Oral History Program Brenda Burrell Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 26 August 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Brenda Burrell Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 26 August 2019 Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii 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. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ____________________________________ 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 interviewer, 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 This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Burrell, Brenda, an oral history by Sarah Langsdon, 26 August 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Brenda Burrell 26 August 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Brenda Burrell, conducted on August 26, 2019, at the Second Baptist Church in Ogden, Utah, by Sarah Langsdon. Brenda discusses her life, her memories, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Lorrie Rands, the video technician, is also present during this interview. SL: This is Sarah Langsdon and I'm here interviewing Brenda Burrell. It is August 26, 2019, and we are at the Second Baptist Church on 27th and Lincoln. Thank you, Brenda, for agreeing to do this with us. We're going to go ahead and just start at the beginning and move forward. So tell us where and when you were born? BB: I was born in Dayton, Ohio, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base on July 21, 1950. SL: Are you an only child or do you have siblings? BB: I have two brothers, I'm the only girl, and I'm the oldest. SL: What was your father's name and what did he do for a living? BB: My father's name was James Cook Walker, he named himself, and he was in the United States Air Force for thirty years, I guess. SL: What do you mean by "he named himself?" BB: He was born JC, with no birth certificate, the youngest often. His mother died in childbirth and that's all anybody knew. When the war came on, World War II and the Korean conflict, he joined up as a teen. He lied about his age, but they wouldn't accept him with initials J.C. so they kicked him out of line and told him to 2 stand over there until he came up with a name. He remembered James was a name in the Bible, and because he was an uneducated black man, the only job he was going to get would be a cook, in the army, which eventually became the Air Force. So he named himself James Cook, his last name was Walker. SL: Well there you go. That's interesting. What about your mom, what was her name and what did she do? BB: Her name is Sadie Corrine Watson Walker. For most of my growing up years, she was a stay-at-home mom, but she ran a beauty shop out of our house. She just did people's hair. She was a licensed cosmetologist. SL: So did you grow up in Ohio with your dad in the Air Force, or did you guys moved around? BB: We moved around a lot. I was only there for two weeks after I was born. Two weeks before I was born, he left for the Korean Conflict, so he didn't see me or hold me or anything until I was two years old. But after my mother could travel at the end of the second week, she moved back to Georgia which is her home, and that's where we lived for two years until my dad came back and then we traveled the world in his career. I really don't have any place I call "home home," but I've lived in Texas longer than I've lived anywhere else, and I've lived in Utah twenty years, so it's becoming home. SL: So you moved all over, you said Texas was the longest you lived. When were you in Texas? 3 BB: I finished high school in Texas, we came back to-the Air Force calls it state-side-- -so I could get ready to go to college and he got stationed in Texas. I stayed in Texas graduated college and married. My husband and I moved to St. Louis, my daughter was born there. Eventually we moved back to Austin, Texas, is where most of my career in education took place. SL: When you were a little girl, who were some of the women you looked up to and why? BB: Both my mother and my grandmother, I tell people all the time that I come from a family of rebels. They raised Hell when there's any injustice anywhere for anybody. So we're advocates from way back. My grandmama Georgia who is really my great grandmother saw her mother sold on a slave action block in Louisville Georgia, so that is the beginning of our rebellion against wrong. That's been passed down from generation to generation. My mother, in spite of segregated South, she was a brilliant person, but she was poor, so there wasn't money to go to college. She finished high school at fourteen, took a train to New York and worked for a Jewish family as a nanny, trying to earn money to go to school, cause that's what she wanted to do, but she never went to college. So those two women were powerful influences for me growing up. After I got old enough to figure out not only was I black and female, then outside people began to have influences on me, such as Nikki Giovanni, the poet, Maya Angelou. I loved the dignity of Coretta Scott King. I took about eight hours time to try to get my hair to look like Angela Davis. So those are all my heroes. 4 SL: So were you encouraged, then, since your mom couldn't go to school, to pursue an education? BB: It was a given. They didn't know what college was, they didn't know how you got in it, they knew it cost a lot of money, but whatever it cost, you were going to go, because education was the way up and the way out. It was like written in the stars, even though I didn't know what college was. They didn't either. SL: So where did you end up going? BB: University of Texas at Austin. SL: And what did you study? BB: Education. SL: Education. So how was that? BB: I went to school where there were 40,000 students. 