Rev. John T. Porter

HUNTLEY: This is an interview with Reverend John Thomas Porter for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's Oral History Project. I'm Dr. Horace Huntley. We are presently at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Today is March 26, 1997.

Rev. Porter, I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to sit and talk with me today. I'd just like to ask you first of all, were your parents originally from Birmingham?

PORTER: No, they were both from Russell County? Pittsview, Alabama, you probably never heard of it.

HUNTLEY: Near Phoenix City?

PORTER: Yes, Pittsview which was Phoenix City is now the county seat. They had another county seat during that time but is Russell County.

HUNTLEY: Now were you born in Russell County or were you born here in Birmingham?

PORTER: I was born in Birmingham, eight blocks from where I pastured. I didn't get very far in life - eight blocks.

HUNTLEY: Eight blocks, that's a long journey.

PORTER: Just a little round about but I ended up eight blocks away from home.

HUNTLEY: That's very interesting. Siblings, how many brothers and sisters?

PORTER: I had one brother and one sister there were three children, and they're all still living.

HUNTLEY: Where do you fit in that, were you the baby?

PORTER: I was the youngest, that's how I prefer it. I was the youngest of the three.

HUNTLEY: What neighborhood did you grow up in?

PORTER: Titusville and I'm one of the original blue bloods of Titusville - that was the original Titusville people. Then it grew and you've got Lincoln Park and some other segments that are now Titusville but I was there among the first 00:02:00families so we were one of the original blue bloods of Titusville.

HUNTLEY: What about the educational background of your parents?

PORTER: My father if he went to school at all he didn't mention it never alluded to one day in school which I'm not sure he ever went. I think he was a country boy and he did a lot of farming and stuff. So his educational background was nil. My mother may have gone to about the 6th or 7th grade. But we were from very proud families ambitious always striving to be better etc. So they were totally unlearned. I doubt whether my father could read. He could write his name 00:03:00but I think that's about all.

HUNTLEY: Where they grown when they came to Birmingham or did they come as children?

PORTER: No, they married in Pittsview and my father came to Birmingham as a young man of about 18 or 19 years old and then he went back a year or so later and drawed his sweetheart to Birmingham after having this big front porch wedding in Pittsview. So they moved here and located near where South Town Project is now. It was Scruggs Alley. So marvelous things can come out of the alleys. So their first three room house was in Scruggs Alley and it was one of those kinds of situations where the house was spotless and yet these are the kinds of people that came of the alleys. They moved to Titusville which was sort 00:04:00of upscale. It was no Enon Ridge where the professionals were but at that time Titusville was really kind of moving up.

So they moved from Scruggs Alley and they moved to Titusville. But incidentally, I want to just throw this in. My father was a yard man, they're landscape engineers now. But he was a yard man at a private home, this was in like '29 let me give you some of the attitude of the South. He went to the employer and asked for enough money to pay down on a car. The employer who was a typical White bigot would not give him money to buy a car but he agreed to give him the down payment on a house. So in '29 this bigot went out to Titusville and bought the 00:05:00chauffeur a house, he bought the butler a house and he bought the yard man a house. The agreement was they would pay for the house $5 a week from their wages and my father was making maybe $15 and he wondered how can you take care of a family and pay $5 a week that would leave you but $10. My father assured him he could make it but the fellow gave my father a raise to $20.

HUNTLEY: So he retained that $15?

PORTER: Fifteen dollars plus a house. This was the worst kind of bigot.

HUNTLEY: Did he live in Birmingham, the person that he worked for? Was it in Homewood?

PORTER: On top of the mountain, he was one of the richest men in Birmingham. All of the very rich lived on top of the mountain overlooking Birmingham Now the very rich have moved further out but at that time the very rich lived on the very top of the mountain and all of these were domestics. They had five and six servants per house. You know how they have one now or maybe a part time twice a week. But everyday five servants worked in that house.

HUNTLEY: What kind of person was this person involved in? Do you know that?

PORTER: Alabama Power, he was president of the Alabama Power Company [inaudible]

HUNTLEY: That is something.

PORTER: He had that kind of relationship where he was opposed to my father having a car but was interested in a house that we were very blessed in an 00:07:00indirect way. I've always appreciated him even though he was a typical Southerner at that time he blessed us in a marvelous way.

HUNTLEY: Prior to your father coming did he or his family own property in Pittsview?

PORTER: No.

HUNTLEY: Were they farmers though?

PORTER: Sharecroppers and because of a leg injury or whatever caused my grandfather to limp. He could not straighten his leg, his leg was bent. So he could not farm because of that leg. So he was a keeper of cows. The owner had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cows and my grandfather would see after 00:08:00these cows and twice a week he would call those cows to the house. To hear him call cows and to look and you can't see a single cow anywhere, in fifteen minutes hundreds of cows . . .

HUNTLEY: The calling of the cows.

PORTER: Would be coming. I'm sure he had this kind of job because that the only one . . . he could not walk behind a plow, he was limping so. So my father's beginnings were very simple.

HUNTLEY: So you then visited your grandparents?

PORTER: Yes, in the summer time we would stay six weeks maybe, every year in the country with our grandparents. Both my grandparents were in Pittsview.

HUNTLEY: Did your mother work outside of the home?

PORTER: My mother would work occasionally as the upstairs maid.

HUNTLEY: In the same home?

PORTER: At the same home with the [inaudible]

HUNTLEY: Did she always live at home or did she at times stay there with that family?

PORTER: No, she lived at home. My father would stay on the place every now and then when they would vacation. They always wanted someone and the servants would rotate turns of staying on the property at night. But my mother did work, just on occasions when Mrs. Martin wanted something very special done and she was sort of considered the upstairs maid.

HUNTLEY: What was Titusville like in those early days that you were growing up? You went to Washington Elementary School. Tell me about Washington Elementary 00:10:00School and how that fit into that community.

PORTER: It was a Black community beyond the railroad tracks. Black communities are always beyond the railroad tracks you see. Going west, you would past the street car here and ride to what is now UAB and that was called Idlewild Circle and you'd get off the street car at the end of the line and walk due west. Once you cross the railroad tracks you were then in the Black community. In Titusville, there were very few if any paved streets in Birmingham. They were all dirt and we would sweep like you'd sweep the house there was not grass because we had hogs and chickens and stuff so there was no grass and once a week 00:11:00we had to sweep it like we do a house. I did live to see all of the streets paved but as a child they were not paved.

HUNTLEY: You know I always thought about that, what did that represent, the sweeping of the street the sweeping of the yards what did that represent in the Black family the Black community?

PORTER: In the White community you would cut the grass, it looks fresh and clean and orderly. To get that same effect of orderliness and cleanliness you would sweep it and you get the same effect as if you would have just cut the grass. All the dirt is level, so it was just cleanliness and houses were cleaned inside to outside because the next day the chickens would walk out over and clunk up 00:12:00the dirt so you would go back and sweep it again and it gave it a very nice smooth clean look.

HUNTLEY: What do you remember about your days at Washington Elementary School?

PORTER: They were good days. All of my growing up days were happy days. I think I'm a very happy adult because my childhood days were very comfortable and they were very good. My time at Washington School was a very special time. We always felt very protected. The neighborhood was protected because the adults watched out of their windows somebody was always looking so it was a very safe environment and we were very much at home at Washington School. You had teachers who were sort of like mothers, they were not cold and withdrawn they were 00:13:00involved with you so it was a very good time.

We had many families that were not well off. There was no one well off if a coal miner made the better salaries the only problem is the labor union had strikes six months out of the year. But when they were working they were making the better salaries. Domestics never did make good salaries but they always worked so if you didn't have but a little income you had some. So you'd find that domestic person almost as well off or better than say a railroad worker who do just a half year salary.

HUNTLEY: You had railroad workers, you had coal miners, you had domestics, what other occupations do you remember growing up in your community?

PORTER: There were all home owners on our street. In the neighborhood everybody was homeowners, there were some postal workers and I'm sure common laborers but we were fortunate in the neighborhood to have the postal workers the coal miners or the railroad people and domestics from the big homes. That was a class there. If you were a domestic at the smaller homes or the lesser rich White people then those who were in the homes of the very rich there was a very striking difference. Our church to which we both belong had Black folk from the very rich 00:15:00families so we was always kind of special.

HUNTLEY: So that this aura of 6th Avenue is not something new?

PORTER: No, we do have doctors and nurses now, back then we had no doctors or nurses but they were all at another kind of level even among the domestics it was the higher paid or domestics from the larger families that attended our church.

HUNTLEY: After Washington Elementary then you went on to some other little school?

PORTER: Ullman.

HUNTLEY: Oh you went to Ullman?

PORTER: Ullman High, yes, you see there was only one high school and that was Parker but Ullman which had been White had now become Black but it was only a 00:16:00two year high school. So everybody on the Southside would go to Ullman for Southside and for the last two years of high school, everybody from everywhere would come to Parker.

HUNTLEY: You said Ullman had been a White school?

PORTER: Yes.

HUNTLEY: Had it been a White junior high school or elementary school or do you remember?

PORTER: I don't know, I really don't know. All I know is that it was a White school. But then it became a Black two year high school.

HUNTLEY: Then you went from Ullman to Parker?

PORTER: Right.

HUNTLEY: What was that like?

PORTER: It was just not a new world but there were more people from everywhere and some you never did get to know. Thirty years later I went to the class reunion and my wife said to me look like you didn't know each other I said well we don't know each other now and frankly we didn't know each other then it was 00:17:00too big. It was probably the largest high school in the world. They had 5,000 students which made it the largest Black high school in the world.

