Oral history interview transcript; Antonio Thacker HIST 150 SPRING 2017
1.(Dr. John Thacker) Interview, History 150 Spring 2017, Conducted by Antonio Thacker, March 21, 2017
- a. Interview setup
I sent the question via email about a week before I was able to meet with Dr. Thacker so that he would have time to compose answers and remember things from his past. We did the interview at his home in Charlottesville, which he had said ahead of time would be quiet. Even with a copy of the questions in front of each of us I had difficulty knowing when to ask the next question because at several points during the interview Dr. Thacker would pause to think and was clearly not done talking. At other points he would read the next question off and begin his answer without pause. Age was an obstacle here, asking a question that wasn’t on his question sheet could lead to confusion or idle the conversation. The audio was easy to convert and was recorded on my laptop. Though the audio was good there wasn’t enough time to finish clipping out the unnecessary parts of the interview.
- Short biography
John Thacker was born the son of a local politician in the rural town of Disputanna, Virginia in 1945. He attended UVA engineering school as an undergraduate in the early 1960s where he married a young lady from the Nursing School. Soon after being married he was drafted into the Army for Vietnam as an officer and was then sent to Germany where his first child was born. Upon his return from Europe he completed his doctorate degree at UVA where he would spend the next 42 years teaching and directing aerospace and mechanical engineering. He retired from UVA in August of 2016 as a father of six and grandfather of 3.
- Backgorund
During the 1960s America saw three presidents. Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson. During this time our Country in hindsight was falling apart. At the forefront of American issues was The Vietnam war, The Civil Rights Riots, and numerous Race Riots throughout the decade. In 1963 John F. Kennedy was assassinated followed by the death of another great leader Martin Luther king Jr. in 1968. In 1964 the Civil rights act was passed making discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin illegal. This was a decade where National conflict and group interests really collided in the American population. Independent groups sought to have them-selves recognized and accepted, not simply tolerated because of the written law. Many of these groups such as women realized that just because the law was written did not mean that it would be enforced especially when it came to fair and equal employment. Many times we assume that these negative conflicts were experienced by everyone who lived during the era in question, but I’ve found out that thats not always the case.
Source A: (APA)
History.com Staff. (2010). The 1960s. Retrieved March 26, 2017, from http://www.history.com/topics/1960s
Source B: (APA)
Civil Rights Act of 1964. (n.d.). Retrieved March 26, 2017, from https://www.nps.gov/subjects/civilrights/1964-civil-rights-act.htm
Black History. (n.d.). Retrieved April 14, 2017, from http://www.historynet.com/black-history
- Transcipt
Antonio Thacker (AT): Alrighty, so go ahead and introduce yourself and describe where you grew up for me.
John Thacker (JT): Okay, my name is John Thacker and I grew up in a little village called Disputanta, Virginia on Route 460. It was named, it was on the Norfolk and Western Railroad and the people that were building the railroad, the owner had his wife name all the stations. Well, when they got to the location of my village, they had a big argument over the name of it and finally he just names the place after his wife and put “dispute” in front of it.
AT: Oh, so her name was Anna?
JT: Yeah.
AT: Oh, okay. Huh, cool!
JT: Let’s see, I was born in 1945 and I lived there until 1963. It has a population of about 50 people.
AT: Wow!
JT: The house, my grandfather built. A two story wooden house. Fireplaces in the rooms because when he first built the house, that’s how you heated each room. Each room had a fireplace. Then he added onto the house and he put in steam heat. Well, in the old part of the house, the pipes that went to the radiators, he couldn’t hide them in the walls, so they just stayed outside. He had two pipes running up and down, just about in every room that were going upstairs.
AT: Hmmm.
JT: Behind the house there was a huge barn and five or six outhouses: a smokehouse, a wood shed, a shop, a stable, there were various places back there. The old outhouse was out there, he finally put in indoor plumbing when he added onto the house. He put in hot water heating. I lived there until I left to go to college.
AT: Okay, what year did you go to college?
JT: I went to college in 1963. And the next question, what do you remember about segregation in your home town? All the schools and churches in that village were segregated. The black’s had their social lives and it was totally separate. There was no intermixing at all.
AT: Was there ever any like tension though?
JT: Nope.
AT: It was just kind of that everybody understood?
JT: It was just how everybody grew up.
AT: Okay.
JT: After the Civil Right’s Act, I wasn’t there. My younger sister was there, because I graduated in 1963. But there was no, there was no big problem with the integration of the schools because we had all….I was born in 1945, not many children were born in 1945 because all the soldiers were away in World War II. And so if we wanted to play ball, we had to play with the black kids, you can’t have a ball game with two people.
AT: Yeah, huh.
JT: And so as far as I know, the schools just combined because that was the law and most people there were law abiding. And I don’t think it was that much of a problem because they intermingled and they knew one another anyway. And the other thing is, my high school served as the high school for all of the dependents at Fort Lee and the Army was already integrated. And so at least 30% of the high school students were from Fort Lee so there wasn’t [trails off]. Um, I never heard my parents talking about the Civil Rights Movement at all.
AT: Really? Okay.
JT: My dad was a local politician. He was the chairman of the county board of supervisors, so he knew everybody. Black and white because you have to know everybody to get their votes.
AT: Right, yeah. So they never really talked about, or there was never any kind of discussion about integration?
JT: Well, I guess they talked about it but I think most of the people could see the writing on the wall and it was going to be inevitable and they said “I’m not going to.” It’s not like, there was one county in Virginia where the county voted to just abolish all the schools in the county.
AT: Because they didn’t want to integrate?
JT: Because they didn’t want to integrate. And the white people built their own school, which was kind of stupid. My mother did go to college, she went to Longwood she was a school teacher.
AT: Okay.
JT: And I would say about 25% of the girls in my high school class went to college.
AT: 25%?
JT: Yeah, about a quarter of them. And a good percentage of them were from the families at Fort Lee. From the families in the county, they just got married and they would just go back to whoever they married, or their family’s, farm and work the farm. When I was in the military, I didn’t run into any women in the military.
AT: Okay. And you were drafted in…?
JT: I was drafted in 1968 and I was inducted in early in, you know I went in in early 1969.
AT: Okay.
JT: And I can’t remember of any women that I encountered and very few blacks.
AT: Oh really?
JT: Yeah.
AT: And, um so, the black people that you did encounter, were they in officer positions ever, or were they enlisted?
JT: When I was in basic training, there weren’t any blacks in my platoon and when I was in the Officer Candidate School, we had one. And we refused to let him flunk out. Mainly because he was an instructor at that Officer Candidate School. He was a Sergeant and we found out really early that he could get the schedule of what we were supposed to be doing for the next couple of days, and that made a lot of difference in knowing what was going to happen ahead of time instead of them springing it on you, which is what they were trying to do.
AT: Mmhmm, and he never got like any sort of grief because he was the only black guy there?
JT: No, we wouldn’t run any faster than he could run. There was just no way because the intel was too good.
AT: Yeah [laughs].
JT: DId my family show a lot of concern about the, I guess they were concerned because I was inducted in the military, but no they didn’t. They weren’t against the…
AT: the war effort?
JT: The war and I don’t know if there were any demonstrations in our neck of the woods against um, Vietnam. In fact I can’t even remember, I was in college and I, um, don’t remember any, well, let’s see, I was in college and got drafted. I still don’t remember any demonstrations at UVA. There might have been some, but it was probably because I was already in the military.
AT: DId you ever, did you still hear about the demonstrations though? From D.C. or anywhere else that were going on?
JT: No, well I was overseas and so you didn’t get, I didn’t any local news. Let’s see, were there women at UVA before I was drafted? Not to my knowledge. There were women at University of Virginia, but not, they just did not choose engineering. They were more in the teaching positions and the liberal arts. Um, now when I stopped teaching last year, probably a third of my class was female.
AT: Oh, okay. So when did you start seeing the females I guess become more integrated into the engineering school?
JT: Probably in the late 80’s.
AT: Late 80’s.
JT: And you know there would be one or two, but not that many. But then it started to be more prevalent. When they started, um, newer majors like in computer science, that pulled in a lot of them and then we began to see them move over into the traditional engineering areas of civil engineering and chemical and mechanical engineering.
AT: Okay, um, so when did you start seeing foreign students? You had, were there a lot of black people when you were in undergraduate school?
JT: No. There were none.
AT: There were none?
JT: No, foreign students, the very first day I was at University of Virginia, foreign students. Because a lot of them were TA’s. Undergraduates, not so many. Very few. And that’s still the case, we don’t get that many, um, students from other countries at the undergraduate level in engineering. We get students that are different, their parents are different nationalities because the majority of the undergraduate engineering students in my class come from Northern Virginia.
AT: Okay.
JT: Yeah, now at least a third of my classes were women.
AT: Okay, and then, I guess the same question for foreign students, when did you start seeing them more prevalent?
JT: Yeah, they were all graduate students. Um, even now. I would get one or two exchange students and all the colleges, even the University of Virginia students will go for one year to another country and go to school. I mean, there’s this program that’s set up. That’s where we see them in the engineering classes.
AT: Oh, okay.
JT: Um, it’s kind of like, it’s called study abroad.
AT: Yeah, I think JMU has that.
JT: And so they, it works out pretty well.
AT: Okay. Okay. And then do you have any interesting stories?
JT: Our very first, uh, lab in one of my, I think it was my introduction to computer engineering back in early 1963, um, the TA was Chinese. His name was Ping Ching and we could not understand a word he said. I mean it was, we were just lost. He could write English and he could tell us how to code, you know, show us how to code the computer, but we could not understand a word that he said. [laughs] The other interesting thing was, golly, back from the early ‘60’s to the middle 80’s maybe 90’s had no Hispanics in our class at all. None.
AT: As an undergrad?
JT: Yeah, to my knowledge. And then it just kind of ballooned.
AT: So not just in the engineering school, but in the class?
JT: I can’t tell you about the college. I mean, I didn’t live in the college and, you know, the engineering school is almost physically separated.
AT: Oh, okay.
JT: So they might have had more in the college, but not in the engineering school.
AT: Okay.
JT: Then, even the graduate students. Most of the graduate students were Chinese.
AT: Okay.
JT: Um, I don’t know. What’s the theme of your paper?
AT: Um, so it’s just social change as a whole.
JT: Well, the main thing that I can say is there was no rioting or anti-demonstrations for either blacks or women in any of the social structures here in Virginia that I know about.
AT: So women were kind of just accepted into the school when they integrated them?
JT: Well, it was kind of gradual because they, I think the first ones came in and some of the programs like computer science, they didn’t come into the hard core engineering curriculums: mechanical engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, um chemical engineering. Then they started probably sifting in in electrical engineering/ computer science and now they’re just, you know prevalent. I think they’re fairly equally dispersed in all the engineering classes. There might be a few more in one program, but it’s not prevalent.
AT: Okay. But, I guess when they integrated there wasn’t like a negative response?
JT: There was no response. And I think why is because it happened very slowly.
AT: Okay.
JT: And it happened a lot, and I’m just kind of guessing it started with graduate students being here and then nobody, you know, you had graduate students from all over the planet; Chinese, Europeans, and because it, becuase it happened very slowly. It wasn’t forced on anybody, it was just kind of alright.
AT: Alright, (Interviewee thinking)
JT: The place where I grew up, I think that people accepted it, but they didn’t, their social structure didn’t integrate.
AT: What do you mean?
JT: They still went to their own churches.
AT: Okay, so they…
JT: They, you know, they were meanable and the public schools and the PTA’s, they probably worked together, but the social structure, it didn’t happen. Now, you know we go to church and people come over and…
AT: Everybody is there….
JT: Everybody is there, you know.
AT: Okay.
(interviewee thinking)
JT: We had people from Uganda living here. We had Hispanics living here. We had local kids living here so it was a little bit different.
AT: Mmmhmm, why do you think there was, um, so you said there were foreign kids in the graduate program, but not so much in the undergraduate program?
JT: Yeah, I think that’s where, to me, that’s where it started. That’s where we were seeing TA’s that were Chinese.
AT: Okay. So do you know why, why why the difference? Why they were in the graduate school, but not in the undergraduate school so much?
JT: Um, they were trying to build up their graduate programs and they probably took in a lot of foreign students that applied. Whereas, in the undergraduate programs, you know, it’s a state university so they were just bringing in students from the state of Virginia. And there were admissions policies, but I don’t think the admissions policy was biased. Even today, um, the number of black students that are in my engineering classes is really low.
AT: Oh, really?
JT: It’s not, it’s grown, but not like the population of the number of women that are in my classes.
AT: Okay. Hmm, interesting.
JT: Then, I only had one black student in the 40 years I was teaching that did very well.
AT: In engineering?
JT: In my classes.
AT: Okay.
JT: He was extremely bright and outgoing and articulate. Um, a lot of the black students struggled. We would help them, but they just struggled. And it’s just part of the society. Achieving to make themselves better. It wasn’t handed to them, that’s for sure.
AT: So you think that there was a…when women came in did they kind of struggle at first too or were they just…?
JT: No, they did fine.
AT: Okay.
JT: I think the black students that I had in the 80’s that now have kids coming to UVA, their children are so much better prepared.
AT: Than they were?
JT: Then they were. Because it wasn’t just the academics they had to deal with, but there were all the social issues they had to deal with.
AT: Right, yeah.
JT: And, um, that was kind of, I think, the big difference.
AT: Okay, that makes sense.
JT: Now I don’t think, I never saw any racial divides among students. They just seemed to all, maybe some of the more social scenes, like maybe the fraternities, I don’t know, but all of the engineering groups in, you know, activities and societies, they were all blacks, whites, females, it was all discipline. If you were civil engineering, you were in the civil engineering societies.
AT: Because they have to work together during like hands-on labs anyways, right?
JT: Um, to a, yeah, to a point, you know labs they have to work together in.
AT: But, no problems?
JT: No, we never had any problems because it wasn’t forced on anybody. It just, okay the ones who had this desire to get an engineering degree, um, they worked at it and yeah, some of them, I had an open door policy, if you had a question about any of the homework or what went over, just come and ask me a question.
AT: Because they were all there by choice, it all kind of just…
JT: They were all there by choice. They weren’t a part of a quota or anything. We weren’t trying to set some legal precedent. They were there because they wanted to study engineering.
AT: Right, okay.
JT: And I don’t think that was true right at the beginning.
AT: Okay. Well what about now? Do you think that there are other things that, because kids don’t necessarily come willingly…?
JT: No, um, I mean, most of the problem is a student wants to get an engineering degree without putting in the work.
AT: Oh, okay.
JT: You see that.
AT: Yeah. Okay, well anything else you want to add to any of the questions?
JT: No. I mean, so what is the main theme of your paper?
AT: Just deciphering the differences through a time period, um, with when women were integrated, blacks integrated, foreign people started.
JT: We were lucky because in the state of Virginia we were kind of on the Mason-DIxon line.
AT: Mmhmm.
JT: And it wasn’t like the far South which was really separated.
AT: Mmhmm.
JT: And so just the, just Virginia, we had one county in the state that like I told you, just shut all the schools down. Um, but I, yeah, the residents of the state of Virginia just says “okay” and they just went ahead and did it. I’m sure there was some concerns and they integrated the public schools and stuff, but they didn’t integrate the churches. And yeah, they just let that happen.
AT: In it’s own timing?
JT: Yeah, even in our church, we have a few black people, but not a lot. And people, they’re just free to choose what they want to do. That’s the great thing about this country. You know, and it’s totally different in Europe because the countries are the size of states in the United States and each country speaks their own language and has their own customs and everything and so their very, um, somewhat discriminatory, I think.
AT: Okay. Because there are such distinct differences between them?
JT: Yeah, they’ve got their own customs and things and they’ve been fighting amongst each other for hundreds of years.
AT: Yeah. Okay. Alrighty well, let me sign this off.
- Conclusion
The interview went very quickly. The questions had been sent ahead of time to give the interviewee time to think about answers and write things down. Once the interview began Dr. Thacker really took over. I tried not to interrupt because he thought of things as he talked that I found interesting. If had a chance to do this assignment again I would do a practice run prior to the actual recording. My interviewee got a little off topic at times and due to age he occasionally would repeat himself. Overall a good perspective was gained from this interview and I thought it went well. (Click play to load/play audio)