Phyllis Seabolt Interview One

Chandler Smith: Thanks again for taking part in our oral history projects. We appreciate that you would come in through the snow and take time to talk with us about these things.

Phyllis Seabolt: I’m happy to do so

CS: Very good, very good. So first question, as you know. Would you please just tell us your name and your address?

PS: My name is Phyllis Seabolt, and I live at Friendship Village, 1400 North Drake, here in Kalamazoo.

CS: Very good. And Ms. Seabolt, people often have an interesting story relating to their name or why they are named what they are. Do you have a story like that?

PS: Well my mother tells me that she was reading a book written by an abolitionist who was, was friends with a family, the Wheatley family, that were 00:01:00very compassionate slave owners who took into their family a small girl child that was born of one of their slaves, and she was kind of sickly and they kept her inside the house and she was not assigned to the work crew in the fields, and they taught this little girl to read and write and she became a playmate of their own child. The family was named Wheatley and they named the little girl Phillis and so mother named me Phyllis after Phillis Wheatley, this former slave who became the first black woman to be a poet, published poet, in this country 00:02:00and the second woman to be published as a poet. And I’ve enjoyed looking up her poems and I’m really proud to have been named after Phillis Wheatley, although her mother spelled her name with an “I” and in the hospital they didn’t get that spelling, so I am P-h-y-l-l-i-s. Phillis Wheatley was her name.

CS: Very good. Growing up, what-or who in your family was very important to you?

PS: Well, I find that hard to answer without giving what was important about each member of the family because their feelings I reacted to and who I am today is because of my family and their interests. First, my grandfather was a farmer, 00:03:00and when it was time for my mother to go to high school, there was no high school in the area, and he lent the farm out on shares and moved in town so that mother could go to high school and County Normal, which allowed her to teach in the county schools - teach grades 1 through 8, after her graduation from Normal. So that’s my grandfather who began all of this. My mother, of course, was as I say a teacher, and her influence on the family in that when we would have dinner 00:04:00in the evening we all ate together, sat around the table. After we said grace and passed the food, first question of the evening at the dinner table was, “What did you do in school today?” And so education has always been a center point of our family. And I think of my father as having helped develop some attitudes of mine in the way he handled problems. When I grew up in the early 30s in Dowagiac, Michigan, where I was born, name-calling was common, and I was often called the “N” word as I would go to school and come back. And then at 00:05:00dinnertime when mother said, “How did things go today?” when I reported that there was one house I passed everyday going to school where the kids called me names and made going to school unpleasant for me, my father said, “I’m coming home early tomorrow and we’ll see about this.” So he came home from work early, changed his clothes, took me by the arm, and we went to the neighbor’s house where I was mistreated, and my father said, “This is not acceptable. I will not have my daughter treated this way.” And he went on to explain, in a very dignified way, who he was, what he stood for, what he 00:06:00expected of us, and what he expected of his neighbors. And he solved the problem by discussion, having that person understand where he’s coming from, understand where the other person developed their feelings, and eventually the two families became friends. So grandparents, mother and father have all been such an influence. I would have to say, family influences, not just one person.

CS: And you, you mentioned that your father would sit down and he would, he would have a discussion with someone or with your neighbors in order to clarify the problems that they were having. What in his life do you know would influence 00:07:00him to act that way? What, what kind of experiences did he - where, where is he from, first of all, if you don’t mind me asking?

PS: I was born in Dowagiac. He lived also on a farm about ten miles outside of Dowagiac going toward Niles, Michigan, called Sumnerville. And he was able to go to school through the eighth grade before he had to drop out of school and help his family economically. That was back in 1915 or so, back before he went into World War II, I, excuse me - World War I. And he was stationed in France as well as in this country. And when I see what experiences I had as a child, I can 00:08:00only imagine that he experienced the same thing, only more so, and it was just his personality to talk things out with people. He was never aggressive to the point that he would turn people off. He usually was able to talk them into seeing his side. And he was a great talker and often addressed political days as the main speaker at an occasion in our community.

CS: Well that answers our second question. What, so what besides education and, 00:09:00and a discussion, a neighborly discussion about things, what other values were very important to your family when you were growing up?

PS: I think they all center around family togetherness, support, education being primary to the aims and purposes of our family. Both mother and father were united in their efforts to see that we had the most advantage that was possible in a restricted society for us to grow to our full extent. For instance, we could not join the Boy Scouts as a group of people, as a minority, so my dad 00:10:00started a Scout troupe. And it was of course made up of the, as in those days we were referred to as Negros. It was ref-uh-a group of Negro boys who otherwise would have had no access to school clubs or that sort of thing, and in later years those young men would come back and thank my father for having provided for them the opportunity to be Boy Scouts. My mother did the same with Campfire Girls and Girl Scouts. And they both were interested in organizations that were available to children our age, but not available to us as individuals solely on the basis of race.

CS: Then do you know - do you have another specific childhood incident that you can share with us that would, that would give us a sense of what it was like to grow up just outside of Dowagiac in Michigan in the 1930s?

PS: I would say in high school when I did my first written exam in English class our first assignment was to write a story about what you did over the summer and 00:12:00tell us about your family, how many children there are, what your mom and dad do, and where you go to vacation and so forth. So I wrote a story, telling about my family, that I had a younger brother at that time and how my mother was interested in church work and how she was a secretary of the church convention and that my father was a well-read man and he subscribed to five newspapers, and I went on with the rest of the story, and when I got my paper back the teacher had written on the back page above where I told about the newspapers, “Isn’t this an exaggeration?” in red with a question mark. So at the dinner table 00:13:00that night when the family said, “What’s happening in school today,” I told about the paper I got back with the low mark and “Wasn’t this an exaggeration,” and my father said, “We’ll take care of this”. The next day, again, came home from work --I was in ninth grade then -- changed clothes. The two of us went back and had an interview with the teacher in her room. Under his arm he took a copy of each of the five newspapers. They were the Dowagiac News, The South Bend Tribune, The Cassopolis Vigilant, The Chicago Defender, and The Detroit Tribune, and he explained that although he was unable to complete high school, he had always been interested in current events and the situation 00:14:00in the world in which we lived, and he had developed an intense interest in reading, and the papers of course had our address - they were delivered to our home, so we had proof that he took five newspapers, read five newspapers, and he did not appreciate the comment on the paper and he hoped that she understood the situation now. That same attitude that he had all along in dealing with people -- to tell the truth, to explain situations - and again, the teacher had eventually all four of the Ash children in school and was a great friend.

CS: You mentioned that your mother was a secretary at the church.

PS: Uh-huh.

CS: Can you kind of explain to us what your family’s relationship to this church was and what kind of church it was?

PS: It was Second Baptist Church of Dowagiac Michigan, which was a member of the Chain Lake Association, which is part of the Baptist Convention. And Chain Lake Church was settled by my forefathers both, on both sides of the family, and that church was over 100 years old and it was significant that mother was the secretary of the convention and also a descendant of the founders of the church, which is still in existence.

CS: And so you went as a family, I’m sure, every Sunday.

PS: Uh, that church was in the country where we grew up. We attended Second Baptist Church in the city of Dowagiac.

CS: Okay, okay. And then, moving on, what is, what is your relationship to Kalamazoo then if you grew up in Dowagiac?

PS: Uh, when I was a junior in high school [clears throat] I elected to go to Kalamazoo to school because it was in-state and I had a scholarship and could major in the topic I was interested in, which was teaching, and Kalamazoo had the most famous college for teachers in the country at Western. It was called 00:17:00Western State Teacher’s College. Long before it was a university, it was internationally known as an outstanding teacher’s college. So I headed for Kalamazoo.

CS: And you’ve been here since then?

PS: And as it happened, I accepted a job here in town and I’ve been in Kalamazoo ever since, except for a couple of years when we lived in Chicago as a Seabolt family, while my husband was in Chiropody school in Chicago.

CS: Can you explain to us then what it was like being in Kalamazoo and what years you were -- what year you came to Kalamazoo

PS: I came to Kalamazoo [cough] -- excuse me -- in 1943 to go to college, and as 00:18:00I say I was at Western. At that time, we could not live on the campus. When I say we, I’m referring to minority students were not accepted on campus. So we all had to live in the city and we solved the problem by the generosity of local families of color. Negros, as we were called at that time, I say, who opened their homes to us, allowed us to rent bedroom space, and to give us space in their refrigerators so that we could keep food and eat at home because we were 00:19:00not allowed to live on the campus -- or at that time just eat at a sandwich shop on the way to school.

CS: And how did that particular experience -- not being able to live on campus at a school that you, you gained acceptance to, after having grown up and seeing how your father treated all of the issues that came up -

PS: Well I solved the problem by working in “private family”, as did many of us. And working in private family meant that instead of paying for board and room, I worked for board and room. So I cleaned the homes, did the cooking-- for that - and watched the children, and just became domestic help… with no pay in 00:20:00return, but for board and room. So that, for two years, that’s how I got through school with my parents paying tuition and books and so forth, and I worked for board and room. Back in those days that was so common for students to work for part of their schooling that that was not unusual. What made it more unusual for me was that I was considered domestic help and going to school on the side, so I had a green and white uniform and a blue and white uniform. And I ate in the kitchen and served my employers, so they were, in the dining room. 00:21:00On Sundays I ate at the dining room with them. During the week their young child and I ate at the kitchen table.

CS: And so how did that - growing up and kind of understanding race relations - how did that make you feel? How did not being able to eat at the same table most of the days of the week, how did that make you feel?

PS: I had learned long before that things were not equal and not necessarily fair between the races, but I also knew that if I wanted to progress beyond doing dishes for someone else all my life that I had to get an education and that was first in my mind. I could eat a peanut butter sandwich I had made that 00:22:00morning and taken to school if it meant that was lunch for me. That was okay ‘cause I was able to go to school and every year I was closer to that degree.

CS: And the fact that you weren’t allowed to live on campus, did that make you feel like you weren’t part of the community?

PS: Yes, it did. But again, you set a goal, and you head toward that goal. I knew that living on campus was not all there was to the college world and that although I was not living on the campus, I was able to go to the class and when I took notes in class and read the book I could get through the class, whether 00:23:00they called on me to recite or whatever the restriction was, it was to my advantage to keep my ears open and to learn everything that was possible. They could take away the right to live in a certain place or eat in a certain place, but they could not restrict my mind, and so my learning was up to me.

CS: And how did your fellow students treat you? How did they treat you when you were in school?

PS: Most of them were neutral. They had strange feelings about our society and the unwritten restrictions that we lived by. There was not much difference 00:24:00between growing up black in the south and the north. The difference was that in the south there were signs that said you cannot sit here or you cannot eat here. Up north there were no signs. It was an understood fact which you lived with in anger or you lived with saying it’s not always going to be like this. I’m going to learn despite the inconvenience of discrimination and segregation. The life on campus was interesting in that since I could not live in the dorm, I was restricted in living in the home management house which was part of my teaching block that I had to do in my junior year. And the head of the department 00:25:00suggested since my grades were so good, perhaps I would be willing to accept an ‘A’ in my home management and not stay in the house. And I was very upset at that and when a friend who was also in the department heard the story, she said, “Let’s go right back to her and tell her that I’ll be your roommate in the house, and we did, and I did, and I earned my own ‘A.’

CS: Were there any very difficult times? It seems like you coped with this--with 00:26:00all the discrimination very well. But do you ever remember a moment when it was too much for you, or people were too aggressive?

