 Good afternoon everybody, and thank you so much for coming today. In recognition of Black History Month, Leling B. Boyce will perform a program titled, My Grandmother, the Great Migration, and African American Spirituals. Boyce's earliest performances in Davis focused on African American Spirituals and African American storytelling. Since then she has presented recitals of art songs and operatic arias and audience participation programs of Broadway's gems. Today, Leling B. returns to African American Spirituals and enlists the audience in lots of sing-alongs. But the story she tells this time is about her grandmother and the seminal historical event that dramatically altered her grandmother's life. This seminal event is known historically as the Great Migration, one of the largest internal migrations in U.S. history and one that has impacted our nation in ways historians are still deciphering. Please welcome Leling B. Boyce. Thank you. And I would like to thank everyone for taking the time to join us today, giving us moral support. And I want to let everyone know I attended a gathering here this week where there were a lot of people with back problems. So I'm very sensitive. If you need to get up and lean against the wall and rest yourself, please feel free to do it. And if for whatever reason you feel you need to leave, you are perfectly welcome to quietly exit. You're not trapped here. This program is dedicated to my grandmother. And I want to alert you in advance that anything I say about, or I should say, 90% of what I say about the Great Migration comes from a wonderful prize-winning book called The Warmth of Other Sons by Isabel Wilkerson. What a wonderful history to read. Would that all history books had that appeal? I'm going to put this down now. And in fact, I'm going to put all of me down at this point. The Great Migration was possibly the biggest under-reported story of the 20th century. It was vast. It was leaderless. It stretched out for such a long period of time over so many thousands of currents. It was well-nigh impossible for anyone, including the press, to fully understand it and capture it while it was underway. Over a period of about six decades, from 1915 into the 1970s, some six million black Southerners picked up and left the South from all points. They left tobacco farms in Virginia, rice plantations in South Carolina, cotton plantations in East Texas and Mississippi. They left cities and towns and villages in the backwoods of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, and by some measures, Oklahoma, with an uncertain future ahead of them, they headed out of the South, away from the South, to nearly every corner of these United States. And they were a motley crew. There were ministers following their flocks, tradesmen following their customers, relatives following relatives who had gone earlier. They left with very few belongings. And I remember in particular some saying, they saw people just walking out of the fields, clutching their St. James Bibles and their old 12-string guitars. In time, this great migration, this massive relocation of people grew to dwarf the California Gold Rush in the 1850s, which had 100,000 participants. And eventually, it dwarfed the Dust Bowl migration in the 1930s when some 300,000 people from Arkansas and Oklahoma migrated to California. It was a turning point in history. It transformed urban America. It changed the social and political fabric of every city and town it touched. And it did not end until the 1970s. And why did it end then? Well, sufficient pressure had been applied to the South so that most of the Southern states, very reluctantly and very slowly, began to ease up on the harsh, brutal feudal caste system it had so painstakingly erected and which had terrorized blacks for generations. My grandmother was part of the great migration, but before I go any further, I think I should answer a question some of you may have. Since I've told you why it ended, why did it begin? It began in 1915. And it began in 1915 despite all the generations of history prior when it should have begun but didn't. It began in 1915 because World War I began in 1914. And World War I caused a dramatic decline in European immigration. This dramatic decline in European immigration meant a dramatic decline in a labor force that the burgeoning factories were depending on. Now, you know capitalism. People aren't going to sit around and say, whoa, what can I do? At least not too long. The North looked South, but it looked South very gingerly because they knew the South treasured. It's somewhat trapped group of cheap, very cheap labor. So what the North did, so as not to ruffle feathers, it started sending agents secretly into the South, very secretly, because the South was extremely sensitive about this matter and slowly word spread among the black population that there was work up North and that the wages were higher. And over time, it just took the promise of a job and higher wages to attract the slow, but what became steady flow of blacks out of the South to all points East, North and West, anywhere out of the South. Now, I mentioned my grandmother was part of that great migration, but I want to alert you in advance that I think she had, her life has three great migrations and one grand migration, but as soon as I wet my whistle here, we'll get into her life. The June 1900 census taken by the U.S. Department of Commerce in the county of Bozier Parish, Louisiana states that my grandmother, Evelyn Flunder, excuse me, that's her married name, Evelyn Porter, was born in July 1891 to Marsalis and Sally Porter. My grandmother was one of 11 surviving Porter children, surviving infancy, that is, and she was the fifth eldest. I know my grandmother held fond memories of her childhood on the family farm and I also know she was very fond of spirituals. Spirituals were a great help for her throughout her life as they were for countless others. So what I would now like to do is make sure everybody has lyric sheets. Does everybody, do you two ladies have lyric sheets? Well, let me, I think there are two. Oh, here's one right here, here's another. Okay, thanks. And hi Carol, I just recognized you. Okay, I'm now going to share my imaginary photo album of my grandmother, her childhood, and spirituals. And in photo number one, we see her snuggled in bed with two older sisters who are singing to her our song number one. And this is our starting note. Oops, it's been on too long. Let me turn it off and turn it back on. And I'll turn it back off now. I see it just goes dead if you let it sit. Let me try that again. I get distracted easily. All day, all night Angels watching over me, my lord All night, all day They're watching over me Now I lay me down to sleep Angels watching over me, my lord Angels watching over me There's some things I need to iron out here, but we're going to photo number two in this album. And in this photo, we see a nice day outdoors and we see, including my grandmother, about five of her siblings lined up to form a train that is part of the song they're going to sing. And so we're going to sing song number two. Turn this on. Little children, get on board Little children, get on board Little children, there's room for The gospel trains are coming She's coming round the curve She's loosened all her steam Then breaks and strain in every nerve Then get on, little children, get on In the second photo, we see my grandmother standing by an older sister who's sitting by a cradle rocking it The newest porter child is in it And the sister is singing our song number three Ah, it's still on Oh, sure It's another outdoor scene This time with some neighbor children It shows a circle of children And one in the center of that circle And the one in the center of that circle is singing our song number four which starts on G Now the person in the center is replaced by someone who has a substitute for the word shoes Now no one here has to get in the center of that circle but let's try substituting Who wants to substitute a word for shoes? I got a harp Okay I got a harp You got a harp Oh, that's children got a harp We're gonna play our Our next photo In fact, our next two photos shows my grandmother in a garden setting And in photo number five she has a fallen blossom in the palm of her hand and she's marveling at its beauty She was a great gardener and she's singing the song Our song number five which starts on F sharp He's got the whole world In his hands He's got the great big world In his hands He's got the whole In his hands He's got the whole world He's got the pretty little flower In his hands He's got the pretty little flower Number six shows my grandmother hands-on hips She's upset because her hoe is missing and she has some serious work to do and she's sure one of her mischievous brothers has hidden it So she is singing her fighting song which is our song number six Josh will fit the battle of Jericho Jericho Jericho Josh will fit the battle of Jericho and the walls come tumbling down Here's with this group I'm gonna close my photo album and we are going to continue past Again, I need to do wet my whistle Let me tell you Having this microphone here and hearing my voice sound differently at time it is really a mind-blower Nothing like simple singing with no microphone Well, my grandmother's childhood like everyone's gradually ebbed away as the years marched on and as the years marched on she became more and more aware of the world beyond her immediate environment She became aware of some things that dismayed her and some things that frightened her From her classroom lessons she was able to complete the ninth grade From listening to adults talk among themselves very somberly and quietly at home and at church From tuning in to the ever-chattering great vine of her peers and her siblings My grandmother gradually learned that there had been a big war called the Civil War and that it lasted from 1861 to 1865 She discovered that people that looked like her had been enslaved but that with the 13th Amendment part of the radical reconstruction amendments between 1865 and 1870 she was told that her forebears had been freed She was told about radical reconstruction which began in 1867 and the wonders of radical reconstructions not only had the slaves been freed but they were allowed to get married to go to school and open businesses not only could they vote some of them were voted into state legislatures Some even went to the U.S. Congress but she also was told that the South never stopped fighting the Civil War In fact, in 1865 right at the end of the war the South passed the Black Codes and the Black Codes were meant to confine blacks to certain areas and to keep them tied into low wage jobs that often involved indebtedness and whereas radical reconstruction had some glorious results for the emancipated population radical reconstruction was kind of a trigger for white Southerners to get more mobilized and so while you have radical reconstruction going on you have the white South forming more mobs and getting more violent radical reconstruction lasted less than a decade What we're often not told is that racism in the North was as prevalent and deep as it was in the South It took different forms but it was and as the 70s, 1870s war on the Republican Party which had been in charge of radical reconstruction began to become more and more conservative They became less concerned with equality and liberty and by the end of the 1870s they pulled the federal troops out of the South turned their heads and left the South to its own devices essentially leaving an extremely vulnerable and helpless black