Flora Washington Smith

HUNTLEY: This is an interview with Mrs. Flora Smith for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's Oral History Project. I am Dr. Horace Huntley. We are at Miles College. Today is September 27, 1995.

Thank you, Mrs. Smith for coming out to be with us today to give us information about your history and the history of Birmingham. I appreciate you taking time out to do that for us today. I want to start by asking you some general questions. What part of the state are you from? Where were you born?

SMITH: Hale County.

HUNTLEY: Hale County, Alabama.You lived in Hale County and where did your 00:01:00parents move to from Hale County, to Tuscaloosa County, was it?

SMITH: My father was away.He was sick and away from home at the time that my mother moved to Tuscaloosa County, about 1917.

HUNTLEY: Was your father a farmer?

SMITH: Yes.

HUNTLEY: Did your mother work outside of the home?

SMITH: My mother did farm work before leaving Hale County, and domestic work in Yolanda.

HUNTLEY: When were you born, what year?

SMITH: November 23, 1909.

HUNTLEY: You moved to Birmingham around what year?How old were you?

SMITH: Well, I was an adult when I moved to Birmingham.

HUNTLEY: Then, let's just back up a bit and talk just briefly about your schooling.You became orphaned at an early age?

SMITH: Yes, both my father and mother died in 1918, four months apart.

HUNTLEY: You were about nine years old at the time.Who did you live with after that?

SMITH: I lived with a Rev. and Mrs. Van Horn.They were distant relatives.

HUNTLEY: That was where?

SMITH: That was in Tuscaloosa County at a place called Cornerville Junction.

HUNTLEY: In Tuscaloosa County were you in school at the time?

SMITH: I started school that same year my mother died, at a place called 00:03:00Willows, which is not on the map.

HUNTLEY: That is in Tuscaloosa County?

SMITH: Yes.

HUNTLEY: What do you remember about your school?

SMITH: Well, I remember I could read very well and I must have been in an advance class because I started off in the second grade. About 1919, we moved to Bessemer. My foster father, a railroad man, began to be what you called "rolled".

HUNTLEY: Rolled from his job?

SMITH: Yes.We then moved from Bessemer to a place called Valley Creek.And I didn't start school there.We left there and we moved to Sumpter, Alabama and we moved before I could get into school there.We moved back to Yolanda, that's not on the map either.

HUNTLEY: Is that in Tuscaloosa County?

SMITH: Yes. I did get to go to school there. Somehow I was in the fourth grade by the time I got back to Yolanda. We stayed in Yolanda maybe a year. But, in 1922 we moved I was in the to a place called Rock Castle. Some called it Davis Creek and some called it Rock Castle.

HUNTLEY: Is that still Tuscaloosa County?

SMITH: That's still Tuscaloosa County.In 1922 my foster father had a mine accident.He lived two days.

HUNTLEY: So he worked in the coal mines?

SMITH: Yes.I think I had enrolled in school when that accident occurred.

HUNTLEY: Did you have brothers and sisters?

SMITH: I had one sister, we came up in the same home together.I had two brothers, they came up in another foster home and I had another brother who came up in another home. So we came up in three different foster homes.

HUNTLEY: Were they in the same general area?

SMITH: No.

HUNTLEY: Did you lose contact with any of them?

SMITH: My baby brother I lost contact with him from about 1920 to about 1927.His foster father took him to Detroit, Michigan. But I did keep in contact with the 00:07:00other two brothers.

HUNTLEY: Oh, I see.You lived with a brother and they lived with a sister?

SMITH: My sister's age is one year and six months was reared along with three foster brothers.

HUNTLEY: So you did have the contact with them?

SMITH: Yes.So in 1922 the foster father died and these brothers knew nothing but mining and they began moving around.They left Rock Castle and moved to a place called Pritchett.

HUNTLEY: Is this Pritchett in south Alabama?

SMITH: It was out from Warrior.

HUNTLEY: Now, you are saying "the brothers."These are brothers that lived with you after the death of my foster father I lived with his widowand his three sons.

SMITH: The brothers I lived with and their mother.

HUNTLEY: Then you stayed with them?

SMITH: I stayed with them.Both my sister, age one and a half and I were reared along with three foster brothers after the death of our mother.

HUNTLEY: As they moved, you moved along with them?

SMITH: Were they your guardians at the time?

SMITH: They were.The mother and those brothers.After Pritchett, we moved to Overton, Alabama probably, in '24 or '23 I went to school there from '24 to about 1926.But I kind of rebelled against going to school because of the fact 00:09:00that they made no effort in particular to send me to school. Education was not a priority to them.The missionary society bought my books that last year and I just thought that was too much.

