Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers

Eddie Faye Gates is a retired Tulsa high school history teacher, administrator, and curriculum writer. She is currently an education consultant, activist, writer, and purveyor of truth. I had the great honor of talking to Ms. Gates in her Tulsa home on April 15, 2004. She is not only a pleasant person to visit with, but she is also a knowledgeable historian who is not afraid to tell the truth. Her books contain fascinating information that is important to each one of us, and her storytelling is superb. She has written Miz Lucy’s Cookies, They Came Searching, and Riot on Greenwood: The Total Destruction of Black Wall Street. For more information on Eddie Faye Gates’s life and work, visit her website, www.tulsa-riot.com.

By Lori Coggins

Do you have a role model from your childhood who had an effect on your life and your success?

I was born in Preston, Oklahoma, a sharecropper’s daughter picking and chopping cotton in the Preston/Okmulgee area. I graduated from Dunbar High School in Okmulgee in 1951. There were 10 of us kids, two died of pneumonia during childhood. Our parents were sharecroppers with a sixth-grade education. They were brilliant people, but they never had a chance. Oklahoma didn’t educate them. Segregation mis-educated them. People tell me, oh Eddie Faye, you’re so smart. I do have a Phi Beta Kappa. I’m telling you that to show how you come from those kind of roots, how you can because of people like my mother and my dad, but especially my mother. She told us kids, “When you go to college.” We heard that all our lives. She made us study and read every book. We would say, “Mother we don’t have any money. How can we go to college?” She said, “You do the grades. God will open the way.” And she was right. We did the grades. We had to.

Is she the reason that education is so important to you?

I got two spankings my whole life. Twice I got a switching with a peach tree switch and both times it was about education. I went to school at age five and I already knew how to read and write because Mother taught me. She would grill me the minute I would get out. “What did you learn today?” I didn’t care about the stuff. I knew it. I wasn’t paying attention. As a matter of fact, I was trying to learn to walk on a log. Before I knew it, that peach tree limb was tearing up my little skinny legs. She said, “Now you pay attention. School is important.” The second time I wasn’t paying attention I was looking at my little brothers and sisters – I couldn’t wait to play with them. She was grilling me. Before I knew it, there was the peach tree limb. It only took two times. I said, “Learning is important to this little woman. If I want to protect these skinny little legs, I’d better pay attention.” And I did.

How did her persistence pay off for you and your brothers and sisters?

Because we studied, all eight of us, we were scholars. We had the grades. There were people, especially at Tuskegee, Booker T. Washington, he had a plan for people. He set up a five-year plan at Tuskegee. Well, somebody came from Tuskegee recruiting and I was a senior, and there was my opening. I set the pace for the other seven children. Mother was right. All eight of us have college degrees; four of us have master’s. Our children have done even better. I have a daughter with a Ph.D, an OSU grad in engineering. She won a four-year Exxon scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley, got her master’s and doctorate in engineering. She was asked to represent the black association and speak at graduation. She dedicated her diploma to Mother. Mother was smarter than all of us.

You write about some of your experiences at Tuskegee in Miz Lucy’s Cookies. Who is Miz Lucy?

Miz Lucy’s Cookies is autobiographical. Miz Lucy was like mother — a little woman in Preston who couldn’t read or write. When I was at Tuskegee, I got discouraged because I was poor. I got the five-year scholarship. But it was the Fifties during the civil rights movement and it was very disturbing. The Klan would come across a major highway that ran across campus and harass us. Mother did the best she could and sent a little spending money, but it always ran out. I wouldn’t have toothpaste and deodorant. I had a loving roommate who was well-off from Alabama who kept me supplied, bless her heart. She died two years ago. I got discouraged because of the segregation, the poverty. The food was terrible. I didn’t eat properly. As a matter of fact, the dormitory lady threatened to call my mother if I didn’t start forcing down more of that dormitory food.

This little lady in Preston knew that I wanted to be a teacher. She sent a box of cookies to me at my dormitory with letter saying how proud she was of me. The cookies were beautiful, made with real butter, with sprinkles. But the note is what got me. This little lady had nothing tangible really except her love for us. She was our mentor. That note kept me from dropping out. That’s why I’m sitting here today with these books and a successful teaching career—because of that note and those cookies. That’s why I used the title Miz Lucy’s Cookies.

I’ve heard that people sometimes think Miz Lucy’s Cookies is a cookbook.

My husband told me that. And they do. Once I was signing at Barnes and Noble, and a lady was walking in with her husband. She wanted to come in and the man said, “Come on. You ain’t using the cookbooks you got!” And I said, sir, sir, it’s not a cookbook; it’s an autobiography. They came in and I made my sale.

Is anything else behind your motivation to write and sell books about history?

It’s not a matter of money. It’s a matter of my passion for getting this message out, especially to children and youth. I love speaking at schools. I’ve spoken to gang-bangers. They have come up on the stage after hearing my story. I was told not to speak at McClain. “Those kids won’t be quiet.” I could hear a pin drop when I talked to those kids. They wept when I told them that I loved them and that I knew what it meant to be poor. I told them not to be ashamed.

Do you believe that society will continue to get better with each generation?

Oh yes! Many people think I’m militant and critical because I wrote books about the pioneers and the riot. The facts of how we came from there to here – it’s not bragging; it’s just to show it can be done. Some people say I don’t give credit for changes that have been made. I do give credit. We have made great progress in this country, in this democracy. It saddens me that it took so long. If we had not had a flawed democracy in the first place, we wouldn’t have had to go through all these stages. I do point that out. Here’s where the problem started—the flawed democracy.

The word “democracy” means everything right and good for many people, and democratic government is good if it's done right. The main thing you must do is include all. In this country we, thank goodness, have moved past that. I have what I call “high road people.” Those are people who take great risks, like Jesus Christ, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr. They stand up for truth and take great risks, sometimes losing their own lives, but they stand for truth. They take the high road. Not many people do that. Sometimes you can say there are states that take the high road. Oklahoma has always been a state that did not take the high road that often, and that bothers me.

Are there any “high road people” in your book, They Came Searching?

I went into going back to Africa and the roots of African-Americans. That’s very interesting. Then I do the slave trade, and that is fascinating. Terrible, tragic thing in history. And then, Civil War. Tragic. We should have taken the high road. We do have a good democracy. Those things in it are beautiful. It would have been so much better if we had just included everyone. Then I do a chapter on Reconstruction. A fascinating period where we didn’t take the high road. Oh, if we had just enforced the 13th, 14th, 15th amendments we would have avoided all this mess. But we didn’t do it. Then I cover the Civil Rights Movement. Tulsa has a rich history in that. We had ministers like Rev. Ben Hill, Rev. McCutcheon; we had white ministers, Catholic priests. They all went together to try to bring down segregation. There were some people in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who took the high road in the Sixties.

So Oklahoma wasn’t all bad at that time?

Oh, no. There was a movement. They got three buses together and went south and marched in Selma. Mrs. Fannie Hill went. Don Ross, who created the Riot Commission, went. It’s fascinating. You know, I missed the Civil Rights Movement. I did not get to go down on that bus. I was living in London, England. My husband was in the military. But I did what I could do, and that is enlighten people. Because the whole world was watching.

What did people in England think about the Civil Rights Movement?

They said, “Oh, you poor baby. What can I do? How can you go back to that country?” And I explained to them, “It’s been long coming, but there are people giving their lives.” I mentioned the whites who were losing their lives fighting for this change. “They’re not all that way. It is rigid, it’s ingrained, and it’s hard to get rid of. But it’s my country, I love it, and I am going back. We will get a change, and we will get a change within the law because we are a law-abiding people.” The media did it for us.

Was the media that strong a force during the Movement?

I’ll tell you one media story that really told the message. It was shown by BBC London and all over the world. The pictures also made it into the textbook that I taught at Edison [High School]. There was a parish in Louisiana, and they were integrating the schools. They were by a construction site, and this white woman picked up a 2x4 and there were these little black children integrating to school. There was a little 12-year-old boy, and she picked up that stick, and she broke his leg right on camera. The film never stopped rolling. My friends in London saw that. The Pope got in touch with that parish, and that whole parish was excommunicated. Even some of the staunch segregationists said, “We can’t do this. It has to change.” World public opinion shifted to the side of the oppressed. The media is like a fourth branch of government.

Is this information you’ve written about being taught in our schools today?

Miz Lucy’s Cookies and They Came Searching are in public schools. Most have it in their libraries. Some classes actually bought it. We don’t have enough funds to use it properly. We need some mentor, somebody like Oprah to put it in classrooms or some wealthy person. Steven Spielberg does what I wish we had some black mentor to do. He puts that [Holocaust study material] in every classroom. I’ve taught the [Holocaust] curriculum and oh, it’s wonderful to teach because you’ve got what you need. Now we have just a smattering of black materials.

What got you interested in researching the Greenwood Riot? Had you always known about it?

I’ve always known about it. I had relatives in Tulsa at the time of the riot. My mother and her parents and sisters and brothers got out about a month before the riot. They lived here. But they had warnings, little things on their door, “Get out by June 1.” That’s why we believe in a conspiracy theory. Two of my aunts were here. They were teachers and one was married to a lawyer. They lived on North Detroit. I used to sit on their porch looking down on all the buildings. I knew about the wealthy blacks who lived here because my aunts were some of them. That part, Detroit was the hardest hit. In fact, most of the damage was done after the guards got here. Whites were so angry that blacks had such things. I have that in some of the bios in Riot on Greenwood. They took time to break up the china, to pour gasoline into victrolas, to break records, to rip the curtains. It had to do with jealousy, envy.

How did you become involved with the Riot Commission?

It was Representative Ross’s idea. He loved this topic since childhood. As a child, he didn’t believe that there had been a riot because it wasn’t in the books. But he had a teacher, W.D. Williams, who was in the riot himself as a child. At first Representative Ross said, “That’s a lie. There was no riot. I would have known about it. I’ve never seen a picture.” His teacher said, “Shut up, big mouth. I’ll prove it to you.” He thought the teacher was going to paddle him and send him home for another paddling. But he didn’t. He brought a scrapbook and showed him the photos. Don has been hooked ever since. He and Senator Maxine Horner created the Commission, House Bill 1035. There were 11 of us on it, six blacks, five whites. We represented the whole state of Oklahoma, black, white, male, female. It was beautiful. I don’t think you could have humanly gotten a better Commission. We were all dedicated. Now that doesn’t mean we always agreed on everything. There were some days there were tears; some days we were ready to name-call. But we were always sincere. We grew to respect each other.

How do we move forward from here?

Dialogue. I don’t think we’d be in Iraq today if we’d had proper dialogue.