Interviewer reflection on the process of interviewing Ireland Beazley

The following thoughts are not about what Mr. Ireland Beazley shared with us, but only about the process of arranging and conducting this interview.

Relationship of interview team to narrator: Walter Long, founder of the Texas After Violence Project, represented Napoleon Beazley for several years in Beazley's final appeals. Walter Long introduced Virginia Raymond to Ireland and Rena Beazley approximately a year earlier, when the Beazleys visited Austin in the spring of 2007, at about the time that Walter incorporated the project. At that point Virginia had committed to work for project, but had not yet begun to do so. Gabriel Solis and Papa Diallo met the Beazleys for the first time on the afternoon of the interview.

How this interview came about: In-person and telephone phone conversations in among Walter Long, Ireland Beazley, Rena Beazley, and Virginia Raymond. While the specific conversations about the timing and logistics of this interview took place in March and early April, they were based in the relationship forged between the Beazleys and Walter Long as he fought to prevent the execution of Napoleon.

Interviewer reflections: This was our first interview using the video camera, and my first oral history interview for the project. (In the fall of 2008, the project interviewed two people using a tape recorder; the equipment was not very good and both of the narrators have very soft voices.) I was tense and uncertain, a circumstance that was aggravated by a series of misunderstandings and events that had taken place that day. Worse, there was an audience. Gabe Solis was operating the camera, which was fine, but there were also three people in the room: Papa Diallo, Rena Beazley, and Walter Long. All three were seated behind me; I was very aware of their presence but could not see their expressions. Walter Long is the founder of the project and represented Napoleon Beazley; he was close to the Rena and Ireland. Walter and I had been good friends for about twenty years at the time of this interview; still, I felt nervous about him watching me conduct an interview with Ireland Beazley. The stakes felt very high. At some point, Rena Beazley and Walter left the room; whether or not it was true, I felt that something in the interview had gone wrong: that I had done something wrong. When I made my first slip of the tongue (saying “Grapevine” instead of “Grapeland”), I became even more nervous.

Lessons about the interview process, from this interview:

One, no one besides the narrator and interview team should be in the room during an interview. There will be times when a narrator really wants her or his partner, or other family member or friend, in the room. In such a case, defer to the narrator's wishes, but be aware that each additional person changes and complicates the situation both during the interview and later. Also, if someone else speaks, you must obtain that person's consent to be taped; that person must also have a chance to review the interview and request that his or her words be deleted. We cannot use any part of an interview with another person's words unless that person has consented; we cannot publish the portion of the interview on the web or anywhere else unless that person grants her explicit permission.

Two, a corollary. Shut the door, unless there’s some compelling reason to leave it open. Conduct each interview in private.

Three, everyone in the room should be able to see and make eye-contact with everyone else. No one should be looking over anyone's shoulder!

Four, it is not a good idea for a supervisor to be observing an interviewer's first interview. The project needs to train the interviewers as well as we are able, give them less intense and lower stakes interviews to do first (for instance, allowing students to interview their peers, not about traumatic events). Then everyone but the interviewer and videographer need to step back and trust the people and process. There is plenty of time after the interview for evaluation and debriefing, using the tools of videotape and transcript to supplement self-reflection and constructive criticism.

Five, forget chronology! Chronological sequences are comforting for the precise reason they are limiting: you only move in one direction. We all know how to ask some version of “And then what happened?” But many narratives are far richer and more sophisticated then mere annals or chronicles, because are minds work in complicated ways (See The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, Hayden White, 1987). There are so many things we miss if we are always looking “ahead” or to the next step. Let the narrator be your guide to her story.

Six, stay with the moment. I wish we had lingered over certain moments in this interview, or returned to them. Mr. Beazley told us that a lot of Napoleon’s friends were white, and that Napoleon’s studiousness – as a young Black man -- surprised even him. What might we have learned from staying with these observations? What if I hadn’t been so anxious to move on and past those awkward, painful, unspoken thoughts about Napoleon’s life as a successful student and athlete, a young Black man with many, even mostly, white friends?

Seven, practice speaking the unspeakable. This is not my insight. Our friends and mentors Antony Cherian and Mark Westmoreland, who consulted with us on the design of this project and who evaluated our first several interviews, noticed that I seemed to have trouble getting to the heart of the issue. They encouraged me to find my own words for what I want to know, and then practice forming those words and making them come out of my mouth. “Mr. Beazley, the state executed your son Napoleon. Would you tell us about it.” The physical practice is important: the body learns. My lips and tongue learn what it feels like to speak these words. My ears get used to hearing my own voice speak the sorrow, until eventually I can say what I need to say without fear or reluctance or apology, without tentativeness or tears.

Eight, interview teams should travel together. For Ireland Beazley's interview, four of us drove from Austin to Grapeland in two cars. We took different roads, made different wrong terms, bonded in pairs, arrived at different times, and had made different decisions about eating. One car had stopped along the way; one car drove straight through. One team arrived later than promised but ready to work; the other team arrived at the appointed hour, but hungry. Irritation happened.

Nine, decide ahead of time who will do what! This is so obvious that I almost forgot to add it --- but believe it or not, we had not decided which of us would conduct what interview and who would film!

Ten, interviewers and videographers need to be aware of our own vulnerabilities (or demons, issues, weaknesses, “hooks,” “buttons,” “stuff,” sensitive areas, “hot spots”). Our friend and project consultant, psychologist Carlos Loredo, emphasizes that we can’t be effective interviewers if we fail to recognize and grapple with our specific, individual demons. In this interview, my anxiety, acute sense of needing to “perform” (in this case intelligence, empathy and interviewing skills), and the completely inappropriate interviewing situation, all resulted from my failure to negotiate with my lifelong internal demon-adversary. But fortunately….

Eleven, the interview is not about the interviewer. The interviewer needs to get over her missteps and awkwardness; she needs to focus on the narrator. (Thanks to Antony Cherian and Mark Westmoreland for this insight and many others.)

Virginia Marie Raymond