Dee Daniels and Murray Pierce

[00:00] DEE DANIELS: Today is Sunday, June 12, 2022. I'm in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and my partner's name is Murray Pierce. And Murray and I are good friends, kindred spirits, and I admire him so for what he contributes to the planet.

[00:23] MURRAY PIERCE: Well, thank you, D. Hi, my name is Murray Pierce. I'm 66 years old. Today is Sunday, June 12, 2022. I'm located in Missoula, Montana, the Garden City, and my partner in this interview is Dee Daniels. Dee Daniels is an inspiration for me. Dee Daniels is a person who I think we all should aspire to be like in many respects. Dee and I methadore through a reunion, a black student union reunion that was held at University of Montana some years ago. Prior to that, Dee had been instrumental in starting the black student union. The black student union at the University of Montana is arguably the third such institution to exist in this country. There's a couple of other in California that started, but Dee was one of the prime movers, if you will. One of the people that helped us start that there was D. Herb white, mace Gray, and the money Akbar were all individuals who started the black student union back in. I think it was 67 or 60. I d can correct me on that. I can't remember specifically.

[01:35] DEE DANIELS: Yes, it was 68, I guess I should say 1968.

[01:47] MURRAY PIERCE: No doubt. And that legacy has endured. There's a black student union on campus today through the university. I'm the director of multicultural affairs. I happen to have been a student here. I was a student athlete back in the seventies, and I reaped the benefits of what Dee had sown as a student here. And I just. For me, in the seventies, it was pretty tough. I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio, and I came here in the 1970s, and it was pretty tough. 1974, to be exact. I can't imagine what it was like in 1968, 67, 68 here in Missoula, Montana. And Dee had been one of the people that started this. Dee, can you tell me just what was the atmosphere like here then?

[02:28] DEE DANIELS: It was pretty bizarre. I was coming to Missoula from Seattle, Washington, where my family and I were living at the time. I'm originally from Oakland, California, and my family moved to Seattle when I was 17, right after I graduated from high school. So I'd only been in large cities, urban settings, and all of that kind of thing. So when I went to Missoula, that's the first time I'd ever been in a small town. And what was even more interesting is when I arrived on the campus of the University of Montana, there were only nine other black students there. Or black people on the campus. We were all students. There were eight black men that were all on athletic scholarship, and then me and another woman who happened to have been engaged to one of the athletes, the money Akbar, who was from Denver. So that was a bit of a culture shock.

[03:47] MURRAY PIERCE: Yeah, I bet it was. And I guess there's a similarity there from my standpoint, too. I came from Cincinnati, Ohio, a few years later from a predominantly black area in Cincinnati. But I got here, and it was culture shock to the max for me. I mean, I was like. I was calling home, quite honestly, I was calling home. And if you understand anything about black families, you know, at the time, you know, people talk about the black family this and the black family that. But I grew up in an era where black families were strong and resilient, and my dad was a head of household, and my mom was caring and nurturing and also tough and smart and intelligent and all those things, too. But my dad laid down the law. He was the one that told me I was going to Montana. I had scholarships to go to Ohio, other places, Kentucky, other places. He said, you're going to Montana. And I asked why. He said, well, there you'll grow up, and you'll be a man. You don't have anybody there that you're going to be able to depend on all the time. So you'll grow up there from that standpoint. But I can tell you that. I can cite you chapter and verse of calling home and talking to my mom, not my dad, about coming back. I wanted out of here, man. I wanted out of here. I thought I'd land on another plant, to be honest with you. And my dad would walk by with my mom would suck. She'd go, oh, baby, it's okay. It'll be okay. And my dad is like, is that. Murray said, yes, it is. He's telling me he's not coming home. He just walk on by. So those were the things for me back then. I'm glad that I did stay. I'm glad that I did stay. So what was the city of Missoula like back in 1968?

[05:21] DEE DANIELS: In general, it was. I think they were shocked, too, because I'll start with the campus live first. So many of the students then had never seen a black person in life alive. And there wasn't much on television at that time. I think Diane Carroll and the show Julia started, I think it was 1968, but in student life, you're not watching tv. You don't have time. So there was this huge curiosity from some and a huge disdain for others, from others. And then in the city itself, it was pretty much the same. Only there felt. It felt like there was more disdain for. To have black people, black students in the city of Missoula. So every time we were off the campus, for example, going across one of the bridges to get to the downtown area, people driving by in their cars would holler out, roll the windows down, holler out, and call us the n word and tell us to go back home and all kinds of crazy things. So, I mean, when growing up in an area, me, which was pretty much integrated, you know, in California at that time, and not understanding then when I was a kid, but understanding later how protected our parents kept my family, my siblings and I, from racism, this was totally a shock to me, you know? So, yeah, it was rough. It was just rough. And you feel so isolated because there's so few of you, you know, and it was a little bit scary in the beginning.

[07:32] MURRAY PIERCE: You know, I can echo that as well, too. When I got here, there was that sense of aloneness to some degree in that there really weren't any cultural supports here. I think a lot of times what's happened through athletics in particular, that I can speak to is that you recruit kids, but you bring them into areas and you think that the education is going to solve everything. Well, it's not. There are cultural aspects. If they are not present within the context of that area that you're bringing them in, you're setting yourself up to fail to a very large degree. So unless you've got some that are there to address their needs culturally, you're going to fail. It just so happened that, as I was talking earlier, that Dee and the other three people that started the black student union, whether they knew it or not, they were, in essence, creating something that was a. It was a cultural safe place. It was something that you could go to. And you knew that you had people that had experienced some of the same things that you experienced, people that had that eat the same thing that you eat, you know, and we had barbers at the time, you know, back in the day, you know, there was no barber here cutting black hair at the time. So we did it amongst ourselves. We would have cookouts and things like that, so we could eat what we wanted to eat. We would bring music and tapes and have parties and stuff and listen to the music that we wanted to. Those are the things that are sustaining to some degree. And I think that in terms of missing that prior to these presence on campus, it must have been rough. For the people that came before her. I know that for sure. What did your parents think? Let me back that up. How did you convey to your parents, or did you convey to your parents what was going on for you here on campus and in the city?

[09:22] DEE DANIELS: Yes, I did. And, you know, my parents were supportive of me, but what they had given me as a child of theirs in wisdom and understanding gave me what I needed to stay there and to get through this. One of the things that the reason why I went to the University of Montana was at the time, my family did not have the money to send me to college, so I always worked. I started out at a junior college in the Washington state area. Actually, it was Olympic college in Bremerton, Washington. And I worked the whole time. I always worked. Right. And when I got ready to go to a four year institution, I didn't have the money to go to, for example, the University of Washington there in Seattle, Washington, or any of the other universities. So I didn't know what I was going to do. You know, I actually stopped school for about a five month period to go work a full time job so I could save up money to go. And I, when I was at the junior college, their Olympic college, I joined a club there called college club. And it was a situation where college students would help high school students prepared to go to college, as far as, you know, the application process and tutoring and whatever was needed. So the young woman who was the director of this club came to me one day and asked me, would I be interested in going to Iran? And I said, what? You know? And it turns out that her name was Donna, and Donna was a member of the university presbyterian church there in Seattle. And the presbyterian church, along with the Olympic diocese, had a program called the world deputation program, where they would send out students, pardon me, send out students many places in the world from three months to three years at a time. And, of course, this was a christian organization, and we were just to have dialogue with the people of whatever country. And sometimes you were going to countries that, of course, didn't have a big christian population. And, of course, Iran was one of those countries, and they wanted to try something different where they would send an ecumenical group. So she asked me if I would be interested in going to represent the baptist denomination. And of course, I said, yes, that would be great, you know, so everything was paid for. And to make a long story short, we went to Iran, and while we sailed over, flew to New York. Sailed from Iran? From New York. I mean, to various ports of call and ended up flying the rest of the way to Tehran. So while I was on the way back, I got a message from my mom that the University of Montana had contacted her and was looking to contact me to see if I would be interested in attending school there. And what had happened was, the semester before I started, I started fall semester of 1967. The eight athletes that I spoke of earlier were already recruited there, and they were dating some of the white students because there were no black women there. And the town of Missoula, many people there were very upset about that and went to the president, President Pantzer and said, you need to fix this. So what the university did was went to each of the black athletes and said, we'd like to give you the opportunity to invite a black woman to go to school here if she. If she is qualified academically and so forth. So I had a friend there, one of those athletes that I had gone to Olympic college with, and he got a scholarship to go there. His girlfriend at the time was attending the University of Washington and didn't want to transfer. So he kind of knew my situation financially and thought to have the university get in touch with me. And when I got back to Seattle from our trip to Iran, I contacted the dean of students. And sure enough, this was a valid offer. And I definitely had the grades to receive the scholarship because it was a full scholarship. And if I wanted to work, I could have a work study job. So I showed up, and the only other black woman was the money, who was engaged to Maceo, as a matter of fact. And so we met. And the day we arrived, the dean of students called us into his office and says, okay, you girls are here to help us integrate this school. And one of the ways we want you to do that is to live in separate dorms. Now, the Moni and I had just met, and we looked at each other. We said, nope, we're going to be roommates. So that was the beginning of my time in Missoula. And it didn't take long to figure out that we were no longer in Kansas. We were somewhere else that we had never been before. Yes.

[16:00] MURRAY PIERCE: What's interesting about that is that how racism plays a part in all sorts of different aspects of our lives. And sometimes, as young people, we really don't understand all the implications of it. I mean, today, I think it's clearly. It's patently obvious that if you're telling someone, well, you need to get more black people here so black people can date black people or whatever. I mean, you would look at that today as something from out of a distant past, which, in fact, it particularly was. But at the time, it was something that concerned citizens and quotation marks in Missoula, Montana, thought that, you know, we just can't run them out of here. But what we'll do is we'll provide an opportunity then, for the. To date their own kind, so to speak.

[16:45] DEE DANIELS: Yes.

[16:46] MURRAY PIERCE: Just amazing how. Yeah.

[16:49] DEE DANIELS: Needless to say, that did not work.

[16:52] MURRAY PIERCE: Yep.

[16:54] DEE DANIELS: That did not work at all, as a matter of fact.

[16:57] MURRAY PIERCE: People don't recognize that we are as black people. We don't exist under a monolith. We don't pass a single shadow. We do what we choose to do. And I think that one of the problems that we have in this country is the perception that it is. That our culture is monolithic, that our concerns are monolithic. All those things fall under one particular shadow. And within that context, you can just decide that, okay, here's what they. Here's what they want. So we'll do this, we'll do x, and it'll work out well. Guarantee you that. Work out well. I know you. I know that's not going to work out with you. I know that. For that.

[17:38] DEE DANIELS: No, no, go ahead, Marie.

[17:42] MURRAY PIERCE: I was just going to ask, how about, from an academic standpoint, about professors and things of that nature? What. What are some of the things that you had to. To deal with in terms of navigating those spaces relative to professors on campus and your grades and those things.

