Male: Let's go ahead,
and now that's good.
-: Yeah, Katherine, right?
-: Yes. -: Okay.
Katherine: Yes, so I just have to state
a couple of formalities, just for the record.
Today is July 6th, 2015.
My name is Katherine Bynum,
I'm here with Moisa Sekunya Gorula,
and Professor Todd Moines.
-: Excuse me. -: Sure.
-: I need to turn my phone off.
Katherine: Sure, sure, sure.
Male: I would say that he's (indistinct)
-: Sorry about that.
Katherine: No, you're fine.
You're fine.
Today we're at the Brazos Valley African-American Museum
in Bryan, Texas, and we are interviewing Mr. Leroy Sterling.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
I really appreciate your taking the time
and helping us with this project.
-: My pleasure.
Katherine: So let me just tell you,
our plan for the interview is
we're gonna talk about your family, and your background,
and your schooling experiences with that.
And then we're gonna go on with your career as an educator,
and then talk a little bit about present day.
So that's kind of how the interview is gonna go.
And I also really appreciate you taking the time,
and kind of making a little timeline for us.
It's very beneficial and I really do appreciate it.
So, do you have any questions before we begin?
-: No. -: Okay.
All right, so let me go ahead and ask you,
can you tell us your full name and when you were born?
-: Katherine, my name is Leroy Sterling,
and I was born March 15, 1939,
and I want to thank you for inviting me here,
because, at least for two reasons, number one,
I think anybody who can remember Harry Truman,
and Eisenhower needs to tell this story in a hurry
because we won't be around very long to do that.
And even if we are, we might not know
where we're going then, so I'm really happy to be here.
Katherine: Well, thank you,
we're so happy that you are here with us
sharing your experiences,
so you were born 1939?
-: Born in 1939.
Katherine: And what city were you born in?
-: Actually, I was born in Boonville, Texas,
and Boonville no longer exists,
but in the old black Boonville cemetery,
the state of Texas now has designated that
as a historic site,
and they are building a replica.
Boonville used to be the county seat of Texas,
and it was also the hub for a stagecoach line.
So the state is building a replica of the, I think,
the stage coach line in the old cemetery
where my dad is buried today.
And I came from a large family,
there were eight of us kids,
and I was raised by my stepdad, starting at three years old.
And my mom was a housewife, and to make ends meet
we all had to work, even at early ages.
I remember picking cotton at six and seven years old.
And my stepdad had a job with the city of Bryan
on the trash truck.
And in those days there was no automation.
They had one guy pick up the barrel,
and throw it to the other guy who was on the truck
and empty the barrel and throw it back down,
while the white driver, always the white driver,
was the supervisor of the crew.
And my dad worked for the city of Bryan
most of his adult life and retired there.
Matter of fact, he was a very honorable man.
I don't even know if he finished grade school,
but I learned quite a bit from him.
And he was brawny from... he wore those muscle straps
to keep his muscles from erupting because he was so strong
from having lifted those barrels.
And I used to be ashamed of him,
because he would call all white men,
regardless of their age, as sir,
and I really didn't like that.
But when I was about 10 years old,
I gained great respect for him,
because at two o'clock in the morning,
he kept two policeman who were armed
looking for a man who had murdered his wife,
and the policeman thought they heard something
in the background when my dad opened the door,
and they were trying to burst in with their guns drawn
and he put his arms up,
told them they could not come in
because he didn't know whether his daughters were dressed
and he kept them out.
And from that day on, I had great respect for him.
Great, great respect for him.
Katherine: About how old were you when that happened?
-: I was about 10.
And one man in the neighborhood had decapitated his wife
and they were looking for him.
So, my dad really became my dad from that day on.
Katherine: And this was your stepfather, you said?
-: My stepfather, yes.
Katherine: And what was his name?
-: His name was Eddie Phillips. -: Eddie Phillips.
And he taught me,
I remember some things that he taught me.
Leroy, a man who sleeps late will never amount to anything.
And I saw him do some degrading things.
In the winter times, we had an outhouse,
and when we finally got indoor plumbing,
the house was on blocks, so that meant
the cold air would go underneath the house
and the plumbing would freeze over.
So, I saw him do some disgusting things with his hands.
And I looked at him and I said,
"Dad, how could you do that?"
And he said, "When you have a family,
"you have to do things that are not nice."
And I remembered those things,
those were my life's lessons from him.
Katherine: Do you know
how your mom and your stepfather met?
-: I really don't know because I was only three.
And I don't know if she knew him before then or not,
but my mom was an amazing woman,
and I told you earlier, she'll be 103 next month,
she's still alive, and she taught all of us
the value of education.
She had eight kids of her own and she adopted another
when the child was an infant, and all of us went to college,
and I think seven of us earned at least one degree,
but yeah, it was pretty good, especially for those days,
but she was totally amazing.
She believed she could do anything and she could.
She wanted to open a restaurant,
we told her she couldn't, she opened a restaurant.
She wanted to learn how to type,
we told her she was too old,
she went to business school, but she is an amazing woman.
I have a photograph just to show you how times were
in those days.
This is a photograph of my brothers and my cousins,
and that's how we dressed back then.
And this is a photograph of my mom, the tall one,
her sister, and her sister's husband, my uncle,
and this was the house next door.
So you can see the condition.
Our house looked probably just like that,
but that's how things looked in those days.
Male: Mr. Sterling, can I ask you
to just put your hand down-
-: Oh okay.
Male: So we can see the photograph a little better?
Could you hold it out a little bit?
That's perfect.
Thank you.
-: Okay.
Katherine: So, your mother, you talked about how
she opened a business, her own restaurant,
and then she wanted to learn how to type,
and she went to business school.
Where did she go to school when she was younger?
Did she have a formal education?
-: Oh, she had no formal education,
and I'm not even sure that she finished high school,
but she had great mother wit, she was a seamstress,
and she sewed a lot for the Mexicans in the community.
She made band uniforms for the Mexicans,
she made dresses for them, she made suits for them.
And I say for the Mexicans, because we lived
on the fringe of the Mexican neighborhood,
and the beginning of the African-American neighborhood,
and the Ibarra Elementary School
was like 15 or 20 yards from our house,
and the house is still there,
and the location where the school was is now a park.
And a decade after the park was destroyed,
my mom was instrumental in making that vacant land a park.
And what happened was my mom saw the need to do something
with the land, and the kids had no formal place to play,
so she did what she had to do to make that become a park.
And in 2013, the city decided to,
they named the park San Jacinto park.
In 2013, the city decided to rename that park
the Ibarra park.
And I found out about it like three days
before the happening; my sister called me.
So I quickly wrote a letter,
and I either took it to the Bryan Eagle, the local paper,
or I had somebody else take it;
I don't remember.
And I don't know if it got there too late to be published,
or they chose not to publish, but I'm gonna read the letter.
And the topic of the letter is first things first,
congratulations to Ibarra Elementary alumni,
Ibarra was the Hispanic school from about 1935 to 1949,
for celebrating the name change
from San Jacinto park to Ibarra Park,
stated in the Eagle 11/1/13.
Caitlyn Peron's article chronicles
Mary Gramaldo's valiant research efforts
to document the school's history and its morphing.
This recognition is long overdue.
While much of the information is undoubtedly based on facts,
the article fails to mention that the school was built
on the edge of the Mexican-American community,
but situated smack-dab in the middle
of the African-American community,
supporting Gramaldo's assertion that,
"The atmosphere was one of segregation,"
and that she had no other place to attend school.
I do know the feeling.
Our house was directly behind the school,
approximately 20 yards from its grounds.
For my first three elementary school years,
I walked to Washington Elementary
on the East side of town
until nearby Carver was built,
and this was almost exactly the same location
of the current African-American Museum, which is right here.
A daunting almost daily trek for a six year old child.
Moreover, Ibarra elementary represented
the quintessential division of race and class
existing in the city at the time.
Go to school in your own neighborhood,
at least for some people.
The San Jacinto Ibarra Park saga would be incomplete
without the following account.
After the school was demolished,
its land was vacant for more than a decade.
My mother, Mrs. Maddie Lee Phillips,
recognized that neither black nor Mexican kids
had a safe place to play,
and set out to do something about it.
She tried the neighborhood, knocked on many doors
to collect signatures, sought and obtained the endorsement
of Johnny Lampo, and petitioned the city of Bryan
to turn the vacant lot into a park.
She was successful in her efforts.
Mrs. Phillips knew the value
of balancing a child's education and safe recreation,
for she raised nine of her own, all of them went to college.
Two years ago, on her 100th birthday, Bryan City councilman,
Paul Madison, cited her for her life's accomplishments
in ceremonies at Pleasant Grove Baptist church.
Over the years. many wondered why the park
wasn't named after her,
but her response has always been, "I didn't do much."
Congratulations again to Ibarra Elementary alumni.
Celebrate your history, embrace, enjoy, and safeguard it.
Leroy Sterling.
Katherine: And when did you write that letter?
-: I wrote it in 2013, November, I think, of 2013.
And I blame myself for not knowing that the name change
was going to take place and not getting the letter
to the newspaper on time,
and they probably would not have done anything about it,
but it would have made me feel better had I done that.
And so I don't go over in that area much anymore,
but when I do, I think about it could have been,
and should have been named the Maddie Phillips Park,
after my mom.
Katherine: So when you were growing up in Bryan,
you mentioned that there were three schools,
there was the Mexican schools, there were the black schools,
and then there were the white schools,
and that the Ibarra School was located right smack dab
in the middle of the black neighborhood.
Can you describe what your neighborhood looked like?
Maybe what house you grew up in,
what were the conditions of the neighborhood,
and who predominantly lived in that neighborhood?
-: Well, when we first moved into that area,
I was probably five or six years old,
and we had a shotgun house.
And I don't know if you know what a shotgun house is,
but I'm not the person who described it in this book,
but a shotgun house is a long house
without any irregular shape.
And you can look through the front door
all the way to the back door,
and it's said that if you shot a shotgun
through the front door, it would go all the way
through the back door with no obstruction.
And the house was too small,
so we lived with the neighbor across the highway.