Narrator: Richard Kingsberry

Interviewer: Kathy Tucker

Date of Interview: Feb. 3, 2000

Location: Kingsberry’s home.

First five minutes of tape cut off because Interviewer didn’t push mike connector all the way in.

K: …I thought I was going to run out of gas, anyway. So, got a job at the mill. Was married. Had two kids. Got married when I was very young. And lived at the Camas Inn and lived in Camas when I first got started because I didn’t have a vehicle. That way I could walk back and forth to work. And eventually I got irritated because I didn’t have my family with me. So I brought my family over and told the people there at the ..?.. you know, I can’t find a house to rent. So I said well, hell, Can I buy a house? He said yeah. I bought a house.

T: Okay. So going back just a bit though, When you and your mom moved to Seattle. Did your mom move out for a job?

K: Actually she came out here because my grandparents were out here. She came out here again to change her lifestyle from Texas. You know, my father stayed in Texas because I guess they had a problem. And so she came out here and so my mother worked, did jobs like anybody else. That’s what she did quite a bit of was nursing, you know. And then we decided to leave Seattle and go to Portland. And I felt like, Where’s Portland? I’d always heard of Portland, Maine. Where’s Portland, Oregon? And during this particular time there was no I-5. When you crossed the bridge, you know, you were right there. And in those days they had the toll bridges. And you had to pay to cross the bridge and of course, there were two ways you could go, you could go down 99, which was Union Avenue. Or you could cross the interstate bridge there and you could go out Interstate Avenue. Of course that was the way you got to downtown Portland and other places. And the big sign, the big statue with Paul Bunyan which looked a lot better than it did now. Of course that part of town there was, what was it, which it still is, Kenton. Which used to be a really nice place in those days, you know. So we came here in ’59 and my mother started working and I started going to grade school. Eventually I got out of grade school and I went to Jefferson High School, which I am quite proud of for a number of reasons. One’s because the football star Mel Runfrow went to Jefferson and played for the Dallas Cowboys for 15-16 years and then was in the big football hall of fame. I graduated from there and then I got married.

T: Right out of high school?

K: Actually I was still in high school when I got married. I got a young girl pregnant. So we ended up getting married. And I went into the military. And this is the funny thing, because you know I went into the military, I think I was 17 years old. I had originally volunteered to go into the service. I had to get my mother’s permission and I volunteered for the service and I kept waiting for them to call me. And they never called me. So, I got married, you know, and had one kid. And left Portland to go back to Seattle because at that time Boeing was hiring. You know, I was really blessed. I went to Jefferson High School. You know there’s been five women in my life that have been really fantastic. My wife, of course, is one. My mother. And I had three school teachers who are all female. I think one of them is still alive, the other ones are all dead. But, during my time, you know, when the job corps thing first came in, they had an organization called the Youth Opportunity Center, which was an organization over on Sandy. What they did was during the summer months they helped kids get jobs, you know. So I got to doing that and I worked in Washington Park. Actually we worked which is now the Japanese Garden. At that time they were just building it. And we were in there building trails and doing things like that. You are only supposed to work for like during the summer, but I was a good worker and they kept me and I worked for them for a year. As a result of that I put in an application to work for the United States Forestry Service, Department of Agriculture. Was waiting for the job, and waiting for the job. And then I got married. And then I heard about Boeing hiring. So I, my mother had gotten married again and she went back to Seattle. And so I went back up there I got a job for Boeing, you know. I was doing great. Then I got drafted. I said whoa, wait a minute, how can this happen. I’ve got a kid, I’m married, I’m not going to go into the service. And my draft board was in Portland. So I came back to Portland and decided to take my test and all that. That was the time when people were burning their draft cards, I wasn’t into that. And I didn’t really think I was going to go into the service. I took my test and I had had some problems as a youth, I was a bad boy, so I got into a little bit of trouble.

T: What kind?

K: Oh, fighting and truancy. I went to McClaren’s School for Boys 1964.

T: What is that?

K: McClaren’s School for Boys? It’s a place where bad boys go. It’s in Woodburn, Oregon. But I’ll tell you something about it. When I was there we had kids there that was there for truancy, family problems – runaway and things like that – they got kids there now who are there for armed robbery, murder, this kid that went to the school and killed all of them – he’s down there now. They didn’t have anything like that when I was a kid, you know. At that time the main highway went right past that place over there now where I-5 is built, it’s like I used to live where I-5 is. In fact I lived not to far from where the Coliseum is now. There was no … it was all houses in there in those days, you know. So I didn’t think I was going to go into the service. I took the test and all that. They said, come back tomorrow, you know, because they were going to check out some other things about me. I came back, next thing I knew I was taking my oath and all that. I still didn’t think I was in the service. I didn’t believe I was in the service until like about 10 o’clock that night, I was in Fort Lewis, Washington, and I was in the service. I went from there to Louisiana, you know. Which was a hell of an experience, you know. I was born in Texas, but I’ve been in the Pacific Northwest now, I’m 52 years old, I’ve been out here all my life. I just did not understand people calling me boy. I didn’t understand that, you know, during the Vietnam Era when we’d go downtown and if you were black or negro, you had to go over here and drink and party. And you couldn’t go over there. I couldn’t understand that. That was for everything. If you wanted, you know a lady of the evening, you had to go over here, you couldn’t go over here. And I actually had went into the bar with some other guys because in Louisiana at that time you could drink at 18. We were sitting around waiting for our drinks, you know, and finally the lady came over and said, We can’t serve you. I thought we couldn’t serve each other because of, I didn’t know what the reason was, you know. I saw that they were serving everybody else that was in uniform. Well, eventually it dawned on me, well, you’re in the South.

T: Did you think that the South was more racist than the Pacific Northwest, or just a different form?

K: A different form. The difference between the North and the South is, in the South you know who hates you. Up here, you don’t know who hates you. People smile in you faces, and this is a great place to live, but, and I don’t want to live anywhere else. But, you know up here, racism is right there, you never know. At least in the South you know you don’t like you. You know where to stay in the … I wasn’t familiar with that. Somebody would call me boy, you know. And I was a little scared down there so I, you know, got me a knife and carried it in my pocket, which was a mistake. You can’t do that in the service. That got me in trouble. Got me arrested by the MPs. I tell you, I was so upset at what I saw and what was going on I had verbally told the army, I am not going to Vietnam. This is ridiculous you know, I’m in the military like anyone else. And one of the guys said, you know you need to go talk to – at that time they called him the inspector general — and I complained about it, those guys are white, they get to go in the bar, how come I can’t go in the bar? He said, what do you think we should do? I said if I can’t go in the bar, they can’t go. But I’ll tell you what. What they did to me, they cut my orders. Told me to go to Vietnam. I said I’m not going to Vietnam. They said, you are going to Vietnam or you are going to jail. I says, I ‘aint going. Well, my attitude changed and what changed my attitude was I was out drinking with some guys, white and black, who had been to Vietnam. You know, I was complaining about this and that …. They actually showed me that, you know, it was not about racism, at least in the military. But in the town, that is just the way it was. A little place called Leesville, Louisiana. Oh man, it’s like (Kingsberry snaps) that big. I came home and went to Vietnam.