population My grandmother heard about the Jim Crow laws the South just kind of had a violent backlash to the Civil War and there's some people who are still violently back-lashing as it is not over Jim Crow laws grew more widespread By the way the first Jim Crow law I read about though occurred I believe it was in Massachusetts and separate buses or train cars for the races but it became most prevalent and dominated the South as years went on and on So my grandmother realized there were places she couldn't go and things she couldn't do and she understood finally why a sister who had traveled to another county with a friend had come home crying Now all of this was dismaying to my grandmother but what kept her awake at night what disturbed her most was the lynching A book published in 1933 called The Tragedy of Lynching said that between 1889 and 1929 a black person was lynched by hanging or being burned alive every four days A recent publication and very recent as of this February it follows the period of 1868 to 1950 and they are very confident that they can document at least 4,000 lynchings during that period A much earlier book I believe in the 1990s says that between 1882 and 1968 notice we've extended that time period in 1968 there were 4,000 the historian here estimates 4,742 lynchings I anticipate many more books being written about lynching because it's still continuing and some of you may be aware of a recent decision this is very ironic three white Mississippi men have been convicted essentially of a modern day lynching by a black federal judge I admire his tenacity to hang in long enough I'm sorry not to see such a day but as I said I anticipate more books coming out because it's still going on I know of one death this past summer I forget what state it was in but a young 18 year old was found hanging and they said he hanged himself but there wasn't enough distance between his feet and the ground for him to have hanged himself he was not wearing his shoes he was hanging from a belt that was not his own so the federal government is moving in on that case but let's get back to the earlier books on lynching the federal government was not moving in on it once the North turned its eye elsewhere it did not it tolerated the atrocities it amazes me that so many people were able to recite the Pledge of Allegiance which though it has gone through a number of iterations has always included these last six words with liberty and justice for all in 1916 May of 1916 in Waco, Texas 15,000 men, women and children gathered to see the burning alive of 18 year old Jesse Washington and as they began to slowly lower him into the flames I have to stop a minute this stuff gets to me folks I have done this program once before and I had to stop with the lynching it just while they were lowering the body into the flames the crowd shouted burn burn burn and one father with a toddler was overheard and seen to lift the toddler onto his shoulders and say you can't start learning too young I just want to share with you when I heard about the burnings abroad in the past two weeks the burnings alive I have to admit the first thing I thought of was the U.S. south so I hope not too many of us felt smug as we looked at those horrible barbarians abroad sadistic inhumane it just challenges your imagination but the scene I've just described was not uncommon in the south a crowd as large as 15,000 was uncommon but it was not uncommon to have crowds in the thousands and they were festive social gatherings these people were picnicking and having fun and high to their neighbors and newspapers were advertising this to make sure you come to the latest lynching folks again I say it boggles the mind now I just mentioned a case where a black federal judge sentenced three white men they murdered a black man for no reason at all for the fun of it we're talking about 2014 folks we're not talking about the old south but we are talking about the old south that way the dates have changed I haven't read the story I forward it to a lot of friends but there is a lot in there that story that is shocking about the character of the people who participated in what this judge referred to as a nigger hunt and that's what some people when they didn't have the large social gatherings and they were kicked back on a weekend and had nothing to do let's go hunt a nigger it was in 1901 that a retired Alabama governor said he scratched his head he didn't understand this newer generation of white southerners he said when the Negro is doing no harm at all they want to kill him and wipe him off the face of the earth now even an old time racist was dumbfounded by the new mentality down south most Americans felt that their first introduction to terror was on 9-11 but terrorism and torture are part of the warp and weft of this society one reason for the spectacle lynching lynchings was to keep the black population in its place slavery was maintained with terror and torture Jim Crow was maintained with terror and torture when they burned Jesse Williams that was a signal to every black southerner that could be you and I don't think it's a wild guess to suspect that most black southerners felt at any time they might be lynched people were lynched for such things as acting like a white person insulting a white person when there were crimes and most of them weren't investigated or proven people were lynched for stealing a hog stealing a horse somebody was lynched for stealing 75 cents these were capital crimes if you were black there is one story about a black serviceman coming home from World War I and he was proudly wearing his uniform he had fought for his country he had defended his homeland and even though it was crappy he was helping to protect his family some whites in his area I forget what state it was I think it was Alabama or Mississippi some whites saw him and didn't like him wearing the uniform and told him to take it off he refused he was lynched and that's the story I started crying on the first time I started talking about lynching the irony of sending people abroad to fight for the rights of others when they didn't have rights here eventually my grandmother was totally traumatized because before she left the South the Porter family got word that some relatives in Texas a husband wife and six children had been burned alive in their home now indeed a crime had been committed here the father in a rage had killed some kind of overseer at the place where he worked he ran home and the result was eight people were burned alive with liberty and justice for all needless to say we had a traumatized black population down south and in the midst of all this terror a lot of the old spirituals became a brief but welcome support we're now going to sing number seven nobody knows I think I have to turn it off and turn it on again I started going out about the likelihood of getting work up north and getting higher wages some people snapped at it took a longer time for others to be persuaded but mind you I had told you about the black codes and most of the black population was circumscribed in terms of movement they had to stay within a certain area and many of them had a ledger of debt that was not always honest the debt was increased to keep them there so leaving the south in those early years was a real challenge now I call reading about one couple they planned, they were sharecroppers they planned over many months they slowly got rid of their possessions they were avoiding doing anything conspicuous that would attract attention to them and finally they decided when they could go and they left they were lucky they were able to make it to the train depot and catch their train once the movement got underway and the plantation owners and others were aware of the large number of blacks suddenly disappearing there became they were on high alert there's one situation I read about where you had a gathering about 10 or 12 people waiting for the train to come and up comes the sheriff and takes their tickets out of their hands and tears them up so getting away in those earlier years was not a pushover but it reminds me of another old slave song and it is your song number eight steal away even after emancipation many blacks had to steal away we start on D sharp now let me turn it on steal away steal away well in 1920 my grandmother did migrate and by that time she had married and when she migrated she held in her arms an infant her only child of a few months now her husband wanted to go further into the south he wanted to go into the lumber mills he knew there was work there and for some reason he wasn't ready to leave the south by the way he eventually did about 10 years later but my grandmother so hated the south to her dying day and she so wanted her only child to get a better education than she did and even though she had a sibling who had gone to Ohio one who had gone to Chicago and I think another further east her eyes were on the brother who had gone to California and that's where she wanted to go and with characteristic independence she picked up her bag and her infant and she left her husband and she came to California so strong was her hatred so strong was her desire for a better environment for her progeny and she left her husband and she arrived in California and most of the time she lived around the Bay Area and she had another sibling eventually that followed her and all three kind of clustered around the Bay Area and I know at times my grandmother worked further into the Central Valley area now knowing how racist not only the south was but the entire nation and knowing that she was a single parent she faced some tough times all the migrants faced tough times they migrated to cities and towns that for the most part over crowded true wages were higher but rents were higher too other things were higher and that mean spirited racism was ever present but before I go any further I want to experiment with you to give you a better idea of what my grandmother might have experienced in the 1920s coming to California I thought I would share with you some of my experiences with racism in Davis in the 2000s so we have roughly a 95 year spread and after you consider what I have faced I just want you to pause a moment and think what my grandmother must have faced now the first incident I'm going to share with you I'm going to apologize for reading and I'm going to read it because there's so many subtleties if I leave certain things out you might not get the true impact of the story this is the only one I'm going to read and this was in the early 2000s I left one of Borders live entertainment shows by myself one night around 8 p.m. I hope you all remember when Borders was there on the commons at Firstinny the bookstore and it did have at least one night a week live entertainment and for free and it was kind of fun place together for a while when I exited Borders I was heading for the first and E pedestrian crossing a crossing that would eventually lead me to the E bus stop at 3rd and E it was dark and to my surprise there was only one other person in sight that person was a young man sitting on the ground fully engrossed in a conversation he was having with himself I followed the paved path from Borders past other assorted businesses until I reached the decomposed granite path that leads directly to first and E I was approximately 12 yards from this intersection when I heard from behind me from the direction of Borders hey nigger I froze with terror but for only a split second and within that split second I saw myself lying dead somewhere by the side of a road looking at the darkened streets that lay between me and my destination bus stop I concluded my safest action would be to return to Borders or get as near as I could to ensure my screams could be heard so in less than four seconds after hearing hey nigger I turned and resolutely began retracing my steps back to Borders as I trained my eyes on Borders I could see by the various neon business lights and by the lights that lighted the path that there were now three people on the commons the new arrival was a tall middle-aged white man whom I immediately recognized as the man who had sat at a table behind mine at Borders only a few minutes earlier I had turned once and seen him out of the corner of my eye he had left a mark on my memory because although he was very casually dressed his clothing the quality of the cloth the quality of the cut reaped of money I thought at the time he might be a professor once I reached the paved pathway that would take me to Borders I had to steal my nerves even further for the inevitable passing within a few feet of the man who had yelled at me hey nigger I fixed my gaze straight ahead but I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was watching me intently we passed each other without incident but I became super alert that he might turn and approach me from behind he did not and I arrived safely back at Borders I never saw this man again now that's my first sharing and I see that I'm running a little over time I think the program has another 15 minutes but if you have to go please feel free to go there is another incident I want to share with you from the early 2000s and it involves the senior center let me first say I think the senior center is one of Davis's gems I think we have a very hard working dedicated staff and I truly have enjoyed the senior center but there are people who come to the center whom I have to describe occasionally one day one afternoon I came into the center I came in through the entrance over there the northeast entrance and I was following the hallway to the lobby and once I entered the lobby of course I could be seen by everybody in the lobby and there was a group of women gathered about as far away as that camera is and one out of this gathering of about four women suddenly saw me and she got this look of not only surprise but rage I guess we can't say nigger anymore welcome to the senior center but I've been here many many times that was an unusual experience but I have other experiences I have a great time telling you about I'm trying to give you the breadth of my experiences here in Davis but there are more I can tell you about about the senior center that's for sure around somewhere between 2004 and 2006 we're dealing with younger people now for most of the rest of these examples you know a lot of us would like to say it's the older people it's the younger people to remember that toddler that was lifted onto the man's shoulder and the father said you can't learn too young some young people are being carefully taught I took a woodworking class at UCD and during the second class our young instructor he was in his early twenties turned to me out of the blue the class had just begun and he had made a few introductory remarks I guess you aren't prepared now he didn't know me from Adam fortunately folks I was very well prepared so I could quietly say well I had this and I had this I had more than anybody there and I am also happy to share with you that once class began we were only about four strong at that class session but all three other classmates came up to me showing their support they understood and they were upset they were as startled as I was now when the class was over I went out to report it to the person in charge on site this person had been very nice to me in fact she encouraged me to try to get a job there I was retired there I didn't want a job I went up and told her what had happened that's the way UC Davis is by the way I come from Berkeley I was stunned I was stunned as much by her reaction as the young teachers that's the way it is and my heart went out to all the minority students who were attending there if that's the way UC Davis is let's not dwell at UC Davis let us go to the co-op again early 2000 somewhere between 2002 and 2004 I'm attending a cooking class I've been commuting a lot and buying so much food at the co-op I thought I'd try cooking for a change at any rate we are a class of about ten people and every time I ask a question this young lady again early 20s very attractive when she responded to me her very lovely face got distorted with anger in it she talked to me like this with everything she had said it was amazing you would have thought that I had brutally oppressed her and her family for several hundred years that was the way she was reacting to me well as soon as we had the break I left and I've never taken a cooking class again and by that point I didn't make a complaint because I had begun to get a sense of Davis and I felt it was probably going to be a waste of my time I may have been wrong now the next examples I want to share with you happened around 2008-2009 and they were in two big businesses here in Davis big money making businesses I remember standing at the counter of one of these businesses and a new worker was standing on the other side of the counter resting and I stood there and I stood there and he kind of looked at me finally an old timer who was observing this new worker said go help her and reluctantly he came over to help me now I want you to know he didn't last very long the next time I was in there he was gone there was another big business and I recall standing in an aisle now this could happen at this business I know you have to be aggressive but it wasn't a busy time of day and this young man had on his face the expression that said don't bother me he walked back and forth