In Black America; John S. Chase: President of UT Austin's Ex-Students Association

. From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. When I say young now, I'm talking about elementary school, high school kids that pass, that can pass your building and look up there and see the word architect and have fun can come in. We have kids come in office now and they've missed the word. What do you do? You know, and you get a chance to tell them and show them through the office something they've never seen in their lives.

But you can't do that if you're on the 30th floor downtown. You see what I mean? And that's why I have remained in the hood and put it like that. Because I want the minority kids, the black kids, to be able to see that there is something else to be done. When Chase enrolled at UT Austin in 1950, he made history. He became the first black among 7,250 students. He also was the first black to graduate from UT's School of Architecture, the first black to be licensed as an architect in Texas. The first black to be named a UT Distinguished Alumnus, the first black to be appointed to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, and now the first black president of the 66,000 member UTX Students Association.

After graduation, UT and Chase parted ways. But in 1965, UT began extending invitations, asking him to attend campus functions. Since then, he has been actively involved with the X Students Association, encouraging students to graduate and recruiting minority students. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr., and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, John S. Chase, president of UT Austin's X Students Association, In Black America. I wouldn't say they are easy to come by, but there are more projects available. The competition makes it that much more difficult. You can imagine how it was for me when I first started. I was only black, licensed architect in the state of Texas. That's a pretty good lock off the tree. Now, you know, they still not that many, which I give me great concern. That even after me having finished UT's architecture in 1952, and that school had been open since that point of time, how few black architects they are right now.

In 1971, 12 African-American architects met in Detroit, Michigan during the AIA convention. What these professionals recognized was the desperate need for an organization dedicated to the development and advancement of minority architects. From that meeting, the national organization of minority architects was founded, and John S. Chase was one of the 12. Born and raised in Annapolis, Maryland, he attended public schools there, and remember telling his industrial art teacher, how he would like to draw buildings when he grew up. Chase graduated from Hampton Institute with a bachelor's degree in architecture. Wanting to do more with his career, he moved to Austin and entered the graduate program at UT Austin. In June 1950, Chase became the first African-American to register at the University of Texas at Austin. After graduation in 1952, he turned down the dean ship of the new school of architecture at Preview A&M University.

Instead, he moved to Houston and opened his own architectural firm. On July 1, 1998, John S. Chase became the president of UT Austin's X Students Association. Recently, in Black America spoke with his pioneer. In high school, of course, I used to doodle around and draw and sketch even in elementary school, but in my own way, you know. In high school, it was made very clear to me by really one of my instructors, Mr. Marshall, as I remember it, who used to ask quite often around the class, he called every person, especially if it were a male or my boy. He asked me when he said, well, what do you plan to do? When you finish and go to college and blah, blah, blah.

I said, well, I don't know what it is, but I'd like to be the person who designs buildings and determines what they look like, how they go together inside and that type of thing. So, he said, you want to be an architect? That's the way it went. That's where it started. And your first job out of Hampton was at an architect firm in Philadelphia? That is correct. And what did you particularly do there? Well, I did drafting in the architectural office there was mostly residential work that was involved and we did some degree of specifications and that type of thing. After that, you moved to Austin. How did you happen to select the University of Texas for your graduate studies?

Well, after moving to Austin, of course, I realized in the work that I was doing, which number one was both teaching and working as an architect. For a lumber company doing their work, I realized I needed some more architecture and the best way I felt to get it was to go back to school and do a graduate degree and the University of Texas being right there in Austin. And of course, one of the leading architectural schools in the country, I were thinking was the place to go. At the time, however, that was early late 49 that we're talking about now, very early 50s. The University was not completely segregated, but undergraduate and undergraduate schools.

But there was a case in front of the Supreme Court swept by the painter at that time. So I just decided to apply and I applied for entrance in there and from that point on, things just sort of fell in place and really very rapidly. It wasn't more than a couple of months after I applied that the Supreme Court decision came on that the University must admit African American students to the graduate school, not to undergraduate, but to graduate school. I often wondered, you know, why they did that? Me that they pushed you to go on into the undergraduate and then go on to graduate, but that wasn't the way it happened. And when the decision came down, I had an application in there and I was accepted.

Being determined and had strong probably to a certain degree, did you feel any added pressures being the only African American in the school at the time? Any added pressures? Oh yeah, you always had that. Oh yeah, very definitely. So, you know, the drag is still segregated. You couldn't live on campus like other students were. You had to live out in the city and commute back and forward. You got into a class situation where you would only African American in the in the class. Yes, they were some pressures. How did your wife of 46 years now assist you in their process? Well, I think she was very helpful in being quite understanding and helping me to adjust to the problems that that experience offered me really.

After graduation, you turned down a position in prayer view? I turned it down, yes, because at the time now, the law was that if a subject matter was offered at purview or Texas 7, then African Americans could not attend any state schools. They would have to go to that particular, take that subject at a purview of Texas 7, and of course, with me going in there as with a massive degree in architecture, I would have qualified that school, that is purview now, to offer graduate degree in architecture, which meant that any, any black students that wanted to go to UT would then be called, they would have called not to let him in because it was offered at purview.

And of course, if you remember Texas 7, never really offered architecture, they offered architectural drafting, which was a step up to under there. And so I just, there was just the way I could be a recipient of the degree myself, and then go up to purview and stop everybody else. So that's why I turned it down, and accepted a job teaching drafting at Texas 7 University. Eventually, you opened up your own architecture firm. Why so? Yes, I did, I opened it up because I couldn't get hired. I tried to be hired by other firms, at the time there were no black firms I could go to in Texas. Not that I would have gone, you know, only to them anyhow, but there were just none there, and all the firms I went to were other than black, and everyone I went to said no, it was just that circle.

And I made the statement that, well, that is to myself, well, you know, after you do that for several months, and especially when people advertise that they need help. It was open, you get there, and you get all these lectures, you know, but I'm not like this, and Michigan, and I'm from New York, but I've got clients that wouldn't, I've got women and white women and officers, after you get all that, you get a little fed up. Right. So I said, well, what I'll do, I'll just take this state examination and stay put, and try Madonna's to pass it, and if I do, I'll just come on out and hire myself. Do you remember that first job? Yes, I do.

What was it? It was a hotel, a small, small hotel in Austin, right at 11th, and what is that, Navasota? The Lux Hotel? What do you know? That's right. Well, of course, it's been remodeled a couple of times since that, but that was the first job to read, who owned it, Mr. and Mrs. Reed, they're both deceased. Right. But I never will forget, I didn't know how to charge, I didn't know anything about that kind of thing, you know, and just having that experience, and when he asked me, well, we cut a deal, I would redo the hotel for him, if he would give me three meals a day for six months. I've always been fascinated and somewhat curious, you're looking in an area, and somehow you can come up with a project that can tell you how many bricks needs to go on this side of a structure.

How much cement needs to be used? How do you calculate all this? Is that the magic of architecture? Well, it's, I don't know, you know, they're formulas, they're methods that are used. However, you're not as much into calculating the quantity of material, as much as you are. It's determining its proper use, and its cost, and how that fits into, you know, the total scheme, you know, especially its use. Why do you put one material in a bathroom and another in the kitchen, than a living room, you know? How has the experience been the first African-American graduate of the UT School of Architecture, and transcending that to what your current responsibilities are as President of the X Students Association?

Well, I don't think it was just a hundred percent me, you know, I think UT reached out also. And I reached out, they reached out, and I accepted the reach, and taken a position that you can always do more inside than you can outside. You see, and, you know, I just put away the experiences that I had had where negative that is. And, you know, I was a graduate, I was entitled to, excuse me, work with the alumni association by joining in membership, and then why shouldn't I just complete the circle? Understand. What are your goals and objectives as President?

Well, of course, to number one, and during this whole crisis involving Hopwood, is to see to it the best I can that the association will continue to provide the financial resources to minority students that are so necessary for them to stay and accept admission into the university. Now, that's very, very key in my desires. I want to, number two, continue to make the association very attractive to graduates so that its membership will continue to grow, and that it will grow. It's just not a matter of graduating and walking off and staying off, but graduating and actually coming back and being continuing that relationship through membership in the association.

I think, and then as they get in, you know, once you get into attracting recent graduates and that type of thing, you're really into the younger group, and that's what I want to do. I want to get more of the younger graduates. That isn't to the exclusion of others, but I would like to direct more of the younger graduates into a very active role in the association. Of course, lastly, and not at all at least, is to try to continue some of the other work that my predecessor did, Larry Temple, who my way of thinking was outstanding in the manner in which he provided over the association and the things that he did. How will you as president and the association assist in the We Are Texas Development Campaign for the University?

Well, we are assisting by, again, using the resources within the association to reach out and touch the legislators and that type of thing to let them know that we are there and that we continually need their help and assistance and things like that. You were awarded the UT Distinguished Alumnus Award? Yes. Your reaction and feeling from receiving that Distinguished Award? Well, naturally, I was very pleased to have been recognized by the association as having made some accomplishments and recognized in that way, I think, among one of the high points that I've experienced in my lifetime to be very frank with. You were one of the founding members of the National Organization of Minority Architects?

That is correct. Why did you all feel that particular organization was necessary to form and what are some of the goals and objectives of that organization? Well, it was very necessary. I think then and now too that the purpose was to get minority architects, notice its national organization of minority architects, to get minority architects together to discuss various problems and discuss possible solutions to better out training our participation in architecture and to help to literally help each other. And that was the purpose and I think that goes on. In fact, annual meeting comes up now and I think next couple of weeks. Yeah, that's right. And to this day, that is still what happens when you go to this meeting, you have a chance to talk with architects of minority around the country to discuss problems that you've had say in Houston or Austin or San Antonio with architects at the African Americans say that

have had the exact same problems in New York City. You know, discussing how each handle them and that type of thing. How you break the corporate veil that's up there. How do you get into the Fortune 500 companies where so much of the work is and where we are not, you see? At one time it was, we caught the Dickens even getting work from our black colleges and universities. But now I think since we design programs to look into that, it's much better. You've got a just an awful lot of the boys. Still you guys like to don't use them. So you've got an awful lot to do. And so I think NOMA has been extremely helpful to especially African American architects in their pursuit of a piece of the pie.

If I'm not mistaken, your current location is the location in which you started out at? No, that's not at all. My current location is not this. I started out with an office. I turned the dining room of my home office. From there, I sold a piece of property that I'd bought in Austin to live in when I couldn't live on campus at UT. Years later, I sold it at a very nice profit and built my office in Houston. So I moved from the dining room to an office building that I owned in Houston. And since that time, I've moved out of that building into the current location where I am.

And how long have you been at that location? You've been the one that I'm in now? Right. About 18 years. Why is it important for you to stay in the neighborhood, so to speak? Well, to me, it is extremely important. And the thing that I've always wanted to do was serve as an example. When I say young now, I'm talking about elementary school, high school kids that can pass your building and look up there and see the word architect and have fun can come in. We have kids come in office now and they've missed the word. What do you do? And boy, you get a chance to tell them and show them through the office something they've never seen in their lives. But you can't do that if you're on the 30th floor downtown. You see what I mean? And that's why I have remained in the hood and put it like that.

Because I want the minority kids, the black kids, to be able to see that there is something else to be done. You see that maybe one day they can do it. And we have had, I see now some dollars that are out and ladies are practicing architecture, that did that, that passed by the office one day and looked. Do you still have an opportunity to go out and mentor? Oh yeah, oh yeah, very definitely so. I'm used to invited to so many of the career conferences in the high schools and elementary schools around town. My betcha, I get a dozen or more invitations each year. And I try to make them and those that I don't make.

I have one, I send one of the people in the office to represent us and talk to the kids. How large is your firm? Well, we have two offices right now. We have one in Dallas and one in Houston. We have four going but we close to. We have another one in Washington DC where we stayed for about 14 years. And we have one in LA where we stayed a much shorter period of time. Currently right now we've got the old in Dallas. There about 16 in Dallas and maybe one or two left in Houston. Before we run our time with the Chase, our projects and jobs easier to come by today or since there are more architects and more minority architects, the competition is much greater.

Oh, I think both. Just say this is right. I wouldn't say they are easy to come by but there are more projects available. The competition makes it that much more difficult. You can imagine that was for me when I first started I was only black licensed architect in the state of Texas. And then as Chase architect and president of UT Austin's ex students association. If you have questions, comments or suggestions asked the future in black America programs, write us. Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for IBA technical producer Cliff Hargrove and production assistant Kaelin Zorette. I'm John L Hansen Jr. Thank you for joining us today and please join us again next week.

Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in black America cassettes, communication building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in black America cassettes, communication building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. From the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John L Hansen Jr. Join me this week on in black America. Having finished UT's architecture in 1952, how filled black architects they are right now.