{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/9882j68m9n/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["William (Bill) Sales Oral History"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/010/original/Aviary_QPLlogo_192x192.png?1578574261","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eWilliam Sales is a retired scholar and activist holding a doctoral degree in Political Science from Columbia University. He is the past Chairperson of the Department of African American Studies and Director of the Center for African American Studies at Seton Hall University. He is the Former Director of the SEEK Program at Queens College, which was a program designed to reach qualified high school students who might not attend college otherwise. \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eIn this interview, Sales describes his experiences at SEEK in the late 1960s and how the program managed to educate students and maintain credibility while aligning itself with ideals and stratagem of the greater movement for civil rights.  \u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source"]},"value":{"en":["Interview conducted as part of the Queens College SEEK History Project."]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English"]}},{"label":{"en":["Coverage"]},"value":{"en":["Late 1940s – December, 2019 (temporal)","Queens College, Flushing, Queens, NY; Columbia University, Manhattan, NY; Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ; Philadelphia, PA (spatial)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2019-12-10 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["William Sales (Interviewee)","Obden Mondesir (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCC BY-NC-SA Contact digitalarchives@queenslibrary.org for research and reproduction requests.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Audio"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["http://digitalarchives.queenslibrary.org/search/browse/44680"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eWilliam Sales is a retired scholar and activist holding a doctoral degree in Political Science from Columbia University. He is the past Chairperson of the Department of African American Studies and Director of the Center for African American Studies at Seton Hall University.\u0026nbsp;He is the Former Director of the SEEK Program at Queens College, which was a program designed to reach qualified high school students who might not attend college otherwise.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eIn this interview, Sales describes his experiences at SEEK in the late 1960s and how the program managed to educate students and maintain credibility while aligning itself with ideals and stratagem of the greater movement for civil rights. \u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCC BY-NC-SA\u0026nbsp;Contact digitalarchives@queenslibrary.org for research and reproduction requests.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Queens Public Library"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Queens Public Library"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/010/original/Aviary_QPLlogo_192x192.png?1578574261","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/100/911/small/IMG_1807.JPG?1604670666","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Sales-William-12102019radioedit.mp3"]},"duration":3895.30122,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/100/911/small/IMG_1807.JPG?1604670666","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-queenslibrary.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/100/911/original/Sales-William-12102019radioedit.mp3?1604670558","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mpeg","duration":3895.30122,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Full Interview Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Obden Mondesir: Today's date is December 10th, 2019. My name is Obden Mondesir. I'm collecting this interview for the Queens College Special Collections and Archives on the SEEK Oral History Project. I am with Dr. Bill Sales. The first question I'm going to ask is when were you born?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=0.0,24.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"William Sales: I was born October 28th, 1942 in Philadelphia, PA.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=24.0,32.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Obden Mondesir: And could you tell me what it was like growing up in Philadelphia?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=32.0,38.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Willian Sales: I grew up in the African-American community in Philadelphia. It's a very, very old community. One of the oldest free black communities in the country. And I lived on a street in the midst of the black community, but it was an unusual street. It's called Christian Street. On that street, we had two of the most prominent black doctors in Philadelphia. One who became the first black coroner, was one of the first black pathologists in the country. That was Dr. Wooding, C.G. Wooding. His brother was a famous jazz musician named Sam Wooding. He played through the interwar years in Europe and had a band. And down the street was an architect who was the designer of the Philadelphia Art Museum. These are all African-Americans. At the corner was the first African Baptist church, the earliest Baptist church, black Baptist church in Philadelphia. And it goes on and on like that. It was a few blocks West of the area that was the source of Dr. Dubois's \"The Philadelphia Negro\", which was the first study in urban sociology in the United States. Just to give you some flavor. Marin Anderson lived around the corner when she was growing up. And so I'm in the midst of that. And in my youth, we then moved to Westfield, which was - black people might say it was a middle-class community, but socio economically a solidly working-class community - folks in the post office, people who had a unionized, industrial jobs, some other kind of government bureaucracy situation and owned one of those little row houses that had [unclear] in Philadelphia. So I grew up there, went to public school. I went to Central High School, which is the second oldest public high school in the United States. And a lot of famous people, black and white Nobel prize winners included, graduated from there. Other people claim to Bill Cosby, but he actually left in 10th grade. He graduated from Germantown. It was like a brag. I went to Central and he did go to Central, he didn't graduate from Central. We don't like to say. Then I stayed in Philadelphia for my undergraduate college education. I went to the University of Pennsylvania. And I was one of, at that time, four people in my class and somewhat less than 17 undergraduates on a campus that had thousands. So it was right before- it's 1960s - and it's about four to five years before that infusion of black students that resulted from the civil rights movement. I'm setting up in there, and I became involved in the civil rights [unclear] University of Pennsylvania. I ultimately became the Chairperson of the campus chapter of the NAACP. And