Melvin Tolson

Oral History Interview

with

Melvin Tolson

Interview Conducted by Jerry Gill March 2, 2009

O-STATE Stories Oral History Project

O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library

Interview History

Interviewer: Jerry Gill Transcriber: Samantha Siebert Editors: Latasha Wilson, Mary Larson

The recording and transcript of this interview were processed at the Oklahoma State University Library in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Project Detail

The purpose of O-STATE Stories Oral History Project is to gather and preserve memories revolving around Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (OAMC) and Oklahoma State University (OSU).

This project was approved by the Oklahoma State University Institutional Review Board on October 5, 2006.

Legal Status

Scholarly use of the recordings and transcripts of the interview with Melvin Tolson is unrestricted. The interview agreement was signed on March 2, 2009.

O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library

About Melvin Tolson…

Dr. Melvin B. Tolson Jr. was born in 1923 and grew up in an intellectually gifted family. His father, Melvin B. Tolson Sr., was an internationally recognized and acclaimed educator, author, poet, and philosopher. His two brothers earned doctorates, his sister received two master's degrees, and later in life his mother received her master’s degree from OSU. Dr. Tolson remembers that, “Our table discussions, our discussions, were about ideas, political and social currents in the world.” He grew up in Marshall, Texas, where his father was on the faculty at Wiley College. The elder Tolson started and coached the nationally acclaimed debate program at the college that was featured in the movie The Great Debaters, starring Denzel Washington as Tolson’s father.

The younger Dr. Tolson, who debated under his father, graduated from Wiley College in 1942 and received a second bachelor’s degree at Gammon Theological Seminary in 1946. He was hired at Prairie View A&M College as assistant chaplain and professor of English, but in 1949 Tolson felt that it was time to work on a master’s degree. Oklahoma State University was located near Langston University, where his father was then a faculty member, and because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling the previous year integrating higher education in Oklahoma, he could consider attending OSU. Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, who had been the plaintiff in that suit, had been a student at Langston, where Tolson’s father had taught and mentored her. He also actively supported her cause and raised money to help pay for legal fees in her court battle to gain admission into the University of Oklahoma Law School.

In the fall of 1949, Tolson began work on his master’s degree in French, and he recalls that five students commuted from Langston at that time, including two women. By the second semester only he and Phail Wynn were still enrolled, and they both graduated in May 1950, becoming the first two African American graduates of Oklahoma State University. Tolson remembers being treated well by his classmates and teachers and remarks that there “never were any words of aspersion, racial words, racial expressions, nothing.” He and Phail were not involved in student activities, and Tolson explained that, “we went to school, went to class and came back to Langston.” He downplays the historical significance of his and Phail’s being the first black graduates of OSU and modestly gives Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher the credit for integrating higher education in Oklahoma and making their enrollment at OSU possible.

Following completion of his master’s degree, Tolson returned to his faculty position at Prairie View College. In 1955, he received a Fulbright Fellowship and spent 1955-56 studying at the University of Paris, the Sorbonne. He received the Advanced Diploma in Contemporary Literature, then returned to Prairie View until 1959. In 1959, he took another leave of absence to pursue doctoral studies in French at the University of Oklahoma, and in 1961 he accepted a teaching position there. He received his PhD in 1964. He later became

one of the first tenured black faculty members at OU. Tolson completed his long and distinguished academic career at the University and received numerous awards and recognitions for teaching excellence and service, including an award of appreciation from the Black Student Association, a Lifetime Excellence Award, and recognition as a Regents Professor.

Dr. Melvin Tolson Jr. retired in 1992 and still resides in Norman, where he continues his studies in the history of the black diaspora on the eastern coast of Africa to Islamic countries. He remains today, as he has been throughout his academic career, a quiet scholar and modest trailblazer who has made significant contributions to both scholarship and racial equality in higher education.

O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library

Melvin Tolson

Oral History Interview

Interviewed by Jerry Gill March 2, 2009 Norman, Oklahoma

Gill My name is Jerry Gill, and today is March 2, 2009. I’m visiting with Dr. Melvin Tolson in his home in Norman, Oklahoma. This interview is part of the O-State Stories Project for the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program of the OSU library. Dr. Tolson, I appreciate you taking time to visit with us today.

Tolson Thank you.

Gill To start off, could you share a little about your early life—about where you grew up, a little bit about your family?

Tolson I was born in my mother’s home in Charlottesville, Virginia, in June of 1923 while my father had come down that summer to Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, where he was going to be a teacher of English. My mother brought me down that fall to Marshall, and I grew up there. As I said, my father taught at Wiley College, and Wiley was right across the street and down the street from elementary and high schools, so it was a school atmosphere in which one found it very easy to go to school. Another thing is that although Marshall was a small town of approximately 10,000 or 12,000 people, there were three colleges— small colleges, of course—in that town. Wiley was what was at that time a Methodist Episcopal—now it’s United Methodist supported. There was another college, Bishop College, which was supported by the Baptist Church. And there was a white college, East Texas College, a state college, which is still there. Bishop College moved to Dallas in the fifties and finally went out of existence, but Wiley and East Texas State are still in Marshall, Texas. The high school, which I attended, was right across the street from Wiley College. Since integration, the high school has ceased to exist and its buildings are now a part of Wiley College. So it was quite an atmosphere to grow up in, a small town with three colleges.

Gill Sounds like a really educational environment for you.

Tolson Yes. And so I finished Wiley in 1942. I taught in a rural elementary school for one year. In Wiley I had majored in philosophy and English. I taught in this rural school one year, and after that I went to what was then Gammon Theological Seminary, which was supported by the Methodist Episcopal church. It is no longer in existence. It is now incorporated into the Interdenominational Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia, but I finished there. I was going to be either a professor of philosophy or a chaplain in the armed forces.

Gill What did you major in at Gammon College?

Tolson No, no. Gammon was a theological seminary, so there was a generalized curriculum in philosophy and theology. You did not major in—it wasn’t like a regular college where one majors in science or arts or things of that sort. Everyone took the same general courses. So when I came out of Gammon, I got a job as assistant chaplain and professor of English at Prairie View A&M College, which is close to Houston, Texas. At Prairie View I was asked, because I had had a course in French, I was asked to teach a course in French one semester and I consented. I enjoyed it so much that I asked for other courses, and gradually my emphasis changed from English to French. In 1949, I decided that it was time to get my master’s degree, and 1949 was also the year that Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher had succeeded in having the courts integrate the school systems in Oklahoma.

Gill What was her name again?

Tolson Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher. She was a student of my father’s at Langston University. I failed to mention that my father left Wiley in 1947 and came to Langston University. She was a student of his, and he mentored her. She is historically important as the woman who brought the suit that Attorney Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP succeeded in winning before the supreme court to integrate the schools. So that year of 1949, five of us went and enrolled in what was then Oklahoma A&M. There were two women and three men, and we commuted from Langston, where we all lived. At the end of the first semester, one of the men and the two women decided that they did not wish to continue, so for the second semester, only Phail Wynn and myself continued, and we finished the course and got our degrees in May.

Gill May of 1950?

Tolson Yes.

Gill Fall of 1949 to Spring…

Tolson To May of 1950, yes.

Gill Did you major in French there?

Tolson My major there was French with an English minor. The department was not very strong in French, and you had to have a minor, so I minored in English.

Gill Let me ask you, Dr. Tolson, what or who influenced you to enroll at Oklahoma State University?

Tolson Well as I said, I came up in 1949. I wasn’t sure where I would be going to graduate school. I knew it was time for me to get a master’s. After all, I got my BA in 1942, I got my BD in 1946, and it was now three years later and I’m teaching in a field in which I do not have a degree. I felt that it was time to get a master’s, so my father and I talked about it, and as I said, it was the year that the schools in Oklahoma had been opened by the Supreme Court decision, brought about by the efforts of Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher and her attorney for the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall. So my father called the dean’s office at Oklahoma A&M and asked. The dean said yes, so that’s the reason I could stay at home and commute to A&M.

Gill Do you remember anything about your enrollment process?

Tolson There was nothing except you just went and signed up. Or perhaps you asked that question thinking that there must have been something special. There was nothing special; we just went. The dean said just come on over and sign up, and that’s what we did. We were in different fields. I don’t remember the fields of the five others. But there was no problem at all. We went to class. It was just as though the school had been open all the time.

Gill Well going in, Dr. Tolson, were you concerned about the reception you’d get, say from white students?

Tolson No, I wasn’t concerned about it particularly. I thought about it, but there was no reason to be concerned because all that occurred was that several students became friendly, asked if they could help me, and ... I could remember that we decided, because we didn’t know anything about the campus, we decided to have lunch—we were invited by the principal of the Negro public school to have lunch at their cafeteria, which we did. It was a few blocks from A&M campus. Then finally, as I said, the second semester, three of the five dropped out. And one day, I decided I didn’t

feel like walking down to the black school to have lunch. I didn’t want anything but a sandwich, so I went into the café restaurant. They had one on the campus there at A&M at that time.

Gill Was the new Student Union building open at that time?

Tolson No, the new Student Union building had not yet been finished as I recall, because this was a small café restaurant, separately like a trailer, like a small café on campus. It was not yet the one that later was incorporated into the union building.

Gill Was that Pop McGruder’s place?

Tolson I just don’t recall. So I went in and ordered a hamburger and Coke, and they gave me one. There was no problem. There was never any problem. Never any problem. Never any words of aspersion, racial words, racist expressions, nothing. The only time (laughs) it might have come up was when one or two white students, as I passed, asked each other whether I was a black man. [As it was January and cold, I was covered up except for my face.] I can remember, there were three or four students, and one said, “Is that a Negro?” and one of the others said, “No, he must be an Indian. They don’t have the Negroes going here yet.” But there was never anything really disagreeable that occurred.

Gill And your classroom experience was not anything different from…

Tolson Oh, classmates were just like classmates. Yes, several of them I studied with. The teachers were fine. One of the deans—I forget which one— one of the deans of the university one day happened to be near me on Campus Corner and asked me how I was getting along. I told him, “Fine.” He said, “Well if you have any problems, come to me.” I said, “Yes, I haven’t had any.” And I never had any.

Gill Do you remember any of your professors on campus? Do you recall any of them that had a special influence on you? Any of your teachers or professors?

Tolson No. The head of the French studies area at that time, whose name unfortunately I’ve forgotten, was very friendly to me and advised me to study later in France if possible. He himself visited Europe almost yearly and finally retired, finally went to live in Brussels, where he passed away. I’m sorry, I can’t recall his name, but at this age I’m lucky if I can recall my own.

Gill Were you engaged in any activities outside of the classroom?

Tolson No, there were no activities. There was no French Club at that time. I don’t know whether there was at OU, but at A&M that was not the emphasis, so there were no other activities, no. We went to school, went to class, and came back to Langston.

Gill During the day did you have any favorite hangouts on campus where you’d go?

Tolson No, because we just went for classes. We’d sit in the library and study and whatnot. I was trying to do as well as possible in my studies, because it was the first time that I had had advanced studies in French and I wanted to do well. And plus, I was also taking advanced studies in English literature, and so there was nothing I did really that whole year but study.

Gill Well how did you do? Were your grades pretty good?

Tolson Oh yes, they were excellent. They were excellent, yes.

Gill You talked about driving back and forth to Langston, the five of the students…

Tolson Yes.

Gill Did you get a chance to have conversations? Were the others’ experiences fairly similar to yours?

Tolson Yes. I don’t know. That is, the one person that I drove back and forth most frequently with was Phail Wynn. Phail was in, I believe, mechanical engineering, although I may be wrong. I just don’t recall. The others had class schedules that—we seldom went over together. But all of the second semester, Phail and I went over together, and when our classes did not correspond, I would go over on the bus, which passed by Langston. It’s about twenty miles. And so Phail and I would talk, and Phail was having no problems either.

Gill And was that the Greyhound bus line that you were riding on?

Tolson I guess.

Gill Were there any problems with blacks riding on the bus or anything?

Tolson Oh no, no, no. I don’t remember at that time—now I remember, I believe, that segregation existed in the bus station, because when I would go to the bus station in ... We didn’t have a bus station of course in Langston. When I would get off at the one in Stillwater, I would go to

the "colored" section. I think at that time you still had a "colored" and "white" section.

Gill Anything specifically that you recall that was special in your memory of your student experience at Oklahoma State?

Tolson No, nothing in particular. Going to school at Oklahoma State was pretty much like going to school anywhere else, except that I was there infrequently—just for the classes—and there was nothing ... But I didn’t expect anything except class activity, you see. Since I wasn’t there, I don’t know what the social life might have been.

Gill You and Phail Wynn, as you indicated, you were the first African American graduates of Oklahoma State University. Did you think of this as historically significant at the time?

Tolson No. We just went. I remember in the fall of ’49, when Langston had its homecoming, Ada Lois Sipuel—I don’t think she was Fisher then, but Ada Lois Sipuel—who as I said, had been a student of my father’s, my father had mentored her at Langston. Ada Lois came by our apartment, my mother and father’s apartment, during homecoming, and that’s when I met her. I knew about her, because from the newspaper accounts of the attempt to integrate the school system, I knew about her. So we met, and she asked me what I was doing there at Langston, and I told her that I was attending Oklahoma A&M with four other blacks. She said, “Really?” She said, “I haven’t seen anything about it in the papers.” I said, “Well so far as I know it hasn’t appeared in the papers.” There was no big to-do about it; we just did it.

Gill Well looking back on it now, do you feel a special sense of pride?

Tolson No. I’m glad I did it. I think perhaps if I were much younger I might, but to me, it was not significant in the way that Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher’s work was significant. I didn’t go to court, you see. I didn’t hire a lawyer. All I did was go over there, go to the registrar’s office, register for classes, go and be advised and I started going to class. So I realize it was a first time, but it didn’t seem ... As I said, there was no publicity about it. After awhile it was just all in a day’s work, so to speak.

Gill What do you remember about your commencement exercises?

Tolson Nothing except that I got my degree. I was told later, and I don’t know whether the story is apocryphal, whether it is untrue or not, the commencement address was given by the governor of the state at that time, and I don’t remember, again, what his name was. [Governor Roy Turner] But 1950, I just don’t recall. Anyway, I was told later in the

summer by somebody that when I walked across the stage and got my diploma, the governor reached over to the president and said, “Pretty dark for an Indian, isn’t he?” (Laughs) There was no way that they could have known that Phail Wynn, in cap and gown, was a Negro, because he looked like an Indian. Now it wasn’t that he particularly looked like an Indian, but his color was not such as would have made him stand out from the other Indians in the graduating class, you see. But mine was. I don’t know whether that story is true or not, but it’s interesting.

Gill Can you share some highlights of your educational career and experiences after you left Oklahoma State?

Tolson Well I went back to Prairie View to teach after I left there. Then in 1955, that is five years later, I succeeded in getting a Fulbright Fellowship to study at the University of Paris. As I said, my professor at Oklahoma A&M had suggested several times, “You should study in France,” and then I felt also that any person teaching a foreign language should have visited the country of the language that he is speaking. So I took a year, 1955-56, and studied at the University of Paris, popularly called the Sorbonne, and took an advanced diploma in contemporary literature.

I knew that I was going to go on, and one of the things that I have not mentioned is that one of the great benefits of having Melvin B. Tolson Sr. as a father was that, although he did not have a doctorate, he encouraged his children. He had three sons and a daughter, and he encouraged his children to go on and get their PhD. And the reason he did so, he said, was not because we would necessarily be any smarter— after all we knew PhD’s who were not—and although he just had a master’s degree, he was writing and being published and whatnot, and we knew that if you wanted to contribute like that you didn’t have to have a PhD. But he encouraged us to do that because he said we would have job security.

Gill Did all four of the kids…

Tolson Yes. Well there were three boys, as I said, and a girl. I took the PhD in French with a minor in Spanish. I studied at the University of Mexico one summer to get my Spanish up to par so that I could take graduate courses. My brother Arthur, who survives, took his doctorate at OU in history, and he still teaches history in Southern University in Baton Rouge. My younger brother, who passed away, took his degree in biochemistry at Georgetown University in D.C. and worked for the National Institute of Health until his death. My sister took a master’s degree at OU in library science and then later took another master’s degree in history. I remember asking her why she didn’t go on and get the PhD in library science. She said that was a field in which once you

got the master’s, there really wasn’t that much more to learn, so that many of the people who had a PhD in it had a master’s in other fields, and many of the people who had a master’s in it went on and got master’s in or PhD’s in other fields. So she had completed, at the time of her death—she was the first of the four children to die—she had completed a master’s of history at Howard University where she was one of the directors of the library of the Dental and Medical School.

So my father encouraged all four of his children. In fact my mother was extraordinary, because she came from a generation in which very few women, black or white, had gone to and had finished high school. My mother had not. She had done one year in high school. As we children were growing up in Marshall, Texas, my mother had an example with the wives of other college professors who had gotten their college degrees there at Wiley while their husbands were teaching. Well my mother, as I said, had not finished high school. My mother went back as a sophomore in high school in Marshall, Texas, did the three years, then came up and did the four years at Wiley College. She and I marched down the aisle for the bachelor’s degree together to a standing ovation. And later when my father came to Langston, she commuted to A&M and took a master’s at Oklahoma State.

Tolson So what year did she finish her master’s?

Gill I forgot now. Nineteen sixty, about the middle ’60s, somewhere there.

Tolson That’s a great story. So education was very much valued in your family.

Gill Oh yes. My father (laughs), my father’s existence was the intellect. Our table discussions, our discussions, were about ideas, political and social currents in the world. He was always regarded as a left-leaning thinker, and he was an excellent orator and speaker. In fact he won prizes when he was in school. The earliest picture that I have of my father is from his high school yearbook—luckily they had one—in which he was the class poet and wrote a long poem. We have a copy of it. Later, he finished at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. There’s also a Lincoln University in Missouri, but the Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, he went to school there, and he was on the debate team and was in public speaking there and wrote poetry. He had written poetry since before he was a teenager; it was just a natural talent that he had. So when he came to Wiley he started the debate team, which was featured in the movie, The Great Debaters. He kept writing, and particularly when debate died with the Second World War, he concentrated more on his writing, and he was named Poet Laureate of the Republic of Liberia and wrote a poem called Libretto for the Republic of Liberia in honor of that occasion and went there for the second inauguration of President [William] Tubman. I

believe that was in 1955-6, the year that I was studying, because he came through Paris. I was able to show him around and also to take him over to see an old writer friend of his, Richard Wright, the author of Native Son, who had transferred his life, like so many Americans at that time, to Paris.

Gill Dr. Tolson, again on your father, was he one of the coaches on that debate team?

Tolson He was the coach.

Gill He was the coach of the debate team, the one that they made the movie about?

Tolson Yes.

Gill Can you share a little bit about that?

Tolson Well as I said, he started the debate team when he went to Wiley. They debated all over the South and parts of the North and the Midwest. They were the first team to debate white universities. They debated Oklahoma City University, and in 1935, they won the national championship from the University of California at I forget which one. Not San Diego. Anyway, in the movie they made it Harvard University. That would sell more tickets of course than…

Gill But nonetheless, this was the national championship.

Tolson This was the national championship, yes, in 1935. And they came back to Wiley, but this is the thing. Debate was popular at that time, because remember you had no television, so debates attracted full houses. In fact there were some debates that they even charged admission.

Gill What actor portrayed your father in the movie?

Tolson Denzel Washington.

Gill So Denzel Washington was your father. Was that pretty neat for you?

Tolson Yes. And the idea came from an interview that I had several years ago in American Legacy magazine. I don’t know who got the idea for the movie, but it was produced and made by Harpo, by Oprah Winfrey’s [production company].

Gill Did anyone contact you about your father on behalf of the movie?

Tolson Oh yes, before the movie, before the script. They had me come down about 2000, at least once in 2006 or 2007, to Marshall, Texas. They had me come down. They also had the only woman debater that was on Dad’s team, who was portrayed by a young woman in the movie. They had her come up from Houston. Henrietta Bell Wells. She had debated only one year with the team because she was a working student and would have to hire somebody in her place. Plus at that time when the team went on tours, which it frequently did, if you were a young lady, you had to have a chaperone. So she was only on the team one year, but in the movie they put her on the championship team there. But she was a very good speaker, and Henrietta just died last year at the age of ninety- five. But the other debaters ... There were other debaters. The one who became best known was J. [James] Leonard Farmer Junior, the founder of CORE Organization [Congress of Racial Equality]. But there were others who became active in the Civil Rights Movement.

Gill Did the movie accurately portray the events of the debate?

Tolson Well, yes and no. As I said, it was the wrong team. There were three men, and not two men and a woman, but if you are going to have a romantic triangle, you have to have woman on the team. Plus they made it Harvard University and not the University of California, so they played around with the facts, but they kept close.

Gill Did Denzel Washington fairly accurately portray your father?

Tolson Well that would be—I would say he did a good portrayal, an excellent portrayal of my father, but of course he’s nothing like my father. Denzel is my height. My father was 5’5”, although he had the energy of a man 6’5”.

Gill Pretty fiery, was he?

Tolson Oh yes! Yes, fiery. Well, he was a poet from his youth, and he was the son and nephew of two preachers, two active preachers.

Gill Were they Methodist preachers?

Tolson Yes. Well, they were both Methodist preachers although not the same Methodist. My grandfather was a Methodist Episcopal, my granduncle was one of the other Methodist churches. I forgot, but I didn’t know him well.

Gill So you came back and got your doctorate at the University of Oklahoma?

Tolson University of Oklahoma.

Gill And then did you go to work for the university after you graduated from OU?

Tolson Well I came up to the University of Oklahoma in summer of 1958, just for the summer. I did that because I wanted to see whether I liked it and whether it liked me, because I didn’t want to do the way some graduate students have done. You take the whole year off, get there, and find out you don’t like the place. So it turned out that I did like the place. And it turned out that I studied with the head of the department—it was in Spanish—who offered me a graduate assistantship. So I went back to Prairie View, taught a full year, and then took leave to come to OU in 1959 to study for the doctorate in French. As I said, the doctorate at that time ... My master’s had been in French and English. The doctorate could not be in French and English. The doctorate had to be in French and Spanish. I had only studied some Spanish independently and had been to Mexico several times from Texas ... I decided that since I could not get credit for taking undergraduate courses, I had better go down to Mexico and stuff myself with Spanish.

So I went down to the University of Mexico and studied for the summer of 1960 and really concentrated on learning as much Spanish as possible—so much so that several times I denied being able to speak English in order to concentrate. So I came back then and did my work in French and Spanish. In 1961, the head of the department asked me to stay [on the faculty]. And, as I said, at that time my father was teaching at Langston University and I talked it over, naturally, with my father and mother. They said, “Well if you don’t like it, you can always leave.” So I resigned from Prairie View and accepted the position at OU as the first black professor. Although there was a previous black, Mrs. Henderson, who was here one—I have forgotten now—one semester? I don’t recall.

Gill Did you get tenured as a professor at OU?

Tolson Oh yes.

Gill So you were the first African American tenured professor at the University of Oklahoma?

Tolson I don’t know, because I was the first, then there was another professor who later left, and then there was a third professor, Dr. Henderson, so I don’t know which of us got tenured first. You didn’t think about it, you know?

Gill But you were one of the top three, early on?

Tolson Yes, oh yes. Well I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t got tenure.

Gill Absolutely. Well can you share some highlights of your time at the University of Oklahoma? Some recognitions or awards that were special to you during your career?

Tolson Oh, I don’t know, I’ve got several awards for teaching. A Regents award for teaching, I don’t know what…

Gill Well Dr. Tolson, peeking at the wall here behind you, it looks like you’ve gotten several recognitions from the University of Oklahoma in appreciation from the Black Student Association for three decades of service, and then I see your Commemorative Lifetime Excellence Award presented here right behind you.

Tolson I don’t know…

Gill You don’t keep score, huh? (Laughs)

Tolson No, no you don’t. You’re glad to get them, once you get them, then they go up on the wall and that’s the end of that.

Gill So when did you retire? In what year?

Tolson I retired in 1992. I became an exchange professor for a program at a university in France for one year, and I decided that that was a good cap on my career, and so when I came back, I retired fully in ’92. Then my interests were turning to broader subjects than just French language and literature. I wanted to do something else.

Gill What were some of those interests? Do you mind sharing some of them?

Tolson Well the principal interests have been the history of the black diaspora, not only on the Atlantic side, but also the history of the black diaspora on the eastern coast of Africa with Islamic countries. We often are not aware, of course, that black slavery existed in Islamic countries six or seven centuries before America was discovered. So it has been a sort of worldwide history of the black diaspora and of countries such as Brazil, in which there is a large black population, and how blacks are treated in various countries of the world that interests me now.

Gill Well have you been to the OSU campus recently? Did you maintain any of your contacts, relationships with Oklahoma State University through the years?

Tolson No. The student association invited me up about two years ago to honor

me as the first graduate, but other than that I’ve had no contact, no.

Gill I think it was the OSU Black Alumni Association and the student association together, I think recognized you together as a trailblazer. It was awarded a couple years ago.

Tolson Yes.

Gill Did you feel pretty special about that? Did you have a good time?

Tolson Yes, I had a good time.

Gill Did you maintain relationships with Phail Wynn or any of the other black students through the years?

Tolson No, after Phail and I finished, we went our separate ways and I did not know what happened to him. In fact, I was surprised on hearing that he had passed. And I don’t know why, I don’t know what the cause of his death was. I saw his son. His son came here as a student part-time, and I met him. But Phail and I did not maintain contact, and so I understand now, if I recall, that his widow has moved to the East Coast to be with Phail Junior. That was the information I received. Whether it was accurate or not, I cannot say.

Gill Did Phail live in Oklahoma most of his life?

Tolson Yes.

Gill What did he do? Do you know what job he had?

Tolson As I said, Phail was in mechanical engineering, so I took it for granted that he was in a high school mechanical arts teaching career. But I don’t know because, as I said, after we finished, we finished.

Gill We haven’t talked about your personal family. Did you ever have a family?

Tolson No, no.

Gill You never did?

Tolson No, I’ve been single all my life.

Gill Single and happy, huh?

Tolson Single and happy, yes.

Gill So you have one brother still living?

Tolson Yes, one brother is still living, and although he’s just a little more than a year younger than I, he’s still teaching full-time.

Gill Wow.

Tolson Yes.

Gill Where is he teaching?

Tolson He teaches at Southern University in Baton Rouge, which is one of the historical black universities. He started teaching there when he received his doctorate from OU, which was about 1964-65, somewhere right in there. So he has been teaching at Southern now for over forty years; in fact they gave him a forty-year certificate about two years ago.

Gill Your father then finished his teaching career at Langston?

Tolson No, my father taught at Langston until 1965 and retired and went to teach at Tuskegee University, but he taught there only one year, ’65-’66, and he died in 1966 of cancer.

Gill Dr. Tolson, you’ve seen a lot of years of higher education, starting back in the ’40s to now through 2009. Are you pleased with how African Americans have been able to integrate into the system and move through? Do you feel it’s going in the right direction now?

Tolson Oh yes. Of course, I wish it had been done more rapidly, but it’s in the right direction, of course. One of the things that has been gratifying has been to see the growing presence of blacks in all aspects of education, but also in the financial and commercial life of the United States. You can barely pick up a newspaper now and look at the business section without seeing a black CEO or CFA or C-something.

Gill Would your dad have been proud to know about Barack Obama’s election? Would that have excited him?

Tolson Oh God, of course. Not only my father. Can you imagine… No, you can’t imagine what black Americans who were freed in slavery would have said, you can’t imagine, about such an event.

Gill Dr. Tolson, I’ve visited a little bit with Dr. Earl Mitchell at Oklahoma State University, who we talked about earlier was the first black tenured professor at Oklahoma State University. I’ll be visiting with Dr. Patricia Bell, who you may know is the Head of the Sociology Department at

Oklahoma State University and is an African American woman. I’ve picked up in some of the conversations that there were some challenges in terms of tenure and recognition professionally. Did you have any of that here at the University of Oklahoma during your time?

Tolson No. I don’t know—you see, I did not apply. I don’t know whether these two did. You see, I was asked to join the faculty, and so I never had any ... It was just like working at a black university so far as I was concerned. There were no problems, there were no questions. As I said, it was the head of the department at that time who asked me, after he had talked it over with other principal members of the department, you see, so that it was a done deal.

Gill So in terms of your promotion and tenure, it was all no problem at all for you.

Tolson No problem at all.

Gill You’ve lived a life of significance, Dr. Tolson, impacting thousands of lives in your teaching…

Tolson No, no…

Gill I know you’re humble, but looking back, how do you hope people will remember Dr. Melvin Tolson?

Tolson You know, the person whom I would be most concerned about their remembering is the person about whom I can have less concern about their remembering, and that is my father. To me, I haven’t done anything particularly significant compared to what he did, you see. And I must say too at the age of eighty-five and a half, I don’t particularly care how I’m remembered.

Gill Looking back at your life, what do you feel like were your significant contributions or accomplishments?

Tolson None, except that I supposedly influenced some students who have written to me through the years, that have told me, which surprised me, but other than that it has been a normal life. You see, as I said, my father was a college professor from 1923 to 1966, and he was an amazing person: a writer, author, poet, speaker, campaigner for civil rights. He used to go around and raise money for Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher when they were having the fight there. He was known; he was a fiery speaker in high schools and churches and graduations. In fact, there was a Methodist minister’s group on the East Coast that used to have him come out and give a week of talks and lectures at their ministerial

conferences there. He was a fabulous speaker. Unfortunately, we have a few, two or three tapes of him, but none at his fiery stage. And also because of his experiences with the debate teams in the ’20s and ’30s, there were racial experiences that he had that we really wish we could put on paper, but my father would not record them.

Gill Speaking of, were you involved in any of the Civil Rights Movement?

Tolson No. I walked one or two times, but no, I did not have leadership qualities. I could be a member of the group, but to lead the group, no.

Gill Dr. Tolson, you’re a pretty humble individual but I’ll summarize a couple of things…

Tolson Well no, I don’t call it being humble, I call it being honest.

Gill But you’re pretty special. I want you to know, to Oklahoma State University as our first African American graduate…

Tolson But you see, this is the thing though—anybody who, like Phail and myself, who had stayed the course, would have been special. You see, it wasn’t that this was Abraham Lincoln who came to this post. It was just that I was looking for a place to go to school. My father called over and asked the dean if space was available for a black. Well, yes. And why was it available? Because Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher had already opened up the system. There was nothing special.

Gill But you walked through the door…

Tolson But the door was already open!

Gill (Laughs) That’s good.

Tolson You see, it’d be different if I had been the one, like Ada Lois, who pushed at the door. She is the one. You see?

Gill I do.

Tolson Yes.

Gill Dr. Tolson, is there anything that you’d like to comment on that we haven’t covered? In your career or…

Tolson No, I’d better get my medication now.

Gill Well I appreciate very much your taking the time to visit with us.

Tolson Thank you.

Gill Thank you.

------End of interview ------