Jeanetta Williams recalls her early years growing up in Oklahoma attending segregated schools. She discusses her career working at U.S. West Communications and Utah Transit Authority; she also discusses her work and effort in civics and human rights.
She talks about her work as the president of the NAACP Salt Lake Branch and the NAACP Tri-State Conference of Idaho, Nevada, and Utah, as well as her efforts on the legislative front: changing Utah’s Human Rights Day to Martin Luther King Jr. Day and successfully lobbying for the passage of the Utah Hate Crimes and Victim Rights Bills.
She explains how and why she founded the Utah Conference of Minority Transportations Officials Chapter. And she shares her feelings about meeting Nelson Mandela.
“Legacies,” a podcast by Utah Women’s Walk
Season 1, Episode =7: Jeanetta Williams
For the complete interview, click here.
MW: For Jeanetta Williams, caring about others in her community means more than showing kindness and offering a helping hand. It means doing the hard work of making that community more safe and just for everyone in it.
JW: I think the main thing is one that we hear all the time—is that, “Treat other people the way you want to be treated.” I think that’s the way I try to live my life—is that everybody has rights. Somebody else may disagree with you, but I would still say, “Treat other people the way you want to be treated.”
MW: I am Michele Welch from Utah Women’s Walk, and this is “Legacies,” a podcast dedicated to preserving the inspiring stories and wisdom of Utah women. Jeanetta has served as the president of the NAACP for the Idaho, Nevada, and Utah branch for nearly 30 years. She served twenty years on the West Valley Police Citizens’ Professional Standards Review Board, and spent time on the Utah State Bar Ethics and Discipline Committee. The list goes on. I spoke with her in 2014 along with my student Tom Hawkins.
JW: I was born in a small town called Clayton Chapel, Oklahoma, which is roughly about sixty miles east of Oklahoma City.
And I have thirteen—it was thirteen all together—brothers and sisters and I was the third oldest in the family since—roughly around several years ago—I had a sudden death in the family, brothers and a sister, and so now we have the ten. I have ten brothers and sisters at this time.
I think some of the important memories that I have is—family and togetherness. Love for one another. Being able to get along, especially with as many brothers and sisters that I had. So we always made sure that we always stuck together. If we were in school and somebody else was, what they call—maybe not like bullying one, then of course, you had to deal with everybody, all the rest of the brothers and sisters. So we have a very close-knit family, and family was everything. That’s the way we were brought up—is to make sure that we love one another, we take care of one another, and that we always helped one another whenever we could. And we still do that.
[I attended] school there in Oklahoma, and went to segregated schools at the early age, and then later after the Brown V. Board of Education, then we were integrated, and then we attended schools—which was white schools at that time.
Some of the places, like small eating establishments, where if you were African American, or a person of color, then you couldn’t go in and order food, like they do now, and eat. They had another area where you have to either go in the back door, and that’s where you either have to eat your food, or take it out. So everything was very segregated. I think just seeing things like that helped me to want to see a change, and things [had] been changing before of course that I got involved, but it was a way for me to continue involvement and making sure that people weren’t being discriminated and that everybody had equal rights.
You probably won’t believe this, but at an early age I was relatively shy, I think. But I think what made me want to, you know, go out and do more is seeing so much hurt in the eyes of people that couldn’t do for themselves, that didn’t really have a voice for themselves. And I later became the voice of the voiceless and was able to try to talk to people and try to get legislation [changed]. You know, do all of these types of things that I felt would make a big difference in the lives of, not only myself, but others and it wasn’t so much about me, but it was about trying to make sure that I tried to help other people.
I think the women that I admired growing up would—I would have to say my mother, number one, because she instilled in myself and others, my siblings—family. Family Love. You know, family—whatever that was going on in the family, kind of, more or less, stayed in the family. And so, I admire my mother for everything that she did to instill in me all of my values that I have today.
And then my teacher was a female woman and her last name was Williams. It just so happened to be that way. But she was a very close friend of the family because in the area you had very close family ties with your teachers and everybody.
And I would say one of the others was a female teacher whose name was Essie Williams, that was very instrumental in the teachings and things to do—involvement. And she would always try to tell all the other students how they should always value their mothers. And I would always make sure that even at a very, very young age I was always trying to work and save a little money, and on Mother’s Day I’d always make sure to give my mother a gift and a little card. And so my teacher would always praise me for that all the time. And so I think it would be my mother and my teacher.
TH: You have a master’s degree, how important do you think it is to obtain a college degree?
JW: It’s very important. Especially—it’s important for everybody, but especially I see as part of accomplishment for African American’s because, even just recently, there was a survey that was done, and that African American’s, you know, with the same education, everything identical to a white person, was getting left behind. They weren’t getting job offers. They weren’t getting a call back for a job interview, and then if they did end up getting the job, the pay was a lot lower. And so that’s why we always say that it’s good to get an education for everybody, but then especially in the African American community and people of color.
TH: Your contributions to life in the state of Utah are extensive. What would you say are some of the high points and low points in those experiences?
When I came to Utah, that was in 1988.
I just got involved with the community. I had church. And so I just kind of found my way around, and would meet people.
I think some of the high points was trying to get—I’m going to maybe outline just one for now. But one of the ones in particular that I worked with, that was so much controversy going back and forth, was changing the Human Rights Day to Martin Luther King Jr. Day because a lot of folks would just say, “Well, we don’t want to change and we don’t want to just honor Dr. King. We wanted to have a human rights day.” So they had all of these different excuses why not to do it, but yet, we continue to have reasons why it should be, and one of the last states to even have it called the name, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. So that was something that went back and forth even [with] the legislators.
But even the Victim Rights Bill, when I first approached legislators to pass some bills on that—pass some legislation on that—well some of the legislators thought that what I was looking for was to have a little bit more sympathy toward the inmates and that wasn’t the case. But what had happened was that I had worked on a case and this person, the victim, was not notified to come to the hearing at the Utah State Prison. He had wanted to, and he would have wanted to, but they only gave a day in advance [notice], so I ended up going to the hearing to speak on behalf of that family. And so after that I thought that they need to have some type of a victims rights bill where that the victim could be notified in sufficient time that if they wanted to come to make a statement there at the parole hearing then they could do that. And so that’s what started that particular one, and it passed.
MW: Was the person that you spoke in behalf of for the Victim Rights Bill, were they an acquaintance of yours? Is that how you got involved in that?
no, it wasn’t. It was a student—African American student. It’s always been other people in the community and people that are seeking assistance and help.
MW: Who have contacted you.
JW: Yes, who’ve made contact with me as president for the NAACP.
So those were some of the things that went back and forth and background that people don’t really know about.
We’re doing good work here in the state of Utah. I’m very pleased that we’ve worked with republican and democrat because we are nonpartisan. And so we are always out there trying to see who can support our efforts that we are doing.
I had the honor of bringing Mrs. Rosa Parks to Utah. And when I first had called and she had told me, “Well, you know, I’ll think about it.”
She told me to call back maybe the next day. And the next day, of course, I couldn’t wait. I called her back and she would say, “Well, I don’t know. Let me think about it.” So it was like—it went on for a couple of different times. And then finally, I said, “You asked me to call you back. I’m calling back again.” So she said, “Well, since you’re so persistent—now, normally I don’t come to places in—that’s so cold, and Utah is very cold in the winter time, but this time, because of your persistence, I’m going to make an exception and I’m going to come.” So that’s what happened, and she did. She came and spoke at the NAACP Martin Luther King Jr. Luncheon. And then I had the opportunity to take her to—at the time, the University of Utah. And also bring her all the way down to BYU [Brigham Young University] and we spent a whole day and an evening at BYU. And so it was marvelous.
I had the opportunity of sitting down and talking with Mrs. Parks in her hotel room. And then it was my birthday and she said, “I know it’s your birthday and we decided”—her and the person she was traveling with, her assistant—said that, “we are going to stay over and we want to take you out to dinner.” And I thought that was very nice of her to do. And she got me a nice gift, and a card, and she had signed it.
And then I would see her on other occasions—international events. And then when she passed, of course, in 2005, I thought, You know, everybody was so excited when she came to Utah that it would be an honor to try and name some streets after her. And so I started that, and of course, West Jordan was the first one.
We call her the mother of civil rights because she was the one who had [sat] on that bus and people say, Well, she was tired. And she had told me too, that she wasn’t tired. She was really tired of being treated the way that African American’s were being treated. And it came time that she needed to make a difference, and she did.
TH: Will you tell us the experience with Nelson Mandela at the White House?
JW: I went and had the opportunity to shake his hand, talk to him. When I told him that I admired all the things that he had done and he said, “No, I admire you for everything that you do.” So it was a nice conversation, nice lunch, back and forth. After he passed, then I held a statewide tribute to President Mandela [in] downtown Salt Lake City and we had the governor, some mayors, different folks from all backgrounds, come and speak about President Mandela.
TH: You’ve obviously served on a national level with some very important people, that you call friends, and you’d mentioned Myrlie Evers-Williams and Julian Bond. What was it like working with these two civil rights icons?
JW: It was really good working with them because when you’re friends with them you don’t really consider [them] as civil rights icons, but you know other folks do.
Myrlie Evers-Williams is of course a very good friend and she has been very good throughout all of her different works with the association. She had remarried after her—Medgar Evers [first husband] was killed during the civil rights movement with, you know—he was registering people to vote. She was so dedicated to the NAACP that although he [second husband] was almost on his death bed, he wanted her to go to the NAACP meeting and run for the position of chairman of the board, and she did win by one vote. That’s why we tell people that one vote does make a difference. And she did get the chance to get back home and get to see him just before he passed away. And then later her son passed away. And so she’s had a lot of different things, personal things, that she’s had to deal with, that a lot of times people don’t really know, because they don’t know her. She’s a very, very strong woman. And so those two friendships I have really admired to have because then—it’s odd when you say it, you know, they’re friends because you know them. And I’ll see, maybe, Julian recently, on some TV shows or something, and I send him an email and say he did really good on them. So for me to be able to just say that you did good on an interview, it’s something that I think is good because then you kind of build those friendships, and that’s good.
TH: You were asked to serve as mayor for a day at the Olympic Village, during 2002—during the winter Olympics. Can you tell us about that experience?
JW: Yes, yes, in fact it was Mitt Romney [who] had asked me to serve, and of course, I said yes because we were—everybody was so thrilled that the Olympics was in Utah and to be a part of it—doing that and being a part of the Olympic Village was an honor for me. I had the opportunity of taking a picture with the other folks doing the Olympics and then I also had the honor of wearing a jacket. I had a jacket that had my name on it, and mayor for a day, and everything.
TH: With your professional life and all of the public service, how have you balanced, or juggled, work, family, and social life?
JW: Okay, I think part of my work, family, and social life comes to—a lot of times I’ll get so busy in the projects, and then I’ll look forward to traveling [to] other countries. I’ve been in South Africa. I’ve been to Hong Kong. You know, they’re having their unrest there. I’ve been to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Australia, to just a lot of different countries. South Africa was always nice because then they had so many different things with the pictures and the historic monuments of President Mandela, and what was going on with Apartheid—those type of things. So I always liked to go and see what kinds of history they have and take a lot of pictures and, you know. I’ve been to Shanghai and just a lot of places and so I like to, kind of, balance my life by traveling the world to see how other people live, you know, see some of the historic things that they do.
MW: What do you foresee in the future for you personally? Anything different?
JW: Personally? No, I almost can’t see myself without doing work for the NAACP.
MW: Is this a full-time job for you?
JW: It is, but guess what? I don’t get paid.
MW: Seriously?
JW: All of the work that I do—all the work that I do [in the] wee, wee hours of the morning— people see emails coming from me at two o’clock, three o’clock in the morning. I don’t get paid a penny for it. I do it because I’m so dedicated to it.
TH: What advice do you have for younger women in Utah?
JW: I think I would tell young women to try to get involved in an organization, or cause, and you know, if they have meetings—we realize people can’t come to every meeting, but if they would at least take a membership out—join. Maybe they may have to pass out pamphlets or attend an event. I would just say to try to get involved, you know, because there are so many different causes, and I think if they would find maybe one cause, in one of those organizations, then it would benefit them. Because then they would have a broader look on what’s going on in the community and ways that they can help. So there’s all types of things going on, but if they would just find maybe something that they might be more interested in than something else, to just get involved.
TH: Are there any words of wisdom or maxims that you’ve lived your life by?
JW: I think the main thing is one that we hear all the time—is that, “Treat other people the way you want to be treated.” I think that’s the way I try to live my life—is that everybody has rights. Somebody else may disagree with you, but I would still say, “Treat other people the way you want to be treated.” I think that’s the way I’ve lived my life.
TH: What would you like most to be remembered for?
JW: I think I would mostly like to be remembered for my fight for justice, and my fight for equality, and trying to make a difference in, not only Utah, but the world, and then making [a] difference in individual lives.
We want to thank Jeanetta Williams for her interview. We honor her for her contributions in seeking justice and equality for all citizens of not only Utah but across the world.
MW: If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to share it with a friend, as well as subscribe and rate us on itunes.
To listen to the full interview of Jeanetta Williams and other remarkable Utah women, visit our website at Utah Women’s Walk. ORG
A special thanks to our supporters Denise and Allen Alexander, Roman and Ann Takasaki, Julie Bagley and Shauna Duke.
And thank you to our writer and producer Tamarra Kemsley and our editor Ron Cool. As well as Catherine McIntyre from the UVU Archives.
Thanks again for listening to today’s episode of “Legacies.”