McLane Evans and Gilbert Evans

[00:03] MACLEAN EVANS: I'm Maclean Evans. I'm 51 years old. Today is Saturday, January 22, 2022. We're in Tampa, Florida. The name of my interview partner is my dad, Gilbert Evans. And my relationship is. He's my dad. Dad, you want to introduce yourself?

[00:21] GILBERT EVANS: My name is Gilbert Evans, known as Gil, age 80. It is, as she said, Saturday, January 22, 2022. We're at the University of South Florida Medical center in Tampa. My partner, as you should know by now, is Maclean Evans, my daughter.

[00:45] MACLEAN EVANS: That was funny, dad. That was your dictation voice I remember hearing coming out of the office all those years.

[00:53] GILBERT EVANS: Yeah.

[00:53] MACLEAN EVANS: You remember doing all that?

[00:55] GILBERT EVANS: How could I forget? I spent about 10% of my time dictating reports as an investigator for the United States Civil Service Commission. Later, Office of Personnel Management had a home office for most of that time, approximately 27 years.

[01:14] MACLEAN EVANS: Because you traveled so much, right. They realized they way back then, you're way ahead of your time. All these work from home, people that was in the seventies. Well, I guess you. You had office downtown in the seventies, but by the eighties you were working from home a lot, right?

[01:26] GILBERT EVANS: Right. I started in the Tampa federal building at 500 Zach street in 1974. And by about 1982 or 83, somewhere thereabouts, I was operating along with my colleagues in our respective home offices. And the work was mailed to us and we would pick it out of the mailbox in the morning and make out an itinerary and a plan of attack for the cases that were assigned to us.

[02:04] MACLEAN EVANS: You want to tell people what handling a case for you meant, like the purpose of your job?

[02:14] GILBERT EVANS: I should back up a little bit, I guess. I was released from active duty as a naval aviator as the Vietnam War was winding down after my combat tour in 1972. And I went back to the University of Florida in Gainesville, finished my master's degree that I had started but was interrupted by my naval service. And then in December of 1974, we came to Tampa when I was hired by what was then the US Civil Service Commission to be an investigator. And what we did generally was background investigations on people who needed security clearances or who were prospects for a position of public trust and employment that involved public funds, discretionary action over matters that were important to the people of the United States and so forth. And like all federal jobs, this one came with the understanding that there would be other jobs as assigned, quote unquote. And among those other jobs as assigned was the most interesting to me, which was the enforcement of the 1965 Voter Rights act.

[03:47] MACLEAN EVANS: And when you say enforcement, your job never entailed any sort of law enforcement tasks. And you never carried any kind of weapon on your typical assignment, nor did you do it when you went to go assist with these election events, right.

[04:09] GILBERT EVANS: Well, that matter was up for discussion. Initially. There was our job, basically, when we were detached to the Department of Justice as observers in the election sites where there had been a complaint made referencing the Voter Rights act. Our job was observing and documenting everything that happened at the polling place against the possibility that there would be federal litigation later, should there be anything occur during the day of the election that violated state or federal law. We did not have any authority or really any desire to step in and take over the polling place and direct what people did. That was the local poll workers, mostly volunteers. Our job was just to see that none of the poll workers or anybody else exerted an undue influence on any of the voters as to what candidate they chose. And it became very dicey at times.

[05:28] MACLEAN EVANS: And just let me interject for a second, just to give perspective. The Voter Rights act was passed in 1965. You didn't start this job and get your first election monitoring assignment until 1975. So this is already a decade after the law had been passed, and they still needed you in this position in elections.