[17:58] DEE DANIELS: There? You know, I have to say that there was only one professor that I had that had a problem with the money. And I being not only on campus, but specifically in her class. And this was a social studies class. We're in the year 1967. There was a lot of racial tension and unrest and riots going on in the country. There was. So you can imagine the atmosphere here. You are in Missoula, Montana, where you kind of isolated from that, but at the same time, in the state of Montana, you have the John Birch society and a whole lot of other stuff going on. And you're talking about social studies. Social studies. I mean, and so we have these books, these social studies books that they handed out to everyone. And the information inside of these books was totally. Whatever was the few parts that were based on truth was totally antiquated. And then all the rest was just not real life. So when we're studying different aspects of the social world in the United States and based on the book, it was totally untrue and had no sense of reality of what was really going on in the world at all. So when the money and I said what we knew personally, being african american people, the teacher got thoroughly upset to the point where one day when we challenged what she was saying and trying to teach to us and the whole class, and this was a big class of students, over 100 students in that class. One day, she just exploded. She screamed at us to the top of her lungs. She turned beet red. And Washington. It was incredible. Just incredible. But she was the only one, to be honest and fair. And for the rest, we found out later the next year, at the beginning of our second year, which was actually the beginning of my junior year, because I came in as a sophomore, that mentality was very limited amongst the teachers. And we found that out by the fact that the money and I wanted to move off campus and get an apartment. So, of course, we did what everybody else does. You look in the classified ads, and you go find places that are for rent. And as we went out to inquire into these different locations, we would. Many things happened, everything but being rented to. For example, we'd walk up to a door. You'd hear people talking, and nobody would come to the door. Or you walk up to the door, and you'd see a hand reach, reach, reach inside the window where there was a forensic sign, and take the sign away and not answer the door. Or you'd have walk up to the door. Someone would open the door. They never look at you, never have eye contact, and said, it's already rented. So to make it long story short, we could not find a place. Well, that word got around the campus, and some of the professors and students that, I would assume many of them came from outside of Montana, were concerned about that and created an organization called Action Seminar. And what action seminar did was they took some surveys, they would send out black students, and there was just the four of us, myself, the money, Maceo and. Oh, God, Murray. What was the fourth person speaking of?

[22:51] MURRAY PIERCE: Herb.

[22:52] DEE DANIELS: Herb.

[22:52] MURRAY PIERCE: Herb.

[22:53] DEE DANIELS: Sorry, Herb. Yeah. And we would, you know, go and try to rent a place, and, of course, nobody would rent to us. And they'd soon follow up with a white student going to the same locations, and, of course, they would always get rented to. Right. So they compiled all this information, and I. And took it to the president. And in the meantime, the people of the townspeople were getting more and more upset, and we were being called the n word more and more frequently and not served. When we would go out to certain places in the downtown corpse, it got really nasty there. And you would have thought we were in Detroit or Watts or somewhere else, but we were. There were just ten of us, and this is how we were being treated. So we band together as black students and formed. That's when we formed the black student union. And through the black student union, we went to the president Pantzer and said, hey, we need some support here. And to make a long story short, once again, or trying to, anyway, that's when they hired Professor Ulysses Doss from Chicago, black professor who created the black studies program.

[24:25] MURRAY PIERCE: Yeah. It is interesting that you talk about just that atmosphere and that climate as it relates, in particular to academics as well. When I got here, there was. There were more. There were more than the four that were here for you, for sure. There were probably between 50 and 75 students, students and student athletes on campus in 1974. So that was a quantum leap beyond what had happened for you in 1968, for sure. From my standpoint, it was. All academics were always big in my household, and my father kept dictionaries in the bathroom, if that tells you anything. So it was like. And we were not allowed to get C's. You got to see, you were in trouble. And back in the day, there were. Corporal punishment was for misbehaving or doing those things where it was. It was the norm. It was the norm. So you grew up with knowing that, hey, I can't bring any C's across my threshold. What was my dad's and statement? Right. So I was in political science to be an attorney, at least I thought I wanted to be an attorney at the time. And I was in political science. That was an anomaly. And that I was the only. The second person ever. Black person ever in that program at the university, and only the second person ever to graduate from that program. But I say that only in reference to a lot of the professors that I had, several of them I had that really had no idea of how to work with me in terms of what was happening relative to the material that we were presented. Same. Same with you. Same with you. I had one professor say to me, I was struggling in a particular aspect of class. I can't remember what it was. It was a political science class. And he said, well, I don't really expect that much from black students in the first place. Oh, boy, that was. That struck me. And I'm like, you know, well, you're gonna expect a hell of a lot more from me. Talked to the wrong brother in a class, and it was. It wasn't because, you know, I wasn't gonna do the material stuff, you know, it was some of the things that happen on a regular basis there. I heard coaches tell student athletes and one particular famous student athlete that came out of the University of Montana, black student athlete, one of the coaches said, you're not here to study English. You're here to play basketball. And I heard that it brought me to my core. And growing up, how I did and where I'm from, it was something that was just, again, like, there's no way that that would ever be material for me. And so, but part of it is that I think in a situation like that, you wonder, as a, as an 1819, 2021 year old kid, why is it that you have to teach grown people that are instructing classes what it means basically, to be human?

