John Brown interview recording, 1995 July 31
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Blair Murphy | If you could state your name? | 0:03 |
John W. Brown | My name is John W. Brown. | 0:05 |
Blair Murphy | And where were you born? | 0:07 |
John W. Brown | I was born in Portsmouth, Virginia. | 0:10 |
Blair Murphy | And what year were you born? What year were you born? | 0:14 |
John W. Brown | I was born in 1917. | 0:18 |
Blair Murphy | And could you tell me a little bit about Portsmouth, what it was like when you were growing up? | 0:22 |
John W. Brown | When I was growing up, Portsmouth was very much like it still is, separate and unequal. | 0:23 |
Blair Murphy | And where did most Black people live in Portsmouth? | 0:37 |
John W. Brown | Most Black people lived on the south side of Portsmouth. | 0:41 |
Blair Murphy | And did your family live there as well? | 0:46 |
John W. Brown | Yes. | 0:50 |
Blair Murphy | And what did your parents do for a living? | 0:51 |
John W. Brown | My father was a United States Navy, retired. My mother was a homemaker. | 0:57 |
Blair Murphy | And where did you go to school? What was your [indistinct 00:01:11]? | 1:09 |
John W. Brown | Went to school in Portsmouth, at the Chestnut Street School, grammar grades, and I.C. Norcom, high school. | 1:10 |
Blair Murphy | And why do you say it was separate and unequal? | 1:29 |
John W. Brown | Because that was the custom then as it is now. Though it's professed to be different now, but it's no different. All schools are separate, but they were distinctly unequal. Example, when I.C. Norcom High School, there was no gym. The football team was equipped with the used and leftover football equipment from the White high school, Wilson. There was books that were furnished, were used and leftover books from Wilson. The only thing that was equal was the caliber of teachers that we had. | 1:33 |
Speaker 1 | That's right. | 2:45 |
John W. Brown | We had dedicated teachers that went beyond the unequal requirements. Because the White schools had curriculum quite different from the Black school. It was not intended that we be taught things that we were taught in I.C. Norcom because it wasn't in the curriculum. But we had teachers who taught it anyway. | 2:45 |
Blair Murphy | What were some of the things that weren't supposed to be taught? | 3:18 |
John W. Brown | Oh, I can think of one in particular, that was trigonometry. It was taught in the White high school, it wasn't taught in Norcom. But we had some Black teachers that slipped it in. I remember that distinctly because I like math. The other inequities were quite visible. Anything that was public was also White. For example, the public park, public playground, it was White. Now they had some little Mickey Mouse playgrounds, but they were what they call exclusive, they Colored. As if it was worth being exclusive. And then for the same fare it was back of the bus. | 3:21 |
Speaker 1 | The stores were the same. | 4:39 |
John W. Brown | Stores, another place of inequity. You pay the same money but don't expect to get the same goods because in the stores that were exclusively yours, didn't have the same goods. And if you were bold enough to go to a better store with the money to buy the better goods, you were told often that, we don't have your size. Of course there were other stores that were not as subtle and they had signs up front, "Niggers and dogs not allowed." Right about here in Portsmouth. And now they're more subtle. They don't have your size. The conditions are somewhat improved now. In my judgment, it came about through equal employment opportunities. | 5:01 |
Speaker 1 | And education. | 6:33 |
John W. Brown | And education. | 6:33 |
Blair Murphy | Could you tell me a little bit about your work at the naval shipyard? | 6:38 |
John W. Brown | I'm retired after a total of 41 and a half years of federal employment. At the shipyard I completed an apprenticeship in mechanical trades and worked for a little over 15 years in the pipe shop as a pipe fitter. Then I was promoted to the design division as a—I'm trying to think of the term they used. I was a draftsman. And I was in design division for approximately 12 or 13 years. And I was promoted to engineering technician. | 6:45 |
Blair Murphy | Was it difficult for Black people to work at the shipyard? | 8:17 |
John W. Brown | It was not difficult to get into the shipyard, it was difficult to get into meaningful— | 8:24 |
Speaker 1 | Jobs. | 8:31 |
John W. Brown | —positions. The way shipyard employment was handled was that you entered upon satisfactory completion of an examination. But then when you arrived there it became subjective— | 8:33 |
Speaker 1 | When they saw you. | 9:05 |
John W. Brown | —and you were placed in positions not according to your merit but according to your color. That began to change with the advent of equal employment opportunity back around what, 1969 or 70, somewhere along there. When I completed, when I took the test for apprenticeship in the shipyard, I was told by many of my Black people who were very happy with their position in life that, "You don't need to be taking that, that's a White boy's job." | 9:05 |
John W. Brown | But I took it anyway and I remember it was given at high school in Norfolk and there were 5,000 candidates for that apprenticeship. And I scored fifth highest of the 5,000. I was extremely proud of that. Until I reached the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. When I was asked—I want to get it right now. When I reached the shipyard, the subjective part of it became evident because I had applied to be an electrician. Well, when I got over there, I found out that the electrical shop, mechanics, apprentices, and mechanics were all White. Didn't have any Black electricians and they didn't intend to have any. They offered me apprentice plumber hoping that I would refuse it. I accepted it. | 10:08 |
John W. Brown | When I got to the pipe shop, the second obstacle was thrown in my way was, "When do you want to come to work?" I told him I'd like—that was on the Thursday. I told him. "I'd like to start the first of the week. I'd like to come on Monday." "You don't want to work, do you?" I said, "You didn't ask me that. You asked me when did I want to come? And I told you Monday." "Well, you be here tomorrow morning." I started work on the last day of a pay period Friday in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. And it was made very clear to me that I was not wanted, which made me more determined to stay there. And I stayed there for over 40 years, 41 and a half years. | 11:48 |
Blair Murphy | There weren't many Blacks that were offered apprenticeships? | 12:41 |
John W. Brown | Well, I was promoted from apprentice up to general manager GS 13 during my career there. I retired as a GS 13 head of an office. And I'm proud of that because they tried every way to make me quit. And I used to tell them that you can make me mad but you can't make me mad enough to quit. And my last 10 years in there, I was the Deputy Equal Employment Opportunity Officer. And I'm proud to say that I participated in many, many changes to the advantage of minorities and women in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. I understand only from rumors that some of the progress that I helped to make had been lost. But some of it still remains and I'm just glad that I could have been a part of it. | 12:44 |
Blair Murphy | How did the Navy Yard try to reconcile? Because I know federal policy wasn't that you could discriminate against Blacks, but how did they reconcile? | 14:28 |
John W. Brown | Reluctantly and through legislation. You see, what they used to hide behind was that, oh we would hire some of these or some of this if we could find some, you see. But then they'd make certain that they couldn't find any. This is what equal employment opportunities did. It didn't establish any quotas that the Republicans would have you believe. What it did was if you can't find any then make some. And that's what we did. | 14:40 |
John W. Brown | If you couldn't find a Black electrician and you didn't have any Black electrician, then you'd make some. Established through training programs, on the job training, upward mobility. Opportunities to take advanced studies at government expense. Whatever was needed to make what you didn't have, you made it and it worked. And no porters were involved. For example, the objections to the Equal Employment Opportunity Program in the shipyard was that, well we don't have anybody here who could do the job and the federal government says you have to do it. So I volunteered to help them to do the job. And at that time I was an engineering technician in the design division and I worked part-time in equal employment opportunity. And one of my recommendations in that part-time activity was to make it a full-time job. The director of industrial relations say, "We can't do that because there's nobody here who could do the job except possibly me." I disagreed with him. | 15:18 |
John W. Brown | And after we got to know each other better, he was always telling folks that, "John and I always disagreed with each other, but we respected each other and we got to be pretty good friends." His name was Joseph Wilkinson. As the director of industrial relations, he had the opportunity to set the grade level for the position of deputy equal employment opportunities officer. The shipyard commander was by law the equal employment opportunities officer, but he had to have a deputy to run the program because of his other duties. | 17:06 |
John W. Brown | And Jo Wilkinson tried to show the admiral that there was nobody in the shipyard that could serve as his deputy EEO except possibly to him. And the [indistinct 00:18:18] said, well, we got to make the position, we got to fill it. So Joe Wilkinson in his position as the employment officer set the grade level for it. The grade level he set was a GS seven. I was able to convince the shipyard commander that that grade level was too low to perform the duties of the position dealing with office and department heads who were all GS twelves and GS thirteens. In the first place, they're not going to listen to anything that the seven says because they don't think a seven is qualified to tell them what they should do or even what they had to do. | 17:59 |
John W. Brown | As a result of my presentation to the shipyard commander, that position was elevated from a seven to a 13 progressively. First from 11 to 12 and later to a 13. And as a result, the office heads and department heads and the deputy equal employment opportunities officer were able to sit down and negotiate as equals. And not some underling at the seven level trying to tell a 13 what he had to do. And all of that was accomplished with a lot of sweat, a lot of unpaid labor. In fact, once the shipyard commander called me in and asked me, "Brown, how many hours are you working a week?" | 19:20 |
John W. Brown | And the reason was because he had noticed that I was doing considerably more than 40 hours a week. And I told him I was putting in anywhere from 55 to 60 hours a week. He said, "I want you to stop it. I want you to work 40 hours a week. No more unless I tell you to." I had to cut down on the number of hours I was putting in, but I didn't cut down on the amount of effort and thought that I was putting into accomplishing what the job was set out to accomplish. And one of the ways I did it, and I'm proud of that, I used to get good grades for being innovative. | 20:35 |
John W. Brown | The argument against equal employment opportunities at that time and now is that you're setting up a lot of quotas and you're putting unqualified people in to do work that they're not qualified to do. It's never been that. Pete Wilson in California is just as wrong as he can be. It's never been that. I set out to prove that it was what it was intended to be. The way we designed getting minorities and women into positions where there were none was to develop some with the qualifications. | 21:26 |
John W. Brown | One of the ways to develop them was through upper mobility. And that is you take the person at a lower level, assign them with their approval to a position in a promotion ladder, with do this beyond, do this of their position description, over a period of time, giving them training and an opportunity to improve scholastically while they were working at a higher level then they were being paid to work at. And if they completed the requirements of that training program, then they would be upwardly moved into the higher level position. They were all set over there in the—to say it wouldn't work, you can't do it. | 22:23 |
John W. Brown | They also said that it was illegal and they had all kinds of argument against it. But they were waiting to see some dumb, ignorant, unqualified, Black person promoted so they could prove how dumb it was. The first person that I worked into upper mobility was a White Anglo-Saxon male. | 23:25 |
Blair Murphy | Why did you do that? | 24:00 |
John W. Brown | I spread his picture all over the front page of the shipyard newspaper, what he had accomplished with training and that proved that upper mobility would work. If I had put a Black person in there, the war would still be going on to prove that upper mobility doesn't work. But if it worked for that White boy, then maybe it is some good, maybe it will work. So that's what got it off the ground. And then there were several other innovative things. And I got in trouble with them. I got in bad graces with the last shipyard commander that I served under because I didn't spend time with a paper program. Some shipyards had a beautiful program on paper, had books that were leather-bound, beautiful color photographs and all kinds of intentions, all of which they had no hope of achieving. | 24:00 |
John W. Brown | No goals were set in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard except goals that could be normal and reasonably achieved. And we reached our goals. But we didn't have any paper to say, this is what we're going to do next year and it was required. And since I didn't spend time doing it, I got in deep trouble about that. The last shipyard commander that I served under wanted the paper program, he wanted a whole lot of beautiful words on paper and a whole lot of pictures. And what we going to do and knowing darn well that you couldn't do it. Believing as I did on setting achievable goals and meeting them in a prescribed timeframe, I found it was time to retire. And I did. My understanding is that he got what he wanted. He got a paper program that didn't meet any more goals. | 25:25 |
Blair Murphy | What do you think made you so determined to do this work? | 26:35 |
Speaker 1 | Because that's his nature. | 26:44 |
John W. Brown | What? | 26:47 |
Blair Murphy | What do you think made you so determined to do this work, to change? | 26:47 |
John W. Brown | Ever since I was a little boy, my daddy instilled in me that you know better than anyone else. But no one else is in it better than you are. I believe that and I have always resisted being relegated to a second class in anything. I was willing to put in extra time and work extra hard to make my part of that program work. And it did work. Like Jo Wilkinson said, we don't don't always agree, but we respect each other. And that was pretty big coming from somebody who says that, what you trying to do you can't do but we did it. | 26:47 |
John W. Brown | It still grieves me to hear people make statements like how happy they were being segregated. It grieves me because I've had employees in Norfolk Naval Shipyard to stand up and tell me that—I used to ask them, "Have you ever been discriminated against?" "No, sir. I never been discriminated against." I said, "You ever drinking the water in the ship yard?" "Yes, sir. I drink water every day." I said, "Where do you drink it from?" "At the water fountain." I said, "What sign is on that water fountain?" "Ain't no sign on it." I said, "I know it's not now, but when you came in here, what sign was on it?" "Well, it was White water and next to it was another fountain was Colored water." I said, "Which one did you drink out of?" "I drank out the Colored water." I said, "But you going to tell me you've never been discriminated against?" | 27:57 |
John W. Brown | And then we went through the definition of discrimination. Discrimination doesn't mean that you've been made unhappy, it means that you've been treated differently from others under the same or similar circumstances. Well, that was real difficult for some of my people to understand that they had actually been discriminated against since they were so happy. And it still bugged me to hear somebody say that they were happy under discriminating conditions because I could never be happy in it. | 29:04 |
John W. Brown | I could have plenty of money and plenty everything, but if it was separate, I couldn't be happy with it because there's no such thing as being separate and equal. It can't be equal if it's separate. And the greatest thing about this program that I retired from was that it didn't set out to establish quotas, it didn't set out to make any race equal to any other race, it set out to provide equal opportunity for employment. And if you're given that, then you develop your own nick in society. Nobody had to say that they've got to put you there, you earn your way there. You set your goal and you earn it. And that's why I'd like to debate Governor Wilson because that man, he doesn't understand what he's saying, he can't understand it. | 29:45 |
Blair Murphy | How— | 31:19 |
John W. Brown | What? | 31:20 |
Blair Murphy | How do you think that Portsmouth has changed? | 31:20 |
John W. Brown | How do I think Portsmouth has changed? | 31:23 |
Blair Murphy | Over time? | 31:24 |
John W. Brown | Very reluctantly and very little. They do what they have to do. But look at all the—you ask about how Portsmouth has changed, no really. Look at all the fight about— | 31:27 |
Speaker 1 | Norcom. | 31:47 |
John W. Brown | —I.C. Norcom High School. The city of Portsmouth went out there in a mosquito infested swamp and built a Taj Mahal high school that they didn't need for Whites in Churchland. They didn't need another high school in Churchland. But they were so anxious to get one out there and improve the living for White kids that they didn't take time to find out where they were building, it was on a swamp, mosquitoes eating them up out there. And then when they tried to rectify it by reluctantly coming in here and building the high school that they really need, I.C. Norcom, they find a thousand reasons why they ought not to do it. | 31:49 |
Blair Murphy | Children in Portsmouth still are largely—? | 32:47 |
Speaker 1 | They're still— | 32:49 |
John W. Brown | The discrimination has— | 32:53 |
Speaker 1 | —Subtle— | 32:55 |
John W. Brown | —Changed from overt to subtle. | 32:55 |
Speaker 1 | Yep, that's exactly what it is. | 33:03 |
John W. Brown | It is still here. | 33:05 |
Speaker 1 | They used to [crosstalk 00:33:09]. | 33:06 |
John W. Brown | And the thing that grieves me most is that some of my folks don't see it because they are living a little better than they ever lived before. | 33:09 |
Speaker 1 | Politics is what it is. | 33:20 |
John W. Brown | Yeah, it's politics, I know it's politics. Politics in everything. But it grieves me to see people, it grieves me to see my people to make a slight achievement and then rest on their laurels. That grieves me deeply. | 33:23 |
Blair Murphy | Was there a business area in Portsmouth where Black businesses were? | 33:47 |
John W. Brown | Yeah, there are Black businesses. | 33:56 |
Blair Murphy | What was that area called and the street? | 34:00 |
John W. Brown | There are Black businesses in construction. | 34:00 |
Speaker 1 | Undertakers, we always had them. You always had undertakers. She's talking about Black businessman. | 34:19 |
John W. Brown | Well, professionals, we've always had professionals because of the separate but equal doctrine. All kinds of—we have every—any profession that you can name, we have Black professionals, but we are lacking in Black small businesses. There are some, but they're not enough. It's real difficult, I imagine, for any Black business to progress now because the chains have all the advantages. And it would be ridiculous for any individual to go now and set up a corner grocery store, can't compete with the chains. Color has nothing to do with the absence of some small Black businesses that would be in competition with chains. For example, Walmart is running a whole lot of established White businesses out of the business. So that's not a color problem at all. | 34:21 |
Blair Murphy | The system of separateness allowed for more Black businesses because Blacks couldn't patronize things? | 35:57 |
John W. Brown | Well, the opportunity is there, but the businesses are not there because they—in my judgment, because of unfair competition with big chains. | 36:05 |
Blair Murphy | But back before, during segregation there was—? | 36:21 |
John W. Brown | Back before the opportunity wasn't even there. But now the opportunity is there. You find an entrepreneur now who wants to open a business and establish a business, he can do it regardless of his color. It's not always advisable, but the opportunity is there. The problems that would confront a Black entrepreneur are also still there, it carry overs from back when the opportunity didn't exist. We have some people who—some entrepreneurs who can really get out there and cut the mustard in spite of the obstacles because the opportunities are there. | 36:25 |
Blair Murphy | Is there anything else you want to say? | 37:27 |
John W. Brown | I got a whole lot more to say but you couldn't print it. | 37:31 |
Speaker 1 | No, that's what I'm saying. (all laugh) | 37:32 |
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