Changing of Time: Interview with Patti Whitham by Sydney Sloan
From Little Rock Central High Memory Project
Changing of Time An interview with Patti Whitham by Sydney Sloan, Class of 2010
My grandmother, Patti Whitham, was born and raised in Batavia, Iowa. She was born July 10, 1964. Until 15 years after her birth did she become familiar with African Americans and the shaped the way she lived forever. Patti is a woman of amazing sowing skills and is a devoted Christian. She is tender with care and is a victim/survivor of polo. She is a resident of Madrid, Iowa and I only come in physical contact with her when my family journeys to Iowa. My grandmother and I stay in good contact via telephone and e-mail. My grandma is an extraordinary woman who has great opinions and stands her ground when being tested. She has lived through the years when the United States was changing every decade with war, news, and fads. She tasted that great sweetness and the awful bitterness of the changing of time. My grandmother is very wise with true morals. I find it amazing that someone with such stature can have such deep meanings to the simplest things.
Batavia was and still is a very small railroad town. Everybody knew each other and everybody knew each other’s business. No one ever expected to see a black family live in such a white community. Not once through the many years that the town prospered had there ever lived an African American. My grandmother grew up in the type of community that revolved around social meetings, church, farming, and family. It wasn’t until 1960, when my grandmother was 15, did she have her first encounter with an African American Family.
In the year of 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon were the first presidential candidates to have a televised debate. The Vietnam War had begun and many of the farm boys joined the services. The minimum wage increased to $1. Many of the girls wore the bouffant dresses with flat shoes (keds). The woman’s hair had to be in the high and tight beehive look and their makeup was dark, but carefully applied. The summer Olympics were being held in Rome also. Besides the big news and fashions, Batavia made room for a new page in history. The first black family was to move into the tiny community.
My grandmother attended Cardinal High School in Eldon, Iowa. One day, a movers van arrived at a freshly sold house a couple blocks away from her home. Gossip was going around that a black family was to move in. All the neighbors were preparing for the worst. They had no idea what to really expect because they had never been around a black family. A few days later, two black teenagers were enrolled in Cardinal High. Their names were Caroline and Roy Winston. Many of the students were curious about them because they had never seen a black human in the flesh before.
Their father worked for the railroad company and he made fairly good money. No one was standoffish, everybody wanted to know them, said my grandmother.
I asked my grandmother, Did you notice any change when the black students started to attend your high school?
She replied, Absolutely not! No one was racist towards them, not a single soul! They were accepted as if they had lived in Batavia their whole lives. Many of the popular athletes were jealous of the newcomers because they were such outstanding athletes, but that didn’t affect their friendships. Roy played football, basketball, track and field. He lettered in every single sport that he played. Caroline ran track and field. Roy and Caroline won Cardinal High many victories and awards. Lots of people came from nearby towns to see them play at games.
They were very intelligent. My grandmother remarked.
Roy and Caroline were able to maintain outstanding grade point averages throughout all of their high school years and still kept their high positions in their extra-curricular activities. Caroline was a very big reader. She read a lot and helped a lot of the other girls with their work. Roy had his mind set on sports, but he was still very smart.
My grandmother inquired, Everybody was their friend even though they didn’t have close friends.
They were very friendly with warm personalities too. Caroline was very respectable to the teachers and never got an attitude with anybody. Roy was the average teenage guy and had his spells every now and then. Many of the students wonder if every black family was like this: comfortable and responsible. No one thought twice about it.
They weren’t the stereotypical black family. We kind of didn’t know what to expect out of them to be honest, but in the end they turned out to be a very upright family with great pride in themselves. My grandmother added on later on.
I asked my grandmother, Were there any rumors or stories about the black kids going around high school?
My grandmother mentioned that a white girl had a major crush on Roy. Everybody knew that she liked him. She would twist her daily route to classes so she would pass him in the hall. She would make sure she would catch him at his locker as well. He would walk her to classes on some days and other days she would eat lunch with him. Roy had no problem that the girl liked him. He just flirted right back. The girl was a very big flirt. Not many of the guys she hung around with gave her much grief with the fact that she liked Roy. Roy was hit the hardest though. Many of the guys gave him a hard time and some of the girls gave him a disgusted look on their faces. The girl kept on liking him. It didn’t bother her, but Roy put an end to it finally.
You should have just seen her stand there by his locker and watch ‘em flirt. It was a known fact that she liked him. A perceived assumption! Back then stuff like that was not acceptable. It just wasn’t supposed to be that way then. My grandma commented.
During her high school years, going to school with a black family didn’t bother her any. Another black boy joined Cardinal High and his name was Larry Baugh, but by then the students were so used to Roy and Caroline that Larry fit right in. The three black students stayed together throughout high school.
They stayed together as one big family because they weren’t very good friends with the other students. They were friends, but had no close friends, like I said. Added my grandmother.
I asked my grandmother, Did you get anything out of going to school with only three black students? Did it impact you in any way?
My grandmother answered, Going to school with Roy, Caroline, and Larry made me more broadminded. I was more accepting of other cultures. I can look back; it gave me a good understanding of how a black family could really function without the typical drama and sass, I was extremely surprised that no one gave them trouble but for that one incident. Everybody liked them. Maybe it was their personality. Maybe it was because they were black. Me personally, I really like them. They were different from everybody and had a sense of understanding. They showed me that they could live in a white community and still be just as good, maybe even better.
My grandmother to this day stays in contact with her classmates. She tells me that Roy and Caroline became very successful in their careers and family. People in the north act completely different than those in the south. I hear of all the grotesque, brutal marches and beatings of blacks in the south. Up in the north, the African Americans were considered equal in every way as if skin tone made no difference in how they were judged. I wonder how just a line across the United States can make such a huge difference. My grandmother has never made a racial slur in her life. She says that there is no need for something so awful as such. I discover that words don’t mean much but they can do harm to somebody who shares your thoughts. I had always believed that people in the north had equal views. I imagined it as if they were color blind; that way, nothing mattered by what they saw but how they interacted with each other. I have grown up in the south and I see how clicks are formed and how we associate with black people today. We seem to give them some respect because of how they were treated in the past, even though it is a new generation. There is a gap that needs to be filled. I always think about growing up in the north. I wonder if I would treat African Americans the way I do today. I treat them just as fairly, but to be honest, I know that there is something that is always going to keep us apart – the past of the south.
| Indexing Information | |
|---|---|
| Interviewer: | Sydney Sloan |
| Interviewee: | Patti Whitham |
| Relationship to Interviewer: | Grandparent |
| Setting of Interview: | Arkansas |
| Time Period: | 1960s |
| Place: | Other State |
| Setting of Story: | School |
| Focus of Story: | Racial |
| Central Figure: | White |
| Interview Media | YourValues |