Dorothy Cotton Interviewed on April 22, 1999

HUNTLEY: This is an interview with Ms. Dorothy Cotton for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's Oral History Project. I am Dr. Horace Huntley. We are presently at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Today is April 22, 1999. Welcome to the Institute.

COTTON: Thank you very much. It is really good to be here.

HUNTLEY: It is a pleasure to have you here. What I am doing today is trying to just get information about you, and of course, how in fact you got involved in the struggle. But before the struggle there was a lot of Dorothy Cotton that prepared you for that. So, I would just like to know were you born in Alabama.

COTTON: No. I was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and Goldsboro is on the 00:01:00Eastern side of the state. Most people certainly know Raleigh, the capital of the state, even if they never heard of Goldsboro. Goldsboro is about 52 miles South of Raleigh on the Eastern side of the state. Goldsboro, North Carolina. I will not tell you what year.

HUNTLEY: And I won't ask.

COTTON: Alright. It was a long time ago. Actually, I was a depression baby.

HUNTLEY: What about siblings?

COTTON: Yes, there were four of us. My parents produced four girls, and my mother died when I was three years old, and she died leaving these four toddlers, actually. Again, I was three, I was the second born. The first born, Effie Mae, our last name Foreman. Effie Mae, Dorothy -- myself, and the third 00:02:00sister Daiselle, and Margaret who was not even a year old when my mother died. And that is a very sad story for me because my mother died in childbirth, and her youngest, Margaret, my youngest sister was not even a year old.

I am not going to cry, but I really get very emotional even now when I think about those times and how hard it must have been with my mother obviously producing babies just much too fast. All of us were literally born one year apart, which meant that she had conceived again when her baby was three months. We were literally born one year apart from each other. So you can do your math there. Three months after each baby she had conceived again. I guess they didn't 00:03:00know about birth control in those days, but she died in childbirth, and it would have been a fifth child.

HUNTLEY: What was the education level of your mother and father?

COTTON: I really don't know. I think my mother-- it's interesting, I have never asked anyone. I think my mother finished high school, but I am really not sure of that, but I know that my father did not. Actually, daddy said he went to school one day and did not like it, and never went back. My father grew up in a very rural area of North Carolina in Green County, and that's a little bit vague, and they were living on a farm in a very isolated area.

There were not even other houses around. I did get that much in an interview with my dad's oldest living sister. She also died last year, but I am really glad that I got her on tape describing something of their childhood, but it was 00:04:00in a very rural area in Green County living on a farm. Schooling was not important. What was important, as was true quite broadly across the south, was that you work on the farm.

HUNTLEY: That's right. Children were born to work.

COTTON: That's right and the more the merrier. Right?

HUNTLEY: Did you continue to live with your father after your mother died?

COTTON: Though my mother had lots of sisters and my dad said various sisters offered to take one of us, and we would have been scattered all about, and though I sort of assessed my childhood as being rather painful childhood, and my dad not even the kindest father in the world, but I guess he did care in his own way. Because he said to them, "No, I want to keep these young ones together." And, he did keep us together, a struggle though it was, but he kept us together. 00:05:00He would not allow various aunts to take us and have us scattered all about. So, we grew up together.

HUNTLEY: What kind of work did he do?

COTTON: My father worked in a tobacco factory, and that tobacco factory there in Goldsboro, North Carolina, was not far down the road from where we lived at 917 North Greenleaf Street, a little three-room shack of a house, with an outhouse in the back yard. I was born in that little house. There were three of them. I took a photograph because I wanted to use the photograph of that little house in a book that I am doing on this same history, and my story.

HUNTLEY: What do you remember about your elementary school days?

COTTON: Oh dear, I think my childhood was not a happy childhood, so the elementary school days really are kind of a blank, but I know that it was 00:06:00Greenleaf School, and I lived on Greenleaf Street. I do not think that building exist anymore. I am not really sure about that, but the elementary school was Greenleaf. It is interesting, no one has asked me about my elementary school days, but I have lots of memories about my high school days for a very particular reason. But the elementary school days, it is really kind of a blank. I know that it was very difficult. I think of things in relationship to my younger years elementary school days. You know, things like having to leave school one day to go get my tonsils taken out, which they did in the doctor's office, and no one went with me to do that. I had no mother to go with me. My father had to be at the factory, and all of that is so painful for me, that I went to have this done.

I remember when dad came home I was already there in bed. I remember the nurse in the doctor's office after taking out my tonsils saying, "somebody should be with you here". And, of course, many, many years after the fact, I hope I don't cry, but many years after the fact, I think certainly someone would have been with me if--.

HUNTLEY: Wait a minute. You mean you walked from school to get your tonsils taken out and then afterwards you walked home.

COTTON: And no adult went with me. They did it right in the doctor's office.

HUNTLEY: That's interesting.

COTTON: I think I am going to cry.

HUNTLEY: Don't cry. That is very interesting because I was simply going to ask the question how you got back and forth to school.

COTTON: Walked. I am going to go right back to Goldsboro and go see. I think that building does not exist anymore.

HUNTLEY: Was your high school in that vicinity in the same area?

COTTON: Dillard High School, of course we all walked to school, but it was farther away, and that building does still exist. They use it for some other purposes now. Of course, walking to school was the order of the day. There were no school buses for us.

HUNTLEY: Now, high school. What about extracurricular activities? Did you participate in any of them?

COTTON: Oh, yes! High School days are so much clearer and happier because of a teacher, and I loved to-- as you know I do a lot of public speaking now, and on occasion I have the opportunity to talk with teachers, and I am so just ready to motivate, to encourage, and to affirm that what they are doing in helping to 00:09:00call for the best in these youngsters that they are working with, helping to mold them, because of a teacher that I had, Ms. Rosie Gray, in high school, my English teacher. I think Ms. Rosie Gray took such an interest in me.

I think I shudder to think what would have happened if she had not taken an interest in me because it was like she really just took me under her wings. Being the English teacher, she also was the drama teacher, and I think perhaps most high schools, at least what we did anyway, had an annual high school play. And, I did so well in her English classes, and I use to love to memorize poetry, and she would have us recite poetry in the classes. I remember that she said to me when some students were still stumbling through the poetry, and I said my 00:10:00poem with such a flair, and afterwards, she said, "there's your ready girl." And, she was constantly affirming me, and I know that I loved doing that.

I loved the poetry, and I loved English, and I am sure that is why I majored in English once I got to college, but I am fast forwarding how I got to college. But, to have the leading role in the high school plays was very important, and I think really put me on a track of affirming that I had something to bring to the environment, and I was very good in the plays, thanks to Ms. Rosie Gray. But, she really took an interest in me, and of course, I wanted to really please her. So we very close.

HUNTLEY: That is obviously part of your support network. Did you have others, your family members in that general area that was part of your network as well, 00:11:00your support network? You mentioned aunts, and maybe uncles? Was that a part of your upbringing?

COTTON: No. Again, my childhood was very difficult and very painful, and a part of what made it painful was that I didn't feel a support network. A part of the reason for that. For example, the several sisters, my mother's sisters, did not live in close proximity to us, but you know, not very far away, but they did not interact with us in a really close way.

HUNTLEY: Did they have children your age?

COTTON: Yes. They had children, but we didn't live in the same neighborhood, but we did not live far away. But, a part of the problem I think now at this age, I 00:12:00think I can analyze it this way, and I think this is accurate. I think that my father was sort of persona non grata with first of all my grandfather, my mother's father because my father, and these are his words "he stole my mother".