HUNTLEY: That's the way it had been termed. The largest Negro high school in the world.

PORTER: I don't know how [inaudible] But anyway I was thrown into that and somehow I became a more aggressive and assertive in high school then in elementary school I was always shy and sort of withdrawn but in high school the shyness shut down and I started getting aggressive politically and other things.

HUNTLEY: What extracurricular activities were you involved in?

PORTER: I wasn't ever into band or football believe it or not you just knew I played football. I was always on the student council, I was leader of that kind.

HUNTLEY: You were a political leader?

PORTER: Political leader, until the principal called me one day in the office my 00:18:00senior year I believe he told me that he didn't like my militant attitude. I never heard of the word militant. I had to try so hard to impress the principal who was new.

HUNTLEY: Was that Johnson?

PORTER: Johnson, told me he didn't like my militant attitude.

HUNTLEY: What was he referring to, how did you interpret what he was saying?

PORTER: I was a member of the High Wire, member of the choir, and the High Wire had a thing I was involved in and that was a protest of a boycott against the teacher who was over the High Wire. I was sort of accused of leading.

HUNTLEY: Was it an unfounded acquisition?

PORTER: We didn't think so. I don't even remember what it was now but we decided 00:19:00that we were going to protest and boycott and I think the faculty member had gone to the principal and told him that we had pulled a strike. He come in and he was angry told me I don't like your militant attitude. Ohhhh, that hurt my heart because I didn't know what it was. But I entered the oratorical contest and the choir and all of this was a part of far removed from the [inaudible] of elementary school.

HUNTLEY: You being a young Black male growing up in Birmingham, Alabama. Being rather aggressive at the time and you seemingly had some vision of where you wanted to go. How did this period of living in Birmingham impact upon your life 00:20:00as the way that you would view you future and view your world?

PORTER: As I indicated earlier my childhood was a happy childhood in that we were provided for and was never in dire need, never had a surplus either. My father always told me how to approach White people, never with my hat on always say yes sir and this is how things are. So with a kind of acceptance I was not fighting against it at any point because I wasn't angry about it. I thought it was just par for the course. As I grew older I felt more and more unfairness.

I was sensitive to the segregation of the buses, the thing that really brought it to focus and when I started working my senior year in high school, everybody on the job was Mr. and Mrs. even the young kids but I was always John to everybody. Nobody explained to me why but I just knew this was not right and what I would do in my junior and senior year in high school I developed my on private protest against these inequities that nobody knew about. Like I made up my mind that I would never say yes sir to a White man. One would come in and say John have you seen that book that was on my desk. I would say, well let me see I 00:22:00think I saw it over . . . always avoiding saying yes sir.

HUNTLEY: This was conscious?

PORTER: Yes, oh I knew that it was wrong for everybody even the folk my age to Mr. and Mrs. and I was person A. So I decided what I would do is that I would never say yes sir to nobody. Interestingly I found out many years later that the man who was my boss knew exactly what I was doing and didn't fire me. I could always love him because he didn't fire me but I made a conscious effort never to say yes sir to a White man. My second thing, now all of this was in my junior and senior year in high school, I was nominated for something . . . I'm going to lose my thought . . . oh yes, in Birmingham I decided in my own mind and never 00:23:00told my dad or anybody that I would never allow a White man to out walk me on the streets of Birmingham. I would stand at the red light and as soon as the light would turn green I would step like I was going a hundred miles an hour. I never allowed any White person to walk faster than me. This is my private protest that I would never utter to anybody but to [inaudible]

HUNTLEY: I'm reading this book now that I'm gonna let you read once I finish it and it talks about those kinds of protests, unorganized protests, but nevertheless very, very real.

PORTER: Yes, I'm sure every White man I've walked past knew what I was doing because you just knew that. No matter how fast you were walking you never walked 00:24:00ahead of a White man. It was just deep within my soul without ever saying it to anybody that I would never allow them to out walk me.

HUNTLEY: You being the younger of the children, what kind of relationship did you have with your brothers and sister?

PORTER: A good relationship as childhood relationships go. But my brother didn't go to college and my sister didn't go to college and once I got to college it sort of set me over in another league. Now we have a good rapport now and everything but from the time I went to college I sort of began to live in another world.

HUNTLEY: How do you mean?

PORTER: My interests were not their interests, their interests were not my interests. It just sort of gave us . . .

HUNTLEY: Would you say that you were growing away from them?

PORTER: Separated only out of interest. Still a closeness that we were the kind of family, it was a small family [inaudible] we were still family. I never sensed for a moment that my brother was envious of me. The reason why I know that is, my brother was a heavy drinker in those days and I would come home on weekends and he would want me to go to the club with him. Well I didn't want to go to clubs that was his thing but I would go. He would always introduce me, hey I want you to meet my college brother.

