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http://libarchstor2.uah.edu/digitalcollections/files/original/32/218/shuttlesworth.jpg
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http://libarchstor2.uah.edu/digitalcollections/files/original/32/218/Tape5.mp4
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
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<ROOT xmlns="https://www.weareavp.com/nunncenter/ohms" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="https://www.weareavp.com/nunncenter/ohms/ohms.xsd"><record id="00090444" dt="2022-07-14"><version>5.4</version><date value="2001-10-11" format="yyyy-mm-dd"/><date_nonpreferred_format></date_nonpreferred_format><cms_record_id></cms_record_id><title>VHS tape of "Trial by Fire and Water: Birmingham, 1963" (Part I).</title><accession></accession><duration></duration><collection_id></collection_id><collection_name>Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965</collection_name><series_id></series_id><series_name></series_name><repository>UAH Archives and Special Collections</repository><funding></funding><repository_url /><interviewee>Fred Shuttlesworth</interviewee><file_name>Tape5.mp4</file_name><sync>1:|2(13)|10(11)|18(3)|25(12)|33(12)|40(1)|48(3)|53(2)|59(13)|68(11)|76(11)|85(11)|92(12)|99(12)|106(6)|114(2)|121(9)|129(5)|137(2)|141(5)|147(8)|156(2)|165(7)|174(10)|185(12)|192(2)|201(7)|210(14)|222(9)|230(8)|241(11)|247(7)|257(15)|269(9)|277(7)|284(13)|291(11)|300(10)|310(3)|319(11)|329(10)|337(12)|346(14)|356(3)|364(9)|373(9)|381(17)|388(13)|396(10)|403(12)|413(5)|423(17)|433(17)|444(15)|454(8)|461(1)|467(5)|471(67)|471(217)</sync><sync_alt></sync_alt><transcript_alt_lang></transcript_alt_lang><translate>0</translate><media_id></media_id><media_url>http://libarchstor2.uah.edu/digitalcollections/files/original/32/218/Tape5.mp4</media_url><mediafile><host>Other</host><avalon_target_domain></avalon_target_domain><host_account_id></host_account_id><host_player_id></host_player_id><host_clip_id></host_clip_id><clip_format>video</clip_format></mediafile><kembed></kembed><language></language><user_notes></user_notes><index><point><time>0</time><title>Welcome</title><title_alt></title_alt><partial_transcript></partial_transcript><partial_transcript_alt></partial_transcript_alt><synopsis></synopsis><synopsis_alt></synopsis_alt><keywords></keywords><keywords_alt></keywords_alt><subjects></subjects><subjects_alt></subjects_alt><gpspoints><gps></gps><gps_zoom></gps_zoom><gps_text></gps_text><gps_text_alt></gps_text_alt></gpspoints><hyperlinks><hyperlink></hyperlink><hyperlink_text></hyperlink_text><hyperlink_text_alt></hyperlink_text_alt></hyperlinks></point><point><time>380</time><title>Introduction of Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth</title><title_alt></title_alt><partial_transcript></partial_transcript><partial_transcript_alt></partial_transcript_alt><synopsis></synopsis><synopsis_alt></synopsis_alt><keywords></keywords><keywords_alt></keywords_alt><subjects></subjects><subjects_alt></subjects_alt><gpspoints><gps></gps><gps_zoom></gps_zoom><gps_text></gps_text><gps_text_alt></gps_text_alt></gpspoints><hyperlinks><hyperlink></hyperlink><hyperlink_text></hyperlink_text><hyperlink_text_alt></hyperlink_text_alt></hyperlinks></point><point><time>723</time><title>Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth Lecture: Injustices of the Era (September 11 and Cincinnati Unrest) and Civil Rights</title><title_alt></title_alt><partial_transcript></partial_transcript><partial_transcript_alt></partial_transcript_alt><synopsis></synopsis><synopsis_alt></synopsis_alt><keywords></keywords><keywords_alt></keywords_alt><subjects></subjects><subjects_alt></subjects_alt><gpspoints><gps></gps><gps_zoom></gps_zoom><gps_text></gps_text><gps_text_alt></gps_text_alt></gpspoints><hyperlinks><hyperlink></hyperlink><hyperlink_text></hyperlink_text><hyperlink_text_alt></hyperlink_text_alt></hyperlinks></point><point><time>1745</time><title>Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth Lecture: Justice, Civil Rights, and Organized Religion</title><title_alt></title_alt><partial_transcript></partial_transcript><partial_transcript_alt></partial_transcript_alt><synopsis></synopsis><synopsis_alt></synopsis_alt><keywords></keywords><keywords_alt></keywords_alt><subjects></subjects><subjects_alt></subjects_alt><gpspoints><gps></gps><gps_zoom></gps_zoom><gps_text></gps_text><gps_text_alt></gps_text_alt></gpspoints><hyperlinks><hyperlink></hyperlink><hyperlink_text></hyperlink_text><hyperlink_text_alt></hyperlink_text_alt></hyperlinks></point><point><time>2380</time><title>Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth: Biblical Justice and the Birmingham Movement</title><title_alt></title_alt><partial_transcript></partial_transcript><partial_transcript_alt></partial_transcript_alt><synopsis></synopsis><synopsis_alt></synopsis_alt><keywords></keywords><keywords_alt></keywords_alt><subjects></subjects><subjects_alt></subjects_alt><gpspoints><gps></gps><gps_zoom></gps_zoom><gps_text></gps_text><gps_text_alt></gps_text_alt></gpspoints><hyperlinks><hyperlink></hyperlink><hyperlink_text></hyperlink_text><hyperlink_text_alt></hyperlink_text_alt></hyperlinks></point><point><time>4625</time><title>Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth Q&A</title><title_alt></title_alt><partial_transcript></partial_transcript><partial_transcript_alt></partial_transcript_alt><synopsis></synopsis><synopsis_alt></synopsis_alt><keywords></keywords><keywords_alt></keywords_alt><subjects></subjects><subjects_alt></subjects_alt><gpspoints><gps></gps><gps_zoom></gps_zoom><gps_text></gps_text><gps_text_alt></gps_text_alt></gpspoints><hyperlinks><hyperlink></hyperlink><hyperlink_text></hyperlink_text><hyperlink_text_alt></hyperlink_text_alt></hyperlinks></point></index><type></type><description></description><rel /><transcript>Introduction: Our speaker for tonight is the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. You
will hear more about him from the person who will introduce him. I want to make
just a few comments about the way in which the programs have taken place up to
this point. Last week we did not have a lecture. I am not sure if that was
clearly stated at the program the week before last. There may have been some
confusion. At least I heard some were a little bit confused. In fact we had a
program at the State Black Archives last Thursday. Some of the people showed up
at the State Black Archives. They said to me, "Is this where the symposium is
going to be?" I told them there was no way we could accommodate the numbers that
we have had at this symposium here at our place. We can only accommodate about
fifty in there. I'm very sorry that there was some misunderstanding. I think
there may have been at least a statement made but perhaps it was not emphasized
as clearly as it should have been or perhaps the emphasis was not as great as it
should have been. If you had looked at your schedule, you would have noticed
that there was no notation for October 4. That was because UAH had a small break
last week. That is the reason why it is not scheduled for the brochure. We
apologize for any inconvenience. We hope that you will forgive us for not making
that clear. However, tonight I would like for you to be sure to note that next
week's program will be at UAH. It will be at the same place and at the same
time. However, the next two programs from the campus of Alabama A&M, that is
October 25 th . If you have your pencils and you want to make a note on your
brochure, you can. October 25 th and November 8 th will be in this place, which
is the West campus center and the Ernest L. Knight reception area. If you are
coming from Meridian, come to the second light. Tum right or turn left. There
are plenty of parking areas just across the street in the parking area where the
post office is. There is some parking also on this side, if you turn left. All
you have to do is remember to proceed to the second light after the Chase Road
and then turn left or right. It will be the building across from the post
office. Is that clear to everyone? The next two programs on the campus of
Alabama A&M, October 11 and October 25 and November 8, there are three of these
and John L. Lewis will be here. We hope that some of the matters that are
keeping the conference occupied will not prevent him from coming. We hope that
he will be able to be here. Keep that in mind. I would like to acknowledge the
planning committee that has been responsible for each program. Dr Mitch
Berbrier, John Dimmock, Lee Williams and Dr. Jack Ellis from UAH; Professor
Carolyn Parker, who is not able to be here tonight, she is out of town, and
myself, from Alabama A&M, and of course crucial contributions are made by Joyce
Maples and Mr. Charles Wood. We do want to acknowledge their contribution and
the committee as a whole. I would like for Dr. Lee Williams to come forth and
acknowledge the people who are responsible for this series. Pastor of St. John
AME Church and a professor here at Alabama A&M University, will introduce Dr.
Shuttlesworth. Thank you.
Introduction continued: Thank you very much Dr. Williams. To Dr. Johnson and to
all of the committee of the Civil Rights Movements Symposium, and to all of the
underwriters, distinguished guests, visitors and friends, the entire Alabama
University family, it is a distinct honor and privilege to introduce the speaker
this evening. He is one whom I can truthfully and sincerely state, his times are
in God's hands. Paraphrased from Psalms 31: 15, "My times are in thy hands."
Circumstances and events in this life for eighty years, this March, I believe.
He has had fifty-eight years of ministry and thirty-six years at Greater New
Life Baptist Church in Cincinnati. He has been living eighty years on this
planet earth. He will introduce himself through his testimony tonight; a
testimony with heritage rich in the African-American experience; a heritage rich
in his love for America; a heritage rich in its primary base, a spiritual base.
We thank God for that rich heritage that is so needed for such a time as this.
Yes, we could talk about his long devotion, his personal history, human rights,
and justice ranging from Selma University and Alabama State with a Bachelor in
Science Degree, but he does not want me to talk about that. Even about 1956
where Alabama politicians outlawed the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People. In response to that act, a group of ministers under the
leadership of Reverend Shuttlesworth came together to organize the Alabama
Christian Movement for Human Rights. He was a very close ally of Dr. King. With
the personality of confrontation, he became known and honored as Birmingham's
Civil Rights Leader. He was able to help and join together with Dr. Martin
Luther King and others to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He
was devoted to nonviolence. He conducted leadership training programs. We can
read the whole history of this association with attorney general Kennedy along
with his love for human rights and justice. He was beaten with clubs and chains
when he tried to enroll his children in an all white high school and in 1961 he
moved to Cincinnati. He founded the Greater New Life Baptist Church in 1966
where he continues to serve as pastor. It's no question that they honored him on
March 10th through 17th of 2002, for thirty-six years of faithful service,
fifty-eight years in the ministry. He does not even look like he is eighty years
old. When I grow up I want to be like that. We look forward to a treat tonight
and I am sure that when we have the impact, not only of what happened at the
Unity Breakfast some years ago. He took us to the mountaintop. I am sure that by
the grace of God he will carry us to another level tonight. He always says that
he can't go any further than the people who are praying for him. I would like
for you to greet him with attentive ears, open hearts and raised disposition for
Birmingham's Civil Rights leader who comes to not only give us inspiration but
also his dedication for years of fervent commitment, not only to human rights
but social justice as a Christian creature who has not denied nor cut himself
away from his ethnicity, spirituality and politics of confrontation. It is my
privilege now to present to you the Reverend Doctor Fred Shuttlesworth, the
Pastor of Greater New Life Baptist Church.
Fred Shuttlesworth: That is a great introduction son. Thank you very much. That
was a great introduction Dr. Williams, Johnson, all the members of the faculties
of these institutions. I assure you that after that beautiful introduction, I
feel a little better than I did before. I was sitting there thinking about how
this is my eighteenth hour. I had to get up at four o'clock this morning. I must
commend the program. This is the first program in which I have ever been
introduced as you get to the heart of the program this quickly. I don't know if
you knew my sufferings or not, but I assure you I won't be all night. I am
reminded of that young boy whose mother wanted him to go and hear a professor
speak. This professor was noted for speaking a long time. In the audience, most
people would go to sleep while he would be speaking. When any of us would talk,
he would sleep. This young boy had to not only be pleaded with but she started
patting him a little bit with a switch. He was burning and seething. The
professor at the college would notice and just look over the audience, maybe
forty-five seconds, or more than a minute and he couldn't come up with anything.
After a while he would say, "I can't think of nothing to talk about." The little
boy would say, "Talk for about a minute and sit down." I may take a little more
than a minute since it would be unfair to you to have that great introduction
and I don't say anything. This is a great time to be alive and I appreciate the
instructional purpose of the programs that you are having, trying to get people
to understand that we have a great heritage. We have a great opportunity to do
something despite the uncertainty of the times in which we live and despite the
fact many people don't appreciate many of the things that happened to make the
change that we have had. This is a challenging time to be alive, both for people
who are in college and out of college. I thought a little bit about the times in
which we live. You all are interested in where I have been and what I have been
doing. I admit I have been into some things and I can put that into one sentence
to sort of put a critique on it. Paul the Apostle in writing to Timothy said
some words that seem to fit for what I have tried to do and what I am doing.
First Timothy Chapter 1 Verse 12 says, "Timothy, I thank God for putting me into
this ministry and sustaining me." I may make that the core of what I want to
speak about tonight. I wish I could speak to your satisfaction on the Birmingham
Movement. The Birmingham Movement should mean much more than it does to most
people. If we could use that as a taking off point to something better. If we
talk about the Birmingham movement and not be inspired from what happened then,
not when I was in it but because of the sacrifice of the people even down to the
children who made as great a sacrifice as if they were soldiers on a foreign
battlefield. That ought to challenge us today to go ahead and finish up the
work. It should challenge us to look at our country, love it, and make sure it
moves forward with this business of brotherhood and justice. I wish I could just
talk about some of the beautiful things that happened in the movement and some
of the terrible things. I know that you have had Diane Nash, one of the stalwart
young ladies. If not for her and the Nashville movement, the freedom riders
would have died on the ground in Birmingham; that is, there would have been no
progress. I wish I could take time and tell you about Robert Kennedy, the
president's brother and the many activities and many conversations that I had
with him, especially as it related to continuing the freedom rides. Maybe we can
cover some of that in the question and answer period, and in demonstrations,
seven years before sixty-two, we suffered so much. We caught a lot of
deprivation. I often think of the song that the people used to sing, Way Down
Yonder By Myself, I Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray. Before I say anything more, I
would like to release what happened after 9/11. Everybody knows what that is,
don't you? That was the day when everyone needed to not call on the police but
call on the Lord. I am a person who believes that you can't just let things roll
on. Things change because people change things. I must say to you that the
world, if it is to be changed, it will be changed by people whom the world
itself cannot change, so I hope I can challenge you in this great city where the
rocket center is your foundational basis here. Leading with outer space, where
we haven't conquered inner space yet. I would like to read this release, then we
will say some words and sit down. I was in California and of course none of us
could fly back so I had to stay in California for three extra days. In all of
what has happened to me, I don't think I have seen anything as tragic as those
planes flying into those tall buildings that represented the greatness of
America, the wishes of America, the center of trade in the world. I tried to get
about five minutes of sleep by turning the television off but I couldn't go to
sleep just thinking about it. No one could look at that with any sensibility and
not have some sort of feeling. Many people had a wrong feeling about it. Let me
just read this. This is the reason I wrote an article in California for the
paper. "Under no circumstance could any American with any degree of loyalty to
humanity or America condone the inhuman and dastardly destruction of buildings,
lives and property in New York and Washington DC. Our nation has indeed been
partially humiliated by this terrorist attack. We hope and pray that it has also
become more humbled before God. America responded in military and diplomatic
strengths to those who destroyed so much property and so very many innocent
lives. America will also now move with the same degree of arousement and
determination to attack racism and injustice within, with the same and truly
beneficial results to al I segments and levels of American life. We are all
Americans, hopefully loyal and loving Americans. However much we question and
disagree with the disputed election of President Bush, we do truly urge all
Americans to join one thousand and one percent in prayer for support of his
effort to secure, lift the spirits, and encourage the lives of all Americans in
this critical hour. God help us to come together and totally sacrifice together
when we are not in crisis as we are now doing always together the things in
unity of spirit as we are doing in this crucial hour. We saw everybody digging
and pulling and helping and suffering and bleeding, and dying together. That's
what Americanism ought to be about. I say this from the bottom of my heart and
in the spirit of God who loves his own. Yes, in the spirit of Martin Luther King
Jr., whom God sent to speak the spirit of nonviolence and unity to America and
to the world. In this our day of violence, hatred and meanness, only Satan is
the enemy of all mankind. All men are brothers and should act brotherly despite
racial and ethnic distinction. God is love and in His Spirit, someday we will
soon overcome the evils of this perilous moment. God bless America and God bless
each one of us." That was the statement.
I was getting ready to go somewhere. I was actually running out the door when I
heard that the judge that dismissed the sentence against the policeman who would
not have been given anything but nine months anyway, if he was given a sentence
at all, after killing this man. It was a minor charge. I thought of how the
system can be so light on certain people and so heavy on others. I thought I
should have something to say. I have lived long enough to know that if you say
nothing and do nothing the life will mean nothing. I was about to run out but my
secretary happened to have the radio on. When J heard that I couldn't believe
it. Serving nine months for killing a man is nothing. If this was a poor man or
a black man, nine years wouldn't have been enough. The following is what I
wrote. "The not guilty verdict of the court for Officer Steven Roach who
wantonly shot and killed Timothy Thomas, is typical of Cincinnati justice. You
know where Cincinnati is, don't you? It is as far South as you can get being in
the North, where the treatment of blacks by policemen is concerned. It is very
close to rulings by Southern segregation judges who felt blacks had no rights
that policemen had to respect. I am a living witness to that. This verdict,
following a series of unnecessary killings of several blacks by policeman and
numerous investigations by officials, can only mean that Cincinnati had been and
still is stuck in the mud of racism and injustice. Right is right and wrong is
wrong no matter who does it. This city, its prosecutors and its courts can never
find any punishable wrong done by its police department where blacks and
minorities are concerned. As painful and as hurtful as the decision to the
morale of the black and poor community, we must continue to give proper respect
to officers of the law, in spite of this decision and the long unholy record of
injustice in this city. Let us hope in faith and nonviolence that the national
tragedy of September 11 th will humble America and Cincinnati, to look within
our souls and eliminate racism, injustice and mistreatment of minorities, even
as America now arms itself to root out terrorism in the world and establish the
rule of law. Anything short of equal and exact justice in the same circumstance
done to any individual, regardless of color or status, is very close to terror
itself. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. God bless America and God
bless Cincinnati and may the day speedily come when all men, regardless of
position, stand equally before the Lord. They can enjoy freedom, justice and
fair play."
I thought I should read that as a sort of taking off point here tonight, as we
think about one or two lessons from the Civil Rights Movement that can be good
for today's affairs. My friends, I am convinced that this is God's world no
matter what. I believe that from the bottom of my heart. In fact, when Bull
Conner was talking about me I said, "Mr. Conner, this is not your world! This is
God's world." I quoted to him that the deeds to this world is written in the
twenty-fourth Psalm where it reads, "The earth is the Lord's." I said, "Your
name is nowhere around it." This is God's world. God loves all of His people. At
sunder times, periodically, God moves in human history to change conditions in
human lives. I am also convinced that God is The God, not a God, but "The God".
There is only one you all know. He is the God of love and mercy, as most people
love to say. He is also the God of justice, which most people don't say. It is
fotmd in Psalms 88: 14. You may read it when you go home. It talks about God's
throne. Psalms ninety-seven talks about it also. They both speak of how God's
throne sits on two pillars. One of the pillars is justice and the other is
righteousness. You see, whoever speaks and does not talk about justice, is not
talking too much or rightly about Mr. God. He is a God of justice. We need in
this day like in old times, the preachers, the prophets, the church and the
leaders to thunder out the words, "let justice roll down like water and
righteousness. We need that to be emphasized today.
No one can preach or teach about God unless one talks of justice, even from the
prophets who said let justice roll down etc. and the longstanding weakness of
the church. I am not going to ask how many people here belong to a church
because I don't want to hear any untruths in here. The tabernacle, the mosque,
in other words organized religion because organized religion, based on the
spirit of God, is God's army. God and an army is a fighting instrument. Am I
right? An army is trained to fight. Folk in the church should be disciplined to
fight. Most folks in the church think that we are in a picnic and not a fight.
God's movement is to overcome injustice and unrighteousness, whether it is in
the government or in the streets. We don't emphasize this. We are supposed to
teach, preach and talk that. No wonder Dr. Martin Luther King said the church is
much more like a taillight than a head light on a car.
I am going to tell the story about this man who was running late for an
appointment. You all were on time. You are to be commended. This man was driving
his car to an instructional convention. He was running late because he was doing
something. The crowd he was supposed to lead just went on without him. There
were several carloads that went ahead. He was trying to hurry up when he
realized he didn't have much gas. He rushed to the filling station and said to
the man, "Fill it up real quick. Put some gas in here real quick." At that time
they had just got this thing where you could put the gas and let it be running
while you do something else, so the man was very nice. He tried to do a little
courtesy, you know, wipe his windshield off and checking the air in his tires.
He was not concerned about that though. He wanted his gas so he could just go
because he was already late. After awhile he told the guy, "Look fellow, I am
late. Hurry up and put the gas in. Did you see some folks in about ten cars go
along here a few minutes ago?" The man said, "Yes". He said, "Well hurry up
because I am leading those folks.
In the affairs of the world, the church is leading those folks, but say nothing.
Indeed the letter from the Birmingham jail was written in response to high
officials, not just ordinary preachers, but bishops and rabbis who talked with
the conscience of God. I guess that is what they thought. We were put in jail.
Police began to beat us. They commended the police. They suggested that we
should just be quiet. Isn't that the voice now of evil when people protest?
Isn't it the same thing? The system has changed since the time when God said to
Moses, go down and tell Pharaoh. You should read Genesis. The first Civil Rights
Conference was called, not in Chicago, as people think, but in a midnight desert
between God and Moses. There were only two of them there around the burning
bush. It was right there where God said some things that I think we would
refresh ourselves and remind ourselves and really do better as we listen again.
Read it again when you go home. God did a strange thing on September 11 °1 to
get our attention. He just set a bush afire. Well maybe if we let him set bushes
afire instead of setting buildings afire, we would do better. He said, "Moses I
am the God". God always makes it plain that he is the only one. Whatever name
you call him he is the God of your problem. You have to think of God with
antiquity in your mind. Did I not say that right or what? I thought I was doing
something wrong. God said, "I am the God". That's not my thought though. God
said, "I have seen the afflictions of my people". That's where we get this thing
from that we say in church "God sees". Let's believe that. I have heard their
groans and I have come down to deliver them". Our God is a God of deliverance
from whatever will hold us down or back. God says, "I see, I know and I am
here". He said another word that too many preachers leave out. God did not come.
He said to Moses, "I will send you to Pharaoh. I will tell you what to tell
him". God is so big and powerful. He can tell you what he is going to do
different from what he is sending you to do. He said, "I am going to harden
Pharaoh's heart but you still do your job". I think that is where we miss the
point. This is a sermon. I am a preacher and it may sound like I am preaching.
The church and people always have excuses. They're always saying what they can't
do. What can you do? God basically said to Moses, "Well who made your mouth
since you think you can't talk. To help you out I will send your brother with
you but Moses you are responsible." Our job is to go to Pharaoh. Pharaoh has a
voice. This might be a good thought to remember. The voice of Pharaoh then, was
not much different from the voice of Pharaoh now. Pharaoh is the system no
matter who is in it, whether they are black or white.
Black folks have been in the system most times. We are a little involved in it
now. If we aren't careful, we won't have to be in it long before we are like the
system. When Moses went down to Pharaoh, he was nervous. "Mr. Pharaoh, ugh, I am
here." Pharaoh said, "What's your name? God told Moses to say, "Tell him I am".
Moses had never heard that. One preacher was philosophizing. This preacher felt
Moses went down to Pharaoh and said, "Well God said let his people go. I am is
my God." Some people call this spiritual imagination. He said Pharaoh said, "I
am? Who is the Lord that I should obey? In allegiance, I am that I am." Moses
went back and told God, "Well Pharaoh said he is down here." God said, "That's
all right. Go back and tell him I am that I am ... my last and first name is the
same and my message is still let my people go."
This system has a nice way of doing it. We don't say we are not going to let
them go. The system says we will let them go but we are always enslaving them
and causing them to get behind even more. If you don't understand what I mean,
Martin Luther King and I were struggling in the South. There are more poor
people and they're poorer now than they were then and we have more money, more
everything. We are wasting it up in this country.
God is going to help us get rid of some of it because we have t.o buy some
friends with free food to help us. You can be sure your sins will find you out.
To show you that this hasn't changed, when Christ Jesus was risen, he called the
disciples. Read the last chapter of John. Jesus told the disciples, "Peace be
unto to you. As My father has sent me, even so, I send you." Our job is to still
speak to Pharaoh, to the system and the injustices in the system. Do you all
agree with that? If you don't, it is true. The church must speak out. If you
could see the Civil Right film, I could have brought that film and wouldn't have
to say anything. I have three copies. We would have fighting and suffering and
Howard K. Smith, this is in 1961, a long time ago. White people were saying what
they wanted to say. The judges and the bishops were talking. The Martin Luther
King letter from the Birmingham jail was responding and so forth. You would have
been surprised. You would have almost thought it was slavery time. The blacks
were discussing their suffering and sacrifices. We called ourselves Negroes
then. Negroes have changed. We call ourselves some of everything now. King led
us to the Birmingham jail with an answer to that defense. The church does not
speak. We compromise on things. We accept things. The history of the church says
that money has had a large effect on the church. Anything money can buy, someone
else can sell for a little more money. People should speak the truth. The Lord
told us to speak the truth. They tell me if we ever practice speaking the truth,
you won't. have to remember the last lie that you told. The truth is just the
truth you know.
I have a little more written down here if you can take it. Without justice,
there would be no brotherhood ever. There would be no beloved community. In the
south, segregation at one time, you wouldn't believe this was more sacred than
going to heaven. The Ku Klux Klan, the mob were allied with the rulers, the
system. The system is amazing. It is just like Old Man River. Don't say nothing,
just keep rolling along. I tell many black people it is our responsibility to
challenge this system. We must remember, if we don't win the war and just win a
battle and think you have won the war, then you have lost. We must come together
and keep pushing for what is wrong. Injustice. I still say like I said fifty
years ago, "Rattlesnakes don't commit suicide and ball teams don't strike
themselves out. You have to put it out." If we are going to win the battle for
justice, freedom, and righteousness in America, we will have to stand up for
something or we will fall for everything. I ask the question, "Who is brave
enough in the land of the free and the home of the brave to call for freedom or
to stand up for freedom? I am speaking to the young people. What kind of world
do you want? Do you want to continue to live in a world that was oppressive,
where people say that they are praying? Even Abraham Lincoln said back then,
"How can a man rest his living from the eyebrows and back of another person and
call on a righteous God to sustain him". In the civil war you have to come to
the conclusion that even if the war is terrible until every drop of blood drawn
with the lash shall be replaced and drawn by the sword. Even so, it must be said
as David said two thousand years ago, "The judgments of the Lord arc true and
righteous all together." I hope that the colleges are training young people. We
have been training them to become a part of the system and become just like the system.
Some of my people were once slaves. Some people hate the word slavery because
they don't like to think they have been in slavery, but they have. When you rise
a little bit up to a certain point, you have to reach back and help those who
are still behind. Justice calls for people who rise in it all, to remember where
you came from. People that don't remember where they came from will not get too
far ahead. Segregation was so important. I can just put this in here now so you
won't forget. If Diane Nash had not been in Nashville encouraging the students,
as I said earlier, the freedom rides would have died on the ground in
Birmingham. That is, they could not have gotten out. But she called me and said,
"Imagine this. After all of the violence and other things, the first time I saw
a human skull, they hit him with an iron pipe and his skull was lying open. You
would not believe it. Birmingham was terrible. They intended to give this man to
the Klan that night. It is amazing how far some people will go, claiming
righteousness. I better tell this. I have seen so many things. I thank God for
this. I don't let anything I see or hear keep me from being what I think I ought
to be and do. Ordered and directed from above before we got here. We should try
to relate to that. On the day that the freedom riders were beaten up, here comes
a yow1g black boy, all beaten up. They came to get me. By the time I got out
there, two or three more had come. Then here comes this white man with his skull
out. It was a pitiful sight. It was as bad as it was on September the 11th, but
in a small way because you had to have empathy.
You had to have evidence. It was around one thirty or two o'clock when we sent
him to Jefferson Hospital. I told him not to try to catch a cab to come back. It
was a dime then. I told him to call me when he was ready and we would come back
to get him. I thank God for using me. We were afraid but so concerned to make
sure of this. I had people around me that I could send to the hospital. That
night something said to me, "Why don't you go". Two fellows said they would go".
I said, "I think I will go tonight. They told me to stay there and they would go
but I told them I wanted to ride tonight. I was on the driver's side. The people
were still marching around the church as if they knew each other, so this man
had this other fellow's car. There were three wheelers and two squad cars. We
came out and got in the car. We pulled off slowly. \,Vhen we started off, they
started off also. I said to the driver, "Be careful. Don't drive over eleven
miles per hour. Nobody is going to get arrested for speeding tonight". We went
from 20th Street going from South to North. There is a viaduct where you had to
go about six blocks to get off, up and on to the North side. They followed us
slowly until we got about a block on the viaduct where you could not turn off or
get off. A policeman on a three-wheeler came right up to the driver's side and
said, "Where are you going boy?" The fellow said, "I am going back over to
Reverend Shuttlesworth's house". The policeman said, "Yeah, let me see your
license". It was the usual. The police said, "Well let me see your
registration?" The fellow said, "Well I am driving so and so's car". The police
said, "Oh, a stolen car!" I knew right then it was going to be hell to pay. I
was so glad I was there. I said to myself, "Thank you Jesus that I came". Has
there ever been a time when you just thanked God for who you are? I knew I had
to say something. The police said to him, "You mean to tell me you have a stolen
car?" I thought I had better say something then. I was sitting on the passenger
side. I said, "Officer you have understanding enough to know that this man would
not get a stolen car to come over to the hospital to get James Peck. He said,
"Who in the hell are you?" I said, "You don't like to know me but you have to
know me. I am Fred Shuttlesworth and tonight you all will not do what you intend
to do. We won't have that here tonight. He is going back over to my house,,. The
policeman said, "Who the hell you say you was? I am saying this only because the
policeman said this. 1 said," I am Reverend Fred huttlesworth and you know it".
The policeman had this thing open and I was listening to the people down at the
station and he was also. He said, "Oh, you are Shuttlesworth?" I said, ''Yes I
am". He said over the speaker, "Hey so and so, shuttlesworth is with us. The
person he was talking to said, "Who, you said?" The police officer repeated
"shuttlesworth!" The man on the radio said, "Aww hell! Let him go!" I said,
"Thank God!" I was in a place where I could speak out and say who I was. My
"am-ness" helped that situation. I am going to make this part of a long story
short if I can. I feel better now than I did when I began to talk. I thought it
was all over. They finally left out from there.
The very next morning when I was getting ready to go out of town, along came a
nice lady's voice saying, "Brother shuttlesworth, this is Diane ash". She had
not yet married as of then. he continued, "The students in Nashville have
decided that we can no longer let violence stop the rights of people". I said,
"Young lady, do you understand what is happening around here? Do you know
someone may yet be killed here?" he said, "Oh yes, but I want to inform you that
the students have made a decision". ln my heart, while I was trying to talk nice
to her, I am saying, "Thank God!" Have you ever been talking to someone and
praying at the same time? I said, "Thank you God for courage". he said, "In fact
a load are already on the way". I said call your governor and police and send
them some telegrams". At that time, any way that they could get you for an
infraction of the law they would do it. I told her we better develop a little
signal because if you would call my house long distance, at that time, Bill
Conner, and all of them would be listening to everything. When I would pick up
the phone long distance, I could hear the police talking to each other. One
time, I went to make a call and I heard someone say, "That's Shuttlesworth".
Don't be so excited. You would be amazed what your country can do. I have gotten
as many as fifty telephone calls in one night. Sometimes we would pick up the
phone and no one would say anything. One time the telephone rang and I picked it
up. I said, "Hello". No one said anything. I put it down and picked it back up
again. I took it off the hook. Guess what? The phone rang off the hook. Another
time I picked it up. Someone said, "Hello, Fire Department, Hello Police
Department. Hello Hospital". Within ten minutes all of them ganged at my house.
I have been through a storm, but thanks be to God.
The problem is not so much about what happens to you. I have discovered that
this God we talk about has always been a God of deliverance. His automobile is
the only automobile I know that does not have any reverse gears. God's car is
not supposed to back up. He proved that at the Red Sea. Nothing but water on
either side and yet God said, "Go ahead. Forward march" There is no mountain or
no water that can stop God. Forward march. They walked across on dry land. It
took faith to believe that. So they went on across. I believe the same about
Pharaoh's army. They were drowned in the Red Sea. The world says, "If you can do
it, then we can too", but you can't if God is in it. He does what he wants to do
and nobody can stop him. How much more time do I have? I am just getting started.
Let's do some things here. Thank God for the creative fifties and sixties. As Stevenson said when he was running against Eisenhower, he said, "America is great because America is good. I liked to hear him orate. He was the best speaker. Eisenhower couldn't talk but he could. He continued to say, "When America ceases to be good, it ceases to be great". It became me, Martin and others led by black folk to challenge this system. We had to ask America, "How good is God's goodness?" I love that song. I don't care what people say about me because I am an American. They used to call me communist, they'd call me black. I said, "Well no, I am too American black to be Russian Red." You can call me what you want but I am like Abraham Lincoln, calling a cow's tail a leg does not make it a leg. I like when we sing that song America, America God shed his grace on you and crowned your good. You need to question how good is his goodness. You must do it because that is a necessity. There are too many people that are terrorized. But I'll try to get to that a little more quicker so you can ask me some questions. We must live in a society that is affluent to decide whether you are going to pay your rent or doctor bill. This is my prayer for America. I hope you will pray for it too. Bush didn't win the election fully, that's all right, we didn't disagree and I can love you right on. Half of that stuff we can change. God bless you and God sanctify you and keep you strong and thank you for allowing me to come.
</transcript><transcript_alt></transcript_alt><rights></rights><fmt>video</fmt><usage></usage><userestrict>0</userestrict><xmllocation>loc_civr_0000005.xml</xmllocation><xmlfilename>loc_civr_0000005.xml</xmlfilename><collection_link></collection_link><series_link></series_link></record></ROOT>
Dublin Core
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Title
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VHS tape of "Trial by Fire and Water: Birmingham, 1963" (Part I).
Subject
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Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011
Civil rights movements--Southern States--History--20th century
Birmingham (Ala.)
Jefferson County (Ala.)
Description
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Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth is the speaker in this lecture given at Alabama A&M.
Creator
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Alabama A & M University
University of Alabama in Huntsville
Source
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
Box 2, Tape 5
University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama
Date
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2001-10-11
Rights
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This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections.
Language
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en
Type
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Lectures
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loc_civr_0000001
Extent
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2:01:04
Temporal Coverage
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2000-2009
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<a href="http://libarchstor2.uah.edu/omeka-2.6.1/items/show/521">Transcript of "Trial by Fire and Water: Birmingham, 1963" (Part I).</a>
Format
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Videotapes
-
http://libarchstor2.uah.edu/digitalcollections/files/original/32/481/loc_civr_020_024.pdf
45de9c40b56317c72772a87bb24576e6
PDF Text
Text
The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama
Join us in Fall 2001 in celebrating a series of public lectures,
panels and firsthand accounts of the major developments of
the Civil Rights Movement that took place in Alabama
from 1954 to 1965.
Presented by
Alabama A&M University
UAH LECTURES
f-!l@lfift•I
Inaugural Lecture
Taylor Branch, Pulirzer Prize-winning author of Paning
�JhL%�rs;.c.Av1eiica in ihe Ki11g Ye<lrs, 1954-63 (1988)_
and Pillar of Fire: America in ihe King Years, 1963-65
(1998).
fi��i#+�1�13;11ci
Early Years of the Movement (Part 1)--
Diane Nash, student leader, Nashville sit-ins of 1960,
Freedom Rides of 196 I, and the Selma Right-ro-Votc
movement, and a founding member of the Student
No,wiolenr Coordinating Commitree (SNCC).
ti4iji#�1�J3;fiJ
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
Fred Gray, acrorney for Rosa Parks and Martin Luther
King, Jr., and author of B11s Ride w)11s1ice (1995);
Charles Moore, Tuscumbia native and celebrated
photographer of the civil rights era; D'Linell Finley,
Sr., University of Alabama Department of Political
Science.
t•Xit•]a3;11:I
Trial by Fire and Water:
Birmingham, 1963 (Part II)
Glenn Eskew, Georgia State University, author of But
for Binninglumi: The Local and National Movemenrs in ihe
Civil Righis Struggle (1997); Horace Huntley,
University of Alabama in Birmingham, author of a
forthcoming oral history of the Birmingham movement;
-e.Jessa Woolfolk, Presidem Emerita ofthe &a,<l t>{
Directors of the Birmingham Civil Righcs Institute.
m•VU+�l:l3ili
"Bloody Lowndes" and the
Black Panther Party
John Hulett, Lowndes County activist during SNCC's
local voter registration drive; Frye Gaillard, prize-win
ning journalist, author of The Dream Long Deferred
(1988) and a forthcoming history of the civil rights
movement in Alabama.
m•i'4Ml:'3ilf.l
Turmoil in Tuskegee
Ocmon$1rO!rol"$ QI Kcly l"9rom Port<, Bi,minghom, Maj 1903'
Frank Toland, Tuskegee University Department
of History.
�AAMU LECTURES
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The Long Night's Jo urney, 1877-1941
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NOVEMBER 8
Selma to Montgomery, 1965
Linda Reed, University of Houston, author of Sim/)ie
Decency and Common Sense: The Sol((hem Conference
lvlovemem, 1938-1963 (1991 ).
John Lewis, U.S. Congressman (Ga., O-Sth)
a native of Troy, A labama and author of \'(/a/king tvith rhe
\Vind: A Memoir of rhe Movement ( 1998), active in the
Freedom Rides and in the events of "Bloody Sunday" at
Selma in 1965; Mary Stanton, author of From Selma ro
SEPTEMBER 20
Early Years of the Movement (Part II)
J. L. Chestnut, Jr., attorney and civil rights nctivist,
Sorrow: the Life and Dearh of Viola Uuzzo ( 1998).
l§t•V4#�J:13;fkl
author of ·BJack in Selma: The Uncommon Life of). L.
Chesnrnt]r.: Poliiics and Power in a Small American
The Case of Mobile
City ( 1990).
Walker Leflore, Janet Owens Leflore, and Burton R .
LeFlore, family o f the eariy civii rights leader John
Leflore; O. B. Purifoy, member of the Non-Partisan
Voters League.
t❖it•M3ilil
Trial by Fire and Water:
Birmingham, 1963 (Part I)
l•J«#�H1#;11
Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, veteran civil rights fighter,
pastor of Birmingham's Bethel Baptist Church
between 1953 and 1961, and a founder of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama
(A Look Back and a Look Ahead)
Aldon Morris, Northwestern University, author of
The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black
Communities Organizing for Change ( 1984).
(❖i(•J:)3iffi
Huntsville during the Civil Rights Movement
Sonnie W. Hereford, III, local physician and activist;
Veronica Pearson, Fred Carodine, and other former
Alabama A&M students active in the 1962 sit-ins.
For more information, look us up on the web at:
Charles Moore, Tuscumbia native
a�d renowned pho(ograpcr of the
Civil Rights era.
http://www.uah.edu/rights or
1------http:;tlwww.aamu.eauTr·-, g�ts---or call 824-6822 or 851-5846
All sessions are free and open to the public and will be held on Thursday evenings at 7 p.m,
except the final session on Dec. 4, which will be on Tuesday. UAH programs will be held at
Roberts Recital Hall. Alabama A&M programs will be held in the School of Business Multipurpose Room.
This series is mode possible in port by funding from lhe Alobamo Humanities Foundation, o state program
of the Notional Endowment for the Humonities; Senator Hank Sandert; The Huntsville Times; DESE Research, Inc.;
MEVATEC Corp.; Alabama Representative Louro Holl; Alabama A&M University, Office of the President;
Office of the Provost; State Black Archives; Reseorch Center and Museum; Tide Ill; Telecommunications and Distance
Learning Center; Office of Student Development; Honors Center; Sociol ogy/Social Work; History; Political Science;
The University of Alabama in Huntsville, Office of the President; Office of the Provost; History Forum/Bonkheod Foundation;
Sociology/Social Issues Symposium; Humanities Center; Division of Continuing Education; Honors Program; Office of
Multiculturol Affairs; Office of Student Affoirs; UAH Copy Center.
'Any ':production of image prohibited without permission o( Charles Moore or Black Star (cmoore 1567@earthlink.net/.
I<
[;
�UAH
Joo(
al lllt<lfSIJII_M _
Alabama A&M University
X
�
Dublin Core
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
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<a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/resources/21" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">View the Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965 finding aid in ArchivesSpace</a>
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
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Title
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Flier advertising the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama 1954-1965 Lecture Series.
Subject
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Alabama--History--1951-
Civil rights movements--Southern States--History--20th century
Creator
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Alabama A & M University
University of Alabama in Huntsville
Source
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
Box 1, Folder 1
University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections.
Language
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en
Type
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Fliers
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Text
Identifier
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loc_civr_000020_000024
Temporal Coverage
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2000-2009
Description
An account of the resource
This pamphlet features photographs taken by Alabama photographer Charles Moore during the civil rights era. Speakers listed include Fred Gray, Fred Shuttlesworth, Sonnie Hereford, and John Lewis.
-
http://libarchstor2.uah.edu/digitalcollections/files/original/32/521/loc_civr_025_044.pdf
aff76a60d08d39750bbe219d76133d43
PDF Text
Text
The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama
Alabama A&M University
Trial by Fire and Water: Birmingham, 1963 (Part I)
Speaker: Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth
Introduction: Our speaker for tonight is the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. You will hear
more about him from the person who will introduce him. I want to make just a few
comments about the way in which the programs have taken place up to this point. Last
week we did not have a lecture. I am not sure if that was clearly stated at the program on
week before last. There may have been some confusion. At least I heard some were a
little bit confused. In fact we had a program at the State Black Archives last Thursday.
Some of the people showed up at the State Black Archives. They said to me, "Is this
where the symposium is going to be?"
I told them there was no way we could
accommodate the numbers that we have had at this symposium here at our place. We can
only accommodate about fifty in there.
I'm very sorry that there was some
misunderstanding. I think there may have been at least a statement made but perhaps jt
was not emphasized as clearly as it should have been or perhaps the emphasis was not as
great as it should have been. If you had looked at your schedule, you would have noticed
that there was no notation for October 4 th . That was because UAH had a small break last
week. That is the reason why it is not scheduled for the brochure. We apologize for any
inconvenience. We hope that you will forgive us for not making that clear. However,
tonight I would like for you to be sure to note that next week's program will be at UAH.
It will be at the same place and at the same time. However, the next two programs from
the campus of Alabama A& M, that is October 25 th. If you have your pencils and you
want to make a note on your brochure, you can. October 25 th and November 8 th will be
1
�The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama
Alabama A&M University
in this place, which is the West campus center and the Ernest L. Knight reception area. If
you are coming from Meridian, come to the second light. Tum right or turn left. There is
plenty of parking areas just across the street in the parking area where the post office is.
There is some parking also on this side, if you turn left. All you have to do is remember
to proceed to the second light after the Chase Road and then turn left or right. It will be
the building across from the post office.
Is that clear to everyone?
The next two
programs on the campus of Alabama A&M, October 11 and October 25 and November 8,
there are three of these and John L. Lewis will be here. We hope that some of the matters
that are keeping the conference occupied will not prevent him from coming. We hope
that he will be able to be here. Keep that in mind. I would like to acknowledge the
planning committee that has been responsible for each program. Dr Mitch Berbrier,
John Dimmock, Lee Williams and Dr. Jack Ellis from UAH; Professor Carolyn Parker,
who is not able to be here tonight, she is out of town, and myself, from Alabama A&M,
and of course crucial contributions are made by Joyce Maples and Mr. Charles Wood.
We do want to acknowledge their contribution and the committee as a whole. I would
like for Dr. Lee Williams to come forth and acknowledge the people who are responsible
for this series. Pastor of St. John AME Church and a professor here at Alabama A&M
University, will introduce Dr. Shuttlesworth. Thank you.
Introduction continued: Thank you very much Dr. Williams. To Dr. Johnson and to all
of the committee of the Civil Rights Movements Symposium, and to all of the
underwriters, distinguished guests, visitors and friends, the entire Alabama University
family, it is a distinct honor and privilege to introduce the speaker this evening. He is
2
�The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama
Alabama A&M University
one whom I can truthfully and sincerely state, his times are in God's hands. Paraphrased
from Psalms 31: 15, "My times are in thy hands." Circumstances and events in this life
for eighty years, this March, I believe. He has had fifty-eight years of ministry and
thirty-six years at Greater New Life Baptist Church in Cincinnati. He has been living
eighty years on this planet earth. He will introduce himself through his testimony tonight;
a testimony with heritage rich in the African-American experience; a heritage rich in his
love for America; a heritage rich in its primary base, a spiritual base. We thank God for
that rich heritage that is so needed for such a time as this. Yes, we could talk about his
long devotion, his personal history, human rights, and justice ranging from Selma
University and Alabama State with a Bachelor in Science Degree, but he does not want
me to talk about that. Even about 1956 where Alabama politicians outlawed the
ational
Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In response to that act, a group of
ministers under the leadership of Reverend Shuttlesworth came together to organize the
Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. He was a very close ally of Dr. King.
With the personality of confrontation, he becan1e known and honored as Birmingham's
Civil Rights Leader. He was able to help and join together with Dr. Martin Luther King
and others to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He was devoted to
nonviolence.
He conducted leadership training programs.
We can read the whole
history of this association with attorney general Kennedy along with his love for human
rights and justice. He was beaten with clubs and chains when he tried to enroll his
children in an all white high school and in 1961 he moved to Cincinnati. He founded the
Greater New Life Baptist Church in 1966 where he continues to serve as pastor. It's no
3
�The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama
Alabama A&M University
question that they honored him on March 10th through 17 th of 2002, for thirty-six years of
faithful service, fifty-eight years in the ministry. He does not even look like he is eighty
years old. When I grow up I want to be like that. We look forward to a treat tonight and
I am sure that when we have the impact, not only of what happened at the Unity
Breakfast some years ago. He took us to the mountaintop. I am sure that by the grace of
God he will carry us to another level tonight. He always says that he can't go any further
than the people who are praying for him. I would like for you to greet him with attentive
ears, open hearts and raised disposition for Birmingham's Civil Rights leader who comes
to not only give us inspiration but also his dedication for years of fervent commitment,
not only to human rights but social justice as a Christian creature who has not denied nor
cut himself away from his ethnicity, spirituality and politics of confrontation. It is my
privilege now to present to you the Reverend Doctor Fred Shuttlesworth, the Pastor of
Greater New Life Baptist Church.
Fred huttle worth: That is a great introduction son. Thank you very much. That was a
great introduction Dr. Williams, Johnson, all the members of the faculties of these
institutions. I assure you that after that beautiful introduction, I feel a little better than I
did before. I was sitting there thinking about how this is my eighteenth hour. I had to get
up at four o'clock this morning. I must commend the program. This is the first program
in which I have ever been introduced as you get to the heart of the program this quickly.
I don't know if you knew my sufferings or not, but I assure you I won't be all night. I am
reminded of that young boy whose mother wanted him to go and hear a professor speak.
This professor was noted for speaking a long time. In the audience, most people would
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go to sleep while he would be speaking. When any of us would talk, he would sleep.
This young boy had to not only be pleaded with but she started patting him a little bit
with a switch. He was burning and seething. The professor at the college would notice
and just look over the audience, maybe forty-five seconds, or more than a minute and he
couldn't come up with anything. After a while he would say, "I can't think of nothing to
talk about." The little boy would say, "Talk for about a minute and sit down." I may
take a little more than a minute since it would be unfair to you to have that great
introduction and I don't say anything. This is a great time to be alive and I appreciate the
instructional purpose of the programs that you are having, trying to get people to
understand that we have a great heritage. We have a great opportunity to do something
despite the w1certainty of the times in which we live and despite the fact many people
don't appreciate many of the things that happened to make the change that we have had.
This is a challenging time to be alive, both for people who are in college and out of
college. I thought a little bit about the times in which we live. You all are interested in
where I have been and what I have been doing. I admit I have been into some things and
I can put that into one sentence to sort of put a critique on it. Paul the Apostle in writing
to Timothy said some words that seem to fit for what I have tried to do and what I am
doing. First Timothy Chapter 1 Verse 12 says, "Timothy, I thank God for putting me into
this ministry and sustaining me." I may make that the core of what I want to speak about
tonight.
I wish I could speak to your satisfaction on the Birmingham Movement. The
Birmingham Movement should mean much more than it does to most people. If we
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could use that as a taking off point to something better. If we talk about the Birmingham
movement and not be inspired from what happened then, not when I was in it but because
of the sacrifice of the people even down to the children who made as great a sacrifice as
if they were soldiers on a foreign battlefield. That ought to challenge us today to go
ahead and finish up the work. It should challenge us to look at our country, love it, and
make sure it moves forward with this business of brotherhood and justice. I wish I could
just talk about some of the beautiful things that happened in the movement and some of
the terrible things. I know that you have had Diane
ash, one of the stalwart young
ladies. If not for her and the Nashville movement, the freedom riders would have died on
the ground in Birmingham; that is, there would have been no progress.
I wish I could take time and tell you about Robert Kennedy, the president's
brother and the many activities and many conversations that I had with him, especially as
it related to continuing the freedom rides.
Maybe we can cover some of that in the
question and answer period, and in demonstrations, seven years before sixty-two, we
suffered so much. We caught a lot of deprivation. I often think of the song that the
people used to sing, Way Down Yonder By Myself, I Couldn't Iiear Nobody Pray. Before
I say anything more, I would like to release what happened after 9/11. Everybody knows
what that is, don't you? That was the day when everyone needed to not call on the police
but call on the Lord.
I am a person who believes that you can't just let things roll on. Things change
because people change things. I must say to you that the world, if it is to be changed, it
will be changed by people whom the world itself cannot change, so I hope I can
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challenge you in this great city where the rocket center is your foundational basis here.
Leading with outer space, where we haven't conquered inner space yet. I would like to
read this release, then we will say some words and sit down. I was in California and of
course none of us could fly back so I had to stay in California for three extra days. In all
of what has happened to me, I don't think I have seen anything as tragic as those planes
flying into those tall buildings that represented the greatness of America, the wishes of
America, the center of trade in the world. I tried to get about five minutes of sleep by
turning the television off but I couldn't go to sleep just thinking about it. No one could
look at that with any sensibility and not have some sort of feeling. Many people had a
wrong feeling about it. Let me just read this. This is the reason I wrote an article in
California for the paper. "Under no circumstance could any American with any degree of
loyalty to humanity or America condone the inhuman and dastardly destruction of
buildings, lives and property in New York and Washington DC. Our nation has indeed
been partially humiliated by this terrorist attack. We hope and pray that it has also
become more humbled before God.
America responded in military and diplomatic
strengths to those who destroyed so much property and so very many innocent lives.
America will also now move with the same degree of arousement and determination to
attack racism and injustice within, with the same and truly beneficial results to al I
segments and levels of American life. We are all Americans, hopefully loyal and loving
Americans.
However much we question and disagree with the disputed election of
President Bush, we do truly urge all Americans to join one thousand and one percent in
prayer for support of his effort to secure, lift the spirits, and encourage the lives of all
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Americans in this critical hour.
God help us to come together and totally sacrifice
together when we are not in crisis as we are now doing always together the things in
unity of spirit as we are doing in this crucial hour. We saw everybody digging and
pulling and helping and suffering and bleeding, and dying together.
That's what
Americanism ought to be about. I say this from the bottom of my heart and in the spirit
of God who loves his own. Yes, in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr., whom God sent
to speak the spirit of nonviolence and unity to America and to the world. In this our day
of violence, hatred and meanness, only Satan is the enemy of all mankind. All men are
brothers and should act brotherly despite racial and ethnic distinction. God is love and in
His Spirit, someday we will soon overcome the evils of this perilous moment. God bless
America and God bless each one of us." That was the statement.
I was getting ready to go somewhere. I was actually running out the door when I
heard that the judge that dismissed the sentence against the policeman who would not
have been given anything but nine months anyway, if he was given a sentence at all, after
killing this man. It was a minor charge. I thought of how the system can be so light on
certain people and so heavy on others. I thought I should have something to say. I have
lived long enough to know that if you say nothing and do nothing the life will mean
nothing. I was about to run out but my secretary happened to have the radio on. When
J
heard that I couldn't believe it. Serving nine months for killing a man is nothing. If this
was a poor man or a black man, nine years wouldn't have been enough. The following is
what I wrote.
"The not guilty verdict of the court for Officer Steven Roach who
wantonly shot and killed Timothy Thomas, is typical of Cincinnati justice. You know
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where Cincinnati is, don't you? It is as far South as you can get being in the North,
where the treatment of blacks by policemen is concerned. It is very close to rulings by
Southern segregation judges who felt blacks had no rights that policemen had to respect.
I am a living witness to that. This verdict, following a series of unnecessary killings of
several blacks by policeman and numerous investigations by officials, can only mean that
Cincinnati had been and still is stuck in the mud of racism and injustice. Right is right
and wrong is wrong no matter who does it. This city, its prosecutors and its courts can
never find any punishable wrong done by its police department where blacks and
minorities are concerned. As painful and as hurtful as the decision to the morale of the
black and poor community, we must continue to give proper respect to officers of the
law, in spite of this decision and the long unholy record of injustice in this city. Let us
hope in faith and nonviolence that the national tragedy of September 11th will humble
An1erica and Cincinnati, to look within our souls and eliminate racism, injustice and
mistreatment of minorities, even as An1erica now arms itself to root out terrorism in the
world and establish the rule of law. Anything short of equal and exact justice in the same
circumstance done to any individual, regardless of color or status, is very close to terror
itself. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. God bless An1erica and God bless
Cincinnati and may the day speedily come when all men, regardless of position, stand
equally before the Lord. They can enjoy freedom, justice and fair play."
I thought I should read that as a sort of taking off point here tonight, as we think
about one or two lessons from the Civil Rights Movement that can be good for today's
affairs. My friends, I am convinced that this is God's world no matter what. I believe
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that from the bottom of my heart. In fact, when Bull Conner was talking about me I said,
"Mr. Conner, this is not your world! This is God's world." I quoted to him that the
deeds to this world is written in the twenty-fourth Psalm where it reads, "The earth is the
Lord's." I said, "Your name is no where around it." This is God's world. God loves all
of His people. At sunder times, periodically, God moves in human history to change
conditions in human lives. I am also convinced that God is The God, not a God, but "The
God". There is only one you all know. He is the God of love and mercy, as most people
love to say. He is also the God of justice, which most people don't say. It is fotmd in
Psalms 88: 14. You may read it when you go home. It talks about God's throne. Psalms
ninety-seven talks about it also. They both speak of how God's throne sits on two pillars.
One of the pillars is justice and the other is righteousness. You see, whoever speaks and
does not talk about justice, is not talking too much or rightly about Mr. God. He is a God
of justice. We need in this day like in old times, the preachers, the prophets, the church
and the leaders to thunder out the words, "let justice roll down like water and
righteousness. We need that to be emphasized today.
No one can preach or teach about God unless one talks of justice, even from the
prophets who said let justice roll down etc. and the longstanding weakness of the church.
I am not going to ask how many people here belong to a church because I don't want to
hear any untruths in here. The tabernacle, the mosque, in other words organized religion
because organized religion, based on the spirit of God, is God's army. God and an arn1y
is a fighting instrument. Am I right? An army is trained to fight. Folk in the church
should be disciplined to fight. Most folks in the church think that we are in a picnic and
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not a fight. God's movement is to overcome injustice and unrighteousness, whether it is
in the government or in the streets. We don't emphasize this. We are supposed to teach,
preach and talk that. No wonder Dr. Martin Luther King said the church is much n1ore
like a taillight than a head light on a car.
I am going to tell the story about this man who was runnmg late for an
appointment. You all were on time. You are to be commended. This man was driving
his car to an instructional convention.
He was running late because he was doing
something. The crowd he was supposed to lead just went on without him. There were
several carloads that went ahead. He was trying to hurry up when he realized he didn't
have much gas. He rushed to the filling station and said to the man, "Fill it up real quick.
Put some gas in here real quick." At that time they had just got this thing where you
could put the gas and let it be running while you do something else, so the man was very
nice. He tried to do a little courtesy, you know, wipe his windshield off and checking the
air in his tires. He was not concerned about that though. He wanted his gas so he could
just go because he was already late. After awhile he told the guy, "Look fellow, I am
late. Hurry up and put the gas in. Did you see some folks in about ten cars go along here
a few minutes ago?" The man said, "Yes". He said, "Well hurry up because I am
leading those folks.
In the affairs of the world, the church is leading those folks, but say nothing.
Indeed the letter from the Birmingham jail was written in response to high officials, not
just ordinary preachers, but bishops and rabbis who talked with the conscience of God. I
guess that is what they thought. We were put in jail. Police began to beat us. They
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commended the police. They suggested that we should just be quiet. Isn't that the voice
now of evil when people protest? Isn't it the same thing? The system has changed since
the time when God said to Moses, go down and tell Pharaoh. You should read Genesis.
The first Civil Rights Conference was called, not in Chicago, as people think, but in a
midnight desert between God and Moses. There were only two of them there around the
burning bush. It was right there where God said some things that I think we would
refresh ourselves and remind ourselves and really do better as we listen again. Read it
again when you go home. God did a strange thing on September 11 °1 to get our attention.
He just set a bush afire. Well maybe if we let him set bushes afire instead of setting
buildings afire, we would do better. He said, "Moses I am the God". God always makes
it plain that he is the only one. Whatever naine you call him he is the God of your
problem. You have to think of God with antiquity in your mind. Did I not say that right
or what? I thought I was doing something wrong. God said, "I am the God". That's not
my thought though. God said, "I have seen the afflictions of my people". That's where
we get this thing from that we say in church "God sees". Let's believe that. I have heard
their groans and I have come down to deliver them". Our God is a God of deliverance
from whatever will hold us down or back. God says, "I see, I know and I am here". He
said another word that too many preachers leave out. God did not come. He said to
Moses, "I will send you to Pharaoh. I will tell you what to tell him". God is so big and
powerful. He can tell you what he is going to do different from what he is sending you to
do. He said, "I am going to harden Pharaoh's heart but you still do your job". I think
that is where we miss the point. This is a sermon. I am a preacher and it may sound like
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I am preaching. The church and people always have excuses. They're always saying
what they can't do. What can you do? God basically said to Moses, "Well who made
your mouth since you think you can't talk. To help you out I will send your brother with
you but Moses you are responsible." Our job is to go to Pharaoh. Pharaoh has a voice.
This might be a good thought to remember. The voice of Pharaoh then, was not 1nuch
different from the voice of Pharaoh now. Pharaoh is the system no matter who is in it,
whether they are black or white.
Black folks have been in the system most times. We are a little involved in it now.
If we aren't careful, we won't have to be in it long before we are like the system. When
Moses went down to Pharaoh, he was nervous. "Mr. Pharaoh, ugh, I am here." Pharaoh
said, "What's your name? God told Moses to say, "Tell him I am". Moses had never
heard that. One preacher was philosophizing. This preacher felt Moses went down to
Pharaoh and said, "Well God said let his people go. I am is my God." Some people call
this spiritual imagination. He said Pharaoh said, "I am? Who is the Lord that I should
obey? In allegiance, I am that I am." Moses went back and told God, "Well Pharaoh
said he is down here." God said, "That's all right. Go back and tell him I am that I
am... my last and first name is the same and my message is still let my people go."
This system has a nice way of doing it. We don't say we are not going to let them
go. The system says we will let them go but we are always enslaving them and causing
them to get behind even more. If you don't understand what I mean, Martin Luther King
and I were struggling in the South. There are more poor people and they're poorer now
than they were then and we have more money, more everything. We are wasting it up in
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this country. God is going to help us get rid of some of it because we have t.o buy some
friends with free food to help us. You can be sure your sins will find you out. To show
you that this hasn't changed, when Christ Jesus was risen, he called the disciples. Read
the last chapter of John. Jesus told the disciples, "Peace be unto to you. As My father
has sent me, even so, I send you." Our job is to still speak to Pharaoh, to the system and
the injustices in the system. Do you all agree with that? If you don't, it is true. The
church must speak out. If you could see the Civil Right film, I could have brought that
film and wouldn't have to say anything. I have three copies.
We would have fighting and suffering and Howard K. Smith, this is in 1961, a long
time ago.
White people were saying what they wanted to say. The judges and the
bishops were talking. The Martin Luther King letter from the Birminghan1 jail was
responding and so forth.
You would have been surprised.
You would have almost
thought it was slavery time. The blacks were discussing their suffering and sacrifices.
We called ourselves Negroes then. Negroes have changed. We call ourselves son1e of
everything now. King led us to the Birmingham jail with an answer to that defense. The
church does not speak. We compromise on things. We accept things. The history of the
church says that money has had a large effect on the church. Anything money can buy,
someone else can sell for a little more money. People should speak the truth. The Lord
told us to speak the truth. They tell me if we ever practice speaking the truth, you won't.
have to remember the last lie that you told. The truth is just the truth you know.
I have a little more written down here if you can take it. Without justice, there
would be no brotherhood ever. There would be no beloved con1munity. In the south,
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segregation at one time, you wouldn't believe this was more sacred than going to heaven.
The Ku Klux Klan, the mob were allied with the rulers, the system. The system is
amazing. It is just like Old Man River. Don't say nothing, just keep rolling along. I tell
many black people it is our responsibility to challenge this system. We must remember,
if we don't win the war and just win a battle and think you have won the war, then you
have lost. We must come together and keep pushing for what is wrong. Injustice. I still
say like I said fifty years ago, "Rattlesnakes don't commit suicide and ball teams don't
strike themselves out. You have to put it out." If we are going to win the battle for
justice, freedom, and righteousness in America, we will have to stand up for something or
we will fall for everything. I ask the question, "Who is brave enough in the land of the
free and the home of the brave to call for freedom or to stand up for freedom? I am
speaking to the young people. What kind of world do you want? Do you want to
continue to live in a world that was oppressive, where people say that they are praying?
Even Abraham Lincoln said back then, "How can a man rest his living from the eyebrows
and back of another person and call on a righteous God to sustain him". In the civil war
you have to come to the conclusion that even if the war is terrible until every drop of
blood drawn with the lash shall be replaced and drawn by the sword. Even so, it must be
said as David said two thousand years ago, "The judgments of the Lord arc true and
righteous all together." I hope that the colleges are training young people. We have been
training them to become a part of the system and become just like the system.
Some of my people were once slaves. Some people hate the word slavery because
they don't like to think they have been in slavery, but they have. When you rise a little
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bit up to a certain point, you have to reach back and help those who are still behind.
Justice calls for people who rise in it all, to remember where you came from. People that
don't remember where they came from will not get too far ahead. Segregation was so
important. I can just put this in here now so you won't forget. If Diane Nash had not
been in Nashville encouraging the students, as I said earlier, the freedom rides would
have died on the ground in Birmingham. That is, they could not have gotten out. But she
called me and said, "Imagine this. After all of the violence and other things, the first time
I saw a human skull, they hit him with an iron pipe and his skull was lying open. You
would not believe it. Birmingham was terrible. They intended to give this man to the
Klan that night. It is amazing how far some people will go, claiming righteousness. I
better tell this. I have seen so many things. I thank God for this. I don't let anything I see
or hear keep 1ne from being what I think I ought to be and do. Ordered and directed from
above before we got here. We should try to relate to that. On the day that the freedom
riders were beaten up, here comes a yow1g black boy, all beaten up. They came to get
me. By the time I got out there, two or three more had come. Then here comes this
white man with his skull out. It was a pitiful sight. It was as bad as it was on September
the 11 th , but in a small way because you had to have empathy.
You had to have evidence. It was around one thirty or two o'clock when we sent
him to Jefferson Hospital. I told him not to try to catch a cab to come back. It was a
dime then. I told him to call me when he was ready and we would come back to get him.
I thank God for using me. We were afraid but so concerned to make sure of this. I had
people around me that I could send to the hospital. That night something said to me,
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"Why don't you go". Two fellows said they would go". I said, "I think I will go tonight.
They told me to stay there and they would go but I told them I wanted to ride tonight. I
was on the driver's side. The people were still marching around the church as if they
knew each other, so this man had this other fellow's car. There were three wheelers and
two squad cars. We came out and got in the car. We pulled off slowly. \,Vhen we started
off, they started off also. I said to the driver, "Be careful. Don't drive over eleven miles
per hour. Nobody is going to get arrested for speeding tonight". We went from 20 th
Street going from South to North. There is a viaduct where you had to go about six
blocks to get off, up and on to the North side. They followed us slowly until we got
about a block on the viaduct where you could not turn off or get off. A policeman on a
three-wheeler came right up to the driver's side and said, "Where are you going boy?"
The fellow said, "I am going back over to Reverend Shuttlesworth's house".
The
policeman said, "Yeah, let me see your license". It was the usual. The police said, "Well
let me see your registration?" The fellow said, "Well I am driving so and so's car". The
police said, "Oh, a stolen car!" I knew right then it was going to be hell to pay. I was so
glad I was there. I said to myself, "Thank you Jesus that I came". Has there ever been a
time when you just thanked God for who you are? I knew I had to say something. The
police said to him, "You mean to tell me you have a stolen car?" I thought I had better
say something then. I was sitting on the passenger side. I said, "Officer you have
understanding enough to know that this man would not get a stolen car to come over to
the hospital to get James Peck. He said, "Who in the hell are you?" I said, "You don't
like to know me but you have to know me. I am Fred Shuttlesworth and tonight you all
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will not do what you intend to do. We won't have that here tonight. He is going back
,,
over to my house . The policeman said,"Who the hell you say you was? I am saying this
only because the policeman said this. 1 said," I an1 Reverend Fred huttlesworth and you
know it". The policeman had this thing open and I was listening to the people down at
the station and he was also. He said, "Oh, you are Shuttlesworth?" I said, ''Yes I am".
He said over the speaker, "Hey so and so, huttlesworth is with us. The person he was
talking to said,"Who, you said?" The police officer repeated " huttlesworth!" The man
on the radio said, "Aww hell! Let him go!" I said,"Thank God!" I was in a place where
I could speak out and say who I was. My"am-ness" helped that situation. I am going to
make this part of a long story short if I can. I feel better now than I did when I began to
talk. I thought it was all over. They finally left out from there. .
The very next morning when I was getting ready to go out of town, along came a
nice lady's voice saying, "Brother huttlesworth, this is Diane
ash". She had not yet
married as of then. he continued, "The students in Nashville have decided that we can
no longer let violence stop the rights of people". I said,"Young lady, do you understand
what is happening around here? Do you know someone may yet be killed here?"
he
said, "Oh yes, but I want to inform you that the students have made a decision". ln my
heart, while I was trying to talk nice to her, I am saying, "Thank God!" Have you ever
been talking to someone and praying at the same time? I said, "Thank you God for
courage".
he said,"In fact a load are already on the way". I said call your governor and
police and send them some telegrams". At that time, any way that they could get you for
an infraction of the law they would do it. I told her we better develop a little signal
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because if you would call my house long distance, at that time, Bill Conner, and all of
them would be listening to everything. When I would pick up the phone long distance, I
could hear the police talking to each other. One time, I went to make a call and I heard
someone say, "That's Shuttlesworth". Don't be so excited. You would be an1azed what
your country can do.
I have gotten as many as fifty telephone calls in one night.
Sometimes we would pick up the phone and no one would say anything. One time the
telephone rang and I picked it up. I said, "Hello". No one said anything. I put it down
and picked it back up again. I took it off the hook. Guess what? The phone rang off the
hook. Another time I picked it up. Someone said, "Hello, Fire Department, Hello Police
Department. Hello Hospital". Within ten minutes all of them ganged at my house. I
have been through a storm, but thanks be to God.
The problem is not so much about what happens to you. I have discovered that
this God we talk about has always been a God of deliverance. His automobile is the only
automobile I know that does not have any reverse gears. God's car is not supposed to
back up. He proved that at the Red Sea. Nothing but water on either side and yet God
said, "Go ahead. Forward march" There is no mountain or no water that can stop God.
Forward march. They walked across on dry land. It took faith to believe that. So they
went on across. I believe the same about Pharaoh's army. They were drowned in the
Red Sea. The world says, "If you can do it, then we can too", but you can't if God is in
it. He does what he wants to do and nobody can stop him. How much more time do I
have? I am just getting started.
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Let's do some things here. Thank God for the creative fifties and sixties. As
Stevenson said when he was running against Eisenhower, he said, "America is great
because America is good.
I liked to hear him orate.
He was the best speaker.
Eisenhower couldn't talk but he could. He continued to say, "When America ceases to
be good, it ceases to be great". It became me, Martin and others led by black folk to
challenge this system. We had to ask America, "How good is God's goodness?" I love
that song. I don't care what people say about me because I am an American. They used
to call me communist, they'd call me black. I said, "Well no, I am too American black to
be Russian Red." You can call me what you want but I an1 like Abraham Lincoln, calling
a cow's tail a leg does not make it a leg. I like when we sing that song America, America
God shed his grace on you and crowned your good. You need to question how good is
his goodness. You must do it because that is a necessity. There are too many people that
are terrorized. But I'll try to get to that a little more quicker so you can ask me some
questions. We must live in a society that is affluent to decide whether you are going to
pay your rent or doctor bill. This is my prayer for America. I hope you will pray for it
too. Bush didn't win the election fully, that's all right, we didn't disagree and I can love
you right on. Half of that stuff we can change. God bless you and God sanctify you and
keep you strong and thank you for allowing me to come.
TAPE 5 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS INAUDIBLE
20
�
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
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Transcript of "Trial by Fire and Water: Birmingham, 1963" (Part I).
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Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011
Civil rights movements--Southern States--History--20th century
Birmingham (Ala.)
Jefferson County (Ala.)
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University of Alabama in Huntsville
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Early Years of the Movement (Part II) Speaker: J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
On behalf of the University of Alabama in Huntsville and on behalf of President
Frank Franz, I am very pleased to welcome all of you to this lecture series
focusing on the history and impact of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. This
historic initiative brings to Huntsville, distinguished speakers who will
reflect on events of the past and who will share with us their hopes for the
future. I must once again commend the faculty from the University of Alabama in
Huntsville and from Alabama
A&M University, who worked over a period of more than two years to make this
possible. The faculty includes, but are not limited to, John Dimmock, Lee
Williams, Jack Ellis, Mitch Berbrier from UAH, and James Johnson and Carolyn
Parker from Alabama A&M. I am very pleased that you could be with us.
Good evening. It is my pleasure to take a couple of moments to acknowledge our
sponsors. These are the people who have made it possible for us to do all these
kinds of things.They have given us funds and all kinds of support.They are: The
Alabama Humanities Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for the
Humanities; Senator Frank Sanders;The Huntsville Times; DESE Research Inc.;Mevatec
Corporation; and Alabama Representative, Laura Hall. At Alabama A&M, we have the
Office of the President, Office of the Provost, the State Black Archives
Research Center and Museum, Title III Telecommunications and Distance Learning
Center, Office of Student Development, the Honor Center, Sociology Social Work
Programs and the History Political Science Programs. At the University of
Alabama in Huntsville, we have
the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, The History Forum Banking
Foundation, Sociology, Social Issues Symposium, The Humanities Center, The
Division of Continuing Education, the Honors Program and the Office of
Multi-Cultural Affairs, Office of Student Affairs and the UAH Copy Center. Let
us give these people a show of appreciation.
Introduction: The thing that has always fascinated me about the civil rights
career of J.L. Chestnut Jr., is the extent of which it is rooted in ordinary
light and then the experiences of
ordinary people struggling against poverty and injustice. Mr.Chestnut's
autobiography, Black in Selma, published in 1990 with Historian Julia Cast, is a
reminder of how history really operates. Here, one is far removed from the
well-ordered narratives of human freedom favored by Hollywood authors and writers
of fiction or those who devise stories where battles are fought and won, where
dramatic conflicts are resolved easily and quickly in time and space. Instead,
Mr. Chestnut introduces us to a far more complicated vision. One marked by the
passions of political combat in a small southern town and by the endless quest
for dignity among those that he calls "The little and forgotten people of this
world." His life shows that the struggle did not begin with the Civil Rights
Movement and it is not over today. Born in Selma, Mr. Chestnut's early
curiosity and his remarkable powers of observation and memory as a child,
particularly of people and events within the black communities and its relation
with the white power structure and with the police, is owed much to the example
of his own parents. He had a hard working and resilient father and an educated,
fiercely independent mother.She spent forty years teaching school and was never
hesitant about speaking her mind.
Mr. Chestnut told me this afternoon that his mother, now age ninety, is still
very quick to speak her mind about affairs of the world.After graduating from
Knox Academy, Selma's black high school, Mr. Chestnut went on to Dillard
University in New Orleans and from there to Howard University in Washington, DC
where he earned a degree in law. In 1959, he came home to open an office as
Selma's first black attorney. Though eventually merging as one of the
South's leading civil rights lawyer, his early years of practice often
encountered the same barriers that confronted Alabama's other black
lawyers. I think at that time there were only nine in all. He had to overcome
the racism of white judges.He struggled to maintain the semblance of a
professional life, even having to fight for the right to be able to sit within
the railing of the courtroom alongside the black sharecroppers and laborers, who
made up the bulk of his clients, are just a few examples. Nevertheless, Mr.
Chestnut's courage and legal skills and his long fight for the right of
Dallas County's black residents earned him the respect of poor blacks and
poor whites alike. Soon, he had become a leader of the black community and its
dealings with the power structure from the sheriff to the mayor, the courthouse
of bureaucracy and eventually to George Wallace himself. Mr. Chestnut headed the
NAACP legal team that oversaw Alabama's reluctant implementation of the
Supreme Court's decision back in 1954, which ordered the desegregation of
schools. In 1963, he helped the young freedom writer, Bernard Lafayette, the
first civil rights worker to come to Selma, persuade his fellow Selmians to
overcome their fears in order for them to attend mass meetings aimed at voter
registration. The importance of this was reflected in the fact that at that
time, out of one hundred and fifty counties, only fifteen thousand black
residents were registered to
vote. That was the start of the Selma movement. The subsequent emergence of
Selma as a symbol for the national black voting rights campaign during the
1960's is owed much to the health and advice that Mr. Chestnut was able to
provide the civil rights organizers. He represented many of them locally,
including Martin Luther King Jr., James Foreman, John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy and
Joseph Lowery. After the event of Bloody Sunday, on March 7, 1965 and long after
the reporters and network television camera's coverage of the violence on
the Edmund Pettus Bridge disappeared, Mr. Chestnut continued to fight in
combating local job discrimination and winning the rights of blacks to sit on
Dallas County juries. Following the Selma to Montgomery March, in passage of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965, Mr. Chestnut emerged in the words of Julia Cast as "a
leader in the long march. The process of turning the possibilities opened up in
1965 into a real grass roots change long after the national spot light and
national civil rights leaders had gone elsewhere."Eventually, Mr. Chestnut would
try more capital cases than any other attorney in Alabama and the firm he was
head of would become the largest black firm in the state.His list of cases
defending the political and economics rights of African Americans, Hispanics,
native Americans, and women continues to grow. Mr. Chestnut has been active in
speaking out in countless public forums across the nation, from ABC's Good
Morning America, BET's Lead Story to CBS Nightline, to name just a few. The
subtitle of Mr. Chestnut's autobiography, The Uncommon Life of.IL. Chestnut
Jr., is amply named, I think. I believe it will provide an endearing testimony
to what he has achieved. That achievement in the words of the San Francisco
Chronicle, has been to give "a vividly human face to the men and women of Selma,
who struggles, hopes,
contradictions, optimism, cynicism and general thrashing about helped shape
today's south." This symposium on the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama is
honored to have as our guest tonight, J.L. Chestnut Jr. Join me in extending a
warm welcome.
J.L. Chestnut, Jr.: Good evening to you. I want you to know that I cannot hardly
wait to get back home and let my dear wife know that I have been hobnobbing with
the president, the Provos and the president of UA in Huntsville as well as two
or three Ph.D's. My wife is always saying I am nobody, but she does not
know a single college president.You just wait until I get back there. My dear
friend, the president of this college who comes from my neck of the woods, is a
fine, fine man. This institution has really grown since the last time I was here
last. It is a great honor for me to be at this historic institution. I was
overwhelmed at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and how it has grown to
seven thousand students, I think. It is a great testimony to the people of this
area and I am honored to be among you. I want you to know that I sit on the
trustee board of the University of South Alabama, USA.Last year, I spoke at the
University of Alabama Law School in Tuskaloosa. Fifty years ago, when I went off
to law school, I could not even get into the University of Alabama University
Law School except as a janitor. What has occurred since that has brought us to
where we are here is part of what I am going to talk about. What was the "there"
and what is the "here"? will try to shed some light on those questions.
First, I would like to take a moment or so to read the opening paragraph from a
deliberately, provocative and controversial weekly newspaper column I write,
which. Kay Turner is well aware of this. The paragraph, I think, says a lot
about the current
mindset of most of the people my age, that struggled in the front ranks of the
movement during the dangerous sixties. Three months before the unspeakable
bloody tragic murder of thousand of innocent souls in New York and Washington, I
wrote and published the following paragraph in several newspapers. It begins by
stating, "In significant ways, the United States of America is a great force for
good and progress in this really chaotic world. I am convinced that no other
country would have created a marshal plan or spent billions of dollars to
economically resurrect or vanquish folk, after a five-year bloody world war.
What nation other than this one would have fought and awful Civil War of the
emancipation of slaves of color. I dare say not one. America is in a class by
itself." I wrote those words because they are true.
I am the great grandson of slaves, but my lawyer states that this nation equals
any America. I was a soldier during the Korean War and I was prepared to die if
necessary, in defense of a democracy that denied me. Moreover, I did not accept
the city rationale in Washington for the war. How does one stop the spread of an
idea of communism with an army?Indeed, the Koreans had every right to be
communist if that is what they wanted to be in their own land. Yet, if my
country went to Korea to fight, I would fight for my country. Less than ten
years later, my country went to Vietnam and made the same mistake. We reaped
devastating results. However, if one listens to George W. Bush, one might think
that only good comes out of America and that all of the evil in the world is
elsewhere.The president described the tragic New York and Washington outrageous,
as unprovoked acts of war and as a war between good and evil. We all can easily
see the unmitigated evil of the terrorists but the young president overstates our
good. I understand his role to try and unify the nation but unity, like peace,
must in the end rest on truth. A false foundation will not support either in the
long run." That is pretty much where my mind is after all of these years of the
struggles in Selma and elsewhere.
Let me leave where I am now and let me take you back to 1958, Selma, when I was
foolish enough to come back and establish a law office. It was the first time a
black was crazy enough to do that in Selma. As you heard a moment ago, only one
hundred and fifty-eight blacks, out of twenty thousand, were registered to vote.
Each one of those people had to be vouched for by a white person. If a white
person did not feel that old Ned was all right, then old Ned did not get to
register. There were black and white water fountains, rest rooms, churches, and
schools.My mother, my wife, and other black women could not try on a pair of
shoes right a hat in some cheap department stores downtown. Not one black person
anywhere in the State of Alabama had ever served on a jury, not one. The police
were a law unto themselves in the black community. When they came to knock on
your door, if they bothered to knock at all, you would say, "Who is it?"They
would respond, "The Law", and they meant it.They did whatever to whomever
whenever. If you asked any questions, they would find you floating in the
Alabama River. This was just a few years ago in 1958. I saw black men literally
lynched for not saying sir or ma'am to a white person or yielding the
sidewalk. The only jobs blacks had in downtown Huntsville, Selma, Birmingham and
Mobile were as janitors, messengers and delivery people. There was a blanket of
fear over this state so thick that you could almost cut it with a knife. Black
folks had to be careful about what they said to
each other. You never knew what someone would go downtown and claim you said.
You could loose a hell of a lot more than a job. As a lady said to me at Harvard
University, "If it was that bad Mr. Chestnut, why did you go back?" I said,
"Hell, that's why I went back". I had no idea that a Civil Rights Movement
would explode in the streets of Selma. I just hoped that we could make some
modest achievement. I hoped that we could pull our resources as black folks and
set up a few credit unions, maybe open up some grocery stores and other types of
businesses. If we were lucky, I thought we might be able to get the white police
out of black Selma. That is about as far as I thought we could go. I was born
and raised in Selma. I had not seen anything that would suggest the Montgomery
Boycott or anything else such as a massive Civil Rights Movement in the streets
of Selma or in Birmingham for that matter. I though when the white man said it
was over, hell, it was over.
The Civil Rights Movements exploded in the city of Selma. I will never forget
March 71\ even if I live to be three hundred years old. I had never seen anything
like that in the army. I went across the bridge early on what we called Bloody
Sunday, to tie up the one telephone that we did have over there. The reason I
had to tie up the telephone is because I represented the NAACP legal defense and
education fund. Even though Martin King and Reverend Abernathy were putting all
of these folks in jail they were not paying for it; my bosses were paying for
it. I had to explain to them what was going on. In fact, we did not even believe
in all of this marching. We said that we should find two or three obviously
qualified black folks, send them down to register and when they turn them down,
you have a perfect test case; go to court. Martin repudiated all of that by sending
five hundred people out. I went across that bridge early just in case. We did
not even know there would be a march. What spurred it all off, Jimmy Lee
Jackson, a young fellow, had been shot dead by the state troopers in a
demonstration in Marion about thirty miles from Selma. All the boy was doing was
trying to protect his mother. People were so upset, they fiercely said, "We
should take his un-embalmed body and march all the way to Montgomery and put it
on George Wallace's desk. Obviously, we could not do that. It evolved from
that into the march to Montgomery. George Wallace said there would be no more
marches and that he was up to here in marches. We said we did not care if he was
up to there, we are going to march. We had this conflict. The question
was rather or not there would be a march said, "If Martin King is in the march, we
are not going to be in it. We have been in Selma for two years getting our ass
whipped, going to jail, bleeding and getting no credit for it, but Martin comes
in, makes one speech, goes out to Los Angeles, and raises ten thousand dollars.
The hell with it! We are not going to march." I went over there just in case. I
was over there looking at the carnival at the other side. On the other side,
there were four hundred state troopers decked out in riot gear. They had billy
clubs the size of baseball bats and tear gas. They were backed up by another one
hundred deputy sheriffs and posse men on horses. They were decked out in tear
gas mask also.I said to myself,"Who the hell are you all expecting ... the
Russian army or something?" They were over there as usual, arguing with each
other about who was in charge. The truth of the matter was none of them were in
charge. I looked back and there was John Lewis, who is now a congressman from
Atlanta, leading a little group of people. Martin Luther King was not in that
march. He
was in Atlanta, preaching in his church.You have seen that clip a many of times
on television of John Lewis and his group coming face to face with all of this,
all might of the state of Alabama, stretched out across that highway at the foot
of that bridge on the Montgomery side. I heard a white boy say, "Tum around. Go
back to your church. This is as far as you will be permitted to go." John
kneeled and begin to pray and the others behind him did likewise. Then,
something went off like a tear gas canister; I do not know what it was.Then,
there was absolute deadlock; tear-gas everywhere.People were screaming and
hollering.You could here ribs cracking as horses rode across folk's breast.
I saw grown men with these baseball bats coming down on the heads of women and
children, splitting them like watermelons. I had dropped the telephone because I
was trying to pull some of these people out of the highway. I could hear New
York saying, "What's happening... What's happening?" It was a horrible
day. Blood was everywhere. I remember walking back across that bridge, literally
crying.What is this all about? Martin keeps talking about the power of the
public opinion. What public opinion? They were beating my folks to death in the
middle of a public highway, at high noon and no one cared because they were
black. What public opinion was this? At that moment, I did not think that
America could be saved. I did not think that white people were worth saving. The
thing I did not know was that people all around the United States, black, white,
brown and red people had watched that ugly bloody scene and they did not like
what they had seen.The President of the United States had watched it spell
bound. Three weeks earlier, he had met with some of us in the White House. We
asked him to present to the congress a voting right bill. He said, "I can't
do that boy. I just got you a
was in Atlanta, preaching in his church. You have seen that clip a many of times
on television of John Lewis and his group coming face to face with all of this,
all might of the state of Alabama, stretched out across that highway at the foot
of that bridge on the Montgomery side. I heard a white boy say, "Turn around. Go
back to your church. This is as far as you will be permitted to go." John
kneeled and begin to pray and the others behind him did likewise. Then,
something went off like a tear gas canister; I do not know what it was. Then,
there was absolute deadlock; tear-gas everywhere. People were screaming and
hollering. You could here ribs cracking as horses rode across folk's
breast. I saw grown men with these baseball bats coming down on the heads of
women and children, splitting them like watermelons. I had dropped the telephone
because I was trying to pull some of these people out of the highway. I could
hear New York saying, "What's happening... What's happening?" It was a
horrible day. Blood was everywhere. I remember walking back across that bridge,
literally crying. What is this all about? Martin keeps talking about the power
of the public opinion. What public opinion? They were beating my folks to death
in the middle of a public highway, at high noon and no one cared because they
were black. What public opinion was this? At that moment, I did not think that
America could be saved. I did not think that white people were worth saving. The
thing I did not know was that people all around the United States, black, white,
brown and red people had watched that ugly bloody scene and they did not like
what they had seen. The President of the United States had watched it spell
bound. Three weeks earlier, he had met with some ofus in the White House. We
asked him to present to the congress a voting right bill. He said, "I can't
do that boy. I just got you a
public accommodation law wherein you can buy a hamburger wherever I can buy one.
You can stay in the Holiday Inn. Go home. Be quiet. Be grateful. Be thankful."
We went home and turned Selma inside out and upside down and the result of it
was at the bottom of that bridge. There he was, the President of the United
States, looking and he did not like what he saw. The next thing he was doing was
standing before the congress of the United States with the bill in his hand,
insisting that the congress pass the bill and pass it now. He ended that refrain
with, "We shall overcome!" Later on, Martin King told me that he was watching it
with his wife Coretta. He said that when the President of the United States
said, "We shall overcome," he said a tear trickled down his cheek. I said,
"Martin, my friend, no tear trickled down my cheek". He said, "Why?" I said, "Do
you not understand? You are no longer the number one Civil Rights leader in
America, hell, Lyndon Johnson is." This is the man who said three weeks ago that
the country would not stand for two civil rights bills. We were in deep, deep trouble.
From that moment on, every time the president of the United States could, he
wanted to preempt out our movement. He was never able to do it. As I was telling
some of the professors today, if it had not been for Lyndon Johnson, I would not
be here today; I would have been six feet under. Lyndon Johnson was able to get
his bill through. Then they took postmen and other federal workers and sent them
to Dallas County, Alabama to Terry County, Alabama and to Wilcox County, Alabama
and said, "Register those folks." In six weeks, we went from one hundred and
fifty registered voters to ten thousand. That has not happened anywhere in the
history of the human race. The struggle was hardly over. The struggle is not
over in the year 2001. It is not over as I
stand here speaking to you. Well, why not? For a whole lot of reasons. First, as
much a hundred years earlier, poor, uneducated slaves were set free to compete
or parish. They had no money. They had nothing.
First of all, in 1966, we had ten thousand new black voters who knew next to
nothing about politics or voting. We were opposed by people with centuries of
experience in politics, government, and voting. Second, we had no control
whatsoever, over the economy. Their political adversaries employed most of the
ten thousand new voters. Even worse, they had been brainwashed for centuries by
being told that voting and politics were white folks business. If you want to
stay out of trouble, stay away from voting and politics. Alabama was a one-party
state, the Democratic Party. It continued to back every incumbent who was white.
The best we could do every now and then was get together and elect what we call
the lesser of two white evils. That took place for the next ten years.
We went to see Jimmy Carter after he was elected. We said to Mr. Carter, "We
went to the poles, but every time they count the absentee ballot box, we lose."
Mr. Carter said, "Well, that is a state problem. We will not deal with that our
first term. We will deal with that our second term." As you know, he did not get
a second term. In 1980, Mr. Reagan came to town, not only were we not getting
any help but also Mr. Reagan prosecuted us. Mr. Reagan's justice department
under Mr. Edwin Meese brought at least a hundred and fifty indictments against
carefully selected black leaders and charged them with something called boast
fraud, something that Mr. Reagan did not know what it meant and hell, I did not
either. We went up to see Mr. Meese and said, "Why are you
doing this to us? Everything we know about the absentee ballot box, we learned
it from whites. We are doing just what they are doing. You have not indicted a
single white person. Here is the evidence." We showed to him how whites were
doing the same thing. Mr. Meese was writing furiously stating, "We are going to
look into that." I never heard another word from Mr. Meese. Finally, we circled
in the court and defeated every one of these indictments, except for about two
and those two were thrown out on appeal. We begin to elect black folks to office
and that was not the end of the battle. The battle was not over. The battle is
not over yet. The battle will not be over in my lifetime or yours.
I filed a lawsuit and charged systematic exclusion of black folks from the jury
box and won. We had blacks come into the jury box. Some of these counties are
seventy and eighty percent black. We came up with a jury with eleven blacks and
one white. The white, every time would be selected foreperson. Because of three
hundred and fifty years of slavery and another one hundred years of near
slavery, the mere fact that I won a lawsuit and was able to put them in the jury
box could not erase four hundred and fifty years of discrimination. It is a slow
process. That is why it is not over. We put an all black jury in the box. There
was a white lady, whose leg was broken in a car accident. She received two
thousand dollars. A black woman in an identical situation would receive two
hundred dollars from an all black jury. After three hundred years of slavery and
one hundred years of near slavery, we have these fools on television talking
about it is over. We are about a third of the way, at best. Do not you fool
yourself. As I say to you, after almost forty years since the bridge, black
folks now take in and spend close to
nine hundred billion dollars every year and we do not spend it with each other
because we have been taught to not do that since the first slave ship stopped
here. That is one of the reasons why people with nine hundred billion dollars
have so many folks on food stamps and living in public housing. Everyday, we
spend at least a million dollars in supermarkets. We do not own one single
supermarket. The NAACP and my so, so, so fraternity and my wife's so, so
sorority spends tons of money in white hotels arguing about poverty and racism.
We do not own a single one of those hotels. If we bought one of those hotels,
that would do far more than addressing poverty and racism than these so called
symposiums that we have on the subject.
We have come a long, long way against insurmountable odds. It is a miracle that
we have even survived. I argue all the time all around the country with all
kinds of folks. The argument is rather or not if the glass is half full or half
empty. If you are white, you are more likely to argue that it is half full. If
you know me or ever heard of me, you would argue that it is half-empty. We all
have to agree that there is some water in the glass. It is wrong to argue that
over the last forty years, we have not made meaningful progress. It is just as
wrong to argue that that progress equals victory. We have to be realistic about
the whole situation. I was arguing with a fellow. You have probably seen him on
television. His last name is Armstrong. I forgot what his name. He called me a
liberal. He was bragging about how conservative he was. I said, "Boy let me tell
you something, I don't care nothing about black liberals or conservatives.
A black conservative to me is someone carrying water on a political reservation
run by George Bush and two or three other powerful Republicans. A black liberal
is someone carrying
water on a political reservation ran by Bill Clinton. The hell with both
reservations!" I am a black man trying to deal with truth.
People like me made people like Armstrong possible. If we knew that would be
.There must be accountability in the black community. We are the only people you
can say anything about, do anything to and there are not any consequences
whatsoever. The reason that we attack and undermine each other is because there
is no penalty to pay. That has to change. Sooner or later, we are going to have
to deal with the Armstrongs whether they all want to do it or not. We are going
to have to do that. We cannot fight on the serious front and have all of these
little yard dogs laughing and yapping at our heel. We have to be loose so we can
concentrate on the real struggle. I will say this. I am going to be frank with
you. I would not have said this if we did not have all of these white folks
here. I am just telling you all the truth. I learned in the Civil Rights
Movement that black folks are just 10 to 12 percent of the national population.
We will never get it done by ourselves. Nothing really happened in Selma until
white people of goodwill came. They came not just from the North, but other
parts of the South and locked arms with us in the streets of Selma and said, "I
am ready to march, go to jail, die or do whatever is necessary that rights will
prevail." White folks died in Selma. White folks died in Mississippi, Georgia
and other places finding that this country could be free. So, I do not want and
I do not agree with these separatist ideas. I think it is not only
self-defeating but foolish to say, "We don't want no white folks in this
and we are going to do it ourselves." You sure will do it yourself. We need all
of the help that we can get. Last, I would like to say to white folks that we
freed more of you all in 1967
than we freed people that look like me. I had white people come up to me and
whisper in my ear in Selma and they would say, "Keep up the fight J.L." They are
still walking by fear.
Do you know what it is in the year 2001 for someone to call you a nigger lover?
You might as well pack up and leave. This is everybody's struggle. We have
come a long way and we have overcome many obstacles. We have a long way to go,
but we are on our way. Nothing can stop us. I know from experience. I have been
to the well many, many times and I know that when good people lookup, rise up
and decide to stand up, we can make mountains move and trees tremble but we have
to do it together.
Closing: Attorney Chestnut will entertain your questions. Before we do that, let
me remind you that the yellow sheets that you have, please fill those out. Those
are our evaluation forms. Some of our grants or rather some of the folks need
that. Please fill them out and give it to some of the young people that are in
the back. Attorney Chestnut will now entertain your questions
Q: (inaudible)
A: You were around in the sixties, I know? Then you know that even then they
were only relatively a few of them. Young folks, my children's generation
and my grandchildren have the impression that 85 percent of black America was on
the march in the 1960's. There were a minuscule number of us on the march. I
think we can increase our numbers, but it will always be small. That does not
matter. Jesus Christ only had twelve, only one of them was a trader. If you are
prepared to be free or die, I do not need an army. I just need a few of those
type people and you can change the world. We want
to give everybody the chance. Do not be disheartened when you look back and see
that there are not many behind you.
My wife and I were born in Selma. We were sick of that little place. We both sat
down and talked about it. We both concluded that in six months to a year, we
would either pack up and leave or we would be dead. We had to consider that, to
not consider that, for us, that would have been crazy. I do not know of anyone
in the Civil Rights Movement back in the sixties who came in because they wanted
to commit suicide. 1 also did not know anyone in that movement who was not
prepared to die, if necessary; what is now going on is a lack of dedication.
Let me tell you about my son who is a lawyer. I raised him in my house. All he
thinks about is the house on the hill and the BMW. There is something human
about that. There are only going to be relatively few people who are going to
rise above that and see a greater truth and a greater need and be prepared to
die for it. I was telling some professors today. Martin Luther King my fly, my
friend and more of my leaders than he ever saw was the most morbid man I ever
met in my life. You could not talk to him three minutes before he brought up
death, his death, and everyone else's. Every since the Montgomery Boycott,
death had stalked him. It stalked him all the way to that balcony in Memphis. If
he said it to me once, he said it one hundred times, "They are going to keep
coming back for us until there is not one of us left." The only reason that did
not turn out to be true was because of Lyndon Johnson. He put so much pressure
on John Edgar Hoover, that every time the Klu Klux Klan met, two thirds of the
meeting were either FBI informants or under cover people... had that not been
the case, every one of us would
have been dead. Lyndon Johnson saved our lives. Even though he used to call us
niggers, but he saved our lives.
Q: There are many people here who are facing tremendous violence. Let me give
reference to the Muslims. Muslims are like the rest of the people who want to be
free, live their own lives and not be murdered or challenged about the way they
live their lives. I hope all people who are suffering for this reason will join
together and try to make this country the kind of country it ought to be. It is
really bad that we do not realize that there is a better way. We could be
benevolent instead of a tyrant around the world. I hope that everybody around
the world will try. I certainly want to work on this because I have been aware
of this for a very long time.
A: The truth is that there are powerful forces in this country who do not want
this to happen, the very thing you suggest. They have been fighting for years to
keep that from happening. It has always amused me that poor white Southerners
went off in the Civil War, fighting to preserve slavery and they were damn near
slaves themselves. It has always puzzled me that in Alabama some of the poorest
folk I know are against labor unions and wants to exalt so-called write-the-work
laws. This is the result of what I call mainstream brainwashing and it is out
there. People like you and lots of people who want to see a better world, there
are powerful forces who only want to see a better world on certain terms. They
are prepared, if necessary, to destroy America, to keep it from happening. It is
a sad commentary on our time, but it is the truth. I was also telling the
professors this afternoon that my ninety-year-old mother and I was sitting in
her house the other night watching television; nobody but us. This is a woman
that I love with all of
my heart. She had cultivated powerful white people all of her life. knows her.
She said black folks cannot do anything for her because they are in the same
boat. She does not even like white people who are not powerful. She does not
have time for you all. We were sitting in her room and President Bush was on the
television. The president said, 'This is a terrible tragedy. Thousands of
innocent people have been slaughtered. It is unprecedented. It never happened in
evil." My mother looked around to make sure there was nobody in there. She knows
there was no one else there but us, but this is the way she has been living with
white folks. She looked around to make sure no one was there and then she looked
at me and said, "ls he too young to remember Hiroshima Nagasaki? Does he
remember the atomic bomb?" I said, "Yes, he remembers. That is not a truth he
wants to deal with." She started to say something else to me and she changed her
mind and did not say it. The thing that I was looking at there, as I was talking
to these professors, that goes beyond the I 960's. That goes all the way
back to slavery. Do you understand it? That is what that is all about. Who would
corrupt the mind of people for centuries except they have diabolical design.
These are the folk who prevent the kind of world that you and I want from happening.
Q: First of all, thank you very much for making myself as well as the multitude
of other people here aware who are our age because so often we do not actually
see what you guys went through back in 1958, even though it is still currently
going on. My question, however, is where do we go from here? As a person in my
generation, what steps do we take to further the goal of equality and freedom?
A: I think that we have to give as much attention to the economics of freedom as
we have given to the politics of freedom. The economics of freedom are far more
difficult to achieve than the politics of freedom. We have to learn how to pull
our resources. We have to learn how to reward our friends with our money and
punish our enemy. We should not be putting money in the First National Bank if
we cannot make loans at the First National Bank. We should not be putting money
in the People's Bank if no one down there looks like us. I think we have to
strike on the economic front and we have to hit as hard as we did on the
political front. America is the citadel of capitalism and spending every dime we
get is a recipe for bankruptcy in the citadel of capitalism. I do not like to
deal with our dirty linen in front of white folks, but I am going to go ahead
and do this. There are some things in the black community that we really need to
clean up and only we can clean them up. I am sick and tired of some of these
black preachers, in an automobile long as from here to there, two telephones,
wearing a $1500.00 suit, riding pass us and will not speak and raising all of
that off people on food stamps; that is wrong. We cannot free a people tied to
that. It is everywhere in a black community. We need to take a look at these so
called black radio stations, so called. We do not usually own them. We just get
on them and act a fool. My partners and I just bought two radio stations in
Selma because there ought to be some other voice to the Selma Times-Journal. If
you listen to some of these so-called black radio stations, what you here will
make a grown man blush. All day long they are preaching to our children that SEX
spells love and it does not. It spells more poverty, more disease, more
everything that is wrong. I am going to stop there because the whites folks are
sure enough getting interested.
Q: I am a public school educator in the city of Huntsville and I work in middle
school. It just breaks my heart. I grew up in Birmingham in****. It is just
devastating because we are not educating blacks nor whites to the truth. I want
to know where do you think education fits in at that level because that is the
future. My day is over with. It is that generation that will have carry us as
America to where we want to be.
A: I agree with you. We are still teaching children that Columbus discovered
America, though the Indians was on the beach waiting for him. In America, the
truth can get you killed. Let me give you all some truths that will shock some
of you. Do you know who trained and equipped some of Osama Bin Laden? He was our
close friend as long as he was killing Russians. Do you understand that these
misguided misfits who took these planes into those buildings, in their own minds
were retaliating against this country for wrongs they felt had been done to
them. Do you realize the truth will get you killed? So, how do you teach it? Do
you realize that beginning in 1980, for eight years, Ronald Reagan prosecuted
underclass, illegal wars on virtually every little country in Central and South
America. He destroyed villages, destroyed families, killing children and women.
Do you know that it is beyond rational dispute that all of the North help
finance those wars with drug money. We do not come with clean hands. That is why
the truth is so dangerous. If you start speaking or telling the truth, get ready
to suffer; it is coming. I have spent a lifetime suffering because I believe in
people and I love people. When I look in the mirror and shave every morning, I
want to see somebody I halfway like. I do not want to be ashamed of me. I have
seen some awful things in my time, things that would make you cry. The innocent
suffers, truth be damned. I am going to say this and then I
am going to hush. While President Bush and clergy from all denominations, black,
white, red and everybody were appropriately gathered in the National Cathedral
to show national tolerance, unity, prayer and hope, two of president Bush's
strongest supporters wrote Reverend Jerry Falwell and Reverend Pat Robertson was
on national television saying that the trade center and the pentagon because of
homosexuals, homosexuality and abortionists. Now, how crazy can you be? That is
loose in this land and it has been loose in this land for a long, long time.
