Judy Boyer Oral History Interview, October 22, 2019

RUTH KORNBERG: The interview with Judy Boyer, October 22, 2019, starting at 3:00. Well, Judy, you've kind of gone through an interview already while listening to your husband. This one won't be very much different except for everything that you say.

JUDY BOYER: Okay.

RK: So, I understand you were born here. So, tell us about starting from, I guess, when you were born and your early life here in Portland and what that was like.

JB: Okay, well, I was a first generation in my family born here. My folks came out of Texas in the early '40s to come to work in the shipyards when they could earn the same amount of money as anyone in the White race, the same hourly wage 00:01:00in the shipyards once the defense department had integrated the armed services contracts. So, my dad came out first from Texas and left my mom and two older siblings in Texas and sent 6 months later he sent for the family. When he came by himself he had one name and one phone number. It was a distant cousin of my mom's. He found the relative, Eddie Butler, who helped him get situated in Portland. He got housing in Vanport, and they lived in Vanport until a year before the flood. So, that was 1947 that they moved out of Vanport and bought a 00:02:00house on Northeast Rodney Street. That first little Victorian house cost them about $1,500. They probably paid cash for it because they were making money at the shipyards. My dad said he couldn't hardly make $50 a month in Texas, and he was putting $50 a week in savings from working at the shipyard, so it just made a huge difference in the life of our family. I had a sister, Trudy, who was born in 1946 in Portland, and I was born in 1949 a year after the flood. So, we actually had, were living on Rodney Street when I was born. The flood happened in '48. As I understand from the family that they housed some of the survivors of the flood, because everybody took somebody in. It was just devastating when 00:03:00the flood happened.

My folks stayed there. My dad was a union painter. He, after working at the shipyards got a job at the veteran's hospital up on the hill, the U.S. veterans' hospital. He was a union painter up there. My mom was more of a home maker, but she also did domestic work. My earliest memories are waking up in somebody else's house and listening for the vacuum cleaner or listening where she might be washing dishes or something and wandering around a big home looking for her, because she was a domestic worker. She got about $15 a day plus carfare. We didn't have a car. She rode the bus. We rode the bus. But I started school at 00:04:00the age of 4 because I had a late birthday in November, so I started kindergarten. By that time, in 1952, they moved out to Montavilla, which is like a White working class neighborhood, on northeast 75th, and Burnside, close to one of the larger churches are now. Highland Community Church is out on northeast Glisan, on 76th. Well, we lived right around the corner from there. They had that house from 1952 until 1994, when they sold it. My siblings and I, we went to school at Vestal. My older siblings, they started in the inner northeast schools and they hated to move. They were in 7th and 8th grade when they had to move out of the neighborhood, and my sister just above me, you know, we didn't know too much else, except the Montavilla neighborhood.

I understand from my parents that there was resistance for them to move out there. I know my father said that a White broker had to show them the house. We had a 4 bedroom, 1 and a half bath house that was on a double lot. The neighbors were not really friendly, but their children were. We had just such a huge play area and a wonderful patio in the back and brick barbeque outside, and my loved, loved, loved to have us home and invited our friends to come there. So, we had talent shows and all kinds of things in the backyard. You know, gradually over the years the neighbors started coming around, even though they were all White. There were probably maybe 5, 4 or 5 Black families out there at that time. Interesting coming up, my parents had belonged to a Lutheran church, an African 00:06:00American majority Lutheran church on northeast Russell Street when they still lived on Rodney. Well, that disbanded probably in the early '50s, and my dad said because now we live in Montavilla we're going to join the closest Lutheran church, and it happened to be a church, Holy Cross Lutheran, that was on 87th and Burnside. We're the only Black family and, of course, the older sister and brother they didn't participate as much as my older sister and I did, mainly because they were, you know, they were teens by then. They really wanted to be more inclusive and more with their friends and they didn't appreciate the isolation of being so far away from the community that they actually came up in.

My folks saw an opportunity for me as the youngest child for me to go to a Lutheran parochial school. So, when I was in the fourth, fifth grade, one of the members of our church was the principal of the school. Five churches got together and they came up with this school and five churches supported it. It was on 136th and Powell. It was way far away from home, but they did have a school bus. Myself and my nephew, who was 5 years younger than me, we went out there. He was in kindergarten. I was in the fifth grade. We were the only Black students in the White school, but the school only had probably 150 students. It was very interesting, very interesting. Being in that setting, I have always 00:08:00been more of an extrovert. My sister next to me, she wouldn't go, because she didn't even like the whole idea of being isolated that much while the public school that we attended in Montavilla maybe had 15 students of color. She didn't want to go somewhere where there was none, just us. That takes us up to my grade school years. By the time high school came around, well, the older siblings had gone to Washington Highschool, which was very, pretty much integrated. My sister above me went to Madison Highschool, which probably had, maybe just under a dozen Black students. I went to Girls' Polytechnic, which probably had of 500, 00:09:00or 600 students, maybe close to 100. That was just so eye-opening and wonderful for me. I loved it, because there was diversity. It wasn't just me in that school. I really thrived. I enjoyed that opportunity. When I got out of high school, my folks didn't have money to send me to college. I got encouragement from some of the teachers, because they thought that I was college material, but you know not having had that in the family yet. What I could afford was I could go to a business college and I could sign a contract for $1,000 to send me one year to this business college for, I was on the legal secretarial arena.

