THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: Family History
INTERVIEW WITH: Kenneth Miles (Tape 1 of 2)
DATE: 25 July 2000
PLACE: Institute of Texan Cultures
INTERVIEWER: Laurie Gudzikowski
TAPE I,SIDE 1
G: This is Laurie Gudzikowski and I’m at the Institute of Texan Cultures. Today is July 25, the year 2000, and I’m going to be talking to Kenneth Miles, who is going to be telling me a little bit about his family and his life. Okay, Kenneth, you want to tell me, first, where you were born and when you were born and where you were born?
M: Well, my name is Kenneth James Miles and I’m the third son of John and Bernice Miles and I was, unfortunately, born at Tuskegee Institute, November 26, the day after Thanksgiving, in 1943. My father was sent from San Antonio along with my mother and two older brothers to participate in the Tuskegee Airman Program, and my father was part of the Ground Support Group. And my two older brothers always tease me about being born in Alabama because I don’t know anything about Alabama; all I know is San Antonio, Texas. When I was six months old my mother was allowed to ride the train and come back home to San Antonio with me. And I was re-baptized again at Holy Redeemer Parish here in San Antonio. And I guess that’s about it, about as far as Kenneth Miles 2
M: where I was born. But I attended Holy Redeemer Catholic School eight years. Altar boy...my father’s grandparents started Holy Redeemer Parish in 1902. They came over from St. Peter Claver Parish at the turn of the century as the City of San Antonio was growing East, and they started that new parish right around the corner from St. Gerard’s. So that’s where the family Miles’ roots are - on my maternal grandmother’s side.
G: Would you tell me a little bit about your family and their roots here in San Antonio?
M: Oh, sure. On my father’s maternal side, his great-grandmother was born in 1859 in Lavaca County. She came to San Antonio in 1866 with her German father and her Black slave mother to San Antonio. And they slept in a wagon behind the Menger Hotel – that’s what she said. She passed away in 1959. She was one hundred years of age. And she used to tell us all these fascinating stories. That’s why we’re all Catholic is because of her and her heritage. And so my father’s grandfather and all of her children who were born here in Bexar County, and being mulatto, they were fortunate enough to have good paying jobs and positions. They were all middle-class. And my father’s mother - the last name was Henry - she married a guy named Henry, but the original name was Branch, B-r-a-n-c-h, and I come to find out that’s Bohemian. And that’s from over in Lavaca County. That’s a common name, so that was...Elsie Branch married a Kenneth Miles 3
M: guy named Henry – John Henry - and they raised their children here. And my father’s grandfather - Sam Henry, who my father looks just like - his oldest daughter, Elsie, is my grandmother. And...
G: You want to tell me a little bit about your dad? I know your dad had a really kind of interesting...
M: Oh.
G: ...some interesting episodes in his life. Would you tell me a little about your dad?
M: Sure. My father is the oldest of four sons - there are no daughters. And being a big man, he was athletically gifted. He was known for his athletic prowess here in San Antonio. He went to Holy Redeemer Catholic School and St. Peter Claver and he went to public school one year - that was in the 11th grade. And he was a standout basketball player and baseball player. He and my mother got married in 1939 and my father was working at Fort Sam Houston. And he said, after the war had started, 1940, some guys came to him and asked him – they wanted him to take an exam, a written exam, what-have-you – to participate in a program that they were starting. And he took it and passed it and he was selected to go to Tuskegee Institute, which he did do. And after graduating from that course in 1944, he came back to San Antonio and was stationed...working at Kelly Air Force Base as a sheet-metal mechanic, a journeyman. And his love for sports – he still participated in sports – he...some Kenneth Miles 4
M: scout here in San Antonio saw him at a game and they signed him to a contract to play in the Negro Major Leagues. So my mother...he said my mother gave her blessings for him to go and try out while she stayed here with three boys. And he left and, of course, he made the team. And he took a leave of absence every summer – you know, baseball didn’t go all year like it does now. So he took a leave of absence during the summer months, playing baseball with the Chicago American Giants. And that was from 1946 through 1949. He also played with the Kansas City Monarchs and Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson and all those guys - they were his friends. And so we, as children, we got used to having a high profile father like that. And he was a very good man, my father - he doesn’t drink, never drank, never smoked, he doesn’t use profanity and devout Catholic. But he was big enough man, he’d take you out, you know. So Uncle Sam asked him in 1949 - all the money they spent on him for the training at Tuskegee or baseball - make his choice. And of course he gave up the baseball. And instead he tried out here with the San Antonio Missions, which were not integrated at the time but they were trying to. And he wound up playing on the weekends with Nuevo Laredo’s team in the Texas League. And being the only Black guy on the team – and my father speaks, he speaks fluent Spanish – we would go with him and everything was conducted in Espanol and there we were with him on the weekends - bad boys and what Kenneth Miles 5
M: have you. And being a big man, my father could hit a baseball further than anyone I ever knew. And he was quite good. So I guess age and everything took its toll. And he was a busy man, and he instilled the student-athlete concept in us. He did graduate from St. Philip’s College also. And they taught us that they wanted us to all graduate from college. We had to participate in sports in the CYO when we were in Catholic School and that was just ingrained in us. And so, fortunately, all - the first four - we all three [graduated] from St. Mary’s University and one from UCLA. And, oh, my...
G: Quite a record.
M: Yes. And my mother passed away in 1969. And my father, along with all the guys that were still alive that had played in the Negro Major League, they all got inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989, I think. So he’s quite a proud of that. He has his gold medal, and I tell you, the guy gets a monthly check from the Baseball Player’s Association - part of his retirement. He’s retired from Civil Service and he gets Social Security and he gets a check from the Baseball Association. And they have him traveling around the country quite a bit. And he... representing the Baseball Player’s Association and pictures of him with guys like Hank Aaron and what-have-you. He really appreciates it so, and it makes us all proud.
G: Sure. Can you tell me a little bit about your mom now? Kenneth Miles 6
G: We’ve heard about your dad’s side of the family, how about telling me a little bit about your mom?
M: Oh, now that was...that was the Jewel of My Eye, my mother.
G: And her name is?
M: Bernice – her maiden name was Mapp, M-a-p-p. Bernice Mapp was the son of Grover Cleveland Mapp and Gertrude Jefferson. Now her parents were born in 1891 and 1892. Her father was half Black, half Irish and her mother, from San Antonio, was half-Black, half Seminole Indian. And she lived down the street from my father, and that’s how they met, and that’s why we are here. So with his German extraction and my mother’s mixed heritage here we are – Heinz Fifty-Seven. But my mother, very intelligent lady, and her father was in World War I - he was stationed at Fort Sam Houston. And when he got stationed here, he met my grandmother and they got married. And my grandmother came from an educated family, all of the...she and everyone in that family graduated from high school. And they were self-sufficient. She had bought land and purchased...and had her own home built prior to the age of twenty-six. And she paid cash for it. When she passed away at the age of thirty-three, my mother was fifteen months old and it was just two children - my mother’s older brother named Winston Mapp and my mother. Well, that abode was left to them, and they were raised by their aunts. And her father was having problems Kenneth Miles 7
M: from some gas that he’d gotten over in France during World War I. And we never met him, either, because he died in a Veteran’s Hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and that’s where he’s buried. We would go by his gravesite, but we never met him either. And...but my mother was very, very intelligent lady. Very insightful, tubs of wisdom, and her aunts were that way. They were people that we really looked up to. And, of course, they - being self-sufficient - they helped my father do a lot of the things: like playing baseball and what-have-you. And he didn’t have anything to worry about because my mother’s family could provide. So – not that he needed it, but they were always there. And they doted on my mother, being the baby and having lost their mother. So my mother, she was a consummate mother, gourmet cook, just a...I idolized her. Of course, I was the baby for six years and so I was very, very attached to my mother. We were very, very close. And she made it so, because she would tell me that all the time - how much I was like her family. “You’re a Mapp, you’re a Jefferson, you know, you look like...you’re part of me, Son.” “Oh, Mother,” you know. And, of course, my two older brothers worked me over for all of that. And...but she doted on me. And I...she...her...one of her aunts is the first Black lady to parachute from an airplane, and she did that here at Stinson Field in 1925 - that’s one of the Seminole ladies.
G: Tell me, what on earth prompted her to... I mean, to Kenneth Miles 8
G: me,jumping out of a airplane in a parachute is the last thing in the world that I would find to do. What prompted your aunt to want to do this?
M: Well, she told...well, this lady was born in 1890, ’96.
G: It’s your great-aunt.
M: She was my great-aunt. And she was like a grandmother to us. We never knew our grandmother, but she was...she took that place and she had no children of her own. And having raised my mother, she said there was a Black aviatrix – Bessie Coleman was barnstorming around the country and she came to San Antonio in June of 1925. And she put out a message to all the local Black establishments and churches and what-have-you to come out to see the aerial show at Stinson Field, which is south of San Antonio. And that was way out there then. And she made an offer for anyone that would like to parachute from the plane...[inaudible] sitting on the bi-wings. And my aunt said she just decided she’d do it. And...
G: What was your aunt’s name?
M: Her name was Elizabeth Jefferson. And back then, the...today you would pronounce it Lisa or Elisa, but back then they pronounced it Eliza. And so Elizabeth Jefferson. And she said the lady told her what to do, and she sat on the wing and they took off. She was holding on and she told her, when she gave her the signal to just jump off and count to ten and pull the cord. And she said they got up to aboutKenneth Miles 9
M: twelve hundred feet and she did it - had never parachuted in her life. So we had always heard that story and, of course, my mother was just an infant at the time so she didn’t see it. So I was telling some friends of mine back in 1972 about it, and that’s how I got involved in getting my family history. They told me I was full of...full of it. So I went around to the public library and looked up the San Antonio Express-News and the San Antonio Light. I found the articles; I copied them, I went back to the office and I said, “Read that.” And that she did do. And I tell you that she’s got more nerve than I...she had more nerve than I would. But...and that’s on my mother’s maternal side. Her grandfather, she said, was six foot eight and a dark gentleman - bald on the top, with straight hair. And she said he believed in the stars and all this other stuff. And he had a brother who was six foot, six - his name was Pete Jefferson. And my mother’s grandfather was Thomas Jefferson. And she told us they were Seminole Indians and da-da-da, da-da-da, and we had never even heard of Seminole. And I knew that my mother’s aunts - they had these high cheekbones and these eyes - and they had, I guess, hair like Hispanics. And they’d wear it in long braids and they’d braid it up and I mean, it hung down pretty far. Whenever they made it up...you know, I guess back in those old days how women used to wear their hair in a big pile up there, and when they let it down they would Kenneth Miles 10
M: comb it and everything. And I never thought too much of it, because no matter what you say, you look in the mirror and you’re Black, you know. I don’t care what you say. And it’s the same way for anybody. You know, you can say, you are what you appear to be. And I knew my father’s heritage. And we were told, you know, German and this and that, and these people eat sauerkraut and potatoes and what-have-you. And my mother’s family eating hot peppers and all this other stuff, you know; so we got the combination of both of them. And so all of these stories, I decided to go and document them. And I went and researched and I got death certificates, I got birth certificates – right here in Bexar County. And I started finding out things – medical problems, things like that - and you need to know those things. And that’s what started me doing that. And “Roots” hadn’t even come out. And I enjoyed it so much I just kept right on going.
G: You told me some about meeting someone in Bracketville.
M: Oh, yes.
G: You want to tell me that story for the tape?
M: Yes. I happened to see in the paper there was a Seminole – Black Seminole get-together or something another in Bracketville, Texas.
G: When was this?
M: This was 199...I mean, yeah, 1993 or ’04.
G: Okay.Kenneth Miles 11
M: And just on a whim, my fiancée and I, we drove down there. And we went to the museum and while we were in the museum, the curator was there and we got to talking and I told him that I’m supposedly part Seminole. And he asked me what was the family’s name. And I said, “Who?” He said, “The ones that were Seminole.” I said, “Oh, Jefferson”. He said, “Go over and look in that case over there,” and I went over and looked in the case and there was a picture of a Black gentleman with his military uniform on, and down at the bottom it said John Jefferson - Black Seminole Scout. And I went...what? And then he told me there was a family...he told me how to get to the cemetery; he said there are a lot of Jeffersons out there. And I went out there and, sure enough, it was. And he said that’s one of the names that they took as surnames. And when I went over to this park where these group of people – some looked like Hispanics, some were...looked like Blacks, some looked Puerto Rican, and all of them spoke Spanish. And I met these people and this lady – I think her last name was Lozano...
G: There are some Lozanos, yes. Alice Fay.
M: Alice Fay. They took me over to meet this lady, and she was sitting there and she looked just like Geronimo – those pictures of Geronimo - to me; she looked just like him, yes. And you know there are...I guess the look they can give you, the eyes are like piercing, you know, like they’reKenneth Miles 12
M: looking within you. And she said, in Spanish, to them
something, and they turned to me and they said, “You’re one...you’re one of us.” And she said that. And I said, “Oh really?” So I told them what my great-grandfather...great-great-grandfather’s name was – Thomas Jefferson – and they all got to talking and said, “Yes, that’s one of us.” So she said, “You sit down; I’m going to tell you about your family. And because I never knew how my mother’s people got to San Antonio, I couldn’t – I cannot trace them – I have gotten back to the 1880s census here, and I see a Thomas Jefferson on the census, but other than that, that’s it. So they told me what had happened – how they had walked off the Indian reservation in Oklahoma and went down into Mexico. And I said, “You know, all my mother’s people know how to make tamales and all of them eat hot peppers. I mean, they’re full of...my mother would pull peppers off of a chilipiquines, eat them raw, you know.” And they said, “Oh, that’s why.” So then how they came out of Mexico by the United States Government offering them to be scouts. And I had always heard the story from my mother that her grandfather, Thomas, and his brother had killed a white overseer, and they were like hiding out. And it never, you know, I just didn’t know how they got here. Well, talking to these people, they said when, around 1890, when they disbanded the Seminole Scouts over there in Bracketville, a lot of them drifted off to other areas, and a lot of them Kenneth Miles 13
M: came East. And that’s probably how your grandfather got
here. And I said, “Well, I know the oldest child was born in 1889 here in San Antonio, and all the rest of them were born here between 1889 and 1900.” And how – that sounds right – the timeline is okay. And then when I met these...the interesting story that she told me and they made me feel at home, you know. And they took me in and showed me all the old pictures of Ocelot – Oceola and all these other Indian chiefs and what-have-you and to be proud of your heritage... ta-da-da. And they gave me a booklet over at the museum on the Seminole, Lipan and Cherokee Indian Scouts and with the names of Jefferson in here, and the...one of the Black families told me that there was information about two brothers that had killed a man and had left – they just disappeared. And he said...he said their last name wasn’t Jefferson, it was Warrior. And he said they said that they were pretty big guys – you know, everybody else was short - and these guys were tall. And they...I come to find out that Seminoles are tall people, they’re not short people, they’re tall - and, I guess, like Cherokees. And I said, what? And he said, “Yes, over around Bracketville there somewhere, these two brothers had gotten into somebody – white, southerner or somebody - that was really bothering them or whatever, and these brothers killed this guy. And all they know is that they disappeared. And he said that
very well could be your great-great-grandfather and his Kenneth Miles 14
M: brother. And I said, “Whoa.” So they were supposed to be researching it, and so I don’t know where that stands. So if the last name is Warrior or Jefferson. So...
G: Both Warrior and Jefferson are among the family names of the Black Seminoles.
M: Oh.
G: There are a large number of Warriors.
M: Right. And that’s what they were telling me. And I said, “You know, my mother and her aunts and everybody went to their graves, and they never knew this. And thinking their name was Jefferson, it might not be Jefferson; it might be Warrior.” And these guys were looking for... everybody was out looking for these guys named Warrior, I guess. So that’s...hopefully I can put some closure on that and find out if it really is them, because tracing them, I just run into a dead-end on that. So that could be the divergency – took the last name of Jefferson to hide the identity back in the late 1880s.
G: They could of, for instance, taken their mother’s name, which might have been Jefferson, since there were many Jeffersons and Warriors.
M: They told me that. They said that the mother of those two guys, her maiden name was Jefferson and Warrior was their dad. And they probably changed their name to their mother’s name. That would be interesting. I have some pictures of all of these people that I’m speaking of.Kenneth Miles 15
G: Good. We’ll look at some of them after we finish the tape.
M: Sure. Sure.
G: I’m going to stop right now because we’re almost at the end of the tape and I don’t want to stop in the...the tape to run out in the middle of a sentence.
M: Sure. Go right...
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 1.
SIDE 2.
G: This is Laurie Gudzikowski and we’re...I’m talking to Kenneth Miles about his family and his life, and this is the second side of the tape. And, Kenneth, I’d like for you to tell me a little bit about yourself. We’ve talked a lot about your dad and your mom and your ancestors, so tell me a little bit about yourself. You were born in...outside of Texas.
M: Yep.
G: Okay, it sounds a little bit better now. I think the tape wasn’t in quite right.
M: Uh-huh.
G: So can we start over again, Kenneth?
M: Sure.
G: And tell me about yourself and your life.
M: Okay. As I said, I’m the third son of John and Bernice Miles. Was born at Tuskegee Institute in 1943, and I always looked up to my two older brothers - especially my oldest Kenneth Miles 16
M: brother. I didn’t tell you about him, so let me tell you about him. Then I’ll get into me.
G: Okay.
M: My oldest brother, Winston, is six foot, seven and he was an outstanding athlete in high school here in San Antonio. And he had, I think it was fourteen or twenty-four scholarships...
G: Wow.
M: ...to go to college to continue playing basketball and being an athlete - I mean, a student. My father, being a stern disciplinarian, said, “You’re going to a Catholic university.” And he didn’t care about Michigan State and Kansas and Kansas State and all these other people coming by our house. This was 1958. And at the age of eighteen Winston became the second Black athlete to attend St. Mary’s University here in San Antonio. And Winston not only went on to have a stellar basketball career at St. Mary’s and become number one in everything, he became the first Black athlete to graduate from St. Mary’s, and that was in 1962. My second oldest brother, John, attended two years behind Winston. He went to St. Mary’s, also. And he’s six foot, four. So they were great basketball players. I was the football player. I...my dad was the baseball player.
G: And how tall are you?
M: I’m six two.
G: You’re the short one?Kenneth Miles 17
M: I’m the short one.
G: ...[inaudible] short.
M: Uh-huh. And I...we played all sports, but the one that I was the best at and I loved the most was football. And I was quite proficient in it. But we all graduated on the honor roll from high school - that was a stipulation from my parents, we had to hit those books. And that we did do. And I had a scholarship to go to UCLA to play football and, of course, my father said no. And I...he said I had to go to St. Mary’s like my two older brothers and I got upset and I told him they didn’t have a football team. And he said, “You’re not going to school to play sports; you’re going to get an education.” And that was 1962. Well, I fixed my father real good - I went and joined the U.S. Navy. And I went to...they sent me to electrician school, then they wanted me to go to Officer’s Candidate School. And being young and, I guess, rebellious at the time, got the first medals for Vietnam, I was in Vietnam ’64, ’65 and ’66. And being the only one in the family that was in the military, my brothers told me to prepare when you get out of the military to go to college. So that I did do, and I came home five years later, apologized to my father, and went to St. Mary’s University and graduated in business administration. So I went the circuitous route of doing that. I was a very good football player, but in my junior year I got my leg broken in Houston while I was punting the Kenneth Miles 18
M: ball. I did everything on the team: I was quarterback,
halfback, defensive halfback, I punted, you know, and I was president of the student council, I was Mister It - so I thought. And having my brothers in front of me, and my dad, I had a lot to look up to. And those were the heroes in my family, as far as athletic prowess is concerned. And as far as intelligentsia is concerned, it was my mother and her family. Wow! You know. And so I had a lot to look up to, and big giant footsteps to follow in. And my oldest brother, Winston, has three master’s degrees, and he was a principal in the school district, San Antonio Independent School District; he retired two years ago. And my brother, John, is the Director for Anheuser-Busch up in Yonkers, New York, and then it’s me - I’m retired from City Public Service. When I got out of the Navy, I came home and because of my family they hired me at CPS and I became the first Black in the power plants. A year later, they wanted...I took an exam; they wanted me to become a computer programmer, which I did do, and that was 1969 through 1977. In 1977 they had me go to the Purchasing Department to be the first Black in that department, and I was the...became supervisor. In 1982 I moved back to Data Processing as a supervisor over Data Input and Control - data entry and input. So then back into as a project leader, as the times started changing and the politics started changing, it was time to go - and because not being Baptist, and certain Kenneth Miles 19
M: minority elements didn’t like that. When it came to
affirmative action, I had the pedigree from the schools and the certificates and everything that I held, whereas they wanted somebody to be given something just because they’re Black. And that wasn’t my cup of tea, because I wasn’t raised like that. So, it was time for me to go. And I retired from CPS in 1994 and I went to St. Mary’s University Law School, and I won Moot Court Competition out of three hundred students. As you know, I can talk...
G: The shy, retiring one of the family.
M: Right, right, right. And I am mentored by Pat Maloney Senior and the other...other people within the community that know my family. And after hearing half of Law School and, of course, you know St. Mary’s University Law School is having its problems. And I took a sabbatical, and in the process became a financial planner with the company that I’m with now. And so now I’m saying, “Well, I really don’t need to go back to law school. But if I do, I want to be an estate planner.” That way I can help a lot more people.
G: That would tie in with your experience.
M: Right. At first I thought I wanted to be a litigator, doing personal injury, like Mr. Maloney.
G: Right.
M: But that’s not a...that’s not a...all it’s cracked up to be anymore. And as he said I will be able to help a lot more people by doing this than as a litigator, so... Kenneth Miles 20
G: Now you grew up in San Antonio during the time when it was changing from a segregated city...
M: Uh-huh.
G: ...to an integrated city, and you’re talking about your life. It was the first Black for this, the first Black for that...
M: Oh, yes, right. Uh-huh.
G: So you had an experience of being often in the forefront of things of this movement. Are you at all politically inclined? You haven’t talked at all about politics. Are you involved – politically inclined?
M: Well, yes and no. I wouldn’t mind being politically involved, but my politics – I’m conservative. And I didn’t know that I was conservative. And as time progressed and I got older, I hired over twenty-two single parent mothers – took them off of welfare – and they work at CPS right now. The Black preachers on the Eastside of San Antonio went after me. And I come to find out – this was in between ’82 and ’91 when I hired all these people – and I had the wherewithal, the resources to do that and that’s how you take these people off the welfare rolls and have them paying taxes. Right? No, no, no, no. Give these people a program, you know, give them a program and let’s put all the soft money in our pockets. Well, they didn’t like me. They didn’t like me at all. And I was told so by the powers of CPS. And I think that is so backwards; I think that is a Kenneth Miles 21
M: mentality that has...that’s past the turn of the century; that’s, you know, having a Black spokesperson, you know. Why do you need a Black spokesperson? The people that were the spokespersons for me when I was a child was John and Bernice Miles; when I became a man, it was me. And you have all these minorities that want somebody to speak for them. You know, you’ve got to have some... Jesse Jackson – I don’t know him, he didn’t go to Catholic school with me, he didn’t have to learn Latin like I did, he wasn’t on my football team. I don’t know him. So how can he speak for me? And so when you think like that, as me and my family do, I didn’t know that my parents and my grandparents – they were all out of step, too, because they didn’t think like that. So you have to be...I think you should be self-sufficient. You make your own bed of roses; this is a land of opportunity - you can do what you want to do. And color should not be a problem. And I will tell you this – this is one thing that my mother used to tell us, from time immemorial, earliest thing I can remember, she would gather the three of us and she would say, “I want you to remember, always in life that there are few people in this world as good as you and absolutely none any better, because God didn’t make one person better than another. So whenever you get into any situation, in the classroom, on your job, playing in sports, you are the best in there; you are the best. If you’re not the best, you’re one of the best. And Kenneth Miles 22
M: never take a backward step to anyone or anything in life, Sons. Promise me you won’t.” If she told us that once she told us that six million times. And I still remember it today. And I think that’s a good motto, a good creed to live by. And you get in and you compete, you know. And if you’re not good enough, you go back and hit the books and study or do whatever or run that play one more time or do like Tiger Woods, you know - keep practicing. And thinking that people have to...you’re entitled to something, entitlement – give it to me just because I’m here or just because I am poor. I don’t think Black people would be where they are today if they felt that way. And...but we’ve got a large segment of the society that thinks you’re supposed to give them something. And that just doesn’t hold water with me. So, that would be out of step with the vast majority of minorities. They want to hear, “What are you going to do for me?” And...but I always paraphrase John F. Kennedy: I said, “President Kennedy said in his inaugural address, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what could you do for your country.’” I said, “I’m going to sum it up for you – he was saying, ‘I’m not going to give you nothing, open the door for the equal opportunity and what-have-you. But we – the government shouldn’t be handing out things.’” And a lot of people think that Republicans are that way, you know; they’re not going to give you nothing. And the Democrats always give you Kenneth Miles 23
M: something. I said, “John F. Kenney did not say that.” And so that’s my political sway there...I wouldn’t...that’s a double-edged sword, so they’ll go after you, you know. Going to dig up something you did in the fourth grade or something.
