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Biography

Patti Miller was born in Algona, Iowa, in 1943. As a student at Drake University in 1964, she went to Mississippi as a Civil Rights worker in the Freedom Summer for Voting Rights. Just two days after she arrived, the news broke that three Civil Rights workers--James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner--had been murdered. After college, she worked with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Chicago, organizing students to support fair housing practices. In her position with the SCLC, she worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She later worked as a teacher in a majority-black school in Chicago. Since her activist days, Patti has produced a documentary and a book on her experiences with the Civil Rights movement, and she regularly speaks to groups in Iowa about her experiences.

Transcript

Transcription of Patti Miller – Iowa City – November 18, 2009

SI-Good Morning. Welcome to Texas School. I’m Shelby Scales.
 
SI-And I am Kayla Wright. And we are going to interview Patricia Miller for our oral history project.

SI-Can you please start by giving us your full name and spelling it?

Patricia-Ok. It’s Patricia Ann Miller. You want me to spell all three?

SI-Yes. Please.

Patti-P-A-T-R-I-C-I-A-, A-N-N, M-I-L-L-E-R.

SI-Thank you.

SI-Do you have any nick names?

Patti-Yeah Pattti.

SI-What is your date of birth?

Patti-I was born in February of 1943.

SI-Where were you born?

Patti-I was born in Algona, Iowa.

SI-Where did you grow up?

Patti-I grew up in mostly in Jefferson, Iowa and spent the last three years of high school in ….

SI-Do you have a spouse and any children?

Patti-I am divorced but I have a daughter who’s 25.

SI-What is your educational background?

Patti-I went to Drake University which is here in Iowa. And that was in the early ‘60s.

SI-Tell us about about growing up in rural Iowa. What sort of values and beliefs did your parents teach you?

Patti- Well I grew up….times were very very different than they are now. You have to remember that. It was a small town in Iowa. We were very - very sheltered. We did not have television. Very few newspapers. Couple of magazines. So our whole world was what was going on in that little town. So my family was very religious. We went to church every Sunday. My father was the principal of the high school in this little town. So I was taught a lot of my values from my religious upbringing. Which was the golden rule. Do unto others as you have them do unto you. That you treat people kindly. That it did in terms of the civil rights work it did come up if you don’t know black people at the time. We would go to Des Moines shopping every year for school clothes and we would see African Americans on the streets. My parent’s always made a point of saying they are no different that we are. Everyone’s equal. .I learned of course in history, that slaves had been freed and everyone was equal. So it was those values that I was brought up with.

SI-So like, when you were in Des Moines and you seen like African Americans what did you think? What was going through your mind?

Patti-The only thing for me was that they were people who didn’t look like the color of skin that people that were around me. I thought that was interesting. I remember at Sunday school we were shown… and you may have seen these pictures. They are pictures of little children around the globe holding hands. And they were red children and white children and yellow children and black children. I was always fascinated with that as a child. Because just growing up with white people I thought it was kind of dull. It would be really fun to get to know people all around the world. People who looked different from me and who maybe thought different from me. So when I would see African Americans in Des Moines I was kind of fascinated and wished I could know more people like that.

SI-What made you choose Drake University after high school, what was your major and why did you choose music? (laughter)

Patti-My major was music. I choose it just because I had been involved in music all through school. I was in band and choir. My brother was also a musician and he was at Drake. He was two years older than me. So he was at Drake in music. I am not sure that I went there because he was there. But a part of me thinks that I really cared for my brother. It was somebody that I would know. I wouldn’t be there as a stranger. It was part of the reason. It was just a natural for me to enter music because I had done so much music.

SI-So did you like sing too?

Patti. Yeah I sing.

SI-Really? Do you play any instruments?

Patti-I play clarinet and oboe and piano.

SI-How did you become involved in the Civil Rights Movement?

Patti-That was when I was at Drake. My freshman year, that’s my first year in college. I was a part of the group called the Wesley Foundation. Which was the Methodist students on campus. We had a house where we would get together on Sunday nights and have meetings and then you could to the house anytime you wanted, you know after class or between classes. And the lady who was the head of Wesley Foundation asked us if one spring break we wouldn’t like to take a trip. We had a week off from school. Take a trip down to New Orleans and travel through the South. She was from the South and she knew about the Civil Rights Movement. I didn’t. I really hadn’t heard a lot about it, because I was just in class. Taking music courses and things. But she thought it would be good for us, because she lived in the South. And knew what was going on in the Civil Rights Movement and knew what the conditions were like in the South. So I thought that sounded interesting, and we meant together. That was about a week. There was a wonderful book she had us to read called “Black like Me.” It was a story….have you read that book?

SI-I’ve heard of it. I’ve never read it though.

Patti-Everyone should read that book. It was a book written by a white man, who decided that he wanted to find out what it was like to live like a black person in the south. So he took medication that pigmented his skin. Made his skin turn dark. And used a stain so he was very, very dark. In fact I am reading it again right now. He shaved his head so his hair… people were not able to see it was straight. He lived as a black person in New Orleans. We read about that. We studied about the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. King. Then we took a trip throughout the south and we stayed in New Orleans for a weekend. And we came back to Drake. And that was when I learned about what was going on in the country at that time. This was in ’62.

SI-How did you feel about blacks and how they were being treated?

Patti-At first I was shocked. And then I was very angry. That experience when I learned about that was when we stopped at a train station. I saw that there was a sign that said colored waiting room and another sign that said white waiting room. And I couldn’t believe it. There were black people sitting in one waiting room and white people in the other. I just, I didn’t realize even from the study about it before we went, that this was how people were treated in the south. That white people actually couldn’t go where there were black people and black people couldn’t go where there were white people. So I got very upset with the group I was with. I said, Well I’m just going to go sit in the colored waiting room, because they can’t tell me what to do.” And people held me back. They said, “You can’t do that, cause if you do it you can be arrested.” I did not understand that there were actually laws that had come into play during this time. The ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s, where people were completely separated in the south. That’s what I learned about. I was very, very angry. And I thought it was wrong and that is what got me interested in trying to do something about it.

SI-So did you ever participate in any public demonstrations? (Fire Drill Alarm)

Patti-I did. That was…we are skipping ahead here in answer to that question. But after I left college… actually during college there were some demonstrations in Des Moines at the courthouse….capitol downtown. I was in those. Then when I moved to Chicago, I was involved with demonstrations there.

SI-What did you do in those demonstrations?

Patti-Well the ones in Chicago, I worked with Dr. King. It was called an Open Housing Movement in Chicago. Housing was very very segregated in Chicago. In fact I think it still is somewhat, but there were neighborhoods where only blacks lived and there were neighborhoods were only whites lives. And of course the housing for blacks was much worse. And if black people wanted to live in a white neighborhood and get better housing they couldn’t. And so we did a lot of demonstrating for that. Those were actually some very, very disturbing demonstrations. Dr. King said that he saw more violence at those demonstrations than he ever saw in the south. Cause people would….we would be in the white neighborhoods demonstrating and people would show up and they would throw rocks and bricks. They hit Dr. King on one of those marches. And they would turn the cars over we would come in and set them on fire. So those were very dangerous demonstrations that we did. I helped to actually organize those. And then I went on them.

SI-So like when you saw this stuff, like did you cry? Or what kind of emotions did you feel? Very scary.

Patti-Yes it is very scary. You see things like that on television it’s sort of like it is in the past, so you know how it came out. But when you are in the middle of it you don’t know. It wasn’t planned to have the violence and it wasn’t planed to have the cars being burned. So you are just in the middle of it trying to protect yourself and do what you think you should do. So it’s yeah, it is very, very scary.

SI-How did others treat you when they real both black and white?

Patti-Are you talking about like in college?

SI-Yeah, like your friends and relatives.

Patti-There were a few discussions I had with people that I could tell where really prejudiced. But it was more of an intellectual discussion that I would have with them. Most people, after people knew on campus that I was involved in the Civil Rights Movement I noticed that people started treating me differently. So there were some people who just did not want to have anything to do with me. And then a few people who thought it was a good thing. So those would have been my good friends. People didn’t want to talk about it a lot. So it was just more subtle. It happens with your friends all the time. You know that people are feeling a certain way about you. And they just treat you subtly. You can tell what their feelings are.

SI-Do you still keep in touch with any of those people who were your friends and who did support how you feel?

Patti-I stay in touch with people I worked with in the Civil Rights Movement. A few people….my brother who was in college the same time I was, he was very supportive. So when I… four years later when I went back to Mississippi, and visited all the places I had been, I asked him if he wanted to go with me, because he had never been there. So he was a part of that. That was also…we were working on a documentary. So there was a …. and he got to be part of the whole thing.

SI-What did your parents say when you told them you were going to Mississippi for the summer?

Patti-Well what their feeling was, because I put it in the light of this was something I really believed in. And I felt I just had to go. And because it was based on beliefs they had taught me when I was young. What their response was, “Well if this is something you really feel you need to do then we’ll support you.” But after I decided to go…this is one thing I wanted to show. This is what made me want to go to Mississippi. This was a brochure that was just hanging on a bulletin board at college. And Just the picture somehow, it said, “Mississippi Summer Project.” And I opened it up. This is the actual brochure from then. But I read about it. And I said….this is something that I hadn’t been able to sit in the colored waiting room and felt like there was something I really wanted to do. I felt like this is something I could actually do. I could go back and do some things to maybe help. When I put it that way to my parents they just said, “We’ll support you.” Then before I left there were three of my fellow workers who had been missing. And it turned out they were killed later. So that was very scary for my parents I’m sure, to send me off and let me go, knowing there were other people on the project who had been killed.

SI-That was dangerous.

Patti-It was very dangerous.

SI-Something would happen to you maybe.

Patti-Exactly, exactly.

SI- Was this your first time leaving Iowa?

Patti-It wasn’t my first time out of Iowa, because our family would go on vacations in the summertime because my dad had the summers off.

SI-Yeah.

Patti -So we visited lots of different parts of the country. But it was the first time I had ever gone on a long trip all by myself. And I was only 21, which is…I mean in those days being so protected to get on a bus and go someplace by myself was the first time.

SI-Was it like really nervous for you to do that? Like you didn’t go with any friends or anything?

Patti-No, I went all alone. I got on the bus in Des Moines. My parents took me to the bus station. It was more than a 24 hour ride. So I had to ride on the bus all night and sleep sitting up. We went clear through the Deep South. The same way we had gone when I went with the other group of students, when we went down to New Orleans. But this time I was by myself. And we stopped in all these little towns in Mississippi all the way to Jackson. I went to Jackson, Mississippi, is where I was headed.

SI-Why did you elect to go on the bus to Mississippi for the summer project?

Patti-I think probably had to do with money. I had never flown and I don’t even know if there were flights in those days. I’d never been on an airplane so that was out. There was nobody who was going to drive me down there. So the only thing I could do was to get on a bus and go.

SI-What was the goal for the project?

Patti-There were a lot of things, but I would say the major thing was to educate southern black people that they should be able to register to vote. In those days, black people were not registered to vote at all. I mean it’s almost unthinkable to us now. Because it was so many people voted, that we have a black president for the first time. And had there not been African Americans all over the country, voting for him, he would never have won. But 40 years ago when I went on the summer project, black people couldn’t register. If they tried they would be… during the Civil Rights Movement they were jailed for trying to register to vote. Or if they were let in the court house, they would be asked to fill out this huge questionnaire about the history of the United States, things that none of us would know. And that was the purpose to ask questions they couldn’t answer. And so when they couldn’t answer them they’d say you can’t register because you haven’t answered those questions. But white people weren’t give those tests when they registered.

SI- How was Mississippi different from Iowa?

Patti-Many ways. And it still is, even going back now which I have done twice in the last five years. First of all the weather is very different. It is very hot, especially in the summer. But there is just a very different feeling about Mississippi. And I think the thing that I noticed the most was that there were so many African Americans there. Especially growing up in Iowa. You know just in the big cities, that’s the only place you see African Americans in Iowa. But in Mississippi, in the country, farms, rural Mississippi, small towns. Some small towns were mostly all black. So that was kind of the first thing in terms of the Civil Rights Movement I noticed. Then the way people move, the pace of life is very slow. I think that is because it is so hot.

SI-Yeah.

Patti-I think that’s why they talk that way too, cause it’s so hot. (laughter) It’s hard to talk fast when you are so hot.

SI-So like in your first 48 hours what were the main things that drew your attention? Like oh wow this is different from Iowa?

