Oral History Program Betty Sawyer Interviewed by Sarah Taylor 16 July 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Betty Sawyer Interviewed by Sarah Taylor 16 July 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: Sawyer, Betty, an oral history by Sarah Taylor, 16 July 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Betty Sawyer Circa 2015 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Betty Sawyer, conducted on July 16, 2019, at Weber State University, by Sarah Taylor. In this interview, Betty discusses her life, her memories, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Lorrie Rands, the video technician, is also present during this interview. ST: It’s Tuesday, July 16th, 2019. The time is 9:11 a.m. We are in Betty Sawyer’s office at the Access and Diversity Center at Weber State University. I’m Sarah Taylor. Lorrie Rands is operating the camera and we are interviewing Betty Sawyer. Thank you again for agreeing to meet with us and be a part of our project. BS: Thanks for the invitation. ST: So, right off, why don’t we start with when and where were you born? BS: I was born in a small town called Pocomoke City. P-O-C-O-M-O-K-E. On the eastern shore of Maryland. ST: And what year? BS: 1953. LR: In relationship to Baltimore, where...? BS: It’s the northeastern shore on the Virginia side, not the Richmond side, so as you move to the Chesapeake Bay. So, Salisbury, Pocomoke, across the bridge, and down. We’re the last city before you hit the Virginia line heading to the North Carolina side. LR: Okay, alright. ST: Could you tell us more about your early life and your childhood growing up? 2 BS: Sure. Our community was dubbed as “the friendliest town on the Eastern shore.” That was what all the signs said. A small town, it was probably, in my earlier days, around 4,000 people, so that’s how small it was. Maybe two stoplights, maybe three on the main parking street. I grew up in a segregated community, so my home was on the border between the Black and White community in that town, so we’d talk through the fence to white kids, our neighbors through the fence. But everything on the other side was all Black. We got to interact on Saturdays, when we went downtown, to go to the different stores. That’s when we would see and interact with other people. But for the most part, our life kind of existed in this small community. The elementary school was a couple of blocks up, across the street was my local church, and at that time, my siblings had to ride the bus to go to the high school. It was a little further away. That was kind of my earlier upbringing. Grew up in a Christian home, both parents. My mother was a Civil Rights worker even then, PTA president, NAACP president. Organized all kinds of things, so my entire upbringing was one of being involved, going places. We didn’t stay home; she took us everywhere she went and everything that she did, we were a part of it. I’m the youngest of six siblings. I have two brothers and three sisters. One sister is deceased. We spent a lot of time in church and school, so church for us was probably Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. All kinds of things going on all the time. African-American teachers from our schools were in our community. The elementary school, like I said, it was segregated, so all of the teachers and administrators were black, and that’s where all of my 3 formative education took place. They didn’t have kindergarten at the time, so first through sixth grade was spent at Steven Long Elementary School in Pocomoke City. I looked forward to going to Worcester High School, which was the segregated high school at the time. Unfortunately, the summer of the sixth grade, I come in from playing and the principal of the elementary school is in my living room along with two teachers and I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m in trouble. What’s going on?” They were there meeting with my mom, so when you walked in my front door, you go up the stairs, my mom’s room was over here, you go down the hallway to get to the living room. I tried to go straight upstairs, and I got stopped. It was like, “Come on in here. We were talking about you.” It’s like, “Oh, man.” Cause if a teacher came by, you were definitely in trouble. They were having a conversation about letting me be one of the students to integrate the local high school. My mother, being the Civil Rights worker and all, “Sure! We’ll do it! Betty can do it!” So for the rest of the summer I was really upset, because I grew up going to the high school, watching my siblings in sports and glee club and their drama department plays and black and gold, their band; everything was fascinating and I couldn’t wait to be there, to do my part and, little did I know, that wasn’t going to happen. I ended up being one of ten students that integrated Pocomoke High School back in ‘65‒‘66 school year. LR: Okay. It’s interesting, I’ve started listening to—I promise there’s relevance here— started listening to a podcast about the Civil Rights movement, learned more than I ever realized. It surprised me what I didn’t know. So, in the South, a lot of 4 the schools were just... talk about not equal. Just terrible. But it almost sounds like you had a really good high school. The segregated high school was really good. BS: It was. LR: So the idea of actually going to a different high school was... irritating, I guess? BS: Yeah, traumatizing. I was traumatized! It was irritating, the fact “Why do I have to be a part of this experiment?” At that time, for someone in the sixth grade, “High school, yay!” LR: So no junior high? BS: No junior high. LR: So it just went from sixth grade, you went immediately into the high school. BS: Into seventh grade high school. LR: Okay, that’s interesting. So, looking forward to this experience that now you’re not going to have, do you feel kind of gypped, or can you actually look back at it now and say, “I did this.” BS: I definitely felt gypped. At times I even felt I was betraying—because I was a student athlete. I was a tomboy from day one. My dad was a baseball player and fanatic, so Sunday afternoon was at a baseball field. That’s what I did; I played ball. I had a cousin that would visit from New York and she played basketball, so she taught me how to play basketball, so when I went to the high school, I tried out for the teams and made it. When we had to play Worcester High, I felt like, “I don’t even want to be out here.” I felt like I was betraying my people and all of 5 that to play for this other team. But I had to do it, cause what do you do? I felt bad when we beat them. Yeah, I definitely felt gypped... One of the things with our school, the safety that was there. That whole caring atmosphere. School, in my elementary days, was an extension of home. Our parents had relationships with the teacher. They lived across the street, around the corner. You tried to avoid them when you were out playing, but they were there, you knew where they lived kind of thing. It was an extension and it wouldn’t be uncommon for the teacher to update your parents at the grocery store or at church or just walking down the street what you were doing, so you knew you had to be on your Ps and Qs all the time. You really didn’t have a chance to mess up, and that was a part of that safety that I found in that surrounding and being able to be there with people that you knew genuinely cared about you and your best interests, even though back in those days, they could spank you. For real. Nah, I didn’t think that part was right. But other than that, it was a really rich experience for me, and grounded me for what was to come. If I hadn’t had that experience in elementary school, and in my home, having that sense of self and self-worth and my Christian upbringing—One of the things my mom would always say, “No one’s better than you, we’re just different.” I grew up saying, “They’re not better, they’re different. Oh well.” One of her other sayings would be, “No one knows what’s in your pocket unless you tell them,” so that whole issue around having money and all that . . . No one knows, so you hold your head up, stick your chest out, and do what you’re supposed to do. That was the mantra me and my siblings grew up 6 with our whole life. That grounded me for that experience at Pocomoke High School, where what you see in the books and see on TV was real. Fighting, spitting, name calling, all of that. In the seventh grade, little 12, 13 years old. Like, what in the world was going on here and why am I here? That was when I would go home, “Mom, I don’t want to be here. Why’d I have to do this?” “Be strong,” and all of that stuff that you didn’t want to hear, but that was what she continued to tell me to send me back out the door the next day. Bell Hooks’ book about, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? That’s what it was, those ten of us. The only time we saw each other was at lunch time and we’d congregate together and then it’s like, “Okay,” and then we got to go back to these classes where the teachers made it obvious that they didn’t want you there and so did the students. Because people knew my mom, because she was a Civil Rights worker and community worker and Girl Scouts leader and all that stuff, I got treated differently than my other friends. Yeah, they would be nicer. Things they would say to others, they may not say to me, but I would still get upset because you’re saying it to them, what is that all about? ST: So did you stay at.... is it Polk High School? BS: Pocomoke. ST: Pocomoke. BS: Lot of Indian names throughout that area. ST: Did you stay there ‘til graduation? BS: I did. Graduating class of ‘71 from Pocomoke High School. Things got better, but again, it wasn’t without controversy on a regular, ongoing basis. There was a lot 7 of “White Flight” that took place when the schools integrated. A lot of parents took their kids out of the high school and put them in private schools in other towns so they wouldn’t be there with black students. I found my refuge in sports. To me, that was my equalizer because the classroom I was treated even differently. They didn’t worry about teaching me or if I understood. Even if I raised my hand, you didn’t get call on. That kind of stuff. My mom worked as a nurse’s aide and she also worked domestically cleaning up the city hall, and the library was at the city hall, so I grew up with books my whole life. She’d bring home the books like that’s a treat. Like, “Here’s some books for you all to read.” So I grew up reading, as a young person. My English teacher, I remember one term, I got a B with like four or five plusses. It’s like, “What happened to an A-? Or an A? Just give me the A, what’s up?” But in their mind, a black child isn’t supposed to get an A in English. So I didn’t get one, and my mom goes to the school and is like, “What is this all about?” They didn’t change the grade. Those kinds of things took place. There were times that I picked fights myself, cause frustration is like, “Okay.” Then I’d get all the guy friends to come join in kind of thing. We can cut that. That little radical side of myself at that time. But at the high school, my elementary school principal ended up becoming a counselor, so only a couple of the black teachers kept their jobs in that community. He tried to keep us motivated and make sure we were okay. I remember, I was in the tenth grade and I was in a biology class and the teacher was a really rude gentleman. I had a test and I was “whatever, I don’t care. He 8 doesn’t care. I don’t care.” The counselor, Mr. Townsend, came and got me out of class the next day and said, “What is this all about? I know you know this and I know you can do better.” Like, “Eh, you know,” trying to give him an excuse like a teenager would, and he says, “No, you’re going to sit here and retake this test.” I retook the test and, of course, I passed it, and then he went on his long dissertation about, look at him, “I was this. Now I’m here, but that has nothing to do with who you are. I need you to do this for your people and the pride,” and all of that stuff. He almost made me cry. Making me feel so bad about not doing my best. He said, “You’re going to get back in there. I don’t care what’s going on. This is the reason we’re doing this, and it’s greater than us.” I was like, “Okay.” So I went back and got my act together and started doing better because I was mentally dropping out of high school. It was like, they didn’t care! And because I was Catherine Walston’s daughter, I’d get a B whether I turned in anything or not. ST: How would you say that this kind of experience shaped you into the person you became later? Does that make sense? BS: Yes, it definitely shaped me. It’s really interesting because, for me, being in a Christian home, that balance of what I’m dealing with versus what I’m hearing on Sunday: “Love your neighbor, do good unto...” All this stuff. It’s like, “Something ain’t right here. You’re telling me to do this, but I’m dealing with this foolishness over here. They’re not doing what you said people are supposed to do. They’re not treating us the way God says we’re supposed to treat each other.” My oldest brother at that time, he’d gone in the Navy, and ended up living in California. Now 9 we’re at the height of ‘60s and ‘70s, Civil Rights movement, Black Panther, Brown Barret and he would write home and write me letters and send me cards on a regular basis and say, “Power to the people,” and all of that. So while my mom is saying, “Turn the other cheek,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself,” my brother said, “Power to the people.” He’s my big brother. Power to the people! All of that together helped shape [me]. I became an activist at a young age. I felt the need to stand up for other people. Like I said, I was treated different than some of my other friends because they know who my mom was and my family. By now, the whole school is integrated. They closed down the black high school, Worcester High, so everybody was at Pocomoke High, and it was a lot more people and things going on. But again, I just developed my sense of self at that time. It felt that I had to stand up for what was right and not acquiesce to something else just because the majority or somebody else said, if it didn’t conform with what I believed and what I had been taught. From there on, even in college, I really got involved as an activist, joined the NAACP. We had sit-ins in school for everything under the sun. I went to HBCU, the Historical Black College and University at Morgan State University. As a student athlete, I had scholarship offers to a couple of predominantly white institutions. I refused. I said, “I don’t care what they pay me, I’m not doing that again.” I knew I was going to go to a black college, and I was the first in my family to go to college. Two of my siblings, my sisters, went to nursing school in Annapolis, Maryland. My older sister was a cosmetologist, so she went to a beauty academy, but I was the first one to go to college or university. 10 Morgan State University, it was a college at the time, in Baltimore, Maryland. University of Maryland Eastern Shore was fifteen miles from my home, too close to mom for me, like “I got to get away.” One of my neighbors across the street, she went to Morgan so I went over and talked to her about college and she helped me fill out my application because at high school, they didn’t tell us to go to college. I mean, the stories you hear, it’s real: “Go to trade school, you can be a secretary, you’re not that smart,” all that foolishness. Thank God I had a family that was telling me something different because I would have believed that, and some of those kids did believe it. They didn’t have that same background... they didn’t try. They just gave up because somebody told them they couldn’t, but I had somebody tell me that I could and I was going to. You don’t have a choice. You’re going to do this. So off to Baltimore I went, to go to college. LR: When you were told, “You can only be a secretary, don’t go to college.” Was that because you were a woman or because you were black? BS: I think primarily black, but I think a part of it was probably gender too. Because that was prevalent at the time, what women could and couldn’t do. ST: One of our key, staple questions is were you encouraged to pursue an education? It sounds like you kind of had the family background that said yes, then the school... I was wondering if there’s anything to elaborate on that, and I can repeat the question because I rambled on quite a bit there, but were you encouraged to pursue an education overall? 11 BS: I was, but from my home, not from the school where you would think it would come as well. The school, again, they were telling all of us, for the most part, either trade school or—chicken factory was a big industry on the eastern shore. Been there, done that. That was the other key moment in my life that I forgot about. Tenth grade, now you could work for real. Before that on the eastern shore, farming, agriculture, chicken factories, that’s where you worked. There was another plant, Campbell’s soup, or something like that. My dad worked at the chicken factory, had been there forever. One of my best friends, her mom was a foreman at the chicken factory. Our big plan was, “We turn 16 this summer; we can get a real job and make some real money,” because we went in the fields. The bus would come through town, load up kids, and we’d go out and pick tomatoes, strawberries, whatever it was, and make money. There were times we did that as a family. One summer—my mom’s bright idea—we need a new refrigerator, and she says, “Well, let’s do that.” We went in the field and by the end of the summer, we bought a new refrigerator. She was so excited, she tried that plan the next summer. “Let’s get a washing machine!” It’s like, this is getting old. Even though I’m the youngest and I played more than I worked, just being out in the hot sun all day wasn’t cool. I forgot what else we were talking about. ST: My initial question was... encouraged to pursue an education. But this is all interesting too. BS: Oh, yeah. So me and my girlfriend, we said, “Okay, we’re going to ask your mom if she’ll give us a job.” Went to her house, sat in the living room, “Miss Juanita, 12 we want a job at the chicken factory.” Cause we knew everybody made big money there. For us, it sounded big. She sat us down. She says, “Okay, I’ll give you a chance. You cannot be late a day. You cannot miss a day, and you have to do it the whole summer. You can’t quit.” “Sure, sure! We’ll do that.” Worst experience in my entire life! Oh my goodness. We laugh about that today. How we begged to go there and then begged to get out of the contract. It was horrible. I don’t even see how the people in my commun—I know why they did it, because they didn’t have choices, but the smell... Can you imagine? LR: Probably not. BS: Hot, cause this was a chicken factory, so they’d have to put hot water on them so they can get the feathers off. What you see in the store today is not how it started. They had people that got there early, that caught the chickens and put them on the conveyor belt, then it went through the hot water, and they had a machine to help pick some of the feathers off and then there were people that had to do that. The conveyor belt kept coming to where we were, in the room where they pulled the insides out. You’re standing up all day, all the time, doing this work. One of my jobs was to cut the gizzard from the rest of the insides, intestines and all of that, without cutting the bile, because that... Yeah! I’m being frank. See I still play it all in my memory. Fifty-some years later, it’s still there. The smell, it was hard. It was on your feet all day, and then when it was time to go to lunch, you didn’t want to eat. But people would just go in the room next door and have lunch and we’re sitting there totally disgusted like, “What have we gotten ourselves into?” And we couldn’t quit. That moment, college became 13 crystal clear to me. It’s like, “I’m not goofing off another day in high school. I’m getting my act together. I don’t care what nobody else does, and I’m getting me some As and getting out of here, because there’s no way this is the life for Betty.” That definitely shaped my life. One summer at Bird’s Eye chicken plant. Nope. I didn’t eat chicken for a while after that, “Nope, don’t want nothing like a chicken.” Yes, all of those things help shape my life and my desire for a better life. I had teachers on one side saying, “You won’t be,” the chicken factory on the other side, “Oh, yes, I am buddy. Y’all don’t know me. I will go somewhere and do something.” When I talked to my neighbor about college, I was singularly focused. LR: So you talk about your mother. Her name was? BS: Catherine. LR: Your father’s name? BS: Wilbert. LR: And you had six siblings. You’re the baby. There’s a question. I can tell that you looked up to your mom a lot. What other—and she can be the one woman you looked up to as a young girl—who did you look up to as a young girl? BS: My mom. My oldest sister. I thought she was the best person in the whole world. I’m the radical one on this end, the tomboy. She was poised. She was sophisticated. “Why aren’t you like your sister?” She was beautiful. She did hair, so her hair was always immaculate. Mine was whatever. She dressed well. She could sing. Everything that you’d want to be, my older sister Caroline that was her. She was sweet; she treated everybody so nice and everybody loved her. But 14 she was a caring, loving person. She took on that role cause our mom often worked two or three jobs cause that’s what families did at that time, so she was always there and she would always be, “Why don’t you? Get in here! Stop! Why do you act that way?” I’m out there screaming and yelling and trying to beat up somebody and she’s like, “I don’t know why you act that way.” So Caroline. There were a lot of women at church that I looked up to and for a lot of different reasons. As I got older, there were a lot more little things. There was a mother and daughter that lived up the street from us. Their house was right in the middle of the street, but at the end, so they could see everything that was going, and that’s what they did. They were the neighborhood’s newspaper, telephone, all of that. They were sweet ladies, and we were taught to be very respectful. Miss Sarah, Miss Viner. That was them. I would go to the store for them and she would take out the hanky where she had her change wrapped and give me a nickel for going to the store. But that was someplace, if we needed something to eat or after school if mom wasn’t there, she’d say, “Come on down.” They were just that constant in the community. Miss Emma was another person that I looked up to. All of these were older than my mom. These were women that took her in and were mentors for her in the community with children, and they became important in my life as well. Miss Emma worked as a domestic; Miss Sarah did too. They cooked. When there were big events in the community, firemen, the police ball, or whatever, these ladies cooked. They would put on their white uniforms and go to the firehouse or wherever the event was going to be and cook. If there was something left, they 15 got to bring something home, but they were just steady people, no controversy, keep you straight, tell you what to do, make you sit in there and listen to some stories, and when I was in elementary school “nah,” but as I got older I learned to appreciate them for what they were and what they were sharing with me and the biscuits that Miss Emma made were wonderful, so I didn’t mind after a while sitting down and listening to her stories cause she would bake bread and I would get to eat. The pastor’s wife was one of those persons that a lot of us looked up to. She really had a special care for the youth in the church. There was another family across the street, Miss Dee, and we had this weird relationship with their family over the years. We’re all still close, but we fought all the time. There were six of us, seven of them. They lived directly in front of us. They had money; we were all poor. We didn’t know we were poor until I got old, cause, you know, that was just a thing. She was that community mom too, but she was very poised and sophisticated and all of that, so somebody would look, “Ooh, that’s a nice outfit. I wish I could do that.” But, we would team up, all summer long, and we would fight, everybody except for my older sister. “Why are you all acting that way? I’m going to tell mom on you all.” They were some of the ones that stood out in my formative years. ST: Sounds like there’s a really strong sense of community. BS: Oh, there was, and the community is still there. Matter of fact, I bought the home next to my mom. I happened to be home one summer and my brother comes home and says, “Oh, do you know, Miss Sadie’s house is going up for auction on 16 Monday?” I said, “Oh, really. Hmm, interesting.” I called my husband, he’s here in Utah, “Butch, I’m going to go to this auction Monday.” He’s like, “Whatever.” I just go, being inquisitive and no intent of doing anything. I hadn’t been to an auction about a house. I get there and nobody’s there but me. My brother knew the guy that was selling the home. He’s like, “Hey Jesse, what are you doing here?” “Oh, I brought my sister here.” He said, “Are you interested?” I said, “Of course I’m interested.” He said, “Well, let’s work a deal. Come by my office the next day.” I went by his office the next day, he says, “It’s yours. This is how much it is. Can you give me $4,000 down?” Okay, I have a house! I call my husband, “Guess what. We just bought a house.” He’s like, “You’re crazy.” I said, “No, we really did, babe. It’s a good deal.” But yeah, it’s a close knit community. The Joneses, Miss Bee, they’re still there. A lot of the older women, of course, they’ve passed on, but the church is still thriving. It’s across the street and you walk to church. They’ve built a middle school where the elementary school was, so it’s still close, in the neighborhood. All of that. Yeah, very, very close knit community. ST: So, I was wondering what you went up to school to study initially, or maybe you switched majors. What did you study? BS: I didn’t know what to study. I didn’t know anything. I was a student athlete. I liked sports, so what do you major in? Physical education. I looked at the sheet. That looks interesting, okay, I’ll be a teacher. No. But, that’s what I started out as: a physical education major. It was great until I had to take anatomy, physiology, kinesiology. Like, no one told that this was part of physical... cause they made 17 you think you just go, throw a ball, play a game, teach somebody how to do it, that was the major. No. My health teacher was rough. He taught eight o’clock in the morning. If you were one minute late, the door was locked, and he would say, “The train has left the station.” I remember one morning, he was late, so one of the football players that was in the class, “Let’s lock the door on him!” They tried to lock the door. Of course, he had a key. He unlocked the door and they said, “The train has left the station.” He said, “But the train can’t leave without the conductor,” and walked on in, and went on doing what he was doing. No one tried that again. Physical education was my major. My junior year, my school started a physical therapy minor and it looked exciting and interesting, so I said, “Oh, I’ll minor in that. I did, and regretted it for the physics class. It was bad enough I had to take anatomy, physiology, kinesiology, neuroanatomy, chemistry, all these crazy... I was not good at math, cause in high school, they didn’t care if I learned, so a lot of stuff I just missed totally. Physics—totally clueless. But I was smart enough, throughout my whole college career—because some of the stereotypes about athletes are true, I must admit—but I was smart enough to know I could party with you, but I got to go study, cause I can’t take bad grades home. My mom don’t play that. Whatever class I went into, I would hook up with the smartest person in my class. I don’t care how nerdy, whatever you want to call it, “You’re my guy. You’re my girl. Cause I got to get my grades. See you all later.” They want to party all the time, mm-mm, got to go. One of my good friends, we were at rival schools in high school—she was at Snowhill, I was at Pocomoke— 18 when we ended up at Morgan together, we ended up being roommates cause you could choose two people to try to get a roommate. We ended up being roommates and we made a pact. When it’s time to leave, we’re going to leave, and you don’t leave the other one; you have to go together. If you go to a party, whatever we’re doing, we have to stick together and leave together. When it’s time to go, we’ll go. That’s what we did, and that was always our excuse. “Oh, she has to leave, so...” whatever. We’d use each other that way, but I’d find the smartest person in all of my classes and that was my study partner. Anatomy, my study partner, Randy was in ROTC and one of my other best friends ended up marrying him. He comes to the dorm to help me study and she’s like, “Who’s that?” I’m like, “Oh, that’s Randy.” He’s a goofy dude, really, but he was smart. And she says, “I want to meet him,” so I introduced them. He was a year ahead of us and she said, “Oh yeah, I’m marrying him.” He was in ROTC and he was on his way to being a Major. She was like, “I’m changing my major.” She went to summer school for the next two summers, and they’re still married today, and we laugh about that as well. You go, girl. But she went to college for a different reason. She went to get a husband, and there were some that did that and that was her. But college was good. Physical education, like I said, it was difficult, but back in the day that’s something we share with our folk here at Weber. We had this sheet, depended on your major, these are your core classes, pick between these three electives or these three, and if you do this, in four years you’re out of here. Four years, I’m out. Just like that, without summer school. Now we give 19 them fifty thousand choices where they don’t understand none of them and say, “Ohhh....” Anyway. Little bit of a regress there. ST: Were there any other challenges besides the science courses? BS: Horrible food. Nope, not really. College was great. I think, just like anything else, you learn and grow, become a woman, find yourself, what you’re really into, what you’re all about. I always got along well with people, made friends easy, so that wasn’t an issue. As an athlete, and that’s true even with the women, doors open. You got to hang out with the jocks. Everybody thought you were cool cause you know all the football players, the basketball players, and we’re all friends. “Oh, yeah!” That was cool. I had interesting coaches in college that left an impression on my life, but they were good; they did the best they could. Matter of fact, in basketball, when we got there, some of the older girls made us join AU team in Baltimore, like, “You’re not going to learn anything here. This is what we do. We play this league and this is how we learn and grow.” So that’s what we all did; we played the AU ball on the side. ST: You mentioned that some of the coaches left a strong impression. Is there anything else you’d like to elaborate on that? BS: Dr. Payne was totally old school. She didn’t want you talking to boys. She didn’t want you being loud. All of this was a part of basketball. They don’t go together, but that was her way. She wanted to know—back then I was rocking a ‘fro— “How’d you get your hair like that?” Cause she was very fair and her hair was wavy and smooth and she had a very thin net that kept all the curls just right, so 20 she wanted to know how my hair ended up in a ‘fro. “I was born that way, thank you.” But she would make certain of us ride with her. The team had a bus, but she would always want to ride in a car. She had this great big black, long Cadillac kind of thing. But she turned around when she talked to you and took her eyes off the road. It was horrible. The older players knew, so they would get on the bus and try to hide so she couldn’t find them, and she’d come on the bus and pull people off. Because I’m the respectful person that I am, “Betty! Come on!” And they would be laughing and stuff, cause they knew what I was going to be in for. One particular trip, we were on our way to Pennsylvania, and she kept doing it. We’re like, “Dr. Payne, watch the road!” She got so mad with us she stopped in the middle of an off-ramp to try to tell us to get out. “You either stop it or you’ve got to get out!” Lord. I said, “I’ll never ride with this woman again. She can put me off the team. She can do whatever she want to do, but that’s never happening again.” I never got back in her car again. Dr. Payne was a trip. One of the other beauties of being at Morgan in Baltimore, you had all of the other athletic teams that were there. It wasn’t uncommon to go to the gym and Wes Ansell would be there with the guys playing basketball, or Rhoda Pearl happened to be in for a game and out there, like, “Is that her? Ahhh!” All of that. The social life was great. They had the concerts. We got to hear everybody on campus. All of the bands of the day came to campus so we got to participate in that or even, like I said, Baltimore. Our choir, all of those things, were fabulous, and the rich culture that was there. 21 My senior year, we were the last class of Morgan State College. The next year it became a university and we tried to protest, because we felt that if it went under the Maryland University system, we would lose the essence of that HBCU’s spirit and tradition. We had sit-ins for a whole week, blocking the traffic on Cold Spring and Hill Road and sit-in at the president’s office and all of that, but to no avail. It became a university and it’s still thriving though, so I guess it worked out, but that was our fear, that we would lose out of that history and , that the black professors would go and the white professors would come, because for a lot of us, that was our experience with integration. LR: You talked about being an activist. Were there any opportunities to be involved in... BS: Activist activities? LR: Well, I’m trying to remember, I know you were talking about your mom being a member of the NAACP. ST: I think you mentioned being part of it when you were in college... LR: Yeah. What were you doing with that in college? BS: In college we were doing the same thing: curriculum. Standing up if they were trying to do curriculum changes that we didn’t think were right, advocating for better food, or particular space for students on campus, expansion of the union, things of that nature. Even then, there was some of the apartheid stuff that had come to our knowledge, so we sat-in about that to make sure that the university didn’t have any investments in South Africa and stuff like that. I had the opportunity to work for a couple of political campaigns there. Terry Mitchell was a 22 congressman. His brother Clarence was a state legislator, so all of us went and worked on their campaigns. All of us were able to get out in the community, going door to door, all those kinds of things that kind of gave me that bite for politics, so to speak, on another side. I can remember Terry Mitchell spoke at our freshman class orientation. Everybody comes into the big auditorium and they have the speaker, tell you to look to the left and to the right, all of that stuff. “Who’s going to be here in four years?” But Terry Mitchell, one of the things he shared with us that day was about his role in the halls of Congress, and the need to be able to be bilingual, bi-everything. He says, “When I’m in east Baltimore on the corner, you sort of talk in jive, but when you walk into the halls of Congress, I have to use my so-so English vernacular to pontificate.” He goes on this long thing to let us now that there’s a time and place for all of this. You’re here to learn how to master both of those, because they both have value, but knowing when and where and how to use them will take you a long way. ST: With the NAACP in particular, did you become a member, or is this all part of that, or is this in addition to all that? BS: You become a member. It’s a membership organization, a college chapter. A matter of fact, Weber just got a college chapter recently. You become a member. You have your regular meetings, decide what you want to do. There was an adult advisor that worked with us as well. ST: And was most of it related to like the college campus? 23 BS: Yes, that’s what it is. Your college chapter. There’s a city branch that dealt with the bigger picture, but ours was specifically college chapter. LR: When you graduated, did you graduate with your degree in— BS: Yes, physical education, minor in therapy. I made it. LR: What was your next… BS: My next step? The weekend I graduated from college, I had an aunt and an uncle that were graduating from school in Baltimore as well, from Hopkins State, another HBCU. Big celebration in Baltimore. By then, when I graduated from college, my parents separated. My dad moved to New York where he had a brother and his sister. That weekend everybody converges on Baltimore for all of these graduations. My father was there. My grandparents of course—they lived in North Carolina, but they came up for everything—We were all in Baltimore. My oldest brother, who happened to live in Utah, had sent messages and congratulations and all of that, but while we were sitting around the table, we got the great idea—I don’t know who started it—but we decided that we would go back to North Carolina where my grandparents lived to “work on the farm” one last time before we all went our separate ways. That was a part of our growing up. My grandparents had ten—when I grew up there were ten, two of their children died early—so it was ten siblings on my mom’s side of the family. All ten of them would send us, their kids, to North Carolina during the summer to work on the farm. Pull weeds and hang out basically, go down with your grandparents. Which was great, we loved it except for the pulling weeds part because those rows were long; you couldn’t see the 24 end of it. The mosquitos were horrible. We were city people. A lot of my other cousins, they lived in rural communities, but we were in the city, so we had the people spray for mosquitos, didn’t get eaten up by mosquitos, but we would go and work on the farm at some point during the summer. That was our big plan, and everybody agreed. The house was full. There was probably about thirty of us or so kids, and we say, “Yep, we’re going to do it.” This was a Sunday, the end of May, it was probably around the 25th or so, and we said that the 30th of May is a holiday. That’s when we would all converge and meet up in North Carolina and spend a week with our grandparents so I packed up all of my stuff out of the dorms. My sister, Dee, she’s a couple years older. She married one of my classmates. That I didn’t know ‘til I went home to a party at her house and he’s there. “What are you doing here?” “What are you doing here?” I said, “That’s my sister.” “That’s my girlfriend.” It’s like, “What? Ack, yuck!” But she married Randy and their son’s birthday is the 30th of May, so they decided they would go a couple of days early and plan a birthday party for him as well. “Okay, sounds good. I’ll meet you all there on the weekend.” We got word that same day. My grandfather passed away. Before we could all get there. Dee and them were already there. He was a farmer and a longshoreman in Norfolk, but he farmed his own farm. Grandma went to call him in for breakfast or lunch, and he didn’t come. Sent somebody out there, “Go get your grandpa off that tractor, have him come on in.” He was laying on the ground by the tractor, and he passed away. It ended up, instead of going there to work that summer, ended up going for a funeral. My brother that lived in Utah came 25 home for the funeral. He drove his Winnebago, great big motor home, cross-country, by himself, to come to the funeral. After the funeral, we go back to Pocomoke. By the time he was getting ready to leave, he had talked seven guys into getting in his Winnebago and going to Utah, some place they’d never heard of. One of them was my lovely brother-in-law, Randy. They’re like, “We’re going to Utah!” I’m like, “Where’s Utah?” Open up encyclopedia, looked up Utah, looked at the map. Me, with my bright ideas, “Oh, it’s close to California. If I don’t like it, I’ll keep going. I always wanted to travel.” It looked close on the map. It looked really close, like step across the street, you’ll be in California. My sister was like, “Betty, if you don’t go, I’m not going. Cause like, Utah, I don’t know anybody. These guys are crazy.” We decided we would take my brother up on the offer. I said, “Sure I’ll go. I don’t have a job, just got out of school. If I don’t like it, I’ll keep going to California. I want to travel, see the world.” Forty-two, -three years later, I’m still in Utah. Saw the world, huh? We ended up coming across country. The guys went first, find a place, get a job, all of that, then they sent for my sister. She had a new baby. That was the other reason she wasn’t going to come if I didn’t come for some help. A month later, we rode across country and ended up in Salt Lake City. ST: Was that a massive culture shock? BS: It was. I’m still traumatized. I still ask myself, “What in the world?” Yes, it was so massive. We come into town in the evening. Lights everywhere. “Ooh, wow, this is a big old city!” I’m thinking Baltimore. Couldn’t even find a gas station open. It 26 was Sunday, nine o’clock, shut down. “Okay, it’s different.” We get to the house, get up the next day. I’m all excited to go outside and see the mountains. The mountains, that’ll get you. I don’t care who you are. It was, “Oh my God, this is real cowboys. I can see them coming down the cliff.” My dad was a big cowboy Western watcher. Grew up on Gunsmoke and all that fun stuff. I said, “Okay, let’s go check out the city.” One, the blocks were huge. “Oh, it’s three blocks.” Oh my goodness. Huge. I was so tired. I’m an athlete; I’ve been playing like four sports. Didn’t know anything about the altitude, so I’m in bad shape just trying to walk from like 5th East to State Street. What in the world is going on here? Took me two weeks—two whole weeks—and I’m looking to find a black person. “Where am I? Where have you brought us and what is going on?” I called my brother all kind of names. Like, “You didn’t tell us this. You didn’t tell me this part. What is going on?” I mean, I’m looking up and down the street, over here... There’s got to be some black people somewhere! Where’s the community? Where do they stay? Where do they go? Finally, I’m riding down State Street, I see a black person, and I’m hanging out the window like [waves arms] and they’re looking at me like I’m crazy. But after that, I knew that look. I see people. I say, “I know. There’s a couple of us here. Yes.” It was such a cultural shock. Like I said, took two weeks to see the first black person. One day, my sister and I were at the grocery store, and we ran into a black lady at the grocery store, and said, “Where’re the people?” She shared that she went to this church: Calvary. “A church?!” Cause we had looked for churches, and we saw all this stuff that didn’t look familiar in the phonebook. 27 “What’s the Church of Jesus Christ?” And it’s like five, ten pages, what is this? We’re just looking for “Baptist, Methodist.” Didn’t see any of that stuff. She told us about the church that she went to and we went there. It was like we had died and went to Heaven. It was black people. It was like, “Oh! Thank you, Jesus. Black people.” That was our journey to help them connect the community. We had some people that we could work with and then they told us, “Central City, you’ll see some of us there. You’ll see some of us over here, and on Sundays we go to Liberty Park.” Started getting into that. Since I had a minor in physical therapy, I looked at U of U cause I was going to go to grad school, and they had a physical therapy program there, so I decided, “Well, maybe I’ll apply to that.” I made an appointment to go up meet with their health sciences office. Bill Martinez, I’ll never forget him. By the time we talked, he’d offered me a job. I was like, “Ooh, Utah might not be too bad after all. This probably wouldn’t have happened in Baltimore.” So I got a job at the U of U as a minority health science advisor. Going out and meeting with families, with students that had shared that they were interested in the health sciences, and trying to talk them into coming to the U of U, signing up for our summer experience initiative, so I got to travel all over the state, go onto the Indian reservations and all of that. It was great. Applied to school. I was accepted, but as a part of my interview, one of the professors asked me what color church did I go to. All kind of inappropriate questions. I said, “Do I tell him what I really think? Do I need to be very political here and just be 28 nice?” I was nice with him, but then shared with others, “You probably need to help this gentleman out because he shouldn’t be asking this stuff.” ST: You stayed at University of Utah for your—was it master’s? BS: No, it was a second bachelor’s in physical therapy. Got my degree. In the meantime, I got married. Life started. I was like, “Okay, I guess I won’t be leaving now.” He lived in Ogden, and was commuting when we got married—because I was still in school. He said, “Well, we’ll stay here until you finish school.” Did that, and then ended up moving up here to Ogden. Going back to the U and got my master’s in public administration later. ST: Okay. What’s his name? BS: Gerod. G-E-R-O-D. We call him Butch. That is his nickname. ST: So you moved to Ogden. What did you find yourself