Oral History Interview
People
are shaped by their experiences, their perspective, and a multitude of other
factors such as family life and the subcultures they identify themselves with.
As people grow older and begin to carve out their own place in life, their
perspective and subcultures will probably change. I had hoped to interview my
grandmother for this assignment, but we had conflicting schedules so instead I
interviewed my mother, Sandy Phillips, a sixty year old French and Spanish
middle school teacher and divorced mother of four adult children. I enjoyed
working on this assignment. I have always been interested in hearing other people’s
stories and experiences, and getting to hear some stories from my mother’s
childhood was a rewarding experience. It is easy to forget that at one point
she was a child and that she also had a life as an adult before she married and
had children. The interview did not cover every phase of her life. It focused
primarily on her childhood, young adult years, and where she is currently in
her life. Personally, I was most interested in learning about the first two
phases because I knew surprisingly little about them.
My
mother was born on July 3, 1952 in Richmond, VA to Paul and Florence Goolsby.
She grew up during the Cold War in a segregated society with her three younger
siblings. As she painted a picture of her childhood I could tell it was much
different from mine. One of the first things she mentioned was that girls
always wore dresses to school. Whenever older women from her neighborhood went
shopping downtown they would wear hats and gloves as they walked to the bus
stop.
“Downtown
Richmond was thriving, and Thalheimers and Miller and Rhodes were the elegant
places to shop. Ladies, especially the older ones, always wore hats to
church. It was almost impossible to see
if you sat behind them.”
Other significant differences were
that almost no one had air conditioning, everything was closed on Sunday, cars
did not have seat belts, and her family had a party line in their home. Their
phone had a specific number assigned to it, but it was a shared line.
Surprisingly, although her family lived in the city, they owned a pony named
Chocolate who my mother rode often. Another difference was that she grew up
during the Cold War, although she said she did not spend much time worrying
about it.
“When
I was in the 5th grade (1962) Castro was making threats in Cuba. My mother said that sugar prices were going
to go up. I don’t remember the Bay of
Pigs, but fifth graders talked about the Russians attacking and we had air raid
drills. At the sound of the siren we had
to go to the basement of the school and squat down. We watched TV shows like “Get Smart” that
poked fun at the Russians. I don’t remember worrying; I just listened and
pondered.”
As my mother mentioned, the use of
humor was one way Americans dealt with the fear of nuclear war with the Soviet
Union during the Cold War.
“America's new
enemy, the Soviet Union, had the bomb, too. In preparation for the day when
they might use it against us, American schools staged "duck and
cover" drills. Communities drew up evacuation plans, designated basements
of downtown public buildings as bomb shelters and stocked them with canned
water and food rations. Ultimately, however, we responded to the specter of the bomb
not with our hearts in our throats but with our tongues in our cheeks.
"You had to joke about it, otherwise you'd be too scared," said Edie
Yentis, a Fort Worth psychologist who was a child and teen-ager during the
height of the Cold War. “The Kingston Trio sang this witty song in the late
'50s called Merry Minuet, which joked about some lovely day, someone setting
the spark off and all of us being blown away' " (Stewart, 1995).
It is hard for me to imagine a time
when people were convinced we could be attacked with nuclear weapons at any
moment. However, America had significant internal problems as well during this
time. My mother was a child during the Civil Rights movement, but seemed
generally unaware of racial inequality or the significance of the movement at
the time.
“My
elementary school, Jeb Stuart, had two sixth grade classes, until my fifth
grade year, the year we were integrated.
So my sixth grade year, there were 4 integrated sixth grade
classes. Black students from another
school were bussed. There was only one
other white girl in my class. The black
kids were nice and I don’t remember any problems. I wasn’t really aware of racial
inequality. The worst thing for me was
not being in class with my friends. On the news I saw riots. The integration of my schools seemed rather
quiet. When Kennedy was running for president,
my mother said, “How would you like it if a black person sat next to you on a
bus?” I was 8 years old and don’t
remember if I had ever ridden a bus. I
was completely unaware that black people couldn’t sit next to whites. To me the Civil Rights movement seemed to be
the right thing.”
My mother’s sentiments are echoed by
other whites who grew up in the era of the Civil Rights movement as well.
“Growing up in the 1950s, I first became aware of a more
colorful world beyond the neat lawns of my Chicago suburb because of the civil
rights movement. I attended St. Petronille elementary school and viewed my
community through windows of stained glass. In that naive state, I believed the
world contained only two kinds of people: Catholics, who subscribed to our
"one true faith," and "publics," the less spiritually
fortunate herded into public schools. I had never met a Jew. I had never even
heard of Islam, Hinduism, or any of the world's other faiths. Everyone I knew
was Christian and white. But I heard plenty about "Negroes." Their struggle
for equal rights reached me through television, the Chicago Tribune I delivered
every morning, and the glossy pages of the Life magazine I eagerly awaited
every week. As with many of my generation, the belief that the protesters were
right -- and in the bedrock American principle that all men are created equal
-- was the first strong conviction of my life” (Bowden, 2010).
It is actually very surprising to me
that my mother was so unaware of the significance of the Civil Rights movement
because apparently it was a huge issue for Richmond.
“School desegregation there was the centerpiece of a
series of judicial decisions that have helped to structure public education
across the United States, as Richmond, in 1973, was the first city where the
issue of metropolitan school consolidation -- merging a city's school system
with neighboring suburban school districts, usually to create or maintain a
more even racial balance -- was debated before the United States Supreme Court”
(Pratt, 1992).
As my mother became a teenager, the
war in Vietnam slowly began brewing. By the time she was finishing high school,
she knew boys her age who were shipping out to fight.
“During the Vietnam War I was in junior high, high school
and college. It was on the evening news,
but I didn’t really follow it or understand what was going on. By the time I was a senior in high school,
boys my age were concerned about being drafted and being sent to Southeast
Asia. I remember Dan Rather broadcasting from rice fields in Vietnam. He struck me as being arrogant. Although I don’t know why, I didn’t trust his
presentation of the “news.” After that,
I never liked him.”
I can
relate to this on some level. I was a sophomore in high school when the 9/11
attacks occurred. Although no draft has been instated, I have had many friends
deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan over the past almost twelve years. I myself have
deployed three times and my brother who is a Marine, also deployed last year.
My mother told she feels like the media had no effect on her perception or
views. Maybe she became a skeptic of the media early on because of her instant
dislike for Dan Rather. I think the media has had an effect on me though. I
read the New York Times every day (I downloaded the application to my cell phone),
which is well-known for its liberal bias. The more I read, the less favorably I
think of far-right Republicans. I also remember watching the media whip the
U.S. into a frenzy after 9/11 as we invaded Afghanistan, and later how the
media was used to incite support for an invasion of Iraq. The media plays a
huge role in national politics and in presenting international issues and
events. I am not sure if I am being more realistic about the influence I have
noticed exerted on me by the media, or if my mother really is strong-willed
enough to feel as if she has been unaffected by it over her life time. One
significant difference now is the development and use of social media.
Naturally, these things did not exist when my mother was growing up (and I was
actually 18 before I began using it in 2005), but I think social media outlets
have a huge effect on what people think about certain issues.
Over the years as she has journeyed
through life, the subcultures my mother has associated with have changed. She
has a much more diverse group of friends now than she did growing up in an
all-white neighborhood. She now lives in a neighborhood with black and white
neighbors who are all on very friendly terms with each other. Her circle of
friends has changed and grown quite a bit over the years. She is no longer
Baptist, but attends a Pentecostal church and occasionally attends Messianic
Shabbat services on Friday nights. “The subcultures I identify with now are
educators, Christians, and Jews, and I have friends who are Philipino, black,
Native American, Korean, Hispanic, and of European ancestry.”
As individuals, we are all shaped by our various experiences,
perspectives, and the things we identify ourselves with. The things we identify
ourselves with are bound to change over time, and this is all part of the
process we go through as we find ourselves and develop into our own
personalities. I learned some interesting things about my mother through this
assignment. I got to take a look at what life was like in Richmond, VA in the
1950’s and 1960’s. Cars did not have seat belts and neighbors shared the same
phone line! I learned that (at least from my mother’s experience) the
integration of schools was not such a huge deal to the children who found
themselves in integrated classrooms. I sat back and tried to imagine what it
would be like to fear an atomic attack by the Russians at any given moment.
Beyond that, I considered not only the differences between my life experience
and my mother’s, but also the similarities. I think I inherited my ideas of
fairness from my mother. She told me that upon hearing that people did not like
Kennedy because he was Catholic (she was raised Baptist) that she went and put
a Kennedy bumper sticker she found on her parents car. I think she was about
eight or nine at the time. Later, as the schools around the country began to be
integrated, she said she felt like it was the fair and right thing to do. In a
similar vein, I am open and accepting to people of all backgrounds. Both of my
roommates were born in foreign countries (India and Romania) and I have dated
black, white, and Jewish girls. If racial integration and Civil Rights were the
huge divisive issues of the day when my mother was growing up, I think one of
the biggest and most pertinent issues of my generation is the gradual
acceptance of homosexuals as normal human beings. Obviously I am biased, and I
have a limited perspective on this, but I feel like it is my generation (I was
born in 1986) that has been more willing than previous generations to accept
homosexuals into society as people. I have been in the Navy for four years and
during that time I have witnessed the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” with
none of the friction that many people seemed to have expected to occur. Gay
marriage is gradually gaining acceptance, and will probably be completely
legalized in my life time. The final, and perhaps most significant, similarity
I have noticed between my mother and myself as a result of this assignment is
our shared ability to adapt and grow as individuals. This is essential for any
person, and who better to learn about it from than the divorced French and
Spanish teacher of four who grew up riding a pony in Richmond with her Baptist
family, and now attends Messianic Shabbat services on Friday nights?
References
Bowden, M. (2010, March 24). The face of America is
changing. McClatchy - Tribune News Service. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/456404851?accountid=32521
Pratt, R. A.
(1992, Mar 09). White flight doomed racial integration in Richmond schools.
Richmond Times - Dispatch. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/423449530?accountid=32521
Stewart, P. (1995, Aug 06). Nuclear fallout the cold war
generation warmed up to parodies of life in an atomic world. Fort Worth Star
- Telegram. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/273300072?accountid=32521
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