Name/Title
Lynel Gardner Oral History InterviewEntry/Object ID
RLG_108Scope and Content
This interview is part of the Represent Los Gatos Oral History Project series. Lynel Gardner was born in San Francisco but was raised by his great aunt and uncle in East Palo Alto and then in the Mountain View and Santa Clara areas. He details his childhood and adolescence, his family life, his heritage, and growing up to become an artist in Los Angeles. He shares about his experiences in performance art with the Hittite Empire and the plays he has written and performed. Learn how he landed in Los Gatos in the 1980s, hear about his experiences working in Town in the Recreation Center, and more. Lynel's interview includes honest conversation on the diversity of the Town, as he recounts his encounters with other members of the community at local protestsand rallies for racial justice and encounters with law enforcement as well. Listen to his story, as he shares his thoughts on how to be a positive change for the community. Read a complete transcript of the interview below. Daniel Keough: [00:00:03] Alright, we're recording. And so I guess, do you want to say your name and the date? Lynel Gardner: [00:00:13] Lynel Gardner, September 17th. Daniel Keough: [00:00:16] Awesome. And so I guess just to start off, where were you born? Lynel Gardner: [00:00:23] I was born in San Francisco, California, January 15th, 1964. And my brother was born January 15th, 1963. Daniel Keough: [00:00:34] What's your brother's name? Lynel Gardner: [00:00:35] Lamont Gardner. My family, back when I was a kid, a baby, French names were very popular for babies. So most of my siblings have French names like my name is "Ionel". But because I lived in America, it became Lynel. So I'm stuck with an Americanized French name. Daniel Keough: [00:00:58] That probably happens to a lot of people. Lynel Gardner: [00:01:00] Yeah, right? Daniel Keough: [00:01:02] And how long did you live in San Francisco? Lynel Gardner: [00:01:06] Well, unfortunately, my mom and dad kind of had a shotgun wedding. My mom had my brother at 15, she had me at 16. And so they were high school sweethearts that got together, and she got pregnant too soon, and so I was, I grew up originally in East Palo Alto and Hunters Point and because of the youth of my parents, my great uncle, great aunt raised me and my brother, and they also raised my mom. So my great aunt and uncle were pretty old when they raised us. And so I went to Brentwood Middle School. And because of the violence that was occurring in East Palo Alto in the 60s, I mean, I had a gang. I had to have a gang to get to school and get back to school, get back from school. And because of the violence that was occurring in East Palo Alto in the late 60s, my great uncle decided to move to Mountain View. So we were one of the first African-American families in the South Bay at that time. Originally, East Palo Alto was a completely all white community, and then my grandfather was a GI and he bought 31 homes in East Palo Alto and then moved his black friends into the white community. And then there was, with the promise that if they were going to sell the house, they had to sell the house back to him. So because of the GI, my grandfather's GI Bill, East Palo Alto became segregated. And then they had what is called white flight. And the idea that if black people move in, the property value will go down. So that's why eventually white people moved out, moved out of the East Palo Alto area. And then, like I said, I went to, we moved to Mountain View and then I went to Mountain View High School and I went to Archbishop Mitty High School and St. Lawrence Academy growing up. Played ball, baseball, football. Played against Barry Bonds and played baseball and football most of my life. And my dad was a, became a pimp and my mom became a prostitute. So that had a detrimental effect on me personally, emotionally, but it was, it helped me to escape into writing and acting and art, because I needed a way to express myself as a young child. So I escaped into art and books. So I was a prolific reader and writer when I was in middle school. And that's what kind of honed my skill to become a professional artist. So then we moved to, then my mom decided when she got herself off, she was a heroin addict. When she got herself off of heroin, she decided she wanted to raise her kids again. So she took us from my great aunt and uncle when I was in the fourth grade and we moved to Santa Clara. And that's when I went to Mitty and St. Lawrence Academy. And I moved in with my mom and her new husband, who was Sicilian. And unfortunately, he was physically abusive and he was, had the highest kill count in his platoon in Vietnam. So he had some issues. So I lived in Santa Clara until, even though my mom got off the heroin, she actually became a pill popper, an alcoholic. So by my sophomore year at Mitty, I decided that I had enough. So I moved back to, I moved back to Mountain View and finished my high school education at Mountain View High School at my great aunt and uncle's house. My family's British. We're Apache on my dad's side, Cherokee on my mom's side and African-American. So my great great grandparents were British Radcliffe out of Yorkshire. So I think at least 70 percent of Black people in America are of mixed race. So I have that legacy and it's taken me a long time embrace it, because I grew up in the era of the civil rights era. So it was more of an era of Black power. And Black is beautiful, but at the same time my grandmother was white. So living in East Palo Alto it's like, who's that white woman? The kids in middle school would say, "who's that white lady living at your house?" And I was like, "You mean my grandmother?" You know, because when you're young, you don't have a concept of color, you know? So she was just Grandma Pocahontas to us, you know, so. So once I came back to Mountain View and graduated Mountain View, the tech industry, I worked at Xerox Corporation. I was the inventory control person and the shipping and receiving at Xerox PARC in Mountain View. And I went to Foothill College and then decided that the culture of Mountain View was changing from art, music and performance, street performance to tech. And a lot of the industry, the art industry, film industry was changing. So I moved to L.A. in 1989 to become a cinematographer. And right when I got into I went to an audition and got into a performance group called the Hittite Empire, an all Black male performance art group. And we started the second coming of the avant garde movement in Los Angeles. And there were two avant garde movements in America, 60s. And then I started, I was part of the new avant garde in L.A. in the late 80s, and that avant garde movement in L.A. became global, became basically marketable and became global. So then I stayed in L.A. for five years and then came back to Mountain View to take care of my great uncle who fell ill with diabetes and lost his leg to diabetes. So I've been here since nineteen, excuse me, I've been here since two thousand excuse me, let me correct that, I came back in '94 and been back ever since. So I think that's the short version. I'm still an artist, still a writer, filmmaker. I've written a play that I toured in the U.K. and London. And I have about three books right now on Amazon. So that's the short version, I think. I wrote a play about my father called "Stories I Never Told My Father", and I started that play as a young.. In the play, I play myself as five years old and I grow up in the play until adulthood within the play. And that's what I toured through the UK. And I've worked in, I work at the Senior Center currently as a maintenance in Los Gatos and I work at the Rec Center and I do maintenance for the Rec Center in Los Gatos. I've worked in Los Gatos since the 80s. I was a limousine driver back in the 80s in Los Gatos. I lived in Saratoga for 20 years on Sobey Road, and yeah, it's kind of the short version. Daniel Keough: [00:10:10] I want to ask, do you know why your uncle chose Mountain View? Lynel Gardner: [00:10:17] Because my great aunt worked at Stanford, she was a nurse, we were actually going to move to Los Altos, Los Altos, California, back in the 70s. But my great aunt got into a car accident and was injured. So he didn't want to have her drive from Los Altos to Stanford Hospital to work. So that's why we ended up moving to Mountain View. Daniel Keough: [00:10:49] Ok, and I was also interested. I can't remember exactly who it was who bought the thirty one homes in East Palo Alto, Lynel Gardner: [00:10:58] My group, my dad, my dad's dad, my grandfather on my dad's side, yeah. Daniel Keough: [00:11:05] That's a pretty significant historical moment, I think, for East Palo Alto. Lynel Gardner: [00:11:10] Yeah. And it was you know, that was the only way we could get into, get the housing. You know, that was the first generation that was able to move out of this because Hunter's Point was the shipping back in the day, so the greatest immigration of America was the immigration from the south to the west with the promise of shipbuilding jobs. And so, but the thing about the north is the north is covert racism and the south is overt racism. So even though my great uncle who worked the coal mines in West Virginia for 20 years, worked as the, he worked in for United Steel for 20 years, and then even though he had degrees, had to start at United Airlines as a janitor and worked from a janitor to eventually becoming a shop foreman for the jet engineering department. So he was a shop foreman that built the jet engines for United Airlines. And if it wasn't for GI Bill, East Palo Alto would still be white. Daniel Keough: [00:12:37] What was his name? Lynel Gardner: [00:12:39] His name was Herbert Gannaway. Daniel Keough: [00:12:43] I just wanted to make sure we got that, because I didn't know if I caught that earlier. Yeah, that's like that's quite a storied history. Lynel Gardner: [00:12:54] You know, what's funny is that I just met a gentleman in Los Gatos like three days ago who was part of that generation that was in East Palo Alto when it was white. And he's a resident of Los Gatos now, and I met him in the park there in front of the post office and he said that his dad was a civil rights activist and stayed in East Palo Alto, kept his homes in East Palo Alto and decided to stay in East Palo Alto and not be caught up in the white flight. And he ended up being renting, keeping his homes, moving out of East Palo Alto and but renting to Black families to this day because he felt he saw the plight of Black people and decided to help them. And so it wasn't just my grandfather. There were actually white people, white families in East Palo Alto that helped Black people and Black families fight segregation. So, I mean, I'm also a documentarian, so I'm going to interview him about that story because a lot of Black people don't know about how the suburbs were able to integrate and don't know that the civil rights movement wasn't just about Black people striving to get ahead, it was also other people who helped us get to that place. And so I want to kind of interview him so we can actually kind of like bring that history into play, you know? Daniel Keough: [00:14:57] Yeah, that's an important moment because it probably, that white flight probably also cemented some of the some of the more racist policies that we know went into affect in Palo Alto itself. Lynel Gardner: [00:15:09] Yeah, the red lining and also the the unsaid redlining that's still happening with some of the brokers there in Los Gatos who are keeping the main downtown area white. You know, those that live around the downtown areas of Los Gatos are generally white families. That happens around the United States because I know I have friends that work for Alain Pinel and a lot of these brokers. And if you're of color and you want a house, they will not show you a house around the downtown area. They'll show you a house on the outskirts of Los Gatos and the clients will go to them and say, if you sell to people of color, we won't tell our friends to come to your establishment. I mean, my best friend was one of the brokers for Alain Pinel, she would tell me these stories. So it's still happening today. Daniel Keough: [00:16:18] Yeah, I think that's, it seems to be one of the issues with kind of tracking, tracking racist policies and lending and things in Los Gatos is that there's not a huge paper trail. And it's hard to find any like redlining maps specifically. Lynel Gardner: [00:16:35] No, it's not. It's all unsaid right now, I mean, redlining is illegal, but the practice still exists. See what I'm saying? And then when people want to move out rather than have a white person, a black person or a person of color buy the house, they'll move their friends into the house and make and give them, and not list the house. And even though these families are barely scraping by that they let live in their house, they just want to keep it white, so. Daniel Keough: [00:17:12] Yeah, and I want to ask a little bit about you mentioned you have Cherokee and Apache background, and have you been able to, do you have a connection with that part of the family? And how did you.. Lynel Gardner: [00:17:26] Well, my great grandmother, Pocahontas, was her name, and she was off the reservation in South Carolina. But her and my dad, it's funny. As a kid, I would go by my dad's mother's house, and she was called Big Momma. Sometimes in Black communities and even in tribal communities. Just because you call, someone's called Big Momma doesn't mean she's that's your mom. It's just that she's the one that takes care of all the kids. So she's given that moniker Big Momma because she's everyone's momma, because you have these kids that get married, have kids out of wedlock. And so they're still kids themselves. And so Big Momma is known, that's where you take your kids when you're trying to get by, trying to, you know, scrape everything you can together to pay the rent, to get food on the table. As a young kid, you're not really responsible. So you send your kid to Big Momma's house. So that was my great grandmother who was Apache. And then 30 years later, it's funny, I was looking at some old pictures on my grandmother's wall and I said, who's that white guy in that photo right there next to Big Momma? My great...my grandmother, and then my my cousin told me, oh, that's your grandfather. Like what? Nobody talked about this guy. Well, why does he look white? Oh, he's not white, he's Apache and he actually raped my grandmother and took off after that. And my name is Lynel Gardner, but my name should be Lynel Spain. That was his name and my grandfather, his son, Mr. Spain's son, my grandfather, hated his dad, so he, my grandmother ended up marrying Mr. Gardner, my grandfather's stepdad, and so eventually my grandfather felt more, I guess because he was raised by Mr. Gardner and eventually changed his name to Bill from Bill Spain to Bill Gardner. So my name is by default, my name is Lynel Gardner, but it should be Lynel Spain, the Apache name. And on my grandmother's side, because you see in Black, in the African-American community, we think that if we have any white in us, it has something to do with slavery so we don't talk about it. There's a lot of shame in that. So if you have any white ethnicity, it must mean you were a slave. But that's not the case in my family. So my mom's side, Grandma Pocahontas was, her parents were British and my grandmother's surname before she married was Radliffe, which is a derivative of Ratcliffe, which is Yorkshire family. So we're from the Yorkshire of Great Britain. But during the civil rights movement, you had the Black Panthers, you had SNCC, you had the NAACP. They all had different ideologies. At the same time, they had different because the ideologies, they had different needs. So in order to unite when it comes to getting political, in terms of politics and getting things done, getting provided for as a community, we combined it into being Negro or being Black that way we were kind of united under the same flag because then we're all, then SNCC would get their money and the pot would be split, right. And then Black Panthers would get their money from government. And NAACP would get their piece of the pie and it would be enough for everyone. So we through the Black Power movement, we kind of united under Black power, so, those that were mixed, like my family that was of mixed ethnicities, we were kind of clumped into the same Black power struggle rather than going 'Wait, we're part Indian, we're part white, we're part this, we're part that.' And also there's an issue with I don't know if you know the history of this. The Indian campaign, but it wasn't the white soldiers that ended the Indian campaign. It was the Buffalo Soldiers. The Buffalo Soldiers were Black Indian regiment that were the toughest regiment in the army. Even the army was afraid of the Buffalo Soldiers and the Indians called them Buffalo Soldiers because they were tough. So it was the Buffalo Soldiers that killed most of the Indians. So there's a lot of animosity between Black Indians and the tribes, the national tribes because of that history. So it's taken me a while to try to get into the nation because of the animosity of the past of the Buffalo Soldiers. So Black Indians were not allowed until recently to get into the tribes, the nation of the Cherokee Nation or the Apache Nation. Daniel Keough: [00:23:24] Was that something that your family talked about when you were younger, or is this more things that you found out as you were older. Lynel Gardner: [00:23:30] Well, there was a lot of shame, because see Black people were already getting abused for being Black and then you're Black Indian? So you have this like a double, you know, double sided sword, right? Yeah. Indians weren't even considered in the census, they were like invisible, invisible people. And then you had white blood and possibly white ethnicity in you. So we were dealing and my family was like, you've got to be ashamed of the whiteness in you, you've got to be ashamed of the Indian in you, and you've got to be ashamed of the Black in you. So we denied for a long time, we denied that, the white and we denied the Indian. But we look different. You know, my daddy doesn't even look Black. I mean, it was kind of like, it's almost like, what do they call it, the Invisible Man syndrome, you know, like a dual personality. We had a duality that we had as a family because at one hand we were saying we were Black, but at the same time my grandmother looked white. So, my mom, she had red hair because of the Cherokee, I had red hair when I was a kid, my mom had red hair and that's a known Cherokee trait is red hair and bright eyes, so. So it was unusual for us, I mean. Daniel Keough: [00:24:55] How was your experience in middle school and high school in Mountain View? Did you feel, I guess, how did that feel going to school for you? Lynel Gardner: [00:25:04] Well, when I was in middle school in East Palo Alto, everybody was, "What's up, blood? What's up fam? What's up cuz? What's up sister?" There was still a lot of Black pride. "What's up, brother?" When I moved to Mountain View, where I was like one of two or three Black people in the classroom, that was the first time I heard "nigger". You know, when I went to Theuerkauf, and when I went to St. Lawrence, I was one of maybe two in the whole middle school. When I went to Mitty I was maybe one or two in the whole high school. And so when you don't have a lot of your own people around you, you have to take a lot of shit. You know, you have to. When you don't have a father around, and my great uncle was so old that he couldn't be like, yeah, I would leave the home, but I wouldn't have his presence in the world. Like when it came to a parent teacher conference, I didn't really have, I mean my aunt and uncle went, but they weren't really in my life outside the house. So it was hard being the only Black kid that had to take the abuse. I'll give you an example. I was in St. Lawrence and a new Black kid moved in. I came to the school, became a student of St Lawrence. So I made three and three Black kids total. And my white friend said, "Oh, there's the new nigger". And I was like, What? And I was like, wait, if he's a nigger, what am I you know, I was like. And I look just like I mean, I'm Black, you know, I look more like him than I do my white friends and then my friends turned to me and said, "Don't worry Lynel, you're one of us". I was like, what? So it was like that duality kind of thing, you know, it's like, wait, he's a nigger, but I'm your friend and I'm not a nigger, but I'm one of us. I don't, I look more like him than I do you. So it was like, that went on throughout my, then I went through seventh and eighth and in ninth grade. I was chased by this one white kid that was a racist who would try to beat me up every day. That's every day for three years. He would wait for me at school every day for three years in seventh, eighth and ninth grade. Luckily, my brother, my older brother was in a grade above me and was always protecting me from him. So, yeah, it was difficult. It was humiliating when you can't defend yourself and somebody speaks ill of you or your family. So it was really difficult for me, growing up mixed race and I took a lot of abuse until I learned how to fight. Daniel Keough: [00:28:16] Is that something that you think drove you to learn how to fight and things? Did you feel like you had to fight a lot in high school? Lynel Gardner: [00:28:27] Yeah, I had to. I had to because my dad was was a big time drug dealer and he was so, my dad was a genius. He had the gift of gab, how to control, manipulate. But because Black men of his generation couldn't get jobs, you know, they had to do what they had to do to survive. So unfortunately, he was a, he was a genius, so it became a global thing for him so he got so big where he couldn't, he didn't have time for his kids. So but, I had to learn how to fight because no one was going to be able to defend me, so I knew I had to, so I started out in judo, then boxing and then jujitsu. And once I had a reputation of a person that could defend himself, the word got around and then most people left me alone after a while. My teacher taught Bruce Lee jujitsu, and I was doing jujitsu before it became trendy as it is today. So I was pretty lucky in that way. I learned how to really fight and defend myself with a real practical martial art. And then I started using it to defend those that were being abused by bigger people at my high school or in life. I always defended the weak because I was once in that position, you know. So, yeah, learning how to fight, and sports helped a lot, too, because I was able to have more freedom of expression through art, acting, sports. I found a vehicle for expressing myself without limitation in sports and art, in acting and writing. Grace Song: [00:30:27] How did you feel in your classrooms and with your teachers? Lynel Gardner: [00:30:33] Oh, the thing about teachers, most of the teachers when I was growing up were white, white male, white female. So if you think about the institution of racism, they grew up learning racist, having racist tendencies themselves, so they would see me in a different light as other kids, because all they knew about Black people was what they were taught. And so even though they were educated teachers and very educated and had degrees, they had racist tendencies in how they spoke to me, how they treated me, their expectations of me. They didn't know me, but they knew, what they knew was what they were told about the Black community, and Black people. And so it was very rare to find a teacher that saw me as a human being, like maybe one or two in my life. And those that did see me as a human being could look past my color and see my my talents, my strengths. And I'm an artist today because of Mrs. Hinkley, who was white at St. Lawrence, who knew whenever she said, who would like to read? I'd raise my hand and I'd read for the class and then. She was the one that said, "Lynel, you ever heard of Martin Luther King Jr.?" That was, what, seventh grade? What are you, 12 like? No. Who's that? And she said, because you're a very strong reader and a very strong, you're articulate. You're very articulate. I'm going to create a elocution contest where every student played a famous person. And I was supposed to play Martin Luther King Jr. and I was going to do I Have a Dream speech. And I was up against Eleanor Roosevelt, FDR and all these other kids that were playing these other characters and the parents were invited to the contest. And at the end of my speech, I got a standing ovation from all the parents and I did not know she could see, she's one of those rare teachers that could see the talent in her students and bring it out. And because of her, I became world famous, a world famous performance artist. And from up until the day she died, I called her to thank her for all she did for me because I wouldn't be where I was if it wasn't for her seeing that in me, seeing past my color. And even in sports, most of the coaches in sports were white males. And all they knew about Black kids was they were dangerous and unruly. And so like, for instance, Barry Bonds, I played against Barry Bonds, but I was better than Barry Bonds. But the problem was the thing about Barry Bonds was most kids his age, Black kids, didn't have fathers. So Barry Bonds's father was Bobby Bonds, who was a Hall of Famer baseball player, and Barry Bonds's godfather was Willie Mays. So when a white coach wanted to talk to me about my swing or my wanting to help me with my batting or my fielding, he couldn't talk to me. Most coaches couldn't talk to a Black kid because they thought there was a cultural barrier because of my ethnicity or Black kids' ethnicity or people of color's ethnicity, so I didn't have that link between. Like with Barry, they could go, let me talk to Bobby and Bobby can talk to Barry about his swing. Bobby, Barry and Willie Mays got with a white coach who felt that he couldn't communicate to Barry as a Black kid could have that link. So with me if the coach wanted to talk to me about my swing, he had no link between, cultural link or cultural ambassador between me in a coach, because my great uncle didn't come outside and didn't go to my games, my dad didn't go to my games, so there was no cultural link or ambassador between the coach and me. So Barry was fortunate, even though we played Barry in the semifinals at Stanford Sunken Diamond, and he went 0 for 4. We knew he wasn't the best, but he had that coach, that link between his father and coach. And because his father was a Hall of Famer, there was that connection. He had that connection politically so that's why some kids made it to the show, to the pros and some Black kids didn't, because they didn't have that link like Barry had. Did I answer your question? Daniel Keough: [00:35:52] Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, you don't think a lot about the kids who went off to be stars and how they got there, because he was a local, same as like Tom Brady, right? Daniel Keough: [00:36:13] You mentioned that you worked at Xerox and you highlighted that. I was wondering what that experience was like, because I know people's experience in tech is always different. Um, yeah. I was wondering what that job was like. Well. Lynel Gardner: [00:36:28] I was responsible for like three thousand employees. I'm always, my work ethic I got from my great uncle, even though he was a Black Indian, he was an alcoholic, but he was a functional alcoholic, like he could go to work all week. But on weekends he would get fall down drunk. But I got my work ethic from him because, like I said, he was in the coal mines for 20 years, United Steel for 20 years, United Airlines for 20 years. So he was like he was from that generation where you had to be on time. You know, you had to look somebody in the eye when you spoke to them. You had to have a firm handshake when you shake somebody's hand. You never were late if you're going to be, you'd rather be early than late. So I got a lot of that work ethic from him, so I enjoy going to work. And watching him, my uncle in middle school. When I went to school, it was like I was going to go to work. So I got a lot of that from him. Xerox itself was, you know, even though it was three thousand employees, there was like two Black people there. It was like one was a scientist, a researcher, and it was me. So my office manager was racist. So I had to deal with racist jokes all day, every day for the four years that I was there. Harassment. Also, you have to deal with the fact that white women look at you as a sexual object rather than a human being. You know, they look at you as, like a "mandingo" or something, but I dealt with a lot of that with white women in the corporate world, that they saw me more as a sexual being rather than a human being. So, I guess that was my need to, during that moment, is being seen as someone that white women want to be, how can I put it, I'll put it how, I'm trying to put it in a way that makes sense. Yeah, just being seen as this exotic other, that's the word, so I got a lot of that in the corporate world. I wasn't seen as fully human, you know, balanced, and I was seen as kind of like an animal, you know, so it was hard. The corporate world was hard like that And then, just always being... Even though I did my job always, it was never, never enough, you know, it was never good enough. And that happened in sports too, where some of my teammates, they were just as rambunctious and, yo... [truncated due to length]Collection
Represent Los Gatos Oral History ProjectOral History Details
Interviewee
Gardner, LynelInterview Date
Sep 17, 2020Primary Language
EnglishRecording Media
MP4Oral History Notes
Creator: Los Gatos Library
Publisher: Los Gatos Library
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