When I came out of there, I had good skills, good clerical skills that you don't learn so much now. I was probably, you know, I knew a shorthand, and I could take shorthand at 120 words a minute. I could type about 80 words a minute. I knew all the business machines at that time. I went out looking for a job and got a job within a month, starting working for Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company that was in Northwest Industrial Area. The woman at the employment office, a Black woman at the employment office, she said, Judy, she said, we have something. I want to take you out on this job. So, she said, but they've never had anybody of color in their office. So, how do you feel about that? I said, I grew up in Montavilla. I went to school where I was the only one. I said, it doesn't bother me. I know who I am. She took me out there and I can remember the 00:11:00interview. The office manager came out to me and he said, we have a position open for a, I think at that time they called them girl Friday or something. He said, so I'm not going to waste your time and you won't waste my time, let's just get ride down to the testing that we're going to do. I said, okay. So, he put me in a room and what he did, he dictated 3 paragraphs to me, totally different subjects, and he said now what I want you to do is take this down. He said, be able to transcribe it, type it up for me, and give it back to me so I see how you do. I'm saying, alright. This was probably the easiest test I ever had in my life because I just got out of business college. I was doing things so many levels higher than this. When I took it down. He said, you need to know 00:12:00where one paragraph ends and a new paragraph starts. You know, 3 different subjects, okay. So, I did that and typed it up for him, gave it back to him. He came in, he said, oh. We've never had anybody do this well. I said, this well? He said, yeah, you didn't have one mistake. I said, okay. He said, so, we would like to offer you the job. He said, it pays $400 a month, which was pretty good at that time. I just interviewed with a lawyer's office and they wanted to pay me $350 a month and I thought that was pretty low. So, I said okay. He said, so you'll be starting in, you know, a week and a half whatever it was. I didn't 00:13:00have a car at that time, so the woman from the employment office, she was waiting for me. I went out to the reception area and I told her, I said, well, I guess I got the job. She said, you did? I said, yeah. We got in the car and I told her everything about it. She said, oh, I'm so proud. Well, I was 19. I said, okay. You know? That sounds pretty good to me.

I worked there 5 years. It was probably the best training I've ever had in my life. I had several people I worked for in that setting. I went from the girl Friday position to working for the credit manager to working for the person who was over all the Goodyear service stores in the state of Oregon. I worked for the chemical sales manager. He taught me how to fill out the export papers, because we sent carloads of paint resin and rubber up to Canada, just some of 00:14:00the best training in the world. In five years, I was kind of ready for me to move on. They hated to see me go, but I did. I left. I thought that I would have good opportunities other places. I tried a couple of places. I went to one of the utility companies, and they saw my background and they said, you know, you have wonderful training. You have a good record, but we cannot put you in a position that pays what you want within the next 6 months because that's just our policy. You start at this level before you can have your first promotion. I said, okay. I said, well, I'll start.

So, they said, oh, we'd hate for you to. There was about 3 or 4 men sitting 00:15:00around me. They said, we know that you're going to get frustrated with this little whatever type of clerk job that they had, because I wanted one of the good secretarial positions and they just couldn't put me in. I said, that's okay. I still will start with you. But they were right. Within 3 months somebody came to me and said, hey, we heard about your training, we'd like you to come. It was TriMet, a person at TriMet that knew of my skills, and said in 1974 they needed to integrate the offices of TriMet. They had never had people of color in the office. So, in April of 1974, I think there was 4 of us Black women that we integrated the offices in various departments, and I was in the employment 00:16:00department. I stayed there about 5 years. That was my introduction into employment and understanding what that meant, that when you go to the personnel office, or employment office, exactly what happens there, specifically to Black folks. I saw some things there that I didn't quite understand that I questioned a lot. I knew they had had lawsuits because of some of the practices that had happened. So, I was there to help.

RK: Give us some examples, concrete examples of those things.

JB: Probably the testing. They gave a test when you came in, especially if you were going to be a driver, and the test consists of maybe about 25 questions and you had, I believe, 30 minutes, maybe, to fill out that test. The manager or 00:17:00coordinator of that office that I worked for, I would see that he would have people come in and maybe people had recommended or his friends or whatever, and he might have them fill out the test with a pencil. Then, if they didn't complete or get all of them correct he might change and answer. I watched that practice, and I encouraged people when they came in to take their time to see what they could do and not only that but to be sure and call back for the 00:18:00results of their test to me. They'd walk out the door and say ah, man. You know, that just went so, I don't know how. I said, please call me back and let me know how you did. I'll let you know how you did on the test. There were things that you couldn't help a person with when they came in for a test at TriMet-that's their driving record and they had to pass drug tests. Sometimes when you have a test and maybe a person, maybe they finished 20 questions in the timeframe, but those 20 questions, I mean 18 of them were correct, but maybe they were just reading just a little bit slower. I would talk to the associate there, I'd say, hey look at this, you know? They said, oh yeah. I think they would get the rest of these. I think its part of interceding for people at the right time, at the 00:19:00right place. A lot of people came onboard in '74 and '75 at TriMet, drivers, etc. They didn't have, before that, they didn't have a lot of women drivers and specifically Black women drivers. One thing they said about women, they said, oh, you know, they'd have female problems and stuff and they can't drive a bus and that kind of-I said, that's baloney. I said, women are out here doing everything. They're driving school busses every day, why can't they drive a city bus? So, there was a lot of interceding that had to go there.

