade. It was called Spalding Junior High, Unit Three. At the seventh grade, Mr. Hathaway, I didn’t know was outside, the principal was outside looking at me work with the kids. CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm? PYRON: The kids were having a good time, I was enjoying the music, we was all having fun. It was just a great session. When Mr. Tucker retired and I applied for the job along with some other band directors, he remembered the day that I’d taken off and come down there and substituted. I lost $150 for $250. But it was worth it. CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm? PYRON: And so he hired me. And that started my career. BAUSKE: How did you go from college to the Army? PYRON: Okay, that’s going to be a civil rights story. I graduated from Fort Valley, and had started working first at Warner Robins, Georgia. I was going to several schools, teaching band. Then from there -- BAUSKE: May I ask what year this was? PYRON: I graduated in ’68, so it would have been probably ’69. BAUSKE: Mm-hmm? PYRON: So I worked in Warner Robins, and I -- the next job, which was a higher-paying job -- I’m sorry. I was in Butler, because they were integrating the schools in Warner Robins, and they were going to turn that high school into a middle school. BAUSKE: Mm-hmm? PYRON: So I went to a high school in Butler, Georgia, Dr. Hicks. WALKER-HARPS: Yes, Charles Hicks. Charlie Hicks. PYRON: Big GAE person. WALKER-HARPS: Yes. PYRON: So I went to Butler, and during the end of the year, Butler, they wanted to integrate the schools, it was all-black schools that particular year. But they wanted the girls to go to one school, and the boys to go to the other. We thought that unfair. The black -- because you’re separating because you don’t want white girls around black boys. BAUSKE: Yes. Yeah. PYRON: That was the bottom line. Dr. Tate came down and talked to us, and he was with the other GAE, the GTAE. WALKER-HARPS: Yes. PYRON: He came down and talked to us and said, “Well, you all have got a decision to make. You can hold out your contracts and see if you can put pressure on them.” Now here’s the thing that you’re going to learn very quickly; I was a very young man then, you know, 21, 22. Everybody supposedly agreed that they were going to hold off signing contracts, hoping to pressure them into not having an all-boys’ school and all girls’ school, just because they was afraid of the white girls being around black boys, and vice versa. Well, some of the people did hold out, but some of them went ahead and signed. That was what you call a life lesson. BAUSKE: Mm-hmm? CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm. PYRON: Well, so when I found out, when a bunch of us found out what had happened, some of us tried to go back and see get our contracts back. No. By that time they’d hired new people. So a bunch of us were left out without a job. Without a job means that you’re open to the draft, the Vietnam War was still going on. BAUSKE: Mmm, (inaudible), yeah. Mm-hmm. PYRON: Yeah. So guess what? BAUSKE: So you got drafted. PYRON: I got drafted. Came to Griffin. Believe it or not, Norma Williams rolled up there with the group that went into the Army, got drafted. I tried very quickly to try and find another job. I could have gotten a deferment if I could, but it was so late in the -- so I went to Griffin. I went into the Army, I went to Fort Lewis, Kentucky. Went to Louisiana, Fort Polk, Louisiana, which was a very interesting experience. I laid out in a bus like everybody else. I did the running. See, I was an older guy, I was, like, 24 then, 24, 25 then, going in. So I was going in as one of the older guys. Most of those guys was 18, 19, and could run like rabbits. So I went in, and I had my orders to Vietnam. I was also Infantry, which means I was going to be on the front lines. So you could imagine the changes you go through, but I said, life is as life is. You go over and do what I need to do. So I got up to Fort Lewis, Washing-- I came -- after basic training and advanced, they gave us orders, and I was going to Vietnam. And Nixon had started calling the Infantry troops home. So when I got to Fort Lewis, Washington, there was an order change. They wanted the Infantry soldiers to go somewhere else, they didn’t want any more Infantry soldiers going over. They wanted the people who trained as clerks to come over there, so that they could process folks out. So we went, the group that was me, we went to Germany. BAUSKE: (inaudible) (laughs) PYRON: Yes. Yes. Yes! BAUSKE: (inaudible) PYRON: I said, Lord -- BAUSKE: So it was Germany. PYRON: I spent 13 months in Germany. They didn’t want us to stay the whole time after 13 months, because -- and while over there, on a sad note, you saw soldiers coming over, and they were sent to Germany for a break before they sent them home, and some of the guys were just really messed up. One guy came there, and he had gotten on speed while he was there. And we had tried to talk to him, and tried to get him to settle down and stop taking that speed. And he was about off of it. Then he went home -- smart guy he went home, and his girlfriend had dumped him, and he hung himself. BAUSKE: Mm-hmm? PYRON: Yeah. And they sent word back to the barracks, he was a likeable guy, you know. Just a good old guy, just kind of got off on some things that he shouldn’t have. But when he went home and his girlfriend had dumped him, it was too much for him, and he hung himself. But in general, we had we spent 24 hours out in the -- I was on the naval site, when we were watching the silos, the bombs, I mean the rockets that are inside the silo. And we spent 24 hours out there. You sleep four hours in a little hut, and then you go four hours where you walk into town, and making sure that -- because they actually had -- I forget what they call them, but they had people who attempted to break in silos because they wanted to blow them up. But I must tell you, the experience in Germany was amazing. The history, the cathedrals, the castles -- we did our jobs, but then you worked one day and you had two days off. Once you get through basic and advanced training, believe it or not, it’s not that bad. It becomes a job. Except, like I said, if you were in Vietnam, that’s a little bit different, yeah. But anyway, so after finishing the Army, I came back, I worked at Ford Motor Company. I final found a job, you know. I was married at that time. So I had to find a job, then before you know, the baby’s on the way. BAUSKE: Mm-hmm. PYRON: So Ford Motor Company did me well. But then Mr. Tucker retired, so I got Mr. Tucker’s job. I went to Georgia State during the time when I was working at Ford, I started going to Georgia State. So I got a degree in -- a master’s in counseling, and certification at the master’s level in music. So I stayed at seventh grade. And then for seven years, go into a couple of elementary schools, and then ended up (inaudible) the seventh grade. From that, I went to West Georgia College. And West Georgia College, that’s where I got my six years in administration. I then went to University of Georgia. I had to pass the GRE first, so I worked on my math for a year. I was at Whalen, in the verbal section. But I worked on my math for a year, with all that refreshing the algebra, and so forth. Then because I didn’t want to write a letter to get in, I wanted to get in just like everybody else. So GRE score was good. Got into the doctorate program. Dr. Holmes at University of Georgia, I don’t know if he’s still there. But he was my mentor and advisor. And I finished University of Georgia with a doctorate in about a year and a half. I went to the summer. And I had to pay for one quarter, you had to do three quarters of your dissertation, or something like that. And I had to pay one quarter while I was doing nothing, we were not doing anything because we had already finished it. CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm? PYRON: And Dr. Holmes gave me an opportunity to come down there and work. But at that time, I had gotten -- I was ready -- I had gotten ready for the ninth grade, and I was just going to start after leaving Fourth Ward. So I didn’t go. CUNNINGHAM: Were you going to school and working at the same time? PYRON: Yes. When I was -- BAUSKE: Yeah, with UGA so far away. PYRON: Well, what happened was, when I was an assistant, after doing seven years as a band director in the seventh grade, I was then hired because I had gotten the certification. I was then hired as assistant principal at the seven grade for three years. So Dr. Greene, who was the superintendent then, said, “Well look, I want you to go over to the ninth grade and be assistant principal there.” I said, “Okay, doc, if that’s what you want.” He says, “Don’t worry, but I need you there right now.” So I went over to Mike Bryans for two years, and was assistant principal there. I left there, (inaudible) followed me there. I left there and went -- I was assigned principal at Fourth Ward, which was the elementary school for a year. So that was my first principalship, and first black principal there. After that year, Dr. Greene, when Bryans left the ninth grade where I had been assistant, Dr. Greene gave me that job as the principal of the ninth grade. And I stayed there for seven years. CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm? PYRON: And then the new superintendent came in, Mr. (Kirbo?) sent me to -- gave me a job at the central office to replace Mr. Walker as administrative assistant. CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm? PYRON: Then when Dr. Bradley came in, he made me assistant superintendent. So it was a whole lot of movement for a while. BAUSKE: And all that while you were going to school for big chunks of that, too. PYRON: I finally finished -- I started going to University of Georgia as assistant principal at the ninth grade. I started there, and I spent that year over at the fourth grade -- at the Fourth Ward, at the elementary school. CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm? PYRON: And that -- and I was finishing up my doctorate when I was finally assigned to the ninth grade as principal. CUNNINGHAM: Okay. PYRON: So that was the quarter I told you I paid, but the work had been done. CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm? PYRON: Yeah, I had to float that time. CUNNINGHAM: So you actually went to four schools? PYRON: Yeah. Mm-hmm. CUNNINGHAM: Fort Valley State, West Georgia, Georgia State and UGA? PYRON: Right. and also, when I was over in Germany -- CUNNINGHAM: Oh, (inaudible)? PYRON: When I was over in Germany (laughter) I went to the University of (inaudible). CUNNINGHAM: Okay. (inaudible) education, that’s for sure. PYRON: But so I could (inaudible). BAUSKE: Okay. (laughter) PYRON: It was a very short course. So I wanted to be able to at least count the money when I was out in Germany. BAUSKE: Yes. Oh yeah, oh yeah. PYRON: But it was interesting. CUNNINGHAM: So now looking back over your lifetime, what do you think the greatest impact that you had on your community? PYRON: Well, a lot of students, both from band and at the ninth grade and elementary, I still run into students that say good things. I run into students, and they generally greet me well. And I’m talking about black, white -- when I go, they’ll come up and they’ll give me a hug, or they’ll, you know. I remember back in band, I had some of the best years. “I remember what you said to me over the ninth grade.” “I know you got on me, I’m glad you gave us those whippings.” But towards the end of the ninth grade career, we had almost stopped spanking kids. CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm? PYRON: And it had become a past way of dealing with children. But a lot of them, I’ve rarely run into one, even when I go to the fitness center I run into people that I’ve taught, and have good things to say. And you feel good about it. I was also chairman of the Salvation Army during that time, and there’s some people out in the community who remember those activities, and some of the things that we did away from the school system. But people have been gracious. And like I said, I get as many -- and I don’t care where I am -- as many white students as black students. And that means that I treated them fairly. And that was also important to me. That was always important. BAUSKE: I have another question. So here we are more than 50 years after the desegregation of schools. What are your thoughts on racial equality in schools now, as you look at it here in Griffin? PYRON: It’s, you know, from -- I don’t necessarily hear -- and Jewel may hear it more than me -- but I don’t necessarily hear racial fights. BAUSKE: Okay. PYRON: I don’t know, hear nasty things being done to one another based on race. I can’t say for sure something hasn’t gone. But I don’t -- I don’t hear it. You know, they have -- I go to the football games, and there’s been kids at the football games. I see black and white interaction, I see mixed couple. I see girlfriends and boyfriends, and they’re black and they’re white, and the cheerleaders, and so forth, tend to be fairly integrated. One school has more of one than the other one. That is a fact. Griffin High has more black folks -- WALKER-HARPS: Spalding High has more. PYRON: And Spalding High has more whites. CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm. BAUSKE: Mm-hmm. WALKER-HARPS: Not because of race (inaudible), but because of living. The demographics of how it’s been. PYRON: The demographics are somewhat different at the two schools. And I don’t know -- you know, anytime that you’re trying to divide lines, where who goes where, you run into interesting complications sometimes. You really do. When we were -- back when we were working on what’s going to be Spartan High School, and what was going to be left at Griffin High School, crossing those -- figuring those lines are very complicated and very difficult. And you get compliant from this, and you get complaints from blacks, you get complaints from white -- excuse me -- it’s very, very difficult. Then you also had the moving patterns. People who can afford to move and want to be in a certain kind of area. We also have the extreme competition from the religious schools, because there are lots of people that want their child to have a religious background. I always remember Madalyn O’Hair that basically took religion out of the school, or prayers, so forth and so on. But a lot of, particularly -- some black students, but a lot of white students attending places like Eagles Landing in McDonough, Henry County, the first, what is it, Presbyter-- I mean -- WALKER-HARPS: First Assembly. PYRON: That First Assembly. A lot of -- and some black kids, because -- matter of fact, the principal of First Assembly is a black guy. WALKER-HARPS: He was, I don’t think he’s still there. PYRON: Or was, I mean. He was -- and but the religious aspect is still very important to a lot of folks. And if they can afford to send to the private school, the private schools -- basically a lot of private schools are doing very well, because there are principles that will be taught in religion that we have some restrictions in the regular school. I remember in ninth grade, trying to figure out how to let the clubs have the pastors, and so forth, coming over with our -- dealing with the restrictions that you got; has to be before this hour, and all kinds of things. And my point, viewpoint, is, religion has more of a positive effect than negative, when it was there. Because at least you knew straight down the line what’s supposed to be right, and what’s supposed to be wrong. Though we try to do character treatment and so forth and so on, it doesn’t have the impact, believe it or not, that religion did. But that’s another story. WALKER-HARPS: Were you a (inaudible)? Were you one of the -- PYRON: Oh, no. WALKER-HARPS: Oh, no. PYRON: The (inaudible) may have been -- was it mostly before my time? WALKER-HARPS: It might have been after your time, I don’t know, still ahead. PYRON: Because I finished Fairmount in ’63. WALKER-HARPS: Then it probably was after your time. PYRON: And Philip, he was at my school. He was an eighth grade teacher. WALKER-HARPS: (inaudible) to go with that. PYRON: I was trying to think when that came in. WALKER-HARPS: I don’t know. Jill Motley and Philip Head, I believe. PYRON: Okay. WALKER-HARPS: Philip Hood, not Philip Head. Philip Hood. PYRON: Uh-huh. WALKER-HARPS: But you would have been -- had you -- it must not have been your time, because -- PYRON: I’m thinking not. WALKER-HARPS: Or you would have been a part of it. And when you talk about the differences in religion, and what have you, that brought my attention back to Fairmount, because even though there may not have been ministers who did it, but with the white gloves and the other groups that you instructed, that readied your students to be the Jesuits, that had the same kind of values. PYRON: To be perfectly honest with you, when the schools were segregating, black folks could do things in the schools that others -- nobody questioned. Superintendent Cheeves, who was there -- and I’m trying -- who’s the lady that would come -- WALKER-HARPS: Ms. McCrary? PYRON: Ms. McCrary was kind of the representative from the white superintendent. CUNNINGHAM: Sure. PYRON: And my