about the More Than One Struggle Oral History Project

See finding aid to the collection, More Than One Struggle Oral History Project Records, UW-Milwaukee

http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-mil-uwmmss0217

See also several digitized interviews in the March on Milwaukee Civil Rights History Project

http://www4.uwm.edu/libraries/digilib/march/index.cfm

In addition, readers may wish to consult two review essays that I have written:

Jack Dougherty. "From Anecdote to Analysis: Oral Interviews and New Scholarship in Educational History." Journal of American History 86 (September 1999): 712-23.

Jack Dougherty, “African Americans, Civil Rights, and Race-Making in Milwaukee,” in Margo Anderson and Victor Greene (eds.), Perspectives on Milwaukee’s Past. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009.

How the interviews were created:

While researching my dissertation on African American school reform activism from the 1930s to the 1990s, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I conducted over 65 oral history interviews. Most of these were recorded during the summers of 1995 and 1996, and transcribed within the following year or two. A portion of these stories were included in my book, More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee (University of North Carolina Press, 2004), but there was much more than I could ever hope to include in one book, so I have made my best effort to organize and preserve these interviews for future researchers. This document offers some background on how these sources were created.

Funding for the oral history research was provided by several generous sources. Clayborn Benson at the Wisconsin Black Historical Society was the first recognize the potential value of these interviews for preserving one aspect of Milwaukee’s Black history, and he provided a small but essential start-up grant of $1, 125. Professor Mary Haywood Metz at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, also resident and scholar of Milwaukee, gave $2,200 to help cover expenses. This project would not have been possible without this early funding, since I was living in Nashville, Tennessee at the time with my spouse, Elizabeth Rose, parenting a small child, and managing a checking account whose balance hovered around zero. The funds allowed me to live in Madison in the summer of 1995, and Milwaukee in the summer of 1996, and to drive around and conduct interviews. Still, it was a very tight budget, and some decisions (such as the low quality of tape cassettes, and lack of photography) I wish that I could have done over again.

In my dissertation proposal, I reviewed the abundant documents that were available for an extended historical analysis of Milwaukee’s Black school reform movements. The papers of key individuals and organizations (such as civil rights attorney Lloyd Barbee, and the Milwaukee Urban League) had been preserved by local historical societies, and included lists of movement participants, meeting minutes, and correspondence that shed light on numerous Black community groups, their reform ideologies, and organizational networks. In addition, I read as much as possible of Black Milwaukee’s weekly press for contrasting views on African American community life and activism, as well as clippings from the White daily press. Open meetings of the Milwaukee Board of School Directors had been transcribed verbatim, and various scholars from history, sociology, and political science had published reports on census data, electoral results, opinion polls, and legislation.

But critical gaps in the paper trail, I argued, could only be filled with oral histories. Many documents focus on the men who made headlines rather than the women who organized support, and therefore distort our understanding of gender in movement participation. Furthermore, African-American integrationists generated volumes of evidence through desegregation lawsuits, and received greater recognition over time from White academics, philanthropists, the news media (and in turn, archivists), in comparison to other African-Americans who pursued strategies of racial solidarity or self-determination.

Who was interviewed?

The oral history project sought to interview African Americans who engaged in one or more K-12 school reform movements from the 1930s to the 1990s. In order to avoid the pitfalls of “snowball sampling,” where the researcher is simply referred by one interviewee to the next, I relied upon “purposive sampling” to elicit a variety of viewpoints from different perspectives within a wide range of organizations (see Valerie Yow, Recording Oral History: A Practical Guide for Social Scientists, 1994). I began by reading extensively in the Black and White press and archival documents, to identify about 25 Black reform organizations and to compile lists of affiliated individuals (from membership lists, descriptions of meetings, photo captions, arrest reports, personal acknowledgements, etc). Next, I sought out individuals who represented different perspectives due to gender or position within the organization (leading spokespeople versus ordinary participants). After tracking down individuals in the most recent city directory or phone directory, or through information gathered from previous interviews, I collected multiple interviews with affiliates within each category (see “Individuals with affiliations” list).

