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Did you have any brothers or sisters? Yep. I have two brothers, three brothers actually two younger than me and one older than mine. And do they still live locally? Yes. They they're local. I think Ronnie who will never live with us, I think he's still in town. And then Michael and it's Dan and my two younger brothers. Okay. And you told me you were married. They have married and your children are their names. Nandi who lives in San Francisco, happens to be here this week, so I'll be visiting with her today. And Dia, who's also love for he's 33. So you grew up in Indianapolis and you told me where your house was. What do you remember about the neighborhood you grew up in? Well, you know, I thought it was a good neighborhood. It's we, the boys, myself and my brothers were often at the heart of things that were taking place that some of our neighbors felt who did that go over and contact Miss Taylor and see what her boys were up to. So we were generally part of that neighborhood group of boys that were in the mischief. But it was, was a good experience. The same neighbors for gosh, stable neighborhood, same group of kids from kindergarten through eighth grade. You know, we did what children do. We have Riverside Neighborhood. The Riverside Center, also at that time had a lot of activity, so I learned how to swim there. And that Riverside Center is located where? Riverside and 23rd Riverside roughly right there where where the golf course is at. So we had activity like that we would go to just do with the kind of thing boys did in neighborhoods. Of course, that was there were gangs in the neighborhood, but it was pre, all the, all the gun violence. So there were, gosh, I can't think of the neighbor particular gang that was real prevalent in the neighborhood that we always had to be cautious, be aware of whenever we went over to the center. Yeah, so that's that's pretty much all I said about the neighborhood. Some there were some new friends were, you know, some were real close friends and others weren't as close. I probably said most of my colleagues were probably a little bit more on the nerdy side, how they we label them these days. Meaning they like to read. Read, yeah, play chess. We did a lot of chess playing. We ran the dice game on the front porch. My mother was at work, you know, stuff like that. So I'm going to talk a little bit about your pre collegiate education. You attended Indianapolis Public School School, 44? Yeah. It was located at 2:03 three Sugar Grove Avenue. Yeah, on the near west side. It's now it's now the Global Prep Academy. Somebody looks it up. Do you remember what year you started at school? 44. I assume it was first grade, but yeah. So 57 I was born I was five years old. Probably 62. Okay. And so add nine years of that, come out 71. Okay. So and school 44 was mostly black school is that right? Not only Black school. There are very few white kids there and very few white teachers there. One of the teachers was Mr. Mark Shoemaker? Correct. And he was white? Yeah. He taught you in the seventh and eighth grade, if I looked up right. Yeah. You sort of mentioned this before, but can you talk about the impact of Mr. Shoemaker had on you? Oh, yeah. It was really was Aj one his passion for his craft. Now, we had in the in the shop class, it was, you know, he was not what I would call a disciplinarian. So there were some members of our class that didn't want to learn anything. And so he just said, okay, yak bullish it over here. And these other young folks I'll work with develop. We learned how to do printing press. We learn screen printing. Photography was one of my favorite that led me to actually purchase my own dark room. And then I actually got into photography in a heavy way from that experience. But it was the screen printing and the abilities to make money. I was always looking for a hustle and it was the abilities to make money that that had the screen printing stay with me from the eighth grade on. And he also would come and hang out in the neighborhood and he spent time on the block, just chopping it up. And so is that unusual for oh, oh, no teacher to be hanging out in the neighborhood? I had no teachers to ever hang out in the neighborhood except for him. Yeah, Black or white. And he was young, you know, He was just fresh out of college. So, yeah, that was a significant impact on my development. So on the seventh grade, that's when you started your first screening T shirt company, right? I think I started in the seventh. De might have been the eighth grade. Uh huh. And I don't quite remember what the shirt was. I had printed, clearly, we didn't make any money. But I do remember and I kept tinkering with it, and it really, I sold T shirts when I was in high school, different events that were taking place in high school. So I always was, was dancing with the T shirt piece there. And I think it really took off for me. I think I was a freshman at produced and I had tied a deal down with a record store that was downtown near Murphy's, and it was right down the corner. And I decided I'm going to print the zodiac T shirts. They were real popular back during that period, and I printed some samples. And I walked around the block where Murphy's in this record store was at like three or four times to get the courage to go in and try to sell these shirts to the owner. And I finally went in and he said, we don't buy stolen property here No, I said I stole print in the basement. So he listened and then, I mean, no shirt sold like crazy. And that was when I was convinced that I had something that could work in business. My mother got sick of me printing T shirt because she thought I was in my way. We would I would run out of her basement, actually. Uh huh. And said, are you you need to put these damn T shirts down. Get back to your education because you felt it was having a negative impact on me graduating. Probably slowed down my my graduation period because I was always selling T shirts. So when you were at school, 44, that was grades one through eight? Yeah. All right. So were there any other teachers there other than Mr. Shumaker, who you look back and think they made a difference in my life? Yeah. The one that comes to mind is Mr. Seabury. Seabury, Yeah. He was the Dane and I'm not really sure exactly what it was about. Well, actually two Mr. Seabury who we did printing work for the for the office out of the shop. And so we were always engaging with him and maybe also because he was the school disciplinarian that you were always having to interface with. Now I will also say back in that period, they had decided to categorize the students based on their perceived academic excellence. Our group was called the pace setter, so we were supposed to be the smart kids and actually backfiring on because it actually created an atmosphere where we were always doing things that were rebellious. Of course, we never got blamed for it was the other team. Another team, we called the troop. So, whenever we were doing something scandalous, they would always go looking for these other, other kids to do that. Also, another teacher comes to mind is the math teach, our homeroom teacher, who was a math teacher, I cannot remember his name right now, but he, he had a lot we would sing in the classroom. And he had these songs he wanted us to sing, gosh. And one of the songs he had to stop on the floor, the principal would come and said, you can't sing that song nomore, because it was caused too much distraction. So those were be the ones that stand out. And I had an English teacher. Whose name go? I can't remember now. But she also was impactful based on her, I remember this like it was yesterday when she talked about the, it was a history class and that the reason the United States dropped the nuclear weapons on Japan was because these people were people of color. And it was just so it was such an impactful statement but her name escapes me. But she's talking about Osha Managasaki in 1945, correct? Yeah, Yeah. So do you feel like you got a good education at school? 44, yeah. But you know, I always was. I had a passion for learning. I just came to the space. Mm hmm. Inquisitive and wanted to learn, so I didn't have to be motivated to learn. So yeah, that I would have gotten a good education probably any place I was that where education would be available. And when did you finish eighth grade? Probably 62, I think. Okay. So now 60 let's see, probably 707071, somewhere there. Okay. So, you were there at school 44 after the Supreme Court's landmark, Brown versus Board of Education. Yeah, that's how I end up at a cathedral. So, I wanted to talk about cathedral. So, how did you end up at cathedral because of the Brown decision? Well, you know, they wanted I spent the summer prior to going to freshman year at George Washington High School. I felt like I got played. Let me start with that. My mother played. Me and her boyfriend, it was, it was a beautiful play. What parents do when they trying to make sure that children are going astray. But I went to George Wing High School for the summer. Took World history one and worldtory two. Oh, it was a rough class. It was hot, it was summer, it was boring. The teacher taught the first session and had promised us something, I'm not sure what it was. And then the second teacher came in and said, oh, I don't have any record of that promise. And that just I slept through the whole rest of the summer after that experience, but they were going to send us to manual high school. If my mother and a boyfriend say you want to go to cathedral, and at that time, cathedral was all boys school and private and Catholic. Private and Catholic. It was on Manion Street. H I suspect that some of that was an effort to their own form of birth control, because you interested in all the young girls in the neighborhood, began some first exploration with the opposite sex. What's rolling in the school? I look at the prets, I said, Mom, what are the girls at Girls school School here. But you know the oldest child. One of the things I think often with the oldest child, you start whatever you start, you finish. So I went to school there and did four years there and that was that. So but your mom had to pay tuition? Yes. You do? Yeah. So that was a sacrifice on her part to put you there? Yes, she had paid for. And we had some experiences there through a racial lamp, where she had to call there a couple of times and say, look, you know, my son's not on a scholarship. If he wants to take this class, he needs to be able to take that class. So that happened a couple of times and, you know, it was ran by the, the brothers. The first two years was truly a Catholic school, run by the brothers in the building for two years. And the last two years it was turned over to another group of, I think, parents and other supporters to keep it from closing. And the last two years were very interesting also. So what made the last two years interesting? The continuity of the school had changed because it didn't have the, but, you know, the brothers were passionate about education and their philosophy of education. And then the next two years, I think it was more around how can this be run more like a college campus. And so if he didn't, there was very little supervision in my junior year and my senior year, so hell, we don't we didn't want to go to class, we didn't go. And I remember we had our own, we had our own, the singers had our own lounge. And of course you could smoke in the lounge. Some of the folks had, had pipes and word got out that they're not just smoking tobacco. So just a lot of disarray. Okay. I think relative to the first two years, the second two years, but any rate, at the end of the day, it was, the education was, was clear enough from a college prep perspective that I was able to go to Purdue based on the education I got at. So you must have been a good student. Yeah. What were the relations like between black and white students at the cathedral? I think the bigger challenge, well, the race question is pretty much the same everywhere. I think for me my own my challenge had more to do with not coming out of those traditional grade schools. So, I got there, you know, I did did not come out of those those spaces. So I didn't have any relationships coming from those spaces. I didn't play sports. Most of the black students who went to cathedral on some kind of sports scholarship, not all of them, but though they had their own relationship with the relates to sports or those school relationships from prior to coming to cathedral that had these relations space. I didn't come with that. I did have a small group of friends that was a mixed group of black kids and white kids. And so I didn't have any racial related challenges in the space other than the typical ones that you have with race, which often are, can you be act more like us? Yeah, that's just, you know, typical. So, you went to Purdue? Why did you pick Purdue? Purdue. That my counselor came to me. I think I was a junior. Might have been a senior. She said, Do you want to go to the college And at that time, you know, it was clear I had three choices. One college, fast food, military. And you graduated from high school in what year? I want to say 75. 76 maybe. Okay. And of course, the Vietnam era was winding down. Yeah. But it was still loud in our space. Loud in our community. You know, we had a lot of conversations in the community level with other young black men about Muhammad. Ali was a prominent figure in our community. We are we going to go to the war? Were we not going to go to war? We're going to go to Canada. So we had a really strong anti war voice in our community, so the idea of going to the military was way on the list. The idea of going to work at Burger King of Hardy, that didn't feel really like something I wanted to do. And so when the counsel came and said, hey produce recruiting engineering students, I had no idea what engineer was and they're going to pay for with some scholarship money. And then they asked me if I just had the question I remember asked, how much do they make and whatever it was, it sounded like a lot of money at the time. I said, yes, sign me up And that's pretty much how I ended up studying engineering and how I end up going to produce. So what type of engineering? Electrical engineering. Okay. And you were there for two years? Did two years there? Maybe 2.5 Took it with the ass kicking for sure. One, culturally, I'll start with the cultural component, which is, you know, black urban youth in a predominantly white community 24 hours a day. And, you know, my first experience with working and predominant white spaces with cathedral, but it was only part of the day you returned back to your block at the end of the day. So that was one. And then I would probably also say, clearly the education was easy for me, so I didn't really have to study and they got to, but it was a whole other ball game. So my freshman year was a total disaster. And then I stayed my sophomore years just actually spent the summer up there alone my peers that went home for the summer. I just was checking to see, can I do this, You know, do I have an me to actually do engineering. And I think I took physics in the summer and I think did great in it. And that was okay, restore my sense of confidence about it. So. Then I moved off campus, another mistake, sophomore year, so we were big guys off campus and the second year was held. So finished the second year and then came home, set out for a semester, trying to get my head back on my my shoulders and again with my mother that I provided the kind of loving and nurturing for my recovery. And then I went back and then I think I did a year. I did my junior year part time. Now, mind you, that was back during the IPY? Yeah, that was back during the apartheid era. And went to school with a bunch of students at that time from overseas. And so that's how I became actually more cognizant of what was going on in the world outside of the US. So, by apartheid era, are you talking about South Africa? Africa, the United States, South Africa in particular. Zimbabwe. So, there were students studying engineering from Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Iran. And we had a whole table in our study room from these young men and women, mostly males from around the world. That just provided a broadening education for me around what's going on in the world. So you attended IUPUI for three years? Approximately three. I quit one year. So were you aware of PI's history that they basically came into existence by buying up the homes of African Americans and relocating them out of there? And Ted, not till maybe my senior year. I think that was the year. I don't know if you know John Lance, but he was over the YMCA. I do actually, yeah. Met him. Yeah, he was held a YMCA back when I was I once said maybe a senior. Uh huh. And I went to a lecture that began to expose some of that, that history. So Right. Come to know it late in my academic career. Did that have any influence on the way you thought about community and your own role in the community When you look at the example of how IUPUI came into existence. Yeah. Of course, older now, I'd probably say you take the local experience you tie with the exposure to international, global issues. Then you just have a world view that don't separate these. Of course we all know UPI has a history that hopefully they are ashamed of. And hopefully they're making some efforts to pursue some form of reparation of those behavior. The jury is out, but you are very much informed by it, but not not shocked by it. Does that make sense? So, my neighbor, when I was a kid, my speaking in that area area, my another person that I failed to mention that had a lot of impact on me as a kid was my next door neighbor and she's the, the mother of, I think his name was Sonny who, who owned the sunset and also was a major player in the Pea shaped space. So that history of, of land grab, it was talked about actually on our block as all that was taking place. So shape space, Shape, Pre, Fuji Lottery. Oh, the oh, the gambling, the financing vachanism that was illegal in our communities that took place. Was space illegal lottery? Yeah. Well, if depending on who's run the law. Oh, illegal. Right. Course, the state of Indiana state was illegal. Right. Right. So you mentioned John Lens. Did you know him very well? Was a strong word but I would I would say well enough to say I will call him one of the mentors two for strength. Just had a courage about a strength about him that you had to at least as a black man admirer. Didn't work directly with him. But I do remember once I gave, I was giving a lecture myself as a student on campus. And he was in the audience. And there was a kid, a young, not a kid, a young person there writing down what I was saying. And John came out with just say, look man, when people come in and they take notes like that, just quit talking. Just wait till they leave. And I hadn't even considered that as an option. And so that was the one of the pieces I would say as relates to that. He also, he was a hell of a reader. So some of the books he mentioned, Doctor Ben, he might even be here somewhere. Black Man Now was also very impactful. But the most impactful piece was the courage of his leadership. And probably also not, you know, I know more about John now through others, but, and all of us are human. So I think his impact was mostly by not knowing him or not knowing him well. Know both his wives, his children, and of course the ten P Y was really intended to serve the black community, so it was a bit under resourced compared to some of the other facilities in town. Okay, so you meant, I know I'm going to flog this. You met hockey booty. It was the founder of the third world press which you did mention when you were a junior in college. I assume that's when you're at IUPUI? Correct. We were having a conference. The Black Student Union and the National Society Black Engineers held a conference, and we brought hockey and others in to that conference. And at that time, I was the president of the local chapter of the National Society Black Engineers at IUPI. They invited us in to partner with the Black Student Union to hold this conference. So you were already emerging as a leader when you were a student without your PUI? Oh, yeah. I was, you know, I was on the engineering side of it mostly. And then what came with that? And at that time, a lot of that was not so much about history as it was providing spaces for engineering students, black engineering students to access traditional corporate spaces. And they asked us to participate with the Black Student Union. That's why I met some other close friends of mine during college that expanded my historical understanding. And that's how it comes to me, kee, through that workshop. And then at that time, you know, it was the only publishing, you know, you didn't, black books weren't in Barnes and Noble. So Third World Press published books that were really aimed at the African American reader and by African American authors? Yes. Okay. And the other thing is they were not, you know, pre Amazon, pre Internet, Black books were not available in the bookstores. And so a friend of ours would go to Chicago and bring back books in some as house. And so that's how we ended up with having access to some of those materials because we just had a person going to pick those up and then when they had events there we would, would go to Thirweth press visit, have those events and just build more more those particular relationships we had actually invited hockey back ourselves two or three times over the course of maybe six, seven year period to come and participate in more programs. But you remember what years you were at IUPUI approximately? Let's see. Let's ask these hard questions, man. Let's see, I went to grade school 62 at eight years, 70 had four more years. 74 went to Purdue for a couple of years. 76, 77. So I would say from 77, 82 somewhere in there. 80, yeah. 70 because I quit in 1980, so I'll probably say 70 late 70s. Early 80s, yeah. Thank you. So when it was an evolving campus and lots of parking lots and ride, there was still actually a liquor store on campus before they built a fancy building, so. Um, and you continue to screen T shirts? Yeah, yeah, screen T shirts all through college.

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Did you have any brothers or sisters? Yep. I have two brothers, three brothers actually two younger than me and one older than mine. And do they still live locally? Yes. They they're local. I think Ronnie who will never live with us, I think he's still in town. And then Michael and it's Dan and my two younger brothers. Okay. And you told me you were married. They have married and your children are their names. Nandi who lives in San Francisco, happens to be here this week, so I'll be visiting with her today. And Dia, who's also love for he's 33. So you grew up in Indianapolis and you told me where your house was. What do you remember about the neighborhood you grew up in? Well, you know, I thought it was a good neighborhood. It's we, the boys, myself and my brothers were often at the heart of things that were taking place that some of our neighbors felt who did that go over and contact Miss Taylor and see what her boys were up to. So we were generally part of that neighborhood group of boys that were in the mischief. But it was, was a good experience. The same neighbors for gosh, stable neighborhood, same group of kids from kindergarten through eighth grade. You know, we did what children do. We have Riverside Neighborhood. The Riverside Center, also at that time had a lot of activity, so I learned how to swim there. And that Riverside Center is located where? Riverside and 23rd Riverside roughly right there where where the golf course is at. So we had activity like that we would go to just do with the kind of thing boys did in neighborhoods. Of course, that was there were gangs in the neighborhood, but it was pre, all the, all the gun violence. So there were, gosh, I can't think of the neighbor particular gang that was real prevalent in the neighborhood that we always had to be cautious, be aware of whenever we went over to the center. Yeah, so that's that's pretty much all I said about the neighborhood. Some there were some new friends were, you know, some were real close friends and others weren't as close. I probably said most of my colleagues were probably a little bit more on the nerdy side, how they we label them these days. Meaning they like to read. Read, yeah, play chess. We did a lot of chess playing. We ran the dice game on the front porch. My mother was at work, you know, stuff like that. So I'm going to talk a little bit about your pre collegiate education. You attended Indianapolis Public School School, 44? Yeah. It was located at 2:03 three Sugar Grove Avenue. Yeah, on the near west side. It's now it's now the Global Prep Academy. Somebody looks it up. Do you remember what year you started at school? 44. I assume it was first grade, but yeah. So 57 I was born I was five years old. Probably 62. Okay. And so add nine years of that, come out 71. Okay. So and school 44 was mostly black school is that right? Not only Black school. There are very few white kids there and very few white teachers there. One of the teachers was Mr. Mark Shoemaker? Correct. And he was white? Yeah. He taught you in the seventh and eighth grade, if I looked up right. Yeah. You sort of mentioned this before, but can you talk about the impact of Mr. Shoemaker had on you? Oh, yeah. It was really was Aj one his passion for his craft. Now, we had in the in the shop class, it was, you know, he was not what I would call a disciplinarian. So there were some members of our class that didn't want to learn anything. And so he just said, okay, yak bullish it over here. And these other young folks I'll work with develop. We learned how to do printing press. We learn screen printing. Photography was one of my favorite that led me to actually purchase my own dark room. And then I actually got into photography in a heavy way from that experience. But it was the screen printing and the abilities to make money. I was always looking for a hustle and it was the abilities to make money that that had the screen printing stay with me from the eighth grade on. And he also would come and hang out in the neighborhood and he spent time on the block, just chopping it up. And so is that unusual for oh, oh, no teacher to be hanging out in the neighborhood? I had no teachers to ever hang out in the neighborhood except for him. Yeah, Black or white. And he was young, you know, He was just fresh out of college. So, yeah, that was a significant impact on my development. So on the seventh grade, that's when you started your first screening T shirt company, right? I think I started in the seventh. De might have been the eighth grade. Uh huh. And I don't quite remember what the shirt was. I had printed, clearly, we didn't make any money. But I do remember and I kept tinkering with it, and it really, I sold T shirts when I was in high school, different events that were taking place in high school. So I always was, was dancing with the T shirt piece there. And I think it really took off for me. I think I was a freshman at produced and I had tied a deal down with a record store that was downtown near Murphy's, and it was right down the corner. And I decided I'm going to print the zodiac T shirts. They were real popular back during that period, and I printed some samples. And I walked around the block where Murphy's in this record store was at like three or four times to get the courage to go in and try to sell these shirts to the owner. And I finally went in and he said, we don't buy stolen property here No, I said I stole print in the basement. So he listened and then, I mean, no shirt sold like crazy. And that was when I was convinced that I had something that could work in business. My mother got sick of me printing T shirt because she thought I was in my way. We would I would run out of her basement, actually. Uh huh. And said, are you you need to put these damn T shirts down. Get back to your education because you felt it was having a negative impact on me graduating. Probably slowed down my my graduation period because I was always selling T shirts. So when you were at school, 44, that was grades one through eight? Yeah. All right. So were there any other teachers there other than Mr. Shumaker, who you look back and think they made a difference in my life? Yeah. The one that comes to mind is Mr. Seabury. Seabury, Yeah. He was the Dane and I'm not really sure exactly what it was about. Well, actually two Mr. Seabury who we did printing work for the for the office out of the shop. And so we were always engaging with him and maybe also because he was the school disciplinarian that you were always having to interface with. Now I will also say back in that period, they had decided to categorize the students based on their perceived academic excellence. Our group was called the pace setter, so we were supposed to be the smart kids and actually backfiring on because it actually created an atmosphere where we were always doing things that were rebellious. Of course, we never got blamed for it was the other team. Another team, we called the troop. So, whenever we were doing something scandalous, they would always go looking for these other, other kids to do that. Also, another teacher comes to mind is the math teach, our homeroom teacher, who was a math teacher, I cannot remember his name right now, but he, he had a lot we would sing in the classroom. And he had these songs he wanted us to sing, gosh. And one of the songs he had to stop on the floor, the principal would come and said, you can't sing that song nomore, because it was caused too much distraction. So those were be the ones that stand out. And I had an English teacher. Whose name go? I can't remember now. But she also was impactful based on her, I remember this like it was yesterday when she talked about the, it was a history class and that the reason the United States dropped the nuclear weapons on Japan was because these people were people of color. And it was just so it was such an impactful statement but her name escapes me. But she's talking about Osha Managasaki in 1945, correct? Yeah, Yeah. So do you feel like you got a good education at school? 44, yeah. But you know, I always was. I had a passion for learning. I just came to the space. Mm hmm. Inquisitive and wanted to learn, so I didn't have to be motivated to learn. So yeah, that I would have gotten a good education probably any place I was that where education would be available. And when did you finish eighth grade? Probably 62, I think. Okay. So now 60 let's see, probably 707071, somewhere there. Okay. So, you were there at school 44 after the Supreme Court's landmark, Brown versus Board of Education. Yeah, that's how I end up at a cathedral. So, I wanted to talk about cathedral. So, how did you end up at cathedral because of the Brown decision? Well, you know, they wanted I spent the summer prior to going to freshman year at George Washington High School. I felt like I got played. Let me start with that. My mother played. Me and her boyfriend, it was, it was a beautiful play. What parents do when they trying to make sure that children are going astray. But I went to George Wing High School for the summer. Took World history one and worldtory two. Oh, it was a rough class. It was hot, it was summer, it was boring. The teacher taught the first session and had promised us something, I'm not sure what it was. And then the second teacher came in and said, oh, I don't have any record of that promise. And that just I slept through the whole rest of the summer after that experience, but they were going to send us to manual high school. If my mother and a boyfriend say you want to go to cathedral, and at that time, cathedral was all boys school and private and Catholic. Private and Catholic. It was on Manion Street. H I suspect that some of that was an effort to their own form of birth control, because you interested in all the young girls in the neighborhood, began some first exploration with the opposite sex. What's rolling in the school? I look at the prets, I said, Mom, what are the girls at Girls school School here. But you know the oldest child. One of the things I think often with the oldest child, you start whatever you start, you finish. So I went to school there and did four years there and that was that. So but your mom had to pay tuition? Yes. You do? Yeah. So that was a sacrifice on her part to put you there? Yes, she had paid for. And we had some experiences there through a racial lamp, where she had to call there a couple of times and say, look, you know, my son's not on a scholarship. If he wants to take this class, he needs to be able to take that class. So that happened a couple of times and, you know, it was ran by the, the brothers. The first two years was truly a Catholic school, run by the brothers in the building for two years. And the last two years it was turned over to another group of, I think, parents and other supporters to keep it from closing. And the last two years were very interesting also. So what made the last two years interesting? The continuity of the school had changed because it didn't have the, but, you know, the brothers were passionate about education and their philosophy of education. And then the next two years, I think it was more around how can this be run more like a college campus. And so if he didn't, there was very little supervision in my junior year and my senior year, so hell, we don't we didn't want to go to class, we didn't go. And I remember we had our own, we had our own, the singers had our own lounge. And of course you could smoke in the lounge. Some of the folks had, had pipes and word got out that they're not just smoking tobacco. So just a lot of disarray. Okay. I think relative to the first two years, the second two years, but any rate, at the end of the day, it was, the education was, was clear enough from a college prep perspective that I was able to go to Purdue based on the education I got at. So you must have been a good student. Yeah. What were the relations like between black and white students at the cathedral? I think the bigger challenge, well, the race question is pretty much the same everywhere. I think for me my own my challenge had more to do with not coming out of those traditional grade schools. So, I got there, you know, I did did not come out of those those spaces. So I didn't have any relationships coming from those spaces. I didn't play sports. Most of the black students who went to cathedral on some kind of sports scholarship, not all of them, but though they had their own relationship with the relates to sports or those school relationships from prior to coming to cathedral that had these relations space. I didn't come with that. I did have a small group of friends that was a mixed group of black kids and white kids. And so I didn't have any racial related challenges in the space other than the typical ones that you have with race, which often are, can you be act more like us? Yeah, that's just, you know, typical. So, you went to Purdue? Why did you pick Purdue? Purdue. That my counselor came to me. I think I was a junior. Might have been a senior. She said, Do you want to go to the college And at that time, you know, it was clear I had three choices. One college, fast food, military. And you graduated from high school in what year? I want to say 75. 76 maybe. Okay. And of course, the Vietnam era was winding down. Yeah. But it was still loud in our space. Loud in our community. You know, we had a lot of conversations in the community level with other young black men about Muhammad. Ali was a prominent figure in our community. We are we going to go to the war? Were we not going to go to war? We're going to go to Canada. So we had a really strong anti war voice in our community, so the idea of going to the military was way on the list. The idea of going to work at Burger King of Hardy, that didn't feel really like something I wanted to do. And so when the counsel came and said, hey produce recruiting engineering students, I had no idea what engineer was and they're going to pay for with some scholarship money. And then they asked me if I just had the question I remember asked, how much do they make and whatever it was, it sounded like a lot of money at the time. I said, yes, sign me up And that's pretty much how I ended up studying engineering and how I end up going to produce. So what type of engineering? Electrical engineering. Okay. And you were there for two years? Did two years there? Maybe 2.5 Took it with the ass kicking for sure. One, culturally, I'll start with the cultural component, which is, you know, black urban youth in a predominantly white community 24 hours a day. And, you know, my first experience with working and predominant white spaces with cathedral, but it was only part of the day you returned back to your block at the end of the day. So that was one. And then I would probably also say, clearly the education was easy for me, so I didn't really have to study and they got to, but it was a whole other ball game. So my freshman year was a total disaster. And then I stayed my sophomore years just actually spent the summer up there alone my peers that went home for the summer. I just was checking to see, can I do this, You know, do I have an me to actually do engineering. And I think I took physics in the summer and I think did great in it. And that was okay, restore my sense of confidence about it. So. Then I moved off campus, another mistake, sophomore year, so we were big guys off campus and the second year was held. So finished the second year and then came home, set out for a semester, trying to get my head back on my my shoulders and again with my mother that I provided the kind of loving and nurturing for my recovery. And then I went back and then I think I did a year. I did my junior year part time. Now, mind you, that was back during the IPY? Yeah, that was back during the apartheid era. And went to school with a bunch of students at that time from overseas. And so that's how I became actually more cognizant of what was going on in the world outside of the US. So, by apartheid era, are you talking about South Africa? Africa, the United States, South Africa in particular. Zimbabwe. So, there were students studying engineering from Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Iran. And we had a whole table in our study room from these young men and women, mostly males from around the world. That just provided a broadening education for me around what's going on in the world. So you attended IUPUI for three years? Approximately three. I quit one year. So were you aware of PI's history that they basically came into existence by buying up the homes of African Americans and relocating them out of there? And Ted, not till maybe my senior year. I think that was the year. I don't know if you know John Lance, but he was over the YMCA. I do actually, yeah. Met him. Yeah, he was held a YMCA back when I was I once said maybe a senior. Uh huh. And I went to a lecture that began to expose some of that, that history. So Right. Come to know it late in my academic career. Did that have any influence on the way you thought about community and your own role in the community When you look at the example of how IUPUI came into existence. Yeah. Of course, older now, I'd probably say you take the local experience you tie with the exposure to international, global issues. Then you just have a world view that don't separate these. Of course we all know UPI has a history that hopefully they are ashamed of. And hopefully they're making some efforts to pursue some form of reparation of those behavior. The jury is out, but you are very much informed by it, but not not shocked by it. Does that make sense? So, my neighbor, when I was a kid, my speaking in that area area, my another person that I failed to mention that had a lot of impact on me as a kid was my next door neighbor and she's the, the mother of, I think his name was Sonny who, who owned the sunset and also was a major player in the Pea shaped space. So that history of, of land grab, it was talked about actually on our block as all that was taking place. So shape space, Shape, Pre, Fuji Lottery. Oh, the oh, the gambling, the financing vachanism that was illegal in our communities that took place. Was space illegal lottery? Yeah. Well, if depending on who's run the law. Oh, illegal. Right. Course, the state of Indiana state was illegal. Right. Right. So you mentioned John Lens. Did you know him very well? Was a strong word but I would I would say well enough to say I will call him one of the mentors two for strength. Just had a courage about a strength about him that you had to at least as a black man admirer. Didn't work directly with him. But I do remember once I gave, I was giving a lecture myself as a student on campus. And he was in the audience. And there was a kid, a young, not a kid, a young person there writing down what I was saying. And John came out with just say, look man, when people come in and they take notes like that, just quit talking. Just wait till they leave. And I hadn't even considered that as an option. And so that was the one of the pieces I would say as relates to that. He also, he was a hell of a reader. So some of the books he mentioned, Doctor Ben, he might even be here somewhere. Black Man Now was also very impactful. But the most impactful piece was the courage of his leadership. And probably also not, you know, I know more about John now through others, but, and all of us are human. So I think his impact was mostly by not knowing him or not knowing him well. Know both his wives, his children, and of course the ten P Y was really intended to serve the black community, so it was a bit under resourced compared to some of the other facilities in town. Okay, so you meant, I know I'm going to flog this. You met hockey booty. It was the founder of the third world press which you did mention when you were a junior in college. I assume that's when you're at IUPUI? Correct. We were having a conference. The Black Student Union and the National Society Black Engineers held a conference, and we brought hockey and others in to that conference. And at that time, I was the president of the local chapter of the National Society Black Engineers at IUPI. They invited us in to partner with the Black Student Union to hold this conference. So you were already emerging as a leader when you were a student without your PUI? Oh, yeah. I was, you know, I was on the engineering side of it mostly. And then what came with that? And at that time, a lot of that was not so much about history as it was providing spaces for engineering students, black engineering students to access traditional corporate spaces. And they asked us to participate with the Black Student Union. That's why I met some other close friends of mine during college that expanded my historical understanding. And that's how it comes to me, kee, through that workshop. And then at that time, you know, it was the only publishing, you know, you didn't, black books weren't in Barnes and Noble. So Third World Press published books that were really aimed at the African American reader and by African American authors? Yes. Okay. And the other thing is they were not, you know, pre Amazon, pre Internet, Black books were not available in the bookstores. And so a friend of ours would go to Chicago and bring back books in some as house. And so that's how we ended up with having access to some of those materials because we just had a person going to pick those up and then when they had events there we would, would go to Thirweth press visit, have those events and just build more more those particular relationships we had actually invited hockey back ourselves two or three times over the course of maybe six, seven year period to come and participate in more programs. But you remember what years you were at IUPUI approximately? Let's see. Let's ask these hard questions, man. Let's see, I went to grade school 62 at eight years, 70 had four more years. 74 went to Purdue for a couple of years. 76, 77. So I would say from 77, 82 somewhere in there. 80, yeah. 70 because I quit in 1980, so I'll probably say 70 late 70s. Early 80s, yeah. Thank you. So when it was an evolving campus and lots of parking lots and ride, there was still actually a liquor store on campus before they built a fancy building, so. Um, and you continue to screen T shirts? Yeah, yeah, screen T shirts all through college.

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Did you have any brothers or sisters? Yep. I have two brothers, three brothers actually two younger than me and one older than mine. And do they still live locally? Yes. They they're local. I think Ronnie who will never live with us, I think he's still in town. And then Michael and it's Dan and my two younger brothers. Okay. And you told me you were married. They have married and your children are their names. Nandi who lives in San Francisco, happens to be here this week, so I'll be visiting with her today. And Dia, who's also love for he's 33. So you grew up in Indianapolis and you told me where your house was. What do you remember about the neighborhood you grew up in? Well, you know, I thought it was a good neighborhood. It's we, the boys, myself and my brothers were often at the heart of things that were taking place that some of our neighbors felt who did that go over and contact Miss Taylor and see what her boys were up to. So we were generally part of that neighborhood group of boys that were in the mischief. But it was, was a good experience. The same neighbors for gosh, stable neighborhood, same group of kids from kindergarten through eighth grade. You know, we did what children do. We have Riverside Neighborhood. The Riverside Center, also at that time had a lot of activity, so I learned how to swim there. And that Riverside Center is located where? Riverside and 23rd Riverside roughly right there where where the golf course is at. So we had activity like that we would go to just do with the kind of thing boys did in neighborhoods. Of course, that was there were gangs in the neighborhood, but it was pre, all the, all the gun violence. So there were, gosh, I can't think of the neighbor particular gang that was real prevalent in the neighborhood that we always had to be cautious, be aware of whenever we went over to the center. Yeah, so that's that's pretty much all I said about the neighborhood. Some there were some new friends were, you know, some were real close friends and others weren't as close. I probably said most of my colleagues were probably a little bit more on the nerdy side, how they we label them these days. Meaning they like to read. Read, yeah, play chess. We did a lot of chess playing. We ran the dice game on the front porch. My mother was at work, you know, stuff like that. So I'm going to talk a little bit about your pre collegiate education. You attended Indianapolis Public School School, 44? Yeah. It was located at 2:03 three Sugar Grove Avenue. Yeah, on the near west side. It's now it's now the Global Prep Academy. Somebody looks it up. Do you remember what year you started at school? 44. I assume it was first grade, but yeah. So 57 I was born I was five years old. Probably 62. Okay. And so add nine years of that, come out 71. Okay. So and school 44 was mostly black school is that right? Not only Black school. There are very few white kids there and very few white teachers there. One of the teachers was Mr. Mark Shoemaker? Correct. And he was white? Yeah. He taught you in the seventh and eighth grade, if I looked up right. Yeah. You sort of mentioned this before, but can you talk about the impact of Mr. Shoemaker had on you? Oh, yeah. It was really was Aj one his passion for his craft. Now, we had in the in the shop class, it was, you know, he was not what I would call a disciplinarian. So there were some members of our class that didn't want to learn anything. And so he just said, okay, yak bullish it over here. And these other young folks I'll work with develop. We learned how to do printing press. We learn screen printing. Photography was one of my favorite that led me to actually purchase my own dark room. And then I actually got into photography in a heavy way from that experience. But it was the screen printing and the abilities to make money. I was always looking for a hustle and it was the abilities to make money that that had the screen printing stay with me from the eighth grade on. And he also would come and hang out in the neighborhood and he spent time on the block, just chopping it up. And so is that unusual for oh, oh, no teacher to be hanging out in the neighborhood? I had no teachers to ever hang out in the neighborhood except for him. Yeah, Black or white. And he was young, you know, He was just fresh out of college. So, yeah, that was a significant impact on my development. So on the seventh grade, that's when you started your first screening T shirt company, right? I think I started in the seventh. De might have been the eighth grade. Uh huh. And I don't quite remember what the shirt was. I had printed, clearly, we didn't make any money. But I do remember and I kept tinkering with it, and it really, I sold T shirts when I was in high school, different events that were taking place in high school. So I always was, was dancing with the T shirt piece there. And I think it really took off for me. I think I was a freshman at produced and I had tied a deal down with a record store that was downtown near Murphy's, and it was right down the corner. And I decided I'm going to print the zodiac T shirts. They were real popular back during that period, and I printed some samples. And I walked around the block where Murphy's in this record store was at like three or four times to get the courage to go in and try to sell these shirts to the owner. And I finally went in and he said, we don't buy stolen property here No, I said I stole print in the basement. So he listened and then, I mean, no shirt sold like crazy. And that was when I was convinced that I had something that could work in business. My mother got sick of me printing T shirt because she thought I was in my way. We would I would run out of her basement, actually. Uh huh. And said, are you you need to put these damn T shirts down. Get back to your education because you felt it was having a negative impact on me graduating. Probably slowed down my my graduation period because I was always selling T shirts. So when you were at school, 44, that was grades one through eight? Yeah. All right. So were there any other teachers there other than Mr. Shumaker, who you look back and think they made a difference in my life? Yeah. The one that comes to mind is Mr. Seabury. Seabury, Yeah. He was the Dane and I'm not really sure exactly what it was about. Well, actually two Mr. Seabury who we did printing work for the for the office out of the shop. And so we were always engaging with him and maybe also because he was the school disciplinarian that you were always having to interface with. Now I will also say back in that period, they had decided to categorize the students based on their perceived academic excellence. Our group was called the pace setter, so we were supposed to be the smart kids and actually backfiring on because it actually created an atmosphere where we were always doing things that were rebellious. Of course, we never got blamed for it was the other team. Another team, we called the troop. So, whenever we were doing something scandalous, they would always go looking for these other, other kids to do that. Also, another teacher comes to mind is the math teach, our homeroom teacher, who was a math teacher, I cannot remember his name right now, but he, he had a lot we would sing in the classroom. And he had these songs he wanted us to sing, gosh. And one of the songs he had to stop on the floor, the principal would come and said, you can't sing that song nomore, because it was caused too much distraction. So those were be the ones that stand out. And I had an English teacher. Whose name go? I can't remember now. But she also was impactful based on her, I remember this like it was yesterday when she talked about the, it was a history class and that the reason the United States dropped the nuclear weapons on Japan was because these people were people of color. And it was just so it was such an impactful statement but her name escapes me. But she's talking about Osha Managasaki in 1945, correct? Yeah, Yeah. So do you feel like you got a good education at school? 