I was directly involved in sit-ins and marches on the campus to integrate the building trades workers who were working on the major construction projects on the campus. Those are undergoing a tremendous building. And as a result of that, we were threatened with arrest, et cetera, et cetera. But what came out of that from my perspective, was the citizen negotiations where other people got your credit. There is a tailored law, a person who was on the faculty of the Wharton School who negotiated throughout the country, but particularly in Philadelphia, New York in agreement for the integration of new buildings [unclear]. And they use, he mentioned his name in connection with that. The truth of the matter is those were demands that the PhiladelphiaCORE, Philadelphia NAACP and the campus chapter NAACP made against the University of Pennsylvania among other institutions that they resisted for the longest time that [unclear] to some of them. They claim them as their own initiative, for example. But that was kind of my baptism of fire. I did not travel South to participate in the movement. It was, there was enough there. I came to Columbia in the Fall of 64 to the school of -what's called today the School of International Affairs. As a graduate student, I got involved in the students Afro-American Society. It was the second oldest black student organization after Harvard's organization. And we gradually moved through a series of demonstrations over the next three years of [unclear] in the spring of 1968. We were at the center of the largest campus takeovers in the history of the United States, even bigger than the one in Berkeley, that was a [unclear] situation. At that time, I had finished my master's degree and was a doctoral student, but hadn't taken my qualifying exams. And in the fall of 68, I came with a number of other students who were involved in that struggle to teach in the SEEK program. A number of us were rejected by the administration here at Queens College. They threw various barriers to stop a number of people from coming. But I was able to get through Carolyn Anderson, Brown, Dr. Sam Anderson - these people going on of course to get their doctorates to be a prominent in the struggle, but they were just starting like I was at that point and we came to Queens college and we got involved in what already was underway here. So that's kinda my personal trajectory into the struggle. So by the fall of 68, I'm here.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=38.0,418.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Obden Mondesir: And when you come here in 68, what position?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=418.0,421.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"William Sales: Uh, okay. I came here to teach contemporary civilization. I was on the SEEK payroll, but housed as a lecturer in political science, which at that time didn't mean anything because we didn't go to poli-sci meetings. It wasn't that we weren't invited. We spent all our time at SEEK developing the contemporary civilization course in such a way that we could combine remedial and developmental work that is not in credit work into something kind of unique. So the class was one hour longer than a traditional three hour course, over four hours a week, not three. So that was to bring people up to speed - that was the remedial part of it. Then of course, the three credits is there. So the students could get three credits. They can start to make progress immediately. It would take a little bit longer at first because the SEEK courses generally had at least one more hour a week. So we were designing that and we had to legitimize it. We had to defend the matriculating status that was given the students sometime in the fall of 68. And we had a struggle against all those things that were developing to either stop this developing program in its tracks, or to make it totally subservient to the traditional powers that be. We just couldn't think outside the box at that point, especially Dean Hartle [Dean of the Faculty], you may have heard his name, Robert Hartle. Of course he wasn't the president, but as the Chief Academic - wait, was he dean? Yeah, he was dean with the academic and later on probably Vice President, whatever the appropriate title up above that. But he was the top official government. The day-to-day request that we were making a big administration. He didn't like the notion of an independent SEEK program at all, what we would call an autonomous program. So those impasses ultimately led the students to demonstrate. And what was unique about that student-faculty-counselor coalition was it involved black and Latino students at that time. They were primarily Puerto Rican, but the notion was that it was a third world coalition, which would have been in language used at that point and included all people of color. Because in fact, when SEEK serviced those who were educationally, economically disadvantaged in a place like New York city at that time, this is talking about black and Puerto Rican people. So the coalition was a coalition that brought students together, and it was also a coalition that brought the allies of students together, faculty who were teaching SEEK were expected to be advocates for students. The counselors who counseled these students, it wasn't supposed to be a paternalistic relationship. They also were supposed to be advocates and gangs. And the administrator obviously would have to be responsive to the demands of students way. And so the attempt was to run the program democratically with the democratic base being defined as that coalition. And so it was the coalition to call the demonstrations, to get the administration to respond, to debate and for some control over coursework, some control over the hiring and firing of faculty, administrators, and counselors to protect the full-time status of our students. And to give us some measure of autonomy of the budget. So the budget couldn't be raided by the department [unclear] at Queens college. So if the legislature said \"SEEK program at Queens college, here's $5 million\". Well, we knew what the amount was, how much it was and how every penny was going to be spent. At least we demanded that. And we thought for many, many years that we actually knew what it was. And some other programs, they didn't know that, you know what I mean? They had to go hand-in-hand for whenever they spent any money, they had to request these things. Not here, we fought for that. The demonstrations were intense. They were carried out by students, faculty, counselors, and administrators. I remember when the first shut-down, it occurred as a result of some stink bombs that some of us on the faculty taken into a meeting of the Queens College faculty, because we knew students couldn't get in, the police were outside. And the president who was McMurray at the time was, what's his name? I think it was-","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=421.0,739.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Obden Mondesir: It was McMurray.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=739.0,739.