Oral History Interview with Don Offutt

This is an interview with Don Offutt. The interview takes place in Lexington, Kentucky and the interviewer is Betsy Brinson.

BETSY BRINSON: Well thank you very much Don, for agreeing to talk with me today. Just so I get a voice level would you give me your full name, please.

MR. DON OFFUTT: My name is Don Carlos Offutt.

BB: Carlos?

OFFUTT: Um-hmm.

BB: And you were born where and . . .?

OFFUTT: Bowling Green, Kentucky, Warren County, May 19th, 1947.

BB: Okay, thank you. Okay, we talked a little bit about the purpose of this interview, um can we begin; I’m going to ask you some personal questions about you, and then we’ll go on and we’ll just talk about some other kinds of social, political kinds of topics. But, tell me a little bit Don, about your family. For example what do you know about your ancestors.

OFFUTT: Well a fairly good deal about my ancestors. Uh, I am a. . . well as you seen with the resume, my teaching area is social studies, but um, I’m probably a serious product of the sixties, uh in the sixties we were clear about trying to self-define, self-determine, and self-defend. So, I had the opportunity with a number of people during that time, to do a little studying, understand a little about genealogy, with a name like Offutt, O F F U T T, I can tell you some funny stories about them seeing a black man come into plenty of places named Offutt when that wasn’t expected, and the various kinds of responses that followed. So, we started to learn a little bit about ourselves in and around Western Kentucky University, uh, I had initially gone to Kentucky State during the early, or I should say mid-sixties, which was right at the time of the African-American Awareness Movement, Civil Rights Movement, the Black Movement, whatever you want to call it for, for the sake of conversation. It was a great time. It was a movement all across the nation for that matter, from young whites uh, to Native Americans, it was, it was a good time. So, I had the opportunity to take a look at the name as it was so peculiar for black folk or white folk, and came to find out that around Logan County, which is a county that’s contiguous to Warren County and borders down near Northern Tennessee, there was a large plantation there that was called the Offutt Plantation. Interestingly enough, the relatives of this particular Offutt also are in Lexington, so what I can understand there were three Offutts who came this way in the early settlement of what was at time called the west. What most folk don’t really realize is how old Kentucky is as a state as the fifteenth state of the Union, and like, like I’m saying it was called the west. We found various documents from the sale of enslaved folk to the Offutt Plantation. I have documents there, that are Bill of Sale documents, and from what we fairly well can understand, and I keep saying we, because this has fairly well been a family effort, many of us have worked on some end of it or the other. But, when George Washington died, what was supposed to have been manumissioned for many of his slaves, didn’t happen that way. Some where sold to pay off the various debts that Washington had by – I believe his son-in-law, and one of those was an African whose name was John. John, at that time, sold for five hundred and fifty dollars ($550), he was in animal husbandry, and was at that time, a pretty valued person so he was sold to the Offutt Plantation. Uh, had I known that this question would have been here, I would have brought the Bill of Sale that’s still in the Logan County uh, records and archives, because one of the things that white America has done well, is that it has basically kept good records on its’ business, and so then John, being of that Plantation, married a woman named Cilia. Cilia had been the daughter of a, an African woman who was, there was a marriage between the Price family and the Offutt family, and as a gift Cilia had been a gift, a wedding gift, and and so the gift, I guess netted the early ancestral beginnings of what would now be us, the lineage of the African-American Offutts because we now know that many of the enslaved Africans’ that were freed or manumitted, they took on the name of the plantation that they often came from. So, what we know is, and there is a tombstone that’s in an outside area of what would have been the Offutt Plantation, and the area in Logan County is called [Shoko] and interestingly enough I found that the name of that little community comes from a name of Native-Americans, the [Shoko] people. But apparently there were African-Americans in this area because there is a tombstone there that says “Father John Offutt and Mother Cilia” and the tombstone dates back to 1856, and from there I understand that we had nine brothers and from there you have some drifting because after manumission many of the, the brothers left and went to other places. Interestingly enough one of the places would have been here in Lexington, so there has been a a line of white Offutts and a line of black Offutts here. So, that’s just a brief overview of the history and some genealogy.

BB: There is actually a [Shoko] slip in Richmond, Virginia, which is in the early parts of the city, um, I wonder if there is any connection there, we might talk about that at some point and see, again it was named after an Indian Tribe. Um, tell me Don about your immediate family growing up; who was in it, and how did your family make their living, and . . .?

OFFUTT: Well I had a . . .

BB: Were you in Bowling Green?

OFFUTT: Yeah, I grew up in Bowling Green, and uh, my father had returned from the military, uh solaced, cute little bright eyed little young lady who obviously captured more than his fantasy, and uh, my dad and mom got married and I was the first child. Uh, my mom had a total of nine children, but only four of us lived. And uh, there were probably numerous reasons – I often wonder, I do know that that was a time of some serious segregation and the hospital that was available to black folk in that area, was in Nashville. You had doctors there, you did have two doctors in Bowling Green, maybe you had three. And the three doctors would make house calls so, I’m one of the rare folks that was born at home, and uh, not until my brother next to me, who was nine years old, did any of us get the opportunity to, at that point in time be born in a hospital. So I came in really on the tail-end of serious segregation and my brother and . . . they later then built what they called the colored wing, or had a colored wing for the hospital so my brother and sister and youngest brother got the good fortune, I guess, of being born in a hospital.

BB: And was that a hospital in Bowling Green, or a hospital in Nashville or . . .

OFFUTT: There was a hospital in Bowling Green, see there was a hospital in Nashville because in a sense that would have been our political and cultural mecha for that end of the state in Kentucky because you had Nashville, Tennessee, and Nashville had Tennessee State, at that time was Tennessee A and I College, and then you had the premiere education institution called Fisk University and right across the street from Fisk University was, and is, a black medical school and hospital called Maharry. So that was where we were able to go to for many of our again, social and cultural kinds of things, but Bowling Green at this time, by the time my brother was born did have the “Colored Wing” of the hospital.

BB: Let me just stop you, because I realize I have put you in the sun.

OFFUT: I am a sun person, I love sun, so . . .

BB: We’ll lose it before long, um, Okay. Did your mother lose those children in pregnancy, in early infancy, or . . .

OFFUTT: There were some that were lost in pregnancy and one or two in early infancy. I’m not sure whether there could have, or would have been, when you go back in hind-sight to wonder, if medical care would have made some difference. Um, but we will never truly know. There were some that were . . . I remember or think a sister, a girl child that was born, that did live for a little while. And uh, it was always interesting to watch the movement of the black community when a child was being born, to watch the women, and how they knew there missions and their roles and responsibilities, or if there was a death, how that all brings its’ own energy and it’s own, own rules, roles and rituals along with it. So, like I say I remember the ritual and the roles and the things that the women were having during the child births.

BB: How did your family during their living while you were growing up.

OFFUTT: With much difficulty. Um, my dad had been in the military, and in the military even though they were segregated he had learned a great deal about electricity, he was in [Carmo], uh meaning stringing wire for communications, uh he had a number of skills and did a number things, I remember some funny stories about that, but naturally when he came back home to Bowling Green, there weren’t jobs for anybody uh, other, for black men other than agricultural things and generally janitorial things if you didn’t have your own particular skill. So, dad had a number of jobs, he worked uh, he did janitorial service working at the movie theater, he was up around the town area and he got to know numbers of people and so they would say “Can you come to my house and clean my house, or cut my grass?” And so dad did a number of those things. Uh, in the fall about maybe November, October, he would also work at the tobacco barn, uh, that was always seasonal work there. He seemed to enjoy that too, I remember him always being up and cause he would go from one job to the other. Um, he had gotten injured uh, he had gotten a combat injury, so later through the years he got uh, some veterans’ benefits that was a small monthly check coming in, I later found out that he should have gotten worlds more, um but . . . so and my mother worked at the hospital. She initially started out uh, in the area where you sterilize equipment and, and, and, I can’t remember what the area was called, and later she moved over to responditory therapy, respiratory therapy, so that’s how we basically lived and worked, uh lived and survived, my parents were working people.

BB: Uh, did your family attend a church?

OFFUTT: Uh, mom attended church. Dad did every now and then, but um, they would have attended a Baptist Church, uh . . .

BB: Was there a particular one?

OFFUTT: State Street Baptist Church down there in Bowling Green.

BB: And how about you?

OFFUTT: Yes, well I was a member of State Street, uh, I guess you always are or whatever you do, and my brothers, my two brothers and sister we attended State Street Baptist Church the whole uh, membership and baptism and this type of thing was there. And uh, so that would have been our main church affiliation.

BB: Okay. Um at that point in time do you have any sense of what percentage of Bowling Green was the black population?

OFFUTT: Yeah, uh you had a a extremely large black population at that time, it would have been easily twenty-five percent. Would have been easily twenty-five percent. Um, the next real major area would have been Hopkinsville, and Hopkinsville, Christian County and Hopkinsville has always had forty percent at least, African-American population, so Bowling Green would have had twenty-five to twenty-eight percent around that time.

BB: Okay. What can you tell me about your early education in Bowling Green?

OFFUTT: I can tell you a great deal about it. Um, there is an interesting kind of duality with segregation. Segregation created problems with education for some, and in others it created pockets of extreme intellectualism. We had an all black high school, obviously because of segregation, but being close to Nashville and being close to Tennessee State and Fisk we had some extremely capable scholars at my school, because what segregation did was it created conditions where these people who were scholars and educators, about the best jobs they could get in many places would be to teach school. So if they couldn’t teach on college levels, uh and at that time you didn’t have very many black universities or such universities as a new phenomena, so many of them taught in high schools. So, I had the opportunity to have an extremely good education, uh, even with the things that would occur such as when the white high school got new books, they sent the old books to the black high schools, well you had had these scholars who that really wasn’t a problem because you had folk who – one of the teachers I had had gone to school with [Dubois] okay, so you know, it took me getting to be an adult to realize how dynamite some of these folks were. You know, then we had languages: French, Spanish, you know and I’m talking from fifties to early and mid-sixties. We had phenomenal choirs and choral music and band music, I mean from uh, the “Negro Spirituals”, uh many of us sung in the All-State Choir, you know, we competed not only in academic circles, and athletic circles, but in, in all kinds. So we had a phenomenal high school and another school not far from us, interestingly enough, Central High School in Louisville, the old Lexington Dunbar School, my school . . . an interesting about my school. It didn’t really ever have a name as such, and uh, folklore kind of says that there were some debates about what it should be named, and the black community did not care for the community for what, at that time the white school board was wanting to talk about a name, and so they didn’t ever name the school. So it was called just the street it was on, High Street.

BB: High Street.

OFFUTT: Um-hmm, Bowling Green High Street. And so, but the folklore says that the folk didn’t want some of the names and titles, they didn’t want another Carver, or another Washington, and uh, I don’t know if they offered any suggestions, but I know that that’s what the folklore says. But, anyway . . .

BB: You must have been there during the time of school integration?

OFFUTT: I was the last class, the last graduating class before the school closed down and integration occurred. So, yeah so my first year was at Kentucky State University, so I had never had a white student in class or a white teacher for thirteen years of my education until I transferred back to Western.

BB: And what year was that Don, that you graduated?

OFFUTT: I graduated in 1965.

BB: Um, how many in your graduating class?

OFFUTT: Uh, I guess right at a hundred and twenty-three, twenty-four (123-124). And what had happened prior to that, we probably would have had some where in the neighborhood of about four hundred (400) but other counties from a thirty mile radius around us, which came from a county north of us, Butler County, a county south of us which is Allen County, and the folk that were in Logan County they went to another school. But anyway, we had about a thirty mile radius where we had kids bussed in. Those schools integrated before our school. We had, at one time we had a large black high school right in the center of South Central Kentucky, and uh . . .

BB: Did it take legal action to finally . . .?

OFFUTT: Oh yeah. Yeah it um, basically, it wasn’t really major court action, it kind of came in on the dribbled in, tail-end thing of all delivered speed, Okay. You started to have court situations occur in Louisville, Kentucky, and from Louisville, Kentucky and some of the major things that were happening there, then other counties started to say, well, you know, let’s, let’s take a look at this thing so that some of this doesn’t hit us. But another major importance to integration wasn’t legal action at all, it was that we had some phenomenal athletes. And, when we would get into tournaments, we would get, . . . and see what you have to understand is that this was the dual system, so for the longest time we played all the way up for black championships in the state, and then when integration kind of started to occur we didn’t, in many instances, play other white schools until late sixty-four, sixty-five, but they created one regional and one district kind of tournament, cause again, there was a white district in the regional tournaments and there was a black district in regional tournaments, but when integration kind of occurred, it was like, well let’s close the black regional district tournaments down and allow them to play in our district and regional tournaments. Well, we did that and like I say, you, you can’t imagine again, some of the athletes that we had because we had a corner on the market, to say the least. Well, like I said one of the earlier things that folks decided to do was let’s integrate and we’ll keep some of these athletes in our respective counties, because we had some, we sent early on guys to the pro’s, a long time ago.

