<Begin Segment 19>

TI: So I'm going to switch gears now. You're now in Pasadena, and all of a sudden, there's this huge national hoopla about Little Rock High School being integrated. And so it must have been kind of a weird sensation for you to be reading in the national news or on TV about your old high school.

MS: It was. I think it was the first year I was teaching, maybe like 1958, was it, I'm not sure. But I was teaching, and all of this was going on and I just had the hardest time concentrating on teaching. [Laughs] Because I wanted to go home and see, watch what was going on or read about it in the paper. It was... it was something that was very hard to imagine. In my mind it was a peaceful, beautiful place that I had just loved, and now it was being stormed by all these state troopers and all these people carrying placards. It just didn't seem like the right thing to do. I mean, the hysteria. It was the right thing to do to integrate the school, of course.

TI: And do you think, from what you know, how well did the media tell the story in terms of the rest of the country? I mean, here you knew the school, the people, and as you watched what was going on, one, you weren't there, so you're not really sure. But did you think Little Rock and the people from Little Rock were getting a fair deal in terms of how they were being portrayed?

MS: Well, at that time, I think that it was... I always knew it was the right thing that needed to get done, and I felt the governor was behaving very badly because he was the one who called in the state troopers, and why couldn't they have done it in a different, more calming way. But yes, at that time, that's the way it was. It was hard to break from old stereotypes and rules.

TI: But in addition to the governor, I mean, when I think back to those images, it just, there was, in the faces, a lot of, it seemed like, anger or hatred. And these were, I mean, you were older, so they weren't the same students. But yet, they were essentially, the same people that you grew up with. So what did that tell you? What did you think about that?

MS: Well, you know, I never thought of it was the same people that I grew up with. Because I felt that they were very tolerant in accepting us. I felt that they were more the rednecks that come out of the woodworks when things like this happen. So I never equated the same people I knew with the people that I saw on the TV, the anger and all of that.

TI: Oh, that's interesting. So what you saw on the screen was maybe a certain segment of that population.

MS: Uh-huh.

TI: And yet, the people that you knew, you wouldn't equate them with that same segment.

MS: I didn't at the time. I'm sure that they felt some of that same emotion, but that's just not how they came across as I knew them.

TI: Did you ever communicate with anyone in Arkansas, whether it's the Yadas or former classmates about what was happening?

MS: No. I kept up correspondence with a friend for a few years, but kind of fizzled out after a while and it just became Christmas cards and then eventually nothing. And Bob, my parents kept in touch with the Yada family. And then, you know, we reunited when we had the reunion a few years ago. And I, he called a couple times, he came out here once. But I think it's just up to him to keep in touch, 'cause his wife is not interested. She's a Caucasian lady. And I think he's just busy with his own life, that he hasn't kept in touch. But I send Christmas cards to him every year.

TI: Okay, good.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.