Social Worker | The HistoryMakers

Dennis Biddle

Retired social worker and former Negro League Baseball player Dennis "Bose" Biddle was born on June 24, 1935, in Magnolia, Arkansas.

Biddle's career in baseball began in 1953 when he was seventeen years old. He was playing in the state championship in Arkansas for the National Farmers' Association. A scout and booking agent for the Negro League Chicago American Giants saw him pitch a no-hitter in the championship and asked him if he would like to try out with the Chicago American Giants. Biddle played for the Chicago American Giants in 1953 and 1954. Because he was only seventeen years old when he played, Biddle was entered into the Congressional Record as the youngest person to play in the Negro baseball leagues. In 1955, the Chicago Cubs were interested in purchasing his contract from the Chicago American Giants. Unfortunately, on the first day of spring training, Biddle jammed his leg and broke his ankle in two places while sliding into third base. The injury never fully healed and Biddle’s baseball career ended.

At the age of twenty-two, Biddle went back to school in 1958. He received his B.A. degree in social work from the University of Wisconsin. Biddle worked for the next twenty-four years with the State of Wisconsin as a social worker in the corrections system. After retiring from the corrections system, he began working for a social service agency in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, called Career Youth Development (C.Y.D.). In this capacity, he continues to work with underprivileged youth and juvenile offenders.

In 1996, Biddle founded the organization, Yesterday's Negro League Baseball Players LLC to support the surviving members of the Negro League baseball teams and defend their economic interests.

Biddle was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on November 18, 2008.

Accession Number

A2008.134

Sex

Male

Archival Photo 1

Interview Date

11/18/2008

Last Name

Biddle

Maker Category

Occupation

Organizations

Schools

Magnolia High School

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Search Occupation Category

SportsMakers:Baseball

Speakers Bureau

Yes

Archival Photo 2

Speakers Bureau Availability

Any

First Name

Dennis

Birth City, State, Country

Magnolia

HM ID

BID01

Speakers Bureau Preferred Audience

Youth, Teens, Adults, Seniors

Speakers Bureau Honorarium

Yes - $1,000 - $5,000

Favorite Season

Spring

Speaker Bureau Notes

Honorarium Specifics: $3000
Availability Specifics: Days, evenings, some weekends.
Preferred Audience: Youth, teens, adults, seniors

State

Arkansas

THM DA Link

http://marc.thehistorymakers.org/thmdigital/A2008.134.htm

Web Clip 1

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/128276

Favorite Vacation Destination

Las Vegas, Nevada

Favorite Quote

People Are Dying Now That's Never Died Before.

Bio Photo

Speakers Bureau Region State

Wisconsin

Interview Description

A2008_134_EAD.pdf

A2008_134_EAC.pdf

Birth Date

6/24/1935

Birth Place Term

Magnolia

Speakers Bureau Region City

Milwaukee

Country

USA

Favorite Food

Okra

Short Description

Social worker and baseball player Dennis Biddle (1935 - ) played for the Negro League Chicago American Giants in 1953 and 1954. After injuring his ankle in 1955, Biddle became a social worker in the Wisconsin corrections system. In 1996, Biddle founded the organization Yesterday's Negro League Baseball Players to support the surviving members of the Negro League baseball teams.

Employment

Chicago American Giants

State of Wisconsin

Career Youth Development

Yesterday's Negro League Baseball Players

Favorite Color

Blue

Web Clip 2

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/128282

Timing Pairs

0,0:287170,3335$0,0:292410,4238

DAStories

Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of Dennis Biddle's interview

Tape: 1 Story: 2 - Dennis Biddle lists his favorites

Tape: 1 Story: 3 - Dennis Biddle describes his mother's family background

Tape: 1 Story: 4 - Dennis Biddle talks about his maternal great-grandfather

Tape: 1 Story: 5 - Dennis Biddle talks about his mother

Tape: 1 Story: 6 - Dennis Biddle describes his father's family background

Tape: 1 Story: 7 - Dennis Biddle talks about his father

Tape: 1 Story: 8 - Dennis Biddle recalls how his parents met

Tape: 1 Story: 9 - Dennis Biddle lists his siblings

Tape: 1 Story: 10 - Dennis Biddle describes his earliest childhood memory

Tape: 2 Story: 1 - Dennis Biddle describes the sights, sounds and smells of his childhood in Magnolia, Arkansas

Tape: 2 Story: 2 - Dennis Biddle talks about growing up in Magnolia, Arkansas in the 1940s and 1950s

Tape: 2 Story: 3 - Dennis Biddle relates his sports experiences at Columbia High School in Magnolia, Arkansas

Tape: 2 Story: 4 - Dennis Biddle talks about college and professional recruitment opportunities while he was a high school student

Tape: 2 Story: 5 - Dennis Biddle talks about his mentors at Columbia High School in Magnolia, Arkansas

Tape: 2 Story: 6 - Dennis Biddle details his decision to try out for the Negro American League in 1953

Tape: 2 Story: 7 - Dennis Biddle describes his journey to Chicago, Illinois in 1953 to try out for the Chicago American Giants

Tape: 3 Story: 1 - Dennis Biddle describes his first night in Chicago, Illinois in 1953

Tape: 3 Story: 2 - Dennis Biddle talks about his mentor, McKinley Washington

Tape: 3 Story: 3 - Dennis Biddle talks about his Chicago American Giants teammates and coaches

Tape: 3 Story: 4 - Dennis Biddle describes the origin of the Negro National League

Tape: 3 Story: 5 - Dennis Biddle talks about the relationship between Negro baseball leagues and the major leagues

Tape: 3 Story: 6 - Dennis Biddle talks about contracts for Negro league players

Tape: 3 Story: 7 - Dennis Biddle recalls a pivotal game against the Memphis Red Sox

Tape: 4 Story: 1 - Dennis Biddle talks about Gread "Lefty" McKinnis

Tape: 4 Story: 2 - Dennis Biddle talks about playing for the Chicago American Giants in the 1950s

Tape: 4 Story: 3 - Dennis Biddle explains the salaries of Negro league baseball players

Tape: 4 Story: 4 - Dennis Biddle describes the end of his baseball career in 1954

Tape: 4 Story: 5 - Dennis Biddle talks about his first jobs in Chicago, Illinois and Milwaukee, Wisconsin after the end of his baseball career

Tape: 4 Story: 6 - Dennis Biddle talks about attending the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as a part-time student

Tape: 4 Story: 7 - Dennis Biddle explains the renewed interest in Negro league baseball in the 1990s

Tape: 5 Story: 1 - Dennis Biddle talks about the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri

Tape: 5 Story: 2 - Dennis Biddle describes the funding for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri

Tape: 5 Story: 3 - Dennis Biddle details the fight for benefits for former Negro league baseball players

Tape: 5 Story: 4 - Dennis Biddle describes his work with the Yesterday's Negro League Baseball Players Foundation

Tape: 5 Story: 5 - Dennis Biddle talks about attempts to discount his history in the Negro Baseball League

Tape: 5 Story: 6 - Dennis Biddle explains the ongoing battle for players' benefits

Tape: 5 Story: 7 - Dennis Biddle talks about the operations and politics of the Yesterday's Negro League Baseball Players foundation

Tape: 5 Story: 8 - Dennis Biddle reflects upon the history of the Negro Baseball League

Tape: 6 Story: 1 - Dennis Biddle details the history of the Milwaukee Bears

Tape: 6 Story: 2 - Dennis Biddle remembers Satchel Paige's years as a pitcher in the Negro leagues

Tape: 6 Story: 3 - Dennis Biddle describes his hopes and concerns for the African American community

Tape: 6 Story: 4 - Dennis Biddle reflects upon his legacy

Tape: 6 Story: 5 - Dennis Biddle talks about his nine children and his four marriages

Tape: 6 Story: 6 - Dennis Biddle talks about how he would like to be remembered

Tape: 6 Story: 7 - Dennis Biddle narrates his photographs

DASession

1$1

DATape

3$3

DAStory

1$7

DATitle

Dennis Biddle describes his first night in Chicago, Illinois in 1953

Dennis Biddle recalls a pivotal game against the Memphis Red Sox

Transcript

Diamond number three [Washington Park, Chicago, Illinois], okay.$$So I, I, I went over there and I sit down. It was a little bench over there. I sit down 'cause nobody was there but me. I was supposed to been there at eleven o'clock. So finally one guy came and me and him started throwing the ball at each other, his name was Clyde McNeil. He was a--later on I, I, I learned a lot about him, but he was a--had been to the minor leagues and had left. He told me, he said they treated him like a dog down there where he was at, say he wasn't gonna take all that pressure. He came back to the Chicago American Giants. This was 1953 now. And so, pretty soon another guy came and then anoth--van--Dick Vance came, a old--older guy he was a catcher and then [HM Ted] "Double Duty" Radcliffe came and it were about fifteen of 'em and there we were. So, they had me pitching batting practice to the guys and I were very impressive I guess because they had a contract already typed out for me to sign. Craw--Mr. Crawford had the contract and so he said, "We got a room for you on 47th [Street] and South Parkway." Say, "Where's your bag?" I said, "Oh, it's across the street over there." He said, "Where?" I said, "Cross the streets," and I noticed he looking at me awful funny, so I said, "I'll show you," and we went across the street and then all them houses look alike, you know? And, and, and I was walking across the street and this lady said, "Are you the young man that left your bag here?" Out of the clear blue sky, she just asked me that and I said, "Yeah." She said, "Well Mr. Washington"--that was his name-"he had to go to work so he said you'd be back for it." I said, "Oh ma'am, thank you." I said, "Could I have his telephone number?" And she gave me his telephone number, so I went up to the little room they had for me on 47th and South Parkway, and it was the worst night of my life, I can remember. As a seventeen year old, in this big city of Chicago [Illinois], didn't know no one and all night long, I could hear people walking and talking. I could hear sirens and, you know, I, I grew up in a little town man, lights out at eight o'clock, you ain't seen nothing, heard, hear nothing but crickets. But here I am with all these sirens going all night long. Oh, I didn't sleep at all. I had that number sitting on that little, little table in the room and I couldn't wait 'til that morning. Telephone call was a dime. I walked across 47th at the corner and put my dime in, in the thing and he answered the phone. He said, "Where are you?" I said, "I'm the gentle--young man that left his bag with you." He said, "Where are you?" I said, "I'm on 47th." I looked, 47th and South Park. He said, "You stay right there. I'll be right there." He came, he picked me up, took me to his house. He lived on 51st and South Parkway, I mean 51st and, and, Champagne [sic, Champlain Ave]. He took me to his house and you know? Twenty-eight years later, I buried him. The Lord put him in my life that day. I became his son. When I got married, my wife was his daughter, my children was his grandchildren. Twenty-eight years later, I buried him.$$What was his first name?$$His name was McKinley Washington.$$Okay, McKinley Washington. And where, you were living--$$He stayed at 620 East 51st Street in Chicago, Illinois.$Now, let me just, let's get back to your career and see--$$Yeah.$$--Th--then we'll pick this up a little later. I mean the rest of the story of the league [Negro American League]--$$Yeah.$$--But, so you're seventeen years old, and--$$Yeah.$$--From what I read, I read that you set a record for the number of wins?$$Yeah, I had five straight wins.$$Okay.$$In the Negro [American] League.$$Okay.$$The first loss I had was from the New York Black Yankees.$$And it's a record for somebody your age, right?$$Well?$$--From somebody seventeen years old?$$I don't know some writer probably did that, I didn't--$$--Okay, all right.$$--See, we didn't, we didn't--it didn't mean nothing, that much to us at that time. I was playing ball, I was getting paid and I knew I was good enough to be in the major leagues, so, the record itself wasn't important to me. Somebody ask me now, how many homeruns you get? I wouldn't know, I think I got one or two inside the--$$Yeah, I think--$$--Park.$$--In those days of the major leagues, I guess the youngest player to, as a pitcher who, who won like a another game was Bob Feller--$$Yeah they can--$$--That's what they--$$--They compare me to Bob Feller? Okay.$$Yeah.$$--Well, I won five straight games--$$So they making you the black Bob Feller (laughter).$$(Laughter) Well I didn't do that. But you know, my first game against the Memphis Red Sox, that, to me that was my historical game because of the things that happened. [HM Ted] "Double Duty" [Radcliffe] was catching. I was winning the game, three to one, and a guy by the name of--the guy that wrote my autobiographry found out the guy's name, I--they called him Big Red [Wilmer Fields] that night, but his real name was Red Lonely, I didn't know that, that night, Red Lonely? They called him Big Red, and, and, I struck Big Red out twice and with that drop, and I never will forget, every time Big Red swing and miss, look like I could feel the vibration out to the mound from the bat. That's how big and strong he was, and the fans, "Ooohh," 'cause he was known to get homeruns apparently 'cause they was looking for him to do this and I struck him out. So, in, in high school, I was taught to hit a curve ball. You, you go up far as you can get in the batter's box and wait there, you know, to hit it, get it before it curve. And I saw him that night --I struck him out twice. The last time in the seventh inning he came up, and look like he st--got up in front of the plate, gon' hit my--Double Duty called for the curve, for the sinker and I said, "Nah," 'cause I saw him step up. I'm gon' cross him up this time, you know, and Double Duty called time out, he come out there he said, "What's the problem?" I said, "You see him setting up?" He said, "I don't give a da"--and he curse word, "You throw what I tell you boy." That's what he said, and he gon' back behind the plate. And look like to me Big Red stepped up further and Double Duty still calling for the sinker and I shook him off, you know? I said no, and he said (waves his hand) that mean throw what you want and I did and I never will forget that night. I threw what I wanted and Mr. Lonely hit it and I think it's still going today. I never seen a ball hit that far in my life (laughter), and I'll never forget the tongue lashing I got that night, a seventeen year old. It was embarrassing to me with all those people there in the stand. Double Duty came out to the mound jumping up and down calling me all kind of names and I been in this league fifteen years, boy if I tell you to throw something, you throw it. I'll never forget that, I went on back and I won the game three to one, but I'll never forget that tongue lashing I got that night, you know.$$Yeah, I bet Double, Double Duty could do it too, he can--$$Oh well he, he, ah man could he do it. He hit the homerun that night to, was it, he hit a two run homer that night, yeah. He was a great player and you know? I didn't see him in his early years, but from what I saw in his older years, he should have been in the hall of fame. I don't know about some of those guys that got in the hall of fame. I didn't see 'em play but, you know, they couldn't have been too much greater than what I saw from him.

Read more about Dennis Biddle

June M. Perry

June Martin Perry was born on June 10, 1947, and raised in Columbia, South Carolina. She received her B.A. degree from North Carolina Central University. Perry attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and received her M.S. degree in social work in 1971. She has also completed her course work for a Ph.D. in urban studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Perry and fellow social worker Geri McFadden started New Concept Development Center, Inc., in 1975 to address what they saw as a lack of local social services, specifically those for African Americans. New Concept is a non-profit social services agency that targets African Americans. Services include family counseling, housing, and employment assistance, as well as case management for HIV patients. In the 1980s, New Concept expanded into a greater set of social services by starting a mentoring program for girls at the Hillside Housing Project, providing a Youth Motivation Seminar for Role Models and Youth, and developing its first youth-managed and operated business through its youth entrepreneurship program. In 1986, New Concept authored a Blue Ribbon report on Teen Pregnancy Prevention for the City of Milwaukee. New Concept developed the first Prenatal Care Program which soon became the model for Title XIX benefits. In the 1990s, New Concept Development Center again expanded its services by opening Milwaukee’s first Father’s Resource Center and developing a First-time Juvenile Offenders Program which became a model for Milwaukee County. What began as a two-woman operation has grown into a 50-employee business serving more than 7,000 families a year operating a budget of $2.5 million. After retiring from New Concept Development Center in 2006, Perry created Access 2 Success, an organization which acts as a technical assistance intermediary between business, government and non-profits to expand the capacity for non-profit sustainability and strategic planning.

Perry is the recipient of many awards including the Sacajawea Trailblazer Award, the Woman of Influence Award, Mentor of the Year, the Black Women’s Network Lifetime Leader Award, the Kraft Foods - Essence Award, the Black Administrators in Child Welfare Long Term Leaders Award, and the Community Service Award from SET Ministries. Perry’s current volunteer involvement includes being a founding member of the African American Women’s Fund, membership on the board of directors of the Aurora Health Care Metro Region, and the oversight and advisory committee for the Healthier Wisconsin Partnership for the University of Wisconsin School of Public Health. Perry is also an independent travel agent for Keystone Travel. She has recently traveled to Australia, New Zealand, Greece, Turkey, France, Italy, and Mexico.

Perry has two adult children and enjoys spending time with her life partner, Bill Stevens.

