Ralph Thompson interview recording, 1995 July 07
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| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, can you tell me when you were born and something about the area that you grew up in? | 0:02 |
| Ralph Thompson | Yes. I was born in February 1935 in Midtown, and we moved to Frayser, which was in the county at that time. I guess I must have been three years old. My dad and mother was sharecropping. We were living on a little old place out there, what is now is Harvester Lane, and we were sharecropping with this guy. At one time, he wanted to sell it and Boyle Investment wouldn't let him sell it to my father. So Boyle Investment was one of the biggest mortgage companies here in the city in the '90s. Back in the '40s, they wouldn't sell it, wouldn't let this guy sell it to my daddy because he was Black. | 0:08 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh. | 1:04 |
| Ralph Thompson | Back then, we were Negroes or Colored, or however you want to say it, but that changed over years, but they were sharecroppers. We went to a church school in Frayser. They had a White school in Frayser. Then we went to the school, it was Frayser Elementary, which was in the Black Baptist Church. We would have to go over to the White school each year to get last year's books from them, and we didn't get books. They would give us books from the White school, but they'd be a year old, at least a year old. | 1:04 |
| Ralph Thompson | This church burned, and the county didn't provide nothing for us until they rebuilt the church, so we missed a year of going to school. Nobody said a word. We just missed a whole year, and we had to make it up. That was one of the reasons why I was 19 when I graduated from high school in 1954. Back then, to go to high school, we had to go to Woodstock, which was about 10, 15 miles north of Frayser. My sister and a brother, they lived in the dormitory. | 1:45 |
| Ralph Thompson | This is a high school, Woodstock Training School, and they lived in a dormitory. By the time I got there in '49 in the eighth grade, and we got a bus. I forgot exactly how it was, either we bought the chassis and the county bought the body or it was vice versa. But I remember each family had to get up 10 bucks, and it cost us $10 to buy the bus. I remember my sister coming in and asking my daddy when she was in the dormitory, it was costing $12 a month for her to live in the dormitory, and that's how we went to high school. | 2:27 |
| Ralph Thompson | When I got out of high school, I went into the military in 1954, and I volunteered. I was right on the tail end of the Korean War, although I didn't see any action. I was stationed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and I was a military policeman. After being discharged from the military, I just had a little haphazard jobs and finally got a job at International Harvester, which was one of the bigger manufacturing companies here in the city, and that was in 1959. | 3:17 |
| Ralph Thompson | So it took me almost two, what is that, '57, two years to get a job. I found minimum wage jobs, but this is one of the better jobs. Back in that time, which I still remember when I went in, I think they hired about 50 people that day. I was the only Black person in the crowd. I can remember that guy coming into the conference room and he looked over and saw me in that crowd and he said, "Did I call your name?" I said, "Yeah." He asked me my name, and I told him. He went and looked at his list to make sure that I was on that list. I guess out of 100, 150 people they only hired about five Blacks. This was in 1959. Naturally, I had some business college, but I had graduated from high school, so I ended up working in a foundry for most of my time there because it was segregated. | 3:54 |
| Ralph Thompson | When you went into jobs, they were basically White jobs and Black jobs. Black jobs was basically in the foundry. You went anywhere else, you were either disqualified or you were given such a hard time that you had to leave. You would just give up and give in. Over years, we just kept fighting and pecking away. Finally, we started getting some jobs, even though our worst jobs were decent paying jobs, but I'm talking about running machines and drills and things like that. They didn't let us do that. | 4:54 |
| Ralph Thompson | In the cafeteria, they had a chain and the Whites came in one door and we came in a different door. We came in the back door. We would come to the steam table and the trays would divide us, and we'd get trays off the same stack. They would go to the right and we would go to the left, and they had two cashiers. They had a White cashier and a Black cashier. The Black cashier couldn't work on the White end, but the White cashier could work on the Black end. | 5:31 |
| Ralph Thompson | So finally, I forgot what year it was, but they came in, the government came in and they had to take the chain down. Just out of habit, we still went in our separate ways. So the government came back in a year or so later and they had to change it around where everybody had to go in the same direction in the cafeteria. I remember in 1969, I went on a milling machine, and for some reason, I just couldn't run the necessary parts because this was incentive work. | 6:08 |
| Ralph Thompson | What they were doing, I didn't know it at the time, they would give me a tool that wouldn't keep an edge as it was cutting, and I had to keep changing out because it would burn up so fast, it would get dull so fast. I can remember as it happened yesterday, the supervisor, when they disqualified me, they put a White person on that job. | 6:59 |
| Ralph Thompson | And I can see that supervisor reaching in his bottom desk drawer on the right-hand side and giving this guy a tool and he could just run it. I transferred away from that department back to the foundry. I ran for an elected office because I made up in my mind if I didn't do anything else, that I would make sure that the people that I represented would get a fair shake in this place, in this environment. Over years, I was elected, I guess, on two-year terms some five or six times. Overall, I must stayed in office about 20 years. | 7:25 |
| Paul Ortiz | Which local, Mr. Thompson? | 8:18 |
| Ralph Thompson | This was Local 988. | 8:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | United Auto Workers. | 8:23 |
| Ralph Thompson | United Auto Workers. | 8:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, I wonder if we could move back to your childhood for a bit. Could you describe the working conditions? What was life like as a sharecropper? | 8:28 |
| Ralph Thompson | We had split seasons, and let's take up when I was going to school, for instance. We had split seasons, so we had to get out in the springtime for planting seasons, then we would go to school in the summer months. Then when the harvest season came along, we were out again. | 8:44 |
| Ralph Thompson | So we were in and out of school all the time, and it was hot. I can remember it wasn't anything like fans or anything for us. I can remember the teacher taking us out under a tree, and we had classes sometime out under a tree. I can remember going to class sometime and wasn't nobody in class but me. It was always funny, we talk about that now because we didn't have nowhere to hide. You couldn't hide behind anybody else because you were the only one there, and she was going to ask you all the questions, and it was something. | 9:05 |
| Ralph Thompson | For instance, if we went to the movie that they had side entrances in the balconies. For some reason, like the Malco and the Warner and the Strand and places like that, I didn't go. I don't know why. I was raised in the South, but something, I just wouldn't do it. I wouldn't go to those side entrances. I was born here in the South, and I knew the signs. I know what the signs look like and all that, but for some reason I just wouldn't go. | 9:48 |
| Ralph Thompson | I would always go to Beale Street, and it was three movies there. Then there was another movie out in North Memphis that I would attend, go to. I loved Westerns, and I'd go most Saturdays. I would either go over and work at this truck patch planting and harvesting and picking greens and onions and for the supermarkets. I think we were making like 10 cents a dozen. We'd pick a dozen bunches, they'd give us a dime, and that's how I made my money. | 10:20 |
| Ralph Thompson | We were living on this one place, and the owner for some reason, she would let me come up to the house and cut grass. They had some chickens, and she would let me feed those chickens. They paid me $6 a month. I'd go up every morning before school and feed the chickens, and I'd come back in the afternoon. If I worked in the yard, they would give me, it seemed like it was 45 cents an hour. But every time I'd go to get paid, she'd ask me how much it was, and I had to figure it out for her. She wouldn't just pay me, which was fine, but she just made me do that. In Frayser, for some reason, we didn't have a lot of problems with being called names and Night Riders and things like that. We didn't have that problem. The signs were there. | 10:56 |
| Ralph Thompson | I can remember if we were coming downtown and you'd go to get on the bus, and the bus ran from the Navy base right to Front Street, and we would have to pay our money in the front door. The bus driver would open the back door, and we'd go get in the back door, because people would be standing up. We couldn't stand up front, we had to stand in the back. I don't ever remember anybody telling us to move to the back, but it was a thing that if it was a vacant seat, then you knew to move to the back, and you just kept moving back. Now, they never said anything to us if we were sitting and the White person got on, we didn't get up as long as there wasn't a seat behind you. They wouldn't sit behind you, and they'd just stand, and you'd have to get up and move to the back. That's the way that was. | 12:00 |
| Ralph Thompson | The little places that were operating back then, little restaurants and things like that, most of them, not most of them, some of them had an interest for Blacks back then in the back. They had a little cubby hole knocked in the wall and they'd serve you through the wall. They put a jukebox back there and they put—if you'd listen, sometimes you'd hear country and western music in, excuse me, in the front and you'd hear blues in the back, and that was the way it was. This was a small community, and we just tend to get along. We didn't socialize with them, but we just kind of existed out there together, and we got along pretty good. We worked with the people that had the truck patches and the guy that had the lumber company and places like that. We get the little old minimum wage jobs. | 13:03 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, what was family life like when you were growing up? | 14:10 |
| Ralph Thompson | Well, I'm the youngest of 10 in our family, and most of my brothers were so much older than I am, was at that time, and still is, that they were in World War II, so they were away from home. So they were sending those allotment checks. So coupled with working a little bit and getting a few bucks on the allotment, we got to do some things like going to the movie, and if it was something going on at school that we could get 50 cents or $1.00 or something like that to do. So in living there, we raised a lot of vegetables and things, not like to sell, but for the consumption, family consumption. I can remember my daddy would always go get, certain times a year he'd go get 25 baby chickens, and we would raise those chickens. Whenever we wanted to eat a chicken, we had to go out and catch it and kill it and pick it and cook it and all. | 14:17 |
| Ralph Thompson | My mother would do it, but that's all we had to do. So although we were poor, we were fortunate that I can't remember a hungry day. I can remember days I didn't want to eat English peas. I can remember days I didn't want to eat snap beans, but I don't remember where people say, "We didn't have," see? We would raise some pigs, not a lot, for family consumption. My daddy never raised cows, any beef cows, and we were pretty close. My mother, she pushed us a little different. I got two sisters just above me, the three of us from the others because they were much older. She always would tell us how she regretted not making them go to school and doing. Although they weren't bad, they didn't go to jail or nothing like that and all, but she would always tell us that. The three of us, we all graduated from high school. | 15:38 |
| Ralph Thompson | I went on to a business college, and I got two years in business college and my sisters, one of them worked and one was sick. She got sick, and she was married and she got sick, had a heart problem. She had a heart operation 25, 30 years ago when they really wasn't doing heart operations, and she's still going. You wouldn't believe it today if you saw her getting around and everything. So we didn't have a hard life like some people. We didn't have the night riders and people threatening us and things like that. We did live in raggedy houses. I can remember you know quick when it rained because you had water leaking somewhere and you'd get up, and you had to move the bed or get a pot to put under there and all that. You'd hear that the rest of the night. But the next day or so, my papa would be up on the house with a bucket of tar trying to cover that, and that is most of— | 17:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, had your family always lived in Frayser, grandparents? | 18:15 |
| Ralph Thompson | No, no. My mother came from Woodville, Mississippi, that's down near the Louisiana line. My daddy came from South Carolina, and I've been doing some family research, that's why I know this. His family migrated to Helena, Arkansas in 1898, somewhere along in there. When my daddy got up to about, I think he told me he was 13 when he ran away from home. He came over into the Mississippi and around Ruleville, Clarksdale back down through there and up through Tunica and around up into Marshall County down in Lamar. My mother's people migrated from Woodville, Mississippi, and they met in there somewhere, and they came to Memphis. | 18:20 |
| Ralph Thompson | My sister next to me, she's two years older than I am, we were born here in Memphis. We lived up in that area at Lamar and Willette, and I was born back there on the street called Rogers right off of Melrose. My sister next to me was born on Seattle, down Lamar near McClean, down in there. My daddy during the Depression, cut yards and things like that. Then he went to Mississippi, he went back to Mississippi and worked with two of my brothers during a picking season, came back to Memphis after the picking season and he decided he was going to move to Missouri. So he moved to Saxton, Missouri, no, Steele, Missouri. My mother decided she wasn't going to do it, so they went up there and worked during that picking season, came back to Memphis and then moved to Frayser, and from there, we stayed. | 19:30 |
| Ralph Thompson | Now my grandparents on my mother's side from Woodville, on my daddy's side from South Carolina. My great-granddaddy, as far as I can find out by the record, came from Virginia, and that's where I am right now. They migrated in all directions after that 'cause my granddad on my daddy's side married a woman down in Helena, Arkansas, and I think she had six kids. They took his name just right off, wasn't no adoption and all. I been down there, I got marriage license on most of those, but I can't find any relatives now. That's basically what and how we came into Memphis and Frayser. Frayser was really a compromise between Steele, Missouri and Memphis within the city limits and somewhere out in the country. So that was a compromise as it was told to me. | 20:42 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, when you were growing up, do you remember stories about your grandparents' lives that passed down to you? | 21:50 |
| Ralph Thompson | No. The only thing, I knew my grandmother on my mother's side, and I can remember her. She smoked a pipe, and I can remember her with an apron on, and she'd fill her pipe up and light it and all I remember her. But on my daddy's side I was told, but I haven't found that he had some Indian in him, and I don't have a lot to go on. Only thing that I knew that he married this lady down there, Caroline Purdy. I used to hear my daddy talk about how mean she was. I never heard him really talk about his daddy, and we never asked a lot of questions about his daddy. That was something that we really didn't do a lot of talk about. | 22:04 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, what were the relationships like between the Black neighbors in Frayser? | 23:11 |
| Ralph Thompson | They were very close because I can remember if your parents had a cow and our parents cow was dry, they'd bring you milk and butter. They didn't tell you to come get it, they'd bring it to you. If they had something in their garden, they would bring it to you. They would say that sometimes, "You could go get it," but they would pull the greens, tomatoes and things like that, they'd bring them to you. I can remember taking milk to our neighbor, and they'd just put butter in the milk and that was the kind of relationship. If something needed to be done, not like the barn raisings and things like that, but you always helped the other one. | 23:22 |
