Charles Warfield Interview Two

Sierra Moore: Alright, this is Sierra Moore conducting the follow-up interview with Dr. Charles Warfield on February 14th, 2013. Thank you again for joining us this afternoon.

Charles Warfield: My privilege.

SM: At the end of our last session, you had begun to talk about coming back to Kalamazoo from Oregon after being involved with the SDS and meeting people in the Black Power Movement. How did you, or do you, feel about the ideologies and the militancy of those groups?

CW: Well, that was really new, and much of my, much of the explanation I got came from my older brother who was already there. I think I told you he was part of the reason why I was at the University of Oregon. And he began to explain, you know, what this whole movement was about. And at that time, there 00:01:00was an awakening on most campuses around the whole question of, of social activism. And so, it was … and, and I think I already talked about that, that California was probably one of the hot beds in the country for social action, social justice, sort of movement. And so, it took me some, some time to understand, and, and when I say some time, it wasn't a year. It was, you know, it was continually being immersed. A, at the same time, I was running into folk who were part of the Black Power movement coming out of Portland, and of course coming out of California, and so they began to talk about that. At the same … 00:02:00there was (sighs) I-I'm trying to think what they called it. It was a convention. It was called …and I think it was in Little Rock, Arkansas. And a bunch of us went to this big convention, and we went there because of the Little Rock School Case, which I think had been settled by that time. I mean, if my memory serves me well - matter of fact, I'm sure it was. But it was sort of commemorating, you know, the desegregation of the Little Rock Schools - really not knowing that that desegregation movement was gonna move out of the South and move into the North as well. Once you got a court case out of it, then all the 00:03:00places began to be challenged. But it was, it wasn't a slow process. It was different because when you come out of the church, often times you separate. That militancy doesn't show up. It's, you know, "God will provide," and "This is the burden that you bear," and, and, you know, "Your reward is not here; it'll be when you die," and all that kind of business. And this new group was saying, "No, no, no, no, no. That's gonna happen now, and if we die, we're gonna do, we're gonna die trying to make it happen now." 'Cause, hadn't talked to anybody lately that had died and come back and told anybody about what was going on on the other side. And so, it was very different for me, as a p--p--preacher's son, but didn't take long to establish what your place was.

The other (clears throat), the other piece (coughs) that was significant at the University of Oregon, was that I was a graduate student. (coughs) Many people who were involved were undergraduate (clears throat, drinks water, coughs) students, so they looked to those of us who were graduate students for leadership. (coughs) And so, and, and I think I said before that my brother had already established his self, so it wasn't difficult for me. (clears throat) Did I answer your question?

SM: Yes.

CW: Okay.

SM: Yeah, thank you. So then after being so involved at the University of Oregon, when you came back to Kalamazoo … what, what prompted you to come back to Kalamazoo?

CW: Oh, it was home. Oh yes. Oh yeah, this was home. I had offers to come to the University of Minnesota, be a professor there, and I think Antioch asked me to come, and they made offers, both of them made offers, but I really wanted to come home because of, of the reputation of my father and my family. And people knew you, and I had a lot of friends (clears throat) at every level of income, particularly in the black community. So, Kalamazoo has, is, and was my, always 00:06:00my first love, and I say that unashamedly. And so that's why I do what I do because I think that Kalamazoo can be what it needs to be for everyone, so that keeps me in the, the fire most of the time.

SM: What was Kalamazoo like, civil rights-wise, when you, when you came back?

CW: It was fairly calm, although everybody was touched by, by people like Martin King, Martin King Jr. And Dr. King's reputation was floating around, and th--the thing that made it even more eh,exciting for those of us who were sort of steeped in the church was that he was a pastor. And so we said, "Well, that 00:07:00makes it alright for us too--" although his methods and techniques were often signed--often-times assailed by the more radical-thinking students.

And when I came back, I came back with a full head of hair, a huge afro, and my children's hair was in, you know, were in afros, my wife's hair. And I remember, I came to church. My sister and her husband were pastoring in Chicago, and we had come into town, and they didn't, they knew we were coming, but they had not seen what we looked like at that time. (laughs) Now I remember when I came in my sister recognized me and told me to come up to the front. And so we came in the 00:08:00church and we sat in the front row, and somebody said to my mother, "Did you see Chucky come in?" And she said, "No, where is he?" She said, "He's sitting right over there." She said, "I don't see him." She was looking right at me. She said, "I don't see." She said, "That's him with all that hair," (laughs) she said. And after church my mother came up to me and asked me, she said, "Is that you, Chucky?" And I said, "Yep it is." And so it was a very different Chucky that came back from Oregon. And we came on periodically, you know, for Christmas and things like that, but it was a steady movement toward outward show of where you stood in this whole civil right, social activism, social justice movement. That 00:09:00was really the mark of who you were.

