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Phyllis Griffin interview transcript, December 21, 2004
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12 PG: You betchya'. Now how she did this I don't know, but, oh absolutely. How do I know this? Because it's my curriculum. I teach theater, I teach voice and speech, but there isn't a week that doesn't go by that I'm asking my students to voice their opinions. NL: I try to have a similar strategy myself teaching. PG: Yeah ! NL: I tell my students not to answer the questions, but to question the answers. PG: Thank you NL: Your welcome. Uh, do you that your family's social class status had any bearing on your mother's ability to be a Civil; Rights Leader, and how so? PG: I think that, being middle class and being one of the few African American middle class people in Des Moines, Iowa, that it did have bearing. And it was provided by my father. There were different ways, I think that,um, people tried to reduce her importance, tried to reduce my father's importance. Because people are fearful when it comes to change, thinking differently. NL: W.E.B DuBois used the term, "the talented tenth" Do you think that your mother and father would have considered themselves part of the talented tenth? Would that have been part of their vernacular? PG: Um, I think they knew that they were privileged financially, which meant that they had an obligation to give back to the community. And I don't think they agreed with DuBois about being above, and DuBois himself later gave up on that, felt it was a mistake to think along those lines. We had, we had, people sat at our table that were very, very, very poor farmers to middle class farmers. We had people at our table who were miners our of like, Virginia or West Virginia, coal miners, Sharecroppers. NL: Uh, what would, how would that come about ? How would a sharecropper or a coal miner be invited to dinner? PG: My mother would hear about their arrival in Des Moines, uh, hear about them in the community. Perhaps how they might be, like one woman was really, a Southern woman as a matter of fact, I think there was a total of three, who were severely struggling financially who had just arrived, and so she asked them to, uh, have dinner, and then eventually hired them to work in the house, which helped them, I think , financially. NL: So, these dinner meetings would be more just, uh, a welcoming to the community rather than, uh, a discussion of labor strategy or other, uh, civil rights. PG: It would have been a welcoming to the community, rather than you know, thinking well you know, politically and strategically I need to invite this person to my dinner, it
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12 PG: You betchya'. Now how she did this I don't know, but, oh absolutely. How do I know this? Because it's my curriculum. I teach theater, I teach voice and speech, but there isn't a week that doesn't go by that I'm asking my students to voice their opinions. NL: I try to have a similar strategy myself teaching. PG: Yeah ! NL: I tell my students not to answer the questions, but to question the answers. PG: Thank you NL: Your welcome. Uh, do you that your family's social class status had any bearing on your mother's ability to be a Civil; Rights Leader, and how so? PG: I think that, being middle class and being one of the few African American middle class people in Des Moines, Iowa, that it did have bearing. And it was provided by my father. There were different ways, I think that,um, people tried to reduce her importance, tried to reduce my father's importance. Because people are fearful when it comes to change, thinking differently. NL: W.E.B DuBois used the term, "the talented tenth" Do you think that your mother and father would have considered themselves part of the talented tenth? Would that have been part of their vernacular? PG: Um, I think they knew that they were privileged financially, which meant that they had an obligation to give back to the community. And I don't think they agreed with DuBois about being above, and DuBois himself later gave up on that, felt it was a mistake to think along those lines. We had, we had, people sat at our table that were very, very, very poor farmers to middle class farmers. We had people at our table who were miners our of like, Virginia or West Virginia, coal miners, Sharecroppers. NL: Uh, what would, how would that come about ? How would a sharecropper or a coal miner be invited to dinner? PG: My mother would hear about their arrival in Des Moines, uh, hear about them in the community. Perhaps how they might be, like one woman was really, a Southern woman as a matter of fact, I think there was a total of three, who were severely struggling financially who had just arrived, and so she asked them to, uh, have dinner, and then eventually hired them to work in the house, which helped them, I think , financially. NL: So, these dinner meetings would be more just, uh, a welcoming to the community rather than, uh, a discussion of labor strategy or other, uh, civil rights. PG: It would have been a welcoming to the community, rather than you know, thinking well you know, politically and strategically I need to invite this person to my dinner, it
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