[05:54] GILBERT EVANS: Actually, it was a little bit less than a decade when I did my first one, because although it was passed in August of 1965, the law really didn't go into effect until 1966. And you have to realize that every year did not necessarily entail an election somewhere. And also the Voter Rights act didn't mean we automatically went to observe and document because there was an election. There were seven states of primary concern. They were all southeastern states in the United States where the Justice Department kept an eye out for any irregularities. And when there was a complaint, typically a complaint would be from one or the other of the major competitors in the election, the candidates. And if one of them suspected that the other side was going to try to corrupt the election, they would file a complaint with the Justice Department that would activate the process. Then the Justice Department would contact our agency and say, we need x number of investigators and the election sites are going to be. And then they would name the geographical locations. It was usually Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, occasionally South Carolina. I don't ever remember one in Florida. I don't think there were any, but they were really interesting and eye opening in many respects. We already knew before the first one that we had to get our sea legs in a hurry because we had to know the election law for the state in which the election was taking place. At least, well enough to know when there was an irregularity or a violation. We also knew that there was potential violence, because all throughout the sixties, up to and through the time when the Voter Rights act was enacted, there were incidents of violence and riots and some pretty bad situations. For example, my very first assignment was in a place called three Mile, Mississippi, and it was probably a 20 or 30 minutes drive south of Memphis, Tennessee, northern Mississippi. And historically, the place was infamous because the freedom riders who came down from the north to protest segregation and unfair treatment of blacks by whites in the south. A couple of them were thrown into the river right here at 3 miles, Mississippi, with a millstone around their neck, and the bodies weren't found for a couple of weeks. And so when we.

[09:39] MACLEAN EVANS: That was prior to the passing of the Voter Rights act, right?

[09:43] GILBERT EVANS: Oh, yeah, yeah. It was. It was in the early sixties, but we believed at the time, from our social and professional interaction with people in the rural south, all of us had similar experiences with racism. It was very strong, very strong. The further you got into the rural hinterlands, the stronger it got.

[10:12] MACLEAN EVANS: And I hate to interrupt, but probably relevant, since people can't see us. You and I are both white.

[10:17] GILBERT EVANS: Oh, yeah. While we're talking about that, the investigators in the teams that went out were a mix, men and women, black and white. And that was a point of friction in some locations. For example, if a white woman on the investigative staff went to lunch with a black guy, both investigators, both federal agents, that would cause a lot of focus of attention. And sometimes it translated into action. There were stories of windows being shot out of cars and tires being shot.

[11:10] MACLEAN EVANS: You're referring to action by the local people and wherever the assignment was.

[11:14] GILBERT EVANS: Right? Right. Not the poll workers at the polls. I never saw anything like that, but voters from around the area. Another important thing to remember is this was a surprise to me. I came from a metropolitan area where a 30% turnout for an election, even a presidential election, was pretty good.

[11:38] MACLEAN EVANS: You mean in Pittsburgh, where you grew up?

[11:40] GILBERT EVANS: You name it. Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Tampa. Here in Tampa, before my first voter rights assignment here in Tampa, we had had a county referendum that was very important to make a change in the county charter. The voter turnout was 17%, and that was not unusual, partly because the area was growing so fast, and it was growing because of people migrating from the northeast and northwest down to the southeast. And these people took a while to get oriented to their new environment. They kind of had 1ft still back in Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania or New York or West Virginia or wherever and just were kind of sticking their toe into the local Hillsborough County, Florida political situation. They werent really up to date on it, didnt know who was who, what the issues were, et cetera, et cetera. So a 17% turnout, even for something important down here, was not that surprising. Now, when we got into these little rural southern towns, like three Mile, Mississippi, the voter turnout was unbelievable. It was in the high nineties. I actually saw injured people brought in from the hospital on a stretcher so that they could vote. Also, especially in Mississippi and northern Louisiana, the illiteracy rate was high, especially among black people. So the law, Mississippi state law, provided that there would be assistance to illiterate voters. That meant that one of the volunteer poll workers had to accompany the voter into the polling booth behind the curtain. And I, as the voter, would point to the ballot, the person offering assistance, the poll worker would read the names and explain what office they were a candidate for. Now, it got kind of crowded in there, because since we were observing everything and documenting every detail at every polling place, that meant that three people had to get into that polling booth behind that curtain at the same time. The voter, the local person providing assistance to the illiterate voter, and then the federal agent looking over the shoulder of the person providing assistance to the voter, so that we could be sure that, either by body language or other manner, that person offering assistance was not trying to influence the choice made by that voter for that candidate or that office. And we went on throughout the day documenting everything. It was. The process began before dawn. We had to be in place at the assigned polling place. We had teams of two people per polling booth. Some places had one or two polling booths, like 3 miles. Mississippi only had two, I think. But some places were bigger, city halls and public buildings where there might be twelve to 15 polling booths. That meant that you had to have 24 to 30 observers. We only had four at three mile, Mississippi, two teams of two. Interestingly, as an aside, this was my first assignment. It was also the first assignment for the other three people who were going to be with me making the observations. The election at three mile, Mississippi. So we were briefed. We reported to Memphis, to a Ravada Inn that the agency basically took over an entire floor of. And we were all briefed together on what we needed to know, what we needed to do, what we couldn't do, and what we could do. And great emphasis was placed on non interference in the process on our part. Even if we saw something blatantly crooked going on, we didn't step in we documented, and what was very hard was not answering honest questions by voters or poll workers.

