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Interview with Mit Joyner

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Contributor

Joyner, Mildred (Mit) ; McKiernan, Stephen

Description

Mildred (Mit) Joyner is a pioneer in teaching, research, writing, and community activism. Joyner has served leadership positions in social work professional organization, including the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) and the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW). She is Emerita Director and Professor of Social Work at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. She received her Bachelor of Social Work from Central State University in Wilberforce and her Master of Social Work from Howard University.

Date

ND

Rights

In copyright

Date Modified

2018-03-29

Is Part Of

McKiernan Interviews

Extent

93:12

Transcription

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Mit Joyner
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: Not dated
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(Start of Interview)

MJ (00:00:00):
[inaudible].

SM (00:00:07):
First, I want to take this opportunity and thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer some questions. As a reminder, the reason why I am doing this project is to do oral history interviews of approximately, hopefully, between two and 300 different people. Some people are very well known in history. Some people are not known. But the goal is to try to combine two things with each of these interviews. Number one, the personal experiences of these individuals that I am interviewing, and also as they reflect on the history of this year and the impact of the boomer generation on AmeriCorps in the last 30 years. And I guess the first question I really want to go into is recently, probably the last couple years, we have heard a lot of commentary, a lot of criticism of attacks on the boomer generation, the generation of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, the generation that a lot of people historically linked to the ending of the Vietnam War, the involvement in civil rights, the women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the Native American movement, Latino movement, as many movements as possible. But the criticism is pretty central on the whole generation as to the reasons that the breakdown of America is being blamed on them. So what I am trying to get from each of the interviewees, and that is the first question I want to ask you, what are your thoughts when you hear people who will generalize about the boomer generation as the reason why we have problems in America today, like the breakup of the family, the increase of drugs, a lot of the issues, and they all seem to go right back to the time when boomers were in their youth? And of course, these boomers are categorized as people born between 1946 and 1964. So your thoughts on these generalizations that are oftentimes leveled at a whole generation?

MJ (00:01:51):
Well, basically, generalizations to me are just that, generalizations. I thought that the (19)60s and the (19)70s brought with it its own empowerment and empowerment to do different things. And some of those things were things that people in our society now would classify as negative things. But on the whole, it really was a positive time because it brought about the empowerment of each group feeling good about their own particular culture. And so for the very first time, we were dealing with more of a strength perspective. And I know at that particular time, I was in high school... started school in the (19)50s and then going all the way through college. And it was not until I went to Central State University that I really saw the empowerment of that movement. And sure, we were going through our own, which White says, our own conversion experience. And by that, what White says is that you go through five stages, and there was a negro to black conversion experience where it was a pre-encounter stage where you just did things because people told you how to do them. And then it kind of moved into an encounter stage where you realized that there was no... The equity in our society only existed for a few. And the immersion stage, which I think our race went through collectively from the (19)60s to the (19)70s, was to immerse yourself about and learn about your race. And that was at the exclusion of everything else. And then came out your immersion stage where people were really stronger in our society. And the fourth stage is the internalization stage, where you internalize those good values and throw away those bad values that you learned. And then obviously, the fifth stage is your internalization commitment stage. Well, as a race of people went through this, there were a lot of negative things that occurred during the immersion stage. There was burning of bras, the burning of draft things, drugs, free life and all that. But I think what emerged was a much stronger group of people. So when people say that to me about, "Look what your generation brought," it brought some negative things, but that was necessary in order to move to a stronger group of people. And so everything has a yin and a yang. And so the yin and the yang of that was, yes, it brought about a freer society, but I would rather have freedom than to have the rigid society that we were experiencing before World War II.

SM (00:04:28):
Let me just... [inaudible] the next question. If you were to look at again from your own personal perspective, your own metaphor... A lot of the reasons why we are doing this is everybody has their own metaphor, and not to be pre-judgmental of any person's beliefs. How would you categorize this generation right now in 1997 in terms of its overall impact on America?

MJ (00:04:57):
It is a generation that is trying to find its people, trying to find out what are the values that are collectively right for our nation. I think they are a generation of triers. And with people who have... probably the first group of people who have major obstacles that are outside race, gender, and class, but technology and access to power through money. And so I think they are trying to build a nation that is equal for all people, but there is just so many obstacles that are in young people's ways.

SM (00:05:41):
... thing is when you look at today's boomers, they are the parents of today's college students, the person who works with college student’s day in and day out, and of course you teach students. Do you think, from your own personal experiences, that the boomer parents have really shared the experiences of their youth with today's college students? Because what we see is only 18 percent of today's college students, according to a Chronicle of Higher Education poll who have an interest in politics, we see a low numbers of young people voting. Their parents do not vote. And here it was during that generation that the fight was for the right to vote. What impact are boomers having on today's college students, not just college students because half the people do not go to college, but on today's youth?

MJ (00:06:26):
Again, I can only speak about this from my perspective, but because I am a believer of what people fought in the civil rights movement for us, we are voters in our family, and my kids vote. When it is voting day, my husband and I just say, "It is voting day, and all of you go to the booths and vote. We do not care what you vote." But we ask them a little bit about, the night before, what about the candidates and why they are making the choices that they do. We are a very political family with my husband's job in terms of being on the federal bench. And the only way he was able to get there was through people voting him on the ballot when he was getting on the county bench. So I think in our family system, we have a very political family. And again, I believe that apples do not fall far from the tree. And so I do not know if it is today's boomers who are not teaching kids to go to the ballot box, but I can say in my family, it was very important for my father that I go, and I do not miss a chance, even when it is awful years, and there is really not that much as people say to vote for. And I think I am giving that value to my children, and I would hope that they would carry it on. I think they understand that one vote does count, and we often show them and analyze the next day in the paper of how many people lost the school race just based on the fact that such very few people voted. And we are also trying to teach them the power of the vote, that if they really wanted to run for something, and they were able to get their contemporaries to vote for them, most likely because of the apathy that is in our country right now, that they could probably win the ballot. So we preach that.

SM (00:08:10):
Would you say though, that within your personal experience then, this has been a very important part of your life? You share the experiences to transfer this importance of the vote, being involved as a citizen in this country. But as you look at the students that you teach, your everyday dealings with today's college students, and even your peers who are boomers, are they failing in this area? Not you personally, but are they failing?

MJ (00:08:34):
I think so. I think a lot of people in our society find it too easy to switch about something and not really bring change. Even here in the social work department, we try to teach the value of voting. That is because that is a philosophy that we hold here. So I will say to my students, "Bring back your little voting ticket and show us that you voted, and we will give you a test for that," to encourage people to... And we talk about the platform because social work is made up of those individuals who we have a responsibility to speak for who are powerless. So it is real hard for me to talk about my colleagues because most of my colleagues that are involved... Let me turn this off. Most of my colleagues that are involved with that decision... In social work, we teach voting. And so most of my colleagues are social workers. So most of the time... And it would be interesting to do a study of how many social workers really do vote, but because our job is to, and part of our code of ethics is to, speak out on people who are not able to speak out from themselves due to lack of wealth or what their life circumstance is, the whole profession teaches a commitment of the ballot box. And so being social workers have to be involved because we speak for the poor. I mean, that is part of our code of ethics.

SM (00:09:59):
If you were to describe the youth of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, and I say that we know that within the boomers, which is from (19)46 to (19)64, there is intergenerational differences. Like boomers who were born towards 64 have a hard time, I believe, personally, in terms of relating with those born (19)46, say, to (19)56. Could you give us some characteristics, some adjectives to describe the boomers, the positive qualities of the boomers and some of the negative qualities?

MJ (00:10:29):
Some of the positive ones, qualities of a boomer, is commitment, the ability to move up the system. Most people are doing better than their parents. Materialistic. That can be an asset and a liability. Caring. Instant need for gratification. Again, an asset or a liability. And I guess the one that I really like is that they are transcendent. They have the ability to go beyond what is expected. And so the negatives of that are sometimes they are workaholics or they have some kind of addictive part of their personality due to the needs of to show out and be the best. And I think their transcending character sometimes has caused health problems, really not able to enjoy family the way they wanted to.

