169 20 8239 https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/40/750/uah_uahp_000195_web.pdf 629d7347ff40349362d6b889bb22754d PDF Text Text � 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 UAH Photograph Collection Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context UAH Photograph Collection 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_uahp_000195 Title A name given to the resource Detail view of an antique car parked at the Noojin House. Description An account of the resource Located at 3300 Holmes Ave. in Huntsville, the home was donated to UAH by F. Kenneth Noojin in 1983. UAH sold the home in 2001. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource University of Alabama in Huntsville Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1980-1989 Subject The topic of the resource College buildings University of Alabama in Huntsville Huntsville (Ala.) Madison County (Ala.) Type The nature or genre of the resource Photographs Still Image Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived UAH Photograph Collection University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, 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. Relation A related resource uah_photos_2019_05 https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/204/14818/sea_ice_chart_of_the_southern_hemisphere.jpg c5595980717b6439d58a3f7f711c05e9 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 HON 399 Research in London Title A name given to the resource HON 399 Research in London Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. 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 Details of an Ice Chart of the Southern Hemisphere Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hydrographic Office Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Ice-Chart-of-Southern-Hemisphere Description An account of the resource Showcases where Captain Cook saw pack ice outside Antarctica's coast. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1866 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Lauren Arnold, HON 399 Study Abroad in London, Spring 2025 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. https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/20/11057/devloxrp1engsatapollaunveh_041107135046.pdf 876683354a96115fe8f1b1aa55408e96 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 Saturn V Collection Relation A related resource <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/resources/60" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">View the Saturn V Collection finding aid in ArchivesSpace</a> Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Saturn V Collection Description An account of the resource <p>The Saturn V was a three-stage launch vehicle and the rocket that put man on the moon. (Detailed information about the Saturn V's three stages may be found<span> </span><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/rocketpark/saturn_v_first_stage.html">here,<span> </span></a><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/rocketpark/saturn_v_second_stage.html">here,<span> </span></a>and<span> </span><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/rocketpark/saturn_v_third_stage.html">here.</a>) Wernher von Braun led the Saturn V team, serving as chief architect for the rocket.</p> <p>Perhaps the Saturn V’s greatest claim to fame is the Apollo Program, specifically Apollo 11. Several manned and unmanned missions that tested the rocket preceded the Apollo 11 launch. Apollo 11 was the United States’ ultimate victory in the space race with the Soviet Union; the spacecraft successfully landed on the moon, and its crew members were the first men in history to set foot on Earth’s rocky satellite.</p> <p>A Saturn V rocket also put Skylab into orbit in 1973. A total of 15 Saturn Vs were built, but only 13 of those were used.</p> 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 devloxrp1engsatapollaunveh_041107135046.pdf spc_stnv_000243 Title A name given to the resource Development of LOX/RP-1 engines for Saturn/Apollo launch vehicles. Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Douglas Engineering Paper No. 3511 Description An account of the resource The development of liquid rocket engines follow similar patterns regardless of engine size. During the development of the H-1 and F-1 engines, may problems were encountered. Mehtods of solving the combustion instability problem are discussed.; AIAA 4th Propulsion Joint Specialist Conference, Cleveland, Ohio, June 10-14, 1968.; Also available on NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) as unclassified. Can be ordered. Also on AIAA. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bostwick, Leonard C. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1968-06-14 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1960-1969 Subject The topic of the resource Saturn project Liquid oxygen Liquid propellant rockets RP-1 rocket propellant Saturn launch vehicles Apollo project Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Essays Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Saturn V Collection Box 27, Folder 11 University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, 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. Relation A related resource spc_stnv_000225_000249 Is Referenced By A related resource that references, cites, or otherwise points to the described resource. <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/17898"> View this item in ArchivesSpace </a> https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/31/509/spc_schu_2024_2025.pdf baa0dceaadfd2dfaf7dc977f7e25e8b1 PDF Text Text �� 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 William August Schulze Collection Relation A related resource <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/resources/38" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">View the William August Schulze Collection finding aid in ArchivesSpace</a> Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context William August Schulze Collection Description An account of the resource William August Schulze (November 23, 1905 to November 4, 2001) received his education at Max Byth Ingenieurschule, Berlin, graduating with an engineering doctorate degree in 1935 (Lundquist). Schulze was a guided missile expert during WWII, and he worked at Peenemünde from 1937 until 1945 (Wade, Lundquist). He was brought to America through Operation Paperclip, and he worked as a member of von Braun's Rocket Team (Wade). By July 1, 1965, Schulze was employed at the Marshall Space Flight Center. "In the February 1969 MSFC Directory, he is listed in the Propulsion and Vehicle Engineering Lab, Vehicle Systems Div." He retired in 1969 (Lundquist). Works Cited Lundquist, Charles. "Transplanted Rocket Pioneers," 2015. Wade, Mark. "Schulze, August Wilhelm." Encyclopedia Astronautica, http://www.astronautix.com/s/schulze.html. 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 spc_schu_2024_2025 Title A name given to the resource Diagram of an A-4 rocket. Description An account of the resource The V-2 rocket was also called the A-4, or Aggregat 4, its technical name. The back of the diagram is stamped "Geheime Kommandosache" ("Secret Military Document"). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Heeresanstalt Peenemünde Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1942-08 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1940-1949 Subject The topic of the resource V-2 rocket World War, 1939-1945--Germany--Equipment and supplies Peenemünde (Germany) Type The nature or genre of the resource Still image Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived William August Schulze Collection Box 3, Folder 49 University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collection, Huntsville, Alabama Language A language of the resource de 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. Relation A related resource spc_schu_2019_01A https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/76/3335/loc_burw_-223.pdf ed02cce282e46cd1ef3fcb02a0082f99 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 Burwell Family Collection Title A name given to the resource Burwell Family Collection Relation A related resource <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/resources/145" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">View the Burwell Family Collection finding aid in ArchivesSpace</a> Description An account of the resource <a href="http://libarchstor2.uah.edu/digitalcollections/items/show/3332" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">View Edwin D. Burwell's World War II service timeline, 1943-1944</a> <a href="http://libarchstor2.uah.edu/digitalcollections/items/show/3333" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">View Edwin D. Burwell's World War II service timeline, 1944-1945</a> Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. Materials donated and digitized by Dudley Burwell 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 loc_burw_000223 Title A name given to the resource Diagram of mine sweeping from boat. Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1940-1949 Subject The topic of the resource Minesweepers World War, 1939-1945 Type The nature or genre of the resource Diagrams Still Image Text Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Burwell Family Collection University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, 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. Relation A related resource loc_burw_2021_02 https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/123/7927/r04a22-11.pdf 5009df216304f9249de2f4a50757ad54 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 Series 04, Subseries A: Huntsville History Title A name given to the resource Series 04, Subseries A: Huntsville History Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. 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 r04a22-11 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Frances Cabaniss Roberts Collection Series 4, Subseries A, Box 22, Folder 11 University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama Title A name given to the resource Diary of Catherine M. Fennell, typed , 1860 - 1865 Relation A related resource r04a-210924 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fennell, Catherine M. Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1860-1869 Subject The topic of the resource Fennell, Catherine M. United States–History–Civil War, 1861-1865 Type The nature or genre of the resource Diaries 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. https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/129/9093/r07_04-00-012.pdf abdfbb3031a015b5d3100969e98e517d Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. 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 r07_04-00-012 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Series 7, Box 4, Item 12 Title A name given to the resource Dickson-Walker House Description An account of the resource This section contains report documents and photographs related to the Dickson-Walker House. Relation A related resource r07-211013 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Top of Alabama Regional Council of Governments Subject The topic of the resource Historic buildings Type The nature or genre of the resource Photographs Inventories Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Frances Cabaniss Roberts Collection 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. https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/20/11061/diffconfigsucc_082107132136.pdf dcc3e1f768f74d380da49c160c122ef0 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 Saturn V Collection Relation A related resource <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/resources/60" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">View the Saturn V Collection finding aid in ArchivesSpace</a> Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Saturn V Collection Description An account of the resource <p>The Saturn V was a three-stage launch vehicle and the rocket that put man on the moon. (Detailed information about the Saturn V's three stages may be found<span> </span><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/rocketpark/saturn_v_first_stage.html">here,<span> </span></a><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/rocketpark/saturn_v_second_stage.html">here,<span> </span></a>and<span> </span><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/rocketpark/saturn_v_third_stage.html">here.</a>) Wernher von Braun led the Saturn V team, serving as chief architect for the rocket.</p> <p>Perhaps the Saturn V’s greatest claim to fame is the Apollo Program, specifically Apollo 11. Several manned and unmanned missions that tested the rocket preceded the Apollo 11 launch. Apollo 11 was the United States’ ultimate victory in the space race with the Soviet Union; the spacecraft successfully landed on the moon, and its crew members were the first men in history to set foot on Earth’s rocky satellite.</p> <p>A Saturn V rocket also put Skylab into orbit in 1973. A total of 15 Saturn Vs were built, but only 13 of those were used.</p> 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 diffconfigsucc_082107132136.pdf spc_stnv_000247 Title A name given to the resource Differences of configuration in successive Saturn IB and Saturn V vehicles- case 330. Description An account of the resource Includes memorandum for file. Configuration matrices reflecting present program status of differences in Saturn IB and Saturn V flight hardware on a mission to mission basis have been prepared. The attached matrices are arranged to show differences in major subsystems (Structures, Propulsion, Instrumentation and Range Safety, and Electrical) for each stage. The reason for the configuration difference and the mission effectivity are included.; DMD, 2031-SGE-eas, GRH; Includes "Recommendation for announcement and distribution of Bellcomm Report". Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bellcomm, Inc. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1965-11-10 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 1960-1969 Subject The topic of the resource Saturn project Saturn launch vehicles. Launch vehicle configurations Saturn 1B launch vehicles Saturn 5 launch vehicles Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Memorandums Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Saturn V Collection Box 15, Folder 34 University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, 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. Relation A related resource spc_stnv_000225_000249 Is Referenced By A related resource that references, cites, or otherwise points to the described resource. <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/17365"> View this item in ArchivesSpace </a> https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/32/13343/InauguralLecture_Tape1_File2.pdf bd245baf8a290564f6f6b50359457e72 PDF Text Text The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Inaugural Lecture Speaker: Taylor Branch Introduction: In 1963, Taylor Branch was a high school junior in Atlanta, Georgia. As he watched the evening news that spring, he recalls being thunderstruck by images of fire hoses and dogs turned against marching children in Birmingham, Alabama, images that led him to formulate his first political questions. What tremendous power made those children march and made police attack them? What was the Civil Rights Movement made of and where did it come from? It was a moment that changed the direction of his life and, twenty years later, finding answers to those questions would become his life's work. After high school, Mr. Branch graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and received his graduate degree in International Economics from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He began a career as a reporter and a writer during the l 970's, holding editorial positions at the Washington Monthly, Harpers and Esquire while continuing to write for a wide variety of publications. In 1976 he wrote the best seller Blind Ambition with President Nixon's former counsel and Watergate figure, John Dean. Mr. Branch continued his successful collaboration, publishing Second Wind with Bill Russell and The Labyrinth, with Eugene M. Proper, in the following years. By the ! 980's, Mr. Branch was engaged in a monumental research project whose goal was nothing less than a narrative history of the Civil Rights Movement, focusing on the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and the struggle that transformed America. The first volume of a planned trilogy, Parting the Waters, �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville America in the King Years, 1954 to 1963, appeared in 1988 and was met with overwhelming public and critical acclaim, beginning with the Pulitzer prize for history and extending to the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the National Book Critic Circle Award. The same was true for his second volume, Pillar of Fire, America in the King Years, 1963 to 1965, which was published in 1998. A magisterial history of one of the most tumultuous periods in post-war America, as one critic described it, Pillar of Fire won the Sidney Hillman Book Award, the Imus Book Award and the American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award. Critics have described Mr. Branch's work as inspiring, definitive, one of the greatest achievements in American biography, a tour de force of research and synthesis, the measure of all books to come. He has been the recipient of a McArthur Foundation Fellowship and in 1999 President William J. Clinton awarded him the National Humanities Medal. Currently Mr. Branch is working on the third and final volume of his trilogy, At Canaan's Edge. Also in the making is an eight-hour miniseries based on the first two books in the trilogy called Parting the Waters, which Mr. Branch is producing with Harry Belafonte and which will be televised by ABC. We are honored to have such a distinguished author as the inaugural speaker in this fall's series on the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. The topic of Mr. Branch's speech tonight is "Equal Souls, Equal Vote, Alabama in the Heart of Civil Rights." Please join me in extending a warm welcome to Mr. Taylor Branch. Taylor Branch: Thank you very much. I am very happy to be here. I know this is not California. You pay your electric bills because there is plenty of light here. It is quite bright up here so I can't see you but I hope I can hear you from time to time. I am 2 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville honored to be here at this inaugural event and I'm flattered by all of the things just said about me in the introduction. To undercut it a little bit, I want you to know that the Don Imus award I received was the first and the only Don Imus Award that will ever be awarded. The Awards program died on some snafu or scandal involving Don Imus. And, on a more somber note, the eight-hour miniseries that Harry and I have been trying to make now for ten years is forthcoming, but forthcoming is a very elastic word in television and it is a labor of love to work in this subject but it is not always a labor of love to try to break down racial barriers in Hollywood, I can tell you that. It is a combination of money and reluctance. We do hope, and we have a wonderful script, that we can bring this truly amazing story of American freedom to a larger audience. People are not going to read big history books or come to lecturers at UAH. But, I'm very grateful to be here. I am glad that two institutions are collaborating and cooperating to do this. It is part of the lesson of the movement that if you are not stretching yourself for citizenship you are in danger oflosing it. It's always a little stretch. Never expect to get it all right. Never expect to be completely comfortable, if you were you wouldn't be stretching. So, I'm glad that you are doing it. We had some events like that in Baltimore, cross-campus events, and they were stupendously successful but, again, not without stretch marks I guess you would say. So expect those and I hope it goes well and I wish you well. You are going to have some wonderful people here. Many of your speakers are dear friends and colleagues of mine, Diane Nash and Fred Shuttlesworth. He is the only person I know who kind of preaches like an airplane. He will literally get his arms out and say I'm looking for a place to land. So, you're in for a treat with a lot of the 3 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville speakers that you are going to have here, and I just mentioned two of them. I think Diane Nash is one of the most unsung figures of the whole Freedom Rights Era and she's coming down from Chicago. She does not make that many appearances so I'm really glad you have her and I hope you'll take advantage of it. Before I start, I would like to mention one personal note. The kind introduction began in Westminster when I was a junior in high school, stupefied by the demonstrations in Birmingham. My football classmate from that era is now, it's hard for me to even get this out, the distinguished Dr. Marshall Shreeder here in Huntsville. He was my classmate and it was one of my treats to come here and spend the night last night with Doctor Shreeder and his wife, Lucinda, who also went to the same high school. I see that they are here tonight. I know that a Jot of you don't want to meet Dr. Shreeder because he is the cancer doctor but, if you do, it will be a treat even if you have cancer. I tell you, he is a wonderful guy. I am here to talk to you about the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama and to give you something of an overview about it. Alabama is the heart of the Civil Rights Movement. I am going to talk to you about three miracles that occurred here, a miracle of cars, a miracle of children and a miracle of young citizens. The miracle of cars, of course, occurred in the bus boycott, which was as much about cars as it was about people. At the time, the black citizens in Montgomery resolved not to ride the buses and Jess than five percent of the black people in Montgomery owned automobiles and there was no alternative form of transportation in a community that was very widely stretched out. Most of the cars that were owned were concentrated in two small Baptist congregations, Dexter Avenue, Dr. King's church, and First Baptist, Ralph Abernathy's church. The 4 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville people in those two churches by in large didn't speak to one another. The one came out of the other. Abernathy's church was built first, right after the Civil War. It was burned down later and they rebuilt it. It was known as the brick-a-day church because the exslaves didn't have any money and everybody was required to go out in the countryside and find one brick a day and bring it to the site and they built the church. They built it up there on the high hill, the same hill where the capital is in Montgomery. But some of the finer members of First Baptist church in the late 19th century were upset by the fact that the door exited out onto the steep side of the hill, I forget which direction that is, toward • Rigley Street and they got mud on their shoes coming out and they felt that they were too good for mud and so they withdrew and went down to a slave pen at the foot of the hill and formed Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. And ever thereafter there was a little bit of snootiness between the two churches. Ralph Abernathy told me once that, he said that in Dr. King's church you couldn't even talk about Jesus. He said, "You could mention Him maybe, but they preferred that you talk about Plato." He said, "Now, at First Baptist, we didn't have any shouting. It was not a shouting congregation. All of the other congregations, where people didn't own any automobiles, were shouting churches." He said you couldn't shout at First Baptist. Other people said that wasn't true, that you really could shout at First Baptist, but Abernathy didn't like to advertise that because he wanted to be as distinguished as Dexter Avenue. He said you couldn't shout, but you could talk about Jesus. He said, "I could preach about Jesus from my pulpit, but not at Dr. King's church." He said, "At Dexter Avenue they didn't even have music in their hymnal. Their hymnal was a book of 5 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville poetry because to them if you put music there, it was kind of demeaning." These are the two congregations, one hundred years later, out of slavery, that split over an issue of status and whether you were going to get mud on your feet coming out onto Ripley Avenue in which all the cars were concentrated when they resolved not to ride the buses and 50,000 people have to get to work. Most of them were maids and day laborers without their established form of public transportation, i.e. the bus. That meant they had to get into the cars of the Dexter members and the First Baptist members, who didn't even want each other in their cars. Their cars were their prize possessions. Vernon Johns, the minister of Dexter Avenue, who preceded Dr. King at Dexter Avenue, said "Do you want a definition of perpetual motion, give the average Negro a Cadillac and tell him to park it on some land he owns." This is what he said to his own members trying to tweak them about how much money they would spend on their cars. "You wouldn't even have a house, but you've got a car." These people loved their cars. We all love our cars. Americans love cars. But if it is a rare possession and if 80% of the working population of black Montgomery at the time of the bus boycott are day laborers and maids, and not a single white collar occupation in the whole city is open to you, it is a profound test of a divided society to ride in somebody else's car to work when you are muddy and dirty and you are a day laborer. To do it for one day is rough. They did it in large part in the beginning for all the reasons that you might think of accumulated degradation and accumulated frustration, but you have to remember that Rosa Parks was not by any means the first person that had been dragged off the buses and arrested. It had happened a number of times and, in fact, it had happened a number of times when they had tried to 6 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville do something about it. Always, the circumstances weren't right. A person arrested, one of them turned out to be a pregnant teenager. Well, who wants to rally the community around a pregnant teenager, or a divorcee? The significant fact that I want to start with you about, about this miracle, is that it was not what Rosa Parks did that was significant, it was who she was. Rosa Parks had a personality and a persona in Montgomery that transcended all of the little status cleavages that divide us even in our academic departments in a university. Dr. King used to say, "People think black people don't quarrel over status because we don't have any ofit, but if you have only a small quantity, you quarrel in all that more minute and finite a degree. Rosa Parks cured all of that. She was a person of great refinement and also a seamstress. She lorded herself over no one and yet she wrote beautiful letters in perfect English for the NAACP, she was the secretary. She sewed for the better members in Dexter Avenue, but went to church in a Lutheran church taught in a little like missionary colony. She was a person who transcended all of the little differences there. The big people liked her because they thought she was refined. The little people liked her because she didn't lord it over anybody. I tried to say in the book, because somebody told me this, that Rosa Parks really makes up for about fifty of society's sociopaths that are let loose. One transcendent personality that everybody likes from every station in life. So, the bus boycott started because of who she was, not that she did something extraordinary or that something extraordinarily bad happened to her, but the combination of this indignity happening to this person made everybody willing to get in the cars. It made everybody willing to submit to that on both sides, to have your car dented, to have your car ticketed, 7 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville to have your car muddied and, on the other side, to humble yourself and say, "May I ride in your highfalutin car, Dr. Atkin?" It forged community bonds that people never knew existed. Talk about stretching yourself, this is the overlooked part of the Miracle in Montgomery. People stretched themselves everyday to walk miles, to ride miles, to endure the harassment by the police, every kind that you can imagine, including arresting Dr. King, of course, several times. To do that for three hundred days, through two winters, is a true phenomenon of social transformation at a community level about the automobile and about people doing things they didn't believe they could do. It really meant a lot to Dr. King when old Mother Pollard, you know he tried to get her to take a ride, said some of the older people shouldn't be doing this. They should take a ride in the car and after a while some people got so devoted to the spirit of the movement, that they would tum down the rides from people, even when they were offered, and Mother Pollard turned down a ride from Dr. King several times and kept saying, "No, I don't want to ride. My feets is tired, but my soul is rested." That famous line came from somebody literally walking into town in that whole long year. People argue about whether the bus boycott was won or lost by the demonstrations or by the lawsuits that ultimately ended the segregation there, but the fact of the matter is that it was the transition within the community itself that happened and made this possible, that laid the groundwork for all the other surprises of people saying, "We can do something about this ourselves if we are willing to stretch across community lines." Nobody knew it was going to be about the buses anymore than they knew that the next stage was going to be about a lunch counter. This is the kind of accidental surprise 8 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville that happens once people begin to stretch themselves and try to ask if somebody else from a different walk of life, across a line, if I'm willing to make myself nervous and expose myself to ask if somebody else will do this, the movement says you will be surprised, you will be pleasantly answered and later on people in the movement are risking their lives to do precisely that. It created hope out of no hope, but we have to be harsh historically and honestly. The bus boycott ended m 1956. Montgomery was never the site of another serious initiative in Civil Rights because as soon as it was over people started quarreling over the success. Rosa Parks was driven out of Montgomery because people resented the fact that she became known as the mother of the Civil Rights Movement and she wasn't from either of the two elite churches. These are harsh facts. The genius and the spirit doesn't last forever and you have to be on guard to figure out where it is going to go. Not only that, it didn't really turn up anywhere else either because seven years later, in 1963, Dr. King really feared that the Civil Rights Movement was going recede from its window in history with segregation still intact. It was still as strong as ever and he believed that the rise of the opposition to the Civil Rights Movements had more momentum than the movement itself by 1962 and he went into Birmingham, the most segregated city and the toughest city, basically as a desperate measure to try to take a risk when he felt he had nothing to lose because the movement otherwise was going to recede. Now, this is the miracle of children. I want to make clear to what degree Birmingham succeeded, not because of a letter from a Birmingham jail, not because of political mobilization of outside people, not because of the accumulated forces of other 9 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Civil Rights support groups and not even because of the wearing down of the long weeks of demonstrations in Birmingham. They were on the point of surrender. Nobody was going to publish the letter from Birmingham jail. Nobody paid any attention. It was a long-winded letter, another one of Dr. King's sermons. President Kennedy, after over a month of demonstrations in Birmingham and people going to jail, basically wasn't even asked questions about Birmingham. It wasn't on the screen and Dr. King was preparing to withdraw from Birmingham when James Bevel and his wife Diane, Diane Nash who is coming here, said, "Well, you're going to have to withdraw because you're running out of people who are willing to go to jail because of all of the terrible things that are happening in Bull Connor's jail and what happens when you are in there. Who wants to go?" But we have plenty of people, it's just that they are 18 and 17 and 16, and an argument began to break out in Birmingham behind the scenes. I mean an argument with fistfights among nonviolent people. Those are really serious arguments. "You mean to say that you have come in here to Birmingham and mobilized hatred among whites, they are firing people right and left, the movement is failing and now you are about to withdraw and you want to leave for good measure all of our children with criminal records. You want to put babies in jail?" Bevel was the leader of the team saying, "Why not? They are segregated. They have no future." One of the fistfights broke out when a parent came in and said, "Get this lunatic out of here, Dr. King. Why is he threatening to put my child in jail?" Bevel said, "I want to put your child in jail because he is willing to do what you should have done thirty years ago," and there was almost a fight there. Bevel essentially argued half seriously, because he was always on the borderline of 10 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville lunacy, that "If Baptists could accept baptism and determine their eternal destiny as early as 6-years-old, how can you tell them they can't march for freedom?" All of the preachers would say, "Now come on Bevel, we do that in the church but we are building the church membership." But the real significant thing about the children's miracle in Birmingham is the argument that took place in almost every household or, in some cases didn't take place, because it became younger and younger and younger. The first day they marched, they allowed people as young as twelve to go to jail. The second day, where you got a lot of the Charles Moore photographs, there were kids as young as six and eight years old, mostly girls, and these are the photographs that stupefied me over there in Atlanta while watching them on TV. The significant thing about the miracle is what took place in the households in black Birmingham during this time between parent and child, "Am I going to go to jail, do know what going to jail means, you're twelve years old, you're my future, I'm not going to jail, well daddy, you'll lose your job and I can't lose a job," people debating over dinner tables what to do. Most were forbidden to go. Some got permission to go. Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, the president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, argued with his family in Birmingham. He was twelve years old. He was the classmate of Denise McNaire, who was later killed in a church bombing. He said it took about two weeks, but his parents tearfully gave him permission to march to jail. He said that it was the hardest thing that he ever did. He was terrified. He said there were awful things that happened in the jail and you have kids crowded up, forty to a cell, a cell for eight people, in with other criminals, being terrorized by the jailers. He was 11 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville later expelled from the school because he was a ringleader, even at the age of twelve. He said to him the greatest lesson that he has ever had that he's carried on through his career as a black president of a predominately white technical school, a State University. It said it was all more than made up for by what happened when they expelled him. He said the white school superintendent insisted that he be expelled as a lesson. He said, "My principal had no choice but to do it in an all black school and he called a big assembly like this. He said, "The principal did a feat worthy of a poet. He expelled me from school in front of everybody else with the political bosses in the back of the room using language that satisfied them that he was being expelled." "You knew what you were doing wrong, Freeman. You knew that this was a deliberate choice and you are going to pay the price here you are going to pay the price down the road, who knows what will happen to you because of this." He said that principal communicated and expelled him in a way that convinced every kid there that the principal was proud of him for what he was doing, and yet satisfied the people in the back. Now that is walking a fine line. But it happened in Montgomery, in the children's marches, with over two thousand people going to jail the first day and then it just spilled over the whole country. There were over fourteen hundred demonstrations in the net six weeks, President Kennedy throwing up his hands, introducing the Civil Rights Bill, essentially in a desperate plea to try to stop the spread of demonstrations that went out from Birmingham, out from the heart of Alabama, the second great miracle here. It led almost inexorably and very quickly to the third. Bevel and Nash were celebrated privately within the movement because as much of an orphan as the idea of putting children in jail was before this great miracle, once it 12 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville spread all over the country, they were geniuses. Nobody really knew that much about the agonizing over strategy, but they knew that putting children in jail had been largely their campaign. So on the night of the Birmingham church bombing when four little girls who, by the way did not take part in those demonstrations, there weren't that many who didn't, but they didn't, were blown up in Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Bevel and Nash stayed up all night, they broke furniture, they wailed and they beat on each other. They said, "This has happened because of us, we killed those girls, and before morning we are going to have an answer to it." They debated essentially, the way Diane puts it, and Bevel too; they're estranged now and Bevel is still on the edge of lunacy, living in Chicago. The million-man march was his idea, among many other things. He said, "We are going to have a Malcolm X solution. We know who set that bomb." When we called down to Birmingham, preachers already knew Chandliss and those people did it. That was no secret. He said, "I know people who can kill them, we'll have a vigilante because we know there's not going to be any investigation so we're going to have a vigilante style response because we can't take this any longer." He said, "We know there's not going to be any investigation. We're going to have a vigilante style response because we can't take this any longer." He said, "That's what John Wayne would do." Bevel would say, "Well what would John Wayne do? Would he sit back and wait? Americans like John Wayne don't they, unless he's black." He called people that night. The alternative, they said, was to devise something appropriate to the heinousness of the crime from the tradition they knew, the tradition of nonviolence, and they went back and forth. I think that this is an honest debate but by morning they had typed up this blueprint for a 13 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville nonviolent answer to the church bomb. They are in North Carolina in another movement. Diane drove all the way to Birmingham where Birmingham was in shock, getting ready for the funeral. Dr. King was there. She fought her way through Fred Shuttlesworth and all the people in the the anteroom and the chaos and presented this plan which was a blueprint for a nonviolent army to march all over Alabama and immobilize the state until black people in Alabama had the right to vote on the theory that if you could secure the right to vote, crimes like the Birmingham church bombing would no longer be trivialized, it would no longer be passed off and sloughed off. For a lot of you, this is historical trivia at the time, but Alabama took far more seriously the fact that Dr. King got a ride in a car from a Justice Department lawyer from Birmingham to Selma trying to stop riots after the Birmingham church bombing than they took the investigation of the bombing itself. They impaneled several grand juries. They said essentially that the federal government, by offering him a ride was subsidizing somebody who was an avowed traitor to the established segregation laws of the State of Alabama and they impaneled grand juries and this was front-page news everywhere. So, getting a ride was a bigger crime than bombing this church. Bevel once said, "Diane, did you ever see the movie Casablanca?" He said, "When Humphrey Bogart got in the river and got those leeches on him, that's the way Diane gets on you." He said, "Diane got on Dr. King about the right to vote movement and that was the origin of the Selma right to vote movement. So this miracle that occurred in Selma was the brain child of two twenty-three-year-old black citizens who could not vote themselves, who in the faith of the church bombings said, "We are not going to wait for somebody else to do something about this. We're not 14 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville going to wait for the President, we're not going to say somebody else should do it, we're not going to say that Walter Cronkite should do it. We are pledging to ourselves, even if it costs us our marriage, that we are not going to rest until we carry through this plan as citizens because we own this country." They nagged Dr. King until he came to Selma to start the Right to Vote Movement. He took three trips across the Selma Bridge ultimately after these demonstrations, too. They all have their own lives. Finally they got their first martyr, a person killed, Jimmy Lee Jackson killed in a church in Marion, Alabama. When they were locked up in Selma, they marched outside of Selma. In the church, the state troopers came and shot a fellow in the stomach and he died. Bevel and Nash, this time it was mostly Bevel, had the idea to march from Selma to Montgomery to petition Governor Wallace for the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson. It took two more marches to get across that bridge, but by the end of the year you had the Voting Rights Act that added five million new black voters to the role, not just in Alabama, but across the South. This worked out to about 1.25 million new voters per martyr in the Birmingham church bombing. On the whole the martyrs in the Civil Right Movement were relatively few given the scope of the miracle that was wrought. Again, I want to tell you a sad part about this though. By the time Bevel and Nash's plan was complete, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee denounced the Voting Rights Act as insufficient. They had worked on it for years themselves, but they had grown too tired, too disillusioned, and too angry about the slowness of the federal government. They said, "If Lyndon Johnson proposed it, it can't be good," so they were against it. They turned against government and the other secret about it was 15 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville that all of a sudden they didn't get along very well internally, black and white, within the movement. That's a big secret, but it's true. They split apart and they couldn't acknowledge the fact because they were holding out in public themselves, as people who were above the race question, but they weren't. Now, in retrospect, it is not surprising that they weren't. The cultures were separate. You have to stretch yourself. You have to expect differences, but they couldn't, and they split apart. The movement disintegrated almost instantly after the Selma Miracle. These three miracles that occurred here in Alabama, and there were others but I cited three, the Bus Boycott, The Miracle of Children that destroyed segregation and in the course of it lifted up women. Discrimination against women was banned in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by accident. As a last ditch effort, the Southerners in the congress decided to add sex in there, thinking that it would make it ridiculous; the idea of having the same bathrooms and that women could be airline pilots and other things that were manifestly ludicrous. They thought that this would discredit the whole bill and maybe it would go down the tubes but there was so much momentum behind the bill and there were a few women in the congress that stood up and accepted and embraced it. Within a year of that people wrestled with the question, "What does equality mean between the sexes?" You had the first female rabbi in the five thousand-year history of Judaism. The Women's Movement began to rise out of the stretching of the question, "What does equality mean?" These miracles are wonderful miracles. They are seldom studied. In a culture that is obsessed with political strategy, that will analyze a media consultant's strategy for winning a primary, you have a miracle wrought by cars, a miracle wrought 16 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville by school children, and I argue that it is on par with the plague of the infants in the Bible. Not since Passover have you had the power of relationships of a great power turned on the witness of eight and ten year old children marching in school and changed the whole legal standard of the entire South, which than changed the whole balance of politics in the United States. Within a week of Barry Goldwater announcing that he, the Republican candidate, was going to oppose the Civil Rights Act, the first candidates of the Republican party who had any prospect of success filed for election to congress here in Alabama and five of them were elected. They were elected so fast they didn't even have any party records. They were all Democrats. They shifted overnight. While I was growing up, we didn't have any Republicans in the South. They were like polar bears. They were Yankees and we didn't have them. As soon Barry Goldwater, for the Republicans in 1964, opposed the Civil Rights Act, that was a fulcrum powerful enough to tum party politics on a dime. It changed things. All of this came about by what school children did. Where are the political textbooks analyzing that you can change the fulcrum of national, and even international politics, if you can devise a strong enough political message through children of that courage? The same is true of Selma, that two kids, in reaction to a heinous crime, could devise a strategy that would lead, within a year and a half, to a law that changed the voting pattern in a whole region of the country is a stupendous deed. We don't study it very much because I think the reaction against this period, because of the Vietnam War and because the movement itself disintegrated and because the resentment of the government that created these miracles has dominated our politics every since. It has kind of bleached it out of our vocabulary. 17 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville These were great miracles in the tradition of American freedom, in the tradition of the revolution, in the tradition of Lincoln and the tradition of all Americans struggling over what the intuition for equal citizenship really means in practice. Throughout our history, usually when you struggle over that, race is somewhere around there. If it's not race, it's immigrants. If it is not immigrants, then it is sex. Who is equal? What does it mean? What does equality mean? It is not an equality of attainment. It's an equality of essence and the language that Dr. King used, you notice I haven't mentioned Dr. King through all of this, because Dr. King was not the heart of the movement. These people, these children, people like Bevel, well there are a thousand Bevels and a thousand Nashs. They are the ones coming up with the tactical innovation. Dr. King was the voice of the movement. The voice is what we miss most today. The objective conditions of America are much, much better than we like to think. These miracles have swept forward. Tiny America in a blink of history, the democratic ideas that the movement used to remake the South in a blank of history has wiped monarchy off the globe from all recorded history. It's been emperors and czars and sultans and people laughed at democracy until it rose up, it wiped slavery off the face of the United States, it enfranchised and transformed the condition of women. Through our national government, the ideals of equal citizenship transformed old age from the most discarded stage of life into now the most secure stage of life. We licked fascism and we licked communism as the iron booted pretended successors to monarchy. We put people on the moon. We licked polio. We reduced the scourge of race. We began to transform ancient war into peacemaking and out of Alabama, the Selma to Montgomery March became a watchword for freedom all around 18 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville the world, from South Africa to the Berlin Wall to Tianaman Square. There have been rebellions in China for five thousand years, but never one modeled on a city until Tianaman Square, and that lived. This is our story. If Dr. King could hope and James Bevel and Diane Nash and these children could formulate hopeful plans in an era of lynching and church bombings, then where is our language of hope in an era that cries out to be redeemed from cynicism and sloth? Our objective conditions are good. Our language is paralyzed. Dr. King used the language of equal souls and equal vote in a very special way. I called it paired footings. He put one foot in the scriptures and one foot in the Constitution, one foot in the Hebrew prophets and in the parables of Jesus and the other foot in the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. You can hear it throughout his language. It gives it an enormous sturdiness. We will win our freedom because the Word of God and the cries of freedom are embodied in our echoing demands. One day he wrote a letter from the Birmingham jail. He wrote, "One day the South will know that when the disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters in Birmingham, they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and for the most sacred value in our Judeo-Christian Heritage." With only one foot in the scriptures and one foot in the Constitution, equal souls, equal vote, with Rabbi Hashol, a wonderful character I studied in the second book, King used to sit around and talk about the basis for democracy is scriptural. In other words, the idea is equal vote and everybody's vote should count as equal, is born up by the idea of equal souls. Everybody's soul is equal in the sight of God. You should measure, and this was the innovation of a prophet, that you should hold King 19 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville to the standard of how they treat widows and orphans because that's the morality that upholds the notion that we are all equally precious. When you have that idea, that everybody's vote is equal because their souls are equal, you can get patriotic language that has the ring of the scriptures. You can get this furnace in King's voice. The furnace in his voice is more distinctive even in the word because it is the hope of that equal soul that the ? and the universities long, but it bends toward justice, colliding with the harsh reality of his time. How hard it was. How much violence and how much hatred there was and when they collide, they come out in that furnace of his voice, equal souls, equal votes. These are the two feet, I think, that we march on and it's the language that is lost in our time when we pretend that our national government has not done anything for us and, in fact, it's bad. The dominant idea since the death of Martin Luther King in American politics is that national government is bad. You cannot look objectively in anything other than the kind of deceptive pride that poisoned our history after the Civil War to the point that I grew up being taught that slavery was good for black people and that reconstruction was a nightmare of unfairness. That kind of fundamental distortion is creeping in again in the history of the 60's and this movement period is a time of license and a time of tyranny on the part of the federal government. When these Acts were passed that liberated the South, the white South, economically, you couldn't even hold a business meeting in the South as long as it was segregated. A month after the Civil Rights Acts had passed, the Milwaukee Braves are running to Atlanta. There wasn't any Sunbelt when it was segregated. That is all the result of this liberation. 20 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville People denounced the Civil Rights Act saymg that if it passed, the federal government would have a jackboot in every town and that the white people would not have a chance. They wouldn't be able to survive and that it would be worst than Nazi tyranny. Well, where is that tyranny? This has enlarged freedom. This is a miracle of freedom and unless we understand that, we are going to lose its language and we won't have it when we need it. The lesson of American history, I submit, is that every generation needs it in some crisis and if you sneer at it long enough you won't have it when it's there to have. Viola Liuzza was the last martyr of the Selma march. You're going to hear Mary Stanley who wrote a biography about her. What I want to say about her miracle is this, she was killed; she was an ordinary Detroit housewife who was moved by the photographs of the Selma march. She came to Alabama to volunteer and was bushwhacked, just because she was riding in the car. That was J. Edgar Hoover's worst moment. We don't have time to go into that but maybe Mary will. Ladies Home Journal did a survey. Sixty-five percent of American women said she got what she deserved because she should have been home with her children. This was a different time and the great tide of freedom that has rolled forward and is still rolling forward. The people in Alabama are comfortable with a weatherman named Hassad . They are comfortable with people from Pakistan and India. The movement prepared America morally for the inevitable shrinking of the world where even if you are a mean, cussed, old person, who doesn't care a farting for democracy or religion, you are going to have to be able to get along with people from Thailand and Syria because the world is shrinking. This movement is the moral 21 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville preparation for survival in a shrinking world. If Viola Liuzzo was a liberated woman before she knew she was a liberated woman and nobody appreciated it, but her witness should remind all of us how much we owe to her. Every white female who goes to a college owes something to Viola Liuzzo because that sacrifice that raised up the question of what are women inherently capable of, just like the question of what are African Americans inherently capable of, transformed this world. I went to a college at Chapel Hill that had no female students, except nursing students. It is a State University, and this is in the sixties. Five percent of the student body was female, now it's seventy percent female, a larger demographic change than you will ever see in race relations, and all of this is a result of a tyranny-free liberation washed forward on the sacrifice of these people, larger than we can appreciate. The story of America is freedom. It's our only story. We're not a country just of people who speak one language or come from one place. America is the story of an idea. We're the only county like that. If we don't have our story, we have nothing else. Our story marches on two feet, equal souls, equal vote. On these two feet move the principles that make the flag wave, that makes Selma to Montgomery and the Alabama miracles of the Civil Rights Movement, the watchword for democracy's ascendant promise the world over that have inspired every patriot from George Washington to Jimmy Lee Jackson; from Thomas Jefferson to Viola Leouso; from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King. Equal souls, equal vote. On these two feet advance history's struggle for justice that transcends boundaries of race, of nonviolence that tames our inclination to demonize and dehumanize people into enemies, a spiritual kinship that joins all humanities beyond 22 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville labels of tribe and kind with neither east nor west, male nor female and above the poison of religious contempt. Equal souls, equal vote. On these two feet rides a new prosperity and peace of the Sunbelt South, which are showered, not only upon those who sacrificed, bled and died for them, but also upon those still with blinders on their eyes and blisters on their hearts, against the very changes that have blessed us all. Equal souls, equal vote. On these two feet yet march perhaps the greatest miracle of all for white Southerners of my generation. For that one time, and not necessarily again, there is no reason that it should happen again. This is all of our , but for that one time African Americans, who for centuries had experienced only the boot heel and the whiplash of democratic values, nevertheless, possessed the nonviolent courage, the political genius and the astonishing grace to lift the rest of us toward the true meaning of our own professed values. May we all keep marching and recover the language of this hope. This is the language of America. Every step, a leap of faith in each other, that we can be self governing, that we can have faith in each other, even as our theoretical elections can turn on the last wino to stumble to the polls as the soul of wisdom in a democratic country and even as we all believe that we are each self-governing. Still a stupendous concept in history that we can be self-governing as individuals and self-governing as a people without external discipline against all the philosophers and all the previous recorded history. When we recover this language, we can march again on the two feet of equal souls and equal vote, in harmony with all means of patriot and patriots of freedom so that we may, like Mother Pollard, say, "My feets is tired, but my soul is rested." Thank you. 23 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Mr. Branch will be more than willing to entertain questions at this moment. We now open the floor for questioning. Mr. Branch: Thank you. I'd love to have questions and they don't have to be on anything I said, or even on Alabama. We really should to stick to Alabama though. When I gave a talk on theology once and the first question was, "Is it true that Dr. King was only 5"6"?" from some student and we really took off from there. We don't have to stick with highfalutin things. Q: You do have some academic background in economics and I find it curious that you don't tie in the misuse of that along with the sex and race. A: Well, I do have a background in economics, which I have pretty much shed like an old skin. I talk about class and I write about class, at least in racial politics and history writing. It turns into a shell game because people who say, it's not class, it's race," or people who say, "it's not race, it's class," are generally trying to avoid the moral imperative of whatever the other side is saying, so it seems to me this gets into another topic. You picked up on something that is right. This talk, the talk that I gave tonight, is more abstract than my writing. My writing is grounded in discipline. I dedicated Parting the Waters to Septa McClark because she had the biggest impact of anybody, I know that most of you probably don't know who Septa McClark is, but she's a wonderful lady, but I couldn't write about her to the degree that I felt was fair and that she deserved because I had this rule that I was only going to do storytelling and let the lessons rise from the stories and Septa McClark was always off stage teaching people how to read and write. She had this theory that she could take an illiterate person and teach him to read and write 24 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville in a week. Not only that, she said that she could also teach them to read and write in a week in a way that one person out of every twenty, she said, another week and she could teach them to teach the next group. She was a remarkable lady but she was always down at Dorchester and she's never kind of in front and center. My theory is that racial discussion is plagued by too much abstraction and not enough discovery at a very human level, so I try to do storytelling history and it's hard to get into a lot of economic analysis that way. It's also hard to comprehend, as I was telling Attorney Thomas. It's harder than law suits for similar reasons because they don't fit a structure that I think is mandatory. We discuss race and abstractions and we use labels because we're all in the Western tradition, right, where the abstract idea is more powerful than the particular. So we think that if we are using a label about who is militant and who is a racist or who is this or who is radical as opposed to a militant, that that kind of abstract label carries more power than a story. It is my theory that that's fool's gold. We exchange labels across the divides between us that are very human. They are, "Who do you eat with? Who do you know? Who have you taken a risk with? Who do you have a history with?" and that's why I talked about the stretching, the movement is great because it gets precisely into that so I think the general answer to your question is that I don't get into a lot of economic theory because I don't get into a lot of any theory. If I get into much theory at all, it's at that intersection between religion and democratic theory, which is what I was trying to talk about in Equal souls and Equal vote because I think one of the great tragedies about America is that we're the only country 25 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville founded on freedom as a theory is that we don't teach what that means. What does democratic theory mean and where does it come from? Does it come from the Bible? A lot of people find that as a heretical idea, that the underpinnings of democratic theory are biblical. Now, to me, if you listen to the Gettysburg address, which is the undercurrent of democratic theory, it sounds like it's out of the Bible and that's the reason it's stirring, but we don't even debate these things. So to that degree, I did get out into abstractions, but the general answer is I don't get a lot into economic theory although I believe it's important and in the third book, of course, Dr. King dies in Memphis with garbage workers. Virtually every one of the people around him didn't want him to be with garbage workers because they didn't like being with garbage workers. This is a very powerful statement about economic issues coming at the end of what is essentially a passion before he is killed, so it will be economic issues there but I don't generally discuss them as a theoretical matter themselves just because of the way I go about my work. It's a matter of craft. 26 � 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_000017 Title A name given to the resource Digitized transcription of VHS tape of "Inaugural Lecture". Description An account of the resource Taylor Branch 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-08-30 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 2000-2009 Subject The topic of the resource Branch, Taylor, 1947- Civil rights movements--Southern states--History--20th century Montgomery (Ala.) Montgomery County African American churches Montgomery Bus Boycott, Montgomery, Ala., 1955-1956 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/395">VHS Tape of: Inaugural Lecture - Speaker: Taylor Branch, 2001-08-30. Box 2, Tape 1</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. 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Extent The size or duration of the resource. 26 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/382">Inaugural Lecture - Speaker: Taylor Branch - Transcription of Tape 1, 2003 Box 1, File 2</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/32/13349/BloodyLowndesandtheBlackPantherParty_Tape8_File9.pdf 7de276f272de2b586febeb89af04529c PDF Text Text The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH The University of Alabama in Huntsville "Bloody Lowndes" and the Black Panther Party Speaker: John Hulett, Frye Gaillard I am Sherry Marie Shuck, Assistant Professor of History at UAH. \Velcome to the ninth installment of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, 14-week symposium centered around a series of public lectures, panels and first-hand account of significant events taking place in the state of Alabama. This series is held alternately at UAH and Alabama A&M University. After three years of planning, this unique intellectual project is a joint venture between Alabama A&M University and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The members of the Steering Committee in alphabetical order are: Mitch Berbrier ofUAH, John Dimrnock ofUAH, Jack Ellis ofUAH, James Johnson of AAMU, Carolyn Parker of AAMU and Lee Williams, II, of UAH. Throughout its work. the planning committee has also been greatly assisted by the efforts of Joyce Maples of UAH's University Relations. We ask that you complete an evaluation form for this program and leave it here on the stage or with an attendant at the exit. This series on the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama would not have been possible without the financial support of numerous sponsors whom the planning committee wishes to acknowledge at this time. First and foremost is the Alabama Humanities Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities; The Huntsville Times, DESE Research Incorporated, Mevatec Corporation, Alabama Representative Laura Hall and Senator Hank Sanders. 1 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Joining our efforts from Alabama A&M University is the Office of the President, The Office of the Provost, the State Black Archives Research Center and Museum, the Title III Telecommunications who are responsible for taping these sessions and we give a special thanks to all of you and Distance Learning, the Office of Student Development, the A&M Honors Center, Sociology/Social Work, Political Science and History. At the University of Alabama in Huntsville, we greatly acknowledge funding assistance from the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, the Humanities Center, the Division of Continuing Education, the Department of Sociology, its Social Issues Symposium, the Honors Program, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, Student Affairs, The Copy Center and the UAH History Forum Bankhead Foundation, which is serving as the local host for tonight's activities; and with the kind help of Staff Assistant Beverly Robinson, who has prepared a reception back stage immediately following tonight's lecture to which you are all invited. We would like to remind you that next Tuesday, November 6th , we have a special guest lecturer, Dr. Hilliard Lackey, Professor of History at Jackson State University who will speak on the Selma Voting Rights Campaign, which will be held in Room 111 of the School of Business at Alabama A&M University at 7 p.m. Next Thursday, our series will take place at the Ernest Knight Reception Center at Alabama A&M University. Our focus will be the struggle for voting rights in Selma, culminating in the event of March 7, 1965, known as Bloody Sunday in which state troopers in an armed posse led by local sheriff, Jim Clark, used clubs an tear gas to beat back peaceful marches attempting to cross Edmund Pettus Bridge on their way to 2 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Montgomery. Our speaker will be Congressman John Lewis of Georgia's 5th District, one of the towering figures of the Civil Rights Movement. A native of Torre, Alabama, an author of Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, published in 1998, Congressman Lewis was active in the national sit-ins, the freedom rides, the Selma movement and was at the head of the marcher's attack on Pettus. He will be joined by New York writer Mary Stanton, author of the book From Selma to Sorrow: the Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo, published in 1998. Tonight, we look at events that took place not far from Selma in a Blackbelt County, whose tradition of violence against African-Americans and Civil Rights workers earned it the unenviable nickname of Bloody Lowndes. Two classic examples of Lowndes County terrorism are the Klan murders on March 25, 1965, of Mrs. Viola Liuzzo, a white Civil Rights volunteer from Michigan along US Highway 80, followed by the shotgun slaying of Jonathan Daniels, a 26-yearold Divinity student from New Hampshire at Varner's Cash Store in Hayneville. Such atrocities had prevented any black resident from being registered to vote for over half a century, even though they outnumbered local whites by more than 3 to I. Blacks who wished to register not only faced expulsion from the farms where they lived and worked but also a constant threat of physical violence. In a county where only 800 white men resided, Mr. John Hulett observed in 1966, that "there are 550 of them who walk around with guns on them. They are deputies. It might sound like a fairy tale to most people, but this is true." Mr. Hulett was at the center of the struggle to bring change to Lowndes County and what he accomplished there had 3 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville repercussions far beyond the Blackbelt and state of Alabama. To introduce him with our second distinguished guest on stage tonight, prize-winning journalist, Frye Gaillard, a call upon Ms. Erin Reed, a history graduate student at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and president of Phi Alpha Theta, the history on a raring society ... Ms. Reed. Introduction: In defending the cause of freedom over the past 5 decades, Mr. John Hulett has served in many ways, from union activist and civil rights leader to county sheriff and probate judge. In his book, Outside Agitator, John Daniel and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, historian Charles W. Eagles, portrays Mr. Hulett as the leader of the Civil Rights struggle in Lowndes County and as a "tireless, determined worker with unusual intensity and powerful personality." Born in a tiny community of Gordonsville, Mr. Hulett passed his formative years in rural bonds. It was here, according to Professor Eagles, that his grandfather born in slavery had managed during his life to acquire more than a hundred acres in addition to a gristmill, a sawmill and a cotton gin. Finishing high school in 1946, Mr. Hulett soon left the family's farm to live in Birmingham. There, he was hired as a foundry worker for the Birmingham Stove and Range Company. This marked the beginning of his life as an activist, first as president of the Foundry Worker's Union and then as a reformer seeking to improve the lives of those in Pratt City where he lives. By 1949, he had joined the NAACP and after it was banned he joined the Successor Organization created by Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, known as the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. In Birmingham, Mr. Hulett was also successful in his attempt to register to vote. 4 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Returning to Lowndes County in 1959, Mr. Hulett soon emerged as the leader of local efforts to combat the poll tax and to gain the right to register for local AfricanAmericans. This brought him into direct conflict with a white minority that dominated that county and that for 50 years had ensured that no black person could vote or serve on By March of 1965, only he and one other black resident had succeeded in being registered, despite an appearance at the courthouse in Hayneville that month by Martin Luther King, Jr., who sought unsuccessfully to register 37 local residents. In response, Mr. Hulett help organize the Lowndes County Christian Movement for Human Rights and served as its first president. Passage of the Voting Rights Act in August 1965 along with presence of federal registrars helped ensure that African-Americans would become a voting majority in Lowndes County. In order to solidify the gains achieved by this ___ and to prevent the local democrat party from again disenfranchising blacks by raising fees for office seekers, Mr. Hulett was instrumental in founding an alternative party, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. This party was organized on April 2, 1966, with Mr. Hulett and it took as its symbol the black panther. In Lowndes County, he explained, we have been deprived of our rights to speak, to move and to do whatever we want to do at all times and now we are going to start moving. On November 8 of this year, we plan to take over the courthouse in Hayneville and whatever it takes to do it, we're going to do it. 5 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville In 1969, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization became part of the National Democratic Party of Alabama whose electoral victories the following year included that of John Hulett as sheriff, the first African-American to be elected to that office there. Tonight, Mr. Hulett will share with us memories of his life and struggle m Lowndes County from his youth and early involvement in the Voter Registration Campaign to the founding of the Black Panther Party, to the Selma movement and the murders of Viola Liuzzo and John Daniels and finally to the changes that has witnessed over the past 40 years. Along with Mr. Hulett, we are also privileged to have as our guest on stage tonight journalist and author Frye Gaillard. Mr. Gaillard will be interviewing Mr. Hulett. Mr. Gaillard lives and works in Charlotte, North Carolina. He is a free-lance writer with special interests in the culture, religion and social history of the American south. He has written or edited 18 books touching on various aspects of this southern experience from black and Native American history to country music and Habitat for Humanity. Mr. Gaillard is a native of Mobile and in 1994 described his own family's history in a book entitled, Lessons from the Big House, One Family's Passage through the History of the South. Between 1964 and 1968, Mr. Gaillard studied at Vanderbilt University, graduating with a major in history. After a brief ____ _ at the Associated Press in 1972, he joined the Charlotte Observer, serving first as a staff writer, then as editorial writer and columnist and finally as southern editor. He remained with this newspaper until 1990 when he decided to pursue free-lance writing. During those years, Mr. Gaillard won numerous awards for excellence in reporting including awards 6 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville from the North Carolina Press Association and the Associated Press. Among Mr. Gaillard's books are several that bear directly on the Civil Rights Movement, The Greensboro for Civil Rights Pioneers, The Way We See It, documentary , photography by the Children of Charlotte which he published with his daughter Rachel and the Dream Long Deferred which detailed the landmark school desegregation struggle in Charlotte. This book won the Gustavus Myers Award for writing on the subject of human rights. At present, Mr. Gaillard is working on a book detailing the Civil Rights Movement here in Alabama. It will be titled, Cradle of Freedom, The History of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama .. It is scheduled to be published by the University of Alabama Press in 2002. We are pleased to have both interviewer and interviewee with us this evening. Please join me in a warm welcome. Frye Gaillard: We are happy to be here tonight to participate in this program. I was fortunate to be here for one of the other programs, with Diane Dash on September 13'\ two days after some fairly significant events in the world. My wife and I were driving down and we thought there would be us and Diane Nash at the auditorium, but it was an amazing turnout. It is a testament to the kind of interest that you have in this community, in this subject and also to the really well planned nature of the program that you have been fortunate to be a part of, I think. I have been asked and have worked for the last two years researching what the University of Alabama Press is calling a popular ~ history of the Civil Rights Movement. By that, they mean they want a journalist and a storyteller rather than a historian to write about it and to keep it short. One of things that I 7 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville have had the privilege of doing is talking to a lot of people who were foot shoulders in the movement, people that I have never in many cases ever heard of. I grew up in those days in Alabama and sort of came of age with an awareness of what was going on in the state. There are so many people who have such rich stories and one of those people are obviously the guest of honor here tonight, John Hulett. I knew that I wanted to meet John Hulett ever since the time in the early l 970's. I was working for the newspaper in Charlotte and I was doing a story on the impact of the Civil Rights Movement on the south in general and one of the places I visited was Lowndes County. I remember driving down one of the back roads in Lowndes County and Lowndes County has a lot of back roads. I was passing this farmhouse and there was kind of a rutted two-lane path that led up to the farmhouse and there was a black man sitting on the porch of this farmhouse. So, I drove up to just see what he might have to say about the Civil Rights Movement and the impact that it had on his life. He was a little skeptical at first of this white stranger who had driven up to his place, but we sat on the porch in these flimsy old aluminum chairs and we talked for a while and began to connect, I think. We started to talk about the movement and the impact that it had and I said, can you tell me what it has meant to you that the Civil Rights Movement occurred in the south and in the state of Alabama. He said, oh, that's an easy question to answer; the biggest difference it has made in my life is that John Hulett is sheriff of Lowndes County and I didn't know exactly what he meant and I said, well talk about this a little bit more. What do you mean by that? He said, let me tell you a story and he told me the story of the night that he was on his way home; this was a man named Ervin Henson. He told me the story of a night that he was on his way 8 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville home and his car broke down on the side of the road. So, he had to leave it and walk and this was not something that you wanted to happen in the pre-Civil Rights days in Lowndes County, Alabama. He was walking by himself on the road and a car with two deputy sheriffs passed by him. They pulled to a stop, demanded what to know what he was doing and he just told them that he was on his way home. They got out of the car and one of them clubbed him over the head with a nightstick. They handcuffed his hands behind his back and pitched him bleeding and semiconscious into the trunk of the police car. They drove around with him in the trunk of car until it was almost dawn and what Mr. Henson said is that it does not happen any more because John Hulett is sheriff of Lowndes County, Alabama. And the more I began to talk to people about this, the more clear it became that there were these sort of stages that the Civil Rights Movement went through. You had this kind of feeling of daybreak in Montgomery with the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the sort of first time that black people in a kind of mass way took a stand for freedom and justice and actually accomplished something and accomplished very tangible results. Of course, you had the freedom rides where young black people and activists served noticed that there was no place too terrifying for the movement to go and that violence would not overcome nonviolence no matter what. You had Birmingham with the police dogs, the fire hoses and those images that seared the conscious of people all over the country. You had Selma and the Montgomery March that led to the most revolutionary single change that the movement accomplished which was the right to vote for black people everywhere. You also had these other struggles that were taking place in Huntsville, Gadsden, Mobile, Tuskegee, Tuscaloosa and all of these other places and you 9 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville had the struggle in the Blackbelt that John Hulett knows so well, which I think the final movement was the victory over fear. If you were black ... and I am going to ask Judge Hulett about this in a minute. But, if you were black in Lowndes County, Alabama, you lived with fear every single of your life because you knew that white people, if they chose, could do anything to you that they wanted to almost with impunity, but at least the legal system would offer you no protection whatsoever and in fact, in most cases, was part of the problem and this is what they changed. This is the final stage of the movement and so that is what we will get to tonight. The format that we are going to use is one that neither John Hulett nor I would have thought of.; I think I am safe in saying. I was doing an interview with him in Hayneville at the courthouse and there was a professor from Auburn who happened to be with me who was so fascinated by the answers that I was getting to these questions that she said, you know, you guys need to do this publicly. We need to take you to some of the schools in Alabama. So, we tried it out before a couple of high school audiences and survived and we figured that was about as tough a crowd as we could have and then we did it at Auburn one time too. So, we are going to try it again tonight. Hopefully, it will work and if you have questions, feel free either to jump in or when I finish getting us started then I will kind of open it up to the audience and you guys can ask whatever you would like to know as well. So, I just want to say before I start what a privilege it is for me to be here with one of the genuine heroes of this movement that you guys have been talking about. Q: Judge Hulett, you grew up in the Blackbelt in the 1930's and l 940's. Talk a little bit about what it was like for black people in those days in that part of Alabama. What are 10 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville some of your memories growing up then and do you agree with Ervin Henson and others that it was a dangerous place to be if you were black? A: Certainly, I do. I was born in 1927 in Gordonsville, Alabama; that's close to ______ and doing that time the entire county was farming country. Most people who lived in that county were sharecroppers. You had to work on other folks plantation, if you know what a sharecropper is, and when you work on peoples plantations you had to do what they say do or you had to go or get killed or a thing of that time, but I lived in Lowndes County and grew up there. I went to school at an all black school and finished grammar school and high school. I came out of high school in 1946, but it was a lot filth that went on during that time. I can remember many times, at night times, we had a sheriff in that county, a real nice brother and he would drive by, and if you were walking the road at night, especially a few black boys walking the road, he would catch you and beat you. I know one friend of mine whose brother went to school with us that he beat one night and finally he died from that beating, but nothing was done about it; I can remember that. Plenty people he would beat. He would walk up to a place that if you had a music box playing, he would just walk up and take his Billy stick and tear it up and start shooting at it. He was that type of person. Oto Mural was our sheriff and he stayed in it as long as he wanted to. When he got ready to run for probate judge, the people denied him the opportunity to be the probate judge, but they wanted a man like that for sheriff. Q: Now, in the those days, back in the l 930's, the Tenant Farmers Unit, came into Lowndes County and tried to organize sharecroppers who were living in conditions not very far removed from slavery. I remember talking to one elderly man, Mr. Charles 11 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Smith, who remembered that as a young man in Lowndes County we were working for almost nothing and he talked about how they struck to try to get paid a dollar a day and they walked out of the fields and the person who organized the strike at the Bell plantation that he was part of was shot down by the sheriff of the overseer in cold blood. Did you hear of those kind of stories when you were growing up? Did you hear about that kind of thing? A: Yes, I did. I talked to Mr. Lemon Bogen whose one of the persons who was involved. The late Lemon Bogen, he's dead now, but he also talked about how bad it was and how people would beat up people and shoot individuals. This was the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement when he started telling more about most of this type stuff. He always said when you go out on these plantations be careful cause they will kill you. Q: So, when the Civil Rights Movement really started in Lowndes County, Alabama, it was part of the collective memory of the people there and what could happen to people who stood up for themselves? I mean, you knew that you were laying your life on the line to do that? A: This is true. I did know that. Q: What do you think gave you the courage to do it? Was it some of the experiences that you had at other places? I know you left Lowndes County for awhile, worked in Birmingham, both in the Labor Movement and in the Civil Rights Movement there. Did you learn things there that were important to you later on? A: Yes, I did. In Birmingham I worked in Shuttersworth and the most important thing happened was the bombing of church, Author Shows house and Athrene Lucie was trying 12 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville to enter into the University of Alabama. So, a few of us got together and would sit guard at Author Shows house that night. Q: Now, he was an attorney? A: He was an attorney who represented Athrene Lucie and I can remember one night sitting there about 3 o' clock in the morning and a shout would come out, there's a car driving up with no lights on it. It was a police car and see most of this stuff that went on was done by law enforcement officers or people who they allowed to do what needed to be done. So, when we came out with those guns in our hands. The lights came on the car and then they said they were just checking to see how everything was. That was the beginning of it, but when I went back to Lowndes County it was a whole different ball game because Lowndes County was predominantly black as far as population but such a dangerous place to be in during that time and we got back into Lowndes County. We had a few people that tried to register to vote but was denied. There was not a single registered voter in Lowndes County and in 1965, the first week in March, the voter registration would be opened 2 days, the first and third week of the month. We got about 65 people to go and get registered to vote. Most of them were afraid to get out of there car when it they got to the courthouse, but somebody had to have the courage, so I took the leadership to walk in the courthouse and find out where to register at. The first thing l was told by one of the registrars was that we have not permitted you all here, go down to the old jail; that's where we going to register the people 2 weeks from now. I immediately went to that old jail, went all through it and looked at the gallows to see where they had been hanging people for years. You had to have that kind of nerve. Two 13 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville weeks later, we went back to that jail and I happen to take the leadership and carry the blind man along with me, the late Reverend Jesse Lawson. They passed two of us that day out of about 25 or 30 people that went through it. They passed me and they passed Reverend Lawson and you had to do answer questions on those older tests at that time. One of the questions that they asked me I can remember, what hospital the president had been in during that time. Now, there are no televisions, very few radios in the radio in the neighborhood, but I did remember it was Walter Reed Hospital and I said that and they passed me. I do not think I passed the test, seriously. They passed me to get rid of me, but every time the voter's registration was open I was back there again until we were able to get enough people registered to vote. Q: You had registered to vote in Birmingham when you lived there. ls that correct? A: This is true. I registered to vote in Birmingham. Q: So, some of the experiences that you had in Birmingham were kind of things that you imported back to Lowndes County? A: That's right. Q: I know one of the interviews that I did recently you mentioned Reverend Shuttlesworth. He tells the story of Christmas night, 1956, right after the end of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and he had announced that the next day, December 26, he was going to ride in front of the bus in Birmingham. He was lying in his bed and the parsonage of his house and 14 sticks of dynamite went off on the comer of the house right under the bed where he was lying. The floor collapsed and the ceiling collapsed but fell just short of where he was. He felt himself falling through the floor to the ground, 14 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville landed on the bed and he said later that he felt like he was landing in the arms of God and if he had ever been afraid until then, he was never afraid again. I am guessing that kind of example of courage inspired you to look inside yourself for the kind of courage that you have because you had to have it in Lowndes County. A: Yes. You had to have it in Lowndes County. I lived about almost a mile and a half off the main. If you have ever lived in the country, you did not have cattle gaps because the drive crossed the cattle gap. You would have to open three gates before you get my house and that was the most fearful thing that somebody might be lying out in the weeds waiting on you. When you open this gate, they could ambush you, but it never happened to me. I kept God in the front and I kept doing what I needed to do to make life better for the people in our country. Q: One of things that happened in a lot of places during the Civil Rights Movements was that in every case there were local people who were there to take a stand. They would stand up for what was right, what was just and what was decent and fair, but there was also in many cases people who came in from the outside to encourage people. I want to talk about two of the people who came into Lowndes County. One of them was Stokeley Carmichael and the other was Jonathan Daniels. Now, there were others too who were every important and we have talked about them as well, but let's take those in order. Give us your recollection of Stokely Carmichael, one of the toughest organizers in SNCC; I think its fair to say. What was your impression of him as a person, a human being, an organizer and a leader and how well did you get to know him? 15 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville A: Just like a brother because he had worked around me quite a bit. I think Stokely was a great person. He had worked in Mississippi with the movement there and when he came into Lowndes County he knew he had an uphill journey. We worked close together and that is why we organized the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. Every place they would go into they was looked at by state troopers every were they went. I remember one incident that took place. One day, there was a group of people that decided to picket in Fort Deposit, Alabama. They arrested about 20 people in that area. Stokely was a passenger in a car and during that same day was arrested and charged with reckless driving as a passenger. So, you can see how bad they wanted Stokely Carmichael. He was great person. He was a great organizer. He stayed with the people in the community and we worked together to try to make Lowndes County better. We had organized the Lowndes County Christian Movement for Human Rights. If you can remember the movement in Birmingham; it was the Alabama Christian Movement. So, the day we went over to get registered and was denied that right, Dr. King came over, but we didn't see him, we went down that night and organized the Lowndes County Christian Movement of Human Rights. I was chosen temporary chairman of that group until we was able to have a mass meeting and the people decided to go ahead and keep me there, but this was the beginning of it. Q: Now, there were people who later came to regard Stokely Carmichael as a violent person. Did you think of him that way? 16 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville A: No sir. He was not a violent person. I never saw him do anything violent to anybody. He would speak up, but he would not threaten anybody or talk about killing or all that type stuff. Q: And that was most emphatically your experience with him in Lowndes County. A: This is true. Q: Okay. Let's talk about Jonathan Daniels a little bit, a white, Episcopal seminarian who came to Lowndes County and did not get out alive. What was your view of Jonathan Daniels? A: He was a great person. He was interested in what was going on. He did not try to do anything wrong. The day that they had this picket in Fort Deposit, Alabama (that's the largest town in the county) he joined that group without my knowledge. I was in Fort Deposit, but I did not know he was going to be a part of that group and it was dangerous for any white to join the black in Fort Deposit. When got there that morning in town, they had every police officer they could get and everything, just waiting. In a moment, if they made about IO steps, they were arrested and out in a two-cell jail with 20 something people. They had to get a dump truck. You know what a dump truck is. The one with the side bars on it. They put them on that dump truck and put a black police officer and brought them in. This was when Stokely was arrested. They wanted him so bad. I am going to be honest with you. There were two pickup trucks and everywhere they would go, one of the trucks would get in the front. If they would make a right into them, the one behind would get in the front and just hit breaks all of a sudden until it made them bump them. When they bumped them, the police arrested them and put both of them in jail and 17 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville charged them with reckless driving. I have a record of that showing that 2 people got charged for reckless driving in the same automobile, but this was the type of situation we lived in that day and time. There were white people that walked around with shotguns. I can never forget that day. I went to the town hall to try to make arrangements with the chief to try and get them out of jail. I could not get anybody to go with me, but I finally took the same car they were driving and drove it to the town hall and waited there while and carried another fellow. There was 14 people and I am not going to lie to you sitting on the sidewalk with shotguns, rifles and pistols. Q: White people? A: White people and they all came inside when the chief of police came in. He wanted to know what I wanted and I told him that I wanted to try to make bond to get Stokely out of jail because I believe they would kill him there. He said no that I could not get him out of jail he is up in Lowndes County and I can never forget the last man. A double barrel shotgun passed by and I rolled my pistol on the floor and he almost ran over the next man. I can remember that just like daylight today and I found out then it has to be a group of you doing it to do it like it ought to be done. You know what I'm saying. They were afraid themselves, but they were out there doing these types of things. Stokely stayed in jail; that was on a Saturday. On Wednesday, I went by the jailhouse and carried food to feed the people that they took to jail. Some of them we made bond, except for Stokely and one or two more. On a Friday evening, I went to Montgomery and when I came back the town was full of police officers and other white people. Black folks were afraid to speak to me almost when I got out of the car on the comer at the intersection. I asked 18 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville what was going on. Why were all of these people were in town? They said, they killed those two white preachers. That's what they said. They had killed Jonathan Daniels. They first shot and killed him and the second shot hit Father Marshall from the back and it took 12 hours to operate on him at St. Jude Hospital, but he finally lived from it. I have had seven meetings with him since that time. This was the kind of conditions we had to live in during that time. Q: How were you able to persuade the average person in Lowndes County that it was possible to change a situation that went as deeply as this one went, where white supremacy was defended as completely by violence and any means necessary? How did you convince people that it was possible to make a change? A: We were meeting together in groups. We were having mass meetings and we would speak to them from those mass meetings. He gave a lot of courage to people that they could overcome what was going on. We would talk about what was going on. We would go on plantations on a daily basis. I quit my job and the movement paid me. The Lowndes County Christian Movement gave me a salary to work. Q: How much was that? A: My salary was 25 dollars every first Sunday; that is a month. I did not work long hours. I just worked about 9 or IO hours a day, 6 days a week. When I went on plantations, bosses were there. You had to have a lot of courage to stand up. I would carry about one or two ladies around with me, most times just riding with me. I would speak up and be straight to people. I was able to get a lot of things done when I started doing that. People would go out and get registered. They just believed that I was doing 19 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville the right thing. Not only me, but there were other people in the movement as well, like the Jackson family, Mattie Lee Murrell; these were older people. They were strong. They stood up and decided to go ahead and go out and register to vote. They wanted to change life for their children and themselves. Q: One of the people that I interviewed in Lowndes County was a SNCC organizer who came in there by the name of Bob Mantz and he still lives there. I was asking him where he found the courage to do the things that he had to do. He said it was so terrifying. There were times when he could barely make himself do the things that he needed to do. I said, where did you find the courage and he said it came from the people of Lowndes County. He told me the story of going to this house where an elderly black woman, almost I 00 years old, was bedridden. She was lying in a bedroom off from the living room where he was talking to other people in the family. He heard this frail voice saying tell that boy to come in here; I want to talk to him. So, he went in to talk to this old lady. She looked up at him and she pointed this bony finger at him from her bed and she said, I have been praying that you boys would come into Lowndes County ever since I saw you march around Mr. Lincoln's grave. Of course, what she meant was that she had seen the march on Washington in television and had been praying that people would come into Lowndes County and trigger a movement in Lowndes County. Bob Mantz said and what I have heard you say as well is that the courage of average people became contagious after awhile. People just held each other help. That is the example from you and other some other people. 20 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH ~ The University of Alabama in Huntsville A: This is true. At the same time, there were people who worked on the plantation. If you were hoeing, you made 25 cents a day and if you were on ____ you got 50 cents a day. We started telling people to go to Montgomery and get jobs and start making life better for them. So, that gave them a lot of courage to come out and do what needed to be done. That made a difference. I want to say one other thing. When Stokely got arrested in Prattville I was suppose to have gone over with him, but I had another speaking engagement with a group of folks in my county. He got arrested the next morning. A young lady called me, a school teacher named Ms. Darby Henson. She said, come ride over to Prattville with me. When I got over there, Stokely was in jail. I drove up to the chief of police and asked him could I walk down the hill to one of the Civil Rights workers; they are in a housing house. He said, go ahead but do not stay long. I walked just a short distance and when I looked out of the window he had a carbine rifle punching her in the car, and that was the most hurting thing I have ever seen in my life. So, I came back out. They had the National Guards. State troopers were over there. When I came back out, the punch did not hit me, but they punched after me until I got to the car. I got in the back seat of the car on the passenger's right side. The same person opened the car door and punched me in the face. Ifl had not snatched by head, I would have broken my jawbone. I made up my mind. I am going to say this because I am serious about it; I was going to get him if I had to burn his house down, his wife and children. Let me be serious with you. I went home that night and prayed about it. It looked like the Lord just came to me like daylight and said do not do that; that is not the way to do it. I did not do it. I prayed about it and things changed for us. Sometimes, you cannot take on violence 21 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville because you believe you ought to do something. You cannot make a fast decision, just pray about it, but I was punched in the face. A few months later I had a gun in the _____ . I went to Montgomery to get the gun out the shop. I had to go up to a lawyer's office. I got on the elevator. Now, I do not even know the man because I never seen him before who punched me in the face. So, when I got on that elevator, he was on that elevator and he came off running like a ____ . The people over there were saying what is going on. I said, do not worry about it' everything is okay. I am not going to bother him. When you treat people wrong, it will come back to you. The next time I got a chance to see him was at the University of Alabama. Everybody was introducing themselves. I was just elected sheriff. When it got around to him, he was sitting across the big conference table and he gave his name in front of me, but he never was able to come back and say I am sorry and that is a bad thing. When you do wrong, you ought to do it. While I am telling it, I want to tell this incident. In 1983, in the line of duty, I got shot in the back by a black man who was on drugs. Q: You were sheriff? A: I was sheriff. One of my deputies reached to shoot him closer than this gentleman over here. I told him not to shoot him. If he was shooting to kill that man and made a mistake and killed somebody else, he would have done more harm than it helped good. After he went to the penitentiary and stayed awhile, I never signed papers to keep him in, I met him one morning after he had gotten out and we out our arms around each one other and forgot about everything. A few months later, I married him to a girl from Pratt, Alabama. I think this is the type of life you have to kill. I think about Jesus Christ, who 22 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville died on the cross for our sins. If we are going to hold things against one another the rest of our lives, white or black, we are wrong. There was an elder man who was part of our movement by the name of Mr. Calan Hayes. We would call him CC Hayes. He always said, John whatever you all do, do not try to do evil for evil to people, not even to us. He passed away a few months ago, but I thank God for that type of thing. We have tried to live right. Q: Let's talk about this whole idea of the changes in Lowndes County and the whole idea of forgiveness and fairness once those changes happened, two questions about that. First of all, in 1966, you ran for sheriff for the first time under the banner of what some people called the Black Panther Party. Now, that was not literally the name of the party, but the emblem of the party was the black panther. Talk about the symbolism of that party, why you ran under that banner and then we will move on to the next question which has to do with when you were elected in 1970. A: Let me say this, I did not run. I was head of the Lowndes County Christian Movement and in 1966 when we got ready to run candidates the Democratic Party, if you can remember, had over the banner white supremacy for the _____ . There was a 50 dollar fee to qualify for sheriff. When we got ready to run, a black man Sidney Logan, Jr., they went to 500 dollars. So, we immediately decided to organize the Lowndes County Freedom Organization and we had to have a symbol, like the rooster was for the Democratic Party or the elephant was for the Republican Party. We organized the Lowndes County Freedom Organization and we had to come up with a symbol. We kind of kicked names around and we came up with the black panther. The reason why we did 23 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville this is because the black panther is not a violent animal but when you push it to a corner, it will come out and do whatever it has to do. If you lived in Lowndes County, you better had something to let folks know you were serious about it. So, we chose that black panther for the party. We lost the election in 1966 and something happened to us. If you can remember, in California, there was a group who was in Lowndes County doing the election in 1966. Q: Huey Newton and some others? A: Huey Newton. They went back to California and got their guns and things. They would get in their cars and follow a policeman around and one of them finally killed a police officer according the records. Because of that, we just decided that the emblem of the black panther was not the best thing for Lowndes County people. We did not want anyone to get hurt in Lowndes County because of what they were doing in California. Dr. Jordan Cassius, from Huntsville, Alabama, came down to Lowndes County and Green County and we got together and organized the NOP A and used the eagle for our symbol and nobody said a word about that. Logan lost in 1966 and in 1970, I ran for sheriff under the National Democratic Party. I won by 210 votes because a lot of our people were afraid to vote for me because there was a thing out that they were going to kill John Hulett if he wins within 3 days after I was elected. I had to go to a lot of these old people that I had trusted in and that loved me because they did not want to see me die. So, I said go ahead and vote for me. I will live ifl have to stay in the woods 3 days. After that, I won 5 more elections without having any problems whatsoever with white or black. 24 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Q: That is right. It was not you that lost in 1966. It was Sidney Logan and then you ran in 1970. In terms of the kind of spirit that you brought to the Office of Sheriff after you were elected in 1970, the spirit of justice rather than revenge, talk a little bit about your relationship. I think it is a great illustration of this point with Tom Coleman. Tom Coleman was the man who killed Jonathan Daniels, blew him away with a shotgun in cold blood at point blank range in the summer of 1965. Can you tell the story about just before you were running for sheriff that Tom Coleman drove up to you on the square in Hayneville? Tell people about your story. A: He drove over to the square in Hayneville and said John, would you mind riding with me to Lonsborough. Here is the guy who just killed one person and shot the other. I had to show him that I had enough courage to get in that car without a gun or anything. I stepped in that car because I did not think that anybody could do anything to me for driving the car and being up there with him. We rode to Lonsborough and we talked about the incident and what took place. The first thing that he said was that people pushed him in a corner to do this. You know, there was people who encourage him to do this; that is what he was saying. The next thing, which I would not have done to any black, he was trying to do this to white people to keep them out of Lowndes County and from helping us and to slow the process down. This is what this was all about. I told him then that I was going to run for sheriff and I would appreciate it if he vote for me. He said, well I cannot vote for you, but I know you are going to win it. After I won the sheriff race in Lowndes County, he was one of people that kept a monitor in his house. He would call me on a daily and nightly basis. He would let me know that the troopers 25 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville were trying to get up with me and that I got some debris on the highway. He would get on the road with me at 2 o'clock in the morning. He would clean up the highways. He had done that for me. I think that sometimes you have to live the kind of life that the Lord wants you to live and treat folks like human beings. I never was afraid of him. I worked with his son as a state trooper and an investigator, but this is the type of thing that I have done. I think the best thing in the world to do is let people know that you are not afraid of them, but you are going to do the right thing; black or white, it did not make a difference. Q: Would you say this man became a friend of yours? A: Yes. He became one of the best friends I had as far as letting me know what was going on and talking to me on a regular basis. He had done that. Q: Why do you think he did that? A: I think it could have been out of fear. He could have thought I was going to try and pay him back. A lot of things could have happened. I can never forget. I want to say this while I am talking. I went into Fort Deposit and I walked into a drug store. There were 11 or 12 women in that store and one man who was filling prescriptions. While I was in there, there was a guy who walked around on the outside all the time with a 38 on him with a ____ . Just as I started out of the door, the main way to ____ school, until I got almost to the door like this here, he walked in and said who is your damn so and so and cussing on. Those women were running out of that door. Two or three were trying to get out at the same time. I looked around at the man who was filling the prescription and I would not lie, he was shaking and trembling so the pee was falling on 26 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville the floor. Somebody has to have some courage. So, I turned around and walked back in there with him wherever he went. Q: The man with the gun? A: Yes. You might shoot me, but you are not going to shoot me in the back. I am going to take this gun from you or you are going to have to shoot me right. I walked back in the store with him for about 5 minutes. He never said another word; I just took his nerve. I finally picked up a bar of candy, paid for it and walked out. He, the drugstore man and I were the only 3 people in there. I never had another word from him. Later, he pulled a gun and said he would never let a nigger arrest him. He pulled a gun on a black man in Fort Deposit and that next morning I go to work after the warrant was signed, he came into the office with Mr. Tom Coleman. That is smart. You understand what I am saying. He believed that Tom Coleman could straighten out some things. I made him sign his bond. I fingerprinted him and told him to make sure you show up in court when time to come and I did not have anymore problems. I never heard another word from him, but he did go to court. These were the types of situations you had to live in. It did not make any difference whether you were right or wrong, white or black; you had to do what was right. I stood my ground the whole time I was in the sheriffs office. I did not care what color he was. If you committed a crime, you went to jail. I would call you and if you did not come, I would go get you. Q: Did you ever have any dealings with George Wallace when you were sheriff? A: Truthfully, I had dealings with George Wallace. George Wallace turned out to be one of my best friends. The first time I became sheriff he had a parade in Greenville and I 27 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville was the only black sheriff in that parade. I can remember walking by him and he gave me some of his material. Every time I would go to their captain for anything, he would say, sheriff what you want. I had a small staff when I started as sheriff. There was only 3 people. I went up one day and said I need a larger staff and he said okay and tell your representative to come by. I told me my representative, but he did not go by. Two weeks ago, I got a check from him to pay for another deputy. That was the kind of person he was and whenever I would come around he would get up and take a picture with me. He would call my house on the weekend and when I got shot, he would call my wife every weekend, Friday night, and tell her whatever he could do to help he would do it. This was the kind of person George Wallace turned out to be with John Hulett. I was not no Uncle Tom, but I was just doing the right thing. Q: Before we open it up to everybody else's questions, as you look back on the experiences that you had in Lowndes County and the impact that the movement had in Lowndes County and other places in Alabama, what is your bottom line summary of those days. What do you feel was accomplished? To what extent was the movement successful and to what extent did it fall short of what you had hoped for? A: Let me refer back to two things. If you all remember, in the state of Alabama, the only people who served on jurors in the state of Alabama were men. There were very few black men in places like Lowndes County. It was Lowndes County who went to Montgomery and filed a snit, White versus Crooks to allow women to serve as jurors in the state of Alabama.; that originated in Lowndes County, Alabama. The first place they camped out in Lowndes County when they came in was Rose Steel's property. Her 28 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville granddaughter was the individual who _____ , Ardenia White. So, that is why women are serving today in the state of Alabama. We also had the justice of peace system in the state of Alabama. Most of you might remember the justice of peace. Every county had a justice of peace. In Lowndes County, one day, I was arrested and charged with reckless driving. I went straight to the justice of peace office and said, what would it cost me for this ticket. He said, it was going to cost you I 00 dollars and 11 dollars court cost. Excuse me for the expression, but I said I will die and go to hell before I pay it. He said, you can get ready. Next week, I went to Montgomery, attorney Salman Say's office, and talked to him about it cause every justice of peace fine you give them, they get 5 dollars out it. I went to federal court and that is why they do not have any justice of peace in the state of Alabama today. The judge ruled in our favor. That was helpful to the state of Alabama and the woman serving on jury was helpful. There was a number of other things that took place in that county. People were able to hold public office who had never held public office. We got plenty of them now, men and women, not only in Lowndes County but in surrounding counties because of our courage and things that we have done. I have gone into other counties and our joining county, Wilcox County has a black sheriff. When he got ready to run, I encouraged him to run. I went down and spoke for him and he won that election and he has been there ever since. It is a lot you can do to help other people if you would do it. Today, we are still working hard trying to make life better for the people in our county. Let me say this. I am retired now and I could not run for probate judge because of my age, but each morning of my life I get up now and go out and do something for somebody. I pick up aluminum cans off the street and give to the 29 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville scholarship fund to help children to go to college. I have a group that takes care of it. I plant gardens so there are plenty vegetables to give folks who cannot afford to work. The older people who cannot cut there yards, I cut there yards free. If you need a ramp built or a wheelchair or something, I go out and do it free for people. This is the type of life I live today. God has blessed and I reach out and try to help others. I want to advise all of you, let's try to do the same thing. Q: I think maybe this is a good time to open it up to questions that people out there may have, things that they want to ask Judge Hulett. A: Okay go ahead. Q: If you want to ask them, I will repeat the questions just in case everyone cannot hear you. Do you consider the adverse situations that you faced in Lowndes County, the opposition that you faced when you tried to stand up for what was right, to be state terrorism against the people of Lowndes County? A: This is true as I have said it to a lot of young people lately because I go out and talk to them. I am use to terrorism. We have had it in our county. We have had it in Birmingham and we have had it in other places. When the people crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge, there was terrorism. When I was punched in the face in Prattville, there was terrorism. We did not have any killing. That was the only difference; it was on a small scale. There was a time in Pratt City, Alabama; I was living in Birmingham. One night, there was like 15 young people who wanted to see the Klan walk up Highbuyon A venue. I took them out there to show them and they had their robes and everything on. They asked me who are these people. I said, these are the same people that you are trading with in stores on an 30 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH ~ The University of Alabama in Huntsville every day basis, most of them are, but they are Klan men. Do not be afraid because you are with me. As we stood there, they drove by singing the Dixie song or a thing of that type with the lights on in the car. These are the type things I have gone through for years. I am not afraid and I try to be straight with my people and say everybody was not wrong, but there were a few people who would do anything. In terrorism, you are going to reap what you sow, so we need to work together and try to save our people instead of trying to destroy them. Q: How many people, African-American people in Lowndes County, did it take before there was sort of a help factor where you felt you were going to succeed. You started out with a little group. How big did the group get? A: Each Sunday night, we would have our mass meeting in groups. We did not have a church large enough to hold us after a few months when we would go in the county. The question was some churches were afraid for us to go in because they thought someone would burn their churches. There was not church burning in Lowndes County, if you remember. There were 2 or 3 churches going in Lowndes County. We had a poverty program burned and one day a white church burned. I was at the University of Wisconsin at that time. This white church burned and no more burning take place in Lowndes County. That is the sad thing, but that took place. Q: In all of your trials of getting registered voters, where was the Federal Government at this time. At one time, I read an article that you recruited a bunch of _________ registered voters. (inaudible) 31 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville A: They came down, but let me be honest with you all. On the first election in 1966, they would be standing out there. I think they were scary and most black folks were. I am serious. I can remember in the ___ area in 1966 when they had the election, somebody cut the lights off in the building. Let me tell you, everybody just froze. Stokely and them were there and they went out and turned the lights on their cars, but those federal agents were just as afraid as anything else. They would not say anything. Several white people that I know brought the people that worked on their plantation in with them and went in and voted their ballots for them. That is why we worked to get that law changed where you could not help your boss man. Now, you can help anybody you want, but your phone cannot help you. If you work for a company, your boss man cannot help you raise the vote in the state of Alabama. We had to get that changed and it was Lowndes County who played the biggest part in that. People were evicted off their plantation because they registered to vote and we put tents out there on highway 80 and tried to be fair to people. We did everything we could until there were able to acquire land to move into. We filed a suit to stop the evictions. That is the only suit that we lost. Q: Did you know Viola Liuzzo and what are your recollections of her, of so? A: I did not know here but shortly after she got killed, I go to meet her family on several occasions. Her son came down and stayed in the county for awhile, but I did not know her personally. Q: If you ever have a chance to go to the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma, there is a wall in the museum that I believe is called, I was there wall or the we were there wall or something like that. The people who played some role in the movement signed a 32 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville little sleep of paper and tacked it to the wall. One of the most touching things on that wall is the daughter of Viola Liuzzo who about a year ago visited the museum and said my mother was here and that is just on the wall there. It is really interesting to see. Q: Do you think that was a turning point in getting national attention to the movement? A: It was a turning point to get lots of attention because people came in. Even at that, Jonathan Daniels was killed after that but remember he got acquitted in court and that is the hurting thing. You understand what I am saying. The Klan killed her and did not anything come from that. The person that was prosecuted in that case stood up in the court and said if she would have stayed in Detroit, Michigan she would have been alive today. There were very few blacks there because they were afraid to go in that court room at night time. Now, if you are prosecuting somebody and get up and say that, what do suspect a jury to do? This is the type ofrepresentation we had. Q: Stokely Carmichael had started an organization called The All African Peoples Revolutionary Party. It took a strong standing in the (inaudible). A: He did do that, but he did not do that in our county. He never did that in Lowndes County. He never had any confrontation with the police. Q: Stokely Carmichael founded an organization. Say the name of the organization again. A: The All African Peoples Revolutionary Party. Q: With The All African Revolutionary Party, did that have an effect on your relationship with Stokely? A: No, it did not because he did not do any of that stuff in Lowndes County. He respected the police officers and Arthur Stickwicker did as well. 33 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Q: There years that you we re involved with the Bloody Lowndes in your county, can you tell us a little bit about your personal life. Did you have a family and how did this impact your family during the year. Then, I understand that there was some type of sanitary land field plan underway within the last couple of years that may effect or impact the tourism and trade in Lowndes County with respect to the Edmund Pettis Bridge and the Selma March in November. Can you talk a little bit about that? A: Okay, let me be honest with you. I have some children who lived with me during that time. My son is a probate judge now who lived in Lowndes County. They were too young to vote, but it did not affect them because we did not have any real decent jobs no way, we were just out there working. We were trying to make life better for them to go to school. When they first integrated the school in Hayneville, they sent 6 kids to school that year. One of my sons went to school and he had some problems with some of the white kids stepping on his heels. One night, I got in my car and drove to the father's house. I said to him, your son is stepping on my son's heels and I do not want it to happen again because I may have to stop that bus on the road and get him off there and it never happened again. I was the sheriff. I being straight with you all about it. This is a little incident that happened. Let me be honest about this land field that we have. This land field is off the Civil Rights trail. People are dumping trash on the highways. Lowndes County was not a pretty place until I started cleaning it up when I retired from the sheriffs office. The white people in Lonsborough did not want it and they had a few blacks with them to help to keep it out. I do not think that land field would do anything wrong to Lowndes County as long as it does its problem like it ought to be done. People 34 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville will be buried under the ground, like 40 feet deep, and within the next 200 years I do not think there will be problem whatsoever. Q: Is that a divisive issue in Lowndes County? Do people disagree about that? A: There are a few people that disagreed about it, just a few. It was mostly people who lived right in Burksville. I remember one night I said to them, you are not concerned about the Civil Rights trail. If you were concerned about the Civil Rights trail, why did you not help us get registered to vote or a thing of that type. You understand what I am saying. These are the same folks who guessed everything now concerned about the Civil Rights trail. It is a money thing that they are looking at now. Q: Have you written or will you right about how the majority of the city of Alabama was able to tolerate injustice in such a way that it brings up today what they are willing to do now which is stand up against injustice. A: I think that to understand the magnitude of what happened in the Civil Rights Movement you have to understand that the majority of white citizens in the state of Alabama were complicit, if not cutting-edge practitioners of the injustices that were inflicted on black people. It was absolutely pervasive. I am very aware of this because I grew up in Alabama in a family that was very much a part of the status quo in Alabama . So, it is really easy to see that the system of segregation that was in place in Alabama could not have survived without the active support of the overwhelming majority of white people in the state of Alabama. I think there is a sense in which white people were liberated by the Civil Rights Movement as well because people of my generation were certainly coming along and you had to decide what we thought about it. It was such a 35 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville powerful reality and it was inescapable. So, you had to ask yourself what is really going on here. I remember when I was about 16 years old I was in Birmingham on a high school trip and I happen to be walking along one afternoon with no idea of anything that was going on. I was not paying attention to what was going on in the world and I walked up upon the arrest of Martin Luther King, the first time he was arrested in Birmingham. I remembered it actually incorrectly. I remembered at first that he was wearing overalls. He was not. He was wearing a denim work shirt and blue jeans. It was almost that way, but I do remember, like I have a picture of it in my head, the look on his face as the policeman bodily carried him pass where I was standing and it was a look of not fear. His eyes seemed to me to be very sad but kind of stoic all at the same time. There was a dignity about him on that occasion that stood in such incredible contrast with the kind of bullying attitude that the policeman had on that occasion. As a 16-year-old white kid, it was a jarring imaging to behold and it was something that I never forgot. It made you ask in a very personal way, what is going on here. It was easy to know who you wanted to identify with in that particular situation. So, one of the things that I am very interested in and this is a long answer to your question, but one of the things I am very interested in is the impact that the Civil Rights Movement had on white people, people of my generation and other people as well because I think that the white citizenry in the state of Alabama had a long way to go. I think we were compelled to move by events that happened by the example of courage that we saw, so I think that is an important part of the story that I certainly want to try to touch on. Now, did we go as far as we need to go? I mean obviously not. We are still struggling with that issue. I was talking to some reporters 36 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville today at the paper. We were talking about why it is that we have not made as much progress as we have maybe hoped we would. I think to me it is the cutting edge of civilization. It is sort of the frontier of civilization. The people who are not exactly alike are still trying to learn how to live in peace and proximity with each other, if they are even trying at all. Amazingly enough, we are probably doing a better job of it here than they are in most places because you look at the Middle East, Northern Ireland or all these other places and people struggle with that. We will continue to struggle with it here, but we have more tools now because of the example of people in the Civil Rights Movement. Q: I was a new comer to Alabama. We came here in 1965 and this whole situation has really stressed me a lot and (inaudible) but nowhere else is it quite so legal. So, I thought perfectly well that this is of people like you, although I had a very culture when I came here. I also said to my brother who called me and said (inaudible) how are you managing this and how will it turn out. I said that I truly believe that we will solve our problems as soon as everybody else, so do not worry. I mean it is a bad situation, but I know that the people that I know so well will find a way to let this happen. I was feeling very ----- at some times during it, off and on. I also participated in the long line that were lining up to vote after the federal government interceded and it was kind of a interesting mess. If you remember, you had to have a registered voter stand with everybody that was going to vote and every body was getting curious because they had 3 tests that were not hard but it took more time and we did not have anymore time allotted to us. So, it was a pretty interesting time for me and I helped the best way that I could to be helpful, the best way I knew how to. I am glad that I was here to do it. 37 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Q: Any response you want to make to that. A: I am not sure. I could not hear everything that she was saying. It was pretty rough, true enough. I could remember the times that we had to have a white to vote for a black. You could not find a white to vote for a black. After they started registering, we did not have to do that in Lowndes County. You did not have to have anybody to vote for you. That was some our problems we were having. The voter registrar did not assist on that. The federal came down and registered most of our people in out county. Q: Was lynching a part of your community also? A: There were many people that were lynched or had things done to them. I do not know much about that, but there were people that were lynched in Lowndes County not during the Civil Rights Movement but before that time. Once we organized, there were no blacks killed by whites except one person and that was before I took office. He was killed because he was hunting rabbits. The dog went across the county line. They shot and killed him and tried the case. That was the first case tried when I got there and they found him guilty. They charged him 100 dollars and a year's probation. This is the kind of thing that happened. This was a white guy who killed a black guy and they charged him 100 dollars plus court cost and a year's probation. Q: How much would it help if they rewrote the constitution in the state of Alabama. Would that kind of blanket or help throughout out the state if the constitution itself was dealt with? 38 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville A: I was in a meeting not long ago and the Alabama New South Coalition was trying to put a committee together to start doing this with the state legislatures, but it may help some. You can rewrite all you want to, but it has to come from the inside of your heart. Q: There are many of the young people today that do not seem to have the right stuff? I would like to know what would be your message to them. A: Those of us who understand what the Civil Rights mean we should go into our communities sit down and talk to our young folks and try to encourage them to do the right thing. Our churches ought to be a part of doing that. Q: Was Lowndes County as violent as it was because black people outnumbered white people by the margin that they did? We have come a long way, but we still have a long ay to go. What, in your opinion, do we still need to do or still need to accomplish? A: I am going to give you a number of incidents that people have just killed people. There were a group of folks from Birmingham one time that came down to move somebody off of a plantation. They killed a guy on a Saturday or Sunday night and rode around in a truck and that Monday they were riding around that courthouse on the back of the truck and nothing was done about it, but this is the kind of thing that happened. If something happened in your family like, you would get afraid. I knew other people that would go out and hunt. I had a cousin that went out one night just hunting. The guys ran up on him hunting in the woods and started shooting under his feet and made him dance all night long. This is the kind of thing that went on in Lowndes County, but in order to change this we are going to have to come together and let drugs go. That is one of the things that is ending us now. Drugs are getting to most of our people. Stop committing 39 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville crimes, stay out of trouble, go to the polls and register to vote and start treating one another like they are human beings. Black or white, we are going to have to start doing that together or we will never move on. Q: Is there still racial tension between blacks and whites in Lowndes County today. A: There may be a few older people. It may not show up around me, but it may show up around a few people. Most people, when you treat folks right, they do not have any problems. I can go any place in Lowndes County in almost anybody house and I do not have any problems. Q: And when you have ran for office, you have gotten considerable white votes? A: At this age, I am 73 years old. I will be 74, November 19th and I wish it was this month. I have had more than 1800 people to call me already and talk to me. I believe I could go back and run for sheriff again. I don't why, but this is something. Let me say this. If someone burglarize a community, a house, a church I get out and work on it night and day until that person has come to justice just about. If somebody has shoot somebody or cut somebody, they are going to jail and everybody knows that. I do not know what is happening to the sheriff and bothering other folks now, but I try to do what is right for the people in our county. I guess that is why they want me back. They are not trying to get me back because I am going to let them do something wrong. If it is a drug dealer in town, he better leave. He better get his stuff and go to some other county. I believe that is what we out to do. They have a drug task force and I want to be sure I get with that drug task force if I am successful in winning and try to get them to do a much better than what they been doing and get these drug dealers out of time. 40 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Q: Will you run again? A: If my health holds up, my name will be on the ballot. Closing: Well, Sheriff Hulett thank you for sharing these stories with us tonight. We really appreciate it. 41 � 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_000023 Title A name given to the resource Digitized transcription of VHS tape of "Bloody Lowndes and the Black Panther Party". Description An account of the resource John Hulett and Frye Gaillard are the speakers 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-11-01 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 2000-2009 Subject The topic of the resource Hulett, John,1927-2006 Gaillard, Frye, 1946- Civil rights movements--Southern states--History--20th century Hayneville (Ala.) Lowndes County Voter registration Black power 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/402">VHS Tape of: Bloody Lowndes and the Black Panther Party - Speakers: John Hulett and Frye Gaillard, 2001-11-01. Box 2, Tape 8</a> University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives 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. 41 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/390">Bloody Lowndes and the Black Panther Party - Speakers: John Hulett and Frye Gaillard - Transcription of Tape 8, 2003 Box 1, File 9</a> University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/32/13345/EarlyYearsoftheMovement_Tape3_File4.pdf 56fedaee613df78a371297db75354a33 PDF Text Text The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Early Years of the Movement (Part II) Speaker: J.L. Chestnut, Jr. On behalf of the University of Alabama in Huntsville and on behalf of President Frank Franz, I am very pleased to welcome all of you to this lecture series focusing on the history and impact of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. This historic initiative brings to Huntsville, distinguished speakers who will reflect on events of the past and who will share with us their hopes for the future. I must once again commend the faculty from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and from Alabama A&M University, who worked over a period of more than two years to make this possible. The faculty includes, but are not limited to, John Dimmock, Lee Williams, Jack Ellis, Mitch Berbrier from UAH, and James Johnson and Carolyn Parker from Alabama A&M. I am very pleased that you could be with us. Good evening. It is my pleasure to take a couple of moments to acknowledge our sponsors. These are the people who have made it possible for us to do all these kinds of things. They have given us funds and all kinds of support. They are: The Alabama Humanities Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Senator Frank Sanders; The Huntsville Times; DESE Research Inc.; Mevatec Corporation; and Alabama Representative, Laura Hall. At Alabama A&M, we have the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, the State Black Archives Research Center and Museum, Title III Telecommunications and Distance Learning Center, Office of Student Development, the Honor Center, Sociology Social Work Programs and the History Political Science Programs. At the University of Alabama in Huntsville, we have �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, The History Forum Banking Foundation, Sociology, Social Issues Symposium, The Humanities Center, The Division of Continuing Education, the Honors Program and the Office of Multi-Cultural Affairs, Office of Student Affairs and the UAH Copy Center. Let us give these people a show of appreciation. Introduction: The thing that has always fascinated me about the civil rights career of J.L. Chestnut Jr., is the extent of which it is rooted in ordinary light and then the experiences of ordinary people struggling against poverty and injustice. Mr. Chestnut's autobiography, Black in Selma, published in 1990 with Historian Julia Cast, is a reminder of how history really operates. Here, one is far removed from the well-ordered narrities of human freedom favored by Hollywood authors and writers of fiction or those who devise stories where battles are fought and won, where dramatic conflicts are resolved easily and quickly in time and space. Instead, Mr. Chestnut introduces us to a far more complicated vision. One marked by the passions of political combat in a small southern town and by the endless quest for dignity among those that he calls "The little and forgotten people of this world." His life shows that the struggle did not begin with the Civil Rights Movement and it is not over today. Born in Selma, Mr. Chestnut's early curiosity and his remarkable powers of observation and memory as a child, particularly of people and events within the black communities and its relation with the white power structure and with the police, is owed much to the example of his own parents. He had a hard working and resilient father and an educated, fiercely independent mother. spent forty years teaching school and was never hesitant about speaking her mind. 2 She �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Mr. Chestnut told me this afternoon that his mother, now age ninety, is still very quick to speak her mind about affairs of the world. After graduating from Knox Academy, Selma's black high school, Mr. Chestnut went on to Dillard University in New Orleans and from there to Howard University in Washington, DC where he earned a degree in law. In 1959, he came home to open an office as Selma's first black attorney. Though eventually merging as one of the South's leading civil rights lawyer, his early years of practice often encountered the same barriers that confronted Alabama's other black lawyers. I think at that time there were only nine in all. He had to overcome the racism of white judges. He struggled to maintain the semblance of a professional life, even having to fight for the right to be able to sit within the railing of the courtroom alongside the black sharecroppers and laborers, who made up the bulk of his clients, are just a few examples. Nevertheless, Mr. Chestnut's courage and legal skills and his long fight for the right of Dallas County's black residents earned him the respect of poor blacks and poor whites alike. Soon, he had become a leader of the black community and its dealings with the power structure from the sheriff to the mayor, the courthouse of bureaucracy and eventually to George Wallace himself. Mr. Chestnut headed the NAACP legal team that oversaw Alabama's reluctant implementation of the Supreme Court's decision back in 1954, which ordered the desegregation of schools. In 1963, he helped the young freedom writer, Bernard Lafayette, the first civil rights worker to come to Selma, persuade his fellow Selmians to overcome their fears in order for them to attend mass meetings aimed at voter registration. The importance of this was reflected in the fact that at that time, out of one hundred and fifty counties, only fifteen thousand black residents were registered to 3 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University vote. That was the start of the Selma movement. The subsequent emergence of Selma as a symbol for the national black voting rights campaign during the 1960's is owed much to the health and advice that Mr. Chestnut was able to provide the civil rights organizers. He represented many of them locally, including Martin Luther King Jr., James Foreman, John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy and Joseph Lowery. After the event of Bloody Sunday, on March 7, 1965 and long after the reporters and network television camera's coverage of the violence on the Edmund Pettus Bridge disappeared, Mr. Chestnut continued to fight in combating local job discrimination and winning the rights of blacks to sit on Dallas County juries. Following the Selma to Montgomery March, in passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Mr. Chestnut emerged in the words of Julia Cast as "a leader in the long march. The process of turning the possibilities opened up in 1965 into a real grass roots change long after the national spot light and national civil rights leaders had gone elsewhere." Eventually, Mr. Chestnut would try more capital cases than any other attorney in Alabama and the firm he was head of would become the largest black firm in the state. His list of cases defending the political and economics rights of African- Americans, Hispanics, native Americans, and women continues to grow. Mr. Chestnut has been active in speaking out in countless public forums across the nation, from ABC's Good Morning America, BET's Lead Story to CBS Nightline, to name just a few. The subtitle of Mr. Chestnut's autobiography, The Uncommon Life of.IL. Chestnut Jr., is amply named, I think. I believe it will provide an endearing testimony to what he has achieved. That achievement in the words of the San Francisco Chronicle, has been to give "a vividly human face to the men and women of Selma, who struggles, hopes, 4 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University contradictions, optimism, cynicism and general thrashing about helped shape today's south." This symposium on the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama is honored to have as our guest tonight, J.L. Chestnut Jr. Join me in extending a warm welcome. J.L. Chestnut, Jr.: Good evening to you. I want you to know that I cannot hardly wait to get back home and let my dear wife know that I have been hobnobbing with the president, the Provos and the president of UA in Huntsville as well as two or three Ph.D's. My wife is always saying I am nobody, but she does not know a single college president. You just wait until I get back there. My dear friend, the president of this college who comes from my neck of the woods, is a fine, fine man. This institution has really grown since the last time I was here last. It is a great honor for me to be at this historic institution. I was overwhelmed at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and how it has grown to seven thousand students, I think. It is a great testimony to the people of this area and I am honored to be among you. I want you to know that I sit on the trustee board of the University of South Alabama, USA. Last year, I spoke at the University of Alabama Law School in Tuskaloosa. Fifty years ago, when I went off to law school, I could not even get into the University of Alabama University Law School except as a janitor. What has occurred since that has brought us to where we are here is part of what I am going to talk about. What was the "there" and what is the "here"? will try to shed some light on those questions. First, I would like to take a moment or so to read the opening paragraph from a deliberately, provocative and controversial weekly newspaper column I write, which. Kay Turner is well aware of this. The paragraph, I think, says a lot about the current 5 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University mindset of most of the people my age, that struggled in the front ranks of the movement during the dangerous sixties. Three months before the unspeakable bloody tragic murder of thousand of innocent souls in New York and Washington, I wrote and published the following paragraph in several newspapers. It begins by stating, "In significant ways, the United States of America is a great force for good and progress in this really chaotic world. I am convinced that no other country would have created a marshal plan or spent billions of dollars to economically resurrect or vanquish folk, after a five-year bloody world war. What nation other than this one would have fought and awful Civil War of the emancipation of slaves of color. I dare say not one. America is in a class by itself." I wrote those words because they are true. I am the great grandson of slaves, but my lawyer states that this nation equals any America. I was a soldier during the Korean War and I was prepared to die if necessary, in defense of a democracy that denied me. Moreover, I did not accept the city rationale in Washington for the war. How does one stop the spread of an idea of communism with an army? Indeed, the Koreans had every right to be communist if that is what they wanted to be in their own land. Yet, if my country went to Korea to fight, I would fight for my country. Less than ten years later, my country went to Vietnam and made the same mistake. We reaped devastating results. However, if one listens to George W. Bush, one might think that only good comes out of America and that all of the evil in the world is elsewhere. The president described the tragic New York and Washington outrageous, as unprovoked acts of war and as a war between good and evil. We all can easily see the unmitigated evil of the terrorists but the young president overstates our 6 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University good. I understand his role to try and unify the nation but unity, like peace, must in the end rest on truth. A false foundation will not support either in the long run." That is pretty much where my mind is after all of these years of the struggles in Selma and elsewhere. Let me leave where I am now and let me take you back to 1958, Selma, when I was foolish enough to come back and establish a law office. It was the first time a black was crazy enough to do that in Selma. As you heard a moment ago, only one hundred and fifty-eight blacks, out of twenty thousand, were registered to vote. Each one of those people had to be vouched for by a white person. If a white person did not feel that old Ned was all right, then old Ned did not get to register. There were black and white water fountains, rest rooms, churches, and schools. My mother, my wife, and other black women could not try on a pair of shoes right a hat in some cheap department stores downtown. Not one black person anywhere in the State of Alabama had ever served on a jury, not one. The police were a law unto themselves in the black community. When they came to knock on your door, if they bothered to knock at all, you would say, "Who is it?" They would respond, "The Law", and they meant it. They did whatever to whomever whenever. If you asked any questions, they would find you floating in the Alabama River. This was just a few years ago in 1958. I saw black men literally lynched for not saying sir or ma'am to a white person or yielding the sidewalk. The only jobs blacks had in downtown Huntsville, Selma, Birmingham and Mobile were as janitors, messengers and delivery people. There was a blanket of fear over this state so thick that you could almost cut it with a knife. Black folks had to be careful about what they said to 7 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University each other. You never knew what someone would go downtown and claim you said. You could loose a hell of a lot more than a job. As a lady said to me at Harvard University, "If it was that bad Mr. Chestnut, why did you go back?" I said, "Hell, that's why I went back". I had no idea that a Civil Rights Movement would explode in the streets of Selma. I just hoped that we could make some modest achievement. I hoped that we could pull our resources as black folks and set up a few credit unions, maybe open up some grocery stores and other types of businesses. If we were lucky, I thought we might be able to get the white police out of black Selma. That is about as far as I thought we could go. I was born and raised in Selma. I had not seen anything that would suggest the Montgomery Boycott or anything else such as a massive Civil Rights Movement in the streets of Selma or in Birmingham for that matter. I though when the white man said it was over, hell, it was over. The Civil Rights Movements exploded in the city of Selma. I will never forget 1 March 7 \ even if! live to be three hundred years old. I had never seen anything like that in the army. I went across the bridge early on what we called Bloody Sunday, to tie up the one telephone that we did have over there. The reason I had to tie up the telephone is because I represented the NAACP legal defense and education fund. Even though Martin King and Reverend Abernathy were putting all of these folks in jail they were not paying for it; my bosses were paying for it. I had to explain to them what was going on. In fact, we did not even believe in all of this marching. We said that we should find two or three obviously qualified black folks, send them down to register and when they turn them down, you have a perfect test case; go to court. Martin repudiated all of that by sending 8 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University five hundred people out. I went across that bridge early just in case. We did not even know there would be a march. What spurred it all off, Jimmy Lee Jackson, a young fellow, had been shot dead by the state troopers in a demonstration in Marion about thirty miles from Selma. All the boy was doing was trying to protect his mother. People were so upset, they fiercely said, "We should take his un-embalmed body and march all the way to Montgomery and put it on George Wallace's desk. Obviously, we could not do that. It evolved from that into the march to Montgomery. George Wallace said there would be no more marches and that he was up to here in marches. We said we did not care if he was up to there, we are going to march. We had this conflict. The question was rather or not there would be a march __ said, "If Martin King is in the march, we are not going to be in it. We have been in Selma for two years getting our ass whipped, going to jail, bleeding and getting no credit for it, but Martin comes in, makes one speech, goes out to Los Angeles, and raises ten thousand dollars. The hell with it! We are not going to march." I went over there just in case. I was over there looking at the carnival at the other side. On the other side, there were four hundred state troopers decked out in riot gear. They had billy clubs the size of baseball bats and tear gas. They were backed up by another one hundred deputy sheriffs and posse men on horses. They were decked out in tear gas mask also. I said to myself, "Who the hell are you all expecting ... the Russian army or something?" They were over there as usual, arguing with each other about who was in charge. The truth of the matter was none of them were in charge. I looked back and there was John Lewis, who is now a congressman from Atlanta, leading a little group of people. Martin Luther King was not in that march. He 9 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University was in Atlanta, preaching in his church. You have seen that clip a many of times on television of John Lewis and his group coming face to face with all of this, all might of the state of Alabama, stretched out across that highway at the foot of that bridge on the Montgomery side. I heard a white boy say, "Tum around. Go back to your church. This is as far as you will be permitted to go." John kneeled and begin to pray and the others behind him did likewise. Then, something went off like a tear gas canister; I do not know what it was. Then, there was absolute deadlock; tear-gas everywhere. screaming and hollering. People were You could here ribs cracking as horses rode across folk's breast. I saw grown men with these baseball bats coming down on the heads of women and children, splitting them like watermelons. I had dropped the telephone because I was trying to pull some of these people out of the highway. I could hear New York saying, "What's happening ... What's happening?" It was a horrible day. Blood was everywhere. I remember walking back across that bridge, literally crying. What is this all about? Martin keeps talking about the power of the public opinion. What public opinion? They were beating my folks to death in the middle of a public highway, at high noon and no one cared because they were black. What public opinion was this? At that moment, I did not think that America could be saved. I did not think that white people were worth saving. The thing I did not know was that people all around the United States, black, white, brown and red people had watched that ugly bloody scene and they did not like what they had seen. The President of the United States had watched it spell bound. Three weeks earlier, he had met with some of us in the White House. We asked him to present to the congress a voting right bill. He said, "I can't do that boy. I just got you a 10 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University was in Atlanta, preaching in his church. You have seen that clip a many of times on television of John Lewis and his group coming face to face with all of this, all might of the state of Alabama, stretched out across that highway at the foot of that bridge on the Montgomery side. I heard a white boy say, "Turn around. Go back to your church. This is as far as you will be permitted to go." John kneeled and begin to pray and the others behind him did likewise. Then, something went off like a tear gas canister; I do not know what it was. Then, there was absolute deadlock; tear-gas everywhere. screaming and hollering. People were You could here ribs cracking as horses rode across folk's breast. I saw grown men with these baseball bats coming down on the heads of women and children, splitting them like watermelons. I had dropped the telephone because I was trying to pull some of these people out of the highway. I could hear New York saying, "What's happening ... What's happening?" It was a horrible day. Blood was everywhere. I remember walking back across that bridge, literally crying. What is this all about? Martin keeps talking about the power of the public opinion. What public opinion? They were beating my folks to death in the middle of a public highway, at high noon and no one cared because they were black. What public opinion was this? At that moment, I did not think that America could be saved. I did not think that white people were worth saving. The thing I did not know was that people all around the United States, black, white, brown and red people had watched that ugly bloody scene and they did not like what they had seen. The President of the United States had watched it spell bound. Three weeks earlier, he had met with some ofus in the White House. We asked him to present to the congress a voting right bill. He said, "I can't do that boy. I just got you a 10 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University public accommodation law wherein you can buy a hamburger wherever I can buy one. You can stay in the Holiday Inn. Go home. Be quiet. Be grateful. Be thankful." We went home and turned Selma inside out and upside down and the result of it was at the bottom of that bridge. There he was, the President of the United States, looking and he did not like what he saw. The next thing he was doing was standing before the congress of the United States with the bill in his hand, insisting that the congress pass the bill and pass it now. He ended that refrain with, "We shall overcome!" Later on, Martin King told me that he was watching it with his wife Coretta. He said that when the President of the United States said, "We shall overcome," he said a tear trickled down his cheek. I said, "Martin, my friend, no tear trickled down my cheek". He said, "Why?" I said, "Do you not understand? You are no longer the number one Civil Rights leader in America, hell, Lyndon Johnson is." This is the man who said three weeks ago that the country would not stand for two civil rights bills. We were in deep, deep trouble. From that moment on, every time the president of the United States could, he wanted to preempt out our movement. He was never able to do it. As I was telling some of the professors today, ifit had not been for Lyndon Johnson, I would not be here today; I would have been six feet under. Lyndon Johnson was able to get his bill through. Then they took postmen and other federal workers and sent them to Dallas County, Alabama to Terry County, Alabama and to Wilcox County, Alabama and said, "Register those folks." thousand. In six weeks, we went from one hundred and fifty registered voters to ten That has not happened anywhere in the history of the human race. struggle was hardly over. The struggle is not over in the year 200 I. It is not over as I 11 The �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University stand here speaking to you. Well, why not? For a whole lot of reasons. First, as much a hundred years earlier, poor, uneducated slaves were set free to compete or parish. They had no money. They had nothing. First of all, in 1966, we had ten thousand new black voters who knew next to nothing about politics or voting. We were opposed by people with centuries of experience in politics, government, and voting. Second, we had no control whatsoever, over the economy. Their political adversaries employed most of the ten thousand new voters. Even worse, they had been brainwashed for centuries by being told that voting and politics were white folks business. If you want to stay out of trouble, stay away from voting and politics. Alabama was a one-party state, the Democratic Party. It continued to back every incumbent who was white. The best we could do every now and then was get together and elect what we call the lesser of two white evils. That took place for the next ten years. We went to see Jimmy Carter after he was elected. We said to Mr. Carter, "We went to the poles, but every time they count the absentee ballot box, we lose." Mr. Carter said, "Well, that is a state problem. We will not deal with that our first term. We will deal with that our second term." As you know, he did not get a second term. In 1980, Mr. Reagan came to town, not only were we not getting any help but also Mr. Reagan prosecuted us. Mr. Reagan's justice department under Mr. Edwin Meese brought at least a hundred and fifty indictments against carefully selected black leaders and charged them with something called boast fraud, something that Mr. Reagan did not know what it meant and hell, I did not either. We went up to see Mr. Meese and said, "Why are you 12 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University doing this to us? Everything we know about the absentee ballot box, we learned it from whites. We are doing just what they are doing. You have not indicted a single white person. Here is the evidence." We showed to him how whites were doing the same thing. Mr. Meese was writing furiously stating, "We are going to look into that." I never heard another word from Mr. Meese. Finally, we circled in the court and defeated every one of these indictments, except for about two and those two were thrown out on appeal. We begin to elect black folks to office and that was not the end of the battle. The battle was not over. The battle is not over yet. The battle will not be over in my lifetime or yours. I filed a lawsuit and charged systematic exclusion of black folks from the jury box and won. We had blacks come into the jury box. Some of these counties are seventy and eighty percent black. We came up with a jury with eleven blacks and one white. The white, every time would be selected foreperson. Because of three hundred and fifty years of slavery and another one hundred years of near slavery, the mere fact that I won a lawsuit and was able to put them in the jury box could not erase four hundred and fifty years of discrimination. It is a slow process. That is why it is not over. We put an all black jury in the box. There was a white lady, whose leg was broken in a car accident. She received two thousand dollars. A black woman in an identical situation would receive two hundred dollars from an all black jury. After three hundred years of slavery and one hundred years of near slavery, we have these fools on television talking about it is over. We are about a third of the way, at best. Do not you fool yourself. As I say to you, after almost forty years since the bridge, black folks now take in and spend close to 13 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University nine hundred billion dollars every year and we do not spend it with each other because we have been taught to not do that since the first slave ship stopped here. That is one of the reasons why people with nine hundred billion dollars have so many folks on food stamps and living in public housing. Everyday, we spend at least a million dollars in supermarkets. We do not own one single supermarket. The NAACP and my so, so, so fraternity and my wife's so, so sorority spends tons of money in white hotels arguing about poverty and racism. We do not own a single one of those hotels. Ifwe bought one of those hotels, that would do far more than addressing poverty and racism than these so called symposiums that we have on the subject. We have come a long, long way against insurmountable odds. It is a miracle that we have even survived. I argue all the time all around the country with all kinds of folks. The argument is rather or not if the glass is half full or half empty. If you are white, you are more likely to argue that it is half full. If you know me or ever heard of me, you would argue that it is half-empty. We all have to agree that there is some water in the glass. It is wrong to argue that over the last forty years, we have not made meaningful progress. It is just as wrong to argue that that progress equals victory. We have to be realistic about the whole situation. I was arguing with a fellow. You have probably seen him on television. His last name is Armstrong. I forgot what his name. He called me a liberal. He was bragging about how conservative he was. I said, "Boy let me tell you something, I don't care nothing about black liberals or conservatives. A black conservative to me is someone carrying water on a political reservation run by George Bush and two or three other powerful Republicans. A black liberal is someone carrying 14 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University water on a political reservation ran by Bill Clinton. The hell with both reservations!" I am a black man trying to deal with truth. People like me made people like Armstrong possible. If we knew that would be _____ . There must be accountability in the black community. We are the only people you can say anything about, do anything to and there are not any consequences whatsoever. The reason that we attack and undermine each other is because there is no penalty to pay. That has to change. Sooner or later, we are going to have to deal with the Armstrongs whether they all want to do it or not. We are going to have to do that. We cannot fight on the serious front and have all of these little yard dogs laughing and yapping at our heel. We have to be loose so we can concentrate on the real struggle. I will say this. I am going to be frank with you. I would not have said this if we did not have all of these white folks here. I am just telling you all the truth. I learned in the Civil Rights Movement that black folks are just IO to I 2 percent of the national population. We will never get it done by ourselves. Nothing really happened in Selma until white people of goodwill came. They came not just from the North, but other parts of the South and locked arms with us in the streets of Selma and said, "I am ready to march, go to jail, die or do whatever is necessary that rights will prevail." White folks died in Selma. White folks died in Mississippi, Georgia and other places finding that this country could be free. So, I do not want and I do not agree with these separatist ideas. I think it is not only self-defeating but foolish to say, "We don't want no white folks in this and we are going to do it ourselves." You sure will do it yourself. We need all of the help that we can get. Last, I would like to say to white folks that we freed more of you all in 1967 15 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University than we freed people that look like me. I had white people come up to me and whisper in my ear in Selma and they would say, "Keep up the fight J.L." They are still walking by fear. Do you know what it is in the year 2001 for someone to call you a nigger lover? You might as well pack up and leave. This is everybody's struggle. We have come a long way and we have overcome many obstacles. We have a long way to go, but we are on our way. Nothing can stop us. I know from experience. I have been to the well many, many times and I know that when good people lookup, rise up and decide to stand up, we can make mountains move and trees tremble but we have to do it together. Closing: Attorney Chestnut will entertain your questions. Before we do that, let me remind you that the yellow sheets that you have, please fill those out. Those are our evaluation forms. Some of our grants or rather some of the folks need that. Please fill them out and give it to some of the young people that are in the back. Attorney Chestnut will now entertain your questions Q: (inaudible) A: You were around in the sixties, I know? Then you know that even then they were only relatively a few of them. Young folks, my children's generation and my grandchildren have the impression that 85 percent of black America was on the march in the 1960's. There were a miniscule number ofus on the march. I think we can increase our numbers, but it will always be small. That does not matter. Jesus Christ only had twelve, only one of them was a trader. If you are prepared to be free or die, I do not need an army. I just need a few of those type people and you can change the world. We want 16 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University to give everybody the chance. Do not be disheartened when you look back and see that there are not many behind you. My wife and I were born in Selma. We were sick of that little place. We both sat down and talked about it. We both concluded that in six months to a year, we would either pack up and leave or we would be dead. We had to consider that, to not consider that, for us, that would have been crazy. I do not know of anyone in the Civil Rights Movement back in the sixties who came in because they wanted to commit suicide. 1 also did not know anyone in that movement who was not prepared to die, if necessary; what is now going on is a lack of dedication. Let me tell you about my son who is a lawyer. I raised him in my house. All he thinks about is the house on the hill and the BMW. There is something human about that. There are only going to be relatively few people who are going to rise above that and see a greater truth and a greater need and be prepared to die for it. I was telling some professors today. Martin Luther King my fly, my friend and more of my leaders than he ever saw was the most morbid man I ever met in my life. You could not talk to him three minutes before he brought up death, his death, and everyone else's. Every since the Montgomery Boycott, death had stalked him. It stalked him all the way to that balcony in Memphis. If he said it to me once, he said it one hundred times, "They are going to keep coming back for us until there is not one ofus left." The only reason that did not turn out to be true was because of Lyndon Johnson. He put so much pressure on John Edgar Hoover, that every time the Klu Klux Klan met, two thirds of the meeting were either FBI informants or under cover people ... had that not been the case, every one ofus would 17 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University have been dead. Lyndon Johnson saved our lives. Even though he used to call us niggers, but he saved our lives. Q: There are many people here who are facing tremendous violence. Let me give reference to the Muslims. Muslims are like the rest of the people who want to be free, live their own lives and not be murdered or challenged about the way they live their lives. I hope all people who are suffering for this reason will join together and try to make this country the kind of country it ought to be. It is really bad that we do not realize that there is a better way. We could be benevolent instead of a tyrant around the world. I hope that everybody around the world will try. I certainly want to work on this because I have been aware of this for a very long time. A: The truth is that there are powerful forces in this country who do not want this to happen, the very thing you suggest. They have been fighting for years to keep that from happening. It has always amused me that poor white Southerners went off in the Civil War, fighting to preserve slavery and they were damn near slaves themselves. It has always puzzled me that in Alabama some of the poorest folk I know are against labor unions and wants to exalt so-called write-the-work laws. This is the result of what I call mainstream brainwashing and it is out there. People like you and lots of people who want to see a better world, there are powerful forces who only want to see a better world on certain terms. They are prepared, if necessary, to destroy America, to keep it from happening. It is a sad commentary on our time, but it is the truth. I was also telling the professors this afternoon that my ninety-year-old mother and I was sitting in her house the other night watching television; nobody but us. This is a woman that I love with all of 18 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University my heart. She had cultivated powerful white people all of her life. ____ knows her. She said black folks cannot do anything for her because they are in the same boat. She does not even like white people who are not powerful. She does not have time for you all. We were sitting in her room and President Bush was on the television. The president said, 'This is a terrible tragedy. Thousands of innocent people have been slaughtered. It is unprecedented. It never happened in evil." My mother looked around to make sure there was nobody in there. She knows there was no one else there but us, but this is the way she has been living with white folks. She looked around to make sure no one was there and then she looked at me and said, "ls he too young to remember Hiroshima Nagasaki? Does he remember the atomic bomb?" I said, "Yes, he remembers. That is not a truth he wants to deal with." She started to say something else to me and she changed her mind and did not say it. The thing that I was looking at there, as I was talking to these professors, that goes beyond the I 960's. That goes all the way back to slavery. Do you understand it? That is what that is all about. Who would corrupt the mind of people for centuries except they have diabolical design. These are the folk who prevent the kind of world that you and I want from happening. Q: First of all, thank you very much for making myself as well as the multitude of other people here aware who are our age because so often we do not actually see what you guys went through back in 1958, even though it is still currently going on. My question, however, is where do we go from here? As a person in my generation, what steps do we take to further the goal of equality and freedom? 19 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University A: I think that we have to give as much attention to the economics of freedom as we have given to the politics of freedom. The economics of freedom are far more difficult to achieve than the politics of freedom. We have to learn how to pull our resources. We have to learn how to reward our friends with our money and punish our enemy. We should not be putting money in the First National Bank if we cannot make loans at the First National Bank. We should not be putting money in the People's Bank if no one down there looks like us. I think we have to strike on the economic front and we have to hit as hard as we did on the political front. America is the citadel of capitalism and spending every dime we get is a recipe for bankruptcy in the citadel of capitalism. I do not like to deal with our dirty linen in front of white folks, but I am going to go ahead and do this. There are some things in the black community that we really need to clean up and only we can clean them up. I am sick and tired of some of these black preachers, in an automobile long as from here to there, two telephones, wearing a $1500.00 suit, riding pass us and will not speak and raising all of that off people on food stamps; that is wrong. We cannot free a people tied to that. It is everywhere in a black community. We need to take a look at these so called black radio stations, so called. We do not usually own them. We just get on them and act a fool. My partners and I just bought two radio stations in Selma because there ought to be some other voice to the Selma Times-Journal. If you listen to some of these so-called black radio stations, what you here will make a grown man blush. All day long they are preaching to our children that SEX spells love and it does not. It spells more poverty, more disease, more everything that is wrong. I am going to stop there because the whites folks are sure enough getting interested. 20 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Q: I am a public school educator in the city of Huntsville and I work in middle school. It just breaks my heart. I grew up in Birmingham in****. It is just devastating because we are not educating blacks nor whites to the truth. I want to know where do you think education fits in at that level because that is the future. My day is over with. It is that generation that will have carry us as America to where we want to be. A: I agree with you. We are still teaching children that Columbus discovered America, though the Indians was on the beach waiting for him. In America, the truth can get you killed. Let me give you all some truths that will shock some of you. Do you know who trained and equipped some of Usama Bin Laden? He was our close friend as long as he was killing Russians. Do you understand that these misguided misfits who took these planes into those buildings, in their own minds were retaliating against this country for wrongs they felt had been done to them. Do you realize the truth will get you killed? So, how do you teach it? Do you realize that beginning in 1980, for eight years, Ronald Reagan prosecuted underclass, illegal wars on virtually every little country in Central and South America. He destroyed villages, destroyed families, killing children and women. Do you know that it is beyond rational dispute that all of the North help finance those wars with drug money. We do not come with clean hands. That is why the truth is so dangerous. If you start speaking or telling the truth, get ready to suffer; it is coming. I have spent a lifetime suffering because I believe in people and I love people. When I look in the mirror and shave every morning, I want to see somebody I halfway like. I do not want to be ashamed of me. I have seen some awful things in my time, things that would make you cry. The innocent suffers, truth be damned. I am going to say this and then I 21 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University am going to hush. While President Bush and clergy from all denominations, black, white, red and everybody were appropriately gathered in the National Cathedral to show national tolerance, unity, prayer and hope, two of president Bush's strongest supporters wrote Reverend Jerry Falwell and Reverend Pat Robertson was on national television saying that the trade center and the pentagon because of homosexuals, homosexuality and abortionists. Now, how crazy can you be? That is loose in this land and it has been loose in this land for a long, long time. These people have power. They have the airwaves. They have television sounds and all that. They feed that to a misguided public all of the time. I hear stuff from intelligent, educated people and I say to myself, "Did I hear that right?" Q: I must first start off by saying that I have immensely enjoyed everything that you have told us tonight. It encourages me as a college student to go forth and do well. The question that I want to ask you is despite all that you have experienced, what has reaffirmed your faith in America in all that you have done and what has kept you going through all of these years? A: As I mentioned earlier, my dear mother and my late father actually loved people. They transferred that to me and to my younger sister. I cannot put up with suffering. I do not like to see anybody mistreated. When you have a sense of people, you want to try to help improve the human condition. I learned a long time ago in Sunday school that I cannot love the Lord until I first learn how to love you. I also learned that no matter what someone else does to me, I cannot afford to let that person make me hate them. I read where Booker T. Washington said, "The only way you can keep a man down a ditch is 22 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University you have to get down there with him." Throughout my life, there has always seemed to be somebody there who cared and said, "Look here boy, you don't want to go that way; go this way." There were a lot of people who did not care. There was always one or two who cared. I went to these segregated public schools in Selma, Alabama. The building 1 went to school in had been condemned twenty years earlier when my mother was a student there. The ceiling would fall down while we were in class. The whites had a brand new school on the main street in Selma. The superintendent would come every year to explain to us why there was no money for a new school. I wanted to do him some harm. I talked to my father about that. My father talked to me about not getting down in the ditch with the superintendent. I will say this. Nobody believes more in prayer than I do. I pray everyday. I am not ashamed of that. I pray at night. I pray driving along the street. When I get through praying, I get up off my knees; I am ready for battle. I guess. I am having the time of my life. Q: (inaudible) A: I will relay your message verbatim. Can I take two minutes and say something about fees that I think that you ought to hear? Three years ago, three of us brought a law suit in Washington, DC on behalf on twentythousand black farmers from Maine to Florida and from New York to California. We charged that the United States Department of Agriculture had discriminated against black farmers by one, not giving them the loans that were entitled to and two, if they got the longs, it was too little too late. It forced farmers out of business. Fifteen years ago, there were thirty-six thousand small black farmers in this country. There are about eight left 23 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University now. The judge said to me, "Mr. Chestnut, how much money are you talking about? Are you talking about 20,000 farmers all over the country?" I said, "Yes your honor." He said, "Well how much money are you talking about. I said about 2.5 billion dollars." The government laughed. The reason they laughed is because black folk had never gotten any real money from the federal government. You get social security and small business loans, but you do not get any real money from the government. There was no precedent for that. As I talk to you now, the government has paid fifty thousand dollars to about nine thousand black farmers who had no records whatsoever. Once they paid them the fifty thousand dollars because it was income, the government wrote a second check for 12,500 dollars for taxes and paid that to the IRS. In addition to that, if the government had some land that it had foreclosed on a black farmer, they had to give it back. They are in the process of doing that right now. Do you know how much black lawyers charged the black farmers? Zero. It cost my law firm 1.5 million dollars to process the case. We said at the end of the case, we will come back to the court. If we win, the court can order the government to pay us. We don't want little farmers paying us. They didn't create this mess. The government did. Now, the government is now paying us. Now, we are arguing with each other. Q: First of all, I would like to extend my sincere appreciation for you sharing that delightful and wonderful lecture that you shared with us. I also wanted to comment on how one, the truth is not out there often and it is not often set out as eloquently as you put it. First of all, you do not have to search for the truth. There are books and research and a lot of that is for us today. If you do teach us from our elders, we will receive that 24 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University information and we will take it and run with it. I do not want you to feel as if the cause is gone; the cause is lost because there are still people out there that feel that it is not over. We hear you when you call upon us to step up to the plate. I know soon that you will have to sit down but just know that our generation is not all lost. We are out there. We are waiting for you and that is all we need to see a little direction and we are in it. Along the path, we as children, we learn from our elders. In someway and somehow, it was mistranslated that after the Civil Rights Movements and after desegregation, everything was okay. Now, today our generation is driving around in luxurious cars paid by our student loans and things like that. I just want to know how do you feel about our generation kind of dropping the ball as far as the revolution is concerned and as far as things of that nature of the Civil Rights Movement is not over. We still have things to fight for. Like you said, it is only one-third of the way to its final destination and I do not see it in **. Where do you think we dropped the ball? So, thank you, thank you for coming to our campus. A: I am going to answer that quickly and then I am going to let you all go. We all have to work together, as I have mentioned and went into that, and try to bring those along who will not come. Some will not come regardless, but you will get some of them. In 1964, every major black Civil Rights leader in the country was in jail in little Selma, every one of them and the movement was dying because there was no one to lead it. We had been trying for two weeks, habeas corpus and everything trying to get them out. One judge told me, "No way. We have the head of the snake. All we have to do is hold it long enough and the tail will die. Then, Malcom X showed up in Selma in front of my 25 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University office before he went on down to the Brown Chappuis Church. I was glad when he went on down to the Brown Chappuis Church. He stood up in front of my office and he said that he had come to Selma to take over the movement and that from now on it would be going in a different direction. The only reason they were going to turn the cheek to see which way the rascal went. I looked up and there was Martin and Ralph walking down the street. The white folks put them out the jail. That is a true story. Malcom X could not have organized a march in Selma if he life depended on it. He did not speak the language or walk the walk. He was from Harlem and he knew that, but he also knew that the white folks did not know that. If they knew it, they were too scared to take a chance. It takes all kinds. Everybody brings something to the struggle. Speaker: You have been trying to ask a question for a long time. Q: (inaudible) A: Let me go at it this way. Sometimes, we do not see what we think we see. Sometimes, it is not so much the mentality as it may be other things. Let me give you an example. In the same black farmer suit, there were serious problems. The statue of limitations had run. The statue of limitations said that if you have a lawsuit for discrimination against the government you had to bring it within two years. These farmers had not brought in any lawsuits within two years. The justice department told the president, "They are over with .Do not worry about it. We will file a motion to dismiss on the basis of the statue of limitations. The justice department thought that the President of the United States had the same mentality that they did because they were all in the government. The president did not want it to go away. He said, "Well, I do not know. 26 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Let me think about it." While he was thinking about it, we went around and brought black farmers. We back to the l 960's. We brought black farmers from all over the United States to Washington. They came in fifteen-year-old pick up trucks. They had little brown bags of cold chicken. That is all that they could afford. They slept five and six in a hotel room. We were up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. One fellow brought his mule. The biggest and the ugliest mule I ever seen in my life. The mule's name was Trouble. We were up and down Pennsylvania Avenue threatening to shut the government down. The President of the United States was in the White House looking out smiling and Al Gore was close to having a miscarriage. He was trying to run for president and that was part of his political base out in the streets marching, so the president had the pressure that he wanted. So, he called of all people, Newton Gingrich. That is what I am saying. Everything that everything that looks a certain way is not. He called Newton Gingrich and said, "I need you to help me." Then he told us, I want you all to go up tomorrow to the speaker's office and talk with him. We are going to see what we can do about this Statue of Limitations". I said, "Oh Lord, who in the world want to be bothered with Newton Gingrich?" We went up there. He said, "Come in. Come in. Then he said, "Look, we saved the Japanese. We did you all wrong. Stop believing that." Newton Gingrich drafted it alone. He had his committee to do it. He went down on the floor of the house himself and insisted that amendment, about 3 paragraphs, be added to that federal budget and it passed. For the first time in the history of the country, the government waived the law and said it did not apply to these minority farmers. What am I saying? I am saying that everything is not as it appears. There are people out there with 27 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University a mindset that you cannot read. There are a whole lot of people we may think got that mindset; they do not have it. We just have to reach them and talk to them. We cannot give up. We have to keep pushing up. 28 � 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_000019 Title A name given to the resource Digitized transcription of VHS tape of "Early Years of the Movement" (Part II). Description An account of the resource J.L. Chestnut, Jr. is the speaker in this lecture given at Alabama A&M. 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-09-20 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 2000-2009 Subject The topic of the resource Chestnut, J. L., 1930-2008 Civil rights movements--Southern states--History--20th century Selma (Ala.) Macon County (Ala.) African Americans--Legal status, laws, etc. Voter registration 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/397">VHS tape of "Early Years of the Movement" (Part II). Box 2, Tape 3</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. 