T: How was that?

K: That was an experience.

T: Well I imagine, it’s kind of a large topic isn’t it?

K: Well, I don’t think I could go to the Vietnam wall. I cry every now and then. I think about the things that went on over there. You know I was 19 years old. Away from my family. I tell you what surprised me. I’m in Vietnam with people that I had never seen or met. They couldn’t pronounce my name, but they could say nigger as good as I just said it. As easy as that. And that was during the time when they were referring to black guys as soul brothers, you know. And of course, you know, if you spent your money in Vietnam and you, I mean in the town, you were number one soul brother. If you were, if you didn’t spend your money you were number ten, which means that you were bad. That’s the way they referred to you. And of course, you could always know when you were in Vietnam, if you walked down the street and you heard country and western – you’d know where you were at. If walked down the other side of the street and you heard, you know, James Brown and Aretha Franklin – you’d know where you were at. But to tell you the truth, you know, I didn’t have problems with the American soldiers, even though we knew that existed. Had problems with Vietnamese. They didn’t know me, and they’d cuss you out and call you names. It was always funny because if you wanted to wear a pair of blue jeans and a cowboy shirt, no problem. But if you wore a dashiki, which is an African shirt, you couldn’t do that. I was there, like I said, in 1967 and ’68. I think, and I really believe that, I think that the racism started more after I left, as well as the drugs. And we had guys smoking marijuana and things like that, but most of the guys drank and things like that. And you know the Vietnam War was the first war that we ever fought together, meaning blacks and whites. Because before that, you had two armies. You had the black army and you had the white army, even though they both was in the military, you know. Harry S. Truman, who was the 33^rd President of the United States at that time, he signed into law and changed that. Which was really just comical, you know. So the Vietnam War was actually the first war where you had black officers telling white soldiers what to do. Until that point, it was the other way around. You had all black outfits, with white officers, you know. People actually didn’t like that because back in the old days they felt that if you were a white officer over a bunch of blacks, well that was a dead end road. There isn’t really time, but I do a really good history about blacks in the military. You just would be astounded at the things that black folks have done. Even back to the cowboy days, just amazing. You know that in World War I blacks were sent to Europe and they had sticks, they wouldn’t give them rifles. They were scared that they would retaliate against white folks. Somewhere along the line the French people said hey, you know, we need some extra help here, you know. They actually said, okay, you can let the blacks fight with you, but you can’t treat them any better than we treat them. And I am telling you, those black guys, they performed, they fought, they killed Germans. Up until that time where Mr. Hitler invaded different places in Europe – in France, they had just multitudes of monuments to the black soldiers. Not in this country. But over there they did. Even in World War II they had the white army and the black army. That’s bad.

T: Did your experiences in Vietnam, obviously I’m sure they changed you, but how, what did you kind of bring home from that. That maybe affected you?

K: You know, now I’m a disabled vet. What is know as, I am a …?… disabled vet, and I have the delayed syndrome. I believe I have Agent Orange, but they said no, but there are things that have changed in me. I never thought I had a problem. I never thought about it. Because I came home, I didn’t use no drugs, illegal drugs. I smoked a little marijuana. Like I said, I always drunk alcohol. And like I said I came home and I got a job, you know, I bought a home and I thought that was normal. It was only twenty years later when I started watching some things on TV that actually brought back some things. Like I said, you know, I’ve been out of Vietnam for thirty years, going on thirty-two. And I still wake up crying, thinking about something that I did in Vietnam. And I didn’t see that much combat in Vietnam. I didn’t see as much as some and probably a little bit more than others, you know. Hopefully never did kill anyone. I got caught in some ambushes, and they shoot at you and you shoot back, and then somebody gets hit, well you don’t know who shot them. Luckily for me I am blessed that I never had face to face, you know. I came home and met a guy at the airport, in the bar. And I got his, he goes, how you doing soldier? I said fine now. I said, I just got home from Vietnam. The guy turned around and said let me shake your hand. He bought me a drink. Nobody else ever did that. My parents didn’t do it, even though I didn’t expect them to do it. My mother was happy to see me home and things like that. And they asked you silly questions, like How was it over there? You know, it was hot, it was miserable. You know I didn’t know those people. Could never speak Vietnamese. Luckily for us we only had to be there a year. It was dangerous, you know, getting shot at. I mean I think about it after all these years and things that could have happened to me. The times that I dozed off on guard duty and fell asleep. So, and you brought that anger home. I know, quote unquote black veterans who really need to get some professional help. But you know they got that wall there, say no, no, I don’t want to do this, and I don’t want to go through all that. They don’t want to have to open up. And I was a little reluctant myself because I had to talk to three psychiatrists. Two females and one woman, and you know, and they get to asking you this and that. And my wife said, well now, you got to be honest. And I said I will until they ask me something that ain’t none of their business.

T: You said you were a disabled vet. Were you injured in Vietnam?

K: No. I have what they call Delayed Stress Syndrome. It took twenty years for it to come out. This is based on … I have a rash that I picked up from Vietnam and I had went to the VA about this rash, which I still have. Again, when I did all these … There’s still some bitterness there, you know. I sometimes think I need to go back and talk to somebody you know, because uh, man, I had to … I left the United States. Again, it’s amazing, you’re talking to these Vietnamese and you know, they are calling you niggers and telling you to go back to America and you are going, wait a minute I don’t want to be over here. I’m over here because I doing whatever I thought we were … the right thing to do, you know. Like I said, I didn’t burn my draft card. I did the right thing …

T: So then you came back to Portland. How did you hear about the job?

K: At that time we had what they call a neighborhood unemployment office which was over on Williams Avenue. And I went down there looking for a job. I’d had all kinds of odd jobs since I came back. And it’s really comical because most of the people that I know that came back from Vietnam, they kicked back. They partied, they did whatever you know, for – some of them are still doing it. So for two or three years, but I mean, I lived with my in-laws and so I needed a job, you know. So I went to the unemployment office over there, which was right in the so-called area. And they said hey, go out to the mill. The mill, what’s that.

T: Did you know anyone else who was going out there too?

K: No.

T: And what did you know about it before you went out?

