Oral History Interview with Anne Butler, January 7, 2000

BETSY BRINSON: Today is January 7, year 2000, my goodness it sounds funny to say that. This is an interview with Anne Butler, at her residence in Frankfort Kentucky and the interviewer is Betsy Brinson.

Brinson: Well, thank you, Anne, for agreeing to do this with me this morning. You probably know as much about what the civil rights project is all about, as one of our Advisory Board Members, than anybody else I’ve interviewed at this point, so I won’t really go into that with you.

ANNE BUTLER: Okay.

BRINSON: Uh, but let’s start, if we can--tell me when and where you were born please.

BUTLER: Okay. [clears throat] I was born in Stanford, Kentucky [coughs] the 23rd of June 1948. Stanford is in Lincoln County.

BRINSON: Okay. And what part of the state is that?

BUTLER: It’s, uh, considered part of the bluegrass area, central Kentucky. Stanford is about thirty to thirty-five miles south of Lexington.

BRINSON: Okay.

BUTLER: We used to consider Lexington our bedroom community. Stanford is just a tiny little hamlet basically.

BRINSON: Of about . . . approximate population.

BUTLER: Uh, now the population may be close to three thousand. But, uh, most of the years that I grew up there it was around eleven to twelve hundred.

BRINSON: Okay. I really want to focus with you in our time together on, uh, your early years but also up to the time that you graduated from college because at that point you left Kentucky.

BUTLER: Right. Yeah, that’s . . . uh hmm. [clears throat]

BRINSON: And so we’ll probably do less of that, if that’s okay, than the early . . .

BUTLER: Sure.

BRINSON: Tell me about your family.

BUTLER: Okay. I grew up, uh, in a family of five children. My parents were named, uh, James Lucian and Mary Catherine, uh, Stewart. My parents . . .

BRINSON: How do you spell Lucian?

BUTLER: Uh, L-u-c-i-a-n.

BRINSON: Okay. I’ll ask you this periodically mostly for the transcriber doing the tapes.

BUTLER: Okay, sure. That’s good. L-u-c-i-a-n. Uh, [clears throat] my parents basically had their family in two phases. Uh, there are two older—the first two were girls and they were a year apart. Then there was ten years between the next child, the third child, and, uh, the next two actually. So by the time I was ready to enter first grade, the two older sisters had married and moved away so that there were three of us remaining at home, and I was in the middle of two boys. I had a brother four years older than me, and then one’s, uh, four years, almost four years younger than me. Uh, very, uh, low income working class family. Uh, my father was a very sharp man but never realized his potential, did not fully realize his potential. And, uh, he ended up for a number of years working at a local cheese factory that was unionized, and he was the only African-American member, or staff person, period. And--but he always worked two or three jobs. In addition to the creamery job, his hours or shifts would change so that there was, uh, a continuous, uh, rescheduling of his time and his day. But I can recall that very early in the mornings he would leave home and go downtown to clean offices. Uh, a couple of attorneys and insurance agents. And then, uh, he had two brothers—his father and two brothers at one time had, uh, been, uh, paperhangers and painters. And so they had a little business going, and quite often my father would work with the brother in that. His father had died long before I was born, but he had [clears throat] a brother and a nephew who continued working around, uh, the community.

BRINSON: And what about your mother?

BUTLER: My mother did domestic work from, uh, as early as I can remember to, uh, almost till her death. She worked for the same family for over sixty years and would also subsidize her income, uh, by, uh, taking in ironing, and she did a lot of cooking and catering on her off-time—well, she never had off-time--but in addition to the, uh, the one domestic job that she had; she would do those kinds of things. I think when I was about fourteen years old, uh, my parents separated and remained so probably seven or eight years. By that time, uh, alcoholism had become a really big problem with my father, and uh, so he moved out. And, subsequently, as his health began to fail, then she had him come back to the house and ended up, basically, care-taker for him for many, many years. Uh, he died in 1984, was seventy-nine years old at the time. And then, uh, my mother lived until, uh, January of 1997; she was eighty-two at the time of her death.

BRINSON: Okay. What do you know about your, um, family origin, your early ancestors?

BUTLER: Uh, not—well, in some--on the maternal side I know more than I do about my father’s side. Uh, I’ve had an ongoing genealogical project with my mother’s side for quite—well, since about 1983—and, uh, and back to the great, great, the great grandmothers—no, the great-great-grandmothers. Uh, so I’m back to about 1830 and, uh, [clears throat] they, uh, were owned by a man named, uh—well, his name is escaping me. It’ll come back to me. But at any rate, they were—this man, you know, came into Kentucky from Virginia—Miller family, I do know that much. Uh, William, yeah, uh, a Miller, a John Miller came into Madison County during the Revolutionary War area—well, around 1775, 1776—and brought with him, uh, a group of slaves. And they settled in Madison County, and subsequently, some of them moved on into, uh, Lincoln County. The Miller family married into the Lackey family and . . .

BRINSON: Lackey. How do you spell . . .

BUTLER: L-a-c-k-e-y. And, uh, there are still Lackeys in Madison County. I’m not sure about the Miller side. I think most of them ended up migrating out of Kentucky, [takes a drink, clears throat] but by eighteen—I mean, yeah, about the early 1840s, there was an offspring of the Miller-Lackey combination named William Miller Lackey. And he was raised in Lincoln County, and subsequently, became the owner of my great-great-grandmother and my great-grandmother. And so I’ve been able to trace, uh, a bit of the family lineage through those changes but never located a picture of the great-grandmother whom I just developed a deep, uh, affinity for without really knowing why or ever having known her.

BRINSON: But you obviously have long-standing Kentucky roots on your mother’s side.

BUTLER: Yeah, yeah

BRINSON: Is that true on your father’s side?

BUTLER: The same with my father’s as well. His parents were in Garrard County which is a county adjacent to Lincoln County, and subsequently, uh, moved on into Stanford. But I don’t know—I can’t go beyond the grandfather. Uh, my father just never talked much at all about, uh, his side of the family so, uh, from his parents forward I know very well. But I, I haven’t stumbled across any clues that can help me, uh, otherwise.

BRINSON: Uh, tell me a little about your early education.

BUTLER: Okay. Uh, the earliest memory I have of public school, formal school [chuckle] took place when I was five years old, and the schools were, of course, segregated in Stanford. The school for the black children was called Lincoln High School, uh, but it was a primary and, you know, an elementary and junior high and high school all combined. Uh, nice limestone building. Uh, but when I was five years old I remember being very excited about the possibility of going to kindergarten. There is, uh, an African-American woman who had, uh, decided that she would open a kindergarten and had gotten a lot of preparation for that done. And, uh, when September came and school started, we went. And within a week, uh, it was determined for some reason that she was not qualified to teach kindergarten and so that effort was aborted. Uh . . .

BRINSON: Was her kindergarten part of the public school system?

BUTLER: Yeah, we had a room in the public school. So--but at that time Kentucky did not have formal kindergartens in place, uh, so, and I don’t know if they, when they adopted, uh, or added the kindergarten level to public schools. But, uh, from there then it was waiting until first grade. The same teacher taught grades one, two, three. Uh, she lived next door to the school and had, uh, children—a daughter my age and then a son my younger brother’s age—so we were playmates. And I don’t know how she did it at the time but, you know, when she got out of school at three o’clock then she had a yard full of kids for the rest of the afternoon because there--we would often go there and play a lot. Uh, first, second and third grade then the same teacher. Her name was Mrs. Lottie Gooch. And then the fourth, fifth and sixth grade classes were combined as well, and the name of that teacher was, uh, Elizabeth Perkins. And there was always a lot of intrigue about her. She didn’t live in the community. She lived in Danville which was about ten miles away but, uh, traveled a lot. And I remember, uh, being exposed to the Rocky Mountains and places farther west because of her travels over holidays. She’d come back and share pictures and postcards and so on.

