Marion Humphrey and Marion Humphrey

00:01 Hello, my name is Mary and Andrew Humphrey. Sr. I am 71 years old. Today is Saturday April 3rd. 2021. I am in Little Rock Arkansas and I am with Mary and Andrew Humphrey Jr. And as you might guess he is my son.

00:24 Minot High, my name is America Andrew Humphrey Jr. Age is a 32 years of age. Today's date is Saturday April 3rd, 2021. I am also in Little Rock Arkansas the name of my conversation Partners Marion Andrew Humphrey senior, and he is my father.

00:51 So

00:54 Dad

00:56 You've had such a long extensive life. Tell us a little bit more about bringing and what impact do you think that they don't give you this far? So I was born to a single mother and in Pine Bluff poor very poor people. I grew up living in a home with my mother her sister her sisters three children my grandparents on my mother's father and mother and we made that family work for us. So we very dependent upon each other week. We loved each other still do for the most

01:56 Missing now and it was just wonderful experience as I look back on it. We were very very poor. I'm not sure we realized how poor we were because we felt rich in love and Rich and values and look forward to greater opportunities. You've mentioned the fact that I'm old but my mother is still living at she is 97 years old and so it's been a blessing to look at life and and look at her grow and mature or in age and I have experience of watching her parents. Even at 97 years old. She is younger than either of her parents were when they passed your father was 99 when he died. Her mother was 103. So I had a long time in dealing with my grandparents and they had a lot of impact on me my grandfather.

02:56 I tell people was born in slavery was born in 1861 and he died in 1960 when I was 11 years old, so I got to know him too. And so it's just a life's been a good experience. No matter the difficulty is coming up. It's it's been good. What about yours?

03:19 Well, I was born in a different situation the only child and I'm an only child to choose very successful parents. I know that you were the first person I believe in your family. I know they get a law degree for perhaps also they do you attend college and maybe not attend college and then he will you definitely the law degree and I know that my mother was the first to gain a master's degree in her family and she was the oldest of nine people announce children and tollette Arkansas small heart of Southwest Arkansas Channel 348 people call, Chaka City and you know, I had enough bringing we're both of you have professional careers move to the big city of Little Rock, Arkansas.

04:19 And down and just some lot of students for young kids and I was throwing up and they got word that my dad was a judge for some reason to display The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. You don't you're not on a liking and imagery of the father while he was the Fresh Prince has to go back and appearance from him. So, you know, it's a it's a different experience. But you know, I'm very happy just to have both of my parents with me even a time of damage and everything that's been going on to go to all beat, you know fascinating able to bounce feel like we're more comfortable to spend some time with each other. Just just very blessed.

05:19 Set the have that inserts to have such Minds back and think and remember the history of their families and can remember the history of their grandparents and and in some cases for grandparents to talk about that and to have both of my grandmothers. Yours is 97 but gotta believe my other grandmother's 89 and and so they both have both of those mines. You can go back into knowing who was in flavoring what I think that that is something that is not often the case. I thank you all for having me, you know that 35 and 39 a little bit older so that I can put my generation doll Stacks some of my cousins. Yes. It's a blessing so, you know you talked about like

06:17 I feel like I learn stuff about you, you know the more I recently that I learn more than your past and you talked about kind of that your upbringing in some of those friends from your upbringing. Maybe you could tell me a little bit more about that group of guys that you hung out with boarding school through a program called the better chance and I ended up in New Hampshire of all places and I ended up going to school with white people. I have never going to school with white people before I grew up in segregated Pine Bluff Arkansas, and I tell people and I hope you're my family young Winston my family. Just look at me like really when I tell him I drink at the colored water fountain I Ruled at the back of the bus. I had to go around the side and in

07:17 Go to the movie theater and go up some dark Ginger stairs to sit in the balcony because the Civil Rights bill wasn't passed until 1964 and I was born in 1949. So I was either 14 and 15 when the impact of the Civil Rights bill came into effect and people had to change customs and traditions in the South Point in formative years. I really growing up in a segregated society and we met at a circus Society work week. We had enjoyable times each other in my friends and I'll neighborhood are we enjoyed it now? We didn't appreciate second-class treatment but life moves on despite, whatever circumstance where you have to make the most of it, even when we went to the balcony in the movie theater well being as cool as we were I was just glad to get to the movie. I have money to go there.