| Ralph Thompson | If you had, wasn't that many around, a widow or something around there, then men would take her load of wood and put out there. Sometimes they might cut a little, but they might not cut a whole lot of wood for her no more than bringing some to her house and putting it out there close to the house. Nobody had a car in that area, so we always had to get some outsider to, if we wanted to go somewhere to another church or something like that. They would get a truck or everybody pile on the truck and pay a quarter, whatever. Then in the late '40s, Transport Bus Company was running the buses from Millington to Memphis because they had that training center out there, the Navy— | 24:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | Park. | 25:25 |
| Ralph Thompson | They would run and we could walk over from wherever you live to that bus line, you could ride the bus for 15 cents and ride down to Poplar and Front Street. That's where the terminal was, and that's how we got around. But people in the neighborhood in the area, wasn't no real neighborhood, but in that area they always helped each other, whatever. If somebody was sick, then you'd see some of the older women come around, maybe just sit with that person. I don't really remember doing too much volunteering like picking cotton over here for somebody. I don't remember us doing none of that. Like your family was picking and we were picking, then when we got through, we were through. If you had to go pick then you had to go pick. But just little things like sharing what you had, things like that, they'd do that. | 25:27 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, what role did the church play in Frayser? | 26:34 |
| Ralph Thompson | The church job provided the school for us. They provided the building, and that was the gathering place and the meeting place. I can remember putting on, the teachers having plays and the families coming to the place at night, and you get out there and perform whatever, but it was always in the church. That was really the role that the church played in that neighborhood. They provided the actual building. When the church burned, and it took some time because we were all poor to build, and I can remember the temporary build and little wooden building they built for us. Then they built a stone church out of cinder blocks, and I can remember the wall falling and we went to that church. They provided the lights. We didn't have electricity, we had kerosene lamps. So if you had to light something, the church provided that. I can remember, I think they would provide us with the coal to keep us warm in the wintertime because well, they furnished that for us. We didn't have regular desks like you have, we just used the benches. | 26:39 |
| Ralph Thompson | I think later on we got a few desks. Blackboards we didn't have, and we didn't get to write on blackboards until we got to Woodstock. We didn't write on blackboards. We had to write on our knees, and we had all eight grades in this one room just like the church. You could hear the eighth grade kids and you could hear a third grade kid because as they called classes up and that's what the teacher would do, call you up, well, you could hear. Just like if they were doing spelling, then you could hear the word. So by the time you get to the next grade, you've heard this for a year. When you look back at it, we lost some things, but it really wasn't that bad when you look at how it helped us over the long haul because when we got to a regular school, just lessons, some lessons we were doing over because we had already been through that because the school was so small. | 28:16 |
| Ralph Thompson | Like I say, I can remember in the seventh grade, a lot of days I was the only person in class. Once I got to high school when I graduated, there was only 32 in my class. So even when I got to high school, that was small. But the role of the church was just, they just took care of some of the problems that we had. We didn't have people coming in that you had to give money to for this or that. I don't remember that. I don't remember any fires out there beyond the church, maybe one or two. But then if you had a fire, that was just a given that you were going to try to give something to that family. It wasn't no big rally over to the church to try to help them. It was just a fact that somebody was going to try to help them and all. Your mother might tell you, "Take this to Miss So-and-So," and all. That's the way it was. | 29:36 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, do you remember a particular difficult experience that you or your neighbors had when you were growing up that stands out? | 30:38 |
| Ralph Thompson | I guess the most difficult thing for us was the burning of the school that really stands out in our minds and just being denied just the basics sometimes. We did the reading and writing, but we didn't go beyond that, and I guess that was part of it. To see other kids that could play baseball and had baseball diamonds and things like that, and we were denied. We didn't have it, and nobody could furnish as far as including our families and all, that was a little hard for us in this day and time, back then. But I think the biggest thing that stands out in my mind was the burning of the school. Maybe the next was us having to buy or help buy the school bus. Those two are things that really stayed with me, and I really get upset when I hear people talk about busing. | 30:53 |
| Ralph Thompson | When we would walk home in the evening down a gravel road, and when the White bus would come, the driver would get up in the center, the gravel would pile up in the center and the wheels would cut tracks in the road and it would pile it up. He would get up in the center for those rocks to shoot out from under the wheels. He didn't know when they were going to do that. I can remember having to turn our backs in case a rock might come out and hit you in the eye. If you were walking home from school and it rained and there's a low spot and you happen to be coming by that low spot, and you could hear the motor on the bus rev up because he's going to speed up 'cause he going to hit that boy as hard as he can. | 32:08 |
| Ralph Thompson | I said, "How can a person be so cold?" When I look back at it, and we would run and we would turn our backs and I'd say, "How can a person be so cold that would try to wet us down and try to put our eyes out and things like that?" Those are some of the things that when you look back today and you see that how mean people could be to a kid. They didn't know us, we didn't bother them, and they would ride right by us. Those kids was going to Millington at the time, and we were out there for a year and nobody tried to help us or get us back in school for a whole year. I hear people talking about busing, and they used to bus them right by us, and they bought the buses. The only time we got on a bus was when we bought one. | 32:57 |
| Ralph Thompson | Mr. Charlie Smith had a '46 Chevrolet bus. We went to school so regular, if we weren't there, he would wait on us in the morning. We'd come and we'd see the bus, we'd take off running. | 33:50 |
| Ralph Thompson | But the things that stand out in my mind, that bus coming, trying to with the rocks, and if it had rained, hit a water puddle. I'm talking about go out of this way to hit it. We knew that because we'd turn our backs. If we couldn't get beyond, we'd get off road as far as we could and we'd turn our backs, and that's what it was like. That's what it was like. You didn't have nobody that you could turn to to help you say, "Hey, bus driver, don't do that," see? Going home telling your parents, you could imagine how frustrating that is, and they'd tell you to turn your head and little things that they could tell you to do, but you couldn't fight back 'cause you didn't have no way of fighting back. | 34:03 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, would your parents talk to you about racism and segregation when you were growing up? | 35:09 |
| Ralph Thompson | My mother, well, both of them, they talked to us a little bit about that, but as it happened, they might respond to things. I can remember the insurance man coming over there one day and called my mother Auntie. She looked at him and said, "Don't you call me Auntie, I'm not your Auntie." I can remember that. His name was Mr. Watson, and this was back in the '40s, and I can remember that. | 35:20 |
| Ralph Thompson | You could just see little things like that and how they responded, and how they would respond to embarrassing things, and they tried to keep you away from things that would be embarrassing when they couldn't fight back. For instance, going in a grocery store or something like that, if we went to town, if we went downtown and they had the Colored drinking fountain and the White drinking fountain. Looking back, and my sister, we talk about it now, my mother would always tell us to drink water before we left home so we didn't get caught into drinking water out, little things like that; things like going in a store and you can't try to clothes on. | 35:58 |
| Ralph Thompson | When I got up to about 12, 14, 15 years old and I'd go to Thom McAn to buy shoes. If I had a $20 bill, they would check that $20 bill like it was counterfeit. I couldn't walk in a Thom McAn shoe store and bypass shoes because they didn't want to take my money. They would treat me like, "This is counterfeit," and they'd look at it. I'm serious, they would look at it and things like that. You don't know how that hurt to do that. You go to a store and you're standing there, and a White person walk up and they'll wait on that White person to just make you stand. So my parents kept us away from that, and they wouldn't let us do certain things. When you look back at it, you can tell why because they couldn't defend it, so they tried to shield us from it by sending us or taking us in a different direction. | 37:02 |
| Ralph Thompson | Whatever was going on, they tried to keep it away from us, so to speak. My daddy very seldom he would—if it was White person around us talking to him in some kind of business format, he would move away from us or tell us to go play or something. I guess that was to protect us from something that might be said to him that he wasn't able to defend. | 38:24 |
| Ralph Thompson | But just being called a nigger, I can't remember just no adult person calling me one. I remember a kid did it, but I don't remember any adults doing us like that. I can remember at the drug store and some evenings we would stop in there and get ice cream and that guy was, the pharmacist was real nice to us. | 39:07 |
| Ralph Thompson | He could scoop the ice cream up, he'd scoop it up, and he could throw it up in the air and catch it with the cone. That was entertaining to us. We'd come in the afternoon, come through there in the afternoon if we bought ice cream, he'd do that for us. In this particular drug store, he didn't put any stools at his counter. When you look back, I guess he said, "I'll treat you as fair as I can, and if I don't put the stools here, I don't have to worry about nobody sitting down. You get your ice cream, you have to move on." Looking back at it now, that's what it seemed like, and I can remember that guy. | 39:37 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, you mentioned earlier how your father would try to move you away when he was involved in a business transaction. Would that be during settling up time or— | 40:24 |
| Ralph Thompson | Yeah, something like that. It wasn't no big deal. If they were talking about planting or settling up or something like that, he very seldom he would do anything like that around us. He would go outside or somewhere else, but really, I can't remember him ever doing that around us. That always stayed clear. | 40:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, when you were growing up, were there company stores or places that you would've to— | 41:06 |
| Ralph Thompson | No, Frayser was so close, this wasn't a area where you had plantation and company stores, you just had regular stores. At that time. The store at Frayser right there at 51 and Whitney was Silver Saver, that was like a chain store or whatever, but it wasn't any company stores. The person where we lived, that guy worked for American Snuff, so he had a job that he'd work. Sometime he would come out there, very seldom he'd come during the week, but he'd come out on the weekend. I can remember him because he wore khaki uniform. My mother used to wash and press that uniform for him, or he'd bring her two, I believe it was, and he paid her 25 cents per uniform. | 41:16 |
| Ralph Thompson | Sometime that's how she would give us a dime or a nickel or something. That's how we got a Coke or a Pepsi or a Double Cola or Royal Crown or something like that. That's how we got a little extra on that side. So it wasn't a company store that we had, it was just a small place and we really didn't make any money and didn't have nothing to take, see? If you making seven, eight bales of cotton, you didn't have nothing to start with, see? So no, we didn't have a company store. | 42:16 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, what was the healthcare situation like when you were growing up or you took sick or— | 42:58 |
| Ralph Thompson | When we took sick, first of all, at the school, they gave you your shots and things like that. When you took sick, the first thing you got was some type of home remedy, and a lot of times it worked. Then if they felt that you were sick enough, it was a doctor out there named Dr. Bowles, he would see us. They made house calls back then, and they would come to the house. If you had a problem with your teeth, then you'd come to downtown on Beale Street to the doctor or dentist, because most of your Black dentists were on Beale Street, and your doctors and all were on Beale Street. So most of the things we had to do, we had to come down. | 43:07 |
| Ralph Thompson | Some White doctors would see you, but they had you a separate waiting room. But the first thing off, if it was a cold, measles, mumps and things like that, they would treat you with home remedies. I can remember my mother parching and taking the hooves off of hogs, pig feet, take the hooves off, put them in the stove and parch them and make a tea out of that. I can remember her taking cotton seeds and parching them, making a tea out of that. It was a tree, they used to take the root and make a tea out of that. I can remember taking kerosene and putting it in sugar and burning it until you get it, it would solidify and you'd suck on it in the spoon like a sucker. | 44:18 |
| Ralph Thompson | They would take wherever thallium came from and they would rub your temple down and your chest down if you had a cold, and they'd do that with thallium, and I can remember that. If you got stung by a wasp and you had somebody around there that dipped snuff, they'd take some of that snuff out of their mouth and put on that sting on that point. So we had some medical care, but the home remedy on most of it was first. If you didn't respond to that, then we were fortunate we got to go to a doctor or something. I'm talking about my two sisters and myself in our family. | 45:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | [indistinct 00:46:09]? | 46:07 |
| Ralph Thompson | The younger ones. Now, the older ones, I don't know, but they were down in Mississippi. I don't know how they dealt with it. I would guess basically the same way. | 46:08 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, who are your role models when you were growing up? | 46:20 |
| Ralph Thompson | Well, your parents are right off the top because they would just seem like they were—matter of fact, they were strong. Then you looked up to the preacher. Then you would look out to the people like Joe Louis was for all of us. When Joe Louis was fighting, man, you couldn't get nobody to talk when that fight started and whoever had— | 46:27 |
| Ralph Thompson | Then when Jackie Robinson came along, everybody loved Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson was us. If you see a Black person with a glove on, he was emulating Jackie Robinson, he had to be a Jackie Robinson. And those were our outside role models. But these people to us were squeaky clean and they couldn't do no wrong and you couldn't make us believe they would do wrong. And those were our role models. | 0:04 |
| Ralph Thompson | And if you got on the other side—and when I say the other side, on the White side—you'd say somebody like President Roosevelt, it just seemed like when he had the Fireside Speeches, and I hated news back then, but we had to listen to that because our parents made us listen to that. And it just seemed like that he would be talking to us and seemed like he was trying to help us. | 0:42 |
| Ralph Thompson | And those were the ones that I can remember that growing up were our role models. We would take tin cans to school and we'd cut the top out and the bottom out and put the top in there and mash it down flat because we knew that was helping the war effort. And we were proud back then, we'd give a dime to the Red Cross and we'd get the little button with the Red Cross on it and you'd wear that, you'd wear that proud to school and you thought you were really doing something for the nation. And that's the way we felt about that and that's the way we were raised. | 1:09 |
| Ralph Thompson | And the teachers were the same, they taught us that. And back then, your teacher couldn't do no wrong. Your teacher couldn't do no wrong and she was a family away from home. See, if you went somewhere and your teacher would tell you in class that, "You represent me and you go out and do certain things, then you embarrass me." | 1:49 |
