-: Okay. We're on
Katherine: Recording on both?
-: Yeah.
-: Okay. Hi, how are you?
-: Fine. How're you doing today?
-: I'm good. Thank you.
My name is Katherine Bynum.
I am here with Morris's Akuna gorilla
and we are from the oral history project called
Civil Rights in Black and Brown.
Today is Monday, June 15th?
-: Yes
-: June 15th, 2015.
I'm here with Mr. Ed Moore.
Thank you so much for being with us today
Mr.Moore, I'm going to ask you just a little bit
about your, you know, biographical history,
where you were born,
what schools you went to, things like that.
And then I was going to ask you
about your work with the United Steels worker
and then later on your election to city council.
So that's just kind of how the interview's going to go.
Do you have any questions before we begin?
-: No. No.
-: Okay.
Okay. So can you start off by telling me where
and when you were born and who your parents are?
-: Okay.
My birth name is Edward D. Moore.
Most people call me Ed.
I was born and raised here in Dallas, Texas.
Birthday December 27, 1947.
I was educated in the Tyler public school system
through elementary and high school, graduated
in high school from the M J Scott High School
which was the predominantly black school.
My graduation date was May 30th, 1966.
-: 1966
-: 66.
After then I enrolled into Tyler Junior College
in September of 66 and attended TJC until I guess
May or June of 1968.
After then I was employed
by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company
which was actually Kelly Springfield Tire and Rubber Company
on August the 8th of 1968.
And I guess that's where I got started.
-: Well, can you tell me what your parents did for a living?
-: Okay. My mother worked private home during my tenure in
in basically in the high school.
But after that, I think in 69
she went to work for a general electric company.
My father was employed at Tyler Pipe Foundry.
He worked there for 41 years.
He passed away of cancer in 1994.
So my father's deceased.
I have one sister.
Her name is Della, and she's a year older than I am.
I am married to Lillian Ross.
We've been married 31 years.
We have two children.
Rebecca is our daughter
and Edward is our son.
Got two grand boys
Marquees and Ethan,
and we have a four month old granddaughter
and her name is Lyric.
-: Lyric?
-: Lyric.
-: Okay. So,
-: So that's my family history.
-: So you said you grew up in Tyler.
Can you describe what neighborhood you grew up in
and kind of what it looked like
-: I grew up in Tyler, Texas Yes.
I always grew up in Tyler,
I guess from my baby days until I guess I was 10 years old.
I grew up basically on the South West side of Tyler.
Most people would call it White City.
That's where I grew up and I don't know what age I was
but I know I was in the fifth grade and my parents and I
we moved to North Tyler when I was in the fifth grade.
And that's where I attended MS Scott Junior High School.
Then we went to in 1962
MW Dogan was a middle school that they built before
I attended MW Dogan.
And then from there, I went to MS Scott High School.
-: So you said you lived in White City
which was the South West side.
-: There was an area that they call basically White City.
-: Do you know why they called it that?
-: I have no idea.
-: What was the, What was the makeup of the neighborhood?
-: All minorities, all black
but predominantly black, predominantly black.
The area, yeah.
-: And then North Tyler is predominantly black
as well. Right?
-: North Tyler at that time was not predominantly black.
-: Okay.
-: It was a mixture of Anglo blacks,
but according to my parents
It was probably maybe 75% minority at that time, 25% white.
And over the period of years, that number, the minority
population increased, the Anglo population decreased.
-: Any Hispanics at that time in the neighborhood?
-: No
-: No?
-: No.
-: They came later on?
-: Not that I can recall.
-: Right.
-: They might've came later on.
-: Okay.
-: And then what was your schooling like?
Can you describe the schools that you went to?
-: Oh Great schooling, great schooling.
I didn't, like I said, we grew up
in the era of segregation or we had no white teachers
no white teachers in our school.
And it's a shame to say that we had no white students.
Like I said even through elementary
all the way to high school, I was never exposed
to too many white students, no white teachers
all my teachers were black.
And like all my friends
and associates and neighbors were black,
it was not until I attended TJC
that I was really familiar mingling
and mixing with the other races.
And that's a strange thing because in 68
when I went to TJC, I was one of the "18 people"
on campus that were black at the time.
So it was a heck of a transition
from going to an all black school then going to college
where it was predominantly white.
And at that particular time in 68
blacks were not allowed to go TJC
oh I wouldn't say they were not allowed.
There was no blacks at TJC.
Now, whether we were allowed to go or not
I grew up knowing that there was no blacks at TJC.
And I think in 60s maybe 66
was the first year that we had black students
at Tyler junior College.
And those black students I think at the time were eight.
And out of that eight, six of them were from MS Scott.
The other two are from out of state because
there were two guys that they signed to play football.
Okay.
So, that's where we started.
-: So you said you had great schooling, great teachers.
Can you describe a couple of your favorite teachers
and why you felt like they were so great?
-: Wow. My English teacher was Ms. Katie Stewart,
who has a very popular family here in Tyler.
I think one of the middle schools over
in South West Tyler was named after her, either her father
or grandfather, but her name was Katie Stewart
a good English teacher cared about the students.
She was (indistinct) in class.
And she just was that type
of teacher that could be a grandmother, a mother to you.
But like I said
her most concern was us getting an education.
And I really enjoyed being in her class.
Sometimes I acted up in her class
but still it goes back to what
how she was concerned for us and us getting an education.
She was my English teacher and then my history teacher,
Mr. Alvin and Mr.
I wouldn't think it was Alvin Anderson.
We had so many Anderson's at the time
but we call him Prof Anderson.
He was my history teacher and my homeroom teacher.
And I called him Prof Anderson.
And he passed away about a couple of years ago
but I enjoyed Prof Anderson.
You know he was kind of
like a father to us when we were at school and he cared.
He cared about us, and they're not going to say this
all these teachers that in MS Scott Junior High School
that I went through Dogan,
they were concerned about us getting an education.
And when you go back and look at the history
of maybe Tyler in the public school system
it's not like what it does now, where you get to look
at the school with the low averages kids not graduating.
We didn't have that in our school system.
I would probably say 95, 96%
of the people that attended high school graduated
the dropout rate was pretty low.
And I think that says a lot
for our community and our teachers back in the day.
And like I said
we had teachers that were concerned and we didn't pass
because you're your mom and dad taught school.
If you didn't get the grade, make the grade
you were held back
and to be held back from moving on was embarrassing.
So everybody worked to try to move
from one grade level to the other grade level.
And the, it was, it was nice.
I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed my high school in our MS D Scott now
still has a history in this community.
We have an all school reunion now, every two years
for those people that graduated from MS Scott,
whether it was 50 years ago, 30 years ago
if they're still alive
they have an opportunity to come back
and fellowship and mingle with classmates of yester years.
And we do that like I said every two years.
And the next one is scheduled for July 1st through the third
of 2016 here in Dallas, Texas.
-: And that's, where's the school?
Where's the school located?
-: The school is no longer exists.
The school no longer exists.
It was, it was completely demolished probably
over 20 years ago
but the site is still there with a marker.
-: There's a marker
-: There's a marker there.
In fact, Texas college, which is a black historical college
Some of their classes and some of their buildings
are on that current site right now.
But there is a marker that depicts
and tells you a little bit about MJ Scott high school.
-: So you mentioned earlier that when you were a kid
you knew that black students weren't going to TJC.
What made you decide to wanna go there?
-: Wow, good question. My dad.
-: Really,
-: My dad
we were fortunate enough to stop renting and buy property.
So he became a property owner and taxpayer.
So my sophomore year in high school
when we started talking about going to college
I wanted to go off to school to go to college.
In fact, my senior year, I had a scholarship
in music to go to Mississippi Valley State.
And he said, no.
He said, I pay taxes in Dallas, Texas.
And you going to TJC.
I said, dad they don't have any blacks at TJC.
He said, they will have you because you're going over there.
And he said, as a taxpayer, I want you to go TJC.
And I didn't argue with him.
You know, I think he had a good point.
So I wound up going TJC basically
because my father insisted that I go
to school where he paid taxes and it was cheaper
a whole lot cheaper to go to TJC.
Than to go off to Mississippi.
And that was one of the things
I'd never been away from home.
So it wasn't a big deal for me.
But I recall that conversation that I had with him
about going to TJC.
And like I said, when I went to TJC
I probably some of the people that I graduated with
from MS Scott attended TJC.
In fact, there was about eight or 10 of us.
We carpool every day from North Tyler to TJC
which made it a little bit interesting.
But like I said, at the time, it wouldn't probably no more
than maybe 18 to 20 of us out there anyway.
-: Do you remember the first black student that went to TJC?
-: I remember some of them there was
a Maurice Langue.
Oh,
(clears throat)
I can't recall all of them.
Oh, James Batten Dale, who was in my class
he's deceased at this time.
It's hard for me to remember
for those that were not, Oh yeah.
Ellen Hicks.
She was a classmate of mine.
(clears throat)
-: I'm trying to think of, I don't want to call any names
because I might not be correct in calling their names
but those are the ones that I know.
I remember going to TJC at the time I was going to TJC
and neither one of those people I called by name was
still here Tyler and I don't, I'm not sure whether
Mr. Langue is alive or not, but I know Mr. Batten Dale
passed away about two or three years ago.
-: Okay.
-: That's about all I can remember
at this particular time.
-: So you said it was there probably what, 10 to
15 black students, when you started attending TJC.
-: Yeah.
-: Did you notice any kind of
prejudice or discrimination when you started going here?
-: Everyday that we went to school.
-: Really? Can you give me an example?
-: Separation of
(indistinct)
there was a place TJC and I'm pretty sure they still got it.
It was called the TP
It's where all the students together, you know
during the break, during class breaks and stuff like that.
And we had a section for colored only, yeah.
Where we would gather and we take care
of our own business and do what we wanted to do.
Basically in this, it was just a common thing.
You know, it was nothing unusual
but it was a section for us.
The classrooms were a little bit different.
Some of the classes assign you in alphabetical order, which
you know, you had a mixture there, but most
of them were alphabetical order basically in the classrooms
I didn't see any, any difference and discrimination
for the most part.
There was one incident that I dropped out of a class
because I didn't like the way the English teacher
addressed black folks.
He called us Nigrits.
And I questioned him about that.
He was from Louisiana.
He said, well, that's the way he grew up.
I said, well, you know what?
I don't have to sit here and listen to this.
I walked out the class, I received a incomplete
but I took it the next semester.
And the reason for that
because I didn't want to be called a Nigrit.
I didn't know what a Nigrit was.
No. So was the end of my career with him.
But other than that everything went pretty smoothly at TJC.
I had to give it to them.
Never saw any fights at TJC.
Nobody ever got out of control
as far as the black and white issue.
If they did, I never saw it.
Like I said, I attended TJC two years and three months.
And basically we had, we were the first class
in 66 through 67 that had black athletes.
Mr. Batten Dale, that I mentioned to you was versatile.
He played football and basketball for TJC.
In fact, during that two year tenure from 66 through 68
there was three African Americans
on the football team Batten Dale and another guy and three
on the basketball team, those same three guys
that played football played basketball.
And like I said Batten Dale was the only local guy.
And then the other two guys were brought
in from someplace else.
And they played football and basketball.
(indistinct)
-: These were on integrated teams.
So both black and white students were on this team?
-: Yeah. It was the, yeah, it was the integrated team.
Now what happened during that athletic career
on with those students
I don't know.
All I know is that Batten Dale and two more guys were
on the football team then that made history
because it was predominantly white
all across the board at TJC
and the basketball team was predominantly white
until those three guys came in
and I can not recall the other two guys names.
The reason why I recall Batten Dale
is because he was a classmate of mine.
And we went to MS Scott and we went to TJC the same time.
But the one guy, it's not his real name.
We used to call him Frogman because he could jump so high
but other than that I can't remember their names.
Did you ever play any sports?
-: High school.
-: High school?
-: Yeah, that was it.
-: Football?
-: Well, basically I played a little bit football
in 9th and 10th grade, but basically I stuck with the band.
I was a band member for, I guess, six years
from the junior high school, all the way to high school.
-: What'd you play?
-: Alto sax, bass drum coordinate .
-: Wow.
-: Yep.
-: That's great.
-: I had a scholarship in music too.
And like I said to Mississippi, but after my dad talked me
into not going, I just forgot about it.
And after TJC, I realized I needed to work.
So I went to work at that particular time it was