2 20 24 https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/32/13350/SelmatoMontgomery_Tape9_File10.pdf 95d07b9379d75e861f0fee6f5e0668f4 PDF Text Text The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Selma to Montgomery, 1965 Speakers: John Lewis, Mary Stanton 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 Jose 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 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University UAH at 7 pm. The featured lecturer will be Frank Toland of the Department of History ofTuskeegee University. Let me also mention tonight, that the last two lectures November 29 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. 2 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 your 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 3 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 Liuzza. 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. dedication to writing. Ms. Mary Stanton, thank you for your 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 down to 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 4 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 electives white, so that the segregationists couldn't get voted out of office. And number two, to keep the juries 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 and point Governor George Wallace refused to intervene. Ace Carter, who was his special assistant, was an outspoken white supremacist. He 5 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University headed an organization called the Official Klu Klux Klan of the Confederacy. And then there were the sheriffs O'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 6 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 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 atier 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 7 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 8 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 9 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 detern1ine 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 from 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 10 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 Liuzza 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." assured that council that he would meet personally with Jim Liuzzo. Girardin He said, "He wanted to spare the Liuzza children from embarrassment." That quotation was picked up 11 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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. Aspirations were being cast on her sanity, her morality, and her sense of responsibility in going to Selma. Girardin's statements said that ora 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, 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 12 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 !960'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. Spend 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 13 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 an 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 nonviolent 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 14 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 in 1964. 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 15 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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, 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. 1 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 16 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 17 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 l 940's and l 950'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 with tons of 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 18 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 1940's and in the l 950's 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. 19 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 white only, and not for colored. 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 20 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 passerby 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 21 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M 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 ofus 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, Georgia, 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 22 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University . of the immediate Boynton in the Dallas County Voters League, working with several ministers and others, trying to create a 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 chnrch that 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 cell 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 23 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 FDLC, 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 24 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 pollliteracy 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 I&'\ 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 25 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 17 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 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 part 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; 26 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 FDLC 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 Jose 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. 27 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 Jose Williams looked down below and he saw this water. He said, "John, can you swim." I said, "No, Jose. 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, "Move up that van," and Jose 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 median said, "John, you should say something to the audience." I stood up and said," I do not understand it, how President 28 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 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 a poster 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." 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 29 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 ____ . 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 that night traveling between Selma and Montgomery, and Reverend James Reed was beaten almost to death on the night of March 91\ after ____ crossed that bridge and later died at the local hospital in Birmingham. The congress passed the Voting Rights Act, finally to 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 30 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 ll th , and I said it a few days after September ll th , 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 ofus 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 wholes 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. 31 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 blast. 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 32 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 ifwe do not exercise, all ofus, 33 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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. 34 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 ·vant 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 ofrevolution. 35 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 36 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 37 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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? 38 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 39 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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? 40 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 41 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 cochair. 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 42 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University anmversary 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 43 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 AfricanAmericans 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 AfricanAmerican 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 44 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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 ofus, 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 45 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 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. 46 � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965 Relation A related resource <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> Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965 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_000024 Title A name given to the resource Digitized transcription of VHS tape of "Selma to Montgomery, 1965". Description An account of the resource U.S. Rep. John Lewis and Mary Stanton are the speakers in this lecture given at Alabama A&M University. 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, Huntsville, Alabama Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-11-08 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 2000-2009 Subject The topic of the resource 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. Type The nature or genre of the resource Lectures Text Transcript Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Print Has Format A related resource that is substantially the same as the pre-existing described resource, but in another format. 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 and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama 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. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 46 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <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 Box 1, File 10</a> University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/32/13351/TurmoilinTuskegee_Tape10_File11.pdf 4cfc6a1444a9f0058d35372e7aefb0c6 PDF Text Text The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville Turmoil in Tuskegee Speaker: Frank Toland 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 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 Leaming 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 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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 AfricanAmerican 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. himself to community service. For over two decades Mr. Toland has dedicated 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 2 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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. D. 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 3 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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 bum 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, 4 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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 R. Carter of the NAACP office showed up to defend us and the NAACP, he asked Judge Jones to excuse 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, 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 5 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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. 6 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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 ifwe 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 7 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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 Peck 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 if 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 false profession. 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 8 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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, 'Tve 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 9 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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 10 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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 11 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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 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 12 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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 th 15 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 Doy le 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 13 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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 m 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. "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 14 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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 stand 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, 'Tm 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 15 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH ~ University of Alabama in Huntsville 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. 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 brought 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 when 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 16 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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 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 Lawrence 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 17 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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 Negro?" 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 111 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. 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 18 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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 111 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. 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 would prevail. 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 19 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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. 20 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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 21 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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. 22 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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 23 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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 ..... . 24 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - University of Alabama in Huntsville 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. 25 � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965 Relation A related resource <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> Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965 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_000025 Title A name given to the resource Digitized transcription of 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. 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, Huntsville, Alabama Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-11-15 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. Civil rights demonstrations Type The nature or genre of the resource Lectures Text Transcript Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Print Has Format A related resource that is substantially the same as the pre-existing described resource, but in another format. 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 and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama 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. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 25 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/392">Turmoil in Tuskegee - Speaker: Frank Toland - Transcription of Tape 10, 2003 Box 1, File 11</a> University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/32/13352/TheCivilRightsMovementinAlabama_Tape12_File13.pdf 8a5846a315cf189d5e149efd65936980 PDF Text Text The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama (A Look Back and a Look Ahead) Speaker: Aldon Morris Welcome to the last session of a series of public lectures on the Civil Rights Movement. Yes, this is the last session. The 15 lecture series included some of the most noted figures of the Civil Rights Movement. They have rotated between UAH and A&M and have lasted the entire fall semester. A&M and UAH are to be commended for planning and implementing such an excellent collaborative and historical lecture series. The planning committee has worked very hard to make sure each lecture was carried out as scheduled. Many times we see the finished product and we forget about all of the background and the preparation that has gone into making each program a success. In expression of our appreciation for all the hours of planning and implementation, let us give the planning committee another hand of applause. Attendance at the lectures has been excellent. People attending the lectures seem to listen attentively as the presenters gave first-hand accounts of the major development of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama from 1954 to 1965. For some of us, the lectures are a source of new knowledge or additional knowledge. For others, the lectures cause us to reflect on the past and have hope for the future. The lecture this evening by Dr. Aldon Morris entitled, The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama (A Look Back and a Look Ahead) will be dynamic and thought provoking. Dr. Morris will be introduced by Dr. Glenna Colclough, Chair of the Sociology Department at UAH, but before the introduction of the speaker I would like to acknowledge the sponsors that made the lecture series possible. We have the Alabama I �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Humanities Foundation. We have Marion Carter who is the associate director of this organization in the audience. Please stand. The Huntsville Times, Mevatec Corporation, DESE Research, Alabama Representative Laura Hall, Alabama A&M University Office of the President, Office of the Provost. We have Dr. James Hicks who is provost in the audience, A&M, State Black Archives Research Center and Museum, Title III Telecommunications and Distance Learning Center, Office of Student Development, Honors Center, Sociology/Social Work, History and Political Science at Alabama A&M University. We have the University of Alabama Office of the President. We have Dr. Frank Franz, President of UAH, in the audience, Office of Provost UAH, Dr. Fran Johnson. History Forum Bankhead Foundation, Sociology Social Issues Foundation, Humanities Center, Division of Continuing Education, Honors Program, Office of Multicultural Affairs, Office of Student Affairs and UAH Copy Center. The reception this evening is sponsored by the social work department's undergraduate and graduate student organization. So again, thank you for attending this important historical lecture series. Thank you very much. Introduction: I am Glenna Colclough from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. We are so pleased to have Professor Aldon Morris with us tonight for the last lecture series on the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama and also for the Sociology Department Social Issues Symposium, which has also worked on this particular lecture this evening. We are honored to have with us one of the most distinguished sociologists in the country and foremost sociologist of the Civil Rights Movement. 2 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Aldon Douglas Morris was born and spent his early years in the Mississippi Delta before moving to Chicago as a young adolescent where he began his very distinguished educational career. In 1972, he earned an associate's degree in sociology from OliveHarvey College in Chicago. In 1974, he graduated cum laude with a bachelor's degree in sociology from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois and attended graduate school at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, where he earned an MA in 1977 and a Ph.D. in 1980, both in sociology. Professor Morris' first teaching position was at the University of Michigan where he began as an assistant professor in 1980. He left Michigan in 1988 and became an associate professor and associate chair of the department of sociology there in Michigan and then in 1988, Professor Morris returned to the greater Chicago area accepting a position at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He has been a full professor of sociology there since 1992 and was chair of the department from 1992 to 1997. At Northwestern, Professor Morris has also been associated with the Institute for Policy Research. Aldon Morris has been the recipient of countless awards and honors. Among his numerous publications, his book, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, is generally recognized now as a true classic in the field of social movement. He has won many awards including The Gustavus Myers Award, the Distinguished Contributions to Scholarship for the American Sociological Association and the Annual Scholarly Achievement Award of the North Central Sociological Association. The book was also selected by choice as one of the outstanding academic books of 1984. In 1986, Professor Morris became the President of the Association of Black Sociologists, a post he held for 3 3 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University years. He was the consultant for the famous PBS series, Eyes on the Prize, in the mid1980's and was also associate editor the American Sociological Review from 1983 to 1986. Over the years, Dr. Morris has been very busy organizing numerous conferences and speaking all over the country and his work has been published and reprinted in numerous places. In 1995, he received the Certificate of Leadership Award from the Association of Black Sociologists and in 1997, he held the Martin Luther King, Jr., Caesar Chavez, Rosa Parks Visiting Professorship at the University of Michigan. In recent years, Professor Morris has continued his research on the Civii Rights Movement. In addition, his research includes the study of the National Baptist Convention funded through the Hartford Seminary as well as the study of The Black Chicago Renaissance Movement. Tonight, Aldon Morris is here to offer us some reflections on the Civil Rights Movement and his talk is entitled, The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama (A Look Back and a Look Ahead). Please join me in welcoming Dr. Aldon Morris. Aldon Morris: Well, good evening. First of all, it is a real pleasure and honor to me to be here. I want to thank each and every member of the planning committee. Knowing something about organizing in social movements and so forth, I know that nothing never just takes place out of the blue, a lot of work went into it. So, I want to just recognize the people who put this all together. I would say that one of the reasons why I decided to come to Huntsville is because I think that during this period of history it is very important for us to revisit the Civil Rights Movement and what has happened in this country in terms of race relations 4 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University and so one. Hopefully, in my talk, I will give you some sense that it is not just important as a romantic journey into the past to revisit the glory days as they were but to really think about race and race inequality today. So, then it is a pleasure for me to address you and to speak on Alabama's role in the Civil Rights Movement and where we need to go from here. One simply cannot think about the Civil Rights Movement without thinking about the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott where 50,000 African-Americans refused to ride the buses for over a year. Certainly, we cannot think about the Civil Rights Movement and not think about the major confrontation in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. We cannot think about the Civil Rights Movement and not think about the Selma confrontation in 1965. When we think about the Birmingham confrontation in 1963, what is going to come out of that of course is going to be the 1964 Civil Rights Act that is going to take the legal teeth out the Jim Crow order. Then, of course, the 1965 Selma confrontation was the major struggle that ended up with blacks ceasing the franchise and being able to vote, which they had not been able to do since the reconstruction period. So, then, clearly Alabama is a good place to talk about the Civil Rights Movement. Now, I want to add a personal note here because I think it would provide some kind of context for what I am going to say. I was born in Saltwater, Mississippi in 1949. I cannot believe that I am this old, but it happens. I knew the Jim Crow system first hand. I drunk from colored water fountains. I attended segregated inferior schools. I remembered that when school began in the fall that almost all of the black students would disappear for 3 months and they went out into the white man's cotton field. I can still recall very 5 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University clearly how we had to walk a mile to the colored school passmg by a very new sophisticated looking white school and walk to the colored school and then receive the torn up hand-me-down books that the white students no longer had any use for. I remember when whites called our father boy and called our mother auntie and referred to all of other inhabitants of the black community as niggers. As a young boy, I loved ice cream. I remember having to walk to the Dairy Creme and then having to go round to the back of the Dairy Creme and have the ice cream cone handed to me out of a little hole in the wall in the back of the Dairy Creme. As a 16-year-old boy, I was gripped with fear when Emmett Till, 14 years old from Chicago, was lynched in Mississippi. In short, what I am saying is that I experienced the prison of Jim Crow first hand. Though more formerly stated, by the l 950's, southern whites in Alabama and throughout the south had established a very comprehensive system of domination over blacks. It is what I have called a tripartite system of domination in the sense that it controlled blacks economically, politically and personally. Economically, blacks were highly concentrated in the lowest paying and dirtiest job that the rural areas in the city had to offer. Politically, southern blacks were oppressed because they were systematically excluded from the political process. They could not serve as jurors and they really had no input into the governing process. blacks were controlled personally because the system of racial segregation denied them personal freedom and by personal freedom I am talking about something as simple as being able to urinate in a decent toilet. I am talking about the kind of personal freedom that whites enjoyed on a routine basis. 6 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University So, racial segregation itself was an arrangement that set blacks off from the rest of humanity and labeled them as an inferior race. Thus, the monumental question that confronted southern blacks at the second half of the 20th century was simply this, how can a relatively powerless group overthrow this tripartite system of domination. It is a system of domination that is backed by legislation, by custom, by terror and by the iron fist of the southern state. There was a darkening path. How do you overthrow this kind of system without very much power? Now, the great abolitionist, Frederic Douglas had already given a clue as to what has to happen when he declared that he who would be free must himself strike the first blow. The Civil Rights Movement was really that first blow in terms of overthrowing the Jim Crow order. Now, the Alabama Movement struck a blow heard throughout America and around the world. So, let me just present to you my thesis or really what my basic argument is here. It is this, that the local movement in Alabama and throughout the south encompassed the organizational and political framework that were the culminating forces that really ended up withdrawing the Jim Crow order. To understand how the Civil Rights Movement overthrew racial segregation in America, you must come to grips with what I talk about as the local movement. When you think about these local movements, they did at least 3 things, one is that they organized and mobilized the black masses. Two, they developed the strategy of mass nonviolence direct action and three, they persuaded the people to abandon their passivity and fear and to boldly disrupt the Jim Crow order until it would collapse. Then, to simplify, I am going to focus tonight on the 1963 Birmingham confrontation. It is important to keep in mind that the same dynamics 7 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University that unfolded in Birmingham in 1963 also unfolded in many local black communities throughout the south. When I first started studying the Civil Rights Movement, I was struck by how previous accounts attributed how the Jim Crow order got overthrown. They attributed the victory to the Supreme Court, 1954 Brown versus Board decision or they would attribute it to the actions of the Kennedy and Johnson administration and to the actions of sympathetic, northern white liberals. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was given some credit. He was usually viewed as a charismatic, black Moses who single-handedly waved the magic wand that freed his people, but as I dove into the archives and interviewed key participants of this pivotal movement, I developed a very different view of how it all happened. I came to recognize that even though the courts were important and so were the Kennedy and Johnson administration as well as sympathetic whites, but these were not the critical factors responsible for overthrowing the Jim Crow order. They were secondary factors, which were triggered by moral and deeper primary factors. Then, in my view and in my research, the primary factors were the local movements that were developed following the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. These local movements had a definite character. First, they were deeply rooted in the black church. Many of them were led by black ministers. Second, they were committed to mass nonviolent direct action that directly confronted the forces of racial segregation. Third, they were associated with the charismatic leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Now, why was the black church so important m this context? I think it is important to talk about the black church historically here but also I think it gets a bum rap a lot for what it fails to do and I think there is a lot of criticism for the black church 8 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University and we may get into it later. I think that we also need to also recognize the historic role that it displayed in the black community. The black church was so crucial to the movement because it was a mass base, indigenous institution respected by black people. Its ministers constituted the bulk of black leadership. The church was largely free of white control and could act independently if it had the courage to do so. During the days of racial segregation, you could not think of any other organization or institution within the black community that was as free to act independently if it had the courage to do so with the church. The black church functioned as a repository of black culture that housed and nourished the community's sacred beliefs and cultural expressions, especially black music. In studying the Civil Rights Movement, I remember talking to a minister about the role of music, one of the major leaders of this other movement. We could not have been able to mobilize that movement and the whole people together if we did not have the music. Church services are the black community's communication network. You go to church and you learn what is happening in the community. You learn the gossip. You learned other kinds of important information. Finally, the church was the community's organizational framework through which important goals could be pursued in a systematic fashion. Because of all of these functions of the black church, it really had no rival in the black community in terms of its importance and this is why the sociologist, E. Franklin Frazier, referred to the black church as a nation within a nation. It falls then that the black church would become the institution on their cultural backbone of the Civil Rights movement. 9 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University The strength and importance of local movements were determined by the degree that the community's churches became involved in the movement in terms of providing a mass of people willing to engage in protest, providing the movement with leadership, with finances and with the resolve to face danger despite the possible consequences. Now, these movements were crucial because they became committed to engaging in mass, nonviolent direct action. When you think about the Jim Crow order and for those of you who are old enough to remember, you know that the Jim Crow order was nothing to be played with. Those who dared to violate its rules could expect awful consequences including being fired from your job, being jailed, being beaten and at worst being hung from the limb of a tree. It was a system designed to make people cowards and to say yes boss to white people who despised them. It was a system that was designed to exploit black people economically and to dominate them politically. It was a system that thrived on keeping black people educationally ignorant and timid. Jim Crow then was dedicated to producing meek, black people who were afraid to rebel against one of the cruelest systems of domination known to human beings. As I said earlier, it was backed by guns, southern states and by terror groups like the Klan. So, then the job of local movements was to produce a fort that could overcome the power of white segregationists. The great achievement of the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott was its revelation that there existed a method of social protest that could boldly confront the Jim Crow system and win. That method was nonviolent direct action. First of all, most blacks, like most other Americans, believed in self-defense rather than turning the other cheek. To 10 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University have people in mass to function nonviolently was a great, great achievement. It was a method that had to be taught to black people. I know at one time I was in Turkey and I asked folks there about what they thought about the Civil Rights Movement and they said the blacks were peaceful and they would sing all this beautiful music and all. I was thinking I really know black people and it was a very complicated thing to get them to accept this whole idea of engaging in nonviolent direct action. It was a unique form of combat that could be used in a way to really challenge the Jim Crow system. I often think about what if King and others had chosen to try to overthrow Jim Crow violently at that time. How might the response have been very different? More than likely, it would have been crushed immediately by the power of the state and other groups acting violently against it. I would argue then that when you think about the Civil Rights Movement one of the thing very important to recognize is that generation formed a taxable problem. It said, we want to overthrow segregation. We do not have that much power. We do not have the guns. We do not have the state behind us. We do not have the media behind us. What do we do then? They came up with this idea of engaging in massive, nonviolence direct action. Another very important thing about that movement was the creation and the development of Martin Luther King Jr., as a charismatic leader because leaders are important in a movement. Now, King became a charismatic tool of the black community and of the Civil Rights Movement. What do I mean by charismatic tool? That means anytime he went to a movement, say he goes to Montgomery, Birmingham or to Selma, immediately the focus of the nation was on that community. He had the eyes of the world 11 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University on where he went and the black community really never had that kind of person. So, that gave the black community something that it had never had. One of the things in studying social movement that I think is an important point for all of those who wish to engage in social change by participating in social movements is there is never such a thing as one leader that leads the social movement. The data shows that Martin Luther King Jr. did not create the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil Rights Movement created Dr. King in the sense that there were already large numbers of people in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 who had already decided that they were going to have a boycott. Rosa Parks was not just some tired old lady. She was an activist. She worked in the NAACP and working in the NAACP in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 was like working in the Black Panther Party in 1966 or 1967. So, when they decided that they were gong to have this boycott, they looked around and they said who should be our spokesperson. Then, they said there is this good speaker over at Dexter Church, Reverend King. He is pretty eloquent and he has a Ph.D. They said, let's try him. So, that is how King became the leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. From there, he went on to grow into this major charismatic tool. I made this point because for those who are interested in social change to have the idea that there are somewhat Moses type of leaders that are going to come along and wave a magic wand and free people is just not the way it happens. So, then, we have a development in the south where now black people have a method, nonviolent direct action, to go and confront the system of domination directly. Now, you have a charismatic leader who can bring attention to those movements, not only domestically but 12 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University bring attention to the whole world as to what is happening to black people in a country that is selling itself as the beacon of democracy. We have to remember that another very important contact during this period was that America was locked in the Cold War. It was in a colossal battle with the Soviet Union. The cold would be the super power. What the United States was doing internationally was telling all of the newly, independent nations of Africa, Asia, and South America is that you should come and align yourself with us because those communists in the Soviet Union are a totalitarian government. They are totalitarian; we are democratic. So, what this did for the merging Civil Rights Movement was once these local movements confronted the system of segregation, then the leaders of the Third World looked at America and said, is this a democracy? Is that how you treat young black children in the streets and so forth? So, then there was this international contact. This was also very important because with the confrontations in the street it really caused a nightmare for the American Foreign Policy. I believe that ( and this is why it is so important to talk about the fact that there is no one leader of a mass movement), the confrontation in Birmingham in 1963 where King was triumphant would never have happened without Fred Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Fred Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights built a strong local movement over in Birmingham. He had fought the system of segregation in Birmingham for 7 years before King decided to come to Birmingham in 1963. In terms of Fred Shuttlesworth, let me just give you a sense of the kind of person that he was. Fred Shuttlesworth is one of the few 13 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University people and I have talked with him a lot. I would say he is my favorite civil rights leader really from that period because this man really conquered the fear of death. For him, the destruction of racial segregation became more important than his own life. That is why in 1956 when he organized the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. He cried in this manner, "Now, when you organize to fight segregation that means you can never be still. We are going to wipe it out or it is going to wipe us out. Somebody may have to die." Shuttlesworth was clear that he, himself, was ready to die for the cause. He maintained, "I tried to get killed in Birmingham. I tried to widow my wife and my children for God's sake. I believed that scripture, which says whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. I had no fear." So, this was the attitude that was incomprehensible to Bohr Conner and I would also say to a lot of black people as well. A system of oppression cannot endure for long when it is persistently attacked by leaders willing to die for freedom and one who is able to instill that spirit in the hearts of the oppressed. That was the character of the leadership that took place in Birmingham. Let me also emphasize this once again, I will not take your time to go through this, but there were literally hundreds of leaders, activists and organizers who were part of the local movement in Birmingham. Now, I argued a little earlier about how important the black church was, saying that was where most of the participants came from, that is how the black mass organized, that is how they financed the movement, passed the plate and raised the money and so forth. You know something that was interesting during the Civil Rights Movement and in Birmingham is that the churches who supported the movement earlier were hardly 14 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Working class black churches but relatively poor Black churches. So, when I say the black church, I want to be a little careful there because at that time there were about 400 black churches in Birmingham, Alabama. The movement that really produced the major confrontations in Birmingham was organized by about 40 working class black churches. The other black leaders or other ministers were accommodation leaders. They had deals