08:17 And be able to book tabs to ride the bus rather than walk where I had had to walk after the 1964 Civil Rights bill was passed and they could not make these distinctions between blacks and whites in public accommodations and transportation. We were a bunch of us kids. We we pack the bus one day. We were going to the park across town until this white woman got on and I think there was a seat available for her, but she would not sit down. She she was not sit down next to a black person so she stood the whole time and we had fun with her at that point because every time the bus turn the corner she was holding on to the rail, but it seemed like she was Tipsy kind of tip over look like a little bit.

09:19 Is going to fall out.

09:27 So we played it off like that. Remember that I next to black folks who they referred to as Niger us back to the way we just we made the most of it and so many of us will pull up the common thing and I didn't feel that much different from anybody else because of that and it came up in a different time. I don't know how the kids did they make it colder in the communities in neighborhoods are when we go out we came up with confidence that things could get better.

10:11 And that's that was ingrained in a 7th and steel in his buyout. Mostly the church saying that if you have faith in God if you trust in the Lord the sky's the limit. We had this black woman who run the school superintendent and she used to say that the sky's the limit and so we believe that I'm in the bus there and I don't know.

10:39 What people really getting these days that kind of encouragement? What do you want? What did your generation get, you know, I think that one of those big things the difference from our experience was that we have integrated schools and I question sometimes whether that's you know, the best thing because stories about your childhood. It seemed like from point A to point B to point Z of your day you were you had someone who was really concerned about your life in contact with you your mother your family members. Then you got to school you had a black teacher who knew your parents that she went to the same church most likely she went to the same church and then, you know, if I've heard of Storytelling, you know, you didn't have food to eat when you got home to teacher provide.

11:39 Someone in the community provided for you and growing up in my my experience. That wasn't always the case. There's always this mean floating around Facebook. That's like when was the first time you had a black teacher and then there's a demain Des Moines, right? When was the first time you had a black male teacher and I didn't have a black woman teaching first grade, I believe but that was that was different for a lot of people on the different means I saw but you know, it really started to Swindle in high school where I had no black teachers in any main academic topics for men black male teachers. I didn't have one until in an academic subject until 7th grade with dr. Bell at Dunbar and so it you don't have that in front of you. You don't have that that perspective and when the schools are in

12:38 Andrew Brady also are in classes with the students to you won't see after school and you won't talk to you and I was in so many different 380 or AP classes with all these white students in Barrie barely got invited to do anything with them outside class. And in those are the folks were in all of my classes on my friends, you know largely has to be in different classes and I had to make friends with folks that I'd I didn't always share an educational background or respected with because they might have been just one notch and a pre-ap when I have gotten to this 81 love or software and I just think that it just aggravates schools. I went to the store at Little Rock Central High School, which when anyone comes tubs A Little Rock I take them there ever Foundation all to me, but it was by no means a perfect place to be there were twenty-four hundred students and they were almost three separate schools within that school.

13:38 If you were taking pre AP to AP courses you were on a almost entirely different side of the campus and students. You weren't and if you were an athlete you were you were doing things in a certain way to square. It just felt like a it was just three different completely different schools and educational expenses in the community was not necessarily time. She would we had busting we had a few know we have a lot of different options now and I didn't go to school. I went to school where I live but there were so many students you wanted to go to Central and the neighbors don't they live predominantly predominantly all-white neighborhood and they were bus to Central because everyone wants to go to go there and so, you know, it just wasn't that stream live from from everything I did was related to my community in every everyone. I knew and anticipated in with was connected. So I feel like that

14:38 Limited the amount of caring and that you received every minute of the day and I think that it really did have some impact on you know, the confidence that it's the child is reared in you know crawling up. I don't I don't think the children necessarily have that taco confident when when you know, there's a teacher who doesn't think that you deserve the great that you get or doesn't promote you to the class. You need to be in when you got the highest grade in the class and writes you up every time you can get written up for excessive talking and I finished the song and then nothing else to do. So, I think that that that was just a different experience and if I have to be negative about it and then like growing up here

15:35 And Little Rock it was it was in our area was was for me safe, but you know, I still hear people that they talk about that. I live in the ghetto and I don't think that fits that all has ever been to the ghetto. The governor's mansion is around the corner from here, but you know a few or few and like in the 90s there was the band In The Rock on HBO and they talk about the games and there were there was a problem with his problem with violent everywhere and still today but just get up and it's also I hate that the use of that term to begin with and it shouldn't be a negative turn the the folks and even if you talk about the Jewish ghettos and in other places when you talk about it, if you're really talking about a group of people with limited resources would have been aggressed upon by the apparatus of the government buy apparatus of hate.

16:35 They are you know, relate institutional racism is a part of it institution or you know capitalism has thwarted the success of those environments. You have read mine. You have all these different components people found a way to still be successful like in to be able to go to get their masters yet. There are a lot of grease in coming from this place that folks want to say is ghetto. The ghetto is is actually it's at the place of a great Triumph in the in the in in a when when given so little at times and so, you know, I will you know, I wish I was almost because I call you living together just because there are some black people here. Now it now all the other white people moving down here. They all want to be downtown and they didn't want to do it before they they weren't here.

17:35 Create made a way for there to be a highway that pushed our city so far west and so far in different directions, and now they want to come down here and buy houses that used to have some black old grandmother live until she passed away and it didn't go there anyone or whatever. They're buying those houses up in my neighbor glitches. This is by no means together. And if it was it's the most it's just a Triumph to be here you would you would be so honored and so fortunate to have grown up at the way that I didn't where I was, you know,

18:09 You know the way meme yes, I was a little bit more about like the law for you no more for your experiences and tell me sorry about more of your experience and education in the Exeter. You know, who looks like that what would happen there when the schools desegregated on a unitary school basis by the time I was leaving to go to boarding school, but the white people in in Pine Bluff as in the rest of Arkansas, I'm probably throughout the South did not do desegregation properly. I recall that there were two black high schools in our school district, school district and both of those principles black men. Both of those pretzels were passed over to become principal at Pine Bluff High when there was a vacancy and they got to go

19:09 Batman with Ben in elementary school principal rather than these two black men. Well as is my friends who was still there and said these kids these kids got that they looked at that season man who presided over graduation ceremonies with been in charge of schools and all of a sudden they get to Pine Bluff High or they sent to a junior high school as principal buddy Pine Bluff High they become an assistant principal and some people would just kind of, you know, save it all time low High when they became an assistant to a white man who did not have the same background and secondary education secondary school education. They did they were over there this blind in the black boy.

19:58 Where is the relative of mine said they didn't used to be this used to be a principal now, they got him over there snatching hats off to buy black boys head. So, you know tell the black boy that kind of thing. They reduce the people rather than allowing them to take their rightful position as chair of a department because of their experience or is principal rather than becoming somebody for principal School principal assistant principal or sending them down to a junior high school. So desegregation was not done fairly even after orders the federal courts to desegregate they found a way to not do it in the right way and going off to a boarding school is just really something different. Espanol. I'm glad I went and had the opportunity and the exposure but it was just a totally different world as I said, I've never

20:58 Going to school with a

21:00 White people and you end up at a school where they are. These people have backgrounds that are just a very prominent a lot of really rich people move. This is social systems cast it's all it's all of that. I feel glad I went just for that 40 exposure but and leave Pine Bluff. I didn't know what a Steinway piano or was that supposed to another piano and I'm in glee club with a Steinway in Pine Bluff as the time Arkansas did not have a Coors beer distributorships. Coors beers came to the west of east of Texas west later on but I was on campus with three or three kids with somebody in your family asked you to possess that person to be The Graduate.

