Interview of Sylvia Drew Ivie

Good morning. I'm interviewing Sylvia Ivie on... Tuesday, um, April the 10th. Sylvia, first I'd like to ask when and where you were born.

Uh, I was born February 15th, 1944, at Freedman's Hospital in Washington, DC.

OK. And could you tell me about your parents and their occupations, also your siblings?

My mother was Minnie Lenore Robbins. My father was Charles Drew. I have two older sisters and a younger brother. My oldest sister is Bebe Drew Price, and my next oldest sister is Charlene Drew Jarvis, and I have a younger brother, Charles Drew, Junior.

OK. And could you tell me what you know about your grandparents?

My mother's, mother was... a homemaker who was a very early feminist, and she liked to like write stories and poetry. Her husband was a steward on a private railroad car. He disapproved of her writing. He thought she ought to be spending more time doing her housework. She was not a very good housekeeper.

Mmm.

And she had an allowance for her household expenses, and she saved money out of that and had her stories privately printed and then went door to door selling them.

Mmm. Interesting.

And she hid all of her writing under the skirt of a big chair in the living room --

Mmm.

-- so that he wouldn't find it and disapprove of it. And she wrote poetry -- she was very involved in her church, and she wrote poetry, I think of a religious nature, and she would often read the poems at church, much to my mother's consternation, who was often required to read the poems out loud --

Oh, I see.

-- which was very deeply embarrassing to her. That's what I know about them. They were in Philadelphia --

OK. And this is maternal or paternal?

This is -- these are my mother's... parents.

OK.

And,

Their names?

Robert Robbins. This was her grand- -- was her father, my grandfather. And the mother was Minnie, um, Cora Wallace --

OK.

-- Robbins.

OK.

And, She came to Philadelphia from Natawasetts, [phonetic] Virginia, which was a community where Quakers were in the leadership.

Mm-hmm.

And Quakers freed a lot of slaves and sent them up to Philadelphia, which is how she happened to be in Philly, and my mother was always a very big devotee of Quakers and Quaker --

I see.

-- philosophy, and sent me to a Quaker boarding school, so --

Uh-huh.

-- that all comes through that line.

OK. All right. OK, so, could you tell me about the neighborhood that you grew up in?

My.... Did you want me to say anything about my father's family --

Yes. Yes, go --

-- or were you going to come back to that?

Yes, we can come back to that.

OK. The neighborhood I grew up in Washington was storied. It -- I -- I lived on the campus of Howard University in Washington, DC, and it was just wonderful. I went to the Lucretia Mott Elementary School, named for the famed abolitionist. We walked one block from our rented housing on campus. We lived in a big house, wooden house that...I can't remember his first name, but the writer from the West Indies -- Williams [Eric Williams]. I can't think of his first name; it'll come to me. But anyway, they lived on the other side of the hou- -- of this -- kind of like a duplex, but I don't think they called it a duplex. Um. And... you know, we were friends with all of the students. We were friends with all of the children, the faculty, and we really didn't know that we were in such a troubled land, because we had -- we had our own society.

Mm-hmm. You were cush- cushioned or --

We were --

-- sheltered?

We were very sheltered by being in a -- in a black university. Kind -- not -- not just any black university, Howard University --

Mm-hmm.

-- which was, you know, the capstone of black education. And so it was -- it was very, very wonderful.

OK. So given that fact you -- that you were so sheltered, one of the things I was going to ask you is at what age as a child did you become aware of race?

Um. Well, when my father died, we had to move out of the University. I was six. And we -- we.... His colleagues collected money for us to make a down payment on a house, and my mother chose a house in a white neighborhood in Rock Creek -- near Rock Creek Park. And --

Rock Creek?

Rock Creek Park.

Mm-hmm.

It's a great, huge -- just like Central Park in New York.

Uh-huh.

It's a great big huge beautiful wooded area in Washington.

Mm-hmm.

And... we were -- we were not the first blacks in the neighborhood, but we were among the first blacks, and we were close to a very big hill that went down into the woods, and it was winter. And my sisters went out sledding down this big hill, and other neighborhood children, seeing them, cried out, "The niggers are coming! The niggers are coming!" So they went home and reported this, and that was really my first impression --

Mm-hmm.

-- that we belonged to a different group.

Mm-hmm.

Um. I probably knew about it before them, but that's the example that sticks out in --

The first --

Yeah.

Right.

So and then I went to...Washington was different than other cities because it was federal, and we integrated schools right after the Supreme Court Decision in -- in '54.

Mm-hmm.

So by '55, District of Columbia schools were integrated.

Mm-hmm.

So I went to an -- a previously white junior high school. And I had white teachers, and I -- you know, I had white classmates, and I did not have a bad time. They -- you know, people were -- they were not hostile.

Mm-hmm.

They were welcoming. The teachers were supportive. I became aware of poor white people. I didn't -- I knew that there were poor black people, but I didn't --

Mm-hmm.

-- I didn't know that there were poor white people.

Mm-hmm.

So I visited homes of some of my white classmates and f- -- and was surprised to see that they didn't really have very much.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and that was really -- that made a deep impression on me because I just didn't know that.

Mm-hmm.

But my sisters had a harder time, because they went to a previously white high school, and because, you know, boyfriend/girlfriend stuff was more --

Mm-hmm.

-- central to everybody's thinking --

Mm. Right.

-- and feeling, there was many more -- there were more problems.

Mm-hmm.

So she actually took one of my siblings out of there and put her back at -- to [Paul Laurence] Dunbar High School --

Mm-hmm.

-- where my father had gone. But the other one stayed, and, um --

Mm-hmm.

-- and it was hard. They cancelled the prom and they didn't want the black and white students dancing together --

For that reason?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Oh. Interesting.

You know. So they had a wholly different experience than I did.

Mm-hmm.

And I think because they had a hard time in high school, my mother decided to send me away to high school --

Mm-hmm.

-- to the Quakers.

Mm-hmm.

Because she didn't want that trouble.

Right. And that was the boarding school you referred to?

That was the boarding school.

What was the name of that boarding school?

Oakwood.

Oakwood.

Mm-hmm.

OK.

Oakwood School in Poughkeepsie, New York. And of course, Quakers, you know, have been advocates of social justice from the beginning --

Mm-hmm.

-- of time, so, you know, I -- I sort of inherited that cultural and religious legacy by four years of immersion --

Mm-hmm.

-- there.

OK, great. Why don't we go back and, uh, why don't you speak about your father's side of the family?

OK. My father's name was Richard Drew, and his father's name was Richard Drew. And both, um, m- -- the senior Richard Drew and -- and my father's father Richard Drew were carpet layers. And, they were high-ranking in the leadership of the carpet layers' union in Washington. I think it was my f- -- my grandfather who was Treasurer of the carpet layers', uh, union. And... um... my father was apparently -- he died before I was born, but he -- my grandfather was apparently a very wonderful... person, who lost his job during -- as a carpet layer -- during the depression.

Mm-hmm.

And turned to alcohol and became an alcoholic and just deteriorated from that point, which is why my father never drank.

Mm-hmm.

Because he had seen that example.

I see.

So he was -- he was a teetotaler.

OK.

My grandmother was a graduate of Miner Teachers College, and she was very beautiful and very strong.

Her name?

Nora Drew.

Mm-hmm.

Nora Burrell Drew. And she was one of 12. I think my grandfather only had one sibling. I'm not sure. Charles. I'm not sure about that.

Mm-hmm.

But I know she was from a family of 12, and... Um. Her father was a dog catcher, and her mother was a seamstress, I think.

Mm-hmm.

No. She was a midwife. Her mother was a midwife. Very successful. And that's all I can remember about them.

OK.

Mm-hmm.

Um. Could you tell me, uh, what part religion played in your early upbringing?

Well, my father was raised in the 19th Street Baptist Church --

Mm-hmm.

-- and his sister Eva [Drew] is still a member, and his sister Nora [Drew] is still a member of the 19th Street Baptist Church in -- in Washington. So it's a really old, central, establishment in Washington for the black community. But my father didn't like church-going, and I think he was active as a child. I think he sang in the choir and so on. But as an adult, he -- he didn't want to go church, and mother said he referred to the preacher as a "little old goat."

Mmm.

So I think he was faith-center but not -- he didn't -- the institutionalization of that faith didn't work for him.

Mm-hmm.

My mother was raised a Baptist and didn't like -- didn't like the harshness of it.

Mm-hmm.

Felt that there was too much hellfire and brimstone in it --

Mm-hmm.

-- and she -- she rejected that. So I think my father chose for us to go to a Congregational Church, and so we went to a Congregational Church. That was my -- our -- my first church experience. And then when he died, my mother joined the Unitarian Church.

Mm-hmm.

And so I learned more about Daoism and Shintoism and Buddhism as a child than I did Christianity.

Mm-hmm.

Um. And then I went to Quaker boarding school, and they don't -- they don't read the Bible. They have silent Quaker meetings. I guess you can read the Bible in private study, but in terms of their formal worship, the Bible is really not a part of it. So, um, so I would say that I -- I had a... deficient, although rich and -- and varied upbringing in terms of spiritual teachings, but when I married my husband, who was from Texas and his family's very devoted Baptist church members I started going to the Unitarian Church when we came out here and had children. And he didn't want to go, my husband, but he would pick us up every Sunday after church and Sunday School and he would say, "Did they mention God today?" And I would have to say, "Well, no, they didn't." And so after a while, I sort of felt maybe I should take them someplace where God was mentioned. So we -- we joined his church, which was Bethany Missionary Baptist Church on 51st [Street] and Figueroa [Avenue], and I just love that church, and I love the pastor, Pastor Wofford, who has since died. But I was there until he died, and now I've joined Mt. Sinai Baptist Church, which is on St. Andrew's Place. It's another lovely Baptist church. So I -- I n- -- I need in my life to have a spiritual place of reference and belonging, and so I -- I really -- I really find these homes right for me, although my children don't join me. So.

Mm. I see. OK, could you tell me something about your mother's education and occupation?

Mm-hmm. My -- neither of my mother's parents went to college, and neither of her siblings. She had two younger brothers. Neither of them went to college. But she wanted to go to college, and so she went to Cheney State Teachers College. And when she finished, she decided she wanted to do graduate study, so she got on the bus and she went up to Cornell [University] --

Mm-hmm.

-- and said she'd like to, uh -- she'd like to -- into the Master's Program in Home Economics. And whoever talked with her said, "Young lady, this is not the way it's done. You don't just... get on the bus and come here. There's a process."

Mm-hmm.

"You have to apply, you have to," -- and she said, "Well, you're going to have to take me, because I just have $26. I want to do this. And I've come and -- and I didn't know the rule. So you're just going to have to make an exception and take me," and they did! So she got her Masters there, and then she got her Masters -- a second Masters -- at Columbia [University]. And she got a teaching position at Spelman [College] --

Mm-hmm.

-- College, and that's where she met my father. So she met him, and they got married and moved to New York, and she didn't really work during their marriage. He didn't believe in women working.

Mm-hmm.

So she was home for 11 years. Against her will. I think she w- -- really w- -- have rather have worked, because she was also a feminist. But, after his death and after we were older, the four of us were older, she went back to work and she worked at a vocational high school, and then she became head of the Department of Economics at, um.... I can't think of the name, but a black college in Baltimore. Morgan [State University]! Morgan. Which is a place where my father had taught the football team --

Mmm.

-- between college and -- and medical school.

Mm-hmm. OK.

So.

Could you just -- before we move to talking about your father, could you tell me a little bit about the emphasis what emphasis was placed on education in your home, when you -- you know. When you were young.

Well, it was... it was all-pervasive. It was just central. It was, you know, it was, it was so central that it almost wasn't observable as a -- as a theme.

Mm-hmm.

It was sort of our... it was our -- almost our reason for being --

Mm-hmm.

-- was to, to focus our efforts on what we were doing in school and to follow the instructions of our teachers and to follow the results of very frequent conferences between teachers and -- and, uh, parents, and, um, there really was this sense that we were... um, expected to, um, achieve at the highest levels. And, um, failure was not an option.

Mm-hmm.

And everyone had permission to report if we were straying in any way.

Mm-hmm.

But we -- we didn't get reported very much, because we all worked very hard.

Mm-hmm.

We didn't -- we took pride in our work. We -- I think we were.... I wouldn't say we were competitive, but we wanted to achieve.

Mm-hmm.

You know. We wanted... we -- we -- we were encouraged to a- achieve, and w- -- our successes were applauded --

Mm-hmm.

-- by our teachers who knew our parents and were part of the same set --

Mm-hmm.

--so they would see each other in other places --

Mm-hmm.

-- and we had excellent, excellent teachers --

Mm-hmm.

--and so we were, um.... You know, we were very, very privileged.

Mmm.

Very, very privileged by the -- the kind of investment that was made.

Mm-hmm.

I have a classmate who was in elementary school with me, Lloyd Ferguson, who is out here. And -- and Lloyd was brilliant and went on to major in math and engineering and -- and one -- our third grade teacher has been in touch with him all these years. Every year they exchange cards, you know?

Mm-hmm.

And now she's over 100 years old. So they... they loved us, you know. They really -- it wasn't just a teacher/pupil.

Mm-hmm.

They really -- they really loved us and they really saw us as extensions of themselves, extensions of our collective hopes. You know, we were -- we were going to be the next generation of all they had accomplished --

Mm-hmm.

-- and they had accomplished a lot.

Mm-hmm.

So it was very helpful, you know?

Mm-hmm.

It was just -- there wasn't any expectation that there would be a break --

Right.

It would -- it would just keep going.

Uh-huh. OK. So you would consider your family and I guess the other families, people in the neighborhood, or that go on the campus middle -- upper-middle class. Uh. So was there much opportunity to interact with, say, working class, lower class?

Yes. There was a housing project right behind my school.

Mm-hmm.

And some of my classmates lived there --

Mm-hmm.

-- and I visited them.

Mm-hmm.

And so I understood from visiting them that we had abundance and that they did not. And I was very attuned to class things that happened, um, um, in -- in school, um, that I thought were very cruel.

Mm-hmm.

And I would report them, you know --

Mm-hmm.

-- to my mother. But, um, I knew that we were very privileged and -- and that many of my classmates were not.

Mm-hmm.

But at the same time, I felt... I felt like even though the teachers were hard on them --

Mm-hmm.

-- it was kind of tough love. It wasn't.... They weren't saying, "You're outside the fold." They were saying, "You're in the fold," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "but to be in the fold, you have to do this."

Mm-hmm.

You know? You're going to have to brush your teeth. You're going to have to brush your hair. You're going to --

Mm-hmm.

Um. And -- and would publicly embarrass them as a way to... to get them, you know, to -- to follow process --

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-- that would make it, um, easier for them, because --

Mm-hmm.

--they were all bright. They were all --

Mm-hmm.

To just go where they wanted to go and do what they needed to do.

Mm-hmm.

But they weren't going to be able to do it if they didn't brush their teeth.

Mm-hmm.

So we were -- we were mixed. We were not really totally isolated --

Mm-hmm.

-- uh, economically. I mean, not that we had a lot of money. We didn't.

Mm-hmm.

You know. Whatever -- whatever, um, income my father made he used to support his mother and his siblings, because the father had died --

Mm-hmm.

-- so he was supporting two families, four children and a wife plus a -- a mother and I think two or three children. Um.

Mm-hmm.

So we didn't -- we didn't really have much money. I mean, we -- we bought our clothes and our furniture at, uh, second-hand stores, and my father only had one good pair of shoes, and, you know, one nice suit. I mean, w- -- it wasn't -- it wasn't like we were -- and he -- he opted not to make money.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, it just wasn't one of his... goals.

Mm-hmm.

He really wanted to teach. He really wanted to invest in young people, and he really wanted to do research.

Mm-hmm.

Those were his passions.

OK.

So, um. So I didn't -- I don't think we ever had a, um.... I don't think we had a screen of... acceptability based on things.

Mm-hmm.

You know, it wasn't, you know.... Because we didn't have a lot of things. You know, we had friends -- my mother had friends who sewed well, and they loved the fact that there were three girls, and so they -- they were always sewing us little outfits that looked just alike. We had three -- you know.

Mm-hmm.

With pinafores, with gathers in the front, and...

Mm-hmm.

Just beautiful little things, you know?

Mm-hmm.

Just such talent in.... But, you know, I didn't know that that was a blessing to my mother --

Mm-hmm.

-- because then she didn't have to go out and -- and buy those dresses --

Right.

-- for us, you know?

Right.

So, I don't know.

OK, another question I've been asking all of my interviewees --

Mm-hmm.

-- I'm interested to know among the black families acquaintances that you interacted with, were there any tensions or dynamics based on light versus dark skin color?

Oh, absolutely.

And could you tell me -

Um.

-- more about that from your perspective?

Well, Washington was, Washington black society was a mirror of white society. And so the fair-skinned blacks were the white people, and the dark-skinned blacks were the negroes.

Mm-hmm.

It -- it was -- it was really just totally a mirror.

Mm-hmm.

And so if you were brown, um, the presumption was against you. If you were fair, the presumption was for you.

Mm-hmm.

And you could overcome that presumption, but you had to be awfully good.

Mm-hmm.

You had to be awfully smart. You had to be awfully hard-working. And many did overcome it. But it was -- it was a -- I remember -- this is such a hurtful memory, but -- uh, a member of my mother's church, All Soul's Unitarian Church, um, a black woman who, um -- Rose Evans -- whose husband was Jimmy Evans who had worked in the Pentagon, and Jimmy had been responsible -- he was a brilliant engineer, and he had been responsible for advising FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] on segregation of the ou- -- of the Armed Forces --

Mm-hmm.

-- and people really credited Jimmy's influence for moving Roosevelt to calling for integration --

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-- of the Armed Forces.

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So he was a hero in that regard. And they were Unitarian, and, uh, and Rose was a sweet woman, and she had a daughter named Evangeline, and Evangeline went to Stanford, and Evangeline and I look very much alike. The same complexion; just looked alike. And Evan- -- when Evangeline got -- was getting married, she asked me to be a bridesmaid, and Rose called my mother and said, "Eva- Evangeline has, uh, a classmate coming from, um," -- wherever she was coming from, um, and they needed a home for her to stay in. And could she stay with us? And so mother said, "Of course," and -- and she said, "I need to tell you that she's brown."

Mm-hmm.

And my mother said, "Well, what difference could that make?" But she felt a need to say -- you know, almost like she's saying, "She's black," you know --

Mm-hmm.

-- to a white family.

Right.

You know?

Mm-hmm.

But the fact that she said it and the fact that she felt she needed to say it, you know --

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-- it's just.... It's just very hurtful. But my mother didn't have those issues. I think my father's family had those issues.

Mm-hmm.

And... um... so we -- you know, in a way, we were spared that by his early death. I don't know whether he felt that way, but I -- I think his siblings did.

Mm-hmm.

My mother didn't -- didn't have those issues, as you just, um -- she really cared about people's character and if they -- if they were not people of good character, she was against them. If they --

Mm-hmm.

-- were people of good character, she was for them. So, um. I've -- I have enjoyed Los Angeles because it didn't have... those rules and restrictions the way --

Mm-hmm.

-- Washington did.

Mm-hmm.

It's been... it's been much, much easier to live here. Although when I came to Los Angeles, I went to a... a Juneteenth party, um, that Maxine Waters [born Maxine Moore Carr] was giving, and when I walked in with my husband, somebody said to me, "What are you doing here, Palomino?" And it was very hurtful.

Hmm. Now, what year was that?

Uh, '74.

Mmm.

'74.

And what year did you come to L.A.?

'74.

You had came in '74?

Mm-hmm.

Uh-huh.

Mm-hmm. So it's -- and you know, it's an issue. It's an issue. And -- and you know, I would say -- I would say that the presumption... the presumptions have switched today, so that the presumption is against you if you're fair, and you --

Mm-hmm.

-- but you can work your way out of it.

Right.

And, you know. That's just -- that's just part of our evolution as a group.

Mm-hmm. That's - OK. I'd like to spend some time talking about your father. I realize you were young when he passed --

Mm-hmm.

-- but if you -- for the record --

Mm-hmm.

-- if you could give me an overview of his career. I'm interested to know what was the trajectory of him choosing, uh, uh, his career, and maybe what were the factors that, uh, you know, maybe attracted him as of work. Um. Interested in that. And also, uh, if you could talk about whe- -- at what age did you realize the magnitude of what his contributions to mankind, in terms of the blood bank, in terms of transfusions --

Mm-hmm.

-- blood storage.

Mmm. Well. He was a, um, he was a different person as a child, in -- in the sense of having a sense of focus and capacity and, um, he organized the boys in the neighborhood, um, to deliver papers. And -- and, you know, he had several routes going --

Mm-hmm.

-- and, you know, he -- he h- he had a -- a kind of charisma. He had a kind of leadership that was probably genetic, you know? It probably came down from his -- from his father, who was a leader in the -- in the union, and, um, and his father, who was a leader in the union. So he sort of had that gift, but, um.... And then he took -- took a real shine to sports where you're working with a team, where y- -- and he was always elected captain of the t- -- you know, different teams, and he just -- oh, he was just a competitor.

Mm-hmm.

He just loved to play, whatever it was. Swimming, basketball, football. And he didn't really have big career ambitions, you know --

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-- he just.... He just would sort of take the thing that was in front of him and just do the best job he could do --

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-- at doing that.

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But he was injured in -- in playing football. Somebody stepped on his thigh or calf with a cleat, and it got infected, and he ended up in the hospital with a very serious infection. And I think while he was in the hospital, you know, he just watched what was going on and like it.

Mm-hmm.

You know, liked the organization of it, liked the order of it, liked the.... Just liked the context.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that was really the birth of the idea that he might go into medicine. I don't think there had been any foreshadowing of that --

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-- before then.

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And, uh, he was not a stellar student. He was a stellar as- athlete, and in college, he was a C student. But he -- he went to Amherst, and he -- he went there because he was a, I think because he was a star athlete. And he got the trophy at the end of four years for the best all-around athlete --

Mm-hmm.

-- of any of the students in the --

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-- and the coach said he was the best -- he was the best player he had ever coached --

Mmm.

-- which is quite a lovely thing to say. So anyway, he applied to Howard. He applied to McGill [University]. Howard turned him down because they said he didn't have enough English credits --

Mm-hmm.