PS: I fought the discouragement that came. I think that was maybe my low moment. When with outstanding grades and awards, they looked at me and said, “I’m sorry we can’t place you because there are no Negro teachers teaching home economics between here and Kalamazoo--uh, between Kalamazoo and Chicago one direction and here and Detroit the other direction.” There are no black teachers in high school. And then when one of the school board members said, 00:27:00“We’ll look into this,” and suggested my name, and Dr. Loy Norrix, whom the school now is named after, said we’ll give it a try. If there are any parents who object to their student having a black teacher, we’ll review it. But otherwise let’s give it a try.” And they did, and I stayed for 21 years before I moved on to teaching at the University, which had told me they couldn’t help me.

CS: So what was it like teaching at Loy Norrix, then during -

PS: Oh, I taught in the junior high, at South Junior High.

CS: Oh.

PS: And, I will bring a picture that shows the ninth grade class at South Junior High. There was one black student at the time at Vine School where I began, and one teacher. That was me. And it stayed that way for about eight years before we got another teacher of color.

CS: Did you ever feel like you didn’t have a voice teaching in that school then? Or did you feel like--what was your relationship like with the other teachers?

PS: No problem whatsoever. I was teaching a subject. The color of my skin and 00:29:00what I taught had no relationship with each other, and the students seemed to feel the same way. No problems. I made it all seem so unnecessary that we lived through this period of discrimination and segregation in our society that did not have to be there, that we were living in an atmosphere that we had created ourselves. We, as a people, had decided to make a separation between the races and in actuality it was something we created ourselves and made our own problems.

CS: When did you first become aware of your racial identity before you went to school?

PS: I just always knew that I was different. But at home I was told my difference made no difference. The color of my skin did not limit my mind or my aspirations or my hopes and I was a person with dignity and worth. And so I had a good background for facing the inequalities I found. I put them behind me and kept moving.

CS: And during the period of--I know there were various types of protests in Kalamazoo during the Civil Rights Movement, especially the Van Avery Drug Store. Do you remember--do you have any stories from that period of time? Or did you take part in any of those protests?

PS: Yes, I did. And they were rightly organized, had foundation, had credibility. They needed --the protests needed to be made, and we did whatever we could to highlight the inequities that we were facing in Kalamazoo--particularly in the, in employment and then housing, and it was a 00:32:00joyous participation that we had in highlighting for the community - Things are unequal, unfair, unjust. This community must change. And it was done in a peaceful way that highlighted the fact that equality and fairness can come about if people attach, attack the problem with integrity.

CS: And did that seem to be the overall mindset of the entire community of Kalamazoo, or was that just a specific mindset that was shared among the protesters?

PS: No, it did not come easy. There were people who were opposed, but once the 00:33:00law was passed in the mid-60s and made discrimination and segregation illegal, that was the beginning of the change in the law and injustice was served--justice was served by the law. However, change in people’s hearts is still something, that is something we must work on. I fear daily for President Obama’s safety. I think it’s remarkable that people could vote for him and at the same time resent the fact that he is a black man, ruling this country and 00:34:00some people still make that color difference in their hearts, still.

CS: And you say that the protests in, in Kalamazoo during the 60s, I would assume, they had, they were, they had a good foundation, they were stable. Who organized the protests that, that occurred?

PS: A small people [sic] of good will of both races. And there were black ministers involved. They had probably the most influence. The black churches were able to get people of good will of both races to march and it was not just 00:35:00a protest of the black community. There were good people of good will on both sides.

CS: And what, what did it seem like the crowds were mostly made up of, of African American members of the community or of white, or was it even, was it split kind of?

PS: It was split.

CS: Split. And there was no tension ever within the group --

PS: Oh, I can’t say that. I don’t know what tensions might have been underneath that were not visible. But it was viable and successful. And, we made a point.

CS: What, what was your proudest moment from -- out of all of the protests you went to? What was the most proud moment you felt?

PS: I don’t know that there was a single moment - all of these changes have come slowly and sometimes begrudgingly. And we can just take joy in knowing that legally this country has changed, that no longer can the single wish of a person who is not -- broad-minded enough to see this country as an amalgamation of people -- who is in charge anymore.

CS: And how far do you think our nation, as a whole, has come since being able to witness this change throughout your life -- how far do you think we’ve come since the Civil Rights Movement?

PS: Well, when you look at the situation in Kalamazoo, for instance, the President of this university -- at Western has been over -- a person of color. The president of Kalamazoo College is a person of color; the mayor of the city is a person of color; the director of the Kalamazoo symphony orchestra is a person of color. When you look at people who have accomplished despite of, in 00:38:00spite of, of problems - it looks as if we have come a long, long way. When you look at the number of people who are unemployed, when you look at the number of people who are -- of, wanting as far as our economy is concerned, who are in jobs that are well paying, the number is skewed around again. And although there are a few people who have accomplished a great deal, the highest number of our children who have inadequate food, and who are hungry, are our children and 00:39:00three-quarters -- are -- of them are children of color. And so when you look at pay for jobs, most of the low-paying jobs are among people of color. And we still have a long way to go. And so, it’s kind of a dichotomy -- that we think perhaps things have changed and life is different and there is no more segregation. There is no more legal segregation and discrimination, but in reality we are still facing some hurdles in finding justice and equality on all 00:40:00phases of American life. So we still have a ways to go.

CS: Then, if we still have a ways to go, what lessons do you think our generation could learn from the civil rights struggle that you were involved in, in order to advance it?

PS: A basic change in attitude and a realization of life’s realities and doing exactly the kind of thing you’re doing here is looking at the problem, dissecting it. That’s something we have been reluctant to do. And I think your generation is going to be more open-minded to ideas and results and causes and 00:41:00-- finding a way to solve the problems that we have created for ourselves. So I think, kind of, it’s, it’s up to you -- and up to us to look at problems and ways to solve them together and a willingness to open up to facts.

CS: (Mm-kay?). Then you mentioned earlier that you went on to teach at a university -- was this Western Michigan?

PS: Mm-hm.

CS: And what did you teach at Western Michigan?

PS: I taught in the home economics department in the public schools, and it has 00:42:00enlarged at the university level to include -- of -- concerns about consumers and family life. So it is a combination of family and consumer sciences.

CS: And when you taught there was it still segregated -- was campus still segregated so only white students could live on campus?

PS: No that was solved a little before the time of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. In the late 50s Western opened up to allowing students of color on campus.

CS: And what year did you start working at Western Michigan?

PS: 1950.

CS: 1950 -- okay. And were you able to experience how sentiment between students, minorities and white students -- were you able to -- what was it like being able to, to watch that change.

PS: Excuse me I misspoke; I went to Western in 1970 --

CS: ‘70, oh okay, okay -- so after that.

PS: As a teacher--

CS: Okay, okay. And I’m sure by that point that lots of the tensions in between the students were solved.

PS: Yes.

CS: Okay. So you never--you - how, how did facing all of this discrimination, how did that not discourage you from wanting to -- from wanting to get an education?

PS: You keep your eye on the prize.

CS: Very good. Are there any other notable moments that you have from, from your -- did, what did, what did teachers that you worked with think of you taking part in, in the protests around, around Kalamazoo? Were you, were you supported by your -- the teachers you worked with?

PS: Some. But no one ever became unhappy enough about the situation to contest it or to make an issue of it with me. I think, perhaps, no one wants to be a bigot. So people are, who are not too happy just don’t make an issue of it, and I don’t make an issue of it. If they are not too happy with me, I ignore them.

CS: Very good. But you, you never witnessed any, any resistance to change, while you were working at the school, being the only teacher that, that was not white?

PS: No, no one -- as I say -- made an issue of it.