Interview of Rita Walters

1. Transcript

1.1. Session 1 (March 10, 2008)

Greene: This is Sean Greene interviewing Rita Walters on Monday, March 10th, 2008, at her home. Hello, Rita.

Walters: Hi, Shawn. How are you today?

Greene: I'm good, and you?

Walters: Fine, thanks.

Greene: All right. We're going to begin by talking some about your background and your childhood. I wonder if you could tell me where you grew up.

Walters: I grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, but I was born in Chicago. Right. I was born in 1930, and my parents were young people who had gone to Chicago looking for work. It was the height of the [Great] Depression.

Greene: And where did your parents move to Chicago from?

Walters: Kansas City, Kansas.

Greene: Oh, they moved from Kansas.

Walters: They were both born in Kansas City, Kansas, and they went to Chicago. My mother had a couple of sisters there, and they went there for a year or so, but then came back to Kansas City, Kansas.

Greene: I see, okay.

Walters: And [my mother] never, ever left.

Greene: And never left once they came back.

Walters: Right.

Greene: And what kind of community did you grow up in in Kansas City?

Walters: Kansas City, Kansas, was always a fairly small community, and even more so with respect to African Americans, or colored people as we were at that time. So as a result of the size of it, it was a pretty close-knit community in many ways. People knew people. As a kid you could walk up one street and down the other, and call out the names of people who lived in different houses.

Greene: So it was close-knit.

Walters: Yes.

Greene: Could you describe your parents for me, tell me a little bit about them, what they were like?

Walters: Yes. My father had completed, I think he had completed his junior year at University of Kansas, and I believe had started his senior year there, and had to drop out. My father was my mother's high-school sweetheart. She was a couple of years younger than he, and they dated and finally married. My dad commuted part of that time to school. University of Kansas was in Lawrence, Kansas, and they had what they called an interurban streetcar, much like what the Red Cars used to be here in Los Angeles. Lawrence, Kansas was about thirty-five, forty miles from Kansas City, Kansas, so he was able to go back and forth to school, even though he stayed in Lawrence most of the time. But he'd come back and forth.

Greene: And so they met, actually, when they were in high school.

Walters: Oh, they knew each other before high school. Small town, everybody knew everybody, so they both grew up knowing--the families knew each other.

Greene: Did you have siblings?

Walters: Yes. I have one sister. My mother and father had three children, and the brother was stillborn. Then they separated and ultimately divorced. They separated when I was five, and my father remarried when I was eight, and my mother remarried when I was ten, and started another family. My father never had any more children.

Greene: You were telling me about your sister.

Walters: Yes. I have one sister who shares the same mother and father, and then when my mother remarried when I was about ten, she started another family, so there were two girls and a boy in that family.

Greene: Were you close with your sister, or with your brother and other sisters?

Walters: Yes. We're all close.

Greene: All right. What did your parents do for a living when you were growing up?

Walters: My father did a variety of things until he got hired by the Santa Fe Railroad as a chair-car porter, as they call it. His father was a Pullman-car porter, and Kansas City was a rail center in the Midwest. All sorts of trains were routed through there, and so many people worked in some capacity for the railroads. My grandfather did, and my father did, and we had an uncle, my grandmother's brother-in-law was a waiter on Southern Pacific [Railroad]. His run was from Kansas City to Los Angeles.

Greene: Is that right.

Walters: Right.

Greene: And was your father part of a union, that you can recall?

Walters: Yes. Yes. And my grandfather was part of the Pullman-car porters as they got organized. In later years one of the things that happened, as I understand it there was no black union for the chair-car porters, but A. Phillip Randolph organized the Pullman-car porters, and it's not clear to me to what extent other positions that were staffed by blacks participated with the Pullman-car porters. I just don't know that information, but they're a union.

Greene: Did your father talk a lot, would he tell stories about his work, or about things that happened at work a lot?

Walters: Yes. My father had been a fine-arts major. He wanted to go into commercial art, and the irony of growing up in a segregated society--he ran the elevator at one of the downtown department stores, and that was in the days when the different stores maintained their own advertising department, and developed their own ads, and didn't have as many mannequins in the window as they would have artwork. An artist would have drawn the clothing on a model. My dad got paid extra for doing that, but they wouldn't give him that job, but they put his work in the windows of the store.

Greene: Oh, that's really interesting.

Walters: Right. One of the very top-flight stores in Kansas City at that time was called Rothchild's, and then he worked for a grocery cafe much along the lines of Whole Foods stores today, where he made coffee. He said all he did was to make coffee and wash those urns out. The place was called Wolferman's. They had very fine foods, grocery items, and then they had a cafe where they'd serve prepared foods and sold prepared foods.

Greene: And he did these before working for the railroad?

Walters: Before working for the railroad, yes, as a very young man. I guess he was a teenager when he did that.

Greene: And your mom, did she work outside the home?

Walters: Not while she and my dad were together. But subsequent to their separation she began to work outside the home. She worked--I remember at one point she had two jobs. She worked in the evenings selling popcorn in the local movie theater. She worked in the concession stand, ran the concession stand, and in the daytime she was what was called a short-order cook at a cafe in a drugstore in Kansas City, Missouri.

Greene: Wonderful. Were your parents, if you can recall, very involved in the local community there? Outside of their work did they belong to organizations?

Walters: My mother didn't, and my father was pretty busy in and out of town on the railroad. I don't know that he--his family [my grandparents] was always very politically oriented.

Greene: In what ways?

Walters: I don't know to what extent my dad participated in organizations, but my grandparents did, and we would go to political meetings with them when some candidate was coming through the area to speak, and I remember they had yard signs and window signs that they would put up. I remember they had the GOP [Grand Old Party] on the sign, and I asked what did that mean--and then that's when I learned, I guess I must have been about six or seven years old, that GOP was Grand Old Party. Many blacks in Kansas were Republicans. Kansas was a free state, and it was the Democrats in the South that supported slavery, and the Republicans were the ones who were trying to abolish slavery.

Greene: The party of Lincoln.

Walters: The party of Lincoln, yes. But as the years went on, I remember an argument that my father had with a cousin of his about the Democrats and the Republicans, and supporting [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt.

Greene: Interesting. So Roosevelt may have been a turning point, at least for your father, as far as his party?

Walters: Oh yes, for most black people in town, you know. They switched for Roosevelt, and we used to listen to his fireside chats on the radio, yes.

Greene: Wow. So you mentioned going to political meetings with your grandfather--

Walters: And grandmother, yes.

Greene: --and grandmother as well.

Walters: Yes, my paternal grandparents.

Greene: Did your family go or belong to a particular church in Kansas City?

Walters: Yes. Trinity A.M.E. Church, which is still standing, same spot.

Greene: How active would you say your family was in the church?

Walters: My mother wasn't, but my paternal grandparents were. My grandfather sang in the choir. My grandmother worked with the, I don't know, women's group there in the church, doing first one thing and then another. And she, because of my father--well, I don't know because of my father--in addition to my father's interest in art, they had some art groups there in Kansas City. I remember one was called the Susie V. Bouldin Art Lovers Club, and they used to have art shows in different homes.

Greene: Is that right?

Walters: From time to time, and display their, I guess you'd call it folk art at that point.

Greene: And did your father--your father participated with the art club?

Walters: Yes. He would put some of his paintings on display.

Greene: And so he painted even while he was working for the railroad?

Walters: Yes. He never stopped painting. He always had a business going on on the side, of doing commercial art, and in addition to doing commercial art he would sketch and paint. He was on the train that Franklin Roosevelt was on once, and the president allowed him to sketch him, and so he had a sketch that he had done of Franklin Roosevelt.

Greene: Interesting. Has any of his artwork survived?

Walters: My sister has a painting of his. I never had one. When we were kids he made--there was this little story, children's story that was quite popular, called "Ferdinand, the Bull." He gave us that book, and then he copied the pictures out of it, painted the pictures and made--we had a set of, I don't know if it was four or six that we had on the wall when we were kids, that he did.

Greene: He must have been very talented.

Walters: He was. He was quite talented.

Greene: Talk to me a little bit about your father's and your mother's political views. You mention that you can recall a conversation your father had with, I believe you said it was--

Walters: A cousin.

Greene: Yes, about Roosevelt and so forth. Were there other political discussions that you remember your family engaging in when you were young?

Walters: Yes. Again, not my mother and her family so much. I guess early on her parents--her father retired and they moved to Chicago. He opened up a little business, they called it a notions store, a precursor of a 7-11.

Greene: Oh, a notions store.

Walters: Yes, in Chicago. He carried needles and thread, and magazines and candy, and just all sorts of small items.

Greene: And did you travel to Chicago to visit your grandparents once they moved there?

Walters: Traveled--after my father remarried he decided that he wanted to enforce the custody arrangement, which my mother was very resistant, and we were supposed to spend six weeks in the summer with my father, so that was a big court battle. I listen to these Amber Alerts with children. They say most of the folks whose children come up missing, it's a family member that's taken them. Our mother spirited us out of town because we were scheduled to go to Chicago to visit, spend part of the summer with my new stepmother and father, and she didn't want to have it, but what she did was to take us to Chicago where her parents were at that time.

Greene: Oh, interesting.

Walters: And that's where my father was, in Chicago.

Greene: And how old were you at that time?

Walters: I was about eight.

Greene: About eight. Do you remember your impressions of Chicago then?

Walters: Oh, it was big, and you know, noisy, a lot of people, a lot of buses, a lot of places to go and do things, see things that we hadn't seen before, like Lake Michigan, you know.

Greene: Oh yes.

Walters: Never seen that much water.

Greene: I'd say, I guess growing up where you were growing up in the Midwest, being landlocked that way.

Walters: Yes. We had a couple of rivers running through town, the Missouri and the Kansas, or the Kaw [Kansas River] as they called it.

Greene: Who were your friends when you were growing up? Could you tell me about your friends?

Walters: A number of them were children of children that my parents had grown up with. Some are friends till today.

Greene: Really.

Walters: Yes. I have a friend here now who doesn't live too far away from here. Her mother was my father's oldest brother, or older brother's, was his first girlfriend.

Greene: Oh, wow. What is her name?

Walters: Her name is Jackie, and they lived near my paternal grandparents in the neighborhood just a block away. Then she and I grew up together. Our mothers were close friends, and we grew up together as babies. We were born close to one another. She was born a couple of months before I was, and wound up going to school together. Then her grandmother moved here, and her mother moved here, and she and her husband moved here. Then I moved here. Her grandmother had bought a big old house over in West Adams area, and they had an apartment over the garage. I rented an apartment from her. When I first came here I lived with an uncle, and then with a cousin, but then I rented that apartment, and her second child and my first child, David that you just saw, were born six weeks apart.

Greene: Is that right?

Walters: Right. And we have maintained friendships, so it's been four generations of family friends.

Greene: You mentioned that you went to school together when you were growing up. This was elementary school?

Walters: Elementary school, junior-high school, and high school, and then not so much in elementary school, because there were several elementary schools, and Jackie was Catholic so she went to--some of her schooling she did at Catholic school. But for the junior high and high school there was only one of each for black folks in town, so we all went to the same school.

Greene: Now, what elementary school did you go to? What was your school like?

Walters: Well, the one I went to for most of the years was [Paul Lawrence] Dunbar Elementary, which no longer exists. It was named for Paul Lawrence Dunbar, which has since been torn down. It was in an area that turned into an industrial area. I also went one year to another elementary school called Stowe, S-t-o-w-e [Elementary], and another for the primary years. Let's see, for second grade I went to Kealing [Elementary], which was a primary school with kindergarten, first, and second grades. Then I did the third grade at Stowe, and then moved back to Dunbar for--well, I went to Catholic school for six months in the sixth grade.

Greene: Could you tell me about your experience in school, say in elementary school? Do you remember having a favorite teacher, a favorite subject?

Walters: Oh yes. We had some wonderful teachers.

Greene: Were your teachers African American?

Walters: All, all of them. I never had a white teacher until 1954. After Brown was decided in May, in that fall of September I enrolled in the community college in Kansas City, Missouri, to take a couple of classes in the evening after work. Took a shorthand class and an accounting class, and that was my first experience in going to a non-segregated school.

Greene: Is that right, when you were in community college. And that was after 1954?

Walters: That was September 1954.

Greene: You were going to tell me about a memory of a favorite teacher.

Walters: Yes, I had several. One of the things in those days, the teachers were part of your community. You lived right in the neighborhood, you know, and so they'd stop by your house if you got out of line, or they'd see your folks at church. In part of the community that we grew up in, there were several churches that all black communities had close by one another, and there was this drugstore that everybody loved, this guy named Curt Cundiff, made his own ice cream, made wonderful ice creams. Everybody would gather there on Sundays, and you'd see folks from the Baptist church and the Methodist church, the Catholic church that were all strung out there together.

Greene: Do you recall your teachers ever coming by your place to speak with your parents?

Walters: I remember once when I was in Catholic school in sixth grade, and these nuns, they'd walk through the neighborhood. They didn't have cars. Nobody took them to the school. So they walked by our house, and one day they stopped and talked to my mom about me, but most of the time when they would stop it was to say something good. We had wonderful teachers. I loved my teachers.

Greene: What were your favorite subjects, if you can recall that?

Walters: I liked history.

Greene: Really.

Walters: Yes, I liked history, and I liked language. I liked English, wasn't wild about math.

Greene: Would you say it was one of the more challenging subjects for you, or you just didn't care for it?

Walters: Well, women weren't supposed to be very good at it, you know, and I think that was just an attitude that was passed on down. I did well, but that's just one of the things that happened. But I enjoyed reading a lot, I enjoyed writing. I remember, I don't know what I had done, chewed gum in class or something, and my teacher made me write, I don't know, a thousand times, five hundred times or some such thing, "I will not chew gum."

Greene: On the board, or on a paper?

Walters: On paper, and turn it in, and I did them all in ink. Well, in those days they taught you to write in ink, and you had inkwells on your desk.

Greene: Oh, you'd just dab the--

Walters: Right, right. And I did all mine in ink. But they were very neatly done and spaced, and she looked at them and she says, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" She said, "This is beautiful." I remember that, "Beautifully done."

Greene: When you say that there was an attitude that women weren't supposed to excel in math, do you feel like you were encouraged in that area, or do you feel like you received more encouragement in other areas?

Walters: No, I don't feel I was particularly encouraged in math. I mean, I was encouraged to do my best in everything, math included, you know, to study hard, do your homework always.

Greene: And did your sister go to the same schools as you went to?

Walters: Yes.

Greene: Was she younger than you?

Walters: Two years.

Greene: Two years younger than you, so she was right behind you.

Walters: Right. Right.

Greene: You mentioned that you wanted to share with me something about your family's political involvement and political views.

Walters: Right. Not my immediate family. My father's first cousin left Kansas City. His father was the uncle that ran on the Southern Pacific Railroad to Los Angeles. He came out here as a young man and started a newspaper, "The Los Angeles Sentinel," and it was in the 1930s where he started this campaign, "Don't buy where you can't work." And he would send the papers home to his parents every week. It was a weekly, started out as a throwaway, so the papers had information and pictures about Leon's campaign on Central Avenue, to not buy, because that was the heart of the black community in those days, and they had all kinds of stores up and down there, and didn't have a black person working in any of them.

Greene: Is that how you first began to form an impression of Los Angeles?

Walters: I guess so, yes, those early impressions, and then my father's older brother came out about the same time Leon did, and my mother had a brother who came out here, so we had family here, and it was something you always heard about. Mail came from it. My mother's brother used to send us at Christmastime, send us these beautiful oranges and citrus fruit that, of course, you couldn't get in Kansas.

Greene: Did you ever visit Los Angeles as a child?

Walters: No.

Greene: That came later.

Walters: Right.

Greene: One thing I wanted to go back to, when you were describing how closely knit your community was. You mentioned the school wasn't very far, and that the teachers would sometimes either see you in church, or would come through the neighborhood itself. Did your family--

Walters: Right. They lived in the neighborhood.

Greene: They lived in the neighborhood. Did your family own your home?

Walters: No. No. My grandparents, both sets of grandparents owned their homes, but my mother didn't. She had it pretty tough, with kids, trying to keep us together and what have you.

Greene: Would you say many of the people that you can recall in your neighborhood were homeowners themselves, or were they renting?

Walters: Yes, they were homeowners now, except the teachers, the female teachers, who were not allowed to be married.

Greene: Teachers were not allowed to be married at that time?

Walters: Not females, could not be married. And so many of them rented rooms in homes, because in those days an unmarried woman did not live alone.

Greene: I see.

Walters: Not in that community, and probably not in others either, so that was quite an impression. It was not until the war years, when World War II came along, and men got drafted, and a lot of them left the classroom and went to work in the defense plants. They built B-25 bombers in Kansas City, and all sorts of other things. They hired married women then, but as I understand it they didn't get the benefits of retirement and all of that. They were hired, but just hired, you know.

Walters: As you were talking earlier, asking me about my father's involvement in politics, and I know this is jumping around, but before I forget it, and I said I didn't know the extent to which chair-car porters were organized, you know, when I was very young, like the Pullman-car porters were. But in later years, again during World War II, there were jobs on the railroad that prior to World War II were not available, were not open to blacks, and two of those jobs, conductor and brakeman--but they would again let blacks do the jobs, but not pay them what they paid the whites if they didn't have a white for the job.

Greene: So they would unofficially have those jobs, but wouldn't get paid to occupy the positions.

Walters: That's right, that's right. And in later years my father, with some other men sued both the union, because the union did not represent blacks fairly, it was basically a white union. Like one of the reasons he couldn't go fully into sign painting, the commercial aspect of art, was because there was a white union that barred blacks, and so what he had to do was signs for smaller businesses that weren't going to be picketed, but the union wasn't going to go after.

Greene: I see. So even the work that was available--

Walters: Right, was race based. But he took a case to the Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court, and won.

Greene: Really.

Walters: That was after he had retired. It went on for years and years, and Santa Fe, you know, like Pilate, they washed their hands of it. "Well, we didn't hire. It was hirin' through the union." And whatever the union's excuse was, but anyway.

Greene: And he brought the case--

Walters: In conjunction with some other men there, brought the case, and I've said I was going to look it up. He was very secretive about it. But he got--I assume it was a fairly decent settlement.

Greene: This was your uncle?

Walters: No, that was my dad. Right, this was my dad, because he was one of those people that had worked as a brakeman and was not paid what the whites were getting, and was not allowed to get the job permanently.

Greene: You've mentioned segregation quite a bit in sort of everyday life, in terms of the schools, in terms of your father's work experiences, even in terms of the way the unions was set up, and your family experiences that way. Do you have any other memories that stand out in your mind about segregation?

Walters: Oh, sure. You could not go in restaurants and eat. There were some stores, one very upscale, very fine--the word wasn't upscale then, it was fine, very fine women's stores. Black women couldn't try on the clothes, couldn't try on hats particularly. Stores wouldn't let black women try on hats, and you'd have to buy the hat and take it home, and hope it fit.

Greene: Wow.

Walters: Unlike southern towns, you didn't have to sit on the back of the bus, but everything else was segregated. Now, the railroad station was not segregated, and you could go over there to the railroad station, you could eat in one of the Fred Harvey restaurants over there in Kansas City, Missouri. But once you stepped outside that railroad station, forget it.

Greene: Everything else was segregated.

Walters: Right.

Greene: When did you first become aware of segregation as such? Was it ever explained to you? Did you ever wonder why things were that way?

Walters: Yes. I remember being told, "Well, that's the way black people are treated. That's what we have to put up with. It's not right, but until it changes, this is the way it is."

Greene: Is this something that your mother told you?

Walters: My mother, my grandparents. People were always complaining to one another about injustices that they had experienced in the workplace, shopping. It was pervasive, just pervasive.

Greene: So it was a running conversation in a way.

Walters: Right. When we were young kids, Kansas City, Kansas, when I was a youngster they had one park that was in the black community with a swimming pool, and I remember it maybe being open a couple of summers, and my mother would take us there. But after it closed down they never reopened it, and people complained because black folks were paying taxes like everybody else, and there was no place for black kids to go. They'd go down to the river, and a lot of kids died trying to swim in the Kaw River.

Greene: Wow.

Walters: It seemed like a lot of kids. I can't tell you the numbers, but there was always some child.

Greene: You said the Kaw River was--

Walters: The Kansas River. Yes, they called it Kaw, K-a-w. I think that was the Indian name for it.

Greene: You talked to me some about elementary school experiences. What was high school like?

Walters: Well, high school was okay. We were having some family concerns during that time. That was, well, high school after 1945. My mother got a good job during the war. She worked at the post office, a job that a male had had, and they would hire women for what they called six months, for the duration plus six months, duration of the war plus six months afterwards.

Greene: I see, so they were temporary positions for women.

Walters: Temporary positions. But because it was the U.S. Post Office, it was not Railway Mail. They had Railway Mail and the regular U.S. Post Office. They hired blacks. Blacks and whites worked together in those places.

Greene: So those jobs were not segregated.

Walters: No, and the pay was very, very good. So she did well during that time. But it was tougher after the war had been over six months and she lost that job, tougher, (A), to find a job, (B), to find a job that paid anything. So our family wound up on welfare, which she hated. But she had these three other children, and by that time she and her second husband had split up, and he wasn't paying any child support, so it was rough.

Greene: It was a difficult time at home?

Walters: It was a difficult time. But I didn't finish high school in Kansas City, Kansas. By that time we had become Seventh Day Adventists, and they had a school, Oakwood Academy and College, in Huntsville, Alabama. It's still there. The college is now a university rank. But my sister and I went to the academy, and we graduated there, and started college--

Greene: In Huntsville?

Walters: Yes, and started college there.

Greene: And what year was this?

Walters: And it was wonderful. When did I go? [19]46 to '51, something like that, '46 to '51, or '47 to '51, something like that.

Greene: And how did your family convert to Seventh Day Adventist?

Walters: My mother and one of her sisters got interested in it, very interested in it, and they offered Bible study classes for people to learn about the church, and so they took those classes and then started attending some services, and ultimately joined, and my sister and I followed them in joining, you know, a couple of months or so later.

Greene: Were your experiences in--do you remember the name of your Seventh Day Adventist Church?

Walters: Bethel, Bethel Seventh Day Adventist Church.

Greene: Were your experiences in Bethel, do you remember--they must have seemed different to you from your experiences in the A.M.E. church.

Walters: Well, the biggest difference was you went to church on Saturday as opposed to Sunday, and that altered your behavior somewhat, because they didn't believe in going to movies, and the schools had the basketball games on Friday nights, and the football games on Saturday, and so we couldn't do those, and the movie business, that was the biggest impact.

Greene: So that socially it changed some things.

Walters: Yes, right. But there were social activities within the church for young people.

Greene: Did you make a lot of friends in the church?

Walters: We did. We did.

Greene: When you say you were there 1946 to 1951, that means you were living in Huntsville, Alabama?

Walters: Oh, we lived on campus. Yes, it was a boarding school.

Greene: Oh, it was a boarding school. Okay. Then after your time there--or actually let me back up. What did you study?

Walters: Well, high school just the regular high-school curriculum--

Greene: And then you said you did one year of college there.

Walters: --and we started, right, right. I had decided I wanted to be what they called a commercial educator, to teach typing and shorthand and that sort of thing, bookkeeping. I had learned to be--I took my first typing class when I was in the seventh grade, and I had learned to be a good typist.

Greene: By the seventh grade!

Walters: Well, I didn't say I was by the seventh grade--

Greene: But that's when you started learning.

Walters: By the time I was in high school, and I took more typing classes in high school and I did well with it, and I was able to work there on campus and earn money. I used to type term papers for students, a nickel a page.

Greene: Really.

Walters: They had one professor who absolutely wouldn't allow any erasures that he could see. It had to be perfect, so his papers were a quarter a page.

Greene: I'm sure. I'm sure.

Walters: And they had some bond paper at that time called Eraser-Eze, that you could if you were very careful make erasures that wouldn't show. I got to be an expert in making erasures that didn't show, and it stood me in good stead when I came out here. I got a job with the county [Los Angeles County] working in the Probation Department [Los Angeles County Probation Department], doing reports, transcribing probation officers' reports, and these things are like six or seven pages each, with all these carbon copies. This was in the days before the Xerox machine, and you couldn't have erasures.

Greene: So your accuracy had to be really high.

Walters: Right, or you had to learn, there were some techniques that you could learn to make those corrections where they wouldn't show.

Greene: And were they in shorthand?

Walters: No. Transcription from Dictaphone, right.

Greene: Interesting. But you--

Walters: And some of the people used to sound like they were speaking in a barrel full of crackers.

Greene: It sounded really garbled.

Walters: Right. But also transcribing the psychiatric reports and the psychologists reports they had out at [L.A.] County [General] Hospital [currently named Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center] what they called Unit 3. It was a psychiatric unit, and they had a court there where they brought people through and would commit them. The older people with dementia, we call it now Alzheimer's, they had state hospitals that they would send them to. The fair number of sexual psychopathy cases, and they would be sent off to prison, Atascadero or someplace like that. So you learned to listen to folks and type what they were saying.

Greene: When you were in Huntsville, did you say that that's when you first decided that you wanted to teach?

Walters: Yes. Well, I don't think so, no, it wasn't, because my mother used to talk to us about being teachers, and she used to talk about Romance languages all the time. That was her thing. She thought we ought to learn languages, and grow up and teach them.

Greene: Did your mother know languages other than English?

Walters: No. But she liked to read a lot, and she liked the thought of other countries.

Greene: Interesting. Now, after Huntsville, Alabama, you went to--you mentioned a community college earlier in--

Walters: In Kansas City, right.

Greene: That was Kansas City, Missouri?

Walters: Right.

Greene: That came after Huntsville?

Walters: Oh yes, much after Huntsville. That was in 1954. Yes, I left Huntsville in '51.

Greene: And when you left Hunstville, you came back to Kansas?

Walters: For a brief time, and then I had a very brief marriage and lived in Detroit for a bit, and then was back in Kansas City until I came to Los Angeles in January '55.

Greene: What was Detroit like for you, coming from Huntsville, Alabama?

Walters: Awful. Awful. Well, Detroit is totally different, and different from Kansas City. But the racism was still there. In Detroit you could go into any store, you could go into restaurants and all that stuff, but getting a job--I was able to get a job in companies in Kansas City as the first black person hired far more easily than I was in either Detroit or Los Angeles.

Greene: Is that right.

Walters: And the skill level was the same.

Greene: So Detroit was really hard to find work?

Walters: It was hard. I went to civil service, so it was tough. But once you got the job there, you worked in an integrated environment.

Greene: Okay. Once you got in the door.

Walters: Once you got in the door, at least the place where I was placed.

Greene: What kind of neighborhood or community did you live in in Detroit while you were there?

Walters: A very nice community, very nice community.

Greene: African American?

Walters: It was a mixed community.

Greene: And had you known people in Detroit before you moved there?

Walters: There was a family there from Kansas City who had a daughter the same age as I was. We were in elementary school and good friends in Kansas City, so I immediately looked her up and we became just as fast friends as we had been in Kansas City.

Greene: Tell me a little more about the community you lived in. You said it was nice. What was nice about it?

Walters: Well, it was on a street that was called--the section we were on was West Grand Boulevard, and it went into East Grand Boulevard, and it was a street with the wide parkway down the middle, and people walked their dogs and took their kids over there, you know. The homes were nice, well-kept.

Greene: One family generally?

Walters: Some were one family, though the one we lived in was four-family. It was a large, four-family, with a three-bedroom flat. Some were duplexes, so there was a mixture. But I'd say most of them were not single family on that street at that time, that stretch. On the side streets were more of the single family.

Greene: So you spent about three years there.

Walters: No, no, no, no, no, just a few months.

Greene: Oh, just a few months. I must have missed that.

Walters: Yes, I said a very brief time, and I was back in Kansas City.

Greene: Back in Kansas City. Had Kansas City changed much since you had been away?

Walters: No.

Greene: And what did you do once you came back?

Walters: I got a job in a downtown jewelry store as the first black hired in that capacity in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. It was a jewelry store whose owner catered to African Americans. He went after--always advertised in the "Kansas City Call."

Greene: "Kansas City Call" was the black newspaper?

Walters: Black newspaper, right, right. But before I had that job, I had also--well, I worked in three different companies during the times I was in and out of Kansas City, where I was the first and only black. And you know, I'd just call and look at the want ads, see a job, call people up and say, "You've got this job. I think I qualify." "Well, come and talk to us." And I'd say, "Well," not African American, "I'm colored," or, "I'm a Negro. Would you be interested in hiring a colored person? Would you be interested in hiring a Negro?" I don't know which one I used, but those were the only two descriptors we used at that time. And some of them said, "Well, come and talk to us," and I did and I got the job.

Greene: Does that mean that, did you have a sense that things were getting better for black folks at that time?

Walters: Well, they were better for me. And I didn't see a lot of hiring going on. But there were government jobs that blacks could get that possibly hadn't been open to them before. So, you know, Topeka, Kansas, was the locus of the Brown decision, so Kansas had this schizophrenic approach to segregation. They called themselves a free state, which they ostensibly were. Missouri was a segregated state, and outside of Kansas City, Missouri, things in those little towns in Missouri were different than they were in St. Louis and Kansas City. Even St. Louis was different, because St. Louis was closer to the South, and that Southern Illinois, Kentucky, Arkansas stuff down there and southeast Missouri was a pretty tough area as far as race relations go.

Walters: Kansas City, Kansas, the State of Kansas' communities were small, and Wichita [Kansas] was growing. At the time I grew up, Kansas City, Kansas, was the largest city in the state, and it had one high school, one junior high school, and several elementary schools for blacks. All the others, with perhaps the exception of Wichita, had segregated elementary schools, but they could only afford one high school period, for blacks and whites, and so the high schools never were segregated. Kansas City, Kansas, was the only place where the high schools were segregated.

Greene: Interesting.

Walters: Right. Right. Right. That's the reason I said they had a schizophrenic approach. So when Linda Brown--her father said he was tired of her having to walk by the white school to go to a black school. I had the same experience. You had to walk--and I went to Dunbar Elementary School. There was a white school probably three blocks before we got to Dunbar, and it eventually closed down while I was still in elementary school, but white kids were still there for many of the years in which I went to elementary school. Walk right past them in the morning and the evening.

Walters: And then, too, some of the neighborhoods were mixed. People lived in neighborhoods, and at one point we had white folks living next to us and across the street, but their kids went to a different school. But as soon as the war came along, and certainly once it was over, people started moving out. White people started moving out.

Greene: Moving out of the city to other areas?

Walters: Yes. And, of course, in 1945 was nine years prior to Brown.

Greene: Yes. So how then--take me from, you return and begin to work. You return from Detroit and you begin to work. You said you were able to find opportunities that you felt you couldn't find in Detroit earlier.

Walters: Well, it was a bit more difficult to find. I didn't find them in private industry in Detroit. I mean, I got a job in Detroit, but not in private industry, got it in government, and the same here.

Greene: Okay. The government jobs were more accessible.

Walters: The government jobs, right. My experience in finding a job in Kansas City was that it maybe took me a couple of days to find a job. In Los Angeles it took me two and a half weeks.

Greene: I see, that is a big difference.

Walters: Right. And I talked to people on the phone, same story, you know, "Would you be interested in hiring--," because I didn't want to go on this wild goose chase all over the place, and they'd say, "Oh, sure, come down." Only you got there, there was no job.

Greene: Oh, suddenly the job had disappeared.

Walters: Suddenly. And I said, "I just talked to you on the phone." "Well, we hired somebody else." You know?

Greene: And that was because of racism?

Walters: I thought it was. I thought it was. Then the government job that I got--

Greene: The Department of Corrections job?

Walters: Not Department of Corrections, it was Probation Department. It was the Los Angeles County Probation Department. I went to the [California] State Employment Office. That was the first stop I made on the first day--well, I got to Los Angeles on a Saturday. That Monday morning I went to the State Employment Office downtown, and the lady was interviewing me and I was very nervous, and I didn't pass their typing test, but I knew I had these skills. So she was talking to me and she says, "Well, the county will test you again if you're interested in going out to this," and she told me frankly, she said, "Do you speak Spanish?" I said, "No, I don't." I said, "I had a couple of years of Spanish in high school." "Well, can you speak it?" I said, "No, I can read it." She said, "Well, they don't want a black person. They don't want a Negro for the job." And I said, "Well--." She said, "But why don't you go out there anyway, and see what they say?" And then she also referred me to Urban League.

Walters: I was sent first to the Urban League for a typing test. They set me up for the test and they gave the test, you know, every few days or something. And I passed the test, except for the typing. After passing the typing test I was sent out to the county hospital where the Probation Department had an office servicing the Court on the premises. The head psychiatrist there interviewed me himself, and I'm going to be a clerk-typist, and here is the head psychiatrist interviewing me. This guy, one, he had a war injury where he'd lost his jaw, so he, you know, had a major disfiguration in his face. But he talked, and he wanted to know what my race was. I told him I was a Negro. "And what were your parents?" I said, "They were Negroes." "And what were their parents?" I said, "They were Negroes." He said, "And their parents?" I said, "They were slaves."

Greene: How did he respond to that?

Walters: He shut up.

Greene: He stopped asking at that point?

Walters: Yes. I mean, how far was he going to go back?

Greene: Right.

Walters: I mean, ignorant stuff like that. This was a man who was a psychiatrist, a full-fledged psychiatrist, had been through psychotherapy and all of that. He was not somebody off the street, and I had never faced that in Kansas City.

Greene: So there was a kind of insensitivity?

Walters: But this was a government job that I eventually got, and the only reason they hired me was because--and that's what the woman in the employment office said, she said, "They've been having trouble finding somebody, because they want somebody who's willing to work on Sundays, because that's their visitation day," and they needed somebody to be a receptionist on Sundays. Not every Sunday. I think it was every other Sunday, or one Sunday a month, or every three Sundays. Anyway, I was willing to do it, because I didn't go to church on Sunday. I went to church on Saturday, and I wouldn't work on Saturday, but I would work on Sunday.

Greene: You were still a practicing Seventh Day Adventist?

Walters: Right. And that's the only reason I got the job.

Greene: Because you could work on Sundays?

Walters: Because I could work on Sunday. And they were desperate, so that was interesting.

Greene: It was. I wonder if you could step back a little and tell me how you came to L.A. How did you come to your decision to move to Los Angeles?

Walters: It was not--at the time that I came, it was almost an impromptu, spur-of-the-moment thing, but the decision had been made long before that, that I knew I was coming out here. There in Kansas City, and perhaps the whole Midwest, anybody who knew anybody in California, they'd come back with all these stories about California is this and California is that, it was the land of milk and honey, you know. The weather was gorgeous, jobs were plentiful, you could live where you wanted to, up to a point.

Walters: And then my sister and I had had the opportunity to come out here with some other people we had known who all came out. A bunch of college kids came out here, eight of us in this big old 1936 Cadillac.

Greene: You drove a Caddy out to L.A.?

Walters: With a jump seat, and there were nine of us in the car coming back.

Greene: And this was for a vacation?

Walters: For vacation. We came out to a church conference, so we were out here two weeks.

Greene: And when was this?

Walters: Probably 1952, summer of '52 or '53 maybe.

Greene: So you load up the Caddy--

Walters: Right, right. We had some folks that were at the University of Nebraska, and some folks that were in a Seventh Day Adventist School, Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska. And then a girl from Denver, Colorado. She was in nursing school at a Seventh Day Adventist hospital in Denver, and my sister and I from Kansas City, and then the owner of the car was from Topeka [Kansas], who was a student at Union College. He was going to be a dentist. He wound up becoming a physical therapist. But there were eight of us, and we had a ball in driving cross country. I think there four or five drivers.

Greene: Well, that's good, you were able to split up the driving.

Walters: Yes, oh yes. You couldn't stop. There wasn't anyplace for black folks to stop. If you got sleepy, you pulled off the side of the road, but if you didn't know anybody you just kept driving.

Greene: You said you had a good time. What kinds of things did you do when you were here? I know you went to the conference.

Walters: Yes. We stayed with my mother's sister while we were here. The conference was in Northern California, but we spent time here before going up there, and my uncle took us to the beach and took us to the amusement park that was on the beach down in Santa Monica called POP [Pacific Ocean Park]. We went to the observatory up there in Griffith Park, and I think we went to the zoo. But we drove around and he showed us different communities, Long Beach. My sister loved roller coasters, and she wanted to ride this roller coaster in Long Beach. Everybody--we'd heard so much about this roller coaster in Long Beach.

Greene: Was there an amusement park down there?

Walters: Yes. It was called The Pike. Now it's the Long Beach Convention Center and hotels and stuff, where the Queen Mary is, down in that area. But we just did the touristy sorts of stuff, you know.

Greene: How did the people in L.A. strike you at that time?

Walters: Oh, I was so excited. I loved this place.

Greene: Really.

Walters: And that's when I knew I was coming back.

Greene: That's when you first decided you would be spending a lot more time here?

Walters: Yes. Well, we had talked about it, our mother and my mother's sister. As I said, my mother had a sister and a brother here, and my father had a brother here, and they had talked about moving out here forever. And as it turns out, her sister [another sister] was a widow and had married a man who was interested in moving out here as well. Now, was she here the summer we came? Or she came just after that? I think she came just after that. She moved out here; she married this gentleman and moved out here, but she moved up to Berkeley. They lived in Berkeley, but I didn't want to live in Berkeley. We were here in June, and when we left Nebraska it was 106, and we got to Berkeley--people were wearing fur coats and white shoes. I've never forgotten that. I saw women--

Greene: Fur coats and white shoes.

Walters: --downtown wearing fur coats and white shoes. [laughs] This conference was in San Francisco in a major auditorium there in San Francisco downtown, so we got to see a lot of San Francisco, and we stayed over in Berkeley with a family friend, but it was colder than heck there. Somebody told us before we left, "Be sure you take something warm to wear in case it gets cold. It gets cold out there." Well, I had one suit and my sister had one suit, and we wore those suits the whole time, for the whole week we were in San Francisco--

Greene: Trying to keep warm.

Walters: --so I knew I did not want San Francisco. The warm weather and the sunshine was where I wanted to be.

Greene: So the sunshine pulled you, huh?

Walters: Right. But you know, there were all kinds of people in our church who were moving to California, other people that we just knew in town were moving out of Kansas City, moving out here.

Greene: Did you have a sense of why they were moving? Was it because of work?

Walters: Oh yes, the segregation, the getting away from the segregation, the finding better job opportunities, and the weather. The weather in Kansas was horrid in the summertime, horrid in the wintertime, and those were the three main reasons, economic, education, and weather.

Greene: So you came back in 1955?

Walters: January of '55, in the middle of a blizzard.

Greene: You left the blizzard behind for a warmer climate.

Walters: Right. So we drove--somebody was changing jobs and was driving out here. He was the pianist at our church, choir leader, and he had a couple of fellows who were going with him. I saw him at church on Saturday, he says, "I'm leaving Monday for Los Angeles. You want to go?" I said, "Oh, you're kidding." He said, "No, I'm dead serious." He says, "There's room if you want to go." I said, "Put my name in."

Greene: And your mom didn't have a problem with you taking off for the West Coast?"

Walters: No, because we had talked about it so much, and the plan was that I was going to come and get a job, and then my sister Barbara, who was two years younger than I, was going to come, and the two of us would get a place and send for our mother and younger sisters and brother, and she would come. Well, as it turned out, for thirty years I was the only one that made it.

Greene: And who followed thirty years later, who came?

Walters: My sister Barbara. Well, her husband came before she did, and he liked it, and finally drug her out.

Greene: But it took a while to make that happen?

Walters: It took her a while, and it took her a while to adjust to it.

Greene: Where did you stay when you--

Walters: I stayed with my father's brother when I first came.

Greene: What's his name?

Walters: Harry White, Harry Clifton White. We called him Cliff.

Greene: And whereabouts in L.A. did he live?

Walters: 41st and Central [Avenue], 895 East 41st Street.

Greene: The East Side.

Walters: Right, East Side, absolutely.

Greene: What was that community like?

Walters: It was an interesting community, and there was a sense of hominess about it, even though it was larger than Kansas City, but black folks were all there. Not all of them; some of them had moved away as far as, I guess, to Crenshaw [Boulevard] there were blacks living, and they were pushing, pushing beyond Crenshaw.

Greene: But it had kind of a homey feeling?

Walters: Yes, and people were very friendly. And, of course, there were numerous people here at church, and the church that I attended, Seventh Day Adventist Church is right around the corner from my uncle's house.

Greene: What was the name of the church?

Walters: Wadsworth Seventh Day Adventist Church, and there was a school, Wadsworth School just adjacent to it, and the school district wanted the land, so the church sold out and moved there on King near Normandie. They're the University Seventh Day Adventist Church now, but at that time that's where they were. And my mother's sister lived near 47th and Central, so she was nearby. And then my mother's brother lived on 36th Place near Arlington, so I had plenty of relatives and plenty of friends from the church and not in the church. My friend Jackie was already here. She and her husband were already here.

Greene: This is Jackie whom you had gone to school with?

Walters: Right, right. And there were other people out here that I had gone to school with.

Greene: So you had a ready-made community that you came into.

Walters: Ready-made community, absolutely.

Greene: Did that make for an easier transition?

Walters: Oh yes, I think so. And my grandmother, my paternal grandmother's sister was here with her husband. Her son had started the "Los Angeles Sentinel," so they were here, and her daughters.

Greene: How did you get acquainted with the city once you were actually living here?

Walters: By using the bus. By using the bus.

Greene: So you learned the bus routes?

Walters: Right. And you could call up, as you can now, and tell them where you were, where you wanted to go, and they'd give you the instructions and it worked well.

Greene: Was it very different for you from--what were some of the differences between L.A. at the time and Kansas City? You mentioned that folks had more freedom of where they could live as one big thing.

Walters: Yes, of moving around. The activities were more plentiful. You could go to the beach, you know, you had your choice of all these different beaches, plenty of towns to explore around, plenty of places of interest, the zoo, the observatory, the museums, Exposition Park. Everything was just on such a grand scale.

Greene: What were some of your favorite places when you first moved here?

Walters: The beach, the beach, the beach.

Greene: You loved the beach.

Walters: Yes. That was my place.

Greene: Were the beaches segregated at all, or were there particular beaches that black folks frequented at the time?

Walters: In Santa Monica? The beach at the foot of Pico was supposed to be the black beach. In 1922 or some time during the twenties, a man by the name of Dr. H. Claude Hudson got arrested for swimming in the water off Manhattan Beach. No blacks were allowed.

Greene: Oh, so Manhattan Beach was kind of off limits to black folks at that time.

Walters: Well, not by the time I came, 1955. They seemed to be everywhere. But we used to go to Venice Beach in Santa Monica a lot.

Greene: So you've told me about what it was like looking for work at the time. Now that you began to work, what was your experience like once you actually got that job for the Department of Probation?

Walters: Oh, it was fine. Yes, it was okay. A nice group of people there to work with, a mixed group, and as it turns out there was a black woman there who was well acquainted with my paternal uncle's wife and her family, so again there was almost a familial connection there. And there was a man [with whom I had gone to school from Kindergarten] who's now deceased that had lived just two blocks from my grandparents, my paternal grandparents, and half a block from our church, Trinity A.M.E., and he had been a member of Trinity A.M.E., and his family.

Greene: So this was a whole network of folks from Kansas.

Walters: Oh yes, I tell you, folks were running like crazy to get out of there. [laughter] But he worked out there at General Hospital, too, in a different department, and I had contacted him when I got here, so there were just all kinds of people, all kinds of things to do of a social nature, and movies on every corner.

Greene: Did you go back to Kansas to visit often at first?

Walters: No. It was seven years before I went back. I started dating a young man that my uncle introduced me to, and we married.

Greene: And what was his name?

Walters: Wilbur Walters, and we started our family, and we had three kids.

Greene: When was your oldest child born?

Walters: 1956, October eighteenth, 1956.

Greene: Did you have a boy?

Walters: I had two sons and a daughter.

Greene: What were their names?

Walters: The daughter, the second child, her name is Susan [Walters], and the youngest is Philip [Walters] with one L.

Greene: And David [Walters] is the oldest.

Walters: Right.

Greene: All right. And what was it like for you when you were, okay, recently married and just beginning a family? That must have been a big change. Prior to that you'd been working and moving around some, so how did your life change once you started a family and were married?

Walters: Oh, it was a drastic change!

Greene: It was a big one.

Walters: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And then when David was born, he was not well, so he required a lot of special attention, so I never went back to work.

Greene: Oh, okay, so you stopped working at that time?

Walters: I was out of the workforce for fifteen years, sixteen years, whatever. Life was different. We bought a home out in Orange County of all places. My husband had a job out that way, and it was before--they were building the 5 Freeway out there, and he was driving all the way to Brea [CA] every day, so a tract of homes opened up out there to blacks. We were the sixth black family. The first black family that moved in got their house bombed.

Greene: It was bombed?

Walters: Bombed.

Greene: Oh, welcome to Orange County.

Walters: Welcome to Orange County.

Greene: This was in 1957?

Walters: We moved out there in February of '57. No wait, let's see. David was born in '56, Susan was born in '57. We moved out there in February '58, and this guy had had his house bombed. And people, you know, a lot of these people had bought homes on the G.I. Bill, and they didn't want to live in the tract with black folks, and almost they thought that, I guess--I don't know what they thought. But they knew they didn't want to--so they walked away from the houses, and here was this--it was a small tract of empty homes.

Greene: What town was this in?

Walters: Placentia [CA]. The VA [Veterans Administration], we bought the house from the VA. It was a VA repo, and the VA was renting them or selling them. Then the state came along and decided they would build a freeway through part of it. The 57 Freeway goes through part of it. And so once the state bought the land they wanted, then they started renting the homes, and black folks and Mexicans moved in, and there were a few white folks, but not many.

Greene: What kind of work did your husband do?

Walters: He was an engineer. He was a mechanical engineer, and he worked for the Union Oil Research Center out there. He had worked in aerospace, and ultimately went back to aerospace.

Greene: Describe your children as they were when they were young.

Walters: Well, they were delightful. Yes, they were good kids, they were wonderful children and we enjoyed them thoroughly.

Greene: What schools did they ultimately go to?

Walters: By the time--we thought that David would start school in Placentia, and, in fact, he had been enrolled. Placentia had an open house for parents that were going to have their kids in school in September. They had it the spring before, like May or June, somewhere around in there, for parents to come in and get acquainted with the teachers and the school, what have you. But we moved that July. We sold our place out there and bought a house here, just down the street, because my husband had gone back to aerospace. He was with a company called Atomics International. It was part of North American Aviation, and he designed atomic reactors. And so David started school here, just walking distance from here.

Greene: What was the name of the school?

Walters: At the time he started, it was called Burnside [Avenue] Elementary School, and it was sitting on a corner of Burnside and Saturn. They added onto the school and the part that they added on included an office building that they located on the Saturn Street side, so they renamed the school Saturn Street [School].

Greene: And this was after living in Orange County for how long?

Walters: It was about three and a half years.

Greene: How did it feel to be living back in L.A.?

Walters: Wonderful, like I'd been released.

Greene: It was very different from Placentia?

Walters: Oh yes. One of the things about Placentia, it was so far away that if the phone rang you'd break your neck trying to answer it, because nobody was going to call you unless they really wanted. Then a lot of women were working out of their homes, trying to make money, so we started getting all these calls you don't want. I remember Arthur Murray Studios, somebody called for Arthur Murray Studios. Do you know Arthur Murray Studios? About ten o'clock one night, at night. And I was so disgusted that they had called, I told the person, I said--they were talking about, "You've won," you know, so many lessons, x number of--I said, "Number one, if I showed up, you wouldn't let me in." [laughter] "I'm a Negro. We're Negroes here." And they'd say, "Oh, right."

Greene: They said you were right.

Walters: Right. "We're sorry, it's not open to Negroes."

Greene: I guess that was one way to stop the calls.

Walters: Yes. Anyway.

Greene: Okay.[End of interview]

1.2. Session 2 (March 28, 2008)

Greene: This is Sean Greene, interviewing Rita Walters at her home, on March 28, 2008. Afternoon, Rita.

Walters: Good afternoon, Shawn. Good to see you again.

Greene: It's good to see you, too. We're going to pick up again with your growing up in Kansas City, Kansas. I just wanted to ask you a couple of follow-up questions about your experiences there. I wonder if you could tell us some about--did you have any awareness of black towns in Kansas, all-black towns when you were growing up?

Walters: Yes.

Greene: You did. What do you remember about them?

Walters: Well, the one that I had the most information about was Nicodemus, Kansas. Ever heard of Nicodemus?

Greene: No, I haven't.

Walters: It's in western Kansas, northwestern part of Kansas, closer to the Colorado border. My father's youngest brother married a woman whose family had a land grant, when they were encouraging blacks to come to Kansas and farm, and she lived out there, and her family. Her father had been a very successful farmer. The family name was Alexander. So we used to hear all of these stories about Nicodemus, Kansas, and we would travel there from time to time with our grandparents.

Greene: So you visited.

Walters: Yes.

Greene: And was the area predominantly rural?

Walters: Oh, it was absolutely rural, absolutely rural. Nicodemus had this one little street. At one end of it there was a Methodist church, and at the other end of it there was a Baptist church, and somewhere in the middle, in between, there was a post office. Then there were some other structures, houses where people lived, but not many of them, and there may have been a little store. There was one family. A woman used to--we'd go up on Sundays for church, and her name was Ora Sweitzer, and she had one of those homes, a two-story place on this one single street in Nicodemus. And she would cook on Sunday, and sell it. She was like the restaurant in town, and people from both churches would gather at her home.