HUNTLEY: He was proud?

PORTER: Even though he was intoxicated he expressed pride which I say must have been genuine and real because he did it for so long he wanted to present me to 00:26:00everybody and always did it by letting them know this is my college brother.

HUNTLEY: How much older was he?

PORTER: Two or three years at the most, we're pretty much the same age.

HUNTLEY: What was your transition like then from high school to college? You went off to Alabama State is that correct?

PORTER: Yes.

HUNTLEY: What was that transition like?

PORTER: When I first graduated my father was quite poor and I couldn't go to college, so I graduated in January we had two classes graduating every year. We'd have about eight to ten classes and you either graduated in May or in December so I didn't graduate. I did graduate in January on time I was the youngest in the class but in May I couldn't go off because there was summer school and all of that and I couldn't go next year because I hadn't planned to 00:27:00go that early. So I got a job working and the thing that really turned me around got me going first of all I had chosen friends here that were all college bound kids from families more affluent than mine.

So when I woke up and saw them going to college I really, you know, I think that by being with the right people who were college bound [inaudible] because it was my peers the very people I was running with. I looked up and they were on their way to college so I just grabbed my stuff and started running too. So I was inspired more by my peers than I was by faculty members who really didn't say much to me about college.

HUNTLEY: Why did you decide on Alabama State?

PORTER: It was cheap. I wanted to go to Talladega. But people who went to Talladega were the daughters and sons of doctors and lawyers. So I ended up 00:28:00going to Alabama State because it was cheaper.

HUNTLEY: Tell me about your experience at Alabama State. You mentioned earlier that you arrived in high school at Parker that you had become more assertive so by the time you get to college now you did not go the first year.

PORTER: Right.

HUNTLEY: So now you have a little more maturity so what was that experience like?

PORTER: I think being more mature made me be ready to be more of a leader because deep down in spite of my shyness and withdrawnness I wanted to be a leader you know and I prayed to be a leader and the Lord did in fact my junior 00:29:00year make me president of the junior class which was just great. Then my senior year and I was always president. I was president of this and president of that, I was always president but the height of my ambition was the be president of Alpha. When my senior year came up I was elected president of Alpha. Interestingly I took office about three months into the term I became ill and the doctor said I had tuberculosis or cancer and I was the biggest man on campus. I thought the doctors didn't know what he was saying I told him I was 00:30:00going home for a week or three days for tests and I'd be back and don't make any announcements until I return.

Well I went to Birmingham and came to the doctor and they confirmed that I had .. . they told me I had TB or scuffala, I think they said. They said tuberculosis of the lymphatic glands. Now I may be wrong because I never seen that doctor since. But anyway I was out about two years. But being there my senior year caused me to be mature. And when I was out a year and then came back I was even more of a leader I was more of a counselor, you know, guys come and sit in my room with me.

HUNTLEY: They probably had heard of you then?

PORTER: Yes, yes, and I'm pretty sure that they had heard about me but it was 00:31:00rare to have a young person preaching. He done lost his mind, had a nervous breakdown or something.

HUNTLEY: When was it that you went into the ministry?

PORTER: My senior year.

HUNTLEY: Senior year?

PORTER: After the Lord knocked me down and laid me out, I had a real talk with him. I prayed, we'd talked before. I had a real in-depth conversation with him and that's when I made certain promises to him.

HUNTLEY: When you returned then for your senior year, you then had an experience to meet an individual that would have an impact upon the entire country and the world.

PORTER: Yes, my senior year I was a ministerial student. Only one on campus. 00:32:00Most people hadn't heard of somebody my age talking about preaching. When I returned and started my senior year, then I was asked my, a faculty member, if I had heard of Martin King. I told him no I hadn't. He said Martin King is the new pastor of Dexter Avenue Church and [inaudible] So on his recommendation a couple of weeks later I went down with some friends to hear Dr. King speak. When the service was over I think it was the next week on campus the professor introduced me to Martin King as a young preacher.

Martin King says you know I don't have anybody at Dexter working with me, why don't you come down to Dexter and work with me. I'd heard him speak and I had never heard anybody speak like that before and his image of a preacher was just 00:33:00so perfectly, he didn't dress too flashy it was just perfect. So I knew it was my opportunity to go so he invited me and I went down there. For a year, I sat next to Martin King during his first year as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Church. I think his greatest preaching took place during that period. That he was never really [inaudible] he never had any time to write or rewrite or such. But as a pastor he was always in the pulpit only on very rare occasions did he miss. But I got opportunities to get to know him and to work with him and see him at what I consider at his best.

HUNTLEY: Were you very close friends, or did you become very close friends as a result of that year?

PORTER: I'll not say close friends I don't like the words close friends because he was a person who you could say was your friend but there was no buddy relationship you see. Sometimes you say close friends and think you were buddies or something like that to me he was never that. I never called him Martin. It was probably three years difference in our ages but from day one I always called him Dr. King. If I look like I'm tiring I'm really not it's just my diabetes working on me.

HUNTLEY: We'll just do this tape and will cut it off and if later on you need to get back.

PORTER: How much time you got?

HUNTLEY: We still have another . . . this is a 90 minute tape so we still have 00:35:00another 40 minutes.

PORTER: Okay, could you turn it off for just a few minutes.

HUNTLEY: You did have the privilege of working with Dr. King. How did that impact your relationship and impact upon? How you would eventually few the ministry?

PORTER: I worked with him a year after being invited down. It was his first year out of Boston and it was just a local parish priest you know hoping to do a good job as pastor. It was my senior year at Alabama State. He was a tremendous preacher and I'm sure he did his best preaching during that first year. After that he went to Albany, but he was a marvelous preacher. He was a new kind of 00:36:00preacher. The preachers I had known prior to King were not lettered preachers they had, had no formal training. King's dress, everything was different there was a new image of the preachers and I needed that badly. Just starting out in the ministry I needed a new image. So he came in my life at a special time that I needed another role model of a preacher and he was that.

In watching him I just want to allude to the fact that he would write his sermons complete, they'd be typed up. At the time of the delivery of the sermon he would leave the folder in the chair and go to the pulpit and you could almost pick up the written sermon and read it with him. He obviously almost had a 00:37:00photographic mind. He never carried the manuscript to the pulpit. Now I tried that a couple of times but it didn't work. I had to have a manuscript, the whole thing. He would leave the manuscript in the chair and he'd go up. He would go back to Boston every now and then to complete up his work on the Ph.D. During those absences he would allow me to preach in his stead etc. But I'm not sure if there was ever any, obviously there were, but just wide spread focus. See I was a good friend of King. He was the kind of guy who had a whole lot of friends. Lots of people knew him and he knew them, but just to say that I'm a friend of King. He was a serious kind of person, but he didn't tell jokes and he didn't 00:38:00laugh. He was just so serious about everything.

HUNTLEY: Always serious?

PORTER: Yes, you really didn't get no joking and clowning out of him. He was always very serious about what he was about. Never on time, that's one thing I did learn. I have to be on time. He'd start 30 minutes late just like he was on time. I realized later that he'd stay on time all of the years of his life he would have died much earlier but by . . . his technique was easy to follow. He had many other things that I picked up that I still do to this day. But then I went to Atlanta after I graduated. I worked with his father for three years and was able to see another kind of pastor to see another guy pasturing as to what 00:39:00you would do and what you would not do.

HUNTLEY: How were they similar and how were they different?

PORTER: They were very different, very different. Martin Sr. was the most unique man I ever met, not junior. It was senior who had the uniqueness that no one else. I mean his was an old fashioned dictator. He's a combination of things, I won't go into now. He was a combination of attitudes and spirits and dispositions, some I liked some I didn't like. He was a strong father, very domineering, everybody had to be under his wing but I was able to see the 00:40:00pasturing. I was able to work for his father for three years, so that gave me a long time to see a pastor at work. But it was King Sr. who probably influenced me in life at another level more than King Jr.

HUNTLEY: Were you working with him while you were at Morehouse?

PORTER: Yes, I did all my intern work. I was the janitor of the church, I was pulpit assistant, I was sort of a little close to Martin's sister and the King's daughter. I worked at every capacity you could think of at Ebenezer Church.

HUNTLEY: You were there for three years?

PORTER: Yes.

HUNTLEY: After you finished up at Morehouse what did you do?

PORTER: The week before I graduated I was called to a church in Detroit, which was shocking. I was ready to go the small country church in Georgia or down home 00:41:00Alabama. But one week from graduation I got this telegraph that said I needed to call the First Baptist Church of Hamtramck, Michigan, which is in the heart of Detroit. I went and stayed four and half years had a marvelous and glorious time with them for four and a half years.

HUNTLEY: How was that transition? You're a southern man coming from Alabama and Georgia going to Detroit. I know that many of the people in Detroit were of course from Alabama and the South. What was that experience like?

PORTER: I look back on it and say it was a very, very great experience. I don't see how I could pastor Detroit, it's awful up their now. But it was an excellent church with about 1,000 members, just the right size for a person who had never pastured a church before. It was a good ministry in that I was wondering why did 00:42:00you send me to Detroit, I want the South even though it didn't offer me anything at all I wanted to go to Alabama and Georgia why Michigan? One day the answer came to me. I was driving down the street in Hamtramck and almost had an accident with a White lady in another car. I put on brakes and backed up and went on my way. This lady caught up with me, rolled down her window, and says get over Nigger. Then I realized that I was up there getting ready to come South. I was about to be called a Nigger in Michigan [inaudible]

HUNTLEY: Some would call the [inaudible] in the Northern cities up South.

PORTER: I considered it as a training time because soon there after that the 00:43:00call came to come back to Birmingham.

HUNTLEY: What is that experience like when you have spent now four years in Detroit and then finally you get a call to come back to Birmingham to a rather prominent church? What was that like?

PORTER: As a young man in the ministry I'd hoped one day that city's pastor would invite me back to be his associate. It's the church I grew up in, 6th Avenue is the church I grew up in and loved dearly. My highest hope was to be an associate minister to the pastor of the church. He became ill and died and the church, I loved it so much invited me. I don't think I was really ready to come 00:44:00until the day I gave up coming. Sometimes sons of churches can become so obsessed with the idea of one day become the pastor of the church that it sort of disqualifies them. But I knew the church had chose to invite me as pastor or two or three other candidates that they were looking at. It was a time of social change. I remember saying to myself that if they never call me I would have still loved the church like I always loved it. I think the moment I came to the conclusion that I was going to love them anyway as my church, I was ready to come. Until then I wasn't ready. I was overwhelmed and proud that the folks who I grew up with who taught me as a child would invite me back to be the head pastor.

HUNTLEY: At your installation service, Martin Luther King preached the sermon?

PORTER: A Knock At Midnight. By this time he was in orbit, see we had met back in '55, '54 in September of '54 and this was many years later that we finally had to go to jail together. That was the only time King was jail, found guilty. We had broken a court injunction and marched. They carried that court case all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court sent it back or overturned it or something. No, what they did, they wouldn't hear it which meant they accepted the ruling of the lower court. We had to serve five days. They went to 00:46:00get all the folks up, I was part of the injunction not to march, and we had to go to jail. That was the only time he was ever convicted.

HUNTLEY: Tell me about what you remember about that Sunday that he preached at your installation service.

PORTER: Well--I think of the day all the arrangements and all and everything had to be in place I was very finicky in those days. We had to persist right on time everybody had to know where they were going. I was just overwhelmed by the day, I thought I would die. It was just that exciting you know and to have him 00:47:00agreeing to come and he was a world wide figure almost by that time you see. It was a very, very special day.

HUNTLEY: So as a result of that relationship in '63 when SCLC came to town to demonstrate you were called on by Dr. King. Can you talk about that experience?

PORTER: I came just six months prior to the big break, the demonstrations broke out in six months. My respect for Dr. King was of such that I would have done anything, any assignment he would have given me I would have done it without question. But it just so happened that the assignment was to lead a march to go 00:48:00to jail. I don't want to get mixed up. The question is concerning the period when--

HUNTLEY: When he initially called you to come to Birmingham?

PORTER: His brother A. D. was very active in our communications so often the communication was not directly with him but it was sometimes through his brother who was right there with him every day and night. He indicated through his brother that he wanted me, Nelson Smith and Mr. A. D. himself, to lead the march I believe on Palm Sunday. We agreed. Nelson Smith was not a great jail goer. But because A. D. who was always a provocative person suggested we would go together 00:49:00and we would call ourselves the three horses of the Apocalypse.

Now what that meant was nothing, we didn't know what it meant. It was just a high sounding word, the three horses of the Apocalypse. We were together after church at St. Paul, I believe, St. Paul's Church. Then after we prayed our little sermon or prayer then we would go out and march. My church had always gotten out before other churches so I was there a long time waiting for my colleagues to show up. I was getting a bit nervous that A. D. and Nelson wouldn't show up and I would be out there by myself. Finally they did show up and they began to sing the songs and people praying and some people were 00:50:00shouting and I believe I heard my mother out there crying.

You can't even convey the spirituality of those moments. They were very emotional moments it's all you could do to just see the people. We didn't have the loss of life or anything. But anyway out of a large crowd of maybe 1,200 people we were able to get about 40 people to volunteer to go. We all went up on the sidewalk and lined up because all of the marchers were on the sidewalk. You'd think that maybe they were in the middle of the street blocking traffic. No every march that was ever taken was done from the sidewalk. But once we got lined up on the sidewalk to walk I looked through the crowd and there was my daddy. I said oh Lord. Then my daddy started toward me. I said not now, not now 00:51:00daddy, not now. He took over and he said leave this thing alone and he was afraid I'd get hurt so he was telling me to leave it alone, leave this thing alone, segregation. So here in my big moment, here my daddy comes. He got as close as he could to me reached through the crowd and shook hands with me after that I could have walked all the way to Montgomery that time.

HUNTLEY: Just when you needed it?

PORTER: He shook hands with me when he went back. Before long we were in jail.

HUNTLEY: Tell me about that experience just the arrest itself. How did that take place?