point about white, because blacks were not really up in central office. So she would come to the school. But the truth of the matter is, schools -- the black schools could have prayer, would have prayer, because they weren’t overseen like it is now. You do it now, somebody’s in trouble. WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm. CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm. PYRON: But back then, the separation, and no watchdog, except for Ms. McCrary, you could do things that you just couldn’t do now. You could -- there were some teachers that could read a bible verse in the middle of a science class, to say -- as she was saying “goodbye” for the day. That couldn’t happen now. CUNNINGHAM: So standing on that point, so looking back now, was integration a positive thing for the black community? Or can you see some negatives that have come from integration? Of the schools? PYRON: In the sense that with integration, and also with finance. For instance, if I have the money and I want my child to be exposed to a religious part of the teaching, I could put him in a private school. If you don’t have the money, but you would like to have your child exposed to it, you don’t have a whole lot of choices. And some kids benefitted from the confines of religious teaching. And blacks were very -- and I think everybody knows -- blacks were very involved with religion during slavery. That was a lot of things -- that was a lot of it that kept you going. “And nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen” -- all the songs had relationships to communication. The belief was we survived because of our belief in God. That’s a part of it. It’s embedded in a lot of ways, a lot of it’s old-school and slightly old-school. But it also had some controlling points of our kids. With the changes in -- with the changes in the structure and the fact that we have so many rules of things you cannot do anymore without breaking rules of government, and the parents of these kids are young, you got some kids, some children have -- you got five children in a single mama’s home, you got three babies’ daddies -- that is a family structure that is going to struggle. And males, black males, have almost disappeared from 60 percent of the homes. They may have children there, but they aren’t there. And even if they weren’t there, they had become irresponsible because they never were there. So you got a teaching that is not reaching those situations. And how do you get -- how to get back to that family structure that was so strong, believe it or not, during the worst of times -- CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm? PYRON: -- that you’re going from 70 percent or 80 percent two-parent homes, or somebody there, to 30 and 40 percent. That is a family structure that is deteriorating. That is why the gang guys can get a hold of the boys on the corner so easily, and sometimes the girls, too. And how are you going to break back into that structure is going to be a mammoth task, because you’re talking about changing a whole -- a culture that has changed from what it was sometime -- that was a time black parents and mothers were tight on their children and keeping them straight in line, education, educate -- Fairmount was education every day, education every day. It’s (inaudible). WALKER-HARPS: So you’re saying -- PYRON: How do you get that structure back? WALKER-HARPS: Are you saying that had separate but equal not been challenged in 1954, we would be better off? CUNNINGHAM: Hmm. WALKER-HARPS: That’s a hard question, I’m sure. I mean, it takes some thoughts. PYRON: That’s what -- WALKER-HARPS: Yeah, it takes some thoughts (inaudible). PYRON: That’s a -- that’s a question. But -- CUNNINGHAM: But definitely issues to explore. PYRON: It’s issues to explore. And it’s hard to come up with a good answer, because we really -- would separate but equal have survived, even separate and equal in the society we have now. You see, that’s why it’s hard to answer that question. WALKER-HARPS: But it never really existed. Only on paper. PYRON: It was never separate -- WALKER-HARPS: Separate -- PYRON: -- but equal. WALKER-HARPS: -- it was never equal, yeah. PYRON: No. Huh-uh. __: Well, it certainly sounds like within Fairmount High, there was a culture nurturing for mutual concern from the staff for all of the students. PYRON: Yeah. See, that was a four -- back in the day, that was a four-pronged attack. You had the parents agreeing with the schools, the community agreeing with the schools and the parents, and you had the church that was just as involved. You had four things working for that one kid. WALKER-HARPS: Mm-hmm? PYRON: And they were together on it! The problem is, it is no longer together. CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm. PYRON: It’s no longer together. WALKER-HARPS: Amen. CUNNINGHAM: Well, do you have any words of wisdom that you’d like to share with me -- PYRON: It was just -- it was just -- CUNNINGHAM: -- for young people of today before we wrap up? PYRON: We used to have a thing at the -- it’s a (inaudible), and -- that we used to say. Boy, where is it? It’s here somewhere. Okay. We used to always say every morning that, “It’s better to be prepared for an opportunity than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.” That was one -- that one, we said it every morning. And it still holds water. You know, after being in education and the Army, you had everything, as 37 years counting our sick leaves, 37 years, 34 without -- you look back and you think about how great some things were that happened in those 37 years. But when I sometimes look at particularly the people who, black, white, Hispanic, and low-income, a different kind of culture has developed, and that’s sad to me. But it’s still going to be one tremendous challenge. I don’t know, as I look at -- I hope the dedication of teachers and principals, I hope that dedication is just as strong now as we felt it was when we were all out there. CUNNINGHAM: Mm-hmm. PYRON: I hope that it is. But when you see in Chicago, Southwest Chicago, and you see a football player in Atlanta just got killed by a guy who could care less, and this kid was head of (inaudible), four teenagers, four young people killed in the last week or so, it’s troubling. Chicago is almost out of control. Certain parts of it, I mean, I mean, just the South part. And I’ve been there. But you still have to believe that things can turn around, but it’s going to take a mammoth effort. And Lord knows, I hope it happens, you know. CUNNINGHAM: Well, before we wrap up today, is there anything else that you’d like to share with us that we haven’t covered? PYRON: I’m amazed that you all listened to all this stuff that I’ve said! (laughs) BAUSKE: It’s been wonderful. It’s been wonderful. CUNNINGHAM: Well, thank you so much, Mr. Pyron. PYRON: It was my pleasure. CUNNINGHAM: Thank you so much for coming in today. We appreciate your time. PYRON: I truly enjoyed talking to you. WALKER-HARPS: We truly enjoyed having you. You actually lived what you’re talking about, so that made it really a good interview, to me. It was real. PYRON: Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. CUNNINGHAM: Yeah, (inaudible). END OF AUDIO FILE
rbrl418gaa-020_pyron BE-ATRICE CUNNINGHAM: All right, well, good afternoon. Today is June 1st, 2018. My name is Be-Atrice Cunningham, and I
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purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL418GAA/findingaid
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Griffin, Georgia
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113 minutes
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https://purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL418GAA-020/ohms
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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Interview with Walter Pyron, June 1, 2018
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RBRL418GAA-020
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Walter Pyron
Jewel Walker-Harps
Be-Atrice Cunningham
John Cruickshank
Ellen Bauske
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audio
oral histories
Subject
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African American teachers
African American veterans
Education
Religion
United States--Veterans
High school teachers
Georgia--Music
Description
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Walter Pyron was born in Griffin, Georgia and attended Anna Shockley Elementary during the years of segregation. Pyron additionally worked as the band director for Griffin High School before becoming the assistant principal of Futral Road Elementary School. In this interview, Pryon talks about growing up in Griffin, his administrative experiences in Griffin, Georgia’s school systems, and his experiences during the Vietnam War, as well as the impact of religion on the African American community.
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2018-06-01
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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sound
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Griffin, Georgia
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-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Griffin African American Oral History Project
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Georgia--History, Local
African Americans--History
Georgia--Communities
Description
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The Griffin African American Oral History Project is a collaboration between the Griffin Branch NAACP, the Griffin Campus Library of the University of Georgia, and the Richard B. Russell Library. The seed was planted in the meetings of the Educational Prosperity Initiative which is also chaired by the president of the Griffin Branch NAACP, Jewel Walker-Harps. Collaborators on the project include: Griffin Housing Authority; Spalding County Collaborative; Fairmont Alumni Association; University of Georgia—Athens and Griffin campuses; and the Educational Prosperity Initiative, which is an affiliate of the Spalding County Collaborative and others. Interviewers on the project include: John Cruickshank, librarian at UGA-Griffin Campus Library; Jewel Walker-Harps, President of the Griffin, GA Branch of the NAACP; Art Cain, coordinator of Continuing Education for UGA-Griffin; Be-Atrice Cunningham, project manager for College of Agricultural and Environmental Science for Griffin; and Ellen Bauske, senior public service associate at the Georgia Center for Urban Agriculture in Griffin. Rich Braman was the sound engineer for this project. <br />The Griffin African American Oral History Project intends to document the experiences of people who lived in Fairmont Community in Griffin, Georgia during the civil rights era and through its transformation to the present day.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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2015-2018
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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Oral histories
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RBRL418GAA
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Griffin, Georgia
Oral History
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5.4 2019-09-26 Interview with Wyomia Tyus, September 26, 2019 RBRL418GAA-024 104 minutes RBRL418GAA Griffin African American Oral History Project Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia Wyomia Tyus Jewel Walker-Harps Art Cain Ellen Bauske Rich Braman 1:|24(10)|33(17)|44(11)|58(10)|70(10)|84(4)|97(6)|109(7)|126(12)|139(17)|157(10)|179(4)|213(6)|231(11)|245(15)|270(5)|297(13)|313(16)|327(13)|339(15)|353(5)|364(18)|379(17)|393(4)|417(7)|433(2)|444(8)|460(9)|496(11)|512(7)|526(3)|540(11)|552(4)|563(11)|576(2)|591(9)|603(8)|617(10)|631(6)|648(10)|671(11)|683(7)|713(12)|725(11)|749(9)|763(12)|774(7)|785(14)|805(8)|818(9)|834(5)|846(11)|863(3)|875(2)|890(8)|903(3)|920(4)|941(15)|957(2)|971(3)|984(7)|1004(2)|1016(11)|1027(15)|1040(12)|1061(12)|1079(12)|1105(10)|1118(9)|1127(16)|1140(7)|1154(5)|1163(12)|1175(7)|1185(9)|1206(5)|1224(4)|1238(9)|1249(8)|1269(5)|1281(11)|1302(7)|1315(4)|1332(7)|1345(11)|1359(8)|1373(9)|1384(13)|1402(11)|1425(13)|1437(15)|1457(6)|1468(17)|1481(9)|1500(4)|1547(12)|1561(9)|1582(10)|1622(3)|1634(10)|1660(6)|1702(12)|1735(16) 0 Kaltura audio < ; iframe id=" ; kaltura_player" ; src=" ; https://cdnapisec.kaltura.com/p/1727411/sp/172741100/embedIframeJs/uiconf_id/26879422/partner_id/1727411?iframeembed=true& ; playerId=kaltura_player& ; entry_id=1_yi6ma5o0& ; flashvars[localizationCode]=en& ; amp ; flashvars[leadWithHTML5]=true& ; amp ; flashvars[sideBarContainer.plugin]=true& ; amp ; flashvars[sideBarContainer.position]=left& ; amp ; flashvars[sideBarContainer.clickToClose]=true& ; amp ; flashvars[chapters.plugin]=true& ; amp ; flashvars[chapters.layout]=vertical& ; amp ; flashvars[chapters.thumbnailRotator]=false& ; amp ; flashvars[streamSelector.plugin]=true& ; amp ; flashvars[EmbedPlayer.SpinnerTarget]=videoHolder& ; amp ; flashvars[dualScreen.plugin]=true& ; amp ; flashvars[Kaltura.addCrossoriginToIframe]=true& ; amp ; & ; wid=1_m6jvivrr" ; width=" ; 400" ; height=" ; 285" ; allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozAllowFullScreen allow=" ; autoplay * ; fullscreen * ; encrypted-media *" ; sandbox=" ; allow-forms allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-top-navigation allow-pointer-lock allow-popups allow-modals allow-orientation-lock allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox allow-presentation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation" ; frameborder=" ; 0" ; title=" ; Kaltura Player" ; > ; < ; /iframe> ; 49 Growing up in Griffin-Spalding, Georgia I'm Karen Wyomia Tyus, and I was... Tyus talks about her family, as her mother and father were a dry cleaner and tenant farmer, respectively. Tyus describes growing up in a farming housing establishment. Tyus explains how, as a child, she often played with white boys, as the girls were not allowed to play outside. Tyus talks about how her father taught her about nature, and encouraged her to stay active. Tyus recalls how her father encouraged equality among their siblings. Ben Brown ; Griffin-Spalding County, Georgia ; Jim Crow ; nature 428 Dealing with discrimination And for that to happen... Tyus shares how her community was more integrated than the surrounding area, which she sees as a result of growing up in the country. Tyus explains how her father taught the kids to deserve and give respect to others. Tyus recalls how the farm housing burned down, and she describes the conditions under which her family lived on the farm. Ben Brown ; community ; segregation 873 Education and father's work We still to the day don't know... Tyus shares how her father emphasized the need for an education among his children, as much of the family worked as farmers. Tyus describes the bus route and members of the community, as she attended the all black Anne-Shockley Elementary School. Anne-Shockley Elementary School ; farming 1270 Hunting / Experiences in primary school I learned at a very early age... Tyus talks about hunting as a child, and the ways she was taught about gun safety. Tyus recalls how it was difficult to play at school since she was a tom-boy. Tyus explains how her father encouraged her to express herself, regardless of gender stereotypes. Anne-Shockley Elementary School ; Fairmount High School ; hunting 1706 School sports Now when did you meet... Tyus talks about joining the track team at Fairmount High School, and her P.E. teacher, Mrs. Kimbro. Tyus recalls how the girls team for Track and Field operated at her Fairmount High School. Tyus explains her experience at a track summit at Tennesee State University. Tyus talks about how her father's death spurred her interest in sports. Annie Shockley Elementary School ; Fairmount High School ; Fort Valley ; Francis Dallas ; Tennessee State University 2072 Summit at Tennessee State When you graduate from high school... Tyus talks about how she was invited to join a summit for track and field at Tennessee State University. Tyus explains how the staff from Fairmount High School raised enough money for her to attend the summit. Tyus describes her experience at the summit. Fairmount High School ; Tennessee State University ; track and field 2487 Opportunities in sports So that was it, I mean that was... Tyus recalls how the teaching community of Fairmount High School was incredibly supportive in students' endeavors. Tyus explains how track and field opened opportunities for her outside of Griffin, Georgia. Tyus talks about all the contributions Ed Temple bought to female black athletics. Ed Temple ; Fairmount High School ; teaching ; Tennessee State University 2897 Parental influence Excuse me, I'm curious about the young lady ... Tyus talks about her opposition in track and field at the Tennessee State University track summit. Tyus talks about the social pressures put on women in the African American community. Tyus describes her parent's influence on her desire to attain excellence in everything she did. gender stereotypes ; parents ; Tennessee State University ; Track and Field 3325 Parental influences (cont.) I mean, I was always strong willed... Tyus continues to describe the way in which her father made sure that his children were raised without having to do the typical manual labor of African Americans at the time. Tyus talks about her decision to move to Los Angeles, California, where she worked as a teacher. Tyus continues to describe her time as a student at Tennessee State University. dairy farming ; Los Angeles, California ; Tennessee State University 3730 Attending University / Civil Rights Movement I did remember Mr. Temple ... Tyus talks about her first semester at Tennessee State University, and the difficulties she faced as a student, especially after the death of her father. Tyus recalls how her travels helped her in understanding herself and her surroundings. Tyus talks about the black power movement and how it tied into her experience in track and field. black power movement ; Civil Rights Movement ; Ed Temple ; Olympics ; Tennessee State University ; track and field 4162 Discrimination in the Olympics And that was experienced by us... Tyus talks about the discrimination she faced as an Olympic runner during the Tokyo Olympics. Tyus explains the methods of subtle protest against both sexual and race discrimination utilized by athletes around the world. discrimination ; Ed Temple ; Tokyo Olympics 4596 Black athletes and public reactions They were called the Texas ... Tyus talks about how American black runners in the Olympics were for the most part ignored in the eyes of the public despite highly outperforming their white counterparts. Tyus recalls the ways in which Ed Temple helped the African American community. discrimination ; Ed Temple ; racism ; Texas Bouffants 5013 Coming home from the Olympics I don't really truly remember... Tyus describes the reaction of the Griffin, Georgia community to her success in the Olympics. Tyus shares her advise to younger generation, as she stresses the importance of an education and respect for others. Tyus talks about the rest of her family and their work to obtain an education. 