G: Tell me a little bit about the neighborhood you grew up in, the school that you went to, the church that you went to. These are on San Antonio’s Eastside.
M: Eastside, uh-huh.
G: Which I’m assuming was a Black neighborhood then, as it now? No, I’m wrong – so tell me about it.
M: No, no. That’s unfortunate that people think the Eastside of San Antonio is the way that it is now. No, it was not.
G: Okay. Tell me about it.
M: The Eastside of San Antonio was like the Northside of San Antonio is right now. It was highly mixed. It was basically German, Polish and Czech - that was the majority. Then it was Black, middle-class, and then it was Hispanic.
G: So this was a mixed, pretty much middle-class community?
M: Mixed community. The people in my neighborhood where my parents grew up were Black schoolteachers, attorneys, doctors, that’s who lived in that neighborhood, along with Whites, a vast majority of Whites and some Hispanics. And we grew up in that neighborhood, which is on Canton Street,Kenneth Miles 24
M: Canton, right off of East Houston and New Braunsfels. All the yards were well kept and well groomed, no one...the guy that lived behind us was a White doctor and his home fronted on Houston Street and his backyard was up against our backyard - Dr. Johnson. The neighbors across the street from him, they were Anglo, the people behind them were...was a fireman, across the street was a Hispanic guy who was a fireman. That’s the way the neighborhood was. There was segregation in San Antonio but being Catholic, you know, when I went to churches - the priest was White, you know, some of the nuns were Black, some were Hispanic, some were White. You went...you got...you were used to going to mass with a mixed congregation. When they would have the Christ The King Pageant here in San Antonio at the old Mission Stadium - all the Catholic schools and archdioceses, everybody’s there. You know, there was no segregated seating or anything like that. And then San Antonio was legally integrated, as far as schools were concerned, in 1954. That was way ahead of everybody else. And so there was no...[inaudible] all-Black school here? Wheatly High School, it didn’t have to be that way. You could have... Tommy Novis, the football player, lived around the corner from Wheatly High School and that’s where he learned to play football. He’s my age; he lived around the corner from my cousins. And that was the Eastside of San Antonio. The poor Blacks lived on the Westside of San Antonio, where Kenneth Miles 25
M: there were no housing developments, anything over there. So they considered anyone from the Eastside highfalutin. Over the years, we moved out to Willow Park in 1954...
G: Where’s Willow Park?
M: It was a new subdivision that they built way out off East Commerce and it was outside the city limits back then. And that’s where we moved to, into that subdivision. And it’s out past – you know where the Coca-Cola Bottling Company is on the East Commerce? Let me think of another landmark – you know where the Coliseum is?
G: Uh-huh.
M: Okay. All of that area out there, before it was Coca-Cola Bottling Company - Coca-Cola Bottling Company used to be downtown here, as a matter of fact, right around the corner. Well, this HemisFair took all of that out, and they moved out. But where they’re located used to be Gaylord, Perry Container Company, that’s what that was. And then there was Handy Andy warehouse and Somers-Rexall Drugstore and, of course, the Coliseum. And all of that was the new boom after World War II and the Korean War, and those were just new subdivisions. And you had to have a car to live out there. And that’s where we moved to. But we didn’t understand that being middle-class, we were moving into an area where people were middle-class, too. Because that part of San Antonio started dying off, although old people were Kenneth Miles 26
M: dying off, new people were moving in and they were not taking care of the property. And it just went down, down, down, down. A person comes to San Antonio now and they see the Eastside of San Antonio, they say that’s where all the Black people live. I don’t know those people; they’re not from here.
G: There weren’t...they are not the same people who lived there when you were growing up.
M: No. And so, my father, he lives in Pecan Valley now. Sold...he rents the home that we grew up in in Willow Park, but even that neighborhood it’s not the same. Man, you’ve got people moving in there that you know, and that happens. So the Eastside of San Antonio – most of those people got up and moved, Black, White, Hispanic, all of them. And they either moved...moved further south, east – Pecan Valley, maybe out in the country somewhere. My oldest brother lives in Lakeside, which is further out than that, although on the Southeast side. And...or to the Northside.
G: Uh-huh.
M: So I moved North and they moved South – further South. And so that’s just what happened. But the people that are on the Eastside now, they know nothing about the Miles Family. The people that go to Holy Redeemer Parish do not live over there. They have money, but they don’t live over there. Because their...the neighborhoods and the conditions are pretty rundown, because you have groups that are movingKenneth Miles 27
M: in here that have no roots or anything in San Antonio. nd the things that they’re doing is, they’re just giving that side of town a real bad name. If you notice the Coliseum, the Frederick Air Conditioning place, it used to be right on Commerce Street, Coca-Cola Bottling Company, the SP train station - the Eastside of San Antonio was the hub of the industry, okay? And there’s a reason for that, okay? They moved that new Alamodome – you see where they put it? Okay? Well, that St. Paul’s there – all that used to be very, very nice. I mean it was very nice. You didn’t worry about anything. But now it’s become pretty rundown over there, and there just needs to be some kind of re-vitalization but you get these families that move in and they start junking the yards and parking cars in the front and...
G: Pretty soon the property values go down.
M: Property values go down. But the Eastside of San Antonio was basically German.
G: So you grew up in an integrated neighborhood?
M: Uh-huh.
G: You went to a church that had a mixed congregation?
M: Uh-huh.
G: The school you went to was...?
M: The same – Holy Redeemer, uh-huh.
G: It was a mixed school?
M: Well, it was predominately Black. St. Gerard’s was Kenneth Miles 28
M: around the corner.
G: Uh-huh.
M: Prior to integration they had Perpetual Help, which was for Hispanics, about three blocks away from Holy Redeemer, which is on Gevers and Nevada - right there by St. Philips. Holy Redeemer was the Black parish and a block over was St. Gerard’s, the White parish. When they integrated, the Archdiocese says, “Okay, close down Perpetual Help and Holy Redeemer; everybody goes to St. Gerard’s.” Well, it’s kind of hard making people change and so those old...a lot of those old families wanted to keep their...keep the parish going and what-have-you.
G: Sure.
M: But the schools closed down. And I think 1957, it was all she wrote for Holy Redeemer school and Perpetual Help. But they had to do that because of the Jim Crow laws here, not because the parish – the Archdiocese wanted it that way. But people frequented each other’s churches anyway.
G: Uh-huh.
M: You know. Like if it’s Easter Sunday and it’s overcrowded at St. Gerard’s...
G: You walk around the block to...[inaudible].
M: All those White people, they came over to Holy Redeemer.
G: Uh-huh.
M: Or they went down the street to Perpetual Help - Mass Kenneth Miles 29
M: is Mass.
G: Uh-huh.
M: And who cares about...you know, I don’t think Jesus cared about that, and vice versa. We would go sometimes to Perpetual Help if the mass was overcrowded for some reason.
G: Uh-huh.
M: And...or go around to St. Gerard’s. So...and most of those people that we associated with and played with and what-have-you, were Czech, German, Polish...
G: Whatever.
M: Whatever, no big deal.
G: And when you were in the military, the military is a very mixed...[inaudible] kind of a thing.
M: Right. Homogenous. I was the only Black guy in my electrician class. And I graduated with the highest GPA.
G: How did they choose you to go to electrician class? Did you take an aptitude test?
M: Yes. They chose you – you ask for the schools that you wanted to go to, but then you had to have a high aptitude.
G: Uh-huh.
M: And fortunately I had that. And I got my choice. And when I got to electrician school out of boot-camp in San Diego, it was a fourteen week school, and I was the only Black guy in the class - the only minority in the class. And I graduated with top honors. And I came home and I married my high school sweetheart - had her out there with Kenneth Miles 30
M: me - and then I got assigned to my ship in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and that was home for four years. And for six months I was the only Black guy on board that ship.
G: Uh-huh.
M: And I became the highest ranking non-commissioned officer, besides the captain. They wanted to send me to Officer’s Candidate School because of my aptitude scores and what-have-you. But I didn’t do that because they...you’d have to sign up for two more years, and I didn’t want to do that. So, I look back on it now, I should have done that.
G: It would have been a different path to your life?
M: Yes. And...but I was young and impetuous and sort of in that kind of rebellious stage and wanted to be my own man.
G: What kind of a ship were you on?
M: It was a...what they call a fleet tug. It’s a salvage and rescue ship.
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 2Kenneth Miles 31
TAPE 2, SIDE 1
G: This is Laurie Gudzikowski and I’m talking to Kenneth Miles and the date is July 25, the year 2000 and this is tape 2 and we’re talking now about Kenneth’s military career. Okay, you were based in Pearl Harbor and this was during the Vietnam War.
M: It was right before it started.
G: Before the Vietnam War. Okay.
M: Right. My ship...we left to go to...
G: What was the name of your ship?
M: The USS Hitchiti.
G: The Hitchiti.
M: That’s the name of an Indian tribe. And I come to find out, it’s a Seminole word. It’s H-i-t-c-h-i-t-i.
G: Thank you.
M: And ATF103. A fleet tug is a salvage and rescue ship, sixty-five men, including officers.
G: It’s a small ship.
M: Small ship, uh-huh. We had towing capabilities; we could tow ships, we could – we had divers on board – they
M: could go down and rescue people – that type of a ship. It’s not a combatant ship. We had one gun on there, had – we always joked – if a hand grenade hit us, we’re going down. In 1964 we were in Subic Bay in the Philippines, and we got orders to get under way during the night. And early that next morning, daybreak, we headed out, out in the SouthKenneth Miles 32
China Seas. And then the captain came on the intercom and said, “We’re in battle conditions; we will remain as such. Some Vietnamese patrol boats fired on a US Navy ship yesterday, and we’re going there. There will be no mail leaving the ship, we cannot...don’t...can’t tell anybody anything, where we’re going.” And for the next twenty-three days we rode around in a circle off the coast of North Vietnam, fifteen miles off the coast, and they had the United States Fleet seventy miles out at sea. We were guinea pigs. And they never launched another attack on us; they’re not that stupid. But if they had of, it would have been an excuse for America to start an all-out war with them. And because we were a non-combatant ship...
G: You were sort of bait.
M: We were bait. So when we got back to Pearl Harbor, we were all given medals, the first medals for...the Vietnamese Expeditionary Medal is what we got. We could have transferred it over but that Vietnam medal is yellow and green, with a little orange, it’s ugly. So I didn’t want that. So I just kept mine. My nice looking medal. And so M: I became a E5, which is a second-class Petty Officer, Electrician and...
G: A Petty Officer is like a non-commissioned officer?
M: A non-commissioned officer.
G: Like a...
M: I guess in the Army it would be a Staff Sergeant.Kenneth Miles 33
G: Okay.
M: And I was taking courses at the University of Wisconsin because it was...
G: Correspondence?
M: Right. To be an electrical engineer. That’s what I wanted to be. And, of course, as I said, I turned down the offer to go to Officer’s Candidate School that the captain wanted me to do, but I’d have to sign up for two extra years. And so I went back to Vietnam, we went back in ’65 and ’66. And I was extended six months, everybody was, due to the war. So I spent four years and seven months in the United States Navy, rather than the four year hitch. And I came home in 1967, having been away since 1962. And I did not have any of the local cuisine. It was a real good experience for me, and I’ve seen a lot of places and seen a lot of things. And right now what I want to do is give back to the community and help people, put them on the right path.
G: At this point I can’t think of anything else, any other questions to ask. Is there more...is there something that I M: didn’t know about that you would like to talk about, about yourself or your life or your family? Oh, there is something I wanted to ask you – you mentioned Tiger Woods a while back.
M: Oh.
G: Tiger Woods has brought a new awareness to the Kenneth Miles 34
importance that people take to their mixed heritage. Even though Tiger Woods looks Black...
M: Uh-huh.
G: He’s very proud of the fact that he has an Asian heritage also.
M: Uh-huh.
G: Now you have a very mixed heritage, do you have...what are your feelings about being of mixed race?
M: To be honest about it, I’m very proud – and my mother taught me this – to be very proud of the Indian part. My oldest brother used to tease my mother - and she was as light as you – we would say...he would tell her, “Mother, the White man sure has touched up your family.” And she would get upset and say, “Well, whatever is in me is in you.” And so it was like she was – she had red hair and my dad told me she had freckles when she was a kid - and we said, “What?” And he said, “Yeah, your mother had freckles.” And they were...she and her brother were light complected like their father, but they were – my mother, she had the Indian features of her mother.
G: Uh-huh.
M: So I guess, all-in-all, since her aunts had raised her she was very proud of the Seminole Indians and she taught us to be proud of that. So, although my father’s mother and their family they were very light complected people too, they were considered mulatto; I’ll show you in the census.Kenneth Miles 35
G: Uh-huh.
M: They were all listed as mulatto, but you know Black is a dominant color and you’re going to...it’s going to come out. And I wasn’t so much as proud of that German heritage. I don’t know why. Maybe it wasn’t talked about as much. But the Seminole Indian was, and so I guess that part, and I guess the other thing was – I forgot to mention to you – in Hawaii they thought I was a Hawaiian because of my features. I got to the Philippines and thought I was Filipino. And I got to Japan and they thought I was part Japanese. In Hong Kong they thought I was part Chinese. And I said, I like this. I really like this. And that’s because of my cheekbones and my eyes. And I would tell my ex-wife - she used to get so upset when they’d ask her, Is your husband a Hawaiian or a Filipino?” And she was say, “No, he’s a blankety-blank from San Antonio, Texas.” And so I guess that really reinforced that, and I think that’s it, you know. I think that’s what really did it. And I just had a young lady a couple of months ago, she’s mixed Japanese/Hispanic and she was sitting at another table and M: she kept looking at me and she said, “Sir, excuse me,” she said, “I just can’t help but ask you – what are you?” And I said, “What do you...American? She said, “No, no, no, what are you? You’re not Black.” And I said, “Oh, yes I am.” She said, “No, no, no.” She said, “I’ve been looking at you, and I can tell.” And I said, “Oh, what you see is Kenneth Miles 36
the Seminole on me, Seminole Indian.” I said, “Why? You thought I was Oriental? That’s all Indians are anyway – Orientals.” And she said, “Yes,” because of her mother’s family and she notes what people look like that are mixed with Orientals. And so I get that quite often.
G: Now on the census this year, I understand that they have...you could put different ethnic backgrounds.
M: I put Black.
G: Did you do that?
M: No.
G: Black is what...you consider yourself Black.
M: Yeah. I just put down Black. There was no need in going into all of that. I have the paperwork here. What they have written on the census means nothing because when you’re doing all the genealogical research they’ll tell you, those census takers, if they thought you said, Goomsomekowski, not Gudzikowsi, that’s what they wrote down. Or if they thought you said, like people will call individuals pet names, instead of calling you Elizabeth, they might have called you Beth, and they wrote down Beth. M: Or Eliza or whatever. And so the records that I have – sometimes they listed them as mulatto, my father’s grandfather ...[inaudible]. And then another time, they listed them as Black - the same way with my mother’s Seminole Indian heritage. On some they say Black and some it says mulatto. So it just depends on the census taker. Kenneth Miles 37
But I guess the...a visual description of a person you can really see and understand, whether or not, what that person is. I like Red Foxx, he said, “Black people in one family,” he said, “You got some deep chocolate, some Swiss mocha, some coffee, some light tan, some light, bright and durn near White.” And that’s true. And you don’t know what your kids going to come out looking like or anything like that. None of us are the complexion of my mother. My father and his brothers are not the complexion of their mother. They all came out dark like their father. And most of us did, we kind of changed as we got a little older, you know, the sun burns you up a little bit. But they used to ask me, in the Navy this guy called me Two-Tone, because he...he asked me, he said, “What kind of Black guy are you? You’re four or five different colors.” And I said, “Well, four or five different things in me, you know.” And so I would... [inaudible] light brown skin when I was younger, but as you get older you get all burned up. And just like anybody else ...
G: Just like anybody else you get a sun tan.
M: And so it’s Indian, so what can you do about it. But my mother was...there was nothing dark about her, and my father’s mother they were just as light or maybe lighter than you. But you never know.
G: I didn’t grow up in Texas; I came from Hawaii.Kenneth Miles 38
M: Oh, really?
G: And have a really kind of a different view of race than they do here. And I’ve often been confused about who’s Black and who isn’t.
M: Uh-huh. Well, coming from Hawaii you know exactly what I’m talking about. And a lot of people look at me and say, “Man, you look like...you look like the...[inaudible], you know.” And I said, “Yes, I’ve heard; I’ve heard, so many times. And I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that. I didn’t know that I looked like so much of the world. I never knew that until I left San Antonio. And it kind of separated me from the other Blacks, you know. It made me, I guess, like Tiger Woods in a way, you know. You identify with several races, rather than one. And that happened to me so many times. We went to a place called Kagoshima, Japan for R&R, and it has an active volcano in the middle of the harbor - it was 1966. And it was...Kagoshima is the resort, Atlantic City, of Japan. And being the only Black guy on the ship, me and a couple of my buddies was walking down this crowded street, Japanese everywhere, and it was late in the evening, about M: seven o’clock or so, and this crowd of people was walking down the street, you know, Whites taking in the sights. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and this Japanese lady, dressed in Western clothes, thick glasses, she introduced herself to me and she said she was with the Chamber of Commerce and she would be more than happy to showKenneth Miles 39
me the lovely city of Kagoshima. And my buddies got to teasing, “Oh, Kenny, Kenny.” So I asked her would it be okay if they came, too, because I didn’t want to be separated from them, you know - strange place, you don’t know. And she said, “Yes.” And she got a cab and she took us all over Kagoshima, up in the mountains and these Japanese gardens and everywhere. And she came out to the ship to visit also. The thing was, she did that to me.
G: Because?
M: I guess because of my features. And that happened – I don’t care where I went. I guess my features were a lot stronger – I’m putting on a little weight now. But I never knew that I looked like all these various groups of people – you’re either Samoan or you’re Hawaiian and/or you’re Filipino, you’re not...you’re not Black. No, no, I’m from San Antonio, Texas. No, you’re not. Yes, I am. You don’t look Black. And I said, “Well, that’s my mother’s side of the family; I can’t help it, you know, that’s what I am.” And so, I guess that’s why I feel proud of that and maybe one of the things that started me doing the research and I M: love doing that.
G: So tell me a little bit about how you went about doing research and finding your family’s roots. Genealogy is a big...very popular.
M: Right. Well, before it became popular, I started off with my aunt - my great-aunt parachuting out of the plane. Kenneth Miles 40
And I found out that they had all of the census records over at the library. And then I started getting death certificates. And it just kept evolving. I got my grandfather’s military records from the National Archives. I found out where he was born – White Plains, Georgia, in 1891. I kept on going. I got my mother – my mother was born in Phoenix, Arizona - he was stationed at Fort ...[inaudible]. Her brother was born here in San Antonio. I got my mother’s birth certificate. And I just kept going. And what happened, in 1975 I got...I wrote Atlanta, Georgia, for genealogical purposes, information on Grover Cleveland Mapp, birth certificates, whatever. And they wrote me back they were giving out no such information. And I thought, how strange. And I kind of gave up on it until I got...I started researching the county and I found a Mapp there. Those people did not leave that county before, during or after the Civil War. They’re directly related to the plantation owner.
G: Oh, okay.
M: And I found that out. And I said, “No wonder they M: didn’t send me anything, because they think you want to lay claim to some of the family stuff there.” But yes, indeed. And I have it. Robert Moses Mapp - he had two slaves listed as mulatto and he had them under his son’s name. His son was Jasper Mapp. Now this guy was born in 1800. And he was sixty years old when the Civil War startedKenneth Miles 41
- a farmer, a plantation owner. His wife’s name was Mary Mapp. Well, under Robert Moses Mapp, he had a son, daughter Lucretia, and his son Jasper. And Mapp is an uncommon name. And so I was looking, trying to add up ages from the 1870 census, because all you have is the 1860 Slave Manifest, and the White Manifest, that freed half of the slave inhabitants. So I knew that my grandfather’s dad’s name was Allan – no, Richard; his father’s name was Allan. Well, I went back on the Slave Manifest trying to find ages that matched what his age was in 1870. And I was poking around there and all of them were listed as Black – B – B – B – B. And one day I just happened to be looking under Jasper Mapp and there were four slaves listed under Jasper – one of them was Jasper’s age and one was a girl 17, and they were listed as mulatto. And I said, son of a gun! And the ages matched from the, you know, and I said, “He fathered, evidently, a son and a daughter and he treated them differently than the other slaves.” Because he had them listed under his son’s name. And evidently his wife was pregnant when he fathered my great-great-grandfather.
G: Uh-huh.
M: And I said, well, Miles was a slave name, Mapp is a family name. And no wonder my mother’s people and them, they kind of...they were so articulate, spoke very well, carried themselves with dignity, you know. These are heavyweight people here, you know; I like that. Kenneth Miles 42
G: I’ve been told that it’s - by people that have done some genealogical research - that it’s easy to track slaves because they were property and they were well documented. But after the Civil War, it became difficult to track them. What was your experience?
M: Unh-unh. It was after...before the Civil War it’s hard, because they gave no names.
G: Okay.
M: It was just ages.
G: That would have been my thought, but someone told me just the opposite.
M: Oh, no, well, I don’t know where they were looking. It’s difficult. The names of...it was easy for me because as you have seen, everybody stayed married, there was, you know, you just followed it right down the line. I mean it just didn’t change. And the other thing that got me was that these people didn’t leave that county, before, during or after the Civil War. And you know they’re hordes of... here in Georgia when Sherman’s Army came through, the slaves were following the Army, not these folks.
G: They stayed right there.
M: They stayed right there.
G: Because?
M: They didn’t have to; that’s why. And if you’re directly related, you know, they were family.
G: They were treated as family.Kenneth Miles 43
M: They were treated as family; they didn’t have to leave. You know, we’re going to have to re-do all of this. And my grandfather, I guess, he broke the pattern when he joined the military and was in the...he left home and was in World War I. And wound up here in San Antonio and my grandfather... But prior to that, as you see in the documentation I have, they didn’t move, did not move. It’s weird.
G: Any other family stories or personal stories that you’d like to get on tape? M: Um, not that I can think of at this time. What I am going to do is get my brother’s resumes, and I wanted to bring a lot of the things that my brother Winston has done, because Winston is an unsung hero. They talk about guys like George Gervin and...get out of here! Winston was not only that good, but Winston had the intelligence. Winston is a very smart man. But he’s sick now; he had a by-pass surgery in November. But I just think that things that my father and my mother’s family did before us – we’re chump, change...we...I mean, the circumstances were a heck of a lot M: different when they came along than when we came along.
G: Uh-huh.
M: But they provided such a legacy. When they handed us the baton, I think we dropped it, you know. And I just want to honor them, honor my family and honor the archdiocese and my blood. I mean, yes, I am part German; yes, I am part Kenneth Miles 44
Irish; yes, I am ninety-nine percent Black. But...and the Seminole Indian, but I’m proud of it all. And I...it was taught to me and I documented all of it and so never knowing that I would come to this opportunity to present it, and I really thank you for inviting me here, having me to do it. It’s all God’s will.
G: Well, I think that I agree with your mother that, you know, everyone is the best. And you proved that in your... in your own very interesting life’s story.
M: Well, thank you.
G: Thank you very much for talking to us.
M: Thank you.
END OF TAPE 2, SIDE 1.
SIDE 2 – BLANK.