Q: Let's talk a little bit about how you came to be born in Ogden. A little bit about your parent's history coming out here.

My parents were born into the North, even though their parents were born into slavery. As children, my grandparents lived as slaves. However, they learned to read and write and became worthwhile, useful tax paying citizens. My father was born in a little village in Southern Indiana, Martinsburg. I've been there. My father was born in 1872, so he was born approximately 13 years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

My mother was born in 1885. Both of them were Victorian. They had wonderful ideals and believed in everything that America believes in: hard work, work ethic. So, I had wonderful parents. They came west from St. Paul, Minnesota in the latter part of 1912. They were married in Billings, Montana because they found work there.

It was temporary work, in October of 1913. They came into Salt Lake City around December of 1913. I was born in 1922, in Ogden. I have a brother that is now deceased, Scott Junior, named after my father. He was born in 1919 in Ogden. So, my parents came to Utah to look for more fuller opportunities, in order to build their lives. My father's brother worked for the Union Pacific Railroad as a dining car chef in Ogden. So, my father knew that he had some support, some family support in the Ogden area, but he lived in Salt Lake City for two years working at the Wilson Hotel. They now have razed that hotel, it's been torn down. My mother did domestic work in Salt Lake.

Q: What was it like growing up in Salt Lake?

It was a mixed bag. I had such a delightful home. My mother was an emaculate housekeeper. Her windows shone, her curtains were always stretched on curtain stretchers. I have had people tell me now that both my parents are dead and gone when they would come to our house, they felt they could eat on my mother's linoleum kitchen floor.

She was that way. It was kind of a strain, because she didn't want us to sit on the edge of the bed, because it would break the mattress down. My mother put up all of her fruit, put up vegetables. She made jelly. She was a magnificent cook, because she had done that in domestic service a lot. She made bread and we had wonderful Thanksgivings, sparse Christmases.

We weren't overly indulged as children, but we had wonderful memories. So, based on those memories growing up in Ogden was a mixed bag for me.

When I left the home and met the world I remember looking at my hands when I was about six, because we had to do Cordial dances, that was part of our recreation activity as little six-year-olds. The little white boys, my little partners didn't want to touch my hand. I couldn't understand why, because don't forget, that I came out of home where I had a lot of love and nurturing. So, I remember thinking even as a six-year-old walking home, which school was only a block and half from where I live, it was called Pingrey School, it has been torn down also. I was thinking what is the matter, and that was when I first realized that I was brown.

I had been looking out at my little white friends, so I think that is my first realization of being a different color. It hurt. It was a subtle thing where people would draw away from you as a child, so by the time I was twenty-one where I had so many experiences throughout my school life where people were so nice and they'd smile and then leave me alone.

I graduated from high school out of a class of over 800 and I was the only black in my graduating class. I believe the only black in the school, because it was a senior high school then and they only carried two grades, the eleventh and twelfth grades. So, it was lonely, it was disturbing.

We couldn't sit where we wanted to in the movie theatres. My father had always been a tax payer. He bought his house early on when he had moved to Ogden, in 1915. So, he was taxpayer, but as children we were not able to take advantage of any of the municipal facilities that were tax-supported by the property taxes. We couldn't swim with the other kids, we would just sit and look at them swimming at the municipal pools. We couldn't do anything. We couldn't get a soda in a drugstore. I remember a drugstore on 28th and Washington called Leanheart Drugstore. I had to pass that drugstore and come all the way home to Wall Avenue, where I was born, 29th and Wall, for my lunch. Lot's of the kids took their lunch and then went in there for a soda or got a sandwich in there.

Really it was most painful, but something happens with the human psyche and human spirit, that if you have love at home and good stable parents, you are able to absorb that and not let it through you completely. At least that has been my experience.

Q: Let's talk about African-American history nation-wide.

I feel very proud to be from African-American stock, good sound stock. But I'm very proud, I feel very American. The African- American history as most people know started in the agrarian economy in this country early on. Some historians say that we've been here for 400 years as slaves.

We worked for nothing. We built the country's economic status through our hard labor and blood. We were beaten, worked like animals, worked as stock! From this very strong, strong background and people shuffling around saying "Yaza" and not being able to talk properly.

That still goes on in our country where the schooling is not the best in some rural areas in parts of our country. Then you expect a product where you don't slap the victim if they have been victimized and say, "Why aren't you doing better," when they have been a product of victimization of schooling, people looking down their nose - when people looking down their nose are the people who have victimized the victim.

I'm very proud that I have come from strong people. People who have shuffled around and said "yaza," and "yaza boss," and whatever it took to survive. People in the general world community know that survival is what it is all about. Whatever you can do to survive, you do that so that your children can have a better life. I am the product of people who have survived in the hardest way without complaining.

Now people say, well that's sounds - without complaining. They stood up in their own dignified way, they stood up by being strong. They stood up by giving us the best life they could, the most secure life that they could so that we would be employable citizens, citizens that pay taxes, citizens that community could be proud of. That's the way they stood up. It isn't always fussing, although we must make our voices heard, we can't sit back and take anymore. No more can we do that.

I hear a lot of people in the wonderful Jewish community say, never again, never again will we suffer such a thing as the Holocaust. I say for the African-American community in this country, my country, that my people have built, in kinds of ways, not just in cotton, in construction, in every kind of way and some ways are not documented in history books. I say, never again will we go back to where we were before the days of Martin Luther King. Prior to the days that I lived from the late 1920s to the middle 1960s. Never again do we want to go back.

Q: Have things changed since 1964?

There has been a great, great, magnificent improvement since 1964 in human rights in rights for minorities and women. Great improvement. There is much, much more to be done. Whether it could be done through Affirmative Action as we know it, but there needs to be some mechanism in place to insure that minorities and women are able to reach their full potential in America. There is still a lot of work to do.

My husband often says that when the eyes meet the heart and they are working in continuum, then that's where change takes place. In other words, when you look at a person and look past color, where you have been conditioned to look at color and think of color as negative and think that white is right. You know that statement, "If you're black stay back, if you're brown stick around, if you're white you're right." Those are the things that I heard as a young person. Not from white people, but from even my own culture. We heard that. We didn't believe it, we laughed about it. We were echoing what the culture reflected back to us.

For some reason or another I have always seen myself first and foremost as a human being. I can remember a couple of instances in my life where I caught myself looking at myself and I wasn't prepared in the mirror to see my image reflected back to me, and I wondered who is this person because I look out on a white world all of the time. I am very proud of who I am. It has been very difficult to live in this society. There are subtle things that people think are in your head or that you're griping, or that you're moaning and groaning, but there's subtle things that you notice in how people treat white people as opposed to how they treat you. Some of the things aren't so subtle. We still have problems in depending upon who's showing us homes in the realty world. We have problems in finding decent homes and getting loans. Just in general, attitude.

I have worked so long in the public. I was a facilitator in human relations on my job at Hill Air Force Base, so I was taught many of the skills in looking to be aware of discrimination, and it heightened my awareness. In some ways it has made me uncomfortable because I can see through things that I couldn't see through before I had the training. The government can train you to do anything. They gave me much more training than I ever utilized in the classroom, but it has helped me a lot in my personal life in trying to understand people and get along with people.

So, I find that on Wall Avenue in Ogden, where I was born, where I've lived most of my life, on Grant Avenue, on all of the avenues below the mountains where wealthier or people that have more means live. We still find the same sorts of people milling around in the same streets, the same, same streets, you're finding minorities living. And when they decide to build condominiums or whatever they are going to do, to keep you in place. That may not be what they think, but that's what a lot of us think. Things have changed, and they haven't changed. It's very difficult to change people's hearts, and to have people see you as you see yourself if you have a good self-image of yourself, which I feel that I do.

Q: Give us an example of the way attitudes have changed at stores...say, at a cosmetic counter.

I find them, that I notice change, as I said in subtle ways. I could be standing in a very fine department store, possibly at a cosmetic counter looking at items that I want to purchase to make me look better. I have to take my turn. If I get to the counter before a white person gets there, a woman gets there, then I would have to wait for her. And in observing, as a result of my training that I've had in human relations, in race relations for my job, my position that I had at Hill, I'm able to pick up on little subtle nuances of people warmly serving the white person just a little different. They turn to me and very, I couldn't say discourteously, but very matter-of-fact. Their expression may even change. The smile may change. It isn't true with everyone because people differ, and some people are very, very sweet and kind with everyone, but there is always enough of the other kind of attitude toward a person.

I don't believe these stores where we're spending our... we're consumers... where I don't see a lot of Hispanics, I don't see a lot of Hispanic faces or Asian-American faces, or Black-American faces. I don't think they give human relations training in order to prepare the people to meet the public. They just come in and depending upon what their personality, they tell them to be courteous and polite because that would facilitate sales. But, it is very apparent. Attitudes are stiffening, and why I don't know because they say our economy is great, and so when the economy is great, we're not vying for each other's jobs. I find that we still as a mass, the Black race as a mass, still needs a leg up.

Q: Let's talk about the way you were able to transfer values and ethics to your children.

What my husband and I tried to instill in our children was a work ethic. He had a work ethic just from wanting to survive because he left home at an early age, and made it on his own. He went to the Salt Lake Barber College, became a professional barber, and has worked from early youth taking care of himself, so he had that instilled in him. I came out of a loving home, went to work, stumbled out to work when I was about fifteen, but it couldn't have taken care of me. Presented before me at all times was the work ethic, but this was a way to be successful. So, I went to work to help my husband because he was a self-made entrepreneur with his own business, having his own barber shop. He has never worked for anyone. He has never, he is a barber, and he has never cut hair in the basement. There is nothing wrong with that, he has just always had a place in an establishment. It took time to build his clientele, so I went to work.

We talk a lot in our home about being proficient in school, paying attention, success is where preparation meets opportunity. I had little signs posted on my children's bedroom door. We tried to show them by example that this is how you get ahead when you save your money and you're able to buy a little piece of land because property meant a lot to me. This was a way to get ahead, and, particularly, I wanted them to be able to have more training, schooling, than I had. I graduated from high school and didn't graduate from college until after I retired from Hill Field and went back to school and graduated from school as a grandmother. But, education has been our main goal, that and work in providing those kinds of incentives in speaking with our children. That's what I think we passed along to them.

Q: Let's talk about the climate on 25th street in Ogden.

Well, it's alive. 25th Street in Ogden, in the late 1920's and 1930's was alive, vibrant. Everything was going on. Good things, bad things, thing things. It was just a very interesting place. A lot of my friends, white friends, were afraid of 25th Street. They were afraid from reported stories, and there were shootings down there, and stabbings. But, as a child, don't forget now I'm going back to the late 1920's and the early 1930's, there were viable businesses on 25th street.

The Italian Americans had businesses, the Greek Americans had businesses, the Oriental Americans, the Asian Americans had businesses, good sturdy businesses, clothing shops. One Black American man owned his own building and had contracts with the Union Pacific Railroad and other railroads to accommodate porters and waiters when they came in. It was called the Porters and Waiters Club. In the basement of that establishment they had a little recreation room where musicians would jam, as they called it, and people from all over the city would come.

There was another Black entrepreneur, a woman, Mrs. Leger Davis. She came with her husband. He died before she did and she continued to, she owned her own building. It was called the Royal Hotel at 25th and Wall, near 25th and Wall, on Wall near 25th, and she also had a basement recreation area that was vibrant. We had live music sometimes to boast, but mostly live combos would come down there, Black musicians.

My life growing up in Ogden was unique in that they had what they called a Penn Tages circuit that came through. We didn't have TV as a child and as teenagers, but some of the performers that would be coming in from the West Coast coming east would stop here for what they called a gig. Duke Ellington, I actually have met his wife that he brought on his train. They came in on sleeping cars, and they had their wives. So, my mother was a great church worker, and some of the church sisters, as they called themselves, went down and waited, as they called it very formally, on these people, that is introduce themselves and ask would they like to come out into some of the Black homes in the community, since they would be there all day without anything to do.

My home on Wall Avenue, the house that I was born in, was one of the homes where Mrs. Ellington visited, and my mother fed her a cherry pie that she had made. She really said, "Well, do we have to go somewhere else? I'm so comfortable here." She was a cute little petite thing, and as a result of that, we had an opportunity at the Orphan Theater to hear the Duke Ellington band sitting up in the lodgers they had, box seats that hung over the stage. We had those wonderful seats as a result of the complimentary tickets Mrs. Ellington provided for us.

We also heard musicians, such as, Nat King Cole. They would come out to the Lagoon, even though at times early on we couldn't dance in the dance pavilion, but we could stand outside and listen. And then later in the 50's they opened it up for dancing. We weren't able to dance, go to skating rinks and dance early on in the 30's and 40's. In some instances in the 50's we never came together with white people as a community. We only came together as consumers. We spent our money, and they took our money in. In their tills, the money wasn't segregated by black and white, but the jobs weren't provided for us.

Q: Tell us about Lagoon. Did you go there often, when Robert Freed -- a Civil Rights activist -- opened the area to blacks?

Is that right? I did not know that.

Q: Did you go to Lagoon, then?

Well, I can tell you when I felt from my own personal experience it did open up. It was in the late 1950's to the best of my recollection, racial opportunities to participate in everything Lagoon had as far as amusement for Blacks seemed to open up. We could go into the dance pavilion, in the swimming pool. Of course all of the rides. We could always go on those.

When I was a little girl, I was a Methodist, and we would have our Sunday school picnics. We would have our baskets with fried chicken and potato salad, and then we'd go on the rides and we'd take transportation on, what they called a Bamberger Railroad that ran between Ogden, Salt Lake, and actually even ran out into Ogden Canyon to a place called a Hermitage. Sometimes we'd have our picnics in Ogden Canyon also.

