TRANSCRIPTION
This seems like a very old picture, who are these people?
This is a picture of Simpson (Popeye) and Molly my great-great-grandparents, she was from east Texas Corsicana, she was not a good person, she hated anyone of color, if anyone of her children went to church she would send one of her sons to bring them home, she was very anti-god, she did not believe that people of color had souls…We lived on my Uncle Ed's ranch. My uncle Ed was married to Martina, she was from Mexico, she had come from Mexico to be a maid for my great-great-grandmother Molly DeSpain and she, was a bigot, a very much a bigot… she had come to south Texas from east Texas and her grandchildren… her parents and grandparents had been slave owners and she did not believe that people of color, whether they were Hispanics or blacks had souls, they were just like cows and dogs and she raised all 7 of her sons and her one daughter to believe that and it was ok to kill them if you wanted to… ya'know… no big deal. In fact, one of her favorite stories, she liked to entertain her grandchildren… one of her favorite stories that I've heard all my life was that umm… her brother Dave had gutted a black slave, she always said.. because he didn't call him sir and she was there as a small child and watched them pick the grass and stuff out of his guts and put them all back in him and sewed him up but he died about 3 days later of gangrene… she saw that as a badge of honor on her brother… well, when she would tell me I was like (shock)… well she didn't tell me but my dad would tell me, but she would tell it to her grandchildren that her brother was the good guy and the slave who didn't say "master" to him was the bad guy. When I got older, much older close to 40, I decided to do family research and she was born after the Civil War, so the man she watched her brother Dave knifed and killed was a free black, and he killed him with no repercussions, simply because the man didn't call him "sir"… even though the black man was a free man no one was prosecuted him for that… umm, she hired a maid from Mexico as I said Martina, Martina married her oldest son Ed. Uncle Ed's wife had died in childbirth on the ranch all by herself, and Martina was probably, uncle Ed was probably 50… she was probably 30? And… maybe younger, maybe 20, but once they got married, she (Molly) never again spoke to Martina, Martina was never again allowed in her house. My grandmother and Martina were best friends and so… I adore Martina. Uncle Ed later had his bother uncle Sampson who was murdered… anyway the guy who had murdered his name was Jess Braggs, and Uncle Ed who was a deputy sheriff, he was 60 years old and he ran into Jess in a rodeo in Tilden and umm… killed him. And Jess had grown up in his ranch, but he went back to his car he got out a rifle, he walks up right behind Jess, he was sitting on the sidebars of a trailer watching the rodeo, calls him by name and shoots him, then he lays down his gun, puts his hands behind his head and told the sheriff "I'm Ed DeSpain, I have just killed Jess Braggs" and they arrested him. He had sold one of his ranches to buy a Judge. The judge still gave him 20 years. The judge died before he got out of prison. Family stories say that if the judge had still been alive, he would've probably killed him for betraying him.
Describe a typical day of your youth
Des… You're talking about my elementary school… high school?
Umm, let's go for high school
High school; typical day in high school is I got up around 5 o'clock, make coffee, went outside usually if the weather was permitting, and I would go out front to get the newspaper was in the backyard with the cat 'cause my parents didn't let the cat in the house and drink coffee and read the news paper cover to cover. I would go get dressed, go to school, umm, at school we had a full day even if you were a senior you didn't get to go home half a day you went into all the classes that you were supposed to take, I always had a math and English, a history, umm… I took Home Economics, you know where you learn how to saw and cook, umm, I took PE, I was a member of the… what we called Pep Squad, you know we went to all the ball games and cheered, we wore the uniforms, we made them signs that we hanged in the hall, after school when I would go home, I walked to and from school because I lived close, I would... go home, I would have chores to do, I would quickly do my chores, I would fix myself a cheese sandwich, and then I would go back. I was a member of a number of clubs, like Home Economics… and then I was a member of Future Teachers and I would go up and we would have a meeting I went to church every Wednesday night and every Sunday night so I would go there… I was a member of… another club that's name has gone out of my head, but I didn't do music or anything like that, umm, I usually tried my junior and senior year to find somewhere to go, because by that point in time I had a little brother and sister and my mother was working so when she would come home from work dad had quit working in the oil field and so he would work in a… he was the one running an industrial supply place where you bought things for oil field so he had a lot of paper work, dad he was very dyslexic so mother would go and help him and then we would have to take care of Dorothy and Lloyd if I were there, Kay and I cooked stuff for every night, my little sister and I, we ate lots of tacos and lots of chalupas 'cause they're easy and we didn't like doing full blown five course meal every night, but umm, I stayed involved in a lot of things, I think I was in