1964 Olympics ; 1968 Olympics ; Ed Temple ; education ; Fairmount High School ; Griffin, Georgia 5417 Reflections And the stuff he said to me... Tyus reflects on the coaching methods of coach Ed Temples. Tyus talks about the ways in which Griffin has changed throughout the years. Tyus describes the way in which politics is present in the sports realm. Ed Temple ; Griffin, Georgia ; Tennessee State University ; Wyomia Tyus Park 5821 Speaking around Georgia Well, you know, I ... Tyus talks about her wish for her story to inspire others, despite the fact that some Universities withheld her the opportunity to speak about her story. Tyus relates some of the other places she has spoken. community ; Georgia Technical University ; Griffin, Georgia Oral history RBRL418GAA-024_Tyus RICH BRAMAN:We can start any time. JEWEL WALKER-HARPS:Ready? Today is September the 26th. We are on the campus of the University of Georgia in Griffin, Georgia. This is the -- our oral history project, and we have -- our guest today is Wyomia Tyus. I' ; m Jewel Walker-Harps of the Griffin Branch, NAACP. ART CAIN:I' ; m Art Cain, director of continuing education program here on the University of Georgia Griffin Campus. ELLEN BAUSKE:I' ; m Ellen Bauske, program coordinator for the Center for Urban Ag. BRAMAN:I' ; m Rich Braman with the Center for Urban Ag. I' ; m the developer. WALKER-HARPS:And -- WYOMIA TYUS:And I' ; m Wy-- WALKER-HARPS:-- and now our special guest, Wyomia Tyus. TYUS:Okay, I' ; m Wyomia Tyus, and I was born and raised in Griffin, Spalding County, Georgia. I was born on a dairy -- well, born on a dair-- raised on a dairy farm right outside of the little Griffin airport. My dad was a tenant farmer ; my mom worked the dry cleaners, so they both worked the whole -- well for years. (laughs) They... I have three older brothers, Jackie, Jimmy Lee, and Willie. Jackie and Jimmy Lee have passed on, so have my parents, Willie and Marie Tyus, they have gone, and it' ; s just my brother Willie. We called him Junior, so I will probably be referring to him as Junior sometimes in the report, so... So it' ; s just the two of us that are remaining. We -- in the community or the area in which we grew up, the farm was owned by Ben Brown. He had a big farmhouse at the top of the hill, we always said, and we lived in the -- yeah, we lived down in the -- where the dairy was. And it was a big, huge house, like -- I' ; m trying to think, one, two, three -- three large bedrooms, a long hallway, kitchen, living room, and all of us lived there. We were the only black family that was living right in that area, so throughout my life, like, up until I was 14, we played with white kids. We played with white boys. We could not play with white girls because they were not allowed to play with us, so we played with white boys. So all my life, I have played with boys. I started out playing with my brothers and then when I was playing with them, it was always trying to keep up with them and also trying to run away from the fights. (laughs) And we -- I enjoyed, well, my childhood mostly. I remember from my childhood, that' ; s always stuck with me, is that my father and my brother Junior and I, we used to go for walks every Saturday or either be on a Sunday because the woods... Ben Brown had a huge, huge farm, and we could -- you could walk it. He sold all that later on, but we used to walk the woods and just go... And as we' ; ll walk in the woods, right, you know, just being with family. And my dad not so much teaching us anything or saying you need to know these things, but in his talks, it was like we would go pick -- like I said, it was in the summer, we would pick berries or something like that. He would always say, " ; You need to be mindful of just sticking your hands in there not just for the little stickers you can get in your finger but snakes live in there. They love to be around those berries, so you should not be there, also wasp nests and all those things," ; you know just teaching us the little things about nature. And that you just don' ; t -- when you' ; re a child, you' ; re not thinking about that. You' ; re out there in the woods playing, throwing dirt, throwing rocks. And I remember my brother and I used to just throw rocks and pine cones to see who could do that, climb trees, you know just being free. And my fath--you know, at the time I was growing up, young girls were not supposed to be that active. They were not supposed to be playing sports with boys at all. Girls did girly things, and boys did whatever boys -- boy things. And I was truly not interested in the girly things, although my mom wanted me to be. She always -- I always got a doll. (laughs) I always had a doll not that I played with it that much but -- because I was always out playing ba-- some type of sports with my brothers and all of that. But the walks (inaudible) my brother and I would have at knife, and we would whittle, and we could do all those -- and we would do all of that and just talk about living in this community, playing with the white girl out there. I can remember my -- that they didn' ; t want... We shouldn' ; t play with the girls. We can' ; t -- with a girl, I don' ; t want a girl on my team. And my dad used -- my brothers weren' ; t saying that, but the other people. The other -- the white kids we were playing with, they would say -- they started out saying it, let me say it that way. And then my dad would tell my brothers, " ; Look, she' ; s just as good as you guys if not better. I don' ; t know why you don' ; t let her play. You know she has to play. If she doesn' ; t play with you guys, who is she going to play with?" ; So he made it very clear very early that I always had to be a part of whatever was going on when it came to playing outside or inside or whatever. And I can remember like one of the first times we went out playing because we played right where our farm -- with the house that we live in. We' ; d had all the acreage where the cows roam and all that and then they had -- like from our front yard, which was very large, to the side, there was a big field, and that was our football field, and that was our basketball field -- court, so we played right there. And the people there are whites that lived across the street, and they had kids that were, oh, the same age of my older brothers. And then Ben Brown had children, all the ages. He had -- well, his youngest child, the -- well, not his youngest, his youngest boy I think -- yes Lewis, that' ; s the one we played with. He -- you know, we pu-- he would always come down, and we would come to the dairy, and we all played. And we just played ball, and once they were at -- all the kids would come play, they didn' ; t want me to play. So my brothers would say, " ; Oh, just take her, you know just let her play." ; " ; No, no, we don' ; t want her on our team," ; so I would have to -- I would always be on my brothers' ; team. And after that, they -- I think the first game we played, they realized in the first five minutes or so, they had made a bad mistake (laughs) because they realized I should -- they should have picked me. Then, it was like the next time we go to play, " ; We want her on the team, we want her," ; " ; No, you can' ; t have her, no," ; or I would say, " ; Nope, you didn' ; t choose me the first time ; I won' ; t play the second time." ; Now, you have to remember, we were growing up in the Jim Crow South. And for that to happen, for white kids and black kids to play together, that was not pretty -- I don' ; t know. I just think it was not that much heard of and especially where they could come in our house, but we couldn' ; t go in theirs. They could if we allowed, you know, but they could only be there if our parents were there. They couldn' ; t just come in and sit around and all that. We -- but they -- we never did. I think my older brother -- oh, no, my younger brother may-- no, my older brother got an opportunity maybe to go in the house. If they went in the house, it' ; s for cleaning or work in the house, so... To be in a situation like that, you didn' ; t think about it, right? When I look at it, I didn' ; t... You know, I knew that -- ah, I knew how -- there was ru-- there were so much rules, so to speak, but that' ; s how the times were. Blacks could do this, blacks... And we lived in the country, so I was not really exposed to what was going on in the city. CAIN:So you had a peer-to-peer relationship with the kids? WALKER-HARPS:Yes. CAIN:But then you had these institutional issues out here. TYUS:We surely did, exactly. But for us, our parents, I felt, always wanted to make a safe haven for us. They wanted us to be safe, and they taught us, first of all, you had to respect yourself, and you don' ; t let anybody disrespect you. That was the key, and that was how we related to the white kids in the neighborhood. Now, we never really had any trouble with Ben Brown' ; s children or the people that lived across the street from us. But Ben Brown also had houses on his farm, and he would have -- they would be vacant, and he would rent them out, and it' ; s usually to whites. And when -- I can remember very vividly that there was a family that moved in, and they definitely didn' ; t want to play with -- well, play with us. And they wanted to call us all kinds of names, the N-word especially. And that was not going to be heard because my dad said, " ; You' ; re not going to -- they can' ; t play with you, you can' ; t play with them if they going to -- they' ; re going to call out your name. You have a name, they have a name, they need to use it." ; And that' ; s how it was. And they came around to play, but they started saying words, the N-word, calling us the N-word, so I can remember my -- we used to do this. We used to draw a line in the sand or in the dirt and say, " ; Okay, that' ; s your property ; this is our property. You step across on our property and call us those names ; you' ; re going to have to pay for it." ; And so that' ; s... I can remember one of the kids, one of the brothers that came across, and he' ; s saying these words, and then he steps across the line and calls us the N-word. And then my brother says to me -- says to them, " ; Well, I' ; m not going to beat you up ; I' ; m going to let my sister beat you up." ; (laughter) BAUSKE:Did you? TYUS:Yes. (laughter) BAUSKE:I -- TYUS:It didn' ; t -- it was more like he said it, and as soon as he said it, I hit him in his stomach, and he went over and then I hit him again and then -- you know? And I think that was it. That was the only incident we' ; ve ever had. Because everybody knew that we were -- we as kids know all the other stuff that was going on, but we were respect -- we expect -- we respected each other. We talked to each other, we didn' ; t call each other names, we might -- we got in fights, but that didn' ; t last. It' ; s like you' ; re on the playground, you get in a fight, oh, you' ; re going to forget it. And that' ; s how it was with us. And -- but mainly from what I can remember and I can recall, that was about the only incident we had. My parents still would say to my brothers, " ; Especially when you go over to work in one of these white people' ; s homes or do something in their yard, you go up on the porch and ring the doorbell and knock on the door, whatever you had to do and then you step off the porch. And if the husband or the man of the house is not there, you do not go in their house, and you do not stand there and stare this person in the face." ; Those were the kinds of things that -- CAIN:So that was -- TYUS:-- they felt -- CAIN:-- the protection? TYUS:-- to protect you. Yes. It was not -- you know, it was more like I said. They wanted you to be safe and they -- and these are the things that they taught us. Now, for me, I didn' ; t do any work. (laughs) I didn' ; t have to. My dad didn' ; t really want us doing any... He never allowed us to pick cotton ; he never allowed us to work on the dairy. He said that he has worked and he will work hard enough, so we would never have to do that because he wants his kids to have better, yes. CAIN:Okay, so what was the agreement that your family had with the Browns that allowed you to stay there, and how far back did that go in your family? BAUSKE:And a kind of related question, is your house, childhood home still standing? TYUS:Okay. The house that -- in which we lived in burned down in ' ; 59. Was it ' ; 59? I think it was, yeah, in 1959, so it was no longer there. And the property in which we lived on, there' ; s subdivision -- they have a big house and subdivision out there past the airport. BAUSKE:Yeah, it' ; s not Lake Louise. I know where there' ; s a street called (Brown' ; s) Acres. TYUS:Yeah, that' ; s also all his farm, all that land -- BAUSKE:Okay, that' ; s his farm, okay. TYUS:-- all that -- all those homes, all those homes, all -- BAUSKE:Yes, off Maddox -- TYUS:-- as far as you can see -- BAUSKE:Yes, up Maddox -- TYUS:-- that' ; s all his property. BAUSKE:-- Avenue. TYUS:He sold all of that, yes, so those are -- that' ; s all his property. BAUSKE:And those homes were probably built in the ' ; 60s I think, maybe? TYUS:I don' ; t know. Because when I left in ' ; 63 -- because when our house burned down, my -- it was very traumatic for my father and all of us. But we -- he never really went back to the dairy to work every day. And he had some -- also some health issues, so he never did because within a year, my father died after the house burned down, so... So that and you asked another question? CAIN:Yeah. WALKER-HARPS:I' ; m sorry. CAIN:The agreement that your parents had with the Browns that allowed you-all to live on the property. And was it something that had been intergenerational or is that something that -- where you-all the first of your family to live on that property? Just how did that work? TYUS:I don' ; t know if we were the first. I mean I just know that when I was born, that' ; s where we -- and -- because my parents lived in Pomona, Georgia. I know my mom, and they lived there and then when I was born, it was at the -- you know, I was taken right to the dairy area. I know the agreement was the fact that my father worked the farm, and I -- that' ; s all we know. And you had to also remember they didn' ; t tell us very much. (laughter) And during that time, they didn' ; t tell kids. That was not your -- that was not for you to worry about, it was for them to worry about, and it goes back to what my father would always say, " ; It' ; s for you." ; He would always tell us, " ; I have to do the work, you go guys go -- your work is you need to go to school and get your lesson," ; which means you need to go to school and get an education. He didn' ; t want us picking anybody' ; s cotton or working in anybody' ; s dairy or work -- doing really hard work. He wanted us to be able to go to school and get an education and get further than he did in school. And we still to the day -- my brother and I laugh about it. We still to the day don' ; t know how far he got in school because he would always tell us, " ; I went to school one day, and the teacher wasn' ; t there." ; So we don' ; t know what type of education he had. And my mom, I know she went to eighth grade, so, but they wanted us to have a lot more, and they worked hard for us to do it like a lot of families did. They worked