Things opened up gradually after the 1954-desegregation law came out that laws should be desegregated. People began to think a little bit more. Individuals did things, but on the whole it was really what happened during, what I would call the revolution of the revolution. You might say where our youngsters were marching for their rights, and being hosed down in the South, and being jailed, and being beaten, and having dogs pounced upon them.

Those were the days that things began to change. The whole American community looked on those outrageous acts and said we can't have this in our country. Television played a great part in helping people understand what was really going on, not only in the South.

They saw it in the South, but we experienced it in a different form, just as variant, maybe without signs, but lack of jobs, lack of being able to move freely and live where we wanted to live, and move freely, and be friends with people we wanted to be friends with. Those things still exist to some extent, great extent.

Q: How do you see the future? Your parents paved the way for your opportunities...you paved the way for the next generation's opportunities. Can you provide a broad brush-stroke for the future?

Well, I see the future as a never-ending struggle, I'd like to say this, until we include in our curriculum's the contributions of all minorities. The great contributions in science, in education. There are many people that don't know the blood work of Dr. Charles Drew, a lot of people that do. They don't know that we have Black astronauts. Until we include and stress on TV other things other than gang violence for our Black youth and show that the majority of our youth are good, are law-abiding, are getting their education. My granddaughter is graduating from Duke University, we're leaving next week, and she's getting her Masters of Business Administration.

In Virginia, and North Carolina, and South Carolina, and all throughout the country, not only back there and in the West, young Black people realize that they must have education to get ahead. Until this is brought out more, until stories are highlighted on TV about this kind of thing, until people, of course I know the shocking kind of stories attract people, until history is written, it's all inclusive. I think it's going to be a continual struggle. We seem to march ahead ten steps, and sometimes we push back five. I think it's going to be a struggle.

My answer, short answer to that, is that we have to be ever vigilant as far as making sure that all people's rights are protected, but particularly those without the power, money power, political power. You'll notice throughout the country that the mayors, we have lots and lots of mayors, no governors. We need to be moving in other directions and seeing people and their abilities as humans rather than the first Black mayor, the first Oriental governor. We need to just view people and maybe make it incidental that they are of a different culture, and we're all of the human race so I like to talk about being of different culture.

Q: Let's tie in just one more explanation about your employment at Hill Field. I would imagine that you made marvelous contributions there just from your persona and what you did on the job. Let's talk about that phase of your life and the successes you were able to achieve.

Well, I was working doing domestic work when I had a skill. I was a high school graduate and I had a skill and that's so important even in this day and age for every young person. I can't say too much for having some sort of skill that one can build upon, so I took the typing skill and built upon that. My progress, since I didn't have a college degree was...well, it was hard work. My career's been thirty-two years. In some ways I feel that it's bitter sweet because I came along before Affirmative Action. The greater part of my career was before Affirmative Action, and as a result of Affirmative Action I received nothing, absolutely nothing. It's all been hard work, and whatever I've received, I earned it, I earned it. But the benefit of having that government job, a lot of people poo-poo the government, but I worked very hard and the people around me worked very hard.

I was what they called an item manager. We supported, during the Vietnamese conflict, parts of the Air Force, well, Hill was responsible for all wheels, but brakes and struts, and for different parts of the fuselage and different parts of the plane. We had to order and compute requirements to buy these things, and then the computations were sent to the buyers and procurement, and they bought these things and we were responsible for all planes that were down in the Vietnam country. We were responsible for certain areas of the aircraft that we were buying for.

It was a very important job and the computations taught me to be very, very careful with keeping books. That is carried over in my personal life, and that I'm able to help my husband with his business. I'm very, very, I'm using an old-fashioned word, persnickety about figures, and about keeping track of things, and so my government career has helped me a lot that way.

With the human relations and the race relations aspect, where I was a facilitator in race relations, I learned a lot about eye contact, how to tell by people's body language how they were feeling. When you're in a group, facilitating a group, you learn a lot about group behavior. We had a very sensitive subject that we were talking about -- race.

It was mandatory that they went because during that time they had had a lot of trouble in the Department of Defense with the trooper, I call them, with the Armed Service people fighting each other because of lack of good race relations in their upbringing or whatever. They brought them together and told them that the common enemy was in this country. But, we had to protect our country from another, whatever was out there that might threaten us, and that we would have to learn a little bit if they were going to live together. They do very closely, people within the Department of Defense (Army, Navy, Marine, Coast Guard.) They lived together and they see they have a single vision and goal. I liked that motto that they have. It's outstanding. You find people that have traveled the world to keep our country strong and in the line of defense. Their attitudes toward race are just a little gentler and more understanding than people that are clustered into their own groups, and we only meet in the consumer market. We meet them where we have to spend our money, or where we go to school, and then we go back into our clusters again.