It is important to clarify what this study did NOT attempt to do. First, it was NOT a random sample of movement participants, since I began with unofficial, incomplete lists of members, and dealt with the fact that many individuals had died, moved away, or could not be traced. Second, I did NOT adhere to rigid methodological rules when common sense led me in a different direction. For instance, while the name “Cynthia Pitts” did not appear in any of the UCAG documents that I found, three individuals told me that I really needed to interview her, so I did so. As a result, this project did not entirely avoid “snowball sampling,” but my methods were much more comprehensive than simply starting with the most prominent activists and asking him/her where to go next.

Furthermore, I decided to create the category of “early Black educators,” even though they did not belong to any identified movement organization, because the very act of breaking into these White-dominated jobs was a key phase in the city’s history, and there were few surviving members of the Milwaukee Urban League during William Kelley’s era to recount these stories. Similarly, I created the category “Black journalists” to solicit views from individuals who had covered these movements in the Black press over an extended period of time.

Although several White participants and co-leaders were active in these movements, this study intentionally concentrated on African American activists. However, some non-Black individuals were interviewed, for various reasons. Juanita Adams agreed to be interviewed only if her very close friend, Arlene Johnson (a White woman who had been married to a Black man during this interracial movement), could participate. Other individuals (Cecil Brown, Larry Saunders) were married to White women (Loretta Brown, Kathleen Saunders), who also participated in the interview and shared their stories. Brian Verdin identified himself as multi-racial, and was mentioned frequently in written and spoken accounts that it made sense to me to interview him. Finally, after reading much of Carolyn Jackson’s story about the school desegregation legal proceedings, I had assumed that she was Black, but discovered upon meeting her that she was a White woman in a biracial family.

Other individuals have been included even though I did not intend to interview them. For example, while interviewing Rev. Leo and Inonia Champion at their home, their son Eugene came by and shared a different view on school desegregation, from his perspective as a Black student in a predominantly White school at the time. Similar events occurred when interviewees’ siblings were present and shared their stories (Geraldine Gilmer Goens and Jay Gilmer; Phyllis Banks and sister Teresa Greene). Also, at the Sister Clara Muhammad School, I arrived expecting to interview one person (Saleem El-Amin) but found that he and his three colleagues preferred a group interview.

While I clearly preferred to interview Black activists who still lived in the Milwaukee area, I made exceptions when individuals from key groups had moved away but were traceable and agreed to telephone interviews.

The interview rosters do not reflect the countless names that I pursued but had died or could not be located. However, there is an identifiable group of individuals who declined to be interviewed or did not respond to repeated invitations: Larry Harwell (MUSIC, Triple O, private school vouchers), Marian McEvilly (Washington High advocate, Black school board member), Jeannette Bryant (Black teacher and MUSIC supporter), E’Allyne Perkins (Washington High teacher, Milwaukee Star editor, sister of Phyllis Banks), Milton Coleman (MUSIC Freedom school teacher, Clifford McKissick Community School contributor).

How were the interviews conducted?

I learned a great deal about conducting interviews while engaged in this project, and a closer reader will see significant changes in my skills from the first interviews to the latter ones. In general, after requesting participation by a letter and follow-up phone call, I made an interview “prep notes” for each individual, based upon my general interview framework and customized notes with everything that I had read about him or her. In some cases I was able to build some rapport by arriving with a handful of news clippings from that person’s past. The generic interview framework appeared as follows (but I frequently shifted away from it when the circumstances warranted):

Generic interview framework (version June 1995)

I’ve been reading back issues of Milwaukee newspapers to see how different people and organizations have tried to improve education for African-Americans.

Your name was mentioned along with the _(organization)_.

            How did you first become involved with that group?

            Why education issues (rather than housing, for example)?

                        (did you have school-age children?

                        what schools? opinion about those schools?)

            What role did you play in the organization?

Try to think back - what names come to mind of other people who worked with this group?

THEN

[Show list of names] Tell me more about the people who were associated with this group...

            -were there Blacks in group? whites in group?

            -where did most of the group members live?

            -what kinds of work did they do for a living?

            -were many of them parents of children in school?

            -what brought most of you together in the first place? did you know each other?

            -which people were heavily involved in the group?

            -did women tend to do one type of work, and men do another type?

            -anyone on the list who doesn’t belong there? or anyone who was left out?

            -do you recommend that I talk with anyone else in this group? (contact info?)

Try to think back to some of the discussions you remember with people in this org

            -what did you talk about most of the time?

            -what did you see as the most important problems at that time?

            -what goals did you and your group set for yourselves?

            -what actions did you take to achieve those goals?

            -were these tough decisions for your group? did you discuss other possibilities?

            -did you disagree about the decisions?

Did anyone help you and your group try to achieve your goal? (other organizations, politicians, school officials)   Who opposed your efforts?

Why did you and your group try ___(action and goal)______? Why not try ___(alternative action and alternative goal)___? [suggest viable alternatives from the same time period]

How did the life of the group come to an end?

            -Did you become less active in the group while it existed?

            -Or did you move to another group?

Looking back, were you and your organization successful in achieving your goals?

In what other ways have you tried to improve ed in Milw - both big and small?

When you look back, has your approach to improving schools for AfAm changed over the years, or has it stayed the same?

Did school desegregation improve education for African-Americans in Milwaukee?

What about the private school choice program?

What about the African-American immersion schools?

I’d like to know some more information about you:

            Map: how long have you lived in Milw, and where have you lived?

                        why did you move?

                        why did you stay?

            When you were growing up, what kind of school did you go to?

            -was it an all-Black school, or mixed race? Where was it?

            -what do you think of it now?

            -did your personal experience in school influence your later approach to reform?

            Do you have any strong memories of relationships with other people which may have influenced how you approach trying to improve education?

            -any relationships within the Black community?

            -any experiences with whites? either negative or positive?

            -any experiences which happened to your children in school?

Wrap up question:

            When you look back over the past several decades in Milwaukee, people have tried different strategies to improve African-American education: compensatory education, integration, community control, Black studies, private school choice, and so on..... Why have some of these movements risen and some declined?

Is there anything that we haven’t talked about that I should know to understand African-American education reforms in Milwaukee?

            -or anyone I should talk with?

When conducting interviews, I always carried a Milwaukee street map with me (as I navigated my way around the city), and also to help clarify spatial relations (between one home and another, or school to school) during the actual conversation.

At the beginning of each interview, I described the consent form, but usually did not bring it out until the interview had ended. The text of the consent form changed slightly during the first few months of the project as I was negotiating the details about where the tapes and transcripts would eventually be donated. Some individuals expressed concern that the consent form appeared to give me rights to their life stories, which I assured them was not the case. One participant specifically requested a modified consent form granting her copyright (Vada Harris), and as of this writing, several individuals are still considering whether or not to sign the consent form or have been asked to sign a replacement for a missing form. (These transcripts are not included unless a consent form is signed). Looking back, I would have preferred a consent form that granted copyright to a third party (such as an historical society) or to the public domain, but I had few models to draw from when beginning this project.

When possible, I typed out a paragraph of “post-interview notes” for myself to help me reflect upon what I was learning and how it was shaping my research. Printouts of my pre- and post-notes (and relevant news clippings) have been retained in my original research folders.

How were the interviews transcribed?

I transcribed all of the 1995 interviews myself. Most of the 1996 interviews were transcribed by Jody Roy, an undergraduate research assistant at Colgate University in 1997, then reviewed by me to correct spellings of names and proper nouns when I recognized them. In a perfect world, I would have personally listened to the tapes a second time while reviewing Jody Roy’s transcriptions, but time did not allow this. Still, I have a high level of confidence in Jody Roy’s transcriptions based on my memory of the interviews. Yet both of us occasionally discovered that some of the tape-recordings were of such low sound quality that it was very difficult to transcribe them completely.

Readers will notice these notes written into the transcripts:

            [inaudible] or [unintelligible] or ?? [double question marks] = cannot be heard or unsure if the transcription is correct here

            [comments in brackets] = transcriber’s summary of portion of the tape that was not transcribed verbatim

I mailed out copies of the tapes and transcripts to interview participants, as spelled out in the consent form. At least one individual mailed it back with suggested corrections to clean up some of his sentences (Marvin Hannah), and since it did not affect the content, I made those changes. Several years later, as I prepared the book for publication, another individual (Juanita Adams) sent me a correction to the content of a statement made by her close friend (Arlene Johnson, who had since deceased), and I have noted this in the transcript with “strikeout” font and the explanation appended at the end.