and back and forth as I stood there now I didn't go and report him I think I went elsewhere to get what I wanted to get I found somebody else but I had already zeroed in on him I'm happy to say he did not last long either these two big businesses are in the business of selling things to people not indulging racism I'm happy to say and I've gone back to both businesses many times and them on speaking terms with the owners around 2010 this is at night time a friend of mine also a black female and I we have left something well I won't talk about what we've left but we are on Second Street where it intersects with D and we are heading north and as we start across the intersection it wasn't a busy night we are about halfway to the center of the intersection when a car pulls up to second on D it's heading south suddenly they make a rapid left hand turn and start speeding for us we haven't made it to the center yet we scurry to get out of the way now we don't know why that was done but I will share with you the first reaction we both had and this lady is a generation younger than I am two generations there both felt the same thing they thought to frighten us because we were black have fun kind of a tamer version of a nigger hunt we don't know though we have all been drugged out and just being crazy 2013 I'm in a boutique I've never been in before I have to go in and look at jewelry and I chat with the owner and she brings out some things and I decide I'm going to get this I'm going to get this but I'd like to look around so I start moseying around looking and by the time I hear all this racket somebody's slapping clothes on the clothes rack and I look over in the direction of the noise and there is that owner looking at me just moving clothing well even I got the message with that she was following me to make sure I wasn't shoplifting no I'm sure people have followed me before I'm just too lost in my own world to be aware of it but this lady was so clumsy I became aware of it and I can pat myself on the back and share with you I didn't get angry I decided to have a little fun since she's going to keep up with me I had her holding things for me putting things up oh would you mind taking this back I had the best customer service that day I had ever had and I was charming while I did oh could you please and we're on speaking terms still I wave at her when I go by I may have caused to go in there again and if she doesn't follow me around I may ask her to come and help me because I rather enjoyed that experience well I'm going to conclude with something that happened in 2014 now in this instance I was witnessing a performance and it so happened that this particular group was singing a rollicking spiritual and it is certainly appropriate with the rollicking spiritual you saw me swaying up here and if my hands were empty I'd be clapping you know the music makes you want to move do something with your body well I wouldn't believe this if I hadn't seen it a very intelligent very sensitive woman in this group three step out to really give the song oomph and for some reason this woman in the middle decided that the oomph you give a rollicking spiritual is this I'm not joking and now I'm not going to tell you the name because if I told you the name you'd be more amazed it's a well known person not only has this person put out very sensitive material in areas I'm not going to mention but she's married to a man who is a darker brown than I he's not African American but every person with a deep color in this country has to confront the racism somewhere there's a lot of races races can't distinguish one from another if you're going to be a racist you should at least know what your big race is about but here she is married to a man of dark color and you would think that even though he's not African American she would have heightened sensibility has two children well I'll stop there and what I would like to do at this point I've certainly gone long over time it's just to let you reflect a moment you've seen what has happened to me in this highly well educated community comparatively speaking well healed community and I could give you many more examples I just wanted to give you a widespread sprinkling and let you know that so much has been with younger people not somebody in their 80s or 90s although that's happened too yes do you have the same experiences in Berkeley yes Berkeley and Davis are part of the USA and in the USA racism is everywhere I don't want you to think I think Berkeley has less of it I grew up in Berkeley I've got some deep wounds from my Berkeley experience the difference I find between the two and let me back off a moment and say this when I first came to Davis I'm commuting on Amtrak and I'm talking to people who say ah Davis is like Berkeley and I'm thinking no it isn't in fact I ran into a young lady who was attending UCD from Berkeley and she told me that in her first year she had to go home every weekend because the difference was so great between Berkeley and Davis she couldn't handle it this is what I think the difference is or this is the difference for me Berkeley has a larger percent of people with a high moral compass that is regarding the woodworking incident I'm much more likely in Berkeley to make a complaint like that and say somebody go oh we have to look into this and let me take your phone number so I can call you and we'll follow up this kind of thing stated another way Davis has a lower percentage than Berkeley of people with a high moral compass there's well that's the way things are yes pardon I want to say the road she goes two ways I have a daughter who lives in Louisiana whom I visit and I have been spoken to in unkind ways in Louisiana by black people and and I don't take offense at it I think that it's often a lack of experience and you know I remember early on when I was eight years old we were traveling in the south and I'm originally from Virginia and I went over to take a drink at a drinking fountain and a white man came and grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me back and said don't drink there that's the colored fountain and I didn't know any idea what that was and I have to say that in a high school in San Diego where there were probably 30% blacks and we had a good relationship basically I was I was molested by a black student and 30 years later at a high school reunion he came up and apologized to me for that and I thanked him very kindly for recognizing that it was an offense so when you have things like that happen try to make it positive and perhaps with the woodworking person say something like I hope we can get to know each other better and appreciate each other more or something like that to kind of take the edge off of it don't hold it in your heart don't harbor resentment because it won't get you anywhere and when you reach out with a comment like that you help to mend the fence I think so I hope that maybe could be a little bit encouraging to you okay if you have any questions I've been functioning with mending fences all my life that's the only way I can function in this society you know if I went around angry all the time I couldn't handle it yes I think it is incumbent upon white people to take responsibility for doing that fence mending or whatever both ways okay and I think a lady over here do you want to contribute me? well I've lived in Berkeley many years I'm from the east I've landed there in 65 and all the different stuff I think that Berkeley has a consciousness and a honesty that is lacking in Davis I wouldn't argue and not just about race relations but about a lot of things I agree denial is heavy duty here and does anybody else want to add yes Bella bigger voice please I can't hear today sorry I wrote the end track and it's gone you don't think you can hit something on the head with the other things I've had a lot of the same experiences you've had around town but kind of shocked me coming back after 30 years I thought Davis would be at a different level but there's backlash and this backlash has been going on since the 1980s a generation of young people has grown up in this backlash and they're actually less likely to have met the white ones are less likely to have met a black person or had a black friend and they would have met in the 1970s it's a new problem that unfortunately we all got a little bit of a face and helped these poor kids I've been overhearing things in my newest residence and found out some stuff so you think we have a new kind of problem that's arisen recently it's part of this big backlash but it's really sunk in that these children are actually a new monster that has to be faced Can I say something? The same thing happened to me yesterday that you were just speaking of I went into a store and this young man was sitting back behind the wall and the white lady was going through the same aisle that I was going through looking for something and he didn't bother and when I went through the wall after she had gone I thought why didn't you help her? I'm like you everybody sees what color I am I don't need to wear my feelings on my shoulder so I'm not an idiot I know how to put out fires but the old game of following you it is so prevalent any store I go into any store someone plays that game and I play it well I go around and let you follow me until you get tired of following me so anyway I love life and I love people and I don't get caught up in that because life is too short but it's there and it's there because of our color how we have mistrust because you spoke of your friend who's married to a darker person but as one guy said to me but no matter how dark anyone is we look down on you as the least of all I hate to say that to you and he's a friend of mine but he's saying that to me to my face so it's always something each day to remind you of your color that you're into you can't be as cast yes the cast system continues and even though yes Carol I was just going to comment about this town I lived here since 1971 raised two biracial children here neither of whom particularly enjoys coming back to Davis and would never accept that I'm here one lives in San Francisco one lives in New York they didn't have a good experience in a lot of ways growing up in this town they never felt I think totally at home here or have I ever I mean I've had this thing about love, hate, Davis all these years and I still have it and I think what irritates me the most is this pride that people have about Davis being this wonderful place to live a wonderful place to raise your children well yes maybe depending on who they are and what their status is in the town but I don't find it a very receptive place in a lot of significant ways that's been my experience all these years I mean I'm here because I can't afford to live in New York or San Francisco and my children are out on their own and they want to live their own lives and you know that's fine but in some ways I feel I'm stuck here because I don't see an alternative for me but that doesn't mean that I go around thinking this is the greatest town in the world and if I could afford to live in Berkeley as an alternative I probably would go there I mean it's not that I don't like this town because I do it's just too different if you ask me I would talk about my unadapted stuff we have a very diverse I was born in the Philippines came here as a grad student and then my big husband was born in Hawaii and we were teaching at Iowa State University in Aims, Iowa and we adapted half black and half white boy mother white father black high school kids in the one in Iowa and 15 months old over we adapted him and then then my husband retired so we decided to go to another university town you know closer to Hawaii for me for me so Albert was going to be a junior at the baby's high school so we just moved in 83 so I thought he worked out with the Catholics and he said Albert today is religious education at St. James we live in front of the library I go to the religious education and you know just you he didn't know a teenager he didn't know anybody so he said ok he stepped up in the house and I told him where to St. James to religious education well an hour later we came a policeman with Albert and Albert was crying he was lifting a candy at the longs and Albert was crying you know he just went there to look through the magazines you know to give time so he didn't have to tell me that he didn't know to religious education and he was crying that was in any Iowa he didn't experience that very very few blacks in any Iowa but he didn't have any experience it was a very good experience yes he was very good thank you Lurtis yeah well does anyone else have something they want to share yes I have never been really called it I think that's a good it is all and although I like to shy away from that word I like to leave it yes I want you to know that racism exists in every country it is just part of the human condition I lived in Mexico and studied there and it was amazed that the Spanish people with whom I was living looked down on the what they call mestizos who were the Mexican people who lived there and they looked down on them and then I made good friends with a lady from India and we were talking about the marriage customs and so on and I said you know what age do they usually get married and she said well usually the women are 18 and the men around 22 but she said I had one cousin who didn't know when I thought she was 28 but she was very dusky she said she was very dusky like dark and I said you know everybody there is dark but anyway so she said but finally she said she had a very good education and she found a husband who appreciated her legal mind so it is everywhere it is everywhere yes and I've been long aware of what's been going on in India and I'm one of the few people who don't want to visit India what I you know I know some fine people from India and I wish the country well but I was I've been deeply hurt from childhood yes a lot of the people in this room have traveled a great deal yeah is America the only country that refer to blacks negatively sometimes as niggers or do they use that word in other countries native people I've heard it used against people in Arabic countries as well okay now I want to I've changed my program entirely here so I want to put the finishing touch on I've enjoyed the conversation we've lost out on some singing and but that's okay I think it was good to have the sharing this is what I want to say about my grandmother and conclude she had her first great migration when she left Louisiana and came to California she had her grand migration remember I said she had one grand migration went after working very hard nose to the grindstone for 28 years she was able to buy a home in Berkeley now what I didn't tell you was when she came to California her eye was on Berkeley so after 28 years scrubbing floors doing all kinds of house work she bought a house and this house she bought really represents one of the outcomes of the great migration because one of the ways it has affected the urban settings is with white flight we're all familiar with that and the suburbanization of the US my grandmother was able to buy a house that she recalls being built in the 20's and it was a lovely old house the lot on her east side which was a lot large enough to build another building the front third was filled with roses and in the back there were blackberries and she was able to do her farming again as she had done in Louisiana she had chickens out there at one point and then the backyard behind the house was very formally laid out this first time I had seen hibiscus and bougainvillea and various fruit trees it was lovely and I'm happy to say that when she retired she still had at least 25 years to enjoy the fruits of her labors so her second great migration was when she was 106 and a half she was in a rest home at that point and in Berkeley and she started preparing us two years before her death her feeling was the good lord has just forgotten me all her friends had gone on and her siblings had gone on and even though she had two doting grand children there's something about that 50 and 60 years man that just doesn't do it but at any rate with characteristic independence one night she closed her eyes and she closed her mouth and she never opened them again I would not let them force feed her because she told us she was going to go she knew what she wanted to do she wanted to do it her way nine days later she was dead we're not going to sing swing low sweet chariot I'm going to rush on to the end so she's had the first great migration the second great migration one grand migration but I said she has three great migrations in her life and you're saying well how is she going to have another one when the right migrations is dead well or I offer you that in the next easily 30 years my grandmother will migrate to the University of California at Berkeley the reason she wanted to home in Berkeley was she had heard back in Louisiana of this great educational institution in Berkeley and that had been her beacon she will not be in attendance there she won't be in a classroom but she will be at the table at UCB because her name and my mother's name will be on a scholarship for needy students so and then I had planned to end by singing ride on King Jesus I can hear my grandmother somewhere saying no man can hinder me and that's it and thank you so much for coming thank you