BRINSON: Let me ask you: how did you get to school?

BUTLER: Walked.

BRINSON: You lived within walking distance.

BUTLER: Yeah, uh huh.

BRINSON: And were you at all aware of the white school at that point in time, through sixth grade . . .

BUTLER: Oh, yeah.

BRINSON: . . . to know whether there were any differences or similarities?

BUTLER: Oh yeah, yeah. The, uh, there were little—there were sections of the community that were designated where white folks lived and, uh, the railroad tracks, as is often the case, was a dividing line, uh, in several instances so that our school was right across the railroad tracks from the white school. And so it, it—you know, I just always seemed to have been aware that there were some real differences. You would hear parents mumbling, and you know, being disappointed or frustrated about the quality of books that were available to the teachers to use with us, uh, as well as space. Space was an issue and so on. And I’m just very aware of the efforts though of the teachers to put in place as many experiences for us as, as they could. And probably hearing this Mrs. Gooch that I stayed around talk about some of the, uh, things that she was dealing with at the time. Uh, in fact, this particular teacher is still living, and a year ago at an all-school reunion, uh, she was, uh, given a gift, an award of some type; and there was an opportunity for her to talk and, uh, about those experiences. And, uh, one of the things she shared at this reunion was remembering that, uh, the, uh, I guess it would have been the white—she served as the truant officer--it was probably a curriculum coordinator at the time, I just am not aware of the title, but Mrs. Gooch talked about, uh, remembering how this lady would just come in with a wheelbarrow and just dump books on the floor and say, “Well here they are. Do what you can with them.” And she would talk about how she would spend time taping pages together and pasting the binding back to the bridge part of the book and so on. But, uh, was very much aware of place and place being, uh, designated for blacks in such a way that, that you knew without anybody ever mentioning it that there was some inferior processes and resources available.

BRINSON: Did you continue after the sixth grade through high school in the same school?

BUTLER: Yeah. This school, [clears throat] uh, there were seventh and eighth grade classes and then nine through twelve, and I continued at that school until the end of my freshman year. Uh, integration came at that point, and this was 1962, eight years after Brown.

BRINSON: Took a while.

BUTLER: Yeah, yeah.

BRINSON: Um, and then what happened in your freshman year?

BUTLER: Uh, the freshman year—by the beginning of the freshman year, we knew this would be the last year of our school as it had always operated. Uh, and so starting the sophomore year, I don’t remember any transition taking place like, uh, you know, I—we had a practice of selecting classes and kind of getting a schedule in the spring for the following fall, and none of that happened. It was an easy transition in a lot of ways. I mean, we just showed up at school when it started the fall of ’63 at the white school.

BRINSON: But you went to a new school though.

BUTLER: Uh huh.

BRINSON: What happened to the old black high school?

BUTLER: It, uh, for many years was used, uh, for—the high school integrated first, okay? And then I’d say within five years the entire school had, uh, been moved over. Uh, it became a facility that was used for special ed classes for a number of years and then in the probably mid-1970s there was--the whole district was consolidated and a new school, county school was built. And at that time the local high school shifted out and it freed up space then so that the Special Ed program that had been at Lincoln was moved over to Stanford High School. And, uh, so that the, uh, building sat dormant for many, many years and then, uh, I suppose late 1970s, early 1980s, the, uh--my mother’s church acquired the school and, uh, basically renovated it and it now serves as, as a church.

BRINSON: Hmm. Now you went to Stanford High School, and what do you recall about the first few days there?

BUTLER: Uh, let me tell you [clears throat] this. Uh, the head of the family that my mother worked for was a man who was, uh, head of the, Chair of the Board of Education. And so there were messages sent like, “Tell Anne everything is going to be okay.” And so I remember going to the high school, the new high school, our Stanford High School, uh, not anticipating any problems. By this time I was painfully aware of the, uh, integration struggles that had taken place, you know, Daisy Bates out in Arkansas in fifty-seven and so on. Uh, and so basically I just remember absolutely no tension whatsoever. Uh, the anxiety that comes with entering a new place, and trying to figure out how that place works, uh, were certainly present. But, uh, you know, we were given assignments for homerooms and then a schedule, and so on and, uh, that was, that was about it. Uh, shortly after the first of the year, uh, I think we became aware that participating in activities like we had done at Lincoln was going to be real different. And, uh, I had been a cheerleader at Lincoln and certainly, uh, by the spring when try-outs were taking place I, I had a real sense that was, it would be futile to try. And so I decided not to go to try-outs but several of my friends did and they were not selected. Uh, so the . . .

BRINSON: Were there any black cheerleaders?

BUTLER: There were no black cheerleaders, ever, while we were there although, uh, one of the resources the white people knew they were getting was the athletic talent of the black football and basketball players. And so you could see some real differences in, in the treatment. I mean these guys were just immediately adopted in whatever popular clique was at present at school and so on. The teachers seemed to accommodate difference without making a big deal out of it . I recall the expectations were high and, you know, I just knew we, we had to perform. I don’t remember feeling under any particular pressure to prove myself.

BRINSON: What was the teacher ratio in terms of black and white?

BUTLER: Oh, uh, at the high school level all of the teachers—well, there were only a handful of teachers, and they did not get incorporated into the white high school at all. The principal at Lincoln and his wife stayed and were over the Special Ed program; and then there was one black teacher at the elementary level. The first, second and third grade teacher, uh, was transferred over. For some reason—I don’t know if Mrs. Perkins retired, who had been the fourth, fifth and sixth, but, I suppose that happened because she was getting up into years, and I don’t remember her making the transfer at all. The coach, the fellow who—the teacher who had taught ninth and tenth grade science classes and so on, uh, went elsewhere to work. He, he didn’t have the opportunity to go over either.

BRINSON: Do you recall approximately how the class make-up went in terms of race?

BUTLER: There were fourteen of us in my, uh, sophomore class, fourteen of the African Americans who entered the white school. And when we graduated, there was a combined total of fifty-five. So, uh . . .

BRINSON: How many of the fourteen graduated?

BUTLER: Oh, all of us graduated and our class, our graduating class, was the largest in the history of Stanford High School so, uh . . .

BRINSON: What kind of student were you?

BUTLER: I was a good student, fairly capable.

BRINSON: Did you have favorite subjects?

BUTLER: Yeah, well, I was pretty—I didn’t care that much about science classes. Uh, once I got past botany, chemistry had no appeal to me whatsoever, and I just remember, uh, getting through those classes without enthusiasm or interest at all. Uh, I’d always been an avid reader and so, uh, English and history and, uh, most of the content-based courses, social science-type courses, appealed to me. Uh, in my freshman year at Lincoln, uh, I had, uh, taken, had to take Latin, and so I continued then with the second year of Latin and then took a couple of years of--the last two language courses I had were in Spanish. Uh, psychology and sociology classes, sociology more than psychology, I liked. And I think it was right about my senior year I did take the first, or the only sociology class, and it began—it was an instrument, a framework that began, helped me to begin, uh, ordering my world. You know, I had been very aware of the differences—my parents had been so socialized into place, their place in the community, that there was very little questioning of the discrimination, the inequalities and so on . . .

BRINSON: I’m actually surprised that your school had a sociology class.

BUTLER: This is the high school.

BRINSON: Right, but it’s unusual, I think, for that period, uh, at least high schools that I was familiar with didn’t offer sociology.

BUTLER: Well, it didn’t seem—I mean, you know, I just didn’t know enough at the time, uh, to question it, but we had a general psychology and then a sociology class. And I can remember the civics—the coach was also the civics teacher and he taught the sociology class as well as the psychology class.

END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE ONE, SIDE TWO

BRINSON: You were saying that you were very much aware of what was going on, uh, with the civil rights struggle, Daisy Bates and others. How did you get your information about that?

BUTLER: You know, we had a TV pretty early and I, I can remember the news coverage over the, the TV. No talking about it within the household at all. Uh, I, I need to tell you that when I was nine years old my mother literally found me w a job, okay? And I began, uh—and her rationale was that since she had to work all day, she didn’t want me alone with the two brothers, okay, and their friends coming to the house--an d so, uh, she started me to work. And this job was, uh, more or less baby-sitting an elderly woman, a woman who was probably late seventies. But she was--it was with a white family, and her daughter, with whom she lived, taught at the Kentucky Deaf and Dumb—isn’t that horrible?—School in Danville, but that’s what it was called; and, uh, in the mornings during the summer. And so I was to be at this home in the event that Mrs. Fields would fall and not be able to reach the telephone and so on. And gradually—well, almost immediately—I was given chores to do while, since I was there, and so it would be sweeping the—they had a front porch that just wrapped around all the house—and so sweeping that everyday and the sidewalk and ultimately doing dishes. And so the tasks just kept going so that by the time I was twelve years old I was doing all of the cleaning. Well, when I was twelve their son came home, moved in with them with a new wife. And, uh, the son was an attorney, and so overhearing talk, okay, about what was going on. The son’s wife was a woman from Barstow, Texas and she was, uh, going to be teaching at the high school as well. She—I remember her talking to me like I was an adult the few times she came to visit, like when I was nine and ten and eleven. And, uh, she told me one time that she had never been around any Negroes, but her family owned a cotton gin in west Texas, and so their family had always hired Mexican itinerant workers and so on. And, uh, she would make, do a lot of—I mean, cook a lot of Mexican dishes. And I remember her telling me then various things about these recipes and, and that probably became my interest in taking Spanish later on because she would curse in Spanish and I just thought that was fascinating [laughing]. But, uh, Nancy then—by the time we integrated, Nancy—her name was Nancy Hill—was teaching at the middle school, and that, at the high school; and that probably helped the sense of ease with which I, I entered that school. Uh, by this time I was working still afternoons. I had one afternoon off during the week and then I worked on Saturdays till about 3 o’clock. When I graduated from high school, I was making $5.00 a week.

BRINSON: And you graduated what year?

BUTLER: In 1966. But, uh, one of the things, one of my, uh, other favorite classes was speech. Nancy got me involved in speech and forensic activities, okay? And she cries now when she brings this memory up. During the junior year I was asked to write a speech for the girl who, uh, was running for student council presidency. She was in our class; her mother taught there at the high school as well. And I don’t remember the speech. I, uh--but it was a knock-out. And I remember Nancy coming to me when I went to her house that afternoon, and tears in her eyes, saying, “Anne, everybody in that school knew that you should be the one running for student council presidency.” And she just would well up in tears and walk away, not really saying anything.

BRINSON: Did you think to run?

BUTLER: Uh, I think I knew it would have been futile.

BRINSON: That you wouldn’t have been elected.

BUTLER: I wouldn’t have been elected. The—it was a small town, there were

cliques along social class lines, and so it was just real clear who would be the leaders and who would be the, considered the achievers and so on. I can’t believe my eyes have just kind of welled up with tears remembering that.

BRINSON: That happens.

BUTLER: Uh huh. [interruption] I was saying that I don’t remember much. I remember giving the speech, but what the content was I don’t remember. But Nancy will ask me now, “Don’t you remember you were wearing a blue mohair sweater that day, a baby-blue sweater?” She has a fantastic memory. But, uh, I don’t. I just don’t remember what the content was there. Uh, you know, I think it was pretty obvious to the teachers right away that most of us were capable, bright and capable. Uh, there might have been one or two among the fourteen who were considered slow and, uh, but that was about it. Academically, then, I was able to join the Beta Club at the white high school. Uh, I stuck with Y Teens but we met after school and the principal’s wife, who was still at the black school, was the, uh, sponsor for that, so we would go across the tracks to, uh, for that club activity.

BRINSON: Now was that an integrated group or was it just black . . .

BUTLER: No, it was—I continued with the black group of Y Teens. The Beta Club was integrated. Uh, and then, except for the forensic activities, I don’t think I participated in any other clubs there at school.

BRINSON: That certainly explains the beginning anyway of your ability to give good speeches, which you certainly do. [laughing]

BUTLER: Yeah. Uh, when I brought Nancy up, I intended—I was talking about how my awareness had evolved. And one of the things that, uh, she used to do was insist that I read the editorials, the Courier-Journal editorials, and that, then, often became the basis for our, uh, some of the themes that I picked out for the speeches that I would write and then for the forensics. I do recall competing at Eastern a couple of times, and while still in high school. Uh, and I would do some prose interpretations and that type of thing, but, uh . . .

BRINSON: Was anybody in your family or your community, while you were growing up, active or even a member of the NAACP?

BUTLER: There were no NAACP—there was not an NAACP chapter in the community, and I was not aware of anyone, uh, participating.

BRINSON: In Danville there was a chapter.

BUTLER: Okay.

BRINSON: But you said that was ten miles . . .

BUTLER: Ten miles away, yeah. Yeah. Uh, I do remember there was a woman who lived across from the school named Mrs. Sue Jones ,and she was, uh, somewhat of an activist although a lot of what she did was in a solitary kind of a way. Uh, I remember that she started a Girl Scouts troop for us. She was very active in the church, and so we had her Baptist, uh, BTU, Baptist Training Unit; and then she worked with youth groups. I need to say also that, uh, my mother was a member of a club, the National Federation of Colored Women’s clubs, and some of the women in that group started a youth chapter. So that these kinds of experiences were in place for me. Anyway, but Mrs. Sue Jones, uh, I would remember—I can remember hearing people talk about her going to city hall to petition the council for things like getting sidewalks in the black community; getting, probably integrating the theater; the colored, I mean, the movie. We had, uh—that was segregated, and there was a place for the colored people, as it was known then, were required to sit in the balcony; and she was the woman who was the impetus then for changes coming about there.

BRINSON: Is she still living?

BUTLER: No, she died probably, uh, mid-‘70s. Had a heart attack. It wasn’t too many years after I moved to Kansas that she died.

BRINSON: So you were aware that she was making some of these petitions and . . .

BUTLER: Yeah. The community that I grew up in, uh, was segmented in a way. My family’s house was on a street—we were the only black families on the street--and there were a couple of elderly women, white women, on the street but then there were more blue-collar, uh, white families. And, in terms of city blocks, I probably was no more—I mean, the next street over, the next block up then would have been the street that the school was on. And there were a couple of vacant blocks in, on our street, and so there was a well-worn pathway, you know, that we would just go up this vacant lot and through one person’s yard and we would be at school. But there were no services--few services--city services were extended to that part of the town; so there still are no sidewalks in, in, uh, for the streets there. You know, a very depressed part of the city, but at the same time the teachers all lived in this community. I mean, you could see a clear difference between the, the blacks who had a little money and those who didn’t but there were no noticeable, uh, class differences. I mean, everybody seemed to buy into the same sort of values, the same values. And then on another part of the community, of the city, there was, uh, what would be considered the red light district where the bootlegging went on, and from time to time there would be little juke joints or restaurants. And that was like the forbidden part of town. You couldn’t go there. Uh, but I remember my father one afternoon had told me that after school I could come to this place that he was doing some paperhanging, and he was going to give me some money for something: I was to get it after school. Uh, again, must have been eight or nine years old. So I went to this house where he was and knocked on the front door; and, uh, a little elderly woman, gray-haired, very motherly, frail-looking woman came to the door, and I told her, you know, that I was here to see my father. And she stood in the door and said, uh, yelled, “Lucian, Lucian, there’s a little colored girl here asking for you. I’m going to send her around to the back door.” And she told me, “The next time you come here, you go to the back door.” Uh, I remember just steaming. And when I got to the back door and saw my father, I was just shaking. And what I was saying to him was, “I’m not a colored girl. I’m brown.” You know. [laughter] So, uh, I know that happened. I was around eight or nine years old and, uh, you know—so about that time there was certainly . . .

BRINSON: Do you remember what your father said to you?

BUTLER: Uh, just be nice. Just be nice. That was his way of dealing with issues and, at the same time, drinking, okay? Which just wiped out, wiped his life out basically.

BRINSON: I want to ask you a couple of things that you have touched on. Your teachers, uh, your black teachers: do you have sense of where they, uh, did their training, their education . . .?

BUTLER: Uh, yeah, one I do . . . well, several. Mrs. Gooch is a product of Kentucky State. I don’t know about Mrs. Perkins. Uh, I don’t think—I just don’t know--and it hadn’t occurred to me to check the records at Kentucky to see if she too might have gone there. But the, the—and then there was a Charles Kavanaugh who was a Kentucky State product. Mr. and Mrs. Parks had attended—one attended Central State in Ohio and the other one Wilberforce. And, uh, that was about it.

BRINSON: Did any of them do any graduate work?

BUTLER: Oh, yeah. They—all of them had masters levels. Mr. Parks would—people would say he had two or three masters. Uh, to give you some idea of what the expectations were, this Mr. Parks was the principal, athletic director, but he also taught Algebra and Latin classes. He would stop you on Main Street and ask you to conjugate a verb in Latin [chuckle—Brinson], and if you could not do it, you knew what to expect the next time you were in his classes. You would be staying after school. I think that fear of that, uh, probably interfered a great deal with my inclination for math. I, I mean, I just was, I just remember being so tense all of the time. I mean, you did not want to get anything wrong. You just did not because you would hear about it forever. Uh . . .

BRINSON: Do you have any knowledge of where any of them might have done their graduate training?

BUTLER: I really don’t.

BRINSON: Okay.

BUTLER: I don’t. I’m suspecting that UK was probably what they had done For some reason, I’m inclined to think that Mr. Parks did talk about going, uh, to UK in the summers, and that’s how he got his masters work. So if he did, I would imagine that she did.

BRINSON: Depending on the period, they could also have done correspondence courses from UK. That actually goes back . . .

BUTLER: Even before . . .

BRINSON: Forty-seven.

BUTLER: Yeah, forty-seven, I was going to say.

BRINSON: Okay. The other question, Anne. I was thinking, when you were talking about reading the Louisville editorials, do you have any recollection of the fact that as a newspaper in the state they were one of the few that actually endorsed the whole effort to eliminate segregation in some areas? Do you have any recollection of reading any of those editorials or . . .?

BUTLER: Uh, not really. Uh, what I remember most would be articles, editorials that dealt with things like Phnom Phen, the Vietnamese—I remember that, uh, very strikingly; but don’t remember any, uh, integration kinds of issues. And yet I might have been—I knew things were going on because of hearing Jeff and Nancy talk. Uh, Nancy would say to me, and as early as I can remember, “You’re going to college. You’re going to college.” Somehow she knew about national direct student loans and grants that were just getting started at that time, and, uh, I remember they would have me read Time Magazine a lot and sometimes, uh, Newsweek also. But prior to that I think that I had—we had, uh, a little bookmobile would come around the community, and we’d get to use books from that, although I don’t ever, uh, recall as a young child getting to go to the little library that was there. It was not until high school that I think that I began going there, but I’m very much aware of using reading to kind of escape my own reality. Uh, I did not, of course, like the idea of never being able to play with other kids, uh, because I had to go to work from like three to three-thirty, to six. And then, you know, it was homework; and very rarely would my mother let us do anything after, in the evenings, uh, before high school. You know, we would almost always need to be at home. Uh, I think every book about Emily Bronte and all of that, uh, I remember reading studiously. Uh, my mother also very much knew her place, and so she was not involved in civil rights in any way that I knew about it. Uh, but I do remember, uh, discussions going on at church about Martin Luther King and whether or not we were going to get to come down here to that march, okay? And this Mrs. Sue Jones, uh, did get a bus and brought us down here for the march and so . . .

BRINSON: Well, talk about that. That was in nineteen sixty . . .

BUTLER: Sixty-four.

BRINSON: Sixty-three or sixty-four.

BUTLER: When was that march? I--it was in my junior year so it must have been sixty-four, right?

BRINSON: Okay.

BUTLER: Yeah. I just remember not really knowing what to anticipate, what to expect. I, I didn’t know if we were going to be in the march or if we were just going to, you know, to come to Frankfort. But, uh, I had an aunt and uncle who lived here in Frankfort, and so I had visited their homes and had a sense of South Frankfort. And I remember my mother telling me that, uh, I should look out for my Aunt Bea. Aunt Bea was a maid in the governor’s mansion, okay? [laughing] And for some reason my mother thought that I would probably, uh, see her. Uh, so I just remember the anticipation of being on the bus, and you know, being teenagers, we were occupied with teenage issues at the time. But there was a certain amount of anxiety because we really didn’t know what it was going to be like.

BRINSON: So everyone who came on the bus were teenagers?

BUTLER: Uh huh. Well, yeah. Mrs. Parks—there were about three other adults, uh, with us.

BRINSON: Sue Ball being one? Was Sue Ball one?

BUTLER: Sue Jones.

BRINSON: Sue Jones, okay.

BUTLER: Uh huh, yeah. And then the bus driver was also the man who would drive the bus for us when we went to out-of-town games and so on. His name was Henry Welch. And then there was a lady named Mrs. Virginia Reed, uh, who was with her. But I remember—my mother had a sister there in the same town, and I was named after her, so she thought she was my mother as much as my own mother did. And I remember her not wanting me to go.

BRINSON: Why was that?

BUTLER: Fear.

BRINSON: Uh huh. Do you have, uh, any recollection of the rally itself?

BUTLER: Just the numbers of people. Uh, we came, I guess, within—it was one of the side streets that led up to the Capitol. I mean, we didn’t start out with the march and come over the bridge or anything. But there was a side street and, uh, Mr. Welch had parked there, and then we got out and walked over. So just aware of all the—it was cold that day—all of the people, probably more people than I’d ever seen in one place. And state troopers were around visibly, quite visibly, and I remember being somewhat afraid and just full of anxiety that day. Uh, didn’t have a real sense of what I might be able to contribute to it. I mean, it was just an onlooker kind of thing, and I just remember being afraid.

BRINSON: Do you remember hearing Martin Luther King?

BUTLER: Oh, yeah. Yeah, but I, I couldn’t remember too much.

BRINSON: But you knew who he was?

BUTLER: Yeah, knew what he was, and we were able to get a good view of him, uh, coming up towards the Capitol. I remember Peter, Paul and Mary playing but, uh, that, that’s just about it. And so there was no real processing of that experience, ever, really and certainly not that day.

BRINSON: What about with Nancy? It sounds like—was she generally supportive of this movement?

BUTLER: She was generally supportive, yeah. Uh, don’t remember much at all, uh, about interacting with her about this. And, and it might have been—Nancy was a real anomaly for Stanford. Uh, she was just different cut, a different breed. And so most of the people there accepted her, but it was a surface kind of acceptance for many, many years. And I remember her husband, uh, almost a Renaissance man in some ways in terms of being willing to step outside of the general stream of consciousness, uh, but was never very—they did it in a mild manner . . .

