Welcome to Texas Talk.

I'm Gilbert Garcia, opinion writer and columnist for the San Antonio Express-News.

On this show, we bring you one on one conversations with some of the most fascinating figures in Texas politics, sports, culture and business.

In the 1989 hip hop anthem Fight the Power, Public Enemy's Chuck D famously stated, most of my heroes don't appear in those stamps.

His point was unmistakable.

Over time, our institutions decide what artifacts are worth preserving, which individuals are worth celebrating, what stories are worth telling and how the story should be told.

In her role as the CEO and director of the San Antonio African-American Community Archive and Museum, Deborah Omowale Jarmon   is working to balance the scales and fill in the blanks.

On this episode, she talks about her life, how she is working to preserve African-American history, and what she wants to see from the forthcoming Alamo Visitor Center and Museum.

Let's get started.

Deborah, thank you so much for being on the show.

Gilbert.

Thank you for having me.

Well, I know you moved to San Antonio in 2012 from Oakland.

you had grandchildren here, was that.

Was the move basically a way of being closer to your grandchildren?

Absolutely.

I have five beautiful grandchildren.

Oh, by the way, my son and daughter in law lived here, too.

Had you?

Yeah.

I want to mention that.

Had you spent much time in San Antonio before that?

I had, I came to visit them a few times prior to moving.

When you when you first moved to San Antonio in 2012, what were the, the landmarks that you were interested in seeing?

What were some of the first places that you.

Well, I moved February 2nd, I believe it's the first Friday in February.

So that's Black History Month.

And so the first thing I wanted to do was take my babies to learn about San Antonio black history.

We, I did a search on Google for San Antonio black history.

And Vincent Davis had just written an article about Ellis Alley, and I took them down to see Ellis Alley.

I didn't really know what it was in the mural, and we looked at the mural and it was great to read about the women, but my grandchildren wanted more information.

and I couldn't tell them any more information.

And then what?

With the wheels started turning for you?

I think this is something I. Yeah, it's like, oh, okay, where can I find out more?

And I heard about a black newspaper, but I lived on my son lived off of Boerne Stage, and I lived up toward the medical center.

So I didn't know anything about San Antonio.

Really.

And the east side.

And where to find out.

Black history.

Yeah.

my understanding is, when you were, when you were young, you you were you lived in Columbus, Ohio.

And I read the, Martin Luther King junior spoke to your church when you were five years old.

That's really young.

But I wonder, do you have any memories of that?

I really don't have any memories of that.

What I do have memories of, though, is civil rights and the Jim Crow South.

My mother was from Selma, Alabama.

She was my grandfather's only daughter.

And you know how dads are with their daughters.

So my mother would go back.

well, we would go back as a family to Selma from Columbus often, she explained to you what happened with the marches that she didn't have to.

I was watching them.

I was a very interesting, precarious, inquisitive child.

And so we did watch the news.

I remember Governor Wallace and I remember them talking about Governor Wallace.

What I really remember is traveling from Columbus to Selma.

And that's why the Green Book is so interesting to me.

Because I like to read.

And my dad would take me to the library when I was young, once a week.

So I was just always reading something.

So I wanted to read the triple A triptych, and I wanted to read this green book, and I really don't remember it being green, honestly.

So it may not have been the Green Book because there were other guides, but, I remember we always stopped at the same gas stations, and I remember so and I thought we stopped at the same gas stations because they knew my dad.

He was so friendly.

And I said, oh, daddy just likes these people.

I didn't realize until I got older that we stopped at those gas stations because it was safe.

I remember reading the signs on the sides of the road thinking, why can't we stop at those restaurants?

And we always have fried chicken.

We always had Kool-Aid in the thermos.

And there was always poundcake.

You know what?

Poundcake is okay?

There was always poundcake, like in the back window, but I would wonder, why can't we stop at these places?

and again, it wasn't until I got older and they explained that at all.

Or I mean, no, no, they didn't.

It was just like, no, we're not stopping.

And I think the big thing was, okay, so I was clearly potty trained.

But they carried my party chair in the car like I wanted and like I know how to use the restroom.

Why.

To use this chair I would never just go ahead and drink and eat what you want and would just pull over when you need to use the restroom, like, okay.

But again, it wasn't until I got older and it was actually, the moment was when I wanted to visit the 16th Street Baptist Church because the road to Columbus to, to Selma was through Birmingham, and I wanted to know and see where these girls were killed.

And we did not stop in Birmingham.

It was never, ever, ever, ever scary.

Yes.

and so when I asked my mother about it, she said, we will never go and see that.

And I did not until I was grown.

So those are the kinds of things I remember.

Oh, and one more thing.

Gilbert, I remember and this is huge.

so I was my mother's only child.

I said I was precarious, I was always asking questions.

She had to buy stockings and Selma.

And it was so hot.

The summers are hot in Selma, and I wanted water.

And there were two drinking fountains on the main street in Selma by the Five and dime, which is now it's a Rexall drugstore, because I was there just last year, and she took me to the ceramic waterfall and I said, I don't want that water.

It's hot.

And I knew that at my church in Columbus and in my schools, we had refrigerated water.

And I'm like, why can't I drink out of that one?

And that was the first time that I actually saw my mother cry.

She hurried me away.

My grandmother was a tailor at a cleaners that was in an alley between the main street in Selma and the street where all the black businesses were.

So we went to my grandmother's shop, sit down, and she gave me a glass of ice water and I was fat, dumb and happy.

Literally, because I was with Grandmama, who makes everything better, right?

And I had my water.

But it can.

I didn't realize that I couldn't drink out of that water fountain until I was much older.

Now, I know that you were an air traffic controller for about 27 years.

How did you how did you end up on that career path?

Oh, that's an interesting story.

How much time do we have now?

So really, I do know how much.

Everything good?

so when I was in high school, my counselor, Mr. Boyd, he went down the list of careers.

That's when counselors really were counselors.

And so he went down this list of careers.

And one of the very first ones was air traffic control.

And I liked to travel.

So I asked him about it and he said, oh, no, no, no, no, you have to be in the military.

And by the way, you have this full ride at the Ohio State University, so you don't want to be an air traffic control specialist.

So that's just something that has always kind of stuck with me.

I settled for accounting because I liked math and it was boring.

But anyway, I got married, moved to Detroit.

I was working at High Dramatic, which General Motors transmissions.

I was a tool and die maker.

Me an apprentice.

I didn't have my full, dirty business card yet.

And there was an ad on the radio looking for air traffic controllers, and it was on the black radio station in Detroit.

They said, hey, if you want to know more about it, come to this orientation.

And this was right after President Reagan fired the controller.

I was thinking, what the.

I was wondering if that.

yeah.

So it happened.

That aligned perfectly.

So I went and I was like, I really want to do this.

And that's how I got started.

It took me two years to get hired.

It's from the outside.

It seems like this is a really stressful job.

I mean, did you find it?

Yes.

So I do have people.

Stress is relative though.

So your job is stressful, right?

You get to.

That's true.

Find stories and then you have to write about them and deadlines.

You have to write about them in such a way that's engaging but fair.

So stress is relative.

I certainly had an amazing career.

I wouldn't trade it for the world.

I love telling people where to go and how to get there and and to get paid for it and to get paid for it.

But I also had the privilege of working in public affairs, and I worked in our systems engineering.

So I didn't talk to airplanes for 27 years.

I had the ability to really engage the public on what air traffic controllers did.

I think my favorite was work was career days.

I love talking to children about this amazing career in aviation and not just air traffic, but there's so many great careers and I like that.

there was only about 10% females when I worked, and about 2% were black females, so it was a very different career career field for African-American females.

Now, you know, we mentioned you came in 2012.

I think cam started in 2017.

And during that was your first few years here, you, I think you ran a bed and breakfast for a while and, I was wondering how when when CNN was looking for a CEO director, how did you find out about it?

And how where were you with your organization?

Was doing was kind of in its infancy.

Right.

So I was aware of, say, cam, I actually worked with show Nick Podia at Dream Voice.

So I had the privilege of going to the house on Cherry Street a couple of times.

I knew the board, chair at the time, the wanted chambers.

So I received a text message.

Now, I was minding my own business, volunteering or being volun told, depending upon how you look at it.

At Dream Boys and I received a text message saying I was looking for an executive director.

If you know anyone passed this on, and I read the qualification.

Oh, okay.

I told you I was an air traffic controller.

They were looking for someone with a masters in Museum Studies and, a number of qualifications that I didn't have.

So I saw the text message and I said, okay, if I think of someone else, send it.

And then I got it again, and then I got it the third time.

So the third time I said, okay, I received this from a couple of people.

If I think of someone, I will send it to them.

And they said, no, we're sending it to you.

And I thought, and I read the qualifications again.

I went home and talked to my husband, who I met here in San Antonio.

One of the benefits of moving to San Antonio.

And then I prayed about it, because that's how I actually got to San Antonio.

I prayed and I fasted, and God is is the right move for me.

and I applied and they were at the end of their selection process.

I didn't know this until I was well in the job, but because I apply, they were like, well, wait a minute, we want to hear what Deborah has to say.

And they called me in for an interview like 2 or 3 days after my application.

Then they called me back for a second interview and I'm like, really?

And I had to do a project and they asked me questions, and the next thing I knew, they said, we want to offer you the job now.

You started this is amazing to me.

You started on March 13th, 2020, which I think many people will, if they think back, will know this is basically when the country settled down.

Yes, the maybe even that week.

Yes.

because of the Covid 19 pandemic, how hard you're in this new job, you're you're excited and you're you're in this situation where everything is shutting down.

How did you deal with that?

That was the best thing ever for me, because that gave me an opportunity to figure out what the heck was going on, to meet with our community partners, to meet with the volunteers, to meet with the board, and just really wrap my head around the strategic plan, all of that.

So I had an opportunity to pause and breathe.

some other interesting things happened.

We lost our lease at, the space on Cherry Street, and it was Covid anyway, is it really to love either or?

Yes.

there was a little bit of time in there, but we had to find a place to to move and Hope House ministries.

They took that time to do some work on the House and to make it ready to receive more people that they were serving in the community.

So there was that.

And then trying to bring on people and understanding, okay, how do we move our open house into a virtual space and meeting with partners?

So it was it was a blessing over for me.

I know that sounds bizarre, but it was.

Now, how would you describe the the mission of, say, Kim when it began in 2017?

And has it evolved, in the year since then?

So our mission has evolved slightly in so we were founded as a digital archive.

Our mission is to collect, preserve and share the African-American cultural heritage of the San Antonio region.

So one of the things that struck me was in order for me to share my story, which is deep, you know, it's it's mine.

I have to know you.

I'm just not going to share the intimate part of my family with someone that I don't know.

So I thought, how do we get the public to know, say, cam, so they can trust us?

this was not the first time an African-American museum was thought about.

Or there was an attempt to start one in San Antonio.

So we needed programing.

We needed to be visible so people could see that we were here to stay and that their stories would be safe.

So my strategy was to create programing that involve the community so they could see we were here so that we could so they could see that we had their best interest at heart, and then they would be more apt to give us their stories.

So we have, that digital archive now has over 110,000 digital items in its collection.

We have over 63 collections we just launched, and a newsletter will be going out at the end of this week.

Our digital collection online.

We partner with Texas A&M San Antonio.

So we have some things, on their digital library as well.

We're not moving away from Texas A&M, but we also realized that their library is based on their resources, and their librarian is one person, and their digital librarian is one person.

And I just told you how much we have.

So we're grateful that we're grateful that we received a grant from the Meadows Foundation to be able to house our archive ourselves.

So we're putting all of these things online because, again, that was our original intent, and it hasn't changed.

It's just that our visibility has allowed us to collect more.

One of the things that as I've gotten older, I look back on and think, and this, this is I don't mean this is an indictment of our education system, but, you know, there are choices that are made as far as what history is told to us.

And I think that drives a lot of what your work is.

But, I mean, I think growing up, I never I in school, I never heard anything about the 1921 Tulsa massacre.

I never heard anything about the murder of Emmett Till.

you know, there's just so many stories I did know about the Buffalo Soldiers and things like that.

do you see your work with, say, cam and your work in the community as, a way to to supplement or fill in the blanks?

The the the things that are just that our kids aren't or aren't being taught elsewhere.

Absolutely.

And I'm excited about that opportunity because you and I talked a little bit before we started on air, and I mentioned how our stories are so much more common than thought about.

And even when I moved here, yes, I knew about Brown versus Board of Education, but I didn't know about and now I can't think of the name of the case.

But in South Texas, the, near the border, the fourth grade students that were held back and because they weren't speaking English and how they were taken to court in that case was heard right here.

We'll see.

When we realized that there was Brown versus Board of Education.

And then there was the, Mexican-American school case.

Wow.

There's so many things that are similar.

And when we can unpack that, we can then look at how how we can move forward, like, why are our schools still segregated or are they segregated because we don't know history?

I'm going to say yes, ma'am, because if we realized that, first of all, history repeats itself.

If you don't know it, we can stop that.

We can live in a more collective community because our stories all interconnect.

I've heard you talk, you know, about so many different historical, you know, major historical stories, and I can I can see that you just.

You're there some people have a fascination with history, and some people don't.

And clearly, you're one of those people.

Where did that come from?

So I was an inquisitive only child.

And when I can't, I can't stress this enough.

And my parents took me to like I went to the New York World's Fair in 1964.

I came to HemisFair.

I went to Expo 67.

In Montreal.

I went to, I think it was Expos 72, I think, in Spokane.

And I was always going to museums and because I was an only child, my mother, she made it a point for me to to play with children of other cultures so I could learn and not be afraid.

I traveled the world, and I just see me in so many other people.

And like, we talked about the, ubuntu, which is, I see you and me, and you see me and you, that really is how we're connected in the world.

And we can't understand that if we don't understand our stories.

and the origin of those stories, to understand that, yes, we are connected.

And when we lean into that connectivity, we can make a difference in our community.

And that's huge for me.

My parents taught me to really leave a community better than you found it, leave a neighborhood better than you found it.

And we say, can we have that opportunity now?

A really exciting development for, say, camp is that the organization now owns the Kress Building, our story building.

This is where, the it was the first location in the South, and this was 1960, in, which the lunch counter were desegregated.

and Kwame owns the building.

He's going to be moving in at some point.

I mean, I guess the challenges to get to get funding for, development, there's I know there's going to be some work on the on the building.

Right.

But when you look at at the Kress building, not only the, the, the size, the, the, the opportunity, the space there, but just the historic importance of it.

I mean, what is what does this mean to you and to seeking, what it means to me is that it's a huge opportunity for our community.

Again, being, young in a Jim Crow South in Columbus, Ohio, wasn't really the South, but I do remember my parents having to draw my feed on a paper bag because I could try on shoes and they would then take they would cut it out and take that.

In some stores I could try on shoes and they would take that and put it in the shoes.

And if the bag bit, you know, that means the shoes didn't fit.

What I hear.

Older people in San Antonio recall that from the Kress building.

Recall that they couldn't eat their.

And now, being a community member and having their name associated with it, because we were a community archive and museum, to see their face light up and to see that joy is huge.

I don't I don't think, I can't think of any better feeling than to see the satisfaction on their faces.

So there's that.

There's also what that will bring to the city of San Antonio.

There isn't a space in San Antonio that talks about our history as a collective.

and we are telling history through a unapologetically African-American lens.

But I can't tell that story if I will tell everyone else's story, because then it just doesn't make sense.

So we'll be able to tell the story of San Antonio.

We hope to open June 2026. there are some challenges.

If it was 2020 when the world was reeling from the murder of George Floyd, we probably would have more money than what we know to do with.

But that guilt has kind of subsided for now.

And so we're just doing what we can.

But we'll open June 2026.

We've just got a little bit of time, but a story that's been in the news, revolves around the Alamo.

You're in the Alamo Museum Planning Committee, and you expressed concerns about, a planned vignette which would involve, enslaved person Joe, who was the first person to tell the story of the Holocaust survivor, at the Alamo and, and told the story of it.

And in the depiction, he's standing next to William Travis, a rifle.

My sense from you.

And correct me if I'm wrong, it wasn't so much the idea that we got to holding a rifle because, you know, it's not so much that you saw it.

Maybe it's historically accurate, but the if that's all we're going to, we're going to see of him if there's no context and it's creating the sense that he was there by choice, that this was that was it was it was the lack of context.

Was that is that fair to say?

Absolutely.

to me, what makes Joe important to the story is that he told the story.

And when you have him there with a gun, you have no idea that he's the one that told the story.

So can we can we talk about that?

Yes.

And I think, we hopefully have a way forward now where we can where things are looking more positive on that front.

Yes, yes.

And I know you are still working on details.

I but it is your hope that it would be something where he he's, he's depicted in a way where it's clear that he is the storyteller, where he's that's, that's what we're seeing of him is that that is my hope.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I have to be a little careful because I signed an NDA and I, and I agreed that I would stick to the NDA, you said.

But my hope is that he showed, telling the story.

Deborah, thank you so much for being on the show.

It's great having you're welcome.

Gilbert.

That's all for this episode of Texas Talk.

Thanks for watching.

If you have any thoughts or questions you want to share with us, please email us at Texas talk@klrn.org.

We'll be back next month with a new guest.

Until then, take care.