SM (00:11:37):
If you look at some of the ideas that young people had in that time... Say for example, picture yourself on a college campus, whether it be a predominantly African American campus or a white campus of the mid to late (19)60s and early (19)70s. There seemed to be a sense of empowerment among young people that we are going to be the change agents for the betterment of society. We are the most unique generation in American history. We are not going to stand for the status quo. There is something wrong in this nation, and we are going to right it. And then as these boomers got older, Vietnam War ended, civil rights is still an ongoing issue, but you did not see the Dr. Kings out there like we used to have. As boomers went into their (19)70s and then into the (19)80s and now into the mid to late (19)90s here, have they kept those ideals or how would you rate this generation?

MJ (00:12:45):
Well, I would give it about a 95. I think most people are successful. They are doing better than they ever thought so. Now, what does better mean? Does better mean they are doing better economically? Yes. Has that caused them to work more and be more self-centered? Yes. Have they changed their vision? Yes. Have they given in to establishment? Yes. I think that the boomers have learned that there are certain things that are status quo and that the way to change the system, what we thought before was just to change that system through not participating or just demanding a change, we now realize that you have to work within the system to get change. So I think their vision has changed. They have become more proactive rather than reactive. And I do not really write a lot of them off because I know a lot of people that I went to Howard University with and Central State University that are tops in their field. And they would have never been able to have that prior to the (19)60s or the (19)70s. But their love for politics is not which we thought it was, but back then, a lot of people did not participate in politics anyway. I mean now they are at least voting. But I mean, I just look at where they have come, and I worry about that for my own children because I do not really think that they will ever have a level of success, this generation, that our generation was privileged to have. And so I feel this generation is going to have to learn how to settle for less. We all have our own homes, two and three cars, several people have summer homes. What happens to this generation? Because I think they kind of bottomed out. I mean, I think that they go back to wanting less. The charge card is starting to own them. And so I worry about that, but I think I would give them a 95.

SM (00:14:46):
When you say 95, though, certainly you are thinking about your metaphor, the people that you know, but it is also a known fact that when Tim Penny was on our campus, he said one of the biggest failures of the boomers was the fact that they do not know how to save, that the average savings account for a 50-year-old is less than $10,000. They may have a home, but they see marriages were late. Kids were raised late. They are putting kids through college up to 60. So we are talking about people that are doing well, but they actually have nothing in the bank. They are like three payments away from being in bankruptcy almost. So we are dealing with a lot of concerns. Now, that is just from a political standpoint, but it is-

MJ (00:15:31):
Again, but that is two cultures that I think clash. That is the culture of my parents who believe that you have to have money in the bank to save. And then there is the culture of the boomers who spend what they get, acquire assets, and can download those assets. So a lot of times savings, because you watch banks just kind of eat up your money and play games with your money... And there is also the need. I said instant gratification is something that I think boomers have. There is a need to go on a vacation rather than to save every penny you have for the next 20 years because a lot of us have watched our parents die at a young age without ever getting the things that they worked for. And so I think you see two cultures that clash a lot, the clash of our parents' culture, who you save things, and you do not have anything until you can pay for it. And then it is this that has learned how to use the market of credit. And it is probably this generation's living longer than our parents' generation because we do not work as hard, or at least at times we work very hard, but we give ourselves the rewards for it. And so that may mean debt for some people, but our generations learned the system of how to pay off a debt, bankruptcy. And that is why you have more debt.

SM (00:16:51):
Would you say that some boomers, like some parents live toward retirement, the World War II generation, they look forward to retirement, that boomers oftentimes may not believe they will even survive to retirement? Do you think there is some perception there?

MJ (00:17:04):
Or they choose not to retire. I think we realize that retirement... A lot of us are workaholics and retirement brings with it some kind of settlement of having to realize that. It also does not give us the dollars to live the lifestyle that you want. And it sure does say that you are not worthy. I mean, in American society, unless you are working, you are really not a worthy person. And there is too much stats to read that Alzheimer's and people forgetfulness and all that occurs once one person retires. So I think there is a fear of retirement, not just because of the economics, but because of the vitality that the boomers always see themselves as.

SM (00:17:45):
Two basic issues are central to the lives of boomers. We know statistically that only about 15 percent of the young people, when they were young in the (19)60s and early (19)70s, were involved in any kind of activism. But I have always been of the perception that even the 85 percent who were not involved were subconsciously affected by that period and may have been late bloomers in terms of getting involved with these kinds of issues in their everyday lives. These two issues, of course, being the Vietnam War and civil rights. Certainly the women's movement and a lot of the movements took place. But when you think of this period, you think of the activism in those two areas. In your own opinion, do you believe that the students on college campuses... Why did the Vietnam War end, in your opinion? Was it because of the protests on college campuses, or was it something else?

MJ (00:18:38):
I think it is because the America was losing, and there was a shame because we were losing. And I think that we felt that for a long period of time that we would have the ability to win that war. And when we realized that there was no way that we could win that war, we pulled out and brought our boys back home. I think the idea of finally coming to terms with the fact that we were losing was brought on by a lot of the protests on college campuses because we realized we were just sending people over there and they were dying for what? And if we were winning, we would have probably had a different feeling about it. But just looking at the many people that I knew that went to Vietnam, for what? It was a country that had had its own way of fighting a war through underground, of which our men had no knowledge about. And we really did not have an understanding of why we were there. So I think that college campuses brought out that, and the citizen who had never sent their child or daughter to the walls of college began to buy into what college students were saying. It is like, show me the money, so to speak. If we are winning, we will stay there. If we are not, then let us pull out. And basically, I think to the existence today, that is how we participate in all of these wars that are throughout the United States. If we can go in and show that we have force and get people to listen to us, we go. If we do not, we will not.

SM (00:20:08):
...you respond to people who will say that... I have interviewed so many people on this project so far that there is diverse opinions. But that we all know who went to war. We all know that the college students were basically getting pardoned out of the war because their parents were rich and they had ways of getting out, whereas the inner city kids, people who were from poor backgrounds, both white and black and all colors could not do that. As one person told me, they were afraid to die. And that is the bottom line. And of course, they were involved in issues like the draft. And when that battle was won, then the whole movement ended. And then another person would say, "Well, really, when body bags kept coming home and middle America saw their sons and daughters dying, when middle America decided it should end, that is when the war really came to an end." So let us not give a lot of credit to these young college students who are basically naive. What are your thoughts on those kinds of diverse opinions?

MJ (00:21:08):
I think the system was set up, and until this day is still set up, for people to go into the armed forces who do not have money. That happens to be people of color or whites who are poor. I mean, the Army, Navy, that is the catch-all for all the people that are poor, a way to get away from your high school. And so it was not a surprise that most people who went to Vietnam were those people who could not afford to go to college. I think, however, that America seeing the body bags come home is sure one of the reasons why the war stopped, but they were body bags of poor people. I do not think, however, that wealthy people were trying to do anything but protect their sons and daughters, and poor people tried to do the same thing. No matter what, you would try. I mean, there were times when mothers were sending their kids to Canada, where parents were trying to get their kids in school. So everybody. I know my brother... You get that number that people got, and you are going to school whether you want to go or not. So everybody. And that to me is just, whether you have money or you do not, you try to protect your own because nobody wants to see their child going off to war. Whereas before, going off to the armed services as an officer was a great thing, and most wealthy people did that. They would go off into Quantico and go to these various little military bases and become an officer. But at that particular time, no matter what you were, and there were a lot of officers who were wealthy, that went off in body bags as well. So I do not think we were as sophisticated to say it was these against those. It just so happened that the bottom got trapped because the system was set up that way.

SM (00:22:59):
How was it when you were a student at Central State as an undergrad, now? Were the students of Central State protesting against the Vietnam War, or was Central State more into the civil rights issues? How was that?

MJ (00:23:13):
It was more the civil rights issues because although a lot of people say politically, a lot of people were not involved in the politics at that time because the church was the backbone of the politics, the African American church. I think what African Americans went through was the violent versus the nonviolent movement. There was the Martin Luther King followers, and then there was the Malcolm X followers. And I mean, had we been sophisticated as we are now, we would have probably known both men contributed a lot, and we did not have to make those choices. But one, the choice that you were in is that if you were a Martin Luther King follower, then you were church-going and you believed in God. But if you were a Malcolm X follower, you were an atheist or you did not believe in God. And really that is where African Americans got more caught up on. Had- Really, that is where African Americans got more caught up on. Had nothing to do with war. It was whether you believed in the violent or the non-violent movement, which I look back on today as a lot of regret. Because I probably would have learned a lot more about the philosophies of Malcolm X, and probably would have backed a lot of them. But because, from your family system, that was seen as something that was way outside, you just did not look at it as seriously. You tried to get into the Martin Luther King. And it was not until Martin Luther King was assassinated that I think African Americans totally went with the philosophy of Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party. And Muslims began to be the thing that everybody saw a little bit more positiveness of, because they really were helping in the community.

SM (00:24:53):
The other issue, of course, is again, you gets right into the issue of civil rights, and the Boomers involvement. Keep in mind, in the summer of (19)64, which was within the Freedom Summer, Boomers, that is the end group of the Boomer generation of (19)60, so 46. We are talking about the oldest person would have been 18.

MJ (00:25:13):
Mm-hmm.

SM (00:25:14):
And of course, most of the people that went down there were already in college, were 19, 20, 21', 22, or in their mid-20s, late-20s.

(00:25:20):
The question I am trying to ask all Boomers, or people involved in this project is, how important were the boomers with respect to the Civil Rights Movement?

MJ (00:25:29):
They were the Civil Rights Movement. If you look at any of the, Eye on the Prize series, you see those young people. NAACP at that particular time was doing a lot of recruiting. And a lot of people were involved in the Mississippi Summer Project, March on Washington, and the Church was giving the backbone of that. And there was a lot of things going on, what group you really wanted to follow. But basically the NAACP, Adam Clayton Powell, all of those individuals, were pulling a lot of people in. And they were young people. They were people in your high schools. NAACP had branches within the high school. And they had these youth organizations where you would participate in the NAACP from a youth perspective. So, it was the young people.

SM (00:26:24):
Critics, who will say that, "Well, wait a minute. The Boomers just latched onto this. They were followers. They were not early leaders." Because in [inaudible] Freedom Summer had already happened. Now the march in Washington was (19)63. The oldest Boomer would have been 17 years old.

MJ (00:26:37):
Mm-hmm.

SM (00:26:38):
You do not buy that argument, then-

MJ (00:26:40):
No.

SM (00:26:40):
...that they were not-

MJ (00:26:44):
No. I think they really were the backbone. And still to this day, I think the Boomers still, I think that is why the Million Man March was so successful, because it was the Boomers reclaiming that time, again, going back. I still see that need to organize, the need to speak out as a collective group that really came out of the March on Washington. That was such an empowering thing to watch, or to listen to, and how to recreate that. And I think that is why the Million Man March was successful. We will see if the March for the Women is just as successful. But if you notice, it is generally, who attended the Million Man March were basically people of color, coming together to speak as a force. I do think it was successful. And again, I have to state that most of these experiences that I am speaking from are from an African American perspective.

SM (00:27:37):
Mm-hmm.

MJ (00:27:37):
And it is very hard for me to look at it from a female perspective, or very hard for me to look at it from a White perspective, which may be different. My experience was not that. I was quite active, even in my own college. And at that particular time, I was not in college, I was in high school. But my father and mother were very active in the movement, and very active in Civil Rights people. We had the coffee klatches in our house. And people would come and talk. And many, many times there were White people that would come to the house. They were friends, and people like that. And voting was talked about in our house. So, I can only talk about it from that perspective. Now, if I was Mit Joyner, and I was a White woman, I do not know how I would be talking about it, or whether it would have been a topic of conversation. I lived in an integrated neighborhood. My father owned his own electrical contracting company and had a lot of problems because he was African American, and owned his own company. And the union did not really want him at first. And then, they wanted him because they wanted to contain him. So, those things were talked about a lot, which brought my transcendence out.

SM (00:28:43):
That is good. Thank you. It is just about the end of this side. Have you changed your opinion at all over the last 25 years, towards the Boomers. When you were young, looked at the Boomer generation, and now you are looking at them in 1997, have you been consistent in your opinions toward them? Or have you changed somewhat?

MJ (00:29:05):
Well, I have changed in terms of some of the workaholic part of a Boomer, the need for work, the need to have more money. I do not think that is as important. I think people that were poor can be very happy. Somewhere, we believe that poor people cannot be happy, but they can be. I believe that the healthcare is more important than what you can give your kids. If you can give your kids yourself versus all of these things that you leave them in a will, probably leaving them yourself is a better asset. So yeah, I have changed. I have changed into not having to worry about everybody, and worrying about myself.

SM (00:29:52):
Yeah. That is a very important commentary.

MJ (00:29:58):
[inaudible] Yeah. Well, just worrying about everybody, to worrying about myself. I think, at that time, the Civil Rights, we worried about our entire race, and moving them along, and making sure that everybody had. African Americans are still member people, that we worry about every member within our family system, and everybody within our extended family, and everybody within our community or on a street. And that can kill you. You have to learn how to worry about yourself, and to acknowledge other people, but people have the right to make choices. And some people are on this path of self-destructiveness, and there is not too much you can do to stop it.

SM (00:30:43):
I want you to respond to this that I mentioned earlier, about a quality that Boomers looked at themselves as, and that is they are the most unique generation in America history.

MJ (00:30:51):
Mm-hmm.

SM (00:30:52):
Now, that is quite a statement.

MJ (00:30:52):
Mm-hmm.

SM (00:30:54):
But a lot of them believe that. Do you think, in your own opinion, that the Boomer generation is the most unique generation in American history?

MJ (00:31:01):
No. No. If I look at it in terms of African Americans, I often look at the slaves that came over from another country, and started us all over again. The strength that it had to take to learn a different language, to learn how to eat different food, to be free, and then be enslaved for no other reason, just because of the color your skin, and to fight to get out of that. I think that, for African Americans, is probably the strongest generation that we have. Because they were people with nothing. And they fought for freedom. When you read the life of Frederick Douglass, and you look at, he was a slave, was not allowed to read, and became a candidate for Vice President of the United States. That just is remarkable to me. Remarkable.

SM (00:31:58):
Okay. I am going to go into another section here. One of the things that I am trying to be involved with this project is the concept of healing. I made many visits to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. I tried to get a grasp and an ambience and a feel for what happened with the wall, which was supposed to be geared toward healing the Vietnam veterans, their families, their loved ones, and certainly trying to help the nation to heal because of those times. But every time I go down there, I see probably a lot of healing, but I see still a lot of tremendous division still, over those who were against the war, the way they were treated when they came home, middle America and how they treated us, and the perception of being baby killers, and all those kinds of things that the media had portrayed against the Vietnam veteran, which was really 3 million people who served in Vietnam. But do you feel, in 1997, irrespective of the wall, which was very important for our generation, for America, that we have healed, that we have healed from those tremendous divisions of that time, those who were for and against the war, the Civil Rights Movement in terms of being out in the streets. A lot of people will say that, part of the problems of the Civil Rights Movement was the riots that developed because of it. No one was ever satisfied with anything. The divisions in America continue today. Again, going right back there, could you concept on how important you feel dealing with the issue of healing is in America, today, on these issues that divided the nation back in the (19)60s and (19)70s?

MJ (00:33:40):
I believe that we heal every time there is a crisis. I think, when you look at America as a family, and we fight amongst ourselves, and there is division amongst ourselves, but I think when you come up against larger issues, I think, America has healed. And I think, in healing, it gives people the right to speak out about the differences. Some are stuck in a phase where they cannot move to the next phase. And what I mean by that is that some will always be upset and always be into a militant stance. But part of healing is accepting that person, and accepting their position, and respecting that. Healing is not wanting everybody to think like me and be like me and not to be upset with me. Healing is being able to accept the difference that is here in our society. And over the war, there are a lot of different opinions about that. There are those that went, those that stayed, those that tried to get out of it. And they all have strong reasons about why they made those choices, back then. And the healing part of that is just accepting that. And I think, the only time when that comes up is, again, for political reasons. And so therefore, I throw that out. But I think, on a whole, we know that there were draft dodgers. And I do not have any problems with them. And I also know I have friends that went over there and fought, and I have no problems with that. It was a time for people to make choices and to live up to whatever those consequences brought. And so, I think we have lived up to that. And every time I see a natural catastrophe, when we had the Gulf War, I saw a more cohesive group, that I have seen before.

SM (00:35:46):
I am going to give you a scenario, and experience the follow-up to this question.

MJ (00:35:47):
Mm-hmm.

SM (00:35:47):
And that is, about five years ago, we took students to Washington, a small group of our Westchester students. And we had a chance to meet Senator Muskie. And I did not realize he had just gotten out of the hospital, and he was not feeling that great. But halfway through our two-hour conversation with him, we started talking about 1968 and the convention, and so forth. And as a Boomer, I had to reveal something that I did not really want to reveal, but I wanted to. And that is that a lot of Boomers, including myself, have a problem with authority. Wherever I have worked, it is not that you do not respect the people you work for, but there is a lack of trust in anybody in positions of power and responsibility. And I know many other Boomers that have gone on to be very successful in life, but still have that quality within them, no matter where they have gone, because of what was transpiring during that timeframe. And what I was trying to get at was, to have him respond to our students about his feelings about the division of American in 1968. And when I asked him the question and gave him the description of some of the lack of trust that I still had, he did not respond immediately. Tears came to his eyes. He reflected. And then, he said, "We have not healed as a nation since the Civil War."

MJ (00:37:05):
Mm-hmm.

SM (00:37:07):
And I thought he was going to talk about Vietnam, and what he ended up doing here. That made me think. This is one of the main reasons why I am working on this project is, he said, "The Civil War generation went to their graves with bitterness toward the other side, despite all the Civil War ceremonies toward healing, between north and south. The hundreds of thousands who died, the families, the generations of families who were never to be raised, almost an entire generation of men wiped out. For what?" And the thing is, what he was saying was that, I thought he was referring, and of course, I never really was able to go back to ask because he had died. But the question is, was he referring to the fact that this generation, the Boomers, are facing the same trauma that the Civil War generation, that they are going to be going to their graves with still these inner, whether it be subconscious or conscious, bitterness toward people who were different than them, who had different ideas, no efforts being made to bring people together to try to understand each other more, because the times were tough times. Your thoughts on Senator Muskie's thoughts there, about the Civil War, and the generation of the Vietnam War, and should we, as a generation, we cannot heal everyone within a generation of 60 plus million, but should efforts be made to try to bring people together toward a better understanding of those times, so that what Senator Muskie was saying about the Civil War people going to their grave with this bitterness and hatred, and then transferring that to their sons and daughters, just your thoughts on that.

MJ (00:38:39):
Well, first of all, when I say America has healed, I meant it in terms of looking at it from a war perspective. I think America is really divided around race and culture. And I think and feel that, again, being African American, a lot of it is because people want you to forget your history. And whether or not retribution bills need to be paid or whatever, perhaps maybe that same public apology to African Americans for bringing them over here as slaves and keeping them enslaved for so long, is something that our nation needs to do, or at least to look at, to address. Because I do believe that most African Americans feel as though the system is really against them, or that there is some unknown thing holding them back. Had we been brought over here, even as indentured slaves, and allowed to work that off, as some of our ancestors were, we would have the old money. And we would be far along where we are today. We would be able to help our own kids in our own cities. And I think there is a lot of anger about that. And it is because America is so inconsistent. And it is still inconsistent in the way it punishes people. There are more African Americans every day placed in jails. And it is so blatant. And so, there is a lot of anger as it relates to race. Because no matter how wealthy I become, I will still be African American, and my kids may be driving a car, and the police officers pull them off because they think they do not have the right to drive the car because they are a person of color. I still have to teach my kids, in 1997, survival techniques of being an African American. And it should not be that way. And when you say that to White America, they feel as though it is untrue. People have dismissed that. "Oh, that is not true," or, "You do not really need to do that." And they think that, "Oh. We do not treat people like that." So, that anger is still there. And as it relates to the Civil War, the only thing that I feel about that is that White America often states in history classes that there has been no war fought in America. And so you ask, "What is the Civil War?" But I have problems with individuals who feel as though the south is all bad, but it is not. There are many, many good people. But I think the Confederate flag issue, and a lot of other issues, that to me, poke fun at people of color. We have not yet really talked about why a Confederate flag sends chills up and down my spot. And yet, I know often people feel as though that was their first flag, and they should fly it for other reasons. It should not always invoke the issues. But there is a little isms in it. And we have to come to understand that. And still, when you read in 1997 that there are places in the South, that just recently I read about, that has two principals, a White principal and a Black principal. There is still a lot of stuff divided on race. And it may make people uncomfortable. It may make people have to look at themselves. But until we start talking about the real race issues in America, I do not ever think we can move forward in that. And that is kind of a doom-er. But teaching race relations, that is the one beautiful thing I love about my course, is just to go over history again, and get people to see this history in a template, almost like when you look at the body, you put the blood on top. And [inaudible] you put the four cultures on top, and look at where they were, I understand why White Anglo-Saxon Protestants did what they did. Because they came from England and they wanted to create a system for themselves where they were not placed in a class system. They wanted to be able to have entrance into every level. And if you worked hard, you should move up. And the more money you have, you moved up. I understand that. But they did that at the expense of other people. And they exclude other people out. They have to also recognize that.

SM (00:42:50):
Could you talk about the generation gap? One of the things that was very common, one of the terms of that period, was that there was a generation gap between the Boomers and World War II generation.

MJ (00:43:02):
Mm-hmm.

SM (00:43:03):
And of course, I am certain there is generation gaps in every generation, in between Boomers and Generation Xers, today. Can you reflect on your own metaphor, your life back then, the differences between the generations, the generation gap? And then comment today on boomers and their kids.

MJ (00:43:21):
Yeah. I think my parents' generation was more of the depreciated character. You just did things because that is the way it was. And they did not question as much. Not to say that was wrong. That was their own survival technique. And they were all coming over. And the (19)50s were the first generation after Brown versus Board of Education, that was allowing integration. that was a win-win for them. We questioned that. "Why cannot we go into every store? Why cannot we sit in every movie seat?" They were in the movies. I am not saying that that was wrong, but I think our generation just tended to question more, and to push the system, and to try to get the system into a little bit more social consistency, and throw out a lot of the injustices that you could see. Why is it that we all have to wash the floors? "I do not want to wash floors. Why cannot I go to college?" All of those questions. I think we just questioned on top of it, and the gap really was a generation of people that, even when they were ill, they kept it to themselves. And that was my father and mother's generation. No matter whatever happened, or how dismayed they were with anybody, they kept it to themselves. Whereas our generation was one who would tell everybody. And that was, to me, the gap. Where I see kids today is, they tell everyone, but it is probably, and again, this is a Boomer quote, this is probably my kids would kill, with a lack of respect, or at least what I see as a lack of respect. I see this generation having no problems telling anybody anything that is on their mind, even at the expense of that other person not being heard. Now, history will obviously play that out, and I will not be here to be able to read it. But I just think the scary part about this group that is graduating right now is, it is reverence sometimes for tradition. Now, that may be good. But...

SM (00:45:48):
Is that what a lot of the Boomers were doing, though?

MJ (00:45:52):
Yeah. Well, yeah, that is why I say-

SM (00:45:53):
They were against the IBM mentality, the lookalike.

MJ (00:45:57):
It may well be good. No. That is not what the Boomers were doing. Because, yeah, we had a no reverence, but we realized that you had to get within that system. This group really feels as though they can do anything independent of a system. Now, perhaps they can. But I also see this group as one that financially has a lot to lose. We raised our kids in a way that they have their own rooms. A lot of them drive their own cars. A lot of them have no idea how to survive without anything. And that is the scary thing. We had less. We came from poor families. We knew how to cook bean soup, and eat that all week. Some people knew how to, you do not have any money to pay the rent, so this is what you pay first. We had all of that. You learned something from being poor. This generation does not have that experience. They are maxing themselves out on credit cards, whereas we have credit cards, but we also know you can only go up to this debt. Whereas this group, I look at the college students and my own kids, that max out on credit cards before they had their first job. We never had a credit card.

SM (00:47:20):
[inaudible] have a credit card, then.

MJ (00:47:20):
Yeah. Now, you have Visa, Master Charge. These kids go to Cancun for spring breaks, and all these places. What is going to happen when the Dow Jones hits bottom? Are they going to be able to survive? These kids want, not Hondas, they want BMWs at an early age. That is where I see the irreverence of the institution, so to speak. They do not really realize, and I do not know if it is going to have negative ramifications, but they do not know how to do without less. And I think that is why a lot of people are delaying marriage. I think our kids are coming back- That is why a lot of people are delaying marriage. I think our kids are coming back home because it is more safe with mom and dad than it is to go into a relationship with someone else. A lot of these kids have big homes with their own bedrooms and every kind of contraption known demand. Why give that up and start over?

SM (00:48:25):
I want to get into this whole... Since you are really talking about today's young people, hopefully this project is also going to be read by a lot of young people because I want them to understand the parents and the people and the era where their parents came from. The passion. I have a passion for certain issues, and I will go to my grave for this passion. A lot of it was because of the era that I came from, my life experiences. I know you are the same way then. You have passions for certain things. I do not see the passion amongst the young people. I cannot generalize amongst all because there are some that have passion for things. But when they see something wrong, I get a sense that I am not sure how many people want to right it in today's young generation, and I am really concerned about that. I want your thoughts in terms of-of that era and why maybe the parents did not somehow instill this in their young kids that there are certain things that are still wrong with America and this is a generational, after generation, and we have got to get it right. We have got to do better. How people approach it might be different, but still we got a long way to go. And I am not sure if I see that. I am almost seeing, what is the term I want to use, not flashback. What is the term... I do not know if they are really listening and I do not know if they want to listen.

MJ (00:49:47):
I think this generation's passion is money. I think this generation wants to be in that 2 percent of the population that controls 90 percent of the wealth, and that is by any means necessary. I see this generation as having a passion, but they do not share it with one another because if I share it with somebody else they may get the wealth and I do not. I think everyone is driven in that area. Does the boomer generation try to talk about that? No, because the boomer generation was caught up in that too, with gaining assets. Maybe not to the degree that this generation has that, but the boomer generation, we were all wanting to have our own house, our own car. And we have that now, but now when you look at houses that are being built, they are being built with $425,000 price tags on them. Something is wrong there. When a house that may have cost 20 years ago, 100 to 200,000 is now moving up to four and $600,000. And these young people, and again, I cannot look at this as wrong because when I ride around these neighborhoods, I see young people moving into these homes. And maybe I just have not figured out how they got there, but I think that it is by any means necessary. And I honestly think that there are a lot more people in organized crime from the white-collar perspective than there ever has been in before. When you talk about mafia and things like that, I think there is more of that now than there was earlier years. I just think we have a lot of young people who go to med school who realize, ah, to be a doctor you got to work real hard to make a lot of money, but I do have access to a few dollars and I can get some illegal drugs and sell them to a group of people. And so I think you have a lack of values in that upper class of people than you have ever had before. And that is scary to me because people got into drugs before because they were depressed, cannot have this, cannot have that. But now people are getting into drugs to make a whole lot of money. I think drugs will perhaps ultimately kill this society.

SM (00:52:16):
What is the lasting legacy of the boomer generation? I know it might be a little bit early, but as you see it right now, is there a lasting legacy?

MJ (00:52:25):
Drugs. Drugs is probably one of them. I always watch that movie Panther. We really should have worked harder to keep drugs out of this society. It is killing everyone. In a positive way, however I think it is our drive and our ability to see our wrongs, to go back and say... Everybody was so into drugs at that particular time but people are not into them like that now to that degree, because they realized how much it really killed off a group of people. I think there is not a boomer around that does not know somebody that just has not died of an overdose. And yet we are also driven people and we can right some of those wrongs. I think we have a time to right those wrongs.

SM (00:53:17):
I think it is too early still to be talking about the boomers and their legacy?

MJ (00:53:20):
Yeah.

SM (00:53:20):
Because President Clinton obviously is 50. Joe Galloway said, again, I interviewed him back in November. He is a Vietnam veteran. And he said that... I asked the same thing. Oh, 50, we still got from 50 to 65, you still got plenty of time. He said, "No, when you hit 50 you know you are on your, not your downward trend, but you know that your time is not going to last a whole lot longer. And that is hard for boomers to realize that they are getting older.

MJ (00:53:52):
Oh, I think there is nothing truer been written. I think boomers have... When we go to 50 year old parties, people try to legitimize that 50 is not old. Yet, I remember looking at my parents when they turned 50, and my God, they are old. I think boomers fear dying. And maybe that is probably one of the things that has made our group so risqué because we never really realized the fact that we can die. And we are not a very religious group of people if you look at us collectively, because most people went against their philosophies of their church because it was part of the establishment.

SM (00:54:30):
Right.

MJ (00:54:30):
And I think there is a scare of that, of trying to go out and get that right. More boomers are returning back to church and trying to get their kids involved in church. And when you look at some of the dresses and clothes that we wear, I do think that we are afraid to come to that old thing that we are not going to be here forever. I think a lot of people try to feel that they are just in the middle phase of their life, but in reality, they are at the end of their life when you are watching your friends die. And you watch people come down with illnesses that you never thought could happen to your friends. And it brings a fear, I think, of the boomer. I think that is why spirituality is returning to be in fashion in the United States is because we were such a great group to say, we do not need that. We can survive on our own. And realizing that we have not paid attention to that. Our generation is almost running back to church in droves. And that is why the churches are becoming so economically solvent and they are building so many churches nowadays is because these people who had wealth, who worked real hard every day are now sick or getting sick and realize they had not paid that much attention to their spiritual side of themselves.

SM (00:55:52):
What I am going to do here is... This is a question dealing with the concept of activism. A lot of the people in the boomer generation were activists in their lives. And do you see any activism at all within today's young people or generation X-ers?

MJ (00:56:16):
Yeah. Again, you have to take the activism and say what it is. I see the volunteer rate here in America is higher than it has ever been. Activism on school boards, activism on women's healthcare issues there. There is so much activism in the United States, but everybody does it within whatever areas that they are experiencing needs to be corrected. If you put those things together collectively, you would probably be a powerful unit. But I do see a lot of activism. The reason why I think we do not see it in a collective way is because most women and men are working today. You do not have that much time to do it and get the fanfare for it, but you are being active within your company or your workplace and your school, and that is about it. Or active within your church. Before, when mothers could stay home and involve themselves into some particular project that is completely different. But with the workforce now, with almost most women working it has changed to be activism in a different way. I think right now women are trying to learn how, or at least a woman's issue, how to be like men, when far too often we want men to be like us. But women are dying now of heart attacks and that is because they are coming to work and they have a great big job to do with all the pressures and they go home and have a family to run with all the pressures and we just do not know how to relax, and we are not used to anybody taking care of us. And so women are trying to actively learn how to be different and go home and have a dirtier house or go home and have somebody take care of their house. Some women find it very difficult to hire a housekeeper, because this is my house and I should be doing that, yet they are not there.

SM (00:58:24):
I got a lot of questions. We will go over this one toward the very end. I want to get back to this issue of trust because I think it is really a major issue in America today. I think it is one of the central issues about not only this current generation, but the generation of boomers, is we know because the media has told us, and we live the fact that we do not trust elected leaders because of the experiences of Watergate, the Vietnam War, the McNamara's of the world and Johnson, and how we originally got into the war in Vietnam. Elected officials not being honest with the American public. We are even seeing some semblance of it today in Washington DC because the media is portraying all these money issues dealing with campaign funds, so forth. Everybody is trying to protect their own back. And these are elected leaders. And really nobody in a position of power responsibility, whether it be a minister, a CEO of a corporation, a university president, a politician, congressman, senator, anybody in a position of power and authority is looked about with a lot of trust. And this came about from the (19)60s and the (19)70s and I think it is a lasting quality that is inherent in many boomers. And it is not just something I feel myself, but then I also know that if you cannot trust how can you succeed in life? I would like your thoughts on the issue of trust today, because you even mentioned in your conversation that many African Americans, young people, and boomers do not trust because of the way they were treated since slavery.

MJ (01:00:11):
Well, again, it goes back to one of my little pet peeves or theories is that with social injustice and social inconsistency causes personal impotence. And by that what I mean is that malls are so inconsistent, we treat people differently and it makes us not be able to react one way or the other. Well, I firmly believe that Americans need to know about one's whole self is unrealistic. There are people in our government that have made mistakes. Now, if we could just apply that and treat everybody the same. I think we are into the business of being into people's personal lives, and we have not learned how to separate out one's personal self and one's professional self. The standards of the professional self is what is important to me and the values of one's professional self. I could care less what you do within your own household. And as we struggled with civil rights and equality of all people, we took that not only regarding the professional self but also the personal self. And I think America is very unrealistic of what we ask for our leaders. I think we do not have enough respect for our own president. And I think we forget to place things on a timeline. I do not believe in sexual harassment, but I realize it was something that happened years ago. I am not going to hold people accountable 20 years ago for some mistakes that they may have made in that area. We are at a different place and we are starting to let politics dictate our common sense. And it is not so much politics or what is right for the country it is just to win a race. And I find both parties as guilty of it, Democrats as well as Republicans, but this mudslinging that we have started to participate as a nation is beginning to destroy us. And I also think that Americans need to know everything about everyone or we are in trouble. And so when you look at things like Watergate, it happened, it is over and we need to move on. Now was Watergate, right? No, because I think it was somebody was trying to manipulate something, so, no, it was not right. In business it is not right. But we as a nation need to move on and we have to put our trust back. How do you gain trust again? Well, you gain trust by looking at a person's public record, not their private record. And I think a lot of decisions are being made over people's private records, not their public ones.

SM (01:03:19):
I am going to list some names of some individuals that were well known during the (19)60s. And if you could just give a few adjectives or just some thoughts on these individuals from your own personal perspective and secondly how you might feel the boomer generation as a whole, both Black and White might feel toward these people then and now. Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden.

MJ (01:03:41):
Revolutionaries. And I am not going to say revolutionaries that sold out. Just revolutionaries and they were made icons because of their celebrity status.

SM (01:03:56):
How about Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin?

MJ (01:03:59):
Risk takers. One who really wanted the establishment to listen to another perspective.

SM (01:04:10):
How about Dr. Benjamin Spock?

MJ (01:04:17):
White values. I think he wanted all of us to be raised the same way and came out with an epistle of how to raise a family. If you did not fit in that box you were abnormal.

SM (01:04:28):
How about the Berrigan Brothers, Catholic priests?

MJ (01:04:33):
The same thing. Catholicism, a box.

SM (01:04:40):
Some of the elected leaders of that period. And then we will start with some of the presidents, John Kennedy.

MJ (01:04:49):
Person who had vision. Had a lot of, as far as a man was seen as a man with a personal side to himself that came from his family system, but I think was there for the good of the nation.

SM (01:05:05):
Lyndon Johnson.

MJ (01:05:07):
Good of the nation. Texan, southern person. Good of the nation from the old boys’ network, but the good of the nation.

SM (01:05:16):
Richard Nixon.

MJ (01:05:18):
Good of the nation. A man who saw it from a very conservative vantage point. Probably would not be a person that I would ever thought about voting for or voting for now, but I think he had a vision for the nation that he thought was important.

SM (01:05:40):
Now, when you were young, did you dislike Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson because of the Vietnam War?

MJ (01:05:48):
No. My parents were democratic, so I usually did the old parochial thing. And you followed the Democrats and not the Republicans. No. I saw Lyndon Johnson as actually someone who probably would not have done it, but actually actualized what Kennedy wanted to do. He was the one that finished off a lot of things. Did he do it for politics? I do not know. But he is the one that made the civil rights movement where it is. It was not JFK. JFK talked about it, but due to his assassination was not able to complete a lot of his tasks. And Lyndon Johnson did do that.

SM (01:06:29):
I guess, Gerald Ford.

MJ (01:06:31):
I saw Gerald Ford as probably the common man coming to office, which I thought was positive.

SM (01:06:38):
George Wallace.

MJ (01:06:39):
Could not stand him. Only because of how history painted him as just being so anti-African American. And yes, he did change and he did contribute and people view him different. Just a southerner who I would never trust.

SM (01:06:59):
How about Ralph Nader?

MJ (01:07:02):
Good person who challenges even those that are in power. Probably can only do that from a White man perspective. If he was a person of color I do not know if Ralph Nader would have lived to be as old as he is today.

SM (01:07:16):
He is still doing it too.

MJ (01:07:17):
Yeah.

SM (01:07:18):
Still lives in an apartment in Washington. He has only two shirts, washes them, and I cannot figure out how the guy lives. Getting into some of the African American leaders at the time, of course, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

MJ (01:07:31):
Religious man who fell into becoming a leader of the Civil Rights movement. Really, when you read the history of Vernon Johns, the person that was at the church before Martin Luther King, he was really the one that was really outlandish. It was just that Martin Luther King was one that people thought that they could work with and he was more the middle of the road person and then moved out. And yes, did bring a lot of people into the movement, but Vernon Johns was actually the civil rights leader, but it was not palatable to people.

SM (01:08:06):
How about Malcolm X.

MJ (01:08:08):
I saw Malcolm X now as probably one of the greatest leaders of all time. It was unfortunate that that movement did not, or Jewish people had such a negative connotation of him. But I also look at his family system and what happened to him in terms of how he was raised and see him as... Really, if we had followed the philosophies of Dr. Martin Luther King, perhaps African Americans would not be as dependent on the government as it is today.

SM (01:08:41):
How about some of the Black Panthers of that period. Huey Long and...

MJ (01:08:46):
You mean Newton?

SM (01:08:47):
Not Huey Long, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver.

MJ (01:08:53):
These were, again, young people who fell into a movement. Actually, the Black Panthers had a nice thing going in terms of they were running schools for children. They were doing a lot of things for African Americans, and they were giving African Americans a pride within themselves and it was unfortunate that it all got swept away in a battle with police officers. I do not even think that they were Black Panthers, the way people look at them, they were just another extension of the Muslim movement to me, but they did not want to be Muslims who were going to fight for, by any means necessary, the rights of their people.

SM (01:09:38):
Timothy Leary.

MJ (01:09:41):
I really cannot speak of him.

SM (01:09:44):
He was a drug guru. A couple of names, Barry Goldwater.

MJ (01:09:48):
Well, that is the reason why I cannot speak of him because drugs, I just have such a thing.

SM (01:09:52):
Right.

MJ (01:09:55):
Barry Goldwater, establishment, keep the power even at the expense of others. And I get that mostly because of how he has settled or went after the lands that Native Americans have lived on. There is just a need to have the wealth.

SM (01:10:11):
Muhammad Ali.

MJ (01:10:13):
Oh, wow. A man that changed America, who made you laugh. When I think of Muhammad Ali, I think of his, not so much of his religious belief or his not going into war, but his ability to poke fun at himself and others and to gain acceptance to almost everything. Having his own beliefs and still to this day fighting Parkinson's disease. You see this man who is fighting it in such a way that no other person has ever done that. He takes every strength to walk, and yet he is walking. I see him as just a very strong and powerful leader.

SM (01:10:57):
I think he just turned 50, did not he?

MJ (01:10:58):
I do not know how old he is.

SM (01:11:00):
He might be 50. He has got be a little over 50 because... Well, anyways. And Spiro Agnew.

MJ (01:11:05):
Oh. Nolo contendere. That is what I think of him. When I explain nolo contendere, I do not know, but if I was, I did not know. And that is how I see him. I often equate the office of Vice President as a nolo contendere job because we really do not use that office the way I think it could be used.

SM (01:11:34):
Well, he certainly brought the campus up to a rage, sure had that ability. Gloria Steinem and some of the women of the Women's Movement.

MJ (01:11:44):
As a woman of color, I just have not really had that much time to be involved in the Women's Movement because you can only have one movement that you are involved in. But Gloria Steinem I think is one that has brought White women to caring about others, as well as looking at White women and how... as well as looking at white women and how oppressed they really were. So she has helped release those shackles.

SM (01:12:09):
It falls under the same category as Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug and even Shirley Chisholm. They were all of that era.

MJ (01:12:17):
And Barbara Jordan, all of them. Yeah.

SM (01:12:18):
Right.

MJ (01:12:19):
Yeah. They were all women who went up against the odds. And so for that, she has got an acolyte in my land.

SM (01:12:28):
Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago?

MJ (01:12:31):
I found he was very racist, I mean, beyond the political machine. I think covert racism is just as, and perhaps more mind-boggling than overt racism. And I feel as though that is how that political machine worked, and it caused a lot of people who... That was the beginning of Cabrini-Greens and all of these blasted welfare apartments that they made, which they called projects, and they put people in there and could care less about them. And that probably is one of the downfalls of our nation because if we had integrated and infused all of these different people, we probably would not have the biggest welfare problem we have today. But we just put all of them in there and let them live on top of each other, kill each other, do whatever as long as it did not bother anybody else. And so Chicago, it has been one of the main places for that.

SM (01:13:24):
How about Robert McNamara?

MJ (01:13:27):
Do not have much to say.

SM (01:13:31):
The musicians of the era, Jimi Hendrix, Janice Joplin, the Beatles, Elvis Presley, all those musicians, it is the Motown sound, all the music of that period.

MJ (01:13:43):
All right. Collectively, when I hear of Jimi Hendrix, I think of drugs. Or I think of Janice Joplin, I think of drugs. So I see it as a lot of drugs involved there. When I think of Motown, however, I think of it completely different. I think of it as exploitation. When I think of Billie Holiday, I think of her as involved in drugs only because she could sing at any place in Harlem and yet could not walk in the front door if she was not singing. So I see a lot of their downfall, the taking drugs, for just trying to deal with the entertainment field. I see it as exploitation because most of those Motown people who have survived, really acquired their wealth in the late (19)70s and (19)80s, really (19)80s and (19)90s. But when you look at way back then, all of them were being used by someone. And they were all involved in a meat-shop-type thing where the people who owned the laborers made the money. I think the music was great. I guess, of the drug person that I loved the music of the most, and think it fits the time, was Marvin Gaye. I think he had such a great political instinct on so many things. When you listen to his records, they are just... You can play him today, and he-

SM (01:15:11):
Yeah. What is Going On is a classic.

MJ (01:15:13):
And Mother... I mean, all of them. He really talked about this... He took the moment of the time, and I really think he was a genius, and really talked about them and the pain that lots of groups of people were coming from.

SM (01:15:27):
And he was criticized for doing that too.

MJ (01:15:28):
Yeah. Oh yeah.

SM (01:15:29):
"You are not going to sell any records doing that."

MJ (01:15:31):
Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, his What is... And I remember going to sleep on Marvin Gaye records, just listening to What is Going On. He dealt with the sexual revolution through Sexual Healing, and that is why we were all into sex. I mean, it is just all of those things. And he was probably the one... Elvis Presley, I could not stand, and a lot because I do not know if it was a rumor or whatever, but I remembered he always said, "Only colored folks could do for him was buy his records." And so there was a lot of division.

SM (01:15:59):
He said that?

MJ (01:15:59):
Yeah.

SM (01:15:59):
Oh wow.

MJ (01:16:02):
I do not know if it was true. I do not know if it was true. It was a rumor that spread throughout the African American community.

SM (01:16:07):
Okay, wow.

MJ (01:16:07):
I also know that he ripped off a lot of African Americans in terms of their music. I mean, and that had nothing to do with him. It had a lot to do with that white America would not listen to Black music. And so Elvis Presley would go and listen to that music and then make money off of it.

SM (01:16:23):
The last one I have here is Dwight Eisenhower because he was when a lot of boomers were a little younger.

MJ (01:16:29):
Dwight Eisenhower? Only because I know the Eisenhowers... I think he came out of the war, and we made him a hero. I do not know if he was primed to be president. And so I think he fell into this great political power based on the fact that he was a good general. And I do not think he made such a great president.

SM (01:16:53):
Woodward and Bernstein, the two reporters that...

MJ (01:16:56):
Courageous. I do not think they realized... Because I lived in Washington around that time. I do not think they realized what they stumbled on to. I always just look at them almost like the OJ Simpson trial. If that had happened now, would they maximize their potential? I would hope not. I hope they would still do the same thing, just write the story as it was told and not worry about who they could sell it to.

SM (01:17:24):
How did the youth of the (19)60s and early (19)70s change your life?

MJ (01:17:27):
The youth of (19)60s and early...

SM (01:17:30):
In attitudes that you have?

MJ (01:17:31):
First off, I grew up in Westchester, Kennett Square, Westchester. So I went to school in Catholic school and public school. And there were not that many African-Americans here. So I grew up in a white environment, probably knew a lot more about Italian and Irish culture than I did my own. My parents gave us, as a gift in our junior year, a trip. And because I was the youngest one, I decided to do the furthest thing. My sister went to Canada. My brother went to New Mexico, and I chose to travel Europe for the summer when I was 16. I turned 16 in Venice, which was really great because I got to come back on the ship that brought over all the student exchanges. And they picked me to be on a lot of panels because it was the ugly American at that time. And most people, most Europeans did not like Americans, which was new to me because here in America, most African Americans wanted to be a white American. Well, white Americans were not accepted, and I was placed in power on that ship because they wanted to know, Europeans wanted to know about my experience of being an African American here in this country, which now thinking back, might have probably been some of my first stance on race relations. And so I remember getting on that ship and being asked to participate in this panel about being an African American, being colored in the United States, and what did it have? And the reason why it had a lot of problems for me was because before I left to go on that trip, I wanted to go academic course. And at Bishop Shanahan High School, the ninth grade was a generic grade, and then you could go academic, commercial, or scientific. One was for the math and science, which was scientific. Academic was for those and wanted to go to college but not in the math and science area. And commercial was those who wanted to be a secretary. And the nun would not approve my schedule for academic. Now, I had been involved in cheerleading, and I just really had power at Bishop Shanahan High School. But when it came time to pick my courses, the nun stated, because my father owned a course, I mean a company, that the best course for me to track would be commercial because it is best for me to get a job and go work for my father in a secretarial slot. Now the nun did not know my father fired me when I was 12 years old because I did not come to work appropriately. So I had thought in my head I never would be able to work for him and never did. I was also a candy striper and had enjoyed seeing the social worker at Chester County Hospital and kind of said, "Oh, that is what I might want to do when I get big or grow old." So when I was denied the academic course, I was going to accept that because, after all, sister Mary Corona said that is what I was supposed to do. And I was a good Catholic. But my mother stated, "No," that I had to... If I wanted to go to college, then that is where I was going, and if she had to pull me out of that school, she would. Now you have to understand, that was devastating to me because I was a cheerleader, that ninth grade, that is the year you make whoever you are going to be. And I had made it to the cheerleading squad. And so I was now quote, "a popular person," unquote, and I did not want to have to start over into... And I had been involved in Catholic school since the fourth grade, fourth grade to the ninth grade. So most of my friends were Catholic. And my mother talked about sending me off to public school. Well, that summer, while I was away, my family moved from Kennett Square to Westchester, and my mother enrolled me into Henderson High School in the academic course. And I have to thank her to this day because I would have been a horrible secretary because I hated that. And I went on and did well, went on to college. But it was during that summer of my 16th birthday that my whole life kind of changed. And in the area of race relations was why it changed because the nun who was very racist, but I did not want to believe that because nuns cannot be racist, denied me access to education of which I wanted.

SM (01:21:39):
Oh wow.

MJ (01:21:41):
And to find out years later, the same thing happened to my husband where he was told the best he could do would be to work with his hands. And he just decided to go on to public school. And he was also raised a Catholic and challenged that system. I do not know if he was told that in public school or whether he was told that in Catholic school but went on to school. And I think that that is where the biggest mistrust comes for African Americans, is in that school system because we do not... And we still do not have enough people of color or enough white people who know about the colleges, of HBCs and know about how to nurture our kids and how to push our kids on. And so we think that, "I do not trust my child's guidance counselor because I know what was done to me. And far too often do I know what was done to other African Americans."

SM (01:22:39):
That is a very revealing story. And that will be in the book.

MJ (01:22:45):
Okay.

SM (01:22:45):
Because of what we have tried to find here, and this leads right into this very important question. If you were to pick the experience that had the greatest impact on your life, is that the one from that period?

MJ (01:22:53):
It was that, yeah. It was that, and it was being raised part of the Black middle class. Being part of the Black middle class, whites did not accept you, as well as African Americans did not accept you. I had a nice life. I did not really want for anything. I rode horses, had a nice life, and many times people would refer to us as silver spoon or all those kind of things. It was not until I came to terms with that my father did what he needed to do for his family, and he wanted to uplift his family. And so I started reading about the Black middle class and really started enjoying it.

SM (01:23:36):
If there was a particular event from that period in American history that had the greatest impact on you, what was that?

MJ (01:23:42):
Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

SM (01:23:44):
Okay. You remember where you were when that happened?