this… I don't know, couple of other clubs, but anyways I liked to have somewhere to go most nights so I wouldn't have to be home babysitting, and my parents were very strict, I wasn't allowed to just go to a friend's house, I never went to a friend's house, well I won't say never, I rarely, and in then it has to be a friend of mine that their parents where friends of my parents, so that narrowed the list down and umm, I… would…. Ah, Kay and I on Saturdays before we got a washer and dryer, well we didn't get a dryer, before we got a washer, we would have to take my brother and sister and go walk about five blocks to the laundry mat, do the laundry, bring it home, hang it on the line, be sure to took it in fold it and put it away, those were just the normal chores, I mean, that was just a given and taking care of Dorothy and Lloyd but anyway, we didn't have a car dad did not let us get our drivers license till we graduated high school, everywhere we went we walked, we went to store from home we walked, and everywhere we went we had to take Dorothy and Lloyd unless it was something to do with school, and that's why I tried to get a lot of stuff to do at school, that's the only way I was allowed to be around other people without my parents going, we went and spent a lot of time every Sunday afternoon and every Saturday we visited relatives, up until my grandparents died we visited them everyday might not have been but 10 or 15 minutes but visited them every day, but my grandparents died in their 50's so… I wasn't very old when they died. I was in 5th grade in the last one time, umm… I had a little job on cleaning the church, they wouldn't… I cleaned, I would go up on Saturdays but they wouldn't let me have the key because I was a teenager, and they didn't want ah… I didn't want to mess with having someone meet me so I used a pocket knife and I broke in every time I wanted to clean the church, no one ever say anything, umm I carried a knife at the time I was… I don't know, 3rd-4th grade cause it's just common back then to carry a knife, I carried a knife when I went college. We didn't go out, hardly ever, I mean, we ate at home 365 days a year, people didn't go out and eat as they do now, people ate at home, you had family over, I was of a… denomination that did not believe in movies so I didn't go to movies, I wasn't allowed to go to dances, and so I went to church, I went to my different meetings at school, and I watched the news religiously, at 6 o'clock and at 10 o'clock, Vietnam was going on. I had friends who would get together to make cookies and mail 'em to soldiers in Vietnam, all my friends said to other friends "if they could use the cookie as weapons" 'cause the cookies would be so hard. I made all my own clothes I would wear anything but dresses and in school you couldn't wear shorts or jeans or anything, you wore dresses. Life was a lot different. Every Friday we decorated cars for football season and have a little parade, it all sounds so country now, but we were happy. We didn't get a TV until I was freshman or sophomore in high school, except during summer when we lived to Laredo a couple of summers, and we got a little TV and so we watched a lot of bull fights and a lot of wrestling, 'cause that's what you could get, but we did every once in a while go to my aunts and uncles and watched TV, but we didn't have TV… We actually had to talk to each other (smiles), whoa what a deal, and everyone had to sit down at the table at meal time and be present, either you're gonna eat or not you gotta sit there and talk, I'm sure that sometimes the wished I would shut up, I was always the talker.
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How big was your family and what was your economic situation?
Ok, my economic situation fluctuated. My family consisted on my mom, my dad, my sister two and a half years older than me, my sister eight years younger than me, and my brother thirteen years younger than me. There were periods of time that my dad would have a decent job that would last a year or two because the oil field worked that way, sometimes you had a good job and made a really good money, but when the rig shut down you didn't get anything, period, nothing, and once my dad went to apply for unemployment but when the lady talked down town, and ya'know he walked away and didn't take it, but when I was about in the fourth or fifth grade I got very, very sick and my dad had been working off and on, and we lived in a place they call it a tent but it's made out of plywood and it was like 20 by 20, and my dad had build a bathroom and then they had hanged curtains that divided into rooms, and then we had this little bitty trailer next door that mom cooked in, and I got very, very sick and I was in the hospital in Freer for a lot of tests and while I was in the hospital and they told my parents to make funeral arrangements because I was gonna die, I dropped down from I think I weighted like 70 pounds I dropped down to 30 pounds, and I looked like someone from a concentration camp, so my dad went in the hospital and just picked me up and walked out with me, with the people yelling and screaming at him, and mom took care of the paper work, and then they took me to Corpus to this doctor they heard about, they went by his office, they sent him to the hospital, they told him they had no insurance, they had no money, and he said he didn't care, his name was Dr. Conklin he admitted me in the hospital, I don't know exactly what year that was, but I can tell you the Pope died that year… 'cause I was in a catholic hospital and, so you had to pay extra to have a TV in your room, and someone paid for me to have a TV in my room, like a dollar a day, that was an incredible paying, and I remember the nuns would come and sit in my room and watch the funeral well, as long as they could get away and then go back, but I was in terrible pain. My mom would sit there next to my bed and say "don't think about the pain, concentrate on my voice" and she would read to me for hours, and people would come see me and all my relatives came, the kids couldn't come up so all my aunts and uncles came, I was only in there for a short period of time but when I got out they discovered that I had a disease called Celiac disease it mostly kids got it, babies, you usually back then die from it, and it took a long time to get over it like in years, it's just… why I looked anorexic for a few years but I had to eat fresh food and lean meat, and we didn't have the money to do that so they had to borrow the money. We were desperately poor during this period and I remember growing up thinking it was my fault we were poor 'cause I was sick for like three years and I don't know that my parents ever paid for all the bill, but if they did it was the rest of their lives, because it was so huge, but I remember believing it was my fault for a long time that we were poor, but it was… we lived right there in town and everyone could see that we were poor, umm… it was embarrassing being that poor… we lived there I was in… part of my school then we moved in my grandparent's house which had wooden floors, if you didn't wear shoes you get splinters in your feet, there weren't kitchen cabinets there were just boards and it had curtains hanging to cover it instead of doors, there were no doors in the house, there were curtains hanging, in the front and back doors there were doors but changing the woods there were no doors, then my dad left working on the rigs and he went to work at the supply company, and they supplied us for the house, it was a decent house, it was the nicest house we lived in since I've been in school that I could remember, and he umm…. And I remember I could paint it, my room, any color as long as I got the paint from the oil field supply company, and the only paint color they sold were colors which you painted rigs and things, so I painted my room national blue, and then I painted flowers all over the wall… I don't know why, just something weird… it stayed that way until my parents left that house when I would… I guess I've been married for 2 or 3 years when they finally moved, but I never had much money, I… (Short pause) I spent my money very carefully, but I never ate but once in the school cafeteria because I couldn't afford it, I had to walk home about four blocks to eat and then walk back, if I didn't wanna do that I just didn't eat, and I just walked home my mother would be working so I would fix myself a sandwich and walk back… I remember being happy but I don't remember ever having any money other than that $10 a month I earned, and that was my clothing and anything I wanted, so I spent most of it on clothing… that's about the economic status, poor, poor, and… sometimes not so poor.
What about your parent's education? Did they have a formal education?
My dad went to… he stayed in school umm... until he would've been in junior, my dad was extremely dyslexic, very poor reading, and got ridiculed by the teacher a lot, he played… back then you could play football even if you weren't in high school academically, and he played football, he was… when he got hit and his knee tore up he dropped out of school the next day, basically once he realized that he didn't… wouldn't to play football anymore he quit school. My mother completed high school and then she went to business school.
My grandparents were not literate, and that sounds funny to just say that my grandparents did all read and write, I don't know how much formal education they had but there weren't any of 'em that couldn't read and write. When I moved to Indiana I met a lot of people in their age hood that couldn't read and write, they couldn't sign their own name, so… that's sad.
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What do you have to say about this picture?
This was during the 50's drought all of our cows died, they were all mortgaged. My dad, he worked in the drilling rig and he fall off the rig floor and he broke his leg and he was unable to work on the rigs for a long time, my mother was a trapper. I would go with my mother when we lived at my uncle Ed's, as long as we lived there would check the traps to trap the animals… my mother's dream was to catch a mountain lion, to trap one, I can remember my mother trapping coyotes, go and shoot them in the head with a 22, cutting off the ears, putting the body of the coyote in the back of the truck, resetting the traps and then you discarded the body away from the traps so that it wouldn't deter the coyotes from coming to the trap… the predators were taking over the area and so the government would pay 2 bucks per coyote ears 10 for mountain lion… If you had met my mother, my mother never went anywhere when her hair wasn't done up, her make up on, her jewelry on… if you call her and you were 6 blocks away, and she was not dressed, she would spend an hour getting ready so she could give you a ride… she wouldn't leave the house without her jewelry and make up, and yet this woman is going out in the brush setting traps, shooting coyotes and wildcats in the head… putting dead things in the back of the pick-up it was just kind of incongruence to see this woman.
Was your neighborhood divided by race?
