Oral History Transcript - Harvey Miller - May 6, 2008
Interview with Harvey Miller
Interviewer: Barbara Thibodeaux
Date of Interview: May 6, 2008
Location: San Marcos, Texas
_____________________
Interviewee: Harvey Miller – The President of the Dunbar Heritage Association, Mr. Miller has resided in San Marcos since 1966. Instrumental in integrating the Georgetown, Texas public schools, Mr. Miller relocated to San Marcos to work at Gary Job Corps.
Attachments: Important Dates in Gary’s History, including copies of photographs of the Dedication ceremony, copies of photographs of barracks before renovations; and Dorm Agenda, August 27, 1987
BARBARA THIBODEAUX: This recording is part of the LBJ Centennial Celebration Oral History Project sponsored by the Texas State University. Today is May 6, 2008. My name is Barbara Thibodeaux. I am interviewing Harvey Miller at San Marcos, Texas.
Mr. Miller, even though you have agreed to the terms and conditions of the release pertaining to this interview in writing, will you also verbally acknowledge your acceptance with a yes or a no?
HARVEY MILLER: Yes. I will.
THIBODEAUX: Thank you so much, Mr. Miller.
MILLER: It’s something I’m excited about.
THIBODEAUX: Well, good. So can you tell me where you grew up?
MILLER: Yeah. I was born and raised in Georgetown, Texas, a little town up north of Austin, and I grew up there. Born in 1929. I’m not going to tell you my age, but I was born in 1929, November 4, ’29. And even at that time I was very sensitive to things, like a lot of kids wasn’t at that time, and even then I was observing things as I grew up in Georgetown.
I was testing things, like I mentioned about my daughter once about when there was restrooms that had one colored and a one white, and water fountains had one colored and one white. I remember when I was growing up in school, Georgetown High School and graduated from Carver High School in 1948, and I was kind of observing things then, you know. I was very sensitive to what a lot of other people—it was just a way of living where the colored people lived on one side of town and the whites and the Caucasians lived on the other side of town. So we all lived on the ridge back in those days, and I was always trying to test things.
One time I remember using a water fountain that said “white,” and I used the white water fountain. And the policeman was there and he got me and asked me, said, “Why are you doing that? You didn’t see that sign?”
I said, “Yeah,” and I’ve always been trying to be funny. So what I said was, “Well, I was just wanting to know if the white folks water was colder than ours.”
And he said, “Was it?” I said, “No, it’s the same.” So he started laughing and everything like, “Okay.” But I was very sensitive to that.
And when I organized the first Boy Scouts in Georgetown—I organized the first Boy Scouts in Georgetown—I brought them down to a camp Tom Wooten, where we’d go on the weekends to a campout for the Scouts a certain time of the year. But the colored kids had to go the last week in the month. So I deliberately got my troop and took them down to Camp Tom Wooten, and when I got down there they said, “Mr. Miller, y’all are not supposed to be here until next month.”
I said, “Oh, my God, what these kids going to do? They’re going to be so disappointed when I tell them that.” I was playing a game.
And the main man heard me. He said, “Mr. Miller, is that your name?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Come here,” so I went over there. “Take your troop down there and put them in that booth down there. It’s empty now and nobody’s going to be in it.” And I took them down and put them in there and I tell you, the kids all just had a first time that ever—but my group, the only colored kids there, and they had a big time with all the kids. They all just had fun. So I was just kind of pulling little tricks like that back in those days because it was essentially the things that was happening and what was happening in the South and stuff like that.
And that’s when I—I guess you want me to go on a little further up.
THIBODEAUX: Well, tell me about the school systems.
MILLER: What happened is—we had a Carver School was a colored school on down on the ridge. And then of course we had two white schools at that time—and what happened was the old Carver School—and I was showing you the picture of it—the old Carver School was beginning to crack and sitting on the edge of a bluff down there called the Blue Bowl. It was starting to kind of lean. So my wife at that time in 1958 was the president of the Carver PTA, and she decided to go to the school board and ask them for a new Carver School because of the condition. And they came down and checked it and knew it was necessary that something needed to be done and was making plans for a bond to be voted on. When it came out in the Georgetown paper, it says, “New Carver School $145,000.”
And when that come out in the paper some white people from the Southwestern University there in Georgetown knew that I’d been involved in a lot of things and started the first little park there for black kids and stuff like that. They called me and they said, “Harvey, we need to meet with you.”
I said, “For what?” Said, “It’s time to integrate. We’re not going pay our taxpayers’ money for no segregated school.”
I almost had a heart attack. I said, “What?” they said, “Yeah, we need to meet.”
So they organized a committee called the Committee for Better Schools and we started meeting on a regular basis, and finally got to the point where they said, “Now, we’re going to file a suit but we got to go—the lawyer wants to know about this—so we’re going to go to court probably in the next few months.” And this is 1962. (Recording stopped) So they talked about the building. We went in and just started talking about going to school together and stuff like that.
I put together a booklet on it. I make a lot of booklets—and put together a booklet on it, and my brother. So when we got the lawsuit, they said, “Well, we’re going to file a suit,” and that’s when the lawyer called me one day and said, “Harvey, now, we’re going to court next week.” This was 1962 by that time. “We’re going to court next month, and I want to ask you a question. Have you ever tried to go to school up there?”
And I said, “No, I haven’t. Why?”
He said, “Well, if I get that Superintendent Barnes on the failure and start drilling him about integration, the first thing he’s probably going to say is, ‘How do they know? They ain’t never tried to come up here.’”
So the next day I took a minister, Minister Givens, and we took twenty-nine kids up to the Georgetown High School to register them in enter them in school. And they said in the office, they said, “Mr. Miller, we can’t take these colored kids up here. And why do you want to bring them up here?”
I said, “Well—” and that’s where I almost got in trouble with my daughter. I said, “My daughter here,” she was about twelve years old, “she wants to be a doctor and there’s no chemistry and no science and nothing of that at the Carver School. They don’t offer that down there.” I said, “In order to be a doctor you need that in your background before you go to school to know a little something about it.”
He said, “I’m sorry. We just can’t take these colored kids,” and the article comes out in the paper, ”Twenty-nine Negroes Turned Down at Georgetown High.” I’ve still got that article, and my brother ended up being in on a lawsuit. My youngest brother was in a lawsuit and with my daughters and when we filed the suit. So that’s when we filed the suit.
We ended up in Austin in court. And the court ruled a grade a year. Well, that means my kids and none of the other kids would be able to go to the white school. First grade this year, second grade next year, and on and on. So what our lawyer said, “We’re going to file an injunction.” So they filed an injunction, and we ended up in the Fifth Circuit Court in Louisiana, and they ruled freedom of choice. Any colored kid that wants to go to the white school can go, and if they want to stay at Carver they can stay. So freedom of choice. So we had thirty-six kids signed up to go that first year. And they went to school there, and that’s how we integrated.
Now, one of the things—I let this in—one of the things that happened, my brother’s still suffering with a kidney thing, and he set a record of being on a kidney dialysis for thirty years, and he still lives in Georgetown. And what happened was, he was playing football. So finally went to play football and some of the schools had integrated already.
I always admired San Marcos. When the Brown v. Board of Education passed in 1954 that all schools in America was to be integrated, San Marcos—it was in the middle of the year and San Marcos integrated in 1955, the next year. No problems at all.
But what was happening in Georgetown, when we start playing teams with—and he was on the football team—and one time we played a team—and I won’t call the name of the town—and one of the white kids tackled my brother. And when he tackled him and my brother went down, he kneed him because they had never played against any colored kids. And my brother was one of three kids on the white team. He kneed him in the side, and it caused him to have a kidney problem back that year, and it happened all the other—but he still has that problem. But he’s in a lot better shape now.
But other than that, there was no other problem. We integrated and everything worked out, and I got pictures of my daughter when they was a cheerleader and some of them got to be cheerleaders at the high school and got involved in a lot. So that’s basically just one of the things.
Like I was saying, I was the head cook at Georgetown at the nursing home I worked there. Then my wife, who’s passed on, went to be a nurse, and she was the first black nurse to graduate from nursing school in Georgetown. And they was really excited about having her when she graduated. When she came to the Job Corps, she didn’t. She had to—she couldn’t work at Job Corps with me, her husband, husband and wife, so she had to go to work for the nursing.
But I’ve been involved in a lot of things, testing things all along all up through those years. And I made a lot of booklets. I made booklets when I organized my millinery union. I organized some books, and made some booklets and took them back to Georgetown about the article—with the articles and the pictures. And all that young generation, they said, “What’s you talking about, Mr. Miller—and Uncle Harvey? We always went to school with the white kids. What are you talking about?”
I said, “No, we didn’t always go, Janie.” And they went back to school one day—and they was still in school—went back to school one day and asked the other kids and the other kids said, “What’re you talking about?” They go home and ask their parents, and the parents said, “Yeah. Back in those days the colored folks had to go in the backdoor to the cafe. They had to sit in the back of the bus.”
Let me insert this in. One day I was going to Austin. I was young and riding to Austin, and at that time black people had to sit on the backseat of the bus, Greyhound Bus. And it would hold about nine people. If there wasn’t no seats, backseat was full, then you’d have to stand up. One day I was on my way to Austin and the backseat was full. So I was supposed to stood back there close to where the rest of them were and stand up back there. So I decided deliberately went up—and I always remember Rosa Parks—I went up front and stood right up and was holding on to the little rail up there standing up right behind the driver.
And there wasn’t very many other white people on the bus, and we got almost to Round Rock, Texas, and this little white lady said, “Why are you standing up?”
I said, “Well, all our seats are full back there, and I don’t have none, so I’m just up here looking at the scenery. It really looks pretty out there.” I’m telling a story, you know. I hope that’s [not] on the television that I’m really telling a story.
She said, “Y’all seats are full? Sit down here with me.” I sat down there with her and all them other white people on the bus started looking at me, and I guess they was saying, “What’s that little colored boy doing sitting down there with that white lady?” I sat down there until we got to Austin. I was just pulling that kind of tricks way back there then.
But then after we integrated—after schools integrated and everything and started integrating and integration went good there. Like I say, in some towns, some cities it didn’t go so good. And San Marcos was one of the cities that it went good compared to a lot of others.
THIBODEAUX: What about politically in voting? Do you remember paying a poll tax?
MILLER: I remember I paid poll tax. Yeah, I remember in Georgetown what really ended that at that time—when I moved to San Marcos in ’66 and went to work at Job Corps, I organized a political action committee, and they called DPAC, Dunbar Political Action Committee. For at that time very many black people wasn’t voting and wasn’t registered to vote and everything and didn’t know what was going on.
So I started registering people to vote, and I started it out at the Job Corps because we were letting Job Corps students vote, and I organized the voter registration program out there. Except instead of voting here in Hays County, they had to go to Caldwell County because Gary Job Corps—you know about where it is, don’t you? It was way out that area. And man, I registered so many kids on there and I took them to the polls to vote, and the people in Martindale, Texas like to went crazy because they were so glad to see so many kids. And I had two busloads of kids out there voting. That made them look good because these kids was in there. What I tell the students here now is, “When you graduate from Job Corps and wherever you relocate, you got to reregister to vote. If you graduate and you go back to California where you’re from, you got to reregister to vote.” So we had a voter registration, so then I got a political action meeting here, and we started to get more people involved in politics in San Marcos with the DPAC, Dunbar Political Action Committee. We just lined people up and registered to vote, and they got so involved in voting.
I always remember one guy that went to Texas State named Earl Moseley. I don’t know if you know him or not. He went to school up there and he was the first black student—the first black student enrolled up there was Dana Jean Smith—but Earl Moseley was one of those that was the first on city council here. And with this committee I had, that I then started for polling people. And what I do, I would take my candidates and let them speak before the voter registration. They had voter registration and candidates would all come speak, and I started taking them up there.
We got a lady named Mary Ann Williams. I took her and then when they voted, they elected her and she was the first black elected to the school board. And then Earl Moseley was the first black elected to city council. And so I started working on things of that nature, getting more people involved and more black people would start registering to vote and start voting, so we’d have a political action meeting.
We called them, and what we’d do, we had the political action meeting and we would call a candidate and let all the candidates come down and then have a meeting and let them speak to the black community. But I always put it this way, “I’m fighting segregation. So if you’re going to fight, you can’t practice.” So what I do, I put an article in the paper. I say, “We’re having a meeting and this is open to everybody in the community, not just the Dunbar area.” My fear is when you say Dunbar, that’s black. It’s kind of like Juneteenth, when you say Juneteenth you think black, and when you say, Cinco de Mayo, you think Hispanic.