END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE TWO

BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE ONE

BRINSON: Anne, I was thinking as we were talking to ask you: at what point did you begin to think about going to college?

BUTLER: Clearly by high school. By ninth grade I think I knew that I wanted to go to college, and because my family had limited resources, I knew that I would have to try to get a scholarship; and so worked uh, especially hard to keep my grades up to make the honor rolls and make sure that was going to be the next step. Uh, I must tell you though that there was a counselor at the high school who, uh, I remember as being very discouraging to me when I went in. It must have been my junior year. I remember when we got to Stanford High School that sophomore year there was a section of college catalogs and I remember jus poring through those a lot.. It was the first time I’d ever seen them. I was very, uh, aware of places like Central State because, uh, and Wilberforce in Ohio, because there was, uh--a couple of girls would come down to Stanford during the summer to visit their grandmother and we’d play a lot. They were from Yellow Springs, Ohio and so knew about Central State and Wilberforce, and would talk about those. And I just thought it was great, you know, that these people were having these experiences, these kids were having these experiences, uh, and I wanted to do that. When my brother, the one that was older than me, went to high school, he didn’t do as well. And I remember, uh, my mother being concerned about that, and ultimately they sent him—there was talk about him going to Lincoln Institute or to Paducah to the Western Kentucky Vocational School and he opted to do that. And so the last year of high school he spent down there learning a trade, okay?

BRINSON: Now was that an all-black school?

BUTLER: That was an all-black school at the time, yeah. Uh, and he took up, uh, barbering and, uh, uh--but I remember that the expectations were high. And I can remember my mother saying, you know, uh--there was so much focus on being a good girl, being a good girl, being a good girl. And, uh, I remember her telling me, uh, “If you want to go, I’ll do everything possible to, to help make it so.” And, uh, she did. So I would say clearly by, by ninth grade, tenth grade the idea was pretty set.

BRINSON: Now were you the first person in your family to go to college?

BUTLER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, I can remember though going into the counselor’s office, hearing about the ACT test that we needed to take, and, uh, going in to ask about taking the test, and I got no information. Instead, she talked to me about, uh—her daughter was getting a divorce and was going to be moving back to Stanford. And I remember her spending the entire time talking to me about working for her as a domestic when I graduated from high school. And, uh, Nancy, you know, asked me that afternoon, “Well, what did you learn from Mrs. Gooch?” And I just told her—this was a white Mrs. Gooch who was the counselor—I told her I didn’t get any information. She said, “Well, when do you take the test?” And I said, “I didn’t get any information.” And when I told her what the substance of the visit had been, well, she was absolutely livid. And, uh, I remember the next morning as soon as I got to school there was a message to go to the principal’s office. And when I went to the principal’s office, then the whole conversation was about what I needed for this ACT test and, uh, he had my folder out, looked at the transcript and said, “You know, I’ll help you get a scholarship.” So it was real clear that Nancy had been in to see him and, uh, uh, that went on. That was really the only negative encounter that I remember having at, at that school and from that day forward—this was in my junior year—I never engaged this counselor in, in conversation again.

BRINSON: How did it come that you selected Eastern Kentucky?

BUTLER: Probably, uh--well, I remember going to the University of Kentucky to take the ACT test. And I was just very, very taken with the aura that—I mean this was big time to me. But I also knew that the University of Kentucky supposedly cost more, and so I just disqualified that on the basis of money.

BRINSON: Did you talk to anybody when you went there? So you didn’t . . .

BUTLER: Didn’t really know but just assumed that this would be something I couldn’t have. Uh, I must have sent—I sent applications to both Morehead and Eastern. There was another girl in class who was stuck on Morehead and, uh, we were good friends and so we were going to go to Morehead together really. And, uh, I, so—I remember Nancy talking to me about Eastern, and--because that’s where Bob Martin was. At some point when I was in junior high, I guess I submitted an essay to, uh, for a DAR competition. And I wrote about Bob Martin, who was the President of Eastern at the time, and I remember contrasting his life with that of Abraham Lincoln: the poor-boy-to-riches kind of a story or poor-boy-to-prominence. And, uh, I won that contest. And I remembered Nancy at that time saying, “We’re going to let Bob Martin know that you wrote this about him.” And, at some point, I was told Bob Martin said, “If you want to come to Eastern, you’ll get a scholarship.” And this was way before I had any formal orientation towards Eastern at all. But I had, in fact, been on that campus, uh, did speech, during speech debates and forensic tournaments and so on; and I remembered somehow thinking this would be cheaper. Well, at any rate, I was going to Morehead; that was going to be my, my choice. And, uh, the spring of my senior year Jackie and I—her name was Jackie Perkins—went up to Morehead to visit the campus, and I saw it and just did not like it; and decided that I was going to change my mind and so I did. And so late that spring, uh, I made the decision to switch and that I was going to Eastern. Uh . . .

BRINSON: Did Jackie continue . . .

BUTLER: Jackie continued. She went on and, uh—she visited me a couple of times while I was at Eastern. We remained, you know, on friendly terms; she never quit ribbing me about backing out on her, but, uh, she continued on. But because of the financial situation of my family--we didn’t even have a car; my parents never owned a car in their life. And, uh, I knew then that, uh, I needed to take the, the lesser . . .

BRINSON: The less expensive.

BUTLER: . . . the less expensive, uh, route. I didn’t regret it. I felt like I had gotten--I was well prepared for college, uh, academically but then also emotionally. The sense of self was intact, the, uh, the community had provided a good foundation for us in that regard.

BRINSON: So you enrolled in the fall of 1966 at Eastern?

BUTLER: Uh huh.

BRINSON: What was it like to be a black student there at that time? Were there—how many of there were you for one thing? How big was the student body?

BUTLER: I think that black students had really just started attending Eastern maybe two years before, and there were just a handful. Uh, what I didn’t know until later was that Bob Martin had sent his recruiters around the state and rounded up—there were about a hundred of us, black students, who went in, uh, that fall. And the numbers kept increasing, uh, so that by the time I graduated, I think there were about four hundred, uh, black students there. Eastern had just gained university status, I believe, uh, maybe earlier in 1966. Uh, I remember distinctively feeling like a number—I mean, I still remember my ID number: 844139. [laughter] Uh, the freshman year, there were, the, the faculty were very distant and I’m not--I did not get to know any professors at all, uh, that freshmen year, that sophomore year. I . . .

BRINSON: Let me ask you about that. Was that because freshman and sophomore classes at most universities usually are very large number, or was it more because it was a white faculty and you were a black student?

BUTLER: I think it was the white faculty-black student thing. Our, uh, science classes were the—the only large classes that I had really were the science classes. Uh, English 101, 102, uh, probably eighteen to twenty students in those and, uh, most of the, uh—I had decided that I was going to major in sociology because I thought I wanted to be a social work, worker. Uh, the few people in the community who had gone on to college had become social workers, and so I knew two things: teaching and social work would be options for me. But I think it had a lot more to do with, uh, social distance. Uh, black students, uh, white faculty. I, uh, had to work my way through school so I got a job, uh, that first semester working in the library and stayed with that same position the four years that I was there. There was one other black student, uh, working in the periodicals division of the library which is the area that I was in, and his name was, uh, Raymond Clay. He was, uh, a junior my freshman year and was a sociology major, and kind of took me in under his wings more or less, uh; and was real instrumental in shaping or steering me towards political consciousness. I remember he would be—he’d walk around with, uh, what was the red book . . .

BRINSON: Oh, uh . . .

BUTLER: The Communist Manifesto. You know, uh, he was off into that and, uh, gradually would talk to me about issues, racial issues related to Eastern and to the campus. I remember he told me that before--well, at the time I was there Eastern’s mascot had been changed to the Eastern Colonels and so this Kentucky gentlemen, this colonel figure was there. But I remember Raymond telling me that, uh, just a few years earlier the mascot had been Maroons; their colors were maroon and white. And that, uh, he had brought to the surface that maroons were colonies of renegade slaves [chuckle] and that once that became known then, of course, the university wanted to disassociate with that image. And so, uh . . .

BRINSON: Of course, that was also beginning to be the height of black nationalism and . . .

BUTLER: Yes, yes, yes.

BRINSON: . . . the Black Panthers and whatnot.

BUTLER: Yeah, yeah.

BRINSON: Um, and, and I was thinking, was there a black student group on campus?

BUTLER: We formed one. Uh, there were a couple of kids that were—two brothers from Eastern—their last name was Brooks and, uh, they were nationalistically oriented. And, uh, it was hard to find the middle-of-the-road place. There would be large numbers of students who didn’t want--who were apolitical, didn’t want to have anything to do with anything other than they would join the choir. I think the black students started a choir, but they didn’t want to be involved in any issue-oriented causes. And, uh, then there was this group that was more of a nationalist leaning, and then there was me, budding, unfolding but unsure of, of which route to, to take. And so ultimately that first year, uh, I just absorbed Eastern and didn’t do anything. The second year, however, a group of black students had started, uh, a little tutoring program. There was a minister at the Methodist Church, and I would go to the Baptist church and so I didn’t know this minister personally, but, uh, he had started some community action types of, uh, programs in the city and wanted to get the black students at Eastern involved. And I remember one of the first things I did was agree to volunteer to do some tutoring after school with some children there.

BRINSON: Were the children in that program predominantly black?

BUTLER: Uh huh, yeah.

BRINSON: Okay.

BUTLER: And at the time, uh, I had become aware also that Richmond, Kentucky supposedly had the worst poverty, one of the worst poverty indexes, uh, east of the Mississippi River. I mean, it—poverty was really, really, uh, glaring in, in that community.

BRINSON: Do you have any sense of why that might have been?

BUTLER: I just think that, uh, you know, so close to the hills of Appalachia for one thing. And, uh, a lot of uneducated people and unskilled, uh, people is my speculation but I don’t know of any real indexes to measure that or gauge that.

BRINSON: I’m interested to know [cough--Butler] if the students who were more interested in black nationalism had, had an agenda to implement. Were there educational programs, speakers, was there any effort on their part to address . . .

BUTLER: Oh yeah, yeah. By this time, by—I would say by ’67, the fall of ’67, their agenda was pretty clear, and it was to open up Eastern in a variety of ways. And so efforts were begun that year to start a black student union; and I remember being on the edge, you know, uh, I’d go to the meetings but really wouldn’t commit. I wanted information but [cough] was not willing to make a commitment in any significant way. There were efforts then to petition the institution to bring in some black speakers and that type of thing. Entertainment was an issue. The, uh, [cough] social life there at Eastern was geared primarily towards the white students and so—there, there was, uh, I’m trying to think what this fellow was, he must have been the student council president, student body president, who was sensitive at the time. He, uh, was friends with a number of the black athletes and so I think he began talking some to the administration on behalf of the black student, uh, needs. [cough] So the BSU was organized and, uh . . .

BRINSON: Was there any movement to ask the administration to include more African-American curriculum in traditional courses as well as separate courses?

BUTLER: We worked on that for a couple of years and, as a matter of fact, just a while back I was going through some papers, a box of stuff that I had taken at the time of my mother’s death, had taken out of the house--and I ran across—she had saved a 1969 edition of an Eastern newspaper. And, uh, it was an April date, early May and there was a record then of some of the demands that we had made, again, for, uh, adding some black history and black literature classes into the curriculum but also were asking for, uh, black teachers. And, uh, so that this article was just kind of a summary of the gains that had been made during that year and one of them was that Dr. Cheaney had been hired to teach and was going to start the fall of ’69 and uh . . .

BRINSON: Tell me Dr. Cheaney’s full name.

BUTLER: His name is Henry Cheaney, C-h-e-a-n-e-y, and, at the time, of course, was a full-time professor at Kentucky State. And Bob Martin had, uh, contacted him and ultimately gotten him to agree to come to Eastern and teach a black history course. And so he did so the fall of sixty-nine and the spring of seventy.

BRINSON: And was that taught like three times a week or . . .

BUTLER: It was a four-hour course on a Saturday morning.

BRINSON: Okay.

BUTLER: So. But I remember at one time that, uh, we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere with our demands. Uh, a fellow by the name of Eric Abercrombie, who was from around Covington, Ohio, emerged as one of the more outspoken leaders. This Raymond Clay, that I mentioned who kind of took me under his wings the first year, was very vocal about some issues there on campus as well. Uh, there was a history professor, and I cannot think of his name, who was interested in black students and this Paul—I mean, Eric Abercrombie was a history major, and I can remember him passing on to us discussions he would have with this professor and basically encouraging us to go on, uh . . .

BRINSON: To go on with your . . .

BUTLER: . . .efforts . . .

BRINSON: . . . requests and whatnot?

BUTLER: Uh huh. Uh huh.

BRINSON: Now you were a sociology major?

BUTLER: I was a sociology major. I think by my junior year Eastern adopted a social work curriculum but I decided to just go on and stay with sociology. I would have had to stay longer to get all the courses and the clinical work in so I decided to stick with the, the sociology major. It was at Eastern that, and during this time, that, uh, a political consciousness began emerging in me. I mean, I think the seed had been manifested probably from the day that woman called me a little colored girl. [laughing] But I was at a point where I could begin to make sense out of the way the world and society was organized; and also was beginning to, uh, learn about resources and acquiring some tools. And I remember, uh, just being taken with, uh, this job that I had at the library because of the exposure, okay? Ramparts magazine. Boy, oh boy, I mean it was just like second to nothing, no experience up to that point. Got to read then a lot about the Black Panthers and what was going on there. Very struck with the community programs that, uh, they had, particularly like the Feed the Children or Community Breakfast programs and so on. And it was at that time then that I began to get a sense of some things that I could do, and this involvement in the program, tutoring children after school, was one of those. By this time also I’m becoming more aware there was a very large proportion of the students, the black students, who were there were from Louisville. And so sons and daughters of people who were aldermen and that type of thing. And so I began getting a sense of, uh huh, there are some people who, in Kentucky, who are making changes in, in, uh, things. But Eastern . . .

END OF TAPE TWO, SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE TWO, SIDE TWO

BRINSON: I wondered, did students stay on campus or go home on the weekend?

BUTLER: Uh, some of both. Uh I think we spent more time on campus than going home. Uh …

BRINSON: How about the black students?

BUTLER: Yeah. The black students, I mean primarily—I really wasn’t aware of those first couple of years. We would pass—there were little joints in, uh Richmond that catered to the college-age community. And, uh, so there were a couple of black bars over there and, uh, those were kind of our home away from [chuckle] homes, uh, a place to go and socialize. I remember we started weekends a lot on Thursdays, and spent regular time in those bars. Part of what happened—I remember the, the black kids that were there, we were fairly a close-knit group. Now, you can be with a hundred, uh, but as the numbers grew, of course, we stayed that way. And those were four of the best years of my life. I really, really appreciated, uh, that experience. Uh, I mentioned, you know, in sociology I became aware for the first time of poverty and, and not—I don’t ever remember thinking that we were poor until I got to school and learned about the economic scales and so on. And it was like, “My God, my family’s income didn’t even come up to the bottom of this”, you know? Uh, became very much aware then of the way society is stratified, and so at the same time I was getting the economic sense, an economic reality and a social reality. And, uh . . .

