PRES. HARROZ: I am Joe Harroz, President at the University of Oklahoma. I want to welcome you to our Conversations with the President. This platform gives me the chance to talk to some of the great people who make OU so special. Make sure you are subscribed to Conversations with the President, and you will be the first to know when new episodes are released.
Let's get started.
First thing first, I want to thank Governor Kevin Stitt for making the time for us in joining us on the show for the last episode. If you haven't already, please listen to that episode or watch it on our YouTube channel. Governor Stitt and I discussed a range of topics including workforce development within our state, and the university's role in that development. At the University of Oklahoma, our purpose is to change lives. And last August, when I welcomed our record‑breaking freshman class, I shared with them that I believed it is important to leave your mark while you are at head OU. I encouraged them each to write their own story.
To be who they want to be. I offered to them that your time at OU is a time for you to learn not just what you want to do with the rest of your life, but to learn who you are. What is your legacy? What do you want to leave behind? Who are the people you want to most positively impact going forward? I think that wish is best exemplified with today's guest who has been a pillar of the University of Oklahoma and its community since he arrived in 1967. It is my profound pleasure to welcome our guest today for conversations with the president. In life you only have a few heroes, and today's guest is one of the profound heroes in my life. He is someone that everyone at the University of Oklahoma community that has been here for any length of time knows, and for those who don't, it is time you get to know him. And I would like to give a few brief comments first about your background, and then would love to open it up for a conversation, but Dr. George Henderson came to the University of Oklahoma in 1967. 56 years with us here. He has broken ground from the moment he came to OU. His story is one of incredible influence and import. We talk about what the University of Oklahoma does in changing lives, Dr. Henderson personifies that. When he came to the University of Oklahoma, he was only the third black professor to be at the University of Oklahoma.
He was the first to get an endowed chair and he and his wife, Barbara, who are treasured members of this community were the first black property owners in Norman, which is a tragic reality. Dr. Henderson, through all of this has prospered and flourished and built us to where we are today and lies a roadmap for where we want to go as a university and as a society. He was founded the Department of Human Relations here at OU, which he chaired for 20 years and eventually became the dean of the College of Liberal studies from 1996 until the year 2000. The Henderson Scholars program is a critical program here named in his honor, and there are so many things that do not carry his name but carry his legacy.
George, it is an absolute pleasure to have you here. Thank you for being here. For our listeners that maybe have not heard from you before, could you talk a little bit about your background and what brought you to Oklahoma.
DR. HENDERSON: My background, oh gosh. Born in poverty in Huntsville, Alabama. We lived in what I referred to as a dirt-poor environment, we lived in a wooden shack. My father's parents and my mother and I and my father we lived in that place. I know poverty. I lived in poverty. My father was run out of Alabama by the Ku Klux Klan. He moved from the segregation of the south to the segregation of the north.
That is the long and the short of it except for this item. I was on welfare until 9th grade in high school. Consequently, I lived in places where people should not live, and I spent many, many days without an adequate diet or food, but I had a mother. My mother told me almost every day that I was with her that I love you. My father, not so much. My father wanted me to be a man and my mother wanted me to be a gentle soul. I tried my father's way, and it did not feel right. I then gravitated to my mother's way, and so consequently with the help of a lot of teachers, I got out of special education with the help of Ms. Johnson. She did not believe that these kids, these special ed kids should be there. She offered tutoring to all 35 of us if our parents agreed.
My mother and 10 other parents agreed that we would do tutoring before school and after school.
PRES. HARROZ: And Dr. Henderson, this was your 3rd grade teacher, right?
DR. HENDERSON: Yes, Ms. Johnson. We were among the first kids to test out of special education in East Chicago, Indiana. In high school, I was on the track team, the star sprinter running in yards instead of meters. That will tell you how far back I was running. From a class of 250, 36 were National Honor Society and I was one of them. The first from East Chicago, the first of two of us from poverty. But hey, that is that.
Got a track scholarship to Michigan State, in ROTC, loved it, but I did not like the fact we had this thing called a Korean conflict going on. Dropped out of ROTC and my draft board said greetings. My freshman year, there were 35, 40 blacks, most of us athletes. Four black females. So you guess I did not have a date. My sophomore year, five new ones, Barbara Beard was one of them. Gosh, we met at a place that was agreed upon in the basement of the student union and I saw this lovely, slight female coming and I rushed over to her and I says baby, you know you love me.
That is George Henderson's story. I decided I was not going to leave her at Michigan State without marrying me, so we did. 1952 we started the Henderson clan.
PRES. HARROZ: It is a remarkable story. You all got married and so your journey went from being a family that the Ku Klux Klan was after and you became the first in your family to graduate high school.
DR. HENDERSON: High school, college, first everything.
PRES. HARROZ: First everything. And you meet Barbara, then you went off to do your service for a few years.
DR. HENDERSON: Instead of the Army, I volunteered for the Air Force. I went to trading to be a radio prepare technician. I was the worst repair technician the Air Force has ever produced. I failed Morse code twice. The instructor called me and said George, if you promise never to use Morse code, I will pass you. So I passed. I was not a very good radio repairman, but that was the beginning of George understanding something about international cultures. We had an Arab and all of us Arabs to clean our Quonset huts, French Morocco, city Sumane and desert, secret radio installation, underground only the Arabs rode their camels over so what was secret about it.
Anyhow, our Mohammed ‑‑ we call all of them Mohammed. We did not bother to ask their name. We would mess up our tent after they did our clothes and floor and bed. After one of those ventures, Mohammed was left to pick his clothes up and the other guys had gone. He looked at me and said George, I know why those other guys did me like this, why did you? You and me same, same. Wow, he was right.
PRES. HARROZ: That is powerful.
DR. HENDERSON: I was the only black in that unit, and before I got Mohammed, I was the object of ridicule and scorn. You me, same, same and then I said never again, not on my watch will you be treated badly.
I do those things, why? My mother told me to.
PRES. HARROZ: It is interesting, you change cultures and all of a sudden you are the one imposing it and not the victim. You learn from that, that is amazing. Tell us how you came to become a professor at the University of Oklahoma in 1967.
DR. HENDERSON: Okay. Two sides to this. Either insanity or my creator sent me here. I chose my creator sent me here. Insanity, if I was on the other side, I could make a good case of George being insane. Why would a father, a husband with seven children, and a mother‑in‑law take a $5000 pay cut to come to the University of Oklahoma and teach when he was the 13th African‑American in the United States who got a doctorate in educational sociology? Could have gone anywhere. I cannot explain it in any other way except this is where I should be. I had the largest lecture interview than any other professor ever coming. People from every academic unit representative wanted to interview this guy. The reason there was a race riot in 1967 in Detroit, and we lived two blocks from that riot. I was assistant to the superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools and in charge of community relations. They wanted to hear about the school's reaction and my role, et cetera. I wanted to talk about academics, and they wanted to talk about a race riot.
But why did I ask that I wanted two hours with students, free time, I don't know but I did. In talking with the students, they showed me Norman. They showed me the poor people in Norman and said we say we don't have poor people here and they took me to places where the poor people live. They said we don't have much diversity here. We didn't. One of them said, you know, Dr. Henderson, we need you because we don't have anyone to teach urban sociology, have never had. Your experience is great. You are a community organizer, you knew Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., et cetera. Would you please come and teach us? I listened. One of them said look, let's be honest here. You are probably going to get better job offers than the University, but you will not get better students than us. Do you want to be a small fish in an ocean or a big fish in a little pond? I said wow, hey, I could be a whale. I accepted because of the students, and I made my mind up. I wanted to teach the students. It was my calling. That is why I am here.
It was not insanity. My creator sent me here with a message, teach them, teach them well.
PRES. HARROZ: It is amazing how these beginnings occur. This is interesting, it is February, it is Black history month, and when we think about those icons in Oklahoma, you spoke about one, Prentice Gautt, the first black scholarship athlete at the University of Oklahoma. Played for Bud Wilkinson. There are other names of individuals and you have mentioned outside of OU Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Junior, but when you look at the names that make up the landscape of Oklahoma and OU, Melvin Tolson, Ada Louise Sipuel Fisher, Claire Looper, these were all friends of yours.
DR. HENDERSON: Silvia Lewis.
PRES. HARROZ: Silvia Lewis. Absolutely.
DR. HENDERSON: Jimmy Stuart. I could go on. Who is who in black Oklahoma, Oklahoma City and Tulsa became friends with the Henderson's. They did not have to, but they reached out. Ada Lewis pulled me aside ‑‑ the first dinner we attended was in Oklahoma City with Ada Lewis, Silvia Lewis, Claire Looper and others. After the dinner, she pulled me aside and said we are glad that you are here. You have a huge responsibility. You have to help finish what I started. I agreed. Driving home, I said what if I fail? A voice said you have to try.
PRES. HARROZ: It is phenomenal. You arrive here in 1967. Some of these stories hadn't been told yet. Some were forming. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had just been passed, not fully implemented by any stretch of the imagination. Could sort of paint the picture for us of what you found in and around civil rights in Oklahoma at OU when you first arrived here in 67.
DR. HENDERSON: I found what I saw in the north, which led me to the conclusion that you can run, but you cannot hide. Joe Louis said that to Billy Conn in a fight. I could try to run from racism, housing, and employment et cetera, but you cannot hide from it. What I found, I found individuals, many who did not want a black living in their neighborhood, so they moved out. I found others who welcomed me.
I was a hypocrite before coming here. I taught desegregation, I taught integrating and housing, I taught all at the fine things about living with other people, but I lived in an all‑black neighborhood until I moved to Norman. So I was telling others to do what George Henderson did not do. I thought the theories, I asked other people to live them. It was my moment of truth. I found individuals who call me and say oh gosh, you find a negative term for an African‑American, they call me those things. Good gracious, maybe I had trauma and people did not tell me, but I found something else. All of the garbage on our front lawn and all of the eggs on my car and all of the people driving by my house shouting epithets and telling me I should go back to Africa and all of the police officers stopping me and asking me why I was in the neighborhood. All of the negative things that could have happened, happened, but there are always two sides to a story.
The other side I found people said we are glad you are here, welcome. Let's try to make this thing work. Don't you leave. I wanted to leave, I will be very honest, I was ready to go. I said Barb, we tried it, it didn't work. She said whoa, I packed up the household because you were trying to help the riot situation. I moved all of our kids here and I settled in. She said I am not leaving. We will leave when we are ready, not when other people say we should. Not a moment earlier or a moment later. I said okay, boss.
PRES. HARROZ: Well, as I have often said, thank you, Barbara. As you think about it, it has been 56 years since you or close to 56 years, this summer since you two arrived and you accepted this. You indicated you were going to stay here as long as necessary. It has been 56 years. As you look at the time you have spent here, has it been spent well? Has it been spent well?
DR. HENDERSON: It is as well as I could have done and as well as those committed to change could have done at the time. Martin Luther Junior came to a meeting one day and says I don't know who said this, but I'm claiming it as mine now. We ain't what we want to be, we ain't what we ought to be, we ain't what we are going to be, but thank God we ain't what we were as a people. Yes, we did not accomplish everything we wanted, we did not. We are not going to accomplish everything that we should. My time, my time, energy and resources are well spent, and I knew when I came here and accepted the job that I would be like a Moses. I could only take the people with me so far, it would be the next generation who would take it and the next and the next, but we were going to move. We were not going to leave. Yes, it was worth it. It reminds me, I think of the University of Oklahoma. I think of the students mostly. If anyone should ever ‑‑ it is a song, if anyone should ever write my life story whatever reason there may be, students would be in my life with all of my fame and glory, they were the best things that happened to me. The OU students were the best things that happened to me. It dawned on me one day, why should I go to the East Coast, West Coast, back to Midwest to look for students and I had the best students that I could have wanted to here.
I did not need a fancy name, just needed the people. Yes, it was worthwhile.
PRES. HARROZ: I love it. I can tell you from our perspective, it is more than worthwhile and is an indelible change. Speaking of change, unlike you, I did not know Martin Luther King Junior. I do love one of the quotes about the ark of the University is long, but it bends towards justice. When I have taught at the law school, I have thought a lot about the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and how long it was until that actually became the real law of the lands. Really not being fully realized until 64 and Civil Rights Act of 91. As you sit here today, one of the statistics I'm proud of with the University as I talk about this year's freshman, record freshman class. We talk about 39% of that record freshman class identify from historically disadvantaged groups, 25% of those in this record freshman class, like you, are the first in the history of families to go to college. All of that being said, we know how much racial strife there is in the country is right now, what the social divide. As you sit here and think about it, has the ark bent toward justice?
DR. HENDERSON: Of course.
PRES. HARROZ: How far have we come and how far do we have to go?
DR. HENDERSON: You know, you should have asked my mother. You should have asked her grandparents and their grandparents. They would say of course you have come far. Those whose ancestors were enslaved, would look at us and say oh my goodness. My mother, for example, when she moved to Norman to live with us until she passed away, she said never did I ever think that I would live in a community like this. She attended a white church, and they called her sister. She had her seat, and the Bible study people would come to her house to study. She said George, honestly, I thought we would be in a black community, and we would be doing well, but this is where we should be. Progress. Progress is relative. If I have learned anything of importance about the civil rights movement, it is that we have learned that you need to compromise, you need to accept things less than what you think you want, but don't give up. Do not take your eye out the crown and do not stop striving for the top. Do not ever say nothing has changed. If nothing has not changed, then I should not be sitting here. You should be having this interview with a white professor talking about the civil rights movement.
No. No. Of course, more has to happen. My family changed, doggone it, and that is something else my mother looks at. We have a picture of several generations of us, and three quarters of my grandchildren are biracial. Actually multiracial. My mother said, George, I knew about living with them, but in our house? She loved those babies, and my mother loved all babies and she passed that on to me. I was thinking about this, that question is a wonderful question. Sometimes, those of us who think in a movement we are doing things that are always helpful, words matter. Words matter deeply and I am wrestling now with myself to deal with a word, non‑white. That is very good, but people of color. The last time I looked, white is a color. When I use that word, I have to check myself and say maybe it is divisive if the white person is listening and say people of color. The word itself separates us. I don't want to separate as ‑‑ I look at my grandchildren and one said I am a half‑ican. It is he going to do? He accepts people as they are. We did it right, Barb and I.
PRES. HARROZ: There is no question you and Barbara are doing it right. It is interesting. I have told you the story before, but I want to make sure the listeners hear this. About seven years ago, my son Joseph, my oldest who is now a freshman at OU came home from school, came home from seventh grade and he said we had a guest speaker I did not know about today. He came in and dad I met a hero. Of course, I perked up and I listened to it. He did not generally talk about any guest speakers that came to the class. He began to talk about this hero, and I knew after the first two sentences that it was you, Dr. George Henderson. I let him play it out and I wanted to hear what he had heard from you. Not just that you were a hero, but the story of your story, the story civil rights in the United States, the story of you coming to Oklahoma. I loved listening to him. You sit here and there is more to come, but as you look back, you retired from OU in 2006.
DR. HENDERSON: Yes, but Barbara will not let me use the word retired. She says liar, liar, if you had hair, it would be on fire. I'm still doing things.
PRES. HARROZ: Right. You have continued to teach, and you continue to be a fabric of the community. What do you hope people think of when they think of you and your legacy?
DR. HENDERSON: Oh gosh, I want them to think that I gave because I loved. I loved the students first and foremost, and then my colleagues secondly. We are family, and family to me means extended. Extended not just in words, but in the action and in the relationships. I want them to say that he was a pioneer who needed people to help him to be a pioneer. I needed as much as I need breath, as much as I need air and water. I needed the students who were not black to accept me, and to say we to are your children, and they are.
Say about me what you will, but always remember that I have accomplished nothing of significance without my students. They taught me. They taught me to accept the difference and not just talk about difference. They asked me tough questions, and they challenged each other. Think about me as someone who is blessed, blessed to have a creator who would send him to a place and tell him in many ways, don't worry about the money, do your job, do the work as people say today.
I got a chance to meet a lot of good people, like you, and do I remember your son. He said and he was listening, and he asked a question, and we connected. We connected as I try to connect with all students. You me, same, same, but I tell them as I am now, you may become, as you are I once was and in between that transition, I did many things that were wrong before I knew better. I try never to do the same bad things over, and I was very creative and did a lot of bad things. My journey, my journey was like students holding my hand and saying we too can do this together. What can I say? I think of the dozen or so job offers that I turned down to stay here, four of them college presidencies. Barbara would always ask me in an interview, will you still be able to teach? Every time the answer was no because I was going to places that needed me hands‑on, full‑time. She says do you think you will enjoy not teaching? I can do the administrative thing, but I love teaching. I exist outside of the classroom. I am alive in it.
I turned those jobs down. As far as going to another university, the students, truth be told, when I was going to leave and Barbara said no, I told the administration that I was going to leave so they could recruit another black professor. Somehow the students ‑‑ the grapevine is very efficient, and they had heard four hours after I had told President George Lang Cross that I was going to leave and there were five students outside of my office in the sociology office, and they were crying and said we heard that you are leaving. One of them asked the question, don't you like us? God, yes, I like them. I loved them. She asked, then why are you leaving, and I did not have a good answer. For another job, for another position. I did not come here for that, I came to teach so yes, they taught me a lot. They taught me people first.
Can I share another story?
PRES. HARROZ: Please.
DR. HENDERSON: The last serious job offer that I participated in was the University of Minnesota, senior vice president in terms of community athletics and you name it, a whole lot of other things. I was the first person to be interviewed and the committee said we want you, Dr. Henderson. I said you are interviewing three others and they said we know, but we want you. We have already decided. After the interview, true, they called and said would you come? Barbara and I had the conversation, and we talked to our kids, and we said there is a possibility I will accept the job at the University of Minnesota. The seven of them got together and then they said, dad, let's have a family meeting. You and mom can go to Minnesota, but we are staying here in the south, and you can come visit us. Did we accomplish something? Our kids found friends here, lifelong friends here in a place that supposedly we should not like. I went back and the president could not understand, and he said why would you want to stay in that small school when you can come to the prestigious Big Ten? On and on and on, and after listening to the talk, I just asked him a question and I said if the University of Oklahoma is so bad, why are you recruiting me? No one talks about my university.
I cannot think of the University without thinking about people. It is an abstraction otherwise. I could do my teaching elsewhere, but not the way I want to do it. I can do my research anywhere, I can do my community service anywhere, but I need students, I needed these students. God, I needed these students. Fortunately, they needed me. We needed each other. What did we do together? We decided we would create a family and it was not just in words. We did that. I am getting now, grandchildren of students that I taught.
PRES. HARROZ: Isn't that amazing.
DR. HENDERSON: They say my grandma or grandpa says that I better stop by and say hi to you.
PRES. HARROZ: For good reason. It's interesting. Today I had a student come by today and they were talking about how they had an opportunity to go somewhere else. Their comment, I think their comment is fascinating the same day we are having this conversation, they said but I feel like my family is here. It is a student that actually is from pretty far away. We had this same conversation with the international students, the Davis World Scholars. Students who are local. To me, it is that feeling of belonging, of attachment, of connection that everybody craves. I love the fact that your own seven kids told you and Barbara this is our home, this is our family, we are staying here. Clearly you understand this but think about all of the lives you have touched where because of you, those students, all students, but certainly black students felt like they belonged, like they have a family here. I hope that you know how fundamentally important that is in the lives of so many people and you have certainly given more than you taken.
DR. HENDERSON: Think about it this way, Joe, all of those lives touched me to. A piece of them are embedded in my heart and my soul, so we are bound together forever. There are always two ways, and it works best that way. When my mother told me I love you, as a little boy trying to be a man, I really did not respond and she said George, I love you, do you love me? Of course, I did. I finally got up enough courage when I came to the University of Oklahoma, I told my students I love you. And that means we help one another, that we appreciate one another, that we will be our foremost cheerleaders and our best critics. We will get it right. If we don't get it right, it will not be because we didn't try. So yes, it always worked both ways.
PRES. HARROZ: And in a lot of ways, I think these two parts of the conversation connect. When you think about to me the highest state of legacy is the fact that part of you, the good part, and we all have good and bad parts. And I love that you recognize that, but to me the greatest thing about legacy, the greatest legacy that can exist is that part of you is in someone else. Part of you, part of what ‑‑ the good that we have and the good that you have is transmitted in those that came after you, your students, and their children. I think your legacy, I know your legacy is a remarkable one. I know it lives inside of so many people, and I can tell you that I am one of them. I have been here since ‑‑ I was here as a student in the 80s and I came back in 94 to work here and from the moment I arrived both as a student and in this role and the roles that I have had since November of 94, I always think about you and the way that you have approached things and the impact that you have.
I love the fact that we are sitting here today. You have been here for 56 years. I have been at OU now 28. I love your story about you and your service and you talking to the Arab individual. You saying, you me, same, same. The truth is here we sit today, black men and Arab man ‑‑
DR. HENDERSON: Same, same.
PRES. HARROZ: Same, same. Thank you for everything that you have given us and everything you are giving us, and nothing but love for you and Barbara.
DR. HENDERSON: It is mutual. It will always be.
PRES. HARROZ: Your legacy will live on forever. Thank you so much, Dr. Henderson.
I want to thank Dr. George Henderson for joining the show. I hope you can see why he is one of the heroes in my life and a true icon at the University of Oklahoma community. I hope many of you watching or listening today are inspired by the life and the story of Dr. Henderson and that all of us hope to make an impact as profound as his and live up to the OU mantra of changing lives. Thank you all for listening to today’s episode. I look forward to our next conversation with the president.
