Oral History Program Raymond Clark Interviewed by Cordon Gifford 22 April 1987 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Raymond Clark Interviewed by Cordon Gifford 22 April 1987 Copyright © 2014 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. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed Kelley Evans, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Clark, Raymond, an oral history by Cordon Gifford, 22 April 1987, 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 Raymond Clark. The interview was conducted on April 22, 1987, by Cordon Gifford, in the Sociology Department of Weber State University. Mr. Clark discusses his view on racism and discrimination at Weber State University throughout his career there. CG: I’m Cordon Gifford. I’m here on April 22, 1987, with Ray Clark who is the chairperson in the Sociology Department here at Weber State College. He was the first advisor to the Black Student Union in 1968. How long have you been at Weber State? RC: Since September ’65. CG: How did you become involved with the BSU? RC: I’m not sure. I think one of the reasons was that in the ‘60s there was a lot of activism going on in the country. There was the Civil Rights and the Human Rights movements. Social work, nationally, was heavily involved in protests and equality. We had quite a few black students in our program at that time. I guess because of the decisions I was making the social work department at that time, they felt that they could work with me. In order to start a student organization at that time, one of the things they had to have was an advisor. Well, there were no black people on staff on campus at that time. They asked if would sponsor them and I said I would be happy to. I think it was Skip Simmons, Major Sessions, and possibly Jerry Reed. Skip and Major came down to my house in Salt Lake a few evenings and we prepared the BSU constitution. We got it organized and got it passed through the student senate. Skip was the first president of the BSU. 1 CG: What were some of the events that led up to the beginning of BSU? I know blacks weren’t highly visible at the time. RC: They were invisible on campus. They were primarily athletes. Not many were graduated. There were no black role models on campus in terms of faculty or staff positions. It was a lily-white campus and highly conservative. It was the thing to do at that time—to organize and start getting some changes. I think it was appropriate because the system was responding to changes. With all that was going on with civil rights and human rights, I think people’s sensitivity was raised. In fact, some fantastic things occurred because of it. There were some real changes. Dr. Donald Stevens was a student at the time and is now a full professor in social work. We have three or four black staff on campus; prior to that, there were none. The visibility has changed—not to the extent that some of us would like, but it has occurred. CG: Do you think the BSU helped the recruitment or blacks or the retention? RC: I think in a couple of ways. I think they pricked the consciousness of the administration. I think they made them feel uncomfortable about the lily-white faculty we had at that time. I think they asked some tough questions. CG: Are the black students now different than what black students were like then? RC: Yes. Black students then were more active. They were more conscious of the history, I think. There was more of a commitment towards civil rights rather than an individual, “What’s in it for me?” I think students today have forgotten history and forgotten what it was like to be told you couldn’t eat at a restaurant. A lot of these students haven’t had that experience. Students then knew what that was like. I remember we hired a black 2 woman in Continuing Education. I’ll never forget the day we went out to the prison together for the first time. We stopped to get a bit to eat at a fast food restaurant on the way. She and I went in—me in my naiveté and she in naiveté—she was from California. We went in and sat down in a booth. In the booth across from us were two men and two women who were truck drivers. The waitress came and asked us what we’d like to order and a guy in the other booth said, “I didn’t know you served salt and pepper here.” She and I minded our own business because I think they were looking for trouble and they were huge. That was in the ‘70s. I don’t think kids today—sixteen, eighteen, twenty years old—have had those kinds of experiences that were kind of routine at that point. CG: There was more of a struggle for black power and black awareness. Where do you think it’s going now? RC: Certainly not towards black power. I think it’s primarily in terms of integration. I have a philosophy I strongly believe in, which is that people who have power make changes. People who don’t have power don’t make changes. Power is essential to any planned change, so I strongly support a black power kind of organization. I think it’s moved from black power to green power. You get green power by selling coke, for example. Black power is power in terms of knowledge and in terms of political savvy. We’d go out and teach residents about parliamentary procedure so they could go to city council meetings. The funniest thing was when we hire Daley Olmer. When I came here, I had been writing a number of grants. For about the first eight or ten years, all of the minority counselors were paid for through my grant. Well Daley, in all his brilliance, took a bunch of black students down to the welfare department and pickets. The first thing I get is a phone call from the welfare director, “Clark, what the hell are you doing?” I said, “What 3 are you talking about?” he said, “You’ve got Daley Olmer down here picketing the welfare department. Aren’t we paying his salary?