... a tribute to a loving couple...

ORAL HISTORY: Tamara Olsen Evans--
Carson Bishop grandmother.
April 16, 2016

BIRTHDATE: 10-4-1940

Recordings transcript

Hello I am Carson Bishop and I will be interviewing my grandma Tamara Evans. We are holding this interview on April 16, 2016

Carson: When were you born?

Tamara: I was born October 4, 1940.

Carson: Where were you born?

Tamara: I was born in Logan, Utah near the small town of Weston, Idaho

Carson: When did you move to Kansas City?

Tamara: That is quite a story. I graduated from college after I was married. I was putting my husband through college at Brigham Young University and I taught at West Jordan, Utah elementary school in the fourth grade for two years and then I had our first daughter, Christine. She was born in 1964.

My husband wanted to go to Dental School and he got excepted to UMKC Dental program so we came to Kansas City in 1964. It was Labor Day weekend when we moved to Kansas City and it was so hot. Christine was four months old and we needed to get me a job right away so that I could make some money to support us.

We lived "down in the projects" in Kansas City Missouri right downtown and the school district hired me right away to teach fourth grade in Frederick Douglas elementary and I was very excited. It was a very exciting time.

Carson: What was your experience like teaching at Douglas elementary school?

Tamara: It was truly an experience because I have never been around (growing up in Idaho) black people or Spanish people and I had a classroom of 50 percent black children and 50 percent Spanish children one white young boy who was blonde blue-eyed and cute as can be. They all blended in wonderfully. They were really good kids.

Carson: How many students were in your classroom
?

Tamara: about 36 students....I think...It was a really long time ago.

Carson: How did the children arrive at the school building for the school day?

Tamara: Some of the children came by bus from other areas because we (the government) was trying to work out the desegregation of schools. John F. Kennedy started the (busing program to mix children of other races in schools in place of students from the same, closest neighborhood.)

I didn't have any trouble (with the mix of kids) my first year teaching, however, I did the second year. Maybe those boys were just being little boys.

My second year, I had a lot of trouble with one of my students. His mother was all upset and she didn't know what to do and I didn't know what to do. You can't have disruptions in your classroom, but we eventually worked it out.

CARSON: What were some specific problems that you had in the classroom?

Tamara: This child mostly distracted other children and tried to stop them from studying and doing things. During reading classes, he was off doing something else and not doing what he was supposed to do. I divided the class by skill level for reading and one part of the class worked on something and the other group worked at something at their level. We did not have assistants then or PARAS. The teachers did it all. I had to keep the other children doing other things because he wasn't very good at paying attention.

He had a lot of other problems too like a lot of fighting on the playground. Most of the children got along well together. They are children. There is a big difference than teens in high school getting along together. I think these kids just blended very well.

In the summertime, they had a convention at UMKC and I was selected to attend. Teachers got together to talk about how to integrate the teaching in the school system of teaching to the black children about heroes of their black race and how we could help them see that they had a history of people and what good things they did. When you see a hero, you want to emulate what they do. That was what the whole conference was about.

It was interesting though at this conference where we were supposed be helping the blacks and learning to become equal, I remember so well one event. There were many many sessions dedicated to talking about how to do this and how we could serve the child. There was a luncheon and there were many people--black and white--sitting around round tables. One thing that I noticed and I'll never forget..... the whole convention there.

The whole convention where there are women were served first and then the man who served at this table

In our era, women were served first at a table, and then the men were served. At this table, I was served because I was white. I was the first one to get served, EVERYTIME. Then the white males were served and then the blacks were served.

I'll never forget it because it was so obvious. It was just some simple little etiquette that I noticed----we were supposed to be equal and we were talking about being equal and trying to do things and in this little simple act of being served first because I was a white woman really put an impact of why it was so important to be treated the same.

( PAUSE AS MY GRANDMA composed herself)

It was just some simple thing that you may not think is important, but it really hit home to me.

There was another teacher chosen by the principle like I was who was black. She was also from our school and she was a very lovely black lady, Mrs. Carter. I asked her when she got into teaching and she said she had been teaching black children all her life since she graduated from school. We got to talking about how she feels about things. She told me she had learned to live with all of the indignations and she try's to not let it bother her. She had two sons who were so angry and she worries about them because they're so angry about being how they are treated.

They felt treated like lower-Class citizens and not accepted for what they were in that they didn't get the jobs they would like to do. She said they're going to do something because there's so much anger about what is going on in their life and their friends' lives. She says it is an anger that she didn't understand, but She worried about it for her children because she didn't know what they would do.

It wasn't long after that the riots started in Kansas City, the city we lived in. We lived right downtown so it was very scary. We lived all around blacks and Spanish. There were not very many whites where we lived. The dental students got together and decided they were going to go downtown near the riots and so they did. The police downtown stopped them. They could not get very close to the riots and the looting and fighting. It was a scary time in our lives. We finally did move to Wyndotte and Argentine and I taught school there.

It was an unusual time because Kansas City was upset with the blacks and the whites. There was a lot tension.

But I met some really wonderful people , mostly black ladies who were teachers. Maybe there was one black man as a teacher. They were nice people. I appreciate being able to have that experience. I know your grandfather had a black male dental student friend in his class who he graduated together. Later, he came to our house in Overland Park. I remember he died suddenly and we attended his funeral and ladies were crying. We were the only white people at the funeral.

So nothing really big happened but it was just life itself and being integrated with the blacks. It has been a really different kind of life than what I would of had in Utah or Idaho.

Carson: Do you think there has been Much change since that time?

Tamara: OH YES. Kids now days are so accepting and they are wonderful to blacks and others and I think prejudice has been eradicated. Oh there is still some. I have seen where blacks and whites are marrying. That was against the law during our time. You could not marry a black person or vice versus.

Carson: How does it make you feel knowing that we live in a society where everyone tries to be accepting?

Tamara: It makes me feel good. I truly believe the we are all children of God whether you are placed in Russia, China, wherever. We are all children of God. We are all the same underneath. We just have different skin colors.

I like the way it is today. I hate seeing hate. Our lives have become so much different now as it was then. It was a sad time. They were really rebelling saying, " enough is enough. We have had 100 years of this trying to be free and we want what you have. We want the same life and opportunities that you have." Now the women are doing it because they don't get paid as much as the men. They want equal opportunities to. Maybe we will have a women president. How about that?

(This 3-minute passage got accidentally deleted when trying to clip and edit the recording. I stopped editing the recording and focused on the story.

I remember John F. Kennedy. I was teaching school in West Jordan, Utah when he became president. We all thought he was great and we all loved him and he was really trying as well as his brother. They were trying so hard with Martin Luther King. This was the time when all the riots in Alabama were occurring. Also, in Topeka Kansas this was the time when two little daughters wanted to attend the school closest to where they lived instead of being bused to a farther away school where mostly whites attended. Their father and their minister protested that these girls should go to the school in their neighborhood. White school as called ROSA PARKS?

I remember the day John F Kennedy died and he got shot. To this day they don't know why he got shot, but to this day some of them speculate that it was because of desegregation and integrating he blacks and the whites. He was a great president, but I remember the schools closed. We went up and had an assembly with the children and we were singing patriotic songs. We had the flag there and we watched it on TV . They canceled school for 3 days and we watched it on a little black and white TV. It was interesting those times. We had a lot of people that died for that integration and equal rights. A lot of wonderful people. And then there were the ones who wanted to stop it. I guess every once in awhile you hear about the hate again. We just had one last year right here in Overland Park and he killed those people because he thought they were Jewish. We still have it in this world.

Carson: Do you think a sense of inferiority of children affects them in learning and how? Do you think being segregated in schools affected the quality of education that different races received?

Tamara: With segregation, you are only seeing one point of view. You are only being taught from one point f view. On any kind of a group, if you are just there and you are not hearing other people's sides and you are being segregated into thinking of this group. When you integrate, the experiences you are having become the experiences of the group. The teacher and the people around you, the students that you are learning from. It just depends on what you are trying to learn as a student because there still are places where their are black colleges and church colleges that are separated. I think it is important that we have an open mind about some things and value the people and what they think. I think that helps a lot with keeping the peace. That is what I think starts all this. We just don't understand each other and their thinking and why they do what they do. Like it is now in the Mid East we just don't understand each other and they hate us so bad. When you think about it, it is probably what the Blacks and men that were fighting. They did not want to be treated the way they were treated. Apparently, these people don't either.

Carson: You said they were angry about their situation and the way they were being treated. What were some of the proposed solutions and what were some of the things that were attempted to try and fix this? What worked and what didn't work?

Tamara: Good question. Well, our president John F Kennedy was all for being equal and he was working with the black leaders to make this problem so it won't explode. One of the things that they come up with was integration into the white schools. The blacks felt like they didn't have the best schools--they didn't feel like they knew the whites so they thought let's put some little children into the white schools. With the little children it will help by them seeing themselves which is a good thing. When you mix another race with another race and once they get to know each other they become friends and they learn about each other. It breaks down all these barriers they have.

So they come up with the busing idea. They took black children from the black areas into the white schools. Some of the white children into the black schools by bus.

The one thing that I noticed that was really bad about that was the children were a long ways from home. The one boy that I had trouble with, his mother was very worried because she didn't know if her son was being mistreated. Or if he wasn't being taught right. I think he was just a boy acting out. She was very concerned because I was a white teacher. She called me a lot and talked to me.

I tried to reassure her that we were doing all we could to help him, but it wasn't working with him. I think he was just a little boy who had undiagnosed ADD. He was hard to work with.

But I could see his mother's concerns. All the mothers who had to send their children on buses
That was a long ways away for a child to be away from his mother and father. They did not mix with the neighborhood children because the schools and the people they associated with where they went to school lived far away from them. It really wasn't working out. I think they tried to do some other things, besides integration and busing.

Segregation is really bad because we really don't get to know each other. I think they worked it out pretty good because we are integrated in America well I guess England and some of those countries are integrated to. Now we are taking in the Muslims and everyone is worried because we don't know them. Once we get to know them they will be fine to.

TAMARA: