Carylon (CT) Tyler oral history
- Shianne Forth: This is Shianne Forth and Amber Dey. Here with Carylon Tyler. Whenever you're
- ready we can go ahead and get started. Carylon Tyler: Okay. Well, glad to meet both
- of you and I'm glad to be a part of this program, our history as it were. Basically, I was born
- and raised in Texas, born in a little town called Smithville. It's not little anymore.
- But Smithville, Texas. My dad was in the military, stationed at Bergstrom Air Force Base and
- Bergstrom is no longer around, either. CT: So we moved in Texas a bit. We moved from
- Austin, and was here a couple years in elementary school. And when he was stationed at the base
- and wound up going to high school in Houston, although his family lived in Corpus Christi.
- So I spent some time in Corpus. Graduated from high school in Houston, that was the
- beginning of my journey. CT: Lucky enough... I went to junior high
- in Corpus and high school in Houston. Lucky enough to get a scholarship in high school,
- went to Cashmere Gardens High School. Once I realized I could go to college, I... Because
- working class family and those days, college, nice but didn't really have the resources
- for that. So a lot of us like African American kids, whatever, unless their parents were
- doctors or lawyers, or well off, the average kid didn't get to go to school, or university
- kind of college. I don't know what the community college scene was then. I didn't even think
- about going to college until I got this scholarships. CT: Then I applied for various schools. I
- was applying and all these schools were math, because I was told I was good at math. You'll
- find this interesting, it'll all kind of come full circle in a minute.
- SF: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- CT: I took, when I was in high school, started
- high school that was the first year that they started automating doing class schedules via
- computers. Up until then, it was all handwritten stuff. The first computer glitch put me and
- my best friend at the time, who was this woman, young girl, in an architectural drawing class,
- mechanical drawing class. It was such a big deal to fix it that we just decided to stay
- in there. CT: So I realized, "Oh my God! I like drawing."
- I mean I'd always liked drawing but this is pretty cool.
- SF: Yeah. CT: So I talked her into, "Ah, let's stay
- another year." I talked her into staying another year. She didn't like it but she liked all
- the guys in there. We were the only girls in the class, right? So she liked the attention.
- So we stayed. Then the next semester, you graduated to another level. You went to mechanical
- drawing then you went to architectural drawing. SF: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
- CT: So you start drawing house plans. And I went, "Aw, man, I really like this." She
- goes, "I'm tired. I'm going back to homemaking," or whatever. I went, "Okay, I'm going to stay."
- Anyway, all through high school I stayed in the drawing classes and once I realized I
- was getting a scholarship, I was telling my instructor. He says, "Oh, congratulations.
- I hear you got a scholarship." I graduated number two in my class, so actually close
- to number one but my best buddy was the valedictorian, I was salutatorian, so we could live with
- that. CT: He says, "Well, what are you going to
- major in?" I said, "I think I'm going to major in architecture." And he goes, "That's really
- hard for a girl." And I went, "What?" You do that now, but then I went, "Uh." Because
- I had no preconceived ideas. I was like, "Uh, okay, well yeah, but I'm going to do it, it's
- what I want to do." Cool, so then I started applying for schools, to schools and I applied
- all the other colleges in math, but UT, for some reason, I don't know why, but that's
- the only school I applied for architecture. I figured, well I want to do architecture
- so I'll apply there. CT: So I start getting these responses back
- from the different colleges. My dad had already said, "You're not going out of the state of
- Texas." So, that was sad because during those times there was a lot of unrest in colleges,
- and things like that. And he goes, "No, you got to stay here in Texas." I went, "Boy."
- SF: At that time, your family was living in Houston, right?
- CT: At that time, we were in Houston, yes. And that's my senior year. I figured, "Aw,
- man, I just want to move away from home." Right? I mean, I just want to. So I got accepted
- to University of Houston, blah blah blah. SF: Yeah.
- CT: I want to go to UT. One day I came home and my mom goes, "Oh there's a letter on the
- table for you." It was from UT. I was like, "Oh my God!" Got that sinking feeling. Then
- it says, "Okay, you're accepted in architecture." Yeah! I was all excited. So that was my segue
- into UT. I had no... First of all, I had no idea I was going to ever go to college. Secondly,
- I just went there, that was the only school I applied to for architecture, for some strange
- reason. I'm a believer in destiny and journeys and faith, by the way. Not so much religious
- faith, but I use faith. CT: We don't know why we do what we do.
- SF: Yeah. CT: And if you let go, you wind up being on
- whatever journey you're supposed to be on in this life. You kind, of got it that way.
- As much as you resist you still wind up going that way.
- SF: Yes. CT: Anyway, so I wind up going to UT. Even
- then, I had no idea what I was going to be up against even at UT, because I was raised
- to believe that whatever you attempted to do, you could do it. You were your biggest
- setback. You're just as good as anybody else, if you don't try it, you don't... Never play
- it safe, because my dad was like that. I mean, my mom tells me that he was a restless spirit
- which she would tell me many times you got his spirit. Which I thought was a good thing.
- But that means I moved around a lot and did things and I just did things because my philosophy
- has always been, why not? As opposed to, "eh, I don't know" kind of thing.
- CT: I wind up at UT. They were all excited because I wasn't going to be far from home.
- At that time they were still burning crosses and doing that whole thing, you know, on people's
- lawns and stuff like that. And the further south you got, the worse it got. My dad was
- a truck driver, he drove pipes across the United States, mainly in Texas. And he would
- always say, "None of you guys..." I was the oldest so I got more of that from my siblings
- later on. He says, "You guys are not going past Galveston." Because of the whole... The
- time, the racism and the Ku Klux Klan, all kinds of stuff during the days. When I was
- coming up, they were real deal, right? They're kind of now, but they were real then.