BRINSON: Anne, I wonder, the black student union, was there any interaction with your school’s group with the programs at Berea or the University of Kentucky?

BUTLER: At—yes, yes. Berea, uh, students would come to Richmond to socialize, okay? And so we got to know them on that regard, uh, and would go to their campus and support some of the efforts they were making; speakers they would bring in, particularly if it were black students and so on, I mean, black speakers. Uh, the University of Kentucky, I remember—Bill Turner, that’s when I met Bill Turner. Uh, Bill Turner and some of his friends would be at Eastern a lot and, uh, I remember, uh, recruiters coming, trying to get black students, uh, give information about some graduate programs. Law school had a big thrust on really to get some black students, and so I remember interacting with students around those kind of experiences as well.

BRINSON: You mentioned Bill Turner who also, I believe, majored in sociology?

BUTLER: Uh huh.

BRINSON: He’s a sociologist. Uh, did that provide any extra kind of connection for you in any way?

BUTLER: No, uh, at the time, you know, I knew who he was and I knew that he was quite bright, but Bill was kind of out on the fringes it seemed. Just a little too extreme for me really. Uh, we would, uh, you know, there’d be some social things in Lexington that I’d go to, and I’d see him then. But, just--I held back a little because he was a bit militant for me at that time. So other than knowing who he was, you know, very surface level, uh, contact, that, that was about it.

BRINSON: I wonder what [coughs--Butler] you recall about first hearing about Martin Luther King’s assassination? Where were you at that time?

BUTLER: I was at Eastern, uh, at that time, and you know, there was certainly a great sense of loss and a sense of sadness. Certainly--I was in high school--I remember giving—I was getting ready to give a speech when we got word that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated, and so, uh, you know. But certainly by the time I had gotten to Eastern and had exposure to all of this literature and, and the information that I hadn’t had in this little, small community that I grew up in, uh, was following events at that time; uh, and so there was just a great sense of sadness and loss and, uh, a sense of hopelessness: what are we going to do now? And, uh, I remember that Methodist minister coming up on campus to one of our BSU meetings at the time and talking to us about what was going on elsewhere, and certainly we knew about riots taking place in other parts of the community; and the outbreak that was taking place at Kentucky State. But none of that happened in Richmond, uh, and it might have been people would go home, you know, and . . .

BRINSON: So that, in and of itself, it wasn’t an immediate impetus for any sort of advocacy or reflection . . .

BUTLER: Yeah, I think that it, it impacted us in that way, and that we began working harder and more forcefully; uh, insisting on, that, that some changes had to take place. Uh, so he was assassinated in April of sixty-eight, I believe, yeah [coughs]. Shortly after that, there were discussions about trying to, uh, close the social gap. I mean it was real clear by that time that there was very little social interaction going on between black students and white students at the university. And this Eric Abercrombie was a resident hall assistant somehow. But I remember that following Martin Luther King’s death, there was a great deal more discussion about really integrating the campus, and what did it mean. And I remember Eric was one who pointed out the differences in living space and so on. So Eastern housing people very quietly began trying to rectify some of this, and one of the things they did was to pair black students and white students as roommates.

BRINSON: What were the housing differences?

BUTLER: The black students tended to be proportionately more in the older dormitories and, uh, more or less segregated within one or two dormitories. And, uh, by that time, inequality got to be an issue. Uh, [clears throat] but I remember going to--my senior year--I lived in the residence hall all four years--and when I went in, you know, dropped off my--moved in literally--I could tell I had a roommate, but there was no tell-tale signs of who the roommate was. And, uh, by this time I have a car. I bought myself a car.

BRINSON: And this was what year now?

BUTLER: Uh, this would have been fall of sixty-nine.

BRINSON: Okay.

BUTLER: My senior year. I remember, uh, taking my things to the room and dropping them off, and then going to register; coming back to the room; dropping books and things off. It must have been a Friday because I knew that I was planning to go back home at the end of the day. And so I did. I was gone that weekend; I came back on Sunday to see items of this other person but nothing that would give me a clue as to the identity of the person. I was aware by this time that I was the only black girl in this particular dormitory, McGregor Hall. Uh, so Sunday there was no tell-tale signs. Went to bed that night and woke up the next morning. There was no roommate. Got up, went to class, went to work, came back; could see some things had been moved around on the roommate’s side but still no clue. And it was not until about Thursday of that week that I got to meet the roommate and, uh, turned out to be a white girl. Didn’t know her. Well, you know, I’m wondering why has she not been around and, you know, what’s going to happen and blah, blah, blah. We just, uh—she told me that she had been staying with her boyfriend, okay? And that explained her absence, and that she would come in and change clothes and leave. But [clears throat] we, uh—as it was, got along just fine. Uh, I got married at the end of my senior year, and I remember there were several girls who could sew, and they helped me make the dresses for my little nieces who were going to be flower girls and all. We were very close and got along very well but when . . .

BRINSON: Now these were all black students?

BUTLER: No, these were all white girls, uh huh. Uh, all white girls and I was the only one—there were about three hundred girls in that dorm and . . .

BRINSON: I wondered earlier when you were talking about some of the, the efforts and advocacy for improving curriculum and whatnot, were there any white students that were part of the group?

BUTLER: I don’t remember there being any at all. Uh, the most interaction that I was aware of between black students and white students would be those people who associated with, the white students who associated with the athletes. Uh, very, very little, very few instances of interracial dating were going on but there were some. Uh, no, I don’t remember there being much interaction. Most of the interaction that I had with white students would be within the dormitory, or at work in the library and that was just about it.

BRINSON: Tell me about Dr. Cheaney’s course.

BUTLER: Uh, Dr. Cheaney just was a marvelous professor, uh, very fluid deliveries. He would come in always on task, you know; there’s very little chitchat before class. I can always remember being in the room, and he would walk in just minutes to spare, okay? Before it was actual class time. It was just like he had timed everything from the moment he walked into the class, the--took off his coat and hat and put his, uh, satchel on the desk and just got started. He would—always very well prepared. He would bring along a book, and he would put notes, some of his notes on the desk, but never, ever referred to either. Uh, he started, uh—was using John Hope Franklin’s text; I probably—I think I still have my copy around. Uh, would supplement that text with information he knew about particular events in Kentucky, and his style of delivery to, to my awareness at the time, reminded me more of a minister, just a very fluid delivery, uh, very clear explanations for the material. And, uh, it, it—I just would be struck there trying to take down everything I could, notes and then to hear him at the end of each session say, “Okay, for today we stopped on such-and-such a page. Next week or next time we meet, we’ll start on . . .”; and he would never have referred to the book at all during his [ ]. Of course, you know, I finally came to understand that he was so systematic that he knew how much material he was going to get covered, and there was less magic to it than it appeared to be at the time. Uh, enjoyed his classes tremendously, uh . . .

BRINSON: Did you take, uh, the one course?

BUTLER: In the fall, and then in the spring I took the second part of, of the course. By this time, there was one white professor, I remember, who sat in on the first section of the course, because he was going to offer the course in subsequent semesters. Uh, by this time also I think there had been a person hired in nursing, for the nursing program, uh . . .

BRINSON: Now are you talking about black faculty?

BUTLER: Black faculty.

BRINSON: In history . . .

BUTLER: In history and in nursing, uh huh, and then I think there was like a person in reading in the Education Department but that was about it. Uh . . .

BRINSON: Tell me about your husband.

BUTLER: I married, uh, a fellow that I had been dating probably since I was about sixteen, uh, and it was not a good situation. I mean, I thought this is what you do, you go to college and you get married, uh . . .

BRINSON: So he was not a student at Eastern Kentucky?