-- so he went to McGill, in Canada. And... something about... something about that environment, something about being in a -- in a place where race was not an issue, um... just, you know -- he just got galvanized, and he really began to study and, um, really, really dug in, and -- he still played sports. They had, you know, physician/student teams, and he played, but, um, but he really became a serious student at that point, and finished second in his class. And he became interested, while he was there, in blood and -- and researched -- researched blood and all the people who had been, you know, experts in the field, and then got a fellowship to go to... Columbia [University], um, where he... he worked on a Doctorate in Science and -- and developed a thesis on Banked Blood.

Mmm.

And he had -- he had mentors at McGill. He had mentors at Columbia. Who were very interested in his work, and, um.... And he just -- you know, he was just a really, really drive, hard worker. And he just -- he just dug it out. And then the -- the war, uh, was happening, and... before American went into the war, the British soldiers were being decimated, and they needed blood for them, and someone over there had heard about his work in preserving blood and wrote and said could he help them?

Mm-hmm.

Could he help them? And so he did. And he headed some British project for collecting blood and went around in a mobile -- mobile van and collected --

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-- blood, and they dried it and sent the dried plasma over to England.

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Then the Red Cross asked him to set up the first blood bank --

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-- here, and he did that, and, they insisted on segregating the -- the blood into white and black, and he said there was no scientific basis for doing that --

Mm-hmm.

-- and he resigned and he went back to Howard where he became, um, a teacher --

Mm-hmm.

--of a -- a surgeon -- a surgeon and a teacher of students, and he -- he produced people who were, um, heads of departments of surgery all throughout the south.

Mm-hmm.

So he had a kind of legacy of his students, which is something that's not much talked about, and I -- I.... I identify more with that.

Mm-hmm.

Um. Because of the, um, human dimension of it, you know.

Mm-hmm.

The... the... the research is... the research is more abstract, to me.

Mm-hmm.

But, you know, ground breaking i- in the sense of, um, you know, where did he get the idea that a- any, you know, young black boy from Washington could go researching things and, you know, um, break new ground in a -- in a field that hadn't -- hadn't had any broken ground in many, many, many years?

Right.

Since they discovered AB, B, O.

Mm-hmm.

That was the last ground breaking --

Mm-hmm.

-- thing in blood. So he had, you know, he had a -- he had a sort of courage. He had a sort of courage that said, "I can -- I can organize the boys for newspapers routes," --

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-- "I can, um, I can be the captain of the swim team. I can -- I can lead our -- our guys to victory," --

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-- "you know. I can, uh, I can map -- map a new way of handling blood that will help," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "more people." So he just -- he just sort of had this "can do," --

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-- sense of himself, and I don't know where that came from. I don't -- you know, his -- his -- none of his siblings had that.

Mm-hmm.

I think his mother had that. For her children, particularly for him.

Mm-hmm.

I think she -- she felt that he would go far, --

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-- and I think she always gave him that idea. I think her influence was very pivotal.

Mm-hmm.

So I -- in terms of when did I become aware of the contribution? I -- I was always aware of it, from, um.... I always knew that he -- that he was a -- considered a very larger-than-life person --

Mm-hmm.

-- And I resented it because I didn't have any interest in that.

Mm-hmm.

I -- I was interested in a father, and I was interested in... um... a family.

Mm-hmm.

Uh -- I mean, I was really -- I wasn't really interested in -- in those things.

Mm-hmm.

I -- you know, I just -- and I still feel some distance from that, because it removes him from me --

Mm-hmm.

-- in a very personal way --

Mm-hmm.

-- and, you know, I know that his accomplishments were extraordinary. I know that his vision was extraordinary. And I'm -- you know, I'm very happy that he was able to tap into his own capacities and --

Mm-hmm.

-- have, you know, such a large number of successes in the things that he went after.

Mm-hmm.

And that his example, you know, still inspires people today. So I mean, I -- I always knew. I always knew who he was and -- and what he was about, but I didn't -- I do- -- I don't -- I didn't come at it as a -- I think my sisters, my older sisters, have more of a worshipful feeling --

Mm-hmm.

-- toward him --

Mm-hmm.

-- and my brother certainly does, but I... I reserved that feeling for whatever reasons.

Mm-hmm. OK. Could you, uh, tell me, uh, maybe what your mother's political views were? I'm gonna go back and finish up on your mother.

Well, my mother, my mother's very bright, very thoughtful. She -- her last great passion -- it makes me cry to think of it -- was about the Palestinians. She was just so upset about them and the way they were treated and how -- how unfair it was that -- that they never could get their homeland back --

Mm-hmm.

-- and we would watch the news at night, and she would just -- you know, there would always be something about Israel. There would always be something about, um, what was happening, and -- and she used to call them, um -- it was Huntley/Brinkley [The Huntley Brinkley Report] --

Mm-hmm.

-- and she called them... I can't remember that. Chundlee? She made up some little funny name. But -- but that was her favorite thing in the evening, to watch them.

Mm-hmm.

And -- and she would -- she would talk back to the television. And every time they would talk about Israel, she would say, "Well, what about the Palestinians? What are you doing for the Palestinians and where is their story?"

Mm-hmm.

And we didn't have any clue what she was talking about --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know, we were just mystified -- I was always mystified that she was so enraged about the Palestinians.

Any idea why she was so imp- --

Because she --

-- impassioned?

-- she just felt it was unfair.

Mm-hmm.

She -- you know, she just felt it was unfair that they didn't get a voice, that they didn't get heard.

Mm-hmm.

She, um. She cared very much about women and the plight of women. She, she told lots of stories about my -- my father that were not complimentary in the sense of his not understanding the posture of women.

Mm-hmm.

And they were funny, but they were -- they were also poignant. She, she said he came home from the hospital -- he lived two -- the hospital was two blocks from the house, and, uh.... She was telling stor- -- she was a housewife, and she was telling stories of what had happened to the children during the course of the day. He was tired, he had been teaching, he had been operating, and you know, he had been there since the crack of dawn. He -- he just wanted to come home and be quiet. So he really wasn't listening. So she took down a, uh, stack of plates and without altering her tone, continued telling her story and at appropriate, uh, pauses in -- in her recitation, she would just drop a plate. (laughter)

(laughter)

So he finally put down the newspaper which he was reading, the Evening Star --

Mm-hmm.

-- and asked her had she lost her mind?

Mm-hmm.

(laughter) You know? And she said, "No, but I would like for you to listen to me when I'm talking to you."

Mm-hmm.

(laughter) So, she just -- she just had -- she just had a tremendous quiet strength when she was in Atlanta, um, teaching at Spelman. She went to Rich's Department Store, and Rich's Department Store had a policy that -- of serving, uh -- they served blacks, but, um they would have a pad where they wrote up each customer. So if white Mrs. Jones would come, they would say, "Thank you for your purchase, let me write it up. All right. Mrs. Sally Jones." And give their r- -- their receipt. Well, if a black customer came, then it -- "What is your name?" "Minnie Robbins." Was her name, she would say. But they wouldn't write, "Miss." They would just write, "Minnie Robbins." So my mother developed a practice of just saying, "Miss," --

Mm-hmm.

-- when they would ask her, and she wouldn't give the rest of her name until they had written, "Miss."

Mm-hmm.

And they were very annoyed about it, --

Mm-hmm.

-- but they would usually write, "Miss," because they couldn't spend all day fooling with her.

Right.

You know. Uh. And so, she just did things like that. You know, they were just very individual, very quiet, um, but unmoving.

Mm-hmm.

Just absolutely unmoving.

Mm-hmm.

And when -- when her church lost a famous minister, A. Powell Davies, he was one of the most well-known Univ- Unitarian ministers, and she wanted them to hire a black minister.

Mm-hmm.

And she -- she just wouldn't move. She was on the committee, and she wouldn't move. She said, "You serve a black community. You've never had a black minister. You say you believe in these principles. You're going to have a black minister," and they did!

Mm-hmm.

You know? Um...

And what year was that?

Oh, that must have been in the '60s.

Mm-hmm.

Um... um... she was -- you know, she was slugging it out at [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt High School, and my sisters were having those problems. And she always did it with tremendous dignity and, you know, she never raised her voice. But she was immovable. So I just -- you know, I just saw her as -- as a champion. She was a member of the League of Women Voters. She was always working on, you know, um, understanding, you know, what was going on. What the new legislation was. What needed to change. What else did she do? She was devoted to her students at Burdick Vocational School. And these were -- these were poor kids. And she really, really wanted them to raise their children well. She really made an effort to transmit everything that she knew about --

Mm-hmm.

-- um, raising children well, and you know, she was devoted to that calling.

Mm-hmm.

But she wasn't -- she wasn't visible. Nobody would know that she had strong political beliefs.

Mm-hmm.

She was a strong supporter of Adlai [Ewing] Stevenson, I remember. That's all I can think of. But she just -- you know, she had a very g- -- clear sense of what was right and what was wrong, and she always stood for the right, and she wouldn't tolerate the wrong.

Mm-hmm.

She just wouldn't. And I think -- I think, had my father lived, um, there -- there might have been issues there, because he -- he didn't like fights --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know? He liked -- he liked work.

Mm-hmm.

He liked to get in, roll up his sleeves, and do whatever the work was that --

Mm-hmm.

-- needed to be done. She liked issues.

Mm-hmm.

So, it was interesting.

OK. So, uh, you mentioned that she had trouble bringing him around to some of the women's issues.

Mm-hmm.

So, would he not equate the fight for women's right with, say, the black fight for rights, or did he not corre- correlate that? Those two, uh, movements?

I think his experience was he had a very smart, strong mother --

Mm-hmm.

-- who stayed home and a- -- used all those talents to --

Mm-hmm.

-- make a way for him and for his siblings --

Mm-hmm.

-- and that was his idea of what --

Mm-hmm.

-- a woman was supposed to do. He didn't think a woman should be a surgeon. One of my mother's best friends was a, uh, a physician who wanted to be a surgeon --

Mm-hmm.

-- and he said she couldn't stand on her feet all those hours.

Mmm.

You know. He did- -- he didn't think a woman should be a surgeon.

Mm-hmm.

He didn't think a woman should go to work.

Mm-hmm.

You know. He had very traditional ideas --

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

-- about women, um, and he really thought... when he married her -- they -- they met and were engaged in -- within three days.

Mm-hmm.

And she's very soft-spoken.

Mm-hmm.

She was, very sos- soft-spoken. And she was very beautiful. And I think he thought that he had... you know, gotten the right box, if you will, you know?

Mm-hmm.

And that there wouldn't be much content, because not much content -- I mean, being good, you know, being a good person, but not much beyond that was necessary --

Mm-hmm.

-- just, you know -- and I think he was probably quite surprised, as time went on, that she had opinions --

Mm-hmm.

-- strong opinions --

Mm-hmm.

-- about many thing.

Mm-hmm.

So. (laughter)

OK. The Oakwood boarding school that you attended, was that your high school?

Mm-hmm.

It was.

Nine -- nine through twelve.-

Nine through twelve. Uh, could you tell me more about, uh, that experience, being in high school? Maybe talk about any teachers that stood out who, um, maybe mentored you in any way? And also about some of the first thoughts you had about what you would do after high school?

Hmm. Well... I don't -- I don't know that there was any particular teacher who got hold of me as much as -- or mentored me as much as the environment --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know? I -- I was in to- -- it was like, you know, language immersion? This was cultural immersion.

Mm-hmm.

I was totally immersed in -- in the Quaker culture.

Mm-hmm.

And, um... I really took to it. I -- I liked everything about it. I liked... I liked the way they dressed, which was, um... you know, just extremely understated. They didn't believe in, um -- they just didn't believe in anything fancy --

Mm-hmm.

-- they didn't believe in, um -- I liked the way they talked. They talked quietly. I liked the way they... gave respect to people. And I -- and I especially liked the way they translated their spiritual beliefs into their life's work.

Mm-hmm.

And, um, I think that was the principle, um, teaching that affected me and my -- my intentions. That if you -- if you hold these sets of beliefs, then they're supposed to be reflected in what you do --

Mm-hmm.

-- in your work. Otherwise, you don't really believe them. Um. So when I was 13 -- I went there when I was 13 -- um, the American Friends Service Committee had a, um, um, a weekend, I don't know what they called it. A weekend work opportunity in East Harlem, um, where you could go down and paint a, uh, low-income senior citizen's apartment who wouldn't otherwise be able to get her apartment painted. And I decided that I wanted to go, because, you know, I -- I wanted to be of service. I had gotten --

Mm-hmm.

-- that idea that you had to be of service. So I wanted to be of service, and, um, I knew my mother wouldn't want me to go --

Mm-hmm.

-- um, because I'd have to go by myself. No one else wanted to go. No one else --

Mm-hmm.

-- signed up. So I forged her sig- signature on the permission card, and I took the train from, um, Poughkeepsie down to New York, and I took the subway from Grand Central over to Penn Central, and I took the subway up to East Harlem, and I found my way to the American Friends Service Committee office where I was met by a young Puerto Rican boy my age whose family was going to host me for the weekend.

Mm-hmm.

He took me to their apartment, and he came from a huge family, ten or eleven people, and they lived in a tiny, tiny little apartment. And they had two bedrooms, and they shared the two bedrooms. And there was no door between them; there was an archway between them.

Mm-hmm.

But because they had invited me to come and be their guest, they all moved --

Mm-hmm.

-- into the other room, and it was so touching --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know, that they would disaccomodate themselves for a child --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know. But we had the most wonderful weekend. And we went and, uh, painted the -- the, uh, lady's apartment, and then we went to a street fair, um, that night. And it was just wonderful. And it was just -- it was just an exhilarating experiencing of, um, being in community --

Mm-hmm.

-- and sharing and, um, and it's just wonderful. So I did -- I did those kinds of things with -- with the American Friends Service Committee, you know, the whole while I was there, and, um, you know, whenever there were protests, whenever there were pickets, whenever there were, you know, any of those things and I could participate, I participated in them. And I, um, I was elected President of the Student Council, and I was always, you know, railing against whatever I saw was unfair in the environment and I was -- I was kind of old in -- for my age, as a -- as a high school student, I think. So, you know, I just -- I just sort of swallowed the whole ethic of the Quaker.

Mm-hmm.

And it was seem- -- it was really not that different than what I see now in the -- in the Baptist tradition, just a different manifestation of it.

Mm-hmm.

But, um, but that was -- Unitarians were not so service-oriented. They were -- they were sort of humanist-oriented.

Mm-hmm.

They wanted people to -- if -- if you -- if your beliefs were -- were this, then it had to manifest itself in opening your arms to the whole human family.

Mm-hmm.

That's what I got from -- so I -- I never... felt that there was anything exclusive about my group as opposed to anybody else's group --

Mm-hmm.

-- from the Unitarian teachings. We were all a part of the same circle --

Mm-hmm.

-- the same human family. But works weren't so much a part of it. But with Quakers, works were part of it.

Mm-hmm.

So,

OK. Um, could you tell me, um, about the beginnings of your involvement with the Civil Rights Movement? And I would assume that would be in the '50s, you know, and also, since you're talking about the Quakers, what role the Quakers had in the Civil Rights Movement? What were the intersections, you know? What was their participation?

Well, they talked about race. You know, one of the things that would come up in -- in Quaker meetings, you know, and i- -- w- -- our -- our meetings were silent --

Mm-hmm.

-- and we sat in a circle and -- on Wednesdays and Sundays for an hour.

Mm-hmm.

So two hours a week of silence. And... you could go a whole hour and no one would say anything --

Mm-hmm.

-- or somebody would get up and say something, and it didn't have to be of a spiritual nature.

Mm-hmm.

And race would come up in those meetings --

Mm-hmm.

-- and people would -- would -- people would say things that, um -- there was never anything said that I considered wrong or improper, but they would raise questions -- I remember, um, one boy getting up and saying, um, um, there was a -- a robbery somewhere in town and the police came to ask if they had seen any young people running through campus.

Mm-hmm.

And this boy had seen two black students --

Mm-hmm.

-- from town running through, and he said, "I -- I was troubled by whether I should say to the policeman that this -- the young people that I saw were black," --

Mm-hmm.

-- or whatever term we're using. And he said, "I don't know whether it was right or wrong," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "to have said that."

Mm-hmm.

And so it was a very thoughtful, thought provoking thing, and other people, you know, commented on it, but.... We thought about race in -- in the -- in the way that we think about race today.

Mm-hmm.

It was very thoughtful. It was very, um, open, just... you know, we sort of worried about it. And -- and then we -- we did things that would, um, express a posture of support. mean, first of all, the school was totally integrated.

Mm-hmm.

We had l- like 15% black students --

Mm-hmm.

-- and we had Asians and we had Latinos. We had everything. Um. And we did everything together and we.... It was -- it was as idyllic an environment as my Howard University environment had been.

Mm-hmm.

Just in a -- in a multicultural way.

Mm-hmm.

Um. So I -- you know, I took that to college.

Mm-hmm.

I thought that was the way it was supposed to be. So I -- you know, I -- I was blessed in two settings.

Mm-hmm.

And I went to this well-regarded liberal arts college, and you know, it was like the -- the time machine turned back and I was -- I was given a single room because I was black --

And what college is this?

Vassar [College].

Vassar. OK.

And I had asked for a -- a roommate.

Mm-hmm.

And they gave me a single, and they had said, "You have to have a really good reason if you want a single, because we don't have very many."

Mm-hmm.

And I said, "I don't want a single, I want a double," --

Mm-hmm.

-- and I filled out the questionnaire. And then I arrived and found I had a single. So I was very troubled by that. And they had admitted, you know, a handful of blacks over the years, so I found out all of their names, and I found out where they were, and I called them all up --

Mm-hmm.

-- and I said, "Were you given a single when you entered the school?" And they all had been. So I went to the Dean's office, Mrs. Drouhai [Elizabeth Moffat Drouilhet], who was, um, her -- her title was Warden.

And her name was -- you said Drou- --

Drouhai. D-R-O-U-H-A-I or something, I don't know.

Mm-hmm.

She was an older woman, and, uh, very tough. Masculine. And I spoke to her secretary and I said, "Like to have an appointment," and she said, "What -- what's it about," --

Mm-hmm.

-- and I said, "Well, it's confidential," and she said, "Well then I can't give you an appointment if you can't tell me what it's about." So I said, "OK," and I back to my room and thought about it, and then I went back the next day and I had the exact same exchange, and I went back. And I came back the third day --

Mm-hmm.

-- and I -- and I said, "It's about discrimination."

Mm-hmm.

So I got an appointment right away. And Mrs. Drouilhet was a smoker, and -- and she smoked unfiltered cigarettes.

Mm-hmm.

And I remember that she just chain-smoked the -- the whole time we -- we talked. And I said, "Mrs. Drouilhet, I want to ask you why you sent me that questionnaire asking me what kind of roommate I wanted and whether I wanted the windows open or shut," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "whether I wanted her to smoke or non-smoke, when you knew all along that you were going to put me in a single room."

Mm-hmm.

And she said, "We have a lot of southern girls here,"

Mmm.

-- "and we didn't -- we didn't want to hurt their feelings." So I said, "Well, what about my feelings?" And she said, "Well, dear, if you can find someone who would like to room with you, we'll be happy to put you together." So I said, "Well, I tell you what I'm going to do. Unless you change this policy immediately,"

Mm-hmm.

-- "I'm going to call the New York Times and let them know that this is your practice," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "and this is what you've been doing, lo these many years. I've spoken to all the other black students."

Mm-hmm.

And she said, without blinking an eye, "We'll change the policy immediately."

Mmm.

And they did. And they admitted one black student the next year --

Mm-hmm.

-- and they gave her a roommate.

Mm-hmm.

But I was very, very frightened, but I was also very angry.

Mm-hmm.

And -- and I really never liked that place after that. Um. And there were girls -- there were a lot of southern girls there, and there were girls who would get up with their tray and leave the table when I came with my tray. So that was really my first experience of discrimination as a black person.

Mm-hmm.

I didn't -- I really hadn't had any experience --

Mm-hmm.

-- of discrimination --

Mm-hmm.

-- before. I had only had real expressions of love and support and togetherness.

Mmm.

Through, um, the -- through the Unitarian Church, through my poor white friends in junior high school, through Oakwood. So the place where I encountered it --

Mm-hmm.

-- was in this, um, upper-crust, you know, self-important white women's college.

Mm-hmm.

So it was -- it was galvanizing for me, and -- and I was well-prepared by everything that had gone before --

Mm-hmm.

-- I just hadn't had to marshal it --

Mm-hmm.

-- in a fighting posture before then.

Mm-hmm.

But, um, that's -- you know, that's where it -- that's where it came forward --

Mm-hmm.

-- and they provoked it. And when I got to be a -- a senior, I said I wanted to be a civil rights lawyer. I wanted to law -- go to law school and --

Mm-hmm.

-- and just do battle with the bad guys.

Mm-hmm.

That's what I wanted to do. So.

OK. Why don't you tell me about your -- maybe your political involvement in -- in college and more about your college career. Um, and more about that decision to become a civil rights lawyer?

I don't think I was very active, politically. I think I was just, you know, sort of an angry -- just an angry person about the way black people were treated. I -- most of my friends were Jewish --

Mm-hmm.

-- liberal, um... uh, some were quite left in their leaning --

Mm-hmm.

-- I don't think I had had any close Jewish friends before then, so, again, people of a particular spiritual experience were very important --

Mm-hmm.

-- to me. I had a roommate from New York whose, um... whose parents were, um.... communists in the '30s.

Mm-hmm.

And all of their friends were former communists --

Mm-hmm.

-- and I used to go home with Joan to New York whenever she went home for the weekend, and the mother was a fabulous cook, and (phone rings) always had -- always had these (phone rings) people --

Mm-hmm.

Um, I'm sorry. (phone rings)

We can st- --

(whispering) -- let me just turn it all the way off. (phone beeps, plays music) Um. I had, um.... Uh, so -- so I met, you know, I met... dramatic people.

Mm-hmm.

They were all dramatic.

Mm-hmm.

Uh. I met James Forman.

Mm-hmm.

I -- I met Paul Robeson's son. I met, who's the woman who wrote the expose on the funeral business?

Hmm.

I can't think of her name, but anyway. Um. Um. They were strident. They were all strident.

Mm-hmm.

And -- And so I don't -- I don't know exactly how the transfer happened, but through these dinner parties I got a notion of, um, what a fighter looked like, talked like --

Mm-hmm.

-- how they behaved, you know, and, um, and the price that you had to pay --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know, for being a fighter.

Mm-hmm.

Because they all had st- -- war stories of what had happened to them, be it the f- -- you know, being communist and.... I just absorbed that --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know, I just -- that was, um.... Oh. The other -- the other person I should mention as being pivotal in my consciousness of social justice was [Anna] Eleanor Roosevelt.