| Ralph Thompson | And I could be in Timbuktu and I wouldn't do certain things because my teacher, I might embarrass her and she might be a on the other side of town, but I couldn't do this because I might embarrass my teacher. So I couldn't do that. And if my teacher told me I needed to do something, I went home and I had to convince my parents that I got to do such and such because Ms. Coleman told me I got to do such and such. | 2:21 |
| Ralph Thompson | And that's the way it was. If she said we had to give to the Red Cross, then by George, I've got to come up with a dime somewhere and I'm going home and I'm going to ask her whatever I need to do to make this dime. I'm going to do this because Ms. Coleman said I've got to have a dime. And I would guess, I would say that the teacher was—She probably ahead of Jackie Robinson, she probably ahead of Joe Louis, but those were the people that we looked up to. | 2:51 |
| Ralph Thompson | Because the teacher, your parents believed in the teacher, you believed in the teacher, and that was just it. They were just like somebody else. I won't say saints or anything, but they stood out. They just wasn't an everyday person. You just looked up to the teacher and you respected the teacher. I didn't have to be over in this side of the church, but I respected that teacher over there. See, then wherever I would go and I'd run into another teacher, that teacher just stood out and you had to respect that teacher. That was automatic. That's a school teacher there, you respected that teacher. She didn't have to teach you, didn't even have to work in your school, but you would respect that teacher. | 3:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, when you were talking about listening to the Joe Louis fights, where would you go and listen to them at? | 4:13 |
| Ralph Thompson | Oh, we had a radio. We had a radio and they used to have a big battery in the back of them. And when you know Joe Louis is going to fight, three, four weeks down the road or whatever, then you stop listening to your radio because you want your battery to last. So you have to get away from your radio listening because you want your battery to last. | 4:21 |
| Ralph Thompson | And if your battery didn't last, then whoever had a radio, the word would get out that such and such a family got the radio tonight and about whatever time fights coming on, before that, everybody started gathering around. So they bring the radio out on the porch and we sit around and listen. And when the fight was over, we'd go home and we'd relive that fight all the way home. | 4:52 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was there a particular fight that stood out? | 5:19 |
| Ralph Thompson | I think to me, the fight that stood out, I think it was Billy Conn, because they had built him up and we were just so afraid that he was going to win. And it was really something because you think, "He can't beat him and we don't want him to lose," and you just be right on the edge of your seat. But I think to me, it would be Billy Conn. I believe that would be the fight that really stood out. | 5:25 |
| Ralph Thompson | And what really hurt was the night that Ezzard Charles knocked Joe Louis out, and that just took a lot. The fight game to me was never the same again because we had built him up in our mind so big that he never was to grow old and you're not supposed to knock him out. You see, and Rocky Marciano and all those people, we would say, "Oh, it was fixed. It was this, it was that." | 5:51 |
| Ralph Thompson | But we just didn't accept the fact that he grew old and past his time. But that's how we would do it, we had batteries back then. | 6:25 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, what was your favorite music growing up? | 6:38 |
| Ralph Thompson | We were lucky. My oldest sister used to take us to see a lot of shows and things, and at that time there was a movie house on Beale Street, The Palace, and they used to do stage shows. And I can remember Larry Steel, Smart or Fast, and he had the chorus line and all of that, and it was the Big Band. The Big Band sound was my kind of music. | 6:45 |
| Ralph Thompson | Then blues, because I grew up on the Big Band back in the forties and all, you listen to Fats Waller, and Duke Ellington, and Stan Kenton, and Joe Stafford, Harry James, the Dorsey Brothers, so you heard Phil Harris, you heard all of this music, and to hear what would be considered what was Black music, we only had 15 minutes a day on WMC and it was brought on by Royal Crown Pomade, and they would do all the advertising in that 15 minutes. So we get to hear maybe one and a half songs, two songs in that 15 minutes of actual blues. | 7:12 |
| Ralph Thompson | And then in 1950, '49, '50, WDIA converted from a Country in Western to Blues and Gospel. And WDIA took the place of Joe Louis and it kind of rivaled Jackie Robinson and all. | 8:00 |
| Ralph Thompson | And then when they sponsored Little League Baseball for kids and the Starlight Review and the Goodwill Review, those are two separate shows at one time of the year and one at a different time of year, and those were the things. And I would go, after I got up some size, I would go out and watch Buddy Johnson and his sister Ella Johnson, Roy Milton's band, Ray Charles, when he first started, Ike and Tina Turner. Even Ike Turner before he started playing by himself, they cut a record in the early fifties called Rocket 88, Jackie Briston and Ike Turner and a guy by the name of Lou Willie John, all of those guys would come to town. And the ones that played at the movie houses like at The Palace, and at that time the WC Handy out on Park Avenue, we could go see that. I was too young to go up on to Club Handy where BB King and all of them played because I was too young to get in there. | 8:19 |
| Ralph Thompson | But I could go to The Palace where the stage shows and the comedians, and I guess that's where I got into really liking comedians, like Moms Mabley, the one I can remember, Pigmeat Markham and all those guys would come to town and I would go down and listen to that. I was 15 years old and I would go listen. It cost 50 cents to get in, never will forget it, and that's what I would do. But Big Band and blues, and back then you'd have a little old picnic somewhere and the guy with a guitar and a drum and old harmonica would get out there on the tree somewhere and play, and you'd eat watermelon and barbecue, and grown people would drink corn liquor and just have a good time and play baseball. We played out— | 9:27 |
| Ralph Thompson | We called it outlaw baseball. Baseball, somebody got a field out there and we'd play. And sometimes you'd get to play in a place that had a field that they charges and we got to play and that's what we would do. | 10:20 |
| Ralph Thompson | But the music was blues and Big Bands. Frank Sinatra, like Andy Griffin, when Andy Griffin came out with the song about the football, I forgot what title that was, his first hit. We listened to that and we used to listen to a station, WHHM played the Big Bands. | 10:35 |
| Ralph Thompson | And we didn't have no choice, that was all on there except that 15 minutes in the evening from four to 4:15. And if you weren't in the field—If you were in the field, you missed that. And I'm telling you, they didn't even accidentally play no Black blues. You might get a Count Basey or Duke Ellington or some of those guys band playing, Louie Armstrong in that group, but people like WDIA got going, people like Illinois Jacket and Bill Gillespie and all those people, you could hear that. That would come on Sunday afternoon, you'd hear the jazz. I never was into the real hard jazz, but blues and the Big Bands. I still like blues and Big Bands now. | 11:04 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, you mentioned baseball, did you play a lot of sports when you were growing up? | 12:01 |
| Ralph Thompson | Oh yeah. Yeah. I played baseball, I played on the basketball team in high school, and that's all we had that we could play. Wasn't no other sports. The school up at Woodstock really didn't have football. We wasn't big enough. We didn't have enough players and we didn't have football, we just had basketball and I played basketball and all. But what was different back then, if you didn't pass, you didn't play. And this was back in the early fifties. | 12:06 |
| Ralph Thompson | And there was certain things just couldn't do. We had a dress code, and I can remember this one guy came out and we was supposed to have on shirts and ties and his collar was open and the principal was on the bus and he told him to go back to the dormitory and don't come back. And he didn't even let him go to the game. He didn't let him go. And that's just the way it was back then. It wasn't just playing sports, you had to get your lesson. And just passing wasn't good enough, you had to really work. You didn't play around. They didn't give you no breaks because you were a player. But I did play baseball. I played baseball in the army too. | 12:41 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, when you were growing up in Frazier, were there Black political organizations? | 13:31 |
| Ralph Thompson | No. No. We never got into no politics. And I can remember my daddy talking about paying poll tax and he voted, but I don't remember my mother voting. But I remember him talking about paying poll tax because he would mention something, "I've got to pay my poll tax." And he would vote, but we never got involved in politics in Frazier. We never got involved in that. I don't know why, but nobody never even mentioned politics. | 13:36 |
| Ralph Thompson | And it really wasn't enough of us that we created enough interest where politicians would even come out and try to even talk to us. I guess they just wrote us off, they could care less. We didn't get anything, they didn't ask us for no votes or no support. And back then I really don't remember any signs ever being out. I really don't. And whoever was sheriff, was sheriff, and whoever was—Whether they called him mayor back then or whatever they call him, but we were in the county so we didn't have the same thing, but we did have sheriff, but I don't know, I don't ever remember them ever coming out asking us about voting. But that's just the way it was. | 14:17 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, when you were at Woodstock, you began thinking in terms of moving away or thinking in terms of a career or something you wanted to do? | 15:09 |
| Ralph Thompson | Not necessarily a career, but moving away because we were sharecroppers, and at that time, all the boys had to take Ag, agriculture. That was part of our curriculum. And I was a sharecropper, so I knew I didn't want to farm, and for some reason I didn't want to teach, and it wasn't nothing else in my mind that I could do. I couldn't stand blood, so I know I couldn't be a doctor. And I think back then if you got a job, a decent paying job, kept your nose clean, then you were sort of a success and you just fitted in a mold. You went to work every day, you took care of your family and you were an all right guy. You didn't do anything bad and you were an all right guy. So we didn't talk about careers. I don't even remember the school talking about careers as such. So when I got out of Woodstock, I went right straight to the military. | 15:26 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, what kind of experiences did you have in the military? | 16:39 |
| Ralph Thompson | They had just integrated in 1954 and most of my experiences—And I was stationed in Albuquerque, New Mexico the whole time after basic training, all my time was spent in Albuquerque, which was a pretty decent place. They didn't have signs and things like that. The bad experience that I had, I was on the basketball team so I didn't have to work. And we lived—The barracks was made like a motel, individual rooms, long haul, and the latrine bathroom is coming for everybody. And people that didn't have to work had to sweep the hall down and mop it and buff it and clean up the bathroom for the inspection every morning. | 16:45 |
| Ralph Thompson | And my sergeant would put me in the latrine every day. He'd put two guys with me, I'd go into latrine. The next morning he put two more into the latrine. Next morning, same thing. And I was the only one had to go into the latrine every morning. And I went to the company commander about that and they changed, they moved me out of his squad. | 17:42 |
| Ralph Thompson | And that was my worst experience. He never would bring me out and let me sweep and mop in the hall, he just put me in the latrine every day. And I'll always believe that's why I didn't get a good conduct medal. I got an honorable discharge and that was the only thing. I never got a good conduct medal and I'm just thinking that was it. But I went to the company commander and I talked about this, and I don't know why, because I came from a segregated background, so it wasn't something that I wasn't used to, but it's just the fact that I couldn't stand by and just let them put me in that latrine every day. | 18:03 |
| Ralph Thompson | And the other experience I had, that was kind of funny. After I made the team and I went to get the uniform, they had given all the uniforms out. It was 12 of us, they only had 10 uniforms. So the game was at night and I didn't go to the game, but I knew I couldn't leave the base, so the captain called over to the barracks and told me to get over there and I went in civilian clothes. And he wanted to know why I wasn't dressed and I told him and he said, "Well, why didn't you wear what you practice in?" And I told him that, "I don't see nobody else over here with blue and white on." And the next day we got 12 new uniforms and those were two experiences that I had that stayed with me. The rest of them, I tried to do my job, go to work on time, do what I was charged with doing, and I really didn't have no problems. | 18:58 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, what came next after the army? | 19:58 |
| Ralph Thompson | I came back home and I couldn't get a job and I started going to a business college on the GI Bill studying accounting. And I got a job at International Harvester, which was one of the better paying jobs in Memphis. And I really didn't put forth enough effort to get a certificate or anything in accounting and I ended up at labor at International Harvest. And what they were paying back then was fairly decent money and I could take care of a family on that. And that was it. | 20:03 |
| Ralph Thompson | And then I got involved with the labor movement and that's what got me into the labor movement, working and seeing people, things happening to people, and a couple of things that happened to me and I started getting active. And one of the things that—Some of the guys that I worked around couldn't read and I could read and they would kind of play off of me and I guess I was their eyes. And we'd get a hand bill or flyer from the company or union, either one, and we'd be sitting there on break or lunch or something like, "What is this? What are they talking about?" I don't have my excuse that I'd always have, I don't have my glasses. And instead of saying anything, I just read and say, "Oh, this is such and such and such such." | 20:45 |
| Ralph Thompson | And that started, people were talking because I was younger and I'd come to work on time and things like that, and they said, "Well, you ought to run for office." And I started running for the bylaws committee and summer school and things like that. And I worked myself on up and I got as high as vice chairman of the bargaining unit. But now when you get to vice chairman, that wasn't elected from the total group, that was elected from the committee, but I held an office that represented about a thousand people and I worked there until I got appointed to a staff job. Really wasn't a staff job, it was kind of a program that the union had and I got to work in it. And when Reagan was elected and we had a grant, they cut it out and I went back in the plant and I got to run a department. I wasn't a supervisor, I was a group leader, and I ran the department where they received all the steel pipes and bars and sheet metal and stuff like that. And that was it. | 21:40 |
| Ralph Thompson | And I worked in other departments, now that was like I explained to you earlier about the chains and you couldn't work in this department. And when they integrated the washroom, had to take the signs down and I didn't, because it wasn't in my work area and I wouldn't have done it anyway. I wasn't one of those kind of people that would take on some of these problems. This guy went up and they put acid in his shoes and acid in his clothes and things like that. | 23:01 |
| Paul Ortiz | Because he was challenging, or? | 23:33 |
| Ralph Thompson | Well, after they took the sign down and he worked in the area, and rather than to walk two bathrooms away to change clothes, take a shower, he just started going in the shower that was closest to him, and it was, at that time, it was basically White. So somebody went up and put acid in his shoes and ate his shoes up and put acid on his clothes. So those are some of the things. And they had the two water fountains. Wherever you found one, you'd find two water fountains. And how you could tell the difference, after they took the signs off of them, they put a spigot on the end of it like this where you just put your cup, press the button and push a cup under it. They didn't hire nobody, they posted a job and it was a guy that used to just bring paper cups around and fill up the cups every day for a good while. | 23:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, that was a way to keep it still— | 24:37 |
| Ralph Thompson | Segregated. | 24:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | Segregated. | 24:40 |
| Ralph Thompson | Right. | 24:41 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. So even though there was one fountain— | 24:45 |
| Ralph Thompson | It was still two fountains. | 24:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | It was still two fountains? | 24:45 |
| Ralph Thompson | Right. But if you didn't want to drink out of what was considered the original Black fountain, you knew the White fountain was the one that had the little spigot on. | 24:47 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh. | 24:56 |
| Ralph Thompson | You could press the button and just drink out that, or you could press the button, fill your cup up. So they put that all around and they put a guy over there that was a full-time job, eight hours a day, just taking cups around all over the plant and filling up the little tube with the paper cups. And that was one. | 24:57 |
| Ralph Thompson | We couldn't drive cranes, the overhead cranes. Finally, we got to where we could do that. We couldn't run no machines. In the union hall we had two, four bathrooms and that was a fight. We had to get an administrator down here for that and that was always a fight. It was extremely hard or close to impossible to get elected to a plant-wide position because you just couldn't get the votes. You couldn't get the votes. And you couldn't get— | 25:22 |
| Ralph Thompson | At that time, they were no Black people in the office, you couldn't get no office job. All you could do was the hardest job. And they had what they call a merry-go-round over in the molding department, and it was a chain and it was flat and you put your molds on them, you could put two on each car and you had your machines lined up. And what they would do, they put—If they had a White person over there, they'd always put the White person on the first machine because the person down here, by the time these cars get to him, they're full. Two molds on this one, two on this one, and two there. And he might not have nowhere to put his mold so he could run less, say a third of the molds you have to run. And that's the way they would do things. | 26:05 |
| Ralph Thompson | Then after they changed, they had it where Blacks was working together, team, two guys, and Whites was working together. And I was a union rep at that time and I couldn't figure out why Blacks were always being disciplined and suspended and White weren't getting there. Not that I want White people suspended, but something ain't right with this. And I discovered one day they had two books, and let's say you had a infraction and they write in this book on you, and the next time you had one, they put in a different book, so when you open the book, wherever you were, he could always pull that book up. I guess he'd go look at it and see where you stand and pull that book up. | 26:58 |
| Ralph Thompson | And I accidentally stumbled up on those books and I brought it to the company's attention and I took a position as a union official, that in the future when a team broke up, some guy transferred out and an opening came, the next person in line had to go there. We can't swap up, you've got to go to that spot. And if you don't like each other, you've got to learn to like each other. If you don't like each other, fine, you still got to work together. And I found that a lot of that problem went away, because if you got a White and a Black working together, then they're together there and it's kind of hard to pick one out and show favors and don't show favors for the other one. The other thing I found, that the heavier molds began to move around through the group, and those were some of the things that we dealt with. | 27:49 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, when you say molds, you're talking about liquid? Or that would be a mold? | 28:50 |
| Ralph Thompson | Yeah, a mold. | 29:00 |
| Paul Ortiz | To make? | 29:00 |
| Ralph Thompson | All kind of things. Spring hangers, where you hang. The springs that go in your trucks, well, it is a casting that you would make in a cast iron, and we would mold that. We would make that out of mold. They'd take molten metal and pour in there and they had the pattern and you'd make the mold and that's where it would come from and that's what we were doing. And when they went from the old culpo type furnaces to electric mill, well, on the culpos we only had Blacks. When they went to electric mill, they wanted to go to a test. And if you go to a test, well, that'd eliminate some of the older guys. And my argument was, you've got a grandfather those guys into the system. You can't just work a guy for 24 years and then all of a sudden you change and then throw him to the wolves. You can't do that. | 29:04 |
| Ralph Thompson | And I convinced the company, and the Charlie Johnson's and all those guys got the transfer, got to go with the job in the electric mill. Because see, as those jobs changed and they were going to take them away from them. If they were good paying jobs, they would hire labor grace and things like that. But when they were over there scuffling and all, then we could do that. But when he got over on the other side with the electric mill, it was still hot, but you got buttons to push. Now, I can't push an up button and a down button. And my argument was that you had to grandfather that in. You've got to grandfather these guys in and this is the only way we can do it. | 30:04 |
| Ralph Thompson | And all of that came from me being disqualified some years earlier in saying that I want to see other people get a fair shake, and the only way I know how to do that is be honest with myself. And if I'm honest with myself, then these guys going to get the best that I can give them. See, and that's some of the things I did. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I satisfied every person that I represented. I didn't, but I tried my best to be honest and fair with them, because we were always into arguments and fights and all where we were concerned. If it was Black, it was very easy, it seemed like, for them to suspend us. It was very easy, it seemed like, to suspend us. | 30:50 |
| Ralph Thompson | And that was one of the things, some of the things that I experienced in the years I worked there. The cranes over in the sheet metal and all that, for a long time we couldn't run it. Simple thing as a saw. And all you got to do with a saw is nest your pipes or stuff here and count them, and however many of you got in the nest and run it up and take your rule and set it. And we couldn't run those kind of machines. They wouldn't let us run. They'd disqualify us. They'd do all kind of thing to disqualify us and we had to try to make it. And it was a never ending fight. | 31:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, what initially propelled you into becoming active in your local? | 32:33 |
| Ralph Thompson | Well, there was a guy that came up through the Pullman Porters, George Holloway, and when I came in 1959, and it was five or six of us, and I was young I guess, and I could read and he stayed on me about participating and telling me, and he just kept pushing me and pushing me, and that's what got me started. Then as I began to work in it and see little problems and I can't gripe about something if I'm not willing to work on it. And as time went on, I got more and more involved just by going to the meetings, listening, disagreeing sometime, agreeing sometime, talking to different people, explaining things. And since I'm doing it on the side, I might as well be elected. | 32:43 |
| Ralph Thompson | So I started running. I got defeated a few times, got my brains beat out to be exact, but I just kept doing it. Then once I got in it, I felt an obligation that I needed to do this because people trusted me and I couldn't let them down. That might sound a little corny, but they trusted me and they voted for me and I thought I owed them good representation because of that. And that's how I got into it and stayed in it. Because I can remember one year, I didn't even have anybody nominated against me, and that's a good feeling to be in that position. I didn't even have a person nominated against me. | 33:41 |
| Paul Ortiz | Is that the seventies? | 34:38 |
| Ralph Thompson | Yeah. And then what make you feel bad, your name's going to appear on the ballot, and if I don't have a good turnout on my side, there's nobody running against me, but if I don't have a good turnout on my votes, then it'd make me look weak. So I didn't tell nobody to run against me, but I kind of liked it if somebody was running against me because it got more vote, people out to vote for me. | 34:41 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, what role did George Holloway play in Memphis labor? | 35:09 |
| Ralph Thompson | Well, George Holloway was that driving force that dealt with the signs where he couldn't go in doors. Although he was a representative, he couldn't go in certain doors, he couldn't go in the hotel in negotiations, he had to go up to service elevator and things like that. And because of his union background, the Pullman Porters and all, he was just a union man. It was in his blood. You could just talk to him and it was just in him. And he kept pushing us to do better and support him and he needed us when certain things was going on. He kept us informed in breaking down some of the barriers and that's what George Holloway was. And some of that rubbed off on some of us. And when he moved up to the staff, then we started running and we tried to do the Jackie Robinson, everybody wanted to be George Holloway. | 35:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | Ah. | 36:20 |
| Ralph Thompson | See, but his role was bridging the gap between us and the other side. The other side being the White company and the White side of the union. He had to deal with all of that. So he was that guy, he was that spokesman for us. And I didn't do it, but I can remember the stories about them having to escort him home at night to protect him. And I can remember them talking about somebody shot in his house over on Alaska and I can remember those things and that made me want to do because of this. I knew how that came about. I can remember the signs, I can remember the water fountains, I can remember denied jobs and things like that, so that made me want to do and make it just a little bit better if could. If my little two cents meant it was going to be better, then that's what I wanted to do. | 36:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, were there other Black labor activists that kind of served as a role model for your generation? | 37:27 |
| Ralph Thompson | In the plant, George Jackson was one. Our politics were a little different. Melvin Powell was the guy before me, he came in between George Holloway and myself, and they were to a degree. But I guess being young and gung-ho, that they just didn't fit the mold for me. But they were role models, they taught me a lot looking back at it. They did. They talked to people, they shared their knowledge with people. George Jackson was a good speaker and he served that purpose. He could talk and express himself and he could do that. Melvin was a fiery kind of guy and he served his purpose. And I wasn't either one of those, but I was there somehow so I could reach out and touch them. | 37:37 |
| Ralph Thompson | And I guess we all played our part, so if you asked me, I would say George Holloway was the driving force from day one or whenever he got involved and that was early in the game. George Jackson and Melvin were there, but they weren't as strong, even I wasn't as strong as Holloway, but they were there and they played their role. And I guess I picked up from all of these guys. And if you had to look at how I acted and responded to things, you'd probably find a little of me, a little of George Jackson, George Holloway, and Melvin Powell in me. I'd probably deny it, but you'd probably find a little of all of those guys in me. | 38:48 |
| Ralph Thompson | See, and a little fire from Melvin. And when I had to talk and go and face people, a little George Jackson. I'd do my research, where when I'd go in, I'd pretty well know what I'm talking about. I didn't just go in ad lib. So those would be the ones that I would say off the top of my head would be the role models. And I know I picked up a lot from them. | 39:35 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, earlier you mentioned that you had different politics than George Jackson. What were your— | 40:13 |
| Ralph Thompson | Well, George Jackson's vocabulary was great, and he couldn't or he wouldn't come down to the level of some of the people that he had to deal with. And I don't have no big words, I can't use them, I don't have them, so I could relate to them. So my politics were to go out and get right in the trenches with them. George was more on the executive type guy. "I told you how it is, that's the way it is, don't you question me." Big word, big word, big word. "And I'm not coming down, it's too hot or it's this or that." Where I would go in the basement if it was necessary, I'd go on the roof if it was necessary, I'd go if it was 110 degrees or if it was 12 degrees. So my politics was a little different from his. | 40:20 |
| Ralph Thompson | I didn't get into that hoodwinking thing where George Holloway, I mean George Jackson would run for chairman or president or something like that and get clobbered, and then the next morning, Mill Wrights and wife was coming around saying, "Hey, you did a great job yesterday. Sorry, you lost." Well, I don't operate that way. My politics was to win and I did whatever was necessary and got in that groove where I could win. See, it's a difference between winning over here and running over here and losing, somebody patting you on your back, because at least you are here to hear and express your feelings in a issue whether you get anybody to support you or not. But if you are on the outside looking in, you can't even do that. | 41:18 |
| Ralph Thompson | And I think that was part of, if that answers your question, as far as our politics was concerned. I was more of a, in the trenches type person. See, I want to hear you, I want to work next to you or whatever. And you'd cuss and raise sand and all that kind of stuff, but let's talk about whatever the issue is, where George Jackson might not come down and tell you or say anything to you like that. | 42:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, it seems like you became active in union activism right around the time of the sanitation workers strike. Was that a coincidence? Or was that something that— | 42:29 |
| Ralph Thompson | No, no. That was a coincidence. I was just happened to be involved out there when this came along. And to get a staff job, George Holloway, see, you've got to be real well-rounded. You've got to be not only involved in the plant, you got to be involved in the community. So trying to get a staff job, then I'm involved in the community, so any marches or anything like that, that I could get involved in, I would do it. If I had to volunteer or whatever, I'd do it. And because I was trying to get a staff job, there's no doubt about that, and I didn't get one. I got an assignment, but that wasn't a staff job because there is miles difference in the pay. But it was just a coincidence that I just happened to be doing something out there during the time of the sanitation strike. | 42:42 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, what was Memphis like during that time, during the sanitation workers strike? | 43:46 |
| Ralph Thompson | Let me put it this way, on our side, our side meaning the Black side, seemed like we were unified. We didn't knock unions and we met at the UAW Hall at Walker in Belleview, 1190 Walker, and it's not Union Hall now. And the community people, the NAACP people and all used to come there and meet because that was one place they could go meet in a group and then have no problems and things like that. And the community was behind the sanitation workers. Loeb in a sense was the enemy, for lack of a better way to put that, and everybody rallied around the sanitation workers. | 43:56 |
| Ralph Thompson | And we remember the tubs on the heads, and they used to be sent home and didn't get paid if it was raining and things like that and it was just indignity. And then when Martin Luther King came in here, that just put a little more, I guess class, that ain't the way to put that, to this drive. And everybody was getting on the bandwagon. | 44:48 |
| Ralph Thompson | And the UAW, and at that time Walter Reuther was the president of UAW, he came in here and he gave $50,000 to the sanitation strike back then. I forgot what year it was, but he gave $50,000 from UAW to the sanitation workers. And if Walter Reuther said, "You UAW people, especially among Black people, that you need to support something to do it," we tried to do it because we believe in Walter Reuther, he was a union person and we believed in him. | 45:10 |
| Ralph Thompson | And when they were getting involved, that meant the local union had to get involved. And if we had members and leadership that didn't want to do it, the ones of us that would do it, then we had to represent 988, so to speak. So we had to get out there and go and participate. But the community rallied around the sanitation workers back then. But since that time, we are so anti-union now, I mean, you're almost afraid to wear a union label in your shirt, let alone one on your—But I'm not that bad, I'm not that afraid. | 45:47 |
