Q: Why did you come to Utah and what was your first impression?

I came to Utah November 1, 1942 in the Army Aircola. That was before the Army Air Force. We probably arrived about 5:30 in the morning and I said, "Look at those clouds over there...there is going to be a star in all of those clouds." When the day came those were mountains. I had never seen a mountain before in my life. Later on, as we got involved at Hill, you just didn't see any black civilians. I came from a county with about 8,000 blacks, but I was here probably two weeks before I saw a black civilian. It's kind of depressing.

When I left Camp Shelby, Mississippi -- that's were I was indebted -- we wore khakis during the summer. When I arrived here there was snow on the ground. It was just different of anything that I had ever thought of.

Q: Tell us about you being stationed here and what the experience was like.

We had all white seaman, all white officers. They treated us just like we were slaves. I guess we were their slaves. We were just laborers. We couldn't use any education we had, we were cleaning up the runways, cleaning up the area, unloading boxcars. It was just different. It was kind of depressing. There was someone there telling you everything to do every minute. They could tell me something to do Monday, and I could go through the remainder of the month. But there was always somebody. "Move this, move that." Even in Mississippi I wasn't used to it.

Q: Did that experience continue on? Or were there opportunities that started to happen?

Just one day someone walked in and said, "Would you like to be a Military Policeman?" I always liked the Westins, so they gave me a 45. We moved from Hill Air Force Base, our office was at 132 25th Street, and 25th Street is heyday. It was quite interesting. They would have white military police and black police. They called us colored at that time. White could arrest the black, but the black could not arrest a white.

Q: Tell us more about the heyday of 25th Street. What was it like?

There were about 20 passenger trains went through everyday, in addition to we don't know how many troop trains, because they kept troop trains a secret. They got off right on 25th Street. Black people walked on the south side of the street and white people on the north side. Nobody told them to or anything. I still wonder. I would ask people, "Why do you always does it?" [They would answer,] "Ah, you've been a troublemaker ever since you've been here. We are happy at what we do, you be happy at what you do."

Q: Do you have some interesting stories about the Quarters and Waiters Club?

I kind of hung out at the Quarters and Waiters Club. I was single and I was still in the service. We would wait from six in the afternoon, and we got off at two in the morning. There was no place to go, so we would go back to the barracks and then a lot of the time we would come in early before we went on duty. I remember we had Provo's watch at once. He would check us out. We would line up and he would say that we were dressed just right. He made a statement once, he said, "I'm not going to do anything if I smell alcohol. But if I smell sin-sin, you are going to prison." He didn't want you try to hide it.

As president of the NAACP, how have you seen the community change and what are your concerns?

Our concern is in employment, housing, and education. But without employment, you forget about everything else. We were somewhat lucky with employment at the bases, the military installations. No success downtown and the private industry. At that time, most black people worked for the railroad. They had pretty good jobs. Laborers made a lot of money. They dressed well, but the were somewhat harassed by the local police even though they were walking down the street all dressed up. They wanted to know how you made a living. It was something that helped, but it was somewhat derogatory. You had to be a porter, a waiter, a cook. You could hold no supervisor position, but you had a job. There were jobs available for black people as porters, waiters, cooks, and red caps and skycaps at the airport.

Now you hear a lot of talk of black people taking jobs from white people. Well, white people have taken all of the sky cap jobs at the international airport. I saw a black sky cap the other day and I almost missed plane I was so glad to see him, because there is a lot of money and people tip heavy. I found out that while he was working during the holidays, they could make more money in one hour than they could on another job, because most people tipped in dollars. So these are jobs that are taken away from black people and the railroad passenger is discontinued, so left a terrible void.

Q: What was it like when the railroad employment diminished?

It was serious because people were too old and uneducated to participate in other jobs. A lot of them went to custodial jobs. A lot of them got jobs as waiters and cooks. In some of the industries, the Gyco Corporation up in the canyon -- they had a place where they employed a lot of black people. But they were just out of jobs. The railroad was apparently hard work, because a lot of the men died early and they didn't make much money. You didn't get a pension on your tips. You only got a pension on your salary. So your salary was smaller. Then, when the husband passed away, the wife only received half of his salary. It was really depressing and people were captured in the era that they have been giving. They couldn't move because they didn't have enough salary, they were too old to get along.

Q: Tell us a little bit about housing.