hard, they wanted their children to do, but there were a lot of families that they -- everybody in the family had to work the farm or pick cotton and all that. My grandmother, my dad' ; s mom, that' ; s what was happening. That' ; s -- that -- they were sharecroppers, and they worked the farm, and they did that. But I know my dad took care of the dairy and not only with -- just him, Ben Brown also. The two of them worked the dairy. CAIN:Was that here in Griffin where your grandparents were? TYUS:No, my dad' ; s family is from Jackson -- CAIN:Jackson. WALKER-HARPS:-- Georgia, mm-hmm. So my dad every morning at 5:00 in the morning, he had to get up and go milk the cows and all that. And I can remember being the -- before I went into elementary school, first grade or anything, I could be with my brothers. And we had to ride the bus. We rode a bus to school. The bus would pick -- we were the first to be picked up, and we were the last to be dropped off, so we had an hour ride every morning every day -- ah, two hours -- CAIN:So -- TYUS:-- hours, two hours going and two -- an hou-- one hour going, I' ; m sorry, and one hour coming back. CAIN:So you were by that day' ; s standards, sorry, not really in the city of Griffin. You were -- TYUS:I was not. CAIN:-- in the country. And then they had you catch a bus to get to -- was it Fairmont? TYUS:Annie Shockley Elementary School. (laughs) Yeah. WALKER-HARPS:In a bus with only black children? TYUS:Yes. It wasn' ; t -- the school' ; s not integrated at the time. So where we had to go was Annie Shockley Elementary, but there were other elementary schools in the city of Griffin. But this was like... And I don' ; t know if Annie Shockley is still around, but it' ; s over there near -- what was that street? I don' ; t know if you guys know Griffin, but by Boyd Road and all those places. I don' ; t know what that -- WALKER-HARPS:Annie Shockley is -- or -- CAIN:What, Anne Street? WALKER-HARPS:Anne Street I believe now, Anne Street School. TYUS:But, yeah, we would -- that -- so that' ; s where we went to school, so the bus would come pick us up. Now, we -- there was a white school near us that we could' ; ve walked, but that wasn' ; t happening. (laughs) And we went to -- you know, my brother Junior and I would get on the bus and.... Because we' ; re the first, we had to -- we would always sit behind the bus driver. We knew him and uh, so we would... And it got to where we -- that was our seat there no matter what. Even at the school, we get on the bus -- if we weren' ; t the first to get on the bus, nobody could sit there because the bus driver was always letting us sit there. So (laughs) we were going to be the first one on, and we had to ride and go pick up other students and go. And it took us an hour to pick up -- by the time we picked up everybody and got to school, it was about an hour. And then when we come home, the same thing, so we' ; ll be the last to be dropped off. Sometimes, he might' ; ve -- a couple of times, I can remember that the bus driver dropped us off first, but usually, that was just his route, so... I don' ; t know where (inaudible) that -- CAIN:And that started when you were in the first grade? TYUS:First grade, yeah. And my brothers had gone before that because they were older. Well, my two older brothers and then -- because I know with my brother Jackie and Jimmy -- Jimmy Lee, they may have started school at -- up in Pomona. They had that one-room school near at the church. There' ; s a church, Macedonia Church, that' ; s the church we belong to. And they had a little schoolhouse, a brick... Well, let' ; s see. What do you call those? Cinder block schoolhouse where you had just one room, and you were in grades by the seats you sat in, so... But I didn' ; t have that ; my older brothers did. CAIN:While you' ; re talking about the Browns and while we' ; re still there, have you maintained any kind of relationship with any other descendants? Do you know anything about whatever happened to them or...? TYUS:No, because once we -- I -- my mom, when my mom was living and my mom used to come to California on -- every year, right? And I know one -- the Lewis, the one that we always played with had moved to Santa Barbara, California. And I know my mom had stayed in contact with -- I don' ; t know which Browns. And she had gotten that information, but we never got a chance to see each other because she will always say, " ; I' ; m going to get that information, and we' ; re going." ; " ; Yeah," ; and I said, " ; Yeah, get it because Santa Barbara, a couple of hours from Los Angeles," ; and I said, " ; We could go and find him," ; and all of that. And I don' ; t know if they' ; re still living. I don' ; t know because it was four boys and two girls. So I don' ; t know what' ; s going -- or what happened when that -- all that took place, all right, because I was not around. That was just not... I was -- I went Tennessee State I think when most of all that happened. Because I left Griffin in ' ; 63 to go off to college, and that' ; s -- you know, I will come back, but there' ; s no reconnection. I know my brother Jimmy Lee, he had a big connection with the people that -- the white boys that lived across the street down the road and all of that because he -- even as an adult. Because he used to go hunting with them and all of that and they keep in contact and all that. And even like when my mom was pretty sick and she was in the hospice, I was out there, and this one guy came up to me, and he says... Like I guess he -- somebody had told him my mom was there, but he had a family member that was also there. And he came up to me, and he goes, " ; Sister," ; because that' ; s what they called me and although -- you know they all called me sister. And he said, " ; I' ; m --" ; and I can' ; t -- God, which one was it? I can' ; t think of his name, but he told me who it was, and I knew that my brother Junior was there. And he said, " ; Oh, yeah, you know, we..." ; And my brother Junior sees him now even. Yeah, I don' ; t -- but I don' ; t see them. But they do. You know it was alwa-- it' ; s always been a good friendship. I know when my brother Jimmy Lee died, it was like I -- I mean the church was packed half-and-half pretty much because Jimmy Lee always kept in contact with them. And they had -- Jimmy Lee had trucks, and they' ; d go hunting and all that stuff because we grew up hunting too. That was the other thing we had. My -- I mean I learned at a very early age, maybe be seven or so about gu-- well, we... There was always a gun in the house. We had a sh-- my dad always had a shotgun in the house, but we never and ever, ever, ever touched it. We were too scared. (laughter) We were too scared about -- even we would go in the room where my dad -- in their bedroom, and if we would jump on the bed, which young kids do, and play around, we never touched the gun. It never fell or anything, but we were taught the safety of guns. We were taught the fact that the gun is only used for hunting and we did. You know we had rabbits, squirrels, and all those things, so, and that' ; s how we used the gun. And my father taught us the safety of how to use it, when to use it, and never pull a gun on anybody unless -- you know that' ; s something. Once you pull the gun, that' ; s your issue there. You' ; re going to have to use it, or they' ; re going to use it on you, so, but we never did. And we never had trouble with white kids doing the same thing because their guns were the same. The way every-- everyone was just -- that was just how life was there. It' ; s not like that now, but that' ; s how it was then. CAIN:Talk a little bit about your elementary school experience, and you went to Fairmont? TYUS:Mm-hmm, I did. I went -- (laughter) I went to Annie Shockley Elementary, and school was something for me. Growing up with my brothers, I was al-- they always called me a tomboy, and I don' ; t -- and all I felt, that I was just a person that enjoyed being outside. I enjoyed competing and then -- I mean just trying to -- not always being the best, just the fact that I could go out there and do those things, and I wanted to do it. I wanted to be the best person to -- I want to be the person that could climb the tree the fastest or ride my bike the fastest. I always want to do that. And when I went to -- I think going to elementary school and all that, they didn' ; t have any -- there was no sports for girls, yeah, nothing. The biggest thing we had was May Day, which you don' ; t do anything but sack races, (laughs) and that was it. And then like at lunchtime and stuff like that, boys could play football, and they could do all that, and I would always just be sitting and wanting to jump out there, run out and then do -- and be a part, but girls can' ; t do that. I can remember trying to play that, and I wa-- the teachers say, " ; Girls play over here, the boys play there," ; hmm, okay. And I was a kid that wore pants to school all the time. And I can remember teachers telling my mom, " ; Does she have a dress?" ; asking her, " ; Does she have a dress?" ; And she says, " ; Yes," ; and " ; Well, she needs to wear dresses sometime," ; and I' ; m like, " ; I can' ; t wear a dress. Well, how am I going to play and jump around and like..." ; (laughs) BAUSKE:Can I ask? TYUS:Sure. BAUSKE:What sports were you playing? TYUS:What sports? BAUSKE:Yeah. TYUS:Well, I played -- like with my brothers, I played the football and basketball with them and so-- and baseball. So that' ; s that -- that' ; s on the farm, but they let the boys play football and all that stuff and run and jump, and we did a lot of running, did a lot of bike racing in our bikes, and all those kind of things. So those are the things that I did as a child on the dairy farm. But when you went -- and then we went to elementary school and we started in school, girls have certain roles they wanted you to (play?). And I didn' ; t want that role, jump rope and London Bridge is falling down, boring. (laughter) BAUSKE:Jump rope is better than it used to be. (laughter) TYUS:Yes, but I still can' ; t jump, so I don' ; t know. (laughter) So that... So I can just remember the teacher saying to my mom I should wear dresses, and I' ; m -- " ; I don' ; t want a dress, I don' ; t want to wear a dress." ; I can remember and remember kind of to revert -- to go back. When I was six maybe or I guess when I turned six or so, it was Christmastime, and my brother Junior wanted a cowboy outfit, and I wanted a cowboy outfit, and my mother says, " ; No, we' ; ll get you a cowgirl outfit." ; I said, " ; No, I want a cowboy outfit." ; " ; No, you get -- you can have a cowgirl outfit," ; and I' ; m -- " ; I' ; m not going to wear that, I don' ; t (inaudible) want a cowgirl outfit, I want a cowboy outfit." ; And my dad said to her, " ; You know she' ; s so -- she' ; s not going to wear it if you buy it, she' ; s not going to wear it. You know how she is ; she' ; s not going to wear it." ; And that morning at Christmas morning, we got up, and I had a cowboy outfit. (laughs) CAIN:Wow. TYUS:And so I always said -- and both of my brother and I had the same outfit and we... People used to thought -- think we were twins, but we weren' ; t. So my mom went and get our pictures taken in the cowboy outfit, and the guy says, " ; Oh, what a -- two cute little boys," ; and I went, " ; I' ; m not a boy." ; And my mom said, " ; See, this is why you need that cowgirl outfit." ; (laughter) So she pulled my braids out so that he could see. (laughs) But I did all -- it was... You know my -- I just admire my parents for them letting me be who I wanted to be and not put the restrictions that girls have to do that. And I think more -- my father really was the one that was behind that, and my mom was more, " ; Well, you need to learn how to do these things," ; and it... To get back to wearing a dress at the school and all that, and my mom said, " ; Well, she wears a dress to church," ; and I did. And so they kept say-- my mom kept saying, " ; You' ; ve got to wear a dress to school," ; so my dad came up with, " ; Well, this is how we' ; ll just get around this. You wear your pants and put your dress over it." ; I was okay with that and that' ; s -- but -- and then now, that' ; s what they do all the time, and so... (laughs) So but -- CAIN:(You were twins?). TYUS:So that' ; s what -- you know? So Annie Shockley, well that was my memories. Annie Shockley, it was -- I mean I enjoy school there. And I think about the teachers that we had, they were -- they reminded me a lot of my parents in the sense that they really were so encouraging, and they wanted you to do more and wanted you to definitely get your lessons so to speak. And they wanted you to just really be proud of who you were. And, yeah, well, at -- again talking about the times, that was... I guess that was the time when a lot -- the teachers there, they were not all -- they weren' ; t from Griffin. They came from different parts of different little counties or -- and not all of them but most of them came from different counties around. And they were always saying, " ; Well, there' ; s so much out there for you to learn," ; and they were so encouraging trying to get us there. And at the time when I was in school, they were also -- when they could swat you, they could give you, but my dad said, " ; No, that' ; s not going to happen. I don' ; t whip my kids, so nobody else can, so..." ; But they could do that when we were in school, so... WALKER-HARPS:Your teachers were mostly from someplace else over at -- TYUS:I' ; m sorry? WALKER-HARPS:Your teachers were mostly from someplace else over at Griffin? TYUS:Mm-hmm. Yup, they were. WALKER-HARPS:Now, when did you meet (Ernestine?) Kimbrough? Was that high school or --? TYUS:That' ; s high school. WALKER-HARPS:That' ; s high school. TYUS:Yeah. So that' ; s Annie Shockley. After Annie Shockley, we went to Kelsey elementary? I mean Kelsey Middle -- BRAMAN:Middle -- TYUS:-- School. It was middle school, junior high then, that' ; s what they called it. But, yeah, I went there, and that was... That' ; s -- what year was that? I don' ; t even know what year was it. You have to -- you guys do the math. (laughs) WALKER-HARPS:Probably about ' ; 62 -- TYUS:Yeah. So I went there. WALKER-HARPS:-- on Kelsey -- TYUS:Yeah, I went there, and I think they had -- I' ; m trying to think, they had basketball for girls. Did they have track? I think they had basketball for girls and track. And that' ; s the first time like I really came into the city, living in the city because -- or not living in the city, just coming to the city, going to school. And then once our house burned down, I think that' ; s when I was in eighth grade and then that was Fairmont, I ended up at Fairmont. I was at Fairmont High School, and... Wow, so, what can I tell you about Fairmont? That' ; s where I met Ms. Kimbrough who was my track coach and basketball coach, and she was the PE teacher, and all of those then, you know? Because I used to think all the time, God, that' ; s such a tall woman. WALKER-HARPS:Mm-hmm, she was. TYUS:(laughs) You know and then also my other thought was, gosh, she was really bowlegged. And I would always say, " ; God, if you straighten her legs out, she could be pretty tall, much taller than what she is." ; But (laughter) she was a woman that... I mean she had a lot of girls that were on the -- that played basketball and ran track. I mean that -- because that was the only two sports for wom-- or for girls in high school. I don' ; t know what was going on in white schools. I don' ; t know if they had a track program or not because none of us was ever -- we were still segregated, we were not integrated at the time, so I don' ; t know if white kids had -- what kind of sports they had. CAIN:How did she identify you as somebody who would be interested in track, good in track, and at what level? You know maybe ninth grade or so on. And tell us a little bit about some of the competitions that got you noticed. TYUS:I really don' ; t know if she really identified me. There was -- you know, it was more that if you wanted to be involved in sports when you were a young girl, you could be involved, and you had to try out. And then if you could beat someone if -- yeah, or you... Depending on how many people they' ; re going to have on their team, like with the basketball team that, you know, you go out there and you play hard. You practice hard and you do -- they have tryouts, so you get -- you either make it or you don' ; t and those that make it... I can' ; t remember them saying, " ; God, you' ; ve got great potential." ; I think that happened after I went to that first summer at Tennessee State, which I was 15 or 6-- yeah, 15. BAUSKE:Tell us about that. That' ; s kind of young to be off in a college environment. TYUS:(laughs) I -- yeah, it was. I was... After, like once I was at Fairmont, they -- then I made the basketball team and I made the track team along with several other women. And there was one woman especially on the track team, Frances Dallas, and she -- she was much better than I was. She whupped me all the time, and I got beat all the time. She could really run, and so... But it didn' ; t bother me that much. I mean I was still enjoying. I was still at the state ; I just enjoy this. This is really something I like to do, and my