MJ (01:23:47):
Mm-hmm. When Dr. Martin Luther King was killed, I was in the first year of college, and actually there was two assassinations. The first one was assassination of JFK. And I was in Catholic school at that time, and we were in mass, and we were dismissed. And then when we got home, we found out that the president had been shot. And that was really, really scary. And then it was the assassination of Medgar Evers.

SM (01:24:16):
Oh yeah.

MJ (01:24:16):
And then it was the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. And at that point, I realized that doing things through the establishment could not happen. And that is where my militant stance took itself because Martin Luther King had talked so much about nonviolence. And then you looked at what did that really bring you? And that is when you really... I think my own conversion experience from that time was moving to, I cannot stand whitey-type philosophy. And I was at Central State when that was occurring, which was a historically Black institution, and also National Guards people, the year before I was there, had marched on our campus and hosed everybody down. So there was this... And that is when I really kind of got involved, had the Afro, wore the dashiki.

SM (01:25:06):
Yeah, those were unbelievable times.

MJ (01:25:09):
But when you see three assassinations, and then right after that it was-

SM (01:25:12):
Bobby Kennedy-

MJ (01:25:12):
Bobby Kennedy.

SM (01:25:13):
...was killed two months later.

MJ (01:25:14):
And so you realized how crazy America could be. Plus, you had television that would show you what was happening in the South, and you were watching people being hosed down. And so it was almost like today when people sit and watch, that is why I hate them, those crazy talk shows. You could turn on television and see things unfolding. I remember sitting home watching Jack Ruby shoot... Yeah.

SM (01:25:41):
So you are another one that saw it live, like I did.

MJ (01:25:42):
Yeah, yeah. I saw it live watching television because I was mesmerized by that whole thing. You just sit, and I mean, you watched television, and I watched the whole JFK funeral unfold. And when I happened to see that, you are just like, "Oh my God." It is almost as you watch that, you get immune to that. You are starting to look at everywhere you can go, you can be wiped out if you do not believe in certain things.

SM (01:26:04):
Yeah, [inaudible]. You were describing the event that had the greatest impact, those series of events. But if you were to try to, and it is tough to do this, but if you were to speak for the entire boomer generation from all ethnic backgrounds, what do you think the most important event has been in their lives, had the greatest impact on them?

MJ (01:26:33):
I think the assassinations and the war, and I say assassinations collectively. I just never thought that we would... I do not think people in America believe that they could see a president assassinated. You see Lincoln assassinated, and you realize, "Ah. Yeah, you can see all that," but never before. And I think the boomer generation watched those assassinations as it associated to politics, and I think that is where our mistrust of the system... Because we still do not really know what happened. And cover-ups started coming into play.

SM (01:27:10):
I am going to end with a question here. Actually, I am going to read this because I want to try to explain this. "The youth of the (19)60s and the (19)70s believed that they could have impact on society as a whole because of the influence on government policy or influence over the draft, issues like voting rights, civil rights legislation, abortion laws, workers' rights, civil rights, multiple movements representing both genders and all ethnic groups because there was a sense of empowerment. This whole issue, we have talked about it earlier, a feeling of empowerment. We can make a difference, not only individually but as a group." How do you feel the boomers feel today about this concept of empowerment? We know they have the power of the dollar because 60 million, they have always been appealed to in the markets for dollars through advertising. But what concerns me is, that you have raised it already earlier, about that they have gone on and raised families, getting a lot of dollars like any other previous generation. But it was always the hope that this generation was different, that this generation saw wrongs and wanted to write them. It is not afraid to speak up, even if it meant the possibility of losing one's job. When you see something wrong, you hope that what happened during that period in terms of what was happening in American civil rights, the war in Vietnam and government policy, how women were being treated, how other ethnic groups came to empowerment, the Native American movement, the Hispanic movement, and the gay and lesbian movement, they all came because they all realized... They used the civil rights as a model, that if nobody is going to change thing for us, unless we change it ourselves. Nothing comes easy. We have to fight to make something happen for the better. My question I am asking you to close out is, are the boomers still feeling that way? And if they are not, is not this a sign that this generation is no different than any generation that preceded them? And as some people used to say, "Well, as you get older, you will see that you are no different." I live my life as I lived it back then. And sometimes I feel isolated when I fight for certain things, not that I am better than anyone, not out of arrogance but that somehow that era caught me for my entire life. And I know there are people like yourself. I think you have fallen in that category, but I am worried that there are few and far between when there is so many issues.

MJ (01:29:42):
Well, yeah. First off, I do not think there are few and far between. I think that a lot of people are doing a lot of things. It is just that our media does not tell us about it all the time. I mean, media really controls your opinion about our nation. And for whatever reason, the media really does not like... When you take a person like Ennis Cosby, who was assassinated, but here is a young... His life was cut away from him early. But he was a young man that could have done anything he wanted to do. But through the values of his mother, Camille, and his father, Bill, who were all part of the boomer generation, was working with kids who had learning disabilities. He was taking all of his wealth that he did not gain, and he had no problems about that. I mean, I think it is okay. It is okay to be wealthy, and I do not want people to think that it is not okay to give your wealth. But he was using his wealth in a way that was going to really take care of others. You take this young man whose life was just cut away, whose father owned the major company up in New York. And when you go around this world, you hear a lot of stories like that. You hear about the post office man who goes to church every Sunday and reads to kids. You hear about people who rock crack-addicted kids. I think there is such a contribution of people giving back, but our media will never ever tell you those stories. And so I think we have been robbed in America, and we have blinders on, and we do not really realize how many people give back and to what degree people give back because everybody is not the person who needs to have their story told in the papers. And so I am a believer that we have contributed, and I am a believer that we have lived up to what we thought we were going to do. I believe all of us have helped bring somebody along that would not have been brought along had we not had this spirit of giving.

SM (01:31:41):
So you are not going to buy into that, my very first question from the beginning of the interview, when people will give a broad sweep, a pen stroke of an entire generation-

MJ (01:31:49):
No.

SM (01:31:50):
...that the reason why we have problems in America, the divorce rate, the break-up of the American family, the drug situation is because of those boomers.

MJ (01:31:58):
No-no. I think the reason we have a high divorce rate is people are living longer. And divorced, we were only married before for about 20 years. You now see people celebrating 50, 60, 70 years of marriage. And that is kind of hard. I think the divorce rate is high because women are working. They are independent, and they no longer are dependent on men. But I have seen too many people in, like I say, the postal office-type jobs that help people, and they will never be written about. They will never receive an outcome like that or receive anything, but they help people.

SM (01:32:30):
I am going to end by saying thank you very much for taking time. An hour and a half out of your schedule is a lot, I know.

MJ (01:32:35):
Oh, thank you.

SM (01:32:38):
And is there any final thoughts that you would like to state to conclude?

MJ (01:32:43):
I would just like to say that these thoughts are my own. They come from an African American perspective of a female, and there is some predictions about the next generation. And I do not believe I am writing that generation off either. I think that they will look out at history 50 years from now, and we will see the strength within themselves because I think everybody contributes in our society, or it would be doomed to fail.

SM (01:33:09):
Very good. Thank you very much.

MJ (01:33:09):
Yes, thank you.

(End of Interview)

Date of Interview

ND

Interviewer

Stephen McKiernan

Interviewee

Mildred (Mit) Joyner

Biographical Text

Mildred (Mit) Joyner is a pioneer in teaching, research, writing, and community activism. Joyner has served leadership positions in social work professional organization, including the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) and the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW). She is Emerita Director and Professor of Social Work at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. She received her Bachelor's degree in Social Work from Central State University in Wilberforce and her Master's degree in Social Work from Howard University.

Duration

93:12

Language

English

Digital Publisher

Binghamton University Libraries

Digital Format

audio/mp4

Material Type

Sound

Interview Format

Audio

Subject LCSH

Social service; College teachers; Community activists; West Chester University of Pennsylvania; Joyner, Mildred (Mit)--Interviews

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Keywords

Civil Rights Movement; Voting; social worker; Baby boom generation; Retirement; Activism; African-Americans; Black Panther; Freedom Summer; Million Man March; Senator Edmund Muskie; Civil War Generation; Confederate Flag; Generation Gap; WWII; Joseph L. Galloway; Trust.

Files

Mit_Joyner.jpg

Item Information

About this Collection

Collection Description

Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s and 2010s. The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and… More

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Citation

“Interview with Mit Joyner,” Digital Collections, accessed March 28, 2024, https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1234.