No, umm, there were parts of town that it was predominantly white because it was predominantly people with money, but if you took any square block of town.. there were Hispanics and whites, across the street there were Hispanics and whites, back behind me were Hispanics and whites, but if you went down to the rich part of the town, which I drive now to Freer and look at what I thought was the rich part town, and I've lived for the last… oh goodness… 30 years, in houses nicer than that but I was so poor that I thought they were rich. My… they had places that were called "camps" if you worked for Mobil Oil, Mobil had houses for everyone who worked for them. Where the oil was, and they provided you the house, if you worked for Texaco you lived in the Texaco camp, and umm… when I was in high school I remember when we got our first Hispanic teacher, we got three in one year, up until then all teachers were white and all the people that lived in this camps, which I didn't lived in, they were all white, but within… I guess when I was a sophomore freshman we got three Hispanic teachers, we got Ms. Bazan, we got Mr. Gonzales and we got Mr. Saenz. Ms. Bazan was our class sponsor she and I became friends in fact. She married my 8th grade teacher who was Anglo, and she was from Benavidez. Mr. Gonzales was from San Diego, he spoke very broken English even though he was a college graduate, he was my Science teacher and chemistry teacher, and he was a wonderful man. He, and Mr. Saenz, was about 5 foot tall, real arrogant, real cocky and he didn't have a clue… and real young, didn't have a clue how to discipline thugs and they put all the thugs in his room, and I remember… white thugs… the Hispanics were always fairly quiet and nice, always, even the ones that may not applied to be a class A citizens, there were no Hispanics that misbehaved at school, and if you spoke Spanish at school you got sent to the office for licks, I'm talking about not a happy camper, they beat you, so nobody spoke Spanish in school because ya'know "oh my goodness I'll get killed" so, but they had these thugs in the class and Mr. Saenz was smart, but he didn't know how to teach 'cause he was one of this really, really smart people? And so… he would be talking and these thugs would pick up their books and drop them from as high as they could reach up… BAM!... and you couldn't hear what was going on, and so those of us who were trying to pass the class and actually wanted to hear what the man said would set up at the front, the thugs were in the back, he would send them to office, the office would send them back? They didn't do anything, if they even went to the office, I don't know if they even went. He couldn't make 'em do anything, they tormented him, it was almost impossible to pass the class because he only stayed one year umm… I don't know what angered the white people about him so much except that he was very cocky, very confident, he was smart and he knew it, if he would've been white nothing would've been done, but he… well, I don't know about that over confidence, but because he was Hispanic, it was the first year we had a Hispanic teacher anywhere in that school, he suffered a lot. They used to sing, they called them Mickey Mouse, Mr. Saenz, because he had a Widow's peak? And in the annuals, if you didn't watch your annual... one of the thugs, would get yours and draw him Mickey Mouse ears on his head, he didn't stay but one year. But Mr. Gonzales and Ms. Bazan they both stayed, they were from the county they stayed in the school for several years. Both of them were on the committee that gave me the college scholarship.
It was very segregated, and not in the division in the neighborhood but white kids went to white kids' homes and Hispanic kids went to Hispanic kids' homes. We were segregated but not black and whites but Hispanics and whites.
Where there any black people in your neighborhood?
There were three or four black people that lived in the whole town, and they didn't live in my neighborhood, I've no clue where did they live. One of them came to our church on fairly semi-regular basis and every time he came, Kay and I, my sister and I, we would go by back and say hi to him and talked, but I noticed that none of the adults did, my mother did, but I mean the other adults? There were like (astonished expression)… and I was concerned he would not feel welcome, and I'm sure he came to our church when he didn't have a way to his church. The house… 'Cause lots of churches were white, Hispanic, or black only four, but I was just… thought that was so sad, how could you be so stupid? ya'know… he's just a man and this is a church how can you not be nice? I mean that is what church is all about... I don't… I don't remember any Hispanics coming to my church, or the First Baptist church, or the Methodist church until after (19)65… then it started changing.… but it, yes, segregation was with us, in fact when my dad was a kid, they didn't have Hispanics and whites in the same classroom, until he was what? 10 or so, the early days, they just… and Hispanics had to go to the back of the restaurant to get their food they couldn't go there and sit, so yeah… racism is a terrible decease, and unfortunately it's trained, a learned behavior… which people share… I have relatives right now that are so prejudice against blacks and Hispanics I tell them I'm black, I tell them "well, you're black" ohh it makes them crazy.
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What were your family's teachings about colored people?