One time I told one of my white friends there, “What do you think when you say, white? I said, “When they say Fourth of July.” He said, “Mr. Miller, y’all can celebrate on the Fourth of July too,” so I said, “Okay.”
But we got it then and let the candidates come down and speak and then they’d go—we had lots of people. I got a lot of booklets and things I made on that, on voter registration. So I really got into voter registration and political action.
THIBODEAUX: So why did they need organizing? Was there a kind of policy or just an air of discouragement for minorities to vote?
MILLER: Well, I think they just felt like—I don’t think and I don’t—when I went back to Georgetown did the same thing in the hometown. They kind of say, “What’s going on? What’re you talking about, Harvey?” and I explained it to them and everything. But I think it was just a way of life at that time. But then when they started wanting to vote and stuff like that, then we had some problems with some of the Caucasian people was having a little problem with it, and some of them called me and same thing. A lot of them was really supporting it, you know. Like in San Marcos—and I think in some areas they did have some problems in other communities, other towns—but in San Marcos the people just kind of fell right in and it was just a good movement, and the same thing in Georgetown. They just—everybody supported it. Every now and then we’d have a little problem with some of the Anglo people would be complaining about this and about that. But it just seemed like it just worked so smoothly. It seemed like, that I always say that it seemed like God was in the plan, and I think it’s just the way you approach it. Sometimes you can be—I’ve always been using this term—be diplomatic. You can approach things more diplomatic than you can if you try to get smart-aleck and stuff like that. But it was a few problems that we had, but they didn’t encounter them much.
So the group organized against us in Georgetown about integration—and I forget what they called the name of that group, integration. But when it come time for election and everything and time to go, we had no problem at all. Everybody just accepted it. Like I say, I always admired San Marcos. They ain’t never had no problem. They just integrated and went right on, had no problem.
And with my organization in 1950, I think it was fifty years after integrating in ’55, I recognized all those in my black history banquet that integrated the schools. A lot of them was old men. They graduated in 1955, and some of them graduated in the next year ’57, ‘58, so they was getting old. So I recognized them in my black history banquet.
THIBODEAUX: You mentioned something about Texas State University, the first black student that went there. So when was it integrated?
MILLER: I think in 1962 or ’63, and I had that—I was going to get that booklet out. I had a booklet on that when Dana Jean Smith. I don’t have it on the wall. Dana Jean Smith was the first lady—her mama goes to my church now, and she’s still here now—she was the first to integrate. She transferred from Austin, and it was four girls—I got an article and the article says, “Southwest Texas Accepts Negroes.” I guess I can’t get up and go get it because I’m talking on the tape.
THIBODEAUX: You want me to pause it?
MILLER: Yeah, if you will. (Recording stopped) Let me see, and there are five to it. Okay. No problem when they integrated. They had the local girl from Austin and she went to school and then the article says, “Southwest Texas Accepts Negroes,” and I’ve been making so many copies of it and enlarging it. And they—no problem. Then one day later, Helen Franks came the next day. She was in the group and so it made five students. So that’s when they integrated Southwest Texas.
I had a program about—I should’ve pulled that out—about when they had the first black girl that won, I think, queen up there. I got some of my stuff—it used to be on display up there—I used to put it up at the university. Somewhere up there there’s some of my stuff I put on display up there for Black History Month. So basically that’s about it for—well, I mean, I got a lot more but, like I say, I have some pictures, something to back it up with.
THIBODEAUX: Do they still have your black history donations at the university, or did you take them back?
MILLER: They had some stuff that I put up there on display one time for them because I wanted to put it in a display. And I just gave it them, I told them, “Y’all can put it up during Black History Month.” Now, you know Black History Month’s in February. And I gave a whole collection to the high school out there and they put it up and kids would be calling me.
And then we got a school here named Dorie Miller. You ever heard of Dorie Miller?
THIBODEAUX: Yes. Is he related to you?
MILLER: No. I tell you what, I tell you what. When they integrated Dunbar and they closed down Dunbar, and Dunbar just was down there—do you know where Dunbar Park is? Have you ever been to Dunbar?
THIBODEAUX: I know where the museum is. Is it close to that?
MILLER: It’s down the street from the museum, yes. And so Dunbar School, so they turned it into a park. What happened was when they built the school, they hadn’t had no one to integrate it, then there was no more schools named after a black because Dunbar was closed and that was the end of it.
So when they got ready to build the school, they built Hernandez and Dorie Miller. You know where they’re located? Out on Hunter Road?
THIBODEAUX: Yeah.
MILLER: You go on Hunter Road, it’s Hernandez and Dorie Miller. So what happened was, I submitted a proposal to name the school after Dorie Miller, and I put in the letter I wrote to them that this would be—since we had no school named after a black since the Dunbar School, I’d like to see this be made.
Now, I sent a story on Dorie Miller, and I got to—I have to make a little booklet on him. And I’ll tell you about who he was. You know anything about him?
THIBODEAUX: I do.
MILLER: Yeah. What happened was they named the school. And one of the ladies still tell me right now—and this is on the tape and everything—but you were talking about Rose Brooks—
THIBODEAUX: Um hmm.
MILLER: —Rose Brooks was on the committee, and she said, “Harvey, you always saying they sent me a letter and a certificate thanking me for naming the school Dorie Miller.” She said, “Harvey, you always telling people you named Dorie Miller School. I was the one on that committee, and I’m the one talked into it.”
I said, “Okay, I apologize, Rose. So I’m going to start thanking you.”
“No, you submitted the name and everything.” So they named the school after Dorie Miller.
You know Dorie Miller was the black guy that was in the navy and when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, at that time blacks could only be cooks and clean up the ships and all that. And Dorie Miller come up on the deck after the ship was bombed—I think it was the Virginia—and one of the gunmen was laying across the gun dead. He moved him off the gun and started shooting. They said he shot down seven, eight, or nine planes. I don’t know who was counting them, but the records shows that he shot down so many planes. Then that’s when he became famous. And he’s from Waco, Texas.
I was getting pretty—I used to be in the genealogy course, and I’d taken it up and I tried to trace it back, hoping he was kin to me. But he was not kin to me, and he’s from Waco—born and raised in Waco, Texas.