[27:09] DEE DANIELS: Yeah.

[27:11] MURRAY PIERCE: Hardest part for me, there were times when, of course, you talk about the Higgins street bridge where people were walking across. And still, even till today, I mean, at the election of our former president, this is Biden's presidency at this point, but our former president, you will not be named. When he got elected, there was all sorts of stuff that kind of revisited itself. And people almost felt that they had agency to say those things and to do those things that they did. So it's interesting, just in terms of a timeline, how the things that you experienced. I think that I experienced to a lesser degree only because you took the brunt of that. And again, I just want to say enough to thank you for, for all that you've done from that standpoint. So let's talk about these fun stuff. You were a member of a band, and you went on to become. And for those of you, Dee is a world famous jazz singer from the University of Montana. And what d doesn't know is that, and I'm not even comparing myself in any way, but I studied music at the College conservatory of Music in Cincinnati, Ohio. When I was in high school. I played trumpet, and I was in a band before I became an athlete.

[28:26] DEE DANIELS: Discovered no band.

[28:28] MURRAY PIERCE: Girls only. You didn't know I sang in a band, sang lead singer for a band and all this other stuff like that. You didn't know that?

[28:33] DEE DANIELS: No.

[28:35] MURRAY PIERCE: Yeah. That was something that I kind of, kind of kept, kept hidden away. It was always my kind of escape point to some degree, except for when my neighbors, like, tell that black guy to quit playing that damn trumpet. That was my foray out to the community telling me to shut up my trumpet. But tell me about how you got into music.

[29:00] DEE DANIELS: Well, you know, my degree is actually in art education. But I've always had music in my life. You know, my stepfather was a Baptist minister in Oakland, California. So, you know, I've always been in church. I sing gospel music, played piano for the choirs, the whole thing. But my passion the whole time, from being in grade school through university, was art. And music was something, though. I always did it. I always had it in my life. I loved it. I just never thought of it as a career. So in my junior year there at the University of Montana, I used to sit in with some of the bands that would come to town and would play downtown at Monks Cave. And then there were some students on campus that were in bands, and I heard about it, and I would go. They'd have little jam sessions in someone's home. And so word kind of got around that I could sing. And there was a band together, and I can't think of their original name right now, but they invited me to come and do sit in jam with them, some rehearsals, and eventually invited me to join the band. And when I did, they changed the name to Brown Sugar. And we were a hardcore rock and roll band. I mean, all of the music at the, you know, the Rolling Stones, cream, Steppenwolf, you know, and because I was me, I threw in a little Aretha Franklin and Lou Rawls, and. And that's what we did. And we played all around Montana, actually. And that is another story, being in Montana, being a black woman traveling around with four white Mendez. But anyway, and that's. So when I sang with them and toured around the state in my junior year and in my senior year, I changed bands because I think Brown sugar disbanded. But anyway, I changed bands with another group of guys, and we were called family of one. So that was my senior year. But when I graduated, I just went on and eventually started teaching art in one of the high schools in Seattle, Washington. And I started teaching in January instead of September. But just New Year's Eve prior to January, I went to a house party, and there was a live band. And it happened to have been a band from Seattle that used to play in Missoula many times while I was there. And I used to sit in with them, and we just met, and they asked me, said, aren't you. Do you know a person named Dee Daniels? I said, well, yeah, very well, I am. And we remembered, you know, the whole story. So I went and they invited me to do some studio work with them because they were recording a new album at the time. And when we finished that album, they invited me to start working with them. And I said, no, I don't want to do a rock band? I don't want to do music because I have a real job. I'm teaching, and I know I'm getting paid every two weeks, but they kept after me until I started working with them on weekends only. And it only took a few weekends before I was hooked and said, wow, this is. This is what I really want to do, you know? And I started working with them six nights a week. Plus, I was still teaching until my body says, nope, you got to make a decision. So I stopped teaching in the middle of the school year, joined the band full time, and never look back.

[33:07] MURRAY PIERCE: Well, I'll tell you what, man. I just. It's amazing here. Dee came back and sang several years ago for a concert here at the university. She's a distinguished alumni now at the university, and, yeah, just. Just amazing. All over the world. That's beautiful. That's incredibly, incredibly beautiful. So I guess we just only got a couple of minutes left, and the last question that I would like to pose is, tell me, what advice do you have for young, say, a young person first coming to the University of Montana today, as bright eyed and bushy tailed as you were when you first got here, what advice would you give them in terms of persisting through, not just in the trick, but persisting through graduation, what advice do you have for them?

[33:53] DEE DANIELS: Well, I'm sure that there are many differences today, but at the same time, many similarities with regards to being black in a predominantly white institution. I think knowing who you are, discovering who you really are, and how your history is very important. I think having the opportunity to find the camaraderie within the black studies program is very important because of just being supported and having someone understand others from the same culture or similar cultures. There's strength in that. And let me say it like this, Murray. One of the best things that happened to me in my life was attending the University of Montana, because I had an opportunity to find out who I really was and how strong I really was. And to this day, I have to say it's one of the highlights of my life, having had the opportunity to be there because of finding out who I was, what I stood for. And it's created a foundation for me that I have been able to build upon in becoming the kind of person that I wanted to become and have become. So, yeah, everybody's going to have a different experience, but it's. It's taking. Yeah, just. Sorry. Just. I think it's just so important to connect and. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm just having a hard time right now because I'm actually getting a little bit too emotional trying not to cry.

[36:27] MURRAY PIERCE: To, but that's okay. But what I can. I just respect that so much in that now I know why we're family, because we are twin children of different siblings, of different parents. This is exactly what I meant early when I said, my dad said to me, said, well, you go to the University of Montana. You're gonna grow up and be a man. You're gonna have anybody there to support. You're gonna learn some things about. About yourself and learn some things about what you can contribute. That was always important in terms of my family as well, too. So I. This has been great for me in that a lot of things have come full circle for me in understanding why it is that you and I are so close. That's part of that.

[37:10] DEE DANIELS: Yeah, I want to go ahead. I'm sorry. I just. Wow.

[37:17] MURRAY PIERCE: I didn't think.

[37:17] DEE DANIELS: I surprised myself. Think I'd be that emotional, both.

[37:22] MURRAY PIERCE: From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you for who you are and what you've done for unknown people that hopefully, through this interview, they might know a little bit more about people that have paved the way for them to be where they are today. So I thank you for that.

[37:37] DEE DANIELS: Well, the pleasure is mine, and it's a very mutual thing. I appreciate what you've done the whole time that you've been there, because I know it's not been a walk in the park most of the time, I would imagine, you know? So, kudos to you, Murray, for what you've given, and I think your father is proud of you for what? The contribution that you have made to the university and all of the black students that you have helped and supported coming through that. That campus. That's a tremendous responsibility, and you've shown through it all.

[38:27] MURRAY PIERCE: I want to thank you once again. Take care. We'll talk soon.