PORTER: It was an agreed upon thing. In other words they knew what route you would take and all times they would designate where they would pick you up. They 00:52:00were smart I remember at one of the later marches that out of thousand people you could only get 40 to volunteer to march. Out of the people left in the church of a 1,000, you had 900 people or more left the church. But once we came out to line up to march and marched on, then all 900 would come and follow us. In other words, they considered us not involved but just friends.

HUNTLEY: When the three of you were approached . . .

PORTER: Okay, we got to the police and as we approached the police they got a 00:53:00bull horn and he says this march can go no further, either disband or you're under arrest. It was a choice to walk away or be arrested. At that point I remember A. D. saying, pray Porter. We dropped to our knees. After he said you're under arrest more or less we didn't kneel then but that's when A. D. said to me pray Porter. I started praying on camera. Once the prayer was over then we stood up and the police would escort us to the paddy wagon.

HUNTLEY: Was it A. D. or was it Reverend Smith that said pray Porter?

PORTER: A. D., A. D. was always the instigator. He had everybody doing whatever he thought they ought to be doing. So they paraded us, the never let you walk by 00:54:00yourself they would always catch you by the arm and pull you but there was not protruding on the floor and having the police drag you we would not allow that. King had us to understand that we were breaking the law and when the man said you're under arrest, you must go peacefully and quietly to the paddy wagon.

HUNTLEY: In the paddy wagon that you were placed in were there other people other than the three of you?

PORTER: There may have been one or two others than you it was very small and tight back there so they couldn't fit in but so many in the paddy wagon. On our way to jail we were being thrown from one side of the paddy wagon to the other. The guy was very upset who was driving and we were singing "We Shall Overcome." The more we would sing the more upset he would become. The more were able to see 00:55:00that he was upset the more we would sing. By the time they got to the city hall to the jail house he was going to open the door . . .

I remember he opened the door and there was this big chorus, "We Shall Overcome." He pulled his billy club and said, y'all better cut out that singing or else. In order to come out of the paddy wagon you kind of got to dip your head and come out. Nelson stood back thinking about that for a while because in the back A. D. was saying sing, sing. But the driver was saying, stop singing and A. D. was saying sing. Nelson Smith, knowing his head would come out of the paddy wagon first, he told A. D. you better stop that G. D. saying because my 00:56:00head will come out first. A. D. was always in the background telling, sing, sing. He was the instigator. He made things happen.

HUNTLEY: How long were you in jail?

PORTER: We were in jail maybe, I was in jail longer than A. D. A. D. and Nelson started right away to get their deacons to come and get them out. My feeling was in that we led the folks into the jail we ought to stay in jail with them. But A. D. and Nelson Smith said they could be more effective outside. So it wasn't long before deacons were there to take them out. They were there but about six or seven hours and I was the only one left and was able to stay with the people and at some point I did get out.

HUNTLEY: Did you stay overnight?

PORTER: Yes, yes, yes.

HUNTLEY: During this particular time the movement of course was at it's height. There were some difficulties after about a month of marching that . . . it lost some of it's steam and there seemingly was the need to discuss how to reinvigorate the movement.

PORTER: Well, it's hard to keep excitement going and the people who had gone to jail were there once and some twice and you needed more people who would go to jail. There was some I remember very vividly a guy saying to me Reverend I can't march today I got to work today. So thank God for that at least he was ready to go to his job on the day assigned, you know the feud they had to go.

This guy said to him he couldn't go because he had to work. We were running out of people to go back again so we went out to Miles College to get college kids but I gather that Miles might have been having a corporate fund drive which sending students out would thoroughly jeopardize them. So we couldn't get anyone from Miles. I think on their way back, having their hands empty of Miles students, somebody came up with the bright idea, let's go by the high school. I have to admit there was not any long range planning that we now a month from now we'd be . . . I know that the miracle of the movement was that there was no 00:59:00grand plan it just happened the time was right and it happened.

HUNTLEY: So the children then were brought in and this sort of reinvigorates?

PORTER: Oh that really set it off but I remember greatly the first part of that but I don't know [inaudible] King came in and said the press is leaving, let's get something going. That was the first time that I realized that God was not leading the group. I thought up to this point we were depending on God. But I found out it was the newspapers too. God and the newspapers. He told us to get something going the press was leaving. So I got to understand that you do need that.

HUNTLEY: Some have said that Bull Conner played a very prominant role and the movement owes him as much credit as any other single individual for the success of the movement because of his tactics. How do you feel about that?

PORTER: I like that but I don't think they owe Bull Conner anything. No, I think that the time was right. I don't think anybody made it happen. I think that if the climate in the South was of such that the South was totally opposed to it, it would have never happen. The time was right. You needed a man, King, you needed a Fred Shuttlesworth, you needed a Bull Conner. They constituted that the time was right.

HUNTLEY: In September of '63 of course we had the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Of course, that was sort of the sister church of 6th Avenue. How did that impact upon your congregation?

PORTER: It was Sunday morning when the bomb went off and we just started our services and they came in and told me that Sixteenth Street had been bombed. My first reaction was that we would be next. We'd done more to provoke this than Sixteenth Street. I was expecting them to throw a bomb, I didn't think a bomb 01:02:00would be placed. All I thought about was somebody driving by throwing a bomb. So I said to them that any moment it could happen and that we kind of brought everything to closure the songs, the prayers and asked people to be dismissed as quickly as possible and for everybody to leave the church. Then I went on to the emergency room from the church that's where I saw Chris McNair in the emergency room, they had carried his daughter there.

HUNTLEY: I want to go just for minute to the incident that took place here in Birmingham. The three of you, A. D. King, Nelson Smith and yourself, of course history records that you led the march on Palm Sunday. There is a monument in 01:03:00the park that was erected supposedly as a result of that but those, the statues, does not depict the three of you.

PORTER: The picture was found in the archives it was among the pictures and when they were planning the park it was the mayor I assume who wanted that picture, the picture of myself and A. D., to be put in granite or in stone. The picture was sent off to the sculptors to do it. Pictures of A. D. were sent to him, pictures of Nelson Smith and myself were sent to Washington to the sculptor. I 01:04:00was in Washington at that same time and went and sat in his studio for the statue and the statue was complete. It was really a marvel the whole body and everything they do it complete. They start off about that size and when they finish it its in the complete form of the statues so I sat for it. About six weeks later or just prior to the time when the statue was to be delivered I got a box, a big box in the mail. I opened the box and my head from the statue was in the box.

HUNTLEY: Did you have any prior warning?

PORTER: No. No inkling whatsoever. I was kind of proud of the fact, can you 01:05:00imagine yourself in stone.

HUNTLEY: What did you think when you saw this? Did you think that this was just a duplicate and they were sending it to you?

PORTER: I really didn't know until I read the letter. See there was a note in there.

Immediately I opened the note and the note said to me that he regretted very much but he had been ordered to cut the heads off the statues and put generic heads on. He could have just thrown it away but since I had sat for it and we'd talked and he had gotten to know me a little bit. He said I've been instructed to cut these heads off.

HUNTLEY: Did he tell you who the instructions came from?

PORTER: No, he didn't but I knew that to have that done it had to have come from the very top. So I knew it had to be Fred or the mayor who would give that kind 01:06:00of instructions and I figured the mayor. No sure enough about one week before the statue was to arrive the mayor called me and asked me if he could come out and see me. Well I knew exactly what he really wanted was to tell me. So I told him no. Let me come down to your office, he was much more busy than I am so let me come down to your office. So I went down and he said to me that Abraham Woods and Fred Shuttlesworth had threatened him that if he did not cut the heads off the statues that they would both resign from the museum and boycott the building 01:07:00that was his threat. I didn't hear . . . this is the mayor. I haven't repeated that in front of too many people but the mayor said to me, that's why he ordered the heads to me removed and that he was threatened by those two and in order to please them I suppose he agreed to cut the heads off.

HUNTLEY: What was the rationale? What was their rationale for?

PORTER: The rationale was that it shouldn't be one person, it was a group of ministers and that was just symbolic, etc. I always wondered about that when I see Shuttlesworth's huge statue out front. With him that was alright but with us rather than have any heads that folks could recognize they just put anybody's 01:08:00head on there. So when the mayor told me I said well mayor you don't ever have to worry about me because I was flattered to think of the idea of having been sculptured so I appreciate that and you'll never hear from me again on it. That is how finally . . . and the rational was that it was not just us it was many who were symbolic.

HUNTLEY: Would you accept that as being valid?

PORTER: I guess there was some validity. I would not like to question motives. It seemed to me to be rather extreme considering one's love for this institution and love for all the things that it is all about that you would for such a minor thing leave the institution and boycott. Not just leave the institution but to boycott.

HUNTLEY: Would you look at that act as being rather historical and political?

PORTER: I think it was political. I was more puzzled my the fact that the mayor was pushed into this dilemma when he had made it clear he was not afraid of the FBI, he was not afraid of the IRS, and yet somehow he was saying I'm scared of Abraham. I don't know of anybody else who's scared of Abraham. But I really accepted it on its face value because I still support the mayor and he's my man and all that kind of stuff. He said they threatened him. But the threat to cut 01:10:00the heads off the statue.

HUNTLEY: Well Rev. Porter I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to come and sit and talk with me today. You've been very frank.

PORTER: Well like I said to the camera my diabetes are out of control.

HUNTLEY: But you did a very good job.

PORTER: But I'm glad for the tape and hope that these words can make future generations understand the times.

HUNTLEY: Thank you very much.