Creating an Oral History

African-American Oral Histories

Charles Urdy
Clip 2: Transcript

Electing Minorities

Running Time: 5 min 42 sec

CU: Well, when I came back to Austin permanently, because I always called Austin home [laughs], but when I came back, in 1972, the whole movement here was to try to elect minorities, Blacks and Hispanics. And in 1972, you had, I think, two Blacks had been elected to anything by 1972: Wilhemina Delco in ’68 had been elected to the school board, and 1971 Berl Hancox to the City Council. Richard Moyer was on the county commissioner’s court, and I think those were the only Black elected, minority elected officials around as far as I can recall, at least in those higher profile positions. And so, when I came back in ’72, there was still this overall movement. I guess the first thing I got involved with was Delco was leaving the school board and running for the state legislature, and so I ended up getting drafted to run her campaign [chuckling], and be her campaign manager. But that was where I first got involved.

In the ‘70s that was just sort of the whole political deal. That’s what everybody was doing. You know, Delco was leaving the school board, so Reverend Griffin was running in her place, we were trying to keep that seat and then shortly after that, or at that same time, Hancox was leaving the City Council so then we got Snell running for that, and then Trevino was running and Gonzalo that was running at the same time as Wilhemina. And, so all of these things were going on, so many campaigns were going on at all of those levels, Justice of the Peace, Richard Scott was still Justice of the Peace, was running at that time, so we just had all kinds of elections that for the most part involved the same people, except for the folks that actually ran the campaign, but the electorate was pretty much the same, and the people that we had to appeal to was pretty much the same.

So you had all of those kind of things, trying to keep the gains that you’d made, trying to keep somebody elected to the Council or the commissioner’s court or this, and try to move into other areas. Anyone who was involved had some valuable expertise for the whole process. And so you were constantly involved with everything that was going on, not just one particular race, so.

It was a fairly easy political climate to get people to listen. In that climate then, you can distribute brochures, and whatever, and have signs, and have discussion meetings, and whatever. And so, it was pretty much just a hot bed of political activity where people were all ready to have campaign rallies, and have campaign picnic-type activities, and we’d have speakers, and we started, you started bringing in speakers, Congressmen and state representatives [bell clanging] and folks like that, and we would bring in folks from other parts of the state, just all kinds of things that could be done. You didn’t have to have a lot of money to do this. These people were politicians themselves, they’d volunteer to do this. So, it was sort of easy to create, once you had the basic interest there, it was pretty easy to create a climate that sort of reinforced that.

There were issues of course but the general issue was neglect, and so, everybody had the same issues, everything that came up it was the same thing, well, you know, the streets are worse and this sort of, everything, you know. So it was easy to focus that on simply the issue of trying to gain representation. The obvious hope at least was that that representation would improve the situation for you, at least would bring some insight to it, and help to improve it. But as a political goal, it was simply trying to elect minorities in general, and so, [clears throat], so you had this, these sort of agreements of sorts, you know what I’m talking about, the gentlemen’s agreement? Now, but you had an agreement of sorts between all of the different factions, you know, if the Hispanic community was supporting this candidate, the Black community didn’t ask any questions about it, said “Okay, so that’s the guy they want, so they’re going to get behind them, we’re behind that person,” and vice versa. And the whole Progressive Coalition worked in that way. It sort of brought, if the feeling was that the Black community was supporting a person, then everybody would support them, even though, in some cases, they may sort of disagree with them philosophically on many issues, and on some other candidate they may not have supported them with those same positions. But a lot of people would say, I used to go around with candidates before I ever ran myself, to those various forums, and I’d talk to people and they’d say, “Well, I don’t like that at all. That’s the op…you know, it’s the wrong position, but, but, if you guys support them, we’ll support them then.”

Disclaimer:
“Oral Narrative as History.” Students received class credit for this work, and were under the supervision of Dr. Martha Norkunas, director of “The Project in Interpreting the Texas Past.”

Every effort has been made to transcribe the audio recordings exactly. On occasion a word, or phrase, was difficult to hear and this is indicated by a question mark in brackets.

Interviewee:
Charles Urdy

Interviewer:
Heather Teague

Date of Interview:
February 23, March 9, 2004

Place:
Lower Colorado River Authority, City Council Room, Lake Austin Blvd., Austin, Texas

Recording Format:
Sony Mini Disc MZ-R50 with stereo microphones; 80-minute minidiscs

Transcriber: 
Heather Teague