Rising to the Challenge: The Story of an Olympic Athlete During the Civil Rights Movement

Interviewer- Johnny Casasola

Interviewee- Lloyd “Butch” Keaser

Instructor- Alex Haight

Date of Submission- February 11, 2016

Table of Contents

Interviewee Release Form 1

Interviewer Release Form 2

Statement of Purpose 4

Biography 5

Historical Contextualization: The Civil Rights Movement: The Road to Progress 7

Interview Transcription 15

Audio Time Indexing Log 38

Interview Analysis 39

Works Consulted 44

Casasola 4

Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this project is to explore and acknowledge the eyewitness account of the

Civil Rights Movement through the eyes of African American wrestling legend Lloyd “Butch”

Keaser. In this interview Mr. Keaser recounts his childhood, his encounters with discrimination and oppression, and ultimately his success as an athlete in the wrestling community. By voicing the unique account of his childhood during the Civil Rights Movement, Mr. Keaser adds to the wide array of information that surrounds the movement. This interview provides the information required for historians to compare and contrast topics that are commonly brought up in historical texts that deal with the Civil Rights Movement. Topics such as allegiance towards leaders like

Martin Luther King Jr. and how those leaders gained such a strong following. Also topics that deal with examining the family dynamic of black middle class families and how the Civil Rights

Movement affected their lives.

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Biography

On February 9, 1950 Lloyd Weldon “Butch” Keaser was born in Pumphrey,

Maryland. Mr. Keaser was an African American male who grew up in the heart of the civil rights movement. He attended his local high school, which had only been integrated for two years prior to his enrollment. His family faced countless acts of racism and segregation as they tried to live out a normal life. Mr. Keaser was a talented athlete playing soccer and little league baseball at a younger age but later in his high school career he discovered his main sport of wrestling. Mr. Keaser was a late bloomer in the wrestling world, but with the help of his high school wrestling coach he became one of the best wrestlers in the area and even began drawing attention from the collegiate level. His senior year in high school he received a scholarship from the Naval Academy and accepted the offer and enrolled the following year. Throughout his college career he accomplished two All-American wrestling titles as the team’s captain. After he graduated he went on to become the first African-

American man to win the gold medal at the Freestyle Wrestling World Championships.

After becoming World Champion he went on to win a silver medal in wrestling at the 1976 Casasola 6

Olympic games in Montreal, Canada. After completing his career as a wrestler Mr. Keaser went on to work at IBM for 27 years and earned highly respected status at the company.

Today he has retired from his job at IBM and works as a wrestling coach at a local school in

Maryland. Mr. Keaser’s legacy is honored and lives on through the “Lloyd W. Keaser

Community Center” which is a center for kids in his hometown that was named after him in honor of his achievements at the 1976 Olympic games.

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Historical Contextualization Paper

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”(Martin Luther King

Jr.) Martin Luther King Jr.’s goals were very clear. He wanted equality for all people, no matter the color of their skin, but in order to win this battle against discrimination he needed to incite hope within his followers both white and black. King believed in unity and peace, but unfortunately the racist American believed in separation and authority through violence.

Although blacks in America have more freedom and rights than when they first arrived as slaves, it does not constitute the cruelty and torture that was inflicted upon them solely because of the color of their skin. Despite their severe disadvantage the African American community managed to acquire positive notoriety through athletics, acting, and the arts. In order to properly understand the magnitude of suffering and the severe social disadvantages that blacks were challenged with daily in their pursuit for equal rights and equal opportunity it is necessary to examine the steps they took to reach their goal. Through looking back at key events and the leaders who brought to light the reality of equality in America we can the learn the rich and gruesome history of the black American.

Contrary to common historical belief, Brown v. Board of Education did not instigate the

Civil Rights Movement. To see where the Civil Rights Movement started we have to go back hundreds of years to when the first African set foot on American soil and was sold into slavery.

This was the dawn of a long and unforgiving road of oppression for blacks in America. In his book, A People’s History of The United States, Howard Zinn says, “The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is Casasola 8 always an inch below the surface.”(Zinn, 327) Little did the whites know that this abuse would not stand without backlash. Racial superiority intoxicated the minds of whites and it did not take long for that ideology to be ingrained within the whites of America. The generations following the first white settlers were born into a society where white supremacy was widely accepted.

This in turn fueled the creation of the ultimate xenophobic and conservative civilization. Lacking proper attention, the nation spiraled out of control creating one of the most traumatizing time periods in African American history.

Slave Revolts played a crucial rule in gathering both positive and negative attention towards slavery. A crucial and one of the most well known slave revolts was Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831. The outcome of Nat Turner’s rebellion was very bloody and resulted in death by gallows for Nat Turner. Although it may have seemed like a huge loss for those who, in reality it sparked a fire within both whites and blacks. Feeding on their hatred for blacks and seeking revenge, the whites embarked on a warpath. Innocent black men, women, and children were blamed for the rebellion and were brutally murdered by unrelenting mobs of white people.

The slaughter of these innocent slaves caught the attention of northern abolitionists and other groups of concerned white people. “Slavery had not suddenly changed in 1831, the year a new, more radical antislavery emerged”(Gilder Lehrman). Abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Theodore D. Weld provided tremendous support towards the goal of emancipation.

As time went on blacks never ceased to fight for their freedom. Slavery was becoming one of the most controversial topics discussed in government and laws like the “gag rule” was put in place to prevent slavery from even being brought up as a subject for debate in congress.

Eventually the government gave in a drafted the 15th Amendment of the constitution, which made it illegal to deny someone the right to vote, based on the color of his skin. Once blacks had Casasola 9 the right to vote they began gaining more power and momentum in the fight for rights. Black officials, like John Menard, were voted into office and their main goal was to improve the situation of blacks in the United States. Their efforts would have prevailed fruitful if were not for the intolerance and extreme racism that was exhibited during that time period. Every effort made by blacks in office was halted by a larger more powerful group of white men. It was almost impossible to accomplish anything that benefited equal rights for everyone in America.

The Civil Rights Movement began in 1954 when the Topeka school board refused to enroll Oliver Brown’s eight-year-old daughter in an all white school. Brown would not take this rejection lightly; he called upon his local branch of the National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for legal advice and assistance with the case. Brown accompanied by 20 other members of the NAACP brought the issue to court against the Topeka

Board of Education (National Humanities Center). Initially in the Brown v. Board of Education case the United States District Court ruled in favor of the Board of Education, but this and many other cases related to segregation in schools caught the attention of Thurgood Marshall, the chief council for the NAACP. He appealed to the court and had a rehearing for the case. The Plessy v.

Ferguson Supreme Court case was also an influential court case in the fight against racism. The

U.S. Supreme Court decided that a Louisiana law authorizing separate but equal accommodations for blacks and whites on intrastate railroads was constitutional. This decision provided the legal foundation to justify many other actions by state and local governments to separate blacks and whites. These "separate but equal" facilities included many public places; bathrooms, stores, transportation and schools. Booker T. Washington wrote the Atlanta

Compromise, which accepted black social isolation from white society, in the same year. The Casasola 10 majority decision in Plessy v. Ferguson served as the organizing legal justification for racial segregation for over 50 years.

This controversy surrounding this court case and its decision did not go away quietly.

African Americans were infuriated and just like their ancestors in slavery they did not back down without a fight. The main difference between the two time periods was the shift in leadership.

Nat turner believed that violence and revenge was the only way prove a point. He believed that scaring the enemy would make them want to give in to their requests and eventually end slavery.

In the 1950’s Martin Luther King Jr. pioneered the method of peaceful protest. King explained how violence only led to more violence. With peaceful protests it gave the police no reason to retaliate because the protesters were not committing any crimes. “The success of the

Montgomery boycott buoyed the hopes of black southerners; their leaders worked out plans to maintain the momentum”(Blumberg 53). Peaceful protest became the blacks new method of instilling fear into the minds of police. The new method also presented dominance over the police, which built confidence in blacks nation wide.

King’s success was due to his quick and insightful thinking, but he would have never gained such notoriety and power without the thousands of Americans that followed him as he led protests around the country. King knew that the people were the source of his strength so he decided to broadcast his message through television. “King came off powerfully on the television screen as he intoned moral principles to justify nonviolent mas actions that often had the effect of inviting violent responses from the opposition”(Blumberg 100). King was a wordsmith and knew exactly how to evoke the opposition into making themselves look even worse by acting violently for no apparent reason. King’s following grew with each day and he was attracting not only black supporters but also a large amount of whites against segregation and mistreatment of Casasola 11 blacks. On August 28th, 1963 King delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech, in front of 200,000 people, at the national mall in Washington D.C. (Nextext 109). King was a super power in the nation and he seemed unstoppable.

Undoubtedly, the most traumatizing event for the African-American community during the Civil Rights Movement was the death of Martin Luther King Jr. Lawrence Van Gelder says in his article about the event, “Dismay, Shame, anger and foreboding marked the nations reaction last night to the reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death.”(Gelder) The nation had lost one of their greatest leaders in history and only because America was too scared to see the real change that he was making a reality in the 60’s. On April 4, 1968 King led a silent protest in Memphis,

Tennesee for the rights of sanitation, when a gunshot rang out over the city of Memphis. While standing on the second floor balcony outside of his hotel room at the Lorraine Motel, King suddenly dropped. Mortally wounded and bleeding out king was rushed straight to the nearest hospital. Their efforts were futile and he was pronounced dead at 7:05 at the St. Joseph Hospital in Tennessee. The following day President Lyndon B. Johnson declared April 7 a national day of mourning in which King and legacies will be honored and remembered. The riots that followed

Martin Luther King Jr.’s death were that of violence and hatred, which King was trying to avoid all along. Cities all around the country like, Washington D.C., Chicago, and Baltimore were literally under extreme heat as they set fires to buildings and vandalized the streets of their hometowns. King’s message of non-violence seemingly disappeared his death was not in vain.

Many hoped that King’s legacy of non-violence would remain a key principle in the movement. In Lawrence Van Gelder’s article covering the death of MLK he strives to make a point that the people should remain peaceful. He says, “Dr. King was a symbol of the non- violent civil rights protest movement. He was a man of peace, of dedication, of great courage. Casasola 12

His senseless assassination solves nothing. It will not stay the civil rights movement; it will instead spur it to greater activity.”(Van Gelder) Despite their efforts towards promoting the idea of non-violence, organization quickly fell apart and protestors across the nation took to extreme violence. Riots broke out all over the United States; the black community was outraged and they wanted to show it.

Following the death of King the goal of integration had seemingly disappeared. People were beginning to lose hope and began abandoning the idea of integration all together. On April

14th, 1968, Anthony Ripley published his article, Hope Rises in Atlanta for Almost-Abandoned

Integration Goal, in the New York Times. Ripley was aware of the fact that the drive to achieve integration was slowly disappearing. Ripley is striving to encourage people not to lose hope. It is hard to convince the people to stay positive when their most influential leader was so recently assassinated. Following King’s death “there was an increasing hardness in Negro-white relations, a growing sense of rigidly divided society, and increased violence and vandalism”(Ripley). That is the opposite of what King would want happening if he were still alive he believed in unity and peace. Charles Morgan Jr. says, “Dr. King had a deep religious belief that anything that separated man from god and man from man was morally wrong”(Ripley). Ripley wants the people to integrate and reunite once again. Lawrence Van Gelder holds a similar belief about the subject and says that we must stay united in order to accomplish our goals. Negro leaders around the country grieved heavily following the death of King but they “expressed hope that it serve as a spur to others to carry on in his spirit of non-violence”(Gelder). Kings ultimate goal was to bring unity to a nation that found itself very separated solely because of peoples different skin tones. He believed in peace and these journalists are simply trying to keep that ideology alive. Casasola 13

In an interview conducted by Katrina Norvell, former chief justice of the Alabama state court, Howell Heflin, talks about the civil rights movement in the south. A key event in the history of civil rights is the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Mr. Heflin is recounting the effect that that event had on his society. He says, “we had schools that were voluntary integrating… it was a voluntary movement in that regard”(Norvell 22). Everything involving integration was by choice and “a voluntary movement” which is what King strived for. He didn’t want people to be forced into equality he believed that is should just be naturally occurring which is what is happening in these northern Alabama cities. The south often carries a heavy reputation for being the pinnacle of racism in America but those stereotypes are unfair. There are innocent southern people who feel no differently about a black person than they do any other person but there are cases of extreme bigotry. “In Mississippi when there was an effort made to integrate the University of

Mississippi- it was a big riot, and in that riot all of three people were killed… people in Alabama took it upon themselves that they didn’t want this to reoccur”(Norvell 23). King wanted to eliminate the fear associated with integration in our nation.

Historians often dispute the role and intention of great leaders in history. It is always interesting to try and discover the true purpose and motive of leaders actions. Historian Steven F.

Lawson argues that, “King and other well known players would not disappear from view, but would take a backseat to women and men who initiated protests in small towns and cities across the south and who acted according to their own needs rather than those of central organization headquarters in New York, Washington, or Atlanta.” He is saying that King would use the people to his advantage and not take much head to what goals the protestors were after. Lawson argues that the people are ignoring these central headquarters where well-known activists would gather and try to preach their philosophy on how to overcome to oppression they come to face Casasola 14 everyday. In Clayborne Carson’s Paradoxes of King Historiography he talks about King’s politics. He says, “Kings political ideas were similarly synthetic but nonetheless cogent and influential”(Carson). He is saying that King may be hiding an artificial thinking but it doesn’t matter because his words still deliver and power and importance no matter if they are artificial or genuine. King’s intentions during the civil rights movement were obvious. He wanted equality and peace but the things that people enjoy looking into are topics like his leadership style and why it was so successful. These two historians believe that he was being artificial and may even be slightly deceptive.

African American history in the United States is not something that any country would be proud of. Despite having experienced a terrible the African American community has persevered through accomplishments such as the creation of the first black air force unit, breaking the barrier in athletics, being accepted in public schools and much more. America has progressed from the most extreme level of racism towards blacks to becoming one of the most welcoming and nurturing countries in the world. Even though we have not yet reached full equality in our country we have taken enormous steps in the right direction.

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Interview Transcription

Interviewee: Lloyd Keaser

Interviewer: Johnny Casasola

Location of Interview: Panera Bread, Reston, Virginia

Date of Interview: January 3rd, 2016

Johnny Casasola: I am Johnny Casasola interviewing Lloyd Keaser ,Ok

Lloyd Keaser: Ok

JC: I’d just like to start off by talking about your childhood, so growing up during the civil rights movement did it affect your childhood negatively in any ways?

LK: It affected me negatively in a sense of in general but within my family and my siblings and my cousins and all we basically believed everybody was the same regardless of color. So in our family there was no race issues but then adjacent to my community was a community where we couldn’t walk through their community and they couldn’t walk through ours and we all got in fights in those times.

JC: So as you said Pumphrey Maryland was very secluded is what you were saying

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LK: It was a segregated community yes.

JC: It was segregated so there was no integration whatsoever and that’s just how you grew up?

LK: Yup that’s how I grew up. I went to a junior-high school in 7th grade and at that point in time the high school had only been integrated 2 years.

JC: Wow. So you attended the Naval Academy shortly following the death of Martin Luther

King Jr and in the heart of the coming down of the civil rights movement, how did that affect your college experience and did you get negative looks or anything like that?

LK: Well I got negative looks not only from the racial side but also from the military side. The

Vietnam War was not very popular, it got to point where we couldn’t wear our uniforms when we went out in public otherwise it could cause some problems, but I went to the Naval Academy and there was only 26 African Americans out of 4,200 and they treated us differently on certain things but pretty much everything else was the same. Social events initially you go to a dance called the “tea-fight”, you had several hundred guys on one side of the curtain, several of the women, and then they shook hands and that’s your date for the rest of the night; blacks didn’t do that. They gave a list of names and then you pick, you know, you pick out of the list blindly find a name on there and then you come through the door and say are you so-and-so? Are you so-and- so? And that shook that way. And there were times where we would gather just to be with other people like ourselves and at times that was highly discouraged. That was during my freshman and sophomore year but by my senior year came by in 72’ a lot of that stuff had changed. The Casasola 17 social event went away basically everybody was like everyone else, but the biggest thing was with all the civil unrest we would call the Military or the National Guard in and my concern was what would happen if I was called in in a situation and I see my friends, family, whatever on the other side. How would I respond? I know that I joined the service to uphold the laws and those kinds of things but in those situations it is very difficult you know when you are faced with it.

JC: So as I was researching I came across a certain doctrine that was in play during the civil rights movement. It was the separate but equal doctrine, what did you think about that because it seems contradictory to the situation saying separate but equal at the same time?

LK: It is contradictory; you can’t be equal if you, well I can see they’re saying there’s a feeling of separate, you know. When we were growing up and even after I grew a lot of the shopping centers were like that there were signs that said, “colored only” or “whites only”. In downtown

Baltimore you couldn’t go to the eatery on those floors where you get a sandwich or a milkshake.

You go to a liquor store, my father couldn’t even go to a liquor store that was five blocks from my house. It got to a point where he could bring a gallon jug and they would put beer in the jug and he pays from the car through the drive through and pass they back out. He wasn’t allowed to go inside, he wasn’t allowed to go inside they wouldn’t even let him take the jug in get it filled and come back out again. It wasn’t even until after I graduated that that could happen. We were faced with that all time, when we went down to the Carolinas we couldn’t use the service stations for rest rooms or any places, so we had to pull over in the woods and those kinds of things.

JC: And did it ever get to a point where your family just got used to things like this? Casasola 18

LK: It made me feel powerless because that’s just the way it was. My mom grew up on a farm in

North Carolina, where it’s far worse, fortunately we had African American schools, we had the same books, we had the same access, but you never really got used to it. I guess you tried to accommodate.

(Parents interrupted to say Hi. Break in the conversation)

LK: The separate but equal thing it was hanging over me at the Naval Academy, not with the

Academy itself, but outside of it. It made it challenging to travel, to buy things, all those kind of things. It goes beyond the separate but equal, if you go into a store you supposedly have access to it but say a person of color walks in and it still happens today; if I’m not dressed up in a suit people will come up and there and say may I help you? Now that’s understandable but they kind of monitor but they don’t do it to you only folks of color. Here it is I’m a pretty mature person, a grandfather, great grandfather, and I still get that feeling. Nowhere near like it used to be but in certain pockets, you can tell where that community or those folks are not really used to a diverse population.

JC: Since you were an athlete you traveled around a lot, were there places, in the time that you were in college, that were a lot more advanced, than like say Maryland and the areas around it?

Were they more accepting of African Americans?

LK: In college you mean? Casasola 19

JC: Yes.

LK: Its kind of hard for me to say in the sense that I when we talked earlier I said that I felt like I was in a bubble. When I traveled in most cases, in college, I was with a team, or I was in midshipmen training, and so basically they treated us differently than probably what they would do in a normal population. So you were with people within the military, with an athletic role and

I had a considerably different experience than a lot of my peers, African Americans, as an athlete. From what they were sharing with me, I wasn’t experiencing those things. I knew they existed and so I felt like I was in this bubble and that maybe I had some protective angels out there and to steer clear and don’t mess with that stuff. I was told years later that that did happen.

I was up in a training camp for one of the international teams, up in Pennsylvania, and the guy who was running it says we’re going to have Lloyd Keaser here and we want to make sure that we treat him right and those kinds of things. I wrestled against the Russians in the New York

Athletic Club and I found out later that African Americans are not allowed to be in the locker room yet everyone in the locker room took showers together and someone said we’re going to make sure nothing happens. So there’s probably a lot of that stuff happening to me, for me, around me, over the years and I had a lot of success and when you have a lot of success people treat you differently. That kinda bothered me, in some cases more so you couldn’t tell if people were relating to you as a person but more as that group, that athlete.

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JC: I was reading news articles following the death of Martin Luther King and a writer,

Lawrence Van Gelder, describes the nations reaction as “dismay, shame, anger, and foreboding”.

Does this description accurately depict your reaction as well?

LK: I was in the 8th grade physical science class, teacher came in and told us all to sit down and be quiet and that she has to deliver some news. She turned the news on the speaker and we heard that thing and I didn’t cry about it but I came close to tears. You know because he was our hero and one of our beloved African American leaders out there. I gravitated more towards Martin

Luther King than like a Malcolm X, confrontational. I was more about turning the other cheek, trying to work with people, treating them as you would like to be treated. So when that happened that was a tremendous loss because what he represented in contrast to what those other guys represented but also how he respected others because we were all fighting for the same thing it was just about agreeing on which way to go about it. So that just reinforced our belief that if you are of color, in this case African American, if you should have anything about getting involved because you have influence from others and you basically suppress lesser of the population. So I was conflicted because I grew up with the activist type, as far as getting out there on the street and all of my peer group and in my community were out there and now you have a guilt thing.

Should I be out there? Even though you believe differently, are you copping out? Are you a coward? All those kinds of things running through my mind, but I still have to stay on the path of what I believe and what my family represented, which went more in line with Martin Luther than say the black panthers or Malcolm X. So it was a matter of conflict within the community and it caused the tension between the community I went to in highschool and with my school to be heightened somewhat. I was actually in school with some of those people but then again I had Casasola 21 times where I starting to get athletic powers and those relationships held a little bit but if we were not in school together they would have been lost. Now my future brother in law went to another school in a community maybe nine or ten miles from mine and he would get in fights on the bus everyday. So it was a little bit different in different parts of the county.

JC: I did notice when we talked on the phone before that you mentioned when those fights would happen around you but you tried to keep that peaceful mentality. That must have very difficult back then.

LK: Well yeah because I never really there when the fights were happening. The fights were always with the big boys, guys who were five or six years older and they would play basketball.

Watching them play basketball they say “White boy!” and all of the sudden they drop the ball and go and run down about a block away where they see him and they would go after him, but my peer group didn’t do that. That was the people who were about four or five years ahead of me that were actually doing that. By the time we got to be that age we were going to school with those guys, not that we hung out with them but they were there.

JC: A historian Steven F. Lawson claims that, “King and other well known players would not disappear from view, but would take a backseat to the women and men who initiated protests in small towns and cities across the south and who acted according to their own needs rather than those of central organization headquarters in New York, Washington, or Atlanta.” Do you agree with that? He is saying that King would almost sit back and watch the people do the work for him. Casasola 22

LK: So you’re saying is as far as being confrontational and stuff?

JC: Yeah

LK: I don’t know the answer to that but I believe that he believed they were fighting for the same thing. As I was saying to you, I believe that we are all and I am fighting for the same thing and I chose to choose another path even though I’m witnessing folks becoming activists and stuff

I didn’t participate I chose to do something else. I don’t know that’s the first time I’ve actually heard that. So you’re saying basically that…

JC: Basically that the people are the fighters and leaders are standing behind the curtain and waiting.

LK: Yeah I don’t know the answer to that. Its like the United States and foreign policy they may not want to say that United States has joined us but they will support them trying to help us to get to that same goal. That’s interesting.

JC: Yeah I found it interesting I thought I would bring it up. So there was actually another person who interviewed by our school in the past few years. It was coach Bill Yoast. Are you familiar with him?

LK: Yes. Casasola 23

JC: During his interview he told a story while he was talking about violence in schools and since he was a teacher at the school he was depicting a story. He says, “The younger kids they had quite a few riots there we had one young student there the daughter of a math teacher Mr.

Saterthright was paralyzed because a kid had a chain and swung it and hit her in the neck.” I found that to be a ridiculous amount of violence. Did you ever see something of that level around you in Maryland or in the place where you grew up? Even after college did you hear anything like that?

LK: Well I didn’t hear that but it wasn’t necessarily a racial thing. Like we were, like I said we watched the big boys play basketball right across the street from my house on the basketball court outside of the school and what happened is we had a few hotheads that would play ball and one guy got so upset he went home and came back down with a gun and blew a guy away. They were about six or seven years older than me and that just scarred me. I couldn’t believe that someone would do such a thing but it happened. It just reinforced what my father had been teaching us, no matter what happens just count to ten or whatever to just make sure to keep yourself under control and not to let the emotion get a hold of you. What I have heard goes far beyond that. People getting hung. I saw that probably, my uncle told me that he will always be a racist and the reason why is because he saw too many black men being hung because they either looked at a white woman, whistled at a woman, or for some other incident. So when you witness that that scars you for life. He says I will always recognize people as an individual, not color. In general I will always be racist. And then my nephew was probably about three years older twenty nine, probably twenty six years ago, and he was in Laurel, Maryland at a 7-11 and he and Casasola 24 his partner were in a pickup truck and all of the sudden they heard this commotion outside. So they decided to see what was over behind the fence and saw a black man with a noose around his neck, hung, just like you see on TV and all of the sudden they spotted a group of men and they took off because they thought they would be next. This was not long ago not even past thirty years ago. They went home turned on the news and realized that they knew the guy. They don’t know what happened or whatever. So throughout my life there was a lot more, Malcolm was face down in a pool in PG County. Back then there wasn’t too many African Americans and he couldn’t swim, we don’t why he was in the pool, there was no reason for him to be in that pool, and there was no investigation. My uncle, my mother’s brother, died in jail. No explanation they just said he died, but when you looked at his body it had basically been beaten to a pulp. So I can share tons and tons of stories of those from people who shared that with me over the years where

I feel confident that its exactly what was happening and we still hear about it to a certain extent.

That one there yes kind of gruesome but when you hear some of these other ones.

JC: Yeah it’s on a whole other level.

LK: Tying a body to a car and dragging it. So in my community it was pretty common to hear these stories.

JC: So how did you start wrestling?

LK: I was playing soccer and little league baseball and then I started gravitating towards TV wrestling like body slams, chokeholds, and stuff like that. My brother and I were pretty good at it Casasola 25 and called ourselves the Keaser boys but then I got wooped by my next door neighbor who choked me out. I was choking him out and then he reversed me and then he choked me and I tapped out. First time that happened in years and I asked him what happened he told me it was a switch he learned in high school and told me where they had a junior-senior wrestling team there that I didn’t even know existed so I went out for the team the next day next week they have their tryouts and I beat him for my first spot. So I went out to rough up on him and then I started out not too good so I tried to quit but I hung in there and I actually started getting better at it and then

I start to take a liking to the sport. So I fell into it by accident.

JC: Wow that’s incredible.

LK: It was pride.

JC: Did you ever feel like you were at a disadvantage because of your race in the wrestling community?

LK: No, I never got that. The only time I thought I was at a disadvantage is on opportunities, but fortunately again, angel. My high school coach brought me out to University of Maryland and brought the University of Maryland coach out who had an interest in me. Then my sophomore and junior years my coach’s father was the secretary of athletics at the Naval Academy, so they got information about me where and made coach Ed Peery aware of me at the Naval Academy so he followed me from that point on. So from those two groups there was a lot of influence in the wrestling community so that I couldn’t afford to go to wrestling camps but coach Peery worked Casasola 26 out a deal with me where I got scholarships where I would wash mats, clean the dishes, take out the trash, and all incidental type things, and things changed for getting those type of things. You got people that can drive people up there. I got invited to the Olympic Development camp my senior year in high school where they had the top 50 wrestlers east of the Mississippi up in

Forksville, Pennsylvania and the other 50 out there on the west coast. I was considered to be one of the top 50. I wasn’t a state champion but Ed Peery, who will be my future coach at the Naval

Academy, his father was an Olympic coach in 1964 so he had considerable influence on whatever so between them some kind of way I got into the camp and it turns out I held my own.

So he saw something in me; typically people of my color would not have those opportunities. In most cases even folks who were white would not even have that opportunity but because of those individuals and who they were I did. Not realizing it but within that camp I was the only one who went on to the Olympics. State champions from New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota,

Mississippi, and all those big name states. So from that aspect in wrestling, within soccer because of the wrestling influence they made the soccer coach at the Naval Academy aware of me. So he came out and saw me and I made all county, so he took a liking to what I did there so I got recruited for soccer as well. Baseball was pretty much the same path but my stick wasn’t as good. I was probably very good defensively but I just wasn’t very good with the bat. So in the sports world I never felt that I got short changed, that I know that a lot of my peers from the time shared a lot of their experiences and I trust what they were saying and they did not.

JC: At what point did you realize you were the real deal and you were going to go all the way to the Olympics? Did your coach have a certain influence on you in trying to let you know you were the best or did you just know you were the best at the Naval Academy? Casasola 27

LK: At the Naval Academy not really. I always believed since I was a little kid if I was given an opportunity from someone else I could be the best at it and if I wasn’t the best at I could work on being the best at it and that was my mindset. So my mindset was always to no matter what you do you gave all you had and then whatever happens you can accept that result because you can look in the mirror and say I did all that I could do and the only thing I can do now is learn how to adapt and improve how I do. So that was me all the time, was I always happy with the result?

No, but I felt good about me except for about seven times that I can count. Every other one of those times, except those seven times, I can look myself in the mirror and say basically I did everything that I can do so I was proud of myself.

JC: When you were beginning to become an Olympic athlete did ever begin to take over you life at all? Did you feel like you were being consumed by the athletic world? Did you have time to do other things and enjoy life?

LK: That was a contradiction, I left the Naval Academy and tried out for the Olympic team in

72’ and I was the alternate behind Dan Gable. So I knew that there was a good shot I could make the team but I did not want that to be all me. It was very important to me to have a balanced life.

In high sx xschool I played three sports and I still recommend doing that today but a lot people say people should specialize. So I said I want to have time with my and train but not train all year round. The marine offered me training all year round and I chose not to. I will fulfill my normal duties as a marine and only wrestle a month and a half to two months out of the year. I said I’ll take my ups wherever they may be. So the only year I actually trained a full year round Casasola 28 was the year before the Olympics games when I was with the Naval Academy but I still held a regular job. I would work out in the morning, work out at noon time, and then an hour before practice one of the Naval wrestlers would come and drill with me everyday. So that was the only year prior to other than that people see me wrestling and they think I’m just working out for the next tournament or whatever. So its important for me not to have my fitness report, my physical résumé, not stay at wrestling, wrestling, wrestling. It had me as a platoon commander, as an instructor, just like everybody else did so when it came time for promotions six or seven years down the road you don’t not have the opportunity because you didn’t have any command time.

JC: So you won the gold medal at the World Championships in 73’, which is a great honor.

Being the first African American to achieve did that affect your reaction or the reaction of the wrestling community based on that?

LK: I didn’t realize I was the first African American until probably ten years ago. So I would say I really don’t know that answer, I just know that within the black wrestling community they were extremely proud that I won but I don’t know if they I was the first. Nobody ever said that to me, there might have been a few in there who did and quite naturally my community got to a point where they named an elementary school after me. I only found that I was the first guy to do that when my aunt called me and said I was one of the questions on Jeopardy. She was out in

Oregon and I said, “Really?!”, because I started asking people like the coach at the Naval

Academy and he said that he wasn’t sure but maybe he’ll take a look at it. Then I started looking at it and I found out that it was true. I think I was the first one to win a world cup. I think I was the first person to win a world cup, it was the first wrestling world cup back in 1973 the year that Casasola 29

I competed. I think I might have been the first at the Naval Academy but I haven’t even looked at those kinds of things. So I talked to one of my buddies from highschool who was two years behind me and wrestled at Michigan State all American. He was surprised that he and I seemed to be pioneers in the wrestling community.

JC: Yeah that’s very interesting because nowadays everything is broadcasted whenever someone is the first American to complete this or do this. That it didn’t come up at all is very interesting.

LK: Yeah no really I didn’t know. We had wide world sports and that was the only national sport event on a weekly basis for one hour or two hour and they covered all the sports at the amateur and professional level. So any time a wide level sport was made possible. I was on there a couple of times for the Olympics and the world cup I guess for a few seconds but now you got

ESPN, NFL network, Major League Baseball, Comcast, you know twenty-four by seven.

JC: So wrestling at the Olympics what was that like being in front of enormous crowds of people and being broadcast? Did that ever get to you mentally or were you just like “I’m here to wrestle”?

LK: I’ve always been in the moment, when I get on the mat I feel like I can barely stand up, barely breathe, I feel like I want to keel over, but once the whistle blows thirty seconds of mixing up and all else is gone. Like a radar I could hear all the people who were important to me. I hear my family in the stands, I don’t care if there are thousands of people. I can hear friends in the stands, I can hear coaches on the side, it was almost like a little murmur but I could still hear Casasola 30 their voice and I’m in the match. The energy in the crowd always gets me revved up, I don’t care if they’re for me or against me equal. Leading up to it and prior to was a tough one because I would look in the mirror and I broke down and started crying, little Butch Keaser had made it.

My highschool buddy I was talking about was an alternate on the team so two black kids from the same community who dreamed of going there and wrestling there had finally made it, unheard of. I have goosebumps talking about it now. So we went to church the next day and I’m not really much of churchgoer. As a kid I get out of it easy but we were still very strong spiritually. I got there and testified in church, I had an out of body experience standing in front of these people saying, I’m saying these words and I just can’t believe that its me. Then I got telegrams, they don’t have those anymore, postcards, letters, phone calls from people all over the country who knew me at some point in my life along the way. I looked for something last night; I got boxes of them still. I get goosebumps talking about it. So it was all those experiences, then the ceremonial parade marching into the stadium, you get formed up to see all the famous people you see on TV as well as yourself and all these TV’s going around. You would march on in and watch all the pigeons fly off and its one of the most overwhelmingly emotional things you ever experience. Then when I got there to game you’re saying, “I want to preform.” I wasn’t really thinking about the TV. I was thinking there’s a wrestling mat over there, there’s a guy over there, and we’re going to shake hand, and we’re at it. That probably helped me throughout my life.

JC: Was there a lot of celebration when you returned home?

LK: Well I wasn’t going home right away my wife, ex-wife, and I drove down from Canada down the east coast just to take time. My Mom would say, “when are you getting home? When Casasola 31 are you getting home?” I said, “Uhhhh” and she says, “I have to know when you’re getting home.” So we gave her a date and then we got and she told me that they were having a Keaser celebration. They had close to a thousand people and everybody was wearing Keaser t-shirts and they had the cars made up, they had a parade. When I drove into the community they had a big banner that said, “Welcome Home” and then when they had the event everybody close from elementary school all the way up to military, then the county executive came up and announced that the old school had been closed and they were renaming it the Keaser center and I was floored. So all of those things were overwhelming. Then afterwards their response to having been to the Olympics just blew me away. I knew it was a big deal but not that big. I won a world title, which to me is my top honor. The same thing it’s just that it’s a different year and not everything is in play but the impact of the Olympics compared to the world championships is absolutely incredible. Peanuts compared and it still is.

JC: After living through this era what are the main differences you notice today? Like peoples attitude?

LK: Its light-years better but it still depends on what pockets of the country you go to. My wife is white as you’ve seen, we can notice it even more because interracial marriages were even worse than just being black. So we can see a very big difference and there are still certain pockets of the country that I’m kind of uneasy. A lot of it is because of historical conditioning but we’ve been some places down south where our car got keyed at the beach. People respond to us in a certain way. They didn’t say anything but they acted a certain way but we know that it still exists. I was doing a clinic up in Towson about five years ago and a bunch people sitting Casasola 32 around a table say, “how was it growing up back in the day?” and I was as you were the saying the first African American and then I started talking about myself the bubble and blah blah blah and then the guy sitting next to me was from Kansas and he was a coach and went down to

Pensacola, Florida and he had agreed for me to come down there and I had a job and then walking around I saw a sign that said Klu Klux Klan meeting at 7 o’clock. I turned to the guy next me and said is that still going on? And he says, “Yeah we’re still going strooong.” So he felt uncomfortable about it and he got the job but then he signed up as fast as he could to move up north to get away from that. So then the guy sitting across from me, state champion from

Missouri, says my family is like that. Not my mom and my dad but my uncles and cousins.

People in the know who live in the communities tell me how it is so I know that in pockets around the country but I coached highschool in colombia and that’s like a melting pot. It’s a whole different vibe there. You go to school there, you see people mixing together but other schools I’ve been you see and it’s the blacks sitting over here, whites over here, maybe some

Hispanics here. So I believe it takes time for people to, if they know people they feel differently, but if you’re separate and never interact its all these pre-conceived visions of someone my belief is what you see on TV or what you read about in the paper. To give you an example, when they first had the first comic show come on things were called “Good Times” and they were like this poor family in urban New York City. Some people didn’t like it because they really portrayed the blacks in it and one guy was dying and he was famous for that and I don’t understand what’s the big deal it’s a TV show you don’t have anything out there but its something. Then when Kate and I met about twelve, fifteen years ago we were up in Maine and we’re both and we both went out to a party and met some people and afterwards they came up to and shook my hand and really it made their night. I was the first black person they had ever talked to or touched even just Casasola 33 by shaking their hand. They’ve seen them, they’ve seen them walking across the street, now these people are close to forty years old. I’m saying Ok if they’re only image is what they see on

TV or read in the newspaper they don’t know so as a result I am more concerned. My belief is that the military helped break down a lot of barriers, athletics helped break down a lot of barriers, and then people moved into the communities, and those kinds of things but still there are several pockets in the United States where its still totally separate. So from that aspect there’s been a lot of change that’s been done and there is almost no comparison to what it used to be but still we got a long ways to go in my opinion.

JC: When you look in the news there are constantly protests and riots based on “black lives matter” and other stuff like that. Do you see those things as a step in the right direction for racial equality or is that negatively affecting America?

LK: I don’t think it negatively affects America, well it depends on your perspective but I think it’s needed. Would I do that no Ok but I think there’s a place for it because what it does is it brings, as long as you’re not doing any harm to those people and that kind of thing, it brings a tension to it and the body cameras and cell phones in that regard are some of the best things that have ever happened because these are things folks have been saying what has been happening over the years but nobody believed them. I’ve had conversations with my peer group, my white peer group, and educated them and I coach because they haven’t realized these types of things.

OJ Simpson’s trial was probably a real good example of it. Totally different views of the outcome because the black community will not trust the police, the white community trusts the police. So if you distrust you have one view, you totally believe they tampered with the Casasola 34 evidence. If you’re white then you say no way they tampered with the evidence because we know what happens in the black community when it comes to police brutality. So we were taught from a very young age that both hands on the steering wheel, yes sir, no quick movements and those kinds of things and that’s how it was back in the time. My buddies who lived in Oklahoma

City were always slammed against the pavement, searched, because they looked like the person.

That was almost on a daily basis they get pulled aside by the police. I’ve told you about walking into a store and those kind of things, all of those things exist so the cameras say that they do. The black lives matter protests are forcing some individuals who would otherwise not take a stand.

The guy who had to resign down in Missouri because they were being mistreated and folks weren’t really paying attention to it. Its mixed as long as harm doesn’t come before us then even though I may not do it that way I think its Ok, but I do think in some peoples mind its going to weigh negative because they still don’t believe it and what they’re fighting for.

JC: You talk about your coach a lot and I see a strong relationship there. Are you still in contact with him? Do you still talk to your highschool coach or college coach?

LK: Yes well my college coach died in 2010 and before that time we did. My father died when I was forty-three so he and I still had that kind of relationship, father son. Well by far the most influential person in my life is my father. The others kind of taught the rest of the technique and that kind of stuff but my father was more of a role model there and reinforced it. My father, my highschool coach, and my college coach all had very similar mindsets. My father was a very bright guy, he had all kinds of little sayings that I would latch onto. He would say, “Do the best things that you can do, always and you can do everything else that everyone else can do if given Casasola 35 the chance because you’re a Keaser.” He taught to believe in myself. My mom is like you aren’t going to lie, you are never going to be shying away from responsibility, and when you say you’re going to do something you honor it. My highschool coach I see every couple of years. As a matter of face I tried to get him into the hall of fame but he won’t let me submit his name, but they were two very big figures.

JC: In Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, he begins talking about how king started to focus on poverty in America. Zinn says, “King was turning his attention to troublesome questions. He planned a “Poor People’s Encampment” on Washington.” Did you ever notice the turning point from King as he was nearing the end of his life focusing his attention more towards poverty or was it just him fighting for rights?

LK: When I look back I only saw him fighting for rights. I wouldn’t really go deep into the political activism for civil rights. I was in middle school when he died and so it wasn’t until I got into college was when you start to become more aware and that was post King at that time.

JC: As you said before you were very sad when he died because you liked the way he thought peacefully and Malcolm X was more of a vigorous and he was about freedom now. So were there ever disputes between the African American community or just people in general, like choosing Martin or choosing Malcolm?

LK: It was almost like, not making light of it, but who’s better Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan.

You get those heated debates, and you have different personalities within the community. No one Casasola 36 ever said anything to my face. Most of the folks I hung out with were college prep folks, and in that group most of them were more in line with Martin Luther King’s approach. The guys my brother hung around, I could see them being more confrontational. There were a handful of

Black Panthers, but there was a big debate. Martin Luther King had a bigger following by far.

JC: Well that’s all my questions. Thank you very much for doing the interview. Is there anything you’d like to make a note on before I finish up, or anything I missed?

LK: So what is the purpose of this?

JC: This is just to interview you about your life, this time period, and this event. I was focusing on the Civil Rights movement so I wanted to get your perspective as a witness to the movement, since you said you didn’t actually participate in any movements. It’s just to get a different viewpoint, so we all interview different people.

LK: Well, another thing for me was that even though I didn’t get out there in the streets and that kind of thing, I felt that for me it was very important to carry myself in a specific way. I knew that it was happening and a lot of people were counting on me as a role model for the non-

African American community, the kind of people we are as African Americans. People have told me that, which is another reason why they named a school after me. I became a Naval grad, a

Marine Corps officer, that kind of stuff. So when people see more people like me, than criminals, they may change how they view African Americans. Another thing is, once I was in any of those positions it was absolutely important that I did nothing that would cause discredit, because that Casasola 37 would be far more harmful than anything else. A lot of my peers at the Naval Academy and the

Marine Corps, I think 1.2% of the Marine Corps was African American, we felt we had to carry a great deal of responsibility. We didn’t really view it as a burden. We could not let the family, the community, and the Black race die. There was also the sense that if you want to do something, you have to be twice as good as a person who was not of color, to get what you want.

Looking back, I keep saying I was in a bubble, but it’s because of the way my family lived. All the brothers and sisters, mom, and daddy, the rest of your family, they carried themselves as if there was no racism. All of them had relationships with folks outside of the family who were not of color. And they were strong relationships. So we were kind of like a contradiction to what was happening back in those times. We tried to live the way the Bible said to live. I guess it came back to us [inaudible]. All those things exist. Another thing too, is I went through life with the mindset that there was no racism. I’m sure it made me treat different things different ways, but I wasn’t looking for it. And a lot of times you see something happen, and what are you going to do? Interpret it a certain way? I always chose not to interpret it as “that”. If I look back, I can probably count on my hand maybe 3 times where I felt there was something there against a black person. I would witness other things, for me personally. It’s a pretty big deal. 4, 300 people might cut me a 130 of those. In Alabama, Georgia, Southern Florida, Tennessee, all those people. And I look at those things and the way that I was treated as tough love. You have faith in society that over time, as people get to know each other, that things with be different.

JC: All right, well thank you.

Casasola 38

Audio Time Indexing Log

Interviewee: Lloyd Keaser Interviewer: Johnny Casasola Location of Interview: Panera Bread, Reston, Virginia Date of Interview: January 3rd, 2016 Recording Format: MP3

Minute Topic

05 Coping with Segregation

10 Reaction to Martin Luther King Jr.’s Death

15 Responding to Steven F. Lawson

20 Violence Against Blacks

25 Wrestling at the Naval Academy

30 Pioneers for Blacks in Wrestling

35 The Public Reaction Towards the Silver Medal

40 Racism Today

45 Family Morals

50 The Image of Black People Today

Casasola 39

Interview Analysis

Olympic Wrestler Lloyd “Butch” Keaser stood the ultimate test when he was brought into this world amidst the mayhem that we call the Civil Rights Movement. Today Mr. Keaser reminisces about those chaotic and gruesome moments he lived through and he says, “Looking back, I keep saying I was in a bubble, but it’s because of the way my family lived. All the brothers and sisters, mom, and daddy, the rest of your family, they carried themselves as if there was no racism.”(Casasola 37) He appreciates the life he was blessed with and that he was able to live to tell the tale today. Currently it is easy for society to neglect and eventually forget the stories of those brave individuals who make up our history and who have built our Nation up from the ashes into the greatest country on Earth. Oral history makes it so that those stories will not go untold. It guarantees the documentation and recognition that these glorious stories deserve. Without oral history we would lose almost the entirety of our nations history. People deserve to be honored for what they have accomplished and oral history gives them the opportunity to put their story out into the world. The responses given by Mr. Keaser in regard to his life during the Civil Rights Movement will both support and confute statements made by historians in regard to the role of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during his time as one of the most influential civil rights activist leaders.

On January 3rd in Reston, Virginia Mr. Keaser told his story about growing up in

Maryland during the civil rights movement and his road to the Olympics. He began by talking about the hardships his family was faced with due to the segregation laws and the extreme level racism that whites exhibited. He begins to describe the small community where he grew up located in Pumphrey, Maryland and he says that it was completely segregated to a point “where Casasola 40 we couldn’t walk through their community and they couldn’t walk through ours”(Casasola 15).

Mr. Keaser’s athletics put him on a path to success to where he could avoid ugliness of society that surrounded him. Whenever he was playing sports or with his team he felt as though he were in a “bubble”(Casasola 19). He is repeatedly mentioning this idea of a “bubble” that protected him from the outside world. Through athletics he found safety. Mr. Keaser “was more about turning the other cheek”(Casasola 20) therefore he gravitated more towards Martin Luther King

Jr. because of his peaceful methods of protesting. Mr. Keaser never actively participated in a protest but he supported the idea of finding equality. Mr. Keaser’s parents and coaches were key role models in his life and they taught him to do the best you can do and to live a peaceful life.

He inherited his peaceful morals from his mother and father and tried to spread that to his peers.

Mr. Keaser believes that the situation for blacks in America is “light-years better”(Casasola 31) but he says there are still certain areas and pockets that still need help in taking that step forward towards equality. Today America takes to rioting to try and reform those small pockets of racism throughout the country and Mr. Keaser says, “I think its needed”(Casasola 33) because it gathers more attention towards the subject.

During the Civil Rights Movement tensions between the people and the government were very high and more often than not the government failed to appease the needs of those protesting for equality in America. After years of protesting it seemed that nothing was happening and so the people took action. This is where controversy may arise among historians because some may argue that the protesting party was being controlled and commanded by higher authorities.

Historian Steven F. Lawson felt otherwise and even goes to say that, “King and other well known players would not disappear from view, but would take a backseat to women and men who initiated protests in small towns and cities across the south and who acted according to their Casasola 41 own needs rather than those of central organization headquarters in New York, Washington, or

Atlanta”(Casasola 21). He is saying that leaders like Martin Luther King would simply sit back and allow civilians to initiate protests that only had the interests of the group in mind and not the interest of the Nation. Mr. Keaser replies honestly saying that he has never heard that opinion before and is stumped on trying to find an answer to the question of if he agrees or disagrees with Mr. Lawson. Although that was the first time he had heard that opinion he responds by saying, “I believed that he [Martin Luther King Jr.] believed they were fighting for the same thing”(Casasola 28). Mr. Keaser disagrees with Mr. Lawson saying that they were fighting for the same reason. He opposes the idea that the groups of civilians were protesting to solely improve the group’s personal interests. Mr. Keaser says, “I believe that we are all and I am fighting for the same thing and I chose to choose another path even though I’m witnessing folks becoming activists and stuff I didn’t participate I chose to do something else”(Casasola 22). He believed even though he was not physically at protests that those groups of people who were at the protests had the interests of everybody who was suffering around the country. Mr. Keaser follows a moral code of resolving things peacefully and through his experience in his sports he has learned how to work as a team. A bias toward teamwork and unity could be observed in Mr.

Keaser’s response. Mr. Lawson is analyzing these events after they have occurred and he is looking at facts and events that have been documented. Mr. Lawson is specifying in studying these documents down to their most specific details and analyzing what the information tells him. He is not basing his conclusion off of what he saw happening around him but through published information.

Another debate that arises between historians is the one questioning whether King had to begun to shift his attention to new goals as he neared the end of his life or if he was Casasola 42 remaining steady on the subject of the Civil Rights. In his book, A People’s History of the

United States, Howard Zinn tackles this idea of King diverting his attention to issues that may seem more drastic. Zinn says, “King was turning his attention to troublesome questions. He planned a ‘Poor People’s Encampment’ on Washington.” Zinn does believe that king was coming up with new developments on how to make a country a better place. Mr. Keaser disagrees with Howard Zinn by saying, “When I look back I only saw him fighting for rights”(Casasola 35). Approaching the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. Keaser was only in middle school and did not take much head to politics and the news. He says, “I wouldn’t really go deep into the political activism for civil rights. I was in middle school when he died and so it wasn’t until I got into college was when you start to become more aware and that was post

King at that time”(Casasola 35). Mr. Keaser was too young to truly understand what was going with King’s plan and what he was trying to accomplish. Mr. Zinn being a historian has an unfair advantage our Mr. Keaser because he has the ability to search through documents, records, and other people’s opinions about the subject while Mr. Keaser gathered all of his information solely through hearing passed along on the street or through the radio. Mr. Keaser’s research about

King’s endeavors as a leader is considerably inferior to that of Mr. Zinn’s research merely because of a difference in time period and resources that are available now for Mr. Zinn that hadn’t existed when Mr. Keaser was concerned about this subject.

Through the process of completing this project I learned my limits and capabilities when trying to complete large assignments. I realized that people aren’t kidding when they say deadlines are always closer than they appear. Time management was a real issue for me and I wish I had set a better plan from the start of project instead of rushing to do research and playing catch up. This project taught me more than anything that I need to plan ahead. I genuinely Casasola 43 enjoyed researching a topic that was related to my main sport of wrestling. I met Mr. Keaser over the summer and instantly wanted to interview him for my project. I also had never learned about the Civil Rights Movement prior to this project and now that I have a deep knowledge about the subject I feel more confident when it comes up in conservation. My favorite part of this project was the interview because I take a great interest in listening to people’s life stories. This project brings out stories that may be hidden beneath the surface until someone asks the right questions and breaks open the mystery of their interviewee’s past. I enjoyed completing the Oral History

Project and am glad that all the hard work is over.

Casasola 44

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