Interviews with African Americans in Utah, Henry and Eva Sexton, Interview 3

Transcript (76 pages) of an interview by Leslie Kelen with Henry and Eva Sexton on September 14, 1983. From Interviews with African Americans in Utah

Mr. and Mrs. Sexton discuss the NAACP, the Progressive Party, the American Legion, picketing theatres and bowling alleys, and raising their foster children.

HENRY SEXTON AND EVA SEXTON INTERVIEWER: Leslie Kelen 9-14-83 E: Civil Rights and together and what we did. Most of the time, as far as things, doing Civil Rights, just come automatically during your day or whatever come up, you just did these kind of things. So it wasn't a thing where you discussed what you was doing to do about situ­ations. Situations come up and you just took ahold of them and did them. For instance, the situation of Mormon Church and their beliefs and everything, as far as the blacks that were here that did not believe the Mormon beliefs about blacks. All they did was whenever they got the chance to even talk to a Mormon, they spoke their feelings about it and everything so it wasn't a thing that talked to anyone else and planned what yu were going to do about Civil Rights. It was just something that you believed in and you did those things as they come along. And this is what happened as far as Civil Rights was con­cerned. Daily, something would come up in your life that you would have to handle and that's what I think most of the people that worked in Civil Rights and £or the cause. It just come up. You just did it individually that way. L: But it was the cause. E: Yeah. It as the cause. H: I think thought you had individual thoughts into action but there was organization behind it. There was some organizing behind it into a group. Okay, in relationship to--we had the NAACP. We had the meetings and they met 1 quite frequently back in thwse days. They met at the minimal once a month. Or special meetings. L: When people would come out. H: Okay. There was also a small corps here. On racial equality. Do you remember that one? L: Sure I do. H: Okay. There was a small group that met here. There were also the Progressive Party. Do you remember the Progres-sive Party? They run Henry Wallace for oresident. They had an active chapter here. Okay? In other words, I think that Progressive Party and their action was the ones that worked heavily in picketing our theaters, the downtown theaters. L: What were their members? Were they white and black? H: Whit~ and black. Oh, yes. E: All those organizations are white and black. In Utah-- L: Excuse me, who do you remember in that Progressive Party? Who do you remember seeing and working with. H: Okay. There was, I can't think of his name. Curtis. His first name just escaped me right then. E: Was Jessie Stewart in there too? H: No, Jessie Stewart was not in the Progressive Party. I don't think. But anyway, there was people such as that. I remember one of the blacks that was prominent in that Progressive Party too. Fred Genus. He was pretty active. L: Is he still around? - H: Yes. He was pretty active. But he was a member of that Progressive Party. They tried to name that particular 2 party as Communist. E: They tried to. H: Yeah, even though they were successful in having Henry Wallace run as president on the national ticket. But they were quite active too in those days. I repeat, they were the ones that were very active in opening the doors for the theaters, picketing the theaters here in Salt Lake. L: How long, as you remember back, did that picketing last? Would it go for a week, a month. H: Oh I think that picketing lasted several months. But saying how I don't really remember. L: Did you participate you two? E: Oh, yes, yes. It lasted for several months but the thsng about it is as we said everything that opened up, the picketing lasted for several months. You picket and all of a sudden you didn't have to picket. You go up--we went up there and you could go in. Everything that hap­pened in SAlt Lake as far as solving the problem it just happened and nobody let anybody know that you could do it or you couldn't. They just did it. H: I remember the heavy concentration of picketing was the old Uptown theater which was on Main Street and South Temple and 1st South. It's location is now where Z.C.M.I. center is. I remember that was a heavy concentration there. Of picketing. - E: The Capitol. L: Was there any reason why? 3 H: Well, because they were segregated in the theater. other words, that you went upstairs to the balcony. In L: Was there any reason why that was more concentrated than someplace else? H: I think it had a lot to do with some of the statements that Joseph ~orris who was owner of the theater at that time made. I met him years later and · I can never under-stand the man. I remember one of his managers was later on to become president cf ... L: Joseph Morris Theaters. They had several. E: They had several theaters. H: The Uptown theater, the STudio theater. They built the Villa theater out here on Highland Drive. L: What were the kinds of things that he was supposed to have said. H: I don't remember. It was something about well, some-thing like we will not have mixed theater. You know. That we willhave segregation in our theaters. Statements such as that. And JOSEPH Morris was kind of a flamboyant type of a person. And thenm as I said, Dave Edwards come up through that system there as, he started as a young­ster in the theaters and everything a~d he become presi­dent of Joseph Morris, he became his right-hand man. And he's one that we became, we become friends over the years. I come to understand after I knew the guy why he done it. But of course, we know why a lot of segregation was done. Why a lot of discrimination was done because it was 4 economics. Okay. When in Rome you do it. I'm not try­ing to defend the man for their actions but this is what happened. And then again, as I learned, later learned to know these people, I could understand why. Dave Edwards was one that used to send kids down to Disneyland and things like that. L: You mean he sent you and your family? P· We wanted to go to Disneyland, you know. E: We became good friends. H: Yeah and when I went down to Disneyland, boy they just opened for me. We didn't have to pay for a doggone thing. Everything was arranged for me. You know, just one of those things. Ee was just this kind of a man. This was many years after. E: And there was such a thing going on in Utah that they would say, the whiteswould say that the reason they felt the way they did. They'd never been around blacks before. So they say that all blacks was ignorant and all blacks was this and that and the other. So you can't say that they did it because that some of them wanted to even. Some of them was manager of a place and they were manag­ing this place but it was a policy of the owner, whoever owned it that no blacks come in there. So this person who was managing it, that's what happened. They are caught up in that too. But I always say that there always has to be an underdog. say ... I meant, as far as what would you 5 H: Now don't get us wrong of what we're saying. Like we be­friended or that we say it happened, you know, and then we appreciate it. No, we're not saying that. I think let's put a perspective on the thing. It was very bad taste, it was a very bad taste in their mouth and I'm glad that we don't have to go through that. Our children don't have to endure those kinds of things. But I think what we're saying is that in our experience here in Utah yes, there was discrimination and there was segregation but also there was people that didn't condone it but they did it because they had to. Again, go back to economics. It was their job, it was their livelihood and those people, are some of the same people that come to the forefront later on and helped us with our struggle. L: Later on? H: Oh yes, oh, yes. L: At the time those people gave you the line, well, I'm just doing it for politics. E: And some of them hated to do it. I meant, they say they hated to do it. For instance, some of them we knew and they'd walk up to you and say, I'm sorry but I just can't do it. L: They just can't let you in. What did you think of it at the time. I mean now you're more forgiving. H: You wanted to fight it. Then you fought it anyway you can. Sometimes you were so mad you might use your fist. I know many times, growing up, that I did. 6 E: When you was younger. H: Yeah. I did. You know, things like that were forced on you. Things to make you feel so bad. When the war come, who wanted to go in the service~ I don't think I can show you one black man that really wanted to go in the service. E: Really wanted to. H: I don't think you could. Not the blacks in that era. E: But they had to. H: Yeah. E: And they were segregated even in service. L: I know. E: So can you imagine. I meant they said they fought. L: Well, let me ask you guys, I mean, you know, segregation now is long past. Do you still feel the pain of it? H: Oh, you betcha. E: It's setll here. L: What did segregation make you feel? H: If you couldn't go to somewhere of your choosing, if you had the same thing, a dollar which buys anything you want. Okay. White, black, green, yellow. I don't care what color you are will buy it. But even if you had the dollar back in those days you could not just because of the pigmentation of your skin. Okay. And that made you feel kind of inferior. But even we had that feeling, our parents taught us that no, you're not inferior. You're just as good as the rest of ther.. So fight about it. 7 Fight for your rights. If the words don't work to fight for your fights, fight for it with your fists. Fight for whatever you can. Go get you an educaticn. Gain as much knowledge. E: Now that's what my ... H: Or be a good citizen. Work hard. Achieve. Be an achiever. Show, just show, just show the white, the white man that you can be just as equal as they are. L: Do you think in thise days when they didn't let people in restaurants, if you had a doctorate they would have let you in? E: No. H: No. I don't care what you had. If you were black, no. L: But okay. So we're twenty years almost past those days. In some sense. 1984 ccming around the bend. We're talk-ing about ' 6 0, ' 61, ' 6 2, ' 6 3, ' 6 4. H: We're talking about before. L: Education, apparently, I mean, as you look back, educa­tion didn't work. That wasn't the key. If you an edu­cation, did they let you into more movies and more res­taurants? H: No, no. It took the laws. It took laws and it took act-ual court cases to really oake things happen. To force things to happen. It took other kinds of actions. Yes, we had laws. We had anti-discrinination laws such as fair housing laws that ccme along, but yet as a black you could go in a lot of places and they would not sell. 8 To you because you were black. So there was a law that said you cannot discriminate the housing. Okay. So if a black was discriminated, he'd get a white go there right behind him and they would take that test. They would take that to court. Those are the kinds of things that made things change. You had to have direct action. Yes, there were laws but you had to have court actions to ~ake it happen to show that this is real. L: Do you think picketing made a difference? H: Yes. Picketing in those days, yes, it made people more conscicus. E: That is because the picketing did great because it wasn't just black out there picketing. Anything that we picketed here in Utah, as I said before, it was white and almost double white as it was black. If it had been left up to to just blacks they wouldn't have felt anything, but we had--there was white there right along with us, you know. That was really liberal. We called theM liberals. That was double the amount of blacks that was there. So that's where the pressure came fron really. I feel that's where the pressure cone frcm. So, when they went so far as eat-ing in restaurants, they went through this thing, we can't let you in here because the white people, we would lose our customers if we have blacks in here eating and the whites don't want to sit beside you. Okay. We've had-­we used to go in bunches to restaurants maybe two or three blacks and the rest white would go as a bunch. ne'd go 9 in to eat and they couldn't serve us. Well, all the whites that was there with us, said if you can't serve them, we don't eat either. And we would go right back the next night and do the same thing. Sometimes we even took names of people that was in there and started to get them to work with us. See? And it worked. L: You mean the people who were work~ng in .the restaurant? E: Uh-huh, and the people who were working in the restaurant and also the people that was going in there every day. Some places pecple eat at the same place every day so you kind of looked at those people and see who they are and kind of get to them and work with them too. To see if they really believed, feel that way, that the managerr.ent was saying. So, the next time we'd go we'd have some of those people with us finally it ended up that they was losing customers. H: You'd be surprised. E: So that's where picketing helped. Now, that's the way picketing helps. H: You'd be surprised that the people of Mormon faith here that were members of the church that did not condone it. That helped in some way. Some of them didn't work. They were not strong enough to work, to come to the forefront but they did work behind the scene. L: How could so~ebody do that? lihat could they do? P· Different actions. They provided money. ~hey donated money. 10 E: They donated money. They donated pamphlets. They donated everything. Things that we needed that we couldn't pay for. We had people that really did it but they wouldn't come out in front because that would hurt things. E: And you find some that did come out in front. E: And then some didn't care. L: Who were some of these people now that helped then? E: Okay. Leon Ward. Is he still living, Henry? H· Yeah, yeah. E: Leon ~ard. Ee had a grocery store here. H: Ee had a grocery store on 21st South. E: Now, he worked hard for Civil Rights. P.: War'ds Market. E: Now, I don't know where he is now or what. H: Oh, he's there. L: McMullin? E: Yes. Sterling McMullin. In the churc. We had other people. Justin Stewart was a very good friend. E: Yes, Justin Stewart. Ee was a judge. H· No, he was not. E: ~o, I don't mean a judge. A lawyer. H· He became a lawyer. E: Uh-huh. Legal things and everything like that they was a lot of things that donated, you know. H· I remember, he didn't become a lawyer until later. ~~-­Well, he didn't but I meant he was becoming one. 11 I meant he was able to help you. H: I remember coming back from the service and the friends. Justin Stewart, Bill Latrell, Dave Diehl. We organized a chapter of the A!~VETS. American Veteran's Association. That was one of the most liberal war type organizations. It was so liberal, it didn't last. It was too liberal. And we organized a branch here. L: What do you mean it was so liberal that it didn't last? H: Just too liberal. L: Too liberal to live. H: Too liberal to live because back in th~se days ... E: Everybody was scared to hurt anybody else's feelings. Feelings, so they didn't let ... H: Yeah, the black and thb white, the brotherhood. E: It was just overbearing. Really, nice overbearing. B: We leased an old dairy. It used to be down on State Street and we put hardwood floor in it. Volunteer work. We converted this old dairy into a clubhouse and we had an active branch, you know. I don't think that organiza-tion is even alive nationally. ization. L: What was it called? E: Amvets. L: American Vets. It was a national organ- H: It was a national organization. After World War II. L: And for the returning vets, right? . B.: Yeah, and one reason it sprung up because even your 12 American Legion or the Veterans of Foreign War were still very a Jim Crow type organization. It took a long time. I joined the American Legion. I joined the VFW when I first come out of the service but there was so much Jim Crowism that I did not maintain my mem~ership. There was no way. Even today I today I have such a bad taste from American Legion that I wouldn't join it. But now I am a member of the VFW. L: What's given you the bad taste? H: Just the way they acted. Now, it isn't that way. E: You don't think so? H: No, not the Areerican Legion. E: What is it that Venice and them belong to and how many years ago has it been that they took us to, wasn't that the American Legion? H: That was t~e American Legion. E: And they didn't want to let us in. H: Well, I know that. That's what I'm saying. E: Now, how many years ago has that been? H: I'm not sure. E: I'ts been several years. H· It's been several years but that same club you go to now, no problem. The same organization down there on 1st South. E: As I said, things opened up and you wouldn't believe that the way that you couldn't even go into a door before in a way that now that, the way that they opened and nothing and it's just like it's never been segregated or anything. 13 Most every place you go you would never think it's ever been segregated. L: Did you have any cases where people violently kept you out? H: Oh, yes, oh, yes. E: I didn't. H: No, you wouldn't. But I have. Many times. One I can re­member very well, went to jail. Okay. This was during the war. There was an old greasy restaurant on South Temple between 1st West and West Temple. On the South­west corner, it used to be the interurban station or the Bamberger Station was right across the street from there. They had a sign in the window where it said, we do not serve colored. And there was about five of us, we were walking along and we saw that and see all our boys and they been brought in. A lot of boys out here to Camp Williams at that time. I'm talking about colored. Colored troopers at Camp Williams. L: Excuse me, where was Camp Williams? H· Camp Williams, right out there the other side, off Red­wood road, out there about a mile or so south of the prison. L: The point-of-the-mountain? H: Yeah, it's right out there. L: Is it still out there? H: L: Oh, yes. I see. It's where the National Guard trains every year. 14 H: Every year. Their summer camp. Oh, yeah, it's very big. Oh, yes. L: So they brought a lot of guys out there, huh? H: Well, at that time they were brought in and they had these black troops out there. I think they used that at the time to train them for M.P. force. Military police. But anyway, so we saw this sign and we decided we would test it and we walked in there and this guy come out of the kitchen with his gun. Told us to get out. We don't serve any niggers. Okay. And so there was the little soldiers in there, a little guy in uniform. He said, give me one of those things I'll help you keep those niggers out of here. He was in uniform. And so naturally, you know, we knew if the guy shot us in there, you know, they would agree with whatever. We were on his property. So we backed out. But would not move from in front. We told him to come on outside on the sidewalk. We was on the sidewalk and we were very much within our rights. Well, soon, there was every cop in the city that was down there for us five black ~oys. The oldest one there was about twenty-two. I mean at that time I was about fifteen. L: You were fifteen? H: Yeah, I was about fifteen, sixteen. And so they got to rassle with us. Somewhere around there. In the meanti~e we were trying to get that damn serviceman. The one in uni­form. If we would have got hin, we'd have killed him. I'm telling you. That hurt our feelings. We don't care 15 about that owner. That man in there in uniform, okay. _ We're all subject to go and there were so many in uniform. Well anyway, they arrested us, they confiscated the guns. They took the sign out of that restaurant but they arrested us and put us in jail all night for disturbing the peace. Okay, now. Two of the cops I had known since I was a little boy. The whole family. Their name was Folsom. The whole family was police departreent for years and years. They just went from one son to son to grandson and so on. Just the whole, you know, the family. I think the last one retired a few years back. Well anyway, I knew them anyway. They took us to jail. We wanted to pay our fine. It was only about ten bucks apiece. They accepted it for bail. They accepted it but they wouldn't release us. They made us stay in that jail that whole night. We weren't released until that morning. L: Did they threaten you? H: They would not release us until that following morning. L: Did they threaten you? H: No, there wasn't any threats. No, there weren't any threats. L: What was it like seeing those two cops that you knew? Did you talk to them? E: 9h, sure. But that didn't mean anything. You have to understand. Well I tell you when in Rome you do as Rome. I don't care who you are. E: Henry. H: White or black. There was very few, back in those days. 16 Of course, those guys there, they say, well, it's my job. They're police and they have to do whatever. E: Henry. L: Were you frightened? H: Well, to a degree. To a degree, yes. But we were a bunch of young wild, not wild kids, but we were tough enough that we didn 1 t scare that easily. You see what I mean? L: Uh-huh. H: One of the boys that was with us, why, he ended getting killed in prison, you know. But what I'm saying is that we weren't that bad but he was. He was just a bad apple. But, with us he wasn't a bad apple. Do you see what I'm trying to say? I'm talking about Snookey. Which you didn't know. E: Henry, tell him about when you came out of service, about segregated shows when you came out and was taking mom and daddy to the show. E: Oh, hell, that was back in Lawrence, Kansas. I was back there and I'd come out of the service, you know. I'd spent two years overseas and so on during the war. Went as far as China any~ay. Come back from the service and I had seen "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn". l\nd I thought it was one of the finest movies that they'd ever made. So I was back in Kansas to pick up her. She was with her mother and father and I ~anted the~ to see the movie. What was the name of that theater. Pathe? or something. 17 E: Patee. H: Yeah, so back there if you went to a movie you had to go up in the balcony but there you would sit behind the, in the upper balcony. It had a white railing. Okay? That was your place. L: There was a balcony and you sat in back of the balcony? H: Way up there by the projection room. E: Right up under the projection room. H: Back then they used a term, they called it nigger heaven. E: That's what they used to call it. H: Okay, that's where you had to sit. But I would not allow my wife and my mother and father to sit there. I said, No, no, we paid for it. I'~ going to sitin the balcony. I said, we're going to sit where we want. We're going to sit in the lower balcony. So, we went down and sit right in the front row. And thh usher come along, flashed his light and he said, Mister, you're going to have to move. I said, well, move where? Back up there. Behind that white railing. I said, we're not going anywhere. That's when I get out of my place. My dad and mother, I wanted to leave and I said no, I grabbed Eva and grabbed her arm and said, no, we're not going to move. And so he come back again. I got out of my place and I said to the usher, the usher said you're going to have to move. And I said, we're not moving. Well, I'm going to have go get the manager. I said, well, you go get the manager, 'cause we're not moving. P.retty soon, the manager 18 come and he said, well, it's the policy of this theater that the colored folk sit to t:ih back. And I said, . look, we're not moving. I said, I paid my money, come in to watch a show and I said, we're not moving. I said, now, if you don't want us to sit in this theater you can give us our money. He started giving me my money back. I said, fine. And he left. And so we got up and come down­stairs and he was at the bottom of the stairs. With money in his hand and the son-of-a-bitch had nerve enough to call my, address my father-in-law as ~r. Shephard. L: He called your father? E: Yeah, he was Mr. Shephard. H: Yeah, he was Mr. Shephard. And yet he told Mr. Shephard that blacks can't sit down here. Okay. but he had nerve enough to call him Mr. Shephard. What did he do that for? Dad grabbed my arm because I was going to hit him. But that man had nerve enough to call my dad-in-law Mr. Shephard. E: That was back in ... H: That was back in 1946. L: Now what did he say? I missed something here? What is your last name? E: My name was Shephard before I got married. L: So, now ... H: That was my father-in-law. Eer father. L: Right. So I'm going to sound awful ignorant but I mean what's wrong with him calling him Mr. Shephard? 19 H: He's going to address him as ~r. but yet he can say a nigger you can't sit here. He addressed him as mister huh? Okay. Now, do you hear wh~t I'm saying? E: Okay, it was back in those days that as long as you stay in your place you are mister. H: Yeah, that'll teach you right. As long as you stay in your place. E: If you move out of your place you just downright nigger. F· You were uppity. E: When we agreed to get out, go out of the place and every­thing, when he was going out the door, you mister again. Mister Shephard. L: I think I understand now. H: See, in their town, the family was very well known. Okay. Very well known and highly respected family. Even back in those days and I wouldn't live in a town and just like I told LeRoy when I come home, I said, there is no way I can live down there. It's worse than being in Mississippi. E: LAwrence is a border town. L: What did you think of what he did? E: Great, only I was so darned scared that he was going to hit hi~. But no, Lawrence, Kansas is a borderline state of the southern states. So, Lawrence is the state where .. L: You mean Lawrence is not the state. E: I meant the city, Kansas but Lawerence is where they had Quantrall's raid. -L: Oh, yes. 20 E: Quantrall's raid. L: John Brown was from Kansas, right? H: Yeah. John Brown was from Independence, Missouri. E: Okay, wait a minute. L: Oh, yes. But he came into Kansas. H: Oh, sure, sure. In fact, you remember Quantrall was through that country, see? L: I see. H: Remember John Brown originally, now correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't he originally with Quantrall? L: I don't know. I'd have to look it up. I don't know. E: Anyway, Jesse James family wns neighbors of my family when they lived up i ·n the country. They called it the country of Leavensworth County. That's a few miles out of Lawrence. Up in the country. That's where Jesse James and all of them was born right just about miles. They called themselves neighbors but neighbors then was miles apart. But they were neighbors. My mother used to tell us about Jesse James and they was bad little rascals when they was little bitty things. H: I remember when I finished bootcamp and as I told you, I was first class. There were five of us selected,you know, the first blacks to be trained in the United States Navy as signalmen. L: Yeah. H: Okay. We left Great Lakes. There was a train full of us. Dang near, going to Hampton Institute for further schooling 21 and we left Great Lakes in a pullman car and I remember that there were some white soldiers who were sailors also who were put on this same train. We was still segregated. We were still segregated units but the whites were still not going. They were going to Florida somewhere and I re­member when we got to Richmond, Virginia and how they stopped that train and split it up and they started shuff­ling cars around and the pullman cars we were in, they moved them way up to the front of the train, the black troops. That was my first real taste of that deep south segregation. Okay, just seeing that. Getting off the train where I saw and had the first experience of seeing this colored only or white drinking fountain. White only. Or colored only. A door in the service station. Colored only. Another door over here, white only. I seen that. That was Richmond, Virginia. This was my first experience in the south. But going back prior to that when I went into the service where I really found out what discrimina­tion and segregation really meant, was in the service. Incidentally, last week, a fellow by the name of Lyle Aldrich that left here going into the service together. We were inducted here together as kids, youngsters. Hadn't seen or heard of that man and he came here to visit his brother and I didn't realize, I had forgotten that the guy here was his brother. Anyway, he had to look me up. He remembered me. And we had a visit, after all these years. And I had forgotten the man. The last time I saw him we 22 left him in Great Lakes and he had the chicken pox. That's when we left Great Lakes and he had to stay there. And he had to go to another company. Never even gradu­ated out of bootcamp with our company. I never seen him after that. Never heard of him. Anything and that was a big thrill. After all these years. That was forty years ago. L: What did he come back for? Why did he want to visit you? H: He came back to visit his brother. L: Why did he want to see you? H: Because he remembered he and I left here. There was one other guy. His name was T. J. Lucky. We left here, the three of us. We were inducted into the Navy, went to Great Lakes. E: They were separated in Great Lakes. H: We were separated in Great Lakes. L: He wondered what became of you, huh? H: Yeah, yeah and I had forgotten that man. But he said, L: where's Sexton? Where is Sexton. I've got some pictures down there, you know, when we was youngsters. That's a great feeling when people, you know, that makes you feel good. Well, that's the kind of enjoyable things I've had all my life. I think my family has had those kinds of things. People who remember us. Well, there was some loving that. to do. It was a loving thing H: Yes. I think it's great. 23 E: You was asking what made, what good an education was in the days when we couldn't do anything with it? That's one of the things, I think you asked us here one night what did we get from our parents? Now, that's one thing that my parents. Now, I don't know where they got it. Because they came out of slavery. But I don't know where my mother and father got it from but they said we had to get an education and we would need it. You are going to need it. But they didn't say well, we could do, there was so many children that was educated along in my age and my brother's age. My brother now is 81 years old but as I said before he was a scientist and he was one of the greatest and when he graduated from Kansas University there they would not let him, they wanted him to teach at Kansas University but they would not have a black on the campus teaching at that time. So what did they do? They sent him to Birmingham, Alabama as Dean of AMA College just out of college. Just with a college degree. So he stayed there and he retired from there and he came back to Lawrence and he bought a little farm and everything and he was up in age then. And Kansas University heard that he was there and they took him out of retirement and put him up at Kansas University in science. He made out all the exams and everything for the classes and he also, they also had him teach in the class. And he retired from there again. But what I'm trying to say, what I'm trying to say is my mother and father had seven children but every one 24 L: E: of them went as far as they wanted to go in school. And there was four of us that went to college, four of us that went to college, the others went through high school but it was just the thing that you're going to need your, you're going to need an education. There wasn't a thing we could do with it. At that time. I meant, but you something to fight with. Now, this was my mother and father's feeling. You would have something to fight with. You need an education. You will need an education. If you're ever going to do anything about the rights and everything that we have. We're fighting for. In the long run, it was the education and things that we did have. That helped with the fighting of Civil Rights. Okay. When it came time I could cope with--when I came out here I had two years of college, I could cope with things like I looked in the paper to see about a job. And this job was offered but it was at the University. Up here at the University. A little old restaurant on the end of the bookstore, right on the corner they needed a cashier. I called up on the telephone, applied for the job on the telephone. They hired me over the telephone and told me to ccme up there. I went up there and I walked in thbre bla.ck. So he was standing there and he was trying--they used to make all kinds of excuses. What do you mean you walked in black? That's what I'm talking about. I walked in black. He wasn't looking for no black person to walk in. You don't 25 understand these things, do you? L: I didn't understand what--okay, I get it. E: Now, you understand it. H: Over the phone. L: I understand, you can't tell, obviously. E: So he hired me over the phone and said I could go right to work. L: So if you'd walked in white you'd have been alright. E: Everything would have been okay. But I walked in and he started making excuses. I was standing there and he was making all kind of excuses. He turned red in the face. He did everything in the world but this one boy walked in and he was a student. And he walked up behind me and he was standing there listening to him and I was telling him about I could type and I said I don't know exactly how to work the cash register. I said, but it's easy to learn, I imagine. The student behind me said, give her a chance. Now there's another liberal. This is what helped Civil Rights. Just people like that. And the man hired me and I stayed there and worked 'til I quit, didn't I, Henry? I stayed there for about a year or more. H: You was there when we got married or when I went in service. E: And then she came from there and went to the Broadway Coffe Shop which was on 3rd South. There's another one I walked into. I always hired over the telephone . . H~ On 3rd South. 26 E: That's where a education gets you. H: And State Street. It's right next to--anyway, that was unheard of at that time. And she was cashier there. In the Broadway Shop. L: How are you on the phone? E: They needed somebody to work. They needed somebody to work and they said they wanted to know, well, your back-ground and everything. They'll ask you all of these things and I told him I had two years of college and I said I came here to visit my sister and I hadn't been here for very long and I really need the work and every-thing and so he said, well, come up, we need somebody right now. And just like that. Most every place in them days, they had ads in the paper. They needed some-body to work. L: ~ight then. E: Right then and I got hired right then. Yes, I'm telling you but when I went to work at the Broadway I set up and I told them that I had just finished working at the Uni- 1 versity, this place and everything and God, you can call / the manager if you want to. Call the bookstore and he called up there and that man did, and this is what I'm· telling you, he gave me a good recow~endation and every-thing and all they could do was hire me. I meant they did it. They could have said no. Ee needed somebody. H: I know many, many black that would just go from one employer to another asking for work and they wouldn't hire the black. E: They didn't know how to talk to them. 27 H: They just wouldn't do it. E: It takes a person now ... L: H: L: E: L: E: H: Let me ask you guys go ahead, I'm sorry. No, go ahead. It kind of interests me, you know, I mean, here I am. I'm doing the interview with you. I'm not black, obviously. And you say that during the movement whites were very im­portant and helped, helped the cause. Do you guys gen­uinely trust whites? I mean, do you feel you can trust whites. I trust people. I meant I have gotten to the point ... Can you trust white people as much as black people? Yes, yes. It depends. it is. It depends on who they are. That's the way L: But what I'm saying though is, for instance, now black person, let's