K: Nothing. I did paper drives when I was a little boy and I didn’t know how paper was made. I worked there for probably five years before I really got an idea of how paper is made. I never knew that the scent that you smell in toilet paper is not in the paper, it’s in the roll. And how that roll is made. The roll that they come off the machine … is as big as this room. They put it on the machine and there’s the machine that cuts it. We have tourists. I’ve been out there for going on thirty-two years and I still think it’s fascinating to watch paper being made. I work in the part of the mill that actually makes the pulp. Before it goes anywhere else, I make the pulp and we do all the stuff that we have to do and then they send it to the paper machine and the bleach plant and all. You know and people don’t realize that wood is the color of say of a brown paper sack. That’s the way it is when you cook it, it’s that color. And it has to be bleached white with chlorine before you can add any other color to it. I guess, or once I’ve been told the Kraft process is the cheapest way to make the pulp. And the word Kraft is a German word that means strength. So I started working at the mill.

T: So, um, can you describe, tell me what happened when you went over there to apply for the job and what your impressions were.

K: Well, I used to always say that people stared at me because I was black. And the other part they stared at me because I am big. Let me go back to Vietnam real quick, I was huge in Vietnam. I was 19 years old and I weighed 235 pounds. I didn’t know anybody in the army at that time that weighed 200 pounds. I was very thin. I looked great. I weigh over 400 pounds now. So, I went out to the mill. Finally got out there. I walked up to what they call the clock room and it’s still there, which is where they, the clock room is the area that controls a lot of things. They call you for jobs and things like that. And they told me to go into the human resources department. I went in there. And I met a gentleman, his name was Bob Rafford. Bob Rafford was the man that basically was hiring and they were hiring blacks. They sent me over there. You know to tell you the truth, I was so shy and so scared about going over there. I was just going to go over there and work for a couple of weeks, you know, maybe a month to get me a nice paycheck so I could come back and buy me a car. I had no intention of staying in Camas, Washington. I had no intention of staying in the mill. And I met a guy who is dead now, and he told me, how do you like this mill? I went man, I don’t like this. I don’t like all you white folks. And rightly so, the people in the mill were just as curious and shy. I wasn’t the first black to work there, but I think I’m one of the more vocal blacks to work there over the years. So, you know, I filled out an application and last year I looked at that application and I just laughed. I said I can’t believe that I got a job in this mill with just the limited amount of information that I wrote down on here, you know. I mean, I didn’t have any experience. I hadn’t worked anywhere else. I worked for the parks bureau. I worked out at Oxbow Park. You know, that’s what I did.

T: What was your pay at that time?

K: $2.05 an hour.

T: And was that considered good, or bad?

K: That was good money. I think I got a raise. We went to like… I think we went on strike and then I got like $2.35 or something like that. But everything else was cheap then. You know, I don’t smoke cigarettes, but can remember when cigarettes was fifteen cents a pack. And they are over, they are almost four bucks a pack now. I remember when gas was thirty-nine cents a gallon, you know. You can’t get gas for that now. So, I’m old, you know. You could go to the store with twenty bucks and buy a lot of food. I mean bread was like thirty cents a deal, you know.

T: You stayed though?

K: Well, you know I couldn’t find a house to rent. I wanted my first wife and kids over there with me. So I bought a house. And it was really funny because I put down. I borrowed $550 from the credit union. The house I bought was like $9500, I wish I’d had kept it. I didn’t have to use my Vietnam, I mean my veteran’s – I’m a veteran so I didn’t have to borrow that money, I did that when I bought this house. So I didn’t have to uh, I borrowed the money and bought the house, moved my family there. It was funny too because I went to buy some furniture and they said, well you don’t have any credit. I said, well that’s right. Well how come you don’t have credit? I said well, twenty years old, bought a house, just back from Vietnam, been in the service, you know, because you had to put that on your application, what have you been doing for the past two years? I said I was in Vietnam. I couldn’t get no credit anywhere, even though I had bought a house. So eventually I got credit. The mill was tough. I had a lot of problems the first five years.

T: I’m sorry, how did you go from thinking you’d only stay for a couple of weeks to staying?

K: I wanted my family over there and I just said hell, I’ll just buy a house. My mother doesn’t even own a house, you know. Who do you know that buys houses at twenty years of age. I bought a house. I drive by there every now and then. That’s a great looking house. It has three bedrooms. So, the first five years I had a chip on my shoulder. I had an attitude. The people that I worked with, they were the same way. They were not familiar with blacks. They liked to, you know, use the term “boy.” Don’t do that. Probably they didn’t mean no harm by it, but I didn’t like it. You know, we are talking about Camas, Washington. The gentleman who hired me, his name was Bob Rafford, he was married to a German lady.

…

He was the man that they hired there to do whatever had to be done. To hire people and things like that. He hired us and hired a bunch of other people. It started off okay. But you know everybody was standoffish, you know. The women wouldn’t talk to you because if they did, the white counterpart men would go, hey what are you doing talking to that guy, you know. So, luckily for me, I was able to find somebody who was somewhat of a mentor to me that got me changing. And I think after about five years in the mill I started changing my attitude. I was able to find some people who were okay. By then I was divorced and remarried. Married a great woman from Camas.

T: let me turned the tape over.

K: Okay.

T: Who was your mentor?

K: A guy named, wow, what’s his name, Blair Dobsen.

T: Was he black too?

K: No. A white guy. I had more than one mentor. A guy named Charlie Collins, he’s dead now. Blair is gone too. I was whining one day about how the union treated me and how the company treated me. Now you’ve got to understand something, you know, Camas is boom, way out here. Never had no black folks live there, never had no, very few black folks working in the mill. And as the old saying goes, the good ‘ole boys would say, well you know if you work here you got to do this and you got to do that. And they treated blacks like they were shit, you know. They just…

T: Can you give me any examples of stuff?