213 of them were African American. I knew them all by name, I knew their mama, their daddy, their brothers and their sisters, because you had to stick together to survive in that very white and very racist institution at the time. SL: So this was probably late 1960s? BB: I graduated from high school in 1968. So the fall of 1968 I began college. SL: What kinds of things were you involved in at the University of Texas at Austin? BB: Well the first year you try to figure out which way is up. And so there were several incidents that occurred that slowed my progress down. Took chemistry 5 401, which is a two-lab chemistry course. There were probably 600 freshman in there and nobody wanted to be my partner. After the first week I went to the professor's office and said, "I can't, I've asked twenty people and everybody says, 'I've got a partner, I've got a partner."' He told me that wasn't his problem, and so the next week I went to the lab to try to do a two-man experiment by myself and blew up the lab. So I changed my major from chemistry to education. Anyway, things like that happened, so the first year I was really just trying to survive and stay above board and stay in classes where people didn't want you or treat you well. After that I got very active in the cultural scene, I served on many of the university committees, trying to bring diversity to the campus in terms of the kinds of artists they brought there. I was very politically active, this was also the time of the Black Panthers and Huey P. Newton, and so there are pictures of me standing out in front of the main building doing Black Panther thing. I lived in Austin, my family was twenty miles away at Bergstrom Air Force Base, so I was also very active in the community, both the church and civic organizations, trying to do things to improve the quality of life of all people. SL: So how did you meet your husband? BB: The University of Texas. His major is architectural engineering. He was the only Black in the department, and one day I was trying to cut through the architecture building, cause it's hot in Texas, so you cut through buildings, going through the air conditioning. He was just sitting there and he looked just kind of out of it, and I said, "You ok?" Black man, right, but I thought, you kind of look out for one another, and he had transferred to UT from a junior college up in San Antonio, 6 Saint Phillips, and it was just blowing his mind. You kind of know that look. That's how I met him, but we didn't date or anything for a while. SL: And then, what's his name? BB: That's my first husband, his name is Larry, and he is the father of my daughter. When my daughter was fourteen he passed away from sickle cell anemia, which is traditionally an African American disease. When Kim my daughter was nineteen, then I married the man you've met, which is Elliot, and we've been married little more than twenty years. SL: So you met your first husband, when did you guys get married? BB: After we graduated with the Bachelor's degrees. SL: Ok, then you guys moved out of Texas? BB: I stayed in Texas the first year to teach. I started teaching the year they integrated the Austin Independent School District. The teachers had already been switching over, and it didn't go smoothly, so it was a rough year. I stayed there four years while he completed his Master's degree and then we moved to St. Louis. SL: So what was it like teaching a newly integrated school as a Black woman? BB: The first year, the first six weeks we didn't teach at all. We spent our day breaking up riots, what we now call it, when you shut down or shelter in place. You hold all the kids here while we try to haul three hundred away that had just tore up the cafeteria. It was a very stressful time, but you're young, you're 7 energetic, and you're positive that you can make a difference. I took my little group and they knew that anything went down, you came to my room, and then they brought their friends, so I'm holding eighty kids in a classroom meant for twenty. But they felt safe there and the tide was turned. After six weeks of school, we had a massive riot that we could not control, because the high school kids had come over to the junior high and it was Black against White and the Hispanics were picking a side, and the fight was on. We knew we could not control that many, and they called SWAT, I mean, it was more than just the police that came. My involvement in the incident started because Jonathan, a young twelve-year-old white boy in my class, had heard me every day for six weeks, saying, "This is a safe place, come here if something is going down, you hear anything, you come tell me." He comes flying in the room, I'm in the middle of class-and my name was Newman then. "Ms. Newman, Ms. Newman, the niggers are fighting, the niggers are fighting!" I took off running, and that was this massive riot that really shifted the tide at the school, because we knew we could not function like that. I lost Jonathan for a week, he wouldn't come to class. I was like, "Where's Jonathan? I see him in the hall," and they say, "He's hiding out in the bathroom, he's not coming to class." So I went in the boys' bathroom and I got him and I said, "Jonathan, why aren't you in my class? You're cutting my class." He said, "I-I-I'm sorry, miss, I'm sorry." I said, "What are you sorry about? Kids could have got hurt that day if you hadn't come and got me," He goes, "Well, I said that word." I said, "What word?" He said, "That n word." I said, "Jonathan, in your mind, who was fighting?" He said, "Well, the white kids 8 and the-the-the ... " "The what?" "The niggers." "And you came and got the?" "The teacher." I said, "Ok, you're good. Come on, let's go to class." Today Jonathan is a pastor in Dallas, Texas and he tells people all the time I'm his mama. People kind of look at the old Black and lady and go, "Uh." But those are kind of life changing moments that affect both his life and my life. SL: So after that big riot, you said that it... BB: It shifted. We knew we had to do something different. So we shifted systems, we altered the bell schedule, so the high school kids wouldn't know when we were getting out or when there were mass of kids in the hall. We started doing lunch not as massive schools, but in small units, like the kids would go get their lunch and then come back to class, you know, all kinds of things to help correct the situation. We held class, and if the bell didn't ring, you didn't let them out, you just kept on teaching. That meant somewhere else, something was going on. I had activities, and then when the bell did ring we were all mad, we were like, "No! We're in the middle of" You know? So we altered about the next month and it settled down. But we, the adults, had to do something different to show the kids "we're really going to have school. And you really are going to learn something, and we're not going to let you all continue to do battle" which is what they were doing. It didn't end everything, because by the end of the year I had two guns and about four chains in my drawer, cause that was the deal. No questions asked. You got something, you brought something to protect yourself, that's not going to work, I'm your protection. Bottom drawer of my desk is open, put it in there. I'm afraid of guns and so I had to call my dad to come up, "Can you get 9 these things out of my drawer?" Because at the end of school they were going, "We're going to do it one more time!" You know, for the cause. But it was a good year. And we settled it down. SL: So that was your first year, and then you went back for a second year. BB: I went back for four years total, and each year it got better. We created learning communities, a human relations committee. We did crazy things. The teachers played football one night for the football game, we suited up and the other school's like, "Who are these old people out here?" Just anything to bring some feeling of community to the group. We continued to teach, we altered curriculums, so it was more multi-cultural in terms of bringing in characters and people and, events that aren't in the book kind of thing. So we did a lot, and then over the years it kept getting better and better. The last year I was there, I don't think we had one group incident. There were always fights or something like that, but no group incidents. SL: How many other African American teachers were there teaching with you? Do you remember? BB: I do not. I, would say a significant number, because it was in Austin, the east side is the Black side of town. The school was on the east side and so they knew they had to put some Black teachers in there, but we were the majority? No. We weren't even a third of the faculty. SL: But there were others, not just you? BB: Yeah. Maybe seven to ten. 10 SL: So, you taught for four years there and then... BB: I left and went to St. Louis. SL: St. Louis. So did you pick up teaching again in St. Louis? BB: I did. I taught at Normandy Elementary, which is right adjacent to the University of Missouri and I taught in their gifted program. After they found out I was gifted certified, I was hired to teach social studies and I developed a program with the University of Missouri, so that these low-income, predominantly African American students would have a vision of what college is about and how to get to it. You could just walk through the fence, we didn't even have to have a bus. Just walk through the football field, walk through the fence, and you're on the University of Missouri campus. We did some good things trying to include that school. I was there for three years and then in the middle of all of that, I had a baby, and then we moved back to Texas because my father was ill. SL: Ok. So you're back in Texas. BB: My father passes away. I worked at Texas Education Agency, and then I returned to the classroom because I miss the kids. I went from a total of seventeen years in the classroom into administration and I had to be talked into it, cause one day something happened, the building principal made a bad decision, I went, "I can do better than that!" I have a Master's in Curriculum and Instruction, and got my administrative certification and superintendency. In Texas you have administrative management and superintendent, and I've got all of those, and then I entered in administration. 11 SL: So you went back to school and got your Master's. Was that when you were in Texas? BB: In Texas. SL: Did you get a PhD? BB: I did, at University of Texas at Austin. My Master's in my curriculum, my administrative work, was from, they used to call it Southwest Texas State University, now it's just called Texas State University, up in San Marcos, Texas. SL: And that's where you got your ...? BB: My administrative certification. So they do special programs for people currently in the field, go to class on Saturday's and on the weekends, because most people can't stop working and go to school. I worked as an assistant principal for a few years, and then a principal of an elementary school, principal of a high school, and then I worked at central office ... No, I take that back. When I first finished, I worked for the superintendent of San Marcos School district, I was the assistant superintendent. Then I went back to Austin as the building level principal, and then I eventually ended up at their central office, which is where I was when my husband decided, "I love the mountains." I'm like, "Mountains? There are mountains in Utah? What mountains?" "You gotta see them." He took a project here for six months with the Department of Defense. It was to see if they needed to replace the missile testing system, and the six months turned into a year and by then we were like, "Well, if you're going to be up there, we've got to figure out something to do." Then a year and a half, and at the two year mark, we 12 decided we'd close house in Austin and I would move up here with him because, "I love the mountains," is what he kept saying. SL: So were you living separately during that time? BB: Those two years, yes I was in Austin, finishing my PhD and a building level principal, and he was here because it was a temporary assignment, and then it began to look more and more like it wasn't. Then we came to the decision that I move here after I finish my degree. SL: So, your daughter is graduated from high school by this time, right? BB: Yes. Oh, she was graduated from high school when we married. SL: Oh, ok, when you married Elliot? BB: Yes, she went to Duke University and got her Bachelor's degree and went to Loyola for law school and at this point in time, she was practicing law when I decided to move to Utah. SL: So was she living in Texas as well? BB: No, she was in New Orleans and then she moved to Dallas. But now she's in Austin. SL: Oh, ok. You came to Utah because your husband had his temporary assignment that turned into more than that. What was it like moving from Texas, the South, to Utah? BB: Keep in mind I've lived all over the world. 13 SL: I know you've lived all over. BB: Ok, so you would think since I have lived and travelled all over the world, that this just would have been another place. But the first six weeks I was in cultural shock. I walked around the mall, because I don't know anybody, I'm learning my way, and I'm looking for another black person. Two weeks after I was here I spotted a man that I think was African American, I don't know, but he was far away and I went trying to get to him, saying, "Is this another black person?" Anyway, so it was very cultural shock, I flew home every other month to get my hair done because I didn't know there was a black beauty shop in Utah. I spent a great deal of time walking around grocery stores looking for food that I recognized that African Americans used to season food or just cook. I had a very difficult transition. My husband decided the way to win me over, because I was wowed by the mountains, but I wasn't like, "We moved here for these, the mountains?" He took me to Hawaii the second month I was here, and then the third month I was here was the Jazz festival up at Deer Valley, and I was, "Oh, I can stay here." So that's how he winged me in. That took us through September, in October I was bored, and I went, "Let me go see if I can get certified here. I may want to work," so I went down to the Utah State Office of Education in downtown Salt Lake and as the children say, got my face broke. That was my final, I think, introduction into Utah cultural aspects. I had my little portfolio, and my little leather binder, and I got copies of all of my degrees and all of my certificates and all of my awards-you know how you're supposed to do this professionally-and I've got my philosophy letter, just in 14 case I need any of this stuff. I walked in there with my suit on and my heels and my little pantyhose. I go up to the desk and I said, "I read online about how you can get a teacher's certification, but I really am looking at administration," I start flipping pages. "Do you have to be certified as a teacher in order to get your administrative certification, because if so then I need your teacher's certification, their administrative certification, I'm also certified as superintendent in two other states," That lady crosses her arms, across that counter and looks at me and says, "I think they may let you teach in Utah." I didn't get it when she first said it, cause like I said, I'm certified a whole lot in a whole lot of things in two different states, right? I'm going, "What do you mean they may let me teach?" "Well, you have to take the Praxis-" which is the test you take when you come out of college, to teach in your subject area. I had to take a whole lot of Praxises, cause I'm certified to teach English, I'm certified to teach any social studies, economics, government, geography, speech, and drama. That's a lot of different tests. So I said, "Well, let's just focus on the administrative, what's the process of getting certified to be an administrator in Utah?" "Well, I think you may be able to teach. You might could get a job teaching." The third time she said it I finally got what she meant. The whole time I was there, I was there fourteen minutes, she never once told me the process of how do you apply for administrative certification, if there was any test, anything you had to do, so when I finally figured out she was just really saying, "Look lady, they're not going to hire you here, and you don't even live in Salt Lake." She said that because there were only two Black 15 administrators in the whole state at the time and they were in Salt Lake at the time. I didn't know that, because I didn't know! So finally I closed up my little portfolio, and I said, "Thank you so much." She said, "Here!" And she shoved the paper and it literally slides on the floor, she shoved it so hard. I didn't catch it, it just slid right off the counter. "This is what you need to take the Praxis," and she gives me like $65, whatever the amount is, how much it costs, and "You just have to register online." I left the paper on the floor, I said to myself, "Welcome to Utah" I drove to Syracuse, opened up my computer, and found the first job that looked like they'd give it to me, minority achievement specialist at the Utah State Office of Education, applied for the job, they called me before I got home from the interview to offer me the job, and I went there cause they really needed me there. That's how I started working in Utah. SL: So what was the multicultural… BB: Basically they had four million dollars they had gotten from the federal government three years ago, it was a four year grant, to improve the number of females and ethnic minorities, in advanced placement classes. Two things: grants from the government, if you don't spend the money, you give it back. As a principal, as a person who's worked with several grants with the federal government, I don't believe in giving nothing back. So instead of having to spend a million a year, I spent four million in one year. But the results were good. We were honored by College Board for our efforts. We increased the number of females and ethnic minorities taking advanced placement classes, and passing 16 the tests. It took me the year to set it up. I've been to Panguitch, I've been to the Navajo reservation, I've been to Davis, I've been to Ogden, and we did training for teachers, trying to convince them, that yes, children of color and girls could take AP chemistry and do well in it, and this is how you teach them so that they do well. So then the test results came in, and the following year, College Boards came down and honored Utah for increasing, significantly increasing the numbers in all aspects of it. So that was my first job. Then I got promoted within the State Office of Education. SL: So when did you start in the state office, 2005 and then you got promoted to what, are you still working now? BB: No, no, no, no. I stayed with them to 2011, I think. I started as a specialist and then I became a coordinator, which is the next step up, and the next step up is director. They'd never had an African American in that position before and they didn't know quite what to do with me. My responsibilities were Advanced Placement; MESA, which is mathematics, engineering, science achievement; science, social studies, all of those curricular areas and two or three more, throughout the state. So underneath me, there're specialists, there's social studies specialist, the science specialist, American Indian special. Utah did not have an American Indian education plan, but we wrote one. I also was the State Title Three Director, which handles the English Language Leamer-English as a second language, all funding from the federal government flowed through my office and down to the districts and there were criteria on how you have to use that money. Part of my job was to enforce that, so I did that four or five years, 17 and then there was a shift in power and I left. I'm all about what's best for the children. I was president of the Texas State Teachers Association, Region 13, so I'm a part of the National Education Association, I'm very much pro-teacher. But when the bottom line comes to, "Do I do a little bit more to help a kid?" I'm going to do a little bit more and help a kid, and when kids don't become my focus, when politics becomes my focus I have to exit stage left, cause it's so ugly. So I left and sat out a while and wrote a book. Then I went to Weber State and I worked with GEARUP, which is a federal grant between Weber State, at that time, the College of Education, and Ogden School District. And I set up a Master's program for Ogden teachers that was paid for by the grant, they just had to go. We set up a special urban education curriculum, because it's very difficult if you are not Black or Hispanic, as an Ogden teacher, and you ain't got a clue how to teach with them, and they're acting so different than what you expect them to act, how do you make that connection? So the Master's focus was to be a better teacher of the kids in front of you. So we changed thy teacher, not the kids. I did that for a while, and then I stepped out for another book and right now I am doing consulting work. Just finished with the Wildcat Scholars. I go to various states to help teacher groups or school districts, where the key phrase is, "Close the achievement gap." My phrase is, "Make me a better teacher so I can teach the kids in front of me." I do consulting work when I want to, and then I wrote another book. SL: I know. So do you miss being in the classroom? BB: I do. 18 SL: What are your books about? BB: They vary. It's like my reading, I read something hard, that heavy reading, and then I got to read some fluff-fluff, once upon a time, boy meets girl and they fell in love. So my books alternate like that. The last book we wrote was with Joe McQueen, it is his life story, and I listened to a whole lot of hours of Joe talking and then I tried as best as I could to put it into his words, but if you know Joe, Mr. hundred-year-old Joe McQueen, Jazz legend, he talks like he plays music and it's just scattered all over the place. So it took me about three months to really, in essence, capture what he said. That was my fluff book. Prior to that, I wrote books on equity and on working with students of poverty. Sometimes it's an article in somebody else's book, and then sometimes we put a compilation, I work with a team of people that are independent consultants like myself to put a piece together that will help a particular school district. SL: Interesting, I didn't know that part of it. LR: This is going back a bit. In your first teaching, in Texas, it struck me the way you were talking about this twelve-year-old boy and how he was in the bathroom. And how he talked to you. Because he said, the way he said things at the very end, he said, "I ran to the teacher," and he didn't make the distinction. Was that something that you were working towards? BB: Very much so. LR: Did that surprise you that he made that distinction? 19 BB: No, it validated me. One of the things that I think, in reaching students, is they one) got to know you care about them, but they also have to understand where you're coming from, cause you're being the adult in the thing. I had spent six weeks, ok, loving on these kids. In class, we talked, it's like, "Ok, you know, Ms. Newman's got a lesson plan, but so what's going on?" And let them talk. So they were free to talk, and then I'm, giving advice, and like I said, every time something went down, more and more kids were ending up in my room, because I said, "This is a safe place. We don't laugh at nobody in here, we don't make fun of nobody in here," and that's from day one. "If I call on you to read and you don't want to read, just holler, 'I'll pass, Miss,"' cause some seventh graders still struggle with reading. So we had established that and you build on that. I didn't realize how big the incident was at the time but when he, and I mean he literally was full speed ahead, ran around that comer and slid into that room, and all he said was, "Miss, Miss, come, the niggers are fighting," I took off. Never clicked on me, one that, well I heard 'niggers,' you can't miss that, but the fact he came to get the teacher. My job is, ''Alright, Jonathan, stay here," and I'm flying and hitting the panic buttons, knocking on the door like, "Head to the cafeteria," and running to get there. They had arrested three hundred people. By the time I got home, I thought about it, I didn't go back and check with him, I should have went back and checked with the kid that brought me the news, "Are you ok?" Because he was there when it broke out. The next day I'm waiting on Jonathan and Jonathan doesn't show up. I'm like, "Ok," you get busy. When I finally was like, "Where's Jonathan?" and I go in that boy’s bathroom and get him, because I should have 20 followed up with him. But the fact that he came to me validated, "I'm doing something right, this kid thinks that I'm a safe place, that I'm the teacher that I can help him, and that's what I'm supposed to do." We formed that bond and then he started coming to my house, "Can I cut your grass?" And then, "Can I stay for dinner?" And, "Jonathan, where's your mama?" He lived in a trailer park, I got to know her, she's working two or three jobs, until about nine o'clock. My husband was saying, "Jonathan's supposed to be going home by nine," we're newly married, no kids, you know. Jonathan just stayed more and more, then over the summer, it's like, I come home and Jonathan would be in the back like it's his backyard. So we built the relationship, but it started on, a crisis, he knew an adult he can trust, an adult would do something about it, and I didn't chastise him. I didn't ever say, "Jonathan, you shouldn't have ever said the word 'niggers."' That's the word he knew. But he, not at fifty years old, he turns red in the face telling the story, that that word ever came out of his mouth. SL: So, being here in Utah, what kind of community activities were you involved in, or groups? BB: Well, I think my two biggest amount of time is at Second Baptist Church. I worked here with a number of outreach programs. I started a college prep academy here, that we took junior high and high school students to prepare them for college. My first set is now, one's in medical school and the last kid just graduated from high school and is on his way to the University of Maine. The group that I dealt with have all been successful, so I've moved out of that role. We do a lot with the 21 homeless, as the area that this church is in, so we do a lot of outreach with them in terms of need: food, clothes, a bath or use of water, cause we don't have a shower here, but they'll come in, wash in the sink. I'm also the president of, the Intermountain General Baptist Convention Women's Auxiliary and it's the women in the sister churches in Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho. We do outreach to the homeless through them, we just took a ton of diapers to the new homeless shelter in Ogden. We do women's clothes in general throughout the year. There's Rescue Haven, we buy clean, new undergarments, for the women. So things like that is my basic outreach here in this area. I serve as chair of the Utah Black Roundtable, which is an organization committed to improving the lives of African Americans and Blacks in the state of Utah. By Blacks we mean anybody who identifies as Black, they can be Caribbean, they can be from Ghana, that general term and then African Americans. We have several areas of focus, one of our major ones right now is education, because of the incident with the young boy in Davis School District. Toward the end of school, there have been several incidences where Davis School District has done nothing about incidents involving African American on buses and the bus drivers, how they were treating them. This young man's mother had made several complaints—he's biracial, his mother's white and his father's black-about what the bus driver had either said or done to kids on the bus. Because her son was taking it home, telling his mother, the bus driver got mad. So a few days before the end of school, there were eleven kids getting off the bus, five had gotten off. This biracial kid was like the fifth or sixth kid to get off 22 the bus, and as he makes the final step off the bus, the bus driver closes the door on his backpack, so he is hanging on the door, his feet, according to the kid, is this far off the ground. The bus drivers moves the bus a hundred and seventy-five feet before he stops. The five kids that are on the ground, if you look at the video are just screaming, "Hey!" Cause their friend is hanging off the bus, The five or six kids that are still on the bus behind him waiting to get off the bus are standing on a moving bus doing this, this, this. He stops finally and opens the door and the boy kind of crumples and hits down. Needless to say, his mama was quite upset and so were we. So we have been to the Davis School District demanding that there be some things done. This is the Utah Black Roundtable, in support with the NAACP and Black Lives Matter. We're in the middle of doing some things within Davis School District in terms of hiring practices. You have a huge school district with almost a hundred schools and you've got one black principal and he don't identify as Black. Really? How many black kids you got? How many Hispanic kids? Can I go to twelve years in Davis School District and not ever see anybody that looks like me? So those are the issues in terms of hiring. You can find a Black coach because you want those black boys on the field, but can you find me a Black third grade teacher? A Black chemistry teacher? So we're working with them on hiring and the second issue is on training. I don't expect you to do better if you don't know better. So we've got to talk about it. What is it you know, how do you feel? Why is it the only thing you teach in your class related to me is slavery? That's the only history I got? That's the only thing you teach. Ok? So let's talk 23 about what you teach and then how do you teach it? Cause you can teach the American Revolution and still teach Black history in the middle of the American Revolution. If you know the real story. How do you work with kids of different cultures. My best example, and this probably doesn't work for this, but I had four boys who were flunking geometry. Everyday they played dominoes in the cafeteria, without pencil or paper. Just, somebody goes in their backpack, pulls out the thing of dominoes, and they start playing. I walk by going, "What's the score?" "He got 45, he got 65, oh, he only got 15." I'm like, "Well, where is that written down?" "We know." "Y'all in agreement those are the numbers?" "Yeah." Me, I'm counting the dots, right? To get to the number, and they're slamming it down. So I looked at it one day, I looked at him, I said, "What's that?" He said, "What?" "What's that?" "Well, we're trying to make- " "No, no, tell me what that is. What's that?" "That's an angle, miss." "What kind of angle?" "I don't know." "And you're in geometry? That's a right angle. What if l do it like that? What's that? Y'all are flunking geometry, but y'all can count and keep score without paper or pencil?" So I made them a deal that I would beat them if they could pass geometry. I don't know how to play dominoes, but I learned, played them a game and I beat them. They passed geometry. That didn't take a whole lot, did it? No. Why can't other people do that? You've got to give them time to think about it, to figure out what's the best approach. Those boys, said they, "Oh, she's a nerd, she don't," cause I'm going, "One, two, three," counting the little dots on the dominoes. They loved it. Ok? But we need to do 24 that in Davis School District, we need to do that in Weber, we need to do that in Ogden, if we're going to reach the kids in front of us. So the Utah Black Roundtable is about doing those things. When they say it ain't my job; I say I'm paying your salary. I'm the taxpayer here. "I'll work alongside you, but it's you that's got to reach those kids in your room." So we've got to provide equity training, we've got to provide content training, we've got to provide diversity training, cause while my focus would be Utah Black Roundtable and African Americans, there are Hispanics, there are Pacific Islander, there are LGBTQ, all kinds of communities, but they're all in your room. You've got to reach them all. The Utah Black Roundtable believes that it if we can uplift the quality of life for African Americans in the state of Utah, we're uplifting the quality of life for all people, in terms of housing, in terms of a restorative justice program, in terms of education, both for K through 12 and higher ed. Weber State's seems to be getting the drift that there's something afloat, because college enrollment is going down, we're not graduating our ethnic minority populations, and the story is, "They're coming in ... " Well, what are you doing about it, what's the plan? So anyway, that's what we do. I'm also a member of Black Storytellers of Utah, we do a lot of storytelling to groups, so tp.at my story is told, which is one of the reasons I agreed to this. Those are probably my big three church, Utah Black Round table, storytellers, I guess. Right now. SL: So back in the 1960s and 1970s there were several African American social clubs here in Ogden, do you know, are they still around? Like, the Anytimers, Excelsior? 25 BB: I am not a member of any of those organizations. There are members that are still around. Anytimers are up in age now. I'm a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, which is a national sorority, there's Alpha Phi Alpha, Omega Psy Phi, Delta Sigma Theta, are national sororities and fraternities that are predominantly black, and neither one of them is all Black, but are predominantly African American. Those are in function here and I think they serve some of the role of what the Anytimers clubs used to be, and there are other social and civic organizations such as the masonic lodge and Eastern Stars. But I'm not a member of any of those. Well, I mean, I'm an AKA. SL: I was just wondering. Keep always wanting to find out, but Miss Sarah didn't know. She said we had to talk to Hazel about Anytimers. BB: Oh, well, Mae Glenn, who is a member here at Second Baptist, is an Anytimer, and she's got a whole history for you. I think you've talked with her. Have you talked with her? SL: As part of New Zions, she was interviewed. But she's one we probably ought to try. I know Betty Sawyer has a group with the Black Student Union and Project Success Coalition, where she's got a group of kids that are going to come to the different churches on Sunday's and start doing oral histories with them. So I'll make sure that we try to get Mae as part of that, I'll talk to Betty. So, there are just a couple of more generalized questions. Looking back, on your mother and your grandmother and then yourself, how do you think the role of mothers have changed? 26 BB: I think it's changed significantly, and I can speak only as a Black mother, ok? Because Black women have always worked outside the home, so we didn't shift from the stay-at-home mom in general. Black women were maids and cooks and blah, blah, blah, so they've always had to maintain two households, and sometimes many black women were single parents. What I think has happened, how it's changed, is that there's no longer the community raising you. When my mother grew up, she tells a story that she sassed the teacher at school, and by sass it means the teacher said something and she went, "Hmm." That's what she did. On her way home, Miss Ella whipped her for sassing the teacher, and by the time she got home her grandmother was home cause her mom was at work, whipped her, and by the time her mama got home, her mama whipped her that night for sassing the teacher, and they didn't have a telephone. SL: So even before she got home... BB: Miss Ella on the way home had heard she sassed the teacher and just snatched him up. That's what I'm talking about the village raising. We don't have that village anymore, and so as a result our children are falling through the cracks, I think. So I think that's the biggest difference. The second biggest differe11ce for me was, when we were old enough to know that there was such a thing as child abuse, and we're going, "I'm going to call the child abuse hotline," my mama would say, "You got to reach the phone first, right?" Now people are scared to chastise or say something to somebody else's kid, because they don't know what the reaction is going to be from anybody else. So I think those things, and McDonald's, have significantly impacted motherhood. There use􀀀 to be a time 27 where at least one if not two meals, you were all sitting at the same table, and it might have been nothing but beans and franks, but you were sitting at the table talking. Now, you pick them up from daycare, school, whatever, you drive through McDonald's, you get home and everybody goes their separate ways. I think that impacts, into any parent, when you don't have other opportunities for the family to get together. Now Utah's a little different in that, because the Utah culture does believe in the family getting together to do some things, and so I think that works in favor of the family. But I've seen huge gatherings in my neighborhood, and all the kids are out playing and all the grown folks are sitting on the porch. I don't see how the grown folks are actually listening to the kids, you know sitting in the same vicinity so you hear the kids' conversation. If you ask the lady across the street from me, I think she has like seventeen grandchildren, and if I asked her, "Can you name me a rap artist." she probably couldn't. But she's got seventeen grandkids that probably can name me at least one, of any color. SL: So, throughout your life and your career, you talked a little about that your mom and your grandma were who you looked up to when you were younger. What about now, looking back? Are there women that have influenced your life, have mentored you? BB: I learned humility from a lady at church, who just took me under her wings when I was going through a bad time, so I consider her a mentor to me. She's nobody famous, she ain't wrote a book, she don't speak to big audiences, you know, she just loved on me enough to get through what I was going through, then let me go. 28 So her name is Peggy, and I would consider her a mentor in my life. I've had the pleasure of meeting some famous women, and I think they all gave me something I took away from it. So at some point, you make your own path, and I think at my age I've made my own path. I just do what in my heart I know is the right thing for me to do, and that fulfills my purpose for being here on earth. I'm going to love on everybody, I don't care what color you are, I don't care where you. God took away my sense of smell, as a classroom teacher; I think the second year of teaching had a severe case of bronchitis, so I can't smell, so if the place on fire you all have to tell unless I see the smoke. But because of that, I can love on or hug a smelly, dirty, homeless person, because I can't smell them. Those are the things I think I'm put here for, to care for people, to lead by example and stay faithful to my word. If I say I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it, come hell or high water. SL: How did you balance your responsibilities between being a working mom and home life? BB: I think that's very difficult for any woman to do, because you feel guilty no matter which one you do. When my daughter was eight, I became president of the Austin Association of Teachers. 6000 teachers, and I negotiated a contract, any pay raises, any disputes came through my office. So I spent a lot of evenings at school board meetings and planning sessions, and my daughter went along. She'd be over in the comer doing her homework and I'd be going, "Three percent ain't going to get it, y'all need to run them numbers, we need at least a five percent raise this year." So I'd look over at her and feel guilty because she's 29 doing her homework in the school board meeting room, but yet this is important because this is the livelihood of 6000 people. I believe my daughter had to be immersed in her own culture, she's African American, and she went to a predominantly, an all-white school. There were three Blacks in school and so we would have to do things on the weekend to make sure she's going to be Black enough to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. She went to Duke University, but we visited a whole lot of historically Black colleges, museums, art exhibits, quilting, and other things. I would feel guilt cause I'm spending Saturday doing all this stuff with her when I got this, a teacher what about to lose her job over there. So it's a hard act to balance, but my daughter is now thirty-nine and I guess maybe about a month ago she called and these were her exact words: "Thank you." I said, "I didn't send you money. I didn't send you clothes. What you thanking me, what you want?" She said, "Thank you." These are her words, "You didn't tell me how to be a woman, a powerful woman of God, but you showed me. And I just wanted to say thank you, Mommy, and I love you." I said, "How much you want, baby? I'll write the check." You know, but I guess she was just sitting there thinking about it and then she started giving examples of stuff that, "I know how to sit in a board room. I know how to talk to people. I know how to dress for the occasion by watching you." And so I was like, "Ok. So I didn't do too bad. I guess I don't feel too bad trying to balance," cause she got the most of both worlds. She's a professional woman, owns her own house, her own 30 business, doing her own thing, and happy about doing it, I didn't damage her too bad. SL: Alright, so what does the term "woman's work" mean to you? BB: Any damn thing I want to do, I can do it. That's what that means to me. Ok, I consider that most of the time you hear the term, it's derogatory, like my place is in the kitchen. No, my place is in the White House, and I may be there one day, ok? So I don't think there's such a thing as woman's work. I don't think there's such a thing as man's work, either. I think there's work, and there's work each of us can do, and still we choose to do it. So I'm not really supportive of woman's work. Now the only thing I don't think science has quite figured out yet is for men to have babies, but they may be working on that, I don't know. But you can have one, there's a whole bunch of adoption agency, and a whole bunch of babies need some parents. I don't see the difference. Now, does my husband see the difference? Yes, while I'm being bold with Brenda, he'll go, "What we having for dinner?" I'll go, "What you cooking?" But no, I don't believe in such a thing as woman's work. Do I think women are better nurturers than men, eighty percent of the time, yes. We're just good at that. SL: As a woman, how do you define courage? BB: The ability to stand when it isn't... safe to stand. That's a big, big word for me. But when it isn't safe to stand, and the ability to stand and speak. Do I need to explain that? SL: Yes, I want to understand. 31 BB: Safe to stand, for example, sometime, you're in a situation where standing up is going to cost you your job. In Davis School District, they're already retaliating against some of the women, some of the names we call that were in support of our cause. It wasn't really safe for them to stand, cause now they're being chastised for standing. I spoke to the Davis School Board, I gave them a pop quiz, "Can you name three racist practices in Davis School District?" And they were offended. One guy said a week later, "You called us racist." I did not. I asked you about practices. I can give you thirty, but I just wanted you to name three, I never called you a racist. That's unsafe, because they don't hear you, or they hear different. The other is when you speak. Words have power, and if you're willing to speak truth to power, you can write your obituary. Cause they're coming for you, in some kind of manner, in some kind of way. I can say what I say now, in Ogden, in Davis School District, because I don't have any kids there. Every meeting I've had, first thing they ask, "Do you have any kids in Davis School District?" Why? Are you going to tum on my kid? I mean, really. "Do you have any grandchildren?" What has that got to do with equity? We're talking about an issue, not my kid. They want to know where you live, what's your feeder school. They're gathering ammo, because you've spoken out. I started getting citations for the trees in front of my house. The garbage truck is hitting the branches. No, they're not. Not yet anyway. Why am I getting citations all of a sudden ... tree ain't even growing now. Come on, really? So, yeah, when you speak out it takes courage, because there's more than likely going to be a cost. 32 SL: Do you have any questions? LR: No. I’m so enthralled that I’m not thinking of questions. BB: Why are you enthralled? LR: This is great. I’m enjoying this thoroughly. BB: Okay, I thought, “What am I saying something wrong?” LR: You’re not saying anything wrong. BB: Okay, I want to add one. I am very surprised, I’ve travelled all over the world, and I’ve seen oppression of women, all over the world, third world countries especially. I am sorry to say that I see oppressed women here in Utah. When women don’t vote, that’s your voice. They won’t vote or they will vote the way their husband tells them to vote, or their bishop or their whatever. I think that's oppression. I think when I talk to a group of high school girls down in Salt Lake, the question was "What do you want to be when you grow up?" And in a room of twenty-eight girls, the answer was "Mother." Stupid Brenda goes, "And what else do you want to be?" And that's all they could come up with? That's an oppressed society. Ok? Everybody doesn't have to work outside the home, I'm not saying everybody's a "career woman." But "I want to be a mother that owns a business at home, or I want to be a mother that does volunteer work at the school on a regular basis." Some vision of who you want to be, fulfill yourself as a person. When you don't have that, and it's not religion, let me make sure you're all hearing me. I think there's a culture of oppression here among a significant portion of the female population, and we have got to figure out some kind of way 33 that, in order for you to be 100%, whatever that is, you have got to be something other than somebody else tells you to be. For eighteen years, through all of elementary and junior high and high school, I was Kim's mother. I didn't have a name, and I accepted that, you walk up to school, "Hey, Kim's mother," all the kids would call you, right? Now, I go out to the car, get the car, drive to the school, "Hello, Ms. Newman, Dr. Burrell, Principal," you know, but at that school, I was Kim's mother. I don't mind being that, but I had to be something else to be all of me. I think in Utah, in terms of our girls, we have got to figure out how to reach them so that they can be all of that· wonderful whatever they're going to be, including mother or wife, or editor, or librarian, or whatever. But there's more to life than just being the mother of eight, ages one to eight. So those are my closing remarks about womanhood. SL: Alright, well you kind of answered the last question, so there you go! BB: As you can tell, that’s my little pet peeve. It’s not people of any specific color; my little Black girls here don’t have a clue. Anyway, it’s just a Brenda thing and I’m working on that to figure out what I want to do about that. SL: Well, thank you. Appreciate it.