These people have power. They have the airwaves. They have television sounds and
all that. They feed that to a misguided public all of the time. I hear stuff
from intelligent, educated people and I say to myself, "Did I hear that right?"
Q: I must first start off by saying that I have immensely enjoyed everything
that you have told us tonight. It encourages me as a college student to go forth
and do well. The question that I want to ask you is despite all that you have
experienced, what has reaffirmed your faith in America in all that you have done
and what has kept you going through all of these years?
A: As I mentioned earlier, my dear mother and my late father actually loved
people. They transferred that to me and to my younger sister. I cannot put up
with suffering. I do not like to see anybody mistreated. When you have a sense
of people, you want to try to help improve the human condition. I learned a long
time ago in Sunday school that I cannot love the Lord until I first learn how to
love you. I also learned that no matter what someone else does to me, I cannot
afford to let that person make me hate them. I read where Booker T. Washington
said, "The only way you can keep a man down a ditch is
you have to get down there with him." Throughout my life, there has always
seemed to be somebody there who cared and said, "Look here boy, you don't
want to go that way; go this way." There were a lot of people who did not care.
There was always one or two who cared. I went to these segregated public schools
in Selma, Alabama. The building 1 went to school in had been condemned twenty
years earlier when my mother was a student there. The ceiling would fall down
while we were in class. The whites had a brand new school on the main street in
Selma. The superintendent would come every year to explain to us why there was
no money for a new school. I wanted to do him some harm. I talked to my father
about that. My father talked to me about not getting down in the ditch with the
superintendent. I will say this. Nobody believes more in prayer than I do. I
pray everyday. I am not ashamed of that. I pray at night. I pray driving along
the street. When I get through praying, I get up off my knees; I am ready for
battle. I guess. I am having the time of my life.
Q: (inaudible)
A: I will relay your message verbatim.
Can I take two minutes and say something about fees that I think that you ought
to hear? Three years ago, three of us brought a law suit in Washington, DC on
behalf on twenty thousand black farmers from Maine to Florida and from New
York to California. We charged that the United States Department of Agriculture
had discriminated against black farmers by one, not giving them the loans that
were entitled to and two, if they got the longs, it was too little too late. It
forced farmers out of business. Fifteen years ago, there were thirty-six
thousand small black farmers in this country. There are about eight left
now. The judge said to me, "Mr. Chestnut, how much money are you talking about?
Are you talking about 20,000 farmers all over the country?" I said, "Yes your
honor." He said, "Well how much money are you talking about. I said about 2.5
billion dollars." The government laughed. The reason they laughed is because
black folk had never gotten any real money from the federal government. You get
social security and small business loans, but you do not get any real money from
the government. There was no precedent for that. As I talk to you now, the
government has paid fifty thousand dollars to about nine thousand black farmers
who had no records whatsoever. Once they paid them the fifty thousand dollars
because it was income, the government wrote a second check for 12,500 dollars
for taxes and paid that to the IRS. In addition to that, if the government had
some land that it had foreclosed on a black farmer, they had to give it back.
They are in the process of doing that right now. Do you know how much black
lawyers charged the black farmers? Zero. It cost my law firm 1.5 million dollars
to process the case. We said at the end of the case, we will come back to the
court. If we win, the court can order the government to pay us. We don't
want little farmers paying us. They didn't create this mess. The government
did. Now, the government is now paying us. Now, we are arguing with each other.
Q: First of all, I would like to extend my sincere appreciation for you sharing
that delightful and wonderful lecture that you shared with us. I also wanted to
comment on how one, the truth is not out there often and it is not often set out
as eloquently as you put it. First of all, you do not have to search for the
truth. There are books and research and a lot of that is for us today. If you do
teach us from our elders, we will receive that
information and we will take it and run with it. I do not want you to feel as if
the cause is gone; the cause is lost because there are still people out there
that feel that it is not over. We hear you when you call upon us to step up to
the plate. I know soon that you will have to sit down but just know that our
generation is not all lost. We are out there. We are waiting for you and that is
all we need to see a little direction and we are in it. Along the path, we as
children, we learn from our elders. In someway and somehow, it was mistranslated
that after the Civil Rights Movements and after desegregation, everything was
okay. Now, today our generation is driving around in luxurious cars paid by our
student loans and things like that. I just want to know how do you feel about
our generation kind of dropping the ball as far as the revolution is concerned
and as far as things of that nature of the Civil Rights Movement is not over. We
still have things to fight for. Like you said, it is only one-third of the way
to its final destination and I do not
see it in **. Where do you think we dropped the ball? So, thank you, thank you
for coming to our campus.
A: I am going to answer that quickly and then I am going to let you all go. We
all have to work together, as I have mentioned and went into that, and try to
bring those along who will not come. Some will not come regardless, but you will
get some of them. In 1964, every major black Civil Rights leader in the country
was in jail in little Selma, every one of them and the movement was dying
because there was no one to lead it. We had been trying for two weeks, habeas
corpus and everything trying to get them out. One judge told me, "No way. We
have the head of the snake. All we have to do is hold it long enough and the
tail will die. Then, Malcolm X showed up in Selma in front of my
office before he went on down to the Brown Chappuis Church. I was glad when he
went on down to the Brown Chappuis Church. He stood up in front of my office and
he said that he had come to Selma to take over the movement and that from now on
it would be going in a different direction. The only reason they were going to
turn the cheek to see which way the rascal went. I looked up and there was
Martin and Ralph walking down the street. The white folks put them out the jail.
That is a true story. Malcolm X could not have organized a march in Selma if he
life depended on it. He did not speak the language or walk the walk. He was from
Harlem and he knew that, but he also knew that the white folks did not know
that. If they knew it, they were too scared to take a chance. It takes all
kinds. Everybody brings something to the struggle.
Speaker: You have been trying to ask a question for a long time.
Q: (inaudible)
A: Let me go at it this way. Sometimes, we do not see what we think we see.
Sometimes, it is not so much the mentality as it may be other things. Let me
give you an example. In the same black farmer suit, there were serious problems.
The statue of limitations had run. The statue of limitations said that if you
have a lawsuit for discrimination against the government you had to bring it
within two years. These farmers had not brought in any lawsuits within two
years. The justice department told the president, "They are over with .Do not
worry about it. We will file a motion to dismiss on the basis of the statue of
limitations. The justice department thought that the President of the United
States had the same mentality that they did because they were all in the
government. The president did not want it to go away. He said, "Well, I do not know.
Let me think about it." While he was thinking about it, we went around and
brought black farmers. We back to the l 960's. We brought black farmers
from all over the United States to Washington. They came in fifteen-year-old
pick up trucks. They had little brown bags of cold chicken. That is all that
they could afford. They slept five and six in a hotel room. We were up and down
Pennsylvania Avenue. One fellow brought his mule. The biggest and the ugliest
mule I ever seen in my life. The mule's name was Trouble. We were up and
down Pennsylvania Avenue threatening to shut the government down. The President
of the United States was in the White House looking out smiling and Al Gore was
close to having a miscarriage. He was trying to run for president and that was
part of his political base out in the streets marching, so the president had the
pressure that he wanted. So, he called of all people, Newton Gingrich. That is
what I am saying. Everything that everything that looks a certain way is not. He
called Newton Gingrich and said, "I need you to help me." Then he told us, I
want you all to go up tomorrow to the speaker's office and talk with him.
We are going to see what we can do about this Statue of Limitations". I said,
"Oh Lord, who in the world want to be bothered with Newton Gingrich?" We went up
there. He said, "Come in. Come in. Then he said, "Look, we saved the Japanese.
We did you all wrong. Stop believing that." Newton Gingrich drafted it alone. He
had his committee to do it. He went down on the floor of the house himself and
insisted that amendment, about 3 paragraphs, be added to that federal budget and
it passed. For the first time in the history of the country, the government
waived the law and said it did not apply to these minority farmers. What am I
saying? I am saying that everything is not as it appears. There are people out
there with
a mindset that you cannot read. There are a whole lot of people we may think got
that mindset; they do not have it. We just have to reach them and talk to them.
We cannot give up. We have to keep pushing up.
Dublin Core
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Digitized VHS tape of "Early Years of the Movement" (Part II).
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J.L. Chestnut, Jr. is the speaker in this lecture given at Alabama A&M.
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2001-09-20
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1:38:28
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en
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This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections.
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Alabama A & M University
University of Alabama in Huntsville
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University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections
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2000-2009
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Chestnut, J. L., 1930-2008
Civil rights movements--Southern states--History--20th century
Selma (Ala.)
Macon County (Ala.)
African Americans--Legal status, laws, etc.
Voter registration
Segregation
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Lectures
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<a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/384">Early Years of the Movement (Part II) - Speaker: J.L. Chestnut, Jr. - Transcription of Tape 3, 2003</a>
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
<a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/397">VHS tape of "Early Years of the Movement" (Part II). Box 2, Tape 3</a>
University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama
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087c422d0f49536387c05bd319cd3ba5
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
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The Montgomery Bus Boycott Speaker: Fred Gray, Charles Moore Thank you. On behalf of the University of Alabama in Huntsville and on behalf of President Frank Franz, I am very pleased to welcome all of you to this lecture series focusing on the history and impact of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama.This historic initiative brings to Huntsville, distinguished speakers who will reflect on events of the past and who will share with us their hopes for the future.I must once again commend the faculty from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and from Alabama A&M University, who worked over a period of more than two years to make this possible. Those faculty include, but are not limited to, John Dimmock, Lee Williams, Jack Ellis, Mitch Berbrier from UAH, and James Johnson and Carolyn Parker from Alabama A&M. I am very pleased that you could be with us. Good evening. It is my pleasure to take a couple of moments to acknowledge our sponsors. These are the people who have made it possible for us to do all these kinds of things. They have given us funds and all kinds of support. They are: The Alabama Humanities Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Senator Frank Sanders; The Huntsville Times; DESE Research, Inc.; Mevatec Corporation; and Alabama Representative, Laura Hall. At Alabama A&M, we have the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, the State Black Archives Research Center and Museum, Title III Telecommunications and Distance Learning Center, Office of Student Development, the Honors Center, Sociology/Social Work Programs and the History and Political Science Programs. At the University of Alabama in Huntsville, we have the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, The History Forum Banking Foundation, Sociology, Social Issues Symposium, The Humanities Center, The Division of Continuing Education, the Honors Program and the Office of Multi-Cultural Affairs, Office of Student Affairs and the UAH Copy Center. Let's give these people a show of appreciation. Now, let's welcome Charles Moore. Charles Moore: For those of you that saw or bought the special series of stamps of the different images from the sixties, it included a photograph of Martin Luther King's face from the sixties. It was from that picture. They purchased the rights to do that, to use his face for an artist to do a rendition of Dr. King in "I Have A Dream." This picture is after they told Dr. King to move from the court steps but he refused. One officer had his armed twisted, like in a hammerlock behind his back. I am sure that hurt. People began to gather around Dr. King, and I think he may have been afraid... he certainly didn't want any violence, so he may have been putting his hand out to the people as to say, "No, don't get involved. Just stay away." So I followed them photographing and there was no one around, there were no other journalists or writers. There were no photographers. I followed them down the street until they took him into the booking station, which may be in here. I'm not sure if we have that picture. I came into the door right behind the policeman and Dr. King and I'm over and behind them. I took one shot and I realize how ridiculous this was because I could only see the backs of the people. I knew there was a little floppy, folding door over on the side of the desk there. Without asking permission, I just ran around there and went in behind the jailer. don't know if he ever knew if l was even there or not but I went behind him to get the picture that would show their faces and the face of Dr. King while they were still twisting his arm behind his back. That was the other photograph. So, those two photographs of the arrest would be equivalent to the others. Some of you will remember the Baltimore postman, William Moore (no relation) who had decided to walk to Mississippi with a sign on his back that said, "Eat at Joe's, Mississippi, both black and white," or something like that. I only learned recently that he stopped in a little store in Georgia, I believe. My reporter and I had flown into Chattanooga and met these guys later that retraced this so I was not on the assignment when this man was killed. He stopped at a little country store and he went in, he was kind of a strange guy, but he believed that this thing going on in the south wasn't right, segregation was not right. Unfortunately, he was very naive and these guys got him into discussion, "Well, do you believe in this, do you believe in interracial marriage, do you believe in blacks and whites getting married." He responded, "Sure I do, if they love each other." They said, "What if they are marrying a Jew?" He said, "Sure there's nothing wrong with that?" The guy went on and on. He was not aware of the danger at all. I did not know this until recently. But he continued his walk, but what I have heard, is that when he started to leave, one of the men said to him, "Boy, you are going to die!" The guy just looked at him and said, "I don't know what you are talking about." The man said, "Like I said, you are going to die". He was shot. It was a cowardly thing. The man that did this is in prison. I do not remember his name. The man went off into the woods on the side of the road by the trees with a high-powered rifle and shot him in the head as he went by. It was a cowardly ambush and murder of a totally innocent, simple man. These things are terrible. On this next picture, I was on this march when my reporter heard on a car radio, he was driving along while I was walking with the marchers, of these guys that were retracing that hike that Bull Conner was going to meet Dr. King with some force. Dr. King was bringing his group into Birmingham and that it was going to happen that afternoon. We stopped right then and took off to Birmingham. We thought that it could be bad. This is the first shot I made. When we drove into Kelly Ingram Park, we looked at a map and found out where it was, Michael was driving a rental car, I saw these firemen, it was a little different from this when I first saw it, but I just made him let me jump out of the car so he could go park and join me later. This was the lead photograph in Life Magazine. It was in the Birmingham story. Life was a pretty big magazine. So, all the way across two pages was this strong black and white image. The firemen were on the left page and they are on the other page and underneath was the caption in big letters, 'THEY FIGHT A FIRE THAT WON'T GO OUT." Fred, do you remember that? It's very interesting, I have always liked this picture, and I'm not saying it because of things that have happened with it, but I have always liked this picture because I studied art for a little while and I always had a big thing on composition. I still believe, and I get a lot of questions from other photographers, and I teach it when I am talking about photography. I teach them that they have to think fast, even in violent action. Sometimes the photograph can have composition, whether it's a bat being hit over someone's head or whether it's this. I didn't want the firemen. I had pictures of the firemen. All I wanted to do was see that white, hot stream of water, which is hard, hitting somebody in the back. I had a 100-millimeter lens on the camera and I just wanted this composition. This has become an icon of the movement. I am happy to say that it is included in twenty-five photographs. A man came to see me recently who had just left Gordon Parks, and Gordon's a friend, not in very good health now, living in New York City. Gordon has one of the great pictures too. These twenty-five pictures will be on the USA cable network. I don't know when it will be. But anyway, it's the twenty-five most important pictures of the century, so I'm very happy that this one made it. Next. Why did I put a color photograph in there? This is in Kelly Ingram Park about two years ago. When Life decided that they were going to pick one the pictures of the century for their special issue, they sent me back to Birmingham. This is the fourteen-year-old woman, Carolyn Mclnstry, who is in the photograph in front of those two young men. This is Carolyn today. She is a good friend. She works for BellSouth in Birmingham and has been with them quite a long time, I think. It's been good for her. She has spent at least two times with Oprah on the Oprah show. She is very active. It is really nice to know that young, fourteen-year-old girl, Carolyn, who lost friends when those little girls were killed in the church. Those were her friends. She had been with them earlier. That was a real shock to Carolyn. This is one of the monuments for those of you who have been there. She was one of the children that were hit by the water at fourteen years of age. This is the one similar to the one Life ran. Next. These are the things that disturbed me so much in Birmingham. I didn't just want to stand in the distance and take a lot of safe shots of overall things happening. I was arrested too. It was during the water hoses that I was arrested. I was too active. My reporter was running around with me too so they grabbed us both. This woman had been hit and knocked down and at one point, this picture was just no good, because she is being rolled by that high-pressure hose and her purse was knocked away. Her clothing was folding up over her and what a terrible thing for her. This man came along and picked her up. I think this is important too. You don't grab a photograph and say, "Well, I got that shot. I am going to see what else I can find." You kind of stay with it and I'm glad I did because I did see this man come up and help her. You can see people running in the background. Next. This is the cover of the book. I think that I reversed all of these. I was in a hurry. This, to me, showed some of the anger. I did photographs of some of the young kids. It's natural for young kids in a situation like this to play in the water. Some people may make fun of that but those are children who are learning. Most of this was a horrible, horrible thing and very degrading and as in one of the photographs in the exhibit, it's one of my favorites because there is one man who is powerful. He's standing like this. He is being hit with this blast of water. It shows his back where he is hit and then he whirls around with this look on his face. He looks like he could destroy anyone of those policemen or firemen. He is standing there helpless as if to say, "How degrading this is to have this happen to you and can't do anything about it". By the way, it's a good time to say I don't know all about the firemen. I know that now firemen are really heroes and all, and I think they are. The firemen down there, I tell you, I was under the water and he had them down and holding them and just spraying them and I crawled under with a wide-angled lens, under the water, and photographed back at the firemen with the water going over me. They could have turned it down on me. I was just hoping they didn't. I overheard a fireman fussing and holding the hose and saying, because it's been quoted. This fireman said to another fireman, 'This is crazy! We are supposed to be fighting fires, not people." Now that is a good fireman. That man obviously did not want to do what he was doing, but sometimes we do it anyway. I work with a wide-angle lens. A lot of people ask me how close and all of this. I'm pretty close. I think I was using a twenty-eight millimeter lens, that's the reason you can tell from this perspective how large the policemen is that is closer to me than the people in the background. With a telephoto lens, a longer lens, if you shoot with that, it compresses your subjects. It compresses the scene, so it pushes them all together. In relation to the people in the background, to this man, they would appear to be closer. It is the way I work. It is the way I feel that there is more drama and more impact, which is what you need in these photographs. I wonder how close that dog was to me. I didn't see him. I didn't even pay any attention to him. I was focusing on the others, but there was a dog there. This is a pretty vicious thing, to allow it to go out and happen. Sure they're on a leash, but they're leading them in on a leash. It was pretty horrible. This man was bitten, not just his pants torn but his leg was badly bitten. On the next picture, again you see the same kind of thing thing. I work fast. If you are ever going to be a photojournalist, then you want to do photographs like this and you have to work really fast. You need to be really good with knowing your exposures. All of your professionalism has to come out so it just works automatically for you. These pictures were taken with manual cameras, nothing automatic, just simply manual, no exposure meters built in, no automatic focusing, or anything. Next. When I photographed this, I just heard that Dr. King had been arrested. I later found out this was not his hand. I don't know whose hand it was but I thought it was Dr. King's. !fit were his hand, this would be an even greater photograph. It's the fact that it is just an icon of what was happening there, which was that so many people, children and women were being arrested. I don't know if any of you all know a writer named Paul Hendrickson, but he wrote about a woman photographer named Marion Post Walcott. He wrote a book called Looking For the Light. He first wrote a piece for Life Magazine, and then he turned it into a major book. He also has another prize-winning book called Five Who Died. It's about Vietnam. He has come from Washington to see me twice. He also works and writes for the Washington Post, but he does books. He's an author. He was haunted, as he said, by this photograph so he has gone back to Mississippi on several occasions and he's been back to Alabama a couple of times and spent some time with me. I know there is someone here who knows Shannon Wells, who is a photographer from the University of Alabama, UNA. We had lunch together at a restaurant in Florence that is an African-American restaurant. It is popular, especially with the college, and it has incredible Southern food. Well, we took him there. He fell in love with Shannon. He wants to come back and visit again. He is a great man and he has gone into the lives of all of these men. He has interviewed their family members, they're all dead. This is on the campus at Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi, during the Meredith thing. The men with the clubs are deputy sheriffs and they're waiting for the marshals to bring in the and they're talking and he is kind of laughing and they're cutting up and they're saying, "This is what we are going to do. We'll show Bobby Kennedy and those marshals how we handle them down here." They are laughing and making a joke out of it. He found out through interviewing people who knew all of these men. He is writing a new book that will be coming out; I don't know what he's calling it right now. He said, "One thing you should know is that everyone I talked to that knew the man in the center, said a lot of things, but the one thing they all had in common about him is that he always had to be the center of attention. So it goes on, the interest in Civil Rights and coming together, making the world better, making our country better, understanding each other and understanding that we are all of the same God, understanding that we all must get along. Color? What is color? It doesn't matter. I am a color photographer. I love all the colors of the spectrum. This last picture is of one of the marshals that had been shot. He had been shot in the leg, I believe. There were twenty-eight marshals that were badly wounded. Two people died that night on the campus. One was a French journalist who was sort of hiding down low behind a piece of shrubbery. His killer got away because someone came up behind and put a bullet in the back of his head. Again, a cowardly thing to do to a man just witnessing as a journalist. How do you find this person? Anyway, another innocent bystander, I don't remember who he was, but somebody who worked in Oxford was hit and killed by a bullet. But twenty-eight of the marshals were wounded by gunfire. The next picture is one of the wounded. He happened to be standing next to me by an army jeep when shots came out of the crowd that night. There were shot gun blasts and all kinds of things being shot at the marshals. There was tear gas and bottles of gasoline being thrown. It was a terrible thing. There were cars being set on fire. It was a nightmare out there in front of that building all night. Some of the guys got a bulldozer and they were going to crash into the front of the building. The marshals had to get on it and take these guys off of it. They had to fight them to get them off. This picture is of an Associated Press writer, a reporter, out of the Memphis office. He was standing and a shot came out of the crowd. I ducked behind the jeep. He turned to run back into the building. The second shot came out. Fortunately it was buckshot, but it blasted his back. He was just patched up by the marshals inside, still bleeding a little bit but went on working. He was interviewing after being wounded. I'm glad I ducked. This is a picture of the next morning. Tear gas is still lingering out there. In some of the pictures, as they are bringing Meredith onto the campus, marshals and other people have their handkerchiefs over their face. John Durr and the top marshal are escorting him in the next morning. He was hidden overnight and they're escorting him the next morning after the riot into the campus to register. Next. These are some of the prisoners the next morning. They are some of the people that were rounded up and you can see that some of the people still have a gas mask on because as you walk around there was so much tears gas used out there that when you walked around the next morning, it would stir it up and it would still be drifting. This is Selma in this picture. Andy Young was praying in this picture. Andrew Young became a good friend and a wonderful man. He wrote the introduction to my book. This was just before the march. They are praying for the march and I think this is before Bloody Sunday. I covered Bloody Sunday and then I went back for the final march. Next. These are some of deputies or sub-deputies or whatever on the street in Selma as John Lewis, and I couldn't find that slide of John Lewis and all the people coming out toward the bridge, but these were people standing there on the streets of Selma. I shot this picture in color. It was a little different but it was the cover of Life. This was Bloody Sunday, the first march. Next. This is after they stopped. They were stopped on the other side by the police and then given two minutes to disburse, and they didn't, then Bloody Sunday happened. They charged these folks with billy clubs and started beating them and later used tear gas. Next. I found out this woman's name later. She was hurt badly. You can see the police have tear gas masks on. I had to cut out a lot of pictures for time and this is one of the marching pictures along the road. Next. Dr. King on the march. This is the final march, the victory march. I wanted to see the reaction of people along the way so I did a lot of photographs also of the people cheering them. This was Birmingham. Everyone knows him. I wanted to get a few faces. I only have a few of them, of the people that were important. Next. James Baldwin certainly was. Harry Bellefonte was one of the most wonderful friends I think I've ever met. He's a great guy. He was also very close to Dr. King. This is one of my favorites always. What a great singer. I have one of her songs on one of my audio/video presentation, which has songs and sounds of the movement on it. Two of his friends. Next. Two of his friends, remember I left my heart in San Francisco? Next. That's Myrlie Evers at the funeral in Jackson, Mississippi. Medgar Evers, I never really worked with him. I only got a chance to go and photograph the funeral. Next. I don't know if it's here, but there's another picture I have of Myrlie with her face bowed that I like better. She's really, really sad. In Montgomery, in between the first march, Bloody Sunday, and the next march, there were some students from different places that had come down to Montgomery. They were sitting in on the street because they were trying, as had been done a couple of time, to desegregate the capital cafeteria. They tried to go in as a mixed group into the cafeteria but it wasn't working so one day they sat down on the street and they weren't going to move. They were just protesting, but very peacefully. What happens all of a sudden, these people come riding up on horses and they said," We're all deputies." But, one person was in uniform. This man was beating some of these people with his cane. Others had clubs. Let's see if there's another one. I don't know if there are any others of the horses. Yeah, there's a man with a hard hat on, hitting this girl over the head with a club. You' II see her, I think in the next picture. Next. This guy, I have a whole sequence of this, I followed them all along. He had been hit, knocked on the ground, she ran. I've got a picture of her running over to pick him up and then picking him up and helping him. Next. He's bleeding very badly. His head had a bad gash in it. She's angry, and she points at his face and looks at me with a very angry look saying, "Look what they did to him." Next. This is a poet, I always forget his name, and I've got to write it down. This man is a well-known poet from the University of Pennsylvania or somewhere. Anyway, his face was busted here with a club. Next. A little tender care. So, folks it was violent. Other people here know a lot more about the violence than I do. I mean I've had violence committed and threatened on me. But I was a color that didn't get quite as much violence as people did of another color, a darker color. So much violence was directed at people. So much harm and harm to our country. I'm very happy and I still like to be positive sometimes and say, "Yes, things are better." I think Fred Gray is right in saying, "There's much to be done still." Always, we can't look back. We have to worry about our children today. What are they going to be like when they're adults? What do they feel about civil rights? Yes, I can be friends openly in Florence, Alabama with black people. I was really amazed. Every year, some of you may know, there is an Ebony Fashion Show. I went to the Ebony Fashion Show with a lady friend and a friend of hers, who's a fashion designer in Nashville, who happened to be down visiting. So, the three of us went and it was amazing. Everybody's all dressed up and there was a little jazz trio there and beautiful models. And I thought, this is Alabama, this incredible mix of black and white here? It was amazing. It was a wonderful, beautiful thing. Everybody had a great time, you know, and it's an annual thing. I think they collect the money for something, I don't remember what the charity is. Anyway, it was wonderful to see that. What happens now is that we must keep moving on, and you educators, especially. I'm happy to see you and hear more about what you're doing at the universities. I speak a lot at universities and I'm very happy to see the things that are happening. Next. This may be the last. Thank you. (Fred Gray) Q: What message do you think scholarships based upon race sends college students, instead of scholarships based on merit? A: Well, you have to understand the purpose for scholarships in the first place. For example, I was just in a conference earlier this week on a high education case here. For the purpose of integrating and encouraging people when they won't just voluntarily do things, the courts use various other means to do it. I think what you have to understand, because if you just take a scholarship out of the context of the whole history of the struggle, then you miss the purpose for it. I have another speech I make all the time and 1 didn't do it tonight because we didn't have time to do it. But, you have to understand how this whole business started. It didn't start today; it started really when African Americans were brought to this country as slaves. The only group that's here, brought against their will. The Constitution that we read about, when we say, "We the people of the United States... " The Constitution as originally written, that preamble did not include people who look like me. It only included white, almost males. Because, even females couldn't serve on the jury in this state, when I started practicing law. So, in order to correct mistakes that were made in the Constitution, you have the adoption of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. And many of those were designed originally just for the protection of African-Americans. But now the equal protection, the due process clause of the 14th Amendment protects white's rights much more than blacks rights when they originally started. So, the whole purpose of whether you call it affirmative action or whatever you want to call it, the whole idea, the court tried to come up with some derivatives to do away with the effects of past discrimination. And I think, if it takes scholarships like at Alabama State and at A&M, white students can obtain scholarships. And they did that because you won't voluntarily go over there. So, to encourage you to do it, they end up giving scholarships. I see nothing wrong with it. But the purpose of it is not to discriminate against anyone; it's trying to make the field level. I think there is a duty and a responsibility on all of us to come up with some ways and means of doing it. If you don't like that way, do something. But, the discrimination, which still exists in this country, needs to be done away with. Q: Civil rights, for example, took on a front of peace movement, the teachings of Gandhi, pacifism. Was it ever close to the leaders or a group going the other way to where there was ever a danger of being more violent? Not as far as the marches, but being violent from the movement itself. A: I think basically, the civil rights movement, particularly as it developed in Montgomery and as Dr. King led it, as you know, his whole philosophy was nonviolence and there really was a good reason for it. There was a good practical reason, too. Number one, if somebody comes up to you and does something to you and you don't fight back, it's hard to have a fight with one person doing all the beating. You might get a beating, but you don't get a fight. Secondly, if in the movement, during the early stages, if we had decided it was going to be a contest between who could arm themselves more and who could fight the most, that's a losing battle. So you don't even try to engage in it. But we did have some persons in the movement, on our side, even, who didn't believe in nonviolence. They wanted to use force when they got an opportunity. I think one of the reasons the early stage of the movement was successful is because it did take on a nonviolent aspect. Q: Earlier in the talks you talked about the fact that we still have problems. I want you to comment on in high schools in the south, you still see a lot of the social and economic segregation. It's very poignant, I was wondering if you could comment about that. A: I think you're perfectly right. There is still, and as one who has been in this fight for a long time, we are still, believe it or not, the case of Lee V. Mason which covers one hundred of one hundred and nineteen school systems in this state. We started out with overt segregation. I now see in some of those same school systems, a less amount of actual, if you count the numbers of whites and blacks who are in these schools. You have fewer now, than we had ten or fifteen years ago. What they're saying is not the result of segregation as it originally exists but it's the result of housing patterns and all of these other things. I think what people have to realize, the idea of and these school desegregation cases were never filed just for the purpose of putting a black child in a formerly white school. The purpose was they found that blacks were receiving an inferior education in those schools. And most of the resources were going to the white schools and not to the black schools. We are almost getting back to that same situation now. What we're concerned about is quality education. But, we have also found that there is a greater possibility of having quality education in a setting where both races are, because once they finish school, they get into the real world, they're going to have to be competing against each other. So, they need to be able to learn how to work together and there is something that each ethnic group can learn from the other. So, I think it's more than just numbers; it's a question of quality education. Closing: Thank you Mr. Gray. I hate to cut the questions off because I think this is a rare, historical opportunity for us to hear these individuals who have played such an important role in American history. But, the hour is getting late and we would like to invite you up for a reception. Just give us a moment to set everything up. And I want to express the appreciation of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama A&M University, the planning committee for your appearance tonight. This has been a wonderful occasion and we're thankful for all three of you.
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Digitized VHS tape of "The Montgomery Bus Boycott".
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Fred Gray, Charles Moore, and D'Linell Finley, Sr. are the speakers in this lecture given at University of Alabama in Huntsville.
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2001-09-27
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0:44:14
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en
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Alabama A & M University
University of Alabama in Huntsville
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University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections
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2000-2009
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Gray, Fred D., 1930-
Moore, Charles, 1931-2010
Finley, D'Linell, 1948-
Civil rights movements--Southern states--History--20th century
Montgomery (Ala.)
Montgomery County
Montgomery Bus Boycott, Montgomery, Ala., 1955-1956
Segregation
Voter registration
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Lectures
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<a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/386">The Montgomery Bus Boycott - Speakers: Fred Gray, Charles Moore, and D'Linell Finley - Transcription of Tape 4, 2003</a>
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
<a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/398">VHS Tape of: The Montgomery Bus Boycott - Speakers: Fred Gray, Charles Moore, and D'Linell Finley, Sr., 2001-09-27 Box 2, Tape 4</a>
University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama
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http://libarchstor2.uah.edu/digitalcollections/files/original/32/11352/uah_civr_000006_Box_2_Tape_6.mp4
5ff66eb87c2c5a857c48d11eabf45f3a
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
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Trial by Fire and Water: Birmingham, 1963 (Part II) Speaker: Glenn Eskew, Odessa Woolfolk Ladies and Gentleman, good evening. I am Sherry Marie Shuck, Assistant Professor of History at UAH. Welcome to the sixth installment of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, a 14-week symposium centered around a series of public lectures, panels and first-hand accounts of significant events taking place in the state of Alabama. This series is held alternately at UAH and Alabama A&M University. After three years of planning, this unique intellectual project is a joint venture between Alabama A&M University and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The members of the Steering Committee in alphabetical order are: Mitch Berbrier of UAH, John Dimmock of UAH, Jack Ellis of UAH, James Johnson of AAMU, Carolyn Parker of AAMU and Lee Williams, II, of UAH. To round its work, the planning committee has also been greatly assisted by the efforts of Joyce Maples of UAH's University Relations. We would also like to recognize our two visitors at this time, President John T. Gibson, President of Alabama A&M University and Dr. Charles Nash, Vice Chancellor of the University of Alabama System. We ask that you complete an evaluation form for this program and leave it here on the stage or with an attendant at the exits. This series on the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama would not have been possible without the financial support of numerous sponsors whom the planning committee wishes to acknowledge at this time. First and foremost is the Alabama Humanities Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities; The Huntsville Times, DESE Research Incorporated, Mevatec Corporation, Alabama Representative Laura Hall and Senator Hank Sanders. Joining our efforts from Alabama A&M University is the Office of the President, The Office of the Provost, the State Black Archives Research Center and Museum, Title III Telecommunications and Distance Learning, the Office of Student Development, the A&M Honors Center of Sociology/Social Work, Political Science and History. At the University of Alabama at Huntsville, we gratefully acknowledge funding assistance from the Office of the President, the Office of the Provost, the Humanities Center, the Division of Continuing Education, the Department of Sociology and Social Issues Symposium, the Honors Program, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, Student Affairs, The Copy Center, and the UAH History Forum Bankhead Foundation, which is serving as the local host for tonight's activities; and with the kind help of Staff Assistant Beverly Robinson, who has prepared a reception back stage immediately following tonight's lecture to which you are all invited. Tonight, we are presenting part 2 of our program, Trial by Fire and Water, Birmingham 1963. We would like to remind you that next week's program which will be a panel discussion on the Civil Rights Movement in Huntsville will be held on the Alabama A&M West Campus at the Ernest Knight Reception Center. I would now like to tum things over to Professor James Johnson, Director of the State Black Archives Research Center and Museum who will introduce tonight's distinguished panelists and moderate the program Dr. Johnson. I would say good evening also. I would like to make some preliminary remarks regarding Dr. Horace Huntley who was to be one of the panelists on tonight's program. At the last minute, Dr. Huntley informed us that he could not keep his commitment to participate in the program due to a medical condition and at the advice of his doctor advising him against making the trip. He regrets this occurrence and offers his sincere apologies, and of course, we recognize that his health takes priority over the project. Dr. Huntley was scheduled to discuss the oral history project of which he serves as director, sponsored by the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. However, Ms. Odessa Woolfolk is familiar with the project and is at liberty to address its significance to the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. We are pleased and privileged to have two exceptionally qualified individuals to serve as panelists for this evening's program, Part II, Trial By Fire and Water - Birmingham, 1963. Introduction: Professor Glenn T. Eskew made did his under graduate studies at Auburn University receiving a BA degree in History and Journalism in 1984. His graduate studies were completed at the University of Georgia, receiving an MA and Ph.D. degrees respectively in 1987 and 1993. He has received prestigious fellowships and honors that reflect upon his outstanding academic and professional accomplishments prior to and as a Professor of History of Georgia State University since 1993. Some of these include The National Endowment for Humanities, Summer Institute for College Teachers, teaching the history of the Southern Civil Rights Movement at the WEB Dubois Institute, Harvard University 1995;Robert C. Anderson Memorial Award for undergraduate assistance, best dissertation 1994;. Albert Einstein Institution Dissertation Fellowship 1991 through 1993. The Phelps-Stoke Graduate Fellowship in 1988. He is also a member of the Phi Alpha Theta and Phi Kappa Phi local and national honor societies. His numerous publications have appeared in journals, anthologies and books, which include Paternalism in a Southern City, Race, Religion and Gender in Augusta, Georgia 1999; Southern Labor in War Times and other essays in honor of Gary Fink, 1999, and But For Birmingham, the Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle, 1997; essays and a number of journals, the Journal of Southern History, Alabama Review, The Historian, The Atlanta History, as well as encyclopedias and dictionaries.But For Birmingham, the Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle, is a significant contribution to the recent literature on the history of the Civil Rights Movement in general and to Birmingham and Alabama in particular. It will serve as a basis for his presentation and the context of the panel's discussions. The title of the book that it quotes from Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and provides the continuity between last week's symposium where Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth was a keynote speaker. Although not dealing exclusively with Reverend Shuttlesworth, But for Birmingham sees him as a central figure in the Birmingham episode. His work, though expressing some provocative view points, is an excellently written, prize-winning book, and Dr. Eskew has a firm grasp on the topic; and questions pertinent to this topic that were not asked last week, will have an opportunity to be addressed tonight. Ms. Odessa Woolfolk received a BA in history and political science from Talladega College, an MA in Urban Studies from Occidental College in California and did additional graduate studies in political science at the University of Chicago and Yale University as a National Urban Fellow. Her distinguished professional experience includes teacher at Ullman High School in Birmingham, an administrative position with the Urban Reinvestment Task Force, Washington DC, New York State Urban Development Corporation, New York City, Auber Hill Community Center and Interracial Council, Albany, New York. Ms. Woolfolk has served as a Director of the Birmingham Opportunity Industrialization Center and Associate Executive Director for the Jefferson County Committee for Economic Opportunity. For ten years, she was director of University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB), Center for Urban Affairs and adjunct lecturer in a Department of Political Science and Public Affairs. She was also an assistant to the president for Community Relations at UAB. She is now a private consultant and lecturer. Her research in consulting areas are housing, social service, education, race relations, community organization and urban history. She also has a distinguished civil and community service history that includes voice of educational institutions, nonpartisan political organizations, business organizations, cultural organizations, advocacy groups and community agencies. Her outstanding accomplishments and distinguished service have been recognized and honored through the many citations received from numerous organizations and institutions. Upon her retirement from UAB in 1993, the University established the Odessa Woolfolk Presidential Community Service Award. In 1994, the Mayor and City Council of Birmingham selected her as an inductee into the Gallery of Distinguished Citizens. She was awarded the Doctor of Humane Letters by Talladega College in 1996. As former chair of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and now President Emerita, she will address the role this institution played in the memorializing the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. She will also comment on her relations to students involved in the movement. I made a comment to her just before coming on stage about one aspect of her talk in which she will not elaborate on but she may mention, and that is the Kelly Ingram Park Monument that is associated with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. The comment that I made to her is that the State Black Archives usually sponsors a historic preservation forum and due to extenuating circumstances, we are not able to have that this year. In fact, it usually comes during this month. We decided to forego it. I indicated to her that I would hope that she would return to Huntsville next year to address the topic dealing with urban parks as it relates to historic preservation. With that, we will ask Dr. Eskew's to come and begin the presentation. Glenn Eskew: Good evening and thank you for coming. I would like to thank Professor James Johnson for that very thorough introduction, and Professor Jack Ellis also, the two of them, and the rest of the committee for inviting me to participate in the symposium. I commend the University of Alabama in Huntsville as well as the Alabama A&M University for putting on this series. As Professor Shuck mentioned, the Alabama Humanities Foundation and the marvelous people there such as Marion Carter, Laura Bradsford, and others who fund this kind of event. It is not very often that a symposium is held where people can gather and actually discuss Alabama's history, much less frankly look at the racial past in our communities. I think that it is a great thing. If you have appreciated these symposia, please allow me to encourage you to write your representative down in Montgomery. Thank him for supporting the Alabama Humanities Foundation for they do receive state dollars as well as your representatives in Washington who also through the National Endowment for the Humanities fund the Alabama Humanities Foundation. They need your support, so please write letters. One last thing, I understand that Reverend Shuttlesworth was here was last week. As Dr. Woolfolk and I both know, when we are on panels with Reverend Shuttlesworth, he is a phenomenal speaker and very charismatic, as scholars, I am afraid it is not the same thing when you get us or me anyway. If you are use to these activists speaking, think back to the scholars you have had and you will probably be a little happier. Tonight, I would like to address Birmingham and the Civil Rights Movement, looking at the Birmingham Triptych. A triptych is a three panel. You can sort of think of it in terms of church as an alter piece. The climax of the civil rights struggle occurred in Birmingham in 1963. President John F. Kennedy attributed his decision to propose watershed Civil Rights Legislation to Commissioner to T. Eugene "Bull" Conner's use of police dogs and fire hoses against protesting Black school children, led by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. King's national group, The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, came to Birmingham to assist the local Alabama Christian Movement to Human Rights, led by the Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth. The resulting Birmingham campaign provoked a brutal response that not only created a crisis in local race relations but also forced a resolution to the national race problem. In the iconography of civil rights history, three images stand above the rest. The Birmingham triptych of Conner, King and Kennedy. Behind the hoses and the dogs, stood Bull Conner. As city commissioner, Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Conner enforced Birmingham segregation ordinances, a job he relished. Conner first gained notoriety in 1938 when he segregated the biracial Southern Conference for Human Welfare at the apparent behest of the Big Mules, the local name given to the city's industrial elite. Ten years later, Bull led the Alabama delegation out of the Democratic National Convention and welcomed the to Birmingham. Indeed, Conner cultivated the reputation as a racial extremist, a tough persona for a tough town. Birmingham existed because of the close proximity of the coal, iron ore and limestone, ingredients necessary for making steel. The city's largest employer, The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, was a subsidiary of the monopolistic United States Steel Corporation. While Pittsburgh determined TCI's policy, creative use of interlocking directories and sizable contracts with would-be competitors enabled TCI to determine Big Mule policy. That included the use of a race wage, lower pay for Black workers as a way to keep white wages lower. By enforcing segregation, Conner kept the city running in the interest of the Big Mules. In June of 1956, a new Black protest group set out to alter race relations m Birmingham. Led by Shuttlesworth, the Alabama Christian Movement used direct action to challenge the legality of the city's segregation ordinances. Across the South, there emerged new Black leaders, preachers who believed that as Christians they were obligated to confront the sin, segregation. Most well known was King, who gained national attention with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This struggle to integrate the city buses concluded in December 1956 with the US Supreme Court ordering an end to segregated seating. Shuttlesworth saw implementation of the rooming on Birmingham's buses. The Alabama Christian Movement also attempted to register Black students at all white Phillips High School in 1957. They tried to integrate the terminal train station in 1958, the airport in 1959, and city parks in 1960. Shuttlesworth led Birmingham's Civil Rights Movement. Bull Conner determined to thwart that desegregation drive. He arrested Shuttlesworth and other integrationist, dodged court orders to stop segregating buses and closed parks. When the freedom riders reached Birmingham in May 1961, Conner allowed a white mob of Klansmen to beat the non-violent activists with impunity. Criticized for not providing police protection, a disingenuous Commissioner of Public Safety explained, 'The force was off because it was Mother's Day". The national condemnation of Birmingham following the freedom rises, convinced several of the Big Mules to tum against Conner. They hatched a plan to remove him from office by changing the city's form of government. Voters selected the mayor council system in November of 1962 and slated new elections for spring 1963. Frustrated by the slow process of change, Shuttlesworth invited King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to Birmingham. As an umbrella organization, the SCLC had provided assistance to local affiliates such as the Alabama Christian Movement and indeed Shuttlesworth had served as secretary of the SCLC since its inception in 1957. Agreeing to work together, the two groups decided to postpone planned sit-ins until after the April 2nd 1963 runoff election. When Bull Conner lost his bid for mayor that day, he then contested the change of government altogether and refused to leave office. Unwilling to await the outcome of Conner's court challenge, the Movement initiated its boycott of downtown businesses with sit-ins at lunch counters that refused to serve food to Black patrons. While the Birmingham news touted the election, the segregationist Big Mule names Albert Boutwell over Bull Conner, as the start of a new day, the real dawn occurred when twenty Black men and women, dressed in their Sunday best, quietly asked for coffee at Britt's Cafeteria. Conner's men arrested the protesters. Other demonstrations followed as Birmingham confronted a Civil Rights Campaign amidst the chaos of competing municipal governments. The first civil rights protest March occurred on April when Shuttlesworth led a demonstration to city hall. Police stopped the procession and arrested the forty-three activists. The next day King's brother, the Reverend A.D. King, headed a column of two dozen out of church and in the streets lined with a thousand African Americans. While not members of the movement, these Black bystanders, many of them unskilled or unemployed workers of the underclass, identified with this desire for race reform. The arrest of the marchers, after walking only two blocks, provoked civic unrest. When the canine core arrived to break up the gathering, one Black youth poked a led pipe at a police dog. The German Shepherd attacked, pinning the young man to the ground. Immediately officers moved in, swinging billy clubs and sicking the dogs. Policemen disbursed the crowd. While reporting brutality, the national press mistook the bystanders as actual members of the Movement, thus sensationalizing the number of protesters and exaggerating the support the Movement received from the Black community. King capitalized on this error by staging future episodes after Black bystanders had gathered and in time for national film crews to get their footage to New York City's for the evening broadcast. Increasingly, Birmingham, became a media event. Despite the use of dogs, Conner tried to follow the example of Police Chief Lloyd Pritchard, who defeated the SCLC's drive in Albany Georgia by meeting King's nonviolence with "nonviolence". Conner obtained a state reporter restraining King, Shuttlesworth, and others from leading protest marches. King's decision to obey a similar injunction the year before had ended the Albany campaign. In Birmingham, King chose to defy the state court order, reasoning that all men had an obligation to violate unjust laws. Also, the SCLC hoped King's arrest would trigger federal support for the Movement. Dressed in the blue denim of the working man, King marched fifty people pass a thousand Black onlookers on April 12. Law enforcement officials stepped in and ushered the integrationists into waiting petty wagons. The arrest of King focused attention on Birmingham as well as the oval office. President John F. Kennedy claimed he had no legal authority to intervene in the dispute, so he remained noncommittal, although he did arrange a telephone call between King and his wife.While held incommunicado, King began his letter from Birmingham jail in response to comments given by eight local clergyman describing the demonstrations as unwise and untimely. Perhaps his greatest written work, King's letter, presented the case for non-violent direct action in theological terms that stressed the immorality of racial oppression. His heart-felt pros gave testament to the urgency of the Civil Rights struggle. While national interest grew during King's incarceration, local support waned. The Alabama Christian Movement had provided most of the foot soldiers so far. Those fanatical Christians whose faith enabled them to face Bull Conner's police dogs, when others simply watched from the sidelines, yet the past two weeks had taxed their resources. Once out on bond, King struggled to find new volunteers for his non-violent army. The Birmingham campaign teetered on the brink of collapse, as only a few dedicated activist demonstrated. Then King's lieutenants, James Bevel and Ike Reynolds, suggested to let the young people march. Opposition from Birmingham's traditional Negro Leadership Class failed to sway King, who acquiesced to the idea out of desperation to generate creative tension and keep the national press in Birmingham. The children's crusade began at noon on May 2nd, as hundreds of Black students skipped school and gathered at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, and then embarked on a protest march. Wave after wave of Black youth washed down the stone steps in the Kelly Ingram Park headed toward down town. The youngsters took Conner by surprise. By the end of the day, the police had arrested five hundred Black teenagers and crammed them into small jail cells. The next morning, King promised bigger marches unless the merchants desegregated. Bull Conner had other ideas. To prevent demonstrations, Conner stationed firemen around the park and sealed off the Black business district from down town. Attack dogs strained on their leashes intimidated many in the Black audience of onlookers, while other bystanders taunted the officers. When the Black youth exited the church, Conner hollered, "let them have it," as water gushed out of the fire hoses, blasting blindly at males and females, spinning students down the sidewalks and tearing the bark off trees. "I want to see the dogs work!" barked Bull explaining, "Look at those Niggers run!" Loosened, the dogs lunged at the Black crowd ripping at clothes in search of flesh. Police arrested seven hundred people, emptying the area. Half an hour later, the horrifying spectacle had ended, but it was captured on film forever. Through his actions, Conner achieved immortality. His barbarous treatment of peaceful protesters, the hoses and the dogs elevated Bull's Birmingham into a national symbol of racial oppression. At least 250 journalists reported the event that dominated the front pages of newspapers around the world. Footage of the brutal suppression played on the broadcast of all three networks that night. Pictures in Saturday's paper sickened President Kennedy, who decided to act. He ordered Burt Marshall, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights to Birmingham, to end the protest. Unrestrained, Conner routed another demonstration, this time using the fire hoses to keep the activist in the church. When the school children resumed marches Monday, May 6th , however, Conner refrained from force. Instead of the infamous hoses and dogs, his officers arrested youthful offenders and loaded them onto school buses that rumbled off to prison. As the momentum increased, classrooms emptied into the streets. Children ran into the arms of policemen, prompting Conner to remark, "Boy, if that is religion, I don't want any". By day's end, officers had arrested more than a thousand Black youth. The city turned the stockade at the state fair grounds into a holding pen, for the Movement had filled the jail to capacity. The next morning, the Movement strategist exploited police lunch breaks by beginning their marches earlier in a bid to upset social order through a large non-violent protest designed to shut the city down. Activist reported false alarms to divert the fire department. Small groups of protesters acted as decoys to distract the police while hundreds of other Black students followed different routes around Bull's blockade. The protesters converged at noon in the heart of Birmingham's business district on First Avenue North. Thousands of singing Black citizens stopped traffic on Twentieth Street, milled about stores and knelt on the sidewalk in prayer. "We're marching for freedom," cheered one. A group of Big Mules, discussing the demonstrations, broke for lunch only to emerge from the chamber of commerce into the chaos of the streets. These businessmen recognized social order had collapsed. They hastily reconvened and determined to negotiate and end the protests. Although Burt Marshall saw his role as that of a moderator between two opposing interests, his very presence in Birmingham signaled the shift in federal policy. While unclear how far Kennedy would go, he obviously sided with a need for race reform. Incensed that the Movement's maneuvering had outfoxed him, Conner reverted to violence. He high powered hoses and repulsed school children as they exited the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Black bystanders threatened to riot, throwing rocks and bricks at officers. When Civil Rights Activist attempted to quell the disorder, firemen trained their hoses on Shuttlesworth. The water lifted him off the ground and slammed him into the side of the church. Learning that an ambulance had taken the minister to the hospital, Conner sneered, "I wish they had carried him away in a hearse." After arriving in Birmingham, Marshall quickly convinced King to stop the demonstrations. With whites willing to negotiate, Kennedy's envoy acted as a go between, hammering out an ambiguous agreement that acknowledged the movement's demand for desegregation, biracial communications and equal employment. Despite the Klan bombing of the AG Gaston Motel and the Reverend A.D. King's house, with a subsequent Black riot and fires in the ghetto that night, the truce held. Birmingham embarked on a uneasy future. Only willing to negotiate when the white violence reflected badly on his administration, President Kennedy responded to the uprising of Birmingham's Black underclass by mobilizing the armed forces. He stationed riot controlled units at nearby military basis. He threatened marshall law in the city. His televised statement of May 12, 1963, emphasized the need to restore order. Kennedy urged Birmingham citizens to accept the negotiated accord and make outside military intervention unnecessary. Yet civil disorder had spread beyond Birmingham. In the weeks that followed, some 750 demonstrations occurred in more than 185 cities across the country with nearly 16,000 arrests of protesters. Civil Rights organizations sponsored sympathy marches in Philadelphia, St. Paul, Los Angeles. About 5,000 people took to the streets of Boston over the brutality of Birmingham. Suddenly, a national Black rebellion appeared at hand. To the nation's white elite, it appeared that Black America could follow one of two routes: the nonviolent movement for assimilation into the American system lead by King, or the apparently violent alternative of Black separatism offered by Malcolm X. In light of Conner's savagery and the outrage of many African-Americans, the nation's new magazines began to rewrite the history of the Birmingham campaign. Previously, the media had presented King as an outside agitator, exacerbating a local race problem; but after the Birmingham campaign, Time and Newsweek heralded the moderate King and his gospel of nonviolence. Forced to accept the Black Civil Rights revolution, the northeastern establishment circled around the charismatic King who preached love and abhorred violence. The same circumstances that transformed King's image altered Kennedy's persona as well. For following Birmingham, the President proposed federal reforms to end America's discriminatory race practices. During a national broadcast on June 11, Kennedy admitted that Birmingham posed problems he could no longer prudently ignore. To stop the demonstration, the destruction of property, the negative publicity, the President called for sweeping legislation, for he believed new moral laws would successfully shift the protests out of the streets and into the courts. Eight days later, he sent to Congress his revolutionary Civil Rights Bill of 1963, which harkened back to reconstruction by setting forth legal reforms designed to achieve implementation of the 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution and the aborted Civil Rights Act of 1875. To outlaw racial discrimination, the federal government would enforce compliance with the new laws by regulating interstate commerce and withholding federal funds. Yet, southern segregationists in Congress stalled the legislation. Building on the success of Birmingham, Civil Rights leaders planned a protest March on Washington. Summoning the activists to the White House, President Kennedy expressed his opposition to the idea, fearing the move might jeopardize his new legislative agenda. King responded that the march was no more ill-timed than the Birmingham campaign. As the topic shifted to police brutality, the President said, "I don't think you should all be totally harsh on Bull Conner," In the startled silence that followed, Kennedy quipped, "after all, he has done more for Civil Rights than almost anybody else." Shuttlesworth remembered the President saying something different. But for Birmingham, we would not be here today. Birmingham provided the climax of the Civil Rights Movement, and the March on Washington simply celebrated that fact. Instead of the massive protests in the capitol as originally envisioned by A. Philip Randolph, the event became an affirmation of the American Dream. No one sounded the theme better than Martin Luther King who gave the address of his life before an integrated audience of at least a quarter-million people with millions more watching by television. With rolling cadences, his "I Have a Dream" speech epitomized African-American desires for assimilation. Nearly tailor made to fit the demands of the Kennedy legislation before Congress, the oration reasoned the need for race reform like his letter from Birmingham jail while concluding with a resounding expression of faith in the American system. Remembering that August day in 1963, Ms. Coretta Scott King recalled the sanctification of King as he stood in the sunlight at the summit of the Lincoln Memorial. "At that moment," she said, "it seemed as if the Kingdom of God appeared." Thereafter, the media constructed an icon of the Civil Rights leader, a symbol of triumphant nonviolence, marching in Birmingham and espousing the American Dream in Washington. In short order, King won Time Magazine's "Man of the Year," and the Nobel Peace Prize. Overwhelmed by his transformation, King accepted his newfound glory with wonder. Likewise, Kennedy underwent a transfiguration in a touching interview shortly after his assassination in November of 1963. Former First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy likened the heady excitement of her husband's administration to the mythical Camelot of Broadway musical fame. Soon, the media set to work recasting the image of the late President into that of an ennobled race reformer. In reality, a less than aggressive President seeking reelection had allowed segregationists to stymie the legislation in Congress. Now, President Lyndon B. Johnson encouraged the passage of the package as a tribute to the martyred leader, and the adoption by Congress of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 marked a watershed in national race relations. The act outlined equal employment opportunities that opened the American system to minorities and women, thus, this triptych. The juxtaposed icons of Conner, King and Kennedy symbolized the struggle to overthrow racial oppression in the South. Taken together, the three images tell the story of race reform in America. First, there's Conner, the fat, beady-eyed little man waving on with his pork-pie hat the hoses and the dogs against helpless Black youth. Then, there is Dr. King, having overcome Birmingham's hoses and dogs but now frozen in time at the Lincoln Memorial giving his "I Have a Dream" speech; and finally, there is President Kennedy in the haze of the White House Camelot, benevolently intervening in his advocacy of racial equality. As icons, these images retell over and again a morality play of triumphant race reform. Clearly centering the climax of the Civil Rights Movement in the streets of Birmingham. Odessa Woolfolk: Good evening, thanks to Dr. Johnson and to others who have sponsored this wonderful discussion about a tremendously important event. I have heard all over Alabama that this was the place to be, and I think we still have one or two more weeks to go - several more weeks to go, so not only is this the place to be, but there is time to be here. No doubt, the best work about Birmingham was written by Glenn Eskew, and we are all indebted to him for his awesome scholarship. I am suppose to talk about the memorialization of the Civil Rights Movement and use the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute as a case, and I will do that, but as Professor Glenn, my friend, told that riveting study of Birmingham, my mind raced back to 1963. I started thinking about what I was doing in Birmingham during the time of these events so wonderfully captured by Professor Glenn. So let me just be personal for a moment and tell you what I was doing. There are four things that happened in 1963 that were mentioned by him that [ just want to comment about in a personal way. First, the spring campaign where Bevel and others invited kids to participate. I was a young American Government teacher at Ullman High School teaching the I 2'h Grade in 1963 when the call came for students to go and joint a group marching downtown. It is interesting that the Birmingham Board of Education had sent a notice to all the teachers saying check the roll in the morning and again after lunch and turn in the names of those who were there in the morning and absent after lunch. Well that did not seem right so a lot of fudging went on with those things. I recall that a lot of students who were in my class were trying to decide... now I was teaching American Government (this is the irony of it) reading McGruder, the author of the textbook that we used. McGruder laid out in the most beautiful fashion the American Dream, the American Creed, and it was clear that what was going on 111 Birmingham was not what McGruder said it should be. So, I counseled my students, as [ recollect. Students have told me as I have talked to them since that my counsel to them was, "I can't tell you whether you should go down and face billy clubs and fire hoses, etc. I can tell you this. I am not teaching on those days when you are not supposed to be here, and so the grade that you will get will be for nothing here." I remember that and occasionally I see students and they remind me of that. The second thing in 1963 that I am remembering, Glenn, as you talked about the March on Washington, and I too went to the march. I went down from New York City where I had been visiting with some friends, and we went on a bus that was sponsored by the and the NAACP. I am pretty sure there were more than a qumier- million people there. It was interesting that when the people from Alabama and Mississippi came in with the wagons and coveralls, you could hardly hear because there was such a roar of acceptance by all the folks around the world praising what these folk from the Deep South had done. So, I remember that and I also remember King's speech. The third thing you mentioned, Glenn, that raced through my mine was the Sixteenth Street Church. On that September Sunday, I recall hearing the bomb all over town. I didn't go to Sunday School that day. I was not a member of the Sixteenth Street Church. My church was a mile from Sixteenth Street. I normally taught Sunday School but that day I did not, so I was late going to church, and I heard this awful noise, but we heard a lot of awful noises in Birmingham. When I arrived at church, shortly after I got there, the phone started ringing and members of our church who had family members at Sixteenth Street were getting the calls about what had happened, so that day is seared in my memory as well. Then, the fourth thing you mentioned is Kennedy. I remember the day that the President was assassinated. Then, I was teaching American Government at Ullman High School. The kids had gone to lunch and came back right after the second lunch period with their little transistor radios. We had transistor radios inside as well, and they said, "the President has been shot," and they were hysterical. This was an all-Black high school for those of you who are too young to know what it was like back then. They were hysterical. About half an hour after that, a carload of white kids came by from another high school chanting, "the nigger lover is dead. The nigger lover is dead," so when I heard Professor Glenn talking about that year, I had all those images revisiting me. I just wanted to share that with you. Well, you have heard from Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, the fiery, tough-minded leader of the Birmingham Movement, a person for whom I have a lot of respect and admiration. Glenn was absolutely right when he said that not all of the African Americans (we were Negroes then), not all of the Negroes supported what he did. It was not that people did not want freedom. It was not that the middle class Negroes were so comfortable that they thought they had it made. It was that Fred Shuttlesworth scared the living daylights out of folks, and they said, "Fred, we want our freedom but we want to be alive to enjoy it." So Reverend Fred did not have as many followers publicly as he had supporters privately. At that time what had happened around the South period was that many Blacks lost their employment and people who were in school teaching and jobs like that had lost jobs, in some small towns especially. So, I suspect that many people were fearful of that happening. The church that I attended, a congregational church, was a place where Andrew Young, Wyatt Tee Walker, King, Deanie and John Drew and others met. Now, that was what Shuttlesworth called the middle class negotiating committee. If you heard him speak, I am sure you heard him speak very plainly. These folk met at our church, so our congregation was somewhat involved but not in the middle, although some of the members actually were in the middle. The Memorializing of the Movement in Birmingham - the healing of a city by design is a title a local news journal used in a cover story of the Civil Rights District. The district linked people, structures, nature, brick, mortar and stone in defining the role that Birmingham played in the Movement. Dr. Johnson mentioned the Kelly Ingram Park and that park was a part of the Civil Rights District which included the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the historic Black business district, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute which was constructed in 1992. Let me just tell you a little about that. Richard Ellington, Jr., about whom many of you have heard, was Mayor of Birmingham for 20 years, the first African-American mayor - it was his job to complete a job proposed by his predecessor, Mayor David Van. David Van in 1979, after having gone to Israel and noticing how the holocaust was dealt with there in museums proposed that the City of Birmingham should spend public dollars for a combination of a museum and an educational facility. It was not a very popular idea I can tell you, even in 1979 in Birmingham, Alabama. It turns out that Van did not get reelected. Richard Ellington did get elected and decided that he would move forward with this idea after thinking about it, as Glenn has written in some of his pieces. Ellington appointed a citizen's task force in 1986. He asked me if I would share it. At that time, I was working for the University of Alabama of Birmingham, your sister university. What we decided to do was to sit and come up with a mission statement, a schematic plan, and to recommend designers to oversee the project to completion. This is what our charge was. You know, preservationists and historians speak of the material culture of human events. We know that the material culture of the Civil Right Movement is, as one scholar put it, comprised of churches, homes, lunch counters, roadways, bus stations, bridges, parks and other public spaces that serve as local sites for community organizing and demonstration. So, we had our task as a planning committee to work on using raw history and telling a story for all eternity of what happened in Birmingham. We were to submit a redesign of Kelly Ingram Park, which is the park across the street from the Sixteenth Street church where the marchers went and where Bull Conner and his crowd welcomed them. One of the major stories in interpreting history is indeed whose story is to be told and who should participate in the telling of the story. How to tell that story was indeed a challenge for us. What we wanted our designers to do was to depict a really powerful, as described by Glenn, a powerful social movement by redesigning the actual place, the Holy ground if you will, where it occurred. We wanted to ensure authenticity so we invited the people who had really marched in 1963 to retrace, to reenact their path. They were asked to tell where the fire hoses and the firemen were; where were the police dogs; where was the tank in terms of the periphery. Where were the cops stationed, etc., to recollect exactly what happened from their first-hand experience, albeit many years later. In addition to those stories, we searched the primary sources and then used that information for designing and landscaping of the park. Dick Ellington was very interested in that particular project and wanted us to think of the park as being from a revolution, which the movement was, to reconciliation, which is the path we felt that Birmingham was on. I would hope that some people might want to visit that park and I will talk about that another time. The design of the Institute itself needed to capture city history. Even in the building materials that we used, we wanted to celebrate the building materials of Birmingham, which had been field brick and wood. Most of Twentieth Century Birmingham structures were made out of those particular elements. We also wanted to show in the path of visitors to the galleries a kind of undulating walk showing that the movement indeed was a struggle and a move forward, so people proceeded vertically through history. We felt that was symbolically important. I raised the question earlier of whose story should be told. Fred Shuttlesworth was no doubt the hero no matter what else we said. We had to tell Fred Shuttlesworth's story. Martin Luther King, Jr., was important to Birmingham, but not as important as Frederick L. Shuttlesoworth. The Birmingham hero of the movement was Fred L. Shuttlesworth. So, we felt that his story needed to be told... not only the story of the leader, but many, many stories of the people who participated because the movement, as Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth will tell you, is larger than those who lead it. We went about planning. The task force was appointed by the mayor, and in June of 1990, the City of Birmingham appointed a Board of Directors made up of those who had previously been on the task force. I was asked to be the president of that, and we did finally open the Institute in 1992; but it was not that simple. As a matter of fact, the board was one of controversy. The mayor had tried on two occasions to have the citizens vote on a bond issue which included not only the Birmingham Civil Right Institute planning but a variety of public improvement, including schools and libraries and recreation facilities. On both occasions, the voters turned those down. There were some interesting arguments in our position, arguments such as: all we will do is open up old wounds; it will rekindle racial strife; and after all, there are more pressing priorities for public dollar. Some argued that just having kind of a building with the name Civil Rights Institute would alienate whites of good will. Somebody said, "white people aren't coming." Others said, "no need to build a new facility for a handful of old papers. We have a library, a very fine library, so we could put those old papers there." There was a group called the Taxbusters who played a major role in the defeat of the bond issue. Their leaders had been very critical of the mayor's spending priorities and said that the taxpayer should not trust him with another dime of public money. They went on and said that to do this, to build this, would just remind the nation about all of the negative aspects of our city. One even argues, "I can't image that there would be widespread attendance at the Institute with the crime and drugs that surround the areas." The Institute was located in the heart of the historic Black community. The crime rate there was no higher than other districts in Birmingham, but that was one of the arguments. had previously been on the task force. I was asked to be the president of that, and we did finally open the Institute in 1992; but it was not that simple. As a matter of fact, the board was one of controversy. The mayor had tried on two occasions to have the citizens vote on a bond issue which included not only the Birmingham Civil Right Institute planning but a variety of public improvement, including schools and libraries and recreation facilities. On both occasions, the voters turned those down. There were some interesting arguments in our position, arguments such as: all we will do is open up old wounds; it will rekindle racial strife; and after all, there are more pressing priorities for public dollar. Some argued that just having kind of a building with the name Civil Rights Institute would alienate whites of good will. Somebody said, "white people aren't coming." Others said, "no need to build a new facility for a handful of old papers. We have a library, a very fine library, so we could put those old papers there." There was a group called the Taxbusters who played a major role in the defeat of the bond issue. Their leaders had been very critical of the mayor's spending priorities and said that the taxpayer should not trust him with another dime of public money. They went on and said that to do this, to build this, would just remind the nation about all of the negative aspects of our city. One even argues, "I can't image that there would be widespread attendance at the Institute with the crime and drugs that surround the areas." The Institute was located in the heart of the historic Black community. The crime rate there was no higher than other districts in Birmingham, but that was one of the arguments. Then during construction, we were caught in a public debate which the newspapers carried for many, many weeks over whether a certain city consultant accused of payment irregularities in work that she was doing for the city was involved in the Institute project. Now, Dr. Glenn, most people on the Institute board never saw this lady. To the whites who feared the creation of a Civil Rights District, Ellington responded that whites were as much a part of this rich history as Blacks. This was an opportunity to take pride in what we had been able to overcome as a biracial community; so he was very positive about the biracial nature of this effort. Well just when we thought we had set aside the usual suspects, we were publicly criticized by a small group of Civil Rights activists. The Civil Rights foot soldiers went after us. Their beef was that they did not think that enough of them were on the Board of Directors. They were concerned that the history that we told would not be accurate and that besides, we were talking only to the leaders of the movement, and they were going to be more interested in their particular role rather than the role of the ordinary people. So we had to work that out. One group asked the City of Birmingham for 1.8 million dollars to do their own history project, and what they did was to sort of have a staff to duplicate what our proposed staff was; and they wanted the city to pay 1.8 million dollars. We were able to reason together and decide that would not be a good idea. Eventually, most of the folk who were opposed to the Institute worked together to make sure that it would happen. We know that museums and institutes and memorials are very effective sources for stories about any group's contribution to society. The purposes of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute are to focus on what happened in the past, not simply because it is in the "past" and leave it in the past, but to understand what lessons can be learned and to be informed as to future developments in human relations in Birmingham and perhaps in the world. One observer of the District remarked, "In choosing to remember together, the citizens of Birmingham have redeemed their history in a way that does indeed have the potential to reconcile, to heal, to teach and to strengthen the bonds of community not just for themselves but for the larger community." So that is really what we are about, finding a way to have those lessons learned from that turbulent period and forming future relationships not only in this country but in the world. After all, both Dr. King and Andrew Young talked about how when they traveled around the world, they would hear, "We shall overcome," in many languages, so there is indeed a universality in the story. Those of you who have visited the Institute know its layout. I will jnst make a brief comment and during the Q&A, I can handle whatever questions you might want to ask regarding the Institute, but we do have a self-directed march through history. The high point is the history of Birmingham, but our story is about American history and about what happened in other parts of the country, especially in the Deep South. I can comment about the old history project later, but it suffices to say now that an important part of the project was to have as many people as we could, who had any recollection from that era to tell their stories in their own words. We have about 300 stories from the people who were known to the public as leaders, such as Fred Shuttlesworth, Andrew Young and the like, from the people who drove the kids downtown, from the people who fed the reporters who came to Birmingham, from the children who themselves marched and from those who organized boycotts, sit-ins and kneel-ins, etc. So, there is a rich collection of history that is videotaped and many of them have been digitized. I recall saying in 1989, as chair of the taskforce, that the Institute would signify that we no longer hide from our history. We recognize that we were once a city that housed two people, black and white, unknown to one another except through the long painful threads of segregation. Now we are a different city embracing our past and through the Civil Rights Institute and similar projects, we are looking to a brighter future. Our motto in spite of the past, a vision for a future... a vision to be a national and international place of healing, mutual understanding and respect among all people. Q: The first time I visited the Civil Rights Institute and every time since, I am impressed how the story of segregation and the Civil Rights Movement is told very bluntly, but there is no rancor and no vigor, and I want to know how you managed to avoid that? A: That was a question that we faced up front. We said that basically we wanted to tell the story as it happened but that our goal was not to evoke guilt, but to have people understand what happens when miscommunication occurs. Therefore, we deliberately decided that we would tell it as it happened and let each individual go through with his or her own emotions without any commentary and that way, the interaction would be between the story and the visitor. Q: How would you compare President Kennedy to Abraham Lincoln? A: That's probably a good comparison. Lincoln of course is the great emancipator and more of a civil war, which he did win. He did free the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation did not at first; it did not free any of the slaves in the Confederacy and the area the federal troops controlled, the slaves continued to be slaves, so Lincoln got a lot of credit for what it seemed to be on surface at first. But as the historian, Du Bois, noted, to win war Lincoln freed the slaves and armed them and in fact, that is what the Emancipation Proclamation was saying. Kennedy was very hesitant to get involved. For example, the Kennedy administration initial response to race relations during the Civil Right Movement was to try to create stability and to end brutality. So, in Alabama you get the Freedom Rights and the Ku Klux Klan mob attacking the bus when it arrives at the Trailway station in Birmingham and again another riot at the bus station in Montgomery. All these sites are now being turned into museums, at least the Montgomery one is. Then, the Kennedy administration intervenes and works out a deal with the State of Mississippi and if in Mississippi there is no violence, if you simply arrest these integrationists and throw them in jail without beating them up in front of the TV cameras, that is great. That is what they did. So they worked out an agreement. Kennedy approached Birmingham with the same kind or perspective. The policy was called federalism and the idea was the federal government, without creating a national police force, really could not come in and intervene in the way you might think it would to prevent Civil Rights abusers. At first, what Burt Marshall was trying to do was simply get the demonstrations ended and that is actually what he achieved. They ended the demonstration. The problem was that it had become much broader than that. In the Kennedy papers, I had the privilege of going up and working in them in Boston. You read in the documents themselves and in the exit interviews that were conducted with members of the Kennedy administration that nobody was thinking about race, so race was not on the radar screen. It was not an issue before Birmingham. Birmingham changed everything and then suddenly it became the big issue. Like Lincoln, Kennedy was forced to address the issue and does, and in the end while his administration hesitates to push the legislation through, he set the whole ball in process. A: Interesting enough, Jerome Bennett's book, Forced Him To Glory, is a book that sort of addresses Abraham Lincoln" role. Q: You said you when you were teaching American Government to students you essentially encouraged them without telling them to go. How many of your kids went and what kind of changes did you see in those that did go out? A: The high school where I worked had a large number of kids. I cannot give you the exact number of those who went and those who did not go. I would say that a good half of the student body was vocally sympathetic to what happened and perhaps most of the others felt that the Civil Rights Movement, the demonstration downtown made sense. I think you have to just realize that Birmingham was the most rigidly segregated place in a major deep south city. The kids have had experiences going down to the lunch counselors and their parents being addressed by their first names and them not being able to go the library. There was a branch library that they could go to. They could not go downtown to check out books. They saw this every day. If they rode a public bus, the signs would move according to the makeup of those who lived in the neighborhood. So, bus drivers would say to kids and kids talked about that a lot that if whites get on this bus now, we are going to have to move you back. You can sit in the front but if whites get on the bus, we have to move you back. So, I think the teenagers felt that there was something horribly wrong about that and therefore they were really philosophically sympathetic. The change was permanent. We have interviewed at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute many of the kids who were involved in the movement and they talked about how that experience made them appreciate democracy because they felt that they had made a contribution to make it better. The day that they all came back after they had been arrested, several of them had little American flags. I sat in the back of the room with others who said they did not go to march. The heroes and heroines that day were those who had gotten arrested. They really had the badge of courage. So, I think the kids were changed. Now, there were some kids that just went along for fun, kids being kids, but I think many of them were changed. Q: How would you rate the big mule mentality down there these days? A: Well, I cannot really speak for recent Birmingham very well at all. I can kind of talk about Birmingham in the l 990's. I recall the Scholl Creek incident that occurred in 1991 and those were bug mules. There is a great irony about Scholl Creek. Let me see if I can recall all the names, Paul Thompson, Lou Willie and Abraham Woods. They had all been involved in 1963 and here they were inl991, once again, with another Civil Rights protest. You may recall that it was over the desegregation of a country club. It was during a great moment for Birmingham with the PGA tournament out at Scholl's Creek. The demand was to integrate the country club and ultimately that what occurs and we saw that take place. Integrating a country club versus desegregating America, it tells us how far we have come since 1963. A: I would like to comment on that question. I have remained in Birmingham and have worked with a number of organizations to which the so-called current big mules belong. We do have in Birmingham a new generation of leaders as you do in many communities and I think that the civic leadership of Birmingham realizes that if Birmingham is to attract industry, attract business and attract visitors, then it has to approach these issues in a modern fashion. So, even those individuals who then in there earlier years may very well have been a valid racist. You do not hear that much anymore. A:The whole economy has changed. That is really the other thing too. The old big mules were industrialists, bankers and insurance men and that kind of thing as well. That is part of what is occurring during the demonstrations in 1963. The old steel industry is losing its control of the city and a new service economy is beginning to emerge. So, today, one of the big mules theoretically would be the president of UAB. Q:This is a two-part question. Do you think history would have been made the way it has been made if it had not been for the kids, if adults had marched instead? A:I think we would both say of course not. The kids made all the difference. Q:The second part is I lived in Thailand during the Vietnam War during -----, but is was not until the last one when the students marched and the adults were afraid to do anything. They saw their children being killed, whole country took over. Is that what it is going to take here to do something about what is going on in the rest of the world now in Afghanistan? American children can give dollars, have American children say stop bombing and killing. A: That is a very good point. Q: If Nixon had won the election or somebody else had been president, are you implying that they would have reacted the exact same way or if President Kennedy as an individual had anything to do with it A: I think Kennedy warmed up to black folk and Civil Rights. Then again, Nixon, since you brought him up, is the fellow who gives us affirmative action. Q: It sounds like you are both from two certain states, Alabama and Georgia. Do you think that Birmingham has a stigma for being involved in the Civil Rights Movement during 1960 unlike Atlanta, Georgia, having a stigma with some of the same leaders that came from that movement. Atlanta seems to have moved into a major US city and Birmingham has sort of done... A: That is an interesting point. I heard a speech given by the governor of Georgia not too long along; this was last spring. He made the same kind of reference. He said when Birmingham was using fire hoses and police dogs, Atlanta was addressing racial problems and look at how well Atlanta has done and look at how we have surpassed Birmingham. Maynard Jackson said the same kind of things. He said we go to the bargaining table, that is Atlanta's style. By the way, I am an Alabamian; I am not a Georgian. There is an attitude about that in Atlanta, but Atlanta also runs from its past. lt has no past. It has bulldozed whatever was historically significant, just about in the city. It was shunned any kind of connection to its Civil War heritage just about, of course it was burning during the war.is an antebellum town, in part to try to overcome racist views from Gone With The Wind and other things but in other ways just because it is typical of a metropolis. It is the center of the state's multinational corporations and it is historical in many ways. Birmingham, on the other hand though, has very much seemed to have hung on to its Civil Rights past for the longest time as a sore spot. It is hard to overcome that. Today, though, Birmingham is capitalizing on it and using it for heritage tourism. In the state of Alabama, thanks to initiation of a woman named Francis Smiley and a fellow named Aubrey Miller who were working in the Department of Tourism for the state under George Wallace the governor, promoted Civil Rights, black heritage in Alabama. They have created a tourism package that is drawing thousands into the state, thousands to the institute and the institute is the shining star of the whole thing. I would say, however, that it is wrong to suggest that Birmingham was held back because of its racism and Atlanta progressed because it was less racists. Atlanta was very racist. Atlanta was the headquarters for the Ku Klux Klan. Atlanta was segregated up until the l 940's as Birmingham ever dreamed of being. It was only because Atlanta's entire political economy was premised on transportation and it had a lot of locally owned capital and institutions like Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines, and several other corporations. Birmingham had the misfortune of being owned by Pittsburgh in large measure. There was indigenous capital, but it was so compromised by US steel that it really was handicapped by the industry itself. A: I understand the premise of your question and I share the premise of the your question, that is to say that Birmingham lagged into a racist, repressive state longer than many other southern cities. The key to that has to do also with absentee ownership by US steel. Even during the l 960's when there was an effort to try to get people to sit down around the table to talk about a better community, the US steel representatives who lived in Pittsburgh and elsewhere did not participate fully. So, I think that where we made a mistake as a point that Glenn made is that we were owned by outside interests. The second point I would make is that the people who were owners of even the businesses within Birmingham that Fred Shuttlesworth and others were trying to desegregate by enlarge did not vote in Birmingham either. They lived in a suburban area. So, we had a peculiar kind of array of who lived in Birmingham and who participated in government. Diane McWhorter has written a book. It would be interesting to hear how some historians evaluate her book, but she does talk about the role of some of these elite interests and industrial interests in holding Birmingham back. A: I would say today though Birmingham is a great place. You can drive across it without too much difficulty, nice communities to live in. You can buy anything you want there. If you cannot get it, you can get it on the Internet, you know. Why live in Atlanta? A:I would agree why live in Atlanta. Q:Any other questions? Q: Who was more in the Civil Rights Movement, was it the middle class, the lower middle class? Who was doing it? Who was the movement force behind it? A: The movement force was made up of working class people and their preachers. Now, the role I think is incorrect and I will yield to what Glenn's records show on this. It is incorrect to say that the middle class was not involved at all. In terms of the class basis for the Shuttlesworth movement if happened to have been what sociologist would call lower class. A:The middle class had been active in voting rights registration campaigns. The NAACP had been very active in that in Birmingham for decades. The movement of folks on the street under Shuttlesworth were from Collegeville which was in the center of a number of industrial neighborhoods around _ and railroad yards. They worked in those plants. The Birmingham Historical Society is doing great work trying to get Bethel Baptist Church on the national register because of the significance of that church and pointing to the community-based support for the civil rights movement out of that church. It came from black workers, paycheck vote. A: Plus, people who had been in the Labor Movement, there is a strong connection in Birmingham with the protest from the Labor Movement as well. Q: I just have a couple of things that I am curious about. When you introduced him, did he say that you have been in Albany since 1984. A: Yes, that is right. Q: I was just wondering where you grew up and if you have a sense of what happened then in your own personal experience? A: I am after all this. A:That is what I have told her. He is a young fellow, so that is why I told the story. Q: I would like for you to share with us if you can the benefit about the how the company is doing. (inaudible) A: The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute from the beginning proposed that we would do as complete an oral history project as we could, first emphasizing those folks that who were directly involved in the movement in the 1950's and early 1960's. So, the first part of the project, now about 300 people, interviewed as many folks as we could find who were involved in the movement, itself. We defined the movement as being those activities that were sponsored by Shuttleworth's group and others from 1956 when the NAACP was at large through 1965 when the Voting Rights Act was formed. That is our definition of the movement for our research in the institute having to do with the movement. We are going to expand that old history project to have folks who were involved in other protests movements and a large section on the Labor Movement on education, which was very important, in the Birmingham community right after World War II. Q: (inaudible) A: The bombing on Sixteenth Street occurred in September of 1963, after the demonstrations. They were in Birmingham in 1961 with Freedom Rights; Diane Nash was. Bevel was there with King in 1963 in the spring, so he had come back. They were in and out over and over again. I heard you had Diane Nash. You were very fortunate to get to have her come speak. I hope you enjoyed the experience. Closing:Thank you again for coming and remember next week's program will be at Alabama A&M, The Huntsville Civil Rights Movement.
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Digitized VHS tape of "Trial by Fire and Water: Birmingham, 1963" (Part II).
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Glenn Eskew, Horace Huntley, and Odessa Woolfolk are the speakers in this lecture given at Alabama A&M.
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2001-10-18
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1:37:15
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en
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This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections.
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Alabama A & M University
University of Alabama in Huntsville
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University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama
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2000-2009
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Eskew, Glenn T., 1962-
Huntley, Horace, 1942-
Woolfolk, Odessa, 1932-
Civil rights movements--Southern States--History--20th century
Birmingham (Ala.)
Jefferson County (Ala.)
Segregation
African Americans--Legal status, laws, etc.
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Lectures
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<a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/388">Trial by Fire and Water: Birmingham, 1963 (Part II) - Speakers Glenn Eskew, Horace Huntley, and Odessa Woolfolk - Transcription of Tape 6, 2003</a>
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
<a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/400">
University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama</a>
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http://libarchstor2.uah.edu/digitalcollections/files/original/32/11353/Huntsville_.jpg
25fa801659070439cb2525c1dc8d93f6
http://libarchstor2.uah.edu/digitalcollections/files/original/32/11353/uah_civr_000007_Box_2_Tape_7.mp4
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
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<a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/resources/21" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">View the Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965 finding aid in ArchivesSpace</a>
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
Oral History
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Huntsville during the Civil Rights Movement Speakers: Sonnie W. Hereford, III,
John Cashin Jr., Fred Carodine and William Pearson
The committee of professors includes James Johnson and Carolyn Parker from Alabama A&M and professors Mitch Berbrier, John Dimmock, and Lee Williams II of UAH. Our work has also been greatly assisted by Ms. Joyce Maples of UAH's University Relations.
This series would not have been possible without the financial support of numerous sponsors. First and foremost is
The Alabama Humanities Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for
the Humanities, as well as a number of groups and organizations within the community including The Huntsville Times; DESE Research Inc and Mevatec Corporation. We're grateful also for the assistance provided by Alabama Representative Laura Hall, and by Senator Hank Sanders. Joining out efforts from Alabama A&M is the Office of the President, the Provost, the State Black
Archives Research Center and Museum, Title III Telecommunications and Distance
Learning Center, Office of
Student Development, the A&M Honors program, Sociology/Social Work and the Political Science and History. At UAH, we greatly acknowledge funding from the Office of the President, the Provost, the Humanities Center,The Division of Continuing Education, The Department of Sociology, and the Social Issues Symposium, The Honors Program, the Office of
Multi-Cultural Affairs and Student Affairs, Copy Center, The History Forum and the Bankhead Foundation. I got through that, and I didn't think I would with my voice.
Next week's session, which will be held at UAH will focus on Lowndes County, one of the most deadly arenas of the Civil Rights struggle in Alabama. Our guest will be Mr. John Hulett, a pioneer in the movement to extend voting rights to all Americans, and the founder and first chairman of the Lowndes County Freedom Party, known also as the Black Panthers. Mr. Hulett was the first African-American to be registered in Lowndes County and was later elected sheriff and probate judge. He will be interviewed on stage by the prize-winning journalist Frye Gaillard, author of The Dream Long Deferred, who is currently working on a history of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. Now, tonight, our session is one to which I have looked forward for a long time. The focus is on the Civil Rights Movement in Huntsville, particularly the event that
started at least with the first sit-ins of January 3, 1962, which were carried
out largely by students from William Cooper Council High School and Alabama A&M,
many of whom had been recruited by a young man named Henry J. Thomas, who was a
veteran freedom rider and a field agent for the Congress of Racial Equality,
known also as CORE. Thomas also, as some of you may know, had been on the bus
that was firebombed outside of Anderson and was beaten as he exited the bus. For
several months after the initial demonstrations in Huntsville, the movement
mushroomed as students targeted segregated lunch counters throughout the city.
From the list of those arrested appearing in the Huntsville Times, one can
identify around 130 young people who participated repeatedly and over an
extended period of time. Though in her 1965 Master's thesis presented here
at Alabama A&M and entitled "The Acquisition of Civil Rights in Huntsville,
Alabama from 1962 to 1965," Theresa Powers-Shields estimates the number at
actually 400 and the total number of known sit-in demonstrations as 260.
Accompanying this campaign were weekly mass meetings, the formation of a community
service committee, known as PCFC, which was chaired by Reverend Ezekiel Bell.
Despite foot dragging by the mayor and other city leaders, the movement also
succeeded in seeing the appointment of a biracial committee that helped oversee
an end to segregation in public facilities two years before the Civil Rights
Movement of 1964.
The question I propose tonight that we can discuss is how and why did events
occur in this fashion in Huntsville and in what ways was the Huntsville Movement
different from, for that matter similar to, the Civil Rights Movements in other
areas of the state. For background, I will briefly mention just a few facts
starting with the city's rapid rise in population after World War II. In
1960, the population of Huntsville stood at just over 72,000; many of these
young, middle-class professionals were from areas outside the south. That same
year I saw massive infusion of federal funds into the local economy, aided
greatly by the creation in 1958 of the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center
which was charged, as many of you know, with developing launch vehicle systems
to support the lunar landing program. Within four years, Marshall was producing
30 million dollars in local contracts annually and employees of NASA and the
newly arriving aerospace industries were spending another 100 million in
Huntsville. In their book, "A Power to Explore: A History of the Marshall Space
Flight Center, 1960 to 1990," published in 1999, Professors Andrew J. Dunar and
Stephen P. Waring note that because nearly 90 percent of Huntsville's
economy was based on federal funds, Washington had more leverage here than
anywhere else in the state, simply because few business leaders or political
leaders were willing to risk losing such resources. In short, say the authors,
"the gospel of wealth had more disciples in Huntsville than the gospel of
white supremacy." These facts, no doubt, helped shape the strategies and tactics
of the local Civil Rights Movement, as did the ability of the demonstrators to
turn Cold War rhetoric on its head by noting how America was spending billions
for defense against communism abroad while denying freedom to its own citizens
here at home. The signs carried by protestors on the Huntsville Square echoed
this message. One said that this is the Rocket City USA, let freedom begin here;
another said Khrushchev can eat in this restaurant, but I can't.
Nevertheless, while the success of the local movement owed much to the federal
presence, I believe it also reflected strengths within the black community
itself. Ten thousand strong in 1960, Huntsville's black residents had
developed a powerful sense of community and culture that was flourishing long
before the arrival of NASA and German rocket scientists. It was the leaders of this
community, its ministers, its business leaders, its professionals, tradesmen and
workers, who defined the terms of the Civil Rights struggle and who provided
financial support and council to the students. Their efforts not only helped
break the back of segregation in Huntsville's public facilities but set the
stage for the successful school desegregation suit filed in March of 1963 on
behalf of Sonnie Hereford, IV, Veronica Pearson, Anthony Bruton and Davis Peday.
By the way, Huntsville's sit-ins, poster walks, boycotts and visits from
the nation's top Civil Rights leaders outraged state officials, like
attorney general McDonald Gallion, who succeeded in banning the Congress of
Racial Equality from the state, and certainly Governor John Patterson who forced
the retirement of Alabama's A&M president of 35 years, Joseph F. Drake.
At the local level, business and professional leaders seemed stunned as they
witnessed the exploding myth of racial harmony in the much-vaunted progressive
environment of Madison County. Their surprise may have been an indication of how
little they really knew about the black community, a fact that is easily
confirmed by one of my students, by the almost complete absence of positive
reporting in the local press on the achievement of African-Americans here in
Madison County during the 3 or 4 decades prior to 1960. Initial reaction to the
sit-ins was thus to be expected. In an editorial from July 9, 1962, the
Huntsville Times accused black leaders of threatening, "to harm
Huntsville's position in the highly competitive race for industrial and
intellectual development." Similarly, a resolution of the Huntsville
Minister's Association stressed the economic progress the city had made as
the space capital of America and added, "We do not want this image marred by the
struggle in human relations that is going on throughout America and around the
world." Yet, as Dunar and Waring had pointed out, despite its liberal
reputation, at least in comparison to the county's black belt. Huntsville,
its schools, hospitals and other public facilities, were rigidly segregated.
Black housing and schools suffered from neglect. Educational and job
opportunities were severely limited. African-Americans, they note, made up
eighteen percent of the city's population, yet were less than one percent
of the work force at Marshall. The fact of the matter, observed one NASA
administrator, is that Huntsville is in Alabama. The Civil Rights Movement here
in Huntsville thus poses numerous questions that I hope we can discuss tonight
with our distinguished panelists and with members of the audience who
were there. To introduce our guests and to moderate the discussion, I would now
like to call on my colleague, Professor Carolyn Parker.
Carolyn Parker: Thank you, Jack. This should prove to be an exciting evening for us.
I'm particularly delighted to have this opportunity to moderate and to
introduce our distinguished panel. Our first presenter for this evening is well
known throughout the city for his work as a medical doctor, Alabama A&M
University and Oakwood College physician, a familiar face on our football field.
He served as team physician in the 1960s, 1970s and l 980s,
as a professor of anatomy at local institutions of higher learning and most
especially, for our purposes tonight, a Civil Rights legend. Dr. Sonnie W.
Hereford, III is a native of Huntsville, Alabama, was educated at Council High
School (my alma mater as well, proud to say), Alabama A&M University and Meharry
Medical College. He distinguished himself by earning highest honors at each
stage of his academic career. He began his practice of general medicine in
Huntsville in 1956. He served as medical director on the Selma to Montgomery
march and assisted Vivian Malone in her quest to enter the University of
Alabama, in Tuscaloosa. Dr. Hereford has received numerous awards for his
contributions to our community, to name a few; Delta Sigma Theta and Zeta Phi
Beta Sororities, the Community Action Agency, the Madison County Midwives
Association, Oakwood College and Alabama A&M University's Athletic
Department. He is a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, the Huntsville Alabama
Hall of Fame and was cited for patriotism and dedication by Redstone Arsenal. In
1999, collaborating with Calhoun Community College, he released a video taped
account of the Civil Rights Movement in Huntsville titled, "A Civil Rights
Journey." His son, Sonnie Wellington
Hereford, IV, who is right here, will you stand? Just let them see who you are.
His son Sonnie Wellington Hereford, IV was first to integrate a public school in
Alabama in 1963, what was then called Fifth Avenue School. Dr. Hereford is
married to the former Martha Lynne Adams and they are parents of five daughters
and one son. Dr. Hereford will share with us a summary of the background of the
Civil Rights Movement in Huntsville from his perspective as a highly involved
activist. It is my pleasure to present our first speaker to our audience, Dr.
Sonnie Wellington Hereford, III.
Sonnie W. Hereford, III: Dr. Parker, Dr. Ellis, our distinguished panel, the
esteemed president of this university and also our esteemed provost, our fellow
freedom fighters, students and friends. It is indeed a pleasure for me to be
here with you tonight. We want to talk about Huntsville. Just before I start
talking about Huntsville, I would like to introduce a few more people in the
audience. She stole a little bit of my thunder, I had planned to introduce some
of the people, but I didn't even know Sonnie was going to be here. Sonnie
was at a funeral this afternoon in Kentucky and has driven here to be with us.
But first, let me introduce my president when I was working at Oakwood and he
has come here tonight at my invitation to be with us. Dr. Minette, would you
stand up or hold up your hand, please and let them see you? This is the first
time I've had the pleasure to see him in the last fifteen or sixteen years.
Now, I wanted to just mention my brother who is in the audience, who's been
with me for seventy years. We've been side by side everyday, even in the Civil
Rights Movement. Tom, would you stand up just a minute please and my daughter
who has driven all the way from Shreveport, Louisiana to
be with us tonight. Would you stand up Martha, please? And, Sonnie and
Sonnie's daughter is here, would you stand up please? We have three
generations here.
Thanks very much for inviting me here to be with you tonight to talk about the
Civil Rights Movement in Huntsville. You see, we have sat and we have listened
to the people talk about the Civil Rights Movement in other cities and other
communities and we've heard about the difficulties that they've had.
When some of them spoke, I thought they were writing my autobiography. We were
so much alike, but then, there were some ways in which we were different.
I'd just like to mention to you about three or four instances in which it
seems like we were so much alike. When Ms. Nash talked about going to jail while
she was pregnant, the first thing that came to my mind was my wife went to jail
when she was pregnant. When Attorney Chestnut spoke of those long meetings that
they sat in until the wee hours of the morning, trying to plan, I thought about Dr. Cashin and
how we use to sit in those long, long meetings until the wee hours of the
morning. When Attorney Gray spoke about the out of state fees they paid him to
try to bribe him to not even try to get into the University of Alabama, I
received that out of state fee. They said if you don't try to go to the
University of Alabama, if you'll go to any other college in the United
States, we'll pay you the difference of what it cost you to go to that
college and to go to the University of Alabama. I talked to Dr. Cashin today and
he said his father refused to accept that. He sent him to school and paid his
way. Dr. Woolfolk, just last week, when she spoke about the superintendent of
the schools threatening to fire the teachers, well, we had the same thing here
in Huntsville and it just seems like they were just talking about our movement.
The doctor has told you about my association with
A&M, so I want to let you know that I really feel at home here at A&M. When I
was a teenager, I used to come to the football games here on Saturdays and then
some Saturdays when I couldn't come, I'd be picking cotton in the
cotton field. I could look and I could see Bill Graves. I could hear the band and
wish I was here.
The next thing I want to speak about, the participation of the people. I go
around all over the United States, showing the film and talking to people about
the Civil Rights Movement. Sometimes, I forget to ask about people who have also
participated. Now, how many people do we have here in the audience who have
participated in the Huntsville Civil Rights Movement? May I have a show of
hands, please? Those who actually participated in the Huntsville Civil Rights
Movement. Okay, very good. No how many had relatives who participated, maybe you
weren't old enough to participate, but some of you had ancestors and
relatives who participated. I think there's a hand. Now, how many people do
we have here who've participated in movements in other cities? All right,
let's give them a hand. I see one young man back there who is still
fighting, I know about your fight.
Now, we know that there is nothing on the face of the earth that is as powerful
as a movement whose time has come. I had read about revolutions and my teachers
had taught me about revolutions, but the ones that I knew about they were more
or less bloody revolutions. There were guns involved; there were knives; there
were slings and there were arrows involved. We want to talk to you a little bit
tonight about a nonviolent revolution. We want you to see how powerful a
nonviolent revolution can be. This is
very timely because in a short sixty-nine days from now, we will be celebrating
the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the Huntsville revolution.
I want to talk to you a minute about how Huntsville used to be, before the
movement started and I want to use the format that I used the last time, when I
spoke at the University of Michigan. I started off by telling them how things
were in the community. The schools in Huntsville were completely segregated. We
had poor equipment. We had poor facilities. We had no library, no gym, no
lunchroom, no PE period, no PhD's on the staff, no playground and we had no
laboratories. Some teachers and students may take exception with me on that,
some of the ones who went to Council High, when I say we had no laboratories. We
had a room that said, the inscription above the door, "Chemistry Laboratory."
But, if you had gone inside that room, this is what you would have seen. You
would have seen about ten or twelve test tubes, ten or twelve reagent bottles,
one beaker and one Bunsen burner. That is not a laboratory, in my opinion. Now,
I want to show you something. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I
sat down, my wife and I drew this picture. You see where it says "MS,"
that's my school. You see where it says "CD," that's the city dump.
Now can you imagine how it was? We didn't have air conditioning. Can you
imagine in September and in May how it was to sit in those classrooms when some
of us didn't want to be there in the first place. Can you imagine that?
Now, if it cost me my life, I couldn't tell you which one was put there
first, the city dump or the school, but my contention is that whichever one went
there first, the other one had no business being put there. Do you agree on that?
There were no buses for black children. The buses were for the white children.
The only thing I remember about a school bus is that if it passed by me fast, it
blew dust in my face. If it passed by me slowly, rotten eggs and rotten tomatoes
came from the windows and hit me in the face. That's what I remember about
a school bus. Now, the powers that be took our own tax money and hired the best legal
minds in the United States to keep us from getting our own freedom and the
things that we deserved to keep us from getting the things that we actually
deserved. Now, you've heard the expression on the street, a double whammy.
Well, if it keeps the schools segregated, you automatically keep the boy scouts
and the girl scouts segregated. You see what I mean. Because the troops come
from the schools. And the jobs: The black people were the last to be hired and the
first to be fired. And, then when they were given a job, they had different pay
scales. Just to give an example, a white man and a black man working on the same
job, the black man 25 cents an hour, the white man 40 cents an hour, the same
job. I know you've heard this before, they bring a white person on a job
and ask the black person to train him, a brand new person, and in the next two
weeks the white person is the black man's supervisor. I know you've
heard that before. Now, the jobs that were available were janitor, delivery man,
minister, teacher, porter, errand boy and construction worker, but you could not
have any supervisor position in the construction work. There were no policemen;
no firemen, no bank tellers, no clerks, no meter maids, and no sales people
whatsoever. There were no black people in the national guard, no black people
holding political offices and I was 30-years-old before I saw my first brown
mannequin in a store
window and that was in Honolulu, Hawaii. I had never seen a brown mannequin in
my life, scout's honor.
Voting. We were disfranchised on the basis of illiteracy. Even though some of us
had Bachelor's, Master's and PhD degrees, we were still disfranchised
and this is what one had to do if one wanted to vote. If you go to the
voter's registration place, you had to take someone with you who was
already a registered voter to vouch for you. You had to take a written test, an
oral test and then interpret the Constitution of the United States to the
satisfaction of the examiner. Now, in some cities, if you passed all of that,
they had a jar of jellybeans and then you'd have to guess how many
jellybeans was in the jar. Now, say for instance you pass all of that including
the jellybeans, then you have to go to the courthouse and pay your poll tax.
After you'd done all of that, if you didn't pay your tax, you still
couldn't vote. On the street, they called that a double whammy because if
you are not a registered voter, then you don't get a chance to serve on a
jury. Now, I don't know how it is today but that's the way it used to
be in Huntsville, Alabama. The jury pool was taken from the list of registered
voters and I know that to be true because I called two lawyers yesterday and
asked them about it and I didn't want to come out here and tell you that
if it weren't true.
Now, on public accommodations. There was no access to any of the arenas, no
access to any of the ballparks, skating rinks, the bowling alleys, the golf
course, and not even to the library. You couldn't go to Shoney's and
you couldn't go to McDonald's. I know you would not have liked that.
In the medical community, we had a county here of about 75,000 people,
twenty-five percent black, with 33 white doctors. We had one black
doctor when I came to town. In the town, I made the 35th doctor. All of the
white doctors had separate waiting rooms and then the black patients had to wait
until the white doctors finished their white patients and then they would take a
black patient. I want to relate to you a little incident that one of your
professors here on the campus told me about. He said, "Dr. Hereford, I went down
to this white doctor's office to take an insurance examination and he said
they told me to be sure and be prepared to give a urine specimen and so I
purposely didn't go to the restroom before I went down there and he said
the nurse gave me a little bottle about that tall and she sent me into the x-ray
room." He said, "Dr. Hereford, I didn't mean to wet the doctor's
floor, but when I got through filling the bottle I couldn't stop." And so,
this is the thing that used to happen to us. The hospital had separate wings for
black and white. On the black wing, they had about 13 to 14 beds and after those
get filled up, then they put patients in the halls. They had to stay in the
hall. After the patients had delivered, all of our post partum patients were
sent in one room, just one big room for all of the postpartum patients, and when
I first got to the hospital they had one room for the emergency room, the
operating room and the delivery room, and you can see how you can run into
problems with that. They had separate pay scales for the workers. All of the
white workers made more than the black workers and they had no place whatsoever
at the hospital for the black doctors, the black nurses and the black workers to
eat. And, nobody seemed to give a damn that they didn't have anywhere for
them to eat. When I started over there, the head of the staff told me,
"Dr. Hereford, you can admit your patient's to the hospital, just like Dr.
Drake does, but now you can't become a member of the staff because in order
to become a member of the
staff, you have to be a member of the county medical association." Well, in
order to become a member of the county medical association, you had to be white.
So, in that way I couldn't be a member of the staff. He said, "Now, you
must come to the meetings, but you can't vote, you can't make a motion
and he said be sure you don't come before seven because the white doctors
are going to eat at 6:30 and for God's sake don't come in while
they're eating and if you do come in, don't let that waitress pour you
a cup of coffee." Now, that's the type of things we had to go through with.
Now, Dr. Ellis is looking at me. I don't know if he's looking at me
about time or not, he says no. I like that. I want to talk to you awhile. Thank
you, Dr. Ellis. Wigs (Nickname of guest speaker William Pearson) yielded five minutes of his time to me.
Well, you finally get tired of having those things. We were eating tonight, we
were sitting at the table and Wigs said yes, sometimes you get tired but sometimes
you can't do it by yourself, you want some help and you want a leader. We
were waiting on a leader. We wanted somebody to get it started, but we
didn't quite know how to get it started and I wanted to do something about
it. I was just sick and tired about how they treated me, not only at the
hospital but all over the city. I was just sick and tired. So, on January 3,
1962, Henry Thomas, representing COA, came from New York. He recruited students
from Council High and Alabama A&M. He started sitting in at some of the local
lunch counters. They were immediately arrested because they had a law back in
those days that said that any merchant and any land owner that did not want you
on his property could order you off and if you didn't leave in a reasonable
length of time they could call the authorities and they would arrest you. And,
so, they did that. They
arrested these kids and that was their reason, just because the man didn't
want them there. So, they arrested these kids and we went and we bailed them
out. Dr. Cashin and a lot of other people went and signed their bonds and we
bailed the kids out and then a night or two after that we decided that we better
call a meeting. We'd get together and we'd organize and we'd form
a committee to try to continue with the demonstrations and to try to make sure we
could get these kids out of jail when they needed to come out of jail and just
to see what we could do about integrating the city.
I'll tell you a little bit about the committee first, and I'll be
looking out the corner of my eye at Dr. Ellis every now and then. We started with
what we called a community service committee and we decided that we'd have
a chairperson and two vice chairpersons and a least one of those individuals
ought to be lady. So, we worked that out. We had subcommittees in the community
service committee. We had a negotiating committee; we had a finance committee;
we had an education committee, a committee on jobs, committee on public
facilities, committee on housing and we had a psychological warfare committee.
Indeed, we would meet whenever necessary and we'd meet wherever we could.
One thing I want to point out, every single meeting we had and every single
demonstration we had was opened with prayer and closed with prayer, every single
one. Even if we had a called meeting where we were going to vote on one issue,
it was opened with prayer and closed with prayer. That's the way we
approached it. Okay, she's telling me I have five more minutes.
I'll talk to you about the leaders in the movement. We had a professor from
here on the campus, Attorney Blackwell, who was an economics and political science
professor, and he was the only one who had had any experience. He had been in
the Greensboro situation. We had Mr. Harris who was manager of the Atlanta Life
Insurance company, and Mr. Nimms, who was the owner of a local funeral home;
Reverend Ezekiel Bell, a new pastor of Fellowship Presbyterian Church, and Dr.
John Cashin, a local dentist who was an activist and made tremendous financial
contributions to this movement. I know he isn't going to say it and I hope
I don't embarrass him when I say it. He gave more money than any other 50
people in the city to help this movement. Now, you want to know how did I know,
I was the treasurer and I knew where the money came from and I knew where it
went. They had Dr. Hereford, who was a physician and an up and coming
photographer who was going to take these pictures of all the demonstrations and
everything and then one day I got up in a meeting and said that if anybody was
injured or if anybody became ill while they were demonstrating that I would take
care of them at no charge to them. We had Mr. R.C. Adams who had done a lot of
work in voter registration, Ms. Ray, who was an activist, and we had our student
leaders like Mr. Pearson and Dr. Dickerson, Ms. Frances Simms, Mr. Steel and
Mr. Benton. Is Mr. Steel here tonight? Mr. Steel has been coming to most of the
meetings.
The other thing I want to say is that it was lack of experience. We had not had
any experience and we were just sailing on uncharted waters. We didn't know
what in the world we needed to do and when we left home we didn't even know
if we'd returned home. We didn't even know if we'd have a home to
return to when we got back home. So, we had no protocol and we had no instruction
manual and no guidebooks and we were
just trying to see what we could do to try to bring about the integration. We
had a small group of demonstrators without any money and it was against the
might of the city, county and state government. We had white supremacy in the
city that were egged on by the governor and the gubernatorial candidates and
they knew that they could do anything they wanted to us and they would not have
to suffer any consequences for doing that. So, that's what we were up
against. Now I guess they're telling me I'm close to time. We went to
the mayor and we asked the mayor to integrate the lunch counter, the drinking
fountains and the restrooms. That wasn't much, was it? He refused us. He
said, "I can't do that. They're not going to let come in and do that. They're not going to lose the customers
they've had for the last 15 to 20 years just to accommodate you people. We
can't do it." We then asked him to establish a biracial committee. We
thought if we could get him to establish a biracial committee and have white
people and black people to come to the bargaining table and sit down and talk we
thought we could work it out. Every single move that we made was geared toward
getting to the bargaining table. We felt that if we could just get them to the
bargaining table then maybe we could coerce them into doing what was right. We
might be able to bluff them into doing what was right or we might be able to
shame them into doing what was right. Everything that we did was geared toward
that end. And so we finally got some black members and the mayor said he
couldn't find anybody white who would serve. He worked and worked and after
the demonstrations kept going, we had to boycott. When the two doctor's
wives got arrested, there was so much publicity all over the United States, then
the mayor found some white people to serve on that committee. Now,
if I could take about another thirty minutes... , I'm sorry, thirty
seconds, I'll give a little chronology about how things happened.
Our movement was 99 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, eight years after
Brown vs Board of Education, seven years after Ms. Rosa Parks, one year after
President Kennedy was inaugurated. So, January 3, we said was the first sit-in
and in February we began to start thinking about boycott. March 19th of the same
year Dr. King came, he spoke and helped solidify the community. March 30th the
restrooms at the courthouse were integrated. April 11th was when the two wives
were arrested. April 22nd, we had what we called Blue Jeans Easter and May 13th
the city parks were peacefully integrated. About the middle of May, Dr.
Cashin's mother-in-law and her friends picketed the New York Stock Exchange
and passed out leaflets. Then, on June 5th two of your professors from here and
my wife and I and Rev. Bell went to Chicago and we picketed the Mid-West Stock Exchange and
passed out leaflets. When the mayor and the City Council found out about these
things, they decided they would have what they would call a trial integration.
So, on July 9th, 10th and 11th they had a trial integration of the lunch counters
and the restrooms. In October of that same year, we filed a petition for the
school integration. In February of the next year, we filed a suit. In August,
the suit was heard and won, and on September 9, 1963, we had he first
integration of any public school in the State of Alabama, and that happened here
in Huntsville. There were some misconceptions about what was happening and it
seemed to be the consensus of opinion in these instances that some people think
that if I give you some of your freedom I'm going to automatically lose
some of mine, and you know that isn't right. Another thing,
they thought I was trying to get into the country club, and I wasn't trying
to get into the country club. I was trying to get into the library and into
Shoney's. And, the last misconception, if they had just looked at my name a
little bit closer they would have seen that my middle name was Wellington, and
not Bonaparte.
Carolyn Parker: Our next speaker, Dr. John L. Cashin, Jr. is a dentist who has
devoted his life to the struggle for civil rights for African-Americans,
especially in the state of Alabama. He founded the National Democratic Political
party of Alabama, NDPA, and was responsible for the election of the first
African-American candidate to public office. He ran for governor of Alabama as a
work pool strategy, getting other black candidates to local and state offices.
Dr. John L. Cashin, Jr., is currently president of TRP, which is critically
involved with promoting public health education and HIV/AIDS program
implementation in the economically challenged counties of the State of
Alabama's black belt. He writes a weekly column, "Down Home," and he
provides for the National Negro Newspaper Publishers Association. Dr. Cashin has
worked with the The Research Institute at the University of Alabama School of
Medicine in Teenage Pregnancy Prevention research and with Dr. Emanuel Shelton
on his Detergent Diet Nutrition Program. At Alabama A&M University, he has
taught biology as well and was involved in selective enzyme cancer research for
the removal of viable cancer nutrients. Dr. Cashin is also Executive Director of
Southeast Alabama Rural Business Enterprise, which is a cooperative venture with
the Tuskegee University Department of Agriculture, a nutritional, environmental,
ecology and economic stability. Dr. Cashin is a graduate of Fisk University,
Tennessee State University and Meharry Medical College. He is the
recipient of numerous awards and citations from a plethora of local, state and
national organizations. He was the first national Omega man of the year ever
from Alabama, designated in 1971 by his fraternity, Omega Psi Phi, the 2000
Humanitarian award of excellence from the New South Coalition and the 2001
Presidential loyal alumnus and political activist award and the 2001 research
service award from Tennessee State University. Dr. Cashin is married, the father
of three children, three grandchildren and has many hobbies. He is instrument
pilot, amateur astronomer, expert photographer, and historian. I am proud to
present to you Huntsville's preeminent freedom fighter, Dr. John Logan Cashin, Jr.
John Cashin Jr.: Thank you Ms. Carolyn, that is, Ms. Parker. I call her Alma's
daughter. That was a very interesting little review that Dr. Hereford gave. As a
matter of fact, he mentioned some things that I had almost forgotten about,
bringing tears to my eyes because those were some rough days. But, we enjoyed
it; we had a lot of fun. And we knew we were on the winning side. I was supposed
to be giving something like a perspective on this movement and so forth. I was
such an active participant that perhaps I get choked up with emotion and
can't give a correct interpretation, because I would be biased. But, I did
want to quote one of my favorite people, a guy that I worship, I call him St.
Fred. I'm sure you have all heard of him. Frederick Douglas is his real
name. Actually, it was Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, but we called him
Frederick Douglas. One of his most famous quotations is, "Let me give you a
message about reform. The whole history of human progress shows that all
concessions made to her August claims have been borne of earnest struggle. The
conflict has been exciting, all
absorbing and, for the time being, putting all other tools to silence, it must
do this or it does nothing. Where there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are like men who
want crops without plowing up the ground. They want the rain without the thunder
and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar that's many
waters. Now this struggle may be a moral one or a physical one, or it may be
both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle for power concedes nothing
without a demand. It never did, it never will. Find out what any people will
quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and
wrong that will be imposed upon them, and these will continue until they are
resisted with words or with blows or with both. For the limits of tyrants are
prescribed by the endurance of those they oppress, a great object lesson for
us." That was the spirit we carried back in 1962. We were sort of like
accidental leaders because you'd have to put it in the perspective of the
fact that Alabama was the only state in the union where the NAACP was outlawed.
How many of you remember that? It was actually a crime to be a member of the
NAACP in the state of Alabama, punishable by a $1000.00 fine and a year in jail.
And that's what we were up against. Of course, that was just a little side
product of the Alabama constitution of 1901, but I'm not supposed to be
talking about the constitution of 1901 tonight, but I can go on all night on
that since that thing has taken on 700 and some amendments. 700 and how many
amendments, Joe? I'm talking to the editor of the Huntsville Times.
That's the number of amendments the Alabama constitution has. I really
don't want to get on that because it's a real sore point for me.
But now, let's get to the perspective that we had in 1962. It's funny
to me because this guy, Hank Thomas, came to my office first and said he was
tired and wanted to do a little testing. I said, "Sure, by all means." I thought
Huntsville was really going to be all right. I said, "Go to the bus station
first," because we had already had a Supreme Court ruling. Let's tum it
back just a hot second because it's very important you understand that
because the NAACP was outlawed, we had to form our own organization, or own ad
hoc of the station that we controlled and, believe me, it's the best way to
handle it because it developed a leadership cadre that we didn't have
before and when I say a cadre, we had some pretty tough characters. They had to
be tough to undergo all of the things that we did; but we did overcome. I'm
looking at little Sonnie, Tom Cat (nickname of speaker Sonnie Hereford's Brother). I see a few other faces here that I
recognize very well from those days. It was rough, but now I'll have to
quote somebody else, a fellow by the name of A. Philip Randolph. He was the
patron saint of Randolph Blackwell. Randolph Blackwell was the economics
professor here at Alabama A&M whose students were in jail or were demonstrating.
They also were making A's in class attendance, too, but Randolph Blackwell
was a graduate of Howard University law school, that's another story, but
he was a disciple of a fellow by the name of A. Philip Randolph. A. Philip
Randolph is a character to be remembered. How many have seen the statute of A.
Philip Randolph in Union Station in Washington, DC. If you haven't, you
need to go and take a look at it because on the pedestal of this statue it gives
his credo. It says, "At the backward table of nature there are no reserved
seats. You take what you can get and you keep what you can hold. If you
can't take anything, you won't get anything. And if you don't get anything,
you won't keep anything. And you can't take anything without
organization." Organization, and that's what we had to do. We put together an
organization. I guess pretty much we were pledged to see it to the end. I really
think that we outsmarted them, but they did not believe, the opposition; when
I'm talking opposition I'm talking about everything white in this city
was opposed to what we were doing. The Huntsville Times had an editorial,
"It's time to call a halt." I remember the day that R.C. Adams jumped up in
a meeting and said, "Let's boycott the Huntsville Times." You remember
that? Anyhow, we used several devices that got the people's attention. So,
as far as voter registration was concerned, this became a SCLC trait, too. We
had a mule that was paraded around downtown with signs on him that said "I
can't vote because I'm a mule, what's your excuse?" If you
remember some of the magazine articles from back in that time, that mule got
around. It was pretty good strategy.
Now, I really wanted to make a few other quotations there because it does not
pertain to what we were doing ad hoc at that particular time, but it does indeed
call attention to the struggle that's going on right now, and that's
the struggle for a new constitution for the state of Alabama. I spoke just
briefly at a gathering in Birmingham the day before yesterday at which I called
attention to the fact that we do have an opportunity. We've got a window
out of this mess that we're in and Huntsville, Alabama can be the key, and
this is one of things I'm pleading Joe Hyman, everybody, Lee Rubin,
everybody who's in the news media who was engaged in the technology that we
had. Just remember, Huntsville, Alabama is the repository. This is the
birthplace as what is known in the world of science as zero defects technology.
Zero defects technology. We
should be arrogant. We put the man on the moon from Huntsville, Alabama, and you
should understand that NASA, those programs would never have come to Alabama had
it not been for what we did with the community service committee. We
desegregated everything in Huntsville. Huntsville, Alabama was the very first
city of any size in the United States to desegregate. Huntsville, Alabama, it
was a pioneer role and it played then, it was a pioneer role that was played
when we put the man on the moon; of course, now it's Johnson Flight Center,
Nixon's thing in Texas and California, but still the repository of
technology of excellence was right here in Huntsville. As a matter of fact, when
those boys in Texas and California get in trouble, they still have to call
Huntsville. Am I right, John? So, Huntsville is probably the only city where nerd is
not a bad word. We've got more nerds per square inch in Huntsville and
they're proud of it. But in any case, I want to call attention to this
situation by giving a quote from Thomas Jefferson. His statement was, "In
questions of power that no more be heard of confidence in man but binds him down
from mischief with the chains of the constitution." Shall I repeat? "In
questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down
from mischief with the chains of the constitution." We can write a perfect
constitution with the technology; all of the world's knowledge is available
right to us at our computers and whatever we have. We can lead the world into an
entirely new phase, just starting from right here, Huntsville Alabama.
We've got the answers. It's time for us to really flex our muscles and
become what we're supposed to be. This little group sacrificed. We caught
hell but we did bring Huntsville into the focus. We can have fairness and law
and order even in Alabama because we did it without bloodshed. It
didn't happen any other place. So, I would probably rather participate in a
question and answer session. I don't have to yield any time, I don't
think I've taken my fifteen minutes. I wanted to just take more time and
just show off what kind of ego I have. No, in all seriousness, this is a
wonderful occasion. I see faces in this audience. I see green eyes in this
audience, it reminds me of... How does it go? No, not good old days, for the
wisest purposes, the creed is implanted within us, an instinctive disposition to
revere the illustrious of our kind. To win this admiration is the most powerful
incentive to action. It is the ardent desire of passionate natures. The sweet
incense of popular applause is more delicious than wine to the senses of man.
Deservedly obtained, it heals every wound and soothes all pain. The mere hope of it
will steal him against disease, neglect and oppression. To bestow this reverence
is a pleasure hardly less exquisite. While we commune with the intellects and
contemplate the virtues of the greats, some portion of their exceeding light
descends upon us. Their aspiring spirits have raised us to higher levels. But,
to yield our homage to those who do not deserve it, is to pervert a pure and
noble instinct. We cannot worship the degraded, except by sinking to lower
depths of degradation. So, Huntsville, Alabama, we cannot worship those evils of
the past. We cannot gloat that we have suppressed one third of the population
and we have gained a few little pennies here and there. We can't worship
the degraded, except by sinking to lower depths of degradation. So, to my mind,
it's the only way we can go. A perfect system, a perfect government, a
perfect constitution, all of this is within our grasp. I'd like to feel
that it started right here in Huntsville, Alabama. Thank you.
Carolyn Parker: Thank you, Dr. Cashin. Dr. Fred Carodine has a long history of
activism on the job, in the community and in his civic organization. His
indelible mark has been made on our cities, particularly in the arena of human
relations and improving the educational opportunities for minorities. Dr.
Carodine is a native of Tuscaloosa, Alabama and a cum laude graduate of Alabama
A&M University. He earned his doctorate in public administration from NOVA
University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and completed further studies at Wayne
State University, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, California State
Polytechnic College and Alabama A&M University. During the early period of the
Civil Rights Movement in Huntsville, Dr. Carodine provided invaluable services
and funds from his entrepreneurial efforts as owner of a printing shop. As the
focus of the movement shifted around 1964 to the education arena, particularly
the integration of schools, he began to concentrate his efforts on working with
the NAACP towards satisfying this goal. Dr. Carodine has enjoyed a lucrative
career with the federal government, holding increasingly responsible positions
and retiring, about ten years ago, as chief of the operation research division
test measurement and diagnostic equipment. His community service activities have
impacted the likes of the Boy Scouts, Harris Home, NAACP, Alabama A&M University
and the Interstate Mission, to name a few. He is a deacon at First Missionary
Baptist Church, Sunday school teacher, member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity and
the Athletic Booster Club. Dr. Carodine is married to the former Nell Bailer and
they are parents of three sons and one daughter. I am proud to present to you
one of Huntsville's premier activists and my dear friend, Dr. Fred Carodine.
Fred Carodine: Good evening. I guess just about everybody stole my thunder.
I'd like to take the opportunity to sort of put in perspective as I saw the
movement and as I participated in some of the events that happened. Earlier,
when Mr. Ellis stood up and introduced the overall program, he suggested that
Huntsville was more interested in money at the time of the sit-ins back in
the early 60's. That is true. There were certain events, in my opinion that
helped to make Huntsville behave in a fashion that Dr. Cashin just mentioned,
there was little bloodshed. One of those events, and I'll try to make the
event oriented, was the election of President Kennedy and his choice of Lyndon
Johnson as his vice president. Now, that may not seem like much in the
beginning, but the Kennedy approach was one similar to what Dr. Hereford had
mentioned. Give them what they want. Find two or three black people who could
give and they would deliver the vote and you didn't owe them anything until
the next election. If you think I've made a mistake in that arena, if you
look in the book " Nixon's Piano" on page 192, you'll understand what
Robert Kennedy had said. Once he was elected... well, he was elected because of
the event of Robert calling when Dr. King was in jail. Nixon's chauffeur
told Nixon that, "You know, we were doing all right until that call was made
about King in jail." But, what good could that do? What it did, was that when
Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson took over his program and his efforts were
directed toward carrying out a program and maintaining Kennedy's legacy. In
that sense, he was determined that EEO would suffice in this particular city.
One of the reasons it was this particular city is because early on in 1960, NASA
had been pulled out of ABMA and the word had come down basically that we're
not going to have the kind of things going on
in other parts of the south here in Huntsville, or they would pull out. Reverend
Ezekiel Bell, Randolph Blackwell and the coordinating committee capitalized on
that in the sense that the signs that they took around addressed that issue.
We'll move the arsenal away from Huntsville. The city of Huntsville then,
was somewhat forced to listen. The population of Huntsville increased between
the 1950's and 1960's well over about 400 percent. Between 1960 and
1964 it increased over the 1960 time frame, another 200 percent. So, Huntsville
was a growing community, which could not stand to have bloodshed, if the city
founders could stop it. Earlier, one of the panelists asked, how many people had
participated in the early movement. One of the persons who raised his hand, I
hope he won't be embarrassed, was Chuck LaLange. I worked in his campaign
once years ago to try to get him elected mayor for the city of Huntsville. He
was with the Inner Faith Mission Service and I guess that's when I met him.
I guess you still are, aren't you? But anyway, there were a number of
things that took place. One event, as I said, was the fact that Kennedy was
elected. He chose Lyndon Johnson. What happened after his having chosen Lyndon
Johnson was that Lyndon put the B on the Huntsville community. Industries were
moving into the city. Each industry, according to its number of employees, paid
into a fund. That fund was handled for the most part by a committee called AHAC.
It was made up of Association of Huntsville Area Contractors. It did some good
and some bad. In the good part, it gave the black community, through some of its
more activist people, a way of expressing itself and getting it up to the city
founders. On the bad part, whether we want to admit it or not, Milton Cumming
understood the black community. He knew the black family. He knew who to touch and
who not to touch. Correct? He knew who to touch and who not to touch. And so it
was that he was going to keep a cap on everything, but it got out of hand. What
happened? During the sit-ins, both predecessors mentioned Randolph C. Blackwell.
Randolph was my next-door neighbor. We both were working out here. I was not in
the sit-ins other than the fact the Rev. Ezekiel Bell, who is my frat brother,
who the Presbyterian Church had sent here to found Fellowship Presbyterian
Church, had solicited me for the sit-ins and I told him I was willing to do it,
but I couldn't promise that I wouldn't fight back if somebody hit me.
So, he told me to collect money. My job was to try at A&M University, here on
the campus, to collect money and I would tum it over to him. At the time of the
trial integration, there were I don't know how many, one, two, three, at
least three drive-in theaters that I knew about. One was just north of us here on
Meridian, one was just south on Meridian and one on 72. My family and I were
chosen to go to the one on 72. That's the one we integrated. We went there
to integrate but by 1964, after the Herefords and so forth had integrated the
schools, something happened. I'm sorry, it was 1965. The NAACP legal
defense fund after the NAACP, Dr. Cashin was allowed back into the state of
Alabama had an interest in this particular area. There were several people who
had worked with the NAACP during the time frame that was outlawed. They kept it
alive underground. Among those people were, Reverend Lacey and James Pickett, at
least those are two that I can remember. They became presidents of the NAACP.
About 1965, a young man came to Huntsville named McKinley Bailey. One of the
reasons Mack and some others came to Huntsville was this organization, AHAC, was
trying to get minorities on board, so they claimed, as employees. The problem
that came
to industry was, we need black engineers; we can't find any. Well of course
you couldn't find any. Dr. Hereford just explained why you couldn't
find any. There had never been any black engineers that could be hired. So, why
would a black person go to an institution and take engineering when there was no
job market? There were no black engineers, or very few. McKinley Bailey was one
of the few. There were one or two others. But, every time, they went outside of
the state trying to find employees, nobody wanted to come to Alabama. They
didn't want to come to Alabama for several reasons. One, there was no
housing. Two, they'd heard about the city and other things that were going
on here. Now, they bring in this man, McKinley Bailey. There's another man,
Les Jackson, who, in Mobile, had tried to bring us and for whatever reason, he
had put them off but finally, he came up. But what McKinley Bailey did was to
become president of the local chapter of the NAACP. Now, there were not that
many NAACP members, not near as many as there are now. The NAACP was a viable
organization, ready to fight. It was composed of McKinley Bailey, Fred Carodine
and Ed Russell. But very seldom did they show up at meetings. But, the strategy
that was put forth was to try to integrate the schools with contacts with a
legal defense fund person who is a regional director, Allen Black. Allen
Black's office was in Memphis and we were tied in, I believe, the guy at
the Justice Department's name was Schira, I believe that was his name. But
what happened then was that we began to move to try to get the schools
integrated more fully. The city proposed one grade at a time. We did not go
along with that at the time. The information that we had received was that
we'd make our input to the legal defense fund and we'd communicate
with the Justice Department. So, when we did not buy that, we of
course would end up sometimes later instead of going one grade at a time, which
the city had proposed, they had to integrate three grades at a time.
The other big issue was one that had been raised about pay. Black teachers did
not make salaries the same as Caucasian teachers. As a consequence, a number of
the engineers and scientists that were moving into Redstone who were males, of
course their wives were Caucasian, were working in the various predominantly
white schools and of course they were making more money than the black teachers
who had degrees and credentials for Alabama. Some of the Caucasians did not have
credentials because they had not taught in Alabama and they had not satisfied
Alabama's criteria. And so it was that even though they were on a Type B
certificate, they were making more than the black teachers. Well, what happened,
once you had to integrate you had to do what? Integrate the salary. So, as we
begin to work that particular problem two things happened. If they were
considered a very good black teacher in that particular school wherever they
were working, they were moved to a predominantly white school. The others were
allowed to stay where they were. The Caucasian teachers who were being hired and
who were just corning out of college, for the most part, went to these
predominantly black schools. As a consequence, we had a program that was started
by the federal government, called EFFA, which was supposed to help elevate these
schools that were behind. All of a sudden, a number of Huntsville schools were
behind. They were behind because they put minority students in the behind
group and they could get money from the federal government to sustain this.
Let me move a little off. There are one or two things I'd like to mention.
Also, about 1963, there was a student from Alabama A&M named Carl Bailey who
went into the city of Huntsville and requested to become a policemen and that
was a no, no. They told him they didn't have any janitorial jobs. He said
he didn't come to be a janitor; he wanted to be a police officer. Well, he
was later hired, our first black policemen. Bailey, a John Christmas and the
late Reverend Huggins, they put them all in a car. They were not to arrest a
Caucasian person, but they could only go down into predominantly black
neighborhoods. Well, the dispatcher would get on and say, "Now, you go down to
that Negro area and do so and so." Well, they got a little tired of this and
they went in to see Chief Spurlock. Spurlock fires them and now the paper had
played up the fact that they had hired these guys, now all of a sudden they had
to get some more policemen. So they sent out to A&M and got two people,
Holyfeld, Staten and finally following that they got a guy named Aaron Wright.
They replaced those three and after having replaced those three until this year,
this is the first time that a black police officer in the city of Huntsville has
ever gone beyond the entrance position of patrol. I don't mean a whole
other job, but Huntsville promoted a sergeant this year and it's the first
time. That is a disgrace, thirty-some years. I know my time is up and I yield.
Carolyn Parker: Our next presenter will share with us his perspective as a
student activist. Mr. William Pearson was probably Alabama A&M University's
most committed member of SNCC during the early 1960's, along with Ms.
Frances Simms. He made many sacrifices in his personal life in order to follow
through on the very demands of the life of a student activist. Mr. William
Pearson is a graduate of Parker High School
in Birmingham and entered Alabama A&M University in 1958. As the Huntsville
movement developed, he could be found working with practically every aspect of
the movement, strategy sections, sit-ins, marches and other demonstrations, all
of this while at Huntsville, but he was also heavily involved in the sit-ins and
marches in Birmingham. Mr. Pearson later earned his degree in history from
Alabama A&M University and continues his dedication to the betterment of our
city through his work with our youth. He teaches and coaches at Davis Hill
Middle School, has a long list of successes producing championship teams for our
Parks and Recreation Department and the YMCA. Mr. Pearson is cofounder and
vice-president of the Alabama Lasers, designed to develop the talent of young
men, 12 to 17 years of age who are interested in basketball. Sponsored by Nike,
Inc, this organization finds scholarships for young people who want to go to
college. When asked, "What's in it for you," he replied, "I don't want
anything. My greatest reward is to see these young guys turn out to be decent
men." Mr. Pearson is married to the former Selena Pollard and the father of two
sons, Christopher and Reginald. I present to you, ever the activist and
community servant, Mr. William Pearson.
William Pearson: Fellow panelists and audience. You know, I started to write
stuff down but when you're talking about something like this, it's
from the heart. It comes from here. As a 17-year-old college student, raised in
Birmingham, Alabama, never went to school with a white guy. My graduating class
had 450 students. Later on, they talked about buses. I thought everybody was
bused. There were only three high schools there. They bused people from all over
Birmingham, four thousand five hundred of us in one
school. We graduated two times a year, January and May, and then usually in the
9th and usually in the ninth senior. When I was about 15-years-old, I had a job at a bowling alley. Getting
off one evening, a policemen stopped me, told me, he said, "I want you to stay
out of my alleys and off of my streets." I had to quit my job. I couldn't
work. I came up at a time where I lived at the bottom of what they called
Dynamite Alley, Dynamite Hill, where Arthur Shores was a lawyer there. I went to
school with his daughter. I also went to school with Angela Davis. We were
always aware of what was going on. We were just waiting for a time. Some of us
went to the left, some of us went to the right, but we were always aware.
Hank Thompson came here at the foot of this hill, called a group of us in and said,
"Hey, you know what they're doing in Greensboro and you know what the
students are doing all over the country. What are you going to do?" I said
we're going to do what we have to do. We were committed to making something
happen. We were committed to doing it in a nonviolent way, afraid, yes, because
you never knew. I had a guy tell me one day; He said, "Brother, you don't
know what it is to be black." I said, "Brother, I was black when black
wasn't cool." You know, afraid, went to jail, I forgot the times, ten,
twelve, fourteen, fifteen; I don't know. I had the record, that's
right. I remember one time Ms. Joan Cashin who was our advisor, you see they
had their committee and we had our committee; that was our lady, loved her,
bless her. We would meet and we would decide what to do and we would go to these
guys. This is family here. They took care of me. The little bit of a man that I
am they helped to mold that. I had no parents here; they were dogging my parents
in Birmingham. My mother said, "I don't know if you should be doing this,"
but daddy was an ex-marine. He said, "Son, do what you got
to do," and that's exactly what I did. I don't need much time. The
only thing I can say is that I did what I had to do and I did it from my heart.
But, you young guys, they are there, out there now. There should be more of you
in this audience to understand and to realize what this world is coming to. What
we marched for and what we fought for, if you don't go out and get some of
your fellow students together, you're going to be on the back of the bus like I
was. You're going to be drinking colored water like I drank. I had fun in
school, but you have to be committed to make things better. I see my wife out
there, Selena, it's 28 years, and my son, Reginald is a 7th grader at Ed
White, which was an all white school when I did this, straight A student. So now
I know I did it for a reason. Thank you.
Carolyn Parker: We set aside a few moments for questions and answers, or I
should say questions and responses, so if you would like to address anyone on
our panel in terms of asking a question, I recognize you now. I saw this hand first.
Q: (inaudible)
A: The school system hasn't made any inroads to improving the school
system. I had the opportunity of meeting with a lot of young men. I see them on
the street and they said they stopped school at sixteen. It's something
being done about the GED. The GED is going to be changed the beginning of the
year and what is the movement, what is the struggle. There is no gain without a
struggle and there is no gain without any pain. I participated in quite a few
things here on this campus and I'm surprised to see the low attendance.
What can we do to get more people involved? What can we do about pro ration with
what's going on right now. We're worried about terror, and I grew up in
Louisiana, Mississippi and the south and, like you said, the things that went on
in New York, black people grew up and lived in that terror. We still live in
some of that terror. We talk about anthrax. We've got to start doing
something about what's going on on a daily basis and I think that this
movement and this struggle have to come to the young people. The older people
participated in the NAACP. I participated in a drive and come to find out
there's sixty to seventy thousand black people here and you have less than
three hundred to five hundred people participating. Where does the struggle go
from here; I don't know.
Carolyn Parker: Okay. First, I'll say you did make some valuable
observations, but
these gentlemen will try to answer your questions.
A: Well, I'm going to try and answer it like this, plain and simple.
We've got to have a new constitution in the state of Alabama. That is the
root of the evil here. I would say that the NAACP, or any organization in the
state of Alabama, needs to be working very hard for a new constitution
convention. That is the basic medication I would prescribe to this illness we
have and I think it's very good advice considering the experience and the
professional education that I bear. Without a new constitution, there is no way
that we can continue in the state of Alabama the way that we have. It's got
to be changed. It's got to be brand new; and, of course, I may sound like a
broken record, but that's it.
Carolyn Parker: I saw a hand right here. They say it's impolite to point
but that's the only way I can designate the person.
Q: My question is simply people are so headstrong to oppose anything, whatsoever
other than when they have a concern about NASA at Redstone Arsenal. What brought the
white people around? How could they have changed without? I know what white
people can do and black people too, when you get so headstrong you're ready
to, "I won't do a thing they tell me," and to bring those people around and
in two or three years, you're talking 1962 through 1965, how did they come
around like that? I can't believe it.
A: I'd like to answer that. It's one of the few I can answer. It was
economics. It was the boycott. It was the boycott that really, really, brought
them around and we decided to have the boycott, we had workshops; I had that
included in my papers, but they wouldn't let me talk to you about it. We
had workshops on how to conduct a boycott. You don't call a merchant and
tell him if you don't do such and such a thing I'm going to boycott
you, you let that guy go. Then, Christmas or Easter, let him buy his stock and
buy all of his stuff and then you tell your people, don't go down there and
purchase anything from him. The first thing he knows, he's got all of this
stuff on his shelves and he can't tum it into money and he's got to
pay the bank for that money that he borrowed. That was what did it. The boycott
was more successful than you could ever believe. I just found out about it later
and Dr. Cashin's wife and I discussed it and I know what she said was right
and the things I thought were right. We had at least five groups of people that
were participating in that boycott that I didn't know about when it was
going on. We had about ninety-five percent of black people that were absolutely,
positively not going to buy. We had another group of white people who were in
the labor union and we had picket lines and they would not cross our picket
lines. We had some white people who came down there to jeer us; we had some
white people who came down to cheer us and we had some other white people who
just didn't come to the city of Huntsville because of
the commotion down there and so that over-compensated for that other five
percent of black people that didn't buy. It was the boycott that really,
really made them come around.
A: Not just the boycott, but there's a little stunt that we put on there
too. We had almost
simultaneous demonstrations, Chicago Board of Trade and New York Stock Exchange.
Picket lines. Don't do business in Huntsville, Alabama. It's bad
business. That made the New York Times and that word got out all around the
world. That just showed most of our potential. That's all. Apparently you
had another part to your question?
Q: How did you handle the hot heads, the ones who were ready to break in?
A: They were not allowed to join our organization. Oh, you're talking about
the white people?
Q: The white people, how did they get put in their place?
A: What do you mean, "Put in their place?"
Q: How did you stop them?
A: We were prepared to take whatever, they did not, as I recall we only had one
incident of violence with Evelyn Sawkowski. The word was out to the city
fathers, if that's what they could be called, there was to be no violence.
That doesn't mean they're going to keep that. If you look in the paper
when Sonnie Hereford, IV went to school, the first time he went he was turned
away. Governor Wallace had set up... that's another story too... yes,
that's another story, but what happened was the city fathers wanted the
money and were not about to let Spurlock and his group get out of hand. There
was a soldier who came up with his invalid child and he wanted to go to school,
even though a black
kid was going to school. There was another lady who told the police that, yea,
they said, "we don't want you to start any trouble, just go on back home."
She said, "You're making the trouble." But that's because of the city
fathers. They didn't want it either. They contested it. They sent letters
to representatives and everything. The point was they wanted that green dollar.
Carolyn Parker: I think William wants to address that.
A: Yes. They tried everything they could, including coming to the school,
getting with the governor and telling us they were going to put us out of school
if we marched. The main thing is if you're committed to something and
you've committed to doing it a certain way; we were committed to
nonviolence. They knocked one girl off of a stool. You know, the mind is a
strong thing. There were people there jeering but when you show no fear, and
then they never wanted to get in the newspapers, so they had to keep it down,
the city fathers had to keep it down. They didn't want it in the paper.
A: There was a little humorous twist there. One of the ways that we were able to
see to it that the crowd didn't get out of hand is on our first
demonstration we had members of the Alabama A&M football team with the signs.
They were some burly guys. Wonder why they wouldn't be fool enough to
tackle them. That was the initial march we had, big, burly six foot three, two
hundred and fifty pounders. Even the redneck would take his chance on something else.
Carolyn Parker: Okay. I saw a hand here first, and then the next one. Right
here, young lady, you'll be next after this gentleman.
Q: Could you tell me the difference between socioeconomics for the minority
groups in this community now as it was then? I don't see many black-owned
businesses in this community. Could you explain that?
A: We've got some black millionaires in this town. We've got quite a
few as a matter of fact. Yes, they're quite a few doing well. I'm not
one of them, but I know a few.
Carolyn Parker: This young lady, then Ms. Deshield.
Q: How did you deal with it? I can't imagine trying to go to school and
having people treating me like that? I know you all were close and you talk
about being committed, but there has to be more to it than that.
A: How did we relieve the stress, is that what you're asking? Now for our
students, and this was Dr. Cashin's wife's idea, she said, "I think
about every three or four weeks we ought to have some entertainment for these
students and when these students are out here protesting and marching and
demonstrating, we ought to give them something to look forward to that
they're going to be doing," so during our movement, the real active part
was about seven months, we had two dances, we had three parties and we had a 4th
of July picnic for the students, so we kept something for them to do and they
always had something to look forward to.
Carolyn Parker: William, would you like to address that?
A: We had a lot of fun too. We had fun together. You know, we were all close
friends and when we partied, we partied hard. We demonstrated; we demonstrated hard.
A: I'd like to say something else to. I'd like to say something about
the closeness of that group. Some of my fraternity brothers may not like for me
to say this and some of my
church members may not like for me to say this, but I've been on a lot of
organizations but I have never been in any group that had a greater closeness
than that group, and more love and respect for each other than that group that
we had.
Carolyn Parker: Okay. Ms. Deshields had a question.
Q: I want to commend you, Dr. Ellis, for the inclusion of my name in your report
and I did write the Acquisition of Civil Rights in Huntsville, Alabama from 1962
to 1965. My question and concern is that I have no documentation about this. You
have not done any research on it, but you made the statement that Dr. Drake was
forced into retirement by Governor John Patterson. I was a student here at A&M
at that time
A: I know that story very well. Yes.
Q: You're agreeing with it or disagreeing with it?
A: The way Patterson treated Drake.
Q: That he forced him into retirement.
A: Yes, he was forced into retirement without any doubt. As a matter of fact, it
was during the sit-ins and John Patterson said that he was going to name a
president who would make those children study and make them behave, and to
really follow on his path, he named the wrong man.
Q: I did see John Patterson in a subsequent meeting in Birmingham many years
later and he had done a 180 degree tum and I could see in my lifetime that transition.
A: A whole lot of them have done ISO-degree turns. George Wallace was in 438
when he changed his mind.
Q: Well, one final statement, Carolyn. That is that my recollection of Dr.
Drake's retiring was based on the loss of his health and that forced him to
retire, but I may not be accurate on that, but I'm raising the question.
A: He was ill and in the hospital when the sit-ins broke out and that is when Governor
Patterson decided that he would fire Drake and name a new president, and he
named Leon Bonner. Leon was president for about three days I recall. Let me make
one comment with respect to that. It is my understanding at the time that Dr.
Levi Watkins and Dr. Drake were under fire. There should be a letter where Dr.
Drake sent a letter to Watkins telling Watkins to stand his ground, to use his
words. Dr. Drake became ill with meningitis, if I remember correctly, and during
his illness, I don't know if he died out of office or if Patterson fired
him. No, Patterson fired him. But, it is due to his illness, in my opinion, at
the time. That's what we received. I don't know if it is true.
Patterson made the public statement that he was going to fire Drake and he was
going to get him a new president that would make those children behave and make
them study. I just want to confirm what Dr. Cashin said. Most of that
information is from the Huntsville Times and, in fact, according to the
Huntsville Times, Dr. Drake heard about his forced retirement on the radio. He
didn't even know it was coming. He was deeply hurt by this and the
quotation that Dr. Cashin is referring to is that Governor Patterson said that
he wanted to hire a new campus administrator who said, "Will require discipline,
make the students behave themselves and make them study." Furthermore, in an
about face, the Huntsville Times generally either ignored some of the
demonstrations or put them on the
third or fourth page. In this case, they had a very lengthy editorial denouncing
the governor for this mistreatment of Dr. Drake.
Carolyn Parker: Okay, we'll take three more questions. I have this lady and
there was
a lady in the back and this gentleman here.
Q: My name is Peggy Bavenovich and one of the questions I have, I saw that
excellent movie that's been made of the whole experience of Huntsville and
my question is, are you saying there were no idealistic whites in Huntsville
that supported you?
A: There were some idealistic whites that did support us. As a matter of fact, a
great contingent came out of the Unitarian fellowship but so far as real active
participation, a few from the Human Relations Council were with it, but the
Unitarians were probably the strongest bunch of all. So far as the local whites
are concerned, a lot of us had white friends, but they didn't want to get
exposed. As a matter of fact, we had some difficulty getting membership in the
biracial committee, but in the final analysis, there were two merchants, I guess
you could call them business people that did indeed support things behind the
scenes. One of them was Woody Anderson. I guess Woody would have conniptions
if he knew I was discussing him. You see, Woody owned the Kings Inn, and that was
one of the first places that opened up, and the other guy was Boots Ellis who
had Boots Lounge down on the Parkway.
Q: How about newcomers?
A: Newcomers, the newcomers pretty much stayed on their own. They were pretty
much here for business, and we had lot of engineers. They were very busy getting
ready to put the man on the moon and when John Kennedy said we're going to
put a man on the moon
by 1970, he gave Huntsville the job and we did it by 1969. But we were a very
busy community. Then, of course, Sputnik was up there beep, beep, beeping so we
were really under the gun. So, we didn't want to rock the boat, but we were
not going to allow the same things to be in place. There were some very, very
dedicated whites; I have to admit that, but so far as locals who were concerned,
there was a narrow few.
Before you say that, I'm glad she mentioned the movie. I had planned to
make this commercial and they didn't tell me to say it or not to say it.
Tom, would you bring it up here please. She mentioned the movie. Evidently she
must have liked it. How much are they? $20.00, $50.00? No, $30.00.
Q: How can we as youth realize the struggle that is current. Many of the
students at A&M have no idea about this Civil Rights Movement because we were
looking for it. We attend Oakwood College and our pre-law found out about this.
Many students don't know what's going on so how can we get motivated
and be informed on these kinds of forums that are taking place?
A: Sessions like this. She didn't know about the program, is that what
she's saying? Well, that is not surprising to me at all. As a matter of
fact, if you will flick on this printed program, I'm not on there.
Carolyn Parker: Okay. We have a question right here, the former president of the college.
Q: I have been greatly inspired by the wonderful tales given by the gentleman on
this panel. I admire their report and what they did over the years. For the
second time in the last four days a visit of Dr. Martin Luther King to
Huntsville was mentioned.
Dr. Hereford, I think is an expert on that. He mentioned it tonight. It
didn't have a relationship to what the committee and group were doing in
Huntsville. He inspired the Oakwood audience where he spoke. He gave us a
preview of his "I Have a Dream" speech where he gave it at Oakwood first, went
up to the Washington Mall and inspired the leaders of the nation and we know
what happened thereafter. I would like to have
Dr. Hereford, if he will, enlarge on the effect on Huntsville.
A: Dr. Minette, it's all right here in this folder. They wouldn't let
me tell you about it but now they can't hold me down in the question and
answer session. We had about four or five hundred demonstrators that would
demonstrate regularly in January, and then nothing was happening. We
weren't getting any concessions at all and so after about six to eight
weeks the participation dropped off. And then in one of those sessions,
Dr. Cashin, Mrs. Cashin, Randolph, Blackwell and I and all of us, somebody said
that "We ought to get a dynamic speaker to come to Huntsville and speak and see
if we can bring our people together, solidify the community and bring some of
these people back that we have lost and maybe get some white people to come and
join us in our demonstrations." So we kept thinking who in the world can we get
and then Dr. King's name came up and somebody said we'll invite Dr.
King. We had a committee that was going to invite Dr. King and I think that Dr.
Cashin was probably the chairman or one of the people on that committee. We had
to figure out where we were going to get the money to pay him and his
lieutenants and so forth. He came March 19th and spoke at First Missionary
Baptist Church, downtown, and then he spoke at Oakwood College gym that night at
8 o'clock. He had to speak at Oakwood because there was nowhere else in
town that they would allow us to have Dr. King. You see what I mean? There was
very good security at Oakwood and I appreciate that, the way it was fixed up at
that time, and that's when Dr. King came. After he left, the community did
show signs of being solidified and also some white people joined our movement
and the mayor found two white people to serve on the biracial committee when Dr.
King left. Does that help to clarify it a little bit?
Carolyn Parker: Okay. We do need to adjourn this session. I realize there are
other questions, but we promised that we wouldn't hold you too long. Let me
also remind you the next session, next week, will be at the University of
Alabama in Huntsville, Roberts Auditorium, and I would certainly be remiss if I
did not acknowledge our Director of the Alabama Humanities Foundation, Mr. Bob
Stewart. Just wave Bob. Bob came all the way from Birmingham to support this
project and, as you well know, we received a grant from the Humanities
Foundation for this program, among other contributions. Let me again thank you
and I've been so delighted to moderate this panel. All of these guys are
very, very special to me and it has just been special to me to do this. Please
join us for refreshments in the back sponsored by the State Black Archives
Research Center. Don't forget your evaluation forms. They'll be in the
back holding them up. Hold on, Dr. Ellis wants to make one more point.
Jack Ellis: I just have one more point. He spoke about Dr. King's speech.
We have excerpts of Dr. King's speech. Thank you Carolyn.
Dublin Core
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uah_civr_000007
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Digitized VHS tape of "Huntsville during the Civil Rights Movement."
Description
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Sonnie W. Hereford, III, John Cashin Jr., William Pearson, and Fred Carodine were the speakers in this lecture given at Alabama A&M University.
Date
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2001-10-25
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1:54:28
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en
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This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections.
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Alabama A & M University
University of Alabama in Huntsville
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University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama
Temporal Coverage
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2000-2009
Subject
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Hereford, Sonnie W., 1931-2016
Pearson, William, 1940-2007
Carodine, Frederick, 1930-2016
Civil rights movements--Southern states--History--20th century
Huntsville (Ala.)
Madison County (Ala.)
Segregation
Race discrimination
African Americans--Legal status, laws, etc.
Cashin, John L. (John Logan), 1928-2011
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Lectures
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MP4
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<a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/389">Huntsville During the Civil Rights Movement - Speakers: Sonnie W. Hereford III, John Cashin Jr., Fred Carodine, and William Pearson - Transcription of Tape 7, 2003 </a>
Source
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
<a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/401">VHS Tape of: Huntsville During the Civil Rights Movement - Speakers Sonnie W. Hereford III, William Pearson, John Cashin Jr., and Fred Carodine, 2001-10-25.Box 2, Tape 7
</a>
University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama
-
http://libarchstor2.uah.edu/digitalcollections/files/original/32/11354/Hulett_and_Frye.jpg
1e01f035a68b8fd312c2e25713aed161
http://libarchstor2.uah.edu/digitalcollections/files/original/32/11354/uah_civr_000008_Box_2_Tape_8.mp4
1804b7426bb520dd0f1f36c8c39251b6
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
Oral History
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UAH The University of Alabama in Huntsville
"Bloody Lowndes" and the Black Panther Party Speaker: John Hulett, Frye Gaillard
I am Sherry Marie Shuck, Assistant Professor of History at UAH. Welcome to the
ninth installment of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, 14-week symposium
centered around a series of public lectures, panels and first-hand account of
significant events taking place in the state of Alabama. This series is held
alternately at UAH and Alabama A&M University. After three years of planning,
this unique intellectual project is a joint venture between Alabama A&M
University and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The members of the
Steering Committee in alphabetical order are: Mitch Berbrier of UAH, John
Dimrnock ofUAH, Jack Ellis of UAH, James Johnson of AAMU, Carolyn Parker of AAMU
and Lee Williams, II, of UAH. Throughout its work. the planning committee has
also been greatly assisted by the efforts of Joyce Maples of UAH's
University Relations.
We ask that you complete an evaluation form for this program and leave it here
on the stage or with an attendant at the exit.
This series on the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama would not have been possible
without the financial support of numerous sponsors whom the planning committee
wishes to acknowledge at this time. First and foremost is the Alabama Humanities
Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities; The
Huntsville Times, DESE Research Incorporated, Mevatec Corporation, Alabama
Representative Laura Hall and Senator Hank Sanders.
Joining our efforts from Alabama A&M University is the Office of the President,
The Office of the Provost, the State Black Archives Research Center and Museum,
the Title III Telecommunications who are responsible for taping these sessions
and we give a special thanks to all of you and Distance Learning, the Office of
Student Development, the A&M Honors Center, Sociology/Social Work, Political
Science and History.
At the University of Alabama in Huntsville, we greatly acknowledge funding
assistance from the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, the
Humanities Center, the Division of Continuing Education, the Department of
Sociology, its Social Issues Symposium, the Honors Program, the Office of
Multicultural Affairs, Student Affairs, The Copy Center and the UAH History
Forum Bankhead Foundation, which is serving as the local host for tonight's
activities; and with the kind help of Staff Assistant Beverly Robinson, who has
prepared a reception back stage immediately following tonight's lecture to
which you are all invited.
We would like to remind you that next Tuesday, November 6th, we have a special
guest lecturer, Dr. Hilliard Lackey, Professor of History at Jackson State
University who will speak on the Selma Voting Rights Campaign, which will be
held in Room 111 of the School of Business at Alabama A&M University at 7 p.m.
Next Thursday, our series will take place at the Ernest Knight Reception Center
at Alabama A&M University. Our focus will be the struggle for voting rights in
Selma, culminating in the event of March 7, 1965, known as Bloody Sunday in
which state troopers in an armed posse led by local sheriff, Jim Clark, used
clubs an tear gas to beat back peaceful marches attempting to cross Edmund
Pettus Bridge on their way to
Montgomery. Our speaker will be Congressman John Lewis of Georgia's 5th
District, one of the towering figures of the Civil Rights Movement. A native of
Torre, Alabama, an author of Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement,
published in 1998, Congressman Lewis was active in the national sit-ins, the
freedom rides, the Selma movement and was at the head of the marcher's
attack on Pettus Bridge. He will be joined by New York writer Mary Stanton, author of
the book From Selma to Sorrow: the Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo, published in 1998.
Tonight, we look at events that took place not far from Selma in a Blackbelt
County, whose tradition of violence against African-Americans and Civil Rights
workers earned it the unenviable nickname of Bloody Lowndes.
Two classic examples of Lowndes County terrorism are the Klan murder on March
25, 1965, of Mrs. Viola Liuzzo, a white Civil Rights volunteer from Michigan
along US Highway 80, followed by the shotgun slaying of Jonathan Daniels, a
26-year old Divinity student from New Hampshire at Varner's Cash Store in
Hayneville. Such atrocities had prevented any black resident from being
registered to vote for over half a century, even though they outnumbered local
whites by more than 3 to I. Blacks who wished to register not only faced
expulsion from the farms where they lived and worked but also a constant threat
of physical violence.
In a county where only 800 white men resided, Mr. John Hulett observed in 1966,
that "there are 550 of them who walk around with guns on them. They are
deputies. It might sound like a fairy tale to most people, but this is true."
Mr. Hulett was at the center of the struggle to bring change to Lowndes County
and what he accomplished there had
repercussions far beyond the Blackbelt and state of Alabama. To introduce him
with our second distinguished guest on stage tonight, prize-winning journalist,
Frye Gaillard, a call upon Ms. Erin Reed, a history graduate student at the
University of Alabama in Huntsville and president of Phi Alpha Theta, the
history honorary society... Ms. Reed.
Introduction: In defending the cause of freedom over the past 5 decades, Mr.
John Hulett has served in many ways, from union activist and civil rights leader
to county sheriff and probate judge. In his book, Outside Agitator, John Daniels
and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, historian Charles W. Eagles, portrays
Mr. Hulett as the leader of the Civil Rights struggle in Lowndes County and as a
"tireless, determined worker with unusual intensity and powerful personality."
Born in a tiny community of Gordonsville, Mr. Hulett passed his formative years
in rural bonds. It was here, according to Professor Eagles, that his grandfather
born in slavery had managed during his life to acquire more than a hundred acres
in addition to a gristmill, a sawmill and a cotton gin. Finishing high school in
1946, Mr. Hulett soon left the family's farm to live in Birmingham. There,
he was hired as a foundry worker for the Birmingham Stove and Range Company.
This marked the beginning of his life as an activist, first as president of the
Foundry Worker's Union and then as a reformer seeking to improve the lives
of those in Pratt City where he lives.
By 1949, he had joined the NAACP and after it was banned he joined the Successor
Organization created by Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, known as the Alabama
Christian Movement for Human Rights. In Birmingham, Mr. Hulett was also
successful in his attempts to register to vote.
Returning to Lowndes County in 1959, Mr. Hulett soon emerged as the leader of
local efforts to combat the poll tax and to gain the right to register for local
African Americans. This brought him into direct conflict with a white minority
that dominated that county and that for 50 years had ensured that no black
person could vote or serve on juries.
By March of 1965, only he and one other black resident had succeeded in being
registered, despite an appearance at the courthouse in Hayneville that month by
Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, who sought unsuccessfully to register 37 local
residents. In response, Mr. Hulett help organize the Lowndes County Christian
Movement for Human Rights and served as its first president.
Passage of the Voting Rights Act in August 1965 along with presence of federal
registrars helped ensure that African-Americans would become a voting majority in
Lowndes County. In order to solidify the gains achieved by this and to prevent
the local democrat party from again disenfranchising blacks by raising fees for
office seekers, Mr. Hulett was instrumental in founding an alternative party,
the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. This party was organized on April 2,
1966, with Mr. Hulett and it took as its symbol the black panther. In Lowndes
County, he explained, we have been deprived of our rights to speak, to move and
to do whatever we want to do at all times and now we are going to start moving.
On November 8 of this year, we plan to take over the courthouse in Hayneville
and whatever it takes to do it, we're going to do it.
In 1969, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization became part of the National
Democratic Party of Alabama whose electoral victories the following year
included that of John Hulett as sheriff, the first African-American to be
elected to that office there.
Tonight, Mr. Hulett will share with us memories of his life and struggle m
Lowndes County from his youth and early involvement in the Voter Registration
Campaign to the founding of the Black Panther Party, to the Selma movement and
the murders of Viola Liuzzo and John Daniels and finally to the changes that has
witnessed over the past 40 years.
Along with Mr. Hulett, we are also privileged to have as our guest on stage
tonight journalist and author Frye Gaillard. Mr. Gaillard will be interviewing
Mr. Hulett. Mr. Gaillard lives and works in Charlotte, North Carolina. He is a
free-lance writer with special interests in the culture, religion and social
history of the American south. He has written or edited 18 books touching on
various aspects of this southern experience from black and Native American
history to country music and Habitat for Humanity.
Mr. Gaillard is a native of Mobile and in 1994 described his own family's
history in a book entitled, Lessons from the Big House, One Family's
Passage through the History of the South. Between 1964 and 1968, Mr. Gaillard
studied at Vanderbilt University, graduating with a major in history. After a
brief stint with the Associated Press in 1972, he joined the Charlotte Observer,
serving first as a staff writer, then as editorial writer and columnist and
finally as southern editor. He remained with this newspaper until 1990 when he
decided to pursue free-lance writing. During those years, Mr. Gaillard won
numerous awards for excellence in reporting including awards
from the North Carolina Press Association and the Associated Press. Among Mr.
Gaillard's books are several that bear directly on the Civil Rights
Movement, The Greensboro Four Civil Rights Pioneers, The Way We See It,
documentary , photography by the Children of Charlotte which he published with
his daughter Rachel and the Dream Long Deferred which detailed the landmark
school desegregation struggle in Charlotte. This book won the Gustavus Myers
Award for writing on the subject of human rights.
At present, Mr. Gaillard is working on a book detailing the Civil Rights
Movement here in Alabama. It will be titled, Cradle of Freedom, The History of
the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama.. It is scheduled to be published by the
University of Alabama Press in 2002.
We are pleased to have both interviewer and interviewee with us this evening.
Please join me in a warm welcome.
Frye Gaillard: We are happy to be here tonight to participate in this program. I
was fortunate to be here for one of the other programs, with Diane Dash on
September 13th two days after some fairly significant events in the world.
My wife and I were driving down and we thought there would be us and Diane Nash
at the auditorium, but it was an amazing turnout. It is a testament to the kind
of interest that you have in this community, in this subject and also to the
really well planned nature of the program that you have been fortunate to be a
part of, I think. I have been asked and have worked for the last two years
researching what the University of Alabama Press is calling a popular history of
the Civil Rights Movement. By that, they mean they want a journalist and a
storyteller rather than a historian to write about it and to keep it short. One
of things that I
have had the privilege of doing is talking to a lot of people who were foot
shoulders in the movement, people that I have never in many cases ever heard of.
I grew up in those days in Alabama and sort of came of age with an awareness of
what was going on in the state. There are so many people who have such rich
stories and one of those people are obviously the guest of honor here tonight,
John Hulett. I knew that I wanted to meet John Hulett ever since the time in the
early 1970's. I was working for the newspaper in Charlotte and I was doing
a story on the impact of the Civil Rights Movement on the south in general and
one of the places I visited was Lowndes County. I remember driving down one of
the back roads in Lowndes County and Lowndes County has a lot of back roads. I
was passing this farmhouse and there was kind of a rutted two-lane path that led
up to the farmhouse and there was a black man sitting on the porch of this
farmhouse. So, I drove up to just see what he might have to say about the Civil
Rights Movement and the impact that it had on his life. He was a little
skeptical at first of this white stranger who had driven up to his place, but we
sat on the porch in these flimsy old aluminum chairs and we talked for a while
and began to connect, I think. We started to talk about the movement and the
impact that it had and I said, can you tell me what it has meant to you that the
Civil Rights Movement occurred in the south and in the state of Alabama. He
said, oh, that's an easy question to answer; the biggest difference it has
made in my life is that John Hulett is sheriff of Lowndes County and I
didn't know exactly what he meant and I said, well talk about this a little
bit more. What do you mean by that? He said, let me tell you a story and he told
me the story of the night that he was on his way home; this was a man named
Ervin Henson. He told me the story of a night that he was on his way
home and his car broke down on the side of the road. So, he had to leave it and
walk and this was not something that you wanted to happen in the pre-Civil
Rights days in Lowndes County, Alabama. He was walking by himself on the road
and a car with two deputy sheriffs passed by him. They pulled to a stop,
demanded what to know what he was doing and he just told them that he was on his
way home. They got out of the car and one of them clubbed him over the head with
a nightstick. They handcuffed his hands behind his back and pitched him bleeding
and semiconscious into the trunk of the police car. They drove around with him
in the trunk of car until it was almost dawn and what Mr. Henson said is that it
does not happen any more because John Hulett is sheriff of Lowndes County,
Alabama. And the more I began to talk to people about this, the more clear it
became that there were these sort of stages that the Civil Rights Movement went
through. You had this kind of feeling of daybreak in Montgomery with the
Montgomery Bus Boycott and the sort of first time that black people in a kind of
mass way took a stand for freedom and justice and actually accomplished
something and accomplished very tangible results. Of course, you had the freedom
rides where young black people and activists served noticed that there was no
place too terrifying for the movement to go and that violence would not overcome
nonviolence no matter what. You had Birmingham with the police dogs, the fire
hoses and those images that seared the conscious of people all over the country.
You had Selma and the Montgomery March that led to the most revolutionary single
change that the movement accomplished which was the right to vote for black
people everywhere. You also had these other struggles that were taking place in
Huntsville, Gadsden, Mobile, Tuskegee, Tuscaloosa and all of these other places
and you
had the struggle in the Blackbelt that John Hulett knows so well, which I think
the final movement was the victory over fear. If you were black... and I am
going to ask Judge Hulett about this in a minute. But, if you were black in
Lowndes County, Alabama, you lived with fear every single day of your life because
you knew that white people, if they chose, could do anything to you that they
wanted to almost with impunity, but at least the legal system would offer you no
protection whatsoever and in fact, in most cases, was part of the problem and
this is what they changed. This is the final stage of the movement and so that
is what we will get to tonight. The format that we are going to use is one that
neither John Hulett nor I would have thought of; I think I am safe in saying. I
was doing an interview with him in Hayneville at the courthouse and there was a
professor from Auburn who happened to be with me who was so fascinated by the
answers that I was getting to these questions that she said, you know, you guys
need to do this publicly. We need to take you to some of the schools in Alabama.
So, we tried it out before a couple of high school audiences and survived and we
figured that was about as tough a crowd as we could have and then we did it at
Auburn one time too. So, we are going to try it again tonight. Hopefully, it
will work and if you have questions, feel free either to jump in or when I
finish getting us started then I will kind of open it up to the audience and you
guys can ask whatever you would like to know as well. So, I just want to say
before I start what a privilege it is for me to be here with one of the genuine
heroes of this movement that you guys have been talking about.
Q: Judge Hulett, you grew up in the Blackbelt in the 1930s and 1940s. Talk a little bit about what it was like for black people in those
days in that part of Alabama. What are
some of your memories growing up then and do you agree with Ervin Henson and
others that it was a dangerous place to be if you were black?
A: Certainly, I do. I was born in 1927 in Gordonsville, Alabama; that's
close to the County Seat of Haynesville,
and during that time the entire county was farming country. Most people who lived
in that county were sharecroppers. You had to work on other folks plantation, if
you know what a sharecropper is, and when you work on peoples plantations you
had to do what they say do or you had to go or get killed or a thing of that
time, but I lived in Lowndes County and grew up there. I went to school at an
all black school and finished grammar school and high school. I came out of high
school in 1946, but it was a lot filth that went on during that time. I can
remember many times, at night times, we had a sheriff in that county, a real
nice brother and he would drive by, and if you were walking the road at night,
especially a few black boys walking the road, he would catch you and beat you. I
know one friend of mine whose brother went to school with us that he beat one
night and finally he died from that beating, but nothing was done about it; I
can remember that. Plenty people he would beat. He would walk up to a place that
if you had
a music box playing, he would just walk up and take his Billy stick and tear it
up and start
shooting at it. He was that type of person. Oto Mural was our sheriff and he
stayed in it as long as he wanted to. When he got ready to run for probate
judge, the people denied him the opportunity to be the probate judge, but they
wanted a man like that for sheriff.
Q: Now, in the those days, back in the 1930s, the Tenant Farmers Unit,
came into Lowndes County and tried to organize sharecroppers who were living in
conditions not very far removed from slavery. I remember talking to one elderly
man, Mr. Charles
Smith, who remembered that as a young man in Lowndes County we were working for
almost nothing and he talked about how they struck to try to get paid a dollar a
day and they walked out of the fields and the person who organized the strike at
the Bell plantation that he was part of was shot down by the sheriff of the
overseer in cold blood. Did you hear of those kind of stories when you were
growing up? Did you hear about that kind of thing?
A: Yes, I did. I talked to Mr. Lemon Bogen whose one of the persons who was
involved that. The late Lemon Bogen, he's dead now, but he also talked about how
bad it was and how people would beat up people and shoot individuals. This was
the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement when he started telling more about
most of this type stuff. He always said when you go out on these plantations be
careful cause they will kill you.
Q: So, when the Civil Rights Movement really started in Lowndes County, Alabama,
it was part of the collective memory of the people there and what could happen
to people who stood up for themselves? I mean, you knew that you were laying
your life on the line to do that?
A: This is true. I did know that.
Q: What do you think gave you the courage to do it? Was it some of the
experiences that you had at other places? I know you left Lowndes County for
awhile, worked in Birmingham, both in the Labor Movement and in the Civil Rights
Movement there. Did you learn things there that were important to you later on?
A: Yes, I did. In Birmingham I worked with, under the Rev. Shuttersworth and the most important
thing happened was the bombing of church, Arthur Shores house and Autherine Lucy
was trying
to enter into the University of Alabama. So, a few of us got together and would
sit guard at Arthur Shores house that night.
Q: Now, he was an attorney?
A: He was an attorney who represented Autherine Lucy and I can remember one night
sitting there about 3 o' clock in the morning and a shout would come out,
there's a car driving up with no lights on it. It was a police car and see
most of this stuff that went on was done by law enforcement officers or people
who they allowed to do what needed to be done. So, when we came out with those
guns in our hands. The lights came on the car and then they said they were just
checking to see how everything was. That was the beginning of it, but when I
went back to Lowndes County it was a whole different ball game because Lowndes
County was predominantly black as far as population but such a dangerous place
to be in during that time and we got back into Lowndes County. We had a few
people that tried to register to vote but was denied. There was not a single
registered voter in Lowndes County and in 1965, the first week in March, the
voter registration would be opened 2 days, the first and third week of the
month. We got about 65 people to go and get registered to vote. Most of them
were afraid to get out of there car when it they got to the courthouse, but
somebody had to have the courage, so I took the leadership to walk in the
courthouse and find out where to register at. The first thing l was told by one
of the registrars was that we have not permitted you all here, go down to the
old jail; that's where we going to register the people 2 weeks from now. I
immediately went to that old jail, went all through it and looked at the gallows
to see where they had been hanging people for years. You had to have that kind
of nerve. Two
weeks later, we went back to that jail and I happen to take the leadership and
carry the blind man along with me, the late Reverend Jesse Lawson. They passed
two of us that day out of about 25 or 30 people that went through it. They
passed me and they passed Reverend Lawson and you had to do answer questions on
those older tests at that time. One of the questions that they asked me I can
remember, what hospital the president had been in during that time. Now, there
are no televisions, very few radios in the radio in the neighborhood, but I did
remember it was Walter Reed Hospital and I said that and they passed me. I do
not think I passed the test, seriously. They passed me to get rid of me, but
every time the voter's registration was open I was back there again until
we were able to get enough people registered to vote.
Q: You had registered to vote in Birmingham when you lived there. ls that correct?
A: This is true. I registered to vote in Birmingham.
Q: So, some of the experiences that you had in Birmingham were kind of things
that you imported back to Lowndes County?
A: That's right.
Q: I know one of the interviews that I did recently you mentioned Reverend
Shuttlesworth. He tells the story of Christmas night, 1956, right after the end
of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and he had announced that the next day, December
26th, he was going to ride in front of the bus in Birmingham. He was lying in his
bed and the parsonage of his house and 14 sticks of dynamite went off on the
comer of the house right under the bed where he was lying. The floor collapsed
and the ceiling collapsed but fell just short of where he was. He felt himself
falling through the floor to the ground,
landed on the bed and he said later that he felt like he was landing in the arms
of God and if he had ever been afraid until then, he was never afraid again. I
am guessing that kind of example of courage inspired you to look inside yourself
for the kind of courage that you have because you had to have it in Lowndes County.
A: Yes. You had to have it in Lowndes County. I lived about almost a mile and a
half off the main road. If you have ever lived in the country, you did not have
cattle gaps because the drive crossed the cattle gap. You would have to open
three gates before you get my house and that was the most fearful thing that
somebody might be lying out in the weeds waiting on you. When you open this
gate, they could ambush you, but it never happened to me. I kept God in the
front and I kept doing what I needed to do to make life better for the people in
our country.
Q: One of things that happened in a lot of places during the Civil Rights
Movements was that in every case there were local people who were there to take
a stand. They would stand up for what was right, what was just and what was
decent and fair, but there was also in many cases people who came in from the
outside to encourage people. I want to talk about two of the people who came
into Lowndes County. One of them was Stokeley Carmichael and the other was
Jonathan Daniels. Now, there were others too who were every important and we
have talked about them as well, but let's take those in order. Give us your
recollection of Stokely Carmichael, one of the toughest organizers in SNCC; I
think its fair to say. What was your impression of him as a person, a human
being, an organizer and a leader and how well did you get to know him?
A: Just like a brother because he had worked around me quite a bit. I think
Stokely was a great person. He had worked in Mississippi with the movement there
and when he came into Lowndes County he knew he had an uphill journey. We worked
close together and that is why we organized the Lowndes County Freedom
Organization. Every place they would go into they was looked at by state
troopers every were they went. I remember one incident that took place. One day,
there was a group of people that decided to picket in Fort Deposit, Alabama.
They arrested about 20 people in that area. Stokely was a passenger in a car and
during that same day was arrested and charged with reckless driving as a
passenger. So, you can see how bad they wanted Stokely Carmichael. He was a great
person. He was a great organizer. He stayed with the people in the community and
we worked together to try to make Lowndes County better. We had organized the
Lowndes County Christian Movement for Human Rights. If you can remember the
movement in Birmingham; it was the Alabama Christian Movement. So, the day we
went over to get registered and was denied that right, Dr. King came over, but
we didn't see him, we went down that night and organized the Lowndes County
Christian Movement of Human Rights. I was chosen temporary chairman of that
group until we was able to have a mass meeting and the people decided to go
ahead and keep me there, but this was the beginning of it.
Q: Now, there were people who later came to regard Stokely Carmichael as a
violent person. Did you think of him that way?
A: No sir. He was not a violent person. I never saw him do anything violent to
anybody. He would speak up, but he would not threaten anybody or talk about
killing or all that type stuff.
Q: And that was most emphatically your experience with him in Lowndes County.
A: This is true.
Q: Okay. Let's talk about Jonathan Daniels a little bit, a white, Episcopal
seminarian who came to Lowndes County and did not get out alive. What was your
view of Jonathan Daniels?
A: He was a great person. He was interested in what was going on. He did not try
to do anything wrong. The day that they had this picket in Fort Deposit, Alabama
(that's the largest town in the county) he joined that group without my
knowledge. I was in Fort Deposit, but I did not know he was going to be a part
of that group and it was dangerous for any white to join the black in Fort
Deposit. When got there that morning in town, they had every police officer they
could get and everything, just waiting. In a moment, if they made about 10
steps, they were arrested and out in a two-cell jail with 20 something people.
They had to get a dump truck. You know what a dump truck is. The one with the
side bars on it. They put them on that dump truck and put a black police officer
and brought them in. This was when Stokely was arrested. He was not in that picket. They wanted him so bad.
I am going to be honest with you. There were two pickup trucks and everywhere
they would go, one of the trucks would get in the front. If they would make a
right into them, the one behind would get in the front and just hit breaks all
of a sudden until it made them bump them. When they bumped them, the police
arrested them and put both of them in jail and
charged them with reckless driving. I have a record of that showing that 2
people got charged for reckless driving in the same automobile, but this was the
type of situation we lived in that day and time. There were white people that
walked around with shotguns. I can never forget that day. I went to the town
hall to try to make arrangements with the chief to try and get them out of jail.
I could not get anybody to go with me, but I finally took the same car they were
driving and drove it to the town hall and waited there while and carried another
fellow. There was 14 people and I am not going to lie to you sitting on the
sidewalk with shotguns, rifles and pistols.
Q: White people?
A: White people and they all came inside when the chief of police came in. He
wanted to know what I wanted and I told him that I wanted to try to make bond to
get Stokely out of jail because I believe they would kill him there. He said no
that I could not get him out of jail he is up in Lowndes County and I can never
forget the last man. A double barrel shotgun passed by and I rolled my pistol on
the floor and he almost ran over the next man. I can remember that just like
daylight today and I found out then it has to be a group of you doing it to do
it like it ought to be done. You know what I'm saying. They were afraid
themselves, but they were out there doing these types of things. Stokely stayed
in jail; that was on a Saturday. On Wednesday, I went by the jailhouse and
carried food to feed the people that they took to jail. Some of them we made
bond, except for Stokely and one or two more. On a Friday evening, I went to
Montgomery and when I came back the town was full of police officers and other
white people. Black folks were afraid to speak to me almost when I got out of
the car on the comer at the intersection. I asked
what was going on. Why were all of these people were in town? They said, they
killed those two white preachers. That's what they said. They had killed
Jonathan Daniels. They first shot and killed him and the second shot hit Father
Marshall from the back and it took 12 hours to operate on him at St. Jude
Hospital, but he finally lived from it. I have had seven meetings with him since
that time. This was the kind of conditions we had to live in during that time.
Q: How were you able to persuade the average person in Lowndes County that it
was possible to change a situation that went as deeply as this one went, where
white supremacy was defended as completely by violence and any means necessary?
How did you convince people that it was possible to make a change?
A: We were meeting together in groups. We were having mass meetings and we would
speak to them from those mass meetings. He gave a lot of courage to people that
they could overcome what was going on. We would talk about what was going on. We
would go on plantations on a daily basis. I quit my job and the movement paid
me. The Lowndes County Christian Movement gave me a salary to work.
Q: How much was that?
A: My salary was 25 dollars every first Sunday; that is a month. I did not work
long hours. I just worked about 9 or 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. When I went
on plantations, bosses were there. You had to have a lot of courage to stand up.
I would carry about one or two ladies around with me, most times just riding
with me. I would speak up and be straight with people. I was able to get a lot of
things done when I started doing that. People would go out and get registered.
They just believed that I was doing
the right thing. Not only me, but there were other people in the movement as
well, like the Jackson family, Mattie Lee Murrell; these were older people. They
were strong. They stood up and decided to go ahead and go out and register to
vote. They wanted to change life for their children and ourselves.
Q: One of the people that I interviewed in Lowndes County was a SNCC organizer
who came in there by the name of Bob Mantz and he still lives there. I was
asking him where he found the courage to do the things that he had to do. He
said it was so terrifying. There were times when he could barely make himself do
the things that he needed to do. He said it was so terrifying. _in Lowndes County that there were time he could barely make himself do what he needed to do. I said, where did you find the courage and he
said it came from the people of Lowndes County. He told me the story of going to
this house where an elderly black woman, almost 100 years old, was bedridden.
She was lying in a bedroom off from the living room where he was talking to
other people in the family. He heard this frail voice saying tell that boy to
come in here; I want to talk to him. So, he went in to talk to this old lady.
She looked up at him and she pointed this bony finger at him from her bed and
she said, I have been praying that you boys would come into Lowndes County ever
since I saw you march around Mr. Lincoln's grave. Of course, what she meant
was that she had seen the march on Washington on television and had been praying
that people would come into Lowndes County and trigger a movement in Lowndes
County. Bob Mantz said and what I have heard you say as well is that the courage
of average people became contagious after awhile. People just held each other
help. That is the example from you and other some other people.
A: This is true. At the same time, there were people who worked on the
plantations. If you were hoeing, you made 25 cents a day and if you were on you
got 50 cents a day. We started telling people to go to Montgomery and get jobs
and start making life better for them. So, that gave them a lot of courage to
come out and do what needed to be done. That made a difference. I want to say
one other thing. When Stokely got arrested in Prattville I was suppose to have
gone over with him, but I had another speaking engagement with a group of folks
in my county. He got arrested the next morning. A young lady called me, a school
teacher named Ms. Darby Henson. She said, come ride over to Prattville with me.
When I got over there, Stokely was in jail. I drove up to the chief of police
and asked him could I walk down the hill to one of the Civil Rights workers;
they are in a housing house. He said, go ahead but do not stay long. I walked
just a short distance and when I looked out of the window he had a carbine rifle
punching her in the car, and that was the most hurting thing I have ever seen in
my life. So, I came back out. They had the National Guards. State troopers were
over there. When I came back out, the punch did not hit me, but they punched
after me until I got to the car. I got in the back seat of the car on the
passenger's right side. The same person opened the car door and punched me
in the face. If l had not snatched by head, I would have broken my jawbone. I
made up my mind. I am going to say this because I am serious about it; I was
going to get him if I had to burn his house down, his wife and children. Let me
be serious with you. I went home that night and prayed about it. It looked like
the Lord just came to me like daylight and said do not do that; that is not the
way to do it. I did not do it. I prayed about it and things changed for us.
Sometimes, you cannot take on violence
because you believe you ought to do something. You cannot make a fast decision,
just pray about it, but I was punched in the face. A few months later I had a
gun in the shop.I went to Montgomery to get the gun out the shop. I had to go up to a
lawyer's office. I got on the elevator. Now, I do not even know the man
because I never seen him before who punched me in the face. So, when I got on
that elevator, he was on that elevator and he came off running like a . The
people over there were saying what is going on. I said, do not worry about
it' everything is okay. I am not going to bother him. When you treat people
wrong, it will come back to you. The next time I got a chance to see him was at
the University of Alabama. Everybody was introducing themselves. I was just
elected sheriff. When it got around to him, he was sitting across the big
conference table and he gave his name in front of me, but he never was able to
come back and say I am sorry and that is a bad thing. When you do wrong, you
ought to do it. While I am telling it, I want to tell this incident. In 1983, in
the line of duty, I got shot in the back by a black man who was on drugs.
Q: You were sheriff?
A: I was sheriff. One of my deputies reached to shoot him closer than this
gentleman over here. I told him not to shoot him. If he was shooting to kill
that man and made a mistake and killed somebody else, he would have done more
harm than it helped good. After he went to the penitentiary and stayed awhile, I
never signed papers to keep him in, I met him one morning after he had gotten
out and we out our arms around each one other and forgot about everything. A few
months later, I married him to a girl from Pratt, Alabama. I think this is the
type of life you have to do. I think about Jesus Christ, who
died on the cross for our sins. If we are going to hold things against one
another the rest of our lives, white or black, we are wrong. There was an elder
man who was part of our movement by the name of Mr. Calan Hayes. We would call
him CC Hayes. He always said, John whatever you all do, do not try to do evil
for evil to people, not even to us. He passed away a few months ago, but I thank
God for that type of thing. We have tried to live right.
Q: Let's talk about this whole idea of the changes in Lowndes County and
the whole idea of forgiveness and fairness once those changes happened, two
questions about that. First of all, in 1966, you ran for sheriff for the first
time under the banner of what some people called the Black Panther Party. Now,
that was not literally the name of the party, but the emblem of the party was
the black panther. Talk about the symbolism of that party, why you ran under
that banner and then we will move on to the next question which has to do with
when you were elected in 1970.
A: Let me say this, I did not run. I was head of the Lowndes County Christian
Movement and in 1966 when we got ready to run candidates the Democratic Party,
if you can remember, had over the banner white supremacy for the . There was a
50 dollar fee to qualify for sheriff. When we got ready to run, a black man
Sidney Logan, Jr., they went to 500 dollars. So, we immediately decided to
organize the Lowndes County Freedom Organization and we had to have a symbol,
like the rooster was for the Democratic Party or the elephant was for the
Republican Party. We organized the Lowndes County Freedom Organization and we
had to come up with a symbol. We kind of kicked names around and we came up with
the black panther. The reason why we did
this is because the black panther is not a violent animal but when you push it
to a corner, it will come out and do whatever it has to do. If you lived in
Lowndes County, you better had something to let folks know you were serious
about it. So, we chose that black panther for the party. We lost the election in
1966 and something happened to us. If you can remember, in California, there was
a group who was in Lowndes County doing the election in 1966.
Q: Huey Newton and some others?
A: Huey Newton. They went back to California and got their guns and things.
They would get in their cars and follow a policeman around and one of them
finally killed a police officer according the records. Because of that, we just
decided that the emblem of the black panther was not the best thing for Lowndes
County people. We did not want anyone to get hurt in Lowndes County because of
what they were doing in California. Dr. John Cashin, from Huntsville,
Alabama, came down to Lowndes County and Green County and we got together and
organized the NOPA and used the eagle for our symbol and nobody said a word
about that. Logan lost in 1966 and in 1970, I ran for sheriff under the National
Democratic Party. I won by 210 votes because a lot of our people were afraid to
vote for me because there was a thing out that they were going to kill John
Hulett if he wins within 3 days after I was elected. I had to go to a lot of
these old people that I had trusted in and that loved me because they did not
want to see me die. So, I said go ahead and vote for me. I will live if have to
stay in the woods 3 days. After that, I won 5 more elections without having any
problems whatsoever with white or black.
Q: That is right. It was not you that lost in 1966. It was Sidney Logan and then
you ran in 1970. In terms of the kind of spirit that you brought to the Office
of Sheriff after you were elected in 1970, the spirit of justice rather than
revenge, talk a little bit about your relationship. I think it is a great
illustration of this point with Tom Coleman. Tom Coleman was the man who killed
Jonathan Daniels, blew him away with a shotgun in cold blood at point blank
range in the summer of 1965. Can you tell the story about just before you were
running for sheriff that Tom Coleman drove up to you on the square in
Hayneville? Tell people about your story.
A: He drove over to the square in Hayneville and said John, would you mind
riding with me to Lonsborough. Here is the guy who just killed one person and
shot the other. I had to show him that I had enough courage to get in that car
without a gun or anything. I stepped in that car because I did not think that
anybody could do anything to me for driving the car and being up there with him.
We rode to Lonsborough and we talked about the incident and what took place. The
first thing that he said was that people pushed him in a corner to do this. You
know, there was people who encourage him to do this; that is what he was saying.
The next thing, which I would not have done to any black, he was trying to do
this to white people to keep them out of Lowndes County and from helping us and
to slow the process down. This is what this was all about. I told him then that
I was going to run for sheriff and I would appreciate it if he vote for me. He
said, well I cannot vote for you, but I know you are going to win it. After I
won the sheriff race in Lowndes County, he was one of people that kept a monitor
in his house. He would call me on a daily and nightly basis. He would let me
know that the troopers
were trying to get up with me and that I got some debris on the highway. He
would get on the road with me at 2 o'clock in the morning. He would clean
up the highways. He had done that for me. I think that sometimes you have to
live the kind of life that the Lord wants you to live and treat folks like human
beings. I never was afraid of him. I worked with his son as a state trooper and
an investigator, but this is the type of thing that I have done. I think the
best thing in the world to do is let people know that you are not afraid of
them, but you are going to do the right thing; black or white, it did not make a
difference.
Q: Would you say this man became a friend of yours?
A: Yes. He became one of the best friends I had as far as letting me know what
was going on and talking to me on a regular basis. He had done that.
Q: Why do you think he did that?
A: I think it could have been out of fear. He could have thought I was going to
try and pay him back. A lot of things could have happened. I can never forget. I
want to say this while I am talking. I went into Fort Deposit and I walked into
a drug store. There were 11 or 12 women in that store and one man who was
filling prescriptions. While I was in there, there was a guy who walked around
on the outside all the time with a 38 on him with a .Just as I started out of
the door, the main way to school, until I got almost to the door like this here,
he walked in and said who is your damn so and so and cussing on. Those women
were running out of that door. Two or three were trying to get out at the same
time. I looked around at the man who was filling the prescription and I would
not lie, he was shaking and trembling so the pee was falling on
the floor. Somebody has to have some courage. So, I turned around and walked
back in there with him wherever he went.
Q: The man with the gun?
A: Yes. You might shoot me, but you are not going to shoot me in the back. I am
going to take this gun from you or you are going to have to shoot me right. I
walked back in the store with him for about 5 minutes. He never said another
word; I just took his nerve. I finally picked up a bar of candy, paid for it and
walked out. He, the drugstore man and I were the only 3 people in there. I never
had another word from him. Later, he pulled a gun and said he would never let a
nigger arrest him. He pulled a gun on a black man in Fort Deposit and that next
morning I got to work after the warrant was signed, he came into the office with
Mr. Tom Coleman. That is smart. You understand what I am saying. He believed
that Tom Coleman could straighten out some things. I made him sign his bond. I
fingerprinted him and told him to make sure you show up in court when time to
come and I did not have anymore problems. I never heard another word from him,
but he did go to court. These were the types of situations you had to live in.
It did not make any difference whether you were right or wrong, white or black;
you had to do what was right. I stood my ground the whole time I was in the
sheriffs office. I did not care what color he was. If you committed a crime, you
went to jail. I would call you and if you did not come, I would go get you.
Q: Did you ever have any dealings with George Wallace when you were sheriff?
A: Truthfully, I had dealings with George Wallace. George Wallace turned out to
be one of my best friends. The first time I became sheriff he had a parade in
Greenville and I
was the only black sheriff in that parade. I can remember walking by him and he
gave me some of his material. Every time I would go to their captain for
anything, he would say, sheriff what you want. I had a small staff when I
started as sheriff. There was only 3 people. I went up one day and said I need a
larger staff and he said okay and tell your representative to come by. I told me
my representative, but he did not go by. Two weeks later, I got a check from him
to pay for another deputy. That was the kind of person he was and whenever I
would come around he would get up and take a picture with me. He would call my
house on the weekend and when I got shot, he would call my wife every weekend,
Friday night, and tell her how sorry he was, whatever he could do to help he would do it. This was
the kind of person George Wallace turned out to be with John Hulett. I was not
no Uncle Tom, but I was just doing the right thing.
Q: Before we open it up to everybody else's questions, as you look back on
the experiences that you had in Lowndes County and the impact that the movement
had in Lowndes County and other places in Alabama, what is your bottom line
summary of those days. What do you feel was accomplished? To what extent was the
movement successful and to what extent did it fall short of what you had hoped for?
A: Let me refer back to two things. If you all remember, in the state of
Alabama, the only people who served on jurors in the state of Alabama were men.
There were very few black men in places like Lowndes County. It was Lowndes
County who went to Montgomery and filed a suit, White versus Crooks to allow
women to serve as jurors in the state of Alabama.; that originated in Lowndes
County, Alabama. The first place they camped out in Lowndes County when they
came in was Rose Steel's property. Her
granddaughter was the individual who , Ardenia White. So, that is why women are
serving today in the state of Alabama. We also had the justice of peace system
in the state of Alabama. Most of you might remember the justice of peace. Every
county had a justice of peace. In Lowndes County, one day, I was arrested and
charged with reckless driving. I went straight to the justice of peace office
and said, what would it cost me for this ticket. He said, it was going to cost
you 100 dollars and 11 dollars court cost. Excuse me for the expression, but I
said I will die and go to hell before I pay it. He said, you can get ready. Next
week, I went to Montgomery, attorney Salman Say's office, and talked to him
about it cause every justice of peace fine you give them, they get 5 dollars out
it. I went to federal court and that is why they do not have any justice of
peace in the state of Alabama today. The judge ruled in our favor. That was
helpful to the state of Alabama and the woman serving on jury was helpful. There
was a number of other things that took place in that county. People were able to
hold public office who had never held public office. We got plenty of them now,
men and women, not only in Lowndes County but in surrounding counties because of
our courage and things that we have done. I have gone into other counties and
our joining county, Wilcox County has a black sheriff. When he got ready to run,
I encouraged him to run. I went down and spoke for him and he won that election
and he has been there ever since. It is a lot you can do to help other people if
you would do it. Today, we are still working hard trying to make life better for
the people in our county. Let me say this. I am retired now and I could not run
for probate judge because of my age, but each morning of my life I get up now
and go out and do something for somebody. I pick up aluminum cans off the street
and give to the
scholarship fund to help children to go to college. I have a group that takes
care of it. I plant gardens so there are plenty vegetables to give folks who
cannot afford to work. The older people who cannot cut there yards, I cut there
yards free. If you need a ramp built or a wheelchair or something, I go out and
do it free for people. This is the type of life I live today. God has blessed
and I reach out and try to help others. I want to advise all of you, let's
try to do the same thing.
Q: I think maybe this is a good time to open it up to questions that people out
there may have, things that they want to ask Judge Hulett.
A: Okay go ahead.
Q: If you want to ask them, I will repeat the questions just in case everyone
cannot hear you. Do you consider the adverse situations that you faced in
Lowndes County, the opposition that you faced when you tried to stand up for
what was right, to be state terrorism against the people of Lowndes County?
A: This is true as I have said it to a lot of young people lately because I go
out and talk to them. I am use to terrorism. We have had it in our county. We
have had it in Birmingham and we have had it in other places. When the people
crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge, there was terrorism. When I was punched in the
face in Prattville, there was terrorism. We did not have any killing. That was
the only difference; it was on a small scale. There was a time in Pratt City,
Alabama; I was living in Birmingham. One night, there was like 15 young people
who wanted to see the Klan walk up Highbuyon Avenue. I took them out there to
show them and they had their robes and everything on. They asked me who are
these people. I said, these are the same people that you are trading with in
stores on an
every day basis, most of them are, but they are Klan men. Do not be afraid
because you are with me. As we stood there, they drove by singing the Dixie song
or a thing of that type with the lights on in the car. These are the type things
I have gone through for years. I am not afraid and I try to be straight with my
people and say everybody was not wrong, but there were a few people who would do
anything. In terrorism, you are going to reap what you sow, so we need to work
together and try to save our people instead of trying to destroy them.
Q: How many people, African-American people in Lowndes County, did it take
before there was sort of a help factor where you felt you were going to succeed.
You started out with a little group. How big did the group get?
A: Each Sunday night, we would have our mass meeting in groups. We did not have
a church large enough to hold us after a few months when we would go in the
county. The question was some churches were afraid for us to go in because they
thought someone would burn their churches. There was not church burning in
Lowndes County, if you remember. There were 2 or 3 churches going in Lowndes
County. We had a poverty program burned and one day a white church burned. I was
at the University of Wisconsin at that time. This white church burned and no
more burning take place in Lowndes County. That is the sad thing, but that took place.
Q: In all of your trials of getting registered voters, where was the Federal
Government at this time. At one time, I read an article that you recruited a
bunch of
registered voters. (inaudible)
A: They came down, but let me be honest with you all. On the first election in
1966, they would be standing out there. I think they were scary and most black
folks were. I am
serious. I can remember in the area in 1966 when they had the election,
somebody cut the lights off in the building. Let me tell you, everybody just
froze. Stokely and them were there and they went out and turned the lights on
their cars, but those federal agents were just as afraid as anything else. They
would not say anything. Several white people that I know brought the people that
worked on their plantation in with them and went in and voted their ballots for
them. That is why we worked to get that law changed where you could not help
your boss man. Now, you can help anybody you want, but your phone cannot help
you. If you work for a company, your boss man cannot help you raise the vote in
the state of Alabama. We had to get that changed and it was Lowndes County who
played the biggest part in that. People were evicted off their plantation
because they registered to vote and we put tents out there on highway 80 and
tried to be fair to people. We did everything we could until there were able to
acquire land to move into. We filed a suit to stop the evictions. That is the
only suit that we lost. Q: Did you know Viola Liuzzo and what are your
recollections of her, of so?
A: I did not know here but shortly after she got killed, I go to meet her family
on several occasions. Her son came down and stayed in the county for awhile, but
I did not know her personally.
Q: If you ever have a chance to go to the National Voting Rights Museum in
Selma, there is a wall in the museum that I believe is called, I was there wall
or the we were there wall or something like that. The people who played some
role in the movement signed a
little sleep of paper and tacked it to the wall. One of the most touching things
on that wall is the daughter of Viola Liuzzo who about a year ago visited the
museum and said my mother was here and that is just on the wall there. It is
really interesting to see.
Q: Do you think that was a turning point in getting national attention to the
movement? A: It was a turning point to get lots of attention because people came
in. Even at that, Jonathan Daniels was killed after that but remember he got
acquitted in court and that is the hurting thing. You understand what I am
saying. The Klan killed her and did not anything come from that. The person that
was prosecuted in that case stood up in the court and said if she would have
stayed in Detroit, Michigan she would have been alive today. There were very few
blacks there because they were afraid to go in that court room at night time.
Now, if you are prosecuting somebody and get up and say that, what do suspect a
jury to do? This is the type of representation we had.
Q: Stokely Carmichael had started an organization called The All African Peoples
Revolutionary Party. It took a strong standing in the (inaudible).
A: He did do that, but he did not do that in our county. He never did that in
Lowndes County. He never had any confrontation with the police.
Q: Stokely Carmichael founded an organization. Say the name of the organization again.
A: The All African Peoples Revolutionary Party.
Q: With The All African Revolutionary Party, did that have an effect on your
relationship with Stokely?
A: No, it did not because he did not do any of that stuff in Lowndes County. He
respected the police officers and Arthur Stickwicker did as well.
Q: There years that you we re involved with the Bloody Lowndes in your county,
can you tell us a little bit about your personal life. Did you have a family and
how did this impact your family during the year. Then, I understand that there
was some type of sanitary land field plan underway within the last couple of
years that may effect or impact the tourism and trade in Lowndes County with
respect to the Edmund Pettis Bridge and the Selma March in November. Can you
talk a little bit about that?
A: Okay, let me be honest with you. I have some children who lived with me
during that time. My son is a probate judge now who lived in Lowndes County.
They were too young to vote, but it did not affect them because we did not have
any real decent jobs no way, we were just out there working. We were trying to
make life better for them to go to school. When they first integrated the school
in Hayneville, they sent 6 kids to school that year. One of my sons went to
school and he had some problems with some of the white kids stepping on his
heels. One night, I got in my car and drove to the father's house. I said
to him, your son is stepping on my son's heels and I do not want it to
happen again because I may have to stop that bus on the road and get him off
there and it never happened again. I was the sheriff. I being straight with you
all about it. This is a little incident that happened. Let me be honest about
this land field that we have. This land field is off the Civil Rights trail.
People are dumping trash on the highways. Lowndes County was not a pretty place
until I started cleaning it up when I retired from the sheriffs office. The
white people in Lonsborough did not want it and they had a few blacks with them
to help to keep it out. I do not think that land field would do anything wrong
to Lowndes County as long as it does its problem like it ought to be done. People
will be buried under the ground, like 40 feet deep, and within the next 200
years I do not think there will be problem whatsoever.
Q: Is that a divisive issue in Lowndes County? Do people disagree about that?
A: There are a few people that disagreed about it, just a few. It was mostly
people who lived right in Burksville. I remember one night I said to them, you
are not concerned about the Civil Rights trail. If you were concerned about the
Civil Rights trail, why did you not help us get registered to vote or a thing of
that type. You understand what I am saying. These are the same folks who guessed
everything now concerned about the Civil Rights trail. It is a money thing that
they are looking at now.
Q: Have you written or will you right about how the majority of the city of
Alabama was able to tolerate injustice in such a way that it brings up today
what they are willing to do now which is stand up against injustice.
A: I think that to understand the magnitude of what happened in the Civil Rights
Movement you have to understand that the majority of white citizens in the state
of Alabama were complicit, if not cutting-edge practitioners of the injustices
that were inflicted on black people. It was absolutely pervasive. I am very
aware of this because I grew up in Alabama in a family that was very much a part
of the status quo in Alabama. So, it is really easy to see that the system of
segregation that was in place in Alabama could not have survived without the
active support of the overwhelming majority of white people in the state of
Alabama. I think there is a sense in which white people were liberated by the
Civil Rights Movement as well because people of my generation were certainly
coming along and you had to decide what we thought about it. It was such a
powerful reality and it was inescapable. So, you had to ask yourself what is
really going on here. I remember when I was about 16 years old I was in
Birmingham on a high school trip and I happen to be walking along one afternoon
with no idea of anything that was going on. I was not paying attention to what
was going on in the world and I walked up upon the arrest of Martin Luther King,
the first time he was arrested in Birmingham. I remembered it actually
incorrectly. I remembered at first that he was wearing overalls. He was not. He
was wearing a denim work shirt and blue jeans. It was almost that way, but I do
remember, like I have a picture of it in my head, the look on his face as the
policeman bodily carried him pass where I was standing and it was a look of not
fear. His eyes seemed to me to be very sad but kind of stoic all at the same
time. There was a dignity about him on that occasion that stood in such
incredible contrast with the kind of bullying attitude that the policeman had on
that occasion. As a 16-year-old white kid, it was a jarring imaging to behold
and it was something that I never forgot. It made you ask in a very personal
way, what is going on here. It was easy to know who you wanted to identify with
in that particular situation. So, one of the things that I am very interested in
and this is a long answer to your question, but one of the things I am very
interested in is the impact that the Civil Rights Movement had on white people,
people of my generation and other people as well because I think that the white
citizenry in the state of Alabama had a long way to go. I think we were
compelled to move by events that happened by the example of courage that we saw,
so I think that is an important part of the story that I certainly want to try
to touch on. Now, did we go as far as we need to go? I mean obviously not. We
are still struggling with that issue. I was talking to some reporters
today at the paper. We were talking about why it is that we have not made as
much progress as we have maybe hoped we would. I think to me it is the cutting
edge of civilization. It is sort of the frontier of civilization. The people who
are not exactly alike are still trying to learn how to live in peace and
proximity with each other, if they are even trying at all. Amazingly enough, we
are probably doing a better job of it here than they are in most places because
you look at the Middle East, Northern Ireland or all these other places and
people struggle with that. We will continue to struggle with it here, but we
have more tools now because of the example of people in the Civil Rights
Movement. Q: I was a new comer to Alabama. We came here in 1965 and this whole
situation has really stressed me a lot and (inaudible) but nowhere else is it
quite so legal. So, I thought perfectly well that this is of people like you,
although I had a very culture when I came here. I also said to my brother who
called me and said (inaudible) how are you managing this and how will it turn
out. I said that I truly believe that we will solve our problems as soon as
everybody else, so do not worry. I mean it is a bad situation, but I know that
the people that I know so well will find a way to let this happen. I was feeling very
----- at some times during it, off and on. I also participated in the long line
that were lining up to vote after the federal government interceded and it was
kind of a
interesting mess. If you remember, you had to have a registered voter stand with
everybody that was going to vote and every body was getting curious because they
had 3 tests that were not hard but it took more time and we did not have anymore
time allotted to us. So, it was a pretty interesting time for me and I helped
the best way that I could to be helpful, the best way I knew how to. I am glad
that I was here to do it.
Q: Any response you want to make to that.
A: I am not sure. I could not hear everything that she was saying. It was pretty
rough, true enough. I could remember the times that we had to have a white to
vote for a black. You could not find a white to vote for a black. After they
started registering, we did not have to do that in Lowndes County. You did not
have to have anybody to vote for you. That was some our problems we were having.
The voter registrar did not assist on that. The federal came down and registered
most of our people in out county.
Q: Was lynching a part of your community also?
A: There were many people that were lynched or had things done to them. I do not
know much about that, but there were people that were lynched in Lowndes County
not during the Civil Rights Movement but before that time. Once we organized,
there were no blacks killed by whites except one person and that was before I
took office. He was killed because he was hunting rabbits. The dog went across
the county line. They shot and killed him and tried the case. That was the first
case tried when I got there and they found him guilty. They charged him 100
dollars and a year's probation. This is the kind of thing that happened.
This was a white guy who killed a black guy and they charged him 100 dollars
plus court cost and a year's probation.
Q: How much would it help if they rewrote the constitution in the state of
Alabama. Would that kind of blanket or help throughout out the state if the
constitution itself was dealt with?
A: I was in a meeting not long ago and the Alabama New South Coalition was
trying to put a committee together to start doing this with the state
legislatures, but it may help some. You can rewrite all you want to, but it has
to come from the inside of your heart.
Q: There are many of the young people today that do not seem to have the right
stuff? I would like to know what would be your message to them.
A: Those of us who understand what the Civil Rights mean we should go into our
communities sit down and talk to our young folks and try to encourage them to do
the right thing. Our churches ought to be a part of doing that.
Q: Was Lowndes County as violent as it was because black people outnumbered
white people by the margin that they did? We have come a long way, but we still
have a long way to go. What, in your opinion, do we still need to do or still
need to accomplish?
A: I am going to give you a number of incidents that people have just killed
people. There were a group of folks from Birmingham one time that came down to
move somebody off of a plantation. They killed a guy on a Saturday or Sunday
night and rode around in a truck and that Monday they were riding around that
courthouse on the back of the truck and nothing was done about it, but this is
the kind of thing that happened. If something happened in your family like, you
would get afraid. I knew other people that would go out and hunt. I had a cousin
that went out one night just hunting. The guys ran up on him hunting in the
woods and started shooting under his feet and made him dance all night long.
This is the kind of thing that went on in Lowndes County, but in order to change
this we are going to have to come together and let drugs go. That is one of the
things that is ending us now. Drugs are getting to most of our people. Stop committing
crimes, stay out of trouble, go to the polls and register to vote and start
treating one another like they are human beings. Black or white, we are going to
have to start doing that together or we will never move on.
Q: Is there still racial tension between blacks and whites in Lowndes County today.
A: There may be a few older people. It may not show up around me, but it may
show up around a few people. Most people, when you treat folks right, they do
not have any problems. I can go any place in Lowndes County in almost anybody
house and I do not have any problems.
Q: And when you have ran for office, you have gotten considerable white votes?
A: At this age, I am 73 years old. I will be 74, November 19th and I wish it was
this month. I have had more than 1800 people to call me already and talk to me.
I believe I could go back and run for sheriff again. I don't why, but this
is something. Let me say this. If someone burglarize a community, a house, a
church I get out and work on it night and day until that person has come to
justice just about. If somebody has shoot somebody or cut somebody, they are
going to jail and everybody knows that. I do not know what is happening to the
sheriff and bothering other folks now, but I try to do what is right for the
people in our county. I guess that is why they want me back. They are not trying
to get me back because I am going to let them do something wrong. If it is a
drug dealer in town, he better leave. He better get his stuff and go to some
other county. I believe that is what we out to do. They have a drug task force
and I want to be sure I get with that drug task force if I am successful in
winning and try to get them to do a much better than what they been doing and
get these drug dealers out of time.
Q: Will you run again?
A: If my health holds up, my name will be on the ballot.
Closing: Well, Sheriff Hulett thank you for sharing these stories with us
tonight. We really appreciate it.
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Digitized VHS tape of "Bloody Lowndes and the Black Panther Party".
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John Hulett and Frye Gaillard are the speakers in this lecture given at University of Alabama in Huntsville.
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2001-11-01
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1:21:21
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en
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Alabama A & M University
University of Alabama in Huntsville
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2000-2009
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Hulett, John,1927-2006
Gaillard, Frye, 1946-
Civil rights movements--Southern states--History--20th century
Hayneville (Ala.)
Lowndes County
Voter registration
Black power
African Americans--Legal status, laws, etc.
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<a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/390">Bloody Lowndes and the Black Panther Party - Speakers: John Hulett and Frye Gaillard - Transcription of Tape 8, 2003</a>
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
<a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/402">VHS Tape of: Bloody Lowndes and the Black Panther Party - Speakers: John Hulett and Frye Gaillard, 2001-11-01. Box 2, Tape 8</a>
University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama
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d27810f12415505aad61b2882385d2c5
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Selma to Montgomery, 1965 Speakers: John Lewis, Mary Stanton
Okay. I think we will be getting started if you want to make your way to your seats. Good evening. I am Douglas Turner, a professor of Political Science here at Alabama A&M
University. I'd like to welcome you to what has been a unique, informative,
and often moving series of lectures and panel discussions. This series, the
Civil Rights Movement in Alabama 1954 through 1965 is a joint endeavor between
Alabama A&M University and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. In my
opinion, this series has been highly successful and is a testament to what can
be accomplished when people of good will come together and earnestly attempt to
build bridges that bring together communities that often view each other with
ambivalence, to say the least.
