Transcript of Oral History Interview with Steve Glasper

Oral history interviews of the Vietnam Era Oral History Project Copyright Notice: © 2019 Minnesota Historical Society Researchers are liable for any infringement. For more information, visit www.mnhs.org/copyright. Version 3 August 20, 2018 Steve Glasper Narrator Douglas Bekke Interviewer April 9, 2018 Fridley, Minnesota Steven Glasper -SG Douglas Bekke -DG DB: Minnesota Historical Society Vietnam Oral History Project interview with Steve Glasper in his home in Fridley, Minnesota on 9 April 2018. Mr. Glasper can you please say and spell your name? SG: Yes my name is Steve Glasper. S-T-E-V-E G-L-A-S-P as in people-E-R DB: And your birth date? SG: 10-31-49 DB: And your place of birth? SG: St. Joseph, Missouri. DB: What do you know about your ancestry? SG: Well, being African-American, sometimes it’s a little difficult, gets a little hazy when you start thinking about how far back you go. I can go back—fortunately for me we’ve had a pretty good, family make up and we’ve always kept in touch with. I can go back as far as my great- great-grandparents at least having some knowledge, and my great-great-grandmother I actually knew Mildred Webster because she was still alive. She died, she was 106 when she passed. DB: That’s pretty amazing. SG: Yeah. We had the opportunity to actually learn some things from her even though I was a small child, but my father is from St. Joseph, Missouri, my mother is from St. Joseph, Missouri. Their families are from there too, the Missouri area. My mother and father divorced when I was seven. My father remained in St. Joseph, Missouri. My mother remarried a serviceman. He was in the air force. From the age of about fourteen, is when I moved away from Missouri, but— DB: Let’s go back to your, great-great-grandmother who lived to be 106. What kind of stories did she tell you? SG: Well, an interesting thing about her was, she married a Caucasian man at a time when it was illegal in Missouri. So the interesting thing was they had traditionally a little bit better house 34 than a lot of us had, you know, back then things were segregated. We’re talking about the fifties era. And, I just remember— DB: She married in, in—she must’ve been close to 100 years old in the 50s. SG: No, well, when did she pass? She passed in the 70s at about 106. DB: Oh, really? SG: Yeah, yeah. So, but she got married long before that. But I’m relating it to the fifties because that’s what I remember. DB: Sure, okay, okay. SG: But my grandfather, my great-grandfather, if you saw a picture of him he looked like Lynden Johnson. We used to make kind of cracks about that because he looked exactly like Lynden Johnson. But at the time it was illegal for them to get married and the way they got married was very interesting because they met, they fell in love, he went to the courthouse to get the papers for them to get married and of course they looked at him kind of oddly because, hey, the— DB: Not being done in those days. SG: But when you fill out the paperwork, under race he put ‘colored’ down. And even though he looked the way he looked, and at that time no one’s going to doubt—why you would say that unless you must really be, so they stamped it and let them get married. And that just kind of showed our family, we always used to talk about how much he cared about her because he was willing to make that sacrifice, and that was a big sacrifice back then, because he really wanted to marry this woman, so—but, one thing about him, the stories I used to hear about him was— DB: Did you know him? SG: I didn’t, no. He passed before DB: Saw pictures of him— SG: Yes. He didn’t live as long as my grandmother did, and I’m not sure about whether they were that close in age or not, but the stories I used to hear were, grandpa Webster used to be able to go and purchase things for our family that everybody would just give him the money and he could go get better choices of things and shop at places where we’d have issues shopping and things we couldn’t get. He would always go and do that for us because his appearance let him open up any doors he needed to open to get in, and you know he got to go shopping for us and buy things for us that we couldn’t normally get our hands on. And he also had a little bit better house than most of the black people that lived in the St. Joe area at that time. DB: And was this on your mother’s side or your father’s side? SG: This was on my father’s side. DB: Okay, okay. 35 SG: And my mother’s side, there is some Native American in there and I can’t really—my mother knows a lot more about it and unfortunately I’ve not been one to kind of put a lot of emphasis on— DB: Is your mother still alive? SG: Yes. DB: Oh, this’ll be an incentive to go and talk to your mother! SG: (laughs) I can get a little information from her, yeah! DB: Is she in Missouri? SG: My great-grandmother on her side, I know, was half Native American, I don’t know which tribe, but they were all from the Missouri area. My mother’s from the Missouri area, but my mother lives here now. And an interesting aspect of my whole family is that none of us are from here in Minnesota, but all of my brothers and sisters are here now. DB: Everybody migrated to Minnesota. SG: Everybody migrated here, yeah. DB: Came here for the weather, didn’t you? SG: Yeah, yeah exactly! (Both laugh) For the hockey! (Both laugh) DB: Okay, okay. You said that your parents divorced when I think you said you were seven? SG: I think I was about seven, yes. DB: And, but you were able to maintain contact with your birth father’s family? SG: Oh yes, yes. He married another woman, had three other boys, they were my half- brothers, but St. Joseph is a small town, and especially the black community, so we all knew each other very well, we played together, we stayed at each other’s houses, we knew each other very well. DB: Okay. SG: And I always had contact with my father. DB: Okay. Sometimes with divorce there’s a sharp line there. SG: No, no, that never was a problem, my father—and he just passed away about two years ago, —and he actually moved up here too, and my mother and my stepfather moved here too— we can get into that later. DB: Okay, and so, you went with your mother after the divorce and your mother married a military person. SG: Yes. She met my stepfather, who, my birth name is actually Webster. My stepfather adopted us because at the time he being in the military and for us to get all of the benefits it was better for him to adopt us. They met through a cousin of mine who was in the military and brought this guy from Chicago—he had been in the military a while, he was a sergeant—to meet 36 my mother, and they hit it off pretty well. Now, me, I had myself and one brother at the house, and he’s younger than me, and me being the oldest and thinking at that time, we’re talking the early sixties, I’m the man of the house, basically, so meeting this guy was a little bit of a—it was kind of an interesting time for me. DB: Stepping into your territory. SG: Right. He was able to get my younger brother’s attention pretty easily. He was younger, give him some candy he’s good to go. Me, I’ve got my eye on you. You’re not— I don’t know, I’m not ready to buy into you. And I remember the day he bought a new car, ‘62 Impala, and he came to—he was, oh where was he based? I really don’t remember where he was based, but he’d only come to see my mother maybe once every month and a half. They wrote letters, and you know they knew everything about each other by the time they met, but anyway. He came this one time—their situation was getting pretty serious, and I think it was either right after or just before he asked her to marry him—he drove up in a brand new ‘62 Impala. I’m 14 years old. I’m looking out the window, I see this Impala pull up, and I’m impressed as hell. I’m like, “oh wow, look at this!” DB: Maybe this guy’s not so bad. SG: Yeah—well I still wasn’t going to give it to him that easily. He walks in the house and you know I’m—I take the smile off my face after looking at the car—“Hey, hey, how’s it going,” you know that kind of thing, and he looks at me and he goes, “Do you know how to drive a car?” And I went, “Yeah,” not knowing how to drive a car at all.

Load more