A Long Road: 50 Years of Experience from Five African American K-State Alumni Chapter 1

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 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.