Mm-hmm.

Because when I was in, um, high school, my -- my roommate was a white Republican from New Jersey, but very liberal --

Mmm.

-- family. Mother was a social worker, and, um, she would take me home on weekends --

Mm-hmm.

-- um, and they -- they owned a mountain in New Jersey --

Mm-hmm.

-- named for the mother. Her name was Ryerson, and it was called Rycliff.

Ryerson?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

R-Y-E-R-S-O-N --

Mm-hmm.

-- I think. And, um, they rented a coll- -- a cottage to the Lash family on their mountain.

Mm-hmm.

The Lashes were very close friends with the Roosevelts.

Mm-hmm.

So -- and the m- -- that mother was very interested in educating me about... um, social skills. So she... always took us to the theater --

Mm-hmm.

-- and I remember, um -- and we would go to dinner, not before theater, we would go to dinner after theater, so that was the first time I knew you could eat dinner so late at night. And we -- we didn't go to fancy restaurants. I don't know whether it was 'cause we didn't have money or because we weren't admitted to them --

Mm-hmm.

-- I don't know what. We didn't --

Mmm.

-- my family didn't go to restaurants. So I didn't know what a restaurant menu --

Mm-hmm.

-- looked like. And one of the first times we went to, um, a play, um... um... we ordered, and... I didn't know the difference between an appetizer and an entree.

Mm-hmm.

So I ordered a shrimp cocktail, because I had had that. I knew what that was.

Mm-hmm.

And she said, "Well -- well, don't you want something else," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "you only get four shrimp with that," --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know, so, I said, "OK, well, I'll have two."

Mm-hmm.

So I got two shrimp cocktails.

Mm-hmm.

And then they -- they understood that I didn't know the difference --

Mm-hmm.

-- and they explained the difference between an appetizer and an entree --

Mm-hmm.

-- and thereafter, I ordered a -- an entree. But, um, on one of these occasions, um, the after-dinner, um, meal was at the apartment of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Mm-hmm.

And she just -- you know, she just loved young people. That was just one of her things.

Mm-hmm.

She just loved young people, and of course, she was a champion for black people in her life.

Mm-hmm.

And I didn't know any of this, you know?

Mm-hmm.

But I -- you know, I was very -- I was very gregarious and chirpy, and -- and -- and outgoing. And -- and we really had a wonderful conversation together that night.

Mm-hmm.

I don't -- I have no idea about what. But I told my mother about it, and, um, my mother, who -- who was a -- just a beautiful writer, wrote her a letter, and -- and said, um, "I'm so happy that my daughter had an opportunity to meet you." "I wonder if you could refer us to someplace where we might find support for her to continue at Oakwood, because I can't a- -- continue her next year."

Mm-hmm.

"I have four children," and, you know. Um. And she wrote back and said, "I'll pay for her expenses."

Mm-hmm.

And she did, through for -- for all the rest of Oakwood.

Mm-hmm.

And -- and she wrote me notes, um, asking about my progress --

Mm-hmm.

-- and I wrote to her, and, unfortunately, those letters were lost. But, um, but the fact that she was interested in me --

Mm-hmm.

-- and the fact that she was... um, a plain woman --

Mm-hmm.

-- because to me, um, beauty was a handicap and beauty got in the way of good works.

Mm-hmm.

You know? And I saw in her that -- that she had found a way to do good works --

Mm-hmm.

-- and I wanted to be like her.

Mm-hmm.

I was very -- I was very inspired by her. Anyway. So, um, so then -- then I was at -- at, uh -- I was at Vassar, and I was seeing my roommate's family, um. I only remember one teacher -- well, maybe two teachers -- who -- who inspired me. One was a very funny looking history teacher whose name was Rhoda Rappaport, and Miss Rappaport was balding. And, um, she combed her hair to one side to sort of hide it, you know --

Mm-hmm.

-- but she -- in the middle, her -- she was bald.

Mm-hmm.

And she had a very long nose. But she was very warm, and she loved history. Loved it. And she had an immediate sense of it that was just -- oh, it was so exciting, and it was because of her that I majored in history. And one day, she just shocked me by coming out of her... chair behind the desk, and she jumped up and sat on the table and hung her legs over the front -- this, yo- -- never saw a teacher do that --

Mm-hmm.

-- any -- anywhere. Just sat on the table and dangled her legs, and -- and then she used a curse word. And she said, "What were the damned colonists revolting about, anyway?"

Hahaha.

And I was so... astonished by her behavior and her language --

Mm-hmm.

-- and -- and her audacity --

Mm-hmm.

-- to -- to bring it into now.

Mm-hmm.

She just -- she brought the whole passion of their fight --

Mm-hmm.

-- into now. And that was so, um, that was such a revelation to me, that you could make history useful --

Mm-hmm.

-- to where you were right now, and that you could learn from what they did, and you could use it for your own fight. Um. So, I -- I really, really appreciated her for that, and I just -- and her spirit was so pure. I -- um, then -- then I wanted -- I guess because of the influence of my roommate's family and friends, I wanted to do a thesis -- I was trying to always integrate my spiritual interests and my political interests, and... I wanted to do an -- a thesis on the, um... struggle for -- for liberation of... African nations.

Mm-hmm.

And they told me there was no one in the history department (inaudible) and wa- -- no one black there. There was no one in the history department who could read such a thesis.

Mm-hmm.

So I said, "Then I'm not staying in your department. I'm leaving and I'm going to the political science department," where there were also no blacks --

Mm-hmm.

-- but at least they talked about politics.

Right.

So... so then I said I wanted to do my thesis on the influence of Karl [Heinrich] Marx on Reinhold Neibuhr.

Mm-hmm.

And I had a professor who loved Reinhold Neiburh and had read every single thing he'd ever written, and so we... we really, really got into it on that thesis. We worked very, very hard. He did not give me any breaks at all, um, but... but I was able to -- to do -- to study two things that I loved at the same time.

Mm-hmm.

And so that was really good. And so I -- I remember that teacher, because he... he thought that I was smart, and he encouraged me, and he tested me, and he pushed me, and he --

Mm-hmm.

-- he did the kind si- -- of things that my elementary school teachers had done, which... before him, I think -- I don't feel I had ever been seen there.

Mm-hmm.

I didn't feel like anybody -- well, Mrs. Drouilhet saw me, because she saw me as a threat, but... none of my teachers saw me, otherwise.

Mm-hmm.

I was invisible.

Mm-hmm.

I -- I was totally invisible.

Mm-hmm.

They were -- you know, I was just there by sufferance.

Mm-hmm.

You have to have a couple, and she's one of them.

Yeah.

Um. (inaudible).

OK. Um, the Jewish classmate that you mentioned, did you find, uh, an affinity based on... common struggles? Was -- did you have discussions with them on the struggles of, uh --

Yes. Yes, well, it -- it w- -- you know, I -- I'm really not an abstract thinker. I'm really a very... you know, I -- things have to be quite concrete, and the things that I remember are, you know, legs thrown over the desk, you know?

Mm-hmm.

I don't -- I don't remember big ideas.

Mm-hmm.

But J- Joan's grandmother was Jenny. And Jenny was Jewish, a Jewish woman born in Russia.

Mm-hmm.

Jenny -- Jenny wasn't much taller than four foot three. I mean, she was just a very short little person, and --

Mm-hmm.

-- but Jenny, ooh. Jenny was tough. And... she remembered everything about Russia, and, um, she described herself as a Russian peasant. And --

Mm-hmm.

-- she described what happened to peasants in -- in Russia, and she -- she said that she was not allowed to go in to Moscow because she was a peasant.

Mm-hmm.

And... you know. That was just terrible, you know?

Mm-hmm.

I couldn't imagine. And she was very poor. She was very, very poor, and... and she just loved me, you know? She just... you know, she really loved me just like my own grandmother would. You know, Jenny was so special. And we -- you know, we just talked and -- and -- and whatever it was she said, I don't know. I don't know what she said, but I just wanted to be like Jenny. And, you know, she wasn't intellectual, (inaudible), you know, but she was... she was just strong, and she just... um.... There's just -- there was nothing phony about her. There -- she was just very earnest. Very pure of heart. And so she was sort of like my mother, you know? My mother was that way, and -- and... I remember when mother came up. You know, I think my mother was poor, and... but she -- you know, she never carried herself in -- in any way as though she were deprived, and when she came up, she really didn't have much money, and I was a freshman in college and -- I guess maybe she had, uh -- we -- we were -- we had come to New York for the weekend for some reason, and so Joan's parents invited us to come to their house for dinner. Well, we went to the house for dinner, and... by now, they're rich, because the father is a painter. He has a painting company; they paint apartments. And he's made a good -- good business out of it, so they -- they have money. They have a -- a beautiful brownstone house on the upper east side. So we came in and... first thing Joe Catton asked, um... my mother was, "Where are you staying?"

Mm-hmm.

And, um... without blinking, you know, she said, "The YWCA [Young Women's Christian Association]."

Mm-hmm.

And he said, "Oh. Is it nice?" And she said, "Yes, it's very nice, thank you."

Mm-hmm.

But her -- her posture in that exchange was so... um... unembarrassed and straightforward --

Mm-hmm.

-- and proud.

Mm-hmm.

You know, it was -- there was just a kind of pride in it that was -- that made him seem very small for --

Mm-hmm.

-- having asked the question.

Mm-hmm.

Um. And Jenny never would have asked a question like that.

Mm-hmm.

She just -- she just wouldn't have, you know? She just -- when she met her, she just... she just grasped both of her hands and just kissed her hands.

Mm-hmm.

And it was so see- -- it was so dear, you know? She just -- she just embraced my mother, because she was my mother, you know --

Mm-hmm.

-- and she loved me. But... I don't know. But... through that relationship whatever the -- the political stories were --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know, took hold.

Mm-hmm.

And I remember the relationship, not the political stories.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

But they were intertwined.

Right.

They -- they go together.

Right.

You know.

OK.

So I think Jenny was really... really, uh, a strong influence. And Joan's mother... um... Joan's mother was a -- was kind of a model to me of what I didn't want to happen to me, because Joan's mother was a very strong, um, political person in the communist movement, uh, and they came out, you know, because they were disillusioned. But she ended up being, uh, a writer for Redbook.

Mm-hmm.

And... and that was a -- you know, it was a good job. It was a -- you know, it was a good job. It was a -- you know, it was a -- she was a journalist. She was a writer. I think from time to time she got to interview important people.

Mm-hmm.

But it was not really an intellectual work.

Mm-hmm.

It -- it was -- it -- it was beneath her vision of herself --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know? So I said, "Whatever you do, fix it so that you can have a chance to do what is in your heart. Don't end up doing something that's just a job. Don't end up just doing a job. And because it -- it ate at her.

Mm-hmm.

And she drank about it. And both -- both she and her husband were alcoholics, I think. But Jenny didn't drink at all.

Mm-hmm.

But they -- they had issues, you know? They had things -- they had disappointments. He didn't want to be a -- a painter.

Mm-hmm.

A painting contractor, you know?

Mm-hmm.

He wanted t- -- he wanted to be a revolutionary. He wanted to change things.

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, I wanted to fix it so that I could change things --

Mm-hmm.

-- and -- and I -- you know -- I think that's really why I went to law school, because I said, you know, "This will give me tools,"

Mm-hmm.

-- "that I need to change things," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "you know?" And I -- I'll be able to work a- at what I want to do.

Mm-hmm.

So.

OK. So, uh, you graduated Vassar and went to law school --

Mm-hmm.

-- and you went to law school at, uh --

I went to Howard [University].

OK.

I -- I was admitted to Harvard [University], and, um... uh.... I didn't... I didn't have an -- any real intention to be a great lawyer. I didn't have any interest in law. I -- I was only interested in social justice, and I wanted --

Mm-hmm.

-- I wanted to, uh, I wanted to join that battle.

Mm-hmm.

But I had friends who had gone to Harvard, and, um... so I applied, and they didn't give me a scholarship, and I think my mother was going to try to make the stretch somehow, but she took me to see Judge William [Henry] Hastie, who was a black -- the first black federal judge.

Mm-hmm.

And, um... um... he said, "Do you have fire in the belly about being a lawyer?" And I said, "No, I don't."

Mm-hmm.

He said, "Then you shouldn't go to Harvard."

Mm-hmm.

He said, "It's very difficult, and you won't make it," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "unless you have fire in the belly." So I took him at his word.

Mm-hmm.

And I said, "I'm not going to go there." You know, I don't -- I didn't want to burden my mother financially, and I could go to Howard for very little money. Um. So I went to Howard. And it turned out to have been a blessing, um, to me personally, because I... I had to have a period of healing after Vassar.

Mm-hmm.

Because it had been so cold and so unwelcoming and so alienating and then, once again, I was immersed in something that was just wonderful and warm and welcoming and I loved being at Howard. I loved being with, um, professors who had been, you know, part of thinking through the strategies of the civil rights cases and --

Mm-hmm.

-- um... It was just good. I -- I just --

Mm-hmm.

-- I really enjoyed it, the absence of the -- of the Harvard credential, I think, um, has hurt me as different junctures and probably my training was not as good as it would have been if I had been able to, you know, get my focus together to really --

Mm-hmm.

-- do Harvard Law School. I might not have made it. I might -- I might have just said, "This is too -- too difficult for what I want."

Mm-hmm.

So I don't know, if I had gone there, whether I would have actually been able to go through the three years. Because I didn't like school. I -- you know, the last time I really liked school was high school.

OK.

But, um. Anyway, I -- I, um... I applied to the Legal Defense Fund, and -- uh, NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] Legal Defense Fund, which was [Thoroughgood] Thurgood Marshall's, um, you know, outfit. And... they didn't take How- Howard graduates. They only took Ivy League graduates --

Mm-hmm.

-- and I was the first Howard graduate they took.

Hmm.

Uh --

And di- did you find that a little curious?

I th- -- I thought it was outrageous.

OK.

I thought it was outrageous.

Uh-huh.

Um --

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

They took other Howard people after me, but I --

Mm-hmm.

-- was the first. Um. And, uh, I loved it. You know, I ju- -- I loved the work. I loved traveling in the south. I loved working with the local, um.... And when I was in law school, I had... I had worked doing civil rights stuff, um, with the Department of HEW, then, Health, Education, and Welfare.

Mm-hmm.

And we traveled to the south to integrate schools in Mississippi and Alabama.

Mm-hmm.

And our -- our job was to go around and knock on doors and ask black families if they wanted to sign their kids up for the white schools --

Mm-hmm.

-- under a Freedom of Choice Plan. And... it was a tremendous education for me, to be in the south and to b- -- meet those families and to witness their courage. Um. I've never seen anything like that before, and I haven't seen it since, where communities had reached together a point where they were ready to die.

Mm-hmm.

They -- it -- it was -- it was palpable. It was visible. You -- you co- -- you could -- it was just there, and --

Mm-hmm.

-- they were not going to go forward the way things were, and whatever it costs, they were willing to pay that.

Mm-hmm.

And, oh, that was so startling to me to encounter. You know, people lost jobs. Their houses were burned down. You know, for signing this little piece of paper.

Mm-hmm.

But they signed it, you know, with no... no show of anything. Just very quietly --

Mm-hmm.

-- and.... One day, I knocked (inaudible) one of those [shotgun-long] houses and -- very weathered. And there was a old -- older woman sitting on a -- on the porch, and went up. There was another law student with me, and... she was pretty suspicious of us. And the first question that we -- one of the first questions after the -- the name was, "What... um... what do you -- what do you do for a living?"

Mm-hmm.

And she said, "I chops."

Mm-hmm.

And I -- I said, "I beg your pardon? What --" "I chops."

Mm-hmm.

I said, "I'm sorry, I don't understand that."

Mm-hmm.

She said, "I chop cotton."

Mmm. And what year was that?

This was 19, uh, 6...7.

Mm-hmm. And you were shocked....

I was -- I was shocked that --

And this was in what state?

In Mississippi.

In Mississippi.

And this was Fannie Lou Hamer [born Fannie Lou Townsend].

Oh. OK.

And she hadn't done her Democratic Convention thing yet.

Mm-hmm.

I -- I just thought sh- -- I didn't know her name. I didn't know she was --

Mm-hmm.

-- a leader of civil rights --

Mm-hmm.

-- movements in Mississippi. I just thought she was --

Mm-hmm.

-- just one of the -- one of the parents. But for some reason, that whole interview and that whole -- just the way she looked and her -- her challenge to me. Because she.... None of them really liked us coming and bothering them, but she especially didn't like it.

Mm-hmm.

And so we had to work our way into a place where we could find a middle ground and get our job done --

Mm-hmm.

-- that day, and -- but she -- you know, she just was a powerful person, I think, and I think it was just present that --

Mm-hmm.

-- that we were little nobodies and she was -- we were sitting with a powerful person.

Mm-hmm.

And, and it -- and I was so thrilled when -- when she became a visible leader --

Mm-hmm.

-- that I had had the privilege of those few moments --

Mm-hmm.

-- sitting on her porch, you know.

Mm-hmm.

It was just -- it was just wonderful, you know, that I had had that chance. Um. So I -- you know, I've just -- I've just met so many wonderful people.

Mm-hmm.

There were -- I've s- -- I've been inspired by so many -- so many people who fought --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know? And who didn't.... Most of them, you know, had a lot that they were drawing on. They just did it.

Mm-hmm.

They just got up and said, "I'm doing it."

Mm-hmm.

So th- that's been a tremendous encouragement to me, that, you know, that we all have the capacity to fight.

Mm-hmm.

We all have the... we all have the duty to just, you know, go ahead and try.

Mm-hmm.

And some days you win, and some days you don't, but you keep trying, you know?

OK.

So.

OK. Maybe you could tell me some of the other highlights of working for the Legal Defense Fund?

Oh, gosh, there were so many.

Oh?

Um. I remember once we were trying to... intervene in a -- in a case in, uh, in the Midwest somewhere. And it was my job to go around and get residents to -- black residents to sign a -- a petition saying that they wanted to be plaintiffs and intervention in this lawsuit. And -- I think maybe it was Tulsa, Oklahoma -- someplace you wouldn't expect to be as bad as the deep south.

Mm-hmm.

They wouldn't -- they wouldn't receive the petition. They wouldn't let me make my argument. They wouldn't hear from any of the people in the courtroom. They just shut us out as though we were not on the planet Earth. And... ooh, that still burns me. That still burns me. Um. They -- the -- we were as disrespected by an august, you know, instrument of state as we -- as it was.... It was shocking.

Mm-hmm.

It was just really shocking to me. I had a -- I had a case in North Carolina.... The -- the local attorney, I think, had called me because of his knowledge of my father's death in -- in North Carolina. And you -- you know the story of -- my father dying in a car crash and dying for want of plasma, which is not true. You know that story?

OK. Would you relate that to me? Because I've been doing a little bit of reading. If you could, uh, for the record --

Yeah.

-- uh, set the record straight about the circumstances surrounding your father's death?

Well, he traveled to, um, um, an annual meeting in Tuskegee, Alabama, by car with, uh, three other black physicians. And they had left late in the evening, and... from Washington, and they had reached... I don't -- I don't actually know whether they were -- I think they were on their way to Tuskegee, and they reached North Carolina outside of Raleigh, and either my father had a heart attack or he fell asleep -- most accounts say that he fell asleep -- but, um, didn't have his seatbelt on, and the car swerved into the, uh, sort of gutter next to the road --

Mm-hmm.

-- and he jerked, trying to get it back on the road, and the motion of the jerking caused the car to turn over three times.

Mm-hmm.

The other three passengers were thrown out, but he wasn't thrown out --

Mm-hmm.

-- and -- and the car rolled on him, and he was crushed.

Mm-hmm.

He didn't die immediately, but, um, uh, lost a tremendous amount of blood and was in shock at the -- by the point they took him to the hospital, and he died.

Uh-huh.

He was taken to the basement of the hospital, which is where they treated black patients. It was a white hospital. Two... physicians, two brothers who worked there, were told who he was and that he was down in the basement.

Mm-hmm.

They knew, uh, his name. They knew his work. And they rushed down to do everything that they could to save him, but he was just too badly injured.

Mm-hmm.

They were trying to get him to a point where they could transfer him to Duke, which was a bigger hospital --

Mm-hmm.

-- but he just didn't make it.

Mm-hmm.

Uh. [Richard] Dick [Claxton] Gregory and Whitney [Moore] Young [Jr.], uh, are credited with, um, starting the story that he died with -- because they -- they denied him blood plasma.

Mm-hmm.

Because it's a -- it's a poignant story of contribution and then deprivation of your own contribution --

Mm-hmm.

-- where your own life is, uh --

Mm-hmm.

-- hanging in the balance. Um. And the story so speaks to our condition --

Mm-hmm.

--that people... won't let it go.

Mm-hmm.

So even though the three doctors said he was given all the care that was available, and -- and other people who were at Howard at the time said it's -- this is not a true story, the story will, in my opinion, never die. And I don't even -- if people will ask me directly, I tell them the story, but if -- I don't try to do anything with it, very much, now, because it hurts people --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know, when I try to take a story away from them --

Mm-hmm.

-- that -- that carries our sort of collective history and pain.

Mm-hmm.

So it's not true in his case; it certainly was true in the case of many other --

Mm-hmm.

-- uh, people that were denied access because they were black.

Uh-huh. Sure.

So it's a true story, it just doesn't happen to be a true story with respect to him.

OK.

Um. Now, I forget why -- why did w- -- why did we -- I started someplace else before we got there. What were we talking about before we --

Um, well, you were talking about the Legal Defense Fund and --

Oh, my case!

I had asked you --

Oh, my case.

Your case, yes.

So this lawyer in North Carolina had a case where a young black man, married, uh, two small children and a third on the way --

Mm-hmm.

-- a very happy little family and he must have been a very sweet husband, because he -- he told his wife he would go out and get her, uh, the car filled up with gas for the next day so she wouldn't have to bother with that.

Mm-hmm.

So he went out to do it, and while he was out, three young night riders who didn't know him from Adam, um, decided to just shoot a black person, and they picked him --

Mm-hmm.

-- and they shot him. And the bullet entered his throat and -- and, um, he didn't lose consciousness. He was able to get to a... a phone, and -- and they sent an ambulance and he was taken to a white hospital in Raleigh. And they called his wife, and she came to the emergency room, and... they, um, said she should just take him to a dentist to t- -- attend to his teeth, because some of his teeth had been im-- impacted. And she said, "Well, aren't you going to keep him overnight? He's had a wound to his throat." They said, "No, we -- he doesn't need to be here overnight."

Mm-hmm.