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"William Sales: Yeah. He didn't even want to say anything at that meeting about what was going on with SEEK. So we simply stood up and posed a direct question to him. And when [unclear], we'd gone to some novelty store and got some on rotten egg smelling whatever. And so we broke this stuff and a little fumes came up, it stank the place out. And then I ran out, they shut the campus down as a result of that. And in fact, that meeting had occurred because students, the student component [unclear], we had what we call a \"flying squad\". I guess the statute of limitations is as fast because this stuff was well, the other side of the [unclear]. The flying squad, was a squad of disruption, and it's called \"flying\" because they were running from one building to another doing disruptive things. So one day they started out in the cafe, throwing all the trays around and knocking everything, ran from there to the library, took the card catalog and threw it all on the floor. And so we had this kind of thing. One other time, one flying squad went into the tower there and lit some Molotov cocktails. Now they didn't do it with the attention to burn anybody up. They've checked to make sure nobody was there. And it was good cause what we didn't know at the time was that the danger there was not on the actual Molotov cocktail, but that's an enclosed space. And so you throw a Molotov cocktail and the air gets superheated. Somebody could have come in recently and really done great damage, would've seared their lungs. So we kind of had a good \"phew\". We dodged that bullet even though the fire was set in there. So we had disruption and even in the minds of some faculty, the threat of disruption was scary, the actual approval of the arrangement with SEEK academically we're thrown back in the faculty. And that spring, we came to faculty meetings to discuss this, \"we're\" going to come, meaning not only the faculty, the SEEK faculty, but the students. So the students just came in the room and looked around the room, around the walls. They didn't try to sit down. Oh my God, some faculty, people just completely went bananas. And they ran, they were running through people trying to get out as if they would be seized [unclear]. That wasn't the case. It was just, the students wondered the crowd [unclear] So it was all a lot of upheaval, but in the short run it was successful for a period of time. We had a large measure of autonomy, specifically. We vetted and offered employment to our faculty and counselors and administrators. What we wanted, nobody crossed us. There are a few controversial - things crack down. Now when Joe Murphy became President, he was very supportive of our right to be autonomous. His vice president at the time, I'm trying to remember his name. I can see him so clearly it will come to me. But in any case, he was much more protective of his prerogative. But we could always get Murphy to outflank it. Murphy's basis was \"I am going to leave them alone\". That was his whole thing. And so no SEEK directors were SEEK directors without the approval of the Black and Puerto Rican faculty counselors in the coalition, no counseling, no teacher, nobody. And if you lost the support of that group, out you went. First director was Mulholland. I think his first name was Joe. I'm not sure, it's been so long.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=739.0,999.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Obden Mondesir: It's Joe.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=999.0,999.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"William Sales: Yeah, [unclear]. He was a former parole officer and his story is interesting because he became Director of SEEK and he was here at the beginning. So he went out and recruited many African-American and Latino young men, who had run afoul in the criminal justice system. Even some people who had been gang members in their youth and had actually been sent to jail for murder, not tons of them, but some significant people. And these guys needed that chance. It turns out that many of them were very talented, became authors, maybe television personalities and what have you. He brought them into the program. And that was good, but he was not the person who could carry forth the SEEK agenda as laid out by the black and Puerto Rican students, faculty, council coalition. It wasn't that he was white so much. Although in those days we were in fact looking for black and Puerto Rican people clearly, because there were none. But that was his big, big difficulty was that he was suspicious and inflexible. He didn't know how to deal with that environment. And he came out of an environment of control. So the students, when they organized this demanded that he leave, he said that he would, but he couldn't leave this year or is he going to leave this year. And that produced a major debate inside the black faculty council coalition. Why? Because there were a number of guys in there. You know, we really felt close to him and felt that they would be training him by [unclear]. If they would, allow him just to be thrown out. Felipe Luciano spoke -","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=999.0,1128.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Obden Mondesir: Yeah, he worked for WBAI.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=1128.0,1128.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"William Sales: Yeah, he spoke up very, very [unclear] and supported him. And brother named Kemp [phonetic] who was a writer. And some other people, they supported him and people respected their opinion, you know what I mean? But it was decided that he had to go and he said he wasn't going. So a group of students and faculty, mostly students, but there were some faculty there too. They went to the SEEK office, took him off of his chair, took the chair at the desk and the file cabinets and put them in the parking lot and said, \"Look, you're out of here\". I guess what happened at that point, he had to go talk to the administration, I guess he didn't want to come back to that. And they probably made it easy for him to leave. And then we had to recruit people. And we got Dr. Delany.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=1128.0,1144.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Obden Mondesir: Around what year would you say you got Dr. Delany?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=1144.0,1197.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"William Sales: Okay. Delany came at the end of 68. They had this struggle. Out goes Mulholland sometime in the spring of 68 [editor correction - Mulholland was out in the spring of 1969]. Boom. Delany, who's already on the faculty, teaches education, had some background in civil rights, in the struggles out in Long Island to integrate the Malverne School District. And he's a clinical psychologist with his own private practice. And he really knows how to put people at ease, a smooth guy about 40-41 years old. I was so young at the time I looked at the [unclear], the dude was old. What if I didn't have somebody wasn't old at all, South equivalent. But when you're really young, I was still in my twenties when I became SEEK director I was 26. So we were real young. So anybody that was in the upper thirties, man, ancient history. That must've, as it related, I didn't realize that Malcolm X and Martin Luther King weren't that old, they never lived to be that old, you know. But in any case, he took over reluctantly this position and one of the reasons he was reluctant was because he had some medical issues. He knew also that it was putting him in a position where he would have to struggle against people who've been his friends for years. Remember, he managed to survive here as a black faculty member. Unfortunately, he died. I think it was September of 69. Unexpected. And probably as a result of some kind of mixture of something, some kind of, I don't know, recreational drug and maybe some alcohol, uh, he was in probably - he died in his office, but the thinking is, and at the time we would never talk about it, but the thinking was that he is probably socializing and he's probably drinking liquor. I didn't say he was inebriated or something, but he might've experimented or tried something or smoked something that had a bad and adverse alcohol reaction and he didn't have a strong heart. So he already shouldn't have been doing that. And it caused cardiac arrest. He died, we were all really shocked. And so we moved forward as best we could. And I was one of the sit-in directors. Juan Celin [phonetic], Latino brothers, poet, and activist, a socialist from Puerto Rico. He was the other assistant director and the program went and recruited somebody. And we ended up recruiting a young PhD in chemistry. And hopefully some of us were very - we recruited Ralph. And Ralph, the thing is I realized I couldn't realize it then, I was too young, that we had been struggling for - by that time, I had already been struggling one way or another for about eight years in the movement. I was used to struggle. I'd already been arrested. I'd been threatened with ABC and D. They already served myself and Sam Anderson with restraining orders. In 69, when all that stuff jumped on Saturday morning, we got orders to appear in court. They had us on camera this, that. Ultimately, our lawyers were able to diffuse that And as far as the ongoing negotiations, but all the contempt, all this stuff. So we went to answer for that. But in any case you bring somebody from the other part of the country, He was very competent in one area. And then he said, \"well, you're the SEEK director. You have to stand up for SEEK, not the administration\". We've never been in that situation before. We ain't going to put his life on the line, put his job on line, put his family on the line. Right. But we insisted. And then over time we finally, wasn't going to do it. We told him he had to leave. And when he say wanted to leave, took his chair and put it out in the parking lot. Now Ralph was funny because Ralph was beside me. So I said, How'd you get a PhD in chemistry?\" Because he was always perplexed by the things we would ask him. Now, most people would say, \"I'm getting up to leave here right away\". Put Ralph's stuff out there. No, I'm not, I'm not going, I'll tell you when I'm gonna leave. You know, give me some time to leave. So we said, \"okay, Ralph, we need to put your stuff out there. We'll give you some time\". And he thought, by the time they said, I thought we had developed a good record reputation. I remember being hard to him and said, \"no, Ralph man, it wasn't.\" But the truth of the matter is they've gotten better. Well, we understood who Ralph was and that Ralph had never gone through this. And it was really on us that we went and hired a guy that could never be as militant and take the kind of chances that we want the SEEK director to take, and so he left. And I became SEEK director and that was in 71, probably a fall semester, 71 or something along that time period. And I stayed there until March 17th, 75. And the program experienced a whole lot of growth during that period. So that I think by the time I left, we had 1800 students in SEEK and we were graduating. You know what I mean? Every graduating class was significant and we had our own special graduation. That was an adjunct to the regular graduation. So kids could go to the regular graduation and then we had a big shindig on campus, luncheon and everything. When our own speaker once had Jesse Jackson, we had John Henry Clark. We had various people come speak directly to SEEK students. We acknowledged and honored and we would do things like that. It wasn't enough that you could go through the [unclear]. We had something for you, that kind of thing. And our students did well. I mean, one of them, who was one of my first students, was the SEEK Director later. Paula [last name unclear]. She was a student of mine. I'm 27 years old, I walked her to class, she's 18 with a number of other people. And she takes my course in contemporary civilization and stayed in contact. She marries a guy who was an activist. And then later on, she teaches English because when it came down to hire people, suddenly, there were few people that we actually educated and people were prepared to do well if given the opportunity to that generation. So all we did was made sure that they had a chance, which meant that we would stick with them longer than the traditional situation. We would give them more time to learn things. We would spend all kind of time with them all day. All during my time as the SEEK director I continued to teach at least one class, sometimes two. I remember once having a student I found out was very motivated. She's was older, she was in her thirties. She was functionally illiterate and had ways of disguising it. This is a common story. She can't read, what am I going to do? So I made an agreement with her. A couple of times a week, you go to meet with me, we're going to sit down and read this stuff. I'm gonna teach you how to read. I didn't put it quite like that. And that's what she did. And she did okay. She became a graduate nurse later on, but somebody needed to, if she needed to know how to read, somebody had to be there to teach her how to read and not say everything else they like has to stop. I'm going to teach you how to read. You're gonna learn on the fly. You're gonna learn how to read and how to read this scholar stuff. And we're going to spend all kinds of extra time. And that's what people were doing. The faculty, the counselors, they were working above and beyond the call of duty. And so that was the program. And it had all kinds of conflicts, internal conflicts, conflicts in terms of how to deal with issues with students. For instance, most students got $50 a week, stipend, right? It wasn't clear legally whether we could do anything to give it to them. We said, you don't go to class, you don't get paid, and people would come to get their checks. And that's it. There's a hold on it. You got to come to this meeting, you don't come to the meeting and don't get your money. If you're addicted to drugs, you can't just come here and be a druggie, right? You have to take a leave and get a detox program. And you come back to the place. It'd be waiting for you. But no, that was illegal. We didn't have the right to do that. You know what I mean? If you sitting up in front of me [unclear] I'm going to let you sit there