That is the word he used, so they ran off and got married, and grandpa never approved of the marriage. Grandpa also had three sets of children. He had three different marriages. He was kind of an itinerant preacher, but he would come around sometimes. And when grandpa would come around, there was always a scowl on my daddy's face.

So, they were not close. I do not know if that is the reason that my mother's siblings were not around, but I asked my dad's sister some questions about my mother since I didn't know her, and something of the relationship. She said, "well, Claude, that's my daddy's name, did not want her around so much". I think 00:13:00my dad, I think he sort of kept people at arm's length in a real way.

HUNTLEY: So that kind of isolated the girls.

COTTON: I think so. I think so. At the same time, I do remember my dad's -- this is my dad's older sister and her children coming around more than some of the others.

HUNTLEY: Growing up in a southern town, a small town, what was that like for young girls your age. You know in Birmingham, where I grew up, you often talk about how separate and unequal all facilities were. Did you experience the same kind of situation in Goldsboro?

COTTON: Oh yes. As I describe and refer to often, we really had apartheid in 00:14:00this country. We really had rigid separation of the races, and one incident that I focus on a good bit is the way, for example, the pavement. You could tell where the black folk lived when it got, even though whites lived in close proximity to black folks, the pavement would stop when it would get to the section where black folk lived.

And I remember a white boy riding his bicycle down Greenleaf Street, and as he was riding he was riding down and stirring up dust on his bicycle. I remember the dust even, but he was singing, deep in the heart of nigger town. And I remember being very upset about that. Again, I am just writing about this.

And I remember that was painful for me. I remember, I think I was about 10 when 00:15:00I heard him doing that. And, of course I felt really helpless to do anything, but I remember I reacted to that. I remember that I was hurt and angry. Yes, this segregation was really complete. And I think that my dad, given his lack of exposure to anything outside of that world where he was struggling to make a living, to feed his four girls, he had no exposure to anything except the really hard life of working in this factory.

I do remember his sister, his oldest sister's children, and they only lived a part of time just two or three streets over, and dad use to, when things were a little bit better, he would buy watermelons and sell them from the front yard. 00:16:00He said sometimes he made nine dollars a week at the tobacco factory, and of course in those days, everything was cheap. You could buy a great big watermelon for a quarter.

HUNTLEY: That's right.

COTTON: When dad was feeling a bit affluent, I guess, had more than the nine dollars with a little bit left over, he would buy a whole load of watermelons from somebody who came by selling, and then dad would sell them for ten cents more, and I remember on Sunday it was a big celebration because he would cut two or three of them. And I remember his oldest sister's kids running across when they saw we had watermelons in the yard. They would run across, and of course, share the festivity, you know, from watermelons.

HUNTLEY: In any kind of apartheid system, whether it is in American or in South Africa, there are always brutal kinds of events that would take place. I have 00:17:00had people tell me about the way that they or someone close to them may have been accosted by a police officer, or something that may even lead to something even more brutal, maybe even a murder or a lynching. Was that ever evident in your childhood that you knew of personally that may have happened to someone that was close to you?

COTTON: I am not aware of physical violence from whites or policemen in the area where we lived. I am aware of the dysfunction of the folk who lived in the neighborhood, and people fighting, but I am talking about sort of intragroup, as a matter of fact, but no violence interracial or coming from the police. My dad 00:18:00just would go to the tobacco factory, he did not go anywhere, he didn't do anything. It was just that hard life of just eking out a living, and so he was not interactive.

HUNTLEY: And you were basically totally isolated from the white community.

COTTON: Yes, that's my sense of it.

HUNTLEY: As you approached your senior year in high school, you must have been thinking about, what do I do next?

COTTON: You know, I wish I could be clearer on how I knew that I wanted more education, that I wanted to go to college. Since I was not around people who were college trained. It must have come from my teachers, especially, Ms. Rosa Gray, my high school teacher, and I remember meeting Mary McCloud-Bethune. Dr. Bethune spoke at my school. As a matter of fact--.

HUNTLEY: At your high school?

COTTON: Actually, when she spoke, I had already, I am sort ahead of the story here, but I had already made my way over to Shaw University, and I would like to talk about that just a little bit, but I heard her say, and I had just gotten over there from my school. Well, let me tell you how I got there. It must have been Ms. Rosa Gray taking an interest in me, and also encouraging me to go forward. I remember once she came to my house to talk to my father because daddy would not let me go to the junior/senior prom.

I know this now many years after the fact, that he probably did not know what a prom was. But also that he probably did not have any money to dress me up to go to the prom, but when I told Ms. Gray that dad said I could not go to the prom, she came to my house and she sat on the porch of this little three-room shack of a house and pleaded with my dad to let me go, that she would take care of me. 00:20:00And he said, "I just isn't ready for my girls to go to dances". Daddy was going to talk fancy for the teacher. But, he probably did not know what they were, but I am sure--.

HUNTLEY: But did you get to go to the prom?

COTTON: No, I didn't go, but I really think it is because he couldn't dress me up, he couldn't buy me a dress. But, I knew again, specific to your question, the seed was planted somewhere in high school, and I think with my interaction with the teachers that I too wanted to either be a teacher or to do some things that they had done, so the teachers were the influence in my life in terms of my developing a vision for doing something with my life other than what I saw around me.

HUNTLEY: What about your sister? You had an older sister.

COTTON: Yes. I am the only one of the four that went to college. All four of us finished high school, and my three sisters got married shortly after high 00:21:00school, and started raising their families, and I am the only one that went to college. Another thing that happened when I was in high school was that I worked for white families.

I would go sometimes before school to help a white woman who ran a boarding house, and she use to feed teachers. Teachers lived there and I would help her with breakfast and then I would run off to school. I would go after school to help with her with dinner and the dishes and all of that. I worked for two families. I ended up working for three white families, and I noticed that their homes were so much nicer than our homes.

You asked about the influence. What I know is that I was thinking these people live better than we do, and why do they live better than we do. I don't know for sure, but I think that that must have had some influence. I would like a house too that has nice shiny floors rather than the floors where you get a splinter 00:22:00in your foot if you walk without shoes, or that's carpeted, a really nice home, and nice dishes and all.

HUNTLEY: Your world had been broadened then by these experiences of being around people who had more than you had.

COTTON: That's right. But interestingly, I don't know if I should say this on tape or not, but maybe I will. My sister also worked for Mrs. Brothers, who had the boarding house for the teachers, but, well let me not put it so much on her, but I think some of us can see by being in an environment, and one thing happens to some of us and a different thing happens to others of us. Like my sister would say, Oh, I love working with the public.

We were sitting in a restaurant, and she meant she would love to be waitress, and I am saying, I don't want to be a waitress, I want to own the restaurant. So, I don't know where that comes from, just the whole different reaction to what we see and what we experience, but I knew that I wanted to do something 00:23:00different with my life that what I was seeing around me, and it probably was that exposure. First of all, the teachers taking a real interest in me and then just the exposure to the way other families lived and had more.

HUNTLEY: Did you ever get to go to the teacher that you referred to?

COTTON: Ms. Gray?

HUNTLEY: Yes. Did you ever get to go to her home?

COTTON: I never went to Ms. Gray's home, and incidentally, in those days she would say that she was an old maid teacher or spinster teacher. She was, indeed, Ms. Gray, not married, but so devoted to her teaching. I remember long after high school I was visiting in Goldsboro, and she knew I was in town and invited me and two or three other students, a fellow named William Harriston, who also had the male leading role in those plays every year.

I just saw him like 40 years after the fact or more in Washington, and he went on to make movies. They did know that, I probably should have gone to drama 00:24:00school, but nobody knew to send me to drama school. But William Harriston, who I just reconnected with. He lives in Falls Church, but he made some movies and we just reconnected just a couple of months ago and remembered and reflected on Ms. Gray on how she took an interest in both of us. But, yes, seeing that life could be different, being exposed to something other than the neighborhood that I lived in, and seeing a lot of dysfunction in the neighborhood. You know, men would fight, I think two or three houses down the road somebody sold whiskey by the glass, and there was a lot of traffic in and out of that house.

HUNTLEY: Shot house.

COTTON: That's right, is that what they call it, shot house?

HUNTLEY: Shot house, yes.

COTTON: And a couple of men in the two or three houses that would fight over something, and I remember at least one fight that they got into. So, there was a good bit of that kind of dysfunction. Maybe not a lot, but there was some. But I 00:25:00just knew that life could be different.

HUNTLEY: Why Shaw University?

COTTON: Ms. Rosa Gray again, started talking to me about college, and she made the call over there to make arrangements for me to go, in other words to get me a job and, oh to this day I do not know how my daddy let me go. He wouldn't let me go to the prom because he wasn't for his girls to go to dances.

But, Ms. Gray called over there and went through all the imaginations of registration and arranged two jobs for me. I ended up putting my things in a cardboard box and got a fellow that seemed interested in me to, Henry Bowden, my first boyfriend I think, to drive me to Raleigh with my things in this box. But, Ms. Gray had phoned over, she had made the arrangements. I never got a penny 00:26:00from anyone, not a family member ever gave me a coin.

I worked in the dining hall and I cleaned the teacher's dormitory. Eventually, I started working in the president's home. This is an interesting story. I walked in the president's home when that job was arranged for me, went into the basement of the president's home, and there was an African student there ironing sheets on one of those big presses that they have in the--. Because you ironed all the linens, even hand towels and that sort of thing, because the president's home, you know they entertained a lot.

But there was this African student. I am fast forwarding over some history, but that African girl that I met that also helped in the president's home, her name is Angie Brooks. Angie Brooks was from Liberia. Angie Brooks became the attorney general of Liberia, and I met her ironing sheets. I was in Liberia once and met 00:27:00her then. I thought that was an interesting thing I started, that she too. So, when I hear, as you know I was director of student activities at Cornell University for almost 10 years, and students use to have big protests because they were not getting enough student aid, and I thought, my goodness, what's that? They were not getting enough student aid. I got no student aid. I got no family aid. I had three jobs working my way. The teacher's dormitory, the dining hall, working in the president's office. I bout near killed myself, I think, it was too much. I don't recommend that much working, to work through school, but that is how I got there, thanks to Ms. Gray who set that all up for me.

HUNTLEY: What was the transition like, coming from Goldsboro to Raleigh?

COTTON: That was easy enough. I remember no particular hardship around then 00:28:00because everybody at Shaw was poor, as I recall. All the students were poor, all the students were working. I lived in Estes Hall, that was, I guess the freshman dormitory at Shaw. It is a Baptist College there in Raleigh, North Carolina, but everybody was kinda of in the same boat.

I remember living in the dormitory my roommate there and I use to--. I remember I had one dress-up dress, and my roommate and I use to.... and I remember it had yellow, green, and green, yellow and black stripes going around it. Sometimes when I needed to dress up, I would borrow her dress-up dress and sometimes just to have a change, and she borrowed mine. We would exchange.

HUNTLEY: Yes, yes, that was a change.

COTTON: I can't imagine with my ways and as finicky as I am now about things. 00:29:00But, you know things. But you know again, I didn't even have a suitcase, I had my things in a little cardboard box, and it held everything I owned, but it was okay because we were all just in the same boat as I said.

HUNTLEY: Were there any highlights at Shaw? I remember when my wife went off to school, she said she just enjoyed being at Tuskegee. She is from Birmingham. She just enjoyed being at Tuskegee so much that she didn't want to come home during the breaks because at least she considered herself grown when she was there. She didn't have to go by her father's rules. Did you have any feeling such as that?

COTTON: That is very interesting. I am sure that was true for me, and I am not sure I felt totally grown until, I can talk about that, some things that 00:30:00happened subsequent to this. But to be away from Greenleaf Street at last, and on my own, but I do remember the hardship of working so much.

HUNTLEY: Did that negatively impact upon your studies?

COTTON: Yeah. Yes, I remember it just really very hard. Even so, I enjoyed my studying, but I just think I was just too tired, but I still did it, and I was a pretty good student. I didn't take a full load. It took me an extra year to finish college because I couldn't take a full load. But, yes I felt like I was on the road. I knew something was on the horizon for me. You know, something other than the environment that I had come from, something was better was on the horizon, and I know that I took hope from that vision.

HUNTLEY: You were anticipating.

COTTON: That's right. I was anticipating what was waiting for me down the road, 00:31:00and I was just willing to, as an old song we use to sing in the churches, something about run on and see what the end is going to be, and so I remember feeling that sense of hope, that things are going to get better, and some very interesting things happened. Like after the first year at Shaw University, ironing those sheets in the basement and you know, taking care of this house.

When Dr. Robert Prentice Daniel, the president of Shaw University at the time got offered the presidency of Virginia State College in Petersburg, Virginia, that's how I got to Virginia. I polished those floors so well in the president's home. I ironed those sheets so well. I took such good care of that house, when he took the job at Virginia State College, it is now Virginia State University, and they took me with them.

HUNTLEY: So, you transferred?

COTTON: I transferred from Shaw University the day after about a year and became 00:32:00a student at Virginia State College in Petersburg, Virginia. And at this point I now lived in the president's home, no longer in the dormitory. There was a space on the third floor, kind of like a loft. There was another girl who lived there too.

HUNTLEY: How was Shaw different from Virginia State:

COTTON: Virginia State College, it seemed to me was a much more affluent situation. As I look back on it I remember Shaw University at the time at the time as, indeed, being a poor struggling school, but I only knew that afterwards. I was not conscious of that then, but when I got to Virginia State College, my sense was again, it is a state school. Shaw is a church-related school, and so the state school had a little bit more money. I mean, in no way 00:33:00again this is a period of our apartheid in this country, and so the University of Virginia, you know at the time black folk could not even go there, and so they built separate and very, very unequal, but it had more facilities, better buildings and everything that Shaw University, because obviously there was a little bit more money at Virginia State.

HUNTLEY: So, you were a junior at that time.

COTTON: Oh no, I was not a junior. I think I had just barely finished the first year in college.

HUNTLEY: Okay. Is there anything that stands out in your mind about your experiences at Virginia State?

COTTON: Oh yes, oh yes! Virginia State College. I became very active in the 00:34:00Student Christian Association. I was always in extracurricular activities, so as hard as I worked, I found some extracurricular things to do, and every Sunday evening I was hold forth at the evening meeting. It was sort of a YWCA sort of gathering on the campus, but it was called SCA at the time, Student Christian Association.

Every evening I am there and leading the singing, and we are having discussions about Sam Ghandi, Dr. Ghandi, we called him Reverend Sam Ghandi at that time, was the minister there at Virginia State College. He too took an interest in me and seemed to have been encouraging me to take a leadership role, and another program that I--I am not sure whether I started it or not, but it was a program called the Even Song, and as I said I always liked poetry. Another program that 00:35:00I did all by myself with the college organist, was to do a program called the Even Song, and that students would come in on Sunday evening and would just hear this voice coming over the microphone reading poetry, and the organist would play, and there were themes.

If it is Thanksgiving, I am reading about the earth and plenty, and whatever. But planning those poetry readings, and so I was very active and apparently I needed to do the extracurricular things because the work was hard. I lived in the president's home, that was not as grand as it sound. The house was quite grand, compared to anything that I had ever seen. I remember my dad came to visit once, and he said, "how do they keep the floors so shiny?" and he said, "what in the world does anybody want to have their floors shining like this for?"

Daddy had never seen floors that were all polished and shiny. I had made them shine, but it was hard. The president's wife, Mrs. Blanche Taylor-Daniel, she would ask me, I remember when she asked me to take down the curtains and wash them the night before examinations the next day, so it was hard. And sometimes they wanted to think of me as a daughter, they had no children, Dr. and Mrs. Daniel, and I was sort of part daughter and part maid.

HUNTLEY: Yes, yes.

COTTON: So, it was hard.

HUNTLEY: What ever happened to the Liberian woman that you had met?

COTTON: At Shaw University?

HUNTLEY: Yes.

COTTON: Of course, she went on to graduate from Shaw University, but I left. I think she graduated the year I left Shaw and went on. She was not taken to Virginia by the Daniels. But I never forgot her. Many years later when I am visiting in Africa in Liberia. I had followed her career though, and I knew that 00:37:00Angie had become the attorney general in Liberia, and another woman, Mabel Fagan, another Liberian student. We had just a wonderful visit there. This was before the awful coup some years ago.

HUNTLEY: At black institutions many times Africans would come and go to certain institutions, Jackson State, Lincoln. Was that the case at Virginia State? And if so, were there any relationships that developed between the African-American students and the African students?

COTTON: At Shaw University, yes. I am not aware of an African presence at Virginia State College once I got to Virginia, but at Shaw University, I think there was a definite and intentional outreach to African students. It was church 00:38:00related, and I think that was an interest of the churches to bring African students for their education. Angie went on, I am not sure where she went to law school and got her advanced degrees, but I think she did that also here in New York. And I knew that she had gone back to Liberia at some point to visit.

HUNTLEY: What did you do after Virginia State?

COTTON: I got a job working in the library at Virginia State College, having lived in the president's home. I am still living in the president's home when I graduated, and worked in the library, and I became very active in a church downtown in Petersburg, Virginia. That church was the Gilfield Baptist Church, and they had this handsome young preacher named Wyatt T. Walker. Reverend Walker 00:39:00became the pastor of Gilfield Baptist Church, and now I have graduated and got married in the president's home. Oh, I forgot that is another story. I did get married in the president's home. That is when I really moved out, but in the interim--.

HUNTLEY: Is this someone that you met while at the college?

COTTON: As a matter of fact, the entire time that I was at Virginia State College, I was being courted by this older guy who would, I felt like he would, he had this big Buick car, and it was he who would drive on to the campus and take me away from my struggles and my troubles. We would go somewhere and, you know, celebrate and have a glass of beer or something, very naughty, naughty.

HUNTLEY: At that particular time, that was very naughty.

COTTON: That's right, that's right. We would listen to jazz and drink beer, which I don't like very much, but back then it was felt I was a little more grown up now.

HUNTLEY: And independent.

COTTON: I ended up marrying George Cotton after almost six or seven years of 00:40:00courting, but it became sort of a habit just to hang out with George during my later college years, and it eventually, working in the library, then getting married as I am still living in the president's home, but also getting active in this church, Gilfield Baptist Church. Reverend Walker, some made an interesting comment, I will never forget about him. I am not sure I should be telling all of this because it is going to be in my book. Maybe it will help the book along.

HUNTLEY: It will be here, and you can always say, well, if you want to hear this story, go to the institute and read it here.

COTTON: Right, right. Reverend Walker was not the pastor initially when I went to Petersburg, Virginia, because when he did come as pastor, he was pastor when I became active in the church, but he use to tell this event. He was wearing in 00:41:00those days they called them Bermuda shorts. I don't know if they still do. But Reverend Walker showed up on his way to go play golf in his Bermuda shorts and a little old lady at the church said, "you our new pastor? You our new young pastor. Well, son you ain't lived long enough, to have sinned long enough, to have repented long enough, to be telling me what to do". So that was her response. You see he is such a young guy.

HUNTLEY: That was his introduction.

COTTON: His introduction to one of the members of the church. You ain't lived long enough, to have sinned long enough, to have repented long enough to be telling me what to do. But I got to know Reverend Walker and was very active in church. Black folk could not use the public library in Petersburg, Virginia.

Reverend Walker became head of the local chapter of the NAACP, and always smarted under the fact of the whole segregation but targeted at some point that library that would not allow black folk to come to the public library, if you 00:42:00could believe that. But he wanted the NAACP headquarters to take that case and fight it in the courts, our exclusion. They had so many cases on the docket at the time, they would not take the case.

They just had too many. Reverend Walker said we are going to do this anyway. So we started our own protest, and I ended up at the church making picket signs and helping younger people, younger than I make picket signs, so that we could walk in front of the library protesting. I need to get the year of this. This must have been around 1950s.

HUNTLEY: Before Brown?

COTTON: No, it was after Brown. Things were sort of moving. As a matter of fact, Reverend Walker knew Martin Luther King. I am not sure when he met him, but he knew him, but we began mounting a campaign against this segregated library. I 00:43:00also remember walking in front of the Woolworth store downtown, and all of this activity emanated from Reverend Walker's church, Gilfield Baptist Church, and I threw a key in helping to talk about nonviolence with the young people, and they were all younger people who were interested in helping with the protest in Petersburg in front of the library. And of course, we now must have been very close, I think maybe this might have been 1959. The reason is I went off to graduate school in between, and I finished my master's degree in 1960.

HUNTLEY: Where did you go off to?

COTTON: Boston University. I am now married. I would go up into the summer, then I would go up the following summer, and then I would go up, and then once I told my husband I am just going to and stay and finish. I remember that I finished the degree in August, 1960. I am a little bit ahead of the story. In 1960 was 00:44:00also when I moved to Atlanta. Backing up again, Reverend Walker invited Martin Luther King to come to Petersburg, Virginia, to speak at one of our mass meetings, so now this might have been early 1960.

You can do a little research and really pin this down. Because the sit-in movement had started which was 1960, and the Montgomery bus boycott had happened, and that was 1955. So sometimes between 1955, we now knew Martin Luther King had given this wonderful leadership in Montgomery, Alabama. And just watching how the leadership that he gave there, Reverend Walker knew that he would be just a good speaker for one of our mass meetings.

HUNTLEY: Had he developed SCLC at that point?

COTTON: No. I think the SCLC was just an idea at this time.

HUNTLEY: That would have been in 1957, when SCLC was first organized.

COTTON: When it was first organized. What Martin Luther King did, and when he came up to speak I was on the program that night. I think I did some poetry again, but somehow we don't just have a speaker come in and speak, you have some music and some other things, trying to get students at Cornell to understand this. They don't listen to anybody speak, they give them a bunch of money and --. have something else on the program and make it more interesting.

So, I was also on the program and we had dinner at the Parsonage afterwards. As a matter of fact, I found a photograph just recently of meeting Dr. King, the very first time I met him at the young women's parish slept at the church. We took a picture of him. We had this dinner at the pastor's house. On that visit, Dr. King invited Wyatt T. Walker to come to Atlanta to help him develop this 00:46:00organization, SCLC.

Reverend Walker said I will come if I can bring the two people who helped me most here with our local movement in Petersburg, Virginia, and that was a fellow named Jim Wood and me. And I said to my husband, I think I will go down and help them out. Reverend Walker has invited me to go down and Dr. King to be his administrative assistant until they get going, and my husband drove me down to Atlanta, and he was coming back and forth to visit. I said I was going to stay about six months, but I stayed 23 years.

HUNTLEY: Twenty-three years.

COTTON: And the movement became my whole life.

HUNTLEY: That is very interesting, because now what you have done, you embarked upon really giving your life to the movement. What are some of the first issues that you encountered once you arrived in Atlanta?

COTTON: I did work in the office as administrative assistant to Wyatt Walker who is now the executive director, and so in these kinds of offices, in this kind of work you do a lot of things. I only had typing in high school and a little course of shorthand, and again I was not really the secretarial type, but I was, I think a good administrative type person just sort of helping sort of overseeing and keeping things moving and helping Reverend Walker in that way. 00:48:00But shortly after I was there the Highlander Folk School in Atlanta.

Oh dear, there is so much about it in this in this story. I have to say a little a bit about Highlander, and how we got a program that Andrew Young and I came to, actually direct. But I remember Dr. King came and sat in front of my desk once in our little office. When Wyatt and I got there, there were, I think Ella Baker was still there, but she did not stay long after these chauvinistic preachers got there, and so she was not around the office very much. There were maybe a couple of other people, Lillie Hunter, and --..

HUNTLEY: Did you get to know Ella Baker?

COTTON: Yes. I remember going out to eat together a few times, and I knew her some, not in any great detail. But she was not around long after all these 00:49:00preachers moved in. And Dr. King was just actually moving into Atlanta too from Montgomery shortly before that. He sort of moved in, even though SCLC had their organizational meeting in 1957, was it, but in terms of really becoming the organization that we know about now, that took some for it to evolve. But we started out in this little office, and I think it might have had maybe two rooms, as opposed to big floor of offices. But when Dr. King pulled up his chair, it was like he just getting to know me.

I am new in town, I am going to be a part of his staff now, and I think one of the reasons he was talking to me was just to see where my head was at, and if I had any sense, if you will, what my skills might have been. Because they were in discussion about receiving a program called the Citizenship Education Program. I 00:50:00will fast forward a minute here, that program became my responsibility. Andrew Young was very key in our getting that program. Highlander Folk School was in the courts fighting for its very life. Miles Horton, at Highlander, a white guy.

HUNTLEY: Monteagle, Tennessee.

COTTON: Yes, Monteagle, Tennessee. They were fighting for their very lives because their state of Tennessee was trying to take that property, and ultimately did. They had a program called the Citizenship Education Program. Septima Points-Clark or Charleston, South Carolina, was working a Highlander and Bernice Robinson, who actually was the first Citizenship schoolteacher after Septima got there. They were the staff at Highlander, but the Marshal Field Foundation that was funding that program, they knew about the court situation. 00:51:00The reason the state was taking that property really was because Miles Horton, a white guy in, you know, rural Tennessee is bringing black folk and white folk together up there in the folk school to discuss their problems, and to discover their own capacity to solve their problems. He use to get beat up and that sort of thing. They accused him of just all manner of evil, selling whiskey, etc.

HUNTLEY: A communist as well.

COTTON: That's right, that communist fool they called him. One woman said they wouldn't have known communism from rheumatism, but they called in communism going on up there. But the state won, and the property was confiscated. Septima said they even took cans of peas from the shelf, Highlander, a beautiful piece of property, but of course Miles, they found other property, and Highlander is now, you know going strong.

But, that program during that time of the impending transition, the Marshal Field Foundation knew that they did not want to give the grant for running this training program, citizenship education to that school because they probably had saw the handwriting on the wall, they were going to lose it, so SCLC got this training program. We inherited that training program, and Andrew Young came down to administer the program because they selected the congregational church headquarters, United Church of Christ it is now, in New York, and Andy was living in New York.

Actually, Andy was going to come and work at Highlander, but all this pending transition was about to happen, and we got the program, so Andy ended up coming over with the program from Highlander to work at SCLC to administer this program, and that program became my full-time responsibility as well, rather than being administrator with Wyatt in the office there.

So, we then started to develop and further develop and expand this adult 00:53:00training program that was started at Highlander Folk School, teaching black adults how to read and write so they could register to vote, it was not just for literacy sake. But that is what the program was about. Really to help black folk around those islands of Charleston, South Carolina, just to discover a different sense of themselves.

HUNTLEY: Would that have any relationship with the voter education project that would eventually be thought up?

COTTON: No. We never called, though voter education and registration were integral pieces of the training, but the voter education project was run by Southern Regional Council in Atlanta. I think that is what they called their 00:54:00voter registration education effort.

HUNTLEY: Yeah, VEP.

COTTON: Yes, VEP, that's right. We called ours citizenship education. But we did more than just voter registration and training. It really, indeed was a citizenship education program. In all that citizenship implies. The United Church of Christ had built several schools, but there was a school down in a little place called McIntosh, Georgia. It is about 35 miles south of Savannah. There was the Dorchester Academy developed by the church to teach the freed slaves, I think, at the turn of the century, but this building was just standing there.

And it was given to the community as kind of a community center, and Andy knew 00:55:00about the property, and Andy got the church to give that over to the training program, because now SCLC has inherited the program from Highlander, and Andy's job was to help see that we expanded and kept that training program going, teaching black folk how to be free. And I would like to talk about it. We, Septima Clark and I would get in the cars and we now had the grant coming again from the Marshal-Field Foundation, and we would drive.

We would target certain areas around the south. They used to think Septima was the mother and Andy and I were the son and daughter, that's how we sort of looked riding around, driving around together. We would go into communities and tell the people about the training program. Into communities targeted because they had the civil rights activity. They had this protest activity going, you know, things were happening, you know, at this time. I am talking about back in 00:56:001961. I know, because Andy came to SCLC in 1961. I came in 1960. I preceded Andy by a few months. Those are some dates I am very clear about.

HUNTLEY: Registering people to vote during that time could be very dangerous. Did you encounter any of that?

COTTON: Oh, absolutely. I think it would be important to note here that once we traveled around and recruited people to come take the training, sometimes we would bring a busload of folks from one community. I remember for example the first time we met Fannie Lou Hamer, we had been recruiting and telling people in the Delta area of Mississippi about the training program, met Fannie Lou Hamer, and invited her to come to Dorchester Center now in McIntosh, Georgia, and to bring other people with her, and she became a major recruiter for us in that area.

There came a time when we no longer needed to go, but we ran a five-day residential citizenship education training workshop every single month, and eventually we could just call key people and say, would call Fannie Lou Hamer, for example, saw the dates we had a five-day workshop going of the people you like to go through the training.

Fannie Lou Hamer was also working to register folk where she lived in Ruleville, and lived on Mr. Marlow's plantation as she talked about it, and Fannie Lou Hamer talked about being abused and threatened because of her work in voter registration education activities. She was told that she needed to get out of town and her husband, Papp, as she called him, took her to the next county because they had been threatened, and she told us that--. She called Papp, her 00:58:00husband and said come get me, I am not going to stay over here anymore and I am going to keep on doing my work, and had become a, yes, people were certainly brutalized, and the voter education registration became a key component of that training program.

HUNTLEY: The SNCC organization would be organized in 1960, and I think both Dr. King, as well as Ella Baker were instantly involved in that. Were you involved in that?

COTTON: I didn't go to the planning meeting, in which they held at Shaw University as a matter of fact, my old college, the first college I went to. 00:59:00Ella Baker was very key in setting the tone for organizing the SNCC folk, and really getting it going. They liked her style and she really took that on as her role to get SNCC going.

HUNTLEY: What eventually would say the relationship, particularly in those early days when you are doing voter registration and SNCC is going to Mississippi, they are doing voter registration, and Fannie Lou Hamer would eventually become a part of SNCC and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. How did those organizations work, you know, together? Were they in close association? Because when you read things there are all kinds of differences made by all of them.

COTTON: Yes. In a real sense there was a close association because we were doing the same work in a real sense. We might have had a little different style. For example, I don't know anyone else that had, for example a training center where we would bring 40, 50, sometimes 60 people together at Dorchester Center and they would stay for five days in a residential workshop learning how to become citizens and functioning and how to fight for their rights.

People would leave Dorchester Center, the training workshops there and the citizenship education workshop. They would go back to their homes, and times were just never the same again. We like say, it really was the base upon so much that training program, the base upon which really so much of the movement was built. Now these people would leave Dorchesta Center, go back in their communities and there would be SNCC people there often living in these various communities, and their style was to, indeed, live in the communities and be there and work that way.

We were running a training program bringing people from all over the south, you know, to that place. When I hear of tension between the various groups, ultimately, that really was true, but it was more like, I think Andy speaks of it this way. It was like children wanting to cut the umbilical cord and to be independent and alone, and away from the older people, because we were older than most of the SNCC people. It was the student nonviolent coordinator committee. You know, here are the people, there is Ella Baker, there is Martin Luther King, there is Dorothy Cotton, you know, there is Wyatt T. Walker.

You know, all older that were SNCC people, and I saw it as a gentle kind of 01:02:00tension, but we were friends. We were in the same communities, because we too, those of us working with the Citizenship Education Program, we were also in these communities. We didn't live in the communities on a long-term basis, because wherever I would visit in a community, I also had to get back and plan the next five-day training workshop, so we were all just like the NAACP working through the courts. We needed people working at all of those levels, and I think sometimes I run across people who make a bit too much out of the tension and dissension, though I also acknowledge that, yes there came a time, really to fast forward through the latter days of that phase of the civil rights movement, when you know, the Stokely Carmichaels would say, you know, nothing is nonviolent, foolishness, you know, take up the guns. Stokely died talking about taking up the gun. He spoke at Cornell University just a few months before he 01:03:00died, and I talked with him. Even then, speaking at those students at Cornell last year, he was talking about, you know, take up the gun.

He didn't say he was going to shoot, but he said, "take up the gun". So, there was a gentle kind of tension and people were getting tired after several years of struggling, you know struggling, and it was only, you know, of course after Dr. King's death, I don't if you saw the ABC television program, the Century, where they invited me to come down to Manhattan, and they wanted to talk about Dr. King's last week on earth, and we were very concerned about what he was going through those last days. A part of what he was going through during those last days were challenges by.

It was almost like the sons challenging the father. Dr. King was very distressed by that now constant criticism, you know, he had come out against the war in Vietnam, and he was people were saying, some of the SNCC people saying things like, if you come into Washington as we were planning the march on Washington, the poor people's campaign, we were disrupted. The challenges were really heavy, and that was very painful, but that is just talking about those last days.

HUNTLEY: But in those earlier days, there were several campaigns that normally stand out. We know about the sit-ins in the 1960s, the freedom rides in 1961. In 1962, I believe SCLC, Dr. King was invited to come into Albany, Georgia, and he 01:05:00went in and some said that this was a defeat for the movement. Right after that, of course, evidently Fred Shuttlesworth had been involved, of course, and said we need to come to Birmingham, and you would be one of those that would come to Birmingham. What were those first days like coming into Birmingham and trying to prepare people of what the vision of SCLC and the Alabama Christian movement was in that particular era?

COTTON: Just to comment about Albany. Many people of written and speak about Albany as a defeat for the movement. We don't think so. The reason we don't think so is that, if you think about movement, if you think about large numbers of people, actually any emotion can bring about change. There is no blueprint 01:06:00for that. There is no pattern. You can't, you know you can look at Mahatma Ghandi and anybody that has conducted major campaigns.

There is no blueprint that tells you what is going to happen when you do whatever you do. We learned a great lesson in Albany. And if we hadn't learned that lesson in Albany, we might have had to learn it here. But because we learned it in Albany, we did not have to learn that one here and we certainly had known we were learning all the time. A major lesson was to go in after things were so much in motion in a particular way that, you know if things are already in motion and you do not do the basic ground work of building your coalitions and that sort of thing, you are going to have a hard time.

You are going to run into some naughty places if you don't build that kind of 01:07:00coalition in the ground. So we learned that we needed to do that to really build the coalitions. That is just one of the lessons out of Albany, I think that we went in too fast without doing that kind of coalition building. When we got to Birmingham, my sense is that the Alabama Christian movement for human rights had been the Reverend Shuttlesworth, who had been on the firing lines a long time.

But when SCLC was invited to come in here, I remember just massive numbers of meetings that were held with folk talking together about we would come together, how SCLC would be helpful, and not that was all that smooth either, but I think the coalitions were, oh I am trying to think of the name of the group, some citizens group, Dr. King, Andy, Wyatt, we were meeting with regularly here to 01:08:00solidify and make sure we did have yet the kind of dialogue going on --.

HUNTLEY: Outside of the movement?

COTTON: Yes, outside of the movement. Local Birmingham people that would sit and meet with Martin, Ralph, Fred, Andy, and me, we were meeting regularly with--.

HUNTLEY: John Drew.

COTTON: That's right, with a real coalition of people here in Birmingham. That was ongoing. Those meetings were regular and ongoing, and that was important. You know, we could talk about, we know this long after the fact. We know that there were some jealousies, and you know, and I know that there are people are around that they are not getting kind of credit that they should get. Some of the top leaders in the movement are feeling, some taking credit where no credit is due, and some just decided I am going to claim the credit that is due me, you know and that was many years after the fact. And you know, movement is dynamic, it is not static.

HUNTLEY: Yes.

COTTON: And so, there were, you know, a few hard places when folk did not agree on what the strategy would be. I am sure Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth can tell you, you know some of the sort of hard places where there were disagreements. I remember folk getting anger among some of the people in the leadership conjuring, but it didn't stop the forward movement. I thought these are human beings, you know, working together to make something happen, to bring about basic change in the society.

HUNTLEY: One of the key issues of that time, of course, was the issue of the use of children. Can you speak on that?

COTTON: Alright. People toss that phrase around where I have traveled around and certain places. For example, I was up in Minnesota not long ago, and someone said something about, they used a phrase, using children. I didn't think of it 01:10:00that way, and I don't anyone who has really thought about the movement and, you know in a real analytical or understanding way, to think of that in a pejorative of kind of negative way.

Because as I could began to respond by a commenting quoting a young man, a Mr. Hood, incidentally, who came here last summer when I brought a few local students here to the institute just to hear stories of Birmingham from Birmingham people who were involved in the movement, and I asked the planners to set up a panel discussion to make sure you find some people who were teenagers, who were youngsters at the time, and Mr. Hood said, I am blocking on his first name which I should know, he said, "I got involved in as a teenager because I had to.

I got involved because I would have felt and did feel so left out of what was happening until I got involved." I wish I had just taped his response. And I know that is what happened to a lot of young people who got involved. People were walking up and down the street and saying things like, you going to the movement, you going to the meeting? You're just out of it, what you mean you are not going, everybody is going to the movement.

HUNTLEY: Yes, yes.

COTTON: That's how they said it. It was so dynamic, and people were really caught up in it, and it did not matter what was happening. The big demonstrations, the big demonstrations, the dogs, and the fire hoses. That just made more people want to come sometimes out of curiosity, but once there for curiosity, people got caught up in the dynamics and actually the spirit of it, and also the justness of our cause, and understood and felt that something is happening here and I am going to miss out on something important if I don't get involved.

Now, that being said, we also had, as a matter of fact Andy asked me to come over here, me and James Bevell to run some citizenship education workshops here in Birmingham. And I remember James Bevell and I working in the basement of the churches, and a handful of students coming by, and I will just explain to them what all this dynamic activity is in Birmingham, and they were interested, you know, what's going on?

And to help them understand that we live in a democracy, but it is not perfect, and we have a major flaw, and we have to make it right. I remember a handful of students being in the church, and ultimately thousands of students being involved, because it just grew like wildfire. Students got involved because they 01:13:00wanted to, and we knew as, I think it was Bevel who said, you will get a greater education by being involved in this struggle than you would in a civics class.

HUNTLEY: Did you personally visit schools and enlist the aid of students? You know Bevel did that.

COTTON: We did it together. We did it together.

HUNTLEY: How did that work? What did you do?

COTTON: We would talk to students wherever we could. What I tried to do was to find some students who really understood. Some who had been in the sessions at the churches, to find some students who really understood, and to get them to help other students to see and to understand. I don't recall personally talking to an administrator at a school. The teachers and school administrators were a little bit weary of us and felt they could get fired, right? So I had to be careful, but to be on the school grounds which we were and talking. We didn't 01:14:00get chased away. I think a lot of teachers and probably administrators, I am speculating here, were very glad that the movement was happening and even supported students being involved in, ultimately massive numbers, but they couldn't say that out loud.

There was a lot of quiet support I think amongst black educators, and I could mention among some whites that I know about who were supporting it but would never ever say it out loud. The wonderful, Mr. Emil Hess, for example, who I think founded one of the Parisians Department stores took me to lunch a few years ago, shortly about a year or so before he passed, and I asked him that very question, what was it like for you, a very prominent businessman in Birmingham.

What was it like for you during this time, and he actually said, if I had come out publicly supporting the movement, we would have not had the Parisians 01:15:00stores. Nobody would have come into the store if people had known, so he had the support, but he was supportive of our goals, and I am not sure of what else he did in terms either financial or helping in negotiations, but he was supportive of the goals. It was exciting to see children get turned on to this notion that we have a democracy and it is not right that a segment of the population should be excluded from the mainstream of life.

Children came to understand that and understood more than some of the parents did. As a matter of fact, I remember, I don't know the name, but I remember one father chasing his son because he had ordered his son not to be involved. There were a few folk, not every black person was pro-movement, you know, and not even 01:16:00all the preachers, but if you hear them talk now, they all loved Martin Luther King. But they didn't all love Martin Luther King, and but they wished that he would get out of town with his "mess".

HUNTLEY: He was an outside agitator.

COTTON: That's right, that's right. A few black folk felt that too. But I remember the son was running and the father was trying to catch him, because he had ordered him not to get involved in this "mess", and I don't know whether he ever caught that son or not, but its like Mr. Hood said, that son was probably involved because he too had to. He wasn't going to miss out. I would like to know.

HUNTLEY: What was the meaning of Birmingham for the movement?

COTTON: Oh, may I quote Mr. Emil Hess?

HUNTLEY: Yes.

COTTON: I am going to write about this in my book because he said it so well, this white man, big businessman in Birmingham said, "Birmingham catapulted this country into the 21st century". And I think that that is so true. Who in this 01:17:00country, maybe who in other countries don't know about Birmingham, Alabama. And though it came to be called bombingham, and we know why that was so, all the bombings, and then of course, the period. But the world, first of all the country saw this flaw in our democratic system through Birmingham. They saw the evil of segregation and racism through looking at Birmingham and what was going on here through the movement in Birmingham. It was like, you know, cutting open a boil and letting out all the ugly stuff so healing can take place. This is where that cutting open occurred so that all the ugliness could come, you know, 01:18:00the racial hatred, and the ugliness of apartheid, American style, it could all be exorcised. Birmingham did that.

We had probably worse, if not worse, at least just as violent response to demonstrations in St. Augustine, Florida, for example. But the country doesn't know about it, you never hear about St. Augustine. I remember marching in some of the big demonstrations in St. Augustine. The first place where we had night demonstrations, and that is the place where I thought I could have gotten killed because I remember marching one night. I remember Andy was leading was leading the march, and I was not far behind and someone threw a brick across and went, 2 or 3 inches it would have hit my head, but it went between me and the person walking in front of me and shattered a store window when they threw the brick.

And I remember somebody jumping on Andy's back and having him on the ground, and even today I shutter to think the guy could have a knife or something. Andy was leading the march, but we had run workshops and we were so disciplined, but there were no cameras. That didn't get out around the country, but cameras show all the ugliness of this terrible in our system, and the cameras showed it from Birmingham.

HUNTLEY: And Birmingham then is pictured all over the world, and that is what created the dynamic that would eventually change Birmingham, and probably changed the world.

COTTON: Absolutely.

HUNTLEY: I know that you also traveled with Dr. King internationally. It was 01:20:00rather early that he made a trip to, was it to Ghana? Did he go to Ghana?

COTTON: I never went to Africa with him. I went to. Actually, I don't know if people know, Dr. King loved to go to Jamaica to write. When he was going to take a little sabbatical from the activity and write, he went to Bimini two- or three-times time. There the former congressman, Adam Clayton Powell's hangout, they had a little cottage there.

I remember places in Jamaica where he would write, and Andy and I on occasion would go down, and he would sit and write and sometime people would even loan him house that was staff, and he would sit and write and we would over lunch read what he had written as he was writing in some of his books, read and go over the chapter that he had written during the morning. I got to go with him to 01:21:00Europe to Oslo, Norway, when he got the Nobel Peace Prize, and there were about 30 of us in the entourage, and we went in two separate planes, about 15 on each plane, but I did get to go to Europe with him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

HUNTLEY: Yes. There was a certain amount of tension in the movement early, because I think it was Stokely and people that were in SNCC who opposed the war earlier than Martin Luther King and SCLC, the day though that he made his announcement, that he was in opposition to the war. Were you at the service that morning? Or, do you remember the dynamics that were taking place during that time in him. Because it really appears that he was agonizing over, you know--.

COTTON: Whether he would come out against the war?

HUNTLEY: Yes.

COTTON: The Vietnam War?

HUNTLEY: Right.

COTTON: He made a major speech in New York at the, I think it was at Riverside, a major speech. I was there when he made the major speech. That's the time that it got great publicity, as I recall, when he made, excuse me I think there were either more cameras or something.

HUNTLEY: Yes. He did the same thing --..

COTTON: In Atlanta. I am sure I was there, that's kind of, I don't know why I am not remembering the New York one, because I was pretty much everywhere. I am sure I was in Atlanta. I am sure I was around.

HUNTLEY: Those days coming up to that. Were there discussions among you about that?

COTTON: Oh yes, yes. I was part of some of the actual arguments among the staff. He did agonize over whether he should make that, not just among the staff, but also board members. As a matter of fact, one of the most painful experiences 01:23:00that Dr. King had around that, coming out against the war was the circulation of the letter signed by supposedly by the board, asking him, telling him not to speak out against the war, that that was not our place. And this is in-house criticism or advice not to speak out against the war, and I loved this line.

He said, at some point when he was getting criticism from everywhere, what we know the line was quoted a lot, "injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere," and he said that in relationship to that war. And he had been studying what the Vietnamese people had gone through for even so many decades, being oppressed by one nation after the other, and he was so committed against the evil of that 01:24:00war. But also when that letter was circulated supposedly coming from the board, but we know really, I guess the real source of the letter that got circulated, it was really painful because it was signed by someone who was actually kind of a family friend, Marian Logan, who was on the board. She was also a family friend. I have a feeling that she is sad that she signed the letter for the board, but to get that from a friend, but Dr. King said, "If I am the last lone voice speaking out against the war, then I will do." He didn't back down a bit, but it was painful to hear criticism coming from such close quarters in-house.

HUNTLEY: Of course, there were criticism that suggested that what did Dr. King know about international affairs. He was a Southern Baptist minister, and of course, he would, in fact answer that with the whole question of an injustice any place is an injustice every place.

COTTON: Yes, he said that on more than one occasion and made the same point. He made the same point in relation to criticism of his being an outsider. You know, after a group of ministers wrote the letter, and of course, Dr. King's famous letter from a Birmingham jail, I think give such a wonderful analysis and response to criticism of working in a place other than where he lived.

HUNTLEY: Some suggest that Dr. King became more threatened after he had made the speech against the war, and then he started to talk about the necessity of poor people, blacks and white, and Appalachian whites come together to develop a movement.

COTTON: Yes.

HUNTLEY: That created a difficulty for some folk that and the threats escalated.

COTTON: The threats escalated on the heels of the anti-Vietnam war coming out statement. Threats on his life did, indeed, escalate. Threats escalated, and this was happening, you know, during the same time frame of threats escalated after the announcement of the poor people's campaign that is bringing now all poor together, and one of the stories I am telling in my book about that is a 01:27:00white Appalachian preacher who called the SCLC offices one day and said, "hello, my name is preacher Red, and I want to talk to somebody that is high up in SCLC," and interestingly I said, "well, let me see if I can find somebody high up," and I went to talk to Andy.

I don't know if Andy will remember this, I said, "here is somebody on the phone who wants to talk to somebody high up, and he says his name is preacher Red." Andy said, "well, ask him if you are high up enough?" But the women's movement hadn't happened then, otherwise I would have said, well, I am high up enough? Today I would just take the call. But I did meet with this white preacher from Appalachia. We went to Pascual's Motel, so it just been, well that was the black motel, and the place for us to go eat and black and white get together in peace.

HUNTLEY: And this was the preacher from Appalachia?

COTTON: Yes. And what he said was, "I just want you to know that I have hated Dr. King. I hate Dr. King." He put in present tense, and I said, well, what do you mean? Why? You know, he wasn't threatening to me. He said, "because he is leaving us out." And that was very moving even as I think about it now. We have the same needs he said, and as Dr. King, the same need for the kind for the kind of leadership that Dr. King is giving to you all and your people, and we are left out. The poor fellow, he didn't know where to go or what to do, but he saw something going on, and you could tell he was afraid of it. It was sort of an attitude. He was nervous.

HUNTLEY: Was this when Dr. King expanded?

COTTON: Oh, we hired, I am blocking on the young man's name, a white fellow on 01:29:00my staff to begin organizing. We started to recruit in Appalachia. We hired a white fellow to go into Appalachia to recruit people to come to the citizen training workshops because they had to get the background. They had to understand nonviolence. They had to understand why fighting for the right to vote was so much a part of the dynamics of the movement. It wasn't just about having a demonstration, and I always sort of get my dandruff up when people talk about the movement, as a lot of demonstrations.

It was so much more than a big demonstration, but folk see the marches on the television and they think that was all that the movement was about. They don't know the planning and the basic goal was to really rearrange the social order in this country, and to, as Dr. Vincent Harding at the Iliff School in Theology puts it to advanced democracy in this country. It is what that movement was about. So it was just so much more. So, the people, they had to come through 01:30:00training, and I have just burst into tears when I think about the first time a group of white folk came from Appalachia now after all these years to Dorchester Center to a citizenship education workshop.

HUNTLEY: By this time Dr. King was bigger than life.

COTTON: Yes.

HUNTLEY: He was the focus. Of course, his assassination. All kinds of questions that are raised. Did the movement die with Dr. King in 1968?

COTTON: The movement did not die with Dr. King in 1968. I could not possibly use that phrase. And I know some people do see it that way. But I think that I so see that movement and let me say that phase of the struggle to advance 01:31:00democracy. I see it as a period and as a phase for our struggle for democracy. I see it as a phase that couldn't possibly continue. There is no way that we could have kept the momentum the way that it was at that time. I think it was neither physically nor emotionally possible to move at that pace and to continue at the same time.

I think even if Dr. King had lived, I think it would have taken--., it was evolving. It would have had to take a different turn. Even Dr. King was saying this, and I even said this very broadly. He was even thinking that maybe I should take some sabbatical, and he talked about that. He talked about that to me, and I don't know who else he said that to. But he was pondering, really 01:32:00where do we go from here, and thinking that maybe he needed to pull away. Dr. King was very clear and said this. There were riots happening in some places, and again, people speak of riots that occurred in Watts or wherever, and then they call Dr. King and put out the fires that were, and he had to say on more than one occasion, I am not a fireman. And that is not how he worked, that was not what the movement is about. It was getting people in motion and using the nonviolent perspective to organize people and to move us forward. So, my sense is that-- to give a quick example, when ultimately, Andy Young decided to run for congress.

To me that was part of the movement. You can't just demonstrate all the rest of your life, you know, and people also get older. But it is evolving, so you go on to other phases, and I think if Dr. King had lived, there probably at some, have 01:33:00been some structure that helped us really move into a way of looking the economics, which is what Dr. King was, that what the poor people's campaign was about. Lets look at the economic underpinning of this apartheid system that has been so oppressive and poor people in general, and so it was evolving.

So, who knows, we might have started pulling in economist, and maybe, we don't know. But, I know that it couldn't have stayed the same. Like it didn't stay the same from the early days of the sit-in movement to 1968. The sit-in movement when those students sat-in in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960, but things happened. You know, all the protest activity in all of these places, things changed, and we became clearer and clearer on where we needed to go in the movement.

HUNTLEY: You know, you have been very gracious with your time, and I certainly appreciate it. I don't where you are today. We could talk for another three hours. I am sure, but I really appreciate you taking your time out and coming to sit with us. So the next time that you are in town, we will have to continue this.

COTTON: Yes and will talk about what I am doing now in terms now of setting up and coordinating convening what we are calling the National Citizenship School, to look at what civic functioning means for the 21st century. No longer do we have to help black folk in mass understand that we can all not be victims but be a part of this wonderful democracy that we have, with its flaws and work on what we need to work on for now.

HUNTLEY: Thank you, Ms. Cotton for being so generous.

COTTON: Thank you for having me here.