You would see in the newspaper a house for sell, a house for rent, a nice location for a porter or a waiter. Most of the black people lived between 24th and 30th Street, west of Grant. Still most of the black people live between 24th and 33rd west of Washington. There are few blacks that moved out of the area to the north. I would say that there has been less then ten blacks over the years that have moved north. Most of them moved south. If you want a house, you go find a house and go to a real estate man. If I wanted to buy a house, I go to a real estate man and he finds me a house.

Real estate people are telling us where we should live. This is something that as president of NAACP I couldn't break, because we just didn't know. You find a house that says that it is unavailable. You know, you have multiple listings, "I'll call you back," or it was sold yesterday. But you drive by three days later and the sign is still there for sale. Black people are still kind of living in the area of black people. I don't see anything wrong with it if you want to do it. But I don't want no real estate person telling me where I should live.

Q: Over the years, what kind of changes in the African-American community have you observed in the Ogden area?

What I saw as president of NAACP, the competence that I am proud of, we call a meeting and the press was there. That was when we had pretty good press in Ogden. It's yellow journalism now. We said, 'No one should buy in a store with over ten employees that don't have a black person employed. We don't want you to go into the stores, the malls, any place." There was not a lot of us here, so probably the same amount was going to the mall and they started to notice they didn't see any black people. Almost every large store hired not only one black person, they hired more than one. Then how you found about vacancies is by word of mouth. Then people who were there, they would tell other people about vacancies and we were quite successful in the employment of black people, in the Ogden Mall especially.

Q: You had a personal indignity directed toward you at your house. You had something thrown at your house. What was the story there?

In 1961 I bought a new house out in Riverdale. People heard that a black person, not Jim Gillespie, had bought a house out there. They busted the windows out and threw tar all over the place, but nobody ever found out what happened and no one tried to find out. The crime lab came out and there was a jar, a quart fruit jar that had the tar in it. It must have been pretty strong, because it went right through the window and landed on the floor. When I went out there, there was the tar running out of this fruit jar, laying out of the floor. So, I picked it up and set it up. When the crime lab came out they said no fingerprints. They were looking for fingerprints, but my fingerprints were on it. This was the type of police protection that we had at that time.

Q: What is the climate nowadays? Is there a lot of discrimination still going on?

Well, if you get three people together, it's a riot. You might have four police cars on an accident on Franklin and Lincoln. A man ran a stop sign and hit this black lady. I was driving by and I looked and saw that there was three police cars and I stopped and they said get going. "I'm James H. Gillespie, president of NAACP, and these people might need some help." But the man that created the accident had left. They didn't have license number, you know how you trade information. Then they took the lady that was hit, who had the right-of-way, down for a drug test and alcohol test, but the man that created the accident had called the police and left. If I hadn't been the type of person that wouldn't get going, they would have put her in jail. I followed them down and when they got there, I was already in the chief's office, and nothing happened, but it was a hit and run.

Q: In your oral history you were describing the NAACP and how it's not just an organization for African-Americans, it reaches further. Could you say something about what the NAACP is?

Well, NAACP is primarily a black organization of membership. We are the only organization that take cases to the Supreme Court. One mistake that we have made, that I'm not going to be critical about, but we see minorities and women. You have benefited more by the Civil Rights Movement than I have.

I went to a conference, and they had all the minorities there, and the American Indians sat up and talked about American Indians, Hispanics sat up and talked about Hispanics, Asians got up and talked about Asians, the black lady got up and talked about minorities and women. The lady from NOW got up and talked about women. We were the only organization that were for everybody. I'm sure the other organizations felt the same, that they wanted equal opportunity for everyone, but they didn't go on record, that's what we need, people speaking out.

Q: Let's talk about what opportunities that the military installations afforded black people.

Most of the blacks that had decent jobs worked at Hill Air Force Base or Defense Depot, Ogden. Now, they had better jobs than black people elsewhere, but it was still lacking in the top jobs. I was the top black in salary at Defense Depot, Ogden. Then, after a while, my wife was the top black in salary at Hill Air Force Base, but we were far from the top. There were a lot of white people that were higher grades than we were. We worked a long time and were lucky enough to have a pretty good retirement.

I was the Equal Opportunity Officer at Defense Depot and my wife was Equal Opportunity Officer at Hill. We made information available to people that were not in the main stream. We sent job opportunities to the inner-city churches, to the minorities organizations, and we counseled people on how they should act when they got a job.

When people have had a job a long time they are somewhat relaxed. We had ten-minute breaks. I'd tell them if they have a ten-minute break, it's a ten-minute break. A half-hour lunch is a half-hour lunch. You go to work at seven o'clock, you go to work at seven o'clock, and you stay on the job. Blacks, a lot of them would say, they tried to compete with white people doing wrong. See, there were fifteen people that went to the cafeteria and stayed about a half-hour, one black. The supervisor called me and let me know that this black person had been gone for thirty minutes and I said, "I was at the club; I saw that there was fourteen people." He didn't pay any attention to the others, he had one black, and he was missed. So, we tried to get additional blacks employment so they wouldn't be noticed all the time.

Q: What would you say has been your fondest or greatest contribution?

Well, to participate in the community, you need motivation. If you are making four dollars an hour, and the next black person you see is making six dollars an hour, you think he's making a lot of money. So, you need to associate with the people that is making twenty-five dollars per hour. Now that's motivational. You need to invite people, if you have a decent house.

We used to have open houses, have teas and invite everyone. We had a job corps fellow come over to the house once and he talked and talked about "Mr. Gillespie, this is a nice house; I bet it cost 15 thousand dollars." Well, it cost four times 15 thousand dollars. But this was his motivation, He had never known of a house that cost over 15 thousand dollars.

Q: What's the best thing that has ever happened to you in your life?

In my life. It's funny and I don't talk about it much (because I believe in things that a lot of people don't believe in) is genes. My father died when I was eleven, but I can remember him as it was yesterday and he died in 1933. All of my family out of the fourteen, all of my family is successful. We go to a family reunion and doctors, lawyers, millionaires are just as common as they are if you go in the Cove. There are probably ten millionaires in my family. One of the top cardiologists in the United States is a nephew of mine. I wonder if it was that you were motivated by others, or if it was genetic, because all of the descendants from my father -- and there is a whole lot of them -- we could have a family reunion in the Field House up at the University of Utah, and don't talk about it much but most of us are doing okay.

How do you envision the future of African-Americans in Utah?

We would like people stop generalizing about black people, and black people shouldn't allow them to. You know, people like to be on television. You can't get that white welfare recipient on television. So, ninety percent of the welfare recipients on television are blacks. They talk about all of the unwed black mothers. They just talk so much about that, but for 250 years we have had a whole lot of unwed black mothers that were impregnated by their slave owners and their children, but they don't talk about that.

They want us to forget about history: "Why don't we forget about slavery and go from here?" We just had the sesquicentennial. People came from Omaha to Salt Lake in covered wagons. They haven't forgotten about their history coming in the Valley, but they want us to forget about our history. And this is what everyone else talks about, is their history. You know, we have a whole lot of people from Royalty in England and they came here as indentured servants, but they want to talk about their history as Royalty in England, but we can say nothing about all of these years. I said 250 years of slavery. We had 300 years of slavery, because slavery ended legally in 1865. We didn't get to vote in Mississippi till 1965. Just think about it, we fought in about seven wars before we could vote.

One thing I would like is that every black person living should vote when they are of age, because a lot of people died for their right to vote and this is one of the things that NAACP did get involved with, not only registering people to vote, but also encouraging them to vote.

What we are concerned about now is the talk about the eliminating affirmative action. People use misquota; they don't say affirmative action, they say and use quotas: "We have so many black people that have benefited from affirmative action, don't want other black people to benefit from affirmative action." Now, affirmative action is not giving someone preferential treatment. If I get a decent job, people said it was preferential treatment. If this young man get a decent job, nothing wrong with it. You hear people say, "I don't want the stigma of affirmative action because, I have a job. I don't want to hear anyone say that I received a job, just because I was black." I would prefer to get a job because I'm black then not get one because I was black.

I don't think I ever received a job because I was black. When you work on one job for forty-two-and-a-half years, a lot of people remember that "Jim you had this job and that job," but they don't remember when I was a supervisor in the military. I was over twenty-seven MP's, I was the supervisor. Then, I went to the Defense Depot, Ogden as a laborer. I wore a necktie for three-and-a-half years on that job and I went out there and I was absolutely nothing. You even couldn't answer a question.