Accession Number

A2008.133

Sex

Female

Interview Date

11/17/2008

Last Name

Perry

Maker Category

CivicMakers

Middle Name

Martin

Occupation

Social Worker

Nonprofit Executive

Organizations

Medical College of Wisconsin

Organization of Organizations

Mosaic Partnership

Delta Sigma Theta Sorority

African American Women’s Fund

Schools

W A Perry Middle

C. A. Johnson High School

Carver-Lyon Elem

North Carolina Central University

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

First Name

June

Birth City, State, Country

Columbia

HM ID

PER05

Favorite Season

Fall

State

South Carolina

THM DA Link

http://marc.thehistorymakers.org/thmdigital/A2008.133.htm

Web Clip 1

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/481845

Favorite Vacation Destination

Italy

Favorite Quote

If It Is Going To Be, It Is Up To Me.

Bio Photo

Speakers Bureau Region State

Wisconsin

Interview Description

A2008_133_EAD.pdf

A2008_133_EAC.pdf

Birth Date

6/10/1947

Birth Place Term

Columbia

Speakers Bureau Region City

Milwaukee

Country

USA

Favorite Food

Grits

Short Description

Social worker and nonprofit executive June M. Perry (1947 - ) started New Concept Development Center, Inc., a non-profit social services agency that targets African Americans, in 1975. In 2006 Perry created Access 2 Success to expand the capacity for non-profit sustainability and strategic planning.

Employment

Wisconsin Department of Public Welfare

New Concept Self Development Center

Favorite Color

Red

Web Clip 2

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/481857

Timing Pairs

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DAStories

Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of June M. Perry's interview

Tape: 1 Story: 2 - Slating of June M. Perry's interview

Tape: 1 Story: 3 - June M. Perry describes her mother's family background

Tape: 1 Story: 4 - June M. Perry describes her maternal grandfather's career as an electrician

Tape: 1 Story: 5 - June M. Perry talks about her family's roots in Africa

Tape: 1 Story: 6 - June M. Perry describes her paternal ancestry in Jenkinsville, South Carolina

Tape: 1 Story: 7 - June M. Perry describes her mother's upbringing in South Carolina

Tape: 1 Story: 8 - June M. Perry describes her father's family background

Tape: 1 Story: 9 - June M. Perry describes her parents' personalities

Tape: 1 Story: 10 - June M. Perry describes her earliest childhood memory

Tape: 1 Story: 11 - June M. Perry describes the sights, sounds and smells of her childhood

Tape: 2 Story: 1 - June M. Perry describes the role of religion in her childhood

Tape: 2 Story: 2 - June M. Perry describes her community in Columbia, South Carolina

Tape: 2 Story: 3 - June M. Perry describes her grade school experiences

Tape: 2 Story: 4 - June M. Perry recalls experiencing racial discrimination in the late 1950s

Tape: 2 Story: 5 - June M. Perry remembers C.A. Johnson High School in Columbia, South Carolina

Tape: 2 Story: 6 - June M. Perry recalls her brother's sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina

Tape: 2 Story: 7 - June M. Perry remembers North Carolina College at Durham

Tape: 2 Story: 8 - June M. Perry recalls meeting Howard Fuller in Durham, North Carolina

Tape: 3 Story: 1 - June M. Perry recalls her decision to study at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Tape: 3 Story: 2 - June M. Perry remembers moving to Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Tape: 3 Story: 3 - June M. Perry describes her community organizing work in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Tape: 3 Story: 4 - June M. Perry describes the Organization of Organizations' role in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Tape: 3 Story: 5 - June M. Perry recalls her community at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Tape: 3 Story: 6 - June M. Perry recalls her work at the Wisconsin Department of Public Welfare

Tape: 3 Story: 7 - June M. Perry describes racial segregation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Tape: 3 Story: 8 - June M. Perry describes her work as a child abuse investigator in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Tape: 4 Story: 1 - June M. Perry recalls the psychological toll of child abuse casework

Tape: 4 Story: 2 - June M. Perry recalls founding the New Concept Self Development Center

Tape: 4 Story: 3 - June M. Perry describes her parental counseling services

Tape: 4 Story: 4 - June M. Perry describes the problems in the Milwaukee Public Schools

Tape: 4 Story: 5 - June M. Perry describes the Each One Reach One mentoring program

Tape: 4 Story: 6 - June M. Perry describes her work with teenage parents

Tape: 4 Story: 7 - June M. Perry describes her preparations for retirement

Tape: 4 Story: 8 - June M. Perry describes the programs at the New Concept Self Development Center

Tape: 5 Story: 1 - June M. Perry describes her work to decrease childhood incarceration

Tape: 5 Story: 2 - June M. Perry reflects upon her career at the New Concept Self Development Center

Tape: 5 Story: 3 - June M. Perry reflects upon her legacy

Tape: 5 Story: 4 - June M. Perry describes her hopes and concerns for the African American community

Tape: 5 Story: 5 - June M. Perry reflects upon her family life

Tape: 5 Story: 6 - June M. Perry describes her plans for the future

Tape: 5 Story: 7 - June M. Perry narrates her photographs

DASession

1$1

DATape

2$3

DAStory

4$8

DATitle

June M. Perry recalls experiencing racial discrimination in the late 1950s

June M. Perry describes her work as a child abuse investigator in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Transcript

Now, the country was really getting into the Civil Rights Movement in the late '50s [1950s], you know (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous) Yeah.$$--Little Rock [Arkansas], and you had, you know, the Montgomery Bus Boycott and--$$Yes.$$And so were things starting to heat up in--$$Yeah.$$--South Carolina?$$I remember when we went to the movies, we, you know, had to sit upstairs and I remember, you know, the news talking about segregation and the--kind of an escalation of the fear--well not fear, but just conversation about you shouldn't drive alone at night because, you know, the Ku Klux Klan [KKK] is around and we'll never see you again, just those kind of things being a part of the conversations that were prevalent in the community in the school. Yeah, so I remember the difference and more attention to the things that we had lived with, like the black and white water fountains and the different bus station and train waiting rooms and all of the things that were segregated. I remember that.$$When you first encountered--can you remember when you first encountered that kind of thing or took notice of it?$$As a little girl, I remember my [maternal] grandmother [Rosena Martin] taking me to ride the bus and the fact that we had to sit in the back. And I would ask her, "Why do we have to go to the back," and she would say, "That's just the way it is." Yeah, and like I said, being with my [maternal] grandfather, and knowing that he had to collect money from white people and sometimes they wouldn't pay him, and also recognizing the difference of he always called them mister and they always called him Uncle Willie [Will Martin]. So, you know, I always--you knew those things happened and also my family would travel, drive, when my father [Mark Martin, Sr.] was alive. I remember we drove to Canada, to Quebec, and we would stay in people's homes that they knew because we couldn't stay in hotels and stop on the side of the road and, you know, have a picnic because we couldn't go in hotels or--you know, in restaurants. So, I--yeah, I remember those things.$$Once you got to Quebec, was it still segregated?$$No. I remember staying in the hotel in Quebec and I think that's, you know, probably why we wanted to go there because it was a different country with different rules, but I remember that.$$It's interesting in those days, a lot of places in the North, black people couldn't stay in hotels either, yeah, I know so--$$Yeah, that's true.$$Yeah.$$The North was just as segregated. It just wasn't talked about as much, you know, but it was. It was--Baltimore [Maryland] was awful, you know, and where--the Mason-Dixon Line, it was supposedly after you crossed that, everything was okay, but I don't think so. And I had my grandmother's sisters, several of them went to New Jersey to work in very wealthy homes, so they worked for people who had a lot of money, for white people, and they lived in a neighborhood in New Jersey, I think it was Newark [New Jersey] then, that was not a bad neighborhood. People had very nice homes and--excuse me--all the people who lived there worked, but it was a--certainly a distinction between what white people and what black people and how they lived.$$Okay.$$Yeah.$$So--usually the pattern is South Carolina goes to New York, and--$$D.C. [Washington, D.C.]$$D.C., too (simultaneous).$$(Simultaneous0 Uh-huh.$$Okay.$$Yeah, a lot in D.C. I have one aunt in D.C., one in New Jersey.$$Okay.$$Yeah.$So you were organizing on the North Side of Milwaukee [Wisconsin], the black (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous) Yeah.$$--part of town?$$Yeah, uh-huh.$$All right.$$Yeah.$$So, were you still investigating cases of child abuse?$$That was when I got out of graduate school [University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin].$$Okay.$$That was my first job, was investigating child abuse, yeah, and mostly in the central city and the North Side. But, again, that was a very rude awakening to me of poverty, very different than in the South, I think. The things that I saw, I had never seen before.$$Like what, for instance?$$The level of poverty, how people lived, homes where there was no food, where, you know, people were living in actual squalor and kids were neglected, didn't have food to eat, you know. I--there are poor people in the South, but I never saw that level of poverty and mistreatment of children before, so that was a rude awakening to me of kind of a difference. And I was thinking, some friends and I were talking about growing up. In the South, everybody lived in a house and had a yard--a yard. People didn't live in high-rise apartments or--the projects were one level, you know, maybe three or four units joined together. But, I think the difference was people were more independent but connected. There were neighborhoods where, like I said, my family--people--no child would go without food because people were around you that knew if you were poor, you lost your job, they were going to help you. So, I had never seen the kind of poverty and mistreatment of children before I came here. That was new. And that was really kind of the motivation for starting the agency [New Concept Self Development Center, Inc., Milwaukee, Wisconsin].$$Now, what was your analysis of I guess the child abuse problem?$$Yeah, it was before crack cocaine, so it was some drugs, but not real prevalent. It was poverty and it was frustration, not having--people were most often referred for child neglect, children who came to school with, you know, very dirty clothes or who--the abuse was I would say maybe 20 percent of the time, but neglect because of poverty was more prevalent.

Read more about June M. Perry

Donald Carpenter

Distinguished professor of sociology Donald Ray Carpenter was born on September 27, 1943 in Tyler, Texas to Modestine Truesdale Carpenter. In the absence of his father, he was raised by his grandmother, a Seventh Day Adventist. As a youth, Carpenter moved to Ogden, Utah, a city known for its historical involvement as a railroad town saturated with black night life, when his stepfather, John Carpenter, a radio repairman, was hired at Hill AFB near Ogden. Carpenter attended T.J. Austin Elementary School before graduating from Ogden High School in 1962. He performed as an organist and pianist for New Zion Baptist Church for forty-seven years. Carpenter went on to enroll at Weber State University where he majored in sociology and minored in anthropology. While attending Weber State, Carpenter also earned a living by working for Wonder Bread Bakery and the U.S. Post Office.

In 1972, Carpenter entered the University of Utah where he pursued his M.S.W. degree in social work. Afterwards, he returned to his alma mater in 1973 and began teaching in Weber State’s Social Work/Gerontology Department. In 1974, he attended the summer institute at the University of Chicago where he studied curriculum development for social work education. Carpenter went on to further his education by earning his Ph.D. in cultural foundation of education in 1986. He was awarded tenure at Weber State University that same year, and in 1993, he became chair of the Department of Social Work and Gerontology at Weber State University.

After retiring in 2003, Carpenter became the Administrator/Head Start Director of the Ogden/Weber Community Action Partnership, an organization that helps the disadvantaged on the local, state and federal levels. He has received many awards and recognitions including: Social Worker of the Year, Utah Chapter of NASW, 1998; 33 Degree Mason, 1988; Past Master of Mt. Ogden Lodge #20, Ogden, Utah; Past Commander-in-Chief of Ben Lomond Consistory, Ogden, Utah; Past Potentate of Rabbak Temple #218, Ogden, Utah and LCSW Social Worker, State of Utah.

Carpenter has been married to the former Elizabeth Ann Washington for forty-six years. Together they have two daughters, Tamera Lynn and Leslie Ann, three grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Carpenter passed away on November 9, 2018.

Carpenter was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on March 14, 2008.

Accession Number

A2008.051

Sex

Male

Interview Date

3/14/2008

Last Name

Carpenter

Maker Category

Occupation

Organizations

Ogden/Weber Community Action Partnership

Schools

Ogden High School

North Davis Junior High School

T.J. Austin Elementary School

Lewis Junior High School

Roy Junior High School

First Name

Donald

Birth City, State, Country

Tyler

HM ID

CAR17

Favorite Season

Summer

State

Texas

THM DA Link

http://marc.thehistorymakers.org/thmdigital/A2008.051.htm

Web Clip 1

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/616385

Favorite Vacation Destination

California

Bio Photo

Speakers Bureau Region State

Utah

Interview Description

A2008_051_EAD.pdf

A2008_051_EAC.pdf

Birth Date

9/27/1943

Birth Place Term

Tyler

Speakers Bureau Region City

Salt Lake City

Country

USA

Favorite Food

Beef (Ground)

Death Date

11/9/2018

Short Description

Social worker and sociology professor Donald Carpenter (1943 - 2018) served as the chair of the Department of Social Work and Gerontology at Weber State University. He was also the administrator and Head Start director of the Ogden-Weber Community Action Partnership, Inc.

Employment

Weber School

Favorite Color

Black

Web Clip 2

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/616409

Timing Pairs

0,0:9222,163:18136,230:21354,266:30078,353:32589,383:38076,463:38820,475:68341,832:75646,870:75950,875:76482,884:79142,922:79902,935:83030,949:85437,980:85935,987:91685,1011:91985,1016:92360,1022:93410,1044:97085,1121:97460,1127:98885,1155:101885,1216:107402,1250:109900,1274$0,0:3600,113:12336,148:13337,161:18966,239:21786,284:22350,293:27760,321:33106,355:34900,392:37006,428:38020,445:41140,517:44829,526:45194,532:50750,609:51200,615:52100,627:52550,633:60459,727:63820,766:69608,815:75812,946:76791,960:78110,974:79295,1000:80401,1032:80717,1037:82771,1069:83324,1077:83640,1082:94068,1378:95095,1393:95648,1400:98334,1431:98650,1436:111184,1526:111776,1535:124500,1644:130060,1659:130456,1667:131446,1686:131842,1701:136890,1740:137298,1747:143878,1849:144293,1855:144791,1862:147990,1896:151830,1931:154458,1985:155480,2002:157232,2037:157524,2042:163476,2114:163866,2121:164490,2137:165348,2152:166050,2163:166986,2185:177394,2297:179878,2344:182728,2354:200258,2635:211398,2784:217582,2842:218734,2867:220678,2905:221254,2914:229025,3020:232066,3046:236034,3084:243552,3148:245300,3179:245604,3184:245984,3190:248416,3231:251912,3299:252216,3304:259580,3410:259975,3416:261634,3431:261950,3436:270102,3530:273510,3643

DAStories

Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of Donald Carpenter's interview

Tape: 1 Story: 2 - Donald Carpenter lists his favorites

Tape: 1 Story: 3 - Donald Carpenter describes his mother's family background

Tape: 1 Story: 4 - Donald Carpenter describes his maternal grandparents

Tape: 1 Story: 5 - Donald Carpenter describes his mother's upbringing

Tape: 1 Story: 6 - Donald Carpenter describes his birth father's family background

Tape: 1 Story: 7 - Donald Carpenter describes his relationship with his birth father

Tape: 1 Story: 8 - Donald Carpenter describes his stepfather's upbringing

Tape: 1 Story: 9 - Donald Carpenter describes his relationship with his stepfather

Tape: 1 Story: 10 - Donald Carpenter talks about how his mother met his birth father

Tape: 1 Story: 11 - Donald Carpenter describes his mother and stepfather's marriage

Tape: 1 Story: 12 - Donald Carpenter describes his relationship with his mother

Tape: 2 Story: 1 - Donald Carpenter describes his earliest childhood memory

Tape: 2 Story: 2 - Donald Carpenter describes his neighborhood in Tyler, Texas

Tape: 2 Story: 3 - Donald Carpenter remembers the Liberty Baptist Church in Tyler, Texas

Tape: 2 Story: 4 - Donald Carpenter describes his relationship with the elders in his community

Tape: 2 Story: 5 - Donald Carpenter remembers T.J. Austin Elementary School in Tyler, Texas

Tape: 2 Story: 6 - Donald Carpenter recalls his family's move to Clearfield, Utah

Tape: 2 Story: 7 - Donald Carpenter remembers Ogden High School in Ogden, Utah

Tape: 2 Story: 8 - Donald Carpenter describes his college aspirations

Tape: 2 Story: 9 - Donald Carpenter remembers marrying his wife

Tape: 2 Story: 10 - Donald Carpenter recalls his mentors at Weber State College in Ogden, Utah

Tape: 2 Story: 11 - Donald Carpenter talks about his early awareness of the Civil Rights Movement

Tape: 3 Story: 1 - Donald Carpenter describes the demographics of Utah

Tape: 3 Story: 2 - Donald Carpenter talks about race relations in Ogden, Utah

Tape: 3 Story: 3 - Donald Carpenter remembers Professor Ray Clark

Tape: 3 Story: 4 - Donald Carpenter recalls his work at the Clearfield Job Corps Center in Clearfield, Utah

Tape: 3 Story: 5 - Donald Carpenter remembers the guidance of his mentor, Professor Ray Clark

Tape: 3 Story: 6 - Donald Carpenter recalls becoming a tenured professor at Weber State College in Ogden, Utah

Tape: 3 Story: 7 - Donald Carpenter describes his Ph.D. dissertation

Tape: 3 Story: 8 - Donald Carpenter talks about the termination of Director H.C. Massey from the Ogden-Weber Community Action Partnership, Inc.