K: If you are white and you are breaking in on the job, they extend the hand of friendship to show you how to do a job, or to do this and do that. If you are black, then they just almost expect for you to know it. If you don’t know it then they just treat you that way. And if you don’t, what you call bust your ass like everybody else, well you just don’t want to work, you know. You don’t want to be a part of this and a part of that. And you had the real problem because if the company was ugly towards you, you’d want to go to the union and complain. But the union and the company was the same. I mean they were two different organizations, but my point being is, you know, the people that ran the mill were white, the people that ran the union were white. So, how do you do this. I used to always say this, I said it for years, I don’t want you to do anything different because I’m black. I pay union dues and my rights have been messed over. It’s really difficult for some white people to understand when we are talking about racism or prejudice because if you are standing there and somebody says, you know I don’t really like working with them niggers. Well now you know you’ve made a derogatory comment. You know that. But there’s something about how they do, and act, and say that you know that they are being racist. And the closest thing that I can compare to this is two items. One, if you are a mother, all mothers know when there kids are sick. It isn’t something that somebody has to tell them. It is something that God instilled in them. They know that child is not feeling well. If you are a female and you say, you know this guy is flirting with me. And somebody else says that no, he’s not flirting with you. No, no. Women know when guys are flirting. They know, they have that feeling. When racism exists, or sexism exists, they know it. They know when you are saying something, when you are trying to do this, trying to do that. And after thirty-some years of being at the mill, I have learned to let a lot of stuff roll over, you know. Hey Richard, where you at, smile, you know, turn the lights on I can’t see you. Now they don’t mean nothing by that. But it’s still a comment. Or, and on the other side of the coin, I’ve changed it around. I was at work today and we have contractors there and we have a requirement that you have to wear safety glasses. They asked if there was anything on the safety. I says yeah, I see a number of contractors coming in to work without safety glasses. Now we have more than one type of contractors and most of them are distinguished by the hard hat that they wear. And somebody said, so, you know, which contractors were they. My comment was, hell, I don’t know they all look the same to me. And somebody laughed and said were they all white. And I said, yeah, they were as a matter of fact. So, some things, you just can’t jump on everything that somebody says. I realize now, at 52 years of age, that every time somebody says something I am not offended. My father-in-law, who was 92-years-old when he died, if he said, you know, boy could you come here for a minute. I would not be offended. He is a 92-year-old man and I am a boy to him and I know he doesn’t mean that derogatory. Now if somebody my age were to call me boy. I’d say, my name is not boy, my name is Richard. Don’t say that to me. Those are the things that you had. And people would crack jokes and of course, when you went into the bathroom you saw nigger this and nigger that and all over the wall. I complained about that. The bosses would go, well you know, they write stuff in there, what do you want me to do. I said I want to paint them. I’d have to paint them all the time. Fine, paint them everyday if you’ve got to, I don’t like that. Now they call that a hostile environment workplace you know. Back they just said well, you got to live with it.

T: So they didn’t paint them.

K: No.

T: I can imagine for somebody that wasn’t as easy going as you, that it didn’t work out for a lot of people.

K: Yeah, I think I told you on the phone that they let all the air out of my tires and wrote nigger get out of town on my car.

T: Did you know who did that?

K: Nah.

T: Did you complain. Did you take that to someone.

K: Took it across the street and filled the tires up with air. And luckily they didn’t cut them. Went home.

T: Did you bring it up at work.

K: Nah.

T: How come?

K: The guys at the mill could care less. They were not sympathetic.

T: The bosses?

K: The bosses were not sympathetic. They were sympathetic inside the mill to a point. Beyond that point you are just complaining, you are not this and you are not that. When you work over, you get meal tickets. Meal tickets were required. At that time you could always take them to Camas, you know, use them as money for buying food. I went into a restaurant in Camas and sat there for, I don’t know, fifteen minutes. Everybody around me was served. I went back to the mill. Told the mill about it. Told them to keep them to take the meal ticket. I was upset. He goes, well, I don’t know, what do you want me to do. I says I want you to know how things are in Camas, you know, how people are treated. A close friend of mine. Let me back up a little bit. You know in 1968 through maybe 1975, the mill hired a lot of black folks. I’m guessing I bet there ain’t 40 blacks there now. And that’s about 1400 and some people. I think we have three or four that work in management.

T: How many do you think were there at the peak?

K: About a hundred or so, that was a lot. And there were 3000 people there then that worked there. It was a big place. I’m a senior citizen there now. There’s myself and about five other people that’s got this much time at the mill. The rest of them just couldn’t make it. You know, the sad thing of it is, there were things that black folks did – they were very critical of them. White folks do the same thing, nothing happens to them.

T: Can you give me an example?

K: I’ve seen guys come to work drunk, they helped them in. Somebody black come to work drunk, they got fired.

T: Any other thing that comes to mind.

K: Oh, if guys were late. One of the things that the mill changed and it was pretty good, you know, in those days as I remember, if the mill called you and you weren’t home you could lose your job. I think they had to call you so many times and if you didn’t answer the phone, then you’d lose your job. I really believe that a lot of this stuff was not explained to them people. You know, that you have to be at home and one thing that the mill did, later, because things were changing and the mill started coming into the 19^th century. That was if they called you in the morning, you had to be home between like seven and nine, if you weren’t home then you had to be home between three and five for swing shift, or eleven and one for graveyard. And the mill was pretty good. Normally you got to… Now you say, other examples of what they did, if you were white and you were working, let’s say you were working and you were doing your job, you know, and let’s say it’s time, it’s close for you to go home and you have to work say nine and a half hours to get a meal. If you were black they’d give your card back and say thank you, they wouldn’t let you work over. If you were white, you know, they’d find something for you to do so you’d get your little meal ticket and plus you’d get nine and half hours.

T: What are the meal tickets?

K: It’s a piece of paper that allows you to not get a free meal, but the mill will buy you a meal. When you work over nine and a half hours or, let’s say, now I’m working day shift, and let’s say they call me at four o’clock in the morning and say, hey Richard we need you to come in four hours early. Okay, I’m going to get three meal tickets and I’m going to get four hours pay, because I’m going to call time. And plus my eight hours, that’s pretty good money, you know.

T: They still have the meal tickets.

K: Oh yeah, they still have them. You know, like I said, the mill is a fantastic place to work. I have gone over to Portland and have talked to blacks and said hey, not everybody can work rotating shifts, not everybody can work shift work. It’s difficult. It’s hard. It’s hard on your personal life. It’s hard on your family life. But the money’s good and that’s the drawback, the money’s good. I’ve missed a lot of good things with my family, but I’ve made a good life, you know. I like the mill. And I think what happened over the years, is the leadership in the union changed. We had leadership at the Camas mill, it started to change. Some of the old timers died off. There were some really racist bastards up there.

T: In the union?

K: In the union and the company. You know. These guys were good ‘ole boys, they just didn’t have any blacks working there, you know. Something else I don’t want to tell you on tape, I’m not going to tell you.

T: Let me turn the tape off and we’ll talk about it.

Tape back on.

T: You did tell me on the phone before, too, that when you married a woman from Camas who was white that that changed things for you and for her too.

K: Oh, sure. People treated her like she was nasty. They were rude to her. She was born and raised in Camas. They didn’t like it. I don’t know why they didn’t like it. I mean, I was no different than anybody else you know. I told the incidents about what happened in the bar.

T: Would you mind telling me again.

K: I lived in the Camas Inn along with two other blacks. One of the blacks was dating what we referred to as a white lady. At that time, and I was a young man them. And she was probably my age. She was not just some fly by. And they went down to the local bar to have a drink, which is right across the street from the mill. And they walked in and they sat down and he ordered two beers. And the gentleman brought back one beer set it down. And he said hey I ordered two beers. And his comment was, the law says I have to serve you. There’s no law that says I have to serve this white bitch. They got up and left. But that was Camas.

T: And you felt that people treated you differently after that.

K: They didn’t treat me differently. They treated all of us the same way, you know. You are only interviewing me. There are some other blacks that don’t work in that mill anymore. You know, I am going to tell you something. If you somewhere for a job, if you don’t feel comfortable you are not going to perform. We don’t ask the people, I don’t want to be your friend, I just want you to treat me like any other human being, you know. I mean Camas, the mill never had any blacks there. You know they had a few. David Baugh was the first black I know that retired from the mill.