BB: Was there an active NAACP there?

OFFUTT: No.

BB: No.

OFFUTT: Um, there was an NAACP, um, but one of the things that’s not generally discussed about civil rights is that there were, you had some people that talked about integration, but at that time most people were talking about equality. There were not a lot of folks that said let’s give up our schools, and let’s give up all of these things in our communities to go over to the white schools, there were folks that said, all we want is when the white school gets new books, we want some new books. You know, we’ve got this cultural thing here, um, we’ve got kids that we were feeding right into Tennessee State, Kentucky State, uh, at that time Arkansas A M and N. Uh, we sent some folk to Central State up in Ohio, I mean those were some major schools that were where our kids were going to and when someone would go we sent folk right on behind them. So, those folk would talk about different issues, and so the active NAACP you, you knew that you raised your concerns but, they weren’t as concerned about some of the things about integration as much as they were saying we want the same equipment that white students get and that type of thing. When they didn’t get it, they didn’t bemoan the fact that they didn’t get it, they said well we’re still going to educate these kids, and so the activity had a whole different direction and focus over and above integration, it was, let’s continue to educate our kids, and we’ve got a pretty good thing going here.

BB: Well, was there a local legal action, though?

OFFUTT: For, for [ ], not really no.

BB: Not really?

OFFUTT: No.

BB: Okay, okay. Were there any individuals that you can recall who played a leadership role in integrating the schools?

OFFUTT: Um-hmm, um-hmm. You had, at that time, and see when I go back to think about the time, the principal of our school had his Ph.D. then. His name was E. T. Buford, you had a local minister there who had his doctorate in divinity named J. E. Jones, you had a man who later got his doctorate, called F. O. Moxley, and there would have been, there would have been some other folk there, but these folk would have been primarily the leaders. I was trying to think of whether a guy by the name of Owmby, O W M B Y, J. S. Owmby, he would have probably been involved in there. But yes, what you almost had was how do we loose and come out of this thing with as much as we can possibly get. Whether these folks were necessarily going out and banging on doors saying we want our kids to go to Bowling Green High School, but when it started to come down that we were going to lose our school, because after these schools had integrated then there was the idea that has always been a a wonderful attack of duplication. We got a school down here, you know, you have a declining student population, um we’re going to close it. You had, at that time, a Kentucky Educational Association, and a Kentucky Negro Education Association, the KNEA, and at that time Dr. Buford was the President of this KNEA, he had done a number of things fighting integration and coming up with strategies and this type of thing, so from what I could understand, they fairly well knew this was going to pretty much be, at least, the beginning of the end, so how do you stave it off as long as you can. I’m not sure that probably the process didn’t start maybe two years before sixty-five, it may have started around sixty-three, because that is when the first group of folk from Scottsville, or Allen County integrated over there and the kids didn’t come back. Then . . .

BB: Let me ask you, in some places now, uh it was a, a gradual process where students who couldn’t take a particular course in the black school could go to the white school to take that course, was there any of that, or was it . . . once the decision was made to, to integrate the schools, did everybody go?

OFFUTT: Yes. It was, it was no gradualism, it was no kind of, of, of plan such as that. As I say, we had a pretty complete school. We had a vocational, uh segment of the school that was excellent, uh as I say, we had the, the business section, we had an academic, and what they called college prep at the time, no there wasn’t . . . when the school was closed down, it was closed down, and that following class then were sent to Bowling Green High School.

BB: At what point Don, in your growing up do you think you recognized that you were growing up in segregated society?

OFFUTT: One evening, we had gone to the movie, we being my mother and my father, and we had gone to the movie. At that time we had to set in the balcony, and I was playing, we were coming down State Street, and

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OFFUTT: . . . got in front of my parents, and I might have been – you know ten, fifteen feet out in front of them, and a car came around with some whites in it, and they hit me in the back with a brick, okay. I was a kid, I might have been eight, I might have been younger than that, I might have been six or seven. But anyway, the, the . . .getting home and hearing the voices, hearing the conversation, made me then realize you know, that people who were white didn’t like me. Now, I didn’t have to have a great deal of, of, of . . . if my family said it, and my grandmother said it, and my grandfather said it, and my mom and dad said it, then its’ gotta be true for me, because that’s kind of the way it is, and that is why they hit me, because there was no other reason for them to hit me. So, that was one of the earliest incidents that I remember, and then, you know there were always other little successions uh, another little succession of things happening, but that was the most critical memory that I had to start realizing that, well . . .and I didn’t think about it even being that much about segregation, I knew that we lived in a community and whites lived in a community and those communities only fairly intermingled in certain kinds of situations and conditions, and I kind of understood that because that’s the way it was. We knew that a number of, of, of black women were domestics, we knew that there were always whites coming down into the black community for some kind of chicanery, you understood that, you saw that. We lived not too far from what the area was called Shake Rag, or this type of thing and so you had . . . my dad was a fairly well-known street guy, they called him Train, uh, me growing up with him they called me Little Train, so when I would walk with my daddy I would try to walk like him going down through the streets and they would say “Here come Train and Little Train,” and so even in that, being a reasonably aware kid, I saw things, and you look at things and you heard people talk, and I heard folk whisper and then I would try to figure what they were whispering for, and about, uh, so I knew that there were two kind of worlds, but I was quite happy, and quite protected, and quite safe. So, up until that one particular point in time, I didn’t really understand that these two communities, in some instances, could be seriously be at odds, because I pretty much had everything I wanted in my own community. Um, one other time I do remember going with my grandmother into the Five and Ten Store, and she would say, “well don’t put your hands in your pockets”, because folk were going to accuse you of stealing something, and uh, that resonated so hard with me that um, many years pasted and when I went into stores and put my hands in my pockets, those words would come back in my head because my grandmother was so seriously adamant about it. So, I remember little, little nasty things, but I knew that when I got back down into my community folks were real happy down there, you know.

BB: Okay, you mentioned earlier that when you graduated high school that you went to Kentucky State.

OFFUTT: Um-hmm.

BB: Talk to me about that. What took you there?

OFFUTT: Valedictorian Scholarship. I was the Valedictorian of my senior class and captain of the football team, captain of the track team, because one of the interesting things that at that time was, was very popular, was to pursue your own excellence, and excellence for many of us was not, it was something that we were not allowed to have any options with. Uh, many instances, those teachers saw many of us and basically uh, I guess did whatever was necessary to develop us as, I guess leaders, um, to make sure uh, I didn’t have a lot of slack opportunity to slack on homework or assignments, they made sure . . . I remember putting down, one time, when I was taking – it was my senior year, and I put down typing when we got a chance to choose our classes, put down typing, and when I got my classes back, I had calculus. [laughing] Now here’s the thing about that, I went in and the little lady taught calculus may have been all of 5’4, maybe Ms. Miles was 5’4, 5’3, she was a little lady.

BB: This was back in high school?

OFFUTT: This is high school, yeah. So anyway, the thing about it was, and you know, I took calculus and it was fine, but the years later, what I needed more thank anything was typing [laughing]. I had to go to vocational school, after school to take a typing class in the evenings. Uh, but uh, anyway that’s how they was. So, many of us didn’t get choices, so I was the Valedictorian of the senior class and um, Kentucky State had a scholarship, and I went to Kentucky State the first year up there. The churches put in about two hundred dollars ($200) or something so, I went there and did well my first year, I ran track, and I think one of the major things that second year, I really about ran out of money, and so what we then also found out was that my dad, being, he at that time, uh his disability had been determined to be service connected, and so the VA paid my tuition and so, I thought well okay, and at that time too, dad was beginning . . . what had happened is they were stringing wire in trees for communications so they were out in an area that should have had, I guess, some type of perimeters around it, and dad was in a tree and they came under fire, and somehow he fell out of the tree. He fell out of the tree and he, and he had told us that years ago, and he fell on his neck, but he was young and he got up, you know, he ran for cover, got his helmet on, you know, and, and, after a while the firing stopped, or was subdued or anything, well anyway, at that time he didn’t really think a lot about it, you know if your in the Army everything hurts anyway if your out in the field. So, later on he had, and they had made, he had gone to the post hospital about it when he got back in, cause he kept having trouble with his neck okay, so there was a record indicating that, but later on what happened was one of his, what is that cervical vertebrates, had been it had slipped, it had been pushed in and later what it started to do was it started to push in against his spinal column. So, as years passed dad started having trouble walking, he subsequently had to go get surgery through his throat to help remove the pressure that the years of pressure, that had put on his spinal column, but what had happened at that point in time, what would generally be, maybe be maybe as big as your thumb, the area had atrophied down to being maybe uh, pencil size or maybe a little less in that particular area so, he had trouble with his legs. So, I said all of that to say that that was another reason, I kind of saw dad losing certain abilities to work and make money, and I was the oldest, so I decided to, since I didn’t have any money anyway, to take a look at Western. So I transferred back to Western, and, and interestingly enough . . .

BB: Were you a second year, or . . .?

OFFUTT: Second year, yeah, I transferred back my sophomore year.

BB: Okay, okay, let me go back just a minute because, of course in Louisville and Lexington, we had sit-ins and demonstrations in the early sixties to open up public accommodations and we had that all over, um the country, and I wonder if there was any activity in Bowling Green that you recall?

OFFUTT: At which time?

BB: Early sixties. To open up theatres or restaurants, or . . .

OFFUTT: No. There, there wasn’t any major activity and probably because [pause] it wasn’t really seriously hardcore segregation as such. I mean there was, the, the communities mingled and then went back off to their own respective home areas. There were people . . . it was an interesting kind of community, the the, you had community areas that were reasonably nice homes, and this type of thing, but they were able to go to the bank and get the loans, and there wasn’t any necessarily segregation, and it might have been more so because folks knew each other. It was, it was an interesting kind of, kind of mix, so there wasn’t much that black folk needed that they about didn’t have access to as long as you just kind of kept it in your own community [laughter]. So the real struggles came, probably, and this is going to sound like I am boasting, when I came back. Because when I came back to Western it was right during the middle of the movement, you know it was sixty-six. And uh, having gone to Kentucky State and having seen some of the things that was happening in other places, and having speakers coming in on campus, when I go back to Western Kentucky University, you know, there was not any organization for black kids. Uh, you had the rebel flag still being waved and this type thing. Uh, you also had people coming in to Western, because Western was recruiting people and athletes from other places, so it was almost just like coming in at a time that was right to first start a black student union, to protest some of these particular things, uh, I was responsible for putting the first black fraternity on campus, the Omega Si Phi Fraternity, there were a number of guys who were interested in other fraternities, we supported and helped them. We had a club that was the first club on campus, you have in the African-American communities you have uh, fraternities, you’ve only got like four fraternities and four sororities. And, anybody that joins a fraternity or sorority will join one of those, it’s . . .so there were guys interested in one of the fraternities called Kappa Alpha Si, and we were in the fraternity Omega Si Phi, so in order to put an organization on campus initially we called it the Kappa Q Club, and then went through the club founding process so that we could get involved with Westerns’ activities, and compete in intramural and those kinds of things. So, the timing was great for that type of thing.

BB: When you went back Don, how many, approximately, African-American students were there, there?

OFFUTT: Probably all of two hundred (200).

BB: Okay, okay. And . . .

OFFUTT: Maybe.

BB: And were you involved in the establishment of the black student union?

OFFUTT: I was the beginner and starter [laughter] and founder of the black student union, yes.

BB: Um, talk to me about that at Western a little bit, if you would, some of the activities, the issues, the . . .

OFFUTT: Yeah, you had the usual issues with, with southern uh, historically predominantly white institutions. Uh, they were who they were. They had had their own cultural entity, uh and operation and history, and basically they brought students there, black students to participate sports. There were some who had begun to come there, one guy, phenomenal guy, he got killed named Larnel Moreman, but he got killed in a car accident, he later became president of the Kentucky Education Association, the first black president. But anyway . . .

BB: Tell me his name again?

OFFUTT: Larnel Moreman, you know phenomenal, phenomenal guy, um truth be told, he’s my wife’s cousin. Uh, from Central City, Kentucky, uh down through there, went to an all black high school called Drakesboro Community. But anyway, as I’m saying there were few of those guys who were there for academics, but primarily most of the athletes who initially came to Western were brought there for sports, and so then when we came in, those guys came in there probably about sixty-three or so, when I got there it was about sixty-six, so Larnel and some of those guys uh, Clarence Gambil, uh, those guys were seniors, I’m giving you those, that guy Gambil’s name because he has an interesting story, he’s in Logan County down there, and so anyway as I’m saying when I got there it was right in the middle of the time for the movement, and we had other folk coming into Western from Louisville and those areas and Western had kind of opened its’ doors for black students to come in and the time was right to put those things together, and we were appalled at some of the things that were occurring. I’ll give you . . .uh, uh when we went to talk about putting together a black fraternity on Westerns’ campus, the deans name was Sagabell.

BB: Sagerbell?

OFFUTT: Yeah.

BB: Can you spell that, just . . .

OFFUTT: I don’t know its all phonetically, it’s, it’s about, I’d have to go back some of the old year books and find it. But anyway, I remember him, and we went and had a meeting with him, he was the Dean of Students, and he told us that he could not see us having a black fraternity on campus, so why didn’t we join the white fraternities. Uh, you have now stepped into the arena we want you in, dean. He was a member of Sigma Nu, we had gone to the library, we had found all of the Constitutions of the white fraternities on campus and in everyone of them there was a clause that membership was only available to white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants. We said, “Sir, it’s impossible for us to become members of the white fraternities because they are only open to white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants.” We didn’t get cute on him, we didn’t say here are Sigma Nu’s, but you know, he knew that too. Well, unless they was going to challenge all the fraternities to change their Constitutions, which he was not going to do, he knew at that point in time he would have a black fraternity on that campus. So that is some of the things, I mean you had cheerleaders, you had black athletes, and no black cheerleaders, that was important, so we had to work with getting black cheerleaders on campus. I got one story I’ll tell you here that is pretty heavy. There was, you know, ROTC, there was Honor Guard, you know, at that point in time we were on the campus, we wanted to be apart of all the things that went on there, so it was all breaking in to this whole thing, and interestingly enough, let me not leave out some of the at that time “hippies”. You had white students, that that probably gave the additional support that was needed so that it wasn’t a black/white political issue, as much as it was, you know, students saying yeah, these folks should have some things. So, you had a group of white students that were there too. But, I remember one of the most, I guess it was scary, a guy by the name of Jeffery Weathers. Jeffery burned a confederate flag at a bon-fire, I thought we were really going to have to fight our way out of there. Nothing happened.

BB: He was black?

OFFUTT: Yeah. Jeffery would remind you of Jimmy Hendrix, so he was plenty black, with plenty big afro, but Jeffery was one of the baddest guys I ever saw [laughing]. And uh, I remember that at the bon-fire, he walked up, held the flag up, you know, and walked in in front of them and threw it in the fire. And we all went because we thought we were going to have to fight, and nothing happened. I was glad when we left, I was kind of glad nothing happened, but not long after that uh, a couple of the athletes at the time, decided that they didn’t want to hear Dixie played for the fight song, so that also helped. And from there Western became a pretty good place to start to have some, some reasonable access to all the things available to all of the students. Major time came in sixty-eight with King’s assassination. Uh, and they brought in the police and the National Guard to set up a perimeter around the campus so folk couldn’t get on and get off, uh, but we did go in and what would have been an attempt to take over the Administration building, that kind of fizzled out because, uh I’ll give Kelly Thompson some credit, the president came down to talk to us, had he not it probably would have gone bad.

BB: Well did they just automatically, with Kennedy’s death . . .

OFFUTT: King.

BB: I’m sorry, King, call in the National Guard?

OFFUTT: Yep.

BB: I mean there was nothing happening to . . .

OFFUTT: Nothing had happened, but they knew that the campus would have been a place, yeah so when we got ready to leave off campus and folk got ready to come on campus, they had it perimetered off so we thought, Okay, what’s happening here, and I, which I look at it from their perspective, it was a pretty good move, so we turned around and went right back to the Administration building.

BB: And did you have a list of things that you hoped to negotiate with the Administration?

OFFUTT: No, we was just mad.

BB: Okay, you weren’t . . .

OFFUTT: It wasn’t, it wasn’t, it happened like, uh, uh, so abruptly and quickly we really weren’t doing anything or planning anything, we were just kind of out and about and rolling and on campus, and, and I’m trying to remember if there was going to remember if there was going to be a dance or something that weekend, or something, so it wasn’t anything really happening and then all of the sudden when the word started to spread, and again, it was some white students with us too, so that was real interesting, but, uh, they did meet with us, they did talk to us, and they did come, you know, and did voice some serious appreciation for what we were thinking. So, we stayed up all night and had the vigual, folk sang, prayed, and cried, and this type of thing, only later on to find out that things were going crazy, you know across the nation and other places. Uh, so those are some things that I remember about the time at Western, but Western was not, it was not adamant about keeping some things in place, it fairly well started to open its’ doors and allow some things to happen so, that made for, I guess what later, like I said, at one time you may have had more people at the University of Louisville, because it was an urban institution, but at one time, Western was, had the second largest African-American population in the state, well Kentucky State, leaving out Kentucky State, but white institutions. Because, it really kind of opened its’ doors and then as black folks started graduating from there, folks said yeah you can go to Western, and fairly well make it through. Now it wasn’t without incident, we had some really old guys, who in some classes would steal, rake some issues, but we expected that.

BB: When you were active though Don, with the black student union, was there ever any interaction with any other chapters at other universities.

OFFUTT: Oh yeah, Tennessee State, Fisk, yeah, yeah.

BB: Okay, how about any of them in Kentucky?

OFFUTT: We came to Louisville , uh one of the earliest things that we did was to come to Louisville when they were just getting started, to, to, uh give some support, and later the movement, or the, I should say the, program that came from that that still goes on became the Black Families Conference at the University of Louisville. Uh, we went to Eastern Kentucky University to help them form a, one of our fraternity chapters there. So, uh probably the black student union lost a little bit of importance when the fraternities started to come into play, because the fraternities connected you with national figures and people. Uh, and I can remember Nashville in the early sixties, had gone through some phenomenal things with integration, so we had the opportunity to down to Nashville and Fisk down there and talk with some of those folks, so that was almost like sitting among elders, and folk who had gone through some serious things. One of, one of our old fraternity brothers, who was the president of the NAACP in Nashville, and his home was bombed named Z. Alexander Lubie, had been one who had been instrumental in the Civil Rights Movement, and integrating downtown Nashville, and like I said, his house was bombed, uh and phenomenal old guy. Uh, so that was an area that we had a lot of access to going in and out of there.

BB: Now Nashville had a fairly large snick element too. Did any of that . . .

OFFUTT: Yeah, it didn’t really come through there much. There were snick member that came through, but right at the sixty-eight, sixty-nine time, we didn’t, when we went places to lend our help or our support and came back to Western, we didn’t really do a lot of joining other movements and other programs. We fairly well were close to that area, and other parts of Kentucky, uh, Nashville and those areas, but um, no we didn’t really do a lot with . . .see the other thing too, was there was along with the snick philosophy, you had, you still had some of the SCLC, the, the, the philosophy that King had, uh so many of us found ourselves, uh always on a continuum between trying to work with, you know for peace and trying to pull some things together, and know that that was a form that things had gotten done in, and we felt like we were moving pretty well and didn’t necessarily join certain types of things like snick, or . . .because we didn’t have to get real radical, as I said we burned a rebel flag out at a bon-fire before homecoming and we didn’t have a fight. Um, so no, it really, we never really quite got to certain militant stages, and, and there were those guys in Nashville that talked about coming to do some things, but we were able to get some things done, and I think that fairly well held down any real reasons to get real violent.

BB: Was there any black power influence in the community?

OFFUTT: Yeah, yeah, well we were it. We were it, we had become the folk that if any conditions or circumstances came up, we were called for. I had been called many, many times to work with the uh, Administration, to say, “Well what do you think is going to happen?” And, and, so we were talking about Stoakly [ ] when you talk about H Rab, when you talk about those guys, we were fairly able to get things done, whether there was a shadow, or of their having some impact on us, or whether these folk were fairly foresighted and to say well let’s work with this, we really never had to get major black power situations in there. So, . . .

BB: You say we, can you identify by name other people who were . . .

OFFUTT: Oh sure, sure. Howard Bailey, the guy down there now who is Dean of Students, he was somebody who was extremely influential. Um you had Henry Jackson, you had Monty Hankins, uh Sam Pearson, um, Steve Coleman, uh . . .none of these things could have happened without any of the women involved. You had Brenda Robinson, you had um, Peggy Scott, I have think maiden names instead of married names, uh, my wife who then was Dorothy Johnson, that was something, she was extremely sharp. She had come in from Florida, she had gone to a Junior College in Florida and came to Western, uh so, you got Carrie White, uh, Carrie, she was extremely brilliant and articulate, uh so yeah, none of our stuff could have happened without the women, uh Sheila Smith.

END SIDE B, TAPE 1

START OF SIDE A, TAPE 2

BETSY BRINSON: This is an interview with Don Offutt. The interview takes place in Lexington, Kentucky and the interviewer is Betsy Brinson.

BRINSON: Well thank you very much Don, for agreeing to talk with me today. Just so I get a voice level would you give me your full name, please.

DON OFFUTT: My name is Don Carlos Offutt.

BRINSON: Carlos?

OFFUTT: Um-hmm.

BRINSON: And you were born where and . . .?

OFFUTT: Bowling Green, Kentucky, Warren County, May 19th, 1947.

BRINSON: Okay, thank you. Okay, we talked a little bit about the purpose of this interview, um can we begin--I’m going to ask you some personal questions about you, and then we’ll go on and we’ll just talk about some other kinds of social, political kinds of topics. But, tell me a little bit Don, about your family. For example what do you know about your ancestors?

OFFUTT: Well a fairly good deal about my ancestors. Uh, I am a. . . well as you seen with the resume, my teaching area is social studies, but um, I’m probably a serious product of the sixties. Uh in the sixties we were clear about trying to self-define, self-determine, and self-defend. So, I had the opportunity with a number of people during that time, to start to do a little studying, understand a little about genealogy. With a name like Offutt, O F F U T T, I can tell you some funny stories about them seeing a black man, come into plenty of places, named Offutt when that wasn’t expected; and the various kinds of responses that followed. So, we started to learn a little bit about ourselves in and around Western Kentucky University. Uh, I had initially gone to Kentucky State during the early, or I should say mid-sixties; which was right at the time of the African-American Awareness Movement, Civil Rights Movement, the Black Movement, whatever you want to call it for, for the sake of conversation. It was a great time. It was a movement all across the nation for that matter, from young whites uh, to Native Americans. It was, it was a good time. So, I had the opportunity to take a look at the name as it was so peculiar for black folk or white folk, and came to find out that around Logan County--which is a county that’s contiguous to Warren County and borders down near Northern Tennessee--there was a large plantation there that was called the Offutt Plantation. Interestingly enough, the relatives of this particular Offutt also are in Lexington. So what I can understand there were three Offutts who came this way in the early settlement of what was at time called the West. What most folk don’t really realize is how old Kentucky is as a state, as the fifteenth state of the Union; and like, like I’m saying it was called the West. We found various documents from the sale of enslaved folk to the Offutt Plantation. I have documents there, that are Bill of Sale documents, and from what we fairly well can understand--and I keep saying we, because this has fairly well been a family effort; many of us have worked on some end of it or the other. But that when George Washington died, what was supposed to have been manumission for many of his slaves, didn’t happen that way. Some where sold to pay off the various debts that Washington had by--I believe his son-in-law--and one of those was an African whose name was John. John, at that time, sold for five hundred and fifty dollars, he was in animal husbandry; and was at that time, a pretty valued person; so he was sold to the Offutt Plantation. Uh, had I known that this question would have been here, I would have brought the Bill of Sale that’s still in the Logan County uh, Records and Archives. Because one of the things that white America has done well, is that it has basically kept good records on its’ business; and so then John, being of that Plantation, married a woman named Cilia. Cilia had been the daughter of a, an African woman who was--there was a marriage between the Price family and the Offutt family--and as a gift Cilia had been a gift, a wedding gift. And so the gift, I guess netted the early ancestral beginnings of what would now be us; the lineage of the African-American Offutts, because we now know that many of the enslaved Africans that were freed or manumitted; they took on the name of the plantation that they often came from. So, what we know is, and there is a tombstone that’s in an outside area of what would have been the Offutt Plantation; and the area in Logan County is called Schochoh and interestingly enough I found that the name of that little community comes from a name of Native-Americans, the Schochoh people. But apparently there were African-Americans in this area because there is a tombstone there that says “Father John Offutt and Mother Cilia”, and the tombstone dates back to 1856. And from there I understand that we had nine brothers, and from there you have some drifting because after manumission many of the, the brothers left and went to other places. Interestingly enough one of the places would have been here in Lexington, so there has been a, a line of white Offutts and a line of black Offutts here. So, that’s just a brief overview of the history and some genealogy.

BRINSON: There is actually a Schochoh Slip in Richmond, Virginia, which is in the early parts of the city. Um, I wonder if there is any connection there, we might talk about that at some point and see, again it was named after an Indian Tribe. Um, tell me Don about your immediate family growing up; who was in it, and how did your family make their living, and . . .?

OFFUTT: Well I had a . . .

BRINSON: Were you in Bowling Green?

OFFUTT: Yeah, I grew up in Bowling Green, and uh, my father had returned from the military, uh solaced a cute little bright-eyed, little young lady who obviously captured more than his fantasy; and uh, my dad and mom got married and I was the first child. Uh, my mom had a total of nine children, but only four of us lived. And uh, there were probably numerous reasons--I often wonder, I do know that that was a time of some serious segregation and the hospital that was available to black folk in that area, was in Nashville. You had doctors there, you did have two doctors in Bowling Green, maybe you had three. And the three doctors would make house calls, so I’m one of the rare folks that was born at home; and uh, not until my brother next to me, who was nine years old, did any of us get the opportunity to, at that point in time be born in a hospital. So I came in really on the tail-end of serious segregation and my brother and--they later then built what they called the colored wing; or had a colored wing for the hospital so my brother and sister and youngest brother got the good fortune, I guess, of being born in a hospital.

BRINSON: And was that a hospital in Bowling Green, or a hospital in Nashville or . . .

OFFUTT: There was a hospital in Bowling Green. See there was a hospital in Nashville because in a sense that would have been our political and cultural mecca for that end of the state in Kentucky because you had Nashville, Tennessee, and Nashville had Tennessee State, at that time was Tennessee A and I College; and then you had the premiere education institution called Fisk University; and right across the street from Fisk University was, and is, a black medical school and hospital called Meharry. So that was where we were able to go to for many of our again, social and cultural kinds of things, but Bowling Green at this time, by the time my brother was born did have the quote “Colored Wing” of the hospital.

BRINSON: Let me just stop you, because I realize I have put you in the sun.

OFFUT: I am a sun person, I love sun, so . . .

BRINSON: We’ll lose it before long, um, Okay. Did your mother lose those children in pregnancy, in early infancy, or . . .

OFFUTT: There were some that were lost in pregnancy and one or two in early infancy. I’m not sure whether there could have, or would have been, when you go back in hind-sight to wonder, if medical care would have made some difference. Um, but we will never truly know. There were some that were . . . I remember or think a sister, a girl child that was born, that did live for a little while. And uh, it was always interesting to watch the movement of the black community when a child was being born. To watch the women, and how they knew there missions and their roles and responsibilities; or if there was a death, how that all brings its’ own energy and it’s own, own rules, roles and rituals along with it. So, like I say I remember the ritual and the roles and the things that the women were having during the child births.

BRINSON: How did your family during their living while you were growing up.

OFFUTT: With much difficulty. Um, my dad had been in the military. And in the military, even though they were segregated, he had learned a great deal about electricity; he was in commo, uh meaning stringing wire for communications. Uh he had a number of skills and did a number things, I remember some funny stories about that; but naturally when he came back home to Bowling Green, there weren’t jobs for anybody--uh, other--for black men other than agricultural things and generally janitorial things if you didn’t have your own particular skill. So, dad had a number of jobs, he worked uh, he did janitorial service working at the movie theater, he was up around the town area and he got to know numbers of people and so they would say, “Can you come to my house and clean my house, or cut my grass?” And so dad did a number of those things. Uh, in the Fall about maybe November, October, he would also work at the tobacco barn, uh, that was always seasonal work there. He seemed to enjoy that too, I remember him always being up ‘cause he would go from one job to the other. Um, he had gotten injured uh, he had gotten a combat injury, so later through the years he got uh, some veterans’ benefits that was a small monthly check coming in. I later found out that he should have gotten worlds more, um but . . . so and my mother worked at the hospital. My mother worked in--she initially started out uh, in the area where you sterilize equipment and, and, and, I can’t remember what the area was called; and later she moved over to responditory therapy, respiratory therapy, so that’s how we basically lived and worked. Uh lived and survived, my parents were working people.

BRINSON: Uh, did your family attend a church?

OFFUTT: Uh, mom attended church. Dad did every now and then, but um, they would have attended a Baptist Church, uh . . .

BRINSON: Was there a particular one?

OFFUTT: State Street Baptist Church down there in Bowling Green.

BRINSON: And how about you?

OFFUTT: Yes, well I was a member of State Street, uh, I guess you always are or whatever you do; and my brothers, my two brothers and sister we attended State Street Baptist Church the whole uh, membership and baptism and this type of thing was there. And uh, so that would have been our main church affiliation.

BRINSON: Okay. Um at that point in time do you have any sense of what percentage of Bowling Green was the black population?

OFFUTT: Yeah, uh you had a, a extremely large black population at that time, it would have been easily twenty-five percent. Would have been easily twenty-five percent. Um, the next real major area would have been Hopkinsville, and Hopkinsville, Christian County and Hopkinsville has always had forty percent at least, African-American population, so Bowling Green would have had twenty-five to twenty-eight percent around that time.

BRINSON: Okay. What can you tell me about your early education in Bowling Green?

OFFUTT: I can tell you a great deal about it. Um, there is an interesting kind of duality with segregation. Segregation created problems with education for some, and in others it created pockets of extreme intellectualism. We had an all black high school, obviously because of segregation; but being close to Nashville and being close to Tennessee State and Fisk we had some extremely capable scholars at my school. Because what segregation did was, it created conditions where these people who were scholars and educators, about the best jobs they could get in many places would be to teach school. So if they couldn’t teach on college levels--uh and at that time you didn’t have very many black universities or such universities as a new phenomena--so many of them taught in high schools. So, I had the opportunity to have an extremely good education; uh, even with the things that would occur such as when the white high school got new books, they sent the old books to the black high schools. Well you had had these scholars who that really wasn’t a problem because you had folk who--one of the teachers I had gone to school with [was] Dubois. Okay? So you know, it took me getting to be an adult to realize how dynamite some of these folks were, you know. Then we had languages: French, Spanish, you know, and I’m talking from fifties to early and mid-sixties. We had phenomenal choirs and choral music and band music. I mean from uh, the quote negro spirituals; uh many of us sung in the All-State Choir, you know. We competed not only in academic circles, and athletic circles, but in, in all kinds. So we had a phenomenal high school and another school not far from us, interestingly enough, Central High School in Louisville, the old Lexington Dunbar School; my school. An interesting story about my school: it didn’t really ever have a name as such. And uh, folklore kind of says that there were some debates about what it should be named; and the black community did not care for the community--for what, at that time the white school board was wanting to talk about a name--and so they didn’t ever name the school. So it was called just the street it was on, High Street.

BRINSON: High Street.

OFFUTT: Um-hmm, Bowling Green High Street. And so, but the folklore says that the folk didn’t want some of the names and titles. They didn’t want another Carver, or another Washington; and uh, I don’t know if they offered any suggestions, but I know that that’s what the folklore says. But, anyway . . .

BRINSON: You must have been there during the time of school integration?

OFFUTT: I was the last class, the last graduating class before the school closed down and integration occurred. So, yeah so my first year was at Kentucky State University, so I had never had a white student in class or a white teacher for thirteen years of my education until I transferred back to Western.

BRINSON: And what year was that Don, that you graduated?

OFFUTT: I graduated in sixty-five--1965.

BRINSON: Um, how many in your graduating class?

OFFUTT: Uh, I guess right at a hundred and twenty-three--twenty-four. And what had happened prior to that, we probably would have had some where in the neighborhood of about four hundred; but other counties from a thirty mile radius around us, which came from a county north of us, Butler County, a county south of us which is Allen County, and the folk that were in Logan County they went to another school. But anyway, we had about a thirty mile radius where we had kids bussed in. Those schools integrated before our school. We had, at one time we had a large black high school right in the center of South Central Kentucky, and uh . . .

BRINSON: Did it take legal action to finally . . .?

OFFUTT: Oh yeah. Oh yeah it um, basically, it wasn’t really major court action, it kind of came in on the dribbled in, tail-end thing of all deliberate speed. Okay? You started to have court situations occur in Louisville, Kentucky, and from Louisville, Kentucky and some of the major things that were happening there; then other counties started to say, “Well, you know, let’s, let’s take a look at this thing so that some of this doesn’t hit us.” But another major impetus to integration wasn’t legal action at all, it was that we had some phenomenal athletes. And, when we would get into tournaments, we would get--and see what you have to understand is that this was the dual system. So for the longest time we played all the way up for black championships in the state, and then when integration kind of started to occur we didn’t, in many instances, play other white schools until around late sixty-four, sixty-five. But they created one regional and one district kind of tournament, ‘cause again, there was a white district in the regional tournaments and there was a black district in regional tournaments; but when integration kind of occurred, it was like, well let’s close the black regional district tournaments down and allow them to play in our district and regional tournaments. Well, we did that and like I say, you, you can’t imagine again, some of the athletes that we had because we had a corner on the market, to say the least. Well, like I said one of the earlier things that folks decided to do was let’s integrate and we’ll keep some of these athletes in our respective counties; because we had some, we sent early on--guys to the pros-- a long time ago.

BRINSON: Was there an active NAACP there?

OFFUTT: No.

BRINSON: No.

OFFUTT: Um, there was an NAACP, um, but one of the things that’s not generally discussed about civil rights is that there were--you had some people that talked about integration, but at that time most people were talking about equality. There were not a lot of folks that said, “Let’s give up our schools, and let’s give up all of these things in our communities to go over to the white schools.” There were folks that said, “All we want is when the white school gets new books, we want some new books.” You know, we’ve got this cultural thing here. Um, we’ve got kids that we were feeding right into Tennessee State, Kentucky State, uh, at that time Arkansas A and M. Uh, we sent some folk to Central State up in Ohio. I mean those were some major schools that were where our kids were going to, and when someone would go we sent folk right on behind them. So, those folk would talk about different issues. And so the active NAACP you, you knew that you raised your concerns, but they weren’t as concerned about some of the things about integration as much as they were saying, “We want the same equipment that white students get;” and that type of thing. When they didn’t get it, they didn’t bemoan the fact that they didn’t get it, they said, “Well we’re still going to educate these kids.” And so the activity had a whole different direction and focus over and above integration; it was, let’s continue to educate our kids, and we’ve got a pretty good thing going here.

BRINSON: Well, was there a local legal action, though?

OFFUTT: For, for ( ), not really no.

BRINSON: Not really?

OFFUTT: No.

BRINSON: Okay, okay. Were there any individuals that you can recall who played a leadership role in integrating the schools?

OFFUTT: Um-hmm, um-hmm. You had, at that time; and see when I go back to think about the time, the principal of our school had his Ph.D. then. His name was E. T. Buford. You had a local minister there who had his Doctorate in Divinity named J. E. Jones. You had a man who later got his Doctorate, called F. O. Moxley; and there would have been--there would have been some other folk there, but these folk would have been primarily the leaders. I was trying to think of whether a guy by the name of Owmby, O W M B Y, J. S. Owmby, he would have probably been involved in there. But yes, what you almost had was how do we lose and come out of this thing with as much as we can possibly get? Whether these folks were necessarily going out and banging on doors saying, “We want our kids to go to Bowling Green High School;” but when it started to come down that we were going to lose our school--because after these other schools had integrated--then there was the idea that has always been a, a wonderful attack of duplication. We got a school down here, you know, you have a declining student population, um we’re going to close it. You had, at that time, a Kentucky Educational Association, and a Kentucky Negro Education Association, the KNEA; and at that time Dr. Buford was the President of this KNEA. He had done a number of things fighting integration and coming up with strategies, and this type of thing. So from what I could understand, they fairly well knew this was going to pretty much be, at least, the beginning of the end. So how do you stave it off as long as you can? I’m not sure that probably the process didn’t start maybe two years before sixty-five, it may have started around sixty-three; because that is when the first group of folk from Scottsville, or Allen County integrated over there and the kids didn’t come back. Then . . .

BRINSON: Let me ask you, in some places now, uh it was a, a gradual process where students who couldn’t take a particular course in the black school could go to the white school to take that course, was there any of that, or was it . . . once the decision was made to, to integrate the schools, did everybody go?

OFFUTT: Yes. It was, it was no gradualism, it was no kind of, of, of plan such as that. As I say, we had a pretty complete school. We had a vocational, uh segment of the school that was excellent; uh as I say, we had the, the business section, we had an academic, and what they called college prep at the time, no there wasn’t--when the school was closed down, it was closed down. And that following class then were sent to Bowling Green High School.

BRINSON: At what point Don, in your growing up do you think you recognized that you were growing up in segregated society?

OFFUTT: One evening, we had gone to the movie, we being my mother and my father. And we had gone to the movie. At that time we had to sit in the balcony, and I was playing; we were coming down State Street, and

END SIDE ONE TAPE ONE

BEGIN SIDE TWO TAPE ONE

OFFUTT: . . . got in front of my parents, and I might have been--you know ten, fifteen feet out in front of them--and a car came around with some whites in it; and they hit me in the back with a brick. Okay, I was a kid, I might have been eight, I might have been younger than that, I might have been six or seven. But anyway, the, the--getting home and hearing the voices, hearing the conversation, made me then realize you know, that people who were white didn’t like me. Now, I didn’t have to have a great deal of, of, of . . . if my family said it; and my grandmother said it; and my grandfather said it; and my mom and dad said it; then it’s gotta be true for me, because that’s kind of the way it is. And that is why they hit me, because there was no other reason for them to hit me. So, that was one of the earliest incidents that I remember. And then, you know there were always other little successions uh, another little succession of things happening; but that was the most critical memory that I had to start realizing, well . . .and I didn’t think about it even being that much about segregation. I knew that we lived in a community, and whites lived in a community, and those communities only fairly intermingled in certain kinds of situations and conditions. And I kind of understood that because that’s the way it was. We knew that a number of, of, of black women were domestics, we knew that there were always whites coming down into the black community for some kind of chicanery; you understood that, you saw that. We lived not too far from what the area was called Shake Rag, or this type of thing and so you had . . . my dad was a fairly well-known street guy, they called him Train. Uh, me growing up with him they called me Little Train, so when I would walk with my daddy I would try to walk like him going down through the streets, and they would say, “Here come Train and Little Train.” And so even in that, being a reasonably aware kid, I saw things, and you look at things and you heard people talk; and I heard folk whisper and then I would try to figure what they were whispering for, and about. Uh, so I knew that there were two kind of worlds, but I was quite happy, and quite protected, and quite safe. So, up until that one particular point in time, I didn’t really understand that these two communities, in some instances, could be seriously be at odds; because I pretty much had everything I wanted in my own community. Um, one other time I do remember going with my grandmother into the Five and Ten Store, and she would say, “Well don’t put your hands in your pockets, because folk were going to accuse you of stealing something.” And uh, that resonated so hard with me that um, many years passed, and when I went into stores and put my hands in my pockets, those words would come back in my head because my grandmother was so seriously adamant about it. So, I remember little, little nasty things, but I knew that when I got back down into my community folks were real happy down there, you know.

BRINSON: Okay, you mentioned earlier that when you graduated high school that you went to Kentucky State.

OFFUTT: Um-hmm.

BRINSON: Talk to me about that. What took you there?

OFFUTT: Valedictorian Scholarship. I was the Valedictorian of my senior class and captain of the football team, captain of the track team; because one of the interesting things that at that time was--was very popular--was to pursue your own excellence. And excellence for many of us was not--it was something that we were not allowed to have any options with. Uh, many instances--those teachers saw many of us and basically uh, I guess did whatever was necessary to develop us as, I guess leaders. Um, to make sure uh, I didn’t have a lot of slack opportunity to slack on homework or assignments, they made sure--I remember putting down, one time--when I was taking--it was my senior year; and I put down typing when we got a chance to choose our classes, put down typing, and when I got my classes back, I had calculus. [laughing] Now here’s the thing about that, I went in and the little lady that taught calculus may have been all of five-four, maybe Ms. Miles was five-four—five-three--she was a little lady.

BRINSON: This was back in high school?

OFFUTT: This is high school, yeah. So anyway, the thing about it was--and you know, I took calculus and it was fine--but the years later, what I needed more thank anything was typing [laughing]. I had to go to vocational school, after school to take a typing class in the evenings. Uh, but uh, anyway that’s how they was. So, many of us didn’t get choices, so I was the Valedictorian of the senior class and um, Kentucky State had a scholarship; and I went to Kentucky State the first year up there. The churches put in about two hundred dollars or something so, I went there and did well my first year. I ran track, and I think one of the major things that second year, I really about ran out of money; and so what we then also found out was that my dad, being--he at that time--uh his disability had been determined to be service connected; and so the VA paid my tuition. And so, I thought well okay, and at that time too, dad was beginning--what had happened is they were stringing wire in trees for communications. So they were out in an area that should have had, I guess, some type of perimeters around it; and dad was in a tree and they came under fire, and somehow he fell out of the tree. He fell out of the tree and he--and he had told us that years ago--and he fell on his neck, but he was young and he got up, you know, he ran for cover, got his helmet on, you know. And, and, after a while the firing stopped, or was subdued or anything; well anyway, at that time he didn’t really think a lot about it, you know if your in the Army everything hurts anyway if your out in the field. So, later on he had--and they had made--he had gone to the post hospital about it when he got back in, ‘cause he kept having trouble with his neck okay. So there was a record indicating that, but later on what happened was one of his--what is that cervical vertebrates, had been--it had slipped. It had been pushed in and later what it started to do was it started to push in against his spinal column. So, as years passed dad started having trouble walking. He subsequently had to go get surgery through his throat to help remove the pressure that the years of pressure, that had put on his spinal column. But what had happened at that point in time, what would generally be, maybe be maybe as big as your thumb; the area had atrophied down to being maybe uh, pencil size or maybe a little less in that particular area. So, he had trouble with his legs. So, I said all of that to say that that was another reason, I kind of saw dad losing certain abilities to work and make money; and I was the oldest, so I decided to--since I didn’t have any money anyway, to take a look at Western. So I transferred back to Western, and, and interestingly enough . . .

BRINSON: Were you a second year, or . . .?

OFFUTT: Second year, yeah, I transferred back my sophomore year.

BRINSON: Okay, okay, let me go back just a minute because, of course in Louisville and Lexington, we had sit-ins and demonstrations in the early sixties to open up public accommodations; and we had that all over, um the country, and I wonder if there was any activity in Bowling Green that you recall?

OFFUTT: At which time?

BRINSON: Early sixties. To open up theatres or restaurants, or . . .

OFFUTT: No. There, there wasn’t any major activity and probably because [pause] it wasn’t really seriously hardcore segregation as such. I mean there was, the, the communities mingled and then went back off to their own respective home areas. There were people . . . it was an interesting kind of community, the—the--you had community areas that were reasonably nice homes, and this type of thing, but they were able to go to the bank and get the loans; and there wasn’t necessarily any segregation. And it might have been more so because folks knew each other. It was, it was an interesting kind of, kind of mix; so there wasn’t much that black folk needed that they about didn’t have access to as long as you just kind of kept it in your own community. [laughter] So the real struggles came, probably, and this is going to sound like I am boasting, when I came back. Because when I came back to Western it was right during the middle of the movement, you know it was sixty-six. And uh, having gone to Kentucky State and having seen some of the things that was happening in other places, and having had speakers coming in on campus; when I go back to Western Kentucky University, you know, there was not any organization for black kids. Uh, you had the rebel flag still being waved and this type thing. Uh, you also had people coming in to Western, because Western was recruiting people and athletes from other places, so it was almost just like coming in at a time that was right to first start a black student union, to protest some of these particular things, uh, I was responsible for putting the first black fraternity on campus, the Omega Si Phi Fraternity, there were a number of guys who were interested in other fraternities, we supported and helped them. We had a club that was the first club on campus, you have in the African-American communities you have uh, fraternities; you’ve only got like four fraternities and four sororities. And, anybody that joins a fraternity or sorority will join one of those, it’s . . .so there were guys interested in one of the fraternities called Kappa Alpha Si, and we were in the fraternity Omega Si Phi. So in order to put an organization on campus initially we called it the Kappa Q Club, and then went through the club founding process so that we could get involved with Western’s activities, and compete in intramural and those kinds of things. So, the timing was great for that type of thing.

BRINSON: When you went back Don, how many, approximately, African-American students were there, there?

OFFUTT: Probably all of two hundred.

BRINSON: Okay, okay. And . . .

OFFUTT: Maybe.

BRINSON: And were you involved in the establishment of the Black Student Union?

OFFUTT: I was the beginner and starter [laughter] and founder of the Black Student Union, yes.

BRINSON: Um, talk to me about that at Western a little bit, if you would, some of the activities, the issues, the . . .

OFFUTT: Yeah, you had the usual issues with, with southern uh, historically predominantly white institutions. Uh, they were who they were. They had had their own cultural entity, uh and operation and history; and basically they brought students there, black students to participate sports. There were some who had begun to come there, one guy, phenomenal guy, he got killed named Larnel Moreman, but he got killed in a car accident, he later became president of the Kentucky Education Association, the first black president. But anyway . . .

BRINSON: Tell me his name again?

OFFUTT: Larnel Moreman, you know phenomenal, phenomenal guy, um truth be told, he’s my wife’s cousin. Uh, from Central City, Kentucky, uh down through there, went to an all black high school called Drakesboro Community. But anyway, as I’m saying there were few of those guys who were there for academics, but primarily most of the athletes who initially came to Western were brought there for sports. And so then when we came in, those guys came in there probably about sixty-three or so, when I got there it was about sixty-six, so Larnel and some of those guys uh, Clarence Gambil, uh, those guys were seniors. I’m giving you those, that guy Gambil’s name because he has an interesting story, he’s in Logan County down there. And so anyway as I’m saying when I got there it was right in the middle of the time for the movement, and we had other folk coming into Western from Louisville and those areas. And Western had kind of opened its’ doors for black students to come in and the time was right to put those things together. And we were appalled at some of the things that were occurring. I’ll give you . . .uh, uh when we went to talk about putting together a black fraternity on Western’s campus, the Dean’s name was Sagabell.

BRINSON: Sagerbell?

OFFUTT: Yeah.

BRINSON: Can you spell that, just . . .

OFFUTT: I don’t know its all phonetically, it’s, it’s about--I’d have to go back some of the old year books and find it. But anyway, I remember him, and we went and had a meeting with him; he was the Dean of Students, and he told us that he could not see us having a black fraternity on campus; so why didn’t we join the white fraternities. Ah, you have now stepped into the arena we want you in, Dean. He was a member of Sigma Nu, we had gone to the library, we had found all of the Constitutions of the white fraternities on campus and in everyone of them there was a clause that membership was only available to white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants. We said, “Sir, it’s impossible for us to become members of the white fraternities because they are only open to white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants.” We didn’t get cute on him, we didn’t say here are Sigma Nu’s; but you know, he knew that too. Well, unless they was going to challenge all the fraternities to change their Constitutions, which he was not going to do; he knew at that point in time he would have a black fraternity on that campus. So that is some of the things, I mean you had cheerleaders, you had black athletes, and no black cheerleaders, that was important; so we had to work with getting black cheerleaders on campus. I got one story I’ll tell you here that is pretty heavy. There was, you know, ROTC, there was Honor Guard, you know, at that point in time we were on the campus, we wanted to be a part of all the things that went on there. So it was all breaking in to this whole thing, and interestingly enough, let me not leave out some of the--at that time—quote, unquote, hippies. You had white students, that that probably gave the additional support that was needed; so that it wasn’t a black/white political issue, as much as it was, you know, students saying yeah, these folks should have some things. So, you had a group of white students that were there too. But, I remember one of the most, I guess it was scary, a guy by the name of Jeffery Weathers. Jeffery burned a confederate flag at a bonfire, I thought we were really going to have to fight our way out of there. Nothing happened.

BRINSON: He was black?

OFFUTT: Yeah. Jeffery would remind you of Jimmy Hendrix, so he was plenty black, with plenty big afro; but Jeffery was one of the baddest guys I ever saw. [laughing] And uh, I remember that at the bonfire, he walked up, held the flag up, you know, and walked in, in front of them and threw it in the fire. And we all went because we thought we were going to have to fight, and nothing happened. I was glad when we left. I was kind of glad nothing happened, but not long after that uh, a couple of the athletes, at the time, decided that they didn’t want to hear Dixie played for the fight song, so that also helped. And from there Western became a pretty good place to start to have some, some reasonable access to all the things available to all of the students. Major time came in sixty-eight with King’s assassination. Uh, and they brought in the police and the National Guard to set up a perimeter around the campus so folk couldn’t get on and get off, uh, but we did go in and what would have been an attempt to take over the Administration building, that kind of fizzled out because, uh I’ll give Kelly Thompson some credit. The president came down to talk to us, had he not it probably would have gone bad.

BRINSON: Well did they just automatically, with Kennedy’s death . . .

OFFUTT: King.

BRINSON: I’m sorry, King, call in the National Guard?

OFFUTT: Yep.

BRINSON: I mean there was nothing happening to . . .

OFFUTT: Nothing had happened, but they knew that the campus would have been a place, yeah so when we got ready to leave off campus and folk got ready to come on campus; they had it perimetered off so we thought, “Okay, what’s happening here?” And I, which I look at it from their perspective, it was a pretty good move, so we then turned around and went right back to the Administration building.

BRINSON: And did you have a list of things that you hoped to negotiate with the Administration?

OFFUTT: No, we was just mad.

BRINSON: Okay, you weren’t . . .