Tape: 4 Story: 1 - Donald Carpenter talks about his directorship of the Ogden-Weber Community Action Partnership, Inc.

Tape: 4 Story: 2 - Donald Carpenter describes his plans to honor H.C. Massey

Tape: 4 Story: 3 - Donald Carpenter recalls the controversy over H.C. Massey's termination

Tape: 4 Story: 4 - Donald Carpenter describes his achievements with the Head Start program in Ogden, Utah

Tape: 4 Story: 5 - Donald Carpenter reflects upon his directorship of the Head Start program in Ogden, Utah

Tape: 4 Story: 6 - Donald Carpenter describes his hopes and concerns for the communities of color in Utah

Tape: 4 Story: 7 - Donald Carpenter talks about H.C. Massey

Tape: 4 Story: 8 - Donald Carpenter describes his hopes and concerns for the African American community

Tape: 4 Story: 9 - Donald Carpenter reflects upon his life, pt. 1

Tape: 5 Story: 1 - Donald Carpenter describes his concerns for the Head Start program

Tape: 5 Story: 2 - Donald Carpenter talks about the role of the church in the black community

Tape: 5 Story: 3 - Donald Carpenter reflects upon his life, pt. 2

Tape: 5 Story: 4 - Donald Carpenter reflects upon his legacy, pt. 1

Tape: 5 Story: 5 - Donald Carpenter describes his family

Tape: 5 Story: 6 - Donald Carpenter talks about the history of African Americans in Ogden, Utah

Tape: 5 Story: 7 - Donald Carpenter reflects upon his legacy, pt. 2

Tape: 5 Story: 8 - Donald Carpenter describes how he would like to be remembered

DASession

1$1

DATape

1$4

DAStory

12$5

DATitle

Donald Carpenter describes his relationship with his mother

Donald Carpenter reflects upon his directorship of the Head Start program in Ogden, Utah

Transcript

When you think about the personalities of your mother and your stepfather [John Carpenter] in particular, who do you think you take after the most?$$My mother, no question. Her and I be--she had so many children and they were so close in particular when we came to Utah I had to really kind of step in and help her quite a bit with those children, and even now my father was a good person, but in the early days he drank quite a bit. So, I had to be the buffer quite a bit between him and her and she depended a lot on me because she was quite young. See she was only about twenty-two, twenty-three when we came to Utah, so she was a young woman herself. In fact, my mother and I are more like brothers and sisters than mother and son. In fact, I call her Modestine [Modestine Truesdell Carpenter]. I don't call her mother, I call her by her name. And, but we--I know what she went through for me, so therefore I'm pretty wired close to her, which gets into a whole lot of things later in years, but she make great sacrifices, I mean no question in my mind. I can name them, go through them. So, we have quite a close relationship. In fact, she says to me all of the time, even today, "If I lost any of my children," the most difficult one would be if she lost me.$So this will be your last job you think as such (simultaneous)?$$(Simultaneous) Yeah, oh absolutely.$$Okay.$$I'm just, I've got to stay until we've overcome the obstacles. I, I don't know how much longer I'll stay. I, it's really a more rewarding job to me than when I was teaching school. That was an easier job, but this job is more rewarding in the sense that--well it think one of the things that have worked, I've had a career, I've had positions, so I don't have nothing to prove other than to come here and help the staff here. I'm not coming in on an ego trip, I, I've been there, done that. And these people bust their butts for me, and a lot of these people have been here twenty years they know a hell of a lot more than I know about Head Start, but they are so committed and since I've been here I mean they make sure that--it was the staff that led this agency [Ogden-Weber Community Action Partnership, Inc., Ogden, Utah] to a zero finding, which is very unusual in the Head Start world. But one of the things I like about it is that it's put me in contact with people I never would have met at the college level, you know like Bob Coard [Robert M. Coard] out of ABCD [Action for Boston Community Development] out of Boston [Massachusetts]. I don't know if you're familiar with him. You really need to do him. I mean he's got the biggest community action program in the United States, Coard, ABCD. He's got four thousand kids in the Head Start program. But, at the nation, at the, at the regional and national level the contacts that I made have just been invaluable, and I think his help helped the, helped the agency tremendously. It's no secret in terms of people knowing about the troubles of this agency, but people coming in saying we want to help has a lot to do in terms the network that I've developed with it and we're making progress and we're, we just don't have those problems anymore and so I've got to stay just long enough that I get the seed planted where it continues to grow. It's got to do even better when I leave, and I'm trying to look at succession planning that when I leave you don't have to go all around the country to find a new director, you have one right here, right here in this agency.$$To have, so--$$People who and I've convinced the board we need to do succession planning. I've made sure that the managers understand if you want this seat it's gon- you gonna have to have at least a master's degree to get it. So, through your T and TA [training and technical assistance] plan I sent them to this Johnson and Johnson Institute in California [Irvin, California] to get that certification, the Head Start certification, you know the career development. I'm saying that, "My last hoorah in this agency is to see--I got five managers. One of you five ought to get this job. I want all of you to be so qualified until the board is going to struggle with who to give it to because you paid your dues." And I think when people feel that they can, if, if I work hard, if I do what I need to do, I might have chance to be promoted when something come up. And so it's, it's, it's, it's work, worked well and I mean I have great respect in the region. I'm, like I say, president of the Region 8 board. I deal with Denver [Colorado]. I deal with D.C. [Washington, D.C.], deal with them all. And it's really been a fun job, in particular with the state level CSBG and that whole system. I, it's, it's worked out really well, so it's been a great experience for me. Actually I'm having more fun here then I did at Weber [Weber State College; Weber State University, Ogden, Utah].

Read more about Donald Carpenter

James Dumpson

International social worker and educator James Russelle Dumpson was born on April 5, 1909 to James and Edythe Dumpson in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Dumpson’s family moved to West Philadelphia where he attended West Philadelphia Boys’ High School. He then attended Chaney Normal School (now Chaney Teachers College) and received a teaching certificate in 1932. He went on to Temple University to receive his B.A. degree in education in 1934. Dumpson taught elementary school for two years before moving to New York City to work for the Children’s Aid Society as a case worker. He then received his M.A. degree in social work from Fordam University and his Ph.D. from the University of Dacca in Ghana.

From 1953 to 1954, Dumpson served as a United Nations Advisor/Chief of Training in Social Welfare to the Government of Pakistan. In 1971, he worked as a consultant in Pakistan, and in 1977, received a fellowship to Pakistan through the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to Pakistan.

Dumpson began his association with Fordham University in 1957 as a Visiting Associate Professor in the Graduate Institute for Mission Studies. Ten years later, he returned to Fordham University as the Dean of the Graduate School of Social Work, with the faculty rank of professor.

In 1959, Dumpson was named Commissioner of Welfare for the City of New York, becoming the only African American welfare commissioner in the country. His appointment also marked the first time that a social worker had held the position. He then returned to New York seven years later to become administrator of the Human Resources Department.

As an advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Dumpson served on various advisory commissions, including the Presidents Commission on Narcotics and Drug Abuse. In 1990, Dumpson was appointed to serve as New York City’s Health Service Administrator and Chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation. Upon retirement, he continued to teach at Fordham University until 2006.

Dumpson passed away on November 5, 2012.

Accession Number

A2007.006

Sex

Male

Interview Date

1/10/2007

Last Name

Dumpson

Maker Category

CivicMakers

PoliticalMakers

Occupation

City Government Appointee

Presidential Advisor

Social Worker

Organizations

President\'s Commission on Narcotics and Drug Abuse

Council on Social Work Education

Schools

West Philadelphia Boys’ High School

West Philadelphia High School

Octavius V. Catto Secondary School

Cheyney University of Pennsylvania

Temple University

Fordham University

First Name

James

Birth City, State, Country

Philadelphia

HM ID

DUM01

Favorite Season

Spring

State

Pennsylvania

THM DA Link

http://marc.thehistorymakers.org/thmdigital/A2007.006.htm

Web Clip 1

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/373211

Favorite Vacation Destination

Cape May, New Jersey

Bio Photo

Speakers Bureau Region State

New York

Interview Description

A2007_006_EAD.pdf

A2007_006_EAC.pdf

Birth Date

4/5/1909

Birth Place Term

Philadelphia

Speakers Bureau Region City

New York

Country

USA

Favorite Food

Beef (Corned), Cabbage

Death Date

11/5/2012

Short Description

City government appointee, presidential advisor, and social worker James Dumpson (1909 - 2012 ) was the first social worker to be named Commissioner of Welfare for the City of New York. He also held appointments as advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and he served on various advisory commissions, including the President’s Commission on Narcotics and Drug Abuse.

Employment

Government of Pakistan

Children's Aid Society

City of New York

Fordham University

Health and Hospitals Corporation, NYC

Favorite Color

Red

Web Clip 2

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/373217

Timing Pairs

0,0:10962,146:11586,153:14081,170:14516,176:15125,184:15821,193:28165,290:33034,366:34414,391:34966,400:35587,411:40070,433:43916,507:46508,562:47399,576:47966,584:49748,622:50396,631:58746,720:60072,753:60582,759:61398,767:63336,789:63744,794:70421,864:71273,877:75218,940:75598,950:76130,958:80994,1050:81526,1058:82134,1067:82666,1075:89770,1142:90370,1150:96701,1224:98303,1245:99015,1253:103910,1316:104622,1325:105512,1340:106847,1355:110128,1367:110824,1380:115709,1425:116041,1430:117867,1465:119859,1493:120274,1500:120938,1510:131674,1625:132139,1631:136231,1691:141492,1729:144484,1784:144756,1789:150740,1976:152576,2018:155432,2092:155976,2101:166740,2126:167028,2131:169692,2217:170268,2227:170988,2238:171276,2243:178796,2289:181369,2329:182365,2350:188953,2435:189559,2442:190468,2452:192690,2468:193570,2477:195340,2485:195808,2492:197368,2522:198460,2539:202750,2619:206962,2710:207586,2722:214382,2765:216084,2796:216750,2817:223120,2927$0,0:1577,18:1909,23:4814,77:11122,198:23876,301:26112,341:33160,406:33616,413:34376,426:34756,432:35288,440:35820,450:36124,455:36732,465:37264,474:38708,499:39924,518:41140,538:42280,555:42812,563:43572,577:44180,587:44636,594:48310,599:56480,719:57560,751:57860,757:60674,798:61139,804:62348,818:69464,900:71808,921:72600,934:73326,971:78000,1007:79170,1025:80250,1043:80880,1050:82050,1077:85470,1122:86010,1129:89972,1145:91064,1166:94262,1214:96758,1242:97226,1249:98474,1261:100502,1297:106673,1358:107291,1365:109306,1379:109798,1386:110700,1400:111930,1418:115990,1458:116470,1465:116790,1470:118700,1484:119036,1489:123908,1544:128508,1566:129288,1579:131124,1598:131796,1608:132552,1619:133056,1626:133896,1638:134400,1645:139510,1681:140161,1689:144460,1746:145344,1763:147906,1772:148402,1780:151943,1795:154370,1803:154986,1815:155602,1822:156394,1832:156746,1837:159480,1860:160155,1872:160680,1878:163860,1896:166560,1930:167910,1941:168720,1951:169170,1957:169530,1962:170520,1975:170880,1980:172050,2002:172770,2012:173760,2026:177377,2037:178325,2052:178799,2059:184875,2115:186266,2132:187015,2139:191608,2170:193666,2186:195770,2193:196274,2200:197702,2221:200894,2257:201384,2270:201580,2275:203249,2289:203603,2296:207138,2331:208370,2350:209338,2362:212242,2406:212858,2414:215322,2456:215938,2465:222240,2525:222905,2532:225945,2611:228035,2637:248212,2794:249588,2835:250878,2862:251222,2867:261760,2963:273980,3260

DAStories

Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of James Dumpson's interview

Tape: 1 Story: 2 - James Dumpson lists his favorites

Tape: 1 Story: 3 - James Dumpson describes his father's family background

Tape: 1 Story: 4 - James Dumpson describes his mother's family background

Tape: 1 Story: 5 - James Dumpson describes his maternal grandparents' role in his family

Tape: 1 Story: 6 - James Dumpson describes his earliest childhood memory

Tape: 1 Story: 7 - James Dumpson recalls growing up in Philadelphia in the 1920s

Tape: 1 Story: 8 - James Dumpson describes his experiences at Octavius V. Catto Secondary School

Tape: 1 Story: 9 - James Dumpson recalls his childhood community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Tape: 1 Story: 10 - James Dumpson remembers West Philadelphia High School for Boys

Tape: 2 Story: 1 - James Dumpson talks about the role of music in his upbringing

Tape: 2 Story: 2 - James Dumpson describes his activities at West Philadelphia High School

Tape: 2 Story: 3 - James Dumpson recalls his experiences at Cheyney Training School for Teachers

Tape: 2 Story: 4 - James Dumpson remembers working as a teacher in Pennsylvania

Tape: 2 Story: 5 - James Dumpson recalls becoming at caseworker at the Children's Aid Society

Tape: 2 Story: 6 - James Dumpson describes his tenure at New York City's Children's Aid Society

Tape: 2 Story: 7 - James Dumpson recalls his work in child welfare for the City of New York

Tape: 2 Story: 8 - James Dumpson recalls being hired to consult for the United Nations

Tape: 3 Story: 1 - James Dumpson remembers his work with the United Nations in Pakistan

Tape: 3 Story: 2 - James Dumpson describes his work for New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare

Tape: 3 Story: 3 - James Dumpson describes his career in academia in New York City

Tape: 3 Story: 4 - James Dumpson recalls the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s

Tape: 3 Story: 5 - James Dumpson recalls attending the March on Washington

Tape: 3 Story: 6 - James Dumpson recalls his chairmanship of New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, pt. 1

Tape: 3 Story: 7 - James Dumpson recalls his chairmanship of New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, pt. 2

Tape: 3 Story: 8 - James Dumpson describes his career since retiring from New York City government

Tape: 4 Story: 1 - James Dumpson describes his work in social welfare with the United Nations

Tape: 4 Story: 2 - James Dumpson describes his work with Whitney Young's National Urban League

Tape: 4 Story: 3 - James Dumpson describes the awards he received during his career

Tape: 4 Story: 4 - James Dumpson recalls prominent African American politicians from New York

Tape: 4 Story: 5 - James Dumpson describes his family life

Tape: 4 Story: 6 - James Dumpson reflects upon his career in social welfare

Tape: 4 Story: 7 - James Dumpson reflects upon his values

Tape: 4 Story: 8 - James Dumpson describes his hopes and concerns for the African American community