44, yeah. But you know, I always was. I had a passion for learning. I just came to the space. Mm hmm. Inquisitive and wanted to learn, so I didn't have to be motivated to learn. So yeah, that I would have gotten a good education probably any place I was that where education would be available. And when did you finish eighth grade? Probably 62, I think. Okay. So now 60 let's see, probably 707071, somewhere there. Okay. So, you were there at school 44 after the Supreme Court's landmark, Brown versus Board of Education. Yeah, that's how I end up at a cathedral. So, I wanted to talk about cathedral. So, how did you end up at cathedral because of the Brown decision? Well, you know, they wanted I spent the summer prior to going to freshman year at George Washington High School. I felt like I got played. Let me start with that. My mother played. Me and her boyfriend, it was, it was a beautiful play. What parents do when they trying to make sure that children are going astray. But I went to George Wing High School for the summer. Took World history one and worldtory two. Oh, it was a rough class. It was hot, it was summer, it was boring. The teacher taught the first session and had promised us something, I'm not sure what it was. And then the second teacher came in and said, oh, I don't have any record of that promise. And that just I slept through the whole rest of the summer after that experience, but they were going to send us to manual high school. If my mother and a boyfriend say you want to go to cathedral, and at that time, cathedral was all boys school and private and Catholic. Private and Catholic. It was on Manion Street. H I suspect that some of that was an effort to their own form of birth control, because you interested in all the young girls in the neighborhood, began some first exploration with the opposite sex. What's rolling in the school? I look at the prets, I said, Mom, what are the girls at Girls school School here. But you know the oldest child. One of the things I think often with the oldest child, you start whatever you start, you finish. So I went to school there and did four years there and that was that. So but your mom had to pay tuition? Yes. You do? Yeah. So that was a sacrifice on her part to put you there? Yes, she had paid for. And we had some experiences there through a racial lamp, where she had to call there a couple of times and say, look, you know, my son's not on a scholarship. If he wants to take this class, he needs to be able to take that class. So that happened a couple of times and, you know, it was ran by the, the brothers. The first two years was truly a Catholic school, run by the brothers in the building for two years. And the last two years it was turned over to another group of, I think, parents and other supporters to keep it from closing. And the last two years were very interesting also. So what made the last two years interesting? The continuity of the school had changed because it didn't have the, but, you know, the brothers were passionate about education and their philosophy of education. And then the next two years, I think it was more around how can this be run more like a college campus. And so if he didn't, there was very little supervision in my junior year and my senior year, so hell, we don't we didn't want to go to class, we didn't go. And I remember we had our own, we had our own, the singers had our own lounge. And of course you could smoke in the lounge. Some of the folks had, had pipes and word got out that they're not just smoking tobacco. So just a lot of disarray. Okay. I think relative to the first two years, the second two years, but any rate, at the end of the day, it was, the education was, was clear enough from a college prep perspective that I was able to go to Purdue based on the education I got at. So you must have been a good student. Yeah. What were the relations like between black and white students at the cathedral? I think the bigger challenge, well, the race question is pretty much the same everywhere. I think for me my own my challenge had more to do with not coming out of those traditional grade schools. So, I got there, you know, I did did not come out of those those spaces. So I didn't have any relationships coming from those spaces. I didn't play sports. Most of the black students who went to cathedral on some kind of sports scholarship, not all of them, but though they had their own relationship with the relates to sports or those school relationships from prior to coming to cathedral that had these relations space. I didn't come with that. I did have a small group of friends that was a mixed group of black kids and white kids. And so I didn't have any racial related challenges in the space other than the typical ones that you have with race, which often are, can you be act more like us? Yeah, that's just, you know, typical. So, you went to Purdue? Why did you pick Purdue? Purdue. That my counselor came to me. I think I was a junior. Might have been a senior. She said, Do you want to go to the college And at that time, you know, it was clear I had three choices. One college, fast food, military. And you graduated from high school in what year? I want to say 75. 76 maybe. Okay. And of course, the Vietnam era was winding down. Yeah. But it was still loud in our space. Loud in our community. You know, we had a lot of conversations in the community level with other young black men about Muhammad. Ali was a prominent figure in our community. We are we going to go to the war? Were we not going to go to war? We're going to go to Canada. So we had a really strong anti war voice in our community, so the idea of going to the military was way on the list. The idea of going to work at Burger King of Hardy, that didn't feel really like something I wanted to do. And so when the counsel came and said, hey produce recruiting engineering students, I had no idea what engineer was and they're going to pay for with some scholarship money. And then they asked me if I just had the question I remember asked, how much do they make and whatever it was, it sounded like a lot of money at the time. I said, yes, sign me up And that's pretty much how I ended up studying engineering and how I end up going to produce. So what type of engineering? Electrical engineering. Okay. And you were there for two years? Did two years there? Maybe 2.5 Took it with the ass kicking for sure. One, culturally, I'll start with the cultural component, which is, you know, black urban youth in a predominantly white community 24 hours a day. And, you know, my first experience with working and predominant white spaces with cathedral, but it was only part of the day you returned back to your block at the end of the day. So that was one. And then I would probably also say, clearly the education was easy for me, so I didn't really have to study and they got to, but it was a whole other ball game. So my freshman year was a total disaster. And then I stayed my sophomore years just actually spent the summer up there alone my peers that went home for the summer. I just was checking to see, can I do this, You know, do I have an me to actually do engineering. And I think I took physics in the summer and I think did great in it. And that was okay, restore my sense of confidence about it. So. Then I moved off campus, another mistake, sophomore year, so we were big guys off campus and the second year was held. So finished the second year and then came home, set out for a semester, trying to get my head back on my my shoulders and again with my mother that I provided the kind of loving and nurturing for my recovery. And then I went back and then I think I did a year. I did my junior year part time. Now, mind you, that was back during the IPY? Yeah, that was back during the apartheid era. And went to school with a bunch of students at that time from overseas. And so that's how I became actually more cognizant of what was going on in the world outside of the US. So, by apartheid era, are you talking about South Africa? Africa, the United States, South Africa in particular. Zimbabwe. So, there were students studying engineering from Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Iran. And we had a whole table in our study room from these young men and women, mostly males from around the world. That just provided a broadening education for me around what's going on in the world. So you attended IUPUI for three years? Approximately three. I quit one year. So were you aware of PI's history that they basically came into existence by buying up the homes of African Americans and relocating them out of there? And Ted, not till maybe my senior year. I think that was the year. I don't know if you know John Lance, but he was over the YMCA. I do actually, yeah. Met him. Yeah, he was held a YMCA back when I was I once said maybe a senior. Uh huh. And I went to a lecture that began to expose some of that, that history. So Right. Come to know it late in my academic career. Did that have any influence on the way you thought about community and your own role in the community When you look at the example of how IUPUI came into existence. Yeah. Of course, older now, I'd probably say you take the local experience you tie with the exposure to international, global issues. Then you just have a world view that don't separate these. Of course we all know UPI has a history that hopefully they are ashamed of. And hopefully they're making some efforts to pursue some form of reparation of those behavior. The jury is out, but you are very much informed by it, but not not shocked by it. Does that make sense? So, my neighbor, when I was a kid, my speaking in that area area, my another person that I failed to mention that had a lot of impact on me as a kid was my next door neighbor and she's the, the mother of, I think his name was Sonny who, who owned the sunset and also was a major player in the Pea shaped space. So that history of, of land grab, it was talked about actually on our block as all that was taking place. So shape space, Shape, Pre, Fuji Lottery. Oh, the oh, the gambling, the financing vachanism that was illegal in our communities that took place. Was space illegal lottery? Yeah. Well, if depending on who's run the law. Oh, illegal. Right. Course, the state of Indiana state was illegal. Right. Right. So you mentioned John Lens. Did you know him very well? Was a strong word but I would I would say well enough to say I will call him one of the mentors two for strength. Just had a courage about a strength about him that you had to at least as a black man admirer. Didn't work directly with him. But I do remember once I gave, I was giving a lecture myself as a student on campus. And he was in the audience. And there was a kid, a young, not a kid, a young person there writing down what I was saying. And John came out with just say, look man, when people come in and they take notes like that, just quit talking. Just wait till they leave. And I hadn't even considered that as an option. And so that was the one of the pieces I would say as relates to that. He also, he was a hell of a reader. So some of the books he mentioned, Doctor Ben, he might even be here somewhere. Black Man Now was also very impactful. But the most impactful piece was the courage of his leadership. And probably also not, you know, I know more about John now through others, but, and all of us are human. So I think his impact was mostly by not knowing him or not knowing him well. Know both his wives, his children, and of course the ten P Y was really intended to serve the black community, so it was a bit under resourced compared to some of the other facilities in town. Okay, so you meant, I know I'm going to flog this. You met hockey booty. It was the founder of the third world press which you did mention when you were a junior in college. I assume that's when you're at IUPUI? Correct. We were having a conference. The Black Student Union and the National Society Black Engineers held a conference, and we brought hockey and others in to that conference. And at that time, I was the president of the local chapter of the National Society Black Engineers at IUPI. They invited us in to partner with the Black Student Union to hold this conference. So you were already emerging as a leader when you were a student without your PUI? Oh, yeah. I was, you know, I was on the engineering side of it mostly. And then what came with that? And at that time, a lot of that was not so much about history as it was providing spaces for engineering students, black engineering students to access traditional corporate spaces. And they asked us to participate with the Black Student Union. That's why I met some other close friends of mine during college that expanded my historical understanding. And that's how it comes to me, kee, through that workshop. And then at that time, you know, it was the only publishing, you know, you didn't, black books weren't in Barnes and Noble. So Third World Press published books that were really aimed at the African American reader and by African American authors? Yes. Okay. And the other thing is they were not, you know, pre Amazon, pre Internet, Black books were not available in the bookstores. And so a friend of ours would go to Chicago and bring back books in some as house. And so that's how we ended up with having access to some of those materials because we just had a person going to pick those up and then when they had events there we would, would go to Thirweth press visit, have those events and just build more more those particular relationships we had actually invited hockey back ourselves two or three times over the course of maybe six, seven year period to come and participate in more programs. But you remember what years you were at IUPUI approximately? Let's see. Let's ask these hard questions, man. Let's see, I went to grade school 62 at eight years, 70 had four more years. 74 went to Purdue for a couple of years. 76, 77. So I would say from 77, 82 somewhere in there. 80, yeah. 70 because I quit in 1980, so I'll probably say 70 late 70s. Early 80s, yeah. Thank you. So when it was an evolving campus and lots of parking lots and ride, there was still actually a liquor store on campus before they built a fancy building, so. Um, and you continue to screen T shirts? Yeah, yeah, screen T shirts all through college.

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Did you have any brothers or sisters? Yep. I have two brothers, three brothers actually two younger than me and one older than mine. And do they still live locally? Yes. They they're local. I think Ronnie who will never live with us, I think he's still in town. And then Michael and it's Dan and my two younger brothers. Okay. And you told me you were married. They have married and your children are their names. Nandi who lives in San Francisco, happens to be here this week, so I'll be visiting with her today. And Dia, who's also love for he's 33. So you grew up in Indianapolis and you told me where your house was. What do you remember about the neighborhood you grew up in? Well, you know, I thought it was a good neighborhood. It's we, the boys, myself and my brothers were often at the heart of things that were taking place that some of our neighbors felt who did that go over and contact Miss Taylor and see what her boys were up to. So we were generally part of that neighborhood group of boys that were in the mischief. But it was, was a good experience. The same neighbors for gosh, stable neighborhood, same group of kids from kindergarten through eighth grade. You know, we did what children do. We have Riverside Neighborhood. The Riverside Center, also at that time had a lot of activity, so I learned how to swim there. And that Riverside Center is located where? Riverside and 23rd Riverside roughly right there where where the golf course is at. So we had activity like that we would go to just do with the kind of thing boys did in neighborhoods. Of course, that was there were gangs in the neighborhood, but it was pre, all the, all the gun violence. So there were, gosh, I can't think of the neighbor particular gang that was real prevalent in the neighborhood that we always had to be cautious, be aware of whenever we went over to the center. Yeah, so that's that's pretty much all I said about the neighborhood. Some there were some new friends were, you know, some were real close friends and others weren't as close. I probably said most of my colleagues were probably a little bit more on the nerdy side, how they we label them these days. Meaning they like to read. Read, yeah, play chess. We did a lot of chess playing. We ran the dice game on the front porch. My mother was at work, you know, stuff like that. So I'm going to talk a little bit about your pre collegiate education. You attended Indianapolis Public School School, 44? Yeah. It was located at 2:03 three Sugar Grove Avenue. Yeah, on the near west side. It's now it's now the Global Prep Academy. Somebody looks it up. Do you remember what year you started at school? 44. I assume it was first grade, but yeah. So 57 I was born I was five years old. Probably 62. Okay. And so add nine years of that, come out 71. Okay. So and school 44 was mostly black school is that right? Not only Black school. There are very few white kids there and very few white teachers there. One of the teachers was Mr. Mark Shoemaker? Correct. And he was white? Yeah. He taught you in the seventh and eighth grade, if I looked up right. Yeah. You sort of mentioned this before, but can you talk about the impact of Mr. Shoemaker had on you? Oh, yeah. It was really was Aj one his passion for his craft. Now, we had in the in the shop class, it was, you know, he was not what I would call a disciplinarian. So there were some members of our class that didn't want to learn anything. And so he just said, okay, yak bullish it over here. And these other young folks I'll work with develop. We learned how to do printing press. We learn screen printing. Photography was one of my favorite that led me to actually purchase my own dark room. And then I actually got into photography in a heavy way from that experience. But it was the screen printing and the abilities to make money. I was always looking for a hustle and it was the abilities to make money that that had the screen printing stay with me from the eighth grade on. And he also would come and hang out in the neighborhood and he spent time on the block, just chopping it up. And so is that unusual for oh, oh, no teacher to be hanging out in the neighborhood? I had no teachers to ever hang out in the neighborhood except for him. Yeah, Black or white. And he was young, you know, He was just fresh out of college. So, yeah, that was a significant impact on my development. So on the seventh grade, that's when you started your first screening T shirt company, right? I think I started in the seventh. De might have been the eighth grade. Uh huh. And I don't quite remember what the shirt was. I had printed, clearly, we didn't make any money. But I do remember and I kept tinkering with it, and it really, I sold T shirts when I was in high school, different events that were taking place in high school. So I always was, was dancing with the T shirt piece there. And I think it really took off for me. I think I was a freshman at produced and I had tied a deal down with a record store that was downtown near Murphy's, and it was right down the corner. And I decided I'm going to print the zodiac T shirts. They were real popular back during that period, and I printed some samples. And I walked around the block where Murphy's in this record store was at like three or four times to get the courage to go in and try to sell these shirts to the owner. And I finally went in and he said, we don't buy stolen property here No, I said I stole print in the basement. So he listened and then, I mean, no shirt sold like crazy. And that was when I was convinced that I had something that could work in business. My mother got sick of me printing T shirt because she thought I was in my way. We would I would run out of her basement, actually. Uh huh. And said, are you you need to put these damn T shirts down. Get back to your education because you felt it was having a negative impact on me graduating. Probably slowed down my my graduation period because I was always selling T shirts. So when you were at school, 44, that was grades one through eight? Yeah. All right. So were there any other teachers there other than Mr. Shumaker, who you look back and think they made a difference in my life? Yeah. The one that comes to mind is Mr. Seabury. Seabury, Yeah. He was the Dane and I'm not really sure exactly what it was about. Well, actually two Mr. Seabury who we did printing work for the for the office out of the shop. And so we were always engaging with him and maybe also because he was the school disciplinarian that you were always having to interface with. Now I will also say back in that period, they had decided to categorize the students based on their perceived academic excellence. Our group was called the pace setter, so we were supposed to be the smart kids and actually backfiring on because it actually created an atmosphere where we were always doing things that were rebellious. Of course, we never got blamed for it was the other team. Another team, we called the troop. So, whenever we were doing something scandalous, they would always go looking for these other, other kids to do that. Also, another teacher comes to mind is the math teach, our homeroom teacher, who was a math teacher, I cannot remember his name right now, but he, he had a lot we would sing in the classroom. And he had these songs he wanted us to sing, gosh. And one of the songs he had to stop on the floor, the principal would come and said, you can't sing that song nomore, because it was caused too much distraction. So those were be the ones that stand out. And I had an English teacher. Whose name go? I can't remember now. But she also was impactful based on her, I remember this like it was yesterday when she talked about the, it was a history class and that the reason the United States dropped the nuclear weapons on Japan was because these people were people of color. And it was just so it was such an impactful statement but her name escapes me. But she's talking about Osha Managasaki in 1945, correct? Yeah, Yeah. So do you feel like you got a good education at school? 44, yeah. But you know, I always was. I had a passion for learning. I just came to the space. Mm hmm. Inquisitive and wanted to learn, so I didn't have to be motivated to learn. So yeah, that I would have gotten a good education probably any place I was that where education would be available. And when did you finish eighth grade? Probably 62, I think. Okay. So now 60 let's see, probably 707071, somewhere there. Okay. So, you were there at school 44 after the Supreme Court's landmark, Brown versus Board of Education. Yeah, that's how I end up at a cathedral. So, I wanted to talk about cathedral. So, how did you end up at cathedral because of the Brown decision? Well, you know, they wanted I spent the summer prior to going to freshman year at George Washington High School. I felt like I got played. Let me start with that. My mother played. Me and her boyfriend, it was, it was a beautiful play. What parents do when they trying to make sure that children are going astray. But I went to George Wing High School for the summer. Took World history one and worldtory two. Oh, it was a rough class. It was hot, it was summer, it was boring. The teacher taught the first session and had promised us something, I'm not sure what it was. And then the second teacher came in and said, oh, I don't have any record of that promise. And that just I slept through the whole rest of the summer after that experience, but they were going to send us to manual high school. If my mother and a boyfriend say you want to go to cathedral, and at that time, cathedral was all boys school and private and Catholic. Private and Catholic. It was on Manion Street. H I suspect that some of that was an effort to their own form of birth control, because you interested in all the young girls in the neighborhood, began some first exploration with the opposite sex. What's rolling in the school? I look at the prets, I said, Mom, what are the girls at Girls school School here. But you know the oldest child. One of the things I think often with the oldest child, you start whatever you start, you finish. So I went to school there and did four years there and that was that. So but your mom had to pay tuition? Yes. You do? Yeah. So that was a sacrifice on her part to put you there? Yes, she had paid for. And we had some experiences there through a racial lamp, where she had to call there a couple of times and say, look, you know, my son's not on a scholarship. If he wants to take this class, he needs to be able to take that class. So that happened a couple of times and, you know, it was ran by the, the brothers. The first two years was truly a Catholic school, run by the brothers in the building for two years. And the last two years it was turned over to another group of, I think, parents and other supporters to keep it from closing. And the last two years were very interesting also. So what made the last two years interesting? The continuity of the school had changed because it didn't have the, but, you know, the brothers were passionate about education and their philosophy of education. And then the next two years, I think it was more around how can this be run more like a college campus. And so if he didn't, there was very little supervision in my junior year and my senior year, so hell, we don't we didn't want to go to class, we didn't go. And I remember we had our own, we had our own, the singers had our own lounge. And of course you could smoke in the lounge. Some of the folks had, had pipes and word got out that they're not just smoking tobacco. So just a lot of disarray. Okay. I think relative to the first two years, the second two years, but any rate, at the end of the day, it was, the education was, was clear enough from a college prep perspective that I was able to go to Purdue based on the education I got at. So you must have been a good student. Yeah. What were the relations like between black and white students at the cathedral? I think the bigger challenge, well, the race question is pretty much the same everywhere. I think for me my own my challenge had more to do with not coming out of those traditional grade schools. So, I got there, you know, I did did not come out of those those spaces. So I didn't have any relationships coming from those spaces. I didn't play sports. Most of the black students who went to cathedral on some kind of sports scholarship, not all of them, but though they had their own relationship with the relates to sports or those school relationships from prior to coming to cathedral that had these relations space. I didn't come with that. I did have a small group of friends that was a mixed group of black kids and white kids. And so I didn't have any racial related challenges in the space other than the typical ones that you have with race, which often are, can you be act more like us? Yeah, that's just, you know, typical. So, you went to Purdue? Why did you pick Purdue? Purdue. That my counselor came to me. I think I was a junior. Might have been a senior. She said, Do you want to go to the college And at that time, you know, it was clear I had three choices. One college, fast food, military. And you graduated from high school in what year? I want to say 75. 76 maybe. Okay. And of course, the Vietnam era was winding down. Yeah. But it was still loud in our space. Loud in our community. You know, we had a lot of conversations in the community level with other young black men about Muhammad. Ali was a prominent figure in our community. We are we going to go to the war? Were we not going to go to war? We're going to go to Canada. So we had a really strong anti war voice in our community, so the idea of going to the military was way on the list. The idea of going to work at Burger King of Hardy, that didn't feel really like something I wanted to do. And so when the counsel came and said, hey produce recruiting engineering students, I had no idea what engineer was and they're going to pay for with some scholarship money. And then they asked me if I just had the question I remember asked, how much do they make and whatever it was, it sounded like a lot of money at the time. I said, yes, sign me up And that's pretty much how I ended up studying engineering and how I end up going to produce. So what type of engineering? Electrical engineering. Okay. And you were there for two years? Did two years there? Maybe 2.5 Took it with the ass kicking for sure. One, culturally, I'll start with the cultural component, which is, you know, black urban youth in a predominantly white community 24 hours a day. And, you know, my first experience with working and predominant white spaces with cathedral, but it was only part of the day you returned back to your block at the end of the day. So that was one. And then I would probably also say, clearly the education was easy for me, so I didn't really have to study and they got to, but it was a whole other ball game. So my freshman year was a total disaster. And then I stayed my sophomore years just actually spent the summer up there alone my peers that went home for the summer. I just was checking to see, can I do this, You know, do I have an me to actually do engineering. And I think I took physics in the summer and I think did great in it. And that was okay, restore my sense of confidence about it. So. Then I moved off campus, another mistake, sophomore year, so we were big guys off campus and the second year was held. So finished the second year and then came home, set out for a semester, trying to get my head back on my my shoulders and again with my mother that I provided the kind of loving and nurturing for my recovery. And then I went back and then I think I did a year. I did my junior year part time. Now, mind you, that was back during the IPY? Yeah, that was back during the apartheid era. And went to school with a bunch of students at that time from overseas. And so that's how I became actually more cognizant of what was going on in the world outside of the US. So, by apartheid era, are you talking about South Africa? Africa, the United States, South Africa in particular. Zimbabwe. So, there were students studying engineering from Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Iran. And we had a whole table in our study room from these young men and women, mostly males from around the world. That just provided a broadening education for me around what's going on in the world. So you attended IUPUI for three years? Approximately three. I quit one year. So were you aware of PI's history that they basically came into existence by buying up the homes of African Americans and relocating them out of there? And Ted, not till maybe my senior year. I think that was the year. I don't know if you know John Lance, but he was over the YMCA. I do actually, yeah. Met him. Yeah, he was held a YMCA back when I was I once said maybe a senior. Uh huh. And I went to a lecture that began to expose some of that, that history. So Right. Come to know it late in my academic career. Did that have any influence on the way you thought about community and your own role in the community When you look at the example of how IUPUI came into existence. Yeah. Of course, older now, I'd probably say you take the local experience you tie with the exposure to international, global issues. Then you just have a world view that don't separate these. Of course we all know UPI has a history that hopefully they are ashamed of. And hopefully they're making some efforts to pursue some form of reparation of those behavior. The jury is out, but you are very much informed by it, but not not shocked by it. Does that make sense? So, my neighbor, when I was a kid, my speaking in that area area, my another person that I failed to mention that had a lot of impact on me as a kid was my next door neighbor and she's the, the mother of, I think his name was Sonny who, who owned the sunset and also was a major player in the Pea shaped space. So that history of, of land grab, it was talked about actually on our block as all that was taking place. So shape space, Shape, Pre, Fuji Lottery. Oh, the oh, the gambling, the financing vachanism that was illegal in our communities that took place. Was space illegal lottery? Yeah. Well, if depending on who's run the law. Oh, illegal. Right. Course, the state of Indiana state was illegal. Right. Right. So you mentioned John Lens. Did you know him very well? Was a strong word but I would I would say well enough to say I will call him one of the mentors two for strength. Just had a courage about a strength about him that you had to at least as a black man admirer. Didn't work directly with him. But I do remember once I gave, I was giving a lecture myself as a student on campus. And he was in the audience. And there was a kid, a young, not a kid, a young person there writing down what I was saying. And John came out with just say, look man, when people come in and they take notes like that, just quit talking. Just wait till they leave. And I hadn't even considered that as an option. And so that was the one of the pieces I would say as relates to that. He also, he was a hell of a reader. So some of the books he mentioned, Doctor Ben, he might even be here somewhere. Black Man Now was also very impactful. But the most impactful piece was the courage of his leadership. And probably also not, you know, I know more about John now through others, but, and all of us are human. So I think his impact was mostly by not knowing him or not knowing him well. Know both his wives, his children, and of course the ten P Y was really intended to serve the black community, so it was a bit under resourced compared to some of the other facilities in town. Okay, so you meant, I know I'm going to flog this. You met hockey booty. It was the founder of the third world press which you did mention when you were a junior in college. I assume that's when you're at IUPUI? Correct. We were having a conference. The Black Student Union and the National Society Black Engineers held a conference, and we brought hockey and others in to that conference. And at that time, I was the president of the local chapter of the National Society Black Engineers at IUPI. They invited us in to partner with the Black Student Union to hold this conference. So you were already emerging as a leader when you were a student without your PUI? Oh, yeah. I was, you know, I was on the engineering side of it mostly. And then what came with that? And at that time, a lot of that was not so much about history as it was providing spaces for engineering students, black engineering students to access traditional corporate spaces. And they asked us to participate with the Black Student Union. That's why I met some other close friends of mine during college that expanded my historical understanding. And that's how it comes to me, kee, through that workshop. And then at that time, you know, it was the only publishing, you know, you didn't, black books weren't in Barnes and Noble. So Third World Press published books that were really aimed at the African American reader and by African American authors? Yes. Okay. And the other thing is they were not, you know, pre Amazon, pre Internet, Black books were not available in the bookstores. And so a friend of ours would go to Chicago and bring back books in some as house. And so that's how we ended up with having access to some of those materials because we just had a person going to pick those up and then when they had events there we would, would go to Thirweth press visit, have those events and just build more more those particular relationships we had actually invited hockey back ourselves two or three times over the course of maybe six, seven year period to come and participate in more programs. But you remember what years you were at IUPUI approximately? Let's see. Let's ask these hard questions, man. Let's see, I went to grade school 62 at eight years, 70 had four more years. 74 went to Purdue for a couple of years. 76, 77. So I would say from 77, 82 somewhere in there. 80, yeah. 70 because I quit in 1980, so I'll probably say 70 late 70s. Early 80s, yeah. Thank you. So when it was an evolving campus and lots of parking lots and ride, there was still actually a liquor store on campus before they built a fancy building, so. Um, and you continue to screen T shirts? Yeah, yeah, screen T shirts all through college.

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Did you have any brothers or sisters? Yep. I have two brothers, three brothers actually two younger than me and one older than mine. And do they still live locally? Yes. They they're local. I think Ronnie who will never live with us, I think he's still in town. And then Michael and it's Dan and my two younger brothers. Okay. And you told me you were married. They have married and your children are their names. Nandi who lives in San Francisco, happens to be here this week, so I'll be visiting with her today. And Dia, who's also love for he's 33. So you grew up in Indianapolis and you told me where your house was. What do you remember about the neighborhood you grew up in? Well, you know, I thought it was a good neighborhood. It's we, the boys, myself and my brothers were often at the heart of things that were taking place that some of our neighbors felt who did that go over and contact Miss Taylor and see what her boys were up to. So we were generally part of that neighborhood group of boys that were in the mischief. But it was, was a good experience. The same neighbors for gosh, stable neighborhood, same group of kids from kindergarten through eighth grade. You know, we did what children do. We have Riverside Neighborhood. The Riverside Center, also at that time had a lot of activity, so I learned how to swim there. And that Riverside Center is located where? Riverside and 23rd Riverside roughly right there where where the golf course is at. So we had activity like that we would go to just do with the kind of thing boys did in neighborhoods. Of course, that was there were gangs in the neighborhood, but it was pre, all the, all the gun violence. So there were, gosh, I can't think of the neighbor particular gang that was real prevalent in the neighborhood that we always had to be cautious, be aware of whenever we went over to the center. Yeah, so that's that's pretty much all I said about the neighborhood. Some there were some new friends were, you know, some were real close friends and others weren't as close. I probably said most of my colleagues were probably a little bit more on the nerdy side, how they we label them these days. Meaning they like to read. Read, yeah, play chess. We did a lot of chess playing. We ran the dice game on the front porch. My mother was at work, you know, stuff like that. So I'm going to talk a little bit about your pre collegiate education. You attended Indianapolis Public School School, 44? Yeah. It was located at 2:03 three Sugar Grove Avenue. Yeah, on the near west side. It's now it's now the Global Prep Academy. Somebody looks it up. Do you remember what year you started at school? 44. I assume it was first grade, but yeah. So 57 I was born I was five years old. Probably 62. Okay. And so add nine years of that, come out 71. Okay. So and school 44 was mostly black school is that right? Not only Black school. There are very few white kids there and very few white teachers there. One of the teachers was Mr. Mark Shoemaker? Correct. And he was white? Yeah. He taught you in the seventh and eighth grade, if I looked up right. Yeah. You sort of mentioned this before, but can you talk about the impact of Mr. Shoemaker had on you? Oh, yeah. It was really was Aj one his passion for his craft. Now, we had in the in the shop class, it was, you know, he was not what I would call a disciplinarian. So there were some members of our class that didn't want to learn anything. And so he just said, okay, yak bullish it over here. And these other young folks I'll work with develop. We learned how to do printing press. We learn screen printing. Photography was one of my favorite that led me to actually purchase my own dark room. And then I actually got into photography in a heavy way from that experience. But it was the screen printing and the abilities to make money. I was always looking for a hustle and it was the abilities to make money that that had the screen printing stay with me from the eighth grade on. And he also would come and hang out in the neighborhood and he spent time on the block, just chopping it up. And so is that unusual for oh, oh, no teacher to be hanging out in the neighborhood? I had no teachers to ever hang out in the neighborhood except for him. Yeah, Black or white. And he was young, you know, He was just fresh out of college. So, yeah, that was a significant impact on my development. So on the seventh grade, that's when you started your first screening T shirt company, right? I think I started in the seventh. De might have been the eighth grade. Uh huh. And I don't quite remember what the shirt was. I had printed, clearly, we didn't make any money. But I do remember and I kept tinkering with it, and it really, I sold T shirts when I was in high school, different events that were taking place in high school. So I always was, was dancing with the T shirt piece there. And I think it really took off for me. I think I was a freshman at produced and I had tied a deal down with a record store that was downtown near Murphy's, and it was right down the corner. And I decided I'm going to print the zodiac T shirts. They were real popular back during that period, and I printed some samples. And I walked around the block where Murphy's in this record store was at like three or four times to get the courage to go in and try to sell these shirts to the owner. And I finally went in and he said, we don't buy stolen property here No, I said I stole print in the basement. So he listened and then, I mean, no shirt sold like crazy. And that was when I was convinced that I had something that could work in business. My mother got sick of me printing T shirt because she thought I was in my way. We would I would run out of her basement, actually. Uh huh. And said, are you you need to put these damn T shirts down. Get back to your education because you felt it was having a negative impact on me graduating. Probably slowed down my my graduation period because I was always selling T shirts. So when you were at school, 44, that was grades one through eight? Yeah. All right. So were there any other teachers there other than Mr. Shumaker, who you look back and think they made a difference in my life? Yeah. The one that comes to mind is Mr. Seabury. Seabury, Yeah. He was the Dane and I'm not really sure exactly what it was about. Well, actually two Mr. Seabury who we did printing work for the for the office out of the shop. And so we were always engaging with him and maybe also because he was the school disciplinarian that you were always having to interface with. Now I will also say back in that period, they had decided to categorize the students based on their perceived academic excellence. Our group was called the pace setter, so we were supposed to be the smart kids and actually backfiring on because it actually created an atmosphere where we were always doing things that were rebellious. Of course, we never got blamed for it was the other team. Another team, we called the troop. So, whenever we were doing something scandalous, they would always go looking for these other, other kids to do that. Also, another teacher comes to mind is the math teach, our homeroom teacher, who was a math teacher, I cannot remember his name right now, but he, he had a lot we would sing in the classroom. And he had these songs he wanted us to sing, gosh. And one of the songs he had to stop on the floor, the principal would come and said, you can't sing that song nomore, because it was caused too much distraction. So those were be the ones that stand out. And I had an English teacher. Whose name go? I can't remember now. But she also was impactful based on her, I remember this like it was yesterday when she talked about the, it was a history class and that the reason the United States dropped the nuclear weapons on Japan was because these people were people of color. And it was just so it was such an impactful statement but her name escapes me. But she's talking about Osha Managasaki in 1945, correct? Yeah, Yeah. So do you feel like you got a good education at school? 44, yeah. But you know, I always was. I had a passion for learning. I just came to the space. Mm hmm. Inquisitive and wanted to learn, so I didn't have to be motivated to learn. So yeah, that I would have gotten a good education probably any place I was that where education would be available. And when did you finish eighth grade? Probably 62, I think. Okay. So now 60 let's see, probably 707071, somewhere there. Okay. So, you were there at school 44 after the Supreme Court's landmark, Brown versus Board of Education. Yeah, that's how I end up at a cathedral. So, I wanted to talk about cathedral. So, how did you end up at cathedral because of the Brown decision? Well, you know, they wanted I spent the summer prior to going to freshman year at George Washington High School. I felt like I got played. Let me start with that. My mother played. Me and her boyfriend, it was, it was a beautiful play. What parents do when they trying to make sure that children are going astray. But I went to George Wing High School for the summer. Took World history one and worldtory two. Oh, it was a rough class. It was hot, it was summer, it was boring. The teacher taught the first session and had promised us something, I'm not sure what it was. And then the second teacher came in and said, oh, I don't have any record of that promise. And that just I slept through the whole rest of the summer after that experience, but they were going to send us to manual high school. If my mother and a boyfriend say you want to go to cathedral, and at that time, cathedral was all boys school and private and Catholic. Private and Catholic. It was on Manion Street. H I suspect that some of that was an effort to their own form of birth control, because you interested in all the young girls in the neighborhood, began some first exploration with the opposite sex. What's rolling in the school? I look at the prets, I said, Mom, what are the girls at Girls school School here. But you know the oldest child. One of the things I think often with the oldest child, you start whatever you start, you finish. So I went to school there and did four years there and that was that. So but your mom had to pay tuition? Yes. You do? Yeah. So that was a sacrifice on her part to put you there? Yes, she had paid for. And we had some experiences there through a racial lamp, where she had to call there a couple of times and say, look, you know, my son's not on a scholarship. If he wants to take this class, he needs to be able to take that class. So that happened a couple of times and, you know, it was ran by the, the brothers. The first two years was truly a Catholic school, run by the brothers in the building for two years. And the last two years it was turned over to another group of, I think, parents and other supporters to keep it from closing. And the last two years were very interesting also. So what made the last two years interesting? The continuity of the school had changed because it didn't have the, but, you know, the brothers were passionate about education and their philosophy of education. And then the next two years, I think it was more around how can this be run more like a college campus. And so if he didn't, there was very little supervision in my junior year and my senior year, so hell, we don't we didn't want to go to class, we didn't go. And I remember we had our own, we had our own, the singers had our own lounge. And of course you could smoke in the lounge. Some of the folks had, had pipes and word got out that they're not just smoking tobacco. So just a lot of disarray. Okay. I think relative to the first two years, the second two years, but any rate, at the end of the day, it was, the education was, was clear enough from a college prep perspective that I was able to go to Purdue based on the education I got at. So you must have been a good student. Yeah. What were the relations like between black and white students at the cathedral? I think the bigger challenge, well, the race question is pretty much the same everywhere. I think for me my own my challenge had more to do with not coming out of those traditional grade schools. So, I got there, you know, I did did not come out of those those spaces. So I didn't have any relationships coming from those spaces. I didn't play sports. Most of the black students who went to cathedral on some kind of sports scholarship, not all of them, but though they had their own relationship with the relates to sports or those school relationships from prior to coming to cathedral that had these relations space. I didn't come with that. I did have a small group of friends that was a mixed group of black kids and white kids. And so I didn't have any racial related challenges in the space other than the typical ones that you have with race, which often are, can you be act more like us? Yeah, that's just, you know, typical. So, you went to Purdue? Why did you pick Purdue? Purdue. That my counselor came to me. I think I was a junior. Might have been a senior. She said, Do you want to go to the college And at that time, you know, it was clear I had three choices. One college, fast food, military. And you graduated from high school in what year? I want to say 75. 76 maybe. Okay. And of course, the Vietnam era was winding down. Yeah. But it was still loud in our space. Loud in our community. You know, we had a lot of conversations in the community level with other young black men about Muhammad. Ali was a prominent figure in our community. We are we going to go to the war? Were we not going to go to war? We're going to go to Canada. So we had a really strong anti war voice in our community, so the idea of going to the military was way on the list. The idea of going to work at Burger King of Hardy, that didn't feel really like something I wanted to do. And so when the counsel came and said, hey produce recruiting engineering students, I had no idea what engineer was and they're going to pay for with some scholarship money. And then they asked me if I just had the question I remember asked, how much do they make and whatever it was, it sounded like a lot of money at the time. I said, yes, sign me up And that's pretty much how I ended up studying engineering and how I end up going to produce. So what type of engineering? Electrical engineering. Okay. And you were there for two years? Did two years there? Maybe 2.5 Took it with the ass kicking for sure. One, culturally, I'll start with the cultural component, which is, you know, black urban youth in a predominantly white community 24 hours a day. And, you know, my first experience with working and predominant white spaces with cathedral, but it was only part of the day you returned back to your block at the end of the day. So that was one. And then I would probably also say, clearly the education was easy for me, so I didn't really have to study and they got to, but it was a whole other ball game. So my freshman year was a total disaster. And then I stayed my sophomore years just actually spent the summer up there alone my peers that went home for the summer. I just was checking to see, can I do this, You know, do I have an me to actually do engineering. And I think I took physics in the summer and I think did great in it. And that was okay, restore my sense of confidence about it. So. Then I moved off campus, another mistake, sophomore year, so we were big guys off campus and the second year was held. So finished the second year and then came home, set out for a semester, trying to get my head back on my my shoulders and again with my mother that I provided the kind of loving and nurturing for my recovery. And then I went back and then I think I did a year. I did my junior year part time. Now, mind you, that was back during the IPY? Yeah, that was back during the apartheid era. And went to school with a bunch of students at that time from overseas. And so that's how I became actually more cognizant of what was going on in the world outside of the US. So, by apartheid era, are you talking about South Africa? Africa, the United States, South Africa in particular. Zimbabwe. So, there were students studying engineering from Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Iran. And we had a whole table in our study room from these young men and women, mostly males from around the world. That just provided a broadening education for me around what's going on in the world. So you attended IUPUI for three years? Approximately three. I quit one year. So were you aware of PI's history that they basically came into existence by buying up the homes of African Americans and relocating them out of there? And Ted, not till maybe my senior year. I think that was the year. I don't know if you know John Lance, but he was over the YMCA. I do actually, yeah. Met him. Yeah, he was held a YMCA back when I was I once said maybe a senior. Uh huh. And I went to a lecture that began to expose some of that, that history. So Right. Come to know it late in my academic career. Did that have any influence on the way you thought about community and your own role in the community When you look at the example of how IUPUI came into existence. Yeah. Of course, older now, I'd probably say you take the local experience you tie with the exposure to international, global issues. Then you just have a world view that don't separate these. Of course we all know UPI has a history that hopefully they are ashamed of. And hopefully they're making some efforts to pursue some form of reparation of those behavior. The jury is out, but you are very much informed by it, but not not shocked by it. Does that make sense? So, my neighbor, when I was a kid, my speaking in that area area, my another person that I failed to mention that had a lot of impact on me as a kid was my next door neighbor and she's the, the mother of, I think his name was Sonny who, who owned the sunset and also was a major player in the Pea shaped space. So that history of, of land grab, it was talked about actually on our block as all that was taking place. So shape space, Shape, Pre, Fuji Lottery. Oh, the oh, the gambling, the financing vachanism that was illegal in our communities that took place. Was space illegal lottery? Yeah. Well, if depending on who's run the law. Oh, illegal. Right. Course, the state of Indiana state was illegal. Right. Right. So you mentioned John Lens. Did you know him very well? Was a strong word but I would I would say well enough to say I will call him one of the mentors two for strength. Just had a courage about a strength about him that you had to at least as a black man admirer. Didn't work directly with him. But I do remember once I gave, I was giving a lecture myself as a student on campus. And he was in the audience. And there was a kid, a young, not a kid, a young person there writing down what I was saying. And John came out with just say, look man, when people come in and they take notes like that, just quit talking. Just wait till they leave. And I hadn't even considered that as an option. And so that was the one of the pieces I would say as relates to that. He also, he was a hell of a reader. So some of the books he mentioned, Doctor Ben, he might even be here somewhere. Black Man Now was also very impactful. But the most impactful piece was the courage of his leadership. And probably also not, you know, I know more about John now through others, but, and all of us are human. So I think his impact was mostly by not knowing him or not knowing him well. Know both his wives, his children, and of course the ten P Y was really intended to serve the black community, so it was a bit under resourced compared to some of the other facilities in town. Okay, so you meant, I know I'm going to flog this. You met hockey booty. It was the founder of the third world press which you did mention when you were a junior in college. I assume that's when you're at IUPUI? Correct. We were having a conference. The Black Student Union and the National Society Black Engineers held a conference, and we brought hockey and others in to that conference. And at that time, I was the president of the local chapter of the National Society Black Engineers at IUPI. They invited us in to partner with the Black Student Union to hold this conference. So you were already emerging as a leader when you were a student without your PUI? Oh, yeah. I was, you know, I was on the engineering side of it mostly. And then what came with that? And at that time, a lot of that was not so much about history as it was providing spaces for engineering students, black engineering students to access traditional corporate spaces. And they asked us to participate with the Black Student Union. That's why I met some other close friends of mine during college that expanded my historical understanding. And that's how it comes to me, kee, through that workshop. And then at that time, you know, it was the only publishing, you know, you didn't, black books weren't in Barnes and Noble. So Third World Press published books that were really aimed at the African American reader and by African American authors? Yes. Okay. And the other thing is they were not, you know, pre Amazon, pre Internet, Black books were not available in the bookstores. And so a friend of ours would go to Chicago and bring back books in some as house. And so that's how we ended up with having access to some of those materials because we just had a person going to pick those up and then when they had events there we would, would go to Thirweth press visit, have those events and just build more more those particular relationships we had actually invited hockey back ourselves two or three times over the course of maybe six, seven year period to come and participate in more programs. But you remember what years you were at IUPUI approximately? Let's see. Let's ask these hard questions, man. Let's see, I went to grade school 62 at eight years, 70 had four more years. 74 went to Purdue for a couple of years. 76, 77. So I would say from 77, 82 somewhere in there. 80, yeah. 70 because I quit in 1980, so I'll probably say 70 late 70s. Early 80s, yeah. Thank you. So when it was an evolving campus and lots of parking lots and ride, there was still actually a liquor store on campus before they built a fancy building, so. Um, and you continue to screen T shirts? Yeah, yeah, screen T shirts all through college.

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Did you have any brothers or sisters? Yep. I have two brothers, three brothers actually two younger than me and one older than mine. And do they still live locally? Yes. They they're local. I think Ronnie who will never live with us, I think he's still in town. And then Michael and it's Dan and my two younger brothers. Okay. And you told me you were married. They have married and your children are their names. Nandi who lives in San Francisco, happens to be here this week, so I'll be visiting with her today. And Dia, who's also love for he's 33. So you grew up in Indianapolis and you told me where your house was. What do you remember about the neighborhood you grew up in? Well, you know, I thought it was a good neighborhood. It's we, the boys, myself and my brothers were often at the heart of things that were taking place that some of our neighbors felt who did that go over and contact Miss Taylor and see what her boys were up to. So we were generally part of that neighborhood group of boys that were in the mischief. But it was, was a good experience. The same neighbors for gosh, stable neighborhood, same group of kids from kindergarten through eighth grade. You know, we did what children do. We have Riverside Neighborhood. The Riverside Center, also at that time had a lot of activity, so I learned how to swim there. And that Riverside Center is located where? Riverside and 23rd Riverside roughly right there where where the golf course is at. So we had activity like that we would go to just do with the kind of thing boys did in neighborhoods. Of course, that was there were gangs in the neighborhood, but it was pre, all the, all the gun violence. So there were, gosh, I can't think of the neighbor particular gang that was real prevalent in the neighborhood that we always had to be cautious, be aware of whenever we went over to the center. Yeah, so that's that's pretty much all I said about the neighborhood. Some there were some new friends were, you know, some were real close friends and others weren't as close. I probably said most of my colleagues were probably a little bit more on the nerdy side, how they we label them these days. Meaning they like to read. Read, yeah, play chess. We did a lot of chess playing. We ran the dice game on the front porch. My mother was at work, you know, stuff like that. So I'm going to talk a little bit about your pre collegiate education. You attended Indianapolis Public School School, 44? Yeah. It was located at 2:03 three Sugar Grove Avenue. Yeah, on the near west side. It's now it's now the Global Prep Academy. Somebody looks it up. Do you remember what year you started at school? 44. I assume it was first grade, but yeah. So 57 I was born I was five years old. Probably 62. Okay. And so add nine years of that, come out 71. Okay. So and school 44 was mostly black school is that right? Not only Black school. There are very few white kids there and very few white teachers there. One of the teachers was Mr. Mark Shoemaker? Correct. And he was white? Yeah. He taught you in the seventh and eighth grade, if I looked up right. Yeah. You sort of mentioned this before, but can you talk about the impact of Mr. Shoemaker had on you? Oh, yeah. It was really was Aj one his passion for his craft. Now, we had in the in the shop class, it was, you know, he was not what I would call a disciplinarian. So there were some members of our class that didn't want to learn anything. And so he just said, okay, yak bullish it over here. And these other young folks I'll work with develop. We learned how to do printing press. We learn screen printing. Photography was one of my favorite that led me to actually purchase my own dark room. And then I actually got into photography in a heavy way from that experience. But it was the screen printing and the abilities to make money. I was always looking for a hustle and it was the abilities to make money that that had the screen printing stay with me from the eighth grade on. And he also would come and hang out in the neighborhood and he spent time on the block, just chopping it up. And so is that unusual for oh, oh, no teacher to be hanging out in the neighborhood? I had no teachers to ever hang out in the neighborhood except for him. Yeah, Black or white. And he was young, you know, He was just fresh out of college. So, yeah, that was a significant impact on my development. So on the seventh grade, that's when you started your first screening T shirt company, right? I think I started in the seventh. De might have been the eighth grade. Uh huh. And I don't quite remember what the shirt was. I had printed, clearly, we didn't make any money. But I do remember and I kept tinkering with it, and it really, I sold T shirts when I was in high school, different events that were taking place in high school. So I always was, was dancing with the T shirt piece there. And I think it really took off for me. I think I was a freshman at produced and I had tied a deal down with a record store that was downtown near Murphy's, and it was right down the corner. And I decided I'm going to print the zodiac T shirts. They were real popular back during that period, and I printed some samples. And I walked around the block where Murphy's in this record store was at like three or four times to get the courage to go in and try to sell these shirts to the owner. And I finally went in and he said, we don't buy stolen property here No, I said I stole print in the basement. So he listened and then, I mean, no shirt sold like crazy. And that was when I was convinced that I had something that could work in business. My mother got sick of me printing T shirt because she thought I was in my way. We would I would run out of her basement, actually. Uh huh. And said, are you you need to put these damn T shirts down. Get back to your education because you felt it was having a negative impact on me graduating. Probably slowed down my my graduation period because I was always selling T shirts. So when you were at school, 44, that was grades one through eight? Yeah. All right. So were there any other teachers there other than Mr. Shumaker, who you look back and think they made a difference in my life? Yeah. The one that comes to mind is Mr. Seabury. Seabury, Yeah. He was the Dane and I'm not really sure exactly what it was about. Well, actually two Mr. Seabury who we did printing work for the for the office out of the shop. And so we were always engaging with him and maybe also because he was the school disciplinarian that you were always having to interface with. Now I will also say back in that period, they had decided to categorize the students based on their perceived academic excellence. Our group was called the pace setter, so we were supposed to be the smart kids and actually backfiring on because it actually created an atmosphere where we were always doing things that were rebellious. Of course, we never got blamed for it was the other team. Another team, we called the troop. So, whenever we were doing something scandalous, they would always go looking for these other, other kids to do that. Also, another teacher comes to mind is the math teach, our homeroom teacher, who was a math teacher, I cannot remember his name right now, but he, he had a lot we would sing in the classroom. And he had these songs he wanted us to sing, gosh. And one of the songs he had to stop on the floor, the principal would come and said, you can't sing that song nomore, because it was caused too much distraction. So those were be the ones that stand out. And I had an English teacher. Whose name go? I can't remember now. But she also was impactful based on her, I remember this like it was yesterday when she talked about the, it was a history class and that the reason the United States dropped the nuclear weapons on Japan was because these people were people of color. And it was just so it was such an impactful statement but her name escapes me. But she's talking about Osha Managasaki in 1945, correct? Yeah, Yeah. So do you feel like you got a good education at school? 44, yeah. But you know, I always was. I had a passion for learning. I just came to the space. Mm hmm. Inquisitive and wanted to learn, so I didn't have to be motivated to learn. So yeah, that I would have gotten a good education probably any place I was that where education would be available. And when did you finish eighth grade? Probably 62, I think. Okay. So now 60 let's see, probably 707071, somewhere there. Okay. So, you were there at school 44 after the Supreme Court's landmark, Brown versus Board of Education. Yeah, that's how I end up at a cathedral. So, I wanted to talk about cathedral. So, how did you end up at cathedral because of the Brown decision? Well, you know, they wanted I spent the summer prior to going to freshman year at George Washington High School. I felt like I got played. Let me start with that. My mother played. Me and her boyfriend, it was, it was a beautiful play. What parents do when they trying to make sure that children are going astray. But I went to George Wing High School for the summer. Took World history one and worldtory two. Oh, it was a rough class. It was hot, it was summer, it was boring. The teacher taught the first session and had promised us something, I'm not sure what it was. And then the second teacher came in and said, oh, I don't have any record of that promise. And that just I slept through the whole rest of the summer after that experience, but they were going to send us to manual high school. If my mother and a boyfriend say you want to go to cathedral, and at that time, cathedral was all boys school and private and Catholic. Private and Catholic. It was on Manion Street. H I suspect that some of that was an effort to their own form of birth control, because you interested in all the young girls in the neighborhood, began some first exploration with the opposite sex. What's rolling in the school? I look at the prets, I said, Mom, what are the girls at Girls school School here. But you know the oldest child. One of the things I think often with the oldest child, you start whatever you start, you finish. So I went to school there and did four years there and that was that. So but your mom had to pay tuition? Yes. You do? Yeah. So that was a sacrifice on her part to put you there? Yes, she had paid for. And we had some experiences there through a racial lamp, where she had to call there a couple of times and say, look, you know, my son's not on a scholarship. If he wants to take this class, he needs to be able to take that class. So that happened a couple of times and, you know, it was ran by the, the brothers. The first two years was truly a Catholic school, run by the brothers in the building for two years. And the last two years it was turned over to another group of, I think, parents and other supporters to keep it from closing. And the last two years were very interesting also. So what made the last two years interesting? The continuity of the school had changed because it didn't have the, but, you know, the brothers were passionate about education and their philosophy of education. And then the next two years, I think it was more around how can this be run more like a college campus. And so if he didn't, there was very little supervision in my junior year and my senior year, so hell, we don't we didn't want to go to class, we didn't go. And I remember we had our own, we had our own, the singers had our own lounge. And of course you could smoke in the lounge. Some of the folks had, had pipes and word got out that they're not just smoking tobacco. So just a lot of disarray. Okay. I think relative to the first two years, the second two years, but any rate, at the end of the day, it was, the education was, was clear enough from a college prep perspective that I was able to go to Purdue based on the education I got at. So you must have been a good student. Yeah. What were the relations like between black and white students at the cathedral? I think the bigger challenge, well, the race question is pretty much the same everywhere. I think for me my own my challenge had more to do with not coming out of those traditional grade schools. So, I got there, you know, I did did not come out of those those spaces. So I didn't have any relationships coming from those spaces. I didn't play sports. Most of the black students who went to cathedral on some kind of sports scholarship, not all of them, but though they had their own relationship with the relates to sports or those school relationships from prior to coming to cathedral that had these relations space. I didn't come with that. I did have a small group of friends that was a mixed group of black kids and white kids. And so I didn't have any racial related challenges in the space other than the typical ones that you have with race, which often are, can you be act more like us? Yeah, that's just, you know, typical. So, you went to Purdue? Why did you pick Purdue? Purdue. That my counselor came to me. I think I was a junior. Might have been a senior. She said, Do you want to go to the college And at that time, you know, it was clear I had three choices. One college, fast food, military. And you graduated from high school in what year? I want to say 75. 76 maybe. Okay. And of course, the Vietnam era was winding down. Yeah. But it was still loud in our space. Loud in our community. You know, we had a lot of conversations in the community level with other young black men about Muhammad. Ali was a prominent figure in our community. We are we going to go to the war? Were we not going to go to war? We're going to go to Canada. So we had a really strong anti war voice in our community, so the idea of going to the military was way on the list. The idea of going to work at Burger King of Hardy, that didn't feel really like something I wanted to do. And so when the counsel came and said, hey produce recruiting engineering students, I had no idea what engineer was and they're going to pay for with some scholarship money. And then they asked me if I just had the question I remember asked, how much do they make and whatever it was, it sounded like a lot of money at the time. I said, yes, sign me up And that's pretty much how I ended up studying engineering and how I end up going to produce. So what type of engineering? Electrical engineering. Okay. And you were there for two years? Did two years there? Maybe 2.5 Took it with the ass kicking for sure. One, culturally, I'll start with the cultural component, which is, you know, black urban youth in a predominantly white community 24 hours a day. And, you know, my first experience with working and predominant white spaces with cathedral, but it was only part of the day you returned back to your block at the end of the day. So that was one. And then I would probably also say, clearly the education was easy for me, so I didn't really have to study and they got to, but it was a whole other ball game. So my freshman year was a total disaster. And then I stayed my sophomore years just actually spent the summer up there alone my peers that went home for the summer. I just was checking to see, can I do this, You know, do I have an me to actually do engineering. And I think I took physics in the summer and I think did great in it. And that was okay, restore my sense of confidence about it. So. Then I moved off campus, another mistake, sophomore year, so we were big guys off campus and the second year was held. So finished the second year and then came home, set out for a semester, trying to get my head back on my my shoulders and again with my mother that I provided the kind of loving and nurturing for my recovery. And then I went back and then I think I did a year. I did my junior year part time. Now, mind you, that was back during the IPY? Yeah, that was back during the apartheid era. And went to school with a bunch of students at that time from overseas. And so that's how I became actually more cognizant of what was going on in the world outside of the US. So, by apartheid era, are you talking about South Africa? Africa, the United States, South Africa in particular. Zimbabwe. So, there were students studying engineering from Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Iran. And we had a whole table in our study room from these young men and women, mostly males from around the world. That just provided a broadening education for me around what's going on in the world. So you attended IUPUI for three years? Approximately three. I quit one year. So were you aware of PI's history that they basically came into existence by buying up the homes of African Americans and relocating them out of there? And Ted, not till maybe my senior year. I think that was the year. I don't know if you know John Lance, but he was over the YMCA. I do actually, yeah. Met him. Yeah, he was held a YMCA back when I was I once said maybe a senior. Uh huh. And I went to a lecture that began to expose some of that, that history. So Right. Come to know it late in my academic career. Did that have any influence on the way you thought about community and your own role in the community When you look at the example of how IUPUI came into existence. Yeah. Of course, older now, I'd probably say you take the local experience you tie with the exposure to international, global issues. Then you just have a world view that don't separate these. Of course we all know UPI has a history that hopefully they are ashamed of. And hopefully they're making some efforts to pursue some form of reparation of those behavior. The jury is out, but you are very much informed by it, but not not shocked by it. Does that make sense? So, my neighbor, when I was a kid, my speaking in that area area, my another person that I failed to mention that had a lot of impact on me as a kid was my next door neighbor and she's the, the mother of, I think his name was Sonny who, who owned the sunset and also was a major player in the Pea shaped space. So that history of, of land grab, it was talked about actually on our block as all that was taking place. So shape space, Shape, Pre, Fuji Lottery. Oh, the oh, the gambling, the financing vachanism that was illegal in our communities that took place. Was space illegal lottery? Yeah. Well, if depending on who's run the law. Oh, illegal. Right. Course, the state of Indiana state was illegal. Right. Right. So you mentioned John Lens. Did you know him very well? Was a strong word but I would I would say well enough to say I will call him one of the mentors two for strength. Just had a courage about a strength about him that you had to at least as a black man admirer. Didn't work directly with him. But I do remember once I gave, I was giving a lecture myself as a student on campus. And he was in the audience. And there was a kid, a young, not a kid, a young person there writing down what I was saying. And John came out with just say, look man, when people come in and they take notes like that, just quit talking. Just wait till they leave. And I hadn't even considered that as an option. And so that was the one of the pieces I would say as relates to that. He also, he was a hell of a reader. So some of the books he mentioned, Doctor Ben, he might even be here somewhere. Black Man Now was also very impactful. But the most impactful piece was the courage of his leadership. And probably also not, you know, I know more about John now through others, but, and all of us are human. So I think his impact was mostly by not knowing him or not knowing him well. Know both his wives, his children, and of course the ten P Y was really intended to serve the black community, so it was a bit under resourced compared to some of the other facilities in town. Okay, so you meant, I know I'm going to flog this. You met hockey booty. It was the founder of the third world press which you did mention when you were a junior in college. I assume that's when you're at IUPUI? Correct. We were having a conference. The Black Student Union and the National Society Black Engineers held a conference, and we brought hockey and others in to that conference. And at that time, I was the president of the local chapter of the National Society Black Engineers at IUPI. They invited us in to partner with the Black Student Union to hold this conference. So you were already emerging as a leader when you were a student without your PUI? Oh, yeah. I was, you know, I was on the engineering side of it mostly. And then what came with that? And at that time, a lot of that was not so much about history as it was providing spaces for engineering students, black engineering students to access traditional corporate spaces. And they asked us to participate with the Black Student Union. That's why I met some other close friends of mine during college that expanded my historical understanding. And that's how it comes to me, kee, through that workshop. And then at that time, you know, it was the only publishing, you know, you didn't, black books weren't in Barnes and Noble. So Third World Press published books that were really aimed at the African American reader and by African American authors? Yes. Okay. And the other thing is they were not, you know, pre Amazon, pre Internet, Black books were not available in the bookstores. And so a friend of ours would go to Chicago and bring back books in some as house. And so that's how we ended up with having access to some of those materials because we just had a person going to pick those up and then when they had events there we would, would go to Thirweth press visit, have those events and just build more more those particular relationships we had actually invited hockey back ourselves two or three times over the course of maybe six, seven year period to come and participate in more programs. But you remember what years you were at IUPUI approximately? Let's see. Let's ask these hard questions, man. Let's see, I went to grade school 62 at eight years, 70 had four more years. 74 went to Purdue for a couple of years. 76, 77. So I would say from 77, 82 somewhere in there. 80, yeah. 70 because I quit in 1980, so I'll probably say 70 late 70s. Early 80s, yeah. Thank you. So when it was an evolving campus and lots of parking lots and ride, there was still actually a liquor store on campus before they built a fancy building, so. Um, and you continue to screen T shirts? Yeah, yeah, screen T shirts all through college.