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “He’s fired.” I said, “No, everything is okay, don’t worry about it.” He said, “Either fire him or you don’t get any more grants.” I was getting millions in grants. I talked to Daley and said, “What the hell are you doing?” I said, “I agree with you and I think you’re doing the right thing, but cool it for right now.” I called and said, “Let’s wait a week because he reacts and then he cools down.” For a couple days it was pretty scary, but he cooled down. We had a lot of money invested at the time. CG: When was that? RC: It was around ’70 or ’71. That was right after Daley first got here. We were paying his money through the Ethnic Studies positions. CG: Do you remember what he was picketing over? RC: Food stamps. There was a new food stamp procedure. They were having all of the people come in at the same time and it was hot and one of the elderly people passed out. We thought there was probably a better way to handle it than have them standing in line at the same time waiting two or three hours. They were picketing to have them change their procedure, which they finally did. CG: How would you describe the racism on campus? RC: I think in terms of condescending. I’m not sure that the school saw itself as overtly racist. I think it was more condescending—giving students grades when they didn’t earn them, excusing them for behaviors that they wouldn’t excuse somebody else for. As far as missing classes and attendance or not turning in assignments, they would say, “Oh 4 that’s okay, we understand because you’re black.” That, to me, is condescending. My responses were, “You can do it or not do it. If you don’t do it, I’ll fail you. If you do it, you’ll get a grade. If you fail, it’s not because you’re black, it’s because you didn’t turn your exams in.” I think we had some good successes. I think the biggest was the number of black students who went on to the University of Utah and got their master’s degree. CG: Why? RC: I think they took a look at the profession and saw that they could do some things. I think they got tied up in the process and said, “I can succeed here.” If you look across the campus here, in recent years we’ve had many successful black students. Don Carpenter, Brad King, Forest Crawford, Percy Divine. There have been numbers of them, both male and female, who have done very well here and gone on to do very well in the community. CG: Do you think the BSU helped in getting some of these black students through college and into a career? RC: I think it gave them a vocal point. One student was in the BSU and was the first Martin Luther King scholarship recipient in the nation. When the Martin Luther King scholarship came out after King was assassinated, our student here received the first scholarship given in the nation. He went on to graduate school at the University of Utah, graduated, and left. CG: Do you recall what some of the primary issues were on campus and became involved with the BSU? 5 RC: I think one was visibility in terms of hiring faculty and staff. I think that was one of the primary issues. I think the other was the implied racism in classes. One of the other issues that would bother everybody was, “What the hell terms do we use?” We use “black,” “negro,” “colored.” People had a hard time calling them black. They wanted to call them “colored people” or “Negros.” It was very difficult. We use the term “black” as everyday expression. In 1970, that wasn’t an everyday expression, it was very difficult for people to say. Books and literature and newspapers referred to the “negro,” and “colored people.” CG: Did you know anything about the Jim Robinson affair? Would you mind relating some of that? RC: I know very much about it. Jim wasn’t one of the first in the BSU. He came in about the third year. He came from California and he was a flaming, hard core black militant. He came here and they elected him president of the BSU. I can’t forget the first time I met Jim. It was a BSU meeting. I was told there was going to be a BSU meeting and I said I would be there. When Jim found out I was coming, he said, “No honkies are coming in—no white people are coming to this meeting.” I was the advisor and decided I was going to the meeting. I went in and sat down and Jim didn’t say anything. He never did say anything. He wanted to kick me out so bad but he knew he couldn’t do it. That was interesting. Apparently some people had been talking and told him, “Clark stays.” Jim and I developed a love-hate relationship. “You’re not going to screw with me but you don’t push me around.” We developed a mutual respect. CG: How long were you advisor to the BSU? 6 RC: I think probably until Daley came around. Probably three or four years. When Daley came on board, the first thing that we did was have Daley assume that responsibility. CG: What else do you remember about Jim Robinson? There were articles about him in the Signpost. RC: He was kidnapped. CG: It didn’t say in the Signpost that he was kidnapped. RC: It was a kidnapping. What happened was that the blacks and particularly Jim had a militant kind of reputation. My understanding is that the police department had a file of all the blacks. Jim was a very militant activist on campus, pushing the administration and pushing people. I