for a whole year and nod your way right on out academically, right on out the door. Because the rules, at that time, there were open enrollment rules and SEEK had to abide by them. It was that you could get three semesters before there'll be a determination whether you had to stay or go. Well, you can imagine some people will get their $50 a week or hang around here and will do anything for three semesters. And then, so what we told them, that's what that rule says. But when you go through the window for your check, you haven't been in a classroom, you've been bullshitting, you do not get your money, forget about it. If you're a druggie, you don't get your money. Oh man, big problems. But we held to it and a number of people got their thing together. They also were able to direct people to services. And counselors said, look, I'm giving a detox program. If you can get them regardless and you put the hammer on them and nobody in the institution wants to openly challenge us. Because that would mean, then you'd have to reveal that here is state money being spent on people who are playing the system. They want to do that. And we were stopping that. So that was one of the things. Another thing was that we were fairly rough on faculty. I remember one person telling me, you're kinda young to be a SEEK director. It'd be good if you were older. But now I realize that there were a number of techniques that I had not even been exposed to, to manage people. Being in the movement, I was around people who already have decided that they're going to do whatever is necessary to advance the cause of black people. I avoided people who were shaky or your shaky by. But in the world you have people who are strong-willed, you have people shaky. The point is, how do you get everybody to be productive? I didn't know all the tricks of the trade, but I knew some of them like we try to do some things with the faculty. You don't want to come to these meetings? Good. When your monthly paycheck comes up, there'll be a hold on it. Or you don't want to get this material in on time. Or when you know, there'll be a whole [unclear] But you want your paycheck. So you know, some of that kind of stuff we did. Because that was the other leverage, one of the few leverages we had. On the other hand, there were people who desired a hell of a lot of autonomy. And in some sense, that's very positive because then the community juices [unclear], but it's gotta be managed because you have to coordinate a number of different things. You're in an overall hostile environment. As an administrator, you have to be worried about the things that nobody else gives a damn about. You know, just do that. [unclear] Well, it's not that easy. So folks will go off and make decisions and come back and say, well, you didn't tell me about this. I can't support it if I don't even know about it. And you don't get my input and know how, if you want to do this, you better frame it this way. So it gets past some of the threatening things. This happened also with counselors. I don't want that big knock down drag out with Jim Fisher among other people. Decent guy, it's not that these people are evil or anything, but these misunderstandings can become very vague. Couple of counselors didn't tell me, but they were going to Brazil over the holiday. Now couple of them were what we call the System Directors for counseling. The problem is they should have been thinking, not as faculty because they weren't, they don't have that whole holiday, that Christmas part. Then there comes a time when it's administrator, you have to be back. Here comes an auditor from the state, the city, to check out our books, look at the counseling staff saying, well, there in Brazil. So I told the guys, I found out what plane they we're coming back on. As soon as they hit the ground, I got word of it. You guys didn't tell me what you were doing. You screwed me up here with this auditor. I am going to be removing you from your assistant director position [unclear] but the administrator [unclear]. So we all came together and hashing out screaming and hollering. They got their positions back and everything. But what I was trying to make people understand, it's one thing to say, we're going to do this, to hell with that. But when they come back at you, how do you defend your autonomy? Well, I don't have nuclear weapons. I don't have an army. I do have some advantages, but we have to coordinate stuff. And so we were all [unclear] about that kind of stuff. But creatively, in retrospect, we did a good job of handling it, but at the time, it would as an administrator get on your last nerve. I'm sure that the stuff I did get on their last nerve at times. There were other conflicts.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=1197.0,2174.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Obden Mondesir: What was the issue that came up with Jim Fisher?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=2174.0,2180.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"William Sales: Oh, no, he was just -the assistant director was on the plane coming back, nothing other than that. To the school [laughing]. Oh my God. Some of the stuff we used to argue about when I think about it. See, here's another thing too, and this is my own take. I haven't had a chance to really discuss it with some of the people who were counselors and stuff at the time. Two different kinds of black folks in SEEK. You had a counseling staff. A number of people from HBCU's [Historically black colleges and universities] African Americans. And they developed a whole lot of solidarity. It was based not only on the generalized African-American experience, but because they were HBCU people, aspiring, middle-class black people that have made it. They got positioned at Queens college. On the faculty end, we had some African Americans, but it's like United Nations of black people. We had Panamanians, Nigerians, Ethiopians, Puerto Ricans, and they're all like intellectuals, Columbia, The New School. They're not from Johnson C. Smith or Morgan State, that kind of thing. So the counseling staff used to call the black folks who were teaching faculty the \"mother country radicals\" [unclear]. And they used to be dismissive and [unclear] you can't do nothing. That kind of stuff. And so they, I think they felt that they should be the dominant entity directing the fortunes of SEEK. Now on the other side, took a very principled - it should be the whole coalition, everybody. The counselors did not have the ear of students the way the faculty did. A few of them did, but many of them didn't. Also entailed the questions of productivity. When he's [unclear] would come, they would always put pressure on them. Well, how many times do you meet with students? So they wanted to really cut into the counseling staff. On the other hand, many of those people were trying to do different things with students. I'm not just going to sit down here 20 hours a week and talk to them, that's not the way it works. Sometimes I'll be inundated with students. Sometimes there will not be any. So I have to be proactive and get with other people. We have to develop programs that go beyond, oh, you're a counselor, and that kind of