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I think just for for archival sake, Dr. Gordon, can you please give me your name and I'll fill in the rest. This is an interview? This is Joy Thomas More interviewing Dr. Gordon. Dr. Gordon? Okay, I'm Edmund Wyatt Gordon. I'm a retired professor of psychology and education. Emeritus from Teachers College at Columbia and the department of psychology at Yale. I'm 100 years old. Do I need to keep talking? No, I think that that's about, that says it all. A hundred, a hundred, you have seen so much in those years. I've seen a lot and I don't think I have ever seen it as threatening to our cause as it is right now.

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I'd like to get into that a little bit more. But before we do, why don't you start with your beginnings? Your very beginning, the beginning of those hundred years. Where are you from? What caused you to even think about coming to Washington, DC and American University? Okay. I was born down in North Carolina in the Piedmont area. Goldsboro. It billed itself, as the heart of the bright leaf tobacco company. Not company, the bright leaf tobacco growing area. And it billed itself as such because its economy was supported in my days, my youth, largely by cotton, but even more so by bright leaf tobacco. And bright leaf tobacco is the kind of tobacco when cured that they used to make cigarettes. Tobacco for cigars was grown in Cuba and Connecticut. I'm not quite sure what those two areas have in common, but they produced a very smooth, insect free leaf that lent itself to wrappings for tobacco. But my friends and neighbors supported themselves on the income from the cigarette industry, which was really the shredding of bright leaf tobacco. That's a little more than you were asking for but let's get to me and what influenced me. I used to tell my students when I was advocating for so-called socially disadvantaged kids that I couldn't really take much credit as a Black person for overcoming poverty and the disadvantages of a low status group. I was born into a middle class Black family, and they were not just middle class. My father was a physician, and my mother was a school teacher. Both of them came out of Black families and this was about 50 years after the Emancipation. They came out of the Black families that had been educated in those days. Her father came out to Jamaica and his ancestors were among the Black Jamaicans that were sent to England to be educated to come back to Jamaica to govern. My mother's family was Black, Indian, and Caucasian. And I don't know how except for their skin color, and, of course, their being blood relatives to influential white people, they got such a good start. But my grandfather, my mother's father, had seven children. And here before the turn of the 20th century, Captain Frank owned two or three merchant ships that had the contract to deliver mail and freight up and down the Atlantic coast. And he sent off to college, and they completed college, all seven of those kids, actually six of them, two girls and two sons. His oldest daughter dropped out and ended up in the high level of domestic service. But the family that I was born into was a very literate, actually, more than a literate family, my mother and father played classical music. My father was a violinist, my mother played the piano, and I grew up with them holding many concerts in our living room, playing Beethoven and Bach, Brahms and Mendelssohn and that kind of stuff. There was never any question about my sister and my going to college. She was two years older than I. My mother took her social position kind of serious. She thought of herself as Mrs. Gordon of North Carolina and her kids had to go to the best schools available at that time. Howard [University] was the capstone of Negro education. So she sent Rose off to Howard, and two years later she sent me up there. I lasted a semester and a half there befor I got kicked out for poor scholarship. Obviously not because I didn't have the ability, but I both didn't have the habits nor the commitment to serious study. I had floated through public school, and being Dr. and Mrs. Gordon's son, I didn't have to do any work to be an honor student. It was different at Howard, I not only was competing with other very smart students, but they expected me to do academic work and I was doing social and political kind of work. So after three semesters, they asked me to leave. My mother sent me up to Philadelphia to live for a semester with my uncle who had three daughters all of whom were Phi Beta Kappa students. So Uncle [?] kind of got me started on being a college student, had the good fortune of returning to Howard and came under the influence of Alain Locke, who really took it upon himself to teach me how to be a serious student.

00:09:11.700 - 00:10:00.800

Tell us about your experience with with Dr. Alain Locke. Oh right. And you would like me to pick up there. Yes, please. And how that brought you to American [University] after graduating from Howard [University]? Oh, yes. I was talking about my encounters with Alain Locke, who on the day that I was leaving campus having been kicked out for poor scholarship, he made the promise that I would seek him out as soon as I came back to campus because I was required to absent myself, absent myself for a semester. Anyway, when I came,

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry Dr. Gordon I'm not sure that you are camera. You're not sure I'm I don't see you. We lost video for a second, I'm not sure why. Oh, there you are. I'm sorry, I know there was an exchange but I didn't comprehend now.

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We're fine, we lost video but you're fine now. Yes, please. All right. We were talking about my encounters with Alain Locke, but he was a professor of philosophy at Howard and the scholar of the Black Renaissance. Here's my encounters though in those days were largely around his teaching me to be a college student, how to think. I remember his handing me an early version of a book that had this title, "How to Read A Book", and he gave less of his time to me around issues of philosophy, more around central issues of sophisticated intellective function. Anyway, I recovered and after three years graduated from Howard, whereupon I entered the school of divinity there. And while at the school of divinity, the dean of men tapped me to be a residence hall counselor, a position that eventually got me up to the position of the assistant dean of men. And Dean [Wes?] one day reminded me that if I wanted a career in higher education, I needed a higher degree. And we set out to find the higher degree for me. And one of the places that was there at my footstep was American University, had a graduate school of, I think it was Administrative, Administration and either Social or Behavioral Sciences. So I applied, encountered a woman by the name of Hudson, who kind of took me, more or less, under her wing and guided me through the completion of a master's degree in social psychology I think it was. I don't remember that as being as intensively tutorial as it was interesting and and challenging. Anyway, in those two years that it took me to complete my Master's at American [University] while working at Howard [University], I further refined my competencies as a student, at this time a graduate student.

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I don't remember a lot of social political cultural experience at American [University]. In my recollection, I associate American largely with my introduction to psychology as a discipline. I don't remember issues of race being much, getting much attention. I think I may have been the only student of color certainly in my classes, there have got to have been other Black students at AU at the time. Excuse me. There've got to have been other Black students at AU at the time, but if I had to name one, I could not at this stage. I don't have any strong recollection of a buddy-buddy relationship with a student of color. There were two white men who kind of stand out because we studied together. But I cannot recall that as a those as friendships that persisted after I left. That was what, about 1950? I'm sorry, would you try that again? Was that about 1950? Because you, you had to be one of only very few students of color.

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Could you hold on because I'm not hearing enough. Try right now. Okay. What about how did, how did that make you feel being so, sort of isolated? You went to Howard, which was predominantly Black. And now you go to a school that is predominantly white. How did that make you feel? You know, I don't have a lot of recollection of my affect around American U. I think at the time, you got to remember, Washington before 1950 was still a very segregated town and I don't think I was looking for community. And not [expect?]. I'm not even sure I associated American U with being socially isolated. I had a rich community back on Howard's campus. Professor Hudson and the man that I was closest to as a fellow student actually became a professor at American U, and I remember some personal social relation with him that persisted half through it, but I must say, I don't recall race, racial identity, integration, segregation, separation. I don't recall those as issues for me. I think I went there to get a master's degree. That worked out for me very well, and I got it and I've always felt kind of grateful for that and have no emotional memory of the political social. My major professor, Professor Hudson, and I think the man I'm thinking of is Andrews, turned out to be supportive, friends. And I did, my studies. And there that's when you received your masters. And then you decided to go. What inspired you? So after you received your masters there, what inspired you then to go on to, to Teachers College to get your doctorate?

00:20:01.800 - 00:26:08.800

The same June that I got my master's degree from American U, my wife got her medical degree from Howard. My boss, my dean, who to whom I was the assistant, and I were talking about what I should do next because he was hoping that I would succeed him as dean. And we agreed that since my wife was looking for an internship, I ought to be looking for a graduate program in psychology that I could get into. We applied to a number of places. I got denied admission by Harvard and Princeton, but I was admitted by University of Pennsylvania and the Teachers College at Columbia. I don't know to this day, why I turned down UPenn because my hope, I know, my wife had already finished her medical degree, which she started at the Women's Medical College in Philadelphia, but she was admitted for her internship at the Bronx Hospital in New York. And since I was admitted to Teachers College at Columbia. We moved to New York, settled in there for her to do her continued studies of medicine and for me to study psychology and education at Teachers College. And at that time, I was interested in preparing to return to Howard to work in Student Administration. So, I entered a program in student administration at Columbia. I became more interested in continuing my studies in Psychology and gravitated toward child development, developmental psychology and guidance, ended up doing my degree in that in that area. With my degree in developmental psychology and guidance. I settled in New York in the practice of psychology because my wife was now in her residency in pediatrics and because we had connections at the hospital where she was doing her residency, I was able to get employment there as a psychologist and continued, this must be 52, 53, and continued until about 1959, 1960. When my work at the hospital with developmentally disabled children led me to be picked up by the Yeshiva University which was starting a new Graduate School of Education. They picked me up as a special educator. So I gladly took that faculty position in psychology, but through its department of special education. Now, it's a very complicated degree of which really has not a lot to do with my professional development, professional development. But I by two or three flukes became a department chair at Yeshiva and was advanced to professor of psychology and education from which I was recruited back to Teachers College into the department where I had earned my degree. Now, in that New York period, I didn't have much contact with American U, but I must have felt some identification with it because I kind of followed the progress of my program, and the rather rapid development of AU as a at least tier two or three university. My actual contacts with people there pretty much disappeared until some 30 years later. I was invited back to be honored as a graduate.

00:26:13.100 - 00:27:11.130

I think that because that's a remarkable journey from I know you're talking but [?] let me see if I can coax my hearing device. I wonder whether or not. you got it? Okay, great. I wonder whether or not your experiences where you were one of so few people of color that you really can't even remember other students there, how that helped you in your way through Einstein and through Yeshiva? Because again, you must have been in the minority in those schools. Now that sounds like a very interesting question but I didn't get all of it. You are asking me about my experience at Yeshiva and Albert Einstein?

00:27:12.600 - 00:30:29.300

Yes, whether or not your experiences at AU, where you were a student, one of very few students of color, how that helped you maneuver later on in both Einstein and Yeshiva? Oh yes. Yes. I had not quite made that connection, but I suspect my making myself at home at both Columbia and at Yeshiva University, and in New York in general was influenced by that time spent at AU as a Black person. As one of a very few Black people in a major institution because they're certainly, not a lot of Black people at Columbia, except in the summer time. When a lot of us went there for summer school and at Yeshiva, I was the only Black person around there at all but I didn't feel I wasn't handicapped [?] because I evidently had already learned how to function effectively in that kind of climate. I'll have to give that some more thought because I hadn't connected the two but they certainly must be related because, yeah, Yeshiva I don't remember having many Black people around me, and Teachers College at the time wasn't any different, and certainly Yeshiva was even worse. Whatever your grandson did. Thank you. Let's try that. I can finally hear the person I'm speaking to. I think we were talking about AU's possible preparation of me for my experience in a predominantly, almost totally white environment at Columbia and Yeshiva. Yes, and I was saying I had not really thought a great deal about that, but I immediately resonate to that connection because I seem to have fit in quite easily at Columbia and very well at Yeshiva.

00:30:30.700 - 00:31:06.800

Yes, and then you also went to Einstein, which is, is that when you first went? Einstein is the medical school for Yeshiva. Yeshiva University. But the medical school and the graduate school at Yeshiva was not and still does not attract a lot of Black people. No, not at all. I actually lived not far from, well, not Yeshiva, but Oh right. Oh yes.

00:31:06.800 - 00:38:01.600

When I, cuz I'm from the Bronx. Yeah, so I resonated really well. I sort of imagined that you were somewhat isolated there. But the the training that you got, how did all of that, what you learned ,the leadership that you learned at AU, and what you further learned in your years in New York, ow did that bring you to Head Start? Well, I indicated that I didn't come to Teachers College with child development as my major interest but I gravitated toward it and I think I gravitated toward it because my wife was a pediatrician. And as we helped each other, I became more and more interested in the psychological development of children to kind of complement her physical development of children. In the course of my study of child development at Teachers College, I became aware of some experimental work that was going on with early child development. Susan Gray down in Tennessee had a very interesting child development project. My friend, I made friends with Martin and Cynthia Deutsch at New York University who were child developmentalists. I think it was my connection with my wife in pediatrics that first made me particularly sensitive to that domain. Then I got this call one day from Joe Califonti [Califano] who was Lyndon Johnson's Special Assistant to the President, Lyndon Johnson, and he had run across my name as one of the few doctoral level, Black people who knew something about child development and the president wanted to run this experiment in that area where I'd come down and talk with him and I did and they latched onto me. I'm almost certain that it was because they wanted some representation, representation of Black people there. I, don't know how to say this without sounding immodest, I gather that I was good enough for them to embrace me for reasons, other than representation. Because they made me the research director of the operation. I had come to the area of child development out of family interests, following my wife's interest. I think I had brought from AU some sensitivity to the fact. That even though psychology tended to focus on individual development, we were beginning, remember it was a social psychology degree I took at AU, we were beginning to recognize that humans are uniquely social beings and our development is greatly influenced by both social contexts, and even more, social relations. So that my take on child development was not so much on the child, but on the settings, inputs that the child was developing, family and community. And I think a part of my attractiveness to the group of people who were trying to put together Head Start was my insistence that we not concentrate only on the child, but Head Start had to be a child and family development experience, rather than a early childhood development experience. And I best trace that perspective on my part to those years I've spent studying social psychology at AU because my training experience at Columbia had been in development and guidance which, both of which were much more individually focused than social group focused.

00:38:10.200 - 00:40:15.900

So, do you consider your work around child and family, social development, sort of your greatest legacy at this point? I don't think I did anything in my career that was more consequential than my Head Start work. It turned out to be the biggest, most successful educational experiment conducted by government in our history. And today, I still take pride, and the people who tell me how they got turned around in those early years when their mother discovered Head Start. So I would say the Head Start experience, the mere fact of being tapped to be a part of it, and certainly its contribution are probably more consequential than anything else I did. Wow, and to think to this day, it is the most sought after piece of legislation money. That is that's, you know, that's what people want. Everyone wants Head Start because they know it works. Absolutely. Absolutely. And the many of the features of it I identify with, I feel, I'm not sure that I'd be correct in saying they wouldn't be there if I hadn't been there, but they certainly are associated with my being there.

00:40:18.200 - 00:41:21.580

Yes, I am sure. I am sure that's the case. I am absolutely sure. You know, I think what is so telling about that, is that even as a student at AU, you didn't know where your training would take you, but you were able to tap into it in later life. Absolutely. So, what would you advise today's students at AU or anywhere, really? What would you advise them as they're going through this journey of exploration as undergraduates or graduate students? How do they sort of um build the foundation that like with you took you to a whole nother, a whole nother field? No, I don't really have a good answer to that question, but I'll try.

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I think that there are two things that are kind of important, that I, in many ways, trace back to that experience. I don't know whether it's because psychology as a discipline was new to me, as I pursued those studies. But somehow I have the wisdom or the good luck to concentrate on, trying to understand the discipline and I use understanding different from knowing, you know, things as you collect information, you assemble facts. You can have a lot of stuff but, it may have been Professor Hudson, Catheryn Hudson, or Andrews that planted the idea. It was certainly reinforced some years later in my experience with Du Bois. And that was that you don't really know unless you understand both contexts and meaning. You gotta understand the context out of which the thing comes into existence from functions, and you've got to know its meaning to different members. And that second part is important because it's not the consensus meaning so much, as it is knowing that for different people, the same experience may have different meanings. But I attribute my capacity to use that early experience at American. I attribute that to my approach to knowing through an understanding lens, trying to not only collect the information, but they have some sense of the context out of, which it comes and its meaning to different people. I attribute it to American because I don't remember any particular experience at Columbia that would have introduced or reinforced that notion. And I remember how welcoming of it I was when I encountered it in my experiences with Du Bois as familiar territory. It is like coming home to a set of ideas. You speak so loving That professor that I was referring to as Hudson, Catheryn Seckler-Hudson is her name and she was the person who first got me entertaining that perspective.

00:45:50.500 - 00:48:25.200

I think that the fact that you can remember the name of a professor so long ago is very telling right? Right, and it speaks to her impact, the impact of her thinking and being on me. I think we're wrapping up. Thank you so much for, you know, for your time, but just some you started out by saying that you were concerned. I guess at what you're seeing now and um sort of the future. What is your fondest hope for the future as it is unfolding before you at age 100? Well, at the moment. I'm almost so pessimistic that I am praying for survival. And let me tell you what I mean by that. One could argue that the universe in its evolution is running out of its capacity to support human life. For me, there's not a question about the continued existence of the universe. But I am beginning to worry that it may no longer be a habitable space for human beings whether we think about climate change, or we think about the new organisms. We're having new organisms come into existence that humans are having difficulty dealing with. It's remarkable how quickly we thought we had solutions to the COVID virus. This month I'm not sure we are as far ahead on that one as 6 or 8 months ago I had thought we were.

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The same could be said for climate change. We're seeing massive movements of people because there are regions of the world that are simply becoming uninhabitable by, by humans. You know, they could run out. Or they could no longer support our form of life. And I think we do have to remember that our form of life is just one of a lot, of a number. And even the many forms that exist on Earth as we know it now are different from some of the forms that existed, say a million years ago, and maybe new forms of life that will evolve to exist on Earth in another century or two or three. I'm beginning to worry that that compatibility for human existence may be running short. And even if it is not, I worry that in our social economic political relations, we may be running out of the capacities to survive. We certainly have an earth that is rich enough to support human life, all of it. But our ways of distributing the resources as such if you know, three-quarters of us live, much less well than one-quarter of us. And there's still a quarter of us who are marginally existing. And if we look at what's happening, not only in the United States, but happening in Europe and happening in some areas of Asia the politics is becoming so fascist that the survival of democracy is threatened. So when I say my prayers these days, I'm praying that we will find a way to survive and hopefully if human existence can survive, we can get back to trying to get ahead, trying to flourish. I don't think in the current period flourishing is a meaningful hope. Survival, maybe lucky. It's it's [?] that is so true. And for me, it is even sadder that I don't have enough time ahead of me to hope that this too will pass. I don't think in my lifetime we are going to see a period for humanity that is as good as it was for my generation. I think I was born in the period that humans were enormously lucky and we were able to make just tremendous strides forward. I don't think I'll live to see us get to that point again. I hope that we can, hope that somehow will return to [?] better.

00:52:54.600 - 00:55:51.200

Our values, our sense of community. Or so what would you, because I know your grandson is there, what what would you want to say to young people today? To turn this around to turn, to make us, make us as a nation as a world. Return to those The thing that has worked wonders for me has been my brain. And the only thing I know is to encourage its cultivation. I think the human brain is a wonderful gift, marvelous, phenomenal, phenomena, phenomenon. If there's any hope for humankind, I think it's the hope that our brains can keep us ahead of the threats to our survival. So my advice to anybody who's got the opportunity is, try to not only know as much as you can, but try to understand as much of that as you can. It may be that you don't need all that is knowable. But it does seem to me that understanding, at least a part of what's around you, is essential, understanding enough to keep ahead of the threats. So, my kind of counsel for young people is to become as intellectively competent, as one can and that doesn't have to be in school. In fact, I think schooling does a poor job of it. Many of us such as myself, the capacity to understand has often developed despite my instruction. Wow, I am, uh, I'm so honored. I am so honored to for you to share your words of wisdom [?] Dr. Gordon. Well, um, or is there anything? I'm delighted that you're interested

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[laughs] We haven't talked about. [?] Like to share, you know, with us, with students, with young people with, you know, as you were saying, developing our intellect. And that's so, has so much more to do with with your legacy, your Head Start. Because that's where we begin the brain development process. That's right. And, uh, so Curiosity and appreciation. Again, and they are the things that keep you digging and trying to trying to understand. Um, if we were, to do this again, I consider an important part of my life as being my take on politics and I don't mean which party you belong to. But how you recognize and appreciate the importance of collective, collective effort when you look at the evolution of the human species. I think we have gotten to where we are, despite our many faults and failures, I think we've gotten to where we are when individual humans have joined forces with other individuals to share thought and effort and it is so much more productive than is individual thought and method.

00:58:16.200 - 01:00:01.350

Absolutely. I think it's important that young people appreciate the fact that while you can't make it without the individual, the individual isn't going to get very far by herself. It's joining hands, joining forces, sharing minds with other people that we that we move ahead. Absolutely. And which is the absolute bedrock, um, reason why it was so important for us to talk with you because sharing of information and knowledge and you know, cuts across generations. So we build upon your shoulders, and we are, I mean anytime you really want to talk you just let me know and we will set it up. Okay. [laughs] Well, I think maybe we need to make it the other way. If you want to try it again, ask me and I'll see if I can squeeze it in. I, I keep a tremendously busy schedule, so if you're gonna wait for me to remember to call you and say let's talk some more, it probably won't happen that way, but if you call and say, you got a few minutes? I'll at least try to make the time for you.

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Appreciate that. Thank you so much and I thank your grandson. there for all his technical assistance today. She's thanking you for your help. [grandson off camera - glad to help out]. And getting this working. Okay, have a good time, good evening. Thank you so much. You too. Thank you. And happy new year to you.

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And the same to you. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye.