While my DNA does not show my native heritage, documentation from my ancestors show that I am 1/16th Cherokee Indian from North Carolina (maybe Tennessee, as that state had not been formed in 1807 when I Cherokee ancestor was born). I assume this was because, my ancestors were part of the missing Jamestown. (Who knows?)
My Grandmother, Essie Wagnon, was 1/4 Cherokee, and insisted on no one saying anything about that ancestry while I was growing up in Oklahoma City. At that time, there was more overt discrimination against Native Indians than there was against Black people; probably because there were more Native Indians than Blacks in Oklahoma. We did not see may Black people in Oklahoma City, so there were few opportunities for discrimination.
In fact my earliest memory of discrimination was the reverse. I was somewhere between 8 and 10 years old, when I first ran across discrimination. While very different from today’s society, as an 8 to 10 year old, my brother and I very often spent the day out of the house, and only returning for lunch or dinner time.
The YMCA was about a 2 mile walk from our house, which we walked more than taking the bus. The bus was a luxury, and it cost a dime to ride, so we infrequently rode the bus down to the Y. One time we had an extra dime so we decided to take the bus. After boarding, we immediatly ran to the back of the bus, as that was our favorite place to ride.
Not more than 3 or 4 blocks later, a Black lady entered the bus, and we were told to move to the front, because the Black lady had to sit in the back. We were curious as to why, as there were plenty of seats further toward the front of the bus. This was my first confrontation with discrimination.
We also used to take the bus to go to my great aunts’ farm in Arpelar, OK. Again, young boys riding a long distance bus by themselves would not go over in today’s environment, but not thought about back then. On one ride back to Oklahoma City, my brother and I were on the bus, and overheard a conversation by people behind us as we stopped at one of the towns on the route. They people said that any white person caught in that town after dark was as good as being dead. It was an all Black town. I have tried to go back with a map trying to identify which town that was. It should have been easy as we traveled on US Highway 270, but cannot
remember the name of the town.
In 1948, my Mother married Ted Brooks and we moved to Wayne, PA. I was a rising senior and went to Radnor High School only two blocks away from our house in Wayne. My brother had graduated from Oklahoma City’s Classen High School, and went to MIT on a partial scholarship. It did not seem as a shock to me that Radnor High School had about 15% of the student body being Black. I went out for the football team and made the starting lineup as an end. Charles Gooch (one of the Black students) was the tackle playing next to me, and we became good friends, even inviting him to come to my house for lunch one Saturday after
having played basketballl in the high school gym.
Neither Ted nor my Mother had anything to say negatively about this event. I attribute that to my Grandfather, who as a Methodist Minister, rode the Circuit in the Cherokee Nation, before it became the Oklahoma State. He was very emphatic about treating people as equals. He always taught that it was not ‘what’ you were, but ‘who’ you were that mattered. He would be appalled at the circumstances today.
Following high school graduation, I commuted to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadephia. Two friends that I met at the University, Ron Herman and Al Ginsburg (No I do not think it wasthat Al Ginsburg, but I could be wrong as I left to go to Washington College for my second year). I mention these two people as they were both Jewish, though at the time, I was oblivious to that fact.
Washington College, being in Maryland, was an all white school. The only Black people on campus were the maintenance men and serving people in the cafeteria. Ole Ely was one of the maintenance people, who was very friendly to me, and I to him. (Today, Washington College is an intergrated school, but I cannot remember any racial disturbances while attending the college. We even played some colleges in basketball that had many Black faces on the team. No bad occurences happened as a result)
As I write this, I recall my time in Tulelake, CA, and the basketball team, which happened to be all white, and town was practically all white. However, we played in a high school league as part of Siskiyou County, and many of the schools in the county had Black students, and naturally some Black players. When we played away games, we played against Black players, but the teams that had Black players apparently were told that they were not welcome to come to Tulelake with Black players.
An illustration of the mental attitude of the spectators of Tulelake HS basketball, I recall an instance where the audience had some disagreement with the calls by the referees. The court was bounded on one side by the theater stage and on the other by the audence behind a short wall, which separated the audence from the first class seats when viewing a stage play, which was where chairs were placed on the basketball court for the theater play. At one point in the game, the spectators pulled a referee into the stands and began to beat him up. They pulled him up over that wall and laid into him. The game was called, and I do not remember who
won, but I am sure that had a Black player showed up all chaos would have broken out.
When I went into the Navy, it was an all white military at the time. The only Black Navy people were serving in the Chow line, or were maintenance people. I did not give any thought to that fact when I was serving my four years in Florida, Texas, Georgia and New Jersey, and only my memory recalls this. It was not something on my mind at the time.
After the Navy, I went to graduate school at Virginia Tech. There I became good friends with a couple of Chinese students from Hong Kong – Valiant Mah, and Bob Mai. Lost contact with both of them after graduation, but Bob Mai had to leave before getting his degree as his father died and he had to take over the food distribution business at the Hong Kong Airport.
On graduating, I went to work with the Engineering Department of the Du Pont Company, which was a segregated company. Again, the only Black people in the department were cafeteria servers or maintenance people. In 1964, I was with the Textile Fibers Department in Martinsville, VA. At that time, the department had decided to begin integration and started to hire Indian (people from India) engineers, to acclimate workers to Black faces. Lalit Bhalla was assigned to work with me. Not exactly sure as to why I was selected, but some must have felt that I was not a prejudicial person.
Later in 1968, the Engineering Department began hiring Black engineers, and one of the first was Stu Wiggins, a graduate of Penn State University. Stu was assigned to my group. As there had been some race altercations in Chester, PA, just over the Delaware line from where we were living at the time, we decided to invite the family for dinner, so they would know they had a safe haven if any altercations occurred. Stu and his wife and 2 boys, about the same age as Mike and Chris, and would be going to the same Jurnior High School as they would.
One incident I recall with a bit of regret. Stu and I were in Brad Brown’s office discussing some problem, when I used an expression learned as a young person, when something does notseem right. It seemed to fit the situation so I said “sounds like there is a nigger in the woodpile”. As soon as I said that, I realized what it sounded like and immediately apologized to Stu for saying such. He did not seem to object, and did not pose a problem in our relationship. Stu made a career with Du Pont, and later went blind, and Du Pont continued to have him work with our scientists until he retired. Of course, I was long gone from Delaware when this happened. I did run across Stu when I was working with Berg Electronics in PA, he was very good in his work, even though he was blind.
After our move to Durham, NC, I became involved with the political action. At one of the early County Party meetings I asked who was in charge of precinct organization. I was immediately assigned to that task. So, as the precinct organizer, I decided to call on each precinct chair at their home location. This was done on purpose, so I could learn a bit about Durham and would help later on finding my way around the town. On this last reason, I really did learn about navigating around Durham which would come in very handy later.
One of these people I had called to meet, had invited me to her apartment before going to work. It turns out that she was a Black lady, who had had her two sons killed by gunfire, She later became, and still is, a County Commissioner, but by then had switched to being a Democrat, as a Republican could not get elected in Durham.
On another occasion, as I drove up to the house, there were many cars and apparently a party going on. As I had already parked, it seemed that my best choice was to go on up to the house, and I did and knocked on the door. I asked if David Stith was at home, and they said come on in. I was the only white person in the house, and David said, that was okay and to come in and help them celebrate and they were celebrating his son’s marriage. Of course his son was not there, but I later met him and his wife.
David and I became best freinds, and spent many politcal affairs sitting at the same table. At several of the out of town events, I would drive David’s Mercedes and be his chauffer.
Another person I met while trying to get to know the Durham precincts was Steve Hopkins. He lived in the Few Gardens complex (a Black, low-income housing development. As an aside, Few Gardens was one of those facilities that came under the gun for renewal, and was torn down to make way for individual homes as part of the federal program, I believe was called Urban Renewal. Regardless, the program resulted in the people living in Few Gardens to be removed, and most did not return to the newer homes, as they required a few more bucks to live in.) Steve was active in an organization called “ReBuild Durham”.
The purpose of Rebuild Durham was to purchase rundown houses, renovate tham and make them available to people who could pay the mortgage (+15% in escrow for repairs), if that value was no more than 30% of their income. And if later, they opted to buy the home, all they had to do was to pickup the mortgage payments and the repair escrow accrued to them. When I joined Rebuild Durham, it was an organization that was being funded by the City of Durham and was headed up by a white woman, Lorisa Seibel. The charter for the organization was for a non-profit and its membership was made up of a person from each of the low income
neighborhoods, which was at the time 15 people.
The City of Durham’s Housing Department decided to stop supporting the organization, and that meant the funds to operate had to be raised by the organization. Steve had conned me into accepting a position within the organization, and I began to put together a proposal to raise funds privately. I had paid for a very nice brochure created by a friend of mine from church, and was using it to raise funds. In the brochure was a picture of Steve Hopkins, which the new president of Rebuild Durham saw as being racist, and objected to using the brochure. Unfortunately, he convinced the majority of the board to that effect, so as the brochure was notused and I was out the money for the brochure as it was bought and paid for by me, It was not long after that I left, and it was not long after that that the Rebuild Durham ceased to exist. The board just could not understand that money had to be raised in order to stay in business. The City took over the contracts on the 11 houses that were in the inventory.
Steve Hopkins left town for California, but returned a couple of years later and convinced me to try and resurrect Rebuild Durham. So, we began to try to do just that. We kept at it for about six months, and then gave up, as the original non-profit charter required membership to be from the low income communities, which were the same ones that did not understand why funds had to be raised. So, with little cooperation from the board we could not purchase any homes. I tell myself that if I win the Publishers Clearing House lottery, I will donate the money to resurrect Rebuild Durham, but with a different structure for the board.
In all of the situations above, I was totally unaware of the race of the people I was calling on, until I actually met them. But, it was not long that I became aware of the race make up of the different communities within Durham, which for the most part remained segregated.
As I said, meeting the precinct chairs in their home made me very cognizant of how to navigate around Durham. This was very important, as I later became an assistant coach for a Black teenage basketball team. In 1996, I met Coach West at a political function in one of the Black communities. We became acquainted quickly and I found out he was trying to help the underprivileged Black kids by using basketball to improve their lives.
Our church at the time had 15 passenger vans, which I was able to borrow. The van was used to pick up the players and take them to the gyms, and out of town to basketball games against other communities, some as far away as Greensboro. Coach West was a go-getter. When he heard of a boy that was a good player, he went to great lengths to get him on our team. One night around 10pm, we were in the Few Gardens Complex knocking on doors trying to find this player. We finally did knock on the right door, and invited to boy to come to the next practice.
It was during one of these practice sessions that I became aware of what is called ‘white privelege’. Many times I was the only white person in the gym. It was one of those times that a group of parents and myself were discussing some topic (I am unable to remember exactly what was the topic) and I asked some of the ladies what their opinion was on that topic. Well, after a few minutes, I became aware that they wanted to hear what my opinion was before they would express theirs.
Unfortunately, Coach West was not as diligent about money as I thought he should have been. We had been able to obtain an office in a downtown building for a nominal rent for our charitable organization, which we called HOPE (Helping Others Progress Effectively). We also had been able to raise some money as I had Coach West speak at a couple of Republican Women’s groups. It was sometime in 1999 that Coach bought uniforms for team, without telling me. I think he thought I would pick up the tab. This included warm up suits, and they were very nice, but we did not have the funds to pay for the uniforms. Coach West had conned the supplier to give it to him on credit, which was over $3,000 dollars. After that, Coach West would not listen to me on the topic of finances, and I finally gave up on trying to work with him. Instead of paying the bill for the uniforms, Coach West decided to leave town and that ended the work with the players.
As I write this, Durham is becoming more integrated in the neighborhoods. No, it is not unsegregated, but moving in that direction. In my neighborhood of Trinity Park, one of the oldest recognized neighborhoods, we have several black families. No problems that I have seen.