Walters: So Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon, Sunday morning after the morning chores were done, and Sunday afternoon after church was out, and before it was time to do the evening chores, people would gather there and eat her food, because she had fabulous food, really good food. And the kids would play, and the adults would sit and chat. Then everybody would go back to their farms.

Greene: About how far was it from Kansas City? How long did it take you to get there?

Walters: My uncle's place was 365 miles from Kansas, and the border--Kansas was 400 miles across, east to west.

Greene: So that was a good trip.

Walters: So it was an all-day trip. It was an all-day trip.

Greene: And what would you say were some of the differences between Nicodemus and the area where you grew up?

Walters: Well, where I grew up was--at least I thought it was--urban, and it was mostly urban, but it was urban with a rural flavor. Kansas City, Kansas, was more rural than Kansas City, Missouri. Kansas City, Missouri, was a full-fledged city.

Greene: I see.

Walters: Kansas City, Kansas, was a full-fledged small town, and it was dependent on Kansas City, Missouri, for a lot of services.

Greene: Okay. You talked to me some before about your experiences in school. What I forgot to ask you was, did you learn much black history, and if so, how did you learn about black history back then?

Walters: Yes, I learned a great deal about black history, because we were in a segregated school system, and the teachers were all black. And many of them made it their business to see that black history was woven in the fabric of the curriculum.

Greene: Wow. Okay.

Walters: So I was of some age before I found out that people in other schools that were desegregated--well, I didn't know anything about desegregated schools, growing up, really, except when at high-school level there was a black family, who were Catholic, and their kids went to the Catholic high school, which was predominantly white. They may have been the only blacks there at the Catholic high school, and that predated Brown [v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas]. So that was really my first introduction, when the daughter, who was either in my class, or a year behind or in front of me, went there.

Greene: There was a period when you went to Catholic school as well, right?

Walters: One semester.

Greene: Oh, for like one semester? And that was what grade?

Walters: Elementary school, sixth grade.

Greene: That was predominantly a black school as well?

Walters: Yes.

Greene: Okay. Just out of curiosity, because I think when you spoke to me about that you mentioned you had nuns or teachers who came calling one day on your parents to talk with them--

Walters: Right.

Greene: Were they black nuns?

Walters: No, no, no. I never saw a black nun, never saw a black nun. I think if memory serves, once there was a black priest that came there.

Greene: Really.

Walters: But I won't want to put my head on a chopping block to that.

Greene: Sure.

Walters: But no, never saw a black nun.

Greene: You mentioned Brown. When did you first become aware of some of this national civil-rights activity that was going on around the country? Do you remember when you were growing up in Kansas, hearing about events, maybe Emmett Till or some of the activities leading up to Brown that were going on in other places?

Walters: Well, Emmett Till happened after Brown, as I recall. I was an adult. Was Emmett Till '57? When did that happen?

Greene: So you would have been living in L.A. at that time, but were there other events, either that were happening in Kansas related to the Civil Rights Movement, or--I mean early Civil Rights Movement, like in the forties perhaps--that you can recall hearing about when you were growing up, or wasn't it until you came to L.A.?

Walters: Well, I don't remember so much about civil-rights activity that was occurring in Kansas, but that was occurring elsewhere. The lynchings that occurred was always an upsetting thing, and we would hear--wherever they occurred--and we would hear grandparents and neighbors and, you know, friends talking about that. Joe Louis was very big. People were very excited about Joe Louis and the Max Schmeling fight, and you know, very supportive of Joe Louis, and very proud of him.

Walters: And I remember he joined the army. He was in the army, and was stationed not too far away, I think down at Fort Riley, Kansas, near Manhattan, Kansas. And he came to Kansas City. There was a woman who was either a relative or friend of parents of a friend of mine, who worked down there at that base, and she brought him. The army had something called Special Services, and they had civilian people who wore uniforms. It was like a U.S.O. [United Services Organization] within the armed services, and, of course, black soldiers weren't allowed to socialize with white soldiers.

Walters: But anyway, he came to Kansas City, Kansas, at the invitation of this lady, and he was staying at the home of my friend, my classmate and her parents. And we would walk by there. She'd tell us he was going to be there, and the kids would start parading up and down the street to get--and people sat out on their front porches in those days, and had swings, and he was sitting there in the swing, swinging back and forth and talking. As a kid I remember just being thrilled to meet this guy, a great guy.

Greene: Wow. Joe Louis?

Walters: But the thing we learned--Joe Louis, the boxer. Kids find out things and then they're not so kind. I remember the word got around that he couldn't read, and people not being able to read of any young age were unheard of. I certainly didn't know anything about it. And one of the kids that had gone by had said, "Well, he was sitting there with a comic book upside down." And that was sad, and I remember my mother and folks talking. We went home and told them, "He can't read." And I think my mother said, "Well, that's all right. He can fight, and he hasn't had the opportunity to go to school."

Greene: Because that stood out to people, that he couldn't read?

Walters: Yes. Yes. And that's how he got into trouble with his finances. He had other people taking care of it, because he was not literate, and it's a sad thing. And athletes today, who have the opportunity to go to school, some of them still can't read their contract.

Greene: Did you happen to see the PBS documentary recently on Joe Louis?

Walters: No. No. When was that?

Greene: About a month ago.

Walters: Really?

Greene: Yes.

Walters: No, I didn't see that.

Greene: Okay, all right. Just thought I'd ask. So let's fast forward a little bit, to when you moved to L.A. in 1955, correct?

Walters: Right.

Greene: When you came--you had begun to tell me who did you stay with, and how did you get set up when you were here. Could you recount that again for me?

Walters: Sure. When I first came here in January '55, I went to my uncle, who was my father's oldest brother. My father had two brothers, one older and one younger --and rang his doorbell. He was not expecting me.

Greene: You just showed up on his doorstep.

Walters: I just showed up. Some people were leaving Kansas City and coming out here, and offered me a free ride if I wanted to go, and I don't think I shared it with you the last time, and it occurred to me afterwards, one of the reasons I was able to just pick up and go like that--because that Friday I had gotten laid off from my job.

Greene: Oh. Okay.

Walters: So, when I was at church on Saturday and this guy said he was going to California on Monday, did I want to go? Oh, sure I want to go. [laughter] He said, "I'm serious, you know." And finally it got through to me, and I talked to my mother, and it worked out. But I rang my uncle's doorbell.

Greene: What was your uncle's name?

Walters: Harry Clifton White, and the family called him Cliff. He had a young family. He had two daughters that were like either six and seven or seven and eight, and a young son. That happened to be his son's birthday, third birthday. But he had been married earlier in life, and that marriage didn't stay, it broke up, and he didn't have any children by that marriage. So the lady that he was married to now, they had married--I guess they were both like thirty-five, thirty-six, and started their family at that time.

Greene: They lived on the East Side?

Walters: Yes, 41st and Wadsworth. Right, right, at 895 East 41st Street.

Greene: Wow. And how long did you stay there?

Walters: Just a couple of months. I came, it was January twenty-second, Harry's birthday, my uncle's son, and I stayed there until about March, mid-March or so, and then moved with a cousin, and the cousin with whom I lived at that time is one that you have on your list to interview, Halvor Miller. Yes. He and his mother had a large apartment, and they had an extra room.

Greene: And whereabouts did they stay?

Walters: They were at 23rd and Normandie at that time.

Greene: What was the community where they lived, what was it like? What was 23rd and Normandie like at that time, do you recall?

Walters: Yes. It was a little more diverse than 41st Street, or that point on 41st. It was 41st, and we were between Central and Avalon. It was a predominantly African American community, although there were some Latinos. There were more Latinos in the 23rd and Normandie area at that time, and a few whites around there.

Greene: Okay. You mentioned that you came into a church community when you came. Remind me of the name of your church?

Walters: The name then was Wadsworth Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Wadsworth being the street on which they were located. Subsequently, they sold that property. There was also a school there, Wadsworth Elementary School, which is still there. They [Los Angeles Unified School District] wanted to expand the school, and bought the property from the church, and the church bought a structure over on what was Santa Barbara [Blvd.] then, but it's King Blvd. now, King and--what's the cross street? Well, it was King west of Vermont, between Vermont and Normandie, and they named it University Church because of the proximity to [U]SC, and it's still there.

Greene: Were you very active in your church at that time?

Walters: For a while, yes, when I first came here.

Greene: I imagine you attended service on Saturday?

Walters: Right.

Greene: Were there other activities that the church sponsored that you were involved in?

Walters: Yes. They had Wednesday-night prayer meetings, and during the time I was with my uncle I was right around the corner, so I'd go around to the church then. And somebody asked me if I would participate. It was a pretty large church, not like large today, but by the standards then, it was a good-sized church, and they asked me if I would serve as an alternate clerk, so that the person who was the church clerk didn't have to perform every week. And I did that, and that was a matter--you know, you welcomed the visitors at some point on the program, you would read people's names who were transferring to that church from some other place, and extend welcome to them, and that was about it.

Greene: Did you become close friends with folks in the congregation? Were there particular people that you became especially close with?

Walters: Yes. There were a number of people there that I had known at Oakwood [Academy and College], so I had those that I'd known at Oakwood, and those who had preceded me on the move from Kansas City.

Greene: And Oakwood was?

Walters: Oakwood Academy and College in Huntsville, Alabama, Seventh-Day Adventist School, which is still there. It no longer has the academy, but it has university status. They just earned university status.

Greene: Is that right?

Walters: Yes, this year, last year.

Greene: And so there were a number of folks that had come out after their time at Oakwood?

Walters: Well, they came from Los Angeles. This was their home.

Greene: Okay, so they were originally from here.

Walters: Right. And I'm sure they're in--in fact, one person who was from New York showed up there, too, so it was a time of pretty high mobility.

Greene: I imagine the black community was growing pretty quickly at that time in L.A. Did you have a sense of that? You mentioned it was very vibrant. Did you get a sense that people were relocating here?

Walters: I had that sense before I came.

Greene: Before you came, okay.

Walters: Right, that people were relocating, because of the numbers of people in Kansas City that were relocating, the numbers of people that I knew that wanted to relocate. Then my mother had a sister, an older sister and brother here, so the uncle I stayed with was a paternal uncle. Then I had the maternal uncle and aunt who lived here, and who had been here for umpteen years. All three of those had been here forever.

Greene: Leon Washington.

Walters: Leon Washington [was my Father's first] cousin, and he'd been here since the early thirties, or twenties, but started his paper in the thirties.

Greene: Did you have much contact with him or with the newspaper when you came to town, when you first moved here I should say?

Walters: I had some. Now, his parents, his mother was my maternal grandmother's sister, and I saw a good deal of Aunt Blanche and Uncle Leon. Also, Leon's paper was just up the street, around the corner from where my uncle lived, so we would walk around there.

Greene: Oh, so you were in pretty close proximity to your church community, to your relatives, where they lived and worked.

Walters: Right, right, right.

Greene: Okay.

Walters: Now, I wasn't buddy-buddy close with Leon, but I knew his wife and her sister. She was from Kansas City, and her sister--she had one sister who was very close friends with my mom. So there were, you know, connections there.

Greene: Oh yes. So you have a network of family, a network of folks that you knew through church and through school, and at this point you began working, right, as you described to me last time. I'm trying to ask, did knowing so many people sort of help you get adapted quickly? How did it affect your life, the fact that you had so many folks here, where you were tied to networks of people already? What kind of impact did that have on your getting settled, your getting set up, your learning your way--

Walters: Well, it made the transition almost seamless.

Greene: Really.

Walters: Yes. I never for a second missed being in Kansas City.

Greene: Is that right?

Walters: Not one second did I miss being in Kansas City.

Greene: Is that because--why is that?

Walters: Well, Kansas City was not a very vibrant place. It tended toward more rural, slow-moving. There were not a lot of things. Here you could go to the beach, you could go to Griffith Park, you could go to the observatory, you could go--Forest Lawn was a tourist attraction at that point. There were museums that you could attend. The movie theaters were a big draw, and at that time, and I don't know about now, but at that time Seventh Day Adventists weren't supposed to go to the movies. Well, I succumbed to that. I went to the movies.

Greene: You went to the movies.

Walters: And there was a lot of social interaction between a lot of different people. The church organized snow trips. The week after I was here, they asked me did I want to go on a snow trip. I said, "A what?" They said, "A snow trip."

Greene: What's a snow trip?

Walters: Yes, what's a snow trip? "Well, we go to the snow." I said, "To do what?" "Well, so the kids can play in the snow. People enjoy the snow." There wasn't much talk about skiing for black people then; I don't remember that. But they were going up here to play and stuff. I could not believe it. As somebody that had the experience of having to shovel your way out your front door--

Greene: Couldn't imagine why anybody would want to go to the snow?

Walters: --why anybody would want to go to the snow? No, count me out on that. That's one activity I don't want to participate in. I didn't care if I never saw snow again. When my children were little, we took them up to the mountains, up to Big Bear. They had--it may still be there, I don't know--Santa Claus Village up there, and we took them up to see Santa Claus and to play in the snow and what have you, just for the experience.

Greene: So they could have that experience.

Walters: For my two older kids. The youngest one was still a baby, and was too young, we thought, to carry, so my mother-in-law, who just passed, she babysat that day we went up to the snow. But that was the only time I took them up there.

Greene: Not too many field trips to the snow, huh?

Walters: No. [laughter]

Greene: Were there prominent black families that you knew of, living either in any of the neighborhoods that you lived in, or living close by? You mentioned that you had friends that lived in West Adams; I believe you said West Adams.

Walters: Yes.

Greene: Did you know of any prominent black families in the area, that you crossed paths with somehow or knew?

Walters: My aunt that--I lived with my cousin--my uncle's wife--

Greene: Which uncle?

Walters: Harry. My mother's brother was James. He [Harry] had married into a family, the Kaiser family. Her name was Edith Kaiser, and they were a very prominent black family here in business and real estate, and she in the school district, and her brothers ran a car-repair business, and their parents had left them a lot of real estate, so she managed that. And then she had a brother who was an artist, and he used to do a lot of that kind of work, portrait painting and stuff.

Greene: Did you have a sense--I think I asked you this about Kansas as well. Were there places that you couldn't go here in L.A., because of the color line? Were there areas that seemed off limits to black folks?

Walters: Well, I think that the [Santa Monica Beach at the] foot of Pico was still considered the spot for black folks for a while, although when I started going to the beach here, and I started dating the man that I eventually married, he had a brother and sister-in-law who lived in Venice. He worked for Douglas Aircraft; his brother worked for Douglas Aircraft, and they lived in walking distance of the beach, Venice Beach, and we used to go down there and walk over to park the car, and walk with them over to the beach. They had their first baby by then. In all, it was just a wonderful experience, so nobody ever stopped us and said we couldn't go.

Greene: Venice was an all-white community at the time?

Walters: Predominantly white. But I think Venice has probably been kind of a jumble of folks for a long time.

Greene: For quite some time?

Walters: Yes, because the Oakwood area there is an old black community, so they've always, I'm sure, for years had their share of black folk. Or I shouldn't say their share, that's not good. They had some black folks who lived there.

Greene: They had some black folks who lived there, fair enough.

Walters: Right. And I was trying to think of some of these other--I didn't know prominent families, so to speak, but there were other people, other relatives who did, and were friends with them. Then my mother had another friend, who passed away just in December, a couple of months before her hundredth birthday, who was married to a minister who was assistant pastor over at Second Baptist Church, and he married us when we got married.

Greene: Is that right?

Walters: Right, right.

Greene: Recap for me again how you and your husband met?

Walters: Through my uncle, my Uncle Harry. The families knew each other, and folks had gone to school together, you know. There was Jefferson High School, that was the predominantly, almost only black high school, Manual High School, Manual Arts [High School] and Jeff. And the kids who grew up on the East Side, you know, everybody got to know each other. My former mother-in-law lived--at the time my Uncle Harry started his family, she lived across the street. She babysat his children, and she was godmother to the youngest one, to the baby, Harry.

Walters: So when I came out here and I had been here a little while, my uncle told me, he said, "There's a nice young man I want you to meet, and I've told him to come by."

Greene: So he literally made the introduction.

Walters: He made the introduction. He made that introduction. As it turns out, I had met him before in Kansas City.

Greene: Really?

Walters: He had come through Kansas City about a year and a half prior. He had gone to Detroit, picked up a car, and was driving back cross country, and stopped to see my father. So I ran into him with my stepmother's cousin one night outside of a black barbecue restaurant in Kansas City, Kansas. But I was sitting in the car, waiting for a friend to get the orders and come out, and Theora, that was my stepmother's cousin, saw me and walked over, said, "Oh, Rita, here's a friend of Cliff's. Let me introduce you to him. He's here visiting Henry." Henry was my father. She said, "He's here visiting Henry." And so I said, "How do you do? Nice to meet you," and that sort of thing. And I told him then, I said, "Well, I love California. I'd love to go to California." He said, "Well, I'm heading there if you want to go." I said, "Yeah, okay," and that was that.

Walters: But it shows you how assumptions are not always the case. Most often they're not the case. My assumption was, he's here visiting my dad. He's a friend of my uncle's. He's an old man. [laughs] It was dark outside. I wasn't paying any attention to the guy.

Greene: That was your early impression of him, huh?

Walters: Yes. But when I came here, and my uncle had him come over to the house, the day he came over to my uncle's, my uncle had gone fishing. He was quite the deep-sea fisherman. And my aunt had taken the kids to a birthday party, and I was packing up to move. My uncle, when he came in he was going to move me over to Hal and Ida's. So I was pretty disheveled when he came to the door--

Greene: Because you were in the middle of packing.

Walters: Right. He and his younger brother came to the door, and he said, "Hi. I'm Wilbur Walters. We're friends of Harry's, Cliff's, and he said I should come over and meet you." I said, "Oh, he told me that. He just didn't tell me when."

Greene: He picked a fine moment to come.

Walters: Right. So I invited him in, and I said, "Well, I'm just in the process of moving, and I'll give you the phone number where I'm going to be." He said, "Yes, and I will call you." And he did. He called me a week or so later.

Greene: Did you recall when he showed up at the door that you had met him before?

Walters: No.

Greene: Or is that something you discovered talking with him after?

Walters: Yes. Right. No, it didn't occur to me at all that this was the same person, because like I said, it was dark outside, and we weren't parked under a streetlight, and I wasn't paying any attention, so that was that. But we started dating, and just about nine months later we got married.

Greene: And where did you marry?

Walters: Second Baptist Church.

Greene: Got married at Second Baptist. Is that because he was a member there?

Walters: No. He was Catholic, and I was Seventh Day Adventist at that time, but we soon became nothing. But it was at Second Baptist because one of our relatives insisted that we have some kind of ceremony. We were going to the courthouse. "No, you can't do that. You've got all these relatives here, and you need to have a wedding and invite people." So we put a wedding together in a couple of weeks time, and my mother's friend, whose husband was the assistant pastor at Second Baptist, said we could have it there. They had a chapel--they still do--adjacent to the main sanctuary, and it would be fine.

Greene: And he was the one who conducted the ceremony?

Walters: He conducted the ceremony.

Greene: What was his name?

Walters: Joe Tackett, Joseph Tackett. And we had it--you know, we were looking around for a larger place to have it, larger than somebody's home, because we did have so many relatives. He had a large family, I had a large family, cousins, aunts, uncles, so we had it in the chapel, small chapel, and it worked out very well, in addition to some friends, you know.

Greene: Wow.

Walters: And then we had the reception at Joe and Marnesba Tackett's home.

Greene: So the Tacketts were old family friends in that sense.

Walters: Right. Right. Right. They grew up--she went to school with my Uncle Harry there [Kansas City]. They were in class together, and, of course, my mother and her sisters, they were all in school together. So both sides of the families were well known to one another. Both sides of my mother and father's family were well known to each other. And then I met the Walters through my Uncle Harry here.

Walters: Another little twist on the family arrangement there--my maiden name was White. My Uncle Harry married, as I told you, a woman by the name of Edith Kaiser. Edith Kaiser's nephew married Wilbur, my husband-to-be, his sister, and then Wilbur married me. So first, a White married a Kaiser. Second, a Kaiser married a Walters. Third, a Walters married a White.

Greene: Wow. [laughter] Talk about merging family lines.

Walters: Right. Exactly.

Greene: Okay. Where did you live once you got married? Initially, I should say.

Walters: Before I married, my friend that I told you lived in the West Adams area, in a big house up there, they had a small apartment over the garage that had originally probably been servants' quarters over there, or the chauffeur's quarters. But it was a little tiny apartment.

Greene: Remind me of your friend's name. This is the woman that studied with you, that went to school with you in Kansas, right?

Walters: Right. She was Jackie Caldwell Tatum. Tatum was her married name, Caldwell is her family name. And her mother and my Uncle Cliff dated. Her first date was my Uncle Cliff.

Greene: Is that right?

Walters: Right. And her mother and my mother were very close friends. So my mother back in Kansas, she was concerned about where and with whom [I was going to live]. She just didn't think any decent single woman lived alone in an apartment, not in Kansas City. So she was urging me to do something with somebody I knew. So that's what I did, and it was a very small apartment, and when Wilbur and I got married, he just moved in. When David came along, we moved out. It was getting too crowded.

Greene: A little crowded in there. What year was David born?

Walters: [19]56.

Greene: 1956, all right. And is that around the time you moved to Orange County?

Walters: We moved to Orange County in '58, after my daughter was born in '57.

Greene: Okay. So when you left the apartment in West Adams, where did you move to then?

Walters: We moved over here on a street called Westview. It's close to La Brea, just east of La Brea, and between Washington and 20th Street.

Greene: And what was that community like?

Walters: It was a very mixed community. Our neighbors on both sides were Anglo, but there were blacks throughout the neighborhood, too.

Greene: Oh, okay, all right. So it was a very mixed community.

Walters: Very mixed neighborhood.

Greene: And you would have stayed there by that point two years, another year or two?

Walters: We moved there when I was expecting Susan, so it had to be sometime in mid-'57. She was born in November.

Greene: And your husband, now you said he was an engineer, correct?

Walters: Right.

Greene: And he was working where at that time?

Walters: He was working for North American Aviation, a division of North American Aviation called Atomics International.

Greene: Wow. What kind of work was he doing for them?

Walters: He was an engineer, a mechanical engineer.

Greene: Okay. And you mentioned that he had a commute. Was he commuting at that time back and forth?

Walters: Yes. North American was in Canoga Park, and that was well before the freeways.

Greene: So he had to take surface streets?

Walters: He took surface streets. But he left North American and took a job--between the time we got married--and took a job in Orange County, and he was commuting. That was after David was born. He was commuting to Orange County; still no freeways. They were building the 5 Freeway.

Greene: And how long did it take to commute to Orange County without the freeway, on average?

Walters: Oh, at least an hour, hour and a half, depending on--of course, you didn't have the traffic which you have now.

Greene: Sure, sure. That's still quite a drive, quite a ways away.

Walters: That's quite a drive, and that's the reason that he said he was just getting to a place where he couldn't handle the drive, and he had heard that there were places out there where we might be able to buy. And we found out that the Veterans Administration had this list of repossessions, and so that's how we got that. We had people right here in town turn us down, tell us, "No, you can't buy a house here in this neighborhood."

Greene: Is that right?

Walters: Yes. One place it happened was around Hyde Park and Van Ness or Arlington, one of those streets down--Wilton Place. I always get those three streets mixed up. And another place was not far from that. It was Sixth Avenue west of Crenshaw, just north of Florence. It was a perfect little house, and it was our price range, and the guy, the owner was there, you know, for sale by owner, sign sitting out there. We went there and he was very nice. He said, "Oh, I promised my neighbors that I wouldn't sell to blacks."

Greene: I see.

Walters: And we weren't blacks. "Said I wouldn't sell to colored," and so he didn't. He wouldn't. And the other guy was pretty nasty.

Greene: Is that right?

Walters: They were having a real-estate open house, sign out there, "Open House," a real-estate company, and we walked up. The house had the breakfast room on the front, and here was the front porch over here, and the living room. And so he was sitting there in the window, in the breakfast room, and the driveway extended the walkway right up there.

Greene: This was the realtor or the owner?

Walters: The owner. The realtor was also there. The realtor was standing outside. And we walked up the driveway, so before the realtor could say anything, the guy had the window open, and he said, "No. We won't show it to you, to your kind."

Greene: Just like that?

Walters: Just like that. "We're not selling it to you. We're not showing it to you."

Greene: That must have been frustrating for you and your husband.

Walters: And I said, you know--he said your kind or your color. I said, "Well, the color of our money is green." He said, "It's the wrong color. You're the wrong color." And that was it.

Greene: That was it. Did you and your husband have conversations then about where you should look, given that you were running into this kind of--these restrictions?

Walters: Well, there were enough other places that--Leimert Park was then opening up to blacks, but there was a neighborhood association that was trying to keep it from being a run on blacks. The real-estate folks, you know, would go in and scare folks to death that the blacks are coming. So they formed an organization, and they had these signs out on their lawns, "This home is not for sale to anyone of any color."

Greene: This is in Leimert Park?

Walters: In Leimert Park, yes. And the sign--those may not be the exact words, but they were saying that, you know, they were going to stay put. And there I think it's just because it was a nice neighborhood and folks wanted to stay.

Greene: Interesting.

Walters: Years later, that was--well, that was during the time we first started looking for a house, so that's like '56, '57, because we started looking before David was born. Then years later, I'm trying to think when, I guess David had started school--David started school in '61, so in the early sixties, about that time, so that's maybe--'61 was when we bought the house down the street, and my mother-in-law was also--she was going to sell her house and buy an apartment building, which she did. So she bought one in Leimert Park on Stocker, and from somebody that wouldn't sell it to colored, so she got somebody else to do it. They went--she and my husband went and did the deal. And the guy asked them, says, you know, "You're not colored, are you?" And my mother-in-law said, "Colored?"

Greene: Is she very fair?

Walters: Yes, she's very fair.

Greene: Your husband as well?

Walters: Yes, he was very fair.

Greene: Okay. So he wondered; when they showed up, he wasn't quite sure?

Walters: Right. Right.

Greene: Interesting.

Walters: So in order for the sale to go through, because my name wasn't going to be on the deed, I had to quit claim, or sign away my right to the property.

Greene: Really.

Walters: Right, because under the community-property laws, anything that the husband acquired became joint property with the wife, should a divorce occur. But I had to sign it away before the sale was consummated. But he signed it completely over to her after the sale was consummated. But they never saw me.

Greene: Wow.

Walters: So that was, you know--

Greene: What you had to do at the time.

Walters: Yes.

Greene: So while you were looking, you realized that the Veterans Administration was making some houses available in Orange County, right?

Walters: Yes. They were getting these repossessions wherever, you know, they had financed them. The G.I. Bill was not available here to black veterans, not any of the subdivisions in the Valley, blacks couldn't buy. They couldn't buy in Orange County. My husband spent seven years in the service, and he could not exercise the G.I. Bill on any purchase. He went in the service at the end of World War II, and stayed in five years, and came out just six months before the Korean War broke out, and he had joined the Reserves or the National Guard. But whatever he was in, his unit was the first one called up, and went to Korea--

Greene: For the Korean War.

Walters: So he was there two years. But we could not buy a house under the G.I. Bill. When they did allow blacks to utilize the G.I. Bill here in California, it was for older inner-city property only, not for the newer subdivisions.

Greene: That was the federal red-lining stuff.

Walters: That was federal red-lining. But the repossessions that the government got, people that couldn't--or wouldn't as it turned out in this tract where we bought--keep up their payments, just walked away from their homes. The government would sell, so we bought it directly from the V.A.

Greene: Directly from the V.A.

Walters: Right.

Greene: Oh, that's interesting. So what was the town that you moved to in Orange County?

Walters: Placentia, population 3,000 when we moved there.

Greene: That was quite a small town.

Walters: Yes, small. Now it's probably 50,000, 40,000.

Greene: Three thousand.

Walters: Yes, three thousand people.

Greene: And what was it like there?

Walters: They had their segregation. Placentia had grown up around the railroad tracks. It had a Sunkist Packing House there, and it was Orange County, oranges and citrus. They packed citrus right there at the plant, and loaded it on the train track, and avocados there across the road. Orangethorpe was the street. Our tract was on the south side of Orangethorpe. The north side of Orangethorpe was an orange grove, surrounded by avocado trees.

Greene: It must have been very fragrant.

Walters: Oh, it was, it was, it was.

Greene: Did they have like farmer's markets or anything comparable at the time?

Walters: No. You could go right to the farm.

Greene: And purchase?

Walters: Yes, like strawberry season, we used to go, you know, five minutes away and knock on the farmer's door, and tell him, you know, "We'd like to pick up a flat." Of course, you had to buy the flat, which was twelve boxes, and then there were another three boxes they filled over the top, so you'd get fifteen boxes of strawberries for some ridiculous price, and any time you wanted strawberries, that's what you did.

Greene: You mentioned that they were just constructing the 57 Freeway, or the--

Walters: 57 Freeway. Well, they hadn't even started construction. All they did was identify a route and started buying up property.

Greene: I see. So they were making way for it. They were preparing for it.

Walters: They were making way for it, right.

Greene: So it wasn't very developed then, apart--there was farmland.

Walters: Oh, yes, it was farmland all around. Fullerton on the north, and Anaheim on the south, were the closest cities.

Greene: In quotes.

Walters: Right. And Disneyland had just opened.

Greene: Oh, Disneyland was new at the time?

Walters: Disneyland was new. I think Disneyland opened in the summer of '57, and we could see--Disneyland did fireworks at nine o'clock every night. We could see the fireworks from our backyard.

Greene: Is that right?

Walters: Yes.

Greene: What were your neighbors like? Did you befriend any of your neighbors there?

Walters: The white folks for the most part, except for a couple of families, all moved out. They were gone. I told you, they bombed the first black guy that moved in there. They bombed his house. I don't know that the neighbors did. I don't know who did. I never heard who did it, just that his home was bombed, and then these folks started leaving in droves. But it was a small tract, and the folks that moved in were for the most part black, a few Latinos. Placentia had--what I started to say, the railroad tracks. They had a little area south of the railroad tracks, just south of where we were, that was called La Jolla. It wasn't at all the La Jolla. I think there was a road called La Jolla. But most of the Mexicans and Latinos lived back over there. They had farmworkers' shacks, and some homes. Like this guy we used to buy strawberries from, he was Latino, but I always thought the house he was in was his home. It was a house. It wasn't a farmworkers' housing; itinerant labor. He was there. If he didn't own it, he rented the land and worked the land.

Walters: There was, on what is now State College Blvd., they built Fullerton State College while we were out there, started construction of that. There was a vegetable stand that some farmers from around there had set up, and you could go and buy fresh vegetables and fruit there, strawberries.

Greene: Is that right?

Walters: They had not exactly farmer's market, but it was a farmer's market. It was one family that had it, and they would pop up different places. There was an egg-packing plant that you could go, and you'd buy fifteen dozen eggs in a crate. You could buy a crate of eggs, fifteen dozen, twenty-five cents a dozen for this whole crate.

Greene: Really.

Walters: And then you'd share them with the neighbors. We'd split them, you know. You'd go to the orange-packing place, and you could buy a crate of oranges, and my husband--oranges keep quite well. He adapted our refrigerator, made a shelf, made a contraption that held the shelf in, and we could pack a lot of those oranges right in the refrigerator.

Greene: Must have been handy having a mechanical engineer around the house.

Walters: Yes. Right, right. So that part, when we moved away from there, I missed all that fresh food, you know.

Greene: When you first moved to the area, knowing that the first black family that had moved there had been bombed, and that white folks weren't necessarily too happy about people of color moving in, were you concerned? Were you afraid moving in, for your safety?

Walters: No, I wasn't. There were, you know, five other families that had been living there a little while, and they hadn't gotten bombed, just the first one. But I had come from Kansas City, where segregation was just--you lived it, breathed it every day. But I had worked in these environments where I was the only black employed, first and only black employed, and so, you know, I wasn't afraid. But one of the things again, going to a segregated school we were taught, "Stand up for your rights," and we learned about people who were doing that.

Walters: I remember Adam Clayton Powell came to Kansas City, and my mother was all excited. She went to hear him speak, and came home and told us about his speech. I guess I was in middle school, or in junior high school at that time. But he was quite an attraction. People used to talk about him all the time.

Walters: Ebony magazine came out, and Jet magazine started publishing. They were very popular publications, and gave you sort of a window on what was happening vis-a-vis civil rights.

Greene: Were they fixtures in your home as well, Ebony and magazines like that?

Walters: Yes, and Jet.

Greene: You had two children when you were living in Placentia, at that time? Two of your children had been born by then?

Walters: I had two when we moved there, three when we left.

Greene: What were your days like? What was a typical day like for you?

Walters: Well, it took some adjusting, the domestic scene.

Greene: Because you had been working up until that point, yes?

Walters: Up until the first child was born. It was strictly a scene of domesticity. You know, you're up, you feed the kids, you bathe them, you get the laundry started, you clean the house, it's time to feed them again, and on and on.

Greene: You had a routine.

Walters: Day after day. Talk to your neighbors.

Greene: I imagine that living so far away from your family means that you didn't necessarily have a lot of help at that time, with child care and things?

Walters: Right. Right. If we wanted help with child care, we had to take them in town. My husband was raised by his aunt, his mother's oldest sister, and she was always considered like their grandmother, or like Wilbur's mother, and we brought the kids there, and she loved babysitting with the kids.

Greene: Really.

Walters: Oh yes. She had done that herself. She would keep folks' kids, and, of course, these were special to her, so we would bring them in. Another time, I was pretty sick with the last baby, and my Aunt Edith, Edith Kaiser--I remember one day she drove all the way from L.A. out to come and spend the day, to give me a hand with the kids.

Greene: Is that right.

Walters: Yes.

Greene: Because you were under the weather.

Walters: Right. Right. But there were neighbors--go ahead.

Greene: You were saying?

Walters: Well, neighbors with whom we were friendly, and some that we weren't. But I knew that once we moved out of there that I didn't want any more to do with suburbia.

Greene: Is that right? You had had your fill.

Walters: Right. I'd had my fill. I had had my fill.

Greene: And before we move forward to once you move back to Los Angeles I just wanted to ask, how did the decision--was it something you and your husband talked about beforehand, that you would stay home with the kids, and that you would be a fulltime homemaker once you began to have a family?

Walters: Not so much. My oldest child, David, was ill a lot. In fact, I was planning to go back to work.

Greene: Oh, I see.

Walters: But he required a lot of care, and then it wasn't long before I was expecting the second one, so that just kind of did it. And David continued to require care and attention as he grew older.

Greene: He had a health condition when he was born?

Walters: No. There wasn't a condition that was immediately obvious, that was congenital. He had a very bad bout with bronchiolitis when he was about five months old. He was in Children's Hospital for a week, and five days of that week he was on the critical list.

Greene: You said he was five months old?

Walters: Yes, five months old. We thought we were going to lose him. And I don't know whether his developmental problems stemmed from that, or whether his developmental problems were really congenital. It's never been said. But he, you know, did okay until he--he was slow talking, slow walking, but he walked and he talked, and we had very good medical care. But when he went to school, kindergarten, his kindergarten teacher was newly pregnant and having a rough time. She couldn't make it to work every day. She'd make it to work two or three days a week.

Walters: The principal called us one day and wanted us to have a meeting at school about David. Well, we went down there and he has this little blue slip of paper, and hands it to us and says, "Sign it." I said, "What is it?" I read across the top, and it said something to the effect of an agreement to--it wasn't expulsion. Well, it was to bar him from school until he was age eight, the legal age in California.

Greene: How old was he at this time?

Walters: Five.

Greene: He was five years old.

Walters: The age of compulsory education in California at that point was eight years old. Kindergarten, first, second grades were not compulsory. They have since moved it back to six, and even then all the schools had kindergarten. But he said, well, "He's not fit to be with other children. He doesn't follow the rules." And I told him, "Look. I've had him for five years. You haven't had him for five months, and you're going to tell me he's not fit to be with other children? If you really believe that, and believe something is that terribly wrong, then with whom do I speak?"

Greene: Absolutely.

Walters: "What are the alternatives? What's out there for him?" So we pushed back on the system.

Greene: What school was this?

Walters: School right down the street. It was Burnside Elementary then, and it's Saturn Street now. It's on Burnside and Saturn. They built a new building around on Saturn, and moved the office and flagpole over here, so it became Saturn Avenue School.

Greene: A predominantly white school?

Walters: It was about half and half when we first--it was a changing community.

Greene: Yes. Half African American, half--

Walters: Right. But it was becoming--the principal then was helping the white parents leave as fast as they could, so it was a transitional neighborhood, you know.

Greene: The administration and teaching staff was predominantly white as well?

Walters: All.

Greene: All white, okay.

Walters: All white. I don't know that there was a black teacher on their faculty then. There was a black woman who was an office manager, who was very kind, very good. But that was the beginning of the struggle with the school district.

Greene: What happened when you began to push back, when you began to ask these questions?

Walters: Well, I started talking to people. We met with a school counselor, and she told us that she thought he had some neurological problems related to development, and that there really wasn't much in the school district for children with his problems at that time. She said another ten or fifteen years, there probably would be. He was hyperactive. So we found out some information from the school counselor. We started looking--we went to Children's Hospital, had him evaluated and tested there, and then the school district was saying that he was mentally retarded. Children's Hospital, the doctor there, the head of children's services there talked to me and said, "He's not mentally retarded." He said, "He has some developmental problems, but they're not retardation."

Walters: And he recommended a different kind of class, and sent the recommendation to the school district. The woman who was head of special ed for the school district called me up and read me the riot act. "Dr. Whatever-his-name-is doesn't run the school district special ed. I do." Her name was Stella Cable.

Greene: You remember that name.

Walters: I remember her name. And we found out that Redondo Beach had fourteen of these classes. Redondo Beach is this little-bitty school district, little-bitty town. It's grown since then. Fourteen classes. L.A. had one or two--

Greene: Is that right?

Walters: --and that was it. So we hooked up with an organization called California Association for Neurologically Handicapped Children, CANHC they called themselves.

Greene: How did you learn about them?

Walters: I don't know, from one place or another. We found this camping group, a woman that ran a day camp in the summers for kids with problems, and they were out in the valley, and so I had to get him out there every day. We went in the summers, and that was good for him. And it may have been through them. I think it was through them that I found out about CANHC, because a number of the parents who had participated there also belonged to CANHC and attended their meetings. But they worked for and pushed through legislation which finally years later resulted in legislation preventing exclusion, that's what they wanted, that he could not be excluded from school, not expelled, not excluded.

Walters: But they found--they got legislation finally, that required public funding of a suitable public education to meet the needs of all children.

Greene: And how long after--

Walters: Oh, years.

Greene: It was years later.

Walters: Years. California developed something called the Sedgwick Act that did that, before they did it on a federal level. Finally the federal level got around to doing it, and now people--school districts have been complaining ever since, because they claim it's an unfunded mandate, that the government mandated it and didn't pay for it, and it's very expensive. California paid for kids under the Sedgwick, and the Sedgwick Act provided not only for education in public school, but the public-school system had to pay for children to go to a private school if there was no public placement for them.

Greene: That was one of the provisions of the act?

Walters: Yes.

Greene: I see. So what did you have to do next to make sure David's needs got met through the school system? Did you keep him in L.A.U.S.D?

Walters: He stayed in the school system, yes. He did wind up in special-ed classes. But what I did next--the wife of Joe Tackett, who married us, was active in politics here, active in NAACP, and she was a civil-rights fighter.

Greene: This was Marnesba Tackett?

Walters: Marnesba Tackett, who just died in December. She put me in touch with one of the school-board members with whom she was friends, and I called her, Mary Tingloff She was a Swedish woman who was a member of the school board. She was married to a doctor, prominent doctor in town, and lived in Pacific Palisades, and she'd taken on the education struggle, and got elected to the school board, ousted an arch conservative on the school board.

Greene: He was an incumbent?

Walters: Yes, yes. When I first came to California, there was this big campaign for school board, Richardson and Tingloff. I saw all these bumper stickers. "Who are Richardson and Tingloff?" "Well, they're two people who are running for the school board." Apparently the school board that they had before Richardson and Tingloff were elected was all conservatives, folks that wanted to censor books and all that kind of stuff. You want to change that? And so I talked to Mary Tingloff, and she gave me the names of some people to talk with in the school district, and went from there.

Walters: And I got involved, and Marnesba--let's see. That was '61, '61 and '62. The ferment was going on in the South. [19]57 was the Montgomery boycott, and Dr. King's work was building still. The lunch-counter sit-ins came along. Then Dr. King came out here, after his arrest in Birmingham took place. And Marnesba was the organizer for the event bringing him here after he was released from the Birmingham Jail, shortly afterwards.

Greene: Is that right. This was through her work with the NAACP, or?

Walters: In NAACP. And out of that mass meeting with Dr. King--they had it in a stadium that no longer exists. It was where the Angels used to play, over on the East Side, 41st and Avalon. What was the name of the stadium? [Wrigley Field] I can't think of the name right now. But anyway, they filled that place. It was standing room only. I don't know how many people were in that group, how many people it sat, but I would imagine 20,000 or more people were there for that event.

Greene: Wow.

Walters: And out of that event came the leaders in the black community, along with some white folks, formed an integrated umbrella organization called United Civil Rights Council, and they established four committees to work in four areas of concern in the city: education, police-community relations, housing, and employment, same issues we're still dealing with today. And Marnesba headed up the education committee, and got me involved in that. Eventually, she became the executive director of the overall organization, and I took over as chair of the education committee.

Greene: Okay.[End of interview]

1.3. Session 3 (April 7, 2008)

Greene: This is Sean Greene interviewing Rita Walters at her home, on April seventh, a Monday. Good afternoon, Rita.

Walters: Good afternoon, Sean.

Greene: How are you?

Walters: Okay.

Greene: All right. So today we're going to backtrack a little bit, to the moment when you moved from Placentia in Orange County, back to Los Angeles. We talked a little bit about that before. I wonder if you could tell me how the move came about, and where you came to stay.

Walters: The move came about because my husband changed jobs. He took a job away from the places where he had been working in Orange County, and went back to his old firm where he'd been working, a company, North American Aviation, and the Atomics International Division of that company, neither of which are any longer in existence. We moved where we moved because as black people, we couldn't find housing in the valley. The company is in Canoga Park, and we wanted to get as far west and north as we could find housing economically, within our pocketbook range, and also housing that people would sell to a black person.

Walters: So here in the Miracle Mile area was where we landed, and that was how we happened to be where we are. The house that we moved to from Orange County was just a block and a half south of where I currently reside, and we were there thirty-nine years.

Greene: You were there thirty-nine years?

Walters: Right.

Greene: And remind me how old your children were at this time, your three children?

Walters: When we moved from Orange County? The youngest, Philip, was just a year old. He was born June first, and we moved in July. Susan was three and a half, and David was four and a half. He was ready to start school in September. His birthday was in October, and Susan's was in November.

Greene: Okay. You talked a little bit before about your son's schooling, about David's schooling in particular.

Walters: Right.

Greene: What kind of child-care arrangement did you have for your other children? They weren't school aged yet, right?

Walters: No. I was the child-care arrangement.

Greene: Okay, you were the child-care arrangement. Okay, all right. So you were watching them. As you talked to me the last time about some of the difficulties with the school system--

Walters: Yes.

Greene: --particularly that your son David ran into--

Walters: Right.

Greene: --I wondered if you could talk to me a little bit about how the issues he was having sort of affected your time on a day-to-day basis. Did you have to do something differently? How did you divide your time with your children? Did he require more attention after a certain point, and could you talk about that some?

Walters: He did require more attention, but you know, you just balance it all together. Children are active anyway, and we just tried to provide him with toys that he enjoyed and that would keep him occupied. Neither of us cared much for television, and didn't think it was particularly the best thing for the kids to be too involved with. We had a television set that we had purchased when we first married, but, oh, I don't know exactly when it went out, but I remember we had been without one for quite a while when John Kennedy was killed, the assassination, and I rented a TV. He was assassinated on a Friday as I recall. We couldn't get anything over the weekend. On Monday, after Oswald had been killed on Sunday, we rented a TV for a month, and then turned it back. So they didn't grow up with TV as a babysitter at all.

Walters: In fact, I worked with a PTA committee that explored the impact of television, and the conclusion was that then--I guess by then it was 1963 when Kennedy was killed, and we were in the process of doing that. But the group of PTA mothers decided it was not a good thing in excess, that you really had to monitor what your child was watching, if you had one.

Greene: Tell me some about the PTA that you were involved with. How active were you with the PTA?

Walters: I was quite active with the PTA, served on what was their education committee. Our pediatrician, who had been quite helpful to us with David's problems, was an African American who was a pediatric cardiologist. He practiced with two other pediatricians who were quite well known, and at that time hospitals, there were certain hospitals that didn't allow privileges to black doctors. But this group of doctors had privileges at Cedars [Hospital], and there weren't many black doctors in town who had privileges at Cedars.

Greene: Do you recall the doctor's name?

Walters: It was Littlejohn. His first name doesn't come immediately to mind. Clarence, [Dr.] Clarence Littlejohn. He agreed--we set up a speakers' forum through the PTA education committee, and he agreed to be one of the speakers who came and spoke. I think he made two or three visits, speaking to the parents about health issues with raising their young children. But we were able to get other speakers as well, and I particularly wanted him to come, because he was African American, and the school at that time, the parents there had, I think, very little exposure to professional African Americans.

Greene: And the PTA was attached to which school?

Walters: That was the Burnside School, that later the name was changed to Saturn Street School, but it's the same school, and PTA, as you know, has its own hierarchy. They were part of a national organization, and then the state organization, and then the local organization, and here in Los Angeles, most of the school district south of Mulholland [Drive] was in the 10th PTA District, and the valley was what was called the 31st District. They were divided up, I guess, like elective offices, you know, certain territories carried a name. And then they had councils within that structure, local councils where maybe half a dozen or ten groups of schools would be one section of the 10th District, and then the next group would be another section, and they had geographical names attached to them.

Greene: What was the makeup of the PTA?

Walters: Predominantly--for this school where I was, it was predominantly white, but that quickly flipped, because whites were busy moving out of the neighborhood. But the first couple of years that I was there, it was predominantly white, although it had very good African American participation.

Greene: Do you recall other activities? You mentioned that you would have speakers come through periodically to talk to the parents. Do you recall other activities that the PTA was engaged in that you participated in?

Walters: Oh, selling candy and, you know, fundraisers. I accused the school district of only wanting the PTA to come in, be quiet, and raise money, and most of the women were content at doing that, and there was certain decorum. We had problems with the administration there at that school. There was some dissatisfaction with it, and I organized a group of parents that came and met at our house to talk about what we could do, and what we should do, because the communication was not good, and trying to get an appointment to talk to the man was difficult.

Walters: So they decided we would write a letter and read it to him at the end of a PTA meeting. The PTA president was part of the group. She was an African American woman, and she was part of the group, and she said she would--they were very strict on Robert's Rules of Order.

Greene: Oh, they used Robert's Rules.

Walters: Oh yes. Oh, my word, yes. I tell folks, the best preparation for public office is PTA service. Anyway, at the end of the meeting she recognized me as a non-agenda speaker, and so I said, "I'd like to be recognized to read a letter to our principal," and which I did, and he was sitting there. And some of the parents, they were just outraged.

Greene: Because?

Walters: Because I would do that, be critical of him in public. I don't remember, but I think some of them left. Anyway, a brouhaha ensued. We had several meetings, and the woman who was head of the 10th District PTA at that time, she called for a meeting at the school. She came out and she was sitting there, and she was going to hear from both sides. So she thoroughly castigated me--

Greene: For being a troublemaker?

Walters: Right. That's right. Bottom line.

Greene: What did the letter say that was so egregious, do you recall?

Walters: One of things I remember was talking about him not coming to school on time, and telling him the way that I personally knew when he came to school was because he always parked in the same place, and at the time that I would bring my children, if that space was empty I parked in it, because it was a space on the street. It was not reserved for anybody. And I could sit there till ten o'clock in the morning, and it wasn't taken, and he was supposed to be there as far as I was concerned. So that was one of the things.

Walters: And, of course, his story was, well, he had lots of meetings to go to downtown. I said, "Well, it's better to take care of business at home before you go off downtown." I felt that he was politically ambitious, and politically as far as school district was concerned, promotional opportunities and what have you, and he was getting well known in the district. But I found out years later that coming to work late was a pattern of his, wherever he was working. I was on the board and he got promoted to a position downtown, and he couldn't be found early in the morning there either, and this is years later, years later. But the people in the district headquarters at that time--I don't know what their practice is now--but at that time, people were in their office at six-thirty, seven o'clock in the morning, because the high schools, they wanted to be there if something happened and they were needed, and that sort of thing.

Greene: What would you say you learned in your time participating with the PTA? You mentioned it was good preparation for public office later. What are some of the lessons that you learned?

Greene: Well, procedural stuff, and group dynamics, some insight into working through problems. The time when the principal came to school was a minor problem. His inaccessibility to parents, his attitude toward the changing demographic makeup of the school. I remember that when my daughter went to first grade, well, several things had transpired. But anyway, she went to another school to start kindergarten, because that school was crowded. They didn't have any more spaces in kindergarten. They took the kids by birth date, the oldest ones first, and her birthday wasn't till November, so she was among the forty or so that were left on a waiting list. Well, there were all these other schools around, some less than a mile away, that had plenty of empty space. But he wasn't advising the parents of their rights to go to these other schools.