| Paul Ortiz | Right. | 46:35 |
| Ralph Thompson | Mm-hmm. | 46:35 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, you mentioned that Walter Reuther, when you began a movement and position of leadership, was very supportive of your goals. How would you— | 46:37 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, when you were talking earlier about the beginning of your career as a union activist, you said that initially it was people like George Holloway who spoke to you about the importance of getting involved. How do you judge the level of Black labor activism when you first came into the local factory or your plant? | 0:03 |
| Ralph Thompson | It seemed like we had people that were very active. We had people running for office. We lost a lot. We won some steward jobs that were people in the departments. But plant-wide, we never was really able to win a plant-wide position. But we had Melvin Burns that I can think of, very active, Rosco Coleman, very active, Jesse Adams, that I can think of. We had people that was in the background that was pretty active that came to the union meetings and the people that didn't take an active role as far as running for office. | 0:37 |
| Ralph Thompson | But we kind of circled the wagons around Holloway when he was in trouble and people wanted to kill him or whatever they were doing to him, keep them from beating him up and things like that. Then there was a group of people that would do that. Then you had other people that would run for positions and all. So it was quite a few because we were all—Although I got in on the tail end of most of it, but we were all active and we all followed the leadership of George Holloway because we knew that he was a guy that would level with us and was leading us in the right direction, and he needed our support. | 1:26 |
| Ralph Thompson | But we had quite a few people that were very active. Back then, the bulk of our people were in the foundry because that's where they would put us, and it was very hard for us to get out and make it somewhere else. So that was our nucleus. When we could get somebody out and in a department or something, then we supported that person in any way, moral support. We didn't have to do no money or nothing like that, but we were supportive that way and encouraging people to take on assembly jobs. | 2:09 |
| Ralph Thompson | I can remember Larry Bingham going into welding, and they would put firecrackers in the welding booth, exploding. Here's a guy couldn't make it at International Harvester welding and taught welding in one of the vocational schools back then, one of the schools that veterans went to. He taught welding. It's strange. We could talk about, I can't think of the guy's name. | 2:48 |
| Ralph Thompson | It was an electrician. Couldn't get in the electrical department, but supervisors and people that worked there would call this guy and have him to go over to their house and do electrical work, Grady Terrell. Grady Terrell, the electrician. I can remember how you kind of supported him by slapping him on the back and encouraging him and all the things that happened. | 3:14 |
| Ralph Thompson | Jimmy Moore, when he went in the crane to drive the crane and they had the wildcat strike. Those are some of the people that you had to look at as pioneers and trailblazers, if I can use that term, and Holloway was that guy. Sometime you rub people the wrong way and he was encouraging you to do this and all. He was pushing me to go to union meeting, participate and all. | 3:40 |
| Ralph Thompson | I can remember I was an alternate steward, and I remember he came over and checked me out. I thought that was the best thing could have happened to me. I'm checked out as a union official and talked to me, "You got to do this, and you got to do that. You got to stand up." He's encouraging you to have some backbone, and that's how that was. But those are some of the trailblazers. If you talk about leaders, you had a group of those. | 4:16 |
| Ralph Thompson | You had people that kind of protected you from violence, Holloway in particular. Then you had the trailblazers like Larry Bingham and Jimmy Moore. Who else can I think of? I can think of Floyd Price and how he had to argue about a checker's job in Department 65 in sheet metal. They didn't want him because this was a job where you walked around with a clipboard and stuff like that. | 4:44 |
| Ralph Thompson | Finally, when we started getting in there and you looked up, it was Black. Matter of fact, my brother was in there. You got to talk about the OD and the ID of a tube and sheet metal and gauge whether it's 18-gauge or whatever and how to measure and all that kind of stuff. We were doing it, but how we had to fight to get there. I can remember all of that stuff as it happened, just like it happened yesterday. That's why I can call these names. | 5:20 |
| Ralph Thompson | If you had a way to check, you could check and you'd find that those names would line up with what I said, like Larry Bingham in welding and Jimmy Moore and the crane and Grady Terrell as an electrician. I can remember in the later years, we had a guy. He was in a department, and he was sweeping the floor. I went to Industrial Relations and argued with them that it was a maintenance job posted in the maintenance department. | 5:54 |
| Ralph Thompson | If he was in the department, he could sign the posters and get the job as a skilled tradesman. but the department wouldn't let him go. They had him out there sweeping the floor. Industrialization, after I raised the issue, had that guy, Perkins, had him moved into maintenance, and that's how he got into the maintenance department. We had all of those kind of fights and arguments, and you had to go. | 6:29 |
| Ralph Thompson | When they hired the first Black nurse, when Ms. Butch retired, Martin came to me and said, "Why don't we have a Black nurse?" I went to Gene Keenam and I said, "Gene, this is a golden opportunity. If the company mean what they say about equal rights and things like that, here's a golden opportunity to hire a Black nurse." And they did. I can't even think of her name. | 6:59 |
| Ralph Thompson | If she talked to you today, I'll bet you money that she wouldn't even know how she got that job or she'll tell you, "I got that job on my own." But it was some pushing behind the scenes, and we never talked about it. It wasn't my idea, although it was a great idea. But I was an elected official, and it was brought to my attention. I went to Keenam and brought it up, and that's how we got where we are. I was just looking for [indistinct 00:07:56]— | 7:27 |
| Paul Ortiz | What year was that, Mr. Thompson, the nurse? | 7:55 |
| Ralph Thompson | That would have to be somewhere around '72, '73. Might be as late as '74, but it had to be somewhere in that area of the mid '70s when we got that. That's how we got the Black nurse. | 7:58 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, you mentioned earlier George Holloway not only played an important leadership role within UAW but also in wider political activism. Can you tell me about some of the things that he did in Memphis? | 8:20 |
| Ralph Thompson | Well, like I say, he was one of the pioneers in the old Shelby County Democratic Club. Now, as far as what part did he play in starting that organization up, I can't tell you. But I do know he was in that during the time when it first started. I know, based on his relationship with the group, it had to be George Holloway that got the union hall and made it available to the communities where they could do that. | 8:38 |
| Ralph Thompson | Knowing George Holloway, knowing how vocal he was, I just know that he played a very important part in developing whatever strategies they had in the community. Because the way he was a pioneer and a driver in the plant, I just know that that would spill over. That's just George Holloway because a lot of times he would invite us to certain meetings. Because when John Conyers came here from Michigan at one of our rallies or something, it was at the union hall. | 9:10 |
| Ralph Thompson | George was real close to Walter because Walter Reuther was talking about integration and things like that, and George was that pioneer. He was that lightning rod in Memphis as far as the Black side was concerned. I would feel comfortable saying George Holloway, through Walter Reuther or with Walter Reuther or suggested to Walter Reuther some of these things, and knowing him and his background that he played a very important part in the community. | 9:54 |
| Ralph Thompson | It seemed like when he was transferred to Maryland that rumor had it that he was going to run for state representative or something or city council, if they were calling them city councilmen back then. But it seemed like George was going to take a stab at a outside office. But you know how that's a rumor thing, and I don't have no documentation on that. But it seemed like that was part of it back then. | 10:26 |
| Ralph Thompson | But he was very, very active in the community. George was the kind of guy that would stand at the gate if he believed in a candidate and passed out literature for that candidate. That's the kind of guy George would be. George was the kind of guy that would come in the locker room and tell you, "Get out of here and go vote this evening," in your regular local, national, state races and things like that. That's the kind of guy. | 10:53 |
| Ralph Thompson | So just based on that, I just know he was active on the outside because I've been invited to meetings and things. So I know he was very active. | 11:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, during the struggles that you had and other Black workers had to move into more skilled positions, how did White workers react to those? | 11:39 |
| Ralph Thompson | First of all, they wouldn't help you. They would do little things to you. You would have to watch your machine. Somebody might come through there and loosen a bolt or something up on you. You'd have to watch that real close. But they kind of stayed in the background, and management would deal with you, disqualify you, say you can't do the job. So your coworkers, really in later years ... | 11:58 |
| Ralph Thompson | Now, prior to what I've heard, some of the wildcats and all when you went into certain jobs, they just wildcats. So finally one day, I forgot how the company broke that. Somebody told me that dozen times, but broke the wildcat before they were—I think they gave them 30 days, the welders. During the stretch I was telling you about Larry Bingham being put over there and they wildcatted or something, I think they gave them 30 days and farmed the work out or something and that kind of calmed that down. | 12:39 |
| Ralph Thompson | But usually, they wouldn't help you. If you had a problem, wouldn't nobody help you. If they put somebody with you, they'd show you a little bit, but they wouldn't really show you. And then they'd say to the management, "He can't do it." The management would watch you. Most of this work is incentive. If you couldn't get up to snuff, you had 40 hours to get up there. | 13:09 |
| Ralph Thompson | But like I was telling you about the job I had, if I had to keep changing the tool out and tools were new because I was taking them out of the package, but they were soft. I found out later years just by observation, they were soft and they wouldn't keep an edge very long. I had to change them out, and I couldn't keep up. This might sound strange. But on this particular job, and I can remember this, from my station to the end of the line, they had two shifts. From my station back, they had one shift. | 13:36 |
| Ralph Thompson | The supervisor's name was Jones. He told the guy that I couldn't keep up. I couldn't run enough pods to keep up. But they had two shifts down here. Being green and didn't argue to that and didn't see it, then these little things that drifted in, I was disqualified. It was in 1969. Somewhere around here, I just couldn't find it. I kept that writeup. Anytime I start going off the deep end, getting a big head, I read that. | 14:17 |
| Ralph Thompson | I'm not even working now. I just read that to keep myself charged up to the fact that you got to watch yourself. I can remember some jobs over there you couldn't even think about going to. You were disqualified before you even got there, see? You could go over. After years and got into the training program, I found that some of these people didn't have a high school education, but there were systems and ways to carry them. | 14:54 |
| Ralph Thompson | You take a set of machines. You make a setup in the morning and just before that guy leave in the evening, he'd make another setup. The guy come in on the second shift and he'd run it as long as the machine would run. The guy come in on the third shift would, first thing off, he'd make a setup. So the guy in the middle didn't know how to set it up. But because he was White, they fixed the way or found the way to take care of this guy. They found a way to do it. | 15:37 |
| Ralph Thompson | I really don't fault you to that degree. It's just that when somebody talk about a level playing field, if you get out there in the real world, you'll find that it ain't no—I mean just like I said. It ain't no level playing field because the system don't allow this playing field because take when I went in. I passed the test. When the guy looked and saw me in this crowd of 50+ people, it wasn't but like 55, 50 people, he didn't take my word or say that, "He must have a right to be in here." | 16:14 |
| Ralph Thompson | He asked, "Did I call your name?" And I said, "Yeah." He didn't take that. He went and looked on the list and looked my name up. It ain't no level playing field, and that's just the way it was. The person that was over payroll just had a high school education. Was over payroll. I'm not saying I could come in and do the same job, but I couldn't even be a clerk in that department. I couldn't even be a clerk in that department. | 16:54 |
| Ralph Thompson | I couldn't be the person that used to bring out time cards and production cards with part numbers on it. All you had to do was put it in the file cabinet. Now, I'm down here as an incentive worker, peace worker. I can go over there and pull the card out of the file, look up the number, and pull it out because I'm down here in the foundry and I'm working. But I can't come out of the office with these same cards and put them in that file cabinet, but I can take them out of the file cabinet. | 17:31 |
| Ralph Thompson | You see what I'm talking about? Because they didn't let us had those jobs because there were ways to disqualify us, and that's what they did. | 17:55 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, earlier you mentioned the incident when you were given the tools that were soft. Now, what exactly was the job that you were trying to qualify for? | 18:13 |
| Ralph Thompson | On a cotton picker, they got a picker bar. The spindles would stand out like this and they'd rotate. That's what pulled the cotton out of the boll. On the end of that bar, you had to grind it out because you got to put a old ring. What do you call it? One that's got the two little ears and you just do this. You had a no-go and a go-gauge here, and you had to rough it out. And then you had to finish it out. | 18:27 |
| Ralph Thompson | When you do the finish grind on it, it's shiny. You got a little triangle. But it was a diamond, but it was a triangle. The corner of it was the thing that actually would do the cutting, see? The tool itself had to be soft because it wouldn't keep an edge, but it was the top of the picker bar on a cotton picker is really what I was grinding out. That's what I was doing. | 18:59 |
| Ralph Thompson | But now, later years when they start downsizing and we had seniority and they couldn't just throw us out in the street because supervisors and everybody else were losing their job. This was in the early '80s and mid '80s, '82, '83 and all that. I ended up on a job that was more technical than the one I got disqualified off of. But by this time, things had changed some, and they had to accept us because they couldn't fire all the Black people. Plus, you got White people that can't do it either. | 19:33 |
| Ralph Thompson | So if you got somebody over there that's got any mechanical skills at all, you got to use them, stick with them. I ended up on a job. Matter of fact, in that same department, some 20 years later, I ended up training people on the machine I was running. I found it strange that 20 years earlier, I couldn't do this. I had made a comment to some of my friends. I said, "Maybe we would be operating today if they had looked at us on our knowledge and skill versus our race. Maybe all of us would have been better off." | 20:12 |
| Ralph Thompson | But that's water under the bridge now. But I've given that thought for a long time. But they didn't try to give us, I won't say half the time. There was some times that we got some jobs. As time went on in the years, we began to get better jobs. But I'm telling you, we were still a long ways away when they closed it down. | 20:52 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, did you or other Black workers ever have to engage in informal job actions or protests? | 21:29 |
| Ralph Thompson | One time I can remember, we were all in molding. I represented the molding department. I was having such a hard time as a representative. We went to the EEOC and brought charges. We went outside of the union, and that's a no-no because we didn't go through the proper channels through the union. We didn't exhaust our rights under the union. But I just found it was so difficult and frustrating to represent a group of people. | 21:41 |