HUNTLEY: You thought the books cost too much?

SMITH: No.I thought that in as much as I cooked and cleaned for these foster brothers, that they should have at least been able to buy books and shoes for me to wear to school.I rebelled.

HUNTLEY: You rebelled against them?So what did you do in your rebellion?

SMITH: Well, eventually I came back to Bessemer.I had an aunt living and I stayed there with her for about nine months and went to school there.I wound up in about the 7th or 8th grade.I think I was promoted to the 8th grade.

HUNTLEY: After that did you go on to start working?

SMITH: I started working.

HUNTLEY: What kind of work did you do?

SMITH: Wash dishes in the cafes and things like that.

HUNTLEY: At what age did you get married?

SMITH: I was 22.

HUNTLEY: You were here in Birmingham at the time I assume.Tell me about the man 00:11:00that you married.

SMITH: Well, the man that I marriedwas a good man, he adopted my son, when he was 6 years old.And my husband became a Baptist preacher in 1938 and we enrolled in the Easonian Baptist Seminary in Birmingham.

HUNTLEY: The two of you enrolled?

SMITH: Yes.We studied in that school a number of years.He went to Tuskegee and 00:12:00took some classes at Tuskegee.I enrolled in the Birmingham Baptist College in the junior high school department when my son was 21 years old.I finished senior high school and received a diploma also in Christian Education I was 42.We did a lot of traveling because my husband became an evangelist as well as a pastor.

HUNTLEY: Tell me what part of Birmingham did you live in?

SMITH: Smithfield and Enon Ridge.

HUNTLEY: What was the community like at that time?

SMITH: Well, I can't tell you too much about the community because I worked all the time.I did domestic work.Work had been hard to get.We came through that 1920 00:13:00crash and things were difficult along about that time.So, I worked all my life and I stayed a great deal to myself.I did not mingle a lot with the people of the community.Having lived in so many unpleasant environments made me want to keep to myself and family.

HUNTLEY: Did the community itself, were you affiliated with a church at that particular time?

SMITH: Yes.We joined the church in 1931. We were baptized together.

HUNTLEY: Did that give you another outlet?

SMITH: Yes, I became more social-minded towards the people in the church.

HUNTLEY: What was Birmingham like at that time?We"re talking about the early 30s.

SMITH: It was segregated.That was one reason why my son left because of the conditions that existed there.It was during the second world war that my son became a Merchant Seaman.

HUNTLEY: Do you remember any specific incidents where segregation affected you and your family?

SMITH: I cannot exactlyIt would take me too long to remember too many things about the segregated style of life.

HUNTLEY: The whole era of segregation is one where it basically subjugated Black 00:15:00people to a position of....

SMITH: We couldn't ride, for instance the bus, there was a partition between "us" and "them."We had to ride in the back and they ride in the front and there was a board that would be moved up when there was less White people on there. But, when they got on there, that board had to be moved back, I remember that.And, of course I remember the segregated eating and all that.You couldn't go to these places and eat and enjoy ourselves as we do now.

HUNTLEY: What about downtown, the movie theaters?

SMITH: Oh, I never went to an integrated movie.

HUNTLEY: Did you go to the theaters on 4th Avenue? SMITH: Yes.

HUNTLEY: That part of Birmingham, at that time, was rather vibrant.

It had a lot of people in that area and you had Black businesses and people consistently shopped in those businesses, went to the movie theaters.This was Black Birmingham.What do you remember about that ,area?

SMITH: Just right off hand I just cannot remember all together.

HUNTLEY: Okay.Let's move up a little bit further.

SMITH: One thing about that.My son, he always wondered what was going in the White church that was not going on in the Black church.He wondered why is it that I can't go into this White church.

HUNTLEY: What did you tell him?

SMITH: I don't remember what I told him.I really didn't have the answer.He did say one time "If I ever preach, I will be preaching to a White congregation".I remember him telling me that.

HUNTLEY: Is he a preacher now?

SMITH: No.But, the church that he worked for, for 22 years, is an Episcopalian 00:18:00Church, one of the oldest churches that was established in the United States of America and he had a lot of contact with those people in that church .I think I gave Mrs. Hendricks a picture of him in this 275 year history of the Church and he is one of four Black men mentioned in this 275 year history.

HUNTLEY: He is one of four Blacks who is mentioned?

SMITH: Yes, one of the four Blacksrecorded in the history of the Parish Church of St. Helena in Beaufort, South Carolina.

HUNTLEY: At what point did you get involved with the Civil Rights Movement?