Walters: So I got busy and got my kids--I think I told you, the two youngest ones went to an elementary school over here at 4th and Fairfax, and were welcomed. But at the end of the semester, first semester in kindergarten, the principal down here demanded--demanded, let me tell you--that all of the children who were away on permit because there wasn't any room, return to their home school. He would not authorize them to be away for another semester. And the principal over here was very upset about it, because she was in danger of losing teachers if too many kids left.

Greene: Is that because spaces opened up in the assigned school?

Walters: Well, some spaces opened up, yes.

Greene: And so they were trying to balance out?

Walters: But rather than him taking ones that were on the list still, he took the ones that were already in schools in other places. I would have thought that the ones who were still on a waiting list would have taken first priority.

Greene: I see. And your sense is that the folks on the waiting list tended to be families of color?

Walters: Oh yes.

Greene: Black families?

Walters: Yes, yes. I don't think there were many--of the incoming students, I don't think many were Anglo, but there may have been some Anglos on there. I won't say there weren't, but my impression was that they were predominantly students of color. His attitude, I felt, toward students of color, was not as encouraging as toward the Anglo students. I did not believe that he felt those children were really capable academically. My daughter had learned to read through my tutoring David and working with him. She had learned to read before she went to first grade. She was reading first-grade material when she was in kindergarten, and so when she went to first grade they tracked kids, and she was put not in a high-achieving group. She was put in an average group.

Greene: Although she could already read?

Walters: Although she could already read, had read all the books. I had gone and bought the books they were using in the schools, and he told me, "You know, Mrs. Walters, that's a no-no." "What are you telling me it's a no-no? I want her to read and do well in class, and that's what she's--." "Well, you might teach her the wrong way at home." "Okay, I might teach her the wrong way. I'm not going to stop." And anyway, she went to this first grade. She came home the first grading period--I think it was every six weeks. Yes, it must have been about every six weeks. She came home and she had nothing but C's on her card, and I went and told him, "How can she only get C's? I'd rather her get some D's and F's, you know, and certainly an A or a B." I knew how capable she was. And I went in the classrooms and sat and observed.

Greene: Did you, you observed?

Walters: Oh yes.

Greene: What did you see?

Walters: I saw her doing extremely well, better than a lot of the kids in the classroom. And I went regularly and observed in David's classroom, too. He didn't like for parents--and, of course, the school district, as a rule they said that parents could come and observe in any class, and you're supposed to check in at the office, and they'd urge you not to stay longer than twenty minutes, and all of that thing. First time I went and observed in a class, the teacher let the principal know I was in there, and he came in there and stayed the whole time that I was there. I don't know what they thought I was going to do.

Greene: You were a threat? You were viewed as a threat, I should say.

Walters: I guess, or they weren't accustomed to parents doing that, or parents wouldn't talk back to them about what they saw. But I don't think it was just at that school. It was a problem district-wide, because when my youngest son got to high school, I went to observe one of his classes. He was having problems with the teacher, and problems with the curriculum, and she threatened to walk out if I was allowed to come in. She wasn't going to allow me in her classroom. So I went back down to the--I said, "I have been to the office. They know I am here." I went back down to the office, got the assistant principal, and we went back to her classroom.

Walters: And one of the things that the assistant principal said, "Well, she doesn't understand that you know the rules." So she took her out in the hallway and told me to go on in the classroom and have a seat, which I did. And so then the woman came back in and went on with her teaching class. And then what she did, which I felt was really not professional, she tried to embarrass my son. She tried to embarrass Philip in front of the class, because he didn't know the material. So, you know, those kinds of things are what you deal with.

Walters: But back to the elementary school and this principal, when I talked to him about Susan's grade cards, he said, "Well, the children here in this school--." No, no, no. The teacher told me, she said, "Well, this is what the principal told us, how the principal told us to grade, that the children here are all average, and we should grade them accordingly."

Greene: So they had been instructed to give students average grades independent of the work that they may have been doing?

Walters: That's right. That's exactly right, exactly right. So we had three fast rounds about that, and I told him--we had had a meeting. My husband and I had gone down to talk to him, and we had broken up the meeting, and we were standing out on the steps of the school as we were leaving, the two little steps. And I was telling the principal, I said, "Look." He said, "You shouldn't push your daughter so much." I said, "Look. My daughter is bright. I want her to grow up with choices, so that she'll have any choice of any college she wants to attend, whether it's a community college, whether it's [University of California at] Berkeley, whether it's some school in the East, I want her to be eligible, academically eligible for any school that she wanted."

Walters: And, of course, at that time I don't think Yale [University]--Yale was still all male, and I think Harvard [University] was male, too, I'm not sure. But anyway, he told me, very typical for that era, that, "Mrs. Walters, you have a beautiful daughter, and she will grow up and marry well." And I told him, I said, "You know what? She is beautiful, and grow up and marry she might, but grow up and work she must, and that's what I want her ready for."

Greene: You were running into an expectation that they had that the children wouldn't succeed.

Walters: Very low expectations of the children's capability. So the next year, second grade, I had worked with the school board, and again with other people, in getting the policy for transfers changed, and they were under the gun about school desegregation, and I was part of that. That was the United Civil Rights Council [UCRC] putting the heat to them about school desegregation, that we were able to get a policy changed, that wherever school had room, if a parent requested a transfer for the purposes of integration, they were to be given the transfer. And I went to the school--

Greene: What year did the policy change, do you recall, roughly?

Walters: Ai yi yi. David started school in '61, Susan started in '62, she was in kindergarten; '63 would have been first grade, '64. Well, '64 I was able to exercise the policy for the '64 school year, '64-'65 school year, so it had to have been changed '63, '64, somewhere along in there.

Greene: Had you heard other parents in the school where your children were enrolled, had you heard other parents running into the similar problem, or at least complaining about the same things?

Walters: Yes, yes. I wasn't the only one complaining.

Greene: And was that something that the PTA would take up?

Walters: No.

Greene: No, it fell outside of the boundaries of the PTA?

Walters: Right. In fact, I was told by this woman who was head of the 10th District that, "The educational program is not the role of the PTA. We're here to support the school. That is our mission." And define support by raising money, keeping your mouth shut.

Greene: So you were there to support the school, but not student achievement apparently.

Walters: Yes, right, right.

Greene: Then tell me some about how you got involved with the NAACP, and how they took that fight about the policy up.

Walters: Well, they didn't take the fight just about the permit policy. It was after they had taken up the fight and filed the court case, Crawford v. Board of Education was filed in '63. After a summer of activity, this group that I told you was formed after Dr. King came here, it was a consortium of civil-rights groups, or organizations in the city concerned about human relations, civil rights, civil liberties, and out of that came four committees, one concentrated on education, and that's the one that I served on; one on police-community relations; one on housing and employment, same issues we're still dealing with.

Walters: But I got involved with that organization through my good friend, a good friend of my parents, Marnesba Tackett, who was the education chair for the NAACP. She was a member of the NAACP, and a good fundraiser for the NAACP. Plus she was an insurance and real-estate salesperson here in town, and she just passed away last fall, October or November. And her family--I guess it was November--her family had a memorial for her on what would have been her one-hundredth birthday. They had the memorial February third. Her birthday was February fourth.

Greene: She lived until she was ninety-nine.

Walters: She lived until she was ninety-nine. Her mother had lived till she was ninety-eight--

Greene: Wow.

Walters: --and she lived till she was ninety-nine. But UCLA did an oral history project, interviewed her for an oral history project, too. She and my parents grew up together, and they were good friends. Her husband married my husband and I.

Greene: He was pastor at Second Baptist [Church] you said before?

Walters: Yes, he was assistant pastor. Right. So that's how I became involved in the United Civil Rights Council, through Marnesba and through my activities in the local school, with my own children.

Greene: Talk to me some about the Civil Rights Council and the NAACP, specifically the education committee. Who was involved in it? People that you knew besides Marnesba Tackett?

Walters: Some, but most of the people I did not know prior to my involvement with it. They came from all over the city, black, white, brown. It was a wonderful group of people that came together, and we met every week. A building was given to--I guess that the United Autoworkers owned--was given to--and they had given it to--you've probably heard the name Ted Watkins?

Greene: Oh yes.

Walters: He was running--

Greene: Watts Labor?

Walters: Yes. That's where his organization started. It was like 83rd and San Pedro. And they gave us that building for the United Civil Rights Council to work out of, and it had on the second floor a big open room where they set up a lot of chairs, and that's where we had meetings all the time. It would hold quite a few people, and it became quite a gathering place. Then as the years went on and that was no longer available, Marnesba had purchased a place over on La Brea near Adams, that was an office. It was zoned for office space in the front, and it had housing in the back. So she lived there, and we started meeting in her place, in her office, every Tuesday night, have this big meeting, people standing around the walls, and sitting on the floors, and that was the summer of '63, because people were there planning the trip, their trip and a group trip to the March on Washington.

Greene: Did you attend?

Walters: No, no. My children were too little, and we had to watch our pennies.

Greene: Sure. Tell me--

Walters: And I wasn't working. Just we had my husband's salary, and we had to be fairly frugal.

Greene: So what kind of matters did you take up on the education committee?

Walters: They addressed the matter of desegregation. They addressed the matter of hiring practices. One of the policies that the district had, spoken or written--I don't know that it was written any place, but practice, pattern and practice of the district was to hire minority teachers and, (a), not hire them as full-fledged teachers. They were hired as long-term substitute teachers, and that meant that they did not have all the rights and benefits that a tenured teacher had. And, of course, tenure was controlled by the state. You had to have three years of teaching in a regular position. Well, you didn't--the black teachers didn't get regular positions. They got long-term-substitute positions, so that didn't count toward their tenure. So a person could work ten years as a long-term sub without ever gaining tenure.

Greene: Is that right?

Walters: That's right.

Greene: What were some of the other benefits of being a full-fledged teacher that you could recall? So tenure was one of them. I imagine there were other benefits.

Walters: Well, tenure was a big one, and then being able to, you know, request a transfer to a school that you wanted to transfer to. And I'm not sure about the salary. I don't recall about the salary and benefits. I'm not certain that they got the health benefits to the same extent that the other teachers did. But there were a number of differences--

Greene: In status between--

Walters: That's right, in long-term subs and a regular teacher. Then the assignment, location assignments, they assign black and brown teachers, for the most part, to their sub-districts. The school district organizationally, administratively, was divided into areas, and most of the black teachers went to East L.A., South L.A. Very few were teaching west of Crenshaw, and very few in the valley, except in the Pacoima-San Fernando area.

Greene: Now, help me understand. They were placed in these places because of segregation, clearly, but the places where they taught were majority students of color?

Walters: Yes.

Greene: I see. And so there was a wall they couldn't--

Walters: Right.

Greene: It mirrored the racial boundaries of the city, let's say? Okay. So they took up desegregation, you took up hiring practices in the schools.

Walters: Hiring and assignment practices. They took up the desegregation for the students, and one of the issues concomitant with that was what were called half-day sessions. The inner-city schools were overcrowded, and they were building new schools, but most of the building was done in the valley. The valley at that time was still growing by leaps and bounds. There were new housing tracts going up all over the place, so they were getting new schools out there, schools where there had not been schools, where there certainly weren't sufficient schools.

Greene: So construction funds were going to the valley, but not to address overcrowding?

Walters: Mostly to the valley. Right. They had some, but not to address the half-day sessions for the most part.

Greene: How did half-day sessions work?

Walters: One group of kids went to school from eight till noon, and that's what was happening down here at Burnside. When Susan was in the first grade, they were on whole days. By the time she was in the second grade, the school was going to half days. So she would have gone either from eight to twelve, or from one to four, and that was hours of instruction on an annual basis that were missed, that children never got the same level of instruction, same hours of instruction that kids who weren't on half days got.

Greene: So it was the same number of days in the school year that school would meet?

Walters: Same number of days, but not the same number of hours.

Greene: I see.

Walters: At one point Marnesba made a presentation down there at the board. The group had done research on it. Something like 80 percent of minority kids were in schools that were on half days, a huge percent, huge percent. And, you know, I think I'm correct on that 80 percent. And an equally high percent, 90 percent of the schools on half days were in minority neighborhoods, so it was--

Greene: Disproportionate?

Walters: Extremely so. Those were some of the issues that UCRC addressed.

Greene: How did UCRC go about it? What were some of the strategies that they used to protest these problems?

Walters: Regular attendance at school-board meetings, and presentations.

Greene: So, regular attendance at school-board meetings?

Walters: Yes. And presentations at each meeting on the subjects that we were addressing. Marnesba was the primary spokesperson, but other people spoke as well from time to time. I remember at one of the meetings the subject was teaching black history in the schools. It wasn't taught as part of the curriculum. And one of the school board members at that time, his name was J.C. Chambers, I will never forget it. He leaned over and said, "There's not enough black history to teach, not enough Negro history to teach."

Greene: This was at a school-board meeting?

Walters: At a school-board meeting.

Greene: Was this in response to a presentation that the council had made?

Walters: Yes, yes. So the next meeting, a gentleman who was a psychologist here in town, an African American guy, came down to the board meeting early, and carried in a stack of books, and put them all around the podium. There was adjacent on both sides of the podium where you spoke--board members sat in a horseshoe, elevated, and here was a podium down here on the floor where the seating was. Each side, adjacent to each side of the podium were long desks where the press sat. Staff sat in the second horseshoe, behind the board members. But he took his books and stacked them, and lined them all along those two desks on either side of the podium where the reporters sat, and he said, "I want to introduce you very quickly to Negro history, to some Negro history." He said, "This doesn't begin to touch it." And he picked up book after book, and read off the title and the authors--

Greene: Oh, to make the point that there was quite a bit of history.

Walters: That's right. And he said, "I couldn't begin--." He said, "These are just books that I own." He said, "You can go to the library and get far more, and I hope you will begin to put them in our schools." So that was one of the things that they were pushing for, teaching African American history, the teaching of--you know, then the readers, as they're called in elementary school, were all, "See Jane run. Look at spot." And they were these little houses with white picket fences, and these blond, blue-eyed children, so, you know, that was one avenue of concern that was expressed. And it took years; finally got state law requiring the use of textbooks that reflected a true picture of the population of the country.

Walters: And Wilson Riles by then, an African American guy, had been elected State Superintendent of Schools, and he appointed me to a commission, reading the textbooks for their treatment of minorities and women, and looking at illustrations.

Greene: This was after '63?

Walters: Oh yes, yes. Right.

Greene: I have so many questions. Were black teachers and other minority teachers, were they unionized at the time? Were they part of teachers' unions that you can recall?

Walters: Yes. They were part of--they didn't have unions. There wasn't a union, but there were, I think, three or four--there were about four different teacher groups that advocated for teachers' rights and benefits. The teachers got together and had a strike here in either '69, '70 or '71, somewhere along in there, and out of that came the United Teachers of Los Angeles, the teachers union. Before then it had been American Federation of Teachers [AFT], California Teachers' Association [CTA], it was AFT-CTA. Then there was a group called LATA, that was Los Angeles Teachers Association, and then there was a smaller group whose name I can't recall.

Walters: But it rolled into the two predominant groups were CTA and AFT, and AFT was a more liberal and vocal group. The CTA tended to be the more conservative group of teachers, but the largest group in the state, and still is.

Greene: And minority teachers were involved in those teachers' associations as well?

Walters: Yes, they belonged. Not all, but they belonged.

Greene: Do you recall those groups ever advocating for some of the things the NAACP advocated for? They wouldn't take them on.

Walters: No. I don't know whether anybody ever pressed them to take them up, but there were black and white teachers alike in the district, who participated with the United Civil Rights Council. And a couple of black male administrators did. I think in '61 there were probably only half a dozen black principals in the city, and one, a gentleman by the name of Owen Knox, and another one by the name of Fred Dumas were very active participants, and very vocal. They would go down themselves. They were literally putting their jobs on the line.

Greene: Is that right? They would attend the school-board meetings you mean?

Walters: Yes. And a lot of the people who came to the meetings--you know, all of a sudden as UCRC was organized, and the education committee was more active, as Marnesba was fond of saying, she said, "More information comes in over my transom, or under my door." So she was able to, on behalf of UCRC--when she spoke, she spoke with great authority, and she always checked her numbers, checked her information, and asking questions at a public forum of a public institution, there's a duty for them to respond, and their responses weren't always accurate. But we did get some responses.

Greene: The board member that you mentioned that said there isn't much Negro history to teach, was his response typical of the kind of response that the board showed to the things that the council was pushing for?

Walters: For most of the board members. There were three members on the board at that time that had a different response. One, the most liberal, was a woman named Mary Tingloff, and I think I mentioned her to you before. She was the one that Marnesba had referred me to, to talk about problems with David. There was another woman whose name was Georgiana Hardy, and there was a gentleman, Ralph Richardson, who was an English professor at UCLA. Then they had a gentleman who was quite elderly, who was a professor at [U]SC [University of Southern California]. I'm trying to think of his name. I can't think of his name. [Willett] He was there, Richardson, Tingloff, Hardy, older guy, J.C. Chambers, and there were two other fellows. There was a guy who was really a rock-ribbed conservative, was against accepting government money for anything, for lunches or anything else, and I can't think of his name, and I should remember it [Smoot]. He had a son who grew up to be quite liberal, a liberal attorney. And one other person. [Arthur Gardner] I can't think of the seventh person's name right now, but there were seven members of the board.

Greene: Would you say that the three folks that you said were liberal and liberal-leaning were allies of the council? Did they take up some of the requests that the council would put forward?

Walters: Yes, Tingloff more than the others. Hardy, though, if you could get her on your side, if she gave you a commitment she was good for it. She never committed to something that she didn't do. And Richardson was a little more hesitant, but he was usually headed in the right direction. I think the seventh person was a guy that was an airline pilot for Western Airlines at the time, and I can't think of his name, but that's who the seventh person was [Arthur Gardner].

Greene: And I wonder, some say that school boards oftentimes will make--and you can confirm this or not--will make decisions long before the actual public meeting happened. Did you ever encounter that when you were working with the council, that things you came to debate or discuss or weigh in on, decisions had already been made?

Walters: Oh yes. It seemed very apparent that they had already been made. And we discovered a lot of work is done in committees. At that time there were three persons, and even subsequent to that, when I was on the board there were three people to a committee. Now, three people didn't always show up. But it depended on how a report would come out of a committee. There wasn't a lot that came out of committees that got changed at the board, although it did happen. And in those days, the board met twice a week, full board meeting Tuesdays and Thursdays. Then as time went on, they began to meet once a week in the full board meetings on Mondays, and reserve Thursdays for committee meetings, so that board members didn't have to do both committees and full board on the same day. If I said the board met on Tuesdays and Thursdays, they met on Monday and Thursday, and it continued that way with the full board every week, and the committees every week, but on different days, until I went on the board

Walters: While I was on the board, there was so much litigation, so much stuff, and we would be in closed session all day long. School board meeting was supposed to start at three o'clock. Rarely started at three o'clock, because you were still in these closed sessions, till we set aside--full board met publicly for two days a month, and two days a month were reserved for closed session, and committees were still on Thursdays. Then they changed--after I left the board, they changed the board meetings from Mondays to Tuesdays, but still committees on Thursdays.

Greene: When the United Civil Rights Council would turn out to the board meeting, how many people on average would you say would come? Were there large numbers of folks that would come to sit in on the board meetings?

Walters: Well, sometimes, and sometimes you got an overflow audience. But other times there would just be a handful of folks, half a dozen maybe.

Greene: Were there ever demonstrations or protests around any of the issues that you laid out for me?

Walters: Yes. Again, later in the summer of '63 there was a large protest and march. First A.M.E. church then was downtown at the corner of 8th Street and Towne Avenue. Many people referred to it as 8th and Towne. That was the church that Biddy Mason--you've probably heard of her--that she bought and built, and gave to the First A.M.E. church. She founded it here. We marched from 8th and Towne to the school-board offices at that time were right adjacent to the Hollywood Freeway, across the freeway from what is now the cathedral, the big cathedral there, and where they're building this new modernistic structure that's going to be a performing arts school.

Walters: But that was called The Hill. That was where the board meetings were, where the administrative offices were, and where the demonstrations occurred. They had a big courtyard there where employees had lunch. It was a lovely place. It was an old high school that they had turned into these administrative offices, and sometimes you'd have people out there in the courtyard, there were so many. And then they wired the cafeteria so that overflow folks could go sit in the cafeteria and hear the board meetings, and they put speakers outside in the courtyard as well.

Walters: But you know, it got to the point where it wasn't just United Civil Rights Council that was demonstrating and protesting. Other groups would come along. One group, I think it might have been CORE that organized sit-ins down at the board. Folks were sitting in all night. I don't know how long--I remember one sit-in went on for days, maybe a week or two, and people were sitting out in the halls.

Greene: And this was around desegregation?

Walters: Part of it, yes, yes. I've got some small booklets here. There was a couple--John Caughey, C-a-u-g-h-e-y, he was a professor at UCLA, and his wife LaRee Caughey. He was a historian. He and John Hope Franklin and Caughey's then son-in-law, who was a professor at Harvard, Ernest May, they wrote the first integrated history textbook that California adopted for the schools in California. That was before Wilson Riles was state superintendent. The man who was state superintendent then--what's his name--Rafferty was his last name; Max was his first name--Max Rafferty, right-wing conservative if you ever saw one. The state superintendent of public instruction is an elective position. When Wilson was elected to that position, Rafferty I guess ran for the U.S. Senate or something. He ran for higher office in California and didn't make it. He took a position at some small university in Alabama, a white school, and left the state.

Walters: But when this book, Land of the Free it was called, came up for adoption, he had all kinds of objections to it, and one of the things that he objected primarily to was a statement in there--in this thick history text they had about that much devoted to the Japanese participation in World War II. The full statement said that the United States was the first country to develop and use the atomic bomb. Rafferty about split his head. He just carried on. He said that would upset children. That would give young children the wrong impression. "That's wrong information. They shouldn't do that." Well, where is it wrong? And he had them doing all kinds of rewrites and stuff on the book before, [recommending it for adoption by the State Board of Education].

Greene: This is the height of the cold war, too, right?

Walters: Height of the cold war, right, right.

Greene: I guess it was unpatriotic to put things like that in a textbook.

Walters: Right, of course.

Greene: You said the textbook included a blurb on Japanese-Americans. Did it also include information about Mexican-Americans, people of Mexican descent, as well as African Americans?

Walters: Yes, right, right. And if I'm not mistaken, they had some of the Chinese history. They really tried to deal with American history in a coordinated fashion.

Greene: Very multi-racial, multicultural.

Walters: Right.

Greene: Would any of the groups that we just talked about, were they visible on some of the desegregation issues? Did you have a sense that Mexican-American communities, or Japanese-American communities were affected by some of the same issues? And if so, were they visible in the struggle to desegregate the schools, that you can recall?

Walters: There were some Latinos involved. I don't recall much involvement from the Japanese or any of the Asian communities. There was a notion that civil rights were really a black issue. But there were some Latinos who participated, and then the Latino Student Movement grew out of all of that protest that we did, and some blacks participated in that, in the schools that were black, like Freemont and Jefferson.

Greene: Did they do walkouts of those schools?

Walters: They did walkouts, yes. Yes, they did.

Greene: So at this time, students were also mobilizing around some of the same issues.

Walters: Right. Right. And, of course, in the larger context, the students in the South had done the sit-ins and Freedom Rides, and SNCC [Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee], and so people were, you know, taking cues from those organizations, too. Protest was, I hate to say fashionable, but it was frequent.

Greene: Yes. Now, if I'm hearing you right, you're involved in PTA, you're negotiating your children's education, and you're becoming more and more heavily involved with the Civil Rights Council and the education committee, so you're receiving quite an education at that time about the school system at large, yes?

Walters: Oh yes, absolutely, absolutely.

Greene: Did that lead to other involvements or other work?

Walters: Yes, it did. In that bio that I gave you, just one thing led to another, you know.

Greene: Let's see, I have it right here. Let's see. The American Civil Liberties Union, what was their role in some sort?

Walters: Oh, the American Civil Liberties Union was there every step of the way, absolutely. They provided some funding, or their membership provided funding, some of their members, and some of their members were quite active. When the NAACP faltered on the Crawford case, they took it over and saw it through to its completion. The NAACP didn't have the funds to do it, and they really at that point had run out of the real commitment to doing it, which I felt was unfortunate.

Greene: And when you say they ran out of commitment to do it, why is that, or what's your sense of that?

Walters: There were people who felt very negatively toward desegregation. Some, you heard the response that, "Well, black children don't have to sit next to white children to learn. You know, let's build up the schools in our neighborhoods." Or, "I don't want my kids traveling on a bus to these hostile white neighborhoods." And some people in NAACP felt that there were better places they could spend their money than in the courts, on the deseg issue.

Greene: On the desegregation issue? Does that mean that--I'm trying to understand. Does that mean that the NAACP was in flux at that moment? Was there something in the organization that was changing?

Walters: Yes. The leadership changed. Roy Wilkins was there, and then after Wilkins--did Wilkins pass away, or his term service was up? Whatever. Anyway, the gentleman that came after him [Benjamin Hooks] had been a Baptist preacher in Memphis, but he was Republican. What was his name? White-haired guy, salt and pepper, very handsome man, very articulate.

Greene: Is he still around, still active today?

Walters: No, no, no, no, no. No, he's long gone. [This is incorrect. Hooks is still alive.] And then there was this concomitant pressure from the more liberal wing, or the more radical wing of the black community, that was opposed to the way NAACP was operating. You know, they weren't too chummy with Reverend King, and they weren't too out-front in supporting that, and some of them felt that Dr. King did all of the demonstrations and protests, and left the legal matters behind for NAACP to raise the money for, and to take through the courts, and while their agenda for legal action might have been different. Then there was NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and they split off from NAACP eventually, and became just LDF.

Greene: So your sense of some of the differences that were affecting NAACP and probably other groups I'd imagine at this time, though, were around strategies, or were they around political positions, or both?

Walters: Probably both, and some other things as well.

Greene: Other things like personality stuff?

Walters: Right. [laughs]

Greene: Okay, I see. And so when the new leadership came in, you were suggesting--the gentleman who was a Republican, you were suggesting that he wanted to go in a different direction?

Walters: He may have, and I think there were people right here in California that weren't too fond of moving forward in any prolonged, continued prolonged--the thing was in the courts twenty years, so a lot happened in twenty years, here in California and across the nation, within the black community and outside the black community. But I think when the suit was first filed, I certainly never dreamed that it would be a prolonged, twenty-year struggle, and I don't know of anybody else that thought it was going to be that either. But it sat in the local court I think for five years--[End of interview]

1.4. Session 4 (May 9, 2008)

Greene: This is Sean Greene interviewing Rita Walters on May 9th, 2008, in her home.

Greene: Good afternoon, Rita.

Walters: Good afternoon, Sean. good to see you again.

Greene: Good to see you, too. I wanted to pick up today by discussing some of your civil rights activism and specific involvements that you began to talk to me about last time. I wanted to ask specifically if you could talk more about your experience with desegregation and struggles around integration and desegregation of schools.

Walters: Yes. The struggles, as I indicated, was sort of a two-prong struggle for desegregation of students and integration steps with respect to the hiring and promoting of minorities in the school system, and breaking down some of those barriers to hiring blacks as permanent teachers, as well as working on where they were assigned to teach. The assignment where they were assigned to teach had to await a procedure under the Crawford case that happened there. The judge ordered desegregation of the teaching staff. I don't recall exactly when the district abandoned its practice, its pattern and practice, because it wasn't a policy, of restricting minority teachers to long-term substitute status. But that, too, happened, subsequent to the push for desegregation.

Greene: You mentioned that once the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] began to lose steam on the integration issue that the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] had taken up the fight.

Walters: That's right. That's correct. That's correct.

Greene: You had also begun to describe that other organizations were getting in on the desegregation issue. Do you recall what some of those were?

Walters: Well, some of those organizations were groups that had been part of the United Civil Rights Council [UCRC], but most of them did not have the funding or staffing that NAACP and, in particular, ACLU had. So for the most part it was an NAACP-ACLU suit. Then after ACLU took over the major portion of the case and the funding for the case, they still involved NAACP lawyers.

Greene: Very good. Just to be clear, so part of it involved a legal strategy and part of it involved direct action tactics.

Walters: Yes. The filing of the case came about as a result of the direct action strategy.

Greene: I see.

Walters: And the determination to sue, the decision to sue, came out of that group, and it was that group--I spoke to you about Marnesba Tackett--under her leadership, and she herself went personally with a group of other people, and walked through Watts and Jordan Downs and some of the neighborhoods of Watts, looking for plaintiffs in the Crawford case. That's how they found the plaintiffs.

Greene: Was support for the NAACP's effort, was it pretty forthcoming from the community, as you recall? Were people hesitant to get involved in it, or were people coming forward pretty readily?

Walters: If memory serves, at the outset folks were pretty enthusiastic about it; again, the group that was involved in the direct action. But as time wore on and people didn't see results, or didn't even see a trial, they became less enamored of the trial, and still some were very involved in the direct action piece; never gave up on the direct action piece. But I think the NAACP, not just here in Los Angeles [L.A.], but as the years wore on, across the country, they were, as a national organization, less inclined to push litigation for desegregation.

Greene: And before the Crawford case was decided, would you say, were there small local-level victories that folks could point to? Did you have a sense that things were changing, even as you worked on?

Walters: Yes, there were other cases. One notable case was in Pasadena. That had gone to the courts before L.A. filed, and I believe the name of that case was Jackson. But again, you'd have to check my memory on that. I'm not certain if the litigators were NAACP or somebody else, but I think that it was NAACP.

Greene: This would have been roughly around what time? In the sixties, right?

Walters: Yes. Well, Crawford was filed at the end of the summer of '63, and I think it sat in the courts about five years before it went to trial. But Jackson had been filed prior to that, and moved along. They had a decision faster than Crawford.

Greene: What's your sense of the mood in South L.A. communities at this point in time? Did you have a sense that--what's your sense of the mood? Were folks optimistic? Were folks restless? Do you have a sense of what that was like?

Walters: Optimistic about desegregation.

Greene: Whether about desegregation or about things changing, given the civil rights stuff that was happening at the national level.

Walters: In '63 folks, I think, were very optimistic, because there was so much going on across the country with the SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] movement, Dr. King, SNCC [Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee], just movements, ad hoc things that were occurring all over the country. As that news--of course, television then was very helpful in bringing that home to people here in L.A. The Birmingham marches and the beating of those children and the fire hoses and Selma [Alabama] and all of the beating of the people at the Pettus Bridge, all that really worked on people and made them realize that, unlike a lot of suppositions, L.A. was not the land of milk and honey; that there was a lot here that needed addressing, as well as being litigated.

Walters: So people were pretty up for a while, but not surprised when things didn't come to fruition as they had hoped. By '65 things were pretty bad here in terms of employment and all of the factors that led to the civil unrest then in the 1965 riot.

Greene: Let me ask you, were some of the events that were happening around the country, is that some of what energized you to continue to get more and more involved with the local community work?

Walters: Oh, certainly, certainly. I had spent four years in the South, in Alabama, plus the time I was in Kansas, and so I had firsthand experience with segregation and what people were experiencing in going--the indignities of it all. I recall riding on the bus in Nashville [Tennessee] and they had a sign up in the front of the bus over the windshield, "This part of bus reserved for white people." In the back of the bus, up over the back windows--buses had back windows then--"This part of bus reserved for Negro race," with the implication being very obvious, that black folks weren't people.

Walters: And just the inconsistencies of it. In Dallas [Texas] on a streetcar--and I guess the buses, too; I just didn't ride a bus in Dallas; I rode the streetcar--they had these little flags that had slots up over windows, and as long as the majority of the people, as long as they were in a black neighborhood or the majority of the people on the streetcar were black, they could move the flag forward to the front and sit up front. But when whites began getting on, a white person could take the flag and move it wherever they wanted to move it, and everybody in front of that flag had to get up and move to the rear.

Greene: So the flag was a marker--

Walters: The flag was a marker.

Greene: --for where the black section began?

Walters: Right. Right. And it had, you know, "White Only" on the front of the flag, "Negroes" on the back of the flag, and these little wooden things that would slip in and out.

Walters: One other experience that I remember--I don't know whether I shared this with you or not--I was only about four years old, but I remember--it may be the only thing I remember from being four years old. My mother's grandmother lived in Kentucky, and we were going there for a visit. It was a rainy season, and I remember this train going through a lot of water and having to stop and just sort of inching along. The conductor came down the aisle, and apparently, because the train was running late, I guess when they got into the next stop, later when I was older and we went to Alabama to school, we had to change trains and get in the Jim Crow car in St. Louis [Missouri], change cars, as well as trains.

Greene: As you were traveling from Kansas--

Walters: To Alabama.

Greene: --you'd stop over and change cars in St. Louis.

Walters: Yes. Right. You could change in St. Louis if you were going directly from St. Louis to Nashville, but some of the time we went from St. Louis to Evansville, Indiana, and we'd get there in the middle of the night and had to change cars. If you were going from St. Louis to Memphis [Tennessee], which we did, you left St. Louis in the Jim Crow car. And in the dining car they had this curtain they drew around you. But at least you could eat in the dining car. Not all the trains, you could eat in the dining car. Just, you know, every turn where they could make people believe they were inferior, that's what they tried to do, what the core of the situation was, that black people were inferior and they should be treated thus.

Greene: So at the time that you were involved with the United Civil Rights Council, was your husband also involved in that work?

Walters: Yes, but to a lesser extent. He helped out, and he went to the marches with me. When I say he helped out, when they got the building I told you about down on South San Pedro, the United Civil Rights Council got that building, he helped fixing up the building, doing some painting and stuff like that. But he wasn't as nearly active in going to all the meetings and what have you. Well, one, we had little kids, you know, and so I could go to a meeting, and he would babysit.

Greene: Trade off.

Walters: Right. But during the day if there meetings, sometimes friends would babysit, or other relatives would babysit. At one point, when we were going to the board of education on a regular basis, some neighborhood friends and I would trade off babysitting. There were about three or four of us with children, and we'd rotate who kept the children and who fed them, made dinner and fed the kids, because meetings started at that time at four o'clock in the afternoon. That was the way we handled it so that everybody could get a chance to go--

Greene: Oh, that's very good.

Walters: --and participate. Right.

Greene: Kind of supported each other so the mothers or parents could participate and the kids would be cared for.

Walters: Right. Right. But you were asking what the mood was that just was a tangential response to your earlier inquiry about what the mood was here in the sixties, the mid-sixties. [President] Lyndon [B.] Johnson had been elected--well, not elected; he ascended to the presidency--and started his War on Poverty. We had a mayor here, Sam Yorty, who was determined not to have anything to do with it. There were monies available, and he didn't want to apply for them. Augustus Hawkins, who died at a hundred years old just last August or September, held a hearing here, a congressional hearing the Saturday before the outbreak of the Watts Riot, held it down at Will Rogers Park. Well, I guess it's Kenneth Hahn Park now, but it used to be Will Rogers, 103rd [Street] and Central [Avenue].

Walters: He held this hearing about the monies and what the needs were, and people came from all over the city, white and black and Latino, to testify at that. Patsy [T.] Mink was a congresswoman from Hawaii, and she came and stayed the whole day with us. I think there was a couple of other congress people that sort of filtered in and out. But I remember the two of them sat there and listened to everybody's speech.

Greene: "Everybody" was community folks who were--

Walters: They testified. They were taking testimony.

Greene: They were taking testimony. I see.

Walters: Right. They gave testimony. whatever was going on that day, there wasn't anybody from UCRC that was able to stay till the end, and so I gave the UCRC presentation at the very end.

Greene: Did you.

Walters: Yes.

Greene: What did you talk about?

Walters: It was a prepared statement that had been--it was a group presentation, group presentation in terms of its preparation. But I talked primarily about the education problems, and what I said, I do not know. I'd have to look at the record to see. But that's what we did. The weather was very warm, I remember, that day, and it just got progressively warmer. It was Tuesday or Wednesday when the civil unrest broke out.

Greene: What do you remember about the civil unrest? Where were you when you heard about it?

Walters: Well, I was right down the street. We lived right down the street, a block and a half from here. We moved there in '61. So I think when I first heard about it, I was in the car doing errands with the kids, whatever we had done that day, and I heard that there were some problems. But let me see; that must have been the next day, because it broke out at night with this kid, Marquette Frye, and the police had tried to stop him on Avalon there. So I suspect that I was at home, that we were at home, and probably heard it through television news.

Walters: As it got progressively worse, and we thought by morning that it had calmed down some, and that was when I heard on the radio the next afternoon that there was still some unrest going on, and some of the black ministers were trying to pull people together and calm them down. Bishop H. Hartford Brookins, he was pastor of First AME Church at the time, and I know he was down there. He was trying to talk to people, calm these kids down. They had a meeting at a playground; I don't think it was Will Rogers, but someplace there was a meeting, and he tried to pull people together. But then as the evening wore on, people got off from work, and it just started blooming.

Walters: Somebody threw a bottle and a Molotov cocktail, and it just--a lot of stuff. There was a lot of anger, just a lot of anger over what was going on in the South and people here feeling, "You know, we're just not going to keep taking this." And the police brutality; relations with the police were horrible. I remember--I don't remember the actual year that it occurred, but that was when this young black guy, trying to rush his wife to the hospital to have a baby, the police stopped him and shot him after a confrontation, and that was Johnny Cochran's first major case that brought a lot of attention it him. I think it was in that mid-sixties.

Greene: Yes, '66.

Walters: Yes, era. So there was a lot going on.

Greene: It seems like it. How did the civil unrest in '65 shape the work that the United Civil Rights Council was doing?

Walters: Well, as I recall, they tried to intensify their work and pressure on elected officials, and the board of education, particularly, to get money that was available in here and get it assigned to programs, develop programs, and get minorities hired. That was the first real breakthrough where minorities broke out of the classroom and got assigned to other jobs. We had called for human relations training of the teachers and administrators.

Walters: They had an organization here that was a county [Los Angeles County] department, and it probably still is. It was the Community Relations Department, whose job it was to work with communities and try to bring about good relations between people in neighborhoods, and the gentleman who headed up that Community Relations Department. The Community Relations Department at first was an arm of the Probation Department, and he had been a deputy in the Probation Department. Then there was a spin-off where it became its own department, as I recall.

Walters: The man who headed that up became very famous; went on to Washington [D.C.]. I can't think of his name now, but I will try to search my mind and see if I can come up with it; it may be a name that you know as well [John Buggs]. They stepped in. They had trained people to work, do group dynamics, and try to smooth out hostilities in a peaceful way.

Walters: Then there were other religious organizations that stepped up, both religious and nonreligious. There was a group of ministers. Can't think of their names, but the name implied a commitment to nonviolence and peace. The Friends Service Committee got involved. Just a number of different groups.

Greene: So there was a lot of activity in the aftermath.

Walters: A lot of activity, and a lot of people willing to come together and talk these things out. I remember a meeting over here not far from here, Crescent Heights Elementary School. It was at Crescent Heights and Airdrome.

Greene: Crescent Heights and--

Walters: Airdrome. It's a few blocks south of Pico [Boulevard] near La Cienega. I think the NAACP sponsored that, or certainly was one of the organizations present. One woman, I remember this elderly white lady, and it was so sad. She got up, and she was in tears. She said, "I've been supporting the NAACP all my life, and what I'm hearing is that you don't want me anymore; that you don't want to be with white people anymore." There was some reference to major offices in the NAACP being held by white folks, and that it was largely, even though the president was well known--I can't think of his name now. [Roy Wilkens]

Greene: Of the NAACP?

Walters: Yes. Yes.

Greene: Nationally?

Walters: Yes.

Greene: We both blanked on his name the last time, and then I remembered it, and now I can't remember it.

Walters: Right. Right. Well, his nephew, he's the commentator on NPR. He's commentator on KCET, on PBS [Roger Wilkins]. He's a legal professor now at one of the universities in Washington. Wilkins, Roy Wilkins.

Greene: Roy Wilkins.

Walters: Roy Wilkins.

Greene: Yes, of course. [Laughs] Okay.

Walters: Some of the people were accusing him of not being the true leader of NAACP; that there were others, and they referenced [Joel Elias] Spingarn, who had been--it's like chairman of the board for some time. Anyway, that was an issue, and of course--

Greene: Let me see if I understand. It was as if he were a figurehead, and other folks were making the decisions?

Walters: Right. Right. Right, the more militant people in the community. You know, it was a precursor to the Black Power Movement when some folks began to say, you know, "We don't need integration. We just need a fair chance," and, "My kid doesn't have to sit next to a white child."

Greene: And those debates played out within the United Civil Rights Council?

Walters: There were some who did. But this meeting that I'm referencing at Crescent Heights was just one of a number of community meetings where they were trying to listen to all of the people and get their feelings. The Jewish community was very active. They had human relations groups, and they tried to bring their people together with black people. There was a lot of pulpit sharing with white pastors and Jewish pastors and black pastors; congregations changing, visiting other churches to try to establish dialogue.

Walters: Some of the reporters, people who did a lot of pieces, columns, on the subject. There was one guy in particular here, who's now dead. His name was Art Seidenbaum. He wrote a regular column for the Los Angeles Times, public interest stuff. One of the things he'd write about from time to time was school desegregation and integration. I remember one of his columns said--he was taking people to task who were arguing that the integration of schools was not the primary, should not be the primary focus of schools; that the primary focus of schools should be learning, education, and not social engineering, as some of them called it. He wrote a column, and his bottom line was that integration is education.

Greene: It was in response to those criticisms?

Walters: In response to a lot of things that were going on here and other places as well. I don't recall at what point that was, but it was certainly a cogent statement at whatever time it occurred.

Greene: What do you suppose those tensions represented? Was it that other folks wanted to take control of leadership of existing organizations? Were there other organizations coming up that sort of wanted to occupy the position of existing organizations? What do you think it was about?

Walters: Some. Some. We had some pretty militant folks that showed up. You may have heard of the US Organization.

Greene: Yes.

Walters: That was one.

Greene: United Slaves.

Walters: Pardon?

Greene: The United Slaves?

Walters: You know, I never did know--US, I thought, always just meant "us black folks." I don't know what the US stood for. Have you found evidence that it was United Slaves?

Greene: FC [phonetic] referred to it as that.

Walters: Really. Well, United Slaves they may have been, but one of the things that a lot of us used to joke about was that some of them would drive up to a meeting with their white companions and leave the women in the car while they went in [laughs] to the meeting and did their black power thing, you know, which was rather amusing. But Ron Karenga is still here. He was the founder of that.

Greene: Oh yes.

Walters: He ran into some trouble, unfortunately, but he came back; he bounced back.

Walters: There was an organization of white women called Women For:.

Greene: Forum?

Walters: Women For, F-o-r.

Greene: Oh, Women For:.

Walters: F-o-r colon. It was always a debate, women for what? They were for justice, equality. They spawned a lot of the women's movements here. But they first--they formed directly as a result of the Watts Riot or the Watts Uprising.

Greene: It was primarily an organization of black women?

Walters: No, white women, Jewish women. They formed at the Leo Baeck Temple out here on Sepulveda not far from UCLA [University of California Los Angeles].

Greene: Leo Baeck?

Walters: Yes, B-a-e-c-k, I think. It's right up the street, right along the side of 405 [Freeway], just, I think, before you get to the [J. Paul] Getty [Center], or across the street from the Getty. It was a large, very active temple, and these women formed there and used to have monthly meetings and foster conferences and, you know, reached out to the entire community to get people involved in that.

Greene: You mentioned Augustus Hawkins. Were there other elected officials who were particularly visible around this time?

Walters: Didn't have any.

Greene: Okay, tell me about that.

Walters: Gus was the first black elected official, I believe, from Southern California, who served many years in the California legislature. Then in the early sixties, a congressional seat opened up, and he was elected to the U.S. Congress. For a long time he was the only black from Southern California. But as the years went on, then other blacks were elected to the Congress and to the state legislature.

Greene: So who represented black communities at this time?

Walters: White folks.

Greene: White folks. Kenny Hahn?

Walters: There was nobody on the [L.A.] City Council, certainly nobody on the Board of Supervisors. I think when Gus left the state legislature and went to the Congress, there was a black person elected in his spot. Then, you know, as the years wore on, people kept standing for office. Merv [Mervyn] Dymally was one that was very active in challenging the political system and was elected to the state legislature and then the state senate and then as lieutenant governor and then Congress. Merv's first election to Congress, he challenged a white guy who was representing a good portion of the city that was black, and people, you know, said, "Oh, Merv can't win that seat." Well, he did win it. It wasn't considered a black seat, but he won it.

Greene: Was that because people were mobilizing behind his candidacy?

Walters: They were mobilizing. They mobilized behind his candidacy and behind the whole idea that there were enough blacks to have greater representation among elected officials.

Greene: This is something that folks were pushing for then.

Walters: Yes, and what they also were pushing for in United Civil Rights Council, in particular, was pushing for the election of a black to the school board. It was 1965 that the first--well, it wasn't the first black person; it was the second black person-- was elected to the school board, the second black person in history. A black woman by the name of Hilda Allen had been elected in the late thirties, early forties, and served one term. People put up--when she ran for reelection, they put up a white candidate, I understand, by the same name, who won the seat.

Greene: Is that right.

Walters: Now, that's the folklore--

Greene: Sure.

Walters: --that I'm told, and it was 1965 before another black was elected, and that was the Rev. James Jones, not the James Jones of Guyana or Jonestown.

Greene: Oh, okay. Not the "drink the Kool-Aid" James Jones.

Walters: No, no. This man was a Presbyterian minister. His church was over here on Jefferson near Arlington. He's now deceased, but he served one term and was unable to get re-elected. By that time conservatives, the conservative movement had sprung up, and they were running a slate of candidates for the school board.

Greene: Is that right.

Walters: Yes, and they were able to defeat him.

Greene: At this time school board members were still elected at large?

Walters: Yes, absolutely. They were still elected at large, and were elected at large until 1979. I was elected in 1979 on the first district elections. I was going to say during one of our prior conversations I was trying to name all the school board members when you were there, and there was one whose name I could not think of. His name was Art Gardner, Arthur Gardner. He was a pilot for Western Airlines.

Greene: Oh, that was the airline pilot.

Walters: That was the airline pilot.

Greene: So you said the conservatives began to run a slate of folks.

Walters: Right. There was a conservative white woman by the name of Laurel Martin. She was very well dressed, very well spoken; wealthy, I understand. She used to live over here in Hancock Park. She moved over to Glendale. She left Hancock Park; went over to Glendale. Jewish families began to move into Hancock Park, and some of the white folks left because Jewish families--

Greene: Because Jews were moving into the area.

Walters: Right. Right. I learned years later that they had separate [Boy and Girl] Scout Troops for the kids who were Jewish and the kids who were white.

Greene: Is that right.

Walters: Just, I mean, so many things. But she made it her business to come down to the school board as often as UCRC was there, and she started making presentations and opposing things that UCRC was requesting be done, and she was able to get a radio show. She was one of the first talk shows around here. And she was good; she was good. But she was conservative as heck. Then she ran for the board and got these other people. The ticket was--there were three of them, [Donald] Newman, who was a doctor; Martin; and Ferraro, with Martin in the middle. Ferraro was a schoolteacher in the district, a high school teacher, and just a first-class--excuse my language--jerk all the years that I knew him. There wasn't any other way that I could describe him. [Laughs]

Greene: No redeeming qualities come to mind.

Walters: None. None. [Laughs] I tell you, I remember long before I was ever a member of the school board, there was an issue in the state legislature to break up the school district, and it was sponsored by a black legislator by the name of Bill Green. He had gotten elected. I guess he took Dymally's seat in the state senate when Dymally left. But his name was Bill Green, and then there was this conservative legislator from Glendale, whose name-- [John L.] Harmer. His name was Harmer. Don't remember the first name. But they had what they called the Green/Harmer bill to break up the school district.

Greene: What was the intent of that?

Walters: Bill's intent was, I'm sure he felt, to get blacks out from under the thumbnail of white folks. He was not a pro-integrationist. He was not really a separatist, either, but he just wanted liberation, I guess. He too had grown up in Kansas City, Missouri. I grew up in Kansas City, Kansas. But we were about the same age and went to these opposing high schools, Sumner [High School - Kansas] and Lincoln [High School - Missouri].

Greene: Very small world.

Walters: Very small world. But a group of us had gone to Sacramento [CA] to testify against this bill. It was in committee. One, they started the hearing late. Two, they took a break about midway through it, for dinner or something, and everybody came back late. We were up there till midnight--

Greene: Is that right.

Walters: --in the capital with this bill. Ferraro was there, and his wife had gone with him, and I remember being surprised. How could anybody marry him? [Laughs] Just terrible. It shows you how stupid I was. But it was terrible. But I have to say for this lady, she was a nurse out at County General Hospital, and when the AIDS epidemic hit, she was one of the people who stepped forward and was willing to care for the AIDS patients. I've heard from people that I know that she was a marvelous nurse, the way she treated the patients. But that wasn't her husband. Anyhow--

Greene: Different animal.

Walters: Different animal.

Walters: These three folks were elected, and Jim Jones was out. Newman, as I said, was a doctor, Dr. Donald Newman, and he was conservative, but he was a kind, gentle person, and he was a person of integrity.

Greene: Since they were elected at large, who was backing these folks? Do you have a sense of where their--it's hard for me to imagine what constituency would have been backing them, because it wasn't neighborhood-based, was it?

Walters: No. No. So they had a constituency all over the place; you know, white folks that did not want integration.

