Description:
Clarence Beatty talks about growing up in northeast Oklahoma City and going from Douglass High School to Princeton University.
SB: My name is Sheldon Beach (SB), I’m with the Metropolitan Library System. And as a part of our Northeast Storytelling Project with Black Space Oklahoma, I’m here today to interview Clarence Beatty (CB). So- first, can I get you to say your name and spell it for me?
CB: Clarence H. Beatty. C-L-A-R-E-N-C-E H. B-E-A-T-T-Y
SB: And Mr. Beatty: When and where were you born?
CB: I was born in Stroud, Oklahoma. May 18, 1951.
SB: And how did you get to Oklahoma City?
CB: Moved to Oklahoma City in the summer of 1956. My mother was a school teacher at the Black school in Stroud, and the school was closed as a result of the (I guess it was) Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that led to the closing of a lot of the black schools in Oklahoma. And so, we moved to Oklahoma City; mom, dad, my brother and I in the summer of 1956, so mom could find a teaching job here.
SB: What part of the city did you move to?
CB: Well, initially we lived on 4th St. One block west of Washington Park. We were there for about a year. Then we moved. Mom and Daddy bought a house: 2129 N. Bath. And we were there for several years. But initially we were right on 4th Street.
SB: And how long did you live on the eastside? Did you go to school there, too?
CB: Well, yes. When we first moved in ’56, I went to Kindergarten at Page--Inman Page Elementary School. But that was before we moved up on Bath (Ave). The following year, my mother got a teaching job at the black high school in Okmulgee, Oklahoma--Dunbar High School. And so, during the school year, we (meaning my mother, and brother, and I) lived in Okmulgee, where she was teaching. And my dad stayed here where he was working. And we’d go back and forth on the weekends. So, I went to elementary school--1st-4th grade--in Okmulgee at Crispus Attucks Elementary School. And Benjamin Banneker Elementary School in Okmulgee from the 1st-4th grade. Then when she got a permanent teaching job in Oklahoma City, we could all be together again. We came back to Oklahoma City. I went to elementary school (5th & 6th grade) at Culbertson Elementary on 13th St. And then F.D. Moon Junior High School in 7th grade. And then the following year, when they opened John F. Kennedy Junior High School, I went to 8th & 9th grade at John F. Kennedy Junior High. And then high school 10th through the 12th grade at Douglass High School.
SB: And what was that like? What do you remember from going to school at Douglass?
CB: Well, at that time, (it’s a little bit unusual because) what brought us to Oklahoma City in the first place was the closing of the black school in Stroud. And supposedly there was integration, but at the time I went to Douglass it was still essentially an all-black-school. I mean, there were about 1400 of us. I think my junior year we had 2 white students and in my senior year we had 1 white student. So, it was essentially (and you had a few white teachers) but it was essentially an environment just like everything else on the Northeast side. It was primarily African-American. As compared to the other schools in the city, I don’t really know, say, what John Marshall and Northwest Classen what they were, because we never went there. But a lot of African-American culture--I remember we had an interesting Black History Class, that all seniors took- that I’m pretty sure was unique to Douglass. And just the way things were done there were probably different because the teachers and all, everybody came from historically African-American environment. I played sports, football a lot. And I know our coaches used to be full of stories about growing up in the ‘40s and ‘50s in NE Oklahoma City & other places. So, we would hear stuff like that all the time. It was a good environment in the sense that the teachers really cared about us. One of the things that was unique about Douglass back then was--I don’t think anybody thought of us as a bastion of academic excellence-- and yet that was the time period that Douglass was turning out Ivy Leaguers. You know, I went to undergraduate school at Princeton. And another one of my classmates went with me. Carl Barkley and I both went to Princeton and graduated. And we were not the first. There were several others who had been to Princeton and University of Pennsylvania prior to us. So, it was an environment in which people were prepared to go on to higher education at the most elite levels. And after Douglass was integrated, that all stopped. I mean about 4 years after I left, the last person who went to the Ivy League had graduated from Douglass (I think it was Rosia McKinney) and nobody has been since then. And so, despite what the outward appearances were from the public standpoint, there was a lot of academic excellence that went on at Douglass in addition the athletics and all that sort of thing.