thing. And the SEEK regulations didn't allow them to do that. We were supportive of them doing that, but they're always feeling that kind of a pressure. One good thing over the long run, long after I left, but people started while I was here, many of the people who were counseling had their master's degrees or picked up master's degrees in counseling and went on and got doctorates and other appropriate degrees and got themselves situated in life the way they wanted to. On the faculty, many of those guys who were from Africa, they went home, became the prime minister of this country, the head of the ministry of agriculture, the Foreign Minister of Nigeria. Hage Geingob, who was a prime minister Namibia, he was a tutor in the SEEK program. Ibrahim Gambari, he taught Yoruba in the program. He was the representative of Nigeria to United Nations, later on the Foreign Minister of Nigeria. [Unclear] at one point became Minister of Agriculture in Ethiopia. There was another Namibian here. One of our counselors was a prominent South African businessman, can't remember his name. I can see his face clear this guy a couple of years ago. Nikki Giovanni, poet, she was a teaching assistant at SEEK at one point. Sam Anderson, who's a very prominent political, cultural figure in the black movement from then to now, he taught math in the program for awhile.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=2180.0,2471.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Obden Mondesir: You also had Jessica Harris?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=2471.0,2472.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"William Sales: Jessica Harris was in languages originally but ultimately made her rep in cookbooking an office here. She was here for the duration. Jessica has been here. You have some other - Omayemi Agbeyegbe, he was based in political science but was a SEEK person all along. We recruited him. He was in a doctoral program at The New School at the time. You know he got his law degree. I don't know if ever finished his doctorate. He stayed here. Who knows, he may still be here. Alem Habtu was here for many years, he became the chair of the sociology department. He passed about two and a half, maybe three years ago now. I can just name tons of people. Many of them were African, the African-American people here at the time. Carolyn Anderson later remarried, name was Brown. She been many years in the history department at Rutgers, got a PhD at Columbia. George Priestley [phonetic] was the head of Latin American Studies here. He was a PhD graduate of Columbia who was on our faculty for many years. Anne taught Math. [unclear] She ultimately became one of our assistant directors. I just can't remember her last name [Carter]. She was here from the beginning. Tons of people. Barbara [most likely Webb], who's written a couple books, great person. She married an Ethiopian brother. And he's trying to remember her, her professional name, but she was a Bryn Mawr graduate and I think she did her work at NYU. And she had a faculty position here and then more people came later who were much more ensconced in the faculty. One person wasn't with SEEK who was very supportive of SEEK was the person who founded the Africana Studies program here. That was Wentworth Ofuatey Kodjoe. Kodjoe was a Guinean who was a full professor in the political science department here. And then later on, he went to the graduate center and developed their doctoral program in African politics. He passed, it must have been 10 years ago now. Well, that's just some of my general reaction.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=2472.0,2639.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Obden Mondesir: Yeah. And then I guess, going back to when you were director from 71 to 75, when you were first at Queens College, just describe the atmosphere of what it was like being there at that time between the politics and like the people.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=2639.0,2662.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"William Sales: Well, when we first came to Queens College, it seemed to be a solidly white middle-class phenomenon. You know, kids drove here from wherever they came, it's all these cars all over the place. Now sure was many people rode, but the impression I got was not of a working class school or that kind of thing. There weren't nearly as many children of immigrants as was to happen. There were almost no black folk and just about no black people on faculty at all. So it was a solidly white environment. And the white students were not necessarily accepting of the black presence on campus, which was reflective of the segregation in the larger society. I did not feel personal animosity much at all. The SEEK program was like a community. I came here, I was in SEEK. And so I might've dealt with some cop situation here or there, but people were not looking at me like you don't belong here. That kind of stuff. I wasn't getting lip from students. You know what I mean? And there were some people in the faculty administration who were very supportive, but it was a white supremacist institution and important to understand, not only white supremacy but the institution. You can be an institutional matrix and not personally be a bigot. But the institution functions in ways that it reproduces inequalities and therefore supports those attitudes that justify those inequalities. And that's the way SEEK - I mean, Queens College was at that time. It was that kind of a place. Gradually it became somewhat different because SEEK came, the black folks came. SEEK was also a shelter for the open enrollment because what happened - when open enrollment came, which wasn't related, but distinct struggle, boom. They said, okay, we're going to have an open enrollment program at the city university. Nobody knew what that was. And so they came to SEEK and said, can you take certain of these open enrollment students have the same profile and same needs as these SEEK students? Can you service some of them. We said, yeah, black and Puerto Rican, Latino - we're not going to tell somebody, no you [unclear] students with SEEK. That would have completely undermined what we're about. The SEEK students that supported them, they supported seat. But it did tack some resources, but the open enrollment program came and that was good. Over time, they got resources directed specifically to them. But in the early going, they had to seek out a whole lot of help from SEEK. But I didn't think it was as hostile an environment as some other places, for instance, Brooklyn College, they had a big problem with the Jewish Defense League. They tried to come to Queens College. We kicked their ass, literally. The particular event, Dr. [name unclear], a Palestinian activist came to speak and some Jewish Defense League people got in the meeting and tried to throw something with an acid or something. Well, they were finally taken it out of the meeting and fell into the parking lot where they tried to take it to the next level. Now you have to understand many SEEK students come from the streets, they know how to handle their hands. Some of them have been in jail even. One of these Jewish