- CT: Anyway, that's why I didn't deal with the south, and went to UT and was like la
- la la la la. Waiting for my room to be assigned to me, excuse me, I got a full scholarship
- for four years, architectural program at the time was six. When I graduated it went back
- to four, which it should have been to begin with but that was out of my hands, right?
- My scholarship was for a full scholarship for tuition and dormitory, you know and books.
- Which is unheard of now, and I'm not even going to tell you how much it was. You probably
- blow that in a weekend. CT: I go check into the dorm and they said,
- "You know, we have an area set up for you in the lobby area." They had created a room
- for me in the lobby area because they had to get permission from the girls' parents
- to have a black roommate, right? I think I stayed in that lobby area for, I want to say
- a semester? It was awhile. I was like, "Wow, okay." I would write home to my parents and
- tell them what was going on and it was interesting because the girls, at the time at the dorm,
- they had never seen a black person before in their life, except for the ones that clean
- their house. Few wealthy and a lot of them were, or took care of them when they were
- babies or kids or whatever. But in terms of just social or whatever, it was truly amazing.
- I learned a lot. CT: So what would happen is these women would
- come in and introduce themselves to me and hang out and stuff. They would come out and
- tell me, "You know, I've never talked to a black person before." And they introduced
- themselves and said, "Would you mind having a convers..." I mean, this went on and on.
- Cool, okay. So a couple of them I got to be friends with and stuff like that and then
- it got to the point where I was helping them with their homework and stuff like that. Because
- these women, you know Texas, UT... Very wealthy kids went to that school. The alumnus-
- SF: Yes. CT: It's one of those. A lot of the girls,
- they didn't really worry about whether they passed their grades or not, their goal was
- to go there, find a guy that Daddy approved of and get married, right? That was their
- thing. So they didn't have the same kind of agenda that I had. Not that I had an agenda,
- other than just go to school, go to my classes and start my adulthood, right? Eventually...
- Then what started happening, this is really funny, a few of the girls started like saying,
- "I can't believe this. Really? This is why this person's here?" So they start going to
- the dorm mother if they could be my roommate. I guess at that point the dorm mother decides
- she needs to accelerate this or this is going to get a little dicey, right?
- CT: Anyway, out of that, I made a couple of really good friends. I ended up getting a
- roommate and it was all good. Nice, actually, a lot of the women were very... Actually,
- I didn't have any bad experiences other than that and it wasn't a bad experience, just
- an experience, right? Because the women were really cool, the girls just some, the ones
- I hung out with or got to know me, not sure all of them were but I didn't know all of
- them. My dad's thing was, and I think this got me through a lot in life, period; never
- judge someone, never judge a whole, just until you get to know them, judge the individual.
- Get to know the individual, don't just judge everybody because you go through life with
- this giant ass chip on your shoulder and you won't get anything, you won't meet interesting
- people and you won't get much done. SF: Yes.
- CT: You know what I'm saying? So I took that opportunity... I didn't look at it as a horrible
- thing, and everybody I ran across. Now I was suspect and didn't turn my back and was in
- real life, but if I meet new people, I always gave them benefit of the doubt. You know what
- I'm saying? Not everybody has a racist agenda. But you're in a point in time where that existed
- and you just have to deal with it and try to navigate it.
- SF: Yes. CT: Anyway, I was at Kinsolving, had a place
- to live there, so that was cool. Then the school of architecture was very interesting.
- That was a story. So I go to class the first day, right? It's all guys. And there was me
- and two other women in the class and three black guys. The professor comes around, you
- know how they announce, "This is Architecture blah blah blah A102, anybody that's not in
- this class, leave now, but look at your program, make sure you're in the right class." So he's
- chatting and everything, he says, "Oh well, roll call. Guess you guys are here to find
- that guy? Are you in Interior Design?" And all three of us majored in architecture.
- CT: No, we were not in Interior Design, we were in the right class. He goes, "Oh, okay."
- Then it wasn't like now where if a guy says that, they're skewed, you skew them and then
- you flay them and they're done, right? In those days it was just the way it was and
- not that you liked it. Because you didn't feel like you got respect or anything. But
- that's just how it was, right? So my thing was, you had to prove yourself otherwise,
- while the average guy in that class, they were going to Daddy's firm, they didn't have
- to worry about it, they had no conseque... Not that all of them there, but 95% were.
- They did the same thing there, they were looking for a wife, or whatever. They didn't have
- to finish high school, I mean college. They probably had goals they're parents wanted
- them to but it wasn't, didn't make an impact on their lives, right?
- SF: Yeah. CT: We got through that and then the professor,
- once he realized that we were in architecture, he was like, "Okay, cool." Now, two of the
- women, I think they were there a semester, a year, you know, two semesters. I don't know
- what it's called now, but then it was a year was two semesters. Two of them, after about
- a year, they decided that they wanted... One went to RISD, they were very smart girls.
- One went to RISD and the other went somewhere in L.A. and kind of split up and I stayed
- here at UT. Then I got to be really good friends with the black guys that were left, obviously.
- So the four of us was like us against the world, it didn't feel like that but you have
- to kind of watch each other's back. CT: One of the guys was Mormon. I was shocked,
- I'd never heard of a black Mormon in my life. But at some point, after the second year,
- he had to leave and go do his journey or whatever you call whatever they do. If you're a Mormon,
- you have to go on some kind of, it's not called a journey but it's... You know where they
- go and they talk to people and they... You've been when they knock on your door and want
- to sell you Bibles and talk to you about the Mormon faith. It's something they have to
- do at a point in their life. So he left, I never really came across him again, don't
- know if he came back. The other two guys, I know one, he was younger, he finished I
- believe and the older guy, he was a little older, he was going back to school, he was
- already had a family kind of thing. But he was cool too. Me and him kind of hung out.
- CT: We're going through school and every semester, the professor, seemed like the same professor,
- he would say, "Oh you're back?" And I'd go, "Yeah. Hey, what's up?"
- CT: Oh, you're back. You're back again? I'm going to finish my course, of course I'm back.
- Anyway, after a while I gained the respect of a lot of professors but they realized,
- okay, you are kind of the real deal, here. You're going to blah blah blah, finish school.
- Which I did. When I left I had a lot of the respect of the professors there, actually
- graduated you know. What changed my life, I think, I've had little guardian angels all,
- for every integral parts of my life and followed... Let me think about this.
- CT: They had what they called visiting professors. I don't know if they still have those, but
- where you would have a professor, that I guess whoever that department, I don't know how
- they select who comes but they come and they teach for a semester and usually happens I
- the studios, when you're in studio level, they'll come. They will teach courses. So
- what happened this one professor, she was a woman and she... I can't remember if she
- was from L.A. or something, but she was invited. I figured she must be pretty amazing if they're
- inviting to come teach studios and she was awesome.
- CT: Everybody was like, "Whoa, you're so different!" She was, at that time, edgy, we would consider
- her edgy and by the time I had to come out, just come out, and the guys I hung out with,
- they were these gay guys, we had our little clique in our studio. Two or three of them.
- They were very talented and very awesome, too, in studio. We were... Some of our colleagues
- or other classmates were looking at us like, "Yeah, you the snooty, smart group." Kind
- of thing. Like, no, we just did our thing. What the deal was is that by the time we got
- in the studio, you would be given a project, they didn't care about your other classes,
- you had 24 hours... different times, you had to make something, to design something. It
- wasn't study, study, right? Although you had study, study.
- CT: Are you guys in... What are your majors? SF: I major in special education.
- CT: Okay. Amber Dey: Human development and family sciences.
- CT: Ah, okay. So, not hard... Well... Just. I'm sure you went through the same thing when
- one professor doesn't care about what the homework the other one gave you. You just
- got to make it happen. But what... The other layer on that for us was just discovering
- all these new things, like your sexuality and stuff, we'd go out to bars at night. We'd
- go out and party all night and still make it to a class the next day. Let me tell you,
- when you're 20 something you can do that and still it was nip and tuck, but it was also
- very fun because you were doing something no one else knew about. Because all these
- bars and different places were very underground then. You have to know someone, you had to
- know where they were. You would not just stumble across them because in those days, like I
- said, they were still beating up people and things like that so everybody was on the down
- low and the men and women hung out together. CT: So we would go out, come back 2:00 or
- 3:00 in the morning, finish what we were doing, go back to the dorm, clean up, go back to
- the studio. That went on for a minute. Luckily I had a really good roommate. I remember sometimes
- I wouldn't be in my room for two or three days and I'd finally go home and crash. I
- said, you know, "Please wake me in a couple hours because I am so tired I could just keep
- sleeping." Anyway, that was fun. But this professor kind of took us under her wing,
- I guess now we would call her a mentor? At the time, we were smart ass kids who just
- wanted to go play and do what we had to do. But we loved architecture and it came easy
- to us on some level because we always did well, but that took time and was important
- that we pleased her and stuff like that. CT: I remember she would do things that our
- other professors didn't, on some level. We'd walk in and she'd pass out a paper. It was
- a program, which what a program means is that there's different requirements at this building
- or structure or piece of land or whatever had to have and you had to design and draw
- this stuff. She would say, "Okay, see you in six hours." We thought, "What! Six hours?"
- Or she would say, "See you in 24." That kind of thing. She goes, "Well I'm just going to
- prepare you for real life." We had no idea what she was fucking talking about, until
- you got to your life. CT: I loved college. It was fantastic and
- so I wouldn't trade none of the experience for anything because also, besides going through
- school of architecture with all these guys and being the only woman in that entire program,
- at the time, only black woman. I'm not sure if a black woman graduated before me or whatever,
- I have no idea. But I was the only one at the time. One day she took me, she said, "Sit
- down, I want to talk to you." She goes, "If you do nothing else when you graduate, I want
- you to stop partying enough. I want you to get your license and I want you to get your
- license sooner than later. If you do nothing else, you get your license. Don't get your
- Masters, don't do nothing, get your license." She said, "You can always go back and get
- your Masters, but you..." She kept saying, "You need to get your license."
- CT: Here again, I didn't know what hell she was talking about. I just took her at her
- faith. I said, "Okay, I will. I will. I will." That was a whole other path that took... What
- she was saying, as I learned later, is that because you are a black woman, because you
- are in a predominately male profession, that will give you the edge. To this day, I do
- not let that license expire. Also, that license has allowed me to do things that I wouldn't
- have been able to do if I didn't have the license. Even the men, now, that don't get
- their license, still have an edge. SF: Yes.
- CT: You know what I'm saying? They can be project managers, they can be principals.
- Okay, you don't have your license. But the first thing they ask a woman if she's even
- wanting to compete on that level, which most women do now, is do you have their license?
- That's gotten me through a lot of stuff. When I as at UT, I remember there was a time when
- I wanted to move out of the dorm. Here again, I thought, I want to get an apartment, I thought,
- "Cool, get an apartment." Right? Me and my roommate at the time, we had gotten to be
- kind of close. She was really nice and she, during the course of the time, we stayed roommates
- for a while. But she met this guy, they got engaged, he was cool too. They were just really
- nice pair and we became friends and stuff like that.
- CT: I decided to get an apartment and I went for this apartment. It says 'for rent' kind
- of thing. I applied for the apartment, they said, "No, it's not for you." I went, "Okay,
- but the sign says..." She says, "No. Just rented it." So my roommate's, I think her
- name was Susan and her fiance was named Richard, she goes, "That's bullshit." So the three
- of us, one day, he goes, "Let's try something." So we went and found this apartment near campus,
- I applied for. He says, "I'm sorry, we just rented it." Five minutes later, the two of
- them go and say, "Hey," and ask for the same apartment. And go, "Oh, yeah, let me show
- you that apartment." We wound up suing the complex, not because, it wasn't my idea, but
- Richard said, "That's not right. Just sue them for the hell of it to shake them up a
- bit." CT: It was a lot of that was happening...
- So what you did during that time if you wanted an apartment, you got someone that was not
- black or whatever. And they go apply and you, "Oh, yeah that's my name right there." There
- was a lot of that going on too. But for me, fuck you, that's not nice. Nice had nothing
- to do with it, that's just what people did. SF: Yeah.
- CT: That was a lot of that here, at the time. It's so diverse now, that all that's probably
- just a story. But it really happened. You had to really... If you had a white friend,
- you'd make them go and do some stuff because you weren't going to get anywhere because
- people were still... But it was cool. CT: Coming out was interesting too. Laurie
- asked me one time, she goes, stop me at any time and ask questions.
- SF: I do want to ask, with suing the complex, how did that pan out?
- CT: We won. We weren't suing them for money or anything, we were just suing them for discrimination.
- SF: Yes. CT: We won although I didn't wind up living
- there. I think I wound up living someplace else. But we definitely took it all the way
- through. So we definitely sued them. CT: Oh, what's that? I thought that was a
- bug. SF: Oh.
- CT: Because I'm dealing with some bugs. Learning about bugs in Texas.
- CT: Anymore questions? I can pause. I feel like I'm rambling on.
- SF: You're doing great. Your roommate, you said was Susan, did you end up living with
- her off campus? CT: Susan, no, eventually her and Richard
- eventually got married and I was at her wedding. I was a part of her wedding, which was really
- cool. We lost track of each other over the years. At that time I came out, so my life
- went a different path, too. Although we kept in touch and she didn't give a shit. She was
- so cool. But no I didn't live with her. SF: All right.
- CT: Where were we? Laurie was asking me, one time, when we were chatting about... She knew
- some other African Americans at that time, a lot of the, what was happening there on
- parts of campus and stuff. Because I said, "You know, I have to make a decision." Because
- she... Architecture school, I handled. I mean that was obvious. That's why I was there,
- I enjoyed what I did. I could handle the professors and stuff because that's just a matter of
- proving you knew what you were talking about. And you finally graduate to spite all your
- [inaudible 00:28:55]. CT: That wasn't an issue. Then you had your
- life outside your classes, right? So during that time, you had the Vietnam War was going
- on with [inaudible 00:29:06] All of this stuff I hope you guys still study or know about
- on some level. That was happening so the campuses were unrest. You were getting a lot of riots
- and belligerence and demonstrating and got tear gassed and all that kind of stuff. There
- was just stuff happening from different places and then we had the black power movement started
- with Martin Luther King and everything and started filtering down through the campuses.
- It was exciting, but a lot going on. SF: Yeah.
- CT: And on UT too, because they didn't think when I was there, it was like 40,000 kids
- and like 500 minorities. They just lumped us all in together, that means international
- students too, you know? It was a different time. But everybody had one thing in common,
- it has always been a political school, right? So, we're going to demonstrate. We demonstrated
- against Vietnam and then the black students on the campus start mobilizing and blah blah
- blah. Then the gay students start being more out there and stuff. I wish I could have more
- gay stories for you but my friend, that I turned Laurie onto, you should seek that pair
- out that's interviewing her. She's a great storyteller.
- CT: But we demonstrated together and stuff. On campus, during that time, there was the
- black student movement and then the gay students started getting more vocal, too. So everybody
- was wanted this and that, blah blah blah. But what happens, the black students didn't
- want to have anting to do with the gay students. They actually like, "We're not fighting your
- cause. You're on your own." And the gay students couldn't be a part of this. It was two different
- things. And the black students, specially the men, hated the gay students.
- CT: I said, "You know what? I'm a black woman, who just came out. So what do I do? Do I go
- support the black movement? Do I go and support the LBGQ community?" So that was easy, I supported
- the gay community. Because also, I wasn't really crazy about how the black community,
- what I see on the campus, the chapter, whoever's running it. I discussed this with Laurie,
- I know the women had their say, but the men were the more aggressor on some level. And
- I just didn't like the energy. I said, you know what? If I'm going to put myself on the
- line, I'm going to do it for the gay community because they are the ones... That's my life
- down the road. I said, that's where my support should be.
