{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/hx15m64309/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Benjamin Hooks 1, circa 1987"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/053/original/cropped-marmia-logo-copy1.png?1586173104","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["https://marmia.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/archival_objects/15111"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["circa 1987 (Creation)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["Be advised that this video may contain sensitive, triggering, and offensive language and content. (Content warning)","Digitized with funding provided by the Council on Library and Information Resources' \"Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives: Amplifying Unheard Voices\" grant program. (Funding note)","Interview footage with Benjamin Hooks discussing his upbringing, career, and more. (Scope and Content Note)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["1 U-matic"]}},{"label":{"en":["Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["WJZ-UNKN-068-003 (Identifier)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Series Title"]},"value":{"en":["Get to Know"]}}],"summary":{"en":["Be advised that this video may contain sensitive, triggering, and offensive language and content.","Digitized with funding provided by the Council on Library and Information Resources' \"Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives: Amplifying Unheard Voices\" grant program.","Interview footage with Benjamin Hooks discussing his upbringing, career, and more."]},"provider":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["MARMIA"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["MARMIA"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/053/original/cropped-marmia-logo-copy1.png?1586173104","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/267/633/small/open-uri20250314-1605153-8w5iuh_1741979239.jpg?1741979240","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 2 - open-uri20250314-1605153-8w5iuh.mp4"]},"duration":1223.828,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/267/633/small/open-uri20250314-1605153-8w5iuh_1741979239.jpg?1741979240","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-marmia.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/267/633/original/open-uri20250314-1605153-8w5iuh.mp4?1741979237","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":1223.828,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["AUTO_TRINT_WJZ-UNKN-068-003_FFV1.ia.mp4 [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 1:\u003c/strong\u003e Street games. OK. You have 30 seconds.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=6.43,8.07"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 2:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah, my parents really liked it. Where we lived, we lived in Chicago. It used to be a bus stop, but now...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=9.09,18.03"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 1:\u003c/strong\u003e But now, the small creatures on the water are really, really talking to each other. But they can get out of it and stay in L.A. and move towards the ocean. So you also have another home in Memphis, is that right?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=17.9,31.74"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 3:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes well Memphis is my home, and I left there in 1972 to go to the Federal Communications Commission. But those jobs are not necessarily permanent you know. So I didn't feel like moving to Washington at that point, I never did in fact.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=31.94,52.5"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 1:\u003c/strong\u003e So when you say home, you mean Memphis? Yeah. Yeah, I understand.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=53.58,56.9"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 3:\u003c/strong\u003e I stayed there five years and moved to New York City.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=56.95,60.95"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 1:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay. I am fascinated to know more about your childhood, the early years of your life, what it was like growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, the South, in the 30s and the 40s for a young black child. What were your experiences?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=64.58,80.86"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 3:\u003c/strong\u003e Well there were three things I guess that come to my mind. First of all, my father was in the profession, he was a photographer. And apparently, before I was old enough to know it, he had done well, you know, in terms of money. But by the time I came along in depression years, things were very, very difficult. And yet, I can't say that I've ever been hungry. I didn't have what I wanted, but I had enough to eat. We were living in a nice neighborhood, if you want to use that word, to get to a course. But then that word was not as popular in the black community as it is now. And we had an excellent segregated school system with outstanding teachers and principals and who demanded that we learn and demanded the best. And I had a very good time, you know, as a child. yet from an early age and I can't tell you when I knew it. I recognized that I was black. I recognized there was a difference. It was something that I don't recall ever sitting down with my mother and father at an early age talking about, although we did later. But it was just something that you came to know. You knew you were going to school with blacks. You knew there were white schools right around the corner or down the street. And there were two or three white kids in my neighborhood. And at a certain age, the little girls stopped playing. Thank you very much. was a little boy so that there were all kinds of unconscious reminders and the racism that was so apparent when you went to town with your parents. The signs that said colored only for water, the fact that you knew you could not eat in a restaurant, the fact that every time we rode the streetcar we were on the back of it rather than you know in the seat you wanted. So that the concept of being a negro as we were calling ourselves then our color was pervasive and you knew it. And it was much later that I began to resent it. But initially, I played in the backyard. All the games we played, built wagons and skate trucks, etc, etc. So basically, I did not have a bad childhood.