Greene: And you think that was a decisive issue in the election, the opposition to integration?

Walters: Oh yes. They were very much opposed to school desegregation, very much opposed to it.

Greene: In your recollection, how did that change the composition of the board at that point?

Walters: Well, they put more hard nosed people on there. But Martin was the mover and shaker behind that group, the brains of the operation.

Greene: I see.

Walters: But she didn't get elected, and a lot of us thought at that time that she didn't get elected because she was female.

Greene: Oh. She didn't, but Ferraro and Newman did.

Walters: Right. Right. So Ferraro unseated--there was a guy, Ralph Richardson, on the board. I'm trying to think whether Ferraro unseated Richardson or Newman unseated--anyway, Ralph Richardson, who was a professor at UCLA, an English professor, was unseated.

Greene: He had previously been sympathetic to the desegregation?

Walters: He was somewhat sympathetic, and he would listen to people and work--but he kind of equivocated, and it took him a while. But he was not an opponent of desegregation. And Georgiana Hardy was still left. I don't recall if Mary Tingloff was still there at that time. I don't think Mary was defeated; I think she left the board for other reasons.

Greene: She resigned, probably.

Walters: Yes, just didn't run for another term, and I'm not sure it was that year. But I know when they came, and the elderly gentleman who was a USC [University of Southern California] professor, I think he just decided not to run again.

Greene: This would have been what year?

Walters: This must have been '69. Jim Jones was elected in '65, so this must have been '69.

Greene: I know you volunteered to work on folks' campaigns. Were you active on any campaigns at this time? Were you involved with any campaigns?

Walters: Jim Jones' campaign. I'm trying to think, in '69, if Hardy was up for reelection. I don't think she was. I don't think she ran again until '71. So I think probably the only campaign that I--oh, oh, Robert Doctor and Julian Nava. Jones was elected in '65. Nava followed in '67. Doctor ran three times before he was elected. He was a professor at Cal State Northridge, as was Julian. There had never been a Latino elected to the board until Nava was elected. The UCRC and other black groups turned out to support NAVA. We worked very hard on his campaign, and also Dr. Doctor's.

Walters: But Doctor didn't get elected. Doctor got elected in '69 in place of Laurel Martin. Folks didn't think he had a chance. He was very, very liberal, very outspoken.

Greene: Is that right.

Walters: Yes.

Greene: That's why folks thought he didn't have a chance?

Walters: Right. Well, he had tried twice before, and they didn't think he would make it, but he did. In '69, that's when we lost Jim Jones. I think that's who took Ferraro's seat--I mean, Ferraro took his seat.

Greene: Ferraro took Jim Jones' seat?

Walters: I think. I think. Maybe it was Dr. Newman; I'm not sure.

Greene: What was the Nava campaign like? What do you recall about the campaign?

Walters: I recall it as an opportunity for blacks and Latinos to work together, which they did. A number of blacks got involved. The first fundraiser that Julian had, UCRC put it on down there on San Pedro. And my husband spent all day painting the bathroom down there for it. We arranged for the food. We bought food from El Cholo’s and brought it in. It was a nice event. It was a nice event.

Greene: At that point did you have a sense that things were changing for the black community? This would have been late '69, right? Sort of in 1969?

Walters: '69. The elections were in the spring, and folks took their seats the first of July, which is still the case. Municipal elections are separate from the national state elections.

Greene: So this was about four years after the civil unrest.

Walters: Right.

Greene: Dymally is in office. Hawkins is in office at this point. They're still wrangling over desegregation issues, and that's kind of still wearing on.

Walters: Right. Right. I think by this time the case had been heard in the lower court. Judge Gittelson, Alfred Gittelson, was the judge. I think--was his decision rendered in '69, '68? '69--I'd have to look that up for you, Sean. But whenever he rendered the decision, he found the school district was segregated in fact. He found the school district guilty of de facto segregation, not de jure segregation but de facto segregation. And they turned him out of office. He lost his seat on the bench.

Greene: Because of his position on integration.

Walters: Because of his position, right. Right. Absolutely.

Greene: How did you disentangle this sort of tension that you say was emerging in the debate around desegregation? How did you see the relationship between desegregation, integration, and busing, for example--or I guess by the time--

Walters: Well, I felt busing was a code word for desegregation, and desegregation was different from integration. Desegregation was just moving bodies. Integration was trying to bridge the gap between cultures, and I felt, along with others, that the sooner you do this, the better. If children are taught from an early age to respect people of all colors, have an opportunity to interact with people of all colors, they don't grow up full of hate and prejudiced. I don't think so.

Walters: So those were the reasons that I did it. I wanted my children to grow up in an atmosphere of equity, in an atmosphere of respect, for themselves and others, and that others would have respect for them, and I didn't think what I wanted for my children was any different from what any other parent wanted for their children. They wanted a good, decent education. Like I told that principal when he was telling me my daughter was beautiful, and she's six years old, she'd grow up and marry well, "Forget that."

Walters: But those were the basic things, as far as I was concerned, and that because we had been slaves, it didn't mean we had to stay slaves. As long as we were treated as half a citizen, three-fifths of a person, we might as well be slaves. You just knew it was going to take--my folks always told us that you had to work twice as hard to get half as far. So that's sort of what the understanding was, the framework in which you had to live and operate.

Greene: I know that you worked on some proposition campaigns. So was this around the same time, or did that come later? Were there propositions that you worked on?

Walters: Well, yes. Anytime there was a school bond, I always worked on the school bonds. Walked precincts for them. Took my kids. One of the things I found out, if my kids were carrying literature and I went up and rang a doorbell, they'd get involved in looking at the kids and taking the literature from them where they weren't so hospitable to me. [Laughs]

Greene: So you were doing door-to-door work in some of these precincts.

Walters: Doing door-to-door, right.

Greene: What other kind of work did you do in some of the campaigns, whether it's the school board campaigns that you volunteered for or the proposition campaigns that you worked for?

Walters: Well, there was always licking and sticking. In those days people didn't have the money for the mass mailing that goes on these days, and I don't know whether they had mail houses then that sent out--

Greene: That handled all of that stuff.

Walters: Right. Right. Now everything is automated. You go put your order in, and the mail house will send out whatever you want.

Greene: But then it was a ----

Walters: They'll print it, write the list, take it to the post office, the whole bit. But there was always licking and sticking, answering phones, making phone calls, having little coffee klatches. We didn't have a lot of money to donate; didn't have much money to donate. So I tried to do what I could with time, you know.

Greene: And I'll ask a question that I asked at an earlier period. It's striking me that you were getting more and more deeply involved here at this moment.

Walters: Yes. Right.

Greene: What are some of the things that you were learning at this time as you were going door to door and talking with folks or as you were helping out in campaign headquarters? How were you changing at that point?

Walters: Well, I learned a lot about civil rights and civil liberties, the philosophical underpinnings, where prior as I grew up, it was gut reaction kind of thing. But my father and his family were pretty well versed on those things, so it just sort of dovetailed into knowledge and experiences that I had had before. I had the opportunity of working in all-white environments in Kansas City, where I was the only black. So I had an opportunity to experience Anglo people and some of their attitudes.

Walters: I recall the day after the Brown decision, I went to work, and this--well, I thought she was elderly. Of course, if you're in your twenties, people in their thirties are elderly. [Laughs] But she wasn't in her thirties; I imagine she was in her late fifties, early sixties. It was at the jewelry store where I worked, and she was what they call a skip tracer. She spent her time--people that don't pay their bills, and she spent her days on the phone running down these folks and trying to get them on the phone and get them to come in and pay their bills and that sort of thing.

Walters: She was extremely obese, and she came to work every morning in a taxicab. She would come into the store, and they had an office that was upstairs overlooking the sales floor, and she would go up there and sit at her desk all day, making these phone calls, because it was very difficult for her to move around.

Walters: But that morning she came in, and she was just on fire. Her face was red when she walked through the door, and she started fussing. She said, "It's horrible, this horrible thing. Those people are going to be--." They had an issue in Kansas City, Missouri, at the same time about who could go in the municipal swimming pool, and they had closed it down for two years rather then let them--because they'd lost in court. Closed it down for two years rather than let black folks in it as the court had ordered.

Walters: But the school deseg[regation] case came down, and she knew that was going to mean, or she felt it was going to mean, that swimming pool was going to be open, and her grandson would have--

Greene: That things were open ----.

Walters: Right. Right. Right. Exactly. So that was the really--that woman was the most overt racial reaction that I had experienced firsthand, face to face.

Walters: Another one, in another place where I worked, this young white girl, who was very friendly and we would eat lunch together and that sort of thing, not in the same restaurants, because I couldn't go in the restaurants where they were going, for the most part. There was one restaurant near where we worked that a black guy owned, and I would go in there and get a take-out. He knew who the other people were that worked in my building, and he says, "You know, if you want to come in with them, it's okay." [Laughs] So sometimes I would go on in and get something with them. But they would go, white folks would go to the barbecue joints, you know, and there a workforce could go together.

Walters: But anyway, this girl had some pictures that she had been on a picnic or something and taken them. They came out pretty dark, and she was showing them around, and she says, "I look like a nigger."

Greene: She announced this?

Walters: And I'm standing right there, just cold. She wasn't hostile. She was just disgusted because she looked dark.

Greene: And she didn't think twice about saying that.

Walters: Didn't think twice about saying it, no. But my mother always taught us the proper definition of a nigger, and she said, "That doesn't describe you." Said, "Don't worry about it."

Greene: Wow.

Walters: So those things, you know, and I guess a lot of people had come here from the South whose experiences with segregation were far deeper than mine and more hurtful. So that hostility had to come here where everybody thought it was so great; folks were so liberal and fine. And I thought, "Well maybe not quite."

Greene: Kind of a rude awakening, I suppose.

Walters: A rude awakening, and very frustrating. But one thing that people could do, in those days there were still factories open, manual labor jobs that paid very well. But yet there was a lot of unemployment for youngsters, young people, so that was a frustration. Housing was a problem. Some of the same stuff we have now, just more people with the same problems.

Greene: So how did you wind up returning--I'm going to jump a little bit--how did you wind up returning to complete your undergraduate degree?

Walters: When my marriage broke up, I had to go to work. I had been out of the workforce all those years, and I knew that I needed a degree to get a decent job, that I didn't want to be a clerk-typist the rest of my life, although I was willing to do that to get to the end, or my goal, to accomplish my goal of getting the degree.

Walters: So that's how I returned to school, and they had these alternative programs. There was a program organized around what they called the University Without Walls, and it was a consortium of universities working in one way or another, contributing to this. The premise of that is that whatever work--that one was not an empty slate, and that whatever they had been doing up to a certain point, they could document it; you would get college credit for it. So that helped me a great deal.

Greene: It was a new program?

Walters: It wasn't brand-new when I went in. In fact, it was on the downside when I got involved.

Greene: So they'd been around?

Walters: It had been a while, a while. But I think it was a program that grew out of the Civil Rights era, that grew out of probably the fifties and early sixties.

Greene: You would have entered the program what year?

Walters: '73, '74. Yes, probably '73. I was looking around for something. I wanted to go back to school, and finding a school that had a program where I could work during the day and go to school in the evenings or weekends or something, you know, you needed something like that. This offered that. Antioch [University] had opened up a program here similar, but Antioch wasn't fully accredited, and I think they were concentrating in the area of psychology when they first opened up.

Walters: This program, its operational base for Southern California was USC. A professor at USC was in charge of it. His name was William Williams. The degree was granted from Shaw University.

Greene: In North Carolina.

Walters: Raleigh, yes. So that's how I got back into school.

Greene: What kind of classes did you take?

Walters: Oh, some were literature. Some were psychology, education. I did a liberal arts concentration.

Greene: So it was a range of different kinds of courses?

Walters: Right.

Greene: How was your experience overall with the program?

Walters: Oh, it was good. It was good.

Greene: I'm trying to understand how was it to be back in school, I imagine still be engaged in activism, and have your children. How did you manage? How did you juggle between those things?

Walters: Well, you do what you have to do, I guess. Fortunately, I had relatives, and my former husband's relatives were always good about keeping the kids.

Greene: So that was a big help.

Walters: That was a help. When I say keeping the kids, I mean for a few hours. I didn't farm them out for a week at a time.

Greene: [Laughs] Sure.

Walters: It wasn't any such thing as them moving into somebody else's house. But I had good kids, and they were very obedient, very good. So we managed. We organized the house around the tasks that needed to be done, and everybody had their task that they had to do. Everybody was responsible for making meals. I told them, "You tell me what you want to prepare, and I'll buy the food, and you prepare it. It's fine if it's eggs, hamburgers. Whatever it is, just let me know so I can buy the food on the weekend," or whenever I was going grocery shopping.

Greene: They would have been like preteens at this time?

Walters: Yes, and in their teens. Let's see. David was born in '57, and this was like '73. Susan and David were in middle school. Middle school, high school, somewhere along in there. But anyway, the days that they cooked, somebody else cleaned up the kitchen; it was somebody else's duty to clean up the kitchen. The cook didn't have to clean up the kitchen. I cooked on weekends, and you know, I would cook like a roast beef or something that they could make sandwiches on and have food during the week, and we could have leftovers. I'd make a pot of spaghetti or chili or whatever.

Walters: But we just worked it out. Everybody had to do their own laundry. I had a washer and a dryer, so no excuse for anybody not having clean clothes. All they had to do was push the buttons. I had a dishwasher, so all they had to do was fill up the dishwasher to clean the kitchen. So it worked out.

Greene: Could I ask, once you and your husband split--I'm sure it changed in a number of ways, but how did your life change? Did your circle of friends change, for example? Did any of your involvements change after that as well?

Walters: The involvements--well, I became involved with the school program. That was new. Many of the friends changed. I was no longer a couple, and I found that a single person in a group of couples kind of made folks uncomfortable. Some it did, and some it didn't. Folks that we used to, you know, get together and go to a movie and dinner on Saturday nights with, suddenly I wasn't getting invitations to do that. But other friends hung right in there. It was difficult with them, too, because the wives and I may have been very close, and the men were close. So, you know, they had a decision, "Well, if we're going to do this, which one do we invite?"

Walters: But it all worked out. It all worked out. The people that I was working with in the school district, I got a job in the school district, a nonprofessional job in the school district. I had been for years involved in the school district, so I knew all the administrators and folks, and they were very helpful. When I needed a job, I went to the superintendent and told him my marriage had broken up and I needed to go to work. So I got a job. The marriage split up in June. I went to work for the school district in July. For the summer, because school for the most part was out, I worked in one of the area offices as a switchboard operator. I'd never done a switchboard in my life, but they taught me to operate the switchboard, and it kept a check coming in until school started up again.

Walters: The school district had this Office of Urban Affairs. It was an outgrowth of the War on Poverty, and these movements to get people to come together, and to try to work through the relationships, one cultural group with another. So I got a job in that office, working with those people with whom I had worked before.

Greene: What you're saying makes a natural extension of some of the--

Walters: That's right. So this time I got paid for it, and continued to do that until I finished the coursework that I had to finish, and did the practice teaching.

Greene: That's because you were getting certified at the time?

Walters: Yes.

Greene: And it was after you finished your program that you went on to teach with L.A.?

Walters: Yes, but before I started teaching, the spring of ‘75, I ran for the school board.

Greene: In the spring of '75.

Walters: Right. I ran for the school board three times before I got elected. I got elected on the third try.

Greene: I see. I thought it was in '73.

Walters: '75, '77, and '79. I was elected in '79.

Greene: What was that first race for the school board like in '75?

Walters: Well, some of it was great fun.

Greene: Really.

Walters: It was a joyous time. We had a large group of people that came together. We used to meet every Thursday night, and we met on Thursday night because two of the people who were most active worked in Sacramento Monday through Thursday as lobbyists for the school district. They'd fly in on Thursday night and come right to our meetings. We had a friend who had a large, lovely home, and she opened it up. We'd fill up her living room and dining room every Thursday night, making our plans for strategy.

Greene: This was a power group. [Walters laughs.] They were strategizing in a war room.

Walters: Right. Right. But I remember the very first meeting that we had was on Halloween, and I'm trying to think whether it was '74 or '75. It was '74, '74, and we started meeting, and the elections filing was in January. So we started working. We had had a smaller group before then, but we spread out, and our first big meeting was Halloween. Then one of my friends who was a budget person, she took care of the finances, and after that meeting was over, she was having a Halloween party at her house, so we just sort of moved from one location to the other.

Greene: Kind of shifted gears.

Walters: Right, and she was also a bridge enthusiast, and she had met this young man at one of the bridge clubs. So she was introducing him to some of us that night for the first time. They went on and got married and had two very fine kids, and they're still married. He became a teacher.

Greene: Is that right.

Walters: Yes. She retired from the school district, and he's still there.

Greene: Who were you running against at that point?

Walters: Diane Watson was also running. She had run in '73, and in between '69 when Jim Jones lost, the next election cycle, '71, a man by the name of Arnett Hartsfield ran and lost, a black man. In '73 he ran again and lost, and Diane Watson had run at the same time. So in '75 I had worked on Arnett's campaigns, and I was just very disgusted that we couldn't seem to get a black person elected to that board again. Because I was fairly well known in education circles, people talked to me about running. Of course, there was the issue of, "Diane is running. Are you going to interfere with her?" There was an empty seat. Georgiana Hardy decided not to run that time. She was up for reelection.

Walters: But I ran, and I lost, and Diane won.

Greene: Okay. That seat?

Walters: Right. And she stayed there until '77 when she was elected to the state senate. I think that's when Mervyn Dymally became lieutenant governor, and she won his seat, if memory serves.

Greene: Was there still a conservative block on the board at that point?

Walters: Oh, by all means, and then one had formed that was even more conservative. It was the Bus Stop they called themselves.

Greene: The Bus Stop.

Walters: Not "The Bus Stop," "Bus Stop." Yes, they called themselves Bus Stop. I said "The Bus Stop." I should have said "the Bus Stop group," but they called themselves Bus Stop. They were going to stop those buses; that's right. They were going to stop those buses. The woman who was the leader of that, Bobbie Feidler, was elected. She defeated Robert Doctor.

Greene: Oh, Feidler took Doctor's seat.

Walters: Yes. Another woman ran who didn't get elected that time, but she got elected in '79. In '77 Bobbie Feidler got elected. In '79 Roberta Weintraub got elected.

Greene: How do you spell Wientraub?

Walters: W-e-i, I guess, n-t-r-a-u-b.

Greene: So some folks had suggested that you run. This was in '75; some folks had suggested that you run.

Walters: Right.

Greene: This was in the '75 election. And you were running, Diane Watson was running, and the goal was to try to get another black person on the school board.

Walters: That's right. So the community was successful in getting Diane elected, so we had another black person on the board then--had a black person on the board then. What was I going to tell you about that? Then in '77 I ran. I had no intention of running; filed just a few hours before the filing shut down. But Ferraro, this horrible guy was going to run unopposed, and some of us were talking about it, "Somebody's got to stand up." I remember up in the school cafeteria--it was on the second floor--at the board offices, there were a group of us sitting together talking about, "We're going to let this guy run unopposed?"

Walters: Somebody said, "Rita, why don't you run?"

Walters: I said, "I'm not prepared to run. I haven't raised any money."

Walters: "But you got name recognition anyway."

Walters: I went over the next day and filed to run. And I did, and I got Ferraro in a run-off and lost by 2 percent of the vote.

Greene: Very narrow margin.

Walters: Oh, extremely narrow, and you know where I lost it? In South Central, because folks didn't turn out. Didn't turn out to vote. As I recall, I did very well in the mountains, hill communities of the [San Fernando] Valley. So because of that, I didn't feel that there were that many people in the Valley. It wasn't a rout for me. I had a lot of support in the Valley. I had fundraisers out there. People really joined the campaign and worked hard, and it showed.

Greene: Would you say that some of the energy, because I know you talked about there was a waning of energy, particularly around education issues, in black of organizations. Would you say that some of that energy by this point, folks who had been kind of--

Walters: Of course. Absolutely.

Greene: --demobilized in a sense?

Walters: Yes, absolutely. There was no longer this strong, focused movement. UCRC had been gone. NAACP was not as energetic around the issue as they had been. And ACLU was.

Greene: What were some of the major issues at this point in the mid-seventies as far as schools were concerned?

Walters: Equity. Always equity. Equity in terms of personnel assigned. All these black kids and Latino kids were still on half-day sessions.

Greene: Still.

Walters: Still. Half-day session. About this time, there were like 10,000 kids on half-day sessions, and 9,000 of them were black or brown.

Greene: It was that blatant?

Walters: It was that blatant, right. School supplies. In the midst of a very active phase of the implementation of the court decision, the judge had ordered over an Easter weekend. There had been complaints from time immemorial, from the first time I ever had gone to a school board meeting, all the way up till this point, and I was on the board at this point. the judge ordered textbooks to be distributed more equitably. They found in schools in the West Side and in the Valley, they had book rooms that were loaded with books. You go into Central City, Watts and East L.A., they had old, outdated, raggedy stuff. So they had to get folks out there on the weekend to move these books.

Greene: So the equity issue was still looming large.

Walters: The equity issue was still there. The equity issue was still there.

Greene: Was integration as central as it had been a few years earlier to the discussion?

Walters: Yes, it was, because after I went on the board in '79, they were in the throes of implementing the court decision and fighting it at every turn. The school board was fighting it at every turn.

Greene: Oh, the school board was fighting it.

Walters: The school board was fighting it.

Greene: Bus Stop.

Walters: Bus Stop. The court ordered that those children be transported, and that's when this woman got on the radio and called me that infamous name, because I was the only one on the board speaking directly to the issue of school desegregation. There were others on the board, Kathleen Brown, for example, the then-governor's sister, and another gentleman from the Harbor [section of Los Angeles], John Greenwood, Democrats, very moderate Democrats. But they were only going to go so far. They weren't as militant on the issue as I was. But they were by no means vociferous opponents. they were reasonable people. Then we had these other folks, who were less so.

Greene: Once you finished the program at Shaw via USC and you went on to do your credentialing, then what did you do?

Walters: The credential, California allows you to get a temporary credential and gives you five years to finish that fifth year that they require for a credential. So I was teaching after I got the credential; lost the election in spring of '75. I started teaching in the fall of '75, and for the next four years I taught reading to illiterate adults. Here there was a school called Mid-City--still is called Mid-City--Adult School near downtown. I taught there in the mornings, and in the afternoons I was teaching English as a second language [ESL] downtown at a school called Evans Adult School, 7th and Figueroa.

Walters: So I did that, and then the next year I was at a different location in the mornings, but still down at Evans. The whole time I was teaching I was at Evans in the afternoons, and in the mornings in other places. The last year I taught, I was at Watts in the mornings and downtown in the afternoons.

Greene: Tell me about your students in each of those places. I imagine they were very different populations.

Walters: Yes, very different populations.

Greene: Tell me something about the students you taught.

Walters: Well, the African American students that I had were across a wide age span. Had some seniors in there that had never had the opportunity for education, and it was something they wanted to do before they left here. It had been a lifelong goal, and they were trying to get it done. Then there were the younger people, who had come out of high school, couldn't read the print that was on whatever they got for a diploma. Or they never graduated at all. some of them had records; had gotten into trouble, but some were just kids that hadn't had a chance. Nobody paying any attention to them.

Walters: So that was the black population.

Greene: And that was the literacy class?

Walters: That was--yes, the literacy class. The ESL class also had a literacy component to it. I did a lot of substitute work. I'd sub in the evenings. Evans downtown ran classes from six in the morning to nine at night. One year they ran them all night.

Greene: Really.

Walters: Yes, because they had people just pouring in here that needed English classes. Most of the time my regular class, the afternoon class, were what they called visa students, students who were here on a visa that they had to spend so many hours a week in school, twenty-five hours a week in school, and I taught them twelve and a half of those. So they had some education. They were quite literate, depending on what country they were from. Like from Japan, for example, they could tell you every grammatical rule there is in the book for English, stuff you never heard of. But they were taught English starting in elementary school, and their kids go to school more months of the year, more hours in the day, than our kids do.

Walters: I had loads of students from Central America, and when people were getting away from unrest in their own country. All kinds of Persian students, other Middle Eastern countries, Russia, everywhere. People from the globe came to that school, and I had an opportunity to interact with them. Really very, very uplifting; very nice, enjoyable.

Walters: The other was enjoyable, too. Some of the Japanese students--I was going to China, and I shared with my students that I was going away; I was going to be in China. Some of the students from Japan said, "Why don't you stop in Japan? Are you going to stop in Japan?"

Walters: "I don't know. I'd like to."

Walters: "Well, stop and see my folks," and they gave me addresses and stuff. So I spent about ten days traveling in Japan after I left China, by myself, from one end of the country to the other--

Greene: Really.

Walters: --visiting the homes. I was a guest in the homes of these people that had been my students. Yes.

Greene: What part of China did you go to?

Walters: We started in Beijing and worked our way north to Mongolia, and spent some time in an old Chinese capital in the north of China called Datong. Went into a couple of cities in Inner Mongolia, Hunenot and Baotau.

Greene: This was in the seventies?

Walters: '77.

Greene: Wow.

Walters: There were other smaller places where we stopped, and then we came back to Beijing again and then to Shanghai. I was there three weeks. Then we left Shanghai and back to Japan.

Greene: What were your impressions of China?

Walters: I was amazed at China. It a closed society; there's no doubt about that. But a couple of years later I went to Korea, and Korea was far more militaristic and closed than China was, and that was South Korea that I went to, not North Korea.

Greene: Wow.

Walters: When I was in Korea, it was some time after they had a president who was assassinated, and they were really paranoid. Everybody had to be off the street like ten o'clock. All the lights went out in the hotel. They closed down the bars and stuff. Everybody had to go to their rooms. But they were something.

Walters: When we got ready to leave there, I remember they came up to my room. They had insisted on that they didn't want you out of their sight for two minutes, and the day we were supposed to leave, they kept us busy all day long. We had told them that we wanted to do some shopping. I was with two other people from the school district. So they had this place they called the--well, I forget the name of it, but it was a big department store and a duty-free place where you could shop in there, and we went in there to do some shopping.

Walters: Anyway, when we came back, they came up and knocked on my door and the doors of the other folks as well. They wanted to come in there and watch you while you got packed and dressed. I told them I was not dressed, and they were not coming in. And they stood out there, beating on my door.

Greene: Is that right. They wanted to watch your every move.

Walters: Watch my every move, absolutely. When I finally was dressed and had packed, got my bag closed, I opened the door, because I was ready to leave then. They came in, and I had taken the papers that stuff had been wrapped in, I took it off and just wrapped things in an article of clothing for packing. They picked up every scrap of paper that I had put in the trash, anything I had dropped on the floor, and were looking at it. You know, I don't know if they thought I was a spy trying to communicate with people. It was weird.

Walters: But China was interesting. China was interesting. They didn't have Coca-Cola in China then, and I said I wanted to go back. We were there BCC, before Coca-Cola, and I wanted to go back afterwards. Friends who have gone since that time tell me it is just very much different. But we saw China still had the signs posted in a public park in Shanghai that the British had put up, "No Chinese or dogs allowed." In this public park in their own country.

Greene: Wow.

Walters: And their military, they were without weapons, but they were always part of the crowd. The hotel we stayed at in Beijing was just down from the Imperial City and across from Tiananmen Square. The Imperial City is right across from Tiananmen Square. We'd go out and walk in the mornings early, and it was marvelous. You'd see all these people, ancient Chinese, out there doing Tai Chi. And others, everybody had a job. Everybody was doing something. You never saw anybody then that wasn't doing some kind of work. People were out there individually, manually sweeping the streets and the sidewalks and what have you.

Greene: Tai Chi hadn't been banned at that point.

Walters: No, they were doing Tai Chi.

Greene: Wow.

Walters: Definitely, and it was beautiful to watch. It was just like a chorus, you know. They were all moving in unison and just so artfully, doing it.

Greene: And so you come back and--oh, you mentioned also that you taught in Watts for a period.

Walters: Yes, I taught in Watts. For most of the same length of time that I was in ESL, I was in the literacy program. They call it Adult Basic Ed[ucation]. So I did that, and one of the very nice experiences I had, one I've never forgotten, there was a woman who was teaching there who, she and her husband had come here, I guess, in the forties, and she had gone to work in a sewing factory. She had never had more than a second grade education, but she found out that these schools existed, and she enrolled in one. She went through the eighth grade, passed all the subjects through the eighth grade. Then got her GED, and then went on and got her high school diploma, and then went to Pepperdine University and earned a bachelor's degree, and then got a job teaching others--

Greene: Wow. Oh, wow.

Walters: --who had had a similar life to hers.

Greene: Oh, that's something else.

Walters: Oh, it was wonderful, just wonderful.

Greene: So teaching for you, I can tell, it was very rewarding. It was very rewarding, your teaching experiences.

Walters: It was, yes. Yes. They were.

Greene: Did you continue to teach while you were on the board later?

Walters: No, you couldn't.

Greene: You can't. That's not allowed.

Walters: No. No. They wouldn't allow you. In those days the conflict of interest laws were very strict. The man, John Greenwood, that was elected at the same time I was, his wife was a teacher, and she had to give up her job. Another man that was elected, his wife wasn't a teacher, but she worked for a poetry group that provided services not only to LAUSD [Los Angeles Unified School District], they taught in Pasadena [School District] and they taught in other school districts. They told her she'd have to give up her job or John would have to get off the board--or not John; Alan was her husband's name--would have to get off the board.

Greene: So they viewed that as a conflict of interest as well. Very strict.

Walters: Yes. So she divorced him.

Greene: Really?

Walters: I think that was just the last straw.

Greene: Sure, sure. [Laughs]

Walters: But--

Greene: That's how she solved that problem, huh?

Walters: That's how she solved that problem. State law, but it was interpreted to be--I don't know how; somebody got a clause in there that made it more onerous for school board members, and these are people that are at the lowest rung of the pay scale. Los Angeles Magazine does a thing every so often about who's earning what in Los Angeles, and they did a piece, and they had Michael Jackson with whatever astronomical sum he was making, number one. They had me at the very bottom, the very last one. [Laughs]

Greene: Just to kind of make the point in dramatic terms.

Walters: Right. Right.

Greene: And they listed your name in there?

Walters: Yes. Well, it's public information. When I first went on the school board, the salary was $1,200 a year. Then we got a raise, a 50 percent raise, so it was $2,400 a year. [Laughs] Big deal.

Greene: You were really coming up at that point, eh? [Laughs]

Walters: I'm telling you. I’m telling you.

Greene: Here's the last thing I'll ask before we end this session, is about you mentioned Diane Watson's term on the board.

Walters: Yes.

Greene: And I know that--I think it was called Proposition M that was going to restructure the school board.

Walters: That's exactly right.

Greene: I wonder if you could tell me a bit about the genesis, from your recollection, of Proposition M and what it did, and we can leave off there.

Walters: Yes. People had engaged in this argument for years about what is the best way to restructure the election in California, and in Los Angeles, that would be more equitable with respect to getting more minorities on the board. They came up with a guy in the teachers' union, Bill Lambert, who was a teachers' union lobbyist in Sacramento. He went to Zev Yaroslavsky and talked to Zev about doing it, and would Zev support it, and what I mean was they were able to put this together and get it on the ballot. I think Zev put it on the ballot through the city council.

Walters: And it passed in the fall of '78, and I ran for election; filed in January '79 for the election in June '79, April and June. That's how it got on there. But before then, people had talked about being elected by districts, and some people didn't favor that. They felt that it would make each person elected too parochial. There were others who favored what was known as the San Diego plan.

Walters: The San Diego plan, and it's still there today, people are elected by district, and then in the runoff--there's a runoff for the two highest vote-getters in each district--at large. The thing I didn't like about that, you could have a conservative person and a liberal person elected from a district, but when they went at large, the conservative person could get elected, and they weren't really representative of the district from which they had been elected, because there was just the two highest vote-getters. You know, one person could be the highest vote-getter and have 500 votes, whereas another one would be the highest vote-getter and they'd have in the thousands.

Walters: So L.A. didn't adopt that. It was a straight district election, and they felt that had the best chance of passing, because people were familiar with electing council people by district, electing assembly and state senatorial and then congressional people by district.

Greene: Who drew the districts, the district lines? [Walters laughs.] I mean, or how did the district lines get drawn?

Walters: Well, there was a lot. The city council had the ultimate authority for drawing the lines, but they had a lot of public input. People went to city council. I went to city council to testify. There was a group of blacks that used to meet at Urban League headquarters, seven o'clock every Wednesday morning, just to talk about the problems in the city, and that was a hot issue. So as a community group, we drew up lines and took them to city council; took them to the school district. They had to be approved by the school district and then to city council.

Walters: And we drew the lines in a way that we felt would advantage us in an election, and that first line drawing, the line started over here at Fairfax and San Vicente. Came out San Vicente down to Pico and went east along Pico. I don't think it did too much zigging and zagging. Then worked its way south until it got over to Alameda, where it was at Adams and Alameda. Went south along Alameda to something--it was just below Manchester, just north of Manchester. And then it was kind of an uneven line across to the Inglewood District lines. And then came around Inglewood, took in the Baldwin Hills to the east of Culver City, and then came back up Fairfax and intersected here at Fairfax and San Vicente.

Walters: There was a guy who had been a professor at UCLA and still did some work there. He was really good at the numbers and the demographics. He looked at school enrollments, and by this time we had the racial and ethnic census every year. So they looked at the schools that were most heavily populated by African American students and just sort of, you know, rough thing he put on the map and drew a circle around. So if most of the black kids are within this circle, then most of the black parents, the voting population, was within the circle. Just roughly, and then they finalized it and really got hard numbers.

Walters: But what was driving that was, one, the district had seven board members. Two, there were more cities in L.A. Unified [School District] than Los Angeles, and they had to be accounted for. Three, people had to live in their districts. And four, according to the one person, one vote rule, the districts had to be apportioned equally.

Greene: Equally in terms of population?

Walters: Equally in terms of population, or almost equally in terms of population. There was, you know, wiggle room there; give or take a few thousand. But you couldn't just draw a circle and say, "Here's all the black folks, and you folks do what you will." Black folks had to be sensitive to the fact of these other factors, that it couldn't go over what was the seven divided into the total population of the school district at that point, total adult population living within the boundaries of the school district. And that it had to be whatever that one-seventh was.

Walters: So now how do you do that? The census tracts are available, and you can get your demographics down to the street level, if you want. It used to be, in the old days when they were doing it, you couldn't split a census tract, because the data wasn't that accurate. But now you can split between this house and the garage out there, if you want. But your numbers have got to work.

Walters: So this guy's name was Bob Singleton.

Greene: And he was from UCLA?

Walters: Yes, and he was excellent. He was excellent. The school district, you could get all kinds of maps from them, and we had maps with pinpoints and red marks and yellow marks and green marks. And because we did it by the book, by the rules, the lines that were submitted were accepted.

Greene: That's wonderful. No one contested them. There was no challenges to them?

Walters: Well, there might have been some challenges, but there were people who were gadflies. One guy, Howard--what was his last name? [Watt] I can see his face. He was a white guy, disabled veteran. Oh, right-wing to the core. But a sad case, because he really--some people took advantage of him. But Howard was at all those board meetings. He could tell you more stuff than you ever knew existed. The same way with city council. He used to go to city council, school board, MTA.

Greene: Wow. He was on top of it.

Walters: Yes. Yes. But early on, in the sixties, there were some folks that had sit-ins at the school board, and they were there, I don't know, a week, ten days, or longer, living there in the school board offices and outside the school board room. And, oh, Howard was vicious. He was always ready to do harm to somebody. But he was--he never did. He was harmless. He was harmless.

Greene: His bark was worse than his bite.

Walters: But he opposed it, and some of the other people opposed it and wanted it left at large.

Greene: And they got it so?

Walters: Yes. Yes. So that's how the lines got drawn, but it was a public process.[End of interview]

1.5. Session 5 (May 19, 2008)

Greene: This is Sean Greene, interviewing Rita Walters on May nineteenth at her home. Hello, Rita, good afternoon.

Walters: How are you, Sean?

Greene: I'm very good.

Walters: Good.

Greene: I wanted to pick up where we left off last time, and ask you to go back and recount for me how it was that you got elected to the school board.

Walters: I got elected on my third try for the school board.

Greene: Tell me about the first two.

Walters: The first two were very interesting. The first one was probably the most exciting, the most fun for people involved, and the people who were involved in my campaign were people from the school district, parents that I had worked on various committees of the school district with, some folks that I had been involved in PTA [Parent Teacher Association] with, some teachers, quite a few administrators, and other administrative personnel. And it was a really cohesive group. We met once a week, and started meeting in a friend's home, filled up her living room and dining room every Thursday night.

Greene: Who was the friend?

Walters: Her name was Ruth Barr. She's been deceased now since I think '84. But she was a very close friend and a great person to work with. She had worked a lot with PTA, and she had two sons that went through LAUSD [Los Angeles Unified School District], and she was serving--I met her when we were both appointed to the first advisory committee that was established under Chapter 1 [Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act]. One of the mandates of Chapter 1, now Title I or whatever it is--it was Title I, and now it's Chapter 1--was that it required school districts, in order to receive this money and to expend it, had to have maximum feasible participation of the poor, of the people that it was to serve. I went on as a civil-rights representative, representative of civil-rights organizations, and Ruth was there as a parent at PTA. Her youngest son was in high school then, so she was a representative from that high school, Manual Arts High School.

Walters: As things turned out, we became very close friends. Our birthdays were just a few days apart, and we were both short and very vocal. [laughter] Ruth was a more humorous person than I by personality. She really had a wonderful sense of humor, and we just got along famously, and other people who were in the group as well. What L.A. did was to divide this representative group into four sub-groups, geographically organized around schools, and it was Committee A, B, C, and D, and Ruth and I were on B, mid-city area, part of South Los Angeles. C was further south and some of Watts, and D, I think, was harbor. D was West L.A. A may have been some of the valley, Pacoima, I think that's what it was. Anyway, they were divided geographically in these committees.

Greene: And how did people come onto these committees? Was it through their participation in the PTA, for example?

Walters: Through their participation in schools, whether it was a PTA or just volunteering around the school, or through some organizational representation. PTA and other organizations were represented.

Greene: Okay, I see. So you said there was an initial meeting at Mrs. Barr's--

Walters: At Ruth's house, right.

Greene: And who were some of the people that came to that initial meeting, that you can recall?

Walters: Well, one was Ron Prescott, who's now deceased. He just passed away a few months ago, last October, and we had became very good friends. He was at that time, at the time we formed these committees, not the school-district committees but campaign committee, he was working as one of the school district's lobbyists in Sacramento, and he was up there Monday through Thursday, and came home on Thursday evenings, he and another woman who was also a lobbyist for the district. She was a lobbyist for the classified employees. They'd get off the plane and come--Ruth lived in Leimert Park, so they'd come right from LAX [Los Angeles International Airport] to Leimert Park.

Walters: Ruth's husband used to make these huge pots of spaghetti or whatever else, and sometimes folks would stop by--The Golden Bird was the popular chicken place at that time--and pick up chicken or whatever. The point is, we had food and not much alcohol. Folks didn't really drink a lot of alcohol, but some might have a glass of wine or something like that. And we'd get down to business for hours.

Greene: Really.

Walters: Right.

Greene: What kind of things did you discuss? Was this like an exploratory committee?

Walters: It started out as an exploratory committee, to find out what people thought, if they thought I had a chance, would they be willing to support me, would they be willing to go out and work and garner other support. Then we decided there that first night, somebody got up and suggested--a woman who was an attorney that I really didn't know very well, but I had met, but she was politically savvy, and she got up and said, "Now, look. We can't leave here without putting some money on the table." So they started passing the hat, and we took up, I think it was $600 that first meeting.

Greene: Is that right, that first meeting?

Walters: Right. And, of course, then $600 was a decent, fair amount of money. I think we did the whole campaign for like 20,000 or so.

Greene: Is that right?

Walters: That was the first campaign. The last campaign that I ran for reelection to the school board I think cost me a couple of hundred thousand.

Greene: Oh, wow, how things change.

Walters: It had gone up, right. And after that, million-dollar campaigns now are nothing, for school board. But that was the genesis of the first meeting. And then as it moved on, as time moved on we started looking for campaign headquarters, and got one over here on Pico [Blvd.] near West Blvd., and we would meet there. But we kept up the weekly pace.

Greene: And was it more or less the same group of folks from one meeting to the next, or did other folks kind of get folded in?

Walters: Well, other folks came in, but the nucleus was still there, the original folks.

Greene: Who was the nucleus? Mrs. Barr, Mr. Prescott you mentioned.

Walters: There was a woman from Watts, and she's still alive, she still lives in Watts, Dorothy Rochelle. She was a parent of children--her daughter had gone through Jordan High School, her older daughter. Her youngest daughter was still in elementary school when we got started, Markham Junior High out there. And we became very close friends, and her husband got involved. He was interested in politics. He was a supervisor in the main post office that was then downtown, and she was a nurse. She used to work nights sometimes, and sometimes she would come to school meetings that we'd have. They'd start eight, nine, ten o'clock. She'd come in her nurse's uniform, because she was an R.N., and again a person who was a lot of fun. She could be cantankerous, but she was a lot of fun.

Walters: Ruth, Dorothy, Ron, Judy Larson, another friend who was from Scotland and had, still has this wonderful Scottish brogue [Margaret]. She worked for the school district. She was very helpful to us. She was what's called a classified employee. She worked on the business side of the school district. Then there was a couple who I had known the husband for years, working through various committees, and he and his wife divorced and were apart for several years, and then he married another woman that he brought along to this, or they joined the committee after we formed it. And they were really prodigious workers. They just really took care of business [Barbara and Jim Smith].

Walters: Then there was another gentleman by the name of Bonnie [Ray] James. He was--

Greene: Cool name.

Walters: Yes, Bonnie Ray James. He was a teacher. He had been a teacher and had moved up in the administrative ranks. Ron had been a teacher. He was now an administrator. Judy was a lobbyist, and Margaret was the numbers person, and Margaret and Jim--Jim was good with numbers. They used to keep track of the money. Margaret [and Bonnie] did the reports that we had to do. Everything was--somebody volunteered to do everything. We had Stella Pena was another woman, a Latina woman whose father was a school principal, and she was an administrator now on The Hill. That's where the school district used to be downtown, right where the stack, the joining of the 110 and 101 [Freeways] there, right across the freeway from the cathedral. That used to be school-district headquarters, and somebody talked them into tearing it down and building an art school, bad mistake. But anyway.

Walters: It was just a large number of people who worked there, and worked in school locations, and who had good contacts in school locations, and we had all kinds of little fundraisers and house parties and stuff, mainly to raise money.

Greene: Oh, wow. Now, it also sounds like these were folks who kind of knew how to get things done, and understood how things worked.

Walters: Oh, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.

Greene: Skill sets around the table.

Walters: Yes. And folks would take a task and they would do it. You didn't have to keep prodding, for the most part, and everybody had fun doing it.

Greene: And so was it after the first meeting that you were pretty certain it was going to be a go as far as the campaign, or did it take a couple of meetings to sort of decide to run?

Walters: Well, after folks started taking up money, it seemed like it was going to be a go.

Greene: It got serious really fast, huh?

Walters: It got serious fast. And one reason it got serious fast was because we had been through two, well, three election cycles, one where Jim Jones lost after four years. Two years later--the elections were every two years, and then everybody was at large, and so you ran by the number of the seat, not the geographical location.

Greene: Got it.

Walters: So there was the school-board election for somebody every two years. So that was 1975, and there was no black representation on the board, had not been since '69, and folks were upset about it, and those that supported me thought because I had been so involved in the community, and had some name recognition, more we felt than Diane Watson did at that time, that we could do it. And, of course, with Diane running also, it gave some folks pause. Then was the time that you just didn't take a chance on running with another black person running.

Walters: And the election where Jim Jones was elected, the community got together, a group of community leaders got together, ministers and business folks and just folks, and had a community convention.

Greene: Oh, really. Tell me about the community convention.

Walters: Well, folks came and they represented organizations, and they had the authority to vote for a certain candidate on behalf of their organization.

Greene: Had this kind of thing happened before on a regular basis within the community, or was this something that sprung up around the--

Walters: Well, smaller groups had gotten together, you know. Some of the money people had gotten together and identified, like when Tom Bradley was running the first time for City Council. He only ran once for City Council. He got elected. But--I think that's right. I don't know what's confusing me there. He was not the first black elected to the city--well, he might have been the first black. He was not the first black on the City Council, because Gil[bert] Lindsay was appointed to--Kenny Hahn left that seat on the council, and engineered Gil Lindsay's appointment to the council. And there was only one appointment subsequent to Gil Lindsay, and that was John Ferraro. But yes, people had gotten together and anointed folks.

Greene: I see. What were some of the groups involved with the convention that you can recall, some of the folks that were voting and anointing?

Walters: Well, by the time the second convention was held, Yvonne Burke was in office, I believe. She was an Assembly person, and she was there, and representatives of whatever elected officials existed were there. Urban League representation was there. John Mack came here I guess about--John came about '68, and I don't know if he participated in that first convention or not. But the second one was more of a convention. It was a larger group.

Greene: And the second one would have been in what year, '73, around then?

Walters: The first one was '71. The second one was '73, and then by the time I ran in '75, some people were taking a different tack, saying that, "This community convention is akin to having two elections, elected by a handful of folks that anoint you and say you can run, before the general public has an opportunity to speak." And the people that supported the community convention said, "No, it's just an opportunity to try to pick the strongest candidate, and one that people feel will represent the community well," and so there were good arguments on both sides.

Greene: Both sides.

Walters: But they didn't have it a third time in '75, when I ran for the first time. They had had it before, when Arnett Hartsfield was running in '71, and ran again in '73. I don't think they had a community convention in '73. They just assumed he had run in '71, his name was out there, and he was willing to run in '73. But he lost both times. That was an African American man who had--he was a firefighter, and he had spent years struggling to break down barriers, racial barriers within the fire department. And he had gone to law school, and retired from the fire department, and began to practice law. But he always--the fire department was, and still is--he's still around--was his love.

Greene: So this was basically--there's a ten-year window, probably between 1963 and let's say arbitrarily '75, when you ran the first time, when black politicians are being elected in larger numbers than probably ever before, I imagine.

Walters: Right, because we didn't have any before. We had one, Gus Hawkins. I don't remember when he was first elected to the [California State] Assembly, because he served thirty years in the Assembly before he went to Congress. The year that he went to Congress escapes me now, but Gus Hawkins down here, and there was a man in Northern California, [William] Byron Rumford, and if memory serves, those were the only two black elected officials that we had in California. Then in that window of which you speak, there was a man who was a minister. His name was [Rev. Douglass] Farrell I think, something to that effect. I can see his face; I can't think of his name--was elected to the state Assembly, represented South Los Angeles, and Yvonne Burke got elected along the way there.

Walters: And then Yvonne Burke went to Congress, and Julian Dixon got elected in her place to the Assembly, and Mervyn Dymally got elected before Julian did. Did Mervyn take Farrell's seat? Whatever. And those people, by the time this last convention came along, which had to be about '73--yes, '73 was the year Bradley was elected mayor. [19]69, Bradley was running for mayor, and that's when he lost. He lost that year, and Jim Jones lost, and some people felt that had there only been one black person on the ballot, regardless of office, that maybe they would have had a chance to win. But I don't think so. I think that there were some real flaws in Arnett's campaign, and he was up against some of the conservatives. This is conservative [territory]. I told you about Laurel Martin and Richard Ferraro and Don Newman, and Laurel Martin lost. I just don't think Arnett stood a chance with that, and the concern about the school desegregation.

Walters: The next campaign, '71, a lot of people got behind Arnett and were working for him. It just didn't work out. And, of course, it was still at large. Everybody was running at large.

Greene: This was sort of the impetus of the concern around not running two black candidates at the same time, for fear you might dilute the black vote?

Walters: Yes, yes, yes. Well, if you were running for the same office, certainly you would dilute the black vote. But there was concern about people even being on the ballot. Diane ran in '73, at the same time Arnett Hartsfield was running, but she ran for a different office, not the same seat that Arnett was running for. But some felt that, well, she wasn't well known enough. Others felt that had she not been there, maybe Arnett would have won. And I think Arnett had some problems, his campaign had some problems, so I'm not sure that's the case that had Diane not--right, that that was the reason that neither of them won.

Walters: But in '75, now, Diane had name recognition from having run before. I had a little name recognition, but it wasn't from having been on the ballot. It was just from being around and being active in the community.

Greene: Had somebody approached you--where did the idea of your running come from? Had somebody approached you, or was it something that you thought you might like to do? How did that come?

Walters: No. It was never my idea. Several people talked to me. You know, some I thought were just blowing smoke. But people kept saying, "Oh, Rita, you'd be a good candidate. You know the school district," this, that, and the other.

Greene: Do you recall who some of the folks were who first approached you about the idea of running?

Walters: Oh, a lot of different people, people that I worked with in the school district. Ron Prescott was one of them, I guess, that stands out as probably being the most persistent.

Greene: He was persuasive?

Walters: Yes, yes. Others, and Ruthie Barr was one. I don't remember whether Dorothy Rochelle was one or not, but some of the other parents and what have you talked to me about it. And then people that I worked with outside of that Title I committee, and my neighborhood here. There were two groups that I worked with. One was called Neighbors Unlimited, and it was formed by a Jewish businessman who was active in the Jewish community, and was concerned that--he formed that after '65, after the Watts riot, to try to pull people in this area together, and he did a great job, and the organization lasted for a number of years. His name was Seymour Robinson. He's now deceased, or that's what I'm told, that he's deceased.