Well It was kind of a mixed teaching, my dad's family, obviously, were prejudice, and they were proud of the fact that they've been slave owners, proud of the fact that someone who killed someone just because he was black. But my parents never told me that they didn't have souls, my parents believed that you were not supposed to hurt anyone, I mean, my dad's grandmother was just sick. She was such an extreme racist that she thought it was OK to kill people of color. I never knew her because she was dead, but I heard a lot of stories about her. My father was proud of the fact that none of his brothers or sisters had ever been arrested because all of my great uncles just about had been arrested at some time, they had a very bad reputation as people that weren't all that nice, and so the next generation he was very proud that they didn't follow after their father, they took more of their mothers teaching, but I was taught, I mean I wasn't taught, I don't remember anyone telling me anything other than during the Civil Rights movement and we would be watching, and then I said "OK why should a woman give up her seat? I mean, she's tired, she worked just like you did "and dad said "well that's just the custom" "I don't care what the custom is, is just wrong, somebody is changing". My mother always talked about how she was taught to respect people, I was always taught to treat everyone with a Christian.. the way a Christian should treat someone, you'd be honest, my dad's family even though they did a lot of things they shouldn't, they were really big of been men of their word, ok, , they will do what they said, that was important whether you were dealing in business no matter your nationality you had to do what you said you were gonna do, but I don't remember other than the arguments over, and you need to understand a lot of my dad's ideas were theoretical, he never made any one go to a different bathroom, use a different water fountain, each in a different restaurant it was just a tradition in the south, his grandmother had told him what was the right thing, that so he just defended it, but he never did that. He had a conversation with Cole, probably six months before he died and told Cole, he said umm, "you know all my friends are Hispanic" and Cole said "yeah I know that grandpa" and he said umm… Something to the fact that you know "I'm really not prejudice" and he said "yeah Grandpa, I know that", I mean my dad would talk prejudice, but he never did anything, if he had two people looking for a job he hired the one who did the best job not because of race. My mother always taught us that all people should be treated fairly and equal, all people have souls and you do the right thing, I was just raised pretty much on do the right thing, I never remember anyone saying I should do something negative dad was just defending when the southerners did negative things, he was defending their right to do it, but I don't know what other than his indoctrination by his prejudice grandmother, I don't know what ground he talked racism on because he never did any of those things, so umm I was pretty… We were allowed in my family to have an opinion but you better be able to defend it, so when my dad and I had conversations about race, about Martin Luther King… Martin Luther king was a big topic to dad, dad was like "well, he's just causing trouble" "no dad, he's trying to right a wrong" it just really, it really made me think through anything I believe my dad would make you tell him why you believed it, so you didn't just believed something because somebody would've said it, you had to know why, and I explained why for those 20 years of argument (smiled), and then I won ha,ha (laugh)… oh good… But it took him to believe that he was black before he could see that again had nothing to do with who you are, the inside had something to do with who you are. It truly does, but there's a lot of people out there, I know about four years, five years ago I was in the valley and some people from Illinois are there and I said something about being black and they just instantly turned on me they've been very friendly to me for an hour and a half, then they wouldn't to speak to me again. Now that stupidest thing I've ever seen , I mean like I was the same person who they talked to thirty seconds before, I tell them I'm black and all of the sudden they hate my guts. Is that reasonable? No, it's stupid. But there are people like that. While my dad was an "Archie Bunker", although he talked the talk of a bigot he didn't live the life, he wasn't the guy who went out and burned the crosses in someone's front yard, he wasn't the guy that would fire the Hispanic to get a white person a job, he didn't do that.
What did you mean when you say that it took your father to believe that he was black before changing his mind?
I went to do research and I went to the Institute of Texan Cultures, and in the basement, they have a library and it's filed by culture because the theme of the Institute… they look at every culture that settled Texas, so if you're looking for people that were all filed under their nationality well I knew that my ancestor Benjamin Arnold, his ancestor Daniel Arnold. Benjamin had a brother named Hendrick … well Sarah was doing a search for me. She's in high school, a freshman, and she's grown up witnessing this small arguments with my dad which always went loud and long for days, so she said "I'll check on the blacks mom" "sure"… well HendrickArnold's father happened to be black culture because in the Texas history books he was listed as a black man um… for reasons that I won't go into here… anyways she finds Hendric in this library which is rarely used, so there might've been six, eight people in the library… But I'm on one side of the room looking in some books and she was looking all those files, and in these files anyone could submit researches they've done and they just put them in the file, and so she pulls out Hendrick Arnolds' file and there were paintings of him, but there were no photographs of him but paintings people did to show how he looked like… and she's got this folder in her hand and she's dancing across the room! And she's hugging the folder! and she's going "mom! We're black! We're black! We're black! Can I tell grandpa we're black?!" (joyful) She was just dancing and everyone in the place, the blacks the whites and Hispanics were just looking at her like (shocked expression)… I said "darling, maybe… let me see what you got, but if we're black maybe I should tell dad because you know he might kill me" (laugh) because he grow up with a prejudice grandmother… his mother wasn't that prejudice, but his grandmother was… my dad and mom came to see us a day, They came… they lived in Alice, we lived in Pleasanton, and they came by and so I copied all these files and everything… and I told my dad that we were black "I won this argument, woohoo! I won! You can't say blacks are inferior because we're them" and so my dad was very subdued he left and he come back in the next weekend, he comes back and say "well Jeannie… you know? maybe Hendrick was half black" and I was "dad I don't care how you cut it, dice it, slice it or cube it at some point in time a black and a white had a child that are our ancestor, thank you very much, had sex… we don't know if they were married or not, we don't know who they are… we just know… yes, that we are here so… deal with it" at the same time I had found that his grandfather was found in a hate crime against Mexicans, so he was extremely upset over the idea of his grandfather participated in the killing of Mexicans because at this point in time my dad was… say 68, he still worked… with Hispanics but he would still talk racist but he didn't live it as far as Hispanics went, as far as blacks went… But anyways he umm… he came back and he said "you know Jeannie umm… I've been giving it a lot of thought and umm…" this is hard for him, I mean this fight had been going on since I was 14 years old and here he is I'm… 45… 48 something like that and here is my dad saying "I think we are… still the same people aren't we?" I jumped up and shot a basket "Two points!! I won! Woohoo!" and I'm dancing around hugging him and kissing him "I love you dad, I love you dad, you finally saw the light." People are just people… we all bleed, we all laugh, we all eat… we're just people.
Tell me about this picture?
This is a picture of me and my dad on my wedding day, notice he's not smiling, he didn't smiled all day, he was unhappy because I was marring a Yankee… ummm well, I met this sailor as I said he was a Yankee, and that was another prejudice my dad had, I could've married a monkey and it would've been the same ya'know umm... he (Ernie) had a friend that was in the Navy with him, he was in the Seabee with this other Seabee guy who's name was Paul, Paul Small that was his name, he was about our age, in his early 20's, he was married from Saint Louis and he was black, and he was the most fun guy he was really nice. Back when we were looking for houses to rent. Paul, Ernie and I would be driving around looking for houses together, and I was sitting in the middle, so people would just stare at us like we were freaks you know? And, Paul was gonna be in our wedding, and my dad told me that of Paul is in the wedding he wouldn't come, and I has this dilemma 'cause I wasn't gonna tell Paul he couldn't be in the wedding 'cause I liked him, he was a very nice person, and I wasn't gonna tell my husband-to-be that "you can't have your best friend in the wedding because he's black" and so I had this real dilemma, weddings plans were going on, Paul is in the wedding and… first thing I need to say is that I met Ernie, November 22nd , 1967 and I married in March 7th, 1968, so all of this happened at a very accelerated process… so you know, Paul's gonna be in the wedding and that's just the way it was and my dad is " well, that's fine but I won't be there" and "ok, you have to make the decision you have to make" but umm, God intervened I guess, I don't know what happened, but anyway Paul's wife had a crisis and so Paul Small had to go home to be with his family, and so Brian O'Brian took his place in the wedding. But I loved my dad he was my best friend, he made me what I am today, hard working and honest but… I don't know what my dad would've done.
What do you consider was what made you go against the flow?
What I think made me go against the flow was the fact that I was taught to think, even though I was thinking against them, against what dad thought at the time, or at least what he thought he thought, the fact that he gave me the freedom to think he was never… He wasn't one that you had to agree with everything he said, if you could defend your position then you would change his mind, but it was very difficult to get him to change his mind as you can tell by years and years and years which I spent getting him to change his mind, but my… I guess obstinance, I don't know, during the 60's when I would watch on TV and I would read in books and I would see what was going on reading the newspapers how that we were treating… black people, African American people whatever terminology you want to use people who didn't deserve to be treated that way, we weren't going out and say "OK these people are bad so what we gonna do is… We just closed the deal, so you don't disturb to live.. well, you don't deserve to have a good life, you don't deserve…." That's just wrong, and I just… I just identified with that. It's just, I don't know what caused me to identify, I would think about then telling me I couldn't sit in a certain place and it would make me so angry, I would want to go over there, like I said, I read about the freedom riders, I wanted to do that, I wanted to go be a… a protester, I wanted to go sit down with the black people and say "freed these people, you people are morons" I…. it offended me to be white, to see white people behaving to stupidly. It was totally about control, it was totally about they won't give up their jobs, or their power, or their… whatever it is they possessed anything they had to the other people it was nothing to do with morality, it was strictly power. The white people had it, they wanted to keep it, and it was wrong. It just like with umm… Cesar Chavez when they wanted to name this road, the street in San Antonio after him, my mother's like "well, he never did anything for anybody in Texas" and I said "anybody that rights a wrong helps us all and makes the country better, he should be honored, we should thank him for having the guts to stand up and say "this is wrong, let's do something about it" and if we are not the person that is not strong enough to think about it, let's at least honor and support the people who were, no matter what our color… no matter what our race… the right thing is the right thing". During the same period of time it was a book called What Would Jesus Do (In His Steps) and every time you were gonna make a decision you were supposed to ask yourself what would Jesus do, I'll tell you Jesus would've got up and gave his seat to Rosa Parks 'cause he would say "that woman is tired", but those people who claim to be Christians, who go to church faithfully and they still believe that there is some way of racism and bigotry is correct… I… I don't know what they're using for brains… is, is illogical, is not reasonable, they're letting… They're letting customs do their thinking, and I wasn't raised that customs do my thinking. Think for yourself, I had good teachers that told me that, my mom told me that, my dad told me that, and then when I went against what they taught… it took 'em a while to see that I'm right, but I won, I'm very determined, I'm very hard to distract, , I rarely say die, I keep going… and going… it's just because I don't like to lose, especially when I'm right, and I know on this, there's no way you can read the Bible and see that anything that was happening in the south was right, there were babies that would come in to the Danny Thomas hospital, and they would send them home with peanut butter to feed the child and a letter saying feed your child every time you can because your baby is dying… of hunger, how smart do you have to be to know that that's wrong? Not very smart right?
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What did you feel or think regarding Dr King's speech?
When he gave speech I cried, I still cry. Dr Martin Luther King as far as I concern is a martyr, the man that killed him was white trash and stupid, but umm… there's… when you're willing going out there day after day, week after week, month after month and make a speech when you know, that almost every white person you encountered wants you dead… takes guts, umm… you're actually putting the cause ahead of your family because for all you know they're going to come in to your house and kill your family. I saw the bus… that they blew up and killed those children in just because they were black, it's just… you just tell me why it took only one prejudge from the south to have the guts, where was everyone else when all this was happening? Where were the other people? I'm very much a member of Dr. Martin Luther King fan club, and I would was very happy when he got his doctorate, very much. I… admired his wife, and his children, yes, because they paid a high price for his cause, they lost their dad, and the motel where he was staying in was not a nice motel because he wasn't allowed to stay in a nice motel, or eat in the nice restaurants, in Memphis, 'cause he was black, simply because he was black.
How did it affect you?
How did it affect me; Well… it made me look at things through different eyes, once I started studying what he said, I heard someone said just recently "well, I didn't like the fact he wanted everyone to have riot" no, he never wanted everybody to have a riot, he wanted you to stand there and take it and then after they just did this to you so much the white people watching would finally stand up and say "wait a minute, this is wrong" he didn't advocate that they tried to overthrow the government, he wanted them to be part of the government, but we're not talking about them, we're talking about the black people, he wanted us and in his "I have a dream" speech he says "I have a dream where black boys and black girls would go to school together" well I see than now where I am, but if you go to San Antonio you have schools that are all black, you have schools that are all Hispanic, you have schools that are predominantly white, you have schools that are predominantly rich, you have schools that are mixed up in just poverty schools, and… a lot of people a lot of black people, a lot of white people, a lot of Hispanic people today believe in segregation, they believe they should be isolated from each other, they just want to make the upward mobility. Dr Martin Luther King made me look at my life and judge everything I do. I remember using racial slurs, ok, you call an Italian a wop the restaurant in the town I grew up in had wop, that's a slang, a slur. Irish people they're slangs, it made me stop and think about "why would I do that? Why would I say something rude about another culture or race?... why would I do that? There is no basis for" but I…. He made me a better person; he kept me from being a red neck like the rest of them… I don't know it just… and I have a lot more friends that I would've had if it has not been for Martin Luther King, and I don't live in a whole white world… I've never lived in a whole white world except, even when I was in Indiana I would work with black people, not so many Hispanics, but I never had any troubles with any of them, but no matter what their social status was I don't talk down to people, and do… you know? Once you realize that everyone is worthy, everyone deserves to be treated like a man, a woman, a child, it changes the way you think, and that's what Dr. King taught, judge everybody like Jesus would you know? That's all he said, he didn't said he wanted us to give away everything we have, he just wanted… respect, he wanted equal opportunity, that's all he wanted. That sounds reasonable to me… don't it?
Within all the moves that you had, did you see any difference within place to place regarding the Civil Rights movement?
Ok, regarding the civil rights movement it didn't happen in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana when I lived there the people in Dubach, Louisiana didn't even know that Dr. King existed umm… they had no intention of treating everyone fairly. San Angelo was probably the town that had the most open minded and racially tolerant, we lived in Oklahoma for while and I didn't know any black people, they didn't see any black people, I don't know who they were treated but I do know the Indians were really mistreated. Umm… when I lived in Indiana, you had blacks and you had whites, the town was very segregated, black people had black friends, white people had white friends, black people lived in one part of town and white people lives in another part of town. I went up to a graduation up there, this is southern Indiana, about five years ago, none of the black people go the awards, and that's supposed to be in the north. In south Texas most of the prejudices south side was against Hispanics and all white areas you still see that, not as much, not as open, but the Good ol' Boy system is still with us.
Do you remember the Chicano movement?
Oh (smile), I took a class in college last time around, it was a Hispanic… the history of Hispanics in the US, the first two classes first we had to decide how many bad things we could say about white people, so after about a class and a half of that I got up and, there's about fifty people there I'm the only white person, I said "ok, I confess, everything that's wrong within the Hispanics in the United States of any age is just my fault, ok, we know that bad things were done, and a lot of them have been overcome by very strong intelligent people, do you think maybe we can start studying those issues?", I mean it was a thing to do, so I set and listen to it for a class and a half, then so they decided that we were gonna discuss argue a Chicano, argue a Tejano, argue Hispanic, argue… all the different ways that someone can be considered, because you know Hispanic implies you were originated in Spain, Mexican-American implies that you at some point… so walk with the Cubans, walk with the south Americans, walk with the… you know, so we spent a couple of days on that and I remember back in the 80's, when the movement came around, it was very much most of south Texas was dominated by the white people. Now, in different areas it changes at different paces, but it was like you couldn't get it strongly to… I mean, I would've voted for Henry Cisneros for president, but you know? He goes out, Mrs. Medlar is pregnant and he covers it up with money, he says lies about it, so then he can't run but yet now we have people running who admit using Marihuana, admits smoking drug, it's just bizarre, we have… Bill Clinton gets reelected when he having affairs in the White House. The changing times, it's been real hard for the Hispanic movement of whatever name you wanna call it to get a strong leader, because the white press investigates them fully, just like they do anyone they don't like, like they're doing now with umm… this lady that is running for vice-president, today if the media doesn't… if there is something they don't want they'll go and try to discredit the Hispanics and then they lose their leaders. It've been very difficult to the Hispanics to come up with a strong leader… they kept their nose clean so they could stay. Like I said, I would have voted for Henry Cisneros, I was really excited, I could see him within eight years, he among the democratic presidential group, and I'm a Republican and I would've voted for him, but you know… I get discouraged, I think a lot of movements get sidetracked once they get a little bit of power, it goes to their head and they lose focus, and that's what I think happened to Dr Martin Luther King, he went and had affairs with other women but it didn't, and even with Mrs. Cisneros, it didn't affect his politics, it should not have affected his politics, and this day it wouldn't have, but ten years, fifteen years ago it was a big deal. Morality is fluid, it changes, and you never know what's gonna be the moral of the day, but yeah, I remember the movement.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
(Silence) Just that the 60's umm… were a time of a… change on many levels, some good, come very bad, the… trying to get rid of harmony didn't turn out that well, was a good thing. Trying to get rid of that hatred and bigotry was a good thing, the fact that we forced some schools to integrate fairly. A lot of people gave their lives for these causes even Martin Luther King and a lot of children, a lot of other people died, all they died, and umm… I just… think it's a shame that here we are, many years later, and haven't made significant progress in many parts of the United States that… that's upsetting to me, that we still have people that don't think for themselves. One of the things they want us to do as teachers is to have students evaluate reasonableness, I would like to have adults that were capable to doing that, much as students, it isn't reasonable some of the things that comes out of people's mouth, we have skinheads, I had some white boys in my classroom a few years ago, one of 'em is now in jail because he got involved in a skinhead organization and actually they killed one of their own, but the whole reason for the organization was hate everything that is not white. I feel like I failed him… I feel like somehow I didn't educate him well enough, so that he could've bypassed that whole prejudiced group but, now he'll probably spend the rest of his life in the penitentiary and is probably 19 years old… and is just a waste… a very sad waste…
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