Tape: 4 Story: 9 - James Dumpson describes how he would like to be remembered

Tape: 5 Story: 1 - James Dumpson narrates his photographs

DASession

1$1

DATape

2$3

DAStory

3$1

DATitle

James Dumpson recalls his experiences at Cheyney Training School for Teachers

James Dumpson remembers his work with the United Nations in Pakistan

Transcript

So, how did you decide what school, what college you wanted to go to?$$I wanted to be a teacher at those days, and there was a man by the name of Leslie Pinckney Hill, a great African American educator, who had been a companion with Frederick Douglass, not Frederick Douglass, it's another American, African American luminary. But Leslie Pinckney Hill was then the president of the Cheyney Training School for Teachers, now Cheyney University of Pennsylvania [Cheyney, Pennsylvania], and it was decided--I decided, my mother [Edyth Smith Dumpson] supported it, having been a teacher herself, that I was gonna go into the teaching profession. And I went to Cheyney and had the great fortune of becoming associated with Leslie Pinckney Hill, one of the great African American educators in this country. And Cheyney became almost a landmark as the beginning of my professional career. I went to Cheyney, and it was at Cheyney that I heard about and learned about Negro spirituals, for example. It was at Cheyney that I learned about leaders in the African American history books. It was at Cheyney that--it was at Cheyney that I became an African American in the true sense of that term. And the roots for that, from my identification as an African American, my knowledge now of African American contribution to American culture and to world culture, began in my relationship with Leslie Pinckney Hill at Cheyney.$$Okay, what else stands out about your college years?$$Well in addition to what I just said about Cheyney and professional preparation as a teacher, there was a woman named Laura Wheeler Waring, who was our music teacher at Cheyney, and through her I became interested in, committed to music written by African Americans. I began to know the spirituals, I began to know people like Nathaniel Dett [R. Nathaniel Dett], then later Marian Anderson who was practically a neighbor of mine in Philadelphia [Pennsylvania]. And (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous) So this was in college?$$This was in Cheyney Training--$$Cheyney, okay--$$--School, Cheyney normal school, now Cheyney Teachers College.$$All right, so, what happens as you begin to get ready for graduation from college?$$Well, to begin to get ready for graduation from college two things happened. One, I realized that I was at a, what was then a normal school that was just becoming a teachers college, that was Cheyney, and that was part of the Pennsylvania higher education system. I then realized that my degree from Cheyney was not gonna be enough to get me where I thought I wanted to go, where I belonged, and therefore I began to take courses at Temple University [Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] and got my first graduate degree from Temple University. Then, of course, I was in the midst of the whole educational system and knew that that was not enough, and I had to go on and finally ended up, of course, with a Ph.D. and all the rest of it--$Now, you accepted this position to go to Pakistan. So tell me about life in Pakistan.$$Oh, it was great.$$(Laughter) Okay.$$Make my reservation for tomorrow.$$Okay.$$I went there as advisor to the government in child welfare and my experience there with the government and with the community for the academic community and the community at large led to my, of course, teaching at what they then had as in social welfare, and child welfare which was very meager in terms of what they needed. And I suppose, as I look back on it, my real contribution was helping them set up a school of social work with an emphasis on family and child welfare in Lahore [Pakistan] and in Dhaka [Dhaka, Pakistan; Dhaka, Bangladesh] and then in Karachi [Pakistan], the three major cities of that country. It was my first international experience. I'd never been out of the country to work and I must tell you it was probably the richest professional experience I ever had in my life, or ever can have.$$What made that so?$$First of all, the commitment of the United Nations [UN] to developing countries and by commitment. I mean not only verbal commitment, but material commitment, money and staffing. Secondly the eagerness and acceptance of the Pakistani people themselves, recognition of their need to get on board with their social develop- educational development and social welfare. And number three was the commitment of the people whom we trained, who are now the social work leadership in that country. Without those three parts we could have done nothing, and Pakistan would not be where it is in the league of nations of social welfare and social development. That was probably the richest experience that I've ever--will ever have in my life, of working in a new culture, African American among Asians, fear of the United States in that country, not spoken of course, but fear, some of it envy. Misunderstanding of who we are as Americans, suspicion about race relations in this country, and here's a black man coming to our country, a Christian in a Muslim country. All of those conflicting contributions in the picture, and the United Nations, and then America, and then the Muslim world, coming together or being in surroundings, in which you then are going out to help them set up a social welfare education program. It was quite a, as I look back on it, probably one of the richest challenges that anybody could possibly have.$$Okay.$$But I did it with the help of the government in Pakistan, with the support of the United Nations social development department [Commission for Social Development], but most importantly with the people, the family--leadership, the families of--who were all Pakistani in Karachi and Dhaka, and Lahore.$$Okay, so you were there for, for about a year, is that right?$$I was there two years.$$Two years?$$And then I've gone back periodically.$$Okay, all right, so we're really now in 1953, you were there from 1953 to 1954?$$That was the official of the United Nations; I'm still there (laughter).$$Yeah, but I'm just saying this is when you (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous) Yes, officially, yes--$$--first went--$$When I first went was '53 [1953] to '54 [1954]--$$--fifty-four [1954]--$$That's correct--$$Okay, all right.

Read more about James Dumpson

Alice Windom

Social worker Alice Mary Windom was born on March 30, 1936, in St. Louis, Missouri to Frances Louise Jones Windom and Dr. John Henry Windom. Windom is from a family of educators. Her grandfather, Christopher Columbus Jones, was Southern Illinois University’s first African American student. Windom’s parents met at the University of Illinois and raised their daughter on African American college campuses at Albany State College and Prairie View A&M University. She attended Prairie View Training School in Texas and Cote Brilliante Elementary School in St. Louis. Windom graduated from Sumner High School in 1953. Offered half tuition at Central State University (CSU) in Wilberforce, Ohio, Windom was exposed to African American historian and school president Dr. Charles Wesley and lectures by Thurgood Marshall, J.A. Rogers and others. She started and organized a successful sit-in of Xenia, Ohio’s Geyer’s Restaurant in 1957. Graduating that year with her B.S. degree in social work, Windom went on to earn her M.S.W. degree from the University of Chicago in 1959.

From June 1958 to August of 1962, Windom worked as a social worker and as a child welfare worker for the State of Illinois Department of Mental Health Division of Family and Children’s Services. From 1962 to 1964, Windom made a decision to live and work in Ghana, West Africa. Working as a secondary school teacher and secretary to the Ethiopian Ambassador, Windom was a part of an historic group of diverse African American expatriates in Ghana which included John Henrik Clarke, Maya Angelou, Curtis “Kojo” Morrow and the elder W.E.B. DuBois. In 1964, Windom helped plan the itinerary for Malcolm X’s trip to Ghana and served as administrative assistant for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa from 1964 to 1968, organizing international conferences in seven countries. From 1969 to 1972, Windom was a social welfare organizer for the Department of Social Welfare in Lusaka, Zambia. In the United States, she served as director of social services for the St. Louis Medium Security Institution from 1973 to 1974. In 1977, Windom sued the City of St. Louis for racial and sexual discrimination and the denial of free speech.

Known for her many well-documented excursions to the African world, Windom served as coordinator for the James T. Bush Center at the University of Missouri-St. Louis; initiating research and workshops in employment, education, housing, and law. A sought after lecturer, Windom is a member of a number of organizations including the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization and the African Heritage Studies Association.

Alice Mary Windom lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Alice Mary Windom was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on December 19, 2006.

Accession Number

A2006.181

Sex

Female

Interview Date

12/19/2006

10/17/2007

12/7/2007

Last Name

Windom

Maker Category

CivicMakers

Marital Status

Single

Occupation

Social Worker

Organizations

National Association of Black Social Workers

National Congress of Black Faculty

Academy of Certified Social Workers

Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization [ASCAC]

African Heritage Studies Association

Schools

Charles H. Sumner High School

Cote Brilliante Elementary School

Jones Elementary School

Central State University

University of Chicago

First Name

Alice

Birth City, State, Country

St. Louis

HM ID

WIN05

Favorite Season

Summer

State

Missouri

THM DA Link

http://marc.thehistorymakers.org/thmdigital/A2006.181.htm

Web Clip 1

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/101608

Favorite Vacation Destination

Africa

Bio Photo

Speakers Bureau Region State

Missouri

Interview Description

A2006_181_EAD.pdf

A2006_181_EAC.pdf

Birth Date

3/30/1936

Birth Place Term

St. Louis

Speakers Bureau Region City

St. Louis

Country

USA

Favorite Food

Chicken

Short Description

Social worker Alice Windom (1936 - ) was part of a historic group of African American expatriates in Ghana. She worked on the Encyclopedia Africana with W.E.B DuBois and helped to plan Malcolm X’s trip to Ghana.

Employment

St. Louis Medium Security Institution

Department of Social Welfare

State of Illinois Department of Mental Health Division of Family and Children's Services

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa

University of Missouri, St. Louis: James T. Bush Sr., Center

Favorite Color

Red

Web Clip 2

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/101488

Timing Pairs

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DAStories

Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of Alice Windom's interview

Tape: 1 Story: 2 - Alice Windom lists her favorites

Tape: 1 Story: 3 - Alice Windom describes her maternal great-grandparents and grandparents

Tape: 1 Story: 4 - Alice Windom describes her maternal grandfather and his family

Tape: 1 Story: 5 - Alice Windom talks about the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904

Tape: 1 Story: 6 - Alice Windom talks about her mother's childhood, pt. 1

Tape: 1 Story: 7 - Alice Windom talks about her mother's childhood, pt. 2

Tape: 1 Story: 8 - Alice Windom describes where and when her father was born

Tape: 2 Story: 1 - Alice Windom describes her father's family background

Tape: 2 Story: 2 - Alice Windom describes why her parents were married twice

Tape: 2 Story: 3 - Alice Windom shares her earliest childhood memories, pt. 1

Tape: 2 Story: 4 - Alice Windom shares her earliest childhood memories, pt. 2

Tape: 2 Story: 5 - Alice Windom remembers being molested by a neighborhood teenager when she was four years old

Tape: 2 Story: 6 - Alice Windom describes her family's move to Prairie View, Texas

Tape: 2 Story: 7 - Alice Windom describes the sights, sounds, and smells of her childhood in Prairie View, Texas

Tape: 2 Story: 8 - Alice Windom recalls her experience at Prairie View Training School in Prairie View Texas

Tape: 2 Story: 9 - Alice Windom recalls her experiences with nature and animals in Prairie View, Texas

Tape: 3 Story: 1 - Alice Windom recalls an encounter with snakes in her family's victory garden

Tape: 3 Story: 2 - Alice Windom talks about the dirt roads in Prairie View, Texas and tricking her younger brother

Tape: 3 Story: 3 - Alice Windom describes her childhood personality

Tape: 3 Story: 4 - Alice Windom recalls reading about lynchings in the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender

Tape: 3 Story: 5 - Alice Windom describes her understanding of African American history in grade school

Tape: 3 Story: 6 - Alice Windom remembers her teachers at Prairie View Training School in Prairie View, Texas

Tape: 3 Story: 7 - Alice Windom describes her family's move back to St. Louis after her father received his Ph.D.

Tape: 3 Story: 8 - Alice Windom recalls learning about the death of President Franklin Roosevelt and the existence of concentration camps

Tape: 3 Story: 9 - Alice Windom talks about her family's lack of belief in religion, pt. 1

Tape: 3 Story: 10 - Alice Windom talks about her family's lack of belief in religion, pt. 2

Tape: 4 Story: 1 - Alice Windom remembers living with her grandparents in Edwardsville, Illinois after leaving Prairie View, Texas

Tape: 4 Story: 2 - Alice Windom describes her experience at Cote Brilliante Elementary School in St. Louis, Missouri

Tape: 4 Story: 3 - Alice Windom describes graduating from Cote Brilliante Elementary School in St. Louis, Missouri

Tape: 4 Story: 4 - Alice Windom talks about her teachers at Sumner High School in St. Louis, Missouri, pt. 1

Tape: 4 Story: 5 - Alice Windom talks about her teachers at Sumner High School in St. Louis, Missouri, pt. 2

Tape: 4 Story: 6 - Alice Windom describes her decision to enroll at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio

Tape: 4 Story: 7 - Alice Windom shares her experience at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio

Tape: 4 Story: 8 - Alice Windom recalls the history and surroundings of Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio

Tape: 5 Story: 1 - Alice Windom recalls her Civil Rights activism with CORE in St. Louis, Missouri

Tape: 5 Story: 2 - Alice Windom describes leading sit-ins at Geyer's Restaurant in Xenia, Ohio

Tape: 5 Story: 3 - Alice Windom talks about her professors at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio

Tape: 5 Story: 4 - Alice Windom recalls one of the outcomes of her protests at Geyer's Restaurant in Xenia, Ohio

Tape: 5 Story: 5 - Alice Windom describes her experience working for Belva Manufacturing Company in St. Louis, Missouri after high school

Tape: 5 Story: 6 - Alice Windom talks about getting treated for an ovarian cyst and the scarcity of jobs in St. Louis, Missouri

Tape: 5 Story: 7 - Alice Windom talks about her recurring summer job at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio during college

Tape: 5 Story: 8 - Alice Windom talks about the housing and campus life at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio

Tape: 5 Story: 9 - Alice Windom describes planning to attend graduate school and her father's death

Tape: 6 Story: 1 - Second slating of Alice Windom's interview

Tape: 6 Story: 2 - Alice Windom describes enrolling at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration in Chicago, Illinois

Tape: 6 Story: 3 - Alice Windom describes the lack of understanding of the African American community at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration in Chicago, Illinois

Tape: 6 Story: 4 - Alice Windom recalls her graduate school fieldwork supervisor and graduating from the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration in Chicago, Illinois

Tape: 6 Story: 5 - Alice Windom recalls conducting adoption home studies for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services

Tape: 6 Story: 6 - Alice Windom talks about Ishmael Flory and the black Communists within the African American Heritage Association in Chicago, Illinois

Tape: 6 Story: 7 - Alice Windom talks about the Washington Park Forum and F.H. Hammurabi's House of Knowledge

Tape: 6 Story: 8 - Alice Windom talks about her association with the Nation of Islam through Christine Johnson and E. U. Essien-Udom

Tape: 7 Story: 1 - Alice Windom recalls a meeting where she defended the Nation of Islam to the Chatham and Avalon Park neighborhoods of Chicago, Illinois

Tape: 7 Story: 2 - Alice Windom describes her political education in Chicago, Illinois and meeting Malcolm X for the first time

Tape: 7 Story: 3 - Alice Windom remembers E.U. Essien-Udom and the Pan African Students Organization of the Americas

Tape: 7 Story: 4 - Alice Windom recalls celebrating the independence of Ghana in 1957 and Nigeria in 1960

Tape: 7 Story: 5 - Alice Windom describes traveling to New York City and London, England on the way to Ghana in 1962

Tape: 7 Story: 6 - Alice Windom describes her experience in London, England while moving to Ghana in 1962

Tape: 7 Story: 7 - Alice Windom describes arriving in Accra, Ghana from London, England in 1962

Tape: 7 Story: 8 - Alice Windom describes her experience teaching English at O'Reilly Secondary High School in Accra, Ghana

Tape: 7 Story: 9 - Alice Windom describes her experience teaching history at O'Reilly Secondary High School in Accra, Ghana

Tape: 8 Story: 1 - Alice Windom shares her impression of Kwame Nkrumah's leadership in Accra, Ghana

Tape: 8 Story: 2 - Alice Windom recalls factors leading to the collapse of Kwame Nkrumah's government in Ghana

Tape: 8 Story: 3 - Alice Windom talks about the foreign black community in Accra, Ghana

Tape: 8 Story: 4 - Alice Windom recalls her experience in Ghana with HistoryMaker Maya Angelou

Tape: 8 Story: 5 - Alice Windom recalls Malcom X's visit to Ghana in 1964, pt. 1

Tape: 8 Story: 6 - Alice Windom recalls Malcom X's visit to Ghana in 1964, pt. 2

Tape: 8 Story: 7 - Alice Windom talks about her friend, writer and actor Julian Mayfield

Tape: 8 Story: 8 - Alice Windom talks about her interactions with HistoryMaker Maya Angelou and W.E.B. DuBois

Tape: 8 Story: 9 - Alice Windom talks about Dr. Alphaeus Hunton and the Encyclopedia Africana

Tape: 8 Story: 10 - Alice Windom remembers Malcom X's return to the United States from Ghana and the famous photograph she took of him

Tape: 9 Story: 1 - Alice Windom recalls moving to Ethiopia in 1964 and meeting with Malcolm X again

Tape: 9 Story: 2 - Alice Windom describes her experience working with the United Nations in Ethiopia under Emperor Haile Selassie, pt. 1

Tape: 9 Story: 3 - Alice Windom describes her experience working with the United Nations in Ethiopia under Emperor Haile Selassie, pt. 2

Tape: 9 Story: 4 - Alice Windom describes traveling through Asia in 1969

Tape: 9 Story: 5 - Alice Windom describes her experience in Zambia under President Kenneth Kaunda

Tape: 9 Story: 6 - Alice Windom describes reuniting with Pamela Nomveta, her former boss's daughter, in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1996

Tape: 9 Story: 7 - Alice Windom describes the sexual discrimination lawsuit she filed against the City of St. Louis in 1977

Tape: 10 Story: 1 - Final slating of Alice Windom's interview

Tape: 10 Story: 2 - Alice Windom talks about Robert L. Williams and the Institute of Black Studies in St. Louis, Missouri, pt. 1

Tape: 10 Story: 3 - Alice Windom talks about Robert L. Williams and the Institute of Black Studies in St. Louis, Missouri, pt. 2

Tape: 10 Story: 4 - Alice Windom recalls her involvement in the movement to keep Homer G. Phillips Hospital open in St. Louis, Missouri

Tape: 10 Story: 5 - Alice Windom describes her visit to the Organization of African Unity Conference in 1975

Tape: 10 Story: 6 - Alice Windom describes Emily Maliwa's efforts to establish a Pan-African Research Council in 1975

Tape: 10 Story: 7 - Alice Windom talks about the treatment of African women by African governments

Tape: 10 Story: 8 - Alice Windom talks about meeting people from the United States during her visit to Kampala, Uganda in 1975

Tape: 10 Story: 9 - Alice Windom reflects on meeting her friend Emily Maliwa

Tape: 10 Story: 10 - Alice Windom describes her life in St. Louis, Missouri and working at the Union-Sarah Health Center

Tape: 11 Story: 1 - Alice Windom describes her work with the Yeatman/Union-Sarah Health Center in St. Louis, Missouri and Dr. Bobby E. Wright

Tape: 11 Story: 2 - Alice Windom describes working on a grant to start a mental health center in St. Louis, Missouri

Tape: 11 Story: 3 - Alice Windom recalls being hired by the Booker T. Washington Foundation in the 1980s

Tape: 11 Story: 4 - Alice Windom describes the decline of the Booker T. Washington Foundation

Tape: 11 Story: 5 - Alice Windom describes her experience with the Booker T. Washington Foundation and meeting Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson

Tape: 11 Story: 6 - Alice Windom describes being hired at the James T. Bush Center at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, Missouri in 1987

Tape: 11 Story: 7 - Alice Windom recalls her travels to Mexico with Dr. Ivan van Sertima in 1984

Tape: 11 Story: 8 - Alice Windom describes her experience of traveling to Egypt with the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC) in 1987, pt. 1

Tape: 11 Story: 9 - Alice Windom describes her experience of traveling to Egypt with the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC) in 1987, pt. 2

Tape: 12 Story: 1 - Alice Windom talks about scholars of African culture, including Sylvia Ardyn Boone

Tape: 12 Story: 2 - Alice Windom talks about scholar Sylvia Ardyn Boone

Tape: 12 Story: 3 - Alice Windom talks about the role of women in Islamic and non-Islamic African cultures

Tape: 12 Story: 4 - Alice Windom talks about her depression and the lack of progress she saw for the African American community

Tape: 12 Story: 5 - Alice Windom talks about retiring from the James T. Bush Center at the University of Missouri, St. Louis

Tape: 12 Story: 6 - Alice Windom talks about the fire that destroyed her home library

Tape: 12 Story: 7 - Alice Windom talks about the Olmec heads found in Mexico with African features

Tape: 13 Story: 1 - Alice Windom describes her hopes and concerns for the African American community

Tape: 13 Story: 2 - Alice Windom reflects on what she would change about her life

Tape: 13 Story: 3 - Alice Windom reflects upon her legacy

Tape: 13 Story: 4 - Alice Windom talks about her family

Tape: 13 Story: 5 - Alice Windom describes how she would like to be remembered

DASession

2$2

DATape

7$9

DAStory

5$4

DATitle

Alice Windom describes traveling to New York City and London, England on the way to Ghana in 1962

Alice Windom describes traveling through Asia in 1969

Transcript

I left during the Cuban Missile Crisis [October 1962], in fact. My desire had been to get a--to go to Africa by ship because I was moving everything that I had, which was mainly books. I didn't have furniture. And I really wanted to travel by ship with my stuff to go to Africa.$$Now how did you, how did it come about? How did you--what agency? How did you hook up on a trip to Ghana, or, or was it through a, a program, or you just decided to go?$$I was going. I had to get out of the United States before I hurt somebody or somebody hurt me. I was so mad with the, the, the, the discrimination and the racism that I was ready to hit somebody. And I'm, I'm not a violent tempered person, but I knew I had to get out. Also, it appeared--I mean Africa, that was the hope then. People were coming to the United Nations from Africa. We'd seen all these glorious, gorgeous folk.$$Did you have contacts on the other side then, I mean in, in, in, in Ghana that--$$I had--$$--that you know?$$--all these friends in Chicago [Illinois]. Several of them were Ghanaians. I knew I was going to Ghana, and so I had a few letters. Christine Johnson had been to Ghana and had shown her slides. I had the medical kit Mr.--Dr. Thompson had made up for me. And it was really on the plane that I really realized I didn't know a soul (laughter)--(unclear)--I was, I was on the plane, and I said, "Well I don't know anybody (laughter) there. Everybody, every Ghanaian I know is in Chicago or New York." But I spent six weeks in New York trying to get this ship. I had failed writing letters from Chicago to, to shipping companies. I wanted to go on freighter. I didn't have the money to go on a cruise ship. And so I had gotten a list of, of freighters, and I had written to these companies. And, and nobody could give me a, a ship going to Ghana. I was in, I got, went to New York. I had spent six weeks there trying to find this ship and also having to work on a visa because I didn't want just a visa that would let me go for a couple of weeks, 'cause I knew I wanted to settle. And so I was asking for at least a year's visa, and I couldn't get that. I eventually found a ship on the black, the Black Star Line had a ship going. Ghana's national shipping company was named after Marcus Garvey's Black Star Line. But I got communication from the person in charge telling me that if they book me on that ship, I would be the only woman on the ship, and they could not guarantee my safety. So I said, "Okay, I got to fly." So I went ahead and got a ticket going through London [England] and then to Accra [Ghana]. And I had packed all my things for a ship, so I had to, had to make suitcase for a plane trip. I went down on 42nd Street, and I got a huge suitcase for $6.00. I told the guy who told it to me, look, I said, "I've got, I'm gonna have to go to London, and then I'm going to Ghana. Will this suitcase make two trips (laughter)?" He said, "Oh, yeah, you'll get three or four trips out of this suitcase." It was a big case with a canvas top, with a zipper that ran along the top edge. I was renting a room from a West Indian couple named Alcantara [ph.] in New York. The morning of my flight, I was to go to wake up two friends who lived a few blocks away, and they were gonna take me to the airport and help me with my luggage. As I was trying to close this $6.00 suitcase, the zipper broke (laughter), and I, I had to have a suitcase. I went down and woke up my landlord. I said, "Have you got a rope? Please give me a rope." They went and took their clothesline down and gave me a rope so that I could tie this suitcase closed and at least get to the friend, home of my friend Alpha Flack. When I showed--she saw he suitcase with the flaps (laughter) open, she said, "They're not gonna let you on the plane with this." I said, "I've got to go today. I must take, go take this plane today." So she ended up, she and her roommate ended up selling me three or four suitcases. I, I had wanted one big suitcase, and I ended up with three or four suitcases again. And then I said--and they hadn't even gotten up out of bed. I said, "You're supposed to help me get to the airport." They said, "You were supposed to be here two hours ago." I said, "Get up, get up." I was crying, "get up" (laughter). They got up, we got to the airport, and I got on the plane.$I had an offer of a job in Zambia in the Department of Labor and Social Services that had, the job had been obtained for me by a woman who used to work in the United Nations who had met, met a Zambian when she was traveling for the UN and had married him. And she'd gotten me, gotten me this job. But I knew I had to wait for my ticket, so I decided to travel in Asia. You know, Malcolm [X] talked about the Bandung Conference in what, 1955 or '56 [1956] in Indonesia, and I really wanted to see how Asians related to an African traveling. So I went by myself, something I probably wouldn't do today. But I went, in those days, I just took a map and I drew a line to all the places I wanted to go. I took it to a travel agency, and I said "Give me a ticket with these stops on it." And then you could change your ticket if you wanted to, didn't cost you anything. And so, when I was in a country, if somebody said "have you seen Angkor Wat" say, in Cambodia? And I said "No." My rule was when the third person said are you going to such and such, then I would go and change my ticket so I could go to such and such. And that's how I got to Angkor Wat. I spent a month in India, fantastic. I would love to go back there again, wonderful hospitality from Indians who had met African Americans while they were traveling in the States. And they had had hospitality from African Americans, and they offered me hospitality, had a great time. Thailand, everyplace was magical. In Hong Kong you have all of these bazaars and shops. And the shopkeepers would come out and say "Soul sister, come into my shop," because that was the way we were projected back then. And I felt really good about it, 'cause so much was going on in the States, people knew about it. "Soul sister, come on in." My nephew, who is a Navy, a commander in the Navy, was stationed in Japan in 1998, and he said Japanese shopkeepers were coming out, "O. J., O. J., come into my shop. We have knives" (laughter). That's how, that's how we have sunk in the estimation of the world, from "Soul sister" to "O. J., we have knives" (laughter). So, I went to Japan, and Indonesia was the only place that I can say I had a problem with people just being so astonished to see a black woman. Now, it wasn't this with black men. They were used to seeing soldiers on R&R [rest and recuperation] and the African diplomats, they would, but to see a woman by herself, people would just get hysterical. They would laugh. And some days I would wear an African dress. It was worse when I wore an African dress. Now, Indonesia was the site of the Bandung Conference (laughter), so I realized that this was just a paper thin veneer of any kind of solidarity, that there was none. In other places, too, I was an object of curiosity, sometimes just because women don't travel alone in those days. To see a woman by herself was strange. But colored played a big part in it. I've sent Julian [Mayfield] letters, and at the end, when I talked to him after the trip, he said "Alice, your trip sounds like one of the great horror stories (laughter) of the Western world." I said that could be because I was emphasizing troubles that I had, but basically, it was a great trip. And to be able to change a ticket without paying a penalty was something that you really miss now if you try to travel. You simply can't do that anymore. So I had hoped to spend a couple of months, say, bumming around on, in Asia again on the fortieth anniversary of my trip. I couldn't think about doing that now. First place, around-the-world ticket back then was $1,625.00. It's several thousand dollars now if you just wanna girdle the globe. But it was $1,625.00. My average expenditure per day including hotels and food was $10.00. Now, if you can do it for $300.00, an average, you're doing well. So I'm so glad that I did that when I did it. And I was, you know, I hadn't broken my knee yet. I could go, if I had to crawl someplace I could do it. I was physically in better shape than I am now. So that was a memorable trip.

Read more about Alice Windom

Clinton E. Dye, Jr.

Clinton Elworth Dye, Jr. was born on April 9, 1942, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Charlotte and Clinton E. Dye, Sr. Dye grew up surrounded by his extended family. He attended Atlanta public schools, graduated from David T. Howard High School in 1960 and then entered Morehouse College. Dye dropped out of Morehouse College after his first year to work for Lockheed Corporation. He returned to Morehouse a year later and received his B.A degree in sociology in 1965.

Dye’s first job was as a case aide for an alcoholism program at Emory University. In 1969, he received his M.A. degree from the Atlanta University School for social work and went on to receive his PhD. Dye has served the community for over forty years in the field of human services. He has held senior management positions at the state and local levels. He was the Director of Economic Opportunity Atlanta. He worked with employee assistance and state mental health programs and in the legislative area.

Dye is a veteran of the Urban League, having served as director of community services with the Atlanta Urban League from 1976 until 1979; and vice-president from 1979 until 1990. In 1990, he held senior management positions in the Georgia Department of Human Resources before returning to the Atlanta Urban League as its president and chief executive officer in April, 2000. He has served on several committees, including the Governor's Advisory Council on Mental Health, State of Georgia; Regional Development Advisory Council, Atlanta Regional Commission; Board of Visitors Grady Memorial Hospital; Georgia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; and Georgia State University Department of Social Work Community Advisory Board.

Accession Number

A2006.166

Sex

Male

Interview Date

12/13/2006

Last Name

Dye

Maker Category

CivicMakers

Middle Name

Occupation

Nonprofit Chief Executive

Social Worker

Organizations

Regional Development Advisory Council

Governor\'s Advisory Council on Mental Health

Georgia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

Board of Visitors Grady Memorial Hospital

Georgia State University Department of Social Work Community Advisory Board

Schools

David T. Howard High School

John Hope Elementary School

C.W. Hill Elementary School

Nathan Bedford Forrest Elementary School

Morehouse College

Clark Atlanta University

First Name

Clinton

Birth City, State, Country

Atlanta

HM ID

DYE02

Favorite Season

Spring

State

Georgia

THM DA Link

http://marc.thehistorymakers.org/thmdigital/A2006.166.htm

Web Clip 1

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/370724

Favorite Vacation Destination

Bahamas

Favorite Quote

Never Forget Where You Come From 'Cause You Ain't Left There Yet.

Bio Photo

Speakers Bureau Region State

Georgia

Interview Description

A2006_166_EAD.pdf

A2006_166_EAC.pdf

Birth Date

4/9/1942

Birth Place Term

Atlanta

Speakers Bureau Region City

Atlanta

Country

USA

Favorite Food

Chicken

Short Description

Nonprofit chief executive and social worker Clinton E. Dye, Jr. (1942 - ) worked for forty years in the field of human services. He was director of Economic Opportunity Atlanta, and became president and CEO of the Atlanta Urban League in 2000.

Employment

Emory University

Georgia Regional Hospital

Economic Opportunites Atlanta Program

Atlanta Regional Commission

Economic Opportunity Atlanta

Atlanta Urban League

Georgia State

Favorite Color

Blue

Web Clip 2

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/370753

Timing Pairs

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DAStories

Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of Clinton E. Dye, Jr.'s interview

Tape: 1 Story: 2 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. lists his favorites

Tape: 1 Story: 3 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his paternal grandparents

Tape: 1 Story: 4 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his paternal grandmother

Tape: 1 Story: 5 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his paternal grandfather, pt. 1

Tape: 1 Story: 6 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his paternal grandfather, pt. 2

Tape: 1 Story: 7 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his father

Tape: 1 Story: 8 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. recalls his parents' discipline

Tape: 1 Story: 9 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his mother

Tape: 2 Story: 1 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his maternal grandmother and great-grandmother

Tape: 2 Story: 2 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr describes his earliest childhood memory

Tape: 2 Story: 3 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his siblings

Tape: 2 Story: 4 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes family gatherings and holidays

Tape: 2 Story: 5 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes the games he played as a child

Tape: 2 Story: 6 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his childhood community

Tape: 2 Story: 7 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. remembers outings with his family

Tape: 2 Story: 8 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes the sights, sounds and smells of his childhood, pt. 1

Tape: 2 Story: 9 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes the sights, sounds and smells of his childhood, pt. 2

Tape: 2 Story: 10 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. recalls his elementary schools in Atlanta, Georgia

Tape: 3 Story: 1 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. recalls attending several elementary schools in Atlanta

Tape: 3 Story: 2 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his mentors at John Hope Elementary School

Tape: 3 Story: 3 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes the textbooks at his segregated school

Tape: 3 Story: 4 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his extracurricular activities

Tape: 3 Story: 5 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes the emphasis on academics in his home

Tape: 3 Story: 6 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes the role of religion in his childhood

Tape: 3 Story: 7 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. talks about his aspirations and activities in high school

Tape: 3 Story: 8 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes the influence of his cousin, Thaddeus Olive, Jr.

Tape: 3 Story: 9 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. recalls attending Morehouse College in the early 1960s

Tape: 3 Story: 10 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. talks about his wife, Myrtice Willis Dye

Tape: 3 Story: 11 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. recalls President John Fitzgerald Kennedy's assassination

Tape: 4 Story: 1 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. talks about his deferment from the Vietnam War draft

Tape: 4 Story: 2 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his activism at Morehouse College

Tape: 4 Story: 3 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. remembers the Freedom Riders

Tape: 4 Story: 4 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his position with Emory University in 1965

Tape: 4 Story: 5 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. talks about attending graduate school and his position at Georgia Regional Hospital

Tape: 4 Story: 6 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. recalls his role as director of Economic Opportunity Atlanta

Tape: 4 Story: 7 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes the impact of the Economic Opportunity Atlanta

Tape: 4 Story: 8 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his position at the Atlanta Regional Commission

Tape: 4 Story: 9 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his involvement with the Urban League of Greater Atlanta

Tape: 4 Story: 10 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. recalls earning his Ph.D. degree

Tape: 4 Story: 11 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. remembers the impact of the Atlanta Child Murders, pt. 1

Tape: 4 Story: 12 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. remembers the impact of the Atlanta Child Murders, pt. 2

Tape: 4 Story: 13 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. remembers the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia

Tape: 5 Story: 1 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes the role of the Urban League of Greater Atlanta

Tape: 5 Story: 2 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his hopes and concerns for the African American community

Tape: 5 Story: 3 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. shares a message for future generations

Tape: 5 Story: 4 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his achievements at the Urban League of Greater Atlanta

Tape: 5 Story: 5 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes how he would like to be remembered

Tape: 5 Story: 6 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. talks about Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., pt. 1

Tape: 5 Story: 7 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. talks about Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., pt. 2

Tape: 5 Story: 8 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. narrates his photographs, pt. 1

Tape: 6 Story: 1 - Clinton E. Dye, Jr. narrates his photographs, pt. 2

DASession

1$1

DATape

2$5

DAStory

6$1

DATitle

Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes his childhood community

Clinton E. Dye, Jr. describes the role of the Urban League of Greater Atlanta

Transcript

So, you said the name of the street that you lived on was McGruder?$$McGruder Street.$$Okay.$$Uh-huh.$$What was the community like? Who lived in that area? What type of jobs did your neighbors have?$$Most of the folks were naturally blue-collar workers, obviously. There were quite a few painters and people who worked at some of the plants around there, you know, around some of the offices. We probably didn't have that many professional people. A lot of the women probably worked as domestics, and that kind of thing. But then later on, we began to get some folks who would teach music and do things like that, piano, you know. The church was very much the center of everything. People sang in the choir, you know, and we did that kind of thing. Schools, you know, were very important. David T. Howard [David T. Howard High School, Atlanta, Georgia] was right there, and then John Hope [John Hope Elementary School; John Hope-Charles Walter Hill Elementary School, Atlanta, Georgia], and some of the other elementary schools. So, that was always it. The houses were, they were modest houses, you know, what we called shotgun houses. And those were the ones, you know, where you could stand at the front and look all the way through it, right out into the backyard. The bathrooms, during the early part of my childhood, the bathrooms were out in the backyard. And we used to tell jokes about late at night it always took two people to go to the bathroom, because it's going to take one to hold the flashlight (laughter), and the umbrella, if it was raining. So, you know, you had to stay in with everybody in the family, because you don't ever know who you may have to get to take you to the bathroom. (Laughter) But then later on, of course, the city, the county in particular, began to say that all of the bathrooms had to be indoors. And we were particularly lucky, because my father [Clinton E. Dye, Sr.] was a plumber, and my granddaddy [Corley Dye, Sr.] was a carpenter. So, we were able to expand our house considerably. At first it was a duplex, you know, with my mother [Charlotte Anderson Dye] and father and us on one side, and my [paternal] grandparents on the other side. And they, my granddaddy bought the house, and then he was able to build on the back of it and make it one house, a single family home. And we continued to live there, and the bathroom was moved inside, and that kind of thing. So, we were living high on the hog there, in terms of having, you know, an indoor house, an indoor bathroom. And during that time, I would say that in Atlanta [Georgia], public housing was the place to be, you know. We talk now about the projects and all of that. But during that time, if you could get into the Grady Homes [Atlanta, Georgia], you were doing something, you know. Because, you know, naturally Grady Homes is the projects, and they had all of the indoor facilities and everything else. So, everybody was trying to get into something like the Grady Homes, in order to move up from some of the situations that they were in. But that was the Atlanta; that was black Atlanta pretty much during that time.$I'd like you to talk about the Urban League [Urban League of Greater Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia], and your role in it in the community. Just--$$Well, you know, first of all, I had always been attracted to the Urban League, primarily because, you know, very early on, as I said, I always knew about Morehouse [Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia], and the School of Social Work [Atlanta University School of Social Work; Whitney M. Young Jr. School of Social Work, Atlanta, Georgia]. And the Urban League was always very much a part of that. And then to grow up around people like Vernon Jordan [HistoryMaker Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.], who eventually ended up at the Urban League, I always had that kind of tie with what the Urban League was doing. And of course being a sociology major and reading-- you know, I knew about Du Bois [W.E.B. Du Bois]. I knew about the Niagara conference [Niagara Movement], the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] and the Urban League, and how all that developed. So, I was always intrigued with that. But the other part of it is that, you know, the Urban League has always been an integral part of this city. But the first, Atlanta [Georgia] was really the gateway to the Urban League movement coming into the Deep South. And I was very much aware of--because I'd hear my parents [Charlotte Anderson Dye and Clinton E. Dye, Sr.] around the house and folks talking about what the Urban League was doing in housing and things like that--Mr. Arnold [Harold Arnold] and others that were down there at the Urban League. And so I always said, "Well, if I don't go into medicine, I want to do something with the Urban League. I want to do something with an organization like that." So, that's pretty much the way that I got involved. When I went to the School of Social Work after Morehouse, Whitney Young, I think, had just left going to become the director of the National Urban League. So, there was a lot of talk around there about the Urban League, and very honestly, the Atlanta University School of Social Work was among the first black schools of social work in the country. And that school played a big role in training black social workers in this country. The problem was during those times social work--the black social work students were pressed to have a place to practice. And they could not do it in the Deep South, in the southern states, because of segregation and discrimination. So, the Urban League became one of the major forces for providing opportunities for social work students from AU [Atlanta University; Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia] for example, to be able to do your field placement. And that's why if you look around the Urban League movement, many of the older--I say older now--the guys who are more seasoned, let me use it that way--the guys are who are in their field years were graduates of the Atlanta University School of Social Work. Because what they would do is after they'd finish their education, then they would be hired. Well, I was exposed to all of this, you know, this history and these guys and what the Urban League did, plus they got some money and then and they got the scholarships. And so I went into social work. And of course, Lyndon Wade had by that time gone to the Urban League. And so, that's how I got into it. That's how I began to think that the Urban League was the way that I wanted to go, and why I-in this coming April, will have spent a total of twenty years with the Urban League movement.

Read more about Clinton E. Dye, Jr.

James H. Gilliam, Sr.

Director of New Castle County, Delaware’s Department of Community Development and Housing, James H. Gilliam, Sr., was born on August 6, 1920, in Baltimore, Maryland. After receiving his diploma in 1938 from Frederick Douglass High School, he attended and graduated from Morgan State University with his B.A. degree in sociology in 1948, and also earned his M.S.W. degree from Howard University's School of Social Work in 1950. He was a captain in the U.S. Army during the Korean War and won a Bronze Star for his admirable service.

From 1974 to 1990, Gilliam served as president and chairman of the board of Delaware's Community Housing Incorporated and as a consultant on a wide range of community development issues. He was the founder and the first executive director of the Greater Wilmington Housing Corporation. He retired in 1990 as director of New Castle County's Department of Community Development and Housing.

Gilliam also served as spokesperson for the Delaware Cancer Society. He was a member of the Delaware Advisory Committee for the U.S. Commission of Civil Rights, the Judicial Evaluation Committee for the Family Court of Delaware, the Supreme Court of Delaware's Professional Responsibility Committee, and the Magistrate's Steering Committee. He assisted the chief judge of the Family Court in converting the Court into a single statewide operation.

Gilliam's other civic duties included a two-term presidency of the National Association of Non-Profit Housing Organizations; service as a trustee of the National Urban League and Wesley College; and as a director of the National Tuberculosis Association. He was the founder of the Metro-Wilmington Urban League. Gilliam was also a member of the board of governors of the United Way of Delaware and served on the board of the Medical Center of Delaware. Currently, he serves as chairman of New Castle County, Delaware’s Diversity Commission.

The Liberty Bell Award was presented to Gilliam in 1997 in recognition of his service as a non-lawyer in strengthening the American system of freedom under the law. He was named Distinguished Delawarean in 1982, and awarded the Order of the First State that same year. Gilliam won the J. Caleb Boggs Community Service Award in 1990 and was awarded the Josiah Marvel Cup in 1994. The National Conference honored him for Community and Justice in 1999. He is also the recipient of honorary doctorate degrees from Goldey-Beacom College, the University of Delaware, and Delaware State University.

Gilliam passed away on September 10, 2015.

Accession Number

A2005.265

Sex

Male

Interview Date

12/19/2005

Last Name

Gilliam

Maker Category

CivicMakers

Middle Name

Occupation

Social Worker

Organizations

Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League

Children’s Bureau of Delaware

Delaware Ethics Commission

First & Central Presbyterian Church

Schools

Frederick Douglass High School

Morgan State University

Howard University

First Name

James

Birth City, State, Country

Baltimore

HM ID

GIL03

Favorite Season

Fall, Spring

State

Maryland

THM DA Link

http://marc.thehistorymakers.org/thmdigital/A2005.265.htm

Web Clip 1

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/312471

Bio Photo

Speakers Bureau Region State

Delaware

Interview Description

A2005_265_EAD.pdf

A2005_265_EAC.pdf

Birth Date

8/6/1920

Birth Place Term

Baltimore

Speakers Bureau Region City

Wilmington

Country

USA

Death Date

9/10/2015

Short Description

Social worker James H. Gilliam, Sr. (1920 - 2015 ) founded the Metro-Wilmington Urban League and the Greater Wilmington Housing Corporation. He retired in 1990 as director of New Castle County, Delaware's Department of Community Development and Housing.

Employment

U.S. Army

Housing Authority of Baltimore City

Baltimore Urban Renewal and Housing Agency

Greater Wilmington Development Council

New Castle County Department of Community Development and Housing

Favorite Color

Blue

Web Clip 2

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/314534

Timing Pairs

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DAStories

Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of James H. Gilliam, Sr.'s interview

Tape: 1 Story: 2 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. lists his favorites

Tape: 1 Story: 3 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes his mother's family background

Tape: 1 Story: 4 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes his maternal grandparents

Tape: 1 Story: 5 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes his mother, Pocahontas Lipscomb Gilliam

Tape: 1 Story: 6 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes his father

Tape: 1 Story: 7 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes his extended family

Tape: 1 Story: 8 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. recalls his childhood neighborhood in Baltimore

Tape: 2 Story: 1 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes his childhood community in Baltimore, Maryland

Tape: 2 Story: 2 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes his childhood holiday traditions

Tape: 2 Story: 3 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes racial incidents from his childhood in Baltimore

Tape: 2 Story: 4 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes his grade school experiences

Tape: 2 Story: 5 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. recalls his influential mentors from school

Tape: 2 Story: 6 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. reflects on athletes who were his role models

Tape: 2 Story: 7 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes his career after graduating high school

Tape: 2 Story: 8 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. recalls job discrimination at Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance

Tape: 3 Story: 1 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. reflects on discrimination in the U.S. Army

Tape: 3 Story: 2 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. recalls officer training in the U.S. Army

Tape: 3 Story: 3 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. reflects on enlisting in the U.S. Army

Tape: 3 Story: 4 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes continuing his education after World War II

Tape: 3 Story: 5 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes working for the Housing Authority of Baltimore City

Tape: 3 Story: 6 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes his reasons for moving to Delaware

Tape: 4 Story: 1 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. reflects on his mission of economic development in Delaware

Tape: 4 Story: 2 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes his marriage and his service in the Korean War

Tape: 4 Story: 3 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes his work as a fair housing advocate

Tape: 4 Story: 4 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes his policy achievements in the field of housing

Tape: 4 Story: 5 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. reflects upon his life

Tape: 4 Story: 6 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes founding the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League

Tape: 4 Story: 7 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes the James H. and Louise Hayley Gilliam Concert Hall

Tape: 4 Story: 8 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. reflects on his family

Tape: 4 Story: 9 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes his reputation in the community

Tape: 4 Story: 10 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. describes his hopes for the African American community

Tape: 4 Story: 11 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. reflects upon his legacy

Tape: 5 Story: 1 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. narrates his photographs, pt. 1

Tape: 5 Story: 2 - James H. Gilliam, Sr. narrates his photographs, pt. 2

DASession

1$1

DATape

2$4

DAStory

8$1

DATitle

James H. Gilliam, Sr. recalls job discrimination at Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance

James H. Gilliam, Sr. reflects on his mission of economic development in Delaware

Transcript

So you said you became so frustrated with this process [at Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance; Social Security Administration] that you decided to join the [U.S.] Army?$$No, well, in a--that was a part of the process, but the thing that really triggered this, my walking out at lunch time one day and saying, "The hell with it." And I went right across the street to the recruiting station.$$What made you walk out at lunch time?$$No, that's what I'm saying.$$Okay.$$In running that machine I became very good at repair work, doing it and then watching these IBM [International Business Machines Corporation] guys fixing it, and if they were shorthanded and I would--if a machine would break down out of pride to keep the union, I mean the unit's production rate high, I would fix the machines, I would fix the machine. And I'll never forget a young white girl from West Virginia, when I was fixing a machine, not my own, and she said, "Why are you doing this and making this guy look good?" He was a little white boy who they'd put in there to fill that vacancy. She said, "You ought to have the vacancy, why are you doing this?" And I said, "Are you--do I understand you correctly?" She said, "Yeah." And she said, "What you ought to do is don't fix the damn machine, just let it break down." And I did that, and the next thing I knew the unit supervisor said, "Why didn't you fix the machine?" I said, "It's not my job, I'm not gonna get promoted." And he said, "You're not being very loyal." I said, "Okay." And I walked out the door and went to the recruiting station that afternoon, and they had a policy, they had a policy there at the recruiting station is that if you were there after five o'clock they had the responsibility of feeding you, so I was there after five o'clock and right down the street there was a restaurant, it was actually a cafeteria and I went in the cafeteria, and they wouldn't let me eat there. I (sneezes)--excuse me--$$Bless you.$$--I had to eat in the kitchen and I'm joining the Army. So I didn't--wasn't--that wasn't enough to raise a whole lot of hell about at that time because then I left and went to Fort Meade [Fort George G. Meade, Maryland], but I'm joining the Army to fight for this country and I had to eat in the kitchen, interesting (laughter).$Desegregation was only one issue, that there were other (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous) Well, the desegregation of the schools, which incidentally I felt was one of the byproducts of housing segregation, one of the byproducts of housing segregation. And so you couldn't really do one with working on the other. And then the other thing too is that going to school and having an opportunity to go to school costs money, so you have to get into the whole business of economic development, the housing situation, education, you name it, and Old MacDonald had a farm (laughter). So you had to do the whole damn thing, so it's not a little piece over here and a piece over there. The, for example, locally one thing that we had to get into was that one of our state legislators introduced a thing on neighborhood schools, and as a result of that that once again this whole business reared its head again of the potential for resegregating the schools. But see all of this once again related to the way the housing was, the way that the communities were, the whole ballgame and so, you just can't work on one without working on all of it. And that was my work, was and is my work.$$So you saw yourself as a housing czar, let's say, you saw yourself as someone who should--you saw yourself as a person who could help black people (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous) By virtue--$$--buy homes--$$--of position. In other words, I was in, I was positioned pretty good to work on these things. For example, in the county [New Castle County, Delaware], when I was the head of the Department of Community Development and Housing, and those two tie in together, so I was in a position to maybe influence the thinking and help to produce the results--I mean the, not the results--well yeah, the results, but I could also help to provide some of the resources needed to do all of this. And I'm still active and if the question was posed to me, "Why am I still doing this?" I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do. It, and that's easy for me to accept, doing the right thing. The consequences, I'm not even, I'm not even thinking about that.$$What, what, what would be the consequences?$$Well, if I was working I could get fired. But guess what, can't nobody fire me now, huh? So I can say as I've always done, say anything I need to say to whomever needs to hear it, and Miss Pokie [Pocahontas Lipscomb Gilliam], is very much there again because she was like that without the resources that I have at my disposal.

Read more about James H. Gilliam, Sr.

Hubie Jones

Hubert Eugene Jones, better known as “Hubie,” shaped and defined the civic and social landscape of Boston for more than forty-five years. He played a leadership role in the formation, building and rebuilding of at least thirty community organizations within Boston’s Black community and across all neighborhoods in the city.

Born in the Bronx neighborhood of New York City on December 13, 1933, Jones came to Boston in 1955 after graduating from the City College of New York. Growing up in the South Bronx, he was inspired by his mother Dorcas, who earned her high school diploma, a B.A. degree and a master’s degree after raising him and his siblings. His father, Hilma, a Pullman Porter, was also an inspiration as he worked along side A. Philip Randolph in organizing the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Randolph even gave the eulogy at his father’s funeral. At CCNY, Jones was inspired by the famed psychologist Dr. Kenneth Clark, whose psychological studies with Black and White children helped bring about the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education.

After receiving a master’s in social work from Boston University, Jones moved through a series of positions in Boston social work agencies. Starting at Boston Children’s Services in 1957, he left for Judge Baker Guidance Center in 1961, and in 1965, he became the director of the Roxbury Multiservice Center, where he remained until 1971. Under Jones, RMC became a national model for neighborhood-based social services for low-income city residents.

While serving as RMC’s director in 1967, Jones noticed a pattern of children who were not going to school in Boston. He led a formal investigation and published a scathing indictment of the Boston Public Schools for systematically excluding 10,000 children because they were physically or mentally disabled, had behavioral problems, did not speak English or were pregnant. The task force report, The Way We Go to School: The Exclusion of Children in Boston, led to the groundbreaking enactments of two landmark laws in Massachusetts, the Special Education Law and the Bilingual Education Law, to protect the rights of and give appropriate education services and instruction to special needs children. The task force, chaired by Jones, became known as the Massachusetts Advocacy Center, now the Massachusetts Advocates for Children.