Patti-That’s a good question. I think for me…I had gone down as a tourist I think it would have been very different for me. But because I was a part of the Civil Rights Movement, what I noticed, was first of all I was trying to make sure that none of the white people knew I was a Civil Rights worker. Because if they did know, they would get very angry. We were in danger all the time of people finding out what we were doing. The other thing was just that this was the first time I’d gone anywhere by myself. I was introduced into this office where I worked. It was all new, the people were all new. It was a dangerous situation. In that first 48 hours I found out the three Civil Rights Workers who had been missing. They found their bodies. So in my first 48 hours I found out other people like myself had been killed. So it was a very shocking first 48 hours. I’m just going to hold up a picture here. These were the three Civil Rights Workers who were killed that summer. This was the poster they had all over the state trying to alert people if they could find them. So these three within the first 48 hours I was there, we know that they had been killed.

SI- How did you feel like when you found that out?

Patti-Oh it was…it was surreal as they say. Everyone in the office that was the other thing. Was that normally had I come in at a different time where I was working and had been introduced. People would have been thinking, “Oh here is a new person.” And being more friendly. But because everyone, it wasn’t just that found out they had been killed. It was everyone. And the office where I worked was where they worked. So this town that I was sent to happened to be the same town where they had been working. So everyone there knew them. And everyone had just found out that these people they had worked with were for sure dead. Everyone was just in a state of shock. So we kind of just sat around.

SI-Where were they found?

Patti-Well it was actually someone who had….they would never have been found if someone who knew what happened to them had not informed the law enforcement people. They were found buried really deep in a dam. There was a farmer….all the people who were responsible for them having been killed were members of the Klu Klux Klan. There was one member of the Klu Klux Klan who had a farm and they were building a dam there. So before they put in the dam they put the bodies at the bottom, and just covered them with all this dirt which was forming the dam. And so they never would have been found, but someone felt a little guilty I guess and informed the law enforcement people. So they went to the….I actually have another picture here. It probably won’t show up on your camera. But they went there they dug into the dam and they found the bodies. That was where they were.

SI-Where did you stay that summer?

Patti-We stayed with an African American family. In Meridian. I was in Meridian, Mississippi. It was a couple and they had three little boys. And they took me into their home and treated me like family. It was wonderful.

SI-How did you feel…..when you got there?

Patti-To their home you mean?

SI-Yeah

Patti-I just felt completely welcome.

SI-So like how were they different like from your own family? Or how were they similar to it?

Patti-There were more similarities than differences. It was a wonderful family. The thing I liked was that they had these three little boys, because I just had an older brother. So for the time I was there I had these three little brothers that always coming in my room, bugging me and wanting to talk to me. So it was wonderful. It was great. Sometimes… I’ve just been reading…..I kept a journal while I was there. And I’ve been reading that lately, and I am glad I did that, because I had forgotten things. But one of the things I said in the Journal is that, some nights I would come home from work and I would help Alice, was the lady I lived with. I would help her fix supper. Then after super we would sit around the table just she and I talking. We had some really good conversations. It meant a lot to me. I actually got to…we are still in touch. Because when I went back five years ago for this documentary, I had lost touch with her but I found her. By going through the phone book in Meridian. And just calling people. So we went to her house. She invited us over and we went to her house. I got to see her and talk to her again. And we’ve been in touch since.

SI-Does she still live in the same house?

Patti- She doesn’t live in the same house. But she still lives in Meridian. And she had three more children after I left. So she told me about all her children.

SI-How did your fellow friends respond to the ….and …?

Patti-I think it was mixed again. Some people thought it was wrong that we were going down there and that we didn’t belong there. A lot of people thought we were just stirring up trouble. And other people though it was good. Because afterwards the Civil Rights Voting Act was passed. The Voting Rights Act was passed. So actually the work that was done actually accomplished something.

SI-So you felt what like you had done was worthwhile.

Patti-Absolutely.

SI-How did the white people in Mississippi react to your support for just equal rights?

Patti-Very poorly. They didn’t like it. They didn’t like it at all. It upset their way of life. They had kept everything separate. People were very prejudice in the south and in the north. They didn’t want to be told to go to the same schools. Schools weren’t integrated, they were completely segregated. And white people wanted to keep them that way. Plus the people that were really opposed to the Civil Rights Movement, the people of the Klu Klux Klan. They just unreasonably hated anyone different from them. I don’t think they knew why. It was a threat to them. I think a lot of those people felt by keeping black people (as they called it) “in their place “if made them feel more important. And if everybody were equal how were they going to feel important? So they really didn’t want this to happen.

SI-So all the problems and experiences you faced in Meridian they were……?

Patti-Absolutely. Yeah. Schools were integrated then in the ‘70s. The Voting Rights Act was passed so that black people started registering to vote. And when that happened, they started running for office. So a lot of small towns, where there were white people running the towns, then they started being…some decisions being made by black people who had been elected too. So it meant a lot of changes. They had to take down all the signs. You don’t see those signs in the south anymore.

SI- So like when you know, they took down all the signs and stuff like, how did you feel?

Patti-It felt great! That’s how it should have been all along. It should never have happened. The fact that I could live in the north and not know that this was happening in the south. Then it turns out, and you might be interested in this, because you are doing Oral History on Iowa. Is that recently that I was speaking in southeastern Iowa which is down here where we are. And found out, that when I was a young girl in the ‘40s and ‘50s, on my grandparents and my uncle’s farm in southeast Iowa. I didn’t live here, but I revisited a lot. It turns out when I was growing up as a young girl, black people couldn’t eat in restaurants here in Iowa, they couldn’t go to the theatres here in Iowa, they had to sit in the balconies. Marian Anderson, have you ever heard of Marian Anderson?

SI-No.

Patti-She was a very famous African American singer. And she was singing somewhere in Iowa when I was a young girl. It turns out they wouldn’t let her stay in a hotel. I think this was in Burlington. Do you know where Burlington is?

SI-Yes.

Patti-Ok. They would not let her stay in a hotel there, so she had to stay in the home of an African American family. And this is when I was a young girl. So there were the same things going on in Iowa, without there being signs up. They were still going by those same things that were happening in Mississippi. So when I found that out I was really shocked. So it wasn’t just in the south it was all over the country. Just the signs were in the south.

SI-Yeah so it was like more open in the south. In Iowa you kind of like… they had to hide it.

Patti-Exactly. That is very insightful of you. That is true. And any problems that they are we could know that in the country…just because they sort of come up in one part of the country and we say, “Oh that’s where it’s bad.” No, it is probably happening everywhere it’s just not as much in the open.

SI-So what did you do when you graduated from college?

Patti-That was when I moved to Chicago and I worked for Dr. King. Dr. Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. They had moved their organization to Chicago to deal with these problems of housing. And I just was fortunate enough to be able to work with them. I actually worked with college students. In the whole area there are many many colleges in the Chicago area. And so I would get to know the students and bring them into the inner city to get to work in the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago. Like I had gotten to do when I was in college.

SI-What was your official job title?

Patti-I think it was college coordinator. But I ended up as I mentioned earlier, helping to organize a lot of the marches that we did on the west side of Chicago. And then, one other thing, after I worked with Dr. King, I also taught in the biggest all black high school, inner city high school on the west side of Chicago. Which was a great experience too.

SI-Did you live on the west side of Chicago?

Patti-I lived the near north side. Are you from Chicago?

SI-Yes.

Patti-I lived on the near north side, but I taught on the west side.

SI-What was it like the first time you meant Martin Luther King?

Patti-Oh, it was very special. He used to…we would have…all of us who worked with him, in the organization, we would have staff meetings almost every week. Sometimes many a week. And he was in and out of town, because he did a lot of other things too. But when he was in town he would come to those staff meetings. So I remember the first one was just amazing to see him in person. And how … what a calm…that was one thing that always impressed me most about him how calm he was. And just quiet. He talked very slow. When you see films of him you know. Accept for his great speeches in a setting like that talking with people. He was just very calm, very intelligent, very clear thinking, very compassionate man.

SI-So, how often did you come into contact with him and other leaders in the movement?

Patti- Well a lot. Whenever he was in town he would come to meetings. Then the other leaders were always….sometimes we would have meetings every morning. To talk about what we were going to do. Because this wasn’t anything that was planned out. The Civil Rights Movement…there wasn’t a map. To say this is what we are going to do. Nobody knew from day to day, because we had to respond to things as they came up. So we would meet often times every morning, before we set off on what we were doing that day. Andrew Young who later became the ambassador to the UN. He was there a lot. And Jessie Jackson he was actually in seminary school at that time on the south side. He would come to the meetings a lot. Then the leaders of the Chicago Movement too. So we saw them a lot. We spent a lot of time talking with people like that.

SI-Was it inspirational?

Patti- Always. You know we talked about non-violence a lot. Because that was so important in the Civil Rights Movement. That you not…you asked about angrier a little bit earlier. It was so important not to get angry, not to get violent, because that would not accomplish anything. So you would just have everybody fighting and beating each other up. So to make the point, about how things had to be different, you had to be non violent. We studied non-violence a lot and talked about it. And made sure that everybody knew, never ever ever, to get angry or violent.

SI- So like you know, of course you are going to get angry about you know, just the things that you see. Did you guys talk about things you could do to prevent you from getting to the point where you might use violence?

Patti- Very good question. And yeah, even like in the south…before I went to Meridian, we had an orientation. And they taught us things to do. If someone is beating you up. What you do, they said, you don’t get angry you just protect yourself. So they teach us how you roll up in a ball and make sure that we don’t get hurt. It was always about never being confrontational, never getting angry. And I think….you know it depends. That some people it was a tactic some people it was a real deep belief. So we wouldn’t’ do that. It is always that violence doesn’t work. That was what we were taught. It just doesn’t work.

SI-So where were you when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot?

Patti-I was teaching at this all black high school in Chicago at the time. They called school….we still had school, and so I showed up as everybody did. But it was… all the students were in the halls people weren’t going to their classes. Because everyone was very, very disturbed. There were riots beginning. I don’t know if you’ve read about that. But all over the country people were so upset that riots broke out in a lot of cities. I could see from my classroom window one of the streets in Chicago. There were fires being set and people rioting on the street. They let school out. They let the black teachers go. But they made the white teachers stay. Because they were afraid…. white people were being pulled out of their cars and things in black neighborhoods. So they made us stay and we had to stay at the school most of the day.

SI-So they thought you guys were going to use angrier because of….?

Patti-They were afraid we would be in danger if we went. Because it was a black neighborhood that we should probably stay at the school.

SI-How did you find out that he got shot?

Patti-It was on the news. By then we had television. (Laughter)

SI-What were you think you learned when he died?

Patti-Can you ask a little more on that?

SI-You said that he was inspirational. Like when he passed away, the things that you learned from him what did you stick with?

Patti-Oh, all of it. I mean it made it seem even more important. Because his words…I don’t know you’ve seen the speech that he gave the night before he was shot? He had a sense that he was going to die. In fact when I was working with him in Chicago, there were many times where we were told that there was word out that somebody’s going to kill Dr. King. So he was constantly being threatened and that last night before he died he said, “I may not get to the mountain top.” Remember? Have you heard that speech? “But I know we as a people we will get there.”

SI-Yes.

Patti - That was the thing is that he inspired people to keep on doing what he had done. …Because he knew it would happen even though he might not be here to see it.

SI- And so just like even though in the back of his mind he knew every day there was a chance he could get shot or killed, he kept going and kept fighting for what he believed in.

Patti-It is an important lesson.

SI-Were there other leaders besides Martin Luther King who inspired you?

Patti- There were a lot. You mean people I worked with?

SI-Yeah.

Patti-I think all the people I worked with. And it wasn’t just the leaders. You know it was…there were a lot of young people. Who in fact a lot of the staff in Chicago were southerners. They were young black people who had meant Dr. King in the south. So they came up north to work with him. It was a whole different life for them. Talk about me going south and working. These were young southerners who then came north. And they were an inspiration. They would get up at these staff meetings and they had really learned non violence. These were young people who had been jailed over and over and over in the south. They were still fighting and they had gotten very strong in their beliefs in what they were doing.

SI- And nothing stopped them.

Patti- Nothing. Yeah, it was great working with them. It was an inspiration.

SI-So like when did you think things started getting better for the whole racism issue and the Civil Rights Movement and just everything?

Patti-Well I think it’s been gradual, ever since then.

SI-Baby steps.

Patti- Yes, baby steps. A very good term. And things still aren’t perfect at all. But I asked this question actually when we were in the south, doing the documentary five years ago. One lady answered that she felt that in the ‘70s when the schools were integrated that things really started …. she felt the change in Mississippi and the south. I almost think that it was harder in the north for changes to come. Because, like we talked about, it was so subtle up here and so people could keep doing things subtly, that they had always been doing. But the south because it was so overt, they had to start ridding buses together. They had to start going to school together. And so I almost think that the changes happened more in the south than in the north.

SI-Did you ever see signs that was racist or harmful to others?

Patti-Signs?

SI-Yes.

Patti-Did I actually see the signs do you mean?

SI-Yeah.

Patti- Yeah, all the time. Do you want to ask me a little more about that…what you mean?

SI-Like, how you said you went, when you were at the rest stations for whites and blacks only. Where there more signs that were hurtful to others like……

SI-What other kinds did you see, like you said you saw some of the colored only waiting rooms and the white only waiting rooms, where else were signs at?

Patti-Oh, everywhere. Everywhere you went. The restrooms, you know. Separate restrooms. In fact that book, Black like Me the white man who is now suddenly black, he said when he started getting advice from the black community, they’d have to…to get a drink of water they would have to walk miles. In a particular…like in New Orleans. Or to go to the bathroom, they would have to kind of plan their day. Because there were so few places where they could go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. It was just very, very difficult, anywhere in the south.

SI-So like did you ever see a black person trying to go into a white person’s restroom or something just, because they really had to go? You know, they couldn’t hold it?

Patti- I didn’t see that. But, people wouldn’t do that.

SI-Yeah, so they wouldn’t dare try.

Patti-They wouldn’t dare. That was the part that was so tragic. The whole sit-in movement began in the lunch counters. When a few black students decided that they didn’t think it was fair they couldn’t eat. At the lunch counters. So they sat at the lunch counters. They were arrested immediately. They sat down, asked for something to eat or drink and they were arrested. So then some more students would come in and they were arrested. This happened all day long. They wouldn’t allow it. It just was against the law.

SI-Have you ever like went into a black only restaurant?

Patti-Oh, yeah. That was ok. That was where I ate in Chicago. That’s where I ate in Mississippi. If I went out to eat that’s where I had to go, because I had my black friends with me. And that to me was welcoming. I rode the buses with mostly black people were riding. They looked at me kind of funny like what was I doing on the bus?

SI-Yes probably because they were taught that white people aren’t like us.

Patti-Right.

SI-And so they were kind of you know shocked and stuff. I saw on your website that Abraham Lincoln was your hero. Can you tell me why?

Patti-Well, I was fascinated with his story. I think a part of it was just that, it was told so simply in the history books that he freed the slaves. And that he was such a courageous man, to in the middle of the Civil War, to take a stand and try to hold the country together. Then I also remember, I think my favorite thing I learned about Abraham Lincoln, was when he was a young man, he had a store. Did you know that he was like a store keeper?

SI-I didn’t know that.

Patti- He and a friend of his had a store. And it failed. They had to take bankruptcy. There was nothing he could do, but take bankruptcy. And then he went on and he became, I think a lawyer after that. But after he earned some money, he went back to the community where he had taken bankruptcy and he paid back all the people that he owed money to. And he wouldn’t have to do that because bankruptcy law means you don’t have to pay back the money. But he did that. I think of all the things I’ve ever known about him that was the most profound, that he was such a man of this word. And his beliefs that if he believed he owed someone something, then he wanted to make sure that he paid them back. It is those kind of values that I admire about him. I think then, which made me admire people like Dr. King. Because he stuck with his values, no matter what the cost.

SI-What about…. young people who you want to make a difference in the world?

Patti-Well I think it is kind of what I learned, when I was young. Is that for young people to think about what those values are that you have been taught or that you’ve learned. Or maybe there is someone for you like Abraham Lincoln, you really admire. What are those values? And then live them. Live them and really believe, believe in yourselves and believe that no matter how difficult it seems to stick with the things you know to be right, to do that. And it doesn’t always have to be in a big way. It can be if you are with your friends and you see someone treating someone not right. Have the courage to speak up. Even thought there may be a consequence. Though people may say…”Oh……” But if you fail to speak up to just live your life in that way, you treating yourself and to sort of follow what you feel to be whatever…. for me it was like when I saw that brochure it was no question in my mind, I had to do this. Things like that come up for young people all the time. Something that really interests you. And you say “Oh wow, I just gotta do that!” And then you say, ”Oh, but I can’t’ do that!” well that is not true. You can always do anything if you feel strongly about doing it.

SI-Thank you for coming and you know sharing everything with us. It was really inspirational.

Patti-Thank you. You did a good job.

SI-Thank you.