BUTLER: No, he had, uh, attended Murray for a couple of years and then dropped out; went to Chicago and, uh, lived for a while with a brother and sister up there. And, uh, we had this long distance relationship, and decided that we would get married around the time that I graduated. And so we did. [coughs] It was just like you follow-through. Steadfastness is an attribute but it also can be a real problem, uh, when one senses there’s no flexibility. And so, uh, I just did what I thought I was supposed to do. Uh, we got married, uh--a day or so before the ceremony, I discovered, I learned that he had been drafted and had kept this informa—as a matter of fact, not only had he been drafted, but he had already attended, uh, basic training. And I didn’t know anything about it. And that was a real difficult one for me to swallow, real difficult one for me to swallow because had I had the option of knowing, I probably would have asked to delay or something. At the time, I had thought the next step for me would be to go on to the University of Kentucky and apply to the social work school, and I wanted to do that. And then I thought a law degree would be good. But suddenly I’m married; I’m trying to deal with this issue of what I felt was dishonesty and deceit. And, uh, so he was stationed at Fort Riley and so . . .

BRINSON: Which is in Kansas.

BUTLER: In Kansas, yeah, between Manhattan and Junction City, Kansas. And so I went out there, uh, with him, was going just for the summer and was going to plan to come back. And he let me know that he was not at all supportive of that decision. Ultimately, uh, he gets, uh, orders to go to Vietnam; it was probably one of the last groups going in there. And so by this time I had been working a part-time job in a community center and, uh, was offered the Directorship; and so I decided that I would stay out there and work this job, uh, while he was gone. And so, came back and, real different person. And, uh, Vietnam had really impacted him in a very negative way. Was into drinking and using drugs and I just couldn’t see being fastened to that. And so ultimately the marriage didn’t make—we didn’t make it through year three.

BRINSON: But to make a long story very short, you ended up staying in . . .

BUTLER: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: . . . that state until what year?

BUTLER: Right. Well, until ninety-seven, ninety-six I came back. Yes, by this time, well, that, uh, gets into another phase.

BRINSON: As I recall though, Anne, you came back in large part to help your mother who really was aging and needed . . .

BUTLER: That and I had been researching and reading about the Kentucky African-American experience for many, many years and wanted to be closer to the records. Uh, had thought initially—and, in fact, the super—my dean out there was, pleaded with me to take a leave of absence instead of resigning. And, uh, you know, two years, three years, you name it, Anne, but I decided, no, I think that I’ll just go on and make this, uh, a clean split. I think that, uh, you know, I had gotten to the point that I just wanted as little as possible on my shoulders, and so wanted a sense of freedom and first time—because I had been subsequently remarried and divor--had the two children by the second husband, and then ended up divorcing and single parenting. So just the weight of that responsibility, of single parenting. Uh, I was ready for jubilee time, [laughter] you know, to just kind of find out what it is to live without all of this weight. And so I decided that I would just go on and make a clean break, and that way I wouldn’t feel beholding. And, uh . . .

BRINSON: And coming back, you came to Kentucky State University?

BUTLER: Uh huh.

BRINSON: To direct the CESKAA. Tell me what CESKAA is.

BUTLER: Center of Excellence for the Study of Kentucky African Americans.

BRINSON: And so your work today is a lot of historical research. I know the underground railway and the nineteenth century . . .

BUTLER: Uh huh. Much of it is—it’s like I was preparing for this job all of those years and just didn’t realize that that’s what I was doing because--starting in 1983 when I started doing my own genealogical study and trying to understand, uh, the context of my family’s world, I’ve been—just got hooked on history. [interruption]

END OF TAPE TWO, SIDE TWO

BEGIN TAPE THREE, SIDE ONE

BUTLER: And so it was getting into those records that led me to the man who had owned her for one of the affiant that she--or affidavits that she had submitted in her pension application was by the man who had owned her--she and her mother--as a slave . Uh, this was in 1894. It was 1890 that Congress gave Civil War widows the rights to claim pensions, and, uh, Alice’s husband died in June of 1894, and by August then she was making application for this pension. I was sitting there reading these affidavits and one of them says: “I have known this affiant since birth for she was born into slavery and was my property until the end of the late, great rebellion.” And, you know, went on—he knew that she had a prior husband; that this first husband had drowned, and that she had not remarried since Milt Williams. So, uh, there it was. William Miller Lackey, age seventy-eight. Uh, and at the time I was able to determine that her birth--she was thirty-eight, so that gave me something to work back on. And she would have been nine years old then, uh, when, when freed. Once—so . . .

BRINSON: Did you, uh, tape your aunt when you were doing the interview with her?

BUTLER: You know, I taped and I made notes but most of my tapes ended up in my children’s . . .

BRINSON: Tape recorders.

BUTLER: . . . tape recorders and jam boxes and so—oh, I was so angry with him. But I have quite a few notes and . . .

BRINSON: She’s not living now, is she?

BUTLER: She just died recently. She just died, uh, ninety-nine years old. She died on the, uh, seventeenth, eighteenth of December, uh, and was the last of the eight children of my grandparents. And, uh, I had been to see her a week and a half before, and really felt like she had already checked out on me, okay? And, and, uh, the, the weekend before I went to see her--my sister had called to tell me that they’d moved her to the hospital from the nursing home but were taking her back to the nursing home. And, uh, so I called the nursing home that Monday and talked with the nurse and she told me, “Yeah, she’s spry and, uh, talking and speaking very clearly,” because there’d been episodes over the last several months of her voice just not being very clear. And I took Wednesday off and went over to see her and—she was in Stanford, in my hometown--and, uh, tubes everywhere and she just—she wasn’t in a comatose state, but I just couldn’t raise her, you know. I just couldn’t. And, uh, it—I’d never seen her like that before, and so I was just saying and doing everything, trying to talk to her and to get her—she used to refer to Muhammad Ali as that Clay boy. [laughing--Brinson] And she was, you know, always would tell me something. Well, I read where that Clay boy did this or that. And that Clay boy had just been, uh, announced as the Kentucky Athlete of the Century; and I was telling her that, you know, kind of rubbing around her arm, her shoulders. And I just knew that I’d get a rise from her for that information but, uh, she didn’t.

BRINSON: Well, tell me, last question: what are you going to do with all of this wonderful family history that you learned about?

BUTLER: Uh, that cedar chest right there is full of it. I’ve already been through one house fire where I lost much of it and had to re-- you know--retrack the steps. Uh, part of why I had hoped to come here was thinking I’d be able to write, and that has not been possible. Uh, I do regret that I did not take a sabbatical before I left Kansas State, but, uh, there was just not a period where I could’ve taken one and gotten away. I had kids there that I needed to be there, you know? And, uh, it was just—I was just too in demand out there to, to be have been able to stay in a place and do the work so, uh, that is the past.

BRINSON: At some point you have to find a way.

BUTLER: I’ve got to, and it’s got to be sooner than later. Uh, because I have, uh, I’ve been to the house, the house that William Miller Lackey owned--still there. There’s just a lot of information that I have . . .

BRINSON: Photos and whatnot?

BUTLER: I do. I have—I don’t have—I can’t find a photograph yet of this great grandmother, but my mother’s parents, I have photographs of them. And, uh, what I did also, uh, you know, I’ve done the reading on history, Kentucky’s history. I’ve been into the Courier-Journal records that just were chunk full of information about people in that area who were victims of violence, who would appeal for relief and so on. I found at one time--this got burned up in my house fire but I could probably dig it out again at the archives--but I found a list of all the confederate sympathizers during the war; and running down through that list it was like, my God, these are all the white people who are here now, even the father of this man that I used to baby-sit for, you know. So have seen some changes the way I have, it’s just been amazing. Uh, and so I do want to do something with that sometime.

END OF INTERVIEW