SMITH: When it was first organized.I believe the first meeting that I attended was at Sardis Baptist Church.

HUNTLEY: This was probably in the beginning.I think the first one was at Sardis and it was 1956.

SMITH: Well I don't remember when it was.

HUNTLEY: This was initially organized as the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights by Fred Shuttlesworth.So you were in attendance at those first meetings?

SMITH: Yes.But what really got me stirred up about it was, I was studying Negro 00:20:00Makers of History by Carter G. Woodson at the Birmingham Baptist College and at the same time we were studying there, Dr. Martin Luther King was beginning his leadership in Montgomery and I used to keep a scrap book of all the activities that were going on among our people.

And, one of the main ones that I remember was when Dr. Martin Luther King was stabbed by a woman in New York and that knife was sticking in his chest and I had that picture. I had pictures of Dr. Shuttlesworth coming out of his house when it was bombed and pictures like that I kept in my scrap book for years.I 00:21:00never thought I'd need them.But that first meeting we attended, I think my husband and I probably attended that first meeting and we kept up with it, but I don't remember exactly why he dropped out, but I continued.

HUNTLEY: Why did you continue and he dropped out?

SMITH: I was interested.I had been stirred up about what was going on and I just kept going.

HUNTLEY: In your activity with the Movement you went to many mass

meetings .SMITH: Quite a few of them.

HUNTLEY: Can you tell me what a mass meeting was like?How would you describe a mass meeting?

SMITH: Well, I can describe just one. I went every night that my school teacher would take me.

HUNTLEY: Who was the school teacher?

SMITH: She was a Miss Doris Miles.

HUNTLEY: Was she related to you?

SMITH: No.She was my landlady.And, she would go up every night and we would sit in the balcony and watch.That's how I became so involved, just watching every night.

HUNTLEY: You always sat in the balcony?

SMITH: Yes.

HUNTLEY: You never sat on the first floor?

SMITH: We didn't.

HUNTLEY: Why do you think you sat in the balcony?

SMITH: I don't know, but I was with her.I don't know why we went into the balcony.

HUNTLEY: Oh, I see.So you basically was just following her to the balcony.I know there were many teachers who were afraid to lose their jobs if they were involved.

SMITH: I think that was it.

HUNTLEY: But, at least she was there.There were many that didn't even attend, but she didn't want to be seen, I assume.

HUNTLEY: I would pray every night that the Lord would send some marchers, but I wasn't about to go myself.I only prayed that God would send somebody.And, this particular night, Dr. Shuttlesworth said, while making this appeal, I'm going to tell you like Mordecai told Esther when the Jews were about to be exterminated."He said, "Mordecai told Esther don't you think that because you are in the king's palace that you will not be destroyed along with the rest of us."

I remember that at that meeting.And that must have been the night when I went back home and woke up the next morning and all those songs that we had been singing, they moved me. My husband had gone fishing.And, I said, I haven't seen my son in five years.I'm going down and be arrested today, and I'm going to be somebody's mother tomorrow, in jail.I packed my little bag with my Bible and my toothpaste and little things, and a white dress because Sunday, was Mother's Day.

HUNTLEY: So this was the Saturday before Mother's Day in 1963?

SMITH: Yes.And, I went on down to 16th Street Baptist Church.

They gave us directions as to which way to go.They singled us out by twos.And, there was a young teenager with me.I think when I got outside that I was hoping that I was not going to be arrested.And, instead of going down 6th Avenue like we were supposed to go.

HUNTLEY: That is where most of the other marchers were going?

SMITH: Yes. But I turned with the young girl and went on down by 16th Street Baptist Church, went up 7th Avenue and down to 19th Street right down by City Hall.

HUNTLEY: Why did you take a different route than everyone else?

SMITH: I think I was hoping I wasn't going to get arrested after all.I had second thoughts.They had told us to stay right there because there'll be somebody.Others will be coming, you just stay there.

HUNTLEY: You mean, at City Hall?

SMITH: Yes.But when I got to City Hall, I and the young person just knelt right down at the steps and began praying and that's when they got us.

HUNTLEY: You mean, at City Hall?

SMITH: We were to go, two-by-two to City Hall.

HUNTLEY: In that line?

SMITH: Yes.

HUNTLEY: But you decided to go in a different direction?

SMITH: Yes.I think I got cold feet and hope that I didn't get caught after all.

HUNTLEY: So did the others make it to City Hall that day?

SMITH: They arrested as we came and put us in the van that was at City Hall and they would wait until somebody else would come until that van got full and they would carry us on over to the city jail.