Jones spent the 1971-1972 year as the Whitney M. Young, Jr. Community Fellow at MIT, and from 1972 until 1977 he was an associate professor in the department of urban studies and planning at MIT. He then became the first African American appointed to a deanship at Boston University, serving as the dean of the School of Social Work from 1977 to 1993.
Between 1995 and 2002, Jones served as special assistant to the chancellor for urban affairs at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. In 2002, he founded the Boston Children’s Chorus, consisting of eighty young people from diverse ethnic and socio-economical backgrounds.

Jones has been honored numerous times for his dedication to children’s advocacy, and friends and colleagues have established The Hubie Fund, to benefit ongoing social concerns in Boston.

Accession Number

A2004.203

Sex

Male

Interview Date

10/14/2004

Last Name

Jones

Maker Category

CivicMakers

EducationMakers

Occupation

Social Worker

Academic Administrator

Organizations

National Association of Social Workers

Schools

City College of New York

Boston University

P.S. 51 Bronx New School

P.S. 23 The New Children's School

Morris High School

First Name

Hubie

Birth City, State, Country

New York

HM ID

JON11

Favorite Season

Fall

State

New York

THM DA Link

http://marc.thehistorymakers.org/thmdigital/A2004.203.htm

Web Clip 1

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/237520

Favorite Vacation Destination

Hilton Head, South Carolina

Favorite Quote

Life Is Not A 60-Yard Dash. It's A Marathon And Staying The Course Is The Secret To It All.

Bio Photo

Speakers Bureau Region State

Massachusetts

Interview Description

A2004_203_EAD.pdf

A2004_203_EAC.pdf

Birth Date

12/13/1933

Birth Place Term

New York

Speakers Bureau Region City

Boston

Country

USA

Favorite Food

Grits (Hominy)

Short Description

Social worker and academic administrator Hubie Jones (1933 - ) was the first African American dean at Boston University. Jones also served as Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Urban Affairs at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and founded the Boston Children’s Chorus.

Employment

Boston Children’s Services

Judge Baker Guidance Center

Roxbury Multi-Service Center

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Boston University

University of Massachusetts, Boston

Favorite Color

Blue

Web Clip 2

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/237533

Timing Pairs

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DAStories

Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of Hubie Jones' interview

Tape: 1 Story: 2 - Hubie Jones lists his favorites

Tape: 1 Story: 3 - Hubie Jones describes his mother's background in Abbeville, South Carolina

Tape: 1 Story: 4 - Hubie Jones explains his mother's hospitality toward family

Tape: 1 Story: 5 - Hubie Jones tells stories of his mother's humor and tenacity

Tape: 1 Story: 6 - Hubie Jones speaks about his mother's aspirations and determination

Tape: 1 Story: 7 - Hubie Jones describes his maternal grandmother's depression

Tape: 1 Story: 8 - Hubie Jones talks about his father's accomplishments as a Pullman porter, pt. 1

Tape: 1 Story: 9 - Hubie Jones talks about his father's accomplishments as a Pullman porter, pt. 2

Tape: 2 Story: 1 - Hubie Jones explains his father's position within the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

Tape: 2 Story: 2 - Hubie Jones describes his paternal grandmother's quiet strength

Tape: 2 Story: 3 - Hubie Jones talks about growing up in the South Bronx neighborhood of New York, New York in the 1930s and 1940s

Tape: 2 Story: 4 - Hubie Jones remembers his elementary, middle and high schools in the Bronx, New York, New York

Tape: 2 Story: 5 - Hubie Jones recalls his initial interest in social work

Tape: 2 Story: 6 - Hubie Jones talks about his mentor, Dr. Kenneth Bancroft Clark

Tape: 2 Story: 7 - Hubie Jones remembers his training at the School of Social Work at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts

Tape: 2 Story: 8 - Hubie Jones recalls being transformed by Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King's Ford Hall Forum oration on October 28, 1956 in Boston, Massachusetts

Tape: 3 Story: 1 - Hubie Jones describes "being up south" in 1950s Boston, Massachusetts

Tape: 3 Story: 2 - Hubie Jones recalls organizing the 1963 Stop Day work strike in Boston, Massachusetts, pt. 1

Tape: 3 Story: 3 - Hubie Jones recalls organizing the 1963 Stop Day work strike in Boston, Massachusetts, pt. 2

Tape: 3 Story: 4 - Hubie Jones remembers his experience working with delinquent children at the Judge Baker Guidance Clinic in Newton, Massachusetts

Tape: 3 Story: 5 - Hubie Jones talks about his eight children

Tape: 3 Story: 6 - Hubie Jones remembers being hired as assistant director for Action for Boston Community Development

Tape: 3 Story: 7 - Hubie Jones talks about his achievements as executive director of the Roxbury Multi-Service Center in Boston, Massachusetts

Tape: 4 Story: 1 - Hubie Jones explains the significance of Massachusetts Chapter 766 and the Transitional Bilingual Education Act

Tape: 4 Story: 2 - Hubie Jones remembers joining the Mel King Community Fellows program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Tape: 4 Story: 3 - Hubie Jones recalls teaching urban studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Tape: 4 Story: 4 - Hubie Jones remembers becoming dean of the School of Social Work at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts

Tape: 4 Story: 5 - Hubie Jones recalls his faculty recruitment at School of Social Work at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts

Tape: 4 Story: 6 - Hubie Jones remembers serving as acting president of Roxbury Community College in Roxbury Crossing, Massachusetts

Tape: 4 Story: 7 - Hubie Jones remembers the 1992 re-accreditation for Roxbury Community College in Roxbury Crossing, Massachusetts

Tape: 4 Story: 8 - Hubie Jones recalls negotiating the location of the school board track at Roxbury Community College in Roxbury Crossing, Massachusetts

Tape: 5 Story: 1 - Hubie Jones recalls becoming special assistant to the chancellor of University of Massachusetts Boston in Boston, Massachusetts

Tape: 5 Story: 2 - Hubie Jones describes civic programs he created at the University of Massachusetts Boston in Boston, Massachusetts, pt. 1

Tape: 5 Story: 3 - Hubie Jones describes civic programs he created at the University of Massachusetts Boston in Boston, Massachusetts, pt. 2

Tape: 5 Story: 4 - Hubie Jones talks about his involvement with Massachusetts Advocates for Children

Tape: 5 Story: 5 - Hubie Jones describes some of the civic organizations he helped establish in Boston, Massachusetts

Tape: 5 Story: 6 - Hubie Jones talks about the Boston Children's Chorus

Tape: 6 Story: 1 - Hubie Jones talks about appearing as a regular panelist on 'Five on Five'

Tape: 6 Story: 2 - Hubie Jones describes the production of 'Five on Five' for WCVB-TV

Tape: 6 Story: 3 - Hubie Jones reflects upon his life, pt. 1

Tape: 6 Story: 4 - Hubie Jones reflects upon his life, pt. 2

Tape: 6 Story: 5 - Hubie Jones shares lessons he has learned about organizing community programs and initiatives

Tape: 6 Story: 6 - Hubie Jones describes how he would like to be remembered

Tape: 6 Story: 7 - Hubie Jones reflects upon his legacy

Tape: 6 Story: 8 - Hubie Jones talks about his honorary doctorate of public service from the University of Maryland in Baltimore, Maryland

Tape: 6 Story: 9 - Hubie Jones reflects upon his father inspiring his achievements

Tape: 7 Story: 1 - Hubie Jones narrates his photographs

DASession

1$1

DATape

2$4

DAStory

6$4

DATitle

Hubie Jones talks about his mentor, Dr. Kenneth Bancroft Clark

Hubie Jones remembers becoming dean of the School of Social Work at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts

Transcript

--I would guess the other powerful thing that happened to me at [The] City College [of New York, New York, New York], which also pushed me towards this social service, social policy stuff, I had Dr. Kenneth [B.] Clark, the noted African American psychologist, as my teacher in my introduction psychology course, and at that time, Dr. Clark was--he had put together the social science team for Brown v. the Board of Education [Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954], and he talked with us about it class. In fact, he came in with the brief one day. He said, "This is our brief," you know, "that we're taking to the [U.S.] Supreme Court. The Supreme Court of the United States has never accepted a social science brief, and in fact the lawyers at the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] some of them don't think it's a good idea, but finally Thurgood Marshall says, 'Yeah, let's go with it.' So, here's the brief, you know, and this brief basically is to document that separation of children by race is damaging to black kids. What do you think? Is the evidence there?" You know, was evidence there? This is a kind of headache you know, whoa, you know, and then he, then Dr. Clark went to the court, you know, went to the Supreme Court to argue, and he'd come back and tell us about it, okay. So, I saw a black academic who's a terrific scholar, but who was prepared to use his knowledge to push for social change, serious social change for black folks. And it was a model that I found to be very, very powerful, and so when I got into academia by a fluke, and you'll learn about that later. When I got into academia by a fluke, my model was Kenneth Clark okay, and I used with my classes something that he said to my class at the end of the semester. With every class I ever had when I was at School of Social Work at BU [Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts] I would say exactly what Clark said to me, said to our class, and that was--last day, this is what he said, "Look, the college requires me to give you a grade; I really don't want to do it, 'cause I think it's irrelevant, but I'm gonna do it; I'm compelled to do it. But, the grade I really want to give you is when I come meet you five years from now or ten years from now, and I say, like, 'What have you done? Have you used your knowledge and what you've learned in college to make a difference?' That's the grade I want to give you. That's the grade I want to give you. That's the real grade." And every once in a while, when I met Ken Clark over the course of my life, he'd say, "Is it time for me to grade you?" and I say, "Oh, Ken Clark, not now, not right--not yet.'"$$I wanna just digress a little bit--$$Yeah.$$--and it's kind of off the track, but when was the last time you saw Dr. Clark? Have you seen him recently?$$No, I haven't seen him. I haven't seen him recently. I saw him at an event in New York. His daughter [Kate Miriam Clark Harris] ended up working for me when I ran the Roxbury Multi-Service Center [Boston, Massachusetts] for a while, and we became friends. So, I hear a lot about Dr. Clark. He's not in very good shape, but it's amazing that's he's living. He's almost, he just had a ninetieth birthday, and the reason I say it's amazing he's living is he was a chain smoker, and so he'd be in class, one cigarette after the next, okay, and that went on for life, but here he is ninety years of age and so forth. But no, he's very fragile and all the rest, but he was a powerful model--$All of a sudden I get a call from Boston University [Boston, Massachusetts], a guy named Saul Levine, who's head of the search committee at Boston University, saying, "The dean at the School of Social Work [Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts], your alma mater, is retiring, and I'm head of the search committee and your name has come up, would you be willing to be considered? Would you apply?" I said, "I don't think so. I don't think that's what I want to do. I want to do something else. I'm not--." And the word got out. I told some of my colleagues about it, and a couple of them thought I was making a mistake. [HistoryMaker] Frank Jones was one. He said, "I want to take you to lunch and talk with you about this. I understand that this is an option for you, maybe, you know, like why don't you want to do this?" "I don't want to be cloistered in the academia, you know, I want to, you know, the place has to be transformed over there, you know they got a whole bunch of--." I mean, the things, you know, it's, and so he said, "Well, I think you ought to think about this differently. You have a mistaken notion that to work in the academy means that you're locked in and disengaged and cut off from community and significant work in community or in the world. Why don't you just look at what the, you know, what your colleagues here at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts] do. When they want to do something in the community, take a year off, and they do it. They're doing it without taking a year off, you know, and even when they take a year or two off, you know, they come back to MIT; they don't let this up. They don't, they don't give this up, and this is why they don't give it up. So you ought to really rethink this, okay. You know being dean of a school of social work, you know, and having that position and command of some resources may give you a greater opportunity to do some of the thing you want to do in terms of the city. It may even give you more prestige. So, I think you ought to think about this." And somebody else, another friend of mine, Tom Glynn [Thomas P. Glynn] who happens now to be the COO of (unclear) health care system [sic. Partners Health Care] who had been a friend of mine, worked in my campaign for [U.S.] Congress, called me up and said the same thing. "Why aren't you thinking about this? Let me take you to lunch and talk with you about it," okay. And out of those conversations, I began to think differently about it. So, I called up the search committee and said, "I think I will throw my hat in the ring." Once I did that, I then had to begin thinking about what would I say when I got to the search committee? What would my program be? What did I have to give? What did I have to bring? What, you know what, what, you know--? So, I really had to think deeply about what would I do if I was the dean of a school of social work, and I had to get my act together for them (simultaneous).$$(Simultaneous) What did you tell them? Do you remember?$$Yeah, I told them that I was interested in seeing how a school of social work could be more related to the developments in the city, how students could have experiences, in terms of training, in, you know, very interesting important service institutions in the city, and that I thought the School of Social Work could have an enormous impact on city life and city development, which was not the case with the Boston University School of Social Work at that time, and that this is one of the things that I would do. I was a social group worker, so they knew that I had a commitment to social group work. Boston University School of Social Work was one of the best group work programs in the country, and I wanted to keep that strong and whole, but I made a case for the kind of leadership I could provide that was broader than the narrow social work leadership that you usually get from a dean of a school of social work.

Read more about Hubie Jones

Paul Hill

Civic leader, social worker, social activist, and author Paul Hill, Jr. was born on November 6, 1945 to Mabel Craig Hill and Paul Hill, Sr. in Cleveland, Ohio. After graduating from Cleveland’s John Adams High School in 1964, Hill earned his B.S. degree in business education from Ohio University and master’s degrees in educational policy studies and social work from the University of Kentucky and the University of Wisconsin. He also completed training with the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland in organizational and systems development.

Hill served for thirty three years as CEO and President of one of the oldest and largest children, youth and family community based services organizations in Cleveland, Ohio. He retired in 2011. Hill is a former W. K. Kellogg Foundation Leadership Fellow (1989 – 1992), and conducted field studies on the socialization of males. In 1992, he authored Coming of Age, a book based on his research on African American boys and men. In 1993, he established The National Rites of Passage Institute, which is designed “to create a critical mass and community of adults to serve and develop youth.” Since 1993, the Institute has provided training to more than 700 men and women in twenty cities. In turn, these individuals have been responsible for mentoring and supporting more than 10,000 children and youth in neighborhood and community-based programs. He has also published several journal articles on rites of passage and human development, including “African Presence in the Americas: Rituals and Rites of Passage.”

A much sought-after speaker, Hill is also active in many community activities, including Kwanzaa cultural programs. Hill and his wife, Marquita McAllister Hill, are the parents of seven children and seven grandchildren.

Paul Hill, Jr. was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on March 17, 2004.

Accession Number

A2004.025

Sex

Male

Archival Photo 1

Interview Date

3/17/2004

Last Name

Hill

Maker Category

CivicMakers

Marital Status

Married

Occupation

Social Worker

Social Activist

Social Work Researcher

Organizations

Schools

John Adams High School

Charles Dickens Elementary School

Alexander Hamilton Junior High School

Charles W Eliot School

Ohio University

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Speakers Bureau

Yes

Archival Photo 2

First Name

Paul

Birth City, State, Country

Cleveland

HM ID

HIL07

Speakers Bureau Honorarium

Yes - $500 - $1,000

Favorite Season

Fall

State

Ohio

THM DA Link

http://marc.thehistorymakers.org/thmdigital/A2004.025.htm

Web Clip 1

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/109210

Favorite Vacation Destination

Beaches

Favorite Quote

If You Don’t Know Where You’re Going, Any Road Will Take You There.

Bio Photo

Speakers Bureau Region State

Ohio

Interview Description

A2004_025_EAD.pdf

A2004_025_EAC.pdf

Birth Date

11/6/1945

Birth Place Term

Cleveland

Speakers Bureau Region City

Cleveland

Country

USA

Favorite Food

Fish, Beans, Corn Muffins, Coleslaw

Short Description

Social worker, social activist, and social work researcher Paul Hill (1945 - ) was president and CEO of East End Neighborhood House, a neighborhood-based nonprofit organization that serves youth and families. In 1993, he established The National Rites of Passage Institute to provide training to adults to mentor and support youth.