father had passed away. Our house burned down and then my father passed away, and I was just devastated by both things, more so by my father' ; s death. And I became a person -- not that I talked a lot in the beginning, but I became a person that would -- like one-word answers, and we would not be having this interview if I had not come. (laughs) It will be yes, no, if you think so. You have to continue to ask but... You know, so at his death, I just really didn' ; t do that. My mom kept saying, " ; You know you need to do something, you need to..." ; And I think that' ; s the reason I really got started running and playing basketball and doing a lot, you know just really putting my heart into it. Not so -- I mean, I guess it' ; s my aggression, just being angry and disappointed and depressed and all those kinds of things, I just -- that was my outlet. And I think Ms. Kimbrough saw that and all of that, so... But it just -- we would have track meets arou-- in around. It' ; s like in Newnan and places like that and then the big thing, you had to -- we go to Fort Valley. At Fort Valley State College, we would go there, and they would have meets there. And it will be not just surrounding Griffin, but you had people from Atlanta, all the big -- and they would be there, but you were... Depending on how large your school is with classes, they had A, B, A, and all up there, so... Mr. Temple was there, yes, and I didn' ; t know anything about that, Mr. Temple, who he was. And he -- after the meet, he came up to me and said -- he introduced himself as the coa-- " ; I' ; m Temple, the coach at Tennessee State University." ; And he always called everybody by their last names. He said, " ; You' ; re Tyus, right?" ; I said, " ; Yes," ; and he said, " ; Well, I was looking at you, and you look like you got some potential there. And I would like to invite you to come for summer at a track camp. I put on a track camp every year, and I invite high school and schoolgirls up, and we train for a month. And if you do well and continue to do well in your books, and you do well on the track, you know when you graduate from high school, you could probably get a scholarship." ; And I was like, " ; Oh." ; He asked, " ; Would you be interested?" ; At 15, " ; Yeah." ; (laughs) That' ; s about -- that was -- now, that was my answer because I was not talking very much, " ; Yeah, I would." ; And he said, " ; Well, you' ; re going to be hearing from me. I talked to your coach, Ms. Kimbrough and --" ; I think it was Kimbrough there. Was it Kimbrough or was it Bonner? See, they crossed it in between with Susan Bonner and Ernestine Kimbrough. They crossed one because they did and I don' ; t know -- I' ; m kind of foggy on that a little bit. I probably have to think about it some more, or you guys can research it for me. WALKER-HARPS:(overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) talking about Susan. TYUS:Yeah, mm-hmm, so... So it must have been Susan Bonner I think it was because I think Ms. Kimbrough left somewhere in the begi-- in the middle of that. I don' ; t know. But anyway, Mr. Temple said that, and he said, " ; Well, you' ; ll be hearing from me," ; and I said, " ; Okay." ; And the next -- I didn' ; t think too much about that. I just went, " ; Yeah, all right." ; And I think a week or so later, my mom got a letter from him saying that he was going to come to Georgia, and he wanted to meet with her, and he' ; s (good?). And that' ; s something he did. He met with everybody' ; s -- every one, young lady that came to Tennessee State in the summer, he went and met with their parents or parent and told -- and laid out his program and said, " ; These are the -- this is what I expect of these -- my young ladies that come here." ; And he came, and he was like so strict I thought, but no more strict than what my parents were. " ; These are the things," ; he said, " ; there' ; s a right way, the wrong way, and then there' ; s my way, and if you don' ; t do it my way, you' ; re going to get sent -- I send them home." ; He said, " ; I make sure I will take care of your daughters. Yes, they will be on a college campus, but they' ; ll be well protected" ; and all of that. And you think about it, I mean, and it was... And he was like, " ; So if you allow her to come, these are the things that you would need," ; and all that, and it was like, okay. So, yeah, he says to me, " ; Well, what do you think, Tyus? You think you want to come?" ; I said, " ; I think so." ; I was just the timid type person, you know I' ; m saying? And he said, " ; Okay," ; and he says to my mom, " ; Ms. Tyus, are you willing to let her come?" ; and she said, " ; Yes." ; And when he left, then I was busy thinking, and how am I going to go? We don' ; t have any money because it was just my mom and my brothers and I, and it was like she don' ; t have any money to send me anywhere. And I can remember -- so it was like I really wanted to go. I started thinking, I' ; ll be -- okay, I' ; ll -- I' ; m going to be out of Griffin for a summer, I' ; m going to be out of the state of Georgia, (laughs) I' ; m going to be going someplace so that became very interesting to me. And after that, the school Fairmont, believe it or not, raised some money for me to go to Tennessee State the first summer. They raised $23 and some-odd cents, which was a lot of money in that day and time because now it' ; s worth -- how much is it worth now (Dave?)? DAVE:It' ; s about $190. TYUS:But in this day and time that would' ; ve been $190 there. So that paid for my bus, my train ticket to and from Griffin to Nashville. It gave me a few dollars to have in my pocket. CAIN:And you went by yourself. TYUS:I did. That was the -- I think about that to this day that here it is that they drove -- my Uncle John Henry and my mom and I think my brother Junior, we drove up to Atlanta to the train station because the train wasn' ; t here in Griffin and you didn' ; t -- they weren' ; t -- so we drove up there. They put me on the train with my little bag of food (laughs) and waved goodbye. And I rode eight hours or more to Nashville and go into the mountains, and it was like, oh my (God?), you know? And I can remember one of my mom' ; s friends telling me, " ; Now, you get on that train, and you sit there, and you sit there with pride and dignity." ; " ; Okay." ; " ; And don' ; t you talk to anybody." ; (laughter) They didn' ; t have to worry about me talking to anyone, I didn' ; t, so I didn' ; t. And I get there, and he said -- and Mr. Temple had said to my mom, " ; Well, I' ; ll be right there when she gets there," ; and he was right there. And he comes and meets me at the train station, and he has another one of the young women that' ; s on the track team there with him, and he said -- he says, " ; Ah, Tyus?" ; I said, " ; Yes, Mr. Temple?" ; because we all called him Mr. Temple. We didn' ; t call him Coach Temple because that' ; s a Southern thing. You-all respect your elders by saying mister, and that' ; s what we did. We didn' ; t call him coach. So he says, " ; Meet Rudolph," ; and that was Wilma Rudolph. Of course, I didn' ; t know that at the time because I didn' ; t know anything about track and that thing. All I knew, I just ran and he saw something. And so we go into the dormitory, and we got to meet all the other women -- young girls that were my age that were coming out for the summer and then also the young -- the women that were on the team that was in college and all of that. CAIN:How many young girls came into the camp? TYUS:That first summer, I think it was about 20 of us, but all of us didn' ; t last. (laughs) A lot of people wanted -- they went home. The practices were really hard. I always used to practice then maybe once or twice a week, and I could still win or I' ; ll get second (inaudible) defeating Frances at the meet. When Frances was at the meet, I could get second, and if she wasn' ; t at the meet, I' ; ll get first but... (laughs) But we would get there, and we had practice like 5:00 in the morning, 9:00 in the morning, and 1:00 in the afternoon. That -- it was very hard practice and now -- CAIN:At the summer camp? CAIN:In the summer camp. And you' ; re in Tennessee, you practice at 1:00 in the afternoon -- BAUSKE:It' ; s hot. Yeah, it' ; s hot. TYUS:So very hot. BAUSKE:Where was your mother, brothers, and you living in Griffin after the farmhouse burned down? TYUS:Once the farmhouse burned down, we moved to a little one-bedroom place. And my dad was -- because my dad lived about 9 months or 10 months, a year. But we all lived in a one-bedroom place over on Washington and Fourth? Was it Washington and Third? I can' ; t remember. On Washington Street. It was on Washington and -- I think it was Washington and Fourth Street, yeah. And then my -- years later, my mom -- we live now on Hill Street because my mom and brothers bought a house there. Yeah. But... So what else was -- need to say? Oh, so that was it. I mean that was going just at Fairmont and then people at Fairmont to be so generous (inaudible), you know? They raised money. It wasn' ; t you would think, oh, that' ; s not enough money, but they raised that money for me to go and -- I thought. And they evidently saw something that I didn' ; t see in myself, and they probably saw the same thing Mr. Temple saw, I don' ; t know. Or it goes back to what I had stated earlier that the teachers and the people, they really wanted you to do better. They wanted you to be more than what people thought you would -- or what they thought of blacks at the time. And they wanted you to get an education because they knew education would definitely do it for you. It will help you anyway. It will be like what Mr. Temple will always say, you know, " ; Sports will open the door, education will keep the door open," ; so... And they -- and I always was very and will always be very grateful for the fact that -- I always felt I had great teachers, and they always wanted the best for you and it' ; s -- WALKER-HARPS:Who was the principal at Fairmont when you were there? TYUS:Um, I don' ; t know. (laughs) Was it Mr. -- WALKER-HARPS:C. W. Daniels? TYUS:-- Daniels, Mr. Daniels? WALKER-HARPS:Or Mr. Tate. BAUSKE:He started but somebody else -- Mr. Tate was there. WALKER-HARPS:It' ; s probably Tate, Horace Tate. TYUS:Yeah, between the -- yeah, because it was him and then Mr. Daniels, right. BAUSKE:Mm-hmm. CAIN:Well, they must have -- since they kind of got together and raised money, and you probably were the only student who had that opportunity, you must have stuck out. TYUS:I -- when you look at it like that, yes, I did. I mean I would -- I think the stuck out came when Mr. Temple made that offer, you know, and I think once he... And then the school knew that. Ms. Bonner -- actually, I don' ; t know which one it was. I think it was Ms. Bonner that she let the school know that, hey -- Ms. Kimbrough I think it was. She let the school know that Mr. Temple was looking in here. And they knew more about the Olympics and all of that, so they knew the opportunity. And to go to a -- to go to college, I was never going to go to college. How was I going to go to college? And for him to say in his letter -- I have the letter that says that here, if you do these things and you -- eventually, you may get a scholarship. He never said you were definitely going to get it but -- you know? And then when you... After you get there and you see all the -- a lot of things that you could see, and for me, it was just so eye-opening in that, yeah, you meet these young women that were doing a whole lot of things not just running track. They were going... They had been overseas, that' ; s all you can -- like they' ; d been overseas, they had been to Germany, they had been to Russia, they had been to Italy, you know, they' ; d had gone to all these different places, and they got a totally different education here. You had book education and you -- then you' ; re able to travel around the world. I think you could -- I feel that you get a different kind of education. You learn about people, you learn about different cultures and how -- you know, and you learn to appreciate not only just yourself but also your culture, the other people' ; s cultures. And I just was amazed by what was going on with that just -- CAIN:Yeah, Tennessee State was nationally and internationally known at that time. TYUS:Right. CAIN:Wilma Rudolph was -- TYUS:And they put them on the map. CAIN:Put them on the map. TYUS:Well, you know even before her, although they didn' ; t get the credit. And still to this day, they -- I don' ; t feel that the Tigerbelles get the credit. That' ; s why I wrote a book about it. But that they went on. You know you had -- in 1956 and they had women on the Olympic team. And if they weren' ; t winning -- if they didn' ; t win, the US women didn' ; t win anything. CAIN:Yeah, and let me just -- in terms of Coach Temple being ahead of his times and being progressive, he was offering scholarships to young ladies in the ' ; 50s and ' ; 60s in athletics prior to Title - TYUS:-- IX. CAIN:-- IX, which... (laughter) You know that' ; s pretty incredible. TYUS:Yeah, well, it was. You think about that Tuskegee started out doing that for women and then that program folded and Mr. Temple' ; s program started to grow. But Tennessee State at the time I was in school is the only school in America giving any type of athletic scholarship to go to school for women -- not just black women, any woman. And at the time I was in school, it was only about -- it was only eight percent of women in the whole USA that was in college. So I' ; m like one of that eight percent, and Tennessee State, the women that were on the team, it was -- is anywhere from 10 to 15 women that were on the team. Now, you think about this as a historical black college doing this. I mean when I was in school with maybe 1300 students there, all black, and this little school did this, and he did this for women, which was not -- I mean in this day and time, women can go to any school they want and -- because -- if they' ; re in sports, have some type of athletic scholarship. Our scholarship was really work aid. It wasn' ; t really so an ath-- right out of an athletic scholarship. But it was a way to go to school and have a way to get an education. and I just would never -- I just don' ; t think we can give enough to Mr. Temple or say enough about him and for the world to know. And the world do, they know what he has done in track and field. But also they don' ; t -- the other part is what he has done for black women and black -- and not only black women but women of all color where he would always say, " ; I was Title I, I wasn' ; t Title IX, I mean I started --" ; he started the whole thing. You know he did for women that nobody else ever dreamed or thought of wanting to do, and he stuck with it, and he put like over 40 women on the Olympic -- on different Olympic teams. And out of the 40, he won 23 medals, 13 of them gold and -- you know? And he graduated all of his girls. He has a 97 percent graduation rate. And if they didn' ; t graduate from Tennessee State, they went on to graduate from another school, which is saying a lot. Because he believed in all, that we all had to have the education because that' ; s the only way you' ; re going to make it. CAIN:I' ; m curious -- (coughs) excuse me. I' ; m curious about the young lady you said who beat you. TYUS:Mm-hmm. BAUSKE:Yes, I was wondering, what happened to Frances? CAIN:Yeah, because he -- she should' ; ve been identified too maybe as somebody who had a lot of potential as -- TYUS:Yeah, but may-- I' ; m trying to think if she ran the day that Mr. Temple was at Fort Valley if she was -- if she even went to the meet because it' ; s not like practices now where you have to go to all these meets. But when we -- like surrounding meets around here, and we had time trials and stuff like that, Frances always beating me and -- yeah, so you know... I -- you also have -- the person I think has to want to do it and want to be. And I wouldn' ; t have ever continued to do it if Mr. Temple had not seen me and said, " ; Hey, you have the potential." ; Because to this day, I just don' ; t understand how he could see me and say it was me. How could it be me? It could' ; ve been Frances. It could' ; ve been someone else, but he chose me. I don' ; t know how that happened, but it was -- and then -- and not only that, there were a lot of other young women from Atlanta that went to that same program that I went to. So he was looking at a lot of people not -- I don' ; t know. And I -- and when I think about it at this point in time, I can' ; t remember her being there. She may have been there, but she may not. I just can' ; t remember that. But she could have, but he didn' ; t see that. WALKER-HARPS:At that time at Fairmont, the focus was on boys and gir-- boys and baseball and basketball if I remember correctly. I' ; m trying to think of others, and maybe you can, who were competitors with you in -- on the sports. We have beaucoups of trophies from that period of time at Fairmont going to early ' ; 60s. I don' ; t remember who they were by name, but there were a lot of them. We were -- we produced a whole bunch of athletes from Fairmont during the early -- well, from the beginning of the school up until the early ' ; 60s. TYUS:Yeah, well -- WALKER-HARPS:But I' ; m not sure. I don' ; t remember... Well, this was Rayfield Wright' ; s period of time or -- I don' ; t remember who. At my age, I don' ; t remember who those were who were competing with the... But I do remember that we received a lot of trophies. TYUS:Mm-hmm. Well, yeah, the -- I mean Fairmont was known for their -- with like the men' ; s basketball team and then the men' ; s football team. But they had a good women' ; s basketball team, but you never heard about it. Like I stated earlier, women were never encouraged to do that. Women were never encouraged to go out and be good. I think about relatives and friends saying that, you know, " ; You can go out and play but don' ; t sweat, horses and cows sweat, things like that. Girls, you' ; re just not supposed to do all these things, and you' ; re not supposed to be good. You' ; re supposed to -- well, girls and women are supposed to be good cooking, good cleaning the house, good --" ; you know? None of the things that I wanted to do, but I know how to do them because I was taught that. That was something we were all taught and not just me. My brothers could clean house better than I can, so... (laughs) So in my family, that' ; s what we -- it was all equal in that sense. It was not what society was saying because my parents wanted us to all -- we all needed to know. These are key things for all of -- for you to survive, you know? You need to know how to cook because you may not find someone that' ; s going to cook for you. You may not want -- you may not get married, so what are you going to do? (Usually, it' ; s...?) You know it was not so much at the time we were growing up ; you weren' ; t going to no restaurants and eating. WALKER-HARPS:Right. TYUS:And so there was not that. I mean there was -- unless you were in a black community, in our black community. I don' ; t -- like I said, I don' ; t know very much about the inner city of Griffin because we lived on a dairy farm. We raised our own food. We had corn, and there were pear trees, there were fig trees, there were all kind of -- we had all kinds of vegetable. Ben Brown had a pond, he had dug a pond, we had fish, we go fishing all the time, and we also raised hogs. So it' ; s like we were pretty much self-sufficient when -- and we didn' ; t really have to come into the city to buy things. My mom worked here in the inner city. CAIN:Something had to be infused in you because you went from being on a dairy farm, okay, to come into Griffin had to be a little bit of a culture shock, to go into Tennessee State had to be a little bit of a culture shock to doing things internationally. And you had to have something in you, something that people put in you or that was just in you innately to allow you to function and survive and say, " ; I' ; m not going to give up those kinds of things." ; Can you talk about that? TYUS:Well, I think the -- what was in me is what my parents raised me, how they raised me and raised me and my brothers. I mean they raised us about -- taught us values and what was valuable to you and what was valuable to me and to them. And as I see, it was family and also not only being just family but being -- treating people right, treating people fairly, you know? That was always -- you know, they didn' ; t sit there and talk about it like that. It' ; s like if you were in an argument or I was fighting with my brothers, which we did a lot, you know, " ; What? Why? You-all can talk that out." ; Well, sometimes you could, and you just had to fight, but still, after the fight was over, you' ; re still brothers and sisters, and you don' ; t treat people mean. You don' ; t be mean to people in that. And it was more -- there' ; s enough of that in the world. Yeah, and it to me, it was just more common sense kind of things, and that' ; s the common sense in my family, not to say that was with everybody' ; s family. WALKER-HARPS:And it sounds like there was inner strength in your parents and perhaps in their parents. Because even living in the -- under the conditions, which they lived, they were never submissive. They were always strong and strong-willed, and that transferred to you-all. And that' ; s not an -- (in here?), that' ; s not an everyday thing especially during that period of time. TYUS:No, it' ; s not, and I think that, you know, still going back to the fact that they always wanted better. They wanted more for their children, and in order and do that, they felt they could sacrifice. And if they did all the hard work and we went to school and got an education, then we could do it for our kids, and you just keep passing it on. It' ; s like you' ; re going to call to it a tradition or whatever and just... I mean I was always strong-willed. It goes back to the whole cowboy outfit. You know I would -- (laughs) and I don' ; t know, I can' ; t -- I think both of my parents were strong-willed. My mom was a person that talked a lot more than the -- and my dad was not. He was a very quiet man and would say very few words but the words he did speak -- but he talked a lot to his kids. He didn' ; t talk a lot to other people, yeah, but -- you know? And he -- and the whole fact of going out and walking in the woods, and he saying to us, " ; This is what we call -- this is being free," ; and those kinds of things. And then the fact that we would go and stay with his pa-- his grand-- my grandmother, my dad' ; s mom. In the summer, we would stay a whole week, my brother and I because my dad -- we would stay a week, but my dad came every day to see us because he didn' ; t like us to be away from home. (laughs) He didn' ; t want us out of his eyesight and stuff like that but -- and in Jackson, Georgia. And my -- they picked cotton, but we weren' ; t allowed to pick cotton. So we were there, but we couldn' ; t pick cotton, so we had to do our -- we had to do all the preparation before everybody that went to pick cotton, so we had to get up and cook -- help cook breakfast. We had to do all the chores, we had to cook -- have lunch ready when they came back from the field, we had to have dinner ready. We had to do all of that, but we could never work the fields. Yeah. WALKER-HARPS:Which means that there had to have been an understanding between the Browns and your family for you-all to have been the allowed that freedom, that choice. TYUS:Yeah, oh, that they -- oh, the Browns knew that we weren' ; t -- we' ; re never allowed to milk cows and things like that. We were taught ; my dad taught us how to milk a cow and all of that. I always tell people that when I was five years old and going to the dairy in the morning once my brothers got on the bus and go to... Because the dairy was all -- a hundred yards away, (laughs) so I would go to the dairy when my dad is finished up milking the cows and stuff and the best thing. And I always wanted to help him and do all that. He goes, " ; No, this is not your job, this is my job." ; And I -- and he would always let me hose down the cow poop. I always, " ; Oh, this is --" ; because you could play in the water, you' ; re doing all that, and that was so much fun, but -- you know? But that' ; s about as much as we could do. We didn' ; t have to do anything else. (laughs) BAUSKE:When you went to college -- the first Olympic was what year of your college? TYUS:Nineteen sixty-four. I entered college in ' ; 63. BAUSKE:And so you were a sophomore TYUS:Yes. BAUSKE:And then the second Olympics was when you had graduated, the year? TYUS:Yeah. I went and graduated -- it took me five... I went to -- I graduated in ' ; 68, August of ' ; 68. BAUSKE:So you were -- and then after you graduated, what' ; d you do? TYUS:I came to Griffin and said goodbye and went to Los Angeles, California. (laughter) BAUSKE:The great diaspora. TYUS:I moved to LA when I -- I think I was 15, maybe 16, I can' ; t remember. We had outdoor championships for track and field in Los Angeles. And that' ; s the first time I' ; ve been on a plane, the first time, and seeing big California and, oh, gosh, and I just thought it was so beautiful and so big and it' ; s so clean. The streets are so wide and the palm trees. I just -- I -- " ; This is where I want to live." ; I said it then, and that' ; s what happened. I moved to California and lived there and worked -- started out working as a teacher in -- a PE teacher in middle school, in junior high, whew. I did that for a year, and that was, right, the end of that. (laughter) And, yeah, I' ; ve been there ever since, and I' ; ve had several different jobs. You know although I won three gold medals and been in the Olympics and set world records, there was no -- nobody giving me -- BAUSKE:Sponsorships -- TYUS:-- endorsements. That was not happening for black people and black women especially. They -- black women wouldn' ; t -- that was not going to be so that -- so that I never got any of those kinds of thing. But it was -- you know, I still had to live. I had to work, so I -- and so I had a lot of different kinds of job. I know I worked with ABC, I mean, in -- for the Olympics in Montreal. I did... Oh, my gosh, I can' ; t think of all those, but I' ; ve had several different jobs, and I retired about nine years ago. And before that, I worked in outdoor education with the LA school district. And what that was about is that they would bring fourth graders and fifth graders to a camp, and they would stay for a week. And we taught them the natural sciences, and we did it through -- everything was outdoors except sleeping. (laughs) And we hiked and we had... It was in the mountains. It was not that far from LA. It was only about a 40-minute drive to get to the mountains and where it was but... And we had creeks and streams, and they had different things, animals and frogs and things you could catch. Well, you catch them but it was more we taught them that they' ; re here, but we don' ; t kill them, we don' ; t ta-- you know we are looking to observe. So you -- this is nature, this is how nature is supposed to be, and we need to learn to take care of this planet or the planet is not going to take care of us. Yeah. So that -- I did that for 17 years. CAIN:Can I back to TSU? TYUS:Sure. CAIN:Talk about that college experience with Mr. Temple and the other ladies that you had around you. As Ellen indicated, during that period of time, you went to two Olympics. TYUS:Mm-hmm. CAIN:And I' ; m sure within that period of time, there were other meets and other activities going on. Just -- if you could just give us a brief -- an overview of that experience. TYUS:Well, my first -- my freshman year at Tennessee State was not the best year. My first quarter there, it was not. I was -- it was just mind-blowing for me, I mean, just and I -- going to practice and going to school and going... I made one -- the biggest mistake is taking a class after practice, which is at six o' ; clock in the evening, and you practiced. And it was literature, and I knew very little. And it' ; s very difficult to stay awake or to be concentra-- to be really focused on talking about Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales and all. Okay, so... (laughter) So I mean, and so I can remember Mr. Temple when he got my grades, he called me in, and he said, " ; Uh, you' ; re not going to be able to stay here with these grades. This is not acceptable." ; And he said, " ; You' ; re going to--" ; his favorite thing that I (remember?), " ; I' ; ll send you home, I' ; m going to send you home with that comic book and apple." ; And people are, " ; Oh, what that was all about with the comic book and apple?" ; Well, the apple was so you have something to eat, so you wouldn' ; t be hungry on your way home. And the comic book was so you have something to read, so your education can continue. (laughter) So he, " ; This is just not going to work. I just don' ; t --" ; I said, " ; I went to class, I' ; d go to cla-- I don' ; t know." ; " ; You can' ; t just go to class. You need to talk in class. I know you' ; re sitting there not --" ; because I was still in that non-- you know, those very few words. " ; And you have to talk in class, you need to do all that." ; I said, " ; Oh," ; and I said, " ; Well, you know, I got that, I can do better, I know I can do better," ; and he says, " ; Well, you' ; re going to have one more chance to do it better, you will have to make some real good grades." ; I said, " ; Okay," ; and I did. I mean that kind of broke the ice, and I realized, okay. And learned how -- now with the help also of the Tigerbelles there, the older women and how to set goals and how to reach them, how to study and how to go to the library and how to ask questions and when you don' ; t know the answer, you know? And you know I would -- I never felt like -- I always felt I could ask the question ; I just never wanted to. I just didn' ; t -- I mean I don' ; t know. I was -- like I said, I was -- even at that time, I was still suffering, I think, when I look back at it from my father' ; s death. I just -- it would -- it really took a toll on me, and I didn' ; t talk to anybody about it because then there was no going to no psychiatrist or anything. You' ; ve got to work that on out of your -- you know? Because we dint have the money so... And even if we did, I don' ; t know if I would' ; ve gone because I don' ; t talk anyway, so... But I think through the whole running and just being around other women, young ladies like myself that had had things happened to them, and they' ; ve gone. And the fact that, hey, here you are, you have an opportunity to get an education, and all you had to do is run and study, you should be able to do this, and that was it. And I still do it now. I' ; m a person that a lot stuff goes on in my head. I talk to myself in my head and say, you know, you should be able to do this. I said, " ; How could you not do this? You could do -- if you can go out there and run and practice and do all these things, you should be able to do these things." ; That' ; s going on. And with the help of that and Mr. Temple and also being exposed to so much more, being exposed to the world when there was travel, being able to be on a plane, being able to go to another country to hear another language and try to pick up words from that, those kinds of -- you know that -- BRAMAN:When was your first international trip? TYUS:My first trip was to Russia, yeah. My first trip was to, oh -- was it Moscow? F:Yeah. TYUS:Yeah, Moscow. BRAMAN:And how old were you? TYUS:I was 18. Mm-hmm, yeah. So that was my first trip. And so it was just called a growth period, I mean, right? And I still say I' ; m still growing. I mean I learned -- I -- that' ; s -- if nothing else, I say to young people, " ; That' ; s something you have to do. You have to go through -- you need to learn from our own experience, you know just... And try to figure out what it -- not so much what it is you want to do but to understand your surroundings, understand what' ; s going on in the world." ; And Mr. Temple would always say to us that " ; It doesn' ; t -- you go out there and you win all these medals and -- or you get all these accolades and all that, but you still need to be able to communicate with people because you never know who you' ; re going to be sitting next to. And you need to have a conversation other than sports. You need to be able to be aware of where -- what things are, what' ; s happening in the world, what' ; s happening in your country, what' ; s happening at your school, what happ-- be able to talk, be able to converse." ; And he said, " ; And, Tyus, you need to be able to do that with more than four or five words," ; so... (laughter) So I had to learn to do those things, and I think it started my freshman -- after my first quarter at Tennessee State, I started, but it was a slow process. I' ; m just getting to where I am now. (laughs) CAIN:During that period of time, it was a period of unrest in the country. TYUS:Mm-hmm. CAIN:You have mentioned earlier about civil rights here in Griffin, but it was happening all over the country. You went to ' ; 68, and that was a big -- that was probably the best Olympic team in history, okay, in my opinion. That -- it was an awesome Olympic team. But it also had people like John Carlos and Tommie Jones -- BAUSKE:Tommie Smith. CAIN:Tommie Smith, excuse me, Tommie Smith who gave the Black Power' ; s fist, and there were a lot of stuff going on probably behind the scenes at that time. Talk about that, talk about your -- if you were involved in any kind of way, talk about any involvement in local civil rights politics. TYUS:Yeah. Well, I was down there and involved (inaudible) any local in Griffin or anything like that. I know my mom was part of the -- WALKER-HARPS:Yeah. She was a strong supporter. TYUS:Yeah, so -- WALKER-HARPS:I think Marie -- TYUS:-- (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) WALKER-HARPS:-- Marie Tyus well -- did well as she could. TYUS:See, I just know that she was relating with the NAACP and worked really hard with that, I know, but I was away at school, so... And I was at Tennessee State, and I -- you know Mr. Temple would always -- he was always trying to prepare us and have us know what was going on. He said, " ; Now, you' ; re going to go -- you go to the Olympics or you go, what, out of the country, and you will see that people in other countries definitely appreciate you more than you' ; ll be appreciated when you go back home. And you go to the Olympics, you' ; re winning medals or whatever, you come back, and then you' ; re still going to be a second-class citizen. But that' ; s something that should never let you down. You also, so, have to fight for your rights still, have to know what -- you need to be aware. That' ; s where the education come in, so when you get out to talk about it, you could talk on it intelligently and express your way -- express how you feel and what' ; s going on." ; So it was a lot of -- you know? And you also had the older Tigerbelles who had experienced a lot of that and had gone to a lot of things. And there' ; s nothing like being on a trip going South, further South in -- from Nashville and having to go to the bathroom, and you can' ; t. So we had to pull alongside the road and run into the bushes. And so we... And then that was experienced by us and it -- that was a sign of the -- that' ; s what was going on at the time. It doesn' ; t mean that that should have been, but that' ; s what was going on. Sixty-- in ' ; 64 in the Olympics, going to Tokyo, the USA team were there, and when you go, they send your equipment like starting blocks for us. We had starting blocks, so they sent -- the USA team sent us, and they sent starting blocks for the team. We get to Tokyo and the male coach -- oh, the ' ; 64 team, Mr. Temple was our coach for the women -- would not let us use -- the women use the starting blocks. And Mr. Temple is like, " ; What are you talking about, we can' ; t use the start--? These blocks are for us. They' ; re for Americans. We are Americans, what do you mean?" ; " ; Nope, you can' ; t use them. Your girls can' ; t use the starting block." ; Now, what kind of craziness is that? Here it is, the USA team, we' ; re all -- USA is on your chest and everything, and we' ; re running for the USA. When they start counting the medals, the me-- our medals going to really co-- you know, they' ; re going to count our medals as part of U-- But he said we couldn' ; t use the blocks. And then, we go to practice one morning, and he' ; s arguing with this coach. Look at me, he' ; s like he didn' ; t -- couldn' ; t understand. We had to, " ; Well, you can use the Japanese starting blocks." ; And Bob Hayes was there, and he saw Mr. Temple and he then went up and asked him, " ; Well, what' ; s going on?" ; And he told him, and he said, " ; Oh, crazy man, they can use my blocks any time. They' ; re not my blocks ; they could -- they should just use them. What kind of craziness is this?" ; So that was the kind of stuff we had. And you say was there racism, was there sexism? I say both -- (laughs) BAUSKE:Yeah, both. TYUS:-- intertwined, you know? So those are the kind of -- those -- that was one experience and then you -- that was like ' ; 64. Sixty-eight, there was a whole lot of unrest going on in the world. It was not just in the US, you know? And then -- but when I was talking about going to the Olympic games and all on this -- the whole thing about South Africa, so athletes were... Well, it started out in San Jose with Tommie and Carlos with the whole not going to the games and protests for unfair -- on the unfair treatment of humans all over the world not just black people. It was all, you know it was human rights, it was the human rights project and... But we decided to go to the games and then when we get to the games, no one could decide on what, if anything, we were going to do as far as the protest is concerned. And after having meeting after meeting, it got to, okay, we don' ; t know and then you can do whatever you want to do. That' ; s what it came down to. I chose to wear black shorts and then Carlos and Tommie did their -- because I ran the hundred before they ran that 200 in that. So that was my protest to, what, all the -- what was going on in not just America but all over. And also, when we went to Mexico City, the slaughter of the students there, so... And then, when Tommie and Carlos did their big fist raising, what they did, it was so powerful, there was really not too much for anybody else to do. It said a lot, it said a lot to what was going on, and it did. And even to this day, here we are over 50 years later, and it' ; s more powerful now than it was then because... And they are looked upon now as legends and all those things and then they were kicking them out the village, trying to kick them out of the -- out of Mexico, which they couldn' ; t, you know, want to take their medals, which they couldn' ; t. (laughs) But these -- this is all the propaganda that was going on at the time saying -- to try to tell people, " ; Oh, they -- you can' ; t do this, you can' ; t, this is not the place to do it. You could --" ; you know? It is the place to do it. It was something that the world could hear and see. And now, so the Mexico Olympics was the first time it was ever televised live, so it was -- everybody got to see what was going on. It was not like we can chop this up and present it the way we want it. So I have always been an advocate for human rights, and I really have been for the -- with women' ; s rights. I mean I grew up with not having any, being told that muscles are ugly on women and no man is going to want you because who wants someone with muscle or who wants a woman that can beat them at something? (laughter) I would say that and -- but because of my parents and my brothers is that that never fazed me. I still want to be the best. I still wanted to do whatever I needed to do. And I just think that you think about what Mr. Temple has done with the Tigerbelles and if we weren' ; t black women, how well would that be celebrated now? What would come -- you know everybody would know about it. I mentioned very briefly that I wrote a book, and it' ; s called Tigerbelle: The Wyomia Tyus Story, and it' ; s talking about what the Tigerbelles had done, what those women had done and how they changed the world, but nobody has gotten credit. And Mr. Temple -- and what Mr. Temple has done and not truly gotten the credit that he deserved -- he' ; s dead and gone. He used to say all the time, " ; I want my roses while I' ; m alive," ; and that was one reason I started writing my book, but he died before I could even finish because I told him I was going to write a book. He would say, " ; Oh, Tyus, I can' ; t believe you are going to write a book. You don' ; t say no more than five words." ; (laughter) But I did that, so I wrote the book to get that publicized. CAIN:You know, that ought... And I guess -- TYUS:Did you want -- did you want to say something? BRAMAN:Well, could I have a (inaudible)? CAIN:Yeah, sure. BRAMAN:You had been (inaudible). But what I wanted to do -- did you tell me about the girls from Texas? TYUS:Oh, no, I need to tell them that too. BRAMAN:That' ; s only -- that' ; s fine. I just wanted to talk about the girls from Texas. Go ahead, (inaudible). TYUS:Okay. The gi-- well, in nine-- what was it -- ' ; 60-- BRAMAN:Sixty-four? TYUS:Sixty-four, yeah, thank you. (laughs) In 1964, going to the Olympics, but there was a track team out of Texas, all white girls and the coach was... She had coached the Russian team when I went the first time in ' ; 63. Now, they were called the Texas Bouffants. And they had all -- (laughs) they had all this big hair and all of this and -- oh, and they just said, oh, they were going to go to the Olympics, and they were going to win. Now, we have ran -- we ran against -- we ran against them in meets, and they never broke a tape. They only felt the tape once we broke it, and they were so far back, they cut them or whatever. But they got put on Sports Illustrated cover. They have never put -- yeah -- BAUSKE:The Bouffants. TYUS:But they' ; ve never put a black woman on Sports Illustrated at that time on that cover. And we -- and this is -- Wilma Rudolph had won three gold medals, the first person to ever do that, and she had never been put on the cover of Sports Illustrated. But here' ; s a man that put over 40 women on the team -- on different Olympic teams and won 23 medals, more than a lot of countries, you know, and never been put on it. And -- but they were talking about -- and in the interview, in the, oh, article, they are saying, " ; Well, Wyomia Tyus ran a -- say, 11.5 seconds in a hundred meters and such and such has run a 11.4." ; (Was she saying?) race with her? (laughs) But it was all the play -- but they never talked to us. They -- all the article was about them. And so that' ; s another sign of -- what -- how racist and didn' ; t care so much about what we as bla-- all they want to do count our medals and did that very proudly. But when we come back home, there was nothing like that. Same thing in -- another example was the fact that we were in it and we came back from the Olympics in ' ; 64 and then we came back, and Edith my best friend, she -- well, they had to... Edith went to Tennessee State, and she is from, what, Atlanta, and she went to Archer High School. And they picked her to win three gold medals like Wilma had done in ' ; 60-- in 1960, but I beat Edith in the hundred meters. I never beat Edith before, but I did that day in the hundred meters. And we come back to Georgia, they give us a parade in Atlanta, and it' ; s only in the black section the day we went to Atlanta. It' ; s only in the black section. CAIN:So it was a parade through black Atlanta? TYUS:Mm-hmm, like Auburn and down -- CAIN:(Auburn Street)? TYUS:Mm-hmm, right down the street, but they didn' ; t take us nowhere else. They took us, and that was it. It was like... It' ; s over. But they had all -- my mom and Edith' ; s mom was there, we had our family there. But we only went into the black neighborhood, within the black (inaudible). WALKER-HARPS:What about when you had the parade here, was that a regular parade or route? I don' ; t remember. TYUS:Yeah, yeah, the parade here? Oh, yeah. There were not too many places you' ; d go in Griffin. (laughter) But, yeah, the parade was downtown and all that, yes. But, yeah, so it was... But, again, it comes from like what Mr. Temple and what he was saying, you know, that, " ; You are doing this, so you want to get an education and you..." ; And he had then taught us well, you know that no matter how well you do it (inaudible), and that' ; s not what you -- you know you are doing it because you like it, you' ; re doing it because you get -- you want the education. That -- you know? CAIN:The fact is the Tigerbelles and Coach Temple and TSU and that program at the time were no less than the kinds of -- did no less than the kind of things that Jackie Robinson did. Because it was -- they were doing it for women, and they were doing it for African American women, and it was a forefront kind of program. TYUS:Yes. You would think that even in this day and time still, and you know like there' ; s so many... I mean I don' ; t really talk about it because there' ; s so many things I just think that they should' ; ve done or could' ; ve done or could' ; ve honored in the way of honoring Mr. Temple, but it did not happen. Because you think about -- you could not name, what, football coach, basketball coach, baseball coach, any coach that has done and accomplished as much as he has and in the graduation rate and in -- CAIN:Forty Olympians you said. TYUS:Yes, 40 Olympians, any -- any -- well since but as in -- you know? And I will always believe this because we were women and black because those two are together -- BAUSKE:Deadly combination, yeah. TYUS:Yeah. And you say, well, which is which? Well, it depends on who' ; s looking at you. They look at you because you' ; re black or they look at you because you' ; re a woman, right? But they both... You' ; re looking at it at the same -- that' ; s the same, and so... If -- BAUSKE:The Bouffants are killing me. (laughter) I mean if it' ; s any comfort, I' ; ve heard of you many times, I' ; d never heard of the Bouffants before. (laughter) Just -- TYUS:Well, you better not let that be the end. (laughs) No, but I just could not... Mr. Temple couldn' ; t believe it, we couldn' ; t believe it, but here it is. It was Olympic year is ' ; 64. Those gi-- I don' ; t even know if they came to the trial, the Olympic Trials because in the Olympic Trials, you have to place one, two, or three to get on the Olympic team. And not only that, you have to hit a certain standard. Say like for the (inaudible), they -- you have to run a certain time in order to be in it, you know be there. Because there sometimes, like they take the last -- I think what they -- I don' ; t know if they still do it -- whatever, the eighth place person in the hundred in the last Olympics, whatever their time was, you have to meet that time before you go to the Olympic Trials. Anyhow, so I don' ; t even -- I can' ; t... When I think of the Olympic Trials in ' ; 64, I don' ; t remember ever -- I didn' ; t remember seeing a white person, a white girl in that race. There could' ; ve been but I don' ; t see behind me so... (laughter) WALKER-HARPS:At the time, you won the your medals, how were you received in Griffin as your home particularly by -- I know we were receptive, but were you received totally by the white community? TYUS:Well -- WALKER-HARPS:Do you remember? TYUS:-- I don' ; t really truly remember but I... When I think about ' ; 64 and I came back to Griffin, they did give me a parade and all of that, the city of Griffin or the county, what, or both did that. And I think after the parade, I went to Fairmont, and they had a banquet -- a little get-together there at Fairmont. That was in ' ; 64. Sixty-eight, I -- they -- there was a parade and all of that too, but it' ; s -- they were... You know so -- been so long ago. I always felt very welcomed by the people, said people here in Griffin and in Spalding County. They always -- I mean for them to build a park for -- and name it in my honor, I -- that to me is welcoming. I mean I can remember when they... That was ' ; 96 so that' ; s 1996 that they -- that... And then I can' ; t say who it was, because I don' ; t remember, saying to me, " ; We didn' ; t do really great by you after the ' ; 64, ' ; 68 Olympics, but we all hope that this really makes up for what --" ; and then to me, that' ; s something to be said, and that wasn' ; t a black person speaking, so... And it' ; s like -- F:That' ; s -- TYUS:-- that' ; s more than -- you know that' ; s something to be said. And just the fact that they would name a park after me, 168 acres, and I' ; m still living, so... I mean I -- you know? And it was great because Mr. Temple was still alive, and he came here for the dedication and so it' ; s -- it was like... I mean to me, the people in Griffin have already -- they di-- it was the times and stuff, but as time went on, for them to say, " ; Hey, look, this is what we think of you." ; WALKER-HARPS:And is there a message that you' ; d like to leave for young people today? Is there anything special you would like to say to the youngsters coming up today that might make an impact that you would hope would make an impact on them? TYUS:Well, the message would be education, number one. And I don' ; t think everybody has to go to school. I don' ; t believe everybody have to go to a college or a university. Education, just make sure you' ; re educating yourself in about what' ; s going on in the world and where -- what are the issues are in the world, and that you could be able to speak on anything that you would like to speak on. And that -- just the fact that there' ; s -- people have -- we stand on so many shoulders. WALKER-HARPS:Shoulders. TYUS:And that' ; s how I look when I think of the Tigerbelle. I stand on so many shoulders. They' ; ve done so many things, and they made a lot more sacrifices. And I look at my parents, and I would always want to be standing so strong for them because I know how much they sacrificed for me. And then for young people in this day and time, you -- there are always going to be obstacles in life, and there' ; s no way of getting around it and there' ; s always... And you just have to be able to be strong and be positive. And sometimes when you work as hard as you work, it doesn' ; t come out the way you want it to come out, but that doesn' ; t mean you stop, and that doesn' ; t mean you give up. That just means you just continue and you continue, and hopefully, you could... It' ; s like, I guess, a tumbleweed or something growing bigger and get people more involved. And just being more expressive and learn ways to talk to each other and talk to people. And I think that' ; s the most key, that we need to know how to talk to each other. Just because we' ; re of a different race or a different view, a different ethnicity, a different culture, that doesn' ; t have to be put down. We need to be -- and when I say we, I' ; m talking about the world. I' ; m not just only talking about here in Griffin and... Because we all -- in order for this world to continue to grow and be a better place, because it' ; s definitely -- my dad said it was going to change, and I see a lot of change from what he said to now, but we still need a lot more. And that we -- yeah, the fight, you can' ; t give up the fight. You always have to stay in the fight, right? I mean that' ; s the big thing, you know? You always have to stay in the