SM: You mentioned last time that you began picketing around Kalamazoo. What, coming back to your hometown, why did you decide to use forms of non-violent protest after being involved in the league that you were in, and--

CW: Well, the, your, your, the Christian background was still there. And, oh, I had a lot of respect for Dr. King and the non-violent movement. And, when we saw that, and we heard him talk about having gone to talk with Gandhi in India and what he had done, and the things he had picked up on, and we saw what was going on with a lot of the students in the South and what was happening to them. It 00:10:00was very difficult to believe that you were gonna be able to, to withstand that kind of pressure. We were hoping that people would not assail us or attack us, but I think at, at some point we were, we were fully ready to deal with it if we had to, and I'm saying dealing with it. I don't think there would have been a peaceful demonstration at that point.

But at the same time, there were also those who, who said, "I can't be as calm and as reserved and as controlling of yourself as you have been able to be. I want to tell you that upfront." And so, they would say things like, "Don't you get excited. We'll get excited for you." You know, these sort of friends and folk and church folk who - they were in church, but they didn't mind, you know, 00:11:00taking their coat off and and getting down into some fist-to- cuffs. And so they would tell us that kind of thing: "Don't you fight. You just speak. We'll do--we'll, we'll get the, we'll get what needs to be done from this way. If they jump you, then we got them." That kind of thing. So you sort of knew that.

I got chased across the tracks, the North Central Railroad Tracks. There's always a dividing line between black and white, and I got chased across the track by some white youth. And, and they didn't understand that that was the dividing line, and they came across the tracks. And when I got - I bet you I wasn't two blocks across the tracks- I just got out of the car and just stood 00:12:00outside, and they all rolled up. (shakes head) Shouldn't have done that, because within minutes - I mean, black people were coming from everywhere. And it was on a weekend too. And so people were kind of out and about. And they said, "Chucky, what's the matter?" I just pointed at them, and they knew they were in big trouble. They, they weren't, they were only a block away from the railroad track, maybe two blocks away from the railroad track. And they, they, they took off and went. And, and that was sort of, you know, once they crossed back over the railroad tracks, people didn't want to chase them. But that, that was what I came home to in many instances.

The other piece was that, there are extremely few of us who went into higher education. All the crowd that, that we knew and had gone, and, and not basically not gone to school with, but - because I went to University High at Western, 00:13:00which when I- and I think I talked earlier about my brother and I, and a few others, were the only blacks on that campus. But we were some of the - we were absolutely, you know, miniscule in terms of numbers, that went to school. So when you came back to the community, you came back with, with status that you - and I had a Masters before I left, which people knew, and then I went away to school. But then I returned back. It was like the prodigal son has returned back home. And so I told everybody, I said, "I came back because this is Kalamazoo and we want to get some stuff going" and so forth and so on. So, that gave you - plus, plus you had your dad as an icon, okay, and your brother sort of as an icon, and so - and my brother, John, was two years older than myself. 00:14:00He turned out to be much more militant than I did. I mean he was much more in your face than I was. And … but he, he, he, he also taught me, cause I would go to visit him in Texas, and Texas, I said, "Man, you, you really believe in living dangerously." And, but he was unafraid as, as I was unafraid here.

You know, at some point you say, 'Well, if you're gonna die for it, you might as well die for something," you know. And that, that's really what happens at some point when you, when social justice really becomes a part of your fabric. I mean, you don't want to die. You don't want to have confrontation. You don't want to have to fight anybody. But you have to speak to it; you, you have to speak to it, which means in many instances you're, you are not gonna be accepted 00:15:00by everybody, and in many instances, it's your own people. You know, they say, "Well, you're stirring up trouble for all of us." Yeah, I do that, you know. But, that's the way it has to be."

SM: Last time you mentioned, when you were talking about picketing, people would call your father and ask them to, or ask him to stop--

CW: "Pull him off," yeah.

SM: What was - could you speak more about that, having--

CW: Well, you--

SM: Father and son--

CW: My father was connected in the city. Not to the point that we, he was on any boards or things like that, but people in the city knew he was a man of integrity. And they knew they could probably talk to him. And I got, you also have to understand, there were probably only three major black churches in town 00:16:00at that time: Second Baptist, where my father was a pastor, Mount Zion Baptist Church, and Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Those were three churches. So my father would be on committees that were multiracial. At that time, the other two pastors didn't, so if they - for instance, we, we had, my father exchanged pulpits with the other white ministers. As far as I know, none of the black ministers did that. So that meant that maybe First Baptist, which is downtown church, would, their pastor would come and preach at our church, and my father would go to preach at their church. And that sort of put him out there, amongst the, the, the folk that most people didn't come in contact with. 00:17:00And so that gave him some leverage, in terms of saying when things did not go well, or things did not go right, or there were things happening, they would tend to call him, or he would call them and say, "You need to deal with this, because if you don't, then it's gonna be trouble." And, and nine times out of ten, it was dealt with, okay. So he'd, he, he was well connected in that way.

And he was al - you know, we were prodding him to be more militant all the time, you know. "You know, Dad you've got to take a stand on this." And so when they would come to him and say, "Your boys are on the corner," he would say, "I can't touch that. I mean they're doing, what, what they think is right. I can't touch that, and won't touch it." And so, that's basically where he stood on it. And he 00:18:00survived. I mean he's kept his connections. And as a result of that, there are a lot of things that happened in Kalamazoo that, that's not probably written down anywhere, but Kalamazoo began to open up and say, "Yeah, we, we--"

One of the things Kalamazoo did have is a sense of pride, because during the desegregation piece, the, the white people in Flint burnt up half of the buses. They set the whole thing on fire over there. Well, when we desegregated, somebody fire--went out to firebomb one of the buses, and I think--or the buses--but they only fire bombed one and whoever made it didn't make a very good Molotov cocktail, right. But, the, the community, Kalamazoo community, said, "If 00:19:00we're gonna be in the newspaper and on the television, it's not going to be for that," okay. And they sent out, they sent the word out to every place, "We will not tolerate that kind of -," and we never had it. We only had that one incident where somebody tried to firebomb one bus. And they said, "No, no, no, no, no, we, Kalamazoo, will not be known for that kind of mess," okay. Now, they did take the desegregation order to the courts, and all through that business, and they lost. They paid a lot of money, 'cause I was on the school board when they did it. But, there was always that sense of pride, "We don't want--we, we can be known for a lot of things, but not that" (clears throat). So -

SM: Are there any specific stories about your, your father's, or your family's 00:20:00experience that you'd like to share?

CW: Well I think, you know, we talked a little bit earlier about shipping people up in casket--but, that, that, that's only one incident where there was a, there was word that, that black people in either in Mississippi or Alabama were being held against their will to, to, to pick crops. And so, at night when they would, in the evening after the sun goes down, they had people out there with rifles watching them herd them back into these huts or wherever they lived. And one guy, one of the guys broke loose and got to the local undertaker. And I don't know the, the, the intricacies of what happened, but that undertaker contacted the undertaker here, and I think his name was Prather, wa--wasn't Prather, his father, he--it was Mr. Patton, that's all I know. 'Cause a lot of times your 00:21:00folks, when you, you never knew a person's first name, 'cause you were never expected to ever call a grown up by their first name. That's Mr., Mrs., you know, so I never knew his first name. And I knew Prather, because that was the undertaker's son, and he knew my brother. So my brother said, "Hi--that's Prather Patton." I said, "Wha--what is--" He said, "That's--his dad is the undertaker." So they got in touch with Mr. Patton and they shipped him up in a hollow-bottom casket. And, as I was saying earlier, the, my house was just full of people. I mean we had a very small house, and you could hear all these people downstairs. So we snuck downstairs, and there was a door that was closed - get downstairs and we listen to the - my brother and I were fairly young at that time, and we said, well I remember saying the next day to my mother--they stayed 00:22:00till late--and I said, "What happened," and she said, "You don't need to know. You don't need to know what happened." And so my brother and I looked at each other, and we, we figured it was trouble of some kind, but we didn't know what.

And then later, when we moved away from that position and moved over on Church Street, when I was older, maybe 17--16, 17, 18, I said, "Mom, a long time ago, there were a whole lot of people in the house, and I asked you when--" and then she told me that story, about, you, you know, my dad, and the deacons had gone down and got this guy out of the, out of this casket. They brought him to the house. He was at the house. They fed him, and then the, the deacons of the church drove him to Detroit, and then on over into--there was a group out of Detroit that drove him on over into Canada, because they figured that whoever--when they found out he'd gotten away. Now, what happened after that, if 00:23:00I remember, our mother said that dad called the FBI, and the FBI went down and broke, broke the whole thing up. But that was how she had seen it, and that's what, you know, I think my dad told her what had happened.

SM: Your mother, being the, the pastor's wife, did she ever involve herself in any--

CW: Uh-uh.

SM: --in anything?

CW: Well she, it's, (laughs) that's a good question. My mother had a temper that was a short fuse, and she believed in the, the tenet in the Bible, which says, "If you spare the od, you spoil the child." And my mother believed in that, and 00:24:00so she didn't--she had a very low tolerance. The other thing is that she had, she had little tolerance for anybody messing with her children, particularly the two that were home. I think I talked about last time, there were two sets of children in the family. One was already out of the house when I was born, and so that left me and my brother were there, still there. And so, when things would happen, she'd be out the door before my, my father knew what happened - I mean, and, and be walking--my mother never drove, okay. Or when he got home, she'd already gone off on somebody. And I remember the police ran us home one time. I, I can't even remember what we were doing, but they came to the house--that was a mistake on their part. They came to the house and they said, "Do you have 00:25:00two boys?" And my mother said, "Yes I have two boys." And they said, "Well they almost hit somebody." We had a car; we had an old piece of car. I had an uncle at a junkyard, and every time he'd get an old car turned in, he'd call us--and we had friends who had taken auto mechanics in high school, and they would come out, get the car running. We had a car. So I was driving since I was 13. So somebody had said we'd almost run over somebody else, and they came to the--"Well we're going to take your boys downtown." And she said, "Not over my body you're not taking them downtown." And so they didn't, they hadn't, they didn't know what to do with her. She just stood in the doorway. She was a little short lady, 'bout 5' 5" at the most, and she said, "No, you're not taking my kids anywhere." And so she ca--,she called us, my brother and I, down--we, we'd 00:26:00gone upstairs cause we saw the police coming, (laughs) we knew. So we, so she said, "Did you boys--what were you boys doing?" And the policeman's standing there, and he said--and so we told her what had happened. She said, "I know you're not taking them now," said, "'cause my boys don't lie." She said, "You're not--" He said, "Well, we're gonna ha--we're gonna take them down." And she said, "No, no, no, you'll have to take me, too, then." And she stood right in the middle of that doorway. And boy I said, "Oh, man, they gonna arrest my momma." Do you know, those guys turned around (laughs) and walked off the porch and left her standing there. I said, "Whoa," I said--and so my brother went upstairs and said, "Boy, mom's tough. She--" And we knew she was tough, cause she was tough on us, but when she ran those two police men off the, off that porch, I said "Whoa buddy, she's tougher than we ever thought she was," you know. And would stand her ground, and she had a temper, whoo she had a temper. 00:27:00And that's what basically killed her, because her temper kept her blood pressure always off the hook. And they didn't, you know, in those days, they didn't treat blood pressure like they do now, particularly among black people. And we only had one doctor that would see black people, maybe two. One was black and the other one was white. And the white doctor did it out of commitment to his religion, 'cause he said, "I don't believe in s--" name was Cavinaw, Dr. Cavinaw - never will forget him. And he would see us anytime, day or night, whenever you would call him. And see, in those days, doctors came to your house. You know, you call 'em and they come to your house and they bring their bag, give you some medicine, that kind of thing.

And then there was Dr. Alexander, who was a black doctor. He, he worked in Borgess Hospital. Bronson Hospital wasn't even here then. The only hospital in 00:28:00town was Borgess, which was run by the Catholic Church and nuns, and that kind of thing. But--and that made it good for, for us, because they basically were non-discriminatory. They didn't care who you were. And they, and all the nuns wore those big, what are they called? Habits. (nods) Mhmm.

SM: How did you address the issue of race with your own children, and your--you had them really small when you were in Oregon around all the, the extreme--

CW: Well, they grew up with a social action atmosphere. They--a lot of the 00:29:00things we talked about had already been dealt with, had been resolved in the community, about school and education. And they had a history in terms of family that they knew that they were gonna have to go to school, so the road had already been cut from early on that you will be going to school. And, again the community kept telling them, "Are you Chucky's son? Are you Chucky's daughter?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, you all are going to school." I mean, it, it wasn't just the family. It was the community, see, which, that's why I fight so hard for community, because what community did for me, and for my family, has to be repaid. That, that's, 00:30:00that's, that's the major reason why I do what I do, is because what community did for me. And how they sacrificed, and they did things to make it happen. And so my kids knew that early on. But, a lot of the, the confrontation stuff, had sort of gone away.

And my daughter went to a black school, and she went to Howard University in Washington. And my son went east for a while, and he was out, you know, spinning around. I said, "You come home. I'm not paying that kind of money for you to go out there and just play around." He called me 3:00 in the morning. I said, "What're you doing?" He said, "I'm on the corner of Sunset." He said, "Dad you ought to see what's going on." I said, "I know what's going on. You coming home." So I brought him home. He went to school at the community college and got 00:31:00him a job, and, and then he finally finished up his bachelor's degree at Western. And, I don't know whether Carl finished up his Master's or not, but I know the girl did, and she--and I mean, my daughter, she was much more focused all the way through, focused and, and directed.

But they are not as involved as, as I was, but they're not ignorant of social justice issues. I mean, a--a lot of people don't know when they're being discriminated against. I mean they just feel like, "Well everybody's getting that," but not my two. Or they'll call and they'll want your opinion: "Dad, this is what happened, this is what happened. What do you think about that?" And I say, "What do you think about it?" And they'll say, "We think--" I say, "You're 00:32:00right," you know, it's, just--and so, they know what to look for with their children and all that kind of stuff--stuff __?? --but they, they, they didn't have the fights that we had to fight then. Because it was much more in your face, you know.

In fact, there wasn't a place in Kalamazoo you couldn't go eat. They would tell you, "You can't eat in here." But most people don't believe that. I mean, there were people on the mall--it wasn't a mall then--but there were places on the mall, where you'd go in there and they would say, "We don't serve people like you in here." There was a restaurant in the middle of the black community that didn't serve pe--people there--it's still there, it's still there. But, but they'll serve you now, if they don't want to burn down--you understand what--and I don't say that with viciousness. It's just a change of attitude. People say, "You're in our neighborhood, and we can't eat here? What are you talking about?" You know. So, but that--they know what social justice is.

SM: Were there any particular stories or memories that you told them when they were younger to--

CW: Oh yeah.

SM: Yeah.

CW: I told them about their grandfather and their grandmother. And, my parent--they--my, my children were, had a chance to know their grandparents, to a degree, okay. And my mother deeply loved them. So we could, we could ta--take them over there and she'd babysit, see, and they knew it was okay. And she loved them, and we'd, you'd get up in the morning and go over there, and they'd have a big cup, 'cause my mother liked coffee. And I kinda, I said, "Mom!" And, and, 00:34:00and when they would come home at night, they'd say, "Dad, grandma gave us coffee." I said, "Ohhh, man." (laughs) I said, "Mom what you--" She said, "Come over and see what I give them." And so she put a little coffee in and just fill it up with milk, so it was a little brown and it looked like coffee, right. And they'd be grinning and drinking coffee. But it was--they had a really good relationship with her.

And, and, but at night they would--particularly the girl--was adamant about, "I'm going home, I'm going to wait right--" and my mother would try to get her to take off her clothes, "Let's lay down," and she'd say, "No, no, no, no." I mean she was really small, she said, "No, I'm waiting for my daddy. My daddy's coming to get me." And we'd come in. Carl would be asleep. She'd be sitting there in the chair asleep. I said, "Momma, what is she doing sitting there'' He--she, she said, "I couldn't get her to go to--" I said, "You couldn't get her to go to bed?" She says," I didn't want to spank her." You know, "She had good reasons, she wanted you all to come get her." But they had an in--a real influence, and they do remember little pieces of her, in terms of their growing up.

SM: Could you describe your experience on the Kalamazoo School Board during that period?

CW: (laughs) Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho. That was a tough time for me. It was really a tough time for me. I was young and I didn't, I--one of the things that I think we have to do, when you're educators, is how do we take the experiences and the knowledge that we have and solve problems? As opposed to just emotional, you know--"It's not right because it feels like--" and "You're messing with me." But it's always a one-on-one, as opposed to a systems approach to something. So you 00:36:00say, "Well, you're discriminating against me." So I, I, what I ended up having to do is take people on, one at a time. Well there's [sic] too many people to take on one at a time. And, and, and what--where I was caught up was I had been taught by one of the great professors, I think, of our time, by a guy by the name of Dr. Arthur Pearl, who was my advisor out there. He talked about systems. Well, I knew about systems, but I didn't know how to grab ahold of them. So I came back, and so I was dealing this one-on-one piece everywhere I go, and I was, you know, burning myself up in the process.

And the school board was one of those places where I should have been using the whole systems approach, as opposed to saying to people on the school board, "You 00:37:00don't like black people. You are racist. You're prejudiced." You know, I was doing a one-on-one, when, in fact, they were building a system. They were part of a system that--it doesn't make any difference if you take me out, the system's gonna continue this, to discriminate, continue to mess with people, continue to, to not give equal asset-- access, as well as diminish the power of democracy. And I, I had that information, but I didn't know how to apply it in that setting.

So what I was always dealing with was individual kinds of situations and things that were going on, and particularly with people because we were going-- the NAACP had picked Kalamazoo, out of all the cities that it could do in this part 00:38:00of the country. They said, "Kalamazoo is the place we think we can win." Now, what they did was, they looked at the areas that the judges were appointed from, and they said, "This district was appointed by a very liberal, democratic president, and we're likely to win if we can bring a case in his district." And they were right, okay. So, the macro systems is what people don't understand. That, that, that judges, and, and, and politicians, and people like that, you know, most of what the average person does is the one-on-one: "Warfield, they just discriminated against me. They did this against me," that kind of thing. As 00:39:00opposed to saying, "If we don't get at the root cause of how they're able to do that and get away with it, then we're always dealing on a one-on-one" and you don't ever have enough energy to do that, okay.

Now, the other, the other, the other thing that they, that ha--, that ha--, that was a dichotomy for me, I went to a school where there were no black females. High school, all the way--from 7th grade all the way through high school. And so, what happened was, the basketball team, the football team--I'd be the only black guy on there--they'd, "Come on Warfield, we're going to the dance." And I, my mind said, "Wait a minute." You're looking at--and I knew it was a system, but I didn't know how to articulate it. They'd say, "Come on, come on, come on." And, and a lot of the, the, the--some of the, the white females at school would say, "Come on Warfield, we're going to dance." I said, "Ohhhh, wait a minute. 00:40:00That doesn't fit," you know. Black people used to have sayings about what would happen to you if you were caught with a white woman, or you got, you know, that kind of thing. So they'd say, you know, "Where there's--" they, they, we had a saying in our house, "Where's there's trees, there's ropes, where there's fires there's smoke." Okay, so that meant, if you got--you gonna get hung, 'cause you see all these pictures coming out of the south, and we see what happened to, to black guys in Kalamazoo who even looked at white women, okay.

So, you--I had that dichotomy going, but also knew how to handle that because there were guys I went to school with who helped me handle that, okay. So then when I came back to my side of the tracks, and people--my friends, my white friends - would come over on the north side in their car and pick me up they'd, 00:41:00they'd knock on, knock on--and then they'd come in, and my mother was a great cook. And they knew that, so they always tried to come when they thought you were getting ready to eat. And they'd say, "Is your mom got any leftovers, or something?" (laughs) I'd say, "Man, we gotta go."

"No, ask your mom if she got any leftovers," that kind of thing, okay. So, my, my whole sense of, of justice began--when I was on the school board, I didn't know to say, "This is a, a, a, a, a bankrupt system." So I end up having to deal one-on-one with everybody, you know. So you, you, you'd cure this one, and you'd get rid of him, but there are five right behind him, because they had a system that allowed them to keep doing that.

And so, so now I don't deal a whole lot with individuals, I mean, they, that's, that does not mean they don't have an opinion in me, and I certainly don't have an opinion--I have an opinion of them, and I tell them that. But I 'm more interested in the systems that allow racism, prejudice, preference, and all that 00:42:00to take place. 'Cause if you don't get at that, you live and die, and all you've done is live and die. I mean, you maybe stopped a few people, but once you're dead--but if you have a system that's in place, that says, "No, no, no, no," then, you've done something; you, you've made an impact. Because now the people who are being discriminated against have a tool. The people who want to be democratic have a tool. They say, "No, no, the law says," or "This policy says," or "This procedure says." Most folk don't understand that, that, that this society, as well as other societies, are put together around procedures, 00:43:00policies, and, and major systems. So you take me out, but the system keeps working. Take him out, take, take you out, but the system keeps working.

If you look at Kalamazoo College, even though it's not a Baptist school like it was when I first came around here, it still has those policies in place. For instance, your international piece, and you know, your, your community involvement piece, that, that kind of thing. That could have very easily been, been, you know, taken away, and that would have been the fall of a system. So now you simply stay within yourself, you're, you're inbred. It's inbreeding that goes on, because you never get a chance to go out and have new ideas brought in. 00:44:00One thing about this school, and I told you this last time, I'm so glad K is here because it always makes Western have to look twice, and say, "Well Kalamazoo College is doing that. Yep, maybe that's something we need to do," okay.

But, if I had a message to give anybody, and, and, and, and if I, one of the things I did have a chance for when I was teaching was to talk about how do you, how do you attack systems? 'Cause people operate on the basis of systems. That's why, when you go in about discrimination, you say, "What is your policy?" They say, "What?"

"No, no, no what is your policy regarding this?" See. Or even at the bank, you know, the bank mess up your account. Like my wife had her, her, her money stolen out of her account three different times. I mean, somebody electronically, from 00:45:00across the country, went in her account and took it out. So I went to the bank, I said, "What's your policy on that?" They said, "Our policy is--" I said, "I'm getting ready to take my money out of this bank." They said, "Wait, wait, wait. Our policy is, when people steal money out of your account, we have to put it back, 'cause it's our system that failed." So they did it three times. I put money back in, they put the money back in, week later, pshhh--gone again. Put the money back in, pshhh--gone again. I said, "What's going on?" They said, "Well, doc, we--" I said, "Well the policy, the policy we had--" I said, "I'll tell you what, give me my money. I'm going to a bank, and say, 'can you tell me my money's not going to be disappearing out of your bank?'" And I did. I took it to another bank. And tha--, and that was 7, 8 years ago. And I haven't lost a dime, 'cause I look at it everyday, okay. (laughs) So, it's about how we look at systems, because systems tell individuals how to behave, okay. (clears throat) 00:46:00That's what happened to me on the school board. I didn't know about systems, so I wasn't that effective.

SM: Why did you feel so passionate about education, why did you decide to get your Ph.D. and then become an educator?

CW: Well, I believe that was the way out for people, particularly people of color, poor people, that I--I really, and still do, believe that education is where it is. I--if you want to be free, if you want to have choice, that's what it is. Because--I've got a cell phone that, it gives me (laughs) real big 00:47:00problems. 'Cause I'm ancient, 'cause my, my telephone, my ans--my telephone number used to me 349-26368--seven digits, I still remember, okay. 349-26368. That was my telephone number. That was when I was a youngster. Now you just say to a machine, "Call home," and a voice talks back to you, and says, "Call home?" I say, "Yes." Next thing I--my phone's ringing at my house. I mean, if, if you, if--and, and, you know, young kids come up and, and say things to me, say, "Dr. Warfield, let me help you with that thing." And they do things to it that I 00:48:00didn't even know it would do. I mean, it, it's the top of the line, but I only use it to call and talking back. They're putting little messages on there, little people, when certain people come on, little characters come on and start dancing, you got different characters come in every time that--I said, "Oh that must be so and so." And all it is is two or three characters that are attached to that telephone message. That, you know, that's, that's education, and if you can't do that, business people will tell you in a minute. We, we, we have people searching the world, not just United States, we--our people are in the air 24/7 looking for people who are quote "educated."

So, the other piece I think education should do was help you understand the systems that you're in, and how you relate to them, and how they relate to you, 00:49:00and what your protection is, and what your protection is not. It, it may not look like what it was, and, and the other part about it is that people like me got it--you got to keep learning. You never stop learning, I mean-- and if you do, it doesn't take very long for you to be, you're, you're not worth much to yourself or to society.

SM: How do you see the, the Kalamazoo Promise, then, in relation to education?

CW: Oh, well, you have to understand, the Kalamazoo Promise was really not about education, and yet it was. The, the Kalamazoo Promise was to keep Kalamazoo from being a Benton Harbor, okay. Because white America was leaving the Kalamazoo 00:50:00Public Schools in big droves because of the numbers of African Americans that were coming in. So they were going to Portage. They were going to a school system to the west of us. Can't think of it right now, but they were leaving in big numbers, which meant that business was gonna leave. It's just like the mall left and went out into Portage. I mean, that, I ask my granddaughter, I said "Where are you going?" She said, "Oh well some of my girlfriends and I, we just going to walk through the mall." I said, "What do you do?" She said, "We just go through the mall." Well I know they don't just go through the mall. I know they asked for money. She'd say, you know, "Papa, can I have some money to go." But, you know, but that mall used to be right downtown in Kalamazoo. Well, people get nervous, you know, when they don't feel protected, or they think there are too 00:51:00many people of color, all that kind of stuff.

So, the Promise really put a halt on that run, because now all of a sudden if you stay, you're looking at maybe, if you can get the University of Michigan, you may be talking about 40, 50, 60,000 dollars for your youngster to go to school. The only thing they don't have is room and board, and some of those schools provide it for, provide it for you. They said, "Well if you get the Promise, we'll give you the room and board, you know. And you hustle up and get your books. Your folks ought to be able to afford your books. If not, you know, get a job during the summer. You can buy your own books." I mean, it was a big boon to--all of a sudden the brakes went on errrr (claps), okay. But the same people kept coming out of the school. So the superintendent we have now, and I think the school board we have now, is saying, "We got to change that. 00:52:00We've got to make sure that those African American kids, which make up I think like 58% of the school, graduate."

The, the tragic part of it is, and you asked me why I'm so interested in education, is that 50% of the black youngsters have dropped out of school before their junior year, okay. So, so we got here, we got a whole group of folk who are not in school after their sophomore year. Now, if you, if you compound that with the rate of pregnancy among poor and black youth, then we've compounded the problem. So here we got a, a teenage girl, maybe 18 at the--no, not 18, 'cause you graduate when you're 18--maybe 16, who's got a child and no education. And if you go on assistance, they're only gonna do that for three years, after that. 00:53:00(claps) Now what you gonna do with a three year old? You got no education.

And see, so that's why I dig in, and I am unashamedly in favor of education, and I fight anybody who tries to reduce the effect of what that education will do for you. And it's, it's an uphill fight. It's really difficult, because (sighs) I think the media and other, other what's __?? cause youngsters to meet--make poor choices. You know, they say well, "Would you rather buy this, or buy this, or buy this?" I say, "I'd rather buy that." They say, "Well yeah, that--come, come on in and we'll help you buy it." I say, "Well, maybe you might want to 00:54:00take that money and do something else with it." It's very difficult to get people to do what I ask them to do.

A white guy came to me when I had two kids; I was sitting up in an apartment upstairs above him, 402 Norway, here in Kalamazoo. And he came up to me and said, "Warfield, you want to be poor all your life?" I said, "No." He said, "I got, I got a system for you, if you want to do it." I said, "Okay, what is it?" He said, "Okay," he said, "every dime that comes to the house, you take out a penny. If a dollar comes in, you take out a dime. If five dollars come in--everything is 10%. You pay yourself first. If you must, spend the rest, but as long as you live, anytime your check comes in, or your wife's check comes in, or a check from heaven comes in, you take out your 10% and put it over there and don't bother it. Spend the rest if you must," okay. So that, that made sense. 00:55:00And he said, "Once you get enough in the savings, you call me. And I'll help you invest it." So that's what I did. I started putting the money in, putting money in. And I looked at them and said, "Ohh, I got a thousand dollars. What can we buy?" That was what I said, "What can we buy?" And then I remembered his words, "call me." So I called him. He said, "I'm gonna put you in some mutual funds." And said that, he said, "You know, you ever heard of Money Magazine?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Go down there and buy it. It's, it's, it's, it's handling money for dummies, basically is what it is." He said, "You can handle that."

So I went down there and started buying it. So everything I saw him do, I checked to see in the Money Magazine. Still take it, still look at my Money Magazine. But, at the same time, I was giving 10% to the church, because that's, that's my upbringing. You always give. You give the Lord his 10, 10 cents. So 20 cents was coming out my money. But I still had 80 cents out of every dollar 00:56:00left. And so, what I began to do was be much more prudent in terms of how I spent the money. But it was a tough road, it was really tough to discipline myself when everybody else was saying, "Look what I bought, look what I bought. And look what you got." (laughs) You see what I'm saying. But over the the long haul--and, and I'm, I'm really reluctant to tell you this, but I haven't been able to convince anybody to do that, (laughs) I really have not be--I have not been able to convince anybody. People ask me, "Warfield, you know, you know that--" I say, "Let me just say something," particularly to being just getting married, or people just get their first job, "take out the dime."

And then, money has a way of doing something about equalizing what goes on, 'cause people say, "Well you can't just--" I say, "Well I can buy that." Or, or 00:57:00the bank, if I go to the bank and they'll say-- I'll say, "I want to borrow some money." And they say, "Well, Warfield--" and I say, "Here's, here's my stock account." Oh, and they say, "Oh ho ho, (claps) yeah, oh ho, come on." You know, you see what I'm--you get a very different view of people when you say, "Here's, here's what I'm worth."

"Oh we're glad to lend you some money, and we got a special rate for you." But that's a system, that-- and it's very difficult for people who are very now- and me-oriented.

SM: I think we have time for one more question.

CW: Okay.

SM: I'm just wondering, how you feel you--you've grown up in Kalamazoo your whole life, your home, just seeing the progress that Kalamazoo has made--how do you, how do you feel about Kalamazoo now?

CW: Oh, well, it's my home. I mean, good or bad, up or down, Kalamazoo is my 00:58:00home. And, and I, I always--that's why I can act ugly, or I can act good. Because this is my home. I mean, I don't back down off anybody for anything. And I tell them straight up, "This is my home." And people start talking to me, I say, "How long you been here?"

"Well, we been here about 5 years." (nods)

"That's what I thought. You sound like it, that's how long you've been here," okay. And so I take great pride, even though I would like to see us take greater care of the people who need the most, have the least and need the most. But I'm not--I don't go around bad-mouthing Kalamazoo, cause that's my home. Whenever I go--I'm president of the National Association for, you know, for the Advancement of Colored People--I go to the meeting, I say, "Hey, I'm from Kalamazoo!" They say, "Warfield, we know about you." 'Cause I tell 'em. Then I point out, I say, 00:59:00"We got the Promise, what do you got?" (laughs) You know, I mean, I'm very proud of that. I'm very proud. I'm proud of this town. And even in our lowest moments, I tell people, "Do you live--are you talking about--do you live in Kalamazoo?"

"No."

"Then shut up." You know, "you, you got the same stuff going on in your town as we do."

"Well, Kalamazoo--"

"Hey, don't give me that. I've been all over the country, been all over the world, don't tell me about, about anything like that."

You know, our pastor used to say, about it, the church, and I say this about it --Kalamazoo - "There's no place like this place, anywhere near this place, so this must be the place," okay. So I don't--I am un-compromising about Kalamazoo. That's why I can be so rabid sometimes. People say, "Warfield you just--" I'll say, "This is my town, I'm proud of it, and I want to make other people 01:00:00understand just where I stand." And see, most--and, and a lot of folk who say, "To get him off of you, you better tell him you know he's from Kalamazoo," okay. 'Cause--and a lot of them don't even try to withstand, cause they know, if you're from out of town and you're going to be badmouth--the federal people came in, and they said that, "We want to talk to you, Warfield." Federal judges came, they, they--the FBI, whatever it is. I'm, I'm trying to help the immigration folk, too, so--and, I, I said, they said, "You're from Kalamazoo?" I said, "Yeah."

"You born and raised here?"

"Yeah, I been born and raised here." And they said, "well, ___??" I said, "I've seen you before." They said, "You have? We don't--" I say, "No, I've seen people who look like you before, who act like you before," 'cause they came into town trying to round up a whole bunch of Hispanics, you know. They, they sneak into town periodically, and they go up and down the street snatching folk off the 01:01:00street and all like that. And they don't know I'm a deputy sheriff, I __?? + (laughs) I got a badge and all that kind of--I never wear it 'cause, you know, there are certain parts of the city (laughs) I don't want to know I'm a deputy sheriff. But you know, I, I, I, I can call all the chiefs. I can call all the chiefs and say, "Who are these guys that are in town? Who are the feds?" They say, "Doc, just a minute, well get you right back," and in about 5, 10 minutes, they call me back. They said, "They're out of Grand Rapids. We didn't know they were coming," you know, you know, "dah dah dah dah dah." They said, "And now the Detroit folk, when they're coming in, they call us ahead of time." Well we can tell folk, "Get your head down," you know. But it's about people. If you don't love people, you know, not my--you're not in my club. You can't join my club unless you love people. That's just that simple.

SM: Before we end, is there anything else that's come to mind?

CW: Oh, no. The, the real piece that I'm pleased with is that I understand what social justice is now, and systems. So it makes it difficult for people to attack me personally. And I don't mind that either, you know, 'cause I save my money so that you can't fire me, you know, of my job and that stuff. And that's another reason why I did what I did. 'Cause my, my, my family told me, my wife in particular said, "You got two kids"--I think I told you that the last time--"They gonna get you, they gonna fire you. We gotta have money to keep going." And so--but that never happened because there were people in this town who said, "He has a right to his opinion, so don't bother him. Don't attack his person, don't attack his job, he is a Kalamazooan. We don't like what he says, but he's Kalamazoo, and when the, and when the chips are down. And, and, and for 01:03:00instance, when comp--and when General Motors was getting ready to come around, and they said, "Go to that young guy standing on the corner of Van Avery, and ask him about what--" and I said, I talked to the media, I said, "General Motors is gone, that means jobs, that means jobs, that means jobs, that means jobs." And then as soon as they left, I said, "Keep the picket signs up."

But that's Kalamazoo, I mean I don't let people bad-mouth my town. I do. I don't let people outside come in. I badmouth 'em. I get on 'em. I go to their things, and I know they hate to see me coming. But, this, this, I, this is my town, also. And I'm very proud of that. Very, very proud.

SM: Thank you so much for coming back to talk to us again.

CW: Always.

SM: It's been a pleasure.