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AI: That must have been quite meaningful to Ralph as a, as a black American who had personally been in India during World War II, in a segregated U.S. army unit, to then be writing about this new India had achieved its independence from Great Britain.

EH: (Yes), it's kind of significant in that you imagine in the millions of blacks that have been in the segregated army, with very little education, that they come out of high school and go to a country like India. And Ralph really had made a, made a lot of it. He went around independently, got acquainted with Indian families, and one of them even gave us a, gave him a copy of the Koran. You're not supposed to do that if, if you're not a real religious believer, but he picked up on issues like that. He wrote his mother and said, "I'm no longer a Christian, a Methodist. I am not any of these things, but I am all of these things." Just because his scope was so broadened that he realized that there's more, more to philosophy and religion than Christianity. And, and he kind of starts off with that, takes off on that even during his teachings.

But those were great lives that he, he had one occasion where the telephone system was poor, and he, he had his assignments to do a certain amount of office work, and he got into a British general's home, inadvertently, and a sixteen-year-old daughter answered the telephone, and she was eager to strike a conversation with anybody, and she ends up inviting him to Sunday tea. And Ralph said, "No, you better ask your parents. This is a very different system." But she wouldn't take no, so he showed up at tea, and elegant house, and here were a lot of American soldiers, white soldiers, and they really got upset with her for allowing this black person to come in. And she couldn't understand that, and she wasn't willing to understand it either, being a British person. So they had a long-term... not a relationship, but she, her mother liked him, and they had to tell the white soldiers, "If you can't, if you don't like him, then you don't, you don't need to stay." [Laughs] So they would be evicted if they, they couldn't tolerate this. And even after we got married, I corresponded with her for quite a while. They, the British had to leave India, so we followed that a little bit. She was back in England, and had three kids about the same age as our three kids, and we kind of dreamed about at some point, being able to, wouldn't it be fun to meet. But anyway...

AI: Well, and then speaking of your children, you did, your, your first child was born in, was it 1951?

EH: (Yes), uh-huh. We got, between... while, while I went to work for the American Friends Service Committee for probably a year, and then a job opening came up in the YMCA, Northeast, it was called Northeast YMCA in the U. District. And I took that on, I worked for about, I worked there until two weeks before Larry was born, the first one, in '51. And those were interesting times. We had also joined a church called the Church of the People. It was a small congregation who was actually kicked out, I guess, of a Capitol Hill prominent Congregational church. Let's see... Pilgrim, I guess. There were three -- I can't remember what the downtown one was. There's, Prospect is also on Capitol Hill, but this one is off Broadway. And so then half of the congregation broke off because Fred Shorter was a little bit too progressive, too advanced for this very proper, posh congregation on Capitol Hill, and they, Fred was straight out of Yale, an Australian, and a little probably Socialist-leaning, but he was preaching against things like lynching, and against Hitler, and some of the things that were going on in the business world. And he was always for the poor, concerned about the poor. Anyway, that was just too antisocial for the, the Capitol Hill congregation. So this church, half of the congregation follows him, and they were able to buy a piece of property at University and what is now Campus Parkway. It's, and that was a very good, small, warm congregation. We ventured into just because it was on the Avenue, and we were curious about how this was -- but Fred turned out to be very influential. He was, had a British accent, but a great leader, and a teacher.

And that congregation did things like... this was in 1950 -- no, they started probably in '35, and we didn't get there until '50, '49. But immediately after the war, there were no places for minority students. There were no dormitories, not even co-op housing allowed minorities. So the church took it upon themselves, they somehow got a hold of -- well, they built, anyway, a two-story building. I think some of it was not pre-fab, but somehow they were able to get part of a building. And the property had a kind of a sunken garden, and they had built the church facing University Way. And, but they decided to do something about housing for minority students. And they, the church took it upon themselves to build a twenty-nine student men's dormitory, and they allowed a couple of Americans, two or three Canadians, but the rest were all students from all over the world, Indians, particularly. Indians because India had just gotten its, its independence, and the government was sending students all over the world to, to accelerate their ability run their own government, and a lot of them were coming here for aeronautical engineering with Boeing here. And, but it was exciting because there were students coming from Europe and from Asia, probably the first solid crop after the war. So we had a chance to hear what life was like, and how they accomplished things.

The church had service in the morning, and then a lunch. The church had a, a very nice kitchen and a student lounge and a dining room, and they allowed people, anybody to come in, have dinner for a dollar and lunch for fifty cents. And so after church service, we would have a fifty cents lunch, and then a forum. And every Sunday we had tremendous interesting, tremendously interesting speakers.

AI: I feel like I need to make a comment here, for people who may not be aware that at this time -- we're talking the late '40s and early '50s, of course -- racial segregation was still legal in the United States as far as restaurants, hotels, public accommodations. And so, to have a place like this, where everyone was welcome regardless of race, and that there was actually interracial mixing, and that there was housing specifically for racial minority people, people of color, was very significant.

EH: (Yes). Twenty-nine, housing for twenty-nine students is a very small drop in the bucket, but it was, it was significant that it was demonstrated. Here it was -- and there were two, couple of other church members who owned property on, in the University District. And I remember an Amy Smith who was probably in her seventies, but she ran a sizeable room and board place on Sixteenth Northeast, and she always had a very good mix of students. It was, it was just a real learning environment, because we had these forums every Sunday.

AI: Excuse me, I was wondering if you ever, this group that was active with the forums and the, the Church of the People, did you ever receive any kinds of racist hate messages or comments because of the racial mixing that was going on at these activities?

EH: No, but for example, that's where, ultimately, Ralph and I got married there. It was a very exciting moment for the church group and we, we enjoyed it. And we had quite a good mix of people, we couldn't afford a lot, but it provided a nice environment. And, you know, churches often get to be -- small churches in particular -- get to be like an extended family. The, by then I was working for the YMCA, and the YMCA is a very different kettle of fish. [Laughs] I mean, they were, they were finding it very intriguing that I was going to get married there, and I think the Church of the People, by and large, in that era, the majority of the business world would probably consider it Communist-leaning. And there were all kinds of negative feelings about it, but, but that's the church that did some of the ground-, the initial meetings for, in this city, the initial meetings that started Group Health medical services and hospital, ACLU, we had a, I think there was an Evergreen Co-op, a milk co-op system, that was a, kind of a true co-operative. Andy Shiga was able to be one of the first drivers, because... in fact, he was kind of the leader, the president as well as truck driver and all. Because he was able to get a teamster's license in, on the East Coast when he was, he was in a CO camp, conscientious objectors -- not a camp, but a medical facility -- and must have had to do some driving. But in those days, in Seattle, minority people could not get, get into the teamster's union, except that here came Andy with his card, and they had to let him drive. But any number of avant garde things. I think the, there's a People's Memorial that's very big and active now, but I think that also got started a little bit later than '50s, probably. I don't know. But anyway, it, the People's Memorial was to combat the high cost of funerals and caskets and that kind of thing. And it's still going much stronger now than, than it was then.

But anyway, when I was working at the YMCA, and here was this wedding going to take place in the Church of the People, the rest of the YMCA staff, and there were only three or four of us, for them it was (going to) be a intriguing experience. And I would hear comments about, "What do you think So-and-so would say?" Meaning people downtown, you know, that, if they went. But they were all right. They, it was kind of an exciting thing for them to do, and I can't remember, they gave me a Revere Ware frying pan for a, for a wedding, wedding gift. And, but it was a fun -- and it was a thoroughly mixed group. The Church of the People, that's right, we also had a, developed a young adult group called the Frontiers Club. And that was a fairly, it wasn't a large group, we were probably ten families, and six or seven, two or three of us were minority families. I think there were two or three other mixed families, mixed couples in that group, and we all had kids, and we would do things like camping. We were looking for property to establish some kind of retreat area. Not that any of us had a lot of money, I don't know how we, why we ever dreamt about things like that when we were on such limited incomes, but anyway, those are the kinds of things that we did.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.