SB: Why do you think that is- that there were so many people going to Ivy League Schools from Douglass?
CB: Well, as I mentioned, we had teachers who really took an interest and cared about us. There was almost, to a certain extent, a familial environment there at the time. And the other thing that was different then was NE Oklahoma City was very well populated in the sense that African-Americans hadn’t dispersed throughout the city to north and west and south down to Moore and all those places. So you had families who appreciated education and parents who had a certain level of education themselves whose children were at Douglass. Whereas in subsequent years when people started moving all over the city, that kind of left the environment around Douglass empty, basically. The population base just dwindled. So that you just had fewer and fewer people there. So I think it was a combination of a lot of factors. But a lot of it was that just the fact that you had a population base that included parents who were educated and appreciated the value of that education. Much more so than later on.
SB: Going back to your childhood, there. What are some of your favorite memories from growing up in NE Oklahoma City?
CB: Growing up, I think, playing football was something that I always enjoyed. Because I did that in Junior high and High School. And there was a certain level of comradery and relationships that were formed with the guys that I played football with. Some that continue to this day, I mean, it’s over 50 years later and there’s guys that we get together. And the basis of our relationship is us playing football together. That was something that we enjoyed. And then, just the cultural aspect of things. We grew up where if you went to some kind of social event or party or something, then the music and all of that sort of thing was the kind of music that we were accustomed to R&B music. Whereas if we had been in NW Oklahoma City or something, the kids would listen to the Beatles or something else crazy like that. So, I think that the culture and for me in particular the sports and athletics. You know, personally it was football, but I wasn’t any good at basketball. I enjoyed watching it, but I wasn’t any good as a basketball player. I would say those things.
SB: What are some of the places you remember going to back then?
CB: Well, when we first moved to Oklahoma City in ’56 when we lived on 4th St, I remember going to the Jewel Theatre. That was the first theatre we ever went to. I think it cost a nickel to go to the movie. And the Aldridge theatre. And then in High School, the movies were (if you took somebody out to a date) a very popular destination because there wasn’t a whole lot else to do. So, I saw a lot of movies from the beginning as a little kid all the way through high school. And then, one of the other things we did: our church had scouting (boy Scout troops, explorer scouts, cub scouts). And those groups we used to go on campouts. And again, that was a thing where you got a bunch of guys together, enjoying each other's company, and doing all sorts of interesting things. So that was the kind of thing that we did.
SB: When you go back to the Eastside now, what is there that you noticed that’s changed the most about it?
CB: Well, the most obvious change, as I alluded to earlier, is the lack of population. How much of it is vacant or empty. Neighborhoods that were once full and vibrant and full of people are now in some cases almost like ghost towns. I mean, there’s vacant houses, vacant lots all over the place. More vacancies than there are people living. And there are people starting to move back in certain areas, but the biggest difference, the obvious difference is the lack of people. I understand when the new Douglass opened...well even now, the biggest single problem they had with that beautiful new building, they didn’t have enough students to occupy the building. There was nobody there. I went over there a few times to help a friend of mine who was a tutor and they just didn’t have any students, in terms of the numbers, that were needed for a building of that size. The biggest change is just the lack of people as compared to what it was in the ’60s and that sort of thing.
SB: For somebody that just knows what the Eastside’s like now, how would you describe it when you were growing up? Since you say it was a lot more populated and everything. What was that like?
CB: Well, it was…how would I describe it? It was an African-American community. It was a bastion of African-American, of black culture, from the standpoint of the little cafés, the little hamburger places that were the typical “mom & pop” places. The schools, the churches, were all… and the churches pretty much are still all African-American and the neighborhoods. So people, I think, relied upon--or interacted--and were more accustomed to relying on each other (people meaning black people) because at that time, we did not interact with--I mean, as I grew up, there was very little interaction with white people. Almost none except when you go to a store downtown or something. So, when you say, ‘What was it like?’
SB: Yeah, what was it like growing up over there?