HUNTLEY: So you were arrested that day?

SMITH: Yes.

HUNTLEY: What did you feel when you were arrested at City Hall?

SMITH: Well, I felt excited just like all the rest of them that were singing. We just began singing. It wasn't no more than we expected.

HUNTLEY: They took you over to the city jail?

SMITH: Yes.

HUNTLEY: Fingerprinted you?

SMITH: Yes.

HUNTLEY: And put you into a cell?

SMITH: Yes.There was a whole lot of us in a cell.

HUNTLEY: How long did you remain there?

SMITH: From that Saturday to that next Sunday before day, we were let out.

HUNTLEY: So you were there for a week?

SMITH: Yes.

HUNTLEY: What do you remember about being there for that week?What did you do for a week?

SMITH: Well, we led the people in singing and praying and trying to keep order.There was a lot of disorder there.

HUNTLEY: What kind of disorder?

SMITH: Well, I woke up one morning and two women were at each other, saying 00:29:00everything they could think to say.And we were right up over the police station and the police heard everything that was being said.And, I said to these women, "We are right here over this police station and they hear everything you say."And I tried to tell them that we have no business talking like this.She said, "What would you have said if she had of spoke to you like she did to me?"I said, "What do you think Dr. King would have had to say?" Well, she said, "I'm not Dr. King."I said, "He wouldn't want you here."

HUNTLEY: Was this one of the people who had been protesting?

SMITH: Really, I don't know.

HUNTLEY: How did you handle that?

SMITH: I just told her "He wouldn't want you here."That quieted that down.They didn't have room for everybody in jail. They had to put a lot of men and boys on the outside and a big storm came up during the night and the men were out screaming in the storm.And I said to the women, "Sisters, our brothers are out there in that storm, let's pray."And we stopped and prayed. I don't remember when the storm stopped.I don't remember what happened.

HUNTLEY: But you stopped and prayed?

SMITH: Yes.And, then one morning we were having devotion and when we didn't 00:31:00break and run to get to the door for breakfast they just shut the door in our face.She just shut the door in our face, we didn't get breakfast that morning.

HUNTLEY: Why were you late?

SMITH: We were having prayer.

HUNTLEY: And they had asked you to come in and you continued to pray?

SMITH: Yes.

HUNTLEY: And by the time that you finished, they had closed the door?

SMITH: Yes.

HUNTLEY: So, even in jail, there was a certain amount of rebellion against the system?Meaning that you were going to do the singing, the praying, regardless of what the consequences?

SMITH: They hollered up there "Stop that singing."They could hear us.

HUNTLEY: "They" meaning the prison guards?

SMITH: Yes.But we sang, right on.Because one day we wasn't singing and it was at the same time Dr. King was in that other building.Somebody went to the window and looked out and they said, "Dr. King said sing."I didn't hear him myself, but somebody that could see him said, "Dr. King said sing."So we went on back to singing.

HUNTLEY: At that point you were 50 or 53.Were you the oldest person in jail at that time?

SMITH: I can't tell, because there were about 200 people and I couldn't 00:33:00tell.There was Mrs. Peagues might have been round about my age, and then there were two women from the church that my husband pastored that were there, they were younger than we were.

HUNTLEY: What was the response of your husband when you were arrested?

SMITH: We never talked about it.

HUNTLEY: Never mentioned it?

SMITH: I never remember discussing it.

HUNTLEY: Did he get you out?

SMITH: Oh, no.The Movement did.

HUNTLEY: After you were released from jail, did you go back to the meetings?

SMITH: No.It wasn't that I was afraid to go back, it was all of the flak I was getting.

HUNTLEY: Who were you getting flak from?

SMITH: The first one was that I remember I was reared in that family and this preacher's wife called me and told me, "I'm so mad at you, I don't know what to do."I said, "What are you mad about?"She said, "You had to go down there and get yourself arrested."And, then, my sister-in-law said that my husband's pastor 00:35:00asked him if he beat me for going down there and getting arrested.

HUNTLEY: Did she tell you what your husband had said?The reply?

SMITH: No.

HUNTLEY: So all these individuals were not associated with the Movement?

SMITH: Oh, no.The people that were associated with the Movement never criticized me.It was the church, they reacted coldly.

HUNTLEY: So that church was not actively involved in the struggles?

SMITH: Just two people had the nerve to go and be in that demonstration.

HUNTLEY: So they treated you rather crudely after you were released from jail?

SMITH: Yes.

HUNTLEY: So you never participated again?

SMITH: I never went back.Except, let me see, I think my husband had passed when we made that march.No, he didn't pass until 1979, but in 1965 I participated in that march.