fight. WALKER-HARPS:Okay. Anything else ladies, gentlemen? BAUSKE:A quick question, your brothers, did they get to college? TYUS:No. Just me, I' ; m the only one to go, yes. Mm-hmm. BAUSKE:But your nieces and nephews have gone, right? TYUS:Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean like I said, things change. I was the only one to go from my family and then my -- and my kids had gone. My grandkids, I' ; ve got two grandkids in school -- going to schools I would have never... I mean I have a grandson that' ; s at UCLA, and I have a daughter at Cal State Seaside and they... And you know what you have -- you know? I just see the changes. And I was the first to go and then it' ; s just been going from then on. WALKER-HARPS:And your niece (Terry?) is an anchor lady at WS -- is it (WSV?) in Savannah? And that' ; s South Georgia, and that would not have been when I came in ' ; 61. Nineteen sixty-one, it would not have been anything dreamed about, and to think that she is one of those black women who graces the evening news -- TYUS:Yeah, she' ; s the anchor -- WALKER-HARPS:-- and the radio station. TYUS:-- for them, mm-hmm. And Tina went to Tennessee State. She went out -- she tried out for the track team. I kept telling her don' ; t, but she did. (laughs) WALKER-HARPS:Okay. TYUS:Because I mean it' ; s -- to me and Coach Temple, it is a -- that was -- it' ; s hard because he was in there and -- M:He was a (overlapping dialogue ; inaudible) TYUS:-- a no-nonsense and is like it' ; s my way, highway, if you don' ; t come my way, you have to be at the highway type thing. And to me, it was kind of like my parents in a sense, but he was -- but he always wanted the best. And you have to have a certain temperament to be -- you had to have one to be under him. And for me, it worked perfect because I will not say anything to him anyway, and he was not -- and the stuff he said to me, it was kind of like if I didn' ; t want to hear, it' ; s like -- it was like the duck with the wet deal, would just roll right off my back, so to speak. But I always felt that he has some of those strict rules and he has some things that he could' ; ve changed, but it wouldn' ; t have been him, and he didn' ; t, and that' ; s not -- you know? Like, you know, you -- he made you... I' ; d like to say he made you tough. He made you know that, hey, this world is not going to be kind and all to you. You need to be prepared for everything, mentally, physically, all of that, education. And for us, the education was it. That' ; s what it was. And still it is, but I think with all the new things that young people can get involved in, and they can learn trades and they could -- and with technology, with technology, you don' ; t always have to go to school. Some people just have that techie mind and -- (laughs) but you have to stick with it. It' ; s not -- you know? You would like for it to be real easy, but it' ; s not. Sometimes when things come easy for you, you don' ; t -- it doesn' ; t work out. CAIN:One last -- WALKER-HARPS:And I know -- CAIN:-- question I have -- WALKER-HARPS:-- we have kept you longer than I said. Do we have enough time, do you have enough time to (inaudible)? No, okay, all right, your last question. CAIN:I was just... You left in ' ; 63 to go to TSU. You come back today, it' ; s -- to Griffin, what do you think about the change in Griffin from then into now? TYUS:Well, you know, my... It' ; s a big change because it' ; s -- I look at Griffin, and I come back, and I mean I' ; m in a store and people say, " ; Oh, you Wyomia Tyus? You' ; re the one at the park over there? Is that their park, they named a park?" ; And then to think that when I was six years old, I couldn' ; t go in -- couldn' ; t even go into a white school, I couldn' ; t go. I had to be on a bus for an hour to go to my -- to go to an all-black school, and just that it' ; s a growth. I see a lot of growth here and I -- you know? And the fact that... I mean I' ; m just a lot of times still shocked and surprised by the fact that -- not just in Griffin but all over that they think I have something. You know what I have to say or what I have been through could help someone or encourage other people to do it. I mean to me that' ; s just -- it' ; s mind-blowing a lot of times that... I mean I was just do-- I just did what I liked doing, and I was one of the few that got chosen. I mean, all of us have those talents. Like I tell young kids all the time, everybody got a gold medal in them. You may not get to go to the Olympics, or the national anthem maybe not be played for you, but you have a gold medal inside of you, and you could make that gold medal work the way you want it to work. And just that Griffin has grown tremendously. And if you live here -- I don' ; t know if (inaudible) people lived, but you live here, you see the growth. And I know people say, " ; It could grow more." ; Of course, so can the world, so... But as I' ; ve said before, Griffin, a double honor naming the Wyomia Tyus Park is just I' ; m -- it' ; s -- I' ; m always speechless, so... How do you -- I had to say thank you, appreciate it, and this is great, and it gives other young kids an opportunity to see what could happen to them. CAIN:Knowing Griffin, there probably was some politics that went on to make that happen. And so I don' ; t know what that was. Jewel might know but -- BAUSKE:She knows, look at her face. (laughter) WALKER-HARPS:Oh. Right -- CAIN:To get that through, well deserved not saying that -- but somebody had to initiate it some place, and it had to get voted on some place I would guess. TYUS:It did, that' ; s true. And then I don' ; t know all the politics, but anything we do, anything that' ; s -- well there' ; s going to be a park after me -- named after me or anything, (look at the?) -- oh well, we won' ; t go to that -- what' ; s going on. But just look at what' ; s going on in the world, you know? Politics is -- there' ; s like a good example like when they were talking about not going to the Olympics, and they said, " ; Well, you shouldn' ; t bring politics into like -- in something -- into the Olympics. The Olympics is for this--" ; well, politics is they always count medals. The US is the first one when if you don' ; t have a medal, you -- and if they' ; re getting beat and stuff like that. Look at what happened in -- what year was it that the USA team, basketball team lost the gold medal? BRAMAN:It was in Munich. CAIN:Was it John Thompson. BRAMAN:No, it was in Munich -- CAIN:Oh -- TYUS:Munich. CAIN:-- you know in ' ; 72. TYUS:Yeah, they lost -- BRAMAN:So ' ; 72? CAIN:Mm-hmm -- TYUS:Mm-hmm. Se-- CAIN:-- seventy-two. TYUS:No, se-- okay. They lost the gold medal in the basketball team. And guess what, they came back here and they (started letting?) pros play basketball. So politics is everywhere, and it' ; s not going to go anywhere. I mean from this -- yeah, this country, world was built on politics and all of that, you know? And there are good people in politics somewhere, you know? WALKER-HARPS:Mm-hmm. TYUS:You know and then -- WALKER-HARPS:I have not -- BRAMAN:You have your own Jimmy Carter that canceled the whole ' ; 80 game. CAIN:Yeah -- BRAMAN:Yeah, the ' ; 80 game. BAUSKE:-- in Mar-- yeah, look at that. TYUS:Mm-hmm. Sure. And so there' ; s always going to be politics and the cold war and all, you name it, there' ; s going to be stuff going on. And as long as there' ; s somebody out there who knows that there are some rights that we can do. And I' ; m just -- like I said, I' ; ve been grateful that that fact that they did the whole park and named it after me. And it gives the people of Griffin, people of color to look at this in Griffin and say, " ; Wow, see that can happen to her, certain things can happen for me." ; WALKER-HARPS:I hope that that was stressed -- that' ; s -- was stressed by in the schools. We did not have an opportunity -- you did not have an opportunity to get into our schools as we would like to have had. However, I' ; m hoping that and I had thought about it until we started talking about it a minute ago. But to get the message out particularly to the schools who are in the Fairmont -- that are in the Fairmont area that they make their children aware of the connection between the Tyus Park and you even if they have to use the Griffin Daily newspaper to deal with all or whatever. They need to make sure that they make that connection, and I will pursue that. TYUS:Yeah. Well, I wanted to go to the schools when I first was asked to come here. That was one of my first things is that in order to come, I would go... This -- I wrote a book, I feel like my book talk about struggles and obstacles and friendship and hard work and all of those kinds of things. And I feel that I would like for it to be in every school library. I like to be -- and that' ; s what I said, " ; I' ; d like for it be in every school library, I would like for it to be in the library here in Griffin, and I would like to have an opportunity to also share my book with the public in Griffin." ; And these -- my -- and I will be willing to go to the schools, but the schools never got back to me. When they got back to me, it was a day before I was getting on a place to come here. WALKER-HARPS:That was this -- by this trip? TYUS:Mm-hmm. WALKER-HARPS:Oh, really? TYUS:Mm-hmm. WALKER-HARPS:Do you have any idea who you corresponded with? TYUS:Well, everything was sent out -- (laughter) well, you know Peter Phelps? WALKER-HARPS:Yes, I know. TYUS:Well, Peter sent it to everybody. He sent it to the school system. He sent it to -- who' ; s the superintendent. WALKER-HARPS:Okay, that' ; s important -- TYUS:He sent -- WALKER-HARPS:-- it is important at this time because I just finished listening to -- spent my morning listening to the school system talk about that greatness and I just finished telling them. But a segment of your (inaudible) has been left out. TYUS:Yeah, but they -- WALKER-HARPS:-- and, oh -- and he was fine. He came up to me afterwards and said, " ; Well, you make it very difficult to -- for me to get always a favorable reception when I come to EPI next week." ; And I said, " ; Well I --" ; he said, " ; But I know you do what you do." ; I said that " ; You' ; re right. I' ; m Jewel, and I do what I do." ; So that' ; s another issue because we were really, really wanting -- matter of fact, we thought it was going to happen. TYUS:No, it wasn' ; t -- WALKER-HARPS:But that was -- TYUS:They put it in the paper there as if I agreed -- WALKER-HARPS:And they -- TYUS:-- but it was ne-- WALKER-HARPS:-- really tried to that, yes. TYUS:-- that was not. But I talked to... I met the superintendent, and I just expressed to him and said, " ; Look, I won' ; t do a little 15 minute here, 15 minute there. I think that is wrong. I think you' ; re cheating the students. If I' ; m going to talk to students, then I would like to have a platform where I go to school. Now, I' ; m not there for 15 minutes, got to run over here for 15 minutes, what if somebody want to ask a question? I don' ; t have the time for that. But I am willing to come back and we -- well, we would have to talk about how we' ; re going to do all of it. I' ; m willing to come back and spend a few days here in Griffin and going to the schools, and it' ; s all for the school. But I am, but you know, I can' ; t do -- you can' ; t just... This has been set up, and it' ; s been set up for two months before I got here and you knew because they were -- those were the first. This was, what, first on my list of things to do." ; And I have all my emails from Peter saying who he has contacted and the letters he had sent too, but it never came to fruition. WALKER-HARPS:You just set my agenda for -- to me -- to all these issues that I' ; ve had to deal with, thank you. But this is the kind of thing that I' ; ll represent to them this morning. You want, you claim, and you say the fact that you want total community support and whatever is being done is being done for the entire community. Yet in the same voice, you backtrack and you are -- you make two lanes. But anyway, that' ; s a story for another day -- TYUS:But, yeah, but that' ; s -- WALKER-HARPS:-- but I' ; ll -- TYUS:-- it could be happening any time because I was at Georgia Tech for like, what, last year, I was there. WALKER-HARPS:Yes, I remember. TYUS:I was up there, and I did a whole thing for them. And they did -- it was A Conversation with Wyomia Tyus, and they had it open to the public -- oh well, I don' ; t know, but -- you know? WALKER-HARPS:One of our main problems here is motivation. There' ; s a lack of -- TYUS:Well, we got the University of Georgia, I can do some. (laughter) BRAMAN:Absolutely, and I' ; ll just say that that we are open here to bring you here to have a conversation with you if it' ; s with schoolkids, if it was -- is it -- if it' ; s with adults, if it' ; s with both. TYUS:Yeah, we could do both. BRAMAN:We -- TYUS:Yeah, one at one time you know to -- BAUSKE:He' ; s the guy who can say yes and can set it up because he' ; s continuing education on the Griffin Campus. TYUS:With that -- BAUSKE:-- Campus. TYUS:-- I know. BRAMAN:Yes. TYUS:Well, I' ; m available. I' ; m going to give you my card. BRAMAN:Okay, absolutely. BAUSKE:He can make that happen. (laughter) WALKER-HARPS:Yeah, we can do that, and he can do that, and we can help you do that. BRAMAN:Okay. WALKER-HARPS:I can help you in many ways. And then I can get sororities (in return to do this?), to chip in if you have to have something else, but we could make it happen. TYUS:Yeah. BRAMAN:We' ; ll make it happen. TYUS:Okay. I haven' ; t signed these papers yet. No, (laughs) I' ; m sorry. (laughs) But I' ; m just saying -- but -- you know? Because like when the University of Georgia -- or not University of Georgia -- Georgia Tech contacted me, it was like, " ; Oh well, sure I could do that." ; (laughter) " ; I' ; m okay with that." ; But the -- but it was really a nice, quiet -- they did it -- where are my glasses -- on a Sunday? Was it Sun-- a Saturday? I can' ; t remember. But you can choose when you want to. (laughs) WALKER-HARPS:You want to -- TYUS:And, yes, we can stay in contact, okay, so -- WALKER-HARPS:Okay -- BRAMAN:That' ; s cool -- WALKER-HARPS:-- let' ; s -- BRAMAN:I' ; ll go ahead and close this. WALKER-HARPS:Let' ; s close out, and we' ; ll take care of that. TYUS:Okay. WALKER-HARPS:We are so indebted and grateful to have you come, Wyomia, to -- or share with us and to share your life story for the African American Oral History Project, which will be in the Richard B. Russell Library on the campus of Athens, University of Georgia. You did not have to share, you did not -- you could come to Griffin and not share with us, and we recognize that, and we are grateful for you. Any other comments ladies, gentlemen? F:Thank you so much for your time. I really hate that I missed listening to you, but I will listen back to hear your story. TYUS:Got it. F:So thank you so much for coming and for your time. We appreciate it. TYUS:Well, thanks for asking me and thanks for letting me be a part of this. And I am -- you know, just to be a native of Griffin and have my family and my grandkids and my distant relatives when I' ; m done could -- be able to see it and hear about it, great. Thank you. BRAMAN:Thank you -- WALKER-HARPS:Thank you -- BRAMAN:-- very much. WALKER-HARPS:-- very much. (It was just real?) -- BRAMAN:What' ; s with this -- BAUSKE:Did you close it, Richie? BRAMAN:Oh, possibly. WALKER-HARPS:Oh -- END OF AUDIO FILE Resources may be used under the guidelines described by the U.S. Copyright Office in Section 107, Title 17, United States Code (Fair use). Parties interested in production or commercial use of the resources should contact the Russell Library for a fee schedule. audio 0 purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL418GAA/findingaid
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Griffin, Georgia
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103 minutes
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https://purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL418GAA-024/ohms
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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Interview with Wyomia Tyus, September 26, 2019
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RBRL418GAA-024
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Wyomia Tyus
Jewel Walker-Harps
Art Cain
Ellen Bauske
Rich Braman
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audio
oral histories
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African American women
Women athletes
Discrimination
Civil rights
United States--Civil rights
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Wyomia Tyus grew up in Griffin, Georgia where she attended Anne-Shockley Elementary School and Fairmont High School. She later attended Tennessee State University where she ran, and competed in the 1964 and 1968 Olympics. In this interview Tyus talks about discrimination, attending University, her time in the Olympics, and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1970s.
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2019-09-26
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sound
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Griffin, Georgia
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