say you met a white person and a black person at the same time. Would it take longer to trust the white person than the black person or would you say ... H: It wouldn't to me because I've made a kind of a--I study people and it's a kind of a thing that I've developed over the years. I can be around a person fifteen, twenty minutes I pretty well can judge their character. I'm pretty good at that. And I can tell. I can sit down and talk to someone and after a few minutes I can know whether that person is meaningful. Whether I can trust that person. Or that I can say I have a feeling I can trust 28 that person. L: So there won't be a residue of suspicion with a white person that there wouldn't be with a black person? H: I think you can have suspicion of a black or a white person from the way he's going to approach you. You got to listen. There's a lot of key words. I don't know. Maybe just something ... SIDE 2 H: Just like I say, it's just something that you ... L: Well, let's make believe you are that white person. H: I couldn't do that. E: Okay, one of the key words to me is I like all blacks. They walk up to me and tell me they like all blacks. That is for the birds. And I've had it happen. H: I don't like a white man to come up to me and introduce himself well I'm mister. E: Yeah, and call you Jim or Joe. H: And call me Jim or Joe, or boy. Okay. Don't do that to me because I'm on guard. And Eva knows what I'm talking about. E: And that was some of the key actions really. H: Yeah, and they'll say well, my best friend was black. Or something like that. You know, that guy--there's a purpose why he's trying to make you feel good. L: Trying to sell you something, more or less. 29 H: I remember the kinds of experience I had when I was sell­ing insurance. And I was with this company and I was with company and I was one of their leading insurance salesman. I was always top salesman. I remember that some of the hotshot salesmen in the company at that time, would say, what's that nigger doing in here in the room. Who brought him in here. How did he get in here. You know. I ignored him. Pretty soon, I noticed people were saying what's that nigger doing here. Back in th\se days you always teamed up with two people. One with learning experience would team up with an older person, you know, learn the ropes and so on. And all those people come up there to team up and they'd say, what's that nigger doing here. L: Did you let them team up with you? H: No. E: This is just where you hear things. H: No, and I would make some remark. Whatever come off my head. I would make some remark and cut them. And make them recognize what I overheard. And a lot of times I would say well, I'm that nigger. You know. I've said that to them. Or something of that nature. And I went from there andtrained. I trained a lot, a lot of people. A lot of them would travel with me. And things like that. They just wanted to find out what was my key to success. Here I am a nigger, you know. white world. 30 I rrustn't be out in the L: Doing it. H: Yeah, doing it. L: You seem kind of proud of him? E: I am proud of him. Yep, real proud. to be proud of. I've got something H: We've had a lot of good experience in our forty years to­gether. We've done so many things together. E: Yeah, I'm proud of him. L: Is that why you're running away? H: I kind of think that I've been very lucky in a sense in this community. Where other blacks have not. Even in my travels throughout the state, went into these little towns where it's partly segregationists and so on. It's never affected me. I've never had the feeling that here, get out of this town, nigger. Where I'm known. When another black man could come right behind me and he's run out of town. L: You've know it to happen? H: Oh, yes. Glen Edwards. You've met him? L: I've met him, yes. H: Well, he's gone into different little towns. L: Did he sell insurance himself? , H: No, no, no. L: Why was he run out? H: Glen had it happen to him right down in Nephi. Nephi, Utah. And I've sold a lot of insurance in Nephi, Utah. What I'm saying is ... 31 L: How do you puzzle it out? H· I don't know. I know that I think since I've been with the state that's had a lot to do with it because I've known this one thing, that I've been in a lot of little towns and I soon know like all the police force is wav­ing at me. What does that tell you? And that mayor, that commissioner and so on. Are out there and they're ... L: They all want some of that money. H: WEll, not necessarily that but that's got a lot to do with it, yes. But even back in selling insurance it wasn't that great. I went to Price, Utah one time selling insur-ance and that's a lot easier than down here. The paper would come out with a picture of this black and he had glasses on and they was wasnted. I was sitting in the cafe there with this other guy. We were having breakfast. Pretty soon I seen this police car drive us, you know, and a copy come in and one sit here and one sit here, and a couple of them sit at the counter and I didn't pay any at­tention to them. Then we went out and they all got up. Then here come a police car come up, one this way and one this way and they cut me off. They said, where's your ID and all that. Somebody had called them and saw this black guy with glasses in the paper and said I was him. I was in the cafe. I got an apology from the chief of police and it wasn't at my insistence, that I got that apology. The salesman that I was with forced that apology from that town. Ee forced it. He was the one who raised all the 32 hell and forced them to come out with an apology. For that embarrassment. L: Were you able to sell insurance to whites as well as blacks. H: Oh, most, 99% insurance I sold to whites. White--if I had to dependent on black I'd never have made it. I never would have made any money in insurance. I had to sell to whites. L: Were you surprised by your success? H: No. E: He worked hard for it. H: I worked hard. I always considered myself as a saleman. And one of the first thing I projected was sincerity. And that's where it is. The people will develop that con­fidence in you. L: The issue of race and segregation didn't come up there? H: Oh, in a lot of cases it has. We went to a party here last summer and there was a girl that had a grandmother. Her grandmother was about 87 years of age and had this party and her grandmother was from Twin Falls, Idaho. Talked to that woman and I sold her insurance back in 1957. Health insurance. That's what we used to do. We used to go across the country and we'd go across the state to these little towns and you knocked on doors and sell insurancae. And I sold her insurance back in '57. But anyway, going back, I was up in Idaho and this was Twin Falls, somewhere in those little towns up there. Burley, Burley, Idaho, it was. I knocked on this door 33 and this man was just all smiles. Shook my hand and in­vited me in and I thought, oh, boy, that's a sale. I sat thbre and talked to them for two hours about insur-ance and I thought sure. I got it ready to sign up and I had all the keys, you know, to close, all the closing signs. When it was time to sign they weren't interested in insurance. Do you know what they told me. I was the first black person th~y ever saw in their life. They just wanted to see and talk to a black person. They'd only seen them in the movies. Of course, pictures in the news­papers. But they'd never seen a black person that they actually saw. They wanted to know what nationality was I. First. L: What a crazy strange thing. H: Then they said my hair was different from what they had seen. I wasn't as black as they'd seen black and so on. They wanted to know what nationality I really was, you know, or what mixtures. It was quite an experience. Quite an experience and then I've had bad problems too with the whites that, the whites that want to fight you. Beat you up, nigger, if you go into a restaurant. What are you doing in there. Get out or something like that. I've had that happen also. See what I mean? L: Uh-huh. H: I've had those kinds of things. But I've also been around with a lot of people that would not allow that to happen. If it happened they would be the first one. I wouldn't 34 have to fight if there was going to be a fight. You see what I'm saying? L: They'd fight for you? H: They would, yeah. They were the ones that would be the strongest objectors. E: Not fists. H: Yeah, they would be the ones that would be the strongest objectors. E: Not fists. This is what I'm talking about. Education. You was talking about whereeducation comes in. Education taught me that you don't fight with your hands and your fists. You fight with learning and your mouth. What comes out of your mouth is enough. So as Henry says he didn't have to say a thing but the people that was with him was educated enough, whites were educated enough and been around Henry long enough to fight his battles with their mouth. And it works. H: Last Sunday we were in Park City, my wife and I were in the golf tournament up there and after we finished we go over to the racquet club, tennis and racquet club. And a friend of mine, we were both going ahead. There was a guy standing there talking and another guy was jawing and everything and he was talking and he mide the remark about a nigger. I don't know what they're calling, what about her nigger. And I say, hey, no he said, once you learn to understand thoseniggers when they talk or some­thing and I said, hey, can you understand this. We don't 35 talk that way. We don't talk that kind of language. The guy turned around and he saw it was me and he could hardly peeing. He just started shaking. That's all I said. My friend got very upset and started cursing him. And I said, no, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. I said, well, I know him, he's not in our crowd. I said, I know they're not. But he wouldn't stand for it. He's from Ohio and he's an old labor man. E: But as you say, it's still there. H: He's the state director from the--it's still there. See? Even in this day and age. But the way you handle things. E: Terry came h me from school today. Now, thws is just to-day. In high school. H: If that guy would give me an argument, I'd try to edu-don't cate him but I/want to fight. Unless he threw the first punch. See what I mean? It's there. The feelings's there. E: One of our children came home from high school today. He's in high school. Came home with the same problem. L: Somebody called him ... E: Somebody called him nigger. At school. L: Was it a boy or girl? E: It was a boy, another boy. But the thing about it is he is not educated enough to fight with his mouth. So what's he want to do? Fight, so that's the problem that we have today. But as I said before, it's still there. It is still there with, well, I'm going through a thing now that I just call them ignorant but as I say, the 36 children aren't educated enough to know how to handle it. They can't even cope with it. As far as me now, if I'd hear something like that I'd walk right up in the bunch probably. And say, who you talking about? L: You'd walk right up? E: Yes, I would. L: To a bunch of people that you don't know? E: Yes. If I supposed to be in ... H: I~ve been there many times. Yes. You know, if I hear that and be in a crowd and I'm there. E: Yeah, I'd walk right up and ask them, who you talking about? For instance, the reason that I would do that ... P· And I've found this too. That a lot of people I've known and befriended and I have still seen those same people that I have befriended have used that term nigger, jig. Black, you know, and things like that. L: Jig? H: Yes, I've heard them very much and then they'll catch . theirself and then they're very apologetic and then I got to hear a long lecture. L: From them? H: Oh, yeah, from them. What I'm saying is it's the nature of the environment. How they've been brought up, you know. If you were brought up around an environment that word is used all the time. And now, all of a sudden, they have become friends or acquaintance to a black or a nigger. You know, and then they've found out that yeah, he was a 37 nice person or she's a nice person but still, I still haven't got it out of vocabulary. Or hadn't thought about that person I'm talking about, he was a black. E: To another one. H: Yeah, to another white. So it's there. E: Now, the reason that I would walk up and interrupt like that is that in the situation as I said the way, the blacks here in Utah, for instance, Henry and I have more white friends than we have black friends. We work in more organizations and different things where we are the only blacks still. In the school district out here I have children in school and so~etimes there's just two or three blacks in that school. So, and most of the things I am the only black at the PTA meeting. I'm the only black, for instance, last night, we went to a carni-val that the school gave down here. I was the only black there so I meant I'm a friend of all these people. So if I hear somebody saying something I'd just love to walk right up to them and say, who are Y3U talking about? Just like that. And which is a good way to handle the situation. H: Make them conscious of what you're saying. L: You'll do it kind of playfully, like the way you're doing it now? E: Yes. Yes. I would. I do. And you was talking about me being proud of my husband, this is enough to show you that Henry here is when ~ampton--he was an executive to Rampton. 38 For the State of Utah. This is, what ~s his name? L: As a matter of fact, we've got an appointment with Gover-nor Rampton. E: Have you? Ask him, he knows Henry Sexton. L: Next Tuesday. E: Okay, this is Henry's writer. H: I can thank that man for having the right perspective. Whbn he was governor. E: Yep. H: He asked me what I was interested in and I told him. And he saw that I would get appointments to various working groups or committees or councils and he influenced me to come and work for the state government. E: I've always said th .t Henry and I have been hbre in Utah so long we've been into every little thing that come along so whenever, for instance, the governor or anybody needed anybody the telephone rang and they either needed Henry or Eva. To be on something. Th't they needed--at one time we called it tokenism. At one time we called it tokenism. So they used us so I didn't mind putting myself out there in front as a token 'cause I wanted to be that token. Do you understand what I'm talking about? So, it worked. It worked great. H: I want you to recognize this too. When I was up at the State Capitol, it was very important taht come from Cal Rampton, that he had a visible black up at that Capitol. L: Were you the visible black that he had up there? 39 H: And he made every effort to hire blacks, hire blacks in the state government. L: Did you feel at that time as comfortable as you are now? With being the token? H: I always felt comfortable. I don't have, I never have had that problem. To feel really uncomfortable. L: I mean, did you feel used? H: Well, sometimes I guess I did but maybe not necessarily from the standpoint with him. I never felt that. But in some instance I might feel that. yks. I think we do it because as we're more and more projected in the public eye or something like that, in some cases, yes, but sometimes you object to the reason you were there. L: You were not there for yourself but as a symbol. H: As a symbol or something of that nature, yeah. E: But after you think about it awhile you say, great. H: That's why I've always said, oh, it's easy, it's easy for -you to get in who's who, you know, once ~our name is there and they ask you to do such and such under conditions, you know. Under Civil Rights, they always ask you why was you in state government? And I'd say, well, they needed a token black. E: But that's Henry's joke about it. See? When he got in here, but he really, they needed one but also Henry put out the work with it so Governor Rampton got to recogniz­ing. I mean, after when he got to recognizing that Henry was puting out what he wanted, what he wanted really. So, 40 he just pushed him as far as he wanted to push him. And it's great. Henry knows he worked like the devil. H: It's always to have people in the right place to help. Whenever I'n needed something that I didn't have that I lacked I would go find it. L: It's pretty much a key if you want to move, to have some people helping and working in your behalf. H: I've had a lot of help, for my particular needs as they come along. L: Let me just ask you guys this. During the Civil Rights Movement here, with the picketing, did you ever have the feeling that the attitudes of whites would be changed? I mean, did you ... E: I almost knew it had to be. No way. H: One thing our parents had always teach us. They'd all say, one day. We always had that real hope. E: They'd always say. H: I know other black families say the black man only will let you do that. · You know, I 've heard that. that. My parents did. I've heard E: I think it was because of slavery and everything. L: They said to you, one day? H: One day. E: One day. I think it was because of slavery that they had went through that they always knew that they were going that there was going to be a change. I meant, some more changes. You'd just be surprised, look how far they've 41 come from slavery. So yes, my parents felt that yes, and it was changing all the time. It was slow. We didn't see it but I meant all the way from slavery it's changing. It changed and it's still, as I say today, you was asking whether today it's all over with. No, it's still, we're still going through it. L: What would you want and this is a large question. What would you want white people to understand? E: I would love to see ... H: True, brotherly love. Tru brotherly. When you don't have to measure you by the pigmentation of your skin. E: Look at my color first, which I don't--Henry and I--I don't know what did it but we don't look at color. We do not look at color and I don't know what did it or any­thing but we don't look at color anymore. And I don't know what did it. But somewhere along the line of going through everything that we've been through and having the friends that we've got, white and everything, I don't see color anymore. And I meant, I know it's there. I don't mean that I don't know that I'm black if I look in the mirror, but I don't dwell on me being black. I meant, if I'm among you and everything, we're talking about something in common and everything, it's not that I'm a black person sitting here and you're a white person sitting there. I meant, it just doesn't, it doesn't ... L: It doesn't really ... E: We go golfing. It's not that I'm golfing with a white 42 person. L: You're golfing. E: Golfing. H: I'm golfing with a friend. E: Yeah, so that is what I would like to see. see that. I'd like to H: I have a very dear friend. Well, in fact, I've got about four that I consider real dear friends and I mean each one . of them. They seem like they just try to overdo one another. It's to maintain my friendship. Okay? I see that kind of competitiveness and I don't know why. Really. Really. E: Some of them aren't even friends of each other. That's what it is. H: But you know, they seem like they want to overdo one another. Just to maintain my friendship. E: But I think it is ... H: But again, I say, it's a great feeling. I'll tell you, · one thing, one of the most rewarding things I'll ever have in my life is I went to Saudi Arabia last year. E: Three months. H: I come back and people that I've worked with over the years, wanted to see me. They'd set up meetings and so on or luncheon and everything, wanted to see Henry and talk to Henry. Who was so glad to see me back and things of this nature. Wanted to learn about my experience over in Saudi Arabia and that but, you know, that's such a 43 great feeling. Everywhere I went. There was that warmth. That was just shown. Henry, great, you know, all that kind of stuff. Glad to see you back and all that. And a lot of those people prior to that would say no more than hello to me. L: Being the devil's advocate for a second. Do you believe it? H: Yes, I could believe it. I could believe it, yes. But I mean, it's just such a great feeling. I told my boss you want to know how great it is to come back and to be invited to some meetings and so on. And the warmth is projected. E: They missed you whwle you was gone, what you was putting out when you was there. This is what I'm talking about. He had a job but Henry knew what he was doing. I meant, he knew his job and this, as I say, Governor Rampton, at first, yes, he was using him but in turn Henry and I always say this, they use you but you use them too. ~ou learn right along with it. So we've always, anything we've gone into we learn everything we can do. You'd be used and learn. H: There's never been anybody, I don't care who it is, that I don't learn something from. E: Anybody. You can learn ... H: A person, he can use me in a certain way, it has to be in a very subtle but I'm going to use that person. I'm 44 going to use that person. There's things out there that person has that I don't have that I need to make me have a degree of success. Okay? I learn. I learned a long time ago when I first went into sales the neophyte can teach you something. A child can teach you something. See what I mean? And we're constantly learning. That that child can teach you something L: Especially if you want to learn. H: That's right. There's something that's going to teach you. You learn that just from being in sales. And deal­ing with people, you learn that. L: Do you guys ever reflect back on the Civil Rights Movement here. Do you think much about it much anymore? E: No, we keep going forward. H: I reflect back on some of it. Yes. E: Just the two of us. You mean us together? L: Talking about it, huh? E: Yes, we have. H: We talk about it whenever we can and where we were. We're kind of proud of ownselves. You got to remember I, I didn't finish high school. E: Didn't finish high school. He's a self educated, he edu­cated himself at nights sitting around a table. H: I didn't finish high school. I only went through the 10th grade. L: Say it again. E: I said he educated himself at nights. He would sit up all 45 night sometimes studying. H: At nights I reflect, you know, where we came from and, as I say, I used to make my own success. I would try something and try and be successful. I make my own success. I force my own success. L: What do you look back on with each other as to where you came from? What do you look back to? H: We reflect on, the children, your accomplishments, what you may have done to help your fellow man. Your contri­butions. L: When you look back, for instance, on the Civil Rights Movement here, can you think of any event any one thing that you return to as being something that was accomp­lished? Any one particular thing you were involved with? That made you feel especially good? H: I don't think I can reflect defintely from that stand-point. L: There isn't one event that you'd go back to? E: That I would go back to? L: Go back to kind of as a symbol. H: I think the greatest--two things that--if you want to talk about events, an event that meant to me. Okay. Naturally, ~artin Luther's day. L: You mean ... H: I mean, it was a very eventful--well, his death caused that's what really caused the big change in me. E: It is. 46 H: Okay. I'm always going to believe that. L: His death, not his movement? H: E: H: L: H: Well, his movement was there. It was there. It wasn't recognized. His death and his death put him into martyrdom. He'd already made .a success out of that because he'd already won the Nobel Peace Prize and so on. But what I'm say­ing, the way we celebrate all that event, say, the events of that day, of that era, is through his death. Right? Yes, yes. I understand. And the second thing I think is the events and we very seldom discuss it, we laugh about it too. But as you reflect it was a very eventful day in our lives. Espec­ially me being raised here. When the president of the church got that vision, that's when I wanted to be a Mormon. But that was a very important event because that was another discrimination and segregation of bigotry. You know, things of that nature. That was destroyed. See what I'm saying? L: You laugh about it sometimes? H: Oh, yes. We laugh about it very much. E: Let me stop you right here and tell him an event that that was so good to us. About three days after this vision there was a friend, a neighbor, not a friend, just a neighbor down the street and she knew that we had foster children. We'd been taking foster children for years and we worked in the community. We did everything we 47 could do in the community around here and into everything and she came to the house and she said to me, she said, Eva, she says, if anybody is worthy, you are. I said, Great. My mother told me that when I was born. So it's these kind of things that you remember but it goes back that something turn·over there that had come back that my mother had told me. Pushed into us, get your education. You're going to need it. You're going to need it. So, it was the same thing that she was saying that you are worthy now. L: For her? E: Yeah, you are worthy now to belong to the church. To go to, to belong to, anybody's worthy to belong to the church. That's what she was saying. So, I said, my mother told me I was worthy when I was born. L: What did she say? E: She didn't say anything. This is what I'm telling you. That I'm great. So, since then they haven't bothered me in this neighborhood about going, because they did after they had this revelation. They did go around blocking, from block to block to the blacks, trying to get them to belong to the church. Okay. But they haven't bothered me since then. L: It does seem like a pretty obvious thing to h3ve discovered after all those years. E: Uh-huh. L: Is that what makes you laugh? 48 E: Yes. L: That they'd discovered the obvious. H: Of course, it's always been my reflection that I remember John Longdan, he was the manager of Westinghouse. He left there and he became an assistant to the twelve apostles and also he served as a stake president over in England and he came back and became an assistant. I re­member, this was right at the beginning of our Civil Rights Movement and we used to have quite a conversations and he told me, Henry, he said at one time he told me, Henry, there's a big movement going on within our church structure and I want you to hear about, be the first one so you won't be so shocked. He said it's a revelation. We're going to elevate the black into our church. I said, oh, and anyway and then soon he came around. I remember afterwards, I remember he came around and he said, Henry, we're not going to have that revelation. This is why I say it's a phoney. It was a way ... L: It's a planned revelation. H: Sure it was. E: Well, it has to be. H: Wait a minute. I've always aid, I've always said and I've made this remark to Eva many times. L: Why does it have to be? H: Okay. E: The plan. H: No, no. It's economics. 49 E: It's economics. Over in Africa, they wanted to go to Africa. H: You remember that the Mormon church was pretty strong. They built a big temple over in South Africa. And I think they had a movement into which is Zambia now. Rhodesia. They were in some of the other African nations. I think it was Nigeria and Ghana, wherever they were asked out by some of those blacks. L: Asked to leave? H: They were asked to leave. Okay. Why? Why were they over there really? Because, you know, the Mormon Church wherever they go they buy as much wealth as they can control so they had to have vast holdings insome of those countries. Anyway, so going back to why this revelation ever happened because they said it could be proved, you know, false wisdom and so on because of the Civil Rights Movement. Now, what's the president's name now, Kimball? L: Uh-huh. H: Okay. Remember when hb first was elevated to presidency, that was one of the first statements he nade. That in his lifetime or as president of the church. Now, don't quote me, but he said some of this, that there will not be a revelation about the blacks. He finally made that statement. Okay? But yet, he's the one that made it. Okay? Now, what I'm getting back to is that okay, the African nations start gaining their blacks, the blacks in those nations started getting their independence, those 50 countries, right? L: Uh-huh. Definitely. H: Okay. So it made sense for that revelation to come. When they saw, sooner or later it's going to bow in South Africa. Sooner or later all the South African are going to fall and South Africa, it's going to be a black ruled nation. L: Did you guys ever join the church? H: No, no. E: What for? I meant, I don't believe that anything like that can happen. I meant, there is but one God. Isn't but one God, so how in the world can I believe in that. I meant, I can't believe that that man sitting up there can have a revelation. I just don't believe that anybody they can change, what are they, what do they call them? That had the revelation? L: Prophet. E: Okay, he dies and another one fills his shoes can't he? L: Uh-huh. E: Okay, he can have a revelation then, can't he? I can't believe that. L: You can't believe in revelations? E: I can't believe in revelations. Not anymore than I be­lieve in, which I do believe in them a little bit more, what is that they say, that they're going--somebody's going to have some, what are those people that say that you're going to have, something's going to happen next 51 year and two or three, reading your horoscope or some­thing. H: Psychic? E: Is that what they are? Psychic? L: Fortune tellers, sort of. E: Well, yeah; fortune tellers. But you see those movie stars coming up with it mostly. That something's going to happen to such and such a person. H: And it makes headlines. L: Astrology? E: Yeah, astrology. H: Psychis. It makes headlines. L: That they read it through the planets. E: Is that what they read it through? I don't know what they read it through. H: Some of them do. Mostly psychics don't. More fortune tellers, more or less. L: Yes, psychics. E: Fortune tellers. Thit's what I'm talking about. H: Say they have visions, you know. Concentrate, you know, I can look at your hand and tell, look at your head, right above your nose, you know, and I can see sight. E: The ones I'm talking about is you went to New York or somewhere and somebody's going to tell you someth~ng's going to happen. Anyway ... H: Does your son believe that stuff? H: I don't know if he does. He reads a lot. 52 L: But he believes it? E: Oh, I don't believe in that anymore. I don't believe in Mormonism anymore than I believe in that. And I don't believe in that. L: Pretty interesting. E: It interests me. But that interests me. The Mormons-­their beliefs interest me too. They do. H: I've certainly leanred from my travels and especially has made me really to take a look at your religious be­liefs and so on and how a religion can control people. And what really opened my eyes is when I was in Saudi Arabia. Okay. You know, Moslem. L: That's a powerful thing. H: Very powerful. An awful hold. L: Yes, yes. E: We were supposed to go back to, you know, until Henry had this operation. We was supposed to go back there to Saudi Arabia and stay for two years, the family was going. So ... L: Foster kids too? E: No, I was going to take one foster, the girl, the oldest girl. She was going with us. H: We went to court and got custody of her. E: So she could go with us. But anyway, we were going over there and stay two years and Henry said, I don't know how you're going to put up with that. You can't practice your religion or anything like that. I said, well, they make them pray. Henry said they had a certain time of day 53 they had to fall on their knees and pray. I aid, they won't know whether I'm howling Allah or what down there. I don't worry about that. H: If they catch on praying, they get you. E: Behead me,, huh? No, we laugh about things like that. But we was going. I meant, we was going. This is what I'm talking about, learning and doing things. L: It would have been a great adventure. E: Sure, sure. Then don't tell me I couldn't pray and holler Allah. Oh, gosh. No, life is funny. It's all what you make it. And it gets tough but it's all what you make it. H: It does get tough. Especially, for instance, I'm 62 now. I've had to go in the back door to get me a drink of water. I've had to go in the back door to get somthing to eat. I've had to go up to a little hole in the wall to get something to eat. Just a little hole in the wall to get something to eat. Yeah, I've had all those bad things. I've been no, we won't hire you, nigger. You know. We don't hire colored here. Something of that nature. I've had all that happen to me. I've been spat at and spit on. I've been called all kinds of names. You know, i've been through the whole gauntlet. Okay, I've been denied. Many, many things. Because I was black. But we've had a lot of good things. We've also had a good side of the coin. Had a good life. We had a lot of friends. And I think we're well respected here in the community. E: When we bought this home here they had a petition in this area to keep us out. So they passed this petition went 54 all over the neighborhood. They had all these names. So when we found out what was happening so we had friends. We went directly to the bank and bought the place from the bank. And that was all that was necessary. But in ... L: Rather than from the real estate. E: Rather than through, in the real estate they got--at that time and so after that we found out about the clause and we went to bat just, how did we do that? We went to the real estate. Well anyway, they had a clause in what they called the gentleman's agreement. H· No, it's a non-covenant clause. Well anyway, you got to remember, honey, yes I bought it through a bank but when we closed the deal we put it in the hands of a black real estate man. E: That's what we did. H: I wanted him to make the commission. E: But I'm talking about things that you do. H: It was the president of the bank. We told him if I wanted the house, if you want it, wanted the house, you've got it. No he said, if you want the house here you've got it. E: But the black real estate guy couldn't--he wouldn't have been able to get it for us. H: But anyway, the president of the bank told me if I wanted the house I could have it. E: That sounds funny, don't it? L: But that was done? 55 E: In those days. That's been just fifteen years ago. We moved here in '68. L: The odd thing, I wonder about somethings and you've prob­ably wondered about it too, is what do those white people see when they looked at you? What did they think they were seeing? H: They saw an animal. They saw a monkey. They saw a black face. E: They saw a black face. That's all they did. In fact, about it ... H: They saw something that they feared. E: Oh, wait a minute. They didn't even see us. They didn't see it, Henr¥, when they put that petition up because they found out from someplace. Because we hadn't even been here. H: I do remember this so. The lady, not in this house, the people next to them, she sent her child up here when we moved in to ask if we were going to move in here. And then when we did move in here she, for one, had set up the block party to introduce my wife. E: That's after we'd been here a long time. H: We hadn't been here that long. No, E: We'd been here about a month or two. H: Well, yeah, just here, but she was the one that set it up. To introduce my wife to the neighborhood. E: Yeah. It turned out real great. 56 H: It turned out real great. E: Education helped again. No fooling, it does help. Be­cause if you had of been non-educated people, but I don't think they'd have even went. L: To the ... E: To the block party. They come up with, about a month after I'd been here, and had a petition up in the neigh­borhood that they didn't want us here and everything and a month later, after we move in, have a block party for you? L: That's pretty strange. E: Pretty strange, isn't it? So you know who it was. H: You know it never bothered me. Because I didn't know my neighbors when I lived in another neighborhood. I didn't have that problem. I don't bother the neighbors today. I've been up here nineteen years. What we moved in in '68? How long's that been? L: Fifteen years. E: Let me tell you. H: Maybe fifteen years. I don't bother my neighbors. L: You mean you don't get together with them? H: No. We used to have block parties. E: If they have any problems I'm right there. But as far as what you call visiting, socializing, no. I'm not their friend, I'm their neighbor. H: The ones we get along with we just ... 57 SIDE 3 E: Friend, to me is a person. I meant, you go visit each other. Friendly and social. But I don't, we don't have anything in common socializing with. We're just neighbors. So, I believe that people should be that way. L: But being a neighbor means caring about a person. Worry­ing about their health. E: Oh, that goes back to, it goes back to what Henry said, that he would like to see all people like and I would too. I'd like to see people love each other. I don't care what. But that's something that's--I don't tnink is going to be possible. L: You told me what you ideally would like to see happen for people. The question I asked you was what would you want whites to know about what blacks have gone through. In this country. What would you want whites to understand? H: I'm not prepared to really understand that. How can I answer that. What would I want a white to know about what we've gone through? I'm not sure. About, well, being treated as an animal or like an animal. Yeah, as an animal. Not like an animal, being treated as an animal. That's what we had to endure. Not me personally but my foreparents. The suffering. The lack or the deprivation of being a human being. What it means to have your family torn away from you. Things of that nature. I think, to keep families separated. Here I am, I'm 58 years old 58 and there's very little that I can mention of my family past. Very little. I have very little knowledge from my family's past. My family. A heritage, you know, of being stripped away from me. Or not even being allowed to have a heritage. That's what slavery done. L: Wiped it away. H: Yes. Destroyed. Oh, yeah, look how the struggle to have a piece of your birthright that where he had just struggle, the black man has to have a part of your birthright. I mean, a part of this economic pie. That's a good term. The Economic pie that's here in this country. And the black man is still struggling for that. E: That's the one as you said, we're still struggling for it. We're still struggling. As black people we are still struggling to, I'd say, own anything as far as right here in Utah, what has the black man owned or anything. What? We don't even have, as far as even professional people, here in Utah. We don't even have any black, maybe one or two, professional people. We don't have--oh, you have black--white dentists and everything like that but for blacks here in Utah it's nothing. I meant, there's nothing. So, we're still struggling. I meant, there are places where there are a few blacks that are doing--but not, if you had the education that you can just automatically go on into doing these things. That is not here yet. H: It would still be very difficult. 'L: I'm looking at these kids, you know. They're up against it. 59 E: Yes. H: And they don't understand it. It's very hard for them to really understand it. E: Very hard for them to understand it. H: They don't see the things that we've seen. L: So, in some way, what you're telling me, what I'm hearing anyway, that the segregation that you dealt with is pretty much gone. There's a subtler kind of discrimination th± keeps kids from really feeling like a part of everyone. E: The thing is turning as I said. It's just like in salvery times, that was not a part of mine. Okay. Then it came to the segregation and everything after slavery and every­thing. That was a part of our days. Okay. Now, it's a different thing but it's still here. This other generation's coming up under. H: I did not see, as a child growing up, the lack of being deprived of an education. E: Now, that was back in the slavery time. H: Okay. No, I'm not talking about that. As they had in the South. The Civil Rights or one of those movements where doors of education were opened up to the black man. Well, I wasn't deprived of that here in Utah. See what I'm say­ing? L: Really, you weren't deprived of going to school? H: That's right. L: You could go to school? H: Oh, you could go to school. There was no segregation. E: There wasn't that many blacks here. 60 H: We were not denied any education. L: Nobody said to you you can't go? H: No. E: Now, in Lawrence where I was now, up until I got into junior high. That was the 7th grade, I was in what they called all black school. Up until junior high and then all of a sudden when you got into the 7th grade you were throwed together. Okay? I was, up until, through the 6th grade, I had black teachers and all black students there. Okay? But thb black teachers that we had in that town, they just made us just work like the devil because next year you're going over there with those white chil­dren and everything and you're going to know this, that and the other. Well, my parents felt the same way. L: You best be prepared. When you get there. E: And I mean they made you prepared. This is the truth. L: So how do you prepare them? E: The children now? L: What do you do for them now? E: Now, they're being educated ... H: m:he hardest thing we hae with them is to show them, all the kids we have now, to understand. L: Understand what? H: To understand segregation and enial that the black person has had. In this world. L: How do they ... H: Okay. They see, they don't see discrimination and 61 segregation. E: They refuse to see it. H: They don't see it. And in a lot of cases they don't-­they know very little about it. In most cases, most of these kids don't know anything about it. We;ve got a fifteen year old boy down there. Most of his life ... E: Been living with white people. H: He's been living with white Mormons. E: This is the first black, no, the second black family he's ever been around. L: So, he's lived in foster care, this boy, all his life? H: With white Mormons and when he came here he swore up and down he wasn't going to live with black people until he came here and he found out--and it made me mad. H: It made me mad. E: What did you expect, to have horns or something? A black. For instance, wait a minute, a black child expecting you to be different. And he's black too. See, so it's hard on him. L: How long as he been with you? E: Just since school started. H: Oh, no. E: Just, oh, no, the summer. I had him since school was out last year. L: How long ago now did you begin with foster children? E: Ten years ago. L: Ten years ago. And I remember we talked a little bit about 62 it before. You said that ten years ago and you saw--how did you come into contact with having the first foster child? E: Well, we owned apartments downtown and this one woman, when they were three-room apartments and they let this one woman, she was black, have foster children in this three rooms and they let her have two foster children and so I just started to going down. As I said, I got in­volved. I wasn't intending--no, I was just watching see­ing what was happening 'cause there wasn't but one bedroom in the place and them children was just, they was just there. So, I got involved and I started to going to family service and I was studying and just talking to the class and went to the classes where thhy was training foster parents and then I just set in on them and I told that I had told them in front that I wasn't interested in being a foster parent. I said, but I have seen some foster parents and I want to see how you train them. So they let me come to the classes and I set in on thb classes. Then finally I got to asking questions and everything so they asked me to come back to the classes and throw questions there so I could keep the parents going to what to expect. So, I did that and then finally they was a little boy came that they had--this foster parent had taken out of state. And they had to go out of state to get him. Where did they take him? They took him to Georgia, somewhere down there. H: Or Alabama. Somewhere down there. 63 E: But this woman would come up here from George or some­where, backwoods in Georgia down there somewhere and she would go into foster care. But she would take, maybe six or seven, eight foster children and rent a big house downtown and keep those foster children for maybe two or three years and then she would go back to Georgia. Would take her foster children. H: This is where she made her money. E: This is the way she made her money. So this time, so this time she got the boy that she had, he couldn't talk. He wouldn't talk. He stuttered so bad he wouldn't talk and he was cute. He was half white and half black. He was as cute as he could be. And she felt sorry for him. So she gave up all the other children and said that she was just going to visit. She wanted to take ~ichael with her. So she took him back to George with her but she didn't come back so the state had to go to George down there and get him. So when they went down there to get him, they come to me and asked me, she asked me if I would take Michael when they first come in because they wouldn't get off the plane until nine o'clock that nighb. L: He was the first child you had? E: And it was Saturday night. That was the first child. So, they went down there and got him and she carre back here with him and she came here to the house and I can remember corning in the door, she said, Eva, I can't leave this boy here. He had sores on him from his neck down to his big 64 toe, impetigo. I said, oh, yes, you can. So I went in and stripped the bed and I put a plastic cover over it and then I put an old sheet, then I threw a sheet over him and I said, oh, he'll be alright, won't you, Mike? And he said, uh-huh. Just like that. So she left and at twelve o'clock that night I think I was laying in the bed and I got up out of there and I called my doctor. That was on a Saturday night. I called him and I told him what was happening and he said, Eva, I'll meet you down at my office at seven o'clock in the morn­ing. That was Sunday morning and I met him down there and that's when he told me Michael had impetigo and I barred off the bathroom in there and I wore rubber gloves. It took two weeks but we soaked him in detergent water for twenty minutes all day long. Let him sleep at night but all day long twenty minutes in and twenty minutes out. And all that come off of him and there wasn't nothing but red, just red in them spots. Thbn he gave me a salve to put on him and we took care of it th t way. But you know it took about three, almost three years, wasn't it, for them scars to leave him. Some of them was th \t big. L: This might seem like a simple sort of question but why did you do it? I mean, it doesn't seem to be enough money in there. H: Well, I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what. L: Why put in so much trouble for a child? That's not your own? 65 H: Let me try to answer this. I think--we lost our son. L: Was this before this boy came? H: Oh, yes. We lost our son when he was seventeen years of age. And then my other son finished high school, then went to college, you know, and he was very lonesome. Well, she had a hard time dealing with my son's death. L: Your wife? H: Yeah. And then my son went in the service and I think I always said I think that was what influenced you. Be­cause she was very lonesome. Very lonely. A very lone­some woman and seeing so many kids, you know, when we were down there and seeing these kids that was deprived. We saw a lot of our black children, a lot of our black children that was placed in foster homes. That the homes they were placed in they had no business being placed in that. You know, if you're going to help that child. Okay? We've seen that happen. She got interested, you know, and I encouraged it. E: And as I said I was ... L: You did encourage her? H: Oh, yes. E: And I said I was majoring in psychology and I enjoyed it. That's another thing. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed trying to for instance, these four children I've got here now, they are from one family and they're something that you can work with and I can't see throwing it away. I can't see it. Them not getting a chance.Somebody's got to do it. 66 L: Is that what's happening with them, do you think? Do you think they were kind of getting thrown away? E: They've been thrown away. H: If it wasn't for this woman here those kids would have been split up. E: Been split up. L: These are the four kids you told me about, they're all brothers and sisters? E: Uh-huh. So for four years, two of these children, they have had them, called them, well, they may have been a little hyper but they've called them hyper and four years they've had them on four times a day. Two of them. They came here and the little boy, running right straight through a door down there. Just as groggy as he could be. The day that they brought him here. I called their doctor and I said, would you consent if I took him off of his medicine until we found out that they really need it. They've been here for, well, this is two months and they haven't been on it since. Sure, they're children. But they get into everything but them two kids went through, what you call withdrawal. And they'd sweat and every­thing else coming off of that stuff. It took almost four weeks. Them kids are getting down to earth now. They're not bad. They're kids. But that mother, that wasn't that. And smart. Those kids can go--they're in the 2nd grade now. But they actually--the ten year old took a .test. She's doing 7th grade work. That's just because somebody 67 is caring. The day that she got to go to the zoo and she said, not the zoo, to the fair. She said, am I going to get to go? I said, what are you supposed to do to go? She said, I'm supposed to take a sack lunch. I said, there is everything in there for you to fix you a sack lunch. You fix it. So she fixed it and she got to school and I told her to call. Because I don't know what you're going to drink. They won't let you bring any money. I don't know what you're going to drink. I said, but call me if you can take something to drink and she called me and I went by 7-Eleven down there and I got her two cokes. Real cold out of the thing and put them in a sack for her to take with her. And she come home and she actually was just thrilled to death and kissed me. Because nobody has been that, nobody has done those kind of things for her. So, it's just ... L: Let me ask you. When did you find out that they black children were being kept with Mormon families? When did you know about that? E: When I started working with the case workers. This is the thing about it that I had been with the family serv­ices, so many things that I've actually worked with down there. And I've actually changed--this is what I'm talk­ing about, I've changed the system and a lot of differ­ent things. For instance, they've never had a record of children when they're--healthwise or nothing when they move them from one home to the other home. I didn't make 68 them do it but I asked for them to have a health record. From the doctor to be sent to family service and every one of them children got a record down there. But it had to be done. Something had to be done because, but it was--and then I got to finding out that I don't take anything but black children. But I meant, but I'm licensed to take children but they know down there that I'm not going to take nothing but black children because my black children don't have a home like this. There is nobody in Salt Lake City that will take blacks that taking chil­dren that's got a decent home. Or decent education. And willing to spend time. A whole lot of time. I meant, the whole time. With the family so it's just not happening. And the reason that is. I meant, they have gone through this thing of wondering why down at family service and they went through this thing with me. why is it that they can't get blacks, any .more blacks to do it. I said, do you realize that as far as the blacks are concerned, that they have just been able to get them homes their­selves. I said, and do you know that some of them idolize them homes. They don't want a child corning in there home, breaking up something. They've just been able to get them theirself. But it's a fact. So where do our black children go? They're put them with welfare people. A family that's on welfare. L: With white Mormons too? E: Anywhere they can put them. If they don't have any place 69 to go. Putting them anyplace. Anybody who will take them. So most of the white Mormons that take them, it is money. They are really and we have ... L: Can you ... E: We have foster homes that are really in the moneys with it. L: So if you take a bunch of kids and don't do too much for them, you could--people like the money. E: For instance, every one I've got, every child that's come here hasn't had nothing on their back. Isn't it true, Henry? H: Oh, yes. E: Terry came here and we had to go and get him shoes. A pair of slacks, just a pair of slacks to wear to church or something. All he had was tennis shoes. He had a pair of tennis shoes. His jeans was hitting him right there. L: Has it made up for the loss of your child? E: No, nothing don't do that. I meant, I've been able to spend my time to where I--you don't think about it. It takes up time. I meant, I don't know. I haven't thought about that. I don't think anything makes up for a loss. L: I agree. I don't think anything would. E: It doesn't make up there but I think that it fills a spot in my life where I had something else to live for. And do for. I think that. But I don't think that ... H: I think that's what keeps her going. Really. She's grow­ing. She can do a hell of a lot. But it did surprised her. ~: That did surprise me. 70 H: I think it's been good for her. She makes me very angry. E: 'Cause I work. He says I work too much. H: Well, you do. L: You don't have time for yourself, you mean. H: That's true. E: I can't ... H: And at our age you should slow down. Now we should. We should. E: Yes, like he wants like traveling or doing things like that. I never did like to travel. H: I'm ready to quit work. E: I don't mind quitting. H: If I could afford it I would too. E: I hate traveling. H: I'm not kidding. I would do it. E: Now, Henry loves traveling and I hate it. Now, I'm looking forward to ... H: Sell our house, you know, and get me a mobile home. E: That's what he wants to do. H: Get a mobile home and ... L: Get on the road. H: That's right. That's right. E: Now, that would be work to me. H: I'd just go back and sell insurance. L: Wants to feel the wind at his back. H: Yeah. Just have something to do, you know. When I want to come home, I want a home. Just keep me busy when I'm 71 home. Something to do. Sell more insurance if I have to. That's all I want to do. E: You going to sell insurance? H: Yeah, if I quit. E: Well, you still got a long time to go though. H: What? E: Unless you quit. You can retire at what age? H: Sixty-two. E: Sixty-two. You still got a few years. H: Yeah, yeah. It takes so much to retire. L: Well, I think traveling is lovely. Myself and at the same time it's kind of hard to travel. E: That's what I said. L: It takes some energy to travel. And, you know, when you get to know a place, you can get around it pretty well. But it's exciting to travel too. E: Oh, yeah. L: It's exciting. It's like you would see some things, I'm sure you'd never seen before. H: Oh, yes. This is one thing I've said. We've ... L: It would probably change your lives too. H: Oh, I know. We've denied ourselves, see? Coming up, you know, trying to ~ake the old buck. We've denied ourselves so many things. Take vacations, you know, going on this trip and that trip and so on. Because you think if you keep working ... L: If you keep working you maybe can turn the corner a little bit. 72 E: I do say this. With us working together and the things that we've been into and really a lot of it we was trying to make the money and everything but for some reason it come right along with the rest of it. Of doing thwngs. For instance, right now I meant, as I said, I started to taking care of foster children the way that I did. Okay. We wasn't thinking about money or anything like that but I had one boy here that was just as bad as he could be. And everything so I went to the school and I had a little psychology so they asked me if I would, if they could work with me. And I said, sure. So, the state sent me and the psychologist at school and we used this boy. His name was Kane. We used him as just a test thing and I went up to the University and I took some more psychology and we worked in and we used him and we turned that boy around. He was, how old was he? Seven years old. We turned that child around completely, to be a--he was just sweet. When he turned sixteen or seventeen, well, sixteen, wasn't it? No, he wasn't that old. H: Fifteen. E: Fifteen years old, he turned right back around again. H: Something happened to him. E: Something happened to him and he turned right back around again. But there wasn't any way that I couldn't do any­thing for him. He had to go--at that age and everything, he had to go do it hisself. That boy ran away from here. ~= To find his family. 73 E: He ran away from here and he hitchhiked to Reno, Nevada. And found his mother. And he called us on the phone and he said, he called me mama. He said, mama, mama isn't prostituting anymore but she's an alcoholic and I can't live with her what shall I do? So we told him to go to the police station and turn himself in, tell them exactly what he had did and that he had run away from here and that he was in family service and they would get him back with the social service workers there. And I said, if they need to call, have them to call here and they can get in touch with the social workers here. But then he called back and he said that they got him a place and he, they got him a little job after school and everything. He was back in school and this is his last year in high school. But now he dug down and did it on hisself. That was the turn back again. But when he first came here that little boy was six years old and bad. He actually stole a dog. Was it a dog, Henry? Stole a dog and sold him to adults, now. Sold him back to adults. Stole him and sol him back four times. To different people. L: That's pretty damn smart. E: Oh, he was very smart. He was very. At six yars old can you see a child just walking away from here and going any­where he wanted to. H: When that boy left I had grown to love that kid very much. I'd grown to love that kid so much. I was really hurt when he left. 74 E: I'm telling you. H: I was hurt. What I loved about him was his aggressiveness. He was so smart. We would have trouble getting him to study but he found out he didn't have to study that much. L: Just picked it up real fast. H: Yeah, paid attention. If you got his attention he would learn just like that. I loved him. The other boy, of course, I had learned to love him but you didn't have to say anything. He didn't have the same things. He didn't have the same things, you know. And I didn't feel quite as bad when he left. E: 4500 South. Alright. L: Is there something wrong? E: I don't know what you call it. Wait a minute. It's the police. Just a minute I'll let you talk to his daddy. The dog's man here. My dog's been hit by a car. Yeah, Lugey. L: A big dog? E: Uh-huh. 23rd East and that's right here. L: Is she badly hurt? E: Must be dead. L: Ah boy. E: Something always happening, isn't it? I wonder if he's dead. H: They said we're going to have to put him to sleep. E: Oh, my God. Well, I was looking for it. 2380 East. L: What street are you on now? 75 E: This is 4500 South. That's right down here on the corner then. L: It's just probably right on the corner. E: Right off the corner down there, Henry. H: I'll probably take her out to the Humane Society. 76