The Honorable Irma Brown Dillon oral history - October 21, 2022

Hi there. My name is Bryant Keith Alexander. I serve as the dean of the College of Communication and Fine Arts here at Loyola Marymount University.

I also serve as the co-chair of IHIP, the Inclusive History and Images Project, and I have the absolute pleasure of being in dialog today with Judge Irma Brown, who is a distinguished alumna of the university and sits as

one of the members of the Board of Trustees for the university. Um absolute pleasure. Absolute pleasure.

Well, Dean, it's my pleasure as well to be here with you this afternoon. Give us some one-on-one time, and just to talk about LMU.

No, this is wonderful— you know what I'd like to do? I'd like to begin with what I want to call an origin story.

Okay. [Crosstalk] Alright? So could you tell us where you were raised, and maybe how you were raised, and how that led you to what is now Loyola Marymount University?

Well, I was born, educated, raised here in South Los Angeles. At that time it was South Central Los Angeles. We're now South—South Los Angeles.

I don't know if that means we gained territory, if we lost territory, or we’ve, uh, become inclusive, so to speak. But I was educated in South Central L.A., I went to Jordan High School in the heart of

Watts. I was born in a—raised—born and raised into a two-parent household. My dad was a Baptist preacher.

When I was ready to go to high school, there was—the construction of Locke High School in South L.A. was under way, and that was supposed to be the high school that I attended.

However, as with construction projects, it wasn't on time. So they gave the children that were coming out of my middle school, which—we were junior high school then, Gompers Junior High School—

the choice of going to Jordan High School in Watts or going to Fremont High School in Los Angeles. So I chose to go to Jordan, along with a lot of other kids in my neighborhood, and that's where

I got the pathway to LMU. I didn't know where I was going to go to college. My parents knew that it was important for me to

go to college. Neither of them were college educated, so they sort of left it into the hands of my guidance counselor. And—I don't want to say unlike public schools today,

but from what I've heard, that there is a shortage of counselors. The ratios are not as good. Right, right. And so the kids don't get that personalized attention.

So it was almost time to graduate, I had no college to attend, and my high school counselor, uh, Mrs. Work, told me about Marymount College at that time, which was up in Palos Verdes, that was

close to home, but not so close that you could live at home. She told me it had high academic standards and that it would be a good fit for me, so I

applied, I was accepted. And that—as you know—we came over here from there and I—I went there in 1966. We came here in 1968.

I left here in 1970. I went to the law school and left there in 1973. And I introduced myself in our trustee board meeting earlier—

last week now— as an addict, ‘cause I can't seem to give it up. No.

That's excellent. So I've been around for a long time. That’s excellent.[Crosstalk.] And, uh, that same high school teacher was at my high school graduation,

she was at my undergraduate school graduation, and my law [Crosstalk]Oh, that’s great. school graduation, and she was the one who had my, um, law degree framed. Wow.

Well, no, that's—that's exciting— I mean, I'm always interested in, you know, those stories of a influential academic advisor or high school teacher that— that, um, influenced many of our lives and got us

on the path. But—but I'm very interested in the Marymount connection, right? [Crosstalk] Okay. So—

so you were a part of the merger? I was a part of the merger. As I said, I went there in my freshman year in 1966. [Crosstalk]Right, right.

The affiliation was our first move. We were not a unified unit. [Crosstalk] Exactly. There wasn't a Loyola Marymount University. There was Loyola University on this campus,

there was Marymount College in Palos Verdes. When I came here, we were still Marymount College at Loyola University. We had one building that was designated as the women's

dorms, which was McKay. Okay. And we were almost like trespassers. Oh no. The guys were happy to have us here, to a

point, but it was very clear that this was their campus. We were just visiting. We might have been paying rent,

I'm not sure about that point. But, on another level, the, uh, orders that be had a vision that we could both be greater together than separate. So—it didn't happen right away.

It took a couple of years of negotiating, and, uh, nuns can be pretty persistent. So we weren't going to accept the invitation unless there was a real promise of equity and inclusion.

And, uh, I think we're—if not there, we’re very close to it. And, um, so we were engaged from the very beginning in terms of forming the merger and naming of it

and how the orders were going to be. I—I thought that there was a difference. And I still think there's a difference that we talk about the Jesuit,

and then we talk—the Jesuits and the Society of Jesus and that tradition that we learn in. And then we talk about the system—then we talk about the—uh, the Sisters of the Religious of the

Sacred Heart of Mary, and St. Joseph of Orange. Right. But it's a little off balance. Right, right, right. But I lost on that one.

Well, you know— so— so you're about to celebrate a, um—an anniversary, right? Correct. Of—of the merger.

Yes. Right. And I know that even within the IHIP project we've been talking about, How can we engage in un—

uncovering some of those stories, some of those stories about what was the opportunities, but also the tensions in that moment of—of—um, of transition, of cohabitation and then the actual merger.

Right. And— Well, we didn't really have cohabitation at that point. Right. We were allowed to have men guests on the lower

floor of McKay, but there were no coed dorms, there were no coming above the first floor of the dormitory. Uh the nuns were still wearing habits and ladies were [Crosstalk] Okay.

still—young ladies were still dressing like what ladies were imaged to be at that time. Uh and it was funny because—Palos Verdes, we always

had to wear socks—nylons—and a dress or a skirt, outside of the living area of the dormitory. [Crosstalk]Right, right. Here they were very happy to have a start wearing pants right on campus, right?

Right. No, that's—that's very interesting. So, I mean, I have to tell you that when I said cohabitation, I was thinking just about territory, about

space, about the plot that is now LMU, not necessarily, you know, um, uh, coed kind of dormitories. Well but see—but now we do have coed dormitories. Yes, yes,

of course. So that's part of the transition— so I told you about the space that was Marymount,

that was McKay. Yes, yes. Everything else was pretty much joint. We began—we began to have joint classes. And that was a little different construct, uh, of women

who had been used to just engaging with women in the classroom and men who had just been used to engaging with men in the classroom. So I think that took a little—that was a

little tension there, both for the students and probably the professors as well, because most of the professors that had been at Marymount did not come over. So we were taught primarily by Jesuits at—at that point.

So that was a little different. The campus physically was totally different. You would not imagine that it was the same location. We had—as I said, that one dorm, all the

dorms that were at that here at that time, I think were—I think they're gone now, I remember telling, uh, Father Lawton that you guys go through buildings faster [laughs] than we go through college and—

[Laughs]Well, wear and tear, right? Wear and tear. But, um, when you kind of come from humble beginnings, the solution to wear and tear is not to tear

it down and rebuild. We repair it, we fix it up, [Crosstalk] Yeah, yeah. right? And so, uh, the new construction that has taken place

on this campus and—new for me is probably not new for so many others who, you know, it was like this one that when they—when they got here, but it wasn't always like this.

We had St. Roberts, we had the Von der Ahe building, we had the gym, we had the engineering building—what’s going to be torn down, right, this year. [Crosstalk] Right. Yeah, yeah. And, um, we had the chapel, we had Malone, and

that was pretty much the campus. What—was it— the—the Jesuit community in place. Yeah, that was the place.

Got it. Got it. [Crosstalk]It was in place, but not as we see it today. And it was in a different building, [Crosstalk] Exactly,

exactly. that was a newer construct. Yeah. Um, if I—if I may, I just wanted to

share this little side story you're talking about. The solution to—or the response to wear and tear is not—right. So I grew up in southwest Louisiana, in Lafayette, Louisiana,

and the house that I grew up in with my mother and my father and my, um, six brothers and sisters, [Crosstalk] Wow. was the same house that my mother grew up in. Mhm. So when my mother and my father got married, they

simply moved in with—with her parents and they added a room to the house, Right? But.

Well, right. That was an expansion, right? And then when—when my grandparents passed away, my parents—

and they started growing their family—added on a room, an extension, right? And I grew up in that same house all the

way until I was a sophomore in college, right? Uh until my parents finally—based upon their own desire to finally purchase a new home, right?

Um, inevitably moved, which was a very monumental move on their part. Uh even though the old house and the property stayed in the family—and it's still in the family now,

right? And so this notion of, um—of adding on, of repairing, right, you know, is something that is so much in my—my mental makeup,

right? Um which is also a part of the reason why I don't throw anything away,[laughs] right?

Right? Which is something that I'm still working on, [Crosstalk] I’m working on it too. right? Right, um.

So I know that you were an active undergrad student engaged in leadership. Correct. Right?

Um what is it that motivated you to be so actively involved, particularly in that transition of—of coming to campus in that way? To be perfectly honest, um, I was in leadership in

high school. Okay? I was in a coed high school. I was in a coed high school that was surrounded

by the projects. I was not—I didn't live in the projects, but I lived very close to it. I had—we had a three bedroom house with one

bathroom. It was—there were just two of us, I have one brother that I was raised with. But my mother had eight siblings, so that was one time

they all came from Arkansas. One by one by one. So we didn't add a room, but we—sometimes they doubled up in a room or my brother and I

doubled up in a room, if, you know, two relatives came at the same time until they were able to get out and on their own.

So I think that's kind of a tradition or a thread that we have. So in student government. Um, at high school I ran for student body president.

I lost to a guy. Okay. When I got to Marymount, I started out as freshman class president.

There were no guys to run against me, we were still living in a sexist society. And then I was student body treasurer. And then coming over here, I think I was student

body secretary, and then I ran for student body president. And it was easy— I lived in the dormitory, which is an experience that I had never had.

There were three African American women in the dormitory at that time. We all lived in the same suite. If you suites were designed for four, there were three Okay.

of us. We had three of us in a four person suite. And one of—uh, someone else came along who was also very attached to

the school. Ginni, um, Dreier—

Oh! Oh, really? roomed with us. Yeah. Ginni was my roommate.

Yes, yes. So Ginni went in a different direction, but we formed a relationship at that time, and I found that a

lot of the girls at that time were Catholic by faith, tradition, and education, and the sense of survival and challenge and making it was not as strong. So it was very easy to exert those leadership qualities

where I might not have measured up—so to speak— in terms of economics or— [Crosstalk] Right, right. experiences, those kinds of things.

I was very strong with leadership skills, and I guess that was attractive. I was able to say, We can change things. And, um—you have to remember, we were in such

a strict confines that if you didn't make your bed up every day, because you got—you got—your room got checked, Right, right. And it was an almost military style, and you—if it

happened five times or for other, um, infractions that you commit—commit on campus, you got what we call it [air quotes]housed. Essentially, is that you got confined to campus, you cannot leave for the weekend.

Um we had sign in and sign out of the dormitory. Uh, there were no such things as keys, or—you had a key to your room.

Although free access, there were no— no Fourth Amendment search and seizure, right? [They laugh.] But the—the nuns could come in and, yeah—and check it.

So it was just easy to— sort of bring about a less submissive and a more activist kind of, uh, climate to, you know, the young ladies.

Yeah, yeah. And I formed friendships that I still have in some cases. And, you know, everybody did something different.

Nice, nice— so, so you—you allude to two things that I'm very much very—interested in. And one is, you sort of identified a series of

other African American women. Right? And I'm curious about the, um, racial climate, right, as it existed, uh, not just within the context of the

merger, but within the overall environment of the institution at the time. You know, that's one part, and then the other part is just the allusion to

activism. Right? And what—what—you know, what were the pressing moments of the—of the times that—that—um, that signified

activism and the nature of—of the pushback of the resistance towards change? A lack of exposure, I think, was the resistance to change,

because if you've never experienced it, you've never seen it, you don't know about it, that—you know, this is the way we do it and this is the way we've always done it,

this is tradition and there's no other way to do it. And so while I have no objection to it, that just wasn't my tradition.

If you wanted something, you had to do whatever enabled you to get it. You had to work for it. You had to sacrifice something.

Uh, parents were only able to do so much sacrifice. So I had to work. I was in the work study program. I had scholarship, but I—in order to have—meet

the deficit, I was in the work study program and I had an older brother. My father had—my mother was his second marriage, I had an older brother.

And I can remember clearly for every—for the four years—first two years when I was in Palos Verdes, every month I got a check for $20, and that was my allowance for the month.

And I took that very seriously. And then when we got up here, it went to— so for two years I got $20 a month, and for the last two years I got $25 a

month. But I'll never forget that, I was the first one in the family to get that college education. And as they said, To—to do good, to do

something. My dad had a fifth grade education. He was born in 1895. [Crosstalk] Got it. So the context in which he lived,

he had done that. His first mode of transportation was a horse and buggy. And he graduated up to being a limousine—not just a limousine driver—but owning a limousine when they had, uh,

their own business at one time— you know, it didn't last, they had a lot of careers, but, um. And he always said, if you see it, and it’s something

you want, go for it. Mhm. Yeah. No—I—I—um I caught myself sort of tearing

up just a little because the, um—um, I'm first generation. My father had a fourth grade education. My mother, um, had a high school education, and she

went to, uh, Holy Rosary Institute, which was a Catholic—a Black Catholic school. And that's, uh—and they saw something in her and kept her in school.

Um and then, um, I had one brother— Nathaniel and I were the first two, um, to go to college and my three older siblings did the same kind of thing that they would see—to support effort,

to support the fact that we wanted to do good. They were working and laboring. They had both—um, all three of them had finished high school. [Crosstalk]Okay.

Uh and they were in, um, sort of everyday jobs, if you will. Right? And they were bringing home a little paycheck.

Right? And they would, uh, give a little something to my parents. Right? And they would slip a little something to me on

the side. Right? In order for me to pay books. Right?

Because I also remember so clearly—and I'm going to tear up here—but I—you know, I remember my parents, um, struggling so hard to pay tuition and, um— literally my parents—my father would empty his pockets every

day. And my father, uh, worked as a garbage man, a sanitation worker. Right?

He had a good job. Yeah. [Crosstalk]Yeah. And, um—and, um, he would come home and he would empty his pockets into a coffee can.

A coffee can that he hid, right, on the top up shelf in the kitchen, right, that only he and my mother and I knew about.

Right? And he would encourage me to put my nickels and dimes and dollars and whatever in there. And then when tuition was due, you know, we would

count that money, right? And my mother would then start writing her check. Right? And I remember my mother's hand shaking to write the

check. And she always wanted to know when was the last possible day, right, that I could pay this? Right?

Because she wanted to make sure that she would do the necessary things to get that money in there. And that was all— not only my parents—but my older siblings who said,

Keith—and that's my middle name, and my family calls me Keith— Keith wants to do good, right? And because of that, we're all going to sort of

help him do that. You know, my brother Nathaniel, who I loved and adored, was out at Southern University in Baton Rouge, you know, partying, right?

And so he was four years older than I was, just partying up a storm. And so there was a lot of investment in making sure that—one, they didn't want me to work.

Okay. Right? Even though I did some work study kind of thing on campus, but they didn't want me to have a

job outside the university, so I didn't lose focus on what it is that—that—that I was, um—was there to do. Well, I worked.

I did—I did work study on campus, and I came home on the weekends, and I came home on the weekends so that I could work. And I worked at Winchell's Donuts.

I had the night shift right over here on 8th—Slauson and 8th Avenue—and my dad would sit in the parking lot on Saturday night during my shift for safety reasons and prepare his sermons for Sunday.

But I was not going to be there, left alone. But I wanted to ask you, don't you still have a coffee can, don’t you still have a jar or something that you put your coins in? [Crosstalk] I do, I do.

I have one at my class. I still do. I still do too. You know, and I do it sort of, um, ritually. I mean, I empty my pockets into this big jar

that I have, and every single time I do it, and every single time I hear that sound. Right? It is—

it is my father putting in, right, his—his, um, contribution to my education. Right? Um and, um—and so quite often I also give back

to so many of our students on this campus. Right? [Crosstalk] Sure. Um and so separate from what a dean does in terms of scholarship.

Every now and then, there's a student who's making it by the hardest, and can't get that book or—can't eat. Right?

And so that's always my way of sort of bringing that back full circle about the importance—particularly, uh, young men and women of color—on this campus, [Crosstalk] Right. right? [Crosstalk] Absolutely.

Who seek out my, um—my company to share what it is that they're dealing with. And quite often, I'll take them to lunch. Right?

Uh because I know something else is going on there. So taking them to lunch and—or taking them to the bookstore, right?

And just, you know, checking to see what little thing that they might need that might enhance their—their experience. And that's so important to have someone as a student on a campus that you can identify with. Yeah.

Uh there weren't many of us students, and there weren't many of them as professors. [Crosstalk] Yeah. Um you talked about protest and ad—advocacy, I can remember—

either junior or senior year— there was a protest. Uh the African American students protested and hung out in the dean's office and blacked out—

it must have been St. Roberts Hall. Uh and even though there was an issue and we were protesting, somebody ordered pizza so that they could make sure that we ate. Yeah, yeah.

I can't tell you exactly who—uh, what the issues were, you know, at that time, I know it had something to do with sports and athletics as well as academics

and, uh, you know, just—just access. Yeah. No, I now—that that all sounds too familiar—and wonderfully familiar in different ways.

Um so— so, who were your mentors?