CB: Well, it was…it’s hard to put into a few words. Like I said, it was just, other than to summarize it was a like bastion of African-American culture. From the barbershop, to the cafe, to the five & dime stores to the schools to the churches--everything that you were involved in or went to, or interacted with, was populated by and run by black people. So that’s what we were familiar with. And that’s what you became accustomed to seeing. When I went off to college to New Jersey to Princeton, New Jersey, I remember what a culture shock it was. Because that’s a completely different environment. I mean, I might as well have been on the moon, as compared to what I was used to growing up because I never got to visit the place or go up there and check it out before I went there to stay. So, you basically were encased and grew up in an environment that was black in pretty much every sense of the word. Meaning, the local grocery store, (again) the church, the school, the barber shop, all your neighbors, the people you interacted with, the girls you went out with; everything. So that’s what we were accustomed to and used to. The music that you heard play was the R & B music of Motown and other places at the time...so I don’t know how else to describe it.
SB: What was the biggest difference that you saw in college when you left Oklahoma City?
CB: Well, for me obviously the biggest difference was moving into an environment where there very few black people. Princeton is not a large university, which is one of the things I like about it. The student teacher ratio was about 6:1, and it was about five to six thousand students. But the huge majority of them were white students. So, just being in an environment where pretty much everybody was white, I mean, I think there were some unique things about my freshman year that took place that made that environment even more unique or different. (I don’t know how much this has to do with NE Oklahoma City, but) Princeton had been around a long time; I think it had been established in 1746. So it was well over 200 years old, but it had always been a male school. My freshman year was the first year they admitted women. So obviously you got this environment that’s been male for over 200 years, and all of a sudden that’s changed in the twinkling of an eye, we’re admitting women. So my freshman year was the first women that came to Princeton as students. And among that first group of women, that first year there were 12 black people. I think there were about 160 black guys, so obviously they were in a huge minority. So just, the interaction with and environment with people from other cultures. You know, Jewish people, Italian people, German people, English people, and all that sort of thing- I had never interacted with any of that in Oklahoma at all. And Princeton is about halfway...90 miles between Philadelphia and New York. So the two cities are not very far. Well, Princeton is right smack dab in the middle. So, within an hour you can be in New York City, or you can be in Philadelphia. And I used to go into cities, one or the other. I hardly ever went into Philadelphia, but I knew some people in New York. So, I got a certain amount of exposure to that. And obviously that is just a completely different world also from Oklahoma. So, there was a host of things about that whole experience that were different- and it's still different than Oklahoma. The biggest single thing that people know about Oklahoma- and it’s not a slight, but it’s just an absolute fact- Oklahoma’s known mostly for the University of Oklahoma football team. If you go all around the country, if people know anything about Oklahoma, what they know is about the football team at the University Of Oklahoma.
Whereas at Princeton when I got there. They have football, but...much to my shock...and have a beautiful stadium, but football is actually an extracurricular activity. Like it’s supposed to be. At that place, the academics is really the predominant thing. It is what drives the train. Not football team, basketball team, or anything else. It’s the academics that matter. And that’s just totally different than anything I’d seen at a university here. People here still to this day don’t recognize a difference between academia and football. But anyway, that was just some of the differences being the cultural diversity and racial diversity of the student body that I saw. And then, just seeing an environment where academically, that’s the king. You know I look at the academic challenges at Princeton. I wonder sometimes how I was able to go through the mathematics department and get a math degree because a lot of those students come from these high dollar prep schools like Phillips Exeter, Choate, Hotchkiss, and all those places. You know these kids come in with what would be equivalent to a college education down here. But Douglass gave me a good enough self-esteem and background that I didn’t go crazy. Because I didn’t have the same background. I just had to work a little harder, maybe. That is one of the things that I really, really credit Douglass and the teachers for, is it prepared me in the sense of having a certain level of self-awareness and self-secureness to where I didn’t freak out when I started seeing these academic challenges that were light-years more than anything I’d ever experience before. And I did see people who “lost it” up there, because in some cases they were not comfortable in what it meant to be black. I mean, they kind of grew up in integrated environments and this was a time when the Civil Rights movement was rampant. A lot of stuff was going on, (like) the Black Panthers and all that sort of stuff. And they were having these identity crises about who they were. I didn’t have any problem with who I was, I knew who I was! So that enabled me to hang in there and work through everything and graduate successfully in four years. Again, I think one of my earlier comments was when I left Oklahoma City and flew to New York to catch the bus on down to Princeton, you know I might as well have been going to the moon. When I got off the plane in New York City, I might as well have been in Paris or somewhere. It was that different than anything I had ever seen here. But again, I had a good enough grounding in who I was that it didn’t freak me out as it did some people.
SB: What did you do after college? Did you come back to Oklahoma?
CB: No, after Princeton with a math degree you don’t really have (I don’t want to be a teacher)] so I got a job at Eastman Kodak company in Rochester, New York as a computer programmer. I stayed there for about 2 and half years. And it got really boring and I realized that if I was going to working in a business, then I need to learn something (about business). Because Princeton didn’t teach anything about business. The mathematics I studied was very pure, very esoteric. So, I went to Kodak because they were looking for people with a certain background, and they would teach you their computer system. So that’s what they did. They taught me their computer systems and I worked as a programmer. But I realized that if I’m going to be in a business, I really didn’t have any education that would prepare me for the business world. Princeton didn’t teach anything like business at all. Especially in the math department. It’s totally “out there” stuff. I remember my senior year when I was getting toward the end of the year, I was getting toward the end of the year, and I was sitting down talking to my thesis advisor, Dr. Lee Neworth who...he’s probably the most brilliant man I’ve met in my life. And he was that way in the sense that there were a lot of smart people around Princeton but Dr. Neworth had the ability to convey it, teach it so you could understand it better than anybody on the planet, as far as I’m concerned. I met him freshman year and he helped me throughout the whole four years I was there. In my senior year, he agreed to be my thesis advisor. So, we would talk a lot. And I still see him to this day. When I go back to New Jersey, he is somebody that if I’m going to see anybody, I’m going to find him. Now, he’s way up in years now, getting close to 90. I was having a conversation with him. It was getting toward, like I said, the end of senior year. And I realized, “man you been in school four years, I gotta get a job and take care of myself. It’s time to go to work!” And when you’re in the middle of school all these last few years, I didn’t really think about that that much because school was your job. I was talking to Dr. Neworth, and I told him, “Man, I gotta go get a job.” And I started thinking, “what am I gonna go?” And then I said to him…I was trying to think [with] all this education, what did I learn how to do? What did it actually teach me in terms of a skill?
He looked at me and chuckled and said, “Well, look Princeton is not a trade school. You didn’t come here to learn carpentry or something. So, if that’s what you’re looking for, you shouldn’t have been here in the first place.” And I realized, he’s right: this ain’t a trade school.
So, I decided after a couple of years at Kodak, in order to get some more practical or applicable education, (I’ll put it this way) I needed to go get an MBA if I was going to work in the business world. So, I looked around at business schools and after 2 1/2 years in Rochester, New York, a top priority was getting away from all that snow; just incredible amounts of snow up there, it’s crazy. So, I applied to business school at Stanford, because it wasn’t snowing in California. So, I went to business school and spent a couple years at Stanford getting an MBA. While I was at Stanford, I got interested in banking. So, I interviewed with a lot of banks and ended up taking a banking job in Houston at Texas Commerce Bank in 1977. And I spent eight years in Houston and in 1985 I moved from Houston back to Oklahoma City. I went to work at Liberty Bank and spent the rest of my working life here in Oklahoma City. So, I spent about 38 or 39 years in banking until I retired. And I retired in November 2014, and stayed very busy with various non-profit organizations, other things that-- sometimes I feel like I’m still working. Because people...when you have a certain level of expertise in financial matters. I found that there are a lot of people that need that skill and I end up getting roped into helping. And I have difficulty saying, “enough is enough.” So, that’s sort of in a nutshell what I’ve done since Princeton (it’s been 38 years, well with business school, and then 2 1/2 years programming then business school and then 38 years banking)
SB: When you moved back to Oklahoma, what did you see that had changed the most from when you were a kid?
CB: Oh, that’s obvious. I remember the shock. And it was shock, because my mother and father were still living at that time. As a matter of fact, that’s why we came back. I had gotten married by the end and had a daughter. My oldest daughter was born in Houston, and my parents were getting older and health was having issues. And so we decided to move back here. But I remember when I came back: I flipped on the TV on a Friday evening or something like that…I was watching Friday night sports came on and you see the reports about the local high school football games and all that sort of thing. Midwest City, Putnam City, Moore, Norman, Northwest Classen, John Marshall… the first thing and the biggest thing that shocked me: I saw all those schools. And I saw black kids at all those schools, which I couldn’t fathom. Because when I lived here, when I was in high school, those schools were all “lilly-white”. And the environments were very hostile. I know when we played football against those schools, there was still a lot of racial negativity that went on. So, to be able to imagine that now there were black people at these schools? I mean there were places that...we envisioned Moore and Midwest City almost like “Klan Country”. And I just couldn’t imagine black folk at these schools now. But I soon found out that things had changed that much in all those years that I had been gone. So, when you say, “What had changed,” that was thing that thing that surprised me more than anything else. Because it was clear that black folk had started to move all over the city now and weren’t just cloistered in Northeast Oklahoma City as it was in the 50’s and 60’s.
SB: When you look at Oklahoma City and look at the Eastside of Oklahoma City now, is there anything that you wish was still there when you were a kid?
CB: I wish that there was...the population. Well, that’s hard to say. You wish that people, that everybody had not just abandoned Northeast Oklahoma City, which is pretty much what happened. But on the other hand, much of the civil rights struggle--the struggle for integration and fair housing and that sort of thing-- was to give people the right to live wherever they wanted to live. And so, in that sense, people want to live north, west, or south, or wherever, and they now have the right to do that. That’s not really something you can change every moment. I mean, that’s part of what the struggle was about. So, you can’t go back to those days. And as far as you say, “Some thing,” I can’t think of some facility or entity that I would like to bring back.
SB: Is there anything that you see on the Northeast side of Oklahoma City that is still there, that something you identify as part of Northeast side of Oklahoma City?
CB: About the only thing that I guess is still there, or the thing that stands out the most are the churches. There’s some churches that instill--well, a lot of them have moved locations, but the presence is still there. Various churches: that’s always been a focal point of the community. As far as the schools go, Northeast High School is still there. But its character has kind of changed. And it wasn’t really a black school per se, then anyway. It was more of a white school. But it’s still there operating as a school. Of course the Douglass that I went to is torn down and rebuilt. And there are some businesses that, strangely enough, one of the businesses I dealt with as a banker, Eckroat Seed (Company) on the corner of 10th and Martin Luther King. They’ve been there since 1921, same spot. And they’re still there. I know the people that run that place. But other than that, most everything has changed. The Y on 4th St. is gone, I mean all the movie theaters--the Origin and Jewel.
The Jewel building is still there, of course it’s been a long time since it was operational. Yeah, about the only thing, the most prevalent ting that was still there would be the churches. And I’m not pointing to a single one, but a number of them. And even most of them have changed locations, but the churches are still there.
SB: Was there anything else you’d like to add? Anything about growing up on the Eastside, or any thoughts that you have?
CB: Well, I guess the thing that I might reiterate is there was an image of Douglass High School, back then, that outsiders had, that just wasn’t accurate. People did not realize how well it prepared us students to excel academically. You know, I mention myself in call. You know I went to Princeton. But, Thurman White was a judge in San Francisco, he was a year before us and went to Princeton. Herland Doolan (?) He was about 4 years before me, he was one of the first Princeton grads. One of my classmates, Robert Alexander, we called him “Flash” because he was on the football team with us. (It was a sarcastic “Flash.” He was very slow.) I think he was number one in his Law School class at Harvard. Well, that’s pretty big stuff. And all this was generated by Douglass High School. And since we left, since it was integrated, nothing remotely like that has happened. As I mentioned, Rosia, who worked in the US Attorney’s office, was the last Princeton grad, the last Ivy Leaguer that came out of there about 4 years after we left. So, I sort of bemoan--I regret that. But on the other hand, those days are never coming back. Because the environment that created that is never going to change. People are not going to move back over to Northeast Oklahoma City. We’re just a different society now. Things are changing and being redeveloped. There’s a lot that I don’t know that took place before we came here in 1956. I remember interviewing some of the old timers, some had gone back all the way to the 1920’s, and the stuff they told me was really phenomenal. I guess that’s about the extent of what I can think of right now.
SB: Well, Mr. Beatty, thank you so much coming down and taking the time to talk to me. I really appreciate it.
CB: Okay. Hopefully, it was helpful.