Aletha Chavis Oral History Interview, May 22, 2019

RUTH KORNBERG: Could you tell us your name, the year you were born, and your age please?

ALETHA CHAVIS: My name is Aletha Christine Emanuel Chavis. Now, you're saying what else am I being asked?

RK: Could you spell your name?

AC: Okay, I can spell my name. It's Aletha: A-l-e-t-h-a. Last name, maiden name was Emanuel: E-m-a-n-u-e-l, just like the hospital here in Portland. My last name now is Chavis: C-h-a-v-i-s.

RK: Date of birth?

AC: Date of birth was June 29, 2931.

RK: Which makes you how old now?

AC: I think that's 88. A big number [laughs].

RK: Where were you born?

AC: I was born right here in Portland, Oregon.

RK: What is today's date?

AC: Oh dear. Today's date is May 22, 2019.

RK: Thank you. Okay, so, today, you could start out with a very beginning of your life again, just about where you were born and your childhood up to, I guess, a little bit through elementary school.

AC: Okay. Well, as I say, I was born in the Emanuel Hospital, and I always like to tell people that my last name, my dad's name, was Norman Emanuel, and it was spelled just like the hospital. I don't know about any significance, except I 00:02:00just like to tell people that. That was in the Depression years, 1931. I have a brother who was one year older. Just a year and a month and a day older and also born at the Emanuel Hospital. We grew up in an area of Portland, it really was near Kenton District. So, we always, but my mother always said we lived in St. Johns. Well, we weren't really in St. Johns. St. Johns was kind of a separate, little bit father west than where we were. Anyway, we lived in a little house, a little shotgun house in Kenton area. Then when I was 8, my brother 9, we moved to southeast Portland, way away from where we were in Kenton. The area was Lents 00:03:00neighborhood. Interesting thing about living in the Kenton area, we were very young. Started grade school at Peninsula School. If I remember correctly Peninsula School burned down the year I was starting to go to second grade, I think. So, my brother and I had to be, they couldn't use the school so all the students from Peninsula had to be bussed. We were going to be the first bussed students, which became a big issue in Portland during the, in 19-the '80s. Anyway, we had a choice of being bussed to Woodlawn School, or we could walk quite a distance to Peninsula School. My mother said, no, you'll take the bus 00:04:00and you'll go to Woodlawn School. We went to Woodlawn School one day and my brother missed the bus the first day coming home, so we didn't go back to Woodlawn School anymore. That meant we walked quite a distance to Portsmouth School for about a year before we moved out to Lents neighborhood.

Growing up in Lents was kind of the same sort of neighborhood, just kind of low income and everybody was poor. I guess we were quite poor, but like all my friends in Lents, we always said we were poor but we didn't have any idea that we were poor. We didn't know, I mean we had enough food to eat and people had their own chickens and they had their own cows and what not. Everybody had a garden, and you grow your vegetables and get your eggs from your chickens and 00:05:00two neighbors had cows a block away. We had one neighbor we'd get the milk non-pasteurized from one family one week and the next week we'd have to go to the neighbor across the street and get their milk. You had everything you thought you needed: clothing, my mother would sew. All my dresses were made by either my mother or my grandmother. My paternal grandmother was a seamstress. So, we just kind of went along with everything. Started third grade at Lents School, which was a block and a half from our house. We walked a block and a half every day together, my brother and I. Came home for lunch-had to come home every day for lunch, because Mom would have lunch ready. You'd eat your lunch and go back to school.

RK: What would you eat for lunch?

AC: You almost always had soup of some kind. My mom would make a big pot of soup that probably last a week and sandwiches. My mom was, well, she was from Barbados. She came to the United States when she was 16, actually, but she put her age up to 18 because she was in charge of her two younger siblings. I think one was 12, her sister was 12, and I think her brother was like 8 or something like that. She wanted to get away from Barbados because her parents were already here in Oregon. I don't know why they were here. I found out later that they had worked on the Panama Canal. They were recruited from Barbados, and her mom and dad had worked on the Panama Canal. When the canal was finished they came to Oregon, which seems real strange to me, because most people from the islands 00:07:00just came right up the coast to New York or Boston or somewhere in that area. Anyway, they came to Oregon. My mom, when she got to be a little older, she wanted to leave the islands. I guess she wanted to be with her mom and dad. So, she came and so she was very, shall we say, frugal. My mom could stretch anything and unbelievably make the pot of soup or whatever, can of tuna fish could go for 3 days. I don't know how she did it, but we always used to say Mom could feed the multitude, because she could put on a spread and she loved to cook. She could put on this spread of food and it would last. Anyway, we always had enough to eat, plenty to eat.

RK: Tell about your school, then, experience in the school.

AC: Okay. As I say, we moved to Lents area and I was in the third grade, starting the third grade. My brother was in the fourth grade. School was very much like the Peninsula School where we had gone in Portsmouth. At that time, the areas where we lived turned out there were very few people of color. Well, interesting thing, as I think about it, I don't know if my brother and I thought very much about what color we were, unless someone found some way to point it out to us. Some people did. They were very, they'd use the word nigger. We were like, what's that? So, we were told to go, by our parents, both Mom and Dad, Mom 00:09:00finished high school and Dad had had some college work, and their expectation of us in school was you're going to achieve. That's what you're going to school for. Don't come home with any problems that you've had with the teacher, because you're going to be in deep trouble when you get home. You pay attention in school. You do what you're told. You follow the rules, and everything will be fine. We enjoyed school, and we, I just thought learning was just wonderful and wanted to participate in everything. My brother wanted to participate in everything. He was very artistic, had a wonderful voice, and starting singing, because my dad was a singer, and the family sang all the time. Everybody played the piano and we'd have just sing-alongs at home. I mean, we just were having an 00:10:00enjoyable time. As I say, expectation of what you do in school is you pay attention to the teacher, you bring home good grades, you learn, and everybody in the family read. We read the Bible a lot and sang and my brother was an artist and he would draw things all the time. We enjoyed school. We came home with all our work that we did in school and got our praises from family and followed the law.

RK: What about your friends?

AC: Oh, friends. We had, I think if you're a good student and you achieve in school and you contribute to whatever the school is doing, like if they're 00:11:00having softball or you know football in grade school, and you participate in those things and do a good job, you're usually, people, all the other students value you. My brother was really good at baseball. I was pretty good at baseball. Then we had, what did we play in the gym? Because we had a lot of days we were not out on the playground. We had to be in the gym. But, you played prison ball. There were two or three girls that we loved prison ball, and it was, you'd have two teams and you'd try to throw the ball to get everybody on the other team out, then they'd have to come over to your team, in your prison. When you get all them out, of course your team had won.

RK: How did you get them out?

AC: You had to hit them with the ball. It was a ball like, it wasn't as large as a basketball. It was a, I guess we called it a volleyball, I don't know. It was a little bit smaller than a basketball, but the two or three of us girls, we could throw that ball and we loved it. We always wanted to play prism ball, and we had gym nearly every day as I remember. It wasn't calisthenics or anything like that. It was just game playing and that kind of thing. If you contribute to your class, whether it's in the classroom or in the gym, people kind of value you. I think both my brother and I were valued in school by most people. As I've thought about it a little bit, it was obvious that there were some kids that had 00:13:00hostilities. I don't know from whence they came, but they were the same age as me and my brother. We went from third, fourth grade up to eighth grade graduation at the neighborhood school and then on into high school. You knew that there were certain people in your classes that had attitudes about you, but basically they knew better than to antagonize you, except one kid. As I think about him, I know his name, but he always wanted to fight with my brother. He always wanted to call him nigger. My brother would, we'd ask, well, what is that? What does that mean? What's that about, because it wasn't something we used in our house. My folks would explain to us, well, there's some people that have attitudes about your skin color. They want to antagonize you, pick on you, 00:14:00make fun of you, but there's nothing to make fun of.

My folks were very religious and they believed God made everybody, and He made some one color, some with another color, some with straight hair, some with kinky hair. If God made it, and everybody believes in God, that ought to be okay. Everybody ought to be okay with that. Turns out, everybody wasn't okay with it and they sometimes would show it. This one kid would pick on my brother all the time and want to fight. My brother was not a fighter. He was an artist and an intellect, but he would fight if it came to it. I remember one time on the way home from school he got in a fight. He and I were together and I ran home instead of being there with him and told my mom, Milton's fighting! My brother's fighting! She said, well, what are you doing here? You go back and 00:15:00help him! Okay. Okay. I don't remember going back. I don't remember doing anything but probably standing there hollering and screaming and maybe trying to kick somebody or something, but basically we got along really well with most kid. Because of our talent and our contributions, both being able to play piano and sing and contribute to events at the school, we would be okay. That went on through high school. My brother was, he sang in the choir. He had a beautiful voice. He was an artist. He sang through four years in the choral group, and I played in the orchestra. I played a string bass in high school. Don't know one 00:16:00string from the other now, but that's what I did in high school. I do remember one kid in high school, he would always pass by my locker and if he saw me-I knew he was an older kid. He was a senior, I think. He'd pass by my locker. If I was standing out there, he'd call me Buckwheat. All I did was giggle, which is what I did most of the time. A lot of the times they called me Giggles because I did a lot of that. I was like, I wonder why he calls me Buckwheat, I had no clue. Well, I had no clue because our family, being Adventist, we didn't go to movies. Everybody else in the school probably knew about Buckwheat and the little kids, little gang, or what was it called? And so he thought he was insulting me by calling me Buckwheat, but he was wasting his breath. Because I had no clue.

RK: Okay, I think now we can jump to the time when you were an adult coming back 00:17:00to Portland.

AC: Okay. You know, I was thinking of one incident that kind of, I guess, kind of brought to mind some of the problems that I wasn't aware how some people felt, but when you have, I had an experience with my seventh grade teacher. The only day I ever remember missing school in the seventh grade was when I had to go get glasses, because I guess I wasn't able to see the board well. My mom took me downtown. We went to get glasses. So, I was out of school the whole day. When my mom and I came home that afternoon, when he got to our porch, there were about 4 or 5, 6 girls sitting on our porch. They were very agitated. They wanted 00:18:00to talk to my mom. They said, Mrs. Emanuel, we are really upset, because today our teacher told us a lot of things and she said, and so, well, what did the teacher say? Then, the kids said well, she told us that Negroes, I don't know if she used the word Negroes, she must have said Negroes, were dumb. They can't learn. They come from monkeys, and you just need to not be associated with them because they are no good. They're evil. They listed a whole bunch of things, and those girls, 5 or 6 of them, were very upset. They wanted my mom to know that that's what the teacher had said. The thing that I remember about that is how 00:19:00surprised I was that that teacher-my seventh grade teacher, whom I thought was a very fine teacher and I never had a hint that she had an animosity or disregard or any bad feelings about me as a student, because those 7 or 8 girls and I were at the top of our class and we all, all of us competed to always get As and have the highest grades in the class and be the smartest and probably the smart-aleck-y at the same time, but how surprised I was at the fact that that teacher would say those things, because I never noted anything where her attitude to me seemed to be negative or ugly. But I was really surprised that 00:20:00the girls, that they felt so strongly that they would come home and tell my parents. Those 5, 6 girls and I went all through high school together. After we graduated from high school we still became friends, even though some of them moved away. They got married long before I did. Every summer we would get together at least once or twice for a luncheon or something and just go over old times and spend a lot of time giggling and laugh about things that went on and things we did, kind of interesting thing.

RK: What was the response of your parents to hearing about your teacher?

AC: Well, as I remember, Mom was, she was not a very outspoken person. I mean, she didn't waste words. When she spoke, she got right to the point. As I 00:21:00remember, she thanked the girls for that information and said she would take care of it. I really don't know what she did, except that I know she did go to the school and spoke to the principal. I did not know immediately what results there were. Seems like I remember going through the rest of the school year with that same teacher, and I probably sat and looked at her thinking I wonder what she was thinking. I wonder why she was acting that way. I didn't notice any difference in the way she treated me. Truly, I was kind of oblivious to things like that, because it was, we were taught not to bother about it. It was somebody else's problem. It wasn't your problem. You do what you have to do and you take care of yourself properly and don't worry about other people. That's kind of how I got over that.

RK: Okay, well, now let's talk about the time when you were already an adult. You come back to Portland.

AC: Right.

RK: You've divorced by then?

AC: When I came back to Portland, I was divorced. I had spent a number of years following my husband around, who was a Navy person. I went to several different cities and-

RK: So, now tell us about Portland.

AC: Portland? Coming back to Portland?

RK: Yeah, the time from when you came back, about what you did, how you found a place to live, what it was like then? Then you had how many children, and being a single mother.

AC: I came back with 3 young ladies, two of them were in school. Let's seen, Maureen was in first grade I believe and Jenny, the youngest one, was 2 years behind her, so she wasn't in school. Interesting thing about coming back, I kind 00:23:00of kept my eye-every time we would come back to Portland when I was traveling, when I was living in different places, we'd always come back every summer to visit Mom and Dad in southeast Portland in their place. They had a big yard and at the time after I left Portland my mom had started adopting, she was a foster parent. She and my dad were foster parents and they had adopted, not adopted, but they had a number of foster children. But we would always come back, and even though she had foster children, we'd always squeeze in Mom's house, which had 4 bedrooms and one bath and that kind of thing, but we'd always stay there, me with the three kids. When I left after my divorce and came back to stay, 00:24:00there was a house next to my mom's house, which formally had been their property. It turned out that they had sold that property, which, when they had it was our chicken yard. Mom and Dad had this lot next door and they fenced it in and they had chickens. The house that was built there had been sold, or, I guess the people moved away. So, the house was empty and I bought that house. Then we had Mom next door, built a path between the two houses, and the kids would spend the night at home and spend, when they came home from school, Grandma's house, with Grandma's foster kids. Just a jolly time. Mom didn't seem 00:25:00to care how many kids around her. At one time she had about 5 foster kids, and one of them she adopted as an infant, it was an infant child. That became my sister. She couldn't cook enough. I mean, she loved cooking and so that's where the kids spent their afternoons.

RK: Now, you came back and you needed to get a job. Tell us about that.

AC: Right. I think the first year I came back, I must have come back; yeah I came back in the summer.

RK: What year? Do you remember?

AC: It would have been, let's see-it would have been '70-something. I don't know. But, I came back in the summer, and started working, so the kids, you 00:26:00know, had time to get organized about going to school and they went to the neighborhood school, which was the same school I had gone to, except they had torn down the old building, the old wooden building and built a new school, which was just across the street from Mom's house. So, they went to Lents School. I started working at a library over in north Portland. It was near a school, about 2 blocks from a school, elementary school named Boise. The kids would come from Boise, a lot of times in the afternoon, into the library. Some of the time teachers would come. Someone said to me, you know we need a teacher at our school, at Boise School. I said, oh, fine. I did go to the school 00:27:00district and apply for a job. They told me they weren't hiring. I thought, hmm. That's interesting. I know they need teachers somewhere. Anyway, I did get a half-time job, 7th grade at a neighborhood school, Arleta School, that's where I started teaching. Then I got hired at Boise Elementary School, and I was there for 2 or 3 years teaching fifth grade, took over a classroom there.

RK: Were those schools in North Portland?

AC: The school, first school I taught at was in southeast. Then, Boise was school in north Portland. It was predominantly a Black school, had very few 00:28:00White people. Neighborhood had changed significant, and was very crowded school. That was the late '60s, I think, yeah, because it was a time when a lot of the kids, especially the younger kids, and I had a fifth grade. The kids would come to school, and they had sort of attitudes about White people. It wasn't something I was used to, and so I found, I spent some time trying to understand what was going on, but there was some overlap from-that was the era of Black Power and the Panthers. Our kids, some of our neighborhood kids, the kids that were going to that school would come to school after going to a lunch or a breakfast put on by the Panthers. They were being indoctrinated with hostility. 00:29:00An interesting that I found with that fifth grade class is the first time I came in I said okay now everybody get out your books. They said, we don't have any books, because I was taking over the class after Christmas break. They said, we don't have any books. I said, you don't have any books? What do you mean you don't have any books? Everybody has books. You're at a school. They said, no. Our teacher took our books away. I said, you're teacher took your books away why? They said, because we were drawing in them. I said, what do you mean you're drawing in your books? You don't draw in your textbook. You draw on art paper. So, I said, well what are you drawing? It turned out, they were drawing afros on every figure that was a person, male or female. They were drawing afros of the heads of the people. So, the teacher took away their language, their math, their 00:30:00reading whatever. I said, well, no. You're going to have your books back and you're not going to draw on them. That's out. We're not drawing in books. They didn't. I think I was kind of a very strict teacher. I had a facial expression that I guess told you I am not playing. I am quite serious. Anyway, that was an interesting thing. I never experienced that before, and I don't know if it happened universally but it certainly happened at Boise school. Anyway, they got their books back and we went on with our studies.

RK: Were the other teachers in that school mainly White or Black?

AC: That was kind of a mixture, mostly White, but about 5 or 6 Black teachers, which I'd had experience with Black schools prior in Philadelphia and, where 00:31:00else that I taught. I didn't have any problem with that, but it was kind of an angry. The primary grades seemed to be fine. They were almost all White teachers, and they just loved the little Black kids. Sometimes I wondered did they teach them anything, but they loved them. But the fifth and sixth grade-

RK: What made you wonder if they were teaching?

AC: Because the little kids were kind of out of control and I believed in control. I believed in behavior that was, you know, calm. When you're in the playground that's fine. Let's jump up and down and holler and scream and run and shout as much as you want to. In the classroom, you talk when you have permission. You don't run around the room like a bunch of, you know, banshees. I 00:32:00didn't have any of that in my classroom, and a new teacher, who was a White teacher, across the hall from me was also a fifth grade teacher and she had been trained to be a nun. She was a young woman, but she was training to be a nun and then decided to go into education. She didn't believe in upside down and running around. She would get out of that classroom every evening and go talk to parents. I did that, too. Some of the younger, some of the other classrooms, I don't think they ever made any contact with parents. I don't think they, I think they just kind of, I was just confused at what they were doing. I think I was probably a little bit of a problem in terms of getting along with everybody, because if you, you know, if you were treating kids like it was a playground and 00:33:00they were in third grade that wasn't working. I would contact people and kind of confront them with what are they learning? You had a fourth grade class down the hall from me where the teacher was just sitting on the, just you know, you'd walk by the classroom and he was not doing anything with, kids running around the room, climbing on the desks, throwing things. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. So, I made a few, not enemies but a little conflict from time to time.

RK: After that school, what did you do?

AC: Then, let's see, I was there for I think about almost 3 years. That school we had to work a lot with the parents to get, before I left there, to get, they 00:34:00had a lot of retreats where parents would go and they would talk about control in the classroom and what are kids learning and how are we going to fix it? What do we really want out of the school? The district instituted a program, I think we were called advisory specialists. They selected a group of Black teachers and we were just a group to try to go into different classrooms throughout the district and meet with teachers trying to help them understand what they could do to improve the educational progress of Black students. Because it turned out that a lot of the schools, especially the inner-city schools where there were 00:35:00lots of numbers of Black kids, had the same problem of misbehavior and not expecting educational outcomes. This group called the advisory specialists, we would go as a team. Usually it was one Black person with a White person who was a good, had been a good teacher, and you would go into different schools, work with classrooms, and you'd try to get the whole student body, not the student body, but the teacher core of the teacher members in the school, and have meetings and discuss what they were doing, how it was working, how it wasn't working and what they could do to improve. Then we had training outside of the school year.

RK: So, it's your opinion that the reason, well, what is your opinion what, why 00:36:00do you think these Black kids were having-

AC: Misbehaving?

RK:-particular misbehaving?

AC: I think part of it was the era of the time that we were living in, the times we were living in where there was outspoken hostility. You had neighborhoods in Portland where people will tell you when they were going to school, and they're my age, that you know they couldn't walk down the street without somebody calling them nigger. That was offensive to a lot of people. To me, it was just like whatever. It's your problem, not mine. But if you have people who recognize that they're being picked on or they've been told by their parents that White people don't treat you right and everything like that. You get an animosity and 00:37:00I think when you have more Black people coming into the schools then there's a clash between the White teachers who'd been there and had been operating as thinking the little Black kids are so cute and so darling and I don't, you know, I'm not worrying about teaching them or anything. They're just cute little, I don't know whatever you're thinking. I saw a lot of that. I don't know really how it developed, but if you listen to people who grew up in Portland who were Black and you hear them talking about in their neighborhood school they were always called nigger all the way home, you see, it bothered them. It made you feel hostile toward White people, and I never experienced that. I didn't care 00:38:00what color you were. My folks taught us we're all the same. But if you grew up with a different attitude, that's I think how so much separation happened in the school. I never really analyzed it, but after I got into that advisory program, and then I saw, you know there really are some problems, and a lot of us, as we were called advisory specialists, White and Black, we'd never analyzed it and we had a lot of professional people come and present to us and teach us why teachers who are White are having the problems they are about people who are not 00:39:00White and why people who are Black have the problems that they're having. You had to find a way to come together or what value are you? You're teaching language arts. You're teaching math, but you're really not getting it through to kids if they're burdened with this hostility and this misbehavior and this whatever, anger, about I don't like White teachers. You'd hear kids saying things like that. That's not a good thing.

RK: Did you feel that the advisory committees ended up being helpful?

AC: I think it did a lot of good. I think the leaders in that could have done a better job, because this is something new. Even professional people who came to 00:40:00us from wherever, Oakland or LA or New York or Washington, D.C., we needed a lot more of that and we needed people to-we needed people who could overcome their own anxieties, hostilities, whatever it was. But if we hadn't had that program, I think we would have gone deeply downhill. It helped a lot. I think it took a lot longer than you might have anticipated. I was in the program for about 3 years and then I went into high school as a vice principal. Then I was just the mean lady, so [laughs].

RK: In the meantime, did you increase your education?

AC: I did. Let's see, I think while I was an advisory specialist, I had a 00:41:00master's degree, and then to go into administration you had to have completed a master's degree and have administrative training.

RK: When did you get the master's degree?

AC: Let's see, it was like I think '74.

RK: Was that before, was that when you left Oregon, before you left Oregon?

AC: No, no, no. That was after-I got the master's degree from the University of Portland.

RK: Okay, tell us some about that experience.

AC: Oh, you know. That I don't remember very much, except just going to class and writing papers and it was at University of Portland. I don't remember much 00:42:00about the classroom, just writing papers and doing the work required. I don't remember anything special. I know the University of Portland, it was in St. Johns area. That was, I would say a very segregated area. It had a reputation in St. Johns.

RK: Where is the St. Johns area?

AC: St. Johns is very far west Portland. It, actually, was a separate town early in the 1800s when Portland was just developing. Then it was annexed. It seemed to be St. Johns had a reputation of being unfriendly to minorities. You kind of 00:43:00think St. Johns being on, kind of on the north end, northwest end of the Willamette River before you get to the Columbia River, and then it was a separate town. Then, as people moved down the river, they developed the town of Portland. St. Johns was actually separate. They've always had an attitude, we're not Portland. We don't belong to Portland. I don't think it's that way now, because it's just been too long. It's always been kind of a part because of the way towns developed, and then there was another community, north Portland, which 00:44:00was Albina District, and Albina was a separate community, too.

RK: Back then to St. Johns. Then you were in school there.

AC: At University of Portland.

RK: At University of Portland, so...

AC: But I didn't do anything about the city. I don't remember ever going to a restaurant during the time I went to school there. Part of that probably was 00:45:00because I was teaching during the day. I was either an advisory specialist or even maybe I was vice principal then. I don't know. My memory is not so good there. So, the town of St. Johns, I never went to a grocery store or a restaurant or anything.

RK: That was a master's in-?

AC: Education.

RK: In education.

AC: Mm-hmm.

RK: You got that so that you can continue to be teaching.

AC: Right and become an administrator, a vice principal.

RK: So, now your experience as a vice principal, what was that like?

AC: [Laughs] It was very interesting. I was at Grant High School, and Grant High School was an interesting school. Grant High School had the reputation of being "the" school, the outstanding school. It was in an area of the students came from Irvington, Alameda, very rich backgrounds, very rich neighborhoods. You 00:46:00went to Grant, and you're all of that and a bag of chips. They were really, you know. So, very few Black students had gone to Grant for a number of years. If you talk to any students that I knew after, when they had grown up and they had attended Grant when they were very minority, they will tell you that Grant was bigoted. They didn't enjoy it. They felt very isolated and very separated. Yet, Grant had a reputation for being an outstanding school in terms of what kids did and what they learned and what they grew up and how professional, many professional people. On the other hand, as a student I was at Franklin, and Franklin was just one of those, you know, we weren't looked upon as anything 00:47:00really. But Grant was looked on as "the" school. So, when I went there as vice principal, first of all, there were very few Black administrators, let alone vice principals. The student body had changed pretty significantly, because they changed the boundaries of the neighborhoods, and one of the reasons that I went there, I went there first as the advisory specialist. I was working with kids who were Black who had wanted to attend Jefferson, which was predominantly a Black school student body. Because they had changed the boundaries, for whatever reason, some of those Black kids had to go to Grant. They did not want them to be there.

There were a lot of conflicts, a lot of conflicts. It usually was, it would materialize after school and before school in terms of going on the bus, because most of the Jefferson kids that had to go now to Grant had to take a bus to get there, because they did not live close to Grant like many of the other kids in the Grant neighborhood did. It was fights and a lot of conflict, always having to get groups of kids together to talk about how can we-you try to find a group of Black kids that had good grades and sensible minds and parents who were supporting them, and then you try to get a group of White kids that were trying to look at, okay, we understand things are changing at our school. We don't have 00:49:00to be so isolated and think we're all that and better than Black kids. You try to put that group of kids together and expand it as you go along and get more kids involved. That took 3 or 4 years of constant working and it, people, grown people who went, who have come out of Grant High School will tell you the experiences they had, they did not like Grant as a student, Black student going there. They did not enjoy it. They would not sing in the choir. They would not get on the dance team, because it wasn't cool. It wasn't cool for them, and it wasn't really accepted for the local neighborhood people. You had to just constantly be bringing groups together and working with people to try to make them understand, you know, come on. Think about it. You all put on your clothes 00:50:00the same way every day. You all, you know? Yeah, your hair is different. Yeah, your skin is different. Get over it.

RK: In terms of the conflict, did they come-was it physical, too. Did they fight with each other?

AC: Oh yeah.

RK: Kids get injured?

AC: Yeah, they'd get in a fight. I was talking to a group the other day about it, and somebody said, when I said something about girls fighting, and they said when you see them take those earrings off. I said, oh I forgot about that! That is something that I would always be outside walking around the campus and trying to meet kids and say good morning and how's it going, blah, blah, blah. If I saw kids taking, girls taking those earrings out of their ears, I knew I needed to be around that school, not in my office, because there was going to be a fight somewhere that day. So, bring that kid in with the earrings out, and let's sit 00:51:00down and figure out what's your problem. You're not going to handle it by fighting, because fighting's going to send your little butt home. So, let's try to figure a way to work through whatever the issue is. It was just a constant, constant get out there and figure out what the kids are doing, figure out who's mad at whom and why, whether they were Black or White. You just had two separate-

RK: What were some of the reasons that you found out that they were mad at each other?

AC: Well, I'll tell you one thing, with Black girls, it was she flung her-they'd say, well, that White girl flung her hair at me. I said, and what did her hair do? Well, I don't know, she flung... I said, well, now, really, what did it do? 00:52:00You'd just have to talk through it. Then you'd have to go and find the White girl and say, now were you trying to be, because you have long hair and it flies and my hair doesn't, I'm Black and I have kinky hair and it ain't going nowhere. Why are you letting that bother you? [Laughs] It was just a constant-first of all, trying to understand what are you upset about? Why does it upset you, and is it something that really-

RK: What kind of response would the girls give? What would they say?

AC: Well, there would just be silliness, really, when you get down to it.

RK: When you talked to them, were they receptive, hostile?

AC: Often, mostly at first hostile, mostly not accepting. Mostly, you don't know what you're talking about, well, you didn't, you always side with the White 00:53:00girls. You this, you that. You know? I'm, it's not about me. You're here to go, let's try to figure out why you're here and why everybody's here. We're all here for the same thing. What's the best way, you know, for you to resolve the problem. Think about it. If you don't like sitting near her because she flings her hair, then maybe you can try to get the teacher to move your seat. You don't have to sit there. It was just really basic things.

RK: What about when you talked to the White girls?

AC: The same thing.

RK: How did that work and what was their response?

AC: Usually, as I remember, White girls at Grant who were good students and were there, you know, because they were trying to get an education, they had no 00:54:00understanding of what the problem or the anger was of the Black student. They had not experienced it before. So, you'd have to try to explain to them, well, it looks like you're trying to, it looks like you, the White girl, are trying to show somehow that you're better or that you are more beautiful or cuter or you've got better clothes. When you do certain things, it's like that's, like you're throwing that in somebody's face and do you need to do that? It's just was just bringing sometimes them together where they could talk it out and you 00:55:00sit here and you sit here and you're not going to fight because I'm in the middle. It was not an easy thing. It was not a quick thing, and you had to bring teachers into the awareness, too. Most of the teachers are just into their subject: I'm the math teacher. I don't have time for blah, blah, blah. PE is blah. We're here to do this and we aren't going to... you know? We don't have time. But, yes you do. You have to have time, because here's the problem that's occurring and everybody has to be a part of the solution. Everybody has to work on it.

RK: Then, after that how long were you the vice principal, then?

AC: Let's see, I think about 9 years? 8 or 9 years? I really enjoyed it. The 00:56:00only thing I can say I really got tired of [laughs] as vice principal, going into the restroom and running the girls out for, you know, go back to class, and I walk back to their class with them, or wherever, for smoking in the restroom. Or, the thing I would have to work with Black girls a lot of times was eating in the restroom at lunchtime. Lunchtime could, you'd get your lunch and go and sit in the bathroom and eat it. No. Don't do that. Why are you doing that? There was just such a disconnect between some of the kids and then you had groups of Black kids and White kids that were just fine. They had no problem with each other. 00:57:00Even if they didn't have interactions as elementary students, they could figure it out as high school students in just being in their classroom together. But you had a group that were just not there. That's the part where you had to work the most and keep at them. The thing I really got tired of most was running the kids out of the bathroom that were eating their food, their lunch, or smoking. I was at the point of getting tired of that. That's when I got the invitation from the superintendent. They wanted me to come in the personnel office. They always have an agenda, though. You don't know the agenda, because they don't tell you. 00:58:00They just tell you this is a wonderful experience and you could, you know, more money and you don't have to do this and you don't have that. That sounds good, but at the school you get summers off. You don't get summers off when you go into the central office. Anyway, I did go in the central office in the personnel department. I kind of found out that that was a place where they needed people of color, and so I was the logical one, I guess, to go.

RK: How was that? What were some of your experiences?

AC: I enjoyed it a lot. It was a totally different viewpoint of the school, of school business, because all of my other experiences had been in schools, either directly in the classroom or in the central office. It was totally separate from 00:59:00the school.

RK: What was your-?

AC: My role?

RK: Your role, yes.

AC: I went in as a, let's see what was I called, I think I was called a personnel specialist, and I was over the, what do you call it, substitute department, substitute teacher department. There were two, there was a team of I think 2 or 3 people that were the people who called for substitutes every day. So, I worked with them. Then I also was interviewing people for job positions in the district, and so that was very interesting. Then we moved into, let's see, well, I found myself in conflict there a lot, quite a bit, too, because, here 01:00:00again, I don't, I tell it like I see it and sometimes I'm not too cool with that. I was pretty direct. For instance, I would have sometimes a principal who would say, well, this substitute we want to hire her as a permanent teacher. Is aid, a couple of times there were some people and they happened to be Black teachers. They were acting as substitutes, and they could do a fairly good job of that with primary grades, like first and second grade. But if you want to hire a teacher you want somebody who is intellectually able to handle the subject matter of the second or the third grade or first grade or whatever it 01:01:00is. On a couple of occasions there were people they wanted to put a person of color but that person wasn't competent even though they were finishing their degree at Portland State. I had to ask who did their writing for them? I would ask them to write something and they couldn't do it. I would say, I'm sorry, I don't care what color she is. I don't care that you need, we need people of color. Let's find somebody. There must be somebody who's qualified, who's competent if they're going to work with kids. They have to be smarter than the kid. I said, okay, to a couple, I said to the principal and one of the area administrators. Well, no, we'll put her at X school, which was predominantly a Black school. I said, oh, let's put her up at Bridlemile, a predominantly White 01:02:00school. Oh, no. I said, well, if she's not competent to go to Bridlemile, she's not competent to go to Boise. We're done. I'm through talking, bye. It was reality, though. See, you can't be wishy-washy and do, you have ulterior motives, and you saying we're hiring Black people. Yes, but let's hire competent Black people. I mean, she's a very nice lady, but that's not what she's there for. She's there to teach the students. That's not fair. They've got to have competent people who can teach.

RK: Then, so, how long did you work there?

AC: Then, I was there in that role for one year, and here's another ulterior 01:03:00motive that I finally figured out. The superintendent and the assistant superintendent said they wanted me to apply for the director of personnel, and I'd been in personnel one year and I'm like all these people who are personnel administrators they've been in here. None of them were Black, and they wanted to-and they did apply. They didn't get it. I got it. It took me a long time to figure out they wanted a Black woman, so that was me. I enjoyed it. I loved it, but it took a while for the rest of the people that I was, the rest of the personnel administrators who had been there for years, but the same 01:04:00administrator taught the administrators who said they wanted me, but they didn't tell me they wanted me except to say well, you're in personnel now. You apply. I thought, well, sure, okay. I'll apply. I don't see any reason why. I had no idea that they wanted a Black woman and you don't think of things like that. You just think, well, that would be interesting but I don't know as much about personnel stuff as some of these people who have been here for 5, 6, 10 years. Then, they had to around and talk to all those long-term employees and personnel and explain to them whatever, the reason why we need this person. We're having a lot 01:05:00of problems getting professional Black people to apply for teaching positions in Portland, Oregon. We did a lot of recruiting trips to go to southern states and other places like Alabama and Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia. When you think about it, as I went on one recruiting trip, if I could get hired in Alabama, my home, where I'm going to talk to these people and they are graduating from an Alabama school and they could get a job in their state, why would they want to come to Oregon? They don't know anything about Oregon. The only thing most of those people had heard about were the Trail Blazers when they won in '77, when they won. They're like, Oregon? Where is it? Don't they have wooden sidewalks? [Laughs] Stuff like it. So, I ended up being in the personnel department.

RK: Personnel, and then after that?

AC: That was it.

RK: That was it. You retired.

AC: I retired, after, I think 9 years as a personnel director.

RK: Now, in your retired life, how are you spending your time?

AC: Well, the minute I think I retired, my 3 daughters, especially two of them, and one of my best friends who was a personnel administrator at that time, said, well you've got to be busy. You've got to find things to do. They started the Oregon Convention Center's going to be built and they're going to need volunteers for their visitor information desk. That's the first thing I did. Then I started singing in a barber shop choir. I was doing, oh, I don't know 01:07:00what all, just a whole lot of different things, and a lot of fun things. I became a tour guide for, I worked for that about 7 or 8 years, I guess.

RK: For?

AC: A tour guide for the city, giving tours of the city, giving tours of, at that time, I think we were doing tours of Mount St. Helens. That was very popular, and tours of the gorge. That was my favorite one, the Columbia River Gorge. You'd get a busload of people and they'd want to see the gorge and so you'd have to learn a whole lot of facts about technical things and fun things.

RK: What year did you retire?

AC: From Portland Schools?

RK: Yeah, when you finished.

AC: At the personnel department, I think that was '89.

RK: '89, and we're now 2019.

AC: '19, yeah.

RK: So, you've got.

AC: Yeah, quite a few years.

RK: Quite a few years, 30 years.

AC: Yeah. I think I was a tour guide for, I was at the personnel office, no, at the convention center for 20 years and that took up a lot of time at the visitor information, something I enjoyed a lot, until I got tired of telling people where they wanted to go to eat. I don't know where you want to go eat [laughs]. Things like that. Let's see, then, volunteering there and being a tour guide, those were my two most active activities.

RK: Any special experiences there that you'd like to tell us?

AC: Let me see if I've had any... other than being, I can't really think of anything earth-shattering. I can't really think of anything that was fun, mostly fun things.

RK: Okay. Just a couple more questions, one is fill us in a little bit more, then, about you and your family life as you were living in Portland and doing all the work.

AC: All those things?

RK: Then as your children were growing up. So, your mother participated a lot in childcare. Tell us a little bit more, then, about the children and how you 01:10:00juggled everything.

AC: Right. I felt I was unbelievably fortunate to be living next door to Mom. As I said, I think I said my mom had, she had 3 foster girls when we first came back and they were about the same age as my girls. So, Mom loved to cook. That was just something she enjoyed. She was cooking and the kids were eating and they'd go to school from Mom's house and come back to Mom's house after school until I came home, especially when I got in administration, sometimes I didn't get home until very, very late. Mom was in charge of the kids, but her kids were about the same age as mine, so it was just 6 girls going crazy and Mom was very 01:11:00much in charge of them. Like I said, she was a no nonsense person. They knew what they had to do and I always said to my kids when I was vice principal, one thing I don't want to hear from any other vice principal or any other principal that you've been in trouble at school, because I know all the principals and vice principals. I don't want to hear it, so make sure I don't. Make sure you don't get in any trouble at school. That's not going to work. They were pretty good kids. They were active in sports and Rose Festival. My oldest one became 01:12:00homecoming queen of Marshall High School her senior year, very popular kids.

I can't think of anything really earth-shattering, except I did hear from one vice principal of my oldest daughter. She really didn't get in a fight, but she was the TA in a PE gym class, where, middle daughter, who was the quiet one, the middle daughter was a student in the class and my oldest daughter was the TA, teacher assistant, and somehow one of the girls in the gym class threw something and hit little sister in the eye, and older sister was going to take that little 01:13:00girl out. She was the TA, she wasn't supposed to be doing that, but she jumped on the girl and really kind of beat her up before the teacher could get it settled. Naturally she was sent to the office, and so I got a call from the vice principal. He said, we sent your daughter home. I thought, oh, no. He said, she's not suspended or anything, she just had to go home because she got in a fight and that's what we do, separate the kids. When Mom went and got her home, she said, good. You beat that girl up. She said, because whatever had happened hit second daughter, who was my mom's favorite. She said, you should have beat 01:14:00her-I thought, Mom! Don't tell the child to fight. You know? But that's what she did. It didn't endanger any of her. She was still popular and that year she was homecoming queen, so I guess everything worked out alright. Very popular girl.

RK: Well, now, I just have kind of one last, couple of just very last questions. When you look back at your life, what stands out most in your memory?

AC: Oh, dear. I haven't really thought about that. I think when you look over things and overall when you think of all the things that could have happened and did happen to other people that you know, I'm just grateful that I never had 01:15:00any, you know, like serious, you know, really bad things. I guess I will think of one bad thing that happened when I was 18 and learning to drive. I had to spend 5 hours in jail because I was over-extending the speed limit and I didn't have a driver's license at that time. But over besides that I think I can't think of anything that was just, I mean, horrendous. Five hours in jail waiting for my brother to come pick me up was pretty bad, but generally speaking. That, I overcame that and didn't have any lasting record or anything about that. I 01:16:00think my life was enjoyable. I'm thankful for the opportunities I had to learn and to extend my knowledge, still trying to do that by reading everything I can get my hands on. I just feel like I never let anything get me down, no matter how bad it seemed, even, you know, like going through a divorce or moving around quickly from place to place every 2 years could have been upsetting, but it was kind of interesting because you learn new things and got to see a lot of the 01:17:00country. I think afterwards of retirement starting to travel, visit numerous places throughout the world, that was something that I think a lot of people may not have gotten, had the opportunity to do. I'm really grateful I did have those opportunities.

RK: Okay, well, thank you very much.

AC: Very much welcome, and delightful talking with you.

RK: Well, it's delightful for me, for us, too.

AC: I hope so.

RK: Talking with you, and I actually know that there'd be lots, lots, lots more that we could continue.

AC: Well, it gets to be a lot when you really think of it, this many years. You have an opportunity to do a lot of things.

RK: Yeah.

AC: Eighty-some years, wow. I'm still dancing.

RK: Oh, I, the dancing, I want this off-record, well, it can be on record. I saw the Aletha movie, Aletha Franklin movie?

AC: Oh, Aretha Franklin. Uh-huh.

RK: Did you see?

AC: No. I have not seen it.

RK: Well, I think it was you that mentioned about doing the dancing. I asked what kind of dancing? Were you the person? Or was somebody else, maybe, that we interviewed that was telling me you go to the Cotton Club and part of, sometimes you do tap dancing.

AC: Oh, I was going to take tap dancing one year, one summer, because my dad could tap dance and I always wanted to, but I never took tap dancing lessons. We would just do the popular dances, like, we'd call it the slow drag, if you're dancing with somebody. What was another one? The spin? I can't remember the 01:19:00names of the dances, but the swing. Just, you know, the popular dances of the time. I loved dancing. It was a lot of fun.

RK: Do you still do any dancing? Do you have energy for that?

AC: There's, sometimes I listen to KMHD almost all the time. Any time they play something that's moveable, I'm trying to move. It gets me going. My girls are good dancers, and my granddaughter, who's here, she's a good dancer. You got to keep moving, even if you don't go out and dance. You got to keep moving.

RK: There was, that whole film was the film of her doing a whole gospel concert, and so at a certain some people stood up and there was this little group of 01:20:00women that were tap dancing.

AC: Oh.

RK: That were doing, and so someone else said something, told us that she used to tap dance.

AC: Not me.

RK: So, I wanted to ask is that the tap dancing?

AC: I was doing to take tap dancing, because my dad could tap dance. I don't know where he learned but he could tap dance. But, you know, growing up as an Adventist, dancing was not something that you did, but because my dad tap danced, I mean, I danced. My folks didn't restrict us dancing. I remember one time my brother and I when we were in grade, oh, we were in high school, I guess, and we both, we would play the piano duets, marching duets for the 01:21:00members of the church who were Seventh Day Adventist who would march around the floor of this hall that they were having this activity in. We were playing the piano, playing marches, as a duet. I thought to myself, now they don't want us dancing but here they are marching. What's the difference? You're on your feet and you're moving. What's the? I could never quite figure that out.

RK: Well, was it maybe the difference between...

AC: Moving your hips?

RK: ...marching or moving your hips?

AC: Yeah, right, right, right. Evidently, dancing was seen as a little too sin-uous or something. Marching you just straight line around in a circle. It wasn't working with me. I said, dancing's okay. You don't have to do pole 01:22:00dancing [laughs]. Move your feet and move your body a little bit.

RK: Well [recording skips] barber shop?

AC: Oh, barber shop. Yeah for years.

RK: Tell us more about all that music, then.

AC: Well, I think I started barber shop shortly after retiring. Yeah, I was retired when I started. My girls got me into that, because I really, you know, barber shop has always been, growing up you thought of, it was almost blackface kind of a thing in the early days, because barber shop was four-part harmony. At first it was men, four men singing. They were doing, was it kind of Stephen Foster type music? Dixie? Talking about the old folks, old Black Joe and all the 01:23:00folks at home and all that kind of stuff. So, it wasn't something that you know you really were too interested in. I loved the music. I loved the harmony, but I didn't know anything about it. When you would see barber shop, you would see these four men and they were singing "Old Black Joe" or "Down by the Suwanee River" or something. It just seemed very racist, almost. When I started, you know, when I got interested in Barber Shop was because my girls were in a restaurant where a group of women who were in a barber shop chorus, which I knew 01:24:00nothing about, and they had come there after their rehearsal to unwind and have some beers and spaghetti or whatever. My kids were in there, and they were singing. My girls came home and they said, Mom, you should hear those ladies singing. You would love it. They have harmony and it's beautiful, a four-part harmony. You should get in that group. I was like, oh, here's something else they want me to do. Well, I went to one of their, a barber shop chorus, and it was a group of about 50 women at that time. It was called Blue Lake Chorus. Their harmony was awesome, four-part harmony. I said, I'm going to get up there. They didn't have any Black people in it. About 50 women, 50, 60 women. I said, I'm going to start singing. I don't know that they liked me or not, but I got in it and I sang bass.

RK: Did you have to try out?

AC: You had to try out and so the director, she had a group of people at the time, and she said, okay just sing this line. So, then they would tell if you were high, had a high voice, or low voice. I have a bass voice. So, I got in it. Well, you know what? After I got in it, I know there were people who thought what's she doing here? They showed it. If they were trying to get me out of it, they were wasting their time, because I'm not paying attention to foolishness like that. I'm just here to sing. You know there were people that didn't, you know, you'd get placed on the chorus on the risers. They have steps, you know, and they have the bass usually is in the middle of the chorus and then they mix the rest of the voices, the tenors, they spread some here, they spread some around. But the bass is usually a wedge in the middle, because that's the 01:26:00foundation of the chord when you're singing barber shop. You got to have a strong bass foundation. I'm right in the middle. Well, there was one lady, she didn't want to stand by me and it was obvious. If she got placed by me, and once you got a position, that's where you went each night of rehearsal. She had asked to be moved, and so, no problem. Let somebody else will stand and she moved around. Well, I didn't know what the woman's problem was. She sang for a number of years and she'd always stand away from me, and one day, actually we were in a contest and we were away from, we were like in Idaho competing or something. She 01:27:00said she wanted to take my picture. I thought, you don't even speak, I thought to myself, you don't even speak to me. What do you want to take my picture for? I said, well, okay. She said, okay, so she takes my picture. I found out later, I asked her, I said, what are you going to do with this picture. She said, oh, I want to show it to my family. We're having a family reunion in, it was either Kentucky or Missouri, I think it was Missouri, and I want to show my family who I stand next to. I said, who you stand next to? She said, yes, but she didn't want to say that I'm standing next to a Black person, because she probably wasn't to say Black person to her family. She was probably going to say, 01:28:00standing next to this nigger woman, is probably what she was going to say. But she didn't say that to me. You know, I thought, that's very interesting. I said, well, I hope your family enjoys seeing the picture. I'm like, oh my God [laughs]. It's just an interesting experience, but that probably was my only... I knew there were other people in the chorus that didn't, you know, they didn't take time with you. You can't take time with everybody, so who cares?

RK: Did you ever become friendly with any of the people?

AC: Oh yeah, real tight buddies. In fact, I sang in 3 quartets, which means four of us come out and we competed and yeah, I sang, I'm still singing with barber shop group.

RK: The same group?

AC: No. No. I've left the chorus, because that chorus got bigger and better and got competitive to the extent that I couldn't spend that much time. After I got 01:29:00older, it was harder to stand on the risers for 2 hours. Your knees give out and you're not just standing and singing. You're doing movements, too. You're doing step movements as well as hand and shoulder movements. It got to be a little too much. Being competitive means you have to put in a lot more hours of practice, and I just got so I couldn't do that. It went on for a long period of time.

RK: Well, that's interesting. I think that we'll terminate now, because otherwise I'll keep asking you more things and we'll go on and on.

AC: [Laughs] Okay.

RK: Thank you so much.

AC: Thank you! It's been wonderful talking to you.