Employment

Murtis H. Taylor Multi-Services Center

East End Neighborhood House

W.K. Kellogg Foundation

Favorite Color

Red

Web Clip 2

https://thmdaprodmedia.blob.core.windows.net/media/story/video/109216

Timing Pairs

0,0:4092,79:4356,84:5478,138:9966,223:10428,231:11418,249:13464,327:14850,395:26940,566:27500,575:32470,679:33800,705:34360,714:46044,861:48492,918:56916,1071:57348,1082:60444,1137:74135,1265:78085,1310:104320,1742:105370,1767:108690,1776:110016,1796:115086,1893:115710,1902:119064,1971:125850,2102:126162,2107:132423,2149:132934,2157:136511,2220:138628,2264:139066,2271:148848,2494:155120,2535:156170,2555:159320,2617:177120,2920:177680,2929:191750,3245:192030,3250:192450,3257:198820,3275:199294,3282:204745,3355:205535,3367:212408,3538:225458,3713:227064,3727:227575,3735:232603,3780:233681,3799:235760,3897:245077,4040:246771,4061:247233,4068:249312,4144:250467,4174:270132,4415:285423,4649:288050,4708:290038,4740:290464,4751:307890,5013:308610,5024:309762,5044:313780,5075$0,0:5370,88:39023,665:66162,1014:73748,1068:95560,1347:179945,2341:218360,2829:242940,3108:260320,3274

DAStories

Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of Paul Hill's interview

Tape: 1 Story: 2 - Paul Hill lists his favorites

Tape: 1 Story: 3 - Paul Hill describes his maternal family history

Tape: 1 Story: 4 - Paul Hill describes his paternal family history

Tape: 1 Story: 5 - Paul Hill comments on his relatives' migration from Alabama to Cleveland, Ohio in the 1930s and 1940s

Tape: 1 Story: 6 - Paul Hill describes his parents' high school education in Cleveland, Ohio

Tape: 1 Story: 7 - Paul Hill talks about his family's history in sharecropping and at Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama

Tape: 1 Story: 8 - Paul Hill describes his three brothers

Tape: 1 Story: 9 - Paul Hill describes his earliest childhood memories

Tape: 1 Story: 10 - Paul Hill talks about John O. Holly and the Future Outlook League in Cleveland, Ohio

Tape: 1 Story: 11 - Paul Hill narrates his photographs

Tape: 2 Story: 1 - Paul Hill describes his mother, Mabel Craig Hill

Tape: 2 Story: 2 - Paul Hill talks about the post office's role in livelihood of the African American community

Tape: 2 Story: 3 - Paul Hill talks about his grade school years and other graduates of John Adams High School in Cleveland, Ohio

Tape: 2 Story: 4 - Paul Hill talks about public housing in Cleveland, Ohio, and his neighbors in Cleveland's Lee-Harvard community

Tape: 2 Story: 5 - Paul Hill describes his memories of the March on Washington and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963

Tape: 2 Story: 6 - Paul Hill talks about his sheltered home as well as attending Ohio University in Athens, Ohio

Tape: 2 Story: 7 - Paul Hill describes his experience at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio

Tape: 2 Story: 8 - Paul Hill narrates his photographs

Tape: 3 Story: 1 - Paul Hill talks about his transition to campus life at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio

Tape: 3 Story: 2 - Paul Hill talks about his early social activism, student teaching at John Hay High School in Cleveland, Ohio, and joining the Teacher Corps

Tape: 3 Story: 3 - Paul Hill describes seminal moments in Lexington, Kentucky that shaped his desire for social activism

Tape: 3 Story: 4 - Paul Hill describes his experience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a Ford Fellow

Tape: 3 Story: 5 - Paul Hill remembers his younger brother's death

Tape: 3 Story: 6 - Paul Hill talks about campaigning for Carl Stokes' reelection and working with Arnold Pinkney at the Cleveland Board of Education

Tape: 3 Story: 7 - Paul Hill talks about desegregation in Cleveland Public Schools in the 1970s

Tape: 3 Story: 8 - Paul Hill talks about a disagreement with the Cleveland Board of Education

Tape: 4 Story: 1 - Paul Hill describes his work as a regional educational specialist for the U.S. Justice Department Community Relations Services, pt.1

Tape: 4 Story: 2 - Paul Hill describes his work as a regional educational specialist for the U.S. Justice Department Community Relations Services, pt.2

Tape: 4 Story: 3 - Paul Hill describes his work in the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare

Tape: 4 Story: 4 - Paul Hill talks about positive conditions for social and cognitive development in black students prior to integration

Tape: 4 Story: 5 - Paul Hill talks about his wife, Marquita McAllister Hill

Tape: 4 Story: 6 - Paul Hill talks about his children and grandchildren

Tape: 4 Story: 7 - Paul Hill describes the African American community in East Cleveland, Ohio, and the state of the African American family

Tape: 5 Story: 1 - Paul Hill describes the black community's self-perception

Tape: 5 Story: 2 - Paul Hill comments on systemic issues affecting the black community in East Cleveland and his family's experience in the city

Tape: 5 Story: 3 - Paul Hill describes the history of and services at East End Neighborhood House in Cleveland, Ohio

Tape: 5 Story: 4 - Paul Hill talks about East End Neighborhood House's partnership with Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights, Ohio

Tape: 5 Story: 5 - Paul Hill comments on the social services in Cleveland, Ohio and a Ford Foundation study on Cleveland's African American community

Tape: 5 Story: 6 - Paul Hill talks about the social pacification of the black community

Tape: 5 Story: 7 - Paul Hill describes the importance of knowing African American history

Tape: 5 Story: 8 - Paul Hill begins to talk about the National Rites of Passage program

Tape: 6 Story: 1 - Paul Hill talks about the creation of the National Rites of Passage Institute

Tape: 6 Story: 2 - Paul Hill describes his rites of passage efforts as an extension of Kwanzaa

Tape: 6 Story: 3 - Paul Hill talks about the eight principles taught through the National Rites of Passage Institute

Tape: 6 Story: 4 - Paul Hill talks about published works on rites of passage and his concern for preserving the integrity of the National Rites of Passage Institute

Tape: 6 Story: 5 - Paul Hill describes the significance of his contributions and the importance of rites of passage

Tape: 6 Story: 6 - Paul Hill narrates his photographs

DASession

1$1

DATape

5$6

DAStory

3$1

DATitle

Paul Hill describes the history of and services at East End Neighborhood House in Cleveland, Ohio

Paul Hill talks about the creation of the National Rites of Passage Institute

Transcript

So, there are three things that always come to mind when I think about you and your work in greater Cleveland [Ohio], both in the city of Cleveland and also in East Cleveland. The first is your family. We spent some time talking about that family foundation; both for your parents [Paul Hill, Sr. and Mabel Craig Hill], your siblings, and then for your wife [Marquita McAllister Hill] and for your children. But then, I think too, about East End Neighborhood House, and I guess if you moved to East Cleveland in '81 [1981], that's about the same time that you're becoming director of East End.$$That's right.$$So, if we can shift gears a little bit and talk about some of the social services and other programs that are offered here at the East End Neighborhood House in the City of Cleveland.$$Well, East End Neighborhood House was founded in 1907. We are located at 2749 Woodhill [Road, Cleveland, Ohio]. We're west of Shaker Square, in the southeast part of Cleveland. We've been at this location since 1917. We own the property. We're on about three acres of land. The original house itself, you know, is standing. Then we have a 1949 addition, then there's another 7500 square foot addition that we made that houses our child daycare department, our senior services staff offices, and then some senior rooms, and we have our computer lab, and then a lobby. As far as services that we provide, we provide services in the area of child daycare, from infants all the way through school ages. We have 112 children that we provide services for, from infants to before and after school program, with our toddler program and preschooler program. We are a NAECY [National Association for the Education of Young Children] accredited organization; that's the National Association for the Education of Children and Youth. We're only two neighborhood-based organizations that have that national accreditation. We just got reaccredited, so we're real proud of the excellent child day care services we're able to provide and constantly improve upon. We also have our senior day care program and that program provides, we provide services for seniors every day, fifty-five seniors, we provide them breakfast and a lunch, and different recreational services, social services, outreach, field trips, we have a nurse, registered nurse to come in and help them with their medicine and prescriptions. We have a lawyer to come in once a month for any type of legal problems they may have. We also have 200 seniors that are frail and handicapped that we provide meals for; our Meals on Wheels program, so we provide meals Monday through Saturday for them and outreach to them, and those are our two anchor programs, the child daycare and senior daycare, and to me those reflect the two most oppressed segments of the population, the very young and the very old, and if it wasn't for these two anchor programs, a lot of families would not be able to work or to go to school, continue their education. So, we provide a very caring and safe environment for children, and a lot of our seniors, if we didn't provide these services, they probably would have to be institutionalized, 'cause a lot of them live by themselves. Now the organization is open Monday through Saturday; Monday through Friday we're open from 6:30 in the morning to 6:00 at night. On Mondays and Thursdays, we have AA [Alcoholics Anonymous], and it's open 'till 8:00. And then, on Saturdays we're open till 2 o'clock. We have a nontraditional day care program with nontraditional hours. It's open on Saturdays from 6:00 to 12:00, and then we have African drumming that's offered from 12 to 3. So, we're open seven days a week. We have a budget of 2.1 million dollars, a staff of thirty-two. Most of our funding are public dollars from the federal government. Especially, the majority is from the county government. We have a contract for our child day care program and our senior day care program, with monies from Western Missouri Area Agency on Aging, and we also have foundation monies from the St. Luke's Foundation and the Cleveland Foundation, the Gunn [ph.] Foundation, the Brewing [ph.] Foundation; I think I've mentioned all of them. And then we charge some fees based on income for the different services we provide. We also get funding from United Way services; about six percent of our budget reflects United Way, so their dollars are important. And there are a total of nineteen neighborhood centers like East End in Cleveland on the East and West Side, and we're one of the oldest and the largest of the neighborhood centers. We have a real good staff, excellent board. We're approaching our 100th anniversary, which will be 2007. We have an annual, we just started last year having an annual fund campaign, which we have done very well. Some of our supporters are Hathaway Brown School [Shaker Heights, Ohio], Hanna Perkins [School, Shaker Heights, Ohio], have been very good supporters of us, and a lot of other individual supporters over the years throughout the community.$All right, Mr. Hill, I would like to talk with you now about this nationally recognized program, [National] Rites of Passage [Institute], in--that you are responsible for launching in greater Cleveland [Ohio]. It has sort of taken off.$$I'd say, yeah, myself and my wife [Marquita McAllister Hill]. Anything I do, you really can't separate, I can't separate her from, I mean, 'cause her influence is knowledge information, it's all part. So it's really been co-authored, co-facilitated through the both of us, based on our experience as husband and wife and as parents.$$So when was it founded, and what's the basic content of the program?$$Well again, rites of passage, the term rites of passage was coined in 1907, by a French anthropologist named Arnold van Gennep, based on his research of how indigenous groups socialize their--the different age sets into life passages, the crisis periods that we go through from conception to death. Usually when we think of rites of passage, we think of it relative to adolescence, but really rites of passage reflect life stages from early childhood to death and even after death becoming an ancestor. The way that I define rites of passage is it is a process. It's not a program. You really have to think of it as a life cycle development process. It's really a ritual. It's a human development ritual for dealing with life passages and crises from birth to death, and to me, the way I define it, operationally define it, is a process for regenerating community, 'cause, first of all, we're not born men and women. We're born males and females, so we have to be socially and culturally developed into manhood and womanhood. And, in the different phases of a man and woman, you know, midlife, which is really a new Western life phase that we go through midlife, and then you're talking about the onset of eldership, early eldership, and then late eldership, and then death and in transition. So, again, my purpose for doing it is dealing specifically with what is known specific for is adolescence; helping young people to make it from childhood to adulthood and not having to do it by themselves, but there is a support of adults and community. But, in order to do that, you can't do that unless adults have gone through that process. How're you gonna take children through something that you have not gone through as a ritual through ceremony, through initiation? So, it's been necessary, 'cause African term never develop your shield on the battlefield, so we have found ourselves concurrently having to regenerate the community as well as establish and create the community among adults. So, there has been two emphases; first of all, to create a critical mass and community of adults that will serve community and serve young people, facilitate the rites of passage process. And then, the young people themselves, a process for helping them to become men and women and to become adults. So, the process is--I basically used my own children; some of the socialization informally and formally in raising them, and then based on some of my field study, field research, reviewing the literature, coming up with a reinvented process for doing rites of passage through East End Neighborhood House [Cleveland, Ohio].

Read more about Paul Hill

Marlene Owens Rankin

Daughter of world-famous track star Jesse Owens, Marlene Owens Rankin was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 19, 1939. Moving with her family first to Detroit, Rankin graduated from high school in Chicago in 1957. After graduation, Rankin returned to Ohio, where she attended Ohio State University, becoming the first African American homecoming queen in the school's history in 1961. Graduating in 1961 with her bachelor's degree in social work, Rankin later attended the University of Chicago, earning her master's degree in 1978.

Growing up watching her father win worldwide athletic events only to be rejected by racism at home inspired Rankin to work to foster interracial understanding and help youth throughout her career. After earning her B.A. degree, Rankin went to work for the Cook County Department of Public Aid in the Children's division as a social worker. Rankin worked for a year with the Chicago Youth Centers/Project Learn as a social worker for a year, before joining the Chicago Committee on Urban Opportunities/Model Cities program as the senior planner; she remained at this position for six years. In 1978, Rankin went to work for the United Charities of Chicago as a clinical social worker and the director of human resources; she stayed in this position for ten years before becoming the director of human resources at the Museum of Science and Industry.

Upon the death of her father in 1980, Rankin, her two sisters, and friends, formed the Jesse Owens Foundation to perpetuate his beliefs and indomitable spirit to future generations. The foundation established scholarships through the Ohio State University and provided hundreds of young adults with support for their education. In 1990, Rankin became the executive director of the Jesse Owens Foundation, where she was working at the time of her interview.

Rankin remained active over the years in a number of organizations, serving as a member of the board of the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, and as the chairperson of the Ohio State University Annual Fund from 1991 to 1995. Rankin also served on the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club and the Sporting Chance Foundation. Today's Chicago Woman named Rankin one of 100 Women Making a Difference in 1992; she was awarded the Annual Orchid Award from the Top Ladies of Distinction. Rankin and Stuart, her husband of over forty years, raised one son.

Accession Number

A2003.060

Sex

Female

Interview Date

3/31/2003

Last Name

Rankin

Maker Category

CivicMakers

Marital Status

Married

Middle Name

Occupation

Foundation Chief Executive

Social Worker

Organizations

Speakers Bureau

First Name

Marlene

Birth City, State, Country

Cleveland

HM ID

RAN01

Favorite Season

All Seasons

State

Ohio

THM DA Link

http://marc.thehistorymakers.org/thmdigital/A2003.060.htm

Favorite Vacation Destination

Michigan, Phoenix, Arizona, Greece, Bahamas

Bio Photo

Speakers Bureau Region State

Illinois

Interview Description

A2003_060_EAD.pdf

A2003_060_EAC.pdf

Birth Date

4/19/1939

Birth Place Term

Cleveland

Speakers Bureau Region City

Chicago

Country

USA

Favorite Food

Chili, Beans, Pie (Lemon Meringue)

Short Description

Foundation chief executive and social worker Marlene Owens Rankin (1939 - ) is the daughter of Jesse Owens and executive director of the Jesse Owens Foundation.

Employment

Cook County Department of Public Aid

Chicago Youth Centers

Chicago Committee on Urban Opportunities

United Charities of Chicago

Museum of Science and Industry

Jesse Owens Foundation

Favorite Color

Orange, Red, White

DAStories

Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of Marlene Rankin interview

Tape: 1 Story: 2 - Marlene Rankin lists her favorites

Tape: 1 Story: 3 - Marlene Rankin recalls her family background

Tape: 1 Story: 4 - Marlene Rankin remembers her mother

Tape: 1 Story: 5 - Marlene Rankin discusses the park dedicated to her father, Jesse Owens

Tape: 2 Story: 1 - Marlene Rankin describes her father's, Jesse Owens, youth

Tape: 2 Story: 2 - Marlene Rankin shares stories about her father, Jesse Owens, in the 1936 Berlin Olympics

Tape: 2 Story: 3 - Marlene Rankin describes her father's struggles to support their family

Tape: 2 Story: 4 - Marlene Rankin remembers her family's frequent moves

Tape: 2 Story: 5 - Marlene Rankin recounts her early school experiences

Tape: 3 Story: 1 - Marlene Rankin discusses Chicago's high schools

Tape: 3 Story: 2 - Marlene Rankin recalls her high school activities

Tape: 3 Story: 3 - Marlene Rankin describes her transition to Ohio State University

Tape: 3 Story: 4 - Marlene Rankin remembers serving as Ohio State's first black Homecoming Queen

Tape: 3 Story: 5 - Marlene Rankin recounts the impact of the Civil Rights Movement at Ohio State

Tape: 4 Story: 1 - Marlene Rankin recalls the 1960 Presidential election

Tape: 4 Story: 2 - Marlene Rankin discusses her career

Tape: 4 Story: 3 - Marlene Rankin discusses the Jesse Owens Foundation

Tape: 4 Story: 4 - Marlene Rankin recounts the pressure on her family to be politically active

Tape: 4 Story: 5 - Marlene Rankin shares her hopes and concerns for the black community

Tape: 4 Story: 6 - Marlene Rankin considers her legacy

Read more about Marlene Owens Rankin

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