- CT: Eventually, both got it together but at the very beginning, during those days in the
- 60s, whew, it was rough. By the way, we had time to support the Vietnam War, we were out
- there protesting, getting tear gassed and everything. I left before the gay group really
- got moving. SF: Yeah.
- CT: I said, "I'm graduating. I'll see you, I'm out of here." So I chose to support the
- gay community as opposed to the... It was interesting because when you start being politically
- active, then everybody kind of knows what your story is. It changes how you look at
- things and how you perceive stuff. For Austin, was the place to be during those times because
- that's where things really happened. You had the other universities and stuff but this
- was the hotbed, still to this day people make us the hotbed. But then it really was. It
- was, yeah we had people get beat up, we had a couple people pass away. It was rough, but
- at the same time, I wouldn't trade it for anything. It was the most exciting time of
- my life. SF: Yeah.
- CT: It put me on a really good path. Because I know when I graduated, I didn't go to one
- UT game. Couldn't do it. I didn't feel like I was embraced. I didn't feel like I was a
- part of it. I got a scholarship here. I'm going to school here against all odds because
- you really don't want me here but I'm going to go to spite you. So the feeling that I
- had there was really different to say if I went not. I mean I was invited to an event
- recently at UT, because I'm trying to get to know the area again, whatever. It was an
- event, so I was asked to [inaudible 00:34:28]. We went around the table and introduced ourselves.
- They said, "And who are you?" And I said, I asked Leslie, "Who should I say I am?" "You're
- an Alumni." I went, "Oh, yeah, I'm an Alumni." I never think of myself as an Alumni, because
- when I left this place it was like, "I can't wait to get the hell out of here because you're
- messing with my head." CT: But, not really. When I graduated, well,
- I'll tell you how I got out of here. I was sitting in the student union one day, I don't
- know, it's probably different now than when I was there. We were just poor kids hanging
- out. One of my buddies, his parents had just given him a new car for his birthday. He goes,
- "Oh, let's go to San Francisco, let's drive to California." "Okay, cool." Well, why the
- hell not? You know, you did that shit then. Now, it's like, can we fly?
- CT: So I said, "Sure, sure." So we drove, we did a little cross country thing out of
- Texas. I remember we went through L.A. and we went through... That's when there was maps,
- there was no navigation, there was no iPhone or anything. Everything was a map. So we took
- this one road and turns out we're going across this... We're in California and we're headed
- up to San Francisco, we decided to take the culture route because it looked so pretty,
- looked like a cool drive on the map. We're headed through this Naval base, military base.
- Beautiful and all of a sudden we start seeing the ocean, right? Everything is so green and
- lush and of course, it's beautiful but it's... You've got all the white houses and the lawns
- and really big space in between houses and everything. The geography is so different.
- CT: We actually go to the road where it intersect with Highway 1. I don't know if you've spent
- any time or driven to California at all. It's the most beautiful thing we'd ever seen in
- our lives. It was so blue, the water was so blue and the flowers were so vibrant and it
- was like, holy shit, this is fucking paradise. So we drove up the coast and heading to San
- Francisco, it was an experience I'd never experienced. Then a friend of ours, who was
- still in school, said, "Look, if you make it to San Francisco, these are my friends.
- Look them up." They lived in the Haight. We said, okay. We didn't know at the time but
- the Haight was the Haight was the Haight, right?
- CT: But we did know that San Francisco had a really big gay community and they didn't
- trip on a lot of stuff that other people trip on so we said, okay, while we're here we're
- going to hit up all the bars and stuff. Which we did. We had a great time. But more than
- that, I realized, I said, "You know what? When I graduate, I want to live here for a
- while. I want to be here for a while." Not only were you a lot freer, but you also noticed
- it's so much more diversity. There were things going on there that nobody really thought
- about. It was no big deal. Every culture on the planet practically lived there. Wow, this
- is so different, it's like another country. CT: So I came back to Texas and once I graduated,
- I told my parents I was moving to California for a year. I'll be back. I didn't even go
- to my graduation, I had my diploma sent home and I said, "You know? I'm out of there. I
- can't do this anymore." But anyway, I was looking for a different... California, what
- the trip showed me was what life should be like. Not that California's perfect, don't
- get me wrong. A lot of stuff was going on. But they didn't trip on the stuff that here
- was such a big deal. Right? They didn't care whether you were black, white, green or yellow
- there. It was just you existed, co-existed kind of thing.
- CT: Living there most of my adult life, I do realize that no place is immune to racism
- and stuff like that. Lovely, wonderful California had racism and you still get the skinheads
- and shit that... But as a whole, it's a whole different ballgame. Actually, the difference
- is you had opportunities... As long as you could say you could do what you could do,
- you had the opportunity. It wasn't like people looked at you and said, "Hell no. It ain't
- going to happen. I don't care how smart he is." It happened there but it's a little different.
- You still had the ability. I could go in a get a job based on my credentials. I could
- do this, I could do that. It was a matter of proving what you can do and blah blah blah.
- CT: But here that was an effort. However, back to Texas. Stop me if you want. Pause
- if you want. SF: I want to ask, jumping back a little bit.
- You were talking about the lawsuit. Do you remember what year that was?
- CT: Well since I got here in 69, had to be... I graduated high school in 69, it had to be
- like... And I lived in Kinsolving for a couple years I think. So it had to be like 71, somewhere
- around there, I imagine. Early 70s. SF: And what year did you graduate UT?
- CT: 75, January of 1975. That's what my transcript said.
- SF: Trust me, I'm not going to go looking it up.
- CT: No, I have it, but I'm like... I don't know if they still have work study now?
- SF: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- CT: Work study is like you could actually
- get a job. I mean, like different companies... I'm sure every department would have a work
- study program of some sort I guess? Or no? SF: I think so. I think you have to apply
- through the college, itself. Like through UT. And then you have to apply to specific
- positions. CT: Oh, so you see then what happened a lot
- of people... Say like in the architectural department, other architects, real firms locally,
- were looking for apprentice or people to work for them or whatever. They actually applied
- through what they called a work study program at UT. Then UT would post those jobs.
- SF: Okay. CT: Then you would go and apply for those
- positions. Because I did that for a planning agency, which allows you... What that allows
- you to do is to work while you're going to school and I was lucky that I was able to
- find jobs within what I was studying for. SF: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
- CT: Because that helps out a lot, not only do you go to school now, but you're also working
- in the field so it makes school a little more useful or real. So you get theory. A lot of
- people get theory but they don't get real life until they get out in the field. But
- I was lucky enough to work for an architect’s office so I really knew what my skills were
- and applied to and what was important and what wasn't kind of thing. That was really
- good. CT: I got a job from this guy, who did really
- high end architecture. That was when we used to draw, called drafting. That was way before
- computers. Everything was drawn, lines, stuff like that and he was very cool. He was a really
- nice guy and he showed me, he gave me my confidence. Like, "You know what? You can do this and
- you're smart and you're good at this, so you need to be doing this." He taught me a lot
- of things. He's a white guy in a white firm and everything. Small firm. He had other guys
- in the office, he had the only other woman drafter who was the head drafter. This guy
- was gay and his partner was the financial, kept the books and stuff, he was great. I
- think that helped me. I think if I'd had a bad experience the first time it would have
- been a different outcome a little bit, mentally. But he was very supportive, so that helped
- me realize that okay, I've got this. CT: Although I had a lot of hair-raising experiences
- here, for the most part I had really good experiences. You just have to stand up for
- yourself, what I'd find out. For a kid that was rough, but I had a military dad so I did
- fine. This was all in early 70s, this all took place, if my diploma was 75, this all
- took place between 69 and 74, 75. Then I left. I said, "See you, Texas. I'm done." I didn't
- do the... Now it's interesting because my friends, Austin's always been a big college
- town. Now we go to the games and stuff like that. My friends are really into the Lady
- Longhorns and just sports, but mostly Lady Longhorns. They take me to the games with
- them and we're standing there singing the song, Gable blows his horn and blah blah blah
- and I'm like, it takes you a minute to start singing it at the very beginning but once
- I get into it, I'm okay. CT: Because when I left it was like, I didn't
- want to have anything to do with this school. I'm done with it. I got what I came to get,
- I got my education, my degree, so I'm gone. Who'd ever thought that years later you'd
- go full circle, you'd come full circle. SF: Yeah.
- CT: Which goes back to my original thing about life being a journey and you're being guided.
- Always listen to that little voice. There's a reason why I'm back here. Well, I know a
- reason why I'm back but there's got to be other reasons why people wind up places.
- SF: Is it just recently that you moved back to Texas?
- CT: I've been back almost 9 months. SF: Wow.
- CT: I moved here July 22 of this year. SF: You were in California all that time?
- CT: All this time from no gray hairs to current gray hairs. But my family's here so I would
- come back, when my parents were alive I would come back and visit of course, Christmas and
- different holidays and stuff. Because they lived in Corpus Christi so I would go back.
- Now, [inaudible 00:46:19] I won't go there just in case. But anyway, yeah, but I lived
- in California the whole time. I lived between San Francisco, Oakland, back and forth. I
- traveled a lot, I lived in L.A. for a while. I just started living life, so to speak. That
- was really fun and then I decided about 2016, I decided California, the Bay Area has changed
- so much and is getting to be so expensive. CT: Have either of you every spent any time
- in the Bay Area? Oakland? San Francisco? SF: My family's from Sacramento.
- CT: Oh, then you know the area. SF: I do.
- CT: Yeah, it's a cool place. You should put it on your list, both of you should go back.
- But it's gotten to be so expensive now and it's not the place I knew when I moved there.
- Everything changes. It's still a place where I go hang out because I made obviously great
- friends and buddies that live there, but I decided, well, you're not getting any younger.
- At some point your marketability is going to go. The thing about architecture, as long
- as the brain works, you can work if you so desire. I figured, you know, I'm not that
- 1% so I'm not going to be able to maintain a lifestyle in California on... You need a
- few bucks to live there. So, what are you going to do? I was tired of the traffic, tired
- of all of it, right? I said, you know? I'm done. I decided to move back.
- CT: My friend who lives here still, I would have these conversations with her about I
- think I'm going to move back and I have siblings that live in Corpus, but we're not close,
- whatsoever. Once the parents passed away, it wasn't good. But anyway, I decided. So,
- where could I move that I could probably afford to live decently and still be like California.
- In terms of being people you can relate to and cool places to go, things to do, because
- I'm not ready for the wheelchair, yet. I was thinking, well, I'll just go back home, which
- is basically this place. CT: So I was able to come out year before,
- she helped me figure out the neighborhoods and stuff like that. I said, "Well, I don't
- want a house." I've lived in a condo before, but I had a house, but it's so much work in
- a house. I'm not in a relationship anymore so it's like that's a lot to do, and I just
- don't want to spend all my time on a house. So I decided a condo was fine. It has some
- issues, but at least, it's a home, it's a place, so wound up finding this place. Then
- the minute I found this place and signed on the bottom line, I got called back to the
- Bay Area for a job to work. CT: So I said, okay, I took the job. So a
- year, this place stayed empty for a year while I went back and forth and my friend took care
- of it and stuff. July of this year, the contract ended in June, so I moved back, permanently.
- So now, I'm living here and it's been very interesting.
- SF: If you don't mind me, jumping back- CT: Oh no, I'm ready for questions or let's
- just fine tune it and stuff. That's kind of my life.
- SF: You were talking about you were part of the gay student movement on campus. When you
- think back to that are there any specific events that come to mind?
- CT: The organizations hadn't been jailed, yet. There were couple of clubs and different
- things that we used to go to... What we would do, Laurie sent me a list of a time table
- of the LBG... the lesbian-gay thing here, my friend Diane who stayed, got more into
- it than I did. By the time I left there were a couple of bars who went down. I remember
- one of the bars was Pearl Street Warehouse, and that was on that list. That was our go-to
- place. It was a bar that you... Like I said, you had to know it was there. You just couldn't...
- If you weren't gay, you didn't know, right? Then what we'd do is we would meet at people's
- houses. We'd hang out... CT: Oh, let me get that. Oh, what? I've never
- used this before. Ah, so there was no motion... CT: So we would just meet at people's places
- and stuff like that. Like I said, it was men and women together. We hung out together.
- There was no organization. I think after I left, the organization started becoming more.
- This is the other thing, I wasn't a political person.
- SF: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- CT: I was a party person. Although I had a
- conscience and I hung out with the political correct, because we all hung out together.
- My friend was more of the, she was a part of the movement I would say, in terms of there
- was a paper, an underground paper that we had. The group started being formed. And what
- you might want to do is once this scenario is over, I'll ask my friend who interviewed
- her- SF: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
- CT: And maybe I'll let you know, I think her stories would be interesting so you could
- actually... She'd probably give you more of the history in terms of what happened and
- stuff like that. I think you'd find that very interesting. Because once that started happening,
- it was already taking off, like out of there, people. But during that time there was underground
- papers and stuff like that. A lot of those people, which was good, a lot of the key people
- who started the gay movement, they're still around. One or two are still around so that's
- where you're going to get your real deal interviews when this happened. I went to the Pearl Street
- Warehouse a lot. CT: Then we'd get together, we'd drive, there
- was a couple of bars, I can't remember, in Dallas. We'd go up there and do that and come
- back saying like, we're so blessed that we didn't, oh yeah. Now, we couldn't do that
- as much because number one, the traffic and the cars and yeah and the cops are out watching
- you. Smoking pot. That was more fun too, because it was illegal then, I guess it was more like
- subversive. It wasn't out in the open. Now, it's not fun because it's. It's okay. I don't
- know about here, but in California it is though. SF: You were also mentioning having come out
- while you were at school. Did you come out to your family?
- CT: Oh, boy. Well, it's one of those deals where we didn't sit around and talk about
- it but they... You know, your parents always know before you know. My family didn't talk
- about it, but one night we were in studio and these guys, you know they were gay guys.
- I knew they were gay. One night, one of them said, "You know what? It's going to be your
- birthday in a couple days. We're going to go out and party." And I'm like, "Oh, okay."
- We just hung out. "So, we're going to take you out." I thought, "Okay."
- CT: They took me out to Pearl Street Warehouse that night and I'm like, "What the, whoa!
- This is very cool!" So that's when I came out. They said, "It's time that you embraced
- yourself." So they took me out and I'm like, "Oh my God, this is so cool! I didn't know
- this existed!" That was the beginning of my acknowledgement of my sexuality thing, coming
- out. Then when I would go home with my parents, I would take my girlfriends, whoever was staying
- with me and stuff like that. It's that typical thing, they figured it out pretty quickly,
- right? But I didn't sit down and say, "Mom, Dad, I'm gay." It's not like TV. But they
- understood. They accepted me, they always embraced who I was. They weren't judgmental
- or anything. Any person I brought home from Houston, they treated them like family, they
- were very nice and everything. CT: To my brother and my sister, none of my
- siblings, but they already knew. We didn't have a formal conversation. But they were
- very accepting, that didn't change. They didn't kick me out or be dramatic or anything. It
- was a relief off of my shoulders now I can be just who I was. During those days... Also
- my... Fuck I got to figure out what's going on. I guess you just... I just turned it on
- when I came in. We'll just see, we'll keep playing.
- CT: Anyway, I had no repercussions and then once I moved away from home, I was on my own.
- I wasn't really close to my siblings really so there was no impact there in terms of that,
- as adults. Even then, we were that kind of family. "You happy?", my Dad would say, "You
- happy?" I went, "Yeah." He goes, "Good. Good for me. That's all I ever want is you guys
- to be happy and take care of yourself. Don't take no shit." Military guy, you know? And
- don't judge. That was a big thing. CT: You know when your parents, did your parents
- tell you all this stuff? And you go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And you don't really think about
- it until way down the road, oh that's why they said that. As if they were never young,
- right? SF: Yeah. Do you have any questions?
- AD: Could you describe more of your place in the lobby in...?
- CT: Oh, my place in the lobby. Well, it was, they had panels up, they created a room for
- me as well as you could do. I think I used the corridor restrooms so I used the restrooms,
- but it wasn't in the rooms, but I had access to showers and stuff. But I could not, I actually
- had a bed in there and a dresser and a little study area. They fixed me up a nice little
- room, I just had no roommate. I was different myself. Which was kind of weird, excuse me,
- for me in that I had left my home, the comfort of my home and here I am in this little cubicle
- out in the middle of nowhere and some nights it was weird because you didn't know anybody.
- You're just there by yourself. Which I think was the hard part, just being there by yourself.
- Because all of a sudden you're in the middle of all these, this whole different scenario
- all by yourself. CT: And the dorm mother would come by, but
- yeah, that was rough. But it was also okay. I became everybody's little place to hang
- out after a while. "What's you doing?" It was just like four panels and yours’s truly
- hanging out in there and people would come visit, sit and chat. I survived.
- AD: Do you think that affected how you approached student life? Because you felt like shoved
- to the side? CT: I don't think it affects student life
- as much as... Well, I certainly didn't trust anybody and I realized right then that I wasn't
- someone, it wasn't like I was going to find any buddy kind of thing. It was definitely
- when you realized that I was not there because people wanted me to be there. I just got thrown
- in there and they had to deal with it. Everybody that I met and stuff like that, I automatically
- realized that these people are only chatting with me because they have to or whatever.
- So I didn't have any friends outside of my studio, until I came out. Because then I had
- friends but then we had something in common. But yeah, definitely affect how you look at
- things. CT: Then, also, I got to UT during affirmative
- action period. It wasn't like I applied to UT, although I was salutatorian of my class,
- at that time, affirmative action was around and UT was one of these universities that
- had X amount of students that they had to admit that were not mainstream. You know,
- X amount of minorities, X amount of this, X amount of that and that's how I got in.
- But even then, you had to be a certain percentile, they couldn't just arbitrarily say, "Okay,
- come on in." You had to have all these points. I think if I hadn't been valedic.... salutatorian
- and had the kind of grades I had I wouldn't have probably gotten in either during those
- times. Because they didn't really want us there, but they had to.
- CT: That's why I have mixed feelings now about doing away with affirmative action. It's still
- not a level playing field, right? So how do you make it level? I don't know. I know that
- my life changed being able to go to college, changed my life, in a lot of ways. Not just
- education wise but how I look at life because you're exposed to something totally different
- where as if you hadn't gone to school, to college and you stayed wherever you were,
- you would look at things differently. You'd probably be a good person, but you would...
- because that's how you were raised, but you would probably look at life differently. You
- wouldn't... I just think everybody should have an opportunity to, you know, to have
- access to that type of education. CT: I don't know when it went from what I
- was paying to $40, and $50,000 a year and people graduating with quarter million dollars
- in debt, I don't know when that happened. It's like, what the fuck? My generation, when
- we graduated, we didn't have that kind of debt.
- AD: Yeah. CT: It didn't cost that much to go to school.
- How are you guys doing it? AD: I work two jobs during the school year.
- CT: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- I had to work the last couple years too because that's why I
- asked about work study because once the scholarship left, then I had to fork up, but still I worked,
- but it wasn't anywhere near the cost now. But yeah, to answer your question, it did
- change how you look at things. Once you got in, it was important to me, I wasn't going
- to squander the opportunity. I enjoyed my classes. Once I got past that whole poor me
- thing in the lobby, people don't want me to be around; then it got to be like, I'm going
- to do this, do this and then you realize, you just relax, they're just people.
- CT: So I went back to that whole thing about the people I met, judge everybody individually.
- Even the professors, after a while, finally, had to admit that they liked me, so. But yeah,
- it did change things. I don't know, I'd say, "Why don't people like me, Daddy?" "Because
- you're a Longhorn." No, just kidding, but yes, it did.
- CT: You guys take good notes. AD: I feel like we should have more questions.
- SF: Yeah. CT: Do you want to hit that button and think
- or- SF: Actually, do have one question right now.
- The other black women that you knew, how did... Did you hear about how housing went for them?
- CT: Oh, there wasn't any other black women in architecture. In Kinsolving, there were
- two other black women. We weren't close, but they lived in another dorm. And one of them's
- father was a doctor, so I think she did okay. The other one, I can't remember what her dad
- did, but we kind of at the very beginning hung out but see here again, even though they
- were black, we had nothing in common. So we didn't really... My dad, working class truck
- driver, five kids and her coming from... Her dad was a doctor. She had a whole different
- lifestyle going on so we didn't have that much in common.
- SF: Yeah. CT: But they did okay. I don't know if they...
- I would imagine that she finished school, but we lost track of each other right after
- that first semester. SF: And they shared a room together in Kinsolving?
- CT: No, they didn't. They were in another section of the dorm, I believe. But Kinsolving
- was pretty big. I don't know if they shared another. I don't think they shared a room
- together but they didn't share a room. But, I don't know. I didn't particularly care for
- them very much. But I know it was just the three of us. They were okay. I would imagine
- they had to do the same thing though. Because they were African American, so. I don't care
- what their parents did, I'm pretty sure they had to get permission. Because I remember
- the dorm mother coming in and standing around and tell me that, "Well, we have to get permission
- from the girls' parents to have you as a roommate." I'll never forget her saying that. I went,
- "Oh, all right. I got this." Thanks, lady. CT: She was nice though, as she could be,
- I guess. SF: So they told you that once you already
- got there that you would have to stay in the lobby?
- CT: Oh, yeah. I didn't know that before. I thought I'd get a regular room and everything.
- I guess they thought that it was okay in terms of the room was okay because it was already
- arranged, it was already made up and everything. Just funky, that's all.
- CT: You know you guys can always, if you think of something call me or whatever, too.
- SF: Yes, yeah, I think...