22:00 Will a lot of folks who were prominent whose parents and grandparents, but the speaker and Al graduation was Dean Acheson live in Secretary of State under President Truman, and he was selected over Nicholas katzenbach Johnny Cash back for my class to is that was attorney general at the time with Ben drowned in the South with some of the whole bunch of people like this and who are these people? What world are they?

22:33 Is there a people whose names you don't know but whose folks on Wall Street and Madison Avenue. Supposed to supposed to wear a Young & rubicam advertising place. I think it's been around and you didn't know you know, who's supposed to rain in Sun Valley Ski Resort all that kind of stuff. You just look around and then I was telling all male institution. I've never done that before and you had opportunity to say I miss this and socials with girls, but

23:20 I couldn't even explain the way that came about you go to a mixer and the guys on one side of the room and here come some girls from one of these girls looking schools are on the other side and they call your name and you get to the middle and you meet your date for the night if I've loved and tell the boys. I was living in Dallas Arboretum and if people don't like who they at least person I very slow.

24:15 Who are you going to be? Okay, if it was that kind of situation, so I knew when I got back home in Pine Bluff by the life moves on and you learn grow from these experiences. You take it all together and you're at the bottom of the people that steal people.

24:43 And and they had their issues. They had their problems just so that I had mine but you learn from that perspective that the life you live it to the best and especially if you living with say I wish my face at the showing forthe more when I was going through that but that's all part of my life's journey.

25:17 Yeah, I mean that kind of reminds me of some of my high school is I mean sorry college experience going to Davidson College Presbyterian school work filiated with Presbyterian Church at the time. I left a school like Central that at 2400 students was virtually half black half white and then I went to Dave and where it only has 1700 students no grad students at all. And you know, I was one of the 13 black men in the class with maybe 500 game. Where was Steph Curry when he was there for three years, but I just remember like I tell this story all the time. It's like I remember the first week and they start or the second week and they start doing these formal.

26:17 And one of these other students on campus don't want us to Summit Hall light came to my room and was like, hey, I got it. I'm going to almost at school, you know, I didn't have time to get Davidson to do laundry for us. And it seems to me like a remnant of the being an all white boy school because they had a the holy building on campus named after black bus person was the I think it's Loop new love Maybelle a laundry mat on campus with directly next to comments where we ate. So you can just put your you put a number on all of your clothes at the time. They reach that said stop this would you put a number on all of your car clothes you put you had a bag of it you drop it off there and they would be done the next day and for shirts they can be pressed and if we're no price for nothing and it was free, but he didn't have time to get a shirt over there. So he comes into my room.

27:17 You know what? You look like you are. I don't I don't know how to iron a shirt for me cuz I don't know how much you don't happen to know where is formal and I just you know, how I did it but I just thought like what it what were they drop me off too? Because I know that that they would never know where I went to school like no one would ever think to ask me something like that. One of my best friends growing up used to iron his money. It would be stressed. If you don't like to have none Chris pills and so I went to a school like that. I you know, it seemed like a regression. It seemed like a stingray aggressive compared to my experience in high school the baby fication of the the books that I was I was with at that school at the time and it was it was

28:17 I completely understand that experience. And unfortunately, it's kind of lingered into you know, if I see the same thing in law school at the University of Arkansas that I went in as a 30 year old and that's old compared to other lost things that I think the average age is probably about 24 and I just think the immaturity level is so off-putting. Did you know I just really didn't really I haven't really connected so much of a lot of the students and I just got a problem, but I know you also went there and you know you went to law school there. How was your experience in Moscow? Well, my head wasn't in law school. And really I probably should have been there then I had a crawling into the ministry and I was fighting it. So I wasn't doing I wasn't into studying the way that I should I couldn't get going. And only reason I went back and back and left us.