[16:50] MACLEAN EVANS: You weren't allowed to. Were you not allowed to speak to them?

[16:53] GILBERT EVANS: No, we were allowed to speak. We just couldn't make any comments that could be construed as the federal government making rules or criticizing or in any way influencing the local process, the local election process, or casting aspersions or inferring that something was legal or illegal. That was all off limits, strictly. And it was very hard because people would see us there, know that we're federal agents, and they would ask, is this okay? Am I doing this right? All we could say is, well, I really can't comment about that. The head of your poll worker crew is the person to address that or something to that effect. And getting back to three mile, which was really an experience, we left very early in the morning, well before dawn. Two of us in one car, two in another. And we.

[18:03] MACLEAN EVANS: Was it those cars you guys used to have for work that had the big government seal on the side?

[18:08] GILBERT EVANS: I don't know if you'd call it a donut seal. They were.

[18:11] MACLEAN EVANS: No, the government seal.

[18:12] GILBERT EVANS: Oh, government seal. Yeah, yeah. They were drawn from the local motor pool. If the motor pool couldn't accommodate us, then we got rental cars. But anyway, we headed south. The other fellow and I. I can't remember his name. It's been so many years, but it was the first time for both of us, and we hit it off right away. I knew we were going to work well together, but we had very explicit directions to this place, this three mile Mississippi. It was a very dark night, and there was a lot of fog. And we drove a certain distance in this direction on this road, made a turn in a certain direction, a certain number of miles, down to the 10th.

[19:02] MACLEAN EVANS: And we should clarify. Back then, there was nothing anywhere near a gps.

[19:07] GILBERT EVANS: No gps, no electronic, no cell phones, paper maps. Yeah, that's right. I. Yeah, once you were on station, you were pretty much incognito. If there wasn't a payphone in the place, there's probably some people that might.

[19:24] MACLEAN EVANS: Listen to this that won't even know what a payphone is.

[19:30] GILBERT EVANS: Anyway, we knew we were at the place that should be three mile, Mississippi. So we went over railroad tracks, and it was supposed to be a railroad crossing. That was one of the last landmarks. We went over the railroad tracks, and we drove about a mile, and we didn't see anything. So we turned around and came back soon hit the same railroad track, still didn't see anything. We passed three mile, Mississippi, without knowing it three times.

[20:05] MACLEAN EVANS: It was that small.

[20:07] GILBERT EVANS: There was the railroad tracks. There was a country store and a church, and I can't remember whether there were any other buildings or not. That was about it. The church was the polling place, which is not unusual. Churches, feed stores, post offices, you know, typical in rural south at that time. So we finally figured out where three mile was, and we were there before the clerk of circuit court, which was important, because we had to be there on site, observing. When the clerk of the circuit court brought the ballot box over to the polling place, we had to see the seal broken, and we had to see that there were no unauthorized documents, votes that were already filled out, or anything of that nature in the box. Everything that came out of that box had to be clean and appropriate to the polling place and according to the Mississippi laws. So we had to document all that before the voting even began. And then the first thing we would do after that is make a sketch to scale of the room where the polling places were, the dimensions, the height, the ceiling, everything in detail. Document where all the poll workers sat, where the polling place, the actual booths were, and where the entrance and exit lines were, and a lot of other details. Because the purpose, really, of everything that we did was to provide an official record that could be entered into evidence should there be follow up federal litigation about the legality or illegality of the way the election was conducted at that polling place. And it had to be pretty much immaculate. It was never clear whether we would later be called as witnesses to authenticate that evidence when it was entered into the court.

