Cecil A. Partee Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

A: Yes.
q: Did she continue active after you . . .
A: Very much so; very, very active. A very hard worker and a very difficult
adversary.
Q: Did you get to know her quite well?
A: I got to know her quite well.
Q: In what way was she a difficult adversary?
A: Well, the lady's dead and I don't want to say anything unkind about her,
but I can remember once putting some literature in a mailbox in an entrance
where there were six families, Five of them were home that I talked to and
one was not there. I left the literature for the one family and I came back
to see if they had gotten home, to go to talk to them, and she was taking the
literature out of the box, tearing it up. I suggested to her that I thought
that was improper and she went into a rage and said some things to me, I
think, calculated to make me angry, to cause me to strike her or something. I
think she thought that that would be something that she could use against me.
I just told her that I wasn't going to do anything like that but that I didn't
appreciate it. She was tough; she was a tough old gal.
Q: Was she an older person?
A: Well, no, she was older than T was but I guess--at that time, I was twentythree
or four years old, something like that. She was about, probably,
thirty-five or forty, something like that.
Q: And she had been there for quite some time then, I guess.
A: Yes, quite some time.
Q: What was the social make-up of the precinct?
A: Well, it was all black and there were middle to middle-upper class people.
Q: What type homes were mostly in this area?
A: Mostly two-flat buildings and owner-occupied. There were a few multiple
apartment buildings, like some twelves or some sixteens, but basically and
fundamentally they were mastly two-flat, home-owner.
Q: What was your first encounter with Mrs. Montoya?
A: Well, I suppose maybe the first memorable encounter was that situation I
have just described to you. She was a person who was very conscientious for
her party. The thing that used to trouble me, there was always some sort of
a little nasty kind of statement that she would make, about either the party