with the white power structure. They were afraid to stand up with the people and so on. The middle class and more prosperous black churches were rather late in coming to the movement and supporting it. Now, I want to briefly mention why it is that Birmingham in 1963 ended up being the major ____ that it was. It was because when you think of what power is. The famous sociologist Max Vaper defined power in this way. He says it is the ability to realize one's own will despite resistance. In Birmingham, as in many other local southern cities and rural areas, blacks have gone to the white power structure and said look, can you desegregate the buses. Can we have some black policeman? Can we get some school desegregation? I mean the Brown decision was passed 3 or 4 years ago and nothing has happened and the white power structure always responded by saying, look you know we cannot do that. Segregation is the law of the land. So, what we have here is black leaders who are without power. They are going and they are pleading and begging the white power structure to implement change. The power of the Civil Rights Movement is this. How do you generate the ability to realize your own will despite resistance? Now, what nonviolence resistance ... This is why Martin Luther King was a radical and this is why he was not this kind of peaceful lover that he is portrayed as now. What he understood and 15 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University what the people understood at that point in history is that the only way that segregation was going to change is that the entire Jim Crow order had to be disrupted. Therefore, in 1963, number one, they implemented an economic boycott of the downtown area. All black people in Birmingham, 90 percent, refused to shop during the movement in Birmingham and it was during Easter season. I know that most black people in this audience would know this. I do not know how many white people know. For black people during Easter, it is second only to Christmas in terms of black people shopping. Everybody has to have a new hat and you have to have new clothes to go to church and so forth. So, then, the white business people in Birmingham expected a great deal of business during the Easter season, but black people refused to buy anything and because of all of the political uncertainties that was going on in Birmingham, white people were afraid to go downtown and shop. So, number one, the business community in Birmingham was brought to a halt. There was no money being made in Birmingham during the movement in 1963. Also, they mobilized thousands of people to march through the streets. What did this do? It did not only make a statement, but it tied those streets up. You could not have any cars, trucks or goods being delivered during this period because the city was completely tied up. One of the ways in which, of course, the power structure dealt with all of these demonstrators and agitators as they call them is that they put them in jail. Then, the movement in Birmingham had a plan for that. What if we fill the jails up and there is nowhere to put anybody else? You would still have thousands of demonstrators coming to demonstrate and the jails would be full; they were able to achieve that. My point here is that what mass, nonviolent direct action did during 16 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University this period is that it created a total crisis in places like Birmingham, in places like Selma and in other places. It brought business to a halt. It brought political activity to a halt. It created a crisis. It generated power in this sense that then the capitalists who are into making money would say, well, my goodness; this cannot go on. This cannot continue. So, then they started putting pressure on the political leaders saying you need to go talk to those folks in the movement. These leaders of the white community were now coming to the movement leaders saying what do we have to do for you all to stop all of these demonstrations and tying up business and tying up the political system. What can we do? You have to take down the signs of segregation and so on. The bottom line then is that such a crisis was created through the use of nonviolent direct action that the system them had to grant many of the demands of the movement. It is the way in which the Jim Crow order was overthrown. Because of the national and international cns1s created by the Birmingham movement, the White House concluded that they had to act. Attorney Robert F. Kennedy studied the map of the United States where pins showed trouble spots multiplying daily. One of the other things was that the Birmingham Movement was organized so magnificently that literally thousands of local movements grew up in cities all across the nation. They called themselves the Birmingham-style movements. They were styled after Birmingham. So, what you have now is the crisis that is just multiplying throughout the nation. John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, the attorney general, ended up in the war room. They were looking. They had little pins on all this spots where protests were breaking out. So, the attorney general concluded that the federal government could no 17 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University longer run around the country like a firearm putting out brush fires. He told his brother, President John F. Kennedy, that they had to correct basic injustices. The President responded with a national address in which he explained that now the time has come for this nation to fulfill its promise. The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city, state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them. Then, on July 2, 1964, John F. Kennedy signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1964 Civil Rights Act was the act that overthrew legal racial segregation. Then, of course, the 1965 confrontation in Selma was the battle that ended up causing Johnson then to introduce a Voting Rights Act and that is how black people ended up with a franchise. Now, not only did you get the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, but you had other measures like affirmative action whose goal was to bring equality between the races. Now, what I want to do is share with you the lessons that I think can be learned from the Civil Rights Movement. The first lesson to be learned from the Civil Rights Movement is that masses of people acting collectively can generate social change. I want to speak more directly to the young people in the audience. A large portion of Civi I Rights participants were young elementary, high school and college students. Indeed, as the movement progressed, black colleges and universities became second only to the black church in terms of its role in organizing and mobilizing black people to confront the Jim Crow order. Thus, young people were crucial to change that was produced by the movement. In fact, when you study social change movements through time and across space and different nations, you realize that in most of those movements the young 18 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University people who are idealists, who believe in democratic values and who believe that change can happen generally play a very, very important role in producing change within those movements. Another lesson to be learned from this pivotal movement is that it produced real change that is often not understood by younger generations of black people. Young people, imagine being in a situation where you could not vote, where you could not use a washroom, where you could not stay in a hotel, where you could not attend most colleges and universities of this nation, where you could not defend yourself when being attacked physically by whites without risking jail and the possibility of death and where you could do nothing when your father was called boy and your mother called auntie. Imagine being shut out of decent occupations and careers simply because of the color of your skin. Young people, real change occurred. The Civil Rights Movement produced real change and it is only ignorance of history that causes one to doubt that the Civil Rights Movement made a difference. Stokely Carmichael who was one of the important student leaders of the Civil Rights Movement summed it up all metaphorically when he stated that one thing is for sure, black people would never go to the back of the bus again. At the same time, I understand why young black people erroneously believe that the Civil Rights Movement did not generate major change. It is because that movement failed to bring about complete racial equality and it also generated the fears of white backlash against racial equality that rages to this day. The current, white backlash disclosed itself in the hypercritical rhetoric of color blindness and individual right rather than group right. White backlash claimed that equality had been reached and that measures like affirmative action equaled reverse discrimination against qualified whites and generally they mean 19 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University qualified white males in their view. These whites along with some strategically black supporters (like Clarence Thomas or somebody like that) claimed that the racial playing field is now equal, but the real truth and the hard data reveals a different reality. For example, look at the recent 2000 Census Data and what you will see is some of the following. If you look at each fifth of white families, it will show that each fifth of white families earn dramatically more than each fifth of black families. For example, the lowest fifth of white families on average make 15,855 dollars a year while similar situated black families earn only 8,236 dollars a year. You have the data there. The other part of it is that it does not get any better when one examines affluent whites and affluent blacks. Indeed, the top 5 percent of white families on average earn 282,017 dollars while similarsituated black families earn only 182,373 dollars. That is a whopping difference of 100,000 dollars. Moreover, social scientists have come to realize is that wealth is an even more important indicator of racial equality than is income. Wealth consists of assets such as homeownership, stocks and bonds, annuities and the like. Wealth constitutes the resources that are passed down through generations. Wealth determines which groups of families and individuals will have superior power and resources through history. Now, if we want to be honest about it, black people were in slavery for 244 years, then, Jim Crow for another two-thirds of a century, almost another 100 years. They were not earning any assets to be passed down to generations. Even black generations of today have to start pretty much anew and that is not happening in the white community in the same way. Another fact that I think that has to be confronted is that when whites argue I did not own 20 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University any slaves; I like black people. The fact of the matter is that 244 years of free labor that produced all of these resources did give whites a great amount of wealth that has been passed down to generations to this day. What a head start, what a head start, 244 years of slavery and then three quarters of a century of Jim Crow. Then, the data is clear. At each income level, whites have 5 to 10 times greater wealth than blacks. The greatest wealth inequalities are between higher income blacks and whites. So, it gets worse as you go towards the top. So, in terms of in common wealth, the racial playing field is grossly unequal. That field is a steep incline and a slippery slope for blacks and the current rhetoric of color blindness among whites is not going to change these basic facts. I want to turn to another very serious form of racial inequality in this nation and in the state of Alabama, in particular. Record numbers of black people, especially young black people, are being locked up in the nation's jails. In the year 2000, 5,051,182 were convicted felons, that is 21 percent of all blacks and 37 percent of black men were convicted felons. Now, let us turn to the state of Alabama, because out of all states, Alabama had the 6th largest incarceration rate out of all of them in 2000. Their rate was 549 persons per 100,000 residents. What does it mean for Alabama to have such a large incarceration rate? In Alabama, felony conviction leads to political disenfranchisement. Indeed, Alabama was one of the few states that disenfranchised all forms of felons including prisoners, parolees, felony probation, jailed inmate and ex-felons. In fact, when you look at the data for Alabama and across the nation, the largest number of folk who are disenfranchised because of felony convictions are actually ex-felons, people who have paid the price but still are disenfranchised. Last year in Alabama, 111,755 African- 21 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Americans were disenfranchised because of felony convictions. Out of the IO largest African-American disenfranchised populations, Alabama ranked 6th in the nation. Moreover, there 1s a large racial dysbaric in Alabama when it comes to felony convictions. The total disenfranchisement rate in Alabama was 6.75 percent but for average Americans that rate doubles the white rate at 13.97 percent. So, nationally, this means that Alabama had a higher rate of black disenfranchisement due to felons than 41 other states. The bottom line is this. This is not without consequence. Probably enough blacks in Alabama were disenfranchised to determine the final outcome of Gore-Bush presidential election. Now, this decision is even stronger when you consider all of the exfelons nationally who cannot vote. So, then, let me close by saying that the playing field between blacks and whites in this country and in Alabama is nowhere near equal. Income, wealth and equalities between the races remains staggering. A large disproportioned number of African-Americans languish in jails and are disenfranchised because of these convictions. A more, basic reality I think is that the Civil Rights Movement was able to destroy legal, racial segregation. That is a major accomplishment, but as you well know, America, Alabama and Huntsville for the most part are more racially segregated than during the days of the Civil Rights Movement. There is an article in your major paper here that shows that Huntsville has become more racially segregated in 2000 than it was in 1990. So, it is hard to argue that we are going in the right direction. We have flipped the script. We are headed backwards. So, I think that one of things that is very important to point out and this is true during the Civil Rights Movement, black people never 22 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University wanted integration because they wanted to be close up around whites or because they wanted to marry whites. What was clear is that in white neighborhoods there were different life chances. There were better schools. There were better services in the community. So, it was the inequality between blacks and whites that caused blacks to say, well we need racial integration. If we all live in the same neighborhoods, go to the same schools and so forth, then we could be equal. The bottom line then is that is not happening and it does not appear to be happening. Before you think that I am picking on Alabama and the South, I bet you when I read the article today in the paper about Huntsville going in the opposite direction and being more segregated now then it was a decade ago, I think you all are ranked number 61 or somewhere around in there. I bet Chicago is up around 3 or 4, but not I. So, it's a national phenomenon. It is a national phenomenon. So, I would conclude by saying that for freedom-loving people and for people who really want America to be a robust democracy because I maintain, that with staggering racial inequality where there is no equal playing field, you cannot have a robust democracy because those kinds of conditions are not congruent with the claims of the constitution. One of the most important things that the Civil Rights Movement did is that it freed a lot of white people as well as blacks because there were many white people who did not want live like that, living a lie in terms of what this country claimed to be. Therefore, it is just as incumbent upon whites as it is blacks to start thinking about how to reengage the struggle about how to bring about real equality because a social movement and change ofreal racial equality is needed today as much as it was needed 23 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University when Jim Crow held sway over most of the south and the nation. America cannot mature into a robust democracy until racial inequality is eliminated at its very roots. Q: You said that _____ were second only to the black churches immobilizing the movement? A: Yes. Q: Did the colleges publicly support these movements, like most of them were state funded, and if they did, did they lose their funding or what did they do about that? Q: The private black colleges participated a great deal more than the public ones. Whenever there was a protest at a state school, they would get a visit. They would say, tell the president. Can you stop this? If not, we have to cut your funds off. But the other thing is that many of the black students could not be controlled by the administrators. They were caught up in the movement. They were caught up in fighting for change and they went on and protested anyway. The black administrators had to say, heh boss, I cannot control them. So, yes you did have a greater amount of participation from the private ones, but you also had significant protests come out of the state schools as well. By the way, on that questions, do you know that one of the most controversial things that happened in the Birmingham Confrontation in 1963? When the movement needed all these people to go to jail or fill up the jail, King and his lieutenants made a decision that they were going to us really young children to participate in this demonstration. Now, this was very controversial. It was debated within the movement. King's lieutenants, very interestingly, had gone to all these schools in the community; I am talking about elementary schools and they had organized. So, they made the decision to use the kids and they did not tell the parents. So, these young kids were going out there confronting 24 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Bohr Conner and so on. Now, on the other hand, the belief of the folk in the movement, especially King and other religious leaders and so forth, they always argued that God was in it. They were confident that God would protect the children. What is so interesting to me is that at the moment that it was time for the children to go and protest, the organizers came to these elementary schools and the kids would line up by the thousands. They were jumping over the school's fences and all and racing down to the 16th Street Baptist Church. At the apex of that movement, there were 3,000 really young people in the jail. So, you can imagine the degree to which the parents/adults had to get involved because they had no choice but to try protect their children at that point. Q: (inaudible) Would say that Afghanistan not only exists because of the ocean, but we live under a form of terrorism right here in this country and they are talking about righting a new constitution that all the blacks and whites get involved with rewriting this constitution and turning things around because if they have a block on the voting, a block on the schools, block on the jobs ... .it is a materialistic system. Would you agree with that. A: Well, I will put it in my own words. The way that I look at it is that I try to go back to other periods in history. We had a period in history like what we have now and that was the McCarthy period. This was a period in which there were groups across America who were organizing for change and then what was used by people who wanted to block change was to accuse all of these groups of being communists. Talking about taking rights away, do you know that Paul Roberson, who was this internationally famous actor and singer, he used his being a celebrity to go across the world saying that America was 25 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University not a democracy because of the way it was treating its own black citizens. Do you know that because of the McCarthy activity and because of communism, they took away Paul Roberson's passport so he could not travel for over a decade. They did not only take his away. They took away W.B. Dubois because W.B. Dubois was traveling across the world doing that thing. So, they took these passports. What my point is here is that with Americans, many of us know in our heart, when you start talking about taking away constitutional, guaranteed freedom, that you are truly on a slippery slope. We also know that black people feel it most intensely because we know that we will pay far more dearly than others. So, I would certainly agree that the treatment of people of color in this society to a certain extent can dictate how we see people of color around the world. That is one of the reasons why I argue that it is so critical that we get over this race problem. When I say get over the race problem, I want to be clear; I do not mean to hold hands and sing, We Shall Overcome. Until the structures of inequality, income inequalities, public inequalities, educational inequalities .... Until those structures of inequality ____ are , there is no reason for us to suspect that we are going to get along together in some form of racial harmony. Think about this. If it took almost 40 years ... If you have structures of control and structures of this _____ that lasted for 40 years, what would you really have to do to change those? They are deep. They are well intrenched and so it would take a lot. Coming back to my brother over here, I would say that there are some real serious problems confronting this country in terms of race but not only race. There is another serious thing going on. When we talk about racial inequality, look at class in equality. Inequality between well-off Americans and poor Americans or even 26 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University working class Americans; I do not care what color they are, those inequalities have increased drastically very significantly. So, one of the things about the black movement and one importance in this country historically, it has always been a broad-based freedom movement and it allows other people who want a democracy to get involved. That is why when we look at the Civil Rights Movement and think about it and what it did, it generated the Women's Movement. It generated the Environmental Movement. It generated the Disability's Movement. It generated the Farm Worker's Movement and there are a lot of other movements I can mention. Its because the black movement has always reached at and really tried to push to be a robust democracy and really reach out embrace what is claimed in the constitution. That is why King said, we are just trying to make the country live up to what it claims to be on paper. So, we are in a serious situation here. Q: With the trend going backwards, do you think that reparations can help out to heal some of these wounds or do you think that it would farther divide us or do you think it has some kind of a place in the movement today. A: I think that reparations should be seriously debated and considered in America. I think that one of the reasons why America walked out of the conference in South Africa was not so much because of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. I think that all of these countries from across the world was going to come to America and come to Europe and say, look, here is what has happened, here is why America is a rich nation because of its engagement in the slave trade and because of all of these centuries of slavery and here is why Europe is such a strong power because of its role in the same dirty business. If we 27 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University want to go on a new path, we have to try to correct some of these inequalities and these centuries of oppression. So, my position about reparations is that I think that everything now ought to be put on the table for discussion. I think as I mentioned in my talk, I believe that if we were dealing with a situation in which whites in this society or any other privilege group had really, really earned everything fair and square or if they are really where they are simply because they worked hard and not because of 250 years of free labor and not because of75 years of Jim Crow (if that were true) then blacks should not be talking about no reparations, but it is not true. If blacks are forever locked behind because of the history of this country and the racist practices of this country, the question really then is how do we go about changing that? How do we do it? Do we just say, well you know, everybody pull themselves up by their own bootstraps now. We are all equal now and we know that is not true. So, yes, I think that reparations is something that ought to be fiercely considered. It ought to be debated and discussed like any other proposed measure. There are all kinds of complexities and all of that. A lawyer once told me that just because something is complex to implement does not mean that it should not be seriously considered if questions of justice are involved. Everybody still like me okay? A: Yes. Q: I want to ask the question about disenfranchisement. ls that possible to be disenfranchised for us? I have heard that we have the right to vote upon every so many years, is that true? A: I am not an expert on exactly how that happens. I do know that the Civil Rights Act was something that was suppose to be put in place for a limited amount of time until the 28 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University goal had been accomplished and then it would be revoted on. I have noticed that has happened in the past, so there may very well be additional times that it would have to come up for another vote and so forth so. In other words, I do not think that the Voting Rights Act is suppose to exist in perpetuity. I do not think that is the way it is on the book. Q: Will disenfranchisement take place in the black community because the 1965 Civil Rights Act is no longer in the book. A: I am not sure that follows. I think number one that most black people who vote and who recognize the responsibility to vote and what we had to pay to get it, they are not about to give it up for any reason. I think that you know that we have a far more serious problem; I would not say more serious, but equally serious problem and that is a lot of our people are not being educated for exercising the franchising and recognizing they got it through people making all kinds of sacrifices and so forth. Q: Dr. Morris. Thank you very much for your speech. I have been trying (inaudible) 1 cannot find a measuring yard to measure your progress, because we have the rights and nobody would touch that. The females have the rights and nobody can mess with them. A young girl can work here with their tops on with their small bikini and you cannot even touch her, even if you want to, but every time blacks are given their rights the government has a way with a lawyer to circumvent that right. What is the cause of racism? I will give you the cause, if you want a debate, but how do you as a people find the cause of racism that you cannot stop. I do not see any end to this. So, if (inaudible) 29 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University and nobody would mess with her when she comes around here. (inaudible) and nobody debates that? A: I got your point, I think. One of my replies would be this is a little side issue. What I think he was asking me is that how do you measure progress on the racial front and how can you be sure that you progress when the rights that you won can be easily taken. I think he was also saying that when you look at gender inequality, it seems to be a little less complexed and that the rules are clear about what you can and cannot do, specifically the women. My sidebar is to say that gender inequality (inequality between men and women) is that it remains a fundamental form of inequality in America society. Secondly, the black community is the one that can afford gender inequality the least because when you look at the degree of family that are headed by black women by themselves, we need to fight like hell to make sure that they can get decent jobs and decent pay. Not only that, because of the historical burden that has been thrust on the black community, black men and women need to be equal to be able to carry forth the struggle. So, I want to say that about gender inequality. Another major form of inequality is that if America is to be what it aspires to be, it is a form that needs to be eliminated. Now, let me go back to what 1 think is the crust of this question and that is how do you measure racial progress in this society and can it be easily taken? I think that as I said in my talk there has been racial progress in this society. Before the Civil Rights Movement, if you were a middle class black, you were a teacher; you were a preacher; you were .a mortician or you were an attorney or doctor. It was a small, tiny black middle class. Less than a tenth of the workforce could be classified as black middle class prior to the Civil Rights Movement. 30 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Now, a third of the black population can be counted as part of the black middle class and that is because that movement was able to open up doors of opportunity that had been previously closed in the schools and in the workplace itself. So, it would be foolhardy I think to not understand the progress that has been made because when you understand the progress that has been made, then you understand that you have something to build on. Now, the other part of it is yes. The gains are always under assault and what that means is that the struggle must always be vigilant to make sure that they are not reversed. Not only that, of course, you make sure that you lay the groundwork to move ahead into progress beyond what you have already received. It is a dual fight always. Protect what you got and push forward. That has been our history in this society, this country. Q: Dr. Morris you spoke of a disparity in the numbers of African-Americans and whites being sentenced but I would like to ask a question. What do you think is a possible solution to alleviate that? With the disparity in the way the sentencing occurs because it has been proven over time definitely that blacks receive harsher convictions in comparison to white counterparts. What are possible solutions to alleviate this and make it a fair conviction across the board versus one being greater than the other? A: Well, you certainly referred to a very, very complex problem in this society. We know that justice in America is highly correlated with the amount of resources that you have. If you have a lot of money and you can get good lawyers and you can get good experts, witnesses and so forth, you have a much greater chance of being released and not convicted. On one hand, I think what we have to do is recognize that there is this complicated relationship always between race and class and so a big part of the problem 31 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University is that large numbers of black people who are incarcerated and who are convicted are also poor. So, we have to deal with this whole issue of economics, unemployment and the work and poor. So, that is a big part of it. Another part of it, of course, is that the criminal justice system in America has been racist. One of things that is going on right now in Illinois is that our governor (and he is a Republican) was courageous enough to declare a motorium on death ____ in Illinois. Now, what is so interesting here is that there has been about at least IO different cases now of black men on death row. Most of them have been accused of raping white women and other very, very serious crimes. Thank God for DNA. Over the last year, I have not counted them all, but I can tell you that at least 20 black men have been released from death row for false convictions. What we also know from this and what we are learning from this is that many times the convictions were beaten out of them by racist white cops and so forth. It is just a fact and so here again is a situation in which the criminal justice system has to be studied, examined and challenged. By the way, one of the reasons why you have a large rate in the prison population, especially amongst African-Americans is drug convictions. There are those who argue that most of these people need help. They need rehabilitation, not to be thrown away and locked in jail where they become hardened criminals and then released and reek havoc on the society. So, yes, I would just say that we clearly have a criminal justice system with some serious, serious racial biases in it and it is getting innocent people killed and forcing folk to stay in jail far longer than they should and as a result also being politically disenfranchised. 32 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Q: It is really not a question. It is more of responding to the issue raised about disenfranchisement. The Voting Rights Act is periodically comes up for renewal. If it is th not renewed, though, blacks will not lose their right to vote. Remember the 15 Amendment is the thing that gave blacks the right to vote. So, until that amendment is appealed blacks will always have the right to vote. What the Voting Rights Act does is that it gives the federal government the authority to come in and enforce the 15th Amendment. If the Voting Rights Act is not renewed, then that power will also removed. So, I just wanted to clear that up. A: What I am concerned about is if we all have the right to vote but we do not vote because we are discouraged or something .. .I hear information all the time that people are just not voting. In fact, middle class and low class people (poor people) have got to realize that they have power if they use it, the power of their vote and they should not be discouraged. They should get together and begin to use that power. Now, the United States is becoming ruled by corporations, but I know that there is not a senator anywhere or representative that cannot be voted out of office if you do not like what they are doing by numbers. I wish to goodness that people would realize that, particularly young people. So, let us get together, all of us, and vote some of these ridiculous laws and actions by the federal government out. A: What I would say to that is that of course I agree with this, but I would also add that often you vote one group of scoundrels out and another group in. The real problem is that many people choose not to vote I think because they went and they voted and they thought that some real change was going to come and it was at this that is made no 33 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University difference. When you think about my argument about the playing field is not level... Think about this. One of the most (I do not think that anybody would disagree with me) important bodies in the federal government is the senate. There is not one black senator and it does not concern many folks, no big thing. I think that part of what has happened in this country is that we just have turned our heads away now. I look at all of the major talk shows like CNN and The Today Show and Good Morning, America, and all that. I do not see any diverse group of people discussing issues. For the most part, 1 have never really seen any serious black journalists or anybody on discussing any issues; so, it is becoming a very narrow dialogue, a very closed kind of community. Finally, about the importance of the vote, a democracy is not just about the vote. It is about informed citizens organizing themselves and engaging in relentless participation in struggle to make the country a democracy. So, I think we have to keep that part in mind. Lastly, I want to thank you for listening to me tonight. I want to say that in these sort of talks, I wonder about them later because I know that part of what I got to say is not meant to bring any peace, no feel good. I think that as an individual I hate to be the bringer of bad ___ ; I really do. I would rather for everybody to say, boy, that Dr. Morris is a real cool guy. I love him, but I know I have a higher calling as an academic and as somebody who studies these things. If I said anything to spur you all to think deep about, even if you completely disagree with me, even if you read the data that I have tried to talk to you about differently, I only ask please let us think about what is happening in America today. Thank you. 34 � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965 Relation A related resource <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> Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965 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_000026 Title A name given to the resource Digitized transcription of VHS tape of "The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama (A Look Back and a Look Ahead)". Description An account of the resource Aldon Morris is the speaker in this lecture given at Alabama A&M University. 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, Huntsville, Alabama Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-12-04 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 2000-2009 Subject The topic of the resource Morris, Aldon D., 1949- Civil rights movements--Southern states--History--20th century Alabama (Ala.) Segregation African Americans--Legal status, laws, etc. Civil rights demonstrations Type The nature or genre of the resource Lectures Text Transcript Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Print Has Format A related resource that is substantially the same as the pre-existing described resource, but in another format. Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965 <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/406">VHS Tape of: The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama (A Look Back and a Look Ahead) - Speaker: Aldon Morris, 2001-12-04. Box 2, Tape 12</a> University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama 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. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 34 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/394">The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama (a Look Back and a Look Ahead) - Speaker Aldon Morris - Transcription of Tape 12, 2003 Box 1, File 13</a> University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/32/13353/TheCaseofMobile_Tape11_File12.pdf f55aa63696eda755236f8a697a7ca1d1 PDF Text Text The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University The Case of Mobile Speakers: Janet Owens LeFlore, Burton R. LeFlore, O.B. Purifoy Tonight's program, The Case of Mobile, is the next to the last program in this fourteen weeks' series, which started on August 30, 2001. Really, this has been a fantastic series; it has been well received and supported by you who have attended these weekly symposiums. And really, it is because of your support that this series has been a success. So I would like for all of you to give yourselves a hand. Some of you have attended all of the programs, others have attended all but one or two. Some attended as many as possible, but we want to express our appreciation for all who attended any of the programs; so again, we say thank you for not only being here tonight but for staying with us throughout the entire thirteen weeks. Well, it will be thirteen weeks next Tuesday, which will be the last program. We certainly deeply appreciate your support in coming out. We also want to express our appreciation to the planning committee. I am not going to indicate who the planning committee is tonight because I think all of you who have been here each night, I think you know who the planning committee is by now. But, we certainly want to express our appreciation to the planning committee. If those on the planning committee want to stand and take a bow, please feel free to do so. We also want to express our appreciation to others who have aided in weekly preparation. What I mean by that is those who have provided the refreshments and those who have helped to set up the chairs, certainly at A&M' s campus because that is what we have had to do, whether we have been here at the multipurpose room or whether we have been over at the Knight �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Reception Center. Those who helped set the chairs up, those who helped to man the doors, hand out brochures and program evaluations and also those who helped to man the PA system during the question and answer period, I would like for you to at least give them a hand as well. Because of protocol, I will acknowledge the sponsors. Please bear with me 111 indicating that those who helped to make this entire series were as follows in terms of funding: The Alabama Humanities Foundation; a state program of the National Endowment of the Humanities; Senator Hank Sanders; the Huntsville Times; DESE Research, Inc; Mevatec, Inc; Alabama representative, Laura Hall; Alabama A&M University Office of the President, Office of the Provost; the State Black Archives Research Center and Museum; Title III Telecommunication and Distance Learning. Of course, we have acknowledged the terrific role that they have played in videotaping these programs each night and so we certainly express our appreciation to them. In addition, we express thanks also the Office of Student Affairs and the Honor Center at Alabama A&M, in addition to the Sociology and Social Work, History and Political Science. At the University of Alabama in Huntsville: The Office of the President; Office of the Provost; History Forum/Bankhead Foundation; Sociology/Social Issues Symposium; Humanities Center; Division of Continuing Education; Honors Program; Office of Multicultural Affairs; Office of Student Affairs; UAH Copy Center. And so, we are certainly thankful to them for the contribution that they have made in terms of the financial support that they have given. I want to simply mention that next week's program, of course, is the last program. If you have paid attention to your brochures, you 2 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University will notice that that program is scheduled for December 4, which is on Tuesday, not Thursday, Tuesday, and it will be in the same location here on the campus of Alabama A&M University. That is, in the multipurpose room which is also now called the Clyde Foster Multipurpose Room. So if you happen to see that, it's the same place. Do not become confused by that. And then, of course, tonight's program is The Case of Mobile and I will ask Dr. Jack Ellis to come and introduce the presenters, those who will be taking part in the panel and provide the context for the program. Jack Ellis: I want to add to what Professor Johnson has just said in extending my appreciation to those of you who have attended so many of these wonderful symposiums and I especially want to commend the students from Decatur. Somehow, I think you have been here almost every night if memory serves me right. This is something because tonight when I saw flooding streets and tornado alerts, I thought to myself, "I know one group that I'm sure is going to be there, it's those Decatur students." Some day, I think that you probably know by now the magnitude of heroes that you have seen over the last thirteen to fourteen weeks. I think that some day in your old age you will think back to these times and these are ordinary people that we have seen, including those that are on our stage tonight and so we are just thrilled to have you here. This fall's series on the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama has revealed a number of patterns that mark the campaign for justice and equality here in our own state. One is the rich diversity of events occurring within Alabama's different regions and cities. As we saw in the example of Huntsville, these events were not simply the faint echoes of a recurring drama played out by Dr. King and the SCLC, which some 3 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University historians regard as the almost mythical core narrative of the movement. Rather, they bore the imprint of local circumstances and local conditions reflecting longstanding race relations, economic forces and political traditions. Another is the sheer longevity of the movement as was evident in last week's presentation on CG Gomillion and the Tuskegee Civic Association which had been going on long before the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Put another way, what happened in Tuskegee, Montgomery, Huntsville, Birmingham and so on during the l 950's and l 960's represented the culmination of decades of struggle and revealed a powerful and enduring local culture that African-Americans had managed to sustain within their own communities over years of oppression. These things are clearly illustrated in the case of Coastal and Catholic Mobile, the state's oldest and second largest city; it's only seaport in the city where the very notion of race itself defies easy definition. It was nevertheless a segregated city, one that had known its share of racial violence. An example (and this is something that my colleague, Professor Williamson, has been working on for years) was the riot that took place in May 1943 in the yards of the Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company which was under federal contract at the time to build ships for the war effort. An attempt was made to allow black workers to move from menial jobs to positions as welders and shipbuilders and this provoked a violent response on the part of white workers, most of these coming from the rural areas of Alabama and Mississippi. Over 100 black workers were injured in the 1943 riots and peace returned only when the government sent in troops from nearby Brookley Air Force Base. Although African-Americans made up 36 percent of Mobile's population in 1950, they were still being denied access to education and jobs generally 4 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University not shared in the cities post-World War II boom. Yet, during the 1960's, Mobile witnessed none of the confrontational tactics occurring in the streets of Birmingham and Selma. The historian, ______ , author of a book on the Civil Rights Movement in Mobile, which is scheduled to be published by the University of Alabama Press, points out that Mobile was the only large city in the state during the l 960's that did not have a major civil rights demonstration. She attributes this fact primarily to the leadership of two people, both of whom typified in her words, "The new deal influence liberal alliance in the south forged during the 1930's." One of these individuals was Joseph Langan who had grown up in an Irish Catholic family that lived in a racially mixed neighborhood of Mobile. He had risen to statewide prominence after winning a seat in the Alabama legislature in 1939. Following military service in World War II, which served to deepen his understanding of the injustices faced by black people everywhere, Langan returned to Mobile and resumed his political career winning a seat in the Alabama senate and then in 1953 one of three seats on the Mobile City Commission. Until his defeat in 1969 during the black power insurgency associated with a new group calling itself the Neighborhood Organization Workers of Mobile, or NOW, which denied him the support he had long enjoyed in the black community. Langan stood as a remarkable visionary among Alabama's white politicians, a rare and eloquent voice for reason and reconciliation in matters of race. The second was an African-American postal worker named John L. Leflore, born in Mobile in 1903. The son of a laborer, Leflore passed the Post Office Civil Service examination in 1922 and became a letter carrier. He was one of the few blacks to be 5 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University allowed to take the Civil Service examinations m the 1920's and 1930's. The job provided him with a measure of protection against economic reprisals during his later career, a distinct advantage for one who even as a young man had proved capable of defending himself in personal encounters with racism, something I was discussing with his grandson at lunch today. In 1926, LeFlore reorganized the defunct Mobile branch of the NAACP and during the administration of Governor Bibb Graves, between 1926 and 1930, became one of the state's most visible civil rights activists. Until 1956, when attorney general John Patterson outlawed the NAACP in Alabama, LeFlore served as executive secretary of the Mobile branch and though he countered Patterson's action by creating the Non partisan Voters League, which you are going to hear about tonight, he continued his affiliation with the NAACP which was later legalized once again in the 1960's. Now working through the NAACP during the 1930's and 1940's, Leflore fought numerous battles on behalf of African-Americans, things that we need to remember today. In court, he challenged the railroads in the matter of equal pay for black brakemen and firemen and fought both the railroads and the railroad unions when they failed to protect the seniority of black workers. He defended the cause of black seaman on ships sailing in and out of Mobile Bay, including their right to stay in integrated hotels while in port. He especially denounced the multitude of lynchings occurring in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana after World War II, carrying out onsite and often dangerous investigations and publicizing the failure of local police authorities and the FBI to find the killers, as in the case of the black veteran such as George Dorsey, who was murdered along with three others outside Monroe, Georgia in the year 1946. In alliance with white 6 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University liberals, LeFlore labored tirelessly during the late l 940's and l 950's to expand voting rights for African-Americans, to increase job opportunities in shipbuilding and in such federal establishments as the Post Office and Brookley Air Force Base. In addition, he won a major victory in persuading the Mobile County School Board to equalize the salaries of black and white teachers. LeFlore's was truly a remarkable life and has been featured in an excellent film produced by Public Television in the Mobile County public schools entitled "A Quiet Revolution." The John Leflore legacy is our own focus tonight and before introducing our guests, I would like to mention two or three other people who wanted to be with us but who were unable to do so. One of these is former Mayor Langan, who is now 90 years old, still articulate, still eager to talk about his life, but following a recent bout with illness, simply was unable to make the trip up to Huntsville. The same is true for Mr. J.C. Randolph who is the former treasurer of the Nonpartisan Voters League. He told me he is now 88 years old, but he expressed his regrets with a wish that I convey this message to the young people in the audience and so here it is, "Don't relinquish what we have already accomplished but nurture it and build upon it. I have carried the torch as far as I can and pass it on to you, confident that you will go forth." So that is Mr. Randolph's message to the young people tonight. Finally, I note with sadness the absence tonight of Dr. Walker B. Leflore who passed away in October. Dr. Walker Leflore was a Mobile native who decided to study medicine during his student years at St. Augustine College, which is a private Episcopal school in Raleigh, North Carolina, 7 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University where he also met his future wife, Janet E. Owens. He received his medical degree at Meharry and practiced many years in Mobile until his death. In a tape interview that I did with him at his medical clinic in October of 1988, Dr. LeFlore recounted with pride his parents' influence on his life, which he said had always shaped his own practice of medicine. We are honored in having as our guests Dr. LeFlore's wife, Janet Owens Leflore and their son, Burton Leflore. They will discuss their own unique perspectives of John LeFlore's career and we hope that our efforts tonight will stand as fitting tribute to the memory of his son, Dr. Walker B. LeFlore. Born in Wilmington, North Carolina, Janet Owens LeFlore received her undergraduate degree from St. Augustine and for several years thereafter taught chemistry and algebra in the schools of Mobile, Wilmington and Atlanta. She began work on her Masters Degree in chemistry at Atlanta University and while her husband was finishing his medical degree at Meharry, completed her Masters at Fisk, teaching and doing research in infraredspectography. She continued her research at Smith, Kline and French Research Industries and then taught chemistry at Bishop State Community College after she and Dr. Leflore returned to Mobile in 1965. From that point forward, and despite fulltime duties as a mother and chemistry teacher, Janet Owens LeFlore became deeply involved in the community activities of her father-in-law, assisting him in a multitude of tasks, from correspondence and proofreading to scheduling. She was thus an eyewitness to remarkable civil rights careers in the 20th century. Those of you who have seen the film, "A Quiet Revolution," will recall her own detailed and insightful recollection of John LeFlore's life and work. 8 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University We are also honored to have Burton Leflore who will also share personal memories as well as insights that he has gained in studying and now writing about his grandfather's life. Mr. Leflore graduated from a Mobile High School that only recently has been named in his grandfather's honor. From there, and while working part-time on the Mobile Press Register, he went on to earn a Bachelors Degree at the University of South Alabama and then completed his law studies at Florida State in 1997. He has taught business law at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington where he served as visiting professor and he stayed active there as well as active as president of the family real estate business in Mobile. Added to these achievements, a film study at NYU film school, and he is presently owner of a company called Film at Work, which produces films and videos for global distribution. Finally, we welcome Mr. O.B. Purifoy, one of the veterans of the civil rights struggles in Mobile who took an active role in the Nonpartisan Voters League as executive secretary and second vice president and is among those featured in this very powerful film, "A Quiet Revolution." Born in Andalusia, Alabama in 1914, Mr. Purifoy studied Business Management at Alabama State in Montgomery before entering the army during World War II. After serving in Europe and the Philippines, he returned to Andalusia to open an insurance firm, later moving to Dothan, before finally settling in Mobile in 1947. Mr. Purifoy was one of John LeFlore's closest collaborators and he will share with us tonight also some of his memories of that experience. We're going to start with Burton LeFlore who is going to spend a few minutes talking about his own work and recollections of the life of John LeFlore. Afterwards, Mrs. Leflore and Mr. Purifoy will 9 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University offer some comments and recollections along the same line and then we're going to open this up to informal discussion and questions from the floor. Please join me in extending a very warm welcome to our guests tonight. Burton LeFlore: How is everyone doing this evening. I would just like to thank, first of all, all of you for coming out tonight, I mean with all this rain and everything. I know this was just a good evening just to kind of call it quits and go home and just watch some television and lay down, but I thank you all for being here. I would also like to thank Dr. Jack Ellis and Dr. James Johnson for having us here in response from this symposium tonight. Once again, I am just honored to be here. I guess another reason why I am certainly happy that everyone came out tonight is because am I am here tonight to honor my grandfather and discuss his legacy and some of his work, there is also a new generation waiting to be born. I have a newborn on the way and I sort of risked missing the birth of my newborn to be here tonight, so I would have been really upset if no one would have shown up. I hope I will be able to get back in time for that. I am going to talk a little but briefly about growing up with John Leflore as a grandfather and then I want to discuss a little bit about some of his work. Obviously, I will not be able to get into everything in the amount of time that I have. Dr. Ellis has mentioned a number of things, but growing up as his grandson was rather uneventful. He was a good grandfather. We spent a lot of time together, but as a child I was not aware of who he was. I was not aware of the things that he had been involved in or things he had done. He was just granddaddy to me. I did not know he had even been a Civil Rights activist. I believed at that time, when I was born, I think that was near the time when he retired from the postal service, 10 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University so he was basically retired. He was working very closely with the Non-Partisan Voters League at that time. We spent a lot of time together and my recollections with him are very vivid. My grandfather passed away in 1976 and I was about IO years old. I think I was about in the 5th grade then. So, I was lucky enough to have been old enough to have formed a relationship with him and to have gotten to know him. He was just a very humble person. He was a very kind person. He was very kind to me. He spent a lot of time. He took me to church. Now, he belonged to a Baptist church, but the church that we would normally go to was a church called the Unitarian Fellowship. The Unitarian Fellowship was more or a less the church where people went and there was some spiritualism going on. There was also a an open forum for many of those individuals to get up and talk about the various things that were going on in the community and state, nationally, etc. I think that is why he enjoyed that particular church because obviously he was very attuned to what was going on during that time. He was also very interested in knowing what other people thought about what was going on, and not just the AfricanAmerican people but the entire community of Mobile as well. Unitarian Fellowship was a nondenominational, racially integrated church. So, I remember those Sundays going to church with him very vivid. I remember that he was a night owl. He stayed up late at night sometimes a lot and maybe I have inherited that from him. He was a night owl and I remember some nights he would come in and he would be hungry. He would eat a little midnight snack and he would watch a little television. I remember he loved cottage cheese and I hate cottage cheese. That was another very vivid memory of mine the fact that he always ate cottage cheese and of course my grandmother was the homemaker. She 11 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University was a very good cook. She cooked just about every day but on Fridays she would always cook gumbo. She would always cook gumbo and she would always have fish, mashed potatoes, vinegar and (what do you call that) cucumbers ... vinegar and cucumbers. I remember having those Friday evening dinners with my grandfather, my mother and my father and my brother and that was always a lot of fun. Of course, now, as far as his involvement in certain things ... Now, there are several things I think were very prevalent in my mind where my grandfather is concerned and of course, one was the fact that there house was bombed in 1967. At that time, I do not have any recollection of the house being bombed. I do not have any recollection of the old house, but I do remember my grandfather coming and staying with us for about 6 months or so while they were reconstructing the house. I think my grandmother went and stayed with their next door neighbor at some point or something like that. The biggest recollection of the house being bombed was the fact that at some point or another I realized, gee, there house was bombed and there are actually pictures in books of them standing out in front of the house after the bombing. First, the anger that I felt and thinking was gee, someone actually tried to kill my grandparents, these innocent people here. Then, the other the thing that really infuriated me was the fact that I could have been there. If my mother had dropped me off over there that night, I might not be standing here today and that was the very infuriating thing I think which has caused me a lot of thought. It reminds me very much of those four girls who died in the Birmingham Church bombing. Of course, luckily, neither one of my grandparents passed away in that bombing and of course I was not there, so that was great. That has always been something that has bothered me over the years. Another thing 12 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University that I remember about my grandfather was the Non-Partisan Voters League meeting. Now, I never knew what was going on in these meetings. I never knew what was being discussed in these meetings. Mr. Purifoy could probably attest to this. Probably, the gist of it was that I was just a teenager and I was being so bad and so obnoxious. People were probably sitting around thinking, why does, you know, he not quiet this kid down. Why does he not tell this kid to sit down? No one ever said anything. So, at that point, I think I started to realize that some of these people had a little respect for my grandfather because obviously they put up with my obnoxious behavior. Now, the final recollection, of course, was when he ran for the House of Representatives and that was a big thing. My recollection of that was I really did not (once again) know, understand or appreciate the extent of his commitment to Civil Rights or the extent of his commitment to serving humanity. That was a pretty big event and when he won we were obviously very proud of him at that time. Then, of course, I attended John Leflore High School, which was named after my grandfather. At that point, I think I started to realize, you know, gee, well, it looks like granddad was a pretty heavy hitter around here. You know he actually had a whole high school named after him. That is a pretty big accomplishment here. In many senses, I am very proud to have been part of his legacy. I am very proud to have been his grandson and very proud of him, but also being his grandson has been a doubleedge sword. It has been a benefit in many ways and it has been a detriment in many ways, but I think the benefits have certainly outweighed the detriments. Now, as far as his works and achievements, first of all, his childhood is very interesting and his development as a child. He was born in 1904 or 1903. His father 13 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University passed away when he was about 9 months old, so he was basically raised by his mother and by his older siblings. Now, his mother was a very industrious lady. She had a gumbo fillet business and she made fillet for gumbo. The interesting thing about how he grew up and the interesting thing about his family life as a child was that she required all the children to work. They all had to work. They all had to hold down jobs and they all had to bring their money back to help support the family. So, my grandfather from the time he was four or five years old he held down a job; he worked, you know, literally as much as he could when he was not in school. He sold newspapers. I think one gentleman that was a friend of his once told me that they use to go down to Brookley Field and they would dive for golf balls. If they got a bucket full, they got like 50 cents or a dime or something. They would actually dive into the lake and fish these golf balls out of the lake and that was sort of recreational for them, but they also got paid for it. Basically, his early childhood was characterized by work and I think that sort of helped instill his work ethic. I think the turning point in my grandfather's life was when he was about 17 years old, right after he graduated from high school. He was on a street cart in Mobile and at that time there were Jim Crow street carts and he was asked to move by a man who had gotten on to the street cart and he refused to move. At that point, there was an altercation between the two gentleman and obviously my grandfather was arrested. I think that was the turning point in his life. I think that maybe from his childhood experiences, having had to work so much as a young child and having not really grown up with his father around, that maybe had something to do with his development in terms of him wanting to become an activist. I think that was the turning point for him. I think that was when he 14 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University realized that he wanted to spend a large majority of his life working to try to change some of the inequities in society. Now, I believe in 1923 he married my grandmother, Teah Leflore, which brings us to the first major portion of his work which was trying to integrate or desegregate the national railroad system in the Pullman cars. Based on my research, understanding and knowledge of this early part of his life, I think that is when he and my grandmother got married. They took a honeymoon trip to St. Louis. Obviously, at that point, I think this was his first exposure not only to the segregation but to the Jim Crow situations on those railroad carts. Obviously, he was obviously incensed about the segregation on the street carts in the city of Mobile, he saw this as an opportunity, his first opportunity to try to change and to try to start working towards bringing about some type of social change. That was of course one of the first things that he began to work on and ultimately he was successful. He may not have been given much credit for it but he and other members of the NAACP at that time were probably some of the foremost fighters in terms of trying to change the national railroad system at that time. Now, around 1925 or 1926, he founded the Mobile branch of the NAACP. Of course, as many of you may know, at that particular time, that was a very unpopular thing to be talking about. As a group of activists or a group of people who wanted to try and accomplish something in their communities or in the state, certainly, I think there was a great deal of fear. I think they were more or less in a situation where it was like, well, what are we going to do; are we going to try and do something about this or are we just going to kind of sit down and just let these things go on that we feel are wrong? Of 15 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University course, I think that was also part of my grandfather's whole philosophy in terms of the fact. He was a very quiet person. He was not a Malcolm X. He was not a Martin Luther King. He was not a Medgar Evers. He was not someone who was willing to go out in the streets and march. He was not someone willing to speak publicly in an open form. I mean, he spoke publicly quite frequently, but he would never put himself in a position where he felt like he might be in danger. There were death threats made on his life quite frequently. As a matter of fact, one of the things that my father has really ever told me about my grandfather was the fact that he use to go down and check my grandfather's mail for him. He would go down during World War II or World War I. I believe it was World War I. He would go down during World War I and there would be postcards in his mailbox. He would pull the mail out and there would be a statement in there about something to the effect of like, nigger, we are going to get you after the big one's through. My father was very adamant about not being involved in politics at all. He wanted nothing to do with politics. He wanted nothing to do with activists. He wanted nothing to do with any of that stuff. I think while that stemmed from his having grown up with John LeFlore and grown up as John LeFlore's son. Many of his thoughts and recollections of my grandfather were basically that I was just worried they were just going to kill the guy. One day, he was just going to leave for work and just was not going to come home, like many of those people did in the September 11th bombing of the World Trade Center. That was his fear. He lived with a lot of fear during the early part of his life. I think fear that his father was either going to be killed or that his father was going to lose his job and what was his family going to do at that point because my grandmother 16 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University was the homemaker. Those are really the main things that my father use to talk about to me. He never really talked about the things that John Leflore was involved or anything. He just really talked about those fears that his father was going to be killed and the fears that his father would be fired from his job. Those were his main concerns at that time. During the l 940's and l 950's, John LeFlore focused a lot of his time and attention on voting rights. Voting Rights became very important. He was very active and certainly as a postal worker and a federal employee. He was not suppose to get involved in many of these issues. He was accused at one point of violating the Hatch Act. Of course, that was another instance where the postal service kind of came down on him and he was censored and reprimanded for having been involved in some of these activities. He never wavered. He never faltered. He hung in there. He was always active during the early l 920's and the l 940's, in terms of trying to change a lot of things that were going on in the postal system, various segregated bathrooms. He was very active about trying to desegregate the bathrooms, the lunch counters, the eating areas and the fact that Black postal workers were not allowed to at that time to work as clerks. He was very active in trying to encourage the postal services not only locally but nationally to promote minorities into more responsible positions other then letter carriers. Certainly, as we see now today, that has occurred. The interesting thing about his marriage to Teah is that during the early l 920's Teah's father was also a postman. I think he was attracted to Teah, but I think he also wanted to get in good with her father because he saw this as sort of a dual opportunity. He was going to get the girl and he was going to get the job too; that was his whole goal. 17 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University I guess he figured, you know, if he could get the job at the post service, which was a pretty good job for a minority at that time, (which is still a pretty good job for anyone at this particular time) he was going to get the girl and he was going to get the job. I think he wanted to endear himself to my grandmother's father at that point to sort of accomplish that dual goal. Obviously, this man had the inroads to the girl and to the job. Sorry, I am skipping around a little bit, but we are moving back into the l 940's and l 950's. Now, another thing of course (I will not have time to talk about every little thing that he was involved in, but I just want to try and talk about some of the noteworthy or some of the more important things) was the bus segregation. In Mobile, the bus system was integrated or desegregated during about 1956 or 1957, which many of you know that was way before Rosa Parks in Montgomery and the Bus Boycott in Montgomery. They did it peaceful in Mobile. They did it peacefully and basically my grandfather and local politicians like Joe Langan got together and said, look, we got to do something about this; what are we going to do? So, there strategy and there program was look, what we are going to do is ... We are going to have a black man get on the bus and he is going to sit in the front of the bus and he is going to be arrested. Once he is arrested, we are going to go to court and we are going to have this city ordinance invalidated and that was it. It was all planned. There was no impromptu action here. This was all orchestrated by these organizations, by the NAACP, by the city counsel and by the mayor. It was all orchestrated. It was all planned. It was all scripted. They had it all planned out and basically I think it was probably one of the smoothest procedures that any city in 18 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Alabama had experienced in terms of desegregating the bus system. Once again, this was in 1956. Another thing, of course, he did a lot during the 1940's and 1950's was investigate a lot of lynches during the 1940's and 1950's. There were lynches in Mississippi that he investigated. There were lynches in Georgia that he investigated and what they would do .. .I have two little interesting stories regarding the lynches. One story I got to tell you is the story about his older brother, George Leflore. George had just gotten a divorce and he was living with my grandmother and grandfather at the time. I believe this was the Munroe, Georgia lynching he was about to investigate. My grandfather was leaving the house to go and investigate this lynching. His brother George (who was perhaps a little less interested in being involved in the Civil Rights Movement, risking his life or getting deeply intrenched or even remotely intrenched in any of the things that were going on at that time) said to him, you are crazy; you are an absolute fool; there is no way that you are going to go up to Munroe, Georgia after this lynching and ride your black self into that county and investigate a lynching. Because when you get there, as soon as they see you drive across the county line, you are going to be the next person lynched. He said, you are not going, as a big brother to a little brother; there is no way. They literally got into a fistfight in the front yard of my grandfather's home because my grandfather said, look, there is no way. I am going, that is all there is to it. If you want to stay here, go right ahead, be my guest, but I got to do what I got to do. He investigated these lynches and he wrote articles for the Chicago Defender, which was an African-American publication out of Chicago. He was sort of a staff correspondent for 19 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University the Chicago Defender. Very often when he would investigate one of these lynches, he would write back to the Chicago Defender and they would print an article about the findings of his investigation. Now, another very interesting thing that many of you may not know (I am sure that Mr. Purifoy probably knows about this) is that one of his very close activist friends, Wiley Bolden ... Now, my grandfather was a relatively dark-skinned man. Wiley Bolden was a very fair skin man. Wiley Bolden was like he was almost white. When they would go to investigate some of these lynches, my grandfather would ride in the trunk of the car. Wiley Bolden would drive the car because just to an average onlooker (say there was a sheriff or someone driving around or some people driving around maybe looking for these activists who were coming in to try and investigate the lynching) ... If they would sort of glance over and see Wiley Bolden driving a car, they would assume he is just another white man. They would not have even raised an eyebrow about it. Of course, now that was the protocol; that was the procedure. When they would go into these counties to investigate these lynches, Wiley Bolden would drive and John Leflore would ride in the trunk until they got to where they needed to go and until they got to some area where they could figure they were safe. At some point or another, during the 1960's, he retired from the postal service and he became very active with an organization called the Non-Partisans Voters League. The philosophy behind the Non-Partisan Voters League was basically the fact that these individuals had reached a point in their lives, in their careers and in their whole struggle that they had realized that they did not want to affiliate themselves with any particular 20 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University party. They did not want to affiliate themselves with the Democrat. They did not want to affiliate themselves with the Republican. They were going to affiliate themselves with whoever was willing to listen to them, whoever was willing to serve their agenda and with whoever shared a similar outlook or at least with that candidate who perhaps more than the other candidate saw things the way that they saw things; people who were interested in trying to help this organization. They never wanted to necessarily say, well, we are just going to vote straight Democrat. We are just going to vote straight Republican. We are going to vote for the person who we feel is going to best represent out interests and our goals and that was the real philosophy behind the Non-Partisan Voters League. Now, the Non-Partisan Voters League became involved in a number of things. During that time, I think my grandfather had accomplished a great deal during his life in terms of helping to gain voting rights, desegregating lunch counters, restaurants, bathrooms, railroad cars, buses and employment opportunities. I mean he did a large amount of work in terms of trying to help minorities gain access to better employment opportunities. He spent a lot of his time coaching minorities in how to pass these exams that were initially formulated to preclude them from voting during the early l 950's. He spent a lot of his time coaching and talking with various employers around the city of Mobile and around the state about benefits of employing minorities or at least at terms of just looking at the idea. He would say to these employers, how about just having a few interviews. We have 5 people here who would like to interview with your company. You know, you do not have to hire him but just talk to them, just have them in. You might find somebody you like. You might find somebody you may want to hire, just give them 21 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University a chance. He spent a lot of time doing that. Once he got involved in the Non-Partisan Voters League, he and the other activists, Mr. Purifoy and Mr. Bolden and many other who were involved in the Non-Partisan Voters League at that time, became involved in trying test cases. If they focused in on something that they felt was a necessary evil so to speak, they would then file a test case in court. At that point, once the test case went through, normally those cases they won. During the early l 960's and many people may not be aware of this, John Leflore and the Non-Partisan Voters League were instrumental. They were almost completely responsible for integrating the University of Alabama. When Vivian Malone Jones went to the University of Alabama during the Governor Wallace stand in the doors of the University of Alabama, the Non-Partisan Voters League and John Leflore were right behind here. I think actually my son asked me once if granddaddy was involved in integrating the University of Alabama and there is all this footage of Governor Wallace standing in the doorway, where was he? That is a very important point because granddaddy, John Leflore, was not one who believed in risking his life. He was the ___ . He was the caboose. He was the engine. He was the engineer, but he would very often stand back and let things happen once they occurred. Once again, he never, other than perhaps investigating some of these lynches, put himself in a situation where his life would be in danger. Once again, during that particular time, the Non-Partisan Voters League sponsored Vivian Malone and they were right behind her there at the University of Alabama. Now, the Bertie Mae Davis case is another case that they worked on once they finished with the University of Alabama and that case involved integrating 22 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University the Murphy High School in Mobile, Alabama. Bertie Mae Davis of course was a young girl and public school student there in Mobile and John Leflore basically decided that he was going to have her as their spokesperson and as their test student so to speak. He spent a lot of time with her talking with her about what to expect and what it was going to be like. He explained to her that it was very important that she be brave and that this was a new situation, but this was something that had to be done. He explained to her also that once you do this, you are going to be a part of history. You are helping to make history. Of course, that went over fairly well, the integration of Murphy High School, which later led to the integration of other high schools in the Mobile area. Then, of course, during the latter part of the l 960's, the next big case that they worked on was the Bolden versus City of Mobile case and that case was the case that basically changed the city form of government in Mobile. The original city form of government was comprised of three counsel members that were elected at large. The notion that the Non-Partisan Voters League formulated was with three counsel members that are elected from the city at large. Based on this, there was no way that various communities and various factions within the city were going to have any voice because we had the same two, three or four guys that were just being reelected over, over and over again. This was shortly after Joe Langan was voted out of office. Now, what happened with Joe Langan was that when the neighborhood, organized workers came along during the latter l 960's, there whole philosophy was so different from John LeFlore's philosophy. These guys were like, you know, they were ready. Their philosophy was more along the line of Malcolm X's philosophy. They wanted to fight fire with fire. They said, if they want to bomb churches 23 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University or houses in our community, then we are going to go bomb churches and houses in their community. If they want to kill our people in our community, we are gonna go kill people in their community. Of course, this was totally alien to John Leflore's philosophy. John LeFlore's philosophy was look, let us work this thing out. Let us sit down and let us work this thing through the courts. Let us file these cases in court. Let us get some rulings on these cases. Let us go to the city counsel. Let us go to the legislature. Let us go to congress. Let us lobby in congress. Let us lobby in the legislature. Let us try and change these things. We do not want to go killing people or bombing people or tit for tat or burn for burn. We do not want to do that. We just want to bring about peaceful harmonious change and that is what John Leflore always worked for. Of course, the Bolden versus the City of Mobile, as I was indicating, came after Joe Langan being voted out of office. The NOW Organization was also very instrumental in Joe Langan being voted out of office. I think they realized that they wanted to upset the whole fabric of Mobile, so to speak. They want to bring about change and as their organization said; they wanted it now. They did not want it next week. They did not want it next month or next year. They wanted it now. Even though, Joe Langan had much Black support in the city of Mobile, the NOW Organization turned their back on Joe Langan. They said, look, if Joe Langan is working with this John Leflore and this Non-Partisan Voters League, he is not getting our vote. We do not want to have anything to do with Joe Langan. We are going to do our own thing. So, many of the blacks who voted for Joe Langan initially did not vote for Joe Langan during the election previous to the Bolden versus City of Mobile case, which involved changing the city's form of government. Of course, the Bolden versus City of 24 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Mobile case was a successful case and the city of Mobile form of government was changed. We now have a city form of government that is comprised of I believe six or seven counsel members from various districts within the community and of course one mayor. So, that was of course probably one of the final local accomplishments of my grandfather. Of course, finally, during the l 970's, he focused his efforts on running for political office. He initially ran for congress. He did not win that election. Shortly thereafter, he ran for the House of Representatives. He was elected to the House of Representatives I believe in 1974. This was about two or three years before his death. To the best of my knowledge and if I am wrong if anyone can correct me q,n this, I do believe that he was the first African-American to be elected to the Alabama House of Representatives since reconstruction. I do believe that he was. If anyone knows anything different, please let me know. During the l 970's, he was elected to the House of Representatives and of course in January of 1976, he passed away. Closing: In closing, I would just like to say that if we look over history and if we look at Alabama history, we have to realize that the Civil Rights Movement did not begin during the 1960's. The Civil Rights Movement did not begin during the 1950's with Brown versus Board of Education. The Civil Rights Movement certainly did not begin in 1925 when John Leflore, Wiley Bolden, Mr. Purifoy and all those guys began working in Mobile. Certainly, the Civil Rights Movement began when the first African slave was brought here into the Civil Rights Movement; that is when the Civil Rights Movement began. We also have to realize, especially you young students back there, that there were many people who were out here working for civil rights. Many of them were behind 25 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University scenes way before the 1960's, way before the 1950's, way before Medgar Evers, way before Malcolm X and way before Martin Luther King. Way before any of these people were even born. You know, there were people who were out there working diligently to bring out peaceful change in the state. Finally, in closing, I would like to say too if you look at the history of Alabama, if you look at Birmingham, if you look at Montgomery and you look at many of the things that went on in Birmingham and Montgomery during that time with as much violence that went on there, Mobile was light years ahead of Birmingham. Mobile was light years ahead of Selma because of the philosophies of people like John LeFlore, Non-Partisan Voters League, Mr. Purifoy and Mr. Bolden. Many of the changes that they brought about during that time were brought about peacefully. They were brought about litigiously. They were brought about through the court system. They were brought about through negotiation and were brought about through litigation. They were brought about through legislation, so to speak. That was the way that many of these people were able to bring about change during that time. I think that was also the way that many of Mobilians were able to achieve certain changes in the social fabric of the city through the work of many of these activists like my grandfather John LeFlore. I believe that I have just about used up all of my time. So, thank you all for being here. Janet LeFlore: I don't think that my son left too much for me to say. Do you think he covered it Mr. Purifoy? There is one thing that I would like to add to it though, just one little thing, and of course this is typical. As he mentioned the changes to the form of government from the at-large form to the city council form. It was like as if it was just 26 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University something that was done, but it really wasn't. My husband and I were in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the 1960's. He was at Albert Einstein and working on his residency in internal medicine. John Leflore called and said, "Janet, I want you to find out what kind of government they have in the city of Philadelphia." I said, "What do you mean? It's just like it is anywhere else, John." He said, "Find out. An at-large form of government or is it a council form of government." I asked my husband, "What is he talking about?" He was listening to John and I didn't quite get it. He said, "Well, just find out and let me know." So, as we discussed it, he said it was probably another project of status and I found out for him and I called him. I said, "Why John? Why do you want to know". He said, "Because, the form of government here in Mobile has to be changed." He said it with such conviction. I said, "John, you cannot change the form of city government in Mobile, Alabama." He said, "Oh, yes I can. !fl start it and don't finish it, someone will be here to finish it for me." Well, he started it, but it wasn't quite as candidly as one could say. It involved about ten or twelve years of hard work, calling cities here and there and everywhere. He was writing to city officials who were not going to answer your little note. They hardly give you time on the telephone, telling you the kind of form of government that they have. So, when my husband and I would go somewhere, anywhere and everywhere we'd go, check on the kind of government that they have there. See what's working for them. It took a number of years to do this. It took a lot of reading and interpretation to do this research. It started in the l 960's and in I 976, the ruling came down that the change of government had to take place. Now, after John Leflore, the NonPartisan Voters League, Purifoy and Ben Bolden and all of them ... After they got enough 27 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University history and after enough research had been done, Mobile, Alabama was under the fire because they could see on paper that the government, which was an at-large form of government did not allow the fair practice of government for everybody there. The minorities could definitely be segregated against and this was evident, not with just the research that had been done in other cities, which would indicate that Mobile should change the city form of government, but with what Mobile, itself, had shown to Mobilians. So, they had a case and that was their technique. Non-Partisan Voters League just wanted a case, a real case; so, they took it to the courts. Of course, they lost the first one. They took it to the higher court; this started in the 1960's. In 1976, it was sent to the Fifth District Court and the Fifth District Court declared that the form of government practiced in Mobile, Alabama, an at-large form of government allowed so many inequities that the minorities in Mobile, Alabama could be segregated again. John LeFlore died January 30, 1976. In September 1976, the Fifth District Court declared that the form of government in Mobile, Alabama, must be/should be/must be changed and then it changed from an at-large form of government to a council form of government and that is the kind of government that Mobile practices today. I am a witness that this is the best form of government, at least for Mobile, Alabama, and this was done by John Leflore as executive secretary of the Non-Partisan Voters League and all those other members of the Non-Partisan Voters League who participated in this research. It was called Bolden versus City of Mobile. That was the case that went down in history. It changed the city form of government of Mobile. As my son said, I am so glad to see the change of the city's form of government. It was not like that at all. It was somebody's 28 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University calling, writing, reading and analyzing the research that had taken place ten to twelve years and 1965 is when I actively became involved with it and 1976 is when the Fifth District Court said that the government should be changed. I think it has worked out very well to have the divided into seven districts and each district now is represented by a council person and the mayor, of course, is the top of it all. It is not like one man or two, three or four men ruling the whole city of Mobile. Surely, if you are living in one district and I am in another district, you cannot know what my needs are; it is my district and that is what it was all about. Of course, there was segregation all over Mobile at that time, still. When we came back from Philadelphia to Mobile, there was a lot of segregation and this form of government did help to rule out a lot of the segregation which was there. This was witnessed by me, but it took more than just a little effort; it took a lot of effort. This was John LeFlore's dream. He went to Queens, New York, the latter part of the l 950's and the he returned the early part of the l 960's. Queens, New York had this kind of government there and probably other cities in New York. He said, it seemed to be such a fair type of government. Of course, when he called me in Philadelphia asking me what kind of government did we have there, it did not make sense to me at all. In the long run, it made a lot of sense. I did put forth quite a bit of effort as all of the members of the Non-Partisan Voters League put forth quite a bit of effort to change the city's form of government and that is the one that we practice today. I guess Mr. Purifoy could attest to the fact that it is a better form of goverrunent. John LeFlore worked all these years. He worked a long, long time. As a child in Wilmington, North Carolina, my dad was a postman also. There was a little paper called, The Postal Alliance, which came out 29 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University probably two times a month. When my dad got that paper, he looked for John LeFlore. He would find something in there that John LeFlore did. We would have to sit down and listen to it. Is this something? He crossed in the middle of the street and they are putting him in jail for this. He came in a minute late and they are putting him in jail for this. He has his bag on the left side instead of the right side and they are putting him in jail. That is John Leflore in Mobile, Alabama. This is the Hatch Act that he has violated. They are going to kick him off of his job, but that is the most courageous man in the history of the times. He said, "I want to meet John Leflore of Mobile, Alabama." So, he sent his daughter to ____ _ College and his daughter met John Leflore's son. John LeFlore's son did not intend to let her go. So, when I introduced him to my mom and dad, (I must have been in my third year and he was in his senior year) my dad said to my husband, (which I call Beck)"would you happen to know a John LeFlore in Mobile, Alabama? My husband said, "Yes. John LeFlore's my dad." My dad said, "Would he be the civil rights worker?" He said, "Oh, yes. That's my dad." He said, "Well, I want to shake your hand." So, after that, Beck said to me, "I've got it made," and I guess he did. Knowing John Leflore and working with him was a glorious experience for me and I think it opened up my mind to bigger and better things. I think it made me a better person. I could never be as courageous as John Leflore. I remember that John LeFlore said to me that you cannot walk through life being afraid. You have to walk through life being unafraid. If you walk through life being afraid, you are not really going through life. I think this was right after I had the telephone, but I lived literally lived around their house all the time. I answered the telephone once and this gentleman was saying that he 30 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University wanted to know what was the size of John LeFlore. I said, "The size of his shoe? What do you want to know for?" He wanted to know so he could make the shoes with cement that would fit him, so if they killed him and dropped him in the Mobile Bay, he would stay down and he would never come up. He would never float up. When I mentioned this to John and his wife Teah, they were unmoved and I was scared to death. They were unmoved. It did not phase them at all. I said, "Well, aren't you afraid, Teah?" She said, "No, it comes all the time." John said that was just somebody being a prankster. I could not understand how these two people could not be disturbed by this kind of message on the telephone. Of course, I thought it was really real that somebody was going to really do that. Of course, they did not because they had so many messages like that. They already had I think about one or two shots in the window, but no one was killed. Of course, John had so many instances where I guess his life was really laid on the line. The Non-Partisan Voters League (I have to give it to you all Mr. Purifoy) really did protect him. They never allowed him to go out from a meeting at night without someone on both sides of John. Before John went out, they had two or three people go out and canvas the area, go across to the parking lot where he had his car parked and kind of go around the neighborhood. Then, they would come back in and give their reporting and then two of the other would escort John Leflore to his car. They gave him as much protection as any group of people could possibly give. So, regarding the case of Bolden versus the City of Mobile, it took over ten to twelve years to get that and that was the way it was with so many of the cases. It takes a long time. It takes the efforts of a lot of good thinking people. It takes a lot of good thinking. It takes a lot for a man to decide that he is going to 31 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University go this way because he knows that his life might be on line. It takes a really courageous man and John Leflore was the man and the members of the Non-Partisan Voters League. They were really courageous, Reverend Hope, he was courageous. He was getting old when I started working with you all. Mr. Purifoy, I am not going to talk any longer. Mr. Purifoy is going to tell the rest of it. They are courageous. It takes a lot of thinking and as I thought about it at several times of my life, John would call me at night, twelve o'clock, and say, "Would you listen to this Janet? How do you like this?" or he would call me at night and say, "Could you come over and read something for me? Please, just read it for me. Look for the i's and look for the t's. See if! dotted the i's and crossed the t's. Just type what I want you to type." It takes a lot out of your day. It takes a lot out of your time. It takes a lot out of your thinking. You have to program yourself to do this. You have to make a lot of changes in your life in order to do this. In the end, you have to think it is probably going to be worthwhile and it was. So, I do not regret any time at all that I gave to this program of John Leflore and the Non-Partisan Voters League and that is all I am going to say. O.B. Purifoy: With what has been said, I do not know really where to begin. (inaudible) I am proud that I was asked to come to Huntsville. It is not a new place to me, but it is an old place that maybe some ten or fifteen years ago I came and I saw this university because .. .I say university now because it was Alabama A&M College for Black Students I think. I came up to bring my grandson to school and of course, I left. Let me say that what I intend talking about tonight are some of the incidents that we had to go through with in living in Mobile, Alabama. Mobile is a good town; don't let anybody tell you 32 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University different. It is a good town. Even now, I can say it is a good town. First, I am going to start with the hospitals in and around our city. We visited (let me see if I can name some of them) Mobile ---- Hospital and South Alabama. (inaudible) I want to say in visiting those hospitals, back when they were talking about, back in the 1950's and the l 960's, black people had a very, very small area in which you could go into the hospitals. You had to be darn good to get in there even at that because they just did not want you in that hospital. After we talked with these people through John LeFlore, John would call the sisters and us. He would call the presidents of the hospitals. We sat down and talked with the sisters and we talked with the presidents of the hospitals. Do you know that when we left those places, we left with an understanding that if you send your blacks out here you will find that the hospitals are going to be different and they were. They were very good about things like that. We even came up to Greenville to what was (inaudible). Some of you may remember that one. We had a John ___ up there. He was the president of the hospital. (inaudible) That is where I was born. I met him and I told him. I said, "John, how is it you can't let any blacks come into this hospital?" He said, "O.B., what makes you think that?" I said, "Simply because I am told that, that they can't come into the hospital in Greenville, Alabama." He said, "Well, how long are you going to be here." I told him, "I'll be up here." He said, "Well, you come back in here to see me the day after tomorrow and I'll show you some black patients in this hospital." It happened. How he made it work, I do not know, but it worked. We also had what was known as the Greyhound bus terminal in Mobile. That was a bus stop. If you have ever tried to ride the greyhound bus back in the l 940's, l 950's and the l 960's, of course, you would know 33 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University that what I am about to say is real. You got on the bus. You walked to the back and there was a curtain on that bus. You had to get beyond that curtain if you were going to ride on that bus. Lots of you people do not believe that. Well, alright, I did not know that you were that young. Anyway, that was something we had to do. We went down to the Greyhound bus station, Mr. Bolden, myself and two or three others of the Non-Partisan Voters League. We sat down and talked with the manager of this station. We did not sit down. We stood and he sat down. Well, he talked and he talked and after we explained to him what we were there for and why we were there, you should know that the bus stations in Mobile, Alabama changed. It changed. It definitely changed. There were several late-night eating places in Mobile at this time. One was called Fletcher's. John Leflore was carrying mail back then. I decided that we were going to go down there and try eating at Fletcher's Barbecue. Well, you know what happened. We were abused, not bruised but abused. We could have gotten bruised had we decided to eat there anyway that day. We just took the abuse and decided that we were going to talk to Mr. Fletcher, the man who owned the place and see what we could do. We talked to him. You know he closed that restaurant, closed it and moved it out on Airport Boulevard. They thought we would not eat there, but we decided that we were going to eat out there. We did eat there and we had a good time eating there. It was very, very nice. It was mentioned about the dry docks in Mobile. We had a lot of blacks working out there, but they were working as workmen at the minimum task you could perform. They were ordering ships. They were picking up trash; they were doing all of that. When we talked to these gentlemen at the dry docks, it was within six month that we had supervisors in maybe three or four 34 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University departments at Alabama state dry docks. This was a trying situation because it was here that they said you would never see a black supervisor in Alabama dry docks. Like I said, within six months, we had three people out there and they were supervisors. Now, we went on to Angus which is about forty miles from Mobile. We have about two thousand people working there now. Mr. P was the man who ran Angus and he was a Mr. P alright. He was a Mr. P and he spelled his name p, e. That is why I do not mind spelling it because that is the way he spelled his name. We have people working down in Angus. (inaudible) They are building them now. Let's come back to Mobile and bus situation. We talked a little bit about the bus station, but we did not talk about the bus drivers. We do have _____ by Mr. Bolden and Randolph. I do not think I was in on this one. Bolden and Randolph went down and they talked with the man at the bus station and we do have bus drivers. Following that discussion that they had, we have black bus drivers and some of them live and drive right out of Mobile, Alabama. We have the third largest water systems in the state of Alabama. Mobile Water and Sewage is a big place. That is a big, big place and we have about three or four thousand people working for them. (inaudible) That Thursday, they had a meeting. They called all of the workers, laid them off for a day and called all of them in. They sat in big groups all around Mobile Water and Sewage. In less than two months, we had blacks driving trucks going all over the city doing what they do without any whites because they did the work, but they just had to have a white person along with them. The league was very, very good. It was a city where men and women could sit down and talk. All of you whites in Huntsville know that before the space center got here, you just did not believe there were going to be 35 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University blacks out there that were working in the areas as they were working in the space center. You did not believe that they would be setting up those very valuable rocks or what