HUNTLEY: The march from Selma to Montgomery?

SMITH: I didn't go all the way from Selma. I went to St. Jude Hospital in Montgomery along with New Pilgrim Baptist Church. From the St. Jude hospital, we marched with those who had begun the marched in Selma.

HUNTLEY: Why did you decide to participate in that march?

SMITH: My husband didn't object.He didn't really say "You can't". He never said 00:37:00that.So I went there and went to Dr. Martin Luther King's funeral.When Dr. King's mother was killed, I went down to Atlanta to view her body.I didn't stay for the funeral.But my husband never said "You can't."

HUNTLEY: He was just not active himself?

SMITH: He was not active himself, but he did not say, "You can't."

HUNTLEY: Well, you've been very active any number of ways.You were active in the Movement during that time.You've marched from Selma to Montgomery.You went to Dr. King's funeral in '68 and, then you decided to complete your education.Tell 00:39:0000:38:00me about that.

SMITH: Well, the New Pilgrim Baptist Church, Dr. N.H. Smith, pastor of which I was a member of and my husband was associate pastor of that church when he died, sent me to Haiti along with another member of the church to check on some land that they was to erect a church school on. And, while I was there, I began to wonder if Haiti wasn't the place where I was supposed to do foreign mission work.But, I didn't have a skill so, when I came back and decided that I would like to go into nurse training and I enrolled in Bessemer Tech. They told me, 00:40:00"You can't make the grade at your age."

HUNTLEY: You were in your 70s?

SMITH: Yes.But they told me, "You can't make the grade because the oldest person that we have ever trained was 65," and I was passed 65.

HUNTLEY: So did you quit at that point?

SMITH: No.The foreign mission bureau sent a letter to Bessemer Tech and told them they were interested in me returning to Haiti and if they could train me, they wanted to send me to Haiti.It grieved me quite a bit that I couldn't pass the test.But it was then that the Lord took over.He said, "Go to Miles College."I called Miles College and I got Dr. Estes in Humanities.I told her the situation and she said, "You come to Miles College and we will take you from 00:42:00where you are to where you need to go".I enrolled in the summer program in 1983.I got a grant to continue schooling.I was given a $1,000 scholarship by a group.

HUNTLEY: That was based on your grades at that point, isn't that right?

SMITH: I got a grant.I began going to school on the grant.And,

then somewhere later down the line I got this scholarship.

HUNTLEY: What were you studying?

SMITH: General education, but my major was English.

HUNTLEY: At that point you were in your mid-70s, right?

SMITH: I was 74 when I enrolled.I was 77 when I finished, but I didn't march until the next year in May.

HUNTLEY: Well, how was it coming back to school, being in school all day, every day with children who could have been your grandchildren?

SMITH: In the first place, it filled a void.I had lost my husband, I had been 00:44:00married to him almost 48 years.

HUNTLEY: When you came back out here to school that filled that void and it gave you again, a sense of purpose, I'm assuming.I can imagine what that was like.What the other students think of you being here?

SMITH: I was a missionary here.I didn't go back to Haiti, but I was a missionary on Miles Campus.

HUNTLEY: Explain that to me.What did you do?How were you a missionary?

SMITH: Well, to begin with there was a young woman in my class and she was most disorderly.It seemed she delighted to run over this White teacher and she kept up a disturbance in that class.One morning I asked him if I could read a scripture and have prayer.

HUNTLEY: Was this after this particular person was disruptive in class?

SMITH: She had been disrupting the class all time and the instructor said, "Yes."And, I read a scripture from the second chapter of Ezekiel, where it is written, "Forthey are impudent children and stiffed hearted...." a preacher prayed and needless to say, it worked.

HUNTLEY: So what did the kids call you?

SMITH: Grandma.I told them you can call me Grandma, I like it.

HUNTLEY: So you were an inspiration then?

SMITH: I think I must have been.There was a lot of things, but that stood out.

HUNTLEY: Well, you've obviously had a long tenure and you have been very, very active and you are still active because you drove here today, right?

SMITH: Yes.I'm active in my church, The Greater Temple Missionary Baptist Church.My pastor is Dr. James A. Gibson, Jr.

HUNTLEY: So you are still serving?That's phenomenal.Is there anything that we have not covered that you would just like to leave us with today?

SMITH: I can only say to God be the glory that he has used such an insignificant person as myself in this program: INSPIRED BY THE PAST /A VISION OF THE FUTURE

HUNTLEY: Thank you Mrs. Smith for spending the time with us today.I appreciate it very much.