Of course tonight's program, Selma to Montgomery 1965, looks at the events
surrounding the confrontation that has come to be known as "Bloody Sunday," in
which hundreds of non-violent protesters led by of course John Lewis among
others and Hosea Williams, who attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in
Selma, Alabama and were met by Alabama state troopers who kicked and clubbed
marchers, severely injuring many. Congressman Lewis, himself, was struck in the
head and knocked unconscious in that particular incident. The event was captured
on film and of course garnered a great deal of publicity for the movement. This
publicity as a subsequent march between Selma and Montgomery would prompt
President Lyndon Johnson to push for the Voting Rights Act which congress passed
on August 6, 1965. Also, let me mention that next week's program, "Turmoil
in Tuskegee" will take place at Roberts Recital Hall on the campus of
UAH at 7 pm. The featured lecturer will be Frank Toland of the Department of
History of Tuskegee University. Let me also mention tonight, that the last two
lectures November 29th and December 4th will both be held here on the campus of
Alabama A&M University.We will be moving back to the multi-purpose room in the
new School of Business for those last two lectures; of course, they do began at
7 pm.
Now, of course the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama lecture series has been a
success in part due to the efforts of those committee members who initiated and
formulated the series and the many sponsors who have contributed financially to
make this ground breaking series a reality. Members of the Civil Rights Movement
in Alabama planning committee include members both from the University of
Alabama in Huntsville and Alabama A&M University which include Dr. Mitch
Berbrier of UAH, Dr. John Dimmock of UAH, Dr. Jack Ellis of UAH, Dr. James
Johnson of AAMU, Professor Carolyn Parker of AAMU and Dr. Lee Williams of UAH.
Funding for the series has been provided by the Alabama Humanities Foundation, a
state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Also, Senator Hank
Sanders, the Huntsville Times, DESE Research, Incorporated, Alabama
Representative Laura Hall. Also, the Alabama A&M University sponsorship has come
from the Office of the President, the Office of the Provost, the State Black
Archives Research Center and Museum, Title III Telecommunications and Distance
Learning Center, the Office of Student Development, the Honor Center of
Sociology and Social Work, History and Political Science.
From the University of Alabama in Huntsville, support has been forthcoming from
the Office of the President, the Office of the Provost, the History Forum, the
Bankhead Foundation, Sociology and Social Issues Symposium, the Humanities
Center, the Division of Continuing Education, the Honors Program, the Office of
Multi-cultural Affairs and the Office of Student Affairs, and also the UAH Copy
Center.We also, would like to recognize other distinguished guests and visitors
in the audience tonight, we acknowledge you.
The introduction of tonight's speaker, Mrs. Mary Stanton, who is a free
lance writer and director of Human Resources for Riverside Church in New York
City and U.S. Congressman John Lewis, Representative from the 5th district in
Georgia. The introduction of tonight's speaker will be provided by Alabama
State representative Laura Hall of Huntsville, Alabama. Do the Honors.
Introduction: Thank you, good evening. I want to say a special thank you to the
members of the committee for Alabama A&M and the University of Alabama in
Huntsville for providing this opportunity for us to reflect and for giving those
of us who did not have an opportunity to live during this time an opportunity to
hear about the experiences of the Civil Rights Movement. I will provide for you
the introduction for Mrs. Mary Stanton. I don't believe we give enough
credit to writers. We take it for granted that the printed word appears on pages
for our consumption and hardly appreciate the hours of research and talent
involved in writing. Mrs. Mary Stanton our speaker, is a writer to whom we owe
special honor. She practiced her profession from a foundation of education.
Holding a MA degree in English literature qualifies here to teach English at
the University of Idaho at Moscow, the College of St. Elizabeth in Morristown,
New Jersey, and the writing program at Rutgers University, and this is only her
secondary career. She has the most productive career in human resources. Her
experiences in human resources surely give her the special insight into her
writing career. I want you to know that Ms. Mary Stanton is the author of, From
Selma to Sorrow: the Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo. Published in 1998, her
depiction of how this Detroit housewife came to be murdered during the 1965
Voting Rights March is essential to our understanding of the sacrifices made by
people who care. This book was nominated for the National Book Award and the
Pulitzer Prize. It has been optioned by the Columbia Tri-Star pictures, and we
should see this new movie soon. A documentary film about the Life of Viola
Liuzzo is about to be completed. We will watch also for Mrs. Stanton's new
book, "Mississippi or Bus," the 1963 freedom walk that tells the story of five
interracial attempts to deliver a message of tolerance to Mississippi Governor
Ross Barnett. One man was murdered on this march. More than one hundred were
jailed and ten spent a month on death row at Kilby State Prison. Ms. Mary
Stanton, thank you for your dedication to writing. We are truly honored and we
benefit from the toils and your talents that you will share also with us today.
Ladies and Gentleman, let us welcome Ms. Mary Stanton with a warm round of applause.
Mary Stanton: Thank you very much. Good evening everybody. I want to thank you.
I want to especially thank Dr. Williams and Dr. Dimmock for your kind invitation
to Huntsville, my first trip to Huntsville, Alabama. I feel very privileged to be apart
of this forum tonight to share some insight about the Alabama of some forty
years ago. When I asked
Dr. Williams what he'd like me to talk about, he suggested that I tackle,
and I'm gonna quote right now, "the interconnections of law enforcement
officials with the intra and interstate police officers, the Klan and the FBI to
subvert the movement in Alabama.
That's a mouth full isn't it? At first, I looked at that and I said,
"well that's a pretty thankless task," but it really is a very important
part of what happened here forty years ago, and it certainly is a important part
of Viola Liuzzo's story. What we know is that the Alabama Civil
Right's Movement was all about power. Power. Who had it? Who intended to
keep it? Who wasn't going to get any? Yes, it was also about injustice and
segregation and economics, but day to day it was really about maintaining the
status quo, and that depended on maintaining segregation through intimidation,
because there were many more powerless black people than more powerful white
ones. Now, two very effective ways of sustaining segregation were number one, to
keep the electorate white, so that the segregationists couldn't get voted
out of office. And number two, to keep the jurists white, so those violent
racists wouldn't get convicted of their crimes against blacks and against
race mixture. Now, in order to maintain this southern way of life, people were
forced to operate outside the law. Remember, there were less than two thousand
Klansmen in the whole state, which is less than one percent of the whole
population. Now, the Klan was successful because they were federal, state and
local law enforcement officers who were members and supporters. The very people
responsible for enforcing the law were undermining it, and permitting the Klan
to operate really like a terrorist shadow government. Case in point Governor
George Wallace refused to intervene. Ace Carter, who was his special assistant,
was an outspoken white supremacist. He
headed an organization called the Official Klu Klux Klan of the Confederacy. And
then there were the sheriffs, Bull Connor and Jim Clark, who all actually
encouraged to defy the law.
So, what does all of this have to do with Viola Liuzzo? I'd like to tell
you about that. In the time that we have together tonight I'd like to talk
about three things. Number one, who Viola Liuzzo was. Number two, why she was
murdered, and finally, what does her experience tell us about the breakdown of
the rule of law, not only in Alabama but through a network of defiance that
stretched from Selma, up to Detroit and across to Washington, D.C. back in 1965.
Now, if Viola Liuzzo was here tonight among us, and we were to ask, "Who are
you?" She might say, 'Tm Penny, Tony, Tommy and Sally's mother." Or,
she might say, 'Tm Jim Liuzzo's wife." After she took a breath she
might add, 'Tm also a medical technologist, I'm a part-time college
student, I belong to the PTA, the Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish and I
volunteer for the March of Dimes." Listening to Viola describe her life,
you'd be hard pressed to figure how she ever became the most controversial
of the American civil rights martyrs, and the only white woman who is honored at
the National Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery.
So, how did it happen? The story very briefly is this. On March 25, 1965, Viola
and a young black man, whose name was Leroy Moton, drove from Selma to
Montgomery that night the voting march ended. They were picking up some marchers
who needed a ride. The march had drawn twenty five thousand people to
Alabama's capital city. Four Klansmen followed Viola and Moton on Highway
80 for twenty miles, and then they pulled up along side her car and fired out
the side window. Viola was
killed instantly, and Moton who was covered with her blood escaped by pretending
to be dead when the Klansmen came back to check their work. The
thirty-nine-year-old Detroit housewife and nineteen-year-old Selma short order
cook had been deliberately chosen by the Klansmen because they represented every
thing that the segregationists most hated and feared, a white female, outside
agitator driving after dark with a local black activist sitting in the front
seat of her car. Because one of the Klansmen was a paid FBI informant, Viola
lost her life in more ways than one. In order to deflect attention from the
FBI's carelessness in permitting a violent racist to work undercover the
night of that march, J. Edgar Hoover personally crafted a malicious public relations
campaign portraying Viola as an unstable woman who had abandoned her family to
stir up trouble in the south. The implication was that she got exactly what she
deserved. Years of unrelenting accusations and outright lies nearly destroyed
her husband and her five children. Until the family got her files through the
Freedom of Information Act, nearly fifteen years after their mother's
murder, they didn't know that the ugly slander about her had originated in
the offices of our own justice department.
Well, this is a very sad story you might say, and yes it's tragic, and yes
J. Edgar Hoover was a monster, but if this was a random slaying or even if it
was a symbolic killing, what is it that we can learn from it? Well, it's
this. J. Edgar Hoover may have molded a very sinister image of Viola Liuzzo, but
in 1965 a majority of white Americans believed it. Why? Well, nice middle aged,
working class white American women didn't go to college. They didn't
champion civil rights or travel by themselves. Those things wouldn't
enhance a white woman's reputation on a good day, but even a reputation
tongued by the FBI couldn't alter the fact that Viola was useless as a
symbol of the Civil Rights Movement. Her age, her gender, her background, her
class, her education, they were all wrong. Yet, ironically the Klansmen chose
her as a target precisely because her death would send a message, send a very
clear message that northern whites and southern blacks could understand. Come
south and get involved with the Freedom Movement at your own risk.
Like the international terrorists that we face today, the Klansmen knew how to
manipulate symbolism. Bin Laden chose the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,
not because they are the tallest or the most beautiful buildings in America, but
because they represent something very fundamental about our society. Symbolism
stirs our deepest consciousness, and it has the power to terrify as well as to
inspire. Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, the three young men
murdered during the Freedom Summer of 1964, also became symbols. To white
liberals, they were appropriate civil rights leaders. They were young. One was a
white activist, college student and another one was a selfless, white social
worker. The other was a black community worker fighting for the freedom of his
people. These were very positive symbols. Viola was too old, too pushy, too
independent, and she trampled on too many social norms. In 1965, Viola had
volunteered to advance the social movement that the majority of white Americans
felt was already moving too fast. Her activism couldn't be ascribed to
youthful idealism. It threatened the family and most importantly, the protective
status of women. White American women couldn't afford to make Viola a hero.
To do that would be to invite disturbing questions about their own lives. The
Goodman, Schwerner
and Chaney families worked hard to insure that their sons would be
remembered. All these families had supported their civil rights activism, while
violist husband Jim, had been very ambivalent about his wife's
participation. After Viola's murder, Jim found himself continually
defending her reputation, refuting these vicious rumors that were swirling
around her, and trying to protect their children. Two days after her funeral, a
cross was burned on his lawn in Detroit.Jim had little time or energy or even
opportunity to worry about his wife's immortality. Viola's children
were taunted by their classmates, shunned by their neighbors and shamed by the
cloud of suspicion that hung over their mother's activism. America fussed
about her and budged about her for a few days and then promptly forgot all about
her. The consensus was there was something just not right about this woman.
Okay, so now that we know who she was, and why she was murdered, let's look
to that last question. What does her experience tell us about the break down of
the rule of law, not only in Alabama, but also through a network of defiance
that stretched from Selma, to Detroit, to Washington? The answers are contained
in something called the Lane report. When I discovered this report in the course
of my research, the nicest thing I can say about it is that it absolutely
chilled me to the bone. I want to share some of that with you. On May 11,1965,
Walter Rugaber, a Detroit free-press reporter, called Jim Liuzzo to alert him
that a confidential report about his wife written by Marvin G. Lane, police
commissioner of Warren, Michigan and former chief of detectives of the Detroit
Police Department had been sent to Selma Sheriff Jim Clark, in April. Early in
May, Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton was seen passing copies of this report to newsmen
covering the Wilkins trial. Wilkins was one of the murderers of Liuzzo. Rugaber
told Jim Liuzzo that the free press would be breaking the story on May 12. Jim
was livid. He wanted to know why Commissioner Lane was investigating his
murdered wife. Jim was so upset that he called the Detroit FBI office.
Lane's jurisdiction was listed in suburban Warren, Jim told the agent.
Liuzzo's never lived in Warren. They had never received so much as a
parking ticket in Warren. And no one from the Warren Police Department had ever
questioned Jim about his personal affairs. Who authorized the Lane report?
Police commissioner Ray Girardin vehemently denied that his department's
criminal intelligence bureau had any part in compiling it. Commissioner Lane
refused to name the sources, insisting that confidential reports were routine.
Lane said he often supplied other police departments' confidential reports
and he received them in return. This was, despite the fact that it was highly
irregular to prepare a detailed personal history on a murder victim, after the
suspects have been apprehended. Commissioner Lane's note to Sheriff Clark
was written on City of Warren Police stationery. He clearly stated that on March
26, one day after the murder, the criminal intelligence bureau began an
investigation on the background of Viola Liuzzo. Lane went on to request Sheriff
Clark's assistance. We would like Wayne Rhode, if it is at all possible to
deterniine the method of transportation of Selma by Mrs. Liuzzo, and who may
have accompanied her. The Detroit Free Press posts three critical questions;
What business of Lane's was it to compile a report on Mrs. Liuzzo since
she was not a Warren resident? By what distorted judgment did Lane decide such a
report was any business of Sheriff Clark's
since the murder did not take place in Dallas County but in Lowden. What
authority did Lane ask Sheriff Clark to determine the method of transportation
she took, and who went with her? On May 14, Walter Rugaber reported that
virtually every detail of Lane's confidential report was smuggled out of
the file of the Detroit Police Department. Rugaber even identified the file as
number 1782, which contained material gathered both by the Detroit police and by
the FBI. Chief of Detectives, Vincent Persanti admitted it was an obvious
conclusion that Lane's information had come from the Detroit Criminal
Intelligence Bureau.On May 17, inspector Earl Miller, Director of the Criminal
Intelligence Bureau admitted to finding his ex-boss Marvin Lane with the file.
Former Sinclair county Sheriff Ferris Lucas, who was serving as Executive
Director of the National Sheriffs Association in Washington, admitted that he
had encouraged Sheriff Jim Clark to ask Lane for the information. Commissioner
Girardin relieved the inspector of his duties saying, "his motives were right,
his judgment perhaps wasn't." Chief Persanti explained the Liuzzo funeral
was going to be here in Detroit, and we wanted to know what sorts of security
arrangements were anticipated? Demonstrations and counter demonstrations were
anticipated and we were just trying to prepare ourselves. Commissioner Girardin
was then called before the City Council to explain why inspector Miller would
assume that Lane, who no longer worked for the police had a right to look at
confidential information.You must remember, that Lane is a retired chief of
detectives, he says, "If he asks to check a record, he would get
cooperation." Girardin assured that council that he would meet personally with
Jim Liuzzo.He said, "He wanted to spare the Liuzzo children from embarrassment."
That quotation was picked up
by the Detroit Free Press and subsequently hit the wire services. Jim went wild.
When he couldn't reach Girardin by phone, he dashed off a telegram
demanding to know what the commissioner meant by such a statement. Distortions,
half-truths, and outright lies were being circulated about his wife. Aspersions
were being cast on her sanity, her morality, and her sense of responsibility in
going to Selma.Girardin's statements said that aura of mystery surrounding
the Lane report, his posture with the council only encouraged further
conjecture. Bits and pieces of Viola Liuzzo's history were being taken out
of context, and distorted beyond recognition. The Jackson Mississippi daily news
was reporting that Mrs. Liuzzo had a police file four pages long. Now, I think
we've come to the crux of what Dr. Williams was talking about and what was
really going on here.The FBI's need to defame Viola in order to cover its
own tracks is understandable, if not a forgivable motive, as is the precious
desire for a good story. The connection between the Selma police, the Detroit
police and the Klan is however, much more ominous. Detroit was one of
America's most racially troubled cities in 1965. Relations between the
white police department and the black community were as angry and violent as any
in Blackbelt, Alabama. In 1925, the Detroit police department had recruited
officers from the Deep South and many of them, their sons, their nephews, their
brothers and their cousins remained on the force forty years later. Members of
the Detroit and Selma police forces reach down empathically to one another. Many
on both sides believed that a white woman who would leave her family to go off
on a freedom march, and live with blacks, ride in cars with black men, and advocate
for their rights was, if not crazy, at least a trader to her race and therefore
very likely immoral. Now, the Lane
report ultimately achieved it's purpose, public sympathy was withdrawn from
the Liuzzo family almost immediately, her murderers were set free, and her image
as a spoiled neurotic housewife abandoning her family to run off on a freedom
march began to stick. I could tell you that it made other northern white middle
age white women think about taking a stand on civil rights.It frightened them
off, just as Viola's murderers had intended to frighten off activists who
were considering coming south to work for the movement. An editorial in the
Detroit Free Press on May 13th tried to set the record straight. The Lane report
is inaccurate, the editor wrote, "It is derogatory, and totally uncalled for."
It makes insinuations, which are not supported by the facts, and dwells on
irrelevant and unfavorable minutia, not only about Liuzzo but also about her
whole family. What Lane ignored was that Mrs. Liuzzo was not accused of any
crime. Her murder was not the result of any provocation on her part. She was
involved in no ballroom brawl, and she had broken no law. Viola Liuzzo's
story, like so many other stories of the 1960's, causes us and cautions us
to be careful and to stay alert.The American electorates are no longer all
white.Juries are no longer all white, but intimidation and manipulation
continue. Spin and character assassination continues. The power of symbolism to
help and to hurt is as strong today as it ever was. Viola Liuzzo's reminds
us that the fight for justice is everybody's business, and no one, no
private citizen, no law enforcement official ought to be permitted to shame or
to terrify anyone into backing away from a lawful position of conscience. I
remember when I was a little girl growing up in Queens, New York and I got into
to squabbles with some of the neighborhood kids, and the kids would often say to
each other, "Don't you tell me to shut
up, this is a free country!" That's the message. The philosopher Plato
probably said it best when he observed at 400 B.C. that, "The punishment which
the wise suffer will refuse to take part in government, is to live under the
government of worse men." Let us remember that.It was something the Alabama
Civil Rights activists believed was important enough to risk their lives for.
Thank You.
Introduction: On February 21, 1940 in Troy, Alabama a little baby boy was born.
With nine siblings, he worked on his family's farm picking cotton,
gathering peanuts and pulling corn. Many times they had to work on the farms
rather than attend their local segregated schools in Pike County, Alabama. Who
would have seen a U.S. Congressman in that little boy by the name of John
Lewis? Who would have guessed that this little boy would devote his life to the
beloved community? Who would have known this little boy would play his role in
history? Who would have guessed this little boy who devoted his life to the
beloved community where all people of all races, religion and ethnicity, would
share basic human rights? Who could have foreseen his fellow congressman asking
him to tell them what is was like to have been in the action of the Civil Rights Movement?
As a young student at Fisk University, John Lewis organized sit in's and
non violent process. In 1961, he was one of the first freedom riders on the
Greyhound buses in Washington D.C., then down through Virginia, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and his native, Alabama. It was
1963; John Lewis was only twenty-three-years-old and a chairman of the student
non-violent coordinating
committee, which placed him in the national spotlight with the "Big Six": Martin
Luther King Jr., A. Phillip Randolph, Whitney Young, James Farmer, and Roy
Wilkins. They met with John F. Kennedy to plan the upcoming march on
Washington. John's controversial speech at the National Mall placed him into
the forefront and into the national spotlight. Gaining national attention by
showing political power in numbers was a successful goal that summer of1964.
John Lewis was there to help organize voters registration drives and community
action programs for the Mississippi freedom summer. Challenging
Mississippi's long standing Democratic Party of segregationists while
democrats fought for seats at the upcoming national convention was a radical
step. John Lewis was there. It was back home in Alabama for John Lewis on March
7, 1965. Arm and arm with the non-violence intended, they marched six hundred
strong across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Suddenly, the clubs and the
kicks of Alabama State Troopers turned their peaceful march into "Bloody
Sunday." A violent blow struck John on the head, knocking him unconscious.This
incident propelled President Lyndon Johnson to work harder for the Voting Rights
Act which congress passed on August 6, 1965. Well, a knock on the head
didn't stop John Lewis. He became Director of the Voter Education Project,
which would add four million minorities to the voter role. In I 977, President
Jimmy Carter named him the Directorship of Action with more than two hundred
fifty thousand volunteers. In 1980, he became Community Affairs Director of the
National Consumer Co-op Bank in Atlanta. After serving on the City Council John
Lewis was elected to represent Georgia's 5th Congressional District in
November of
1986. He is currently serving his 8th congressional term, and guess what ladies
and gentleman; he runs unopposed. In the 107th Congress, John is a committee
member of the Ways and Means where he serves on the sub-committee on health and
oversight. He is a Chief Deputy Democratic Whip sense 1991. He served on the
Democratic Steering Committee as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and
a congressional committee to support writers and journalists. He is also the
Co-chair of the Faith and Politics Institute.
Now I ask you, what crystal ball could have forecast that we here today would be
eagerly waiting to hear this hard working, farmer's son, this courageous
student, this national leader, this trench worker for voter registration, this
Edmund Pettus Bridge peaceful warrior, and this distinguished Congressman John
Lewis? Congressman Lewis.
John Lewis: Thank you very much, Representative Hall, for
those kind words of introduction. Let me just say to members of the planning
committee, to each and every one of you participating in this event, for
inviting me to be here, the representatives of University of Alabama in
Huntsville, and Alabama A&M University, I'm delighted and very pleased to
be here. It is good to be here with Mary Stanton telling the history of Viola
Liuzzo. Thank you, Mary. Thank You. You heard in the introduction, and I want to
be brief. I didn't grow up in a big city like Decatur. I didn't grow
up in a big city like Troy, Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham, Bradford, Atmore, or
Florence. I grew up fifty miles from Montgomery, in this little town called
Troy. My father, as Representative Hall told you was a sharecropper, a tenant
farmer. Back in 1944, when I was four years old, and I do remember when I was
four, My father had saved three hundred dollars and with the three
hundred dollars he bought one hundred ten acres of land. That's a lot of
land for three hundred dollars. As a matter of fact, my eighty-seven- year old
mother is still living on this farm that my father bought in 1944 for three
hundred dollars. On this farm, there was a lot of cotton, corn, peanuts, hogs,
cows, and chickens. Now, Mary has heard me tell this story and Don Calloway, who
is the Executive President of the student body here at A&M with a intern in my
office this pass summer, he heard it probably more than you care to hear. Right
Don? But, I tell this story just to put it into the proper perspective about the
Civil Rights Movement in Alabama and our journey from Selma to Montgomery in
1965. Assuming you come to Washington and visit my office, the first thing the
staff will offer you will be a Coca-Cola, because Atlanta happens to be the home
of the Coca-Cola bottling company. And Coca-Cola provides all members of the
Georgia Congressional Delegation with an adequate supply of Coca-Cola products
to be made available to our visitors.The next thing the staff will offer you,
will be some peanuts. I ate so many peanuts when I was growing up outside of
Troy, that I don't want to see anymore peanuts. Sometimes when I would get
on the flight to fly from Atlanta to Washington or from Washington back to
Atlanta, the flight attendant would try to push some peanuts on me and I would
just say, "No, no peanuts!" The Georgia peanut people provide us with peanuts
and I don't want any of you to come to Georgia and say that John Lewis was
talking about the peanuts okay? Don't say anything, but if you are from
there we will offer you some peanuts. Also, on this farm, we raised a lot of
chickens and as young black boy growing up on this farm it was my responsibility
to care for the chickens. I fell in love with raising chickens like no one else
could raise chickens. It was
my calling; it was my mission; it was my sense of obligation and responsibility
to care for those chickens. Now, I know that at the University of Alabama in
Huntsville and Alabama A&M, you are very smart.They have wonderful professors,
wonderful administrators and smart students, but you don't know anything
about raising chickens. I know you don't. Let me tell you what I had to as
young black boy growing up in rural Pike County, Alabama in the 1940's and 1950's. You take a fresh egg, mark them with a pencil, place them under
the sitting hen and wait for three long weeks for the little chicks to
hatch. Now, some of you are smart in computer science and math, history and
literature, but you don't know anything about raising chickens.I know you
are very smart being here in this community of science and technologies, but you
don't know anything about raising chickens, but you' re saying why do
you mark those fresh eggs with a pencil before you place them under the sitting
hen? Well, from time to time another hen will get on the same nest, and there
would be some more eggs. You have to be able to tell the first eggs from the
eggs that we already under the sitting hen. Do you follow me? You don't
follow me. When these little chicks would hatch, I would fool these sitting
hens; I would cheat on these sitting hens. I would take these little chicks and
give them to another hen. I'd put them in a box with a lantern, and raise
them on their own. I'd get some more fresh eggs and mark them with a
pencil, place them under the sitting hen, encourage the sitting hen to sit in
the nest for another three weeks. I kept on cheating on these sitting hens in
order to get some more little chicks. When I looked back on it was not the right
thing to do. It was not the moral thing to do. It was not the most loving thing
to do. It was not the most non-violent thing to do, but I kept on
cheating on these sitting hens and fooling these sitting hens. I was never quite
able to save $18.98 to order the most inexpensive hatcher incubator from the
Sears & Roebuck store in Atlanta. We use to get the Sears & Roebuck catalog.
Some of you may be old enough to remember that big book, thick catalog, we
called it the wish book. I wish I had this, I wish I had that. So, I just kept
on cheating on the sitting hens. As a young boy, I wanted to be a minister. So,
when I was about 7-½ or 8 years old, one of my uncles had Santa Clause bring me
a Bible. I learned to read the bible, then I started preaching and teaching;
from time to time, we would church. With the help of my sisters, brothers and
first cousins, we would gather all of our chickens together, like you are
gathered here in this hall tonight. The chickens along with my sisters, brothers
and my first cousins would make up the congregation. I would start speaking, a
preacher, and as I started the chickens would become very quiet. As a matter of
fact some of these chickens would bow their head. Some of them would shake their
head. But when I look back on it, they never quite said Amen. I am convinced
that the regular majority of these chickens that I preached to in the
1940s and in the 1950s tended to listen to me better than some of
my colleagues listen to me today in the Congress and some of these chickens were
a little more productive.At least, they produced eggs.But growing up there in
rural Pike County, outside of Troy... When we would visit the little town of
Troy, or visit Montgomery, or visit Tuskegee, or visit Union Springs, I saw
those signs that said, "White men, colored men, white women, colored waiting." I
saw signs that said white waiting, colored waiting. As a young child, I tasted
the bitter fruits of racism and segregation and racial discrimination.
In 1955, at the age of fifteen in the tenth grade, I heard of Rosa Parks; I
heard of Martin Luther King Jr. In 1956, at the age of sixteen, a group of us
went down to the Pike County Public Library in downtown Troy, trying to check
some books out, trying to get a library card. We were told by the librarian that
the library was for whites only, and not for coloreds. I went back to the Pike
County Public Library on July 5, 1998 for a book signing and hundreds of
white and black citizens came out. As a matter of fact they gave me a library
card, so it says something about the distance that we've come and the
progress that was made in laying down the burden of race. I don't want to
digress too much, but I was telling Jim and his wife that when we were driving
in from the airport that when I finished high school in May of 1957, I wanted to
study at Troy State College. I sent my High school transcript, filed my
application, and I never heard a word from the college, only ten miles from my
home. I wrote a letter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I didn't tell my
mother, didn't tell my father or any of my sisters and brothers that I had
sent a letter to Dr. King telling him about my desire to attend Troy State
College, better known now as Troy State University.In the meantime, my mother
was working at a baptist orphan home, white, Alabama southern baptist orphan
home, in addition to her work on the farm. She came across a little paper about
a black school, supported by the southern baptist white and nation baptist black
in Nashville for black students, students who studied and worked their way
through school. I applied to go there. I was accepted.
An uncle of mine gave me a hundred-dollar bill, more money than I had ever had. He
gave me a footlocker, one of these upright trunks, footlockers with the drawers,
the curtains, drapers you call it I guess. I put everything that I owned in that
footlocker, my
books, clothing, everything except those chickens and I went off to school in
Nashville. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. heard that I was in Nashville and got back
in touch with me.
He sent me a round trip Greyhound bus ticket and told me the next time I was in
Troy for spring break to come to see him. It was in March of 1958, by this time
I was eighteen years old, on a Saturday morning, my father drove me to the
Greyhound bus station. I boarded the bus, and traveled the fifty miles to
Montgomery. A young lawyer, I'd never seen a lawyer before, black or white
by the name of Fred Grey met me at the Greyhound bus station. Fred Grey for many
years was a lawyer for the Montgomery Improvement Association for Dr. King and
Rosa Parks, for those of us on the Selma March and the Freedom Ride. He met me
and drove me to First Baptist Church in downtown Montgomery on Ripley Street
pastored by Reverend Abernathy. Arriving at the steps of the church, I was so
scared and so nervous. I didn't know what I was going to say to Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.He ushered me into the pastor's study and I saw Reverend
Abernathy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. standing behind a desk. Dr. King said,
"Are you John Lewis? Are you the boy from Troy?" and I spoke up and said, " Dr.
King, I am John Robert Lewis." I gave my whole name. I didn't want there to
be any mistake that I was the right person. That was the beginning of my
relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. I continued to study in Nashville.
While studying there I met individuals like Jim Lawson, one of the leading
thinkers and philosopher on the philosophy and the discipline of non-violence,
students like Diane Nash, James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette and many other young
people. We start studying the philosophy and the discipline for non violence,
every Tuesday night at 6:30 p.m. at a Methodist church near Fisk University
campus. In then we got involved in the sit-ins and the freedom ride. Two years
later, I became the head of the student non-violent coordinating committee in
June 1963 as Representative Hall said at the age of twenty-three. On the freedom
ride through Alabama, we were arrested and jailed in Birmingham. Later, Bull
Conner picked us up, took us out of jail and dropped us off at the
Alabama/Tennessee state line, and left us. A car from Nashville came back in May
of 1961, picked us up and took us back to Birmingham where we were met by the
Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and other students. We continued from Birmingham to
Montgomery, where we were beaten at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery by
an angry mob. We continued to Mississippi, but we were arrested and jailed, a
few of us was in the city jail in Jackson, the county jail in Jackson and many of
us went to the state penitentiary in Parchment during the summer of 1961. All
across the south, not just in Mississippi, not just in Georgia, not just in North Carolina or South
Carolina, but in the eleven states of the whole confederacy, from Virginia to
Texas, it was almost impossible for people of color to become participants in
the democratic process to register to vote. When I was working on my March on
Washington speech for August 28, 1963, I was reading a copy of the New York
Times and I saw a group of women in Africa, black women, carrying signs saying,
"One man, one vote." So in my March on Washington speech I said something like,
"One man, one vote is the African pride. It is ours too, it must be ours," and
that became the rallying cry. That became the slogan for the student non-violent
coordinating committee.
A young man by the name of Bernard Lafayette who was a student in Nashville, had
gone into Selma, Alabama in the fall of 1962. He was working with Mrs. Boynton of the immediate Boynton in the Dallas County Voters League, working with
several ministers and others, trying to create a grassroots movement in Selma, around the
right to vote. In Selma in 1962, 1963, 1964 and 1965 only 2-4 percent of blacks
of voting age were registered to vote. At the same time, we were organizing an
effort in Mississippi. There had been sit-ins in Selma. People had gone to jail,
got arrested at lunch counters and drugstores. There had been a movement there,
and we went there to help. A great deal of our time was left in a place in
Mississippi. Before we could launch the campaign in Selma or in Mississippi,
there was a terrible bombing at the sixteenth street Baptist Church in
Birmingham, Sunday morning, September 15, 1963, where four little girls were
killed. We intensified our effort in Selma, but also in Mississippi. We recruited
more than a thousand students. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, priests, ministers,
rabbis, nuns and others to come to Mississippi and work in the Freedom School.
As Mary Stanton told you, the summer night of June 21, 1964 three young men that
I knew: Andy Goodman, Michael Schwerner, white from New York and James Chaney,
black from Mississippi, went out to investigate the burning of black church. Their car was
stopped by the sheriff. They were arrested and taken to jail. Later that same
Sunday night of June 21, 1964 the sheriff and his deputies took these three
young men from their jail cells and turned them over to the Klan, where they were
beaten, shot and killed. These three young men didn't die in Vietnam. They
didn't die in the Middle East. They didn't die in Africa or in Eastern
Europe. They didn't die in Central South America. They died right here in
our own country, for the right of all of our citizens to become participants in
the democratic process. So, when people said what they said about the election
last year, and
what happened in Florida and other places, and they tell us to get over it, we
say, "We cannot get over it." It's very hard to get over it. It's
difficult for me to know that some of our friends, some of our colleagues died
for the precious rights for all of our citizens to participate in the democratic process.
That was a serious blow to the movement, but we didn't give up. President
Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964. He won a landslide election
in November of 1964. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. received a Nobel Peace Prize in
December 1964. He came back to America, met by a group of us in New York, and
later went down to Washington to the White House to have a meeting with
President Johnson and he said, "Mr. President, we need a strong voting rights
act." And President Johnson told Dr. King in so many words, "We don't have
the votes in the congress to get a voting rights act passed." A judge signed the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. Martin Luther King Jr. had come back to Atlanta to
meet with people in SCLC, his own organization. We were those involved in the
student non-violent coordinating committee. Then, he got an invitation from the
Dallas County Voters League in Selma, Alabama from Mrs. Boynton and the good
people in Selma, to come there and be the Emancipation Proclamation speaker in
January of 1965. Dr. King said," We will write that act, we will write it some
place." In Selma, Alabama we had a Sheriff, as the Mayor mentioned earlier by
the name of Jim Clark. Sheriff Clark was a very big man, who wore a gun on one
side and a nightstick on the other side. He carried an electric cow prodder in
his hand, and he didn't use it on cows. He wore a button on his left lapel,
and that button said, "Never, never to voter registration." Now all of you here
must keep in mind that in Selma, if you go there
now, the courthouse looks the same way it did thirty six years ago. The steps
and the rails are the same.You could only attempt to register to vote on the
first and third Monday of each month. The courthouse was the only place. And
sometimes when they knew that we were organizing the voter's registration
campaign they would just close the doors, just lock it up for the day or for the
week. I will never forget when it was my day, January 18, 1965, to lead a group
of elderly black men and women to the courthouse just to get inside the door, up
the steps, get an application form and try to pass the test. You must keep in
mind, and I know that there are some historians here and professors of political
science, but it was very difficult, almost impossible for people to pass the
poll literacy test. They were asked things like; How many bubbles are in bar
of soap? That was not on the test. There were black teachers, black lawyers and
black doctors told that they could not read or write well enough, and they
fought the so-called literacy test. On January 18th when it was my day to
lead a group of people up the steps, Sheriff Clark met me at the top of the
steps and he said, "John Lewis, you're an outside agitator. You are the
lowest form of humanity." At that time, I had all of my hair and I was a few
pounds lighter. I looked Sheriff Clark straight in the eye and I said, "Sheriff,
I may be a agitator, but I'm not an outsider. I grew up only about ninety
miles from here and we're going to stay here until these people are allowed
to register to vote," and he said, "You're under arrest." He arrested me
along with a few other people. We went to jail. A few days later Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., Reverend Abernathy and others came to Selma. In less than one
week, we filled the jails of Selma, every jail, the city jail and the county
jail. They took us out on some penal farm where it looked like a place where
they kept
chickens. They put us all in there and we slept on wooden floors. Then, about
three weeks later, I believe it was the night of February 17th or the 19th in
Marion, Alabama, in Perry County, in the heart of the Blackbelt. Perry County is
the home county of Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King, the home
county of Mrs. Ralph Abernathy, Juanita Abernathy, and the late Mrs. Andrew
Young, Jane Young; all from this county in Alabama. There was a demonstration, a
protest, for the right to vote. That night a confrontation occurred. A young man
by the name of Jimmy Lee Jackson tried to protect his elderly grandparents and
was shot in the stomach by a state trooper and a few days later, he died at the
Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma. Because of what happened to him, we made a
decision (the movement did) that we would march from Selma to Montgomery. It was
the idea of James Bevel that had been involved in the Nashville incident and the
Freedom Ride. A whole new staff of Dr. King suggested at one point that maybe we
should take the body of Jimmy Lee Jackson to the state capital in Alabama and
present the body to Governor Wallace. We decided that we would have an orderly
peaceful nonviolent war from Selma to Montgomery to dramatize the fight, to help educate and synthesize
all of the citizens of Alabama but as a nation around the right to vote. We
announced that the march would occur on Sunday, March 7th. On Saturday, March
6th, Governor Wallace made a statement that the march would not be allowed. On
Saturday, the Governor, rather than the sheriff from Dallas County, Sheriff
Clark, requested that all white men over the age of 21 come down to the Dallas
County Court House to be deputized to become part of the process to stop the march.
There was a real debate within my organization, the student non-violent
coordinating committee. There were people saying that we should not march;
it is too dangerous; people would get hurt. So, we went back to Atlanta, had a
meeting there in the basement of a little restaurant. We met almost all night
debating whether we should march or not. I took the position as the chair of the
student non-violent coordinating committee and said that we should march and the
local people wanted to march. The SCLC people wanted to march. I felt that I had
an obligation to walk with the people from Selma. I have been there; I got
arrested with them. I felt that I should be there. So, the SNCC executive
committee voted that early that Sunday morning, about three or four o'
clock in the morning, that if I wanted to march I would march as an individual
but not as chair of the student nonviolent coordinating committee. Three of us
jumped in an old car and drove from Atlanta to Selma. We got our sleeping bags
and slept in the SNCC Freedom House on the floor until later that morning. We
got up and got dressed. We went to the Brown Chapel AME Church for the morning
services. After the services, more than six hundred of us, mostly elderly black
men and women and a few young people came out of the church near a housing
project (playground area) where we conducted a non-violent workshop, telling
people to be orderly, to be quiet and to walk in twos. We had a prayer. We lined
up in twos. I was walking beside Hosea Williams from Dr. King's
organization. At that time, I was wearing a backpack. I had a light trench coat
on and I was wearing a backpack before they became fashionable to wear
backpacks. In this backpack, I had two books, an apple, an orange, toothbrush
and toothpaste. I thought that we were going to be arrested and that we were
going to jail. So, I wanted to have something to read, something to eat and
since I was going to be in close quarters with my friends, colleagues and
neighbors, I wanted to be able to brush my teeth.
We started walking through the streets of Selma. No one was saying a word, so
orderly, so peaceful and so quiet on a Sunday afternoon. We got to the edge of
the Edmund Pettus Bridge, crossing the Alabama River, and Hosea Williams looked
down below and he saw this water. He said, "John, can you swim." I said, "No,
Hosea. Can you swim?" He said, "No. Well, there is too much water down there." I
said, "We are not going to jump. We are not going back. We are going forward."
We continued to walk. We came to the apex of the Edmund Pettus Bridge and down
below we saw a sea of blue, Alabama state troopers, and behind the state
troopers, you saw Sheriff Clark's deputies; you saw men on horseback and we
walked. We came within hearing distance of the state troopers and a man
identified himself and said, "I am Major John Cloud of the Alabama State
troopers. This is an unlawful march. You will not be allowed to continue. I will
give you three minutes to disperse and return to your church." Less than a
minute-and-a-half, Major Cloud said, "Troopers advance," and Hosea said to me,
"John, they are going to gas us." We saw these men putting on their gas masks
and they came towards us beating us with nightsticks, tramping us with horses
and releasing the tear gas. I was hit in the head by a state trooper with a
nightstick. I thought that I was going to die. I thought I saw death. Until this
day, I do not know how I made it back across that bridge, through the streets of
Selma and back to the Brown Chapel AME Church, but I do recall being back at the
church that Sunday afternoon. By this time, the church was full to capacity.
More than two thousand citizens of Selma and surrounding communities from
outside were trying to get in to protest what had happened. Someone in the
media said, "John, you should say something to the audience." I stood up and
said," I do not understand it, how President
Johnson can send troops to Vietnam but cannot send troops to Selma to protect
people who only desire is to register to vote." The next thing I know is that I
had been admitted to the Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma with a fractured
skull. The next morning, early that Monday (it would be March 8th) Martin Luther
King, Jr., and Reverend Abernathy came in from Atlanta. They came by to see me.
Dr. King said, "Do not worry. We will make it from Selma to Montgomery. The
Voting Rights Act will be passed." He was right. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
issued an appeal for religious leaders to come to Selma
that following Tuesday, March 9th. And more than a thousand white and black religious
leaders, ministers, priests, rabbis, nuns and others came to Selma and marched
to the same spot where we had been beaten two days earlier, prayed and turned
back. Some of the people in SNCC that had opposed march came and they did not
like the idea that Dr. King turned back. They went to Montgomery and started
another effort organizing the students at Alabama State and Tuskegee; a
confrontation occurred there. We went into federal court and got an injunction
against Governor Wallace, Sheriff Clark and others for interfering with the
march. President Lyndon Johnson called Governor Wallace to Washington and tried
to get an assurance from him that he could protect us, as we got a court ruling
from federal district judge Frank Johnson. I do not know what the state of
Alabama would be like. I do not know what it would be like if it was not for a
man like Frank M. Johnson. I remember us going into court. The Department of
Justice subpoenaed the CBS film from that day of "Bloody Sunday." They showed it. Judge Johnson
viewed it. He stood up, shook his robe, recessed the court, came back and
granted us everything that we wanted and allowed us to march in an orderly
fashion all the way from Selma to
Montgomery. Three hundred of us walked all the way. On the night of March 15,
1965, President Lyndon Johnson spoke to a joint session of the congress and made
one of the most meaningful speeches any American president had made in modern
time and the whole question of voting rights/civil rights. He condemned the
violence in Selma. He started that speech off that night by saying, "I speak
tonight for the dignity of man and for the destiny of democracy." President
Johnson went on to say, "At times, history and fate meet in a single place in
man's on end in search for freedom." It was more than a century ago at
Lexington and at Concorde. So, it was at Appomattox. So, it was last week in Selma,
Alabama. In his speech he said, "And we shall overcome," over and over again. He
said it with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the home of a local dentist. As we
watched and listened to Lyndon Johnson, tears came down Dr. King's face; he
cried. We all cried. He said again, "We'll make it from Selma to
Montgomery," and the Voting Rights Act was passed. We walked all the way, five
days. More then twenty-five thousand people gathered there on that day. As Mary
said again, Ms. Viola Liuzzo was killed on that
night traveling between Selma and Montgomery, and Reverend James Reed was beaten almost to death on the night of March 11th after crossed that bridge and later
died at the local hospital in Birmingham. The congress passed the Voting Rights
Act, signed it into law, and I said it might be because of what happened in Selma.
Because of what happened on the bridge, we had witnessed what I like to call a
nonviolent revolution in this region. We live in a different country. We lived
in a better country and we are a better people. Sometimes, I hear young people
saying nothing has changed and I feel like saying, "Come and walk in my shoes.
Come and walk across that bridge. Come and sit-in
in Nashville. Come and go on the Freedom Ride Bus. Come and be dropped off on
the Tennessee/Alabama state line by Bull Conner at four o'clock in the
morning leaving you to be ambushed." Things have changed. Today, there are
hundreds and thousands of black-elected officials like Representative Hall and
others because of what happened in Selma. So, tonight as we think and ponder
Selma to Montgomery in 1965, we must not give up. We must not give in. We must
not give out. We must not get lost in a sea of despair. We must keep the faith
and keep our eyes on the prize. I was just thinking a few days ago, since
September 11th, and I said it a few days after September 11th, that people may
bomb our buildings, kill some of our fellow citizens, but they will never ever
kill our love for freedom, our love for democratic ideas, our love for the good
society and to the open society. Many of us in the 1960's would be walking
across that bridge, through the sit-ins and when we went on the Freedom Ride,
accepting nonviolence not as a simple average technique or as a tactic but as a
way of life and as a way of living. Selma was not a struggle against a people;
it was against custom and tradition, a system we wanted to build and not tear
down. We wanted to reconcile and not separate. We wanted to create the beloved
community, the good society. I will tell this story and I will be finished. I
tell this story in my book, Walking with the Wind. It's a true story. When
I was growing up outside of Troy, Alabama, I had an aunt by the name of Seneva
and my aunt Seneva lived in what we called a shotgun house. She didn't have
a green, manicured lawn. She had a simple, plain dirt yard and sometime at
night, you could look up through the ceiling, through the holes in the tin roof
and count the stars. When it would rain, she would get a pail of what we called
a bucket and catch the rainwater. She lived in a shotgun house.
From time to time, she would go out into the woods and get branches from a
dogwood tree and she would make a broom. She called that broom the branch broom
and she would sweep the dirt yard clean, sometimes two and three times a week.
For those who are so young, who might not know what a shotgun house is and never
seen one, was not born in one and never lived in one, (in a nonviolent sense) a
shotgun house is a old house with a tin roof where you can bounce a ball through
the front door and the ball would go straight out the back door. In the military
sense, a shotgun house would be an old house with a tin roof where you can fire
a gun through the front door and the bullet would go straight out the back door.
My aunt Seneva lived in a shotgun house. One Sunday afternoon, a group of my
sisters, brothers and a few if my first cousins, about twelve of us young
children while playing my aunt Seneva' s dirt yard, an unbelievable storm
came up. The wind started blowing. The thunder started rolling. The lightning
started flashing and the rain started beating on the tin roof of this old
shotgun house. My aunt became terrified. She thought this old house was going to
blow away. She started crying. She got us all in the inside and told us to hold
hands. As little children, we did as we were told, but we all started crying.
The wind continued to blow. The thunder continued to roll. The lightning
continued to flash. In one comer of the house, it appeared to be lifting from
its foundation and my aunt had us walk to that side to try and hold the house
down with our little bodies. When the other comer appeared to be lifting, she
had us walk to that corner to try and hold down this house with our little
bodies. We were little children walking with the wind, but we never left the
house. As citizens of Alabama, as citizens of the world, as students and young
people and as faculty members, the wind may blow; the
thunder may roll; the lightning may flash and the rain might beat on our old
house. Call it the house of Huntsville. Call it the house of Alabama. Call it
the house of America. Call it the world house. We must never ever leave the
house. We must become one house, one family and one people. Just maybe, our
foremothers and our forefathers all came to this great land in different ships.
We're all in the same boat now. It doesn't matter whether we are black
or white, Asian, American, Hispanic or Native American; we are one people. As we
think about Selma to Montgomery, let us continue to walk with the wind and let
the spirit of the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965 be our guide. Thank you very much.
Douglas Turner: Alright, one again, how about another round of applause for Ms.
Mary Stanton as well. We want to take a short period here for answer and
questions. I want to mention that any of you who might have any commendations or
other certificates of recognition that you would like to present to the
congressman that you can do that after the symposium is over. We do want to open
the program now for questions for either Ms. Stanton or Congressman Lewis.
Q: The question and comment for both Congressman Lewis and Ms. Stanton ...
Congressman Lewis, you've spoke about the struggles that you had in the
march from Selma to Montgomery, the pain that you and others suffered. Ms.
Stanton you talked about Plato's reflection on government and
participation. The suffering that has occurred so that people, all people, have
the right to participate in this democracy, yet today eighty percent of young
people and more than fifty percent of all adults, do not bother to vote. We have
moved a great deal forward, but if we do not exercise, all of us,
the right to vote and if we do not take part in our responsibilities to
participate in this democracy, we are going to move backward. How do we get pass
this? How do we reverse this at present? How do we tell people, you have to
participate if you want to keep moving forward? I sincerely believe that. I
guess the question is two parts. Do you agree with that and if so, how do we win
that battle?
A: That's a good response. Mary, would you like?
A: I would prefer you.
A: I agree with you, sir. I think the greatest threat to our democratic way of
life and the greatest threat to our democracy and to whatever you want to call
it is the lack of participation and the lack of involvement. I think the day
will soon come in America, if we are not mindful, that we will no longer count
the people that are voting, we will count those who did not vote. I think it is
a very dangerous trend. First of all, I think we have to do something called
campaign finance reform. We have to get...In the congress, there is a group of
us on both sides, both Democrats and Republicans, and the Independents that we
have among us in the house, trying to get campaign finance reform. There is too
much money. I have been in congress for my fifteenth year, serving my eighth
tenth, but I have young colleagues that come and they spend all of their time
dialing for dollars. That's not the way. When you have some one in New York
spending fifty or sixty million (I don't know how much money was spent all
together) ... but to get elected. We have people running for congress and we
have someone running for mayor for Atlanta. We have to make the airways free. It
cost too much to be on television. The people have the right to know. We have to
take money out of it. It is too much money in American politics.
Whether someone is a millionaire or whether someone is a dogcatcher, they have
only one vote. We have to change it. It is not the way to go. We have to say to
our young people and those of us not so young, if you do not vote, you really do
not count. You have to participate. We have to encourage more people to run,
more women, more young people, more minorities. Get out there and run.
Don't leave it up to people. Everybody has something to offer. Run for
school board. Run for city council. Run for mayor. Run for congress. Get out
there. The more people we have participating, the better our democracy is. It
helps strengthen our democracy. We have a young lady who was just elected mayor
of the city of Atlanta. She came out of nowhere almost. She raised a lot or
money also, but she came out of nowhere.
Douglas Turner: Let me also mention that both Ms. Stanton and Congressman Lewis
have books for sale back here in the back. They will be available to sign if you
have already purchased one and you want them to sign it or if you will be
purchasing one. Next question, I saw your hand back there.
Q: Congressman Lewis and Ms. Stanton, I am trying to find the difference really
between the nonviolent revolution that you were talking about because I have
looked at most of the countries who practice nonviolent revolution and they do
not seem to be making any progress. They are stagnated like we are, but
Americans came with a more traditional
type of revolution and now we are the number one power in the world. It seems we
all will be ambulating to number one•or something in that area.
Douglas Turner: So, is your question or statement is that there is a need for
violence or some kind of revolution.
Q: Mary, you want to deal with that?
A: I'm not sure that I understand the question. Are you asking the value of
a nonviolent revolution?
A: Yes.
A: Well, I happen to believe in the philosophy and the discipline of nonviolence
and I happen to believe also that in the long run, violence tends to create more
problems than it solves. As Americans, we've said, well Americans proceed
in violence when we talk about the American Revolution. A few days ago, I was in
(inaudible) and visited those historic places. I think humankind must evolve to
a much higher level, not just Americans but people all over this planet and all
over this world. We lay down the tools and the instruments of violence and some
people would say and maybe you would say that is too idealistic. As Dr. King
would say, it is nonviolent and nonexistent. No one in the long run wins in a
war. A war is messy. It is bloody. It kills; it harms; it divides and it
destroys. We have to find a way to say no more war.
Q: Do you know who killed Dr. King? (inaudible)
A: I don't know who killed Dr. King. A colleague of mine from one of our
southern states came to me on the floor just yesterday and wanted me to meet
with him and come and visit a family who says they had some information about
someone who participated in the assassination or knew something about the
assassination of Dr. King. He doesn't know if this is legitimate or whether
this is valid. I don't know. I believe until the day that I die that it was
a conspiracy to remove Dr. King from America. I do not think that any one person
acted alone. Some of the things that happened during the 1960's and what
Mary said about the FBI, it is unbelievable. It is to think the unthinkable. We
had this whole thing going on in America during the Cold War that there was _
members coming inside and we were under the Dukes of Marksville. If you saw a
sign saying white waiting and colored waiting, you did not need anyone from
Marksville, New York, Philadelphia or Washington to tell you that sign had to
go. So, somehow and some way, this mentality is creeping back into this segment
of America. There has been an attempt on the part of some of us to remove Mr.
Hoover's name and have another respected American's name put on there.
Q: Brother Lewis, it is so good to see you again. My name is James Steele. I
remember the situation quite well. I was a young student here at the college
when you were beaten on the Selma Bridge; 1954 just would not make it to Selma.
Right down the street, a young man was pastoring a church by the name of
Reverend Ezekiel Bell in the l 960's. I was with the first steering
committee that launched the movement here in Huntsville. Some of the student
nonviolent coordinating persons and the Congress of Racial Equality along with a
young lawyer here at Alabama A&M by the name of Randolph Blackwell that some of
you may know of. There had not been much talk about Reverend Bell and Blackwell,
but they were spark plugs in the movement here. I started with the movement
about 1954. I don't want to tell how old, I mean how young I am Dr. Lewis,
but what has concerned me is that was a great movement. People were together. I
must admit that we had a number of people shucking and jiving in the movement
back then. My question is about 1980. What I believe is going to go down in
history is the saddest part of our history, one who kept his eye on the Civil
Rights Movement and the Human Rights
Movement in Huntsville, Alabama. I believe that I have seen more shucking and
jiving starting in the l 980's to the present time. My question is from
your vanish point, do you see that and what we may do to overcome this go with
the flow, flip-flopping type leadership that we see now across the nation.
Somebody ought to stand up and tell the truth where it relates to real freedom,
justice and equality. I won't share that scripture with you now, but it is
in Isaiah 56:10.
Douglas Turner: What is the question?
A: I am getting to that. Go ahead and answer my question. They called time on me.
A: Only thing I would say my friend is that during the days of the height of the
movement, it was my philosophy not to engage in name calling, not to put anyone
down because it was keeping with the philosophy and the discipline of
nonviolence. There are roles for people to play. Everybody can go in a sit-in.
Everybody can go on the Freedom Ride. When I was a student in Nashville, there
were guys who played football and they said, "Oh, John. I can't go. If I go
down, I may fight and I can do something else. Maybe, they just did not have the
courage to sit-in unless someone put a lighted cigarette out in their hair or
down their back. So, I just do not think it is in keeping with the philosophy of
nonviolence to sit in judgment on the role and the function of anyone. So, I
don't want to call anyone shucking and jiving or put someone down because
they may be marching to a different beat.
Q: I would like to know was it pure luck that Ramsey Clark with feds monitored
the Selma to Montgomery march or was that a request.
A: Was it pure luck that Ramsey Clark?
A: Monitored the Selma to Montgomery march.
A: I do not know. I really do not. It could have been his role and maybe there
was something that he wanted to do. I have said in the past that there are such
individuals in the Kennedy/Johnson administration. There was a young man by the
name of John Door who was a Republican. He was held over from either house
administration. He was a tall, lanky guy from the Midwest. He played a major,
major role and I consider some of these individuals as sympathetic referees in
the struggle for civil rights. I think you had in the department of justice that
said Edgar Hoover was this and that. There were certain individuals. It did not
matter what time of night or what time of morning. You could pick up the
telephone and call them at home instead of Ramsey, Burke or Marshall or whoever
saying this is our problem; there is a problem in Alabama or there is a problem
in Mississippi. Some of these guys would say today. Some of you may not know
this. On the Freedom Ride, there was this brave, courageous man representative
by the name of Floyd Mann, who was the public safety director for the state of
Alabama during the freedom ride. When we were being beaten by this angry mob in
Montgomery, it was Floyd Mann. This white gentleman, native of this state and
from this part of Alabama, had to leave. I think he took a job as a security
person maybe for the Goodyear plant. He stood up with a gun and he said, "There
would be no killing here today. There would be no killing here today." It was
Saturday morning, May 20, I 961, at the greyhound bus station in Montgomery and
the mob dispersed. If it had not been for this man, I probably would not be here
today and others probably would not be here. I saw him for the first
time later, in all these years, at the dedication of the Civil Rights Memorial m
Montgomery. He came up to me and I think by this time I was on the city council
or maybe in congress and he said, "John Lewis, do you remember me?" I said, "Mr.
Mann, I do remember you. Thank you for saving my life." We both started to cry.
So, you had people there.
Q: Congressman Lewis, you mentioned about the woman in Atlanta who came out of
nowhere and won governor.
A: The mayor's office.
Q: Okay, the mayor's office. Don't you think it is about time for a
dark horse to come out and run for president? When are you going to run for president?
A: Who me? No, I'm happy being the congressperson from Atlanta, Georgia.
Q: It was a pleasure hearing you speak and I had the pleasure of being in Selma
at the last election for the run off and some of the same things are going on as
far as getting people the patient register to vote. My question is this. With
the incident that took place down at Auburn University, do you think that is an
isolated incident? Or is there something that should be addressed to the
governor, to the people of Alabama and to the nation as to that incident? The
other thing is that there are young people that need to take up the struggle. Do
you think that it would be befitting? In the state of Alabama and in the United
States of America, they teach history. They teach so-called American history. Do
you think they should teach civil rights and the Civil Rights Movement in the
state of Alabama and all the other states so that they will know the history of
this movement because this movement is what gave life to the whole constitution?
A: Well, I think it is important that we tell the story. To me, I am so
gratified and so pleased to see what these two institutions are doing. I wish
other institutions, not just in Alabama, all across the south and all across the
nation, would do this. It is to help educate, to synthesize all of our people
about the contribution that people made and the changes that have occurred. I
think it is a must. I think we need to be teaching the philosophy and the
discipline of nonviolence, not just when people get to college, but we need to
start teaching it in daycare, in Head Start and in first grade. We need to teach
people the way of love and it may sound strange for a politician or for people
to talk about love. We need to teach that the way of love and the way of peace
is a much better way and much more excellent way. Maybe, we would not have some
of the problems that we have. Maybe at Auburn, a group of students could start
conducting nonviolent workshops saying we just don't do this; we live in a
different time; we live in a different period. We respect diversity. We respect
people. We respect the worth and dignity of every human being. I think too many
young people in our society today are growing up, and too many of us, because of
something that is happening that we have this almost disdain for just common
decency and respecting the worth of a fellow human being. People bump into you
and do not even want to say excuse me; I'm sorry. So, to be nonviolent is
not not hitting some, but it is also attitude. Words can be very violent. Words
can be very destructive. So, it is a way of love and the way of nonviolence that
we have to get over to our people. Maybe, during this time of sort of national
healing, we can sort of tum towards each other as a national community and talk
about love and nonviolence and peace in the sense of community and in the sense
family. Don't be afraid
to say it to somebody. It's nothing weak about saying to somebody,
"I'm sorry I said that. I'm sorry I did that." A lot of times, I call
my colleagues and they say, "Hello, brother.
How are you?" It's not just a black brother; it's the white brother
and the brown brother who happen to be Hispanic or an Asian American brother or
sister. In the congress, you see us on the floor. We argue like cats and dogs,
but I bet you one thing, when something happens to us, we are there for each
other. We are family. The same people that get up and arguing on C-span or
arguing on the floor, the next moment they are working out together in the gym
or having a meal together in the member's dining room. I wish sometimes
that the larger community could see the sense of family that we try to exercise
even in Washington even among politicians. Can I go for one other moment? We
have a group in Washington, and I am the co-chair, called Faith and Politics. I
am the Democrat co-chair. There is a young man by the name of Amo Houghton who
is the Republican co chair. I am one of the poorest members of congress. This
guy is one of the richest members of congress. He is very, very... You know
Steuben Glass, CorningWare. That's the family in upstate New York. We get
together, members from Alabama, white members from Alabama, white members from
Mississippi, black members from Mississippi, Alabama or Georgia, Hispanic
members from Texas, California or Florida or Asian American members from
California. We get together in our offices, in our little
hideaways and in our homes and we have what we call a ---
on race and we talk
about it. We debate it. During the past four years, we have been taking (some of
you probably read about it) we have been taking groups of members from
Washington, starting in Birmingham to Montgomery and to Selma, over a weekend
during the
anniversary of the march across the bridge. It has been unbelievable. Some of the
members walked through Sixteenth Street Baptist Church or went to the site where
Rosa Parks was arrested or might go to the museum there or go to Birmingham and
walk through the park. They would walk across the bridge and breakdown and cry.
It helps to educate and helps to synthesize. It is making us better. We always
need to reach out to each other.
Q: Good evening, Ms. Stanton and Mr. Lewis. I would just like to thank you all
on behalf
of the student body for making your appearance and sharing with us your
experiences this evening. Mr. Lewis, I would just like you to, if you could for
just a moment, speak about your current struggles with historic preservation in
the African-American museums, which we did a lot of work on this past summer.
Ms. Stanton, my question was there is no doubt to anybody in here that Viola
Liuzzo was a remarkable woman and a remarkable individual and what happened to
her was disgusting and reprehensible to say the least, but we hear about a
movie, books and all these types of things. I have seen documentaries on her and
her existence. Do you believe that if Viola Liuzzo was an African-American woman
that she would be remembered today?
A: That's a good question. It's a hard one to answer because in many
ways Viola Liuzzo was not remembered. If she was an African-American woman, the
obvious answer is probably no.
A: In Washington, for the past twelve or thirteen years, I've been leading
in an effort to create a national African-American museum on the mall. As a
matter of fact, I had a meeting today with J.C. Watts, my Republican colleague
from Oklahoma, who is the
chair of the Republican conference. We had more than one hundred and thirty-five
members, cosponsors, Republicans and Democrats in the house, and thirty-two
members of the senate of cosponsor. All of the leadership on the house side and
the senate side are cosponsoring this legislation and I think one day, we will
have in Washington a national African-American museum that tells the whole story
of the struggle of African Americans from the days of slavery to the present.
It will happen.
Douglas Turner: I have been instructed to allow a few more questions, although
time is running out and I know our guests would like to, you know, get away and
rest tonight. Two more questions. Go ahead.
Q: (Inaudible)
Q: I am the president of 2000 Freedom Fighters out of Decatur and my question is
that we have had a hard time getting the ministers involved. I know way back
when the church was the foundation and the ministers was the backbone. So, what
would you have to say today that would encourage the ministers and the churches
to get involved with the civil rights because certainly there are so many
injustices in the state of Alabama and all over the country?
A: Well, it is a very interesting question. I do not know about how strong the
African- American churches are in the African-American community, but there was
no institution that ran parallel in the poor white communities when people were
trying to organize. I think that strength moved the movement, the incredible
thrust and the power that the church has, not only through faith but also
through organizing skills training people and
bringing people together. Maybe, you can speak to that Congressman Lewis. Is it
as strong as it was or are we losing ground?
A: I would like to think that the church in the African-American community is
still strong. From what we gather, more people in both the African-American
community and the white community are going to church. You must keep in mind
that during the 1960's and during the height of the movement, all of the
ministers were not involved. All of the churches were not involved. There were
certain churches even in the city like Atlanta did not even want Dr. King, when
he left Montgomery, to come back to Atlanta. There were churches in other parts
of the south. There were certain places where the ministers were afraid to speak
out or speak up. So, you do not give up because some group is saying, well, I
cannot do this. You just keep going, four year and five there, ten there, fifty
here and one hundred there, but you be consistent, be persistent and just hang
in there and do what you can do. You are never going to have everybody. During
the original Freedom Ride, the original Freedom Ride group that left Washington,
DC, on May 4, 1961, it was only thirteen of us, seven white and six blacks that
left Washington, DC, on May 4, 1961. Later, three hundred people got arrested
and went to jail over the summer of 1961. So, you do not have to have the whole
nation or the entire community. Sometimes, there are only a few that come
together in one accord committed, dedicated, believing in an idea and they
change things. So, do not be discouraged.
Q: (inaudible)
A: Well, I would encourage people, especially young people. There is a young man
who is a history teacher out in the bay area of California and he (inaudible).
He was able to get
the state legislature of California and others to get the necessary money, but
he started off just having a fundraiser, bringing one hundred students to
Washington. They go to the Lincoln Memorial. They listen to Dr. King's
speech on an old boombox, "I have a Dream." Then, they fly to Atlanta. Then,
they travel by bus to Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma, Little Rock and to Memphis.
They go to Central High and they meet with some of the former students of
Central High. During the past four or five years, he has brought over eleven
hundred students. In some cases, there were superintendents, parents and members
of the board of education, but a whole generation of high school students. They
are black; they are white. They are Asian American. They are Hispanic and Native
American. In this state, there is so much history; it is unbelievable. I say to
the young people in Atlanta, to the students there sometimes, go and visit the
King Center. Go and visit Dr. King's grave. Go and visit Ebenezer Church.
There are kids growing up in Atlanta that have never been in the home of where
Dr. King was born. So, we encourage young people and people not so young to take
advantage of this history here. There is a lot of rich history here in this
state dealing with the whole question of race and civil rights.
Closing: We have gone over our usual time, but I think that most of you would
agree that it has been a productive and memorable evening. Once again, how about
a round of applause for Ms. Mary Stanton and Congressman Lewis. Do not forget
too that next week, the lecture series continues at UAH in Roberts Recital Hall
at 7 p.m. The topic will be "Turmoil in Tuskegee." The lecturer will be Frank
Toland of the History Department at Tuskegee University. Thanks for coming out
and see you next week.
OHMS Object
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http://libarchstor2.uah.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=uah_civr_000009.xml
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Digitized VHS tape of "Selma to Montgomery, 1965".
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U.S. Rep. John Lewis and Mary Stanton are the speakers in this lecture given at Alabama A&M University.
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2001-11-08
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1:56:01
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en
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Alabama A & M University
University of Alabama in Huntsville
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University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections
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2000-2009
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Lewis, John, 1940-2020
Stanton, Mary, 1946-
Civil rights movements--Southern states--History--20th century
Selma (Ala.)
Dallas County (Ala.)
Freedom Rides, 1961
African Americans--Legal status, laws, etc.
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Lectures
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<a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/391">Selma to Montgomery, 1965 - Speakers: John Lewis and Mary Stanton - Transcription of Tape 9, 2003</a>
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
<a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/403"> VHS Tape of: Selma to Montgomery, 1965 - Speakers: John Lewis and Mary Stanton, 2001-11-08. Box 2, Tape 9</a>
University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
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Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
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Turmoil in Tuskegee Speaker: Frank Toland
...Who is currently a professor of sociology at Northwestern University in Chicago. Now for those of you who have not yet committed the list to memory. Let me point out to you that this series has been possible only because of the
generous contributions of the following: The Alabama Humanities Foundation State
Program; The National Endowment for the Humanities; Mevatec Corporation; DESE
Research, Inc; Representative Laura Hall; and Senator Hank Sanford. At A&M, the
Office of the President; the Office of the Provost; State Black Archives and Research
Center and Museum; Title III; The Office of Student Development; The Honor
Center of Sociology and Social Work, History and Political Science; and also at
the Telecommunications and Distance Learning Center have also been wonderful in
taping all of our sessions for us. They have done a wonderful job. We are
grateful to them for that. At UAH, the Office of the President; the Office of
the Provost; the Bankhead Foundation to the History Forum and to the Department
of History; Social Issues Symposium; the Department of Sociology; the Office of
Multicultural Affairs; Division of Continuing Education; The Humanities Center;
The Honors Program; The Office of Student Affairs and the Copy Center. I would
now like to turn things over to Ms. Barbara Wright who is a graduate student in
History here at UAH, past president of Phi Alpha Beta, currently assistant to
the editor of the Oral History Review. She will introduce our speaker for this evening.
Introduction: In his long and distinguished career Frank J. Toland has served
his community in many ways, as an educator, a social and political activist, a
historian, a scholar, a folklorist, a writer and a poet. He began his career
studying English, History and Political Science at South Carolina State College.
Mr. Toland received his MA in
History from the University of Pennsylvania, completing advanced study at both
Temple University and the University of Minnesota. As an educator, Mr. Toland
joined the faculty of Tuskegee University in 1949. During his tenure at Tuskegee
he was instrumental in developing the History Major program, the College of Arts
and Sciences and the Black Studies Program. Mr. Toland served Tuskegee as
chairman of the History Department for over twenty-seven years and as Director
of the Black Studies Program from 1968 until 1984. Widely recognized as an
expert in African-American and Southern History and a humanities scholar, Mr.
Toland has been invited to speak at colleges and universities worldwide. He has
served as a scholar and lecturer for the
Alabama Humanities Foundation since 1983 and is a member of the Speakers Board for extending the humanities to the public since 1990. The topic of his lectures
have included: Black Wings, the American Black in Aviation; Utopia in American
Life and Literature; African-Americans and the War Experience; The Harlem
Renaissance Revisited; Tuskegee Airmen and the Civil Rights Movement; and the
African-American Religious Experience. As a politician and activist, Mr. Toland
became the first African American to serve as mayor pro tern of Tuskegee, a
position he held from 1968 until 1972. He also served as chairman of the
Tuskegee Utilities Board, as coordinator of the Tuskegee Model Cities Program.
For over two decades Mr. Toland has dedicated himself to community service. His
membership and activities include the Alabama League of Municipalities, the
State Committee for the Study of Alabama State Administration, the National
Security Forum, and the State Registrar's Advisory Board, to which he was
nominated by Governor Guy Hunt. Mr. Toland is here tonight to speak
to us about the turmoil in Tuskegee during the civil rights movement. Please
join me in giving a warm welcome to Mr. Frank J. Toland.
Frank Toland: Thank you very much platform associates and I've got to
mention my good brother there, Dr. Lee Williams, who has been so kind to me over
the years in inviting me different places, especially here at the University of
Alabama in Huntsville. I was surprised at some of those things that were said
that I had done. The fact that I couldn't decide what it was I wanted to
major in at college, so I ended up majoring in all three was because I was an
intellectual nomad. I wandered from one area to the other. In listening to the
introduction, you have concluded that I am still something of an intellectual
nomad. I thought I was going to be a constitutional scholar when I went to work
at Tuskegee Institute only to discover that they never had a course in
Constitutional History and I was invited to develop one as long as I taught
those courses in World Civilization which were expected of me. What I discovered
is what you discover at a small school is that you become a generalist and not a
specialist and that the generalists are those persons who learn less and less by
going more and specialists are those persons who learn more and more by less and less.
Tonight, I have outlined some material, but don't be alarmed. I will be
selective in presenting it to you. The journey, my journey in civil rights,
began as I turned thirteen years of age in South Carolina. I had been hearing
and had almost made me believe that I remembered it, that the Ku Klux Klan had
visited my grandmother and my paralyzed grandfather before I was four years old.
They were looking for a young black man whom they wanted to teach a lesson and
my grandmother may have saved a brutal beating or a
lynching because she recognized the voice of one of the Klansmen and in her
bravery as the daughter of a white man she snatched his hood and then shamed
him. I understand that it was a traumatic experience for me and that I kept
hanging onto my grandmother's leg over the years until she finally sent me
off to elementary school. That got rid of that. I have witnessed violence in my
life and I have had these threats made upon me many times. The Klan was looking
for our leader's home in Tuskegee, CG Gomillion's home. We lived on
the same street, both on the right side of the street. The street that we lived
on had become overgrown at the end with trees so that you could not get all the
way out to Highway 80. So, the Klan came in with this cross about three feet
high, intending to burn it on Gomillion's lawn on the right side, but I was
the secondary target in case they didn't get it burned at Gomillion's
house. They forgot that if you go down and it's on the right and when you
come out it's on the left, so they burned the cross at a house that looked
like the one I lived in. It was a dear, sweet old lady and she knew the cross
was intended for me and she never had another civil thing to say to me the rest
of her life. They had frightened her terribly and it was indeed my fault and I
tried to reconcile but without success.
I got involved in the Civil Rights Movement in Tuskegee because of an incident
at the courtroom at the courthouse in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was over my efforts
to get my wife a driver's license. After three trips there, the patrolman,
each time he'd get almost to us, whites would come in at the last minute
and he always gave them preference so that blacks were continuously returning to
try to get those licenses. One of the persons there already had a pilot's
license. Her husband you may have heard about,
Tuskegee airman, Colonel Herbert Carter, retired, and she never knew until a few
months ago that I was the one who caused her such a delay in getting her license
because the patrolman thought that she was my wife and he wanted to teach me a
lesson. The lesson that stuck was that he threatened to blow my guts out for
interfering with the way that he performed his job and I was nervous about it,
but I put up a bold front and I said to him, "I own property in this state, I
help to pay your salary." That was not a good thing to say. I got involved in
the movement and we had three different organizations and they were interlocking
directories, meaning that officers in one served on boards for the other and the
other. The three organizations included the NAACP. In the NAACP, all of our
committees were called action committees (political action, education action).
All were action committees because we were raising money expecting to secure our
rights through the court system but in 1955 we appeared in court in Montgomery
before Judge Walter B. Jones, and Judge Walter B. Jones had written an article
that was widely circulated. He did columns for the Montgomery Advertiser
periodically and he had written a column that said, and circulated even in the
northern area. It said, "I speak for the white man" so when Bob Carter of the
NAACP office showed up to defend us and the NAACP, he asked Judge Jones to
recuse himself because of his prior expressed prejudices against blacks. He
refused to do so. He took a break and he walked up and down in the hall smoking, recess.
Then came back in and he pulled the decision out of his inside coat pocket. He
had already written his decision. "The NAACP was a foreign corporation doing
business in Alabama without paying Alabama taxes," and so what we did, the
regional office of the NAACP was in Birmingham, so during the course of the
night we loaded those materials up
and transported them to Atlanta, that's how the office ended up in Atlanta,
but for all of the rest of the years since 1955 until after the Voting Rights
Act of 1965, the NAACP could not operate in Alabama.
The second organization was the Tuskegee Civic Association. This is the
organization that led the successful movement for Civil Rights in Macon County.
That group had started as a men's discussion group in the 1920's. It
became a men's meeting group in 1938 and became the Tuskegee Civic
Association in 1941. As the Tuskegee Civic Association, we accepted membership
from women, but women were treated kind of like second-class citizens. The men
paid one dollar a year for membership dues. The thought was that women
didn't have a dollar that they wanted to spare, so women were charged fifty
cents a year until Beulah Johnson got up in one of the meetings and indicated
that we needed to examine what we were doing because we were talking about an
egalitarian society and we were treating our own wives as unequal. We responded
by charging her a dollar and immediately we collected fifty cents more and then
after that women paid the dollar. I mention Beulah Johnson because when we were
having our difficulties locating the registrar's office, Beulah Johnson
happened to go into City Bank and she noticed people going in and out of the
vault and she just went back there and saw that the Board of Registrars was
meeting at the City Bank and not at the courthouse and Beulah Johnson caught one
of them and pulled him out and told him, "You go where the law requires you to
be, and that is in the room set aside for registration in the courthouse," and
Beulah got away with it.
The next organization was the Macon County Democratic Club. What we did there
was do candidate analysis and make political endorsements, but we never endorsed
any candidate until the night before the voting, and then we roamed around the
county in meetings around the county, indicating the candidate that we would
support. The reason we did that was because we didn't want the white
candidate to be able to say who was getting the Negro vote so we kept them in
the dark. One year it worked very well. The sheriff, Patty Evans, was perhaps
one of the meanest people that God put in Macon County and we got him. We forced
him into a runoff because he missed winning a majority by one vote and they
checked all they could but he still didn't have it and so at the runoff
election we supported Hornsby for the sheriff. Hornsby sneaked into black
meetings and Hornsby always took his hat off in the presence of black women. We
didn't get much promise out of Hornsby but Hornsby was the best thing we
had going for us. With Hornsby, we heard him address our women properly. He
promised us that if we worked with him to make him sheriff that neither he nor
any of his deputies would ever hit another Negro with a club or not with a club.
So, on that basis, we made him sheriff. Then, we made him probate judge and we
discouraged any blacks from running against Hornsby until Hornsby reached the
age of 70 and couldn't run any more and now Hornsby is dead. But Hornsby
was one of the best white persons to happen to us during that period of turmoil in Tuskegee.
The Tuskegee Civic Association would put its primary emphasis on securing for
blacks the right to vote and the right to register unhindered. If you had any
contact with the registration application of the late 1940's and the early
1950's, that application was
some three to five legal size paper and it was deliberately designed to confuse
people who were trying to register. At one point on the application it asked for
your place of birth and several lines below that it asked how long have you been
a citizen of Alabama? Invariably, persons who were born in Alabama would
subtract twenty-one years, believing that you only became a citizen when you
achieved the right to vote. We had application after application rejected on
those excuses. When I did my application to register the person who was the
chairman of the Board of Registrars in Macon County had a tenth grade education,
not that there was anything wrong with a tenth grade education, but he was
trying to take me over an oath which he had not been taught to read himself and
every time he made a mistake with the oath, I corrected him. So I never became
fully sworn in as a registered voter. I just became a registered voter. They
decided, "That's enough, we'll let you know in a week whether you are
qualified to vote in the state." But they took my discharge to prove that I was
a veteran. I couldn't sleep that night for fear they had destroyed my
discharge. I went back the next morning and they had already decided to register
me because someone had said to them, "I think he is a lawyer for the NAACP," and
so I was registered, I suppose, under a false perception.
Some of the things that they did (not only was the application confusing) ... We
had application completion schools where we taught blacks how to do
applications, but how would you like to have thrown at you questions like this.
These were for black people; it was approved by the Alabama Supreme Court. They
used it and finally in 1994 the Alabama Supreme Court approved these kinds of
questions to be asked of persons trying to get registered, but the court was
careful to point out that it was an attempt to
restrict the number of unqualified Negroes. The questions were like this: How
many persons were in South Carolina's first congress; how many persons were
needed to have a representative in the first congress; if the president
appointed someone to a position that needed the approval of congress, what were
the limitations. I wouldn't let him ask me those questions. What I said to
him was, "I've got some that I'd like to ask you because I'm
trained in constitutional history and if you will answer one for me I think I
can handle some of these." He didn't because he couldn't. No one could
answer them.
Let me move to our work in registration and voting, beginning with 1957. In
1955, the NAACP was forced out of the state and an engineering firm was brought
in from Birmingham, Denning and Associates. We were told in the black community
that Denning and Associates were there to serve the black neighborhood so they
could provide us with water, sanitary sewers, streetlights and paved streets. We
cooperated with Denning. We helped him do his job only to discover that it was
false pretense. What Denning was doing was surveying the city of Tuskegee in
order to gerrymander the city of Tuskegee. A few of you have this gerrymander
map. The city was squared off and rectangled off. When Denning got through with
it, eliminating some three thousand black people from the population of the City
of Tuskegee, about four hundred of these black people were registered voters
when we didn't have much more than about four hundred and twenty voters. We
have counted the size of this monstrosity and we can't agree whether
it's twenty-six sided or twenty-nine sided, so those of you who have the
maps you can try counting them and see what it shapes up to be. For example, one
of the main streets was Fonsill Street and blacks lived on one side of the
street and whites on the
other. So the city limits went right down the middle of Fonsill Street, but they
couldn't get all of the black people out of Fonsill Street out of the city
because on one end of Fonsill Street there were several black owned properties,
so they didn't zigzag it in, they just went straight down the middle. They
gerrymandered us out of the city. I was one of those gerrymandered out. When we
got news of it through an introduction by Senator Sam Englehart into the Alabama
senate, then we got the word and we appealed to the whites in the town. We
appealed by newspaper advertisements to other legislators that they not pass
this gerrymander bill and we didn't stop it. We could not stop it being
passed by the Alabama legislature. What they were going to do, they said, was to
"end forever this agitation by Negroes to try to take over our town and our
county." The bill was allowed to become law in Governor Fulton's
administration. He did not sign it. Then, the second bill that Englehart
introduced (he was on a roll) a bill to abolish Macon County and to divide Macon
County among the five surrounding counties and this bill passed, authorizing a
constitutional amendment. We again appealed that this not be allowed to happen
and Englehart's committee said that they would have hearings on it. Our
organization asked to be represented at the hearings. We did not know as we took
our little group down to Montgomery that Sam Englehart would dictate that only
one Negro could be heard. So, the rest of us cooled our heels out in the hall
and our leader, CG Gomillion, whom some of you have seen on film, was a mild
mannered man. CG Gomillion was allowed to represent the Negroes in Macon County
except that they would not allow him to be seated in the presence of the white
inquisitors and he took it for the good of the order. What we decided to do was
to mount a campaign, making speeches in
the counties that were supposed to get a piece of Macon County. We scared those
other counties off because all of us who were doing speaking came from Tuskegee
Institute, that hot bed of radicalism, and what the decision was by these
counties was that they wanted their piece of the action, but they did not want
Tuskegee Institute and the Veteran's Administration Hospital. We thought
we'd tweak them a little bit and start investigating how Tuskegee Institute
and the VA Hospital could be incorporated as a separate, black governed city and
that's when the law was explained to us that we could not have a separate
city because we would be within the police jurisdiction of an existing city. We
never intended to do that anyhow, but that kind of tactic had worked for me when
I was in the movement in South Carolina, where you start rumors among the white
people of the worse kind and then expect them in fear to spread the rumors for
you. It had worked before and that time it worked again. We did get one white
group to oppose the abolition of the county. It was the Macon County Bar
Association but for fear of white reaction against them, they made it clear that
they only opposed the abolition of the county at the present time. We mounted
what we called a crusade for a city democracy and we revived a campaign that had
been tried in the l 940's, a campaign of trade with your friends, and so we
put out handbills and the like, Trading With Your Friends, urging black people
to trade only with those white people who would support our constitutional
rights. A white retaliatory group then came out with its campaign urging white
people not to hire Negroes and to fire the Negroes they already had. Well, it
was like the same thing they tried to do in Montgomery in the bus boycott. It
didn't work in Montgomery and it didn't work in Tuskegee, but it
worked for black folk because our pressure on the
economic system forced the closure of over twenty businesses. We drove them out
of town. We were so successful with that that when the whites tried to seek industry, to come into
Macon County at the old Tuskegee Army Air Base, I was in Minnesota so I was sent
on a mission by the group to this firm they were courting in Minnesota to
establish a plant in Macon County and I single handedly nipped that one in the
bud when I started talking about the kind of reaction that we were going to
produce in the nation among the black population not to buy anything that they
manufactured at any plant in Tuskegee. I know somebody will say you cost black
people jobs, maybe so and maybe not. What we were trying to do was prove to
whites that we were an integral part of the society and an integral part of the
economy and that without us it would flounder. After all, blacks in Macon County
constituted 84.6 percent of the population. We turned to the courts and in our
case, there's a book on it by Bernard Taper. In our court action, in
Gomillion versus Lightfoot, we filed suit over the gerrymander, over the
redefinition of the boundaries. Judge Johnson, who would later render some
fairly good decisions on our behalf, decided that he had no jurisdiction in the
matter regarding the gerrymander of the city so we kept pushing and on November
14, 1960 we lost in the district court. We lost in the appellate court and we
won in the Supreme Court. Another case that we brought was to secure an
improvement of our registration possibilities. We tried to appeal and to quote
the liberals in congress, including a personal visit that I had with Senator
Humphrey and what I was trying to explain to him on behalf of my group, that
there was a clause in the 14th Amendment which had never been enforced.
It's that clause that provides that if any group of people were denied the
right to vote that that state would proportionately lose
representation in the House of Representatives. If you look at it, it has never
been enforced. What Senator Humphrey and others said was that that wasn't
the way that we needed to go. We needed to keep pressing to force the southern
states to live up to the constitutional requirements of both the 14th Amendment
and the 15th Amendment. The 15th Amendment does not grant the right to vote, but
it protects the right to vote from discrimination in the application of a
state's voting laws. We were able to finally get the Civil Rights
Commission in December of 1958 to come into Tuskegee and examine our situation
there and the commission did hold hearings in Montgomery and brought in black
witnesses on this. It was a good move. John Doyle of the Attorney General's
office would come in and help us in a voting rights case in 1959. One of the
things that the Tuskegee Civic Association had going for it was that we had some
good record keepers and so when the Board of Registrars would come into session
it would hurry to register all whites and then they would cease to function. The
law required that two be present before registration could take place and so
ultimately one would come in, then the next time another one would come in, but
they would not two of them, so that we could get blacks registered to vote.
Every week we would draw up a list of twelve qualified blacks and mail that list
by registered letter to the three persons who had charge in the state of
appointing the boards of registrars so that when the Justice Department came in
we had records of all of this and when the Justice Department tried to get the
registration records they had to go to Judge Johnson's court to get an
order forcing the registrars to open their books, to open those registration
books from 1950 to 1960. It was while we were examining the applications of
whites that we discovered how little prepared some of
those applications had been and yet those persons had been registered to vote.
In my participation in research, I guess I've seen enough bad writing as a
teacher so that immediately one of the applications caught my eye because
everything on it was filled out in the same handwriting, including the
signature, and over on the edge there was a tiny X. The person who had been
registered was an illiterate white woman out of Notasulga, Alabama. So that
helped to make our case.
The trial on the voting rights issue was held in Opelika, you had these state
lawyers profiling and stancing because the thought they had the right judge, and
they did have the right judge until we got them before the Supreme Court and
then they had the wrong judge there. We had our lawyer put this lady on the
stand, and then the bombshell. "Is this your signature. You're under oath. Is this your signature?"
The lawyer for the state said, Judge, "She doesn't have to answer that." We
persisted and the judge said that she must answer. We went a step further. We
handed her a pen and asked her to sign, and she couldn't. She said, "You
all are just trying to shame me, embarrass me," and I momentarily had this
twinge of pity that anybody that would abuse a female in that fashion, using her
and then trying to put her in further danger of legal action by claiming that
she indeed had prepared this application. Well, we had our case dismissed but
again, we took it to the Appellate Court and again, we lost. We took it to the
Supreme Court and again, we won.
In 1959 we seemed to have been on a roll and so two of us decided that we would
write our own voting rights bill, so we did. We wrote a voting rights bill that
provided that in those counties where the registrars were unwilling to register
persons who were qualified to vote, if they failed to perform their functions,
then the registrars would be
federal registrars. Does that sound familiar to anybody? You see, Adam Clayton
Powell put it in legal language for the House and while we told him to wait
while we gathered some support for this, Adam Clayton Powell needed a political
stance so he introduced it but he couldn't get any support for it. What
pleased us was later on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, those areas that do not
perform the functions of registering qualified people to vote, federal
registrars can replace them. So, we did have that part that was represented. In
1959, the Alabama legislature was again attracted to our situation in Macon
County and so the Macon County representative introduced a bill, which he called
a bill to curb voter registration of the Negro. That was in 1959. Well, folk,
when we first started working this registration business the white Board of
Registrars required that every Negro applicant who was deemed to be qualified to
vote must be vouched for as a good Negro by a white registered voter. So,
Gomillion was not registered to vote at first. Gomillion was going to build a
house on their street. So, Gomillion put it out for bids and the Carter brothers
in Tuskegee, a building firm, had the lowest bid and they kept wondering, "When
will he let us start?" Gomillion said to them, "I'm going to start building
this house as soon as I become a registered voter," and they said, "If
that's your problem we'll take care of that." So, Gomillion opened
another avenue to black folk. Don't do business with white folk who
won't vouch for you to vote if you're a good Negro. So, many white
folks started vouching for too many good Negroes and the registrars decided that
now no white person could know no more than three good Negroes in one year. We
went to court again. We broke up that white voucher system so it became possible
for black folk to vouch for black folk. We vouched for black folk all
over the place but when we were sending these names in and all, they were being
rejected and we were building a case for the Supreme Court. We knew that's
where we would get our relief. So, we did with the Justice Department. We got
before the Supreme Court because Johnson had turned us down and the Supreme
Court remanded this case to Johnson and told Judge Johnson that these Negro
citizens who are as qualified as the least qualified white voter on the list
must be registered to vote, so Johnson issued the order. But guess what? The
least qualified white person on the list was an illiterate white woman from Notasulga. So that
opened Pandora's box by registering an illiterate white voter. That made
themselves subject if we pushed it to the registration of illiterate black
voters. Now folk, in this whole process we built the evidence, they rejected
over 170 blacks, none of whom had less than two years of college, and the
chairman of the board had a 10th grade education, yet he was declaring along
with his companions that these blacks were not literate enough to vote for they
had not completed a perfect application. You had to complete a perfect
application, they declared.
Now the case I talked about, the gerrymander case, this is Gomillion versus
Lightfoot and there was a book out on that case. In fact, there are four books
that I can cite to you and one I particularly think is sufficiently documented,
that's the book written by a person who served as historian of the group
ahead of me, Jessie Parkhurst Guzman. Her book, Crusade for Civic Democracy,
contains a number of documents, the cases that I have cited for you being among
them. Bernard Taper, who wrote a series of articles for the New Yorker came out
with his book, Gomillion versus Lightfoot: Apartheid in Alabama and then Charles
Hamilton, a political scientist eventually at Columbia
University and the coauthor of Black Power. If you read Black Power, some of the
material in there is material taken from the Archives of the Tuskegee Civic
Association. Another book is Robert Norrell's book, Reaping the Whirlwind.
Norrell says what he has done is to look at the Macon County situation from both
the white perspective and the African-American perspective. We would continue
this pressure to continue to get blacks registered to vote. We would continue
the pressure for legal action and at the Supreme Court level we eventually did
not lose any of the cases that we got before the Supreme Court of the United
States. We mounted this crusade for civic democracy like that Montgomery Bus
Boycott of a later time. Tuskegee, really, was more of a mother of the Civil
Rights Movement than Montgomery. It is not genrally known that Ralph Abernathy, a late
friend of mine, and Dr. King came to Tuskegee to get ideas about how we
conducted our affairs in the Tuskegee Civic Association. In a home there on
Washington Avenue, I was talking to my good friend Ralph. We knew what King had
talked about nonviolence and I was not then nonviolent. No, I wasn't,
because I had known violence several times. A cop had threatened to kill me on
280 in Birmingham, a cop had threatened to kill me in Macon County and a white
man had gotten his gun on me in Decatur when I was trying to buy gasoline. In
instances, they said I didn't know how to talk to white folks. I had gotten
lost in Lowndes County. I was conducting citizenship and voting classes for the
Southern Branch of the National Urban League and we had a standing operating
procedure and that was if you got lost out there on those country roads and
couldn't find your way out, look for the worse house on the road and go
there and get directions, because that would be the house occupied by black
folk. Well, one night I saw such a
house and I went up on the porch. The mistake was there was a single light bulb
on the porch and that should have warned me that blacks hadn't electrified
in that area, but I knocked on the door and this white man came to the door and
he said, "What you want Nigger?" I quickly made me up a name and an excuse. I
told him I was an insurance man and that I was looking for this fellow. He said,
"Nigger, there ain't no such nigger around here." I backed off the porch
because you see in those circumstances you learn that you don't walk away,
you back away, for if you walk away and you get shot, you get shot in the back,
you see, so that you have done a crime and you're trying to get away and
you got stopped. So, I didn't get back to that area. I never completed my
task either because I rode around until I found my way out to my county and
headed on home.
You know, I was saying to someone that I may be the only black person in
Alabama who has been called a black George Wallace. It was in Lowndes County. I
was down there speaking in Hayneville, Alabama to a group of black folk I was
trying to get registered and all and a reporter/photographer for the State
Sovereignty Commission was following us around and so he showed up, camera in
hand. I wasn't talking to him. I was doing the rap, as they say, with the
black folk assembled. He turned to me and he shook his finger at me and said that I was
nothing but a black George Wallace, and I used profanity and he left. I asked
the Lord to forgive the use of those words, which I had not used in a mighty
long time.
Now for us, we elected our first blacks to office in 1964 in Macon County, two
members of the city council and one county commissioner. We had tried to elect
earlier, before we got a majority of the vote, a member of the Board of
Education. We had gone
to Notasulga and mailed the postcards there to encourage people to vote for her,
Jessie Parkhurst Guzman, author of the book I mentioned. We mailed one card back
to Tuskegee and that one card was not delivered so we knew that the postmaster
in Notasulga had destroyed the mail and we put Washington on them because we
knew what they had done. They would never do that again, but we didn't win
the seat either. In 1964, we were moving so well with elected officials that the
decision was made that we would not try to take control of the government but
share the government, black and white. But a group rose up to challenge the old
pioneer leaders on the grounds that we were out of church, but we would come
back and our way prevailed. The following election, in 1968, I was elected
unanimously to the city council and unanimously by the council to be the first
black mayor pro tern, and then for eight weeks I became the first black to serve
as mayor of Tuskegee without being elected. I was interim and I also became a
black judge for a day. I handled one case to save the city money. It was a case
of an alcoholic who came to town because he had been put on a bus and sent to
Tuskegee. I put him on a bus and sent him to Montgomery. Do you have questions?
Moderator: Does anyone have questions?
Q: You said that ...
A: We won the election over that candidate.
Q: Was there any specific turning point where Judge Frank Johnson sort of turned?
A: Judge Frank Johnson got his wrists slapped by the Supreme Court of the United
States when they remanded the voting rights case to him and told him to issue a
ruling on it and so we got a good ruling out of him. He is the one who carried
through that the
Board of Registrars must register all qualified Negroes who were as qualified as
voters already on the list. When the Board of Registrars received the court
order permitting the Justice Department to examine the records, they put a sign
up saying that there would be no registration because the office had been
invaded by the "Injustice Department." They resigned and we kept trying to get
new registrars appointed. No white person would accept an appointment to the
Board of Registrars so we offered our own registrars to them and Frank Johnson
issued a ruling that they were to have functioning registrars. He would send in
federal registrars and so under that threat they came back and they had to
gradually register a backlog of over 170 black folk, all of whom had been qualified.
Moderator: Any more questions?
Q: (inaudible)
A: No. We always figured, you see, in these southern courts your district judges
and your appellate judges are southerners and they had to be brought around by
the Supreme Court. I would guess that no judge likes to be continuously reversed
if he has aspirations for elevation in the federal judiciary and so eventually
Frank Johnson became very favorable for us. The same thing happened in South
Carolina with Judge Wright. I was scheduled to be a litigant to desegregate the
School of Law at the University of South Carolina, I'm a South Carolina
person, but I got into a fight and they tested me and decided that I was a bit
too volatile to talk about desegregating anything. And so I lost my chance for
that history.
Q: Professor Toland, could you tell us a little bit about events in Tuskegee
after the Lee versus Macon County court case desegregated the schools in Tuskegee.
A: The Lee versus Macon case was a case that involved first of all twelve black
youngsters, I think eventually thirteen attended the school. We got Lee versus
Macon, which we financed through the Tuskegee Civic Association. We got it
declared to be a class action suit and then to make the ruling in the case
applicable to other school districts in the state if they were similarly
situated and once we won the case and Judge Johnson ordered the admission of
these students, George Wallace sent in state troopers and closed the school. So
we got Judge Johnson to order the black students who would have gone to the
school placed in the white school in Notasulga and what eventually happened to
Tuskegee school is that arson destroyed the building where the classes were held
that had the black student center. It was done at night. Blacks were not there.
Judge Johnson ordered those students displaced in Tuskegee to be bused to
Notasulga, the school there, and of course a year later all of the whites pulled
out of the school and you were operating a school for twelve or thirteen black
youngsters. After they burned the building, these kids had no school. They had
to be put in a school in Notasulga. Maybe it was a good thing because the school
burned in those areas and we got instant urban renewal on the school because
under court order they had to provide a school and so they built a new facility
at the place where they had burned it down. But the cross burnings were at work
in the county. Several whites that cautioned that we should make an effort to
heal the community found some properties of theirs burned. We had two blacks,
who were businessmen, and their businesses were burned to the ground. One of
them was a shopping center owned by a black family and they burned that. The
other was a store across from campus. You see the vacant spot there. That's
where another school used to
stand. It was during the boycott years and we were not trading downtown. We were
trading with these grocers, so they burned them out and we had to trade in
Auburn and in Montgomery. We were running transfers of people into Auburn and
into Montgomery to trade. Tragedy would befall one of the students who was
involved in that desegregation. He never quite recovered when all of the
accolade died down. One thing that desegregating school situations developed was
that we made heroes out of these persons. They were ordinary people and we made
heroes out of them. We paraded them around, elevated them to programs and all,
what you have done to serve your black community and all, and it was a little
bit too much for them. One day, there was a student of mine in Bible study, and
he would come up with things out of his reading. He was reading stuff about how
you reduce the pressure on population by wars to kill some of the people off and
so he bought into it and he killed himself. He reduced the pressure on the
population by committing suicide. This was the only tragedy. I offered our
daughters as one of the persons and my wife said to me, "I'm sacrificing a
husband. I will not sacrifice a daughter." She was sacrificing a husband because
I got these threats and when I would come home at night, since my house fronted
a well traveled street, I would have to drive into the back of my house and go
underneath the house and wait until traffic died down and then come up the back
way into my house. After dark, I could not use my living room because the house
had been shot into and there was fear that if I used my living room after dark I
could get shot. I couldn't take a gun because I couldn't get a permit.
And besides, if I had a permit I wouldn't know who was threatening me
anyway, and so I survived it.
Q: Can I ask you to comment a little bit more about the question answered
earlier, the challenge of young people to Mr. Gomillion? Who exactly were the
young people and might you also comment about the changing student body at
Tuskegee, the impact of SNCC, for example. Where does Macon County stand today
in reference to the struggles and the hopes that you had 34 years ago?
A: Some of these persons had come in from the outside to work among the youth
there in Tuskegee. They had been caught up in Stokely Carmichael and the Black
Panther movement. They came into Tuskegee with a source of money, for one thing,
and the students were there and they believed that the students were ready to be
radicalized and so they worked in that direction with the students. We had some
demonstrations on campus. We had growing out of that students to rampage in the
hall of the main camps building, and I was in there when they were rampaging but
when I started out knowing what they were doing I decided to spend the night in
my office. I never went back to that office at night again. What they did was
they cut the fire hoses and turned on all of the water and locked the front door
of the building, wouldn't let faculty out. They locked the trustees up in
Dorothy Hall, they had food fights all over the place and somebody called the
state troopers to come in to quell the disturbance there at Dorothy Hall. So,
the movement for the young people turned a little bit away from Dr. King. King
was not the hero to some of these students, Malcolm X was.
Q: What about your reflections on where you are now in reference to your struggle?
A: I tell you, with our students now, I really wish they were a bit more
proactive. I wish they thought of something other than their own SUV's and
their walkie-talkies and that
sort of thing. I really wish they would be more proactive. They're just not
interested. We have a few students that I talk to because they don't study
enough to logically analyze anything. Some of them study in one direction. I
love sweet potatoes, but I don't want sweet potatoes three times a day.
Some of them are reading the same stuff, you see, so they are not giving any
kind of variety to their learning experiences.
Q: You mentioned a very lengthy process for these legal appeals, which I imagine
took a great deal of effort and time. Please elaborate on the support. Did the
NAACP help in this?
A: When we brought the Justice Department in, the Justice Department paid for
those cases. Where we had our own attorneys and the attorneys of the NAACP, the
NAACP financed the case where the NAACP was thrown out of state. The NAACP
financed that case, but people were generous in their giving to the Tuskegee
Civic Association. During the course of what we called the crusades, when we had
weekly meetings, we had built twelve collection boxes (twelve locked collection
boxes). Every week people would put money through the slot in the collection box
and then we would go back to the office, unlock the boxes, count the money and
bank the money, so that we were able to finance Lee versus Macon, for example,
from our own resources. We instituted what we called a life membership. It was a
cheap life membership because you could become a life member for $25.00 and a
lot of people joined life membership and put their kids in. I ended up with five
life memberships. I wanted my kids to get off on the right track.
Q: I want to ask a question about the VA Hospital ......
A: The test of Tuskegee Civic Association was a nonpartisan organization, and
then persons from the Veterans Administration Hospital could work in the units
of Tuskegee Civic Association. Remember, for the NAACP we called them action
committees, political action, education and that sort of thing; but when the
NAACP was forced out of the state we concentrated the work of the NAACP into the
Tuskegee Civic Association. We called the Civic Association's committees
education committees so that the persons who worked at the Veteran's
Administration Hospital could be active in the group. Now, we had teachers in
the movement. Alabama legislature passed a law removing the teachers from Macon
County from the tenure track. When they did that, what we did was move all
teachers out of leadership positions in the Tuskegee Civic Association so that
they would not lose their tenure or their retirement. We adjusted to that. The
NAACP on campus, we called it the student forum and then we did the same thing
we were doing when it was the NAACP, except we called it education. We did the
same thing with the Tuskegee Civic Association. We now doubled our
responsibilities because we took on the work of the NAACP. Someone had asked me
earlier about Lee versus Macon. Anthony Lee, I think, was born to do what he
did. His father was Detroit Lee, who was a pioneer in the Tuskegee Civic
Association and then he decided to run for probate judge in the democratic
primary and I warned him that he would violate the Hatch Act by doing so, but
Detroit Lee had challenged many things before and this time he challenged the
Hatch Act and lost. He lost the election and he lost his job.
Closing: We are going to have refreshments in a minute or two and I remind you
that our next session is two weeks from tonight.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
uah_civr_000010
Title
A name given to the resource
Digitized VHS tape of "Turmoil in Tuskegee".
Description
An account of the resource
Frank Toland is the speaker in this lecture given at University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2001-11-15
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
1:19:04
Language
A language of the resource
en
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Alabama A & M University
University of Alabama in Huntsville
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
2000-2009
Subject
The topic of the resource
Toland, Frank, 1920-2010
Civil rights movements--Southern states--History--20th century
Tuskegee (Ala.)
Macon County (Ala.)
Segregation
African Americans--Legal status, laws, etc.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Lectures
Moving Image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
MP4
Has Format
A related resource that is substantially the same as the pre-existing described resource, but in another format.
<a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/392">Turmoil in Tuskegee - Speaker: Frank Toland - Transcription of Tape 10, 2003</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965
<a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/404">VHS Tape of: Turmoil in Tuskegee - Speaker: Frank Toland, 2001-11-15. Box 2, Tape 10</a>
University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama