A Long Road: 50 Years of Experience from Five African American K-State Alumni David Griffin: I think history matters because it gives a reflection of what has occurred in the past. It matters because if you don't know the foundation of the soil that you stand on you might as well be on quicksand. It gives you a clear perspective of the state in which you matriculate. It gives you a sense that you either clearly understand the history and you accept that, or you clearly understand it and you want to change it. So you have that rich part of history that, why should I know about the history of the state of Kansas? Is it important for me to understand the dynamics if you will, of what makes Kansas a great state? Charles Rankin: The definition of history is half fact, half fiction, half interpretation, and the thing that gets us in trouble is the interpretation piece. I try to teach it from an advantage point of fact, not only what I know but what I lived. Juanita McGowan: I think my elementary school experience taught me at a very early age that race and ethnicity was very critical, and what I found was that I needed to join this network of people who were committed to diversity and who would work on race and ethnicity and so that's always been the foundation of my work regardless of the role I play. Veryl Switzer: We have a long way to go yet, we said this 15 to 20 years ago and I think every effort must come about to give more people involved in a whole process, exactly individuals and community leaders. David Griffin: I think it should be told every day, because our young brothers and sisters who are on campus now, they don't understand. It's not all about Greek fraternities and Black Faculty Staff Alliance, and Black Student Union. Those things are critical, they are important, but there are other things that proceeded that to make those things happen. They need to understand that, they need to hear that history. David Griffin: I was born and raised in Orlando, Florida. It was not the Orlando, Florida that it is today. It was central to communities, you don't stray outside your community and felt safe as a young African American person at that time, very segregated, very prejudiced environment, but we felt happy and safe within our own community. I was very fortunate to have a set of parents that in my opinion were well beyond their time. My father grew up in Benton Harbor, Michigan, my mother grew up in Georgia ? two very segregated, and very prejudiced time during their time. But I was fortunate because my older brother, Earl and my younger sister Cathy and I were taught at a very early age in a segregated, and very prejudice environment of Orlando, Florida to always feel good about who you are, always feel good at the fact that you're black, and at the time they called us Negroes. And so my parents would say be proud that you're a Negro, be proud of your heritage. And we were taught about where we came from, at a very early age, in terms of our family history. Not necessarily going way back into history, but our immediate and past family, our relatives, those kinds of things. So we grew up in a family that taught us to respect others even if they didn't respect you and we were not on the same page, my brother and I especially we were not on the same page with that, but we understood that when my parents said something that's what you did without question, but to go out and be called names and being pushed. And my parents said, hey be strong enough. At that time and that's why I was even fortunate to have parents because I could have grown up very differently, and I had that structure, and I had that guidance to look at my pigmentation and look in the mirror and say I'm proud to be who I am. Charles Rankin: I was born on December 6th in 1937 in a little town called Winfield, Kansas. Growing up in Winfield was a very unique experience. Part of the experience was that everybody knew you, you know, when a child was being born in the community everybody prepared for that new child because most of the young people of my ethnicity were born at home. So we had midwives and midwives would deliver these children and people would come out on the porch and say the baby is born and so there was celebration when this child came into the world. The house was unique because my dad bought it from a guy by the name of Leo Camp and he bought the home for $200. It is what you call a shotgun house. Because you go in the front door and you could roll a marble and it could roll right at the back door. But all the additions were done by my father. My father was very unique individual, he had a lot of skills. He used to describe himself as Jack of all trade and master of none. My mother was a frustrated nurse, during that time Negroes couldn't attend the local nursing school so my mother had a book. It was called the Red Cross book. It was grey and she actually wore the pages out. Every illness that happened in our community, my mother knew how to handle it. She was very, very talented and it was the experience that she would've been a great nurse because she was interested in that profession. Juanita McGowan: I grew up in the ghetto in Kansas City, Kansas. My father died when I was five years old, it was just mom and my brother and then we lived in a predominantly black neighborhood the ghetto and then back in the day it was called urban renewal where the city government would take over those communities and then move you to other communities. The textbooks called it a ghetto, I called it home. So to me it was just a community of people I loved, and played with, and interacted with. I didn't necessarily see the poverty, I did not necessarily see the cry, I did not necessarily see the violence, and even when I go back to my home community now, people say are you afraid? No! This was home, so I have lived in that community and I breathe and felt that community, but I never saw the despair, I never saw the negative perceptions of what we understand the community to be. It was just a community where I had fun and we played. I just grew up with a lot of love and a very strong family, and I think when you have that foundation the outside or the ghetto then really doesn't set precedence. Kathy Greene: I'm Kathy Greene and I grew up in the borough of Queens, New York. Growing up it was really a diverse community. It was a predominantly black community, but we had members of other ethnicities. We had Puerto Ricans, we had Caucasians, we had interracial families and it was a very safe community and the neighbors knew each other and it was a fun community. Growing up I went to school district number 36 and it was in walking distance. It was seven blocks away, but my best friend across the street went to another public school because that was the dividing line, she went to public school when 18, so I think New York was so big like that it was the interesting point at my life. I usually was the youngest learn on the black, had good experiences, I learned a lot from my older friends, I learned how to count by playing the card game more, because of the cards. I had both my father and mother, I felt very lucky about that because I know some of my friends was not that lucky. My parents they were good role models for me, my mother worked as an assembly line she worked for a toy company, Ideal Toy Corporation. My father was in the Post Office, he worked downtown New York City and Christmas time I loved, my father would get bonuses and where he worked he would deliver to this delicatessen and he would come home with beautiful hams to eat and he always had a surprise for us, so my mother of course had the special toys, so I looked forward to that and had really good experiences. Veryl Switzer: My name is Veryl Switzer. I was born and raised in Winfield, Kansas. I was born and raised in Nicodemus, Kansas. Since 1950 I spent most of that time not only just here at K-State but in western Kansas. We were taught to take care of ourselves, both physically and intellectually and my mother had spent a great deal of time with me because I was the last one in the family of six children. And so I had my mother and my dad both out there in the same building they made a big experience on me. Ironically we didn't think about being poor, because we had to live a life and we couldn't do a thing about it. My mother spent her most of her time trying to raise six children. My dad kind of gave her the thumbs up to take care of his children as well as my mother's so it was an experience. I enjoyed fishing, learning how to ride horses. That was an experience that you had to be there to appreciate it. Charles Rankin: The community that I grew up in, I wouldn't say it was racist. I'd say it was more classic, you know, classism. As an example, the African American kids couldn't swim in a swimming pool but the white kids got to swim. If you went to the movie theater you had to sit in the section of the movie theater they called the crows nest. Even though you paid the same money, go into the theater, go upstairs to the balcony and sit in a cordoned off area in the back of the movie theater. If you went to a restaurant, you had to either take your food, buy it and leave in a sack or you sat in the back of the restaurant, not where the other folks sat but in the back. And the thing that if people would ask me what was the driving force that made me become a social activist, I would say San Francisco, California. Because my parents took their children out to San Francisco. All of my relatives lived in San Francisco, meaning my uncles and aunts. They all went out there in the 20s and so we went out there and daddy drove his little Chevrolet with his family in it to San Francisco. The innocent thing about the trip, and as we're talking about this I could see things that really impacted me. He couldn't rent a motel room, so he's driving from Winfield, Kansas to San Francisco and he drove as long as he could them we'd stop and we'd sleep on the ground and I remember that the ants bit me. So when people talk about camping I am not one of the supporters of camping because the red ants in New Mexico they bite you. But we finally got to San Francisco and my cousins were all about the same age was taking us out. There was a place called the Cliff House right on the edge of the west side of San Francisco and had five indoor pools, and so you could go swimming there. So my cousin Geraldine said, let's go swimming. Well I had to play like I could swam with white kids and black kids and brown kids before and I'd never had. So we going into the cliff house climb up a diving board, it was about 10 meters high, and I get up there and I did not know how tall 10 meters was until I got up there and I had to dive off because the little girl before me, dived off, you know, dived off the diving board, then my cousin was teasing me said was I going to let this little girl do something I was too scared to do so naturally I followed the lady and I parted my hair like Dagwood when I came out of the water, but then we go to a restaurant you could sit anywhere you wanted to, you go to a movie theater you could sit anywhere you paid. I took those concepts back to my hometown and refused to participate in that discriminatory practice. We went to California all the time, and every time I learnt something, I'd bring it back to Kansas, but interesting enough, the swimming pool's incident, is this little girl I mentioned was working there, and she was maybe 14 years old, and she says, make sure you take a shower. And I took a shower, and the kids were on the side of the pool hanging on the fence, because they thought, surely they would hang me, or kill me in that white swimming pool, and I dove in one in the swimming pool, and came up underneath the diving board on the other end. And the kids got their quarters out, run around and paid their quarters we integrated that swimming pool. So I think it was more of a tradition than a reality. I thought that people had always done that and they figured you were supposed to do that, but there really wasn't rule that you had to do that. And I think a lot of discriminatory practices are really predicated on those types of experiences. Upon the death of my mother, when I was in school I built her a cedar chest, and in that cedar chest we found documents from Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She was able to call to his attention the discriminatory practice that was taking place in the defense industry during World War II, and she said that the defense contractors and businesses and companies were not allowing African Americans or at that time Negros to work in the defense industry, and the government was being short sighted but not taking advantage of these people wanting to work. So he dispatched this the guy by the name of Robert Weaver, who was later on under Lyndon Baines Johnson's secretary of labor I believe and he came out to Kansas and my mother sat down and talked to him about what he needed to do to make the defense department hire Negroes at that time, so that they could work, and my mother did that. Kathy Greene: I was never one to demonstrate or picket, but we had a black student union that was developed and speaking about you know recruiting more students and making sure a fair treatment was given. When I first came on that campus in 1964, they had a shortage of housing but they had like one student, he was an older student who was getting an accounting degree and he was renting his house same as his wife across the street so a lot of us stayed over there, and it was integrated, there was only two blacks that stayed in the house and the rest were white. But I was originally assigned to a white roommate and all of a sudden she disappeared and I was like, what happened to so and so, and I found out later that she didn't want a room, her parents didn't want a room with me. I believe they were alumni and they were pretty big donors, and the Dean said, that's the assignment. We don't accept that she doesn't want a room with someone because of their race, and that's how it was put, and the dean was Dean Snodgrass, I will never forget her name. And she never told me that, but some other people knew about it and told me. Veryl Switzer: Coaches treated us well because of Bill Meek. They brought him in my Freshman year, and freshmen weren't eligible to compete at that time, but he would try to make it understood that I was part of that family. He was from Alabama. He coached at Maryland and so he had never coached a black player until I came here. We had a good relation too, maybe now students to compete in the big schools in Alabama, Florida, so those were our experiences, and we experienced that with a coach who had no experience in working with black students, and I was his number one guy he made me feel at home and that was big help, because I could depend upon him, in fact had it not been for him, I wouldn't have played in the East West Shrine game, but they were not going to recruit blacks or allow them to play, he convinced them by telephone that I would be the best football player, that I had the skills and demeanor to work with anybody and everybody. I didn't know that this all happened, and I came back after the term, after the Shrine Bowl I didn't realize that it had they had words said to each other about whether I'm going to get invited or not, but he wouldn't tell me. Now I was drafted to the NFL, I went to Green Bay, they didn't believe in paying the price these youngsters are getting today, but at least they recognized me from a stand point of being a drafted number four and he had all but one quarterback and that experience gave me a really a thumbs up type of attitude, and I was the only black player in Green Bay, when they picked me up there. I didn't know whether I wanted to go up there or not, the weather was an issue. Juanita McGowan: When I first arrived in the Manhattan community prior to working, well of course you're looking for a place to stay, and so I had looked in the paper, and had looked at what apartments were available in Manhattan, and so I called this one apartment community, and she said yes we have a two-bedroom apartment available, please come, and then my mother drove up with me, and so we checked into this apartment community and met with the manager, and she saw me and she said, oh! You know, I'm mistaken, I really don't have an apartment available and so my mom just kind of touched me on the side and she says my mom says oh that's so discouraging, she said my daughter's getting ready to move here I want to make sure she is in someplace that is safe, my mom says and we have the money to pay for the down payment and everything, and so she said I tell you what? Why don't you give me 30 minutes to kind of check our records again and then call me back and I'll let you know if apartment is available. And so when we walked what my mom said, don't worry you are going to get this apartment, so we came back in about an hour and she says, oh yeah I do have an apartment available for you. So I share that to say that when in the 1980s, the Manhattan community wasn't really ready for African American women, especially in this particular apartment community, I think I was the only African American who would be living in that apartment and so that was new, and so part of that pioneer experience is always being sometimes the first and sometimes when you're the first you can either be angry or frustrated or see it as an opportunity. And so when I moved to that apartment community and then stayed there, I was ending up helping her redesign the flower beds, how to improve the apartments and all that. I think one of my greatest support systems was Provost James Coffman, who was my mentor and who encouraged me to get with the Tilford Initiative, I remember Provost Coffman even looking at my salary at one point and saying your salary is not at the level of others in your position and therefore this is what your salary needs to be. Provost Coffman was probably one of my biggest advocates. I think he understood me, I understood him, we worked very, very well together. And I think people that knew me knew the quality of my work. But it's the challenges I experienced were students, very few though, students in the classroom were not used to an African-American instructor and then as you were promoted and you began to supervise people, really, every once in a while you had someone not comfortable with an African-American supervisor. Charles Rankin: I think K-State has evolved into a very, very positive environment from where it used to be and I think that what has occurred is that it's been very positive for the university. There's been many, many good people here who saw it as an opportunity to make the university grow, the demographics of the state of Kansas have changed immensely from when I came. Kansas used to be like 7 or 8% minority counting all groups, now it's almost 30% counting all groups. Communities have changed radically, they're coming to this university to get an education, the job market is absorbing their parents, they are able to afford places like this and KU and K-State, Wichita are all adjusting to that particular population that's coming in. You could see it in the athletic programs, the minority numbers are increasing each year participating in the sports program, generating the revenue, filling up the stadium, all that good stuff. David Griffin: When I came here there wasn't a whole lot of color. The color that you saw was athletic, we only had football players, a few basketball players. Dr. Jim Boyer, emeritus, was the first full professor of African American color on this campus. He laid the foundation for me, and when I use me generically me from all blacks who came to this campus. He did things that laid the pathway for me to come and begin to do the kind of things that I did. I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Boyer. That was a source of support because he would school me, in terms of you got to be aware of some things, whether you like them or not, they are part of reality. The reality is that there were three entities here, one being, the life inside the college of education, a life outside of Bluemont Hall, and the general population, of the university. Then there's the city of Manhattan. So there were three different segments that I had to understand. I think they should be told everyday. Because our young brothers and sisters who are in campus now, they don't understand it. If you mention Jim Boyer, if you mention Veryl Switzer, the majority of students wouldn't know who those two individuals were. So it's important that they understand constantly, that they have an opportunity because of those individuals who came before them. It's not all about Greek fraternities and Black Faculty Staff Alliance and Black Student Union. Those things are critical, they are important, but there are other things that preceded that to make those things happen. They need to understand that. They need to hear that history. Veryl Switzer: There were about 40 or 50 black students at K-State when I got here. We were given the task of breaking in, the folks getting in line. The white students did not care about us coming to K-State or competing. And those who gave us some attention in a lot of cases they ended up talking very negative about us, calling us names, that happened while I was here. I had my teammates now though were all white there were no black athletes in football, I was the only black football player at K-State at the time when I was here. That didn't bother me so much cause I'd been accustomed to different treatment and I challenged whoever was and I wanted them to know that I had a piece of the experience here as much as they did, and they would call out names, of N*** if you will, the only experience we had we didn't let it get to us on a personal basis, because they didn't know us personally. So those were some experiences we had to live with and I was isolated, most of the time to students on campus. We had a fraternity and we had a sorority here at K-State back in those days, so we kind of segregated ourselves if you will because we didn't feel that we needed any of those students and we tried to let them understand that the cost of education was also experienced by individuals so I did get a scholarship. I played football, safety, half back and so that was all part of it. I graduated in 1954. I was already committed to coming back K-State, when I came back about 10 years later, as the administrator we would have ended up doing a lot of visiting. Faculty accepted their task quite well, and so I didn't have any problems in the classroom they didn't think much of football players, was the issue, You didn't didn't know whether it was based on being a football player, or being black. David Griffin: Sixty-eight was a lot of revolutionary kind of things going on, you know, the war, Vietnam was cooking up very heavily, black power, a racial divide if you will, a lot of things going across America in sixty-eight that we had had. Sixty-three, Kennedy being assassinated, in sixty-eight Martin Luther King being assassinated, as a matter of fact I was 80 miles from Memphis when Dr. King was shot, and I remember very clearly driving with several of my athletic friends listening to the radio, we were jamming, had the radio booming high, and it cut off, and the news brief came on that Dr. King had been shot, and it was such a shock to hear that, we didn't believe it, we did not believe it, but it took a very few seconds to understand and believe that it was real. And so that even divided attitudes and opinions about race relations, just tore the fiber during that time, and so everything was centered around hatred and violence and suspicion, and non-acceptance, and that was hard to deal with. Juanita McGowan: I was in school but I was at an evening program and I remember they came running in saying Dr. King has been shot, Dr King has been shot, and I was like you're just in shock, no this cannot be true. Too young to truly understand the magnitude of what that meant, what that would mean for society, what would that mean for the voice? What would that mean for the movement? I think only until later and as I understood the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. King's contributions but shocked, hurt, but too young to truly understand what a great man he was. Charles Rankin: I was studying in my home in Wichita, Kansas. I remember it well, it was a Thursday night and they came across the TV that he's been shot. Concerned, concerned because during that period of time there were incidents in which riotous conditions broke out in several communities across this country and they were addressed from the vantage point of power. Wichita had its own experiences in which the National guard was patrolling the North East community, with their Jeeps, with guns, some of the kids had, and they were kids, teenagers had thrown rocks at cars coming through the North East section of that community, and when, King's event occurred I immediately knew that the cities in this country were going to erupt, and they did. Some people didn't subscribe to, or believe in the nonviolence movement, and some people did believe in that movement, but the reaction was to punish people who may have killed him, and not punish them per say, but take advantage of just disrupting the community. A lot of looting, a lot of breaking up of people's property and things. Cathy Greene: We had spring break in April, and we were driving to Colorado, me and another lady, and we heard on the radio about the assassination, I'll never forget that. I knew that he lived on edge, but I was shocked that that happened. He accomplished a lot with the civil rights era but he was focusing on the Vietnam war and bringing about peace. But he was in Memphis trying to help sanitation workers get better benefits and higher pay. My husband and I, my fiancee at the time, were on our way to be with his family, and I remember getting back on the campus, we were, blacks on that campus, we were more proactive and trying to get equal rights and the campus itself, there wasn't, uh, it was very accepting of us, but we were, it really got our attention to be part of the movement to continue the movement. Veryl Switzer: I was teaching at that time in Chicago, and as a result of Dr. King's visit I believe, that could have been one of the reasons I came back to K-State. I had a lot of activities taking place in Chicago. K-State people came after me, Ernie Barrett, he was the assistant athletic director, he came to Chicago to visit me about coming back to K-State to work. So I was recruited probably harder then, than I was recruited when I was in college but anyway, I agreed to come back, made a visit. Agreed to come back and to help set up some programs for minorities and blacks. I think he was encouraged, and the president of the University, I think were given encouragement, and by Dr. Martin Luther King that they ought to integrate their program here. I was the first black administrator to be a part of K-State's program when they finally hired me, and I set up a special program for black students recruitment, because they weren't being recruited. So that was one of the reasons why I could make a contribution to the administrative program and bring in, increase the number of black students. David Griffin: First of all, I think in my own opinion, to say to young people that you can be anything that you want to be and leave it at that. I'm not on board with that. I'm on board with you can be anything that you aspire to be if you work hard enough and dedicate yourself to that endeavor. Always tell students at any grade level that you understand it that there are ten, ten tiny words of power that I subscribe to and those ten tiny words of power is if it is to be, it is up to me. What that simply means is that don't rely on anyone for your success but you, because you're the major entity in your success. Am I saying don't rely on someone to help you? Absolutely not, I didn't get here without help, I had a whole lot of help, but I had to believe that it was my responsibility to step forward and do whatever it took, the sacrifice, the time, the energy to get to where I am today. It did not come without a lot of sacrifices, it did not come without a lot of guidance, a lot of counseling, a lot of love, I believe in challenges, if someone say I can do something, I would be the determinant factor whether I can do it or not. So I say to young people, aspire to be the best that you can be based on your ability and your ability to understand that you need to put forth the effort to get there. Let no one, no one indicate that you can't do something and you accept that at face value, because I always tell them that nobody high jumps to a low bar it's impossible. So you set the bar high, and you work to jump over it, and if you do that you can. Juanita McGowan: My advice to any student whether K through 12, first love yourself, love yourself believe in yourself believe that you have a purpose on this world, that you are blessed with gifts and when you are blessed with gifts, the darts can come but you are still focused, and always keep your eye on the prize. My mom always raised me she said Juanita, managing your own life is a full-time job you don't have time to manage other people's business. So stay focused on yourself, stay focused on your dreams, get a support system. As you grow older develop the spirit of discernment, who's for you, who's not, but I think just stay focused, and even through any difficult trial that I've ever experienced I've always just kept walking, I just always kept walking. I think my husband used to say he says Juanita, you'll just walk through a storm. I'm just going to walk through it. I'm just going to walk through it. Veryl Switzer: We've got a long way to go yet, we said this here fifteen to twenty years ago, we shouldn't have to be emphasizing where we're going from here, we ought to know the effort must come about to get more people involved in the whole process. Faculty, the individuals and then community leaders. Kathy Greene: I would want them to know that to really listen to their teachers, the teachers generally are there because they love teaching and they can learn a lot from their teachers and they could be good role models for them, and to really to focus on their studies and to pay attention to what they're learning and their curriculum and to set goals and to have dreams. My last words would be to follow that dream and to keep your eyes on that dream and your goals. Charles Rankin: Know yourself, be true to yourself, be honest with yourself, what you don't know seek out, be comfortable in your own skin, like yourself, like your wide nose, your thick lips, your nappy hair, be proud that you are here, you too, the society is ready for you. And I would advise young people, black, white, green or yellow, know yourself.