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For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 27, 2007 Title A name given to the resource Oral History Interview with John Brinkley Description An account of the resource Discussion Note: Includes Peace Corps and Africa In early 2007 the Plainfield Public Library was asked to host two days of oral-history interviews, conducted by StoryCorps. As part of StoryCorps� Griot project, a Plainfield historian arranged to capture the stories of African-Americans in Union County. Our library received copies of the 17 Plainfield interviews, which it later transcribed through funding from a Union County History Grant. JOHN BRINKLEY VAUGHN: My name is Tasha Vaughn and I am thirty years old. Today’s date is April 27. I am here in Plainfield, New Jersey and the year is 2007. And I’ve known John Brinkley since 2000, I’d say -- about 1999, 2000. And we have known each other starting with the Neighborhood Empowerment Committee which was in Plainfield City, you know, doing various things trying to help the community. From there we developed a great friendship, he’s a great person, and it’s just been a lot of fun knowing him and he’s an interesting person that we’re going to get to interview today. BRINKLEY: John Brinkley, sixty one years old. Today’s date is April 27, 2007. We’re here in the Plainfield Public Library and I’ve known Tasha for about the six, seven years now and I particularly wanted to be interviewed by her today because she’s a playwright and I thought that maybe she’ll find something interesting and put me in one of her plays. VAUGHN: That’s good. Okay. Well let’s begin. Let’s see. Now, Mr. John David, what is your earliest memory? BRINKLEY: The funniest thing -- the earliest memory that I have is that of my Grandmother saying that today you are two years old. My sisters don’t really remember it, but I remember it very distinctly and it just takes me back to a time where our family -- we lived in the same house, it was multi-generational -- and we also lived on the block where we had a lot of relatives on the block, also. So it was a very close-knit community and we used to have family outings during -- reunions during the fourth of July and Labor Day where all the family would gather and it was a great great time. And the thing that I really liked about it is because, being born in Forty-Five, I knew people who were born in the nineteenth century, and I always would love to ask them, you know, all kinds of questions. I think I would -- I got on some of their nerves because some of the things people just don’t like to talk about. You know, there’s all kinds of family things that they just don’t want to relive but we had -- did have my Grandmother was a talker. She relayed a lot of stories about the family history and everything, but it was a great time and that’s my earliest memory. VAUGHN: Well, you know what, you said something about the time reference. So tell me, you were part of the post-war boomer generation. What does that feel like? I mean, is that an experience you can describe in itself? BRINKLEY: Absolutely. You know, they call us the boomers. I never, during the time -- never really related to it like that, but came of age during the fifties I remember Sputnik and Eisenhower and Einstein, when he passed away there was a lot because Einstein was down in Princeton and everything. I remember very distinctly when Emmett Till -- he was a young man from Detroit who went down the Mississippi to visit some friends and family and he was killed because he whistled at a white woman and he was a little older than me but not that much and this was during the period of time where I was very inquisitive. I would read everything and we had a newspaper called The Daily Journal and this one day I was just reading the paper and I turned to the inside of the front page and there was a big picture of Emmett Till, and I don’t know if you know the story, but he was beaten brutally. His face was hit by, you know, hammers and he was thrown in the river. It was a long time before they found his body so his face was all bloated and his mother, Maymi (sp?) -- Mabel (sp?) -- thought that the world should know. So she took the body back to Detroit and she had it on display and, so, pictures were taken of it. People came from miles around to see what happened to this young boy for whistling at a white woman down south. VAUGHN: When you say young, approximately what age would you say he was around? BRINKLEY: He was fourteen. He was fourteen, I was around twelve when it happened. So, that was in the fifties and that was right around the time that Rosa Parks, you know, decided not to give up her seat so I -- those things are very strong memories and I remember, you know -- I’m basically a child of the sixties because I turned fifteen in 1960 and I remember that was a presidential year and I remember both Kennedy and Nixon came to my town, Elizabeth -- I was in Elizabeth at that time. They both came and spoke. In fact, Kennedy spoke right outside of our High School and that was a time where they let everybody out of the High School, and he was pretty impressive, you know, it was an exciting time. But right after he got -- right after he won, we had this Cuban Missile Crisis and we all -- being of an age -- we were right at the age where we weren’t quite draft age-able but we felt that something was imminent happening and, so, all -- I went to an all boys school. And, so, we all were very -- I was excited about what was going to happen. There was a little bit of trepidation because we thought the war -- a world war was going to start. But it didn’t, you know, but it was -- things are very tense. It was a very tense period of time. And, then, the Civil Rights Movement started and we were protesting, we were in sympathy with people in the south and it just spread, you know, all over -- all over the country. VAUGHN: Because you were where, exactly, during that time? You grew up where? BRINKLEY: I grew up in Elizabeth. VAUGHN: Elizabeth. You did say that, okay. BRINKLEY: Yeah. The capital -- VAUGHN: -- Always in New Jersey -- BRINKLEY: -- It’s the county seat of Union County and -- but, during that time, if you remember the sixties, it was quite a time. It started with, you know, Kennedy and the early times had -- Medgar Evers was assassinated. The Civil Rights Movement. The summer of Sixty-Five when we all -- a lot of folks went down to -- in fact that was ‘63 -- we went down south to help enroll people to vote. Medgar Evers was killed in ‘63, early ‘63, and then Kennedy was shot. I remember exactly where I was, you know, walking down -- that was my freshman year in school -- and that was after we had had the March on Washington. Our church took busloads of people down and that was quite and event and, then, we had, you know, King was doing the various demonstrations. Malcolm X was assassinated. It was a tumultuous time. There was a lot of energy. There was a lot of energy. People -- and it’s a little different today. A little different today. Things were very open. VAUGHN: A lot of causes. BRINKLEY: A lot of causes. Now, there’s kind of like a pulling apart. But youth were united whether you were a young white boy, Jewish person, you know, a Protestant, Catholic, Black, Hispanic, Native American -- we all were united. And, particularly, the Jewish and African-American. Soroner (sp?) and Goodman went down to Mississippi and they met with Cheney, a young black activist, and they all were assass -- they all were killed together. So it was -- things have changed a little bit, but there was -- definitely a bond between African-Americans and Jewish Americans and it was -- on the other side, there was -- things were very open. It was a very open society. You felt -- at least my generation felt that we could accomplish anything and we were going to change the establishment before the establishment changed us. The Civil Rights Movement kind of triggered the Environmental Movement, the Women’s Movement, the Anti-War Movement. All of that was, people felt that they had an invested right in this country and what happened with it and, so they became active and decided to change. VAUGHN: Right. So, you’ve pretty much -- you’ve gone over some of the critical moments in your life and we know that you came of age in the Sixties and kind of got a good idea how that experience was. BRINKLEY: Oh, there was one other thing about the Sixties, because black people were evolving. We entered the Sixties pretty much as colored people. You know, the polite term was “colored.” You know, that was pretty inoffensive. The National Organization -- National Association of Colored People -- but, then, there became the Black Consciousness Movement. Before that really took hold, we became Negroes, which was -- I really don’t know where that time came from but it was a step up from “colored.” But, then, the Black Consciousness Movement came in. There were so many different organizations that you could join if you were very militant you know, you could join the Panthers. If you were just -- wanted, you know, Civil Rights, you could join the NAACP. You could join the Southern Christian Leadership. You could join, if you were a student, you could join SNICK (sp?). When I was at Rutgers we had this Student African-American Society. We had the Members, we had CORE (sp?), we had all kinds of organizations, so -- and there were all kinds of leadership. People felt very empowered. It wasn’t like you had to follow this line or that line, you could follow your own line, you could form an organization, but it was all geared toward change and identity for African-Americans, so we went from “Colored,” to “Negro,” to “Black” to “African-American” to “African -- “ basically Africans living here in America. And that’s kind of where I found myself. VAUGHN: Right. Now that would bring you to around, what would you say, the early twenties maybe? BRINKLEY: Yeah, I turned fifteen in the Sixty and that decade -- I was twenty-five. VAUGHN: About twenty-five. Now, I understand that you were in the Peace Corps in Africa. Did all that stuff kind of have an impact as to why you, you know, joined the Peace Corps for going into Africa? BRINKLEY: Absolutely. The identity issue because coming -- being at Rutgers, there was an International Students, there were no more African students, I had a number of, you know, friends who were from Africa and it was -- we were told we were African and I really didn’t know that much about Africa as you probably know. The education even up through the college level was really kind of devoid of any real -- unless you -- and this was prior to there being the African Studies Movement. That started a little bit towards the end when I was in college because of all the struggles -- the sit-ins, the teach-ins, and all that was going on and the demand for ethnic studies and, you know, began with African-American study and, then, it kind of morphed into ethnic studies. But, anyway, we were told -- told -- that we were African and I accepted that but I said, “No. I really want to know what that’s all about” because I know a little bit about what it is like here when I don’t know what it is about there. And it was also the time when the war was waging, the Vietnam War -- I couldn’t see myself going over there. Muhammad