Interview with Gwendolyn Young, September 20 2012

Martha Loffler: I'm Martha Loffler here interviewing Gwen Young on September 20, 2012 at the Muhammad Ali Center, Louisville, KY. Thank you for your time today.

Gwen Young: Thank you for your time today?

ML: For this recording can you acknowledge that you signed and understood the consent gift form.

GY: Yes, I did.

ML: Alright. Can you say and spell your name for the record?

GY: Gwendolyn Young G-W-E-N-D-O-L-Y-N Young Y-O-U-N-G

ML: Tell me when & where you were born?

GY: I was born in Louisville, KY some years ago. [Laughs].

ML: Okay.

GY: Go ahead.

ML: Okay. Can you briefly describe your education and professional background?

GL: Yes, the highest level of education is law school. I'm a licensed attorney in the state of Kentucky. I attended college and law school in the state of Minnesota. I attended Carlton College and have a B.A. in Psychology and I have a jurist doctorate degree from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

ML: And what about your professional background, work history?

GY: My work history? It's varied actually, and I kind of think it's - I'm starting to enjoy it. Well, I've enjoyed it all along. When I look back over the years I started in public service with the Kentucky commission on Human Rights as an investigator. A civil rights investigator. Shortly thereafter I went to 2:00the Human Relations Commission and was the supervisor over the investigative arm over the commission. Within a year I became the executive director of that agency. Was there for 10-11 years there after I went to the private sector. I became an in-house employment attorney for a local, actually a regional bank, a fairly large regional bank. And was there for 16 years, there after I am now in the non-profit world. In-house council for the Muhammad Ali Center and I also have a part time family law practice.

ML: That's interesting. How did you initially be come involved with the HRC?

GY: I came back to Louisville upon graduating from the University of Minnesota 3:00Law School. I took the Minnesota bar, but I came home, this is home. My mom, my grandparents, everybody was here. I came home with the big idea that I was relocating to California. I was going to become an entertainment attorney. Sounded pretty sexy and sounded exciting. Little did I know that to come home I really needed money to sustain myself. So very quickly even being here in Louisville, I figured out I needed to get some kind of employment, if nothing more than to accumulate enough cash to make my move to California.

As it turned out, the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights was advertising for an investigator, a civil rights investigator. I definitely a keen interest always in civil rights and social justice issues so that just seemed to be a natural, I was attracted to that naturally. So I went to work there never with the intent on staying very long. Ended up being an investigator there about year. When one 4:00of my co-workers alerted me to a local agency, the Louisville Jefferson Human Relations Commission that was looking for a compliance supervisor. With my legal background, by then I had taken the Kentucky bar and passed the Kentucky bar as well as the Minnesota bar. And with a year of my investigative experience with the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, I was pretty competitive for that supervisory job and as it turned out I received that position.

So I was in that job as I said managing and supervising investigators, both employment and housing investigators for I guess for about a year in a half. The then executive director resigned. I was given the position on an interim basis, held that on an interim basis for less than a year and was named the executive director of that agency. I was twenty-six years old.

ML: Do you remember what year that was that you started?

GY: With the Louisville Jefferson County?

ML: Yes, the Human Relations Commission?

GY: Yes, I want to say - let's see, '80. I graduated from law school in '79, maybe '81. I would say January 1981.

ML: What year did you start as the director?

GY: It would have been, I'm thinking, I don't have my resume in front of me that would have been helpful. '82, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometime in '82.

ML: Until?

GY: Until '93 or '94.

ML: Describe your official duties and responsibilities related to the commission?

GY: As noted earlier, as compliance supervisor my primary job was to supervise the investigation of housing employment and public accommodation cases. To supervise, I think at the time we may have had four or five investigators. Also, at that particular time, prior to that time there had not been a real analysis 6:00of the anti-discrimination laws of the city and county to know exactly what the enforcement responsibilities of the agency were. They never had -- well not never, at the time I replaced someone who was an attorney. So he helped put the process in place in terms of how the commission roles and the anti-discrimination panel, what their responsibilities were. Training the investigators. So I picked up those responsibilities. I trained the investigators on the investigative process. How you investigate a case, what you do? Decorum, demeanor. The kinds of evidence and information we needed. How to write a report. Then I trained the commissioners on their role. AS the anti-discrimination panel members and what they should be looking for. Are they looking for cause or no cause? The definition for the various kinds of discrimination. I trained them and I trained the full board as well in their 7:00role in that entire investigative process.

I hope we're recording.

As the executive director of the agency, I picked up in addition to those duties, I did very little of that once I became the executive director, but I worked mostly with the commissioners, there was a body of twenty-one commissioners who were appointed by the judge and the mayor -- county judge and the mayor. During the time we had two branches of government. I worked primarily with them and I picked up a lot of administrative duties and responsibilities. Negotiations contracts with the EEOC which allowed us to hire more staff to do more work in the city and the county with respect to investigating those cases. Negotiations contracts with HUD, Housing & Urban Development, for the same purposes, to hire more staff and to be able to touch and investigate more cases 8:00of alleged discrimination in the area of housing.

And then working also with the elected officials. Lots of work with the Board of Alderman at the time they were called and the fiscal court members. Responding to their request and information they required and needed. And then I worked with our committees. The commission had a number of very robust and vibrant committees that helped spearhead changes in the law. We - under the time I was there, we were able to - and I don't remember if it happened right as well -- we did so much work in the area of fairness, sexual orientation coverage. It started during the time I was there we worked very closely with the Fairness Campaign it's called now. Many of those people I still know. To try to get the law expanded to include coverage to include discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Disability rights, we did a lot of work in the area of protecting individuals based upon claims on disability discrimination which at the time was in the law, but was not really enforced that much. We worked with a lot of the advocacy, local advocacy groups and that's part of my job to work with those committees. I hope that kind of summarizes what those duties are.

ML: Did you take on any informal volunteer responsibilities as related to the commission and if so, what?

GW: I don't think so, I think most of what I did, all of what I did I felt, was tied to my work as director of the commission. There was a lot of work in the community, but it was all tied to the work in the commission. Very broad and don't quote me on this, I thought it was executive order, or the resolution 193 that talked in very broad terms of the scope of what the commission was to do, 10:00to promote understanding and respect among of all people. That's very broad and it took me to all four corners of our community to deal with all kinds of social justice kinds of issues. I worked with many number - many nights I did not get home until 8 or 9 o'clock attending meetings, school board meetings. Another big issue was education and the desegregation plan at the time. I worked tirelessly with many members of the community, many civil rights leaders as well as other advocates to ensure the assignment plan was fair. I did not consider that volunteer work that was a part of what I believed as the role of the commission.

ML: During your time at the commission, I know you touched on this before, what were some of the key issues you were involved in?

GY: As I said before, disability rights, protecting and enforcing the law regarding disability rights. Working tirelessly to get coverage for sexual 11:00orientation under the local laws. Again my memory is slipping me as to whether or not if we got that accomplished prior to my leaving or if it happened shortly thereafter. But somewhere I want to think it happened around 1993 before I left, maybe not.

The other piece was education and fairness and education for students in this community. So those were the thing we worked hard on. As well as housing discrimination. And we also had hate crimes became a big deal during the time that I was there. And we developed strategies and ways to deal with that- well not to deal with it, but to respond. We enlisted the support of local police and other organizations to help us. We pressed for prosecutions of individuals who violated or sought to violate the civil rights of individuals in our community. 12:00In fact, that was another thing we did, we got a hate crime law passed during that time. I think we did a lot of good work during the time I was there. I look back on that time and am very pleased with some of the things we were able to do. But you never can do enough. It's never going away. And create laws to try to shape behavior, but real change comes from within, you know, I don't know how much of that we've been able to do. I think its better. Obviously it's better than it was, but obviously we're not where we should be or where we need to be.

ML: How do you characterize the commission's relationship with community advocates and social justice groups during your time with the commission?

GY: Excellent. I think we were in lock step with almost everything. We were very involved; when you talk about some of the leaders we all admire and now pay great tribute too. Anne Braden, Louis Coleman, I'm trying to think of others. Ira Grouper is still here and around, he's not only a commissioner, but after 13:00that he was on the committees. Carla Wallace, Fairness Campaign -- she's still around, still working. Our committees were so active, education -- we had an education committee, disability rights committee, a fairness committee. And all of these committees were made up of people who were activists in the area and they brought those things -- we the commission thought it was important in order to promote understanding and respect. We had to work with these groups to find out what it is that needed to be addressed and how to assist and that's what we did.

ML: How would you characterize the commission's relationship with city government during your time?

GY: How would I characterize it? I think government was, in honesty, I have 14:00nothing to lose here. I think that they understood the laws and thought it was great we had laws, but I never knew if they ever expected anybody to enforce the laws. I don't know that they ever thought there would be a process in place -- and according to the ordinance it certainly laid it out that there would be investigators and file complaints and those complaints would be served and you would actually sit down and requests data and information regarding the commission or the complaint. I got the impression sometime -

Recording ends in middle of interview at 14:36