have you. Right now, I believe you have fifteen hundred. We can talk a lot about the struggle. We can talk a lot about the things that we did and did not do, but we have had some wonderful experiences. I would not trade them for anything because it is here that I learned my lesson. Now, I work individually for the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. I am retired and I am happy of it, but I still work with the Non-Partisan Voters League in Mobile If you are every in that area, look us up. We will do anything we can. We just about know everybody in Mobile. Mr. Joe Langan was a wonderful person. After he came back from the army ... ! was in the army the same time he was in the army. After he came back, he ran and won the election as city councilman. The city government and Mobile are going to have a strange case come up. I do not believe that Mrs. LeFlore knows about this just yet. In the election of government, we have councilman and we have ____ . We have to have a minority of five in order to pass anything in the city. Recently, less than two months ago, we had three new persons that were elected to this council. One of them have come up with that we do not need a majority in order to get something happening in the black community. You know about what is probably going to happen. That is why we are going to have another ____ come up in Mobile because we are not going to have just one man come in and change what has been effective and has been helpful in Mobile and helpful in the state of Alabama. It has been helpful in the whole United States. I think the works of John LeFlore was the beginning of this. I think that John LeFlore gave to the 36 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University black people an insight that would help them realize that the ways to maintain it is to sit down and talk. I do not know who the mayor of Huntsville is now, but maybe if you sit down and talk with him you may find him out. You can talk with him; I would think. The way that we grew up in Mobile is by talking to the mayor. We talk to the city police chief. We talk to the councilmen. If you have talked with the man and go there with the right idea, you can leave with a better idea and I know that I have used up my time. I want to thank you for listening. Janet LeFlore: When my husband and I came back to Mobile from Philadelphia, my husband absolutely, beyond a shadow of doubt, definitely qualified to practice medicine at any hospital in the whole United States of America. He could only go to one little hospital. It was overcrowded with all the blacks that had to go there because as he mentioned the hospitals did not allow the blacks into their beds and so forth. John at that time was trying to get Dr. Foster a position in Mobile. Just at the time that my husband got there ... My husband had applied to all of them and had not heard from any of them, boy, was he surprised because he really knew he would get in, but he did not get in. John Leflore went into the hospital. He talked to the administrators and said, it is not right. This is what John Leflore believed in doing as Mr. Purifoy just pointed out. He said, "I believe if you take a right and wrong to any person in the United States of America (of course, he was wrong) and say to them, "Is it right for you to keep a man from feeding his family. Is it right for you to kick a man out of a position just because he is black? My son has not heard from any of these hospitals here. He has not been admitted to anyone except for down at the base." The sister was really surprised and she said, "I never got his 37 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University application, but that is okay. He need not send it. Tell him to call me tomorrow and he will be admitted to this facility." Then, Mobile Infirmary said the same thing and then South Alabama Hospital. Dr. LeFlore was admitted to all of the hospitals within twentyfour hours and there were no incidents, none whatsoever. That was the personal experience I thought of when Mr. Purifoy was talking. Thank you. Q: (inaudible) A: You have a good question there. I cannot answer you fully. Mobile is strangely a town of politics where if you carry the right idea, then you got the right answer. You can do that today. You can count on that. If you carry the right idea, you get the right answer. A: Yes, politics are involved if I may answer that question. They are definitely. We are talking about politics. There are good politics and there are bad politics. You know that. I know that. We are talking about one versus the other. You know there is right and there is wrong and that is what we have to face in life. You are either right or you are wrong. You are either on the right side of the street or the wrong side of the street. This is what I keep saying about John LeFlore because I was so intermittently involved with him. He I believed going to you and saying to you, "Would you consider opening up a job to a man who happens to black. He is very good and deserves a good. Can you consider the idea that it is wrong to keep a man out of a job just because his skin is not the color of your skin?" He believed going to a man. He nagged them to death, over and over, writing them notes and calling them on the telephone saying, "Can we have a conference? Can you have a conference with me? Can I have five or ten minutes of your time?" It usually ended up being twenty-five or thirty minutes of his time, but he did it. Isn't that what 38 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University politics are all about? We are living in a political world. This is a political arena. There is right in it and there is wrong in it. We all know that. John Leflore, Non-Partisan Voters League and the NAACP were trying to right some of the wrong. Even if you were blind, even if you could not see, you knew these were inequities that should not be, particularly in the United States of America. It took a long, long struggle and it did not start in 1960. It did not start with Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King did his part surely and God bless him and we all love him, but it started long before the sit-ins. It started long before ____ . It started with (inaudible) pushing and striving and praying that this change would take place with honor and without fighting in the street and without kicking and slamming each other but just negotiating. If the negotiating could not take place in an office, then they would take it to the court, particularly after the Civil Rights Bill was passed. Q: (inaudible) A: Let me say this. Yes, he was a lawyer and then no, he was not a lawyer, but there is no lawyer that knew much more law than John LeFlore. He worked and he worked and he worked. He went to the post office during the day and put his time in there. He came home and got a little bit of rest, two or three hours. He took his soak in the bathtub and then he started working at his typewriter in the Non-Partisan Voters League or in the NAACP office and then he worked until two, three or four o' clock in the morning. The night that his house was bombed (if you can believe in this and I think I do) he sat each night in a particular chair in front of two windows in his home. He sat at his nice dining room table that he had to clean off daily in order to eat there because it had pages all over 39 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University the place. He sat there and he worked. He pecked away at that typewriter. He went to the meetings. He did all of this. He worked. I would say out of twenty-four hours a day he must have given at least eighteen hours of time to do this work. One other thing, he took a course at a college and I will not name the professor. He told me this. He said, "I just noticed that John just kept asking questions and asking questions. Then, suddenly, I didn't see John anymore. He left the class." So, I called and asked, "Why did you leave the class? Have you left the class for good?" He said, "Well, I wasn't learning too much." Then, he said, "You knew more than I did. You knew more of the history than I did." He was a well, rounded man. He did not graduate from college, but he could hold a good conversation and give you the facts on practically any subject that you approached him with. A: That is an interesting question because actually John Leflore probably should have been a lawyer. It is interesting that you would raise that point. He was a very articulate man. That is another recollection of mine. He loved words. He was a brilliant man. As I said, he never really got the opportunity to go to college. He certainly never got the opportunity to go to law school. Much of his work in civil rights was work that he did really out of the goodness of his heart. This was not something he got paid for. He was a postal worker. He was a mail carrier. That was his job. That is how he earned a living and that is how he paid his bills. That is how he feed his family, bought a car and home, whatever. That was his job. If anything happened in Mobile, I say maybe from (I would was born in 1965, so I know anything after that) 1950 through 1976, if someone felt they had been discriminated against, if someone felt they had been wronged, if someone had 40 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University been beaten by the police, if someone felt that they had been wrongfully arrested or if they had been discriminated against in employment, the first person they went to talk to was not an attorney; it was John LeFlore. Very often, I think about the fact of what would it have been like had he been an attorney. If he had been an attorney, my goodness, you never know what the possibility would have been. I mean, I am an attorney and frankly speaking, I do not have half of the guts that this guy had. Of course, I live in a different time and I have a very different viewpoint about life and many other issues. So, it really is not mandatory that I have the guts that he had because I do not have to face the things that he had to face. I do not have to worry about many of things he had to worry about. Society is very different today as opposed to the way society was then. I think the interesting thing about him having been an attorney was the fact that he was not. Possibly, had he been an attorney, he would have been more or less in a situation where he would have had to pick and choose more so than just being a humanitarian. You know, I went to school with a lot of very, very wealthy people. Many of these people whose grandfathers and great-grandfathers started big businesses, etc., etc. My grandfather was not a wealthy man. He was not a wealthy man when he died. He was not a rich man when he died. He left behind a great legacy. He left behind thousands of people who remembered him, respected him, believed in what he stood for and who cherished his memory. Once again, he was not a wealthy man, but I think had he been an attorney, he would have made decisions based on pecuniary concerns as opposed to having made decisions based on humanitarian concern. His decisions may have been a little different. He may have had to back away from certain things because he would have been scared 41 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University that he would have jeopardized his life had he gotten involved or he may have gotten involved in things because maybe there was a pecuniary interest, or financial interest, whereas that was never really a motivating factor. Really, once again, all of the things that he did as far as civil rights are concerned, those were things he was never compensated for. This was time, maybe three, four or five hours a day that he spent, maybe twenty, thirty hours a week that he may have spent working with the NAACP, working with the Non-Partisan Voters League or working with various organizations, political leaders, members of the community, etc., etc. He was not paid for any of this stuff. This was all out of his own dedication, out of his own devotion and his own humanitarian spirits. Q: With bus drivers, were they allowed to drive throughout the whole state or just in Mobile? The next question is what kind of tactics was used to appeal the Jim Crow laws? What kind of angles was used with the injustice that was against human rights? A: Ifl came to you and said to you, "Do you think it's right for you to run over this child in the middle of the street or should you drive around this child who is in the middle of street?" What would you say to me? Which is right and which is wrong? One is right and one is wrong. Would you drive over that child in the middle of the street or would you drive around that child in the middle of the street so that you would not kill it? It is the matter of working with a man's conscious and going to a man, a leader, who is helping to make the rules an who is making the law and present the law to that man. Let him think about it. Is it right or is it wrong? This is a human being. The only difference is that your skin is one color and this man's skin is another color. Should we segregate on the basis of 42 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University color? No. I good thinking person whether he is black, green, white or purple could not say anything to that question except, it is the law or that is wrong. That was his technique. Q: Mrs. LeFlore, while not meaning to understate the racism in the northern states as well as the south, I am wondering if Philadelphia's system might have been a little bit different from Mobile and did you ever intend on not returning to the south? A: Yes. When we went to Philadelphia, we were going to buy a home in Philadelphia, we noticed that the realtors were taking us to middle class homes that were owned by whites. Then, we noticed that in these neighborhoods, for the most part, there was integration. They were quite a few blacks and very few whites. Then, we learned that we bought blacks. We bought the homes from the whites and they moved out, way out, to North Philadelphia. Philadelphia had two people who thought well of themselves. They had been taught to think well of themselves. Learn it. Do it right. Do not do it halfway. Do it all the way. So, when we bought this house and they moved out; this is segregation in Philadelphia. That is what we were up against. My husband thought about his mother and father growing old in Mobile by themselves, so he came back to Mobile. Now, Mobile did need desperately black doctors. I say black doctors because there were blacks in Mobile that desperately needed medical care and there were not enough black doctors in Mobile to give them that care. They were several black doctors then. White doctors did not turn them away, but proud blacks did not want to go into a white doctor's office and sit where they had to sit, waiting for services. How could you trust a man with your life who was not going to let you sit with his other patients. It was that kind of situation, you know, just thinking through it. So, we had not plarmed to come back to Alabama. I did 43 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University not particularly want to come back to Alabama, but I was a dutiful wife and I followed my husband back to Alabama. The same things began happening in Alabama. We started to buy a home and the same thing was happening. So, my husband and I said, "Well, we'll buy all of that when we get enough money and we will make our own subdivision," and we did it. Q: First of all, I would like to thank all of you for coming in this weather. It is kind of a two-part question but kind of short. First, how did you stay so focused on your work in helping John Leflore and second, what advice would you give to a young person today to help make sure that the progress in America continues. A: First of all, you have got to believe in yourself. Okay? My grandmother was raised under a mother who got you up out of the bed and gave you tasks to do all day long. You were doing this and doing that. Everyday you had to study and you had to learn math. Everyday, you had to devote a little bit of time to that and everyday you had to be functional. ---- father said who said to you, "You have to work. You must work. You must do a good job." He had five daughters and three sons. He told his daughters they were not prissy or attractive unless you can work. So, what daughter would not want to be attractive to a father? So, you worked and you worked and you worked. You swept the kitchen and you swept the sidewalk. You washed the dishes, all except my sister; she would not wash dishes, but you learned how to do these things. They were embedded in you and you had a mother who said, "You can't rest in the bed unless you are sick. You have to do this." Your whole day is programmed. So, this is what you learn to do to make the maximum use of what God has given to use, some energy. You just learn how to 44 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University work. When I was teaching at Fisk University, I also worked at the Atomic Energy Commission in a very sophisticated stage of chemistry, which I had to learn and then put in use. I held down tow full-time jobs while my husband was in medical school. That was very, very hard, but I did it. I also gave our son some time. When I went to Mobile and started helping with the Non-Partisan Voters League, all this reading and listening to John Leflore, it was hard, but it was worthwhile. I had attuned myself, my body, my energies and everything I had to working. You are working. So, you just do it and you do not ignore your children. You give them good, quality time. What is wrong with my son sitting on my lap while I am talking to somebody in Timbuktu about changing the city's form of government? This is what you do. Work always, my dear, maximum work, each day of your life. Go all the way. Do it. You can do it. Closing: In reference to your question and your question as well. I have always had that same question, not only about John Leflore, but many people who bring about change in history. How are they able to do this? I also know about Janet Owens LeFlore in 1965 when she went back to Mobile. I know a little bit about the things she was doing in the Non-Partisan Voters League. I know she had a full-time career teaching chemistry at Bishop. I can barely do one job teaching full-time and in addition to raising a fan1ily. The other thing, which is just a general comment in relation to politics, from the historical point of view, all change in a sense is ultimately political change. Tactics are different. Tactics that worked in Selma and Birmingham may not work in other areas. It seems to me that LeFlore and the Non-Partisan Voters League arrived at the best tactics given the circumstances they found in a coastal and catholic. He reminds me of the ____ 45 _ �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University about war. He says, "War is the continuation of diplomacy by other means." I think in a way politics are the same way. I have really enjoyed this session tonight. It has been a privilege to have Burton her and Janet Owens Leflore and Mr. Purifoy. I appreciate you all coming out and please join them in one more round of applause. 46 � 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/. Title A name given to the resource Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965 Relation A related resource <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> Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965 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_000027 Title A name given to the resource Digitized transcription of VHS tape of "The Case of Mobile". Description An account of the resource Janet Owens LeFlore, Burton R. LeFlore, and O.B. Purifoy are the speakers in this lecture given at Alabama A&M University. 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, Huntsville, Alabama Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-11-29 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 2000-2009 Subject The topic of the resource LeFlore, Janet Owens, 1928-2015 LeFlore, Burton R, 1966- Purifoy, Ossie B., 1914-2005 Civil rights movements--Southern states--History--20th century Mobile (Ala.) Mobile County Segregation African Americans--Legal status, laws, etc. Civil rights demonstrations Type The nature or genre of the resource Lectures Text Transcript Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Print 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. Extent The size or duration of the resource. 46 Has Format A related resource that is substantially the same as the pre-existing described resource, but in another format. Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965 <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/405">VHS Tape of: The Case of Mobile - Speakers: Walker LeFlore, Janet Owens LeFlore, Burton R. LeFlore, and O.B. Purifoy, 2001-11-29 Box 2, Tape 11</a> University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections, Huntsville, Alabama 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/393">The Case of Mobile - Speakers: Walker LeFlore, Janet Owens LeFlore, Burton R. LeFlore, and O. B. Purifoy - Transcription of Tape 11, 2003. Box 1, File 12</a> University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama