Oral History Program James H. Gillepsie Richard Sterken DD MM YYYY i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah James H. Gillepsie Interviewed by Richard Sterken 15 February 1971 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Gillespie, James, an oral history by Richard Sterken, 15 February 1971, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with James H. Gillespie. The interview was conducted on February 15, 1971, by Richard Sterken. Gillespie discusses the black man in Utah. RS: How long has the black man been in Utah? JG: Well Dick, the black man came to Utah with the original pioneers. Some of them came in as free men and women and some of them came in as slaves. There is about the same percentage of blacks in Utah now as there was in 1849 when the pioneers came into the valley. RS: Was Utah a slave state at that time? JG: No, Utah was not a slave state but as you know, some of the pioneers originally came from Missouri, which was a slave state at that time. The type of work they did was mostly house work and some farming but there is very little written history on the black man in the early part of the development of Utah. One of the original pioneers was named Green Flake. There is a black man that works at Hill AFB; he is Green Flake III, descendent from the early pioneer. RS: How has the structure of the black man's society here in Utah changed from early times? JG: It has changed a lot, because at first, as I said, they were mostly servants and then when the railroad came in, the black man (of which there is very little of this in history) helped construct the transcontinental railroad. Most of them were cooks and they did some labor work; when I came here in 1942, about 80% of the black people in Utah 1 worked for the railroad as cooks, porters and waiters, mostly in these servant type jobs. So as you know, the railroad is a dead organization in the passenger part. It is really on the decline. We used to have twenty trains going through here a day, now we have only two so we have gone into government work and most of the black people work for the Department of Defense or Department of Defense Contractors. These would be Hill AFB, Defense Depot Ogden, Tooele and they work at such Department of Defense Contractors as Boeing, Thiokol, Hercules and so forth. There are very few black people working for state, county and local Government. We don't have a black automobile salesman in the entire state of Utah. This is how a lot of people make their money. There are very few blacks in the sales field. RS: Are the problems facing the black man different now than when they first arrived in Utah? JG: The situation is about the same because the problem is racial discrimination. They said that the black man should get an education to get a job, but as we go along and the higher educated black man is compared to a white man, the wider the spread of income. There is about $1,000 difference in the yearly income of a white person with a high school diploma and a black person with a diploma. But when you get up to a black man with a PhD and a white man with a PhD, there is about a $7,000 difference a year in their income. Right now there are many black college graduates in certain fields, especially in the field of the IBM Program which is a wide open field now; it would be easier for a black person to get a job than a white person. This is because of long time discrimination. They have very few blacks in their organizations and they are told they should integrate. If a black person would hire in today, he might start out with $8,000 a 2 year and a white person might start out with $7,000. But, within five years, the white person probably would be making $15,000 and the black man probably about $10,000. We have a major, problem of getting promoted. There are no blacks in key supervisory positions. I shouldn't say there are none, there are very few. None has any key jobs at a personnel office and this is where you find out about jobs. RS: Is this typical in just Utah, or throughout the whole country? JG: Well, it is somewhat the whole country Dick, but we have a problem in Utah that we have no place else. I don't know what your religious background is Dick, and it doesn't matter, but I am Episcopalian and my minister does not work outside of the religion. In the majority religion here the ministers are called bishops who are non-salaried and as a rule, hold key supervisory and key personnel positions and they hold high jobs in employment security. So if I was looking for a job and my bishop was Chief of Personnel at Hill AFB, then I would have a better opportunity of getting a job than a person that didn't have anyone in a key position and this is the only religion in which the ministers work. If I was looking for a job in Utah now, I would rather be a returned missionary than a returned black Vietnam veteran with a Congressional Medal of Honor. Because when I go to look for a job, I will be talking to someone of my religion, my color, and I might live in the same neighborhood. This is one of the major problems in employment in the State of Utah. RS: This applies to all religions other than the dominant one in Utah? JG: Yes, but blacks have a problem that whites don't have because you can't look at a person and tell his religion but you know there are very few blacks in the majority 3 religion in Utah so if he tries to get favors saying he is of the majority religion, I am sure he would be rejected. RS: Are there any ghettos in the State of Utah? JG: There is a ghetto here Dick, but it is a one story ghetto. A lot of people when you talk about ghettos think you talk about the high rise apartments, a lot of people in one area, but most of the blacks in Utah live between 23rd and 33rd, west of Grant. There isn't a house in this area that is under 50 years old. Well, you heard the saying that when blacks move into the area then it starts deteriorating. Really and truly, before blacks move in they are deteriorated already. Now let’s talk about a 50 year old house - how much longer is it going to last, not much longer. Mostly, if you go looking for a house Dick, I guess sitting here you might think there is no housing problem, but we do have a housing problem because if you would call now and say you were black and were looking for a house, they would try to place you in the north end of town or the old part of Washington Terrace between 33rd and 23rd west of Grant. If a white person wants to buy a house he finds a house and then looks up a realtor. Well, if a black person wants to buy a house he has to go to a realtor and the realtor will find a house for him. You can't live in the area of your choice if you are black. RS: Well, we are talking right now from Washington Terrace. Personally, did you have trouble moving out of the black community into, I guess I would have to say a white area? JG: About seven years ago, eight years ago now, I bought a new house over in Riverdale and they busted my windows out and threw tar all over the place and telephone threats and so forth, but the house I am living in now, it was in a home show. I came over and 4 looked at it, liked it and bought it. I can't say this is a white area because I bought the first house in this sub-division. So if this locale was integrated, the white people integrated my neighborhood, I didn't integrate theirs! As a so-called "leader" Dick, I believe in telling my people that they should have good jobs, nice homes, but before I tell them they should do it, I should do it myself and I think black people relate to black people. If a white person makes $50,000 a year very few black people will say "I want to make $50,000 a year because he is making it, but if a black person makes $50,000 a year and blacks relate to blacks, then he will say, "if old Gillespie can make $50,000 a year, I am smarter than he is so I can do the same." So this is the same with housing. I moved out here on the 10th of September 1969. I have two black neighbors now and this is good. These people did live in the central city and decided that they would buy a better house, so I have a black neighbor right over to the South and a black neighbor to the North. It is a good investment. If I paid $40,000 for a house in this neighborhood, in 10 years it will probably be worth $50,000. If I paid $15,000 for a house in the central city, in 10 years it will be worth $8,000 so it is not only that you live in a decent house, in a decent neighborhood, but also it is a good investment. I believe in schooling for my children. I said I would talk about education; but it is the black ghetto education that still has problems, but it is absolutely necessary for everyone. Is it more important for a black man to get an education than it would be for a white man? Of course, because when you have a job advertised, it says you must have a college degree. Well, no black is going to be able to apply unless he has a college degree but with whites having friends in key positions, they can apply and be accepted without the mandatory qualifications and no one would know it. So within three blocks of this house Dick, there are 5 three brand new schools - an elementary, a junior high and a high school. This is one thing I like about the majority religion. They believe in their children getting a good education and they can't keep my child from getting a good education if I live in the same neighborhood. This is important when you choose a place to live. You should be sure that you have good schooling in that area. I really don't like school buses Dick. They are dangerous and the children are away from home for a long time. So as far as I am concerned, this is the perfect area for a person to live in who is rearing a family. RS: Jim, what needs to be improved in the areas of employment, education and housing and as a second part of the question, does one hinge on the other or is each a separate goal? JG: Of course, Dick, in the NACCP we have three things we call our major goals. These are employment, housing and education and we put employment number one, because without employment you can forget about housing and education. But to improve employment, we need to get black people in key personnel positions and key jobs in the employment security offices because most of your information is passed on by word of mouth. If there are one hundred jobs available at Defense Depot Ogden tomorrow and they are going to advertise it in the newspaper, the thirty-four people that work in Civilian Personnel out there would have taken this information back to their community and the people would have applied for the jobs and they would have been taken before any black people knew about it. I don't believe in just hiring a person because he is black, I believe that they should have a person in this position who should be a qualified person. Maybe he couldn't have all the basic qualifications because of discrimination. A few years ago they hired some people at Internal Revenue and they said they should 6 have a background in banking or working for a finance company. Well no blacks in Utah had ever worked for a bank or a finance company so that eliminated all of them from applying. So I think maybe the standard should be lowered so they could get in and get some training. On housing- you need a decent house, a decent neighborhood for your children, the security. If you will notice, most of the pilferage, the houses that are being broken into in the Ogden City, now I want you to watch in the Standard-Examiner, most of them are in somewhat designated ghetto because people live close together. Everyone knows when the other person isn't home. Now here, my neighbors seldom know when I am not home unless they see me leave. But when you have your houses so close together where there is no driveway, everyone knows what is going on. I could probably beat my wife and family half to death and nobody would know about it here but down in the area where the houses are so close together, if you speak above a whisper, your neighbors are calling the police. These things are important and a lot of people don't understand it. In the so called ghetto, they are over-patrolled. They have over fifteen police cars on duty as a rule-ten of them below Washington Boulevard. Some of the black people say, "We are surrounded by policemen without any protection." Now to go into the third area, education. Of course education is very, very important because there are no jobs now. When I first started working for the government, we had people that were just laborers, forklift operators. All they did was unload boxcars but as you know working for the government, you have to fill out papers now and we have a lot of explosive type equipment and fragile equipment and what can a person do who can't read. He might be throwing a $500.00 vacuum radio tube around and damage it because he can't read. So it is absolutely necessary to get an education. If your parents 7 don't have an education, then they can't get the type of job so that they can afford to get you an education, so this is why we say employment relates to education. Housing somewhat relates to education because if you are in a neighborhood where everyone speaks poor English, then there is the possibility your children will speak poor English. When I was back in Mississippi in 1969, blacks thought whites always spoke good English, so with my children speaking good grammar they didn't say "your children speak good grammar", they say "your children sound like white children." I pity the teachers that teach in the suburban schools because as a rule, they are getting a finished product. They are not used to a child coming to an English class and saying "I are or I is" and this is the problem that the teachers have in the central city. We have all of the poor uneducated living in one area. Where my children go to school here at Roosevelt and Bonneville, I would say there aren't five children in the two schools that come from an educationally depressed home. Where you have at Jefferson Elementary down in the central city a class of thirty, you will probably have twenty-five from educationally depressed homes. Now, do you see the problem that the teacher will have? Really and truly if you don't reduce a class size Dick, no one is getting an education. They are more or less baby-sitting. Yes, they are baby-sitting because if your child has a problem at home at night and he has two illiterate parents, now who is going to help him? If the teacher has twenty-five children in her class from this type of home she can't help them. I think that we should if it takes bussing to distribute the class load so it won't be such a burden on the teacher with so many children with problems; or something else, we could help the college students get and education. Maybe we could go to Weber College and we could have a salary we could pay the college students to 8 tutor the elementary students and this would help two people get an education. I have written a proposal to HEW for this. But you know, I work for the government, I have to work for a living and it takes a lot of time. But the NAACP isn't only working to eliminate discrimination, we are working to help people and if you help a black person you are going to help all other ethnic groups. RS: This project Head Start I have heard a little bit about, is that helping? JG: It helps a lot Dick. They call it Head Start but I think the name should be changed from Head Start to Catch Up because they are really not getting a head start. Some of these children are from homes where they don't have a television, no newspapers or magazines. Some of the Mexican children - their mothers and fathers both speak Spanish. Do you think that this child can enter kindergarten with two parents that speak a foreign language and compete with a child whose parents have been speaking English all their lives? We have three or four televisions right here, ten or twelve radios, newspapers and magazines, you see them scattered all over the floor, but this is educational. The people you associate with talk constructive conversation. Look at Travel - I talked to a twenty-seven year old lady the other day who had only been from Ogden to Salt Lake City. She has never been out of the state of Utah and she has five children. Now think of the problems with her children competing when they go to school. Well the Head Start is one of the most valuable programs that they have established in the last ten or fifteen years. RS: Well Jim, I would like to thank you for your time and your interest in the subject and your comments. 9 JG: Well Dick, I would like to say before the tape runs out, that anyone in your class that would like to ask a few questions, if you want to ask questions about different ethnic groups, if you want to ask questions about a Mexican-American I think you should ask a Mexican-American, the same with a Japanese or an Indian. If you want to ask any questions about blacks, I will do the best of my ability, to answer them for you and be glad to do it. Thanks Dick. RS: Thanks Jim. 10