Items

• Oral History: Byrd, Arnold Norris, 2022

  This interview was recorded as part of the Black Camden Oral History Project. Arnold Norris Byrd was born to Laura Bertha and Ralph Herman Byrd in Camden, New Jersey, in 1939. Byrd attended Rutgers University in New Brunswick from 1957 to 1961 and earned his Bachelor’s in Psychology while participating in athletics. At Rutgers he was part of the Black Student Union and the ROTC. In 1976, he graduated from Antioch College with a Master’s in Community Education. During the interview, Byrd discusses his family’s decision to move from Virginia as part of the Great Migration and his positive experiences growing up in Camden. He touches on the issue of school integration in the city. The interview includes information about his experiences in the ROTC and his military service in Korea. He ended his service as a captain in the reserves. He describes race relations in the military. He talks about his life-long participation in athletics, especially during his time at Rutgers University and while serving in the military. Byrd returned to Camden and spent most of his life residing in his hometown. The interview highlights his civil service and economic development work in the city, including work for the Welfare Board and his decades as the Executive Director of the Camden County Council on Economic Opportunity (OEO). He describes his relationship with Camden leader Poppy Sharp and the Black People’s Unity Movement. He also discusses his perspectives on Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X.
• Oral History: Fisher, Michael M., 2022

  This interview was conducted by Professor Deborah Gray White for the Scarlet and Black Research Center. Michael M. Fisher was a star football player at Rutgers University–New Brunswick from 1974 to 1978. He is known as Mike Fisher in the annals of Rutgers athletics. He was born in New Brunswick and grew up in nearby Edison. In his interview he recalls his experience growing up in Middlesex County, New Jersey, and participating in youth sports through the Pop Warner Little Scholars program. He discusses college sports at length, including recruitment, training, travel, rivalries, and the use of college athletes' image and likeness for promotional purposes in the 1970s. During his time at Rutgers, he was part of the undefeated 1976 Scarlet Knights team and played the first college football game at the Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands. He also shares memories of the social life on campus and the African American fraternities and sororities in the 1970s.
• Oral History: Grimsley, Harvey, 2019

  Harvey Grimsley was born in Haleburg, Alabama, in 1922. His family fled the racial oppression and violence of the Jim Crow-era South and moved to New Jersey during his childhood. Grimsley attended schools in Bloomfield and then Orange, where his relative Monte Irvin also grew up. Irvin went on to play professional baseball and became a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Grimsley graduated from Orange High School in 1942. During World War II, Grimsley was drafted. He served overseas in Europe in the segregated U.S. Army in an all-Black transportation unit. He and his unit partook in D-Day, the Allied invasion of German-occupied Normandy on June 6, 1944, and landed on Utah Beach. In 1945-'46, Grimsley attended Biarritz American University in Europe and played on the university's integrated basketball team. After being discharged from the Army, Grimsley was recruited to play football at Rutgers, which he attended on the GI Bill. Between '46 and '49, Grimsley distinguished himself as the Scarlet Knight's leading scorer, despite never starting a game under coach Harvey Harman. After graduating in the Rutgers College Class of 1950, Grimsley spent his career working as a coach, including being a high school coach in Newark and Piscataway and working as a recruiter for Governors State University in Chicago. He was inducted into the Rutgers Athletic Hall of Fame in 1993.
• Oral History: Mitchell, Bryant, 2015

  Part 1 - Bryant Mitchell was born on July 13, 1947, in Hampton, Virginia. An art history major, he graduated from Rutgers College in 1969. While at Rutgers, he was named most valuable player for the 1968 football season. He is a 1992 Rutgers Football Hall of Fame inductee. During Mr. Mitchell's first interview, he recalls growing up in Virginia, an early exposure to Civil Rights activism by way of his father, Henry Bryant Mitchell, and his time at Rutgers. He joined the 25th Infantry Division in 1969. Part 2 - Mr. Mitchell served in the 25th Infantry Division from September 1969 to September 1971 as a combat MP. He was stationed at Cu Chi before being assigned to Dau Tieng. After leaving the military, Mr. Mitchell entered the University of Virginia Law School and graduated in 1975. Currently, Mr. Mitchell works in real estate, owning his own brokerage in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.
• Oral History: Petway, Sandra M., 2022

  This interview was conducted by Professor Deborah Gray White for the Scarlet and Black Research Center. Sandra Petway, known to her friends and fellow athletes as Sandee, started the women’s track and field program at Rutgers–New Brunswick in 1974, a year after joining the university as a physical education instructor. She was the first Black head coach at Rutgers and led the track team until 1980. In 2022, she was inducted into the Rutgers Athletics Hall of Fame in recognition of her contribution to women’s sports and the many successes that her track team achieved during her tenure. Petway was born in 1950 in Plainfield, NJ, and grew up in Vineland in South Jersey. She attended Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey), where she developed her leadership experience by creating a women’s varsity track team as an undergraduate student. In her interview, she discusses her memories of Rutgers athletics in the 1970s and the changes that Title IX brought to the university. She also discusses her family history and the impact that her mother, teacher and principal Pauline Petway, had on the community in Vineland.