| Ralph Thompson | We got the hardest, roughest job in the world, and we get the worst breaks, more discipline, it seemed like. Fans, some of them are not working. It just didn't seem fair to me how they were treating us. I said, "We got to do something." Because if you go enter into a wildcat strike and especially you the union official, that's an automatic discharge for you and a suspension for the people that you are leading. So we said, "We got to get around that." | 22:14 |
| Ralph Thompson | So we took a Saturday and set it up with the EEOC to sit down and file some charges and go from there. It must have been about eight or nine of us to do that. We never heard anymore from it. But I think when they approached the company, they kind of lightened up some. But the EEOC, I can never remember them coming back. I remember the company calling me in and asking me did I do it, and I said, "Yeah." | 22:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. So you approached the EEOC and then they approached the company? | 23:28 |
| Ralph Thompson | Right. But that was the one action that we took. Another time, we took an action. We did something. We were having some problems in the department. So if we'd go out on a concerted effort on turning down overtime, mass refusal, they can bring charges against us. So I took a position as the leader in that group. I said, "What we going to do, we going to start turning it down, like one turn it down today, then somebody else tomorrow." | 23:36 |
| Ralph Thompson | So that'd give me two people, somebody else the next day and on down the line. I said, "Now, the one that went out first, you're going to lose money off the top because you're not working overtime. But you got to trust all of this." We went through a week and a half. When you knew anything, we were all turning it down. But it didn't appear that it was a concerted effort until way down the road. | 24:09 |
| Ralph Thompson | So now you can't come back and charge us because you can't say, "Well, they all turned it down." "This guy been turning it down for a week. What are you talking about? This guy been turning it down for the last seven, eight days. What are you talking about? Get away from me." You see what I'm talking about? So we began to get some movement there. And then the company called me in one day and was talking to me about just the problems and all. | 24:39 |
| Ralph Thompson | I was telling them, because I wouldn't work on Saturdays and I'd go to work every morning. So you can't say I'm leading it because I'm here. I started turning down Saturdays. I told them. I said, "When I get through with all the problems during the week, I don't feel like working on Saturday." So the people were telling me. They said, "If you don't work, they won't work. The only way they're going to work, you got to come in." "Well, I got to have some relief if I'm going to come in." | 25:04 |
| Ralph Thompson | We began to strike up more and more dialogue and discussion issues and getting problems worked out, like fans in the summertime and heat and things like that and water fountains down and some skilled trade jobs. We got a few skilled trade jobs, but our people were all qualified naturally. We couldn't go nowhere and get a letter saying I had experience doing certain jobs. So I got to have that I worked for ABC company before I came here. Here's my record and things like that. | 25:33 |
| Ralph Thompson | We got a few people in skilled trades. We got a few people in the pattern shop where they actually work on the molds that make the parts and all. We got what? Sykes, Dorsey, and somebody else. We got three people in there. And then we were beginning to get the women in there, and that created a whole different problem and approach because they're not set up. The bathroom is over here. They converted this one. | 26:20 |
| Ralph Thompson | And then the women get in there and stay, and then they got an argument. So all those little things. Most of the Black women ended up in the foundry, and the White women ended up on the factory side. All of those things we try to deal with. We try to be fair. Don't fire her, but how is it that all the Black women end up over here and no White women end up over here? How did that happen? You got to bring it to somebody's attention. | 26:48 |
| Ralph Thompson | Then the people even on your side of the table, and I can understand that, saying, "Wait a minute. I don't want my folks over here. They got a job. I can't make them place them here or there." So you got to constantly talk about that. And then they say, "Everything is color." You'll hear that term. You still hear that today. Everything is color. But there are certain things that raise a flag with us that make it that way. | 27:26 |
| Ralph Thompson | You say, "How is it that if you hire 25 people, 15 of them are White and 10 are Black and all 10 end up on the worst jobs and all 15 end up on the best job? Why couldn't two or three end up over here and one or two end up over there?" It might not be equal, but at least it seems like it was halfway colorblind. When you raise those questions, then you're painted as that's all you think about is a race issue. | 28:00 |
| Ralph Thompson | But if you go down there and you deal with it, you can't help but see it. If I was on the other side, I probably wouldn't see it because my people are not over there. I don't have a reason to be upset. You see? Then you get into the one where the daddy is working there and the son come in, and they'll put the son over in the foundry. But the daddy will come over there, and he'll jump up and down, "What are they doing to my son?" | 28:37 |
| Ralph Thompson | Well, what about that guy's son? What about that person there? He's somebody's son. What about him? That's a whole different fight on your hand. The son can come in. He's a probationary employee. During that probationary period, he can miss two days. They might fire him. The daddy been there 25 years and he come in one morning with rocks in his jaw and they say, "Oh, he's all upset. Leave him alone. He'll be all right after a while." But he's got 25 years on the job. Here's a guy got less than a month on the job, and they treat those two different. | 29:14 |
| Ralph Thompson | Because I've had a guy tell me that, you being the union official. They'll look at you and say, "Well, I don't want you representing my son." You don't get a lot of that. I had one, but I had that one, see? "Well, I wish So-and-so was here." Although Melvin was Black, too. He said, "Well, I wish Melvin was here because I don't want you." See? One guy will say, "Well, it's not that my son's too good to be over here. It's the work just too bogus, too hard." What about all these other 900 people, me included? | 29:54 |
| Ralph Thompson | So all of that was an experience. But if I raise it, then it's turned back on me that that's all I think about is race, see? And then I get my flashbacks that if it had been left up to the guy in personnel, I wouldn't have even been there because when he saw me in the room, he wanted to throw me out the very first day. I passed the test. I passed the physical and everything. I wasn't to the physical when we were in the conference room. At that point, I just passed the test. | 30:39 |
| Ralph Thompson | But he said, "Wait a minute. What are you doing here?" There's 50+ Whites in there and me, one. He's saying, "You shouldn't even be here." Somebody say that, "You're bitter of whatever." What other way can I be? You got to live it. You've got to live it to understand it. I'm not going out there and shoot somebody or nothing like that. But I'm just telling you, when you live it, you watch those things. You see them. | 31:19 |
| Ralph Thompson | So when somebody bring it up, you know what they're talking about. Harvester was a good place. It must have been a good place. I stayed there 30+ years. I retired from there. Because you might say, "Well, why don't you quit?" What am I going to do? Jump off the world? I can't jump off the edge. I got to figure out a way to live in this system. I got to try to find a way to make it better if I can. | 31:57 |
| Ralph Thompson | All of this is, what, from Holloway telling us to get involved. See, I can't accuse the company of something and raise the sand with somebody else if I'm not willing to go out there and bite the bullet and stand right up to it and talk about it, trying to get some relief. We talked about the nurse earlier. The nurse never had to wait on me for no reason. She'd never know till this day because I know I didn't tell what went on. | 32:26 |
| Ralph Thompson | But we made the company conscious that they had a golden opportunity to hire a Black nurse. Now, whether they were going to hire one anyway, I don't know. But I do know we made the company conscious of the fact that that was a golden opportunity, and that's how we did some of these things. All of it came from our relationship and talking and George Holloway's teaching. | 33:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, I read about foundry work in an automobile plant, but I've never heard a description of it in a plant such as Harvester. Were there differences in the foundry there, the kind of work that you were doing? | 33:35 |
| Ralph Thompson | It was no different from any other foundry, but it was different work from the factory side. First of all, you're dealing with scrap iron. You're dealing with molten metal. It takes I think it's 2,800 degrees for it to melt, and it's running like water. In the summertime, if it's 100 degrees outside, it's like 115 or 20 inside. It's heavy because you're using sand, and they got whatever they put in it. | 33:52 |
| Ralph Thompson | It's black. So you got all this sand. You're sweating, and it's sticking to you and all. It's heavy work. It's incentive, so that mean it's fast. Back then in those days, it was a rough, tough job, and you had to be tough to do it because you got metal running like water. Once it's set up, it's still 1,200 degrees or better. It's red hot. The molds now, they are hot. They are steaming. | 34:35 |
| Ralph Thompson | You got gas coming off of the molds because of the ingredients you put on the sand to form the mold. Then you got noise because you got metal banging against metal. You got grinding wheels that's running when you're grinding it because this is a complete operation. You got sand coming in the back of the building. You got people making cores. You got people making molds and the castings. You got people grinding those castings. | 35:17 |
| Ralph Thompson | You got furnaces up there where you put them in heat treat. All of this is in one building. To heat treat something, you got to bring it up to 1,800 degrees, although it's in a furnace. If you bring the inside up to 18, you know you're going to get some heat outside. Not a lot, but you're going to get some heat outside. So here's the situation where in the middle of the building, you've got iron being melted at 2,800 degrees. | 35:50 |
| Ralph Thompson | You got these molds out here on the deck and steam and stuff and dust from that. You got people grinding and the particles coming off from the grinding wheel, little particles of iron coming off of that. Although you got goggles on, but that particle will find a way to get in your eye. And then once you get through grinding it, some of it's going back through heat treatment, and all of that's right there together. That is extremely tough. | 36:22 |
| Ralph Thompson | We survived it some kind of way. That is the reason why that the foundry workers and through this council here, we argued and we wanted, through the company granting that, we should be given special treatment because our life expectancy was shorter than a factory worker. So that's why and how for every five years that we spent in a foundry, they give us one year credit. So when I get to 25 years, I got the equivalent of 30 years and I can walk out with full retirement at 25 years. But I'll call it 30 years. | 36:56 |
| Ralph Thompson | The factory worker's life expectancy was longer than mine. That is why and how that came about. Because of that conference right here, we brought up problems and talked about issues that was unique to the foundry. There were things that happened to us that didn't happen to factory workers. That is the reason why they had a council. One of the big things that we got out of it was the 25 and out. That's where it came from, because of the work. | 37:35 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, was the foundry council within UAW organized prior to your participation? | 38:15 |
| Ralph Thompson | Right. The international executive board presidents and Walter Reuther and whatever encouraged somebody to organize these councils. In the International Harvester chain, there was a Harvester council. They would get together. These different plants would get together that's in the Harvester chain and talk about their problems. You talked about yours out of Louisville, Kentucky. Somebody talked about theirs out of Illinois, and somebody talked about theirs out of Canada or whatever. | 38:22 |
| Ralph Thompson | So when you went to negotiate contracts, you kind of put all your eggs in one basket. The foundry was encouraged to do the same thing, and that's how, before my time, it came about. Because I represented the foundry then, I would attend these meetings and, because I attended the meetings and talked to people and things like that, I was elected president. I was elected vice president and then elected president. | 39:00 |
| Ralph Thompson | That's how I got to be president because of my involvement in the foundry. But the council itself was in place way before I got there. | 39:32 |
| Paul Ortiz | So you became president of the Foundry Workers— | 39:40 |
| Ralph Thompson | Council. | 39:44 |
| Paul Ortiz | —Council? | 39:45 |
| Ralph Thompson | I don't have nothing to back this up. I think we represented somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 foundry workers throughout the country and Canada. That was Ford, GM foundries, Caterpillar foundry, International Harvester foundry, John Deere foundry. All of the foundries that are represented by the UAW. Some independent foundries belonged to this council. | 39:49 |
| Ralph Thompson | The membership, after they sent their delegation, this is the executive board there. But after they sent their delegation to the council, we was representing, I was told, somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 people back during this '75 at the peak of this time, see? It was 200,000 people we represented. But don't hold my feet to the fire on that count. | 40:19 |
| Ralph Thompson | This is just conversation. But we would meet in different places, like we met in Montreal, Canada. We met in Milwaukee. We met in Memphis at the Rivermont Hotel. That was the old Rivermont. That's not a hotel anymore, but that was out on the swimming pool there. But we met at the Rivermont. Louisville, Kentucky. We tried to meet wherever there was a foundry represented by UAW. We met here several times. But that was the council. | 40:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, during the '60s and early '70s, what was your family life like? Were you settled down at this point? | 41:46 |
| Ralph Thompson | I was married. It didn't last long. Got a divorce in 1971. Walter Reuther, not because of my divorce, but he saw the problem that union officials had and still have with family. So he developed up in northern Michigan what they call Black Lake. That's like a lodge, and that's where UAW members go. They take their families, and the family get to see what the daddy or the wife, whatever the case may be, what they do as far as union reps are and get the family involved. | 41:57 |
| Ralph Thompson | You spend a week up there, and they got a place for the kids what they call up on the hill. That's a compound up there with college kids that come up every summer and be with the kids. They group them by age, and they don't even be with their family until Wednesday, I think it is. The other time, they swim and do mock negotiations and all kind of things with these college kids while the family is at the main compound doing basically the same thing. | 42:41 |
| Ralph Thompson | Walter's vision was that if the family know what you're doing and how you're doing it and what you're going through and all, the tendency is greater for you to stay together. The other reason why it's way out there—It's, what, a couple hundred miles north of Detroit, almost to the Canada up near Mackinac Island. The other thing is if you're in this environment, then you don't have the temptation to go down on Beale Streets and Bourbon Streets. You know what I'm talking about. | 43:15 |
| Ralph Thompson | You're here. You do what you're supposed to do. It's nothing here but this facility. You can only eat and go to class. At night, the bar open, but the bar isn't open in the daytime. That was his vision to try and keep the families together. Yeah, I got a divorce in 1971. I don't know whether it was the union or what. But you spend a lot of time away from home. If people don't understand that, you get in trouble. Some women stay, and some go. I just happened to have where we didn't make it. | 43:58 |
| Ralph Thompson | But Black Lake, in Walter's lifetime, really what he thought was not necessarily a solution, but would help the family life for the union person, getting you acquainted with negotiations and grievances and what that union rep is going through. That's what that's all about, and that's what it was like. But we had a lot of them. We had a lot of divorces, and I was one of them. But I'm not going to tell you that it was total union-related, but I was real active in the movement. | 44:49 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, during the '60s and '70s, did you see overlaps between your labor activism and civil rights struggles going on? | 45:31 |
| Ralph Thompson | Yeah, because some of that that we experienced in the workplace was happening out in the public. Because we were working, we were making decent salaries, then we could get contributions. We could give out our checks or whatever it is to some of the movements. Some people could take off and participate in the movement. So I could see the overlap. I could see we participated in the elections. | 45:49 |
| Ralph Thompson | We participated. We gave money. Sometime we would go out and give support, as much as we could as working people. We just can't take off indefinitely, but what I consider our fair share. But it overlapped some. | 46:33 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, what was the racial composition of your union local? Did that change over time from the time you started working? | 46:53 |
| Ralph Thompson | Not really. | 47:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | —saying you were outnumbered about three to one? | 0:02 |
| Ralph Thompson | Uh-huh. Yeah. We were outnumbered about three to one and it really didn't change that much. In 1966, International Harvester hired I think more of us, more Black people at one time than I think they've ever hired, but it still—I doubt we might have gone two to one. I doubt it. My strong feeling would be it was basically three to one. | 0:03 |
| Paul Ortiz | What year did the plant close down? | 0:45 |
| Ralph Thompson | The plant actually closed down in 1985. I believe it was June of 1985. | 0:48 |
| Paul Ortiz | At that point, well, I guess what was the peak of employment, Mr. Thompson, at Harvester and then what was the employment when it closed down? | 1:01 |
| Ralph Thompson | I believe the peak was about 1972. Somewhere in there because in that timeframe, they hired somewhere around a thousand people. In 1980, after we had that six-month strike, they began to downsize and lay off. People began to retire, so that's when we started on that downward trend in early '81. We got to a low stage and we stayed there until they made the announcement in '83. Part, late '83. Then they came back. Said they were going to keep it open. They let that ride for a while and then they came back and made the official announcement that they were closing. | 1:10 |
| Ralph Thompson | By 1985, June of '85, they were down. They were gone. The people that worked in the training program and I was one of them, I think it was about six of us in the training program. We stayed around for about two years. So around '87, I think it was December of 1987, is when the company put us on notice saying, "We're going to phase this out." That's the training program, "We're going to phase it out." They were going to give us a notice and I asked the International Union would they consider another project like that? You saw that OJT project thing I was working on. | 2:15 |
| Ralph Thompson | Would they consider something like that? That working with Title III people, dislocated workers and they came in and we got a grant from the state. Matter of fact, the state agreed and asked us, would we do that? Several of us stayed and I stayed for two years, but when we separated from this company, I was on leave of absence and I stayed with the program. But they didn't make me the director. They made a person that they brought on in '85 the director. | 3:07 |
| Ralph Thompson | I worked for two years and after two years, I had an inflamed stomach. I just couldn't take no more because I think that I should have been the director. I retired in 1989 and I could have transferred to Indiana, but I didn't. I didn't want to go up North. I don't like cold weather and the program that I'm talking about is still existing. It's working now as we speak, but they didn't make me the director and I just couldn't take it anymore. | 3:41 |
| Ralph Thompson | I can't take somebody that I was training and helped train, telling me that I don't know what I'm doing. I can't meet people, and I can't do this, and all. I had the opportunity to retire and I retired. If I could have, I would have still been working, but after 30-some years and I still couldn't get to the top. With whatever few credentials I have and you bring somebody on, never worked in this field before. | 4:38 |
| Ralph Thompson | Bring them on and less than two years, you make them the director. Then I got to deal with that. Then if I have to sacrifice, I'd rather sacrifice now and live like I live than to work and hate to go to work. Don't like the people I'm working with and things like that. That's a bad feeling and I don't feel sorry for myself, but I'm just telling you, these are some of the things that I have lived through. | 5:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was that person White, Mr. Thompson? | 6:04 |
| Ralph Thompson | Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Some of the people that's out there, right? All of them out there White now, except one person and I tried my level best to find the letter that I wrote to the International requesting for somebody come down to discuss this with us. The end result is out there as we speak and that's why some of the things that—That's what I kept telling you about. It's not a level playing field. It's not a level playing field as we speak. You see what I'm talking about? | 6:11 |
| Ralph Thompson | You do this. If I made it up, I did a good job since the time you talked to me. What would it take for me to make it? What would it take for me to make it in this environment that I spent so many years honing my skills? What would it take for me to make it? It's just so difficult and that's why and this is definitely off the subject, but that's why listening to the Congress, and the Newt Gingriches, and people like that, it burns me up because you walk in. You can talk a little hate over here and get to the people. | 6:48 |
| Ralph Thompson | People like me get steamrolled over. I paid some dues somewhere and I should have been rewarded, I feel because I paid dues. It ain't something that I'm asking somebody to give me. What should I have done? See? You saw me ask for a job in print, so you can't say, "Well, we didn't know he wanted a job." Because I asked for it in print. There it is and when you see and hear a Black person talk about something, walk around, if you get a chance, and just ask him, "Why did you say that? How did you get to this point?" | 7:36 |
| Ralph Thompson | I will be willing to bet you that person will give you a history, the ups and downs, and all the dues they paid trying to play within the bounds, within the rules to get to the top. We're not asking for no handouts, but I'm saying, if I can't get it with these credentials, then I need civil rights or something to say to the powers to be, "Hey. You just can write this off. Now, if you don't have a position, we're not going to demand you to make a position, but by George, if you've got a position, you ought to have to consider these credentials. You should have to consider these credentials." | 8:20 |
| Ralph Thompson | I'm not the only person that probably been in a situation like that. There probably is a guy out there that could put me to shame. You see where I'm coming from? But if it is, then my question would be, why didn't you hire him? Why didn't you consider him? If you tell me, "Well, you're not qualified, although you got this, you're not qualified." Then tell me what the qualifications are. It's too late for me, but at least I could tell my son, "This is what you got to do." | 9:14 |
| Ralph Thompson | But then it took two lifetimes to get this one lousy job and here's a guy who had less than two years. Never worked in this field before. I sit down and I talked to him. In his first account told him where it was, and how, and all that. They made him and I can see it today. We sitting at the conference table and they kept referring to him, "You sign here and the director signs here, and so-and-so, and all." I can do it and I can remember sitting at the conference table when that was going on. | 9:51 |
| Ralph Thompson | So it's not that I didn't pay dues. It's the same thing in 1995 that it was in 1965 without the signs. The same. This, and the job, and all, that's the equivalent of the machine when I got the tool I told you that kept losing its edge? The tool, the machine changed. The machine changed, so that's what it's like growing up with a Black skin. I'm not about to go over there and jump off no bridge that I'm so disappointed and all that. I did pretty good for a sharecropper's son. | 10:30 |
| Ralph Thompson | This ain't the biggest house in the world. It ain't the worst house in the world. It's not the best house in the world, but it's fairly comfortable and this is where I am. My kids going to be up here because all of my kids got college degrees, so in a sense, I can sit back and laugh, although my retirement would have been more if I had made staff job or if I was still working, I could afford some things, but that wasn't to be. So I took it out on society and say to my kids, "Get your degree. Get your education into something that you can go somewhere and make a living. Start considering working for yourself, doing your own thing. Make your own job." | 11:33 |
| Ralph Thompson | Although, they're not doing it now, but this is the teaching that you hear from me in 1995, and 1980, and '85. All that when they were in college and getting out of high school and all. So you got to make your own way. Don't get caught like your papa did. You spent all these years and I'm still a union guy. I buy American every chance I get. You spent all of your time and then somebody make a decision about you after 30-some years. You don't have no recourse. You see what I'm talking about? | 12:30 |
| Ralph Thompson | So then, I'm saying, "Make your own job and you don't have to worry about 30 years. Yeah, you're going to have gray hair, and worries, and can't sleep at night. So what? Make your own job. Go to school." I got a son right now. He's up for major in the Air Force. He got out of Memphis State. Play no stupid basketball. The coach could care less about you. The coach could care less about you. At least, if horse break his leg, they'll shoot him and take him out of his misery. | 13:07 |
| Ralph Thompson | If a Black kid don't make it in basketball at no university, they throw him to the wolves. They throw him to the wolves and when Georgetown and John Thompson talked about getting those kids education, he was painted in the corner like some monster. See? So that's what it's like being Black, being in a workforce. You say, here's a guy that went to work every day, did his job, got within the system, ran for office, was elected, knew how to politic. Not over there trying to sell some kind of issue, or selling people bad goods, and not standing up for what is right. | 13:40 |
| Ralph Thompson | Did all the things and in the end, did he get a shot at a staff job after asking for one in print? After asking for one? You say, "What do you have to do?" Then you say, "Well, was there anybody else qualified?" I said one thing. "That job where that guy had one year service, don't you think these 20-some years would outweigh one? You tell me that's a level playing field?" Then you say, "Is he bitter?" No. He's not bitter. That's just facts. Would you be talking like this if that had happened to you? | 14:32 |
| Ralph Thompson | You chose to go to school, get an education in whatever you're doing. You chose to do that. Okay, fine. Whatever and the people that talked to you and directed you into that. I'm not criticizing my parents. They told me and channeled me in a direction the best they could. I did a little better than they did. My kids going to do better than I. You see where I'm coming from? But look, it took what? What is that, generations, right? About three for us to start and my grandkids going to be much higher, in my opinion. Smarter in all than I am. | 15:15 |
| Ralph Thompson | That computer they gave, my son sent me, they got a new one. My grandkids can work that thing. You think I can work that? No. I can't work that. They gave me this. I got some more parts coming, but my grandkids can work that thing. They're going to be better than me. They're going to be higher than me. They're going to be out there based on what I'm saying, my son, and daughters, and all saying. They're going to be out there demanding the level playing field. | 15:59 |
| Ralph Thompson | They're going to spend their 30 years—I don't mean to kick the table. They're going to spend their 30 years competing just like I competed in this environment and that's why I tell them, "You got to do it on your own. You got to have your own. You got to do your own job. You got to make your own job. You got to pick a field. You got to make your own way." See, and I tell this story, but I'm not bitter. I'm disappointed because I tried and it didn't work. The end result says, your bank account show it. Zero, zip. See what I'm talking about? | 16:29 |
| Ralph Thompson | But I'll share this story with anybody, see? When you talk about a level playing field and you hear Black people jumping up and down, remember my story. If you don't agree with my story, remember and say, "Well, I heard that before. I don't know whether it's true or not." But just admit to yourself, "I've heard this before." See? We'll get there one of these days, but the things that we've done, we've tried to do, we try to be loyal citizens and all. I volunteered and went into the military. | 17:18 |
| Ralph Thompson | Poor son. I had a cousin. My wife's cousin went to Vietnam. Got shot before he got there good. He wasn't there a week hardly. Shot. Brought him back. Shot up so bad the government said, "One person can view the body and after that nobody else." Then, I hear Newt Gingrich talking about a Bill Clinton and neither one of them didn't go. See, I can't go to Canada and blend in. You can go to Canada and blend in. I can't do that for obvious reasons, see? I can change my name to anything, but when I show up that kills it. | 18:07 |
| Ralph Thompson | When I retired and I went to the senior citizen office. At that time, it was a placement center right there at Beale and 3rd Street next to WREC in that same building over Alfred's. If you ever go down there, remember this. I don't know whether they still in there or not and filled out application. When they saw my application where I had been working OJT, on the job training, negotiating contracts with companies, placing people to work, I got a phone call. But when they discovered who I was, I got another phone call told me, "Who called you and said we had a job?" | 18:53 |
| Ralph Thompson | I said, "Well, I didn't just pick it out of the sky." In my opinion, if I didn't wear this shade, there's no way with my background that I've been sitting down for six years. I would have been offered a job. Like I say, when they saw my background on the application with the senior citizens, they called me and when they discovered who I was, partner, they dropped that like a hot potato. They dropped that like a hot potato. When you talk about MIFA Food bank, I'm bringing you into 1994, and three, and five, and all these years, as far as what it's like being over on this side of the color line. | 19:31 |
| Ralph Thompson | I called MIFA said, "Oh, no. We don't have anything down here you can do and you wouldn't want to work down here anyway." Yes, sir. Now, I probably could. Well, they don't want me to drive the truck and deliver—I don't want to do that anyway. They don't want me to do that because see, I served on the board of directors at United Way of Greater Memphis. At that time, the person that was the chairman, chairperson, that's what she'd want to be. She's over MIFA now and being on the board, I called down there. | 20:30 |
| Ralph Thompson | You would think that she'd say, "Well, let me see." Uh-uh. Didn't get that far, "It's nothing you can do and you wouldn't want to work down here anyway." That was the answer I got. Now see, let me show you how that's work. When you're on the board of directors over at United Way of Greater Memphis, and she was a chairman, and she needed votes, I was a good guy because I could vote in favor of program. Now, she's in a position with MIFA that Memphis Inner Faith whatever. | 21:08 |
| Ralph Thompson | They serve food and take all that food in and all. They don't need me. I'm the wrong kind and you could say, "Wait a minute. Here's a guy that's got a background in a warehouse, International Harvester." I was the guy that received all the steel in '85. Backing up '84, and '83, and all that. Received all the tubing, and the pipe, and the sheet metal, wire mesh, all of that. I was the guy in charge of receiving all of that. You would think with them having that big food bank down there, and all that food, and stuff coming in there. | 21:39 |
| Ralph Thompson | They got to have a warehouse and they got to store it. They got to store it in some kind of way, "Well, you might be able to work out in the warehouse. You might be able to do—Give me a résumé and let me see." You would think, but all of the white-collar jobs went to the white-collar people. See where I'm coming from? So they didn't tell me where is the level playing field. So you tell me on one side that we're going to give food and all. I know the person that need food. Don't want to hear me say that because they want that meal. | 22:21 |
| Ralph Thompson | But then on the other side, with that stupid statement about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, I ain't never understood that, but how do you pull yourself up when you got positions that you don't offer out to that person? See? So I can't be the stadium manager out there at Tim McCarver Stadium for the baseball team, but yet, you can bring in some of the people from out there and work in here. So they got the best of two worlds. They can quit a job out here and get another job over here paying more money under the umbrella of helping what? The poor because you got to keep them poor because you won't have no job if you can't keep me down. | 23:02 |
| Ralph Thompson | So I can't have you in here doing any of this work. I don't care what you can do because you're going to knock somebody out of a job. You retired. Get on out there and sit down somewhere. See, when I went down, like I say, to the senior citizen, that's what they were charged with helping senior citizens and that's what I am, but do you think they would help me? Yeah. They give me a job over in McDonald's, but when they looked at my application and so, "Uh-oh. Wait a minute." But they said when they discovered who I was, and I know I'm repeating myself. They say, "No. We can't have him. We don't have no opening. We don't have no opening." | 23:47 |
| Ralph Thompson | So when you go back and you follow me from the time I was a sharecropper's son. I'm still a sharecropper's son, but when we were working as sharecroppers and all until 1995, it's not a whole lot of different high-tech in 1995, but it's not a whole lot of difference as far as me and the same kind of problems. I am fortunate because I got to retire and I get a retirement check, but what about that guy out there that didn't get to retire? You talk about a level playing field, so we still have a whole lot of problems. | 24:28 |
| Ralph Thompson | Let me tell you something else about life in the workforce, and Black, and stuff like that. You don't know what it is to go in a store and the moment you go in, people start watching you from the time you get in. Security people blend in with the clothes, and whatever else until you walk in, and they come out. They going to come and stand. Move a shirt or something until you move over there. The world's worst and I mean that. Underline the world's worst, go in a Chinese-owned operation, if you really want to be hurt, and embarrassed. Put on my skin and go in. | 25:11 |
| Ralph Thompson | You really want to be hurt? Go in a Chinese grocery store and see how they treat you. I ain't talking about 1964. I'm talking about 1995. See, you don't know what it's like to go in a store and somebody watch you from the time you go in. Seem like, if I went in with this white hair, you'd say, "Well, he done retired from stealing." Seem like they would say, "He's retired from stealing, so we don't have to watch him." Seem like that somewhere down the line they might look at you and say, "He's got an honest face. He look honest." | 26:00 |
| Ralph Thompson | I don't even look honest. What do you do to just walk out and be served? Walk up to a counter. Me and you could walk up to a counter. I could walk up there 15 seconds, minute before you and when they come out, the stock question is going to be, "Who's next?" You can walk up there 15 seconds before me and they won't hesitate to wait on you. You think I'm kidding? We'll go out anywhere you want and I'll guarantee you that'll happen, 1995, today. You want to know what it's like? | 26:35 |
| Ralph Thompson | That's what it's like from back then to right now. That's what it's like. See? I'll tell you what I can do and it's sad, but it's a fact. I could put on a tie and go. They'll treat me a little differently because they'll say, "Hey, he's a preacher." The only time a Black person wear a tie is the preacher. If I put on a tie in the morning—No, no. Not tomorrow, this weekend. Let me put on a tie Tuesday morning and go anywhere. Before the day is out, I'll guarantee you somebody's going to approach me and ask me that stupid question about where are you pastoring? Or Reverend, "What about so-and-so and so-and-so?" | 27:17 |
| Ralph Thompson | That is the way it is, see? That's the way it is. So you got to keep living. I always say, "I ain't going to jump off the bridge." That's the way I say that. I ain't going to jump off the bridge. I'ma keep living. There are stores that I won't go in because of that. The big stores, the Sears, and the Goldsmith's, places like that, I have to tolerate that they watching you. I can tell you, if I go in a store, if they got security cameras, I can tell you where every one is because I might be the only person that feel that way, but I'll look at them. | 28:01 |
| Ralph Thompson | I can't help it. I'll look at them. I'll pick them out in a second and I can't tell whether the camera is on me or not. I might look suspicious by looking at the camera, but these are things that grow with you because you know people are watching you, see? What I try to do, I try not to put myself in a hidden position. If there is a shelf or something and it's blocking me over behind somewhere, whatever it is over there, if I want it, I'll go get me a salesclerk. You don't see me standing over in no corner or nothing because, see, if they come over and they shake you down, whether you're doing it or not, the embarrassment, see? | 28:49 |
| Ralph Thompson | So I don't even put myself in that position, see? So to get around this counter deal on who is next, I try to place myself in a position where unless you Ray Charles and blind that you'll see, I got to be next. I was in Seessel's the other night and there was a White woman in front of me. I had about four items and she looked at me. She said, "That's all you got? You can get in front of me." The clerk was Black. She almost had a heart attack when she saw me get in front because she thought I'd just walked up and got in front of her. | 29:47 |
| Ralph Thompson | She almost had a heart attack. She asked me. I said, "She said, 'Okay.'" "Well, I just didn't want no trouble." You see what I'm talking about? I can understand her feeling. I can understand her feeling, but you see what a difficult life? All I wanted was a loaf of bread and a carton of ice cream. You would say, "Everything is Black and white to you." But just a little simple thing that stands out is she looked at me and saw these items. I think I had four items. She looked at me and she had a basket. | 30:31 |
| Ralph Thompson | She said, "That's all you got?" She said, "Go ahead in front of me." It stirred it up just like that. Just little simple things. I hope when you talk about issues and if you hear something like this again, if I'm the only one, then you say, "That's one in a thousand." But if you hear of something like that and just see how it is. The level playing field and what we're asking. You say, "What do we have to do? What do we have to do?" Personally, I think you got to do it on your own. | 31:14 |
| Ralph Thompson | You got to go out and create your own job of whatever. You can't depend on being treated fairly. You can't wait on that. You'll waste a whole lifetime because the person in charge is going to look out for friends, his friend, her friend, and not on who is qualified. You're going to look out for your friend and unless you have some kind of mechanism in place to guarantee, then you ain't going to get there because I don't have a reason to play fair. Who play fair? See? | 32:00 |
| Ralph Thompson | So how do you get there? So when you talk to me, you talk to me about the labor movement, I was in it. I stayed in it. I'm still in it. I'm the recording secretary. Right now, I'm the recording secretary. 95% of the members are White. Take me back in my first conversation they wouldn't vote for me to save their necks. Now, all of a sudden, we're all old and gray. They know me and they say, "Oh, okay. He can write and at the next meeting he can read the minutes from the last meeting." | 32:51 |
| Ralph Thompson | I didn't come to marry nobody's sister or daughter. I'm just a human being and just look at me as that. If I can't read, then I shouldn't be the recording secretary. If I can't chair a meeting, I shouldn't be the president and that's what you ought to vote for me on or vote against me. Then again, if you don't like me as a human being, that's fine, but don't make that decision soon as you see me. Listen to me, you might not like my politics if I'm running. | 33:40 |
| Ralph Thompson | You might say, "Well, I'm going to vote for my best friend over there because I promised him I'm going to vote for him." That's fine. I don't have no problem with that, but if I come out and I'm running. I present myself. Why don't you consider me? Why can't you consider me? See, those are the things. Like now, they consider me because they found out that, yeah. He can read. Yes, he can. We get communications. Yes, he can get up, and read the communications, and all like that. | 34:15 |
| Ralph Thompson | But when I was in the plant, they couldn't do that. As I told the lady I worked with. She said, "I don't even remember seeing you and you say you've been here 26 years?" We worked in the office together on the tail end. I got to tell you this story and I told her. I said, "You didn't see me because you saw a Black person coming and you blocked it out of your mind. Right off the bat, you just blocked me out of your mind and all." I said, "If you had blocked me out of your mind because of the way I am and the way I act with what you know about me," I said, "that's fine, but you blocked me out and didn't even know me." | 34:53 |
| Ralph Thompson | We had so much in common. She was White. We had so much in common because her mother is old and my daddy at that time was real old. Her mother expected her to do a lot for her and my daddy expected me to do a lot for him, although, we had other sisters and brothers. But we were the one, the chosen one in our respective families. I would say the only difference is, you're talking about your mother and I'm talking about my daddy. If you take all the color and all that away from it, these two human beings the difference was, that was her mother and my daddy. | 35:37 |
| Ralph Thompson | But she'd come in and share with me some of the things her mother had said to her and wanted her to do. I'd come in and share things with her about my daddy. I told her. I said, "Wouldn't it have been something, not for no kind of relationship outside of just being human being, if you had known me and could just sit down sometime and talk like we talk in 19," This must have been '87, no, no. Yeah, '87, "if we could have just talked about life and what you like and don't like. You get up and go to your house. I get up and go home. You ain't trying to come over to my house and I'm not trying to come over to your house. But just as two human beings, if we could have talked like we are now and all." | 36:10 |
| Ralph Thompson | I said, "Because the way the society and the system, you blocked me out. Because I worked in a foundry, you probably were saying," and I said it to her, "you probably were saying, 'Not only is he Black, he's ignorant because he's in the foundry.'" I said, "I was trying to make a living. I was trying to survive." I said, "I had to grit my teeth a lot a days to survive and nature make you want to live. You try to survive. You do a whole lot of things, just like you. You're not going up there and run that stop sign, red light because you're trying to survive. There are certain things you just won't do because you're trying to survive and that's all I'm trying to do." | 37:03 |
| Ralph Thompson | See, but we are put in a position. We're the last hired. We're the first fired. If we even consider talking about some fairness, then the Newt Gingriches and people like that start painting these pictures about giveaways and things like that. Then people that don't know kind of listen to that and don't let them have the slightest problem. Then they say, "Oh, that's my problem. It's these lazy people over here. It's those people over there." So you painted the picture of me that I'm less than a human. | 37:51 |
| Ralph Thompson | I get the hardest job. I still try to survive. I try to respect people. Do all the things that I think is necessary and I still can't get to the top. I still can't get to the top and you got to ask yourself, say, "Just what do I do?" I couldn't make it as a sharecropper because right off the bat, Boyle Investment would not let that man sell the land to my papa. He could go down there and work it every day. Plow, and we could pick, and all that kind of stuff, but they would not sell him the land. | 38:51 |
| Ralph Thompson | Boyle Investment and then I'm painted as some kind of heathen because when old man Boyle died the other day, I didn't feel nothing about that as another human being dying. You see what I'm talking about? You say, "Well, you can't hold that in you." Why can't I hold that? I couldn't make it as a farmer. I couldn't make it in this environment. I went to the Korean—I wasn't in the war, the shooting war, but I'm a Korean Veteran, so you can't say that all my brothers. | 39:35 |
| Ralph Thompson | I got seven brothers. All of them went to the military in World War II, so you can't say we ain't patriotic, but you don't see me running around waving no Taiwan flag. Don't tell me about no flag when you walk around with a foreign flag. You won't even let America make it. You don't make them here, so when you look at us, although you hear us talking and going, "We got the same problem. We got wants, and needs, and desires. We want our kids to have, just like you." | 40:14 |
| Ralph Thompson | But we're painted in a corner that we're something less than a human and I hope if you never see me again, I hope that you'll always remember. Said, "I met a guy that wanted nothing but fairness, just a level playing field and I saw some evidence of what he was saying." Now whether or not if I was put up against another person that had equal. Not even equal, close to this, five, 10 years of experience, I could see that. But when you're put up against a guy who ain't got none and you got 30, then what happened? See, what happened? How do you do that? | 40:55 |
| Ralph Thompson | See, I interviewed. I went to the Holiday Inn over on Brooks Road and interviewed with that guy, but it wasn't good enough. Wrote letters, "It ain't good enough." He said because I put in my résumé about I lectured, "Okay." They said, "No. That's the wrong word." Well, I went over to a high school, junior high school and talked to the class. For two hours, I talked to a class that was working on their master's degree about organized labor. What is that? What would you call that? See what I'm talking about? | 41:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | Right. | 42:19 |
| Ralph Thompson | But I didn't do that, see? That's what I had. Do you see? They said, "Write it over for your letters and stuff. Write it over." They say I didn't do that. Well, I sure did. I lectured to a class of people working on their master's degree and I keep that stuff. That reminds me and if I get a chance. People like you that look at that and say, "Well, maybe he's telling the truth. May be something to this." So you know my life history. | 42:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Thompson, you've been through a lot of struggles throughout your life. What would have been the things that have kept you going through all of it? What are the things that inspired you? | 43:27 |
| Ralph Thompson | I guess when it's happened to you, you tell yourself that you're bigger and stronger than whatever that is. I can't put it no other way and I'll show you. Let me use this. I tell people. I say, "Treat it like a relief pitcher." I said, "If bases are loaded, the best hitter on that team is coming to the bat and you the relief pitcher. You have to bear down. You have to throw your best stuff." That's the way I look at life. When it's tough on me, I have to bear down. The bases are loaded, the best hitter's at the plate, and I have to bear down. I have to bear down. | 43:39 |
| Ralph Thompson | I can't help saying it. I ain't going to jump off the bridge. I have to bear down, so when all of this happened to me, I'm saying, "I'm going to live a long life and I'm going to enjoy my life." I'm talking to you about this. I ain't going to be up in the morning mad at the world and all that. I'm going about my life and when this interview is over I'm going to show you some things to show you that I'm going about my life. That is the way I deal with all my problems. | 44:42 |
| Ralph Thompson | When they get tough and seem like I can't bear it, I just tell myself, "The base is loaded. The best hitter's at the plate. You got to bear down. You got to throw strikes. Now, you ain't got no choice. You got to throw strikes. You got to do your best." That's what I do, when it's all said and done. I came out having no idea. Say, "What are you going to do to get yourself back near your income level that you were making?" The first year, I went to work for the Census Bureau for a short period of time. I started off as an enumerator in my first test and when I went on the payroll, I was a field operation supervisor. I had 10 supervisors and 100 enumerators under me. That's bearing down. On my first test. After that, I drove a school bus. | 45:23 |
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