doing once you moved to Ogden? BS: Immediately connecting to the community. I had church network, so that opened up doors. I knew some people from Ogden. As a part of our church tradition, we travel and go to each other’s churches. They have like anniversaries and special events, so I knew some people in Ogden at the time, and because my husband lived here, he knew a bunch. When I got here, one of his best friends, his mom, took us under her wings and kind of adopted us as her kids. Miss Ivy Smith. She’s another one of those Sheroes. She was a beautician, excellent cook, excellent singer, and all of her kids except for one were excellent singers and musicians. Hazel couldn’t sing a lick, but the rest of them were great. As a matter of fact, one of her daughters, we were really close, 29 Zenopia comes back every year for our Juneteenth festival and performs. But yeah, they adopted us and took care of us and watched our son. We didn’t know anybody. She took care of my older son, gave him his nickname. All of that fun stuff. ST: So what did you find yourself doing? Did you end up getting a job worked out here? Did you become more of a stay-at-home mom? What did you do? BS: No, I worked full-time. I worked, worked, worked, went to school. Before I came here, I had a job. I was in physical therapy, and one day at Calvary in Salt Lake, this black lady who happened to be the center director of the Job Corps center. She stood up in church, gave an announcement about Job Corps. They were looking for people to work there, and one of my best friends back in Maryland went to Job Corps and I went with her mom and dad for her graduation, so I kind of had an idea what Job Corps was. That next day I said, “I’m going to take a couple of vacation days and I’m going to go out and visit and check it out.” A couple of days later, I went out to Job Corps and when I rode into the gate, I saw black kids. I thought, “My goodness!” Again. I’m thirsty. I put in my resignation at Primary Children’s and got a job at Job Corps, so when we moved here, I was working at Job Corps in their cultural center and health programs. Taught physical education and things of that nature, sex ed. and ran the cultural programs there. ST: Do you have any kind of key memories you wanted to share from that? BS: Job Corps was a great experience. Like anything else, being there and young people from all over the country. There were two other black ladies; we all 30 worked in the physical education department. We ran the activities for the kids, so we did all the fun stuff: we did the movie theater, we did the cultural center, we did the pool hall, and all of that. We did the evening shift. We worked from like one in the afternoon until night, so we taught classes in the afternoon, and the evening we did all the cultural things with the kids. It was a blast. I learned how to play racquetball. I learned how to do some pottery. It was a wonderful experience being able to impact students who were taking a different path but still being successful. At that time, they even had the college programs. We were able to get some of them into college. One of the fun facts, all three of us along with the white lady, Holly, who ran the arts and crafts, we all got pregnant at the same time. All four of us, in one department, that were running all of the stuff. Our kids were like a month apart, so that was a big joke at Job Corps for a while, “What are you doing over there? Everybody’s pregnant.” ST: Were you there for quite a while? BS: I was there for... maybe seven or eight years. Yeah, I was good after that. When I was having my next child, decided that it was a good transition time. I got a job at the Marshall White Center and started working there as the recreation coordinator. That was fun too. While I was there, they were getting a new center director and I applied for that position and didn’t get it, and one of my other mentors, Mister Matthew, called me up said, “What are you going to do?” I said, “I don’t know yet.” Whether I’m going to stay there and still serve as the assistant or not. He offered me a job at Community Action, and I thought about it: “I can 31 either stay here and teach my replacement how to do the job or I’ll go and reinvent myself.” I decided that I’d take him up on the offer and went to work at Community Action, and I wasn’t there very long. I think I was only there maybe two years before I had to opportunity to apply for a job with the State of Utah as Director of the Governor’s Office of Black Affairs. I got that job and moved on to the state. ST: What did you end up doing in that job? Like what were your roles and responsibilities? BS: Our general title was to be an advisory to the governor and other state agencies and a liaison between state agencies and the black community. At the time, they had Black Affairs, Asian Affairs, Hispanic Affairs, and, of course, Indian Affair was a division, so that was different, but we were all in the same area in community and economic development. Spent a lot of time reviewing policies and procedures to see what impact they had on black and other communities of color. Of course, going to more meetings than you could ever care to go to because you were the one to be on this commission, that committee. Working on violence prevention, substance abuse prevention, education. Everything from A to Z, we were part of it in that capacity, along with any special initiatives the governor would have. I was appointed by Governor Bangerter and worked through part of his administration and part of Leavitt’s administration as the Director. A lot of great things happened. A lot of challenges of course, because Utah is definitely not on the cutting edge when it comes to diversity and inclusion 32 and affirmative action and civil rights or any of that. It was constant [holds up hands and mimes pushing back]... As a matter of fact, when I ended up going back to school to get my master’s and trying to decide what I’d do—health, education, or something else—it was my experience in the governor’s office that prompted me to do it in Public Administration because I couldn’t figure out why they were making decisions. I said, “None of this makes sense. What logic are they using? Why are they doing this? I don’t get it. It might be a white thing, I don’t know.” Cause I would have to sit up at the legislative session and some of those discussions and conversations—and they’re the ones in charge of government? I was like flabbergasted to listen to some of the actual things that some of the legislators would say for or against. Common sense stuff. It’s like... they must have never left home. They must have not seen or anything. It’s almost like your doctor. You think they’re the smartest person in the world and they know everything, until you find out, no, you might need to help them a little bit, to guide them through this. That’s what I found out in the State Capitol. There were homemakers, ranchers, some doctors, lawyers, from all walks of life. But they were making decisions for us based on what they knew and a lot of them had limited knowledge and weren’t, to me, doing a whole lot to expand their knowledge base. I was like, “Yeah, this has to change.” We tried in our best way to help them along the way and introduce things. One of my initiatives, I wanted to a minority internship program because in state government they advertise the jobs to each other or they would tell friends, families, “Hey, we got this job.” If you weren’t in there already, you weren’t going 33 to get a job. I sat down with Governor Bangerter and he said, “If you add women to it, I’ll do it.” No problem, add women, we need a job too! We started a minorities and women internship program and we worked with our different higher ed institutions to place interns in different departments in state government, to introduce them to that possibility. Martin Luther King holiday and commission was something we worked on. I drafted the legislation for the establishment of the Martin Luther King Human Rights Commission and the governor said, “Okay, we’ll put it out there,” and it got passed. They went back the next year and tried to get a little bit of money because there was no budget. It all came out of my budget. The Office of Black Affairs was able to get a small budget passed for it and the commission is still active today. We were able to get an endowment created for minorities students through the Board of Regents with Commissioner Foxley at the time. Worked with Salt Lake when they were doing their MLK Street and then we worked with Ogden to do the Martin Luther King Street here and Cesar Chavez and on and on and on. Young Achievers Program. One of the first things I did when I went to the governor’s office, there was an African American gentleman there that I worked with at Job Corps, and he’s a Republican. I told him, “I won’t hold it against you. It takes all of us working.” I go sit in his office, “Gerry, what is this all about? What do I need to do?” He said, “The first thing you need to do Betty, is put it in writing.” He said, “Your predecessors didn’t take a lot of time to put things down, so it’s hard to follow up if you don’t do that.” I said, “I can do that. I like to write.” That’s what I did. I 34 started drafting a lot of things and presenting them and was quite successful. Everything I presented got funded. I was able to get the governor’s support because I tried to tie—and that’s the other thing, he says, “See what they’re doing and then tie your agenda to what’s already going on.” “Okay, that makes sense.” I’m in community and economic development, so I would present things that had to do with business development. One of them was a marketing and advertising program. Tourism is a big thing in Utah, so I said, “Hey, we have Black organizations. Let’s get them to come to the state of Utah and hold their conventions.” I wrote that up and got funding to go out and market and work with the Chambers to do that and put on a couple conventions here. Along with bringing them here, I took it a step further because there was no real economic impact toward the Black community or minority community with the convention. We didn’t own hotels, we didn’t own taxis, we didn’t own restaurants, so I was able to get our mayors to agree to allow street vending—that was before street vending was a thing—during the conventions that we were bringing into town. Churches and small businesses, they were able to come downtown and set up a shop. One of the conventions, one of our churches actually had their bus come to the convention center, pick up people and take them back to the church to serve meals and things of that nature, so that was our way to try to get some of the funds to trickle down into our community like that. Bunch... all over the place. Because that’s what we did. Every department took time, took turns, looking across what was going on to try 35 to make sure that diversity and how it impacted the communities was a part of the conversation. Often time, if you’re not in the room, it doesn’t come up. ST: So were you there for quite a few years? BS: I was there for ten years. A long time, cause just as a political appointee, when the government change, you change too. I got to stay a little longer and push the envelope a little harder. That’s always a challenge in state government. If you push too hard, the governor goes, “Betty, it’s been wonderful, but I think it’s time for you to go.” You’re a political appointee. Your right to work state, in politics, if you’re appointed, they don’t have to give you a reason. It’s like, “Okay, you can leave today.” LR: What was maybe one of the biggest challenges you faced when you were there? BS: I think probably being the follow-up. We were successful in being able to present and say yes. But then you had to work through the agency and all of the bureaucracies to actually get something to change. My thing there was to let other people understand how government works. I thought that was a part of my major responsibility, because I could work on a government level to change all the policies in the world, but if the people weren’t in a position to understand or take advantage of it, the haves are already there, so they would get the benefit, so it would never trickle down. A lot of the work I did was to help bring the community up at the same time and get people appointed to different boards and commissions and get them to go to meetings, to see what was going on, to be in the room. Because when we’re in the room, the conversation changes. That was a big part of it. Talking to people, getting people ready to sit through meetings, 36 which aren’t fun, that you may not really understand, but the importance of being there and then being able to work long-term with that particular department to see that change come to fruition. Because we worked on things like affirmative action policies, then the person that’s the director will leave, or it’d get this far and the politics will, “Oh, well maybe we won’t do that.” It’s easy to get frustrated working in that environment. I think they were some of the biggest challenges: not being frustrated, staying focused, trying to see it resolved, and getting our own communities to feel that they have the right to be involved in government, on a local and especially state level, because this is where policies are being made that impact their life, their kids’ life, and a lot of people didn’t realize. They don’t look at it. No, you need to be here. You need to be here because you need to speak up and call folk and write letters and do all of that. ST: Kind of going off of that, there seems to be a lot of work involved getting people aware, letting them know, and also kind of keeping an eye on all these different projects, and also there’s a community side to it and then your family, so I’m wondering. How did you balance all of these different roles and responsibilities, things you were trying to get done? BS: First and foremost, I had a wonderful husband. He knew I wasn’t a traditional kind of stay-at-home. When we met, I was involved, and he was willing to take that journey. Then, a lot of negotiation had to go on in that arena, where he was okay with doing the laundry and taking the kids... “You want dinner? You might have to cook your own dinner tonight,” but no, for real, I couldn’t have done it. Because I had friends whose spouses or partners weren’t that accommodating to 37 what they were trying to do. My husband was, so he gave me that freedom to work in community and job and go to school. There was a time I was going to school full-time, and working full-time, and raising kids. We have four sons, so doing all of that. When I showed up to school, “Oh, Miss Betty’s here today!” Cause they didn’t see me in every meeting. My husband, he’d be picking them up or dropping them off kind of thing. There was a lot of give and take and balancing all that, all the time. Even now, even with my kids being grown, I get home last night, it’s 9:30. “Oh, you finally made it.” “NAACP, babe.” It don’t matter. It’s always going to be something. Then I had a couple of good friends, like the Smiths, were that family. One of the things Miss Ivy Smith told me when we first connect, “Don’t leave your kids with anybody.” She was my primary babysitter and took care of my kids, so I had that security that I had somebody that I could trust being there to take care of my children when my husband was at work and I had to go somewhere because my role in the government is I was travelling, going out of town as well, to conferences. Whenever I could take the family, I took them, but there were times when they weren’t able to go. Yeah, a lot of balancing, a lot of give and take, and the community that was willing to support what I was doing. ST: You just kind of recently mentioned the NAACP again. Did you become involved with it in Utah? BS: I stayed involved. Yes, when I was in Salt Lake, it’s one of those things you do as a person of color, African American. When you move to a new place, you look for the church, you look for the NAACP. That’s community to us. Grew up in that 38 culture, so that’s what I did when I was in Salt Lake: found the church, found the NAACP, joined, got involved, and stayed involved. When I came to Ogden, I knew who the president was, reached out, got involved, found out when the meetings were. They took me under their wings. Mr. Gilespie, Adrien’s grandpa, he was the president for 32 years or so. They were excited to have a young person in the room. I stayed the youngest. Now I’m one of the old ones at the meeting. But yeah, I immediately got involved when I came to Ogden and went to meetings, went to conventions and conferences, and I was a youth advisor for a lot of years and then became president. I was the first president after Mr. Gilespie retired, and I did that until I ran for state government. I ran for state legislature, so I resigned from president at that time. I didn’t win. A few years later, I became president again, resigned again cause I ran for senate. But stayed involved the whole time, just not as president. Then two years, I’m president again. It’s like, recycling me in this organization. Yeah, NAACP is in my blood. ST: What were some of your key memories or experiences, that you associate... with NAACP? BS: Probably experiences with our conventions and things of that nature. So powerful. Matter of fact, we’re going this weekend to Detroit for a national convention. But the education, just being able to get the background to continue to do what you’re doing. The workshops and all of that are powerful. Getting to meet everybody, getting to shake hands with Nelson Mandela, and Jesse Jackson, and Cara Moseley Braun. Everybody that was somebody is at the 39 convention. They’re doing a presidential town hall, so all of the candidates—I just got an email—at least eight of them are going to be in Detroit for the meeting and they said, “Send in your questions now.” The black lady that’s one of the White House press secretaries, she’s one of the reporters with MSNBC and somebody else, but she’ll be moderating—April. April Ryan will be moderating the town hall, which should be fun. For years, NAACP has a national program called ACTSO— Academic, Cultural, Technological, and Scientific Olympics. It’s focused on high school students and they compete in all of these areas on a local level, regional level; the winners go to national to compete for cash prizes, computers, all kinds of things. Just being a part of that, and we were able to take students from our local branch to compete in that competition every year, along with my other mentors, Miss Debbie Goodwin, one of the first teachers in Ogden. But being able to take other young people to experience that, cause in Utah you don’t get it, and to go back there to be among thousands of African Americans that are doing all kinds of things will definitely... help keep you going when you came back home, when you get discouraged or don’t think you’re going to make a difference. Then you’re able to hold on again and it’s making a difference. You just have to not give up. ST: You might have already answered this one. I’m wondering what some of the key, specific responsibilities of being president of Ogden’s NAACP. I know you mentioned education [being] inspiring in that sense. Was there anything else that you had to do that maybe most people wouldn’t consider part of the job? That surprised you? 40 BS: Everything is a part of the job. We’re volunteers, number one. People assume it is a job. No, it’s an adventure. We’re all volunteers in this capacity, although, I guess larger, maybe New York and Detroit or LA may have paid staff, but for the most part most of the branches are all volunteer people. Along with being responsible for just a meeting period, and committees and coordinating all of that, then the issues that come along with that: meeting with police, meeting with educators, meeting with the health department, meeting with whomever you need to meet with to address complaints and issues that come up. Again, being in Ogden, being in Utah is a lot harder to deal with those issues. One, denial: “Oh, of course there’s no racism here. When we see you, we don’t see color.” So, why don’t you have any black teachers in Ogden High? Why don’t you have this going here? Those are always challenges. Then to be able to do that long term, see it change. We meet them and it’s like, “Oh, yeah, you’re right.” You go back next year and nothing has changed, and we get tired too. It’s like, “My goodness, how many times do we have to have the same conversation?” I’m having the same conversation today that I had thirty years ago. “Excuse me, what’s the problem? Why can’t we ‘just...’” They say with other people, “Why can’t you all just do what you’re supposed to do?” Open it up and diversify and add curriculum that honors all people and genders? Why are we still doing this same old...? If you didn’t teach yourself gender studies, if you didn’t teach yourself Black history, you wouldn’t get it in school. That’s sad. It should not be the case. We should have a diverse curriculum, but we don’t. You can’t talk about science and not include women and people of color. How do you do that in 41 a science curriculum? To me, it has to be intentional. You can’t avoid it when we have this long list of people that have invented things and done things and you never hear about it in school. One of my colleagues said he had some pictures of some famous Blacks, and asked his middle school daughter if she could name any. Couldn’t name not one person. Come on. That’s not a good thing. That’s been a constant challenge. You hope people would do what you think is right to do, but in their mind, they believe that they are. It’s hard to crack that and to break that. I was in a training; we have a new initiative called “Ogden Civic Action” that’s going on in our city. We have an alliance for health and IHC is doing in Ogden, we call the Ogden KN. There’s a housing committee Education and Health. But again, they’re addressing the same stuff I was doing in the government’s office thirty years ago. We had a training about intergenerational poverty, and the trainer was with the United Way down in Salt Lake and as a part of her discussion, she was talking about change, and one thing that came up about change was it’s like death for some people. I’m sitting there listening, and all of sudden, I said, “Maybe that’s why change is so hard, because people look at it they’re losing something.” I had never looked at it as loss. I had always looked at like, “Well, change is you gain something. I’m doing better. I’m doing this, this, and this.” For other people, they look at it just opposite; they’re losing something, so that may make them more resistant to it. That made me start thinking about when I’m in these meetings with folk trying to push and ask and expand the conversation, so if they’re thinking they’re losing something, how can 42 I approach this? What can I say to maybe mitigate that fear or that concern to get to what I feel is the better end result? That’s kind of the constant in the work that we do with NAACP and we sit on different committees to address these things, but it’s always an uphill battle. Even though we’ve gotten a lot better, we say the words, “Diversity, inclusion, inclusive excellence.” But one of my other mentors, H.C. Massey at Community Action, told me years ago, “Betty, don’t watch what they say. Watch what they do.” And that’s kind of been my mantra. I look for what you do. I remember when President White first came to Weber and one of my dear friends on the Board of Regents—Pastor France Davis—he said, “I need to introduce you all. He’s a good president.” So we go over to the corner and start talking and I said, “Well, President White, I need to let you know a little bit about myself.” I said, “You know, I have a couple of things that I kind of live by and one is follow the money. What a person invests in, what they believe in, their priorities, that’s where they put their money, so I’m going to be watching to see what you put your money in at Weber State.” I’m like this little peon working at Weber State, but I say that to him. I said, “The other is, I believe in watching what a person does and not what they say. Cause we can say a lot of things.” And he says, “That’s what I want you to do.” ST: One of the questions that I did want to ask about was Project Success Coalition. Could you tell us more about your experience with that and your involvement? BS: Project Success Coalition is a local non-profit organization that myself and the late Reverend Leander Coots, who was a pastor here in Ogden at the time, co- 43 founded. We did that in response to a couple of drug busts that took place in our inner city and people were just talking about, “What can we do? Did you hear about this?” We convened kind of a community mass meeting and invited residents from all over the neighborhood to come. I have continued to serve as director for that organization in my spare time. Nights and weekends I do Project Success. As we came together to establish the organization at the time, we had very few Black organizations in Ogden outside of our church, so it was important that we try to fill that gap of some needed services. Our first effort, we established a summer youth program and we hired students. We partnered with JTPA, Job Training Partnership Act program, to hire youth and the youth would work during the summer. Then once we found out that they had some academic deficiencies, we went back to JTPA and said, “Okay, this can’t be just a work program. We need to tie in education with it,” and they agreed and supported our effort. Students would work a half a day and they’d be in classroom a half a day. We partnered with Ogden Applied Technology College to do those courses with us. Today, we still do a number of programing. Our major focus is on cultural arts, education, and health. We serve as an advocacy organization around those issues as well as some direct services, with tobacco and health. We do the Utah Juneteenth Cultural Arts Festival, community Kwanzaa celebration. We do a Gift of Love, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner in partnership with the Marshall White Center of Ogden City. We’ve done that for about twenty years now, and 44 we’ve been in existence since 1989. For us, thirty years doing this work in the community. ST: What are your favorite memories or experiences associated with Project Success? BS: First of all, when we first started, being able to offer an after-school program. At the time, there weren’t any after-school programs in the Ogden school district, so we offered one of those first after-school programs and then we expanded that to include summer school, so we did a year round education initiative. We did that for about maybe seven to ten years. When the school districts began to do programs, Boys and Girls Clubs and all those other initiatives that had more resources—we were very grassroot, very small... We didn’t have the kind of funding to support transportation from school to our program, so we went back to the board and said, “Okay, now that we do have these other programs, let’s look at another niche or other gaps in services that we may be able to support,” and we stopped doing our after-school program at that time. We partnered with Weber State doing one of those first community computer labs, and we opened up our computer lab to the public. Along with that, one of the bigger things that we’ve been able to do and continue to have impact even today is that coalition building—that’s in our name, Project Success Coalition—but everything that we’ve done, we’ve reached out to bring other people to the table, to support that recognizing that it’s not the issues that we deal with, or challenges. The opportunities are far greater than any one entity, and we’ve been able to continue 45 to bring people together to address those issues and work for a better Ogden, better Weber, all of that. Let’s see, some of the other fun things Project Success has done. Juneteenth has been a major effort that we have sustained for thirty years. There was a celebration happening in Salt Lake for several years, and one year at the last minute they forgot to reserve the park for the Juneteenth festival. That particular weekend, which was the Juneteenth weekend, there was no park available in the Salt Lake area, at all. They were going to cancel, and I’m like, “How do you cancel Juneteenth? It’s going to happen whether we do anything or not.” So I called my friend, Maurice White, who was the director of Marshall White and said, “Look, is the park available? Is the center available?” And he said, “Yes, come on up.” That’s where we came, to Ogden, and had our first Juneteenth festival in this area. Pulled it together two weeks prior to Juneteenth. We had a flatbed truck, an umbrella to block the sun from the performer, one at a time, and we made it happen. Because of the reception we had in Ogden, we decided to do it again. Thirty years later, we have a Juneteenth Festival still going on and now we do it in multiple locations from Salt Lake, West Jordan, Layton, and here, to having a holiday, and we were able to work with legislators to get that passed. We first tried with our former representative Johansson to get the holiday passed. It wasn’t successful, passed in the House, not in the Senate. We reached out to Representative Sandra Hollands, said, “It’s time to try it again,” about twelve years later, and we were successful in getting full support and approval, and then we were able to have the Governor come up to Weber for 46 our celebration and have a ceremonial signing of that bill to commemorate Juneteenth as an official Utah holiday. So the third Saturday in June: Juneteenth. I think, along with that, the students that we’ve been able to help over the years, being able to increase their academic performance, connecting them to opportunities that we were able to partner with in town, camps that they were able to experience that they would not have, had it not been for Project Success. Our community Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners. Years ago, Mister Jackson had a restaurant, The Cajun Skillet, in downtown Ogden, and he used to invite the homeless in to feed them at Thanksgiving, and again, he decided he couldn’t do it anymore. I said, “This has been a great event, a great opportunity to support those that have not. Would you mind if we kept the dream alive and kept doing it?” And he said, “Sure, I’ll even come and cook,” so he came down and cooked, and we moved it from his restaurant, which it had outgrown, to the Marshall White Center. We continued to do the homeless and low-income community Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner and we called it the Gift of Love. We didn’t just want to say “Homeless dinner” that doesn’t sound... you know. Part of that event, again, was bringing community together. We worked with ATC, their chefs to help cook, volunteers by the tons went in to prepare the meals, serve the meals, and one of the things we emphasized was that we wanted people to just sit down and talk to our guests, and that’s how we looked at it. They were our guests, and to treat them with respect and to serve them in that particular time. We continued to do that and we were able to get Ogden City, then, to make this event as a part of the workplan, the policies and programs of the community, of 47 Marshall White, so whether Project Success is here or not, it’s in that workplan to do the Gift of Love Thanksgiving dinner, the Christmas dinner, to support the Martin Luther King prayer breakfast that we’re involved in, along with the NAACP. Those are some of our hallmark events and successes. ST: Alright. You described some of the challenges of being a grassroots organization. Could you maybe go into that or some of the other challenges you faced? BS: One of the things we wanted to do when we established it was to keep it grassroots, recognizing the value of every person. A lot of times, on any board, their immediate goal is to get the movers and shakers on the board because they bring in money, name recognition and all of that, but we felt it was important and that’s a part of who we are. “Keeping hope alive” is our motto and it’s for grassroots people because I believe that’s where the real change... You can change policies and adopt policies every day, but if those people that are intended to be helped by it aren’t aware or aren’t in a place to take advantage of it, their life doesn’t change. It’s the neighbor next door, that corner store that speaks to people. I think all of us can look back in our lives and think of that moment where someone said something to us that really made a difference. It wasn’t a mayor. It wasn’t a county commissioner. It wasn’t a CEO of any bank or corporation. It was a janitor, a teacher, a neighbor, somebody spoke that life into you. By us trying to do that and keeping regular folk as our board, just presents those kind of challenges, because people like to give to places where, “Oh, yeah, I know him.” We haven’t had that and we still don’t have that, but we continue to do our best to make it happen. 48 ST: Alright. What have been some of your responsibilities and roles, specifically for the Project Success Coalition? BS: Help support that vision for it. Help primarily with fundraising to keep it alive. I do most of the grant writing; 99% of all of that, which is a challenge because I’m not grant writer, but I do my best. Then being that spokesperson, in terms of the advocacy role, whatever’s going on, being able to make sure that in our other board rooms and settings that issues of low-income people, people of color are definitely on the table and addressed and included in that bigger planning. We have a lot of things going on where often times how it impacts traditionally underrepresented people is not at the top of the agenda. Most people assume if it’s good for the majority, it’s good for everybody else, but we know that there are nuances in all of our communities and cultures that make it important that we look at things in different ways, use a cultural competence lens and making sure that we’re looking at equity and inclusion and all of that and it doesn’t automatically happen. We have to be intentional. That’s been our role, to make sure people would be more intentional about how they look at issues around poverty, around race and ethnicity, and how education impacts that and how we could change education to better serve this population. ST: And how would you recommend, based off of your experience, to change education to better fit the population? I’m kind of curious. BS: First of all, just having better awareness and understanding of those systems that impact someone’s ability to take full advantage of the education system that’s there. The other is, when you look at these education achievement gaps, it would 49 be, in my mind, ridiculous to think that black people and brown people are automatically not as smart of somebody else. So why aren’t they achieving? Being able to pull back those layers to see what is going on that this system is not as helpful for these students, or they’re not benefitting the same way as someone else. I think, often times, we’ve looked at poverty as an excuse for why we’re not doing it, versus “How can we make education better even in the midst of someone who’s experiencing poverty?” When I grew up, I was poor. Everybody was poor. That wasn’t even a thing. We didn’t even know poverty cause we all were just living. But we had excellent education systems and teachers went above and beyond, were a part of the community. They made sure that you felt good, that you understood who you were, felt good about who you were. Instructions like, “Hold your head up, stick your chest out, you’re special.” A lot of our young people never get to feel that they’re special, so when it comes to tackling challenging situations, often times give up before they even start, or they experience subtle racism or -isms that make them feel that they don’t even belong in those spaces where they are. If you’re in school for twelve years and never hear about anybody black except Rosa Parks and Dr. King, that’s a problem, and that’s what we experience today. Even our curriculum, and that’s something that definitely has to be addressed, making that more factual. Because when you tell this limited history, then you’re not really educating people, preparing them for this world that we’re living in. Those are some of the things that we have to really do and usually when you bring up issues, people immediately take it, “Oh, they’re talking about me. I’m not bad, I’m wonderful, I’m 50 not prejudiced, I’m not a racist, I’m not...” No one’s saying that. We can do better; we can do different. That’s the challenge that we have every day in education and other places: how do we do it better? Because 60% of the people are okay, doesn’t mean we don’t have to do anything else. 70% are doing fine, that doesn’t exonerate us from doing more to bring up that other 30%. We haven’t adequately addressed the 30% and the 20% and the 10% and it takes work, it takes effort, but that’s why we’re here, right? That’s some of the advice. And to be more culturally competent themselves. We take a diversity class and think, “We’ve got it. We don’t have to do anything else. I already did that. Oh, we’ve got to do that again?” I hear that all the time. “Oh, we’ve got to go another sexual harassment. Oh we’ve got to...” If everything was where it needed to be, we wouldn’t have to, but for myself I had to learn on my own. People forget that we’re in the same education system, so how do I become aware of who Betty is, my history, my culture? I had to teach myself. My parents taught us. We read the books. We went to the museums. We experienced that history. In Utah, if you’re black, where do you go, where do you get it, who tells you if you’re not getting any of it in school? The same system that didn’t share that with you is that one that didn’t share it with the people that needed to learn that as well. Every parent, they may have missed that as well, so they’re not teaching that history, and when you don’t have that, you don’t have that feeling of self, that you’re part of something bigger than yourself, regardless of your circumstances, regardless of not having enough money. My mother used to tell us, again, about that, “Okay, go on out to school. Put your head up, stick 51 your chest out. Nobody knows what’s in your pocket if you don’t tell them.” Poverty isn’t even an issue. You better get out there and do the best you can. The old axiom for Blacks was, “You had to work twice as hard to be half as good or get half the recognition.” We all grew up being overachievers and going the extra mile, and those are some of the things that we have to be able to pass on to younger people. Those are things that our educators have to constantly learn. There’s no excuse for us not having more diverse curriculum in our schools. Betty Shabazz, Malcom X’s wife, came to the U of U while I was still working there. Awesome. We had a private meet and greet with her, and one of the students asked, “Well, how are we supposed to if nobody tells us and nobody teaches us,” and she said, “Oh, no. Stop right there.” She said, “I don’t want to ever hear that come out of your mouth or anybody else’s mouth again.” She said, “We are in the information age. You cannot blame anyone else for not knowing. You can Google everything. You can pick up. You can read. It’s there. You have these computers. You have things that we never had, so no more excuses. You can’t blame anyone. If they’re not doing it, you demand that they do it, but you can do some of this on your own.” ST: You kind of answered my next question, but I’m going to ask it anyway to see if there’s more. What role do you think education has played in empowering women? BS: I’ll start with a positive. The fact that in education you see so many women is empowering in and of itself, because we do get to see role models in education, women that have taken different paths to get to where they are. At the same 52 time, we see little or no Black women, Latino women, Asian women, women from other places in education. At all. I have four sons. They all went through their whole Utah education experience with only one Black teacher. They all didn’t have him, but they knew who he was when Mr. Johnson finally came to Ogden High. When we look at that role for empowering women, the fact that we have role models and Utah does have role models, I’m not confident that they went beyond that to highlight the significant role of women in our country, in Utah. One of the constant challenges with Utah being predominantly Latter-Day Saint, the role that they have shown for women has kind of been prevalent in how we address women in education in general. I had a young man. He was an intern for me since I’d been at Weber and was quite interesting because I’d never heard this shared before, but he got married while he was a student. His wife worked here as well. When I asked her about what she was going to do next, thinking maybe she’d say grad school or look for a job, it was “Be a homemaker.” I’m like... you just did four years of college to go home? I don’t understand. “What is that all about?” He’s LDS and he chimes in that, “We’re taught that the likelihood of your children going to college is more dependent on the mom, so they push for the mothers to get a college education so they could better influence their education outcome of their children.” I found that... very interesting... Yeah, that’s great. But influence them to do what? Is it to do the same path? You go to school so that your children will go to school, or do you go to school to fulfill this dream that you have within you to be whatever that next step is? I think, as a state of education, we definitely 53 have work to do when it comes to how we view women and women’s roles and how we support those roles and how we, in actuality, try to open up more doors for that. Oh, I want to back up on that and share a little bit more. Because I think there’s a big difference in how education views roles of different women, you know white women versus women of color and what their next steps are and how they support them. That in and of itself is enough opportunity for growth. I just think about, even in my own career, mentorship or coaching, I haven’t received that as a woman of color even at Weber. No one saying, “Okay, this is how you do this, this is how you go to the next step, this is how you rise,” and, “Have you ever thought about being a VP? Have you ever thought about teaching? Have you ever? Well, this is how you do that.” I think that’s another area that education has definitely missed some opportunities in mentoring and supporting women of color and joining with them. I remember when Weber opened up, we had a big influx of women coming to campus and supporting the higher education of women. I don’t recall any women of color that were part of that class of women that were given those opportunities, so I think, again, how we address women across the board and how we view and support women of color is something that we definitely have to do a better job and be more intentional. You’ll see one every now and then, that one, that Adrienne. We recognize that. But I think across the board we could do a much better job. Again, being able to highlight other women. If I asked young people to name five of these people, they probably couldn’t get past one or two. 54 Of course, they know Michelle Obama, and they probably seen Rosa Parks. Other than that... that’s it, and that’s sad, when we’ve had so many remarkable women through history that have made a huge difference on society and changed things for the better. The movie Harriet just opened up, I can’t wait. I was out of town, so I’m going to get some of our students together and the ladies, and we’re going to go check it out this weekend. I hope it’s in Utah, I haven’t even checked yet. But it opened nationwide on Tuesday. The filmmaker and producer were at our NAACP conference in Detroit this past week and it was awesome. They did a little sneak preview. I can’t wait. But most people don’t know anything about Harriet Tubman other than Underground Railroad, but not the depth of the work that she was doing and against all odds. Freedom. ST: Is there anything else you want to add? To the education question. Cause I don’t want to... BS: I don’t think we do enough across the board, encouraging them to go beyond high school, to look at non-traditional paths and opportunities, to even explore those things while they’re in school. Yeah, we can do a lot more where that’s concerned. We’ve definitely gotten better. We’re talking STEM and women and minority in science and we’ve done that, but there’s a lot more that could be done. Again, if we look around to see where women are, even on our own campus, and in education we don’t have a lot of women. High school principals, I think we had an assistant superintendent, a female superintendent for a short 55 period of time in the Ogden school district. Not at Weber. Put our money where our mouth is. We should see some outcomes and we’re doing these great things. ST: You said that you would suggest encouraging women to take more non-traditional paths. I’m curious what you mean by non-traditional, cause sometimes I feel like that word varies depending, person to person, what their values are. BS: First, non-traditional: believing that you can be anything you want to be. That’s the first non-traditional because we all don’t grow up thinking that we can do whatever. We have often been pigeon-holed, or where we’ve seen other women like ourselves. That’s what we strive to do because that’s what we see. The other part of that, within the framework of where those jobs and opportunities are, seek those things that maybe everybody else doesn’t do or won’t do. If we have 80% of our classroom teachers and educators, maybe you don’t want to do that, maybe you want to do something else. That’s what I mean with non-traditional. ST: Alright, thank you. In regards to timeline, I have 1989 is the Project Success Coalition, is there anything else going on at that time that you kind of wanted to make note of? BS: A lot. At the same time we created Project Success, and the same issues were happening in Salt Lake, so I called on some of my sister friends and we established another non-profit there called African American Task Force, and we were addressing substance abuse prevention. We brought in speakers, looking at rights of passage programs for men as well as women. We moved forward to establish a group home at that time in Salt Lake, the “Bird House,” and worked with young women that were about to run away or that were court involved, so 56 we had a residential group home in Salt Lake at the time. I was working in the governor’s office as Director of the Office of Black Affairs, so there was a lot of work happening there to influence policies and procedures in education. We worked with the Board of Regents, established a minority scholarship program. At that time, it was just busy, busy, busy. The ‘80s and ‘90s were busy times. I was a part of the effort to establish Martin Luther King Day as a holiday in the state of Utah. I established the Martin Luther King Human Rights Commission with the support of the governor. Once we had the holiday passed— I had Dr. Crawford appointed as our first chairperson, so I’m the new Director for the Office of Black Affairs, and petitioned the governor, put it in our work plan, to establish a commission to sustain the holiday. Cause once you have the holiday, what are you going to do with it, how are you going to make sure that people commemorate it, the school children learn about it and take time to learn about the Kingian principles of nonviolence and what this whole Civil Rights movement is all about? I looked around to think about what names I would put forward to be our first chairperson. I looked at my colleagues at the U of U. The U of U was leap years before Utah in doing major programming and things of that nature around Dr. King Day, so I thought about submitting one of my colleagues down there, then I looked at my home, because everything doesn’t have to be in Salt Lake. Throughout my tenure in the Director of the Office of Black Affairs, I made sure we did things in Ogden and Layton and get folks, “Come on, get out of Salt Lake, y’all. I know you think you’re all that, but we’re pretty good on this end, too.” I looked at what wasn’t happening at Weber—there was a little bit, but very, 57 very little happening here—and my thinking was, “If I were to get Dr. Crawford appointed, that would help elevate and push Weber to do even more.” Because at the time, we had a... well, we still do have a large African American population, and so this would be a good place to help draw in community and build partnerships between Weber and the community. The governor accepted my recommendation and Dr. Crawford was appointed as Chair, and we worked together for the next ten, fifteen years, traveling to Atlanta to meet with Coretta Scott King and Lloyd, the director of the holiday commission and their family. Them coming here off and on over the years, working with us as well. We were able to get the commission, a little bit of funding to go on a road trip, and that was a part of our effort to educate and inform. The commission started doing that where we travelled throughout the state. We had recognition program and supported the Salt Lake branch of the NAACP, had the large Martin Luther King luncheon, and then we supported the bell ringing going on at that particular time. We worked to get the street name changed in Salt Lake, and then we came to Ogden and worked to get 24th Street changed here. By that time I was no longer working as the Director of the Office of Black Affairs, but supported from a community level getting the Cesar Chavez streets named as well in both Salt Lake and Ogden, so it was a lot going on at that time. We worked with our schools. Governor Bangerter held an economic development conference, and at that conference, he recognized a young entrepreneur—these were college competitions. The first year I participated, I’m sitting there watching students winning $25,000, $10,000, like, “Ooh!” And there’s 58 no people of color in this group, so it’s like, “Go back, what are we going to do to let our kids know that these opportunities?” They were recognizing high school students as well, and they were winning $5,000 or whatever for their business ideas and what they had done starting businesses, so I brought my colleagues together—we had Office of Black Affairs, Asian Affairs, Hispanic Affairs, and we had Native American Indian Bureau, they were a little bit different—But I said, “Look, we have to do something to just introduce this to our young people.” I offered an idea to do a Young Achievers program as a way to recognize our young students of color and to bring them to this economic development conference the next year. Theirs wasn’t just business, because at the time I didn’t know any black kids or Hispanic kids that had a business, we said, “Okay, let’s call it Young Achievers,” so we could recognize them for the academic achievement, for their public service, and all of that. The next year, Governor Levitt continued to do this and they were able to be recognized by the governor in these categories, so each of our groups were able to pick their top three students to be recognized at the governor’s conference, and hopefully that sparked some interests in them on what some of those opportunities were in the state, and things that they could do that they may not have thought about doing in the past. ST: You sound very busy during this time. BS: Yeah, it was... When you’re working in government period, you’re constantly learning, looking, “Oh, wow, oh!” Unfortunately, my creativity, my visionary stuff... I guess overacted. Another one of the initiatives that I started in the governor’s 59 office was the marketing and advertising program. Again, I was housed in Business and Economic Development, so I’m listening to all of this, and the arts council was there and film commission. Again, it’s like, “Okay... They’re giving people money and spending money to bring conferences. Why aren’t they bringing our conferences?” Makes sense to me, so I wrote it up. Regardless of who Salt Lake City or whoever brought in, they would always reach out to our offices because they figure some people of color would come, so, “How can we make sure they’re welcome and we do what we need to do?” In those conversations, I learned how they calculate the economic impact of these conferences and conventions on the state. They stayed for two days, it had an economic impact—and these are just general figures—of maybe $300 per person. If it’s one hundred people at the conference, if it’s one thousand people at the conference, it adds up. People in the offices would go in and they would ask the state legislature, “We need $100,000 to support this conference coming to Utah.” “Oh, okay, I can count, that makes sense.” So I wrote it up. Of course I didn’t ask for big money, but I would put on the proposals “there would be 500 people, they’re staying for three to four days, and when you add in transportation, hotel, eating, all of that... they’re spending $2.5 million dollars, adding that to Utah’s economy. All we want is $30,000 to support blah, blah, blah.” I was speaking their language and they supported it, so it was successful. Matter of fact, our division got recognized by the state for this marketing and advertising program, so we were able to bring the Gospel Music Workshop of America here, which was a huge deal, and that was probably around 1992. 60 Over a thousand people came for that and they sang with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, were in the temple with them doing this performance, and helped change a lot of things in the state of Utah with opening that door. We brought the ELS convention, and Gamma Delta, my sorority. We brought that regional conference here. One of the things that happened with the Gospel Music Workshop Convention... Who makes the money when a convention comes? The hotels, the eateries, transportation. We didn’t have transportation. We didn’t own any cabs or companies. We didn’t own any restaurants, only one at the time in downtown Salt Lake, and we didn’t own any of the hotels, so I went to the mayor. I said, “Look, we’re bringing this conference. It’s people of color, and our community needs to be able to enjoy some of the economic benefit.” I was able to get the mayor to agree to allow street vending before we had street vending in Salt Lake City, and we invited organizations and churches to have a vending booth on the street during that convention. Yeah, that was a success. A radio got started, doing the KILLB. They brought bands and their church buses and picked people up and took them back to their church to feed them and get them engaged in the community, so those kinds of things were going on as well. Health stuff, substance abuse, working with drug free youth... A lot of good things going on at that time. A lot of progress being made. ST: What were some of the health and drug related things that you worked with, cause you have mentioned them. I was wondering if you could go into more detail. 61 BS: Yes. Substance abuse prevention was one of our major initiatives at the time, so we did all kinds of education. We worked with Coalition for Drug Free Utah, Red Ribbon week. We were very involved in it and making sure that the impact on communities of color was included in the work that we did. Tobacco and health, Project Success still works in that arena as well as our student group, Black Scholars United, because of vaping and things that are going on currently in our teenagers and young adults, the highest group of users thinking that that’s better than tobacco and not as harmful, but no, junk is still in it. Anti-violence, as well. We work with gang prevention and worked with a number of programs that were in the schools at the time, Colors of Success and others, to present a culturally competent prevention program and intervention programs to address violence and gang involvement in our schools across the state. We’ve worked with infant mortality, still do that. Diabetes, those chronic diseases, hypertension, things that have desperate impact on our communities of color. We participate in a statewide network of ethnic organizations that address those issues on a holistic basis, even today. We started a project called “Shop Talk.” We modeled it off a national— nothing we created ourselves, but when you see something that works, you grab it up, put your spin on it—and we called it “Shop Talk: Where the Swag Begins.” At the time, swag was a hip term. They probably don’t ever use that anymore. But taking health messages to the people, so when you go to the beauty shop or the barber shop, you’re spending more time than you probably would ever want to do, waiting to get your turn. Instead of just having random conversations, why 62 not bring people in to talk about tobacco or talk about diabetes, or talk about whatever. We did that and partnered with a number of our beauty and barber shops to take the message to the people. We established a youth council that’s still engaged and meeting on a regular monthly basis that addresses peer-to-peer education. They also address advocacy with our policymakers, and we’ve partnered with Weber/Morgan Health Department and their governing youth conference. We take them to the capital every year to meet with their legislators and talk about tobacco bills and all of that. Tobacco 21 is something that we’ve worked on for the last three years with our youth groups across the state. Of course now E-cig regulations, and we partner with Weber/Morgan, their legislative dinner where we invited all of our mayors, city councils, county commissioners, and legislators to come sit down with the young people once a year and they present their issues with them and have a kind of dialogue to help them better understand what youth are dealing with on these issues and how it impacts them. ST: I guess you’re very, very busy. BS: Yeah, that’s what my family says, but they come along for the ride. It’s always a family affair. Along with that, we table all the time. We’re tabling at events almost every week, or at least twice a month, sharing information about tobacco and E-cigs and all the other things, promoting wellness in general. We partnered with predominately African-American congregations to do health initiatives where we support what they do by offering incentives and financial support, and if they’re 63 not doing anything, we work with them to build a program in their congregations to promote wellness. ST: This is mainly the ‘90s, right? BS: ‘80s, ‘90s, 2000s, too. And we’re still doing that today. ST: Oh, okay. BS: So you’re doing this timeline, okay. If I can remember, where was I in 2000? No. ST: Do you know? BS: 2000 I had transitioned out of state government work, and I took a job. First... I think for probably about a year, year and a half, I was administrative assistant for my church, and in that I helped develop an initiative as a part of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation called “Faith in Action.” The goal of that project was to help our seniors, elderly population, stay in their homes, versus having to go to a nursing home. Being able to train and get volunteers to work with them, to do some of those daily activities, helping support them with bathing and food, getting their meals properly, eating, running errands, all of that. We established that program in our local community here in Ogden. Then I worked, for a short period of time, for Boys and Girls Club, and ran the Marshall White Center program. That was really good. Keeping my hands, again, in community and working with young people, because I believe that we definitely have to invest in them and their family, their parents, to bring them along. I was able to do that as well. ST: Were there any key challenges associated with both of those? BS: I think for our Faith in Action initiative, and this was something that was statewide. We had several programs across the state of Utah that were doing 64 that caregiving. One of the things we recognized, while volunteers can help, that can’t sustain it just volunteering because our population of elderly was growing so rapidly, and some of the needs that they had. I think that’s why we saw all of these other programs pop up to help our senior citizens, which is a good thing. Boys and Girls Club, no real challenges. I love working with young people. You can go to work and laugh all day. It was that kind of stuff. You’ve got to do payroll and making sure people were doing their job, but we were able to partner and do fun things with the kids as well as their family. Take them on field trips to universities and museums and the aquarium and Tracy Aviary. Again, getting them to see things that they may see on their own and open up those doors of opportunity for them. No real challenges at all. ST: This is kind of a fishing question. There might not be an answer. I’m wondering if there are any key memories that you have of this time that you wanted to share. BS: I know with Faith in Action, just being able to help some of our elderly with things like getting their bills paid. Because if you know older people, they want to be independent as long as they want to, so they had no problem telling me or whoever, “I know this. I can do this. You don’t have to help me,” when they’re barely standing up. Like, “Don’t you—I’ve got this.” I kind of used that as a flashback, “Am I going to be like that when I get old?” It was a lot of fun, and the older they were, the more blunt they were. Filter totally gone. Especially conversations with the little old church ladies, like, “Did you hear what she just said?” kind of thing. A lot of those moments all around. I was able to go back to DC as a part of our Robert Wood Johnson initiative, and being able to meet our 65 congress people and getting their support for the Faith in Action initiative on a national level. Congressman Bob Bennett, at the time. Those were fun things. I still think about some of the little old ladies when I find myself losing my filters. Like, “Oh, that does happen for real.” Boys and Girls Club. Pat Barr used to be at Weber, and she was the director at the time; that’s who hired me to work with Boys and Girls Club. I think one of the big takeaways I have from working with Boys and Girls Club and working with her was—We often hear, in our non-profit circles, about non-duplication of services. “You’re duplicating services because one person has a reading program and funders look at duplication of services,” and she would constantly say, “We’re not duplicating services unless 100% of every child that needs this service is being served.” We were far away from that. Just because more than one entity is doing it, doesn’t automatically mean it’s a duplication of services, because there are more kids that need to be served by these programs that are not being served, and I think that’s where we are today, and I think that points to those financial challenges for smaller organizations. “If the larger organizations are doing it, and you’re doing it, oh that’s duplication. We’ll just fund these larger categories and these larger entities.” Those are some of the things, and working with young people is never a dull moment, but to see them try things that they didn’t think they could do, learn how to do, was just remarkable, and still makes me smile today. Being able to get out there with them, then I could still run up and down the court with them, and play volleyball, they’d be shocked. “What?” Cause I’m so old, you’re not 66 supposed to be able to do any of that stuff. Then I would get out there and show them, “Oh, I can still get down a little bit.” Playing basketball and volleyball and softball with them was fun. ST: So what did you do then? BS: Went to the University of Utah to work. ST: What did you do there? BS: I was African American Program Coordinator in our Center for Ethnic Student Affairs. They called it CESA at the time. I also advised their Black Student Union. It was a team of us, working in the center to promote student retention, graduation, the same things that I’m involved with here to a certain extent. That was a remarkable experience. The commute got to me. That’s why I ended up at Weber. I probably would have still been there. I told myself I wasn’t going to commute again after doing it for ten years working for the governor’s office. After three years and a couple snow storms, it’s like, “Yeah, I’ve got to do something different. This is not working for me.” I’d had some health issues along the way too that had made it even worse. I was like, “Okay, time to go.” But it was a good experience. I worked with some remarkable people and some remarkable students were able to make a significant difference. While there, we did a conference for all of our different ethnic groups, so we did the African American Student Conference with hundreds of students, over 500 students coming to that conference to hear about post-secondary education and student success and life after high school and that type of thing. All of our groups held those conferences and a lot of students and parents of students that I work 67 with now were folk that came to the U of U for those conferences years ago and remind me, “Oh yeah, Miss Betty, I remember you from, and you said.” It’s like, “Uh-oh, what did I say?” kind of thing, making sure it was still good today. Yes, working at the U of U, that was a good experience. We established an initiative called the Cecil Scholars that we tried to model a couple programs here at Weber after. But, students who did not get traditionally admitted—they were close, meeting that basic criteria for admittance, but did not get admitted to the U of U. Those names were sent to us and we would screen those students, invite them in for an interview, and accept about a hundred or so as Cecil Scholars where we put them in cohort classes and followed them through internship opportunities, service opportunities, and those students that were in our program ended up with 87% freshman and sophomore—first year to second year—retention rate. It was remarkable. First, we were able to establish that sense of self, a sense of community, building bonds, that whole sense of belonging and support them academically and socially and culturally, and it made a difference, and the program is still in existence today at the U. We tried to use that model with our first LIA class: getting them in a cohort to work together, and now the work that Erik Ansel is doing with our Weber Scholars program is that similar model. We didn’t have them do a math and English class. They were doing a history class together, cultural affairs, learning about famous leaders and concepts relating to equity, diversity, and inclusion in that class together. Giving them a language which to speak from, a place to identify who they are, what it’s all about, and “Yes, you are 68 a scholar. You’re in the right place because all of these other people from Imhotep to others already charted this path. We’re scientists, we’re leaders, we’re doctors, we’re whatever, so don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do these things.” ST: So, you mentioned that after University of Utah, you came to work here at Weber. When did you start working at Weber State? BS: 2011. I think it was 2011. Something like that. What’s this year? SS: 2019. BS: I think it was 2011. ST: And what drew you to Weber State? BS: Again, what drew me from the U of U was the commute, and I’d seen a job advertised here for, at that time it was the GEARUP program—Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Program. It was a federal program that worked with high school students, preparing them to come to college. I saw it advertised, and I said, “Eh, Weber, I don’t know.” I didn’t apply, and about three weeks later, months later, it reopened. I was like, “Okay, maybe that’s a sign.” It was winter, and the snow was about to fall again, so I said, “I’ll apply.” I got an interview and got hired. I started out working with the GEARUP program for... Did I start in Ogden? Weber had a grant with both the Davis school district and here in Ogden, so I think I probably started with the Ogden program and then was hired to run the Davis GEARUP program. ST: You were hired by Weber State in relation to GEARUP? BS: Yes, that was the position. 69 ST: Okay. What was Weber State like when you started? BS: It was good. It was fun. A lot had changed, because I’ve always been at Weber in some capacity, supporting students, participating in events because it’s in my community, and being engaged in things, partnerships with different departments here over the years, continuing ed. and others. It looked about the same that I had seen it. Not a lot of ethnic diversity. I was still surprised that there weren’t more African Americans as faculty and staff here. I had expected to see more African American students here because Ogden had one of the largest populations of African Americans students. But in general, the atmosphere was positive and things were happening here. ST: Okay. Thank you. What positions have you held at Weber State? BS: All of them have been in this department, which is interesting. But this department has been undergoing transition on some level since I’ve been here. I don’t mind change. From GEARUP, we started an initiative based on probably a two-year research in where the gaps were, what was keeping students of color from enrolling and being successful as incoming freshmen. After that research, we decided to establish a first year transition program, so I got to lead that initiative. Unfortunately, it changed about a year and a half in, and it’s, “Oh, let’s do this.” “Okay, interesting. That’s not what the research said, but if that’s what you want to do, that’s fine by me.” Then I ended up coming over here. They created “Community Engagement.” I’ve been in Community Engagement maybe three years now. My office was over in the student union building in the Union Diversity Center. For a couple years, myself and Amy Huntington, who is now 70 directing the Wildcat Scholars Program, we worked together on the transition initiative. ST: My next question: how has diversity programming changed over time? BS: I think we have more of it in terms of the campus recognizing the need to address diversity and inclusion. We have a long way to go when it comes to that. I think outside of this area—this is the most diverse place you’re going to come when it comes to employees, whether they’re students or staff. We do have a lot of work to do still in that arena, diversifying our colleges and departments across campus. I think transition and addressing the needs of traditionally underrepresented students has to be more of a priority on campus. The grant that Dr. Ansel just received is a part of that effort on how we address the needs. Why are we still having these achievement gaps on campus that we’re seeing every place outside of here and every place else? I think one of the areas that we definitely need to be more intentional about is the fact that Weber is an open enrollment institution. But some of our systems and structures operate as a traditional enrollment campus. If you’re telling people, “Regardless of your GPA, regardless of whatever, regardless of courses taken, you can come here,” then we have to definitely have the infrastructure to support that whole continuum of students, and we’re not doing that. I’m sure somebody’s doing something. We’re not doing it well. I’ve shared this with my VP, Dr. Berassey. We can’t wait and just have a six week program once they get here. This stuff has to start way before they get here. They graduate from high school. We need to be doing a program right then—We 71 already know what their GPAs are, we have test scores, we have other things. There are other parts to being a successful student other than grades and tests. Those are the things we have not addressed and we’re not dealing with well at our institution. But we have to, to be successful and for students to be successful and for us to continue to strive and be a leader in our community and across the state and across the country, and I believe we can, but again, this has to be intentional. Social, emotional, family, our students are coming to school... ill prepared. But you told them they could come, so they come. But what are you going to do? They’re coming with no money. You told them they could come. They don’t know you’re not going to give them money. They don’t know this whole process. Some of our outreach programs are doing that work to better prepare them, and it has to be scaled across the board. It can’t just be GEARUP, Outward Bound, Talent Search, Student2Student, which affects maybe about 2,000 students of those maybe 400 coming in as incoming freshmen, when we have thousands of students coming in as incoming freshmen, first year students. How do we scale that to be able to have a connection with every student that selects to come to Weber? It has to be that intentional. Every student. We have to be able to do those other assessments to find out what’s the need, what’s the best fit, what do we have in place to connect those students? To me, I know it costs money, but we’re sending too many students out the door without a degree and in tremendous debt. That’s not fair to anybody, and that needs to stop, and that has to be addressed intentionally, or we get a bad rep in the community. 72 When you have parents who were not successful at Weber, what do you think they’re telling their kids? Are they coming here? No. We have to do a better job. I know we’ve started the Bounce Back, and I haven’t looked at the statistics to see what the impact of that has been, but to me one of the first things we could do is everybody that didn’t get a degree, those that are close, those that are within two semesters of finishing their degree, where are they, who are they, can we get them back here to finish? To me, that would be a giant first step in changing what we’re doing. Again, with that transition, being able to get them at least 60 days out, almost immediately once they finish high school, find how we could build those initiatives to begin working with them then to prepare them to be successful that first day. I have students that will come in here, that have been in school a month, and don’t have a book. There should be a sign, “If you don’t have a book, go here.” Because if you’re underrepresented, first time, first year, a lot of times you don’t ask the question; you don’t even know what question to ask. There should be a one-stop shop. “Need a book? Need a this? Here it is. This is how you do it.” To me, that’s a no brainer. But the cost must be too much for us to do it, I don’t know. But, again, when I see students out here with all of the student loan debt without a degree, can’t get back in cause you can’t get financial aid... You’ve got a hold, you’re not getting back in. Do an appeal, do this, do that. Not making adequate progress every year. Because this may not have been the place for you, but if we had been communicating and talking and doing different assessments prior to them getting here, then we could say, “Not to squash your dream, but you may need to do this,” or enroll them in this before 73 they come here and incur all of this debt and can’t finish. Yeah. Too many. Again, no brainer. That’s where we need to put some serious resources in our community. Because a majority of the students coming out of our high schools are going to come to Weber, but what is Weber giving them in return? I live in this vicinity. During the elections about six years ago, you know, campaigners out knocking on doors. One of the people knocked on my door. Let them in, “How are you doing? What are you running for?” He asked, “Well, what do you do?” I said, “Work at Weber.” He said, “Oh, has the math gotten any better?” He says, “I opened up my business because so many people were flunking math at Weber.” What’s the one math program up here? I can’t even think of the name. But everybody was going there, trying to pass math. We’ve made some changes in math, hopefully they pay off