00:00:07BIRDWHISTELL: The, uh, P.G. the interview we're doing today, this second day of February 1993, is part of a larger project on the history of the Lexington-Fayette County Urban League that, uh, we're--UK is doing in cooperation with the Urban League. And I've gone back and listened to parts of interviews that you've done in the past, one with Ed Owens and one with Gerald Smith, that review some of the history of the Urban League. Today, what I'd like to do is--my, my goal in this part of the project is to make this sort of a life history of P.G. Peeples as much as a story about the Urban League. And we'll get to that part about the Urban League. But I think it's very important in looking at your career here at the Urban League to start back and find out where P.G. Peeples came from and how you ended up in this position at the present time. And I guess as far as I know, that story starts in Lynch, Kentucky. Is that right?
00:01:04PEEPLES: Exactly. Born on October 29, 1945, Lynch, Kentucky.
00:01:14BIRDWHISTELL: Tell me a little bit about your family. Did your grandparents live there in Lynch?
00:01:20PEEPLES: Yes, uh, grandparents on my, on my mother's side lived in Lynch. Grandparents on my father's side were still in Alabama. Well, in fact, I never knew my father's mother, she died early on, but I did get to know my grandfather on my father's side.
00:01:41BIRDWHISTELL: He lived in Alabama?
00:01:44PEEPLES: He lived in Alabama.
00:01:44BIRDWHISTELL: Where in Alabama?
00:01:45PEEPLES: In Bessemer. I had an, uh, had an opportunity to visit that--my father's home place in Bessemer a couple of times as a young kid before my grandfather died.
00:01:59BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, really?
00:02:00PEEPLES: Uh, and, uh, it--my father had another brother was--who lived in Lynch. Both of them were coal miners. Came to Lynch to work in the coal mines. They used to make the trip back home, and I can remember in elementary school going to Bessemer and going out on the farm where my father was raised.
00:02:30BIRDWHISTELL: Really? How do you spell Bessemer?
00:02:32PEEPLES: Bessemer, B-E-S-S-E-M-E-R. It's right outside of Birmingham.
00:02:35BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, really?
00:02:36PEEPLES: Yeah. And, uh, in fact, my father's family, sisters and brothers, he has a sister I think two sisters who still live on the home place.
00:02:52BIRDWHISTELL: So they were farmers?
00:02:54PEEPLES: His father was a farmer.
00:02:55BIRDWHISTELL: His family was farmers in Alabama?
00:02:57PEEPLES: Farmers in Alabama. What happened during that time, the way my father and his brother ended up in Lynch, that was an out-migration pattern of many African Americans coming to eastern Kentucky to work in the coal mines or West Virginia.
00:03:20BIRDWHISTELL: How did they find out about the work in eastern Kentucky?
00:03:23PEEPLES: Well, as I under, as I understand it, there was, uh, particularly in Lynch, there was a guy who I've heard stories about who used to go and bring African Americans in groups.
00:03:38BIRDWHISTELL: On the train?
00:03:39PEEPLES: Uh, I really don't know how they got there, but I remember they--there was a name that they called them, but he used to bring them into Lynch. Lynch was kind of a booming town at that time because it was a United States Steel owned town after the Bloody Harlan County battles to establish the union there. And as union workers, they tended to have a better lifestyle or at least more, they made better wages and had better benefits and protection of their jobs in the union versus probably some of the other surrounding counties where they were privately owned small mines and that owner pretty much controlled everything. So there was a large number of African Americans in Lynch who came from the Alabama area.
00:04:43BIRDWHISTELL: So your father and your father's brother?
00:04:45PEEPLES: Yeah, settled in Lynch. Yes.
00:04:47BIRDWHISTELL: What year did they come, do you know?
00:04:49PEEPLES: I really don't know, Terry. It must have been the late 30s or early 40s. It had to be late 30s, I guess.
00:05:01BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm. And your mother's family was there. Where did they come from?
00:05:07PEEPLES: My mother's family, I think, originally was in--from Alabama, I mean, from Tennessee, by way of Alabama.
00:05:14BIRDWHISTELL: Alabama, Tennessee, Lynch. And her family came, her father came as a coal miner?
00:05:20PEEPLES: Came the same way as a coal miner. Her father came as a coal miner.
00:05:24BIRDWHISTELL: All right. Let me--I'm trying to keep all this straight. This family stuff gets complicated.
00:05:29PEEPLES: Absolutely.
00:05:30BIRDWHISTELL: Now, did your father talk much about his parents and his grandparents there in Alabama, did he talk much about the family history? The Peeple--he was a Peeples, right?
00:05:42PEEPLES: Yes.
00:05:42BIRDWHISTELL: Did they talk much about that family history that he could--that you remember now? You know, like, did he know much about, did he talk much about what it was like to grow up there in Alabama in what would have been, what, the first couple of decades?
00:06:01PEEPLES: I don't recall as much of him talking about it as I have probably found out more in later life from my, from my uncle.
00:06:10BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm. What did you find out?
00:06:12PEEPLES: Uh, you know, just, um, you know, that, the kind of, uh, things that, you know, my my, my uncle talks more now about what it was like growing up.
00:06:25BIRDWHISTELL: He still lives in Lynch?
00:06:26PEEPLES: Yeah, he still lives in Lynch. In fact, he's the only living relative left in Lynch.
00:06:32BIRDWHISTELL: Is that right?
00:06:33PEEPLES: Yeah, see, see, my father died about seventeen, eighteen years ago. My mother died about four years ago. My uncle's wife died about two years ago. And all of the kids have moved away. So he is it. But he and I still have a--maintain a real close relationship. We probably talk on the phone three or four times a week, and we still fish together down in Tennessee because Tennessee is where it all began in terms of my real close relationship with my father. Most, most, most coal miners fished and hunted and I picked that up with my father.
00:07:24BIRDWHISTELL: So your father would take you fishing?
00:07:30PEEPLES: Oh, I started going fishing with my father, Terry, before I started going to elementary school. And fished--and one of my fondest memories of my relationship with my father is the fact that I was able to buy for him a boat.
00:07:46PEEPLES: Is that right?
00:07:47PEEPLES: Uh, and, on, it's--the dates are ironic there that--on March 8th, at--of being the spring, and he, he died that fall.
00:07:59BIRDWHISTELL: Is that right?
00:08:00PEEPLES: Yeah, we were able to spend one good summer in it. March 8th, and he died like September 8th, uh, and, which is--.
00:08:08BIRDWHISTELL: what, what was the attraction of going to Tennessee as opposed to fishing in Harlan County?
00:08:13PEEPLES: Well, in Harlan County there were really no lakes, but East Tennessee, that's where Tennessee Valley Authority lakes were.
00:08:19BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, so you go down to those lakes.
00:08:20PEEPLES: Yeah, we went to those lakes there, and they went to those lakes, probably starting when they were young men in the coal mines. And, uh, I still go. And with my uncle and some of the older retired guys who are still living in Lynch, very few of them still left, but I go down and I spend time fishing with them, Terry, and that's really therapeutic for me. Because when I'm out there with those guys now, I, you know, they, uh, basically all they do is reminisce and tell, tell old funny lies, and uh--(Birdwhistell laughs)--a lot of reminiscing about what it was like when I first started going fishing with them and, with them, and my dad and some of the rest of them. A lot of that I can recall.
00:09:01BIRDWHISTELL: So you still feel a connection?
00:09:03PEEPLES: Oh, a very, very close connection, I, uh--
00:09:05BIRDWHISTELL: --it doesn't feel artificial or like you have to kind of bridge any gap?
00:09:09PEEPLES: No, no, no. These guys I am very, very, very close to. And the fishing is the kind of thing that they all--that they always did. My dad and I used to, we used to fish so much.
00:09:26BIRDWHISTELL: What was it? What's the attraction of fishing? What is it about fishing?
00:09:29PEEPLES: Well, if I may use the same term, it's just so therapeutic. It's relaxing.
00:09:33BIRDWHISTELL: Just a way to get out? Be ----(??)--?
00:09:35PEEPLES: Yeah. And, and, it, for me, it, uh, it was almost like it was prescribed for me to counter the pressures and the tension that this job, that this job brings. No telephones, no newspapers, nothing but just the phone. And it's something that I don't have to have a lot of people participating in to do. And I'm really not, I'm really not a guy who likes to socialize with a lot of people. This job mandates that I do enough of that. And I guess my own personal social lifestyle now is one of, you know, it doesn't bother me to leave this place on--and go home for a weekend and not do a lot of socializing with a lot of folks. You know, that's okay. Yeah, I can--
00:10:31BIRDWHISTELL: --tell me about visiting Alabama. What--when you were a kid, did you go to Alabama?
00:10:37PEEPLES: What I remember about going to Alabama was connecting with my cousins who, who lived there. Getting out, and, you know, because Lynch was was kind of, it was, you know, the high mountains, and we were just kind of like stuck down in a little valley there. When I got to Alabama, my dad's place, wide open places, spaces, the trees that we call the Christmas trees, the, uh, and a lot of that grew, pine trees, a lot of it grew on the land. And, at the time that I went to Alabama, I had already started developing my love for fishing and hunting with my dad, and that gave me a chance to get out. We could hunt on their land out there and run around with, uh, with my cousins. That, that was the connection that I had. Even at that age, I think I could identify something with, hey, this is where my dad, this is where he grew up, and it was special. Special to me from that standpoint.
00:11:45BIRDWHISTELL: What kind of education did your father get in Alabama?
00:11:48PEEPLES: I think, Terry, that my father made it through to about the seventh grade. My mother, my mother was a high school graduate.
00:11:57BIRDWHISTELL: From?
00:11:58PEEPLES: My mother graduated from school in Lynch.
00:11:59BIRDWHISTELL: In Lynch. She--okay, her family moved there and she went to the high school in Lynch.
00:12:01PEEPLES: Yeah.
00:12:02BIRDWHISTELL: Um, how long had the family owned the farm here in Alabama?
00:12:09PEEPLES: As I --to the best of my knowledge, Terry, I think it's kind of been in, I'm not so sure if it's passed down from great-grandfather to him. I'm not exactly sure, but I know that all of my father's like they were on that, they were on that land.
00:12:22BIRDWHISTELL: What did they grow?
00:12:23PEEPLES: Gosh, I think basic subsistence kind of, basic subsistence kind of--
00:12:27BIRDWHISTELL: --they grew their own food and then some kind of cash crop?
00:12:30PEEPLES: Yeah, yeah. Well, in addition to being a father, I mean a farmer I think my father's father did work. He worked for Zeigler Meatpacking Company, which is one of the-- grew to be one of the largest firms in Birmingham.
00:12:44BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, so that's close enough to where he could commute to Birmingham?
00:12:46PEEPLES: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Birmingham. Bessemer's right outside of Birmingham.
00:12:49BIRDWHISTELL: Well, I'm going to go to Birmingham in, uh, March.
00:12:51PEEPLES: Really? Yeah. Bessemer's right outside of it. Let's see.
00:12:56BIRDWHISTELL: Um, let's see, so your father--how old was he when he came here?
00:13:06PEEPLES: Really, I don't know, Terry. I don't know. I would think, I'm going to guess probably in the twenties, old enough to start work. But what was interesting about their, their migration pattern from--of African Americans, including my father, from Birmingham to Lynch, is that a similar pattern developed from, for African Americans who lived in Lynch who were desirous of their offspring having a better opportunity. Dad left Alabama to come to Kentucky for a better opportunity, and African Americans in Lynch, beginning in the, what, 50s, had a pattern of going to the urban centers of Cleveland, Detroit. And then probably later in the 60s, they started a pattern of going to New Jersey and New York.
00:14:09BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, really?
00:14:10PEEPLES: Yeah. But there, there's that connection. They were going to Cleveland and Detroit to work for the auto industries. So those who were, weren't desirous of staying in the coal mine. And that was something that my dad certainly did not, he never wanted his sons to be coal miners.
00:14:29BIRDWHISTELL: Now, in looking at the time that your father made the migration, in, say it's the late 30s, you know, you're still in the Depression and times are tough, but I guess he would have had a choice to try to find work in Birmingham or become a coal miner. I wonder if--did he ever talk about why he made the decision to become a coal miner. I mean, if you grew up on a farm in Alabama, the next thing you know you're a coal miner.
00:14:54PEEPLES: Well, I, I, I, I really, as I think back on it, oh, I think they saw that as a better, that was a better opportunity.
00:15:01BIRDWHISTELL: Lower mining.
00:15:02PEEPLES: Lower mining, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm not so sure that some of it had to do with trying to get away from, I mean, One of the reasons that the Urban League is in existence is that there were migration patterns of African Americans from the South to the North, getting away from Jim Crowism in the South.
00:15:22BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. Yeah. And those were, those were tough times.
00:15:26PEEPLES: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
00:15:28BIRDWHISTELL: Did he ever talk about?
00:15:29PEEPLES: No, no. (recording pauses) (recording resumes)
00:15:34BIRDWHISTELL: Okay. So we were, um--
00:15:36PEEPLES: We were still talking about that migration pattern.
00:15:39BIRDWHISTELL: Right. And all the--and the people moving from Alabama to Lynch and then to the north and northeast. Uh, tell me your mother's name.
00:15:50PEEPLES: Carrie, C-A-R-R-I-E, L-O-U, Carrie Lou.
00:15:55BIRDWHISTELL: And what was her maiden name?
00:15:57PEEPLES: Conner, C-O-N-N-E-R.
00:15:58BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm. Um-hm. And, and her father had, had--
00:16:06PEEPLES: Okay. Now her, her father was a Conner, but her mother remarried and her--she was basically raised by her mother and stepfather.
00:16:19BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, really?
00:16:20PEEPLES: Who was Bethune, B-E-T-H-U-N-E.
00:16:22BIRDWHISTELL: B-A what?
00:16:23PEEPLES: B-E-T-H-U-N-E. T-H-U-N-E.
00:16:27BIRDWHISTELL: Huh. I'm not familiar with that name.
00:16:30PEEPLES: You ever heard Mary McLeod Bethune? Who one, the oral--Black History, like, but anyway, that's another one.
00:16:36BIRDWHISTELL: I should, probably. See, you ask enough questions, I should have done my -------(??).
00:16:40PEEPLES: Uh, but, and I was named after her--their stepfather, Porter.
00:16:48BIRDWHISTELL: His name was Porter?
00:16:49PEEPLES: Yeah, Porter Bethune. And, um--
00:16:52BIRDWHISTELL: Where does your middle name come from?
00:16:54PEEPLES: It's uh, that's, uh, my father's name was Roy O'Neal. And I don't know how they come--and my oldest brother's name, Roy O'Neal Jr.
00:17:06BIRDWHISTELL: Roy's called what?
00:17:07PEEPLES: Junior. Roy Jr.,
00:17:08BIRDWHISTELL: Roy Jr.
00:17:10PEEPLES: And, um, the third son, some kind of way they came up with the configuration of Porter, and I don't know how the Geneal piece came to being.
00:17:19BIRDWHISTELL: You never asked him? (both laugh) Where'd you all get this?
00:17:24PEEPLES: Well, I--as a young kid, I kind of thought, to me as a young kid, I thought there was something feminine about it. and kind of resented it. And, (laughs)
00:17:38BIRDWHISTELL: Were you teased about it?
00:17:39PEEPLES: Well actually, there's an interesting thing about small towns like that, Terry. Is--you're going to find it's kind of unbelievable. Your real name, you never start to identify with until you start elementary school.
00:17:54BIRDWHISTELL: When the teacher calls you that?
00:17:55PEEPLES: Teacher calls you that. Because you always have some kind of nickname.
00:17:57BIRDWHISTELL: What was your nickname?
00:17:57PEEPLES: And that--oh, my nickname was Sluggo.
00:18:03BIRDWHISTELL: Sluggo.
00:18:04PEEPLES: Sluggo. You remember Sluggo from the newspaper?
00:18:05BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.
00:18:07PEEPLES: And that nickname came, came about as a result of, uh, um, uh, of, uh, that, uh, Sluggo had, if you go back and look at some of the pictures of Sluggo, he always had the, had the clean cut. He was always bald-headed almost. And my mother used to always talk about, you know, that my hair was, in African American, my hair was so bad that it was best that you just keep it all cut off, because it kind of, it knotted up when it tried to grow out. So I always had clean cut, you know, bald heads almost, growing up as a little kid. And also most months, because that was also the easier way to more economical, just cut it all off and let you go.
00:18:52BIRDWHISTELL: Who cut your hair? Did your mother cut your hair?
00:18:54PEEPLES: No, no. In my--that did happen in a lot of families. But in my family, we always went--there were always barbers on the street or in the town, and they still do that. There was no barber--there was never a barber shop in my town.
00:19:09BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, really?
00:19:10PEEPLES: No, never, We never had a barber shop. But there were certain people who cut hair in their homes. Like a guy, Mr. Prinkton, used to cut my hair. Mr. Cox used to cut my hair. Then, then as we got to be teenagers and we wanted to be more stylish, we had certain teenagers start to cut hair.
00:19:26BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, really?
00:19:27PEEPLES: And they would, uh, be like the barber.
00:19:28BIRDWHISTELL: Because I was saying if you kept it real short, you'd just pick--
00:19:30PEEPLES: No. Well, then as a, well then, uh, we wanted more style in the way that you take a razor line, take the razor and cut certain razor lines in it. And it's pretty much the same thing these young guys are doing today. They've kind of designed it to cut in there. See I showed my son a picture of myself when I was eighteen, and showed him the hairstyle. See it's no different.
00:19:53BIRDWHISTELL: Things just go ----(??) around.
00:19:55PEEPLES: And that exactly was my point that I was making to him when I showed him that. I said, "You guys, why do you think that the whole world waited for you all to come on the scene for this to happen? It's just an evolution son." (both laugh)
00:20:07BIRDWHISTELL: He wasn't impressed.
00:20:09PEEPLES: No, no, no. But gowing up in--as a teenager, one of us, a guy who was, I think he was maybe a couple years older than me and played, we played football together, a guy named Biscuit was there. He was the barber, he cut the all, all of our hair.
00:20:24BIRDWHISTELL: That was his nickname.
00:20:25PEEPLES: Yeah, Biscuit, his, yeah. Everybody had some kind of nickname. And, somebody--you basically, stuck with you all the way through, and then you maybe would pick up another one based on some kind of, but everybody had some kind of--
00:20:38BIRDWHISTELL: What was your father--what did people call your father? Did they call him Porter?
00:20:42PEEPLES: No, my father's name was Roy. That was grandfather.
00:20:45BIRDWHISTELL: That was your grandfather on your mother's side was Porter.
00:20:46BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah
00:20:47BIRDWHISTELL: So your father's name was Roy. So did they call him Roy or did they have a nickname for him?
00:20:51PEEPLES: No, my father didn't--let me think, no, I don't think he had.
00:20:56BIRDWHISTELL: As far as you knew, most people called him Roy. Now, tell me, you had two brothers?
00:21:03PEEPLES: No, no. There were nine kids in my family. Five boys and four girls.
00:21:05BIRDWHISTELL: You just mentioned two.
00:21:07PEEPLES: Five and four. Five boys. Four girls.
00:21:08BIRDWHISTELL: Five boys.
00:21:09PEEPLES: Four girls.
00:21:10BIRDWHISTELL: And four girls. Okay. And where were you in -----(??)--?
00:21:15PEEPLES: I was in the middle.
00:21:16BIRDWHISTELL: You were right in the middle.
00:21:17PEEPLES: I was in the middle there.
00:21:18BIRDWHISTELL: Um, brothers and sisters. And we talked about how the family came to be in Lynch. Tell me about--think back to your childhood, and tell me some of your earliest recollections of your family and being in Lynch, Kentucky. I mean, what are some of the things that, you know, when you just kind of, your mind just sort of goes back to your childhood. What are some of the things that really stand out in your mind in your early life? Were there events that you went to? Were there things that happened there in the family?
00:21:52PEEPLES: Well, you, you always remember immediately the fact that their--the house was always overcrowded with nine kids running around. Mealtime was one, and I often tell a joke that and the proper etiquette at the table is to have one hand under the table and one on top. But our style was to put both elbows on the table, and that was to protect your turf. You couldn't put somebody from coming over.
00:22:27BIRDWHISTELL: It was -----(??) easy, couldn't you?
00:22:29PEEPLES: Everybody being, being at the table. Another thing I always remember about mealtime was, uh, your, if--when you think about a dining room table today, you think four chairs sitting around. We had, my dad, we had a bench.
00:22:50BIRDWHISTELL: A bench, sure. More like the Waltons. (laughs)
00:22:52PEEPLES: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. My dad made a bench. And that, that bench kind of like stayed in the family forever. In fact, as I said, I may be mistaken when I say my dad. My granddad may have made that bench.
00:23:04BIRDWHISTELL: Porter.
00:23:05PEEPLES: Yeah, but you'd line up across on that bench and be served. I remember the food being served out of large pots. And, uh, I remember, you-when you came in to eat, the kitchen sink, because you--growing up our bathroom facilities were the outhouse. When you came into the kitchen sink, that's where you washed your face and did everything. Everything happened right there, just as you got ready to eati. And the towel hanged there.
00:23:41BIRDWHISTELL: Tell me about the house. Where was it located, and how would you describe the house for me?
00:23:46PEEPLES: Okay, the first house I remember that we lived in, Terry, was a, uh, yeah a two-story. And most houses in Lynch were either two or an occasional three stories, all these homes were built, all these houses were built by the company. So they all looked alike. There were just differences in color, very little differences in shape. But a family of our size had a two-story with two bedrooms upstairs. And so that's why I say I always remember overcrowding this, because, you know, the parents had a bedroom. And maybe one of the younger kids may have a small bed in there with the parents, but the rest of us were in there. And the boys maybe had a big bed, two, three, four, you slept in. And then the girls had another room bed on the other side. And then after my grandfather died, and he died--I remember him dying when I was in the third grade. I distinctly remember him. him dying the day before school started as I was going into the third grade.
00:24:46BIRDWHISTELL: He lived with you?
00:24:47PEEPLES: No, he lived across the street. That's where I'm getting ready to go to. He--they had the three-story house across the street. And after he died, we moved in, into that house. And that's where I was raised.
00:25:00BIRDWHISTELL: And did your family own the house? Or was it rented from the company?
00:25:03PEEPLES: We always rented from the company. Those homes, my father bought it. very late in life, in my life, that the company then sell all the houses to the people who were there.
00:25:16BIRDWHISTELL: Had you already moved out when he bought the house?
00:25:19PEEPLES: No, I was still, I was still in high school when Dad bought the house. See, I stayed home probably longer than my sisters and brothers who were older than me, because after high school they left. And coincidentally, at the time that I graduated from high school, the community, the Southeast Community College had opened. And so I stayed two years at the community college, but that was with the assistance of all my sisters and brothers, because they had gone away, and I could go to New York and live, which is another thing that all African Americans did there, is when you were out of age that you could work, you would go north and stay with a relative for the summer, and then come back and go to school. I did. I went to New York from the time I was in the ninth grade, until I graduated from college.
00:26:02BIRDWHISTELL: I want to talk about that. I knew you'd, you'd mention that to me once, and I knew that was something we wanted to get to.
00:26:07PEEPLES: We moved into the three-story house.
00:26:10BIRDWHISTELL: Now, how did you get the three-story house? Since you were renting from the company, does the family have precedent over who gets the house rather than someone on the waiting list?
00:26:17PEEPLES: As I--yes, I understand. I think at that time, yeah, I think that we were able to kind of some squatter's rights, I guess that's what you got to call it, because it had been in the family. But see, when my grandfather died, there was one of my, uh, as I think one of his baby daughter at the time, I think, was living there with him. And then she moved to another house, and then we moved in.
00:26:44BIRDWHISTELL: So you have, uh, two adults and nine children. managing in a two-story house. And when you say two-story, it probably wasn't a huge two-story house. It was just like a two-story, like you might see, probably had what, Four rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs.
00:27:03PEEPLES: Yeah, two rooms downstairs, two upstairs.
00:27:04BIRDWHISTELL: Two and two.
00:27:05PEEPLES: Yeah. You came, you had a large front porch. You come into the living room, and then you had a landing that you go across into the kitchen. You had a back porch and back, small backyard, and the outhouse that's out there. You went upstairs to two bedrooms.
00:27:22BIRDWHISTELL: Now, uh, of the nine children, would--I guess I would assume that there are both boys and girls older than you.
00:27:29PEEPLES: Older than me, uh, one brother and three sisters.
00:27:32BIRDWHISTELL: Three sisters. So I'm sure the three sisters had a role in helping you grow up. Is that the way it worked in -------(??)--?
00:27:38PEEPLES: Oh, absolutely. They, that was a, you know, you start learning those skills of reaching back and helping your brothers and sisters very, very early in life.
00:27:50BIRDWHISTELL: And you did the same thing for the kids that were younger?
00:27:53PEEPLES: Yeah, I think I tried. I don't know if I did much for them. (both laugh)
00:28:01BIRDWHISTELL: What are your earliest recollections of your father coming in after work and ------(??)--?
00:28:05PEEPLES: Oh, God, Terry, that was, that, now that was kind of, like, exciting. One of the things that most coal mining fathers did was pack something in their lunch bucket that they knew they weren't going to eat and brought home.
00:28:21BIRDWHISTELL: Is that right?
00:28:22PEEPLES: Yeah, an apple or something. And it was like, when Dad would come home from work, you know, they'd--there was always probably four or five of us that were still of that age that would be excited about Dad coming home from work with the lunch bucket. And they were like, I would get the apple this day, somebody else would get it. But there was excitement about grabbing that lunch bucket. and seeing what he had in it, what he didn't, what he saved for the day. And also, Terry, that it--all coal miners, um, that most of them would change clothes at what's called a bathhouse. And it was, as a young kid, it was exciting if you got a chance to go to the bathhouse to meet your dad. You know, you stand there and you see all of the guys coming out of the, them coming to the bathhouse, and it's just one of, you know, you couldn't hardly recognize them, because they were all covered with dust. And, but to see your dad, I mean, it was, I mean, as we speak, it's just, it kind of feels chill to think about, you know, waiting for your dad coming out of that mine, and getting a chance to walk home with him or just to carry that bucket as you walk along with him.
00:29:39BIRDWHISTELL: What was your father like? Was he anything like you?
00:29:44PEEPLES: My father was very, very laid back, very quiet kind of guy. Didn't talk much, didn't socialize much with people. Kind of stay at home.
00:29:56BIRDWHISTELL: He liked to work and he liked to go fishing and--
00:29:58PEEPLES: Fishing and hunting. A lot of people, not being around a lot of people didn't bother him.
00:30:05BIRDWHISTELL: What about your mother? What was she like?
00:30:07PEEPLES: Just the opposite. My mother talked a lot and was very, very feisty, busy. Whereas I have, I guess one of my, I have some brothers who are just pretty much--I have one brother that talked so much his nickname was Radio.
00:30:26BIRDWHISTELL: You're kind of in between. You don't like to socialize a lot, but you can talk when you have to.
00:30:30PEEPLES: Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I can do without it when I don't have to.
00:30:36BIRDWHISTELL: What did your mother spend her days doing? Everything that needed to be done?
00:30:40PEEPLES: All mothers is, is washing clothes, and I can remember hanging the clothes out on the line. the clotheslines that every yard had. I remember the old--them washing with the old wringer type washers. One is--of the memories of the wringer type washer was being out there and your mother saying, "Don't mess with the washer when that thing that dries the clothes." Practically every kid in the house got your finger or your arm caught in there.
00:31:13BIRDWHISTELL: Why is that?
00:31:14PEEPLES: It was just the, it was always the temptation. Because I'd see my mother take the clothes out of that tub and put them there and they'd go through, and you--the temptation. "I can do that." And then you'd get your finger caught and you'd run up in there and that--practically every kid in the house did it.
00:31:34BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, yeah. I do. I do. It's amazing. I have a memory of that. (Peeples laughs)
00:31:39PEEPLES: That, that, that, those Maytag washers was what we had.
00:31:45BIRDWHISTELL: Now was that out on the back porch?
00:31:46PEEPLES: On the back porch. Yeah, out on the back porch and mother brought them.
00:31:49BIRDWHISTELL: And she'd have to haul the water to the washer?
00:31:51BIRDWHISTELL: Well no, we, uh, yeah, we--
00:31:53BIRDWHISTELL: But you had the water at the sink?
00:31:56PEEPLES: Oh, either she could run a hose and run the water.
00:31:59BIRDWHISTELL: It just wasn't a toilet facility that you had?
00:32:00PEEPLES: No, no toilet facility. But we always had inside, water inside.
00:32:03BIRDWHISTELL: Did you ever get inside, uh, toilets?
00:32:04PEEPLES: Oh, yeah, absolutely. We got that probably when I was in. junior high school,
00:32:11PEEPLES: That's what, I figured it must be--
00:32:12PEEPLES: --yeah, early and maybe even late elementary school.
00:32:14BIRDWHISTELL: That was a big step, right?
00:32:16PEEPLES: Oh, absolutely. (Birdwhistell laughs)
00:32:16BIRDWHISTELL: Well, you talk about quality of life. (laughs)
00:32:20PEEPLES: But that was one of the things I remember about my father. He and another guy were, well, most guys who worked in the coal mines were, had lots of talent. They learned to do a lot of things. And he learned, he was, he and this other guy used to install bathrooms.
00:32:40BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, really?
00:32:41PEEPLES: He used to install bathrooms and I can remember him, he used to , uh, we used to have a lot of problems in the cold winter with pipes freezing up in people's houses around. And I can remember the blowtorch that my dad had as part of the tools that they did plumbing with. I remember him. He used to unthaw pipe for people, and uh, uh--
00:33:05BIRDWHISTELL: --he was a part-time plumber.
00:33:07PEEPLES: Yeah, he could do that. He could do that. And he did some of those kinds of things like most coal miners. We went through periods where they were laid off because of slow periods in the industry. They were laid off working. He could do those kinds of things. And I remember a period where he was laid off from United States Steel and he had to work in one of these small coal mines privately owned. Even at that stage, I never felt--I used to always have fear that he'd get hurt.
00:33:41BIRDWHISTELL: I was going to ask you about that.
00:33:43PEEPLES: I always had, you know, I didn't have that same fear when I was with the United States Steel Mine, but in those private, small mines, because they--
00:33:49BIRDWHISTELL: --probably had a good reason to worry. (laughs)
00:33:50PEEPLES: Yeah, well, they had history of having problems in those small mines, because their safety records weren't what the U.S. Steel did.
00:33:58BIRDWHISTELL: Were there any deaths in the mines while you were there?
00:34:01PEEPLES: Well my, my mother's first husband died in the coal mines. And it was the father of my oldest sister. I don't remember that, obviously. Yes, there were deaths, but there weren't as numerous as you might think. I can remember my dad getting--having some accidents where he may have got, coal may have hit him on the head or in around his eye. I remember some of those kinds of accidents. But fortunately, my father never was hurt and never had a major injury while he was in the coal mine--thirty-some years. But you didn't really think about that much. That was like going to the office.
00:34:50BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. Yeah. Especially as a kid you think everybody lives forever anyway.
00:34:54PEEPLES: It--and those guys were, they were, what do you call it? Real men. (laughs) That's what we saw, because they worked hard. I mean, they labored.
00:35:10BIRDWHISTELL: Tough guys.
00:35:11PEEPLES: Yeah. And later on, the mechanism, mines became more highly mechanized, and the work was not as much pick and shovels. When that started, I'm sure it was just pick and shovels. It was just, the hard work.
00:35:25BIRDWHISTELL: Did your family ever consider at any point, let's just pack up and go to Cleveland?
00:35:30PEEPLES: No. No, I never heard that discussed. The only thing that was ever discussed in my house was as the kids got older and graduated from school, "You leave."
00:35:42BIRDWHISTELL: Get out of here.
00:35:43PEEPLES: Yep. Go.
00:35:44BIRDWHISTELL: Go get some. Go make make something of--what about in the mines? Did your father work with white miners? Did theyt work alongside ----(??)--?
00:35:50PEEPLES: Oh, sure. They all, all of them worked alongside each other. We lived segregated. But that's like, but when I say live segregated, it's like the street that I lived on, the only thing that separated us from the white families was an alley. (laughs)
00:36:10BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, that had always been segregated housing from the time that the U.S. [Steel] started it? So did you get to know white families then?
00:36:20PEEPLES: Oh, sure, because we all played together. The kids grew up playing together. We used to have some of the most, most, uh--sports was really big in my town. football, basketball, and we used to have--
00:36:36BIRDWHISTELL: --baseball--
00:36:37PEEPLES: --some hellacious, yeah, baseball too. some hellacious games with the Black kids against the white kids.
00:36:42BIRDWHISTELL: Because you'd have Black against white?
00:36:43PEEPLES: Yeah, you'd, man, you'd go at it. And then after the game, until the next Saturday, you were okay. Sometimes during the week when you were walking from the segregated schools, you'd probably test each other's manhood as you're walking up the sidewalk, and who's going to play chicken and move off the sidewalk today kind of deal, and you'd have some little scrapes. But that was basically the extent of it. You mentioned baseball. A lot of the younger guys who came to Lynch came there to play baseball. See that was the minor league, what we would consider minor league baseball. Because U.S. Steel have a team, a team maybe over in the next town was Benham, Kentucky. that was International Harvester, coal mine, they had a team. And they would bring, recruit guys, and that was the reward. You'd get a coal miner, the good coal mining job, if you were a good baseball player. Whereas some of the guys had to go back in them holes and work. You know, a good baseball player got, you know, a job on the outside.
00:37:55BIRDWHISTELL: Is that right? That's incredible.
00:37:56PEEPLES: Yeah, yeah, that was part of, and that was serious competition between those communities for the semi-pro baseball.
00:38:02BIRDWHISTELL: Now, were the semi-pro games, were they all Black teams or all white teams, or mixed?
00:38:07PEEPLES: They were basically Black teams. And they had nice stadiums that the coal companies would build to accommodate their teams.
00:38:17BIRDWHISTELL: Did the Black teams ever play the white teams?
00:38:19PEEPLES: I'm trying to think. In baseball, I'm not so sure.
00:38:22BIRDWHISTELL: Your memory is mostly the Black teams ------(??)--
00:38:24PEEPLES: --the Black team. The Black teams, yeah. Because I can remember as a kid loving to go to those baseball games on Sunday. And you would have heroes. You know guys, because one of my brothers, third down from me is named Maceo. And he was named after a guy who I remember came to Lynch, they brought him to Lynch to play baseball, and he was one fantastic pitcher.
00:38:52BIRDWHISTELL: You probably saw some good players.
00:38:54PEEPLES: Oh yeah, absolutely. (Birdwhistell laughs) And the Birmingham Black Barons and those kinds of teams used to come and play. Yeah. They used to come to Lynch and play. So we saw some talent.
00:39:05BIRDWHISTELL: Did any of those players ever move on up, into, the--
00:39:08PEEPLES: Not that I recall.
00:39:11BIRDWHISTELL: Did you know of any player that made it to the big leagues? To the show?
00:39:13PEEPLES: No. No. No.
00:39:14BIRDWHISTELL: You know, you reminded me of something. When you were growing up, I assume you had radio in your house?
00:39:21PEEPLES: Yeah.
00:39:22BIRDWHISTELL: Was that a big deal?
00:39:23PEEPLES: I think the TV came in the house when I was in about the fourth grade.
00:39:27BIRDWHISTELL: That'd be about right.
00:39:29PEEPLES: Yeah. As we mentioned, TV, um. it reminds me of another interesting episode of my life. When I was in the fourth grade, my--I went away to live with my uncle and aunt, both of whom were schoolteachers in Harlan, Kentucky, which was about twenty, twenty-two miles away from Lynch. They didn't have any kids, so they wanted me to come live with them.
00:40:02BIRDWHISTELL: How were you chosen?
00:40:03PEEPLES: I don't know. I don't really know. I wonder about that myself now.
00:40:07BIRDWHISTELL: That is interesting.
00:40:08PEEPLES: But I did that, Terry, for about a, I completed the fourth grade, stayed with them the whole fourth grade. In half of the fifth grade, I went home to visit for Christmas, and I made the decision I wanted to stay home.
00:40:21BIRDWHISTELL: Is that right?
00:40:22PEEPLES: Yeah, and I did. I stayed home.
00:40:23BIRDWHISTELL: Why did you choose, now this--it's interesting to me, I mean, here, you're in Harlan. And you got the whole house.
00:40:29PEEPLES: The whole house. Only child. Got basically everything I wanted.
00:40:33BIRDWHISTELL: You're being spoiled crazy. (laughs)
00:40:34PEEPLES: Yeah, absolutely, but I went home for Christmas and I stayed. And as I reflect back on that, I think that really hurt them, my uncle and aunt, because they had developed a real attraction to me as the only child. I don't know, Terry, I guess it was when I got back home with my sisters and brothers.
00:40:52BIRDWHISTELL: Every kid wants to be home. I mean, that's understandable. That's understandable. but I guess, you know, and looking back trying to balance wanting to be with your family and those kind of things that pull on you and the advantages that were there for you in Harlan. What was the school like in Harlan? Was it much different than what you had been to at Lynch?
00:41:14PEEPLES: Not much. It was still typical Black segregated school. Well, Harlan had a--the elementary school I went to in Harlan was in a wooden building, but it was still a good, basically, good school. And my uncle, you know, being a teacher, you know what, though, Terry, as I think back, I'm not so sure that, some probably--there probably were some pressures on me in the fourth and fifth grade with my uncle being a school teacher.
00:41:45BIRDWHISTELL: Your uncle and aunt taught in that school?
00:41:47PEEPLES: Yeah.
00:41:48BIRDWHISTELL: Both of them taught in that school?
00:41:49PEEPLES: She substituted in elementary schools, and he was a math teacher in high school.
00:41:54BIRDWHISTELL: So he taught--and it was all elementary through one through twelve?
00:41:58PEEPLES: Yeah. The wooden building where for first through sixth grade went was just right across, on the same grounds next door to it.
00:42:07BIRDWHISTELL: And what was your uncle's name?
00:42:08PEEPLES: Ernest Clements. He died in a car accident when I was a senior in high school.
00:42:16BIRDWHISTELL: And your aunt's name?
00:42:18PEEPLES: Elizabeth. She lives in, uh, Savannah Georgia now. She went back home. I can remember she took me down to meet her. I went to Savannah a couple of times to see her family.
00:42:31BIRDWHISTELL: So this is your mother's sister?
00:42:33PEEPLES: That was my, Ernest was my mother's half-brother.
00:42:38BIRDWHISTELL: He was her half-brother, okay.
00:42:40PEEPLES: He was--
00:42:41BIRDWHISTELL: --all right. Uh, so you think there was pressure on you?
00:42:47PEEPLES: I think so. I really think that I couldn't understand, as a, as a, kid in that--I don't know. I just remember going home for Christmas and never going back.
00:42:59BIRDWHISTELL: Harlan was a big place then.
00:43:01PEEPLES: Yeah, compared to Lynch, absolutely.
00:43:03BIRDWHISTELL: And compared to now. It had more people then, didn't it? (Peeples laughs)
00:43:05PEEPLES: I don't know. It may have. I'm not exactly sure.
00:43:12BIRDWHISTELL: But there wasn't anything you disliked necessarily about living in Harlan?
00:43:16PEEPLES: Oh, no, no. As a kid, I probably thought that they were putting some unnecessary pressures on me, and they, and probably their parenting style was different from, obviously different from my parents' parenting style.
00:43:31BIRDWHISTELL: In a way, I guess you probably had less freedom in Harlan, because--
00:43:33BIRDWHISTELL: --probably did--
00:43:34BIRDWHISTELL: --in, uh, Lynch with nine kids you could probably go about. (laughs)
00:43:36PEEPLES: Oh, you'd get lost, and they wouldn't know you were gone until they did a nighttime head count or something. (both laugh)
00:43:42BIRDWHISTELL: This would have been about 1954, 55, when you've been living in Harlan County.
00:43:48PEEPLES: Yeah, somewheres there.
00:43:49BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, that's interesting.
00:43:53PEEPLES: I probably also missed my relationship with my father, too, Terry. My relationship with my father was something very, very special. Very special to me. So special that I can remember when he died, I subconsciously just quit fishing for a long period of time. In retrospect, I regret that because I think I lost some time with my own son, because that would have been the time that I would have been developing that fishing kind of thing. But subconsciously, fishing, I just lost all interest in it. I'm back into it now, and I've been back in now probably for the last, because he's been dead probably about seventeen years, I've probably been back in about the last seven, eight years, real, real heavy, but I'm really... Yeah, you know, when I first met you, you never talked about fishing, and then a few years ago, it started to slip into your conversation.
00:44:43PEEPLES: Yeah, it just, it came back with me.
00:44:46BIRDWHISTELL: And I was kind of surprised, because I never heard you talk about it. You know, when I first knew you.
00:44:52PEEPLES: Subconsciously, I--and I, as I talked to my uncle, I remember he went through a period where he just kind of backed away from it for a while, too. Because that was our bond. That was our bond. And I'll just say the irony of it is that I was able to get that boat for him on March 8th. And he got sick on September 6th, which was the time that he got sick that, on that Friday evening, we were, myself and my brother, we got there that night here. See, what happened, he started bleeding from within. Bleeding inside. They arrested that. And he was doing okay. And so we went on home that Saturday, and that night, or late that night, early in the Sunday morning, he died. Just, you know, undiagnosed, ulcer. You know, I, too, have -----(??) the, well, surgery for some things. I've been vaccinated, too.
00:46:01BIRDWHISTELL: But you watch yours?
00:46:03PEEPLES: Oh, yeah. You know, some of the kinds of things I did, but you know, I don't do no more.. I used to, you know, prior to then, I used to drink. I don't know. I don't drink. I don't know much of anything. But this job itself brings enough pressure. I didn't need to aggravate it with other kinds of things. Now, I don't ever remember any doctor telling me anything. My own sisters told me that you don't need to be doing that.
00:46:28BIRDWHISTELL: Absolutely. So you had radio, and then you got TV, and so this was sort of a, you know, you described Lynch as sort of, you know, the mountains and, you know, being down in that valley, and it brings up all kinds of imagery, of course, but then radio and TV connects you with the world beyond Lynch, and of course, by the time you're a little older, you're going to be seeing that world. You're going to be getting out. But for a while there, Lynch and Harlan were your world.
00:47:02PEEPLES: I don't remember the radio era much, but I remember them. And that's why I guess I got off talking about moving to Harlan because I remember when I was living in Harlan was when the family I got TV. So when I moved back, so.
00:47:15BIRDWHISTELL: You other relatives in Harlan didn't have a television?
00:47:16PEEPLES: Oh, yes, they did. My ------(??).
00:47:17BIRDWHISTELL: I thought if they were teachers, they wouldn't.
00:47:19PEEPLES: No, no, no. They had them. ----------(??) When I got to Harlan, they had everything. And I can remember when I first moved in with them. I probably had, I probably had what I thought were a lot of clothes for myself. It was nothing because I remember the very first weekend I moved in with them they took me and they just lavished me with clothes.
00:47:43BIRDWHISTELL: Had your own room?
00:47:44PEEPLES: Oh, absolutely.
00:47:48BIRDWHISTELL: Had it made?
00:47:50PEEPLES: I guess by some standard or the other. (Birdwhistell laughs)
00:47:55BIRDWHISTELL: What about newspapers? Did you, as you were growing up, did you start reading the Lynch newspapers?
00:48:03PEEPLES: What we had in eastern Kentucky was the Knoxville News Sentinel and the Knoxville Journal. So those are the papers. We had, uh, which gave us a good--probably the closest tie to the University of Tennessee, probably, and the University of Kentucky. And I had a newspaper route.
00:48:24BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, you did?
00:48:24PEEPLES: I had the early morning route.
00:48:25BIRDWHISTELL: For the Knoxville paper?
00:48:27PEEPLES: Knoxville Journal paper I carried. And I remember creating for myself, in addition to those morning papers that I carried, I, back during that time, Ebony Magazine, Jet Magazine, and Tan Magazine were real big ----(??) in the Black community. And I remember one time opening the Ebony magazine and so on, seeing where they were recruiting people to just create their own routes. So I connected with Chicago and developed an Ebony, Jet, Tan route in Lynch where I sold those, I sold those magazines and then I would have to take my share out and then send the rest of the money to Chicago.
00:49:13BIRDWHISTELL: So you'd go around an knock on doors? And get people to sign up?
00:49:16PEEPLES: Yeah, and people were interested in getting those magazines delivered.
00:49:18BIRDWHISTELL: And could they not get them at a store then?
00:49:20PEEPLES: They could get them at a store, but this was--
00:49:21BIRDWHISTELL: --just home delivery?
00:49:22PEEPLES: Yeah, home delivery. And the my--every month the Ebony came, every week the Jet came, and every month the Tan magazine. So I put together my own, maybe I had a little entrepreneurial spirit at that age.
00:49:36BIRDWHISTELL: Sluggo the entrepreneur. (both laugh)
00:49:37PEEPLES: Yeah. --------(??) And my Knoxville Journal, what I remember about that was that, I had that at a time that my father was out of work with the coal mine. And he and I used to deliver those papers early. Yeah, in the morning. I used to deliver that thing about 6 o'clock every morning.
00:50:00BIRDWHISTELL: But that was cash. You were getting cash. Did your other brothers and sisters have part-time jobs, or were they able to generate income?
00:50:07PEEPLES: Well, one of my other brothers later on had a newspaper route.
00:50:12BIRDWHISTELL: But that would be very important, I think, to try and get some spending money.
00:50:19PEEPLES: But all of us did different kinds of things. Running errands for older people. In high school, we used to wash cars on Saturday. You could make decent money and wash four or five cars on a Saturday.
00:50:37BIRDWHISTELL: Did anyone work for white families?
00:50:40BIRDWHISTELL: My sister did.
00:50:41BIRDWHISTELL: Like you would find, you know, work?
00:50:45PEEPLES: The domestic kind of, kind of--my older sister did. She worked for a family, the Vicini family, which lived behind us. They had a, there was a large family of them, a Catholic family, and they had a lot of, a lot of kids, and she used to babysit.
00:51:08BIRDWHISTELL: It occurred to me, you know, like in this part of Kentucky, you know, it's quite common for Blacks to work in white families, but I was wondering with the different circumstances there, it wouldn't be quite as common.
00:51:18PEEPLES: No, no, no, that wasn't as--
00:51:20BIRDWHISTELL: --because it was Black coal miner, and they were earning the same as the white coal miners?
00:51:24PEEPLES: Pretty much, yeah.
00:51:27BIRDWHISTELL: And so that wouldn't be the same as what you might find here in Central Kentucky.
00:51:32PEEPLES: No. What you had in terms of a, uh, the differences in income is you had what we call supervisors, or they call them bosses in the mine, who made more money. They lived in a different section of town.
00:51:51PEEPLES: Did they always live up on the hill?
00:51:52PEEPLES: Yeah, they would live up on the hill or somewhere, and they had better, they had better--but most of the rank-and-file workers pretty much lived there. Now, everybody had different personal management styles of their money. Some people lived better than others, but the system that they had in there, I think, crippled a lot of people in terms of better management of their money, because you had the company store, and you could go to the company store and get what they call scrip. And you just go in and say, I need ten dollars, and I want to go grocery shopping with them. And that was deducted from the wages before they would get their--and oftentimes they weren't, because of that they didn't manage as well, and probably sometimes would spend more than what the paycheck was going to be. I remember those kind of things happening earlier on. But I think later, you know, they developed better management skills for their money. That developed a dependency on the company, and I'm not so sure if that wasn't the plan.
00:53:04BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. If they hadn't thought of it, they liked the way it worked. (laughs) What about the church? How important was the church in your life?
00:53:13PEEPLES: Very, very, very important. The, um--
00:53:16BIRDWHISTELL: --how many different Black churches were there?
00:53:18PEEPLES: We had, in my town, we had two Baptist churches and one Methodist.
00:53:22BIRDWHISTELL: Two Baptist churches?
00:53:23PEEPLES: Yeah. Uh, the town, the way the town was--
00:53:24BIRDWHISTELL: --usually when there's two Baptist churches, there's a falling out in the ------(??).
00:53:28PEEPLES: The way the town was structured, uh, in, in coal mining, you'd have certain, they, they called them by numbers. Uh, as you entered Lynch, on the coming, on the south side coming in, there was, you'd have number one, number two, number three, number four. And I lived in number five, our church was in number six, but the other Baptist church is, was in number one. So they were all separated apart, and the Methodist church was in number four.
00:54:02BIRDWHISTELL: Now were the ministers full-time, or were they part-time?
00:54:04PEEPLES: Full-time, full-time ministers.
00:54:07BIRDWHISTELL: And which church were you in, the Baptist?
00:54:08PEEPLES: I was in the Baptist church. Baptist church in number six.
00:54:12BIRDWHISTELL: And what was it called?
00:54:13PEEPLES: First Baptist.
00:54:14BIRDWHISTELL: First Baptist.
00:54:15PEEPLES: Yeah, First Baptist. And that's where, you know, I had funerals with my mother and father. I remember Sunday school. We always went to Sunday school. We always went to church. The fun times were the church picnics. Every year we'd, uh, that, the bus would come and we would leave Lynch to go to places like Cumberland Falls or come down to Barbourville. But another thing in terms of the outside exposure, the teachers were really interested in kids always getting outside exposure. So you had the church picnic and you also, every class would have a picnic, an annual picnic. And I can remember a second grade, teacher, Ms. Harris, she always took her class to Cincinnati Zoo.
00:55:04BIRDWHISTELL: Is that right?
00:55:05PEEPLES: Yeah, from Lynch to Cincinnati.
00:55:06BIRDWHISTELL: On a bus?
00:55:07PEEPLES: Yeah.
00:55:08BIRDWHISTELL: That's a haul.
00:55:09PEEPLES: You know, the kids would, I mean, that was, you know, the parents knew that at the end of the year that that was an event. And then you, uh, Cincinnati, yes, we did. Then, and we had one teacher who was, who was born and raised in Franklin. She always carried her class down and visited the--
00:55:25BIRDWHISTELL: --Capitol.
00:55:26PEEPLES: Capitol.
00:55:27BIRDWHISTELL: Where were you? Were the teachers from all over, basically?
00:55:29PEEPLES: Yeah. The teachers were recruited into Lynch. As I was told that the jobs were more attractive in Lynch because of the United States Steel subsidizing the schools, that the salaries were a bit higher than the county school system.
00:55:49BIRDWHISTELL: Were the teachers mostly women?
00:55:54PEEPLES: Yeah.
00:55:54BIRDWHISTELL: Were they mostly unmarried?
00:55:58PEEPLES: A lot of them probably when they came.
00:55:59BIRDWHISTELL: And then they might marry a coal miner. Were there any African-American men in Lynch that weren't coal miners?
00:56:09PEEPLES: No, I only remember, it's funny, I only remember.
00:56:11BIRDWHISTELL: I mean, this is what you remember, I understand. I -------(??).
00:56:14PEEPLES: No, no, no. It was crystal. That's kind of evident. There was only one. I remember one guy who didn't, growing up, His--he worked for the superintendent of the mine as caretaker of his house. And they were my neighbors right across the street.
00:56:36BIRDWHISTELL: That's probably a pretty good job, wasn't it?
00:56:37PEEPLES: Well, I don't know whether I was going to--I guess they survived. I don't know if that was the, but, but he was, he was, he was, he was, he was conspicuous by the difference. That he didn't, he didn't work in the, that he did not work in the mine. That everybody worked in the mine.
00:56:54BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm. When, in growing up, when did it first occur to you that, about race, race being a factor in your existence. I mean, is there a point in your life when all of a sudden it just sort of dawned on you, you said, wait a minute, I've got this figured out now. There's a reason why the Black kids play the white kids. There's this, there's a thing going on here that's a little more complicated than I first realized.
00:57:32PEEPLES: The differences, probably were obvious all along, but the differences didn't bother me because that's the way it's supposed to be.
00:57:41BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, you didn't have any reason to even.
00:57:42PEEPLES: Yeah, but now the first time it bothered me was when we integrated my senior year.
00:57:48BIRDWHISTELL: Senior in high school?
00:57:51PEEPLES: One, I was--I didn't like it. I just felt like, I felt like I was, something was being taken away from me, because you always--
00:57:56BIRDWHISTELL: --well it was-- (laughs)
00:57:57PEEPLES: --you always look forward to your senior year, and you were a big time when you were a senior in the Black school.
00:58:06BIRDWHISTELL: Well, it was being taken away from you.
00:58:07PEEPLES: I, I resented that, and I think I carried that feeling with me into the integrated setting. And when we, football, bear in mind that football was big, a big deal to me. Class A state champs, you know, it was just kind of automatic that Lynch would be the class A state champ. We were class A state champs my senior year. The differences became evident to me then when we went in to select captains my senior year. My junior year, we practiced. Back then you could have spring practice in football. We had spring practice together.
00:58:50BIRDWHISTELL: How'd that go?
00:58:51PEEPLES: Fine, fine.
00:58:52BIRDWHISTELL: You knew the kids, right?
00:58:53PEEPLES: Oh yeah, we all knew each other. And then we went away for the summer and we came back for practice that fall, and we started, we were going to select captains. and we all went through this democratic process of writing names on a slip and giving--and then the coaches went into the back room and they came out and told us who. And I questioned that I remember questioning that because I remember historically the way we did it in our school is that we would all put them in a hat and then somebody would go to the board and put the names and we'd count someone they'd call them out.
00:59:29PEEPLES: Kind of like a monitoring process.
00:59:30PEEPLES: Yeah, and then we did it that way, and I questioned that. He came back, they came back, and they told us, well, here are our captains. And there was three white guys.
00:59:39BIRDWHISTELL: Three white guys.
00:59:42PEEPLES: And I, because I remember us part strategizing as Black players that we were going to do some Black -----(??).
00:59:48BIRDWHISTELL: How many, what was the--?--
00:59:49PEEPLES: And, we--I know the numbers should have supported that position. We should have had--
00:59:54BIRDWHISTELL: --you had enough numbers to--
00:59:55PEEPLES: --yeah, we had enough numbers, that, yeah. But one, but we did win because we were able to elect a Black, Black football queen. Wait a minute, did we get, did we win? No, I think we may have won in basketball. I got a, I think we worked on that, too, as, as a block, and I think a co-queen or something, we won that.
01:00:13BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm, um-hm. So you, you raised the issue about this.
01:00:16PEEPLES: Yeah, I remember, I remember. You know, you didn't become marked, you know, and he obviously didn't like that. You know, you weren't, I mean, you were out of place. You weren't supposed to be doing that.
01:00:30BIRDWHISTELL: You know, I mean, there's two different things going on there. One's the race, and one's questioning the coach. Either one will get you into trouble, and you combine both of them, and that's your result. (laughs) Were you surprised that you were the person that spoke up?
01:00:49PEEPLES: No, and I'm not so sure that I was the only one. I think we basically, you know, we were, all of us were conscious of, that, that would probably happen. And we were really, really, and I guess probably on those kind of issues that those of us who were Black kids probably were a little more advanced than the white kids because of the fact that all of us had had outside exposures. All of us had been to different cities and seen different nationalities and had different involvement. The white kids stayed in Lynch all the time. They stayed in Lynch every summer, and they could go to that little country club and play and do other kinds of things. But we had had a different exposure to the outside world. As I reflect back on the guys who were probably in my senior class, I remember one of them used to go to Washington, and one used to go to his relatives in New Jersey. one guy used to go to Philadelphia, several of us went to Brooklyn, some went to Cleveland, all of us, I mean--
01:01:45BIRDWHISTELL: --that sure makes you different people, doesn't it, after you've been to the city like that?
01:01:48PEEPLES: Yeah. The day after school was out in Lynch, or certainly a week after school was out, it was difficult to find Black teenagers. We were gone.
01:02:00BIRDWHISTELL: That's incredible. Did any Black teachers make the transition to the consolidated school?
01:02:10PEEPLES: Uh, some. No Black coaches. And I think that's pretty much, they just kind of faded away That--.
01:02:17BIRDWHISTELL: --what about the Black principal? What happened to them?
01:02:20PEEPLES: Became, they would either become assistants or they took care of the junior high or something along that line, and then they just kind of faded away. That wasn't just Lynch, but I think that happened across the state.
01:02:30BIRDWHISTELL: No, it did. It did. You're not telling me anything I haven't heard before in that regard, in terms of the school consolidation. Uh so you would have been a senior in nineteen--
01:02:40PEEPLES: Sixty-three, sixty-four.
01:02:43BIRDWHISTELL: Sixty-three, sixty-four. So you're in, uh, you learned in your junior year that the schools were going to be consolidated--
01:02:52PEEPLES: Integrated, yeah. Consolidated. You're right.
01:02:55BIRDWHISTELL: It is integrated, and so they shut down the Black school, probably--
01:03:00PEEPLES: --uh, I think, let me see, I think what they did was, junior high, the, we--
01:03:08BIRDWHISTELL: --um, other than the, uh, so did your relationship with the football coach, would that make it bad for the rest of your year there? Did that not work out?
01:03:21PEEPLES: Well, I was mediocre player at best, even though I was, I played a lot in the junior, but mediocre at best, so my greatest expectation was just to, be on the team, probably just be on the team. Because football, I mean, football was serious business. Serious, serious business.
01:03:48BIRDWHISTELL: And you're not the biggest guy that ever played football either?
01:03:50PEEPLES: No, I was probably a little better during high school weighing--I was probably about a hundred and forty-five pounds.
01:03:54BIRDWHISTELL: But you played defensive back?
01:03:55PEEPLES: I played quarterback and defensive back and a half back. But every, practically all guys played, played football.
01:04:06BIRDWHISTELL: So the integrated school was Lynch High School, right? And what was the school you would go to?
01:04:11PEEPLES: Oh no, what we had, we had East Main High and West Main High. West Main was the Black school and East Main was the--
01:04:15BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, really? And so then when it was integrated, what was it called?
01:04:19PEEPLES: We just went to East Main.
01:04:20BIRDWHISTELL: But it wasn't called Lynch High School, it was just called East Main?
01:04:22PEEPLES: No, it was East Main, and then West Main became, I think, a junior high school.
01:04:25BIRDWHISTELL: Huh. That's interesting.
01:04:29PEEPLES: I don't know, I guess, probably I carried a lot of resentment. I know I carried a lot of resentment in there, and I remember those--they had something that they did up there at the beginning of your senior year where they, I mean, to them I think it was all in fun, but to me it was serious, where they would make a kind of a forecast as to what everybody was going to be as adults. And I remember something about that I was supposed to be a shoe salesman. I just resented someone thinking that they had the right to tell me what I was going to do--be.
01:05:15BIRDWHISTELL: And this was published somewhere?
01:05:17PEEPLES: Yeah, it was a little fun kind of deal. that I just didn't like. And I took on some personal challenges of competing with some of the, of the, of what were considered their best students, and some of the rest of us. And we basically, we felt we owed it to the teachers who had prepared us to compete against. There, the, the, some of the white students there. I remember an American government class I had with, and there was a guy named Bobby Ross. Bobby Ross was, ended up in the battle of the class. Now, I wasn't, then there were other guys who were probably above me in terms of overall--Bill Turner, who's PhD. Bill was Bill was academically probably a better student.
01:06:07BIRDWHISTELL: All in the same grade?
01:06:08PEEPLES: Yeah. Art Garner. Art Garner, who came to UK and we graduated together.
01:06:12BIRDWHISTELL: Who?
01:06:13PEEPLES: Art Garner. And he was good in math. We have Freida Hopkins, who I think she graduated from Berea and went on, and I think she has a PhD now.
01:06:24BIRDWHISTELL: Quite a class. (laughs)
01:06:25PEEPLES: But we just, it was a challenge. It was just a challenge for us to compete with them. I can remember that government class with Bobby. I was just bound and determined that he was not going to do any better in that class than me. I was talking to one of the guys who taught that class when I was back home at the community college not too long ago. We were kind of chuckling about that.
01:06:50BIRDWHISTELL: Were you, so the kids who came from West Main, you all, I mean, for seniors in high school, that's a pretty big chunk of stuff to carry around, you know, to represent the race, represent the school, represent the athletic tradition of your school. I mean, good grief, this is pretty heavy stuff for an eighteen, seventeen, eighteen-year-old kid.
01:07:18PEEPLES: Yeah, it was a load. It was a load.
01:07:22BIRDWHISTELL: It had to change you, I guess. I mean that, uh--
01:07:25PEEPLES: --what was it? Another interesting piece of that, Terry, is that the guy who was the principal of the school named Jack Isaacs left Lynch after our first year of integration and came to Lexington, because Lexington had not integrated. And I'm not saying that Jack moved to get away from integration, but he became an assistant principal at Henry Clay.
01:07:48BIRDWHISTELL: Really?
01:07:50PEEPLES: And he was one of those guys who was, who I targeted as being part of that group who were making those predictions about our capabilities. And I remember coming when I was a senior at UK, and we were trying to do some recruiting of African American high school students from the area to come to UK. I was part of a delegation that went to Henry Clay to talk to students. And I guess that probably was one of the proudest days of my life, to walk into his office there as principal and say, "Oh, remember me?"
01:08:24BIRDWHISTELL: Did he?
01:08:25PEEPLES: Yeah. (both laugh)
01:08:30BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, goodness.
01:08:33PEEPLES: That was fun. That was kind of fun for me.
01:08:37BIRDWHISTELL: So you're--up until your senior year through school, you were a good student.
01:08:43PEEPLES: Well, I was an excellent student in elementary school. Junior high I was okay. First year junior. Eighth, ninth grade, I went through one of these things of acceptance by the guys, and that it wasn't cool to get your lessons. So I just kind of--
01:09:06BIRDWHISTELL: --let it slide?
01:09:09PEEPLES: --or just quit. Just enough to get by.
01:09:10BIRDWHISTELL: Really?
01:09:11PEEPLES: And probably went through that nonsense until tenth grade. And then I got started getting my act back together later, tenth grade, eleventh grade. But when we integrated, man, I was fired up about competing.
01:09:29BIRDWHISTELL: What do you think turned it back around for you in the tenth grade? Do you have any--a clue?
01:09:34PEEPLES: Starting to go to New York and starting to see what--if you didn't--
01:09:38BIRDWHISTELL: --what the future might be?
01:09:39PEEPLES: Yeah, absolutely. Because every summer after I went to New York, I would go back and I'd see where some of the guys I knew had, what had happened was some of them had succumbed to drugs, some of them had gotten killed, some of them had, uh, and I just, I, that started to make some sense to me. In addition to probably what my brothers and the rest of them were telling me about what, if you're going to make it out in this world.
01:10:03BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, you had some people telling you?
01:10:04BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, oh yeah, it started to make sense.
01:10:05BIRDWHISTELL: All you had to do was listen. Whenever you wanted to tune it in, the message was there wasn't it?
01:10:10PEEPLES: Yeah. And when I graduated, I remember, Terry, when I graduated from college, graduated from high school and went to the community college, being the first of the family to have an opportunity, I feel like I carried the responsibility. I had to do it. I feel like I would have let down my brothers and sisters who were allowing me to come and live with them in the summer. And they were giving of their households and their times to give me an opportunity. So I feel like I had to graduate.
01:10:38BIRDWHISTELL: Couldn't screw this up.
01:10:39PEEPLES: No, I had to do that. I had to do that. And when I graduated, and I still to this day feel that when I got the degree that I could have or should have had the names of all of them who made it possible for me.
01:10:56BIRDWHISTELL: Sure, sure. An acknowledgments page on your diploma. Yeah. I think that's true in everybody's life, but it's more true in some than others, that's for sure. When you come back from New York in the late summer, early fall, probably late summer, did those mountains look a little higher and that place look a little deeper?
01:11:19PEEPLES: Yeah. The streets looked a little smaller and--
01:11:22BIRDWHISTELL: --and a little more closed in. Because you're getting older and you've been, you know, you've been to Brooklyn, good grief.
01:11:27PEEPLES: Exposed to--but Terry, there, it was like, I mean, the reunion when we came back every August was just so fantastic.
01:11:33BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, I bet.
01:11:34PEEPLES: Because all of us will have, we would come back and talk about the different work experiences we had. All of us, you know, basically all we had to do with the money that we made that summer was buy our school clothes. And everybody would come back with a whole different, I mean, we'd come back with whatever styles that they were wearing in those cities.
01:11:53BIRDWHISTELL: And even if you took away the exaggeration of the stories, they were pretty good. (both laugh)
01:11:58PEEPLES: And we communicated during the summers, too.
01:12:00PEEPLES: Really? Writing letters?
01:12:01PEEPLES: Yeah.
01:12:02BIRDWHISTELL: Did you keep any of those?
01:12:05PEEPLES: In fact, one of probably any of the things that I would have had is memorabilia. It went away before our house burned down.
01:12:15BIRDWHISTELL: Your house in Lynch burned down? What year was that?
01:12:24PEEPLES: Probably--it's been since my father died, probably ten years.
01:12:27BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. That's too bad. Did you lose a lot when that happened?
01:12:31PEEPLES: It was still fully equipped.
01:12:36BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm. That's interesting.
01:12:39PEEPLES: Because we used to go back, and go back, and we think it was arson.
01:12:45BIRDWHISTELL: Really? Why would somebody want to burn their house down?
01:12:47PEEPLES: To get the lot, because there was a trend there to put these wire trailers on lots. So we really, because, in fact, I'm convinced it was arson because of the way it went. The neighbors who saw it said it just went. (Peeples makes sound effect) You could, I mean, the guy across the street, said you could see the fire running up the steps.
01:13:09BIRDWHISTELL: Sort of like these cases we got out in South Lexington right now of arson. Before we talk about going away to the big cities and staying with your relatives in the summer, you mentioned you took trips to--in grade school. You'd go to Cincinnati Zoo. You might go to Frankfurt. So you were getting out a little bit.
01:13:31PEEPLES: And I was always going to Tennessee over in the Knoxville area, where we fished around. So I did have some exposure. And there was another tradition, we, uh, all coal mining families, the coal mines were shut down for two weeks in July. and the families would go on vacation. And most--a lot of them would go to Alabama.
01:13:52BIRDWHISTELL: Where did you all go?
01:13:53PEEPLES: Uh, my dad and I, mostly--we went fishing.
01:13:58BIRDWHISTELL: Because I was going to say, you can't get nine people in a car. (laughs)
01:14:01PEEPLES: No, we went fishing. A lot of the other families had traditions of going back home. My dad and his brother used to go to Alabama in the wintertime, usually. That's when I remember going to Alabama, around Christmas.
01:14:15BIRDWHISTELL: Did a lot of the families have a large number of kids?
01:14:19PEEPLES: Oh yeah, that was the rule, rule rather than exception. Five, four, five kids, up to nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. (Birdwhistell laughs)
01:14:32BIRDWHISTELL: So tell me about the first summer that you went away to stay with relatives. Where'd you go the first summer, and how old were you?
01:14:44PEEPLES: I think I was fifteen or sixteen. Uh-huh.
01:14:48BIRDWHISTELL: So this went, let's see, 1945, 1950, to 1960.
01:14:52PEEPLES: Yeah.
01:14:53BIRDWHISTELL: You went to Brooklyn.
01:14:54PEEPLES: I went to live with my brother, who was then working. He was pretty new to New York itself. He was working then as a system manager of some kind of sorts in a large grocery store. And my first job I had was as a messenger boy in Midtown Manhattan, 19th Street Park Avenue South as a messenger boy for a printing firm.
01:15:29BIRDWHISTELL: Your brother got that job for you?
01:15:32PEEPLES: The, um, two friends, I mean when I went to New York that summer, my girlfriend, who later became my wife, went to New York also. She lived in New York City. She went to New York City to live with her auntie.
01:15:52BIRDWHISTELL: From Lynch to New York City.
01:15:53PEEPLES: Yeah, from Lynch to live with her auntie. And I went to Brooklyn to live with my brother. Auntie helped her get a job where she would go out to Westport, Connecticut and babysit in one of the large homes. A lot of that went on Westport, Connecticut to babysit. And then she would come back in and stay weekends with her aunt.
01:16:16BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, she stayed the whole week out there?
01:16:17PEEPLES: Yeah, stayed out there on the place and kept the kids. The family who she worked for owned the printing company in New York, so I went to work for them as a messenger boy. And my area is 19th Street, Park Avenue South, up to Rockefeller Center. And it was exciting.
01:16:38BIRDWHISTELL: I can't imagine.
01:16:39PEEPLES: Really exciting.
01:16:40BIRDWHISTELL: Fifteen, sixteen years old, 1960, New York City, good grief.
01:16:45PEEPLES: You have to remember, because the first time I went up, I went with my brother. My brother had come home to visit, and I went with him, and we got off the train there, and Penn Station at 34th Street, and there's New York. I remember seeing a, a, uh, a priest who in my sights appeared to be inebriated. And I said, now if this is New York, I don't know if I really want this. That was, that was--I'm not so sure if it's just my own excitement or my own anxieties or whatever that was happening at that time. But, yeah, I made the adjustment. Went to the neighborhood. You have to, you know, whenever you came from down south, as they said, and went and became in the new neighborhood, you kind of had to prove yourself to be accepted with the guys around the neighborhood.
01:17:50BIRDWHISTELL: Were you able to do that?
01:17:51PEEPLES: Well, we played basketball a lot. Basketball was a big thing on the pavements in New York, so we played basketball. My brother had some some relatives, and um, there was--he had a nephew who was my age who kind of helped me.
01:18:06BIRDWHISTELL: What kind of housing did your brother live in?
01:18:08PEEPLES: He rented an apartment in New York, in Brooklyn.
01:18:13BIRDWHISTELL: So this looked pretty good to you? This whole scene looked pretty good?
01:18:17PEEPLES: Oh, yeah. It was exciting to me. It was exciting. So--it's a whole different world, a whole different world. And you know New York City. And I had to learn how to catch the subway in Brooklyn and ride to New York. And as a messenger boy I had to--learn how to learn my way around New York City.
01:18:35BIRDWHISTELL: How were you getting around?
01:18:37PEEPLES: Well, buses, cabs.
01:18:39BIRDWHISTELL: As a messenger?
01:18:40PEEPLES: As a messenger. Buses, cabs, and subways. And the first day they would send somebody out which would basically let you know north, south, east, and west. And the rest of it you were on your own. But it made, it was fun. It was a job, but it was fun, Terry. Because most of what I did around the printing shop was, if I wasn't out on the errand, I had to sweep up and do stuff like that. And if an errand to run, I changed clothes and I'm gone. Out, come back in and change clothes again, sweep up and do that kind of stuff. Time to go to another one, out and gone again.
01:19:18BIRDWHISTELL: Did you, how many summers were you in New York?
01:19:23PEEPLES: With the exception of one summer that I went to Cincinnati, and I think that was between my sophomore and junior year in college. I went to Cincinnati to work for Formica Company, um, every summer I went to New York.
01:19:39BIRDWHISTELL: Why did you pick Cincinnati that summer?
01:19:47PEEPLES: I really don't--think a couple of my buddies were going to do something different that summer and I just, I think I just wanted to do something different and go live with my sister who was there.
01:19:58BIRDWHISTELL: How was it compared to New York?
01:20:03PEEPLES: Well, New York was, in New York I had Midtown Manhattan, New York was a lot different from downtown Cincinnati, because my sister lived right down around Crosley Field there.
01:20:18BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, really?
01:20:19PEEPLES: And, because I remember seeing--
01:20:21BIRDWHISTELL: --you go to the ball games?
01:20:23PEEPLES: Yeah, well, I used to go down sometimes and get one of those little identification tags to sell beer. And I'd sell beer for about four innings, then I'd watch the game. Because, see, I had a job. I was working third shift at Formica.
01:20:37PEEPLES: Right.
01:20:38PEEPLES: I'd sell a beer for about three or four innings and then watch the game. That walking around yelling cold beer here and all, that really wasn't me, Terry. (laughs)
01:20:48BIRDWHISTELL: You weren't there to sell any Hudies? (laughs)
01:20:51PEEPLES: But you could, if you located you a section where there was a group would come on the bus, you could just go there and stand in front of them and they'd buy all your--
01:21:02BIRDWHISTELL: You basically just handed them out, right?
01:21:03PEEPLES: Yeah. (both laugh)
01:21:04BIRDWHISTELL: Or just set them down and told them about the money and everything. Bus groups.
01:21:12PEEPLES: Yeah, you get the bus groups that came from Kentucky and be up there. God, they couldn't even count the money after about a second in.
01:21:24BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, that's funny. That's funny.
01:21:27PEEPLES: But working at Formica there, Terry, what it gave me was exposure to a lot of transplanted Kentuckians who had gone what they considered north to Ohio to work.
01:21:41BIRDWHISTELL: Whites or African Americans?
01:21:42PEEPLES: Whites. Whites. Most of the African Americans who worked in the Cincinnati plant were from Cincinnati, but most of the white ones were from Kentucky. They either lived right over in northern Kentucky and went across the river, or they were from southern Kentucky, southeastern Kentucky, and like Corbin and the rest of them had gone there. So most of them were guys that are...
01:22:00BIRDWHISTELL: Hmm. That's interesting.
01:22:03PEEPLES: And, it was just -----(??)--go ahead.
01:22:04BIRDWHISTELL: I was just going to say that, you know, from what you've described in terms New York and Cincinnati and the environment there in Lynch. For you, anyway, negotiating this bridge between being an African American and dealing with these white people, you managed that fairly successfully.
01:22:28PEEPLES: In?
01:22:29BIRDWHISTELL: In terms of, at this point in your life, working out a way to get along with white people was fairly easy for you.
01:22:41PEEPLES: Yeah, developing survival skills.
01:22:43BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. You knew how to negotiate that terrain pretty well. Was that conscious negotiation, or?
01:22:51PEEPLES: I don't know what you contributed to it. Probably, I don't know, that was just survival skills, I guess, Terry.
01:23:03BIRDWHISTELL: Well, that's all part of surviving, of course, is that, you know, you had to, you know, in these kind of jobs you were in and the kind of environment you find yourself in, you had to be able to get through all that.
01:23:13PEEPLES: In New York, you had to learn how to deal with all of the different, you know, melting pot of, of ethnic groups. In the--somewhere in Cincinnati, it was just clear Black and white. And most of the white guys were from Kentucky who were, many of them who I could identify, who could--would identify with me as a Kentuckian who was working way through school. And when I was working as a messenger boy in those first couple summers in New York, and then I think I worked as a messenger boy even until I started college. And some of the guys who were in, who worked in the plant, in the printing company there, They kind of adopted me. They appreciated me for what I was doing and working my way on through school. The older guys, some of the older guys who probably had kids my age, and some of the younger guys who were--who knew that that was the top as far as they were concerned in their careers. They just kind of adopted me. A lot of times when we would buy lunch, the guys would say, "Ah. keep yours, you're trying to go to school." You know, we'd go out together. And, you know, when school, when the summer would end, I remember some of the guys used to just do things for me, give me money.
01:24:51BIRDWHISTELL: These were white guys?
01:24:52PEEPLES: Black and white.
01:24:53BIRDWHISTELL: Black and white.
01:24:55PEEPLES: Guys who I just became close to. That was at that printing company, because I probably worked there six or seven years. And then, I think between my junior and senior year, I worked as what was classified as an electrician's helper with a--through a program that was sponsored by the A. Philip Randolph Foundation to, and they were working to get more African Americans into their skills crafts, like electricians, plumbers. And they had a special component of that to help African Americans who were in college, who were going to college. They would let us work as electricians and help us in the summer. But basically all we did was we were high paid errand boys.
01:25:50BIRDWHISTELL: You're talking about junior and senior. That's college?
01:25:54PEEPLES: College. I'm talking college.
01:25:55BIRDWHISTELL: So you continued to go to New York while you were here?
01:25:59PEEPLES: Yeah, with the exception of sophomore, between the sophomore and junior year.
01:26:03PEEPLES: I see. Okay. I thought you were talking about high school.
01:26:06PEEPLES: No, I'm talking junior--between junior and senior year. I moved on between junior and senior year of college. I worked as a electrician's helpman. two summers between the junior and senior. See, I graduated mid-year, so that gave me two summers of junior and senior. But the first one I worked as an electrician's helper, and the second one--but the program was--gave us this job, and then when we came back to school, the electrician's local would have set aside so much for every week you worked. And then they would send that back to you in monthly checks while you were in school. So I would get a check for $60, at least up to--through about January. That's a lot of money.
01:26:55BIRDWHISTELL: That was important, wasn't it?
01:26:56PEEPLES: But that was the electrician's local contribution to helping young African-Americans. Now, that was not without a price sometimes, Terry, because there were some of the people who were in the unions who resented that because their fathers and some of the other ethnic groups who felt like their fathers had paid the price to make their union what it was, and it was unfair for us to be getting those. So sometimes they would make you pay pay your price for getting the benefit. I remember one day there were two of us, two African Americans on the job, both was college guys, and they were assigned you to a crew. This guy made us take these, you know, electricians have what they call conduit, a pipe that they pull electrical wiring through. And if it's--some is small and some of it gets to be this big. And we had the--we had to haul something all the way up several flights of stairs. Trying to maneuver through those stairs was very difficult. And it was in an old building with very little air. I mean, it was awful. And he made us do that all afternoon. And I went and got up there. He said, "Wrong size." (Birdwhistell laughs)
01:28:16BIRDWHISTELL: Oh.
01:28:17PEEPLES: We knew at the end of it that it was intentional. But that's life.
01:28:25BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. All part of it, I guess.
01:28:27PEEPLES: Yeah, all part of it.
01:28:29BIRDWHISTELL: But you were working in New York at this job, right?
01:28:32PEEPLES: Yeah. This job was on, up, uh, this particular job was up near the U.N. But then most of the work I did in New York as a electrician's helper was on Columbia's campus. At St. Luke's Hospital. And I got a chance to be there when the students took over the president's office on Columbia's campus. And then I was in New York when Harlem burned, when Newark burned, and the riots.
01:29:01BIRDWHISTELL: Wow.
01:29:02PEEPLES: I got a chance to see all of that.
01:29:04BIRDWHISTELL: What'd you make of all that?
01:29:08PEEPLES: Whew. That was frightening. Really frightening. Because I remember I used to go to Harlem.
01:29:13BIRDWHISTELL: I was going to ask you that.
01:29:14PEEPLES: I used to go to Harlem a lot. From Brooklyn, catch the subway and go up in Harlan, 125th Street. I used to go to the Apollo Theater. On Tuesday nights, what they called, what they had was called amateur night, and most of the groups who ultimately became the name groups, Shirelles and--
01:29:34BIRDWHISTELL: They came to the Apollo?
01:29:35PEEPLES: They came, thatat's where they got their starts.
01:29:39BIRDWHISTELL: Didn't they have a reunion recently at the Apollo Theater?
01:29:42PEEPLES: Well they, well they, uh--
01:29:43BIRDWHISTELL: What happened?
01:29:44PEEPLES: Percy Sutton has totally redone that thing.
01:29:51BIRDWHISTELL: There was a program not long ago that was broadcast on TV.
01:29:55PEEPLES: They used to go to the Apollo Theater and watch. You could go to the Apollo Theater for a few bucks and see a whole review. And here in Lexington now, if you get one group come, you've got to pay a arm and a leg. But that was good. I got a chance to see all of the contemporary groups in New York. That's something. You're coming from small, Lynch, Kentucky, and you get a chance to see live all of these. I was watching Spike Lee's movie. with a friend of mine, and some of it was filmed in 125th Street, what's called Smalls Paradise. That's a club. And it brought back memories to me, because when I was growing up, when I was a teenager in college, Wilt Chamberlain used to own that. It was called Big Wilt's Smalls Paradise.
01:30:49BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, really? (laughs)
01:30:50PEEPLES: He, he used to go there.
01:30:54BIRDWHISTELL: We're about out of tape. You want to put in another tape or you want to stop here and and, uh, pick it up again?
01:31:00PEEPLES: What do you think?
01:31:01BIRDWHISTELL: Your pleasure whatever you have time for. Want to go another 30 minutes?
01:31:04PEEPLES: All right. I don't care. [Recording stops]
01:31:08BIRDWHISTELL: [Recording resumes] Thinking about, uh, I want to go back and pick up when you go to Southeast Community College that I want to follow up on something here that, uh, as you're getting older, your experiences at the community colleges, your experiences at UK, you're shaping your views on life and society and how things are going. Then you're up in New York and you're going to Harlem. And obviously your views about--and, and the whole racial situation in the country is just exploding. You're talking about the Harlem thing.
01:31:43PEEPLES: Oh, absolutely.
01:31:44BIRDWHISTELL: I mean, how are you--and again, we'll pick this up in a lot of different ways as we go through different things, but I want to go back to, you know, you being there in Harlem in the summers that, you know, you're a college student, and how are your views on race evolving during this period, in just general terms? You know, how is P.G. Peeples dealing with, you know, this and that, and everything's coming, I mean, plus you're just, you know, you're still a kid, basically.
01:32:11PEEPLES: You're right, it was just--it did feel like it was coming in so many different ways, because, you know, I, like probably a lot of other youngsters at that time was, there was, uh, one, when Martin Luther King was very prominent. Malcolm X. And that's what I could identify so much when I watched the movie "Malcolm". And so where people were having to make decisions between the non-violence versus the violence. And the Black Panthers were on the scene. And going to New York gave me a, even more of a closeness to a lot of that, because a lot of Malcolm X followers were, the Muslims were in--
01:32:58BIRDWHISTELL: I mean, that's where it happening. I mean that's, that's--things were happening right there in New York.
01:32:59PEEPLES: That's exactly, that was it. Right there.
01:33:02BIRDWHISTELL: And that's when it was happening to.
01:33:06PEEPLES: And then there, as I said, being there and seeing Harlem when it burned and Newark when they tore it up. Because my brother-in-law's brother, lived over in Newark and worked on the docks. And I used to frequent Newark quite a bit. I guess I probably was, as most folks were, "What's this country coming to? What's it coming to?" But I guess as I think back on that, Terry, what was really kind of ironic about all of that was, as I would come back, by that time I was coming back, I transferred to UK. as a junior. I was coming back to the University of Kentucky. And to be exposed to that big world, and then come back here, and for people to think, for some folks here to still be so wrapped up in their own little bitty world, which was really microcosmic to me, it's--but to them was huge. Some of the kinds of things, it made me adjust to going through the University of Kentucky very easily. Pretty much anything that they could throw at me on this campus didn't bother me that much. It was laughable. You know, where I would move into a dorm and a white student would come in and see me and then move out. See I hit mature to the point where it really didn't matter. I wanted to be by myself. (Birdwhistell laughs) I didn't want to be living in a dorm with three or four people. I was glad to have my room all by myself.
01:34:44BIRDWHISTELL: But without those other experiences that would have been a lot different.
01:34:45PEEPLES: Yeah, the experiences would have probably been, been, benn detrimental.
01:34:49BIRDWHISTELL: Without your own self-esteem and your own sense of who you were.
01:34:52PEEPLES: Yeah. It didn't bother me at all. Walking across campus and, and, or walking up and down Rose Street and cars coming by and people hollering "nigger." I went through a lot of that. Yeah that, really, I could kind of laugh all of that off. because I, it had it in a different kind of perspective.
01:35:16BIRDWHISTELL: So your reaction to the mid-60s and your growing awareness of the world and the economic distribution, the racial makeup of the country, all this, you weren't becoming an angry person. You were dealing with it.
01:35:36PEEPLES: Well, one. Go back and remember that I still felt a strong commitment and obligation to graduate from college.
01:35:48BIRDWHISTELL: And so if you got angry, that wouldn't help?
01:35:49PEEPLES: And, and I couldn't get too angry, or I could get too caught up in some of the things that maybe some other college students did.
01:35:57BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. You were on a mission.
01:35:59PEEPLES: Yeah. Yeah. I would work summers, and I worked while I was in school. So I kept all of that focused, because I was going to graduate. My family was gonna was I wasn't gonna let them down on on the on the investments they had in me
01:36:17BIRDWHISTELL: Couldn't screw it up. (laughs)
01:36:19PEEPLES: No way. Absolutely not.
01:36:20BIRDWHISTELL: Let's go back then to, uh, uh, to your senior year in high school and, uh, people were were forced at that point, I guess, when you're senior in high school you're forced to think about what you're going to do about your future. When did it, when did you make a decision about your future? And had you made an earlier decision and that changed over time? As you were in high school, what was your future? How did you envision your future?
01:36:53PEEPLES: Probably two periods there. Early in high school, I probably didn't even think about the future.
01:36:59BIRDWHISTELL: At the very least, you needed to get a job?
01:37:00PEEPLES: Probably about 10th grade. As you remember when I said I rededicated myself to become a better student. And that was as a result of what New York showed me. Yeah, that without formalized education that I would be back, I could go back to New York and push carts up and down or do whatever.
01:37:20BIRDWHISTELL: And so you got serious about your studies and then at some point you decided that in addition to a high school diploma you needed to go to college?
01:37:33PEEPLES: I probably decided college, that I knew I was going to go to college around the 10th grade to--because the [Southeast] Community College was there and I was able to associate with some of the other guys who were going to the Community College and moving on to UK. So I could associate with that and saw that as a good path.
01:37:56BIRDWHISTELL: So did you--you had gone out to the community college and seen what that was like when you were still in high school?
01:38:00PEEPLES: Yeah. There were some guys like, I think the Community College there probably opened when I was about the ninth grade. I can remember Ron Ratchford and some of the rest of them being the first group of Blacks who went over there with, and, uh--
01:38:16BIRDWHISTELL: --so the people who, the African Americans who preceded you there, was that a pretty good experience for them? Was this something that, you know, when it got back to you, you--
01:38:23PEEPLES: Yeah, it was a good experience. It was, probably was just, it came off, probably as just an extension. See, these guys had graduated from a segregated school situation, and they'd go on to--their first integration was college.
01:38:36BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, yeah.
01:38:40PEEPLES: And, uh, but I was still in a segregated situation. But then by the time I went to college, you know, I had the integrated experience as a senior, and then carried the integrated experience on over to college.
01:38:54BIRDWHISTELL: So, like, in your graduating class, what kind of percentage would go to the Southeast Community College? I mean, would this be large numbers of whites and Blacks going to Southeast?
01:39:03PEEPLES: Yeah. Um-hm. Um-hm.
01:39:08BIRDWHISTELL: Was there ever any thought of going somewhere else to college?
01:39:13PEEPLES: No, not for me. It wasn't even the cards. It was, it was, economics dictated that.
01:39:19BIRDWHISTELL: I mean, you couldn't--there weren't any scholarships or fellowships or anybody recruiting you to come anyplace else?
01:39:26PEEPLES: No, not, not for me. We had some others, some who went to Eastern, some who went to Berea, but for me, it was, that was it, given the preparation, that was the only option I had.
01:39:38BIRDWHISTELL: So that summer after high school, you, you, uh--how'd the first graduation of the integrated school go? Was that a pretty standard boring graduation?
01:39:48PEEPLES: Well, I'll tell you what I remember about that graduating class. There's a long-standing tradition that senior classes used to go, the senior class at the white school used to go to Washington. And if there was anything I kind of looked forward to out of integration was that. But they didn't do that then, you know, I think there was some fear of Black and white kids going there. I remember they took us to Gatlinburg one morning and got us back before the sun went down. (Both laugh) I remember that. I can remember we had a prom. I think at the prom there probably was more chaperones than there were students. All of the precautions that they had in place are the things that stand out the most in my mind.
01:40:48BIRDWHISTELL: How many people were in your graduating class?
01:40:50PEEPLES: God, Terry.
01:40:51BIRDWHISTELL: A hundred? Seventy-five?
01:40:54PEEPLES: Seventy-five of us I would think. If--then that may be exaggerated.
01:40:59BIRDWHISTELL: That might be, high? Yeah. There were a hundred in mine, I think. Something like that. Big schools. (laughs) Let me think. You reminded me of something there. You'd mentioned earlier that the African American students sort of organized to help elect either a homecoming queen or basketball queen--
01:41:25PEEPLES: --yeah, and that's just kind of--
01:41:26BIRDWHISTELL: --so there was this consciousness on the part of the African American students that, hey, we've got to get this together here.
01:41:33PEEPLES: We're here. We're going to be, we're going to be accounted and we're going to be accepted as somebody in the system.
01:41:39BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm. Now I know one of the things you've talked about before we--have been cheerleaders. I assume there weren't any African American cheerleaders.
01:41:47PEEPLES: In my class, I don't think we had the opportunity. I'm trying to think after, immediately after. I need to check that, Terry. I'm not exactly sure. I think immediately that started to become a focus, and after that it started to happen. I don't think in my class there were.
01:42:06BIRDWHISTELL: But for the year you were there, basically, there was no big-time racial problems within the school, I guess, pretty much?
01:42:15PEEPLES: No, it was a smooth year. It was a smooth senior year. The kinds of things that I probably focused on, probably the other folks probably, yeah, I think my friends and I were conscious of that, but it wasn't like a community, it wasn't a community issue.
01:42:31BIRDWHISTELL: Now did the white kids start having separate social functions that, you know, that they might have been part of a school function before integration, that they might like have a dance at the club or something or do something different?
01:42:43PEEPLES: Well, as I recall, there wasn't, socially there wasn't a whole lot that went on. We always had our own private parties of Blacks that, uh, because we just, I mean, I don't know, We didn't have fun together. They had a different kind of fun and we had a different kind of fun, so.
01:43:00BIRDWHISTELL: There's a whole history of doing things your own way.
01:43:01PEEPLES: Yeah, that, that, that's, that was okay. It didn't bother us. We'd have our own house parties and they'd have, I guess they had them, I don't know what they had.
01:43:11BIRDWHISTELL: You weren't too much worried about it. (Both laugh)
01:43:12PEEPLES: No. Yeah, it didn't bother me what they had. But the town itself and everything really rallied around that football team. I can remember one time, it was later on, I think my brother was a senior, who was four years behind me, and they were playing one, one of the, in the playoffs football somewhere in Dayton, Kentucky. And the mountains caught on fire in Lynch, and the only people left there were people who couldn't get out of their houses. (both laugh) Yeah, Lynch football in that town just turned out. But, you know, that's kind of a, as I've grown older and understand, like Pennsylvania, they have a lot of that same--in the steel mill kind of towns.
01:43:59BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, yeah. So, you decided to go to Southeast. You went away and worked that summer. And then that fall you started at Southeast Community College. And you lived at home?
01:44:15PEEPLES: Um-hm. I lived at home both of those years. I got away from Southeast, what, sixty-six with an associate degree.
01:44:22BIRDWHISTELL: So did you use your summer money to pay your tuition to go to Southeast?
01:44:25PEEPLES: Um-hm. I think tuition at that time probably was about $100.
01:44:29BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, it wasn't that--
01:44:30PEEPLES: --so it was no big deal. You could save that, and--
01:44:32BIRDWHISTELL: --um-hm. So what--tell me about--
01:44:34PEEPLES: --again, by that time I was developing a better relationship, back to some of those guys I worked with. Here, help with your books, help with that stuff. And then I had sisters and brothers. So there was really no straining at all.
01:44:50BIRDWHISTELL: And your older sisters and brothers hadn't gone to college because this hadn't been an option for them?
01:44:53PEEPLES: Hadn't been an option. It had nothing to do with me being any more, brighter.
01:44:57BIRDWHISTELL: It was just there when your turn came, there was that college.
01:45:00BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm.
01:45:02BIRDWHISTELL: Um, what did your mother think about you going to school?
01:45:07PEEPLES: I think both mother and father were, they, they were pleased. They were very, very pleased that that option was there and that I was taking advantage of it.
01:45:18BIRDWHISTELL: Did all your brothers and sisters graduate from high school?
01:45:19PEEPLES: Oh, everybody, yes.
01:45:20BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm. That's what I figured. So that first semester there at Southeast Community College, what was that like? As you think back about, you know, the community college setting is a lot different from what we have come to think of as traditional college life, you know, where, you know, there's a football game on Saturday afternoon and there's the ivy growing up the side of the library, you know. And the community colleges where they were out, they were higher education outposts in a sense. I mean, they're built in these communities to give access and it's a whole different, kind of scene isn't it?
01:45:58PEEPLES: Yeah.
01:45:59BIRDWHISTELL: So describe it for me.
01:46:00PEEPLES: Well actually, Terry, I looked upon it as two more years of high school really, because I was still staying home. Drive to class every day, with the exception of that many of us who had come from other communities were now going to the same school.
01:46:22BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm. Now where was the, where is the community college in relation to?
01:46:25PEEPLES: It's in Cumberland, and that's five miles from Lynch.
01:46:28BIRDWHISTELL: Five miles from Lynch.
01:46:29PEEPLES: And then we drew kids from Harlan, who we had competed against in high school, drew kids from Evarts, Kentucky, and then kids from Cumberland. So all of us had gone to different high schools, competitive high schools around the--many of us were then going to the community college. So it really was, that was it, you know, with the exception of just the different expectations of college, studying for college and preparing and being able to meet and satisfy the--what you must do to be able to exist in college, really wasn't a whole lot of difference to me.
01:47:11BIRDWHISTELL: When you were in segregated schools, you had Black teachers who were dedicated teachers. I mean, that--there's a story there that I think, you know, cuts across all of the African American schools in our history, you know, that Black teachers were there to help Black students succeed, and there's that story. You go into the integrated school, you know, and so you have these first experiences with white teachers, and then that's just for one year, and then you go to the Community College, Are there people that were at that community college, on the faculty, on the staff, administrators, who you felt were particularly interested in seeing you succeed?
01:47:52BIRDWHISTELL: Only one--well, well, I think not initially. I was a number. I think some of those survival skills that I know I had, I used those to attach myself to some folks. By that time in life, I was understanding. Getting to know people.
01:48:12BIRDWHISTELL: Getting to know you, right? (laughs)
01:48:13PEEPLES: Yeah. And I think, but I would say, Terry, that it probably, the caring about us as students, and it probably, based on the numbers, was better than it would have been if I had come to the University of Kentucky as a freshman.
01:48:36BIRDWHISTELL: I think you're right, there.
01:48:38PEEPLES: Plus, there were a few teachers on the faculty who also doubled as high school teachers.
01:48:43BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, really?
01:48:44PEEPLES: I think I remember my education teacher was assistant principal with the high school.
01:48:50BIRDWHISTELL: So you might have the class, like, late afternoon, or, and they'd be in high school, and then the evening, late afternoon, evening.
01:48:57PEEPLES: So that's when I say there was some similarities of just being an extended high school there. And I do think that some of those professors saw a need to give us some special attention because they knew what the next step was going to be. They really had to put some props under us to get us ready for the next step coming down. So it was more personal.
01:49:21BIRDWHISTELL: And so you said, I think you started to say there was one person who may have helped you more?
01:49:26PEEPLES: Yeah, I can remember a guy, Larry Craft, who was a biology teacher. I don't know, for some reason we were here and I just kind of bonded, connected. But those things happen in life. Sure.
01:49:41BIRDWHISTELL: So your goal when you went to Southeast was to go to college, to go to a four-year college at some point?
01:49:46PEEPLES: Yeah. Oh, I knew I was coming to the University of Kentucky.
01:49:48BIRDWHISTELL: You knew you were coming to UK?
01:49:50PEEPLES: Yeah. I was.
01:49:51BIRDWHISTELL: From the very start?
01:49:52PEEPLES: Yeah.
01:49:53BIRDWHISTELL: And then you told your teachers that?
01:49:54PEEPLES: Yeah. Yeah, I knew. I was going to come to UK and I was going to graduate from UK.
01:49:58BIRDWHISTELL: Okay. (laughs) Uh, so, you described it as an extension of high school, worked a little different. And then you worked part-time during this whole period?
01:50:10PEEPLES: While at home? No.
01:50:12BIRDWHISTELL: So at Southeast, all you had to do was concentrate on ----(??) ?
01:50:14PEEPLES: Well, when I say work, I did some of the same kind of things I did in high school, like wash cars on weekends.
01:50:18BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, but now, you didn't have a job, you didn't work at the grocery--
01:50:19PEEPLES: No. I--when I came to University of Kentucky, I had a job. I was in, uh, when I came to the UK, I decided to pursue a degree and I had done the--my associate degree in education and then I decided to specialize, to go to special education when I came to the University of Kentucky and I went to work at the Bluegrass School for the Retarded out here in a special program.
01:50:43BIRDWHISTELL: And your emphasis in your undergraduate degree was on mental retardation?
01:50:46PEEPLES: Slow learners, working with slow learners, which I think, you know, just the expectation--the curriculum is designed to get you focused on having the kind of patience necessary to work with slow learners. And I think the kind of patience that they help you develop, I think, has been helpful for me in what I've done in this job. Because in this job, if you don't have that, you can--it just generates more frustration.
01:51:28BIRDWHISTELL: Now you didn't, there wasn't somebody in your family or growing up that had a problem, had a mental retardation that made you gravitate?
01:51:39PEEPLES: I think there are a couple of things at that time. One, as I looked at, I don't really know what really put me into that special education mode, but I did develop a good relationship with a professor over there named Dr. Levy, Al Levy, who most kids in this college of education just dearly loved. He was probably one of the most compassionate people I've ever met in my life. He was my, coincidentally, was my advisor in special ed. He was very, very helpful to me in moving through, um, helped me get the job at the Bluegrass School. And in addition to the different, you know I've worked at the YMCA while I was in college too um with, uh, with inner city kids, uh, at the Y and over here on what was then the Y on second street we used to pick up kids all over north side, east side, north side of, north and west side of town and take them to the Y on High Street on Wednesday nights and Friday and Saturday nights for--those were the nights that the Blacks got a chance to come and participate. It was what they called a gray Y program (?), working with those kids in the evening.
01:52:53BIRDWHISTELL: What do you mean, that's the time when the Blacks got a chance to come?
01:52:54PEEPLES: Well, they, uh, over--they didn't have a gym. I mean, they had an old gym and no swimming pool facilities, and we went up there to use those.
01:53:03BIRDWHISTELL: So this was the Black YMCA over here?
01:53:05PEEPLES: Yeah. What is now the Jefferson Center.
01:53:09BIRDWHISTELL: Yah, I'd--I mean, I played basketball over there when that was just a YMCA. I didn't realize was the--it had a history as the Black YMCA.
01:53:16PEEPLES: In fact, my senior year, the last semester that I was in college, when I was doing my student teaching, I lived at the Y. And that's how my connection with the Urban League came about. Because the Urban League director then, Walter Brown, set up the first office on the first floor of the YMCA.
01:53:36BIRDWHISTELL: And there you were.
01:53:37PEEPLES: And I was living in the Y and doing my student teaching, and he had the New Jersey, he was from New Jersey, and my New York experiences and his New Jersey just made a natural for us. And when I graduated that December and taught school for that spring semester, he offered me a job to come for the Urban League the next fall.
01:53:56BIRDWHISTELL: Good grief.
01:53:57PEEPLES: I came to work for him as Director of the Education Programs, and the rest is history.
01:54:04BIRDWHISTELL: It's funny how things work. It's funny how things work. Huh. Let me get you back to Southeast.
01:54:13PEEPLES: Okay. (Burdwhistell laughs)
01:54:15BIRDWHISTELL: You're at Southeast. You're--obviously that goes pretty well for you. I mean, you know, you take the courses, do well. You have a couple of teachers who are helping you and supportive. And you've known all along that you wanted to go to UK.
01:54:29PEEPLES: Family and friends supportive. Yeah.
01:54:31BIRDWHISTELL: Family and friends. And, uh, you knew you wanted to go to UK So the time comes when you finish at Southeast and you make the jump to UK How did you feel that summer as you were getting ready to leave Southeast and go to UK? What did you anticipate?
01:54:47PEEPLES: That was the summer I went to Cincinnati.
01:54:49BIRDWHISTELL: All right, you went to Cincinnati that summer.
01:54:54PEEPLES: I came down to UK from Cincinnati that summer, and I'm glad I did. I'm glad I did go to Cincinnati that summer. I'm not so sure if I planned it that way, but they gave me a chance to come down for the orientation and spend the day on campus.
01:55:08BIRDWHISTELL: What was that like?
01:55:12PEEPLES: Well one, it was bad because I got off work that morning, caught the bus, came down here and went back to work that night. So, that was tough. (both laugh) And then I had--
01:55:24BIRDWHISTELL: --that's one recollection of it. (laughs)
01:55:25PEEPLES: I caught one of those buses that came down--no, I didn't catch one that came straight down 75 to Lexignton. I went around through Georgetown and everywhere.
01:55:31BIRDWHISTELL: You got to see everybody. On US 25 right? (Both laugh) Where the road got wide, the bus stopped.
01:55:41PEEPLES: And, and I remember, uh, I don't know, I just remember going through the day's experience of getting associated. But again, the other experiences made this not intimidating. When I got my map, You know, I could find my way around that campus. You compare that to someone giving you a map, putting you on 19th Street in New York City and saying, "This is it, bud." So this was nothing.
01:56:09BIRDWHISTELL: You weren't gawking at the building.
01:56:10PEEPLES: No, no, no, no. (both laugh) See, because I had learned in New York that it was first rule they tell you in New York, if you're new, don't look like you're new.
01:56:20BIRDWHISTELL: I've tried to practice that myself. (Peeples laughs) I do it so well, people ask me directions. (both laugh) What year is it? The fall of what when you arrived at UK?
01:56:33PEEPLES: Let's see, I graduated from community college. High school, sixty-four. Community college, sixty-six, sixty-seven, I guess.
01:56:45BIRDWHISTELL: Sixty-six, sixty-seven? Or sixty, yeah, sixty-six?
01:56:47PEEPLES: I'd say sixty-six, sixty-seven.
01:56:49BIRDWHISTELL: Nineteen sixty-six?
01:56:50PEEPLES: Probably somewhere around there, Terry.
01:56:52BIRDWHISTELL: Sixty-seven? Uh, what did you know about UK? What, I mean when's--
01:57:00PEEPLES: --well I had developed, started to develop a, because we used to come from the Community College down here to athletic events, football games and those kind of things. So I started to develop a, a, I started to become a UK student. You know I was the pride, that, the freshman, sophomore pride of being a UK student, wearing my UK sweatshirt. So I did. I had the pride in it.
01:57:25BIRDWHISTELL: So you felt like UK even before you got to Lexington?
01:57:27PEEPLES: Yeah. But when I got here and I started to learn how, well, the gap there was between the Black community and the University of Kentucky, you know, there were some times I would take that sweatshirt and turn the inside out when I'd come downtown, in, because acceptance. I mean, you were looked at as a leopard or something.
01:57:47BIRDWHISTELL: You might want to get a Texas Western shirt. (both laugh) That was the spring of when you started?
01:57:52PEEPLES: Now quite frankly, yeah. Let me see. I remember the Texas Western incident, and I remember--
01:57:59BIRDWHISTELL: --spring sixty-six.
01:58:01PEEPLES: Now I, while I was developing the pride about UK, I still knew about Rupp, and I didn't appreciate him. I never had any association or identity and pride in that basketball thing, probably until I started up through my friend Leonard Hamilton.
01:58:19BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Right.
01:58:20PEEPLES: That was, uh, that was as an adult. All during high school, all during college, I hated the University of Kentucky basketball program.
01:58:27BIRDWHISTELL: I can't imagine why. (both laugh)
01:58:31PEEPLES: I remember, you know, the first year, even though we tried to help do some recruiting of Black basketball players, because I wanted to--
01:58:39BIRDWHISTELL: --sure you did--
01:58:40PEEPLES: --be a part of it.
01:58:41BIRDWHISTELL: Sure. Why not? It's your school. ---------(??) did you recruit basketball players?
01:58:46PEEPLES: Jerome Perry, some of the guys who played basketball in Louisville who went to Western Kentucky, that team that beat the crap out of--that's where the--Wilbur Hackett and them came up here as football players. They were the same age as Jerome Perry and them who went to--so that team, we tried to help recruit Jim, Jim, Jim Rose from Hazard and Jim McDaniels from--who went to, uh, who went down there. See, all those guys were Kentucky kids. Jim Rose, Jim McDaniels, Jerome Perry, Glover. All those were Kentucky kids. But I tell you, I shared the pull. Now, I had graduated when that happened, but I was sharing the pull for all those guys. And I pulled for Texas Western. I used to pull for Alabama when CM Newton used to bring his Black teams up here. I used to pull for Vanderbilt when they had integrated.
01:59:33BIRDWHISTELL: You were for Louisville? You probably liked Louisville?
01:59:36PEEPLES: I'm not so sure. Well Louisville at that time I don't think it had set the world on fire in terms of integrating.
01:59:42BIRDWHISTELL: I'm trying to think of the player from Breckenridge County.
01:59:45PEEPLES: Oh, Butch Beard.
01:59:46BIRDWHISTELL: Butch Beard. You know, he was heavily recruited by UK. And I've interviewed people, white administrators, who talk about the effort to recruit him and Ned Breathitt getting involved in that recruitment. A real interesting story there about this. But without the coaches, it--
02:00:04PEEPLES: Back during that time, I'm not so sure if the Louisville-Kentucky versus issue was as big.
02:00:10BIRDWHISTELL: No, it--they didn't play each other for one thing, but in terms of schools though that moved ahead with--
02:00:15PEEPLES: But see, plus they weren't, I don't think they were even seen as the same caliber, because Louisville wasn't seen as a national, in national prominence. Louisville was that school, that other school.
02:00:23BIRDWHISTELL: They were getting ready to make a move.
02:00:24PEEPLES: Yeah, they were that other schools over there. But I think, well, see, Black people then, Some Black people now identify with Louisville and probably anybody else who plays UK, plays against UK. Back then they probably just anybody who played against UK. Louisville wasn't of that prominence.
02:00:46BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, yeah, I understand. Now when you came to, uh, let me go back for a minute and we'll try to wrap this up so you can get some lunch here. You'd gone through the same events that all of us had witnessed as young people, you know, Kennedy being shot in sixty-three.
02:01:09PEEPLES: I remember that distinctly. My senior year of high school, we were getting ready to play up at--in a championship football game that they didn't want to win. We were playing Paris.
02:01:20BIRDWHISTELL: Huh. That's tough.
02:01:21PEEPLES: We, as we were getting ready. We came out and won the state championship football.
02:01:25BIRDWHISTELL: Did you all play that night?
02:01:26PEEPLES: Yeah, yeah, we played. Because it happened, I think, on a Friday afternoon.
02:01:30PEEPLES: Yeah, Friday.
02:01:31PEEPLES: Paris was already on the ---(??). You know, the time it took to drive a Lynch from Paris. So they were already on the ----(??).
02:01:38BIRDWHISTELL: You come that far, you don't want to turn around and come back twice, yeah. And then, of course, with the assassination of King, how did that, how did you deal with that?
02:01:54PEEPLES: I was, I was at UK. April 4th or whatever, there, I was graduating, that was my last, what year, sixty-eight? April sixty-eight, I think. Yeah. I remember they were building, I'll tell you the things that I remember, they were building the tower in the middle of campus. I remember they held a vigil. out there holding hands, Black and white students, and I can still remember some of those, some of the construction types up there laughing and making mockery of us, you know, being out there in recognition of King. I was living in the dorms over on the on the far side of campus, new, new, new.
02:02:54BIRDWHISTELL: The ---(??)-ing?
02:02:55PEEPLES: The ---(??)-ing, yeah. I remember we, we watched a lot of that on TV.
02:03:03BIRDWHISTELL: And then of course the reaction around the country, and it sounds like your reaction was peaceful.
02:03:13PEEPLES: Yeah, on UK, UK, yeah, yeah, that's basically what happened at UK.
02:03:18BIRDWHISTELL: When, when King was shot, and, you know, here you were, you were going to finish the following December, you know, did any thoughts run through your mind like, good grief, what is my future in this country what's going to happen here. Here I am a Black man I'm going to get a college degree from this basically white university try to operate in this world where they shoot Martin Luther King and John Kennedy and they're going to shoot Robert Kennedy, and, you know, what--were you still optimistic? I mean, you've always seemed to be an optimistic, (Peeples laughs) determined person. Is that the way you sort of faced this, these uh?
02:04:00PEEPLES: Yeah, because, and I guess probably to my own benefit, Terry, I still was functioning on the fact that I'm going to be okay, I'm going to--that I can compete and survive out there once I get this license, this license that puts me in the marketplace.
02:04:19BIRDWHISTELL: So your optimism, your, your faith in your own abilities.
02:04:22PEEPLES: Still felt that I, I could compete against anybody who wants to--get me on the field, that I could compete. Even though I've had some experiences in high school that showed me that the field sometimes is not level, but I still felt that I could compete. And I'm glad, because you--if I hadn't have felt that way, I may have lost lost the inspiration.
02:04:49BIRDWHISTELL: Well, if you have any--if you don't feel that way, it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think you're going to lose, you probably will. But, where do you attribute this drive? Where does it all come from? Is it a combination of family and school?
02:05:05PEEPLES: Family, school. The Black schools kind of gave you that. Those teachers kind of wouldn't let you fail.
02:05:15BIRDWHISTELL: Where are kids supposed to get it today?
02:05:19PEEPLES: Because, because it--and that's a good question. Because the family structure is not there, and the schools is not really there. That's why when the kids make it today, they really make it against their hearts.
02:05:31BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, because it's--the community just sort of meanders out there. There's no focus. You know, you don't have the First Baptist Church on 4th or whatever it was, the 5th, you know, the Black teachers--
02:05:43PEEPLES: --I'm not -------(??)--
02:05:44BIRDWHISTELL: --instilling Black pride in these students saying, "You know, you can do this."
02:05:48PEEPLES: That's what I really attribute to a lot of the downfall, a lot of the downfall. I was talking about that to the Urban County (?) Council the other day. They had me in to do a talk about economic development, and I chose to talk about those social issues that if they're not fixed, we can do--say to hell with any kind of economic development. Because economic development revolves around, while the end result is money, it revolves around people. You shouldn't have got to have those human resources, and we're losing the most today, that, we're losing that in this society. We really are.
02:06:29BIRDWHISTELL: And that's not just because we're getting older, we really-- (laughs)
02:06:31PEEPLES: No.
02:06:32BIRDWHISTELL: It's really happening. We're not just thinking this way.
02:06:35PEEPLES: It's not that we're becoming more settled and more mature in our perspectives. No, Terry. Those are realities.
02:06:41BIRDWHISTELL: It's real isn't it? The real stuff.
02:06:46PEEPLES: Those realities, um, my University of Kentucky experience also, Terry, includes the first African-American football player being recruited over there, Greg Page, and Nat Northington. Those guys were my friends.
02:07:07BIRDWHISTELL: Of course, the tragedy is that, uh--
02:07:08PEEPLES: --and then when Greg was killed, I remember coming back from New York and Greg's accident happening just as we came back to school. And Greg being in the hospital over there. It happened like about the 28th of August, just as school was going.
02:07:24BIRDWHISTELL: He was from Middlesboro?
02:07:25PEEPLES: Middlesboro, yes. My hometown is fifty miles away from there. And when we came back and found out that it happened to Greg, then he died the day of the first game of the season. We were playing Mississippi. And so Nat played in that game. And then the next day, I remember we were up in the dorm and Nat left. We were talking and he just left. Never to return. He went to Western.
02:07:53BIRDWHISTELL: I didn't know that. Now the whole team went down to Middlesboro?
02:07:58PEEPLES: Yeah, I was a pallbearer in that funeral.
02:08:00BIRDWHISTELL: Were you?
02:08:01PEEPLES: We took a bus, the team had a bus, and I remember the Black students we had a, we had a bus and we went down. I was in Middlesboro about three weeks ago talking. I'm doing some work with Berea College. They've got a program to deal with Black students in the mountains, and they have a chapter of that down in Middlesboro and Barbourville. But I was in Barbourville, and some of the people from Middlesboro were over there, and we were relating, relating to that experience.
02:08:27BIRDWHISTELL: You know, it's so weird not having known Greg Page and not being there at the time, but when you look at it, you know, when you're just studying the history of it, you look back about the problems of UK and integration, integrating those sports teams, and then Greg Page comes and then he dies as a football player.
02:08:49PEEPLES: Well, that same year you have to remember there was some kid named Kitchen (??) who was paralyzed, because I remember him being in the wheelchair. His accident happened later in Fort Patrick. Greg's happened as they were in a freaky kind of thing.
02:09:03BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just so weird that that, uh, that that would happen.
02:09:11PEEPLES: And that lent itself to a lot of the naysayers, let's say, for a long time. it was, intentionally done to him.
02:09:17BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh. You never thought that? (No audible response from Peeples) But there was a racial overtone to all of this, and I know I interviewed Jack Oswald, and I think he was very conscious of that at the time. Not only had a young man's life been taken by an accident, but, you know, he was an African-American football player at a place that didn't need anybody to think anything else bad about it in terms of race.
02:09:52PEEPLES: On that campus, probably one of the most blatant displays of segregation was that fraternity on the--
02:10:00BIRDWHISTELL: The KA.
02:10:01PEEPLES: The KAs. Those guys used to give us the blues walking up and down Rose Street. Now I talked earlier about being able to rise above and not take serious a lot of, but, uh, I mean I took serious going past that place because I'm not so sure that those guys may not have brought, done the bottle (??) the horn to you and some of those drunken stupors over there sometime.
02:10:19BIRDWHISTELL: Well I was looking at your yearbooks where I came today in sixty-eight and sixty-nine, you know you graduated in December, sixty-eight, your commencement was in sixty-nine. And the pictures of Old South in those yearbooks, you know, I thought well, you know, and I started bringing the yearbooks, they're so big.
02:10:39PEEPLES: I got one.
02:10:40BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, did you?
02:10:41PEEPLES: One right down there. But you know, I've got the yearbook, but I didn't participate in graduation.
02:10:44BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.
02:10:45BIRDWHISTELL: I didn't march.
02:10:46BIRDWHISTELL: And your--the picture's not in the yearbook, I don't think.
02:10:48PEEPLES: I didn't, I didn't,
02:10:50BIRDWHISTELL: I wasn't surprised.
02:10:51PEEPLES: No. You know, I, I had what I wanted. That Sunday when my class was doing that, I was gone. I mean, actually, graduating in December, I would have had to come back and do it. It didn't matter to me. It didn't matter to me. As I've gotten older and I look back on that, I wonder if I may have robbed my parents or something, that they may have want--I may have been selfish because I didn't ask them.
02:11:15BIRDWHISTELL: I've had that same feeling myself. But, you know, when you're that age and you know all these other things are going on, it's hard to get out of that state.
02:11:21PEEPLES: To me, I came, I saw, I conquered, and I'm gone.
02:11:25BIRDWHISTELL: You know who got an honorary degree at your commencement in 1969?
02:11:29PEEPLES: Whitney Young?
02:11:30BIRDWHISTELL: Whitney Young. (laughs)
02:11:31PEEPLES: I remember. I remember he got that, yeah.
02:11:34BIRDWHISTELL: I think that's so interesting.
02:11:35PEEPLES: Yeah, that's so, that's ironic.
02:11:37BIRDWHISTELL: It is. And he was on, he spoke on campus in sixty-eight. Did you go to the talk?
02:11:43PEEPLES: Don't remember.
02:11:44BIRDWHISTELL: Or he was in town. Of course he was in town, and uh--
02:11:47PEEPLES: --well, see, he came here to start getting the Urban League started up.
02:11:49BIRDWHISTELL: But his picture's in the yearbook as if he spoke on campus. It's next to Ed Muskie or somebody like that. And I thought, this is really interesting, you know, that PG's here, sixty-eight, and you're in the commencement process. program in 6sixty-nine, as you know. And then there's Whitney Young getting an honorary degree. Those connections are just, are really nice. (clears throat) But it's, you know, some--that's what's good about interviewing people, you know, because if we hadn't done this, in a hundred years they'd be writing the history of this Urban League and they'd say, P.G. Peeples was probably in the audience and saw Whitney Young get that honorary degree and at that moment committed himself to the Urban League.
02:12:33PEEPLES: Yeah, all that little theoretical.
02:12:35BIRDWHISTELL: That wasn't the case at all. You were just living your life.
02:12:38PEEPLES: I was putting distance between myself and that place. I had done what I wanted to do there. And my own little triumph of the way I was being, saying, you know, I'm not interested in the pomp and circumstance. get me out of here.
02:12:53BIRDWHISTELL: Well, it wasn't a time of pomp and circumstance. I mean, even, you know, there weren't many, there weren't a lot of students at that time who, I mean, the students were moving away from that, you know, about that formal ceremonial stuff that, that was on the down.
02:13:08PEEPLES: Yeah, they--you're right, that was, that was kind of, uh--
02:13:10BIRDWHISTELL: --but, you know, as you look through that yearbook, trying to reconstruct just from what a yearbook would show of what the environment was there for an African-American student, you know, from Lynch, Kentucky, who had all this New York experience and urban experience. But it, you know, then and probably still today, you know, it's a white-looking environment. You know, it's sororities and fraternities and Greek Week and Little Kentucky Derby, and--
02:13:41PEEPLES: --see, Terry, that's what really made my adjusting to, like, I would come there and I was be in the ---(??). And my vision, as I look, or I close my eyes and look, and I'll see the typical white student with the V-neck sweater.
02:13:58PEEPLES: Hang, hang on. (recording pauses) (recording resumes) White student--
02:14:01PEEPLES: --with the V-neck sweater and the khaki pants and the shiny loafers and the jacket with the turned-up collar. And mom and dad were making sure that they had the best of everything in school. And they were in their own big world. I mean that was their big world that they controlled. And see I was able to put in perspective how really tiny that world was. So I could kind of inside chuckle about it. And that's what made me be able to deal with it. In fact, and I guess I remember one time as part of the Student Council for Special Education, we went to a couple of national conventions. And one of them was in New York. And some of the students, but most of the students who went along with me were students who had become friends of mine, so I didn't see them in the same sense. But I was--to be able to have them in New York and see them having to deal with that whole other big world was kind of interesting. (Birdwhistell laughs)
02:15:03BIRDWHISTELL: That would be.
02:15:04PEEPLES: But, but, you know, Terry, even today, some adults from here in Lexington who really see the world as Lexington.
02:15:11BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, yeah. There's--that's part of Lexington's problem, of course, and it always has been.
02:15:15PEEPLES: Yeah, the thing it stops--
02:15:16BIRDWHISTELL: --and UK. is connected to that.
02:15:17PEEPLES: Yeah, it stops. Stops and starts.
02:15:19BIRDWHISTELL: The U.K.-Lexington axis, you know, that people revolve around, and, it, it constrains this community in a lot of ways. What about the friendships you made at--on the campus with other African-American students? How did, I mean, was it a thing where African-American students were by necessity forced together?
02:15:48PEEPLES: So few of us. There may, may have been during, most, probably at the max during my time, it may have been fifty of us. And a few of us had some little raggedy transportation, and a lot of us, and we kind of, we didn't go, we didn't, when we went off campus, we'd make four or five trips, make sure everybody got to the same place and got back. That kind of thing. We just kind of bonded together like that. Chester Rondy (?), who's on campus, he and another guy named John Beckham, who came from Louisville, Bill Turner, Art Garner, and myself came down from the mountains together. A few kids from here in Lexington, a few others from Louisville. Really, really had a close-knit kind of relationship. Out of necessity. As time went on, and as much as I stayed here in Lexington, I used to go back and visit the campus, and I'd see Black students walking around, and I'd kind of come to kind of catch their eyes and force them to speak. And I can remember when I was there, boy, if you saw somebody Black, you not only spoke, you almost embraced them.
02:16:52BIRDWHISTELL: Of course, where--when you were there, you saw a lot of Black people.
02:16:56PEEPLES: Oh, working.
02:16:58BIRDWHISTELL: They were working. How did you, what did you think of all that? Every once in a while, that, that--it's like I see it every day, and then every once in a while it just hits me that there's still, you know, in 1993, if you go to UK, people who are servicing that place so that, you know, it can be the great university that they want it to be are African Americans in there day in and day out, and they have been for generations. You know, and if you go back and look at the histories of the place and the pictures that they publish, they always have one picture of all African Americans who've been loyal workers in that place. You know, that's a part of the, you know, it's an ongoing thing, and, and how do you put that in the photo, for your ----(??)--?
02:17:47PEEPLES: Well, I put it in the same framework of the whole society, of the whole world, the whole United States. You know, I look at Lexington, the real service, people who service the garbage for Lexington, 99.4% or 100% is going to be African American, very loyal, hardworking core of people. same way there, very loyal, hard-working core of people. And what that speaks to is the same kind of drive and same kind of determination and the same kind of upbringing about whatever you do. I mean, that's always been part of the African-American culture is that whatever you do, you do it well. And I'm not saying that anybody else's culture didn't do that, but I'm saying I know that that was it.
02:18:33BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Right.
02:18:34PEEPLES: That you do it well. Now, if you look at it from the standpoint of fairness and equity,
02:18:41BIRDWHISTELL: It ain't there.
02:18:42PEEPLES: Still got a long way to go.
02:18:44BIRDWHISTELL: It ain't there, is it?
02:18:45PEEPLES: Still got an awfully long way to go.
02:18:48BIRDWHISTELL: And I guess--
02:18:49PEEPLES: --that's why I guess you have an appreciation for a guy like -------(??), because you think finally you've got someone who's given time, may make some difference, or will try to make some difference.
02:19:01BIRDWHISTELL: And certainly the goal is not to take away jobs from the people who were doing custodial work at U.K. I mean, that's not the point.
02:19:08PEEPLES: A certainly honorable job, yes.
02:19:09BIRDWHISTELL: Sure. I mean, and it's not to denigrate it or to take anything away from those people. That--the reason it stands out is because the people teaching the classes and the majority, you know, the large majority of the students are all white. That's what makes it look all out of, out of whack. What made me think of that was you know, when you're talking about, say, you're an African American and you're on the campus over there, I mean, it's still, I mean, you could walk over there today and, you know, when you see another African American person, you know, this eye contact or, you know, this is like you were talking about. And I've been around African American professors when they would run into an African American custodian and the sort of moment's hesitation of eye contact and an acknowledgment of each other being there, it's almost awkward for a moment. Is that right? I mean, is that? Am I reading that right?
02:20:05PEEPLES: Well, if it--yeah, yeah, you read that right. And I hope the awkwardness is because you've kind of been startled because you've, you weren't expecting the African Americans because there are so few. What I hope is not happening, and, and one of the things that bothers me about that, the aspect--about some African Americans who have ascended up the ladder, who have gotten into this situation where they don't want to identify.
02:20:29BIRDWHISTELL: No, this wasn't, that wasn't the way I was reading it at all.
02:20:32PEEPLES: But that's a pet peeve of mine. We do have a lot of them who are in that area. And that bothers me. It bothers me a lot.
02:20:39BIRDWHISTELL: But what I'm saying is that the professor--
02:20:41PEEPLES: They're just as much of the problem at that point.
02:20:44BIRDWHISTELL: If the professor and the custodian run into each other on Saturday at the barbershop, there's no, there's no, nothing going on, but, you know, just regular, regular hellos.
02:20:54PEEPLES: Yeah.
02:20:55BIRDWHISTELL: But there's this, you know, and the point is not, not to get into that too far, but the whole point is the atmosphere at UK. I mean, it's just still, it's an atmosphere that allows that to be an awkward, first situation, you know, where a custodian would be surprised that there's a professor, you know, you just used to see white guys do that. And white guys, not white women necessarily. (laughs)
02:21:19PEEPLES: Yeah, white guys.
02:21:21BIRDWHISTELL: It's white guys, just the white guys. So, were there any, we talked about your close-knit necessity of Blacks on campus as students when you were there. Were there social clubs or was there any kind of development of a, of a, you know, when I'm looking at women's history, when women are trying to gain a foothold on their campus, in one of the chapters I'm working on, I'd say they're present but not accounted for because they come and they take their classes and they get their degrees and then they go on. And then there's a stage where they develop their own sphere, where they develop, uh, clubs and associations that mirror what the men have done. Was that in process, in progress when you were there as a Black student where you were -----(??) ?
02:22:19PEEPLES: The numbers probably didn't lend itself to much of that at the time I was there. More that's probably going on now, or probably has evolved. No, what, no, what, there, there was a just begun, just beginning to develop an Alpha Fraternity chapter. We socialized. A few of the students had apartments off campus, we, we, where we went to and partied. We did a lot of things with Kentucky State. We'd go to Kentucky State. We'd go to Eastern, because Eastern had more Blacks.
02:22:54BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, yeah, Eastern was a very, uh--
02:22:56PEEPLES: --yeah, Eastern had a lot of Blacks from Eastern Kentucky, from Lexington, and from Louisville. So we did a lot of that.
02:23:04BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, that would make sense.
02:23:05PEEPLES: That was what we did.
02:23:06BIRDWHISTELL: Did you ever think when you were at Eastern, when you got down to Richmond to socialize, you thought, well, why didn't I just go here? (laughs) Why am I messing with those people over there? (Peeples laughs)
02:23:16PEEPLES: No, no, because, uh, I don't know, I always got a sense from a lot of the kids, some of the students at Eastern, was that they, while they knew that we lacked a lot in terms of that social outlet, they--some of them, I kind of felt, kind of admired us for the ability to weather this.
02:23:43BIRDWHISTELL: And your degree was going to be from UK, and you, you met the test.
02:23:47PEEPLES: Yeah.
02:23:48BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. I can, I can--yeah, that was probably true.
02:23:53PEEPLES: Getting someone to admit that may have been a ---(??) up, but I really just kind of felt--
02:23:57BIRDWHISTELL: --push comes to shove, you don't want to have to sit there and say that, but, that's the, uh, impression you get?
02:23:58PEEPLES: Yeah, yeah, but I, I kind of, I kind of felt that. And that they weren't--it didn't bother them to share their social. Social life, because I think they also understood that we were pioneering something for other folks too.
02:24:14BIRDWHISTELL: Well, that's for sure.
02:24:16PEEPLES: It was, it was clearly a pioneering effort. I have no regrets about it Terry. I have none. I, I just, I feel like as my life has evolved it was almost like it was predestined that I would have that experience to help me deal with the other experiences.
02:24:34BIRDWHISTELL: I was going to say, I can't get you to regret anything so far. (laughs) You took the cards that were dealt each time and played the best hand you had, didn't you?
02:24:41PEEPLES: That's, uh, it, it minimizes frustration. And I still do a lot in this job I deal with right now. I do a lot in terms of, you know, making success stories, the kind of success stories that gives you the kind of inspiration to keep going. Because in this work, you could very easily become frustrated and become nonproductive.
02:25:08BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. Yeah.
02:25:09PEEPLES: You can either allow yourself to do that, or you can allow other people.
02:25:14BIRDWHISTELL: Well, people do that in less challenging jobs than this. That's for sure. It's a frustrating ----(??).
02:25:16PEEPLES: Yeah, to put you in a position to become frustrated. But if you can allow someone else to start setting your goals.
02:25:25BIRDWHISTELL: That's right. ----(??) go. That's right.
02:25:27PEEPLES: Yeah, that's right. And I don't allow that.
02:25:31BIRDWHISTELL: Why don't we stop here for the day and take it up again--
02:25:35PEEPLES: --okay--
02:25:36BIRDWHISTELL: --at UK. I'm not through with UK yet.
02:25:37PEEPLES: Okay.
02:25:38BIRDWHISTELL: We're not going to get you out of there yet.
