Transcripts

SPEAKER: Earlier this week, Minnesotans lost a prominent voice for civil rights. Glover, longtime head of the Minneapolis Urban League, died at his home on Wednesday at the age of 60. This week, Glover was remembered with respect, admiration, and sorrow by politicians, business leaders, educators, and community activists. His level-headed approach to conflict cooled tempers in the late '60s when riots broke out in Minneapolis.

But Glover was also a shrewd tactician who organized boycotts and other public action to pressure Minnesota corporations to change hiring practices and improve their treatment of persons of color. Harry Davis was a long friend and colleague of Gleason Glover. He worked with him, beginning in 1967, when Glover came to Minneapolis to head the Urban League. He's here with us this morning to remember a good friend, Mr Davis. Good morning.

HARRY DAVIS: Good morning.

SPEAKER: You've lost a friend this week and a very significant partner in the fight for civil rights. Take us back to the 1960s and remind us what it was like for people of color then. How did Gleason Glover help change the scene back then?

HARRY DAVIS: Well, I think the first thing when Gleason came here, it was right at the middle of the 1967 riots. So things were hot and heavy right at the time that he arrived. If you remember, Plymouth Avenue was burning. Mayor Art Naftalin was the mayor of Minneapolis at that time. We were called about 2 o'clock in the morning and went up to Humboldt and Plymouth Avenue.

I met Gleason there, along with Mayor Naftalin and Chief Hockenson. And as we looked down Plymouth Avenue, the street was just full of people. And there was a riot squad right in that vacant lot on Humboldt and Plymouth Avenue. Chief Hockenson was ready to give orders for the riot squad to move down Plymouth Avenue and arrest everyone that was in the street.

Gleason and I were talking to Mayor Naftalin, saying, now just use this as an example. If you were the one that created a riot, would you stay and wait for the police to come and arrest you? The answer was no. So we said no. The people that there are the people that are curious to see looking at the fire. And many of the people were there in their nightclothes.

And so Mayor Naftalin did not send the troops down Plymouth Avenue, waited until we were able to go down the avenue and try to clear the people off. And then for those people that were there looting, the police went down and arrested them. So that was the kind of influence that Gleason had in the kind of thought process. He had not to harm the innocent people, but to try to get the people that were doing wrong. Many, many times, Gleason did that.

I recall that Gleason and I were members of the Moore board, mobilization of economic resources. That was back during the poverty program. Oftentimes, too, there would be-- some of the people that didn't agree with us would come in with guns on their hips. If you remember back in the '60s, it wasn't until Mayor Naftalin, and then passed an ordinance against guns carrying guns. It was legal to carry guns as long as they were in sight. You could see them. Against the law, it was to carry them concealed.

So we went to the city council and Mayor Naftalin, and they passed a gun ordinance, which meant they could not carry the guns, even if they were showing. So that helped a great deal. But we often sat through meetings with the Moore board and the Urban coalition, where people would come in with guns and try to force you through scare tactics to change your mind, to do things their way. But we resisted that. And Gleason led that fight against resisting, doing things that would scare people or harm people into doing things they didn't want to do.

SPEAKER: He was a real peacemaker.

HARRY DAVIS: He was that could sit and talk, and people would listen because he would talk a lot of sense. He would rationalize what they were trying to do and make it look as if they were not doing it the right way for their own good.

SPEAKER: People like Gleason Glover, and organizations like the Urban League are less visible, perhaps, than they used to be some years ago. You might ask people in their 20s or early 30s what the Urban League does, and they won't be able to tell you, but they'll know who Sharif Willis is. Why do you think that is?

HARRY DAVIS: Well, I think the family unit has fallen apart. Drugs are prominent, and drugs make you do things that you regret later. That all has changed the picture. It has given a whole different personality to the approach people take to a disagreement. There's not a thought process. They don't think before they act. And for those kids whose parents are not with them to hold them, to hug them, to teach them when they're young, that they venture into gangs.

And they get into drugs because it's a way of getting rid of their frustration, of their sorrow. But it's not the way that benefits them because most of them and many of them end up doing 20 or 30 years in jail. And so that's just a wasted life. Or many of them end up in the morgue, and that's another waste of life. So there has to be that voice that comes back again to sense to them.

Here's what you should look forward to. First of all, you've got to consider yourself, consider yourself. What am I going to do in order to become successful? What am I going to do to make change? And then sit down and think about it and plan it. Get the children involved in it. Give them a reason to want to do it. Make them feel that they're wanted. And that's what Gleason would do. He'd make them feel that they were important. He'd make them feel that they had a right to make a mistake.

SPEAKER: As you think about Mr Glover's life and his legacy, what do you think is the unfinished business of his life? What work needs doing most in the Twin Cities right now, in your opinion? And what would Mr. Glover worry most about?

HARRY DAVIS: Well, I think he'd worry about the young people, the children, the five, six, seven, eight-year-old children, whether they're receiving the nurturing and the love that they need to grow, and to grow with a clear mind, and to pursue ways of being becoming successful and beneficial. I think that he would want those of us that have been through the struggle to be mentors to those children so that we can show that other people have suffered just for them to be able to participate in the quality of life that's here in Minnesota. But the quality of life will not continue unless we get to the children and teach them early.

SPEAKER: Well, Harry Davis, thank you very much.

HARRY DAVIS: Thank you.