OFFUTT: It wasn’t--it wasn’t--it happened like, uh, uh, so abruptly and quickly we really weren’t doing anything or planning anything. We were just kind of out and about and rolling and on campus, and, and I’m trying to remember if there was going to be a dance or something that weekend; or something. So it wasn’t anything really happening and then all of the sudden when the word started to spread, and again, it was some white students with us too; so that was real interesting. But, uh, they did meet with us, they did talk to us, and they did come, you know, and did voice some serious appreciation for what we were thinking. So, we stayed up all night and had the vigil, folk sang, prayed, and cried; and this type of thing. Only later on to find out that things were going crazy, you know across the nation and other places. Uh, so those are some things that I remember about the time at Western. But Western was not--it was not adamant about keeping some things in place. It fairly well started to open its doors and allow some things to happen. So, that made for--I guess what later--like I said, at one time you may have had more people at the University of Louisville because it was an urban institution; but at one time, Western was, had the second largest African-American population in the state. Well Kentucky State, leaving out Kentucky State, but white institutions. Because it really kind of opened its doors, and then as black folks started to graduate from there; folks said, “Yeah you can go to Western, and fairly well make it through.” Now it wasn’t without incident, we had some really old guys, who in some classes would steal, rake some issues; but we expected that.

BRINSON: When you were active though Don, with the Black Student Union, was there ever any interaction with any other chapters at other universities?

OFFUTT: Oh yeah, Tennessee State, Fisk, yeah, yeah.

BRINSON: Okay, how about any of them in Kentucky?

OFFUTT: We came to Louisville. Uh one of the earliest things that we did was to come to Louisville when they were just getting started to—to--uh give some support. And later the movement, or the, I should say the, program that came from that that still goes on; became the Black Families Conference at the University of Louisville. Uh, we went to Eastern Kentucky University to help them form a, one of our fraternity chapters there. So, uh probably the Black Student Union lost a little bit of importance when the fraternities started to come into play, because the fraternities connected you with national figures and people. Uh, and I can remember Nashville in the early sixties, had gone through some phenomenal things with integration. So we had the opportunity to down to Nashville, and Fisk down there, and talk with some of those folks. So that was almost like sitting among Elders, and folk who had gone through some serious things. One of, one of our old fraternity brothers, who was the president of the NAACP in Nashville, and his home was bombed named Z. Alexander Lubie; had been one who had been instrumental in the Civil Rights Movement, and integrating downtown Nashville. And like I said, his house was bombed, uh and [a] phenomenal old guy. Uh, so that was an area that we had a lot of access to going in and out of there.

BRINSON: Now Nashville had a fairly large SNICK element too. Did any of that . . .

OFFUTT: Yeah, it didn’t really come through there much. There were SNICK member that came through, but right at the sixty-eight, sixty-nine time--we didn’t, when we went places to lend our help or our support and came back to Western--we didn’t really do a lot of joining other movements and other programs. We fairly well were close to that area, and other parts of Kentucky, uh, Nashville and those areas; but um, no we didn’t really do a lot with--see the other thing too, was there was along with the SNICK philosophy, you had--you still had some of the SCLC. The—the--the philosophy that King had--uh so many of us found ourselves uh always on a continuum between trying to work with, you know for peace, and trying to pull some things together. And know that that was a form that things had gotten done in, and we felt like we were moving pretty well and didn’t necessarily join certain types of things like SNICK, or . . .because we didn’t have to get real radical. As I said, we burned a rebel flag out at a bonfire before Homecoming and we didn’t have a fight. Um, so no, it really--we never really quite got to certain militant stages; and, and there were those guys in Nashville that talked about coming to do some things. But we were able to get some things done, and I think that fairly well held down any real reasons to get real violent.

BRINSON: Was there any Black Power influence in the community?

OFFUTT: Yeah, yeah, well we were it. We were it. We had become the folk that if any conditions or circumstances came up, we were called for. I had been called many, many times to work with the uh, Administration, to say, “Well what do you think is going to happen?” And, and, so we were talking about Stokely, ( ) when you talk about H Rap; when you talk about those guys, we were fairly able to get things done. Whether there was a shadow, or of their having some impact on us; or whether these folk were fairly foresighted and to say, “Well let’s work with this.” We really never had to get major black power situations in there. So, . . .

BRINSON: You say we, can you identify by name other people who were . . .

OFFUTT: Oh sure, sure. Howard Bailey, the guy down there now who is Dean of Students, he was somebody who was extremely influential. Um you had Henry Jackson, you had Monty Hankins, uh Sam Pearson, um, Steve Coleman, uh . . .

BRINSON: Were there any women?

OFFUTT: None of these things could have happened without any of the women involved. You had Brenda Robinson, you had um, Peggy Scott--I have think maiden names instead of married names--uh, my wife who then was Dorothy Johnson. That was something; she was extremely sharp. She had come in from Florida. She had gone to a Junior College in Florida and came to Western; uh so, you got Carrie White, uh, Carrie, she was extremely brilliant and articulate. Uh so yeah, none of our stuff could have happened without the women, uh Sheila Smith.

BRINSON: I’m going to stop here and change the tape.

END SIDE TWO TAPE ONE

BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE ONE

OFFUTT: . . .you know of um, Alice Gatewood for Homecoming Queen. And you know, Alice, Alice won it, she was the second person--uh, Pat Garrison was the first lady, who again was an activist with us too. And I have to remember maiden names, Pat Garrison was the second runner-up the first time that we had ever had someone--had anybody black run for Homecoming Queen. And then Alice Gatewood, the, our senior year, won it. And that’s ‘cause again, we packed our vote in, and that type thing; but they were the activists, no doubt about it.

BRINSON: So, let me go back to um, you were, your public school experience in the black school. Many of the black schools have had reunions over the years. Did your school?

OFFUTT: Oh, yeah, yeah. Still does.

BRINSON: Still does?

OFFUTT: Still does. Uh, we usually have--we had an extremely popular golf club in Bowling Green my whole time coming up; and it was called The Par-Makers Golf Club. And they have, and had then a tournament every year. Well they still have that tournament, and that tournament now kind of coincided with what’s kind of like an official--an unofficial reunion for about every four years. A big reunion comes in from classes from the forties and—and--and I don’t remember what the oldest class was, but I do remember early forties; might have been one time someone from late thirties came in. But that’s been a while ago, but anyway; there’s like an official big four-year reunion; and then like every year annually people come back for the Par-Makers reunion. So yeah, that’s big, a big thing. I mean now the tournament is an extremely big tournament and it draws people from all around the southern part of the nation, blacks and white.

BRINSON: Okay, but what else goes on, in terms of any, like a banquet or . . .

OFFUTT: For the reunion? Yeah, oh yeah, there’s the golf tournament, there’s the dinner, there’s a dance; many of the classes have individual activities; and, and um, there’s church on Sunday. Sunday everybody goes down to State Street Church. So you have both the major things, the golf tournament, you have the dance, you’ll have a breakfast, they’ll be always a hospitality room or area that’s available. But then a lot of the classes--there’s always the classes have small--you know their own individual things through the day, that type thing.

BRINSON: Okay, what did you major in at Western?

OFFUTT: Political Science and Sociology.

BRINSON: Okay, and why did you choose those subjects?

OFFUTT: I started out at Kentucky State in biology, but the things were so--the time was right for political science and sociology--and there was this one professor; well let me go back to Kentucky State. You had a man at Kentucky State that is probably one of the premier educators, who is now retired; he should be somebody that we ought to be getting on tape.

BRINSON: Dr. Chaney?

OFFUTT: Dr. Chaney. [laughing].

BRINSON: He won’t.

OFFUTT: I know it. I know it. That’s—you’re absolutely right; but you knew who I was going to say. In that day we called him “The Chaney Man”. Uh, when you put anything, anybody’s name on something and then put man on it--from that day, that was like we’d call you the baddest guy we knew. So we used to call him “The Chaney Man.” He was one of the guys that captivated me. Uh, this man, it’s a shame, that we have not honored him, and he is not on this tape. I, I, would immediately bow to this man, yeah, yeah, but anyway. So biology was nice, and I’m doing some stuff; but these guys like Doc Chaney, uh, and when you walk across campus with him, and you’d ask him why things were happening, and what’s happening, he could tie it in and put the things in--you had another one there.. . .

BRINSON: Let me just say, for the purpose of anyone reading, he taught history, he taught black history.

OFFUTT: Yes, yes.

BRINSON: Okay.

OFFUTT: He taught HISTORY. Whichever way you want to call it. [both laughing] Yeah. So, so, and Kentucky State a number of those types of men there. Whether they were in other departments, you had access to some serious scholars. A gentleman by the name of Reverend Jones, uh one of the most brilliant mathematicians I’ve ever seen And anybody that went to Kentucky State and had Reverend Jones would, would be shaking their head at this. I remember one time on one of his tests I made a seventeen. This was good. The guy in front of me had made a twenty-three is now a State Senator named Jesse Crenshaw, but I made a seventeen. I was good, and he may not have but three questions, but every question answer plugged in to the next, so I had a piece of the first one. So yeah, I can’t begin to tell you--this seventeen--I was real happy for this seventeen; now this was out of a hundred. So you had these men who were the actually--truthfully, I found Western easier than Kentucky State. My biggest problem at Western was not understanding the vernacular and the, some of the language things. And I had to figure out when – this was a joke, when it was sarcasm or . . .because there is whole different cultural, humor kinds of things. But yeah, we were surrounded at Kentucky State with some phenomenal scholars and people.

BRINSON: You were in biology, so did you get to know the Ridgels at all?

OFFUTT: Oh yeah, everybody knew [laughing] Donna Ridgels. She was another one of the little ladies that you would come in, very humble and quaking; and of course, her husband Gus, in economics. This guy’s another sharp guy, who probably at one time should have been considered for President of Kentucky State University, that’s another whole political thing that went on a long time ago. Uh, yeah so, we, well knew them. And, and these people gave us models and live human beings to imitate; um, so that’s the folk we were around. And so then there were seniors and people who had had, you know, three years under these people when I came there. And so we found ourselves under this whole cultural thing that had certain high-archetypical kinds of things, and, and it all stemmed from these folks. So probably I was infected to get into political science and sociology from Kentucky State. Biology was just something I went thinking I would really like to do, but it was a political science . . .

BRINSON: When you were at Western Don, since your home was in the community, did you live at home, or did you live in the dorms?

OFFUTT: Uh, when I first came in there, I lived at home, and then I got my own apartment, a couple of guys and I got an apartment, and uh, so that was – like I said when I first came in I lived at home.

BRINSON: So you never lived in University housing as such?

OFFUTT: No.

BRINSON: And that wasn’t required?

OFFUTT: No.

BRINSON: I know some schools still in that period would require their students to live on campus.

OFFUTT: No, Western had a fair commuter populous at that time, being where it’s set you either--I mean you talk about Murray as the next thing west, you know, which all the way at the end of the state, then you had Louisville. So Western actually set in a really centralized area and had a number of people--‘cause at one time its’ major--one of it’s major educational products was teachers. So you had teachers coming in working on masters degrees, so it had a fair commuter populous, so it wasn’t any requirement to stay.

BRINSON: Who were the faculty of Western that you think had an influence on you?

OFFUTT: [pause] One guy that had an influence on me, I’m trying to remember another guy’s name, but one guy who had an influence on me, would probably have been one of those odd kinds of influences, ‘cause it was, it was a guy by the name of Newber that taught government. And he was kind of a fire-plug built, bow-tie wearing guy, who I took government under, and he was brilliant too. Because when he got off into his area, probably was the Supreme Court; because when we went through Supreme Court cases he talked about the personalities of the respective justices’, some of their personal habits, and I was pretty fascinated with how much this guy knew and how he could discuss the arguments that the Supreme Court went through. Especially when we got to--I mean we went through some of the major ones, you know, the, the, uh Plessey vs. Ferguson, um, Dred Scott, Brown vs. Board, Starterhouse cases, uh Marburry vs. Madison, uh, so, so nobody would probably know, and Newber probably would have never thought that I would have been somebody that he would have impressed. The primary persons name, Craig Taylor. He was the liberal white guy that worked with these afro-wearing black activist kids, who became the first advisor to this first little black club on this campus. Craig Taylor will forever be a friend, and I am bold enough to say that his enemy, is my enemy.

BRINSON: Is he still there?

OFFUTT: He’s still there. He is in the Sociology Department. I think he became Mayor of an outside city called Oakland, Kentucky. I need to write him, I’m glad that this question came up. Um, from there not many more, um . . .

BRINSON: Were there any black faculty?

OFFUTT: At that time you had one person that was, what do you call it, an adjunct faculty member. And that was the gentleman that I told you who name was doctor--who was the reverend--or the minister, or pastor of State Street Baptist Church, Dr. Jones, Dr. J. E. Jones. But, he was there for about two years, I guess maybe at the end of his retired period of time--and he was from Virginia--and he went back to Virginia. So, that was one of the other issues that we talked about, in trying to get some black faculty in there, but it was a while – I’m trying to remember, no, we didn’t have any black faculty members at that point in time. Oh, my, my last semester they did bring in a guy from Tennessee State named Mingo Scott. Uh, I don’t think that he stayed more than a couple of years.

BRINSON: What was his area?

OFFUTT: History.

BRINSON: Okay, did you have him for . . .

OFFUTT: I didn’t have him, cause like I said, my senior year I pretty much need him, and so I was coming on out of there you know.

BRINSON: What year did you graduate?

OFFUTT: Uh, I graduated in Seventy.

BRINSON: Seventy, okay, and then what?

OFFUTT: From there uh, I had come to, no – I came out, I worked, I got married, and I went to Columbus, Ohio, up there, and I was up there for about a year and a half.

BRINSON: What took you to Columbus?

OFFUTT: Jobs. Uh, one of the things, Bowling Green did not do well for many of us coming out of college with degrees, unless you wanted to teach. You probably could have gotten a job teaching somewhere, but if you wanted to get into government or those areas, you kind of had to hustle it down. So we had a program that I first got hired at, was a program that was a combination State Government/Model Cities program; and it was called the Model Neighborhood Employment Service; and I was one of the, again, on the ground-floor of getting that started. And the idea was to . . .

BRINSON: Now where was that?

OFFUTT: It was right down on Second and State Street.

BRINSON: So it was still in Bowling Green?

OFFUTT: It’s still in Bowling Green, yes. And the idea was Model Cities was wanting, to again, find folk, train them, do some job development for them, and, and, and, work primarily in the black community; which was right down my line. And Model Cities uh, at that time was a federally funded program; and for about two years, a little over two years, it ran real well. We had an Outreach Program, we brought people in, uh we tested them, and after testing them we sent them to vocational schools or did direct job development. We worked with the Youth Service Bureau, and uh; I was hired by the state as what would have been an employment counselor; so that is where my salary came from, but the operation of the program came through Model Cities. And, so, when Model Cities funds started to dry up, then a lot of folk – well me, one – you know we were pretty angry about that because we were saying if you talking about wanting to do some things for the people, here we are doing it, but you know it means very little. And, so, many of us who had graduated and were from Bowling Green or around the area, and a few others of us who uh--my wife worked with the Youth Service Bureau--and the guy over the Youth Service Bureau was named Jim Embry, he’d come to Western from Oklahoma, but he was a black guy, he stayed there. Uh Melvin Watson was a guy who, like me, when we graduated he went to Seaton Hall, but came back to graduate from Western. So we all ended up, because of the social jobs and what we wanted to work there, so we all dispersed and left and went other places, so I went to Columbus.

BRINSON: And what did you do in Columbus?

OFFUTT: I was, I was the Affirmative Action Director for, for, the, the, what they called The Department of Development at that time at, uh in Columbus. And uh, that, that went pretty well. I, I wanted to come back to Kentucky--um, my wife and family--my wife had got--she got a job with a social service program. And I was trying to remember what it was called, but I think um, she would go out and, and, help folk learn how to fill out various applications for housing, and that type of thing. And I can’t remember what it was called, but anyway . . .

BRINSON: And she grew up where?

OFFUTT: She grew up in Central City, Kentucky, in Muhlenberg County, over there. And uh, like I said she went two years to Florida to a Junior College and then came back to Western; and—she got her masters--she got her first masters degree from Western. And uh, so anyway, we were in Columbus there and we stayed there about a year and a half, and then a job opened up back down here and I came here.

BRINSON: How did you get into teaching social studies?

OFFUTT: One of the things that I did was I came out of um--I came back here, and they had a job that they needed somebody to recruit and retain uh, black students for the College of Nursing, Pharmacy, and Allied Health; and they had a grant to do that. So that was my chance to come back here. The guy brought me back recently passed, named Jerry Stevens, uh, he and I go way back, way, way, way, way back, and he was the first guy that I met here and he was on the interview team; and so I came back here with that job, and I am getting to your question, of how I got into teaching social studies.

BRINSON: Here in Lexington?

OFFUTT: Yes, yes. Uh, I came, when I, when I – that job was on a grant too, and so when that job ended um, I joined the National Guard. And when I joined the National Guard that was pretty good, I enjoyed it, I enjoyed military even went active duty. But, I probably thought--well I did think that I should have probably done this six, seven years ago, because now my rank and things would have been better. So, anyway, I had good benefits, I was in the military, I was a training NCO, had won some honors, had uh, done a number of things, had had some great experiences, but I knew . . .

BRINSON: Give me an approximate date of when you joined the National Guard, just to keep this in perspective.

OFFUTT: About eighty-two, eighty-three.

BRINSON: Okay, okay.

OFFUTT: And uh, so anyway, as I’m saying I knew that right now the way things were going they were down-sizing. And if I was going to do anything in the military I was going to have to move around a lot, and I didn’t want to move around a lot. My wife was pretty comfortable, the family was pretty comfortable; uh, my active duty was over here out back behind the airport, and I worked across the state because they were down-sizing the Army, but what they were doing was backing it up with National Guard units. So my active duty was readiness, and making sure that the training that National Guard units got around the state of Kentucky were good for anything that may happen, with any down-sized units. So, I was able to travel a lot and I was able to get around, and it was pretty good; but I kind of knew that if I was going to try to go up and get any rank with this, I was probably going to have to move to some base. So I had done everything I needed to do at Western, I even took electives that would have been Methods for Education and Teaching, but I didn’t do my student teaching. So I look at the amount I had and so I knew, I said, “Well I think I’m going to go ahead and come out of this military thing, and what I may do is, I’m going to call Western and see if they can set up a time to do my social studies.” Man I wish I could remember this guys name. [laughing] I called this guy – I almost had his name – and I gave him my name and told him what I wanted to do, and he asked me if I could come down and talk with him; and I told him about the time I had been there. I went down there, and this gentleman said, “I remember you.” [laughing] And I said “Okay, we’ll go with this.” He said, “Uh, you know, I think we talked to you one time about doing student teaching.” And I said, “Yeah, but I didn’t need it.” He said, “I think I remember when we talked, because then they were wanting to get black kids into teaching and that type thing.” He said, “I think when I talked to you, you were with three other guys, weren’t you?” I said, [laughing] “Yeah.” Which was true, it was a couple of guys, I think Monty and Steve. He said, “And uh, didn’t you tell me that you didn’t think you ever wanted to teach?” This guy has got me, I’m thinking this old guy he remembers everything. But he was right on the money and I said, “Sir, I think you’ve got me nailed down.” But anyway, he said, ( ) and then was ragging me a little bit, which was fun, but uh, he set up a student teaching thing for me and uh, I did my student teaching at North Warren Middle School. And that gave me the back up that I really wanted, because I truly didn’t think a lot about, still about teaching at that point in time. But, it ended up being one of the best things that I could have ever done, was getting that teachers’ certification, because the jobs and other things that were political were in and out, and so the teaching certificate has always been pretty, pretty sturdy and pretty stationary.

BRINSON: So you have actually been in education since about 1993?

OFFUTT: Yeah I taught my first year, when I came out of my student teaching, uh, I taught my first year at Bowling Green High; that would have been may eighty-seven to eighty-eight, something about like that. Now my family was up here uh, and my wife was wanting me to get back and come back up here because she didn’t want me to be too far away, get too far . . .so we had a little bit of friction about that. But while I had been up here I had worked in some political campaigns, and one of the guys I had worked with named John Wiggington, had run for Second District Councilman. And I had been one of his campaign managers, or a co-manager, of another one of his campaigns. Well he got the good fortune and um, back--Wallace Wilkerson, which at that time was a long shot--because at that time you had Steve Beshear from Lexington; and John Y. Brown, who had the big vote from Louisville; and they had this little guy named Wallace Wilkerson who was going all around to the Hopkinsvilles and the local counties. And that, and the Hazards, and the Harlan Counties, and you know when the vote came down; John Y. had Louisville, Breshear had Lexington, and Wallace Wilkerson had the rest of the state. And when Wallace Wilkerson became Governor, John Wigginton who had been one of those folk who was, who backed him, got the opportunity to be the Secretary of the Corrections Cabinet. John then called me in Bowling Green, I think he called me maybe, when I was coaching the track team, and uh, he said “Well I want to talk you about something.” And I said “Well, what’s up?” He said, “I got something for you and I want you to think about coming on back up here.” And truly, I was having a ball, I was teaching and coaching, had a good track team, and I said, “Well my four hundred mile relay team was Fulton State, and I loved coaching.” [tape very distorted at this point] ( ) So um, I said, “Well John, I really don’t know if I want to do that right now.” And I said, “I’m having a pretty good time.” And I said, “Now I tell you what, if it’s available at the end of the school year—‘cause that was maybe right around May, you know ‘cause we were getting ready to come to the state. I said, “If it’s still available, if you haven’t found anybody by around June or so, then I’ll talk with you.” And he said, “Well I’ll tell you what, I won’t put nobody in it until around June.” And I said, “Now come on now, don’t get like that.” I said, “I’ll be coming up around home.” So anyway, I came home and he came by my house and uh we [too distorted to hear] [laughing] so at that time I went to work for the Commissioner of the Corrections Cabinet, and at that time Kentucky’s Governor could only serve a four-year term, so when Wilkerson came out uh, then we ended up having to come out too, and that’s when I fell back in around ninety-three, into teaching.

BRINSON: Did you ever think about running for political office yourself?

OFFUTT: I would have done it, yeah I might have done it in Bowling Green. Uh, but I wouldn’t have done it here.

BRINSON: For a particular office, or . . .

OFFUTT: City Council.

BRINSON: City Council?

OFFUTT: Um-hmm. I would have, the, the name in Bowling Green and having been at Western, having had high school time, I, I probably would have looked at it there at that time, but I never really thought about it up here.

BRINSON: I’m getting close to the end, what I wanted to ask you Don, but I want to have you talk with me about a whole movement to integrate the schools and where you have come with that. There are segments within the black community who feel that the community lost [distortion] . . . how do you see all that and where do you think we are going in Kentucky with things.

OFFUTT: Well like I say, that’s probably one of those questions we could have started the beginning of the tape on, but uh, the major problem that exist is that solving the education problem in Kentucky was done by utilizing a political application; and just like any political applications to anything, it’s what it is, it’s a political application. Most of the black folk that who are talking about whatever happened in Brown vs. Board, which even that in itself was a, a court case used, but there numbers of other cases that were in Brown vs. Board, Charles Anderson and some of those guys, [ ] Marshall, they have done numerous things, and what they were talking about was equality. They weren’t talking about a cultural onslaught, or I could say cultural slaughter. They were saying, fine, we can work with a number of these things, we ain’t religious or nothing, but when you go to early cases where you have—you’re in Kentucky and black folk that wanted to go to law school, you had one of two strategies; we’ll pay your way to go to a black law school out of state, or what ended up happening is we’ll have you in the class and we will drive a law professor to Kentucky State. You had complete idiocy already occurring. So, when folk started to ask for equality, at one time there thirteen black law schools, so what started to happen was when you had these political strategies occurring, you started to have people come up with arguments like duplication, so you closed the black law school down.

BRINSON: Did you not say thirteen black law schools in Kentucky?

OFFUTT: No not in Kentucky, across the nation, I’m sorry.

BRINSON: Okay.

OFFUTT: But, you had about thirteen or fourteen black law schools across the states. But anyway, so what happened was, when you had the request for equality, you had the political answer, or political remedy; but it’s like any other political remedy it’s, it’s vulnerable to politics. So what we have had occur here in Kentucky probably is vintage Kentucky. Kentucky is a strange state anyway, it’s too far north to be south and it’s too far south to be north. It’s too agricultural to industrial and it’s industrial to be agricultural.

END SIDE ONE TAPE TWO

BEGIN SIDE TWO TAPE TWO

OFFUTT: . . .so you have folk like John Hunt Morgan, who in Lexington is supposed to be a Civil War hero. Uh, yet in Lexington, Kentucky you have a place that, that, that, could boast of having some--I guess you could say some leadership in, in early black development, you know and reconstruction. But, anyway, as I’m saying, what happened with, with, Kentucky, many of the leaders of the black community where not part of the solution to what occurred; which again is politics. Yeah, when you talked about, what are you going to do with this situation or these people, and what you have had is a political situation that has not worked well because it was not correctly defined, operationalized, evaluated, and re-tooled from the beginning. You had the idea of we are going close down black institutions, bring the black kids to the white schools, and then we are going to work it from there. You had, at the very least, a ten-year fallout from that, of black kids who uh, had gone to black schools in their early lives going into a new culture and climate, that in may instances, not only was foreign, but hostile. Then those kids, in their survival mode turned around and get hostile and fight back, or disengage from its education process. So then you then you’ve got a series of things happening that make numerous black kids be unsuccessful in this education system. Now, crazy as it may seem, some places did reasonably well, but it was because the political strategies and applications that were applied were not as strong as some of the cultural things that were in place. So, so, you have had such a hodge-podge of what was happening in schools, and then in Louisville, it went on to federal court systems, and, and, burning of buses, and, and, and, that kind of thing. So, you had a school system that was not, and still is not a very good national school system, applying a political application to solve a problem that was very pitifully defined from the beginning. Where we are now, remnants of that still exists. It will probably forever exist in the Kentucky school systems because you’ve got three Kentuckys. You’ve got an Eastern Kentucky, Central Kentucky, and Western Kentucky. You’ve got kids who probably find success, black kids who probably find success based on now, family social economic status; uh if there have been other folk who have led the way and got education so some of the things are making for African-American success don’t have – have little to do with the educational system. And some things that are making for, for, for, African-Americans educational failure have to do with things external to the system and the system. You know, because one of the things that I am looking at is the disparity in minority student achievement. And that is a phenomenal myriad of the things that play into what is happening there.

BRINSON: Your doing that in your . . .

OFFUTT: That’s going to hopefully be my dissertation study, to look at some of those things. And not necessarily look at it from a quantitative perspective, but from a qualitative perspective. Uh, I can say, that Kentucky with the KERA initiative is on the fore-front of looking at this particular issue. Two states nationwide have started an initiative to look at it is Kentucky and North Carolina. So hopefully we are right here at the beginning of some things, but um, I think we still have the specter of not truly, of like I say, of trying to solve the question of what do we do with education for all of our citizenry, and applying a political remedy, and like any other political remedy, it’s only as effective as the politics that’s available at the time.

BRINSON: I wonder, of course there’s the whole history of migration out of Kentucky of the white and black communities. Are you seeing that particularly among African-American youth today?

OFFUTT: Yes. Um, one of the interesting things about migration from here is that much of the talent that was here at one time left and went to places like Detroit, Indianapolis, Chicago. Uh, I don’t know, I know folk in these areas, I’m sure some probably went to New York, New Jersey, but much of the talent left because there was no market for it. It still happens to some extent. Much of the talent now, maybe going to Atlanta, and to some of the places like that. A number of our kids--I have a daughter, who went to Grambling State University, historically black college in Louisiana--uh, and now teaches there, but she probably will forever stay in, oh well she probably won’t come back. She may not forever stay at Grambling, I don’t know, but she has had a good life there and she is doing really well; she teaches foreign language there. Our son, who is at Tennessee State University loves Tennessee State, he still kind of loves to come home; he had a great life here growing up here in Lexington. I got other friends whose children have gone out of here and have not come back. So, I would imagine that the migration will occur, will continue to occur, and I may, I may myself sometime pull out of here.

BRINSON: But your talking about younger people who by and large are um, educated, college educated and what-not. How about black youth who don’t even finish high school, or who just finish high school.

OFFUTT: Those that I know, and that I have taught over the years, that haven’t done so well, they’ve stayed pretty much in here. Um, I’m trying to remember, most of those that I know who have left out were those who had gone to college somewhere, university somewhere, and stayed away. But I do know that those that have not done so well, those again have stayed here, some kind of working various jobs. I know some who are not doing so well, and there will be those who will be in and out of, probably situations with the police. So, that, if nothing else, highlights a dichotomy in the black community. There is not much middle ground anymore. There used to be, you know reasonably long continuum from black folk, who were quote, unquote professionals, or whatever that was, to those that were not doing so well, and a continuum – now you’ve almost a dichotomy where folk are doing okay and surviving and folk who are not. But those who are not are fairly well staying in and around here.

BRINSON: Um . . .

OFFUTT: They can’t go anywhere else because the various same things that is keeping them from not doing well here would, you know hinder them some where else.

BRINSON: What do you think Kentucky could do in education that would um, improve, that would be, how should I say this, that would improve the black community?

OFFUTT: Um-hmm.

BRINSON: I’m trying not to lead you here.

OFFUTT: It’s okay, don’t worry about it. That’s okay, my ego is not that big, I’ll take all the help I can get. Uh, I don’t put it on Kentucky to lead the black community anywhere. The black community will have to decide that it wants to lead itself, and then utilize Kentucky as all the other citizens in Kentucky utilize their state that they pay taxes in, to help them do what is needed to be done. Kentucky will do what Kentucky has always done, uh, Kentucky has always come up with funny kinds of, of confused approaches to a number of things to dealing with the black community. It will take the leadership from the black community to decide what it wants Kentucky to do. It will have to decide what it wants to do for itself. One of the problems now at this point going in, especially coming through the late eighties and early nineties, as I say, a number of things occurred where the black community isn’t clear about where it’s trying to go or what it wants to do. So I can’t give that much power to Kentucky to say, “Well Kentucky ought to do for the black community.” The black community should say what Kentucky should do for it as it has decided to do some things for itself. Now, that isn’t anti anybody else’s community, that’s just saying we’ve got some problems here with too many of our kids who are not doing well in this school system, so what are we going to do about it. Well we are either going to make this school system work for these kids or we’re going to create our own schools. If you just kind of leave it dangling and hanging out there, then the results are probably going to be about the same.

BRINSON: Okay. So your close to finishing up a Doctoral degree in Education.

OFFUTT: Yes, yes you, you always said that with much . . .

BRINSON: Well, no, I’m saying because its’ a preference. . .

OFFUTT: [laughing] No, I’m saying I always said that When I said you, I was really meaning myself, in one sentence you are close to finishing your doctorates degree, you said that very humbly with a lot of humility, [laughing] ‘cause one never – it’s been a long haul. So, I’m just doing the best . . .

BRINSON: My question though Don, is where do you see yourself when you finish your degree?

OFFUTT: I see myself being able to do what I talk about Kentucky black folk in Kentucky, need to be done. Somebody to be able to say, “Wait a minute, hold it, hold it, hold it, wait, wait, wait, I like this thing your calling KERA and all of these initiatives. But lets talk some truth here, let’s talk about the numbers of kids that really are not faring well, and why.” Um, so what I would like to do is, I would really like to get on the University campus, I’d really, I really like to teach, uh I enjoy teaching; but along with that I would be researching and writing. I would like to publish, and do some consulting. Um, so as far as really being political, I’m not so sure that my politics would be standing out at some podium, giving some political speech; but I think the things that I would to publish would at least get enough attention that I could be called in to say, “What have we got here, we’ve got some problems here.” Because I can tell you what’s going to happen from state government doing this initiative with the disparity in minority student achievement. They are going to probably crank out a lot of quantitative stuff. I’m saying, that’s good, and it is necessary, but let me go and talk to some of the kids--which I already do anyway--and say, “Why didn’t you do well in the school system?” Now, let’s talk truth here. Some kids didn’t do well because there wasn’t a good mix with them and the school. Some kids don’t do well because they bring so much baggage into the situation that they wouldn’t do well anyway. But the problem is who is going to really know that when a quantitative thing of saying, you know this little guy only scored this on this test, or we did this much and she/he didn’t make it. So the problem is there is no real breakout of was this kid one who could have made it given some certain things; or one who needed some other things from the very beginning. So, I hope to see myself actually trying to, to give information that will truly help solve some problems, because we’ve gotta really have some problems in the next seven, eight years. We’re going to have a group of kids, white and black, who are very ill-equipped to survive. You will have, from where we sit, within a five mile radius maybe six mile radius, a number of white kids that won’t do well either.

BRINSON: Now those kids are what age now?

OFFUTT: Fifteen.

BRINSON: Fifteen, okay.

OFFUTT: Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen.

BRINSON: Okay, seven or eight years. Okay, okay.

OFFUTT: Um-hmm, because the system has not met their needs. And this is not even an indictment of the system, it may be other things the system cannot do; which I’ll maybe address that in just a second. But we’ll have a number of people who will be extremely ill-equipped to make it out here because the Army is not available anymore, military is not available anymore, if you don’t have a high school diploma, or maybe a G.E.D. in some instances. Uh, fast food restaurants can only handle and take so many folk, and the more technology comes in to any of that. So we are going to have a group of people out here that are really going to, to need all the human services, goods and services that anybody else will need, and will be truly ill-equipped to handle this. So if we don’t really get serious about saying, what are we going to do with this populous, then it’s going to come back and bite us in the butt. And it ain’t real far away. So, so that’s, that’s what I would like to seriously look at, I’d like to look at the, how are we really going to handle this situation. You, if you are one to listen to the rap music and the hip-hop music fairly knowledgeable people of history, and I just said fairly, you know, know that the music of history tells you something. It tells you something, I mean we now revere and romanticize that music of Pete Sieger and the folk of the sixties. At that time that was radical stuff these folks sang [laughing]. Right, so, I’m saying that if we listen to this music -- and not just black kids are listening to this music; a lot of white kids. Let me tell you what the most integrated situations that I have ever seen, the most integrated situations I have ever seen are not at the University of Kentucky—they are in poor communities where black folk and white folk all live together. And you’ll find--and I’ve seen--I’ve seen one of the most bizarre kinds of situation of a white female with a child, a biracial child, and a white child, with black female friends. At one time, that would have been a real friction issue here; and I’m thinking, something’s happening down in here; and all these wise pundits that are talking about a lot of horse manure, and really looking at the social movement that’s occurring down here on the ground.

BRINSON: But if you’re talking about that age, in seven or eight years, um and most of them are not going to complete their education before that seven or eight years, are you talking about moving into areas outside of education?

OFFUTT: You’re always in the areas outside of education. Anybody that’s just in education they’re probably very narrow, very stuffy, and probably obsolete. And there are some of those folks there [laughing], okay. Because if they, and I don’t care if it’s education in, in, in philosophy, or something, I mean if that is all you’re going to do; I’m not so sure how well the twenty-first century will, will, will be able to use you even. Not you, but you as that person.

BRINSON: But you’re talking about research and writing, how, how will we, as a population, what can we do for these young people?

OFFUTT: Well, the first thing we have got to do, is to address our own fears, or prejudices, concerning them. See, it, it, it, it, like I said about the black community, you know what is Kentucky going to do for the black community, well Kentucky ain’t necessarily going to do for the black community, and the black community well we’re going . . . well what, you know, what can people do, who are doing well, help one kid. What can folk who are doing okay, reasonably educated, what can you do to say, well you know, they don’t have to be black kids, there are kids right over here in Irish town, and Davis bottom over here, I got a little time, why don’t I go over to the school system and volunteer some time. Uh, I used to play a little music, or this type thing, so why don’t I go and do that. You know, we, we, we, are, and maybe I don’t like this kid with his hat on backwards, maybe I don’t like the kid with earring in his ear, maybe I don’t like the kid with the blue, and purple, and pink hair. Why is it you don’t like them? I used to do a workshop that was called Popular Culture in the classroom, and the key was, I’m going to try to give you some strategies to work with yourself. When little Dennis Rodman walks into your class, and he’s got things pierced and he’s 6’10 and he’s a big guy, and you know, you’re afraid of him. Or here comes little Madonna, you know, with, with, everything exposed, and so are you appalled at how she is exposed and you go to some Victorian kind of thing that says that she should not have,. . . . you know. The key was when I, when I did the workshop, the workshop really dealt with people looking at themselves and working out what is my strategy for working with little Dennis or little Madonna; not so much – because they are going to be in your class, you know, and if they are in your class what are you going to do with them? And what you do with them comes from your paradigm, from your things that you think, feel, and believe and your value system. So it goes back to say, what can we do. Well what we can do is first address ourselves and say, well what is it that we really, that is really stopping us from doing anything, what is it I really can do, and what is it that I really would like to do, and would I really like to do anything at all? I might not like to do anything at all. And if that’s the case, then you say okay. But, we don’t have parents or people coming in, there are turns of people in the community that could come in and do some things, the schools would work if there was really a serious community coalition.

BRINSON: How serious, or how, how much discussion is there around voucher schools in the black community today in Kentucky?

OFFUTT: There is some. Some of the politics in the black community is after effect politics. You say, okay, let’s see what happens, and then let’s figure out how we survive after it. Um, some of the things that has happened over the last, well like with the election now, uh, you’ve got, you’ve got some black folk who are saying that we are probably going to have a pretty bad time here, you know, so let’s just, you know, as they say in Eastern Kentucky, let’s just hunker down, and get ready for this bad time coming, ‘cause it’s going to come. So, if vouchers are part of the bad time, they’ll be the, whatever you do to counter-punch or to cover up for the vouchers. If there is going to be some other bad times, so right now it’s probably more after the effect kinds of politics, and vouchers are just a part of it. Um, but you see vouchers aren’t any more frightening then what this integration has been, you know, it’s, it’s – so you know, you just say, let’s see what this brings, but not a lot, not a lot. Uh, you’ll find the folk that are the Civil Rights leaders talking, uh vouchers won’t help, but then you’ll find some of the conservative black leaders that will talk, vouchers will help. So it’s always, the black community is not a monolithic community, it’s got the dialogue and duality in there.

BRINSON: Okay, thank you very much.

OFFUTT: Thank you ma’am.

END TAPE TWO SIDE TWO

END OF INTERVIEW