Since these tapes were transcribed with historical content in mind, researchers concentrating on linguistics and subtle differences in language use should consult both tapes and transcripts.

Where are the transcripts, tapes, and notes located?

When historians conduct interviews and donate them to an archive (something that does not happen as regularly as it should), they typically give them to one institution. This project led me to make a different decision. Since my goal was to preserve Milwaukee’s African American history in the most inclusive way possible, I donated the interviews to two institutions: the Milwaukee Urban Archives at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Library, and the Wisconsin Black Historical Society (at 2620 West Center Street in Milwaukee). The former is a predominantly White institution with a budget that enables it to make historical resources available to researchers from afar; the latter is a Black-run institution with a strong local ties and a mission to make historical resources available to Milwaukee’s Black community. Therefore, I donated the original tapes, notes, transcripts (paper and computer files on CD) to UW-Milwaukee library, and an identical set of transcripts (paper and computer files on CD) to the Wisconsin Black Historical Society.

 
What historical or sociological factors may have shaped these interviews?

From an historical perspective, it’s very important to acknowledge that these interviews were conducted in 1995-96, a period of time in Milwaukee where many individuals openly questioned the school integration movement, and the campaigns for private school vouchers and African-American immersion schooling were on the upswing.

Furthermore, one must also take into account that these interviews with African Americans were conducted at the request of a young White middle-class male who was an outsider to Black Milwaukee and also did not have many ties to White Milwaukee. Since I did not have an African American counterpart who also conducted similar interviews, there is no firm way to determine what the participants did (or not did) tell me that they might have hidden (or revealed) to an interviewer of the same race, gender, or social class background. Yet readers will discover several ways in which race (or class or gender) clearly shaped the interview, such as the beginning of the interview with Edith Finlayson, where she seeks to assure me of her view that O.J. Simpson should have been found guilty by the jury (a topic that I had not brought up at all).

How did these oral histories shape my historical writing?

My first impression upon concluding the dissertation, I must confess, was being astounded at the massive investment of time into researching, setting up, taping, and transcribing these oral histories -- and the relatively low return that they directly produced, in terms of sentences and paragraphs in my historical writing. Perhaps this was due to my lack of imaginative use of oral histories, but I was surprised to find out how few of the activists’ stories actually found their way into the narrative I constructed. The experience made me want to caution other graduate students against embarking on overly ambitious oral history projects, and to spend more time working with written documents.

But upon further reflection, I realized that the oral history research-to-writing ratio was misleading. Every time that I sat down with an interviewee, tried to understand that person’s historical context, and listened to his/her reasons for their actions, I learned much more than I had done while typing notes in the archives or at the microfilm reader. Each interview turned out to be another opportunity for me to rehearse and refine (and often stand corrected) on my emerging interpretation for why African American school reform movements evolved over six decades in one Midwestern industrial city. Conversing with over 65 interview participants, whose views often differed from one another or fell into patterns that I had not expected, was like having 65 readers look over portions of my dissertation before it was even written. That alone was worth the massive investment of time, and I wonder how historians who write about distant time periods and places (never having the opportunity to meet the people whose lives they have studied) manage to feel confidence in their interpretations of the past.

What other resources should users of this collection consult?

As noted in the bibliography of More Than One Struggle, I also made use of other oral history collections and interviews recorded on film and tape. In particular, Milwaukee civil rights historians should consider the 1968 transcribed interviews as part of the Civil Rights Documentation Project, Ralph J. Bunche Oral History Collection, Howard University. (See index at http://www.founders.howard.edu/moorland-spingarn/ohindex.htm). Milwaukeeans represented in this collection include:

Frank Aukofer, journalist

Lloyd Barbee, state representative, attorney, and integration activist

Wayne Bernhagen, Milwaukee Citizens’ Civic Voice

Milton Coleman, Alliance of Black Students

Phillip Estrada, Milwaukee Star editor

Father James Groppi, open housing activist

Henry Maier, mayor

Prentice McKinney and Dwight Benning, NAACP Youth Council-Commandos

Vel Phillips, alderwoman and open housing activist

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