Just take him to a dentist. So she took him to the dentist and then took him home, and he had an aneurysm and died during the night.

Mmm. Mm-hmm.

So Julius Chambers called me and asked me if I would help him file suit against the hospital.

Mm-hmm.

So we did, and we had a... a federal claim and a -- and a state negligence ca- claim together. And it was a jury trial, and there was one black on the jury. And we could not get any physician, black or white, to testify for us --

Mm-hmm.

-- to say that this was not a common practice with a bullet wound to the neck --

Mm-hmm.

-- to discharge the patient. And it was common practice everywhere that if the -- you had that, you st- -- you stayed overnight.

Mm-hmm.

So we got a Jewish lawyer from Howard University to come down, and he testified that this was not proper. And, um... um... um... there was also a testimony that, um, from the wife that when they were redressing her husband, he couldn't lift his left arm to put it back into the shirt.

Mm-hmm.

Well, that's a sign that there's already been, um, a breakage --

Mm-hmm.

-- that it's affected the --

Mm-hmm.

-- neurology.

Mm-hmm.

So he'd -- he'd already had something like a stroke.

Mm-hmm.

Which was a sign they should have kept him.

Yes.

Um. Anyway, so, the jury, uh, was out for two hours and came back with a verdict for the hospital, and then the judge called us up to the bench and, um, said, "Do you know why you lost this case?" and we said, "Why?" And he said, "Because you brought that bearded, Jewish fellow down here from Washington, D.C. We don't like that."

Mmm.

So, of course, that was... that was a very great disappointment, and the woman miscarried her baby, um, from the stress of all of it. And it was just a travesty, you know. And, um, we were unable to make our case that this was a discriminating hospital, because at that time, the federal government didn't require keeping data by race --

Mm-hmm.

-- on admissions.

Mm-hmm.

So I was able to do that, when I became director of the [United States Department of Health and Human Services] Office of Civil Rights.

Mm-hmm.

And I -- and I felt that that was... that closed that gap.

Mm-hmm.

But that was, that -- that case made me decide that I wanted to -- I wanted to do civil rights and health.

Mm-hmm.

Because there really wasn't much in the way of civil rights and health at that time.

Mm-hmm.

There had been in a case in North Carolina where they, uh, eh, they tried to integrate staff at a hospital. Because if you didn't have a -- a staff physician, you couldn't get into a hospital. If you didn't accept black staff, then the black people couldn't get in the hospital.

Mm-hmm.

But other than that, there hadn't been any really big cases, and, um, hehe, the -- you know, the main cases were -- I -- that I handled were integrating mental institutions and the staff --

Mm-hmm.

-- where they -- they, uh, they didn't make too big a fuss about it, 'cause they thought all the people were crazy anyway. They didn't know that -- whether people were black and white.

Mm-hmm.

The inmates. Sort of an irony. But, and that's really -- you know, that's really why, when I came to California and there was not a civil rights law firm that I could join, I looked for health advocacy --

Mm-hmm.

-- and then I became a health advocate.

Mm-hmm.

And... while they were interested in enforcing statutory entitlements to healthcare like Medicare and Medicaid and Hill Burton and maternal and child health, I was interested in bringing constitutional civil rights protections to bear --

Mm-hmm.

-- to -- to increase access for black people and other people of color --

OK.

-- to healthcare services.

Yeah.

So that's what I did for the --

OK.

-- for those ten years that I was there.

OK.

But I sort of came back to that root at the [Indian] Legal Defense Fund.

Right. Any other highlights you'd like to discuss in terms of the, uh, Legal Defense Fund and your work? And also could you talk about, uh -- maybe you could tell me what years you did that, and then what was going on on the larger scene in terms of, you know, civil rights?

Well, these were our heydays, you know? This was -- this was, uh... um.... I got out of law school in 1968 --

Mm-hmm.

-- and I joined the Legal Defense Fund in 1969. For the preceding year, I worked to d- -- to -- to, uh, help establish an Indian Legal Defense Fund with the Ford Foundation, uh, which was -- which was wonderful, and I traveled all over the country visiting reservations.

Mm-hmm.

But I wanted to -- I wanted to do civil rights. You know, that's why I had gone to law school, and... so I got a chance to -- to, uh, work at the Legal Defense Fund, and I did school desegregation, housing discrimination, employment discrimination, jury discrimination, um. And I had wonderful mentors, um, at the Fund and in the -- in the, uh, local law firms of civil rights lawyers throughout the south. Um. And I won... all my cases.

Mmm.

Um. Not because I was so, uh, brilliant, but because the -- the Fund was just very, very good, you know?

Mm-hmm.

I mean, everybody -- everybody's work was, you know.... I mean, they just... they didn't -- it wasn't submitted until it was --

Mm-hmm.

-- excellent.

Mm-hmm.

But I loved it. I loved writing the briefs. I loved arguing the cases. I loved working with local attorneys, and, uh.... It was just -- it was just a -- a seven-year high. I was just --

Mm-hmm.

-- excited all the time, and... it was wonderful. Then it started to -- by the time I left, we had started losing.

Mmm.

The courts had begun to turn against our cases, and we --

Mm-hmm.

-- were beginning to not have success. And -- and that was, whoa. That was just... unthinkable. 'Cause w- we thought this was just a straight trajectory up --

Mm-hmm.

-- to equality, and --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know. An even playing field. We really thought we were going to get there.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, we -- we were certain of that. That this -- the door was finally open --

Mm-hmm.

-- and we were all going to go through. All of us --

Mm-hmm.

-- together. So very disillusioning --

Mm-hmm.

-- in the '70s, to -- to realize that was not so, and --

Yeah. Yeah.

-- that -- that we would have to refight those battles again.

Uh-huh.

Um. So, um, my -- my first job out here was with the City Attorney. I worked for [Los Angeles City Attorney] Burt Pines. He created a -- a new position, um, to enforce, um, affirmative action for women and minorities in city government.

Mm-hmm.

And there were 34 different departments and none of them were right on -- on either women or minorities.

Mm-hmm.

But I concentrated on police and fire. And, um, and they were bad. They were really bad. And still are.

Mm-hmm.

And I think I went beyond what they wanted me to do. And they disbanded that office.

Mm-hmm.

And what years was that office in existence?

That was, um... that was 19...74 --

Mm-hmm.

-- through '7...6.

Mm-hmm.

So that's when I went into health law.

Mm-hmm.

And civil rights and health. And I, um, you know, I -- I.... I had -- I had a lot of disillusionment there, because the courts... the courts were open in -- during the, you know, the heyday --

Mm-hmm.

-- to housing, employment, jury, discrimination, and they would rule for us.

Mm-hmm.

In the health domain, they said, "This doesn't belong here. This is a creature of the legislature, and" --

Mm-hmm.

-- "regulatory agencies. This doesn't belong here. We can't solve your problems."

Mm-hmm.

So the courts would just rule against us in --

Mm-hmm.

-- in health cases, because really, there's no substantial body of, uh, rulings in health --

Mm-hmm.

-- and civil rights.

Mm-hmm.

They just wouldn't hear it. Isn't that interesting?

Very.

And I'll give you two examples, um, of how it didn't work for me. One was a case in Mississippi. I was so happy I had found, um, a little small town where they, uh -- it was one doctor, and he had a white and a colored waiting room.

Mm-hmm.

And the white waiting room was well-lit, current magazines, nice furniture, and the black waiting room was dark, uh, no magazines, worse furniture -- I mean, it was just classic --

Mm-hmm.

-- separate and unequal.

Mm-hmm.

So I s- -- I prepared the complaint, you know, and found people who were willing to be plaintiffs, and.... came the day where people were supposed to assemble, and not a single person showed. And... they said, you know, "We had to make a choice whether we wanted to fight this battle or whether we wanted to have access to a doctor," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "and we decided we wanted to have access to a doctor." And that was the right decision.

Mm-hmm.

So... I understood that, um, this was a different animal.

Mm-hmm.

This was a different creature than that -- my other kind of civil rights cases. The other kind of case that I was involved in was hospital runaways, where inner-city hospitals, once they tipped with too many blacks --

Mm-hmm.

-- would try to move to the suburbs.

Mm-hmm.

And we sued them. In Wilmington, Delaware, and in, uh... Indi- Indiana, um. And... in both cases, the courts said, "You can have a decision requiring integration," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "or you can have a decision requiring more resources to go to the hospital that's left in the inner city."

Mm-hmm.

And in both cases, the plaintiffs said, "Let's get more resources for the hospital that's left, because we want the care."

Mm-hmm.

So... the ideal of equality takes second tier to the desire to stay alive.

Right.

It's interesting.

Interesting. OK, before we move further, what turned the tide? When you mentioned -- when you left the Legal Defense Fund --

Mm-hmm.

-- that the tide was turning --

Mm-hmm.

-- um, maybe put that in a larger context in terms of who was in the White House at the time. What were the other factors that made the tide turn in the '70s?

Um. Well, let's see. We had -- you know, our best champion was Lyndon [Baines] Johnson. You know, Kennedy gets credit, but it was really Lyd- Lyndon Johnson who had the skills and the passion to get the civil rights, uh, legislation through Congress in the mid-'60s.

Mm-hmm.

And then we had the war, and L- -- and Johnson lost his popularity because of the war.

Mm-hmm.

I was against the war, even though I was a big supporter of Johnson because of his, um, his work in civil rights.

Mm-hmm.

And then, we had, um -- who was the President after Johnson? Was it -- [Richard Milhous] Nixon.

Nixon.

And then Nixon was, Nixon was sort of, you know, trying to get things re-established back in the old way --

Mm-hmm.

-- um, and he -- he was a leader of -- of moving in the same way that Reagan, later, was a -- a leader in moving things back.

Mm-hmm.

And so the -- the climate in the courts changed.

Mm-hmm.

You know? You -- you lead from the top. So if the leader says, "We -- we're not going that way," --

Mm-hmm.

-- then the judges get that, you know?

Mm-hmm.

And decisions begin to reflect that.

Mm-hmm.

So. You know, I -- I would just say we had peaked, you know.

Mm-hmm.

There was a period of time where the -- where the courts said, "OK, we've done wrong, we're going to make right," you know, and -- and then they said, "Well, that's enough of that."

Mm-hmm.

"You're on your own." So that -- that was the context. And then, of course, we -- it got worse, you know, when[Ronald Wilson] Reagan was elected and, um, Reagan really made it OK to hate black people.

Mm-hmm.

Nixon didn't lead us in hating black people; Nixon led us in saying, "We're not going to move the machinery of state to support...." --

Mm-hmm.

But Reagan said, "No, the- -- you know, they're really different, and it's OK to say, 'They're different, and we do-' -- you know, America is for people who look like me."

Mm-hmm.

"It's not for them." He -- he was -- he was an evil, evil influence. Reagan. I just hate it that he's so --

Mmm.

-- revered. So, you know, I spent a lot of time in Legal Services fighting Reagan who was trying to kill Legal Services and trying to kill the backup centers in Legal Services. You know, he -- he did -- he -- [Edwin] Ed Meese [III] -- he and Ed Meese, his Attorney General, did -- did very serious damage to due process. They tried to kill us by, um, unannounced visits, to see -- they suspected -- we were the Health Law Program, and they suspected that we were, um, secretly doing, uh, abortion work. Which we were not.

Mm-hmm.

We -- you know, we were trying to get people into hospitals. We didn't have anything to do with abortion.

Mm-hmm.

But that was the ruse. And they --

Mm-hmm.

-- would come, they'd open our files --

Mm-hmm.

-- to see if there was anything in there having to do with abortion. I mean, it was just... oh, it was really Big Brother time.

Mm-hmm.

And that's really why I left law, because I was spending all my time fighting reactionary Washington leadership, and I said, "This is not what I came to do. You know, I came to help people."

Mm-hmm.

"I didn't come to do battle," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "with the funding sources. I thought I was authorized," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "to do this work."

Right.

And now I see I'm not authorized. You don't want me to do this work.

Mm-hmm.

So I s- -- I -- you know, I said, "I'm going to go into direct service and see whether I can do something that's helpful," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "in direct service." And -- and -- and I could. It turned out that I could do as much or more policy advocacy from the platform of an administrator of a community clinic --

Mm-hmm.

-- than I could as a legal service health lawyer.

OK.

It was interesting.

Why don't we stop --

Good morning. I'm continuing an interview with Sylvia Ivie on Friday, May the 11th. I've just got a couple of follow-up questions on your family history. Could you elaborate a little bit more -- you talked about your father's sort of philosophy of investing in young people. Tell me more about that. Was there anything concrete he was doing, or was this just sort of a... just a philosophy that he lived by?

Well, I --

Or believed in?

I think it's something that probably came from... his parents, who were, um, very interested in, in supporting young people. Very active in the Y -- YMCA. They just had a focus on it. And then he became a coach after he was in a lot of different team sports in -- in college. He became -- when he got out of Am- Amherst [College], he became a coach at Morgan State [University]. And he seemed to have a gift as a coach. He seemed to -- he seemed to really be able to... understand what young people were struggling with and help them with it. And so Morgan had never beat Howard University, and he told him that was going to be their goal and they were going to do that, and they did do that. So I think he very much coached his residents and interns. It was very much a replication of that dynamic --

Mm-hmm.

-- of, you know, "Here's the goal, and here's what we have to practice to do to get there. And you have everything you need." You know, he was very good at, uh, really making them know just how much they brought to it. You know, it was just a -- a question of organizing it and mobilizing it toward the agreed-upon goal. And people used to say, uh, after a -- the student had been in to -- to see him, you know, "Did you get the elixir?" Because he just had this way of making people just feel very, you know, just up, excited, and confident that they could do whatever the next thing was. So, it was -- I -- I just think he was -- you know, teachers don't get -- except in the context of school and front students who talk among themselves, they don't -- they don't get their due. But to... to really be a good teacher and to really be able to... capture the mind and spirit of young people is probably, you know, close to one of the most profound things you can do. And he had that. And so people always, you know, talk about his research and, uh, you know, making -- making headway in our understanding of blood preservation, but I always, uh, think that his gift was what he did with the -- with the students that he was in charge of and how he inspired them and how, to this day, when -- whenever I meet anybody who was his student, there was just this reverence for him. And, um... sort of like, you know, n- -- since he... uh, touched their lives, they -- they have an entirely different opinion of who they are, which they continue to carry. So it's kind of a permanent investment. It's like -- it's like making a living institution. It's a person, but you've -- you've changed it. You've altered it. If you do research and you -- and you make a breakthrough of some sort, it changes that system, and then, you know, you collect blood differently and you make blood available differently, and it's a system change, you know. But if you change a... a person to make that person believe in their capacity, and that person then goes on to leadership in other places and -- and replicates that, um, that's a more-powerful change agent in many ways --

Right.

-- than the system change over here.

Right.

'Cause it's living, you know.

Right.

A -- a system dep- -- change depends on people, you know --

Right.

-- and you have to have the -- the scientific evidence of what you're doing. But a -- but a change in a person, in terms of their belief in their own capacity and dedication to reaching their highest potential -- um, because he always told them to, you know, dream high, you know, don't -- don't dream low, dream high. And, um, and they -- you know, they all just went out dreaming high. So, I also think that he, he had the capacity to -- as a -- as a man, to kind of a very, uh, um, almost like a father, just to really love his students. It wasn't just inspiring them and teaching them and, you know, exciting them about what they were doing, but he very personally invested in them. In -- in his care for them. And I think that was -- that was very critical. That transference of his affections. And so it was almost like they were all his, you know. In that story I may have told you the last time about his being in the basement when his students were, um, taking the exams. And just, you know, just imagine a --a teacher having that much... anxiety. Now, you see coaches -- you know, you watch a basketball game, and you see how frantic the coaches get --

Right.

-- out there. You know, like football coaches get watching their teams. And it's a little bit like that, um... where he was wanting to know whether his team was gonna -- gonna get across the goal line.

Right.

You know. But just being totally and completely 100%, uh, like his heart was in them. His heart wasn't in him at that moment.

Right.

His heart was in them. And so, you know, whether he lived or died depended on whether they did.

Right.

So it's that -- that's kind of an amazing quality --

It is.

-- of -- of, um, transference and investment. So -- and that just came out with, you know, in a teacher-student, you know, younger person investment. And -- and also his philosophy that, that that was the vehicle for our improvement. You know. That every time one of his students flourished, it was a home run for the race.

Mm-hmm.

You know. That --

Right.

-- they didn't just represent themselves and it wasn't just their service. It was that they carried us. And he would -- he would make that point. I have -- I have a letter I could share with you that he wrote, um, to a Doctor Cohen, who was one of his students. And he -- he passed his boards in ophthalmology, I think.

Mm-hmm.

And -- and he wrote him this very dear little letter saying, you know, just what that meant to the race, you know? And gosh, to get such a letter, you know --

Right.

-- from a teacher that you already adored --

Yeah.

-- but who -- who is saying to you, "This is what you've done for everybody."

Right.

You know. So, um, that was -- that was very special and -- and, you know, my sisters remember him as a -- as a teacher.

Mm-hmm.

But I don't, you know, because I was too young.

Right.

But...

OK. Could you elaborate on your mother's and grandmother's roles as feminists? You talked a little bit about that.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

I want to know what that meant in the tim- -- in the time period in which they lived --

Mmm.

-- before we even had a name --

Mmm.

-- for that.

Mm-hmm.

And also you talked a little bit about the expectations for gender roles.

Yeah.

And so you -- I'd like you to elaborate, you know, more on that.

Yeah. Well, my -- my grandmother Robbins -- this is my mother's mother -- um... was an independent woman. She was -- she was very... She was very beautiful. She was very mysterious. We weren't quite sure what her... background was. And, um, and she had -- she wanted to write. You know, she just had a love of -- of writing, and her husband, who was a private steward on a railroad car, did not believe that that was... what she was supposed to do. He thought that she was supposed to take care of the children -- they had three children -- my mother was the eldest -- and two boys -- and keep the house clean, and cook meals, and just generally, you know, be a good person in charge of making everything in the home go. And she wasn't used to (inaudible). She really -- she wasn't, she wasn't an indifferent mother -- I think they all three were loved. But... she definitely di- -- was not interested in housekeeping. That -- that was just something that she didn't like to do and didn't want to do and I think probably didn't do very well. But she, she wrote poetry and, um, and she wrote stories. And -- and she conspired to, um, take money out of her household allowance to get her stories published, you know, self-published, and then she would go door to door and sell them. So she had a lot of chutzpah, you know, uh, without -- I -- I never heard any stories of anybody encouraging her, her having a support group of any sort. She wasn't linked up to other writers. She was just by herself with this idea that she wanted to write. And -- and so she just proceeded to do that. And, um, she must have gotten some reinforcement at church, because they would allow her to read poems at church. And my -- my mother was forced into reading them, which she --

Mmm.

-- didn't like at all. But, um.... other than that, I didn't ever hear of any support for it. And she had to hide her stuff, because her husband didn't approve of it.

Mm-hmm.

So she hid it under the, um, chair in the living room. But... um... but I think that must have made a strong impression on my mother, um, because she saw her pushing toward her own goals. And probably suffering some consequences for it, in terms --

Mm-hmm.

-- of her relationship with her -- with her father. With her husband. So, um, I think my mother was very similar in her attitude and, um, sense of herself. She wrote, um -- she didn't write poetry or stories, but she... she wrote. She just -- you know, I have a vision of her at her desk just always writing. She wrote beautiful letters. She wrote letters to the editor. She participated in the League of Women Voters. She... she had an empathy for the poor, which was, um, unusual in -- in -- among, uh, middle-class, upwardly-mobile black families in Washington at this time. She was interested in what was happening to young girls who were pregnant. She -- you know, she was interested in -- she wanted -- she wanted to be of service to them. And she always believed in the superiority of women. You know, she -- she.... Somebody named Morgenthal -- I don't know who that was, but she was always quoting to us, you know, that women were the superior sex. And -- and I think there was a lot of tension between her and my father on that issue, because he didn't support that view of women. He thought that men were the -- the leaders, the natural leaders, and -- and women had a role at home, very much like, um, her father felt. And she -- you know, she had gone to school. She had gotten a job teaching at Spelman [College]. She, you know, she had certain talents. So for her to come out of sort of the peak of -- of her young achievement into just being a straight homemaker, where she had really very little interest in homemaking, um, and he really wanted her to be a homemaker and a good homemaker -- I think it was very hard for her. You know, I don't think that she took to that. Um. So, I think having, then, three daughters, uh, she... she had an audience, and -- and she had all the control, because after his death, we were, uh, ten, nine, and six. So she was the -- she was the one imparting the philosophy --

Mm-hmm.

-- about who we were, what we do, how we should conduct ourselves. And -- and what our aspirations should be. So.... And she was always introducing us to women that she admired. She was all about strength and character and quality. She was not at all interested in fashion. She was not interested in style or -- or beauty or... you know, the latest f- furniture style for the house. Yeah. None of those things interested her. She -- she read a lot. She read the Washington Post cover to cover every morning. She was always reading. She -- she listened to the best news commentators. And she had opinions. She had opinions about things, and the people who called her and talked with her called her and talked with her about substantive things. So their conversations were... you know, not about people. They weren't about what Mrs. Jones did or what Mr. Smith did. They were substantive conversations. So sh- -- I wouldn't say she was an intellectual, in the sense of, you know, really being an academician, but she was... she was very bright, and she was interested in things, and she was interested in the way the world worked and what was working and what wasn't working. And -- and she'd lend herself to leadership roles. She was a -- I think she was the president of the PTA [Parent Teacher Association] at all of our schools --

Mm-hmm.

-- at different times. So -- and she was a leader at the -- the Unitarian Church, and she just very quietly insisted on respect for herself and for women. She would never make a big fuss, and she never... she never took anybody on. I never heard her raise her voice with anybody about anything. Even with us --

Mmm.

-- you know. She was very quiet. But she was very strong. And -- and we were afraid of her, you know, because she just -- she ruled us very, very quietly but very strongly. She just gave us a look, and we knew to shut up or stop or whatever it was we were supposed to do.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, just one glance and that was it. Um. So she was strong. And I -- and I think she was probably time enough for my father. Um. But it wasn't what he wanted, you know, that he didn't -- he wasn't looking for that. He was looking for Doris Day [Mary Ann von Kappelhoff], you know, someone who's just... uh, very sweet and adoring and --

Mm-hmm.

-- domestic and... um, and she just wasn't any of those things. So.

OK. Um. I'd like to talk, though, moving forward, um, could you tell me -- once you got to Los Angeles --

Mm-hmm.

-- about your involvement with, um, c- -- maybe the civil rights movement or with other local movements and.... You, of course, came after the Watts Rebellion --

Mm-hmm.

-- is that correct?

Mm-hmm.

OK.

I came in '74.

Yes -- OK. So if you could talk a little bit about that.

Mm-hmm.

Um, about your -- like, say, your political involvement, involvement in... any civil rights or other movements, wh- when you came into Los Angeles.

Mm-hmm. Well, I came to -- to L.A., uh, from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund where I had been for seven years doing civil rights litigation in the southeastern United States in domains of school integration, housing integration, um, jury integration, employment discrimination, and health care access. So... my first job here was in a new position in the City -- L.A. City Attorney's office. Burt Pines was the City Attorney. And he set up an affirmative action unit that -- the job of which was to police 34 city departments on, uh, race and gender, um, um, hiring. And -- and terminations. And so... I... worked primarily on, um, the police department and -- I can't remember whether it was the fire department or water and power. Maybe the three of them. But the police department was the worst, and they -- they didn't hire, um, blacks or women. And they -- they didn't promote them. And I was not getting support from the City Attorney or from... police department. And because it was internal, I couldn't sue them. You know, I couldn't --

Mm-hmm.

-- threaten anything. Uh. All I could do was try to get support of my superiors.

Mm-hmm.

The mayor supported me -- Bradley supported me.

Mm-hmm.

And... and his Deputy, Bill Elkins.

Elkins?

Elkins. Bill Elkins.

Elkins.

Bill Elkins was very supportive. And so I was constantly conspiring with them to see what we could do, um, to move Burt or -- or move the police department. Daryl -- Daryl Gates was the -- was the police chief at that time, so you see -- you know that I --

Mmm.

-- had no help there. So what I decided to do -- and this wasn't with the mayor's knowledge or consent -- was I just started sending the statistics that I had compiled on to the Justice Department --

Mm-hmm.

-- where there were people who were... concerned and friendly. And then they began to move against the city. So I was very proud of that. Alternative... solution to -- to trying to get something done, but Burt Pines, who was pretty liberal his own self, tried to be supportive, but he was getting so many push-backs from what I was doing from the department heads who did not want to move on --

Mmm.

-- affirmative action for either minorities or women. And t- -- af- after, uh, a year and a half, Burt disbanded that unit.

Mm-hmm.

So that was the end of that effort to, um, to really, from inside, improve opportunities for fair representation. My local involvement in civil rights issues was primarily through SCLC, and I -- I was the board of SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] for many years. Probably '81 to... to 2002.

Mm-hmm.

A long, long time. Um. And so we worked on, you know, whatever the issues of the day were. Police brutality or, um... um... representation of -- of blacks in the media, uh, um... gang involvement, trying to support young people, and finding ways out of gang involvement, um... I can't remember now what some of the campaigns were, but, um... equality of -- of the, uh, public schools in south L.A. Um. And then I -- I think I became involved with King Drew Issues back, you know, in the -- in that period --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know, '70s and '80s. Mitchell Spelman was the, um, was the first Dean of the Medical School, and he appointed me to, um, uh, a visitor's committee, uh, which is like, you know, like a... it's really a fund-raising Board --

Mm-hmm.

-- of Directors. And so I worked with them. And became acquainted through that process with struggles, you know, that the school was having. But I don't think I was engaged... in the fight directly.

Mm-hmm.

My -- my real first fight for Drew was in -- around, um... '88.

Mm-hmm.

When -- when, uh, the L.A. Times did a whole series of, um, exposes about quality of care.

Mm-hmm.

Claire Spiegel was the reporter, and she was just giving them a real thumping, and I was calling her every day and telling her... how wrong and one-sided her stories were --

Mm-hmm.

-- and what damage she was doing and how important the training programs were, and... um... and... how minimal the -- the services were for the area that they had to cover. So --

Mm-hmm.

-- and none of that changed between 1988 and 2005, when the next series happened.

Right.

Charlie Ornstein. I went from the City Attorney's office to Legal Services, to the National Health Law Program. And -- and there I -- I was working... not very much locally. I was really working nationally, because it was a national legal services law firm helping neighborhood legal service law firm lawyers, um, with health care access issues. And my particular beat was trying to inte- integrate constitutional protections for non-discrimination with, uh, statutory and regulatory program entitlements like Medicaid and Medicare and Hill Burton because legal service lawyers, generally speaking, don't do constitutional law. Civil rights lawyers generally don't... try to enforce regulatory --

Mm-hmm.

-- programmatic entitlements. They -- they live in two different domains. But in health, it was my view that you needed to combine those.

Mm-hmm.

Because we didn't have national health insurance. We just had little pieces of programs that you were entitled to --

Mm-hmm.

-- which were not being policed by community members. And we also had, um, protected groups. You know, blacks and Latinos --

Mm-hmm.

-- who were... were really not getting what they were entitled to as a matter of constitutional equal protection. So I -- I really tried to bring those two... streams of thinking together. And I -- you know, I had a few converts but not many.

Mm-hmm.

Not very many. I'm trying to think what other groups I might have worked with. I knew Miss [Lillian] Mobley -- well, she was on the SCLC board. So.... And I think -- I think we worked on King Drew things from the SCLC board perspective, 'cause Miss Mobley was always involved in King Drew.

Mm-hmm.

So whatever issues were there at that time, you know, when we were working on the through -- through King Drew. I mean, i- -- through SCLC. I -- I think that was really all. I don't think I was too... involved in -- in any organizations that were just specific to L.A.

Mm-hmm. What differences, uh, coming from the southeast --

Mm-hmm.

-- where you were working, what differences did you find in working with communities there, and then when you got to Los Angeles, where the -- what sort of stood out?

Well, I -- I found the black community to be, um, very different in L.A. than in --

How so?

-- the geography. Because... we were -- we regarded ourselves as being... much more powerful and much more important and much more... a force to be reckoned with --

Mm-hmm.

-- in the south than --

Mmm.

-- in L.A.. And -- and p- -- and part of that is difference in proportion of the population, difference in the history of -- of, you know, Jim Crow and everything.

Mm-hmm.

In the south, longevity of the struggle against Jim... Jim Crow laws and so on. And... for slavery. So, so the whole depth of who we were, what we had to fight against, the -- the legacy was kind of uninterrupted --

Mm-hmm.

-- where many, many people in L.A. were coming from different places --

Mm-hmm.

-- and here, the numbers were proportionally smaller --

Mm-hmm.

-- and the message from the Powers that Be was, "We're not hearing that stuff here."

Mmm.

"This is not the south. Don't bring that. We're not hearing it. We don't feel guilty. We don't care about you that much."

Mm-hmm.

"You don't have any power."

Mm-hmm.

"So just understand what your place is," --

Mmm.

-- "which is not very high up on the pecking order." And that was very hard to deal with, because it w- -- it -- it was really hard for me to sort of step down from feeling really entitled --

Mm-hmm.

-- to push and to advocate. People were -- were.... People were sort of surprised that I would push on these issues. I remember w- -- people called me about school integration when I first got here, 'cause I used to do school cases and... they -- they don't want school integration --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know? And they didn't feel like they had to have it, because this wasn't the south. And, you know, so there was just this... sense of, "Well, why are you talking about that?" Like -- you know --

Mm-hmm.

-- like I had come into the wrong door or I had the wrong set of messages or the wrong --

Mm-hmm.

-- set of tools or -- it was -- it was always making me feel like... I was out of place.

Mm-hmm.

You know, my words were out of place, my activities were out of place. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know my right place.

Mm-hmm.

Um. And I felt quite alone in that.

Mmm.

I didn't, uh... I didn't have much reinforcement. My husband reinforced me, but m- -- I didn't have much reinforcement in m- -- in my... in my mindset that said --

Mm-hmm.

-- "No, I don't have to take (inaudible)." Right, you know? This -- this is same community here that is community there --

Mm-hmm.

-- and we have the same issues, and you package it differently, but it's the same set of issues.

Mm-hmm.

And... so, um, that really made me mad. And -- and I also -- I also felt from a very early point in time that to the extent that people had compassion --

Mm-hmm.

-- for, um, marginal people, they felt it for Latinos.

Hmm.

Um. And so I -- I bumped up against that quite early.

Mm-hmm.

You know, that if you're going to care about people who are marginalized, that's the population.

Mm-hmm.

It's not the blacks.

Hmm. Interesting.

So... um... I objected to that, in -- in part because of my own limited experience dealing with Latino communities. I didn't have any experience. I didn't --

Mmm.

- you know, I didn't know anything about, say, the Puerto Rican community in New York or.... And we didn't -- we didn't have Mexican-American, you know --

Mm-hmm.

-- enclaves in --

Mm-hmm.

-- all the cities then, you know?

Mm-hmm.

When I was growing up, it was just black and white. So my worldview was black and white.

Mm-hmm.

Then I came here, and not only was it black and brown and white, it was also Asian. So all that was new for me. And I -- and I liked it, because I'd always sort of liked from the Unitarian and Quaker perspective, um, multiculturalism. I always.... I was always delighted in -- in that --

Mm-hmm.

-- from a cultural standpoint. But from a political standpoint, um... you know, I -- I wanted, first and foremost, to be an advocate for the black community.

Mm-hmm.

That's -- that -- that was what I wanted to do.

Mm-hmm.

That was all I wanted to do. Um. But I -- after a period of time, I learned that the California way of doing advo- advocacy always had to have one of everybody at the table.

Right.

Um. And I used to have... I used to have really interesting debates with my friend Lynn Walker who worked at the Legal Defense Fund and then went to the Ford Foundation and... and... after a while, I sort of embraced this multicultural approach. And she wouldn't embrace it, because she was still back in the black and white frame, and she said, "Oh, you know, you're going to just be so multicultural that they disappear."

Mm-hmm.

So we -- we had that conversation going on back and forth over years, um. And I -- and I still... don't know which one of us was right about that. Because ev- every other group... here -- it's not true on the east coast -- every other group here feels quite unapologetic about, uh, pushing for their own interests and their own culture and their own -- and they don't make any apologies about it.

Mm-hmm.

If they're Jewish, if they're Latino, if they're... um, Chinese or Japanese, they just have a whole long tradition, and they're, you know, they -- they revere it and they push -- push it forward, and there's no apologizes about it.

Mm-hmm.

It's only when we step forward and say, "We have a long tradition," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "and we have culture and we have, um, people that we were revere." Uh. That we -- we sort of apologize for it.

Mm-hmm.

So... so that's something I, you know, I -- I g- -- I don't accept that at all, and I -- I think it's very important that we push our own -- our own strengths, and -- and push them... with one another and to the outside community.

Mm-hmm.

So -- now, I still don't think we do that very well, and it's because we live in a culture here that's been saying to us, um, "You're not very important and you don't have firm ground to stand on, because we did not treat you here the way you were treated in the south," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "so don't bring in that. Don't bring in that."

Interesting. So that -- that was coming not only from within our community --

Mm-hmm.

-- but from others --

Right.

-- other communities.

Right.

Ok.

Right. So the- -- so there's -- there's -- there's a... there's sort of a collective... um... absence of sufficient self-esteem.

Hmm.

I -- I think we don't have enough self-esteem --

Mm-hmm.

-- as a -- as a community here.

Mm-hmm. As opposed to the southeast?

As oppo- -- as opposed to the southeast where they're just as proud as they can be.

Mm-hmm. Interesting.

You know, just as --

Mm-hmm.

-- proud as they can be, you know, and just... uh.... And they have all the people around them --

Mm-hmm.

-- who... reinforcing all the time how wonderful they are.

Mm-hmm.

You know, they're sort of built into the fabric of it, you know --

Mm-hmm.

-- the -- the -- you know, like we revere Miss Mobley.

Right.

You know. But we don't have very many Miss Mobleys --

Mm-hmm.

-- you see? So we hold on to the ones that we have because there haven't been very many who've been willing to just stand up --

Mm-hmm.

-- year after year after year and speak truth to power year after year and -- and --

Mm-hmm.

-- suffer whatever the slings and --

Mm-hmm.

-- arrows are, you know? Um. And it takes those pillars, it takes those --

Mm-hmm.

-- community pillars to... give courage --

Mm-hmm.

-- to others to -- to follow them.

Mm-hmm.

And the more of them you have, the more likely it is that people will say, "This is the way we do our business as a community."

Mm-hmm.

"This is the way we push forward," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "together." Um. So. I don't know. Those are some of the differences --

OK.

-- I observed.

OK. Um. In this ser- -- interview series, I'm looking at, um, organizations and institutions which arose out of the first Watt's Rebellion, '65. And in some cases, some of those organizations started before. Um. If you can, could you speak to how effective, um, the organizations and institutions with which you're familiar --

Mm-hmm.

-- that came out of the Rebellion were in addressing, uh, the needs... of the community.

Well, um, the -- the main one that I'm familiar with is, um, is the hospital and the medical school.

Mm-hmm.

And -- and I think people were... um... very valiant in their struggle, um, to get that hospital built. Um. It was not wanted. It was a, um, a ballot measure which was defeated.

Mm-hmm.

The voters didn't -- didn't want black people to have a hospital in south L.A. Didn't want to pay for it.

Mm-hmm.

Which is just a breathtaking historical statement.

Mm-hmm.

You know, that just says, "It's OK with us if you die," you know --

Right.

-- it was just -- I mean, it's really a st- -- a very deep statement of, um... um... indifference at the highest level.

Mm-hmm.

So. Uh. Fortunately, we had, um, Mervy [M.] Dymally --

Mm-hmm.

-- with us. And --

Mm-hmm.

-- and, uh, he developed, uh, a road around that at the State Legislative level. And through his efforts, um, and through the efforts of Supervisor [Kenneth "Kenny"] Hahn --

Mm-hmm.

-- um, they were able to get the hospital built. They were backed by the black medical community and by the wives of those -- mostly men -- uh, who raised money --

Mm-hmm.

-- uh, for things that the legislative package didn't cover. Um. And -- and they started a post-graduate, uh, medical school.

Mm-hmm.

And... so they -- those were really, really pioneering efforts.

Mm-hmm.

Against the wishes of all of the Powers that Be --

Mm-hmm.

-- and -- and... So that was quite historic, and it's been -- it's been a fight... ever since.

Mm-hmm.

And the fight has not -- you know, they go- -- first of all, King is one of the most beautiful public hospitals in Los Angeles --

Mm-hmm.

-- which you would never know, hearing -- you know, reading the newspapers.

Right.

But when you go visit a -- King, and you compare it to Harbor, you know, King just is -- just beautiful. Um. So they got a beautiful facility. They then took on a mission of training minority physicians not only t- to be M.D.s, but to train residents in all the specialties that we didn't have any of.

Mm-hmm.

And people don't realize to this day that they only let us, uh, train in -- in the general fields. You can be a family practice physicians, um, you can be an internist, but you can't be a neurosurgeon. You're black. You know? You can't be a dermatologist. You're black. Yo- you know --

Mm-hmm.

-- any -- any of the specialties, the medical schools don't accept our people.

Mm-hmm.

OK? So -- and even the other black medical schools don't train in those specialties. They mostly train in the general --

Mm-hmm.

-- OK? Pediatrics, OB, family practice. So Drew took it on t- to the 18-specialty residency programs, more than any other black school. So that was a very special niche --

Mm-hmm.

-- and they attracted not only black leadership but white leadership from all over the country to come in and set up those programs.

Mm-hmm.

So that was very pioneering, not only to have a place to train black medical providers, but to train them in all of the specialties.

Right.

So that t- today, two-thirds of the black dermatologists in the country were trained at Drew.

Mm-hmm.

So, and then, our -- our, um... work in the -- in the hospital, in terms of, uh, state of the art emergency care. Unfortunately, building on all the violence in the community --

Right.

-- with gunshots, n- -- and -- and knife wounds and so on. But it became a -- a nationally prominent training center, and you know, the Army sent people in to train there, because you -- you got such good exposure. And then those people, not unlike my father's residents, who were the first, um, surgical residents --

Mm-hmm.

-- we had, back in my father's time, there we- -- he was the first black member of the American Board of Surgery.

Mm-hmm.

And -- and his trainees then went on to become certified.

Mm-hmm.

And his trainees went on to become chiefs of surgery throughout hospitals --

Mm-hmm.

-- in the south, OK? So these people who were trained at Drew and trained at King went out from there to become emergency department leaders --

Mm-hmm.

-- throughout L.A. County. And today, I think there are four King-trained people.

Mm-hmm.

So here's the L.A. Times saying, you know, "You're the worst hospital in America. Worst quality of care in America."

Mm-hmm.

And our trainees are taking care of everybody else in other hospitals in their accidents on the freeway and their --

Right.

You know. So, I mean, it's such a gap between the way it's depicted and what they have, in fact, done.

Right.

So... so I think that was a stellar accomplishment. I think they -- I think they really did something really wonderful and -- and it's -- it's held. We still -- we still have the hospital. We still have the medical school, although they had been really, really damaged by the L.A. Times --

Mm-hmm.

-- and, um... you know, there are a lot of conspiracy theories about why people are still trying to kill both of those institutions.

Yeah. What are your opinions?

Some people believe that it's just real estate. You know, that the growth of the county is moving in that direction.

Mm-hmm.

We can't be having poor black people occupying that much space and concentration and, you know, we need to just, um, get them out --

Mm-hmm.

-- and that property can be used for different things or we can move it into, uh, Latino leadership, because the demographic shifts.

Mm-hmm.

But their day is over. So it's just a matter of, you know, how do we move them out --

Mm-hmm.

-- without creating more riots?

Mm-hmm.

But it goes back to that kind of sense of disrespect for black people that I was describing earlier.

Mm-hmm.

Uh. Dick Riordan said, um, there -- there's nobody -- there's no leadership in south L.A. that we have to pay attention to.

Mmm.

So... you know, if you don't have any -- if you don't have -- if you perceive yourself as not having anybody who can harm you --

Mm-hmm.

-- and push back --

Mm-hmm.

-- then you make all kinds of, you know, plans for how you're going to use this space --

Right.

-- in the city in terms of your master plan --

Mm-hmm.

-- that -- that doesn't take us into account at all --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know? So -- and -- and I don't think that we've had very good leadership and pushing back. I really don't.

OK. I was going to ask you, as odious as that statement by [Richard J.] Riordan is --

Mm--hmm.

-- um, wh- who are the leadership that they ar- -- need to be afraid of and accountable to, and in a sense, you know, you were talking about earlier, uh, how there's this, uh, almost like a lack of self-esteem --

Mm-hmm.

-- that you had in the south, and can that be somehow traced back to that in terms of, you know, what we're talking about here? I mean, who are the, you know, leaders? You know.

We- well.... You know, when you -- i- i- it's all this sort of -- it's all connected. It's a continuum. So if you -- if you have somebody's foot on your neck and people rally together to push it off, the people who are in leadership in that push, then some of them find their way into elected office.

Mm-hmm.

You know. And they came out of shared victories --

Mm-hmm.

-- or shared defeats.

Mm-hmm.

And so they have a kind of accountability that is intrinsic to the struggle

Mm-hmm.

They're not just... they're not just black.

Mm-hmm.

They're people who have actually, um, struggled with their community --

Mm-hmm.

to change things --

Right.

-- OK? So... a lot of our leaders don't have those credentials. They're...

Mmm.

They -- they're geographically in the community, but they don't have those kinds of credentials of struggle (inaudible) some exceptions. You know, look today at -- at Karen Bass, Mark Ridley-Thomas.

Mm-hmm.

They both have track records.

Mm-hmm.

They have track rer- records of engagement and -- and fighting with people to change things and -- and so they're trusted.

Mm-hmm.

You know? And they hold themselves accountable to the community that they struggled with --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know? And people -- people will call them to task as peers, you know?

Uh-huh.

There's no separation between them as --

Mm-hmm.

-- vaunted political leaders. You can't do that with Yvonne [Brathwaite] Burke.

Mmm.

Now, Yvonne's accomplishment was she was the first this, she was the first that, she was the -- and -- and -- and that's a way, you know, some people did their -- their... their advocacy. They broke those barriers.

Mm-hmm.

You know, one person at a time. So she (inaudible) so she, um, you know, all the -- the first -- first black supervisor, and.... But she was not connected to or beholden to the communities of struggle. She just -- she just wasn't --

Mm-hmm.

-- and she didn't pay attention to 'em. And she really -- she wanted people to -- she always aspired, it seemed to me, in an old-school kind of way, for people to just do their homework better. Get their paperwork in ti- -- on time.

Mm-hmm.

Don't be sloppy, you know.

Mm-hmm.

Very intolerant of anything that wasn't... showing that we could do it just as well as the other (inaudible).

Mm-hmm.

But that's not a political position, that -- that's a -- that's kind of a personal preference for the way people conduct themselves.

Mm-hmm.

Political a- actions are -- uh, don't depend on that. Political actions depend on people agreeing to the problem and agreeing to try to solve the problem in this way, and if that doesn't work, trying something else. And it -- those two worldviews don't -- they just don't overlap --

Mm-hmm.

-- very much. She has been a f- -- a -- a very strong supporter of the continued existence of -- of King Drew --

Mm-hmm.

-- um, but she hasn't been effective.

Mm-hmm.

She hasn't been effective at it, and the supervisors, essentially, dethroned her as the person in charge with this last series of articles in the --

Mm-hmm.

-- in the L.A. Times. They said, "Clearly you have failed, so the four of us are now going to take over." And they did.

Mm-hmm.

[Gloria] Molina and Zev [Yaroslavsky] in particular took over.

Mm-hmm.

So, um, so she has not been really useful, in my -- in my view. I've worked with Maxine [Waters] over the years. And Maxine is a truly heroic presence. She's -- she really knows how to... galvanize community around an issue, make them move, make them rally. She -- she took over the -- the closing of the trauma center at -- at, uh, King as an issue, even though it really was Juanita's beat.

Mm-hmm.

Which was typical of Maxine, that she al- -- you know, she just -- she just moves according to what her -- her, um, dictates are. But her follow-through is really not very strong. So she's very, very good on the front end of issues --

Mm-hmm.

-- she really will raise visibility of it, she'll rally people around it --

Mm-hmm.

-- um, but then she'll move onto another issue.

Mm-hmm.

And so she -- while -- while she's a strong leader and while she gets a lot of press here and nationally, she -- she's not a, uh, she's not a builder.

Mm-hmm.

She's not a builder. Diane Watson, um... has been a passionate health and education advocate, but, um... you know, she's -- she's past her prime and really is not very strong today. Juanita [Millender-MacDonald], of course, just died. And Juanita was a good fighter, you know. She -- anything that -- that seemed to be pinching us, she would go -- go out against it. I don't think she had -- I don't think she had reached her potential --

Mm-hmm.