Walters: Then there was another organization of parents around the schools, and they were called Parents For:. I told you about the Women For: organization, so they were called Parents For:.

Greene: Same, like Parents For: with a colon?

Walters: Yes, Parents For: with a colon, and Joyce Fiske was one of the major organizers of that, and she was very active in the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union], and in later years became president, local president of the ACLU. She got involved in the campaigns, and we were very close friends. She lived--we were on Hauser, she was on Sycamore. You know, Sycamore is just on the other side of Redondo, one block, in the 1200 block, so we were back and forth all the time. She had a son and a daughter. Her daughter was about the age of my daughter, maybe a year or so--she was between my daughter and Philip.

Greene: Okay, more or less the same age.

Walters: Right, right, right. That's what that was. So I worked with that group, and there were people in that group, like Joyce, and a woman, Jackie Tishler. I know one of the things we used to do when the court case was being tried, we'd go sit and listen to the testimony of the school-district officials, and listen to the proceedings of the judge, and the judge asked the Caugheys--I told you about the Caugheys, John and LaRee. He asked them one time, he said, "Who are those ladies? Are they your daughters?" And I was the only black one, but there were four of us that used to go down there all the time. [Nina Barsky was the fourth one.]

Greene: A contingent, huh?

Walters: Yes. But Judge Gittelson, bless his heart, I told you he lost his seat--

Greene: As a result of--

Walters: --as a result of it. He lost his seat in '69, I believe. So people that were involved in those groups, you know, would offhanded, "Have you ever thought about running for the school board?" And finally that exploratory, that first meeting, Ron and I had talked to a few people before they came to the meeting, to sound them out and see what they thought. So they all thought it was a good idea, and some of them offered reasons as to why they thought it wasn't such a good idea. But, you know, the thing was, "Well, I'll be with you, but--."

Greene: What were some of the downsides that they pointed out?

Walters: Well, they were concerned about Diane [Watson] running again, and what would it do? Would it keep her from getting elected? Well, as it turned out, it didn't keep her from getting elected. She did get elected. She got elected at large, and she was on the board two and a half years I think, before she got elected to the State Senate, and she went on to the State Senate. Merv Dymally got elected, I guess, lieutenant governor, and Diane took Merv's seat in the State Senate, if memory serves correctly.

Greene: So that was the outcome of the first go round, the 1975 run that you did?

Walters: [19]75, right. There was another very conservative woman who was running, Dolly Swift, and everybody was afraid that I would make it impossible for Diane to win, and Dolly Swift, who was horrible, would get elected to the board. But she didn't, thank goodness. I didn't, and Diane did, and things moved on. Before I ran a second time, '77, because I didn't decide--I think I told you--just a matter of hours before the deadline to sign up. One of the people that I did get on the phone and ask, sound out about that, was Diane, and I told her, I said, "Now, Diane, you're on the board. If you are not supportive of me running, then I won't run." So the next day at around noon I met her in her office, or the next morning, whatever it was. I met her in her office. She had called Gwen Moore, and they were talking with one another to see whether they would support me or not, and they agreed to support me.

Walters: So we went on and tried to hash together a campaign, and the same folks that had been there the first time were there the second time. And the first time, talking about community conventions, we didn't have a community convention, but what I had is a kickoff for my campaign, was a meeting at Widney High School. David was a student at Widney High School. It's a school for the handicapped over here, right up over the 10 Freeway. We had a meeting there on a Saturday, and a couple who were both teachers in the school district, and the wife later became a school principal, and the husband had gone to law school, and he was practicing law--he'd left the school district to practice law. But they put together that first meeting, and it was great. It was just great. It was a real kickoff rally. It was terrific.

Greene: When you say it was great, it was because the energy was well organized, because the energy was--

Walters: It was well organized. A good-sized crowd turned out, and the energy was just very high, so that kicked off the first run. And the second time I got this guy, Richard Ferraro, in a runoff, and lost by only 2 percent [in a city-wide election].

Greene: With a narrow margin of 2 percent.

Walters: Right, of the vote. And I lost it in South Los Angeles, you know, just like Tom Bradley had lost the governor's race, the gubernatorial race. One of the ministers, H. Hartford Brookins, who was close to Bradley, he said, "Bradley lost by 50,000 votes statewide." He said, "There are that many votes between Washington and Rosecrans that should have turned out for him."

Greene: So for this second campaign, that's where the runoff happened with Ferraro, right?

Walters: Right.

Greene: So what were some of the groups that were turning people out to the polls in different parts of town, do you recall?

Walters: Well, labor always more or less did the lion's share of that work.

Greene: And when you say labor you mean which labor organizations? Do you mean some of the teachers' trade groups, or?

Walters: Well, the labor is organized in a federation here. The County Federation of Labor it's called, and anybody who's a member of a labor group that is part of the AFL-CIO was considered a member of the County Fed, and they elected their board of directors and their committees from a conglomeration of all these unions, and the teachers' union was part of it. And usually, on something like school-board elections they would take the lead of the teachers' union.

Greene: Which teachers' union?

Walters: Well, the union that affiliated with AFL-CIO, because at that time there were three teacher groups. That was before collective bargaining was a fact. It was meet and confer. But they had three teachers' groups that coalesced and became United Teachers Los Angeles [in 1970]. And AFT [American Federation of Teachers], there was always an AFT, American Federation of Teachers, and then the largest group was CTA, California Teachers Association, were affiliated with CTA. Then there was a smaller group called Los Angeles Teachers Association, LATA [Association of Teachers of Los Angeles, ATOLA]. I think that's what it was, LATA [ATOLA], something to that effect.

Greene: Had you had dealings with some combination of those teachers' unions?

Walters: Right. You're trying to get the endorsements of them. You go around to all these different groups, seeking endorsements, and you go to County Fed and seek their endorsement, because if you get a County Fed endorsement, most of the unions, if not all of them, would go along, because they're representative, where their new representatives had an opportunity to speak up and keep you from getting it, which UTLA did to me--

Greene: In that second campaign?

Walters: No, no, no. I don't think they did in the second. After I was elected to the board.

Greene: I see.

Walters: I don't remember them doing that in the second campaign, but I don't think they endorsed me in the second. I think they went with Diane in her second campaign. My first campaign they went with Diane. My second campaign, yes, they endorsed me in the second campaign.

Greene: So I'm trying to figure out, okay, so if labor's playing a big role in turning folks out into the polls, because you had gotten the endorsement at that point, what groups in South L.A. would have been turning folks out at the time? I know churches don't necessarily turn people out, but were there church-based groups that might have been turning folks out? Were there other organizations that you were aware of in South L.A. that would have been trying to get folks to the polls?

Walters: That's a good question. We had an internal group in that second campaign that Maxine Waters got in. She got involved in different campaigns, and she would make a deal with a campaign to provide campaign services, GOTV [Get Out the Vote], maybe printing or whatever.

Greene: She was Assemblywoman at that time?

Walters: Yes, she was an Assemblywoman at that time. She had worked for Dave Cunningham, who had gotten elected. Dave Cunningham and Bob Farrell had gotten elected to the city council right after Bradley was elected mayor, and with his help, his anointment, they were elected. Maxine worked for Dave Cunningham before she ran for the Assembly herself, but she had someone that was supposed to be organizing GOTV efforts for us, as she did for some other folks, and I don't know what the--

Greene: GOTV, Get Out The Vote.

Walters: Well, yes, I know what GOTV is, but I was going to say, I don't know what the dollar figure was. I don't remember that exactly. But that didn't work, and there was a big glitch on the GOTV for Bradley for mayor. A lot of effort went out, but the last day somehow it didn't quite come together. So those were some of the people that were doing GOTV. As far as churches, church people were involved, but I don't recall any churches having GOTV efforts. Now, they did voter registration, but I don't think they could do GOTV, legally.

Greene: No, not likely, not likely.

Walters: Right.

Greene: And so you lose that second campaign, the runoff actually, to Ferraro.

Walters: Right.

Greene: All right. And then what happened?

Walters: Then I went [back] to work teaching for the school district.

Greene: Okay. Was this the adult education?

Walters: Yes. Right. I had received my degree and temporary credential before that '77 campaign; no, '75, I'm getting it mixed up. I received it before the '75 campaign, but I didn't start teaching prior to that campaign, because I didn't want to start teaching and then start campaigning. Of course I thought I was going to win, but it would have been difficult to do. Now, in '77 I went to work right after the campaign, teaching, taught from '75 to '79, and working in adult ed the hours were flexible enough, because the school district had programs that ran all day and half the night. And I taught during--I had regular assignments in the mornings and in the afternoons, and I could sub in the evenings, and so I was able to work my schedule. I held constant the afternoon classes, gave up the morning and just subbed in there, because most of the places where you had to go seeking endorsements and meetings and stuff, speaking engagements, were morning or evening, and the afternoon was kind of dead time.

Walters: So that was my constant, and then I could sub at night and sub in the morning, and that worked. That was at Evans Adult School. I gave up the other permanent assignment.

Greene: That was in '77?

Walters: [19]77, and again in '79.

Greene: How did you wind up running again in '79?

Walters: That's a good question, because I swore I wasn't going to do that anymore.

Greene: You weren't going to go through that again.

Walters: Right. Yes, that was a painful campaign.

Greene: By now you had name recognition, because you had run--or even more name recognition I should say, because not only were you connected to the groups that you'd been involved in in an ongoing way, but you had already run twice, and also presumably worked on other folks' campaigns.

Walters: That's right, that's right. The thing that convinced me to run in '79 was the passage of Prop M in the fall, November of '79. I had been talking to folks before then, and the general feeling was that I had invested time when I ran at large, and had done so well the second time I ran at large that with Prop M they were certain that I would be able to be successful in that, and I was. I won in the primary.

Greene: And talk to me about--maybe I have a two-part question. One is, what were some of the major issues animating the campaign in '79?

Walters: School desegregation.

Greene: Had that been constant over the prior--

Walters: Yes. Right. It was still at the top of the list. School desegregation, equity for minority children in the school district, black and brown; a resource argument. They were comprised, the majority of kids, on half days. They were in the most rundown schools. They had the fewest books. They had the least permanent teachers. There wasn't so much emphasis then on the scores being released, but with people inside the system working with us we had access to that information. Then you go to the board, and, of course, civil rights groups had been doing that, going to the board asking for data, and so really the board got challenged on its own data, and that's one thing that I--not challenged on the correctness, but challenged on why you tolerate this. "Do you know that?" And that was something I learned from working with Marnesba Tackett and the United Civil Rights Council.

Walters: And the lawyers have a saying that says, never ask a question to which you don't know the answer, so folks feeding you information gave you enough grounds to go and ask for certain information to be collected and released. It's public information. So you know, those things, the achievement levels, the disparity in resources, the lack of desegregation, any effort to desegregate the schools, or upgrade the schools, the lack of permanency in terms of teacher staff, and credentials in terms of the teaching staff, and people not teaching in their major field, and desegregation of teaching and administrative staff, trying to get people moved up the line and moved around.

Greene: So how is it that you win in '79, whereas you weren't able to win in '77? You mentioned the restructuring of the school board through Prop M.

Walters: Elections, yes, yes. I think that was the major factor. I still had the same group of people with me, gained more, got more endorsements in terms of labor, and labor had endorsed me in '77. There was a guy who was running in '77, Howard Miller, who had--he was a lawyer. Have you heard of him?

Greene: He was president of the board at the time, wasn't he?

Walters: Yes. But Howard, he had come to the black community I guess when Don Newman died, and wanted to be appointed to that seat. Most people thought he was a good guy, and he promised he was going to support desegregation, and got on the board and did just the opposite. And black folks were mad. They were righteously angry. So he was running in '77, first election, because he had been appointed, and he was running for election to the seat to which he had been appointed.

Walters: And UTLA [United Teachers of Los Angeles] was supporting him, and they were going to send out a mailer with both our names on it. I said, "No, you can't put my name on there with Howard Miller, just can't do it."

Greene: Now, was this prior to the recall--they tried to recall him at a point, didn't they?

Walters: They did recall him, '79. They recalled him two years later.

Greene: Okay. It was a good move not to have your name on.

Walters: Right. Right. But it was some conservatives that recalled him, because they said he lied to them. He promised them that he was going to vote a certain way, and then didn't do it.

Greene: Oh, I see. So he had gotten into a pickle on both sides.

Walters: That's right, that's right. Howard didn't have any friends at that point, so he got voted down. Then a woman who was the highest-ranking black administrator in the school district, her name was Josie Bain, she decided to run for that seat against me, and, of course, she was a very regal person and the world just bowed down to her. "Oh, she's wonderful," she's this, that, and the other. And I'm sure she was. She had been nice to me, so I knew her, and she had supported me in my prior two efforts, my two prior efforts. But she thought I should get out of the race, because she was in the race. And I said, "No, I'm not going to do that."

Walters: So she decided to run, and she had moved to Encino from Leimert Park. But she gave an address on what was then Santa Barbara before it became King.

Greene: And was that illegal at the time, or was it unethical?

Walters: Sure. It was then and now. Right, it was illegal, absolutely. So anyway, a lot of people didn't think that I could beat her, they thought the black community----. She was a socialite, and everybody knew Mrs. Bain, and all the people who worked for her, she had gotten all these jobs for people, and promotions and what have you. They thought she was going to win, but I won in the primary.

Greene: Help me understand something about the primary. There was sort of a two-step deal into the office at that point, right? Because wasn't there--when Diane Watson moved up to Sacramento, there was an interim position, was there?

Walters: Yes, yes, and I'm glad you mentioned that. Father [Lewis] Bohler, Lewis Bohler was appointed--

Greene: Okay, he was appointed to serve out the rest of her term?

Walters: Right. There was this big movement that some folks organized, to say that the seat should not be left vacant that long. The seat would be vacant from November to first of July, and they wanted--

Greene: This meant that there were six school board members at the time?

Walters: That's right.

Greene: There was like deadlock or something, am I right?

Walters: Right, right. So they wanted somebody in that seat, but there wasn't time to schedule--or the board felt it was too expensive or whatever, to schedule a special election, and then the regular election, the primary, was coming up in April. So the board was persuaded to appoint somebody, and then there was this debate between Josie Bain and I, you know. So the board was told, you couldn't appoint one over the other, because they're both running, so they were looking around for a neutral person.

Greene: Is that you couldn't appoint one over the other because it would anger folks, or because it would create an unfair advantage by the time the election came around?

Walters: Both, both. So Fr. Bohler--

Greene: He was the neutral--

Walters: Right. He was the neutral, right. He was pastor of the Episcopal Church of the Advent over here on Adams Blvd.

Greene: Had you known him before?

Walters: Oh yes, yes. I knew him, knew his wife. He had a son with similar problems to David. They went to school together for a while. And I had just known him before. He was active in the community around a lot. He was well known, and a tiny church but big voice, so I knew him, knew him well.

Greene: So he gets appointed to serve the rest of Diane Watson's term, and meanwhile the contention for the seat that's being created is still underway.

Walters: That's right.

Greene: With you and Josie Bain.

Walters: Right. And also the recall of Howard Miller started.

Greene: That was going on at the same time?

Walters: Yes.

Greene: Oh, okay. So the board composition was getting a lot of attention publicly at that time.

Walters: That's right, that's exactly right. Now, when I won in the primary, they could have appointed me to the seat for the remainder of the term, but Bohler wanted to stay there, and people in the community said, "Oh, let him stay. You're elected. Everybody knows you're elected. You've got four years, he's got four months or whatever, two months. Forget it." So I did, and I went back to work. Well, I had to work, and that was one thing through all my campaigns. You used to hear stories about folks mortgaging their houses to raise money. I told everybody upfront, "Look. I've got three kids. I'm now single. I don't have any income that allows me to go and start mortgaging the house. I'm not going to put my house at risk, because my kids have got to have a place to live." So everybody knew that, and I didn't have any big bank accounts. There wasn't any money I could come up with personally, that's the point. A lot of people would put their personal funds in.

Walters: And I told them, and a lot of people go crazy during a campaign, and just start spending and running up bills like now, like Hillary Clinton, twenty million dollars in debt. I told them, "I cannot have any debts." So Bonnie [James] and Margaret [Scholl Fairlie], my Scottish friend, and Jim Smith, folks that watched out for the dollars, they took care of that money, let me tell you. I didn't owe anybody. The first campaign, I didn't owe anybody a dime when that campaign came to an end--every bill was paid. The second campaign I came out with $6,000 to the good. The guy who managed the campaign, I was so upset with him. "You lose a campaign with money in the bank? That doesn't make sense."

Walters: And then the third campaign I borrowed money. I borrowed $4,000 against a savings account that I had, and I said, "This is a loan. I have to have it back," and I did, I got it back. We raised enough money for me to get my money back. But the same thing pertained. I said, "I can't put these kids at risk." I might have been crazy enough to put myself at risk, but I wasn't putting the kids at risk. So that was the gist of the '79 campaign.

Greene: And you were telling me that you'd picked up some additional support, that it was some of the same groups from earlier on, plus a couple? Were there other--do you recall what some of the other groups and/or individuals that supported your campaign, who they were?

Walters: Well, the labor groups that came along, the Classified Employees, who were affiliated with the SEIU, Local 99, big supporters. UTLA was a big supporter in '79, and other unions. I think the Building Trades supported me. I don't know if the Community College Guild did, but the Community College Guild more or less focused on the community-college races. The Retail Grocery Workers--Gosh, so many labor groups, different groups that were organized within the school district, as well as those who were not part of the school district. And then administrative groups. Now, I'm trying to think, did they--the Council of Black Administrators, COBA, I don't know that they took a position supporting me, because Josie Bain had been one of them, their own. But a lot of people who were part of COBA were integral parts of my campaign.

Walters: And some of the ministers supported me, and some didn't, and that was another thing that was a problem, because Josie Bain's husband was a minister. He was assistant pastor at Holman [United Methodist Church].

Greene: Oh, I see. Okay.

Walters: Yes. And he had--well, was he assistant pastor then, or he still had his own church then? He had Vermont Square United Methodist Church, and then after he retired from there he went to Holman as an assistant pastor. So the church community, the social community, and a lot of the black teaching and administrative community were supportive of Josie.

Greene: Okay. Once you're elected to the board and you begin, were there any discoveries that you made--now that you're on the other side, were there any discoveries that you made once you got on the board, as far as how things worked, or perhaps challenges that you had to confront once you got into the seat?

Walters: One of the things that surprised me was to see how reluctant some people are to make a decision. They get up and run a campaign, you know, "I want to go there, and I want to represent you," and what have you, and you get down to the nuts and bolts of the thing, and they're trying to find wiggle room to not commit themselves, and I was surprised by that on the one hand, and on the other hand, the conservative folks surprised me in that day and time, that people could still harbor such feelings. But they did. So those were two things, and there's probably others as well.

Greene: Were there--busing is still a huge issue at this moment, right? It seemed to be a huge issue for quite some time, right?

Walters: Right. Right.

Greene: What were some of the debates and decisions that were going on that you can recall around busing at the time?

Walters: Well, whether we were going to do it or not do it. And then when the court said you had to do it, they were trying to find every blessed way under the sun not to do it, and that's when a State Senator by the name of Alan Robbins put this measure on the ballot.

Greene: Was it voluntary busing, versus mandatory, or something?

Walters: Yes, yes, voluntary vs. mandatory transport. But the State of California said, "Fine. You don't have to put your kid on a bus, but you do have to put your kid in the school to which he's assigned."

Greene: As opposed to a more metropolitan kind of approach?

Walters: Right. They didn't want a metropolitan approach. They took it all the way to the Supreme Court, and that's where Crawford ended with a thud. The Crawford case, you know, really never got heard as such, but it was subsumed in this Prop A, Prop 1, Prop something thing that Robbins had put on the ballot, so that was that. And right after that decision was made, handed down, the court handed the thing down, it was like in the spring, maybe March, April. The conservatives on the board wouldn't let the kids stay in the schools and finish out the year. They brought all those kids back home, made them go back to their home school. And there weren't that many white kids who were being bused, but they wanted the black kids out.

Greene: Wow.

Walters: Black and brown kids, you know. And then the overcrowding became such a problem, as more and more people were coming.

Greene: Because they were returning to their--

Walters: Well, coming to the city, to live in the city. The population was growing, just ballooning.

Greene: So overcrowding became a huge issue.

Walters: It was a huge issue, and sort of moved the desegregation--well, the desegregation had been moved to the side by the court.

Greene: And what kind of things were you hearing from constituents at this time, or from constituent groups at this time? Were there demands being placed on you, sort of as a new representative of that district, to sort of make certain things happen, or try to ensure that certain things got addressed, and if so, what did that look like?

Walters: It looked like the need for cleaner campuses, the need for more books. It's a resource argument. The need for more and better teachers, decent food. I know my youngest son said--he graduated in June '79, just before I took my seat, and he said, "Mom, if you don't do anything else while you're there, would you get some decent food in the cafeteria?" [laughs] The food was always an argument.

Greene: And who was it--talk to me a little about the board composition at this point. Were there folks up there who you felt like you could work with to make some things happen? Were there folks you repeatedly bumped heads with?

Walters: Kathleen Brown, the governor's sister, and John Greenwood, who was elected from the harbor, I could work with. The conservatives who were on the board at that time, Bobby Feidler, Roberta Weintraub--Ferraro was impossible. He was just an impossibility. And in '79 who was the other person on the board? I should know that in my sleep.

Greene: You said Feidler, Ferraro, Weintraub, Brown, Greenwood.

Walters: Who was the other person?

Greene: Whoever it is, I'm missing their name.

Walters: Well, let's put a pinhole in that, and I'll try to get back to you with that name.

Greene: Oh, was it--it wasn't [Julian] Nava yet, right?

Walters: Oh, Nava had come and gone.

Greene: Oh, already?

Walters: Bob Doctor was elected in--Jim Jones was '65, Bob Doctor was in '69, and Julian Nava I think was '67, and I think Julian served like twelve years and left, so he left at the time I came on the board. So maybe he served just ten years, who knows. I came in '79. That's what happened. Nava came in '67, and then Bob Doctor was elected in '69, and Bob Doctor was defeated in '77 by Bobby Feidler. And Julian Nava, I think he just decided not to run again in '79.

Greene: Just as you were coming on.

Walters: Just as I came on, yes. And I know he left at that time, because I got his office space.

Greene: Phillip Bardos was gone?

Walters: Bardos was gone. Yes, they had quite a changeover there, because John Greenwood and I were elected, and Roberta Weintraub in '79. She completed the recall.

Greene: Right. That was when Miller was outgoing.

Walters: Right. Right. And even though I had been elected in the primary, because of that interim appointment, she was elected in the general, but she actually took her seat right away. So she was there a couple of weeks before the first of July, and I took my seat the first of July. So there were three of us, at least three of us that were new folks. Ferraro was ongoing, Feidler was ongoing. I don't know why I can't think of this other person that was ongoing, either ongoing or had been elected to.[End of interview]

1.6. Session 6 (June 10, 2008)

Greene: This is Sean Green interviewing Rita Walters at her home on June 10th.

Greene: Good afternoon, Rita.

Walters: Good afternoon, Sean. How are you?

Greene: I'm good. How about you?

Walters: Good.

Greene: All righty. So maybe we should begin, you mentioned that there were some things we talked about before that you wanted to clarify for the record, particularly about your time in Huntsville, Alabama, at Oakwood.

Walters: Yes.

Greene: Tell us about it.

Walters: At Oakwood Academy and Oakwood College. You had asked me about the courses that I took when I was attending Oakwood College. Whatever I was saying to you that I had taken, I think I said English and a couple of other things, I only went to the college one semester and only took a couple of courses, because the first semester that I was there for the college years, I was working at the college and trying to build up a reserve money to finance the second semester while I was there. Also my sister was going, and she was taking a full load there at that time, so I was trying to help her, as well, to get through. I was late, my sister and I-my sister is two years younger than I, Barbara. We graduated high school at the same time, because I had been a partial dropout in two or three years working my way through high school. I wasn't working on the job, just working through the course work and stuff, and teenage problems and what have you.

Greene: Sure.

Walters: So I was late graduating from high school, and then money was a problem by the time we got to college. So that's what I wanted to clarify, that I was not a full-term student-

Greene: Oh, I see, the timeline. Yes.

Walters: -in the college portion while I was at Oakwood.

Greene: Yes, because you were working at the same time.

Walters: Yes, right.

Greene: Very good. Very good. Well, thank you for that clarification.

Greene: That was a fast-forward in time, a bit, something-and pick up where we left off the last time. We talked about your committees for the Board of Education in L.A. and your successful campaign in 1979, and you had mentioned at the end of our conversation that you had a kind of broad-based and very multicultural support. I wondered if we could start there. Tell me some about the composition of, if you will, the supports that you had at the time and what might have been unique about it.

Walters: Well, I think it was unique in that it paralleled somewhat the kind of base of support that Tom Bradley had had when he ran for mayor. I had a lot of support from Jewish people who lived on the West Side. Some of them still lived, at that time, in Baldwin Hills and around. But I had Asian people, Latino people, who were all part of the coalition that came together. I think that I had that kind of support because I had worked in civil rights and had been very much a part of the struggle for school desegregation, and in giving speeches and what have you, and in working with groups, and in going to conferences and attending, there was always the talk about the worth of all people and the respect that all people, regardless of gender and ethnicity, deserved as we all struggle together to try to make our way through this world. So that kind of base was reflected in my supporters and people who really just hung in there and worked very hard, and I had that kind of support all the way through my political career and I was honored and very pleased to have earned that kind of support.

Greene: I may have asked you this before. I know we talked about some specific congregations and things like that the last time. I wonder, as you recount for me the kind of broad multiracial support that you had, are there any organizations that stand out in your mind? I'm sure there were individuals, but are there organizations or individuals that stand out in your mind, folks that folded in over time sort of behind your candidacy or behind some of your efforts, whether it was school or city council?

Walters: I had, for the school board, in the first two races-well, probably the second more than the first-strong church support, but then negating circumstances, like the first race there was another African American running for the school board-

Greene: Diane Watson?

Walters: Diane Watson. And the second race I was running against an Anglo guy, this guy Richard Ferraro, who was very right-wing, so that didn't provide any conflict as far as support went in the black or liberal community. The third time I ran for the school board, the impediment-not an impediment, but the competition-that's a better word-was Mrs. Bain. Her husband was a prominent minister, assistant pastor at Holman [United] Methodist [Church]. He had had his own church and retired from that. I'm trying to think of the name of the church and it's slipping my mind. It was near Vermont and Vernon. I'll think of it and let you know. [Vermont Square United Methodist Church]

Walters: So that was competition for the ministerial support, but the churches were, for the most part, very nice. Whether they would support me or not, whether the minister was going to say he would support me, they would let you come in and make a pitch to the congregation. Of course, as it turns out, they really aren't supposed to publicly say they're supporting candidates anyway, because of their financial status, nonprofit status.

Greene: Sure.

Walters: So that's how that went. Some of the ministers I had better relations with than others. Some didn't like it because I didn't belong to a church, and I was very adamant about the need to have church and state separate. Some people don't always feel that way.

Greene: Sure. And I imagine you got some pushback from taking that kind of position.

Walters: From some.

Greene: Okay.

Walters: From some, but it wasn't anything heavy-duty. One minister-a couple of them, actually; this was after I was on the board- some wanted to run, free, a summer Bible school in the schools. No, can't do that. What you can do is rent the space, pay for the space and utilize it, but you can't utilize public space to teach any one religion or any religion. So that didn't go over too well. And some of the ministers like a lot of attention, and I wasn't too high on that.

Greene: Got it. Got you. We talked a lot the last time about school desegregation and also Prop 1 and how it made it through the Supreme Court.

Walters: Right.

Greene: Well, it died there, right, in terms of the mandatory busing and so forth.

Walters: Right. For California, that's where it died.

Greene: Yes.

Walters: The L.A. Times did-Paul Conrad, who did these cartoons, did a cartoon of Judge Egly, who was the last local judge handling the Crawford case [except for the final, local judge, Robert B. Lopez, who issued an approximately 1-2 page decision putting it to rest in 1981, after Judge Egly had been reversed by the California 2nd District Court of Appeals. The 2nd District returned Crawford to the L.A. Superior Court and Lopez acted.], did a cartoon of him on the steps of the Supreme Court, with the justices of the Court stabbing him in the back.

Greene: Wow.

Walters: Yes.

Greene: Wow. I guess since we're in this time period, maybe you could tell us the story about your confrontation-or no, the harsh words that were said about you once upon a time. [Walters laughs.] You talked about the bus stop group-

Walters: Yes.

Greene: -and the kind of staunch opposition that existed on the Board of Education for mandatory busing.

Walters: Right.

Greene: And if I'm not mistaken, at times you were the only person on the board, at least, to stand for integration of schools and for the busing program as it was being discussed at the time.

Walters: Right, and there were a couple of folks that I don't think that they felt in their hearts this great staunch opposition. They weren't going to get out there.

Greene: And who was that?

Walters: Kathleen Brown, for one. She wasn't in staunch opposition at all to school desegregation, but it just wasn't the hill she was going to die on. And John Greenwood, who was the representative from the harbor area, there was a good deal of opposition in the harbor area to school desegregation, and he was a man who had worked as a CORO director and what have you. He had a broader vision of the world, so I would not count him as a staunch opponent to it, but again, it wasn't a hill he was going to die on. Unfortunately, at a later date, I guess after he had served two terms-two terms or one term? Anyway, he was defeated by a gentleman, a Japanese gentleman from the Gardena area who just recently took a seat in the State Assembly, Warren Furutani.

Greene: Warren?

Walters: Warren Furutani, F-u-r-u-t-a-n-i. And I told you that initially when I first went on the board there were only six of us. There was this empty seat because of the shenanigans of this guy Ferraro who, while holding the seat, at-large seat-this was in the transition from at-large to district elections-he ran for a district seat and won the district seat in East L.A. by going around telling people he was Latino. The man he was running against, whose name was Mardirosian, he was an Armenian by birth, but he had grown up in Mexico, his family had left Armenia during the genocide and had fled to Mexico, and that's where he grew up and then later migrated to the United States, and he had worked all of his life in the East L.A. community, pastored a church over there. He was a minister and worked so hard with the Latino community, and they considered him Latino, but Ferraro capitalized on the fact that he wasn't Latino.

Greene: And that's why we couldn't remember the seventh person.

Walters: That's why we couldn't remember the seventh person.

Greene: So he wasn't occupying two seats, but essentially he-

Walters: He did; he occupied an at-large seat.

Greene: Okay.

Walters: He had been on the board since 1969 and he occupied an at-large seat. In '79 when the district seats, the law was passed to allow for election to school boards by district, he held onto his at-large seat. His term wasn't up.

Greene: Oh, I see.

Walters: While running for the vacant seat, because Julian Nava was the Latino on the board and he was retiring from the school board, so Ferraro jumped in that race that Mardirosian was running for, and Mardirosian lost, Ferraro won. So for a brief moment, Ferraro was holding two seats.

Greene: I imagine, at least in the board, kind of stayed in the deadlock situation that it had been for a while?

Walters: Yes, and eventually appointed a person to that seat, a Filipino gentleman by the name of Tony Trias.

Greene: Tony Trias?

Walters: Right. Then Tony served out whatever length of time was still on there, I guess a couple of years, and he lost when he was running for election.

Greene: Oh, I see. Was he pro integration?

Walters: No.

Greene: No.

Walters: No.

Greene: [laughs] Emphatically no.

Walters: Well, he wasn't a right-winger, but I think Tony was interested in elective office. I don't know that it mattered much which elective office. He didn't have any particular commitment one way or the other.

Greene: I see.

Walters: The conservatives on the board had supported him, so he would vote with them.

Greene: I see.

Walters: As he used to be fond of saying, he was the swing-he was the guy in the middle, the deciding vote. One of the problems he had was deciding-

Greene: I'm wondering now if-

Walters: -in my opinion. I don't want to slander the guy.

Greene: Sure. Of course.

Walters: I don't even know where he is. He never held another office.

Greene: Oh, I see.

Walters: Right, and I don't think there was anything malicious about the man.

Greene: I wonder about-so if Proposition 1 then stalled in the Supreme Court, I wonder then does that mean integration, as it were, didn't die, right?

Walters: Well, it died as a matter of functionality.

Greene: Okay.

Walters: As I recall, the decision was handed down by the court maybe late March, mid-March, something like that, and the conservatives on the board moved right away. We were coming up to the Easter vacation. They wanted all the kids backed out of any deseg[regation] programs, if they were being bused, transported, if they were assigned by the district to-[tape recorder off]

Greene: Okay.

Walters: We were talking about the end of the mandatory desegregation programs in Los Angeles. It came about immediately following the U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down Proposition 1. And I say "immediately." It was just a matter of two or three weeks. Easter vacation was coming up and the conservative majority on the board, to which I referred to as "the gang of four," decided that they wanted all the mandatory portion, all the children who were traveling mandatorily on the buses to be returned to their home schools following the Easter vacation.

Greene: So, really mid-year.

Walters: Right.

Greene: Right in the middle of the-

Walters: That's right, right in the middle of the second semester. All the literature, at that time-and I'm sure it still does-speaks to the importance of continuity in the education of children for it to be as stable as possible, with as few changes as possible, moving around from school to school or neighborhood to neighborhood. But despite the fact that the kids had not completed the year, they didn't want them to complete the year. The year was over at the end of June, mid-June, and they demanded that it be done, and that's what happened. That was one of my lowest points on the school board emotionally. It was terrible.

Greene: In terms of being very frustrated with how things were playing out?

Walters: Yes, because of the impact on the children. It wasn't Rita Walters and Roberta Weintraub in an argument. It wasn't the liberals versus the conservatives or the people who supported desegregation against people who didn't support it. The children were directly at the end of that decision and immediate in that decision. Parents didn't have time to prepare. Nothing. Had to get accustomed to new teachers, new surroundings, all at once, and how do they understand that? How do they internalize that?

Greene: It was very disruptive.

Walters: Extremely so. In my opinion, it was extremely disruptive. So that was pretty bad.

Greene: I wonder were there-what was the reaction of groups outside of the board, like community organizations and so forth that had been vigilant up until that point, civil rights groups that had been vigilant about busing, do you recall some of the reactions that groups had to the decision and to the way mandatory busing sort of went down in flames?

Walters: Well, some of them were pretty cynical. Some of the people were pretty cynical about it, and more so individuals than organizations. By that time I don't know that there were too many organizations, at least in the black community, who were overjoyed with the idea. They wanted kids to have a better education, but they didn't care if they didn't get on a bus to go get it, and that was a brewing internal-internal to the black community-sentiment and argument about our kids -some of the more militant people and groups were opposing school transportation for purposes of integration.

Greene: So at this point, then, if not busing as a way of pursuing education equality, then what? How did the agenda change after that? Did the priorities shift?

Walters: More emphasis was put on the voluntary aspects of it.

Greene: Okay.

Walters: The magnet school aspects of it, which were volunteering. And legally they couldn't shut down the voluntarily aspects of it, although probably some of them would have liked to have done that, but that wasn't something they could legally do. So there was more emphasis put on that.

Walters: And then one of the problems that was increasing by leaps and bounds was the overcrowding situation was ballooning because of the influx of Latino children. The schools were just bubbling over, so that that became a problem and it just sort of transitioned from deseg to overcrowding, the emphasis.

Greene: This was in the early eighties?

Walters: Like the mid-eighties, you know. Transportation was for the purpose of getting kids out of overcrowded schools and classrooms and off the half-day sessions, and so they had to make room in the schools where they had come from. Now, some schools wanted to segregate the kids within the schools, you know. Yes.

Greene: Really?

Walters: Absolutely. I visited, I remember, Grant High School at one point, and you'd see these classrooms that were almost all black and classrooms that were almost all white, and at lunchtime parts of the cafeteria were separate, the whole thing separate but equal, supposedly, you know.

Greene: Was that through some kind of tracking mechanism?

Walters: Yes, they were tracking kids and they were saying, well, these kids, like in a math class, they haven't had algebra before they came to the tenth grade like some kids. Well, in inner city, you couldn't get algebra before the tenth grade. When my daughter was going to school, I had the biggest fight. I had to go all the way to the superintendent to get my daughter in a ninth-grade algebra class. And it wasn't because she was not capable, she was very smart and highly capable, but that was just a little game they played that some of the people and individuals here, that school, John Burroughs right over here, not far from here at all, the principal would not allow her to be admitted to the class. Because the year was going fast, I did not want to go through the area superintendent and all the chairs. I just went to the superintendent of schools and he took it on, but the principal was still very reluctant to make the move.

Greene: Is that right? So, overcrowding becomes the sort of prominent issue at this point, in the mid-eighties.

Walters: Right. Right, and there were other issues like community involvement, Community Advisory Councils attached to the school. Some people wanted to move out of the PTA structure because it was too regimented and they were not-even though they were local to each school, their structure was imposed on by the state and national organizations. PTA was a national organization and not a local. Community Advisory Councils were local to that community, and I worked on advisory committees to set up those throughout the school district.

Greene: Were they attached to particular schools or were they district, from some district?

Walters: They were supposed to be attached to each school. Each school was supposed to have a Community Advisory Council.

Greene: Is that right?

Walters: And we set up a means of governance and what the elected should have a certain percentage of teachers or a percentage of parents, administrators, other folks in the community.

Greene: Was it staffed? Was there a liaison of some kind?

Walters: No.

Greene: No. Okay.

Walters: Well, they had a staff, had part of one of the offices downtown. I think it was what was called the Urban Affairs Office, but it may not have been Urban Affairs. I'm not sure. It wasn't the Office of Instruction. I don't recall right now the exact office that had oversight of those committees, but they worked under the aegis of the local superintendents. I think at that time there were probably eight to ten administrative areas that had local area superintendents.[brief interruption]

Greene: So the Community Advisory Committees were seen as a kind of local response to what was usually a kind of top-down approach of the PTAs?

Walters: That's right.

Greene: Okay.

Walters: And they were more flexible in their approach and what parents could do in the schools and that sort of thing. It wasn't the tea-and-crumpets attitude that the PTA had.

Greene: What kind of business would Community Advisory Committees typically take up?

Walters: It sort of depended on what they were. At John Burroughs, I was elected president of the first one that they had, and we had parents there who were interested in curriculum changes. Some were interested in more minorities being reflected in the history that was taught in social studies. Others were interested in an expansion of math and science courses.

Greene: So they were really getting into the nitty-gritty of how the schools operated.

Walters: Oh, absolutely. That's right. Absolutely.

Greene: As opposed to how you'd describe PTAs as operating and being a support to school.

Walters: Oh, right. Right. Right. Right, they got down to policy.

Greene: Okay. Interesting.

Walters: Some of them, some schools would raise money to paint the schools, because they didn't get painted very often under the school district because they didn't have the money. They'd arrange volunteer things. A bunch of parents would come out on a weekend and, like, paint a certain number of classrooms or paint part of the outside or whatever.

Greene: So it was really a vehicle for involving the community.

Walters: Yes, that was the whole notion, to get parents more involved in the schools and with overarching notion that by doing these things, they could get acquainted with one another and come together in a more positive way to work for the support of the education of the children, regardless of what color they were.

Greene: Can you recall any incident-did any of the committees ever run into trouble because they were too assertive or hands-on?

Walters: Yes, some they did, and some thought that they were the managers of the school, and that had to be defined. They were not the managers of the school; they were not the principals of the school; they were not to give orders. They were advisory in nature, not anything mandatory that they could determine. But the smart principal had good ears, you know, and would listen and try to work together with them. There were some principals who weren't going to have any of it, you know, so that was a problem, too. Then there were some principals that communities were having a problem with and the communities went to work to get them moved. So there was a range of activities and responses.

Greene: Have they ceased to exist?

Walters: No, I think in some form or another they're still existing. But one of the things that happened while I was on the board-and I opposed it-during the union and district negotiations, the people on the board who were the most ardent union supporters wanted it and the teachers themselves, the unions had requested the teachers be 51 percent of the people in the Advisory Committee. And they said, "Then it's not a Parent Advisory Committee." And it came down to 50-50, which was also a block, because there were other people from the community, like businesspeople and what have you, that had joined and most often would be sympathetic to teachers. So that was a real breakdown. To me that just flew in the face of what they were originally established to do. They became a pawn in the struggle between management and the staff.

Greene: Oh, that's really interesting. So what it suggests is that they weren't simply viewed as a vehicle for parents to engage with policy making, as far as the schools were concerned. The unions also saw it as potentially something that-

Walters: Right, and some teachers didn't like the idea of being involved with parents on that level. But other places, they worked beautifully, just beautifully. So it just varied from location to location.

Greene: Tell me about your C-average initiative that you put forward. When did that come about?

Walters: I can't give you the exact year, but sometime in the mid-eighties [1983 approximately].

Greene: Mid-eighties, okay.

Walters: '83. '82, '83 maybe.

Greene: Now, how long were terms on the school board?

Walters: Four years.

Greene: They were four years?

Walters: Four years.

Greene: So this would have been something that you proposed just at the start of your second term or around then?

Walters: I was elected in '79, so that meant I had to be reelected in '83. It was probably like '81, '82 when I introduced it.

Greene: Okay.

Walters: And it came about because of a series of articles that the L.A. Times did about-I think it was fifteen years after the Watts riots. Well, maybe we can back in. The Watts riots were '65. Fifteen years would have been 1980, right? So I guess it was subsequent to that, so it was either '80, '81 when I introduced it. They ran these articles over a period of several weeks or maybe a couple of months and then bound them and you could get copies. One of the articles that I had read when it was in the paper and then read it again in the book as published, the booklet-it wasn't a hardback book.

Greene: You could request it from who?

Walters: From the L.A. Times.

Greene: Oh, I see. Okay.

Walters: Was about schools and the athletes in the schools and which schools put more emphasis on athletics. The question was what happens to the academics. And one of the examples that this reporter found, there's a Catholic school called Verbum Dei out in the Watts area, and they have the city's champion basketball team. But he looked at the number of those kids that, (a), finished high school; (b), went on to college; or, (c), just wound up nowhere, and then what happened after they got to college. This one kid he found was recruited from Arizona to play on UCLA's football team and he came here. His name was-I thought I'd never forget his name, but I have. Anyway, he was brought from Arizona to play on UCLA's football team and he got into trouble. He wasn't going to practice and he got into drugs, and anyway, was mixed up in a murder and was sentenced to prison. During this sentencing, the probation department does a probation report as to whether this is a fit candidate for probation or what type of sentencing. The judge looked at the material on this kid and found out he couldn't read above a second-grade level.

Greene: And he was in college.

Walters: At UCLA!

Greene: Wow.

Walters: The state school for the top twelve and a half percent of the students in the state, and they had recruited him out of state to come-Billy Don Jackson was his name-to play on UCLA's football team. So that intrigued the reporter, and he went on from there, and one of the things he said in that article in conclusion was that school boards had no rules or policies about participation in sports activities. I was stunned, and I found out not only did we not have any rules with respect to sports, we didn't have any with respect to any extracurricular activities. Now, when I grew up in and was going to school in Kansas, they had those rules. My mother had those rules that you either did your homework, got your lessons, making decent grades, if you weren't, you know, you were going to cut out some of the other stuff. And Oakwood certainly had it. There they graded you on your behavior; decorum, as it was called. Your decorum grades had to be up. You were graded on housekeeping, how you kept your room.

Greene: Really?

Walters: Yes. The dean went around the building at the dorm, whatever dorm you were in, she made her rounds, and he at the men's dorms. They got graded every day on what their rooms looked like.

Greene: Inspection.

Walters: Inspection. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I said, "I can't sit here as a school board member and not try to do something about this." So I talked to a few friends of mine, advisors and supporters, campaign supporters, and they were sort of split down the middle. They said, "Oh, you can't do that."

Walters: "What do you mean, you can't do that?"

Walters: "Well, sports is the only thing that keeps---- or other-extracurricular activities are the only thing that keeps some kids in school."

Walters: I said, "So what do they do when they're out of school if they haven't studied and learned?"

Walters: So that was a big hooray. I got more feedback, blowback from that in the African American community than I did in the white community.

Greene: Is that right? What were some of the responses to it?

Walters: Well, some of the responses to it, I remember I went on TV with a coach, he was coaching at Belmont, and his whole thing was, "Well, what these kids are capable of is playing sports, and you're going to take the one thing that they're good at away from them."

Walters: Give me a break. How about teaching them and then you see what they're good at? But that was it.

Walters: Other teachers, English teachers, math teachers, came down and said, "Hallelujah!" [laughs] They said they had more problems with coaches coming and trying to get them to change grades so that little Johnny could play a certain game, they were having a home game, or even a tennis game. We had some teachers coming down, people coaching tennis. Girls were involved as well as the boys. And then some of the Anglo parents, they had drama classes in their schools. Well, there were drama classes in some of the inner-city schools, too, but they didn't come down, but they came down. "My daughter won't be able to play this part, and this is her big opportunity," and [mimics parents].

Greene: So you were catching it from all sides, huh?

Walters: Right. Such superficial nonsense.

Greene: Yes. Yes.

Walters: You know? What are you going to do with these kids when the cheering stops?

Greene: Yes.

Walters: What are they going to do with themselves? They've got to learn, and an C-average is nothing.

Greene: And your sense is that some of the teachers felt like this was kind of reinforcement for what they were trying to do in the classroom?

Walters: Yes, definitely. I got letters to that effect. What I got is many letters and more saying it was the worst thing you could ever do. So as I introduced it initially, it was a C-average with no failing grades, and the no-failing grades was in there because if a kid had a C-average, they could get an A in office service and an F in geometry and still have a C-average. And it lasted like that for a couple of years, and then the board got together and reintroduced it and took the F out, which meant nothing; it was just toothless.

Greene: Oh, I see. They took the teeth out of it, you say.

Walters: Right. Right. But there was a lot of-that was before the NCAA. I didn't follow sports. I didn't know anything about the NCAA, let alone that they had a debate going there about requiring some type of academic achievement as a function of participating in extracurricular activities. Mine, I said flat out, extracurricular activities. It didn't matter whether it was band, whether it was drama, whether it was the newspaper.

Greene: So it wasn't that you were targeting any particular-

Walters: That's right.

Greene: Like you weren't targeting the basketball or football team.

Walters: Right.

Greene: I see.

Walters: Right, and a lot of people accused me, they said, "Well, she's not interested in sports. She doesn't know anything about sports," and they were right, I didn't know anything about sports. I knew a baseball from a basketball and used to go to basketball and football games when I was in school. In Oakwood we didn't have any intramural sports. My family, as I recall, they were interested in the Negro League baseball teams, and then when-the first guy to go to the Dodgers. Robinson. Jackie Robinson.

Greene: Jackie Robinson.

Walters: Went to the Dodgers, then baseball became a big thing. My dad was excited about it, my uncles were excited about it, and what have you. In gym class when I was growing up, we used to play baseball-that was softball, I guess-and I never went out for the track team or anything like that.

Walters: But anyway, they thought I wasn't interested in sports. I got interviewed by-oh, I can't remember the reporter's name. He was a big reporter on ABC World of Sports, World News now, and it came on on Sunday evenings. He came out here and interviewed me and asked me how many players are there on a football team or baseball team. I don't know how many players. I gave him the wrong number. I guess he asked baseball and I told him eleven or something. [laughs] He played that part of the interview.

Greene: I'm sure.

Walters: But anyway, as far as I was concerned, the issue wasn't what I felt about sports, the issue wasn't what I achieved in school, it was what was going to happen to these kids, and they couldn't get anywhere in this world then or now without a decent education, and the place to get that was starting in elementary school all the way through high school. It was too late to get up to graduation day and say, "Oh, what am I going to do from here on out?" But it was difficult.

Greene: I imagine there were other sort of moments of controversy that you encountered either in terms of your support for certain measures or putting forward certain measures. You mentioned once something called the Ten Schools Policy.

Walters: Oh, yes, Ten Schools Project.

Greene: Ten Schools Project.

Walters: Right. That was built on the notion-some friends of mine worked in the schools, we were always getting together talking about what we can do to raise the achievement level of African American children. They had an organization in the school district called COBA, Council of Black Administrators, and I used to engage with them on a regular basis and we were talking about what could be done. This money, desegregation money, was still flowing to the district to-yes, and they still have some deseg money to design programs for enhancing of the achievement of minority students, and if you could bring them in together with white students, that was fine, too. So a lot of the kids, the busing became a one-way busing program, voluntarily busing program, for purposes of deseg, to relieve overcrowding. Relieving overcrowding quickly took over as the largest portion of that program.

Walters: So we had the idea that if you could back out everybody out of a group of schools-and we chose the ten lowest achieving schools over time-and hire only the teachers who wanted to work there, and it would be a rigorous program, a hectic schedule, and people would have to be willing to invest their time and effort with the children and with the parents, working with the parents and the children and some dynamic administrators who wanted to be there, experienced principals, experienced teachers, and other teachers, too, if they wanted to participate. But the teachers union had a clause that a teacher could transfer after three years on the site, and we wanted a five-year commitment that nobody would leave. So we wanted, first, people who wanted to be there; second, as much experience as you could get; three, people who would give you a long-term five-year commitment, to the extent that's long term, across the board. Well, we weren't able to achieve that. The teachers union wouldn't support it.

Greene: Was this U.T.L.A.[United Teachers of Los Angeles]?