T: How do you spell his last name?

K: Baugh. And he’s got Alzheimer’s now. I wish you could hear some of the stories that he used to tell me that they used to say. I mean they used to. It’s just amazing. You could walk up and you’d catch somebody talking and they’d say things like, my God, you know, got this big nigger that works over here in such and such of place. And that’s just the way they talked, you know. They don’t do that anymore. They don’t, not vocally anyway. Things started changing when quote unquote women started going to the workforce in those days, women only did women’s jobs, they worked in the converting plant. We didn’t have no women foremen you know. We don’t have foremen anymore. But in those days we started getting women foremen in and the guys rebelled, you know. I won’t have this woman telling me what I have to do and things like that. I never had a problem with women foremen, the women being in authority for two reasons. One, my mother was a single parent who raised me and my mother — what she said went. And the second thing, when I went into the military, you know, you ran into women in the military, I didn’t have no problem with that. It wasn’t about whether you liked or didn’t like it, they were in charge and they told you what to do and you did it. It’s as simple as that.

T: They helped change the feeling in the workplace?

K: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know the other thing that’s nice about the mill, and one thing that’s… Camas is a family mill. You don’t see that as much now, but, you know, I worked there and I got two nieces on my wife’s side that work there, and they both call me uncle. And so, it’s still a family mill. It has changed in a lot of ways. I’ve been there going on thirty-two years and I’m involved, I never got involved with the union then, never got involved with safety and things like that. The mill had a program called Project Early Bird. It was phenomenal. At one point, Crown Zellerbach – the spent a fortune. And they would go over, not only – now we did this at the Camas mill, but they did this in other mills, they did this in San Francisco. They would go over to Portland. The way they would start is they would pick x amount of people that would go over to Portland, to go to Vernon School, predominately black school, and they would talk to these kids about what they did in the paper mill. And then we would bring the kids to the paper mill and we’d have a tour of the mill. You had to be at least 12 years of age. You’d tour the mill, and then we’d have a big awards dinner, and the kids would come and they’d draw pictures and they would talk and they got a chance to dress up and the mill paid for the – that was fantastic. It was a fantastic program. And we did it under Crown Zellerbach and then we did it under James River. And then it just folded, by the way.

T: How many years did you do it?

K: I think I did it for ten years.

T: Did you get people there, did you get people to come work for you from that?

K: You know, we always said that. We said, you know, we want, I was hoping someday that some kid would grow up and come to the mill, fill out an application. And they would say that he was involved in Project Early Bird. But, not yet. The kids all talked about that, and I’m sure they are grown. You know, they were in the fifth grade then. But it had been longer than that. Because I got a lot of paperwork on that. You know the kids draw pictures and sent you back. I got awards for that, you know, and things like that.

T: Even if they didn’t come, you were able to show sort of a role model …?

K: Well, you know, they had – The whole thing was, we had myself, some white folks, some black folks, and we were able to show these kids, you know, there’s a better way. Vernon School was in a bad area, had the gangs, they had you know, I remember going to the school, talking to these kids and then when they came out to the school (Mill?) I asked, where’s the rest of the kids? They said, well they were acting too bad. One girl, that they didn’t bring that I remember, I just kept pressing the teacher, saying well how come you didn’t bring her out here, because I thought she was coming? She just said she was twelve years old, she was as active sexually as an adult woman and they just said that would have been a problem. The other kids that I met that didn’t show up, they said that they were drunk. Twelve years old, you know. But we had a great time. We took these kids out to picnics. The mill had done this for them. The union got involved. It was great. I mean it was just. We’d bring, you know, a whole bunch of kids over. Let me back up, I’m going to tell you a story that for years I could never find out the total truth of this. They used to say things like, you know, the reason why they let blacks in the mill was because they changed their hiring practice and lowered what it took to get somebody to get a job in the mill, because you had to take a test and things like that.

T: That’s what they used to say?

K: Oh yeah, yeah. Now I could never find out whether that was true or not because not only were they hiring blacks, they were also hiring white folks too. So I said well, gee, they must be all in the same boat. Then the other thing that they said, and I could never find anything in print on it, but they were so desperate to blacks in the mill that then brought them over from Portland in a bus. And when, in those days, now we have to buy our own boots, but in those days they gave you a free pair of boots. And the credit union gave you like $50, you know, that was way back when. None of those people work in the mill. They were bums off the streets and they weren’t anything.

T: Was that before you were there?

K: I went over to the urban league and talked to a group of people that were looking for a job. Myself, a fantastic lady that I worked with named Eleanor Bailey. Eleanor Bailey worked in HR and she was just, I mean I could go to her and talk to her about problems within the mill and she was just a really good person to work with. She was very supportive of Project Early Bird. And we went over to Urban League and talked to the people about getting jobs. And I just told them straight up, you know, not everybody can work shift work, not everybody can work rotating shifts. If you haven’t worked around a lot of white folks, especially in Camas, you know because Camas was such, I mean who got a job in Camas. Until the mill started changing and things, man, you could smell. I mean our clothes smelled like that rotten eggs which was a process that you don’t smell anymore. Sometimes you do. But over the years the mill has cleaned all that up. You could smell you wallet if you wore, you know I ruined a leather coat over there that got that smell in it. But I just told them up front, you know, you don’t want to come work in the mill if you don’t want to do this. The mill has been good to me. And the money has been fantastic. When people complain about that mill, I tell them you need to go work somewhere else. I’ve got a home here. I’ve got four grown kids. I have a beach house, you know. I have a nice car. My wife’s a beautician. So we’ve just, it’s been good, you know. It almost broke me one time because we went on strike for about seven-and-a-half months and all the money I had saved up I had to spend it.

T: How did you feel about the strike, were you involved in it?

K: Yeah, I supported my union. We thought we were right, still do. Cost me a lot of money. We all thought the strike would be over with, you know, in a couple of months. And it went on and went on, very scary.

T: Well now there is also, there’s Asians that work at the mill too.

K: Yeah.

T: At that time that you started ..?

K: No.

T: No. When did that that start?

K: The mill started diversifying and you started to see Asians come in, Vietnamese and things like that. I think we have about three or four Vietnamese out there, you know, that work. It’s real comical too because I’d be talking to them and people would be bringing it up about Vietnam. I don’t want to talk about that, you know, start the war all over again. I don’t know what the break down is at the Camas mill is. It is still a predominately white mill. We don’t have that many women. I know we don’t have that many black women that work there. Because again, we are talking about rotating shifts and … shift work, you know. I’m pretty stable now because I work just a straight shift. I work seven days of day shift and I’m off tomorrow at four o’clock and don’t go back until Tuesday night at midnight. Seven days of that, two days off, then I start a four to midnight shift and then I have two more days off. So that all doesn’t change. But for some people, you might work graveyard this week, bam, go to day shift the next week, bam, you might jump back to graveyard, you know. You might work three or four graveyards in a row, that’s real hard. But again, I’ve chosen to do this and in about ten years I’ll be retiring, hopefully.

T: Now you said on the phone that there was a woman that you thought I should interview?

K: Crystal Odum.

T: How do you spell her last name, do you know?

K: No. And she is someone who I’ve worked with in the diversity because, she’s a real good person. You know I’ll tell you something, Andy Elsberry, John Shanks, these were good mill managers. Nothing against the other ones, but these were good mill managers that were dealing with the problems that we were having in the mill with blacks, with women, with things like that. Eleanor Bailey, Tricia Dykes, who is dead now, fantastic lady. Women that were open to, you know, situations and problems and things that were happening. People can be cruel, they can be really cruel, they can be nasty. You know I remember at one point, you know I said that we had about a hundred some people in that mill that were black. At one point, you know, people were going around and saying man, where’s all these black folks coming from, you know, are they just taking over. Again, when black folks didn’t stay at the mill they already had all these excuses of why they quit. And I always asked myself, how did you treat them? You know were you courteous to them, did you make them feel comfortable. You know, they are late like anybody else. They miss work, they have problems like anybody else. Sometimes it is funny because if they knew the things that black folks, you know, you are no different than anybody else. But that’s not true, I mean, it’s like, when somebody dies and we moan. I mean, we are just different than most people. Not that, you know, this and that. We breath air and drink like everybody else and eat food. You know overweight, things like that. I’m telling you the things that I have seen that have happened in Camas. I told you on the phone that when I first moved there, I received a letter from the city council welcoming me to Camas and inviting me to come down to the city council to talk to them if I experienced any problems or anything, you know, while I lived in the town. And most of the time people didn’t really bother me. They left me alone. I drank in the bars and things like that. And of course I studied karate when I first started, you know, lived there. People said things and did things, they were rude to my wife.

T: Can you give me an example of what your wife experienced?

K: People were just rude to her because she married me.

T: You did tell me on the phone too, that your brother-in-law wouldn’t talk to you.

K: Well, that’s something else that I shouldn’t have said.

T: But that it changed.

K: Yeah, it did. He was part of that. Well, you know, he’s dead now. I loved him then, you know I was bitter, because he wouldn’t talk to me or his sister. He was from Camas, you know. He was a part of that good ‘ole boy thing. I know he took a lot of pressure.

T: Did he work that the mill?

K: Oh yeah, he was a millwright. He took a lot of pressure because people would kid him, you know, hey how does it feel to have a black guy as a brother-in-law, you know. And later, things changed and we started talking and became really good friends and I carried his casket when he passed away. It was funny because later in life, when we got to talking, guys would come over and they would tell him a black joke. And they said, you know, go tell your brother-in-law that, you know. He would say, why don’t you go tell him. They were using him to do that. He just changed completely and I’m glad, you know, that we became friends. It was just one of those things. It was tight and people teased him about it and he didn’t speak to me.

T: You didn’t stay in Camas. Well, actually going back to the letter. Was the city trying to address things? Were there things going on that they were concerned about specifically.

K: Yeah.

T: Can you remember what some of that was?

K: It was just the tension of having blacks in Camas, you know. I mean I told you that there was an ordinance one time in Camas that blacks couldn’t stay in Camas. That was removed from the books, but it was an ordinance. You could work there, but you couldn’t live there. I mean we are talking about Camas, Washington. So many people pronounce it wrong or spell it wrong. It’s spelled Camas. In fact I rode the bus over there one time and the guy pronounced in wrong. What are they talking about, it’s Camas. Used be called Lacamas because of the plant and the Indians. After about five years of being at that mill, I met Blair Dobsen. You know, there was a, tell you what they had, there was procedure in the mill where if you worked in a department for so many weeks you were what they called blue slipped. Which you were steady in the department. If you weren’t there and you left the department or they kicked you out of the department you were red tagged and you couldn’t work in that department. I was probably red tagged, probably, in about ten departments. You know, they said it was me and I, you know, if somebody made me mad I would cuss them out and say, you don’t treat so and so that way, why are you treating me that way. Why do you say that, get off my back, you know, you are a racist, you are this and that. Some of that was true and some of it wasn’t. Some of it was my attitude. Again, you got to remember, I started at the mill in 1968, I’m fresh back from Vietnam. I’ve got an attitude. Most of the people in the mill had hair that was shorter than what you’ve got. And then we started having white guys come to the mill with longer hair. It was during the time we had the Sky River Rock Festival. And so the conservative guys, they drank like anybody else except that they had real short hair and they shaved and they had mustaches and things like that, you know. And that existed during those times. We had a lot blacks in the mill. You had a lot of white folks with the long hair and things like that. It was pretty much different now.

T: Okay, I’m going to change tapes.

Tape changed, tape two:

T: Can you tell me more about your mentor that you talked about.

K: You know, Blair Dobsen, eventually he became a foreman. He was just a real good shop steward. He was a nice guy to talk to. I was able to talk to him. We worked on the paper machines together, and, along with another guy named Charlie Collins, who was another guy that I – he’s from Texas. We were good friends, and he’d always irritate me because when I started acting different, he’d say now you are starting to act like a nigger. I’d go, oh, you know I wouldn’t hit him but I’d say we got a problem right now. He’d say it’s your attitude that had done it. I’d say no, it’s not my attitude it’s how people are treating me. Not everybody in the mill was prejudice. Not everybody in the mill was a racist.

T: Which person were you talking about there?

K: I was talking to Charlie Collins then. When I met Blair Dobsen, he was a shop steward and I was explaining to him how I was getting screwed over because I was being red tagged out of the department. And if you get red tagged out of so many departments, you don’t work anywhere. But I didn’t take no shit, to put it bluntly, off anybody. You know, I’d work like anybody else and if somebody was screwing off, you know, I’d use that as an excuse and say, well wait a minute, wait a minute – he’s doing this, why are you on my case? And if somebody asked me about my wife, the argument, the fight, you know, none of your business. I don’t ask about yours. It’s a personal thing. Or if they referred to my wife as white, the argument was on. The fight was on, you know. I didn’t marry a white woman. I married a woman. I don’t know how people say, you know, I want to look for a white woman. You know, I don’t. I wanted to look for someone, you know, that I could live with for the rest of my life, that had the same ideas of responsibilities and things that I wanted to see and done. Now and unfortunately my first wife didn’t see it that way.

T: Well you were pretty young.

K: Yeah, we were. I had a kid when I was 17 years old. My oldest son will be thirty-five this year, you know. So I was complaining to Blair, and talking to him. He said, you know Richard, he said, I’m going to go to the union, meaning our local, and he was going to look up all this stuff. Once again, I was so irritated that when I had a problem, I would say – it said you had a right to have a shop steward – I wouldn’t even have a shop steward there. Because I didn’t trust the shop stewards. You know I don’t trust this white guy, why am I going to trust another white guy. Because these guys might be fishing buddies. And because the Camas mill was such a family, an orientated person, you know. I mean everybody was kin. Everybody was married to everybody, you know. One department I worked in, one lady was married to like four guys and of the four guys, three of her husbands all worked in the same department. You know, she had kids by all of them. When you had a family reunion, you know, everybody was family. Everybody knew somebody, or married somebody or went to school with somebody. Like I said, my nephew and my niece, they work in the mill, they are kin to me. So, back to Mr. Blair Dobsen, who is again, passed on. He went to the union and he saw that most of the things that had been done to me were done to me, they were wrong, you know, and they started having them removed. And then I got into a department where I guess you could say I found a home, and I’ve been there ever since.

T: What department is that?

K: At that time it was called the Kraft Mill Department, and now it’s called Fiber. I still work in the Kraft mill, but it’s not a department anymore. And I am what is known as the first cook, and a team leader, which is the top of the ladder, you know. Instead of being foreman, they have team leaders. And there are only two black team leaders, me and one other gentleman.

T: So Blair Dobsen, he had enough clout, or he was able to help you with the union.

K: Well, he was a shop steward. Yeah, and so he went to the shop stewards and just looked at all the records and saw. You know one thing, you know if I got into a disagreement with someone that’s no reason to red tag me. But everybody was calling him and saying, you know what, well this black guy in your department … Let me tell you a little story. I was in the department one day and I was talking to the department head. He got a phone call.

T: Which department?

K: Kraft Mill. Where I’m at now. And he’s talking to this guy on the phone and this guy – well I don’t know the other side of the conversation but I found out later. This guy tells my department head, he says, is that big black guy is still working in your department? And my Boss said yeah, he is. He said, well, he’s out of the department and he’s over here and he’s doing this and doing that. And I just called you to let you know he’s out of the department, he needs to be back over here. When he hung the phone up, he looked at me and said, what are you doing over in that other area? I said what area. He said well, I just got a phone call that you were out of the area. You know, out of my work area. It wasn’t me. It was somebody else, you know. But I’ve learned to respect people. I’ve learned to get along them. They’ve learned to get along with me. There’s some people that like me. I got thirty-two years in the mill. We had what they called the old timer’s picnic, and this same guy that I’m telling you about, who was my department head – somebody had asked me, said Richard, what job are you doing. I said I’m a first cook, which is at the top of the ladder. And I laughed and I said I bet you never thought I’d make it. And my department head, he’s retired now, he leans over right here and he says Richard, I never thought you’d be in the mill this long, much less be where you are that. But I was there, stayed there. It wasn’t easy. It’s tough. The shift work is tough. Again, I was, and even the union changed. Bob Cochrane, who I’ve know since I’ve been in the union, he has had a sympathetic ear to some of the things that have gone on. He’s our union president and he has done some good things for us, you know, and said hey we have to look at this. He’s probably been in there about thirty-four years, something like that. Bob Watress? was somebody else. I mention these guys names, Jim Pierce, I mention their names because they came to me and said hey, you know, let’s talk about diversity. The Camas mill and the paper industry needs to have diversity, they don’t. Why? Because the paper mill is probably eighty percent white males. Rest of them is made up of minorities. Once again, you’ve got white folks that have never seen black people. They don’t know how to act around them. They act around everybody else – everybody says things, they do things different, you know. I got a pretty good personality because I was able to joke and get along with people, until they crossed that line. They crossed that line and I … I don’t want to hear that. You know, they are telling jokes or something like that, you know. They want to use as we say the N word. You know, I’ll tell you something. Another little story. When I was in Vietnam, I had a guy come up to me and we were talking and we were drinking or whatever and he called me black. I said what did you say. He said it again, you know. I said, oh wait a minute, I don’t appreciate that. Now this is how the United States, or the World as we said it, was changing. I had been in Vietnam not a year, you know, and things were changing so fast that we went from being coloreds, negros, niggers, whatever, to being black. Which is really comical. And the guy, as I remember the story, he said whoa wait a minute. He said Richard, he says that’s what they are saying back in what we called the World, the United States, you know. I was shocked. And he says, you remember James Brown. I said yeah. He says, James Brown had a song called “Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud.” And I looked at him and my mouth dropped and I said, are they playing that on the radio. I mean I was shocked. People just didn’t … When they used the term black, you know, it wasn’t – the word nigger would get you, you’d get into a fight. If you used the word black, well, it wouldn’t get you a fight but it might raise eyes and things like that.

T: How do you feel about the different terminology now?

K: I’m 52 years old. I’m an American. I am a black American, but I am an American. And I don’t why we have to distinguish ourselves, you know, Asian Americans, Afro-Americans, you know, Spanish Americans and this and that. I was born in the United States. I don’t know nothing about Africa other than history. If somebody called me a nigger I certainly wouldn’t like it. At this point in my life I’d probably go, oh okay, fine and keep walking. Now if he put his hands on me that would be a different story. I’ve had little kids say that, come up to me and say that. I had little kids come up to me and do this (rubs his arm and looks at his hand), you know. They were just curious, you know. Because when I taught karate. I taught karate for the Vancouver Parks and recreation and I taught, you know, karate from 1975 to 1995, yeah. I used to have the little kids that would come up and you know, they’d sit on you and they’d do this (rub arm and look at hand). You know I though they were just feeling me, you’d look down, they’d look up and they’d – I’d just say no it don’t come off. Which is really comical and things like that. You know, I lived in Camas three and a half years, we got married in 1970 and I moved in 1971, the day my youngest daughter was born. She is twenty-eight years old. We moved into this house and we have been here ever since.

T: Why did you move?

K: Because I think if somebody would have been disrespectful to my child, or my quote unquote stepdaughter, I’d have hurt somebody. I couldn’t handle nobody talking bad to my kids and saying, yeah, you know your mother’s white and your father’s black or something like that, you know. I always heard this old …. You know, it’s okay for blacks and whites to get married as long as they don’t have any kids. And I’m going, oh, that’s bullshit, you know. They’d say because kids suffer. Tell me kids that don’t suffer. If you are fat and you are a kid you suffer. If you got freckles and you are kid you suffer. If anything, if you are skinny you suffer. They say well they suffer more. No. The only time kids suffer is when the mother and the father, meaning the marriage unit, if it’s weak. If it’s weak then they are going to suffer and people are going to say things. The other thing that I always find remarkable is when they speak of interracial or intercultural marriages. They ain’t talking about blacks and whites. They never talk about if a Mexican married an Oriental. Or if a white guy marries a Japanese, or if he marries a Russian. That’s still an interracial, or intercultural, marriage. But they said, no, no, no, no. They only talk about blacks and whites, you know. When I moved to Vancouver there were like four hundred blacks that lived here in Clark County. There are a great deal more now. One of the nice things about Clark County is blacks live everywhere. You can’t find that many blacks. When we moved here, that was a lettuce field out there.

T: To this house.

K: Right across the street was all lettuce as far as you could see this way, this way, and that way. It was all flat. I mean they grew lettuce out there. Every now and then you would see deer out here. People used to ride horses up and down this street. That was, like I said, 1971. And now you see I got a light right in front of my house. It just irritates me.

…

T: Okay. Now it sounds like you were able to work with the union, or with management on diversity issues. Can you describe some of that?

K: Well, we figured that by having diversity and, I actually missed the boat on this because when I talked about diversity I would talk about blacks and whites, females and women and things like that. And then when I started going to some diversity classes and meetings and things like that, you know. I actually told the union, my local, I stood up and said I missed the boat because when we talk about diversity we also forget that quote unquote there is even a diversity between white males, white females. You know, you got white guys who come from different backgrounds, different places where they were raised, or something like that. And they are different. You know, Camas had a lot of hunters. I ain’t never been hunting a day in my life. There’s and example right there. You get a bunch of white guys together, they talk about hunting and fishing. And they are laughing and joking, nobody says nothing. You get a bunch of black guys that are laughing and joking – what them black guys over there talking about, hey, you guys got to go to work. The only difference is that they are talking about hunting and fishing and we are talking about maybe a party and having a good time. And they said well you guys are always talking about this and that. And the comical thing about it was, I always asked them, case in point. I have what is known as a, it’s what the Muslims wear, and it’s a skull hat. And for the love of me I can’t think of the name of it. And I wore it to work. People were shocked. They said what are you wearing that for, or why. I’ve never seen you wear anything like that before. Well, I’m wearing this you know. And there was, you know, all this talk about it. So I stopped wearing it and I wore a cowboy hat to work. Nobody said nothing. They were happy. Oh, I like that. They can identify with a cowboy hat, but they could not identify – oh I can’t think of the name of it. I haven’t worn them in a while. But I paid a lot of money for them and I wore them. It’s just a prayer, a prayer hat that you wear.

T: Are you Muslim.

K: No, no. I’m a Christian. I studied the Muslims and I like it but. There are more movements in the world than anybody. You know, I was baptized Baptist and go to the Baptist church.

T: Well, what did you do with the diversity. What did you do, did you have committees.

K: We had a committee. It’s fell by the wayside because it needs to be restarted. What we did was, we started having classes and trying to, getting people to understand different cultures and things like that. If you know somebody, you try to understand their culture and stuff like that. I mean, I would never walk up to an Indian and go ‘How’. That’s rude. That’s like saying all Orientals know karate. All blacks can play sports. I can’t play sports. I can’t even dance. I was real good in karate, I got to be a sixth degree black belt. And then I started putting on weight and my knees started, and I just got out of it altogether, you know, because it has changed. We went around the mill and the first thing that was difficult was, was trying to find a good committee. And the first committee we didn’t have any white males on there. We had two black males, a Hispanic, a black female, and Cindy Castro who was our, she was someone that we could go to for advise and she was also on the committee. Again, it fell by the wayside. And people didn’t accept it very well. You know, we have to have it by law, you have to have this harassment thing that you do every year. Now they accept that because that’s the law, diversity is not the law. One of the best places in Clark County that have the diversity program is Hewlett Packard. They’ve got an impressive diversity program. It’s almost zero tolerance. They have classes and they teach people, we don’t have that. I’m hoping that someday we can have our diversity program, because the law says that, you know, you can’t put your hands on somebody if they don’t want to and you can’t do this with their head or … Case in point, white guys love to walk up to each other and go, how’s it going guy, and kick you in the butt with their feet. They do that. It’s just something about them. Black guys don’t do that. We don’t. that could get you into a serious problem, fighting or whatever. Keep your feet on the ground, you don’t do that. But it’s something that they do, it’s cultural. I guess in our culture we talk with our hands and things like that, you know. The guys tease me, say how come you wear a mustache. I’ve been wearing a mustache ever since I could wear one. White guys don’t wear mustaches. They always shave, you know, they are clean shaven. But these are just the little things. Case in point, you got two guys on a bus, one white – one black. One has a King James version of the bible, the other guy has the modern translation of the bible. They both acknowledge that they are both Christians, they both believe in Lord Jesus Christ, okay. But as they are talking they start questioning one another. And the white guy asks the black guy, why is it that when you guys are singing in church you be jumping around and shaking your heads and screaming, you know. The black guy says, why is it when you guys are in church you’d be singing and you don’t move, and you are cold and this and that. And what is happening is – the important thing here is they are both Christian. All that other stuff is immaterial, but they started putting each other down. The same thing happens in the mill. Why does this black guy do this. Well why don’t you go and ask him. Why does this white guy do this, well why don’t you go and ask him. Why does he do this, why does he say that, or why does he have the earring in his ear or this or that. And these are what we are talking about, the cultural understanding and things in the mill. And I thing it started off pretty good, but it wasn’t received very well. I went and found me somebody who was white who I thought was real good, but whoah. The mill is a hard nut to crack.

T: You went and found somebody …

K: Someone in the mill that I knew that I thought was good, who could see both parts, you know, diversity, so that we would have a white guy on the committee.

Phone rings, turn tape off and then back on again.

…

I’ve had people sit in the mill and tell me, they are hiring all these blacks but my brother or my cousin, who was born and raised here in this town, can’t get a job. Well you check on it and find out that he has got a bad record. Or he didn’t do this and he didn’t do that.

…

I used to date some women and the mill. And they’d always ask me questions. The people at the mill would ask me questions, you know, and I would say none of your damn business. It was really comical, because they would always want to know, are you going out with that woman. I’d say none of your business, we are just friends, you know. … Of course, if they found out they would be really hard on the women. You know, say things, be rude to them, stuff like that. I’ve been in the mill so long that when I go somewhere and people say, god, you still work at the mill. I say yeah. How does it feel to work out there in snowman land? … The term snowman means, you know, all them white folks. I don’t know. I weathered the storm. Some bad things have happened to me and I’ve had some good things happen to me and I am thankful to still be working in the mill and having a good job. I still have contact with some people, some things, you know. I‘m a shop steward so I’m safety committee person. I got involved, you know. Although I know some blacks in the mill who are still having problem and, you know, they are handling it the best they can. They’ve still got that good ‘ole boys attitude there, you’ve still got the people there. And it’s changing because you are getting the younger people that are coming in, the old timers are dying off and that attitude is changing. And plus you got all these new laws that you don’t want to be involved in what they call a hostile work environment. But on the other hand too, not everybody wants to work at the mill …

T: Well, I thing for now I’ll wrap this interview up …. Thank you very much.

K. Thank you.