Densho Digital Repository - Sharon Sobie Seymour Interview (Densho ID: ddr-sjacl-2-27-10)

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BT: No, but the other thing I was going to mention is that you had one -- and I'm not gonna go into detail about this, but you know what I'm talking about -- you had one of the harder internal issues. And when you were talking about the old guard, I remember when some people came to our meeting to, I thought, to berate the board, and I thought we handled that fine. But when I think about that, yes, you did have a hard year.

SS: And well, I don't know. And I'll just mentioned it lightly, and you'll know. Well, first of all, that incident happened at May -- March of 1999.

BT: Yeah. I know.

SS: This didn't get taken care of until 2000.

BT: Yeah.

SS: I was president-elect, and I was, I kept hoping, okay, let's take care of this, okay, you need to take care of this. Because I was gone -- I was actually, just had a baby -- but besides that, I think what took me just completely down was also there were... some of the finances. I don't know if you remember that. Just the accounting, let's just say the accounting. There were some things we had to straighten up, and the methods I had to do it was not lovely. It was a little... I had to take care of it quickly. And there were, you can't... there was an opportunity that we could have lost our 501(c)(3), and so I had to take care of some stuff.

And so, Kristen, when you go into a civil rights organization, I think most people, or at least me, I'll just again talk from my perspective. And when I was president, when I first started, I was excited, like, "Okay, we're gonna go fight the fight, we're going to fight the man, right? Give me the bullhorn, man. I am going to be out there." And we started with the MLK March, I was there. We did a couple other things and, you know, put up your dukes, I'm ready for you. So that's what I was thinking, and that's what I was ready for. And to... I think it was so internal. For the bulk of the year -- it wasn't like one internal thing. I think we had three or four, that were internal things -- and I had to say, "No, we're going to bring it up. No, you're wrong. It's illegal to do this." And especially sometimes the old guard -- and it's not just our community -- this is some of, I know my dad's friends, all that, there's that. "Oh, it's okay. It's okay. Don't worry about it, la la la la la." We're just, "Shhhh. If you don't look, and we just take it, it's working. It's working, so let's not." So, I had to be the one to... Believe me, I would have loved to have gone on. But it was just... I think I was meant to be, to do that, I think that was just going to be it. I don't think... I think that's just the way it was, I think, and it had to be me. I think it had to be, I don't know. So that was -- hopefully that answered your question. I don't...

KE: No, it did.

BT: Kristin and Sharon, I'm trying to be mindful of everybody's time here.

SS: Sorry.

BT: A couple more questions. But I think at this point, I was looking at the other questions, and I think we could send these to you. A lot of it is just to get your perspective on other issues and people, that we might consider that, we make sure that ensure that we get everything important on our screen. So, I think I'll talk to Kristen later, and we'll email each other, and we'll send you some more questions.