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=80.95,207.81"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 1:\u003c/strong\u003e Were there lots of siblings? I don't know. Did you have brothers, sisters? Yes, I had.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=209.11,212.47"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 3:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, I had three brothers and three sisters, that's seven of us, and of course they ranged in age from 1912 to 1932, so from the youngest to the oldest that was a 20-year span.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=211.98,223.06"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 1:\u003c/strong\u003e And you were.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=223.61,224.09"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 3:\u003c/strong\u003e I was the last boy and the fifth child. I have two sisters younger than I, and four brothers and sisters older than I, so I was the last boy, number five, and the three boys, I'm sorry, four boys and three girls.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=224.4,237.66"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 1:\u003c/strong\u003e Who was the strongest influence in your household over you deciding what you would do in your future? Who was the one who really could motivate you?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=239.08,246.78"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 3:\u003c/strong\u003e Well I think as I look back on it, my mother and father were equally strong people. My mother never in my lifetime held an outside job. She would be what today we call a homemaker and in those days we called a housewife. She never, to my knowledge, ever worked. She may have done so before I came on the scene, that I don't know, but from the time I knew her she was right there in the home taking care of the children. Of course, before the day of washing machines and refrigerators and... and you know frozen foods that was more than a full-time job.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=247.96,282.14"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 1:\u003c/strong\u003e with seven children.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=282.5,283.12"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 3:\u003c/strong\u003e And you wash an iron for nine people and keep a big house clean and bring in coal and take out ashes and break up wood and go to the ice house for ice as we did. Try to juggle insufficient money to stretch to meet our requirements and donning socks and changing collars on shirts and all those kind of things. It was a very, very difficult job and she did it exceptionally well. And then when I was 12... I started working with my father every day. I'd leave school and work with him in the photographer's studio. And I did that until I was 18 when I went to the Army. So both my mother and father had to, well, I would, I'd look back on it where he was influential in terms, but I did not make up my mind of what I wanted to do until I was out of the Army.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=283.48,335.7"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 1:\u003c/strong\u003e I see. So if I would have met you as a young man at 17 and said what are you going to make out of your life, what would you have said then?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=337.04,342.36"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 3:\u003c/strong\u003e Well there was a question in the building where my father's office was located, there was a lawyer, black lawyer, black dentist, a black doctor. And there was another office where ministers met, where they had a conference. So I was exposed very early on to the lawyer, to the doctor, to the dentist. And I ran errands for all of them and did some little chores for them. I guess in some way. If someone had really asked me, when I went to college, and I went to college for two years before I entered the army, I was taking a general course. I wanted to go into politics. But God knows there was nothing to inspire one, because there were no black elected officials, not only in my town, in my state, but nowhere in my entire Southland. And I'd only made one brief trip to Chicago and didn't come into contact too much. But we did have in our home, and I guess the most. profound influence outside the home was the fact that we took two black newspapers. One was called the Chicago Defender and the other was the Pittsburgh Curia. And then we had a hometown paper called the Memphis World. But the two out of town papers, the Defender and the Curia, kept me informed about the exports and the deeds of people like Walter who had NAACP, Bishop Walz of the Amazigh Church, Adam Clayton Powell. The people who were involved, Bishop, I'm trying to think of his name, it skips me right now and I probably shouldn't call him names because there were so many and I can't recall all of them. But in reading those papers I got a glimpse that there was a life beyond Memphis, there was a life beyond segregation, and there were people who were making tremendous strides to change things.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=343.47,452.03"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 1:\u003c/strong\u003e A lot of young people feel, at certain ages, when they're feeling restless and feeling their oats, so to speak, I can do anything. There are all possibilities out there. Did you feel that way, or were you aware when you were young that there were going to be limits you'd have to hit?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=453.38,468.26"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 3:\u003c/strong\u003e But at that time, I guess that either consciously or subconsciously, I was aware of limitations. Perhaps teaching was the avenue most readily available to the black community, and there were not too many black men who taught school, and not too many black men who had a chance to finish college. And I suppose that my high school principal outside of my family was the strongest most of my life. He was a preacher and an educator and a very strong dynamic personality whom I shall never forget. And I suppose like many of my contemporaries who went to school at the time I did, who ended up teaching and becoming principals, that might have been my ambition to be a good teacher and finally a principal of a school. So, the law bit sort of kept intruding on my consciousness because... I would go into the office of this lawyer in the building, and we were in the second story of a building as most black professionals were in those days on Beale Street. And I would talk with him about the law. Then I'd go up in the front of the office and talk with the doctor about medicine and talk to the dentist about dentistry. But I did not, I guess if I had, my first ambition was to finish college. That was to finish college. I knew that I had to do that before I could do anything else that I might want to do. I even gave some thought to follow my father's footsteps and been a photographer. But even if I did that, I still wanted to finish college.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=468.89,563.48"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 1:\u003c/strong\u003e Who instilled in you that need to finish college? Your family? Was that just understood that you would finish college?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=564.46,569.52"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 3:\u003c/strong\u003e Well I guess in a way, you see, I came along during the Depression. I was five years old in 1930, and I became acutely aware that there was a difference in the house. And I had three older brothers and an older sister, all of whom academically were much smarter than I, but they were never able to finish college, in fact. In those days, finishing high school was quite an exploit for us. black person and where we lived. So all of my brothers and sisters finished high school and then they went to work. My older sister started college but was not able to keep up the tuition payments. So that I was the first child of my family to attend college but not the first to be educated. Because in those days, and I don't seem to be too old, In my high school they taught four years of Latin, first year Latin, Cesar Cicero Virgil, French, Spanish, calculus, physics, and so I would suppose that kids who really matriculated and did well in high school in the 30s in Memphis would compete favorably with a lot of college graduates today.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=570.27,643.62"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 2:\u003c/strong\u003e Mm-hmm.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=643.96,643.96"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 3:\u003c/strong\u003e in general fields, and I'm not saying if you're a specialist in some fields, so that all of my family was educated, but my father had finished private high school because my grandmother was quite famous in that town. In fact, there's a book that I will give you when you leave here, Angela Beals speak, has written about her. She was a juvenile probation officer, a former schoolteacher, founded an orphan's home and a home for older women. And quite active, arrested. Yeah. all the time because she lived in the day when there was no Jim Crow laws. She was born in 1852 and when they passed the Jim Crow laws many times she refused to abide by them. She would not sit on the back of the streetcar. She would walk through the parks where blacks were not supposed to walk and she would attend the operas and the ballets and various things that were for white only. And I remember hearing my family talk about that so that that that sort of rested in my It was not conscious, it was not a... conscious thing that one day I would be leading in that field, but I think it's subconsciously piled up within me.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=644.42,710.07"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 1:\u003c/strong\u003e Maybe you got some of her genes, too.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=710.49,712.13"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 3:\u003c/strong\u003e So we knew that finishing college and when I finished high school in 1941, June of 41, things were a lot better financially and I had older brothers and sisters who could, and in those days many children, once they finished school, remained at home and helped to carry the expense of the household. and all of my older brothers and sisters at the time. were still at home, helping with the expenses of the home. And it meant that it appeared I would be able to go to college. I went right in my hometown. I was not able to go out of town. Didn't have the money for train fare, room and board, but I could attend college in town. So that, it was the family background, what was expected of me. And later on I had an older brother who finished college and after he was a full grown man and had six children, he wanted to go back to school. Thanks for watching! But I was the first child of the family who was able to go right from high school into college.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=713.86,773.65"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 1:\u003c/strong\u003e Was that in any way a burden for you, knowing that you were privileged in a way that your brothers and sisters weren't, that people then were looking to you to do special things because you got this special opportunity?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=774.07,784.25"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 3:\u003c/strong\u003e I never did feel that way. I felt that they would have gone to college at times been different. When they finished, all of them wanted to go to college, but it simply was not financially possible. The tragedy of discrimination and segregation was we had a very large state-supported college in Memphis. Had they been white, they could have continued in the college as they did in high school because there had been no tuition burden. but because there was no public college in Memphis, in fact the nearest public college at that time was located in Nashville, 221 miles away. In fact, in my mind, certainly correctly, it was the only college operated by the state for black people in the 20s, 30s, and 40s. So wherever you lived in Tennessee, and it's sort of ironic that the largest part of the black population lived in West Tennessee, but they did not build the college in West Tennessee. They did not build it in Memphis where there were over 200,000 black folk. They built it in Nashville. And those who wished to go to public school, college, had to be able to pay room and board and bus fare from Memphis to Nashville.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=785.58,858.26"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 2:\u003c/strong\u003e Mm-hmm.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=858.38,858.38"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 3:\u003c/strong\u003e So we had a very excellent private school in Memphis. And I think that the tuition was $100 a year or $100 a semester. And that seems like nothing now. But believe me when I tell you, grown men were working for $8 a week and $10 a week. My sister's first job paid $5 a week in car fare. Black maids and cooks worked routinely for a dollar a day in car fare. And so it was not easy. to get $100 to pay for tuition.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=859.26,889.97"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 1:\u003c/strong\u003e Those years, those early years, you say you were aware at a certain point that there was a difference. Did that difference, did that awareness create anything in you, any sort of anger or resentment that later then continued to fuel those fires as you began to actively work for civil rights?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=892.56,910.95"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 3:\u003c/strong\u003e And since I've been an adult, I've read so many books by black people who talk about their anger, their resentment, their bitterness, the fact that they lived in a jungle. I did not live in a jungle. I lived in a highly civilized community. I lived in a community of violin players and saxophonists and teachers and doctors and lawyers who were black. I lived in a community where civility was expected, obedience was demanded. that I lived in. community where the church was the central focal point where the high school and grade school principals received great respect. We were civilized people. I don't know anything about smoking dope. I don't know anything about stealing. I did the normal mischievous things that boys do, but what we were doing then would even compare to what goes on now. So I don't have any, I didn't feel I came from a deprived background all of my life. If we had green sedans, that was it. We didn't have a balanced meal of green, a vegetable, I mean a vegetable, a starch, and a meat, except on Sunday. But every day when I came home, I knew if we had cabbage, I'd have cabbage and cornbread, that's it. And I didn't feel the deprivation, so I didn't have this welling up of anger. There were things that happened, lynchings occurred, police brutality occurred. I have seen with my own eyes policemen. beat Negroes down with nightsticks and that was a fear in the black community of the white police force. I knew there were no black policemen in the town, no black firemen. I knew from my brother's experience that even though he finished number two on the civil service exam he could not get a job as a postman. They only offered him a laborer's job but the postal laborer paid $135 A month of that was so much more that he was making $12 a week as what he was making otherwise, that he was forced to take it. I realized the meanness of spirit. I knew about department stores where you could not try on a hat, you know, all of those things. And I think that what happened, and then my grandmother, who had gone to Barreira College in the 70s and who had taught there, in fact, first black teacher at that school, first black, one of the first black students, she, she kept alive in many ways by conversation and things that you hear around the table, my mother and father talking, my older brothers and sisters, and I heard my older sister always complaining about the disparity. In fact, my sister was the secretary of the Memphis branch of NAACP, and my grandmother in 1912 was one of the charter members of the Memphis branch. So around the table there were always these discussions, but I thank God I did not grow up. with a legacy of villainous, of hatred, of anger. At a point in my life, I decided that things were not always going to be that way. And I wanted to be a part of the change, but I didn't map out or have a strategy of how we would do it. And all of these people who have all of these villainous in them and reflect upon how bad that childhood was just wasn't my lot. And let me say something else. It was not the lot of majority of blacks that I knew. Even those kids who did not, and I remember I've said already, that I didn't live that well. But whenever I left home I had on clean clothes no matter how patched they were. I had pride because my mother instilled that in me. I was obedient because I'd get beat half to death if I went out. And, you know, to get in trouble in school meant you were in trouble at home. My mother was a treasurer of the Parent Teacher's Association. She made periodic visits to the school. my family was well known and there was no way for me to escape. I can remember, I guess it was Darren then, you know, trying to smoke a cigarette when I should not have, or smoke a cigar, so I did a lot of things I shouldn't have done. I'm not trying to, I was by no means perfect and I didn't play, I didn't, I wasn't absent from school because the teachers would call, we didn't have a phone, but they could come by my house to find out where I was. I feel that worse than death itself. I know it's dangerous. I know there are a lot of things like that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=911.15,1173.49"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSpeaker 1:\u003c/strong\u003e We're going to pause for one second, they're going to switch tapes real quickly.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633#t=1173.86,1175.86"}]},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["English [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267633/transcript/77527/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"subtitling","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/file_transcripts/associated_files/000/077/527/original/trint_WJZ-UNKN-068-003_FFV1_transcript.vtt?1742308433","format":"text/vtt","language":"en"},"target":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/file_transcripts/associated_files/000/077/527/original/trint_WJZ-UNKN-068-003_FFV1_transcript.vtt?1742308433"}]}]},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267634","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 2 of 2 - open-uri20250314-1605153-nfiqjq.mp4"]},"duration":1223.828,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/267/634/small/open-uri20250314-1605153-nfiqjq_1741979641.jpg?1741979642","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267634/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267634/content/2/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-marmia.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/267/634/original/open-uri20250314-1605153-nfiqjq.mp4?1741979640","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":1223.828,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/144788/file/267634","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[]}]}