Defense League Kids tried to step the one little brother, he knocked the kid out cold. I've never seen anything like it. [unclear] he went to get him. He felt better. He put it back and then he just hit this kid. It's like the kid got hit by a bolt of lightning. He stood up like this and fall straight back on his head. I never seen anybody get knocked out like that. It's like he snapped to attention and fell straight back. I could get [unclear]. And there were fisticuffs going on at various points at that parking lot back there. And they never came back. Whereas some guys in Brooklyn College some blacks [unclear] by the JDL people. So given the fact that we had a relatively progressive student body, cause they will be known as anti-imperialist, kind of student body, they would be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. And the JDL was very right in their defense of what they thought was the promise of Israel. And [unclear]. And they saw the program in some ways infringing on their territory. They use force at a number of campuses, but not here brother. Clock 'em and tighten them up. As you can see in my discussion, this is a discussion that you couldn't have this openly then because it's about people doing things in terms of self-defense that were not legal. And the law could be used as a way of diffusing movement. You have a protest, right? Things get broken. Maybe you wanted didn't want it broken and it was a byproduct of the protest. But you can comment and say, well, that's just disruptive houliganism and then you don't have to deal with the underlying issues. So a whole lot of things happen, but we just quiet about who caused it and why it happened. I was there when the guy got knocked out cold, I didn't say anything. In fact, there was a guy who had a gun. We said, man, put that gun away, get in the car here. And my director of tutoring, Leon Denmark had his car. I said, \"Leon, drive this guy off campus, get him off the campus\". But yeah, we got him off the campus. Leon went on to become the Director of JPAC in New Jersey - the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=2662.0,3088.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Obden Mondesir: What does JPAC stand for?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=3088.0,3090.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"William Sales: New Jersey Performing Arts Center. He had previously worked with the Negro [unclear] company. Went back up to Binghamton and got his masters in administration of the arts. But he had worked for several years closely with me here and had arranged to have the tutorial program. George Edward Tate was one of our tutors and became a very famous poet and cultural icon based in Harlem died a few years ago. He was a tutor here. And one of the reasons people ended up at Queens - not only here, City [College] was like that also - was because this was the generation where black folks were breaking into college and grad school. People needed jobs, so they graduate educational activities and what have you. And we were in a position to give these folks jobs. That first generation was full of some exceptional people and they eventually ended up here at Queens College. St. Clair Bourne, one of our best filmmakers, taught a film class here. Dave Burrell, who play with Archie Shepp, and some of the folks with Coltrane even, he taught music, the basic classical music appreciation to some students here. And there are people here like Jimmy Garrison was Coltrane's bassist, came out and gave lectures and things like that. So we were lucky we could reach those kinds of people at that point in history because black people had motion, so SEEK has to be understood in the movement sense. It was a program, but it was also a part of the larger movement. Overtime, as a movement of members, the movement characteristics of the SEEK program ultimately diminished. Most of that happened after I left. I left in March of 75. I basically didn't want to be the director anymore. And most of the people who had been director said that after a couple of years you shouldn't do this job anymore because it's a total immersion kind of thing, and you're always on the line in all kinds of different ways. I even had a student who was very talented, but he was having trouble with drugs at the time. And we found out they were - after we would leave work, they would break into the offices and steal. So we waited for him one day. And when they did it, we confronted them. And we knew the guys by name. So we we're giving them hell. And this one, innocent guy takes off his coat, \"hey, you punk, you ain't going to do nothin'\". And so he swings at me and I fire him up countering everything before anybody else could come out there. And so we separated and I said, man, you need to get off these drugs, you're killing yourself. Later on, he gets arrested, all three up to jail for five years for attempted armed robbery or something. They tried to get me, the FBI, testify against them. To try and talk about how I had disagreements with him and et cetera. I said I don't want to talk about this kid, he has trouble, don't call me and stuff. But you could be subpoenaed. And if you don't come, that's a problem. I said, well, you can subpoena me. I'm not going to say anything. The kid had trouble, I dealt with it. And so all three goes to jail and Walter Fields - yeah, Walter Fields was his name, and he sends me word through another brother, Walter Fields who was with him at the time but didn't go up, he says, tell Bill I said, hello, man. It's cool. And I said, it's a shame because he was really talented. He comes out and he joins a theater group and there by a pool in Harlem one night after they have rehearsals and people, where's Walter, I don't know where he is. No Walter was at the bottom of the pool. He got high and fell in the damn thing and drowned. It was very sad. His friend Walter Fields got his life together, went on - last I saw him. He was in a play act - doing acting and doing well. So people had trouble at times in the program and we had to try and struggle through with them. It wasn't always easy, man. They put that on you. It's very sad what happened there, that he had to do that time. His problem is just [unclear]. This was the early seventies by now. This is when all those drugs came into our community, flooded. This was before crack. This is heroin, this an early heroin epidemic. Nodding out, nodding in front of me coming into the office fussing with me. We had the development of students who were getting into Islam at this time. And they took over a whole room - we had a student house, they took over a whole room in the basement, put their prayer rug down, don't come down here. Somebody came down and stepped on the rug. So they lit him up. So that led to somebody retaliating. And so I had to call them and say, look, wait a minute. Everybody's religion is gonna be respected. We're not going to beat somebody up simply because they made a mistake and they didn't know. We're not going to do that. So we talked and talked. A couple of the brothers are imams now, they got worked out, but that was new for them, and for us.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=3090.0,3459.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Obden Mondesir: There was a program - the word is escaping me right now. It was kind of like a rehab program that was at SEEK that was managed by some counselors [editor note - it was the Radical Action program (RAP)]?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=3459.0,3474.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"William Sales: I think that got set up when we started trying to deal with the drug program. There's one guy who was reactive in particular, a white guy. I can't remember his name, but he was good at that. He was good at working with people and he had a whole lot of experience with that. And then every, so often we had to fire somebody or let them go. And they wouldn't resign. So they had initiated this whole process which could either end up going to arbitration in our town and all this kind of stuff. So you never wanted to do that because then you had to call upon the very people that are trying to screw us in the administration. They would be representing you against your own, someone who had been in the program. But sometimes you couldn't afford that because every so often we made a mistake [unclear]. And then they will have some - I guess I'm at the end of my time for the day. They're all kind of little vignettes, like what happened as a director. And I haven't had talked about this comprehensively for a long time, it'd be interesting to sit down with some other folks and talk about it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=3474.0,3555.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Obden Mondesir: Yeah. We can have it where you can interview you with Mr. Modeste. We've interviewed with him two or three times, but I'd love to have you in conversation.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=3555.0,3566.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"William Sales: Some of them [unclear]. They're the ones that kind of stayed here most as a unit with other faculty. People kind of moved on. I'd be interested because some of them - Some of the people that you should have gotten on tape are gone. I wonder if Yemi is still around, Yemi Agbeyegbe. If he is, you might check SEEK and say \"Is Yemi still here?\". Because we're all in old age now. I'm 77, time flies. And what you find out when you get older, everybody doesn't make it even to 70. People are stepping out early. A very good friend of mine was a student here with a lot of SEEK students, open enrollment students that I really knew from here vaguely. But I really got to know him later in the movement. And he died at the age of 58. Big shock, you know what I mean? He would have been somebody to interview as a student who would have been on campus at that time. And have many students been interviewed for this?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=3566.0,3639.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Obden Mondesir: I got ahold of one student. Their name is escaping me, but then, basically I lost my phone and I'm trying to retrieve their number. Cause I basically - there's a lot of back and forth. He's like, I really want to do this interview. But my daughter just had a child and the issue, my phone got lost and I have an old one.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=3639.0,3663.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"William Sales: So it does take time to do this once people are away from the institution?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=3663.0,3668.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Obden Mondesir: Yeah. Cause there's, Dr. Keith Clark. He was in Bos- no, not Boston. Cape Cod? Yes. He was in Cape Cod and we had to do it over the phone. Waldo Jeff [phonetic], he's in Cincinnati, Ohio. So we had to do that over the phone as well. Some people agreed to do it, but are traveling cause they're doing a lecture series or something like that. So yeah, it takes a while to - when you initiate contact and then like actually having the person sit down and talk to you. It might take a while between those two.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=3668.0,3707.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"William Sales: Yeah. Have you talked to Phil Luciano?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=3707.0,7310.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Obden Mondesir: I've messaged him through WBAI Radio where I wrote in the email, I was like, hi, would love to speak to you. But I haven't heard back from him.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=7310.0,7320.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"William Sales: Yeah. Keep trying, he's very busy. He left before some of the stuff, later stuff jumped. He wasn't there in 69 when that stuff jumped. But he was here at the beginning of 67 and for at least the first 68, maybe be a little of 69. And it'd be interesting to get his perspective on how he felt about people like Mulholland and some of those guys who came out of prison. What SEEK meant to them? How you talked to me - the politicians as well. God, they are all dead. Percy Sutton, Basil Paterson and some of those guys who created SEEK. I come here and I think, well, who is still around here that would know who the hell I am? Cause at the time, how long was I here? 68 to 75, that seven years. Then I went on to the next place. I stopped and stayed one year. Then after that I stayed 38. I stayed in one place for the rest of my academic career.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=7320.0,7396.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Obden Mondesir: Where did you stay for 38 years?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=7396.0,7397.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911/transcript/20891/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"William Sales: Seton Hall in South Orange, New Jersey. And then in the Africana Studies program, I stayed there through its formative period, setting up the department. It's disillusion as a department. That's when I left, [unclear] the disillusion for three or four years. Got sick as a dog from internalizing all that shit until one fine day, I said, May 30th. I'm out of here. End of the spring semester, I retire. Well don't you want to come - ? No, I don't want to do anything. I think I've been back once since I left. That was five years ago now. It'll be five and a half - It'll be six years ago in May that I just retired. And that was another whole struggle that went on for decades there. And then at a certain point it was a struggle that went on without a movement to support it. We had gotten - the movement was not there. We fight [unclear] actions. I said, I did my little piece and I had to retire. And so I haven't taught a day. I give them lectures and things, but I haven't actually taught a regular class since I walked out of there. I haven't asked for any. I'm not looking for any - I can find something. I have just been kind of repairing my body after 71 years. Constant struggle, man, constant struggle.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/150/collection_resources/32183/file/100911#t=7397.0,3895.30122"}]}]}]}