Ali, you know, said, “No one in Vietcong never called me a nigger,” and it was not in my mind to get involved in that at all, but, I saw the Peace Corps as an opportunity to go to Africa because, at that time, and I think still now, you could select where you wanted to go. So I talked to some of my friends and one was from Uganda and he said, “Go to Uganda. It’s beautiful, you’ll -- East Africa, you’ll love it.” So I applied and I said Uganda. And they came back and said, “Okay. We’ll send you to Iberia.” And I said, “No. Uganda,” because you could reject. Then said, “Okay, how about Upper Volta?” And I said, “No. Uganda.” And, then, they said, “Well, how about Ethiopia?” And, then, Ethiopia kind of hit me because I remember my parents and uncles and everything talking about Ethiopia so I said, “Well, let me read up a little bit about Ethiopia,” and I saw it’s place in African-American -- in our history. You know, Haile Sellassie was very well respected and he was much in power -- in control right then -- and so I said, “Okay. Ethiopia.” So, up my bride-to-be and I both enrolled in the Peace Corps and we both were accepted into service in Ethiopia, so, ‘68, King was killed, I was working with the Division on Civil Rights. We went to the streets to kind of calm things down. I got married in June, the second day of our honeymoon, Robert Kennedy was killed. Yeah. It was a time. We then did go into Peace Corps training which was very interesting but, while we were in training and they had the convention -- the Democratic Convention in Chicago, where Mayor Daley and the -- there was a lot of protests -- I don’t know if you remember hearing about it, but they started clubbing the people who were protesting because LBJ and -- this is ‘68, so the war was still going on -- McCarthy decided to be -- run for President against the establishment. He was a senator -- senator McCarthy was a senator but he was kind of leading the charge against the war, you know, withdrawing from the war and everything so that was a backdrop but there also was, in ‘68 -- other than Robert Kennedy being assassinated -- the Olympics. The Olympics in Mexico City where you had the Tommy Smith and, I forget the other person who stood on the stand with the black glove and the power salute, that all happened in ‘68 -- but we were in Ethiopia. We went through training. Training was great because you learn a language. You learn and in [heart?] they have many languages but the main language is Amharic and we got pretty good. She was better than I was but it was great. And given that Ethiopia was an ancient kingdom that had never really been colonized the way the rest of Africa was, it had been kind of occupied by the Italians during the war but it was never really occupied so the country -- it was like stepping back into the days of King Arthur because it was a feudal society. You had Haile Sellassie was the king of kings. There were different providences where he had governors who were, you know, like the noble class and he would bestow -- physically bestow titles on them and they would give him homage and they would give him, you know, different, forms of, you know, tribute, but they were responsible for that area. It’s a highland -- we’re in Addis and we were in a place called Ambo (sp?) and Ambo (sp?) was a resort town, they had an Olympic sized swimming pool and it was filled with bubbling water -- naturally warm mineral spring water. A whole swimming pool. It was absolutely tremendous. We would go there every day and swim after school. I was a teacher, but we both -- I taught math and my wife taught English and geography. I had students -- it was a custom for teachers -- you have a house. The Peace Corps put you at the same standard as the people that you worked with. If you were a teacher you were afforded the same status as a teacher so teachers had houses, we had a house. They would give you a stipend and, so, we had a house and it was the responsibility of the teachers to have students live with them. You have a compound, the students had their quarters, so we had six students that stayed with us and the students are the greatest students in the -- well, in my short career, the greatest students in the world. Very intelligent, very -- they would -- the schools -- we were in a school that went from Grammar School all the way through High School, so I taught math, I taught the upper levels, and the students would come from all over, and all over the region, they would walk for miles and miles and miles to come to school. Definitely motivated. You would come in the class and they would stand up and say, “Good morning, sir,” “Good morning, class,” you know, “Please sit down,” you know, and in Ethiopia you have your father’s name first, is your last name, and then you have your own name. So Abeba (sp?) is a very popular name so about half of my class, their name was Abeba, you know, yeah, it was fun and it was funny. But, it was great, you know, being in there, being with other very highly motivated Peace Corps volunteers. Out of our group -- we had a group, probably, I guess about 200 volunteers and there were only about five African-Americans in the entire group. Yeah. It was very interesting. And all these folks were going over to Africa, you know, to be teachers or to work on water projects or to work on road development and things like that. But Ethiopia was a great place. It also afforded us the opportunity to travel. You teach during the regular school year and then you go off and you have a summer assignment. Now, our summer assignment was in Northern Ethiopia which was Eritrea, and, after that, you know, you have a month off. And, so, we would go down to East Africa so we had the opportunity to go down to Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Zanzibar. It was a way to really see Africa. You know, we tried to learn as many different languages as we -- in Ethiopia. The thing that amazes me about being out of the states is how many languages people know. And the thing that really hit me was -- that really brought it home -- was some good friends of ours were from India -- the Balatrandians (sp?), and they spoke Malyaram (sp?), and they had a little son who was about six years old and his name was Deepak (sp?). He spoke his parents language which was Malyaram (sp?), they also spoke English. They had a housekeeper that spoke a language called Galeenya (sp?) which was another language and, then, in school, he spoke Amharic. So he would come into and, you know, he was very talkative. So he would come into a room and he would look at us and maybe speak English and, then, turn to the housekeeper and speak in Malyaram, speak to -- Galeenya -- turn to his parents and speak to them in Malyaram without missing a beat. You know, without missing -- and it kind of just brought it home. But he was not alone. The students in class after the fourth grade, all language or instruction was in English, so regardless of where they came from -- and then the official language was Amharic, so if you spoke Degreemya or you spoke Galeenya you would have to come in, you have to learn Amharic, you would have to learn English, and maybe if you went north you would have learn Italian, then you had to learn another language was -- a lot of people learned French. So it was very easy for them to speak four or five languages and they were -- and it really kind of made you -- humbled you, when we’re struggling -- you know, I studied Spanish before when I studied Spanish in school and we’re struggling with a little bit of Spanish and a little bit of Amharic and the thing is, we could understand each other because when you start thinking in a language and you don’t know the words, our vocabulary in Spanish was a little stronger than Amharic in the beginning when we first were picking up Amharic. So, we would start with an Amharic word and then we throw in some Spanish words so we could understand each other but no one else could understand us because we were moving in and out through all these languages. VAUGHN: Wow. It’s such a great experience, was that the end of it or did you ever get to visit Africa again? BRINKLEY: Oh, yeah. I’ve been back a few times. Yeah. I don’t know if you remember Roots. Roots came out in ‘77 and they had this Return to Gambia, Return to Alex Haley’s Roots where you could go, very inexpensively, like, for 279 dollars you could go, which would include your airfare, your hotel, and a continental breakfast for a week for 2 -- yeah. It was kind of a special rate because there were so many people going over and I went back -- and the thing is, we were in Ethiopia from ‘68 to Seventy and, in the meantime, coming back and reading all the news. Now, you talk about how bad things were in Africa and the Sahelt (sp?), the desert was spreading and people are starving and this was going on. I’m saying, “What?” Now this isn’t because on our way back we, again, went down to East Africa and, then, we came -- there were many routes you could go home. Some of the volunteers went West or East through India and, then, you know, came home. We decided to go to West Africa. We went to Ghana, we went to Nigeria right after the Biafra war. We didn’t know whether we could get into Nigeria or not but we were lucky. You know, right after the war we were one of the first people that could get in there. We went to Senegal, we went to Liberia all on the West coast, then we went up to Morocco and, then, finally home. So, hearing all this about how bad things were, you know what I’m saying, and that’s not the Africa I remember. So, I was able to go back. My wife was pregnant, though, she didn’t come -- to Senegal and to the Gambia and everything and it was wonderful. It was beautiful. VAUGHN: And what year would you say that was? BRINKLEY: That was ‘77. Now I went back again. My wife passed away in ‘98, and we had three children, and they -- and I had a Granddaughter at that point, also, who was just like one and a half years old, so I was determined to have -- let them see what we saw. Go back to Ethiopia and everything and what happened is -- so, we made all the arrangements and, as luck would have it, Ethiopian Airlines, about the month before we were going -- got the routes to dock in Newark -- got the -- to dock in Newark. And, so, we were able to leave from Newark, go to Ethiopia, saw my students -- some of my students -- and the thing is, when you’re young, a two year, three year difference is kind of great but as you get older, you know, now we’re contemporaries and, so, one of my former students met us and took us around and, in fact, my son actually married one of his daughters. So he got married over there, they came back here. So it was wonderful. VAUGHN: Full circle. Wow. BRINKLEY: Yeah. And, so, my little one and a half year old Granddaughter -- she doesn’t remember it, but we have pictures. We traveled all over -- you know, back to Ethiopian -- went to places -- Lalibela, where they had the church’s Carduelis dome, you know, one of the wonders of the world. We went down to East Africa -- Kenya and Tanzania and Zanzibar again, and, so, you know, they got a little taste of it. VAUGHN: Well, you’ve been very fortunate. Are there any other countries that you visited that you feel are as significant, or... BRINKLEY: Well, I’ve been to Mexico. My wife went to school in Mexico for a year so we went to Mexico, went down to Brazil. Been to the islands and everything. I can’t understate -- overstate the value of travel in terms of education and living in a place -- even traveling is one thing -- but living in a place is even more. But travel, particularly if you’re prepared. If you’ve learned the language, if you’ve learned something about the customs and everything so you’re not, you know, totally a tourist and I really -- one thing I really think would be very beneficial is for students to have that exchange experience so, to learn about a country, to go, because you view yourself, your country, a lot differently and the capabilities -- and particularly for African-Americans to go to Africa and for our young people, I think it would really see how much they know and what opportunities are out there and to -- because people are very warm, you know, on a person-to-person -- the politics aside, the people-to-people bases, it’s a wonderful experience. VAUGHN: Kind of contrast from the United States, I’m sure. BRINKLEY: Well, it’s like going home. It’s like going home. And you see the different levels that people live and you see the land. You see the potential and you see -- I think students here don’t know what they really know but going to a country where there aren’t any, really, kind of obvious racial barriers -- because in Ethiopia everyone was black, right -- now, you get below, there are some things, but coming in as an African from America, it’s like you come in almost neutral. You know, you’re not in this ethnic group, you’re not in that ethnic group, and, things that you’ve learned -- maybe how to repair a car, you know, familiar with technology, you could do so much. There are all kinds of businesses and things that you could -- and skills and everything that you could bring. Whereas here, I don’t think people -- youth particularly -- appreciate what they know and, you know, I think it’s somewhat stifled in terms of really thinking what their potential is. VAUGHN: Yeah. Education is really about, I guess, how much money you’ll make some day as opposed to just crave knowledge. BRINKLEY: Yeah, and it’s best right here. A lot of our education is really just dysfunctional. I mean, the people just don’t -- they’re not really taught things that will enable them and is some of the worst education is they’re not even doing the basics. You know, people are coming out of school not really being able to read, not really being able to calculate, not knowing about science, not really having an appreciation for learning and that’s a real -- you know, it’s a shame. VAUGHN: Well, that brings me to pretty much our last question where I would want to know what would you, I guess, like to say to the next and future generations, like what would you want them to remember about you and your generation? BRINKLEY: Well, I would like them to know that we came to an awareness that freedom is a wonderful thing and it starts as a state of mind but it doesn’t really stay there it’s something that you really need to struggle for. It’s not really given to you. You have to struggle for it and you have to take it and, then, you have to preserve it. The things that we thought we had accomplished in the Sixties and the Seventies and everything seem to have ebbed away and it is not like they were snatched all at one time but they just kind of, you know, piece by piece by piece, you know, kind of ebbed away, so, it starts knowing that you should be free, you know, to live a wonderful life. Everyone on the planet should have an opportunity to live a wonderful life. You need to be bonded with people, you know, all over the world, not just your own. And I think that will free you from thinking that only -- it’s a zero-sum game. You know, I have to exploit you or I’ll be exploited. You know, it’s only one piece of pie there and I have to have it all and you have to have none. It frees you to say there’s enough for everyone if we do it right. And, then, I think that there’s a basic spirituality that runs through people and if they tap into it and they understand what their purpose is here -- like my purpose, I really identify it as being someone who feels passionately about bringing people together to accomplish important goals. To be the person who can organize and those are the skills that I’ve gathered and my focus is on African-Americans because there is so much to be done and when you start talking about African-Americans you start talking about African and, so, I think that people need to know who they are and know what their purpose is, realize that freedom isn’t free, you have to take it, you have to earn it, you have to nurture it, but in the end, if you do all that, it will be a wonderful place. VAUGHN: Right. Sounds good. Very well put. END OF FILE Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Language A language of the resource English References A related resource that is referenced, cited, or otherwise pointed to by the described resource. http://cdm17109.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p17109coll15/id/7 Relation A related resource linkto:001:http://cdm17109.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p17109coll15/id/7 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived NJ/DE Digital Collective VRA Core VRA Core standard for artistic pieces and cultural heritage artifacts. The first input will be treated as a <display> element. More detailed VRA Core metadata is available below that input. Subject Terms or phrases that describe, identify, or interpret the Work or Image and what it depicts or expresses. 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