Waldo Jeff Oral History

In Part 1 of this interview, Waldo Jeff talks of his youth and growing up in the La Fete housing project in segregated New Orleans during the 1940s, and the successful Black professionals who lived there and came to dominate their industries; his education history and his experience as a college athlete on a football scholarship at Colorado State University, learning to work effectively across racial lines, majoring in Physical Education and training to be a college football coach; the post-graduate change to studying social work at Atlanta University and the London School of Economics; his social and professional connections to major civil rights organizations like the National Group of the Congress of Racial Equality in the early 1960s as a student in Atlanta; his work with John Lewis and student activists planning the first and second Selma Marches; living in London and befriending Black classmates from all over the British Empire in the International Social Welfare program. In addition, Waldo Jeff talks in detail about the SEEK program: its development and history within CUNY; his initial impressions of the SEEK program at Queens College as a counselor when it was first instituted in 1967; the social-political environment of Queens in relation to other boroughs; the variety of students enrolled in SEEK and the challenges of students of color within academia; the SEEK goal to change the environment and change the expectations for “non-traditional” students; the SEEK rebellion in the late 1960s seeking control and major changes to the program; and the creation of the campus daycare in the early 1970s in response to SEEK student needs.

In Part 2, Jeff further discusses the administrative shake-up at SEEK with the induction of Bill Sales as the director of the SEEK program; the effectiveness of Bill Sales as director and Waldo Jeff’s experience working with him; adversarial attitudes and clashing education philosophies of students and faculty at Queens College; the intersection of SEEK with social movements of the late 1960s; racial discrimination within New York City school systems broadly; fears of the SEEK program shutting down; his experiences in his last year as a Queens College SEEK counselor and taking a leave of absence to go into the private sector; his feelings after being denied the ability to return to Queens as a SEEK counselor; the 1975 recession and its effect on his business; and memories of other notable SEEK faculty members and his relationships with them.