I wasn't that popular because, not only was I for fairness but I also became a union activist there. That's the first time I belonged to a union, the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757 and try to change some things around in the 00:20:00policies and things. After 5 years, the national AFL-CIO, they had a subregional office in Portland and they came after me, they asked me to come for work them. I went to work for them. That started my political career. One of my managers I worked for was, he was over the whole western region for the Committee on Political Education, Walter Gray. The other one was a field representative for the same region and his name was Bill Fitzgerald. I learned so much under those two men. I was able to become a charter member of the A. Philip Randolph Institute that was with just a handful of other Black union activists as well as some White union activists. They saw a need to have a chapter here in Portland. 00:21:00As Mr. Boyer said, that's where we met. I had been on board and somebody invited him to come to one of our meetings and it kind of went from there. Lots of political, local, regional, and national politics, where I was able to-

RK: Describe that. Give us some content and all of that.

JB: Well, you know my father had always been very interested in politics and we would talk politics at home and my brother. We would talk politics. My dad, once I got that job, he wanted to know so much about, he was so interested and I was 00:22:00so excited to let him know some of the things that I was going to be involved in, some of the local races that would happen. You know, the mayoral race or the house seats or the senate seats, that sort of thing, but when it came to some of the national races. I mean, I remember when Ron Wyden, he was challenging Bob Duncan, and Bob Duncan had been a long-time supporter of union and good democrat and that sort of thing. The guy I worked for, I said, hey, I said, you know this Ron Wyden he's coming up and he's with the seniors and he's been one of their supporters and he's coming to meetings and we'd have this A. Philip Randolph Institute and we'd meet at night and he was coming over there on Union Avenue and coming to the place where we were meeting at. I'm saying, he's fierce. I'm 00:23:00said, you know, he's really going to challenge Bob Duncan some of the things. Bob had been in there for quite a while. The same thing, another woman from the labor council, she and I would sit and talk about this. We think there's going to be an upset in this race because we just, you know, our ear was to the ground. We were grassroots. Sure enough, I mean Ron got in and you know had been there ever since and now he's a senator. Presidential elections-I can remember when President Carter's campaign, because we were so active with voter education and voter registration in the A. Philip Randolph here in the late '70s and into the '80s. When he was going to run for his second, run for reelection, and I got 00:24:00a call on a Saturday from his campaign office that they had here in Portland. They said, you know the president's going to come here on election eve and we need some community folks and some Black folks to show up at the airport for him. I says, okay. So, we understand that your organization that you've been doing some things and gathering people. I said, okay. So, this was on a Saturday morning, and he was going to be here because the election was on Tuesday, he was going to be here on Monday evening, election eve. He was going to fly into Portland. They wanted a lot of people to be out to the Portland airport to support him. They said we want to know what it would take for you to get some people out to the airport.

I got off the phone, I called one of the men I worked for, Walter Gray, who was the COPE, Committee on Political Engagement, Director, and I said hey, I got this call. Can a campaign give me money to put on an event? He said, you make sure that they make it out whatever they give you to the organization so that you guys, not you personally, doing the thing. I said, okay. He said, good luck [laughs]. So, we started working on it and got a whole, we said, well, okay, what can we do? So, we said, okay, first of all in order to get people out to the airport and get them at 5:00 in the evening and want their families to go out there, we have to have a carrot-that's going to be food. Okay, what kind of food? Well, one of Bob's friends he had a barbeque thing. So, we said, okay, so 00:26:00we called him and said, what would it take if we put up some barbeque sandwiches and stuff, pop, and how do you prepare that for Monday? Can you do that if we wanted to do this for maybe about 300 people? Yeah, I can do it. You're willing to pay me? So, he gave us a good price and everything. I said, because that's the only thing we had to pay for was the food. We had a place where we could print the flyers. We said, now where should we go? We went up to the King Facility, which was the neighborhood facility, and we made sure that we distributed flyers around that whole area within a mile circumference of that whole area. Then we contacted transportation, somebody had a connection with the school buses. I had worked at TriMet, so I had friends who were drivers. They 00:27:00would drive the school buses, school buses they were going to let us use those free. So, we had an assembly line set up at King Facility. We were packing the barbeque sandwiches and putting them in coolers as well as a cooler of pop and then loading them on buses and as people came in we told them a certain time to come in to be there at 5:00 or whatever. We would load them on the school buses. We filled up 7 school buses, and they had the food on the buses. Took them to the airport, the kids and all could go out there and made sure that every bus they had a count of who they had out there so they wouldn't leave people. They stayed out there for the flight to come in and then they came all the way back and stuff. A wonderful experience. I hadn't done one like that before, and so it kind of cut our teeth on that sort of thing for national politics, and that was kind of the start of other campaigns.

RK: How did you get the school buses organized to have them on that day?

JB: Well, that's another story, but it's a friend who had a friend. That old favor. We got those 7 school buses and I had the contacts with the drivers that the TriMet, these friends of mine would drive these school buses. But, no pay. Those were favors.

RK: There would have been like a technical thing to do with getting permission in case for insurance and that.

JB: Mm-hmm. Some things in politics you just kind of let it go, at least then. Now, it's a little different, a lot different [laughs].

RK: How you can?

JB: We didn't ask a lot of details back then when things were happening.

RK: So, tell me then, you met your husband, and so tell me a little bit more about your family life.

JB: Well, we had each been in a previous marriage and I had one daughter. He had 5 kids. We have a blended family that came together, and we were very concerned about the future for our children, what this world was going to look like. So, we worked very hard on all types of issues that involved equity and education as well as other community issues to make sure that things are going to be right. But, I guess we had the same I don't know, I guess we had the same attitude that 00:30:00you have to work on it, you have to be part of the solution. You can't talk about the problem. I saw that in him and what he had done so much more because him being several years older than me and he had really done a lot in the community. Mine was more geared toward what I was doing with my jobs and what it had to do with the labor movement or that sort of thing. Then it branched out, once it got into the political arena and you see that encompasses everything. It's political how much you pay for a loaf of bread. Everything's political.

RK: Explain that a little more.

JB: Well, you know when people say that, oh, I'm just not political or I don't get involved in things, and it's very interesting, it only takes one issue to get a person involved. I would hear Barbara Roberts talk all the time, the former governor, that she wasn't involved until she had a special needs child that she didn't think was being served by the school district. A lot of people are one issue folks, and that's when they start getting involved and then you see there's so much more involved in that. I know my folks they each had 10 sisters and brothers and they were the pioneers that came out here to Oregon. They know things they couldn't do in Texas that they could do out here while Portland, while Oregon is challenging because it is such a White state, and Portland's such a White city. They still knew there was an opportunity for them to do more than what they did from where they came from. They took advantage of 00:32:00those opportunities. One thing they did not do for their four children and grandchildren, they did not tell us the stories, those horrible stories that they came up with. We didn't know until we were much older the challenges that they had but I think they were trying to keep us optimistic to know that things can always be better. Living in Montavilla and I'd go to my dad and I'd say, hey, I was out here and this boy called me a name and said aren't you grateful for Abraham Lincoln and that kind of thing. My dad would say, it's okay. He said, he doesn't understand. He said, it's okay. We would sit down and he'd talk and he started explaining some things to me, you know? That's what it took. But they weren't bitter. They gave us a different outlook and they stayed spiritual. 00:33:00They stayed close to the church as far as having faith that things get better. My mother's father's a revival minister, probably, and he did that until he was about 95 years old. He was Baptist. My dad, I don't know that he was raised by his grandparents, I don't know that he was religious at all until he got with my mom. When they got out here and joined the Black Lutheran church, they came together on things and that kind of gelled and they said this needs to be part of our life, and it was. Not saying they were perfect. My dad had worked hard all week and on Saturday nights he might have a good time and have some beers and stuff, but Sunday morning we were all in church as a family. We went to 00:34:00Sunday school. He was one of the officers in the church. We counted the money afterward and that's even going to the White church, that every Sunday afternoon counting that money and then rolling the coins up and taking it to the bank and putting it in the night drop and stuff. They believed that we should stay involved in what's happening in our lives, that we should be part of something, that we don't just sit back and watch what's being done. I think we just, we followed that lead.

One important lesson they taught us very young is you need to own property. When they bought the little house for $1,500 on Rodney they kept that several years as a rental. For 3 of us 4 kids, once we were up and bought our own houses and 00:35:00stuff, we got into rentals. They said you work, but you got to have something else. Have something else on the side. When I met Bob, we came together and we each had a piece of property and we said, oh, this is great. We need to have a prenuptial agreement so that we know, because we'd been married before, nobody should take anything away from anybody else. So, we had this prenuptial agreement this attorney wrote up and said when you came into it this was his and this was hers. Then after 3 or 4 years you throw that stuff away and you say, okay, everything's ours. We knew the kids were going to be gone someday, so what we did was every time we had an opportunity we picked up something else, and we picked up something else. Back then, you could do that because property was cheaper, so much cheaper. You know, kids can't do that these days. It's so hard 00:36:00for them and they have to come back home and that sort of thing. We haven't had that. Our kids all, I think, in their 20s bought their own places. Now, whether they kept them or whether they married and had something with somebody else, maybe they divorced the person and they needed something. The concept still flows that you need to have a piece of the rock. That's very important. You need to have that to stabilize yourself. We carried on that tradition and trying to carry on that philosophy with the grandkids and maybe into the great grandkids have an opportunity to talk with them.

RK: Tell a little bit about, then, the neighborhood where you were living, or 00:37:00neighborhoods, with your children as they grew up and what was going on socially and politically and so on in those neighborhoods and your relations to the people, to the neighbors.

JB: Okay. While I was raised in Montavilla, when it was time for me to buy a house I came back to inner northeast Portland, mainly because I could get more house for the money and I needed to be around people that look like me. I didn't want to be stuck out in neighborhoods. So, the kids went to the neighborhood schools. Because it's a blended family, kids might be with their other parent that sort of thing. But mostly everybody was right around pretty close in the 00:38:00same area until a couple of children moved with their mom to California. But even then, when they graduated from high school, they came back and gravitated back here. I think I've always tried to live in a diverse neighborhood. I think that's strong. I really like that. I also from the beginning - we like to know who are neighbors are. My parents did that. We knew who the neighbors were because the neighborhood kids would come to our house and we would go to their houses, if my parents approved of it. They wanted to know who they were and what was going on, and that sort of thing. I think we kind of instilled that sort of thing. It wasn't so much how kids maybe have sleepovers and that kind of thing. 00:39:00We pretty much s tuck to home, and our kids did, too. We didn't encourage, because we weren't in control of somebody else's house, and when you're not in control of somebody else's house, you don't quite know what's going on with your child. But, certainly, all the kids were welcome, come over to visit, that sort of thing. But we love diverse neighborhoods.

RK: So, when you say diverse, you mean that it has a good amount of African Americans?

JB: Mm-hmm, African Americans, Asians, Latino, White, old, young, yeah.

RK: Tell me a little bit, this is a different subject but you have a big family and I know you probably celebrate holidays. Tell us a little bit about how you 00:40:00celebrate holidays and which holidays.

JB: Well, we celebrate birthdays but we have to do it in chunks. We're so big [laughs that we never get everybody together, so we just had a celebration for our wedding anniversary. At that point, we probably had a dozen of us together. We had another celebration in the summer, and well, no, even before that we went to a Moroccan restaurant and that was for son's birthday, and there was probably about 12, 12 or 15 people there. Because it's a blended family and because there's different dynamics going on with other parents and things, you see, we love all the kids and we try to be very diplomatic in what we're doing. We're 00:41:00thinking because we're going to hit a milestone next month. I'll be 70 and he'll be 80, trying to think, okay, now what's this going to look like? My daughter was calling us last night saying, l think what we should do and I says, okay. Give us a few days to think about it first. Because we have to figure out the dynamics of all this is going to work out okay. But, it's fun. We try to get together always for Thanksgiving and for Christmas. We just, we can't hit everybody's birthday. We can't hit everybody's whatever celebration. We had a grandson that graduated from Wilsonville High this summer. We went down to, and so happy. He's in Clackamas Community College now and stuff. The kids are growing, but the majority are in the Portland metro area, which is nice. It's 00:42:00really nice.

RK: When you celebrate, say, for Christmas, kids, or whichever parts of the family come here? Have dinner? What do you do?

JB: We used to, but now a couple of the kids have bigger houses than we have. We'll go over to the bigger houses where more people can get in or maybe they can float together on different levels of the house. My husband has a museum in the basement. He's very particular about these 10,000 books and all these pictures and that kind of thing that he doesn't want necessarily the great grandkids running through, that sort of thing. Sometimes, it's kind of a neutral place that we'll go to. But, we'll cook and take things there.

RK: What do you take? What do you cook?

JB: Well, let's see. You know I like to bake. So, usually I'll take my sweet 00:43:00potato pies or cobblers and that sort of thing. Some of the other kids are good on the meats and the veggies and people are trying to be healthy now, so we'll trying all kind of vegan dishes. We're open for it. We just want to be healthy. We want to live as long as we can, live our best life.

RK: We change traditions as times change.

JB: Absolutely, and both my folks lived to be almost 90. They went with the flow. It was really good. They were always lifelong learners so they could adapt and be flexible at every age, and that's what we try to do.

RK: You were talking about a certain amount of your jobs, so I think we got up 00:44:00to you working for the union.

JB: Mm-hmm. I worked for the union, and that lasted about 5 years. One of our presidents, Reagan in fact, when he was elected that was a challenge when it broke up one of the unions-PATCO, the air traffic controllers, and other unions took a hit as well as the AFL-CIO. Because I had worked for them, they had to close 5 or 6 offices nationwide, and I got hit in that. So, from there was the beginning of me really working for non-profits. About half my career I worked in non-profits. I also worked for a while, several years, for Gladys McCoy on her executive staff when she was the county chair of Multnomah County, the only 00:45:00African American county chair we've had. She was a wonderful person to work for. From there, I've had other political jobs, but non-profits, non-profits, I-

RK: Which non-profits?

JB: Okay. I worked for an organization called the Center for Urban Education. What we focused on actually was probably giving one day or two day classes to people who are working folks on grant writing and how to be a successful manager and the basics of successful supervision, all kinds of things as well as they got into some community and national issues. I can remember one time that they had the, we had papers from the federal government to take to Grand Ronde, because they were getting reestablished as a tribe out there, and that's before 00:46:00the casino or any of that. They just had a little post office and different things. But we did very interesting things. I was with them for about 5 years and from there I went to work for Gladys McCoy. I've worked for probably employment and training in that arena wherever I've been. I think the most fun job I've had, I used to, I would run temporary employment agencies. I was with NA Rail, which is a national agency, and I was with St. Vincent de Paul that specializes in putting people with disability on jobs, you know people that never had to come out of their house because they're on social security disability, but their integrity made them want to feel like they wanted to come out and be useful.

RK: Tell about that. Give us some of your experiences.

JB: Well, you know when you go into employment and training, you need to have the understanding of who's out there. So, working for NA Rail, they trained us very well. They're national office was in Atlanta, and it's sales, but it's also getting people hired and so would interview hundreds of people and you had to have that gut feeling that you can put this person on a job and that they would stay committed to that job whether it was a one-week, a one-month, or a three-month assignment. I helped a lot of people get started on jobs that way, especially women coming back into the workforce whose kids had gone, they were in school now. It'd give people the courage, oh I'm not into computers, I don't 00:48:00know how to-oh yeah, this is easier, if you ever had to go in and use the old typewriters, this is going to be a piece of cake for you because these things do everything. Anyway, that was, I loved those jobs because you can inspire people to get started on a new path, a new track, give them the confidence that they needed in themselves. I had one woman who had been a server for 20 years. She said, I just can't do this anymore. I need to do something else. I said, well, come on in. Let's see. So, I told her about a couple of opportunities when I saw she really wanted to get into computers. She took a class, a coupled classes at PCC and came back in. By then, she knew the keyboard and she could do a few things. But she's so committed. Being a server she was so committed on a job, 00:49:00and put her on a couple assignments and everybody loved her because she had good interpersonal skills, she could get along with folks, and she wasn't a know-it-all, she would ask how to do it and if she was doing it right. Everybody that had her and she'd be on assignments for more than a year, they didn't want to let her go. It changes your life.

RK: What are some of the other examples from some of the other NGOs that you worked for?

JB: Actually, you know, I had a life-changing even when my mom died. My dad died in '95, and we had my mom here in the house with us for 8 years. When she passed, I'll tell you it was like you know, I was kind of failing. My husband 00:50:00went to the doctor, he said, my wife's not doing good. Because when you live with a person, you do everything for them. You know, every time you get in the car you're with them and that sort of thing. So, between and my doctor and my daughter, specifically my daughter, she said, hey mom why don't you go back and finish the college you said you never got a chance to do? So, within a 2-week period I decided and signed up to go. I started with PCC and I went there for 2 years and then I transferred to Concordia University and I completed my business degree. It was one of the best things I ever did in my life.

RK: So, how old were you at that time?

JB: I was 55 when I started and I finished at, I was almost 59 when I graduated. 00:51:00I graduated winter term. The kids and the grandkids were there for the celebration and the Concordia president, he had Bob come up on the stage and hand me my degree. It was just absolutely wonderful. I always wanted to do it and on every job you're on they'll give you training. You're sent to seminars. You're sent to training that sort of thing, but I never had it tied all together. This is an opportunity. So, I went in the summer. I never stopped. I went every single term, because I knew if I stopped I wouldn't go back, so I had to keep going. That was absolutely wonderful. I have so many young friends. I learned about, I had little study groups. I learned a lot about the computer. I can do research on the computer. I just, there's just so much, it just opened up a whole new world to me. After I got through I signed up to be an AmeriCorps Volunteer. I did that for a year at the Native American Center right down here 00:52:00on Columbia Boulevard. I helped their employment and training. That was my background, anyway. I helped their employment and training department when I was down there for a year. That kind of validated what I was doing.

RK: That's very, very, very interesting. It validated what you were doing and did it give you more confidence? Or that was never a problem?

JB: It did. Because I will tell you, especially in some of the jobs, like working for the county or working for the city, I always worked with people that had these degrees. I always felt like I had to work longer and harder to match up, although people around me all thought that I had the degree. When you work on jobs side by side, they don't ask you, but they took it for granted that I did. I knew that I didn't. Once I got the degree, it did build the confidence 00:53:00level that I'd always wanted to have.

RK: I'm going to go back now to another kind of subject, but tell us a little bit more about your social life, what kind of friends you have, what you like to do for entertainment or the kind of relationships you have with different people?

JB: Okay. Well, there's 3 areas that I focus on. Of course, family but also I was introduced to a senior group, the north northeast has an AARP chapter. It's mostly African American. It has a continuous charter for the last 20 years in 00:54:00this neighborhood. My husband had been going while I was still working full-time. When I stopped working, he said why don't you come to a meeting with me? So, I went to a meeting and they were having it in one of the senior housing projects here, and about 35 people and they were there in the middle of the day and I walked in and the president said, hey Bob, who's this young girl you brought in here? [Laughs] And my head turned, I said, I haven't been called that in a long time. I said this is my kind of group. I never stopped. That's been about 9 years that I've been part of this AARP. I'm president of that chapter 00:55:00now, and just completing my second term, second 2-year term as president. What has happened, I've met a lot of people I didn't know. The chapter's made up of a lot of movers and shakers that have done wonderful things in this city. That have integrated places. They have been entrepreneurs. They are retired educators. They are retired health professionals from every walk of life. But when you listen to them and the challenges they have had in their life and they've been through a little bit of everything, and they have still persevered. Our most active group within our chapter is the ages of 75 to 85. Our youngest member is 54, and we acknowledge 3 of our oldest members at 90 this year. You 00:56:00know, and people who still want to come out who still want to be knowledgeable of things that are changing.

That group of seniors, I also teach Sunday school, middle school and high school, but I also with little kids trying to tutor little kids over here at this Faubion school for about 5 years, because I worked for an organization called Reading Results and the statistics would show you if a child can read by the 3rd grade, if they can really read by the 3rd grade, it's very likely that they are going to graduate from high school. So, I worked over here for 5 years with Reading Results, where we would design custom reading plans. It was a 00:57:00nonprofit that paid us to do this, but so meaningful and they're in all kind of school districts now. They have a lot of volunteers. I stepped back a couple of years ago and I said, okay. Okay. But we like to, Bob and I like music. We used to like to dance a lot. We dance at home now with our Bose system [laughs]. We have friends that we associate with. We have a couple of groups that we'll go down, probably on the party bus to a casino. We have a favorite New Year's Eve party we go to each year. You know, we try to stay as active as possible.

RK: Give me some descriptions of some of your social outings. Take some example of one or two.

JB: Okay, yeah. The historical society, we love to go through the exhibits at 00:58:00the historical society. They have a really good one right now on Blacks that were involved in World War II. We like to go down there because history's a thing for both of us. We think that's so important so that you can pass on to your kids. When they had the Civil Rights exhibit down at the historical society, and our kids went down there and saw our pictures up there, they said, really? [Laughs] I said, we tried to tell you we did a few things, but you know people get so busy with their lives and stuff. We like to go to plays, musical concerts. We just went to the O'Jays at Spirit Mountain Casino and jumped up and danced to their music and stuff, you know. We like all of that. I'm trying to get into hearing some of the stuff that the kids are doing these days if we can 00:59:00understand what they're doing. There's still some artists, like India Arie, some of them that we really, really like that are pretty thoughtful.

RK: Who are your very favorites?

JB: Oh, you know then, it would go back to the R&B days where we had Gladys Knight, Marvin Gaye, when we had, you know, the Temptations, the Four Tops, we had Diana Ross and Dionne Warwick and just Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, just so many, so many. We still have vinyl. Now, I have my selection of vinyl up here, okay? But I can't touch his selection downstairs, okay? He's got vinyl. I've got vinyl, and then we have some DVDs and stuff that we play, but we like vinyl. Yeah. I understand that's kind of making a comeback.

RK: It is. We'll talk later.

JB: [Laughs].

RK: Yeah, so you guys have a, maintain a nice, active life. Let's go int a little bit deeper about what you yourself actually did during the Civil Rights.

JB: Okay, well, okay, so the years. Okay, so you want to talk about '60s? '70s?

RK: Yep.

JB: Okay. I, first let me say my folks from where they came from understood how important it was to stay involved. As a kid, what I can remember is coming to churches, even though we lived in Montavilla, we came over here and I can remember going to the basement meetings of churches. It must have been like NAACP meetings or something like that, because I can just remember us being in 01:01:00groups of people.

RK: You would have been how old in the '60s?

JB: I would have been... yeah, I graduated from high school in '67, so this would have been like '61, you know? '60, '59.

RK: Fourteen, something like that.

JB: I remember when we had, well, yeah. I got involved probably right after high school. The Black Power movement was going on. The Black Panthers.

RK: Tell us about the Black Panthers.

JB: I wasn't so much involved here, but we did, and before I met Bob. But I did visit the Panther headquarters in Seattle, and I had a couple of friends that 01:02:00were involved up there and went to the headquarters and I can just remember them saying, well, you know you got your car out there. You know, the FBI, the CIA, whatever they got your license plate number. You're on the rolls now. I said, okay. To go in and see the sandbags set up all around the windows and stuff. Here, they had kids with library books and they had free lunch. People forget that the Panthers started the free lunch. Made all the sense. Feed the body and the mind can learn. I can remember participating. I can remember getting involved when Angela Davis, when all that happened, and I was just so thirsty 01:03:00for all that knowledge and reading the books and trying to work with other groups that were involved in that. I was working full-time, and didn't have my daughter then. So, I had more freedom to do stuff, but, mostly, mine was just filling that void that I didn't know a lot that went on. We didn't have social media. Had no idea like the kids now. They're smarter. I was just filling that void and getting myself knowledgeable as possible with what was going on.

RK: What did you think about the differences of the approach in NAACP, Black Panthers, Martin Luther King? There were all those different approaches at the time.

JB: [Takes deep breath] I was not a supporter of King because I felt he was too passive. Malcom X, I listened to, and I listened to the smart, educated people within the Panthers. I grew up watching Huntley-Brinkley on TV. As a family, we used to sit down after dinner and watch the news and to see the hoses and the dogs set on people in the south. It just went all through me. I just thought that King was too passive, non-violence, you know. But like I say, I mean I was of the age. I was young. I wanted more action. I wanted to see that we were actually fighting back, really resisting what was happening. It took years for 01:05:00me to understand King. Absolute years, but when I was in college I wrote a paper which they published over in India for one of my classes. It was the history of India I was taking. It was two comparisons between Gandhi and Ambedkar, who was who a lot of the Indian people respect because he was an untouchable. He wasn't born in the higher class like Gandhi, and compare that to Martin Luther King and Malcom X, Malcom X who had a very poor upcoming and King who was in the echelon, upper echelon class, and just talking about how you raise leaders up with what 01:06:00philosophies and if one has had the advantage and the other has had none. Something about my instructor, over there at Concordia, he said, Judy, I've never seen this done before. Do you mind if I send this to my friend in India? I said, no [laughs]. It was an article, it was a paper maybe, I don't know, probably 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 pages long or something. Well, his wife, the Indian man's wife had died and he was trying to put together some essays that were a tribute for his wife and things that she believed in. He asked could he put this in the book. I said, what a compliment. Yeah.

RK: Congratulations.

JB: I know! I know [laughs].

RK: Well, I think we've come kind of towards the end and I'll ask you some of these more ending questions. What were some of the best parts and those that weren't so good in your life?

JB: Well, for sure the best part would have been the birth of my daughter, because for a long time I contemplated whether I wanted to bring a child into this world when I saw the problems and things going on. She's really been just such a strong supporter, such a strong woman now.

RK: How old is she now?

JB: She's 44. We're really very, very good friends. She met Bob when she was 3. 01:08:00That's how long she's been around with him. For sure, Bob and I have made a good team. I had a previous marriage, and not that anything bad happened but sometimes when you get married so young, and I was 18 when I got married, you just kind of grow apart. You're growing up in the midst of that. Bob and I have been a good team and good support for all of the children. I think that the, I really miss my parents because they were so supportive. I'm the only one of the siblings left, so they're gone. I think that's hard. You don't look at those 01:09:00things in life, you don't appreciate what you have when you have it. But all in all, I think we push past, we persevere, and we take advantage of what we can. This life is just a blink of an eye. We have faith that this isn't all there is, but you have to have comparisons and you have to have, know the hard times to know the good times and vice versa. I will say my life was full of a lot of people and specifically a lot of people and now this older group that I'm in. 01:10:00I've seen them go through sickness and death and tragedies and all kinds of things, and you know they're like my old boss, Gladys McCoy, the county chair, she said, this too shall pass. She had 7 children, and 2 had juvenile diabetes and you know, you learn to just take one day and enjoy that day, so that's where I am.

RK: What would you have done differently in your life if you were able to?

JB: Probably start traveling a lot earlier. I truly think that'd the education. I would. I would have just, you know, have just saved enough money just to be able to go all the time. I met a friend that that's what he does. He works for 6 01:11:00to 9 months, make enough money, and then he's off. He travels, and then he writes about the travels and then he writes about the travels and he sends it back to us so we can read. I said, this is fantastic. That is the only way that you have a true understanding and appreciation for other folks, or, to appreciate what we have as opposed to what other people don't have. But, travel's a key.

RK: For the very last question, when you look back at your life what stands out the most in your memory?

JB: Hmm. I guess the importance of family. You know, I know people that have no 01:12:00one. I've gone through a lot of hurdles and you could, family's there to catch you. I think the importance of family, and close friends. They keep you out of insane asylums [laughs].

RK: Okay is there anything else you would like to add to let us know more about your life?

JB: No. You know, it's very interesting to be born in Portland, Oregon, to have seen changes. I think one of my biggest disappointments right today is that we 01:13:00feel like we have to go back out to the streets to fight the things that we fought so many years ago. I am just so disappointed, so embarrassed, by this government and what's happening at the executive level that I'm ashamed to travel and say I'm American. I mean, there is no need for what's going on now and it takes a lot of brave people to change things around, and we're working so hard to make that change happen next year. We're working so hard, but I didn't think at almost 70 years old that I'd be wanting to be back in the streets where I was when I was in my 20s. Never would have conceived that anything would be threatened like it was threatened before.

RK: Yes. Greg, did you have any questions?

GREGORY BLACK: No questions.

RK: Well, thank you.

JB: Thank you.

RK: Very much.

JB: Thank you.