Walters: Yes. They wouldn't support it, so they said anybody who was teaching at any of the schools who wanted to stay could stay, that they didn't have to leave. So there was encouragement for people to leave. So they got some new people in, but not all new people. Of course, the ones that stayed, in a lot of instances, were the ones who wanted to be the first to go. And the five-year commitments weren't honored. But the results, I left the board right after it was implemented, and the results weren't what we had hoped for, but they showed some progress.

Greene: And the idea was to get a new crop of committed teachers into the schools?

Walters: Right, to see if holding constant teachers and administrators for five years, who made a commitment to stay there, who wanted to be there, who felt that they had the talent to work with the kids or the dedication to work with the kids and see if that improvement occurred, and parents, a group of parents who were willing to be cooperative with the teachers, who were willing to work with the children and the teachers and administrators, to assist everybody working on the periphery for these children in the middle. So in some places it worked better than others.

Greene: I wonder, when you say that it was shown to not have been as successful as you might have liked, do you know that because the board would commission evaluations of-

Walters: Oh, every year.

Greene: Okay.

Walters: Every year there were tests, and of course there were state tests on a regular basis, not every year until No Child Left Behind came along. But-

Greene: Oh, I see. So you're measuring in terms of the students' achievement.

Walters: Student achievement.

Greene: I see, that would coincide with the policy.

Walters: Right.

Greene: Okay.

Walters: There were other components for which they were never fully funded. One of the things I desperately wanted and it started out that way, with elementary-these were all elementary schools, ten elementary schools. Elementary schools don't have counselors on a regular basis. I wanted counselors in there who were not paperwork counselors, scheduling kids' classes like they do in the high schools, but who work with families and children in trying to help them work through problems that they were having. My feeling and the feeling of others was that some of these children you can see that they're headed for trouble, problems very early on, and if there could be some intervention strategies into that behavior, some alternatives that would be very positive and give the children a sense of worth and accomplishment, that you'd eliminate a lot of problems by the time they got to junior high school and middle school then and high school. That was a very expensive component, because we wanted to keep the caseload low. Counselors in high schools have six hundred kids, minimum six hundred kids.

Greene: Yes.

Walters: So they become attendance people and programming classes, you know, schedules. So that was the basic idea behind-not only counselors, but a school nurse at every school, full-time school nurse, full-time counselors. Expensive positions.

Greene: What kind of support did you receive from these particular-

Walters: Well, I had the support of the staff, the superintendent and the staff, and he put a group of folks to work that came up with the curriculum and all the managerial kinds of things that needed to be developed, and they had meetings during the summer with the teachers. In-service training was essential and that, again, was expensive because there was a clause in the teachers' contract that they had to be paid their regular hourly rate or whatever the rate was for that in-service training that they had agreed on. That was already in the contract, so this would certainly fall under it. And we wanted aides in the classrooms, teacher aides. So it was an expensive.

Greene: So it was a comprehensive-

Walters: It was comprehensive and expensive, right, but I thought if we could do it in ten schools, that we could identify the factors that were most successful, most successfully implemented, and then the factors that showed the highest return on the effort that had been put into it and replicate that out from those ten schools.

Greene: Were there people besides the teachers union that took issue with some aspects of the program? Were there maybe not so much individuals, but were there bodies of folks or organizations that-

Walters: No. No, I don't think so, or at least I don't recall any right now. I do recall individuals, though, that didn't want to move and thought it was unfair and they were being singled out and their reputation and they'd have to drive so far, and they couldn't go where they wanted to go, blahdey, blahdey, blah. But aside from the teachers union there really was not an organized opposition to it. We weren't talking about moving children away from their home school, so we didn't have stuff from the parents, and it was really in response to what parents were saying about these teachers that don't want to be here and that aren't teaching the kids and aren't prepared. The idea was if you assume that given the resources, people will do their best.

Greene: Yes.

Walters: Whether it's the children or the teachers or administrators. That was the idea, give them all these resources and see what we could come up with.

Greene: That just strikes me that it also became a way to direct resources toward struggling schools.

Walters: That's right, and these were the struggling schools that had scored lowest year after year after year after year. So folks couldn't say we were cherry-picking. But that was something I had high hopes for, but it didn't quite come out. One, the resources that were committed didn't all arrive, whether they were human resources or other types of resources, materials, books. It shouldn't be that hard to get something together. It was only ten schools out of a district of 435 elementary schools. You'd have thought we could get ten together.

Greene: Was there a lot of public debate that you can recall around sort of not just achievement gap kinds of things from, say, one area of the district versus another, but the equity issues that you seemed to be trying to adjust?

Walters: Yes.

Greene: Was there a lot of public discussion about those equity issues?

Walters: I was always talking about the equity issues and that equity was not demonstrated in ten books going here and ten books going here, that there had to be something else along with that, otherwise we were separate but equal, and the court decreed that separate was never equal, and to count just ten books here and ten books here was saying that it's separate but it's equal. Equity, to me, was a larger concept. So we tried to get that across. This whole notion, Sean, of the lack of achievement on the part of minority children was something inherent that couldn't be changed, and that makes you crazy.

Greene: And they just take it for granted that it's got to be like that.

Walters: Right, absolutely, that we're all dumb and stupid and will never be able to learn. I mean, give me a break.

Greene: You've described to me how you encountered time and again that mindset in some cases among some administrators, unfortunately, right? In particular was it-I guess I'm trying to ask, did you see the board move? As you participated in the board, did you see the board move on these issues either in recognizing the importance or in coming around, so at least trying to address them, albeit in impartial ways?

Walters: If I did, or thought I did, at varying points they'd throw water on it. Like a document that the superintendent had put together well in advance of No Child Left Behind, it was entitled, "Children Can No Longer Wait." He had a group, a large group of teachers and administrators working together to bring this document to fruition.

Greene: Which superintendent was this?

Walters: Harry Handler. They brought this, and the gentleman that he put in charge of that later became superintendent in Laguna Beach. I'll think of his name in a minute. They came up with this document of all these guiding principles, and they brought out a lot of information, a lot of data, hard data, with respect to achievement and non-achievement, where it was, where it wasn't, and what it would take and what it would cost. They costed it out. As I recall, the first year of it would take 69 million dollars to implement. Yes, and everybody raised their eyebrows. So we passed that in theory only, with the notion that we'd go to the legislature and try to get this money. Well, it never happened.

Walters: But during that debate when the staff brought that and presented it to the board and it was over a period of time, they didn't present it all in one meeting, two board members sat there, and just without prompting, said-well, part of the statement, part of the premise of the document was that every child can learn. And they said flatly, "We don't believe every child can learn."

Greene: Oh. Which two members were these?

Walters: Weintraub and Korenstein.

Greene: Oh, okay.

Walters: And Korenstein is still there.

Greene: Really?

Walters: Yes. Korenstein wasn't-you know, she certainly wasn't a racist. I never thought she was a racist or hard-grown segregationist. She worked on Jesse Jackson's campaign. But she didn't believe every child could learn. Roberta didn't believe every child could learn. Of course, as these cartoons indicate, Roberta was sort of an elitist. But every child can learn. They've got to be taught. They've got to be given the chance. They've got to be believed in. They've got to have resources at their disposal. And if a kid needs a one-on-one instruction or one-on-five instruction, then they deserve to have that. You know, throw kids in a classroom with thirty, thirty-five kids and expect them to learn?

Walters: Anyway, when you asked did I ever see the board members coming along, every once in a while, every once in a while. And board members changed and had different views. We had one board member that got elected, Leticia Quezada, who was a firm believer in bilingual education, and she was able to bring most of the board along on bilingual education, and then it got shot down at the state. After I left, people went bananas about bilingual education and didn't want it in the schools, but I believe in bilingual education and supported bilingual education. I used to teach, I think I told you, English as a second language and had students from all over in a jillion different countries coming here struggling with learning the English language. And while we take English for granted, it's a very hard language to learn. I just saw how hard these people struggled with that, and I thought we were the only industrialized country who's monolingual. That's terrible. You can travel around the world. I did. Even in China. I was visiting a museum, they had us on a guided tour, and they had been doing some painting in there, and the odor of linseed oil was oppressive and it just made me ill. I said, "I've got to go sit outside." There were some benches outside, not far from the buses they brought us to the museum on. This elderly gentleman walked up to me and started talking and he's speaking in English.

Walters: I traveled throughout Japan by myself, couldn't speak a word of Japanese, other than whatever, a couple of little words, "Thank you," "Hello." [Domo Arigato] is "Thank you." That I could say. But I never had to ask more than three people for directions where I was trying to go if I was mixed up. It was wonderful, wonderful for me as a person. But a Japanese person couldn't come here not speaking any English, not having any ear for any English, and be able to get directions, credible directions to where they wanted to go. Can you imagine somebody walking up here on Wilshire Boulevard stopping people, speaking in Japanese?

Greene: Good luck. [laughs]

Walters: Yes, good luck is right.

Greene: I'm recalling from our earlier conversations when you talked about the United Civil Rights Council and how folks would come to the board meetings and monitor, or in some cases, advocate for certain things.

Walters: Right.

Greene: I wonder, by the time we fast-forward in time, I would see the Civil Rights Council isn't there, or at least not in the same capacity. I'm trying to figure out where you found sources of support when you were that lone voice advocating for busing or integration more broadly, or when you were raising the equity issues. I'm wondering, were there folks who would come up for the public comment period or were there organizations in the crowd that would sort of advocate on the other end for these things as well?

Walters: The organization that I told you about, Women For-

Greene: Yes.

Walters: They did that, followed pretty consistently. There was a woman, Rosalind Cooperman, whose husband was a judge, and Roz had been very active for years. I met her through the PTA. Roz is the most faithful person. She came week after week, year after year, and she could take shorthand. We talk about Spanglish. Well, she would, however you would mix shorthand and regular English. She had these voluminous notes meeting after meeting after meeting. She spoke quite frequently on behalf of Women For and then as an individual parent.

Walters: Then there was this Parents For organization that I told you about that we formed in this area.

Greene: Oh, yes.

Walters: It was an integrated group. Two of the women that had worked very diligently with that organization, we went together last Friday to Karen Bass' inaugural ceremony here. They would come down with groups from their neighborhood or as Parents For. There were two schools here that we paired up, like the-I think they called it the Princeton Plan, where they took two schools close together and put half the grades in one school and half in the other, two elementary schools. These schools were less than a mile apart. It was Crescent Heights and Canfield Elementary Schools. They're not far from here. They're on Canfield. They were both on Airdrome, set on Airdrome Street, but one at Crescent Heights and one at Canfield Street, intersecting streets. They worked for years diligently to integrate those two schools, just, "Let's start here," and finally were able to do that.

Walters: One woman, Nina Barsky, her husband, Howard Barsky, had gotten a group of people together and they studied school boundaries and how they intersected and how many blocks there were, how far people had to travel within a particular school's attendance boundary to get to that school. One of the things they found, Fairfax High School, where David works, up here at Fairfax and Melrose, and L.A. High right down the street here at Olympic Boulevard and Rimpau, the attendance boundary for L.A. High extended a mile behind that of Fairfax High. Fairfax is-you looked at the way they were drawn, literally drawn around minority communities or poor communities, and it was amazing, just amazing what they found out in those boundary studies.

Walters: So that became a factor in the argument as the lawyers argued the Crawford case, the gerrymandering of school boundaries. So those were, you know, individual citizens that came down, maybe a small neighborhood organization or Parents For, one that took in several neighborhoods. There were African American parents in South Central and in Watts. One woman in Watts, I think I mentioned her name to you before, Dorothy Rochelle. Dorothy was a soldier on that battlefield. Annie Richardson, who lived over here in the West Adams area. Mary Keipp, who was an individual parent, now, she served on the SCLC board. She was white. Her husband was a doctor. But she lived in West Adams. She had five or six kids and you'd have thought she was the mother of all the kids in the neighborhood. She had a big old house and it was always full of kids and pets. But she spent a lot of time.

Greene: Keipp was her last name?

Walters: Keipp. K-e-i-p-p. She's working on some program now at UCLA. But, yes, there were individuals and small groups of people who came down and advocated for things that they were interested in or wanted, thought would be good for the school district, for the children.

Walters: Burt Lancaster's wife was one of the early ones that organized a group called Transport a Child, where they lived in Bel Air and they said, "We have a school up here that doesn't have many kids in it. Bring the children here and let's raise money to transport these children." So hence, the name Transport a Child. They would have fundraisers to raise money to bring kids from the inner city out there to Bellagio Road to school. Then they got some other schools that participated, as well.

Walters: So individual people put out a lot of effort and it worked. I firmly believe that Los Angeles was the place where you could have made mandatory desegregation work had it not been for Bus Stop and folks becoming faint of heart in the face of Bus Stop. Politicians were afraid to speak up because they might not be elected, which was true. They got rid of the first judge on the case, Judge Gittelson. It brought out a lot of viciousness, and we had some people that were just bound and determined that these things weren't going to happen. Some pretty ugly stuff.

Greene: I bet. I bet. You know, looking at a couple of other things on the list, some flashpoints that we had talked about in passing before, there was an issue of-there was a teachers' strike. Do you want to talk about that some?

Walters: That was pretty rough. I think the year was '88. I think. I'm not sure. Settlement was triple-eight, 8 percent a year for three years, so I may be getting the year mixed up with the settlement. [laughs] But that was rough. It went on for quite a while, and I did not support the teachers. The first teachers' strike here in '69 I supported. I was on the picket line with the teachers every day. And the slogan for them, "Teachers want what children need," and I believe that was the case at that time. Then there were three or four disparate teacher bargaining groups. California had a meet-and-confer law then; they did not have a collective bargaining law.

Greene: Okay. That means that there were different groups representing teachers?

Walters: Yes, different groups of teachers. Collective bargaining was passed. A collective bargaining was passed subsequent to '69. I don't think there was a collective bargaining-no, there was no collective bargaining in '69, but in '69, as an outgrowth of that strike, all the teachers' groups came together and formed the United Teachers of Los Angeles. That was where the "United" came from.

Walters: Now, the CTA [California Teachers Association] group maintained its independence within that group, but they're still part of UTLA [United Teachers of Los Angeles], and they changed off leadership at whatever period of time, they elect a president. Then AFT [American Federation of Teachers] was the other major group there and they did likewise, so, you know, a president of UTLA serves more than one year; two or three years or something like that, I think. It would be a CTA and an AFT person, and it would go back and forth. It was subsequent to that, several years subsequent to that before collective bargaining came in, because collective bargaining was an issue, I know in the first campaign, and I said I believed in collective bargaining and there were person who didn't believe in collective bargaining for teachers, but they got it eventually through the state action.

Walters: What was the rest of the question?

Greene: The strike.

Walters: Oh, the strike. The strike in '69, I think was six weeks. I'm not sure of the one subsequent to that in, perhaps, '88, '89, whenever it was, was quite as long, but it was long and pretty bitter. So I think that they thought, you know, if they walked out, that the board would cave because they had a solid four votes.

Greene: The issues was raises?

Walters: Raises, right. Right, and at a time when we didn't have any money.

Greene: Okay.

Walters: And the board overruled the recommendation of the superintendent and went forward with the triple-eight settlement. I was the only one that voted against it.

Greene: Even though there wasn't money for it?

Walters: Even though there was no money for it. Right.

Greene: That's a recipe for something.

Walters: Right. Now, UTLA had run, after the end of my second term, they had run a candidate against me. I think I told you about that.

Greene: Yes.

Walters: Mark Ridley Thomas was the candidate who ran against me. He was the person who ran against me.

Greene: Oh, I didn't realize that. Actually, I think we had talked about that.

Walters: Yes. But I won, and I was up for reelection again in '91, and so they thought, you know, they were possibly going to run a candidate against me again and try to take me out because I had opposed the settlement, but they weren't running anybody against me, because you had to file for elections like the first of January or sometime in-January you had to file for elections for those spring elections. But I was slated to run and had already built up a good-sized war chest. Then a good-sized war chest, I had like $30,000 on hand that I made at one fundraiser, at a party at somebody's house, and the tickets were two for $99. So it wasn't any heavy-duty money; it just a lot of people. Kind of like Obama's campaign, you know, a lot of people paying a little adds up to as much as a few people paying a lot.

Walters: Then Gilbert Lindsey passed away in December, and I decided to run for his seat.

Greene: Oh, I see.

Walters: Yes. So I had to move from my home into the Ninth District. I had an aunt, my husband's aunt, my former husband's aunt, I moved in with her. She lived in the Ninth District.

Greene: She was in the-

Walters: Right. Right. Then after I won, I got an apartment of my own.

Greene: So that's how your run for the City Council came about when Gilbert Lindsey passed away?

Walters: Right.

Greene: Did someone talk you into it?

Walters: Several people had started talking to me. He went into a coma. He had a stroke, bad stroke, and the staff was trying to hide it and hide where he was. He was supposed to-somebody raised the question that he was outside the district, he was at a hospital in Inglewood, Daniel Freeman. And the L.A. Times ran a picture on the front page that they took in the middle of the night one night when they were moving Gil out of the hospital to an ambulance to a hospital in the district, in the city of Los Angeles, not in his district, there weren't any in his district. Well, there was one California hospital that was in his district, downtown, but they took him someplace else, I think Queen of Angels. I'm not sure where they took him now.

Walters: But he was in a coma like that for about a month, and then after they moved him, I don't know, it was a week or two that he passed away. But people started talking to me then, because they said, "Look. Gil's ninety years old. We doubt he's coming back. You ought to think about this. It's an opportunity."

Walters: At first I said no, and then I decided. I hadn't talked to you much about Julian Dixon. He was a very close friend, congressman, and major advisor to me in my campaign, and supporter. I called him up on Sunday morning. There was this article in the paper, again, about it, and then Gil died a few days later. He [Julian] said, "Well, let's talk about it." So he came over to the house and we spent a whole day going over pros and cons. We had a couple of other people there, his staffers. So I thought about it another day or so, and decided I would do it.

Greene: Okay.[End of June 10, 2008 interview]

1.7. Session 7 (June 13, 2008)

Greene: This is Sean Greene, interviewing Rita Walters at her home on Friday the thirteenth, 2008. How are you?

Walters: I'm fine, Sean. It's good to see you again.

Greene: It's good to see you as well. We're going to pick up where we left off the last time, and I wonder if you could tell me how was it you came to succeed Gilbert Lindsay in the 9th Council District in Los Angeles.

Walters: Gil had had a stroke, or some impairment that made him incapacitated, really incapacitated for some time. He'd been in the hospital I think maybe a couple of months, and people had started, as they would given Gil's age, because he turned ninety just before he died--started talking about his replacement, somebody to run for his seat. One of the things was that most of the politically oriented people, or people who could mount a good campaign, didn't live in the 9th District, so they not only had to find a candidate, but somebody that was willing to move into the Ninth District, or establish residence there and run for that office.

Walters: Several people began to talk to me about it, and at first--through all the years that I had been in politics, this other opportunity came up. I was adamantly opposed to moving, because I had my children. David was comfortable where we were, and he could get around on the bus and knew that part of the city, so I really wasn't too interested in moving. But at the time Gil passed away, it was a particularly difficult time at the school board. We had had a strike not too long before. This was the fall of '91; no, it was the fall of '90 that Gil passed away, because I was elected in '91, spring of '91, and took my seat July one, '91. [Was June 14, 1991 because the seat was empty. The general election was the 1st week of June]

Walters: So we had been through the strike, and there was a struggle. The teachers union was demanding these site councils that were 51 percent teachers, and it was that kind of struggle. We ultimately settled on 50-50, but 50 percent of the parents group was--the parents didn't have 50 percent. The teachers had 50 percent. But the business people and other people in the area had part of that other 50 percent, as I recall.

Greene: Were there also school based administrators as well?

Walters: Yes.

Greene: So parents were outnumbered on all sides.

Walters: Yes. So the details now of how it finally worked out escape me, but anyway, it was a lot of tension and arguing back and forth, back and forth about this. The salary issues were a problem, and the balancing the budget was always a problem in the school district, because they really have very little control over the budget. After Proposition 13, the local budgetary control was really limited, because school districts were the only governmental entity under Prop 13 that was forever forbidden from raising a tax. They used to be able to put a bond measure on the ballot. Well, they can still put a bond measure on the ballot, but they have to have state approval and all of that sort of thing. And they had to go to the state hat in hand to get money. There wasn't that much money generated at the local level.

Greene: All this was because of the cap on property taxes.

Walters: Because of the cap on property taxes, whereas the property tax had formerly provided the bulk of the school funding, and then some from the state. Now it flipped, and the property tax went to the state, and the state gave us back what they wanted us to have.

Greene: You were saying, the property taxes, the inability of the schools to--

Walters: Right. They couldn't--in years past, for example, if they needed money to balance a budget, or I know at one point they didn't have money to give a raise, but they did have enough money that they could add millage, or a small tax on the ballot locally, to fund health benefits. But that's no longer possible. You can't do that anymore.

Greene: Do you recall either political responses to--it's a two-part question, really. When do you suppose either in retrospect or from your vantage point on the school board a few years after Prop 13 passed--do you have a sense of when the effects of it started to be felt, and what some of the community and the political reactions to it were?

Walters: The effect was immediate, because one of the things we had to do was start cutting classes and cutting teachers. The folks that didn't want to pay taxes said that there was too much fluff in the schools, and we didn't need to spend all the money we were spending for stuff that didn't count. And the back-to-basics movement was in flower then, and so back to basics meant ejecting art and music out of the schools. It was terrible. Art classes went, music classes went, but the football team didn't go, and as far as I was concerned, I would have cut football teams and kept art and music, but it didn't happen, or tried to achieve a balance somewhere in there. But that didn't happen.

Walters: And eventually through the years, what used to be termed shop classes, carpentry, machine shop, printing, things that would give kids some type of training that they could get a job when they got out of school. My youngest son, who's now a licensed contractor, and he had gotten interested in carpentry because his father did such good carpentry work, and his uncle, but he took a carpentry class in high school and made a beautiful butcher-block table for our kitchen, and his instructor wanted to buy it from him. I said, "No way. He's not going to do that." But he had something tangible that he could do if he wasn't going to college, and it was important to kids, I thought, to do that.

Greene: So those were some of the things that went on the chopping block almost immediately, you're saying.

Walters: Right. And the shop classes took longer than the art and music, unfortunately. That was cut early on. Cuts in libraries--elementary schools, not all elementary schools had libraries. Very few of the elementary schools, if any, had a dedicated librarian in the libraries. The teachers would take the kids to the library. But the high schools had libraries, middle schools and high schools, and had a dedicated teacher librarian. But those were cut back. Hours that the library was open were cut back. Essential things like that were cut back.

Greene: How did community organizations and other political groups react in the face of these kinds of cuts, which I imagine were being felt across a range of services?

Walters: Yes. And talk about it being cut across a range of services, school maintenance was always at the top of the list for cutting, because the crying was always, cut as far away from the classroom, don't cut in the classroom. And so the folks that aren't in the classroom, who are they? The maintenance people, the cafeteria workers, and administrators. And, of course, the teachers union and other people as well always said that L.A. Unified [Los Angeles School District] was top heavy with administration. But as compared with other school districts across the United States, as a percent of students and other personnel, L.A. was not top heavy. But trying to get folks to believe that, you know, it was very difficult.

Walters: One of the things that I believe has been a direct result of Proposition 13, as they try to cut administration out of school--the teachers union classifies anybody as an administrator who was once a teacher and is no longer in the classroom, doing something out of the classroom. And they felt that--left to the more radical ones, the district didn't need any administration. Some people felt--we had a member on the school board who felt the schools didn't need a principal--

Greene: Really.

Walters: --that teachers could do it collectively. But we couldn't, and one of the things that occurred that I think was a direct hit on the instructional program, and the kids suffered from it as a result, and are still suffering, is the lack of instructional-support personnel. Used to have teacher advisors that would go out to the schools, visit the classrooms, help the teachers plan their lessons, showed them how to deliver a particular lesson on a particular subject, how to work with children, and teachers need that kind of reinforcement, particularly new teachers, and we had a slew of new teachers all the time. So that was one of the harms of Proposition 13.

Walters: And I remember doing--Wilson Riles was school superintendent. I was a member of the school board, and Howard Jarvis was head of--you've probably heard of him. He was the guy that headed up the Prop 13 forces, the conservative forces, anti-tax forces, and they still have a Howard Jarvis Association. Howard Jarvis had tried for years to get something akin to Prop 13 passed, and it never did pass. He was always trying to cut school budgets. Anyway, on this television program, I think it was on Channel 4 here, KNBC, we were being interviewed about Prop 13's impact on the schools, and Howard Jarvis said, "It didn't make any difference. Kids don't learn anything anyway." And that was his idea about schools. "They don't need it. They don't learn anything anyway." So, you know, he was just, I felt, in my opinion a hateful old man who did not like kids, and did not like government, and didn't want to pay for anything.

Walters: And, of course, that ushered in--all that came together about the same time as the "Me" generation, and the [Ronald] Reagan approach to things, you know. "Take care of yourself." People look out for themselves. "I'm important, not you."

Greene: Or no notion of the greater good of anyone.

Walters: No, of whoever. Consider the greater good for the greater number; that just wasn't thought of anymore. And certainly in the writings that the conservatives were doing, in their lectures, in their campaigns, they were just putting all that aside. Fewer people were having children, and people began to question, well, if I don't have any children, why should I support schools? Well, you may not need a policeman, but folks want to support the police. More law enforcement, they certainly want that. And I don't think one ought to be pitted against the other; we need both. But folks--it was a very one-sided approach to things, and they didn't want--you'd hear all the stories about the welfare queens and that sort of thing.

Greene: Now, I take this as, in some respects, the context in which you are finishing up, or you're serving your term on the school board, and about to make this transition to the city council.

Walters: Well, Prop 13 was enacted before. It was enacted in '78, wasn't it, '78, and I went on the school board in '79, so the impact--I think your question was about the impact--the impact was immediate and continuing. That would have been a better answer, shorter answer to that. It was immediate and continuing.

Greene: It's very helpful, because in your response you sort of moved forward in time, sort of from the immediate impact that you described, to an increasingly conservative political environment that is the backdrop to really the rest of your time on the school board, I believe. Is that right?

Walters: Yes, yes, definitely.

Greene: You mentioned that a number of people approached you as they were trying to figure out who might succeed Gilbert Lindsay. Who were some of those people, do you recall?

Walters: Well, Marnesba Tackett, of whom I've spoken to you about before. She was one of the first people that called.

Greene: She was still very active on the scene?

Walters: Oh yes, she was still active in her church, and active somewhat politically. She was not out front anymore, but still a very respected voice in the community.

Greene: She was affiliated with, was it Second Baptist [Church]?

Walters: She was affiliated with Second Baptist Church. Her husband had been assistant pastor there until his death, and he died early. He died in '58 I believe it was, yes, April '58. But she was still active.

Greene: Was she in the Urban League as well? Was she an Urban League member?

Walters: Well, I'm sure she was a member, but she was not on the Urban League board. She had been more active with NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People].

Greene: She was with NAACP, okay.

Walters: Right. She was more active with NAACP, and with the United Civil Rights Council, and then when the United Civil Rights Council folded, she headed up a housing, Fair Housing organization, and then headed up the SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] here, and the Martin Luther King Legacy Association. She formed the Martin Luther King Legacy Association. But she was the first female that had held executive director position with SCLC, and she held that for a number of years, during which she still spoke out, and education was still her focus. She devised a program and got it funded through the school district, that worked with parents in the schools, to help parents, teach parents how to help their children succeed academically, and assisted parents in that regard, and she had had some success with that.

Greene: If she was director at SCLC, at some point she would overlap with Mark Ridley Thomas?

Walters: Mark came after Marnesba.

Greene: I see. Okay. All right.

Walters: Yes. Mark was active with SCLC before Marnesba retired, and I believe was a member of the board of SCLC prior to Marnesba's retirement. Then Marnesba retired and went back--her private business was selling insurance and real estate, so she went back to that after she retired. Plus her community activities, she still kept those up. At one point she said, "You know, I'm never going to retire again." She said, "I'm busier now than I was when I was working, and I'm just not going to retire anymore."

Greene: Sounds like quite a spitfire.

Walters: Oh, she was, she really was.

Greene: So she was one of the folks who asked you to consider, or asked if you'd consider running?

Walters: Yes, right. And other people, friends here and there would say, "Well, you know, we've got a seat coming up." Of course, whenever there was going to be a vacancy or an election, you know, folks would start talking. "Who's going to run for this? Are you interested? Are you going to run? Is so-and-so interested? Are they going to run? Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that?"

Greene: Were there other folks that were opposed to it that stand out in your mind, that had mentioned it that you off the top of your head recall?

Walters: Yes. Friends that--I had one group of friends that never wanted me to even think about leaving the school board, and another group of friends that felt, well, there's a lot of things on the political landscape that are larger opportunities, in terms of the number of people whose lives you can affect, and in terms of expanding your own horizons, you know. So.

Greene: So why would you consider, why would you want to run for a seat on the school board? I remember you had mentioned that for a moment at least, your frame of mind was such that you probably wouldn't run for another office.

Walters: For the school board, or for the city council?

Greene: For the city council. It wasn't necessarily the first thing on your mind at the time.

Walters: No. When city council--I didn't particularly think that city issues were as interesting as working for children, although they're extremely important, and once I was there there was a lot of interest in working through those problems that existed there. But one of the things that had occurred with me now, I was coming up on--I was completing twelve years on the school board, and they were getting more and more filled with tension and backbiting, and just this constant struggle with the teachers union, when we should have been working together.

Greene: Is that because resources were shrinking, and so the stakes were getting higher?

Walters: Well, I think that was part of it, but the other part of it was I think some of it was philosophical. I think there was, you know, on some issues, like the administrative-versus-teacher business, for example. I was very, very dismayed with some of our school-board members, because we had a school board that was almost totally supported by the teachers union, and they had four solid votes that they--one member would sit at closed session, and something would go down with respect to the union, and she would walk out of the room and come back and say, "Helen's not going to accept that." Helen was head of the teachers union. I mean, that kind of thing.

Walters: Marnesba, for example, when I was elected to the school board she said, "Now you're one of them." And she said, "You've got to remember that." And she said, "So we're going to still come down and present before the school board, and make demands on the school board, but you are now officially a school-board member, so you have to look at all sides of the problem, and we only have to look at one side."

Greene: You're saying not everybody drew that separation in terms of their role and their relationship to outside pressure groups?

Walters: No, no. Right. So I was not viewed with favor, or looked upon with favor by teachers union members at that time, and particularly the leadership of the union, and some of my colleagues on the board. It was just a very tense struggle with them. And I'm not the easiest person in the world to get along with, so I'm not the most accommodating person in the world.

Walters: So I remember on an interview on school desegregation, the interviewer asked me, after one of the court decisions would it now be easier for me to compromise. I said, "How do you compromise on somebody's civil rights? There isn't any." But there just wasn't that understanding or commitment to that issue, that there are some things that you can't compromise on, that there's no compromise to be had.

Greene: Now, help me understand something. I guess what I'm trying to figure out is, what was it about your priorities that placed you increasingly at odds with the folks on the board that were connected to the teachers unions, for example? Was it that the teachers unions' priorities had changed, or was it that in the changing political climate, the equity issues that you were outspoken on needed to take a backseat to something that the teachers union wanted? Help me understand what it was that placed you at odds with the teachers unions' preferred members of the board.

Walters: Well, I think that the teachers union--like I said before, the first strike in '69 or '70, '69 I believe, their slogan was "Teachers want what children need," and I firmly believed that that's where their heads were, and I marched with them on the picket lines, and raised money. At the local school where my kids were, the parents got together and raised money for striking teachers there, and some of them did tutoring sessions, teaching sessions with the kids in various homes while they were out on strike, and we raised money for the time, and paid them for the time that they gave.

Walters: Ten years later, however, I felt the issue was different, that equity was getting a short shrift to the money issue, and teachers were woefully underpaid, and I think teachers are still underpaid. But the big change that came in there was Prop 13 that sort of pulled the financial rug out from under the school districts, not just LAUSD, but school districts throughout the state, and then on top of that we had the fight over school desegregation. There were teachers that didn't want to support that as well, but the leadership never took an anti-desegregation position. The position they took, however--the court said that the teaching staff had to be integrated, and they were going to move the teachers around and reassign them. The teachers union was not supportive of that at all. We had areas of the city where there were no minority teachers, so that was an issue. But black teachers were opposed to that, too. They wanted to stay, very often, where they were. They preferred a predominantly African American or predominantly minority school, and didn't want to desegregate. So that was an issue.

Walters: But I think the largest equity issue that was a problem with the teachers union was that--and myself, problem between us--I felt that once a teacher came to work and was hired for the school district, the school district should have the say so as to where they were assigned. If I go to work for the post office, they don't tell me, if I say I want to work for the post-office branch that's six blocks from my house, they don't guarantee me that that's where I'll work. They say, "You'll work where we send you," and I might wind up in Downey somewhere, or way out in Chatsworth. You go where you're sent. But they didn't see it that way, and they wanted to go where they wanted to go. They wanted the teachers to have first right of refusal as to where they could go to work.

Walters: And the school board members supported that, and I remember one of the school teacher union officials said--and I reminded him what their slogan had been--he said, "Kids don't pay our salaries, teachers do."

Greene: Wow. That was pretty bold.

Walters: That was pretty bold. He said, "That's the way it is." And so they worked for what--union staff worked for what the teachers wanted.

Greene: From your standpoint, being able to assign teachers is important because schools in your district were losing out under that formula?

Walters: Yes. I felt that we paid teachers for experience. They got an increment for years of service, advanced degrees, any outside learning. If they took sabbatical and took trips and whatever, we paid for that sort of thing. That to the extent that that was of benefit to the children in the classroom, and that was the basis on which we were paying them these added increments, then it ought to be shared equally, that experience factor should be shared equally with all the children in the school district.

Walters: We had this lopsided assignment policy. You'd go into inner-city schools and, you know, 80 percent of the teachers would be inexperienced, new teachers, teacher staff turning over year after year after year, not a stable teaching staff. And particularly then, they had to go three years, teach three years before they could get tenure. As soon as that three years was up and they got tenure, they were out, transferring to some other school, and I wanted that stopped. Well, I saw that as a real equity issue.

Walters: Another equity issue had to do with the overcrowding of schools. Right down Olympic Blvd. [near downtown] here there is a school called 10th Street School, and at the particular time that I was taking notice of it, it was an elementary school with like a thousand or twelve hundred kids packed in there, half-day sessions. You'd look at the teacher's salary per student in that school, and it was vastly lower than the expenditures for teachers salaries at a little school that we since closed, in the West Valley, where they had a seven-acre campus for an elementary school, which was very unusual. I think they had like three or four hundred kids, and this school down here had maybe two acres, three at best at that time--they've expanded it since then--with all these kids packed in there. Well, the per-pupil expenditures were vastly unequal, and all experienced staff, a principal, experienced principal, and none of that was down at 10th Street.

Greene: How was it that the per-pupil expenditures could vary so much from one part of the city to the other? Like how does it happen?

Walters: Well, they said it was because of the experience factor.

Greene: Oh, because they were able to command more.

Walters: More money. The teachers there were making more money, because the district rewarded experience. And if the district rewarded experience, why didn't they spread that reward around the inner-city in the forms of transferring experienced teachers to inner-city schools? Weren't the kids in inner-city as justly deserving of the teachers' experience, benefitting from teachers' experience as any other kids?

Greene: That was what was at issue for you?

Walters: And see, that had nothing to do with desegregation.

Greene: Right, right. That was a basic distribution question.

Walters: Yes, distribution of resources. In terms of other resources that were inequitably distributed, books, other paper and pencils and stuff, and part of that was, folks weren't always given instructions in how to order, how far ahead of time you had to order, and how to keep up with your inventory so that you never ran out of things, out of supplies.

Greene: Where did some of the groups that had supported you in your campaigns fall on these issues? Were there ways available to them to back you when you took these stances, for example, against other board members, or at least in the public debate around some of these things?

Walters: Well, you know, sometimes once folks elect somebody, everybody sort of goes back to their own business as usual. "Well, we got so-and-so elected. Now they'll take care of it."

Greene: Yes, yes.

Walters: And so that's what it was. I know sometimes I'd make requests for folks to come down. There were parents who did. I know one issue we had, that there was a proposal on the table to reward the teachers with the salary increase they wanted, but in order to do that they were going to have to either not give, or give a much smaller amount to the classified employees, the custodians, cafeteria workers, etc. And I raised Holy Ned about it. And on that, other folks came and joined me. I remember that Maxine [Waters] and I got together. I called her. She was very supportive of the teachers union.

Greene: Maxine was?

Walters: Yes. And I told her what they were doing. So she agreed to come to this meeting. We had it in an Urban League training facility down on South Figueroa. And she told them in no uncertain terms--oh, and they were going to run legislation, which in years past, after I left the board, it's now been run, that allows the teachers union to get paid, get a higher rate of increase in their pay than other employees in the school district. But she told them in no uncertain terms that she would see that such a bill--that they suffered if they put that through.

Greene: Maxine.

Walters: Right. So she was in the [California] State Legislature at that time.

Greene: Yes.

Walters: And other black legislators up there did the same thing.

Greene: Is that right?

Walters: Yes, because all of us were supported by labor. But they quit supporting me. Other unions supported me, the teachers union, and then the teachers union, the way the County Federation of Labor works, on an election so to speak, the other unions like Building Trades, look to the in-house unions, teachers union, classified unions, as to whom they should support, and they will follow their lead. Like for the city elections, AFSCME is probably the leading union there, and SEIU, so UTLA [United Teachers of Los Angeles] and other unions, Building Trades, would look to AFSCME and SEIU as a cue to whom they should support.

Walters: So they kept me from getting a federation endorsement, but individual unions supported me. Like I always had the support of the classified unions, SEIU. And I remember once the postal workers, I didn't get the endorsement of the postal workers, because the guy said, "Well, UTLA isn't supporting her. Why should we support her?" And he didn't know anything about me. It wasn't personal.

Greene: That was a common practice for them?

Walters: Yes. Right.

Greene: Then I'm going to shift back to campaigning for the city council, but before I do that, once you run and win city council and move over to the city council, who is left on the school board to advocate for the kind of equity issues that you were outspoken about, and who took your place in the district?

Walters: Barbara Boudreaux took my place. Barbara and her husband had been advocates for equity and equal rights. They worked that as teachers, and Barbara as an administrator [and as a school board member]. But after I went to city council, you know, I always told Barbara and Genethia [Hayes] behind Barbara, even though I didn't support--Hayes, she served one term.

Greene: She was affiliated with SCLC at one point, too, wasn't she?

Walters: Yes, she took Mark's place.

Greene: I see. Okay.

Walters: But, well, Genethia was working for Mark. He was still director of SCLC when he got elected to the city council. But Genethia was heading up that portion that Marnesba had started with the parent group. You know, I told them, "Call me if you need me, any way I can help let me know." And even though I did not support Genethia's campaign against Barbara, once she was there that's what I told her. But Genethia in my opinion was [Richard] Riordan and Eli Broad's candidate. But she always spoke to equity. She spoke to what she saw as equity issues.

Greene: How did your campaign come together?

Walters: Okay.

Greene: I was about to ask, so when did you make your decision to run for city council?

Walters: Gil died, and there was this article in the paper about both his death and what was going to happen, because election season was just about to open. Filing for these seats was just about to open. So it was one Sunday morning I was reading the paper, and there was a number of articles in there about some shenanigans at the school district, and I was really, Sean, just so frustrated with it, and trying to make some sense out of all this stuff for kids, and I wasn't the only one trying to do something for kids. You know, other people in their way were, I suppose. But that particular day, I was up to here with it all.

Walters: And aside from that, it was quite a personal struggle, personal financial struggle to stay on the school board. The salary was raised 50 percent while I was there. When I took the job, it was $12,000 a year, a thousand dollars a month. Along the way we got a 50 percent increase, which took it to $2400 a month, and that was another problem with UTLA. We had to go to the legislature to get our salaries raised, and they blocked it every time that we tried to get salaries of school-board members raised, and it's still blocked. Those people are the lowest-paid elected officials in the City of Los Angeles.

Walters: There was a mechanism that we could have gotten it through the city council. Teachers union blocked it there. So, you know, the battle was not only political; the political became personal. I didn't mind the sacrifice, as long as it looked like it meant something, was going somewhere. But then just everything had gotten on my last nerve, so I said, well, maybe I ought to take a look at this. So I called Julian Dixon, with whom I was very close friends, and he was a premier political advisor, and talked with him that Sunday morning. He said, "Well, let's talk about it."

Walters: So he came over and brought a couple of his staff members, spent the day, and we were just battling and back and forth, what if, all these different scenarios, you know. Are you ready for this, are you ready for that? What would you do in such-and-such case? What do you think ought to be done about this, that, and the other? Just walking it through. How do you think you can raise money? All those questions that have to be dealt with. And after that the decision was, well, we'll wait a couple of days and mull it over, you know, perhaps talk with some other folks, and let him know what I thought, what I wanted to do. He said, "I'll support you whatever you decide you want to do." And so I decided, well, I'd give it a try.

Greene: Once you decide to have a go at it, talk to me about the price tag on the campaign, and about some of the [other issues it raised].

Walters: Yes. One of the things that I had to do, before we get to the price tag, and it involves the price tag, I had to move, establish residency in the 9th District, because then I just lived a block and a half from here, and this isn't the 9th District. But my former husband had an aunt who still lived in the 9th District, so I went over to see her, and talked with her and asked her could I move in. The family was still friends. And she was delighted. She lived alone. She was in her late eighties and she was living alone, and she said she'd be delighted to have me there, so that took care of that piece.

Walters: The other piece that occurred that involved money--because I did not meet the city statute for living in a district the requisite amount of time prior to filing for election, the city clerk in Los Angeles, the Election Divisions Office would not accept my papers for filing as a candidate. So we decided to go to court. My campaign manager said, "Well, why don't we sue?" And so we began to talk with some lawyers who were experienced in that area of the law, and they said they thought they could take it to federal court and win. But in order to take it to federal court, they needed $30,000, like boom.

Greene: Hand it over, huh?

Walters: Right.

Greene: Reach in your pocket and hand it over.

Walters: So I had too many issues. One, to raise the money for that, and not be in violation of the state election laws with respect to my school-board office. Two, I had begun to raise money for the school-board office. I think I told you that I had this fundraiser, and raised $30,000 one Sunday afternoon at a friend's home. I was starting to say Barbara Boudreaux's home. It wasn't Barbara Boudreaux's home, it was somebody else's home. But Barbara and her husband were there. So was any of that money usable to this purpose? Well, the answer was no. You couldn't use that money for this purpose. But I could raise money separately to pay for the lawyers, which I did.

Greene: Who was your campaign manager?

Walters: A young woman by the name of Felicia Bragg. Yes.

Greene: How did you find her?

Walters: Felicia was very young. She had been around in politics, in labor politics for quite a while, and quite a while was just a few years for her. And also, along the way she had started dating Julian Dixon, and so in '79 she became my campaign manager. She wasn't the other two times I ran. Other people were. And she's a very, very smart young woman. She and Julian got married just before the primary election in '79, and Julian had been elected to Congress, and he was back there in Washington, and anxious for her to come back. So we were going to have a different manager had I not [won in the primary]--but I won in the primary, so I didn't have to go through that. And so Felicia each time after that, Felicia managed all the rest of my campaigns.

Greene: So you had worked with her.

Walters: Yes, right, right.

Greene: Do you recall who the lawyers were that you were--

Walters: Irell and Manella was the firm that handled it, took it to federal court.

Greene: So you learned that you were allowed to raise money to pay the lawyers, so that you could--

Walters: Right. And I raised it, just got on the phone calling folks. "Look. I need this amount of money in just a few days' time," and so we were able to get it. I had to get 15,000 at first, to give them as a down payment, and then 15,000 right after that.

Greene: Wow. And that's just to file suit to possibly be able to run?

Walters: Right.

Greene: Okay. All right. So walk me through it.

Walters: I got on the phone and dialed for dollars, and raised the money, and we paid the lawyers. They went to court. And, of course, once I got that first 15,000, they knew we were serious and they went on with the case. It all happened in, I guess, just a couple of weeks' time, because the filing period was open, and people were filing and the deadline was coming up. The court ordered that the deadline be extended for, I think it was a week, to allow me to file. Then the premise was that had I known that Mr. Lindsay was not going to return to office, was not going to be running for reelection, that I would have established residency in the district in a timely fashion, because where I established residency was also in my school-board district. It was not out of the district for school board.

Walters: So anyway, the judge ruled in my favor without establishing a precedent. He said the decision was pertinent to this case only, as I recall. So I gained a green light, and we walked out of federal court across from city hall, across the street from city hall, walked out on the Main Street side of the federal court half a block, crossed the street and went up in city hall, and filed the papers to run, and it was on.

Greene: It was on. So talk to me about the folks who are running against you for that seat.

Walters: Oh, on the issue, it just occurs to me about not allowing me to run. I think it went to city council after the clerk turned it down, and the council would not go against their laws, so then we went to court.

Greene: I see. That's how it ended up in court.

Walters: Right. They would not overturn their laws, or make any provision for it without the court's intervention.

Greene: And there were other folks who were interested in the seat, some of whom ended up running, some of whom I'm not sure if they did or not. I have someone named Woody Flemming, Robert Gay?

Walters: Woody, did Woody run in '79?

Greene: No, I think he was--

Walters: No, because he came to work for me.

Greene: Did he end up working for you?

Walters: Yes.

Greene: These are names that were floating around as people who might be considered--

Walters: Yes. Well, Woody had wanted to run for the seat, and he did run when I retired, when I left, and didn't win. Bob Gay was one of Lindsay's deputies, and he did run, and I was in a runoff against him.

Greene: Oh, you two had a runoff. Okay.

Walters: Right. And there were a number of other people. I think there were nine or ten folks, maybe thirteen or something. There was a large field of candidates, yes. Do you have some other names there?

Greene: Brad Pye?

Walters: Oh yes, Brad Pye. Yes. Brad Pye was very well known. He was a sportswriter for the Los Angeles Sentinel, had been for years, a well-known person, really affable sort of guy. And he was sure he was going to win, he said, because of all the people that told him they were going to vote for him. But--

Greene: Didn't quite pan out that way?

Walters: Didn't quite pan out that way. He was a very nice man.

Greene: I don't believe she ran, but again another one of those rumored folks was Theresa Hughes at the time.

Walters: Oh no. Theresa Hughes was in the state legislature, and I don't know whether she had gone to the State Senate at that time, or she was still in the Assembly.

Greene: I believe she was still in the Assembly. Okay, so there was quite a few other candidates.

Walters: I said State Legislature. I don't know whether she'd gone to the Senate at that time, or she was still in the Assembly, but she's still in the Assembly.

Greene: I think she's still in the Assembly. So talk to me about how the campaign proceeded at that point. You declared your candidacy. There's a broad field of--

Walters: And then L.A. has this thing of petitions, and you've got to get out and get the signatures of 500 registered voters. And in order to be assured of 500 registered voters, you've got to have a thousand, because folks mess up petitions. They have the wrong address, they sign on the wrong line, all sorts of things. I have learned that working for other candidates, that that's something you have to be dead serious about, and you have to bird dog it, because you've got timelines to meet on that. They also had, the city had, for people who could not afford or did not want to pay, it was those signatures plus a filing fee. You had to pay the filing fee.

Walters: Now, the filing fee for the school board, it was 500 valid signatures and $500. But it was a higher filing fee for the city. I think it was calculated on the salary that the office paid or something. So if you didn't want to pay the salary, or pay the fee, or couldn't afford to pay the fee, you could get another 500 registered voters, which meant 2,000 signatures, and turn them in. The advantage is to get them as quickly as possible, because they count them as soon as they come in. And then if you're short, they give you a supplemental, where you can go out and get some more signatures. So that was the first task, getting people organized to do that.

Greene: Who are some of the folks that worked on your campaign, or that helped out I should say, like as volunteer--

Walters: Yes. A lot of the people from the school district helped. Some were concerned because I was leaving the school district. The $30,000 that I had raised at that party, I started sending that back, returning it with a letter that, "If you'd be willing to contribute this amount to our campaign now, this is the way you can do it," and included an envelope, but we had to return it, according to the state. So we returned it, and I would say I got about half of it back. And then you're introduced to a whole new set of campaign contributors, folks that have interest in downtown, folks that have interest in other parts of the district, folks who live in other parts of the district.

Greene: I imagine individuals and entities, or individuals and organizations assisted?

Walters: Yes. And each one according to the rules governing them, you know. So you start making as many contacts as possible, and contacting people who can contact people and put you in touch with folks, that sort of thing. Seeking endorsements, you go about seeking endorsements. One of the groups that I immediately sought endorsement from was the Central City Association that I told you about.

Greene: That was a business association?

Walters: Yes, still is. Then people who--

Greene: Was it downtown, small-business owners, or a mix?

Walters: Every, any businessperson downtown that wants to join. Now, they may have a structured dues scale, but I don't know what that is, and I don't know if it is scaled, or if everybody pays the same amount. But I don't think everybody pays the same amount.

Greene: So you sought their endorsement. That sounds like it would be a key endorsement.

Walters: Yes, yes, it was a key endorsement, and they were expected to go with Bob Gay, because Bob was well known to them, had been working with them for a long time. And then the Downtown Business News, the throwaway paper, but politically it had influence downtown. Other business groups, some developers downtown, because that was the name of the game down there at that time.

Greene: At this moment, downtown is slated for, I imagine, a bunch of development projects percolating through the downtown area just at this point?

Walters: Still, yes, yes. There were a number of them, a ton of them percolating at the time that I ran, and then the bottom fell out of everything, and a lot of them never came to fruition.

Greene: I imagine there were labor groups as well were interested in your campaign?

Walters: Yes. AFSCME, which had minimal interest in what happened at the school district--

Greene: Came to the fore?

Walters: Right. And SEIU was active in both city and school district, and some members of the Building Trades Council. What other unions? There were many more unions, the police and fire in the city. The school district had its own police force, a separate organization. I don't think I ever had their endorsement, and I didn't get the LAPD's, the police and fire, the Police Department endorsement, and I'm trying to remember whether I got the firefighters. I may have gotten the firefighters.

Greene: How about endorsements from the South L.A. side? I guess it's the East Side primarily, what was in your district, no?

Walters: Yes. Yes. Some of the churches did, a lot of them didn't.

Greene: Why do you think that was? Was it because they would have been more supportive of Bob Gay, from their point?

Walters: Yes, some of them were. Bob was very religious, and claimed he was a minister, so a lot of them supported Bob. And like I said, some of them didn't.

Greene: I read that in a book, black politicians or political operatives one way or another, came out and endorsed you publicly, Tom Bradley for one, right?

Walters: Yes. Tom Bradley did, and through Tom Bradley I was able to get the endorsement of Rev. Jim Lawson from Holman. He was still the minister at Holman at that time. He endorsed me, and who else did? Tom Pullman.

Greene: [State Senator] Bill Green?

Walters: Oh, Bill Green endorsed me on his own. Bill Green wasn't a minister. Bill Green was the State Senator, right. And Bill had endorsed me for school board. I was from Kansas City, Kansas; he was from Kansas City, Missouri. He had gone to Lincoln High School, and I went to Sumner High School, notorious rivals at that time. Kansas City, Missouri, had two black high schools. Kansas City, Kansas, had one. Bill was a football player over there.

Greene: That Kansas connection keeps--

Walters: Right, right.

Greene: At that time, Assemblywoman Hughes endorsed me, yes. And Merv [Mervyn Dymally] endorsed me. Look in there and see if I have an old piece of literature with all these names on them.

Greene: Yes, I'm sure. Okay. So how did the campaign proceed? What were some of the issues that dominated the campaign?

Walters: Well, some of the issues that dominated were around certain pending ordinances, or things that were expected to come up in the council in the form of an ordinance, and people wanted to know where you were going to be on that. One of the things--the mayor was fighting for a truck ordinance that would restrict the trucks to delivery at certain hours only, like they did during the Olympics. They had the truck deliveries all restricted for those two weeks of the Olympics, to night hours, to keep the traffic down. So he, Bradley wanted to utilize that vehicle modified, to ease the traffic on the freeways and downtown during the day, and people were fighting him tooth and nail about it. Some people were for it, and some people were against it.

Walters: Some people didn't like it because it would inconvenience them. They'd have to have personnel there at the business premises during the night, when they don't ordinarily have them there, and that was one of the concerns. Let's see, what else. There was another issue of air rights, how air rights were calculated on a building, and could folks sell them, that sort of thing. The city, they sold the air rights to the library, so that the Library Tower [now the U.S. Bank Tower, the tallest building in L.A., across the street from the main city library] could be built, exceed the height limits, whatever. So anyway, all that was going on.

Walters: An issue out of the downtown area, people felt that that part of the district had been grossly neglected, and it had. It was terrible. It was just awful, just physically filthy. Streets weren't being swept. You know, my staff and I, we used to organize cleanups, and try to get some of the neighborhood groups, block clubs, interested, and a few of them would come out. But we'd take a weekend and go out, and I got down on the street, in the street, digging up grass growing out of the dirt in the gutters, myself. And the only way--we couldn't get the response from the [city department] staff, and structures falling down, and dope dens up in abandoned houses, and one of the most god-awful sites was owned by the federal government and the city, and one didn't want to clean it up because they would have the liability for it, you know. It was just horrible. It took years to get that taken care of, but you just had to keep on it and on it and on it.

Walters: These [city] staff folks, we organized--I got city vans lined up, and we took--I think we had about fifteen folks in those two vans, and took them out on a tour through the city. We had turned in all these sites, and they kept telling us, "Well, it's taken care of, it's taken care of. It's down. It's empty. The lot's vacant." And they were still there. So Woody Flemming and John Sheppard, who was on my staff, they went out and took pictures of these. We must have had maybe a dozen sites, and took pictures of these sites, and put them in envelopes so that everybody had their own set of pictures, with addresses.

Walters: And then we took the folks to the sites and physically showed them, "Now, look. I see a building sitting there. What do you see?" You know? And the guy that was supposed to be in charge of the street sweeping, we took him to some of the streets where this grass was growing up in the dirt. I said, "Look. Saturday I was across the street, digging up the dirt and the grass out of that, on my knees in the street doing it. And this is over here. Now, you tell me the street's been swept." "Well, the street is swept. It's swept every week." I said, "Then what accounts for this dirt and grime in the street?" I mean, it's just, that kind of stuff just drives you crazy, Sean.

Walters: And they had, still have a group of young people, they call them the Conservation Corps, and these young kids, they have a group called Clean and Green. They wear these green shirts, and they're about cleaning up everything. Wonderful kids, hard-working. They get out there and dig and clean and sweep, and plant trees, marvelous, marvelous. That was a thing we used to do a lot of, planting trees. And one of the things that was depressing--people were awfully depressed in those areas. They don't want trees planted, because they didn't want to have to take care of them. I don't know what you do about that.

Walters: But anyway, in other places they'd see us out there planting trees, and then some folks would feel guilty and say, "Yeah, you got an extra one? You can plant it in front of my house." But trying to get resources and what have you to do all of those things, you know, and get trash picked up. People would put their old furniture, broken-down furniture out on the front, and expect it to be picked up with the trash. Well, the city has this special number you call. They call it bulky-item pickup, and they don't pick up every week like--they have to have an appointment, and then put it out then. So we had a two-pronged approach, trying to educate the people in the communities through the block clubs and meetings that we used to have every couple of months. I'd have a meeting in a different part of the district, in an elementary school or middle school. Never had one in a high school, because the auditoriums were too large. We didn't get that kind of turnout. But an elementary school was more intimate, and people would come out.

Walters: And we would bring--we'd feature one or two departments, and try to get the department heads to come out and talk to the people about what their jobs were, how the people could reach them themselves, if need be, and what they could expect to happen once they called that department. So we did that a lot. We did it with police and fire, we did it with building and safety, we did it with street services, we did it with DWP, all the city departments.

Greene: So what you're describing is essentially a coordinated push to get services, basic services--

Walters: That's right, that's exactly right. And after we'd been through our cycle of departments, then we'd start all over again, you know, to meet around the district in different places, and a different department was featured each time. We had--a lot of the people in South Central had never been to the harbor. We sponsored a harbor tour, took buses the city paid for. Each council office gets an allotment. Then I think it was $10,000 a year for buses for senior citizens, and $10,000 for other events, schools and what have you. So we took some buses. I think we had about three busloads of folks that we took down to the harbor, and they put them on boats and took them around the harbor, so they could see that's what their tax money is paying for.

Greene: How did you adjust to being on this new body? Because it sort of sounds like you rolled up your sleeves really quickly, and jumped in to make some things happen.

Walters: Well, I was just horrified. This neighborhood where I live didn't look like that. I didn't have to worry about my street being swept. I had to worry about getting the car off the street so I wouldn't get a ticket if I parked on the street and the street sweeper came by. I didn't see any mattresses and couches and stuff sitting around here. It was like walking into a different world, and I thought, this is all the same city. They've got to provide the same services here. It's just like the school district. It was an equity issue. It was definitely an equity issue. And I found the same lack of expectation for achievement that I found in the school district in the city, only it wasn't achievement they were thinking about, lack of expectation and interest in their neighborhoods, you know. And the alleys, the filthy alleys, piled with stuff, dumping in the alley, and people dumping their own stuff, you know. Go outside and throw it over the fence, back into the alley.

Walters: And we were able after years of trying, to get a program through Board of Public Works, where they would go out and clean up an alley if the largest portion of the people who abutted the alley agreed that--and they would gate it and lock it, and pass out keys to everybody that said they used the alley to get to their garages for parking, or to park behind their home. And if nobody was using it, nobody wanted it, they'd just permanently lock the alley. They would clean it out, and they'd put wood chips, mulch and stuff down in the alleys, and in some of them they put benches out there, and some barbecue pits, and some places it went very well. Other places, it didn't. Other people were disgruntled about it, and one guy kept throwing stuff out there. He must have been a pack rat. I guess he went around searching through folks' trash, and brought it home and threw it in his alley.

Greene: Because he had plenty of stuff that he'd thrown.

Walters: There was plenty of stuff out there.

Greene: Let me ask you, maybe we should step back a bit and describe the district as a kind of unique composition and topography, I guess. Describe it for us.

Walters: It was unique, because there was such a vast difference, light years of difference between the downtown area and between the adjacent areas near downtown, where a lot of immigrant families lived in old, broken-down hotels, and buildings with businesses on the ground floor, and these horrendous living quarters above it. Then as you moved on further south away from the downtown, it was a community of primarily smaller homes, again overcrowded homes, very poor people. I imagine the district was about 70 percent Latino, 65 percent Latino when I ran in '91. Probably the vast majority of those didn't speak much English, and they worked in those downtown restaurants, and buildings as janitors and what have you, and a lot of them worked in other places far away, and had difficulty getting to jobs. You'd see them out there early in the morning, six o'clock in the morning. The bus stops were loaded.

Walters: And people in the evenings, and the children. Most of the African American people who still lived there were older people. It seemed that most of the younger African Americans had moved out. Although on Sundays people--a lot of African American churches, and people would come back for the churches. And a lot of African American people who were there of whatever age, they were of a couple of minds. One was to keep up their property. They weren't going to move, and they wanted to stay, and wanted their new neighbors to keep up their property, and they were upset and unhappy, and took a dim view of Latinos moving into neighborhoods.

Walters: I would tell folks, "You know, the same thing that you're saying, the exact same words you're using with respect to Latinos, that's what white folks were saying about us when I first came to L.A. They didn't want us in Leimert Park, because we didn't take care of our property. We didn't know how to keep up our property. We threw stuff out in the street." You know, please. But some people understood that and tried to take a different tack, and there were others who were just rabid about it.

Walters: I remember one lady, oh, she jumped up in a meeting. I always had people--I hired folks to come on the weekend from the school district, and I rented the equipment, translation equipment from the school district, because the city didn't have any, and these people would translate. Everybody that needed translation could have earphones, because I wanted the Latino community there. And this woman jumps up and says, "The Latinos didn't elect you. We elected you, and we expect you to speak to our issues. I don't want this business going on here. You don't have to translate." I said, "Oh yes, we do. Oh yes, we do." And she used to fight me with all her energy, just her issue was South Park, that park on Avalon [Boulevard]. It used to be a beautiful, beautiful park, and it had gone to pieces, just horrible, and this was a city facility that just was not at all being maintained. And then when the city started the [re-doing] swimming pool, it was in terrible condition. Got the money together to have the swimming pool rehabbed. It took the city four years. They could have built ten new swimming pools.

Greene: Absolutely.

Walters: Four years to rehab that pool and that bathhouse, and enlarge it a bit. I don't think they enlarged the pool. They enlarged the bathhouse. Four years! I mean, that kind of callousness.

Greene: Yes. So what you're describing to me is background tensions that you encountered in trying to represent the whole district.

Walters: Right.

Greene: But as you're describing it, you're facing south. I imagine there was another balancing act that had to take place in terms of representing downtown and South L.A. and the district.

Walters: Right. The people in South L.A. were resentful of downtown, because none of the downtown money was coming their way, or development, and the people downtown, they absolutely wanted your 150 percent undivided attention at all times and in all places, on downtown.

Greene: If the initial issues that you had to take up for South L.A. involved getting needed services and sort of cleaning up and making improvements to the area, what were some of the things to be contended with in downtown?

Walters: Well, they'd always bring up the issue of homelessness, and, "Attention needs to be focused on getting these folks off the street." "Fine. I'd like to see them off the street. They don't need to sleep on the street. Where shall we put them?" And some people were very forthright. "You know, I don't care where you put them. Just get them out of here." You know, one guy I remember, there were two branches of the flower mart down there. One was the Japanese group of businesspeople had their market, and this other guy was Italian, and he had the non-Japanese portion across the street. And he used to complain--his office was up on the second floor, and he could sit out and look over the Japanese market and the street below him, and there was a public phone on the street, and he claims that drug dealers were using it to make deals. And he had asked the police department, asked the phone company to get rid of the phone, and they wouldn't do it. So he says, "I just walked across the street one morning, and I was sick of looking at that blankety-blank phone, and folks using the phone, and I snatched it off the pole and threw it in the street."

Walters: One man brought me a video. He had put cameras on the roof of his building, and there was a space, small space between his building and the next building, and he said people used to go back in there and defecate and have sex, and he said, "If you don't believe me, here's this video." And he puts this video on to show me what he was talking about. Now, he was a very quiet, soft-spoken guy. He said, "I need you to do something with this. This kind of stuff scares my employees. What are we going to do about it?" And they didn't want the--I used to tell people, people talked about these folks going to the bathroom in the street. He said, "You know what? I have talked to them about public toilets. There's no place in downtown for anybody to go to the bathroom." I said, "No. We can get some Port-O-Potties and put them in." "No, I don't want any Port-O--I don't want that in front of my business." "Well, you don't want the Port-O-Potties in front of your business. It's a funny thing about human beings. They have plumbing that doesn't stop working when they become homeless. They're going to have to go somewhere."

Walters: And I told him about the coin-operated toilets in Europe, and many of them had seen those. They were aware of them. "Well, that's--," da, da, da. I worked on that thing, trying to get toilets down there, till the last day I was in office. And the last day I was in office I was ill. I had gotten ill in May. I had to have emergency surgery the twentieth of May, and was never able to return to city council, but my staff went on. And I had a staff member that had been working diligently on these pay toilets, and the city staff, the CLA's Office, Chief Legislative-Analyst's Office, had set up this trip to Europe, and one of my staff members went, to look at these pay toilets, because we had had people that had come here, the manufacturers of them, and brought brochures and all that sort of thing. And people downtown had tried to work with Central City Association. They were just adamant.

Walters: Before we got to that point, those toilets came after I left the office, but they voted on them before I left office, put them there. We did manage to get Port-O-Potties. Richard [Alatorre], in the reapportionment of not '93, the reapportionment of--well, I guess it was the '90 census--

Greene: Are you talking about the redistricting?

Walters: Yes, the redistricting.

Greene: I think it was '94.

Walters: Managed to get a portion of downtown. He got a portion of Skid Row. The people he talked to didn't want the toilets there, and he agreed with it. They didn't have to have it. So he made a deal with a woman down there, who was--

Greene: Richard Riordan?

Walters: Richard Alatorre. I'm glad you corrected me on that, or raised a question about it. This woman, I can't think of her name. She was an Episcopal priest, and she ran an outreach-services unit for homeless people, feeding them and what have you. She didn't want the Port-O-Potties, and she became a spokesperson for the other folks who didn't want the Port-O-Potties, so she made a deal with Richard. I thought she was going to support the Port-O-Potties. She made a deal with Richard that she wouldn't--he took two of them in his district. All the rest were in mine, and people were unhappy, you know. So I know they were happy when I was no longer in office.

Greene: Was this the kind of resistance you ran into when you were trying to make sure folks had what they needed, you know, their basic needs met?

Walters: Right, absolutely. When I first came to L.A., Pershing Square down there--I don't know whether you've been into Pershing Square. It sits right between Olive and Hill, in front of the Biltmore Hotel. That was a lovely, lush, green, planted area, and I loved it. Coming from Kansas in the snow, and here it is, February, March there, and it's all warm and green, and flowers are blooming, and they had public bathrooms there. And I soon learned--I went to work for the Probation Department, and through my work at the Probation Department I was at General Hospital, their psychiatric unit, where they had a court for committing people to state hospitals who needed psychiatric attention. They also had what they called their sexual psychopathy cases, and the police department had a regular detail that hung out in a crawl space in the men's bathroom, trying to catch folks that they called sexual deviants, men who were looking for sexual partners. And they wound up in the court out there, in the psychiatric courts, for psychiatric commitment.

Greene: Because they were labeled deviants?

Walters: They were homosexuals; they were labeled as deviants.

Greene: As late as--this was in 199-what?

Walters: No, this was in 1955 when I first came out. Yes, when I first came here. But anyway, the point is they took this park, and it ran down, and folks wanted to close it up, so they redesigned it to be as much anti-people as possible.

Greene: I see.

Walters: And unfortunately, one of the first things that happened when I first came to office, they handed me a design of this park and said, "Will you approve that?" And I said, "Oh, okay. It looks okay." I looked at the model they had and it looked okay. But I wasn't sensitive to the issues that I needed to be sensitive to at that point, so now you've got this anti-people park down there. And the toilets were closed up, weren't cleaned up, they were closed up, and there's a parking structure underneath that there was a fifty-year lease on, that the city wasn't getting much money, so that came up for renegotiation while I was there, and I insisted that the city take it over. Now the city's making a nice pile of change, despite the fact that they have to staff it. You know, the people who leased it had always said, "Well, it's cheaper for us to operate it." But the heck it was.

Walters: But anyway--and the department stores used to have restrooms that people could go into, but department stores have closed up. There weren't any department stores down--you know, no May Co., no Robinson's, no Bullock's, no Broadway, the places that occupied large spaces down there, and so it was just a mess. The people had no place--and if you were not--if you were a homeless person, you couldn't go in anywhere. There was no place to go. So that was a problem.[End of interview]

1.8. Session 8 (June 14, 2008)

Greene: This is Sean Greene, interviewing Rita Walters at her home on June fourteenth. Hi, Rita.

Walters: Hi, Sean, how are you today?

Greene: I'm good, I'm good. I want to pick up where we left off yesterday. You had just finished talking about some of the struggles that you had trying to get--when you were elected as councilwoman for the 9th District--basic services into the area, and to get the different neighborhoods cleaned up, and to provide services also for folks living in and around Skid Row in downtown.

Walters: Right.

Greene: I wanted to pick up there, and ask you about the Rodney King incident that I think was kind of a backdrop around the time you were running for city council. What do you recall about the Rodney King incident, and how did it impact your campaign?

Walters: It was more than a backdrop, let me tell you. That was just a horrible, horrible incident. I remember the morning after it happened, you turned on the news and it was all over the news, but the pictures hadn't come out yet.

Greene: So it wasn't the images?

Walters: Initially, no. There were no news cameras. The pictures were taken by a person who lived nearby in an apartment, from his balcony, looking out over the situation from his balcony. But it just sounded awful. My campaign manager, Felicia Bragg, called me that morning and said, "Have you heard?" "Yes, I've heard." Then in the next couple of days, as it began developing and more information started coming out, and the pictures became available, then the horror of it all became well known. At first it was a motorist that was on something, who wouldn't stop, and then it turned into what some have characterized as a police riot, and some of the school-district police. It was just like a y'all-come festival, that school-district police were out there, and had absolutely no business being there.

Walters: Well, the school-board members were horrified, and we voted for the superintendent to fire them, for the police chief of the school district to fire these guys. Well, they sued and were reinstated, said the firing violated their rights, and that they didn't have any part in the beating, they were just watching. So later in that week, the same week--well, before the luncheon that I was just going to tell you about, because the school district had a program, and the police department, together with the police department had two programs--one was called Officer Bill, the friendly police officer who goes on campus, takes his unit and has the kids come out, and talks to them about the police car, and they can crawl all over it, and look at his badge and all that--it was very popular and kids loved it, and the police enjoyed it.

Walters: And then they had this DARE Program that was in the schools, where the police officers went in and talked to the kids about drugs, not using drugs, and they were elementary schools for the most part, at that point. So I went to the police department. I called up the police department, called the chief's office and asked to speak to [Darryl] Gates. I wanted an appointment with Gates to talk about what had happened, and what was the impact going to be on kids when they saw these policemen coming into their schools. How did the department plan to handle that? Well, I wasn't able to talk to Gates, but I did talk with the top-ranking assistant chief at that time, and I don't recall his name now. But he, of course, assured me that it was an aberration and that the kids were going to be fine, and they would be very sensitive to any questions that the kids might raise about it, and would tell them that, you know, that's not what they usually do, and on and on.

Walters: Then in the next day or so, I was campaigning for office and there was a luncheon that some downtown group was having, and I went to speak to the group, as did other candidates, and they were going to have a Q&A of the candidates. And the question came up about, what is your reaction to what has happened with the police department, and I said, "Well, it may cost me any support of this group, but I'm very much opposed to it, and we can't tolerate that kind of thing." And I was quite surprised when it was over, I was standing in line waiting for the car to come--they had valet parking. It was in one of the downtown hotels, and you had to wait forever. And this gentleman in line turned around and said to me, he said, "You know, I think you underestimate this audience. There are a lot of people here that don't like what they saw happen, and don't want that to be the policy of the police department."

Walters: Well, that kind of buoyed me up a bit. I was glad to know that, and I told him that. So it just went on from there, and it was one thing after another. It was really a hot issue. They [black ministers] had a meeting, I think Rodney King was outside First A.M.E. Church when he said, "Can't we all get along?" But I think that kind of calmed things down. People were really, really angry. And before that happened [the beating], as I walked precincts, the anger toward the police department was palpable, and I'm not talking about among young people. The average voter in the district at that time was over fifty-five, female, and African American, and we went to targeted homes, to those voters, high-propensity voters.

Walters: They--yes, talking to people, fear was palpable, and resentment to the police was palpable. Lots of people had the iron doors, and they talked to you through those with iron screens. They wouldn't open the screen and talk to you, or come out and talk to you, or invite you in. Some did, but some didn't. And then as this Rodney King thing unfolded, the anger just felt explosive, just really explosive. People were tired of it, his being treated like that by the police, and again, these same high-propensity voters. These weren't hip-hoppers, or folks who were gang-banging out in the street, so it really impacted things, I felt.

Greene: I imagine it propelled the issue of policing strategies and police brutality, and made it a priority in the campaign?

Walters: Absolutely. The police brutality had a long history in Los Angeles, and particularly under Darryl Gates. He just seemed to really tolerate that kind of thing. No matter what kind of hearing or trial or whatever, it was always found within policy, or if it wasn't within policy, there was just a slap on the wrist as far as the police officers went. And it was always that they have to act to protect their own safety, as well as the safety of the public. Well, I had no desire to see police officers hurt or killed. That's not the point. But I don't want innocent citizens subject to that kind of brutality either, so you have to have a balance, and that kind of brutality, just blatant, raw police brutality doesn't engender any respect for the police department.

Greene: As you began to take in more and more people's reactions to the beating, I imagine that led you to be able to take stronger public stances against that sort of thing? Is that what I understand you were saying when you were speaking to the group downtown, and you found a receptive audience; as it buoyed you, did it give you an opportunity to sort of take the issue on in a very head-on kind of way?

Walters: I think so, but I think I would have done that anyway.

Greene: Sure.

Walters: I don't think I was waiting to feel some type of approval for taking that kind of position. Had I felt that way, that that was needed before I could speak out, I probably wouldn't have spoken out the way I did at that luncheon, that initial luncheon where it came up.

Greene: Do you remember--

Walters: Not the initial luncheon, the luncheon where it first came up in the campaign, as an issue in the campaign.

Greene: Sure. Were there community organizations in South L.A., for example, that sort of took the lead around community responses to the beating?

Walters: Oh yes.

Greene: What were some of those, that you can recall?

Walters: John Mack was still with Urban League at that time, and he certainly was outspoken about it. NAACP was outspoken about it. Some of the churches were. I'm not sure ACORN was a group at that time. If they were, they were sort of in the early stages of formation, but people were just outraged.

Greene: Fast forwarding a little bit, talk about what came out of the incident in terms of police-and-community relations.

Walters: Not much. Not much. There was one commission appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley immediately following the beating of Rodney King in approximately early March. It was charged by Warren Christopher, then the local head of the well known and well respected law firm O'Melveny and Myers. He was later appointed Secretary of State by President Bill Clinton. The commission was called the "Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department." Their report was entitled "Report of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department." It was issued July 9, 1991. The charge was to conduct "a comprehensive investigation into the use of excessive force by the Los Angeles Police Department."The second study was undertaken after the civil unrest of April 29, 1992 that occurred in Los Angeles following the not guilty verdicts rendered in the trial of some of the officers accused of being very active participants in the beating of Rodney King. That group was established after William Webster, former director of the F.B.I., was appointed as Special Advisor to the Los Angeles Police Commission. The Los Angeles Police Commission is charged by the charter of the City of Los Angeles with oversight of the Los Angeles Police Department. Their report issued October 21, 1992 was entitled "The City in Crisis." They were charged with looking at the city's response to the "civil disorders" as well as its level of preparation.

Greene: So you're saying perhaps after the civil unrest, a commission forms?

Walters: I think so. I really can't recall. The Rodney King beating occurred in the spring of '91. The beating occurred in March I think it was, early March. The civil unrest occurred after the trial, and that was a year later, '92; April twenty-nine was when the civil unrest broke out. Knowing how commissions work, that commission probably wasn't established until after the civil unrest. And then when their work was done--well, the Secretary of State wasn't going to come here and work on a commission. I don't know, Sean. That's something that I'd have to look up and find out.

Greene: I'll look into it as well. But by the time the civil unrest happens, you're in office already.

Walters: I was in office, yes. Yes, I was in office, and it was quite a day. I remember it was like after the announcement had been made that the decision was going to be handed down, that the jury had reached a decision and it would be released at three o'clock in the afternoon, everybody was just on tenterhooks, waiting for that time. And when it came, I had a gentleman in the office who was at that time with CRA [Community Redevelopment Agency], heading up the Community Redevelopment Agency, and I felt like somebody had hit me with a baseball bat in my stomach. I really couldn't talk, and I couldn't concentrate on what he was saying, and I just finally told him, "Look. We'll have to reschedule this meeting. I can't do this right now." And I had gotten up and just walked out of the room for a bit, trying to get it together.

Walters: How in the world, with that video showing this brutality, just rank brutality--it was like something out of the South--could those people say that the police weren't guilty? But the D.A. [District Attorney] had moved it to Simi Valley, which was on the other side of the Moon as far as the African American community was concerned, and it was just awful. It was just awful.

Walters: And leading up to that decision, John Mack and church leaders and NAACP had come together, and elected officials, trying to develop a plan for what to do when the decision came down. The thinking was to have a meeting scheduled, that people would know in advance, after the decision the meeting's going to be held at--First A.M.E. volunteered their services, the preacher there, Chip Murray, volunteered the church, and so that's where it was. And as soon as I could get out of the office, I guess it must have been about six o'clock we left the office, and the person who was then serving as my chief of staff, we drove over to First A.M.E., and he had driven his personal car that day, rather than a city car, and we left mine downtown, because I lived downtown. I had moved downtown subsequent to my election, to be in the district.

Walters: We went out to First A.M.E., and they heard a lot of speakers, and the mayor was there, and other elected officials, both black and white. I remember Zev Yaroslavsky was there, and he had driven his city car, and it got torched that night. Other city vehicles, the same thing happened. When we came back about nine o'clock, and we kept getting bulletins that people--and Rev. Murray said that the people had started a fire not far away, and that they were trying to tell folks to remain calm, and there was a group outside yelling they wanted to come inside, and they were trying to calm them down. So I decided to leave with my staff member. He had sent me a note and said, "This may be the time to leave."

Walters: So we did, went back downtown, went to City Hall to see what was going on, and it looked like just devastation. Going down 1st Street, the lights were out in front of the L.A. Times building and around the City Hall and Parker Center, newspaper boxes, those metal boxes on the corners, were turned over into the street. As memory serves, the Los Angeles Times had a window broken out, or two windows broken out, whatever, and there was a car on fire over at Parker Center. Then after we got into City Hall, I went to the mayor's office, and standing in the mayor's office looking down on Main Street, here was this car burning right under the mayor's window. I don't know whose car it was, if it was a stolen car or if it was a city vehicle. I don't recall to whom those vehicles belonged, if anybody ever identified the ownership of them.

Walters: And we had TV sets going in a number of offices adjacent to the mayor's office, within his compound of offices, as well as my office was a floor below, on the second floor. The mayor was on the third floor. We had a TV set in my office going, and then up in the mayor's office we could see all the channels, what was going on in the city, and the skies were just black with smoke. It was a horrible, horrible, scary night, I tell you. It was awful. I was in touch with my sons to see how they were, and if David had gotten home from work okay, and he had. There was a woman at his school where he works that brought him home in the evenings. He worked, as he still does, from four to nine in the evenings in the adult school.

Walters: I kept in touch with them, and stuff was getting raucous out here. At the corner of San Vicente and Hauser there's that little--well, there are three mini-malls on four of the corners, and a grocery store on the fourth corner, was a grocery store. Now it's I think more liquor store than grocery store. But there were folks coming through the neighborhood creating problems, and my son Philip and some of the other men in the neighborhood went to both ends of the block, trying to keep people from coming out here. And the one end of the block there at San Vicente, they were trying to attack the shops there, ice-cream shop, cleaners, laundry, and a 7-11. But enough people gathered that kept them from doing that, kept them from doing any damage there.

Walters: But that's just how it was. And the next day, I guess I must have probably turned in about three o'clock that morning, and things were still going strong. The police and fire wouldn't--well, the police wouldn't go in, and we later found out it was deliberate, that Darryl Gates withheld orders for them to go in. But the fire department said they wouldn't go in, because they were getting shot at, and rocks and stuff thrown at them, without police protection. So the city was one fire, and it was horrible. It just was horrible.

Walters: They had some helicopters that could get up high enough that they weren't in danger of being hit, even if they were shot at.

Greene: And so what happens--when did things begin to calm down?

Walters: It took several days for it to calm down. It really took several days.

Greene: And when everything shook out, much of the damage was in your district?

Walters: Yes. The most damage was in my district [the 9th], although there was damage in many places in the city. But the most--and because the reports we got came to us by district, the monetary damage, structures damage and that sort of thing.

Greene: So at that point, what does a newly elected councilwoman do when confronted with everything from what touched off the unrest--

Walters: Well, you become not so newly elected pretty fast.

Greene: Pretty quickly. What did you do?

Walters: Because this was a good year after the election. I was elected in '91, and this occurred in '92, so it was a year after I had been elected.

Greene: So where do you begin? What did you do?

Walters: First thing you do is to go out and look at what's occurring, tour the area. I took a helicopter tour, took a walking tour of certain parts, took a driving tour of other parts, went down--they had a command post. The police had a command post not too far from the point of instigation, where the beating occurred, not the Rodney King beating, but the beating of the civilians driving through the area of Florence and Normandie. They had a command post at Slauson and Arlington, Slauson and Van Ness, and they were just sitting there, all these police resources. And I went down there and talked to, you know, the top-ranking guys down there. "What's going on?" "Well, we're waiting for orders to move." Motorcycle officers, officers who were in cars, officers who were on foot. They had their mobile-police-station vans all lined up there, and nobody moved. And that was terrible, that was terrible.

Walters: And then as the week wore on and reaction started pouring in, and people could see the devastation, the Latino actor that was so good [Edward James Olmos], had said, "Let's everybody get a broom and go out and help clean it up this weekend," and that's what happened. And I was out on Central Avenue that Saturday and Sunday with a broom and a shovel. Our office got hold of them from the Conservation Corps that I told you about, we got brooms and shovels, and went out there, and other organizations provided tools. And Sean, I tell you, there were people from everywhere and of every color, out on Central Avenue trying to clean it up. One couple I spoke with had their children with them. They had come all the way from Laguna Beach, an Anglo couple, and there were many of those who were out there trying to clean it up, and who were horrified about what the police had done, and they wanted people to know that they didn't support that, and they wanted the black community to know that they didn't support that. So that part of it helped a lot.

Greene: So there was some show of solidarity with the community, it was a new experience?

Walters: Yes. It was just a wonderful outpouring of human kindness, outreaching to another community in real trouble. So that helped to calm things down. Then the problem of trying to get funds for rebuilding.

Greene: Talk to me about rebuilding. As we move into that portion of our discussion though, tell me, is it typical for the police department--were the police department giving regular reports, say, to the city council or perhaps to the mayor's office, as to how they were approaching things at this point? I'm trying to figure out the holding pattern.

Walters: No. The answer is no. It later came out that Gates and [Tom] Bradley weren't speaking.

Greene: There was a breakdown in communications?

Walters: Yes. And Darryl Gates wasn't somebody you could easily communicate with. City council asked him to come in and talk, you know, to the council about these things, and I'm trying to remember whether he came or sent somebody, but it was not pretty, not pretty.

Greene: And so did talk of rebuilding begin right away?

Walters: Yes. The talk of rebuilding occurred very quickly, and Rebuild L.A. was established. The mayor established it, and it became the fashionable place to be.

Greene: Was it established under Bradley, or was it established under Riordan?

Walters: Riordan? No. Bradley was--well, let's see. Bradley was in office until '93, till July '93. Rebuild L.A. was established while Bradley was still in office.

Greene: So it got up and running pretty quickly?

Walters: It got up and running. They had lots of difficulty with it. The guy that was brought in to run it, he was very much a top-down sort of person, and he got all these big-name folks to come to all these meetings. There were too many people, too many big names, and everybody was responding to the pressure to get something done as quick as possible. Kaiser Hospital had a property downtown. They had a clinic that they had vacated, so they gave that to the city to utilize for Rebuild L.A. as offices for Rebuild L.A., which they did.

Walters: But you know, some of these people, you wondered why they were appointed. There was no representation from my office. I represented the district that had the most damage, and it was ignored, which I complained about privately and publicly, and it took months, a year before anything changed. But anyway, they still, they hired all these people with money that was given--I think there was something like five million or so dollars that got raised. People donated very quickly, and it was all spent on these salaries of folks that really weren't getting the job done. It was salaries and P.R., who knows, administrative stuff. Very little of it went into rebuilding the community, actually rebuilding the community.

Walters: And a lot of people came forward, Vons Markets, for example. There weren't any markets to speak of, and the ones that were there were horrible. Vons Markets came in with a very public mea culpa about, you know, they were sorry they had moved out of the area. They had no idea it would have that kind of effect, and they were coming in and going to build some new stores. They even announced a location where their stores were going to go. Their first store, however, went to Inglewood. Inglewood was not--

Greene: Hardly the 9th District.

Walters: Right.

Greene: Or even the 8th.

Walters: Right. And Inglewood had very little damage down there, and they never got around to building any others. One of the things that occurred was they changed ownership, changed the administrators and then ownership, and then folks started backing off promises that had been made, and these were public promises that were made, on tape. I remember after the leadership at Rebuild L.A. changed, and I can't think of her name, the woman, Linda [Griego]. She was a restaurant owner downtown, and had run for mayor. She was great. She was terrific. She went about it in a more organized way, and more hands-on way herself, and she went with my staff and I to meet with the people at Vons about getting some grocery stores, about them building grocery stores.

Walters: There was a property that I think they owned a part of it, and tried to get them to build on it, and assist them acquiring other properties that they would need to build on, I think. It went nowhere, just nowhere. Ralph's [Supermarket] had a couple of dingy, horrible markets. One was called Ralph's and the other was called Boy's [Supermarket]. They were awful places. They were not good people to deal with. And that was the story on dealing with a couple of markets, you know.

Walters: Then other markets got interested, but they were folks that I felt were exploiters. They weren't going to pay union wages. They weren't going to unionize, allow the employees to be unionized. They had substandard stores other places, and I felt people deserved decent stores. So for the rest of the time I was in office, a lot of it was spent trying to get stores there. The property that Von's owned, they had a dairy there, and it was a large, a very large property, but we couldn't get them to build on it. They cleared the property and claimed they were going to build on it, but they didn't. But before I left office, a market from Mexico--I don't know whether they purchased it or leased the land, I don't recall, from Von's. It seems to me like they purchased it, and they built a big new store on there, and hired folks, allowed them to unionize, and paid union wages.

Greene: You said it was a large lot. Is that because space was an issue in the conversations with the supermarket?

Walters: Space was part an issue, because that ran the cost up, and space was at a premium.

Greene: Because it's a densely built area of the city.

Walters: Yes. A lot of space that could have been purchased and stuff on it demolished, stuff that wasn't being used, stuff that was in horrible condition if it was being used, but folks were holding onto that property. They wouldn't sell the stuff, didn't want to sell the property. So yes, property acquisition was a problem. But that didn't keep--you know, Von's had that property. They didn't have any problem acquiring that particular piece of property.

Greene: You began to anticipate my next question, which is, if the impetus for redevelopment wasn't necessarily forthcoming from Rebuild L.A., where did some of that impetus come from, and what were some of the initiatives that popped up in the face of Rebuild L.A.'s lack of effectiveness, as you describe it?

Walters: Rebuild L.A. just, until it changed leadership, there really wasn't any impetus that benefitted the 9th District. Then [Richard] Riordan came in, and the federal government--[Bill] Clinton was president, and he and [Albert] Gore started this project, I forget what they called it. [Empowerment Zones, nationally in select cities]

Greene: [Federal] Empowerment Zones?

Walters: Empowerment Zones. Riordan engineered that thing in L.A., and changed the rules, was able to get rules changed, where very little of the money stayed with the inner-city. He wanted adjacent parcels of property to be eligible, properties adjacent to the Empowerment Zone, because they couldn't get folks to go into the Empowerment Zone. And folks that were in the Empowerment Zone that got money were not always the companies that needed it. I remember one company that we worked with, a tortilla factory, family owned tortilla factory, and they wanted some larger space and couldn't get it, and I think they wound up moving to Commerce or someplace, out of the 9th District.

Walters: All kinds of stories like that. One company, African American, that claimed they were bottlers, and there was another dairy downtown that they wanted to buy and take over the business, and they were going to bottle soft drinks. This company had been bottling milk, and for the most part selling to the school district and the hospitals and stuff, in these little cartons. These folks came along, and they tried to convince me of how good they were, and how experienced they were. Riordan wound up--I think he was responsible for those folks getting like twenty-five million dollars. I wouldn't have anything to do with them. And the project went right down the tubes. The city was out the twenty-five million dollars.

Greene: The city leveraged money, or subsidized something?

Walters: The money that they got through this Empowerment Zone.

Greene: Oh, I see.

Walters: And the school district wound up buying the property and building a high school on it.

Greene: Twenty-five million dollars later.

Walters: Yes.

Greene: Wow.

Walters: Yes. Just ridiculous stuff. Just ridiculous stuff. And so there was just so much waste and inefficiency, and I don't know what in the world made Riordan so enamored of those young men, because you know, I was--just because they were African American, you know, that was one thing folks accuse you of, black elected officials, that you support somebody because they're African American. Well, they've got to show you something besides a black skin.

Greene: Absolutely. It raises a few questions. One is, what was your relationship like with Tom Bradley, I mean with Mayor Bradley?

Walters: It was very good.

Greene: I imagine you conferred, collaborated on some issues?

Walters: Some, yes.

Greene: Any that you can think of that had bearing on the civil unrest when it occurred? Was there any sort of coordination between your offices to try to address some things that you could see?

Walters: No. He was aware of the destruction that had occurred, and he was very busy trying to get some financial resources in there, for everywhere. But everybody on the council wanted to get their hands on the financial resources, you know. Bradley worked with--[George H.W.] Bush was still president, and there's a sort of iconic picture of John Mack walking with Bush the first through some of the destruction that occurred over on Crenshaw, in the Crenshaw area. And then Bush the first was out, and Clinton came in, and it made the job a little easier. And, of course, they were trying to get the Empowerment Zone set up and running and what have you.

Walters: But some cities, I understand, really did well with their Empowerment Zone money. But with Riordan in charge, that didn't happen here.

Greene: That's my next question. What was your relationship with Riordan like, and were there opportunities there--

Walters: Acidic.

Greene: It was acidic. That's a strong word. Okay.

Walters: He was always trying to finagle something, I felt, away from inner-city. I don't think he had much concern about or respect for inner-city communities. And one day he asked me, why was I so angry? I said, "Well, if you represent an area like mine, and you try to get resources and can't do it, what does that make you?"

Greene: At the same time the resources were flowing from the federal government and other entities.

Walters: Right. Right. But we had--the practice of Bradley was whenever he was doing something in a--whenever he was doing an event in a councilmember's district, he always notified that council member, and if they wanted to appear with him they did. Riordan would not notify our office when he was doing stuff downtown or in the--he didn't do anything south of downtown. Somebody who was a developer downtown told me that Riordan was coming to their site. They were putting up some subsidized housing for the poor downtown, and she said, "Well, will Mrs. Walters be here?" And they said, "Oh, we don't invite her to things." I mean, that's--

Greene: That was a candid response.

Walters: Right. That was the way it was with Riordan. He showed up once at--well, I told you about this alley program. He thought he could get a picture-op out of it. So he came to that, took his coat off and grabbed the shovel, and he was going to clean up the alley in his blue monogrammed shirt. And I told him about this. It had come to me that his office was saying to folks that he didn't do things with me in my district.

Greene: Oh, that was becoming the unofficial word?

Walters: Yes. And I understand he went back and jumped on one of his staff members. So I don't know whether it was a staff thing, or if it was his thing, but--

Greene: The effect was the same.

Walters: The effect was the same.

Greene: Talk to me some about how constituent groups began to form and try to push for things to happen in this period. I imagine it must have set off a great deal of activity on the ground in your district as well.

Walters: Well, the Community Coalition was great. They were a young organization, but we had been working with them on the issue of cigarette advertising and alcohol advertising around schools. There was a law that prohibited that, and they brought examples of where there were billboards within the area where they were not supposed to be, closer to schools than they were supposed to be. So my office was able to get some of the billboard companies to come in and meet with the students and hear what they had to say, and one of the companies offered to put up some billboards with the students' message on it, near schools, and to take down any that had advertising that were closer to schools than they were permitted. So that worked out well. And we just went from there to the fight against the liquor stores and the motels.

Greene: Talk to me about the fight against the liquor stores and the motels.

Walters: We had probably more liquor stores than churches, and that's saying a lot, and these seedy, rundown, dirty old motels that were just houses of prostitution. And people were complaining, neighbors were complaining about prostitutes walking through their neighborhoods, not being the least bit careful about what they were doing, or trying to conduct themselves in a decent fashion. They complained about prostitutes walking the streets and having alliances with men near school properties, near church properties, and you'd find dirty condoms strewn around, and there just needed to be a crackdown on these liquor licenses.

Walters: Some of the owners would sell their license privately. Somebody would buy the license, and there was a quirk in the law, a loophole that allowed it to be turned over to somebody else, without them having to go through as much scrutiny as the original owners had. I don't know whether it was transferring it, just transferring a license to an ostensible family member or what, but whatever the loophole was, it was being taken advantage of, and people were not getting a permit like they should have.

Greene: And so the effect was pretty much the lax regulation and oversight of these--

Walters: Right. And they had to get the license from the state, State Alcohol and Beverage Control Board, ABC, and they were not at all sensitive to the problems of liquor stores in inner-city communities. Right down the street here, when the mini-mall went in with the 7-11, 7-11 applied for a liquor license. Well, there were already liquor licenses on two of those four corners, and now a 7-11 was going to make it on the third corner.

Greene: Oh, I see.

Walters: But this community organized, and testified, and kept them from getting a license. And 7-11's claim is, well, they can't make a success out of a store unless they are able to sell liquor. That store has been there twenty years at least, and they've never sold a bottle of liquor out of there. One of the stores that was on another corner, the owners were older and they grew older, more elderly and not well, and their son didn't take it over for too long, so they went out of business. So that was two stores down, and that left the third corner with liquor in the third store, and they're still there. But without the community protesting, they would have had liquor in that 7-11.

Walters: And that was the thing--in that case, with liquor on two corners already, and would have had it on the third, the ABC took the notion that the new license was not in a zone that the other two were. And these are four corners at the same intersection.

Greene: Oh, I see. And ABC is?

Walters: The alcoholic beverage control, State Alcoholic Beverage Control Office. Marguerite Archie-Hudson was in the State Legislature at this time, so she ran a bill. I went up and testified, and I'm sure the community--as I recall, the Community Coalition was there testifying as well, that we needed to do something about the proliferation of liquor stores in inner-city communities. And they were using that same ploy to give additional liquor licenses in inner-city communities, that this new licensee is not in the same zone as the old licensee. You know, they finally got the message and cracked down some, and we were able to close some liquor stores. We asked for tougher enforcement, like stopping them from selling cigarettes and alcohol to minors, and we were able to get some of them closed down for that reason.

Walters: There was a store, I think it was 51st and Figueroa. It was near a church, near a couple of churches, and I'm trying to think, did one have a school there? But they were selling, openly selling cigarettes and alcohol to kids. And ABC caught them at it, cited them, told them they'd lose their license if they were caught again. They turned right around and continued doing it, and the ABC shut them down. But if we hadn't insisted on that increased enforcement, it wouldn't have happened.

Greene: I'm trying to understand. What you're describing is a situation where in parts of your district, folks were hard pressed to get grocery stores to come into the area.

Walters: Right.

Greene: On one hand. On the other hand, you had a number of liquor stores and motels--

Walters: Right.

Greene: --with all kinds of nefarious practices going on--

Walters: Exactly.

Greene: --with very little oversight from the state or the city agency that would have had responsibility--

Walters: Right. Right.

Greene: --and you're suggesting that in other parts of the city, folks had more ability to sort of organize and decide whether or not those types of businesses were what they wanted there--

Walters: Absolutely. Right.

Greene: --and this is what the Community Coalition was engaged in?

Walters: Organizing people--

Greene: To weigh in on those types of things--

Walters: That's exactly right.

Greene: --and help get these things regulated and enforced?

Walters: Right.

Greene: I see. Okay.

Walters: Right. And the city has a mechanism through the Planning Department for issuing conditional-use permits. Use is not granted straight out. They wouldn't give a license for somebody to operate on a particular corner, at a particular address, just straight up. They would condition that, and they'd say, "You can't be open but certain hours. During the hours you're open, you have to have a security guard," and other things like that, about the lighting of the store and that sort of thing.

Greene: For safety purposes and that kind of thing?

Walters: For safety purposes. Whatever they thought was necessary to mitigate the problems that the establishment of this business at that location was expected to cause. So we got the city to be more proactive in conditioning places, and then in following up on inspections after they had conditioned them. I would go and testify before the Planning and Land Use Committee in the council, and Planning and Land Use Commission that was established outside the council as a staff vehicle, but with public citizens sitting on it.

Walters: I remember one liquor store we were trying to get closed up. This guy, before the Planning and Land Use Commission, the owner brought in folks from the community that said, you know, there weren't any grocery stores, which there weren't in the area. And people said, "This is the only way I can get milk and bread and some groceries for my family." He brought a couple of drunks in there, just reeking of alcohol, and this one guy got up and said, "I'm an alcoholic. I've got to have someplace close to me where I can get what I need." Sean--

Greene: Wow.

Walters: --I tell you, you don't know whether to laugh or to cry--

Greene: Wow.

Walters: --in a situation like that. But he was just boldfaced, and he said, "I'm telling it like it is. I've got to have it, and this is the closest place I can get it."

Greene: That was his testimony and he was sticking to it, huh?

Walters: Right. And one of the conditions that was put on the stores, one of the things that happens in inner-city communities is a lot of gathering around liquor stores, and they find old couches and chairs, and just park outside, you know, play cards and dominos or whatever, so they can drink their malt liquor and as soon as they're empty, go get another one. They're right there. Well, one of the conditions was that they couldn't allow people to gather outside like that, and use the parking lot for those kinds of uses.

Greene: So your community standards were being developed.

Walters: Exactly. Exactly.

Greene: And a lot of this came--it sounds like it was a longstanding problem--

Walters: Oh, absolutely.

Greene: --but that a lot of it sort of came to the fore in the aftermath of the uprising, as folks were having conversations about redeveloping?

Walters: Absolutely. Because all of these things contributed to the deterioration of the neighborhood. And the first thing in the riot that they started burning down were the liquor stores. You know, nobody burned anybody's home, but the liquor stores were the ones that got burned.

Greene: They were bombing targets.

Walters: Yes. They were targeted in '65, and they were targeted in '92, the liquor stores. You know, there weren't any real grocery stores burned.

Greene: Okay. So there's a laundry list of issues that you had to tackle while you were in office, including the sort of issues around community development and economic development that we were talking about. So I wanted to throw out some of those and just ask you kind of what you recall, and how you had to sort of work around some of these issues, how they may have become issues. Before I do, I want to ask you something about who your allies were at different times on the city council, particularly when you're confronting these issues around redevelopment and problem businesses, and trying to bring services to the area. I know you were elected at the same time as Mark Ridley Thomas, for example, and that some of the issues may have affected some parts of his district as well. So I wonder if you could talk some about your working relationship with Mark, and I wondered, too, were there other folks that you worked with regularly and conferred with regularly on the council.

Walters: My relationship with Mark was excellent. We both recognized that we essentially represented the same community, and that we needed to work together to get what those communities needed, and so we did that, so there wasn't a problem there. As far as working with others, it depended on the issue, whether folks would ally themselves with you or not. On the issue of any monies coming from rebuilding funds after the civil unrest, a district that I think had two windows broken out, they were trying to get money for that, so you know, when money is on the table, your allies dwindled in direct proportion to the amount of money involved.

Walters: And some people felt that--in fact, I heard one of the council people, and it astounded me to hear him say it, was that he wasn't giving any money to anybody that burned their own community down.

Greene: This was? Who was this?

Walters: One of the council people. They don't understand that people don't feel they own their community, that it's something that they own. They feel it's something that they're almost excluded from, or an outcast, that their community is an outcast as a whole, and that's hard to get across to folks. But other people were more than willing to be helpful, as long as it didn't deprive them of anything, or anything that they could access for their district. So that was a fluid--your working relationships were fluid.

Greene: Depending on the issue that you took up and what was at stake.

Walters: Depending on the issue, right. Exactly.

Greene: Okay. So you took up--let me ask you about community policing. Were you a proponent of community policing?

Walters: Yes, it worked well.

Greene: And was that in any way a response to some of the tensions around the civil unrest?

Walters: Yes, I think it was. I think Darryl Gates had done some talking about it, but when Willie Williams came in, I think community policing, that he was better able to sell it to the community, and sell it to the police officers. It was no magic bullet by any stretch, but it did help to open some doors, and some hearts and minds.

Greene: Talk about the notion of community policing. What was it supposed to do, and how was it different from what had happened previously, or what had been done previously?

Walters: Well, before the notion of community policing, they had neighborhood block clubs, which were very close to community policing. But community policing was supposed to encourage officers to work more closely with the community, and not just attend the block-club meeting, but to get to know people in the community, make themselves available so people could know them and would feel free to call on them. They probably had calling cards before, but they were encouraged to distribute their calling cards so that people could call them on the phone if they needed something, and I think that helped some.

Walters: There's still a lot of skepticism. The skepticism is still there. It doesn't disappear overnight. But there was at least from the top somebody saying, "We want to reach out to communities, and we want to have a better relationship." Darryl Gates sort of had an attitude, well, they can go jump, take a flying leap or something. To me, he never was much on outreach to the community. He reached out to more conservative parts of the community, but as far as going out of his way, or the department going out of their way to get to know people or whatever, that was not my impression that that was his guiding theme.

Greene: You took up the issue of ammunition, the availability of bullets.

Walters: Yes. I found out a store just down the street from a high school, Manual Arts High School--the store was almost at Vernon and Vermont. Manual Arts High School is just at [Martin Luther] King [Blvd.] and Vermont--was selling individual bullets of varying sizes, and depending on the size you could go in there and buy one for as little as twenty-five cents. So a kid could take their lunch money and go in there and buy several bullets, you know. And they didn't have any age restrictions or requirements against it. It was awful.

Greene: What was it you were proposing be done?

Walters: I was proposing that the city pass an ordinance that would prohibit the sale of individual bullets, to minors or anybody else, because adults could go in there and decide, you know, if they had access to a gun, they could decide they're going to rip somebody off, and go in there and buy a couple of bullets, and there goes a life. So as I recall, the ordinance never got passed, because they felt that we didn't have the legal right to regulate the sales of ammunition.

Greene: Banking.

Walters: Almost nonexistent.

Greene: Is that right? And had that been the case, or was it--I guess what I'm trying to figure out, was it the result of some branches closing, or was it that there had never been a good number of branches in your district at the time.

Walters: I think it was the result of a lot of banks closing branches. There were some banks in the area, but they were pretty few and far between. And then after the civil unrest, folks kind of lost interest in being in the community, you know. A lot of the payday-advance places opened up, which were just usurious in terms of the rates of interest they charged people for borrowing money.

Greene: Oh, these are the check-cashing establishments?

Walters: Check cashing, payday advance, where folks could go take their check and cash it, and say, "I need a hundred dollars more than I have," and they borrowed against next week's pay, and wind up paying, what, 125 or 150 back for the hundred they borrowed, if they paid it on time. And if they didn't pay it on time, before you know it they owed more than they had borrowed, a lot more than they had borrowed. They would always owe more than they had borrowed to pay any interest at all, but I mean, you know, that it had doubled over the principal. If they borrowed a hundred, then they owed two hundred.

Greene: Wow.

Walters: It's pretty awful.

Greene: That used to be called usury?

Walters: Yes.

Greene: Were there groups in your district that were working on this issue, or worked to make it more of an issue? Was it something that you took up--how did you come to take it up?

Walters: They wanted to raise their rates, and I think they had to come to the council for it, and I opposed it. But people supported them. People on the council supported them. I can't say that the community folks, there was any wholesale community support for it. But certainly an argument was, there were no banks, and these people need to cash checks, and we need to charge them money for doing that.

Greene: There's something I missed, and failed to ask you about. Following the uprising, just a couple of short years later, like two to three years later there was an earthquake?

Walters: Yes, yes.

Greene: How did that impact--

Walters: CD-9? Not nearly to the extent that the civil unrest had. But there was still some impact there in CD-9, and one of the things, one of the areas that was impacted in the earthquake that hadn't been touched in the civil unrest was housing. Some old apartment buildings and houses, individual homes, were affected, but not nearly like the major damage was really in the western and valley area, because they said at the same time or just after it, the quake in the city that Santa Monica had--what happened in Santa Monica was caused by a different quake. But at the same time, it was probably touched off by the initial quake.

Walters: So there wasn't a lot of damage, and some of the damage, like to larger structures, some of the buildings downtown that had to be rehabbed or whatever, was damage in CD-9, but not to the poorer portion. But we did have some housing issues. We had alternative housing set up for a while at Manual Arts High School, because people--their buildings had been condemned, and they couldn't stay in them, so we had to find them some housing.

Greene: Did you ever catch flak from constituents in other parts of your district for taking up these kinds of issues that seemed to impact folks at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale?

Walters: The folks downtown weren't too interested in hearing about folks at the lower end of the scale, and they wanted all your time and attention to downtown, no matter how needy the rest of the district was.

Greene: How did you--I'm trying to figure out how you navigated that.

Walters: Balancing?

Greene: How did you negotiate that? How did you stand strong in the face of kind of magnetic pull to downtown, even while you're advocating for the needs of communities in other parts of your district? How did you walk that tightrope?

Walters: Well, to the best extent that I was able, I didn't ask them for money. I wasn't out there with my hand out all the time, having fundraisers and what have you. There was a lot of dissatisfaction, and people talking about, well, they weren't going to support me. Okay, don't. They thought I was very difficult to work with. That's fine. I didn't dispute that, because where the difficulty came in, I was just not of a mind to make folks who already were doing well, to make their life easier. Now, I understood the need to have a viable business community, and as a person with an MBA I understood the need for financing, and for people having a viable workforce and that sort of thing.

Walters: But I also understood the need to pay people, to pay them a decent wage, and one of the things that the business community did not like was the Livable Wage Law. They felt I should oppose that, which I did not. One of the people who was working on the Livable Wage Law got the impression from a staff person that I had that I was opposing it, which was totally wrong, and I made them understand that, and the staff, too, and that they were never to go out and say that I wasn't supporting or was supporting something without talking with me first. So that was a problem.

Walters: Then there was the restaurant workers and hotel workers were having negotiation difficulty with the downtown hotels, and so labor asked people not to patronize the hotels that weren't supportive of unionization, which I did not do. I supported them and spoke at their rallies, and the janitors, spoke at their rallies and marches, and the woman who's now head of the County Federation [of Labor], Maria Elena Durazo, was just a real fireball, and great organizer, and was able to get good results for the people. But the business community wasn't terribly in love with Maria Elena, but she is a terrific woman.

Walters: I felt that business people really need to understand that they're not the sole folks with needs that need to be addressed by people in elective office, that they've got to be sensitive to these other needs. And when the economy went dead and so many people out of work, we had a bad time in the nineties, not as bad as it is now, but things went downhill quite a bit. A lot of people lost jobs, and a lot of the jobs that were expected to be available were not, so it was a balancing act. But you just have to do both things. You have to take care of folks that can't take care of themselves so well, and do what is possible without harming somebody else for folks that do a good job of taking care of themselves.

Greene: Are there constituency groups that stand out in your mind--you mentioned the Community Coalition, and I think we talked a little earlier about the southeast central homeowners, even the Central Business Association you once mentioned. Are there groups that you worked with almost continuously in your time as a councilwoman that sort of stand out in your mind as either helping to keep you focused, or to make certain things happen for your district that you felt were important?

Walters: Well, the 9th District was not a district of organizations. It really wasn't. One of the things I had hoped for was to get some of the Latino community organized and vocal in the 9th District, but that didn't happen and they didn't participate. As I told you about these community meetings I had, I always had translation there, and we were trying to encourage Latino families to become a part of it, and they really weren't present too much. But when you understand that some of them are working two and three jobs, both parents or at least one parent, and they've got children, young children, families--they tend to have more children than other families--that life was very difficult, and for people coming from another country, not speaking the language, may or may not have papers, trying to exist in a sometimes-hostile environment is very difficult.

Walters: I did work with--one ongoing group that I worked with was NALEO, the National Association of Latino Elected Officials, and their citizenship classes we made available to them through the school district. They had to apply for it, but I spoke for them at the school district, that we wanted--and the school district had this policy of Civic Center permits they called them, where they rent out the schools to different groups, and if you fall into certain criteria, you can have the school property for your meeting or event, without a charge. Then the district got up against it, and they said, well, they absolutely had to charge for custodial services, and that would be their minimum charge. So I was able to, you know, do that for them, because we rented the schools and had to pay the fee for my meetings in the schools. So they had kind of worked with them on getting their classes established in the school district, and when they were having classes I would go and speak to them, to their classes and the people, and encourage them to become citizens, to try to outreach to that community, you know, and explain to them what council offices do and can do.

Walters: But then there was the Community Coalition, and they were steady, always there, and they would outreach to people, and bring in more people to participate. But one of the things that I found was a lot of people were long on complaining, but short on doing any action. It was difficult, and in some ways you understand it. People would call us and complain about block parties, loud block parties. Well, call the police. Well, they don't want to call the police, because they were afraid to call the police, that their neighbors might know they had called, and they had to live there in the community, and the police started telling folks, "You don't have to give your name." And some people insisted. "They do require my name. I call up and they want my name, and they won't come without my name." Well, you keep telling them that you can call, and you don't have to leave your name.

Walters: And then some people were afraid that if they called the police, they'd wind up getting hurt, so--.

Greene: Okay.[End of interview]

1.9. Session 9 (August 19, 2008)

Greene: This is Sean Greene interviewing Rita Walters on August nineteenth at her home. Good afternoon, Rita.

Walters: Good afternoon, Sean.

Greene: I wonder if we could pick up where we left off. We were talking about the end of your term as city councilwoman of City Council District 9, and I wondered if you could talk about when you left office and how that came about, before we talk about what came next for you.

Walters: I left office in 2001. June thirty was the last official day. There was no choice about staying, because term limits had been enacted by the people, in a vote of the people of Los Angeles. When I was first elected to the Council, it was for the unexpired term of a council person who had died in office, Gilbert Lindsay, and there were no term limits at that time. But two years later the election--[Mayor Richard] Riordan was running, and Riordan sponsored the initiative. He paid for it to be put on the [November 1992] ballot, got the signatures, for term limits, allowing only two-four year terms. He was using that as a vehicle to get himself known [for the April '93 election].

Greene: I see.

Walters: And it worked for him. For him it was an election issue, and later as he was coming to the end of his term he said that he wished that he had put a term limit that would have been longer. He wanted to stay, of course. But that was the immediate reason why I left. Well, it was the reason. As I said, I had no choice in the matter. But in addition to that, I was seventy-one at that time, and I really didn't have a lot of regrets about the personal effect of term limits, because I really felt like after twenty-two years in public life, I was ready to retire, ready to give it up.

Greene: And did you have a view of term limits sort of beyond your situation? What was your perspective on term limits?

Walters: Oh, I despise term limits. I think that it robs people of the right to vote for the candidate that they choose, like Gus Hawkins, for example, and Tom Bradley. Both of those gentlemen spent about fifty years in public service, and if there had been term limits on either the Assembly, where Gus spent twenty, thirty years, or the U.S. Congress, where he spent, I don't know, twenty-five years or so, thirty years maybe there, he wouldn't have been able to do that. He wouldn't have been able to give that service, and to me that would have been depriving people of a public servant that they liked and that served them well. So I'm not at all for term limits.

Walters: And aside from that, just to see the effect of term limits at the state level and at the local level. It's really detrimental to the operation of government, because people come in really raw, so to speak, with respect to the policy making process. Some of the people who were elected had never served in a public body before. I remember when I got elected to the school board, and there were no term limits there, and there still are not. But folks got elected that had never even been to a school-board meeting before, that there was an issue that they would glom onto, and you know, they were looking for elective-office opportunity, and so that's where they landed.

Greene: So you're saying that term limits effectively--for folks who come in with a learning curve, term limits prevents them from being able to get good at serving in that particular office?

Walters: It does. And it prevents them from--a lot of politics is relationships. You don't have time to establish relationships. Folks get elected into office, they know they've got two terms, and they're already looking to what's going to be out there available for them at the time their term is up. Then folks are elected for two terms, that's eight years in the city council, and only six years at the [California] State Assembly, and eight years in the [California] State Senate. But they get elected to these offices, and start looking for something else, and then you've got this hop, skip, and jump.

Greene: Pieces on a chessboard almost.

Walters: That's right, folks just jumping in and out all over the place. There's a person on the council now, Richard Alarcon. Richard was elected to the city council, I think, in '93. I was already elected when he was elected, and then term limits came in with his election on the council that year. So an opportunity opened at the State Senate, and he went to the State Senate and served the eight years that was allowed, and then ran for the State Assembly and got elected, and then a [Los Angeles] City Council seat opened up [after another election in 2006 extended Council terms to three]. I think he was in the Assembly maybe a month or two, literally, before he started running for the city council and was elected again to the city council. And the reason he was able to do that--he had not served a full eight years on the city council. I said he had served eight years, but he didn't serve his full term. The opportunity came to go to the state level before he finished his two terms, so he got to go back.

Greene: And that's what would allow him to go back to the city council.

Walters: Right. Right. And there's discussion--next spring are municipal elections again, and there's talk that some members who were termed out, or left before term limits came in, are thinking of running again for the council.

Greene: Wow.

Walters: You know, that kind of thing.

Greene: Kind of moving parts, huh, with lack of continuity in the one particular office.

Walters: That's right. That's right. And some districts, people have changed so rapidly, constituents complain, "I don't know who my representative is anymore," and that's unfortunate.

Greene: Did you pay much attention to the campaign to fill your seat on the city council at the time?

Walters: I was supporting a young man who was a member of my staff, and whom I had known for many years. He was strongly connected to labor in Los Angeles. He had been a labor operative, but he did not win.

Greene: His name was?

Walters: Woody [William] Flemming. Yes. So to the extent, you know, that Woody was running, I was supporting him, but he lost, in the final analysis. He lost in the general.

Greene: So what came next for you once your term was over on city council?

Walters: Well, something that I hadn't planned for. Just about six weeks before the end of the term, like May twentieth, I became ill all of a sudden, and had to have emergency surgery, and wound up spending three weeks in the hospital. I never got to go back to the council, because I had an extended recuperative period after the three weeks, after I got out of the hospital. I got out of the hospital after about five days, went home for a few days, and had to go right back, and they kept me for three weeks. So then I came home, and after I began to improve and get better, my ex-husband took sick. We were still friends, and he lived in the South Bay, and it was very difficult for my youngest son to get down there and get him to his medical appointments and what have you, so I started doing that. Then he got so ill, we brought him here.

Walters: He didn't have cancer when it first started, when his illness first started. He had a problem with clogged arteries. He had been a heavy smoker all his life, and he had had an infection set in his foot that turned into gangrene. He was a patient at the Veteran's Administration, and he just got treated horribly there, just horribly. So Philip finally took him over to the doctors at Cedars Hospital, and they took very good care of him. He died a couple of years later, well, probably a year and a half later.

Greene: And for most of that time you cared for him at home?

Walters: Well, he was in and out. Yes, he came here, and then he'd have to go back to the hospital, and he was in rehab, and it wound up they amputated his leg below the knee. They replaced an artery first, but it was a long, slow process, and he thought the process of getting adjusted to a prosthetic would be simpler than trying to have those arteries heal, so he asked the doctor if they would amputate his leg, and they did. And then he turned up with cancer, with leukemia, and so that really did him in. And that's what I meant when I said he didn't have it at first. He didn't have leukemia at first, didn't have cancer.

Greene: It developed after?

Walters: Right. Right. So during that time I had started--I guess before he got sick I started training at the City [of Los Angeles] Library to be a docent, and that was about, oh, it started in like September or October, and went all the way till the next April or May, about eight or nine months training.

Greene: Wow. What was the nature of the training? That sounds pretty extensive.

Walters: Right. Learning all about the--it's at the central library--about all the departments and their function, and what's held, what books are in certain places. The building itself is historic, and learning about the architects, and how the public-library system came about in Los Angeles, and all of these historical facts, and they were insistent that you do all of this from memory, no notes.

Greene: Really.

Walters: Right, right. So I did that and I was about ready to complete that when the then-Mayor, Jim [James] Hahn, on my request--somebody called and said that there was an African American woman on the Library Commission who was leaving because of family illness, and would I be interested in taking her place, and if I was, to call the mayor. I was, and I called him and sent him a letter and resume.

Greene: What was her name, do you recall?

Walters: No, I don't. I think she was the wife of a minister in town. I'm not sure.

Greene: So this is how you were appointed to the commission, the Library Commission?

Walters: Yes, right. Hahn appointed me, and then [Mayor] Villaraigosa reappointed me after he came along.

Greene: What does the Library Commission do? Tell me some about the Library Commission and what that's like.

Walters: The Library Commission's function is to set policy for the operation of the library. Before Riordan came along and enacted--he put a number of charter changes on the ballot, and what he did was the Library Commission prior to that had the authority to hire and fire the city librarian. That was removed from the commission, that authority, in those charter changes. So there's not a whole lot they do outside the setting-the-policy arena. It's, again, a learning process. The City of Los Angeles has, in addition to the central library, has seventy-two branches that all operate under the one library department, or Department of Libraries. I think in New York it's different. Their central library is not connected to their branches, and Brooklyn has a separate operation.

Greene: Brooklyn has its own.

Walters: Right. But this is all one library system. Now, County of Los Angeles has a county system for those smaller cities and unincorporated areas in the County of Los Angeles.

Greene: And that's a separate system?

Walters: That's a separate system. But L.A., in the City of Los Angeles there are seventy-two, plus the central library, and we just opened a new branch, a rebuilt branch. It moved from Vermont, across from [U]SC, the Exposition Park-Mary McCleod Bethune Branch, and they doubled it in size, and rebuilt it at 39th and Western, and we just opened it yesterday.

Greene: Oh, was there a ceremony?

Walters: Yes. Right.

Greene: Oh, wonderful. And it was the actual opening, it wasn't like a groundbreaking, was it?

Walters: No, no, no. The groundbreaking was a year or more ago. It's a brand-new, wonderful building.

Greene: Oh, at 39th and Western.

Walters: And Western, right, and if you're ever in that area and can go by there--

Greene: Absolutely.

Walters: --it just does so much for the area, for the neighborhood.

Greene: How many people serve on the Library Commission?

Walters: Five. Five people on the commission, yes.

Greene: And I imagine you were well prepared by that point to sit on a commission, given how it functions. Was it pretty much how you expected it to be?

Walters: Oh yes, yes, yes. Some of the commissions in what are called the proprietary departments, the Department of Water and Power, the Airports, for example, the Harbor, wield a lot of power, but the Library Commission is not one of those.

Greene: Especially after the charter change that you mentioned.

Walters: Right. Right. The Library Commission is not one of those. They approve--when the building program started, the architects would come, and we would approve the design and work with architects, and then they have to go to the Cultural Affairs Commission to be sure that the art that's--we have a Public Art Ordinance, that 1 percent of the building costs for a particular building, a public building, has to be expended on artwork in the building, or in front of the building, on some public art. So we approve that, and it goes on to the Cultural Affairs Commission, and then goes on to council. But the city council is definitely before all these jillion commissions that the City of L.A. has. Some folks come on and they think that whatever action they take, that's the final thing. Nay, not so.

Greene: Doesn't work that way?

Walters: Doesn't work that way. The mayor and the council--the council has to approve it, and then the mayor has to approve it.

Greene: Oh, so there's at least two more cuts it has to go through.

Walters: That's right, that's right. But in the past few years, in the nineties the voters of L.A. passed two bond issues for building new libraries and refurbishing older libraries, and we've built [or refurbished] thirty-five libraries. And they've spent their money so well, they were able to build three that weren't initially planned for.

Greene: Now, are those measures, are those something that the Library Commission would recommend to be put on the ballot?

Walters: Yes. Yes. But the council has to approve whether it goes on the ballot, so the things that the commission approves go to the council as recommendations. And sometimes things come from the Mayor's Office, or from the council, and they come to the Library Commission as recommendations, and we act on them and send them back as recommendations, and then they're approved.

Greene: All right. I'm torn. I want to ask you, on the one hand, about your children, because the last time we talked, probably the last time we talked at length about them was in an earlier interview when they were still school aged.

Walters: Oh yes.

Greene: And obviously they're grown now--

Walters: Right.

Greene: --and so I wonder if you could tell me something about what direction their lives might have taken.

Walters: David, my oldest, is fifty-one. Susan, the middle child, is fifty, and both of them in October and November will be fifty-one and fifty-two. Philip, the youngest, turned forty-eight the first of June, and he was, incidentally, born on the same day that both my grandfathers were born.

Greene: Is that right?

Walters: Right. But David, I think I shared with you, had some developmental disabilities, so he works as--I think his job title is office helper at an adult school that's operated by the Los Angeles Unified School District, and he works there part time, and does well, functions well, gets around the city on the bus. He's fully functional in taking care of himself. He has some visual problems and some--well, I guess when he was a child they said he had neurological impairment, so he had visual and hearing problems, in terms of perception. He had visual-perceptual problems, and hearing-perception problems, and was classified as hyperactive, the AD--what is it--Attention Deficit Disorder [ADD] now, that's been classified.

Walters: Susan is a very bright young woman, very, very bright, exceptionally bright, and she has done very well with her life. When she was six years old she was in a class--I had bought the school books, and in trying to help David learn to read, Susan learned, and had read all those books. They had her in this class, and then the teacher--came home with her report card all Cs. I said, "This is ridiculous," and I talked to the principal about it, and I told him I wanted her to be prepared to go to any college that she chose to go to in the United States, and certainly the University of California. He told me, "Oh, don't worry, Mrs. Walters. Your daughter is a beautiful young girl, and she'll grow up and marry well." I told him, "Grow up and marry she might; grow up and work she must."

Walters: But I was trying to get her in an algebra class, get her started on her A-to-F requirements in the ninth grade, so that she would come up to the senior year and not be burdened with trying to be sure she had all these things. They didn't want to let her in an algebra class in the ninth grade. The principal didn't think she could handle it. I went all the way to superintendent of schools. That was before I was a school-board member. I was a pushy parent, to get her in an algebra class. Susan did well in school, and she went from high-school graduation on a Thursday night--she was due in class at Berkeley on a program, a bridge program they called it, for minority students, that Monday, the next Monday. And she was on the Dean's List there every quarter her first year at Berkeley, so she could do the work.

Walters: She left, she graduated from Berkeley. Her undergraduate degree was in business, and then she worked for the university for her first year out of school, and then she went--she was doing minority recruitment, and she traveled up and down the state doing minority recruitment. Then she went to Coro. Are you familiar with the Coro Program?

Greene: No.

Walters: It's a public-affairs program, quite extensive, operates in L.A., San Francisco, St. Louis, New York, maybe Chicago, but they have a number of them across the country. What they do is set up opportunities for their interns. There are about a dozen a year in each group that intern with various public officials or public institutions, for two to three weeks at a time, and then the group meets together once a week, and they talk about their experiences, and they have to document their experiences. There's a lot of writing and what have you.

Greene: I think I have come across the program in New York.

Walters: Yes. They do this for nine months. At the end of the nine months, they have an opportunity to continue their graduate work--they consider it graduate work--at Claremont University here. Susan did that, and earned a master's in public policy. So then she went to work for Willie Brown, and worked for the [California] State Assembly, and then Wille Brown when he was Speaker [of the California State Assembly]--and then she worked for him for a number of years [in his San Francisco office], and then went to work for Pac [Pacific] Bell, which was the phone company at that time, and she stayed there a number of years. Then she went to work for a private business entity in the private sector, and that didn't work out too well. Where did she go from there? I can't remember. I'm blanking on where she worked after that. [She formed her own consulting company focusing on technology and public policy.]

Walters: But she worked for Citibank for a couple of years, her most recent before she took this job. Now she's with a foundation called California Emerging Technology Fund, that was formed as a result of the State Public Utilities Commission, requiring as a function of Verizon, [AT&T and MCI] and some of the phone companies, requiring that the phone companies, in exchange for what they were asking in the state with respect to some of the mergers and what have you, that they fund this foundation for five years, and the fund's mission is to bring technology to underserved communities, rural and inner-city communities. So she's doing that. She's a vice president with that, and enjoying it very much. Today she's in Fresno [CA].

Greene: Oh, she travels for her job.

Walters: Right. Right. So that's what Susan does. Philip also had attention deficit disorder, but Philip tested in the gifted range, so he was able to compensate for a lot of that. But getting him to focus, you know, on what he wanted--when he graduated from high school, he went to community college for a while, and then he got into music, and he did volunteer work at a radio station, and decided he wanted to be a recording engineer. UCLA Extension had this program for recording, training people to do recording engineering, and he enrolled in that, and I guess he worked for about ten years in the recording industry. And then he decided it was just too crazy. It was either feast or famine. They would have long periods where they'd, you know, like work around the clock, and other periods where there was no work. It was seasonal. [Then he enrolled in Antioch University - Santa Monica Campus - studying psychology.]

Walters: And he got interested in architecture in old homes, and carpentry. He had always been interested in carpentry. Those speakers in there he made when he was in high school. I had--he made a kitchen table, a butcher-block kitchen table that was just gorgeous, but the termites got in it in our old house. So then the house that we had, I wanted to do some rehab work, and he started on it and did a beautiful job on it. His father was an engineer, but he was also an excellent carpenter. He had that rocking chair that I used to have in there, his dad had made that, and made the harp that sits there. The rocking chair went back with Susan. Well, Philip has the rocking chair, and he had another chair his dad had made that Susan wanted to trade him the rocking chair for, so that's what they did.

Walters: But Philip started doing remodeling, and he went and got his contractor's license, so he's a licensed contractor, and he did that for a number of years, and he got stiffed by a couple of folks. so he decided he was going to get out of that. So what he's doing now is construction inspection on schools. He works with a man that was very active--his name is Bonnie James--very active in my campaigns. He was a teacher and then administrator in LAUSD, and then a vice president of Pasadena Community College, and he started this--and he came back to LAUSD and was assisting on their building program before I left. He then went to L.A. Community College, and he retired from the L.A. Community College District and started his own business of assisting school districts in getting funds, because then and still, districts have to go to Sacramento to get building funds, and finally L.A. and a couple of other districts started going out on their own, seeing if they could pass bond issues to get money for schools, so they wouldn't have to go through so much red tape with the state. There's still a lot, because state must approve every building that's constructed, regardless of who pays for it.

Greene: Is that how that works?

Walters: That's how it works, and that's because of what's called the Field Act. In the thirties they had this bad earthquake down in Long Beach, and schools collapsed, so they set up a very rigid set of guidelines for what school construction must be. So schools and hospitals have to do that, and so Philip is working for him now. They're building some schools out in Alhambra that he's a construction inspector on. So that's what they're doing. Susan was the only one who was married, and now, as I told you before, she's no longer married. She's divorced. And Philip is an old bachelor, as is David, but they're good kids. I feel very blessed, because they have been wonderful children. There was never, never a problem with them.

Walters: I mean, you know, a problem like, "What can I wear? Why do I have to be home at a certain time?"

Greene: Sure. Typical sort of teenage stuff.

Walters: Right, right. Teenage stuff. "Turn the hi-fi down," that kind of stuff. But I mean, no major problems. We're just very fortunate [knocks on wood] they didn't have an involvement with drugs or, you know, teenage pregnancies, none of that really horrible stuff.

Greene: You mentioned before how so much of political work is premised on relationships and so forth. Were there any relationships from your time in elective office that sort of carried over over the years once you had left the office, even though not necessary public service?

Walters: Yes. With Mark Ridley Thomas, with Karen Bass. I still have a good relationship with Herb Wesson. Another is Laura Chick. I mean, we're not fast friends, but we have a good relationship with those people. Villaraigosa. There's Julian Dixon, I think I've talked to you about him before. He died about six months before I left office, and that's a relationship that would have continued. We were really very close friends. But yes, there are still relationships around, people that I feel I have a good relationship with, a number of them.

Greene: I guess I want to ask you a couple of questions. One is about, actually, in keeping with some of your activities since you were in elected office. Were there campaigns or others' political aspirations that you supported once you were out of office, in one way or another?

Walters: Oh, absolutely. Tom La Bonge on the city council, his was the first campaign I got involved in. It came shortly after I left. He was in a special election, because the person, John Ferraro, that had been president of the council, died in office, and Tom had worked on his staff, and he was running for that office. I supported Tom, and made phone calls and did all that stuff for him. There were others. I worked on Mark's campaigns, and still am working on supporting him for election to the board of supervisors. And I have a good relationship with Bernie [Bernard] Parks, but I'm not supporting him for the supervisorial seat.

Walters: Other campaigns, I'm involved with the [Barack] Obama campaign. I was involved with Karen Bass' campaign, and I don't know whether I mentioned it before. I've known Karen since she was a little girl, friends with her parents.

Greene: Talk to me about your relationship with Karen, and also about any opinions you might have about Karen's trajectory and what it represents.

Walters: Oh, I think Karen's trajectory is as far as she wants to go with it, and it's term limits that get in the way. But she and Mark are two of the most progressive African American elected officials, I think, that we have, and I look for each of them to go very far. Karen is just so bright. She comes from a family of geniuses. They're all just extremely bright people, and they had such a wonderful parentage. Their mother and father were marvelous parents, so they had a very good family background. Karen was always more politically oriented than her brothers. She has three brothers. But I've always been very proud of her, and very proud of her brothers. They're very, very good people. And Karen just has always seemed to have a grasp of world events and what is needed to change things, and to challenge the power structure, how you organize. She seems to have this innate organizational ability. And besides, having a nice personality, being very easy to get along with, you know. She really has a warm, open personality, and she has done well, she will continue to do well, and I look for Mark to do the same.

Greene: It's a challenging time to be in office right now, in general--

Walters: Yes.

Greene: --but certainly to be Assembly Speaker, for example--

Walters: Right.

Greene: --or even to possibly occupy the supervisorial seat that Ridley Thomas is running for, right?

Walters: Yes, yes, at some point.

Greene: I wonder what you see as some of the challenges facing black elected officials nowadays, progressive or otherwise. What do you see from your vantage point as some of the kind of major challenges that exist?

Walters: Well, given the population of Los Angeles, I think it's very important for any elected official, regardless of being African American or any other race--they need to be able to work in an environment of coalition politics, and Karen is very good at that. Her Community Coalition was just that. It was a coalition of everybody in the community, and she had Latino staff. One of her closest friends is a Latina woman who's on her staff now.

Greene: Sylvia Castillo?

Walters: Right. And Karen has just always had a knack for that. She traveled to Cuba early on. She understands how you have to put things together, and not all of our elected officials, black, white, or brown, have that ability. But I think for anybody that's going to be really successful in Los Angeles, that's necessary, and some of the older politicians have had to learn that.

Greene: How about maybe from the vantage point of some of your former constituents in C.D. [Council District] 9, for example, right? What do you see as some of the challenges facing the communities that you used to represent in office, for example, given how the city is changing, given the times that we're living in politically and otherwise?

Walters: Well, it was predominantly Latino when I was elected, but they were not voting constituents. It's a community of a lot of new immigrants, you know. It's a first stop for a lot of immigrant people, so that's difficult. I imagine now the population there is probably close to 85, 90 percent Latino in the 9th District, except for the downtown. Now, when I was there, there weren't that many people that lived downtown, but there were some, and I moved in downtown, too. But the downtown population then tended to be predominantly white and affluent, and now I guess it's still affluent, but it's more of a mix as more building has gone up, and folks have built lofts.

Greene: Oh, the lofts and the apartments, luxury apartments and stuff.

Walters: Right. So there's going to continue to be that real difference between income and race, marked differences there, that, you know, south of, say, Washington Blvd. is going to continue to be the poorer minority section of the district, and the Downtown [Los Angeles], the northern part of the district, is probably going to continue to be the more affluent, less diverse part of the district.

Greene: Have the prospects improved for the kinds of--let me back up. When you talk to me about your time in office, it strikes me that a lot of what you were trying to do was affect the distribution of services and resources--

Walters: Right.

Greene: --and make sure that they got to the community that needed them most, and that didn't have them in the same way that other parts of the district may have, or other parts of the city may have.

Walters: Right.

Greene: Have you noticed a change in the possibilities for that type of redistribution, for example? Is there something different about the climate now that makes it a steeper climb, for example, to kind of push for those kinds of distributional effects?

Walters: I don't know that it's steeper, but it's still steep, and I think a lot depends on how much of a struggle in which you're willing to engage over those distributional issues. One of the things that I learned about elected officials--there's more people than I thought that really want folks to love them.

Greene: Is that right?

Walters: And they don't want to do anything to upset anybody. But I didn't have that problem. So, you know, if they loved me, great; if they didn't, that's great, too. But it's hard for some people. It's hard for some people. And, of course, your life is a lot easier if people do have warm feelings toward you, but you can't live your life on whether constituent A or constituent B loves you, or that you can't do something over here in constituent C's neighborhood, because A and B might get upset with you. You just have to try to bring them all into the mix, and explain why it's necessary to do something over here for constituent C, that you still care about constituents A and B, but you've got to do something for constituents C and D, and that's what government is supposed to be about. There's supposed to be an equity factor there. Everybody's paying taxes. Some folks don't think that's true, but as a percentage of income, poorer people pay more in taxes than affluent people do. Folks don't want to accept that.

Greene: You mentioned the Obama campaign. Can we talk about that for a few minutes?

Walters: Sure.

Greene: All right. What interested you in Senator Obama, and what interested you enough to make you want to participate and work for his campaign?

Walters: Oh, you know, he was a surprise, really. I first heard about him when he was running for State Senate in Illinois, in Chicago, and people were saying, well, the media were saying that this young man is challenging this other guy, but he doesn't stand a chance. The Anglo guy has got the money, and got the name, and blah de blah. And all of a sudden, up popped a very unfortunate difference between the guy and his wife, not Obama, the other man that Obama was running against. You didn't hear about--

Greene: Somehow I missed that part.

Walters: Oh, well. He had quite a sexual history, and his wife made it all public and--

Greene: Oh, it got ugly.

Walters: --it got ugly, yes. She was seeking a divorce, and she accused him of being into pornography, and wanting her to participate or something in it. Anyway, he lost, and I'm trying to recall whether he just gave up or he went the distance and lost, and I don't recall. Seems like he dropped out of the race, but I'm not sure. But what I remember from those early days and when I first heard about Obama was the certitude on the part of some of the media, that he wasn't going anyplace. And then Carol Mosley Braun--did she go back to the [U.S.] Senate, and had a problem?

Greene: The U.S. Senate?

Walters: Yes. She went back and had a problem.

Greene: Getting reelected.

Walters: Yes. She got tied up with a boyfriend, and some goings on in Africa or something. And he [Obama] ran for the [United States] Senate. I said, oh, this is interesting. Wonder if Illinois will elect another black to the Senate. And what do you know? He got elected. Then he was doing so well, and all of a sudden folks started talking about president. And I said, oh, god, I hope he doesn't lose his Senate seat and, you know, give this up running for president, because it just seemed such a far reach. But I'm so glad he did it, and he, of course, didn't lose his Senate seat. He still has the Senate seat if he loses for president.

Walters: But when he got out there for president and was really serious about it, I knew I couldn't sit here as an African American who had been part of the elective, part of the political world, and even had I not been part of the political world, I needed to be out there supporting this man, and hopefully he would win. At first I thought, well, with Hillary Clinton running he won't make it, but you still have to support him. But he did make it, and God, I hope he makes it in November. They're doing some dirt.

Greene: Yes.

Walters: Really doing some dirt. And the Clintons [William and Hillary], I've been so disappointed in them. I was a very strong Clinton supporter, but they've really surprised me. Their behavior has surprised me in this campaign.

Greene: In the course of the campaign?

Walters: Right. Right. And I still don't trust Hillary's machinations, or her husband's. You know, this business that they get two nights at the convention, and they're going to put Hillary's name in nomination. To me she operates like the Trojan horse, you know, get a toe in under the tent, and before you know it here's this whole body in there, with a whole lot of other bodies along with it.

Greene: And chaos ensues.

Walters: Right. Absolutely.

Greene: Who knows how the dust settles.

Walters: So I think he would be having a much better time.

Greene: I noticed the excitement in your voice though, when you talked about how from the time of Obama's early campaigns, seeing that he actually has gotten to a point of having a really good shot at the nomination of the party.

Walters: Right, right, right. And I think that he's--in looking at him and the way he operates, I think he has the capability of practicing the coalition politics that a lot of our would-be politicians or already politicians really don't have that understanding. And people, you know, black folks will be talking about it, "Well, is he black enough?" You know? No, he's not Jesse Jackson. Thank God he's not Al Sharpton. But I think he has a new vision. He talks about new politics, and I think we all need to take a look at that, of whatever color, you know.

Greene: That seems to be a theme you touched on a couple of times, which is that nowadays you have to be willing and able to engage in coalition politics, to be able to move forward.

Walters: That's right, absolutely. Absolutely. And that speech he gave on race in Philadelphia after Rev. Wright showed out so, was magnificent. The principles he outlined, the thinking that that reflected, the depth of his commitment and understanding about human nature; I just think he's marvelous.

Greene: What's your sense of how his candidacy has been received on the ground here in Los Angeles?

Walters: Well, at first, you know, folks were, "Well, black elected officials aren't supporting him. Why should I?" And one woman that I know very well, she said, "Well, he's not black. He's always trying to change his identity. He called himself Barry when he was out here at Occidental." I said, "So what has that got to do with anything?" You know? So he was Barry. Young people change their names and stuff all the time, and he readily tells folks he was searching for something when he was young. And how many of us would like to see our young lives plastered across the front page? I wouldn't; I don't think anybody else would. But now they even--Hillary went, or somebody attached to her went back and found some paper he'd written, or something he said when he was in kindergarten, that he wanted to be president. They're trying to hold it against him.

Greene: Right. It is interesting to see kind of what comes out in the wash in the sort of political cycle--

Walters: Yes.

Greene: --the depths people will stoop to, even the way some of the folks' objections get framed in sort of ostensibly non-racial terms, but completely racialized.

Walters: Right. And some of the black elected officials, they just got caught out there on the limb supporting Hillary. Of course, with Hillary and Bill in the White House all those years, any Democrat probably owes them a lot of favors, any Democrat who was in the Congress. But the congressman from Georgia, John Lewis--

Greene: Lewis, he's Republican, no?

Walters: John Lewis? Oh, no. He was the guy that worked with Martin Luther King, and got beat up so bad in those Freedom Rides--bus rides. He is from Georgia, from Atlanta. Yes, John Lewis. He just hung in there as long as he could with Hillary, and he came out and said, "No, I've got to go with Obama. My constituents want me with Obama." But here, Maxine Waters was on TV about fifteen minutes before the polls closed in a couple of those latter primary states where Obama had a real rout, saying that she was supporting him. It was all over by then, or essentially all over. And she wasn't the only one.

Greene: Who sort of came to support his candidacy late you mean?

Walters: Very, very late, extremely so. But people have to do what they have to do, I guess. But I don't know how anybody would have looked at him and listened to him, and read his book without supporting him. I mean, this was no fly-by-night, somebody just looking for publicity. This is a serious man. And one friend said, well, she didn't like his wife. So? Did she like Bush's wife? Give me a break.

Greene: Do you see Obama's candidacy as--in some ways it might be a test for the kind of coalition politics that you see as important in these times. Do you see it as a test of anything else?

Walters: I see it as a test of black people, whether we can coalesce. I think we've pretty much done it. A majority of blacks now, I think throughout the United States, are supporting him. But we've still got a few hangers on out there that are not too enthusiastic about his candidacy, and some of them are ministers. I think one of the problems that black folks had with his candidacy--he didn't come up through that religious background, where you're rubbing the minister's back, and promising them stuff if they'll tout your candidacy in their church. That's passe, and not a day too soon. And the business there with people--it was not only here, I'm sure it was in every town, where the black preachers and folks were in--maybe not elected officials, but they were politicians still in the community; you had to have their approval before you could expect to run and get support. That's gone. That is gone, and folks have got to recognize that, that that day no longer exists, that you've really got to have some substance, and got to be able to get it across, and got to be able to work across racial lines, and you've got to know what you're talking about, and what you're doing. You can't just do this, you know, pats on the back and kissing all the babies, and that's going to get you elected. At least I don't think so. I think that day is gone.

Greene: That may be a good ending point, but I want to make sure I give you an opportunity, in case there were any reflections that you had that you wanted to share about your trajectory. We were talking about your daughter's trajectory, or about Karen Bass' trajectory, and in this case we've talked about Obama's rise on the national political stage. Given all of the things that you've seen, and all of the work and public service that you've engaged in over the years, is there something that you see as unique--I see a bunch of things--is there something that you see as unique to your path that folks should take notice of, or really grapple with, based on your experience, and I know that's a huge question I'm throwing to you at the end of our session.

Walters: Well, I think it would be pretty egotistical to say that there is something that I did. The one thing I think that I did was working with coalitions. It wasn't--with diverse groups. My campaigns were never just all black. In the school district, fighting for school desegregation, how do you run an all-black campaign? You've got to have some commitment to diversity, beyond just for blacks, and we've got to understand that the same feelings of struggle for equality that rise in us also rise in Latinos, in Asians, whites, white women, and we've got to take advantage of that and reach out to all those people, and move forward. And I think it can be done, but I think it's going to take commitment on all our parts to get that done, and I don't see sometimes that we as blacks have been willing to understand that. We've felt a lot of resentment that Latinos were coming, taking our jobs away, and taking our neighborhoods away.

Walters: I think I mentioned to you before that sometimes I'd hear some of the people in the 9th District, their rhetoric sounded like whites when blacks were moving into neighborhoods, you know. "Oh, they're going to run the property values down," or, "They don't keep up their property," and this, that, and the other. But that's not what's going to make a better world. It's not just a better space for myself, or for me and my family. It's for the family of all of us to come together and make a family of men and women universally, so that our children can grow up and see the world as a different place, not a world filled with hate and, "I'll stay on my side of the fence, and you stay on your side of the fence."

Greene: Would you say that that's the thread of continuity between a lot of these experiences that you've shared with me, this commitment to diversity and equity for everyone, as much as possible?

Walters: Yes, I think so. I think so. I really do think so, because I firmly believe you cannot have freedom and justice and equality for just one segment of the population, and that's the thing white people have had to learn, that you know, they went to wars and all of this fighting for freedom, and we still hear folks talking about freedom, freedom. Well, it's not just for white folks; freedom for everybody. And it's not just for Christians. They've got to take recognition of all these other religions, that mean as much to the people who believe in them as people who are Christians, as their religion means to them. But it's a tough lesson to learn sometimes. But we've got to take a broader perspective.

Walters: One of the things--you asked about accomplishments. One of the things that we did get accomplished was to build a park. I think I talked to you about the park that we built, named after Gus Hawkins?

Greene: No, I don't think we talked about that.

Walters: Oh. There was an eight-acre parcel in the 9th District, at Slauson [Blvd.] and Compton [Blvd.] avenues, sitting right adjacent to a railroad track, that the [Los Angeles] Department of Water and Power--the city owned this square block, and they kept it as the city's junk yard, as the Department of Water and Power's junk yard. It was the most horrible-looking place. They had pipes--they called it a pipe yard, and they had all these concrete pipes, metal pipes, clay pipes, stuff stacked forever around that place. They had a couple of structures that nobody had been in and didn't know what they were for, or what they were connected to. It was a horrible place.

Walters: And when I was on the school board, we were looking for properties that didn't require taking of homes. That had no homes on it, not a home. It also didn't look like it was a dirty site in such that it had been contaminated with chemicals or gasoline or whatever, but I never was able to get it from the city, to build a school. So when I came to the city, and park money was available, I went after it for a park. In fact, one of the things that I wanted to do was trade it with the city for some park land further north in the district, to build a school and replace the amount of park land that we took, to build a park there at Slauson and Compton. But we never were able to work out a deal.

Walters: But once I was in office, we were able to get it, and to build this park. It was a lovely park, called a nature park. It wasn't like the cookie-cutter parks that Recreation and Parks builds in the city. It was kind of wild, and they put a water element there with a windmill pumping the water up, and made a little stream. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy did a connection with them, and they built the park, designed it and built the park, and built a home in there to serve as an office for the park, and also for the ranger, park ranger, a two-bedroom place for a park ranger to live onsite, and become part of the community. It was a lovely place, and I named it after Gus Hawkins, because it was in the middle of the district that he had served. I had the pleasure of taking him there one day. He wasn't able to come out for the opening, but he was here subsequent to that time, and just to see his reaction to it was great.

Greene: That's a great anecdote.

Walters: Yes. So that was the last thing that was done, and they had a sculpture made of him, a bust that sits there. There are a few other things that we did, trying to get new libraries built, and we did, got one built while I was there. And there were a few other things here and there. Got some work started on Central Avenue, rehabbing Central Avenue, the Central Avenue Jazz Festival started that. But it was tough, it was tough.

Walters: But I felt very fortunate to have the opportunity to have participated there, and to try to upgrade the community. So there's a lot of history there as far as black people were concerned, about their lives here in L.A. And even though black people were moving out, I think they wanted to preserve that as our community, but it wasn't our community. It was whoever was choosing to live there. But it was interesting, it was interesting.

Greene: Thank you.

Walters: Well, you're more than welcome. You're more than welcome. One of the things I've done since leaving office--UCLA has through their Center on Aging, they have a Senior Scholars Program where you can go and take classes. It's like auditing classes, and I took classes in African American literature and art, and a class in nonviolent social change.

Greene: Oh, wow.

Walters: Yes, I did that for a couple of years, each quarter, until my eyes gave out, and so I had to stop.

Greene: You had to suspend it. Will you go back?

Walters: Yes. I've got a catalog for the fall, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to go back.

Greene: Yes.

Walters: There's also another program that I've volunteered in. Through the same Center on Aging, they've got a doctor out there who has done a lot of work in memory training, and particularly for older people, to keep their memories intact for longer. So I took the training for that, to become a volunteer, and did a couple of classes with that. And again, you have to be able to read the stuff.

Greene: Sure.

Walters: So I had to give that up, but I'll go back to that. They still call me.

Greene: Oh, very good, very good. So you'll resume with that as well?

Walters: Yes, I'll resume that. And I served on the board of a charter school that some friends of mine were operating.

Greene: You keep busy. I don't know how you find time.

Walters: Well--and I gave that up because I had so much inner conflict about the charter school and the full-blown public schools, the resources, diversion of resources.

Greene: Sure.

Walters: And the cherry picking that goes on.

Greene: Absolutely.

Walters: And the impact, what's the impact on the kids who don't make it to the charter schools, you know? So I still worry about the kids. And that's about it. I feel guilty, like I haven't done enough, you know, for the kids.

Greene: Really? After a lifetime of service? [laughter] Twenty-two years.

Walters: Well, that's only a third of the lifetime, you know.

Greene: Sure. So it sounds like you're looking forward to staying connected to that concern, your concern for children.

Walters: Oh yes, and I think that if Obama gets elected, we'll see a whole different world.

Greene: All right.

Walters: I really believe that. And I never thought I'd live to see it. You know, when [Rev.] Jesse [Jackson] ran, people were saying, "Now I can tell kids they can grow up and be president, too." Well, they could surely grow up and aspire to be president, but this guy hopefully is going to make it.

Greene: We'll see. We'll see.

Walters: Yes. And he's, you know, just somebody that you can just really be proud of. I looked at him on television when he was over there in Germany. What, 200,000 people?

Greene: It was a massive crowd.

Walters: And [Senator John] McCain's sitting here, "Well, he's acting like a president." So? That's what it's all about, isn't it?

Greene: That was burning him up, huh?

Walters: Oh, god.

Greene: He has quite a reaction to--quite a negative reaction, I should say--

Walters: Right, right. And The Nation magazine has got an article I started reading and haven't finished, but they're talking about the media reaction, said it was really like just telling blacks to stay in their place, what right did he have to go and meet with world leaders, and speak to people in other countries? Every right in the world.

Greene: That sentiment has an interesting history, too, right? That's definitely come up before.

Walters: Right. Right. They're in the article talking about the McCain folks and others in the media using the word, saying it was presumptuous of him, and they said that's a code word for not staying in your place. But the question is, what is my place?

Greene: And who decided that?

Walters: That's exactly right, that's exactly right.

Greene: So we'll end there?

Walters: Okay.[End of interview]

A TEI Project

Interview of Rita Walters

Contents

1. Transcript

1.1. Session 1 (March 10, 2008)

1.2. Session 2 (March 28, 2008)

1.3. Session 3 (April 7, 2008)

1.4. Session 4 (May 9, 2008)

1.5. Session 5 (May 19, 2008)

1.6. Session 6 (June 10, 2008)

1.7. Session 7 (June 13, 2008)

1.8. Session 8 (June 14, 2008)

1.9. Session 9 (August 19, 2008)