[22:25] MACLEAN EVANS: And did you ever get to hear about anything after you submitted all your reports, after an assignment? Did you ever get to hear anything about whether anything became of it after that?

[22:36] GILBERT EVANS: Well, that was what I was about to tell you. The answer, in a word, is no. The only time we would have found any feedback would have been if there was litigation and if we were called as witnesses to testify to the accuracy of the report. And in my case, that never happened, and I can see why at three mile. And I later learned this, some things were typical there. Of all the assignments that I had. One thing is, when we first came in to meet the poll workers, who were volunteers for the most part, and surprisingly to me, they were all, almost all. Even given the reputation of the place, almost all of them were really what you'd call the cream of the crop, ideal citizens. Everybody I met at three mile that worked on the poles impressed me as being someone who was conscious of a civic duty and trying his best to do that and not to cheat anybody out of his vote. But at the same time, when we first got there, understandably, the reception was pretty icy, very cool.

[24:03] MACLEAN EVANS: By who? The poll workers or everyone poll workers.

[24:06] GILBERT EVANS: Well, everyone. But the first people we met were the poll workers before it opened up to the voters. And, of course, the voters knew what we were there for. And I. They came from the same place, you might say, as the poll workers. They all assumed that our being there, the very fact that the federal government interfered at this level, was an insult to their integrity and their honesty and so forth. So they were very cool. But on the other team, the other two guys that were with us, there was a fellow from Texas, a heavyset guy. I can't remember his name, but I'll never forget him. He missed his calling, not going into sales. By 10:00 in the morning, this guy had thawed these people out so thoroughly that by noon, they were including us on their sandwich orders for lunch.

[25:04] MACLEAN EVANS: Wow.

[25:05] GILBERT EVANS: And what happened was he provoked a conversation with him. And one lady, a poll worker, asked him, well, what'd you do before you went to work for the government? Well, I was a rancher from Texas. Well, why'd you quit ranching? Well, I wasn't bust. And she thought that was hilarious. And they all kind of identified with that because they all had some connection with agriculture in that area, in that county. And the conversation continued. And in one corner, there was a piano. Pretty good size, real piano, not a spinet or something like that. A big, full size piano. And lo and behold, this ex Texas rancher goes over there and sits down and starts banging out some familiar old tunes. It was slow, early in the morning. Pretty soon we started singing along with the more familiar tunes, and everybody joined in, and it was like one big party.

[26:13] MACLEAN EVANS: And were you guys all dressed in your usual three piece suits?

[26:17] GILBERT EVANS: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm.

[26:19] MACLEAN EVANS: And was everyone else's formal there, or were you. Did you guys stand out as overdressed?

[26:23] GILBERT EVANS: You mean the poll workers and the voters?

[26:25] MACLEAN EVANS: Yeah.

[26:25] GILBERT EVANS: Oh, my God. No, no. Absolutely nothing. They were blue jeans, dungarees, various casual clothes. But anyway, by noon, the relationship had thawed out, and we were feeling welcome at the place, and they weren't feeling threatened anymore. And it went very well. There were a couple things that were kind of irregular, and I documented them.

[27:08] MACLEAN EVANS: What kinds of things?

[27:10] GILBERT EVANS: Well, giving assistance to the illiterate, for example, every once in a while, the poll worker, I think more because he couldn't help himself than because he was trying to do something wrong, would make a comment beyond what he was supposed to do.

[27:35] MACLEAN EVANS: He would be perceived as potentially influencing towards one or the other.

[27:39] GILBERT EVANS: Yes. Yeah. He would make some comment about, oh, that's that candidate. That guy is from over on the SaaS 40. He's Joe Louis's cousin, you know, or something like that. And you could pretty much tell what that guy's opinion of Joe Louis was by his attitude. Well, that was. That was technically illegal, because that was an influence on that voter who was depending on the person giving assistance to make his choices. And if this guy was so negative about Joe Lewis, how could he not feel a little negative, too? So, that was one. Let me think. There were other ones. They had to do with procedure, and they were not anything like blatant, but we documented them very carefully. I didn't know whether they'd get flagged or not. But then neither did the Justice Department until all the results were in and they were all known to everybody. People either complained or didn't complain, which would instigate a DOJ investigation, which might lead to the litigation.

[29:00] MACLEAN EVANS: Well, even though you saw the poll workers trying to conduct themselves as properly as possible, did you see anything improper amongst the crowd or people out in the parking lot trying to do any sorts of acts of intimidation?

[29:17] GILBERT EVANS: Well, I should tell you that the whole experience overall was really heartening to me for two reasons. First, there was pretty much order. There were a few people that gave us a cold look or a remark as they came in to vote. But unless you were coming in to vote and you had not yet voted, you couldn't be in the building. Now, Mississippi state law has two alternatives regarding people observing the vote. One is, if there are observers of any kind in the room, then it has to be open to the whole public, everybody. The other alternative, which was the case in three mile, was you would broadcast over the air so that everybody outside could hear, vote by vote. They would read the vote for sheriff Joe Doakes, and then you'd hear a chorus of yays from one side, boos from other side.

[30:38] MACLEAN EVANS: Oh, you're talking about during the counting. Not during the voting.

[30:40] GILBERT EVANS: During the counting. I'm sorry. Yeah, but this went on all day. We didn't get out of there anymore.

[30:46] MACLEAN EVANS: They counted as the votes came in.

[30:48] GILBERT EVANS: Oh, yes. Paper ballots. And they had to count them, and we had to watch the count.

[30:52] MACLEAN EVANS: Huh.

[30:53] GILBERT EVANS: And document that.

[30:54] MACLEAN EVANS: How'd you watch the count and watch people vote if they were both going on at the same time?

[30:58] GILBERT EVANS: No, they didn't. They closed the polls at something like five or 06:00 okay, gotcha. And then everybody was cleared except the poll workers. And they sat up and counted the votes. And then Joe Doakes. Yay. Boo. The thing that impressed me was there was so much enthusiasm over the sheriff and the clerk of circuit court. I later learned those are very important on the county level. And the other thing is the 90 some percent of participation. It was really an exercise in democracy. The counting process was very tedious. All the way down the ballot, candidate by candidate, every piece of paper. We got out of there somewhere between eleven and twelve at night, got back to Memphis half hour later, turned in our documentation, and then we had to make up a report. And they wouldn't let us go to bed or get something to eat until that was done. So the next day, we pretty much all slept in and then took the day off and went touring. And I had an opportunity then to see a lot of things I wouldn't ordinarily have seen in the rural south because of that opportunity. One I remember we had a polling place in northern Louisiana. We met at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and that's where we operated from. And after that, oh, that exercise had a lot of irregularities, the northern Louisiana polls. I can't remember the town, but there was a lot of racism there, and it was overt, and they didn't make any bones about it.

[32:49] MACLEAN EVANS: Including the poll workers.

[32:50] GILBERT EVANS: Yeah. And I referred to a black lady, one of the voters who was black as a lady. I said, this lady here would like to be the next one, or something to that effect. And she said, do you call her a lady? Why, yes, I did. A lady. Does she look like a lady? And clearly you could see what she was getting at. That was a poll worker. That was kind of rough. But we again documented everything, filed our reports. And then afterwards, my teammate and I took an opportunity to see the Vicksburg National Historic Reserve, or it might be a park. I can't remember. I think it's a historic memorial where during the Civil War, Vicksburg was under siege from both the river, Vicksburg being a riverside town, and from the east side on the land. And people lived underground for more than a month, weeks and weeks on end in implorable conditions. And the US Park Service has this thing all set up in a way that you can walk through it, you can just identify with what's going on. The fellow with me, my teammate, was from Tennessee. And we went to the scene of the bloodiest battle, which was a steep hill where the southerners were entrenched at the top. They had the high ground, and the Union army people had to rush up that hill with their equipment on their backs, charging. They must have been gunned down by the dozens, if not the hundreds. And he looked at me, and I looked at him. Now, I had grown up in Pennsylvania, him and Tennessee, and we're both thinking the same thing as we looked at each other, if we were back there in 1863, we would have been trying to kill each other on that very scene. I'd have been charging up the hill, and he'd have been shooting on it. And it was very moving, the way the park department presented it, the national park Department. It was very, very interesting. I had a lot of interesting experiences that way. But to wrap this up, overall, I was kind of inspired by the fact that there had been a visible difference developed as a result of the Voter Rights act and the civil rights legislation during the sixties. It worked. I think 99% of the people in the United States felt there was no way. There were some very popular sayings that summed up the attitudes generally, which was, for example, you can't change people's minds by making a law. That was like an axiom. Another one was, an awful lot of people are going to have to die before we ever have a colorblind society. Well, neither one of them turned out to be accurate.

[36:12] MACLEAN EVANS: And by the second, saying what they were saying was like, generations need to die off. Not that there was going to be a war.

[36:18] GILBERT EVANS: Yes. Right, right. Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah, there was no reference to a war that people were so deeply steeped in racism and segregation that they could not change. I thought about that when I saw George Wallace at the halftime of an Alabama football game, wheeled out in his wheelchair to the middle of the field to crown a black homecoming queen.

[36:50] MACLEAN EVANS: Do you remember what year that was?

[36:52] GILBERT EVANS: No, I can't remember the year. But I thought to myself, man, we're making progress.

[37:01] MACLEAN EVANS: Well, another discussion for another day. But while that I find very uplifting, I find the changes from the Supreme Court decision in 2013 to the voters right act very disheartening. And I feel like we are seeing the effect from all the state laws that are. And just to clarify, the section five portion that required preclearance for states to change their election procedure was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2013. And now we have, what, 23 states that have passed voting restrictions that seem like they're targeted, at least on some portion, racially, to try to manipulate the outcome of the next election. So I find that kind of disheartening does that make you feel?

[37:52] GILBERT EVANS: Two things that I would point out. First one is that social progress is not a linear function. You take a couple steps forward and a step back and then a step forward and a step back, and it's unpredictable. But it, overall it's positive. The other part having to do with the laws that are restricting voters in states where those kind of things have been passed. It bothers me, too. It really bothers me. But then I have the advantage of this experience to know that these laws are not carved in stone. The original Voter Rights act was amended about five to seven times, and each time it might be a little weaker or a little stronger. And eventually we got to the point where the most important parts of the original Voter Rights act were basically allowed to sunset and the situation really warranted it. These laws that are being passed are being passed. In my opinion, the restrictive laws against voters, not because of racism so much as there is a racism factor, no doubt. But I think more importantly, it's for political advantage because traditionally, since they've been voting in numbers, black people have gravitated toward one party. And naturally the other party would like to do what it can to whittle down the numbers of those people at the ballot box. That's what those new laws are about, in my opinion. I mean, of course there's racism behind them. Most of the people who think in those crass political terms are undoubtedly racist, and it's passed down from generation to generation. But I personally am an example of a place where the racism stopped. I was raised in a racist atmosphere, and by the time I got to college, I realized there's something wrong with this. It just doesn't fit. I met too many people that I admired who didn't have the same skin color as me, and it really opened my eyes. I didn't realize I was in a racist society until I asked a guy, a friend of mine in college who was a football player. I saw him. I was on my way to a neighboring town to go to a movie that was pretty good. I thought he'd enjoy it. And I saw him standing on the corner. I pulled over to the curb and said, hey, George, let's go to the movies. He said, where are you going? I said, charleroi. He said, what? You want to get me killed? Now this was in the Mon Valley in Pennsylvania. In about what year would you say 1963? And so I can only imagine what it was like in 1963 in the Mississippi Delta or Louisiana. Albany, Georgia, where you were born. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote a book called Souls of Black Folk and one chapter was labeled the Black Belt. And guess where was the heart of the black belt? Three mile Dougherty County, Georgia, of which Albany is the county seat where you were born. And the next county over is the county that was home to Jimmy Carter. And lo and behold, I did a voter rights exercise in that county and I was based in Dougherty county in Albany to go over there. And that voter exercise, the voter rights exercise took place while Jimmy Carter was a sitting president, which I thought was ironic given his attitudes and his openness and being an anti segregationist. Anyway, overall, it was a positive experience for me and I think in the long run, we're on the right direction.

[42:46] MACLEAN EVANS: Well, thank you, Dad. I learned a lot and I really had a good time having this conversation with you. I love you.

[42:53] GILBERT EVANS: I love you, too. Thanks.