29:17 Went back is because I have these credits outstanding I couldn't transfer them to any other disciplines and Grace is so bad. I can transfer those anywhere. So I had to go back where I was and finish up after I finished up at so I never will practice law anything like that. I just want to finish and get it over with and I guess I should learn better than to say what I never will do a little practicing law and running for judge is serving as a judge for 22 years and could not have done that and I'm not finished up even when I went back to law school. I had another reason for reapplying to go back and that's when I was there at first I was acting with the under grass in the black student organization. What other was very dear friend of mine and he

30:10 Exact notes with leukemia. And so one of the reasons I want to go back with so I can help watch out for him. That was another guy who's the football player with him and and he did his parents really did not want him up there with that leukemia. They never knew when they were going to get a telephone call saying something really bad has happened and I said, well, that's another me to go back to look out for some fruit and but before before I got back he passed but I went back anyway finished and I'm glad I did but I just think the lawyers wonderful profession. I think largest sometimes get a bad rap about lawyers not being honest or are they are being cut throat. That's the way it's sometimes so sometimes

31:10 Rise up.

31:12 But you going to Law Office you should see the people who come in there wanting you to do certain things. I mean lawyers have to be more ethical than the box of the folks who want you to work on your phone. So I can't do that when they come to see a lawyer. They wanted to get down and then go after somebody and and cut somebody's throat on their behalf. And so I am and you know, you have cautioned them. A lot of times people that you see Bailey who have a few friends are to them. But when it's something where they feel that their rights have been violated where there's something that they want. They just want it and we have to work with us within certain parameters. It's a good profession. I was interested in it because of civil rights because of the fight for justice for our people.

32:12 Particular antonym for what's right in this really where I had developed an interest in it. And I think it's good. I think it's still need it. I know it's me to be useful the degree is used to itself. It's one with versatility to it. So you can do other things and just to have that perspective is good. I was frustrated as a law student because if I tell people that weren't Outlets to talk about what's Justin what's fair when you in law school, you just got to learn the law and deal with it as it is and some of the laws don't seem to be just but you still have to look at the questioning and put the facts with the law and an answer the question rather than giving your own opinion as to whether this is right of this is wrong. I like that and then you don't even tell people up thing. I didn't like about law school. Is there no pictures in the books.

33:12 Are you sure he can be boring sometimes just read reading. I like a little animation here and there but it's something you just have to do and do it is and that's the way life. Is there some things in life that you just have to do later on. It makes sense because you can see the application sometime when you going through them.

33:38 You you want a little bit more excitement.

33:43 Yeah, I mean I share that that first part about there's just no Outlet in law school steel today to really

33:55 Connect with the real issues that the law as of us as a bunch of words based on racism and capitalism in our country is no way to really have that conversation in law school setting you can't the first year you supposed to take contracts black people couldn't be in contracts it that when they were 3/5 of a person you then you also talked about criminal law and half the cases that have a u.s. United States vs. Hernandez are United States versus someone, you know a Jerome or somebody that you know, it's a black person that you can't really talk about why they were the people that had a protection. Or a why why police shut up and stop and frisk them and why we have a lot but, you know an ability to do that type of things to people

34:55 Based off of police and their bias and how they relate that bias to the power that they possessed.

35:04 We have property law and redlining in in conversations about eminent domain and how black people were just taken away from their property those conversations. Don't come up in a law school class and when you're in a law school class at a place like University of Arkansas, which is the flagship institution of Arkansas in Arkansas is 15% black, but you at you're in a class that has 120 people and there are only five black people in that class when there should be over 20 students if it's 15% of a black Space Invaders continue. And for two years is only one black woman in two classes in a row having to be in classes to talk about stuff. It is very, you know, and it's very difficult to navigate even today because their needs to be systemic and institutional change.

36:00 Because of the law night night night night to the law because of the law are there so many issues. So many think this is why young people out here young people like myself out in the streets and so infuriated by what you see on a daily basis why you know, we have a prison industrial complex in a mass incarceration issue that no other developed country is putting people in prison like this. No other developed countries doing this and this all relates back in the US. It relates back to anti-black racism black people would never supposed to be free why people never really supposed to have to work for anything. They were supposed to rely on Free Labor and black people would never supposed to to to take leadership and power and position and as soon I don't know as soon as you know, why people realize that they won't be

37:00 Majority of citizens in the country, you know, we have them go to the US Capitol on January 6th and provide, you know, the the most dramatic season finale of whiteness that we've seen in a very long time. It is very ridiculous to see and it's sometimes this is very hard to see like what am I even working so hard when this is, you know, where are white people who really just thought that they were supposed to not have to do anything for for whatever they have in to be in classes with them into to you know, try to build relationship and just for me to be one of the biggest things that someone told me is to just try not to burn a bridge and that is enough of that takes a lot of fiber of my being to do on a regular basis cuz I I feel just a breast appointment in insert empty spaces cry every time there's just an even or some type of

37:56 Microaggression is enough. I was in a class and property and we were just talking about how the bartering of property is in. His intestine is a way in which communities that wouldn't naturally socializer interact with each other the bar during a property is how you get those those people together and that's how they felt they make those type of connection and then the professor on a very next slide has a picture like a big head of a black woman and there's no black woman in my class in my property class with a black woman and his question was who knows the most about Black women hair.

38:35 There are 60 people in this class three black men and some white person raising like black women and then he's like that's right. And then his next question was who knows the who knows the second most about black woman hair. I know it's black men cuz I have nothing here but her Rants and he's like, that's right you like Koreans by selling weed to black women are bothering something that black woman need and they create this ecosystem and this this relationship to one another that they wouldn't naturally have and everyone, you know benefits from it.

39:22 I wanted to leave the classroom. I've wanted to just walk on out because it was so productive of that relationship is so reductive of you know, you know, I love people of color to use in China. I love Chinese food at the love Asian food and stuff. But I do know that I've been it's a lot of difficult stores and I've been following, you know, it's the best institutional racism white supremacy that internalized racism, but it's mainly anti-black racism, you know, and that is not acidic black people can't even own stores. We tried to just poke tried to own story, but they can get the hair for cheap enough to be able to compete so it if there was no new ones to that conversation. I stood up and argue with him in class that's keto and and and it just there was no space to even you know, the Fate that and these are the people were indoctrinated the attorneys in the lawyer that come after us. It's just it's I'm so

40:22 I'm just like you I'm really tired of it. I'm only doing it and I don't think I don't want to practice my I probably will but it just ate the whole process of them is can be very. I think the one thing you mentioned about what happened in Washington DC on January 6th. I think we need to address that in air it out more than what has been done. There's a black woman who was in the second wave of black women to attend Princeton and we do a zoom on Saturday evening, and she usually she really use the terminology that it has not been used widely that describes what happened in Washington DC on January 6th. He said they acted as barbarians.

41:14 I think that you got to look at that that that that was the conduct and not enough has been said about that kind of time. That is just an affront to civilized society and it certainly is an affront to the Democratic process your man lost. Why are you acting this way? What makes you entitled to come nation's capital and in real break windows and history in and rummage through the desk of senators and carry a noose for the vice president United States.

41:51 I just think the people going crazy again in their actions and they are afraid so what I mean, we're we're white people used to be in control of everything and then the love of the majority may not like in South Africa the Blackhawks going to run what's out of white people out of South Africa amazing combination. You cannot make Lee and and it's a symbiotic relationship. You you see you develop an understanding of people need each other I think is reduced to what the Reverend Dorothy Austin said. She was doing a sermon that the used to be assistant Dean at Harvard Divinity School. She was doing a sermon by Memorial Chapel in 1 inch thick we all afraid to die.

42:44 You know people I don't care if you're black or white lyrics you pull your whatever you're afraid of the unknown you were human. And so I don't know why some people think that they're better than anybody else because you have all of these uncertainties in inadequate is a human beings and everyone has them so you're not really any better than anybody else. You're not any less anyone else either.

43:11 Man

43:14 I think that's a good way to end this conversation.