School Social Work Coordinator

(Simultaneous) Tell us about the Appomattox Club [Oakland, California]. Let's see, D.G. Gibson was one of the men that worked with your father [William Byron Rumford] (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous) Oh yes, D.G. Gibson, Frances Albrier. There were so many people that, let's see, Evelio Grillo is still around.$$Evelio Grillo?$$Yeah.$$How do you spell that (laughter)?$$E-V-E-L-I-O.$$Evelio, okay.$$Evelio Grillo, G-R-I-L-L-O. As a matter of fact, I think he wrote the foreword, didn't he write the foreword for this book ['William Byron Rumford, The Life and Public Services of a California Legislator: A Biography,' Lawrence P. Crouchett]? But he--.$$Now, is he an African American?$$Well, you know, I think that, you know I can't remember if it was Puerto Rican or Cuban descent, but he certainly identified and I don't know, you know, he was a light brown person and-- (laughter).$$He probably, I don't know, I'm thinking a lot of times, you know, anybody brown was discriminated against, you know, in terms of if you weren't white, you know, so--they tried to break down these covenants that restricted blacks from (unclear)--.$$Right, right, and one of the main things they were trying to do is to get somebody to run for office, and Tom [L.] Berkley, who died, let's see, he died in 2001, but he was major, major in the [San Francisco] Bay Area [California] as well. He's an attorney and he was part of that group. There was, they used to meet and get together to try to see how they could break down the barriers, and they were considering Tom Berkley because, you know, he had been very active but then he declined to run for office, this assembly seat that was vacant, and so my aunt, my mother's [Elsie Carrington Rumford] sister, who was, actually she ended up being a teacher in Berkeley [California], she wasn't a teacher at the time, but she nominated my father and he ran for the seat and he won the seat.$$What year is this when he wins the seat?$$He--1948. He was elected into the [California State] Assembly.$$Okay.$$He was a pharmacist, I should mention too. He was a pharmacist and had a drug store in Berkeley and I think that's real important because while he was an assemblyman, he never gave up his career as a pharmacist. When he was in Sacramento [California], he was working the drug store (laughter).$$What was the name of his drug store?$$Rumford Pharmacy. (Laughter) And it's still there, but they changed it to a health center and they named it after him. The building is still there. But actually, when he first opened, what happened he worked as a pharmacist for someone else in the early years, and then they retired and he bought the drug store from them, and then several years later, I guess 1950, he, it was a small store so he moved across the street and had a much bigger drug store, and that was where he could be found. (Laughter) That's where you found your assemblyman, in the drug store. And people would come down, you know, you want to talk to your assemblyperson, you just go to the drug store.$$Okay. And so you were three years old when he was elected?$$See, that's it. I was three years old when he was elected, so all of my life that, all my memory from the time I was three to the time I was a young adult in '66 [1966], he was in the assembly, and my whole recollection of him was as an assemblyman.$When you graduated from San Francisco State [College; San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California], in (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous) San Francisco State. January '67 [1967].$$--in January '67 [1967], okay, and you went to Howard [University, Washington, D.C.] for grad school?$$Well, no, actually I worked--.$$You worked for the City--.$$I worked for the City of Oakland--I worked for the California state--State of California for a while, and the department of employment, where I ran across discrimination, and was naive enough to be surprised that employers were requesting white only, and I reported it to my--I was a minority rep [representative] and reported it to my minority rep boss who was based out of San Francisco [California], and they had a big investigation of the City of Oakland [California] department of employment and confiscated files and it was a real big thing, a real big thing. And, but, I think, I always look back on that now and I think, oh, my gosh, that was because I grew up in that whole civil rights thing where, you know, this is wrong, you can't do--and I didn't even try to smoothly talk to my supervisor and say well, you know, can we do something about--I was like indignant and youthful, you know, right out of college.$$That is something to be indignant about, if you look back at it. They've been doing that since they started it.$$But my boss later told me, my local boss in Oakland said, "[HistoryMaker] Elsie [Rumford], why didn't you come to me and say something to me?" I went to the minority employment rep in San Francisco, who was also my boss in a way, but I guess they wanted to handle it in house, and my minority employment rep boss in San Francisco reported to Sacramento [California]. I mean, it was just a problem to file. It was a big deal and my, the chief of the department of employment in Oakland ended up resigning early and I was so naive I went to his retirement dinner, you know, 'cuz I was like, I don't know, stuff just kinda, I didn't really see how I think it affected so much in my tunnel vision of like wrong, that's it, they shouldn't do this, and you know--.$$Well, you know that's by the same token they should have known it was wrong.$$Well, they did.$$It's a policy that was wrong from the time of its inception until we showed up and when we showed up it should have been a signal, hey, maybe we should change some of this before somebody blows a whistle (laughter).$$Like me. And then I was kind of, at that point, I was pretty much untouchable because of my dad [William Byron Rumford], you know, although I wasn't doing it for--it was wrong. People stopped speaking to me. Oh, my gosh. There was a lot of pressure. It was a really difficult time. Even my mother [Elsie Carrington Rumford] said something to me. She said, you know--these are peoples' livelihoods. They're gonna have to--you know, she was worried people were gonna get fired and what they might do to me. You be careful, is what she said.$$But is there really an unrisky way to create a social change of that kind?$$Well, I don't know. In hind sight, you know, maybe I could have gone to the local Oakland people and tried to work it out, but--$$You know, the usual mantra is be patient.$$No, but I wasn't--and the only thing, the young people, there were about three or four young people who worked in the office, it was a big office, and they kinda stuck with me through it, but it was, it was difficult. It was some real, real difficult times. I ended up moving to a different office, but I wasn't gonna move out till I was ready. They didn't move me out. I just waited, but there was a lot of pressure, lots and lots of pressure.