-- so it's -- it's sad that she died prematurely, because I think -- I think she was getting better.

Mm-hmm.

You know, i- i- -- she used to do a lot of talking --

Mm-hmm.

-- and not much doing, but she was getting better at figuring out how you make doings happen.

I see.

So... so that's who we have. Those are our th- three Congresspeople. Mar- -- uh, Mark and -- and Karen are, you know, the people that I most respect in the -- in the Legislature. But size is -- is a real, real impediment to the strength that we do have --

Mm-hmm.

-- really working for us, because we're... our, uh, diaspora is so great, you know. We're not centralized in south L.A.

Mm-hmm.

We're all over the place. Um. And... there is a -- there is a feeling of -- of a black community. There is a feeling of known and respected leaders. But it's not like Atlanta.

Mm-hmm.

It's not like Baltimore. It's not like Jackson, Mississippi. It's... becau- -- in part because of the geography.

Mm-hmm.

And -- and then, you know, I -- I will blame -- blame us all, as voters, for electing people who've been ineffective, and then, you know, just lettin' 'em sit there. We know they're ineffective. We say among ourselves they're ineffective.

Mm-hmm.

And we just let 'em sit there. We don't organize ourselves to get somebody who we think would be more effective.

Right.

So I don't know why we do that. I don't -- I don't know, you know -- I, myself, I guess, feel... powerless to do anything about that.

Mm-hmm.

And there's kind of a... kind of a rule that, um, you have to be very careful, for example, talking about Yvonne, you know. If -- if you say bad things about her, it will get back to her and then she'll punish you. You know, if you need grant monies or this or that, you know, that -- that there would be repercussions. So if you're in a -- in a semi-leader capacity and could begin to lead the folk in that direction --

Mmm.

-- your -- your own CBO [Community-Based Organization] dollars would depend on you not undertaking that --

Uh-huh.

-- um, particular campaign. So... um, so the -- the result is that we... we're sort of leader light.

Mm-hmm.

We're -- we're leader light. Um. And some of our strongest leaders are in positions where they don't... where their main thing is not political change --

Mm-hmm.

-- like our ministers.

Mm-hmm.

You know, we have some very bright, um, very charismatic church leaders --

Mm-hmm.

-- but they're mostly leading people to heaven.

Mm-hmm.

They're not leading people to change here on earth.

So there's a lot of potential -- would be -- there will be a lot of potential there for --

The -- yes. If we could -- if we could persuade them --

Mm-hmm.

-- that they can do both. That it's not contrary to church ethics to get involved in the worldly --

Mm-hmm.

-- struggles. And some of them are there. You know --

Mm-hmm.

-- think of Jim [James M.] Lawson.

Mm-hmm.

Who's always been a champion.

Mm-hmm.

And -- and Jim is, you know, still -- still a great voice. Still a brilliant, uh, strategist.

Mm-hmm.

And a multiculturalist, I might add. He's -- he's very... very aligned with other groups. With Latinos, with labor, and so on.

Mm-hmm.

It's, uh -- it's a little discouraging, you know.

Mm-hmm.

It's a -- it's a little discouraging, um... because there's such a -- and it may just be a reflection of my age and station in life, but, you know, I'm at this age and that -- I was inspired by so many civil rights champions coming up --

Mm-hmm.

-- in the '60s and the '70s --

Mm-hmm.

-- and people who were just awesome. You know, people who were just ready to die. And... those people may have been here, and I just didn't meet them --

Mm-hmm.

-- because I wasn't here --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know, in the '40s and in the '50s. I mean, that story in the paper the other day was just so chilling to me. This busi- -- black businessman who worked for Pepsi Cola. Did you read that?

No.

I remember his name. [sic] But he was brought in in the '40s --

Mm-hmm.

-- to -- t- -- to help Pepsi market Pepsi to the black community.

Mm-hmm.

And he did it by creating ads, um, that humanized black people.

Mm-hmm.

He -- they were black families and loving relationship and, um, having fun together, celebrating together. But instead of being caricatures of -- of black people, they were just real, warm, regular human beings --

Mm-hmm.

-- and it worked very, very well and -- and blacks started buying Pepsi.

Mm-hmm.

And the Chairman of the Board spoke at a meeting of all the shareholders --

Mm-hmm.

-- uh, great big, huge meeting, and -- and this was somebody who had the... courage to hire this man --

Mm-hmm.

-- to do this -- wisdom, courage, whatever combination of them, because he needed him -- uh.... and he said at this meeting, uh, "Now, we don't want to be identified, uh, as the company with the nigger drink."

Mmm.

So... this man said he stood up and he walked out of the meeting, and he was down front.

Mm-hmm.

He said it was the longest walk of his life.

Mm-hmm.

Because, I guess, you know, he -- I don't know whether he resigned at that point or whether he was fired at that point or what h- -- he didn't know what was gonna happen --

Mm-hmm.

-- at the end, but he wasn't gonna sit there while that was said.

Mmm.

After he had helped them, made them money, and gave them his understanding of, you know, what we needed to be --

Mm-hmm.

-- to feel like we could be part of the Pepsi whatever.

Mm-hmm.

So. You know, this is a man whose name I never heard of, and he lived here and he was, um... he was a champion, just in a domain that I wasn't familiar with. But he was out there struggling, you know. And that was every bit as much a struggle as -- as somebody, uh, sitting in at the -- at the lunch counter --

Right.

-- in Greensboro. That was --

Right.

-- you know, that was a heroic struggle. You know. So who tho- -- but -- but the fact that nobody ever heard of him and that he was working alone may -- may mean that our jewels are sort of invisible to us --

Mm-hmm.

-- in California, and that people who know about these jewels need to bring them forward and talk about them. And I -- I think that's what you're doing with your --

Yes.

-- project.

Yes.

So that these names become known, and our sense of who we are and our sense of our collective contribution... we can own and build on.

Mm-hmm.

Because you -- you kinda need that. You know, I -- I -- I think it's very hard to just reinvent yourself every generation.

Mm-hmm.

You know, you want to feel like there were other people that did the same thing and took their lumps for it, you know. They did it, they took their lumps. OK, I can do it. I can take my lumps, because look at what they left us --

Right.

-- you know. And I want my children to look at me and say, "OK, she took her lumps," and -- and I'm gonna do it now --

Mm-hmm.

-- my turn. So that's the way you build that--

Mm-hmm.

-- that, um, tradition.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, uh, yo- you keep your tradition of struggle alive. 'Cause to be black in America is to be in struggle.

Right.

Um. So how you manage that struggle is very important and very dependent on the stories --

Mm-hmm.

-- that we have, and this -- the -- the storytelling, um, probably happens but isn't.... It -- it isn't -- it needs to be broadcast more -- more broadly.

Right.

It needs to -- it needs to be captured. It needs to be broadcast so that people know it. Not only for ourselves, but for other groups.

Right.

Because, you know, the white community is more than happy to celebrate heroes that they know about --

Mm-hmm.

-- but if they don't know about them, then they say, "You have no heroes."

Right.

That's what happens.

Mm-hmm.

And that's why they can continuously behave this way toward us, because for yourself, you're not gonna say, "Well, but I did this." That -- you know, you don't -- that isn't what you answer with.

Mm-hmm.

You answer with... Lillian Mobley did this.

Right.

Miss [Mary] Henry did this. You know, um... um... Mitchell Spelman did this. Mervyn Dymally did that. How dare you.

Mm-hmm.

You know, you just have to have, uh, that armament of how dare you at the ready --

Mm-hmm.

-- um... so.

OK. You, uh, described Jim Lawson --

Mm--hmm.

-- as a multiculturalist, and given the, uh, changed demographics --

Mm-hmm.

-- in Los Angeles --

Mm-hmm.

-- how does an African -- would an African American go about being a multiculturalist, but at the same time, maintaining the black identity, self-esteem -- and I'm thinking about this in terms of tackling the many problems that we're still facing in the community, whether that be health care, education. I mean, is maybe... being a multiculturalist as Jim Lawson is, part of or the answer to that?

I don't know the answer to that question.

Mmm.

I don't know the -- you know, I struggle with that every day. And, um... my current focus is I -- I believe in multiculturalism as a -- as a process of getting where I'm going. But I want us to be the leader of it.

Mm-hmm.

You know. I don't want us to be just one more seat at the table.

Mm-hmm.

And the way for us to be the leader of it is to plunge into our own community, try to a- work on a problem that's -- needs addressing --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know, collectively, and invite them to come and be with us as we do that.

Mm-hmm.

But it's... it's our... train.

Mm-hmm.

You know, and they can get on board.

Right.

And -- and they're welcome, and they'll bring ideas and they'll bring money, and they'll bring, resources that -- that we need.

Mm-hmm.

But, the -- the engineer will be black.

Right.

So that's where I think things oughta go --

Mm-hmm.

-- and that's -- that's the way I -- I don't want to just be the black one on their team.

Mm-hmm.

I've done that for a long time. And -- and I still do it, uh, but -- and I think it's very important to... it's very important for me, just as a per- -- as a m- -- a matter of personal... continuing education to understand how they think, how they process, how they, um, how they interact with one another, because I can't influence 'em if I don't understand that language.

Mm-hmm.

So I -- you know, I always... counsel myself to stay involved, because if I -- if I step out and just deal with my own community pretty exclusively, my skills get very rusty --

Mm-hmm.

-- and then I don't know how to talk to them anymore. So it's -- it's like, you know, you took French in -- in high school, and then you didn't speak it anymore and you lost your capacity to speak it. It's very much like that for me --

Mm-hmm.

-- if I step out and I lose that capacity.

Mm-hmm.

So I try to s- -- try to stay in. And I -- and I try to bring our point of view and our perspective and our problems. And I also consider that I translate back the other way. My -- again, my friend Lynn says that, um, she sees our dynamic as... some of us being right in the center, you know, uh... like, Nation of Islam. And then some of us being more on the edge of the circle.

Mm-hmm.

And the ones that are in the center are really dealing with, uh, exclusively, the fundamental survival of the culture and the -- the resources that are needed to ensure the survival of --

Mm-hmm.

-- the culture. The ones that are on the -- on the edge of the circle and interfacing with other groups, you know, and translating out and translating in. So I'm -- I'm often there. I'm often there. But as I -- the older I get, the more I'm interested to move in.

Mm-hmm.

And the less interested I am to help with the -- with the dual translations. 'Cause I -- I just feel like time is -- my time is limited --

Mm-hmm.

-- and... and if I want to -- if I want to implant something that's going to really be an institutional change agent, I've got to do that --

Mm-hmm.

-- now, and -- and build it -- and others can come and help, but it's gonna be ours, and -- and we'll build it, and... and it's for us.

Mm-hmm.

It's for us, and it's in celebration of us. And it's in celebration of our spirit. Not our rights, but of our spirit, which I've spent most of my adult life working on our rights --

Mm-hmm.

-- and it's very important to do that, and -- and the lawyers need to do it, and, you know, the advocates need to do it. But in the end, what makes people survive is their spirit --

Mm-hmm.

-- and you get at maintenance of the spirit by celebrating the, ... the n- -- the uniqueness, the cultural uniqueness of each people.

Mm-hmm.

And affirming the cultural uniqueness of each people and -- and w- -- and we don't do enough of that. So I really -- I consider myself to be in the celebration business.

Mm-hmm.

And I think it's very powerful. Last night I went to Liberty Hill Foundation, which is -- I don't -- I don't know who that group is. It's a 30-year-old organization, and they fund sort of radical CBO groups, um. It's mostly white. I think it's largely Jewish.

Mm-hmm.

Um. And largely unchanged fr- from, you know, 30 years ago.

Mm-hmm.

So they've managed to stay together and do this and -- um, it's -- it's a -- it's a very special niche, and they're strong, and they do good work. And so they were celebrating these groups which are change agents, you know? And the M.C. said, you know, "Soup kitchens are nice, but change is what we want," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "and our motto is, 'Change, not charity.'"

Mm-hmm.

OK? But that was wrong, because when -- when you... provide a -- a service that appears to be a simple service that's in celebration of life and celebration of culture, you -- it's -- it's like that... blood plasma versus training a resident dichotomy I was describing earlier. When you transform the spirit of the person to believe in themselves, you -- you've done something that's really quite transformational.

Mm-hmm.

And much more transformational than a system change, in my view.

Mm-hmm.

Because that person touches so many people in his own family, her own family, and community, in a lived experience, not a... brought-in experience.

Mm-hmm.

All -- all my work has been to be the outsider bringing what's good for you in. "Oh, you need this lawsuit. Oh, you need this regulation. Oh, you need this. I'm gonna go and get it for you." That isn't lived by the people who are then the beneficiaries.

Mm-hmm.

They didn't get it. They didn't do it. That's why King's brilliance was so, um, a- amazing, because he allowed people to do it themselves.

Right.

It was theirs. He was the leader, but it was their victory.

Mm-hmm.

Because they got busted in the head, you know? They did that. So... I -- I just think people have to... you know, they have to be allowed to win --

Mm-hmm.

-- themselves. You know? And I -- I don't want to be the -- I don't wanna be the outsider bringing it in. I wanna be the facilitator of their own discoveries.

Mm-hmm.

And I -- and it's happening every day, with my -- with my kitchen. It's happening every day. People are just surfacing, you know? People who've been interested in food, doing things with food, creating things with food, not having a platform, not having a place for all these different things to come together.

Mm-hmm.

And they're think that are so, um... they -- you know, they're just deep. Like this -- this one lady who's, uh, uh, a health teacher at [Susan Miller] Dorsey [High School]. I don't know where -- um... um... I don't know where she's from. I th- -- I think she's a Los Angelino. She's 65, and she's been teaching there for years and years and years and she's, uh, Miss Robbins, and she's gonna retire this year. But her passion is, you know, you go to the grocery store and you see on the shelves food from every other culture except us.

Mm-hmm.

Why can't you see anything from our culture --

Mm-hmm.

-- that's good for you? So she has a -- a tea biscuit that -- that comes up from a slave recipe --

Mm-hmm.

-- that she's kept, and from her grandmother and from her grandmother, and she wants to make a microbusiness and get that in Ralph's --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know? So that's her passion. And she also has a -- a ginger tea that'll make you hit your mother, it's so good, and she wants to get that packaged --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know? So, um... but I just love her energy about it, you know, it's that -- it's got the tie to the history. It's delicious. It's health. And she's so proud. And -- and she's so angry, you know, that -- that there's no space made for us to assert ourselves --

Mm-hmm.

-- in this central thing in all of our living, which is what we eat, enjoy -- and enjoy together and celebrate together.

Mm-hmm.

And there's no -- no place for us to do that. So, um... so anyway. I -- I don't think people understand, and I -- I -- I saw the... I -- I -- I -- I'm on the Board of a group called, um, the Angel Foundation.

Mm-hmm.

And... Father Gregory [J.] Boyle is on it, and at our first meeting, um... he said something I've really be thinking about. He said, "The end result of whatever you're doing should not be revolution but should be friendship."

Mm-hmm.

And he said... "It's not so much what you stand for but where you stand." So that if you just see people struggling and you go and stand with them, you might not be standing in front of them --

Mm-hmm.

-- but you go and stand with them, and you make yourself available to do whatever you can do to that situation, and you -- you'll know in the end if you've been successful in where you stood because you'll know whether you became friends --

Mm-hmm.

-- with those people. So it's a very different evaluation of the effectiveness of what you try to do and how you try to do it --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know, and -- and what the -- what the end result is. Because those things that are personal are those things that are elastic. And somehow it -- somehow we need people who think about these things and write them to make the case that that is the foundation of the system change --

Mm-hmm.

-- that you want. That if you don't have that underpinning, if you don't have that base, um -- and somebody was saying to me, "If you -- if you look at Boards of Directors,"

Mm-hmm.

-- "that are functional and the ones that are not functional, the ones that are functional, the people are friends. They like each other."

Mm-hmm.

"They see each other outside of the boardroom. You know. They are connected to each other."

Right.

"Boards that don't work, they're not friends. They go to the meeting. They do what they're supposed to do. They meet with their committee, but they don't like each other. They don't care if they never see them," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "outside that context." It's very powerful. You know, this -- this human connection part --

Right.

-- OK? So, um, so I -- these are the things I want to -- I want to explore in what I'm doing with the kitchen and, um... and explore with, you know, sort of a heading in more again. I -- I -- I loved... working at THE Clinic because it was multicultural but we were in the leadership. That this --

Mm-hmm.

-- was a black clinic. Um. A majority of the patients were black, and that -- majority of the providers were black, majority of the staff was black. But it was multicultural!

Mm-hmm.

But we were in the head.

Mm-hmm.

You know. So that was my model for how we can all be together and be multicultural --

Mm-hmm.

-- respect each other, uh, learn from each other. But we- -- we're entitled to be leaders of some things --

Mm-hmm.

-- especially where it's in our community. So.

OK. What I think I wanna do, I wanna go back and talk about the '92 rebellion, and then I think what I might do on the last session, I'd really like to talk -- you to talk at length about T.H.E --

OK.

-- on the next session, and also, uh, talk more about, um, both, uh, King Drew University and King Hospital.

Mm-hmm.

So to wind up, um, looking at the '92 rebellion --

Mm-hmm.

-- Are there any connections to be made with the '65 rebellion in terms of issues and community needs that were still unmet, um. Were the key players, um, completely different? Were the root causes completely different, when you look at the two?

Well, I equate the two in the sense of, um, this -- the contin- continuing, uh, presence of, uh, a police force which is employed to keep certain people away from other people --

Mm-hmm.

-- in the community. That seems to be their main job.

Mm-hmm.

They're not here to protect and serve everybody. They're here to protect and serve the elite, the powers --

Mm-hmm.

-- that be --

Mm-hmm.

-- and that was true in '65 and then it's true in '92, and, and it makes people insane that -- that that... goes on and on and on and that we don't get help and our kids get shot and nobody cares and nobody puts it in the paper and --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know, it's just... that continuing message of, "You don't matter."

Mm-hmm.

"You don't matter." And... in -- in both instances, I pe- -- I think people said, "We're here, we feel, you know, we're in pain. And you will recognize that we are here," --

Mm-hmm.

-- "and we feel and we are in pain."

Mm-hmm.

"And even if we do it in a way that ultimately, um, leaves us with the remains of the demonstration --"

Mm-hmm.

"-- you know, it tears down what little resources we have."

Mm-hmm.

"Still we'll speak. We'll speak. And, um -- and you will notice. Um. And you will scratch your head once again about, 'What's wrong with those people?'"

Mm-hmm.

"But we will have spoken." So, I -- I think people in Los Angeles are very lucky that ha- -- there hasn't been more of this, because the -- the disrespect is so continuous and profound --

Mm-hmm.

-- and so... uh, unrelenting...

Mmm. Interesting you should say that. I have had at least three other interviewees say the same thing. Uh, one of my interviewees was actually very worried about this summer --

Mm-hmm.

-- for instance. I mean, it seems to be a real concern that, uh, a lot of the basic human needs, quality of life needs, are still not being met.

Mm-hmm.

The whole issue of the police fo- --

Mm-hmm.

-- LAPD.

Mm-hmm. LAPD is just symbolic of that, you know, and... uh, it -- it's a symbol, and it's also a very real, you know, everyday worry.

Mm-hmm.

Um. I -- you know, I -- I worry every single night when my son is out whether or not he's going to have a confrontation with the police.

Mm-hmm.

I just do.

Same here.

So --

Yeah.

-- that's just part of my life that other people don't experience --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know? And it makes me very angry that that has to be part of my life. You know, that I don't know that my son is safe --

Mm-hmm.

-- here. So, the way they -- they dealt with the, um, '92, um, conflagration was, um, by bringing in white businesspeople who didn't know what they were doing, and they failed at what they were doing, so --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know, i- -- um, it didn't do anything after, uh, the Watts riot. So even though we spoke, even though we screamed and hollered, you know, they say -- they sort of said, "Tsk, tsk," and after a while, went away.

Mm-hmm.

So, um... so it -- you know, we -- we -- I don't know what -- what it'll take. I don't know what it'll take for them to notice that we're here and -- and I've experienced it at the [California] Endowment, you know, two years -- two and a half years there. Everybody says, um, "Oh, south L.A. South L.A. We really need to do something in south L.A." And then they proceed to do stuff everywhere except south L.A.

Mm-hmm.

Because it's sort of like... they're so far down. They're so far down. And their language to describe this is... they speak in numbers, you know. If people are -- if -- if one is a community most organized to deal with their problems and ten is the worst, they say, "Oh, you -- you've gotta start at least with, um... you know...." No, it's the other way. "Y- you -- um, you gotta have six or seven," -- ten being best. "You've gotta have six or seven. Y- you definitely can't start with ten. You can't start with ten, because it's just... your dollars just won't make any difference, you know?" So here we are, community of ten. So they're gonna go where there's a community of six, 'cause they think their dollars go further because you have infrastructure. You have CBOs, you have leaders --

Mm-hmm.

-- you have this and that and that other, all of which are essential for --

Mmm.

-- the change that you want to see happen. We don't have it, so we can't have it. So we can't have anything that would help us build and move --

Mm-hmm.

-- you know, from ten to nine to eight. So it stays at ten, and then they say, "Oh, south L.A., we've gotta do something about south L.A." And it just never gets any better. So, it -- we're -- we're -- we're left on an island, really left -- you know, I -- I once said, "Look, I'm gonna apply for rural, um, health care monies, 'cause this is -- this is like a rural... uh, abandoned place."

Mmm.

You know. And that's the way rural communities get money. And I think we oughta make the argument that we're rural, even though we're in the middle of the second largest city in the -- in the country.

Mm-hmm.

But we have all the characteristics of -- of a rural en- environment. And they've -- they've -- they've made it that way. You know? They've made it. You saw a map of where all the clinics are? You'd just be astonished at how few are in south L.A., and they're all clustered on the west side where they don't have any poor people. You know? But the leadership wanted to be where they were safe.

Mm-hmm.

Felt they were safe. So.

Mm-hmm. Interesting. OK, we can st- stop

I'm interviewing Sylvia Drew Ivie on Monday, June the fourth [2007]. Sylvia, could you tell me about the T.H.E. [To Help Everyone] Clinic, how did it evolve, what was its original mission, and tell me something about your involvement?

T.H.E. stands for To Help Everyone, and it was founded in 1974 by eight white women. That's a crucial fact in its history because it was located first on Western [Avenue] and, oh, I think around 29th [Street]. Then it had a second address on Western in the same neighborhood, and then it moved to Martin Luther King [Boulevard] and Marlton [Avenue], and it was there for most of its history, and it's just recently moved now back to Western, to 38th and Western. But the population it served has always been at least 80 percent African American and at least 80 percent women.

So it was really a resource, a breakthrough for us to have our own place where we could attend to our health needs, and where people could have privacy and where they could get health education, and where their partners could come in to be treated where there was an STD, or where the partners could come in as fathers of the babies that the moms that were coming to get care for. We hadn't had anything like that and we still don't have anything like that, that is medically oriented but primarily supportively oriented. So we had a lot of health educators, nutritionists, case managers. It was 80 percent support and 20 percent medical care, and I think that is really the right formula. That is what makes a difference.

And it wasn't always formalized by title. It was something about the culture of the place and the way we hired people who came from the various communities that we served, so that there was a kind of leveling. It wasn't a hierarchical usual medical construct. It was very flat, and patients felt that they were just as important as all the people who worked there, so if there was any problem they felt quite free to come into my office and tell me, "This isn't working right," or, "That isn't working right, and it isn't right and would like you to fix it." But they always befriended somebody, and it might be their nurse or their doctor, or it might be the front-desk receptionist or the financial screener or the health educator, but everybody seemed to have somebody in the clinic that was their special partner who they would bring their issues to, you know. And the person would know them and would remember, and it was a point of check in, how they were doing with whatever it was they were carrying.

Healthcare is--formalized healthcare is a method of returning balance, mental, physical, and emotional balance to the person which is out of balance. Those conversations that people had restored balance. Then the provider could come in with expertise and add to that, but the healing had already started. The healing had already started. So if you have a place where that kind of exchange is happening regularly for virtually all the patients, you have a very unique environment. So I really think that was the magic, that was the magic of T.H.E.

It also had a kind of fluid definition of itself, so that it grew quite organically. It started out as family planning. The eight women who founded it were concerned that there were no family planning services for low-income minority women in South L.A., and that's why they started it. But, of course, family planning service, that didn't work for some and they got pregnant, so then they needed prenatal care, so we added prenatal care. Well, then they had the babies, so we needed pediatric care and we added that. Then we became aware that our patients were infected more than most populations with HIV [Human immunodeficiency virus], so we added HIV services for women, and really that was not available anywhere for women of any color, so we had our first white patients really, coming through the HIV program, because they couldn't get care. All the programs were for men everywhere else.

But the clinic was always multiethnic from the very beginning. The first director was a white feminist from Iowa, who was a very strident feminist named Vi Verreau, who's now died, V-e-r-r-e-a-u. Vi was a pistol, and she had worked at another clinic that was focused on women, but she said, you know, middle-income women needed advocacy, but their position was entirely different than low-income women. And she said she tried to get that clinic to focus on low and they wouldn't, so she bolted and she took with her a nurse who was retired, fifty years old at the time, who became the nursing director at T.H.E., Marilyn [Zeitz] Norwood, and Marilyn is still the nursing director today, so Marilyn was another pivotal person in the founding and growth of the clinic. They were the two powerhouses.

And the board, I think the board had a majority of Asians to start out with. I'm not sure exactly why that was, but then the first executive director was Japanese American, Irene Hirano, who's now head of the Japanese American National Museum downtown, and Irene is a terrific woman whose politics were inclusive, and who had a deep personal empathy for blacks. I don't know where it came from, but it was there.

I was on the board of SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] for many years. I think I went on the board in '84, and Irene was on that board. So when Irene decided to leave, she asked me if I would be interested to replace her. I was then working in legal services at the National Health Law Program. So I said yes because I admired Irene so much. I didn't know very much about community clinics. I didn't know exactly what they did. I really had no clue what I would be taking on, but I just said okay and I plunged in and I was just like a duck in water. It was just a wonderful place, because the staff was wonderful, the patients were wonderful, and the whole place is just filled stem to stern with stories, and I just live for stories. So every day there was always a trail of people coming in my office bringing me stories about patients. Sometimes patients would bring me themselves, sometimes the nurses or doctors would bring them, but I then could take the stories and do my advocacy for healthcare reform using the stories of the patients in the clinic, which is so powerful.

You know, it was just wonderful. It just worked better. I was much, much more successful as an advocate as an administrator of a community clinic than I was as a legal services lawyer, because legal services lawyers were suspect. Clinic administrators are thought to be neutral. They're not political. They're administrators of a community service agency, so, of course, they're not going to try to trick anybody. You know, they're just straight ahead, telling you what needs to happen. So, of course, I was the same person doing the same thing I had done across the road in legal services, but the reception was just entirely different.

And then all of the issues that would come to us, it was such a pleasure to be able to move quickly from identifying a need to serving a need. So we saw that all the services that we had set up for women and their partners, because it always served their partners, but really neglected the fact that for uninsured African American men there wasn't a focus. You know, there was no focus for them that could make them feel like this was their clinic, too. So we started a project to do outreach to uninsured African American men for prostate cancer screening, and when we brought them in for that we would screen for diabetes and hypertension, so we'd do all three. And, oh, it was so gratifying. It was so gratifying, because they just would say, "I didn't think anybody cared about us." And you could just sort of see them flowering--that's not the right word for a man, but it just made them feel different, that there was a place that was interested in their health, that wanted to provide health education, that wanted to provide support groups of men.

We would have an annual meeting every year where we would bring volunteer doctors in who really, really wanted--these black doctors who really wanted to reach that population but didn't know how, so we were the bridge maker and it was just a love fest, because the doctors wanted so much to share. It was just like what I was saying about Artie [phonetic] earlier. They wanted to share their expertise. They wanted to tell them what they'd learned all these years treating men before they got sick, you know, to really get there at the earliest possible point, and, you know, to help people who had had prostate cancer and to talk about things like their sexuality. Oh, it was just so--and I couldn't get people to go home, because there was so much thirst for it and so much eagerness to share that they would just stay and stay, you know. Oh, it was just wonderful. I loved the prostate program. I just thought that was really--.

And then we had a very truly dedicated manager of that program, who lived in the community, deeply religious, and she took it as her religious mission to find these men and keep them in care. So as she moved around the community--somebody is going to get her one day--she would see people and she would say, "Mr. Jones, I'm Melba Denise. Do you remember me? You were supposed to come and see me last week. You didn't come." [laughs] You know? And they would just laugh. And she--"I'm calling you on Monday so we can schedule a time." So, I mean, it was just like a living, breathing, connecting presence. It wasn't just a one-time shot. If you came in, you were beholden then to Melba, because Melba's going to keep you on the straight and narrow road. You were going to come in for your screenings, you were going to do what you needed to do, you were going to take care of yourself, and she wasn't going to let you alone about it.

Interesting.

We had so many wonderful people. Mr. Hall, Amos Hall found us. Mr. Hall had such a heartbreaking story. He had gone someplace for prostate screening and he had an abnormal result, and they told him to go over to Harbor-UCLA and do further diagnostic work. I don't know where he lived, but it took him three hours and a number of buses to get there. He walked up to the window and he said this was his situation, and the woman said, "You can't be seen. We don't have a phlebotomist today." Well, Mr. Hall didn't know what a phlebotomist was, but he wasn't going to tell her that he didn't know. And he said, "I've taken this many buses, it's taken--." She said, "We don't have a phlebotomist." So they went back and forth and back and forth until finally he gave up and went home, but he was so humiliated and so angry about the way that he had been treated or not treated that he didn't go anywhere for four years. And, of course, by then the cancer had grown, and somebody in the community told him about T.H.E. and its prostate program and he came in, and in one month we had taken him, Melba had taken him to a hospital, not Harbor, gotten his further diagnosis, gotten the recommendations for what he needed to do. He had made his decision, his prostate gland was removed, and he was so undyingly grateful to Melba and to the clinic that he became a volunteer ambassador. And to this day, and this was years ago now, to this day Mr. Hall is out in the community rounding up men, sending them over to T.H.E. for their prostate screening. And it's just been the most joyous experience in his life to be able to help others, because he got help, you know, and to sort of help people maintain their dignity in the process of a real crisis where they have that diagnosis. So that was a wonderful program.

When did that start, that prostate program?

That probably started--let's see, I went there in '88. It probably started around '89, '90, and it's still going on. It's still going on, even though we have no money. This is a program that we got a three-year grant to do with St. Vincent's Hospital and then the grant was over. But we said we just can't--we just have to work it in somehow, we just have to keep it going, so we just did.

We started our HIV program around the same time, and the sainted person in that program is Nola Thomas, who is a black nun from Trinidad who did her training in Ireland. She was sent to Ireland to go to training, and they sent her to New Orleans. I don't know how many years she was in Ireland, but she was sort of cut off all those years from anybody black. She got to New Orleans and then she met somebody in New Orleans. The next thing you know, she's pregnant. She's fired by the school, she leaves the order, but in spite of all that, I still consider her a nun. She's very devout, and she found her mission in the HIV program. She's such a special, special person, and every new patient who would come in she would say, "We're going to just have a cup of tea together and get to know each other," no paperwork, no interviews, no medicine, no talk about anything about that, just, "This is who I am. I'd like you to tell me who you are. We're going to be working together taking care of you, and we're going to be friends, I hope." Such a wonderful, wonderful warm way of starting a relationship.

And most of the women with HIV are totally in hiding, so they don't tell anybody. Nobody knows. So to have somebody who actually says, "I want to be your friend," on the first day, you know, sharing a cup of tea in a very social way, just started things off so well, and they just all love Nola so much. That program was fantastic, and we just had amazing results. We had nothing but extraordinary people. We had a doctor named Groesbeck, G-r-o-s-b-e-c-k Parham, P-a-r-h-a-m [Dr. Groesbeck Parham], and Groesbeck is just the most radical doctor and black from Alabama, and was working at King [Hospital]. He had been volunteering to help women from the Sudan do vaginal reconstruction where they had had clitorectomies, and we didn't know him because we actually didn't have any patients who presented with that issue.

But we sent an announcement out for a physician for our HIV program to 1800 OB/GYNs in L.A. County. He was the only person who answered, because people were so scared. You know, this is in the early, early eighties. People were so scared of it--no, early nineties, early nineties. So he came and the patients loved him. He was our first physician. Then we had another gifted physician, a Haitian woman, Dr. Giselle Biamby, who's an extraordinary character as well. Dr. Biamby would get in there and wrestle for their soul. All the patients couldn't take her. Some of the patients would say, "No, I can't deal with her." But the majority could, because she uniquely interwove medicine and psychology, and she wanted to know who they were psychologically, and that was going to be part of her program for treating them.

So her first meeting with each HIV patient was two hours long, two hours, and it wasn't just, you know, a friend. It was wholly different in tone than Nola's. Nola's was very just gentle and loving and you know, "Let's breathe together and feel the sun together." Dr. Biamby was, you know, "Who are you? Who are you? What are you really wrestling with?" And to meet somebody and have somebody just plunge right into your soul like that, tough, tough. But there was something about her that patients yielded to, they yielded to, and she had miraculous results. This was before the protease inhibitors. She had miraculous--I would see patients walking by my door who looked like they were going to die tomorrow. Six months later they'd walk in just the same as you or me. Just unbelievable. So I don't know, just many, many, many wonderful people in that program.

We had a wonderful prenatal program which the main person was Dr. William Merritt, who was the medical director of the clinic, a black physician who was the founding medical director. He's from North Carolina and very, very bright, very able physician, not a touchy-feely person, just a real good clinician, but who had an empathy for the patients that we served. I don't know where that came from. He was wealthy, his family was wealthy, so he didn't really have financial worries. He was not Left in leaning politically at all. You know, I would say he was quite conservative, but he liked taking care of our patients. I don't know what it was. They satisfied his aspirations, they just satisfied whatever his dream was, and T.H.E. was his dream, you know. He said he wanted T.H.E. on his tombstone. He just loved it. He just loved it, and they just loved him.

And then we had a nurse practitioner named Sharon Leffall, and between the two of them, you know, the statistics on prenatal outcome in the black community are very bad. We have the worst maternal death, the worst pre-term, the worst low birth weight, the worst drug addicted; everything that is the worst about prenatal care, we have it. We didn't have any of that. We did not have any of that, and it was the same population, so how did that happen? How did that happen?

The reason it happened was because between Dr. Merritt and Sharon and the other team of people that they worked with, every patient's care was tailored to her. They didn't have a book that said "checklist." It wasn't the way they did it. They found out who she was, what her challenges were, and everything they did was geared to her particular needs. And then we did the routine guideline stuff, but the patients felt so seen and supported and cared about by this team that, you know, whatever their challenges were just became less important. It was a wonderful, wonderful thing to see them, because there was so much joy in the clinic. With each of these separate programs there was just always joy. The prenatal patients were joyous, and when they would have the baby they couldn't wait to get back to the clinic and show the baby to Sharon and Dr. Merritt, and they would bring pictures of the baby, and Sharon put the pictures up on the board. So it was very intimate, you know. It was very much like family. T.H.E. was like an extended family, like we were all aunts and uncles, you know. We were people who loved you and who you loved back.

And we got in trouble for that, because the people who give you money, federal people who give you money say, "Doctors are supposed to see this many patients an hour. Relationships with patients are supposed to be arm's-length. You are not supposed to go to the hospital and bring an HIV patient blue stockings when she gets admitted, because that's just what her whim is. That's not your job, that's not your responsibility, that's over the line." But I always thought that's what made the patients do well, and so I always encouraged it. And I never had an aspiration to triple our size, and the feds always wanted us to triple our size so that we would become Walmart. I didn't want to be big.

You know, we saw 10,000 patients a year, which was not insignificant. But I wanted it to be small enough so that people could continue to have those relationships, so they could continue to have that sense of ownership, so we would continue to know their names, and I just thought that was part of who we were. And the same thing happened with other communities. We had an Asian Health Project that had Filipino, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Thai patients, and we had community health educators from each of those communities, and when they would come to the front desk, most did not speak English and they would just give the name of their health educator. So they would come up if they were Thai and they would say, "Nung Yao," and Nung Yao would come, and each health educator would bow in the tradition of their nationality, so it was deeply respectful and then they would take them back and then they would explain what was going to happen in the visit, who they were going to see, and then they would invite them to see the provider. Sometimes they would translate for the patient, and then they'd go back with the health educator and go over what happened. So all of the translation that they needed, not only about the medical visit but about how they were doing generally. You know, "My children are having trouble with this school. Is there another school?" or, "What do you do about graffiti?" or whatever it was that they needed as new immigrants, they could get that from our health educators.

We had a Latino Health Project, and we had a psychologist who would teach staff, I remember this lesson that she taught us. She said, "When you're dealing with Latino families, the first thing that you need to ask them is how are the other members of their family. How is your mother, how is your father, how is your husband or your partner, how are your children? Take a few minutes to ask about the family, and if you do that your rewards will be tremendous. If you do not do that, then you will have a very cold, clinical relationship that will not get past to the issues that are really troubling them." So, you know, she would just bring me so many wonderful stories, not wonderful in terms of the problems that people had, but just kind of being able to break through and find out what was really going on, and find out, well, actually, they were living in a car, or actually they felt like there was something wrong in their marriage, because their husband only wanted anal intercourse and they really didn't know what to do about it, and what could they do? You know, just all kinds of things. But Grace was able to establish a rapport where these very intimate things were shared. She, in turn, could share it with the providers, and then the providers and Grace could work together to take care of that patient, and again in a very tailored personal way meet her needs.

We had a Teen Project that was also just a favorite, because these were just such smart, energetic, bright, creative little people, and yet they all came with many problems. So we had a psychologist on staff, and the teens would start every day with a personal session, individual one-on-one with the psychologist, and then they would go back to the Teen Clinic and do their teen work. That was a very nice triangle, because we were taking care of their needs so that they could then take care of the needs of other teen clients coming in, so Sharon and the other medical providers whenever they had a teenager they'd say, "Okay, when we're done I want you to go back and talk to Aleria Eakins," who was our teen director.

And you know, Aleria got pregnant, bless her heart, and wasn't in relation with the father, so nine of us went to the hospital and we're surrogates, a surrogate family--her mother died when she was thirteen--for the most wonderful little guy, Jackson, and Jackson just grew up in the clinic. Jackson was like our collective child, and I expect great things of Jackson, because he had such a rich childhood in this environment. But we helped a lot of teens through the teen clinic, and HIV prevention, STD [sexually transmitted disease] prevention, violence, so many kids have violence in their relationships, referrals for mental health, depression, anxiety disorders. What else did we have?

Then we recruited this wonderful, wonderful--Dr. Merritt got, oh, I can't think of the kind of cancer that he got, but he's still living but he had to retire, and we got another physician who had been at King, Dr. David Martins, who is just wonderful. David came to us looking for patients to be part of a study on hypertension. He's an internal medicine specialist, so again this was another step of evolution, that we couldn't just treat, you know, the things where people were not very sick. We really had to be able to take care of people who were very sick, who had diabetes and hypertension out of control. So he was our first internal medicine medical director, and he was just unlike any other physician. He's a superb clinician, but deeply religious and a minister in his own church, a Nigerian Christian church, and so his calling was also spiritual. It was medical but it was also spiritual, and so his relationship with his patients was very personal.

He felt it was his duty to make them understand what the medicines were for, and if they didn't take their medicines he would say to them, "Well, then, it is my fault, because we haven't talked enough about your challenges, so let's talk some more about your challenges. I want to understand why it's hard for you to do this." So one of his patients who had heart disease he referred over to King for cardiac, to a cardiologist. He said, "You're very sick and I want you to go to a specialist here." So he went to the hospital, they did all these tests and the cardiologist said, "You're very sick and we have to admit you and you have to do this." And he said, "I'm not doing anything that you're telling me to do until my doctor tells me what is going on." And he said, "But look, you're very sick. You know, I'm the specialist, I'm a cardiologist. He sent you to me and you have to do this." He said, "I don't care what you say, I'm not doing any of it until my doctor--."

And he said, "Well, why is his explanation so important?" He said, "Well, I have had high blood pressure for twenty years and never understood one thing about it. I never understood one thing about the medicine. I never understood one thing about what I could do until Dr. Martins explained it to me, and he was the only one who cared enough about me to explain it so that I could understand it, and I don't trust anybody else now but him, and so I'm going to go back to him, and if he'll explain to me what it is you're telling me and it makes sense to me, then I'll be back." So he said, "Well, who is this person that you're talking about?" He said, "His name is Dr. David Martins." He said, "Well, I trained him. He was a resident here." He said, "I don't care. He's my doctor. He's the one that I'm going to rely on." So he went back and he had it explained, and then he came back and he had his procedures. But that's a very unusual sense of personal connection, that this is not just a community service agency. This is somebody who is in my corner. This is somebody who's going to take the time and extend himself to me so that we work together on my health.

So it was very satisfying to the patients, it was very satisfying to Dr. Martins. Sometimes he would get in trouble. He was trying to help a woman who was smoking who had high blood pressure. He talked with her about the smoking, and he told her what it was. Then she came back and she'd made no effort, and so he said, "Then I won't treat you. I will not treat you. I've told you what we're up against here. You have to help me. I cannot do this. You have to be the person to do it." And she just went totally off on him and said who the hell did he think he was, and blah-de-blah and so on, so we actually had to intervene and separate them, because they were going at it. But he was fighting for her, he was really, really fighting for her. But everybody isn't ready to be fought for, you know, and I don't know how that one ever turned out. I don't know whether she circled back around. She may have been somebody that we lost, so it's not always a success, you know. Some of Dr. Biamby's patients left, or went to another HIV doctor that we had, but it's a different pathway. It's a different pathway, and they were always willing to extend themselves.

I was there one Saturday--we weren't open on Saturdays--and I was looking out the window and a truck drove up, and two young men drove up with a woman who didn't look well. They held her up and brought her in, but they didn't bring her upstairs. Our clinic was on the second floor. So I said, "Sharon, I just saw something strange out the window. These men were bringing this woman, but they didn't come up." So we went out and went to the stairs, and they were leaving her down there. So Sharon said, "Don't leave her down there. Bring her up here." Well, it turned out she was a prostitute. They were the johns that had picked her up. She was too high on whatever drugs she was on to perform her services, so as good Samaritans of a sort, they brought her to the clinic, but they didn't want to get involved, you know, so they were going to just park her on the steps.

She was a young girl, very pretty, so we brought her up and she couldn't talk. So there was a drug--[unclear]--there was a drug program next door, and we called and we said, "Here's a patient. We don't know what she's on. We can't talk to her." He said, "Well, get her up and walk her around, just walk her around," and they asked us some other questions. We checked things, "And if she responds to that, then call 911 and get an ambulance." So we did that. Then the ambulance people came and they wouldn't take her, because before the ambulance will take you, you have to give consent, and she wasn't in her right mind enough to give consent, so they wouldn't take her. But she was more coherent by the time they came, and she just kept saying that her uterus was in the wrong place. She just kept saying that over and over again.

So Sharon said, "Okay. Bring her back, let me take a look." Sharon's, you know, a women's specialist, a nurse practitioner. Well, the woman had pelvic inflammatory disease. But Sharon spent two hours in the room with her, talking her down, talking with her about her life, talking with her about her choices of profession and so on, and when she came out she was sober. She said, "Nobody ever talked to me like that in my life." Sharon's Catholic, very devout, and so she became a regular patient at the clinic and brought other people from the profession in, so you can see that each person was like a towering resource to people in the community, and it was just done with the greatest generosity and love. You know, it just wasn't work. It just wasn't work. It was just people really looked forward to it.

And we always celebrated everything, you know, with food. We were all overweight. We were all eating all the time, but people would bring their food from Thailand or from Mexico or from the Caribbean, so our potlucks were always fabulous affairs with the most delicious everything. And those were our communions. Those were our communions, where we got to support each other and help each other with our problems. It was just a wonderful place. I really, really loved it. I was there seventeen years, and we drew visitors from all over the world. We had delegations from Japan, we had delegations from Russia, from the Ukraine. We had a whole troop of mental health workers from England come and visit. People just wanted to know, how could you do this? How could you have this many languages--we had eleven languages--and deal with people who are supposed to be this sick and have this kind of outcome, you know.

Because we had researchers all the time coming in, too, from UCLA and Rand [Corporation] and USC [University of Southern California], documenting all these things. We didn't have the academic expertise, but I always thought it was important to let people come in and write it down the way they write things down, so that the proof would be stored somewhere of what was happening, because I knew it was special, you know, but I wouldn't have been able to do that. Although as we evolved we had people come in who would train our staff, like our teens, on data keeping and data analysis, so by the time I left, we really had begun to develop some of our own expertise.

But it was great and still is. It still is a great clinic and very special and just unlike any other clinic, because most other clinics--all community clinics are wonderful, but there was just something about T.H.E. in the way that it evolved, the way that it grew, that was so organic, that just made it very, very special. I think the focus on women made it different and focus on the full family to start out, and it evolved to the full family. But still 80 percent of the patients are women, and that kind of whole-person view and I think the spirituality of the staff, that they brought so much of their spiritual beliefs into their own motivation.

We were always involved in politics. I was always in battle with somebody about something, whether it was cutbacks in family planning. [Courken George] Deukmejian was the governor. We had all of our patients fill in cards in protest, and we put them in baby carriages and we walked them down to the governor's office and dumped them. We were always protesting at the board of supervisors the things that they had failed to do in terms of supporting women in HIV, always in battle with the HIV people, because they wanted to give all the money to men. What else did we fight about? Cutbacks in Medical, everything, everything that affected funding, support for the different programs, whatever they did wrong, people would come to T.H.E. and say, "What do you think about it? How is this going to affect the patients?" and I would find patients to speak to the issues, because I was always most interested in having them speak for themselves, and they loved to do that. They loved to tell their stories, and they were the best tellers of their stories, so it was a very good platform for advocacy. That's all I can remember.

Okay, just a few follow-ups. One, where did the funding come from for the clinic?

The federal government, the state government, the county government, private foundations, private individuals, but we were always a poor clinic. But when I went there in 1988, its budget wasn't even a million dollars, and when I left seventeen years later, it was just five million, so we were always poor. We didn't have the equipment we needed. We didn't have the staff we needed. We didn't have the building that we needed. Our clinic was at a converted IRS [Internal Revenue Service] office, so it was definitely a make-do situation all around. But we took a little bit of money and did a lot with it, because we felt privileged. You know, we felt privileged to be there and so loved and needed by the patients, you know, so loved and needed by the patients.

Dr. Martins would say, because he worked at L.A. County, and he said, "Why are the patients here so sweet and nice, and the very same patients when they come into the County are just mean and angry and attacking the doctors all the time?" He really pondered that, you know, what was it that made the difference in the way they behaved in these four walls versus four walls someplace else. They were the same people.

About the prostate clinic, did the people principally involved in that have any problem as women talking to men about men's health issues? Were there any hurdles to get over there at first?

Oh, yes, absolutely, and we recognized that women were not the right ones, so we hired men. Melba was the head of the unit, but we hired men who were outreach workers, and it was the men who talked to the men. Then when we had our annual event, we would bring in famous people like Rod [Roderick] Wright, who had had prostate cancer, and Rod would lead the discussion about sexuality and what would happen after you had the operation and so on. There were women in the room, but we didn't talk to the men about the things that were most personal, you know, so we tried to have it be as sensitive in a gender way as we tried to be in terms of the language support. We recognized you had to have that.

Right. Okay. And then lastly, as it regards the clinic, could you give me an example--you mentioned the stories--of how you used a particular story in terms of being an advocate, in your advocacy?

Well, in dealing with the effect of being without necessary resources, whether it's money or housing or food or whatever it is your family is struggling to get enough of, it's very hard for the general public, which has all those things, to see you and to feel you and to care about you. What I always wanted to do was to make the patients visible. That was always my goal, and I would do one story, not about twenty people, I would say one story. And the stories were also memorable, but I always told people stories that I felt would be difficult for them to forget, so that it would become part of their DNA to know that this is what it's like.

I remember speaking at a Women on Target, you know, they have an annual Christmas dinner. This is a group of black women professionals, mostly retired. I said I was working on a Saturday and one of our staff workers, because staff did not get paid very much, one of our staff workers' sons greeted me. He was about eight years old. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving and I said, "How was your turkey-lurky?" And he said, "We couldn't afford to have a turkey. But my mother's neighbor had some turkey left over and so she brought it to us." Well, you don't think of anybody on Thanksgiving not having enough money to get a turkey. It just would never occur to anybody that there might be a family that--you know. And I think he said, "We had meatloaf." It was just a heartbreaking story, you know, for a little boy not to have turkey, and you see all the Rockwell paintings are everywhere, and everybody's having just a wonderful--and so you don't forget that. You don't forget that. And people said, "Well, if I had known, he could have had my turkey. We would have taken it off our table and taken it to him."

So I would use that kind of story in the context of whatever the cutback was that was going on, to let them know what that meant. When they did x, this is what it did to Mrs. Rodriguez. And it was always a revelation, because in order to know stories of people, you have to talk to people. You have to be where people are, and people don't want to be where poor people are. They don't want to be in that neighborhood. They don't want to be in that environment, you know, and they didn't know that we just had a good time every single day. We always said we were just the best-kept secret, and we never had any problems. We never had any crime, we never had any violence. It was just fun. So that's how I used the stories.

So the patients were my best weapon. They were my best weapon, and the staff which amassed all this wonderful information was so happy to have it have a place to go that would be useful, because it meant that their listening time, besides making a partnership with the patient, also had a political dimension.

Right. All right. We talked a little bit about King Hospital last time, and I was wondering if you could give me an overview of your association with the hospital. When I was doing my research, I even ran across a picture of your mother at the--

Groundbreaking, yes.

Right. So if you could tell me something about that and maybe move forward to your most recent association with the hospital in connection with getting it to be a viable place again.

Yes. Well, first, let me just say that it was a miraculous thing that the hospital got built, because the voters had voted against it, and Mervyn [M.] Dymally had to do an end run at the state legislative level to get it built, and Kenny Hahn was a big champion, and community residents were very supportive of all income groups, so it was a little miracle that it got built. Of course, it was called for in the McCone Commission Report, as was the medical school. It was a beautiful, and still is a beautiful hospital, you know, state of the art, and the community was so proud of it, just so proud to have a big, beautiful hospital that was theirs and to take care of them.

I was involved in the beginning through the medical school, because Mitchell Spellman was the first dean of the medical school. Mitchell was a student of my father's and a friend of my family. He was from New Orleans, but he lived in Washington many years. So Mitchell asked me if I would serve on the board of visitors of Drew, and they were people like Audrey Moss of Mars candy-bar fame, an heiress, and Sidney Poitier, and Willie [Davis]--can't remember his last name, from Anheuser Busch, he was their representative out here. But it was quite an illustrious board of visitors. Mitchell was a very good dean, and he brought in a really stellar mixed-race team of department heads, and they established an outstanding postgraduate medical school and then a two-year medical school after that, in association with UCLA.

I was not involved with King or Drew as an advocate until the late eighties, when Claire Spiegel started doing an expose on King and then people came to me--I was at the National Health Law Program--to get pushback, and I began to push back and to talk about problems in other public hospitals, and why was King being singled out, and what was the motivation here and so on, just a foreshadowing of what we've been through in the last few years here with the Pulitzer Prize winner.

But also, I guess it's not fair to say that was the first time, because we were always aware of King Hospital and Drew at SCLC, so that when there were problems at King or at Drew, SCLC would be pulled into it. Mrs. [Lillian] Mobley was on the board of SCLC, so it was through my association with her that, I guess, my King awareness was developed. But I didn't really have a lot of work connected to King, but I was always supportive, I always promoted them, always said good things about them, because there were so many people who said bad things. So I always tried to be a counterbalancing voice.

And then fast forward to 2004, when Bob Ross called me at the endowment and asked me to come and be the project manager of a group that he wanted to put together to look at King Drew in light of the new L.A. Times series, to get a more impartial look at what was going on. So I did that and that took a year and a half, eighteen months, and I'm still helping them. I'm helping them now trying to become a four-year medical school, now that the medical school has lost its partnership and affiliation with King Hospital. What's going to happen to King is very much up in the air. King could very well close. I think it won't close, because if it does close, we'll be right back to 1965, with no hospital to serve that community, and people will be very angry. We cannot do with no hospital. We cannot be taken back to that.

So, you know, King serves a million people in its geographic area, and the whole history of non-support and bad support and utilization for political appointees has really been a scandal, not getting the highest-caliber administrators, settling for people who were not good, having acting people for years in place, so not caring, not nurturing. And Drew on its part, not taking the role of caretaker, because the county was so disrespectful of Drew, whereas they were very respectful of UCLA and USC, so Drew just was treated like a stepchild by the county and wouldn't support the doctors in what they needed in the hospital, because nursing and pharmacy and plant equipment problems are all things that the county needed to take care of. They didn't take care of them. Now, if Harbor or USC or UCLA had nursing, pharmacy, equipment problems, the county would take care of it, because they're afraid of those institutions, but they weren't afraid of Drew. [unclear]. "What can you do? We're not going to do anything about it. What can you do?"

So a bad marriage, bad marriage between the county and Drew, which hurt King, because the two of them had to work together in order to make King work. So it's been a very tortured, tortured story, and because we're a disempowered community, and because the middle class doesn't use King, the black middle class doesn't use King, they don't step up and call up their supervisors and say, "This won't be. We're holding you responsible, Supervisor Burke," you know, "We're holding you responsible, Supervisor Molina. You're not going to let this hospital go down." So I don't know what will happen.

Your comments reminded me of one of my other interviews, where I asked the interviewee whether the responsibility for keeping King a viable hospital rested not only with the residents and the community, but even those African Americans who have moved out of the community, and they seemed to think it was primarily the response of those in the community. They really didn't think that African Americans who had even moved out of the community would take that responsibility. But I think what I'm hearing from you is that it's really everybody's responsibility.

It's everybody's responsibility. You know, you can't just move away from our infrastructure. This is what we have. If you don't have institutions, you don't have anything to work with. We've got a hospital, we've got a fine medical school, we have two clinics that have served us in South L.A., T.H.E. and Watts. That's what we've got in terms of health. Then we have many, many fine physicians scattered everywhere, at Cedars and here and so on. They're operating solo. Keith Black is Keith Black at Cedars, bless his heart, you know. But Keith Black is not an institution. We have to support our institutions and save our institutions, because if all of our institutions which are all in trouble disappear, then we're back to square one. Just like the King community will be back to square one with no hospital, we'll be back to square one as a people, with no institutions and just suffering individuals, you know? Can't let that happen. Can't let that happen.

If you look at how groups empower themselves, they collect, they form institutions, they support the institutions, and then they have continuity over time. So even if you're not a health person, King is a very important institution. We are training half of the minority physicians in the State of California, not just blacks. Are we going to be leaders? Are we going to use our experience to lead other minority groups that need a hand up, or are we just concerned with ourselves? So it's just very, very important. It's very, very important, and we've tried to tell the story from our steering committee groups' perspective and tried to challenge people in the decisions that they made. You know, history will affirm, I think, some of the things that we found, but the board of supervisors shelved our report, didn't even give us an opportunity to talk with them about it. They just totally dissed us, just totally dissed us.

What is the prognosis, if I can use that term, after Supervisor Burke goes off of the board of supervisors and whoever will be elected to that position?

Well, whoever will be elected will inherit King Drew, and whoever will be elected will have to step up, will have to step up. Indeed, I would like to see that be a plank of their election platform, that they will do something about that, that will be part of what they undertake to do. You know, when Bob Ross said, "I'm going to put a million dollars into looking at this," that was a courageous thing. He's a black physician. He's from Pennsylvania. What the hell does he have to do with King Drew in South L.A., you know? But he understood this is an institution that we have to protect, and so he brought together the best black and brown minds he could find, you know, physicians, to look at it and say, "This is the way we see it. Here's the blame that we place on everybody at the table. This one didn't do this, this one didn't do this. There's enough blame to go around to everybody, and to fix it this one's got to do this and this one's got to do that," and we laid it all out. It was a very good report. Ignored.

So referring back to that report, what will it take for it to be a viable institution again, and keeping in mind that--and this is something several of the interviewees have said in their interviews, is that as an institution it's been literally strangled for resources, that it's been bad-mouthed from the beginning. What will it take?

Well, I like the new administrator, and I hope that she will stay there and continue doing her work. She's very bright, Epps.

Antoinette Epps?

Antoinette Epps. She's smart, she's hard-working, she's charismatic, she's willing to take responsibilities for things that they screw up on, because they still do screw up on things. But they've never had anybody like Antoinette there, and she'll be there a year in October.

I see.

Okay. So you have a leader, you have a permanent leader. You have somebody who's investing her whole heart and soul in it, and then you need to bring back components of the hospital. They've so boiled them down to such a skeletal. The only thing I can say in defense of the horrible incident where the woman died on the floor is you have an emergency room, but you have so few beds that there's nothing you can really do no matter how sick they are coming in, and yet you want your staff to bleed to death for every patient who comes in in pain. It's like you give them no tools and say, "Care about that person. Care about that person." There's something wrong in that picture.

Right, right.

So I don't know. I took a group of students on a tour and we just found the staff so empathetic, so caring, so proud, so proud of the institution in spite of everything, so I just think they need time. I think they need time, and I think they need support to say, "You are indispensable, and we, the county, are going to do whatever we need to do to make this a viable hospital, including stopping our attitude that you are on an island unconnected to the rest of the system." You've got all these talented people in all these other county facilities. They won't say to them, "Go over to King," because people don't want to go. Well, you can say, "You go over to King or you don't stay in our system." But they say, "Oh, no, we couldn't do that. Do you know how short we are on nurses, how short we are? If they would resign, we couldn't get them back. We can't take that risk." So they just say, "Well, let King go, because we have to make sure they stay over there serving wherever they are."

So in other words, they say, "You're not equal, and we're not going to subject our staff to hard labor at King," which is a terrible way to treat an equal member of the system. It's really discriminatory. [unclear] have all these traveling nurses. You know, traveling nurses don't give you the same care as people who are permanent employees. They closed the Trauma Center, which was just the star of the hospital system. They built a beautiful Women's Health Center and now they're shutting that down. I mean, they're just killing it. It's not closed, but they're just killing it a little at a time, and if you think the staff doesn't know that they're killing it, you know, think again, because they see what's happening and it's their institution. It's like watching a member of their own family die. They're just watching it die. So they need to breathe life back into it. They need to make a public commitment, "We're going to keep this. We're going to fix anything that's broken. We're going to stay at it until we get it the way we want, and we've got somebody to lead that change. We've got Antoinette." The board loves her, the Department of Health Services loves her, the staff loves her. How often has that happened? Never. Never. So that's what I think needs to happen.

Okay. I'd like to talk about some of the other organizations with which you've been involved that were on your bio. I see you were a member of the California Women's Health Advisory [Council] Board/Presidential Commission on Quality Healthcare & Consumer Protection. Could you tell me a little bit about that?

What was the name of it again? That doesn't sound right.

California Women's Health Advisory Council/Presidential Commission on Quality--

Those are two separate things, two separate things. Okay. The California Women's Policy Advisory Group I fell away from over a fight on reporting HIV status.

And what was the issue?

The issue was, California would not embrace a required reporting of HIV positivity. We've had required reporting. You know, you have required reporting to Public Health of tuberculosis, syphilis, AIDS, but not HIV. And thirty-four states--you know, this is five or six years ago now--thirty-four states had all embraced it and said, "This is important, because once it's reported, then public health workers go out and without mentioning the name of the patient say, 'You may have been exposed to AIDS. You need to get tested. You need to get into care if you're positive.'" So you're doing that. There's been no leak, no breach of confidentiality on AIDS from the start of the epidemic, but they didn't want it for HIV.

And because black and brown men don't tell their partners that they're positive, it was imperative that it be reported for the protection of women, because it would be the only way that they could find out would be a public-health worker telling them, "You may have been exposed to something." So I took this to this group, and they were heavily lobbied by the men's HIV advocate group and took their position on it as a civil rights violation, a breach of their privacy. It wasn't a breach of their privacy on AIDS, but it was a breach of their privacy on HIV.

Curious.

Very curious. So instead they adopted a unique identifier system, which is all these nine digits of things that don't work and the providers don't do it. So finally last year they said, "This doesn't work and we're going to do names reporting." But at the time that I was trying to get women to support this for the benefit of women of color, they weren't hearing it, so I separated from that.

The Bill Clinton Commission on Quality Healthcare was a very interesting experience, led by Donna [Esther] Shalala and Alexis [Margaret] Herman. Alexis Herman was head of Commerce, I think, and Donna Shalala was head of HHS [Health and Human Services], secretaries. And it was, I don't know, twenty-four, thirty-four people, all big-name folks, and I was there as a consumer representative. This commission was really convened because people were concerned about whether or not they were going to maintain quality of care in managed care. It was not convened because anybody was worried about poor people.

So I was always bringing up the rear, saying, "Well, what about the poor people who are forced into Medicaid HMOs? What about you?" And they were tolerant but didn't really--and that's been really my position on so many of these boards and things that I'm on, that I'm bringing in the voice and the concerns of poor people, poor people of color in particular, and people don't want to spend time with that. That's not what they're concerned about, these big policy makers. But Donna Shalala understood my position, and Alexis Herman really was out of her area of expertise. She was not a health person. This was really deep health stuff. But Shalala understood my position, and she would always ask me questions, and she would always try to incorporate whatever I was talking about.

So when we came--and it was a real rush thing, because we were trying to get it ready so that we could go to Congress and get a bill passed, and we never did get the bill passed on consumer protection, because the industry pushed back. But I remember the last meeting, and she would say, "All right. We don't have time for a lot of talk," and she ran a tough meeting. "Let's just go around and people can tell me--." They had the draft of it, and so I said what I didn't like, and this was all middle class, and it was wrong for it to be middle class, and she said, "So you don't like it." I said, "Yes. In brief, I don't like it," [laughs] which was really, it was kind of a stop-the-meeting moment, because you don't say that to Donna Shalala. She's a kind of powerful figure.

But we fixed it, you know. We got language in there which addressed the concerns that I had, so it ended up being positive, at least in terms of what our final report was, but not positive in terms of what we got in legislation, because we didn't get it. But it was a good thing, and [William Jefferson] Clinton was very supportive, and we met with him and it was very intense. We met once a month, so I was flying back to Washington once a month, and I think it was twelve or fourteen months.

I see. CDC [Center for Disease Control and Prevention] Blue Ribbon Panel on Reducing Ethnic Health Disparities?

Well, that was another fight. I'm just always in fights. I don't know, I'm really a nice person, but they gave forty grants to community groups to come up with creative, innovative ideas for eliminating disparities in health, and then they convened this blue-ribbon taskforce to talk about how to evaluate these forty programs, because they were different. They were given a sort of open invitation to come up with new approaches, so how are you going to evaluate them? So the people they brought to the blue-ribbon commission were all university, white evaluators who knew the academic parameters of evaluation, but didn't know anything about community or community groups and dealing with these historic issues.

So, you know, the group said, "Well, we need to have some community-based people on here, so that we can have their perspective injected into this conversation." So I was added to the board. Michael Zinzun was on this committee, and Pauline Brooks was on this committee, and Michael and Pauline and I and a sister from South Carolina, a sister from Atlanta said, "You know, we have got to force this group to talk about racism and how racism plays into the situation that we're in with these disparities in health." And the group did not want racism discussed. They thought it was just a whole red herring, it didn't have anything to do--and so our group broke off, and we had our own sub-meeting in Las Vegas and worked on--and Pauline is writing a book about the experience. She's a Ph.D. in psychology.

So we fell apart. It was not a successful effort. We had a report and a minority report, and it was really a searing experience to see how entitled people are by dint of their expertise, to say what is and is not relevant and what will be in and what will be out of discussion. So bless his heart, you know, that was Michael's last big battle, and he's dead now of a heart attack, but it was a privilege to work with him on it, and he was kind of his own researcher, and he would just bring in these articles on racism and white privilege.

I was going to ask you about the larger issue of white privilege as it has to do with health disparities.

Well, it's all blaming the victim, you know, because we smoke and drink and we overeat, and it has nothing to do with anything they've done or failed to do. You know, it has nothing to do with the fact that Nestle's puts formula in every hospital and now less than 40 percent of black women take up nursing. You know, white people are not responsible for any of that. It's all because black women are too stupid to take up nursing. You know. And now this whole evidence-based thing, everything has to be evidence-based medicine. We don't understand half of what goes on medically, so when you hold yourself out as having the answer and demanding evidence-based, you're perpetrating a fraud, you know, because you do not know.

In pre-term birth, the Mayo Clinic says, "We understand 50 percent of the reasons. The other 50 percent we don't know." That's what the Mayo Clinic says. So we have to do our own work. We have to do our own work, and we have to develop institutions that do two things, that provide social support and provide tools for helping ourselves. Neither one of those things have anything to do with trained physicians and nurses. That has to do with us. We can do that ourselves, and if we would do that, we would control 80 percent of our health. We would take it out of their hands and take it out of their judgment and get our own health back. It could be done. It could be done. That's why I'm trying to build a community kitchen, because I think that's the place where that can happen. That's the place where we can get back to food.

I read a study that young people in Juvenile Detention Centers who are fed a healthy diet have 50 percent less infractions than the youngsters who are fed the regular diet in juvie, 50 percent, okay? And that goes to the violence and acting out and so on. But the same can be said in terms of just realizing your own potential. If you can understand that food is pivotal to everything you are and everything you hope to be, you can make new pathways. You have other choices. So I don't have any confidence in the pharmacy machine, the physician machine, the hospital machine. I think we're on our own and the only defense we have is to stay out of their clutches, to stay well, or if we're sick to stay in control, and we have ways that we can do that. We have ways that we can prevent disease, and we have ways that we can stay in control if we're sick, and people just need to hear it.

All right. Before we close out, are there any other organizations with which you've been involved that you'd like to talk about, any other passions of yours that you'd like to discuss?

Well, I love my church. I love my church, and I'm very interested in that balance of spirit and body and mind, and I think there's something really wonderful that happens in the black church, something really wonderful, and I think we need to get people back into spiritual circles of whatever definition they like and they're comfortable with. I've tried to bring my daughter into this and she said, "Oh, Mother, you're so--I can't be in a church that only has one kind of people in it." And I said, "You know, that's fine. I understand that," and I've been in many churches that have everybody. But there is something really, really satisfying to my soul to be in a church that is in a pretty unbroken line from where we started out after slavery. It's something very, very, very profound, and I wouldn't be able to say what it is, but I know it feeds me, and it makes me feel connected. You know, I just feel connected to all the ancestors through the church. So I'm surprised at my own self in terms of my involvement and attendance and so on, and I think it's part of getting older, you know, that your spiritual side is more important, and I just feel very lucky. Okay?

All right. Thank you, Sylvia.