One time I made a booklet the governor recognized Dorie Miller on December 7 at the capitol in Austin, and I went up there and while they were recognizing him—it’s been about ten or twelve years ago—and I made this little booklet on Dorie Miller. So a lot of these people come to me after that and said, “That book you showed me. You can actually see the generations so far back,” because Dorie Miller really was a little older than me when he was born. Because I was about twelve years—I was born in ’29 and in ’41 when they bombed Pearl Harbor I was about twelve years old.
And I remember on my way—in Georgetown—on my way to church that Sunday morning—it was on a Sunday—I kept passing houses, me and my little brother walking to church, kept passing houses and they kept saying, “The Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor.” There wasn’t no television, I don’t think then, so it was just Japs—I got to church and I asked one of them old deacons, I said, “What’s Japs? And what’s Pearl Harbor?” They didn’t know anything about it. “I don’t know. I ain’t never heard of no Japs or nothing like that.” So when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and then when they made it a holiday.
Then I got in the genealogy class and I tried to trace back, and I tried to trace all the way back to Waco, and I was born in Georgetown, so he must be kin to me because I came from a big family. But he wasn’t. We could never make no connection. But those families there in Austin that day—I had to go back home and make about twenty—they gave me about ten or fifteen dollars—and went back later and made about twenty-five of them books and sent them to them because the generation had never—all they just heard something about Uncle Dorie and that’s all.
And one of the things the story on Dorie being his dad and his mom—I think in the book I got it explains it—is the name was Doris Miller. And what happened was when he was going to high school with the name Doris Miler, they kept calling him a sissy because his name was Doris Miller. And that’s in writing. So he changed his name from Doris to Dorie Miller. So they quit calling him a sissy. And so that way he didn’t have to be Doris Miller. So he was then Dorie Miller, so he was in—and there’s been a lot of schools and streets and buildings named after Dorie Miller all throughout America. So that’s when they accepted that school, so Dorie Miller out here. I used to go out there during Black History Month and speak on Dorie Miller and what happened. I haven’t been out there lately. They haven’t called me lately during February.
But I guess that’s basically it. My wife was the first black nurse that graduated from nursing school in Georgetown, and when she came down here she went to work for Hays County and she went to work. In ’66 they wouldn’t take us both at Job Corps, so she was a nurse, so she went to work for the Hays County Health Department. So she went to Hays County Health Department. She came home one day and she said, “Harvey,” and she was a Libra. You’re not no Libra, are you?
THIBODEAUX: Uh uh.
MILLER: She was a Libra, and she was tough. I’m a Scorpio. I’m easygoing. She came home one day and said, “Harvey, you going to have to put me in your black history.”
I said, “For what? What have you done? What kind of” (inaudible).
“Just shut up.” She said, “They introduced me today and everything and said, ‘This is Mrs. Miller and she’s from Georgetown. And Mrs. Miller is the first colored nurse Hays County Health Department has ever had. And now she’s going to be on regular.’” I’m going to tell you what I told her, and I almost got slapped. I said, “Oh, so you was the first nigger nurse.” I said, “Okay. That’s all right then.”
And so I put down she was the first nurse, and a lot of people tried to oppose it. I went to Hays County Health Department and went through the records. I kept reading records and everything and go through and go through. One day I got to about that time and they got down there, “Arabelle Miller, colored,” so they had an ethnic down, like white or Caucasians or Hispanics, stuff like that, and it said, “colored.” So sure enough, there was no other colored nurse until about that time. So I tell some of the other people here. They said, “Harvey, you didn’t grow up here. How you know all that?” So I was so into black history and I checked it.
I didn’t realize that in all the black history I was in—I didn’t realize that there were black people in the Bible. I just always—where the Bible was printed, I just always thought everybody in the Bible was white. I remember telling my white friend one day about it. He said, “Well, there ain’t that many white people in the Bible.” I said, “No, there’s some in there because Moses—when Moses and—do you know about when Moses was told to replenish the earth? Think it’s in Genesis something, Moses was told to replenish the earth after the flood—I mean, Noah was. Noah.
And what happened was Noah had these three sons, and Noah planted a vineyard and he made a lot of wine. One day he was in his tent naked and drunk. His baby boy, which is named Ham, was a colored boy and then—I never did know which one represented, say, like the Hispanic or the Chinese or something like that, and then one represented the Caucasian. When Ham come out and told his brothers about it, they didn’t want to see their daddy naked, so they take a spread—they call it in the Bible—walks in there and covers him up. Now, when Noah wakes up and comes out, he calls them together, and he tells Ham, who was his black son, he said, “Your people are going to be servants to your brothers.” Now, this was in the new Bible—I mean, in the regular Bible. Then when I got the new Bible where it’s been revised, it says in there, “Your people are going to be slaves to your brothers.” That’s the way he punished Ham for telling off on him for being naked and drunk.
So I always tell my white friends that slavery was a biblical thing. It started back there then and it was meant that way. And the same thing about the blacks and Ham was told to this, and he had to go on this side of the thing and the other two brothers had to go on the other side. So that’s why I realized that when Moses married an Ethiopian woman, his brother and sisters didn’t like him because of that. And the Lord called them together and punished Miriam and Aaron because they didn’t like their brother because he married this Ethiopian woman and put a yellow fever on them. Now, I called somewhere and asked, I said, “The Ethiopia today is that the Ethiopia in the Bible?” and they said, “Yeah, it is,” and they gave me a number to call up in New York. I called and I said, “The Ethiopia today is that the Ethiopia that’s in the Bible?” and they said, “Yes. It’s a little more modern, not much more.” But I didn’t know Ethiopia. So a lot of things happened in Bible about Ethiopia about the kind of a discrimination in the Bible. So I put together a little booklet of people of color in the Bible and realized there was a lot of people in the Bible.
So I’ve been into black history and all that kind of stuff, and then—I guess you want to go back—were we going to talk about anything? You want me to keep talking or you want to ask some questions?
THIBODEAUX: What about Gary Job Corps Center? Why don’t you tell me a little bit about the Job Corps Center and what you did there? And then I think you said that you saw LBJ at Gary Job Corps Center.
MILLER: Yes. Well, it’s Gary Job Corps Center and I got some collections here. Like I say, I got quite a bit of collections on him. One of the things about what happened with the Gary Job Corps, President Kennedy—President Johnson was the vice president to President Kennedy—and President Kennedy had set up this program—and I forget what it’s called there for low income people at that time that they wasn’t able to go to college and all of them have some kind of training. That’s why Job Corps kind of started. So when he got it all set up and going pretty good—all over the United States they had in and in the South had it. So when President Kennedy was assassinated and President Johnson taken over—and I looked for that article because I had an article and somebody said, “You know, Harvey, you got to prove that,” and I had the article.
So what happened when President Johnson, who went to the university here and everything, and I think he was from Marble Falls, Texas, somewhere. He went to the university here. So when Kennedy was assassinated and the program was going on, he was getting—make the program grow bigger and bigger, he said, “Now, I want a Job Corps Center at the old Gary Air Force Base in San Marcos, Texas.” Now, since the World War II, that base had closed down and a lot of those old barracks was just falling down and all that. So when he said that, then they started the Job Corps Center in here. I think this is part of the Job Corps here. I think that’s part of Job Corps there where he was shaking hands with them.
But he actually came out there one time riding in the back of a car and he kept trying to shake hands with all the students. One of the security guards come up to me and said, “Harvey—” no, the security guards started pushing the students back, pushing them back away from the president, like that, and he was trying to shake hands with all. And I had a picture of him reaching over shaking hands with them. I asked one of these guards, a guy at the front gate down there, I said, “Let me ask you something. Did you get a chance to see the president?”
“Yeah, I talked with him at the front gate down there before he come in. We got him all set up and put him in his car and everything.”
I said, “Well, why are y’all giving these kids a hard time? Everybody wants to go home and say, ‘Mamma, Daddy, I shook hands with the president of the United States.’”
And one of the security guards said, “Oh, hell. Okay, Harvey,” and he just backed up, and President Johnson circled around Gary Job Corps and just started to shaking hands both sides with all the students. It was amazing. They had pictures of him. I don’t think it’s in here because this is all to do with Job Corps.
Some of that booklet is made by Job Corps, as a matter of fact, because there’s some of the dormitory. That’s what the dormitories looked like when they first started. Gary transferred to army section, and I got that article, and that’s what they looked like.[Photograph of barracks included in GJCC history attached.] And then they started remodeling them. Now, it’s real modern out there. They even got a big—look like dormitories in the city. So this is when it was an air force base out there and part of my thing.
So that’s where he started Job Corps and it was all over, and it ended up with three thousand boys at that time, three thousand boys. And just about all of them were black because at that time Anglo kids was having a good time, so really didn’t think there was no need for them. But there was a few of them out there. But then pretty soon—in 1974—and I got put together a booklet on that—in 1974 they decided to make it coed.
Now, those boys were so bad and mostly black, and the boys from New Orleans and the South couldn’t get along with the boys from New York and up in the North, fighting all the time. They used to call themselves the Louisiana—called the Boot, and they’d all fighting. We’d be kicking them out, send them home, send them before the review board and put some of them on probation and keep them, and some they’d send home.
I remember in 1974 when they decided to make it coed, I said, “Oh man, what are we going to do with bringing girls out here with all these bad boys?”
In 1974 we brought the girls out there, and there’s a girl that called me later on and she said, “Mr. Miller, you said something about when they integrated and I was one of the first girls in that group to come down there.” She said, “Now, are you sure it was me?”
I said, “Yeah. I got a picture.”
She said, “What do that picture look like?” I said, “You got a big old Afro.” “Oh, my God, that’s me. Mr. Miller, put that in the trash. I don’t want nobody to see what I look like,” and I tell you, she look something else.
But we brought the girls out and then we started having coed—and it’s coed now—and they started making trades, and it really was helpful. Now, everybody uses it now. It’s just more. It’s just as many Anglo kids because it’s a good way to get a trade. If you drop out of school and get a trade and go to work and be a—go on to school and be a doctor. You know, they offer so many trades out there.
So it just turned out to be a good program. I don’t know how many centers they still have over across the United States, but they had centers all over the United States and even have some in Hawaii right after it became a state.
So the Job Corps Program—so President Johnson, he did come out there that day, and that’s when I got a chance to shake his hand and to meet him and not get too much chance to speak with him because so many people there and everything. That’s why I told Luci Baines, his daughter, about it, and she was almost—she just couldn’t believe all that was happening. She said she read a lot about her daddy but she didn’t know that.
THIBODEAUX: Do you remember when that visit was?
MILLER: Yeah. That was in—no, I don’t remember whether in ‘6_—seems like it was around ’64 or something like that. But I don’t remember exactly.
THIBODEAUX: It wasn’t at the beginning, was it?
MILLER: No, ma’am. It was a while later on after—it was still a bunch of boys there, but it was in—they opened in 1965. And I started in March 26, ’66, and that’s when it opened in 1965, and so it was around 1967 or ’68 maybe when he came out there. But he’d come down to this area to speak down here and he used to come to Texas State—well, it wasn’t Texas State then—quite a bit. Matter of fact, that’s the story about him being out there then.
THIBODEAUX: That’s when he dedicated the center?
MILLER: Um hmm. “LBJ Discusses the Matter with the Students,” so all this is Gary Air Force Base in 1956. So then on November 20 when President Johnson—“a short time later President Johnson surprised local officials when he announced in his speech at his alma mater, Southwest Texas University that he—“ okay that one really tells the story right there. I could make you a copy of it because that’s basically what it is. Now, I don’t know if it has some dates up there.
THIBODEAUX: Oh yes. I’d like copies of this.
MILLER: Like I say, I got a copy machine back there—
THIBODEAUX: Oh, wow!
MILLER: —and the pictures may not come out very good, but the story part of it would. And then it goes on to tell—and this is at Job Corps. I don’t know if –probably at Gary - pressing the flesh. Important dates in Gary’s history.[attached] Okay. There is he there and all that, and I guess it gives the dates of what happened. Gary gains a sister center was, you know, on further down there. I’ll make you some copies of this and, like I say, the pictures won’t come out very good, but the writing part will.
THIBODEAUX: Yeah. That’d be great.
MILLER: Jack Pickle at that time—O. J. Baker was the first center director out there at Job Corps. I think that may be him talking. He’s talking to some of the students and he’s talking to students in the different trades. Like I say, I named the campers after him and it was—well, this is a picture. A lot of times when you keep these collections they start getting dark, it’s hard to make good copies, but I made this copy here of him. I don’t know if he’s at the Job Corps or at—well, it said, “Johnson on Campus,” talking to them. I’ll give you that too with some stuff here.
THIBODEAUX: Oh, thank you.
MILLER: Now, what I did, I named it after—my campers—and I got promoted and I start giving out awards and I called them the LBJ Campers. And I give out different certificates. And this is here a little something about him. I’m going to give you this because I got some of this. It’s also about him and Southwest Texas. This is about the museum I think. We had that. And here I made this certificate. Can you imagine that?
THIBODEAUX: Oh, that is so funny.
MILLER: I got that—that is Nixon—I got that out of a paper when he was president, so I made a certificate out of it. So he’s pushing Nixon on the bike—presidency. That kind of looks like him a little bit. And now I got an extra copy of this. You may have it somewhere. That’s Luci when she came down to this area, and this is something to do with the museum. I don’t know if they’ve got it continued.
THIBODEAUX: So that picture of you with Luci, is that for the opening of the museum?
MILLER: I think that’s when it opened, and I think that’s when the dedication of the museum, I believe it was. I was trying to look back over some more articles and to see—see a few other things. This is a picture here when they—I guess it’s when—I don’t know if this is in here. I’m going to give you some that you can—that may be something about the Job Corps.
THIBODEAUX: That’s Gary Job Corps.
MILLER: Um hmm, and this is when he was young looking. You can have that because I got a copy of that.
THIBODEAUX: Okay.
MILLER: I made extra copies of everything, you know, if you’re going to write on him, and then you got a picture of him already, I guess, somewhere.
THIBODEAUX: Yeah, that’s an interesting one.
MILLER: The Lyndon Baines Johnson Museum. Well, that’s about the museum. I got two of these. I don’t know about—now, you may—you say you’ve been associated with the museum?
THIBODEAUX: Yes. I work for the university and they’re collaborating with the museum.
MILLER: We got a committee now—and I say I’m on the committee—we went before the county and we wanted to put a statue of Martin Luther King. Now, I brought this up years ago to the city. I said, “Martin Luther King and LBJ run together.” Now, you know where the little courthouse is?
THIBODEAUX: Um hmm.
MILLER: Martin Luther King and the lady, Mrs. Armstead, passed on, was the name of the group that named the street Martin Luther King was Fornell Street and they named Martin Luther King Street. So when it gets to that place and the doughnut shop there and LBJ, they run together. So I sent a letter to the city to put a big picture up there of Martin Luther King and LBJ shaking hands because it’s just like the streets running into each other and they’re shaking hands. They said, “No, Mr. Miller, we can’t do that because people’d be stopping and slowing down and holding up traffic just to look at that thing.”
Now then, what they’re trying to do on that same corner but over further in there—I’m on that committee and we went to the court last week, but tried to meet with the court but they were out. Must’ve been on holiday or something, and there was a picture like this here, and I gave them this picture and they used it on a plaque, LBJ and Martin Luther King. So we planned on building a—putting a statue there on the corner down at the end of Martin Luther King and LBJ now. So we got to get back with the city next week on building that. And that was back when Martin Luther King and then - they really got along real good because it was just that time. One thing about Martin Luther King compared to a lot of other people, he always done things in a diplomatic way, always used that term, where a lot of other people was doing it real—just mean and ornery about it. Martin Luther King worked with a lot of people because he was real diplomatic about it, how to handle people. ‘Oh six, you don’t have this here because I got another one. I’ll just give it, that’s about the museum.
THIBODEAUX: Oh, good.
MILLER: And I got another one of these. These are probably the same thing but it’s a different date because right now I go down there sometimes but I’m not on the board and I just go down and look at them. I enlarged this picture—one of the pictures—and that’s the one that Luci looked at and she thought about having. That’s one of them. This one’s a little larger, I enlarged it. I don’t know if you want to have it and put it in something.
THIBODEAUX: Yeah, that’s nice.
MILLER: And then this was like the dorm agenda. We used to have dorm agendas in the Job Corps. [copy attached] And LBJ’s birthday was August 27, and we’d have a birthday party for him out there.
THIBODEAUX: Oh. I would like a copy of that.
MILLER: Yeah. Just go ahead and take that.
THIBODEAUX: Oh, thank you.
MILLER: I got so—’m such a collector and I got stuff—and I got file cabinets right now. I’m going to let you peek in my file cabinets, but my office is so junky out there. (Thibodeaux laughs) And one of my little grandkids told me one day, said, “Granddad, what are you going to do with all this junk?” and I was cleaning it off a little here so you’d have a place to sit down, and you told me I didn’t have to. I said, “Well,” I didn’t want to say when I die, so, “when I go to heaven, y’all can just put it in the trash.” Now, the funny thing about him, he looked up at me like this, Are you going to heaven? I don’t know if he was saying the way you’ve been acting right now I don’t think you’re going to heaven. But I got so much collection, and what I like to do now is kind of like pass it on to people and not just have it here.
Mr. Miller’s grandson: You said you need to make some copies of some of this?
MILLER: Let me see what else. This is some on the LBJ Museum.
THIBODEAUX: So were you on the original committee that came up with the idea and got things going for the museum?
MILLER: No, not really. Some other people—I had talked about it and I had been communicating with the university and everything, and they usually just called me. Sometimes the people get some ideas from me just from talking, and I was surprised later on when they called about having it, and they had to get some permission to use it on the square and to use that building and how much it was going to cost and stuff like that. I think that’s when some of them were writing them. But I just have ideas and then the next thing I know, a few months or years later, they decided to have it because I was talking about Lyndon Johnson out at the Job Corps. I was trying to see if there was anything else on him. Minutes on the Lyndon Johnson Museum—this is in 2000. And this is one, the guy that was over it—and I’ll give you this copy because I’ve got two or three of these. So you may have some of this stuff. Do you have any collection in the museum?
THIBODEAUX: No.
MILLER: Well, I remember him and this is a picture of LBJ and this is kind of a little booklet I start putting out.
THIBODEAUX: So this is at the very beginning?
MILLER: It’s kind of like, yes, ma’am, at the beginning of when they started it, I believe. I don’t know exactly. And out at Job Corps I used to make tickets, and the kids in order for them to get in, I handed them all tickets, a personal invitation. So I put LBJ and if you didn’t have one of these, you couldn’t get in the event. Then some of the kids started going out there trying to make them.
Now, this is what the building looked like—I think it’s where the museum is now—it kind of looked like and they kind of redone it here. Did I give you one of these?
THIBODEAUX: I’ve got one of those.
MILLER: Okay. That is Job Corps and they had a dorm council and we had to go in here.
THIBODEAUX: So you’ve put “Lyndon Johnson” on everything—
MILLER: Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: —related to the dorms?
MILLER: Yeah. Yeah, just in my campers. Like I say, all them different dorms back there then, we end up naming them after—and then they named dorms after—I suggested before I left—I retired. I was out there thirty-three years and I retired, and I had started a lot of things. Like I started—well, another guy worked with me on the drill team, and then I decided to—me and a Hispanic lady got together and decided we would do a—what had happened was I was so easygoing with students and I would work to save students and everything. And everybody’d just get mad and they wanted to kick them out, and I called the student in and talked. I said, “Now, look, I’m going to go before the review board, and I want you to change your way if you want to stay here. If not, I’m going to let them kick you out.” And I saved a lot of students like that.
The first thing you know, they demoted me. When a new lady came out there and taken over the center, she demoted me from where I was all the way down to working in the gym. Well, what happened, I heard her talking on the phone to the regional office. Her name was Mrs. [Lana] Kite. That was years later—talking and said, “I got this man,” and she didn’t know I was listening and I was in the other room. “I got this little old man here, and he’s done a whole lot for Job Corps and everything. But he’s so easygoing, he’s been here so long,” and something about money and stuff like that, and that’s when she said that, then they went ahead and demoted me all the way down but they couldn’t take my money. I was making money that I was making as a (inaudible).
That’s when I started the Four Clover Dance Team, me and this Hispanic lady. We was going all around Central Texas getting in for parades and dancing. And we went to Laredo one time and we got down there. I told—we was dancing in Laredo on the Texas side. I told them, I said, “I’m going to go across the border so I can tell my people I’ve been out of the United States.” Three of them little Hispanic girls on the team called me, “Mr. Miller, don’t you go across the border because if they lock you up, how are we going to get home?”
It just so happened the man that was over the gate heard me say that and heard them say that. He said, “Sir, come here a few minutes.” I went through the gate and went over to his office over there and he said, “Okay, that’s it. You can tell your people you’ve been out of the United States.” And them girls just started laughing because I did that. So I have a historical day.
I had an Indian dance team. We went everywhere and started an Indian dance team. We were just going everywhere dancing. I’d been demoted and I just going everywhere dancing. I guess that’s about all I got in there about that. This one here is a little bigger one, but you got one.
THIBODEAUX: Could I have one of those just passes with his picture on it?
MILLER: Yeah. Yes, ma’am.
THIBODEAUX: That’s interesting.
So what activities did people from the Gary Job Corps Center do in town? Did they contribute to any projects, build anything?
MILLER: They came down and done some projects that they built and helped restore buildings and stuff like that. I think they helped to restore the Calaboose. Then they just participated in all parades. The drill team, we’d be in all the parades. Then they’d come home—they’d come to town on weekends, and some of them got so bad that they don’t come like they used to. I don’t know. I used to be on the community relations board out there for a long time. But they’d come in, they’d get into stuff. There was a lot of good students then, and then a lot of them would get into trouble. They’d be drinking, wasn’t supposed to be. They’d be just doing everything, stealing, and finally got it where it was hard to get them to come to town. A certain group’d have to come.
And we’d bring the church, and I tell you, my church, since they knew me, was so full of students that we used to have to put seats down the middle of the church because that’s how everybody have a seat, just full of Job Corps students. And just coincidence about my pastor last year was an ex-Job Corps student. He stayed here and went on to be a preacher. Then there’s two other guys that go to my church and one of them is on the trustee board. He was in Job Corps, and all those people was in Job Corps.
THIBODEAUX: Thank you so much.
MILLER: Okay. So I think you got all the writing part. That ought to help you.
THIBODEAUX: What’s your pastor’s name?
MILLER: Pastor now is named Derrick Benn, and I don’t know if his ex-wife still works there. Sherri Benn used to work at the university.
THIBODEAUX: How do you spell their last name?
MILLER: B-e-n-n. His name is Derrick Benn, and he used to work up there.
THIBODEAUX: So he was one of your success stories.
MILLER: Yeah. But his ex-wife—I think his former wife—went to school up there and then I think she went on and went to work up there.
Here’s a letter here. I don’t know what that says. But it was the court that sent that.
THIBODEAUX: About attending one of the meetings.
Well, I know that President Johnson did work with Martin Luther King and they did have an idea that universal educational opportunities and programs to try to move people out of poverty would help overcome a lot of problems faced by minorities.
MILLER: Um hmm.
THIBODEAUX: Can you—are there any programs under the Great Society that you could visibly see in the Central Texas area and see that it was doing some benefit, like Upward Bound or Community Action?
MILLER: Yeah, Community Action. I used to work for—I worked at Job Corps and I joined so many committees. I joined Community Action, I just worked with them, and I worked for a program—just talking about myself—I worked for a program similar to Community Action in the Dunbar area down where the Dunbar Park is. At that time I was living down right across from the park. The old Dunbar School, when it was about to fall down, I got a picture of that of the old school and the new school. I got a picture of that.
And what happened was when they had a meeting one day—they called a meeting—no, when Martin Luther King was assassinated, a bunch of people from the university called a meeting and invited a lot of us to it right after the assassination. They called it the Bridge Builders, and they said, “Now, we’re going to meet and start meeting. What we’re going to do, we’re going to try to bridge the gap between the ethnic groups, so what happened to Martin Luther King won’t happen here.”
One day we was at a meeting and they started asking all us black people there and all the other different people different things, what would you like to see? And a lot of the black said, I’d like to see more black nurses hired and more black secretaries, and they was all different things. And they said, “Harvey, what about you?” I said, “Well, let me just say this. I live across the street from the old colored school. Cars run around over there all the time, and they’re over there just drinking and gambling and stuff like that. I’d like to see that made into a park and a recreation center.”
They put that on their list, and you’re not going to believe it, about three weeks later, they had me standing before the city council and they said, “Draw a little plan, Harvey, a little plat—” and I just saw that picture a while ago— “a little plan of that and let me see what you’re talking about.” And I did. I drew a thing for a park and everything, and I went to the city council and I told them about it, and then they kind of looked into it and stood before the—got the article, “Harvey Miller Comes Before City Council.” I drawed the plan.
Then I come back and they checked with the school, and the school says, “We can’t do that. We can’t let you use that part.” I was good at writing letters. I even wrote some letters to the president and to the secretary of state and stuff like that, and I’ve still got some copies of it. So I wrote a letter to the school board—and that’s where you document things—and the school board with the principal—with the superintendent said, “We can’t do that.” And he wrote a letter back and he even put it in the paper. “Got a letter from Mr. Miller about that school and everything. Well, we can’t do that because that’s what we use to store all our stuff and use it for storage. Now, if the city can come up with a place to store all our stuff, we can work with them.”
A lady—and I saw a picture of her a while ago—her name was Frances Marshall, and she was a friend of my daughter, Chris, my oldest daughter, and when they came out in the paper about a park down there—this is her here. Frances Marshall, she end up running for the school board. Too, which was her daughter, and they ran for school board. She got elected, he didn’t. And what she did, she saw that article in the paper, and she paid the school—and I got another article where it comes out in the paper—she paid the school $31,000 out of her pocket for that building, and the school—for them to give it to the city. As soon as they give it to the city, they made Dunbar Park.
Then right now it’s so busy now, you have to book it in advance. I have to book it now for next year for my Juneteenth. Somebody’s down there all the time. So that’s Frances Marshall and her husband, and she’s passed on now. So she gave that money to the school—bought it from the school and gave it to the city to make a school.
And that’s just a few of the things that I was involved in. But that’s like Johnson, like I say, when he came down and when they opened the museum and everything. He was going to school here, you know, since he went to school here. He was in-and-out quite a bit. I think—I can’t get the proof—but I think he was from Marble Falls, Texas up there somewhere. You might check that in Marble Falls. So when he went to school here, that’s what happened then. So he wanted the Job Corps Center out there at that old Gary Air Force Base. Them pictures like I showed you where it’s about to fall down. But I don’t know. I could just go on talking and talking.
THIBODEAUX: Why don’t we kind of summarize it up?
My big opinion question I’d like to ask—I asked of everyone so far—is what do you think is President Johnson’s—or Lyndon Johnson’s greatest legacy in this area, in the Central Texas area? What do you think is the best thing he’s done for this area?
MILLER: Well, he done a lot of things. I think they got a building up on campus named after him. But I think as a result of him and his popularity in being—end up being president of the United States that attracted a lot of students to the university there. I read an article about that one time. A lot of them was because of that in this area. At one time it was almost more students in there than it was the population of San Marcos, but I just keep up with the status of population of San Marcos and knew what the breakdown was of ethnic groups, Hispanic, black, and whites. I even went to the city—I went to the taxpayer and got that, which right now—back then was about 12 or 13 percent of the black, and actually there was more Hispanic than it was white on the taxpayer. But I think the school was one of the things that attracted a lot of students there, and I think it may still be but I think a lot of them may be aware of the fact, but at that time I think it attracted a lot of them.
I think another thing that happened, I think when he got so involved with the Job Corps because the Job Corps affected this community because a lot of people moved here. I moved here from Georgetown to go to work at Job Corps, and a lot of people moved in this area and I think a lot of them still live—I see people and I invite them to church, and I say, “Now, where are you employed at?” “I’m with Job Corps.” And a lot of them have heard about me and a lot of them come in and ask right now, “Are you Harvey Miller?” I said, “No, I’m not Harvey Miller. I’m Miller Lite.” I always trying to be funny. “Okay, Mr. Miller.” But I think the Job Corps was one of the areas that he made an outstanding contribution when they did that and got that here because it provided so many jobs and so many opportunities for people here. A lot of them instead of driving all the way from San Antonio, they relocated here and then all of that.
Then like I say, then the university had an effect on a lot of it. And then with the museum—after they decided to do the museum, it attracted a lot of attention and a lot of people, especially the young generation because a lot of them wasn’t aware of it. And a lot of my collection I used to make and put them in the schools of him and Martin Luther King and a lot of things about black history.
I guess those may be the two things that I think may be the best, and I think people still when you mention San Marcos, they always think about LBJ, where he lived at. They said, “Oh, yeah. Now, that’s where our president and all used to live and used to be,” I say, “Yeah. Well, I hate to tell you this, but I met him one time.” And they just say, “What?” I say, “Yeah. He came to Job Corps, and I got to shake his hand.” But I think probably that’s the two things I think that might’ve been.
The museum because I think we got on one of our programs when people go through making the tour—we got a senior citizen kind of a tour of the city. And a lady called me from Waxahachie, Texas the other day, was coming down here—and I don’t know how—where they get my name. I get so many calls—and was coming down here in October. She wanted to know about when to come for where you ride around and see the history of the whole town and about where she could stay and sent her some—find her some motels. So she called me and wanted to know about, and I told her about that. She said, “Now, are you saying—I heard something about it. Let me ask you this question,” and I said, “Yeah.” “Now, is that the same town where our President used to live?” I said, “Yeah. That’s the same town. He was here,” and so-and-so and so-and-so. She just wanted to come by and she asked about the museum.
And I found out later when my grandkids took me to the library, there’s so much on the Internet and all that that pulls up, I guess you can put it in and pull it up. He pulled my name up, and I don’t know who put all that stuff on it but a lot of stuff on me about the things I was involved in. So a lot of people when they say this and this is San Marcos, and this has something to do with LBJ and the museum. So they just all excited about coming down and visiting the museum. I haven’t been by—well, I went in there not too long ago, but I hadn’t been down there lately. I say I was going to get involved with it a little more. She said you know about the Calaboose [Museum].
THIBODEAUX: Um hmm.
MILLER: I took them a lot of my history. I got the old irons and old churns and old eggbeater and all that kind of stuff, so I took all—give them a lot of that down there to just put on display down at the museum. But I don’t know. I could probably go on and on with things.
THIBODEAUX: Is there anything else you want to offer on Lyndon Johnson?
MILLER: No, I guess that’s about it. I have to get back in touch with you later on. Now, I gave you one of these, didn’t I? Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: Yes. I’ve got a copy of that.
MILLER: Okay, because this is the original. I could give you—
(End of interview)