don’t know how it happened but Jim was in my 9:30 class and didn’t show up that morning. During class, somebody came up and said, “There are some problems down in the cafeteria with Jim.” When I got down there, he was in the cafeteria and there were two great big guys pulling Jim into a Cadillac which was parked by the Fine Arts. Jim was screaming, “Raymond do something, they’re kidnapping me!” I went up and tried to talk to them and they pulled a gun on me. They threw Jim in the back seat and split. I went back to my office, I think Skip Simmons was with me, and called the Ogden City Police. I reported it and they said nothing. I called the Highway Patrol and gave them the information. They said, “Where are they going?” We said, “The Nevada border.” Well, it was interesting because we kept calling—we called the FBI, we called Salt Lake police, we called a lot of different people and nobody responded until two and half hours after our first call. By that time they were already across the state border. I had no proof, but the whole thing seemed to have been 7 coordinated with the local and campus police. It was coordinated and they had him out of the state in no time. CG: Who were they? RC: Revenuers. They were bounty hunters. He had a parking ticket or outstanding warrant in California. Nothing serious, but he busted bail and came here and they sent the bounty hunters after him. It was very questionable. Then they threw him in jail in California. I wrote a letter and couldn’t get a response. I wrote my brother in Sacramento and asked him to visit. My brother, Ben, when to visit him and wrote me a letter describing the conditions Jim was in, which were horrendous. Just ghastly. It was like those pens they had in Vietnam. Jim was there for quite some time. Once he got out, he came back to visit but never came back as a student. CG: When was the last time you heard from him? RC: Jim was in town…maybe in ’76. He called and we talked for a minute and that was it. I haven’t heard from him since. CG: Do you think the campus administration was in on removing him from this environment? RC: There were a lot of rumors that the campus police were involved. Strictly rumors. Nothing was ever verified. CG: What were your suspicions? RC: They were not unhappy that he was gone. I guess it’s very hard for me to think of wrestling somebody down in a student union building with guns and not have our security people be involved or be there to stop it. If our security is that lax, we’re in deep trouble. 8 CG: Racism? RC: Elements of racism. Elements of fear. Here was a guy who was spouting rhetoric that was inflammatory and different than a lot of the other blacks on campus. I’m not sure that a majority of blacks on campus, at that time, subscribed to Jim’s violent rhetoric. But I think Jim went to the far end of the continuum to make people listen. And they did listen, to a certain extent. CG: What was the response of the BSU? How many members were there at the time? RC: The membership had always been minimal in terms of minimal numbers. There were ten, maybe fifteen hardcore people. They were outraged when Jim was taken. There was paranoia. Disbelief that it could happen. CG: You said you wrote a constitution for the BSU. What were some of the goals of the BSU? RC: One was to develop the Ethnic Studies program. That started out of a black history class that Dr. Ulibarri taught. He and Gary Carson were the first directors of the Ethnic Studies program. Gradually, Gary dropped out and Dr. Ulibarri took it over. This is a Black Student Union agenda. “One: the BSU requests and complains against the Coach Stark. The BSU demands and apology from the coach for his behavior, which is unbecoming for a college coach, who has the responsibility to frame young minds at an institution of higher learning. The BSU emphasize that Coach Starks complies with NCAA rules in the recruiting program and neglected to recruit blacks first as students and secondly as athletes.” The real concern was that we recruit athletes and then as soon as their eligibility was up, they were gone and didn’t graduate. 9 CG: Some of these issues haven’t changed. RC: “The BSU requires tutors and programs financed by the athletic department.” Blacks were also wanting a Black Studies program taught by black instructors. CG: What was the perception of blacks by the administration? RC: I’m really not sure. I think it ran the whole gambit. Some concerned. Some patronizing towards them. Some seeing them as less-than full-class citizens. At that time blacks couldn’t hold the priesthood in the LDS church. There was finally the revelation that they could. There were a lot of issues like that. CG: Did blacks feel that there were a lot of racial issues on campus? RC: Yes. CG: What was the black view of whites at the time? RC: Suspicious. Non-trusting. CG: Did the attitude change after the Mormon revelation about blacks holding the priesthood? RC: I don’t think so. CG: Was there a response to that? RC: They said, “We knew this was going to happen.” CG: There’s been a comment that at that time, students were younger than they are now. RC: I think we have some older blank students than we did before, but I’m not sure that they were necessary younger. I think that we have more students and we have older females 10 coming back and retired military blacks who are coming back, but by and large, the typical black student here is in their twenties. That’s pretty much what it was then. CG: Have you kept up your affiliation with the BSU at all? RC: Yes and no. I’ve been aware of what was going on, but it’s not my role to intervene in it. The purpose of the BSU was to take care of and control the BSU themselves. I think as soon as we could get the black advisors and black faculty, they had the role models they wanted. There really wasn’t any need for me to get involved in it. CG: When you were involved in starting it, did you think black leadership would be better? RC: Yes, absolutely. I said we needed a black advisor. I said, “I’ll be the advisor, I’ll held do what we need to do until there is someone appropriate.” I think Darnell was the first black advisor, and then Daley took over. Darnell was on campus before Daley. CG: Do you think blacks have any more advantages now than they did then? RC: I think the poor are getting poor and the rich are getting richer. Whether you’re black or white, it’s the same. If you’re a poor white, you’re getting poorer; if you’re a poor black, you’re getting poorer. I think there’s more acceptance of human differences today than there was then. That could be blacks, disabled, the Chicanos, the funny looking. There’s more acceptance of diversity. CG: Do you think blacks are more involved now in school policy making? RC: Yes. We have Dr. Carpenter who is black and sits on a number of committees. Daley and Darnell are in administrative positions. CG: When I’ve talked to other people, they’ve said that was one of the original goals—to get blacks into more policy-making areas. 11 RC: I think it’s superb. I’m still dissatisfied with the number of blacks who have faculty positions. We have a lot of blacks in staff positions, but the only blacks in faculty positions are Dr. Carpenter and a woman they hired in Family Life this year. Carpenter is the first tenured black professor on this campus. CG: When did he get hired? RC: Twelve or fifteen years ago. He graduated from here. He was around when all of this was happening. CG: Did you do anything to help get him hired? RC: I was responsible for hiring him. CG: What are some of the drawbacks of the BSU? RC: I think one of the drawbacks I’ve seen with the BSU is that they need to take a concern and develop it…say they’re going to have a social, then just have a social and forget everything else. Whatever they’re going to do, then do it up in style and publicity. What I see them doing is trying to do lots of different kinds of things and all of them are okay, but it doesn’t give them the visibility. An example is black emphasis week. Let’s take one of those issues and develop the hell out of it. CG: Is racism as prevalent on campus as it was? RC: I don’t buy that. I don’t think it’s as prevalent as it was in the ‘60s and ‘70s. I think it’s getting better. I think that sometimes students will use differences for lack of responsibility. They’ll say, “You’re doing this because I’m black,” not because they didn’t do what they were supposed to do. In other words, “You failed me because I’m black,” 12 instead of, “You failed me because I failed the class.” In some instances, they use it as a crutch. CG: What sort of achievements were there in the BSU? RC: I think getting the minority positions filled was an achievement. Hiring blacks. Students and faculty going to national black leadership conferences. Carpenter would take black students back to the National Black Social Workers Association conferences, which gave them exposure to national leaders. I think visibility and the things we see today as far as black faculty and staff. We’ve seen some changes. Changes are small but they do come. CG: Were you developing leadership specifically at that time? RC: I think if you look at Tony Anthony King, who was one of the presidents, Anthony had some very good skills. I think that some of them developed leadership skills that enabled them to survive the system, get some power, make some decisions, and change some things. CG: Did you get any black speakers on campus? RC: I can’t remember specifically who, but they were brought in. CG: How about recruiting? RC: The BSU went out recruiting all the time. Darnell would go to California to recruit. CG: For students? RC: For athletes. Darnell was successful in bringing some of them here. He did a good job. Darnell and I and Ulibarri were doing a lot of ethnic awareness workshops with the 13 Forest Service, the government, the state. The campus here probably had the best reputation in the state for ethnic studies. We went all over the place and spoke continuously to groups. I think it helped some of the local people who had never been exposed to blacks or Chicano or Indians. I have a sneaky idea that you can’t teach tolerance in terms of separation. I think you teach tolerance by interacting with one another because we see the differences aren’t all that great. In fact, the differences are very small. CG: Is there anything you’d like to add before we finish? RC: I think some small gains have been made and there’s still a long way to go. We still only have one tenured black faculty person on campus. We have more who are Indian—from India—on campus than we do blacks. CG: What do you attribute that to? It’s been almost twenty years and there’s still so few. RC: We hired a black woman out of California and she lasted a year. She couldn’t bear the amount of money and the social environment wasn’t conducive. I think it’s hard to recruit in terms of salary. It’s also hard to recruit career women because there aren’t black males. This is kind of a wasteland. CG: Do you see that changing? RC: No, I don’t see it changing. CG: Thank you for your time. RC: My pleasure. 14