28 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/384">Early Years of the Movement (Part II) - Speaker: J.L. Chestnut, Jr. - Transcription of Tape 3, 2003</a> University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/32/13348/HuntsvileDuringtheCivilRightsMovement_Tape7_File8.pdf c06fec7c805330961744733c9eef2400 PDF Text Text The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Huntsville during the Civil Rights Movement Speakers: Sonnie W. Hereford, III, John Cashin Jr., Fred Carodine and William Pearson On behalf of the University of Alabama in Huntsville and on behalf of President Frank Franz, I am very pleased to welcome all of you to this lecture series focusing on the history and impact of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. This historic initiative brings to Huntsville, distinguished speakers who will reflect on events of the past and who will share with us their hopes for the future. I must once again commend the faculty from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and from Alabama A&M University, who worked over a period of more than two years to make this possible. The faculty includes, but are not limited to, John Dimmock, Lee Williams, Jack Ellis, Mitch Berbrier from UAH, James Johnson and Carolyn Parker from Alabama A&M. I am very pleased that you could be with us. Good evening. It is my pleasure to take a couple of moments to acknowledge our sponsors. These are the people who have made it possible for us to do all these kinds of things. They have given us funds and all kinds of support. They are: The Alabama Humanities Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Senator Frank Sanders; The Huntsville Times; DESE Research Inc.; Mevatec Corporation; and Alabama Representative, Laura Hall. At Alabama A&M, we have the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, the State Black Archives Research Center and Museum, Title III Telecommunications and Distance Learning Center, Office of -1- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Student Development, the Honor Center, Sociology/Social Work Programs and the History Political Science Programs. At the University of Alabama in Huntsville, we have the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, The History Forum Banking Foundation, Sociology, Social Issues Symposium, The Humanities Center, The Division of Continuing Education, the Honors Program and the Office of Multi-Cultural Affairs, Office of Student Affairs and the UAH Copy Center. Let us give these people a show of appreciation. Jack Ellis: The focus is on the Civil Rights Movement in Huntsville, the event that started at least with the first sit-ins of January 3, 1962, which were carried out largely by students from William Cooper Council High School and Alabama A&M, many of whom had been recruited by a young man named Henry J. Thomas, who was a veteran freedom rider and a field agent for the Congress of Racial Equality, known also as CORE. Thomas also, as some of you may know, had been on the bus that was firebombed outside of Anderson and was beaten as he exited the bus. For several months after the initial demonstrations in Huntsville, the movement mushroomed as students targeted segregated lunch counters throughout the city. From the list of those arrested appearing in the Huntsville Times, one can identify around 130 young people who participated repeatedly and over an extended period of time. Though in her 1965 Master's thesis presented here at Alabama A&M and entitled "The Acquisition of Civil Rights in Huntsville, Alabama from 1962 to 1965," Theresa Powers-Shields estimates the number at actually 400 and the total number of known sit-in demonstrations as 260. Accompanying this campaign were weekly mass meetings, the formation of a community -2- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University service committee, known as PCFC, which was chaired by Reverend Ezekiel Bell. Despite foot dragging by the mayor and other city leaders, the movement also succeeded in seeing the appointment of a biracial committee that helped oversee an end to segregation in public facilities two years before the Civil Rights Movement of 1964. The question I propose tonight that we can discuss is how and why did events occur in this fashion in Huntsville and in what ways was the Huntsville Movement different from, for that matter similar to, the Civil Rights Movements in other areas of the state. For background, I will briefly mention just a few facts starting with the city's rapid rise in population after World War II. In 1960, the population of Huntsville stood at just over 72,000; many of these young, middle-class professionals were from areas outside the south. That same year I saw massive infusion of federal funds into the local economy, aided greatly by the creation in 1958 of the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center which was charged, as many of you know, with developing launch vehicle systems to support the lunar landing program. Within four years, Marshall was producing 30 million dollars in local contracts annually and employees of NASA and the newly arriving aerospace industries were spending another I 00 million in Huntsville. In their book, "A Power to Explore: A History of the Marshall Space Flight Center, 1960 to 1990," published in 1999, Professors Andrew J. Dunar and Stephen P. Waring note that because nearly 90 percent of Huntsville's economy was based on federal funds, Washington had more leverage here than anywhere else in the state, simply because few business leaders or political leaders were willing to risk losing such resources. In short, say the authors, "the gospel of wealth had more disciples in Huntsville than the gospel of -3- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University white supremacy." These facts, no doubt, helped shape the strategies and tactics of the local Civil Rights Movement, as did the ability of the demonstrators to tum Cold War rhetoric on its head by noting how America was spending billions for defense against communism abroad while denying freedom to its own citizens here at home. The signs carried by protestors on the Huntsville Square echoed this message. One said that this is the Rocket City USA, let freedom begin here; another said Khrushchev can eat in this restaurant, but I can't. Nevertheless, while the success of the local movement owed much to the federal presence, I believe it also reflected strengths within the black community itself. Ten thousand strong in 1960, Huntsville's black residents had developed a powerful sense of community and culture that was flourishing long before the arrival of NASA and German rocket science. It was the leaders of this community, its ministers, its business leaders, its professionals, tradesmen and workers, who defined the terms of the Civil Rights struggle and who provided financial support and council to the students. Their efforts not only helped break the back of segregation in Huntsville's public facilities but set the stage for the successful school desegregation suit filed in March of 1963 on behalf of Sonnie Hereford, IV, Veronica Pearson, Anthony Bruton wid Davis Peday. By the way, Huntsville's sit-ins, poster walks, boycotts and visits from the nation's top Civil Rights leaders outraged state officials, like attorney general McDonald Gallion, who succeeded in banning the Congress of Racial Equality from the state, and certainly Governor John Patterson who forced the retirement of Alabama's A&M president of 35 years, Joseph F. Drake. -4- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University At the local level, business and professional leaders seemed stunned as they witnessed the exploding myth of racial harmony in the much-vaunted progressive environment of Madison County. Their surprise may have been an indication of how little they really knew about the black community, a fact that is easily confirmed by one of my students, by the almost complete absence of positive reporting in the local press on the achievement of African-Americans here in Madison County during the 3 or 4 decades prior to 1960. Initial reaction to the sit-ins was thus to be expected. In an editorial from July 9, 1962, the Huntsville Times accused black leaders of threatening, "to harm Huntsville's position in the highly competitive race for industrial and intellectual development." Similarly, a resolution of the Huntsville Minister's Association stressed the economic progress the city had made as the space capital of America and added, "We do not want this image marred by the struggle in human relations that is going on throughout America and around the world." Yet, as Dunar and Waring had pointed out, despite its liberal reputation, at least in comparison to the county's black belt. Huntsville, its schools, hospitals and other public facilities, were rigidly segregated. Black housing and schools suffered from neglect. Educational and job opportunities were severely limited. African-Americans, they note, made up eighteen percent of the city's population, yet were less than one percent of the work force at Marshall. The fact of the matter, observed one NASA administrator, is that Huntsville is in Alabama. The Civil Rights Movement here in Huntsville thus poses numerous questions that I hope we can discuss tonight with our distinguished panelists and with members of the audience who -5- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University were there. To introduce our guests and to moderate the discussion, I would now like to call on my colleague, Professor Carolyn Parker. Carolyn Parker: Thank you, Jack. This should prove to be an exciting evening for us. I'm particularly delighted to have this opportunity to moderate and to introduce our distinguished panel. Our first presenter for this evening is well known throughout the city for his work as a medical doctor, Alabama A&M University and Oakwood College physician, a familiar face on our football field. He served as team physician in the I 960's, 1970's and l 980's, as a professor of anatomy at local institutions of higher learning and most especially, for our purposes tonight, a Civil Rights legend. Dr. Sonnie W. Hereford, III is a native of Huntsville, Alabama, was educated at Council High School (my alma mater as well, proud to say), Alabama A&M University and Meharry Medical College. He distinguished himself by earning highest honors at each stage of his academic career. He began his practice of general medicine in Huntsville in 1956. He served as medical director on the Selma to Montgomery march and assisted Vivian Malone in her quest to enter the University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa. Dr. Hereford has received numerous awards for his contributions to our community, to name a few; Delta Sigma Theta and Zeta Phi Beta Sororities, the Community Action Agency, the Madison County Midwives Association, Oakwood College and Alabama A&M University's Athletic Department. He is a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, the Huntsville Alabama Hall of Fame and was cited for patriotism and dedication by Redstone Arsenal. In 1999, collaborating with Calhoun Community College, he released a video taped account of the Civil Rights Movement in Huntsville titled, "A Civil Rights Journey." His son, Sonnie Wellington -6- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Hereford, IV, who is right here, will you stand? Just let them see who you are. His son Sonnie Wellington Hereford, IV was first to integrate a public school in Alabama in 1963, what was then called Fifth Avenue School. Dr. Hereford is married to the former Martha Lynne Adams and they are parents of five daughters and one son. Dr. Hereford will share with us a summary of the background of the Civil Rights Movement in Huntsville from his perspective as a highly involved activist. It is my pleasure to present our first speaker to our audience, Dr. Sonnie Wellington Hereford, III. Sonnie W. Hereford, III: Dr. Parker, Dr. Ellis, our distinguished panel, the esteemed president of this university and also our esteemed provost, our fellow freedom fighters, students and friends. It is indeed a pleasure for me to be here with you tonight. We want to talk about Huntsville. Just before I start talking about Huntsville, I would like to introduce a few more people in the audience. She stole a little bit of my thunder, I had planned to introduce some of the people, but I didn't even know Sonnie was going to be here. Sonnie was at a funeral this afternoon in Kentucky and has driven here to be with us. But first, let me introduce my president when I was working at Oakwood and he has come here tonight at my invitation to be with us. Dr. Minette, would you stand up or hold up your hand, please and let them see you? This is the first time I've had the pleasure to see him in the last fifteen or sixteen years. Now, I wanted to just mention my brother who is in the audience, who's been with me seventy years. We've been side by side everyday, even in the Civil Rights Movement. Tom, would you stand up just a minute please and my daughter who has driven all the way from Shreveport, Louisiana to -7- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University be with us tonight. Would you stand up Martha, please? And, Sonnie and Sonnie's daughter is here, would you stand up please? We have three generations here. Thanks very much for inviting me here to be with you tonight to talk about the Civil Rights Movement in Huntsville. You see, we have sat and we have listened to the people talk about the Civil Rights Movement in other cities and other communities and we've heard about the difficulties that they've had. When some of them spoke, I thought they were writing my autobiography. We were so much alike, but then, there were some ways in which we were different. I'd just like to mention to you about three or four incidents in which it seems like we were so much alike. When Ms. Nash talked about going to jail while she was pregnant, the first thing that came to my mind was my wife went to jail when she was pregnant. When Attorney Chestnut spoke of those long meetings that they sat in until the wee hours of the morning, I thought about Dr. Cashin and how we use to sit in those long, long meetings until the wee hours of the morning. When Attorney Gray spoke about the out of state fees they paid him to try to bribe him to not even try to get into the University of Alabama, I received that out of state fee. They said if you don't try to go to the University of Alabama, if you'll go to any other college in the United States, we'll pay you the difference of what it cost you to go to that college and to go to the University of Alabama. I talked to Dr. Cashin today and he said his father refused to accept that. He sent him to school and paid his way. Dr. Woolfolk, just last week, when she spoke about the superintendent of the schools threatening to fire the teachers, well, we had the same thing here in Huntsville and it just seems like they were just talking about our movement. The doctor has told you about my association with -8- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University A&M, so I want to let you know that I really feel at home here at A&M. When I was a teenager, I used to come to the football games here on Saturdays and then some Saturdays when I couldn't come, I'd be picking cotton in the cotton field. I could look and I could see Bill Grey. I could hear the band and wish I was here. The next thing I want to speak about, the participation of the people. I go around all over the United States, showing the film and talking to people about the Civil Rights Movement. Sometimes, I forget to ask about people who have also participated. Now, how many people do we have here in the audience who have participated in the Huntsville Civil Rights Movement? May I have a show of hands, please? Those who actually participated in the Huntsville Civil Rights Movement. Okay, very good. How many had relatives who participated, maybe you weren't old enough to participate, but some of you had ancestors and relatives who participated. I think there's a hand. Now, how many people do we have here who've participated in movements in other cities? All right, let's give them a hand. I see one young man back there who is still fighting, I know about your fight. Now, we know that there is nothing on the face of the earth that is as powerful as a movement whose time has come. I had read about revolutions and my teachers had taught me about revolutions, but the ones that I knew about they were more or less bloody revolutions. There were guns involved; there were knives; there were slings and there were arrows involved. We want to talk to you a little bit tonight about a nonviolent revolution. We want you to see how powerful a nonviolent revolution can be. This is -9- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University th very timely because in a short sixty-nine days from now, we will be celebrating the 40 anniversary of the beginning of the Huntsville revolution. I want to talk to you a minute about how Huntsville used to be, before the movement started and I want to use the format that I used the last time, when I spoke at the University of Michigan. community. I started off by telling them how things were in the The schools in Huntsville were completely segregated. We had poor equipment. We had poor facilities. We had no library, no gym, no lunchroom, no PE period, no PhD's on the staff, no playground and we had no laboratories. Some teachers and students may take exception with me on that, some of the ones who went to Council High, when I say we had no laboratories. We had a room that said, the inscription above the door, "Chemistry Laboratory." But, if you had gone inside that room, this is what you would have seen. You would have seen about ten or twelve test tubes, ten or twelve reagent bottles, one beaker and one Bunsen burner. That is not a laboratory, in my opinion. Now, I want to show you something. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I sat down, my wife and I drew this picture. You see where it says "MS," that's my school. You see where it says "CD," that's the city dump. Now can you imagine how it was? We didn't have air conditioning. Can you imagine in September and in May how it was to sit in those classrooms when some of us didn't want to be there in the first place. Can you imagine that? Now, if it cost me my life, I couldn't tell you which one was put there first, the city dump or the school, but my contention is that whichever one went there first, the other one had no business being put there. Do you agree on that? -10- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University There were no buses for black children. The buses were for the white children. The only thing I remember about a school bus is that if it passed by me fast, it blew dust in my face. If it passed by me slowly, rotten eggs and rotten tomatoes came from the windows and hit me in the face. That's what I remember about a school bus. Now, the powers took our own tax money and hired the best legal minds in the United States to keep us from getting our own freedom and the things that we deserved to keep us from getting the things that we actually deserved. Now, you've heard the expression on the street, a double whammy. Well, if it keeps the schools segregated, you automatically keep the boy scouts and the girl scouts segregated. You see what I mean. Because the troops come from the schools and the job. The black people were the last to be hired and the first to be fired. And, then when they were given a job, they had different pay scales. Just to give an example, a white man and a black man working on the same job, the black man 25 cents an hour, the white man 40 cents an hour, the same job. I know you've heard this before, they bring a white person on a job and ask the black person to train him, a brand new person, and in the next two weeks the white person is the black man's supervisor. I know you've heard that before. Now, the jobs that were available were janitor, delivery man, minister, teacher, porter, errand boy and construction worker, but you could not have any supervisor position in the construction work. There were no policemen; no firemen, no bank tellers, no clerks, no meter maids, and no sales people whatsoever. There were no black people in the national guard, no black people holding political offices and I was 30-years-old before I saw my first brown mannequin in a store -11- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University window and that was in Honolulu, Hawaii. I had never seen a brown mannequin in my life, scout's honor. Voting. We were disfranchised on the basis of illiteracy. Even though some ofus had Bachelor's, Master's and PhD degrees, we were still disfranchised and this is what one had to do if one wanted to vote. If you go to the voter's registration place, you had to take someone with you who was already a registered voter to vouch for you. You had to take a written test, an oral test and then interpret the Constitution of the United States to the satisfaction of the examiner. Now, in some cities, if you passed all of that, they had a jar of jellybeans and then you'd have to guess how many jellybeans was in the jar. Now, say for instance you pass all of that including the jellybeans, then you have to go to the courthouse and pay your poll tax. After you'd done all of that, if you didn't pay your tax, you still couldn't vote. On the street, they called that a double whammy because if you are not a registered voter, then you don't get a chance to serve on a jury. Now, I don't know how it is today but that's the way it used to be in Huntsville, Alabama. The jury pool was taken from the list of registered voters and I know that to be true because I called two lawyers yesterday and asked them about it and I didn't want to come out here and tell you that ifit weren't true. Now, on public accommodations. There was no access to any of the arenas, no access to any of the ballparks, skating rinks, the bowling alleys, the golf course, and not even to the library. You couldn't go to Shoney's and you couldn't go to McDonald's. I know you would not have liked that. In the medical community, we had a county here of about 75,000 people, twenty-five percent black, with 33 white doctors. We had one black -12- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University doctor when I came to town. In the town, I made the 35th doctor. All of the white doctors had separate waiting rooms and then the black patients had to wait until the white doctors finished their white patients and then they would take a black patient. I want to relate to you a little incident that one of your professors here on the campus told me about. He said, "Dr. Hereford, I went down to this white doctor's office to take an insurance examination and he said they told me to be sure and be prepared to give a urine specimen and so I purposely didn't go to the restroom before I went down there and he said the nurse gave me a little bottle about that tall and she sent me into the x-ray room." He said, "Dr. Hereford, I didn't mean to wet the doctor's floor, but when I got through filling the bottle I couldn't stop." And so, this is the thing that used to happen to us. The hospital had separate wings for black and white. On the black wing, they had about 13 to 14 beds and after those get filled up, then they put patients in the halls. They had to stay in the hall. After the patients had delivered, all of our post partum patients were sent in one room, just one big room for all of the postpartum patients, and when I first got to the hospital they had one room for the emergency room, the operating room and the delivery room, and you can see how you can run into problems with that. They had separate pay scales for the workers. All of the white workers made more than the black workers and they had no place whatsoever at the hospital for the black doctors, the black nurses and the black workers to eat. And, nobody seemed to give a damn that they didn't have anywhere for them to eat. When I started over there, the head of the staff told me, "Dr. Hereford, you can admit your patient's to the hospital, just like Dr. Drake does, but now you can't become a member of the staff because in order to become a member of the -13- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University staff, you have to be a member of the county medical association." Well, in order to become a member of the county medical association, you had to be white. So, in that way I couldn't be a member of the staff. He said, "Now, you must come to the meetings, but you can't vote, you can't make a motion and he said be sure you don't come before seven because the white doctors are going to eat at 6:30 and for God's sake don't come in while they're eating and if you do come in, don't let that waitress pour you a cup of coffee." Now, that's the type of things we had to go through with. Now, Dr. Ellis is looking at me. I don't know if he's looking at me about time or not, he says no. I like that. I want to talk to you awhile. Thank you, Dr. Ellis. We yielded five minutes of his time to me. Well, you finally get tired of having those things. We were eating tonight, we were sitting at the table and we said yes, sometimes you get tired but sometimes you can't do it by yourself, you want some help and you want a leader. We were waiting on a leader. We wanted somebody to get it started, but we didn't quite know how to get it started and I wanted to do something about it. I was just sick and tired about how they treated me, not only at the hospital but all over the city. I was just sick and tired. So, on January 3, 1962, Henry Thomas, representing COA, came from New York. He recruited students from Council High and Alabama A&M. He started sitting in at some of the local lunch counters. They were immediately arrested because they had a law back in those days that said that any merchant and any land owner that did not want you on his property could order you off and if you didn't leave in a reasonable length of time they could call the authorities and they would arrest you. And, so, they did that. They -14- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University arrested these kids and that was their reason, just because the man didn't want them there. So, they arrested these kids and we went and we bailed them out. Dr. Cashin and a lot of other people went and signed their bonds and we bailed the kids out and then a night or two after that we decided that we better call a meeting. We'd get together and we'd organize and we'd form a committee to try to continue with the demonstration and to try to make sure we could get these kids out of jail when they needed to come out of jail and just to see what we could do about integrating the city. I'll tell you a little bit about the committee first, and I'll be looking out the corner ofmy eye at Dr. Ellis every now and then. We started with what we called a community service committee and we decided that we'd have a chairperson and two vicechairpersons and a least one of those individuals ought to be lady. So, we worked that out. We had subcommittees in the community service committee. We had a negotiating committee; we had a finance committee; we had an education committee, a committee on jobs, committee on public facilities, committee on housing and we had a psychological warfare committee. Indeed, we would meet whenever necessary and we'd meet wherever we could. One thing I want to point out, every single meeting we had and every single demonstration we had was opened with prayer and closed with prayer, every single one. Even if we had a called meeting where we were going to vote on one issue, it was opened with prayer and closed with prayer. That's the way we approached it. Okay, she's telling me I have five more minutes. I'll talk to you about the leaders in the movement. We had a professor from here on the campus, Attorney Blackwell, who was an economics and political science -15- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University professor, and he was the only one who had had any experience. He had been in the Greensboro situation. We had Mr. Harris who was manager of the Atlanta Life Insurance company, and Mr. Nimms, who was the owner of a local funeral home; Reverend Ezekiel Bell, a new pastor of Fellowship Presbyterian Church, and Dr. John Cashin, a local dentist who was an activist and made tremendous financial contributions to this movement. I know he isn't going to say it and I hope I don't embarrass him when I say it. He gave more money than any other 50 people in the city to help this movement. Now, you want to know how did I know, I was the treasurer and I knew where the money came from and I knew where it went. They had Dr. Hereford, who was a physician and an up and coming photographer who was going to take these pictures of all the demonstrations and everything and then one day I got up in a meeting and said that if anybody was injured or if anybody became ill while they were demonstrating that I would take care of them at no charge to them. We had Mr. R.C. Adams who had done a lot of work in voter registration, Ms. Ray, who was an activist, and we had our student leaders like Mr. Pearson and Dr. Dickerson, Ms. Frances Simms, Mr. Steel and Mr. Benton. Is Mr. Steel here tonight? Mr. Steel has been coming to most of the meetings. The other thing I want to say is that it was lack of experience. We had not had any experience and we were just sailing on uncharted waters. We didn't know what in the world we needed to do and when we left home we didn't even know if we'd returned home. We didn't even know if we'd have a home to return to when we got back to. So, we had no protocol and we had no instruction manual and no guidebooks and we were -16- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University just trying to see what we could do to try to bring about the integration. We had a small group of demonstrators without any money and it was against the might of the city, county and state government. We had white supremacy in the city that were egged on by the governor and the gubernatorial candidates and they knew that they could do anything they wanted to us and they would not have to suffer any consequences for doing that. So, that's what we were up against. Now I guess they're telling me I'm close to time. We went to the mayor and we asked the mayor to integrate the lunch counter, the drinking fountains and the restrooms. That wasn't much, was it? He refused us. He said, "I can't do that. They're not going to lose the customers they've had for the last 15 to 20 years just to accommodate you people. We can't do it." We then asked him to establish a biracial committee. We thought if we could get him to establish a biracial committee and have white people and black people to come to the bargaining table and sit down and talk we thought we could work it out. Every single move that we made was geared toward getting to the bargaining table. We felt that if we could just get them to the bargaining table then maybe we could coerce them into doing what was right. We might be able to bluff them into doing what was right or we might be able to shame them into doing what was right. Everything that we did was geared toward that end. And so we finally got some black members and the mayor said he couldn't find anybody white who would serve. He worked and worked and after the demonstrations kept going, we had to boycott. When the two doctor's wives got arrested, there was so much publicity all over the United States, then the mayor found some white people to serve on that committee. Now, -17- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University if I could take about another thirty minutes ... , I'm sorry, thirty seconds, I'll give a little chronology about how things happened. Our movement was 99 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, eight years after Brown vs Board of Education, seven years after Ms. Rosa Parks, one year after President Kennedy was inaugurated. So, January 3, we said was the first sit-in and in February we began to start thinking about boycott. March 19th of the same year Dr. King came, he spoke and helped solidify the community. March 30t\ the restrooms at the courthouse were integrated. April 11th was when the two wives were arrested. April 22nd , we had what we called Blue Jeans Easter and May 13t\ the city parks were peacefully integrated. About the middle of May, Dr. Cashin's mother-in-law and her friends picketed the New York Stock Exchange and passed out leaflets. Then, on June 5t\ two of your professors from here and my wife and I went to Chicago and we picketed the Mid-West Stock Exchange and passed out leaflets. When the mayor and the City Council found out about these things, they decided they would have what they would call a trial integration. So, on July 9t\ 10th and 11t\ they had a trial integration of the lunch counters and the restrooms. In October of that same year, we filed a petition for the school integration. In February of the next year, we filed a suit. In August, the suit was heard and won, and on September 9, 1963, we had he first integration of any public school in the State of Alabama, and that happened here in Huntsville. There were some misconceptions about what was happening and it seemed to be the consensus of opinion in these instances that some people think that if I give you some of your freedom I'm going to automatically lose some of mine, and you know that isn't right. Another thing, -18- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University they thought I was trying to get into the country club, and I wasn't trying to get into the country club. I was trying to get into the library and into Shoney's. And, the last misconception, if they had just looked at my name a little bit closer they would have seen that my middle name was Wellington, and not Bonaparte. Carolyn Parker: Our next speaker, Dr. John L. Cashin, Jr. is a dentist who has devoted his life to the struggle for civil rights for African-Americans, especially in the state of Alabama. He founded the National Democratic Political party of Alabama, NDP A, and was responsible for the election of the first African-American candidate to public office. He ran for governor of Alabama as a work pool strategy, getting other black candidates to local and state offices. Dr. John L. Cashin, Jr., is currently president of TRP, which is critically involved with promoting public health education and HIV/ AIDS program implementation in the economically challenged counties of the State of Alabama's black belt. He writes a weekly column, "Down Home," and he provides for the National Negro Newspaper Publishers Association. Dr. Cashin has worked with the Research Institute at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Teenage Pregnancy Prevention research and with Dr. Emanuel Shelton on his Detergent Diet Nutrition Program. At Alabama A&M University, he has taught biology as well and was involved in selective enzyme cancer research for the removal of viable cancer nutrients. Dr. Cashin is also Executive Director of Southeast Alabama Rural Business Enterprise, which is a cooperative venture with the Tuskegee University Department of Agriculture, a nutritional, environmental, ecology and economic stability. Dr. Cashin is a graduate of Fisk University, Tennessee State University and Meharry Medical College. He is the -19- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University recipient of numerous awards and citations from a plethora of local, state and national organizations. He was the first national Omega man of the year ever from Alabama, designated in 1971 by his fraternity, Omega Psi Phi, the 2000 Humanitarian award of excellence from the New South Coalition and the 2001 Presidential loyal alumnus and political activist award and the 2001 research service award from Tennessee State University. Dr. Cashin is married, the father of three children, three grandchildren and has many hobbies. He is instrument pilot, amateur astronomer, expert photographer, and historian. I am proud to present to you Huntsville's preeminent freedom fighter, Dr. John Cashin, Jr. John Cashin Jr.: Thank you Ms. Carolyn, that is, Ms. Parker. I call her Alma's daughter. That was a very interesting little review that Dr. Hereford gave. As a matter of fact, he mentioned some things that I had almost forgotten about, bringing tears to my eyes because those were some rough days. But, we enjoyed it; we had a lot of fun. And we knew we were on the winning side. I was supposed to be giving something like a perspective on this movement and so forth. I was such an active participant that perhaps I get choked up with emotion and can't give a correct interpretation, because I would be biased. But, I did want to quote one of my favorite people, a guy that I worship, I call him St. Fred. I'm sure you have all heard of him. Frederick Douglas is his real name. Actually, it was Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, but we called him Frederick Douglas. One of his most famous quotations is, "Let me give you a message about refonn. The whole history of human progress shows that all concessions made to her August claims have been borne of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, all -20- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University absorbing and, for the time being, putting all other tools to silence, it must do this or it does nothing. Where there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are like men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want the rain without the thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar that's many waters. Now this struggle may be a moral one or a physical one, or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle for power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, it never will. Find out what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong that will be imposed upon them, and these will continue until they are resisted with words or with blows or with both. For the limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those they oppress, a great object lesson for us." That was the spirit we carried back in 1962. We were sort of like accidental leaders because you'd have to put it in the perspective of the fact that Alabama was the only state in the union where the NAACP was outlawed. How many of you remember that? It was actually a crime to be a member of the NAACP in the state of Alabama, punishable by a $1000.00 fine and a year in jail. And that's what we were up against. Of course, that was just a little side product of the Alabama constitution of 1901, but I'm not supposed to be talking about the constitution of 1901 tonight, but I can go on all night on that since that thing has taken on 700 and some amendments. 700 and how many amendments, Joe? I'm talking to the editor of the Huntsville Times. That's the number of amendments the Alabama constitution has. I really don't want to get on that because it's a real sore point for me. -21- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University But now, let's get to the perspective that we had in 1962. It's funny to me because this guy, Hank Thomas, came to my office first and said he was tired and wanted to do a little testing. I said, "Sure, by all means." I thought Huntsville was really going to be all right. I said, "Go to the bus station first," because we had already had a Supreme Court ruling. Let's tum it back just a hot second because it's very important you understand that because the NAACP was outlawed, we had to form our own organization, or own ad hoc of the station that we controlled and, believe me, it's the best way to handle it because it developed a leadership cadre that we didn't have before and when I say a cadre, we had some pretty tough characters. They had to be tough to undergo all of the things that we did; but we did overcome. I'm looking at little Sonnie, a tough cat. I see a few other faces here that I recognize very well from those days. It was rough, but now I'll have to quote somebody else, a fellow by the name of A. Philip Randolph. He was the patron saint of Randolph Blackwell. Randolph Blackwell was the economics professor here at Alabama A&M whose students were in jail or were demonstrating. They also were making A's in class attendance, too, but Randolph Blackwell was a graduate of Howard University law school, that's another story, but he was a disciple of a fellow by the name of A. Philip Randolph. A. Philip Randolph is a character to be remembered. How many have seen the statute of A. Philip Randolph in Union Station in Washington, DC. If you haven't, you need to go and take a look at it because on the pedestal of this statue it gives his credo. It says, "At the backward table of nature there are no reserved seats. You take what you can get and you keep what you can hold. If you can't take anything, you won't get anything. And if you don't get anything, -22- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University you won't keep anything. And you can't take anything without organization." And that's what we had to do. We put together an organization. I guess pretty much we were pledged to see it to the end. I really think that we outsmarted them, but they did not believe, the opposition; when I'm talking opposition I'm talking about everything white in this city was opposed to what we were doing. The Huntsville Times had an editorial, "It's time to call a halt." I remember the day that R.C. Adams jumped up in a meeting and said, "Let's boycott the Huntsville Times." You remember that? Anyhow, we used several devices that got the people's attention. So, as far as voter registration was concerned, this became a SCLC trait, too. We had a mule that was paraded around downtown with signs on him that said "I can't vote because I'm a mule, what's your excuse?" If you remember some of the magazine articles from back in that time, that mule got around. It was pretty good strategy. Now, I really wanted to make a few other quotations there because it does not pertain to what we were doing ad hoc at that particular time, but it does indeed call attention to the struggle that's going on right now, and that's the struggle for a new constitution for the state of Alabama. I spoke just briefly at a gathering in Birmingham the day before yesterday at which I called attention to the fact that we do have an opportunity. We've got a window out of this mess that we're in and Huntsville, Alabama can be the key, and this is one of things I'm pleading Joe Hyman, everybody, Lee Rubin, everybody who's in the news media who was engaged in the technology that we had. Just remember, Huntsville, Alabama is the repository. This is the birthplace as what is known in the world of science as zero to sex technology. Zero to sex technology. We -23- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University should be arrogant. We put the man on the moon from Huntsville, Alabama, and you should understand that NASA, those programs would never have come to Alabama had it not been for what we did with the community service committee. We desegregated everything in Huntsville. Huntsville, Alabama was the very first city of any size in the United States to desegregate. Huntsville, Alabama, it was a pioneer role and it played then, it was a pioneer role that was played when we put the man on the moon; of course, now it's Johnson Flight Center, Nixon's thing in Texas and California, but still the repository of technology of excellence was right here in Huntsville. As a matter of fact, when those boys in Texas and California get in trouble, they still have to call Huntsville. Arn I right? So, Huntsville is probably the only city where nerd is not a bad word. We've got more nerds per square inch in Huntsville and they're proud of it. But in any case, I want to call attention to this situation by giving a quote from Thomas Jefferson. His statement was, "In questions of power that no more be heard of confidence in man but binds him down from mischief with the chains of the constitution." Shall I repeat? "In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief with the chains of the constitution." We can write a perfect constitution with the technology; all of the world's knowledge is available right to us at our computers and whatever we have. We can lead the world into an entirely new phase, just starting from right here, Huntsville Alabama. We've got the answers. It's time for us to really flex our muscles and become what we're supposed to be. This little group sacrificed. We caught hell but we did bring Huntsville into the focus. We can have fairness and law and order even in Alabama because we did it without bloodshed. It -24- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University didn't happen any other place. So, I would probably rather participate in a question and answer session. I don't have to yield any time, I don't think I've taken my fifteen minutes. I wanted to just take more time and just show off what kind of ego I have. No, in all seriousness, this is a wonderful occasion. I see faces in this audience. I see green eyes in this audience, it reminds me of... How does it go? No, not good old days, for the wisest purposes, the creed is implanted within us, an instinctive disposition to revere the illustrious of our kind. To win this admiration is the most powerful incentive to action. It is the ardent desire of passionate natures. The sweet incense of popular applause is more delicious than wine to the senses of man. Deservedly pained, it heals every wound and sooths all pain. The mere hope of it will steal him against disease, neglect and oppression. To bestow this reverence is a pleasure hardly less exquisite. While we commune with the intellects and contemplate the virtues of the greats, some portion of their exceeding light descends upon us. Their aspiring spirits have raised us to higher levels. But, to yield our homage to those who do not deserve it, is to pervert a pure and noble instinct. We cannot worship the degraded, except by sinking to lower depths of degradation. So, Huntsville, Alabama, we cannot worship those evils of the past. We cannot gloat that we have suppressed one third of the population and we have gained a few little pennies here and there. We can't worship the degraded, except by sinking to lower depths of degradation. So, to my mind, it's the only way we can go. A perfect system, a perfect government, a perfect constitution, all of this is within our grasp. I'd like to feel that it started right here in Huntsville, Alabama. Thank you. -25- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Carolyn Parker: Thank you, Dr. Cashin. Dr. Fred Carodine has a long history of activism on the job, in the community and in his civic organization. His indelible mark has been made on our cities, particularly in the arena of human relations and improving the educational opportunities for minorities. Dr. Carodine is a native of Tuscaloosa, Alabama and a cum laude graduate of Alabama A&M University. He earned his doctorate in public administration from NOVA University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and completed further studies at Wayne State University, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, California State Polytechnic College and Alabama A&M University. During the early period of the Civil Rights Movement in Huntsville, Dr. Carodine provided invaluable services and funds from his entrepreneurial efforts as owner of a printing shop. As the focus of the movement shifted around 1964 to the education arena, particularly the integration of schools, he began to concentrate his efforts on working with the NAACP towards satisfying this goal. Dr. Carodine has enjoyed a lucrative career with the federal government, holding increasingly responsible positions and retiring, about ten years ago, as chief of the operation research division test measurement and diagnostic equipment. His community service activities have impacted the likes of the Boy Scouts, Harris Home, NAACP, Alabama A&M University and the Interstate Mission, to name a few. He is a deacon at First Missionary Baptist Church, Sunday school teacher, member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity and the Athletic Booster Club. Dr. Carodine is married to the former Nell Bailer and they are parents of three sons and one daughter. I am proud to present to you one of Huntsville's premier activists and my dear friend, Dr. Fred Carodine. -26- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Fred Carodine: Good evening. I guess just about everybody stole my thunder. I'd like to take the opportunity to sort of put in perspective as I saw the movement and as I participated in some of the events that happened. Earlier, when Mr. Ellis stood up and introduced the overall program, he suggested that Huntsville was more interested in learning at the time of the sit-ins back in the early 60's. That is true. There were certain events, in my opinion that helped to make Huntsville behave in a fashion that Dr. Cashin just mentioned, there was little bloodshed. One of those events, and I'll try to make the event oriented, was the election of President Kennedy and his choice of Lyndon Johnson as his vice president. Now, that may not seem like much in the beginning, but the Kennedy approach was one similar to what Dr. Hereford had mentioned. Give them what they want. Find two or three black people who could give and they would deliver the vote and you didn't owe them anything until the next election. If you think I've made a mistake in that arena, if you look in the book " Nixon's Piano" on page 192, you'll understand what Robert Kennedy had said. Once he was elected ... well, he was elected because of the event of Robert calling when Dr. King was in jail. Nixon's chauffeur told Nixon that, "You know, we were doing all right until that call was made about King in jail." But, what good could that do? What it did, was that when Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson took over his program and his efforts were directed toward carrying out a program and maintaining Kennedy's legacy. In that sense, King was determined that we would suffice in this particular city. One of the reasons it was this particular city is because early on in 1960, NASA had been pulled out of ABMA and the word had come down basically that we're not going to have the kind of things going on -27- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University in other parts of the south here in Huntsville, or they would pull out. Reverend Ezekiel Bell, Randolph Blackwell and the coordinating committee capitalized on that in the sense that the signs that they took around addressed that issue. We'll move the arsenal away from Huntsville. The city of Huntsville then, was somewhat forced to listen. The population of Huntsville increased between the 1950's and 1960's well over about 400 percent. Between 1960 and 1964 it increased over the 1960 time frame, another 200 percent. So, Huntsville was a growing community, which could not stand to have bloodshed, if the city founders could stop it. Earlier, one of the panelists asked, how many people had participated in the early movement. One of the persons who raised his hand, I hope he won't be embarrassed, was Chuck LaLange. I worked in his campaign once years ago to try to get him elected mayor for the city of Huntsville. He was with the Inner Faith Mission Service and I guess that's when I met him. I guess you still are, aren't you? But anyway, there were a number of things that took place. One event, as I said, was the fact that Kennedy was elected. He chose Lyndon Johnson. What happened after his having chosen Lyndon Johnson was that Lyndon put the B on the Huntsville community. Industries were moving into the city. Each industry, according to its number of employees, paid into a fund. That fund was handled for the most part by a committee called AHAC. It was made up of Association of Huntsville Area Contractors. It did some good and some bad. In the good part, it gave the black community, through some of its more activist people, a way of expressing itself and getting it up to the city founders. On the bad part, whether we want to admit it or not, Milton Cumming understood the black community. He knew the black family. He knew who to touch and -28- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University who not to touch. Correct? He knew who to touch and who not to touch. And so it was that he was going to keep a cap on everything, but it got out of hand. What happened? During the sit-ins, both predecessors mentioned Randolph C. Blackwell. Randolph was my next-door neighbor. We both were working out here. I was not in the sit-ins other than the fact the Rev. Ezekiel Bell, who is my frat brother, who the Presbyterian Church had sent here to found Fellowship Presbyterian Church, had solicited me for the sit-ins and I told him I was willing to do it, but I couldn't promise that I wouldn't fight back if somebody hit me. So, he told me to collect money. My job was to try at A&M University, here on the campus, to collect money and I would tum it over to him. At the time of the trial integration, there were I don't know how many, one, two, three, at least three drive-in theaters that I knew about. One was just north ofus here on Meridian, one was just south on Meridian and one on 72. My family and I were chosen to go to the one on 72. That's the one we integrated. We went there to integrate but by 1964, after the Herefords and so forth had integrated the schools, something happened. I'm sorry, it was 1965. The NAACP legal defense fund after the NAACP, Dr. Cashin was allowed back into the state of Alabama had an interest in this particular area. There were several people who had worked with the NAACP during the time frame that was outlawed. They kept it alive underground. Among those people were, Reverend Lacey and James Pickett, at least those are two that I can remember. They became presidents of the NAACP. About 1965, a young man came to Huntsville named McKinley Bailey. One of the reasons Mack and some others came to Huntsville was this organization, AHAC, was trying to get minorities on board, so they claimed, as employees. The problem that came -29- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University to industry was, we need black engineers; we can't find any. Well of course you couldn't find any. Dr. Hereford just explained why you couldn't find any. There had never been any black engineers that could be hired. So, why would a black person go to an institution and take engineering when there was no job market? There were no black engineers, or very few. McKinley Bailey was one of the few. There were one or two others. But, every time, they went outside of the state trying to find employees, nobody wanted to come to Alabama. They didn't want to come to Alabama for several reasons. One, there was no housing. Two, they'd heard about the city and other things that were going on here. Now, they bring in this man, McKinley Bailey. There's another man, Les Jackson, who, in Mobile, had tried to bring us and for whatever reason, he had put them off but finally, he came up. But what McKinley Bailey did was to become president of the local chapter of the NAACP. Now, there were not that many NAACP members, not near as many as there are now. The NAACP was a viable organization, ready to fight. It was composed of McKinley Bailey, Fred Carodine and Ed Russell. But very seldom did they show up at meetings. But, the strategy that was put forth was to try to integrate the schools with contacts with a legal defense fund person who is a regional director, Allen Black. Allen Black's office was in Memphis and we were tied in, I believe, the guy at the Justice Department's name was Schira, I believe that was his name. But what happened then was that we began to move to try to get the schools integrated more fully. The city proposed one grade at a time. We did not go along with that at the time. The information that we had received was that we'd make our input to the legal defense fund and we'd communicate with the Justice Department. So, when we did not buy that, we of -30- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University course would end up sometimes later instead of going one grade at a time, which the city had proposed, they had to integrate three grades at a time. The other big issue was one that had been raised about pay. Black teachers did not make salaries the same as Caucasian teachers. As a consequence, a number of the engineers and scientists that were moving into Redstone who were males, of course their wives were Caucasian, were working in the various predominantly white schools and of course they were making more money than the black teachers who had degrees and credentials for Alabama. Some of the Caucasians did not have credentials because they had not taught in Alabama and they had not satisfied Alabama's criteria. And so it was that even though they were on a Type B certificate, they were making more than the black teachers. Well, what happened, once you had to integrate you had to do what? Integrate the salary. So, as we begin to work that particular problem two things happened. If they were considered a very good black teacher in that particular school wherever they were working, they were moved to a predominantly white school. The others were allowed to stay where they were. The Caucasian teachers who were being hired and who were just corning out of college, for the most part, went to these predominantly black schools. As a consequence, we had a program that was started by the federal government, called EFF A, which was supposed to help elevate these schools that were behind. All of a sudden, a number of Huntsville schools were behind. They were behind because they put a large difference between the behind group and they could get money from the federal government to sustain this. -31- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Let me move a little off. There are one or two things I'd like to mention. Also, about 1963, there was a student from Alabama A&M named Carl Bailey who went into the city of Huntsville and requested to become a policemen and that was a no, no. They told him they didn't have any janitorial jobs. He said he didn't come to be a janitor; he wanted to be a police officer. Well, he was later hired, our first black policemen. Bailey, a John Christmas and the late Reverend Huggin, they put them all in a car. They were not to arrest a Caucasian person, but they could only go down into predominantly black neighborhoods. Well, the dispatcher would get on and say, "Now, you go down to that Negro area and do so and so." Well, they got a little tired of this and they went in to see Chief Spurlock. Spurlock fires them and now the paper had played up the fact that they had hired these guys, now all of a sudden they had to get some more policemen. So they sent out to A&M and got two people, Holyfeld, Staten and finally following that they got a guy named Aaron Wright. They replaced those three and after having replaced those three until this year, this is the first time that a black police officer in the city of Huntsville has ever gone beyond the entrance position of patrol. I don't mean a whole other job, but Huntsville promoted a sergeant this year and it's the first time. That is a disgrace, thirty-some years. I know my time is up and I yield. Carolyn Parker: Our next presenter will share with us his perspective as a student activist. Mr. William Pearson was probably Alabama A&M University's most committed member of SNCC during the early 1960's, along with Ms. Frances Fell. He made many sacrifices in his personal life in order to follow through on the very demands of the life of a student activist. Mr. William Pearson is a graduate of Parker High School -32- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University m Birmingham and entered Alabama A&M University in 1958. As the Huntsville movement developed, he could be found working with practically every aspect of the movement, strategy sections, sit-ins, marches and other demonstrations, all of this while at Huntsville, but he was also heavily involved in the sit-ins and marches in Birmingham. Mr. Pearson later earned his degree in history from Alabama A&M University and continues his dedication to the betterment of our city through his work with our youth. He teaches and coaches at Davis Hill Middle School, has a long list of successes producing championship teams for our Parks and Recreation Department and the YMCA. Mr. Pearson is cofounder and vice-president of the Alabama Masons, designed to develop the talent of young men, 12 to 17 years of age who are interested in basketball. Sponsored by Nike, Inc, this organization finds scholarships for young people who want to go to college. When asked, "What's in it for you," he replied, "I don't want anything. My greatest reward is to see these young guys turn out to be decent men." Mr. Pearson is married to the former Selena Pollard and the father of two sons, Christopher and Reginald. I present to you, ever the activist and community servant, Mr. William Pearson. William Pearson: Fellow panelists and audience. You know, I started to write stuff down but when you're talking about something like this, it's from the heart. It comes from here. As a 17-year-old college student, raised in Birmingham, Alabama, never went to school with a white guy. My graduating class had 450 students. Later on, they talked about buses. I thought everybody was bused. There were only three high schools there. They bused people from all over Birmingham, four thousand five hundred of us in one -33- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University school. We graduated two times a year, January and May, and then usually in the 9 th • When I was about 15-years-old, I had a job at a bowling alley. Getting off one evening, a policemen stopped me, told me, he said, "I want you to stay out of my alleys and off of my streets." I had to quit my job. I couldn't work. I came up at a time where I lived at the bottom of what they called Dynamite Alley, Dynamite Hill, where Arthur Shores was a lawyer there. I went to school with his daughter. I also went to school with Angela Davis. We were always aware of what was going on. We were just waiting for a time. Some ofus went to the left, some ofus went to the right, but we were always aware. Hank Thompson came here at the foot of this hill, called a group of us in and said, "Hey, you know what they're doing in Greensboro and you know what the students are doing all over the country. What are you going to do?" I said we're going to do what we have to do. We were committed to making something happen. We were committed to doing it in a nonviolent way, afraid, yes, because you never knew. I had a guy tell me one day; He said, "Brother, you don't know what it is to be black." I said, "Brother, I was black when black wasn't cool." You know, afraid, went to jail, I forgot the times, ten, twelve, fourteen, fifteen; I don't know. I had the record, that's right. I remember one time Ms. Joan Jackson who was our advisor, you see they had their committee and we had our committee; that was our lady, loved her, bless her. We would meet and we would decide what to do and we would go to these guys. This is family here. They took care of me. The little bit of a man that I am they helped to mold that. I had no parents here; they were dogging my parents in Birmingham. My mother said, "I don't know if you should be doing this," but daddy was an ex-marine. He said, "Son, do what you got -34- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University to do," and that's exactly what I did. I don't need much time. The only thing I can say is that I did what I had to do and I did it from my heart. But, you young guys, they are there, out there now. There should be more of you in this audience to understand and to realize what this world is coming to. What we marched for and what we fought for, if you don't go out and get some of your fellow students together, you're going to be on the back of the blood wash. You're going to be drinking colored water like I drank. I had fun in school, but you have to be committed to make things better. I see my wife out there, Selena, it's 28 years, and my son, Reginald is a 7th grader at Ed White, which was an all white school when I did this, straight A student. So now I know I did it for a reason. Thank you. Carolyn Parker: We set aside a few moments for questions and answers, or I should say questions and responses, so if you would like to address anyone on our panel in terms of asking a question, I recognize you now. I saw this hand first. Q: (inaudible) A: The school system hasn't made any inroads to improving the school system. I had the opportunity of meeting with a lot of young men. I see them on the street and they said they stopped school at sixteen. It's something being done about the GED. The GED is going to be changed the beginning of the year and what is the movement, what is the struggle. There is no gain without a struggle and there is no gain without any pain. I participated in quite a few things here on this campus and I'm surprised to see the low attendance. What can we do to get more people involved? What can we do about pro ration with what's going on right now. We're worried about terror, and I grew up in -35- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Louisiana, Mississippi and the south and, like you said, the things that went on in New York, black people grew up and lived in that terror. We still live in some of that terror. We talk about anthrax. We've got to start doing something about what's going on on a daily basis and I think that this movement and this struggle have to come to the young people. The older people participated in the NAACP. I participated in a drive and come to find out there's sixty to seventy thousand black people here and you have less than three hundred to five hundred people participating. Where does the struggle go from here; I don't know. Carolyn Parker: Okay. First, I'll say you did make some valuable observations, but these gentlemen will try to answer your questions. A: Well, I'm going to try and answer it like this, plain and simple. We've got to have a new constitution in the state of Alabama. That is the root of the evil here. I would say that the NAACP, or any organization in the state of Alabama, needs to be working very hard for a new constitution convention. That is the basic medication I would prescribe to this illness we have and I think it's very good advice considering the experience and the professional education that I bear. Without a new constitution, there is no way that we can continue in the state of Alabama the way that we have. It's got to be changed. It's got to be brand new; and, of course, I may sound like a broken record, but that's it. Carolyn Parker: I saw a hand right here. They say it's impolite to point but that's the only way I can designate the person. Q: My question is simply people are so headstrong to oppose anything, whatsoever other than when they have a concern about NASA at Redstone Arsenal. What brought the -36- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University white people around? How could they have changed without? I know what white people can do and black people too, when you get so headstrong you're ready to, "I won't do a thing they tell me," and to bring those people around and in two or three years, you're talking 1962 through 1965, how did they come around like that? I can't believe it. A: I'd like to answer that. It's one of the few I can answer. It was economics. It was the boycott. It was the boycott that really, really, brought them around and we decided to have the boycott, we had workshops; I had that included in my papers, but they wouldn't let me talk to you about it. We had workshops on how to conduct a boycott. You don't call a merchant and tell him if you don't do such and such a thing I'm going to boycott you, you let that guy go. Then, Christmas or Easter, let him buy his stock and buy all of his stuff and then you tell your people, don't go down there and purchase anything from him. The first thing he knows, he's got all of this stuff on his shelves and he can't tum it into money and he's got to pay the bank for that money that he borrowed. That was what did it. The boycott was more successful than you could ever believe. I just found out about it later and Dr. Cashin's wife and I discussed it and I know what she said was right and the things I thought were right. We had at least five groups of people that were participating in that boycott that I didn't know about when it was going on. We had about ninety-five percent of black people that were absolutely, positively not going to buy. We had another group of white people who were in the labor union and we had picket lines and they would not cross our picket lines. We had some white people who came down there to jeer us; we had some white people who came down to cheer us and we had some other white people who just didn't come to the city of Huntsville because of -37- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University the commotion down there and so that over-compensated for that other five percent of black people that didn't buy. It was the boycott that really, really made them come around. A: Not just the boycott, but there's a little stunt that we put on there too. We had almost simultaneous demonstrations, Chicago Board of Trade and New York Stock Exchange. Picket lines. Don't do business in Huntsville, Alabama. It's bad business. That made the New York Times and that word got out all around the world. That just showed most of our potential. That's all. Apparently you had another part to your question? Q: How did you handle the hot heads, the ones who were ready to break in? A: They were not allowed to join our organization. Oh, you're talking about the white people? Q: The white people, how did they get put in their place? A: What do you mean, "Put in their place?" Q: How did you stop them? A: We were prepared to take whatever, they did not, as I recall we only had one incident of violence with Evelyn Sawkowski. The word was out to the city fathers, if that's what they could be called, there was to be no violence. That doesn't mean they're going to keep that. If you look in the paper when Sonnie Hereford, IV went to school, the first time he went he was turned away. Governor Wallace had set up ... that's another story too ... yes, that's another story, but what happened was the city fathers wanted the money and were not about to let Spurlock and his group get out of hand. There was a soldier who came up with his invalid child and he wanted to go to school, even though a black -38- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University kid was going to school. There was another lady who told the police that, yea, they said, "we don't want you to start any trouble, just go on back home." She said, "You're making the trouble." But that's because of the city fathers. They didn't want it either. They contested it. They sent letters to representatives and everything. The point was they wanted that green dollar. Carolyn Parker: I think William wants to address that. A: Yes. They tried everything they could, including coming to the school, getting with the governor and telling us they were going to put us out of school if we marched. The main thing is if you 're committed to something and you've committed to doing it a certain way; we were committed to nonviolence. They knocked one girl off of a stool. You know, the mind is a strong thing. There were people there jeering but when you show no fear, and then they never wanted to get in the newspapers, so they had to keep it down, the city fathers had to keep it down. They didn't want it in the paper. A: There was a little humorous twist there. One of the ways that we were able to see to it that the crowd didn't get out of hand is on our first demonstration we had members of the Alabama A&M football team with the signs. They were some burly guys. Wonder why they wouldn't be fool enough to tackle them. That was the initial march we had, big, burly six foot three, two hundred and fifty pounders. Even the redneck would take his chance on something else. Carolyn Parker: Okay. I saw a hand here first, and then the next one. Right here, young lady, you'll be next after this gentleman. -39- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Q: Could you tell me the difference between socioeconomics for the minority groups in this community now as it was then? I don't see many black-owned businesses in this community. Could you explain that? A: We've got some black millionaires in this town. We've got quite a few as a matter of fact. Yes, they're quite a few doing well. I'm not one of them, but I know a few. Carolyn Parker: This young lady, then Ms. Deshield. Q: How did you deal with it? I can't imagine trying to go to school and having people treating me like that? I know you all were close and you talk about being committed, but there has to be more to it than that. A: How did we relieve the stress, is that what you're asking? Now for our students, and this was Dr. Cashin's wife's idea, she said, "I think about every three or four weeks we ought to have some entertainment for these students and when these students are out here protesting and marching and demonstrating, we ought to give them something to look forward to that they're going to be doing," so during our movement, the real active part was about seven months, we had two dances, we had three parties and we had a 4th of July picnic for the students, so we kept something for them to do and they always had something to look forward to. Carolyn Parker: William, would you like to address that? A: We had a lot of fun too. We had fun together. You know, we were all close friends and when we partied, we partied hard. We demonstrated; we demonstrated hard. A: I'd like to say something else to. I'd like to say something about the closeness of that group. Some of my fraternity brothers may not like for me to say this and some of my -40- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University church members may not like for me to say this, but I've been on a lot of organizations but I have never been in any group that had a greater closeness than that group, and more love and respect for each other than that group that we had. Carolyn Parker: Okay. Ms. Deshields had a question. Q: I want to commend you, Dr. Ellis, for the inclusion of my name in your report and I did write the Acquisition of Civil Rights in Huntsville, Alabama from 1962 to 1965. My question and concern is that I have no documentation about this. You have not done any research on it, but you made the statement that Dr. Drake was forced into retirement by Governor John Patterson. I was a student here at A&M at that time A: I know that story very well. Yes. Q: You 're agreeing with it or disagreeing with it? A: The way Patterson treated Drake. Q: That he forced him into retirement. A: Yes, he was forced into retirement without any doubt. As a matter of fact, it was during the sit-ins and John Patterson said that he was going to name a president who would make those children study and make them behave, and to really follow on his path, he named the wrong man. Q: I did see John Patterson in a subsequent meeting in Birmingham many years later and he had done a 180 degree tum and I could see in my lifetime that transition. A: A whole lot of them have done ISO-degree turns. George Wallace was in 438 when he changed his mind. -41- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Q: Well, one final statement, Carolyn. That is that my recollection of Dr. Drake's retiring was based on the loss of his health and that forced him to retire, but I may not be accurate on that, but I'm raising the question. A: He was ill and in the hospital when the sit-ins broke out and that is when Governor Patterson decided that he would fire Drake and name a new president, and he named Leon Bonner. Leon was president for about three days I recall. Let me make one comment with respect to that. It is my understanding at the time that Dr. Levi Watkins and Dr. Drake were under fire. There should be a letter where Dr. Drake sent a letter to Watkins telling Watkins to stand his ground, to use his words. Dr. Drake became ill with meningitis, if I remember correctly, and during his illness, I don't know if he died out of office or if Patterson fired him. No, Patterson fired him. But, it is due to his illness, in my opinion, at the time. That's what we received. I don't know if it is true. Patterson made the public statement that he was going to fire Drake and he was going to get him a new president that would make those children behave and make them study. I just want to confirm what Dr. Cashin said. Most of that information is from the Huntsville Times and, in fact, according to the Huntsville Times, Dr. Drake heard about his forced retirement on the radio. He didn't even know it was coming. He was deeply hurt by this and the quotation that Dr. Cashin is referring to is that Governor Patterson said that he wanted to hire a new campus administrator who said, "Will require discipline, make the students behave themselves and make them study." Furthermore, in an about face, the Huntsville Times generally either ignored some of the demonstrations or put them on the -42- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University third or fourth page. In this case, they had a very lengthy editorial denouncing the governor for this mistreatment of Dr. Drake. Carolyn Parker: Okay, we'll take three more questions. I have this lady and there was a lady in the back and this gentleman here. Q: My name is Peggy Bavenovich and one of the questions I have, I saw that excellent movie that's been made of the whole experience of Huntsville and my question is, are you saying there were no idealistic whites in Huntsville that supported you? A: There were some idealistic whites that did support us. As a matter of fact, a great contingent came out of the Unitarian fellowship but so far as real active participation, a few from the Human Relations Council were with it, but the Unitarians were probably the strongest bunch of all. So far as the local whites are concerned, a lot of us had white friends, but they didn't want to get exposed. As a matter of fact, we had some difficulty getting membership in the biracial committee, but in the final analysis, there were two merchants, I guess you could call them business people that did indeed support things behind the scenes. One of them was Woody Anderson. I guess Woody would have conniptions ifhe knew I was discussing him. You see, Woody owned the Kings Inn, and that was one of the first places that opened up, and the other guy was Boots Ellis who had Boots Lounge down on the Parkway. Q: How about newcomers? A: Newcomers, the newcomers pretty much stayed on their own. They were pretty much here for business, and we had lot of engineers. They were very busy getting ready to put the man on the moon and when John Kennedy said we're going to put a man on the moon -43- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University by 1970, he gave Huntsville the job and we did it by 1969. But we were a very busy community. Then, of course, Sputnik was up there beep, beep, beeping so we were really under the gun. So, we didn't want to rock the boat, but we were not going to allow the same things to be in place. There were some very, very dedicated whites; I have to admit that, but so far as locals who were concerned, there was a narrow few. Before you say that, I'm glad she mentioned the movie. I had planned to make this commercial and they didn't tell me to say it or not to say it. Tom, would you bring it up here please. She mentioned the movie. Evidently she must have liked it. How much are they? $20.00, $50.00? No, $30.00. Q: How can we as youth realize the struggle that is current. Many of the students at A&M have no idea about this Civil Rights Movement because we were looking for it. We attend Oakwood College and our pre-law found out about this. Many students don't know what's going on so how can we get motivated and be informed on these kinds of forums that are taking place? A: Sessions like this. She didn't know about the program, is that what she's saying? Well, that is not surprising to me at all. As a matter of fact, if you will flick on this printed program, I'm not on there. Carolyn Parker: Okay. We have a question right here, the former president of the college. Q: I have been greatly inspired by the wonderful tales given by the gentleman on this panel. I admire their report and what they did over the years. For the second time in the last four days a visit of Dr. Martin Luther King to Huntsville was mentioned. -44- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Dr. Hereford, I think is an expert on that. He mentioned it tonight. It didn't have a relationship to what the committee and group were doing in Huntsville. He inspired the Oakwood audience where he spoke. He gave us a preview of his "I Have a Dream" speech where he gave it at Oakwood first, went up to the Washington Mall and inspired the leaders of the nation and we know what happened thereafter. I would like to have Dr. Hereford, ifhe will, enlarge on the effect on Huntsville. A: Dr. Minette, it's all right here in this folder. They wouldn't let me tell you about it but now they can't hold me down in the question and answer session. We had about four or five hundred demonstrators that would demonstrate regularly in January, and then nothing was happening. We weren't getting any concessions at all and so after about six to eight weeks the participation dropped off. And then in one of those sessions, Dr. Cashin, Mrs. Cashin, Randolph, Blackwell and I and all of us, somebody said that "We ought to get a dynamic speaker to come to Huntsville and speak and see if we can bring our people together, solidify the community and bring some of these people back that we have lost and maybe get some white people to come and join us in our demonstrations." So we kept thinking who in the world can we get and then Dr. King's name came up and somebody said we'll invite Dr. King. We had a committee that was going to invite Dr. King and I think that Dr. Cashin was probably the chairman or one of the people on that committee. We had to figure out where we were going to get the money to pay him and his lieutenants and so forth. He came March 19th and spoke at First Missionary Baptist Church, downtown, and then he spoke at Oakwood College gym that night at 8 o'clock. He had to speak at Oakwood because there was nowhere else in -45- �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University town that they would allow us to have Dr. King. You see what I mean? There was very good security at Oakwood and I appreciate that, the way it was fixed up at that time, and that's when Dr. King came. After he left, the community did show signs of being solidified and also some white people joined our movement and the mayor found two white people to serve on the biracial committee when Dr. King left. Does that help to clarify it a little bit? Carolyn Parker: Okay. We do need to adjourn this session. I realize there are other questions, but we promised that we wouldn't hold you too long. Let me also remind you the next session, next week, will be at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Roberts Auditorium, and I would certainly be remiss if I did not acknowledge our Director of the Alabama Humanities Foundation, Mr. Bob Stewart. Just wave Bob. Bob came all the way from Birmingham to support this project and, as you well know, we received a grant from the Humanities Foundation for this program, among other contributions. Let me again thank you and I've been so delighted to moderate this panel. All of these guys are very, very special to me and it has just been special to me to do this. Please join us for refreshments in the back sponsored by the State Black Archives Research Center. Don't forget your evaluation forms. They'll be in the back holding them up. Hold on, Dr. Ellis wants to make one more point. Jack Ellis: I just have one more point. He spoke about Dr. King's speech. We have excerpts of Dr. King's speech. Thank you Carolyn. -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_000022 Title A name given to the resource Digitized transcription of VHS tape of "Huntsville during the Civil Rights Movement." Description An account of the resource Sonnie W. Hereford III, John Cashin Jr., William Pearson, and Fred Carodine were 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-10-25 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 2000-2009 Subject The topic of the resource Hereford, Sonnie W., 1931-2016 Pearson, William, 1940-2007 Carodine, Frederick, 1930-2016 Civil rights movements--Southern states--History--20th century Huntsville (Ala.) Madison County (Ala.) Segregation Race discrimination Cashin, John L. (John Logan), 1928-2011 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/401">VHS Tape of: Huntsville During the Civil Rights Movement - Speakers Sonnie W. Hereford III, John Cashin Jr., Fred Carodine, and William Pearson, 2001-10-25.Box 2, Tape 7 </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/389">Huntsville During the Civil Rights Movement - Speakers: Sonnie W. Hereford III, John Cashin Jr., Fred Carodine, and William Pearson - Transcription of Tape 7, 2003 Box 1, File 8</a> University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama 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/32/13353/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 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/32/13344/TheLongNightsJourney_Tape2_File3.pdf 2c0f2e28a67200c82a9688104d652377 PDF Text Text The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University The Long Night's Journey, 1877-1941 Speaker: Linda Reed Thank you. On behalf of the University of Alabama in Huntsville and on beha1fbf President Frank Franz, I am very pleased to welcome all of you to this lecture series focusing on the history and impact of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. This historic initiative brings to Huntsville, distinguished speakers who will reflect on events of the past and who will share with us their hopes for the future. I must once again commend the faculty from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and from Alabama A&M University, who worked over a period of more than two years to make this possible. Those faculty include, but are not limited to, John Dimmock, Lee Williams, Jack Ellis, Mitch Berbrier from UAH, and James Johnson and Carolyn Parker from Alabama A&M. I am very pleased that you could be with us. Good evening. It is my pleasure to take a couple of moments to acknowledge our sponsors. These are the people who have made it possible for us to do all these kinds of things. They have given us funds and all kinds of support. They are the Alabama Humanities Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Senator Frank Sanders; The Huntsville Times; DESE Research Inc.; Mevatec Corporation; and Alabama Representative, Laura Hall. At Alabama A&M, we have the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, the State Black Archives Research Center and Museum, Title III Telecommunications and Distance Learning Center, Office of Student Development, the Honor Center, Sociology/Social Work Programs and the History Political Science Programs. At the University of Alabama in Huntsville, we have �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, The History Farum Banking Foundation, Sociology, Social Issues Symposium, The Humanities Center, The Division of Continuing Education, the Honors Program and the Office of Multi-Cultural Affairs, Office of Student Affairs and the UAH Copy Center. Let's give these people a show of appreciation. I've been asked to announce that the Charles Moore exhibit, and by the way, Charles Moore's pictures are the ones you see on our brochure that hopefully each of you has received. The Charles Moore exhibit on Civil Rights Photos will open at the Union Grove Gallery on the UAH campus, Monday through Friday, 12:30 until 4:30. Is it already open Jack? It is already open. I also need to ask you to remember to please turn in to us your evaluation forms. You may leave them with any of the ladies at the back. If you have to leave them on your chair, that's fine but please fill out the evaluation forms and leave those with us. We would appreciate that. I have the pleasure of presenting the young lady who is going to introduce our speaker. Ms. Melanie Crutchfield, a sophomore premed major from Columbus, Georgia is a valued member of the Alabama A&M University Honors Program. She is broadly involved in all aspects of the program. She is a varsity Honda Campus All Star Challenge Participant and she represented us in Orlando for this national competition. She will represent A&M University in New York at the Thurgood Marshall Scholar's Conference. She has distinguished herself as an upand-coming scholar and she plans to become a medical doctor, specializing in Pediatric Pathology and Childhood Diseases. I am delighted to present to you, Ms. Melanie Crutchfield, who will introduce our speaker for this seminar. 2 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Introduction: This evening's presenter, Dr. Linda Reed, returns to our campus in a capacity that personifies the excellence and accomplishments that our legacy allows us to expect of our graduates. Dr. Reed is a 1977 graduate of Alabama A&M University. She received her Ph.D. from Indiana University, with a specialization in African-American History, Twentieth Century. Her accomplishments are numerous and distinctive. She presently serves as Associate Professor of History at the University of Houston and with the Martin Luther King Jr./Cesar Chavez/Rosa Parks, Visiting Professor at Michigan State University. Additionally her career has taken her to various positions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Auburn University, as well as Indiana University. Her awards too, are many and varied. She is a Ford Foundation Fellow, a Carter G. Woodson Fellow, a University of Houston City Council Brain Wit Award Winner and a recipient of the Young Black Achievers of Houston Award, Question and Review. Dr. Reed has published a variety of books and essays relevant to the Civil Rights Movement. Some of those include, Fannie Lou Hamer, Civil Rights Leader, Brown Decision, Historical Context and an Historian's Reflection, various entries in the Encyclopedia of African-American Civil Rights and the award winning book, Simple Decency and Common Sense: The Southern Conference Movement. Her intellectual interest is in the American South and the General Civil Rights. It is my pleasure to present to you our speaker for this evening's program, Dr. Linda Reed. 3 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Linda Reed: I think I will hire Melanie to introduce me all around. It is certainly a pleasure to be back to what is practically home to me, Alabama A&M University. The secret is out. I graduated in 1977. I think some ofus were talking earlier and one person said, "You probably don't want to say what year you graduated." So the secret is out. Thank you Melanie! That was such a wonderful introduction. I want to thank the planning committee for thinking so highly of my work in terms of what I have done with some of the interpretations of the Civil Rights Movement, in order to include me in this very stellar group of scholars and activists from that period. It is really an honor. I said to one of the persons on the planning committee that I wish I could just come back to each one of these lectures myself. They are just absolutely fantastic and I am truly honored to be included among that group of individuals. I want to share just one story about my time here at Alabama A& M University. I was telling this to one of the students earlier today. You know, Alabama A&M is referred to as the Hill and so students may not realize it. Your exercise program is built in. Well, we're into physical fitness now. I won't tell you what my weight was when I used to be a student here. I used to have classes down in this area of the campus. Just before choir practice, I would walk all the way across campus up to either Buchanan Hall or one of the dorms up on the highest part of the hill, for a fifteen-minute power nap before six o'clock choir rehearsal. I was in the choir the entire four years that I was here. It is just wonderful to think about that built-in exercise program. That is just one of the stories, but there are so many that I could share about this wonderful institution. Just one more, and this is really for the young people who might be students here, or students 4 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University anywhere else. One of the things that was said to me in the very first weeks of the time that I was here was from Dr. Henry Bradford. It was in chapel. He said, 'There is no reason why any of you should leave Alabama A&M University and not be known on your campus." I have made that part of my life's mission that wherever I am, people should know who I am and what I stand for, so much so that as I resigned from being director of the African-American Studies Program this summer, one of the things my dean said about me was, "Well you know Linda will come with her issues and she is not always so soft spoken about them, to put it mildly." I learned a lot while I was here at Alabama A& M and I am very appreciative of it. This evening I want to talk about the subject "Simple Decency and Common Sense, A Message for all Times." Some of you might know that this title is taken from the book with that same title. America must be concerned with bridging economic gaps and perhaps a small group, such as the Southern Conference Movement, that is willing to step ahead of the status quo people of our time, would be a start. Yes, our problems are of the magnitude to require federal actions but individual efforts could also help. With a limited time to speak this evening, I want to talk about the Southern Conference for Human Welfare's founding, about the significance of my labeling the Southern Conference Movement's Mission as one of simple decency and common sense and some of the struggles of the other organizations, the Southern Conference Educational Fund in the period just after the I 940's, a lot of the work was carried on the l 940's but some of the work took us into the 1950's. 5 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University I want to make a brief mention up front about the Southern Conference Movement and how it began. I talked a little bit about how happy I am to be back at my alma mater but also it is very appropriate to talk about the Southern Conference for Human Welfare and the Southern Conference Educational Fund here because Alabama is the place where the Southern Conference Movement had its beginning. In 1938, at President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's urging, the National Emergency Council, made up largely of Southerners, including the University of North Carolina's president, Frank P. Graham, and labor organizer Luther Randolph Mason, studied economic conditions of the South. I will talk a little bit about that more. But then, there is also the question of why there was a need for the Southern Conference for Human Welfare in 1938. During the l 870's and l 880's, as white Southerners struggled to compete with the North's rapidly growing economy, progressive Southerners coined the term New South to draw attention to the region's industrial growth. The South proved hospitable to a variety of industries, textiles, tobacco, steel, and iron railroads. Southern industries in one way or another enjoyed the advantages of proximity to raw material, more transportation cost and cheap labor. With industry concentrated in large cities such as Birmingham, Alabama; Atlanta, Georgia; Richmond, Virginia; and Louisville, Kentucky, the New South eventually came to reference as the South of the cities, factories and blast furnaces as opposed to the rural South. New South people wanted the South to move forward industrially. What about all of its regions? What about the rest of the South? The Southern society for the promotion of the study of race conditions in the South, meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, gives us a clue. In 1900, that organization epitomized the 6 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University views of the various New South spokesperson on the concept of white supremacy. This lily-white gathering set out to solve the Southern racial problem beginning with placing the blame on black people for the backwardness of the Southern economy. The conferees failed to produce a single responsible proposal by which to resolve their grade problem because they defined the South and Southerners as white and refused to see the black people as an integral part of the Southern economy. This analysis contained a serious contradiction. As a Southern society for the promotion of the study of race conditions in the South blamed Africa- Americans for the region's economic troubles. Indeed, if the economic situation of the whites improved and that of blacks remained dismal, all would be well, the white organization believed. The social dominance of whites and absolute degradation of black people remained the organization's most important goal. Black Americans must be kept wholly within the limits of Jim Crow at all cost, according to this organization. By the l 930's and l 940's, the South remained in many ways the same as the South of the 1880's and 1890's and also what that organization talked about in terms of the 1900' s, despite the claim of some southerners that after the turn of the century, the region could be labeled a New South. In 1938, a small group of mostly white southern liberals gave the term a new meaning. Southern liberals of the twentieth century did not dissociate the New South totally from its original intended use. In addition to New South denoting industrial development, Southern liberals used the term to suggest that Southerners finally needed to dismantle old South values in regard to racial equality. In a sense, in Southern economic problems of the 1930's, Southern liberals, unlike most white 7 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Southerners, figured inequities and discrimination against African-Americans as major drawbacks for the fullest development of the Southern economy. Although the region had gone far in its industrial growth, Southern liberals argued that racial inequities slowed economic progress in the realization of the New South. Blacks, still treated as inferior, continued to be disfranchised, to face violence at the hands of racist whites, to be denied well paying jobs, to experience injustice in the judicial system, and to be forced to live in narrowly circumscribed and substandard housing. Simply put, blacks in the South, during the twentieth century, like those of the late nineteenth century, continuously faced conditions of economic, political and social oppression. Indeed, between 1920 and 1930, over a million black people left the region in search of a better life in the North and other sections of the country. Yet the South held the majority of the black population. Liberal Southern whites eventually allied themselves with those educated African-Americans who stayed in the American South in their struggle for justice, initially addressing the economic gap between the racist and later political and social unfairness. The federal government helped Southern liberals associate industrialism with Southern values also. However productive the South had been at the turn of the century, by 1938 the New South prosperity had become precarious. Also, in 1938 the National Emergency Council, a group that President Roosevelt set up to study economic conditions in the South, described the region as the nation's number one economic problem, the nation's problem, not merely the South's. Although the South was the poorest region in the country, the NEC's report on the economic conditions of the South argued, "It has the potential for becoming the richest." 8 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University The report contended that institutional deficiencies kept the South from realizing its potential. In discussions on economic resources, education, health, housing and labor, the NEC addressed the same issues that Southern liberals tackled to create a just society. The NEC concluded that the South's white population suffered because of the regions poor economy and that black people suffered more. The Roosevelt administration and the NEC linked Southern poverty and racism in an unprecedented way, but having negative commentary on the South, left Southerners to search for their own solutions. Southerners generally agreed with the findings of the NEC report, but refused to support it because they did not feel strong support for President Roosevelt and there was a great deal of anti-New Deal sentiment. At the same time, Southern liberals in particular, accepted that the region's economic problems were tied to its resistance to end racial discrimination. In direct response to the NEC report, a group of Southern black and white liberals founded the Southern Conference for Human Welfare in Birmingham, Alabama in November of 1938. The Southern Conference for Human Welfare and the Southern Conference Educational Fund, the group that the Southern Conference set up in 1946 for tax-exempt purposes and to further its work in race relations, fought to create a democratic South, an effort that faced all kinds of obstacles and difficulties. Indeed the importance of maintaining white supremacy, especially the economic dominance of whites over black, was so paramount in the minds of many Southern whites that they were willing to see the entire region languish in order to maintain their way of life. Most Southern whites considered economic dominance central to the maintenance of white supremacy and remained committed to sustaining racial segregation. Even at the 9 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University height of the Civil Rights Movement in the l 960's, most white Southerners resisted efforts to end racial discrimination. Yet, not all whites were segregationists, as the activities of the inter-racial Southern Conference to Human Welfare and the Southern Conference Educational Fund made clear. As I said, it was organized in the fall of 1938, largely through the efforts of Louise 0. Charleston, a Southern white woman and commissioner in Birmingham. The Southern Conference to Human Welfare sought to help Southern whites to understand that to remove limitations on its African-American citizens was to ensure the region's greater prosperity. The Southern led Southern Conference became a welfare for its time, became the progressive movement, a movement that would respond to the NEC report with specific prescriptions to cure the ills that the report described. The Southern Conference to Human Welfare's recommendation challenged President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Congress and especially Southern citizens, to improve the regions. The Southern Conference for Human Welfare singled out, for instance, the unequal facilities for white and black school children. The organizations membership reminded its region that a supreme court decision of Plessy versus Ferguson of 1896, that states could set up separate facilities for black people as long as these places were equal to those that were provided for whites. The problem, of course, as the Southern Conference for Human Welfare reminded, was that places for black people never equaled those places that were set up for whites, if any were provided at all. The Southern Conference for Human Welfare also pointed out the problem with unequal salaries of black and white teachers and unequal incomes of black and white 10 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University tenant farmers as examples of the inequity and wastefulness of a racially segregated society. Races that could not reap equal benefits for their labor could not live together harmoniously. It is important to emphasize that the ideas and ideals underlying the creation of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, have a history stretching back to the New South era of the 1880's. During the 1880's, a number of prominent white Southerners coined the term New South in a concerted effort to incite actions for Southern economic growth. In 1938, what some of the white Southerners were saying is that there was a new way to put it and that way was to be inclusive of everyone. The Southern Conference for Human Welfare became involved in many issues, even though its origins grew out of a determination to improve the South economically. From 1938 to 1948, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare's major goal was to repeal the poll tax, one of those road blocks set up in late nineteenth century America to prevent black males from voting. In many Southern communities, whites feared that if African-Americans were allowed to exercise their right to vote, they would gain too much political power. Recall that in the time of redemption, that is the return of white rule after reconstruction ended in 1877 with the inauguration of Rutherford B. Hayes as President, black men voted when they could vote at all. When they voted, they voted Republican. As a result, during the 1890's, Southern states, including Alabama, began using several tactics to deny the vote to blacks. Some states required voters to own property or to pay poll tax, a special fee that must be paid before a person was permitted to vote. Both of these requirements were beyond the financial reach of most African-Americans. Voters also had to pass literacy tests. These tests were supposed to demonstrate that a voter could II �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University read, write and meet minimum standards of knowledge, but like the property requirement and the poll tax, literacy tests were really designed to keep African-Americans from voting. In fact, whites often gave African-Americans much more difficult tests than the ones given to whites. With some of the speakers who will come later on, you will get real specific examples of how those tests when given in the I 950's and l 960's were really ridiculous. If you ever get a chance to visit the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, there is a little mechanical device in there where you just spin the wheel and it points out to you a possibility of how you might have been denied the right to vote on any particular day. It could include a whole array of things as, "Well, you didn't know how many bubbles were in a bar of soap" or something that ridiculous. But those tests did continue in big waves all the way up into the l 960's and that is one of the reasons why you hear about the Freedom Schools. That was a way to try to educate voters so that they could pass the test. To ensure that the literacy test did not keep too many poor whites from voting, some states passed special laws with grandfather clauses. These laws exempted men from certain voting restrictions if they had already voted or, if they had ancestors, for instance grandfathers, who had voted prior to black males being granted suffrage. African-Americans, of course, did not meet the qualifications and thus had to take the literacy tests. All of these laws kept African-Americans from voting while not singling out the group name, which would have been unconstitutional. Even though there were some of these that were declared unconstitutional in 1950 and the time after, some states continued the practice. Alabama, Louisiana and North Carolina, were the only three Southern states that interfered with voters with the specific use of all four measures, that 12 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University 1s, using the grandfather clause, the property tax, the literacy test, and the poll tax. Georgia was the only Southern state that did not use the poll tax and the poll tax remained a problem as late as 1938. Between 1938 and 1948, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, through it's institutionalized Civil Rights committee, brought into formation a national committee to abolish the poll tax. One of the key people in the campaign to abolish the poll tax was a woman from Alabama, Virginia Durr. A lot of you had an opportunity to meet her. I interviewed her for the scholarship presented in Simple Decency and Common Sense. She was a very colorful person in terms of her take on life. I guess you had to be in order to endure as much as some of these individuals did. She was very forceful in that campaign to abolish the poll tax between 1938 and 1948. Of course, a lot of the work included distributing literature, speakers and a whole series of educational kinds of things. The work was quite forbidding. It was not until the 1960's, with constitutional amendment, that the poll tax was finally abolished. But, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare made that whole effort part of its goal. It was a very forthright goal. There were quite a number of other individuals involved m the Southern Conference Movement. Birmingham, Alabama. I have mentioned Louise Charleston, a woman from Joseph Gelzers was a physics professor at the University of Alabama who was also quite important for the work of the Southern Conference Movement. There were a number of college presidents, business people, labor leaders and workers and so with this cross section, a Southern Conference for Human Welfare boasted of having every segment of society represented and participating in its serious 13 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University campaigns and activities. Two of those individuals you have probably learned a little bit about. One of these people was Mary McCloud Bethune, who was founder of what we came to know as the Bethune Cookman College, and her dear friend, Eleanor Roosevelt. They became true pals in a lot of the work in the l 930's all the way up through the time ofBethune's death in the 1950's and Eleanor Roosevelt's death in the 1960's. Both of them were present at the meeting in 1938. When local racial moors intruded at the Southern Conference meeting in November of 1938, Governor Roosevelt responded defiantly. Although whites and blacks had separate accommodations and ate separately because of Jim Crow laws, they sat wherever they wanted at the opening session on November 20th and even until late afternoon on November 21st . None of the participants at the conference had complained, but when the police department learned of the integrated seating, an order came to the Southern Conference for Human Welfare from the city commissioner, Theopolus Eugene Bull Conner, the "Infamous Bull Conner," we liked to call him, that the audience had to segregate, that is, whites on one side of the aisle, and blacks on the other side, or the group would lose use of the city auditorium. If the Southern Conference for Human Welfare continued to use the auditorium and the audience remained mixed, the commissioner threatened to arrest the Southern Conference for Human Welfare Conference attendees. Doubting that any local official would dare arrest the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt sat with the blacks until the police requested that she move. But, even then, she did so restively and continued to make her point by placing a folding chair in the aisle just beyond the center. She sat there during all of the sessions she attended. For the remainder of the conference, police came to enforce the segregation 14 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University ordinance, sometimes creating such anxiety that some participants would not even cross the aisle to speak to a friend of the other race for fear of being arrested. As I said, I met quite a number of people who were part of the Southern Conference Movement. One of those individuals hailed from South Carolina, Modjeska Simkins. I met Mrs. Simkins when she was, I think, in her late 80's and she lived to be in her 90's, and a lot of these individuals became very good friends of mine. Modjeska Simkins, when she was alive, loved to share the story about Eleanor Roosevelt and that seat in the center aisle and, as Mrs. Simkins would tell the story, she would say, "Eleanor Roosevelt sat that chair in the middle aisle and she put one hip on one side for the whites and one hip on the other side for the blacks." She would just really roar in laughter about that particular incident. These individuals did have a sense of humor about life and I think it was one of things that kept them going. They had to have some sense of humor to endure. Conner's interference resulted in the Southern Conference for Human Welfare adopting the resolution condemning segregation. And also, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare promised to hold all of its future meetings in cities where segregation was not an issue. To that end, the group met in Nashville, Tennessee; Chattanooga, Tennessee; and New Orleans, between 1940 and 1948. It was in 1948 that the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, as it had come to be called, dismantled and the Southern Conference Educational Fund, the institution that had been formed in 1946, continued its mission. Far too late in 1938, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare came to accept that racism and economics were related one to the other. The weak-hearted left the 15 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University movement when the Southern Conference for Human Welfare stood its ground, but a courageous few continued to work with the Southern Conference Educational Fund for the next thirty plus years. It is really the work of the Southern Conference Educational Fund that came to make the many issues of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare a reality. What about this issue of Simple Decency and Common Sense? If we have been listening lately, we hear the words, common sense, quite often. Former President George Bush talked about the need to use common sense to address the crimes of inner cities. Other politicians used the words to address many issues. Even a commercial in Texas and some of the other states around talk about common sense bank loans. It is possible that I hear the words more often because they are part of my book title and are quite important in my assessment of two Southern interracial organizations. The Southern Conference movement then refers to the Southern Conference for Human Welfare and the Southern Conference Educational Fund, and their efforts between 1938 and far into the l 970's. These organizations offered a program of what they called Simple Decency and Common Sense to rectify the South's imbalances. This rectification called for identifying the poor economic status of black people as a Southern problem and then also included black people when the solutions were sought. Neither organization formally termed the effort of transforming the South as simple decency, but several individuals linked the concept with the Southern Conference Movement, often speaking of a simple decency and common sense approach for bringing about reform. The Southern Conference Educational Fund President, Aubrey Williams, a native Alabamian and New 16 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Deal administrator with the Roosevelt administration, wrote in 1950, "We need to take some chances in behalf of decency." In October of 1955, the Southern Conference Movement monthly publication, The Southern Patriots headlined, "New Orleans integration petition proves decencies stressed". Black leaders said it best when they protested senate on un-American activities hearings in the l 950's. Thirty-two leaders collectively from the South border states and the District of Columbia, in March of 1954, demanded of Mississippi Senator James Eastman that, "As an act of simple decency and common sense, you make appropriate apologies to those individuals whose names have been sullied in the press." What had happened in the un-American activities cases of the 1950's is that largely white Southerners who had struggled in the efforts with African-Americans were redbaited, that is, they were accused of being communists, so it would interfere with the work that they were doing with black people. Well, the remainder of this letter could apply to some of our present day crises for the leaders continued, and I quote, "In the opinion of the undersigned, the action of your subcommittee against the Southern Conference Educational Fund is an attack upon the Negro community of this nation. This organization has spearheaded the fight against segregation in the South. When your statements and those of your fellow committee members smear the fund, the leadership, you are also disparaging the hopes and aspiration of Negro people. It is ridiculous to impute this loyalty of the Southern Conference Educational Fund. Its Board of Directors, composed equally of Whites and Negroes includes many distinguished civic leaders in Southern States. Its sole concern throughout the years has been with the evil effects of 17 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University racial segregation m education, hospital services, transportation, and other public facilities. Its goal of harmoniously ending all racial barriers is our goal. How can you presume to sit in judgment on the patriotism of an organization which shares with vicePresident Nixon the conviction that every act of racial discrimination or prejudice in the United States hurts America as much as an espionage agent who turns over a weapon to a foreign country." Reverend J. Echols Laury, of Mobile Alabama, signed the letter. In 1958 one supporter said, I certainly want to support the cause of decency in the South. As we continue to hear the words, common sense, in our time, I hope we will begin to also see signs of simple decency that ought to be placed right alongside of common sense. My grandfather used to tease me all the time when I was so interested in being educated. He used to say, "Well, you learn a lot of things in school but they don't teach you any common sense. The Southern Conference Educational Fund set out at many meeting to challenge these issues of racial justice in the l 950's. Though hardly because of its efforts alone in the l 950's, the Southern Conference Educational Fund observed the beginning of the fruition of its dream. Segregation was ending and eventual demise of overt racial discrimination was within sight. The most important of these breakthroughs, of course, is the Supreme Court decision in Brown versus the Board of Education in 1954 and then the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 and 1956, all made evident that blacks were taking charge of the struggle for civil rights. While individuals in the Southern Conference Educational Fund came to realize that the struggle for equality was changing in make-up, black civil rights leaders continued to welcome the help and support of whites sympathetic to their demands for a I8 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University just society. The Supreme Court decision in Brown ended a long struggle for blacks and white liberals and for the first time since the Plessy case of 1896, segregationists were placed on the defensive. The Brown decision embraced only one aspect of racial equality and that was public education and so blacks had yet many other obstacles to overcome, mainly those blocking the way to equitable economic and political opportunities. Resistance and oppression dominated the Southern scene after the Brown decision and added to the already difficult task of blacks and their white Southern counterparts in the Civil Rights Movement. Mississippi Congressman, John Bail Williams, labeled May 14, 1954, the day that the Supreme Court announced its decision, as Black Monday and two months later he joined other staunch segregationists in forming the first white citizens council in Indianola Mississippi. Throughout the l 950's, Southern legislators proceeded with various means to evade school integration, the most noble example of which was the Southern manifesto, whereby Southern senators and congressmen pledged to use all lawful means to bring about a reversal of this decision. We heard a little bit about that last year with the campaign from Al Gore because his father was one of the Southern politicians who refused to sign the Southern Manifesto in the l 950's. The legislators and the white Southern majority proved quite successful in various strategies to prevent school integration. As late as the mid-l 960's, most public schools in Alabama, South Carolina and Mississippi had not been integrated. Most white Southerners, accustomed to the use of violence to maintain their superior status, proved no exception to this rule in the decades of the 1950's and 1960's. Indeed, the reason why historians labeled this period 19 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University the second reconstruction is due partly to the many violent acts on black and white sympathizers by advocates of the status quo that occurred more intensely during the l 950's and l 960's than at any other time after the civil war. Moreover, not since Reconstruction had Southerners so avidly tested the strength of state's rights versus federal authority. While the educational fund continued to expect that it could change the mentality of most white Southerners through public awareness and condemnation, a few black leaders anticipated a massive resistance from the segregationists. In the aftermath of the Brown decision then, blacks experienced both new hope and dread for pensive moments based on the reactions of diehard segregationists. Roscoe Dunjee, editor of the Oklahoma City's Black Dispatch and Educational Fund board member, pointed to evidence of developments in his state and concluded that in the mid-1950's the South faced its darkest hour and that, 'The era presented the most challenging moments simply because white reaction will try to join with Negro Uncle Tom's to defeat our objective." The NAACP leader, Roy Wilkins, agreed with Dunjee's assessment and he also warned of the dark before the dawn. Wilkins reasoned that a great many white people in the South experienced "a tremendous shock" not because the NAACP and other civil rights organizations advocated the abolition of segregation but because, Wilkins said, "For the first time since Reconstruction, they are making absolutely no headway with the old tested and tried technique through which they have managed to stave off and defeat similar efforts in the past." Wilkins previously observed that more blacks, than in the l 950's, had been easily intimidated by white violence and threats. 20 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University During that period, Wilkins said, "Whites only had to make their feelings known and to pass the word out to their colored people and a movement was stopped in its tracks, except for a persistent minority." Now that African-Americans loudly proclaimed that segregation had to end, Wilkins believed such actions has resulted for the first time in the so-called upper class white people bonding together in organizations like the White Citizens Council and similar groups to fight desegregation and that "Their own colored people and the NAACP." Prior to this time, in Wilkins assessment, they had never had to organize, not in such a concerted way, but Wilkins and Dunjee saw the end of the White Citizens Council Movement as soon as it started because, as they understood it, although it was enjoying temporary success, it was doomed because it had to come out and openly use methods that would draw to its condemnation nationally. Also, Wilkins and Dunjee summed up the importance of the Brown decision when they predicted the demise of the White Citizens Council Movement because, in the ultimate court tests, the White Citizens Council cannot win now. As I said with the Brown decision, at least the law now was on the side of people who wanted to bring about desegregation. They did not have the confidence that the white Southern majority would slowly convert to the Southern Conference Educational Fund, but at least Wilkins and Dunjee valued the silent condemnation and non-cooperation of important segments of the white Southern community. The idealism of the educational fund in its efforts to make the American public aware of the horrors of segregation and discrimination remained a significant part of the Civil Rights Movement. And, of course, there are many stories that could be shared 21 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University about the way in which the White Citizens Council and other organizations would be condemned. For instance, there were so many bombings in Birmingham that the city became called "Bombingham" as opposed to Birmingham. The historian, Gilbert Osaski lists between January of 1955 and January of 1959, Alabama alone saw over fifty-five acts of violence on the part of whites against blacks, over half of which occurred in Birmingham. A similar kind of story can be told in Mississippi and some of the other places around the South. There is the infamous case of Emmett Till, who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955. There are numerous horror stories about that. In a march in April and September of 1956, attention centered on Autherine Lucy, when the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, after a three-year court fight, admitted her as its first black student. The disruption at the school caused by mob violence of white segregationists, far from outside of the Tuscaloosa area, compelled the University's board of trustees to expel Lucy for her own safety and because she accused the University of conspiring with the white mob against her. The end result, that is, in 1992, Autherine Lucy earned her Masters Degree from the University of Alabama. She and her daughter graduated together. For the rest of the l 950's, Fred Shuttlesworth shared many stories of violence from the Birmingham area and he of course will tell you more of those stories when he is here. Obvious other horrific episodes of the 1950's, the long decade of red-baiting, the Little Rock incident and so many others, show the light of the horror of the Civil Rights Movement and what people had to endure. White leaders of the educational fund paid for their alliance with blacks in the Civil Rights Movement. Its president, Aubrey Williams, 22 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University did not escape economic reprisal. In 1957, he said he had to end the publication of the Southern Farmer, a monthly that came out from Montgomery. Williams concluded, 'They had me labeled as a bad guy from the start and I have never been able to convince them that I was not even as radical as Thomas Jefferson." Later in 1957, he went on to say to his close friend James Dombrowski, who was for a long time President of the Southern Conference Educational Fund, "I can't get the straight of this. I do not want to believe that it is due to the Birmingham news article," which reported of his activities in the Southern Conference Movement and/or "my stand on the Little Rock debacle, but it comes and just at this time." In other words, he was saying if they had some problem with me, they could have done this at any other time. Economic interests were just as important to the majority of Southern whites as the continued hope to maintain white supremacy. Whites hoped to rob blacks of a chance of an education that would help them obtain better jobs. Whites were ahead economically and the Southern white majority would see to it that the situation remained that way. The question of integration over economics or vice versa plagued the entire Civil Rights Movement. Blacks were becoming more aware during the debacle of the Little Rock situation or other massive resistance incidents of the importance of economic security, which had been a major concern of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare when it was first founded in 1938. When the Southern Conference placed emphasis on equal economic opportunities in the late l 930's, few liberals, black or white, developed means for achieving that specific goal. The Little Rock incident, because the school desegregation effort created so much attention, caused many blacks to question whether 23 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University the integration of schools was the most important aspect of African-American's fight for first class citizenship. P. B. Young, publisher and editor of the Norfolk, Virginia Journal and Guide newspaper and also a black leader who sought only integration as recently as the l 950's, believed that equal opportunity in employment constituted the most essential step to first class citizenship. The cycle was catchy, however. In order to obtain high status jobs, blacks needed education and training of high quality. Segregation also needed to be abolished for it, like inferior education, prevented blacks from progressing to their full potential. Consequently, Young saw the Brown decision as the removal of the basic reasons for legal segregation and believed that it would enable blacks eventually to acquire better homes and also better jobs. Although integration was not entirely a school question, it remained the center of attention for the rest of the 1950's in terms of the Civil Rights Movement. The debate shifted back and forth but by the late 1960's, black leaders decided that equal economic opportunity was the key to equal treatment in all aspects of American society. By 1960, when the sit-in movement and freedom rides had taken the Civil Rights Movement yet to another level, and people like Virginia Durr and her husband encountered almost daily insanities, the situation grew so desperate that when the New Yorker carried a story about the Durr's from Montgomery, most people knew from reading the story who the Durr' s were. This led to a letter campaign that came into the Durr's, so they got a lot of support from other sections of the country. One of the supporters wrote Virginia Durr, she called herself a friend at a distance and she said, "I 24 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University hope this letter will offer a bit of friendship to give you some feeling that your courage is not wasted. It spreads more seeds than you may ever realize and it enables you to live with yourself. I wonder how many of the people who snub you on the streets envy you that." There were a lot of other people who believed in and wanted to see the Southern liberals and African-Americans succeed. What was it about the few white Southerners that drove them to ally with blacks in the struggle? One liberal, white Southern, Anne Braden, who was born in Birmingham, Alabama and later moved to Louisville, Kentucky, described the intensity of the Southern white majority as neurotic and segregationists described that of the liberals in the same way. So, each side was calling the other neurotic. Anne Braden said that she, "grew up in a sick society and a sick society makes neurotics of one kind or another, on one side or another. It makes people like those who could take pleasure in killing and mutilating Emmett Till, and it makes people like me," she said. Braden also believed that when a supreme court outlined its decision on the effects of segregation on the black child, it might have included some discussion about what segregation did to the white child. If neurotics were what liberals ought to be called, Braden concluded that even if the name applied there, there were many neurotics like herself in the South and that the answer did not rest with the group who called themselves, "Saner and more practical and more moderate," who insisted that change occur at a slower pace. She went on to say, "As long as segregation remains a fact in communities all over the South, there will be people like us who are compelled to act." Braden's metaphor for an integrated and just society depicted a world without walls. She saw the Interracial Movement and the Southern 25 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University Conference Educational Fund and others as a tearing down of the wall of segregation and discrimination. The other thing that people like Braden came to understand is that when they did their work, there was always not the support that came from the white community, as they felt was always there for black people in their community. One of those persons who put into words his expressions about that was Aubrey Williams, who was president of the Southern Conference Movement, and also Virginia Durr. They talked about the bitterness that they felt within the struggle because they did not get very much support from the white community. Williams' disillusionment, partly due to his physical condition by the late l 950's, he was dying from cancer, and partly due to a resentment of support that he sensed that blacks shared from their own, as I said, overwhelmed his views of the Civil Rights Movement by the late 1950's. At that time what he said was that he really would like to see more support. I will just share with you part of what he wrote in terms of his assessment of some of the blacks and whites of that struggle. One of the things that I described that what historians do is that we read other people's mail, so I'll share with you part of his letter also. He said, "There are three kinds of leaders." There are the shark troops. There are the expendables. These bear the burden of making the attacks upon the enemies of free men. They must also take any new ground gained from mankind. Modjeska Simkins belonged to this group. Then there are the Proclaimers, wherein once new ground is taken, they view the situation as having been accepted by society. They emerge and give voice and sanction to the new areas of rights and justice. These are the Ralph McGill's and the Harry Ashmore's. In this sense, he is 26 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University calling them actually moderate, which is not such a good kind of thing. Then there are the politicians who, once the additional ground has been won and the Proclaimers have set their seal upon it about face and to make legal what they had only recently denounced as the wild schemes of radical and impractical idealists. Modjeska Simkins has been for the span of her life, of the shock troops and the expendables, though she is still far from being expended. One might steal a title from a Broadway play now in favor, The Indestructible Molly Brown and say, "No more appropriate title could be found for Modjeska". Judging history by how advances have come about in our time, one begins to doubt the validity of their nomination and credits of and for fame. For if we are to judge the probabilities of who will go down in history as the leaders of those forces who secured the final friend of the Negro. It will be some President of the United States or some individual who have become a symbol. It will not be the Modjeska Simkins' or the E.B. Mixon's, (I have not mentioned him but you will hear about him later and his connection to Montgomery) or James Dombrowski. Yet these and others like them are the people that made it possible for the Ralph McGill's and the Harry Ashmore's to voice an acceptance of the ground taken. I do not value Ralph McGill less because I value Modjeska Simkins more. I do not deny the importance of a Hubert Humphrey but I do say that without a Modjeska Simpkins, he nor others like him would have done what was able to be accomplished or attempted to do what was done. In a sense, the Southern Conference Educational Fund leaders can be likened then to the abolitionists, who could not take credit for the Emancipation of Slaves, though this group were the ones who made the abolition of 27 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University slaves there sincere purpose. But abolitionists, few in number, as the Southern liberals of the Southern Conference Educational Fund, predicted slavery's end and published large quantities of literature with such announcements. Not unlike the abolitionists, the Educational Fund fulfilled a certain mission by the role it played in the Civil Rights Movement. So, the Southern Conference Movement made a difference in the lives of black people and white people that may not be known outside of Alabama, or the South. I believe that their message if practiced could help us resolve many of the problems of our present time. We have to become more inclusive." Linda Reed will be more than willing to entertain questions at this moment. We now open the floor for questioning. Linda Reed: Some other people that are up here probably can help me keep track of whose hands are going up. Q: For The December 4th lecture that is going to address the future and the past of the Civil Rights Movement, I would like for you to share with us, your opinion about what is happening in South Africa, as far as reparation is concerned with slavery, and having new individuals in the scene here in America, such as Clarence Thomas, J. C. Watts and Alan Keyes. In what direction do you see the Civil Rights Movement taking in the 2 I st century, being that we have reparation and we have extremely conservative wealth knowing black individuals? A: Thank you for your question. As I emphasized with a lot of what I said this evening, as the Civil Rights struggle grew, it came more and more to that question of economics. think in the 21st century, the question is still a matter of economics. We have a larger 28 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University number of African-Americans for sure who are of a different class; people who have really good jobs and very high incomes. Then you have a large percentage of AfricanAmericans who do not do well because of poor education, which is one of the concerns of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare. They also do not have the opportunities because of their lack of education. Also in assessing the economic status of the country on that issue of reparation, we have come to understand that the institution of slavery was very important for the development of America and North America, as we have come to know it. Now people are bringing that into question and wanting to look at it. Some organizations and individuals feel that there is a specific part of that which should go to individuals. There are others who have seen it in such a way that it could be institutionalized. For instance, institutions that would educate a larger number of African-Americans and perhaps would have specific kinds of financial backing and that kind of thing. That question of economics is still a very important one. So, on that question of reparation, we have seen how divisive it became for the conference in South Africa. The question still is quite central, that is the issue of economics is still quite central to many of the other discussions about how we can all move forward. As many members of the Southern Conference Movement came to explain it, they had a very practical, or common sense kind of way to approach it. People who could not reap the same types of benefits from their labor will not feel that they had been included or feel tied into a productive community etc., that is tied into crime and all other kinds of things. It was important for the Southern Conference Movement. I don't know what some of those individuals would say about reparation but I would think that many of them would 29 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University support the principle of it; there is some kind of way that people who are descendants of the institution of slavery could benefit in some kind of way. It is a very long and debatable kind of issue. You see some of those same kinds of issues tied with discussions on affirmative actions. That was a very important question and I do thank you for it. Q: Am I correct to assume that there was a FBI surveillance of the Southern Conference and if so, were you able to have access to those records? A: Yes, the FBI was very busy because of J. Edgar Hoover who served as its director for a very long period of time. When did he get in there? It was a long time back. To answer the question specifically, Lillian Smith, who I did not mention in the talk this evening, was a very active member of the Southern Conference Movement. She hailed from Georgia. She brought out a periodical on a monthly basis. She believed in all of their efforts and activities. She was a Southern white woman. Because of that, as early as 1931, the FBI started a file on Lillian Smith. You can ask for the records but of course the records are sanitized. You really don't get a chance to see all of the notes that the FBI kept on these kinds of individuals, both white Americans and black Americans. You would get part of a statement at the top part of the page, most of it blacked out, and maybe you would see something written at the end. It wasn't something that I could make a lot of sense of. What I gathered from the work that I am doing on Fannie Lou Hamer and having seen the papers of Paul P. Johnson and seeing some of the notes of the people who were active in taking the notes, with that, you can get kind of a clearer sense of what kind of the things the FBI was involved in. With the records of other collections 30 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University that were not sanitized to the extent of the ones that you get from the FBI, you came to understand that they sent infiltrators to meetings, for some of the support that came in, in terms of clothing, funding and that kind of thing, to Southern States. The FBI would interfere with some of that material being delivered. There were very deliberate ways that the FBI interfered. There is a whole effort called COINTELPRO, where the FBI paid specific individuals to be in meetings and report back as to specific kinds of things that organizations and individuals were doing, even to the example of a person like Fannie Lou Hamer who was very poor, but there is a FBI file on Fannie Lou Hamer. So, for almost all of the organizations and individuals, there is a FBI file that one could get a hold of to try to discern some kind of information. It is very difficult because so much of the pages have been blackened out before it was sent out to the researcher. Q: I was wondering whether the utilization of common sense, is that more pertinent to political matters or social culture commonality? How would you see that? A: Common sense in the way that a lot of the individuals that we're talking about from the Southern Conference Movement, for them, it is something like "Can't you see it, you know, it is right in front of you. Why is it so difficult that you have such a hard time seeing this the way that we see it?" A lot of these individuals were very religious. They were members of churches and they were church leaders. Part of their message was "We're supposed to love our brother as we do ourselves. They placed part of their emphasis on the individual level and in that sense you would not mistreat your brother or your sister. Common sense would tell you, "Why would you continue to do this on a regular basis?" It is something that is very fundamental to them that they are practicing 31 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University on a regular day-to-day basis. They would like to see other Americans, including white Southerners who believe in white supremacy, to take their approach to life. To them it is right here. All you have to do is open your eyes. I hope that helps. I am not sure if that is what you were asking. Q: What was the role of political parties in the activities of the Civil Rights Movement as they were played out in the 1950's and 1960's. A: Now that is s very good question. For the most part, the South of the 20 th century remained the South of the 19th century in the sense that the Democratic Party, for a long time, was the same Democratic Party from the Reconstruction period. It aligned itself with white supremacy, white rule, and that kind of thing. As late as 1958, that was still the case. When Harry S. Truman insisted on presenting a Civil Rights plank in his platform of 1948, I don't know if you've had this in any of your history classes, but members of the Democratic party were so concerned that Strom Thurman, a young George Wallace, a man who eventually became the governor of Mississippi, marched out of the convention while the band played Dixie, to protest Harry Truman's support of Civil Rights. So, that gives you an idea of how strong this was aligned with the Democratic Party as late as 1948. It is really hard to try to condense all of these different history lessons but I am going to really try hard. In 1964, there was the development in Mississippi, a third party called the Mississippi Democratic party, which challenged the all white delegation from Mississippi. With that challenge, led famously by Fannie Lou Hamer and some of the people who supported her, like people from the Southern Conference Educational Fund and that organization. The Democratic Party promised that 32 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University it would be very inclusive in the conventions after 1964. The Democratic Party kept its promise. The Republican Party up to this time had been the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln. Of course there was a shift from the Republican Party for AfricanAmericans in the l 930's when more African-Americans voted the Democratic Party. In the l 960's and thereafter, there was almost a total flip of what the parties represent. As the Democratic party became more aligned with the types of issues that the Southern Conference Movement stood for such as equality, and exclusiveness, more and more of the politicians who had aligned with that party very strongly, started to align themselves with the Republican Party. To make a long story short, without other kinds of lessons that I don't want to go into, there was a parting of the ways almost on the issue of racial discrimination between the parties. Now in our time, the Democratic Party is seen as the party more of what the Republican Party was at first. That might seem a little confusing but essentially that is how it was. The parties were quite important in terms of how things occurred. When people were encouraging individuals to vote and to be registered to vote, for a long time, it was to the Democratic party, but that party was changed in the terms of not being the party that it had been in late 19th century America. Q: Perhaps you have mentioned this and I just missed it, but what role, if any did the Southern Conference play in some of the major events in the state in places like Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma, or were those kind of activities beyond the mission of the Southern Conference? A: No, they were as active as anyone could be. One of the key roles that the white members of the Southern Conference Educational Fund played, especially in the city and 33 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University campaigns and some of those other efforts where people ended up being arrested, they were in the behind the scenes efforts of raising money so that once people were arrested, they would have funds to be released from jail. Some of them were out on the front lines, like in the Selma march and other key instances of voter registration and that kind of thing. Just like we heard some of the horrific stories about African-Americans, there are similar types of stories about white Americans who also lost their lives in the process of trying to create a democracy that was suppose to be in existence already. Q: How did the older generations like Virginia Durr, Anne Braden and some of them identify with some of the student organizations and student leaders in the 1960's? A: I guess the best way to give an example is to use the example of Anne Braden, who is an older woman; she is in her seventies now. Just last year, many people celebrated her th 75 birthday. Martha Norman is a real good friend of hers. Anne Braden is white and Martha Norman is African-American. Martha Norman was one of the student workers in SNCC in the 1960's. They are just like regular pals, except Anne still does not really appreciate some of the music that some of the students listen to. I say that because I invited Anne Braden, Martha Norman, Lawrence Guyot, (who I didn't talk about tonight either) and Ed King, a white chaplain at Tugaloo College in the 1960's, to visit the University of Houston. All of these people were involved in the Civil Rights struggle in their respective areas. I picked them up from the airport and I took them back to the airport. We were on our way to take Lawrence Guyot to take his flight. Anne and Martha were going to leave later. We were all in the car. Martha and I started talking about the music from the 1960' s. Now of course, I was just a kid when they were doing 34 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University all of this stuff. Up until we started talking about the music, Anne was right there with us. She was really hanging out. We started talking about the music and Anne went to sleep. I said to Martha, "You know, she just really does not like some of the stuff that we like." Martha said, "Yea, that's right". But they got along just fine. They appreciated their differences. The older people were very nurturing of what the younger people were trying to do. Of course we know that it is really the support of Ella Baker, an older African-American woman, who nurtured, talked with, discussed, gave advice, and mentored young college students so that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee could come into existence in the first place. For many of them, it was no big deal. For some of them, just like in our time, some of the older people would say, "I just don't know what these young people are doing." I think that is going to always be the case. For them, there is a great amount of appreciation in sharing. Q: The time between Reconstruction of the 19th century and the Civil Rights Movement of the l 950's and 1960's is a very long time period. How was it that things became worse and worse? A: This is s very interesting question. It gets us back to understanding that this is why many historians termed the Civil Rights Movement The Second Reconstruction because things did get worse and worse. We also have to understand that the Civil Rights Movement has always been an ongomg process. If you could appreciate the interpretation that Vincent Harding, historian, who in a book called There is a River, uses the river metaphor to help us understand that from the shores of Africa, people of African descent have always been involved in the struggle for freedom. When we get to the 35 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University l 950's, we are still talking about a struggle for freedom. Although slavery had been abolished universally in the 1860's, reconstruction had been something that was provided to try to ensure democracy for all Americans, including African-Americans; America still had not lived up to its promise of democracy. Reconstruction from the ] 9th century is viewed as a failure. It put into play some things but it did not uphold the promise. As a matter of fact, things gradually eroded. What types of examples do we see that things became worse and worse? With the Brown decision of 1954, the Supreme Court justices argued the fact that African-American students were allocated to separate institutions, that this was something that was harmful psychologically. These were individuals who were told on a regular basis, "You are going to be relegated to this poor school. You are going to get used books. Sometimes you might not even get a book. Sometimes you will not have buses to ride to school." They said this was psychologically harmful. I guess that is one of the examples of how bad it could get. The NAACP had led court cases in the 1930's and 1940's for the equalization of black and white teacher's pay. Even with that, people had seen in some communities the small victories. As more and more people saw that there could be some breakthroughs and there could be some changes, they were more willing to try to push the envelope to see what other kinds of things could be opened up. Instead of saying how bad things did become, I would rather see how people saw opportunities for things to change more and more. So the momentum grew as opposed to things just getting worse and worse. Q: (Inaudible) 36 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University A: That's a very good question and also a way for me to tie in some of the things I said about the New Deal. The one big, big part of the historical picture that I left out was the Great Depression of the I 930's. With so many Americans suffering in the l 930's, there were many people who wondered why didn't more Americans turn to Communism and just simply dismantle the kind of government that we had because this was a government, especially under Herbert Hoover, that did not seem to sympathize with the average American who had lost a job and were suffering because of issues of economics. And so, in some pockets of America, the Communist party did increase in membership. The belief was that because African-Americans had suffered so drastically and continued to suffer that more and more of them were turning to the communist party. If there were whites that sympathized with them, then these of course were individuals who were part of the communist party. And also, there was this message that was part of a federal campaign that African-Americans certainly could not understand their hardship, that if they came to these conclusions that they had to have direct action campaign then, of course, it was the communist party who told them this kind of stuff. It was all in a cycle that went hand and hand but the tie in was two problems from the Great Depression, which also got back to the issues of economic hardship. As they say in the Bartels and James commercial, I do thank you for your support. I want to first encourage you to be sure to turn in your program evaluation forms. We do have refreshments at the back and we certainly want you to take advantage of the refreshments. I would also like to say thank you to all of you who came out tonight. Thank you for those individuals who played a very important role in getting you to come 37 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama Alabama A&M University out tonight. Be sure to take note of your brochures or your posters to be aware of the upcoming lectures. Of course, the lecture next week will be on the campus of U AH and Diane Nash, who was one of the activists involved with the Civil Rights Movement from the Nashville area, but as some learned from the inaugural lecture, she and her husband played a very important role in Alabama as well. I hope that, as I said at the beginning of the program, all of you will make every effort to attend as many of these lectures in this important series as possible. Thank you and good night. 38 � 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_000018 Title A name given to the resource Digitized transcription of VHS tape of "The Long Night's Journey, 1877-1941". Description An account of the resource Linda Reed 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-09-06 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 2000-2009 Subject The topic of the resource Reed, Linda, 1955- Civil rights movements--Southern states--History--20th century Alabama (Ala.) Southern States Humanitarianism Labor 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/396">VHS Tape of: The Long Night's Journey, 1877-1941 - Speaker: Linda Reed, 2001-09-06. Box 2, Tape 2</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. 38 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/383">The Long Night's Journey, 1877-1941 - Speaker: Linda Reed - Transcription of Tape 2, 2003 Box 1, File 3</a> University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/32/13346/TheMontgomeryBusBoycott_Tape4_File5.pdf 5dc52b7489ca3e7eaba450a7275bb858 PDF Text Text The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville The Montgomery Bus Boycott Speaker: Fred Gray, Charles Moore Thank you. On behalf of the University of Alabama in Huntsville and on behalf of President Frank Franz, I am very pleased to welcome all of you to this lecture series focusing on the history and impact of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. This historic initiative brings to Huntsville, distinguished speakers who will reflect on events of the past and who will share with us their hopes for the future. I must once again commend the faculty from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and from Alabama A&M University, who worked over a period of more than two years to make this possible. Those faculty include, but are not limited to, John Dimmack, Lee Williams, Jack Ellis, Mitch Berbrier from UAH, and James Johnson and Carolyn Parker from Alabama A&M. I am very pleased that you could be with us. Good evening. It is my pleasure to take a couple of moments to acknowledge our sponsors. These are the people who have made it possible for us to do all these kinds of things. They have given us funds and all kinds of support. They are: The Alabama Humanities Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Senator Frank Sanders; The Huntsville Times; DESE Research, Inc.; Mevatec Corporation; and Alabama Representative, Laura Hall. At Alabama A&M, we have the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, the State Black Archives Research Center and Museum, Title III Telecommunications and Distance Learning Center, Office of Student Development, the Honors Center, Sociology/Social Work Programs and the History and Political Science Programs. At the University of Alabama in Huntsville, we �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville have the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, The History Forwn Banking Foundation, Sociology, Social Issues Symposium, The Humanities Center, The Division of Continuing Education, the Honors Program and the Office of Multi-Cultural Affairs, Office of Student Affairs and the UAH Copy Center. Let's give these people a show of appreciation. Now, let's welcome Charles Moore. Charles Moore: For those of you that saw or bought the special series of stamps of the different images from the sixties, it included a photograph of Martin Luther King's face from the sixties. It was from that picture. They purchased the rights to do that, to use his face for an artist to do a rendition of Dr. King in "I Have A Dream." This picture is after they told Dr. King to move from the court steps but he refused. One officer had his armed twisted, like in a hammerlock behind his back. I am sure that hurt. People began to gather around Dr. King, and I think he may have been afraid ... he certainly didn't want any violence, so he may have been putting his hand out to the people as to say, "No, don't get involved. Just stay away." So I followed them photographing and there was no one around, there were no other journalists or writers. There were no photographers. I followed them down the street until they took him into the booking station, which may be in here. I'm not sure ifwe have that picture. I came into the door right behind the policeman and Dr. King and I'm over and behind them. I took one shot and I realize how ridiculous this was because I could only see the backs of the people. I knew there was a little floppy, folding door over on the side of the desk there. Without asking permission, I just ran around there and went in behind the jailer. don't know ifhe ever knew ifl was even there or not but I went behind him to get the 2 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville picture that would show their faces and the face of Dr. King while they were still twisting his arm behind his back. That was the other photograph. So, those two photographs of the arrest would be equivalent to the others. Some of you will remember the Baltimore postman, William Moore (no relation) who had decided to walk to Mississippi with a sign on his back that said, "Eat at Joe's, Mississippi, both black and white," or something like that. I only learned recently that he stopped in a little store in Georgia, I believe. My reporter and I had flown into Chattanooga and met these guys later that retraced this so I was not on the assignment when this man was killed. He stopped at a little country store and he went in, he was kind of a strange guy, but he believed that this thing going on in the south wasn't right, segregation was not right. Unfortunately, he was very naive and these guys got him into discussion, "Well, do you believe in this, do you believe in interracial marriage, do you believe in blacks and whites getting married." He responded, "Sure I do, if they love each other." They said, "What if they are marrying a Jew?" He said, "Sure there's nothing wrong with that?" The guy went on and on. He was not aware of the danger at all. I did not know this until recently. But he continued his walk, but what I have heard, is that when he started to leave, one of the men said to him, "Boy, you are going to die!" The guy just looked at him and said, "I don't know what you are talking about." The man said, "Like I said, you are going to die". He was shot. It was a cowardly thing. The man that did this is in prison. I do not remember his name. The man went off into the woods on the side of the road by the trees with a high-powered rifle and shot him in the 3 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville head as he went by. It was a cowardly ambush and murder of a totally innocent, simple man. These things are terrible. On this next picture, I was on this march when my reporter heard on a car radio, he was driving along while I was walking with the marchers, of these guys that were retracing that hike that Bull Conner was going to meet Dr. King with some force. Dr. King was bringing his group into Birmingham and that it was going to happen that afternoon. We stopped right then and took off to Birmingham. We thought that it could be bad. This is the first shot I made. When we drove into Kelly Ingram Park, we looked at a map and found out where it was, Michael was driving a rental car, I saw these firemen, it was a little different from this when I first saw it, but I just made him let me jump out of the car so he could go park and join me later. This was the lead photograph in Life Magazine. It was in the Birmingham story. Life was a pretty big magazine. So, all the way across two pages was this strong black and white image. The firemen were on the left page and they are on the other page and underneath was the caption in big letters, 'THEY FIGHT A FIRE THAT WON'T GO OUT." Fred, do you remember that? It's very interesting, I have always liked this picture, and I'm not saying it because of things that have happened with it, but I have always liked this picture because I studied art for a little while and I always had a big thing on composition. I still believe, and I get a lot of questions from other photographers, and I teach it when I am talking about photography. I teach them that they have to think fast, even in violent action. Sometimes the photograph can have composition, whether it's a bat being hit over someone's head or whether it's this. I didn't want the firemen. I had pictures of the firemen. All I wanted 4 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville to do was see that white, hot stream of water, which is hard, hitting somebody in the back. I had a I 00-millimeter lens on the camera and I just wanted this composition. This has become an icon of the movement. I am happy to say that it is included in twenty-five photographs. A man came to see me recently who had just left Gordon Parks, and Gordon's a friend, not in very good health now, living in New York City. Gordon has one of the great pictures too. These twenty-five pictures will be on the USA cable network. I don't know when it will be. But anyway, it's the twenty-five most important pictures of the century, so I'm very happy that this one made it. Next. Why did I put a color photograph in there? This is in Kelly Ingram Park about two years ago. When Life decided that they were going to pick one the pictures of the century for their special issue, they sent me back to Birmingham. This is the fourteen-year-old woman, Carolyn Mclnstry, who is in the photograph in front of those two young men. This is Carolyn today. She is a good friend. She works for BellSouth in Birmingham and has been with them quite a long time, I think. It's been good for her. She has spent at least two times with Oprah on the Oprah show. She is very active. It is really nice to know that young, fourteen-year-old girl, Carolyn, who lost friends when those little girls were killed in the church. Those were her friends. She had been with them earlier. That was a real shock to Carolyn. This is one of the monuments for those of you who have been there. She was one of the children that were hit by the water at fourteen years of age. This is the one similar to the one Life ran. 5 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Next. These are the things that disturbed me so much in Birmingham. I didn't just want to stand in the distance and take a lot of safe shots of overall things happening. I was arrested too. It was during the water hoses that I was arrested. I was too active. My reporter was running around with me too so they grabbed us both. This woman had been hit and knocked down and at one point, this picture was just no good, because she is being rolled by that high-pressure hose and her purse was knocked away. Her clothing was folding up over her and what a terrible thing for her. This man came along and picked her up. I think this is important too. You don't grab a photograph and say, "Well, I got that shot. I am going to see what else I can find." You kind of stay with it and I'm glad I did because I did see this man come up and help her. You can see people running in the background. Next. This is the cover of the book. I think that I reversed all of these. I was in a hurry. This, to me, showed some of the anger. I did photographs of some of the young kids. It's natural for young kids in a situation like this to play in the water. Some people may make fun of that but those are children who are learning. Most of this was a horrible, horrible thing and very degrading and as in one of the photographs in the exhibit, it's one ofmy favorites because there is one man who is powerful. He's standing like this. He is being hit with this blast of water. It shows his back where he is hit and then he whirls around with this look on his face. He looks like he could destroy anyone of those policemen or firemen. He is standing there helpless as ifto say, "How degrading this is to have this happen to you and can't do anything about it". 6 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville By the way, it's a good time to say I don't know all about the firemen. I know that now firemen are really heroes and all, and I think they are. The firemen down there, I tell you, I was under the water and he had them down and holding them and just spraying them and I crawled under with a wide-angled lens, under the water, and photographed back at the firemen with the water going over me. They could have turned it down on me. I was just hoping they didn't. I overheard a fireman fussing and holding the hose and saying, because it's been quoted. This fireman said to another fireman, 'This is crazy! We are supposed to be fighting fires, not people." Now that is a good fireman. That man obviously did not want to do what he was doing, but sometimes we do it anyway. I work with a wide-angle lens. A lot of people ask me how close and all of this. I'm pretty close. I think I was using a twenty-eight millimeter lens, that's the reason you can tell from this perspective how large the policemen is that is closer to me than the people in the background. With a telephoto lens, a longer lens, if you shoot with that, it compresses your subjects. It compresses the scene, so it pushes them all together. In relation to the people in the background, to this man, they would appear to be closer. It is the way I work. It is the way I feel that there is more drama and more impact, which is what you need in these photographs. I wonder how close that dog was to me. I didn't see him. I didn't even pay any attention to him. I was focusing on the others, but there was a dog there. This is a pretty vicious thing, to allow it to go out and happen. Sure they're on a leash, but they're leading them in on a leash. It was pretty horrible. This man was bitten, not just his pants torn but his leg was badly bitten. 7 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville On the next picture, again you see the same kind of thing thing. I work fast. If you are ever going to be a photojournalist, then you want to do photographs like this and you have to work really fast. You need to be really good with knowing your exposures. All of your professionalism has to come out so it just works automatically for you. These pictures were taken with manual cameras, nothing automatic, just simply manual, no exposure meters built in, no automatic focusing, or anything. Next. When I photographed this, I just heard that Dr. King had been arrested. I later found out this was not his hand. I don't know whose hand it was but I thought it was Dr. King's. !fit were his hand, this would be an even greater photograph. It's the fact that it is just an icon of what was happening there, which was that so many people, children and women were being arrested. I don't know if any of you all know a writer named Paul Hendrickson, but he wrote about a woman photographer named Marion Post Walcott. He wrote a book called Looking For the Light. He first wrote a piece for Life Magazine, and then he turned it into a major book. He also has another prize-winning book called Five Who Died. It's about Vietnam. He has come from Washington to see me twice. He also works and writes for the Washington Post, but he does books. He's an author. He was haunted, as he said, by this photograph so he has gone back to Mississippi on several occasions and he's been back to Alabama a couple of times and spent some time with me. I know there is someone here who knows Shannon Wells, who is a photographer from the University of Alabama, UNA. We had lunch together at a restaurant in Florence that is an African-American restaurant. It is popular, especially with the college, and it 8 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville has incredible Southern food. Well, we took him there. He fell in love with Shannon. He wants to come back and visit again. He is a great man and he has gone into the lives of all of these men. He has interviewed their family members, they're all dead. This is on the campus at Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi, during the Meredith thing. The men with the clubs are deputy sheriffs and they're waiting for the marshals to bring in the and they're talking and he is kind oflaughing and they're cutting up and they're saying, "This is what we are going to do. We'll show Bobby Kennedy and those marshals how we handle them down here." They are laughing and making a joke out ofit. He found out through interviewing people who knew all of these men. He is writing a new book that will be coming out; I don't know what he's calling it right now. He said, "One thing you should know is that everyone I talked to that knew the man in the center, said a lot of things, but the one thing they all had in common about him is that he always had to be the center of attention. So it goes on, the interest in Civil Rights and coming together, making the world better, making our country better, understanding each other and understanding that we are all of the same God, understanding that we all must get along. Color? What is color? It doesn't matter. I am a color photographer. I love all the colors of the spectrum. This last picture is of one of the marshals that had been shot. He had been shot in the leg, I believe. There were twenty-eight marshals that were badly wounded. Two people died that night on the campus. One was a French journalist who was sort of hiding down low behind a piece of shrubbery. His killer got away because someone came up behind and put a bullet in the back of his head. Again, a cowardly thing to do to 9 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville a man just witnessing as a journalist. How do you find this person? Anyway, another innocent bystander, I don't remember who he was, but somebody who worked in Oxford was hit and killed by a bullet. But twenty-eight of the marshals were wounded by gunfire. The next picture is one of the wounded. He happened to be standing next to me by an army jeep when shots came out of the crowd that night. There were shot gun blasts and all kinds of things being shot at the marshals. There was tear gas and bottles of gasoline being thrown. It was a terrible thing. There were cars being set on fire. It was a nightmare out there in front of that building all night. Some of the guys got a bulldozer and they were going to crash into the front of the building. The marshals had to get on it and take these guys off of it. They had to fight them to get them off. This picture is of an Associated Press writer, a reporter, out of the Memphis office. He was standing and a shot came out of the crowd. I ducked behind the jeep. He turned to run back into the building. The second shot came out. Fortunately it was buckshot, but it blasted his back. He was just patched up by the marshals inside, still bleeding a little bit but went on working. He was interviewing after being wounded. I'm glad I ducked. This is a picture of the next morning. Tear gas is still lingering out there. In some of the pictures, as they are bringing Meredith onto the campus, marshals and other people have their handkerchiefs over their face. John Durr and the top marshal are escorting him in the next morning. He was hidden overnight and they're escorting him the next morning after the riot into the campus to register. �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Next. These are some of the prisoners the next morning. They are some of the people that were rounded up and you can see that some of the people still have a gas mask on because as you walk around there was so much tears gas used out there that when you walked around the next morning, it would stir it up and it would still be drifting. This is Selma in this picture. Andy Young was praying in this picture. Andrew Young became a good friend and a wonderful man. He wrote the introduction to my book. This was just before the march. They are praying for the march and I think this is before Bloody Sunday. I covered Bloody Sunday and then I went back for the final march. Next. These are some of deputies or sub-deputies or whatever on the street in Selma as John Lewis, and I couldn't find that slide of John Lewis and all the people coming out toward the bridge, but these were people standing there on the streets of Selma. I shot this picture in color. It was a little different but it was the cover of Life. This was Bloody Sunday, the first march. Next. This is after they stopped. They were stopped on the other side by the police and then given two minutes to disburse, and they didn't, then Bloody Sunday happened. They charged these folks with billy clubs and started beating them and later used tear gas. Next. I found out this woman's name later. She was hurt badly. You can see the police have tear gas masks on. I had to cut out a lot of pictures for time and this is one of the marching pictures along the road. 11 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Next. Dr. King on the march. This is the final march, the victory march. I wanted to see the reaction of people along the way so I did a lot of photographs also of the people cheering them. This was Birmingham. Everyone knows him. I wanted to get a few faces. I only have a few of them, of the people that were important. Next. James Baldwin certainly was. Harry Bellefonte was one of the most wonderful friends I think I've ever met. He's a great guy. He was also very close to Dr. King. This is one ofmy favorites always. What a great singer. I have one of her songs on one of my audio/video presentation, which has songs and sounds of the movement on it. Two of his friends. Next. Two of his friends, remember I left my heart in San Francisco? Next. That's Myrlie Evers at the funeral in Jackson, Mississippi. Medgar Evers, I never really worked with him. I only got a chance to go and photograph the funeral. Next. I don't know if it's here, but there's another picture I have of Myrlie with her face bowed that I like better. She's really, really sad. In Montgomery, in between the first march, Bloody Sunday, and the next march, there were some students from different places that had come down to Montgomery. They were sitting in on the street because they were trying, as had been done a couple of time, to desegregate the capital cafeteria. They tried to go in as a mixed group into the cafeteria but it wasn't working so one day they sat down on the street and they weren't going to move. They were just protesting, but very peacefully. What happens all of a sudden, these people come riding up on horses and they said," We're all deputies." But, one person was in uniform. This man was beating some of these people with his cane. Others had clubs. Let's see if there's another one. I don't know if there are any others of the horses. Yeah, there's a man with 12 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville a hard hat on, hitting this girl over the head with a club. You' II see her, I think in the next picture. Next. This guy, I have a whole sequence of this, I followed them all along. He had been hit, knocked on the ground, she ran. I've got a picture of her running over to pick him up and then picking him up and helping him. Next. He's bleeding very badly. His head had a bad gash in it. She's angry, and she points at his face and looks at me with a very angry look saying, "Look what they did to him." Next. This is a poet, I always forget his name, and I've got to write it down. This man is a well-known poet from the University of Pennsylvania or somewhere. Anyway, his face was busted here with a club. Next. A little tender care. So, folks it was violent. Other people here know a lot more about the violence than I do. I mean I've had violence committed and threatened on me. But I was a color that didn't get quite as much violence as people did of another color, a darker color. So much violence was directed at people. So much harm and harm to our country. I'm very happy and I still like to be positive sometimes and say, "Yes, things are better." I think Fred Gray is right in saying, "There's much to be done still." Always, we can't look back. We have to worry about our children today. What are they going to be like when they're adults? What do they feel about civil rights? Yes, I can be friends openly in Florence, Alabama with black people. I was really amazed. Every year, some of you may know, there is an Ebony Fashion Show. I went to the Ebony Fashion Show with a lady friend and a friend of hers, who's a fashion designer in Nashville, who happened to be down visiting. So, the three ofus went and it was amazing. Everybody's all dressed up and there was a little jazz trio 13 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville there and beautiful models. And I thought, this is Alabama, this incredible mix of black and white here? It was amazing. It was a wonderful, beautiful thing. Everybody had a great time, you know, and it's an annual thing. I think they collect the money for something, I don't remember what the charity is. Anyway, it was wonderful to see that. What happens now is that we must keep moving on, and you educators, especially. I'm happy to see you and hear more about what you're doing at the universities. I speak a lot at universities and I'm very happy to see the things that are happening. Next. This may be the last. Thank you. (Fred Gray) Q: What message do you think scholarships based upon race sends college students, instead of scholarships based on merit? A: Well, you have to understand the purpose for scholarships in the first place. For example, I was just in a conference earlier this week on a high education case here. For the purpose of integrating and encouraging people when they won't just voluntarily do things, the courts use various other means to do it. I think what you have to understand, because if you just take a scholarship out of the context of the whole history of the struggle, then you miss the purpose for it. I have another speech I make all the time and 1 didn't do it tonight because we didn't have time to do it. But, you have to understand how this whole business started. It didn't start today; it started really when AfricanAmericans were brought to this country as slaves. The only group that's here, brought against their will. The Constitution that we read about, when we say, "We the people of the United States ... " The Constitution as originally written, that preamble did not 14 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville include people who look like me. It only included white, almost males. Because, even females couldn't serve on the jury in this state, when I started practicing law. So, in order to correct mistakes that were made in the Constitution, you have the adoption of the 13ti', 141\ and 15th Amendments. And many of those were designed originally just for the protection of African-Americans. But now the equal protection, the due process clause of the 14th Amendment protects white's rights much more than blacks rights when they originally started. So, the whole purpose of whether you call it affirmative action or whatever you want to call it, the whole idea, the court tried to come up with some derivatives to do away with the effects of past discrimination. And I think, if it takes scholarships like at Alabama State and at A&M, white students can obtain scholarships. And they did that because you won't voluntarily go over there. So, to encourage you to do it, they end up giving scholarships. I see nothing wrong with it. But the purpose of it is not to discriminate against anyone; it's trying to make the field level. I think there is a duty and a responsibility on all ofus to come up with some ways and means of doing it. If you don't like that way, do something. But, the discrimination, which still exists in this country, needs to be done away with. Q: Civil rights, for example, took on a front of peace movement, the teachings of Gandhi, pacifism. Was it ever close to the leaders or a group going the other way to where there was ever a danger of being more violent? Not as far as the marches, but being violent from the movement itself. A: I think basically, the civil rights movement, particularly as it developed in Montgomery and as Dr. King led it, as you know, his whole philosophy was nonviolence 15 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville and there really was a good reason for it. There was a good practical reason, too. Number one, if somebody comes up to you and does something to you and you don't fight back, it's hard to have a fight with one person doing all the beating. You might get a beating, but you don't get a fight. Secondly, if in the movement, during the early stages, if we had decided it was going to be a contest between who could arm themselves more and who could fight the most, that's a losing battle. So you don't even try to engage in it. But we did have some persons in the movement, on our side, even, who didn't believe in nonviolence. They wanted to use force when they got an opportunity. I think one of the reasons the early stage of the movement was successful is because it did take on a nonviolent aspect. Q: Earlier in the talks you talked about the fact that we still have problems. I want you to comment on in high schools in the south, you still see a lot of the social and economic segregation. It's very poignant, I was wondering if you could comment about that. A: I think you're perfectly right. There is still, and as one who has been in this fight for a long time, we are still, believe it or not, the case of Lee V. Mason which covers one hundred of one hundred and nineteen school systems in this state. We started out with overt segregation. I now see in some of those same school systems, a less amount of actual, if you count the numbers of whites and blacks who are in these schools. You have fewer now, than we had ten or fifteen years ago. What they're saying is not the result of segregation as it originally exists but it's the result of housing patterns and all of these other things. I think what people have to realize, the idea of and these school desegregation cases were never filed just for the purpose of putting a black child in a 16 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville formerly white school. The purpose was they found that blacks were receiving an inferior education in those schools. And most of the resources were going to the white schools and not to the black schools. We are almost getting back to that same situation now. What we're concerned about is quality education. But, we have also found that there is a greater possibility of having quality education in a setting where both races are, because once they finish school, they get into the real world, they're going to have to be competing against each other. So, they need to be able to learn how to work together and there is something that each ethnic group can learn from the other. So, I think it's more than just numbers; it's a question of quality education. Closing: Thank you Mr. Gray. I hate to cut the questions off because I think this is a rare, historical opportunity for us to hear these individuals who have played such an important role in American history. But, the hour is getting late and we would like to invite you up for a reception. Just give us a moment to set everything up. And I want to express the appreciation of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama A&M University, the planning committee for your appearance tonight. This has been a wonderful occasion and we're thankful for all three of you. 17 � 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_000020 Title A name given to the resource Digitized transcription of VHS tape of "The Montgomery Bus Boycott". Description An account of the resource Fred Gray, Charles Moore, and D'Linell Finley, Sr. are the speakers 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 2001-09-27 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 2000-2009 Subject The topic of the resource Gray, Fred D., 1930- Moore, Charles, 1931-2010 Finley, D'Linell, 1948- Civil rights movements--Southern states--History--20th century Montgomery (Ala.) Montgomery County Montgomery Bus Boycott, Montgomery, Ala., 1955-1956 Segregation 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/398">VHS Tape of: The Montgomery Bus Boycott - Speakers: Fred Gray, Charles Moore, and D'Linell Finley, Sr., 2001-09-27 Box 2, Tape 4</a> University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives 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. 17 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/386">The Montgomery Bus Boycott - Speakers: Fred Gray, Charles Moore, and D'Linell Finley - Transcription of Tape 4, 2003 Box 1, File 5</a> University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/32/13347/TrialByFireandWaterPart2_Tape6_File7.pdf 27b97c39f8295b49d753e70fb1489463 PDF Text Text The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Trial by Fire and Water: Birmingham, 1963 (Part II) Speaker: Glenn Eskew, Odessa Woolfolk Ladies and Gentleman, good evenmg. I am Sherry Marie Shuck, Assistant Professor of History at UAH. Welcome to the sixth installment of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, a 14-week symposium centered around a series of public lectures, panels and first-hand account of significant events taking place in the state of Alabama. This series is held alternately at UAH and Alabama A&M University. After three years of planning, this unique intellectual project is a joint venture between Alabama A&M University and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The members of the Steering Committee in alphabetical order are: Mitch Berbrier of UAH, John Dimmock of UAH, Jack Ellis of UAH, James Johnson of AAMU, Carolyn Parker of AAMU and Lee Williams, II, of UAH. To round its work, the planning committee has also been greatly assisted by the efforts of Joyce Maples of UAH's University Relations. We would also like to recognize our two visitors at this time, President John Kee Gibson, President of Alabama A&M University and Dr. Charles Nash, Vice Chancellor of the University of Alabama System. We ask that you complete an evaluation form for this program and leave it here on the stage or with an attendant at the exit. This series on the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama would not have been possible without the financial support of numerous sponsors whom the planning committee wishes to acknowledge at this time. First and foremost is the Alabama Humanities Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities; �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville The Huntsville Times, DESE Research Incorporated, Mevatec Corporation, Alabama Representative Laura Hall and Senator Hank Sanders. Joining our efforts from Alabama A&M University is the Office of the President, The Office of the Provost, the State Black Archives Research Center and Museum, Title III Telecommunications and Distance Leaming, the Office of Student Development, the A&M Honors Center of Sociology/Social Work, Political Science and History. At the University of Alabama at Huntsville, we greatly acknowledge funding assistance from the Office of the President, the Office of the Provost, the Humanities Center, the Division of Continuing Education, the Department of Sociology and Social Issues Symposium, the Honors Program, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, Student Affairs, The Copy Center, and the UAH History Forum Bankhead Foundation, which is serving as the local host for tonight's activities; and with the kind help of Staff Assistant Beverly Robinson, who has prepared a reception back stage immediately following tonight's lecture to which you are all invited. Tonight, we are presenting part 2 o( our program, Trial by Fire and Water, Birmingham 1963. We would like to remind you that next week's program which will be a panel discussion on the Civil Rights Movement in Huntsville will be held on the Alabama A&M West Campus at the Ernest Knight Reception Center. I would now like to tum things over to Professor James Johnson, Director of the State Black Archives Research Center and Museum who will introduce tonight, the distinguished panelists and moderate the program .... Dr. Johnson. 2 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville I would say good evening also. I would like to make some preliminary remarks regarding Dr. Horace Huntley who was to be one of the panelists on tonight's program. At the last minute, Dr. Huntley informed us that he could not keep his commitment to participate in the program due to a medical condition and at the advice of his doctor advising him against making the trip. He regrets this occurrence and offers his sincere apologies, and of course, we recognize that his health takes priority over the project. Dr. Huntley was scheduled to discuss the oral history project of which he serves as director, sponsored by the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. However, Ms. Odessa Woolfolk is familiar with the project and is at liberty to address its significance to the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. We are pleased and privileged to have two exceptionally qualified individuals to serve as panelists for this evening's program, Part II, Trial By Fire and Water Birmingham, 1963. Introduction: Professor Glenn T. Eskew made did his under graduate studies at Auburn University receiving a BA degree in History and Journalism in 1984. His graduate studies were completed at the University of Georgia, receiving an MA and Ph.D. degrees respectively in 1987 and 1993. He has received prestigious fellowships and honors that reflect upon his outstanding academic and professional accomplishments prior to and as a Professor of History of Georgia State Universities since 1993. Some of these include The National Endowment for Humanities, Summer Institute for College Teachers, teaching the history of the Southern Civil Rights Movement at the WEB Dubois Institute, Harvard 3 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville University 1195; Robert C. Anderson Memorial Award for undergraduate assistance, best dissertation 1994;. Albert Einstein Institution Dissertation Fellowship 1991 through 1993. The Phelps-Stoke Graduate Fellowship in 1988. He is also a member of the Phi Alpha Theta and Phi Kappa Phi local and national honor societies. His numerous publications have appeared in journals, anthologies and books, which include Fraternalism in a Southern City, Race, Religion and Gender in Augusta, Georgia 1999; Southern Labor in War Times and other essays in honor of Gary Fink, 1999, and But For Birmingham, the Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle, 1997; essays and a number of journals, the Journal of Southern History, Alabama Review, The Historian, The Atlanta History, as well as encyclopedias and dictionaries. But For Birmingham, the Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle, is a significant contribution to the recent literature on the history of the Civil Rights Movement in general and to Birmingham and Alabama in particular. It will serve as a basis for his presentation and the context of the panel's discussions. The title of the book that it quotes from Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and provides the continuity between last week's symposium where Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth was a keynote speaker. Although not dealing exclusively with Reverend Shuttlesworth, But for Birmingham sees him as a central figure in the Birmingham episode. His work, though expressing some provocative view points, is an excellently written, prize-winning book, and Dr. Eskew has a firm grasp on the topic; and questions pertinent to this topic that were not asked last week, will have an opportunity to be addressed tonight. 4 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Ms. Odessa Woolfolk received a BA in history and political science from Talladega College, AMA in Urban Studies from Occidental College in California and did additional graduate studies in political science at the University of Chicago and Yale University as a National Urban Fellow. Her distinguished professional experience includes teacher at Ullman High School in Birmingham, an administrative position with the Urban Reinvestment Task Force, Washington DC, New York State Urban Development Corporation, New York City, Auber Hill Community Center and Interracial Council, Albany, New York. Ms. Woolfolk has served as a Director of the Birmingham Opportunity Industrialization Center and Associate Executive Director for the Jefferson County Committee for Economic Opportunity. For ten years, she was director of University of Alabama Birmingham, UAB, Center for Urban Affairs and adjunct lecturer in a Department of Political Science and Public Affairs. She was also an assistant to the president for Community Relations at UAD. She is now a private consultant and lecturer. Her research in consulting areas are housing, social service, education, race relations, community organization and urban history. She also has a distinguished civil and community service history that includes voice of educational institutions, nonpartisan political organizations, business organizations, cultural organizations, advocacy groups and community agencies. Her outstanding accomplishments and distinguished service have been recognized and honored through the many citations received from numerous organizations and institutions. Upon her retirement from UAV in 1993, the University established the Odessa Woolfolk Presidential Community Service Award. 5 In 1994, the Mayor and City �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Council of Birmingham selected her as an inductee into the Gallery of Distinguished Citizens. She was awarded the Doctor of Humane Letters by Talladega College in 1996. As former chair of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and now President Emerita, she will address the role this institution played in the memorializing the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. She will also comment on her relations to students involved in the movement. I made a comment to her just before coming on stage about one aspect of her talk in which she will not elaborate on but she may mention, and that is the Kelly Ingram Park Monument that is associated with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. The comment that I made to her is that the State Black Archives usually sponsors a historic preservation forum and due to extenuating circumstances, we are not able to have that this year. In fact, it usually comes during this month. We decided to forego it. I indicated to her that I would hope that she would return to Huntsville next year to address the topic dealing with urban parks as it relates to historic preservation. With that, we will ask Dr. Eskew's to come and begin the presentation. Glenn Eskew: Good evening and thank you for coming. I would like to thank Professor James Johnson for that very thorough introduction, and Professor Jack Ellis also, the two of them, and the rest of the committee for inviting me to participate in the symposium. I commend the University of Alabama in Huntsville as well as the Alabama A&M University for putting on this series. As Professor Shuck mentioned, the Alabama Humanities Foundation and the marvelous people there such as Marion Carter, Laura Bradsford, and others who fund this kind of event. It is not very often that a symposium is held where people can gather and actually discuss Alabama's history, much less 6 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville frankly look at the racial past in our communities. I think that it is a great thing. If you have appreciated these symposia, please allow me to encourage you to write your representative down in Montgomery. Thank him for supporting the Alabama Humanities Foundation for they do receive state dollars as well as your representatives in Washington who also through the National Endowment for the Humanities fund the Alabama Humanities Foundation. They need your support, so please write letters. One last thing, I understand that Reverend Shuttlesworth was here was last week. As Dr. Woolfolk and 1 both know, when we are on panels with Reverend Shuttlesworth, he is a phenomenal speaker and very charismatic, as scholars, I am afraid it is not the same thing when you get us or me anyway. If you are use to these activists speaking, think back to the scholars you have had and you will probably be a little happier. Tonight, I would like to address Birmingham and the Civil Rights Movement, looking at the Birmingham Triptych. A triptych is a three panel. You can sort of think of it in terms of church as an alter piece. The climax of the civil rights struggle occurred in Birmingham in 1963. President John F. Kennedy attributed his decision to propose watershed Civil Rights Legislation to Commissioner to T. Eugene "Bull" Conner's use of police dogs and fire hoses against protesting Black school children, led by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. King's national group, The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, came to Birmingham to assist the local Alabama Christian Movement to Human Rights, led by the Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth. The resulting Birmingham campaign provoked a brutal response that not only created a crisis in local race relations but also forced a resolution to the national race problem. In the iconography of civil 7 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville rights history, three images stand above the rest. The Birmingham triptych of Conner, King and Kennedy. Behind the hoses and the dogs, stood Bull Conner. As city commissioner, Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Conner enforced Birmingham segregation ordinances, a job he relished. Conner first gained notoriety in 1938 when he segregated the biracial Southern Conference for Human Welfare at the apparent behest of the Big Mules, the local name given to the city's industrial elite. Ten years later, Bull led the Alabama delegation out of the Democratic National Convention and welcomed the to Birmingham. Indeed, Conner cultivated the reputation as a racial extremist, a tough persona for a tough town. Birmingham existed because of the close proximity of the coal, iron ore and limestone, ingredients necessary for making steel. The city's largest employer, The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, was a subsidiary of the monopolistic United States Steel Corporation. While Pittsburgh determined TCI's policy, creative use of interlocking directories and sizable contracts with would-be competitors enabled TCI to determine Big Mule policy. That included the use of a race wage, lower pay for Black workers as a way to keep white wages lower. By enforcing segregation, Conner kept the city running in the interest of the Big Mules. In June of 1956, a new Black protest group set out to alter race relations m Birmingham. Led by Shuttlesworth, the Alabama Christian Movement used direct action to challenge the legality of the city's segregation ordinances. Across the South, there emerged new Black leaders, preachers who believed that as Christians they were obligated to confront the sin, segregation. Most well known was King, who gained national attention with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This struggle to integrate the city 8 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville buses concluded in December 1956 with the US Supreme Court ordering an end to segregated seating. Shuttlesworth saw implementation of the rooming on Birmingham's buses. The Alabama Christian Movement also attempted to register Black students at allwhite Phillips High School in 1957. They tried to integrate the terminal train station in 1958, the airport in 1959, and city parks in 1960. Shuttlesworth led Birmingham's Civil Rights Movement. Bull Conner determined to thwart that desegregation drive. He arrested Shuttlesworth and other integrationist, dodged court orders to stop segregating buses and closed parks. When the freedom riders reached Birmingham in May 1961, Conner allowed a white mob of Klansmen to beat the non-violent activists with impunity. Criticized for not providing police protection, a disingenuous Commissioner of Public Safety explained, 'The force was off because it was Mother's Day". The national condemnation of Birmingham following the freedom rises, convinced several of the Big Mules to tum against Conner. They hatched a plan to remove him from office by changing the city's form of government. Voters selected the mayor council system in November of 1962 and slated new elections for spring 1963. Frustrated by the slow process of change, Shuttlesworth invited King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to Birmingham. As an umbrella organization, the SCLC had provided assistance to local affiliates such as the Alabama Christian Movement and indeed Shuttlesworth had served as secretary of the SCLC since its inception in 1957. Agreeing to work together, the two groups decided to postpone planned sit-ins until after the April 2nd 1963 runoff election. When Bull Conner lost his bid for mayor that day, he then contested the change of government altogether 9 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville and refused to leave office. Unwilling to await the outcome of Conner's court challenge, the Movement initiated its boycott of downtown businesses with sit-ins at lunch counters that refused to serve food to Black patrons. While the Birmingham news touted the election, the segregationist Big Mule names Albert Boutwell over Bull Conner, as the start of a new day, the real dawn occurred when twenty Black men and women, dressed in their Sunday best, quietly asked for coffee at Britt's Cafeteria. Conner's men arrested the protesters. Other demonstrations followed as Birmingham confronted a Civil Rights Campaign amidst the chaos of competing municipal governments. The first civil rights protest March occurred on April when Shuttlesworth led a demonstration to city hall. Police stopped the procession and arrested the forty-three activists. The next day King's brother, the Reverend A.D. King, headed a column of two dozen out of church and in the streets lined with a thousand African Americans. While not members of the movement, these Black bystanders, many of them unskilled or unemployed workers of the underclass, identified with this desire for race reform. The arrest of the marchers, after walking only two blocks, provoked civic unrest. When the canine core arrived to break up the gathering, one Black youth poked a led pipe at a police dog. The German Shepherd attacked, pinning the young man to the ground. Immediately officers moved in, swinging billy clubs and sicking the dogs. Policemen disbursed the crowd. While reporting brutality, the national press mistook the bystanders as actual members of the Movement, thus sensationalizing the number of protesters and exaggerating the support the Movement received from the Black community. King capitalized on this error by staging future episodes after Black bystanders had gathered IO �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville and in time for national film crews to get their footage to New York City's for the evening broadcast. Increasingly, Birmingham, became a media event. Despite the use of dogs, Conner tried to follow the example of Police Chief Lloyd Pritchard, who defeated the SCLC's drive in Albany Georgia by meeting King's nonviolence with "nonviolence". Conner obtained a state reporter restraining King, Shuttlesworth, and others from leading protest marches. King's decision to obey a similar injunction the year before had ended the Albany campaign. In Birmingham, King chose to defy the state court order, reasoning that all men had an obligation to violate unjust laws. Also, the SCLC hoped King's arrest would trigger federal support for the Movement. Dressed in the blue denim of the working man, King marched fiiiy people pass a thousand Black onlookers on April 12. Law enforcement officials stepped in and ushered the integrationists into waiting petty wagons. The arrest of King focused attention on Birmingham as well as the oval office. President John F. Kennedy claimed he had no legal authority to intervene in the dispute, so he remained noncommittal, although he did arrange a telephone call between King and his wife. While held incommunicado, King began his letter from Birmingham jail in response to comments given by eight local clergyman describing the demonstrations as unwise and untimely. Perhaps his greatest written work, King's letter, presented the case for non-violent direct action in theological terms that stressed the immorality of racial oppression. His heart-felt pros gave testament to the urgency of the Civil Rights struggle. While national interest grew during King's incarceration, local support waned. The Alabama Christian Movement had provided most of the foot soldiers so far. Those II �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville fanatical Christians whose faith enabled them to face Bull Conner's police dogs, when others simply watched from the sidelines, yet the past two weeks had taxed their resources. Once out on bond, King struggled to find new volunteers for his non-violent army. The Birmingham campaign teetered on the brink of collapse, as only a few dedicated activist demonstrated. Then King's lieutenants, James Bevel and Ike Reynolds, suggested to let the young people march. Opposition from Birmingham's traditional Negro Leadership Class failed to sway King, who acquiesced to the idea out of desperation to generate creative tension and keep the national press in Birmingham. The children's crusade began at noon on May 2nd , as hundreds of Black students skipped school and gathered at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, and then embarked on a protest march. Wave after wave of Black youth washed down the stone steps in the Kelly Ingram Park headed toward down town. The youngsters took Conner by surprise. By the end of the day, the police had arrested five hundred Black teenagers and crammed them into small jail cells. The next morning, King promised bigger marches unless the merchants desegregated. Bull Conner had other ideas. To prevent demonstrations, Conner stationed firemen around the park and sealed off the Black business district from down town. Attack dogs strained on their leashes intimidated many in the Black audience of onlookers, while other bystanders taunted the officers. When the Black youth exited the church, Conner hollered, "let them have it," as water gushed out of the fire hoses, blasting blindly at males and females, spinning students down the sidewalks and tearing the bark off trees. "I want to see the dogs work!" barked Bull explaining, "Look at those 12 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Niggers run!" Loosened, the dogs lunged at the Black crowd ripping at clothes in search of flesh. Police arrested seven hundred people, emptying the area. Half an hour later, the horrifying spectacle had ended, but it was captured on film forever. Through his actions, Conner achieved immortality. His barbarous treatment of peaceful protesters, the hoses and the dogs elevated Bull's Birmingham into a national symbol of racial oppression. At least 250 journalists reported the event that dominated the front pages of newspapers around the world. Footage of the brutal suppression played on the broadcast of all three networks that night. Pictures in Saturday's paper sickened President Kennedy, who decided to act. He ordered Burt Marshall, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights to Birmingham, to end the protest. Unrestrained, Conner routed another demonstration, this time using the fire hoses to keep the activist in the church. When the school children resumed marches Monday, May 6th Conner refrained from force. , however, Instead of the infamous hoses and dogs, his officers arrested youthful offenders and loaded them onto school buses that rumbled off to prison. As the momentum increased, classrooms emptied into the streets. Children ran into the arms of policemen, prompting Conner to remark, "Boy, if that is religion, I don't want any". By day's end, officers had arrested more than a thousand Black youth. The city turned the stockade at the state fair grounds into a holding pen, for the Movement had filled the jail to capacity. The next morning, the Movement strategist exploited police lunch breaks by beginning their marches earlier in a bid to upset social order through a large non-violent protest designed to shut the city down. Activist reported false alarms to divert the fire 13 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville department. Small groups of protesters acted as decoys to distract the police while hundreds of other Black students followed different routes around Bull's blockade. The protesters converged at noon in the heart of Birmingham's business district on First Avenue North. Thousands of singing Black citizens stopped traffic on Twentieth Street, milled about stores and knelt on the sidewalk in prayer. "We're marching for freedom," cheered one. A group of Big Mules, discussing the demonstrations, broke for lunch only to emerge from the chamber of commerce into the chaos of the streets. businessmen recognized social order had collapsed. These They hastily reconvened and determined to negotiate and end the protests. Although Burt Marshall saw his role as that of a moderator between two opposing interests, his very presence in Birmingham signaled the shift in federal policy. While unclear how far Kennedy would go, he obviously sided with a need for race reform. Incensed that the Movement's maneuvering had outfoxed him, Conner reverted to violence. He high powered hoses and repulsed school children as they exited the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Black bystanders threatened to riot, throwing rocks and bricks at officers. When Civil Rights Activist attempted to quell the disorder, firemen trained their hoses on Shuttlesworth. The water lifted him off the ground and slammed him into the side of the church. Learning that an ambulance had taken the minister to the hospital, Conner sneered, "I wish they had carried him away in a hearse." After arriving in Birmingham, Marshall quickly convinced King to stop the demonstrations. With whites willing to negotiate, Kennedy's envoy acted as a go between, hammering out an ambiguous agreement that acknowledged the movement's 14 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH ~ The University of Alabama in Huntsville demand for desegregation, biracial communications and equal employment. Despite the Klan bombing of the AG Gaston Motel and the Reverend A.D. King's house, with a subsequent Black riot and fires in the ghetto that night, the truce held. Birmingham embarked on a uneasy future. Only willing to negotiate when the white violence reflected badly on his administration, President Kennedy responded to the uprising of Birmingham's Black underclass by mobilizing the armed forces. He stationed riot- controlled units at nearby military basis. He threatened marshall law in the city. His televised statement of May 12, 1963, emphasized the need to restore order. Kennedy urged Birmingham citizens to accept the negotiated accord and make outside military intervention unnecessary. Yet civil disorder had spread beyond Birmingham. In the weeks that followed, some 750 demonstrations occurred in more than 185 cities across the country with nearly 16,000 arrests of protesters. Civil Rights organizations sponsored sympathy marches in Philadelphia, St. Paul, Los Angeles. About 5,000 people took to the streets of Boston over the brutality of Birmingham. Suddenly, a national Black rebellion appeared at hand. To the nation's white elite, it appeared that Black America could follow one of two routes: the nonviolent movement for assimilation into the American system lead by King, or the apparently violent alternative of Black separatism offered by Malcolm X. In light of Conner's savagery and the outrage of many African-Americans, the nation's new magazines began to rewrite the history of the Birmingham campaign. Previously, the media had presented King as an outside agitator, exacerbating a local race problem; but after the Birmingham campaign, Time and Newsweek heralded the moderate King and his gospel of nonviolence. Forced to accept the Black Civil Rights 15 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville revolution, the northeastern establishment circled around the charismatic King who preached love and abhorred violence. The same circumstances that transformed King's image altered Kennedy's persona as well. For following Birmingham, the President proposed federal reforms to end America's discriminatory race practices. During a national broadcast on June 11, Kennedy admitted that Birmingham posed problems he could no longer prudently ignore. To stop the demonstration, the destruction of property, the negative publicity, the President called for sweeping legislation, for he believed new moral laws would successfully shift the protests out of the streets and into the courts. Eight days later, he sent to Congress his revolutionary Civil Rights Bill of 1963, which harkened back to reconstruction by setting forth legal reforms designed to achieve implementation of the 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution and the aborted Civil Rights Act of 1875. To outlaw racial discrimination, the federal government would enforce compliance with the new laws by regulating interstate commerce and withholding federal funds. Yet, southern segregationists in Congress stalled the legislation. Building on the success of Birmingham, Civil Rights leaders planned a protest March on Washington. Summoning the activists to the White House, President Kennedy expressed his opposition to the idea, fearing the move might jeopardize his new legislative agenda. King responded that the march was no more ill-timed than the Birmingham campaign. As the topic shifted to police brutality, the President said, "I don't think you should all be totally harsh on Bull Conner," In the startled silence that 16 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville followed, Kennedy quipped, "after all, he has done more for Civil Rights than almost anybody else." Shuttlesworth remembered the President saymg something different. But for Birmingham, we would not be here today. Birmingham provided the climax of the Civil Rights Movement, and the March on Washington simply celebrated that fact. Instead of the massive protests in the capitol as originally envisioned by A. Philip Randolph, the event became an affirmation of the American Dream. No one sounded the theme better than Martin Luther King who gave the address of his life before an integrated audience of at least a quarter-million people with millions more watching by television. With rolling cadences, his "I Have a Dream" speech epitomized African-American desires for assimilation. Nearly tailor made to fit the demands of the Kennedy legislation before Congress, the oration reasoned the need for race reform like his letter from Birmingham jail while concluding with a resounding expression of faith in the American system. Remembering that August day in 1963, Ms. Coretta Scott King recalled the sanctification of King as he stood in the sunlight at the summit of the Lincoln Memorial. "At that moment," she said, "it seemed as if the Kingdom of God appeared." Thereafter, the media constructed an icon of the Civil Rights leader, a symbol of triumphant nonviolence, marching in Birmingham and espousing the American Dream in Washington. In short order, King won Time Magazine's "Man of the Year," and the Nobel Peace Prize. Overwhelmed by his transformation, King accepted his newfound glory with wonder. 17 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Likewise, Kennedy underwent a transfiguration in a touching interview shortly after his assassination in November of 1963. Former First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy likened the heady excitement of her husband's administration to the mythical Camelot of Broadway musical fame. Soon, the media set to work recasting the image of the late President into that of an ennobled race reformer. In reality, a less than aggressive President seeking reelection had allowed segregationists to stymie the legislation in Congress. Now, President Lyndon B. Johnson encouraged the passage of the package as a tribute to the martyred leader, and the adoption by Congress of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 marked a watershed in national race relations. The act outlined equal employment opportunities that opened the American system to minorities and women, thus, this triptych. The juxtaposed icons of Conner, King and Kennedy symbolized the struggle to overthrow racial oppression in the South. Taken together, the three images tell the story of race reform in America. First, there's Conner, the fat, beady-eyed little man waving on with his pork-pie hat the hoses and the dogs against helpless Black youth. Then, there is Dr. King, having overcome Birmingham's hoses and dogs but now frozen in time at the Lincoln Memorial giving his "I Have a Dream" speech; and finally, there is President Kennedy in the haze of the White House Camelot, benevolently intervening in his advocacy of racial equality. As icons, these images retell over and again a morality play of triumphant race reform. Clearly centering the climax of the Civil Rights Movement in the streets of Birmingham. 18 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Odessa Woolfolk: Good evening, thanks to Dr. Johnson and to others who have sponsored this wonderful discussion about a tremendously important event. I have heard all over Alabama that this was the place to be, and I think we still have one or two more weeks to go - several more weeks to go, so not only is this the place to be, but there is time to be here. No doubt, the best work about Birmingham was written by Glenn Eskew, and we are all indebted to him for his awesome scholarship. I am suppose to talk about the memorialization of the Civil Rights Movement and use the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute as a case, and I will do that, but as Professor Glenn, my friend, told that riveting study of Birmingham, my mind raced back to 1963. I started thinking about what I was doing in Birmingham during the time of these events so wonderfully captured by Professor Glenn. So let me just be personal for a moment and tell you what I was doing. There are four things that happened in 1963 that were mentioned by him that [ just want to comment about in a personal way. First, the spring campaign where Bevel and others invited kids to participate. I was a young American Government teacher at Ullman High School teaching the I 2'h Grade in 1963 when the call came for students to go and joint a group marching downtown. It is interesting that the Birmingham Board of Education had sent a notice to all the teachers saying check the roll in the morning and again after lunch and turn in the names of those who were there in the morning and absent after lunch. Well that did not seem right so a lot of fudging went on with those things. I recall that a lot of students who were in my class were trying to decide ... now I was teaching American Government (this is the irony of it) reading McGruder, the author of the textbook that we used. McGruder laid out in the most beautiful fashion the 19 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville American Dream, the American Creed, and it was clear that what was gomg on 111 Birmingham was not what McGruder said it should be. So, I counseled my students, as [ recollect. Students have told me as I have talked to them since that my counsel to them was, "I can't tell you whether you should go down and face billy clubs and fire hoses, etc. I can tell you this. I am not teaching on those days when you are not supposed to be here, and so the grade that you will get will be for nothing here." I remember that and occasionally I see students and they remind me of that. The second thing in 1963 that I am remembering, Glenn, as you talked about the March on Washington, and I too went to the march. I went down from New York City where I had been visiting with some friends, and we went on a bus that was sponsored by the ______ and the NAACP. I am pretty sure there were more than a qumier- million people there. It was interesting that when the people from Alabama and Mississippi came in with the wagons and coveralls, you could hardly hear because there was such a roar of acceptance by all the folks around the world praising what these folk from the Deep South had done. So, I remember that and I also remember King's speech. The third thing you mentioned, Glenn, that raced through my mine was the Sixteenth Street Church. On that September Sunday, I recall hearing the bomb all over town. I didn't go to Sunday School that day. I was not a member of the Sixteenth Street Church. My church was a mile from Sixteenth Street. I normally taught Sunday School but that day I did not, so I was late going to church, and I heard this awful noise, but we heard a lot of awful noises in Binningham. When I arrived at church, shortly after I got there, the phone started ringing and members of our church who had family members at 20 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Sixteenth Street were getting the calls about what had happened, so that day is seared in my memory as well. Then, the fourth thing you mentioned is Kennedy. I remember the day that the President was assassinated. Then, I was teaching American Government at Ullman High School. The kids had gone to lunch and came back right after the second lunch period with their little transistor radios. We had transistor radios inside as well, and they said, "the President has been shot," and they were hysterical. This was an all-Black high school for those of you who are too young to know what it was like back then. They were hysterical. About half an hour after that, a carload of white kids came by from another high school chanting, "the nigger lover is dead. The nigger lover is dead," so when I heard Professor Glenn talking about that year, I had all those images revisiting me. I just wanted to share that with you. Well, you have heard from Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, the fiery, tough-minded leader of the Birmingham Movement, a person for whom I have a lot of respect and admiration. Glenn was absolutely right when he said that not all of the African- Americans (we were Negroes then), not all of the Negroes supported what he did. It was not that people did not want freedom. It was not that the middle class Negroes were so comfortable that they thought they had it made. It was that Fred Shuttlesworth scared the living daylights out of folks, and they said, "Fred, we want our freedom but we want to be alive to enjoy it." So Reverend Fred did not have as many followers publically as he had supporters privately. At that time what had happened around the South period was that many Blacks lost their employment and people who were in school teaching and jobs 21 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville like that had lost jobs, in some small towns especially. So, I suspect that many people were fearful of that happening. The church that I attended, a congregational church, was a place where Andrew Young, Wyatt Tee Walker, King, Deanie and John Drew and others met. Now, that was what Shuttlesworth called the middle class negotiating committee. If you heard him speak, I am sure you heard him speak very plainly. These folk met at our church, so our congregation was somewhat involved but not in the middle, although some of the members actually were in the middle. The Memorializing of the Movement in Birmingham - the healing of a city by design is a title a local news journal used in a cover story of the Civil Rights District. The district linked people, structures, nature, brick, mortar and stone in defining the role that Birmingham played in the Movement. Dr. Johnson mentioned the Kelly Ingram Park and that park was a part of the Civil Rights District which included the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the historic Black business district, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute which was constructed in 1992. Let me just tell you a little about that. Richard Ellington, Jr., about whom many of you have heard, was Mayor of Birmingham for 20 years, the first African-American mayor - it was his job to complete a job proposed by his predecessor, Mayor David Van. David Van in 1979, after having gone to Israel and noticing how the holocaust was dealt with there in museums proposed that the City of Birmingham should spend public dollars for a combination of a museum and an educational facility. It was not a very popular idea I can tell you, even in 1979 in Birmingham, Alabama. It turns out that Van did not get reelected. Richard Ellington did get elected and decided that he would move forward with this idea after thinking about it, 22 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville as Glenn has written in some of his pieces. Ellington appointed a citizen's task force in 1986. He asked me if I would share it. At that time, I was working for the University of Alabama of Birmingham, your sister university. What we decided to do was to sit and come up with a mission statement, a schematic plan, and to recommend designers to oversee the project to completion. This is what our charge was. You know, preservationists and historians speak of the material culture of human events. We know that the material culture of the Civil Right Movement is, as one scholar put it, comprised of churches, homes, lunch counters, roadways, bus stations, bridges, parks and other public spaces that serve as local sites for community organizing and demonstration. So, we had our task as a planning committee to work on using raw history and telling a story for all eternity of what happened in Birmingham. We were to submit a redesign of Kelly Ingram Park, which is the park across the street from the Sixteenth Street church where the marchers went and where Bull Conner and his crowd welcomed them. One of the major stories in interpreting history is indeed whose story is to be told and who should participate in the telling of the story. How to tell that story was indeed a challenge for us. What we wanted our designers to do was to depict a really powerful, as described by Glenn, a powerful social movement by redesigning the actual place, the Holy ground if you will, where it occurred. We wanted to ensure authenticity so we invited the people who had really marched in 1963 to retrace, to reenact their path. They were asked to tell where the fire hoses and the firemen were; where were the police dogs; where was the tank in terms of the periphery. Where were the cops stationed, etc., to recollect exactly what happened from their first-hand experience, albeit many years later. 23 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville In addition to those stories, we searched the primary sources and then used that information for designing and landscaping of the park. Dick Ellington was very interested in that particular project and wanted us to think of the park as being from a revolution, which the movement was, to reconciliation, which is the path we felt that Birmingham was on. I would hope that some people might want to visit that park and I will talk about that another time. The design of the Institute itself needed to capture city history. Even in the building materials that we used, we wanted to celebrate the building materials of Birmingham, which had been field brick and wood. Most of Twentieth Century Birmingham structures were made out of those particular elements. We also wanted to show in the path of visitors to the galleries a kind of undulating walk showing that the movement indeed was a struggle and a move forward, so people proceeded vertically through history. We felt that was symbolically important. I raised the question earlier of whose story should be told. Fred Shuttlesworth was no doubt the hero no matter what else we said. We had to tell Fred Shuttlesworth's story. Martin Luther King, Jr., was important to Birmingham, but not as important as Frederick L. Shuttlesoworth. The Birmingham hero of the movement was Fred L. Shuttlesworth. So, we felt that his story needed to be told ... not only the story of the leader, but many, many stories of the people who participated because the movement, as Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth will tell you, is larger than those who lead it. We went about planning. The task force was appointed by the mayor, and in June of 1990, the City of Birmingham appointed a Board of Directors made up of those who 24 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville had previously been on the task force. I was asked to be the president of that, and we did finally open the Institute in 1992; but it was not that simple. As a matter of fact, the board was one of controversy. The mayor had tried on two occasions to have the citizens vote on a bond issue which included not only the Birmingham Civil Right Institute planning but a variety of public improvement, including schools and libraries and recreation facilities. On both occasions, the voters turned those down. There were some interesting arguments in our position, arguments such as: all we will do is open up old wounds; it will rekindle racial strife; and after all, there are more pressing priorities for public dollar. Some argued that just having kind of a building with the name Civil Rights Institute would alienate whites of good will. Somebody said, "white people aren't coming." Others said, "no need to build a new facility for a handful of old papers. We have a library, a very fine library, so we could put those old papers there." There was a group called the Taxbusters who played a major role in the defeat of the bond issue. Their leaders had been very critical of the mayor's spending priorities and said that the taxpayer should not trust him with another dime of public money. They went on and said that to do this, to build this, would just remind the nation about all of the negative aspects of our city. One even argues, "I can't image that there would be widespread attendance at the Institute with the crime and drugs that surround the areas." The Institute was located in the heart of the historic Black community. The crime rate there was no higher than other districts in Birmingham, but that was one of the arguments. 25 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville had previously been on the task force. I was asked to be the president of that, and we did finally open the Institute in 1992; but it was not that simple. As a matter of fact, the board was one of controversy. The mayor had tried on two occasions to have the citizens vote on a bond issue which included not only the Birmingham Civil Right Institute planning but a variety of public improvement, including schools and libraries and recreation facilities. On both occasions, the voters turned those down. There were some interesting arguments in our position, arguments such as: all we will do is open up old wounds; it will rekindle racial strife; and after all, there are more pressing priorities for public dollar. Some argued that just having kind of a building with the name Civil Rights Institute would alienate whites of good will. Somebody said, "white people aren't coming." Others said, "no need to build a new facility for a handful of old papers. We have a library, a very fine library, so we could put those old papers there." There was a group called the Taxbusters who played a major role in the defeat of the bond issue. Their leaders had been very critical of the mayor's spending priorities and said that the taxpayer should not trust him with another dime of public money. They went on and said that to do this, to build this, would just remind the nation about all of the negative aspects of our city. One even argues, "I can't image that there would be widespread attendance at the Institute with the crime and drugs that surround the areas." The Institute was located in the heart of the historic Black community. The crime rate there was no higher than other districts in Birmingham, but that was one of the arguments. 25 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Then during construction, we were caught in a public debate which the newspapers carried for many, many weeks over whether a certain city consultant accused of payment irregularities in work that she was doing for the city was involved in the Institute project. Now, Dr. Glenn, most people on the Institute board never saw this lady. To the whites who feared the creation of a Civil Rights District, Ellington responded that whites were as much a part of this rich history as Blacks. This was an opportunity to take pride in what we had been able to overcome as a biracial community; so he was very positive about the biracial nature of this effort. Well just when we thought we had set aside the usual suspects, we were publically criticized by a small group of Civil Rights activists. The Civil Rights foot soldiers went after us. Their beef was that they did not think that enough of them were on the Board of Directors. They were concerned that the history that we told would not be accurate and that besides, we were talking only to the leaders of the movement, and they were going to be more interested in their particular role rather than the role of the ordinary people. So we had to work that out. One group asked the City of Birmingham for 1.8 million dollars to do their own history project, and what they did was to sort of have a staff to duplicate what our proposed staff was; and they wanted the city to pay 1.8 million dollars. We were able to reason together and decide that would not be a good idea. Eventually, most of the folk who were opposed to the Institute worked together to make sure that it would happen. We know that museums and institutes and memorials are very effective sources for stories about any group's contribution to society. The purposes of the Birmingham 26 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Civil Rights Institute are to focus on what happened in the past, not simply because it is in the "past" and leave it in the past, but to understand what lessons can be learned and to be informed as to future developments in human relations in Birmingham and perhaps in the world. One observer of the District remarked, "In choosing to remember together, the citizens of Birmingham have redeemed their history in a way that does indeed have the potential to reconcile, to heal, to teach and to strengthen the bonds of community~not just for themselves but for the larger community." So that is really what we are about, finding a way to have those lessons learned from that turbulent period and forming future relationships not only in this country but in the world. After all, both Dr. King and Andrew Young talked about how when they traveled around the world, they would hear, "We shall overcome," in many languages, so there is indeed a universality in the story. Those of you who have visited the Institute know its layout. I will jnst make a brief comment and during the Q&A, I can handle whatever questions you might want to ask regarding the Institute, but we do have a self-directed march through history. The high point is the history of Birmingham, but our story is about American history and about what happened in other parts of the country, especially in the Deep South. I can comment about the old history project later, but it suffices to say now that an important part of the project was to have as many people as we could, who had any recollection from that era to tell their stories in their own words. We have about 300 stories from the people who were known to the public as leaders, such as Fred Shuttlesworth, Andrew Young and the like, from the people who drove the kids downtown, from the people who 27 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville fed the reporters who came to Birmingham, from the children who themselves marched and from those who organized boycotts, sit-ins and kneel-ins, etc. So, there is a rich collection of history that is videotaped and many of them have been digitized. I recall saying in 1989, as chair of the taskforce, that the Institute would signify that we no longer hide from our history. We recognize that we were once a city that housed two people, black and white, unknown to one another except through the long painful threads of segregation. Now we are a different city embracing our past and through the Civil Rights Institute and similar projects, we are looking to a brighter future. Our motto in spite of the past, a vision for a future ... a vision to be a national and international place of healing, mutual understanding and respect among all people. Q: The first time I visited the Civil Rights Institute and every time since, I am impressed how the story of segregation and the Civil Rights Movement is told very bluntly, but there is no rancor and no vigor, and I want to know how you managed to avoid that? A: That was a question that we faced up front. We said that basically we wanted to tell the story as it happened but that our goal was not to evoke guilt, but to have people understand what happens when miscommunication occurs. Therefore, we deliberately decided that we would tell it as it happened and let each individual go through with his or her own emotions without any commentary and that way, the interaction would be between the story and the visitor. Q: How would you compare President Kennedy to Abraham Lincoln? 28 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville A: That's probably a good comparison. Lincoln of course is the great emancipator and more of a civil war, which he did win. He did free the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation did not at first; it did not free any of the slaves in the Confederacy and the area the federal troops controlled, the slaves continued to be slaves, so Lincoln got a lot of credit for what it seemed to be on surface at first. But as the historian, DuBois, noted, to win war Lincoln freed the slaves and armed them and in fact, that is what the Emancipation Proclamation was saying. Kennedy was very hesitant to get involved. For example, the Kennedy administration initial response to race relations during the Civil Right Movement was to try to create stability and to end brutality. So, in Alabama you get the Freedom Rights and the Ku Klux Klan mob attacking the bus when it arrives at the Trailway station in Birmingham and again another riot at the bus station in Montgomery. All these sites are now being turned into museums, at least the Montgomery one is. Then, the Kennedy administration intervenes and works out a deal with the State of Mississippi and if in Mississippi there is no violence, if you simply arrest these integrationists and throw them in jail without beating them up in front of the TV cameras, that is great. That is what they did. So they worked out an agreement. Kennedy approached Birmingham with the same kind or perspective. The policy was called federalism and the idea was the federal government, without creating a national police force, really could not come in and intervene in the way you might think it would to prevent Civil Rights abusers. At first, what Burt Marshall was trying to do was simply get the demonstrations ended and that is actually what he achieved. They ended the demonstration. The problem was that it had become much broader than that. In the 29 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville Kennedy papers, I had the privilege of going up and working in them in Boston. You read in the documents themselves and in the exit interviews that were conducted with members of the Kennedy administration that nobody was thinking about race, so race was not on the radar screen. It was not an issue before Birmingham. Birmingham changed everything and then suddenly it became the big issue. Like Lincoln, Kennedy was forced to address the issue and does, and in the end while his administration hesitates to push the legislation through, he set the whole ball in process. A: Interesting enough, Jerome Bennett's book, Forced Him To Glory, is a book that sort of addresses Abraham Lincoln" role. Q: You said you when you were teaching American Govermnent to students you essentially encouraged them without telling them to go. How many of your kids went and what kind of changes did you see in those that did go out? A: The high school where I worked had a large number of kids. I cannot give you the exact number of those who went and those who did not go. I would say that a good half of the student body was vocally sympathetic to what happened and perhaps most of the others felt that the Civil Rights Movement, the demonstration downtown made sense. I think you have to just realize that Birmingham was the most rigidly segregated place in a major deep south city. The kids have had experiences going down to the lunch counselors and their parents being addressed by their first names and them not being able to go the library. There was a branch library that they could go to. They could not go downtown to check out books. They saw this every day. If they rode a public bus, the signs would move according to the makeup of those who lived in the neighborhood. So, bus drivers 30 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville would say to kids and kids talked about that a lot that if whites get on this bus now, we are going to have to move you back. You can sit in the front but if whites get on the bus, we have to move you back. So, I think the teenagers felt that there was something horribly wrong about that and therefore they were really philosophically sympathetic. The change was permanent. We have interviewed at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute many of the kids who were involved in the movement and they talked about how that experience made them appreciate democracy because they felt that they had made a contribution to make it better. The day that they all came back after they had been arrested, several of them had little American flags. I sat in the back of the room with others who said they did not go to march. The heroes and heroines that day were those who had gotten arrested. They really had the badge of courage. So, I think the kids were changed. Now, there were some kids that just went along for fun, kids being kids, but I think many of them were changed. Q: How would you rate the big mule mentality down there these days? A: Well, I cannot really speak for recent Birmingham very well at all. I can kind of talk about Birmingham in the l 990's. I recall the Scholl Creek incident that occurred in 1991 and those were bug mules. There is a great irony about Scholl Creek. Let me see if I can recall all the names, Paul Thompson, Lou Willie and Abraham Woods. They had all been involved in 1963 and here they were inl991, once again, with another Civil Rights protest. You may recall that it was over the desegregation of a country club. It was during a great moment for Birmingham with the PGA tournament out at Scholl's Creek. The demand was to integrate the country club and ultimately that what occurs and we saw that 31 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville take place. Integrating a country club versus desegregating America, it tells us how far we have come since 1963. A: I would like to comment on that question. I have remained in Birmingham and have worked with a number of organizations to which the so-called current big mules belong. We do have in Birmingham a new generation of leaders as you do in many communities and I think that the civic leadership of Birmingham realizes that if Birmingham is to attract industry, attract business and attract visitors, then it has to approach these issues in a modern fashion. So, even those individuals who then in there earlier years may very well have been a valid racist. You do not hear that much anymore. A: The whole economy has changed. That is really the other thing too. The old big mules were industrialists, bankers and insurance men and that kind of thing as well. That is part of what is occurring during the demonstrations in 1963. The old steel industry is losing its control of the city and a new service economy is beginning to emerge. So, today, one of the big mules theoretically would be the president ofUAB. Q: This is a two-part question. Do you think history would have been made the way it has been made if it had not been for the kids, if adults had marched instead? A: I think we would both say of course not. The kids made all the difference. Q: The second part is I lived in Thailand during the Vietnam War during ----- , but is was not until the last one when the students marched and the adults were afraid to do anything. They saw their children being killed, whole country took over. Is that what it is going to take here to do something about what is 32 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville going on in the rest of the world now in Afghanistan? American children can give dollars, have American children say stop bombing and killing. A: That is a very good point. Q: If Nixon had won the election or somebody else had been president, are you implying that they would have reacted the exact same way or if President Kennedy as an individual had anything to do with it A: I think Kennedy warmed up to black folk and Civil Rights. Then again, Nixon, since you brought him up, is the fellow who gives us affirmative action. Q: It sounds like you are both from two certain states, Alabama and Georgia. Do you think that Birmingham has a stigma for being involved in the Civil Rights Movement during 1960 unlike Atlanta, Georgia, having a stigma with some of the same leaders that came from that movement. Atlanta seems to have moved into a major US city and Birmingham has sort of done ... A: That is an interesting point. I heard a speech given by the governor of Georgia not too long along; this was last spring. He made the same kind of reference. He said when Birmingham was using fire hoses and police dogs, Atlanta was addressing racial problems and look at how well Atlanta has done and look at how we have surpassed Birmingham. Maynard Jackson said the same kind of things. He said we go to the bargaining table, that is Atlanta's style. By the way, I am an Alabamian; I am not a Georgian. There is an attitude about that in Atlanta, but Atlanta also runs from its past. lt has no past. It has bulldozed whatever was historically significant, just about in the city. It was shunned any kind of connection to its Civil War heritage just about, of course it 33 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville was burning during the war.___ is an antivillain town, in part to try to overcome racist views from Gone With The Wind and other things but in other ways just because it is typical of a metropolis. It is the center of the state's multinational corporations and it is historical in many ways. Birmingham, on the other hand though, has very much seemed to have hung on to its Civil Rights past for the longest time as a sore spot. It is hard to overcome that. Today, though, Birmingham is capitalizing on it and using it for heritage tourism. In the state of Alabama, thanks to initiation of a woman named Francis Smiley and a fellow named Aubrey Miller who were working in the Department of Tourism for the state under George Wallace the governor, promoted Civil Rights, black heritage in Alabama. They have created a tourism package that is drawing thousands into the state, thousands to the institute and the institute is the shining star of the whole thing. I would say, however, that it is wrong to suggest that Birmingham was held back because of its racism and Atlanta progressed because it was less racists. Atlanta was very racist. Atlanta was the headquarters for the Ku Klux Klan. Atlanta was segregated up until the l 940's as Birmingham ever dreamed of being. It was only because Atlanta's entire political economy was premised on transportation and it had a lot of locally owned capital and institutions like Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines, and several other corporations. Birmingham had the misfortune of being owned by Pittsburgh in large measure. There was indigenous capital, but it was so compromised by US steel that it really was handicapped by the industry itself. A: I understand the premise of your question and I share the premise of the your question, that is to say that Birmingham lagged into a racist, repressive state longer than 34 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville many other southern cities. The key to that has to do also with absentee ownership by US steel. Even during the l 960's when there was an effort to try to get people to sit down around the table to talk about a better community, the US steel representatives who lived in Pittsburgh and elsewhere did not participate fully. So, I think that where we made a mistake as a point that Glenn made is that we were owned by outside interests. The second point I would make is that the people who were owners of even the businesses within Birmingham that Fred Shuttlesworth and others were trying to desegregate by enlarge did not vote in Birmingham either. They lived in a suburban area. So, we had a peculiar kind of array of who lived in Birmingham and who participated in government. Diane Mc Whorter has written a book. It would be interesting to hear how some historians evaluate her book, but she does talk about the role of some of these elite interests and industrial interests in holding Birmingham back. A: I would say today though Birmingham is a great place. You can drive across it without too much difficulty, nice communities to live in. You can buy anything you want there. If you cannot get it, you can get it on the Internet, you know. Why live in Atlanta? A: I would agree why live in Atlanta. Q: Any other questions? Q: Who was more in the Civil Rights Movement, was it the middle class, the lower middle class? Who was doing it? Who was the movement force behind it? A: The movement force was made up of working class people and their preachers. Now, the role I think is incorrect and I will yield to what Glenn's records show on this. It is incorrect to say that the middle class was not involved at all. In terms of the class basis 35 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville for the Shuttlesworth movement if happened to have been what sociologist would call lower class. A: The middle class had been active in voting rights registration campaigns. The NAACP had been very active in that in Birmingham for decades. The movement of folks on the street under Shuttlesworth were from Collegeville which was in the center of a number of industrial neighborhoods around ___ _ and railroad yards. They worked in those plants. The Birmingham Historical Society is doing great work trying to get Bethel Baptist Church on the national register because of the significance of that church and pointing to the community-based support for the civil rights movement out of that church. It came from black workers, paycheck vote. A: Plus, people who had been in the Labor Movement, there is a strong connection in Birmingham with the protest from the Labor Movement as well. Q: I just have a couple of things that I am curious about. When you introduced him, did he say that you have been in Albany since 1984. A: Yes, that is right. Q: I was just wondering where you grew up and if you have a sense of what happened then in your own personal experience? A: I am after all this. A: That is what I have told her. He is a young fellow, so that is why I told the story. Q: I would like for you to share with us if you can the benefit about the how the company is doing. (inaudible) 36 �The Civil Rights Movement in Alabama UAH - The University of Alabama in Huntsville A: The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute from the beginning proposed that we would do as complete an oral history project as we could, first emphasizing those folks that who were directly involved in the movement in the 1950's and early 1960's. So, the first part of the project, now about 300 people, interviewed as many folks as we could find who were involved in the movement, itself. We defined the movement as being those activities that were sponsored by Shuttleworth's group and others from 1956 when the NAACP was at large through 1965 when the Voting Rights Act was formed. That is our definition of the movement for our research in the institute having to do with the movement. We are going to expand that old history project to have folks who were involved in other protests movements and a large section on the Labor Movement on education, which was very important, in the Birmingham community right after World War II. Q: (inaudible) A: The bombing on Sixteenth Street occurred in September of 1963, afier the demonstrations. They were in Birmingham in 1961 with Freedom Rights; Diane Nash was. Bevel was there with King in 1963 in the spring, so he had come back. They were in and out over and over again. I heard you had Diane Nash. You were very fortunate to get to have her come speak. I hope you enjoyed the experience. Closing: Thank you again for coming and remember next week's program will be at Alabama A&M, The Huntsville Civil Rights Movement. 37 � 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_000021 Title A name given to the resource Digitized transcription of VHS tape of "Trial by Fire and Water: Birmingham, 1963" (Part II). Description An account of the resource Glenn Eskew, Horace Huntley, and Odessa Woolfolk are the speakers in this lecture given at Alabama A&M. 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 2001-10-18 Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 2000-2009 Subject The topic of the resource Eskew, Glenn T., 1962 Huntley, Horace, 1942 Woolfolk, Odessa, 1932- Civil rights movements--Southern States--History--20th century Birmingham (Ala.) Jefferson County (Ala.) Segregation African Americans--Legal status, laws, etc. 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/400">VHS tape of "Trial by Fire and Water: Birmingham, 1963" (Part II). Box 2, Tape 6</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. 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Extent The size or duration of the resource. 37 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/388">Trial by Fire and Water: Birmingham, 1963 (Part II) - Speakers Glenn Eskew, Horace Huntley, and Odessa Woolfolk - Transcription of Tape 6, 2003 Box 1, File 7</a> University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/32/11354/Hulett_and_Frye.jpg 1e01f035a68b8fd312c2e25713aed161 https://digitalprojects.uah.edu/files/original/32/11354/uah_civr_000008_Box_2_Tape_8.mp4 1804b7426bb520dd0f1f36c8c39251b6 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 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) http://libarchstor2.uah.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=uah_civr_000008.xml OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka UAH The University of Alabama in Huntsville "Bloody Lowndes" and the Black Panther Party Speaker: John Hulett, Frye Gaillard I am Sherry Marie Shuck, Assistant Professor of History at UAH. Welcome to the ninth installment of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, 14-week symposium centered around a series of public lectures, panels and first-hand account of significant events taking place in the state of Alabama. This series is held alternately at UAH and Alabama A&amp;M University. After three years of planning, this unique intellectual project is a joint venture between Alabama A&amp;M University and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The members of the Steering Committee in alphabetical order are: Mitch Berbrier of UAH, John Dimrnock ofUAH, Jack Ellis of UAH, James Johnson of AAMU, Carolyn Parker of AAMU and Lee Williams, II, of UAH. Throughout its work. the planning committee has also been greatly assisted by the efforts of Joyce Maples of UAH's University Relations. We ask that you complete an evaluation form for this program and leave it here on the stage or with an attendant at the exit. This series on the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama would not have been possible without the financial support of numerous sponsors whom the planning committee wishes to acknowledge at this time. First and foremost is the Alabama Humanities Foundation, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities; The Huntsville Times, DESE Research Incorporated, Mevatec Corporation, Alabama Representative Laura Hall and Senator Hank Sanders. Joining our efforts from Alabama A&amp;M University is the Office of the President, The Office of the Provost, the State Black Archives Research Center and Museum, the Title III Telecommunications who are responsible for taping these sessions and we give a special thanks to all of you and Distance Learning, the Office of Student Development, the A&amp;M Honors Center, Sociology/Social Work, Political Science and History. At the University of Alabama in Huntsville, we greatly acknowledge funding assistance from the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, the Humanities Center, the Division of Continuing Education, the Department of Sociology, its Social Issues Symposium, the Honors Program, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, Student Affairs, The Copy Center and the UAH History Forum Bankhead Foundation, which is serving as the local host for tonight's activities; and with the kind help of Staff Assistant Beverly Robinson, who has prepared a reception back stage immediately following tonight's lecture to which you are all invited. We would like to remind you that next Tuesday, November 6th, we have a special guest lecturer, Dr. Hilliard Lackey, Professor of History at Jackson State University who will speak on the Selma Voting Rights Campaign, which will be held in Room 111 of the School of Business at Alabama A&amp;M University at 7 p.m. Next Thursday, our series will take place at the Ernest Knight Reception Center at Alabama A&amp;M University. Our focus will be the struggle for voting rights in Selma, culminating in the event of March 7, 1965, known as Bloody Sunday in which state troopers in an armed posse led by local sheriff, Jim Clark, used clubs an tear gas to beat back peaceful marches attempting to cross Edmund Pettus Bridge on their way to Montgomery. Our speaker will be Congressman John Lewis of Georgia's 5th District, one of the towering figures of the Civil Rights Movement. A native of Torre, Alabama, an author of Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, published in 1998, Congressman Lewis was active in the national sit-ins, the freedom rides, the Selma movement and was at the head of the marcher's attack on Pettus Bridge. He will be joined by New York writer Mary Stanton, author of the book From Selma to Sorrow: the Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo, published in 1998. Tonight, we look at events that took place not far from Selma in a Blackbelt County, whose tradition of violence against African-Americans and Civil Rights workers earned it the unenviable nickname of Bloody Lowndes. Two classic examples of Lowndes County terrorism are the Klan murder on March 25, 1965, of Mrs. Viola Liuzzo, a white Civil Rights volunteer from Michigan along US Highway 80, followed by the shotgun slaying of Jonathan Daniels, a 26-year­ old Divinity student from New Hampshire at Varner's Cash Store in Hayneville. Such atrocities had prevented any black resident from being registered to vote for over half a century, even though they outnumbered local whites by more than 3 to I. Blacks who wished to register not only faced expulsion from the farms where they lived and worked but also a constant threat of physical violence. In a county where only 800 white men resided, Mr. John Hulett observed in 1966, that "there are 550 of them who walk around with guns on them. They are deputies. It might sound like a fairy tale to most people, but this is true." Mr. Hulett was at the center of the struggle to bring change to Lowndes County and what he accomplished there had repercussions far beyond the Blackbelt and state of Alabama. To introduce him with our second distinguished guest on stage tonight, prize-winning journalist, Frye Gaillard, a call upon Ms. Erin Reed, a history graduate student at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and president of Phi Alpha Theta, the history honorary society... Ms. Reed. Introduction: In defending the cause of freedom over the past 5 decades, Mr. John Hulett has served in many ways, from union activist and civil rights leader to county sheriff and probate judge. In his book, Outside Agitator, John Daniels and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, historian Charles W. Eagles, portrays Mr. Hulett as the leader of the Civil Rights struggle in Lowndes County and as a "tireless, determined worker with unusual intensity and powerful personality." Born in a tiny community of Gordonsville, Mr. Hulett passed his formative years in rural bonds. It was here, according to Professor Eagles, that his grandfather born in slavery had managed during his life to acquire more than a hundred acres in addition to a gristmill, a sawmill and a cotton gin. Finishing high school in 1946, Mr. Hulett soon left the family's farm to live in Birmingham. There, he was hired as a foundry worker for the Birmingham Stove and Range Company. This marked the beginning of his life as an activist, first as president of the Foundry Worker's Union and then as a reformer seeking to improve the lives of those in Pratt City where he lives. By 1949, he had joined the NAACP and after it was banned he joined the Successor Organization created by Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, known as the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. In Birmingham, Mr. Hulett was also successful in his attempts to register to vote. Returning to Lowndes County in 1959, Mr. Hulett soon emerged as the leader of local efforts to combat the poll tax and to gain the right to register for local African­ Americans. This brought him into direct conflict with a white minority that dominated that county and that for 50 years had ensured that no black person could vote or serve on juries. By March of 1965, only he and one other black resident had succeeded in being registered, despite an appearance at the courthouse in Hayneville that month by Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, who sought unsuccessfully to register 37 local residents. In response, Mr. Hulett help organize the Lowndes County Christian Movement for Human Rights and served as its first president. Passage of the Voting Rights Act in August 1965 along with presence of federal registrars helped ensure that African-Americans would become a voting majority in Lowndes County. In order to solidify the gains achieved by this and to prevent the local democrat party from again disenfranchising blacks by raising fees for office seekers, Mr. Hulett was instrumental in founding an alternative party, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. This party was organized on April 2, 1966, with Mr. Hulett and it took as its symbol the black panther. In Lowndes County, he explained, we have been deprived of our rights to speak, to move and to do whatever we want to do at all times and now we are going to start moving. On November 8 of this year, we plan to take over the courthouse in Hayneville and whatever it takes to do it, we're going to do it. In 1969, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization became part of the National Democratic Party of Alabama whose electoral victories the following year included that of John Hulett as sheriff, the first African-American to be elected to that office there. Tonight, Mr. Hulett will share with us memories of his life and struggle m Lowndes County from his youth and early involvement in the Voter Registration Campaign to the founding of the Black Panther Party, to the Selma movement and the murders of Viola Liuzzo and John Daniels and finally to the changes that has witnessed over the past 40 years. Along with Mr. Hulett, we are also privileged to have as our guest on stage tonight journalist and author Frye Gaillard. Mr. Gaillard will be interviewing Mr. Hulett. Mr. Gaillard lives and works in Charlotte, North Carolina. He is a free-lance writer with special interests in the culture, religion and social history of the American south. He has written or edited 18 books touching on various aspects of this southern experience from black and Native American history to country music and Habitat for Humanity. Mr. Gaillard is a native of Mobile and in 1994 described his own family's history in a book entitled, Lessons from the Big House, One Family's Passage through the History of the South. Between 1964 and 1968, Mr. Gaillard studied at Vanderbilt University, graduating with a major in history. After a brief stint with the Associated Press in 1972, he joined the Charlotte Observer, serving first as a staff writer, then as editorial writer and columnist and finally as southern editor. He remained with this newspaper until 1990 when he decided to pursue free-lance writing. During those years, Mr. Gaillard won numerous awards for excellence in reporting including awards from the North Carolina Press Association and the Associated Press. Among Mr. Gaillard's books are several that bear directly on the Civil Rights Movement, The Greensboro Four Civil Rights Pioneers, The Way We See It, documentary , photography by the Children of Charlotte which he published with his daughter Rachel and the Dream Long Deferred which detailed the landmark school desegregation struggle in Charlotte. This book won the Gustavus Myers Award for writing on the subject of human rights. At present, Mr. Gaillard is working on a book detailing the Civil Rights Movement here in Alabama. It will be titled, Cradle of Freedom, The History of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama.. It is scheduled to be published by the University of Alabama Press in 2002. We are pleased to have both interviewer and interviewee with us this evening. Please join me in a warm welcome. Frye Gaillard: We are happy to be here tonight to participate in this program. I was fortunate to be here for one of the other programs, with Diane Dash on September 13th two days after some fairly significant events in the world. My wife and I were driving down and we thought there would be us and Diane Nash at the auditorium, but it was an amazing turnout. It is a testament to the kind of interest that you have in this community, in this subject and also to the really well planned nature of the program that you have been fortunate to be a part of, I think. I have been asked and have worked for the last two years researching what the University of Alabama Press is calling a popular history of the Civil Rights Movement. By that, they mean they want a journalist and a storyteller rather than a historian to write about it and to keep it short. One of things that I have had the privilege of doing is talking to a lot of people who were foot shoulders in the movement, people that I have never in many cases ever heard of. I grew up in those days in Alabama and sort of came of age with an awareness of what was going on in the state. There are so many people who have such rich stories and one of those people are obviously the guest of honor here tonight, John Hulett. I knew that I wanted to meet John Hulett ever since the time in the early 1970's. I was working for the newspaper in Charlotte and I was doing a story on the impact of the Civil Rights Movement on the south in general and one of the places I visited was Lowndes County. I remember driving down one of the back roads in Lowndes County and Lowndes County has a lot of back roads. I was passing this farmhouse and there was kind of a rutted two-lane path that led up to the farmhouse and there was a black man sitting on the porch of this farmhouse. So, I drove up to just see what he might have to say about the Civil Rights Movement and the impact that it had on his life. He was a little skeptical at first of this white stranger who had driven up to his place, but we sat on the porch in these flimsy old aluminum chairs and we talked for a while and began to connect, I think. We started to talk about the movement and the impact that it had and I said, can you tell me what it has meant to you that the Civil Rights Movement occurred in the south and in the state of Alabama. He said, oh, that's an easy question to answer; the biggest difference it has made in my life is that John Hulett is sheriff of Lowndes County and I didn't know exactly what he meant and I said, well talk about this a little bit more. What do you mean by that? He said, let me tell you a story and he told me the story of the night that he was on his way home; this was a man named Ervin Henson. He told me the story of a night that he was on his way home and his car broke down on the side of the road. So, he had to leave it and walk and this was not something that you wanted to happen in the pre-Civil Rights days in Lowndes County, Alabama. He was walking by himself on the road and a car with two deputy sheriffs passed by him. They pulled to a stop, demanded what to know what he was doing and he just told them that he was on his way home. They got out of the car and one of them clubbed him over the head with a nightstick. They handcuffed his hands behind his back and pitched him bleeding and semiconscious into the trunk of the police car. They drove around with him in the trunk of car until it was almost dawn and what Mr. Henson said is that it does not happen any more because John Hulett is sheriff of Lowndes County, Alabama. And the more I began to talk to people about this, the more clear it became that there were these sort of stages that the Civil Rights Movement went through. You had this kind of feeling of daybreak in Montgomery with the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the sort of first time that black people in a kind of mass way took a stand for freedom and justice and actually accomplished something and accomplished very tangible results. Of course, you had the freedom rides where young black people and activists served noticed that there was no place too terrifying for the movement to go and that violence would not overcome nonviolence no matter what. You had Birmingham with the police dogs, the fire hoses and those images that seared the conscious of people all over the country. You had Selma and the Montgomery March that led to the most revolutionary single change that the movement accomplished which was the right to vote for black people everywhere. You also had these other struggles that were taking place in Huntsville, Gadsden, Mobile, Tuskegee, Tuscaloosa and all of these other places and you had the struggle in the Blackbelt that John Hulett knows so well, which I think the final movement was the victory over fear. If you were black... and I am going to ask Judge Hulett about this in a minute. But, if you were black in Lowndes County, Alabama, you lived with fear every single day of your life because you knew that white people, if they chose, could do anything to you that they wanted to almost with impunity, but at least the legal system would offer you no protection whatsoever and in fact, in most cases, was part of the problem and this is what they changed. This is the final stage of the movement and so that is what we will get to tonight. The format that we are going to use is one that neither John Hulett nor I would have thought of; I think I am safe in saying. I was doing an interview with him in Hayneville at the courthouse and there was a professor from Auburn who happened to be with me who was so fascinated by the answers that I was getting to these questions that she said, you know, you guys need to do this publicly. We need to take you to some of the schools in Alabama. So, we tried it out before a couple of high school audiences and survived and we figured that was about as tough a crowd as we could have and then we did it at Auburn one time too. So, we are going to try it again tonight. Hopefully, it will work and if you have questions, feel free either to jump in or when I finish getting us started then I will kind of open it up to the audience and you guys can ask whatever you would like to know as well. So, I just want to say before I start what a privilege it is for me to be here with one of the genuine heroes of this movement that you guys have been talking about. Q: Judge Hulett, you grew up in the Blackbelt in the 1930s and 1940s. Talk a little bit about what it was like for black people in those days in that part of Alabama. What are some of your memories growing up then and do you agree with Ervin Henson and others that it was a dangerous place to be if you were black? A: Certainly, I do. I was born in 1927 in Gordonsville, Alabama; that's close to the County Seat of Haynesville, and during that time the entire county was farming country. Most people who lived in that county were sharecroppers. You had to work on other folks plantation, if you know what a sharecropper is, and when you work on peoples plantations you had to do what they say do or you had to go or get killed or a thing of that time, but I lived in Lowndes County and grew up there. I went to school at an all black school and finished grammar school and high school. I came out of high school in 1946, but it was a lot filth that went on during that time. I can remember many times, at night times, we had a sheriff in that county, a real nice brother and he would drive by, and if you were walking the road at night, especially a few black boys walking the road, he would catch you and beat you. I know one friend of mine whose brother went to school with us that he beat one night and finally he died from that beating, but nothing was done about it; I can remember that. Plenty people he would beat. He would walk up to a place that if you had a music box playing, he would just walk up and take his Billy stick and tear it up and start shooting at it. He was that type of person. Oto Mural was our sheriff and he stayed in it as long as he wanted to. When he got ready to run for probate judge, the people denied him the opportunity to be the probate judge, but they wanted a man like that for sheriff. Q: Now, in the those days, back in the 1930s, the Tenant Farmers Unit, came into Lowndes County and tried to organize sharecroppers who were living in conditions not very far removed from slavery. I remember talking to one elderly man, Mr. Charles Smith, who remembered that as a young man in Lowndes County we were working for almost nothing and he talked about how they struck to try to get paid a dollar a day and they walked out of the fields and the person who organized the strike at the Bell plantation that he was part of was shot down by the sheriff of the overseer in cold blood. Did you hear of those kind of stories when you were growing up? Did you hear about that kind of thing? A: Yes, I did. I talked to Mr. Lemon Bogen whose one of the persons who was involved that. The late Lemon Bogen, he's dead now, but he also talked about how bad it was and how people would beat up people and shoot individuals. This was the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement when he started telling more about most of this type stuff. He always said when you go out on these plantations be careful cause they will kill you. Q: So, when the Civil Rights Movement really started in Lowndes County, Alabama, it was part of the collective memory of the people there and what could happen to people who stood up for themselves? I mean, you knew that you were laying your life on the line to do that? A: This is true. I did know that. Q: What do you think gave you the courage to do it? Was it some of the experiences that you had at other places? I know you left Lowndes County for awhile, worked in Birmingham, both in the Labor Movement and in the Civil Rights Movement there. Did you learn things there that were important to you later on? A: Yes, I did. In Birmingham I worked with, under the Rev. Shuttersworth and the most important thing happened was the bombing of church, Arthur Shores house and Autherine Lucy was trying to enter into the University of Alabama. So, a few of us got together and would sit guard at Arthur Shores house that night. Q: Now, he was an attorney? A: He was an attorney who represented Autherine Lucy and I can remember one night sitting there about 3 o' clock in the morning and a shout would come out, there's a car driving up with no lights on it. It was a police car and see most of this stuff that went on was done by law enforcement officers or people who they allowed to do what needed to be done. So, when we came out with those guns in our hands. The lights came on the car and then they said they were just checking to see how everything was. That was the beginning of it, but when I went back to Lowndes County it was a whole different ball game because Lowndes County was predominantly black as far as population but such a dangerous place to be in during that time and we got back into Lowndes County. We had a few people that tried to register to vote but was denied. There was not a single registered voter in Lowndes County and in 1965, the first week in March, the voter registration would be opened 2 days, the first and third week of the month. We got about 65 people to go and get registered to vote. Most of them were afraid to get out of there car when it they got to the courthouse, but somebody had to have the courage, so I took the leadership to walk in the courthouse and find out where to register at. The first thing l was told by one of the registrars was that we have not permitted you all here, go down to the old jail; that's where we going to register the people 2 weeks from now. I immediately went to that old jail, went all through it and looked at the gallows to see where they had been hanging people for years. You had to have that kind of nerve. Two weeks later, we went back to that jail and I happen to take the leadership and carry the blind man along with me, the late Reverend Jesse Lawson. They passed two of us that day out of about 25 or 30 people that went through it. They passed me and they passed Reverend Lawson and you had to do answer questions on those older tests at that time. One of the questions that they asked me I can remember, what hospital the president had been in during that time. Now, there are no televisions, very few radios in the radio in the neighborhood, but I did remember it was Walter Reed Hospital and I said that and they passed me. I do not think I passed the test, seriously. They passed me to get rid of me, but every time the voter's registration was open I was back there again until we were able to get enough people registered to vote. Q: You had registered to vote in Birmingham when you lived there. ls that correct? A: This is true. I registered to vote in Birmingham. Q: So, some of the experiences that you had in Birmingham were kind of things that you imported back to Lowndes County? A: That's right. Q: I know one of the interviews that I did recently you mentioned Reverend Shuttlesworth. He tells the story of Christmas night, 1956, right after the end of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and he had announced that the next day, December 26th, he was going to ride in front of the bus in Birmingham. He was lying in his bed and the parsonage of his house and 14 sticks of dynamite went off on the comer of the house right under the bed where he was lying. The floor collapsed and the ceiling collapsed but fell just short of where he was. He felt himself falling through the floor to the ground, landed on the bed and he said later that he felt like he was landing in the arms of God and if he had ever been afraid until then, he was never afraid again. I am guessing that kind of example of courage inspired you to look inside yourself for the kind of courage that you have because you had to have it in Lowndes County. A: Yes. You had to have it in Lowndes County. I lived about almost a mile and a half off the main road. If you have ever lived in the country, you did not have cattle gaps because the drive crossed the cattle gap. You would have to open three gates before you get my house and that was the most fearful thing that somebody might be lying out in the weeds waiting on you. When you open this gate, they could ambush you, but it never happened to me. I kept God in the front and I kept doing what I needed to do to make life better for the people in our country. Q: One of things that happened in a lot of places during the Civil Rights Movements was that in every case there were local people who were there to take a stand. They would stand up for what was right, what was just and what was decent and fair, but there was also in many cases people who came in from the outside to encourage people. I want to talk about two of the people who came into Lowndes County. One of them was Stokeley Carmichael and the other was Jonathan Daniels. Now, there were others too who were every important and we have talked about them as well, but let's take those in order. Give us your recollection of Stokely Carmichael, one of the toughest organizers in SNCC; I think its fair to say. What was your impression of him as a person, a human being, an organizer and a leader and how well did you get to know him? A: Just like a brother because he had worked around me quite a bit. I think Stokely was a great person. He had worked in Mississippi with the movement there and when he came into Lowndes County he knew he had an uphill journey. We worked close together and that is why we organized the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. Every place they would go into they was looked at by state troopers every were they went. I remember one incident that took place. One day, there was a group of people that decided to picket in Fort Deposit, Alabama. They arrested about 20 people in that area. Stokely was a passenger in a car and during that same day was arrested and charged with reckless driving as a passenger. So, you can see how bad they wanted Stokely Carmichael. He was a great person. He was a great organizer. He stayed with the people in the community and we worked together to try to make Lowndes County better. We had organized the Lowndes County Christian Movement for Human Rights. If you can remember the movement in Birmingham; it was the Alabama Christian Movement. So, the day we went over to get registered and was denied that right, Dr. King came over, but we didn't see him, we went down that night and organized the Lowndes County Christian Movement of Human Rights. I was chosen temporary chairman of that group until we was able to have a mass meeting and the people decided to go ahead and keep me there, but this was the beginning of it. Q: Now, there were people who later came to regard Stokely Carmichael as a violent person. Did you think of him that way? A: No sir. He was not a violent person. I never saw him do anything violent to anybody. He would speak up, but he would not threaten anybody or talk about killing or all that type stuff. Q: And that was most emphatically your experience with him in Lowndes County. A: This is true. Q: Okay. Let's talk about Jonathan Daniels a little bit, a white, Episcopal seminarian who came to Lowndes County and did not get out alive. What was your view of Jonathan Daniels? A: He was a great person. He was interested in what was going on. He did not try to do anything wrong. The day that they had this picket in Fort Deposit, Alabama (that's the largest town in the county) he joined that group without my knowledge. I was in Fort Deposit, but I did not know he was going to be a part of that group and it was dangerous for any white to join the black in Fort Deposit. When got there that morning in town, they had every police officer they could get and everything, just waiting. In a moment, if they made about 10 steps, they were arrested and out in a two-cell jail with 20 something people. They had to get a dump truck. You know what a dump truck is. The one with the side bars on it. They put them on that dump truck and put a black police officer and brought them in. This was when Stokely was arrested. He was not in that picket. They wanted him so bad. I am going to be honest with you. There were two pickup trucks and everywhere they would go, one of the trucks would get in the front. If they would make a right into them, the one behind would get in the front and just hit breaks all of a sudden until it made them bump them. When they bumped them, the police arrested them and put both of them in jail and charged them with reckless driving. I have a record of that showing that 2 people got charged for reckless driving in the same automobile, but this was the type of situation we lived in that day and time. There were white people that walked around with shotguns. I can never forget that day. I went to the town hall to try to make arrangements with the chief to try and get them out of jail. I could not get anybody to go with me, but I finally took the same car they were driving and drove it to the town hall and waited there while and carried another fellow. There was 14 people and I am not going to lie to you sitting on the sidewalk with shotguns, rifles and pistols. Q: White people? A: White people and they all came inside when the chief of police came in. He wanted to know what I wanted and I told him that I wanted to try to make bond to get Stokely out of jail because I believe they would kill him there. He said no that I could not get him out of jail he is up in Lowndes County and I can never forget the last man. A double barrel shotgun passed by and I rolled my pistol on the floor and he almost ran over the next man. I can remember that just like daylight today and I found out then it has to be a group of you doing it to do it like it ought to be done. You know what I'm saying. They were afraid themselves, but they were out there doing these types of things. Stokely stayed in jail; that was on a Saturday. On Wednesday, I went by the jailhouse and carried food to feed the people that they took to jail. Some of them we made bond, except for Stokely and one or two more. On a Friday evening, I went to Montgomery and when I came back the town was full of police officers and other white people. Black folks were afraid to speak to me almost when I got out of the car on the comer at the intersection. I asked what was going on. Why were all of these people were in town? They said, they killed those two white preachers. That's what they said. They had killed Jonathan Daniels. They first shot and killed him and the second shot hit Father Marshall from the back and it took 12 hours to operate on him at St. Jude Hospital, but he finally lived from it. I have had seven meetings with him since that time. This was the kind of conditions we had to live in during that time. Q: How were you able to persuade the average person in Lowndes County that it was possible to change a situation that went as deeply as this one went, where white supremacy was defended as completely by violence and any means necessary? How did you convince people that it was possible to make a change? A: We were meeting together in groups. We were having mass meetings and we would speak to them from those mass meetings. He gave a lot of courage to people that they could overcome what was going on. We would talk about what was going on. We would go on plantations on a daily basis. I quit my job and the movement paid me. The Lowndes County Christian Movement gave me a salary to work. Q: How much was that? A: My salary was 25 dollars every first Sunday; that is a month. I did not work long hours. I just worked about 9 or 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. When I went on plantations, bosses were there. You had to have a lot of courage to stand up. I would carry about one or two ladies around with me, most times just riding with me. I would speak up and be straight with people. I was able to get a lot of things done when I started doing that. People would go out and get registered. They just believed that I was doing the right thing. Not only me, but there were other people in the movement as well, like the Jackson family, Mattie Lee Murrell; these were older people. They were strong. They stood up and decided to go ahead and go out and register to vote. They wanted to change life for their children and ourselves. Q: One of the people that I interviewed in Lowndes County was a SNCC organizer who came in there by the name of Bob Mantz and he still lives there. I was asking him where he found the courage to do the things that he had to do. He said it was so terrifying. There were times when he could barely make himself do the things that he needed to do. He said it was so terrifying. _in Lowndes County that there were time he could barely make himself do what he needed to do. I said, where did you find the courage and he said it came from the people of Lowndes County. He told me the story of going to this house where an elderly black woman, almost 100 years old, was bedridden. She was lying in a bedroom off from the living room where he was talking to other people in the family. He heard this frail voice saying tell that boy to come in here; I want to talk to him. So, he went in to talk to this old lady. She looked up at him and she pointed this bony finger at him from her bed and she said, I have been praying that you boys would come into Lowndes County ever since I saw you march around Mr. Lincoln's grave. Of course, what she meant was that she had seen the march on Washington on television and had been praying that people would come into Lowndes County and trigger a movement in Lowndes County. Bob Mantz said and what I have heard you say as well is that the courage of average people became contagious after awhile. People just held each other help. That is the example from you and other some other people. A: This is true. At the same time, there were people who worked on the plantations. If you were hoeing, you made 25 cents a day and if you were on you got 50 cents a day. We started telling people to go to Montgomery and get jobs and start making life better for them. So, that gave them a lot of courage to come out and do what needed to be done. That made a difference. I want to say one other thing. When Stokely got arrested in Prattville I was suppose to have gone over with him, but I had another speaking engagement with a group of folks in my county. He got arrested the next morning. A young lady called me, a school teacher named Ms. Darby Henson. She said, come ride over to Prattville with me. When I got over there, Stokely was in jail. I drove up to the chief of police and asked him could I walk down the hill to one of the Civil Rights workers; they are in a housing house. He said, go ahead but do not stay long. I walked just a short distance and when I looked out of the window he had a carbine rifle punching her in the car, and that was the most hurting thing I have ever seen in my life. So, I came back out. They had the National Guards. State troopers were over there. When I came back out, the punch did not hit me, but they punched after me until I got to the car. I got in the back seat of the car on the passenger's right side. The same person opened the car door and punched me in the face. If l had not snatched by head, I would have broken my jawbone. I made up my mind. I am going to say this because I am serious about it; I was going to get him if I had to burn his house down, his wife and children. Let me be serious with you. I went home that night and prayed about it. It looked like the Lord just came to me like daylight and said do not do that; that is not the way to do it. I did not do it. I prayed about it and things changed for us. Sometimes, you cannot take on violence because you believe you ought to do something. You cannot make a fast decision, just pray about it, but I was punched in the face. A few months later I had a gun in the shop.I went to Montgomery to get the gun out the shop. I had to go up to a lawyer's office. I got on the elevator. Now, I do not even know the man because I never seen him before who punched me in the face. So, when I got on that elevator, he was on that elevator and he came off running like a . The people over there were saying what is going on. I said, do not worry about it' everything is okay. I am not going to bother him. When you treat people wrong, it will come back to you. The next time I got a chance to see him was at the University of Alabama. Everybody was introducing themselves. I was just elected sheriff. When it got around to him, he was sitting across the big conference table and he gave his name in front of me, but he never was able to come back and say I am sorry and that is a bad thing. When you do wrong, you ought to do it. While I am telling it, I want to tell this incident. In 1983, in the line of duty, I got shot in the back by a black man who was on drugs. Q: You were sheriff? A: I was sheriff. One of my deputies reached to shoot him closer than this gentleman over here. I told him not to shoot him. If he was shooting to kill that man and made a mistake and killed somebody else, he would have done more harm than it helped good. After he went to the penitentiary and stayed awhile, I never signed papers to keep him in, I met him one morning after he had gotten out and we out our arms around each one other and forgot about everything. A few months later, I married him to a girl from Pratt, Alabama. I think this is the type of life you have to do. I think about Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for our sins. If we are going to hold things against one another the rest of our lives, white or black, we are wrong. There was an elder man who was part of our movement by the name of Mr. Calan Hayes. We would call him CC Hayes. He always said, John whatever you all do, do not try to do evil for evil to people, not even to us. He passed away a few months ago, but I thank God for that type of thing. We have tried to live right. Q: Let's talk about this whole idea of the changes in Lowndes County and the whole idea of forgiveness and fairness once those changes happened, two questions about that. First of all, in 1966, you ran for sheriff for the first time under the banner of what some people called the Black Panther Party. Now, that was not literally the name of the party, but the emblem of the party was the black panther. Talk about the symbolism of that party, why you ran under that banner and then we will move on to the next question which has to do with when you were elected in 1970. A: Let me say this, I did not run. I was head of the Lowndes County Christian Movement and in 1966 when we got ready to run candidates the Democratic Party, if you can remember, had over the banner white supremacy for the . There was a 50 dollar fee to qualify for sheriff. When we got ready to run, a black man Sidney Logan, Jr., they went to 500 dollars. So, we immediately decided to organize the Lowndes County Freedom Organization and we had to have a symbol, like the rooster was for the Democratic Party or the elephant was for the Republican Party. We organized the Lowndes County Freedom Organization and we had to come up with a symbol. We kind of kicked names around and we came up with the black panther. The reason why we did this is because the black panther is not a violent animal but when you push it to a corner, it will come out and do whatever it has to do. If you lived in Lowndes County, you better had something to let folks know you were serious about it. So, we chose that black panther for the party. We lost the election in 1966 and something happened to us. If you can remember, in California, there was a group who was in Lowndes County doing the election in 1966. Q: Huey Newton and some others? A: Huey Newton. They went back to California and got their guns and things. They would get in their cars and follow a policeman around and one of them finally killed a police officer according the records. Because of that, we just decided that the emblem of the black panther was not the best thing for Lowndes County people. We did not want anyone to get hurt in Lowndes County because of what they were doing in California. Dr. John Cashin, from Huntsville, Alabama, came down to Lowndes County and Green County and we got together and organized the NOPA and used the eagle for our symbol and nobody said a word about that. Logan lost in 1966 and in 1970, I ran for sheriff under the National Democratic Party. I won by 210 votes because a lot of our people were afraid to vote for me because there was a thing out that they were going to kill John Hulett if he wins within 3 days after I was elected. I had to go to a lot of these old people that I had trusted in and that loved me because they did not want to see me die. So, I said go ahead and vote for me. I will live if have to stay in the woods 3 days. After that, I won 5 more elections without having any problems whatsoever with white or black. Q: That is right. It was not you that lost in 1966. It was Sidney Logan and then you ran in 1970. In terms of the kind of spirit that you brought to the Office of Sheriff after you were elected in 1970, the spirit of justice rather than revenge, talk a little bit about your relationship. I think it is a great illustration of this point with Tom Coleman. Tom Coleman was the man who killed Jonathan Daniels, blew him away with a shotgun in cold blood at point blank range in the summer of 1965. Can you tell the story about just before you were running for sheriff that Tom Coleman drove up to you on the square in Hayneville? Tell people about your story. A: He drove over to the square in Hayneville and said John, would you mind riding with me to Lonsborough. Here is the guy who just killed one person and shot the other. I had to show him that I had enough courage to get in that car without a gun or anything. I stepped in that car because I did not think that anybody could do anything to me for driving the car and being up there with him. We rode to Lonsborough and we talked about the incident and what took place. The first thing that he said was that people pushed him in a corner to do this. You know, there was people who encourage him to do this; that is what he was saying. The next thing, which I would not have done to any black, he was trying to do this to white people to keep them out of Lowndes County and from helping us and to slow the process down. This is what this was all about. I told him then that I was going to run for sheriff and I would appreciate it if he vote for me. He said, well I cannot vote for you, but I know you are going to win it. After I won the sheriff race in Lowndes County, he was one of people that kept a monitor in his house. He would call me on a daily and nightly basis. He would let me know that the troopers were trying to get up with me and that I got some debris on the highway. He would get on the road with me at 2 o'clock in the morning. He would clean up the highways. He had done that for me. I think that sometimes you have to live the kind of life that the Lord wants you to live and treat folks like human beings. I never was afraid of him. I worked with his son as a state trooper and an investigator, but this is the type of thing that I have done. I think the best thing in the world to do is let people know that you are not afraid of them, but you are going to do the right thing; black or white, it did not make a difference. Q: Would you say this man became a friend of yours? A: Yes. He became one of the best friends I had as far as letting me know what was going on and talking to me on a regular basis. He had done that. Q: Why do you think he did that? A: I think it could have been out of fear. He could have thought I was going to try and pay him back. A lot of things could have happened. I can never forget. I want to say this while I am talking. I went into Fort Deposit and I walked into a drug store. There were 11 or 12 women in that store and one man who was filling prescriptions. While I was in there, there was a guy who walked around on the outside all the time with a 38 on him with a .Just as I started out of the door, the main way to school, until I got almost to the door like this here, he walked in and said who is your damn so and so and cussing on. Those women were running out of that door. Two or three were trying to get out at the same time. I looked around at the man who was filling the prescription and I would not lie, he was shaking and trembling so the pee was falling on the floor. Somebody has to have some courage. So, I turned around and walked back in there with him wherever he went. Q: The man with the gun? A: Yes. You might shoot me, but you are not going to shoot me in the back. I am going to take this gun from you or you are going to have to shoot me right. I walked back in the store with him for about 5 minutes. He never said another word; I just took his nerve. I finally picked up a bar of candy, paid for it and walked out. He, the drugstore man and I were the only 3 people in there. I never had another word from him. Later, he pulled a gun and said he would never let a nigger arrest him. He pulled a gun on a black man in Fort Deposit and that next morning I got to work after the warrant was signed, he came into the office with Mr. Tom Coleman. That is smart. You understand what I am saying. He believed that Tom Coleman could straighten out some things. I made him sign his bond. I fingerprinted him and told him to make sure you show up in court when time to come and I did not have anymore problems. I never heard another word from him, but he did go to court. These were the types of situations you had to live in. It did not make any difference whether you were right or wrong, white or black; you had to do what was right. I stood my ground the whole time I was in the sheriffs office. I did not care what color he was. If you committed a crime, you went to jail. I would call you and if you did not come, I would go get you. Q: Did you ever have any dealings with George Wallace when you were sheriff? A: Truthfully, I had dealings with George Wallace. George Wallace turned out to be one of my best friends. The first time I became sheriff he had a parade in Greenville and I was the only black sheriff in that parade. I can remember walking by him and he gave me some of his material. Every time I would go to their captain for anything, he would say, sheriff what you want. I had a small staff when I started as sheriff. There was only 3 people. I went up one day and said I need a larger staff and he said okay and tell your representative to come by. I told me my representative, but he did not go by. Two weeks later, I got a check from him to pay for another deputy. That was the kind of person he was and whenever I would come around he would get up and take a picture with me. He would call my house on the weekend and when I got shot, he would call my wife every weekend, Friday night, and tell her how sorry he was, whatever he could do to help he would do it. This was the kind of person George Wallace turned out to be with John Hulett. I was not no Uncle Tom, but I was just doing the right thing. Q: Before we open it up to everybody else's questions, as you look back on the experiences that you had in Lowndes County and the impact that the movement had in Lowndes County and other places in Alabama, what is your bottom line summary of those days. What do you feel was accomplished? To what extent was the movement successful and to what extent did it fall short of what you had hoped for? A: Let me refer back to two things. If you all remember, in the state of Alabama, the only people who served on jurors in the state of Alabama were men. There were very few black men in places like Lowndes County. It was Lowndes County who went to Montgomery and filed a suit, White versus Crooks to allow women to serve as jurors in the state of Alabama.; that originated in Lowndes County, Alabama. The first place they camped out in Lowndes County when they came in was Rose Steel's property. Her granddaughter was the individual who , Ardenia White. So, that is why women are serving today in the state of Alabama. We also had the justice of peace system in the state of Alabama. Most of you might remember the justice of peace. Every county had a justice of peace. In Lowndes County, one day, I was arrested and charged with reckless driving. I went straight to the justice of peace office and said, what would it cost me for this ticket. He said, it was going to cost you 100 dollars and 11 dollars court cost. Excuse me for the expression, but I said I will die and go to hell before I pay it. He said, you can get ready. Next week, I went to Montgomery, attorney Salman Say's office, and talked to him about it cause every justice of peace fine you give them, they get 5 dollars out it. I went to federal court and that is why they do not have any justice of peace in the state of Alabama today. The judge ruled in our favor. That was helpful to the state of Alabama and the woman serving on jury was helpful. There was a number of other things that took place in that county. People were able to hold public office who had never held public office. We got plenty of them now, men and women, not only in Lowndes County but in surrounding counties because of our courage and things that we have done. I have gone into other counties and our joining county, Wilcox County has a black sheriff. When he got ready to run, I encouraged him to run. I went down and spoke for him and he won that election and he has been there ever since. It is a lot you can do to help other people if you would do it. Today, we are still working hard trying to make life better for the people in our county. Let me say this. I am retired now and I could not run for probate judge because of my age, but each morning of my life I get up now and go out and do something for somebody. I pick up aluminum cans off the street and give to the scholarship fund to help children to go to college. I have a group that takes care of it. I plant gardens so there are plenty vegetables to give folks who cannot afford to work. The older people who cannot cut there yards, I cut there yards free. If you need a ramp built or a wheelchair or something, I go out and do it free for people. This is the type of life I live today. God has blessed and I reach out and try to help others. I want to advise all of you, let's try to do the same thing. Q: I think maybe this is a good time to open it up to questions that people out there may have, things that they want to ask Judge Hulett. A: Okay go ahead. Q: If you want to ask them, I will repeat the questions just in case everyone cannot hear you. Do you consider the adverse situations that you faced in Lowndes County, the opposition that you faced when you tried to stand up for what was right, to be state terrorism against the people of Lowndes County? A: This is true as I have said it to a lot of young people lately because I go out and talk to them. I am use to terrorism. We have had it in our county. We have had it in Birmingham and we have had it in other places. When the people crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge, there was terrorism. When I was punched in the face in Prattville, there was terrorism. We did not have any killing. That was the only difference; it was on a small scale. There was a time in Pratt City, Alabama; I was living in Birmingham. One night, there was like 15 young people who wanted to see the Klan walk up Highbuyon Avenue. I took them out there to show them and they had their robes and everything on. They asked me who are these people. I said, these are the same people that you are trading with in stores on an every day basis, most of them are, but they are Klan men. Do not be afraid because you are with me. As we stood there, they drove by singing the Dixie song or a thing of that type with the lights on in the car. These are the type things I have gone through for years. I am not afraid and I try to be straight with my people and say everybody was not wrong, but there were a few people who would do anything. In terrorism, you are going to reap what you sow, so we need to work together and try to save our people instead of trying to destroy them. Q: How many people, African-American people in Lowndes County, did it take before there was sort of a help factor where you felt you were going to succeed. You started out with a little group. How big did the group get? A: Each Sunday night, we would have our mass meeting in groups. We did not have a church large enough to hold us after a few months when we would go in the county. The question was some churches were afraid for us to go in because they thought someone would burn their churches. There was not church burning in Lowndes County, if you remember. There were 2 or 3 churches going in Lowndes County. We had a poverty program burned and one day a white church burned. I was at the University of Wisconsin at that time. This white church burned and no more burning take place in Lowndes County. That is the sad thing, but that took place. Q: In all of your trials of getting registered voters, where was the Federal Government at this time. At one time, I read an article that you recruited a bunch of registered voters. (inaudible) A: They came down, but let me be honest with you all. On the first election in 1966, they would be standing out there. I think they were scary and most black folks were. I am serious. I can remember in the area in 1966 when they had the election, somebody cut the lights off in the building. Let me tell you, everybody just froze. Stokely and them were there and they went out and turned the lights on their cars, but those federal agents were just as afraid as anything else. They would not say anything. Several white people that I know brought the people that worked on their plantation in with them and went in and voted their ballots for them. That is why we worked to get that law changed where you could not help your boss man. Now, you can help anybody you want, but your phone cannot help you. If you work for a company, your boss man cannot help you raise the vote in the state of Alabama. We had to get that changed and it was Lowndes County who played the biggest part in that. People were evicted off their plantation because they registered to vote and we put tents out there on highway 80 and tried to be fair to people. We did everything we could until there were able to acquire land to move into. We filed a suit to stop the evictions. That is the only suit that we lost. Q: Did you know Viola Liuzzo and what are your recollections of her, of so? A: I did not know here but shortly after she got killed, I go to meet her family on several occasions. Her son came down and stayed in the county for awhile, but I did not know her personally. Q: If you ever have a chance to go to the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma, there is a wall in the museum that I believe is called, I was there wall or the we were there wall or something like that. The people who played some role in the movement signed a little sleep of paper and tacked it to the wall. One of the most touching things on that wall is the daughter of Viola Liuzzo who about a year ago visited the museum and said my mother was here and that is just on the wall there. It is really interesting to see. Q: Do you think that was a turning point in getting national attention to the movement? A: It was a turning point to get lots of attention because people came in. Even at that, Jonathan Daniels was killed after that but remember he got acquitted in court and that is the hurting thing. You understand what I am saying. The Klan killed her and did not anything come from that. The person that was prosecuted in that case stood up in the court and said if she would have stayed in Detroit, Michigan she would have been alive today. There were very few blacks there because they were afraid to go in that court room at night time. Now, if you are prosecuting somebody and get up and say that, what do suspect a jury to do? This is the type of representation we had. Q: Stokely Carmichael had started an organization called The All African Peoples Revolutionary Party. It took a strong standing in the (inaudible). A: He did do that, but he did not do that in our county. He never did that in Lowndes County. He never had any confrontation with the police. Q: Stokely Carmichael founded an organization. Say the name of the organization again. A: The All African Peoples Revolutionary Party. Q: With The All African Revolutionary Party, did that have an effect on your relationship with Stokely? A: No, it did not because he did not do any of that stuff in Lowndes County. He respected the police officers and Arthur Stickwicker did as well. Q: There years that you we re involved with the Bloody Lowndes in your county, can you tell us a little bit about your personal life. Did you have a family and how did this impact your family during the year. Then, I understand that there was some type of sanitary land field plan underway within the last couple of years that may effect or impact the tourism and trade in Lowndes County with respect to the Edmund Pettis Bridge and the Selma March in November. Can you talk a little bit about that? A: Okay, let me be honest with you. I have some children who lived with me during that time. My son is a probate judge now who lived in Lowndes County. They were too young to vote, but it did not affect them because we did not have any real decent jobs no way, we were just out there working. We were trying to make life better for them to go to school. When they first integrated the school in Hayneville, they sent 6 kids to school that year. One of my sons went to school and he had some problems with some of the white kids stepping on his heels. One night, I got in my car and drove to the father's house. I said to him, your son is stepping on my son's heels and I do not want it to happen again because I may have to stop that bus on the road and get him off there and it never happened again. I was the sheriff. I being straight with you all about it. This is a little incident that happened. Let me be honest about this land field that we have. This land field is off the Civil Rights trail. People are dumping trash on the highways. Lowndes County was not a pretty place until I started cleaning it up when I retired from the sheriffs office. The white people in Lonsborough did not want it and they had a few blacks with them to help to keep it out. I do not think that land field would do anything wrong to Lowndes County as long as it does its problem like it ought to be done. People will be buried under the ground, like 40 feet deep, and within the next 200 years I do not think there will be problem whatsoever. Q: Is that a divisive issue in Lowndes County? Do people disagree about that? A: There are a few people that disagreed about it, just a few. It was mostly people who lived right in Burksville. I remember one night I said to them, you are not concerned about the Civil Rights trail. If you were concerned about the Civil Rights trail, why did you not help us get registered to vote or a thing of that type. You understand what I am saying. These are the same folks who guessed everything now concerned about the Civil Rights trail. It is a money thing that they are looking at now. Q: Have you written or will you right about how the majority of the city of Alabama was able to tolerate injustice in such a way that it brings up today what they are willing to do now which is stand up against injustice. A: I think that to understand the magnitude of what happened in the Civil Rights Movement you have to understand that the majority of white citizens in the state of Alabama were complicit, if not cutting-edge practitioners of the injustices that were inflicted on black people. It was absolutely pervasive. I am very aware of this because I grew up in Alabama in a family that was very much a part of the status quo in Alabama. So, it is really easy to see that the system of segregation that was in place in Alabama could not have survived without the active support of the overwhelming majority of white people in the state of Alabama. I think there is a sense in which white people were liberated by the Civil Rights Movement as well because people of my generation were certainly coming along and you had to decide what we thought about it. It was such a powerful reality and it was inescapable. So, you had to ask yourself what is really going on here. I remember when I was about 16 years old I was in Birmingham on a high school trip and I happen to be walking along one afternoon with no idea of anything that was going on. I was not paying attention to what was going on in the world and I walked up upon the arrest of Martin Luther King, the first time he was arrested in Birmingham. I remembered it actually incorrectly. I remembered at first that he was wearing overalls. He was not. He was wearing a denim work shirt and blue jeans. It was almost that way, but I do remember, like I have a picture of it in my head, the look on his face as the policeman bodily carried him pass where I was standing and it was a look of not fear. His eyes seemed to me to be very sad but kind of stoic all at the same time. There was a dignity about him on that occasion that stood in such incredible contrast with the kind of bullying attitude that the policeman had on that occasion. As a 16-year-old white kid, it was a jarring imaging to behold and it was something that I never forgot. It made you ask in a very personal way, what is going on here. It was easy to know who you wanted to identify with in that particular situation. So, one of the things that I am very interested in and this is a long answer to your question, but one of the things I am very interested in is the impact that the Civil Rights Movement had on white people, people of my generation and other people as well because I think that the white citizenry in the state of Alabama had a long way to go. I think we were compelled to move by events that happened by the example of courage that we saw, so I think that is an important part of the story that I certainly want to try to touch on. Now, did we go as far as we need to go? I mean obviously not. We are still struggling with that issue. I was talking to some reporters today at the paper. We were talking about why it is that we have not made as much progress as we have maybe hoped we would. I think to me it is the cutting edge of civilization. It is sort of the frontier of civilization. The people who are not exactly alike are still trying to learn how to live in peace and proximity with each other, if they are even trying at all. Amazingly enough, we are probably doing a better job of it here than they are in most places because you look at the Middle East, Northern Ireland or all these other places and people struggle with that. We will continue to struggle with it here, but we have more tools now because of the example of people in the Civil Rights Movement. Q: I was a new comer to Alabama. We came here in 1965 and this whole situation has really stressed me a lot and (inaudible) but nowhere else is it quite so legal. So, I thought perfectly well that this is of people like you, although I had a very culture when I came here. I also said to my brother who called me and said (inaudible) how are you managing this and how will it turn out. I said that I truly believe that we will solve our problems as soon as everybody else, so do not worry. I mean it is a bad situation, but I know that the people that I know so well will find a way to let this happen. I was feeling very ----- at some times during it, off and on. I also participated in the long line that were lining up to vote after the federal government interceded and it was kind of a interesting mess. If you remember, you had to have a registered voter stand with everybody that was going to vote and every body was getting curious because they had 3 tests that were not hard but it took more time and we did not have anymore time allotted to us. So, it was a pretty interesting time for me and I helped the best way that I could to be helpful, the best way I knew how to. I am glad that I was here to do it. Q: Any response you want to make to that. A: I am not sure. I could not hear everything that she was saying. It was pretty rough, true enough. I could remember the times that we had to have a white to vote for a black. You could not find a white to vote for a black. After they started registering, we did not have to do that in Lowndes County. You did not have to have anybody to vote for you. That was some our problems we were having. The voter registrar did not assist on that. The federal came down and registered most of our people in out county. Q: Was lynching a part of your community also? A: There were many people that were lynched or had things done to them. I do not know much about that, but there were people that were lynched in Lowndes County not during the Civil Rights Movement but before that time. Once we organized, there were no blacks killed by whites except one person and that was before I took office. He was killed because he was hunting rabbits. The dog went across the county line. They shot and killed him and tried the case. That was the first case tried when I got there and they found him guilty. They charged him 100 dollars and a year's probation. This is the kind of thing that happened. This was a white guy who killed a black guy and they charged him 100 dollars plus court cost and a year's probation. Q: How much would it help if they rewrote the constitution in the state of Alabama. Would that kind of blanket or help throughout out the state if the constitution itself was dealt with? A: I was in a meeting not long ago and the Alabama New South Coalition was trying to put a committee together to start doing this with the state legislatures, but it may help some. You can rewrite all you want to, but it has to come from the inside of your heart. Q: There are many of the young people today that do not seem to have the right stuff? I would like to know what would be your message to them. A: Those of us who understand what the Civil Rights mean we should go into our communities sit down and talk to our young folks and try to encourage them to do the right thing. Our churches ought to be a part of doing that. Q: Was Lowndes County as violent as it was because black people outnumbered white people by the margin that they did? We have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. What, in your opinion, do we still need to do or still need to accomplish? A: I am going to give you a number of incidents that people have just killed people. There were a group of folks from Birmingham one time that came down to move somebody off of a plantation. They killed a guy on a Saturday or Sunday night and rode around in a truck and that Monday they were riding around that courthouse on the back of the truck and nothing was done about it, but this is the kind of thing that happened. If something happened in your family like, you would get afraid. I knew other people that would go out and hunt. I had a cousin that went out one night just hunting. The guys ran up on him hunting in the woods and started shooting under his feet and made him dance all night long. This is the kind of thing that went on in Lowndes County, but in order to change this we are going to have to come together and let drugs go. That is one of the things that is ending us now. Drugs are getting to most of our people. Stop committing crimes, stay out of trouble, go to the polls and register to vote and start treating one another like they are human beings. Black or white, we are going to have to start doing that together or we will never move on. Q: Is there still racial tension between blacks and whites in Lowndes County today. A: There may be a few older people. It may not show up around me, but it may show up around a few people. Most people, when you treat folks right, they do not have any problems. I can go any place in Lowndes County in almost anybody house and I do not have any problems. Q: And when you have ran for office, you have gotten considerable white votes? A: At this age, I am 73 years old. I will be 74, November 19th and I wish it was this month. I have had more than 1800 people to call me already and talk to me. I believe I could go back and run for sheriff again. I don't why, but this is something. Let me say this. If someone burglarize a community, a house, a church I get out and work on it night and day until that person has come to justice just about. If somebody has shoot somebody or cut somebody, they are going to jail and everybody knows that. I do not know what is happening to the sheriff and bothering other folks now, but I try to do what is right for the people in our county. I guess that is why they want me back. They are not trying to get me back because I am going to let them do something wrong. If it is a drug dealer in town, he better leave. He better get his stuff and go to some other county. I believe that is what we out to do. They have a drug task force and I want to be sure I get with that drug task force if I am successful in winning and try to get them to do a much better than what they been doing and get these drug dealers out of time. Q: Will you run again? A: If my health holds up, my name will be on the ballot. Closing: Well, Sheriff Hulett thank you for sharing these stories with us tonight. We really appreciate it. 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_000008 Title A name given to the resource Digitized VHS tape of "Bloody Lowndes and the Black Panther Party". Description An account of the resource John Hulett and Frye Gaillard are the speakers in this lecture given at University of Alabama in Huntsville. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-11-01 Extent The size or duration of the resource. 1:21:21 Language A language of the resource en Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use the digitized material for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Alabama A & M University University of Alabama in Huntsville Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections Temporal Coverage Temporal characteristics of the resource. 2000-2009 Subject The topic of the resource Hulett, John,1927-2006 Gaillard, Frye, 1946- Civil rights movements--Southern states--History--20th century Hayneville (Ala.) Lowndes County Voter registration Black power African Americans--Legal status, laws, etc. Type The nature or genre of the resource Lectures Moving Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP4 Has Format A related resource that is substantially the same as the pre-existing described resource, but in another format. <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/390">Bloody Lowndes and the Black Panther Party - Speakers: John Hulett and Frye Gaillard - Transcription of Tape 8, 2003</a> Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Lecture Series on Civil Rights in Alabama, 1954-1965 <a href="http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/402">VHS Tape of: Bloody Lowndes and the Black Panther Party - Speakers: John Hulett and Frye Gaillard, 2001-11-01. Box 2, Tape 8</a> University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives, Huntsville, Alabama