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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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bcriohp
Oral History
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Horace Huntley
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Ruth Barefield-Pendleton
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http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=RBPendleton1995.xml
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National Urban League
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
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5.4 March 9, 1995 Ruth Barefield-Pendleton Interviewed on March 9, 1995 19950309B 0:55:17 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project Collection bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Raines Whittaker Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham Miles College National Urban League Southern Christian Leadership Conference Ruth Barefield-Pendleton Horace Huntley Video 1:|12(6)|34(7)|65(10)|85(1)|102(10)|115(9)|135(8)|148(7)|164(3)|179(6)|195(5)|208(16)|238(12)|252(9)|275(2)|288(7)|298(8)|310(10)|325(11)|342(11)|363(6)|374(10)|397(6)|411(11)|421(2)|439(18)|449(1)|463(4)|481(12)|495(15)|509(10)|529(7)|540(9)|551(17)|580(7)|590(7)|616(6)|627(13)|646(8)|657(5)|671(6)|687(3)|702(5)|715(6)|730(4)|742(10)|755(8)|770(8)|786(2)|808(2)|826(5)|840(11)|849(13) 0 https://youtu.be/ib60jaZvfuE YouTube video English 23 Beginning of Interview I am Dr. Horace Huntley. 33.516200, -86.813870 17 Birmingham Civil Rights Institute http://www.bcri.org BCRI homepage 56 Personal Background Are you an Alabamian? She is from Mississippi and has family around the south. African American families ; Southern States--History 30.366334, -88.559316 12 Pascagoula, MS 170 Background of her Parents Tell me about the education of your parents, your mother and father. Her parents came to Mississippi around 1920 where they didn't receive much formal education. African American families ; Southern States--History 277 Community Composition Tell me a little about your community, the community that you grew up in. She grew up in a mixed-race area that was impacted by the shipyard there. African American history ; Mississippi--History ; Shipyards--United States 417 College Tell me, after you finished high school, when you went off to college, where did you go to college? Attended liberal arts college and began associations with white people. Tougaloo College African American college students ; Tougaloo (Miss.) 32.404879, -90.160735 12 Tougaloo College 520 Black Community in Adolescence Before we get to Birmingham, though, let me just ask you about your Mississippi experiences. She grew up in a Black community where her mother still lives. African American families ; Home ownership--United States 552 Expectations of Black Women Well, when you left and went off to Tougaloo, what had you decided to do with your life? Encouraged by her father but with few options, she majored in English. Tougaloo College African American families ; African American women 625 Marriage after College Then, after Tougaloo, what did you do? She married after college, her husband went into the military, and they moved around. Mobile (Ala.) ; Moss Point (Miss.) ; Pascagoula (Miss.) African American families ; African American soldiers 853 Teaching in Birmingham So, then you, when you came to Birmingham in '53, did you start teaching at that time? She taught for a few years and went to Miles College for Alabama history. Birmingham (Ala.) ; Miles College African American history ; High school teachers 978 Community Activism After Wenonah, then what, what did you do? She began participation in movements through her church and people she met at Miles College, transporting students, attending meetings, and marching. Birmingham (Ala.) ; Miles College ; Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 African American civil rights workers ; Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights ; Civil rights movement 1132 NAACP is Outlawed There were several events that took place between the establishment of the Movement, the Alabama Christian Movement in '56 and 1963. While still teaching, she was a member of the NAACP but membership was outlawed and grounds for firing. African American teachers ; Alabama--History ; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 1238 Police Surveillance of Meetings Now another organization, the Alabama Council on Human Relations, met regularly at my church, the First Congregational Church. Undercover police would infiltrate meetings and record attendees. African American churches ; Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights ; Alabama Council on Human Relations ; Civil rights movement ; Police patrol--Surveillance operations 1383 Organizational Make-Up What was the make-up of that organization, the ratio between Blacks and whites? She organized with many white people and with Miles College students. Miles College Civil rights movement 1432 Support of Miles College Students How did that affect Miles College? She actively assisted Miles College students in major civil rights activism. Miles College African American civil rights workers ; Alabama--History ; Civil rights demonstrations ; Civil rights movement 1582 Freedom Rides In '61 the Freedom Rides took place. She remembers when the Freedom Rides came to Birmingham and the attendant violence. Civil rights movement ; Freedom Rides, 1961 ; Police brutality ; Racism 1711 Selective Buying Campaign In '62 then, we get to the Selective Buying Campaign. She participated with Miles College students and others in promoting the Selective Buying Campaign. Miles College Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights ; Boycotts--Alabama ; Civil rights demonstrations ; Civil rights movement 1871 Southern Christian Leadership Conference Then, we move into 1963, and of course... She organized with SCLC and was secretary of the Central Committee. Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 African American civil rights workers ; Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights ; Civil rights movement ; Southern Christian Leadership Conference 2078 Mass Meetings and Mothering You were at all of those meetings? She balanced full time participation in the Movement and still caring for her children. African American families ; African American women civil rights workers ; Civil rights movement 2250 Involvement in the Movement You participated very fervently during the...this April and May period, you being the secretary... She was involved in a lot of activity, which was often risky, but avoided arrest. African American civil rights workers ; Civil rights demonstrations ; Civil rights movement 2363 Support from her Husband As you, you were so active, what did your husband say about your activity? Her husband was supportive of her involvement and occasionally participated. African American civil rights workers ; African American families 2434 Participation of Teachers and Students In Selma, one of the things that broke that Movement was...well not broke the movement, but assisted the Movement was the assistance of teachers. Teachers assisted how and when it was possible, especially when students were involved. Civil rights demonstrations ; Civil rights movement ; Teachers 2577 Church Support What church, I think we've talked about this briefly, but what church were you a member of again? Her church was very active in the Civil Rights Movement. African American churches ; Civil rights movement 2672 Water Hose Attacks Tell me, are there any recollections that stand out in your memory during this period that probably, probably stand out more than any other, than any single incidents that you remember? She recalls the police and firefighters using water hoses on people coming out of church. Civil rights demonstrations ; Civil rights movement ; Police brutality 2810 Voter Registration Work Tell me also about your activity, because I know that you were a member of the NAACP and you worked in voter registration campaign with W. C. Patten. She worked on registering Black voters and helping them so they would qualify. Civil rights movement ; Civil rights workers ; Voter registration 3029 Urban League Activity Tell me about your activity with the Urban League. She volunteered with the Urban League, where she was a secretary. African American civil rights workers ; National Urban League 3104 Assessment of the Birmingham Movement What is your assessment of the Birmingham movement? She recognizes many successes that came out of the Movement and the civil rights bills that resulted. African American civil rights workers ; Alabama--History ; Civil rights movement ; United States. Voting Rights Act of 1965 Oral History Ruth Barefield-Pendleton discusses serving as secretary of the Central Committee of SCLC after growing up and teaching in Birmingham. She also served as secretary of the Urban League. HUNTLEY: I am Dr. Horace Huntley. This is an interview with Mrs. Ruth Barefield- Pendleton from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute' ; s Oral History Project. We are at Miles College, March 9, 1995. Good afternoon, Mrs. Pendleton. B-PENDLETON: Good afternoon, Dr. Huntley. HUNTLEY: Thank you very much for coming out...taking time out of your busy schedule today to sit and talk with us about the Civil Rights Movement. Before we get into asking questions about the Movement itself, I' ; d like to get a little background. Are you an Alabamian? B-PENDLETON: No, I' ; m not. I come from Pascagoula, Mississippi. HUNTLEY: Pascagoula, Mississippi? Okay. B-PENDLETON: A foreigner to the west. HUNTLEY: Well, Pascagoula, that' ; s down on the coast, is that right? B-PENDLETON: That' ; s right. It' ; s the beginning of the Mississippi gulf coast. HUNTLEY: Oh, I see. Then, were your parents from Mississippi? B-PENDLETON: No, my parents come from Monroe County, Alabama from the community of Chrysler, Alabama which is no longer in existence. But, at an early age, they left and came to Pascagoula when Pascagoula was known as Scranton, Mississippi and that was back in early 1919. HUNTLEY: I see. B-PENDLETON: So, they really...well my mother is still living at 99 years, my father died two years ago at 97 and they were married for 76 years. HUNTLEY: So, they in fact were Mississippians? B-PENDLETON: Yes. HUNTLEY: Well, how many brothers and sisters do you have? B-PENDLETON: I have two brothers and two sisters. HUNTLEY: Are they still in Mississippi? B-PENDLETON: No, one brother is in Gadsden, Alabama, another brother is in Atlanta, Georgia and a sister is in Mobile, Alabama and a sister is in Philadelphia, Mississippi. HUNTLEY: So, you guys are just scattered all over the country? B-PENDLETON: Scattered, but not too far, though. HUNTLEY: So, how do you fit in there? Were you the second... B-PENDLETON: I' ; m the youngest of the five. HUNTLEY: So, you were the spoiled one of the family? B-PENDLETON: No, the outspoken one. The youngest can always get away with more than the others. HUNTLEY: Absolutely. Tell me about the education of your parents, your mother and your father. B-PENDLETON: Well, my father' ; s formal education went to the 7th grade. He used to like to say he had his trunk packed for Mr. Washington' ; s school in Tuskeegee. But his formal education really stopped at the 7th grade when his mother died shortly...she didn' ; t want him to go to Tuskeegee because she said that she had heard that the White men were killing the Coloreds who were trying to get an education. We were Colored back then. HUNTLEY: Right. B-PENDLETON: So, he took his young bride and he left after his mother died and went to Pascagoula. HUNTLEY: I see. B-PENDLETON: Now my mother says that her education really began when her children began school. She still studies, even to this day at 99, when her mail comes, she reads it first. HUNTLEY: She reads her own mail, that' ; s great, great. What about occupations? B-PENDLETON: My father, in the early years was a truck driver for a lumber company and then he began to work for the post office in a janitorial position and he worked up to become a mail carrier. He picked up mail from sub-stations and drove them to the main post office. My mother was always a housewife. HUNTLEY: And, this is Mississippi, early 19th century, I mean 20th century? B-PENDLETON: This is early, well around 1919-1920. HUNTLEY: Mid 20s? B-PENDLETON: Now, he did not start working for the post office until I was in high school, but before then his occupation was a truck driver. HUNTLEY: Tell me a little about your community, the community that you grew up in. B-PENDLETON: Well, Pascagoula is a seaport town. It was really founded by the Jesuit priests. It' ; s a catholic town, however, we were one of the few protestant families in the community and before the shipyard came there, Ingalls Shipyard, all Whites and Blacks knew each other. But then with the coming of the shipyard you had a lot of transients...you know a lot of people coming in, so it has grown to be the third largest city in Mississippi. Jackson, Meridian and then Pascagoula. HUNTLEY: What about the racial make-up? B-PENDLETON: Well, I have not lived there since I left to go to college, but the racial climate seems to be improving. You see, the coastal part of Mississippi was never as rigid in its well, the Delta, you know. HUNTLEY: The Delta is the Black belt area? B-PENDLETON: The Delta is the Black belt area and anywhere where Blacks outnumbered Whites, the climate is not good. Well down on the Mississippi gulf coast it was a little better. And then, the occupations...you know, it was better economically also, because of the shipyard. HUNTLEY: So the shipyard was really where most people worked? B-PENDLETON: Where most people worked and still do. And then, of course, you have a cannery out on Cat Island. You' ; ve got these businesses that sprang up from the shipyard. You have a fertilizer factory over on another island and of course, the fertilizer is made from poagy fish.. HUNTLEY: Interesting. B-PENDLETON: And, of course, now the industry is the lott...uh gambling. HUNTLEY: Right, absolutely. B-PENDLETON: You know, down in that area. HUNTLEY: Tell me, after you finished high school, when you went off to college, where did you go to college? B-PENDLETON: I went to Tougaloo College, Tougaloo, Mississippi. And this is on the other side of Jackson. Now Jackson' ; s suburbs has grown so much that it reaches the suburbs of Toogaloo. Now Tougaloo is just a whistle stop. The only thing there is the campus and a few families that live outside of the community. HUNTLEY: Well, tell me, how was the transition from Pascagoula to Tougaloo? B-PENDLETON: Well, it wasn' ; t hard. Tougaloo is a private, liberal arts school. It is the sister school to Talladega and to Fisk. It was founded by the American Missionary Association They came south, set up schools and churches for the children of the new freed Black man. Well, when I went to college, the faculty was predominately White. The president was White, so my association with Whites, that was the beginning...there at Tougaloo. And, of course, when I moved to Alabama, the first thing I did was to look for a congregational church. You see, Tougaloo is a congregational school. HUNTLEY: Right. B-PENDLETON: When I went to the congregational church, I met Rev. Harold Long who was the pastor there...who was also very involved in the civil rights struggles. HUNTLEY: Right. Before we get to Birmingham, though, let me just ask you about your Mississippi experiences. Prior to going to Tougaloo, you lived in a Black community, I assume? B-PENDLETON: I lived in a Black community. The home house is still there. My mother and father ran the household. As a matter of fact, it' ; s the house that I was born in and we still live in the family house. HUNTLEY: Is that where your mother still lives? B-PENDLETON: Yes. HUNTLEY: Oh, that' ; s interesting. Well, when you left and went off to Tougaloo, what had you decided to do with your life? B-PENDLETON: Well, at that time, Black people...women in particular you either were going to be a teacher, or a nurse. I didn' ; t want to be either of those things. Of course, I ended up being a teacher and uh, my father who was not formally educated beyond the 7th grade, always said that " ; you need to stand for something, stand up for something and live well, so someone will stand up for you." ; And, of course, he said Tougaloo would be the best school to go to. He first was talking about Mr. Washington' ; s school, Tuskeegee, but my principal influenced me a lot to go to Tougaloo. And, I loved it. HUNTLEY: What was your major? B-PENDLETON: My major? English...a minor in history, a minor in library science. HUNTLEY: Then, after Tougaloo, what did you do? B-PENDLETON: I married. I married my present husband. HUNTLEY: Did you meet him there in school? B-PENDLETON: No, he came to my hometown to practice medicine and he was the first Black doctor to come into Pascagoula.and I came home from college one summer and I met him. HUNTLEY: Then after you finished at Tougaloo, did you go back then to Pascagoula? B-PENDLETON: Yes. My husband went to Korea. I was in Pascagoula while he was in Korea for 10 months and then, when he came back from Korea, we went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. HUNTLEY: Okay. How long then was he in the military? B-PENDLETON: He was in the military until I asked him to retire....uh... when the Korean campaign started, they needed physicians. They gave him one month, to close his office and another week he was in California and in three weeks he was on the front lines at an aid station in North Korea, not North Korea, South Korea. He was there when the North Koreans came across the Border or came down. And, then when he came back to the states, he came later to Fort Sill, Oklahoma and that' ; s where I joined him. HUNTLEY: Well, while he was in Korea and you were in Pascagoula... B-PENDLETON: I was in Pascagoula and I taught school at Moss Point, Mississippi. HUNTLEY: Moss Point. B-PENDLETON: You know that name. HUNTLEY: Yes, absolutely. B-PENDLETON: Well, Moss Point is to Pascagoula like Mountain Brook is to Birmingham. It' ; s about three miles. HUNTLEY: Moss Point, is that not an all Black town? B-PENDLETON: Oh no, no, it' ; s not an all Black town. HUNTLEY: But, it was a rather well off... B-PENDLETON: They have a Black mayor now. HUNTLEY: Okay. Well, is that why you came to Birmingham? B-PENDLETON: No, no. When my husband came back from Korea, when he got out of the army at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, he came to Mobile, Alabama to practice medicine. We stayed there about a year. Five physicians came in at one time, three were local boys and two were outside of Mobile. I call it our starvation period. So, after a year, we moved to Bessemer, Alabama and his office is still in Roosevelt City. That' ; s where I lived when we first came here. That was in 1953. HUNTLEY: Did you teach in Mobile or in Oklahoma? B-PENDLETON: No, no I, I was busy having babies. I had two. HUNTLEY: So, then you, when you then came to Birmingham in ' ; 53, did you start teaching at that time? B-PENDLETON: I started teaching the next school session and that' ; s when I discovered that you had to have Alabama history before you could teach in the public school system. I taught at Wenonah High School, but I came to Miles College to get Alabama history, and I was out there a summer, and that' ; s where I met, uh, a lot of good people who influenced me. Myrtle Blissett, who is no longer here and at that time, Dr. Bell was the president and then, of course, I met Dr. Williams President after him. But, the person who most influenced my life was Dr. Lucius Pitts. I met Dr. Lucius Pitts and, uh, I' ; m getting ahead of myself, but that' ; s how I happened to get to Miles College. HUNTLEY: Okay, so you taught at Wenonah until...? B-PENDLETON: I taught at Wenonah until my children became school age and my husband and I both agreed that that' ; s a full-time job, to be at home. HUNTLEY: Were you living in Roosevelt at the time? B-PENDLETON: I was living in Roosevelt City. HUNTLEY: It appears that we.... B-PENDLETON: I moved to Birmingham in 1958. That' ; s when I retired from teaching. HUNTLEY: Okay. B-PENDLETON: I haven' ; t taught since 1958. HUNTLEY: Is that right. We seemed to have crossed paths at Wenonah. That was my first year of Wenonah and well my first year was ' ; 57 so, ' ; 57 to ' ; 58 school year was my first year, and evidently, that was your last year. B-PENDLETON: That' ; s right. HUNTLEY: So, we did cross paths. We both had ' ; 58s in mind because we' ; re from minorities. After Wenonah, then what, what did you do? B-PENDLETON: Well, that' ; s when I became active in the community. We moved from Roosevelt City to Birmingham where I live now. It' ; s the area called College Hills in Smithfield, and at that time they were calling it " ; Dynamite Hill," ; . I joined the congregational church there. My pastor was very active in the Movement. I met my close and dear friend Deenie Drew, who lives around the corner from me. The two of us... and there' ; s another friend, Mrs. Montgomery, Althea Montgomery. We would go out to Miles college and assist Mr. Jonathan McPherson who was working with the students at Miles. At that time the students didn' ; t have adequate transportation. There were not many students with cars. So, what we did, we would provide transportation for them. They, would blanket the community during the selective buying campaign. We took the students to all of the communities in the Jefferson County area. HUNTLEY: Let me ask you, let me back you up just a bit and ask you about getting involved...your initial...in 1958, when you moved to College Hills...the Movement. The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights was organized in 1956 and they started with mass meetings at that time, did you attend any of those meetings? B-PENDLETON: I went to mass meetings almost nightly. Uh, at that time, I had full time help and I had a lot of baby sitters, so during mass meetings.I never joined the Alabama Christian Movement, but every time Fred Shuttlesworth marched, I marched. Uh, they used to joke with me and say " ; Ruth, you got on your walking shoes?" ; And, it was there where I met people like Georgia Price and, and Lola Hendricks. Deenie would pick me up, or I would pick her up and we would go to the mass meetings. HUNTLEY: There were several events that took place between the establishment of the Movement, the Alabama Christian Movement in ' ; 56 and 1963. The first issue that the Movement dealt with was the issue of hiring of Black police. One of the key issues, of course was the integration of schools. In ' ; 57 when Rev. Shuttlesworth and his wife were attacked... B-PENDLETON: I remember that. No, in ' ; 57 I was teaching. Now you remember, if you were a school teacher, you could not even be a card carrying member of the NAACP. HUNTLEY: Why couldn' ; t you be a card carrying member of the NAACP? B-PENDLETON: Well, they had outlawed the NAACP here in Alabama, and I had joined the NAACP in Mobile, Alabama so I did not have to come to join, I was already a member. And someone told me, " ; Ruth, you shouldn' ; t carry that card around." ; But, I did. I' ; m getting off the subject now. HUNTLEY: No, that' ; s a good piece of the story, because in ' ; 57 if you had a card, a NAACP card in your pocket and you were... B-PENDLETON: You were subject to be fired from your job. HUNTLEY: Was that, was that simply something that was understood or did someone tell you that? B-PENDLETON: This is what...well, you know, if you taught, you would hear rumors and this is what was said. That you don' ; t carry your NAACP card around with you and I said " ; why?" ; and of course, they said, " ; well, Ruth, you know, they outlawed it." ; Well anyway. Now another organization, the Alabama Council on Human Relations, met regularly at my church, the First Congregational Church. HUNTLEY: Now that' ; s an inter-racial .... B-PENDLETON: That' ; s an inter-racial group. And, I joined that, went to several of the meetings. I can recall coming outside of the church and the policemen would be walking around the parking lot, writing down the tag numbers of the car. And that was so they could know up who was inside the church. What White people were there and these people were automatically branded communists. That is where I met Eileen Walbert. HUNTLEY: The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights meetings were actually attended by police officers. B-PENDLETON: Oh yes, there would be plain clothesmen, they would come on the grounds like they would at the mass meetings. HUNTLEY: Did they do the same thing at the meetings at your congregational church? B-PENDLETON: I never knew if any of them came inside the church. They would be outside, in the parking lot. HUNTLEY: Simply..taking... B-PENDLETON: Taking the number, the tag number of the cars. HUNTLEY: How did that affect attendance? B-PENDLETON: Well, these people had to be very brave because they always had a pretty large number of persons attending. Now, I had just moved up on the hill, didn' ; t have as many baby sitters, and so, of course...I say baby sitters, my children were school age, but I guess the word would be sitters. Didn' ; t have too many of them. But when I lined up some of the sitters when I first moved up there, Angela Davis was one of my sitters. Angela' ; s sister Fania was one of my sitters. Her brother, Bennie was one of my sitters, and of course, Jamie Collins, whose sister, Addie, was killed at the 16th Street bombing, was one of my sitters. So, I had a lot of people I could call on. This was in the early years. We haven' ; t gotten to ' ; 63 because Angela was gone by that time. HUNTLEY: What was the make-up of that organization. The ratio between Blacks and Whites? B-PENDLETON: There were more Whites than Blacks. HUNTLEY: Were most of the Black people that were involved, were they your neighbors? Did they live on...in College Hills? B-PENDLETON: The Drew' ; s and no, some of them came from other parts of the city, I can' ; t think of this lady' ; s name, but I see her face right now. HUNTLEY: Right. In 1960, was the year that the sit-ins started. Of course, in North Carolina and then they really swept the entire South. B-PENDLETON: Yes. It started with students. HUNTLEY: That' ; s right. B-PENDLETON: That' ; s when I came out...I was working with the Miles students. HUNTLEY: How did that affect Miles College? Was Miles involved in that at all. B-PENDLETON: Well, Dr. Lucius Pitts invited Deanie Drew, Althea Montgomery and myself to come out and see if we would could help the students because they did need transportation and we became known as the " ; den mothers" ; for Miles College. HUNTLEY: You mean he asked you to come out to provide... B-PENDLETON: To come out and see whatever we could do to help. He didn' ; t tell us to get involved, but he directed us to Dr. Jonathan McPherson. I think he' ; s still on the faculty out there, I' ; m not sure. But anyway, these were the things that Dr. Jonathan McPherson told us they needed. They needed transportation. We would drive out to Miles, pick up students, take them downtown and they would try to sit in at Loveman' ; s, Pizitz, any place that had a lunch counter. Kress, Woolworth' ; s, Britts, those were the five places. HUNTLEY: So you are suggesting there was concerted effort between the administration and the student body to demonstrate in downtown Birmingham. Dr. Pitts was behind the students 100% and the students of Miles worked diligently. Some were arrested. We would go to court with them and that' ; s when they started calling us " ; den mothers of Miles" ; . And, of course, bail bond. Dr. Pitts said, " ; you know we are a methodist school, we don' ; t have any money for bail bonds." ; But, the children...I don' ; t remember any of the students having to stay overnight in jail. They went to jail. Now this was before SCLC came into the city and then the students to work with the Alabama Christian Movement. All of these things were going on at the same time. And that' ; s when they blanketed the community, asking the citizens to stay away from the stores. This is when the selective buying campaign started. HUNTLEY: Before we get to the selective buying, because we are talking about ' ; 62 then and that becomes a really big issue. B-PENDLETON: Now I don' ; t remember these dates, now don' ; t you... HUNTLEY: That' ; s why I' ; ll throw those out to you, but in ' ; 61 the Freedom Rides took place. B-PENDLETON: Oh yeah, I remember when they came through and they were beaten up so terrible. Well, they were stopped in Anniston and then when they got to the bus station here in Birmingham, they were met by people with baseball bats and chains and it was terrible. HUNTLEY: There were individuals here who actually...I think some of them went to Anniston to pick up some of the riders. Shuttlesworth, of course was called in. He was at the bus station and some of the people went out to his church and out to his home. What do you remember about that particular episode, may be through newspapers or may be through just discussions with individuals who were involved or people that you knew? Are there any recollections that you had about... B-PENDLETON: No, what I remember most about that, it was how brutal the, uh, the White man was, and all these people were doing, were doing was riding the bus, going through the South. And, uh, they had stopped this bus in Anniston and some of the riders were taken from the bus and beaten and then when they came into Birmingham, I remember reading, and I wasn' ; t involved in this at all, but I do remember reading that there were Blacks and we were not called Blacks then, we were called Negroes. There were Negroes who met them at the station also. And, the Whites were there and there was a great confrontation. HUNTLEY: Now.. B-PENDLETON: The climate was not good at all. The climate was not good. It was a frightening situation. HUNTLEY: In ' ; 62 then, we get to the Selective Buying Campaign. Can you tell me about the organization of that? How did that materialize? B-PENDLETON: Well, the students of Miles, uh, made leaflets and we would take them to each community and they would drop packages of leaflets off at the churches in the community. They would also go from door to door, passing out leaflets, urging the people not to shop downtown and I think it was very effective. Not nearly as effective as we wanted it to be, but no one could say they did not know a boycott was going on in Birmingham. HUNTLEY: And, you couldn' ; t use the term " ; boycott," ; right? B-PENDLETON: No. HUNTLEY: That was against the law. B-PENDLETON: Selective Buying Campaign. HUNTLEY: What initiated the Selective Buying Campaign? Why a Selective Buying Campaign? B-PENDLETON: Well, there were certain things that the Alabama Christian Movement, and Rev. Shuttlesworth, they had been asking for for the past 6-7 years. And that was the upgrading of the Black people who were already working at the stores, from hiring sales persons, training for the managerial positions. Desegregation of the lunch counters, simple, basic things. Desegregation of the toilets, desegregation of water fountains. These were the things that they were asking for. Nothing that . . . HUNTLEY: Nothing really revolutionary? B-PENDLETON: That' ; s right, nothing really revolutionary. HUNTLEY: The students. . .Miles College. . .was it correct that Miles College actually had a campaign, a fund raising campaign at the time and, I believe they were soliciting funds and the city or someone. . . B-PENDLETON: They went from door-to-door as they did with the leaflets with cups and, you know, asking for donations. And, of course, I think that was relatively successful. HUNTLEY: So, then this was really when the Movement, the Alabama Christian Movement and Miles College students... B-PENDLETON: Started working together, yes. HUNTLEY: Then, we move into 1963, and of course... B-PENDLETON: Yeah, that was when the SCLC came into the city at the invitation of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth of the Alabama Christian Movement. And, of course, the city was going through its changes. You know, we had Mayor and a commissioner form of government at that time. Three commissioners--Bull Conner, Jabo Wagner and Art Haynes was the mayor. Well, we elected Albert Boutwell for mayor and nine council men, council persons now. But anyway, uh, they could not take their seat because, Bull Conner and Art Haynes and Jabo Wagner would not move out. HUNTLEY: Right. B-PENDLETON: But anyway, uh, Rev. Shuttlesworth had invited the SCLC to come into the city and before it was known that SCLC was in the city, uh, some of the personnel of the SCLC had been in for two weeks, you know recruiting folk to work. I didn' ; t even know that they were in the city until the uh, the uh, the call went out " ; come, we need your help," ; and since I was already out there working with the students, I went down. HUNTLEY: You got involved... B-PENDLETON: I got involved with the.... HUNTLEY: Was this the beginning then of the mass meetings that would take place in April and May? B-PENDLETON: This was, this was the beginning when the SCLC came into the city. I went down when they asked for the citizens to please come, " ; we need your support." ; I went down and they wanted the citizens of Birmingham to be involved so that the White city people...citizens could not justifiably say outside agitators. So, they set up this committee. This committee, it was called the Central Committee and I was elected secretary of the Central Committee. Now the Central Committee was made up mostly of ministers because these... HUNTLEY: Why ministers? B-PENDLETON: Well, these were persons who did not have to answer to the White man. He did not worry about losing his job and then, of course, the Black ministers could reach more Black people than any other person in the community. So, uh, through the Alabama Christian Movement and SCLC, many Black ministers showed up that day. And, Deenie Drew and I were there. And, I was elected secretary of that committee, and we met in room 30 every morning. Some days, it would be in the afternoon. HUNTLEY: And, you were at all of those meetings? B-PENDLETON: Sometimes I could not. It depend...it would depend on how long my, my...the lady that worked for me could stay. She came in the morning at 9:00 and she stayed until 4:00. So, I did not leave until she was there and she did not leave until Denise and Tyree were home from school. Those are my children. HUNTLEY: Right. B-PENDLETON: And, by the time she left at 4:00, I was back at home. And then when the mass meetings started, around 6:00, I was gone again. But, between 4:00 and sometimes 6 or 7:00 depending...we did homework and things like that. HUNTLEY: Oh, so you did take the time to do the homework with the kids and.... B-PENDLETON: Oh, every night, we did homework. HUNTLEY: And then you' ; d leave there going to the mass meetings? B-PENDLETON: Go to the mass meetings. HUNTLEY: Did your children ever go to the mass meetings? B-PENDLETON: No, my children never went to the mass meetings. My children went with me to Selma. My children went with me, and with my husband and me to Montgomery and but not here in Birmingham. HUNTLEY: Not to the mass meetings? B-PENDLETON: Not to the mass meetings. HUNTLEY: Can you describe to me what a mass meeting was like? B-PENDLETON: The mass meeting was a combination of a revival, a political rally, non-partisan that is, and a camp meeting. It was very fiery, you had a lot of singing of freedom songs, spirituals...you had a lot of speech making and you would always find a.The churches would be full, every night. It did not start off that way, but, it grew and it got to the point where you could not get a seat. The churches would be full. They met at different churches. Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, St. Paul which is up the next block from Sixteenth Street, St. James, and Sixth Avenue Baptist. Sixth Avenue Baptist was over where the medical center is now. It was on Sixth Avenue. I think New Pilgrim. HUNTLEY: On the same corner as Sixteenth Street. B-PENDLETON: That' ; s right. HUNTLEY: One on the north side. in fact, I' ; ve heard someone say, I think it was Rev. Oliver, he said " ; Sixteenth Street South." ; B-PENDLETON: Sixteenth Street, yes. HUNTLEY: Sixteenth Street South, that was... B-PENDLETON: You know Rev. Oliver, he was a member of the Alabama Council on Human Relations, I think that' ; s where I first met him. And, then he became a member of this Central Committee. HUNTLEY: You participated very fervently during the. this April and May period, you being the secretary. . . B-PENDLETON: Yes, but I did other things. HUNTLEY: Okay. B-PENDLETON: We made placards. We picked up people at the airports. I ran road blocks. I ran around road blocks. That is, I would pick up demonstrators, Bull Conner would block off the streets, 5th Avenue, 19th Street, 4th Avenue, so we would go around down to 13th Street and go across to 1st Avenue North, put the demonstrators out at 19th Street and they would walk down to Pizitz, to Britts, to you know...so I did more than just write the minutes. HUNTLEY: So, you were actually in the thick of things? B-PENDLETON: Yes. And then of course, they made me chairman of the Transportation Committee, so what I did, I asked my friends who I knew were not working during that time, Deenie Drew and I, Althea Montgomery, Ruth Gaillard, Willa Adams...these were ladies who were at home. Also, we asked Rhett Bradford. . . we asked them to come, bring your cars, we need transportation. People were coming in from everywhere and we had to pick them up and get them out. HUNTLEY: Were you ever arrested? B-PENDLETON: No, but I had my toothbrush with me and I carry my toothbrush with me to this day. If you look over there in the pocket book, you' ; ll find a toothbrush. HUNTLEY: You' ; re like the boy scouts, you' ; re prepared. B-PENDLETON: I was prepared. HUNTLEY: As you, you were so active, what did your husband say about your activity? B-PENDLETON: He encouraged me. He was paying for the gasoline for my car. He was paying for the food or materials, for the placards, or whatever. He went to his office every day and then at night, he would come home and he would help patrol our neighborhood. You see, we lived in, well, it was called " ; Dynamite Hill" ; at that time and it was also a target for the KKK and the men in the neighborhood would patrol that area because they were planting bombs at Arthur Shores house and the catholic church down there. And he went to Montgomery with us. He went to Selma once and when the march began, from Selma to Montgomery, he was medical officer of the day, that is, he went down one afternoon, manned an aid station all that day and night and came back the next day. He made available, bond money for demonstrators that had been jailed. HUNTLEY: In Selma, one of the things that broke that Movement was...well not broke the movement, but assisted the Movement was the assistance of teachers. Teachers finally came out. Were there ever efforts here in Birmingham, those of you who had been teachers and had associations with other teachers to get others who were still in the classroom? B-PENDLETON: Well, if they were in the classroom, they could not very well...we were not asking anyone to jeopardize their jobs. But, they supported in other ways. There were some who supported in others ways, financially. You know, they always needed money. HUNTLEY: So, the...go ahead. B-PENDLETON: And, of course, when the students of the schools came out, well that was another situation where the teachers did not discourage the students not to go. And, of course, we would drive to the campus of the schools, but we couldn' ; t go on the campus to pick the kids up. That is the children who lived way out in North Birmingham. Rev. Bevell, Rev. Andrew Young, well we called them Bevell and Andy at that time. They would tell us what school the kids were coming out and they needed to be picked up. But, some of these kids came out from schools a long distance away and they walked to Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and the teachers did not discourage them as far as we know. There were some, I understand that did, but very few. HUNTLEY: Where were your children in school at the time? B-PENDLETON: At Wilkerson Elementary School. HUNTLEY: Were kids from Wilkerson leaving school and getting involved? B-PENDLETON: I don' ; t remember if any of them did. I really don' ; t know. My children did not go. They were...well there were kids as young as they were, 9 and 10 and that time. My husband was opposed to taking them out of school. HUNTLEY: What church, I think we' ; ve talked about this briefly, but what church were you a member of again? B-PENDLETON: The First Congregational Church. HUNTLEY: What was the level of its involvement? B-PENDLETON: Very active. Harold Long, Rev. Harold Long was the pastor of the First Congregational church at that time and he was very involved. And, uh, I think, I' ; m not sure of this, but First Congregational was one of the few churches where inter-racial groups could meet. The Pastor Joseph Alwinger' ; s church over on Sixth Avenue South of the Lutheran Church, they could meet there. But, for some reason I think they felt a little safer, I don' ; t know, but they did meet at my church and I understand that St. Marks opened their doors. HUNTLEY: So the congregation then was in support of... B-PENDLETON: The congregation supported Rev. Long and we have a very small congregation. And, you see, Arthur Shores, one of the lawyers at that time for the Movement, one of the lawyers, is a member of that church, and our present...the Executive Director of the Civil Rights Institute, Odessa Woolfolk, is a member of that church. HUNTLEY: So you all have a lot of rebels in that church. Tell me, are there any recollections that stand out in your memory during this period that probably, probably stand out more than any other, than any single incidents that you remember? B-PENDLETON: Well, the day, that the first time they turned the water hose on the children when they came out of Sixteenth Street Church there at Kelly Ingram Park. See every time they marched, if they were going to march to the courthouse, we marched, if we could. We would always end up at the back of the line, but we marched. HUNTLEY: Who are we? B-PENDLETON: Deenie Drew and I. We marched with the kids. And, that day, we were at the back of the line when they came out of the church and to see the water hose turned on,the pressure from the water hose, turned on those young people, well there were young and old, it' ; s heart rendering. It was terrible. HUNTLEY: You see that on film today, what do you... B-PENDLETON: It brings back... refresh memories, it really does. Uh, I can also remember a time when we were marching over to the jailhouse and, uh, over on Sixth Avenue South and Bull Conner order the policeman...oh, I get my marches mixed up sometime, but we were marching and Bull Conner order them to turn the water hose on and that day, one fireman did not turn his on and had tears in his eyes, I remember that. HUNTLEY: So, that meant that you were pretty close to the front? B-PENDLETON: Sometimes, sometimes. Most of the time I was doing other things and they needed people to do other things. HUNTLEY: Tell me also about your activity, because I know that you were a member of the NAACP and you worked in voter registration campaign with W. C. Patten, can you tell me a little about that? B-PENDLETON: Yes, uh Mr. Patten was asking for volunteers. I went down and we used the city directory to compile the voters list. We took the city directory and we wrote the names of every Black male and Black female listed. HUNTLEY: Well, how did you know who was Black or not? B-PENDLETON: The city had already done the work for us. They coded the book behind the name of White male they had a " ; one" ; , by the name of a White female, they had a " ; 2" ; . By the name by a Black male " ; 3" ; , by the name of a Black female " ; 4" ; , so all we had to do was just list the names that were numbered 3s and 4s. We wrote the names, addresses and telephone numbers and then we compiled these voter lists by communities and we would call...there were other people now, not just Deanie and myself. There were other persons helping. We would call these persons, uh, ask them if they were registered voters and if they said no, and nine times out of ten they would say no, we would tell them about the clinics that were being held to educate people to register and vote. HUNTLEY: How successful were those efforts? B-PENDLETON: It was very successful because Black people wanted that opportunity to vote and they would go to these clinics and, they were taught how to register to vote. HUNTLEY: Would this be in the 50s or the 60s? B-PENDLETON: Now this was in...this was early 60s. Now in the 50s...let me go back just a minute. HUNTLEY: Sure. B-PENDLETON: I was teaching at Wenonah High School, I lived in Roosevelt City. We had to go over to the community of Wilkes which is across the highway from Val Hallow and Midfield. We had to go across to Wilkes to register to vote. They had questions, real long list of questions. They would ask questions like who was the dog catcher in the Bessemer cut- off area and you know, things like that. And, I smuggled a list of the questions out, took it to my class, I was teaching American History. I had it xeroxed, and took it to my class. HUNTLEY: At Wenonah? B-PENDLETON: At Wenonah and gave it to my students and they took it home to their parents and the parents studied them so they could pass the test, to learn to vote...I mean, that is to qualify rather. HUNTLEY: Sure, sure. That' ; s very interesting because we all know the kinds of questions that..... B-PENDLETON: They were ridiculous. HUNTLEY: And, if you didn' ; t B-PENDLETON: If you didn' ; t know... HUNTLEY: Absolutely. B-PENDLETON: Well, that' ; s how some of my students' ; parents got the questions. HUNTLEY: Tell me about your activity with the Urban League? B-PENDLETON: Well, at that time, there was a young man by the name of Clarence Wood that was here in Birmingham, he was a Birmingham boy and he invited me down to work with the Urban League. And, or course, you know they had a different program, that is training people. We knew that if the doors were opened, that we the people were demonstrating to open, that you had to have qualified people to fill these jobs. So, that was the role of the Urban League and, I helped in whatever way that I could. I don' ; t remember all that, but I was secretary for awhile and I stopped that too. HUNTLEY: So, you have volunteered, you have really been a professional volunteer. You' ; ve helped in a lot of areas... B-PENDLETON: No, I do absolutely nothing but work with my church. HUNTLEY: You do what you want to do now. B-PENDLETON: Well, I' ; m a docent at the Civil Rights Institute. HUNTLEY: Sure. What is your assessment of the Birmingham movement? How successful? What were it' ; s accomplishments? B-PENDLETON: Well, I think that the Birmingham movement was a moral mirror for the rest of the country. I think that it was the catalyst really that. . . the results were the 1964 Voting Rights bill. True, the people in Selma, you know the crossing of the Pettus Bridge, they were instrumental in encouraging...not encouraging but making Lyndon Johnson act on the civil, on the voting rights bill, but the Birmingham movement was catalyst for the movement in Selma, that' ; s my opinion. I really think so. HUNTLEY: Birmingham precedes the ' ; 64 Public Accommodations Bill, also... B-PENDLETON: That' ; s true, that' ; s true. HUNTLEY: And, that leads then to the Voting Rights Bill. B-PENDLETON: That' ; s true. That' ; s what I mean when I say, the moral mirror and that' ; s not my words. I picked that up from someone else, some book I read, I don' ; t know. HUNTLEY: What do you think were the real issues? B-PENDLETON: Well, in the beginning, the real issues, we were just asking for basic necessity. Things that were. . . that you would expect any citizen to want. The right to sit and eat. The right to relieve yourself ; public accommodations. The right to go to whatever school you want to do to these were the things that happened and only those persons who had the, the money and/ or the education could really take advantage of these things. HUNTLEY: But, if you were Black, even if you had the money and the education,.... B-PENDLETON: That' ; s right, here in Birmingham, we didn' ; t have those opportunities. HUNTLEY: Well, are there any other things that we have not touched upon that you would just like to mention, I know that you' ; ve talked an awful lot about a lot of things, and what we' ; ll normally do is to, to look at this and we possibly. We' ; ll have a follow-up at some point because I know that in an hour' ; s time, we really. You know, I think it evokes and it stirs up some of your memories, but I' ; m sure when you get home you' ; re going to remember some other things and then we, uh we will possibly want to do this again. But, I want to thank you for coming out, taking your time from your busy schedule and sitting with us today. B-PENDLETON: Thank you for asking. HUNTLEY: Thank you very much. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
bcri.org. 0 http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=RBPendleton1995.xml RBPendleton1995.xml
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Ruth Barefield-Pendleton
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Ruth Barefield-Pendleton discusses serving as secretary of the Central Committee of SCLC after growing up and teaching in Birmingham. She also served as secretary of the Urban League.
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19950309B
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
Miles College
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1995-03-09
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video
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9af2eb6d7a8ccc8b576be50a193f93aa
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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Interviews collected as part of the general mission of the Oral History Project
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Video
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Oral History
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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English
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bcriohp
Oral History
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Edward S. LaMonte
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Dr. Richard Arrington Jr.
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http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=RArringtonJr2001a.xml
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5.4 July 23, 2001 Richard Arrington Jr. (1 of 2) Interviewed on July 23, 2001 20010723A 4:01:13 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project Collection bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Jess Holdnak Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham Pitts, Luscious Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Birmingham (Ala.). Mayor Miles College Dr. Richard Arrington Jr. Edward S. LaMonte Video 1:|12(8)|24(3)|36(12)|49(2)|61(17)|74(11)|86(6)|97(5)|109(11)|123(10)|139(17)|150(14)|163(11)|174(12)|189(4)|201(16)|214(5)|224(4)|232(9)|243(12)|255(9)|269(3)|282(7)|297(2)|312(6)|329(2)|341(8)|353(2)|367(3)|382(8)|394(7)|407(2)|418(8)|431(2)|446(11)|460(12)|474(14)|489(12)|501(3)|516(8)|529(10)|540(12)|554(7)|567(1)|578(5)|592(8)|605(2)|617(3)|630(3)|643(12)|653(13)|665(4)|679(6)|689(12)|701(6)|713(7)|739(10)|750(14)|765(9)|777(10)|791(7)|804(8)|814(2)|825(14)|838(3)|852(4)|865(4)|877(2)|888(5)|899(1)|912(2)|925(11)|938(1)|948(6)|962(13)|974(12)|985(11)|998(8)|1017(1)|1031(1)|1041(16)|1054(12)|1067(9)|1081(3)|1094(4)|1106(6)|1118(9)|1129(10)|1146(1)|1157(7)|1169(2)|1178(9)|1193(10)|1204(8)|1216(4)|1229(5)|1241(13)|1258(6)|1272(1)|1283(5)|1294(12)|1304(12)|1315(6)|1328(11)|1343(4)|1352(10)|1362(16)|1375(2)|1387(3)|1398(4)|1410(3)|1420(10)|1434(2)|1445(3)|1456(15)|1469(7)|1482(4)|1491(7)|1503(1)|1516(3)|1533(8)|1543(11)|1552(14)|1566(4)|1587(6)|1599(5)|1610(7)|1623(9)|1634(3)|1647(4)|1657(8)|1669(7)|1682(13)|1695(16)|1710(7)|1721(12)|1732(4)|1742(1)|1752(8)|1768(7)|1783(19)|1802(1)|1815(4)|1830(12)|1846(10)|1859(4)|1872(11)|1883(8)|1895(17)|1907(5)|1919(1)|1933(4)|1943(3)|1954(9)|1966(5)|1976(11)|1991(7)|2004(9)|2014(11)|2026(8)|2036(7)|2046(11)|2054(12)|2065(8)|2078(2)|2094(5)|2105(4)|2116(6)|2127(15)|2139(5)|2150(6)|2160(6)|2171(6)|2180(4)|2191(7)|2205(5)|2217(5)|2228(15)|2241(5)|2252(13)|2264(11)|2278(7)|2292(12)|2303(9)|2315(13)|2329(12)|2338(10)|2350(7)|2361(6)|2374(8)|2385(11)|2398(4)|2405(11)|2420(9)|2435(9)|2445(14)|2460(3)|2473(9)|2486(14)|2499(8)|2515(2)|2528(4)|2546(14)|2559(2)|2571(13)|2582(9)|2593(15)|2613(5)|2624(11)|2641(1)|2652(1)|2665(8)|2677(13)|2688(12)|2702(7)|2710(1)|2723(2)|2733(9)|2744(3)|2758(16)|2771(15)|2782(17)|2794(12)|2803(11)|2814(10)|2826(3)|2838(11)|2852(8)|2868(9)|2879(14)|2895(3)|2906(11)|2918(3)|2932(12)|2949(7)|2968(11)|2979(8)|2991(11)|3005(6)|3017(11)|3027(5) 0 https://youtu.be/dDZ0MBNEBlw YouTube video English 0 Introduction Introduction to interviewer, Edward S LeMonte, and interviewee Dr. Richard Arrington Jr. 33.516200, -86.813870 17 The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute https://www.bcri.org/ The homepage of the BCRI 82 Early Life and Childhood: Living in Birmingham Dr. Arrington, let’s begin at the beginning, would you talk about you early childhood, family experiences, and your growing up years? Dr. Arrington talks about moving from Livingston to Fairfield, his family history and life as a child in Birmingham. He discusses early role models, and seeing electric lights for the first time. Birmingham (Ala.) ; Blacks--Segregation ; Fairfield (Ala.) 786 Early Life and Childhood: Industrial Highschool When I finished Industrial High School, where I had studied dry-cleaning, because it was an industrial school and it offered us, what had called the straight academic program for those students who intended to go on the college. But most of the students of course were studying some trade, tailoring, upholstery, shoe repair, auto mechanics and things of that sort. Dr. Arrington talks about studying dry-cleaning in high school, his high school experience and his parents. Industrial High School Arrington family 1793 Early Life and Childhood: Living In a Segregated Society You mentioned your mother’s concern in particular about police encounters or other incidents. Were there any terrible incidents in your childhood or times when living in a segregated society was very punishing and you knew at the time? Dr. Arrington talks about his experience and knowledge of segregation as a child. Birmingham (Ala.) ; Blacks--Segregation 1974 Early Life and Childhood: Church You’ve talked about the importance of family, of high school and of the community that you grew up in that produced role models. Were there other institutions or organizations that were important in your early years, church, and civic groups, anything along those lines? Dr. Arrington mentions the importance of church in his life. Church ; Conley Bethel Primitive Baptist Church 2111 Education: Miles College I ended up going to college right here and actually two blocks from where I grew up at Miles College. And I go to college, I start as a freshman, I have no idea what I’m going to study, but as I said I knew I was going Dr. Arrington talks about the path that led him to study Biology at Miles. Biology ; Miles College 2283 Education: Graduate School And that I said, “I’m 20 years old and I just graduated from college.” And I leave Alabama for the first time in my life, I take the greyhound bus and off I go to Detroit and I married by that time too at 20 years. So off we go on the bus to Detroit, I’ll never forget it was a tearful moment, I cried, didn’t want to leave home. Dr. Arrington talks about being one of only a few black student at the University of Detroit and not having to deal with segregation or the first time. He also talks about teaching at Miles after receiving his Master's, receiving a National Science Foundation Fellowship, and applying to Ph.D programs. Biology--Study and teaching (Higher) ; Education Miles College ; University of Detroit ; University of Oklahoma 2739 Politics: Voting Were there any thoughts at all at this point in your career about public service, politics, anything other than higher education? Dr. Arrington talks about registering to vote and voter tests. Jefferson County (Ala.) ; Pitts, Luscious Voter registration 3176 Politics: The Civil Rights Movement During the time you were in college, the Brown vs. Board of Education decision was handed down by the supreme court and then I guess during your graduate school years, the Civil Rights Movement, perhaps peeked and had its greatest impact. How did those developments in the civil rights arena either affect your life or shaped your thinking during that period of time? Dr. Arrington talks about his awareness and involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and in desegregation, including his children attending desegregated schools. Civic League ; Fairfield (Ala.) Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ; Civil rights movement 3470 Education :Doctoral Studies 1961, I was at Washington University when he was chosen president. In fact, I first met him when I was a graduate student at Washington University and he came to St. Louis to speak to a group of Mileans, I attended that sessions and that was when I first met Luscious Pitts. L: So you taught at Miles and then went off and earned your PhD ultimately--? Dr. Arrington talks about his doctoral program. Pitts, Luscious Miles College 3628 Politics: Summer of 1963 So you left beginning your doctoral work in ’63, were you here during the summer of ’63 when the demonstrations were occurring? Dr. Arrington talks about working with Civil Rights Leaders. He also mentions George Wallace and the assignation of John F. Kennedy. 1963 ; Gaston, A. G. (Arthur George), 1892- ; Halls, Peter ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; Montgomery, James ; Wallace, George ; Woods, Abraham ; Woods, Calvin Civil rights movement 4169 Education: University of Oklahoma and Discrimination But those were things that sort of stick with you, but I was Oklahoma in ’63 for three years and enjoyed it. Took 2 1⁄2 years, taught there the last semester I was there, the whole three-year period and it was basically a good experience. Socially it was, somewhat different. Oklahoma turned out to be not that different from Alabama, they had gone through a lot of litigation already about desegregation and I wasn’t aware of that, as I should have been. Dr. Arrington talks about discrimination in off-campus housing and the University of Oklahoma, discrimination at restaurants, and the history of segregation on campus. He also talks about his friendship with Professor Harley Brown. Norman, Oklahoma ; Oklahoma City (Okla.) ; University of Oklahoma Blacks--Segregation ; Discrimination in housing ; Discrimination in restaurants 4908 Career: Career in Education But was there ever any thought of going some place other than Birmingham, or did you assume and understand on completion of your doctorate that you would return to Miles College and resume your career there? Dr. Arrington summarizes his career as academic dean at Miles, director of the Alabama Center for Higher Education, and work with the Carnegie Foundation. Alabama Center for Higher Education ; Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching ; Ford Foundation ; Pitts, Luscious Birmingham (Ala.) ; Miles College 5400 Career: City Council L: So you were there from ’70 until you were elected mayor in ’79, and there was a moment of political initiation at some point during that stage, when did you first have the thought descended to you of becoming involving in politics and public life? Dr. Arrington talks about getting involved in politics for the first time, running for city council and his first council term. He mentions speaking out against the police and working with the white community. City council members ; Connor, Eugene, 1897-1973 ; Shores, Arthur D. (Arthur Davis), 1904-1996 ; Vann, David Birmingham (Ala.) ; City council members 6941 Career: Motivation for Running for Mayor Was there any thought on your part of perhaps running for mayor in 1975 at the end of your first term? Dr. Arrington say that the Benita Carter incident was his motivation for running for mayor. Carter, Benita ; Vann, David Birmingham (Ala.). Mayor 7208 Career: Leaving Miles College (inaudible) but you raised a question my leaving Miles College, what happened at Miles College was there was a search for a new president and John Monroe, who had come to Miles from Harvard some years earlier, led an effort to get me back as president and apparently had spoken with the bishop, who was the chairman of the board. Dr. Arrington talks about leaving Miles and how Dr. Clyde Williams became its president. Monroe, John ; Williams, Clyde Miles College 7549 Career: City Council Second Term Could we talk a little about the second term, your second term as a council member was 1975 to 1979, David Vann was mayor during that period of time, you mentioned that your first meeting with David had occurred during the 1971 campaign when he had forwarded some campaign funds to you, you had not met him during the period in ’63 when he was very much involved with the negotiations between black and white leaders? Dr. Arrington talks about his second term on the city council focusing especially on David Vann as mayor. He mentions some about his run for mayor against Vann's reelection campaign. Boutwell, Albert Burton, 1904-1978 ; Connor, Eugene, 1897-1973 ; United States. Voting Rights Act of 1965 Vann, David 8599 Mayor: Campaign L: Two questions before we move into your campaign and first term, prior then to the Benita Carter tragedy in the summer of ’79, your plan was to finish your second term as council member, leave politics, return to I assume a full-time career somewhere in higher education? Dr. Arrington talks about running for Mayor in 1979 and winning. He mentions financing his campaign and working with businesses in Birmingham. He also mentions some of his campaign platform. 1979 ; Bradford, Tom ; Campaign funds ; Carter, Benita ; Farley, Joe ; Gaston, A. G. (Arthur George), 1892- ; Harbert, Raymond ; Thompson, Hall ; Vann, David ; Woods, John Campaign promises ; Political campaigns 10020 Mayor: Winning First Term Dr. Arrington talks about transitioning into office and some of the issues he faced including selecting a chief of police. Davis, Willie ; Myers, Bill Birmingham (Ala.). Mayor 10946 Mayor: Police L: (inaudible) difficult to in a reasonable period of time covered 20 years as mayor, but I think there are some areas that we could group questions and thoughts on your part and I guess one of them would be to return the topic of police and you’ve talked about the professionalization of the police department a long-term process that began during your first term as council. I recall that the issue of the shooting policy was one of the kinds of important police issues that came up early in your tenure as mayor, I wonder if you could speak to that and other things related to policing that reflected your commitment to the professionalization of the department. Dr. Arrington talks about reforming the Birmingham police department. Deustch, Arthur ; Fraternal order of police ; Myers, Bill ; Police Reform Birmingham (Ala.). Police Department 11462 Mayor: Affirmative Action Related to the police department and all other department but certainly more extensively were very basically was the question of affirmative action in the consent decree. At the time you entered office the question of discriminatory hiring practices was before the courts? Dr. Arrington talks about affirmative action, accusations of reverse discrimination, and his progress in diversifying the Birmingham workforce. Reverse discrimination ; United States. Supreme Court Affirmative action programs ; Affirmative action programs--United States 12366 Mayor: The Birmingham Plan I don’t know how successful it has been, but we reached a point where they started working with us rather than against us. We got the Birmingham plan put in place and the Birmingham plan, in my opinion ; it’s a significant accomplishment. I don’t think it was a productive as it could have been, because quite frankly I don’t think we ever got really the mentality among a (inaudible) minority contractors, they were going to get a set aside, but with all those rough balance, one very pleasing moment for me was one day when six young black contractors came in my office. Dr. Arrington talk about implementing the Birmingham plan and attempting to help minority contractors, and small businesses. The Birmingham Plan African American business enterprises ; Economic development 13269 Mayor: Downtown Revitalization One of the projects that David Vann had begun was the commitment to downtown Birmingham the revitalization of downtown, would you comment on your views of downtown and what your administrations did over the years on behalf of downtown Birmingham and your assessment of success or failure? Dr. Arrington talks about attempting to revitalize downtown Birmingham. He mentions projects like the McWane Center, dealings with Sloss, plans for improvements that did not happen, plans for parks and issues with recruiting business. He also talks about improvements to the 280 area including the Summit. His discussion on annexations includes David Vann's time as mayor. Annexation (Municipal government) ; downtown revitalization ; McWane Center ; Pizitz ; Sloss Furnace Company ; United States Highway 280 (Ala. and Ga.) Birmingham (Ala.) Oral History Dr. Richard Arrington Jr. discusses growing up in Birmingham, his educational career, his time on the city council and his early years as Mayor. This interview is continued on July 24, 2001. LEMONTE: This interview with Dr. Richard Arrington, Jr ; it is conducted on July 23-24, 2001. I am Edward S. LeMonte, currently Vice President for Administration and Howell Heflin Professor of American Government at Birmingham-Southern College. I would say at the outset of the interview it was my personal and professional privilege to serve as a staff member during the first two of Dr. Arrington' ; s five terms as mayor from 1979 to 1987. And during much of that time, served as his senior staff person or executive secretary. The purpose of the interview is to provide a comprehensive introduction to the life of Richard Arrington, to his public service career and also to his reflections on the Civil Rights experience, particularly at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. The interview is part of the Oral History program of the institute. Dr. Arrington, let' ; s begin at the beginning, would you talk about you early childhood, family experiences, and your growing up years? ARRINGTON: Of course, yes. Life leads on some interesting journeys and that' ; s what life has led me. I was born in what is called the Black Belt area of Alabama, a place called Livingston, Alabama, which is located in Sumter County and my father and mother were sharecropping farmers down in Livingston, Alabama. My first four years were spent there in Livingston, Alabama on the farm with my parents. My dad eventually decided to join the great movement to Birmingham to work in the steel mills. That of course, was what many of the people who were on the farms were doing at that time. They were leaving the farms because of economic conditions changing and new opportunities opening up in places like Birmingham with its vast steel mills. And so when I was four or five years old, my dad moved us to Birmingham ; and he went to work in the steel mill, so I grew up in Birmingham, out in the suburb called Fairfield. I was taught in the Fairfield Public Schools System and even did my first four years in college in Fairfield and I earned my Bachelors Degree at Miles College, which of course is in the Fairfield area. I never left Birmingham in fact until after I had finished college. It was an interesting experience growing up in that time. Race was of course a dominant factor in daily lives and shaped everything from social activities to education, and schools were all of course, segregated. There were black schools, I attended Robinson Elementary School and then from there to Fairfield Industrial High School. These were the schools for black students in the city of Fairfield. The time during that particular period, again, there was a straight emphasis on separation of the races, so I grew up not knowing very much. I had very few contacts with whites ; the law of the land in the south at that particular time was of course, racial segregation. Parks were segregated, there were very few facilities, in fact, and quite frankly the system at that time treated blacks really as second-class citizens. We lived in separate neighborhoods but there were usually the neighborhoods where there were few of public services where the streets were usually unpaved and what have you. But that was an interesting thing about it and because of the segregation laws, it kept all blacks, corralled all blacks, few which were professionals or they were teachers, doctors and lawyers. They lived in the same neighborhoods with those like my father, like where we lived, people were blue-collar workers. And so in one regard I see a positive in that ; we were sort of united frankly by race and by racial laws and so I knew everyone in the community, I knew the teachers who lived in the community, those who had the opportunities to get education. I knew at least one or two physicians who lived in the community, I knew the professionals. And so one result of segregation of blacks in the community was the fact that they had to all live in the same community and that provided some opportunity for some degree of interaction. LEMONTE: Were there any particular individuals who you would call as role models during your youth in that segregated community that you grew up in? ARRINGTON: Yes, I recall quite well. In my early days, I thought I wanted to be a physician because of Dr. W.L. Drake was ' ; The Black Physician' ; in the city of Fairfield. He handled most of the clients there in the city, and I remember Grover P. Parham, who was also a black businessman who was actually a pharmacist, but highly respected and ran several businesses here in Birmingham. There were a few others, really this was in Fairfield mainly. There were a few other blacks ; there were some teachers that I got to know fairly well who lived in the community. They were all in one sense or another sort of role models that I think inspired a lot of us. And when I think about them in conjunction with the constant counseling of my parents about what I should do in life, which was go to college. See my parents had never gone to college, my dad had only gone to the third grade in a one-room country school and all the grades were in the same room. My mom had come from a family down in Sumter County where there was some degree of education among most of the members of the family ; for example, her uncle Dr. Jones, was sort of the first presidents of Selma University. And then in her family, most of her uncles attended school or went to Tuskegee. They didn' ; t graduate, but they went there for a while. And then they came back and they taught there. And my maternal great-grandmother was also a teacher. So on the Bell side of the family, which was my mother' ; s maiden name was a, Bell. On the Bell side of the family, we had a great emphasis placed on education and also it' ; s interesting that many people. Particularly blacks coming out of Sumter County, who knew the Bells, always thought we were really well to do. I think it was a combination of the fact that most of the Bells were into education. They were teaching in some of the schools there and then gone to college. Of course that' ; s a privilege viewed by blacks whom were rural people working mainly on the farms. My great-great granddad lived on a huge plantation and they called it ' ; The Bell Place' ; . I cannot remember how many acres there were, but even to this day I meet people of my generation here in Birmingham, who are from that area and had grown up there, maybe a little bit older, but they still think that my family owned this so-called Bell Place. The truth is that my great-great granddad was three years old when slavery was abolished and continued to live there on that plantation which was owned by Ms. Lula Degraffenreid. When Mrs. Degraffenreid moved out, she let my great- great grandfather continue to live there. So he married and all of his children were born there. Each one built a house somewhere on that huge plantation. So the Bells lived there and people always thought we all did well, we owned not a square inch out there. Of course today, American Can Company owns all of that land, but it' ; s timberland but that was where I got my start. I got to Birmingham, there were things, I told people many times I have never seen, because I had never left Livingston and I' ; m only four or five years old. I had gone to the train depot a couple of times to see some relatives off. I come to Birmingham and get there at night and one of my first experiences is hearing a streetcar and not being able to see and my mom (inaudible) thought it was a train and having her tell me it' ; s a streetcar. And I could hardly wait to get up the next morning to get out on the porch to see where the streetcar was. And because we lived there in an area in Fairfield called Vinesville, right where the city of Birmingham boundaries meet the city of Fairfield. And from my home, I could see what was called a #7 streetcar that came down and turned around and went back to Birmingham and I could the #14 street car that came through there and went on down to Bessemer and that was very interesting. It was interesting for me moving to Birmingham as a young man to see electric lights up. I can' ; t recall having ever seen them anywhere in Livingston. But I knew we lived in a home on the farm where there were no electric lights. Everything, all the lights at night came from kerosene lamps. And so I got to see electric lights for the first time and each one of our three-room house my dad leased. Then we got the single electric light bulb on a cord and we kept on by hand, this is a new experience. I' ; m seeing this new technology, new forms of energy, all very exciting. But my playmates, my friends all were of course people in the neighborhood, and they were black. Even then our newspaper carrying days, I was a paper carrier early ; I was ten years old, and I got me a paper route. I had a few contacts with young whites that were also paper carriers, but we had some interesting experiences, for example, my cousin and I would like to stop in the park down in the city of Fairfield and watch the baseball games. Well it was a park for whites, but we would stop on the (inaudible) put our papers down and watch the game. Occasionally there in the park, along with some of the white paper carriers, down in the field by the station where we picked up our newspapers, we would engage one another in football games, the black playing the whites and we had great fun, but the police would come along and they would really scold us. And they really scold the blacks and that was all out of place, the blacks and whites would play together and that' ; s race-conscious people were and that was the kind of situation I grew up in. The whites I got to know, well those I worked for, once I got to be a senior and started working at a drycleaners, called Howard' ; s drycleaners, which incidentally still here in Birmingham down on 3rd ave and ninth street. And I worked there in my starting the end of my senior year in high school and I worked there for four years, almost until I graduated from college. When I finished Industrial High School, where I had studied dry-cleaning, because it was an industrial school and it offered us, what had called the straight academic program for those students who intended to go on the college. But most of the students of course were studying some trade, tailoring, upholstery, shoe repair, auto mechanics and things of that sort. And so a friend of mine influenced me, a good buddy in high school named Thomas Hardin. At the end of the 10th grade you had to make a choice of which program you wanted to study, whether you wanted to take a trade and which trade you would study. Or you were going to go to college. Now I knew all the time that I was going to college. I knew it because my parents had always said we' ; d have to go to college. And it was interesting that they would say that because we had no means, no money or anything to send people to school. My dad just worked in the steel mills and when he was not working at the plant, he was a brick mason and carpenter and he built homes. Many of them still stand out in Fairfield today. But we didn' ; t have an abundance of money ; we lived from paycheck to paycheck. I knew I was going to college, yet this friend influenced me. When this election time came up and having no counselors at the high school that I was attending, although we had an outstanding educator, this principal named EJ Oliver. I ended up studying dry cleaning, which was not my first choice. What happened is Dr. Oliver would call all the students into the auditorium and we would tell him what areas we wanted to study and we would get assigned to those particular areas. Many of us wanted to study some trades and more than a trade could accommodate the teacher. There was a single teacher in each trade, so I wanted to study tailoring. Thomas and I chose tailoring and there were so many people wanted to study tailoring. What Dr. Oliver did was that he had all of us to put our names on a piece of paper and fold it up and drop it in a hat. And so 15 people who were going to be able to study tailoring were the names drawn out. I was unlucky, I didn' ; t get tailoring and that' ; s whet Thomas and I had to choose another trade. And so he said, " ; Let' ; s go into dry cleaning." ; So I studied dry-cleaning my junior and senior years in high school. I studied dry- cleaning and basically cleaned clothes for friends of others and ours. I had only two people, although I had done fairly well academically in school, I was an honor student and obviously should have gone in the straight academic program. That would have meant more algebra and trigonometry and would have meant more than chemistry and things of that sort. But only two, maybe three people out of a class of hundred and something students who graduated went into straight academic programs of study. But anyway, from there, my friend and I graduated and we ended up to Miles College the next year as freshmen. And as I said I worked at Howard Cleaners after having done one summer of just making brick mortar for brick mason at $0.50 an hour, which was my first job. So that sort of a sketch of how I grew up--. LEMONTE: You make it clear that your parents expected you to go to college ; I take it that your family was a close-knit family. Your parents had great influence over you and what you did. Could you say a little more about your family, your siblings and what have become family members? ARRINGTON: Absolutely, one of my blessings was that we had a close-knit family. My dad married my mom when she was just 18 years old and he was in his early 20s. He was dating my mom and they were talking about marriage, my mother was 17 when her mother died of a heart attack. And of course she and her siblings--she had a brother who was the youngest of the three, her sister in between, and my mother was the oldest of the three children. So her father had brought them up and then he was killed in an accident. He was working cutting timber and somehow was killed when a large log falling on him and killed him. So shortly thereafter, my father married my mother and moved into her home and in essence raised three kids, his wife, his sister-in-law and his young brother-in-law. So he actually kept all three of them and they lived with us, or up until I left home that they continued to live with us (inaudible). But it was a close-knit family and even when we moved into the city out in Fairfield, my aunt and my uncle still lived with us, although we had just a three- room house, a living room, a bedroom, a kitchen, and a toilet eventually on the back porch, initially dry toilets out in the backyard. My uncle Bill eventually moved next door, but the family remained a close- knit family. My dad was sort of the patriarch and oversaw the entire family. And when my mom did a lot of the work of seeing my brother--I have a brother who is two and half years younger than I am. He is in high education and lives in South Carolina. But my mother had the responsibilities of seeing that we did our schoolwork or getting us enrolled in school, all those kinds of things. I can recall coming home almost daily during the week sitting on the front porch in what we call a glider. My mom taking me over the lessons, with a switch in there by her side. And with my reading or my doing the spelling and sometimes I see the kids out there running and playing, I wanted to go. Occasionally my mom is picking up the switch-hitting me because folks playing distracted me. I almost remember some of the visits made by teachers. I had a--I got up to eight or ninth grade, I had this pretty teacher, named Angelina Raye. She had a sister who taught there in the system named Mattie Raye and they were both very attractive ladies, even to the kids whose in the eight grade. But I came under Angelina Raye, who was from an area called Hooper City. I came under Angelina Raye, in her English class and I tell people to this day that every bit of the grammar I know, I learned that under her. I had never heard about conjugating a verb until I got into her class. She was an outstanding teacher and I paid strict attention to her ; she was pretty to watch but I was anxious to learn. I wanted to know and then I wanted her approval, but she would come over, she and her sister, they would do home visits quite often ; they would sit on the front porch and talk with my parents about my brother and me and about well we were doing in school. The interesting part of that story, the reason I mentioned it, is that Angelina Raye later married my brother, who played basketball in high school. My brother' ; s basketball coach, a man whose name was Rice, his last name was Rice ; and of course today his daughter is the security advisor to the president of the United States, George W. Bush. But I told Condoleeza Rice on a number of occasions (inaudible), her mother, of course she remembers that her mother knew me and had talked about me and all of that. So that was interesting, I came under the influence of some good teachers like Mrs. Raye, Mrs. Cook and I got into doing things I really didn' ; t do well, debate team and it was really a good academic experience at Fairfield Industrial High School because EJ Oliver, who some would call a tyrant, but he ran his school and he demanded that there would be emphasis on academic achievement. We completed statewide academic meets every year. In fact the greatest disappointment I had in my entire high school career was that I had never won what' ; s called a ribbon. We would go off to Alabama State University in Montgomery every year, where black high school students from across the state who were considered to be the top students in their classes and during the junior and senior years would compete in certain areas like Government, History, and English, or Literature and Writing. And of course the great honor, the thing that made everybody feel good at Fairfield is that you got a lot of recognition for your academic achievement. There was a large glass showcase and if you won a ribbon, you brought it back, kept your name on it, it was in the showcase. And all the kids who over years and years at the school had won ribbons, they were all there. So it was a great honor and of course I went off and competed in that twice and didn' ; t win a ribbon either, you win first, second, third place ribbon. And that was my great appointment and I never won a ribbon in that. LEMONTE: Was that due in part to your being in the dry cleaning tract--? ARRINGTON: It may have been, I don' ; t know the answer, but it may have been. Another way that Oliver really inspired us is that he had built on the wall, a large bulletin board with a glass door that covered it and he called it the " ; The Fairfield Industrial High School Hall of Fame." ; And the first graduate that achieved some distinction in the field would go into the hall of fame ; for example, the first Fairfield Industrial High School graduate who became a lawyer. And the first one who became a pharmacist and the first one who became a doctor and so forth and so on. And it' ; s amazing how that inspired people become everybody wanted to be in the Fairfield Industrial Hall of Fame and I left Fairfield, hoping one day get into Industrial Hall of Fame. And of course I was able to get in there, I was the first Fairfield Industrial High graduate to get a PhD degree in Zoology and so I was brought back some years later got inducted into the hall of fame. And here I am now of course and adult now, gone all the way through school and I' ; m about 30 or 31 years old, Doctorate Degree, but I was just as proud going back the Fairfield Industrial High and be inducted to that hall of fame. It made me prouder and that time when I walked across that stage to get my Doctoral degree. LEMONTE: Did Dr. Oliver sort of push you personally toward academics? ARRINGTON: No he didn' ; t push me-- LEMONTE: Particularly. ARRINGTON: He did do a lot of recognition to honor students. If you make the honor roll every semester, you were brought--he called names, in the assembly you came up. So he put a lot emphasis on that, he loved sports, but he put a lot of emphasis on academic achievement. While he gave a lot of attention to people like Willie Mayes, who was a couple of years ahead of me in school and was our hero and other athletic standouts ; He also did great emphasis to people who achieved academically and I sort of ranked always in like the top 10 of the class, I was probably number 3 or 4 in my graduating class. So I got recognition that way and then I was a thespian, I didn' ; t have any acting abilities, but I was a thespian working on properties and I said I was in the debate club and did have to debate and compete with our school against other schools in debating. And all of these things believe it not turned out to be very, very constructive activities and good activities for my development. But I still grew up in essentially a black culture and a segregated culture, didn' ; t think a lot about it at the time, quite frankly, just accepted it as a way of life. My mother worried especially about what would happen to us in relationship with police because the police were the people who kept everybody in line, in particularly the black community and the children being (inaudible) she was always worried about what kind of encounter we might have one day with the police. Although my brother and I were well behaved because my mother was a strict disciplinarian and we dared not get in any kind of trouble because we' ; d be in serious, serious trouble at home. My mom would not hesitate to give us whippings for anything we did. It was the same way about school I mean, we had to perform well in school and it was expected of us and we knew we had to do it. And so we learned that at an early age, what the expectations were, and we labored to (inaudible). It wasn' ; t that I was in any way extraordinary in terms of intellectual abilities, it was just hard work. It was that ethic that my family had and you got to get in there and do it. And it carried my right on through college, as I said, I went to college and I paid my tuition, there were no student loans or anything like that at that time. So I paid my tuition by working year round at Howard Cleaners. Worked there every afternoon at 4:00, I droved the delivery truck to about 10 or 12 branches to take the dry-cleaning out to the different branches. I was at the cleaners' ; (inaudible), I worked there on Saturdays and sometimes Sundays and then all summer long. I worked every job, I learned every job at the cleaners from firing the boiler so when the boiler man was on vacation during the summer, I relieved him and I did that and I ran the huge laundry and the man in charge of the laundry was off work and began in charge of the dry cleaning--I learned every job there, even down to the dressing machine, the area that many machines that were there. So that too was a learning experience, I became almost like a plumber, I knew how to do everything, but that' ; s how I worked my way through college. LEMONTE: You mentioned your mother' ; s concern in particular about police encounters or other incidents. Were there any terrible incidents in your childhood or times when living in a segregated society was very punishing and you knew at the time? ARRINGTON: It very punishing in a sense of that and fearful, there was great fear about what happened to blacks who according to whites or in the view of whites, stepped out of line or stepped across the line. We were fortunate that we' ; ve never had any bitter experience in our family, but we knew of people all around us who were beaten by police officers. Some were killed, whenever there was a rape of a white female somewhere in the Birmingham area, there was always some black guilty party and may not have been, I don' ; t know, but some black would pay the price and that was always a front page story, if a black was accused of having raped a white female, it was always front page but it always sent some fear throughout the black community until somebody had been apprehended and charged with that. I grew up at a time, still in the rural areas, a person or so charged, probably never got, many times never got to trial. A mob would come they would be lynched and taken that person out of jail and it' ; s still happening, even when I was in college it' ; s still happening and not that much in Alabama then as it was still happening in Mississippi and I still recall some of the victims, Parker and people like that. And because my mother taught me to love reading and so forth and I read everything, including the newspaper. But the people across the street did and I borrowed that newspaper everyday, just to read. And my dad loved to read, he didn' ; t read well, but he read the paper everyday, got the paper and he would read it and (inaudible) his words and stuff. So I grew up reading the paper daily and I was also aware of what went on and what I seen from reading the newspapers. So there was a kind of fear, but luckily we never had a direct bitter experience. I had officers stop me and say negative things, but never got to any physical encounter thank God. LEMONTE: You' ; ve talked about the importance of family, of high school and of the community that you grew up in that produced role models. Were there other institutions or organizations that were important in your early years, church, and civic groups, anything along those lines? ARRINGTON: Well the church certainly was a major institution. I remember joining the church that I' ; m now a member of, when I was six years old, being baptized a few years later and it' ; s a church I grew up in and attended regularly, worked in the Sunday school, was in the vacation Bible school. My parents were very much involved especially my mother and working in auxiliaries in the church. My mom sang in the choir and worked with the vacation bible school. And of course we were always in attendance, so the church had a significant influence in shaping our lives and helping us to shape the values so forth that we had. It was a major institution and of course I feel the black church has been one of the major institutions for blacks in this country. Much of the black leadership has come out of the black churches, colleges ; black churches started many of the black colleges. And so, yes, a lot of my values were shaped by church. LEMONTE: And you are a member of the church that you joined when you were six? ARRINGTON: It' ; s the only church I' ; ve ever-- LEMONTE: And what church is that? ARRINGTON: Conley Bethel Primitive Baptist Church in Fairfield. I' ; m what you call a foot washing primitive Baptist. We wash feet on communion Sundays and so it' ; an important institution. I ended up going to college right here and actually two blocks from where I grew up at Miles College. And I go to college, I start as a freshman, I have no idea what I' ; m going to study, but as I said I knew I was going. So I enrolled, I take the admission they had, what they call placement tests at that time in math and English and really think I did well and all her students from my high school all did well on those. They were not standardized test ; they were test put together by the faculties there, the college at that particular time. But if you didn' ; t pass the test in math, for example, you ended being placed in remedial math class, which you would spend a year but get no college credit. If you didn' ; t pass the English test, you couldn' ; t write the composition to the satisfaction of the teachers, you would end what they called sub-bang, which is remedial English. And so many of the students, in fact there were more students taking remedial math or remedial English in the freshman year and they would take the regular. But I did notice that the students who came out of Fairfield Industrial High School was me and attended Miles College just about everyone of them passed the placement exams did well, which again spoke well of what people were doing. But at Miles college I didn' ; t' ; know what I was going to, but fortunately some good teachers and some who took a special interest in us. And I remember a young teacher named Verdell Martin who taught Psychology and I remember her calling, I had taken a course with her in Psychology and I remember her calling me one day, I just happened to be passing by her office and calling me in and asking me, " ; What have you decided to study, you' ; re starting you sophomore year?" ; And I was very honest with her and said I just didn' ; t know, she says, " ; I think you got a good aptitude for science and I' ; d like for you to go and talk to Mr. Jones." ; That was the Biology teacher, a man named (inaudible) Jones. And so I did and I went over and talked to him and he suggested that I study biology or chemistry and that' ; s why I became biology major. And that was fortunate because he took an interest in his students ; he got a number of us to go into graduate school. I had no idea of what graduate school was. When he first mentioned it to me, have you thought about going to graduate school. I didn' ; t know what graduate school was and he explained and he thought he could help me get into graduate school up at the university of Detroit where he had gotten his masters degree and so he wrote the professor there and I applied there and I was admitted and I was given a teaching fellowship, teaching freshman laboratory classes at the University of Detroit. And that I said, " ; I' ; m 20 years old and I just graduated from college." ; And I leave Alabama for the first time in my life, I take the greyhound bus and off I go to Detroit and I married by that time too at 20 years. So off we go on the bus to Detroit, I' ; ll never forget it was a tearful moment, I cried, didn' ; t want to leave home. But it was also a traumatic experience for me at the university. People were wonderful there, at the university where there was maybe a dozen of blacks in the entire university, it was 12,000 students over in the biology department where I was, I was, at the time, the only black student enrolled in that graduate school. And while nobody else seemed to have thought anything about that, it stayed on my mind because I had come out of Alabama, out of a rigidly segregated society. Whereas I said, I had no social interaction with whites excepts occasion football game or baseball thing, might have happened on the streets or in the park, we' ; d sneak and did a lot, the police didn' ; t come along. So I really had no real contacts and now here I am in a setting where everybody in there in the graduate school where I am is white and no blacks. And the faculty and the students were wonderful, but even the horse played with the guys, but to me it felt strange, on weekends, hanging around as a graduated student, labs and so forth and guys get the wrestling and so forth and some white guy comes over and grabs me and started wrestling. You know, you didn' ; t do that in Alabama and it was a strange feeling. And sitting in the class rooms and the professor was lecturing decided to question people as he talked and I didn' ; t care how many times he called on my, every time he called on me, I just had to know the answer and when I didn' ; t I felt so bad, I thought I had let the whole black down, just shows you what racial segregation had done. But I think it was at the University of Detroit that I began to get some sense of self and identity and it turned out to be a very good experience. My second year there, my last year in which I received my degree, I did have another black student, a young woman named Sue Chatman came in as a graduate student and she eventually went on the dental school, in fact she practices today. She' ; s a dentist in Atlanta, so it was a good experience and of course from having gone to, I got a masters degree and came back to teach, but my professors had also recommended that I go on to work for a doctorate and so forth. All of this turned out to be good experiences. LEMONTE: You received your master' ; s degree in what year? ARRINGTON: ' ; 57 and I graduated from Miles in 1955 and then in ' ; 57 I received my master degree. I returned to Miles College and began teaching some biology at Miles College and studied--I would go off to graduate school during the summer for long time and then around 1960 or ' ; 61 I left as national science foundation fellow and went to Washington University for a year to do studying and research and then to the medical at the state university of Iowa to do research in radiation biology. Came back to the college and taught for a year after that and then was accepted at two or three schools for a doctoral program and chose to go out to the University of Oklahoma. I really wanted to go, ever since I had gotten my master' ; s, I had wanted to go to the university of Illinois to study zoology under a professor named Kudo, Dr. Kudo was one of the top people in his field. In fact, I had done my master' ; s (inaudible) a small problem dealing with small project that was related to the work that he was doing. But I was never accepted, I applied and they never accepted me. I was accepted to the University of Connecticut and I was accepted at the University of Southern Illinois and I was accepted at the University of Oklahoma. Out of the four schools, there was one other school that I applied to. So three of those schools accepted me and I chose to go to Oklahoma to work with a professor there in invertebrate zoology and we took off and went to Oklahoma. LEMONTE: So your career then prior to going to Oklahoma really was focusing you on academics, on being a researcher and more particularly I guess a teacher at Miles? ARRINGTON: My interest was teaching, I love teaching, I was secondly doing some research, but teaching at a school like Miles undergraduate institution, there was no real emphasis for me to do real research. You taught three classes a term and I enjoyed and that' ; s what I did. But of course whenever I went to graduate school, whether it was summer or what have you, I' ; d have to do research and if I hoped to achieved, ever get a doctorate degree of course I had to show that I had some ability to do a research, do some research which at least had to be at a level (inaudible) contributed something to the field. And so I kept my fingers in research areas by going to school every summer, I was very fortunate also that during that time, the federal government began to pump a lot of money into sciences. For example, when sputnik, when the Russians put the first space object into space called sputnik, out government responded by pumping a lot of money especially into the sciences to begin training people. To upgrade teachers who were teaching science. That, I was very fortunate, so I applied every summer and went away in some sort of program where we were getting graduate training. So again it was just luck as things came along. Things that I would have been able to, I was making $390 per month at Miles College teaching, had a family and there wasn' ; t much I could save. You couldn' ; t save any money, but I was able to go to graduate school every summer, because there were plenty of opportunities available through the national science foundation, but the science and math teachers and the timing was just right. LEMONTE: Were there any thoughts at all at this point in your career about public service, politics, anything other than higher education? ARRINGTON: No, I had thought of nothing except being a college teacher. There were no role models at that time in politics for me or for blacks because blacks did not have the vote except for a very small number. Blacks were essentially prohibited from voting in Alabama or they limited the number, even people who held a vast professional degrees, doctors, other doctorate degree, often times were not permitted to vote in Alabama. You went down to the board of registrars ; there were three people on the board of registrars in this county in Alabama. And you had to pass a test, an examination, whatever decided, usually in some counties it was written, but usually just answer the questions from the board of registrars. And that registrar was so determined whether or not you were qualified to vote. And the questions asked, often times were not very relevant to voting, but they would ask you things about the constitution, ask you a lot of things about Alabama, sometimes they would ask you things were actually just silly questions, telling you that you weren' ; t gonna be allowed to register to vote. And I assumed that they had a quota that they worked by for the number of blacks they would put on the voting roll. I' ; ve told the story many a times that I graduate from Miles, I' ; m 20 years, you can' ; t vote until you' ; re 21. I go off to Detroit and because in the black community there was always a push through a (inaudible). Every black community had civic leagues at that time. Today you would talk about neighborhood association, but then we talk about civic leagues. And every black community that I knew of had civic leagues working. And one of their major responsibilities and challenges was to get blacks registered to vote. And so what they would do and act, I remember this clearly, is that they circulate it throughout the black community a legal size sheet of paper with typed questions on it, both sides, that we studied when we' ; re old enough to register to vote, you studied those questions. And people in the black community studied those questions. But (inaudible) the questions and the answer to the question, we would study those in preparation for going down to the board of registrars. And of course, as I said, " ; You' ; d go down and you really had the (inaudible) of the registrar." ; I still remember some of those questions, like you know, which county in Alabama has two courthouses, so things of that sort. But people worked awfully hard I mean because the people in the civic league sort of went to house to house trying to encourage blacks to register to vote. And all during my growing up there at Fairfield, I saw this. So I grew up in a family and my dad was never registered to vote until I was in adulthood. But I grew up in a family where there was cautiousness about it. And so I wanted to register to vote, I' ; ve always wanted to, turned 21, my first semester in graduate school. Came home for Christmas, the first thing I wanted to do was go down the Jefferson County Courthouse in Birmingham and register to vote. So I went down to register to vote and this dear lady who was a registrar, sitting, it was white lady, she began talking with me, asking me about my background, in fact I was school. All of these things and of course trying to be as polite as I can be. But feeling great anxiety, waiting for her to start asking me all these questions, which I have been studying and I assumed I know the answer. I got me a bachelor' ; s degree and I know the answer to all these questions. And she surprises me, she' ; s asking me how are you doing in school and then she says, " ; Raise your right hand." ; She never asked me a single question. And there I was just a nervous wreck, wondering if I passed (laughs). But it was interesting, that' ; s the way things were at that particular time and it' ; s just interesting how things happened in your life, how people come into your life, how you happen to some places sometimes. My coming back to Miles College after I had become a (inaudible). My work as a research fellow, brought in contact with Luscious Pitts. Luscious Pitts became president while I was away and contacted me about coming back to teach at Miles College. And of course I fell under the influence of Luscious Pitts and even after I got my doctorate, he talked me into coming back to Miles College. I think I came back to Miles, I believe Luscious paid me $10,000 or $12,000 per year (inaudible). When I came back and began working there. But Luscious was very much involved in the community as a whole and encourage the students to get involved in the community. And so here I am, I had not thought about politics, or public service because I started to say earlier, there were no role models, there were no black elected officials. The only one I could think of back during that time was Adam Clayton Powell, who was a congressman from Harlem. But other than that, there were none that I knew of. And so having no role models, most of us, there may have been some extraordinary black young men and women who were thinking about a career in public service of some sort. Running for office, but most of us, I don' ; t think ever even thought about that. In fact, I couldn' ; t imagine that in Alabama there would be black elected officials period. And I really thought about that even after I became mayor. Somebody had told me that was going to happen back a few years ago, I would have said, you don' ; t know what you' ; re talking about, it' ; s not gonna happen. LEMONTE: During the time you were in college, the Brown vs. Board of Education decision was handed down by the supreme court and then I guess during your graduate school years, the Civil Rights Movement, perhaps peeked and had its greatest impact. How did those developments in the civil rights arena either affect your life or shaped your thinking during that period of time? ARRINGTON: Well, I was always very much aware of what was going on in the whole struggle for human rights, us being raised in Birmingham. I think it was in part because of family in part because I was (inaudible) and I knew that I always had an interest in civic affairs and because of the work of the civic league and early on I had joined the Fairfield civic league and attended meetings of the Civic league. So I had that awareness about what was happening. When the school desegregation of ' ; 54 decision came down, I was just watching what had happened seeing a couple of years after that, the efforts to desegregation schools here in Birmingham and the problems that were created and seeing city government fight against all forms of integration, parks closed eventually and things of that sort to try to avoid desegregation. And I think that lifted the awareness of the black communities. I think that the black communities as a whole were sort of caught up in a struggle. Now for achieving some equal treatment under the constitution, especially the night of the US supreme court in ' ; 54 and had gotten rid of separate but equal and that was longer the law of the land. I' ; m not sure we thought about it that way, but the push was on throughout the black community and eventually through civic leagues and through the black church. We were being encouraged. Encouraged to integrating, desegregate the schools, do this. So that push was a constant push, I remember I had to make a decision when I came back in ' ; 57 about my kids going to schools. Whether or not to take them to the predominately white school in Fairfield, I remember after some of the--taking them there. So that was interesting, but Luscious Pitts, when I came back and I was working at Miles, Luscious Pitts was very much involved and a lot of students were involved in movements for equal treatment of blacks here in Birmingham. LEMONTE: Let me just go back, you mentioned your kids taking--did I understand that they did go to--? ARRINGTON: We took them to predominately white schools--. LEMONTE: And they were accepted? ARRINGTON: Yes, yes they accepted them--. LEMONTE: And that was in what year? ARRINGTON: That was in ' ; 57. LEMONTE: So the Fairfield Public Schools desegregated six years before Birmingham did? ARRINGTON: Probably so, I came back in ' ; 57, ' ; 57 I returned to Miles College to teach and enrolled my son in the--what had been a predominately white school there in Fairfield. LEMONTE: With no incidents or particular problem--? ARRINGTON: No problem, maybe a dozen blacks in the school. LEMONTE: Do you have the sense that Fairfield municipal government was in a way more progressive than the Birmingham city--? ARRINGTON: Well, no, let me get my time frame right. Your question brings that back to mind, I have to go back and think about my son and the age. You' ; re right because my kid was born in ' ; 56 or ' ; 57 and so that would not have been school age, four or five years later. So it was at that time when he turned 6 years old at that time. So it was probably in ' ; 60. LEMONTE: And do you recall what year Dr. Pitts became the president at Miles? ARRINGTON: 1961, I was at Washington University when he was chosen president. In fact, I first met him when I was a graduate student at Washington University and he came to St. Louis to speak to a group of Mileans, I attended that sessions and that was when I first met Luscious Pitts. LEMONTE: So you taught at Miles and then went off and earned your PhD ultimately--? ARRINGTON: Yes. LEMONTE: And that was in what year? ARRINGTON: ' ; 66. After going back and forth to graduate school and Miles to teach, in ' ; 63 I loaded up my--I applied to each school, was accepted at the University of Oklahoma. Was given a teaching fellowship there, which covered tuition there, small staffing and I was also--because even when I working on my masters, the state of Alabama was providing some money because the state had a program where blacks who went out of state to graduate school, the state would pay their difference between the cost you had to pay at the school what you would pay to Alabama, and that was their way of keeping the schools segregated. So if you wanted to pursue graduate study in a field that was not offered, say at Tuskegee Institute, then you applied to the department of education and you got admitted at some other school. You applied to the department of education and we got a check each quarter. You just simply had the business officer at the school you attend to verify what your tuition was and you sent it to the state department of education and they would calculate what the differences was and the expense and send you a check for the difference. So all while I was in school, I already took my doctorate program, which I got a doctorate in ' ; 66. I was getting that stipend from the state. And that plus my teaching fellowship stipend and they would support my family and attend school. LEMONTE: So you left beginning your doctoral work in ' ; 63, were you here during the summer of ' ; 63 when the demonstrations were occurring? ARRINGTON: Yes, I left in August of ' ; 63, I had been accepted ; I had taught summer school at Miles College. I had been involved and sort of indirectly in some of what was going on because Luscious Pitts had had me doing things like attending meetings with him, taking notes and minutes, writing up some statements that Dr. James Montgomery who was (inaudible) during the news conference or Abraham Woods or Calvin Woods and I often times wrote those up, but Luscious assigned me that responsibility. I often times wrote those up but Luscious assigned me that responsibility. I attended the meetings of some of the black leaders in the black community, like AG Gaston and the Peter Halls and the people who were considered to be spokespersons for the black community. I kept all the minutes, I was in the meetings when--I wrote up document listing the grievances of the black community which went down to the city fathers at some time. I think we' ; re now in the 60s probably and that document eventually led to decision by the white leadership to form a biracial committee. I was at the meetings when the black leaders at AG Gaston' ; s office dealt with the issue of who would sit on the committee to represent the black community. It was a big decision, it was a important time, but they did--I really think the initiative was taken by white leaders who suggested to the black group because we had submitted this list of grievances and all. And eventually they suggested that there be a biracial committee. And they named the members of the committee, both black and white. And I told the story many times that how black leaders resented that. And said Jim Montgomery who was physician and Calvin Woods was a preacher to meet with some of the white leaders to tell them that. The time had passed for whites telling blacks who the leaders were, they were going to chose their own leaders. And the white group was very apologetic about that and of course-- LEMONTE: LeMonte is speaking (in regards to pausing for a moment) ARRINGTON: Well I was telling a story that I' ; d like to tell about that particular meeting where at AG Gaston' ; s office. The (inaudible) Calvin Woods and Jim Montgomery had come back from meeting with some of the leaders of the white group and had informed them that we were going to chose our own leaders. And the white group was very apologetic, so now it' ; s left up to us because they apologized and they asked us to please inform them of the names of our representatives on that committee, there were the be 10 people named. And it was really sort of humorous to me because we got into the discussion about who the leaders would be or who the representatives would be and just to make this story short, the group ended up naming the same people. Out of the ten people, nine of them were the same people that whites had named. And the only reason the 10th person wasn' ; t named, the whites had included the name of a black female who nobody knew. Nobody knew who she was and of course she wasn' ; t in the meeting, but all the other nine that had been named were in the meeting that we were in. And everybody was lobbying of course to get on them ; nobody wanted to offend anybody by leaving them out. So they put the same nine on there--nine of the ten that the whites had named, that left really only the 10th open. And Peter Hall, who was an attorney at the time, later was to become the first black municipal judge in the city of Birmingham, but who had refused to sign that grievance petition that we sent down, of course I remembered in the meeting when I had presented it for that review. He said that he couldn' ; t sign it because I had written something in there about the injustices that we suffered in the courts and he said that he was an attorney and an officer of the court, so he couldn' ; t sign the petition. But when we were ready to get the committee, he was there lobbying for that 10th spot, he thought he should be in there and he got it. And so I always tell that story because to me even that morning I found it very humorous, I can hardly keep from laughing out when they named all the members of the committee because it was exactly the committee except for one person that the white members had named in the first place. LEMONTE: And Dr. Pitts was one of the ten--? ARRINGTON: Yeah. So it was an interesting experience for me, I' ; m just (inaudible). In ' ; 63 I am ready to go out and work full-time on that doctorate rather than trying to work during the summer and I taught through summer school and packed my family in my old white ford, had a new baby at that time, and we headed off to the University of Oklahoma. When I left Birmingham, it was right at the height of a lot of the unrest, George Wallace had become the governor, he was stumping the state giving fiery segregationist speeches, he had earlier made his inaugural address where he had declared segregation now and forever and what have you and challenged the federal government by saying he had tossed the gauntlet in the dust and so forth. And then he was also moving around places like Tuskegee where ever there were efforts being made to desegregate schools, especially now in rural areas where there were black majority, Macon county for example and so he stood in the schoolhouse door things, in high school he had done the Autherine Lucy thing. And he came to Birmingham, he made very fiery speeches. George Wallace just stirred the part of--he was a demagogue and he did a lot of demagogue. And I think helped set the stage for some of the violent activities that took place in Birmingham and had been ongoing, but stepped up some of the bombings of churches and homes of blacks that occurred. So I left Birmingham in August and went to Oklahoma in late August and of course I had only been there a short while and the tragedy of the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church occurring. I remember hearing about that on the news first and then reading about it and calling home and talking about it. But I was in Oklahoma in ' ; 63 and some eventful times. I' ; ll never forget the day that JFK was assassinated, I was attending a seminar where graduate students from several universities and colleges there in Oklahoma came to the science association to present papers and I was at the meeting. And we had a break just about lunch and walked out in the hall and somebody had a television on and of course they were talking about the president had been assassinated in Dallas. But those were things that sort of stick with you, but I was Oklahoma in ' ; 63 for three years and enjoyed it. Took 2 ½ years, taught there the last semester I was there, the whole three-year period and it was basically a good experience. Socially it was, somewhat different. Oklahoma turned out to be not that different from Alabama, they had gone through a lot of litigation already about desegregation and I wasn' ; t aware of that, as I should have been. Before going there, I had been informed by the school that all married housing was full and they had no married housing, but the (inaudible) letter they sent out said that I was University-approved housing in the community and the University of Oklahoma is in a small college town, Norman, which is not very far from Oklahoma City, the largest city and Norman is a very special little college town, it' ; s a fishbowl kind of town. And so I wasn' ; t very aware, for someone who had grown up in Alabama and who had been following the struggle for human rights in the country, my mind was just on school. So I arrived there that day and I go to the dean of students office and I asked a young lady there--I get there late afternoon with my family and we don' ; t have any place to stay so I go there and I asked her if I may have the list of approved housing, because I' ; m going out in the community to find some housing. And she looks at me so funny and she says, " ; Excuse me a minute." ; And she goes back in the back and she comes back out and says, " ; Dean-somebody" ; --it was a lady that talked with me and so she took me back and asked me some questions about the family and but they never would give me list. Instead they put me in some housing, again that was fortunate in a sense, they put me in what was called the old navy base they had on the campus and they converted that to married student housing. And so my family and I ended up living there and I was very pleased. It was only just several weeks later in talking with a black graduate student there in the department of biology, who was from Georgia. He explained to me why I had been given the housing, while whites who had put their names on the list to provide housing, sometimes in their own homes for graduate students and it was on the approved list. While they would rent to black from foreign countries, they would not rent to American blacks. And there were a lot of African, not a lot of them, but enough, be very visible. African students, Nigerian and others living out in approved housing that the white residents of Norman, all-white city, I was told that there had been one black family that lived in Norman and I think that they, aside on the university, it' ; s probably still the same, I was back there recently. Did not accept American blacks, although I went to church at the largest white Baptist there and they welcomed us and all of that. But on housing--in fact you got three or four blocks away from the campus and it was sort of like Alabama again. The racial segregation was there. I had to experience one night, while there, I' ; m going out with three of my fellow graduate students and (inaudible) department to a very popular beer tavern that students frequented, just always there. And of course we always worked late because we taught grads and we took classes and at night, you were there doing your work or you were doing your research or setting up your lab work for the next day, classes and things of that sort. So as a graduate student in science, you know they all will tell, you stayed at the school all the time. I' ; d get up early in the morning, jump on bicycle, peddle from my housing about two miles from my department building and I' ; d stay there all day, by 5:00, I' ; d go home, eat dinner, say hi to the family and about an hour, get back on my bicycle, back over to the university, out there until maybe 10, 11:00, I' ; d come home, that was just the life of a graduate student in science. One night we had finished our work and two or three other guys says, " ; Come on let' ; s go have a beer, Dick, why don' ; t you join us?" ; I said, " ; Okay." ; So we go to this popular place on the (inaudible) of the campus and we walk in and of course it' ; s just crowded with university students (inaudible) all around, standing and all of the tables--and we finally find a table in the corner and we all each ordered a pitcher of beer because this place is famous for serving beer by the pitcher. And we said bring us a pitcher of beer, well the waiter comes back and he brings everybody a pitcher of beer except me at the table. And so one of the guys said you know where is his beer, so the guy says, " ; We can' ; t serve you here." ; Well we were caught totally unaware, we had forgotten, they have too, they were more embarrassed than I and of course they had some unkind things to say to the guy and say come on let' ; s go and we got up and went outside and the guys were so embarrassed. And they said come let' ; s go, I said well I need to go home and they were pleading with me, I said, " ; No, you guys go on." ; And I went home. But the next day I went to one of the professors in the department named Carl Riggs because he was serving on the Norman' ; s city council. And I told him what had happened and I said to him, I' ; m going to file a complaint with Oklahoma City NAACP. He called me back the next day and said, " ; Dick, I' ; ve looked into that matter and here' ; s what I want you to do. I want you get back with your friends and go back over there." ; I never did but obviously what he had done was somebody had called, I guess the owner of the place and had said, " ; Well if he comes back in here, we' ; ll serve him." ; But I had forgotten that and it was such a fishbowl, I hadn' ; t had experience like that, I went into the little Dixie, which is the southeast of Oklahoma on a field trip with all graduate students, about a dozen of us and I was of course the only black in the group, there were only three blacks students at graduate that studied Zoology at the University of Oklahoma. We get down one day after working in the field all day, we' ; re all tired and we decided as students with a little money, we' ; d splurge some. And there' ; s this popular steak place and so one of the young ladies says, " ; Let' ; s all have a steak." ; And so sure enough we walk in the restaurant and everybody' ; s very joyful and we' ; re having a good time, we had a good day in the field. And we all sat down and the lady comes over and I noticed that she whispers to one of the young ladies in the crowd and the young lady gets up from the table, walks over and then the young lady comes back and say to the rest of us, hey we gotta go back--here again I was in what was called the most conservative parts of Oklahoma, but I didn' ; t know it, as I said, it was called little Dixie and they rigidly segregated by race in the area and they would not even, the fact was that they didn' ; t even serve blacks in that restaurant period. But here I am and so this dear lady who owns the place, she doesn' ; t know what to do, she decide she' ; d put us in a small meeting room. And or course we all recognize what this is all about and so I said you all go on and of course they plead, aw Dick please and so we all went back and sat in there and ate. But that was again just how sometimes you let your guard even when you know (inaudible) you grown up in a place. So I learned a lot of things even there in Oklahoma, I think they all made me stronger quite frankly--. LEMONTE: Children in school in Oklahoma? ARRINGTON: Didn' ; t have any problems, I was so pleased about it, got to Oklahoma, my kids participated in everything, placed them in the school right there on the campus. All of the activities, my kids were very active and that was, you get (inaudible) to sleep because--you' ; re not as quite as conscious about racial restrictions once--. We were at a university setting, I' ; ve forgotten about the history of Oklahoma, even though they still have their--the professor shows me in one of the lecture rooms the area where they had roped off where the black students would have to sit. After first having to sit outside and then the students protested there about them having to sit outside the classroom. They then block the student who had been ordered to be admitted by the federal courts to the University of Oklahoma, they built an area, it' ; s a little. (Inaudible) in every building he had a class and that' ; s where he had to sit and they still had that, they longer had to sit there but they were still there in that lecture room, in the library he was given a special place in the cafeteria. And that may not--many years before I came to Oklahoma, but I had forgotten about that you know. And people were friendly and all and I had one faculty member (inaudible) I' ; ll never forget who told me my first day there and he asked serious questions about whether or not I was going to succeed, not only because I was black but because I was from the south. And he said that southerners just didn' ; t do well in graduate school and all that stuff and you know--very uplifting talk (both laugh). But I did well at Oklahoma and became the personality, a popular student at a black school. (Inaudible) what they called a (inaudible) top students, I was the first to join the biological society, I was tapped for that (inaudible). I got to be a very popular person and I was fortunate that I chose a professor named Harley P. Brown, whom I did not know at the time, he was from Mobile, Alabama and of course he still comes up, well his family is in Mobile. And he and his wife just took my family and me in, had us in their home regularly for dinner, liked to go out on weekends on field trips to collect bills and other things and they' ; d come back and take my wife and the kids and I were--and we just became apart of that family. And it meant a great deal, I mean more than I even knew at that time, but it just made me feel a part of something. While things were still sort (inaudible) in the country in particularly back in Birmingham. So well, I' ; ve been fortunate in a lot of ways over those years. And came back to Birmingham in ' ; 66. LEMONTE: But was there ever any thought of going some place other than Birmingham, or did you assume and understand on completion of your doctorate that you would return to Miles College and resume your career there? ARRINGTON: I had no commitment to that except my own personal desire. I had never thought of living any place except Alabama. Whenever I left Alabama, I always knew I was coming back to Alabama, I don' ; t know why. I had a good offer down in Florida at Tilwater at the junior college when the junior college expansion was really under way in Florida, if I had a former teacher coworker of mine at Miles College who had gone there and encouraged me to apply and I accepted to faculty there of course the pay was compared to what Miles College was paying, was just great. But I made the decision not to go there, for some reason I always came back. My brother was always anxious to get out of Alabama and not come back. The graduate school he went to, Georgia and that' ; s where he stayed, in Georgia and from there to South Carolina. Came back here and taught one year here and left, he just never liked staying in Alabama. Me, I' ; ve always wanted to stay in Alabama. I still just don' ; t see myself ever living anywhere except Alabama. I don' ; t know what it is about, but anyway, that sort of takes us up to--we have the ' ; 66--? LEMONTE: ' ; 66, you come back to Miles College to teach fall of ' ; 66, I assume, full-time teaching--? ARRINGTON: Yeah, I came back that summer ; I had little (inaudible). But I had me never flown, never been on the airplane, I really finished all my work and defended my dissertation at the end of the fall semester. So the fall practical purpose, I was finished. But the university offered me a teaching position for a semester (inaudible), a special professor teaching, so I taught for one semester. Luscious Pitts, of course offered contacted me and Miles College sent me ticket to fly me back for an interview and so I got on the (inaudible) airline in Oklahoma City for the first time, I flew. (Inaudible) education (inaudible) year. And there was a gentleman, as acting dean then, I think Randolph (inaudible) was his name. (Inaudible) gentleman who had retired and then had come to Miles teaching and I had met with him and Luscious Pitts and they asked me to come back and wanted me to direct the summer school that summer. In fact, that week that I was there for the interview, I wrote up the schedule for the summer classes (both laugh). And went back and packed my family up and came back and directed the summer school. But I had signed a contract for about $10-$12k to come back as chairman of the science department. So I came back as chairman of the science department, but I directed summer school and when summer school over, Luscious then asked me while I' ; m serving as chairman of the science department to act as Academic Dean. So for three years, I was academic dean at Miles College until I leave in 1970 to direct the consortium of black senior colleges in the state of Alabama, there was a consortium that had been formed a couple of years earlier through the initiatives of the Ford Foundation. And I took on that job and from May of 1970 until ' ; 79 when I elected mayor, I was director or what was incorporated as the Alabama Center for Higher Education, a consortium of initially eight historically black senior colleges in Alabama. And that was another good experience, additional administrative experience about a fundraising responsibilities dealing with foundations and the opportunity to interact with the faculties at eight campuses and get to know administrators in eight black campuses here in Alabama. So it was again a good experience. LEMONTE: But you loved teaching so much and had left, it was--? ARRINGTON: Yeah, I loved teaching, but I left it, I only taught one class at the university somewhere in that period, that university, I think was trying to get black faculty on or something and so they gave me a special thing, still in the catalog, I forget what they call it, but I taught on class at the university and that was it. I didn' ; t know other teaching, but I was busy during that time, it was such a good time for black colleges and it was a time, shortly after so-called title 3 programs that had been put in place for purpose of strengthening black colleges by giving grants to black colleges. Eventually it became a program for developing colleges' ; period and many today black and white schools are in there, but initially it was lenient to black colleges and provided us a source for funding for black higher education that was badly needed. And we had an opportunity to be somewhat creative. I had a certain niche I had to fill working for eight colleges, but I was able leverage that title 3 support, to get a lot of foundation support, so we had sizable grants, multi-year grants from Carnegie, Ford, (inaudible) and my responsibility, I was writing all of those grants and I was negotiating and I was traveling, especially New York, because I thought all of the foundation in the world were in New York. I was going to New York and meeting people and eventually came sort of a field worker, even though I served as director for a couple other foundations. I did field work, I visited colleges, I became a field officer and evaluator for (inaudible) education for all of the black colleges in South Carolina, and did the evaluations. So these were all very rich experiences, I guess that' ; s why I didn' ; t miss teaching. I was getting into areas and getting to interact with people all over the country, as well as the staff of the ES department of education and I was privileged enough to become one of their field workers and one of their evaluators. And that was good, one thing it meant that, you know, I could look out for certain schools and it was good for the center, I got to read, I saw what a lot of developing were doing, programs they were trying to initiate. And that certainly prompted my thinking about programs and how we are to shape them and when the Carnegie Foundation asked me to work for them and then the (inaudible) foundation asked me to do some work. Always it' ; s something that' ; s continued to expand my opportunities for learning and meeting people. LEMONTE: So you were there from ' ; 70 until you were elected mayor in ' ; 79, and there was a moment of political initiation at some point during that stage, when did you first have the thought descended to you of becoming involving in politics and public life? ARRINGTON: I had never, even in, as late as 1970, I had never thought about entering politics. In Birmingham, of course, things had obviously changed politically, the former government had been changed before I left, didn' ; t take effect after I left because they were still in litigation up until October I believe of that year. We had gotten a new form of government, mayor council form of government, eventually somewhere like ' ; 68 or ' ; 69, when one of the council members passed, the eight white council members who were left, filled the vacancy with Arthur Shores, the first black to serve on the council and some short time after, I cannot remember whether it was a year later or months later, he ran for reelection and was elected to a term. So Arthur was serving on the city council and had serving I think like ' ; 69 or ' ; 70 something like that. I hadn' ; t thought about politics because I had worked in my office downtown Birmingham, late that night I was still there, I had worked ' ; til 7,8,9 o' ; clock, someone then came in one evening and they were out looking for some candidates to run for mayor, to run for council from the black community. I was impressed because these were young black guys, a guy named Jesse Stewart and I forget the other two names, escape me right now. But just the fact that they were concerned enough about the community, they were out trying to find what they called some good candidates to run and they came and asked me and initially me to run for mayor and I said no. And then they wanted to know if I' ; d consider running for the council and I had talked with them and said, " ; Yeah, well, why don' ; t you come back tomorrow and we' ; ll talk about it." ; Thinking they wouldn' ; t come back, they came back and made a lot of commitments and I ended up running, I guess that was 1972--I' ; d have to count back--. LEMONTE: ' ; 71 actually--. ARRINGTON: ' ; 71 yeah, yeah, that was 1971. And I ran, made the run-off and was elected in the run-off at another time of transition in Birmingham, I was elected at the time that David Vann, who (inaudible) to becoming mayor, Angie Procter, and I, we were considered the new moderates because the Birmingham city council, with the exception of many (inaudible) conceived to be a very conservative council and if you can understand that fight to get bull Connor out of office and then the issues of race that still raise. I can even understand that the council, why trying to move the city forward, had to be very considerate to him, people who were elected were of course, conservative. But in ' ; 71, when the three that I' ; ve mentioned, three of us were elected, it was conceived to be a time of transition, moderates were coming on and replacing some of the conservatives on the city council and of course Arthur had been elected so my being elected was important, but not a great big issue, I wasn' ; t breaking any new grounds. I guess the greatest surprise, over David Vann was elected because David Vann had been working in the community a long time and after he had come back here and started practicing law, having went for congress and all of that. But was considered liberal and I read some of the news clippings when David ran for congress and I guess he was forced to try to defend segregation and some of things he said in his--, but he was viewed as being liberal and folks said David Vann could never be elected dogcatcher in Birmingham and he was elected to the city council with me, that' ; s how I got know David, had met his wife a little bit earlier who was a reporter for the Birmingham Post because she had done an interview with me and (inaudible) a future article on me while I was Miles College. She did what she called trailblazer interview, I was one of the persons she chose to interview so I had met (inaudible), but had not met David, had heard about him and so met him during the campaign quite frankly because he began raising money for the blacks who were running and he had his own campaign done, but one night he met me and called me aside and he called Jesse aside and the three of us and he pulls out of his wallet and gives maybe $500 to each of us or something like that. He told us the money had come from the owner of Parisian, who of course didn' ; t want anybody to know it (inaudible). (inaudible) had sent the money and (inaudible) was helping me fund the campaign of the blacks. And so I got to know David from helping him campaigning and he was elected and I was on the council because he was very bright guy and always trying to do everything, just loved taking politics and he wanted to type (inaudible) you know. And I found him fascinating quite frankly because he was very knowledgeable and we got to be very good friends. And so he became sort of mentor for me, I don' ; t think he knew he was a mentor, but I began following him and trying to learn my government and my politics from David Vann. And David was an unusual you know we got together and he' ; d come over to the house and sit down and (inaudible) pot of greens and (inaudible) green and he' ; d sit there for hours and we' ; d talk and he' ; d tell you about all of the things he thought he ought to do so forth and so on. When I was chairman of the committee on transportation communication, I was given a job of writing all of the work and doing the negotiations for the cable television franchise. Did most of it right away in my office for the Alabama Center for Higher Education 2121 building. And David would come over there ; I don' ; t know how he practiced law, because we' ; d come over there for four and five days a week. We' ; d sit there and we' ; d write stuff, what ought to be in the cable franchise and we' ; d read, bring stuff in. But he just loved the business and of course I was following him and I sort of learned from David. So that was another fortunate, great for me to get to know David Vann. LEMONTE: Can you talk more about your first campaign ; the council members were, at that time elected at large? ARRINGTON: Yes. LEMONTE: And in a nonpartisan election, so people were really also independent campaigns based upon their name, their community contacts? ARRINGTON: Yes. LEMONTE: How did you go about that first campaign, who supported you, what were they pleasures and disappointments that you encountered and I guess particularly thinking ahead to your several campaigns as mayor, what your experience of campaigning in the white community and gaining support within the white community? ARRINGTON: The strength of my campaign, I think was the fact that I had worked for Luscious Pitts and LP knew a lot of people and even though he had left a year earlier to become president of Payne College in Augusta, the people who knew me for example in the business community, knew me as a (inaudible) at Miles College and especially the fact the I accompanied LP from time to time and earlier days and some of these sessions, that' ; s how they knew me. And so many of LP' ; s friends, like (inaudible) Jemison and people like that rallied to my campaign and they were glad to see me run. (Inaudible) times who was a power broker of a sort at the Birmingham News at the time, even suggested to me that I let LP send the letter and endorse my candidacy and he would arrange and make sure that it was running the letters to the editor in the Birmingham News, which he did, LP wrote a very fine letter. And it was important at that time because I guess I was being seen as somebody who might win, and the FOP and few of those groups for some reason, they really didn' ; t know me at that time, I hadn' ; t gotten into my battles about police conduct and policies but they began circulating stories like, I had been fired at Miles College because I had stolen money from Miles College and it was just floating around it' ; s been some times when he would talk with me about it and suggested that I get LP to write a letter that you would run. Probably a letter to the editors and that was helpful because he wrote a letter speaking about me and saying I had fine character and all of that and how Birmingham would do well you know. And that was a big boost, plus I think we were at a time, Arthur Shores had been on the council and Arthur had not made any enemies of such, he while he was an outstanding and courage attorney and civil rights attorney and had had some terrible experiences, having his home bombed on several occasions, he was a lawyer who took Autherine Lucy to Alabama. He was still a very quiet man, he said very little and even in council meetings, he was never controversial. And I think that helped, because there were people in Birmingham, that may not have been residents of the city per se in all instances, but people who were very interesting in seeing the city continue to bring blacks into the arena of leadership. And so my ties to LP and thing so of that sort helped me to get support. And some regards while, I' ; m sure people talked about race and stuff of that sort, they didn' ; t--weren' ; t widely (inaudible) I ran a campaign, I got some support, mainly from the south side in the white community and very little support from the eastern area, which was very conservative and largely white and that was to be for quite some time. And of course I was elected, and I think people were generally, those who considered progressive about wanting the city to change (inaudible). I think the black community was pleased that another black, although some of them had some doubts about me because I was not militant, I had not been marching and this had been a city been rocked by marches and demonstrations and so forth and that question was asked, where was I and had I done. And that was basically true, I only had worked behind the scenes, I sat with LP and many of them didn' ; t even know about that. So they had mixed emotions, they were pleased that another black was on, as they felt that Arthur was militant and neither was I, and therefore that caused cause of the black community, they were not going to get a great boost because neither of us would be very outspoken. LEMONTE: Did you have a specific platform that you ran on that had major items of interest? ARRINGTON: I ran on, looking back at some of the early materials of recently as I' ; ve been trying to do some writing of my own, I ran number one promoting Birmingham and what it' ; s image and my commitment to that and had one or two other items in that area, I didn' ; t deal a whole lot with opening with anything about race relations quite frankly. There was a very general kind of platform that I had four or five points. LEMONTE: No mention of police? ARRINGTON: No mention of police, no mention of anything controversial, that I was running but there were several blacks running then, like seven blacks might have been running that time. So people were getting at least accustomed to the idea and thought that I was educated, highly educated obviously. But after I was elected and I began to raise issues, a number of things, but especially issues police policies, and the way the police department dealt with the black community. That was a very sensitive cord within the black community, and I was their first elected official to begin to speak out about that and to focus attention on it and many ways and with help of come other council members to put in place policies that began changing police conduct and it made me a strong political of the FOP, that' ; s where they saw me and but it may be the darling of the black community because police abused black citizens in Birmingham including shootings, were so rampant that every black understood that. And nobody had been given a platform such as I as a member of city government ; nobody had ever used that platform to really crusade against. Emory O Jackson had done it with his Birmingham World paper and a few other blacks, a few ministers, but nobody who had that stamp of being elected official had done it. And so I began keeping before the people and that' ; s quite frankly how I became to be a very popular elected official in Birmingham' ; s black community. When I first got on the council, I remember some fraternity brothers of mine, we had an annual dance and these were all men who were educated, some were physicians and doctors of other sorts and all of these things and teachers and I remember Clarence Mitchell, the president of the chapter coming to see me and asking me if I' ; d go see the police chief, this is when I first got on, because we were having our Christmas, annual dance during the Christmas break. And the dance was always like a 10-2 or 9-1. And it was common driving at night, the police would stop and harass you, (inaudible) coming to see me and asked me if I' ; d go talk with the police chief and explain what our organization was about and asked him to ask his police officers not to stop, I mean that' ; s how things were back during that time, and of course we started a long battle of that, other than that I became very controversial in the eyes of many people. People who were fearful about whether or not my campaign to get rid of police abuse was undermining law and order and I was antipolice. I never got rid of it frankly in the eyes of many people, but it' ; s one of the real contributions I feel I made to the city of Birmingham, was that we changed policies, we took over the years, started when I was a council member, and went on during my years as mayor, but we changed the policies totally. We professionlalized the police department that wasn' ; t very professional and I think we got rid of rampant police abuse in the city. It was a much better city for it, that was really one of the things I did when I first got on the council, and of course the news papers you know, they like to write stories. So I was a new story for them and not only the fact that I was a black councilman, but here was somebody talking about the police, so I' ; m in constant conflict with FOP about police actions and sometimes Mayor Joel sibyls and I' ; m keeping records and files and pictures on people who had been arrested and beating by police officers and of course that was juicy stuff for the newspapers. And so I got a lot of play there in the newspaper, and those were all good stories. I went and found out if it all worked out well, I just think that some people in this town of my (inaudible) so forth, whose still around, I never forgotten and can never quite see as anything except somewhat controversial because I fought for--I started (inaudible) police and then about time I was mayor, I got a bigger responsibility and I' ; m working for (inaudible) in government and trying to open doors for blacks, given promotions and all those things I got underway. And then in and out of court in those battles and so it helped shaped the perception that people had of who Richard Arrington was and what he was like. LEMONTE: The first time as council member would really redefine, it seems to me your working relationships with broader community including white, white business community and others, because I assume even at the Alabama Center for higher education, you were still functioning primarily within the black community and people out of town who were concerned about educational issues, did your network of contacts with the white community expand significantly during that first term as council member? ARRINGTON: Yes it did ; first of all, the campaign began to open up access to the white community. Around 1970, about time that white group started inviting some black candidates in, it had not had a lot of black candidates running for offices. It may have been a few people, Chris McNair had run for legislature unsuccessfully, Jim Montgomery had run the legislature unsuccessfully and LP had run, but they had very few but you know--in the early 70s by ' ; 71 more blacks get in. And when they held neighborhood forums, some of us were invited and the first campaign, a lot of places we were not invited, particularly a lot of places in the white community were not invited, but by the second time I ran because we had then gotten neighborhood associations and all of that, it was really invited to every place, but my first term, I (inaudible) I got to know people, I got to understand some issues, the zoning issues and their important, and that was a hot issue. That time I had got to know people like (inaudible) who was working to reach out the black communities to build some bridges and was using things like zoning issues, a common interest that single family areas whether they are black or white had in protecting single family housing, she was smart enough to use to bring people together and I got to know people like (inaudible) and folks like that. It opened up opportunities for me to know all the people I never would have know and so at the end of my four years, while some people were predicting there was no way for me to be reelected and columnist in two of the local papers-- because I had too controversial particularly on the police issue and of course when I was reelected with somewhat with ease, I think, even I was surprised and running city wide and got a good vote and most easily reelected to the council, which was again an indication, if you look at it, gauging how things are changing, how people are changing. Here I was a young, that time, a young council member who had been somewhat controversial, but you know I had worked on transportation and given the responsibility of committee chairman and getting the transit authority and the government making the transition from privately owned to publicly owned was working with Tom (inaudible) who was in the legislature, helping to get the (inaudible) transit authority and as I said I was working on a cable television. I worked in a lot of things, but the thing that got really attention was of course those things that tend to be somewhat controversial and that was the police issue and in a town where police were very, very powerful, you got to remember this is coming off of the Connor era where Connor is police commissioner was the most powerful politician and as a result it had spawned the FOP, that was a very, very, very in the city and here I come and probably didn' ; t fully understand and would not have analyzed it, even to the extend I analyze it now, at that time, but here I come and I take on what is essentially one of the strongest political groups in this town and that' ; s the police department which have in fact, the spokesman and the group that speaks for it is really FOP. We worked through all of that. So by the second term I wasn' ; t really and I wasn' ; t seen as anymore controversial as the early days of the police thing, I had continued that. But I had decided that that was enough of that, I had enjoyed it, it was part-time my work. I had learned, I thought quite a bit about government and how it works, but I going to leave and Rachel and I had talked about and I was not going to run for reelection. LEMONTE: Was there any thought on your part of perhaps running for mayor in 1975 at the end of your first term? ARRINGTON: None at all, none at all, ever thought about it. And we made the decision that I would not run again, I would have had eight years I' ; ve done. I' ; ve never thought about running for mayor, in fact, we took off on a vacation somewhere, Rachel and I did and that' ; s when the Benita Carter thing flared up and that' ; s the story about how I ended up running for mayor. But no, prior to that, I had never thought about it. Had been mentioned to me once and that was when the guys had come to see me the first time in ' ; 71, say they were looking for somebody, would I run for mayor, I almost laughed in their faces and then they say, what about running for council and that' ; s why ended up running for council, but no, I had not. I was sort thrust up on me quite frankly, I had not thought about until this incident came up again, police, black community tension. The death Benita Carter, David Vann trying to walk the tight rope between the black community and the white community and supporting the police and the resulting fed up in the black community over David' ; s failure the fire the police officer rather than fine, he disciplined him by giving him desk duty and what have you which led black leadership, largely black preachers, but a few others to become very disenchanted with David. But I also think at announcing that David handled poorly, when he-- everything sort of worked against at that time, I will tell. This is a hot issue caused some small rioting out there in Kingston and all of that and David just trying to run through this thick of problems and how best to handle it. So we appoints this committee which is the first we ever had that. And he appoints this special citizens committee and I don' ; t know what David had in mind, I assumed he hoped that the committee would be helpful, but the committee comes back not, unanimously, one person abstaining and says the police officers were wrong, he had acted improperly. He (inaudible) in corner and with the committee' ; s report out there now, the leadership of the black community becomes more militant about it, we got to fire this guy and of course is knowing, I can' ; t fire the guy, I don' ; t have the grounds the fire the guy. And so he' ; s maneuvering and so, when he finally decides what to do with and that was to give desk duty and he comes up with his (inaudible) and after that and David apparently had thought it through and planned it out so he drew up his public statement and he invited members of the black leadership committee to his office, that morning that he was going to make the announcement and like they came in like 8 or 9:00, something somewhere around that time. And of course they engaged David in a heated discussion in the office. They disagreed with his decision not to fire the officer and it reached upon where it was just totally unproductive and David said well I got a news conference ; he had already set his news conference to make the public announcement about what he planned to do in the case. And so they began pleading with him not go out-- ARRINGTON: (inaudible) but you raised a question my leaving Miles College, what happened at Miles College was there was a search for a new president and John Monroe, who had come to Miles from Harvard some years earlier, led an effort to get me back as president and apparently had spoken with the bishop, who was the chairman of the board. LEMONTE: Had you left at this time? ARRINGTON: Yeah, I had left--. LEMONTE: So that you left prior to the search? ARRINGTON: Right, I had left in May of ' ; 70 and I think Luscious left shortly after that, so when they began to search, I was--John Monroe and some other members formed the faculty committee and they talked with me about my willingness to accept the presidency and I said yes, but I didn' ; t the college would want to elect someone who was not a CME, not a member of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, of course, I' ; m primitive Baptist. They went to the bishop and the bishop, I' ; m told, (inaudible) that they would consider somebody outside of that denomination. And so the faculty was strongly behind me as the presidential candidate and I submitted my name for the candidate for president. In the final analysis, I don' ; t know what happened behind the scenes, but having seen the church politics and seeing board meetings and knowing that the board is dominated by the CME ministers and so forth and that the bishop, being a very strong individual as yet, still politically has to be sensitive to what his ministers and members want. I just kind of felt that they really ready to make a break with having a non-CME as president. And so they ended selecting Dr. Clyde Williams as president and that was fine. I don' ; t know what I said about it, but my recollection is that when that happened, I had not, you know I was still at--probably still at the college, I can' ; t remember--and I know I was still at the college when Clyde was elected. Because I met Clyde on his first visit after he had been appointed, but he hadn' ; t yet come to the college, and he had talked with he and me had expressed some concern about my loyalty to--. LEMONTE: You were dean at the college at this time? ARRINGTON: About my loyalty to his administration and I assured him that I was, but I think he was concerned, since I had been in a competition to be president, that I--I was so disappointed that I probably created a problems for him, maybe with the faculty and he probably (inaudible) the faculty had been lobbying on my behalf. But I sure did work well with him. I even wrote him a letter to that effect after he left. But he never seemed really assured ; I don' ; t remember whether it was in letter or phone that the same issue was raised. And I just thought that it was better for me to leave the college at the time because I didn' ; t really want him thinking it, if I' ; d ever differ with him it was because of what had happened in the selection of presidents. And also the center was looking for somebody at that time, executive director, so that' ; s why I decided to leave. LEMONTE: But in retrospect, had you been offered the presidency, you were prepared to accept it? ARRINGTON: Yes. LEMONTE: Along about 1970? ARRINGTON: Yes. LEMONTE: And had that happened, I would assume that it had a group of young me come calling on your to run for city council, you might not have able to agree to their request? ARRINGTON: I would not have been as president of the college ; I certainly would have been able to do it. But that' ; s what happened their and that' ; s how I ended up in politics and I was telling the story about David and his experiences that morning. I' ; m in the office with him, he walks out of the office with these ministers walking behind him pleading for not to go out, let' ; s talk about it some more and of course, he walks out and goes out and gives a statement. Well of course, they were very angry and that leads them eventually to calling me to a meeting and talking to me about running and so forth, and that' ; s how I ended up--sort of semi-draft you call it, running for mayor. LEMONTE: Could we talk a little about the second term, your second term as a council member was 1975 to 1979, David Vann was mayor during that period of time, you mentioned that your first meeting with David had occurred during the 1971 campaign when he had forwarded some campaign funds to you, you had not met him during the period in ' ; 63 when he was very much involved with the negotiations between black and white leaders? ARRINGTON: No, I knew he was involved, I heard his name, but I was never in any of those meetings. At those high level meetings when they were having meetings like with the (inaudible) even King, I wasn' ; t even here, no I left here in August of ' ; 63, so I was never in a meeting with David at that time. LEMONTE: Could you reflect on your service with him as a council member, did the two of you emerge as political allies in some of the important issues that the city confront between in ' ; 75 and ' ; 79? ARRINGTON: Yes, I think very much so, I think David had a strong falling with five or six council members who supported his program and so things much as he did in a political sense, I was one of those, eventually David Herring was to come as a one of them. And Amina was still on the council, Arthur was on the council, so David had, during his time council member, anyway, had carved out the niches of sort of political leader of the group. He spent much of his time at city hall, even when he was city council member. We worked most of George Siebels' ; budgets and restructured departments, which the council has the authority to do. Got rid of arrangement where Cletus Boyles was the director of public work for a number of departments and council had budget time reorganized the department and David was a leader in this. And these and many efforts, and looking back, it was remarkable that George Sibyls saw that David had those votes and he really didn' ; t--I mean he fought for it, but once he lost, he didn' ; t try to fight. We had to override on one or two things. David redefined what for example, the finance chairman was, in the minds of many people fault city government, they got to be the strongest committee chairman shift there was. But before David was chairman of the finance committee, it wasn' ; t that strong of a position quite frankly, but David made it that kind of position, because David was so involved and because he loved it so much and the city stuff, he (inaudible) he really worked it, and he had a following there, so he was able to get things done. Even down to the neighborhood associations that we have today, the so- called participation program. I think a lot of the people have forgotten that Siebels opposed a proposed the first time around. In fact, I don' ; t know if he vetoed it or whether (inaudible) or if you had enough votes, anyway to turn it down. I think we lost it, Vann had proposed a structure such as we have now. Sibyls wanted something much more conservative, didn' ; t want to do as much power sharing with the people, that concept of the people very much involved in the government through citizen participation. Siebels wanted less of that, he understood the citizen participation but wanted less of it and initially fought off the effort. It was a second time the matter came before the--council came back (inaudible) for a vote that we mustered enough votes to pass that program. But Vann was clearly if perhaps the leader, the most effective elected official there in city hall during that time and of course ended up running against George Sibyls at the end of Vann' ; s first term. And Sibyls' ; first term as mayor, he ends up running against Sibyls. And Vann beats Sibyls by less than 2,000 votes, I don' ; t remember the 1100 or 1200--I think I still have a copy of Sibyls' ; letter that he wrote somebody after that. He lost, he was just crushed, but he always blamed me for his loss to David Vann, because Tony Harrison and I--Tony is a young black legislature here in Birmingham. Tony Harrison and I worked the black community through neighborhood meetings on talk shows and radio and all for David Vann. And we succeeded and pulling away from Sibyls' ; sizable black vote. By this time blacks have really become a major political factor in Birmingham. Many more blacks now and--Voting Rights Act has passed and many voters are on the role now, by that time 40% are slightly more than people on the voting rolls in city of Birmingham were black. And they loved George Sibyls, Sibyls was the first mayor who had really gone out into the black community and started attending functions in the black communities, he would go to black churches and all and blacks had never seen that, after all you know--you just--one or two people (inaudible) from bull Connor. You know get Connor, and then you move around and you get Albert Boutwell and they get the new government. And Boutwell of course was very conservative and then comes Sibyls after that. And Sibyls was astute enough to see the going political empowerment of blacks and maybe for his other interest to involve people, but he didn' ; t mind going out to black functions. Now a few years before that you couldn' ; t have done that. In fact, that was one of the issues that they would use against a candidate who got into a runoff, because we got the black vote, if you got the black vote, you were defeated in the runoff, they called it putting the black hand on a candidate. But now the Voting Rights Act has changed that because now blacks can freely register to vote and they have a large part of the population and an expanding number of them are on the voters' ; roll. So if Sibyls obviously knew this, he goes out and blacks of course are thrill, that the mayor of the city comes to black functions, he comes to black churches. And so they vote for Sibyls and the second he runs (inaudible). He had a strong black vote and he had a real hold on the black vote and we knew that the only way that David Vann could defeated Sibyls was that we had to get the black vote away from Sibyls and delivered it somehow to David Vann and that was not an easy job. I mean Tony and I really worked hard, we went to see civic association neighborhood leaders and we talked with those people and those were very, very sincere about it. I can remember some of them just asking me, they wanted to support me, because I was asking them and I was sort of popular then as a council member. And many had started viewing me as their voice down at city hall by that time. I had been doing things like, not only the police thing, but also reporting to the black community on the radio thing every week about city hall and this kind of thing. Now that perception of me is that I' ; m there a council member so to speak, even though I run at (inaudible) but I' ; m their councilman, I' ; m their voice. And I did some bonds with them, and so now I go to them and ask them to support Vann and some of them I remember, was very troubled by it and they say, I want to do what you want me to do, but are sure (inaudible). But we succeeded, we pulled about 80 something percent of the black vote for David Vann and I don' ; t think that George Sibyls ever thought that would happen and that' ; s how David won office as mayor and as I said, George Siebels never forgot that, I think he went to his grave still smarting over that. But I worked for David, that time he was mayor, I think I supported their initiative, David pushed this--my relationship with him was really a very close one. And we really never had a real disagreement, I mean we disagreed on some things, I was still pushing affirmative action kinds of things, this is before affirmative action was a big deal, policy wise, and I was pushing policies. David always got in there, he was smart enough not to (inaudible) he would sort of co-op you by giving in there and working with you and shaping it the way he thought it would work. He thought it was too radical over there and the mere fact that he kept the dialogue (inaudible) all the time, even on issues like--you know I stayed on the police, I stayed initially on parts when Sibyls was there. I got a (inaudible) Bill Meyers comes in and you know (inaudible). But even with the disagreements about police policies sometimes, Vann was a politically astute enough ; he also really had a genuine sense of fairness ; he wanted to include folks. He was always aware that we can go too fast and some people wouldn' ; t accept it, but David was always most the white standards anyway, going too fast. So I found him easy to work with and if I was trying to put some ordinance on or develop some new policy, or even having a little complaint about system who said that he and someone in the family or someone who had been abused by the police. Vann never positions himself as an opponent ; he always got in and sort of worked him, that way, he sort of kept control. So I worked closely with David and I was really sort of troubled when I decided to run against David, I like him a lot, and I was being pushed by him and then--what a lot of people don' ; t know is (inaudible) Roseman was also a major factor and when she learned I was going to learn, she was pushing me. She had supported David, but she had become disenchanted with David because she said he didn' ; t communicate well with the people and didn' ; t have the access she suggested to me when I got into the campaign that I make a part of my platform--the matter of sensibility to the mayor, because people were complaining that David was not very accessible. Particularly some of the most liberal white voters who had supported him and that are what they were saying about him. What I think was happening quite frankly is that David was so busy working the nuts and bolts and everything, he just loved, I remember Larry (inaudible) saying to me once, you I don' ; t care how well you put something together for mayor Vann, he' ; s going to do something, if he doesn' ; t do anything but cross another t or dot another I--. LEMONTE: (inaudible) was then David' ; s executive secretary? ARRINGTON: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I remember when he was telling me that, but David loved to do. I don' ; t care, you could get all of the wise men in the world to work something, you give it to David, he' ; s going to sit there and he' ; s going to go through it and say it' ; s good, but he' ; s going to change something. And I think he got so involved in that, that he didn' ; t have a lot of time. Mayor' ; s office is really demanding anyway, I mean never get a man who people think, you ought to get one after the Joe Rileys and a few others that people love and say always accessible and always out with the people, but you want to get a man who, after the first term, people think he or she' ; s a very accessible person, you can see the mayor. They start complaining after a while, how can you get in to see the mayor. So David is very busy working is what I' ; m thinking, he wants to work on everything and he' ; s putting a lot of things in place, but he' ; s not implementing a lot. He' ; s stacking up money for example, which was a real advantage to me. He comes up with all of these great ideas and he puts the money in place, but he never gets around to getting the program going. And so when I come in as mayor of course, David has gotten a lot of things in place, which you know is like for me--push the button and let it go, that he had put in place. A lot of money stacked up there to spend, projects. And I just think it' ; s because he' ; s always creative and he was always trying to put something together and it was good to this point, but maybe he ought to rework it and do. I think I had David' ; s former law partner-- LEMONTE: John Carlton. ARRINGTON: No, not join, that' ; s the other guy. LEMONTE: Stickway? ARRINGTON: Whoever first started practicing law with David, but he said David' ; s a wonderful guy, he say--I will tell you David, he seeks to be a perfectionist. David will get an important lawsuit for you and he will in, have it won for millions of dollars and he' ; ll come back and decide (inaudible) other things and he' ; ll lose (inaudible) several times. And that' ; s just the way David was, the longer you let him work on something, the more he' ; s going to fix it. He' ; s going to fine-tune it, fine-tune it, and fine-tune it. And while that' ; s good in a way, I think he got so involved that he lost some of his strong liberal white support. So when I ran against him and he had-- the white vote was frightening because John Katapotis is in there and Frank Parsons is in there, so you got three or four strong whites running. And while we got maybe it was three and we got four blacks running, but Larry Langford was expected to be a strong, but he wasn' ; t, he didn' ; t poll well at all in the black community. So the black vote gets so fragmented and David ended up with 16% or something like that. And he gets (inaudible) even out of the runoff. I' ; ve always wondered what would have happened in the runoff if David had ended up in the runoff. Here I am polling for the big black voted, polling 40 something percent of the vote, that gets me in to the runoff and Parsons is 16 point something, like 17 percent, David is 16, and John is right below David. I think John came in right behind David. But I was wondering what would have happened if David had gotten into a runoff with me. But he was out of course he ends up shortly thereafter a week later, he decides to endorse me. He comes out publicly to endorse me. LEMONTE: Two questions before we move into your campaign and first term, prior then to the Benita Carter tragedy in the summer of ' ; 79, your plan was to finish your second term as council member, leave politics, return to I assume a full-time career somewhere in higher education? ARRINGTON: Yes. LEMONTE: David' ; s assumption, I would imagine was that he would seek a second term and that you would support him which I--? ARRINGTON: I assume that was his assumption, he certainly would have had no reason to assume otherwise. LEMONTE: But there was never any thought that when his tenure as mayor concluded you would be his logical successor, that was not something that had occurred or had occurred to him? ARRINGTON: Certainly it never occurred to me and it was never discussed with me. I don' ; t know if David ever thought how long he would even serve as mayor, but because I didn' ; t have any real interest in being mayor and I enjoyed it and think I had said to some people I' ; ve enjoyed my time on the council, had a great learning experience for me in many ways. But I never wanted to do it full-time politically. It' ; s fun being part-time politician, coming over for committee meetings and attending city council meetings and then going on doing other things you wanted to do. But I never wanted to do it full-time and that was the way I truly felt about it. I did not really want to do it. And so I don' ; t really think up until maybe a week before I formally announced, because the rumor was out there then. I remember Scottie Green coming down to the church where I announced because he said he had to come down. He said he had to see this himself, he said he couldn' ; t believe I was going to run against David, I remember he said that to me that day, he was there in the crowd. But up until about a week before that I don' ; t think that David had an idea that I was going to run. He was caught up in (inaudible) and all of this debate that were still going on and the preachers marching and they do this march downtown and saying David Vann' ; s gotta go and I' ; m standing there on the city hall 19th street portico with David Vann where they had set up the microphone for the ministers to speak and when they turned the corner there onto 19th street off of 6th ave it was, David walks off and goes and meets them. And of course they' ; re shouting, the Vann' ; s must go and he meets them about a halfway the block before the city hall there on 19th street, shakes their hands and join them and marches with them. And they get up and of course they talk about him and make all the speeches and so forth. And even at that time, I had, at that point had crossed my mind that I was going to be running at all. So it happened sort of sudden--. LEMONTE: Did you tell David prior to the time you made your announcement that you were going to run against him? ARRINGTON: I really don' ; t believe I did, but I don' ; t know. It was like being swept along and something that--at the time, I sort of preferred would not have happened quite frankly. But what they were saying to me was it was time for me to run and the thing the ministers were saying we' ; ve been standing with you in all the (inaudible). Because they were talking about all the fights, the police thing and all of that and we' ; ll back you this, that and the other. And you' ; re the person and so forth and so on. I can' ; t say they did a lot of arm-twisting ; they went really, really fast in a short period of time. In fact, I agreed I' ; ll run and then I called my wife and then I to write up something for a news conference, they had call out there for later that day. So it went fast, but even in the campaign, David and I--got along well, I took a few pot shots at David by saying that I was going to be a very accessible mayor. I had two or three pointers and (inaudible) given them to me and asked me to push those points. And she was my single largest contributor in that campaign the first time. Because when I ran for the mayor, I didn' ; t raise any money, I raised 19k in that campaign the first time. And much of it was taken up from black churches quite frankly. And (inaudible) gave me $500. And she allowed her name to put out there. And that was my largest contribution by far. Now when I got to the runoff, after I got 40 something percent of the votes, the handwriting was on the walls, Goodrich and some of the corporate community came in and gave me some money, so in the runoff, I was able to raise about $30k, whereas I had raised on 19 the first time. But what I had going for me been a solidified and mobilized black vote, opposed to David having his lost his black base and really got a fragment and (inaudible) about it. It split and goes in three different directions. And as time passed, the black community developed a sort of fervent of belief that he could win, when they first started off, I think it was a lot of doubt. I' ; ll never forget that Dr. AG Gaston and Vincent Townsend, summoned me to a meeting in Dr. Gaston' ; s office one morning, shortly after I had formally announced that I was running and Dr. Gaston lectured me there with Townsend and said blacks couldn' ; t win and I had made a big mistake and so forth and he ended--and Townsend said to me, " ; Look one day you know, there is going to be a time for black." ; " ; Blacks' ; time will come or something to that substance." ; We will support you at that time, but you know, now is not the time and so forth and that conversation ended with Gaston asking, almost instructing me and he said, " ; Richard, what I want you to do, I want you to go out of here now and tell people you' ; ve changed your mind and that you' ; re gonna support David Vann." ; That' ; s what he said when I was leaving and I said, " ; Dr. I' ; ll have to think about it." ; I know I wasn' ; t gonna change and I left, I did talk with some of the ministers Jared, Woods and a bunch of them about the meeting and they said, " ; Well, we' ; re gonna go on anyway, we can win without Dr. Gaston." ; You know they were fired up and they kept folding my arms and pushing me along. So I ended up with this mobilized vote, because as I said as time went on, blacks started thinking we knew we were gonna win. And they come in and they start volunteering and I got to find something for them to do. They' ; re all fired up and they turned out to sixty something percent vote of blacks, so that what was the first time (inaudible) people would say the primary and whites were not that fired up, they were divided. And though there was a slight white majority on the voting roll, I don' ; t know where in (inaudible) there was, but on the voting rolls, 55% of the people on the voting rolls are still white and about 45% black. Whites were not really as fired up as the blacks were. So now when it hits and I got 40 something percent of the vote and I go into a runoff with Frank Parsons, who is a political (inaudible) I think, I don' ; t know all Frank had been doing, say he' ; d been running some other campaigns, but he had never run as far as I know. I think it shook things up, but it reverberated in the black community. It really fired the black community, gosh here is this candidate 40 something percent of the vote, this boy here, and oh we can win. Now the black community is truly fired up. The white community I think it sends trembles of fear through the corporate community also. And some of the people in the corporate began an effort to organize to get a strong white turn out and they did. The white vote shot up to about 60 something percent, which is a strong turn out, the black vote the first time was 60 something percent, but in the runoff, I mean, blacks were so fired up in the runoff, I get 73% of black turn out, which I think is probably still a record of a turn out in the city of black voters percentage- wise. I' ; m able to get some racial crossover from some white votes and Frank gets only less then 1% of the black vote. So I ended up winning by 2,000 or so votes over there and it was still somewhat different. The night we were waiting for the results to come in at the old parliament house, which was the headquarters for the victory (inaudible) that night, David came earlier, about time my family arrived there, my dad, mom and David and he was in there with us. And it was still sort of a choking experience. David, my friend, and I had defeated him and I remember Richard Friedman was there interviewing us and of course he writes and he wrote in his article sort of like choking up when he was interviewing him because I felt that way. I was pleased I had won, but I was sad seeing that David has lost, I really was. But yet, there was a guy who was supporting me and was there and doing things that David has always done and he was always (inaudible) to say the first (inaudible). So it was something to remember. That was an interesting night when I elected ; my supporters tore the Parliament House down (both laugh). They built my camp there, they had to stop people, they eventually closed it down, the fire inspectors came and wouldn' ; t let anybody else come into the hotel. It was interesting, I mean it was an exciting night, I came down there and the place was just jammed, I came down from the top floor suite and we had to work our way through the crowd to get up to the stage. Folks were shouting, car horns honking all over the place. The president Carter called, just when I was about to go down and greet the folks, the phone rings and it' ; s president Carter and you know he said something. And so it was a very historic time and I still remember and looking back at news clippings and stories that just bring me back those memories of that particular evening. LEMONTE: You mentioned that your total campaign cost in 1979 were between the two races, right around $50,000? ARRINGTON: Yeah. LEMONTE: Earlier, you had said that (inaudible) has conveyed some campaign money to you in a council race. Was there any business support financially in your first election for mayor? ARRINGTON: In the run-off. And (inaudible) gave me some money, but Henry Goodrich sort of put--the corporate community sort of channeled money through Henry Goodrich who brought it to me. And or either sent people and that' ; s how I got the 30-something thousand dollars--. LEMONTE: Did any members of the corporate community sit down and talk to you about their hopes and expectations for the city and attempt to gauge you as a candidate? ARRINGTON: Not at that time, the only exposure I got has been through news media interviews and forums and at the time it was sort of limited of what candidates could say. And even through the run-off, it went the same. But once I was elected, interestingly, the person to invite me to come to a meeting with the business community for dinner, in which he was host, was Tom Bradford of people, I will never forget that. I had a short-lived experience with Tom, he was, at the time on the park board and considered to be one of the most ultra-conservative businessman quite frankly. But I don' ; t know if he called me or I called him, but I ended up going to his office over there on first ave and sitting and talking with him. And he called me at some point and offered to host a dinner and invite the corporate community in and that was my first meeting and that was a very interesting meeting. Some rather frank talk went on that night about race and all of that. I remember he used to explain to me why downtown was going to be such a challenge and the fact about white behavior, once the downtown area go to be a certain percentage black. It was a good meeting. But some of those--Joe Farley was around that time, shortly thereafter, he stepped down and (inaudible) came in, but Joe Farley was around. Joe wasn' ; t very active, but he was sort of liberal among the corporate people, and had a run-off, spoken to me a couple times, but nothing of any great detail. So we eventually, (inaudible) the support in the corporate community built up, but some people obviously in 20 years, they haven' ; t came around, I mean, I had talks with people like Hall Thompson, but obviously never got any kind of support from Hall, but got support from Judy and the (inaudible) time, I got support from his son, who now runs their business. And I never got any support from Harbert, although, the next time I ran, Raymond Harbert, who was then the CEO, had succeeded his death, did a fundraiser for me up at the Summit Club. So there were interesting things like that. (Inaudible) B. Stevens, I never got him to anything--get him to come to a meeting, he just totally refused. He tried to talk to me once about some things he thought ought to be done and I asked him if he' ; d lead the effort to do it and of course he would not. So I never (inaudible) B. Stevens or that family at all in anyway, but over the years we got a good (inaudible) of corporate folks and they began helping and (inaudible) Harris came along and he was more active in reaching out. And of course eventually Leo King and he started using his influence pulls them around. But the interesting thing Barney was, he proceeded Henry as head--(inaudible) was a Vulcan Material, but he was very-- LEMONTE: Monahan. ARRINGTON: Monahan. By the end of my third year, the time when people talking about election again, he calls me and he says that some of us want to meet with you. And I said, " ; Fine." ; And he wanted to know if I wanted to come over to what is the Amsouth Bank tower. I walk over there that day ; they really had the meeting in the southern natural gas office complex. And I walked up there and (inaudible) was just about (inaudible) in the corporate community there. Few exceptions, but who' ; s who in Birmingham and they came Barney spoke and their offer was to support me, they wanted me to run again for mayor, I don' ; t know what had gone into their discussions, but I assumed that they had concluded that the next mayor was going to be black, things have changed. And we' ; ve had almost four years with this guy and some folks (inaudible). Let' ; s strengthen him and make sure we keep him in office rather having some other black, which we don' ; t know as well. And so it made a great (inaudible) worry about money and if I would run again, they (inaudible) get out and pass leaflets and all of this kind of stuff. And they did, they raised the money for all and me. Some of them John Woods, some of these got to be people I could go to. Here and there, I had a falling out with most of them, at one point or another at one time or another, but I thought overall, my relationship with the corporate community was good. I think once the corporate community saw that it was going to be a black mayor here, because it' ; s a black majority now, here in this city. Most of them decided said, " ; We' ; re going to support Arrington." ; Most of them did, even when they were still running white (inaudible) for mayor, but they knew he wasn' ; t going to win, mostly corporate folks were still giving me support. LEMONTE: Aside from the issue of Benita Carter and police, what were the topics or issues in your 1979 campaign for mayor that represented your platform and the points that distinguished you from Frank Parsons or the other candidates? ARRINGTON: Well, in the run-off, of course, I tried to (inaudible) experience that Frank had, none of that kind of experience and tried to speak of that as (inaudible). But I also set other goals ; city image was one of the things I had talked about in the campaign. Management was another thing, because of encouragement from folks like (inaudible), I talked about management style a lot and what my management style was going to be and issues (inaudible). I did have to address of course you know, the whole matter of how I was going to (inaudible) the police department, because that was still really a concern of people. And initially, I don' ; t think that anybody thought that I was going to win. Anyway, I mean until the primary and then I think that it really dawned on people and some people I think felt that if there was going to be--the most disastrous area would probably be that this guy is not going to get along, the police don' ; t like him and that' ; s going to be bad for us. I think that was--but I had not really dealt that much with the issue. But I had to answer questions about it because they had asked--no questions were asked about it. And then the FOP also had a sense in that campaign, that maybe more than other folks did--that a black might be elected and that' ; s why they got Larry and Larry was in it and they threw their support for Larry Langford for whatever reason, I don' ; t know what their political strategy was. But there was to fragment to vote or whatever, but they did. It just didn' ; t work. But we just--I talked to some about economic development, but I talked particularly about changing the city image, the management styles and things of that sort, so I talked about that. Time went by and subsequent elections, we learned a little bit more ; we put together a better platform, a more inclusive platform. LEMONTE: So you walk in as mayor in the fall of ' ; 79, you knew city hall, you knew people, but here you are as mayor, what was your sense in feeling an issue begin that experience and what kind of reception did you get from people, already in city government? ARRINGTON: Well, my feeling was one, a lot of uncertainty to tell you the truth. In fact I had thought about it sense and I wonder, for somebody who hadn' ; t city hall at all, as elected mayor, a transitition (inaudible). Secondly, but I still had that--still uncertainty but once I won I was swept up really in this whole media thing because worldwide media--I spent all my time interviewing, doing TV things, because Birmingham' ; s got a black mayor, that was big, big stuff. So much so that even I didn' ; t--it was--I started writing my inaugural address the night before the inauguration at home late that night when I finally got home, I think I had done an interview, a guy--a photographer--a reporter from People magazine had gone and they gone home with me and done some shots of the family. A lot of that stuff was what I had, I didn' ; t really have a transition team and all, I was just doing all of this media stuff. And I didn' ; t even finish my speech until I had gotten to the office that morning that I was to speak at the ceremony had set I don' ; t remember the time, maybe 10:00 or something. And I still had two or three (inaudible) I finished writing and then give it to the girl to type up. That' ; s how busy it was, but I turned the people who had been my friends first of all, particularly Nina and David who were on the council. And I began talking with them about trying to put together a staff and it was Nina who had suggested to me that' ; --take Willie Davis because he had been over in the council (inaudible) and he had some experience. And then when we decided (inaudible) decided to come--I think Tom was coming too, David was opposed to that say I was taking all the experienced staff over to that side, but Nina spoke up and of course she thought I needed her and you know--and she just let t Tom go on and so. That helped some, we came in--I didn' ; t have a whole lot of experience on putting together that staff in city government and then I was trying to--had decided that--listening to folks I had to sort of balance the staff and I tried to get (inaudible) in and I tried to get blacks on the staff as well as whites and all of that. And then I was able to get you to come (inaudible) and that' ; s what we worked on. We put together a pretty balanced staff and we got going. I mean we staggered out of the open gate and somehow we regained our balance and we kept going and it continued to be a learning experience all the way for 20 years it was a learning experience I will tell you. We learned how to do some things, we got some breaks. We sometimes have priorities (inaudible) just to get the priorities in order, but I thought we got some things done and unfortunately we couldn' ; t get some of them done without some debate, some conflict, after all it was--we came in ' ; 79 with an economy in shambles and we were concerned about that, we didn' ; t have a strong economy. But again, we were fortunate and that certain things were happening I mean the University was there and it was sort of an anchor and the economy began slowly changing and the transition into a service-type economy was beginning to pick up. Some--that helped us a whole lot and here and there we started having some success and I do think we started to administer, I do think we put in place a pretty good administration, I think we did some good things administrative wise, I think we did some good planning. I think the thing was when we started out and decided we had to start surveying and putting emphasis on retention existing businesses as well as looking new ones. I think some of those were little things, but they turned out to be important kinds of things for us. And we began to have some breaks with the economy during that latter part of that term. We still had some issues of conflict of course, the affirmative action thing was on its way and then somewhere at the end--early in the second term, I' ; m dealing with the consent decree and all of that and of those things were controversial, fight over minority participation in programs and having a fight with the associated general contractors. So it was challenging in that, because when I think going into government anyway as a chief executive is just challenging (inaudible). But we just had issues, we had things changing and we were trying to make some social changes, we were trying to build a city government that was more inclusive in trying to bring people in. We' ; re out trying to push at the same time to put in a minority participation programs. There were a whole lot of issues that made it very challenging time for us and we get into a fight right away about the police chief, so that for many people was a carry over, a bitter taste that they already had because the doubts they had about my becoming a mayor because of what posture they had seen me take as a council member and now the first thing I do is get into a fight over the selection of the police chief. So that' ; s what I mean when I' ; m talking about rocky start coming out of the gates, but some of it was a bit controversial. LEMONTE: When you took office, all of the department heads were protected under civil service. You did not have the opportunity to bring in a team of department heads of your own selection. And so you became head of the bureaucracy that was not necessarily obligated to be very responsive to you, how did that transition early in the first term go with your becoming the chief administrating officer of a very large and complicated bureaucracy? ARRINGTON: I think it went fairly well ; we had decent cooperation from some of the department heads. I think we (inaudible) the police chief, basically worked with us, but he was just caught in the middle between a man who was trying to make changes and who was not popular with his (inaudible)--. LEMONTE: This was chief Myers, Bill Myers. ARRINGTON: And Bill was just torn, I mean--and I have to say Bill as far as I know was loyal to me as mayor, I mean he really was, but you know, I was pulling on one side and he was trying to be a professional and be loyal to the mayor, as he promised me he would (inaudible) and of course he' ; s got his men who feel betrayed and so but I think Bill did right he stood there and when he--just so he could make it and he resigned. Because he just thought my policies, my style, my goals were things that he couldn' ; t continue to support, particularly at the place I was trying to go. There was some (inaudible) we got (inaudible) didn' ; t really give me any problem, but he wasn' ; t very, very active in his support. But the truth is that I met with a few of them and then I brought in you know the staff, administrative assistant, executive administration and that dealt with the other department heads and then they met. I think things that we were able to do like meet with them, begin talking about goals, knowing what' ; s going on, that constant hands-on kind of thing is what kept things moving. I think if we had left it sort of loose so to speak and had not been close and hands on where they had to talk with somebody, what was happening here today and you know we (inaudible) different story, but I think that was part of the strength of our administration was that we' ; re coming in and we get (inaudible) and one or two other people who--I think our department heads respected. And they had to deal with them everyday. And I think quite frankly some of them probably find that something that they preferred to having to deal with me on a regular basis to be very frank. But it worked out well for us, it created a kind of comfort zone for them in a different transition period and we had some early problems you know we had Willie Davis questions and I had some corporate folks would talk to me about that. But quite frankly you know after you became the chief executive some of the corporate folks worried about you, they thought we were corrupt you down there. But things went fairly well and one thing that was important in addition to what Willie brought to the job and (inaudible) to own style and ability, was also-- nobody questioned your ability and nobody questioned your integrity and they felt that they could talk with you, I mean and that--I think that' ; s important to have somebody there particularly at a time of transition where a new mayor and especially in this case, in a town where race has been a great preoccupation and everybody, you' ; re making a change, it' ; s very important that the white community, and especially the corporate community has somebody in that office that they have some confidence in. And somebody that they can come and complain to if they want to and feel that they' ; re getting a message to city hall because somebody who has some influence there. I think that was a part of why we were able to get over those humps and move things along. After a while I don' ; t think that some corporate people who never thought, who were suspicious or was always going on but, I don' ; t thing we had a lot of questions about whether you know this was an administration that was incompetent, I mean I really don' ; t and the real secret to that was that we--you and then we sort of put other people around. And you brought around--we got Virginia on and (inaudible) and you know if when you look back at it, we put some good people around there who could do their work and I think that helped us a lot and people start having confidence, especially the business community, started having some confidence in these folks around me. And that helped our administration there. One day I' ; d like to hear what you have to say, to say about all of that. I' ; ve been thinking about it and I sort of outlined some things and the manuscript that I' ; m working on, and I talk about that, I tried to get in and sort of analyze and pick a part you know, what would have think that made a difference and then you know I feel quite frankly that I was just fortunate and lucky in many ways. Started about talking about my life, things just happen because I planned-- (inaudible) because I didn' ; t know you were--I had no idea that you would ever come work in government, I mean I would have thought that you were right off. And I was talking with you about somebody and I find out that you were willing to consider it because--but I mean that was, for me it was just a lucky thing and it happened. And so I just sometimes when I think about some of the tough times and I think about all the breaks I got along the way, they just sort of fell in place somehow and it worked out well so that' ; s good, and having you there for what eight years? LEMONTE: Eight years, eight fascinating wonderful years. ARRINGTON: It was good, I thought I was going to get you back (inaudible) like that, I never told you about that conversation. LEMONTE: (inaudible) difficult to in a reasonable period of time covered 20 years as mayor, but I think there are some areas that we could group questions and thoughts on your part and I guess one of them would be to return the topic of police and you' ; ve talked about the professionalization of the police department a long-term process that began during your first term as council. I recall that the issue of the shooting policy was one of the kinds of important police issues that came up early in your tenure as mayor, I wonder if you could speak to that and other things related to policing that reflected your commitment to the professionalization of the department. ARRINGTON: And here again I have to give credit to Bill Myers, who was police chief when I became mayor. Because even on issues, really hot issues and shooting policies were about as hard as issues you could get, because Alabama at that time are still under the state of (inaudible) felon, where if a felony had been committed (inaudible) suspected that you might have committed it, under the law that officer can use deadly force against you. And that was a serious and very much flawed law, of course thank goodness, some years after we stepped out and changed the policy, the other case got to the supreme court, where you just couldn' ; t shoot folks, except under some dire circumstances, life-threatening circumstances, but you got to the situation somebody could grab your television out of your house and go running and the officer would shoot him if he couldn' ; t catch him. It changed a lot, it had a real impact on society as a whole, but I took on shooting policy early on because I thought we had to change the policy. That may have been the most divisive issue, the police things in this community and if you ever wondered to come back together or get (inaudible) have some cooperation. We really had to get the police issue under some control where it just always stays out there. It was a major issue that divided this community. And I think honestly some people (inaudible) but I honestly think we accomplished that. Even today I see people saying things (inaudible) about the police here and there on an abuse case, but I know from experience that it' ; s nothing like it used to be. We took on that shooting policy and my police chief at the time, Bill Myers, didn' ; t fight me on it. He worked with me on it, when I asked him to do the work, the surveys ; he put his folks to work on it. Now that was a very unpopular thing for him to do, especially with the FOP, but he did it and then I called together the corporate leaders at some point I don' ; t think they were at all happy about it, but some of them cooperated, we put together a committee, we looked at it and we came up with a new policy, the police union, the FOP were never satisfied with it, but just by putting in our own policy, we changed, I think the behavior really endangering lives of police officers. Handful of police officer who had been so trigger-happy and the (inaudible). We changed that ; I think also the fact that we were going to stand firm on that policy and others, I mean we implemented policies along the way that we were responsible, some before I became mayor. The simple one like, if any force has to be used to apprehend an individual, you must take that individual to the hospital (inaudible) sounds like it' ; s a little troublesome thing, but I mean it had a great impact on the behavior of the police department after a while because you got a medical trained individual. He looks at somebody and says, what has happened to him or her or what kind of injuries do they have, which is much different than somebody being thrown in jail without getting any medical attention. You also build a (inaudible) so if internal affairs (inaudible) what operators (inaudible). And the composite impact of all of those things, I think brought about some very positive changes, even with the shooting policies. Now I will tell, if the chief had not stood with us, (inaudible) if he just gotten out there and said this is not going to work and that' ; s why I still give Bill Myers his due because he remained professional and stood with me on those things. We changed the shooting policy (inaudible) that wasn' ; t good-- LEMONTE: And I think for those who want to know that story, Jimmy Franklin has done a good job of documenting it back to Birmingham book. So I think it exists as a carefully recorded story that-- ARRINGTON: I think he has done a good job of what happened then. But we' ; ve been through that and we' ; ve come in with the new chief, who ends up being a very controversial chief from the outside, but there was a product of a process and (inaudible). And the difference in viewpoints about how it ought to be done and the filling on the parts of some influential people in this community, that we were moving too fast and so forth. And I think people did the best thing they knew how to do. I think those who thought, no you know we at least got to get a police chief in here that the police officers respect and don' ; t trample their morale, eventually I' ; ve gotten to understand all of that, but again, you know we came through it, we came in with Arthur Deustch, there was always controversy, but we got some things accomplished. We became one of the few cities a few years ago that got accreditation I mean the number has increased, but there is still not a lot of accredited police departments in this country that on the accrediting association. And we have been accredited and had two or three reaccreditations visits since. I think our officers have been trained much better and I think it' ; s because we were forced--that issue was always front burner and (inaudible) we were looking for ways to do what we thought was right, but at the same time they give the people the training. So I really do think that the police reform was major accomplishment of our administration, the police reform, not without pain and problems, but it happened in a city where that was really known a terrible police commissioner, powerful politician bull Connor. And so we moved the police reform away from the common thing to--what I think is a professional department that had some problems down there, but never really serious problems relatively speaking. So I chalk that up as one of the things that we accomplished. LEMONTE: Related to the police department and all other department but certainly more extensively were very basically was the question of affirmative action in the consent decree. At the time you entered office the question of discriminatory hiring practices was before the courts? ARRINGTON: Yes, that had been a hearing or two particularly I think on police in fact, not on other departments. The NAACP in one case I believe there was some employee that might have been in parks and rec somewhere had brought that case to court. But anyway, we moved (inaudible) with the encouragement of president Reagan' ; s justice department to settle the case with (inaudible) consent decree, which was really fashioned, by the justice department. And it created more problems for us, all the issues that eventually came up about affirmative action and them somewhere around about that time, shortly or before or after the news media really made reverse discrimination a household word, I remember reading one national magazine, first big story I read about reverse discrimination and after a while I got to be a house hold word, discrimination. And so anytime they talked about affirmative action, you had that other side of the issue. I was helped with that--I kept the same law firm that David had hired to deal with that and that was Bradley Arab and we had an attorney who was pretty good working with us and guiding us on that. I was fortunate and David this too, David was able to influence the personnel board to let us have a director of personnel. It was Gordon Graham. And Gordon was very helpful and all of that because he had a background in it and he knew his way around and I think many times you know they had Gordon up there handling these issues and helping us shape the policy, somebody like who had had that same situation where we could not have had a personnel director, we still just had to deal directly with the board over there. We would have had a lot of havoc in what we were trying to do. LEMONTE: But it required the consent of the personnel board to have him-- ARRINGTON: Absolutely--. LEMONTE: You did not have the independent authority as mayor--? ARRINGTON: That' ; s correct, but just to have somebody there who knew personnel and knew how to shape policies and how the personnel management was a plus and I was pleased. And we did good I thought, we lost a reverse discrimination case and I had never gotten over that, frankly even today, I think one of the little quirks that have in the judicial system is that kind of (inaudible) of that nature. The irony of the fact that in Birmingham in Jefferson county, where blacks were truly excluded, it was really the policy they excluded all the way through the personnel board on down, in a city renowned for its race problem, that Birmingham would end up being a city guilty of reverse discrimination. And the way that went down is something that I never been able to sort of digest, but we got caught in a time when the pendulum was swinging the other way, Reagan days, new court members, the court becoming more conservative, in fact the guy who had been the attorney general' ; s office as an assistant attorney general down in Alabama had gotten on the (inaudible) court and was one of the key-- (inaudible) wrote that opinion which I had read 50 times and still doesn' ; t make any sense in which he concluded that we were guilty of reverse discrimination. I (inaudible) people that make sense, he said we were right to try to do this and right to try to do that, but in doing that we, or course violated the rights of other people. I was also disturbed about it because, everything we had done, Sam Pointer had been the judge in the district court who had looked at it. And even in the firefighters' ; case, he had reviewed every promotion, and of course he was just overruled in the final analysis on the (inaudible) and so that was a little disappointing, because we had a district judge who has said, okay, they had not promoted a single firefighter and he had looked at their records and said that was the right thing to do. By anyway, it still had a tremendous impact, I mean, it changed labor force, made it much more inclusive, we went from a labor force of 12 to 15 % black, we came in and when we left, you know about half of the labor force was black. We went from a labor force that had one black department head and I guess during our time in office, we must have hired about 14 and we ended up with about 12 when we left. We didn' ; t open up as fast, but we made a difference there. For example in the police department, I think they might have had one, may have been two women sergeants when I became mayor and when we left, women were moving all the way up to serving deputy chief, we didn' ; t but one chief yet, but we gotten a few women in the fire department, still that' ; s been a tough nut to crack. But women were largely in clerical positions back in 1979 and 1980 in Birmingham. And we promoted--we changed a lot of that, a lot of women were promoted in all departments. We didn' ; t do as well as we might have done about when the department heads, but we did get two or three women in department head positions. I' ; m pleased about that, I think--out of that affirmative action, the program under that consent decree, we were able to create the most (inaudible) wise and racial-wise the most diverse (inaudible) force in the state of Alabama, any government in the state of Alabama, I think including the state itself. That' ; s an accomplishment I' ; m very proud of. I' ; ve always wondered though, I will tell you, even while we were carrying out the affirmative action promotions under that consent decree, the one thing I always wondered about was at what point do you stop affirmative action? It always stays in the back of my mind, when I would talk with Alexander who was a lawyer over there at Bradley and (inaudible) I would raise that question. How long do we do this? Because I thought there was going to be a breaking point, at some point, I' ; m not a lawyer obviously, so I don' ; t know the legal argument. But if you say you' ; re going to correct something in affirmative action is the remedy, and I speak solely just within a city, within any organization. I guess to be a question--if you accomplish and we were accomplishing all of our goals, then when do you stop it. And of course we never--I don' ; t think we' ; ve answered the question yet, I mean reverse discrimination created some problems for us and I think they may now have paid off the last employee reverse discrimination. I know when mayor Kincaid came in, they still had several, that' ; s because we couldn' ; t negotiable settlements. Some of them wanted more, but we tried to settle with as many as we could, but the question still is, how long do you stay--does the court keep you in the consent decree and so forth. In fact I think that the Achilles Hill in the affirmative action program and that' ; s it. But that' ; s why I think America finally--society as a whole finally, we being handled with reverse discrimination and that--where I think a lot of the attitudes finally changed and opinions of some (inaudible) I may be totally wrong but even when I was mayor I was thinking about that. I even said it to Gordon a few times, you know, okay we' ; re achieving these goals now how long are going to continue to do this. And I have to admit, I was speaking then from the perspective of an administrator, he knew that there was still resentment about it because we felt we had accomplished a lot of it and we thought that if we could say, we achieved our goals, the affirmative action program just go on hiring, it would have some impact on morale and get some of the bitter disputes that were ongoing about promotions and all of that. So it' ; s just amazing that once you' ; re in a position, how it makes you-- you' ; re force to think about some things. I many times rethought the whole minority business loan program you know, you begin to sort of understand arguments whether you agree totally or not with some of the people who (inaudible) very simple question, why do you take some guy that has terrible credit and couldn' ; t do this, that other and can' ; t get a loan from the bank and then you take him and give him taxpayers' ; money and you look around you got a 60% rate of (inaudible). And yet, I mean it takes you to that point. And you had answers that were really not that simple, but I tell you, it really makes--you think about it. And now affirmative action program, many times I sat and I thought questions like that. LEMONTE: When you left office, were there still affirmative action requirements in place in city employment? ARRINGTON: Yeah, promotion goals are still in place. LEMONTE: As a matter of--? ARRINGTON: Even after the reverse discrimination thing, it' ; s still there. And I rather no--it has (inaudible) formally ended you know, there have been few cases, I mean like school cases, where the courts have finally said that schools were integrated, I mean essentially not been the most segregated (inaudible), but they ended the program. I don' ; t think they done that at city yet. I know they hadn' ; t done that before I left. Now that, you know, I think a natural question might be, you were chief executive you thought that was time you know, why didn' ; t you move to do it. I don' ; t know, I thought about it and but we got caught up in the reverse discrimination thing just wouldn' ; t go away. I would go up and went all the way to Supreme Court. I went up there, sat in and listened to the argument at the Supreme Court. The only time I' ; ve been in there. And then of course, the Supreme Court rules against us in terms of the right of these people to pursue the reverse discrimination and then we worked through that two or three years and we eventually lose and of course that was the end of it. But anyway, it just raises a lot of questions of how you deal with past injustices and how do, in some way make the solutions somewhat more acceptable to other people who were in there. And I think one way is that if you limit the times much more things can be done, I don' ; t know. Anyway, it was an interesting thing, but I think we accomplished something despite difficulties and that always happens despite problems. And I also felt that the next mayor coming in would probably be able to build a better, a stronger relationship with employees and employee rep groups, because that mayor would not have to go through some of those vice that we had to go through. I' ; m not sure that has happened at city hall, but at least that next mayor came in with a cleaner slate, didn' ; t have to fight the minority business thing, all of that (inaudible) affirmative action kind of things that ended up with people at opposite ends of the spectrum and people fighting and people feeling that they' ; ve been mistreated one way or another, passed over and all of that. So I thought, as I was getting ready to leave office, well the next mayor wouldn' ; t have to deal with a lot of that. He' ; d already be viewed and sort of pigeonholed as a person whose this way or the other. I don' ; t know how it' ; s worked out, but for Birmingham, that' ; s my question in my mind, affirmative action was the right thing to do. And I think that its overall results have been positive for us. And I believe anybody doing that analysis would probably reach the same conclusion today. And I believe Birmingham is one of the better examples, really what has happened in affirmative action, what has happened about inclusiveness of people and the labor force. And keep in mind that we didn' ; t stop just with our labor force, we reached out and well we had some debates with associated general contractors and some fights. We eventually ended up with some agreements with them. I don' ; t know how successful it has been, but we reached a point where they started working with us rather than against us. We got the Birmingham plan put in place and the Birmingham plan, in my opinion ; it' ; s a significant accomplishment. I don' ; t think it was a productive as it could have been, because quite frankly I don' ; t think we ever got really the mentality among a (inaudible) minority contractors, they were going to get a set aside, but with all those rough balance, one very pleasing moment for me was one day when six young black contractors came in my office. And they came not to complain about what was going on, but they thanked and to tell me what had happened to their businesses and these weren' ; t guys just only--one guy was a (inaudible) man, they were all in different construction trades. But they were all successful and they were thanking me, not only for what I had done, but because Auburn University was offering courses and they were taking those courses. And they were telling me how some of those courses, management courses and so forth had enabled them to improve their own skills and run their businesses and how pleased they were, plus they were asking, also part of the reason they came, for us to sponsor some other courses that Auburn had down there that they wanted. And that was a rare thing because most of the times when minority contractors came to see me, they came to complain about something that wasn' ; t going on. (Inaudible) were very good, there were six young black guys and they were really good--. LEMONTE: These were courses offered under the Birmingham Plan? ARRINGTON: Under the Birmingham plan, DCIA having arrangements with Auburn University and they sent someone in and they offered the courses. And they may still do that. But the difference was here were six young guys, number one they were young and apparently fairly well-educated I don' ; t really know what their backgrounds were, but fairly well-educated, well-spoken, who took advantage of this and there are some guys who don' ; t have that background and don' ; t have the determination and don' ; t do the work and you know they really don' ; t benefit that much from it, they don' ; t see much coming from it. But you have to keep in mind, that things like minority contracts for the first 100 years that this, the city of Birmingham, there was nothing, no business going to blacks of any degree. David started trying a program, he tried to put about a million dollars in contracts for blacks. But we really got caught up on front ; there were a lot of fronts. I' ; m not sure if we ever got rid of all of them, but we got rid of a lot of those fronts and so when we started talking about, (inaudible) talking about, well we' ; ve done 70m dollars worth of business with black firms. I would guarantee that most of that was done with those firms and very few fronts. So their accomplishments in that area--. LEMONTE: What was the origin of the Birmingham plan, and are you able to think of a moment when that came clearly forward as a (inaudible) policy possibility or did it evolve over a long period of time? ARRINGTON: (inaudible) it evolved, but it' ; s like something that hit you, I had been in and out of court with the associated general contractors, it was a losing battle every time because the state law was--without changing state law, it' ; s hard to do what we were trying to do. Even with the best lawyers trying to rewrite the city code on some things, the state law says you got to take the best bid, the lowest bid and so (inaudible) caught well, small businesses can' ; t bid, very few of them can bid. We tried everything we knew, trying to break the packages down, smaller, but that really didn' ; t work. The only thing that was going to work, the strong general contractors were going to somehow have to associate some minority contractors with them. We eventually got two or three of them that were willing to do it, but a lot of them didn' ; t, some of them just did it, just as nuisance, they did it and the people working with them didn' ; t benefit, they got that money, but they didn' ; t learn a lot of things. And then we tried the--was that the university program we tried over there, it was a (inaudible) project. I think we tried to do this sort of a case study to see what was going on, but what happened with the Birmingham plan, following the court thing, I just started thinking about it, the fact that we weren' ; t getting much visible support from the corporate community and I really sat home one night and sort of wrote up a thing about the Birmingham plan, a statement I wanted to make. I must have spoken with (inaudible) or somebody to invite the people in over there at Birmingham-Southern and said basically what I had written down and asked them to get off the sideline and get (inaudible). Surprisingly their response was positive ; there was a positive response. I don' ; t know how much they knew about what I was going to say, I don' ; t know if I would go into any details with Neal about it, except that' ; s what I wanted to talk about. But I look back up on it and say you know, they put two or three people in place and say alright, let' ; s start working it. So that was a good faith effort on the part of the business community and it allowed us to put in place the Birmingham plan. But not only, just really--out of frustration, but it came in on those fights and I thought we (inaudible) the corporate community and so that' ; s how we came out with the Birmingham plan. LEMONTE: You mentioned earlier that minority business program which really gets it at the time, two questions I' ; d like to ask to respond to, one is sort of your notion of what the world of city government properly ought to be in the economic development area, because I meet many people would say this just isn' ; t a function of city government to be worrying about business success or failure. And then the question of the evolution of the city' ; s program away from the simple loan to more complicated things, it seems to me the city learned a lot by its trial and sometimes that failure in those areas? ARRINGTON: Yeah, I think we did learn, we certainly during the loan area, we got into an area first of all we wouldn' ; t have ever been able to get into the state constitution, but with the help of the federal government and the federal funds and the attorney general' ; s opinion that said we could use federal funds for loans, but we couldn' ; t use city funds for loans. But you know we got off into that area. When the funds sort of dried up, we were fortunate because we had some good times with (inaudible) things and so we had (inaudible) repayments coming in and every year they bring back almost a half million dollars that we put into a loan pool to keep it going. We then eventually were able to become a bit more selective in how we make loans and who we made them to and we make better loans to people who in most instances ended up succeeding whereas earlier a large number of our people were failing, I mean they got money, small loans and it lasted a little while. I think they just failed, so we learned as time went along, I think that there is a role for government to play because there' ; s a broader issue of justice and there' ; s the issue of what history has been. And so I think there is a role to play and if it is a government that represents a population that has been significantly impacted by the past practices, I think the responsibility of that government is even greater to try to find out what is our proper role. I just feel today that the loan program per se which most small business including minority businesses would say is the biggest problem access to capital. I still today question the loan thing is really the role for us. I do think that stuff we do through (inaudible) to help people and to offer them training and to make sure people know how the system works. People who really want to put together a package and want to be competitive and so forth. I think all of those are very legitimate kinds of things and the better we can do them, the more effective we will be--. LEMONTE: BCIA is Birmingham Construction Industry Authority--? ARRINGTON: And I think the more effective those people are in doing that, the more successful we will be. I think you have to understand when you' ; re doing it though that, your success rate is not going to be real high, when you' ; re dealing things like contractors, particularly when there has been a history of most of the minority contractors really not being formally trained and a lot of them, it' ; s a trade they picked up. But even there were those who were except help, I mean we have to (inaudible) from how to handle books to how to do payroll, how to stay out of trouble with the IRS, but some of them were too strapped to do it and some of them just sort of threw their hands up, but there are legitimate roles to play. If I were starting over and had my choice I, wouldn' ; t totally cut out the loan program, though it troubles me some, but I would make the requirements a little bit more stringent and there ought to be some reasonable expectations at folk and succeed. If you' ; re going to put a small amount of money in something--we eventually put in place some good support mechanisms--I mean Susan' ; s program, what is that called. It' ; s an incubator type thing, I think it' ; s been one of the better ones that you would find any place and it really evolved from what we tried to do in the city and what the business community did in partnership with us. That' ; s how we got a successful incubator program for startup businesses for small businesses. So those were some successes, we tried to do things like even help minority contractors, number one to organize as a unit and number two, to understand even the political system but in one area we failed and I think even today, the city probably still funds the minority contractors and gives them a staff and three or four people. But I tried, I went to meeting myself and I tried to get them to do things like, I even once had the city put up the money for them to hire attorneys and I tried to get them to do simple things like lobbying, the associated general contractors and the other (inaudible) contracting group was making a move to change the law, about how you get your license to stiffen the exam. And I tried awfully hard to get them to--number one lobby--just bring in the black legislatures and number two to send somebody to Montgomery and they acted never get them to do it. And somebody might say that isn' ; t important, but when you look at the system as a whole and you know how it works, and you know where the laws are made and the laws tell you everything--and the government really tells you everything in this country when you get through examining it, how it' ; s doing and who is going to be certified and all. And they could never see that as a part or root of their problem and we just could do it better. But dealing with building contractors in particular is a very difficult area when dealing with minority builder contractor. I think you get a few, when we started out, we probably had one or two general contractors and when I left, who were minorities, when I left office we might have had about six of them that were doing fairly well, still operating. We never wavered a bill, you know a hugely successful minority contractor firm, say a Russell company or something, and we were never able to do that. But we had a lot of experience that I can talk to some people about what she shouldn' ; t do (inaudible) work in some instances. LEMONTE: One of the projects that David Vann had begun was the commitment to downtown Birmingham the revitalization of downtown, would you comment on your views of downtown and what your administrations did over the years on behalf of downtown Birmingham and your assessment of success or failure? ARRINGTON: I really think we overall got off to a great start in downtown. You can' ; t fully appreciate if you can' ; t recall what downtown was like in ' ; 79. Even today we didn' ; t see the long term affect of some of the things, but I look back at records and see the number of buildings that were renovated for example downtown and I look at it today, some of the renovations didn' ; t keep businesses there. Of course, they are going to lofts and things of that sort. But we did a large number of building renovation downtown addition to new construction. I think our downtown effort though was pretty good. We' ; re a long way from getting the kind of mix that gives downtown the character ; it has to have a new character. Making the transition from a downtown where retail dominated retail market, huge department stores to one that' ; s got a totally different character, especially in a town where folk had lived downtown, we had to try to go through that change. But we did a lot of things that were positive to downtown, however people measure it, I mean you look at office. How many new office buildings came downtown. We had a fair labor (inaudible) we got downtown and we negotiated and it' ; s a great leap from where we started, block 60 and the failure of block 60, we learned some things from that and we were able to negotiate and use our incentives a little bit better and to get some buildings downtown. We haven' ; t been able to change from being a workday place, but or course we got a lot of jobs into downtown and what we called the central business district. The role of Michael (inaudible) and operation new Birmingham, that road was very important in what we' ; ve been able to do downtown. I think we' ; re sort of halfway there. We started things like the McWane center ; we have not seen the full impact of that yet. One day, I' ; m still hopeful that we' ; ll complete that and that it' ; s going to anchor changes around there, hopeful (inaudible) talking with Jeffrey (inaudible) two nights ago and I' ; m hopeful that he' ; s going to succeed with his plan for the Pizitz thing. But we put in place a sort of nucleus for some good things to happen but when you think about, we did things like parking decks downtown, during the time we were in office that 20 years, it was done four or five parking decks, started down there--the last one, the bank of Birmingham, you think about the one across from the federal courthouse, we did the one behind the finance center, we did the Birmingham news parking deck, we did the second ave parking deck. That was all a part of course trying to reinforce the survival of downtown and provide the parking. But even when you look at the buildings, we fought some battles, we got the new federal courthouse, it was going to be downtown, but we got it where it is, over the oppositions of the federal judges who didn' ; t want it down there, because it backed right up to the black business district. I now see that at least there' ; s an office building going up diagonally across the street from the federal courthouse down on 4th ave. And then I forget her name, Sloss people building behind the federal reserve, that' ; s a battle we sort of lost, I mean we didn' ; t lose federal reserve, we kept them in the city but we lost them downtown, after we gave them all the help in the world to get the (inaudible) finance. But now I see Cathy and her associates, the Sloss group coming to the office complex there. I had a conversation ; just yesterday I had lunch with Elias Hendrix, talking with him about his business. And here' ; s a young black couple (inaudible) business and they were totally excited and working with people like Sloss, expanding their businesses, taking in additional kids, he was just (inaudible) we don' ; t get the--a lot of the kids can' ; t afford to go to (inaudible) learning center or to the church, (inaudible) operated by the church because it cost a lot. But there are a lot of secretaries who have kids and you know people making less money, they can get business from black and white. And now they' ; re getting involved in the actual plan (inaudible) they' ; re negotiating with them right now about the number of places they' ; re going to provide for folks in the office, I mean that' ; s a (inaudible) listening to him talk about that, I mean I really felt good about it, because people are dealing with their children and they' ; re willing to get their children and these people have done well enough that the folks who were making a big investment, developing the thing is talking with them about how we' ; re going to meet the needs of some the tenants who are going to fill these buildings and you know--can we contract (inaudible) for so many spaces. That, to me, I didn' ; t tell in all of this but to me that' ; s a message on about a lot of change in Birmingham, I mean the kids are the one of the most important things we got, you know and when you can get folks to the point where they' ; re taking them, they think they feel safe enough to put their kids in-that you got a quality enough thing. That (inaudible) who operates it in (inaudible) but they run a good one, but for Birmingham, that' ; s a message up. So I think that' ; s happening, I see an office building going up on Concord, I worry a little now about two that ought to be going up and I don' ; t know where the new administration is, where they mayor is, unfortunately we had no communication at all. No transition, you know, I was there for 20 years and then the new mayor comes in and he decides that he and his people don' ; t want to have any communication with this administration. But you know I worry about some federal things, some social security payments--(talking already in progress). ARRINGTON: Tom Williams saying that we put in place, but (inaudible) still coming together, the university' ; s impact is still felt there and when I read that the parliament house, that it' ; s going to finally be revitalized and redone. I think downtown is--they have reasons to be optimistic, though there' ; s much to be done and I think that our work over 20 years, contributed some towards that. I also think that we bought time, our work in things like annexation that we probably talked some about, and what we did to provided a source of revenue for this city and for the neighborhoods to do a lot of things, not only looking at incentives downtown and we could afford to do that because had we been so strapped for money we would have just pushing every cent there and no matter where it came from. But it gave us a little breathing room to look elsewhere ; it enabled us to maintain some services through our neighborhoods, even the older neighborhoods, the lower income neighborhoods, our people don' ; t think about that. But much of that revenue that (inaudible) services coming in from what we did out on 280 and places like that, it' ; s coming in from the Summit and HEALTHSOUTH, and Grandview and Perimeter Square, Brookhighland and those are all parts of our economic packages and we tried, mentioned though at this point, (inaudible) with downtown is that a lot of those places we tried to get--I should have tried to get Richard Scrushy downtown. But that failing and with us making our case, I think they felt, at least some obligation to try to stay within the city and they did and I think we had some successes in many cases. We didn' ; t get them downtown, I believe downtown will make a comeback, but we still got a little way to go. I think the image of downtown is still a negative one and we still got to find some ways to get people down there after five o' ; clock. And I don' ; t know what' ; s going to happen with the convention center. I think we built in for ourselves a problem and a challenge, a long time ago when we decided to put the convention center there, or when we ran the interstate right through the middle of it and while only people who were planners and other people considered themselves to be urban know ledges were quick to see what that disadvantage is, it' ; s still a disadvantage. Is there going to be dome downtown, what impact is that going to be, I don' ; t know quite frankly do not know. I think this would a positive for downtown and when I studied what had happened with domes and saw what cities had used domed stadiums to do to revitalize their downtown or some old area (inaudible) I thought it would be ideal to get one here, it would do the same, but I don' ; t think we would be able to sell people on that. The recent legislation provides some money, sort of puts it on life support for a while to see what else is going to happen with it. But our downtown is still in a position where we can achieve goals and making a model downtown, we may be decade away from doing all of that, but things are still happening downtown. LEMONTE: That was a initiative that was begun under David Vann, was it one that you and he worked on together or was one that you inherited as a mayoral initiative from him? ARRINGTON: Well I don' ; t, virtually downtown thing was a--something that--we didn' ; t work much on that together. LEMONTE: The Costa head or the Pedro Costa appointment was one that he made as mayor without a great deal of discussion with council? ARRINGTON: I' ; m not sure David made the Pedro Costa appointment. My mind may be playing tricks on me. I know when we did the 19th street project, which we hoped would sort of duplicate the Birmingham (inaudible) thing and it just never happened and the 7million dollars that we put into the project, that just went no where. I think I had come into office and I remember talking with Nina about that and I don' ; t know if David--I had talked with David at all, but I do remember him having an extended conversation with Nina about when we try to select somebody, whether we should use Costa or not and you know--her feeling at the time I remember, I say well these are people who have some faith in downtown, but at that time he had brought up all these properties downtown and she thought (inaudible) I think you' ; re, that' ; s where we ought to take the risk with people who believe there' ; s a future downtown. And I think that might have been right after David, I won' ; t say it didn' ; t come from some momentum. LEMONTE: Now I thought he had made the initial appointment, Pedro Costa and demerit that had-- ARRINGTON: You may be right. LEMONTE: And that the early report came out some time shortly after you entered office, but-- ARRINGTON: You may be right, I just don' ; t remember, but I do remember--when did we do the block 60? LEMONTE: It was early, ' ; 80, ' ; 81 I think. ARRINGTON: I thought about that many times and I just wish I had known a little bit more and I felt that maybe we could salvaged that, but we didn' ; t lose it completely, we got the bank building, I think we could have gotten more but you know we just--it was a learning experience, we paid some prices. LEMONTE: You mentioned annexation that core commitment to downtown have been balanced by the concern for the outer area, how does that annexation strategy develop and what was the rationale behind it as you undertook it? ARRINGTON: I really didn' ; t know much about that from David, or course even after I became mayor, David still spearheaded annexation plans. The first time we really gotten in a real conversation with David about annexation and began to appreciate what the policy ought to be. Of course when David was mayor and Blue Cross went to Riverchase and David cut off the city business with Blue Cross and I gotten into some conversations with him then and it got to be far arranging as things often times get to be with David talking about things like that. And he started talking about annexation and then, (inaudible) it was very interesting and he called me one Saturday and came over to the house and wanted to talk about annexing, that we ought to do this annexation, that' ; s when we were going to go out to Birmingport, with that annexation. And I was valuable to David at that point because I was at the particular time, a very visible and popular black political official there, influential. And David had come up with this scheme and he was explaining it to me about this (inaudible) and how to annex these tax-exempt the annexation had to do them. And explain to me how we could get--in most cases there were black community groups that didn' ; t have services and couldn' ; t get them from the areas. And so first when we took office it was Booker Heights to bring in all of that area, because what David' ; s plan was is that we were going to take Birmingport and make it a major industrial park and in order to do (inaudible) he always had the idea that we' ; re going to do a canal all the way downtown, we talked about all of that, but (inaudible) was the idea that he had that I thought was workable. LEMONTE: And this is was when he was in office? ARRINGTON: Yeah, it started when he was in office. And that was set if we could work successfully annex this are, he drew this thing all the way out, past Maytown and we would have all of the Birmingport, it would be in Birmingham. And while there are few warehouses and things out there now and a fair amount of stuff is shipped out on barges and so forth. It goes entirely into the Tombigbee waterway and all of the Birmingport. We could more than quadruple what was going on if we were really set a major industrial park right there on that riverfront right on the port there. And David convinced me that was what to do and so our first joint effort was to Booker Heights annexation which we lost by one vote because there were only about 50 folks to vote and they needed the services, they were in unincorporated area and they wanted some services from Birmingham and there was an all-black community and David wanted to know if felt I could convince them to come in, which I thought I could. And we hooked with a minister out there in the area and we thought we were going to--surely carry it--David said Tom (inaudible) got to the minister and lo and behold we did find out before election minister had changed sides instead of encouraging folks out there to annex, he was--Tom had gotten to him, Tom was now on the county commission and he was getting them to work against it. And they beat us, they came out like 26-25 I mean lost by one, but that' ; s where I got my initiation into with him, and then we just started talking, even when David was mayor, about other annexations, we might do. I don' ; t think we got around to another major annexation while he was still in office, but I in effect carried out some of the David plans when he came back to work-- LEMONTE: Let' ; s stop. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
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Dr. Richard Arrington Jr. (2001) (1 of 2)
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Dr. Richard Arrington Jr. discusses growing up in Birmingham, his educational career, his time on the city council and his early years as Mayor. This interview is continued on July 24, 2001.
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
Pitts, Luscious
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
Birmingham (Ala.). Mayor
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2001-07-23
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Edward S. LaMonte
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Dr. Richard Arrington Jr.
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Bell, William
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5.4 July 24, 200 Richard Arrington Jr. (2 of 2) Interviewed on July 24, 2001 20010724A 3:57:22 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project Collection bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Jess Holdnak Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham MAPS: Metropolitan Area Projects Strategy Birmingham (Ala.). Mayor Bell, William Dr. Richard Arrington Jr. Edward S. LaMonte Video 1:|11(7)|25(1)|37(11)|49(2)|60(1)|76(11)|91(5)|102(9)|113(12)|128(12)|142(5)|154(8)|165(7)|177(3)|188(5)|197(9)|210(8)|224(12)|234(5)|245(10)|258(4)|270(10)|284(3)|295(1)|307(4)|322(1)|332(10)|348(1)|360(15)|375(8)|388(13)|402(4)|415(8)|429(4)|443(3)|455(11)|468(13)|482(5)|492(3)|506(11)|519(6)|530(6)|543(3)|554(17)|571(3)|586(6)|601(9)|610(2)|620(12)|636(14)|647(13)|656(4)|667(2)|683(3)|697(2)|709(14)|722(9)|737(12)|751(13)|765(13)|779(4)|792(9)|808(2)|822(3)|833(2)|844(10)|854(4)|863(12)|877(3)|889(3)|903(13)|919(7)|936(2)|949(6)|963(11)|979(2)|994(2)|1003(3)|1014(8)|1022(9)|1032(7)|1044(8)|1059(3)|1071(13)|1082(15)|1095(9)|1111(2)|1123(6)|1136(12)|1148(1)|1166(3)|1177(1)|1189(4)|1201(5)|1215(13)|1230(3)|1244(6)|1258(13)|1273(9)|1285(1)|1300(4)|1314(2)|1328(9)|1342(1)|1354(5)|1369(8)|1385(1)|1405(7)|1415(14)|1429(9)|1448(9)|1461(11)|1475(5)|1492(4)|1507(10)|1517(4)|1531(15)|1543(1)|1557(6)|1569(3)|1580(9)|1592(2)|1603(5)|1615(1)|1627(14)|1639(15)|1657(7)|1667(1)|1678(12)|1690(5)|1702(13)|1716(6)|1729(3)|1740(4)|1749(3)|1759(5)|1771(1)|1783(11)|1796(5)|1806(5)|1819(1)|1831(9)|1849(8)|1858(2)|1870(9)|1884(1)|1897(6)|1909(1)|1920(11)|1931(9)|1945(12)|1956(8)|1967(8)|1977(14)|1990(6)|2003(5)|2016(3)|2028(15)|2046(4)|2057(9)|2071(9)|2083(14)|2097(7)|2111(13)|2125(8)|2138(5)|2149(7)|2161(9)|2171(2)|2188(8)|2199(8)|2215(2)|2223(7)|2234(6)|2250(4)|2263(10)|2279(2)|2290(12)|2306(4)|2321(4)|2334(5)|2349(13)|2361(12)|2379(1)|2393(15)|2409(11)|2427(8)|2444(2)|2454(6)|2466(13)|2484(1)|2499(11)|2512(9)|2525(5)|2538(1)|2548(4)|2560(17)|2574(6)|2588(5)|2596(9)|2607(12)|2623(1)|2635(10)|2645(11)|2655(6)|2668(6)|2679(8)|2695(6)|2708(5)|2725(4)|2737(4)|2752(1)|2765(14)|2775(9)|2785(2)|2796(13)|2808(3)|2817(1)|2829(4)|2841(10)|2855(2)|2869(1)|2881(7)|2893(1)|2908(13)|2922(10)|2933(5)|2943(11)|2958(13)|2971(2)|2980(15)|2993(9)|3005(4)|3016(13)|3030(14)|3044(14) 0 https://youtu.be/b2WtB0FCznc YouTube video English 0 Annexation:Major Areas L: I believed we ended up yesterday with the early discussion of annexation, how that developed, what its importance was and I think you were at the first efforts that occurred under David Vann? Dr. Arrington talks about annexations in the Birmingham area which began under David Vann as Mayor while Arrington was in the city council. The annexations begin with Booker Heights attempt and continued to communities such as Dolomite, Birmingport, 280 area, Oxmoor. Birmingport ; Booker Heights ; Dolomite ; Hwy 280 ; Vann, David Annexation (Municipal government) ; Birmingham (Ala.) 1545 Annexation: Relationship with David Vann and Relationship with Community L: You described a relationship with the man you defeated in 1979, in really quite a remarkable way that apparently you and he were able to work very closely with one another on important city projects, after you took office and he brought an expertise to your administration that was probably unavailable anywhere else I would think that our keen topic of annexation, I would think that’s almost unique in governmental politics to have the winner and the loser function so closely as a team, did it strike you that way at the time and did you David ever reflect on the irony of your careers? Dr. Arrington talks about working with David Vann on annexation, working with communities to annex, and working through the legal system to annex. Alabama. Supreme Court ; Hoover (Ala.) ; Vann, David Annexation (Municipal government) ; Birmingham (Ala.) 1914 Annexation: Relationship with Business When David immediately became mayor, began to try to offer him incentives to stay in, applied pressure to these big businesses not to leave the city. If they left the city like Blue Cross, he immediately cancelled the insurance at Blue Cross ; I mean did a number of things. In fact, David made that decision that we would do that, and then he lost and then it really fell on my shoulders (inaudible). Dr. Arrington talks about dealing with businesses while working on annexations. Blue Cross ; Mountain Brook (Ala.) ; National Liberty Corporation ; Vestavia Hills (Ala.) Annexation (Municipal government) ; Birmingham (Ala.) 2419 Mayor: Birmingham Schools L: You mentioned Birmingham schools in relation to the residential developments. What (inaudible) you look back over your tenure in public life, what comments would you make about education, the importance of education, what was done or might have been done, certainly any thoughts you have about education in the future in Birmingham? Dr. Arrington talks about his lack of progress and missed opportunity with education while mayor. He also talks about what he sees as the future of Birmingham schools. Birmingham (Ala.) ; Birmingham Public Schools (Birmingham, Ala.) 2990 Mayor: MAPS (Metropolitan Area Projects Strategy) L: You put public education generally in a negative column, another area that I suspect you would put in the same category was the maps effort, and I wonder if you could talk about what the thinking was behind maps, the importance you attach to it and you reflections on that experience? Dr. Arrington talks about MAPS: the Metropolitan Area Projects Strategy and its attempt to create a domed stadium facility in Downtown Birmingham. He discusses the plan's failure. He also talk about the attempt to create intergovernmental cooperation. HealthSouth (Firm) ; MAPS: Metropolitan Area Projects Strategy ; McWane Center ; Scrushy, Richard Birmingham (Ala.) 3763 Mayor: Suburbanization and City Fragmentation L: My recollection is you are one of the very few public officials who had said over the years that you would support a consolidation of local governments where some major restructuring of local government, there hasn’t appeared to be a base of support for that, what are your reflections in what have been your experiences with governing the central city of a rather fragmented metropolis in what do you see as the possibilities in the short-run for overcoming some of that fragmentation, if there are such possibilities? Dr. Arrington talks about dealing with a fragmented metro area and issues with suburbanization. He talks about eh economic impact of suburbanization and the political factors involved. He also talk about his pessimistic view of dealing with this issue in the future. Charlotte (N.C.) ; Chattanooga (Tenn.) ; Homewood (Ala.) ; Jacksonville (Fla.) ; Mountain Brook (Ala.) ; Suburbanization Birmingham (Ala.) 4729 Politics: Jefferson County Citizens Coalition L: Your political career is often linked to the Jefferson County Citizens Coalition, could you talk about its history, how it was organized, what it did and your thoughts about the coalition as, at the time you left office in it’s continuing role in local government. Dr. Arrington talks about creating the Jefferson County Citizens Coalition as an umbrella group touring together black citizen's leagues and political organizations. He talks about starting the organization to help mobilize the black vote and black political power. He discusses membership and practices. He also mentions some of the challenges the group tried to address. Adams, Oscar ; Bonds ; Clemons, EW ; Democratic Party (Ala.) ; Jackson, Walter ; Jefferson County Citizens Coalition African American political activists ; Birmingham (Ala.) 6779 Mayor: Birmingham City Districts L: You mentioned the coalition responding to the creation of districts, when you first ran for mayor, the council was elected at large and then the change of districts occurred, I guess in the early 90s perhaps— A: 80s. L: What difference did that make for you as mayor, particularly in terms of the city council and its relationship to you and how do assess overall the moved districts? Dr. Arrington talks about the switch to city council districts and how that impacted city politics. City council districts ; Jefferson County Citizens Coalition Birmingham (Ala.) ; City council members 7270 Mayor: Campaigns L: You ran for mayor five times, did the nature of your campaigns change over that period of time, or did you retain basically the same campaign style? Dr. Arrington talks about campaigning through five mayoral elections. He also discusses what percentage of the white vote he was able to win and why. white vote Birmingham (Ala.). Mayor ; Campaign organization and tactics 8037 Mayor: Relationship with Media L: The media topic seems to me an important one and I guess a complicated topic, radio, TV, press, historically white press, black press, but could you talk some about your relationships with media and the importance of media in shaping the political environment? Dr. Arrington talks about how he was portrayed as Mayor in local media. Birmingham News ; Townsend, Vincent ; Vann, David Birmingham (Ala.). Mayor ; News media coverage of . . . 8592 Mayor: FBI Investigation L: You mentioned briefly, the campaign that occurred during a year when you were under investigation by the FBI? A: Yeah. L: That’s a long and complicated and I’m sure unpleasant topic for you, but would you discuss that and what your view is to why it happened and what its impact was you as mayor and maybe as a person? Dr. Arrington tell the story of the FBI investigation into supposed political corruption and eventually an accusation of evasion. He was not found guilty of any crime. Bell, William ; Corruption investigation ; Davis, Willie ; Dixon, Joe ; Peters, Marjorie Birmingham (Ala.). Mayor 10457 Mayor: FBI Investigation--Impact L: Aside from the impact on you personally and family and friends, how did it influence your ability to function as mayor and to campaign as mayor? Dr. Arrington talks about the impact of the FBI investigation on his career as mayor. He mentions feeling like there was a sense of suspicion toward him, especially from the white community and business community. Corruption investigation Birmingham (Ala.). Mayor 11612 Mayor: Birmingham Civil Rights Institute L: Let’s turn to the topic of the institute, this interview is part of its Oral History Program, but I think everyone connected with the institute would acknowledge that, without your commitment to it, this place would not exist. Could you talk about your involvement with the institute, what it has meant to you, what do you think it means to the community and I guess, along the way, perhaps address some of the controversies that surrounded the institute in opposition that it confronted? Dr. Arrington talks about the creation of the Civil Rights Institute including: the idea's origins with David Vann ; how it relates to some of the corruption investigations and Majorie Peters, how the projects was funded, and controversy about the project. Civil rights movement ; Peters, Marjorie ; Vann, David Birmingham (Ala.). Mayor ; Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, Ala.) 12792 Mayor: Reflection on Career L: As you look back over your entire lengthy career as an elected official and public servant, what do you rank as the really rewarding successes from your point of view and what have been the areas of greatest personal disappointment for you? Dr. Arrington reflects on his long career as mayor. He mentions accomplishments like economic development, and improved diversity in city government. He also mentions public education as a missed opportunity, and disappointments like MAPS and block 60. He discusses current challenges to the city like regionalism, housing, and maintaining economic development. He also reflects on the role of mayor as a leader. Blacks--Segregation ; Diversity in the workplace Birmingham (Ala.). Mayor ; Economic development Oral History Dr. Richard Arrington Jr. discusses the latter part of his career as Mayor of Birmingham including the annexation of additional area, being the subject of an FBI investigation and the creation of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. LEMONTE: I believed we ended up yesterday with the early discussion of annexation, how that developed, what its importance was and I think you were at the first efforts that occurred under David Vann? ARRINGTON: Yes, I think we talked about the first efforts occurred out at a, major annexation effort was an effort at Booker Heights and it was during David' ; s term as mayor, he had talked with me about his vision of Birmingport becoming a major port. David thought that only way that would really come to fruition is that the city of Birmingham would have to take the lead and that the city of Birmingham was probably the only government with an interest and perhaps with some resources and make it become a reality. If we were going to do that, however, it meant that we wanted the property in the city, so we could sort of control it and reap benefits of whatever the investments were. David' ; s vision was that we would build a significant industrial park out in Birmingham, which would go a long way towards making Birmingport a major economic port that had real impact on the city since you can go out of Birmingport and many companies shipped out of Birmingport that owned barges and go right into the Tennessee Tombigbee River and of course that gets you into the major waterway that can take you right on down to South American if you want or you can go north. So David' ; s first plan was to annex property, picking up at Birmingham' ; s boundary, going out in the direction of Birmingport and finding a way to annex unincorporated property into Birmingham. He had discovered in his research that there was an old law in the book in the early 1900s for tax-exempt annexations and it was only for cities like Birmingham, whatever class we were, I don' ; t know what class, but the legislature had passed it for class 3 cities. A class 3 city can have the council ; can draw up a map of the unincorporated area that they wanted to annex, just as long as some point contiguous with the city' ; s boundaries. I had the council to call an election, pass a resolution on calling an election in that area. The only tax-exempt annexation, the only folk who voted were the people who actually lived on the land, not necessarily the owners of the land, but the just the people who lived on the land. And then we would of course take that, after the council passed the resolution, it would go to the probate judge and the probate judge would set a date for election. We' ; d hold election if the majority approve and the property was annexed for ten years and for commercial property, maybe 12 years, they paid no property taxes and we only had to give them police and fire services. Now, David had decided and I think he was right, but most of the areas that were annexed would want full services and there was a section in that law that allowed them to waive that tax-exemption and get full services right away. And so after having the first really push for that was, as I said, Birmingport, and the way we were going to do that is by including small black communities that called Booker Heights, it' ; s out in that particular area, that is unincorporated and needed fire services and police services and others. And because I was pretty well-known as a black councilman, I could go to Booker Heights and talk with them about it and explore their interests, that is what we did and of course they said yes, they wanted to and we set about to set election, we allied with a minister in the Booker Heights area as a sort of community leader, he didn' ; t live in the area but he had a church in the area. And he was very much for it and he was helping us the rally the 50 or 60 people who lived there. All went well, but Tom Glore came on, who was on the county commission and he somehow, without our knowing it, he convinced the minister, that was not in their best interest and I imagine, he promised that the county would begin to provide some services that they were seeking, because Tom was not interested in seeing that unincorporated property become a part of Birmingham. I have really never understood why, I just think it was part of the differences that Vann and Glore always had, almost all political issues. Because having the property come inside of Birmingham didn' ; t take it out of the county, it was still in the county. Not that it deny the county any revenue or anyway the county was getting, it in fact reduced the county' ; s responsibility to provide any kind of services to them including sheriffs and all of that because the city would then have to provide it. And if we had developed the property and developed well the county would have gotten much greater revenue. So as far as I was concerned, it was a political jealousy thing, but we discovered, just shortly before the election, that the gentleman we thought was working for us, had changed his mind and was trying to convince people not to, and had created quite a division there. We went forward with the election, lost it by one vote I think it was like 26- 25 with one for it being thrown out for some reason and so we lost that first annexation election. Now that was the first, what I called major one commercial-- to bring in commercial property. And the reason we focused on commercial properties, more than we did residential properties, it' ; s simply because--let me say we used residential properties, mainly we hooked them into annexation because that' ; s where the people lived and we had to have somebody living there. And most of these annexations that a talk about were annexations where there were small black unincorporated communities that had for years tried to get some sort of services like fire protection, from one of the neighboring cities, the cities closest to it tried to get annexed into those cities and because these neighborhoods that were not well-off or basically poor neighborhood, they simply could not get annexed and so we were sort of like riding in and it' ; s people who would provide them some of the services and the in turn would be helping us, because we would attached large (inaudible) of land--commercial land, voting it to the city. Commercial property was our major focus because of the tax structure for cities in Alabama. It is clearly skewered for cities, the tax structure skewered towards commercial property. Cities in Alabama with the exception of maybe Mountain Brook and one or two other cities that are not under what we call the cap, property tax and they pay a higher property on their residential properties, but all the other cities, depend upon sales taxes, business licenses, and occupational taxes and things of that sort of thing. But the city of Birmingham for example gets about 70% of its revenue every year from three sources, occupational tax, sales taxes and business licenses. So clearly, your tax base in cities is skewered in Alabama towards having commercial properties. You don' ; t have commercial properties, you don' ; t get jobs, and you don' ; t have jobs if nobody occupational tax. You don' ; t have business ; nobody buys a business license (inaudible) business you don' ; t make sales, you don' ; t get the sales taxes. So that was all part of the planning, which is why we were looking at commercial properties in order to help Birmingham to develop economically. LEMONTE: My recollection at the time, is that the media and many of your critics saw this as a ploy on your part to increase the number of black residents and strengthen your political base in the city, that is then a misreading of your motives? ARRINGTON: Totally, when we started it out the first one, for example, the one in Booker Heights, I was not even there at that time, David Vann was mayor. But if you look at all of the annexations we made, we probably, especially if you' ; re (inaudible) the Roosevelt City annexation, we probably didn' ; t bring 3,000 people into the city. Our focus was really not on residential properties, trying to bring more population in, we welcomed that, but that was not our major purpose. Our major purpose was to strengthen our tax base by annexing commercial properties that had not been developed and then using the resources that the city of Birmingham had to provide incentives to develop those properties, we could come in and offer people certain, first they had a tax break, we might come in and offer to do streets, if a developer would go ahead, or to help with the sewer development and there was no other city or no other local government that was doing that. So that was what our focus was, now we had done a tax-exempt annexation also under David Vann' ; s administration earlier, but it didn' ; t focus on commercial property. David had come up with Airport Hills, which was largely a residential area, and they wanted to come (inaudible) city and he called an election--had the city council call an election and that was a tax-exempt annexation, but it was largely just to get those citizens in Airports Hills into the city without going through the little convoluted annexation procedures, which was so archaic and was very difficult to pull it off. So we had used it out in Airport Hills and brought in largely a black residential area under David' ; s administration. Well when I came into office as mayor, I continued to consult with David on a regular basis, of course shortly after my time as mayor, he came back to work in the law department and his major responsibility that I asked him to take home was working on annexation, identifying areas that we could annex, that had great economic development potential and so we pulled off some major ones, which today, actually provide the foundation of Birmingham' ; s tax revenue. We first went east because there was going to be a racetrack, there was a vote dog racing in the city of Birmingham. And we wanted that track in Birmingham, so we went east using that process and we annexed the property out near the dog track, we used a neighborhood out there, near Trussville, a predominantly black unincorporated neighborhood, that had been trying to get Trussville to give them some services and they would not. We included them in annexation, they were the ones, and their votes brought that property in. So we got the property where the racetrack was being brought in that way, then David drew the plans so that we would go further east out beyond the track annexing property and the real dramatic move was that he came up with the decision that we would then move south through corridor an unincorporated property and into Shelby county, the next property into Shelby county. Well were already getting howls of criticism from suburbs and others, they said we were land grabbing ; they said all kinds of things. So suddenly we got Trussville and Irondale to come together after we began the annexation process, which would take us from the eastern area, south, down into Shelby county and we really were targeting the Cahaba River because it was a water source for us and David said we should try to control the water shed area and so we were focusing all of those things. Trussville and Irondale, knowing what corridor we were going through, moved to try to halt our annexation by carrying out an annexation themselves that would bring their boundaries together we would have no unincorporated corridor through which we could go. We learned of that, they were doing and under the law, there was something about the law you could only annex so much, you could do it a series of steps. And so when David learned of that, we called a council meeting on a Saturday morning or a Sunday and passed whatever we needed to pass, in order to get through the gap that they were trying to close so we couldn' ; t proceed with the annexation, it' ; s an interesting story. That annexation succeeded and we had to fight some subsequent battles, cities like Hoover tried to get their legislatures to pass laws to, which in fact would toss us out and invalidate our annexations. We had to beat them back in legislature, then they filed a suit against us, it went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court upheld our annexation, so that was good. We then made a major push along 280, now David, the 280 push actually came before David was working full time for us. A firm out of Atlanta, the Carter Company is a development that developed the Colonade and some other properties out on 280, hired David Vann to come and negotiate with the city, because I was trying to annex some of their property, so they hired David to work out a plan and they agreed on annexation. And David represented them and we annexed property on 280, where the colonnade was built, once we were there, we went further and annexed a (inaudible) property and we went down 280 and we annexed--later own we annexed in the same time frame, the property where the large shopping center, the Summit is, we went all the way down, weaving our way through properties where people would give us at least six inches to keep us contiguous, we went down--all the way down the Brookhighland Shopping Center. Now most of the Brookhighland residential areas are still unincorporated, there' ; s a small part of it that is in the city of Birmingham. But all of the commercial development and that' ; s what' ; s important to us again, the commercial, that shopping center is in the city Birmingham. Now even when Just For Feet built its new national headquarters some time ago and the newspapers also said they were in Pelham, they never were, they were in Birmingham, and I had negotiated that--even that deal with Serotti Permute Law Firm to provide them certain incentives for building that headquarters. So we did that annexation--the 280 annexation, David was still looking for ways to get out to towards Birmingport and we seized up on an opportunity to annex an area called Dolomite, a black community out in the southwestern area, sandwiched out there between Fairfield, Pleasant Grove, and Hueytown, that had about three or four people killed in house fires, the city of Fairfield would not give it any fire protection, or annex it, nor would any of the other cities. The city of Birmingham could never get to it because it was at no point, or out boundaries contiguous. US Steel was adamantly opposed to allowing us to come across their property or even giving us a small corridor to make us contiguous because they always feared the David Vann had a scheme to annex the plant out there, which or course he did. But David was always real dissatisfied because USX, one of the largest employers, with all of those steel mills out there were in unincorporated areas and apparently always told the city of Fairfield if they, which is where they naturally would be--annexed in the city of Fairfield, most people think they are in the city Fairfield, had told them so years ago, according to David, that if they tried to annex the properties that they were going to move their plants and go to Texas, where they had operations there. And that always bothered David, so he sought some way that we could get help there and if we could get to Dolomite, we would then of course call the annexation or we let the Dolomite folks vote the US Steel property, but US Steel and USX would never agree. So what finally happened is that I had went to Pittsburgh and met with one of their officials a vice president who turned out to have had a doctorate in Physics and was now in the administrative positive there. I talked with him about at least giving us a corridor through the US Steel properties, so that we would be contiguous with the Dolomite community and we could annex and provide them with some services. Against advice of his local folks who really didn' ; t like Birmingham and didn' ; t trust David Vann at all, he agreed to consider and flew down here on a couple of occasions and met with me and after getting some solid commitments and writing and so forth, that we would not annex their plant, they gave us like about a six foot corridor through their properties and they annex a six foot corridor to Birmingham, that (inaudible) gave direct access and made us contiguous with Dolomite. So now you can annex Dolomite, we could achieve one of our purposes, which is to provide this community with services they don' ; t have, better police protection, fire protection, street and sanitation services. But then David came up with idea that we would move--we could (inaudible) Dolomite and we can go northwest of Dolomite and go up to Birmingport again and now, this time the county thought they had blocked us, they had gotten Maytown annexed, the corridor around--blocking Birmingham, but David found a way, so we still went- we didn' ; t get all the property we had originally wanting the Booker Heights annexation, but we got a great deal of it, because we used the Dolomite property and he found the unincorporated corridors that took us almost to Birmingport, so that was one of our annexations. We annexed--we increased the size of Birmingham about 60%. We failed in one annexation because we used some old maps, we were going to annex much of what now is gone into Trussville, but we were going to annex a whole lot of that area along the interstate that runs through that area, property owned by USX and by Tutwilers. We put it all in a call and one of the mistakes we made--David recommended and he and I debated it and I finally gave into it, that we annexed the high school that was there. And of course that was a very sore spot and it really got the people upset and then lo and behold, by a week or so before the election, we decided that David and Bob Land would ride the area and look at it and lo and behold, when they got out and started looking around at the area where we called annexation and which we expected to win because we had a small black community sitting right there on Trussville, which had refused to annex and they wanted services again. And I had worked with a black minister there and I had lined up all of those people, it was about 20 families and they were all going to come in and vote and we had the votes to annex all of this property. But in riding out looking at it, they discovered that there had been a number of multi-family units built on some of those properties, all of the residents were white and we had used old maps that didn' ; t show that property was still under development and of course we lost that election, because first of all, the people were up in arms, particularly the city of Trussville and the white landowners and all and Mr. Tutwiler and they rallied those people living in those apartments to come out and vote and on that day of the referendum, they served hot dogs and tea at the voting place. And of course they gave us a (inaudible) they beat us like about one hundred and something to about twenty, so that was the one big one we lost, but most of them, we did succeed in carrying out and I would close this point out by pointing out that the tax structure in the city of Birmingham today rest largely, not totally, but largely on businesses that are in those annexed, that been building those annexed properties and we helped to build some of those businesses, you know. We got into Oxmoor and all that but even when we did 280 property, where the Summit is, we used a small black mining town community, which was originally Oxmoor, gathered black communities that Irondale would not take in and when that community voted in like the Summit property for us at the time that we called that annexation, but today that is one of the largest shopping center, even Saks Fifth Ave now, under construction on that property. But that' ; s in Birmingham, you go down that corridor and some of the major developments, HEALTHSOUTH national headquarters is in Birmingham and all of those were built on that annexed property and they provide a large amount of the revenue for the operation of Birmingham ; a large number of jobs for our city. So I can tell many stories about annexation, but that gives you some idea of it. The major annexation--we did annex some small towns and solely for purpose of providing them with some services. We did Roosevelt City, and didn' ; t bring any other properties, we just brought Roosevelt City in, and we did a little town called Brownsville, because they were going broke, they wanted (inaudible) and we annexed them. But our major annexation was those huge plots of land that we talked about. LEMONTE: You described a relationship with the man you defeated in 1979, in really quite a remarkable way that apparently you and he were able to work very closely with one another on important city projects, after you took office and he brought an expertise to your administration that was probably unavailable anywhere else I would think that our keen topic of annexation, I would think that' ; s almost unique in governmental politics to have the winner and the loser function so closely as a team, did it strike you that way at the time and did you David ever reflect on the irony of your careers? ARRINGTON: No, I tell we never did, I think David and I always enjoyed working with each other. And even following that election, we continued to work together and we didn' ; t even miss a beat, we just kept working together. For David, it sat aside this great (inaudible) he had to be involved in municipal government. It was good for us because he was perhaps the most knowledgeable person in municipal (inaudible) we had in the state. And certainly on annexation he knew things nobody else knew, I mean he put fear in the lives of folks were opposed to our annexations, because they just felt, after a short while no way to defeat us, when David Vann was handling our annexation. But we remained close politically our lives and friends up until the time David passed, I mean we would sit around sometimes and reflect on things that have gone down or talked about things that were happening, I would go up to David' ; s apartment, we would sit there and talk. But you know, there was never any friction between David and me, I can' ; t tell you why I think part of it, it was that I used to enjoy David' ; s style, he was always creative, he always wanted to do something. And plus he had such an interesting emotional things he wanted to do for the city. And I just enjoyed it and was glad to have aboard and he was clearly the architect of the major annexation moves that we made. I think we had started getting much of the so-called Oxmoor Valley now, where we have warehouses and major office plants. We started annexing some of that before I was mayor, when David was mayor. We annexed some additional property after I came in, but I was clearly following that David Vann pattern. David was sort of the brain trust behind and I was a facilitator because we had to use--many cases we had to use small black-- just about every area would use black voters to vote the land in under that tax- exempt annexation. And I at that particular time had the high enough profile, I was well known, being the first black mayor and I could move into those communities. People at that particular time, they were happy to get the services, happy to know me, happy to know that the city was interested, and so forth and so on. So we made a good team and I never forgot. LEMONTE: My recollection is that you really took a drubbing in the community from sources who did misread the motive, was there any way that you tried to explain to the business leadership and the media leadership in the community, this annexation strategy, did they listen in retrospect, do you think it was a public relations problem as well as a major economic policy? ARRINGTON: Well I think it might have been a public relations problem, but I' ; m not sure there was one that, even with best public relations experts, we could have avoided a fight. I think that was just--I am not resenting of Birmingham coming in annexation properties, that in some instances surrounding cities that had not taken them in apparently saw them as future expansion areas for them, places like Hoover. It was very interesting that shortly after we did one of those annexations, they got the law change so other cities could it, and that is a tax-exempt annexation and Hoover annexed into Shelby also, Hoover was once only in Birmingham. But the legislature took all--made all of the effort to get us out of Shelby county, but leaving Hoover in there and there sort of undercut the arguments too because here they are trying to kick Birmingham out from coming from one county into another, but they want to leave Hoover in Shelby county, where it had annexed into. And that also helped us in winning the case before the Alabama Supreme Court, when we were taken to court on those annexations. I just think, historically there had been opposition from smaller cities to Birmingham. Opposition in the legislature, they viewed Birmingham, as Big Bad Birmingham and that started before I was mayor, probably even before David was mayor. I think the situation probably--the resentment was heightened some because we were pretty proactive as mayors, both of us were and we were fighting for the survival of the city and we were--by the time David came in, the migration of people to the suburbs was taking place and (inaudible) going to some businesses like Blue Cross and all of that and David--whereas other mayors, George Sibyls had--some of those businesses started leaving under Sibyls administration, but Sibyls didn' ; t mount any fight against it. When David immediately became mayor, began to try to offer him incentives to stay in, applied pressure to these big businesses not to leave the city. If they left the city like Blue Cross, he immediately cancelled the insurance at Blue Cross ; I mean did a number of things. In fact, David made that decision that we would do that, and then he lost and then it really fell on my shoulders (inaudible). So the fight with Blue Cross really carried out into my administration and (inaudible) employees very happy because they were shifting over to a self-insured plant from Blue Cross plant. But there was heavy opposition to it ; I really don' ; t think there any way that we could have cut down on any opposition. I met with some people, for example, representative Ellis, who represented Shelby county in the legislature, brought a delegation in to see me and he said we had upset people down in Shelby county, people who had moved down, built new subdivisions, were living new subdivisions because they thought we were going to force them into the city. So he was an attorney, but I explained to him in the conference room there at city hall that no we were not trying to force anybody and we couldn' ; t bring anybody unless they voted to come in anyway, so we had not touched the residential areas. But I made a mistake of telling him what we were doing, I explained to him that we were targeting commercial properties and why. Now I don' ; t know why they had not thought about that before he and the other people. But really they wanted us to declare a moratorium on elections (inaudible) annexations elections, especially in Shelby county area. And I simply agreed that we would not touch any residential areas in Shelby County, but any commercial areas that were coming in, we would proceed with annexation. And of course once they knew what we were targeting, they began to target people, we were about annex a gentleman who owned a small business, service station, grocery store, he had wanted to come in and they applied significant pressure to him and the threat of boycotting the businesses and so forth and so that' ; s how they headed us off. I made one other major goof, we set up an election that would have annexed a lot of land owned by Drummond, it' ; s now called Liberty Park, by Drummond USX and whatever that company--liberty--whatever insurance company there, I forget the name of it, but it was a large welcome when Frank Sanford-- LEMONTE: Liberty National. ARRINGTON: Liberty Nations Insurance Company and David drew up that plan and we had this little black community out there in Irondale and we threw all of that property into that annexation call. So everything that' ; s now Liberty Park, it was in that annexation call. We had a hand down--we had the votes, I started meeting with representatives of those three companies and they began then to unveil a plan they had for the development of Liberty Park. And they were of course going to build these homes, these very expensive homes and they needed a (inaudible)--they needed to have a school system which was considered quality school system, they said Birmingham school system didn' ; t fit that bill, they could do those homes and so forth. And what they did in a series of meetings with me and probably should have been accompanied by somebody like David, but in a series of meetings with me, they cut a deal with me, where they bring--they would put the commercial properties in Birmingham, we would lead a residential properties, the properties that they scheduled for residential developments out. Well I thought that was okay, that was a fair deal. To show their good faith, they annexed like 50 or 60 acres of commercial property into the city right away, they annexed another small commercial piece where they had some commercial businesses-owned, just small businesses and the mistake I made is that they then said--well I said, " ; What we will do, we will just change the map and we' ; ll leave the commercial properties in." ; They then asked--said or no we would bring the properties in, we would rather develop the properties outside of the city and then bring them in because the city had stronger requirements for things like sidewalks and you don' ; t have that in the county and it runs the cost up, but as we build these buildings and they built a number of them, we would annex them. And I was so naïve that I did that on a handshake and obviously they never brought them in. I went back to see them when they started--completed two of the office buildings, they would not bring the property in. They subsequently went to Mountain Brook to try to get Mountain Brook to annex the property. They then explained to me they needed to keep the commercial properties to support their residential areas and provide for the schools and the libraries. When they couldn' ; t get Mountain Brook to do it they got the state legislature--I successfully blocked it the first year, but the second year they succeeded in getting the state legislature to annex it to Vestavia, even though it was not contiguous to Vestavia, so I learned a bitter lesson there and a bitter lesson down with Rust, I don' ; t want to get into it, but we--Rust major headquarters, the home company for Rust had a long time commitment to us to stay in Birmingham because we had to help do the studies for the (inaudible) cites. And again, just on the word of the local director Mr. Rosendale here, one day he called me and wanted me to send a letter to his national headquarters and we didn' ; t object to their moving down on 280 and property of that is owned by a real estate firm down there and that they would annex the property to the city as they built them and with my letter, the headquarters allowed them to begin moving down there. After they had moved into four very fine buildings down and I hadn' ; t heard from them, I went to visit Mr. Rosendale and of course I also--Douglass was a developer and was apart of their agreement, David had handle a negotiation with Daniel on the deal. Rosendale refused even to talk with me about when I went to his office, I mean he was sort of rude frankly and when I went to the Daniel folks to talk about it, they said they couldn' ; t bring the property in because they were being pressure by the Shelby county commission. And so forth and so on those were two occasions where I was a terrible businesses person because I assume that these people--but their word was good and I learned from that, that in doing a business deal, you bind it and those are two deals which should have gone though and my goodness, it cost us millions of dollars every year that we don' ; t have, those are major areas here in this metro area right now. LEMONTE: You mentioned Birmingham schools in relation to the residential developments. What (inaudible) you look back over your tenure in public life, what comments would you make about education, the importance of education, what was done or might have been done, certainly any thoughts you have about education in the future in Birmingham? ARRINGTON: Well I think the greatest failure during my administration was that we didn' ; t put enough emphasis on trying, pushing for the improvement of education, it' ; s just sort of tricky thing to do in a sense that education in public schools here strictly the boards of educations and so forth. But I don' ; t think that any superintendent that I' ; d gone to them and said, " ; Look we want to--you know we were giving schools, we built some new schools, and we did some renovations." ; Every bond issue we did, we went through the board of education and said, and " ; Don' ; t you want to be included?" ; And so we must have done some elementary schools and some other schools and provided renovation, but there was not major infusion of money into the capital program for schools and the school facilities were steadily deteriorating. I don' ; t know how much we could have done about the educational program, the academic program, I think the mayor' ; s office could probably have been a bully pulpit so to speak and we could have (inaudible) postured bully pulpit--city money as we have now begin--the city is now beginning to do. They only started that major effort just shortly before I left office, two hundred million dollar program. But we didn' ; t put enough emphasis frankly and I left it (inaudible) to the superintendent and the board and I was responding to what they asked of us and that' ; s very little of us to tell you the truth and all of the while the quality of education going down the suburban flight of course played a role in it. And the school system itself was just not making adjustments for the students that had--was holding up standards and expectations and so forth and city government wasn' ; t priding and pushing in those particular areas. There was just school system was just a troubled school system, a deteriorating school system, with declining student performance and all of those kinds of things. And I never, as mayor, I never tried to pull together any kind hearing or summit or anything talking about education, focus attention what was happening to those schools. It was only after Johnny Brown, he had began to push and I had a few conversations with him, it really dawned on me that we could have been doing more and he was a superintendent who had demanded a lot of accountability, he came in demanding accountability of his staff and teachers and I liked that very much and I was happy to try to join him to help provide some resources for the capital improvements. But that was one of the major shortcomings of the 20 I was there, we just let our educational system just deteriorate and I really didn' ; t think it through. I hadn' ; t gone to the schools-- board of superintendents suggested that we do many things, I had gotten involved when they had fight over firing the superintendent and of course the newspaper had said I was going to get politics into the systems and I ought to keep my nose out. And I used that as an excuse for why I didn' ; t do anything, but quite frankly, I didn' ; t see the bigger picture of even being--the fact that I had come out of high education and I' ; m dealing with all of these other issues, but I' ; m not pushing in educational area and I think we paid a price for it, we were late coming though it. And now we' ; re trying to rebuild our system, it will take years and there' ; s still problems of course and not just for the schools, I mean even trying to--kids perform better on tasks, we started building new schools, finished the regional high school, about to go to another, providing the money for. We got a teacher' ; s union happy to have (inaudible) superintendent and there' ; s a move I think that they' ; d like to get an elected board, so hopefully they could get a majority on the board and they can fire the superintendent. It' ; s a crazy kind of thing and I interpreted it all because they don' ; t like the fact that their feet are being held to the fire in terms of how they got to perform. But we' ; ll see how that comes out. LEMONTE: Do you have any thoughts if you were suddenly made soured public education based on your experience and what you may have heard from other mayors, what can be done with big city systems that make them serve the kids better? ARRINGTON: Well I really think that one thing we could do here would have been to give the mayor a little bit more authority, to make him sort of resolve the schools as they did in Chicago, as they did in Buffalo and they done in several other cities. Because quite frankly when it comes to getting some resources, especially capital resources for facilities and then new technology and so forth, it' ; s usually done at the local level and the state level and certainly that' ; s true here in Alabama. The other monies come out of this special education trust fund in the state for instruction, but there' ; s little money comes from the state for capital improvements and things of that sort. And so the board of education usually ends up coming to city government and they usually come to the largest city government and in the case unincorporated areas, they go to the county commission seeking funds. And even if they usually if they want to ask people voted additional taxes up on themselves, the schools usually come through--they have the cities that handle the referendum and so forth. Now I think the two major missing ingredients, maybe three in schools that I would really push, one is you got to put greater accountability ; I mean you have got to have principals-(Talking already in progress) ARRINGTON: Over and started trying to help and get involved and work it out and then I saw how poor the management was and the whole system, so at the very top, there were some serious problems. I think putting in place a stronger administrative staff that understood its responsibilities, held itself accountable, first things important. You could then, of course, demand the principals, you set goals and had expectations, and everybody had to work toward them. And then along with that you had to provide resources, you just can' ; t pump resources, even if it' ; s only half of the resources are in, if you' ; re not going to deal with the people who have to carry the program out. That' ; s easier said than done, because a lot of fine teachers in the systems, many, quite a few who' ; ve become laxed, while there have been some good principals and a lot of principals that have not been good. And we' ; ve had such trouble here in the teachers' ; union, the AEA in Alabama is such a strong force that most superintendents didn' ; t really want to take AEA on. I think this superintendent that we have now has done that. I think that' ; s a move in the right direction, but I think that' ; s what we have to do and that' ; s what (inaudible) I would have been the best superintendent, trying to find some good principals, even had to go outside to bring them in, I don' ; t think they tenure principals, we' ; re moving new principals in and of course you can' ; t get rid of tenured teachers. But you can push on in-service training for teachers and you can certainly get rid of the new teachers coming in that are not tenured if they don' ; t perform well. And quite frankly we didn' ; t do that in the Birmingham system until Johnny Brown came in. LEMONTE: You put public education generally in a negative column, another area that I suspect you would put in the same category was the maps effort, and I wonder if you could talk about what the thinking was behind maps, the importance you attach to it and you reflections on that experience? ARRINGTON: Well MAPS is another great failure, it was a metropolitan-wide program of projects, the centerpiece for (inaudible) was to build a dome facility and but in order--also to attract support for the dome facility, we proposed, providing special funding sources for the proposed one cent county-wide sales tax that would have been levied for education and some for recreation and some for cultural activities and things of that sort. We had about ten or twelve major areas, we had for public safety, (inaudible) and we had a number of things and it was good composite, but the opponents, the critics always argued that we would put those things in there to try to sell the dome and while that might have true, that might have brought us around, including these things, that still diminish the importance of having those things, of having funding to complete the McWane Center of having funding for cultural activities for the symphony and the dance groups and all of these groups. That was the good thing about maps, let me just start about it two or three ways, first of all, it was a major accomplishment to get the corporate community behind MAPS program, the corporate communities were very conservative about those things. Fortunately, Richard Scrushy, a CEO of HEALTHSOUTH was interested in it at the time in (inaudible) major sports franchise had competed for the Marlins baseball team, came in second in that. Had been offered by the man who was given the franchise of some significant share of the stock, as he told me, but had decided that he wanted to be the major stockholder in the franchise, he participated in it so he was interested in putting together a group in trying to bring a franchise to Birmingham and to do so, of course we needed the dome. That' ; s how we got started talking about it quite frankly. There were a lot of interesting discussions because he wanted to put the dome in Pelham and or somewhere way out and he made arguments about land cost and arguments about how much parking there would be and a whole lot of other things. He was arguing against my point, that the dome had to be downtown Birmingham. And I knew that because I had staff to do a study and they had studied ten or twelve cities with domes and what were going into their planning. Out of twelve domes, we looked at in those twelve cities, ten of them, the cities had used the dome facilities to revitalize their downtown areas or their old convention centers and what have you. And they had worked very successfully and most--a couple of cases out in Detroit, they had gone out to a suburb with the silver dome and Pontiac, MI and it had not been a success at all and of course as we talk now, we know that the franchise, both baseball and football had been moved back into Detroit and they had built a new stadium, football and baseball stadiums. So it was a flop, but I remember in St. Petersburg, it' ; s still there, I think the Marlins play down there now, but for years, it' ; s been a great dome to utilized stadium, because they didn' ; t--it wasn' ; t used a lot for conventions and things and that' ; s really what they mostly use for convention type activities, you got a major league franchise, like a particular like football teams, it may pay ten or fifteen games in there, you got ten or fifteen dates failed, but you got your other 300 days of the year you to do something with, so you do it with conventions and so forth, that surely would have carried it. So anyway, I never convinced Richard until he had a consultant, we pulled together sort of an advisory group of businessmen and consultants told them the same things they were in total agreement with me and so they settled on that, (inaudible) do a dome stadium down at the convention center. The corporate community came together behind that, now there were difficult hurdles to overcome like, first of all, it require the constitutional amendment to do that project, how we were going to get it out the legislature. We wanted a Jefferson County only vote, we didn' ; t want to vote it on the countywide, in order to do that, it had to pass the legislature without a dissenting vote and all of that and we did. That was a major accomplishment, but clearly we were only able to do it because the corporate community really put the pressure on the legislature and so perhaps, maybe one time in history something that significant comes out of Alabama legislature, nobody would vote against it, everybody either voted for it or abstaining, one way or the other. So that put us in business with it, now we hired consultants with some of the marketing, the people had have criticized our marketing, people have criticized the fact that the MAPS project had an advisory committee, which was going to have an executive committee that included the majority the membership of corporate people and not elected officials. But elected officials were going to be in the proposed executive group. But of course the opposition used that to also help to defeat the project. But I guess we never got across to people, we tried in the end, but first of all, MAPS first and foremost and economic development project. It was something Birmingham had never had, and it' ; s a sizeable economic development project that creates literally thousands of jobs, just in construction and then after the construction phase would create a less number of jobs. But it would make us competitive, we never convinced people that this is a job creation and the qualities of life starts with jobs. If folks don' ; t have jobs, they can' ; t have a good quality of life, if they don' ; t have jobs, they don' ; t pay taxes, they don' ; t pay taxes, we can' ; t build good schools, we can' ; t have fine recreational facilities, we can' ; t have all of these good things we talk about what we see in other cities and wonder why we don' ; t have them. We have to make an investment and so had ask people to approve the maps project with the one cents countywide sales tax, either 25% of that tax was to go for a transit system which was going to be countywide. We tried to hammer that home towards the end, but we didn' ; t succeed. We also, the second thing in maps was important about maps the people never really understood and it was quite frankly a back doorway to promote intergovernmental cooperation. Because under maps program, we set up pools of money for the police department and the way it was structured, all the police chiefs had to sit together and determine how we were going to use that money, we put in money to have a countywide communication system, throughout the county, one communication system that would be paid for by the maps money. All of the crime fighting programs would have had--instead of having 30 some odd different crime fighting programs, with every police department having this program. Under the maps program, using as a magnet to pool the money generated by maps that set aside for public safety, all those police chiefs had to sit together and plan together and implement the programs together. So it was a way to bring about cooperation, you had to do the same thing in every area, whether you were talking about parks, even for the schools. They say there wasn' ; t much money ; the schools' ; is only $75m (inaudible), that' ; s true, but that was more than the school systems here in the county were getting from the state. The state was (inaudible) $500m bond issue, but when they got through spitting the money up among 120 something public school systems, we didn' ; t have anything. But it even made the superintendents had to plan together, the fire department had to do that, so the other thing we were doing sort of--as I said, backdoor way, we were forcing some intergovernmental cooperation, which is badly needed here and we were starting it on a regional basis. And maps would have done that, because of one of the conditions we had put in was that, we set aside the pool of money for these different projects, but the advisory group (inaudible) has to be the chief officer in that particular area from each one of the governments and that' ; s what we were doing. But anyway, it failed, the opposition attacked us, first of all, Scrushy was attacked, we' ; re building a stadium for fat cat who (inaudible) to build his own stadium (inaudible) second thing was (inaudible) grabbed by King Richard in Birmingham, because Birmingham was going to get most of it, the dome stadium was going to be in Birmingham. I got some very critical letters from suburban reps and from the mayor of Trussville wrote me a letter like they used to--I thought they wrote back in the 1940s and I still have that in my file, in which he said all kinds of negative things about Birmingham and why is it--they come to the crime center and ought to call it crime dome and a number of things. They riled the people up and so by the time it came to a vote, quite frankly, it was suburban/inner city issue, it was a black/white issue and all you have to do is look at the outcome of the votes. In the city of Birmingham, especially the black votes, there were boxes there were 70 something percent voted for maps. But in the white boxes, even in Birmingham, we got only about 20 something percent votes for maps. And in the suburban areas the turnout was terrific, I mean the large number people, more than voted in a presidential election, voted in the suburban areas and they voted 99 against maps and of course that killed it. Now you know, during the post-mortem on it, people say all kinds of things, but in my opinion, Birmingham is just a city that' ; s consultant after consultant, national consultants have told us through the metropolitan development board, the chamber of commerce, Birmingham is just a city that' ; s just adverse risk and change. It does not want to venture out enough, to take the risks that other cities take to do things, that we have too much of a status quo city and I think our history tells us that. If you look at the where Birmingham was among the major cities in the southeast and going about 1948 and then you look at where we are now, you know that the other cities are doing some things economically and otherwise that we' ; re not doing and they' ; re doing it better than us and they' ; ve surpassed us. (Talking already in progress) LEMONTE: You framed the discussion of maps partly in the context of intergovernmental cooperation and you spoke about Birmingham being a risk-adverse city, I assume you mean the metropolitan area as well? ARRINGTON: Yeah, I speak of the metro area well. LEMONTE: My recollection is you are one of the very few public officials who had said over the years that you would support a consolidation of local governments where some major restructuring of local government, there hasn' ; t appeared to be a base of support for that, what are your reflections in what have been your experiences with governing the central city of a rather fragmented metropolis in what do you see as the possibilities in the short-run for overcoming some of that fragmentation, if there are such possibilities? ARRINGTON: Well, sub urbanization has been the very destabilizing force for Birmingham, which is a major city and so-called mother city in a city and the reasons are fairly obvious, we' ; ve lost most of the middle class suburbs and with it, gone a lot of the jobs and so forth and even though we have worked hard to create jobs and have been very successful in that area, we still, sub urbanization- is still a problem for us because there is really no cooperation for example, the city of Birmingham, it' ; s lower per capita income, compared the suburbs, still provides most of the amenities (inaudible), the botanical gardens, we are a major governmental contributor to the symphony. Going on we the one government (inaudible) to provide air service for this ten-county area. And the affluent governmental (inaudible) Vestavias and the Mountain Brooks, their governments did nothing, contributed absolutely nothing. They enjoy all the benefits of going to the symphony, (inaudible) cultural things. That' ; s an inequity that should not be allowed to continue to exist now, just in the sense of not only fairness, but the sense of what it takes to keep a metro area viable. I' ; ve tried to diplomatically point that out to a number of the mayors. We just could not continue to do this by ourselves and that we had a much lower per capita income than their cities had and yet their governments are contributing nothing to these amenities which absolutely essential for viable metro area. Of course, we did not get very far with that particular argument, I have participated in a number of conferences or groups like 20/20 has sponsored, but elected officials from metro and the talks are always good, but it never gets beyond that. I think for many suburban governments, there is also a political problem that they see and they feel that cooperation with Birmingham and somehow, it threatens them politically because their perception is that is not the thing, that the overwhelmingly majority voters in that area was (inaudible). There are some fear (inaudible) who would talk about threatening the quality of the schools in the suburban areas and the possibility at some point, there may be a forced merger of Birmingham' ; s schools significantly less quality than the suburban schools. That argument is perhaps the most frequently used argument that I hear. But the truth is and I think--of course there is political argument, suburbs are even in the legislature are represented by republicans, Birmingham is represented by democrats, there is the racial gap and the legislatures from Birmingham are black and those from the suburbs are white, white republicans, black democrats, a black inner city, a white suburban area and all the old problems that we have struggled with related to race over the years, still played out in some ways and even in these discussions, because politicians by and large or not, most of them are really not great leaders, they' ; re not risk takers of that sort. They' ; re busy sampling there to find what their people want, they don' ; t get out and lead ; they sort of follow what the people want. So we just have not done anything except talk about it, it' ; s been some ongoing efforts. I' ; ve tried about two years before leaving office to push the concept of the metro service districts, where everybody would be protected, but I tried to push to get the local chamber of commerce and the metro development board to support efforts in the legislature to create metro service districts where legislatures group, maybe several counties or whatever the natural dominance or metro area together and call that a metro service district. And set up a board of representatives and they provide whatever services that people in the district voted to them to provide and of course voted to pay for and we cited the area (inaudible) as an example, the chamber and other groups even sent committees out to look at to see what had been done and places like that and we cited a number of other examples, but he had gotten nowhere with the metro service district. In fact the time I was scheduled to make the presentation at a chamber breakfast for the metro service districts. I think the chamber reps started was not going if they ever stood any chance of selling that I was not the person to sell it quite frankly and while they didn' ; t want to offend by asking me not to do it, they did maneuvered, I forgot John' ; s name, but anyway, he was a southern research man for many years-- LEMONTE: John Rouse? ARRINGTON: Yeah, they got John Rouse and they presented a program where John Rouse was to speak and I was to speak and John Rouse would talk about what southern research institute, a fine institute, but what research they had done on this issue and so forth. And of course, it went down--he made his presentation that morning, I spoke afterwards and I said nothing about it, but clearly I knew what was driving the way it was done, but that didn' ; t matter. The good thing was that if we could sell the idea of metro service districts, that way--and then I had thought maybe with John Rouse saying to them, you don' ; t have to worry about your schools, unless you want to do schools, everybody in the district would have to vote if you' ; re going to do something about schools. But anyway, to date, it still hasn' ; t caught on and I think we' ; re suffering because of it, in this entire metro area, that' ; s why other areas are outgrowing us, we' ; re competing for economic development against the Charlottes. Charlotte is carrying out metro-wide cooperation without any legislation, they' ; ve had a group studying in it and making proposals, but they have consolidated things without that and have still have not, they' ; ve had stuff in the legislature didn' ; t have a group, they still have not taken a form of a vote, but they' ; ve gone ahead with consolidation. A (inaudible) is moving because Davidson county has a metro form of government. Jacksonville took off, these are cities that, even when I first got on the council, didn' ; t outrank Birmingham economically or otherwise, but now has passed us by. Jacksonville, Florida' ; s metro government, it has one school district and so it doesn' ; t have to deal with fears of folks worrying about the quality of education, they already got one board of education and one school district. But here in Birmingham, we still have all of those problems and you can around the country and sight a number of metro areas, where there is good regional cooperation, even through a metro-form of government or through some sort of intergovernmental agreement, they worked together. That gives them an advantage when it comes to competition, when competing with Birmingham. What we' ; re here in the Birmingham area, when we compete for jobs what have you, quite frankly there' ; s only one government, that' ; s really out on the forefront fighting that. Now we have the help of the metro development board and some extend to chamber, but for a long time, you have to remember, up until maybe five years ago, the major funding for even the metro development board was coming from the city of Birmingham, not from other cities and not from the business community. Thank goodness that has change in the business community has now stepped in and played a much more active role in funding the metro development board. I' ; m at the same point, I just reiterated that, the suburban areas who have been getting the growth and much of the growth is just not been regional growth, it' ; s just been a redistribution of jobs and things, they just moved folks out of the inner city, so to speak, or the central city out to the suburbs and so they said, " ; You know we' ; re growing." ; That hasn' ; t always been the case (inaudible) some growth, but you look at your net growth in terms of what was happening in the region. Regional cooperation is a serious problem and we have to--it' ; s a negative for us. It' ; s been pointed out to us by the every--the metro board brings, and the chamber bring in a nationally known economically development consulting group. They bring them in there four or five years and tell us what we ought to do and the problems are and how do we compare with the dozen other cities in the region and they tell us the same thing every time, you know they compare where we are in education and all of those areas with those cities and then they tell us the same things, we gotta improve our education, we' ; ve got to venture and takes some risks, they strongly endorse the maps program and things of that sort. But we just haven' ; t been able to succeed in getting people to understand that and-- LEMONTE: And you' ; re not optimistic about major change in the short-run? ARRINGTON: Unfortunately I' ; m not, I just do not see it, there are some people who are working hard on it, but you know, the 20/20 project, I think has been wonderful bringing people in, have a lot of input from people and one of the criticisms of the maps program, was that it has been put together by a small group of folks and hadn' ; t had any input from other areas. Well they got a 20/20 program going now and I think they had plenty input from maybe a ten-county area, folks have said this is what prefer. I don' ; t anything coming out of it quite frankly, you' ; ve got to find out about all of those things they' ; re talking about, you gotta find out where do we get started, where do get a hoe. And you really won' ; t have the major impact if you want to deal with some projects, I mean if you want to just deal with bike trails and hiking trails and making sure they run from county to county and we did that on the maps too, we did things like that. That' ; s fine, but it' ; s not going to generate any great economic impact and it' ; s not going to change a whole lot of things, and people just have to face up to that. We now have the zoo, it' ; s now semi-privatized, and I mean, three governments--four governments, the county, the city of Birmingham, Mountain Brook and Homewood. I worked on that years and years, I finally pulled it off, but only because of this strategic location of the zoo and the fear about what' ; s going to happen if we indeed in ever succeeded in moving the zoo to a new site, had been proposed two or three times. Homewood was very concerned about what was going to happen and Mountain Brook was very concerned that hundred and something odd, or two hundred and something odd acres of property out there that the city owned that we would probably sell it to some commercial developer and so forth and it would interfere with quality of life for those suburban communities. And that' ; s what eventually brought them to the table and we were able to hammer out some agreement where we turned to zoo operation over to the zoological society and we (inaudible) to operating expenses for ten years. So I hate to be so pessimistic, but I just don' ; t see anything happening, the attitudes have not changed. We couldn' ; t people to see the tremendous impact of having a countywide transit system, a true quality convention center with a domed stadium in it. Just to look at the economic impact, how many jobs are going to be created if we try to build the transit system, the facilities, build these trails, building new Olympic swimming facilities, so all of this-we could never get them to look beyond the ways we didn' ; t do anything and what social problems they imagine, these things would pose and we gotta stop being a status quo metro area, that' ; s all I can tell you. And I don' ; t know how we do it, I mean sit around and I mentioned all of these cities that passed our metro, I look at Chattanooga and that' ; s a destination site, Birmingham is not, so we' ; re obviously not doing something right and we' ; re just not cooperating and planning together. LEMONTE: Your political career is often linked to the Jefferson County Citizens Coalition, could you talk about its history, how it was organized, what it did and your thoughts about the coalition as, at the time you left office in it' ; s continuing role in local government. ARRINGTON: Actually it' ; s an effort to get the leverage ; black political support for an upcoming bond issue is how it really started. I think this is was during the Vann administration, but anyway, we were about to vote on bond issue and I looked at past bond issues and voting on them and it' ; s very obvious that bond issues that have passed in Birmingham in the last ten years-since the mid-60s anyway. I had passed because of the support from black voters and you could not find a white box where the issue had ever passed except for building a jail and I saw that right away, that' ; s not to say that no whites voted for the bond issue, it' ; s just when you took the box as a whole, there was a predominantly white box that everyone had voted against it, they were much more conservative about it, they voted against even when we said there were no new taxes involved, we could issue the bonds using the current taxation, they still voted against and so all of the bond issues that were passed and we had several that were passed and there were significant efforts to do things from street, public and (inaudible) improvement projects and libraries and things of that sort. They were passed on the strength of black voters, now also on bond issue I noticed right way that only about 20% of the folks had bothered to vote period on the bond issue at the turn out was always small. So anyway, noting that, I called a meeting, I was a council member at that time, but I called a meeting with all the black political civic leagues and group at 16th Street Baptist church and was very pleased that there was a super turn out and (inaudible). And I talked about having an umbrella group of civic leagues and political organizations and often the black community, which set forth a group of goals that we wanted achieved and the economic development, if we were going to support the upcoming bond issue, we had to have a commitment from the city Birmingham, black contractors and so forth were going to be guaranteed involvement of participation in projects. We asked the late Oscar Adams, who later became a Supreme Court judge, asked him to be one of the speakers, he went before the city, he along with Walter Jackson and some other small committee and made our pitch for involvement in exchange for support. But we also decided in that meeting that we ought to go to the county and say the same thing to the county and you know the county was not--the government was not having the bond issue at the time and we did that. So we started out well, the city of Birmingham, we were well received there, the black vote was very pivotal in the bond issue and I think they recognize that. They appointed a committee, in fact the reason I can' ; t tell whether David was--' ; 75, this was ' ; 76 probably when this is happening, I think he may have just become mayor. But anyway we got a committee ; I know Vann attended some of the meetings with the black groups committee, down at 16th Street Baptist church. Vann, Russell, Yarborough, I don' ; t know who the third person, but anyway, we met and we talked and of course, there was general agreement, nothing binding or ironclad, but there was general agreement that we would definitely see that the projects were carried out or implemented with the bond funds which included black participation, I mean there was an essence what we did. And that was good, but in the meantime, what was happening with the black groups except the David Hood who headed up, an attorney who headed up what was then the most influential black political organization called the progressive democratic council, in which was in arm of the Alabama Democratic Party, became disenchanted with because I had chosen Oscar Adams as the chief lead spokesman to go before these different groups and that' ; s what they said the problem was. And the reason for them--that Oscar Adams was a republican, he was one of the few black republicans, blacks were always (inaudible), but Oscar had come from a republican family, Dan had been a republican way back and so their family were republican and the democrats all of a sudden-the black democrats didn' ; t like the fact, the fact what they did was invite me down to it' ; s now best western, but it was a holiday inn at that time, at the civic center. And there I met Bernice Johnson, who was a member of that group, I was a member of that group too, but, David and I think they had already decided they were going to disassociate themselves from this umbrella group, which we were just loosely calling some sort of coalition at that time. My proposal to them had been at the outset that the progressive democratic council will continue to be the political arm, and but we would empower the council more because all of the black civic group, the black community as a whole would be speaking only one voice. And I thought it was a great idea, I thought it was ideal quite frankly and as I said, at the meeting, they bought into and we did follow up meetings, but soon, I' ; m called to this meeting at lunch one day down there with this committee and they tell me that they' ; re unhappy because Oscar is speaking and I said, " ; You know it doesn' ; t seem to me as that important, we' ; re talking about issues that transcend these political boundaries." ; And they said, " ; No you know we' ; re democratic and we don' ; t want a republican." ; --but I think they had really decided to get Bell out. And so I said, " ; Well where do you want the spokesperson?" ; And they really didn' ; t want a spokesperson ; they wanted to tell me--a nice way of telling me that they were pulling the organization out. Now this hurts us because, we don' ; t have a political arm, we got a group of folks who are voters and influence other voters, but we don' ; t have a political organization, that gets out there and puts out the sample ballot, does the political advertisement, because they are, not only were we attacked quietly by the black progressive democratic council, but Vincent Townsend attacked us through Ed Gardner, he called Ed Gardner and Ed relayed it to me, but it worked well for Vincent, and said, Ed, the Birmingham News had carried a story about out meeting and this umbrella group and says, " ; What is this happening, I thought you were the leader." ; When y' ; all make Arrington the leader and I think several calls to Ed, that led him to call me and he bailed out for the council and he called me and he told me what Townsend had said and I said, " ; Rev. Gardner, you know that' ; s just a divide and conquer tactic." ; But when he called me the second time, he told me the Alabama Movement for Christian (inaudible) Christian Movement, the human rights, what ever this group was called. They were withdrawing from the pack, from that coalition pack. And so it' ; s just like I mean it' ; s the efforts to try to hold folk together, it began to fragment and I got in a fight with the progressive council from of which I was a member and they had been supportive of me when I ran for office. But I was pushing for them to support younger blacks, Ronald Jackson, believe or not, (inaudible) legislation, they didn' ; t want to support him, Jeff Germany was getting to run for something, it may have been the city council and I got up on the floor and I made the argument about the need to bring younger blacks in. But they weren' ; t very open to that because they felt they had been tilling the field and the younger blacks hadn' ; t been coming to meetings and all. And so we had another extend (inaudible) debate about that. All of these things coming together and I finally decided that I would take what was left of that umbrella group and we would become a political organization also, in 1977 we incorporated Jefferson county citizens coalition. And immediately eclipse the council as a major political body and we did assemble it by networking with the neighborhood association president, civic league presidents and all of that. Ministerial alliance, black ministerial alliance and all of that. And so that the Jefferson citizens coalition became a very influential group in the 70s and the 80s because it had a strong black voter base, it has some semblance of unity and although most of the ministers and a lot of the presidents never were card toting members of the coalition, but they were strong supporters. And they implemented whatever we recommended, where the sample ballot, they pushed it, they pushed through the churches, they pushed it through (inaudible) organization, many of our members were neighborhoods presidents and of course people that got to be neighborhood president, because they were influential in their neighborhoods and so when they came from the coalition meeting and said this is what we' ; re going to do, the people followed him. And so from that we built an organization, our people were thrilled at the Birmingham News writing stories about how powerful we were and I was warning them all the time, look they' ; re setting us up for execution, they' ; re going to crucify us, they' ; re wanting people, you better watch this group because they had started calling us the political machine, well you know, they were (inaudible) very gleeful over that, you know, here' ; s a black group and we (inaudible) powerful. And I was saying no, you got to understand, what they' ; re saying to people you better watch this group, you get a political machine, political machines are not good, you know, well, that' ; s what they were doing. To the extent that the black vote determined the outcome of issues. We were a force to be reckoned with ; certainly when you dealt with a city where it was a majority of vote was black inside the city, we were very influential for almost 20 years, no question about the influence. But nobody ran in this county, nobody but a few people, particularly democrats even ran statewide without seeking the support of this group, because the center of black political strength is here in Jefferson County. I mean it' ; s a predominantly black belt area, but quite frankly I noticed a long time ago when count up all the votes in the black belt, you don' ; t have that many vote, every vote count, but the center for black political thing is first to all Birmingham, second is Mobile and then Montgomery. So I had that organization when I ran for office, the coalition was there and the fact that I was a founder of it and initially I was founder of it, I was the first president and then I became the mayor, I think that also added to the statute of the organization and brought more people in and brought greater support, I think that was a desire among black voters to see the first black mayor succeed and the coalition became sort of the mechanism through which we worked, that made us influential. It also helped me to withstand some of the battles, because I had a solid core of black supporters, I was not as vulnerable to negative news reporting and so forth as a political would normally be, because I had a strong base. I think that some political observers and some of the journalists thought that was bad for Birmingham because they see the news media as watchdogs and you have to have something that puts some fear and caution in politicians and one thing is the media writing about them and stirring the folk up and I think they began to feel Arrington doesn' ; t have to listen if he doesn' ; t want to because he got in his pocket enough votes to keep getting him elected. And I think that always bothered people, but the coalition' ; s been good, as we grown older and many of the people in my generation, we' ; ve gotten old, some of the key people have died in my generation. The young people have come in and organization, numbers-wise every year we issue--if people want to pay a ten dollar membership fee, we issued some four-hundred and some odd cards every year and we have some seven day people who attend coalition meetings every last Saturday in every month, that continues. But the organizations are not as nearly as active, first of all, in the early days people were excited and they got out they worked, they worked in neighborhoods. You couldn' ; t believe the kind of political organization there was in networking. In recent years we have to pay people to work, people have gotten accustomed to seeing blacks in office and blacks on boards they accepted them. Very few people will volunteer, we' ; ve distributed ballots, we would mail them out, but if we go door to door with them, we have to pay somebody to do that. If we follow the old pattern, the coalition started a pattern of standing outside the polling places handing out sample ballots ; we would just inundate the black community with sample ballots. And even though we would put one at every door or taken them to all the churches, distributing them on Sundays, we would still, on election day, put two people outside of every black polling place handing out the sample ballots, I mean just inundating everyone. Of course eventually all the other groups came on and started the doing the same thing. It sort of creates havoc at some polling places, folks get out in their six- seven different folks handing them sample ballots. Now we did all of that, the coalition-we took issues on little things, things people don' ; t even know, the W Clemons case, being a federal judge, being tried out in--not tried but under grand jury investigation out in California, the coalition played a major part, I was down vacationing in the islands in Jamaica. My wife called me telling me the FBI was at the house and they had to find, just because the grand jury wanted me out in Los Angeles and so I had to cut short my vacation, come back and go to Los Angeles and go before a grand jury on the matter of some questions about EW Clemons, that had grown out of some things his sister had been involved in federal funds. I saw that grand jury doing the same thing I' ; ve seen other grand juries do, I think the prosecutor--they were just--you got some top lawyers--it just didn' ; t look good. In fact, one of the grand jurors came out when I had finished my testimony, a young black guy from Los Angeles, he followed me out and he says, " ; I' ; m so glad you came you, you know." ; You' ; re the first guy who came here and really spoke for this man, because they didn' ; t know how--they can really do you in I mean, the government has a lot of power. If you had a girlfriend, they had done all of that, they brought in everything, all the money you had spent, which hotels you stayed in, I didn' ; t have everything (inaudible) they can paint such a picture. But what we did, we had came--the coalition hired three attorneys here, I' ; m trying to think of the name. But anyway, we hired three attorneys to begin looking into the EW Clemons thing, they helped and we began looking especially at the investigative methods that the FBI used. I had learned from that and we learned first things like, they had gone to his church and he had left his briefcase there and they got the old janitor, the janitor opens up and lets them in and they go through his briefcase, I mean they did stuff that was just illegal and that happens. And we documented all of that and we raised a bunch of issues and we entered that to Washington to Al Gore and had him to look at it, he was Vice President and he was so concerned about it, he then went to the judiciary committee and from that, they went to the justice department and from there, the justice department informed the prosecutor that the US attorney out in California to drop it. I mean that' ; s not a story we had (inaudible), but EW knows that is a fact, we have it documented. And we got involved in a lot of that I mean, when the whole thing about black elected officials started, the strong suspicion of how I got to be a target eventually down the road was a fact that we called together the first groups of blacks from all across the state to form a group to protest the harassment of black officials and of course the coalition was in the forefront and I was asked to be the chief spokesperson. And we put together the reports and followed them and that went on and on, the coalition did things like that, we then formed a statewide group today we' ; ve been kicked out of it, but it was the new south coalition, I was the founder and the president of the New South Coalition. I did that because young blacks from across the state like Michael Figgers, Hank Sanders and all came to my office had been encouraging me to pull together a group. I didn' ; t want to do it because Joe Reed was seeing it as a group that was going to be a competition for his democratic council, so anyway, we done a lot of those kinds of things. The organization still goes along, and it survives, it is not as effective and it just constantly the target of attacks because people know it' ; s a popular (inaudible). It is the white media and the white community certainly viewed it as a negative and I don' ; t understand all the reasons, why except I think any group that teams blacks together politically, it creates fear in a lot of the people in the white community. And when the white media is also telling them this group was this, that and this powerful and I think people get worried about where power is. Then over the years, erosion occurs, you can' ; t support everybody, you support some people and you help the win the office and then later on you have a difference of opinion with them and you help to defeat them. And so your enemy gets (inaudible) and you find out eventually you' ; re being attacked by former black elected officials, by the whites and so forth after a while they carry out a campaign to discredit the organization. On the coalition, even today, they get to the point, I' ; m not going to support the coalition people because people handling, say the coalition, they created all the stalemate of city hall, they do this, that and the other, it is interested, you know, but that sort of how the organization continues to work today. LEMONTE: You mentioned membership of around, was that the membership when the coalition was at its peak as well? ARRINGTON: Yeah, it might have been a few more frankly, all of us kept the organization open, even today, we' ; d let anybody come in except media, I mean we have guest. We try to be a very open organization. We kept it open so that people who did not want to support, say a slate or a position we took on referendum, was free to support anything else or if they' ; re working on a campaign, we set up rules where all you had to do say, I' ; m already committed to this candidate and I' ; m going to work the campaign and tell us that and therefore you participated on the political action committee under the debate about whether or not to endorse. We did a lot of things ; we kept it flexible enough in hopes of keeping people in. We started letting a lot of people in it, people like Lee Loder who was one of the founders, but he left us a long time ago once he ran for the county commission and we supported Ruben Davis and he' ; s never forgiven us for it and today his son of course sits on the city council and it' ; s just interesting for me as I look knowing the history. But the attendance has always been good and even today as I say, we get 400 and when something is going and you don' ; t pack the place, 100 and something folks would show, but the truth is that most of them don' ; t worry. A lot of the people who worked hard are old now and they don' ; t get out--they can' ; t out (inaudible) they can' ; t get out and do all of things they used to. They can' ; t walk all over the place and do all of that and the younger folks, they saw that we were paying people to do and so nobody does anything unless they get paid now. And these are the kinds of things that shape and it needs frankly, you know it needs new leadership, a new infusion of leadership and it needs to done and it' ; s got to be somebody who excites people. I excited folks, not because of my personality, but because I had been elected first to the council and I had been the spokesperson quote for the black community on police brutality, which the black community understood and I got elected to be the first black mayor. And although I don' ; t have the great personality, but the point is I am the first black to do these things. And so I' ; ve become embraced by the community, if I then have an organization one way to become visibly supportive of me and to associate with me and if I had a particular strength is that once I' ; ve dealt with people closely, a one-on-one I mean, they found something they liked about me and they became sort of loyal to me. And so I was that kind of catalyst for that politically building quite frankly, many of my detractors were hoping by the time I left office, once I left office, the coalition would be no more, the coalition was dead because, for them the coalition was Dick Arrington and few loyal falls and so we' ; ve been tested, see what happens. We really new another start arise that bring folks back, particularly young folks back because young people (inaudible). Do we need to have team politics, should elected officials be independent, they get confused. They think because we hand out a sample ballot to folk, that' ; s insulting, when in fact, all over America, they' ; re handing out sample ballots, the Birmingham news and the post herald (inaudible) slate area election, but when we endorse a slate, our critics convince folks through talk shows and so forth, that we' ; re a political machine trying to tell them how to vote and how dare we hand out sample ballots we think folks are not intelligent enough to know how to vote. While the Christian coalition passes them out at the churches now by millions and vote all over the country, it' ; s a whole lot of political games people play, but the organization can' ; t remain viable unless it can deal with that and offset it and that' ; s what we' ; re needing to do but we really need young blood to do it and step forward. And so we' ; re going through an interesting period of transition and every election, particularly every city election, for right now, is almost a referendum of the coalition, everyone of them. And people standing by hoping to kill the coalition candidates on every hand. LEMONTE: What was the process of determining who would be on the sample ballot that of coalition issue? ARRINGTON: We had a political action committee put together by the president and submitted to the body and body proved it. We would let, we added people according to what the body say and that committee did handle what ever screening candidates we did, a screening of issues and then by vote of that body, we' ; ll bring it back to the whole body and the body votes on it. Now even within the organization I have to say, we have had very few fights, we' ; ve had some cases where we had, I can' ; t think of the dentist' ; s name, he came in, this happened with politicians, folks decide that they' ; re going to run for office, they come in and join the organization, that' ; s no problem, you can join our organization and fill out the card and next month the committee comes back and the body votes you in, they haven' ; t turned down anybody. LEMONTE: Any white applicants? ARRINGTON: We got one white member, just one white member, the guy who runs the Edwards furniture company, he was at the last meeting, I haven' ; t seen him. But just one white member in that group, at one time we had about three or four, but now we' ; re down to one--. LEMONTE: But never had a problem accepting more if they had chosen to do so? ARRINGTON: It' ; s just been seen as a black group and it' ; s been a group that' ; s focused largely on so-called black community problems and I think that sort of circumscribed--a membership I was speaking to some point, I don' ; t if you remember what it was-- LEMONTE: The process, the selecting of those who would be endorse? ARRINGTON: That' ; s the way we do it, now once in city elections, once we went to districts, what we did we made sure that the so-called political action committee that does the screening, that we have district committees and then they bring in district 6 (skip in tape) once you' ; re endorsed we do the sample ballot, we mail it out and we distribute it, we buy the radio advertisement, we run radio ads on your behalf and we run a phone bank on your behalf. And at area elections we run a citywide transportation system and it' ; s a pretty good organization and when it' ; s working, it' ; s outstanding. LEMONTE: Did you regard it rubber stamp, which was the way the media frequently depicted it, that if you went in and express preference, that almost became the result? ARRINGTON: I didn' ; t regard it as that, but I don' ; t think that was far from the truth, I think that the members of the organization were anxious to follow my leadership. Sometimes I remained quiet on issues as they debate them, but once I spoke on it that was it, most folks felt they had to support it, but I think that was true, it' ; s changed somewhat, but it hasn' ; t changed totally, even today, because they got a lot of younger folks in there now. But I would tell you the older people in there, they are still the same way, they want to know what I have to say, even when I was the president, (inaudible) the first time I stepped down and then (inaudible) became the president and then Louis Spratt became the president. Then we tried to make Linda Coleman, but the men in there wouldn' ; t accept a woman as president, I think that sort of broke her heart and gave her a sour taste about it because she had been a hardworking organization and we still don' ; t have a woman president, the women have to secretary and things like that. ARRINGTON: We' ; re still an organization, so but even today the older people claim their old ways of thinking. We' ; ve tried to bring in young folks in a lot of places, I mean, take for example, people don' ; t know how I fought to get Hank Nelson on the school board of education, the arguments at the coalition--and we had control because we had some coalition people who were loyal to us on the council and therefore we could control those board appointments. The arguments about Hank Sanders was, they didn' ; t like him-- LEMONTE: Hank Nelson? ARRINGTON: Nelson, yeah I meant, he hadn' ; t been here, what does he participate in? I never seen him in nothing, he live over there in the white community on the Southside, he' ; s not one of us. We' ; re arguing that--what we must do to strengthen the black communities is to reach out to these young people who we struggle or educate, their families spend their last penny to get them educated and so forth, we got to bring them in circle, at least help those who we think got leadership abilities. But you had a pool of good community workers who have been around a long time, who felt they had paid their dues and they needed to be elected, that would pay off for them, they wanted to run for office, well we don' ; t want to endorse anybody for city council who is not already recognized in his or her community as somebody who' ; s been doing something there. Well unfortunately when you look at that, it sort of condemns a lot of the young folks because they' ; re not the ones that go to neighborhood association meetings, they don' ; t get elected president or officer, they' ; re not there. And the only time they will show up at those meetings is when they' ; re running for offices. And still the folks saying well, where have they been and that really has shaped endorsements and look of things a whole lot, like who gets on there, because people say, well Mr. Sams, so and so, she did, well she' ; s good enough to be the neighborhood and she' ; s (inaudible). That' ; s who we ought to be supporting, this guy is from Harvard, MIT and he' ; s a nice fellow, he might have great potential, but he ain' ; t been coming to the meeting, I mean that really goes on, now how we change all of that, I don' ; t know, that' ; s why I think they young leadership coming in, we' ; ll probably change it and it may be necessary for the organization to survive. LEMONTE: You mentioned the coalition responding to the creation of districts, when you first ran for mayor, the council was elected at large and then the change of districts occurred, I guess in the early 90s perhaps-- ARRINGTON: 80s. LEMONTE: What difference did that make for you as mayor, particularly in terms of the city council and its relationship to you and how do assess overall the moved districts? ARRINGTON: Well I, first of all I was never really for the move of districts, let me say that, because I just thought giving Birmingham' ; s history, districts could only create more division, we had reached a point in Birmingham where there was about, black and white votes were almost equal and when you run city wide, you couldn' ; t afford to ignore the problems in either group and that was one thing that was overcoming the racial division. We got to a point in Birmingham, once the Voting Rights Act passed, that you have--and you' ; re running for the council, you had to assume a moderate position, because you have to draw votes from, you had to get white votes, you had to get black votes, I mean that was just a hardcore facts. And that was good for Birmingham I will tell you the truth, because it was a bridge builder for Birmingham and it was a moderator for the politicians in Birmingham. So I never wanted to see the city go to total districts, even though I knew the law and I think David had argued the one man, one vote kind of thing and it' ; s good. But for Birmingham, I think it was good and I still, even today feel the same way about it because people are just different. Politicians respond to those who get them elected and what have you. I' ; m sure that my--first of going to districts and the changing makeup of the city' ; s population, the growing number of blacks and black dominance in numbers within the city' ; s on the city' ; s voting roll, made a difference for me, it helped me with projects, it made me stronger politically as a mayor. But the truth is that when we were even at large and when my first two or three councils that I worked with were majority white councils. And I don' ; t think I had any difficulties getting programs passed, in part because I had served with them, I knew them, I had one fight with Nina and Betty, but just before left council, but before that I didn' ; t. Because I worked the same way with those councils that were predominantly white and during that time, there was a council election every two years ; I worked the same way with them as I sort of worked with this group. Also I had--they had to consider the fact that there was a strong black vote out there that they also depended on. And I think my political style of dealing with them was one where I didn' ; t push them or what have you, I kept them informed, I consulted with them a head of time about programs I wanted to push and tried to be persuasive that way so when I brought it up, I knew I had the support. I think they were very mindful--you know sometimes they get angry, they fault me on things like a theme park and all that. But generally speaking I think if it was something they could swallow and thing was good for the community, they went along with it, also being mindful of the fact that there was a large black vote out there, which they also in part depended upon, which they knew was very supportive of me. The other thing that happened was once we went to districts, that gave some independence to whites that they did not have by independence I mean from the political pressure of a black vote. In fact the plaintiffs in the case that we settled in that district, make no secret of it, in their what ever they documented brief, they clearly stated in there, that a major reason that they wanted to go to districts was because of the coalition and they wanted to get rid of the dominance of the Jefferson County Citizens Coalition and they stated that it mattered not with them, it didn' ; t matter if they only got 1 person that represent (inaudible) coalition could not be--. LEMONTE: So the plaintiffs that were claiming that were minorities discriminated against were in fact white plaintiffs? ARRINGTON: Russell Yarborough started pushing a council, remember after somebody, I don' ; t know---after his defeat or somebody--and as I said, they just didn' ; t make a secret of it, they put it in the brief it' ; s all written out. So it didn' ; t change the racial makeup of the council, we were 6-3 at the time, when it was at large, had gotten to the point because the growing black vote and the movement of whites out of the city, it was a 6-3 racial breakdown, remains even today as 6-3 racial breakdown. I thought it was going to go 7-2 this time, but when they got through drawing the line, it' ; s still the same. So it didn' ; t change the racial makeup of it, but it changed the behavior in politicians, because it became district-oriented, not city- wide and of course a lot of the division crept in and the fights and so forth and of course it accentuated black/white thing to a degree and then the blacks were by and large coalition folks, endorse by coalition in most cases, at least 5 or 6 or so always, but brought in all of the problems you have in a political setting. LEMONTE: The thinking of the plaintiffs was if there were whites that were elected, they would have to gain the endorsement of the coalition and then would be the part of that court machine? ARRINGTON: George Sibyls was also one of the key folks who had always been in a mind that you know, I (inaudible) too powerful, he had never forgotten the fact that I played a role in his defeated and he had never forgiven me for that and all of that. And he was very active in that group, but they said we wanted to elect some candidates that are not controlled by the coalition. Even though now candidates are controlled by the coalition because the coalition has controlled (inaudible) influence of the black voters and you can' ; t get elected, even whites can' ; t elected today without some significant black support and who control that black support, the coalition. And under the Voting Rights Act you know, we think we' ; re being discriminated against because we don' ; t get fair representation as minorities. And it they stated something in there that even if we only get one person elected whose not influenced by the coalition, it would be worth it. LEMONTE: You ran for mayor five times, did the nature of your campaigns change over that period of time, or did you retain basically the same campaign style? ARRINGTON: It never really changed, I had broad reception always in the black community and stayed that way, except that (inaudible) gets you (inaudible) no matter which community you' ; re in, you get political enemies and detractors and so whereas the first two or three elections, I' ; m winning about 60 something percent of campaign, it drops down and you start winning like 57-58 and when I was leaving, I was probably winning 54% of the vote and even though the votes were black, it changes generations and all that get to be a part of it. But my campaigning didn' ; t change, I even went to--. LEMONTE: I believe we stopped in talking about the change to districts and then we were talking about your campaign and the changes in your campaign style over the times that you ran for office? ARRINGTON: No, I think the campaign style remain essentially the same, (inaudible) ran for office, I got an access the second time I ran, maybe to a broader audience. But I the style didn' ; t change, I remember going out in a more conservative areas of the city, in the eastern area, I go during the campaign for reelection, to go before their screening committee, Mr. Blackburn had made sure that I got before the screening committee. They had a huge screening committee, I must have had about 50 people on the committee, they had pulled in people from all over the eastern area, a few of whom I was familiar with some of the attorneys downtown. And so I went out there well-prepared at least a challenge then, and so I carried with me a list of every public improvement project that had been done by the city during my term as mayor and passed that out so they could check it off and they could not deny that we had given some significant attention to the eastern area. And also sort of staunch the talk that they had been doing, some of them-- that I did nothing for the eastern, I had no concerns about that area, but when I put the list--and they went down the list, and it was a long list because we had done a lot of things out in that area, some major projects and they couldn' ; t deny and I understand from talking with Mr. Blackburn and few others after I left that place, that it create a little division, they had a serious debate as to whether or not they were going to endorse me. Now that would have really been an achievement and a triumph at that particular time, to get an endorse from this political action committee representing the eastern area. They just finally concluded, I' ; m told that they just couldn' ; t that, people wouldn' ; t understand, but at least they didn' ; t deny that time, that I had done some things that were important in that area. But my style stayed basically the same, I never changed it ; it was dictated in part by the neighborhood structure we have in the city with neighborhood associations, there were few other groups that provided for them. I had a televise debate in the second campaign with John Katapotis, that was carried by local television. That was about the only time I had gotten on TV in a campaign, I never used any television for any of my campaign, that was sort of part of what we thought was a campaign strategy, (inaudible) radio ads and things of that sort and then printed material. But the style as far as I can recall really did not change, I probably campaign hardest the last time I ran, I was under the stronger attack and about what was being done in the city and so forth and as I had learned earlier, you do have to remind voters of what things that have been done because you can achieve some big projects, projects that are important for them, you get those accomplished and people tend to forget them. I mean you can put in, the neighborhood that' ; s been flooding for 50 years and you can go in and put in 5 million dollars worth of sewers to stop the flooding and after a months they forget all about the fact that it was ever flooded, so you have to campaign and remind people of what' ; s been done. ARRINGTON: I don' ; t think my campaign style changed very much. LEMONTE: You spoke earlier about the fact that your very, very strong base of support in the black community at the beginning sort of eroded over time as there were issues and disagreements among your supporters, so that I believe the percentage of the black vote that you received declined over time. What happened to the white over time and how do you account for that? ARRINGTON: Well, I never got more than about 12% of the white vote, I probably got the most white votes the first time I ever ran in 1979 and I was really never able to increase it, it sort of stayed stuck at about 10,11, 12 percent, except that I was under the grand jury investigation by the federal government and it dropped down to around 4 or 5 percent. Well, how do we account for that, basically bottom line, I think many whites just really never felt comfortable with me and I learned over time that people don' ; t really vote for people that they don' ; t feel comfortable with, I mean you have to make them feel comfortable, I think there was another factor involved earlier and that was the fact that many whites in Birmingham had never voted for a black before, had a few whites to say that to me, who were commending me from time to time about the job I was doing, but admitted to me that they didn' ; t vote for me and that they never voted for a black, so that kind of voting behavior also, I think played a role in, but you know about the end of my third term, the candidate, there were no serious white candidates in the race. I believe when I ran for my forth and fifth term, I ran against, my major contender was Emory Anthony and Emory was able to poll a large number of white votes, he got about 80% of the white votes and they came right back in the last election running against me again and Emory Anthony was a municipal judge at the time in the city of Birmingham. And he came right back and ran against me the second and he still polled about 80%, the first time he did it, I attributed his success with the white vote to a couple of things, he had a very strong phone bank being run by the firefighters and the FOP and they tax busters, a group called themselves tax busters and they were calling white voters on his behalf, I think a part of the message in addition to the fact that Anthony was, in their opinion, a better candidate for Birmingham was that they saw it as a way of getting rid of Arrington, who represented, of course machine politician and who quite frankly had never won voters. I came into office as I said earlier, there were issues about police, minorities participation, all of those battles I fought and in the minds of some voters, I think there was a perception that Arrington is racist and he deals too much with race, he doesn' ; t support the police officers and I just think over time with people running against me and to reinforce that kind of thing, whites just really--the majority of them were about--85-90 % percent of them just never were comfortable enough to support me. Even some of them I think, who thought that I was doing a pretty good job, but they just never got around to feeling that they could support me. I always claim that one major contribution I made is, that these voters wanted so badly to get rid of me, that they finally started voting for a black and that changed their voting behavior because they realize that the mayor was likely to be a black, given the way blacks and whites vote in this town and the make up of the voting roll is going to be a black. And so they finally recognized that and after Bob McKee ran, ran a very weak campaign against me, got about 30% of the vote, I think they realize they had to come up with a strategy and that their mayor was going to be a black at least for the time being and they had better try to find a black whom they trusted and wanted to support. And I think once the people change their behavior, once they had voted for a black, I think from here on and they' ; ve been able to do it, they did it for Kincaid, did it twice for Anthony, so we did see some evolution there in the behavior. LEMONTE: Do you think it' ; s possible that Birmingham might have a white mayor at some point in the future? ARRINGTON: I think that it' ; s possible ; yes I think it' ; s possible. It' ; s not going to be easily done, but I think there is some whites whom, a few who could run a very good race and might be elected. I' ; ve had some people to talk with me about it and had some names tossed around and of course, one guy, his name is Lemont (jokingly referring to Lemont). And so I think it' ; s possible, I think a white that already has some identity and it' ; s positive identity and acceptance in the black community to be a very serious candidate. LEMONTE: The media topic seems to me an important one and I guess a complicated topic, radio, TV, press, historically white press, black press, but could you talk some about your relationships with media and the importance of media in shaping the political environment? ARRINGTON: Well, my relationship with the media was never really bad, it wasn' ; t good, but it wasn' ; t really bad ; number one, my personality and so forth just didn' ; t lend itself to the media, I didn' ; t have the flair that they usually find in politicians who loved the spotlight and who can give them good sound bites and things of that sort. So I preferred to stay away from the media as much as I could, although I tried when they requested to be accessible. I got interestingly, I got fairly good support from the media when I ran. I got endorsements for example, even when I won in ' ; 79, the big story there, a few days before the Birmingham news came out with this endorsement, was the fact that they were going to endorse, they were going to endorse me over David Vann and over the other candidates. Mr. Vincent Townsend first apparently had agreed with his editorial committee, they had gone to him and they were just elated that he had agreed, in fact some of them leaked the word to us, I had learned about it and they were really pleased because they never thought that he would never do it. Well when the endorsement came out that, the day they endorsed me, came out in the newspaper. What they did was sort of a dual endorsement, in the Birmingham News ; I think the post gave me an endorsement. The Birmingham News did a dual endorsement with David Vann/Dick Arrington kind of thing and I learned from the people who had been leaking the information to me, that Mr. Townsend had left the office early and was at home listening to the 5:00 news and one of the local TV channels, I think it was 6, ran a poll result and had me up around 40 something percent, which is what I eventually polling. And had the closest competitors of somewhere around 15-20% and he picked up the phone immediately and I was apparently (inaudible) this guy could win and he called in and he them to change the editorials to do from endorsement meeting that he had approved to do a (inaudible) endorsement. But after that I got the news in the post herald endorsement, sometimes they did it with slight reservation, but they gave me good endorsements, what did happen with the media, the daily papers was that, in the last two years, I think they sort of decided that I was having too much of what they call a cakewalk and so what they would do is like two or three weeks out, they would run stories on me and they would get like on what I had accomplished and not and they would get pretty critical. One year they did a grading at one of those things and I was surprised how they graded me down, you know, they were giving me Cs, Ds, Fs in areas and so forth, but I learned from some reporters that that was sort of what they decided to do as they thought it was time to try to make the races for mayor more competitive and they didn' ; t like the fact that I was running the machine backing. And so what they would do is bash me for couple of weeks on a series that they would do, but they would still come back and put their endorsements out--but they would still endorse me. So I learned to get along with the media, my first term wasn' ; t good, you know, I didn' ; t understand, they gave me a honeymoon when I first got in there, they let that run for like two, a couple of months and then took out after me about some things, you know the gasoline truck that Willie Davis had released. Two or three little items you know, they said I had some sort of mentality because David Vann had taken the door off as some indication as to he had (inaudible) over administration and I of course had the door put back up. So they said I had a besieged mentality, so they gave me--after that that went fine I mean, (inaudible) deal with everybody, the reporting really wasn' ; t bad, they always hit the coalition. I had a rough time with the media when I had the organization the backing all-black slate of candidates. They tarred and feathered me on that one, but overall it wasn' ; t terribly bad. LEMONTE: And that occurred during your first term as I recall? ARRINGTON: Yeah it was my first term and that was a big, big, big story. We had a situation in the coalition where we had some strong black candidates running and at that time, we still had a (inaudible) of people in the organization and it came down to Pat Davis whose pretty strong candidate, (inaudible) a very big fight in the organization, not a debate about it and the group frankly really split down, not permanently, but on that issue and what the two war agreed on was those who were for--Pat--we' ; re gonna print dollars and put out-- include her on the slate. And it would be all five blacks instead of four blacks endorse. And those who wanted Nina we printed some ballots and they could go out and campaign for Nina. We did that of course, but the big story was that it was an all-black slate and of course I recognize that, that was really for the coalition anyway. It was not the right thing to do, but that was a good strategy behind it, good political strategy behind it because blacks were not so dominant in terms of voters at that time, that the black vote controlled, we knew that, what the discussion had been that the only way we were going to get a black majority on the council, was to convince black voters, now remember, we' ; re still running city-wide for the council. To convince black voters to vote an all-black slate and out of that we thought we' ; d get three blacks elected. I think we had William Bell on the council and maybe Jeff Germany was on that, they had two blacks on there, it' ; s before Bessie Estelle came on there I know that. And so that was a strategy because the black vote was significant, but it wasn' ; t controlling and everybody had to run at large in the city. And so in a number of sessions with the political action committee people, decided that the only way we were going to get a majority is that we could somehow come out and get the voters to vote a straight black thing and out of that we' ; d probably get three. Well of course the whole thing backfired on us and we were lucky that we got one black elected and that was William Bell, who was (inaudible) at the time, and he was reelected, but that strategy really backfired on us. LEMONTE: You mentioned briefly, the campaign that occurred during a year when you were under investigation by the FBI? ARRINGTON: Yeah. LEMONTE: That' ; s a long and complicated and I' ; m sure unpleasant topic for you, but would you discuss that and what your view is to why it happened and what its impact was you as mayor and maybe as a person? ARRINGTON: Well the impact was powerful and terrible to be very honest with you, for me and for my family and really for a lot of people who supported and I thought even for the black community. Because the one thing black voters wanted to be proud of was a mayor and they didn' ; t want mayor who was supposedly corrupt or anything of that sort. That' ; s one of the things that they had been proud of, dealing with me is that they tell people that I was impeccable, my character--you know all of these kinds of things. So it was really a very difficult time, but now as to why it occurred, I don' ; t fully know, but I have a whole lot of information on that. At one point when the US attorney in Montgomery indicted three legislatures from Birmingham, people have forgotten that, that' ; s interesting. But they indicted EB McClain, Pat Davis, John Rogers, and Jim White, there was a white, so they indicted those four and it came on the heels of a lot of investigation of black elected officials. Apparently was the occurring really sort of threw out the country and I was called upon at the time to call together black political leadership and political activists in the state to form some sort of organization to campaign against what we call harassment of black elected officials and I did that. I called (inaudible) we called and met in Montgomery at Dexter Ave Baptist Church, the church that was once pastured by Dr. King, right down the street from the state capitol. It was well-attended and we had a news conference, interesting enough I had a couple of FBI guys posing as news reporters, when I got out of my car, they ran up and they started asking me questions about, it was a black guy, he was in the city jail for something and his close friend Willie Davis--I mean they started asking embarrassing things and they tried to harass me during the--I mean they didn' ; t act like journalists at all, it turned out later I learned that they were the FBI guys, they do that kind of stuff. But we went through that, we formed a group and I wrote a paper and we sent it off to congress our report and we did some research and we talked about what was happening in Georgia, an investigation of Maynard Jackson by the FBI and his police chief, Eldrin Bell and we got that code and we got a lot of information and we complained that there was a plan for black harassment. Well, it may have been that I was already targeted for some kind of investigation at least, they looked closely at me, I just didn' ; t know it. I learned-- and if not I thought some people said you know, the role I was playing as a spokesperson, certainly didn' ; t endear me to the federal officials in there at all because I was attacking the federal officials. The local republicans had sent Joe Dixon to me before this happened, once when I was criticizing Reagan, after he got in office and this was around ' ; 82 or ' ; 83. And Joe Dixon, who is a republican black newspaper, came to my office one day, to bring me a message from a republican--he said it' ; s from the Republican Party, but they had a meeting over at the HUD office. And he said and the director was of course, I don' ; t want to call his name, but he was the director of HUD and was active republican. And they were very unhappy with the things I was saying about the president and they had sent me some threatening messages, but I didn' ; t pay any attention to it, I thought they were silly really, because I didn' ; t think the republican party as a whole or anybody in Washington cared what a man down here in Birmingham said about Reagan. He' ; s a very popular president, but these local folks were angry with me because I was criticizing him in the media and saying he was abandoning cities and then he had bailed out on us on that reverse discrimination thing and I was being very negative about it. So that helps to build up the element (inaudible) Arrington' ; s got to get his. Now then from a very reliable source, a person who once held a very high office in the state, came and wanted to meet with me and now congressman, Earl Hilliard and he told us that he had a female friend in the Mobile office for the US attorney general, and that she had informed him that there was what we call a hit list for black elected officials who were to be investigated and he gave us that list and of course I was at the top of the list. William Bell was on the list, they had-it was about 10 of us on that list and this official, a friend just wanted us to know, be careful because this is factual. They had the meetings in the Mobile office and this is the list of the people they are running investigations. So I had that information, then of course the FBI had come to see me once, but I didn' ; t know what--I was naïve. About five of them came to the office to see me to ask about a building over in the Ensley area that we had sold to James Parker, who had been a partner of mine, either had been or later would be in the funeral business. And I didn' ; t even know the building had been sold to him. This doctor had given us this old building, I guess he was writing it off as a tax benefit for him and I had of course turned the building over to Bob Land, the handler of community development. And we' ; ve been having tenants in it, we just had one tenant and that was on the ground floor, there was a drug store and we never did anything with the building, the fact is the staff completely forgot that we owned it, even had the building. And as Bob Land explained it to me, James Parker who had this funeral home two or three blocks from the building came and inquiring about the building, purchasing the building. And found out the city owned the building and he went up to community development, I didn' ; t even know he had been there and he talked with Bob and Bob then made a recommendation to us that we sell him the building. And of course we sold it to him on some very generous terms because when the man gave it to us, there was still an outstanding mortgage on it, but it was a very little--we hadn' ; t been paying anything, so we sold it to him because eventually (inaudible) came back to the city. That led, particularly the folk over at HUD, since he was handling this through community development, to file a complaint against me and eventually five FBI agents came to my office to talk with me and question me about James Parker, right after that (inaudible) Brown, who ended up really eventually years later, turning some evidence, making some accusations against me for the FBI, but at that time (inaudible) I had just really met, Willie Davis had introduced Brown to me, had introduced Marjorie Peters to me, they come here from Atlanta and I had Brown setting up an office here and of course, he wanted--I gave him the architectural work for the Boutwell project. But it was also in the paper that Willie Davis, Charlie Brown, Rodger Hanson' ; s son, but we had formed an energy conservation group, but I had gotten clearings from the ethics commission and they had told me yes I could participate, as long as we didn' ; t do any business in the city, I was okay and of course the business we had, we had a contract with Tuskegee energy conservation, one at Alabama State on energy conservation, a few of us at the time. So anyway the FBI came to question me about all of that and they took notes about the Parker thing and I sat there and talked with them, I didn' ; t have anything to hide, I talked with them and they left and I just sort of forgot about it after that(inaudible) I have to tell you about and then somehow they all come together before they finally make that move. A good republican friend of mine, locally, who had served in the legislature, I should not call his name, came to me, he had attended the Guy Hunt fundraiser at Houston Blount' ; s home and he came after that fundraiser a day or two after that, he came to see me. And he told me that at that fundraiser there were a group of people there off in caucus and he went into it and he named them and they were very influential people and one very influential, very wealthy guy, we all know, was complaining to the other people that Frank Donaldson didn' ; t have enough backbone to take on Arrington and raising the question about when was he going to do something about Arrington and so forth. And this gentleman was concerned about that and came to warn me that-- that was the kind of conversation that was going on there and you know he just felt I needed to know. But anyway I still sort of ignored all of those things and I got to be, I thought a friend of Mr. Donaldson and where I went to see him, I heard there were some questions being raised, I said well, I want to cooperate with you, he told me that wasn' ; t true. He invited me to several of his workshops and seminars then he gave his numbers and says, " ; Anytime there' ; s a problem you call me direct, whether I' ; m in town or out of town." ; Because by now, I' ; m hearing from folks that Bill or what ever his senior prosecutor is, criminal cases, Bill Barnett is going around questioning people about me and people are sending me word that--a couple of tax lawyers said that you--you' ; re a crook, this, that and the other. And then what really happened, I went to Mr. Donaldson, I had gotten a call from some people in Atlanta I knew, said there was a guy, he' ; s a federal attorney named Barnett today and he' ; s down here questioning us about you. So I immediately went over to see Mr. Donaldson and he assured all that. I said well they say that it' ; s Bill Barnett. Bill wouldn' ; t be doing that he said, I mean--he was so convincing that I really thought he probably didn' ; t know what Barnett was doing at the time. He sat me down and slapped me on the shoulder, took my coat and talked with me and we started talking about some other problems, somebody had fired a bullet through the window one night at the federal courthouse at his office and we talked about that kind of thing and again he reassured that it was nothing. And they kept doing that and then when they empanel a grand jury and they started out by subpoenaing certain people who had done business with the city, the first one I knew about, was the people who had the concessions at legion field, the Yarboroughs and Robbie Yarborough came to office one day and said that he needed to see me and that he said that he talked with his attorney, he had be subpoenaed, he, his mother, and his brother. They had to bring all their books and so forth to the grand jury and he talked with his attorney afterwards and that he was completely at liberty to diverge what had gone on before the grand jury, that the law had changed and by them going before the grand jury, could come back and say what had happened. So he came and told me that they raised a lot of the questions about whether that I or anybody in the administration had asked them for favors because at that time, we had gotten them to partner, we' ; d given them the contract, but they had to have a minority partner, they got a local black guy as their partner, I can' ; t remember what T' ; s name, we called him T. But they questioned him extensively about that, and so they came to tell me--then they questioned them about Marjorie Peterson, had she been to--well I still didn' ; t-I just didn' ; t worry much about it. And as more rumors began to fly and more people were going before the grand jury, we started inquiring about what was happening, we were being reassured and even the committee from the business community--it wasn' ; t about me, they had started saying that they were (inaudible) corruption at city hall. They subpoenaed all of the records, a list--a computer printout of all of the vendors, going back for five years in the city. And they went through that list and cut out all of the black firms that we' ; ve endorsed and then they subpoenaed the records of the black firms, so then they had investigated the minority participation program. And I don' ; t how they had got (inaudible) soon, but you know I' ; ve been fighting battles for minority businesses. I had gone to court ; I had shut down some contracts I had been fighting with the associated general contractors, the whole (inaudible) night, I guess some people said that it' ; s got to be corruption, gotta be kickbacks in there. So that' ; s what they were doing, they were investigating and they were just investigating corruption in the city hall, generally as they said and it turned out that they were really looking at the minority participation program and trying to find out what had happened. That' ; s how we got into it, it was a (inaudible) drawn out investigation because they didn' ; t really publicly turned their focus on me until close to the end. They said in August, when they were wrapping up the investigation-- LEMONTE: What year was that--? ARRINGTON: I think this was ' ; 92 I believe, ' ; 92 or ' ; 93, I can' ; t recall. I ran for office because all of this was timed just months before when finally turned on me, just months before the election. So it was ' ; 94, ' ; 95 because I was to run for office that fall, it was that August that they turned on me. Bill Barnett had called--by that time I had an attorney, I had gotten Donald Watkins as my attorney simply because a (inaudible) needs an American name (inaudible) appeared in my life all of a sudden. I hadn' ; t seen him since the first time I had run for office was in--it' ; s like years ago (inaudible) now running for the fourth time. And he showed up at my house one night at 9:00, rings the doorbell, my daughter answers the door and of course he comes in and he tells me this horrifying story about when he was working for the FBI, he was in difficulty with them, in part of what he--they had reneged on a promise made to him. He had helped catch the comatose people who tried to avoid taxes and he had testified himself (inaudible) seen in the paper. But he had been an FBI (inaudible) got him on taxes and then they put him to work and let him work off his situation before they tried him and so--and they gave him money and he other people and he testified against. But when he thought that he had done all they had asked him to do and he was going to get a lighter sentence--afraid, thought he was going to get probation, they apparently turned on him--they already then told him they had another job for him and that' ; s when they told him he had to help them to get evidence on me and some other blacks. And that' ; s a long story, but he wasn' ; t lying, because he started taping them and later we got the tapes after he was killed--we got the tapes from his attorney. Off his-some of his conversations with the FBI, where they were talking about the black legislature, so he was clearly were not lying about it. But he had become very upset because they had given him money and first got him to buy a building out in East Lake, which was eventually being renovated and they still had cross from what was then Woodlawn Baptist church and they had sent him to talk with me and William Bell and others about getting it rezoned and all of this and they offered money to see if we could help to get the properties rezoned. It' ; s just an entrapment kind of thing and fortunately nobody had bought into what he was trying to do and he claims that after he was unsuccessful and yet, he had come to my office, before that he showed up one day at my office and (inaudible) calling Carolyn. I learned when he came to my house one night to spill the beans on the FBI and learned that--he came to my office and it was very strange, I hadn' ; t seen Bob in I don' ; t know how long. He talked in circles and I got a little bit impatient and I try to be nice and say well Bob I must go and he left and said that we would go to dinner sometime and I said fine. He came back a second time, he called, he came back, and he still was just talking about nothing. And (inaudible) said, " ; I want to take you to Cancun and all this kind of thing." ; And so the third time he called, I told Carolyn, don' ; t let him in ; I don' ; t have time to be bothered. What I learned when he came to my house, he had admitted and put it in a sworn affidavit a few days later, that the FBI, he was wired and they were sitting outside of the city and listening to the entire conversation. It' ; s a strange kind of story, we later found out all of that to be true, because I got my freedom of information pack and most of that stuff is in there, some references to it. So I don' ; t know, but let me just sort of summarize this part of it. In August, Bill Barnett called Donald Watkins, my attorney and said, " ; Tell the mayor we have completed the investigated and we didn' ; t find any wrongdoing on his part. He ought to be more selected about who his friends are like Marjorie Peters." ; But we didn' ; t find anything wrong that he had done. And I said well and that was August and it' ; s late September and of course (inaudible) incident. We had been filing complaints with the Washington office and made some very negative comments about the Washington office and how inept they were and what they couldn' ; t do and so forth. And Donald Watkins, my attorney wrote those up and sent them to the Washington office, so I' ; m sure that enraged Barnett and I suspected that it had something to do with furthering his plan to do something about it. He had been telling a number of folks that I was a crook, he had tried to get some folks to get me indicted in what they said about what was going on and I knew all of that. We had gotten affidavits ; we had been fighting a bitter battle with him about folk who had asked to help create evidence. So interesting enough he and Marjorie Peters' ; attorney who were jailed--Chestnut from Selma, had a little spat. Apparently Chestnut, as a defense attorney was entitle to certain information about his client and what the charges were and what evidence was. And Barnett did not want to release and so he says to Chestnut, " ; If you filed a motion with the court and insist on getting this, I' ; m going to name the mayor as an un-indicted coconspirator." ; And so Chestnut of course come straight from his office over to my office and tells me and I get the lawyer. And we say that guy is just bluffing, you go ahead and Chestnut filed his motion and two days after that Barnett named me as a un-indicted coconspirator, which he personally did. I was an un-indicted coconspirator ; he named me and a young man working for Herman Russell, (inaudible) that young man' ; s career. Eventually had to move him out of here and move him on up, but anyway, and that' ; s when the attention eventually turned to me for 18 months, I was--the grand jury was investigating me and they investigated--it all started when I was in--I tell this story because there are so many pieces you have to tie it all together. I was hosting the mayors of six cities here in Alabama. We had formed the (inaudible) group, the mayor of Mobile, Montgomery, Birmingham, Dothan and Huntsville. And we had our first meeting in Montgomery and I agreed to host the next meeting here at the Harbert Center. And so they came for the meeting, I was at Harbert Center and shortly after lunch, we adjourned the meeting and I was headed back to my office in the city car and along comes Don Watkins' ; legal aide in the car and he' ; s driving, he sees my car and he turns around in the middle of the street and I said, " ; What' ; s happening here with Joseph and flashed me down." ; And so I said I' ; m just a block from city hall, so I' ; m going on the city hall. So he comes and follows in city hall, and he tells me, he gotten a call from a reporter at the Birmingham News guy still there--John--and John had told him that they had gotten a call from the US Attorney, well they got an anonymous call, says, " ; You ought to be judged, what ever the judge' ; s name, courtroom at11:00." ; And this guy told Don' ; s aide about this, so his aide went over there. 11:00 had (inaudible) Brown in there before the jury (inaudible) Brown had signed some sort of document admitting that, of course he had evaded taxes for an x number of years and that he made payments totaling $25,000 to me on two occasions, it was a total of 25 and the jury had questioned him and of course they had laid it out clearly so that the media would pick it up because they had tipped the media off and so it hit the paper and that' ; s how it--you know, I mean it was that kind of thing, they charges really hit me and as soon as they made public, they had done sloppy work because they, in the confession that he had signed--(Talking already in progress) ARRINGTON: Going back since the day I had been in there and of course, we immediately went back and got the logs and checked and there lo and behold the first date they talked about I was in Washington, in fact I was on the front page of the Birmingham News, a fundraiser being held for me at that Democratic headquarters in Washington with ambassadors from some of the small foreign countries sitting around the table and so forth. And of course it wasn' ; t a very popular thing, the newspaper reporter who did it out of the Birmingham news, it was sort of critical the way he did because the Arab American affairs council sponsored it. And they had put the fundraiser together for me ; I was on their executive committee so it came out really slanted, I think there was an influence of the Jewish lobbyist on the whole to be very honest with you about it. But nevertheless, it was no question, I was in Washington that day for a couple of days and it was on the papers. And then the next time, he supposedly made the second payoff to make to total of $25,000, we checked that and lo and behold that was when I had led the delegation to Israel and so of course, we hit back with that real quick and it just got nastier from there and eventually the grand jury, after sitting 18 months and looking at everything I had and subpoenaed everything, everywhere, all over the state, anywhere they could, it really turned out 6 months, they dropped the charges about my receiving money and then they turned on me at taxes. And the charges they eventually tried to get me indicted was tax evasion, it took a five-year period, pointed, said how much they calculated, they did what they call a personal--they look at your assets, you know what you list, so what they-- and I didn' ; t know all of this at the time, what they do is like, if I made a loan from the bank, say five-six years ago, they would get a copy of what I said my personal financial worth was and then you come back later, five, six years later if you had done one again and they look at the difference between and then they would compare it with how much money you' ; d made and what your expensed must have been. And if it didn' ; t sort of balance, they would say you got some money some where, that you haven' ; t reported and that' ; s what they did to me. And the five years, one year, they said I got $20k or more than I had reported, another year $20 something thousand and then they got in the last three years I was getting like 80k, is what they claimed, that' ; s what they actually claimed and that' ; s what they were trying to get me indicted on. And the interesting thing about it was that the numbers they had and the numbers that my CPA had, we had almost identical, it came out almost the same, but their interpretations were different and we eventually prevailed on that, we had to go all the way to Washington with the head laureates in Washington, who had a hearing through their head' ; s connections, they got republicans in office at that time and his former roommate at Yale, had enough influence in him, just to get us a hearing before the director of the IRS to hear both sides and there they determined that they didn' ; t think the FBI had a strong case for taxes on me and that' ; s what they told the US attorney. And so, anyway, the grand jury sat as long as they could sit by law in those 24 mos., and they finally returned no bill against me. There' ; s a whole lot more to that story, but you know, it ended basically well, but it was a bitter fight and it still a scar from that. LEMONTE: Aside from the impact on you personally and family and friends, how did it influence your ability to function as mayor and to campaign as mayor? ARRINGTON: Well, I campaigned and I had to campaign that election, one of things that make some people suspicious of the federal actions is the timing as I said, " ; this is-- election is October, this is late August when they indicted me, they don' ; t indicted me but when the US attorney names me as a un-indicted coconspirator, which incidentally I later got the federal court to have it stricken from the records. Because after it was all over, we filed a motion and went before judge Probst and to have my name and all those allegations and my status as an unindicted coconspirator, to get all of that struck from the records. And it was granted, it' ; s a story most people don' ; t know, but it was granted, but of course, it was your public official (inaudible). One public official said," ; We' ; ve been investigated before the grand jury, where do you go to get your reputation back, I mean because people are just suspicious of politicians in the first place." ; I think I suffered from that, what was that question again? LEMONTE: Your ability to govern. ARRINGTON: Well, I just think it created an air of suspicion around, I mean people just don' ; t want an elected official who is, most people think if the FBI is after you, you had to do something wrong, I mean that is just the attitude of most people. And a few people were--I mean I had few friends, I had (inaudible) Parker telling a (inaudible) that he just didn' ; t believe, I know their character and I don' ; t believe it. But I tell you, very few of your friends would say that, they would scratch their heads and wonder you know, you must be (inaudible) so much. I just got strong support from the black community and the election was overwhelming, I mean they gave me a huge vote and so I won again by fairly 58--50 uppers, I guess it was a landslide. I told you it hurt with the white community and then governing I think there was just some suspicion, it took a while before I think people felt comfortable. I think eventually that it sort of faded away, people didn' ; t think about it. It' ; s a great negative I think. LEMONTE: You had talked earlier about the number of occasions where you would personally meet with business leaders and represent the city and make commitments on behalf of the city. During this extent of period of the investigation, was it more difficult for you to function with leaders in the community? ARRINGTON: Well, not really, part of what helped me here was the business community. At Central bank on the Southside in the dining room (inaudible) president or CEO of that bank, was hosting a breakfast that I had with business folks and Dr. Birdie who was heading up the group and pulling the group the together, had informed me that some of the folks were concerned and wanted to hear what I to say about all this federal stuff was going on. This is even before the grand jury informed that I was not a target of the investigation (inaudible) telling me that, they were telling me that it had nothing to do with me that they were just going to city hall looking at corruption at city hall. So I had finally secured my entire package (inaudible) release (inaudible) information that just laid out the path of how long the FBI had been investigating me from the time I came in when they had labeled me as a national security risk and a sympathizer for the black panthers which really had me in the COINTELPRO, under the name of the 1600 black leaders that the FBI director had said had to be undermined and their reputation was destroyed and all of that and all of that racket and all of that came out in a year before congress. I was surprised to find that I was one of those 1600 and didn' ; t know it until I got my freedom of information pack and then I was one when they sent the words out to the field officers that these were dangerous people and you had to do everything you can to undermine them, destroy their ability to lead. I was one of those folk and I learned that--but of course I had got that and then I found out that all--ever since I had been in office, they had investigating me. And there in my file were letters from Frank Donaldson where he on two occasions where he had written and said they had completed the investigation on my name and me was bowtie, they had completed the investigation and that they had found (inaudible) two letters that in the file that I got in my freedom of information package, they didn' ; t even read that--those letters, the letters just came from Frank Donaldson. So I was able to use that, even with the business community, I did a chronology, started when I was in Memphis, of how many times they investigated me, how many phone tap messages, they had 400 and something phone messages, how many photographs they had, of course all of that' ; s in there. They' ; ve been investigating me, just ever since I had been there and I just didn' ; t know it. They investigated me on the track, they thought they had gotten a call once and said that Amerit Pizitz had paid me $900k to get their license for the race track out there, I was one of the members of the racing commission. All of that was in there, they had--it turned out--I had no idea. But they investigated extensively. So one year around the clock with four or six agents, and they claim (inaudible) doing the thing because there was many complaints they were getting, alleging that there was corruption at city hall, even in their freedom of information documents from the justice department, they said that. But I think once you lay it out and people look at it, even folks who are suspicious, they might conclude that this guy done something, but would also have to include these folks have really been going after this guy, I mean all of this period of time. So I printed out and I gave it to the businessmen that morning at the breakfast. Nobody said much about it, I mean I got up and talked about it and gave him or her a copy of it and nobody said much about it. Henry Goodrich made some sort of semi-unfavorable comment about the whole situation about me, but (inaudible) Birdie then asked if some folks--said this whole thing is bad for the community, maybe we ought to send a committee to talk with the feds, the FBI and they did, Jimmy Lee from Buffalo Rock and (inaudible) Birdie and about 3 other people went and they were later assured, I mean when they went, they were assured that no, we' ; re just investigating, this has nothing to do with the mayor, we' ; re investigating what' ; s going on at city hall, of course that all turned out to be false in the end. So the business community, I think just had mixed emotions about it frankly, I felt very sorry for some of the people like Raymond Hubbard, because he had just done a--all of these rumors were flying and he was about to do a fundraiser for me, which was really breaking with, but position his dad had taken, he would never got done anything for me. And Raymond talked with me and he said that he was willing to do this fundraiser and invite all these business people up as a summit. But he said, " ; I want to ask you about something." ; And then of course he asked me about these rumors going around and I assured him that there was nothing to it. And then you know explained that it hurt him if it were and he went ahead and did this fundraiser for me and later it comes out that FBI, the grand jury is really at me. Although I had denied at first and the same thing happened with Richard Scrushy, that the day after they made the charges, they made the charges public and brought (inaudible) Brown before the federal judge, two days before Richard Scrushy was having a huge fundraiser for me down at the civic center in which he invited a large crowd and of course he gave me support, got up at the that thing and said he didn' ; t believe anything the feds were doing and criticized it. Of course they got after him, after they came down--the FBI came down and started questioning him, questioning some of his doctors, some of his staff, this is such crazy things, people don' ; t know what happens. It is just wild, it is absolutely wild and I don' ; t know--I guess I' ; m just blessed I didn' ; t end of going to prison, I mean I did go to prison, but that was because I wanted to dramatize the fact that they were trying to get my--. Once they found out we had appointment records for all of those years, they then turned around and subpoenaed those records and I wanted to--I agreed to turn the records over, but I wanted to turn them over the Washington, to the office in Washington and not to the local folks and I just wanted (inaudible) Washington, the local folks wanted to take it and try to reconstruct their story about what I had done. And Washington then said, no, at first I had to turn it over here and when I wouldn' ; t turn them over here, Washington did agreed that, what they would do is send somebody down from Washington office and I would turn them over to Mr. Donaldson and the person from Washington jointly. Well, we accepted that, but (inaudible) we also want Bill Barnett removed from the case and of course Mr. Donaldson who had been instructed by his superiors in Washington, offered agreement about how the records would be turned over, used the fact that we added to it, that we wanted Barnett moved as a way of reporting back to Washington that we rejected the offer, and Donaldson disappeared that day, we couldn' ; t find him. At 3:00, when I' ; m about to go down to 16th Baptist Church, where a bunch of ministers and other supporters are going to dramatize the situation by putting handcuffs on me and chains around my neck and march me down to the courthouse and turning me in at the time I' ; m suppose to support it--at 3:00 we get a call from Washington wanting to know what' ; s going on, Joe Whatley, one of their attorneys and he finds Donald Watkins and they said, no (inaudible) went with this deal. We all totally rejected the deal, well Mr. Donaldson really hadn' ; t been honest with it and then he disappeared, nobody could find him that day and he had sent all his staff home early that day because the demonstration that I was to be turned in, he shut his office down early that day. And when I get that information and then by the time I would get to the courthouse and I turn myself in, Donald Watkins walks in and said, " ; Dick you don' ; t have to go to prison." ; You know I just got through talking with the folks in Washington and we gotten all this straight and we agreed on records and they' ; re going to send somebody. Well I couldn' ; t stop there ; I mean the people had marched me to city hall-- LEMONTE: Was this when you were draped in chains? ARRINGTON: Yeah, they had marched me--I was draped, marched me to city hall, turned me over to the feds, I' ; m up somewhere up on 3rd or 4th floor, they put the belly strap around me, had me handcuffed, they were being nice, the federal marshals said they were supposed to put leg cuffs on me, ankle cuffs, but they were not going to do that, but the rest of it, got me sitting there and they' ; re waiting--the crowd is dispersing out there and they' ; re waiting and looking on through the cameras all around the building that looks at everything out there, so they' ; re watching the crowd through the building, watching it disperse and they were waiting for--most of it dispersed before they put me in the van to take me down to Maxwell. And in walks my attorney telling me that I don' ; t have to go. And I just said Donald, I can' ; t do that, I have to go now, I don' ; t want people to go home tonight at 10:00 and they' ; ve gone through all this and then I don' ; t go to prison, so he said alright, so I went on to prison and we worked it out so the next day, David Cromwell Johnson, Donald Watkins, Joe Riley, a bunch of them met with a bunch of federal folks at Maxwell, they brought me in, after I spent a night at Maxwell, and then we signed the deal about how the records would be turned over and later that day they released me from Maxwell. LEMONTE: So there was an element of theater in--? ARRINGTON: Well, you know the whole was kind of dramatized, this is injustice, we got to dramatize it and so when they wanted the records, I said, " ; No I' ; m not going to turn my records over to these people." ; So that' ; s when we wrote the letter to the US attorney in Washington and offered the turn the records over to them and it was sort of a whole lot of interesting developments. LEMONTE: Did you ever receive anything that represented an apology from the government for what had been done to you and to your administration? ARRINGTON: No, never, the closest I got to that was that they had a young attorney named Jack Sheldon who came in after Frank Donaldson was forced into retirement by age and Jack Sheldon came in (inaudible) initially took a strong stand in support of the investigators and the federal government and said he wasn' ; t going to sweep anything under the rug. He did begin to listen to our attorneys and what have you. And even the file of issue after--even if we had gone to Washington with the IRS and their opinion wasn' ; t binding on the US attorney they didn' ; t think that there was substantial evidence to back up the charges of tax evasion. But all they could do is say that it was left to the local us attorney to decide whether to go forward and Jack Sheldon frankly had the courage not to and offended a lot of the staff over that worked for him, including, I think Mr. Barnett, who I' ; ve learned from other assistant US attorney, in a meeting had pleaded with Mr. Sheldon, just to let him go ahead and indict me and let the jury decide. And of course that' ; s a ploy because you know if once you' ; re indicted before the jury, it' ; s no telling what will happen. But Jack Sheldon and I had never been able to thank him because one day--because I wasn' ; t suppose to know all this that went down, but it all went down and Jack Sheldon, over the objection of Bill Barnett and some of the other folks, decided that there was not enough evidence to indict me. And of course most people don' ; t know that, they want to say grand jury indicts based on what, in particular for a public official, you have to run into Washington and so forth, and then if they walk in try to get to the federal grand jury to indict you--and Bill Barnett was so upset that (inaudible) indicted, he refused to go back before the grand jury, he sent his assistant over there and dismissed the grand jury. I' ; ve started writing about it all. LEMONTE: You are? ARRINGTON: Oh yeah, I' ; ve started writing, I got the (inaudible) files on FBI stuff and I mean, (inaudible) files, I' ; m going to try to update my records in my writing to see what has happened since that time. But I had all kinds of things, people who have come to me, they had a captain on the Birmingham Police Department, they had spread every (inaudible) they could, really tried to entrap me, I got my file-they had been following me, they listed everywhere I was, they were able to describe it, they apparently had a camera, were talking into and they were describing everybody who went into the place where I went, like if there was a fundraiser at a club and everybody went in there, they described them, they took down the tag numbers of everybody. They followed me for one for full year and I never knew it until I got my freedom of information thing. And there it all was, they had followed me a whole year. I can' ; t remember if it was four or six agents (inaudible) get special training for my investigation and they assigned full-time to me. And I couldn' ; t--it' ; s hard to believe, but it all happened, a number of times came in my office and two of these guys I got to know, I still have the business cards they gave and if (inaudible) name they used. And I had Virginia Williams checking on them, she was my chief of staff, they had come-said they were from Huntsville and that they were in this development company and they kept talking with me about some land the city had that we had bought for a theme park and have a theme park built and they kept wanting to cut some deal with me. (inaudible) If I were implying to try to cut a deal and get something for myself, I would have done it and they left their cards and all. And then we later checked their cards because they had to testify in a case over in Atlanta in another public official corruption case and here these two guys were and of course on the stand they have to give their names and what their fictitious names were. And these were two guys that been to my office talking with me, they had also been in with a group of agents from New Orleans, about six of them came, claiming they wanted to build something on that theme park land and that got to be a real magnet for investigation and I just sort of assumed this because somehow, Bob (inaudible) got involved in it but that gives you some since of what went on. LEMONTE: Let' ; s turn to the topic of the institute, this interview is part of its Oral History Program, but I think everyone connected with the institute would acknowledge that, without your commitment to it, this place would not exist. Could you talk about your involvement with the institute, what it has meant to you, what do you think it means to the community and I guess, along the way, perhaps address some of the controversies that surrounded the institute in opposition that it confronted? ARRINGTON: Well, I' ; m proud of this institute, I think it' ; s a fine facility and I still think it has considerable of potential. It' ; s slowly moving into that direction, I think it' ; s going to be a repository. It' ; s good for people who research certain issues, it' ; s certainly has given us an opportunity to talk from our perspective about Birmingham and what shaped Birmingham and made Birmingham what it slacked. ARRINGTON: Of course you know it' ; s expanded to the fact that we put our human relation struggle in the context of human relation struggles that go on in many, many places in the world ; so which I think it' ; s really unique. So everything from the way it has been programmed and the direction is moving to the fact that we have a really first- rate facility that I think we' ; ve built for about $12,000,000 or $14,000,000. You know I' ; m proud of it and I think people are proud of it, it brings a lot of people here, this is a destination site for many people, from across this country and from many different countries and I' ; m proud of that and I hope that it continues to grow, because I think for academicians and other people whose studying human relations and human behavior and so forth have some aspects of it and we may have some things here that they would find of some interest, quite frankly. So I' ; m pleased about it, it is also slowly getting a national reputation, it' ; s interesting that in recent years, different places people have talked with me. Out of the state where I was, people have talked with me about the institute and how impressed and they went to this institute and it' ; s the greatest thing. So we have to be very proud of it, it is interesting because it also ties into some problems we had with the federal government, quite frankly. It came right out of the effort of this institute, in fact, the lady Ms. Peters, who was convicted for her tax problem, but convicted for taking money from the city, actually the allegation, I never really understood that she had beaten the city out of some $200 and something thousand dollars, it was institute money and I want to get back on, except to say, if she had been hired by the architectural firm, Bond Rider James, that designed this institute for us, as their local person and she was authorized to submit the invoices and she apparently submitted an invoice that they had not authorized as submit. Now they returned the check to me and said that they had not authorized it and they would get that straight, but anyway, it got to be a major issue in that whole federal thing. That whole idea of having an institute was David Vann' ; s idea. It' ; s one of the many things that we' ; ve talked about from time to time. David Vann said that we ought to have a Civil Rights Museum, as we called it then, I think or we referred to it as a museum. It would sort of tell our story and so forth and so on. He talked about it and it sort of caught my imagination too and he said he hoped to do it, but he had never, in his four years, he never made any effort to do anything about it, but he just talked about it, but he certainly sort of planted the seed in my mind and maybe in the minds of some other people, I don' ; t know, but that' ; s why I wanted to go forward with the Civil Rights Institute, because David had talked about what a great advantage it would be. He had sold me on that idea and I will tell, even looking recently as I try to put down some things in a manuscript about my administration looking at the file on the Civil Rights Institute, I was reminded that, this goes back to the early 80s, we began talking about it in the early 80s, we got letters and so forth, so we talked about the institute, in the hiring of our architectural firm and I was looking at the contract we signed with the architectural firm and the first projection that came up was that it was going to cost us $16 million and I was writing them and telling them that they had to redo them, because that plan, before they got to work on the drawing, because we were only going to have about $10 to $12 million dollars and so forth and so on I think we probably ended up spending, I don' ; t remember what it is, but $14 million on this facility, I think--but anyway, we hired Bond Rider James. They did, I think an outstanding job with the design and tying us in with, of course the site was the perfect site and I believe, I don' ; t know whether I' ; m wrong here in giving David credit for suggesting that it ought to be on this site or whether it was some staff person or somebody. But we acquired the site because ; you know the Sixteenth Street Baptist was over there. We acquired with the intent of, of course, building a Civil Rights museum here. The problem was, I think, we got the money from some city funds. We bought this property, I' ; ve decided that we would include funds from construction of the institute in a bond issue. We had $110 million dollar bond issue and including in that $110 million dollars was so many million--it might have fifteen million dollars for the institute. And the entire bond issue was resting in part up on also, five additional mills of property taxes that people would vote on themselves. Well, of course, I was very disappointed because the bond issue failed, I thought I had done my work, especially in going to areas, going to black community leaders, two-fold purposes, number one, I thought they would be especially interested in seeing the institute that told the story about the Civil Rights struggle and secondly I knew that every bond issue that had passed since the mid-60s had passed on the strength of the black voters. The difference here, which they had to put an additional tax on themselves. And of course it failed and I had expected it to pass, quite frankly. Now there was opposition, I can remember hearing Henry Goodrich, the CEO of Sonat coming to the office and telling me that he and some other corporate people had met and they didn' ; t think the idea of an institute was a good one and he brought with him a clipping from the Memphis Appeal, commercial appeal, which he left with me where they had made an announcement that they were going to convert the Lorraine Hotel into a Civil Rights Museum and his argument was that we didn' ; t need another one here and that it was not going to do anything, except perhaps, reopen some old wounds and so forth. So it was some opposition to it and I think it might have pretty widespread, but it' ; s always been that feeling among many people. Many people here would really like to forget that part of our history and not remind people of it and they think that when we do that, it' ; s very negative for us. Although I have to say that the last time there was the anniversary period for the Sixteenth Street church bombing, our local media gave it wide, wide exposure in playing the whole history of it, so I was pleased to see that because it says at least you know some of the attitudes about how to handle these things are really, really changing. But anyway, I was visible upset that it had failed and some of my supporters in the black community came to see me because they knew I was upset and they were feeling sorry for me. And so they felt they didn' ; t work hard enough and they really didn' ; t understand how important it was and they said to me what they wanted me to do was run that bond issue again. So I believed them and I ran it again and it was defeated again. And so I, being determined to see it go forward, I had the staff to begin looking for other sources of money that we might use for the institute. And we came up with the idea of selling a building that houses the social security payment center for the southeast US, in which had been built by the public building authority and was eventually to become the property at--they owed a debt or something--it was paid off of the developer out of Memphis, but, a long story short, what I did was move earlier and sold the building to him. And we got some of our money to start the part growing for the construction of the institute from that. And then we looked around other areas, we had some past bond issues where some money was left here and there and it was money that could be used--it wasn' ; t designated specifically for the institute, but it was broadly enough designated that we could use it and so we just found a way to finance it, to get it going and we built it. And we had, once it was built, we had a minority firm partnership between Mr. Harbert' ; s firm, it' ; s interesting that John Harbert would built a Civil Rights institute, (inaudible) the builder (inaudible) Russell, those two firms, joint ventured in building this facility. You know once we got it going, I think people sort of accepted it. I' ; m not sure how many people in Birmingham, who ever really visited the institute. I think enough people from outside of the city come. I haven' ; t talked with the staff yet about how much local participation there is, in terms of visitors here, although it' ; s often times it' ; s like for receptions and things of that sort. The corporate community eventually decided that it was something they should support and they did a special fundraiser for it, I think it' ; s for the endowment audit or something of that sort, but they did a special fundraiser for the institute. It' ; s a very fine facility, it' ; s one that I think we can be proud of, it' ; s a fine institution here in the city and I' ; m pleased, I was just looking the other day, was pleased that we had the foresight to eventually acquire the entire blocks we got one block for the institute, we can do some things with it. (Inaudible) interesting people, I want to do other things, I know the former pastor of 16th St Baptist church wanted to joint venture with us on the expansion of their church in facility that didn' ; t work out, but the point is, is that it is a fine institution and (inaudible) it as city and it extends outside of the institute into the park of what we call revolution and reconciliation theme, that theme there, it' ; s an extension on what we--that thing that we carry in this institute. I' ; m pleased about it and I think as time goes by, more and more people will be pleased. LEMONTE: But the Marjorie Peters involvement that clouded the institute proved (inaudible) timeless really do to her relationship with the architect, it was not any appointment that you had made and it didn' ; t involve her working with the city? ARRINGTON: Right, Marjorie Peters had no contract with the city, in fact, in all the times she' ; s out, she may have gotten one contract, but when it came out in the media, of course it appeared that she was charged with defrauding the city of money. Actually the city never lost a cent in there and I said that to Mr. Donaldson. We even got the state attorney general in and asked him if he would join the case. Well Mr. Donaldson objected to that and said that he was going to recover our money, because we had an (inaudible) what I--in layman' ; s term called a lock and key kind of job. They wanted to design to institute--his plans which were acceptable to us and to see do as an architect, (inaudible) see if it' ; s completed, they did all of that and we were to pay them a certain amount of money and did that. We paid--all of our money was paid to them, now they had--with their employees, local employees with Ms. Peters, they did have, I know one flare up between Ms. Peters and that firm and also (inaudible) Brown, who was also associated with her at that time, but as far as I know, nobody lost any money and Ms. Peters had like contracts that they had with the airport authority and the newspaper played them out as if they were contractor that administration had given. And even when Mr. McMahon, local CEO of the airport was concerned enough that he went to the editorial staff of the newspaper and explained that those were not contracts I had given out, those were contracts she had gotten from the airport authority, they never really ever made the distinction. They continued to call them city of Birmingham contracts and I really discussed this with Virginia Williams, who was chief of staff one time. And I really don' ; t believe we ever gave Marjorie Peters any contract-- LEMONTE: Through the city? ARRINGTON: Through the city, she got in on a city contract, that Cecil Jones, we had given Cecil Jones and Cecil Jones used, for part of his minority participation on the program project, it had something to do with race track road and so forth out there. He used Marjorie Peters and (inaudible) Brown. But even then that was a problem, because Cecil Jones came to me and said that (inaudible) Brown had over billed him and that sense that would have been over billing the city for about $200,000 and wanting to know what to do and I said, " ; You got to get the money back." ; And he did that and I guess it didn' ; t make (inaudible) very happy, but we recovered all the money, but I told Cecil it was his responsibility that we had to recover the money if he in fact could document that they had been over billed for the time and so forth. So it was interesting, I think people interpreted information, data and things in different ways. I guess there had been a lot of rumors going ; something' ; s must be going on at city hall. I really thing some people probably failed on the outside and people associated with the associated general contractors in groups like that ABC and groups I was really fighting against. I think maybe a few of them began to get suspicious that this guy didn' ; t really have a commitment to minority participation, he doesn' ; t think that this is an important part of the city' ; s program, it ought to be a city' ; s commitment. He' ; s gotta be getting something out of this himself, I mean, that' ; s what I think. I believe that' ; s how the rumor started going and when I look at the freedom of information package and they--what they say several places in there is how many complaints they have received at the Birmingham FBI office by allegations of corruption of city hall. I began to think, it just had to be--it' ; s a rumor mill going, I mean, frankly, I think that. And so people began to interpret whatever information they got in light of what the rumor mill was and these investigators who trained to snoop stuff out and be suspicious of folk anyway, and they' ; ve been getting all these complaints and in my freedom of information packet, there are all these negative news clippings, they clip everything from news--they started an investigation based on the stories they read in the newspaper and all these negative things in there and I think the stage engine has been set for them, eventually coming at us on something, unfortunately it ended up being on this and involving the institute. LEMONTE: We have covered a lot of specific topics, are there any specific things that you would want to add to what we' ; ve talked about because I' ; d like to conclude with some general reflections about the role of mayor and your personal inventory of special successes and disappointments in what you think the city confronts is major challenges in the future. But I want to make sure there isn' ; t a topic that you would like to have included in the interview that we haven' ; t touched on? ARRINGTON: Well, no topic cross my mind, I think we have been fairly exhausted, at least in terms of topics we touched on. So I don' ; t have any--. LEMONTE: As you look back over your entire lengthy career as an elected official and public servant, what do you rank as the really rewarding successes from your point of view and what have been the areas of greatest personal disappointment for you? ARRINGTON: Well, the success of the city and remaining economically viable achievement and guiding the city through a period of time in which there was a transformation or a transition in its economy. The matter of creating jobs, economic development, all of which I think are essential to a city. When I think about he fact that in 1979, when my administration took office, we were in the economic boardrooms and people were out of work and the unemployment rate was 20-something percent, still the industry was going down the drain here and elsewhere, the steel mills were closing and all of that, and where we' ; ve come from. From that to--the city was not financially strong, didn' ; t have money and so forth and where we' ; ve come from, from that time. In 20 years, we' ; ve come a city that--from at certain times was known and still is, I' ; ve seen recently, as one of the million-sized city where there are good job opportunities and one of the top ten at one time, hotspot cities, according to the national magazine, where there was significantly economic development going on. The whole economic transition, to be able to be leave office in ' ; 99 saying that the city of Birmingham has a largest number of jobs, in its corporate boundaries than it has ever had in its entire, any other time it' ; s entire history. It' ; s something that I' ; ve considered to be a real accomplishment, now many, of course obviously, sharing the credit for that, but I' ; m just--we did some things too, we provided incentives and we tried to be a catalyst for certain things and we tried to sort of keep the faith and confidence and always say to folk that we believe that we could do this and we approached a lot of CEOs who were thinking about moving, some of them are did and we offered incentives to stay here and we had some successes. And so we, despite the problems with suburban migration and all of that, we built an economy, we built a strong financial base for the city, that' ; s something I' ; m very proud of. I could say a lot more about it, the second thing that I see as an accomplishment is that we became, in my opinion, an inclusive government during our administration. And perhaps a mall for the state in that regard as I have said earlier, as it relates to race and gender. And that' ; s very significant to me because this was a city that was known for its racial discrimination and as far as exclusion of people and did not permit people to compete even on an equal basis for jobs, really shut the door on people, particularly black people and really limited women to, the achievement of women might make job promotions, we changed a lot of that. And leave office and be able to say that we come from a city with 12% of its labor force, black and most of those blacks, the most menial jobs in the city to one that about half of its employees are black many of those blacks have supervisory responsibilities. And that we have increased the promotional women and upgrading the women, we had a number of 27-33%, but some of it, I' ; m really proud of, I think that' ; s an accomplishment and you measured those accomplishments by where you started from and what you had to overcome in doing it and we had a lot of tough battles and it dealt with some things that were very, very emotional, thing that people had deep feelings about. Just the idea, we got blacks in supervisory positions, nobody thinks about that today. But that was a no-no in Birmingham for blacks to supervise whites, in fact I told the story of Sadie McCarter, who was the director of our emergency management program, civil defense program and the story she told me about her neighbor, who was very curious that she worked for a man who was black and Ellen Cole tells a similar story that tells about an elderly white neighbor she had who came out to her and said that, you know what is like to work for black man and I just mentioned that because people don' ; t know how deeply rooted human behavior, some actions and thoughts are and what has been the customs and so forth in an area. And Birmingham was originally segregated place where people clung tenaciously to these concepts of class, race, differences and things of inferiority and where your place is. And we were able to build a labor force that we tell other folks to look and generally speaking, as far as governmental labor forces go, I think we have a good one, quite frankly, I mean you know, you got the government bureaucracy and all, but you can' ; t get around that. But we brought some quality people into city government. So I' ; m very proud of that, I could talk a lot more about it, but we' ; ll just close that point out. Sadie McCarter had a neighbor where she lived, they would inquire ; they were inquisitive about what it was like working for a black mayor. She said to me, I always tell them, I' ; m proud of you and I think you' ; re doing an outstanding job and I hope you don' ; t, but you just have to understand that we grew up and our parents used to say to us, when we were negligent or we didn' ; t do our work well, or if we didn' ; t do our studies, or we didn' ; t want to do our book, they used to say, alright, one day you' ; re gonna have a nigger for your boss. And she said, " ; We grew up thinking, that was the worst thing that could ever happen to a white person, that a black person would be bossing them as a supervisor." ; And she says, " ; Even today, there are still many whites that have never worked in a position where there were black supervisors." ; So they asked about it and she says, " ; I just wanted you to know, I tell them how proud I am to work for you." ; But included in all that, if you unravel it, it' ; s again, the way people honestly believe what they thought--and I think really we' ; ve changed things more than we know. So I' ; m very, very proud of that. Those two certainly topped my list of accomplishments I think we made some other accomplishments ; I' ; m always reluctant to talk about crimes. Crimes here have just been going up, up, up during my time, crime went down, but I can never explain the reasons for what happened to the crime. I don' ; t if sociologist--who can explain it. It' ; s just something I think politicians can use to boast about when you get it down and my last few years were good years, in terms of what was happening, crime, the direction it was going. But those first two were certainly accomplishment. I still think what happened, the failure to provide some significant leadership for public schools, it' ; s probably the biggest negative I had. You know I can go in there and pick out projects that I thought were key projects that were going to push this city into a higher orbit and make it competitive, that failed. It started with like block 60 and maps and those were big disappointments, because they were intended to be major economic catalysts for the city and to move this city up in towards the forefront of the pack of cities of so- called large cities in the states, in the southeast, that we did our best, but we didn' ; t pull it off and it' ; s some disappointment about that. LEMONTE: And what would define as the list of issues that the city confronts now and in the near future, that are going to be the make-or-break issues for our community? ARRINGTON: Well, I still think the whole issue of developing some kind of regional cooperation. And it starts with just trying to develop something even in this county, intergovernmental cooperation, on a serious level. I' ; m not talking about just a joint (inaudible) but I' ; m talking about some serious economic development efforts. I still think it' ; s a big challenge, we' ; ve been very fortunate, and we' ; ve gone through some tough economic times to what have been some good ones. And the city has grown with it, I mean the economy has been good ; we' ; ve been doing good. And even sometimes when the national economy wasn' ; t doing well, we continued to do well. We have generated jobs and so forth in this city, we still provide many new jobs for this metro area. People who don' ; t live in the city, but they work here and they come and they make their living here and that is due at least in part to the fact that governments here and city governments have really--well there' ; s been no other government including the county has taken the initiative that the city of Birmingham has taken to try to carry out economic involvement and to try to create jobs in this area. So when we' ; ve been able to do things like the success of the park out on 79 Delmonte and Ogihara and all those are, I get great satisfaction, I know how hard we work. We competed with several other states and places for Ogihara, which is a supplier for Mercedes body parts and we got Ogihara here and it' ; s expanding and it' ; s got a bright future, it' ; s going to create a lot of job for us still down the road. So the challenge is to try to maintain the economic development, that' ; s just one saving grace we' ; ve had, is that even with the negative impacts of the suburban growth on us, we' ; ve been able to generate the jobs here, be economically sound to keep taxpayers in place, that is still an ongoing challenge, you got to have economic development because that is the very foundation upon which the whole quality of life will rest. That' ; s something we have to do and we have to be very vigilant about doing it because we are a city that' ; s still in some sort of change here and we' ; re trying to redefine the character of this city, we have got to do something about--of course we got to do something about education, public education and find ways to have our schools, public school system, to maybe joint venture, try things like what we talked--charter schools or things like that. We got to find ways to improve education for kids, we got to find a way to challenge kids in Birmingham school system and to help them to redefine expectations because I think part of the problem is that nothing is expected a lot of the kids and they give you what you expect. When you tighten it up and say you got to do this and more of them would do it. So we got a long way to go to accomplish that. Housing is another thing that we really must give some attention within the city. We had a time during my 20-year stint in administration where we were doing good in housing frankly, particularly low to moderate income housing, single family housing, we did some other family housing, but as the national policies changed and Mr. Reagan came into office and programmed funds dried up, few years after that, our pace of housing redevelopment, construction housing, renovation in this city has slowed considerably too. And so the city suffers a day from disproportionate amount of substandard housing and vacant lots, we' ; ve torn down houses, so housing stock is a real challenge for the city today, to begin to improve housing stock. It' ; s interesting that our economic growth has helped people, especially folks who had been at the lower end of the totem pole, those who had some skills and so to help some of them move out, but we have not been able to provide the housing and the kind of schools they want and so we lose a lot of them too to suburbs and so forth, to be viable we have to get a good housing program and we got to get a good system for education. Some of that' ; s a long road back, education thing is the longest road, but we just must do it. LEMONTE: You know what it' ; s like to be mayor better than anyone else, final question, would you reflect on the office of mayor, what is its importance in the city, in the metro area, what are the main responsibilities of the mayor as you think back over your time and what would you say are the characteristics that people might look for in the future for someone who could provide the leadership that' ; s needed? ARRINGTON: A mayor is a leader, the quality of a mayor' ; s leadership differs from the other mayor, but that mayor is the leader. First of all, in a city like Birmingham and any other place, medium size and some smaller ones, the mayor' ; s leader in all of them, but some places it' ; s only full-time elected official like the city of Birmingham, he is a full-time mayor, he is the chief executive of the city. He actually sort of sets the agenda for the city, he has to be the negotiator, he has to be the person who can knit together networks and cooperation of corporate communities, he' ; s got to work so that the corporate community develops enough confidence in his leadership that they are willing to share some of the risk with him and to give him or her, what ever the case may be, some assistance in helping to define goals and actually often putting their resources behind goals. The mayor has to be a mediator on a number of things, there are many cities there are always issues to me yet, the more diverse your population is also the more people problems there going to be. For mayors' ; respected, that mayor can be a good mediator if people trust that mayor. Some do it better than others, that' ; s just the way it is, but that is the role of a mayor. There is a significant burden of leadership on the shoulder of the person who is mayor. First you got to have some vision by what this city ought to be, you must be real about where it is, whatever city it is. And take your city and you gotta have some dreams about where it ought to go, and some idea about how you might try to move it that way and how do you get people to follow and how do you get at least enough success, minimal success that people are willing follow and believe things are going to happen. And that caused for putting a lot of things together and knowing a lot of people and people getting to know you at least well enough to believe that this person knows what he' ; s done, he' ; s got some sense of how things ought to go and he' ; s worth working with. It is just really a good job particularly cities in America like Birmingham, cities with large minority populations and so forth, you really need a proactive mayor and in a lot of areas. You must be proactive with your economic development program and things like that, but you must be proactive with human relations kind of things to, you gotta be able to step in and head off things that could deteriorate and some of the negatives. And we had some of the experience ; I think we were most successful than sometimes we knew, when I look back at some of the hot issues we had to deal with. Some of the thing that some people think you ought to be criticized for and they criticize you for it, sometimes some of the issues that help keep the lid on things. I mean I had to stay on the tight rope of, I needed the corporate community, I had to have a significant segment of it. The same time I needed that, what people called it civil rights, part of the black community, because we got a strong contingent of that there and potentially there' ; s always conflict between the two. And in a situation like that, the mayor' ; s got to have support in both, you gotta have enough credibility so that you could deal with both and one of the things I' ; ve tried to do as mayor was to be credible with the Abraham Woods' ; and the others and that they believed in what I said and you know I could, by staying in touch with them I could sometime guide where they were going or what they wanted to do. And at the same time, I had to have a corporate community that was willing to work with me to try to make some things opportunities available are better for people and who understood that I had to work with other people in communities, I think you have to all of those things. It' ; s truly a challenging job, but it' ; s an exciting job and I' ; m the one who was easily excited about things. But when we accomplish things I got great, great satisfaction from it. That' ; s what kept me going and people could never tell that by looking at my face, because I' ; ve got that kind of sour face, but inside when we accomplished things, I mean I really felt great about them and it sort of fired me up and it kept me going to the next things. And I think that what good mayors have to do. I' ; ve tried to look at some of the good mayors in this country and got to know a few of them, not all of them, but in 20 years, I got to know some good mayors. And I look at the Joe Rileys and folks like that and watch what they do and not only their ability to plan, but also how they worked with people and the confidence that folks have in them and folks see them as their mayor and you know, it' ; s that kind of thing. It' ; s that gift of leadership that really outstanding mayors have. I didn' ; t come in with a lot of flare, but I came with really a strong desire, once I was there to do things that were positive and the willingness to work hard and I tried to make up for what ever shortcomings I had and you know the flare and all this, just-mayor has to do everything. You got to speak all the time. (Inaudible) but I got to speak everyday, you know it' ; s an interesting job, but I tell you when I sit and think about it, when I' ; m trying to write and I start thinking about it and it slowly comes together in my mind, it' ; s amazing what happens. LEMONTE: So you' ; re glad you did it? ARRINGTON: I' ; m glad I did it, I' ; m glad I' ; m out of it though (both laugh) LEMONTE: Well thank you very much for your generous commitment of time to this interview. ARRINGTON: Thank you very much, it' ; s always a joy talking with you. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
bcri.org. 0 http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=RArringtonJr2001b.xml RArringtonJr2001b.xml
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Dr. Richard Arrington Jr. (2001) (2 of 2)
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Dr. Richard Arrington Jr. discusses the latter part of his career as Mayor of Birmingham including the annexation of additional area, being the subject of an FBI investigation and the creation of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
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20010724A
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
MAPS: Metropolitan Area Projects Strategy
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2001-07-24
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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Interviews collected as part of the general mission of the Oral History Project
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Video
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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English
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bcriohp
Oral History
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Betty Hanson
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Charles Morgan Jr.
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Civil rights lawyers
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
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5.4 February 24, 1995 Charles Morgan Jr. Interviewed on February 24, 1995 19950224M 1:20:31 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project Collection bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Raines Whittaker Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham Watergate Affair, 1972-1974 Civil rights lawyers Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Charles Morgan Jr. Betty Hanson Video 1:|1(2)|39(14)|63(3)|81(5)|109(7)|127(1)|144(12)|162(12)|177(7)|195(5)|210(16)|225(2)|244(5)|266(11)|281(14)|302(1)|317(6)|332(11)|352(8)|365(8)|384(7)|397(10)|411(8)|431(8)|447(2)|460(11)|473(3)|486(13)|509(10)|528(13)|549(1)|564(2)|590(5)|624(2)|643(5)|658(2)|668(9)|680(12)|691(4)|715(2)|728(13)|746(8)|760(11)|771(10)|787(3)|801(6)|812(6)|823(5)|834(2)|845(10)|863(3)|876(16)|898(13)|912(7)|929(9)|946(10)|967(1)|981(7)|993(10)|1006(3)|1022(9)|1034(10)|1045(15)|1062(2)|1073(13)|1086(3)|1103(8)|1116(6)|1130(10)|1143(12)|1161(2)|1182(4)|1194(11)|1208(5)|1222(11)|1233(12)|1247(1)|1265(9)|1278(8)|1295(2) 0 https://youtu.be/Yb4hcSL2LVs YouTube video English 61 Beginning of Interview Just for the record, Chuck, give me your name. 33.516200, -86.813870 17 Birmingham Civil Rights Institute http://www.bcri.org Website for the BCRI 67 Biographical Information And you were born where? He grew up in an upper middle class white community. Birmingham (Ala.) ; Southern States--History 115 Family Status And, so, that's why your family moved there? His father worked for National Life and Accident Insurance Company, which is the work that brought his family to Birmingham. Kentucky Birmingham (Ala.) ; Industrial life insurance ; Southern States--History 230 Education Okay. You went to high school, then, when you got here. He attended the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. College students ; University of Alabama 276 University Desegregation Okay, but you got interested the minute you got down there in student politics. He was supportive of the Brown v. Board of Education decision but wasn't yet a public figure when it occurred. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ; University of Alabama Alabama--History ; College integration 376 Politics in Alabama Except race. He sees Alabama as a progressive state and supported democratic politics. Folsom, James Elisha ; Wallace, George C. (George Corley), 1919-1998 Alabama--History ; Political parties--Southern States 567 Steel Workers and Race This was a big labor center. Race relations in organized labor was central to workers' struggles. AFL-CIO Birmingham (Ala.) ; Iron and steel workers--Labor unions ; Race relations in the United States 637 Trajectory of Political Education So, you, then, became, can I fairly say this? As his politics developed through law school, he noticed the impact that WW2 had on Black soldiers returning. World War II African American soldiers ; African Americans--Segregation ; University of Alabama. School of Law 768 Race after World War II But Chuck, if these people came back from the second world war— Birmingham was a segregated city that soldiers had to return to. Birmingham (Ala.) ; Segregation--United States ; United States. Supreme Court 852 Effects of Brown v. Board of Education Birmingham followed the rest of the south in resisting desegregation. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Iron and steel workers--United States ; Segregation--United States 1026 Working towards Desegregation Let's go back to Tuscaloosa and the Autherine Lucy case because you, in your book. He wanted to assist Authurine Lucy in attending the University of Alabama to desegregate it. Segregation in higher education--United States ; Tuscaloosa (Ala.) ; University of Alabama 1105 Involvement in Politics and Law How did you begin to work with people like Orzell Billingsley and Arthur Shores? He was involved with the Young Democrats and began to be known for his beliefs. University of Alabama ; Young Democrats of America 1250 Practicing Law Alright, what was the first confrontation that...? He started a law practice and, because of his politics, began to defend cases. Alabama--History ; Civil rights lawyers 1395 Becoming a Well-Known Lawyer Deal with that a little bit. While a lawyer, he was also involved in the Young Men's Business Club and associated with various politicians. Alabama Council on Human Relations ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Political parties--United States--History--20th century 1689 White Resentment for His Work I know. Stop right there though. Because of his work, white people, especially in Birmingham, resented him. Alabama--History ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Race relations 1756 Conscious Decision for Civil Rights Cases Stop right there. What made you...? As a white lawyer, he saw himself as one of the few who consciously chose to defend civil rights cases. American Bar Association Birmingham (Ala.) ; Civil rights lawyers ; Civil rights movement 1913 Consequences of Defending Civil Rights But, Chuck, you suffered a lot financially, in a lot of different ways and yet you kept plowing ahead. Because of his civil rights work, his life was threatened and he had to adjust his life accordingly. Alabama--History ; Civil rights lawyers ; Self-defense 2120 Getting the Black Vote and Jury Let's talk about some of the most famous cases. He saw that it was necessary for Black people to be able to vote and serve on juries for them to have any power in society. American Civil Liberties Union. Southern Regional Office African Americans--Civil rights ; Alabama--History ; Segregation--Law and legislation 2472 Working for Racial Justice Before we get to that, also— He worked on legal cases to desegregate juries, prisons, and voting across the state. American Civil Liberties Union Alabama--History ; Civil rights lawyers ; Segregation--Law and legislation 2859 ACLU Work in Atlanta But, talk a little bit about where you were at that time. He was working with the ACLU in Atlanta when Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. American Civil Liberties Union ; Atlanta (Ga.) ; Civil rights lawyers ; United States. Civil Rights Act of 1964 3078 Social Climate after Sixteenth St. Church Bombing Chuck, let's go back to 1963. He was deeply bothered by the 16th St. church bombing. 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, Birmingham, Ala., 1963 Birmingham (Ala.) ; Racism--United States--History ; Violence--United States--History 3225 Practicing Law with Black Lawyers Let's talk a little bit about practicing law in Birmingham— He worked closely with two Black lawyers in Birmingham during years of segregation. Birmingham Bar Association African American lawyers ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Civil rights lawyers ; United States--Race relations--History 3639 Defending Vietnam War Cases Yeah, right, but you might very well have seen things differently— While working with the ACLU, he saw the ways that the Vietnam War impacted the Civil Rights Movement. American Civil Liberties Union ; Civil rights lawyers ; Civil rights movement ; Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Protest movements--United States 3969 Perception of the Anti-War Movement But you took individual cases, Chuck. He reflects on different civil rights actors and their overlap with the anti-war movement. Civil rights lawyers ; Civil rights movement ; Race relations in the United States 4242 Involvement in Watergate Case Okay, but then the other famous cases... He was a lawyer defending the Democratic Party during the Watergate case. American Civil Liberties Union. Washington Office ; Civil rights lawyers ; Political parties--United States--History ; Watergate Affair, 1972-1974 4465 Looking Forward to the Next Social Change Chuck, here it is February 1995. He is skeptical of the political parties but finds importance in democratic ideals. Democracy--United States ; Political parties--United States--History 4633 Progress of Race Relations Do you think the social revolution, looking back— He sees society as better off than it was and access to power as necessary for further progress. American society and culture ; Political parties--United States ; Race relations in the United States Oral History Charles Morgan Jr. discusses his legal career, involvement in civil rights cases and his work with the ACLU. He also covers his iWork defending the Democratic Party in the Watergate case. HANSON: Just for the record, Chuck, give me your name. MORGAN: Charles Morgan, Jr. HANSON: And you were born where? MORGAN: 1930, across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio. HANSON: And you grew up, your early years... MORGAN: The first fifteen years in Kentucky. HANSON: And you came to Birmingham. Just give me a little background. MORGAN: In 1945. HANSON: Okay. Your father did what? MORGAN: He was the manager of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company. HANSON: And when you moved to Birmingham, you lived where? MORGAN: Why, Mountain Brook. HANSON: You say that as if there was no other place. MORGAN: Well, there was certainly no other place at the time that anybody in their right mind wanted to live. HANSON: Why was that? MORGAN: Because it was a precious little kingdom. It was a nice little, upper middle class, very upper middle class, White community. And it was understood that people who lived there were socially acceptable. It contained two country clubs and lot of White folk. HANSON: And, so, that' ; s why your family moved there? MORGAN: My family was there because it was the best residential section in town. HANSON: Did your father feel very much a part of the White power structure? MORGAN: No. HANSON: Talk about that just a little bit so we get some background. I' ; m trying to find out... MORGAN: In the first place, the last thing in the world that my father would have thought of in moving to Birmingham was something called, quote, ' ; the White power structure,' ; end quote. I doubt that many people in Birmingham thought of themselves as power structure. Many people in Birmingham thought of themselves as White or Black, and the power structure in Birmingham was pretty clearly defined. It was United States Steel. HANSON: Did your father sell insurance to United States Steel? Is that what brought him here? I' ; m trying to get a little background, Chuck, to come to your attitudes. MORGAN: No, he worked for the National Life and Accident Insurance Company out of Nashville, Tennessee. My father was born in the mountains of Kentucky. My mother was born in Paducah. Paducah was in western Kentucky. That' ; s more the landed noblesse oblique. Where my father was born, there were no slaves and no slave history, so one of the best things he could do in this entire world was to get out of the place that he was born, literally in a cabin which was in a suburb of, I guess, Lackey, which would have been a suburb of Allen, which would have been a suburb of Prestonburg. So he was quite interested in doing that, and he hit the road and got himself a job and worked his way up inside of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company which was out of Nashville. HANSON: You came here and you were approximately fifteen [years old], correct? MORGAN: Yes. Incidentally, they had a large industrial insurance business. Industrial insurance was insurance in the south that was generally sold to Black folks, whether it was that company or even a few Black owned insurance companies. And so, a person who worked for such an insurance company or, ultimately, managed it had to know an awful lot about living conditions amongst Black folks. Go ahead. HANSON: Okay. You went to high school, then, when you got here. Three years, two years... MORGAN: I went to high school. I went to Birmingham University School and I went to Ramsay High School from which I graduated. HANSON: Then you went to the University of Alabama. MORGAN: Yes. HANSON: Why did you do that as opposed to going up east like a lot of your contemporaries did? Why did you go to Tuscaloosa? MORGAN: Well, I didn' ; t even think about going up east, and not a lot of my contemporaries did. Some of them did. The University of Alabama was the state university. I was out of school a bit early. I had skipped a grade some place down the line and I was, I suppose, 17 or whatever and I started out at the University. It was the state university and it was a fine place to go. I didn' ; t even consider the other places. HANSON: Okay, but you got interested the minute you got down there in student politics. I mean... MORGAN: Well, it wasn' ; t that moment. No, I didn' ; t do that the first minute I got there. It took a while. I was interested in student politics because that was the thing in the State of Alabama to be interested in. HANSON: And you wanted to be a politician yourself? MORGAN: Well, I don' ; t think that' ; s true. No, I don' ; t think that I wanted to be a politician. I was just interested in politics. HANSON: Deal with those years in Tuscaloosa, particularly, because that just precedes the Autherine Lucy entrance. But, were you in Tuscaloosa at the time the Supreme Court decision came down, Brown v. The Board of Education? MORGAN: Sure, I started at the University of Alabama at 1947. I left the University of Alabama in 1955. Brown v. Board was 1954. Autherine Lucy had filed suit before that. HANSON: Talk a little bit about those years, Chuck. I mean you took a very strong position in favor of Brown. You took a strong position in favor of Autherine Lucy. MORGAN: Well, that' ; s right. But you see, I didn' ; t have a strong pulpit to speak from. I mean, a strong position did not mean that I was suddenly going to broadcast nationwide and say, ' ; Hi there, folks, this is a kid at the University of Alabama that favors Brown v. Board.' ; But people at the University knew generally that not only I, but many others--Whites--thought that the outcome in Brown v. Board should be precisely what it was, that desegregation was unconstitutional. There were a goodly number of White folks even though many people today don' ; t remember, don' ; t want to, or weren' ; t there... A good many folks in Alabama were pretty liberal. You' ; ve got to remember Alabama was far more liberal than most northern states on most issues. HANSON: Except race. MORGAN: No, I don' ; t, I don' ; t give that away either. I think that there were a lot of northern states which, starting in about 1948 with the race of Franklin Roosevelt' ; s presidency over the years and Harry Truman' ; s campaign on the civil rights platform, had decided that there was something called civil rights and they had to take a position, so they took a position in favor of it and of them. Now, in Alabama, they took a position generally against it. Alabama seceded from the Democratic Party when Harry Truman was nominated in 1948. I remember that. HANSON: You were there, were you not? MORGAN: The Dixiecrat Convention was here and my father attended the thing and all that sort of stuff and everything and here on out. But, you see, what happened in Alabama, you always had very...Alabama was far to the left of most states in the Union with respect to its senatorial representation, members of the house and, in nineteen hundred and forty six [1946], its governor. HANSON: You' ; re talking now about Jim Folsom? MORGAN: Why, of course. HANSON: And that' ; s the one that you worked very hard for. That was your first political campaign of consequence. MORGAN: No, no, I was still in school, still in high school and as far as I was concerned if Folsom was never...Folsom was never respectable inside the precious little kingdom nor was he ever respectable inside any other Birmingham industrial centers of power. But, Folsom was a person that I saw when I was sixteen years old, when he first...I guess that was his first successful run and I can remember him running. I thought he was kind of a funny fellow. I mean, after all, he' ; d lie down and do anything else it took to get publicity or be in the newspapers. But, he never said he hated anybody, and he always said quite the contrary. So, I think I and a goodly number of people who were in Mountain Brook didn' ; t talk about being for Jim Folsom, we didn' ; t even know that race was a major issue at the time. But, that' ; s what Folsom did, and then it came to the ' ; 48 convention and he led the loyalists. So, by 1948 when I was at the University of Alabama, I knew there was a difference between Loyalists and Dixiecrats. And soon, along the way, I had to make up my mind whether I was on the one side or the other, and a number of us made up our minds that we were on the side of the loyalists and I wasn' ; t at all isolated or alone in that. The entire Hill-Sparkman organization--even though Hill and Sparkman were not noteworthily to the left on the race question--the entire Folsom operation, everybody in the state made a decision with respect to all the loyal democrats. They had to know that they were on the side of the political party that included the Black folks and did so nationally. Now, many of them wrestled mightily to get free of that. George Wallace was a Loyalist. He and George Hawkins, whose campaign I worked in and managed later and worked on in ' ; 58, all those kinds of people that were around.... This was a big labor center. I mean, you can' ; t look around Birmingham, Alabama and not understand that there were disputes between laboring people who were Black and those who were White. And, the one thing the steel workers and the CIO unions had to do was to get rid of that rivalry between the two. And--. HANSON: Say that again. Get rid of the rivalry, or sort of put it...stimulate it so that Blacks and Whites would be working against each other? MORGAN: Not...the steel workers. The steel workers wanted them working together. HANSON: Okay, you' ; re talking about the steel workers. MORGAN: I mean, White folks, some of the times when White plant owners and others would have a strike or something of the White workers, they would try to bring Black folks in as strike breakers and sometimes they were successful and that made them very unpopular in that circumstance too. The only way that you organize in the mine workers or the steel workers was to make sure that racial barriers did not exist so that they couldn' ; t run in strike breakers. This was not the conservative city that everybody sees. It was conservative in the state... The state itself was conservative as race is the measure, but on other issues, it was far to the left of much of the country. HANSON: So, you, then, became, can I fairly say this? First, before you got involved as a civil rights attorney, you became very much an economic kind of liberal. MORGAN: By the time I graduated from the University of Alabama Law School, I taught a course four times called American Economic History. I didn' ; t just wake up one day and say, ' ; Hey, I like economics,' ; or whatever it is. But, I actually did that as I was going through school. Now, I was always interested in that. I developed a certain degree of scholarship at the University of Alabama because I had to. I had been too interested in politics and other things. So, I finally had to make almost all ' ; A' ; s' ; for four or five semesters to get an average that could get me into law school. And, when I got to law school, it became a habit, so I did the same thing in law school. I was an honor student in the law school. I' ; ve had different interests in life and as they have approached me, then, sometimes the world has been interested in what I was interested in. Sometimes, it hasn' ; t. That hasn' ; t bothered me too much. I' ; ve just had to move through those things. I could always look at Alabama a little differently than a lot of folks did because I knew some of the contrasts that existed in it. But, when you grow up in post World War Two and you had Jim Folsom as governor--and he was not going to cuss the Black folks--and you had a Lister Hill and a Sparkman-- You started off, I guess, with senator Bankhead along the way. And, you had all these people and these were returning veterans of World War Two. You know, one of the wonderful things World War Two did for an awful lot of people that is forgotten today is that it told them that there was such a thing as democracy and that Hitler was a racist and that Mussolini was a fascist and the Nazis were on the other side and the Japanese, of course, were of another race. It was more comfortable fighting them, no doubt. But, the fact of the matter is that these people were fascist totalitarians. And, a lot of young men came back from the war and they went to the University of Alabama and I' ; m sure other southern campuses, too, but certainly in Alabama, and those folks came back and they had lived in a world whereby they had been defending what they thought was democracy. Many of them saw that what they were living in was not. I wasn' ; t alone in that. HANSON: But Chuck, if these people came back from the second world war--and that' ; s both Blacks and Whites, because Truman did desegregate the army, that was the first time-- MORGAN: That' ; s right, but the Truman desegregation of the army wasn' ; t in the middle of a pitched battle during World War Two. But go ahead. HANSON: Yes, it came afterwards. But, the important thing was there was that change. Those veterans came back, both White and Black, but they came back and went to school and by 1954 came this Supreme Court decision and everything changed. I mean the--what you call the liberal state or the liberal city, closed its doors, did it not? I mean it said, ' ; We shall not desegregate our public schools.' ; MORGAN: I don' ; t think I' ; ve ever accused Birmingham of being a liberal city. HANSON: I thought you said that it was a lot more liberal than the rest of the state in everything but race. MORGAN: Oh, you' ; re talking about with organized labor. Yes, until you saw the people who were actually living at the country clubs and running the town, I mean owning it. HANSON: Okay, so there was... MORGAN: Except for Pittsburgh people. I mean, Pittsburgh owned the place, lock, stock and mill. But the rest of the folks around here all did business with Pittsburgh, so they were pretty conservative. But, inside the other segments of the society where laboring people worked, 25,000 of them, 50,000 in unions and in mines, those folks were not exactly what you called people who worshipped at the altar of mammon as you' ; d say. HANSON: What about...let' ; s take that topic and I want to go back to Tuscaloosa again and the Autherine Lucy situation. But let' ; s take that ' ; 54 situation. Everything actually changed then in this city. There seemed to be a wall that came down and said, " ; We are not going to change.' ; Atlanta didn' ; t take that approach. Why do you think Birmingham did? MORGAN: Every city took that approach in the south. The entire South took that approach. When the cotton curtain [went up], which had always been there anyway, it just was molded into a wall when Brown v. Board came because people had been making up their minds for years before Brown v. Board. And, segregationist politicians, who were generally representative of the rich, the well borne and the able, certainly moved in 1954, as they had in 1948 when they used the race question to take the democratic party away and they did exactly the same thing then. Now, at that point, you had certain noted politicians, Bull Conner--Theopholis Eugene, I think, was his given name--and all those people, and they were really pawns for a goodly number of white folks whose names I could mention. I think I won' ; t right now. HANSON: Why? MORGAN: Because I don' ; t choose to. HANSON: All right. MORGAN: But these folks were in the area and they were conservative beforehand, and they were conservative after that. But, the race issue gave them something really to talk about, because now they could talk in terms of segregated schools and all of the phrases they might have used. I remember one deacon [saying], ' ; Niggers have taken over your school. Niggers had taken over your churches. Niggers had taken over all those kinds of things,' ; and, consequently, they had great power and that was true not just of Birmingham. That was true across much of the South. Birmingham was always rawer and tougher than the rest of the south. Atlanta had a business community and a semblance of an educational community inside the city and you had in Birmingham-- You didn' ; t have much of that. People who did business here did business through U.S. Steel and did business with U.S. Steel. If you mined coal, you sold it some place. If you were an ore miner or if you owned the ore mine, you got rid of it there if U.S. Steel didn' ; t already own it. And, all of the rest of the steel companies did. This was just that place. We' ; re talking about 50,000 folks around here. HANSON: So you' ; re saying that this cry against Black folks fell on very fertile ground, because people were built with lack of education or whatever the case may be. MORGAN: And, traditionally, if possible, when White labor went on a strike, Black folk would-- They tried to bring Black folks in and convicts and prison labor sometimes to break the strike. And that didn' ; t--There was not a unity in working together. Only a couple of labor unions managed to put that together and work together so they could get organized. They did a good job at that. HANSON: Let' ; s go back to Tuscaloosa and the Autherine Lucy case because you, in your book, One Man, One Voice site the fact that you had called Autherine Lucy when she came, and she mentioned that she heard from this young White man and you were the one that called her. But the University didn' ; t do anything towards bringing her in. Did you want to do something about bringing her into the University? MORGAN: Yes, but you see, I mean, there' ; s nothing that I would.... I mean I' ; m not....Let me think. To ask the question in this time and to think about the question say in nineteen hundred and forty seven [1947] through nineteen hundred and fifty five [1955], would I have wanted to bring her to the University of Alabama? Sure. But, would I have wanted her to enter the University of Alabama? Sure. But, would I want to have a means to do that? Sure. And did I have any conceivable means to do that? No. The only thing I had was I had some influence on the campus from time to time in the ways that some people did, and I could just assure her that we would have that matter worked out when she got admitted. That everybody would be a peaceful admission and it wouldn' ; t be bad and that could have been done easily. HANSON: Were you in law school then? MORGAN: Not when she got in, but she came in 1956. I was out of law school in 1955. HANSON: How did you begin to work with people like Orzell Billingsley and Arthur Shores? I mean what was the connection there in the beginning? Because your career goes on interestingly defending a lot of very unpopular positions, Chuck. I mean, that' ; s what you' ; re noted for. MORGAN: Well, the defense of unpopular positions did not feed me, to start with. But, let' ; s just go back.... HANSON: Let' ; s go back. MORGAN: At the University of Alabama... I understood Alabama very well. I finished near the top of my class in law school if not at it. I knew the... I had come out of Alabama with a couple of degrees. I knew a lot of people. I had worked in campus politics and activities and in Young Democrats' ; work and in democratic state politics well before I got out of the University of Alabama. I left the University of Alabama at age 25. By the time I left Alabama, I understood the Hill-Sparkman bunch, the Young Democrats, and everything else that I was involved in. I was the national committeeman for the Young Democrats, I guess, before I ever got out of school. Now, I knew state politics and I knew state politicians and they knew me and they knew I was a little strange in some beliefs. Some of them did, but a great number of them agreed with me. Now the fact that I wind up saying something and am known for saying something or breaking loose that way was not by my pre-design. I didn' ; t wake up one day and say, ' ; Hi there. There' ; s a revival. I' ; m going to do something.' ; It is just that some people were confronted with having to make a decision. Most people wanted to avoid that decision. I was sane. I certainly would have preferred to avoid making the decision. I had already made my mind up as to how I felt about things and I said it. But, I sure didn' ; t want to be confronted with something that would strike me away from the entire community or town. HANSON: Then why did you? MORGAN: Because I wasn' ; t smart enough to turn it down. I couldn' ; t figure a way out where I could live with myself. I didn' ; t have the capacity to rationalize, apparently, that other people did, and I was confronted. Confrontation is what changes people. Their minds are already made up, generally. They know what they think. They know what it is and they know whether they can live with themselves or not. So, once confronted, then you make a choice. HANSON: Alright, what was the first confrontation that...? You said it didn' ; t pay the bills. What paid your bills in the beginning when you took ....? MORGAN: Well, I made a law practice. I' ; m not sitting down there looking for a civil rights case. That' ; s crazy. I suppose, as you get into things you think about them. For instance, I was already active in politics to a degree and already involved in the liberal or Loyalists Democratic...the Loyalist wing of the Democratic Party. There were Loyalists and Dixiecrats. We were Loyalists. And, in that context, people knew what people thought. I mean there were folks in the crowd that knew. And, when you go through it and you' ; re suddenly someplace and you' ; re thinking about this and you' ; ve watched everything go, then, at some point, you either have to--You make a decision and a choice. For instance, if you represent somebody, you' ; re appointed to defend someone in a criminal case, then you have to make a decision. You' ; ve accepted the appointment. They paid a hundred dollars ($100) back then for a capital case. That means if the fellow could face capital punishment you got a hundred dollars ($100) from the State of Alabama to defend that person. Now, one of the reasons some lawyers would do that, even those...like I did when I started out with a corporate firm here...one reason lawyers did that is because, if they were young, they wanted to learn something. Well they also did not want to be--at least I did not want to be--known as ' ; Death House Morgan.' ; That was a word that went beyond me. I didn' ; t want to be known as a fellow who took advantage of anybody that got killed. Now, once you' ; ve been presented with a case and you go ahead and you handle it, you start learning more and more about things as you go. It' ; s not just law or rationality. It' ; s facts and circumstances. And one case after another case after another case, you wind up doing things. And, you know the strangest thing happens. All of your friends and associates, all of whom were associated with you in one activity or another, seem to develop a propensity to find out that they can send you a case that they wouldn' ; t handle. HANSON: Why did you never turn it down? MORGAN: Well, I didn' ; t....I had a different perception of things. I didn' ; t want to take some cases sometimes and get out there in those damn things any more than anybody else did. That was crazy. But, my perception of being a lawyer was different from that of a lot of people. HANSON: Deal with that a little bit. Let' ; s go back to deal with some of the cases that gave you high visibility that led up to your leaving in ' ; 64. I' ; m thinking of you taking, for example, the Alabama Council on Human Relations, the Bob Hughes case, the Norman Jimerson case. There were no attorneys that would handle that in Birmingham. MORGAN: Well, there probably were some lawyers. I' ; m talking about White lawyers. HANSON: Yes, I' ; m talking about White lawyers, because there were segregated juries and we' ; re going to get to that in a minute. MORGAN: There were some White lawyers, probably, who would have taken those cases...a few. And those lawyers were unknown sometimes, often, to me, but certainly to the clients. Now, when someone comes to you and they have a problem, then, the first thing you want to do is shun it off to somebody else. I was never a member of the Council on Human Relations. I mean I was hardly ever...I mean I was a member of the Young Men' ; s Business Club primarily because at least it was an organization that had some controversy to it. I mean, in a world in which the Junior Chamber of Commerce was over here and the Young Men' ; s Business Club [YMBC] was over there, I got to the YMBC. And we had debates in that thing! It was really very strange in Birmingham that somebody would do that sort of thing, a group or an organization. We had folks that were, you know, good people who were confronting things. Well, as far as I was concerned, the last thing in the world I wanted to do as I got up in the morning was to go out and confront the race question. And the reason for that was that I had done very well and I was not what you would call ignorant of the world in which I lived. I mean, I traveled the state in politics. I had done a world of things. I knew everybody from...you know...I mean, I had people who were interested in me. Mark Ray Clement in Tuscaloosa and others. Jim Folsom. All those folks around, I mean Hill and Sparkman, I got along with all of these folks. Now the last thing in the world they wanted me to do--any of them that knew me well--would be to get involved in an integration case, because it was unheard of. You' ; ve got to be out of your mind to do that. Well, I wasn' ; t out of my mind, obviously. It' ; s worked out very well over the long haul. I couldn' ; t foresee any of it. But, you see, what happens is that when you are confronted in life, you make certain decisions and the decisions you make generally govern the rest of your life in certain instances. And when you make those decisions you begin to move, even if your moves cut you away from the community and one leads to another because you don' ; t live in a vacuum. If Joe Jones over here knows something happened, he may tell Bill Green who tells Sam Smith and Sam then knows somebody and pretty soon you wind up with another client and you say, ' ; Where did that client come from?' ; Well, it came because of the first one. And it could be that your capacity to rationalize wasn' ; t ... you weren' ; t that rational a person perhaps. Now, I didn' ; t have any question about what was right and I knew I was an American citizen and there was a Supreme Court of the United States and, as such, all those things entered into it. There was a certain sense of patriotism and if you took a case then you tried to win it. You could win it any number of ways, settle it, do this, get the case dismissed, do all those things I could and you just wound up repeatedly getting in those things and when you did wind up repeatedly getting in them, it wasn' ; t that you couldn' ; t foretell the future. You just didn' ; t know what else to do other than whatever your duty was. As I said, it wasn' ; t my duty to join the Council on Human Relations. I didn' ; t race over every day to see if I could attend a NAACP meeting. I mean, that wasn' ; t in my interest. I didn' ; t wake up one morning thinking that was a fine thing for me to do. I didn' ; t go join some debating society. The Young Men' ; s Business Club is as closest I came to that around here. I didn' ; t do that. All that happened was, things happened and invariably, when I get into a case then some son of a bitch would come along and would anger me a little bit along the way and that would just increase my resolve. Now, in fact looking back at it, I have a lot to be thankful for Birmingham. I got out of here alive. HANSON: True. MORGAN: I got out of here well. I came back here for years. I still do. I used to say I didn' ; t make any...lose any old friends. I just made new enemies. And I didn' ; t do anything particularly noteworthy, you see. HANSON: But Chuck... MORGAN: I was a lawyer. HANSON: I know. Stop right there though. We must talk a little bit about the climate for White folks at that time and what it was like if you dared speak out. For example, one of the cases when you came back into town, a classic that you recite in your book, is that you' ; re down here at the Parliament House having lunch and somebody saw you and went across the street. It was shortly after the city had desegregated the lunch counters and so forth. And they said they' ; d rather eat across the street with a group of niggers than sit in the same hotel room with Chuck Morgan. MORGAN: That' ; s right. HANSON: Obviously you weren' ; t the dearly beloved...It didn' ; t offend you? How did you put up with that? I mean, you knew people and they resented you. You were not the most dearly loved man in Birmingham. MORGAN: You know something. This may come as a big surprise to you, but the odds are pretty good that I' ; m still not. (Hanson laughs.) Now, the second thing is how do you do that? Well, you don' ; t do that voluntarily. You don' ; t wake up one morning and say I' ; d like to do that but you have to figure out whether you' ; re right or not and then you have to figure out whether it' ; s worth it or not and then you have to do whatever you got to do. HANSON: Stop right there. What made you...? Was it your conscience that said this is right? You said you were an American citizen. You were... MORGAN: My conscience told me this was right, yes. My conscience told me the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union were right also, and I didn' ; t pick up the first mail opportunity I had to join. I was confronted. HANSON: So, you' ; re saying it was always in your life, this confrontation, where you had to make an ethical decision? MORGAN: I' ; m saying that precisely what has happened with almost every social movement in the country and certainly with the movement for civil rights in this country is that the conduct of the oppressed was such that it confronted the oppressors. And, if you witness that, then, the old line from the labor days is, ' ; Which side are you on?' ; And, if it confronts you directly then you either do your duty or you don' ; t. I didn' ; t do anything... I didn' ; t do one thing that a lawyer shouldn' ; t do. I did only what a lawyer should do. HANSON: Then why weren' ; t there more lawyers? In this case, specifically, White lawyers that would take civil rights cases in Alabama? MORGAN: I don' ; t know. You' ; ll have to ask them. HANSON: Well, we' ; ve tried, and nobody will give us an answer to that. MORGAN: Well, in the first place a lot of them don' ; t go. I mean, I can think of... If I were Black, there would be a world of lawyers I wouldn' ; t enter into their office asking them to represent me. If I were a member of the Communist Party for instance, I wouldn' ; t just search out some of these lawyers around town here and ask them to represent me. Now, me, I was pretty well treated by these lawyers around here. I remind you, because don' ; t think for a minute that I wasn' ; t. There were two things I was doing. I was doing a lot of the dirty work. It was clean to me. It was clean to the world, but I was doing a lot of the things they didn' ; t have to do and I had a lot of friends. I was president of the Junior Bar Section of the Young Lawyers that year. I was in charge of sundry things in the Bar Association. I started out with a corporate firm here in town, had a world of friends and I was active in politics and I still do and I haven' ; t lost those friends. I still see them now. I see those lawyers now, many of them, the ones that are still living, and I don' ; t have a problem with them and they didn' ; t have a problem with me. I went to a bar dinner the other night here in Birmingham. I might as well have been returning to a family reunion with a lot of those folks, but the fact of the matter is that I chose a different course than they did. Many of them respected that course. A lot of them were on the other side, politically and otherwise, and I can' ; t expect them, if they' ; re on the other side, politically and otherwise, to stand around applauding me. HANSON: But, Chuck, you suffered a lot financially, in a lot of different ways and yet you kept plowing ahead. For example, segregation.... MORGAN: Every single thing that I suffered along the way financially, if you will look back over that as life went on, everything came out very well. HANSON: Sure. You can take it with perspective. But I can remember walking in your house in Mountain Brook with search lights going on the front door that stayed on 24 hours a day. MORGAN: Well now, they were just kind of big long lights. They were not searchlights in that sense, but they were there because I thought a place should be well lit--in Birmingham. HANSON: Now, be honest about that. You had had threats. Your family had had threats. Your child had had threats. Being a White man, taking some civil rights cases... MORGAN: I don' ; t believe the child had threats. HANSON: But you had threats. MORGAN: Well that was alright, sure, but I expected that. I had a lot of threats, sure. HANSON: And what about... Did you fear for your life ever? MORGAN: Of course. HANSON: You would go across the tracks and meet with Orzell Billingsley carrying a gun sometimes in your cases. MORGAN: I didn' ; t carry one much, but I had a permit to carry one and I did sometimes have a thing that would protect me in my briefcase, sure. HANSON: Do you think you could have used it? MORGAN: Do I think I could have used it? Well,...I mean, what a strange question. HANSON: I don' ; t think it' ; s strange at all. MORGAN: You don' ; t think anybody ever carried one of those things and didn' ; t think they could use it. HANSON: Do you still carry a gun? MORGAN: No. HANSON: Why? MORGAN: I don' ; t want to. HANSON: Why did you carry it then? MORGAN: Well, I didn' ; t want to then. HANSON: But you felt you had to? MORGAN: From time to time. Not every day, not much.... I' ; ve always thought they were more trouble than they were worth, usually, but there were events and things that came along that from time to time told me that I should be able to defend myself against people who were not interested in fist fighting. HANSON: What was the response of your mother and father, Camille, your wife, to your outspoken stand on a variety of different things? And we are going to get into some of these cases in just a minute which are famous now. But what was their response? Did they ever say, ' ; Chuck, pull back. Don' ; t be so outspoken.' ; ? MORGAN: Not my wife, no, never. HANSON: Your mother and father? Your brother? MORGAN: No, not my brother. I think my mother and father were worried about me not making it. So, consequently, they would express that concern from time to time. But as far as my wife was concerned, no, not from the moment that we... not from the moment that the subject first came up have we disagreed on it. HANSON: Despite the fact that your life was threatened, despite the fact that you had to live under lights because you liked, to use your term, ' ; a well lit lawn' ; ... MORGAN: No don' ; t, don' ; t. Listen, it was nothing compared with people like Shores and folks like that who had an entire neighborhood with no policemen around. You know, I' ; m telling you. I' ; m living in Mountain Brook. If I were sitting over some place and worrying about doing something to somebody, about the last place I would like to go if I were from...I' ; m not going to mention the area in Birmingham, something like White steel workers or somebody else, I' ; m not going to trot out to Mountain Brook to do something. Why, good Lord, man. That' ; s about as foreign as... It' ; s foreign in a different way, the same way the Black community is, but in a different way. HANSON: Let' ; s talk about some of the most famous cases. Certainly, desegregating juries, Chuck. I mean, you had some failures in that but you saw in the beginning that that had to happen quickly. MORGAN: Well, because of my experience in Birmingham practicing law, I understood--because of my experience generally in Alabama with politics--I knew that Black folks had to have some power and the power that Blacks could get, of course, is the vote. Without the right to vote, everything else would fail. Now, the instruments of power in our democracy are generally... The first power is the power of the vote--a power just as important is the power of being on a jury. If you had all White juries, as we generally throughout the State of Alabama, the jury can do anything to you. The jury is what takes your life away. The jury can take away your property. The jury can take away everything. Therefore, that' ; s one of the great instruments of power in a democracy. We talk about the police and the lawyers and this and that, but the jury, that' ; s the essence of power. The vote is the essence of power in a democracy and when I started practicing here, women couldn' ; t serve on juries. Blacks didn' ; t serve on juries except in some areas in small numbers. They' ; d show up one, two or three in the panel. With women, I filed a case called White v. Crook in Lowndes County, Alabama. I like that name. White was Gardenia White and she was Black. Crook was Bruce Crook and he was the jury commissioner and he was White. But, also, I added into that complaint the question of the exclusion of women from juries and on recollection that was the first application of the equal protection clause for the rights of women with respect to a matter of that nature. So, in that one case, I struck down-- We managed to desegregate the juries of Lowndes County and, secondly, managed to take away the ban on women, White and Black from serving on juries in the State of Alabama. Those cases, those jury cases were filed county by county by county. I would have somebody, and this is...much of this is after I left here and went .... I left Birmingham in late 1963 and by 1964 I was back in Atlanta. In ' ; 64 I then organized the ACLU Southern Regional Office, American Civil Liberties Union Southern Regional Office, and consequently, filed lawsuits across the South. So, when I left here, I didn' ; t leave for long and I didn' ; t leave for real, some might say. Because, then, it was in Alabama counties, numbers of them, not just one, two, or three, that a lawsuit would be filed against the jury commissioners to require the desegregation of juries. And they would be filed in a federal court. And, then, we would rule to desegregate the juries since statistically they would have to come up and make sure that they met, generally, the population in the area. Well that' ; s the transfer of power that nobody much sees or notices, looking back at it, but that' ; s one of the strongest instruments of power that exists. Very few things in this society can take away your life, legally, or take away your property, legally. HANSON: Could the state have changed everything if they could have passed a law in the legislature to desegregate juries? The answer is, ' ; Of course.' ; Some states did, didn' ; t they? MORGAN: No. HANSON: None. In the South. MORGAN: In the South? Not when I was doing this, no. HANSON: Okay, so you went county by county in Alabama particularly, but you also did it in Mississippi? MORGAN: In Alabama. I had a great desire to see that Alabama changed. I mean, I had the whole South and we had other organizations working with...and worked with them whether it was in Mississippi or Georgia. We had lawyers and organizations and ultimately you raised money in the North and the money flowed South and it became a major industry for folks. And you had lawyers all across the way. We had lawyers in particular states and so we filed lawsuits with them, Black lawyers, White lawyers, whatever. But, all those things were devoted and dedicated to redistributing power. It was not...I mean, I wasn' ; t that...The traditional way to do it is you defend a Black man charged with a crime and you raise the question of systematic exclusion of Negroes from the Grand Appellate juries and, after you raise the question, you see, you get in the record and you go up and appeal the case and you get the conviction reversed and he doesn' ; t go to death because you' ; ve proved racial discrimination in the selection of the jury. But you see, what I did was different. We fashioned an answer out of a little arcane reference to a couple of cases and the answer was, file suit in federal court against the state court at jury officials and put them under an injunction, because when you used to raise the question for Black defendants, it would go away. The whole thing would go away. Then you' ; d turn around and retry him and whatever else it is then after the court ruled you' ; d have the juries about the same way. This way, we put them under a court order and we would ____________. And I don' ; t care if the county was Lowndes, Harber, Bullock, wherever across the South, we did that. And, then the second place was in the voting rights cases. HANSON: Before we get to that, also--which is sort of right with it, because you always talk about segregated justice, from cradle to grave, lack of justice for the Black man in particular-- [cross-talking] MORGAN: There' ; s no way...You see, I can be critical, and I sometimes am, of some companions that I had. But imagine what you' ; d do if you walk in a courthouse and you raise the racial questions if you are a White lawyer in those years. You earn your living there. You' ; ve got a wife and kids at home. You' ; ve got a mortgage on your house, just like everybody else. You look at it and you know you have an obligation to raise the question of systematic exclusion of negroes from juries, but you know if you do so that you' ; ll have to give up your livelihood, the town you' ; ve lived in, your mother' ; s and father' ; s and everybody else' ; s around, your wife and children. Now, under that circumstance, that' ; s quite a burden to be on a lawyer or any other citizen, you know, who lives some place. Well that' ; s what was confronted. There were a lot of lawyers that didn' ; t like that system, but if they did something about it, the natural laws of economics did them in. Now, I understood that. I' ; d been through all that. So, when I went with the ACLU, I used the ACLU and they used me. But, I used it and grant funds and all across the South, hired lawyers to file lawsuits to desegregate juries that even some of them later would be trying cases in. HANSON: Also, you desegregated prisons, I mean the Caleb Washington case. Along with Orzell Billingsley, you had been fighting this for years. MORGAN: The whole justice system. Jury cases, the prison system, you name it. All of it is a part of the instrument of power. The basic instrument of power in any society and culture is to do one of two things: kill someone or put them in jail. That' ; s the way the world works. Now, I understood that. And I understand it today. Lots of people today don' ; t seem to understand that. It' ; s what I would refer to as kind of murky, miasmic liberalism. I mean, the world would be nice, but that' ; s called power and I knew something about politics and I knew that was the way that you changed things was to alter power, not so that Whites wouldn' ; t be serving but so that you would desegregate and integrate. And you know why you want to integrate? You want to integrate because that means that Black folks and White folks both talk differently. They say things differently when White folks are around. Black folks do, and White folks say things differently when Black folks are around. That' ; s just the nature of human beings. Everybody forgets about the nature of human beings. HANSON: So you decided to use the federal government in a new way to desegregate juries to get people to desegregate prisons. But the classic case, of course--and you had a lot of help here--was the one man, one vote. You saw reapportionment as absolutely fundamental to changing the state. In other words, they were all part of a large scheme, were they not, Chuck? MORGAN: I could see something that other people didn' ; t see. They still don' ; t see it and they still don' ; t understand it and they may never. It doesn' ; t matter a whit. Somebody will. Somebody will see it. If you have a state legislature, as Alabama did, that was created in 1901 and designed to make certain that certain agricultural interest ruled the area and designed in such a way that you have a state senator from, say, Lowndes County and a state member of the House or two and that this state senator and that state senator from Wilcox and the state senator from X county and Y county, that all these people had great power in a 35 person senate. And Jefferson County was 642,000 people, ultimately, by about 1940 as I recall. And Jefferson County had one vote in the state legislature and state senate, too. Seven members of the house. Other places had two or three members of the house. Every county had one. Sixty-seven counties had one house member. Therefore, the apportionment of the state meant that the vote of a person in Jefferson County, White or Black, was minuscule compared with the votes of the people in those other counties. Now, how do you change the state? Well, in the first place, if the Black Belt of the state--named, incidentally, if anybody ever watches this, not because of the population, it is said, but because of the color of the soil--the Black Belt of the state ran the operation and the Black Belt of the state is interested in what? Cheap labor. What' ; s the cheapest labor? Well, slave labor was pretty expensive. It got cheaper after Reconstruction. So, you' ; ve got all the crops and all the Black folks living on the farm and how do you control folks who live on the farm? They see you' ; ve got more than they' ; ve got. Well, you know, the strangest thing is you sometimes do it with guns, whips, knives, chains, the sheriff and the county jail. Now, how do you do something about that? Well, the first thing you do is you desegregate juries. Simultaneously, you' ; d better desegregate the voter rolls, because if you have a democracy, the real power lies in the voter rolls. And so, simultaneously, we started filing voting discrimination cases and working with those who did across the Black Belt, also. And in the ACLU years it was just wonderful. I mean, it was like, there I was in Atlanta, Georgia and I had people all over the United States who were contributing money and foundations and others for me to go out and hire lawyers and to get people to do things and try cases myself and take them to Supreme Court to alter the law that concerns you deeply. But, talk a little bit about where you were at that time. You were with the ACLU in Atlanta. MORGAN: I was in the ACLU in Atlanta in 1964. I left here in ' ; 63 and was... In ' ; 64 the Voting Rights Act was proposed, but ' ; 64 was the year for the Civil Rights Act. HANSON: That' ; s right. ' ; 64. MORGAN: [unclear] and the rest of that. I lived in Washington and then moved to Atlanta, I guess later in that year-- Late in ' ; 64 I moved to Atlanta. Now, in 1965, you had the Selma to Montgomery March and those things for the Voting Rights Act. And, you see, we also had a Department of Justice back then and I liked those people. A lot of people don' ; t like the Department of Justice, but I always thought they were pretty good folks. Burke Marshall headed up the Department of Justice and John Doar was in the Department of Justice as number two in the Civil Rights Division and Bob Kennedy was the Attorney General of the United States. Whatever people may say about any Kennedy, any place, Robert Kennedy was hard minded, tough and he was devoted and dedicated to making the United States live by its promise and carrying that promise forward to the South. So, I liked him, I mean, personally and otherwise and I liked these other folks personally and otherwise and they took care of their things and I' ; d try to take care of things that they couldn' ; t take care of and things that.... They couldn' ; t handle all of these lawsuits. They could break down this statute and that sort of statute. They had all sorts of things going for them. Then, Jack Kennedy was assassinated, of course, soon after...in the fall of 1963. Well, then, in came Lyndon Johnson and, you see, Lyndon Johnson, as southern as he is, was a man who understood power. You know, you don' ; t have to be a walking around genius to understand power, and Lyndon Johnson was probably both a walking around genius and he understood power. He knew that one way to alter that power in the South was to alter the vote. Now, he knew that that was the right thing to do, too, so he embarked upon the vote. So if you can take care of the votes and if you can take care of the jury structure and the justice system and, then, lastly, if you can take care of the ..... HANSON: Reapportionment. MORGAN: Well, I mean, you' ; ve got that. That' ; s the vote. I consider the reapportionment cases, those cases, all of them having to do with the vote down the line. And, when you get through, you change those two things. Then, education you see has to fall in the center of that. You can' ; t educate people or get money for education or do anything else unless you' ; ve got a decent legislature, a decent voter set of rolls and a decent set of people who are not going to be able to kill people with impunity. And, they' ; ve got juries to protect that. So, by working on the instruments of power...I came to these conclusions in Birmingham. I mean, nobody sat around and philosophized with me about this. I mean, I could see this from the University of Alabama right straight on through. I understood power and I had a lot of folks who were more miasmic than I was in civil rights things. They did other things. They were interested in-- I understood what had to be done to give people a playground in which they could all operate. A place where they could debate back and forth, where people could hear different arguments. And, I... That' ; s what I did. I did that for eight years out of Atlanta. HANSON: Chuck, let' ; s go back to 1963. The thing-- If you said to X number of people in Birmingham, ' ; Chuck Morgan,' ; they would say, ' ; I remember when he said,' ; and they' ; ll quote ' ; Birmingham is dead,' ; which is not exactly how you said it in that famous speech before the YMBC. That happened in ' ; 63 after four little girls were killed at the Sixteenth Street Church. Do you want to address the climate that led up to that bombing that certainly was a turning point in your life? MORGAN: No, and I don' ; t think it was an event in my life. I mean, I know that that was an important event in my life. It was a terrible thing to have happen and it sickened me. But...I can' ; t recount those events. HANSON: Why did you determine to give that speech in the first place? Because you were so outraged? MORGAN: Well, it was nothing else. Sure. I mean, I didn' ; t sit down and rationally say, ' ; Hi, there. I think I' ; ll go give this speech. Hey let' ; s go to Gettysburg.' ; No, that' ; s not any event. I mean, I just... I was furious. That' ; s why. HANSON: You said something there that having just recently gone.... MORGAN: It was sick. The whole thing was sickening. HANSON: But you said, ' ; We are all to blame.' ; MORGAN: Well, of course. We were. HANSON: Address that a little bit. MORGAN: Well, we are a democracy. When the people' ; s will is carried out by bombing kids at a church that' ; s pretty close to seeing who did it. You know, I' ; m not a great one to wake up one morning and say corporate guilt is the way of the earth. I' ; m not talking about that. But, I lived in Birmingham, Alabama. I knew who the hell did it. I didn' ; t have to.... I wasn' ; t born yesterday, but I didn' ; t have the capacity to rationalize [that] most people did, because I could see things they didn' ; t see or at least I was willing to look. But there was nothing great about that. I didn' ; t do anything. There was all these people talking about courage and this and that and all that sort of routine. I only did, you see, what I couldn' ; t keep from doing. People don' ; t understand that. Other people could keep from doing it who agreed with me. I just didn' ; t have the way... I couldn' ; t do that. HANSON: Let' ; s talk a little bit about practicing law in Birmingham, Alabama for two Black lawyers that you worked very closely with, most notably Orzell Billingsley and Arthur Shores. What was it like? This was before there was any desegregation, before your famous cases on juries, before your famous cases with the prisons. What was it like the first time you came in contact with somebody like Arthur Shores or Orzell Billingsley? How did they practice law? How could they practice law in this highly segregated society? MORGAN: Well, it was very hard because they didn' ; t have any power. HANSON: That' ; s your theme, isn' ; t it? That' ; s the theme of everything. MORGAN: It' ; s not the theme. It' ; s the theme of democracy and the world and life. I mean it' ; s nothing I thought of, because human beings who are interested in politics understand a little bit about power to start with, and human beings that are interested in law ought to understand something about power and it just... The real question is, did Orzell Billingsley and Arthur Shores have power? They had about nine thousand Black votes, as I recall--nine to ten or twelve thousand Black votes in a period of time in Birmingham and Jefferson County, and that was a semblance of power, you know, a little bit, but not much. Orzell was... I drank with Orzell a good bit. We' ; d go off to some place, his house or somewhere--not in Mountain Brook. We didn' ; t go out there. And Arthur was not a person who was that way. He' ; d never go with us. And I did not work with them in any number of cases. I mean, Orzell was a plaintiff of mine in one case, Billingsley v. Clayton, a jury case. Or maybe that was his father. HANSON: That was his father. MORGAN: Yes, his daddy. [pauses and laughs] Orzell, that' ; s a funny story. [speaking low] I probably ought to pick up the phone and tell him before I tell it, but these were people that I saw. It was a segregated society. I didn' ; t see them any place except at Orzell' ; s house. I was closer to Orzell than Arthur. Arthur was pretty straight laced and he was a fellow-- Orzell drank a good bit and he was... Arthur was a representative of, you know, the business interest... HANSON: The power structure. MORGAN: The NAACP and the rest of it. But, Orzell and the other young lawyers, you know. There were some younger lawyers around who were Black lawyers and I used to...I thought they were brilliant in many ways. I' ; m not commenting scholastically. I don' ; t know what they did in law school, but they could find a remedy and think of something to do. The problem was that they were crippled. HANSON: Because-- MORGAN: Because they lived in a segregated society in which all the power was in the hands of the White folks. HANSON: And being crippled they also didn' ; t have access to some of the libraries, did they, Chuck? MORGAN: Well, they didn' ; t have access to the rest of that. You see there are people who can practice law without much law libraries, but in Birmingham, I discovered one day at the Birmingham law library, I was-- I told somebody just the other day. I was at the Birmingham Law Library looking for something and I noticed all these people who worked there who weren' ; t helping anybody do anything--about four of them, I counted. And I counted particularly because there I am in the old courthouse, Jefferson County Courthouse and I' ; m wandering along and I' ; m searching for something and I looked over at a little room over there and there used to be a room in there, there' ; s a little ... the sixth floor of the courthouse had an elevator that would take you upstairs to the law library. And, in the law library there was an old man there, with gray hair, a short little fellow, a nice fellow as far as I was concerned, named Charlie White. The Birmingham Bar Association ran that library. Well, Black folks couldn' ; t even be members of the Birmingham Bar Association. They had their own private bar association. And, it was...one of the great revelations of my life was to discover that Orzell or whoever it was, would go over to the law library and they couldn' ; t go into the law library and get a book. They' ; d get up there and they would put them in a little room, like the little room I saw. And, then the law librarian, Charlie White, would bring them books. They would tell him what they wanted, and he' ; d come over and bring the books back to them. Now, of course, I started to say to somebody the other day, desegregation has resulted, now, in a law library where the librarians don' ; t even bring White lawyers' ; books. (laughs) But, there was Charlie White working along the way carrying the books over to the Black lawyers. There were a thousand things that were strange and absurd looking back, but you see, they were all designed to a purpose and the purpose was to make sure that White people, just because of their race, remained in power. Nothing else. And, if you... There were a thousand rationalizations...but that' ; s what was involved. To a great degree that' ; s involved in a lot of politics today, and we' ; re talking about thirty years later. And, I imagine, they' ; ll be involved thirty more years from now. Ultimately, if things continue to work along the way, and we have democracy along the way, and the continuance of the Constitution--If the Supreme Court comes in, it' ; ll enforce it and that sort of thing and we' ; ll find that those problems will go away. But that comes from something called integration. You know it' ; s not... There' ; s been a lot of integration of the South. You can see it by the sundry shades of Black folks. Now, all these artificial distinctions of race, I mean religion, you don' ; t even, you know-- You can' ; t even tell what somebody' ; s religion is when you see them, but people all over the world...until you know what it is, people all over the world kill each other over religion. Well, they can see race. They kill each other over race. It just.... Most things in life are very simple. You don' ; t have to be an honor graduate of the Alabama Law School--or Harvard or Yale. The problem with the law and the problem with education is, it gives people a way to think " ; rationally" ; or, to put it another way, to rationalize. And when they rationalize, they rationalize away most of the things they might have done, which could have changed something along the way, along life' ; s road. And, I have seen many people do that and I have not, you know, I have not written them off. I mean, I have a world of friends here who disagreed with me and over the years, I mean they just... I' ; d see some in Atlanta and some in some other places, those eight years in Atlanta, four years in Washington. And all these folks, I mean-- As I say, I didn' ; t lose a lot of old friends. I knew a world of people. HANSON: But Chuck you might have-- MORGAN: I made a lot of new enemies. HANSON: Yeah, right, but you might very well have seen things differently--and I want to get to the core of why you did--because aside from just what you did in Alabama and when you were with the ACLU in juries and one man, one vote, and prisons and so forth, you also defended unpopular causes, not the least of whom was Muhammed Ali who was Cassius Clay who didn' ; t want to go and work in the Vietnam War. The Levy case, a dermatologist who also did not want to serve in the Vietnam War. Did the ACLU give you that kind of cover, or why did you decide to take those cases? Those were individuals. That was not a question of power. That was individual. MORGAN: OK. The day that the ACLU, in a time like the Vietnam War, gives somebody, quote, cover, that is the day that the organization should dissolve. Now, the...When I left here and went to Washington, I worked for the American Association of University Professors for a while after I finished A Time to Speak. And then, after that, the American Civil Liberties Union decided that, low and behold, the poor benighted southerners needed some help and needed some emancipation and so, consequently, they wanted to organize a Southern Regional Office of the ACLU. It was also in liberal jargon or whatever you want to put it, it was pretty good business, as the ACLU Southern office raised enough money to handle it and probably raised some money extra to boot. But there were foundation heads all across the country who were interested in the South, many of them having been southerners. I mean the guys who ran them. And, so, consequently, when I was in the southern office of the ACLU, grants came and with those grants I could do something that we hadn' ; t done before. I put maybe fifteen or ten or twenty lawyers on a retainer. They were Black, most of them. Some were White. Every month. Why? I wanted them to be able to practice where they were and live, eat. I understood that. See, if you could eat and sleep, have a place to live, food, shelter and clothing, then you' ; re likely to be around and handle cases. Now, the Vietnam War came along and as the Vietnam War came, it got in the way. It was just a terrible inconvenience for the Civil Rights Movement (both laugh). I' ; m in Atlanta, Georgia and there' ; s Julian Bond, who' ; s, you know, a friend and a client. There he is in the Georgia legislature and they want to throw him out. I wind up in a case called Bond v. Floyd. I' ; m already in Reynolds v. Sims or Sims v. Frank is the way they filed it, and I' ; ve done that. I guess I argued that case in ' ; 64. I' ; m in Atlanta...when I' ; m in Atlanta and I' ; m back in Atlanta in ' ; 64, I argue Reynolds v. Sims in the Supreme Court of the United States in ' ; 64. In ' ; 65-- HANSON: (coughs loudly) Excuse me, Chuck. MORGAN: That' ; s alright. In ' ; 65, when you go along, then the Voting Rights Act comes in and all these things are there, so there' ; s another thing coming along and it' ; s the Vietnam War. I say the Vietnam War got in the way. It was a terrible inconvenience for the social revolution that was underway. It' ; s very difficult to have a social revolution in a time of war. War does things to people and governments. I don' ; t know where you read this, but it' ; s readable many places that war does things to people that other things don' ; t do to them, and to nations. When you' ; ve got a, quote, enemy, out there then the war effort takes precedence. Well, what we did with the Civil Rights Movement, you see, is that it was existing in the time of the Vietnam War. And people like Martin King and others move against the war. In the first place, Martin King was a Christian. I mean, people keep forgetting that. I mean, they think of Martin Luther King as a " ; civil rights leader" ; or as a great speaker or as an excellent writer or as a PhD from Boston, but Martin King was a Christian and most Christians understand there is something wrong with war. Most of them don' ; t mind it much, but they know there is something wrong with war. Well, Martin King knew there was something wrong with war. The old spirituals knew there was something wrong with war. Lots of people sang, ' ; Ain' ; t goin' ; to go to war no more.' ; And, along with that come the Vietnam War and at that juncture people in the United States look at them and they say what in God' ; s green earth are we doing in Vietnam? As far as I' ; m concerned, I don' ; t particularly want to get involved in the war. I' ; m interested in other things but the war keeps getting in the way. I mean, the war is in the way of the social revolution going on in the United States. War generally kills social revolutions. Well, something happened with the Vietnam War. It was a little bit different. The social revolution may have been killed by the war. It may not have. I doubt that it has. But, secondly, it also killed the war. The Vietnam War was there and I... HANSON: But you took individual cases, Chuck. I mean, King certainly got to be very unpopular with a lot of the good folk, the liberal folk, that were beginning to accept him and what he had done in the Civil Rights Movement. But when he came out--I can remember him doing it just before Memphis and when he was killed--when he came out and, ' ; a,' ; talked about the garbage workers and organizing and, ' ; b,' ; when he talked against the war, everybody said, ' ; Well, he' ; s too radical.' ; MORGAN: Now, just look at that. Here' ; s a man who goes out and says garbage workers should be organized and should be paid more. Now, there are very few citizens of this world who don' ; t know that garbage workers should have been organized and should have been paid more. Today they are. They are organized in many cases and they are paid more. They work for private contractors today, generally, throughout the country, but back then, when King did that, there was just a lot of folks who hate anybody who is on the side of working class people making more money. I mean, you know, I-- Just wake up every morning and you can find people who are opposed to that. They are in high office. They' ; re in office today. They were in office twenty years ago. They were in office a hundred years ago. They will be in office another hundred years from now, maybe, unless the world is changing so rapidly through certain kinds of things that there is no need to go into. Newt and I understand them. I don' ; t think Newt understands it very well (both laugh). So what you have is, King moving over into the anti-war movement also but his understanding being different from that of others. People were critical of him many liberals who were for civil rights were critical of that for two reasons: First of all, King was then opposed to a democratic president who was liberal on the general issues of civil rights. So, a number of liberals allied themselves with that president. I liked that president myself. I didn' ; t write him off. I differed with him on the war, but I didn' ; t write him off on that score. And, some people looked at Martin King--people were constantly looking at Martin King and people like him, and they wanted to find a reason to be against him anyway. I mean, [people said], ' ; Who is this fellow out here?' ; ' ; Is he so sanc... You know, what kind of a guy is he, really? Is he really a fellow who' ; s a Christian? Is he really a good man? He' ; s got to keep a place someplace. We' ; ve got to get down there and unzip those shoes and look at them.' ; Now, when-- The war kept getting in the way, so-- If I can get a call from Chauncey Eskridge, who was also a lawyer for Martin King and others and--I think this is the way it happened for SCLC--and he asked me if I would go out and help defend Mohammed Ali in his draft case in Houston, the answer is, ' ; Of course I will.' ; I mean, after all I' ; m being paid a salary by the American Civil Liberties Union. Hell, they ain' ; t--for anything unfair in the draft and I go out there to Houston and I meet him the first day, you know and we were standing down in front of the federal courthouse one time out there, coming out, and we looked around. There was a television reporter with hair shaped just about like yours and she was with NBC as I recall and there was a big crowd of people as we walked out the federal courthouse. And we stood there for a minute and I' ; m standing there and the cameras are on him and of course, I' ; m with him, so I' ; m on camera occasionally along the way. These questions are asked and one of the questions she asked of Mohammed Ali, she said, ' ; Is it true that you don' ; t work with any White people?' ; or something like that or ' ; --you don' ; t like White people,' ; or something like that and he gave some answer to them like, ' ; Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.' ; You know, ' ; That' ; s right,' ; and whatever. And when the camera came back around whatever it was and her turn came again, she says, ' ; Well, you said that you don' ; t like any white people, but he' ; s your lawyer--' ; No. ' ; He' ; s your lawyer and you don' ; t have any friends, you say, that are white.' ; And his answer, quick as lightening, was just like this: He says, ' ; He' ; s my lawyer, not my friend.' ; And, you see, there' ; s a lot of people who don' ; t understand that kind of distinction. Now, in fact we did got along pretty well later. Later, he turned to me and said (laughs), ' ; I' ; ll stop at nothing to drive us apart,' ; or something like that. But the fact of the matter is that the war got in the way. So, when Howard Levy gets in difficulty and asks for help or somebody asks for help, sure I went out and defended him. HANSON: Okay, but then the other famous cases .... Did the Watergate get in the way of the Civil Rights Movement? I mean your goal has always been one thing...to bring about social justice in this country. I think I can say that fairly, can' ; t I, Chuck? MORGAN: Well, I think you can say that. Also, I' ; ve done other things along the way. I' ; ve gotten to be rich and well borne and able myself. I' ; ve made a good bit of money. HANSON: But let' ; s go, before we get to that-- We' ; ll get to that in a minute, but let' ; s just talk about those things that have large social import. The Watergate trial was another one. You were called in as an ACLU lawyer, is that correct, to defend those who went into the Watergate [Hotel]? MORGAN: Not to defend the ones who went into the Watergate, no, no. HANSON: The victims of the Watergate. MORGAN: The victims were the Democrats. The Association of State Democratic Chairmen had a working wiretap on their telephone-- HANSON: Right. MORGAN: --and I was now fresh in Washington. I had left Atlanta and I was the director of the ACLU Washington' ; s National Office--not the local office, but the national office--and some folks came to me and asked me to defend a fellow, represent a fellow, named Spensor Oliver. His phone was the one tapped by a working wiretap by Baldwin or others, a bug, in the Watergate [Hotel]. He was the Chairman of the... Oh, I' ; ve forgotten exactly the name of it, but it was the Democratic Party organization and they had him tapped. And the question then became, ' ; What can we do about that?' ; So, I filed a motion to suppress the contents--a pretty good memory here, because (unclear)--a motion to suppress the contents of illegally intercepted oral and wire communications. Now, I filed that motion in court to exclude the contents of any wire intercepted conversations. Now, my interest was in defending the client, and in all these cases unless I' ; m filing an affirmative lawsuit for the client or a lawsuit to break down segregation or something that I' ; ve dreamed up and going at it affirmatively-- Otherwise, your duty as a lawyer is to defend your client and it doesn' ; t matter who your client is, he could be right-wing, left-wing, Black, White, whatever. And, in this particular case, I' ; m defending a client by moving to suppress the contents of those conversations. The prosecutor said he was going to introduce the conversations to show the reason for the Watergate wiretap. Well, I knew that the Watergate break in wasn' ; t because of my clients or what they were saying on the telephone or any of that sort of stuff, or what they could say on the telephone. But, I filed the motion to do that and went through that case and I always knew that the people on the other side of that case were just like the people on the other sides of some cases in the South and that they were on the wrong side of the great questions that ordinarily faced the citizens of the United States. HANSON: Do you feel that as a large social issue also? MORGAN: Well, the large social issue is, who is going to run the country? In that instance, Richard Nixon was. And he did for a while and then his party came along and then Jimmy Carter came in for four years and then the Republicans returned with Ronald Reagan and they' ; re in power right now. And their interests have not generally been the kinds of political interests that I' ; ve had. I mean, on tax rates, I guess I profit, but as far as the rest of its concerned, no I' ; m on the other side of most of the things those people are for. HANSON: Chuck, here it is February 1995. The Republicans have taken over Congress, for whomever listens to this down in history, whatever. Be a little far seeing. Where is the social revolution coming now? Where is it coming from? We' ; re talking, I say we the Congress, in particularly the Republican wing. It' ; s talking about dismantling everything, dismantling welfare, quitting grants to the states. How far this will go in history I don' ; t know, but for this moment in time, address those things. That certainly isn' ; t part of a larger social revolution that you knew. It' ; s an entirely different kind of thing. MORGAN: Without opposition, the Republican Party is moving to dismantle things that are for the good of the people, in my judgment. The Democratic Party, you see, doesn' ; t manage to find itself capable of defending its own programs. It doesn' ; t have either the heart or the will for that. Now, there' ; s nothing really that I can do about that. I' ; m not going to run for president. But, you see, under that circumstance, when everyone is afraid to confront the people-- You see there are two things. Skepticism, and I' ; ve always been skeptical of a lot of things, but cynicism is the death of a democracy. And the cynics of this world undermine it worse that any underground or subversive group in the whole history of the country could possibly do. Democracy, and our democracy in particular, with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the 13th, 14th and 15th.... This democracy is an idealistic system that must live by ideals. And, if it doesn' ; t appeal to people' ; s ideals then it won' ; t last. Now, one of the ways you undercut those ideals is cynicism. You always find some fault with something: ' ; The people didn' ; t do this,' ; or, ' ; They didn' ; t do that,' ; or, ' ; They made a mistake last year,' ; or, ' ; Look who they elected,' ; or, ' ; My God, they elected Nixon and gee it will never be the same again,' ; or, ' ; Gee, what happens here with so and so now that we' ; ve got...?' ; Now, if you have a political party that is devoted to ideals, it must express those ideals because one of those things that happens in a political campaign is the mass education of the populace, Blacks, Whites, everybody else. Now, if you speak truth to power and people, you gain power. But when you are cynical about it and you think the people don' ; t have good sense, and you write them off, then you have no program and they ordinarily vote for folks like they did in the last election. HANSON: Do you think the social revolution, looking back--here again, I' ; m talking about the Black/White revolution, which has been so important in the south--has it been a success? Do you see it...the obvious things there have been are there have more access by Blacks to the system as it were, but are we becoming more alienated one from another? MORGAN: Oh, good God, who cares? HANSON: You don' ; t care. MORGAN: About alienation [of] one from the other? Look, I would prefer to live in a society where people weren' ; t mean to each other, where the world came along and everybody loved each other, where Black folks and White folks got up every morning and went out there and Hattie McDaniel served the food and everybody stood there and sang to the heavens and everybody said here we are. That' ; d just be wonderful. But I don' ; t know of that time has ever occurred in history of the human race on a regular basis. It happens every now and then. Now, if you are in a society like our culture and society, and the things are out there, are we better off now than we were then? That' ; s the implicit... HANSON: That' ; s exactly what it is. MORGAN: The answer is: every given day, every moment of every day. Sure, we' ; re much better off. Number two. Could it all be taken away? Not probably, not all of it, but a hell of a lot of it could. Number three. Is the Democratic Party far better than the Republican Party today? Well the Republican Party at least has certain principles and precepts. Those principle and precepts generally are meanness and unspoken hatred and fear. It' ; s the-- It' ; s kind of the midas touch. It' ; s the money, money, money approach and somehow, some rules of economics and law say everything is going to be alright if we just adopt these rules of economics. And, the Democratic Party goes around, they don' ; t have organized labor, they don' ; t have all those other kinds of backgrounds that they used to have and they are floundering around and all they ought to have is beliefs. That' ; s all they need. HANSON: Could I summarize all of this and say, if we understand how power works, we can do something about constantly improving our society? Is that too simplistic, Chuck? MORGAN: No, it' ; s not simplistic. What the simple thing is, is that in our society, with freedom and access to information, the way people can get known and do things in this country, that if you do right, you ordinarily win. And if you win enough, the whole society wins--Blacks, whites, everybody in it. If we ever do that in the country in a really great way, we' ; ll do it for the whole world. HANSON: Thanks, Chuck. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
bcri.org. 0 http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=CMorgan1995.xml CMorgan1995.xml
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Charles Morgan Jr.
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Charles Morgan Jr. discusses his legal career, involvement in civil rights cases and his work with the ACLU. He also covers his iWork defending the Democratic Party in the Watergate case.
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19950224M
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
Watergate Affair, 1972-1974
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1995-02-24
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video
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ca0bf065516a489ae6ffc37a3f6d80b4
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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Interviews collected as part of the general mission of the Oral History Project
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Video
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Oral History
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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English
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bcriohp
Oral History
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Horace Huntley
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Colonel Stone Johnson
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http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=CSJohnson1995.xml
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Birmingham (Ala.). Police Department
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5.4 January 6, 1995 Colonel Stone Johnson Interviewed on January 6, 1995 19950106J 1:26:32 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project Collection bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Emily Reynolds Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham Ku Klux Klan (1915- ) Police brutality--United States Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 Birmingham (Ala.). Police Department Colonel Stone Johnson Horace Huntley Video 1:|2(3)|27(9)|52(8)|59(10)|70(6)|88(8)|102(8)|110(5)|130(2)|139(15)|153(4)|177(6)|190(10)|203(11)|219(3)|228(7)|242(11)|255(15)|276(9)|293(10)|308(15)|316(10)|329(6)|340(4)|351(9)|363(12)|370(14)|384(1)|391(6)|398(1)|408(11)|416(10)|432(16)|441(12)|452(6)|462(8)|474(14)|484(1)|492(13)|503(13)|512(4)|521(14)|530(4)|541(11)|551(6)|559(2)|575(13)|585(13)|599(2)|606(3)|616(5)|633(14)|641(12)|649(12)|659(5)|670(14)|685(11)|695(10)|705(8)|714(6)|723(3)|731(13)|744(3)|754(12)|767(4)|779(15)|790(10)|798(15)|807(7)|817(8)|836(2)|846(10)|859(8)|869(13)|879(4)|889(7)|911(4)|922(5)|937(7)|951(9)|964(6)|973(4)|984(9)|994(14) 0 https://youtu.be/oNb_FLKJdoA YouTube video English 0 Interview Introduction This is an interview with Colonel Stone Johnson for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's Oral History Project done by Dr. Horace Huntley at Miles College, January 6, 1995. Interview Introduction with Colonel Stone Johnson. 33.516200, -86.813870 17 The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute https://www.bcri.org/ The homepage of the BCRI 92 Family & ; Childhood Let me just start by asking you, what part of the state were your parents from? Johnson discusses his parents and childhood. African American youth ; African Americans--Employment ; Birmingham (Ala.) African Americans--Southern States 387 Childhood Community What community did you grow up in? Johnson describes the neighborhoods he lived in within Birmingham. African American neighborhoods ; African Americans--Housing ; African Americans--Southern States Birmingham (Ala.) 696 Education How much education do you have? Johnson describes his experience attending high school. African Americans--Education (Secondary) ; African Americans--Education--Southern States ; African Americans--Social conditions ; Racism in education--United States African Americans--Education 870 Police & ; Community But let me just ask you, when you moved to Second Avenue, what kind of relationship did your community have with the Birmingham Police Department? Johnson discusses his community's relationship with the Birmingham Police Department. African Americans--Civil rights ; African Americans--Crimes against ; African Americans--Southern States ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Ku Klux Klan (1915- ) ; Police brutality--United States Birmingham (Ala.). Police Department 1021 Community Recreation Options Black folks didn't have places to go but two places in Birmingham. That was the Elks and the Masonic Temple. City auditorium was out of bounds, but yet your tax footed the bill. Johnson discusses recreational and athletic options available to African Americans in his community. African Amercans -- Athletics ; African Americans--Segregation ; African Americans--Social conditions ; Elks (Fraternal order) African Americans--Recreation 1185 Workplace Discrimination & ; Labor Unions Well, we talked about the [nineteen] forties and moving into the fifties and we know that the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights was organized in 1956. Can you tell me, how and why did you get involved with the Civil Rights Movement? Johnson describes discrimination in the workplace, joining a union, and his motivations for becoming involved in the Civil Rights Movement. African Americans--Southern States ; Brotherhood of Railway Clerks ; Discrimination in employment--United States ; Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 African Americans--Civil rights ; African Americans--Employment ; Labor unions--United States--History--20th century 3162 Movement Involvement & ; Birmingham Bombings How did you get involved with the Movement? Johnson describes becoming involved in the Civil Rights Movement, including his participation in a watchmen's group during several bombings. African Americans--Civil rights ; African Americans--Crimes against ; Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Civil rights movement ; Ku Klux Klan (1915- ) ; Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States 4247 Workplace Discrimination But I never was afraid because I asked God to give me a good job. Johnson discusses his experience with workplace/pay discrimination. African Americans--Civil rights African Americans--Employment 4339 Police Harassment During the movement, I know you were very busy protecting the various houses and doing a lot of different things. Were you ever arrested? Johnson discusses his personal experience with the Birmingham Police Department. African American women ; African Americans--Civil rights ; African Americans--Crimes against ; Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 Birmingham (Ala.). Police Department ; Police brutality--United States 4675 Church Response to Movement What church were you a member of? Johnson discusses his church's response to the Civil Rights Movement. African Americans--Religion ; African Americans--Southern States ; Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights African Americans--Civil rights 4826 Family Response to Activism What was the reaction of your father and your wife to your being so active in the movement? Johnson describes his family's response to his participation in the Civil Rights Movement. African American families African Americans--Civil rights 4894 Reflection on Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth What— Really, one of my really top motivations was Fred Shuttlesworth. He could explain God's idea of freedom so well that it would just take away the fear from your heart. Johnson reflects on the impact and legacy of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. African Americans--Civil rights ; African Americans--Religion ; Civil rights movement Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 5134 Interview Conclusion Okay, well, we certainly appreciate your time and I would like to just say that I want to do this again, because there are a number of issues. Interview Conclusion Oral History Colonel Stone Johnson discusses being one of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth's bodyguards, fighting workplace discrimination and serving on many local organizations and boards, including the BCRI. HUNTLEY: This is an interview with Colonel Stone Johnson for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project done by Dr. Horace Huntley at Miles College, January 6, 1995. Good morning, Colonel, how are you doing this morning? JOHNSON: Good morning, Dr. Huntley. How are you? HUNTLEY: I' ; m doing great. JOHNSON: Good. HUNTLEY: It' ; s a pleasure to have you here. As you know, what we are attempting to do is get individual histories of people who have been actively involved in the development of Birmingham, particularly as it relates to the Civil Rights Movement. I appreciate you coming out this morning. Let me just start by asking you, what part of the state were your parents from? JOHNSON: Hayneville, Alabama, Lowndes County in the Deep South, in the Black Belt. HUNTLEY: In the Black Belt. Were you born there? JOHNSON: Yes sir. HUNTLEY: How old were you then when you came to Birmingham? JOHNSON: Oh--I was about four years old when they brought me to Birmingham. HUNTLEY: So, you are basically, a Birmingham boy, then. Did you ever go back to Lowndes County to visit? JOHNSON: Oh, I go regular. It' ; s a haven to me. HUNTLEY: How many brothers and sisters do you have? JOHNSON: Well, I don' ; t have any now. I had one brother. HUNTLEY: Was he younger or older than you? JOHNSON: He was three years older than I was. HUNTLEY: What about your parents education? How much education did your parents have? JOHNSON: My old man had a college degree. My mother didn' ; t have but a third or fourth grade. HUNTLEY: What was their occupation? Did your mother work outside the home? JOHNSON: Housewife, all the way. HUNTLEY: And your father' ; s occupation? JOHNSON: Well, he started off-- His first job was teaching school for $30 in Lowndes County. Then, he got a job at Thorsby or Clanton. He worked in three or four little towns between Birmingham and Montgomery. They had pipe shops all up and down the Montgomery thoroughfare and the trains were very popular then. They had a plant in Verbena. He worked there a while and, then, the closer you get to Birmingham, the more money you can make. He moved on up then to Clanton. From Clanton to Helena and he worked in a pipe shop at Helena. From there he got with a company that was building sidewalks. They called him a cement finisher, and he worked with the cement finisher until he got his journeymanship and he got to be a full-fledged cement finisher. Then he started working in Birmingham and the company that he really worked, he told me that he really made it big on, was Milton and Erickson. One of the grandsons is a big contractor here in Birmingham now and he does a lot of work for Birmingham, but it' ; s just Milton Company now. When it was Milton and Erickson it was two brothers-in-law. He did a lot of figuring for them. They were farmers. They come from over in the old country. HUNTLEY: They' ; re from Europe? JOHNSON: Yes, in the European country. They couldn' ; t figure like he could, but they still used the American technique. HUNTLEY: Were they Italians or Jews? JOHNSON: No, they were Swedes. They come from Sweden. He [Johnson' ; s father] could tell you how many square foot was in any...figure any job they had to do. HUNTLEY: What did he major in, in college? You said he had a college education? JOHNSON: He majored in mathematics. HUNTLEY: Where did he go? JOHNSON: Alabama State [University] in Montgomery. HUNTLEY: So he then became a professional cement finisher. JOHNSON: And after then, after organized labor come in, he got to be the union representative for five counties--Jefferson, Saint Clair, Etowah, Tuscaloosa and Shelby. He stayed on that job until he was eighty-six years old. I had to beg him to quit because everybody wanted him to stay, but he was way over pension age then. HUNTLEY: So he was a union official when he retired? JOHNSON: Right. HUNTLEY: What community did you grow up in? JOHNSON: Well, I started in Travellick on Ellis Avenue. We stayed there a year or so. Then we moved to 1005 Sixteenth Street North and we stayed there from 1924 until 1946. I bought a house on Second Avenue, [house number] 708 Second Avenue North, and we moved there about 1946. I bought the house, really, in 1941 when I was single, and I rented it out until 1946. We moved in and made a double tenement out of it. My old man and my stepmother moved next door and we had one side. After a year or two, we had it jacked up and I put two apartments under it. HUNTLEY: How would you compare the different communities that you lived in from Travellick to the North side? JOHNSON: Well, where we moved in 1924 we were the first Blacks in the block. HUNTLEY: Were there Whites on the block? JOHNSON: Yes. On the corner was an Italian store. HUNTLEY: What was the name of the store? JOHNSON: Norman Schalaci' ; s Grocery. HUNTLEY: And that was on Ellis? JOHNSON: No, that was after we moved off Ellis. There was no store at all on Ellis at that time. We moved from Ellis in 1924 and moved to the North side and we stayed there. But at first we were the only Blacks on that block. HUNTLEY: Well, what happened when you moved there? Were there any repercussions because you moved in that neighborhood? JOHNSON: Not a bit, because Milton and Erickson owned just about everything in the block. Most of all the White folks was renting. It was four White homeowners in the block and the rest of the White people were renting. There were White people living in duplex houses and the real estate companies owned them. HUNTLEY: And this is Birmingham in 1924 and a Black family moves into a White neighborhood? JOHNSON: Right, but it is two Jewish families--one Italian family and another Jewish family. It was five White families and then it was a big millionaire lived in a big two-story house and had a servant house in the back. We called it the big house, because the Jones' ; lived there, but the rest of it was rented. HUNTLEY: So, you stayed there for twenty years until 1946? JOHNSON: Twenty-two years, yes. HUNTLEY: Then you moved to Tuscaloosa Avenue? JOHNSON: No, I moved to 708 Second Avenue North, one block west of Tee' ; s Place. It wasn' ; t Tee' ; s Place then. That' ; s where the Tee' ; s boys were born--five brothers, Taylors. They were born right next door, where that driveway goes into Tee' ; s Place. That' ; s where their home house was. The building next to them was an undertaker. HUNTLEY: So, we are seeing, then, the development of a Black community that' ; s really becoming rather self-sufficient. JOHNSON: Well, now, when I moved there a lot of Whites was in the neighborhood. Even the church next door, which Blacks eventually bought, was a White Methodist church. HUNTLEY: In more recent times when Blacks started to move into West End, Whites started to move out. Did that happen in [19]46 when you moved into your home? JOHNSON: Well, it happened slow, but, eventually, it wasn' ; t any Whites in there. HUNTLEY: How much education do you have? JOHNSON: Well, I have a high school education. HUNTLEY: Where did you get your education? JOHNSON: Correspondence courses. HUNTLEY: Where did you finish high school? JOHNSON: Industrial. HUNTLEY: Industrial High School? That' ; s now Parker High School. JOHNSON: Right. Dr. Parker was the principal when I finished. HUNTLEY: What were your experiences at Parker? What do you remember about it? JOHNSON: Well, people don' ; t like for me to say it, but I was shown a lot of discrimination at Parker, at Industrial. HUNTLEY: Parker, Industrial was a Black school, what do you mean you were shown discrimination? JOHNSON: Well, if you weren' ; t ' ; high yellow' ; you stayed in the back. I can remember in the Depression when the Y, it was like the WPA for the young folks, they paid thirty dollars a month. If your people--If wasn' ; t nobody in your family working, you could work at the school, help clean up, and they would give you thirty dollars a month. NYA - National Youth Association of America. I had a buddy, he' ; s a nice guy, and he' ; s real light [skinned]. His momma and daddy both are working and him and myself went to the office to put in our application at the same time and they wrote both of us up. At the first of the month, he started working. I never did start because I never did-- They never did give me a job. It happened to a lot of fellows like that, but they didn' ; t give you no excuse. But, old common sense would tell me what it was. And, also, my buddy told me, said, ' ; Well, I know what happened." ; And I saw a lot of discrimination, even on the football team. HUNTLEY: If you were not ' ; high yellow' ; or if you were Black, you simply had to step back? JOHNSON: If you Black, get back. If you' ; re Brown, stick around. HUNTLEY: What about the majorettes? JOHNSON: It was the same way. HUNTLEY: So, you are saying even within the race there was color discrimination? JOHNSON: Yes sir. HUNTLEY: That' ; s very interesting. That' ; s a topic that we are going to have to deal with at another time. But let me just ask you, when you moved to Second Avenue, what kind of relationship did your community have with the Birmingham Police Department? JOHNSON: Well, the Birmingham Police Department was all White and just to my thoughts and seeing what was going on, most of the police was Ku Klux. If they weren' ; t, they acted like it. HUNTLEY: What do you mean they ' ; acted like it.' ; JOHNSON: Well, they were overbearing, especially to Blacks. Anything you let a person do to one race, he' ; d try it on another. I' ; ve seen them beat White women just like they beat Black folks when they ran. They beat Black folks without reason. For a Black person, if they just felt like whipping you, they' ; d whip you. You didn' ; t have to resist arrest. But, ordinarily, the way things were a White person just figured that they weren' ; t supposed to be treated like that and when they ran, they beat them too. You could make the error they' ; d say you was making, not say ' ; Yes, sir' ; and ' ; No, sir.' ; If you said, ' ; Yes' ; and ' ; No' ; the way you were taught in school, then the man would take the club and hit you across the head. They had hoses they used to carry, instead of ' ; billy sticks' ; . They had hoses like... It was a heavy duty hose like a water hose, but it was industrial hose and they' ; re real heavy, reinforced. They would hit you across the head with that hose. HUNTLEY: Did you ever witness any of that? JOHNSON: Oh, I have seen them hit a lot of folks. They cut up so around there, you didn' ; t have to go to picture show. You could see all the picture show with the police and the Black community on Friday and Saturday night. Black folks didn' ; t have but two places to go in Birmingham. That was the Elks and the Masonic Temple. City auditorium was out of bounds, but yet your tax footed the bill. HUNTLEY: What other kinds of recreation did the various communities have in the Black neighborhood? JOHNSON: Oh, baseball, basketball. HUNTLEY: I know that a lot of the industrial areas had different baseball teams and these teams, on the weekends, would play each other. Could you describe any of the events? JOHNSON: Oh, they had big times at the baseball games. But all your ball games-- Your Blacks didn' ; t have nowhere to play. But, they had Sloss field out in ACIPCO [American Cast Iron Pipe Company] and Perfection Mattress had two teams. They had a Black Team and a White team. ACIPCO had a Black team and a White team. Stockham Valve had Black and White teams. Out in Bessemer, all of these places had Black and White teams. HUNTLEY: TCI [Tennessee Coal and Iron] had one? JOHNSON: Yes sir, but when integration come along then they done away with all your ball teams. HUNTLEY: Why is that? JOHNSON: They didn' ; t want to play with Blacks. HUNTLEY: Rather than integrating, they just did away with them? JOHNSON: Yes sir. HUNTLEY: What about community organizations? Were you a member of any community organizations at the time. Did you hold any offices? JOHNSON: No, they had a lot of discrimination in that too. If you.. they' ; d tell you... Blacks would tell you if you don' ; t own your own home, you couldn' ; t join the Democratic organization. I owned my home, but I wasn' ; t going to brag about it and it was up before I was invited to come into some of the meetings. HUNTLEY: You owned your home, but you were dark? JOHNSON: No, that wasn' ; t it. I wasn' ; t in the upper class. HUNTLEY: So, you had a class stratification? JOHNSON: Right. HUNTLEY: Well, we talked about the [nineteen] forties and moving into the fifties and we know that the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights was organized in 1956. Can you tell me, how and why did you get involved with the Civil Rights Movement? JOHNSON: Yes sir. My involvement in civil rights started early in the railroad shop. When I was hired, March 31, 1942. And when I got out there I saw such a big difference in the treatment of men and where I had been working for just a minimum wage. Really there wasn' ; t a minimum wage. They paid you what they wanted to. They had a little union at some of the places. HUNTLEY: Where was this? Where were you working? JOHNSON: I was working for Bowden Provision Company. HUNTLEY: What did you do out there? JOHNSON: I was a truck driver and they had an office in Hormel Packing Company. They did most of their buying from Hormel and Hormel let them have an office there, and they stored their goods there and the guy was real nice. He treated everybody the same, but he had some kin folks would call you a nigger in a minute. But he wouldn' ; t. He knew your name. He' ; d find out your name and he' ; d call you by your name. He wouldn' ; t call you John, Joe, uncle and all that, but he had some kin folk that would call you anything. You see, when a fellow... It' ; s intimidating for a man to call you uncle and he' ; s older than you are... or John. When I went to the railroad shop... I quit working for this guy, not for any kind of race relations or treatment or anything, but finance. I wasn' ; t making the kind of money I thought I should be making. But now, on that job there was a difference in pay between Blacks and Whites. When I went to the railroad shop, if you' ; re the labor, all labor made the same thing. They had a union shop. HUNTLEY: If you were Black or White? JOHNSON: Black or White. If you the helper or the helper' ; s mate, it' ; s the same thing. But where the difference come, where the segregation come, is in promotion. You could have a high school education, and had some college through correspondence and the White man they get right off the farm, fourth or fifth grade. I' ; ve seen them bring them in by the truckload. Some farmer bring in a truck load of people that he knows from Cullman or Huntsville, somewhere up in north Alabama in the war time in the forties [1940s] and World War Two. They brought the White fellows in there by the truck load and hired every one of them. They would hire fifty men. They would be riding on the back ton-and-a-half truck like cattle, but they' ; d hire them. Some of them they' ; d hire, they would have maybe an eighth or tenth grade education. They would hire them as helpers and you were still a laborer and you would know all the work, but you didn' ; t get the preference that you should get. So, they had a bad habit. I' ; ve seen them kick fellows just like they kick a dog. They called themselves playing. There was a young fellow just had come out of high school. He got hired out there and I see him regular, but I' ; m not going to call his name. He' ; s still living--a very intelligent looking young man. And, I saw a foreman kick him and just laughed and it' ; s something in me just reared.... at God given man. I couldn' ; t take it. I asked, ' ; What y' ; all doing?' ; I called him by his name and he said, ' ; We just playing,' ; and just laughed. I said, ' ; The ball field is unequal.' ; I said, ' ; If y' ; all playing, look like you' ; d kick him some time to make it fair.' ; And the foreman said, ' ; That nigger' ; s crazy.' ; HUNTLEY: Talking about you? JOHNSON: Yes. I said, ' ; You' ; ll see how crazy I am if you kick me.' ; And he said, ' ; Oh, the nigger is crazy, sure enough. I see he' ; s crazy,' ; but he never did kick me. HUNTLEY: This is in the forties? JOHNSON: Yes, that was in 1942. I had been there about eight or ten months. I asked them did they have a union. They said, ' ; Yes, but the Blacks are not in it.' ; HUNTLEY: Blacks couldn' ; t join the union? JOHNSON: They wouldn' ; t exactly tell you that. You was in the department, in the clerical department and they had a clerk' ; s union, Brotherhood of Railway Clerks. So, I decided on my own to talk to a union representative, because I had always believed in the union in the little jobs I had been on. You see, I had worked in both places, in the packing house and for Bowden Company. I worked for Hormel and Bowden. Hormel had the CIO and they hadn' ; t merged then. They merged about [19]46 or ' ; 47, the CIO and the AFL did. But anyway, when I went to this guy, he said, ' ; Well, ain' ; t no Blacks in our union,' ; just like that. So then I went to Mr. Louis Berry, a Black guy who was over the firemen and oilers. He said, ' ; Come up to the union hall' ; and he told me when the union was going to meet. And he said, ' ; We' ; ll explain to you how you can get you an auxiliary.' ; An auxiliary is different from a full-fledged union. HUNTLEY: Were the Firemen and Oilmen a Black union? JOHNSON: Yes sir. Louis Berry was the head of it--Louis Berry and George Henderson. HUNTLEY: Were they affiliated with the CIO? JOHNSON: They were in the Brotherhood of Firemen and Oilers, which was part of the AFL at that time. So they told me, ' ; You have to have something out of your department, but we will get you a man down here to organize y' ; all an auxiliary.' ; They wrote to the headquarters, which was in Cincinnati, Ohio at that time and they sent a man, a field representative named Mr. St. John, a White man. He came down and talked with us and he stopped at the Bankhead Hotel and when we went to go see him, we had to go to the back and get on the freight elevator to go up to his room. But, anyway, he organized a union for the Blacks in the clerk department of the railroad. But that made them have dual representation and they wouldn' ; t give but one shop a district chairman, so that would always be a White man. That made us be under them. So if you had any kind of grievance, you would have to ... After you filed your grievance they would never be justifiable in it, and you would want to appeal it. You had to go to the district chairman which was over the White union, and if you were trying to get a promotion, he didn' ; t want you to have it. The same folks you were paying your money to was keeping you back. But anyway, we organized and Reverend Shuttlesworth' ; s uncle, August U. Morris, we voted him the president and we voted Regis Adams vice president and just come on down the line. It was hard to get folks to accept positions because they were afraid the company would retaliate, so they gave Morris both positions. He was the union representative and the president for the first couple of years. They would always... We would get together and have a little pow wow away from the union hall so Morris asked me, ' ; Why won' ; t you take the chairman of the protective committee?' ; And I said, ' ; Well, I can' ; t take it. You have to vote me in... I' ; ll accept it if y' ; all vote me in.' ; He said he' ; d recommend it and they recommend me and I stayed in there twenty eight years. HUNTLEY: What position was that? JOHNSON: Chairman of the Protective Committee. They called it the union representative, but in writing it' ; s Chairman of the Protective Committee and I stayed in that job... and Reuben Davis was in the Firemen and Oiler with George Henderson and Louis Berry. I got with Reuben. We had been working on that side by ourselves, so we got together where we could understand the rules and regulations. You see, a lot of fine print it' ; s hard for a man to understand all of it. But when you have a round table discussion and you put your know-how in, and I put mine, and the other fellow put his, you can get together and work out something. So, Reuben figured how a grievance was supposed to be written up and he started to write them up for all the Blacks. I took Reuben and we stopped the folks from kicking Black folks. Some of the fellows, before they stopped it, you see, they got by [with] kicking Blacks for so long, some of them would kick White folks. HUNTLEY: Some of the Whites would kick the Whites? JOHNSON: Oh yeah, if you let a fellow.... If you let your dog bite your next-door neighbor, he will go on down the street and bite somebody else. Eventually, he would bite the police when he come by. HUNTLEY: Now these are usually people that are in supervisory positions. JOHNSON: Right, right. The first man I wrote up, his name was E. J. Higgins--great big, old, fat White gentleman and, boy, he acted like he had a kicking machine the way he used to kick fellows. I saw him kick an old Black fellow seventy or eighty years old, a peg leg man. His name was E. J. Higgins and I wrote him up to the master mechanic. That was the top man in the shop. The only boss he had was the superintendent and at the time I wrote him up we had a superintendent that was the toughest I ever seen. But, he was about as straight a guy, at that time, that I had ever met and he didn' ; t have no kind of manners. He would cuss just about every word he said, but he still had more of a level playing ground than anybody I' ; ve met because the same cursing he put on you, he' ; d put on ' ; Mr. Charlie.' ; Well, I wrote this guy up to Mr. Richard McWilliams. We called him Dick McWilliams. He' ; s a little fellow, but if you didn' ; t see him you' ; d think a giant was talking when he spoke. He had a bass voice and he really spoke with authority. He had authority. The company gave him authority and he used it, and when I wrote him up-- You see, back in those days, and it ain' ; t much different now in the office-- When a letter came in to the superintendent, the chief clerk got authority to open it up. All mail come in and the chief clerk would look at it and, to protect White folks, if that letter was wrote up against one of the foremen they' ; d put it in ' ; file 13' ; and the master mechanic would never see it. But, I wrote a letter, and the little reputation I had built for being straight in helping people, they knew that if I didn' ; t hear from the letter, I was going to the man and ask him why. So, they took the letter and sent for my supervisor--not my foreman, my supervisor--and told him, [they] said, ' ; Johnson done wrote up Mr. Brighton and Mr. Brighton' ; s going to lose his job. The company don' ; t allow this, all this stuff y' ; all been doing. You' ; ve just been getting by.' ; Said, ' ; He wrote up Mr. Bryant for kicking a man,' ; and said, ' ; The first rule in the book, he' ; s got...he' ; s got it quoted there.' ; The first rule in the book said no horseplay, no wrestling, no scuffling, no stealing, no drinking at any time on company premises or you will be dismissed. So when they got the letter and they had their little conference, then my supervisor sent for me. He was the superintendent for a big Sunday school church, a big Baptist church in the community there where the shop was. He was a man you could sit down and talk to him. Lot of folks you can' ; t talk to when they big folks. He was a big man that you could talk to, but he was on the other side of the river. He was a discriminator, too, but not as bad as some of the other folks. The little boy says, ' ; His bite wasn' ; t as bad as some of the bites,' ; but, anyway, he called me and told me he wanted a conference with me, and I said, ' ; Yes, sir.' ; I went into his office and he wanted to go back outside to the warehouse. ' ; There' ; s a question I want to ask you and I don' ; t want nobody else to hear it.' ; He said, ' ; Johnson, you know all our conversations you talk about saving a man' ; s job.' ; I said, ' ; That' ; s right.' ; [He said,] ' ; Here you done wrote up a man and he going to lose his job if we let this go through.' ; I said, ' ; We who?' ; He said, ' ; You and myself. I' ; m your boss and I' ; m his boss.' ; I said, ' ; Yes, but I' ; ve been watching that fellow, and he treat these fellows like they are dogs.' ; He said, ' ; He ever done anything to you?' ; And I said, ' ; No, but I' ; m my brothers' ; keeper. I' ; m head of the union. How can I represent a man and turn my head when he' ; s kicking a man like he a dog and the man is just as humble as a lamb? I had to write him up.' ; He said, ' ; Well, what would you do to take the letter out?' ; And I said, ' ; Mr. Bryant promises me never kick another Black man on the company premises and I' ; ll take the letter out immediately. Other than that, I can' ; t do it.' ; He said, ' ; Well, I think we can handle that. I' ; ve already talked to E. J. so I' ; ll call him.' ; He called him. [E.J.] was in another building about half a mile from where we were. The shop, at that time, was a five-mile shop, but when I left it was a ten-mile shop. But anyway, this guy wanted to be a real heavy, but that was his boss. He said, ' ; Tell Johnson I said to call me." ; He came back and told me and I said, ' ; I don' ; t want to see him. Tell him to call me on the warehouse phone. He wants to see me. I don' ; t want to see him.' ; So, finally, he called and said, ' ; Johnson, you want to see me?' ; I said, ' ; No, sir, I don' ; t want to see you.' ; He said, ' ; Well, I heard that you got me wrote up.' ; I said, ' ; Yes, sir.' ; He said, ' ; What you wrote about me?' ; He said, ' ; All you know. Y' ; all have already discussed it. You don' ; t know how to keep your feet on the ground. You' ; re kicking folks.' ; He said, ' ; Well, the man didn' ; t complain.' ; I said, ' ; But I saw it with my own eyes. I represent the man. He didn' ; t have to tell me or ask me. I wrote you up because it is unbecoming a company employee to act like you act, especially in the position you' ; re in.' ; So, he said, ' ; Well, what would I have to do?' ; I said, ' ; The man done already told you. The supervisor told you.' ; He said, ' ; Yeah, he told me, but I want you to tell me.' ; I said, ' ; I' ; ll sure tell you. You make me a promise you won' ; t kick another Black man on the company premises and I will take the letter out.' ; He said, ' ; Well, if it suits you, I' ; ll promise you that I won' ; t do it no more.' ; I said, ' ; Well, it suits me, and I' ; ll go take the letter out.' ; So when I... I worked on the first floor and the office was upstairs and I went upstairs. All the typewriters quit. There was about ten to twelve clerks. Everybody quit work, because the discussion had went on. I went to the chief clerk and spoke. ' ; Good morning, sir.' ; He said, ' ; Good morning, Johnson. What can I do for you?' ; I said, ' ; Well, I' ; ve got a letter up here and we' ; ve negotiated to take it out, and I want to take it out.' ; He said, ' ; Here it is. You' ; re the only somebody that can take it out.' ; And I took it and threw it in the wastebasket. But, now, I never heard about another Black fellow being kicked or seen one. HUNTLEY: By Bryant or anybody else? JOHNSON: Nobody else. They put a bulletin out. On the bottom he put, ' ; Now I mean what I say. If I catch anybody breaking rule number one or any other rule, they' ; ve got to go.' ; When Reuben Davis come back from World War Two, they didn' ; t want Blacks in the steel gang talking about rebuilding freight cars for the railroad company. Those jobs paid good money. That was a top job. Reuben Davis never did get one, but he fixed it where the Blacks could get them. You see, when you go to the army-- There' ; s a proclamation [that] when you leave a job and go fight for your country, wherever you were working, when you come back you' ; re supposed to have been promoted, more money increased. They' ; re supposed to recognize you by seniority. So, Reuben asked for some more jobs for Blacks in the steel gang. Had no Blacks been going in it--nothing but laborers to pick up scrap and move it out the way when they tear the stuff off the cars. So, they called Reuben a troublemaker, but all the fellows that was in Reuben' ; s union, maybe forty or fifty, they upgraded them to helpers. And, then, a lot of them they upgraded from helpers to car repairman. That means a top grade journeyman. And, they put out a hate list. It wasn' ; t in writing. It was word of mouth. This same master mechanic that I was telling you was more fair than anybody else, but he' ; s the toughest guy I ever met in my whole life-- HUNTLEY: McWilliams? JOHNSON: McWilliams, Richard McWilliams. He told in a personnel meeting--and if you do your work in the union somebody' ; s going to tell you what happened in the personnel meeting-- And, when they got through with the meeting and everything and their conversation brought up about Reuben Davis, how he was invading the job, Whites' ; jobs for Blacks, then he [McWilliams] showed his discrimination. He said, ' ; I want Reuben Davis' ; job at all costs. If you have to lie on him, get his job. I want to run him off. I can' ; t run him off for nothing. We got to have something concrete on him.' ; Reuben' ; s foreman, being a Christian gentleman, Mr. McIntire, said, ' ; I can' ; t do it.' ; He said, ' ; He' ; s a good worker and I' ; d have to lie, and I ain' ; t going to lie on him. He does his work.' ; Reuben Davis was a tractor drive--what you call a push-up man. He pushed the cars on the assembly line in the big shed where they worked on them. And, when they finished working on them, he pushed them out. It' ; s three or four lines he had to push, but he was sitting there on his tractor--what you call ' ; on the minute' ; all the time. As soon as he finished a line--and nobody could move a line but the foreman--and we walked both sides of the track to see if everybody was clear, then he' ; d tell Reuben to shove them out and Reuben would shove them out. They he would shovel another line of cars in there for them to work on. But he wouldn' ; t go along with the wrong program. And had a guy, a red-headed foreman, named Sam Hollingsworth. Sam said he was a labor foreman. Now, he wasn' ; t really Reuben' ; s foreman ordinarily, but when the other foreman would be off, he would substitute for this guy to have a day off. He took on the responsibility to get Reuben' ; s job. He finally come out there one day when the regular foreman was off and told Reuben that he wasn' ; t doing nothing and that he needed a man over here at the wheel shop, the most dangerous in the shop, rolling train wheels weighing nine hundred pounds according to the car they went under, eight and nine hundred pounds. And, they come loose in boxcars and you had to stand them up when they fall. They lined up. They were standing up and when one fell, you had to have help to get it up. [It] had the big stick in it called a wheel stick and the men catch it by their hand and two of them would catch the stick and they would pull it down and straighten that wheel up. Whoever' ; s turn it is to get a wheel, they would catch it and roll it out and it' ; s on a flank, which it helped me out at the wheel shop. We got a load of wheels that needed unloading. So Reuben had better sense than to tell him, ' ; I ain' ; t going to do it.' ; Reuben said, ' ; I was just fixing to come to you. I' ; m sick and I want to go home.' ; He said, ' ; Oh, you refuse to work?' ; He said, ' ; No, I' ; m not refusing to work. I' ; m sick.' ; ' ; Ah, you' ; re refusing to work.' ; So he wrote Reuben up that he was refusing to work and to take orders from him. So, they fired Reuben. Reuben stayed off a year and his case went all the way to the National Railway Labor Board through appealing and he had a union lawyer out of St. Louis and they won the case in a year. HUNTLEY: So he was back on the job? JOHNSON: Well, while he was off, he started teaching mechanics at Bessemer Tech or either-- I' ; m thinking he went to Abrams first, then he went to Bessemer Tech. But, in that deal, in the space of time, they sent Reuben a letter in May, about May first and told him he had his job back, but he was teaching then. He wrote them back and said he would be back in thirty days. When school was out on May 28th, Reuben come to work on June first and whatever they owed him, he got his money and then he worked on through close to ninety days and he gave them another notice that he was resigning and went back to teach school. HUNTLEY: So, then, from your activism with the union, you had basically seen and understood the way that racism worked? Then, in the [nineteen] fifties when the movement started, you were basically primed for that because you had already been doing this kind of work? JOHNSON: Well, yes. What really motivated me-- Shuttlesworth' ; s uncle was the president of my local and he was in the undertaking business on the side. They picked at him because he was in business. They didn' ; t know he was in business, but the informers, the other Black folks, would tell them. He was an undertaker then and sometimes he would drive a seven passenger car to work back when there really were only a few seven passenger cars at that time. But, anyway, Shuttlesworth and his wife-- Where I met Shuttlesworth-- His wife was Morris' ; niece. They raised her...Mr. and Mrs. Morris. Shuttlesworth' ; s wife was named Ruby and her auntie was named Adella. She was a school teacher and A.U. was a clerk at the shop. There was only about three Black clerks out there that were top clerks, and one of them was A. C. McClenny, lived in Titusville, a highly educated, most respected education fellow. I mean he was very intelligent. He was a dispatcher. All the train movements went out...he set up the schedule. And this man, McWilliams, when he come, he stopped this Black guy from doing all the White folks' ; work. You see, he worked second shift and if anything was set up wrong at the first shift, he would straighten it out so that the book work would go in right. And when he left off of his shift, he stayed there until twelve thirty [12:30] and one o' ; clock and was supposed to leave at eleven o' ; clock and would straighten things up and line it up for the third shift. So McWilliams told them, ' ; Y' ; all going to have to hire some intelligent White folks or get some Black ones and put them on the job, because this man working and you are not even paying him.' ; They didn' ; t pay him for extra work. He was just staying there to help his fellow man and he did it for years to my knowing. But McWilliams told him, ' ; When it' ; s time for you to get off, leave and don' ; t come to work [at] no twelve thirty or one o' ; clock like you' ; ve been coming. Your job comes on at three o' ; clock. HUNTLEY: Who did they hire? Did they hire a Black person for the job? JOHNSON: No. The White guy that was on it was an old man. He got off of it. Then a young White guy, well educated, got on it. HUNTLEY: So A.C. McClenny remained as..? JOHNSON: Yes, until he got ready to retire. HUNTLEY: How did you get involved with the Movement? JOHNSON: Anyway, after so long a time, I had done a little extra work for the undertaker shop and we got to be good friends. Shuttlesworth was going to Selma University, him and his wife both, and we would go down there. I would drive the seven-passenger car, taking Morris down there, because I was one of his employees and he just used me for a chauffeur. But, anyway, I met Shuttlesworth, and he was such a likeable fellow that we got to be good friends and when they bombed his house in fifty seven [1957] or fifty eight--I' ; ve got a record of it, but I don' ; t have it with me, and I thought it was in this book, that' ; s the reason I brought it, but-- When they bombed his house in fifty seven or fifty eight, and I went out there Christmas morning, they bombed it that Christmas Eve night. They generally do their bombing at midnight. But anyway, it was just like they bombed my house. It could have been mine. See, if you stand up, talk straight, the Klu Klux would retaliate. They didn' ; t count the law. A lot of folks don' ; t know it, but God says you got to reap what you sow. Young Blacks don' ; t count the law now. They don' ; t pay it no mind. The city is reaping--no special person, the city--the power to be, because once upon a time the power didn' ; t respect the law and they were the law. Now, these Black boys and a lot of White boys will kill you in a minute. Right now, youngsters, teenagers, when they get to fighting, the first thing come in their mind, is I' ; ll kill you. See, the Klu Klux used that word and method through the years and it' ; s just reaping time. But, anyway, I went over to Morris' ; office that next day, or two or three days after, and we were talking about what happened and Morris said, ' ; Johnson, you know Shuttlesworth can' ; t get nobody to watch his house and the church?' ; I said, ' ; Well, what do you think we ought to do?' ; He said, ' ; You' ; ve got a lot of influence with the men out here in the union and during the meeting nights ask some of the fellows to volunteer.' ; In the meantime, I had a good friend that was president of a mine local. His name was Will Hall. They called him John L. Lewis because he represented the miners union and he was real tough. HUNTLEY: Was he a coal miner or an ore miner? JOHNSON: Coal miner. He lived next door to the Ballad House. I used to know the name of the house. The lady that owned the house owned the taxi company and they called the house...it had a special name and it was two doors from St. Johns Methodist Church on Fifteenth Street and Seventh Avenue North. But anyway, I went hunting Will Hall and told him the circumstances. And we had another fellow, a union-minded fellow named George Walker, and we all got together. The Lord fixed it for us to get together. We got up a watchmen group. In those days, you couldn' ; t have gotten by calling it a watchmen group or a security group, so they had the Alabama Christian Movement going. They just wrote us up as ' ; ushers' ; for the Christian Movement. But ordinarily, we were security men and that' ; s the way we got together and started watching the church. HUNTLEY: How many men were involved with this group? With the watchman group? J ; Well, really, it was a lot of men and they fixed it where you didn' ; t have to stay but three or four hours when you first started off. HUNTLEY: So you started by watching Shuttlesworth' ; s home? JOHNSON: Right, and the church. The first parsonage they blew into splinters on the first bombing. That' ; s when they left Shuttlesworth lying there on the mattress. And God being who He is, just one girl in the family got one little scratch on her cheek. Nobody else got any scratches at all and that was the girl next door to this one...uh, Ricky. That' ; s her nickname. Now I know her name, but right at the time--We called her Ricky so long... HUNTLEY: There was one time when you had diffused some dynamite. Can you tell me about that? JOHNSON: I' ; ll tell you about that. They had got so bad out there. This J. B. Stoner, he was the chief bomber. He would ride around all night in a yellow cab and that made me to know the Yellow Cab Company in some kind of way was tied with the bombing...that is, some of the entrepreneurs that owned Yellow Cab. No driver could drive a car around with one man all the week, all night every night. HUNTLEY: Did you know J. B. Stoner at that time? JOHNSON: No, I really didn' ; t know too much about him. I had seen him on TV talking about [how] Black folks ought to go back to Africa, ought to be shipped back to Africa and a whole lot of stuff. But, anyway, he' ; d ride around in that cab and we could see... You know, keep seeing a person' ; s face regular, you can remember it. I had never seen him walk. I didn' ; t know he was crippled until one Sunday evening when we were out there watching. In the daytime they had a program at the church and Reverend Shuttlesworth was in the church, in the office of the church. He was living in the new parsonage then, across the street, and he come from home and come right towards us and spoke to everybody and passed a few words and went on to his office. A little while, Stoner come up walking. He had parked the cab around the corner and he had a limp. One leg was longer than the other. He had a shoe with a lot of heel to it, and sole to lengthen it out, so it give him a kind of even walk, but he still walked with a limp. We were sitting across the street at Mr. Robert Revis' ; house. On his front porch he had it closed in and a heater and everything for us to sit there and watch the front of the church. The next-door neighbor, Sam Smiley, had a garage in the back of his backyard and we had a watchman station there. To watch the back of the church, we had men in the church at the back windows. But it' ; s hard to see a fellow if he gets close to the building. That' ; s what happened when they planted this bomb that I' ; m fixing to tell you about. But at the Revis' ; home there was four of us sitting there: James Russell, myself, Will Hall and another miner used to sell peanuts and sell them. He ran a store out in Pratt City and we just called him Peanut Seller. I don' ; t know his name. But, anyway, we were all sitting there on the porch and it might have been somebody else. I know it was four or more. And one of Mr. Revis' ; daughters come in. Her name was LaVerne McWilliams at that time. She had come back home to stay with her mother and daddy. But, her date brought her in around twelve o' ; clock, around midnight, in a brown Chrysler automobile. I never will forget it and when she got out the car she said, ' ; Y' ; all going to sit there and let the church burn up?' ; ' ; Burn up? What you mean?' ; She said, ' ; See? Look at the smoke coming from the side of the church.' ; That was the bomb. It was in a fresh paint can and by the fuse being lit that made the paint smoke. We hadn' ; t seen the smoke. They had somebody just set it there, and we didn' ; t see who sit it there. HUNTLEY: You didn' ; t see any cars pass? JOHNSON: Well, the cars had passed, but somebody walked up-- You see the alley was right behind the church and they just walked up and got close to the building and set it down. It was on Saturday night and a lot of folks were walking at that time. But, anyway, we rushed out, Will Hall and myself, and we got up close to it and you ever heard what a fire cracker says? Well, the dynamite says it the same way. The shorter the fuse gets, the louder the sound like a rattlesnake. But anyway, I says, ' ; John L., that' ; s some dynamite.' ; He says, ' ; I know it is.' ; Him being experienced with fuses in mines, he says, ' ; Yeah, it' ; s some dynamite.' ; He says, ' ; Let' ; s get it.' ; And both of us reached for it about the same time and caught the bail of the five-gallon paint can and walked about eight or ten feet and set it in the gutter. The street wasn' ; t paved then. It had a little ditch going by and we sit it down in that gutter of the ditch and backed off maybe eight or ten feet and it went off. But, as we were coming from the house where we were at the watch station to the bomb, I said, ' ; Somebody run in the church and tell them men to come out quick. It' ; s some dynamite out here and we don' ; t want the church to be blowed away and they in there and kill everybody in there.' ; We forgot about ourselves. We were looking out for the other men. And about the time they got out there, a fellow named Elijah Dawson--we called him ' ; Lige--he come up and say, ' ; What' ; s the matter?.-- BOOM!! He was about ten feet from it, and he was the only one who got a scratch. A little shrapnel of steel hit him on the cheek. Now it blowed all the glass out the church and for five or six blocks around dishes broke on the folks in the pantries and windows broke out of houses as much as seven and eight blocks, but the church still stood. HUNTLEY: Were you standing when it went off? JOHNSON: Oh, yes. I was standing about, maybe, seven or eight feet from it. As soon as I set it down and backed up and--at the same time, while we were doing that, those other fellows were coming out the church--and about the time Dawson got down there to see what was going on, it went off. We had a lot of fellows I could call by name that never did come back. But you can' ; t think hard of a fellow, because nobody can take the fear out of your heart but God. It had just frightened a lot of them to death and when some of them went home and told their wives about it, the women didn' ; t want them to go back anymore. But John L and myself-- It got real thin after that second bombing, but the men eventually come back. The Lord had always sent somebody else there. I can remember when it got real thin and it was a fellow, I can' ; t think of his last name. I had never seen him at the church, but he lived two or three blocks from the church. HUNTLEY: Which church? JOHNSON: Shuttlesworth' ; s church. His next-door neighbor, they were buddies and they would always come by there and speak. They were nice guys seemed to me. ' ; How you fellows doing?' ; We' ; d speak, ' ; Fine. How are you all?' ; They started to watching after they saw we needed somebody and, then, eventually, it built back up. HUNTLEY: But while you were watching Shuttlesworth' ; s church, they were also bombing in the area that' ; s called Dynamite Hill. Did you watch homes up there as well? JOHNSON: Yeah, I didn' ; t really have a station up there but they,... Robert Cole called me several times when the cars would be driving by the houses. You probably know Robert. And the people never did give Leroy Galliard the credit he should have gotten. He had two-way radios in his station wagons. He had a plumbing company. Galliard furnished the two-way radios for the watchmen on Dynamite Hill. A lot of times, we would leave Shuttlesworth' ; s house and go by Dynamite Hill and help them out. I know it was a straining job, but we never did get tired and I figured later on in life that God just wouldn' ; t let us get tired. We weren' ; t getting much rest. But let me tell you this first. After that bombing, Jet Magazine come along. Will Hall was on pension and Jet Magazine wanted to interview both of us. I wouldn' ; t let them interview me because the job I had. Not being afraid, but you had to use your head. They would have framed me and got my job. You see, they would put a smear on you like the folks tried to do Richard Arrington. They have done everything in the book to smear Richard Arrington, but when God' ; s in the plan, it' ; s hard for you to smear a fellow. Hard. I watched it. You read your Bible, read Joseph, ' ; a chosen man of God to save his people.' ; When God puts a man in a position like Dick Arrington, you can' ; t hurt him. We' ; re not talking about Dick now, but I had to bring that in there. Anyway, when Jet come along and everybody come along say, ' ; Man, you' ; d be known all over the world.' ; I said, ' ; I' ; m working for a cause, not for an ego.' ; When you go to work talking about an ego trip, no, God won' ; t be in that plan. You' ; ll use the little that you have. But, they wrote it up in Jet and I had a lot of criticism. Folks said, ' ; Man, if I was you...' ; ' ; But,' ; I said, ' ; You' ; re not me. If you was, you' ; d be out here helping to watch Shuttlesworth Church.' ; Members of the church even told me. I said, ' ; Man, how come you won' ; t come out here and watch your own church?' ; And, then, a fellow that worked with me at the shop, he still living, he told the assistant superintendent that I was out there watching and that was a slur to get my job. Any kind of excuse back in yesteryear they would get your job. And that' ; s what they would use. It' ; s what you call a backlash. A lot of folks were afraid. But I never was afraid because I asked God to give me a good job. And the way he give it to me [was] through my wife, and every once in a while she' ; d take credit now. She' ; d say, ' ; You know, I got you that job out there.' ; HUNTLEY: Why did she get you the job? JOHNSON: Well, she was working for the master mechanic at that time--at his house. HUNTLEY: She was working for McWilliams? JOHNSON: No, McWilliams wasn' ; t a master mechanic. Before him. Theodore Cramer. He was quiet and easy, nice, but he believed in discrimination too, cause he didn' ; t in promotion. Anytime a man don' ; t believe in you getting equal pay, it don' ; t matter how nice he talk. HUNTLEY: It doesn' ; t mean anything? JOHNSON: No. You see, it' ; s your livelihood that really counts. But, anyway, my wife recommended me and would tell the lady about me driving on the road and going out of town and be so late coming in and working these long hours with straight pay, no overtime or nothing, no vacation. So, she told her husband and he told me to come out to the shop. I went out there and he hired me. That' ; s where it come in at. I asked the Lord, but that' ; s the way it come in. HUNTLEY: During the movement, I know you were very busy protecting the various houses and doing a lot of different things. Were you ever arrested? JOHNSON: Well, yes and no. I was harassed. A lot of times I would leave Shuttlesworth' ; s house on Sunday morning. As soon as daylight come, we would leave and the police would be waiting on you. If you went out Twenty-ninth Avenue, the man would get behind you and trail you. You see, they knew my car. The man would give me tickets and say I ran a stop sign. I' ; m looking right at him sitting in Bruno' ; s. You see Bruno' ; s used to be on Twenty-fifth Street and Twenty-ninth Avenue in that little burnt building. And he used to have a three-wheel motorcycle sitting right in the door. You could look right in his face and you pull right up to the stop sign. Now, I' ; d look like a fool running a stop sign, looking in the police' ; s face, but he would still give me a ticket. ' ; Boy, you run that stop sign.' ; I said, ' ; No, sir.' ; ' ; I' ; m a liar then.' ; I said, ' ; Well, I didn' ; t run the sign.' ; He said, ' ; Well, I' ; m going to give you a so-and-so ticket anyway.' ; He would give me a ticket for running a stop sign. I' ; d pay it, but that' ; s what you had to pay. That' ; s the price you pay for freedom. The man followed me one day. They had it set up good from Shuttlesworth' ; s church all the way past where this policeman sat. When I turned on Twenty-fourth Street-- It' ; s a Southern Amacite Company. They make this amacite what you put down floor tile. It' ; s like concrete but they call it amacite. It' ; s finer ground. But, anyway, it' ; s a watchman sit there in a little shack and they stop you right there at the shack and the watchman come out there with a shotgun. All of that is to intimidate you, like they' ; re dangerous and ready to kill you. Police would draw his gun and search you. They had searched me many times. The watchman is right up with them. But, now, a lot of these companies didn' ; t know their employees was participating in that kind of stuff. They used their own authority. When the big man over the mountain sleep-- See, a lot of rich folk didn' ; t even know that the folks was being treated that bad and, then, a lot of them had the same idea. But, that' ; s just the way it went. I was stopped one night. The first night we had the mass meeting at Sixth Avenue Baptist. Sixth Avenue Baptist was sitting right where Cooper Green Hospital is. I had a brand new [19]66 Buick and my old man and my wife and his wife and another person, there were five of us in the car. After the mass meeting, we walked down on Fifth Avenue. There were so many people at the mass meeting that you couldn' ; t get a parking space on Sixth Avenue, but we walked down to the car and got in the car. As soon as we got in the car, before I could crank the car up good, I turned the key and just as soon as it started, the police pulled up on a motorcycle right up alongside of me. He said, ' ; Gimme' ; your driver' ; s license.' ; I got my driver' ; s license out. ' ; Your lights are too bright.' ; He wrote me a ticket up for bright lights and I hadn' ; t even cut my lights on, but I had to pay that ticket. But that was the price we had to pay. And, a lot of folks, their eyes come open. You see, Wallace is paying the price for keeping folks from having their freedom. You see, God don' ; t let you by. He said, ' ; Let the wheat and the tares grow together.' ; You see, that' ; s the reason when a man treats you wrong, you don' ; t kill him. You forgive him. The boss man got the payroll and he is going to pay off. HUNTLEY: You had mentioned to me that your wife drove. JOHNSON: Yes, my wife used to drive. HUNTLEY: But she doesn' ; t drive now? Why did she stop driving? JOHNSON: She stopped driving when we saw the police intimidating Black women and she couldn' ; t stand it. She said, ' ; Y' ; all talk about non-violence and I hear Reverend Shuttlesworth and Dr. King say slap you on one cheek and turn the other.' ; She said, ' ; I read it in the book [Bible], but I couldn' ; t stand it.' ; She said, ' ; If somebody snatch me out of my car and hit me across the head, if I don' ; t have nothing, I' ; m going to grab them and bite them. I ain' ; t going to drive any more, because if somebody treat me like that, they would have me to kill. I can' ; t stand that.' ; HUNTLEY: So she never drove since? JOHNSON: She said, ' ; I ain' ; t driving no more,' ; and she hadn' ; t drove since. That was in [19]63. HUNTLEY: What church were you a member of? JOHNSON: At that time, I joined-- I was a Macedonian. But, when I bought on Second Avenue next door to a church and they treated me with so much hospitality and just kept inviting me, and then the preacher asked me to join, I just joined. My wife wanted me to stay where I was, but she said I was stepping down in a little church. I told her you can serve a little church better than you can a big one. So I joined Mount Calvary. HUNTLEY: Was your church actively involved with the movement? JOHNSON: Later on. At first, they did like the other churches. The preacher said, ' ; The folks didn' ; t want the movement here,' ; and ' ; I ain' ; t going to let it come,' ; but when he left and we got a good country preacher there... HUNTLEY: Who was the one who came in? JOHNSON: Prince Jenkins. He is as country as watermelon, but he is real spiritual and he' ; s a young man who was interested in freedom. He asked me, ' ; Johnson, how come you don' ; t get the movement to come to our church?' ; I said, ' ; If the folks would accept it. The pastor before you, him and five or six folks that he catered to, they said they didn' ; t want the movement here and they didn' ; t let it come.' ; He said, ' ; I want it and I' ; m going to talk about it today.' ; He got up and he said how much good the Alabama Christian Movement was doing and he wanted them to come to the church. He said, ' ; As soon as I can get them to come, I' ; m going to invite them whenever they get ready.' ; He said, ' ; I' ; m letting y' ; all know now. The Movement is coming.' ; HUNTLEY: This is after the [19]63 demonstration? JOHNSON: Yes, that was about ' ; 67, ' ; 68 or ' ; 69. But, anyway, we started meeting at our church. I told the secretary, which was Miss Georgia Price, and she talked to Reverend Garner. They were the two that selected the places to go. Then they started to come to our church. HUNTLEY: What was the reaction of your father and your wife to your being so active in the movement? JOHNSON: Oh, my old man, he-- That just suited him fine. My wife never did kick on. Of course, she went to all the mass meetings. She was right up in it just like I was. But, she just wasn' ; t active as I was. But she went to all the meetings. Just about every Monday night, if she wasn' ; t sick, she was there, and she hasn' ; t been sick that much to my knowing. HUNTLEY: Mr. Johnson, I know we can spend another two hours and I think we are going to have to do that because you have so much to say. But let me just ask you if there is anything that you have not stated that you would like to end on today. But, now, we are not ending, because I' ; m going to do this with you again because there are a number of issues that are vitally important and we really just touched them. JOHNSON: Well now, I' ; m going to give you the high part. What-- Really, one of my really top motivations was Fred Shuttlesworth. He could explain God' ; s idea of freedom so well that it would just take away the fear from your heart. And, the confidence that he had in the Lord God-- And he could really explain it. And he did. One of his sayings was, ' ; If I was in an airplane without a parachute and God told me to jump, I wouldn' ; t ask him no questions. I' ; d jump.' ; When he would make those statements, the spirit would be very high before. He knows when to make them and it was touching. And he motivated the folks until we started to have some more mass meetings. You see, that' ; s the only way you get your information and that' ; s the only way to touch the folks. A lot of folks, a lot of preachers, are afraid to preach the truth. They are afraid they would get hungry. You' ; d be surprised. In a lot of churches, even in the White church, if the preacher tells the truth, he had to go. A lot of folks can' ; t stand the truth. So, the Bible says the truth would make you free. So that' ; s what makes a lot of folks not free, because they don' ; t hear the truth. HUNTLEY: Let me just ask you just one final question in relation to Reverend Shuttlesworth. We know that he' ; s a courageous individual and all those things we heard about him. You can say that he was really attempting to give his life for the movement and that we realize. There were some who criticized him, who said that he was a dictator and he thought that it was his movement. As a person who worked very closely with him, how would you react to that? JOHNSON: Well, you see, somebody got to lead and he was a leader. You can' ; t have but one head. A lot of folks, after Shuttlesworth knocked down the big trees, the big oaks, out the way, then everybody wanted to lead, especially the ones with the ego. When a man got an ego, he wants the office without work. In other words, there is a lot of labor in it, a lot of sacrifice, and a lot of folks wouldn' ; t have done what Shuttlesworth done. I' ; ve seen Shuttlesworth--And I' ; m not going to drop the fault on nobody. I' ; m just going to lay it out there--I' ; ve seen him go out when a lot of folks was in jail, when you needed money. He would go to New York, California and all over the United States to preach and come back and put that money in the Movement and he didn' ; t have nothing. A poor boy a long way from home. And I heard other preachers tell him, ' ; Fred, I wouldn' ; t put all that money in the Movement. You preached and that' ; s your money.' ; He' ; d say, ' ; No, I preached in the name of the Movement. I was representing the Movement and I' ; m putting this money in there.' ; But, you see, that was God' ; s program. What the other fellows was showing me, if they were the head of it, they would take as much of the money that they wanted to. Now he didn' ; t have nothing. But, see, God paid him later. He rewarded him later. He' ; s in good shape now and he got it honest. You see, when you don' ; t get it honest, you can' ; t keep it. He got it and he keeping it. HUNTLEY: Okay, well, we certainly appreciate your time and I would like to just say that I want to do this again, because there are a number of issues. There' ; s a labor issue that we need to deal with and there are other issues within the Movement that I' ; d like to hear about as well. JOHNSON: Whenever you get ready, no problem. HUNTLEY: Thank you, sir. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
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Colonel Stone Johnson
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Colonel Stone Johnson discusses being one of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth's bodyguards, fighting workplace discrimination and serving on many local organizations and boards, including the BCRI.
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19950106J
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
Ku Klux Klan (1915- )
Police brutality--United States
Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011
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1995-01-06
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video
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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Interviews collected as part of the general mission of the Oral History Project
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Video
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Oral History
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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English
Identifier
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bcriohp
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Binnie Myles
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Margaret Givner Brown
OHMS Object
This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS
Viewer).
http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=MGBrown1996.xml
Interview Keyword
This field adds keywords to the Omeka Oral History item type. Keywords are
included in the OHMS XML, this field in Omeka will allow for full data migration
between OHMS XML and the Omeka Record.
Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011
Abernathy, Ralph, 1926-1990
OHMS Object Text
This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the
contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka.
5.4 June 13, 1996 Margaret Givner Brown Interviewed on June 13, 1996 19960613B 0:31:14 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project Collection bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Emily Reynolds Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham. Police brutality--United States Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, Ala.) Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 Abernathy, Ralph, 1926-1990 Margaret Givner Brown Binnie Myles Oral History 1:|41(3)|74(4)|91(5)|110(1)|132(4)|152(7)|164(5)|173(11)|184(14)|197(10)|213(9)|223(3)|248(13)|281(10)|298(2)|312(5)|323(11)|339(12)|362(15)|376(10)|395(1)|404(2)|420(10)|432(5)|447(5)|463(13)|481(9)|497(11)|512(8)|532(3) 0 https://youtu.be/2bkOJuiPpqc YouTube video English 1 Interview Introduction This is an interview for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's Oral History Project with Margaret Givner Brown on June 13, 1996 at 2:00 p.m. at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Interview Introduction 33.516200, -86.813870 17 The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute https://www.bcri.org/ The homepage of the BCRI 19 Childhood and Family How are you? Fine. Good. Did you grow up in Birmingham? Brown discusses her family, her parents' work, and her childhood neighborhood. African Americans--Employment ; African Americans--Southern States ; Birmingham (Ala.) African American families 270 School & ; Church Movement Involvement Were you very active, your family, were you very active in any particular church? Church involvement and church participation in Civil Rights Movement. Abernathy, Ralph, 1926-1990 ; African Americans--Education ; African Americans--Southern States ; Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 African Americans--Civil rights ; African Americans--Religion 537 Movement Demonstration & ; Family Response Did you recall your parents saying anything about the meetings? Perhaps after the meetings were over with, or when you came home? Brown discusses her involvement in a Civil Rights Movement demonstration, and her family's response to Movement activity. African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Civil rights movement ; Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Ala.) African American families ; African Americans--Civil rights 958 Arrest & ; Jail Experience To Kelly Ingram Park? To Kelly Ingram Park. Yes, we had made it to the street over from Kelly Ingram Park. And there, that's when the police stopped us. Brown describes her experience being arrested and put in jail following her participation in a Civil Rights Movement demonstration. African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States ; Civil rights movement ; Police brutality--United States African Americans--Civil rights ; Birmingham (Ala.). Police Department 1271 Reflection on Experience Impact So as you came out of that experience and different things happened to the South, particularly in Birmingham, did you ever look back at it and say, " ; Boy, you know I was really young, but I did make a difference." ; Brown reflects on her experience as part of the Civil Rights Movement, and how she has shared that experience with children of today. African Americans--Civil rights--History ; African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States ; African Americans--Race identity African Americans--Civil rights ; Civil rights movement 1543 Visiting BCRI How was it for you when you came to the Institute? Did you have flashbacks? Was it an emotional time for? Were you with somebody or by yourself? Brown describes visiting the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute for the first time. African Americans--Civil rights--History Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, Ala.) 1637 Community Leadership What about your involvement, and when you look at your church? They also played a very big role. I guess that made you very proud of your church. Brown describes living in her community during the Civil Rights Movement, and shares thoughts about the role of church and organizations on the Birmingham and the African American community. African Americans--Civil rights ; African Americans--Crimes against ; African Americans--Religion ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Southern Christian Leadership Conference African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States 1793 Advice for Future & ; Conclusion Before we close, how would you say they can get 'in touch' with the Movement? Brown shares her advice for future generations of African Americans. African Americans--Civil rights ; Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, Ala.) African Americans--Race identity Video Margaret Givner Brown discusses growing up in Birmingham before getting involved with the Movement as a child. She was arrested at 8 years old for marching. MYLES: This is an interview for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute' ; s Oral History Project with Margaret Givner Brown on June 13, 1996 at 2:00 p.m. at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. How are you? BROWN: Fine. MYLES: Good. Did you grow up in Birmingham? BROWN: Yes, I did. MYLES: What area? BROWN: In Titusville. MYLES: Where did you live in Titusville? BROWN: On Kappa Street. MYLES: Do you have brothers and sisters? BROWN: Yes, I have five sisters, no brothers. MYLES: What do you remember about your childhood growing up? When do you remember yourself, at the age of 5, or 7 or what? BROWN: Well, I was a happy, normal, regular five-year-old. MYLES: So you can remember back as early as five? BROWN: Yes. MYLES: What was your community like where you lived? BROWN: It wasn' ; t the suburbs or anything, but it was nice. At that time, it was just an ordinary community to me. MYLES: Did your mom work outside of the home? BROWN: She did small work. Nothing too much. She would work in the school. MYLES: What school did she work in? BROWN: I think she worked at Gary. She worked in the nutrition department where they cooked the food. MYLES: What did your dad do? BROWN: He was a porter at A& ; P. MYLES: What does a porter do? BROWN: A porter does a little of everything, whatever needs to be done. There were certain times when he would unload the trucks when they would come into the warehouse part, or he took mail. Whatever needed to be done, he was there to do that. MYLES: Did he stay there a long time? BROWN: Twenty-seven years, I think. MYLES: Did he? BROWN: Yes, he stayed a long time. MYLES: Did he retire from there or did he go to another job? BROWN: No. The A& ; P closed suddenly so he was left without a job. MYLES: That must have been very difficult. BROWN: It was. MYLES: Do you remember about what age you were when the store closed? BROWN: I was about 15. MYLES: So, in terms of the number of kids, where did you come in, older, younger? BROWN: At the end. MYLES: You' ; re the baby. BROWN: I' ; m the ' ; knee' ; baby. MYLES: Does that mean you came to the knees? BROWN: I was almost at the end. There was one born after me. MYLES: What did you over hear your parents say when the store closed? BROWN: Well, at that time it was hard, but that was years after the demonstrations and all of this. It was hard, but we managed to get on and eventually they had a suit against the company so that way money came in. MYLES: So he and some other people sued A& ; P because of what? BROWN: Because the way in which they ended the job without letting them know anything about it. MYLES: Was your family very active in any particular church? BROWN: Yes, we were all members of New Pilgrim Baptist Church. My father was deacon. He was head of the deacon Board and my mother was a deaconess. MYLES: So that meant the kids were active in church, too. BROWN: Oh, yes. My oldest sister sang in the choir. I was an usher and we were very active. MYLES: Was this something that you wanted to be, an usher? Was that something to really be proud of, " ; When I get a little older, I would like to be an usher," ; or one says, " ; I' ; m going to sing in the choir." ; Or, was it something that parents said, " ; Well you' ; re going to be an usher and you' ; re going to sing in the choir?" ; How did that work? BROWN: Oh, no. That was something that I wanted to do. I enjoyed standing up watching the people as they come in. I like serving so I enjoyed seating people and things like that. MYLES: What about school? Where did you attend elementary school? BROWN: We all attended Washington Elementary. MYLES: What kind of experience did you have there? Do you remember your principal or any of your teachers? BROWN: My principal' ; s name was Mr. Moore and I remember Mrs. Jones-- she was one of my favorite teachers along with Miss Peagues and several others. MYLES: After you finished Washington, did you go to high school or was it a middle school after that? BROWN: I went right into Ullman. I attended Ullman for two years. And, then they closed Ullman so I had to go to Parker to finish up my other two years. MYLES: Were you sad? BROWN: I was sad until I got there and I fit in. MYLES: Your church, you said you were an usher and your family was very active in the church. What kind of community, at home and at the church, was it as it relates to the Movement? Do you remember anything about the Civil Rights Movement or SCLC or NAACP? BROWN: Do you mean as I grew older or when I was younger? MYLES: When you were younger. BROWN: Yes, I remember (Inaudible) participating. Our church was one of the churches that I believe they started in. And, therefore we came to all the meetings that they had in the evening time. It was really exciting. MYLES: What do you recall at the meetings? Was Rev. Smith over the meetings or was he the pastor then or was it somebody else? What were some of the things that the men and women talked about? BROWN: I remember Rev. Smith would turn it over to Rev. Shuttlesworth. I remember Rev. Abernathy would come up and get the crowd roaring for Dr. King. MYLES: What do you recall him saying? BROWN: I remember he would say, " ; fireball" ; and, being a child that drew my attention. I remember the excitement that the people would have. MYLES: What do you remember about Rev. Abernathy, King and Shuttlesworth? BROWN: Well, I remember them being very outspoken. I remember it would be exciting. All I remember is when they talked, we listened. They had a way about them that they could calm a crowd. And, what they had to say, even to a child it was interesting. MYLES: Do you recall your parents saying anything about the meetings? BROWN: I remember it was scary and exciting at the same time, because when they would come home they would tell us to be very careful and that things would probably happen that we wouldn' ; t understand right off. But if we had anything that we wanted to ask them about, we could always ask them about it. It was just exciting to me. MYLES: Why were you scared? BROWN: I remember them telling us that, I guess when the marches were getting started, that they had come on the job and they were asking was anybody a part of it and it was hush, hush among the Black men that were there. As the Movement began to grow and develop more and more, they would, by us being a part of it, my father said the Black employees were drawing away from him. I guess they disassociated themselves with him because they were afraid at that time. All I remember is that there was a lot of fear because they didn' ; t know what would happen to them. MYLES: So, you said, " ; They came on the job and wanted to know who was involved." ; When you say " ; they" ; , who came? BROWN: No, no. I mean they were discussing it on the job. I remember hearing my father when he came home, telling my mom that it was a part of their discussion as to who was in it and who would not participate. MYLES: His employers, his boss? BROWN: Exactly. MYLES: So they would be people that were Caucasian or Black people? BROWN: Black. Because they didn' ; t know whether or not they were participating. They just saw some were for it and some were against it. MYLES: As youngsters, did you girls get together and discuss what might happen? BROWN: Now, my older sisters would say something about it. But my sister who was three years above me, she would ask me if I wanted to participate. And she told me, " ; I want to go." ; And I think talking to her kind of motivated me to want to go. I remember the day that I did march we had talked about it the night before. MYLES: What did you say? BROWN: We were out and had been playing earlier that day. Later on that night when we were in the room getting ready for bed my sister told me, she said, " ; Well, I want to go. I really want to participate." ; She said, " ; I' ; m not afraid." ; And, so I said, " ; They say dogs are there. I' ; ve seen the dogs." ; And, she said, " ; But I' ; m not afraid." ; And, so she said, " ; I just believe that I' ; ll be all right." ; I remember saying, " ; Well, if you go, I want to go." ; I guess by the confidence that she had, and she didn' ; t have any fear, made me not have fear and made me more curious as to what it was all about. MYLES: Did you say anything to your parents? BROWN: The next morning we both went to my mom and my sister told me what she wanted to do because we heard that there would be a march the next day. We asked her if we could go. She was a little reluctant. She kind of pulled back. She said, " ; Not both of you." ; But my older sister said, " ; Well, I' ; ll take care of them." ; And, then she gave us permission to go. MYLES: Your dad had probably already gone to work? BROWN: He was at work. MYLES: Where were you in school at that time? BROWN: I was attending Washington. MYLES: Oh, you were a little girl. You were still in elementary school. BROWN: Very young. MYLES: What age were you? BROWN: I was eight years old, but I was so small that they thought I was younger. MYLES: What age was your sister? BROWN: She was 12, I believe. MYLES: So, this was during the school time? BROWN: This was in the summer. MYLES: So you went down, you knew what time the march was going to take place, do you remember about what time it was? BROWN: We went in the morning. I think it was about 8:00 or 9:00. MYLES: How did you get there? BROWN: My mom had a friend to drop us off and that' ; s how we came. MYLES: Where did the march take place? BROWN: Right at 16th Street Baptist Church. MYLES: When you got there were there other people there? BROWN: Oh, yes. MYLES: A lot of people? BROWN: Yes. MYLES: How did you feel then as you approached the church? BROWN: It was very exciting. People had began to come and I guess waiting for the time seemed like it was the longest time just getting prepared to go, but during that time we sat in and listened to instructions. MYLES: Who gave the instructions and what were they, do you remember? BROWN: I don' ; t remember exactly who that person was. But, I do remember him saying " ; No Comment." ; If somebody come around and ask you something, like who are your parents, say, " ; No Comment." ; I do remember that was part of my instructions. MYLES: So they got everybody together to do the marching. You marched from the church to where? BROWN: We were on the other side of the park. MYLES: To Kelly Ingram Park? BROWN: Yes. We had made it to the street over from Kelly Ingram Park and that' ; s when the policemen stopped us and me and my sister went together. Right as we turned the corner, that' ; s when the police stopped us. MYLES: Do you remember what they said? BROWN: They asked the people that were in front of us did we have a permit and I don' ; t know what the response was, but I remember them telling us then to line up against a fence. MYLES: So now you' ; re like a criminal, an 8 year old criminal, you' ; re lining up against a fence, at least that' ; s the way they looked at it, and they thought you were doing something wrong. Were you scared then, yet? BROWN: No, I was excited. This is really happening. We were going to jail was going through my mind. I know I did everything they said. I lined up against the fence, but I was very excited and a little curious as to what would happen. But, I guess more excited than anything. MYLES: Then what happened? BROWN: Then they had these paddy wagons. They put us in the back. There was a little window so you could see out the back. There was another one on the side. I remember looking out, but they took us down to a big place. At that time I didn' ; t know where it was, but then later, because they took us the back way. I was used to seeing the jail the front way, but they took was the back way. Later I found out that it was the City Jail. When we got there, and I guess they noticed that we were small, they took us to a room. We weren' ; t there long then a bus came. We loaded back up, got on the bus and they took us then to juvenile hall. MYLES: What happened there? Were your fingerprinted and all that? BROWN: No, I don' ; t remember being finger printed. I remember being placed in a room with some more girls. They were much older than I was. As a matter of fact that was exciting for me because they all petted me, I was so small. They were all like big sisters for me. MYLES: So they kind of took you under their wing? BROWN: Oh, yes. They were very sweet to me. I remember we stayed up there until later that evening. I guess they were trying to decide what to do with us. It was a lot of us. I remember looking at the news, because they had a TV in there and we could see everything that was happening on the news. MYLES: On the news, did they mention about the march? BROWN: I remember them saying they wanted to get my attention. They wanted me to see because I imagine, at that time by me being so small, that they filmed me and they wanted me to see it, but it was so many of us and by the time I got a chance to see it, it was over. MYLES: Did anybody call your parents? BROWN: They asked us who our parents were and where we lived. They said they wanted it so they could call our parents, but we didn' ; t tell them anything. MYLES: So, how long did you stay in jail? BROWN: Five days. MYLES: You and your sister? BROWN: Yes. MYLES: What was she saying? Did she say, " ; We' ; re going to get in trouble" ; ? Or " ; Mom and Dad are going to be worried about us." ; BROWN: Oh, no, because we had talked with our parents before we left and they told her to look after me. So they knew where we were, and we knew that they knew where we were. We weren' ; t wondering about whether or not they would be upset. While we were there, it was fun for us. We had to pass the time by singing and playing, little things like that. So, it wasn' ; t fearful as far as passing the time. MYLES: What was the food like? Were you really hungry? BROWN: We had a routine that we went through. We were fed three meals a day and it was a rule that if we were late, when it was time to go, like if they came that morning at 6:00 to get us and we weren' ; t ready to go, then they wouldn' ; t let us come down to eat if we weren' ; t in the line ready to go out. MYLES: So you had to follow the rules and be on time for everything? BROWN: Exactly. MYLES: So as you came out of that experience and different things happen to the South, particularly in Birmingham, did you ever look back at it and say, " ; Boy, I was really young, but I did make a difference." ; BROWN: Yes, I did. I really did. Even with my own kids as I grew older I told them about what had happened. Even though I think what I did was a very small part, I knew that it was important as the years went on because of all of the things that have happened since then. MYLES: But, if you look at it and say it' ; s a small part, it is a big part because if everybody who did just that one small part, it makes the whole one and it does make a difference no matter how insignificant it may seem to ' ; the doer.' ; That' ; s a great responsibility to take upon oneself to march during those times. BROWN: I just wanted to say that it was time. I know that one incident that made me know afterward how important it was and how dangerous it was, but I thank God he brought us through. I have five other sisters, as I said. And, all but one of them went to jail. And, when I got out, when our incident was over with, we would always share what had happened to the other. I had one sister that was put in a sweat box and she had a rough time. I had another sister that fire hydrant was turned on and the dogs were there. So, I knew what I was doing was important. It was a small part at that time, but I knew that it was important. MYLES: When you look back at that, and I don' ; t know whether you' ; ve shared that with other children, and when you see the file film or even if you' ; ve been to the Civil Rights Institute ; have you been to the Institute? BROWN: Yes, I have. MYLES: When you look at all that, first I want to ask you, what about when you talk to your relatives' ; children or your own children and you see an old movie or some file film and say, " ; Yes, I participated, I did so and so." ; What do they say, " ; Oh, that was in the olden days. You didn' ; t really do that." ; Or do they ask you to tell them about it? BROWN: The very first time I shared my experience with any other child was when I was young myself. I remember doing it at school. I had to give a report and that was my report. I wanted to tell them about my incident. When I went up first the kids made fun of me, but later on they were just spellbound. And, as I grew older with my own kids, like I said, they listened. A lot of times, in school systems when I talked with them, they said, " ; Oh, Mrs. Brown, it wasn' ; t that bad." ; The kids just can' ; t imagine that things went on though they did. They just couldn' ; t imagine that ever happened. MYLES: What about when they' ; ve seen the Institute and they see the bus, they see the fountains, do they say, " ; Is this for real, or is this like a movie?" ; What do they say? BROWN: They are really amazed. When the museum first opened I brought my middle son. He was really amazed. He was just saying that, " ; The law--the law should have been able to help. I can' ; t see where the law would allow them to do that." ; But, I told them that at that time it was the law, that we couldn' ; t go different places. It' ; s hard for all my kids. Now, they understand it better. But, earlier they didn' ; t. They didn' ; t understand that the law could do that. MYLES: And the thing about it too, I guess you could look at it and say, well, when you look back, even though you have children, it really wasn' ; t that long ago. BROWN: No, it wasn' ; t. MYLES: How was it for you when you came to the Institute? Did you have flashbacks? Was it an emotional time for? Were you with somebody or by yourself? BROWN: When I first came I was with my husband and it was exciting. It brought back a lot of memories. MYLES: We' ; ve talked to some people who said that it was very emotional. Even men said it brought tears to their eyes when they came here to the Institute. Did you experience any of that? BROWN: All of that, everything that you mentioned. There was sadness, but, like I said, it was time that we had to go through with, it had to be. MYLES: When you talk with your husband about it, did he know you when you were a little girl? BROWN: No. MYLES: So, when you tell him, did he say, " ; Oh, girl, you didn' ; t do that?" ; BROWN: No. He wasn' ; t like that all. All he would say is that he hated that he couldn' ; t participate and he hated that he missed out on that chance, but he was so small his parents didn' ; t allow it. But, he didn' ; t talk to me as though I did not participate. MYLES: What about your church' ; s involvement? When you look at your church, they also played a very big role. I guess that made you very proud of your church. BROWN: It did. MYLES: What about Rev. Smith? Did your father or did you ever overhear about him being threatened or his house being bombed? BROWN: Oh, yes. MYLES: What did they say? BROWN: Especially when we had a member that was beaten. I remember him talking about Rev. Billups. He and Dr. Smith were close. I remember him saying that they had beat him to death. They had found his body in a car and that they were (Inaudible). And, it was just a constant fear that all their lives were in danger, but at the same time we were still motivated to go on. It wasn' ; t the fear that kept us from doing it, it was the fear that made us want to do more. MYLES: Sure, that if we didn' ; t, it would never be. BROWN: Right. It would be even worse. MYLES: What about the Movement in your opinion, then, when you look back at organizations like SCLC and the NAACP then, do you think they were worth it? Was it worth it being involved? Were they good? And, then when you look at the Movement today, you look at SCLC, NAACP, those kinds of organizations, what is the difference or is there any difference in your opinion, then and now? BROWN: Yes, it' ; s a difference now. Then, it was very needed and it is needed today. But we put more faith and confidence in it then because they were right there with us. Now, the kids today don' ; t know about it. Very few do. My daughter, since, was involved in the Movement, the NAACP, but she was telling me about a lot of the kids that weren' ; t aware of it. They didn' ; t know what was going on and I know when we were coming up that was all we talked about--the NAACP, the Movement and the marches and things. So, now, the young kids are kind of out of touch with it. MYLES: Do you think they need to be in touch? BROWN: They do need to be in touch, exactly. MYLES: Before we close, how would you say they can get ' ; in touch' ; with the Movement? BROWN: Through the school system. If they would have different programs to involve them, I believe that would help. That' ; s my opinion. Then, through the churches, that would help a lot, too. MYLES: Do you think that some churches have gotten away from those kinds of things and doing other kinds of things? BROWN: Yes, exactly. MYLES: Is there anything that I didn' ; t ask you that you wanted to share with us? BROWN: Well, I think we covered it all. MYLES: If you could say something to encourage somebody to come to the Civil Rights Institute and see a part of history that took place, how would you invite them? BROWN: I would really advise them to come because this is history and this is something that really, as a matter of fact when they look at where they are today, and they have a long ways yet to go, but if they think about the struggle that we had, in the back and before all of the fine cars and the nice houses came about, they need to know where they came from, to appreciate where they are and where they' ; re going in the future. So I' ; d advise them to please come. MYLES: We certainly thank you for sharing with us today. BROWN: It was a pleasure. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
bcri.org. 0 http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=MGBrown1996.xml MGBrown1996.xml
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Margaret Givner Brown
Description
An account of the resource
Margaret Givner Brown discusses growing up in Birmingham before getting involved with the Movement as a child. She was arrested at 8 years old for marching.
Identifier
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19960613B
Subject
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham.
Police brutality--United States
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, Ala.)
Date
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1996-06-13
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video
-
https://bcriohp.org/files/original/bcacf10ff8982654e0737af9def034ad.jpg
e7814800f653b1ac08d642830caf357d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Interviews collected as part of the general mission of the Oral History Project
Publisher
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
Format
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Video
Type
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Oral History
Subject
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
Language
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English
Identifier
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bcriohp
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Horace Huntley
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Eileen Kelley Walbert
OHMS Object
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Viewer).
http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=EKWalbert1995.xml
Interview Keyword
This field adds keywords to the Omeka Oral History item type. Keywords are
included in the OHMS XML, this field in Omeka will allow for full data migration
between OHMS XML and the Omeka Record.
Segregation in education
OHMS Object Text
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5.4 February 3, 1995 Eileen Kelley Walbert Interviewed on February 3, 1995 19950203W 0:59:08 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project Collection bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Raines Whittaker Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham Police brutality--United States Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 Segregation in education Eileen Kelley Walbert Horace Huntley Video 1:|15(4)|32(6)|61(1)|72(9)|86(3)|104(9)|115(1)|127(2)|140(8)|155(12)|167(7)|177(6)|193(6)|208(1)|222(6)|232(12)|247(1)|261(14)|276(8)|290(2)|297(15)|311(1)|328(5)|340(5)|347(14)|366(10)|385(12)|394(12)|404(7)|418(6)|430(4)|440(1)|449(14)|464(7)|479(8)|491(1)|502(3)|510(8)|520(1)|535(1)|544(8)|554(12)|564(1)|573(13)|587(9)|596(7)|606(2)|614(14)|626(14)|639(10)|647(1)|660(4)|670(14)|678(14)|685(7)|700(1)|710(7) 0 https://youtu.be/l0atZ6XSxSU YouTube video English 64 Beginning of Interview This is an interview with Mrs. Eileen Kelley Walbert from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's Oral History Project done by Dr. Horace Huntley at Miles College, February 3, 1995. Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, Ala.) 33.516200, -86.813870 17 Birmingham Civil Rights Institute http://www.bcri.org BCRI website 115 Personal Background First, of all, I just want to get a little information, a little personal information, about yourself. She is from Virginia and moved to Birmingham as an adult. Episcopal Church Southern States--History ; Women--Southern States 37.032568, -76.465299 11 Hilton Village, VA 229 Moving from New York City to Birmingham What was the transition like moving from New York City to Birmingham, Alabama? Moving to Alabama was shocking because of the overt segregation and racism. African Americans--Segregation ; Alabama--History ; Segregation in education--United States 331 Family Background Let me just back up just a bit and ask a bit about your family--your mother and father. Her parents are from the North but met in the Philippines, where her mother also learned about discrimination. Discrimination ; Military bases, American--Philippines ; Military occupation ; New Englanders 500 Coming to Birmingham What brought you to Birmingham? Her and her husband moved to Birmingham for her husband's work as a piano teacher. Piano teachers African Americans--Segregation ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Homewood (Ala.) ; Voting--United States 640 Inter-Racial Organizing Do you have any memories of relationships that developed between yourself and others who were attempting to develop inter-racial dialogue in Birmingham? Although isolated as a white person, she participated in organizing with the Black community. Birmingham (Ala.) ; Birmingham (Ala.). Police Department ; Civil rights workers ; Police brutality--United States ; Racism--United States--History 954 Atmosphere when Organizing What was the atmosphere in the meetings when you knew that this individual was there? The environment of organizing was one of intimation, especially from the Ku Klux Klan. University of Alabama at Birmingham Birmingham (Ala.) ; Civil rights workers ; Racism--United States--History 1159 Connection to Fred Shuttlesworth They’re close, adjacent to each other. She knew Fred Shuttlesworth through the school that her daughter attended. Southern Christian Leadership Conference African Americans--Segregation ; Civil rights movement ; Racism in education--United States ; Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 https://www.bhamwiki.com/w/Fred_Shuttlesworth Information on Fred Shuttlesworth 1390 Only White Parent in School Support Were you the only White parent there? She found herself to be the only white parent at council meetings in support of African American civil rights. Civil rights workers ; Race relations in the United States 1470 Reverberations of the Civil Rights Movement in the White Community In 1960 and ‘61 we had the sit-ins and the Freedom Rides. She attended meetings for school desegregation in the face of other white people's opposition. Miscegenation Civil rights movement ; Racism--United States ; Segregation in education--United States ; Southern States--Race relations 1712 Working toward School Desegregation You were going to discuss integration of the schools? She worked for school desegregation after witnessing the unequal conditions for Black children. Miles College African American schools ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; School integration--United States ; Segregation in education https://www.bhamwiki.com/w/Miles_College Information on Miles College 1947 Reactions of the White Community to Civil Rights Participation What was the reaction of White communities to the demonstrations that started to take place here in April and May of 1963? She and her husband encountered resentment and intimation for supporting civil rights causes. Miles College African Americans--Civil rights ; Civil rights demonstrations--Alabama ; Civil rights movement ; Southern States--Race relations 2356 Personal Relations within the Civil Rights Movement How did you feel as a White person attempting to make changes in Birmingham? She was one of the few white people active and met many important civil rights figures. Alabama Council on Human Relations ; Williams, Hosea, 1926- Birmingham (Ala.) ; Civil rights demonstrations--Alabama ; Civil rights movement ; Civil rights workers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosea_Williams Information on Hosea Williams 2737 White March of Support in Selma So, then, did you actually march? She participated in a solidarity march in Selma that was well received by the Black community. Civil rights demonstrations--Alabama ; Civil rights movement ; Selma (Ala.) 3003 Lack of White Church Involvement What church were you a member of at that time? The church she attended gave no support to the civil rights movement. Civil rights movement ; Episcopal Church ; Race relations--Religious aspects 3067 Impact of the Birmingham Movement How would you evaluate the Birmingham movement, its successes and failures? She found involvement to be transformative but wished the ideals could have been further maintained. Vietnam War, 1961-1975 African Americans--Civil rights--History--20th century ; Civil rights movement ; Race relations in the United States 3236 Hypothetical Advising to Those Involved in the Movement If you could turn the clock back and you found yourself as chief advisor to Dr. King, Rev. Shuttlesworth or the White business community ... If given the chance to advise the big civil rights leaders, she would support all their efforts and only want to see more for supporting children. African Americans--Education ; Equality--United States ; Poor children--Education--United States ; Race relations--Economic aspects 3388 Future Visions Finally, let me just ask you if there is anything else that you would like to add that we have not dealt with that relates to race relations in Birmingham ... She wishes to see greater integration of communities to better support children's futures. Community and neighborhood structure ; Race relations in the United States ; Segregation--United States ; Social integration--United States Oral History Eileen Kelley Walbert discusses getting involved in the movement after moving to Birmingham as a young adult. She participated in Movement activities, usually as the only white person. She marched in an act of white solidarity in Selma, Alabama. HUNTLEY: This is an interview with Mrs. Eileen Kelley Walbert from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute' ; s Oral History Project done by Dr. Horace Huntley at Miles College, February 3, 1995. Thank you, Mrs. Walbert, for coming out and sitting with us this morning. As you know, what we are doing is simply attempting to sort of get a personality of individual people who were associated with the movement, or associated with Birmingham evolving from what we termed " ; Bombingham" ; to Birmingham, finally, and I want to thank you for taking your time out this morning to come and sit and talk with us. WALBERT: I' ; m honored. HUNTLEY: First, of all, I just want to get a little information, a little personal information, about yourself. You are not a native Alabamian. Tell me a little about your background. WALBERT: Well I was born in a little village in Virginia. I was the first child baptized into the Episcopal church there that my grandfather founded, and I met my husband during the second World War, and we spent a few years after that in New York and then we came to Birmingham. HUNTLEY: You were born in Virginia. What part of Virginia? WALBERT: It was a little village called Hilton Village about three miles from Newport News, which was an embarkation center. HUNTLEY: Is that where you went to school? WALBERT: Yes, that' ; s where I went to school. HUNTLEY: You finished high school there? WALBERT: Yes. HUNTLEY: Did you go on to college? WALBERT: No, I did not. I went back for a postgraduate course in stenography. HUNTLEY: Then you moved to New York from Virginia? WALBERT: Yes, when my husband had got out of the army we were in New York for a short time. HUNTLEY: How did you like New York? WALBERT: Oh, I loved New York. We would have like to have stayed there but it was very difficult at that time. HUNTLEY: Then, did you move from New York to Birmingham? WALBERT: Yes. HUNTLEY: When did you come to Birmingham? WALBERT: 1946. HUNTLEY: What was the transition like moving from New York City to Birmingham, Alabama? WALBERT: Oh, it was like, I' ; ve said this before, like moving to Nazi Germany because the second World War was just over and we hadn' ; t recovered from the horrors from that, you know, and to come here and although there were no swastikas on most of the population, half of the population, their skin color served the same purpose for discrimination and oppression. The signs, ' ; Colored' ; and ' ; White' ; were just so revolting, so ... HUNTLEY: Was this the first time that you had been in the Deep South? WALBERT: No, I grew up in Virginia and how I escaped all of this, I mean-- Virginia was the last integrated school, so it wasn' ; t that good for African Americans. But, I just wasn' ; t so aware of it. You know, I didn' ; t even know there was such a thing as social studies and certainly we heard nothing in our history classes about the oppression of so many of our people. HUNTLEY: So, this was your first encounter then with this kind of situation? WALBERT: Yes, yes, yes. It was a shock to go back years later and find that many of the people, or some of the people I grew up with shared those same prejudiced views. HUNTLEY: Let me just back up just a bit and ask a bit about your family--your mother and father. Can you tell us a little about them? WALBERT: Well, they were Yankees. My mother grew up in New England and my father in New York. My father got carried away with Teddy Roosevelt' ; s Rough Riders and he was, I' ; m told by the members of his family, pulling a train to go to Notre Dame where his two older brothers had gone to school, and he got off in Florida. They were living in New Mexico at the time and joined the army and went to the Philippine Islands where he stayed for 17 years. During that time, he met my mother, who went there from New England as a missionary nurse and met my father and she was there for ten years. My three older sisters were born there. HUNTLEY: How many brothers and sisters do you have? WALBERT: I have four older sisters. All are deceased now. HUNTLEY: Your brother, was he older or younger? WALBERT: I don' ; t have a brother. I' ; m sorry I didn' ; t make that clear. HUNTLEY: Okay. So, you then...were any of your sisters born in the Philippines? WALBERT: The three older sisters. HUNTLEY: Have you had the opportunity to live in the Philippines? WALBERT: No, I haven' ; t. I really enjoyed Carlos Romero' ; s book. He was the first president of the Philippines and, in fact, I sent it to my father some years later. But, my mother implanted in my brain I guess the idea that discrimination existed, because before she met my father and was working in a hospital in Manilla she invited a young Filipino man to accompany her to a dance or party or some affair there and was told never to do that again. That they must not...what is the word-- ' ; associate' ; with the natives. There' ; s another term for that that escapes me right now... ' ; Fraternize' ; with the natives. That' ; s the word. And when she told me about it, she used that expression with enough hate for me to realize that was not the proper thing. Though I was very young at the time, apparently it sank in. HUNTLEY: What brought you to Birmingham? WALBERT: Well, my husband is a musician, pianist. [He] teaches piano and the family business was a gospel publishing business in Tennessee where he grew up and they had contacts here that enabled him to have a number of students already signed up to study with him. Of course, we had to have some income, so that' ; s what brought us here. HUNTLEY: And you said upon the arrival in Birmingham the atmosphere... WALBERT: Well the first thing one sees are those signs, ' ; Colored' ; ' ; White' ; at the train station, the bus stations, over the fountains in all of the department stores and it was quite blatant. HUNTLEY: What part of Birmingham did you live? WALBERT: When we first came, we had a half a house in Inglenook and then through a mutual acquaintance we had an apartment in Mountain Brook and then we moved to Homewood. When we moved to Homewood, we didn' ; t know we were moving out of Birmingham because, you know, all the little neighborhood communities used that title. And, at one point, when there was an election about joining Birmingham I was at the polls all day, that day. Although we won immediately, there was another election and it was voted against. HUNTLEY: So, you, then, would not get the opportunity then to vote... WALBERT: Not in Birmingham. And, my reason for wanting to be at the polls that day, my reasons for wanting to be annexed into Birmingham was in order to have a vote against Bull Conner. It was quite a motivation. HUNTLEY: So, you never got the opportunity to vote against Bull Conner as a result of you not living in Birmingham? WALBERT: No. HUNTLEY: Do you have any memories of relationships that developed between yourself and others who were attempting to develop inter-racial dialogue in Birmingham? WALBERT: I felt very lonely in my neighborhood most of the time. I did have a few people through the connection with this musical friend who we attended events at his house and met a couple of reporters, so that was very heartening. And then..., but it wasn' ; t until I guess in the [19]50s that I met Dr. and Anny--Dr. Frederick and Anny Kraus--who told me about the Birmingham Council on Human Relations. It was at that time I began to attend those meetings and to meet people who were involved in trying to change things. HUNTLEY: Can you tell me a little about the operation of that organization? WALBERT: Well, we met once a month and the speaker very often..., The speakers were trying to get us to do something, you know, really constructive and overt, I guess I should say, at every meeting. There were so many atrocities being committed in this town, so many young African American men who were being knifed in the back...in the back, because they were resisting arrest, you know. I mean shot in the back, because they had a knife and were resisting arrest. And, uh, there were so many other horrendous things going on. Usually, at the meeting, the victim, or if he was deceased, a member of the family would be there in person to tell about it and .... HUNTLEY: There were some rather trying times. Well, in that kind of setting, obviously we are talking about some people that turned Birmingham into being a police state and the Black community being under siege. The kinds of things that the Black community had to endure as far as the police were concerned... WALBERT: Yes. HUNTLEY: Some suggested that the police department was very closely tied with the Ku Klux Klan. WALBERT: Oh yes. HUNTLEY: How would you react to that? WALBERT: Of course. I mean, there were so many incidents of that where.... One night, well I don' ; t know if the Klan had anything to do with this, but I remember when the Reverend Herbert Oliver, who was president of our council for a time, in fact, just before the marches in Selma, was taken from his house, in the middle of the night, in his underwear by the police because he had the audacity to go up before the library board and ask for permission for Black people to come to the library. HUNTLEY: And he was taken out by the police? WALBERT: Yeah. HUNTLEY: This is the kind of incident, of course, that would lead people to obviously associate the police and the Klan in the same... WALBERT: Well, the Klan came to our meetings. And, also, Jamie Moore, the police chief, Jamie Moore had a representative at everything that was integrated. He would saddle up to any newcomer who came and get their name and address. You know, we knew this was going on but before we could get to them and say, ' ; Don' ; t talk to him unless you want your picture in the Birmingham Independent--.' ; But he...he did...and in the marches, you know, he would be pointing out, he would be there with the police and several police pointing out various ones and giving their names and they were invariably printed in this paper and the caption, though they didn' ; t come right out and say he or she is a communist..., well maybe they did, but the way it was...you know... [they would say] we were supporting the Communists and that sort of thing to make us look like very disreputable, undemocratic people. HUNTLEY: What was the atmosphere in the meetings when you knew that this individual was there? WALBERT: Oh, he was very friendly, you know. We weren' ; t intimidated by him but the Klan would follow us home and one night we came out of the meeting and the Kraus' ; and I, I forget who we were talking to, maybe the Reverend Harold Long, who was there then. We were the last to leave and as we started to come of the driveway, which went up, there was a car with the Klan, a couple of men in it and the lights were on bright, you know, shining down on our faces and so, when the Kraus' ; ....and Dr. Roger Hanson was there that night. So, we went and told them what was going on and they came out and we left and went around the other way and I was so impressed with Roger and Frederick. Frederick was driving the car and he circled around the block and by that time the Klan car had pulled out and parked on the ... just backed out the driveway and parked. So, he went up behind them and made a big to do of taking their license number, you know, and when we went by very slowly, and they were glaring at them, you know, so Anny and I did the same thing. And, then, he just snaked through the neighborhood--Frederick did--on the way out to be sure they were really following us, which they were. They followed us into the University grounds and then they just sort of waved when they turned off. And, it turned out they were guards at the University. HUNTLEY: Is that right? WALBERT: But this happened. They followed people home oftentimes. I remember one person just drove into the police station and they followed her to the police station. She was--Alice Kidd was her name. She' ; s deceased now, but she was not deterred by...intimidated by anybody. HUNTLEY: So, she just drove ... WALBERT: Right. They, you know, backed off, drove off. HUNTLEY: Were any of the members ever harassed, I mean, physically beaten? WALBERT: Let me think. I don' ; t recall right now. HUNTLEY: They were too intimidating? WALBERT: Dr. Boykin and his wife attended the meetings--the parents of Dr. Joel Boykin. And I remember before I began attending the meetings that they had built a very fine clinic and it had been bombed. They were a lovely couple. HUNTLEY: Where was that clinic located? WALBERT: It' ; s in Ensley, I think, still. I' ; m not sure. I get addresses in Ensley and Fairfield confused. HUNTLEY: They' ; re close, adjacent to each other. When did you first come in contact with Fred Shuttlesworth? WALBERT: Well, when Phillips High School... When he tried to get his children registered in Phillips High School and was so brutally beaten and hospitalized as a result, my daughter wrote him a fan letter. I didn' ; t know all of this was going on, because, you know, we were so terrified for our children and so they arranged to meet at one of the council meetings and I don' ; t suppose he even remembers that, because his life was pretty exciting at that time. But, that' ; s when I first met him. HUNTLEY: How old was your daughter? WALBERT: She was a freshman in high school. Ultimately, the Kraus' ; daughter and Pam and the Shuttlesworth children got together a few times and then we read in the paper that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was having a....it must have been a youth conference. I tried to find a newspaper article about that, but young people were conducting the meeting and there were mostly young people present, so I assume it was a young conference at Bethel Baptist Church. HUNTLEY: Was this about the same time that your daughter had written the letter? WALBERT: Yes, soon after that. So, we went there, and we were greeted by C. T. Vivian, because the Rev. Shuttlesworth was.... You know, there were several times when he had to rescue his children, I think. I' ; m not sure this was the Anniston incident. He was somewhere in the county getting them out of jail or taking care of his children. That' ; s where we first learned the freedom songs. We also had with us a young man whose, I don' ; t know where his family' ; s sympathies were, I feel sure they weren' ; t hostile, but they were not actively involved and...so, uh, it was the most religious experience I had ever had up to that time. He taught us ' ; This Little Light of Mine' ; and ' ; We Shall Overcome' ; and it was just beautiful. HUNTLEY: Did you attend these more than once? WALBERT: No, this was a one-time event, so far as I know. They were to have been an ongoing thing.... but, well, when it was over they were going across the street for refreshments and someone came in. The children had already gone over, and someone came in and said that there was green car and these men were riding around and had circled the block a few times. They didn' ; t seem terribly concerned, but I panicked and ran over there and got the children, you know, and got out. You know, Pam was just ashamed and said, ' ; Well, you' ; ll have to call Mrs. Shuttlesworth and apologize,' ; which I did, but we had this young man with us and I thought if something happened it would....Well, that gives you an idea of how terrifying things were. HUNTLEY: Were you the only White parent there? WALBERT: I was really surprised that there were no other White people there. I guess the word hadn' ; t gotten around to, you know, the other White people who were connected with the Council. I feel sure that some of them would have come, but... HUNTLEY: There was no other time when there were more that were involved in that kind of participation? WALBERT: No. No. I don' ; t know what the children did after that. It wasn' ; t too long after that Pam left town and I really don' ; t know. HUNTLEY: Did she leave before she graduated from high school? WALBERT: Yes, she got a scholarship. No, not before she graduated. Yes, she did. I' ; m getting confused. She got a scholarship to a school of drama in New York, went there and then came back and finished high school. She didn' ; t stay very long. She went to Birmingham Southern after that. HUNTLEY: In 1960 and ' ; 61 we had the sit-ins and the Freedom Rides. What was happening in Homewood at the same time that this was taking place? WALBERT: The ' ; Keep the Schools Open' ; meetings were going on. HUNTLEY: What kind of meetings? WALBERT: ' ; Keep the Schools Open.' ; This..uh, I wish Betty and Roger Hanson were here to tell you about that but, because Betty-- They feared for her life at a meeting that I believe was held in the library, because she had the first women' ; s radio program and had brought a Swedish lady in to talk about Planned Parenthood and for that she was labeled the baby killer of Alabama and these, I would say, ' ; pro-violent' ; people turned up that... I was not present at that meeting. I forget why I was not, but something else was going on. I did attend the next one, and I think the library didn' ; t allow any more meetings there and I' ; m not, I believe it was at the Tutwiler, but I' ; m not sure about that. The most repulsive White man I think I' ; ve ever seen, just the personification of evil, got up at that meeting, you know, which was about keeping the schools open and everything and he said something so horrendous I don' ; t even want to put it on tape. It was just...it was just... they were really frightening people. They are frightening people! HUNTLEY: Well, what did he say? WALBERT: Oh, God. HUNTLEY: You don' ; t necessarily have to say it, but what was the essence. WALBERT: Well, I mean the essence was very brief. It was specifically, you put a Black man in bed with a White woman and a Black snake will crawl out. I mean, oh, God, some people... HUNTLEY: So, this, then, the ' ; Keep The Schools Open' ; campaign was as a result of the Brown v. Board and the attempts to integrate the schools, I' ; m assuming? WALBERT: Yes, and as a result of all of the protests against that. It was to reinforce the teachers and faculty and community that wanted this to go on. HUNTLEY: So those were some rather heated meetings? WALBERT: Yes, they were dreadful. HUNTLEY: So, as the sit-ins and the demonstrations or the sit-ins and the freedom rides were going on, these kinds of meetings are also happening at approximately the same time. WALBERT: The Council meetings were going on every month. HUNTLEY: And you were dealing with different issues, different issues such as the schools. Did you ever... WALBERT: And, we had, we had a lady from the American Friends Service Committee come on and, I mean it was dangerous to even hold a seminar on integrating the schools. We went to some little community out in the county and I-- In retrospect, I think just to go there, and register was an act of defiance or whatever you want to call it. HUNTLEY: You were going to discuss integration of the schools? WALBERT: Yes. I don' ; t know how many of those there were. The Council was involved in that...well, my involvement was with Willa Adams, Oscar Adams' ; wife. He was an attorney for the schools and now a retired Supreme Court Justice, Associate Justice. I worked with Willa on gathering data as to why the schools were unequal which wasn' ; t difficult to do because, you know, even before we went out, there were people like a teacher in Bessemer, Della Bryant, who attended our meetings regularly. She was telling about the school in which she taught as having a separate building for lunches and in rainy weather little children would have to carry their little plates from the lunchroom through the rain--or whatever, there wasn' ; t even any kind of a shed--to their classrooms to eat because there was nowhere to eat in the lunchroom. Well, I don' ; t have to tell you about that. The things...they were so disproportionate. HUNTLEY: What other kinds of inequities did you see? WALBERT: Well, at Edgewater School I remember, and that was a beautiful building as I recall, very well constructed and it... We asked to see the library and the principal took us behind the stage in the auditorium and there was a little bookcase, a little two-shelf bookcase. HUNTLEY: This was a Black school? WALBERT: Yes. Just a handful of dusty books there and that was all they had. At one time, Anny Kraus and I came out here to Miles to... We had many friends here that we met through the Council and at the invitation of the science teacher, Connie, do you remember Connie, all of a sudden, I can' ; t remember her last name. But, she was teaching science and chemistry and we were taken to the labs and I think the chemistry lab had to go across the hall to the science lab even to get water. I mean, it was so unfair, you know. But, Anny went back to the University and I wasn' ; t with her, but she persuaded a lot of the professors there to donate much needed equipment to Miles College. HUNTLEY: She went back to the University of Alabama? WALBERT: University in... UAB, where Frederick was teaching at that time and Roger was teaching ... Roger Hanson I spoke of was teaching there and also Abraham Segal. He was happy to take down those ' ; Black' ; and ' ; White,' ; I mean ' ; Colored' ; and ' ; White' ; signs, even before they--he was told it was alright. HUNTLEY: What was the reaction of White communities to the demonstrations that started to take place here in April and May of 1963? Were there any relationships that evolved with the Birmingham Council and... WALBERT: Well, I remember at the time driving towards Homewood where I lived, south on 18th Street and there were the Miles College children demonstrating. They were singing their freedom songs and there was such a feeling of elation and, you know, you really felt like they were experiencing true freedom for the first time just by getting out there and putting their ' ; warm bodies,' ; as they used to say, on the line for freedom. Among them was a tall, gray-haired White man and his name was Frank Fulton. He was a teacher here at Miles. And, until that time, although I supported the demonstrations in my heart, I didn' ; t think that was something I could do, you know. But, he really started me thinking about that--the need for all of us to get out into the street. HUNTLEY: Were there any reactions of, say, your neighbors to your involvement? WALBERT: Oh, one Sunday morning the children came in and said that there was a cross in the front yard that had been burned, but when I went out to investigate, it wasn' ; t done by the Klan, I' ; m sure. It was much smaller than they do and I had a feeling that if it was anyone close- by watching, that I didn' ; t want them to think that we were intimidated by that. So, we made a big to do of...spoke loud enough for anyone to hear, [saying] ' ; Well, we' ; ll just prop up this shrub here with it,' ; you know, which we did and left it there for I don' ; t know how long. I don' ; t know how.... They didn' ; t say too much about it. I' ; m sure they felt something, but... HUNTLEY: But they didn' ; t really say anything? WALBERT: They knew it was .... what we were doing was right. HUNTLEY: Were there others in your neighborhood who were as active as you? WALBERT: No. One--Some neighbors up the street that I persuaded to attend one of our yearly state dinners was one who was victimized by that infamous paper. That time, they not only threw... What they would do was encircle your name and throw it on your street and on...for all the neighbors to see. They would throw it on the lawns of all the neighbors. HUNTLEY: This was the Birmingham Independent? WALBERT: Yes. That day, they threw out two, and they were intimidated by that enough that they didn' ; t attend any more meetings. I don' ; t know if their job were threatened or...I don' ; t remember. There was too much going on to... HUNTLEY: Did your husband attend the meetings with you? WALBERT: When he... Most of the time, he was playing. He played at what is now University Inn during the dinner hour after teaching all day to keep a roof over our head. But, he attended the state dinners, and, in fact, he sang those Tom Lehrer songs, some of those about " ; when Alabama gets the bomb" ; and some of those funny things. He was able to go to a march in Bessemer that Caleb Washington (unclear) freed many years ago. But, he really had a harder time than I did because I was associated with all of these wonderful people and he had to, in his work, put up with that. He had a photograph of Martin Luther King in his studio and someone called and said, you know, that her daughter wouldn' ; t be able to come anymore because she just...she was just disturbed by the photograph of that communist in the studio and when he was working at the University Inn, he was working with two men who taught school and had to be waiters at night because their income was so poor. HUNTLEY: These were two Black men? WALBERT: Yes. One night, he told me he was really disturbed about this. They asked the manager for, what amounted to a permission slip and he wanted to know what that was all about and he had to say on there that they were out after dark on legitimate business...they were waiters at this Inn. And, I mean, you know, these were grown men and it was...there were so many awful stories like that. I remember someone, another teacher in the schools who attended our meetings and they were having a party in their yard, in the summertime, and because, you know there were more than several people there, the police broke it up. Then, of course, you know there was so much brutality against young African American men. I mean, Aaron Henry and all the bombings and everything that had been going on, you know it was just awful. HUNTLEY: How did you feel as a White person attempting to make changes in Birmingham? WALBERT: Well, there weren' ; t so many of us, but I guess at the time, we had hope that things would change because there were so many books and articles and then we had television, so there was all of this exposure and, as I say, I was meeting so many stimulating people and learning so much about Black history...that it was a terrible time but a very enlightening time also. HUNTLEY: Did you know Chuck Morgan? WALBERT: Yes. HUNTLEY: Was he associated with the Birmingham Council on Human Relations during the time that you were? WALBERT: I' ; m trying to think. I think that Chuck was involved with so many other issues at the time, I feel sure he must have attended some of the meetings, but not regularly. He was on a different... I think that many of the lawyers were doing other things. He was, I believe, working with the African American lawyers. HUNTLEY: You had mentioned to me earlier that you had the opportunity to meet Hosea Williams? WALBERT: Yes. Hosea was a speaker at one of our meetings and he was telling us how, about the brutality in Selma. This was during the Selma marches and how the young people were beaten and herded into corral like enclosures or sheds and water hoses poured on them and it was...although it was in the spring, it was bitter cold. Well, actually, it was in March, which can be a very bad month for us. We had many talks from people like [C.] Herbert Oliver, the Reverend Herbert Oliver, and Joe [Joseph] Ellwanger, who was our leader at the time about, you know, about doing more than just deploring and writing letters and that sort of thing. Two of our members, two of the women members, had on their own gone to Selma and came back and told me about how the police were there, the troopers, you know, laughing at the freedom songs and, you know how, the general way they acted trying to intimidate people and everything. And, they had gone down just because they were curious and wanted to see for themselves what was going on and this was just a few days before this meeting. So, when he finished speaking, I said, ' ; Well, how would it be if some White people went to Selma to let the world know that those people who are trying to prevent American citizens the right and privilege to register and vote did not speak for all the White people in Alabama?' ; Of course, Hosea got very excited about that and we had...The whole Council group was not in accord with this and we had to take a vote. Since it was not unanimous, we decided-- Those who wanted to go [to Selma] stayed on and we formed a separate group, which we ultimately called Concerned White Citizens of Alabama. By the next morning, Hosea had sent two people over here from SCLC who came to my house. All of this was so fast! The coordinator of our march' ; s name was Allen Lingo. That was just very interesting, you know, Al Lingo, the state trooper' ; s nemesis. So, we even, I even met with Anny and Frederick [Kraus] and various others who would be at the little planning meeting at our house the next day about what to serve, you know, so quickly for lunch. So, I had to go to the store the next morning. They were coming very early, like 10:00, I guess. I left a note on the door for them to come in, I' ; d be right back, I was at the grocery store. And when I got back, there they were sitting there. I' ; m trying to think of her name. But, anyway, we had our little meeting and planned our strategy and we were-- There weren' ; t that many of us, but we were assigned various areas to go to, people to approach, you know, locally, and then the other Human Relation Councils throughout the state as in Auburn, Huntsville and Talladega and, did I say Tuscaloosa? HUNTLEY: What was the response like? WALBERT: Well, we ended up with 72 people and over a short period of time--ten days' ; time. I mean, people were going out all over, just in little groups. HUNTLEY: So, then, did you actually march? WALBERT: We went to Selma on Saturday, April, what was the day of ' ; Bloody Sunday,' ; the sixth, seventh? The day before--the Saturday before ' ; Bloody Sunday.' ; We assembled at this little Presbyterian church there and I was acting secretary for just this little event and as we came in, we all signed this little notebook and we had-- Under Allen' ; s instructions we had our marshals and I can' ; t remember who they were, but Frederick and my son, David, served as marshals and gave out our little pamphlet. I did give you a copy of that did I not, with our statement? Joe Ellwanger read it at the steps of the courthouse. We marched as though we were on air almost. It was frightening towards the end, but there were carloads of the Selma Black community, you know, driving along beside us as though to protect us, which I' ; m sure they did. Then, as we got near the courthouse, the march stopped, and we moved up front to see what was going on. WALBERT: Joe Ellwanger was reading a telegram from the Lutheran Synod, you know, which was not in support of our march. I can' ; t remember the wording, but I' ; m sure you' ; ll be interviewing him. HUNTLEY: Yes. WALBERT: And--which gives you an idea of how little support there was from the White churches generally. We crossed the street and, some of us were to face the courthouse and some to face the street, you know. I was facing the courthouse, and someone had fired a smoke bomb or something, but the wind had blown it over whoever had done that, you know, out of our direction, which was a small triumph. He read, and there were the usual yahoos and carrying on and, you know, loud. And then, when Joe finished reading the statement, we heard this roar and I thought, ' ; Oh, my God, they' ; re really out in force,' ; and I turned to face the building across the street. It was the whole Black community of Selma, I think, assembled there. They started singing ' ; We Shall Overcome' ; and I' ; m telling you, I' ; ll never experience such a euphoric moment again. HUNTLEY: This march, then, was simply a march of White people that was protected, in effect, by the Black community of Selma? WALBERT: Yes, right. Then, on the way back, they were in their cars following us on the way back also. But, we got word when we got back to get out of town as fast as we could because they had seen people coming in with the baseball bats and that sort of thing, you know. But, the reception when we got there to that little church was something that I wish had been recorded because it was fantastic. HUNTLEY: What church were you a member of at that time? WALBERT: The Episcopal Church. I' ; m trying to think what-- I guess it was after the Shuttlesworth incidents that Pam and I went to the Suffragan Bishop and were told, in essence, that there was nothing they could do. They couldn' ; t afford to turn away any of their flock--which, you know, we thought made us expendable--but that we could do something. That' ; s putting it rather crudely, but I didn' ; t go back after that. HUNTLEY: So, the church was not involved? WALBERT: No. We had a token membership from the church during all that time. Two people. HUNTLEY: How would you evaluate the Birmingham movement, its successes and failures? WALBERT: I wish we had continued, and I wish we had taken up Dr. King' ; s anti-war movement, because, to my way of thinking, it may be simplistic, but I think the Vietnam War was the thing that really destroyed our dreams. We lost our ideals a lot and the money for that program that was going to give everyone an opportunity...[she begins to weep]. HUNTLEY: So that, you are suggesting that the Vietnam War actually took the money that could have gone for the movement and... WALBERT: For that education we were promised at one of our meetings, so that every child could go as far as he wanted to educationally, and.... HUNTLEY: How would you, then, evaluate the impact that the movement had upon your family, friends and community? WALBERT: Oh, well, I am sure it--[wiping her eyes] It was broadening to say the least. It gave us a sense of freedom that we certainly didn' ; t have before, because we were all victims of the system. It was great liberation for all of us. HUNTLEY: In talking with Vincent Harding, he was saying, and he has said in his books, that the movement, in a sense, freed the community--both Blacks and Whites--and had a tremendous impact upon the ways in which people viewed themselves and the way people viewed others in relation to themselves across racial lines. And that seemed to be what you were suggesting. WALBERT: Yes. HUNTLEY: If you could turn the clock back and you found yourself as chief advisor to Dr. King, Rev. Shuttlesworth or the White business community, how would you advise them in terms of changing what took place, or would you advise them to do anything different than what was done? WALBERT: Well, good heavens, I don' ; t feel like I could advise any of those people in what to do. I mean, they were certainly right in getting rid of all the signs and doing more hiring and that sort of thing. The thing I still weep about is the plight of so many of our children, and that they haven' ; t provided them with the environment that they deserve--that they have a right to. I don' ; t know how many of us who live in safe communities could survive in one of these terribly dangerous areas for one day and we expect our little children to do that and come out unscathed. Everyone should have the right to grow up in a, not necessarily with a lot of wealth, but certainly in a beautiful environment with trees and a chance to be close to nature. Being close to nature, I think, is an essential part of the need for human development. It' ; s unconscionable that we' ; ve let all these years go by and haven' ; t done anything about that. HUNTLEY: And you see that as being something that has to be done? WALBERT: We have to have money to get the children in safe environments and that can' ; t be done by the African American community alone. It has to be a coordinated effort. HUNTLEY: Finally, let me just ask you if there is anything else that you would like to add that we have not dealt with that relates to race relations in Birmingham and how the society has evolved over time--your involvement or any other thing that you would like to say? WALBERT: Well, I would like to see our neighborhoods more integrated. I think that... You know, you can feel a kinship to your neighbor whether you have anything in common or not just by having everyday contact with them. Like, I am sure there are many people in your neighborhood that you don' ; t see socially so much, but you care about them. We' ; re so isolated from one another that there isn' ; t as much opportunity for that as I would like for there to be. HUNTLEY: How do you think that could be achieved? WALBERT: I don' ; t know. It isn' ; t... I don' ; t know. And, I don' ; t know if that is so important as building better communities...building up communities where the children can be safe. That' ; s my primary concern in that their schools be as good as any school in well-subsidized communities such as Mountain Brook and Vestavia and Homewood. That they have the same .... HUNTLEY: The children are the future. WALBERT: Absolutely. HUNTLEY: And, when we look at them and whatever our children are, that' ; s what we will be in generations to come. I agree wholeheartedly. Mrs. Walbert, I want to thank you for taking time out of your schedule to come and sit with us this morning and just to talk about our Birmingham and maybe we' ; ll have to do this again sometime. WALBERT: Thank you, I enjoyed being here. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
bcri.org. 0 http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=EKWalbert1995.xml EKWalbert1995.xml
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Eileen Kelley Walbert (1995)
Description
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Eileen Kelley Walbert discusses getting involved in the movement after moving to Birmingham as a young adult. She participated in Movement activities, usually as the only white person. She marched in an act of white solidarity in Selma, Alabama.
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19950203W
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
Police brutality--United States
Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011
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1995-02-03
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video
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0451230cfec8017ed9a007614af4286b
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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Interviews collected as part of the general mission of the Oral History Project
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Video
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Oral History
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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English
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bcriohp
Oral History
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Horace Huntley
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Rev. Dr. Joseph E. Lowery
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http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=JELowery2000.xml
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Syndicate Affairs Association
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5.4 April 11, 2000 Rev. Dr. Joseph E. Lowery Interviewed on April 11, 2000 20000411L 01:31:10 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project Collection bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Jess Holdnak Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights United States. Supreme Court Southern Christian Leadership Conference King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 Abernathy, Ralph, 1926-1990 Syndicate Affairs Association Rev. Dr. Joseph E. Lowery Horace Huntley Video 1:|15(7)|24(6)|35(3)|53(6)|65(7)|77(7)|87(13)|99(12)|109(5)|118(15)|128(5)|143(9)|151(9)|161(9)|174(13)|185(4)|193(14)|203(12)|213(1)|232(11)|241(10)|252(1)|265(1)|282(3)|295(1)|310(3)|320(10)|330(14)|343(4)|353(7)|368(10)|379(15)|392(2)|401(1)|410(3)|426(4)|441(8)|457(5)|472(13)|486(6)|506(7)|519(6)|531(5)|544(7)|554(16)|559(3)|571(10)|588(10)|598(7)|611(1)|625(12)|635(7)|646(5)|657(1)|669(4)|677(11)|687(6)|695(16)|709(8)|717(15)|728(12)|738(7)|747(6)|755(14)|763(9)|771(9)|782(14)|790(12)|799(4)|806(7)|817(11)|826(4)|832(7)|843(1)|853(3)|863(12)|872(6)|881(13)|891(3)|907(7)|918(14)|928(16)|939(4)|949(2)|956(15)|966(3)|977(5)|986(15)|999(15)|1011(4)|1024(10) 0 https://youtu.be/NEbRe5TDhqc YouTube video English 0 Introduction and Family History H: Rev. Lowery I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule, and welcome to the institute. L: Well, thank you for inviting me to this marvelous institute, I’m glad to be here. H: Yes sir. Dr. Lowery, are you native Alabamian? L: Well, yes, but I’m an authentic Northerner. Although, you folks here in Birmingham consider yourselves North Alabama, I’m from the real North Alabama, Huntsville. I was born in Huntsville, Alabama, Madison County. Rev. Dr. Joseph E. Lowery begins his interview by describing his family history. He discuses his mother and father's education and work. Alabama A & ; amp ; M University African American families ; African American religious leaders ; Huntsville (Ala.) ; Madison County (Ala.) 33.516200, -86.813870 18 The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute https://www.bcri.org/ The Homepage of the BCRI 452 Growing Up in Huntsville H: What was it like growing up in Huntsville? Young black men living in Birmingham as being the, you would say in the big city from the country, who was as less than a 100 miles from north of here. How was that different? Rev. Dr. Lowery talks about his early life in Huntsville including facing racism. He mentions two incidents in the family car where his father played off his mother's light skin to get out of racist situations. And another incident where as a child he was punched in the stomach by a white police officer, and later talked to the man as an adult. Lowery also talks about seeing the KKK march down his street. KKK African American life ; Huntsville (Ala.) ; Racism--United States 1162 Education and Becoming a Minister H: What about your high school, days? L: High school, it was very much segregated. When busing was an issue in the country, I always wondered why, because I used to see white kids on buses all the time. So, it wasn’t the bus, it was us they that they were concerned about. I used to walk all the way from down on Church Street down into the grove. We called the grove, to the black school, the colored school. Rev. Dr. Lowery outlines his education through seminary school. He mentions going to a segregated school, having confrontations with white children, and going to school in Chicago. Lowery also discusses the path that led him to the ministry including his mother's church involvement, speaking in church at a young age, and influential pastors. NAACP ; The Grove African American life ; African American Presbyterian churches ; African American religious leaders ; Alabama A & ; amp ; Chicago (Ill.) ; Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary ; M University ; Segregation in education ; Wayne University 1816 Early Involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and the Bus Boycotts And that was the ministry that led me into the movement, that was the theology, that was the concept of ministry that led me to civil rights. H: When did that happen? L: That happened right at East Thomas. My first year at East Thomas, I wasn’t there but a year, but I got involved in activities that were co-protestant. Rev. Dr. Lowery describes his first involvement with the Civil Rights Movement while he was living in Mobile. He also describes the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the desegregation of buses in Mobile. Alabama Civic Affairs Association ; NAACP Alexander City (Ala.) ; Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Langer, Jo ; Mobile (Ala.) ; Montgomery (Ala.) ; Montgomery Bus Boycott, Montgomery, Ala., 1955-1956 2266 The Outlawing of the NAACP and the New York Times v. Sullivan H: How did the outlawing of the NAACP affect Mobile? Rev. Dr. Lowery talks about the Alabama Christian Movement, MIA and Syndicate Affairs Association. He discusses the story behind the Supreme Court case: New York Times v. Sullivan. Syndicate Affairs Association Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights ; Black, Hugo, Jr., 1922-2013 ; Civil rights movement ; Mobile (Ala.) ; United States. Supreme Court 2483 The Southern Christian Leadership Conference H: SCLC, how did you get organized? Rev. Dr. Lowery discusses the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Abernathy, Ralph, 1926-1990 ; African American religious leaders ; Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 ; Southern Christian Leadership Conference 2786 The Nashville Movement and the Birmingham Movement H: Now back from 1960 to 1963 there were a number of things that took place. Of course the organization of SNCC, the freedom ride took place in 1961, in Birmingham in 1962 there was a selective buying campaign, and in Albany, Georgia, took place in 1962. Birmingham then would come along in ’63. Why did you leave Mobile? Rev. Dr. Lowery talks about his involvement in both the Nashville and Birmingham Movement s from 1961-1968, including some of the violence in Birmingham like the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, Birmingham, Ala., 1963 ; A.G. Gaston Motel (Birmingham, Ala.) ; African American religious leaders ; Civil rights movement ; Nashville (Tenn.) ; Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Ala.) 3210 Move to Atlanta and Presidency of SCLC I was vice-president of SCLC then, and I was organizing up until ’67. At the convention in Atlanta Martin asked me if I would serve as chairman of the board. We didn’t have a chairman of the board. They asked me if I would be chairman of the board, and I agreed to do that. So I could preside at the meetings, and take some of the weight off of his shoulders and I did that, but he always wanted me to come to Atlanta, and I said, no my place is here. The Birmingham News had just had an editorial about blacks will be elected to public office and other blacks will qualify, and they named a bunch of names and mine was one of them. I said, well maybe its time for me to leave Birmingham. Rev. Dr. Lowery talks about moving to Atlanta in 1968 at the request of Martin Luther King Jr. and becoming the President of SCLC in 1977-1998. He also mentions the Labor Movement and Walter Reuther. Abernathy, Ralph, 1926-1990 ; Atlanta (Ga.) ; Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Labor movement--United States--History--20th century ; Reuther, Walter, 1907-1970 ; Southern Christian Leadership Conference 3774 The Abernathy Book and the FBI Tapes H: The book that, the controversy, the book that Reverand Abernathy wrote, and that was during the time you were in the fore-front. How did that play? Rev. Dr. Lowery discusses the contriver around Ralph Abernathy's book and the FBI tapes of King and other Civil Rights leaders. Abernathy, Ralph, 1926-1990 ; Hoover, J. Edgar (John Edgar), 1895-1972 ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation 4209 Women of the Movement and Giving Demands to Gov. Wallace H: Let me ask you a question about the women in the movement, the wives of the leaders. I know that there probably were times when you had to go some place and your wife may say, well you know... How did you handle that relationship, keep that relationship together and be successful? Rev. Dr. Lowery talks about how his work ing the Movement affected his family and his relationship with his wife, He then goes on to describe in detail giving Gov. Wallace the Movement's list of demands in 1965. He also methods later encounters with Wallace. African American women ; Civil rights movement ; Selma to Montgomery Rights March (1965 : Selma, Ala.) ; Wallace, George C. (George Corley), 1919-1998 4840 " ; Retirement" ; and Conclusion H: Reverend Lowery, you have had a tremendous career in life, but you obviously have not finished. L: I’m retired. What do you mean? I have been retired two years now. Nobody believes me. Rev. Dr. Lowery discusses some of the causes he helped champion since his retirement including working with farmers, automobile dealers, and promoters. He also reflects on the President's visit to Selma in 2000 and many other changes since the Civil Rights Movement. People's Agenda Atlanta (Ga.) ; Civil rights movement ; Selma (Ala.) Oral History Rev. Dr. Joseph E. Lowery discusses his extensive involvement in the Movement in Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile, Nashville and Atlanta. He served in closely with Dr. King, lead the SCLC, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2009. HUNTLEY: This is an interview with Reverend Joseph E. Lowery for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s Oral History Project. I’m Dr. Horace Huntley. Today is April 11 in the year 2000. Rev. Lowery I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule, and welcome to the institute. LOWERY: Well, thank you for inviting me to this marvelous institute, I' ; m glad to be here. HUNTLEY: Yes sir. Dr. Lowery, are you native Alabamian? LOWERY: Well, yes, but I' ; m an authentic Northerner. Although, you folks here in Birmingham consider yourselves North Alabama, I' ; m from the real North Alabama, Huntsville. I was born in Huntsville, Alabama, Madison County. HUNTLEY: Right. Because of most of us now, we, actually migrated from the South, out of Black Belt counties. So, there is some real significance to you being from North Alabama I think. Let me just talk about your family for a minute. Tell me about your mother and father. What kind of education do they have? LOWERY: Well, my father went to a little training school in Huntsville with Professor McKinley, who is a noted figure in the 19th century in Huntsville, and he probably did not finish what we consider, now, high school. My mother went to a Normal, which is now Alabama A& ; M. And she taught school, but she probably had about the equivalent of a junior college, I think, education. But both of them were very intelligent, very very informed, and inspired me considerably. They were active church people. My mother sang in the choir for about 150 years, and my father was a reluctant church member. And that my mother spent so much time in church, my father decided he needed to go just to see what was going on. He became the Treasurer of the church, and it' ; s very interesting, the church where I grew up in Huntsville, Lakeside. My father' ; s grandfather, Rev. Green Echols, was the first African-American Pastor of my church. The church was founded by the old AME Church North and had a white pastor. And after plenty years my great-grandfather came here and became the first black pastor of that church. HUNTLEY: So that would have been late 19th century? LOWERY: That' ; s right. No that would have been, yes, yes, yes--that' ; s correct. HUNTLEY: Somewhere between the emancipation and the 20th century. LOWERY: That' ; s right, the 20th century. That' ; s correct. HUNTLEY: How many siblings did you have? LOWERY: Well, I had-- my parents lost two children before I was born. My father was named Leroy and this boy was named Roy, and then the girl was born Alba Lee, and she passed away as well. So, I was the first surviving child, and then I had a sister, born three years later. So, there was the two of us there in Huntsville. HUNTLEY: What kind of work did your father do? LOWERY: My father was a, it' ; s a very interesting story, he worked in an office of a physician, old Dr. Scruggs, in Huntsville. The earliest recollection I have of any physician was Dr. Scruggs. My father was still alive when I was old enough to remember. My father worked for him as a single man, and the deal was he used to go to Nashville, and somehow enroll in pharmacy school and come back and be the pharmacist, and Dr. Scruggs was to write the prescriptions, and they would have a partnership. So, my father didn' ; t have the money. And, so, he borrowed, he and a friend, borrowed some money and some equipment to open a little ice cream parlor ; with a couple of pool tables. And he decided to work for a year or two, and then go on to pharmacy school. It took him the two years to pay for the equipment, and so he had to stay another two to earn the money to go to school. He ended up staying 60 years, running a little business in Huntsville. Never did go to pharmacy school, but it was in the context of what Huntsville is about. A very successful entrepreneur. He bought some property and opened another business a sweet shop and then he opened another billiard parlor. And he became interested in insurance and was elected to the board of directors of Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company, very prominent insurance company among any African- American who has ever been to Chicago. So, he was an enterprising man. HUNTLEY: Sounds like he was very respected individual. LOWERY: Very respected in the community, and probably had more influence on my outlook on life, my ideals, my principles in terms of my behavior, my integrity, probable influence in any other individual, in my life. My mother did too, and that was to be expected, I guess that was so expected that you couldn' ; t see the trees for the forest, or the forest for the trees, because my mother explained it. But you didn' ; t always have the father' ; s who set that kind of example. And I remember he use to write, on the board up on the front of the sweet shop little sayings every week, and he would sit down and discuss them with me. The first one I remember was " ; An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." ; I don' ; t know who said it, but my daddy is the reason I remember it. So, he had tremendous influence on my life. He was a man of great honor, great integrity, great industry, he was a hardworking man, and there' ; s no such thing as a self-made man, but I guess my daddy came as close to being independent in terms of his upward mobility, as you could be. Of course, he had help, but he was pretty much alone as far as family was concerned. His mother, I remember her very well. But his father he did not remember too well, was part Cherokee who sort of came through on the Dela la Rosa and didn' ; t remember him to well. But his mother, Ma Paulee also had a great influence on my life. She was a domestic, but a woman of great dignity, great beauty, great charm, and raised two boys practically by herself, and did a marvelous job. So, she and my father, that stream, had a great deal to do with the molding and shaping of my life. HUNTLEY: What was it like growing up in Huntsville? Young black men living in Birmingham as being the, you would say in the big city from the country, who was as less than 100 miles from north of here. How was that different? LOWERY: Let me tell you, Huntsville is a, not an industrial center like Birmingham. It mostly was a cotton city ; Madison County is agricultural. Huntsville was full of cotton gins, and cotton brokers who sold cotton across the country from offices in Huntsville. And the cotton was grown outside of town. Strange enough I lived in the city, such as it was, about two blocks from the railroad station. My grandmother, Ma Paulee, my daddy' ; s mother, lived about a block from the railroad station, and whenever I got angry with my parents, and was going to leave home, I' ; d go ahead and go by Ma Paulee' ; s and stay there awhile. If I was real angry, I' ; d go on to the railroad track and decide to catch a train, which I never caught. But it was a textile town. We did not have the terrible, awful kind of oppression in Huntsville. Maybe the fact that we were not such a large minority in the city, we didn' ; t pose a threat that black belt communities and even Birmingham did. But we knew we were black, we knew we were colored. I remember at very early age, my father bought a new Studebaker. We were in the car, he had my mother in the front seat, I was in the backseat, and I guess my sister was there, I don' ; t remember, but that sounds like a boy doesn' ; t it?, but the police stopped my daddy. I don' ; t know if he didn' ; t fully stop for the stop sign or what, and it was a brand-new car. I guess he didn' ; t expect colored people to have brand new cars, and he said, " ; whose car is this boy," ; and my daddy said, " ; this is Mr. Lowery' ; s car," ; " ; Mr. Lowery' ; s car, oh okay, you drive it carefully, here," ; and then drove on. I think he may have thought my mother was white, I' ; m not sure, and my daddy was the driver. But he let him go on and that puzzled me. I was very, very young and I remember asking dad about it and he gave me the best kind of explanation a very young boy could take, I guess. One other time I remember my daddy and my mother, I, and I guess my sister was present, he had a flat tire. He was changing the flat tire and looked around and saw about four big old hard nail boots, and he looked up and there four of the biggest rednecks he had ever seen. They used bad language, " ; what is [mumbled reference to cursing] (so and so) are you doing boy?" ; He said, " ; shhhh! My Miss in the car, oh Miss don' ; t like no cussing," ; he said, " ; Oh, excuse me," ; took his hat off and saw my mother, and said " ; get up little boy," ; and help changed the tire for him. I' ; m sitting in the car, mother and I trembling. And he' ; s out there trying to keep from laughing his crazy head off. And finally, when they finished, he got in the car, and they say, " ; good evening miss, we glad to change your tire for you." ; My mother just bowed her head, and we drove off and soon as we got down the road he had to pull the car over because we were laughing. HUNTLEY: What was his complexion? LOWERY: My father was a little darker than I, but my mother was very fair. She could, if she wanted to, she could pass. Because her side, her family were all fair. There was a lot of integration in those days and I think on my mother' ; s side, her mother participated in integrated sex, as many, black colored women had to do. Invasion, and rape. My daddy and I recall, from time to time, I didn' ; t exactly understand, use to tease her a little bit about it, from time to time. She didn' ; t take it too well. Later, when I was approaching teenage level, I was coming out of my dad' ; s sweet shop one day, and I was three -fourths out the door, and a big red cop was running forth in the door. He thought that gave him rights, and he punched me in the stomach with his night-stick, and said, " ; get back nigger, don' ; t you see a white man coming in the door." ; Of course, I got back, and he came in and he didn' ; t know who I was, I didn' ; t know who he was, and I cried and tried to wipe my eyes to keep from crying, I didn' ; t want him to see me cry. I went down the street, lived about a block from the sweet shop. I remember seeing a little pearl handle pistol that my father had in the drawer. I went to get it. I couldn' ; t look and find it. My mother kept asking what' ; s wrong, what' ; s wrong, but I wouldn' ; t say. Finally, I found it, and started out the front door, what I was going to do, I' ; m not sure to this day, but that was my recourse. But strangely enough as I started down the steps, my father was coming up the steps. Now what' ; s so strange about that is I guess most of my life in Huntsville I never saw my dad at home in the daytime, except on Sunday, it just didn' ; t happen, he was working. He left home before dark, he ran his business, help was hard to find, he had to be janitor, cashier and everything. But for some reason he came home this afternoon. Probably, between three and four, I was out of school. He saw something was wrong, and asked me what was wrong, and saw my hand in my pocket. He took the gun away from me, and gave me a good sound spanking. I ought to be truthful, a good sound beating. My father was not a part of the nonviolence school. HUNTLEY: Child abuse. LOWERY: No, no. If they had child abuse laws in those days, my mother would have been in jail most of the time, and my father occasionally. I told him what happened. He went to the police chief, and the mayor to complain. They told him that they were sorry it happened, but that was the only kind of white man they could hire to be police and there was nothing they could do about it. My daddy didn' ; t like it and came home and told me to forget it, choke it up, the experience will make you a better man, and this is the way the South is etc. My father, his insurance company, I mentioned, one year, he drove, let me go with him to Chicago, to the board meeting, a meeting of his life. It was a thrill to me because I had never been out of Huntsville, except to the country. When we got up there my father got his revenge. We were down in the loop, and we were in heavy traffic with another friend of ours whose mother lived next door to us, he was a physician. We were all in the car, and a cop yelled at Dr. Tate to come on, " ; Come on, why you hold traffic, come on." ; And he cursed G D and Dr. Tate said, " ; Don' ; t curse me, damn you," ; and my daddy was shocked to hear a colored man talk to white police officer, and so he said, " ; yeah, don' ; t yell at us like that," ; He got his little bit in, and I said, yeah too in the back seat, so we got our revenge for the incident at the sweet shop. But let me tell you this, many years later, I was pastoring my first church here in Birmingham, out in East Thomas, St. James. And I went home one day and was on the porch talking to my mother and my father and the postman came by. He gave the mail to my mother. I looked at him and he looked at me, and thoughts started running through my mind when he left. I said, mother. She said, " ; yes." ; I said, who was that man. She said, " ; well, I was hoping you wouldn' ; t recognize him, that' ; s Mr. Shields, that' ; s the police officer who punched you in the stomach many years ago." ; And I went down the steps, I wanted to go catch him. My mother wasn' ; t sure what my motives were, I intended just to talk with him, and he was coming back. And he said, " ; Mrs. Nora," ; he called her Ms. Nora, ' ; is this Joe.?' ; And she said, " ; yes." ; And my father by that time came to the end of the porch to see what happened. He said, " ; can I shake your hand?" ; We shook hands. He said, " ; I' ; m pastoring a little church out in the westside of Huntsville, and I understand you' ; re pastoring a church in Birmingham." ; I said, yes, I am. He said, " ; Well, I want to tell you, I' ; m sorry." ; " ; I thought about it many times, mother and I talked many times, I never dreamed I' ; d run up on you, and I said, I understand, how you grew up and how we all grew up, and thank God we' ; re growing out of it." ; He said, " ; yes, I' ; m out of it, I' ; d been born again, and I' ; m sorry, and I thank God," ; and he cried. Of course, he made me shed a tear, it was a moving story. But that was Huntsville. I only remember one-time hearing talk about the KKK. They had some kind of little march up Church Street, Church street road came from the depot, and right into the heart of town. I remember my mother, my father wasn' ; t there, he couldn' ; t get there, my mother closed all the curtains and made us come back in the bedroom and not go to the front, cut the lights out. I slipped out, crawled up the hallway and peeped out the dining room window. I saw them. It was only about 15 or 20 of them, seemed to not have hoods on, they all had on sheets, and it was a frightening experience for me, as a boy. HUNTLEY: I could imagine that experience, I experienced that myself. LOWERY: That was Huntsville, it was a good mixture. Alabama A& ; M was there. HUNTLEY: What about your high school, days? LOWERY: High school, it was very much segregated. When busing was an issue in the country, I always wondered why, because I used to see white kids on buses all the time. So, it wasn' ; t the bus, it was us they that they were concerned about. I used to walk all the way from down on Church Street down into the grove. We called the grove, to the black school, the colored school. HUNTLEY: Passing other schools. LOWERY: Pass one other school. But white kids passed us in buses, going to the white school. And we had to go through a white neighborhood to get to our school. There were some white kids, whose names I won' ; t mention because they may be some family to some people who still live there. But about once or twice a week, my friends and I would have a confrontation with these white kids. We had not been introduced to non-violence at that time. And I never saw them after we grew up, but they were infamous, those kids, and we use to throw rocks sometimes, throw fists at other times or go another way when we didn' ; t feel like having a confrontation. But Huntsville was a southern textile mill town. There were certain parts of town we never went in. And I never saw too many white kids down in the grove. They could come up my street, because my street was right on downtown, and pretty much non-identifiable in that term. But you didn' ; t see to many white kids in the grove and didn' ; t see too many black kids out near the mill. HUNTLEY: What did you do after high school? LOWERY: I went to college at Knoxville college. And in the summer took some classes at Alabama A& ; M. There I got involved with the NAACP, as a youth. And taught protest. It brought back memories, because I remember my dad carried me to a couple of church meetings. Old town hall meetings, where they would discuss race relations, and some incident. They had a fellow in town named Monk, and Monk was a bad fellow. But Monk every now and then would beat up a white fellow. And Monk would attend the meetings, and I remember my daddy saying in conversation with another doctor, that Monk was a bad nigger, and white folks thought he was crazy, and when they think you crazy you can get away. But when they think you intelligent, they don' ; t like uppity negroes. But one that' ; s crazy he gets away with a lot. I had tasted the race situation from all the perspectives I mentioned, and when I got exposed to the youth work with NAACP it tasted good to me. I had a familiar taste out of college, and I started teaching school for a while, but my daddy wanted me to go to law school. HUNTLEY: You came back home and then? LOWERY: I came back home over the summer, but in the meantime before I went to college, I was asking my daddy to send me to Chicago. He had some friends in Chicago, and I spent five years in Chicago going through elementary and two years of high school in Chicago at St.Vincent' ; s Roman Catholic School, and Dusable High School. I treasure those years because they were very good schools and taught me the discipline of studying. HUNTLEY: Who did you have in Chicago? LOWERY: A very good friend of my father. I didn' ; t learn until later that it was the brother of an old girlfriend of my father' ; s, who he almost married, but she passed, and he married my mother. But he and the brother maintained good relationship. And when dad felt that the schools in Huntsville weren' ; t doing what they ought to do, he sent me up there and I would come home in the summer, but I would go to Chicago during the school year. HUNTLEY: That must have been an experience, going from Huntsville to Chicago. LOWERY: Very interesting. And I guess it' ; s good I went to the St. Vincent school rather than a public school at first. Because St. Vincent' ; s was so strict in terms of discipline, until I didn' ; t have much choice to be flexible or irresponsible with the rules. They didn' ; t tolerate it. So, I made a transition without to much pain and difficulty. HUNTLEY: After you came back home did you ever have any desire to go back to Chicago, to live in Chicago? LOWERY: Yes, in a way I did, and in a way I didn' ; t. I went back to Chicago for a while, I studied for a couple of summers at Garrett, out in Evanston, and I lived in Detroit for a while. I studied a little bit there at Wayne. Just this past winter, Wayne University gave me an award named after the great labor leader with the autoworkers. HUNTLEY: Reuther? LOWERY: Walter Reuther and I was the first recipient of that award and it did me good because I had walked on the campus at Wayne and they gave me that award along with UAW. I always preferred the south, I don' ; t know why. I guess it' ; s because I grew up there, the neighborhoods, the neighborliness, the intimacy, the slower way of life I guess. And I came back after I went to-- in fact I came here to the theological seminary, in addition to Garrett for a while. Then I went to Garrett, but my first church was here in Birmingham. HUNTLEY: When did you first get involved with the church in the community? LOWERY: The church. You could leave my backyard and walk across the field and go to the church. So, I grew up at the church, as much as I did in the home. My mother was a substitute teacher, a choir singer, she ran, what they call, a harvest program every fall. They would have a harvest program, and my mother was always in charge. One of the things she did was have all the children bring in these sheaves. I ought to know what they are, but we called them sheaves, " ; bringing in the sheaves, and we' ; d wave them and wave them. I always did that so I could sing it in my sleep. Any occasion in the church I say the speech. Everybody told me, you are going to be a preacher. I always say, no I am not, when I get big enough When I get big enough where I don' ; t have to come to church, y' ; all not go see me. But I grew up in the church. I had a couple of ministers, one in particular who was in Huntsville, Rev. Fields, who use to tease me about being a preacher. But then he would to take the time to talk to me about the ministry. And planted a seed that later on when I was getting out of college it hit me again, and all of the seeds he planted began to bear fruit. I met another preacher when I went to A& ; M a couple of summers named Sam Williams, who was teaching economics, he was a preacher. That did it. He was the radical. Although the other preachers were not radical the chaplain at Knoxville, Ben Evans, was between radical and conservative. But I think I had enough. My dad, when I told him I' ; m not going to law school. He wanted to go in law and major in business law. And I said I' ; m not going to law school ; I' ; m going to seminary. And he said, " ; why?" ; I think the Lord wants me to preach. I said, you must have some understanding, your grandfather was a preacher, and all my in-laws on my mother' ; s side, there were uncles that were preachers on her side of the family. He said, " ; well, I was so counting on you to go to law school. We own a lot down this street on the corner of Church and Arnold Street. Let' ; s build a church there and you preach all you want to while you' ; re going to law school." ; I said, daddy I don' ; t think that' ; s what the Lord had in mind. And I was very hurt that he wasn' ; t enthusiastic. So, I preached my first sermon at my home church. And people in town heard, and when the word got out I was preaching my trial sermon, you couldn' ; t get in the church. HUNTLEY: How old were you? LOWERY: I had come through college, but they did not believe that the good Joe Lowery was going to preach. They had to come see it for themselves. Right on the front row was several young ladies I had known growing up, and I wished they would move in the back of the church. But I made it through and had a good time. My father came to me afterwards, and he said, " ; maybe the Lord did touch you." ; And then that Christmas I came back home. The Presbyterian Church was right next door to me and the pastor there asked me to preach the early Christmas morning service. I was thrilled, and that did it for my daddy, and he said, " ; I' ; m glad, I just wish my mother, Ma Paulee, had lived long enough to see you go into the ministry." ; But I guess all of that background when I went into the ministry, I didn' ; t have to develop a wholistic theology, it was sort of engraved that the gospel had to do with the whole person, and the whole of life. And I always felt that it was time to make heaven your home, but it was always trying to make it a home here heavenly. And that was the ministry that led me into the movement, that was the theology, that was the concept of ministry that led me to civil rights. HUNTLEY: When did that happen? LOWERY: That happened right at East Thomas. My first year at East Thomas, I wasn' ; t there but a year, but I got involved in activities that were co-protestant. HUNTLEY: This is in the mid 40s. LOWERY: This was 1948, and the next year I went to Alexander City, and I stayed there three years. Alexander City, I went there in 49 that was the movement was beginning to pick up then. HUNTLEY: Were you married at the time? LOWERY: Oh yes, I was married. And we had our first child at East Thomas. And then we went on from Alexander City to Mobile. It was in Mobile, I went to Mobile in fifty-two, and NAACP was meeting at my church and continued to meet, and NAACP was outlawed. And we organized other protest groups and I was selected President of what we called Alabama Civic Affairs Association, and headed the movement in Mobile. And when the boycott started in Montgomery, and Martin and Ralph issued their first demand, they had been sitting at the back of the bus and filing up to the front. And as white people got on, blacks had to get up and move back. We had been filling it back and when we filled up we' ; d have to get up. White folk would start at the front and if they filled up they didn' ; t have to get up. So white filled up they sat we rode, we filled up we sat they rode. And so when Martin made the first demand, I had met him, I knew him already, I met in Boston and I met him again in Montgomery. I called him up, and I said, hey man, y' ; all asking for what we already got, don' ; t ask for that, ask for the whole bag of peas, you know, no segregation. He said, " ; listen, don' ; t worry, they are not going to give us that, so we chose to ask for the least and so when they refuse that, it will give us the psychological and spiritual advantage." ; And of course, they did. They denied that, they wouldn' ; t do that, and the boycott followed. HUNTLEY: Why the difference in Mobile and Montgomery? LOWERY: I think two reasons. Montgomery was in the middle of Alabama, and Mobile was on the coast. So Mobile had the cosmopolitan flavor of shipping and the water and different cultures coming in, plus Mobile had a city commissioner, named Joe Langer very early on, and he was a very sensitive and fair-minded man. And he agreed to give the influence, and so Mobile just wasn' ; t as violent, at least at first. So, when we decided to desegregated the buses I was President of the Minister of Alliance. We had some workshops on nonviolence and we divided the preachers up. two by two we go ride different bus lines and sit in the front. I had called and talked with Martin, I had carried, as President, the first $1000 up to the MIA while they were protesting. I remember sitting in the church waiting on Martin and Ralph to get there from across town, I had to come all the way from Mobile. They came and I gave them the money. I told them what we were going to do. So the fellows decided since I was the " ; leader" ; that I had to ride the Pritchett line which was number five. It' ; s been a long time but I remember it. I as going out into the heart of crackerland and so Reverend S.N. McCree, pastor at Mount Zion Baptist Church. I met his son not long ago some place I was speaking, his son was there, but anyway he and I rode the bus, the Pritchett bus and sat on the front seat, and was facing from not on the side, but from when you first cross parallel seats. We got about halfway out there and a white fella got on with a bag. He obviously had a bundle in the bag. McCree said, " ; well here it comes." ; The bus driver hadn' ; t said anything. He had been instructed not to bother us. HUNTLEY: Is this during the Montgomery bus boycott? LOWERY: This was early stages of the Montgomery bus boycott. Though the bus boycott had ended, we started our desegregation process. HUNTLEY: Okay. LOWERY: And when the guy sat down he was a little inebriated, and then he didn' ; t realize that these two black guys were sitting on the front seat. And finally, it dawned on him that the two blacks were up there, so he left you sitting on the side seat right behind the driver. He went over and told the driver, said " ; hey make them get back." ; The bus driver said, " ; you just ride, and I' ; ll drive. I am in charge of the bus." ; So, the guy said, " ; by God if you don' ; t make them get back, I will." ; So, then McCree I felt his hand slip in his pocket. I said don' ; t do that Rev. McCree, you in my workshop now. The fella started back and I stood up. I said, sir! We are not bothering you, don' ; t bother us. Sit down please and reach your destination and we will reach our destination in peace. Thank you sir. And he sat down. That was what we had learned in our workshop. Take the initiative, you know. And that was our first time trying out. HUNTLEY: You disarmed you. LOWERY: I took the advantaged, took the initiative, and took charge. I said to McCree, it works man, it works. And I won' ; t tell you what he said. He said, " ; but I' ; ll be so and so, it did work." ; But I was worried Rev. McCree had a little bitty pocket knife in his pocket. I said, what was you going to do with that. That was what ended segregation on the buses in Mobile. About a month later we demanded that they hire black drivers. HUNTLEY: And they did? LOWERY: They did. It was six months. They hired them in ninety days. So, they beat us to the punch. McBeal never made the headlines because we were making too much progress. That was the news. It was the violence, the bombing, and so forth in Montgomery and Birmingham that made the news. But Mobile moved quietly along and we even desegregated the lunch counters as well without too much difficulty. HUNTLEY: How did the outlawing of the NAACP affect Mobile? LOWERY: That' ; s when I was elected president of the Syndicate Affairs Association. We organized independent organizations. Rev. McElroy and here it was called the Alabama Christian Movement, MIA in Montgomery, and Syndicate Affairs Association in Mobile, and that was how we ran the movement. Later, we were sued by the city commission in Montgomery and the Governor of Alabama for libel. Ralph Abernathy, Joseph Lowery, and Solomon Seay in Montgomery. We were sued for libel. The people in New York were raising money for the movement put a big ad in the paper, " ; Heed their rising voices," ; and they called and said that policemen were raiding the campus, and brutalizing, so forth, and the city commission to the exception, and the n Governor Patterson had sued. And of course, they won the case. HUNTLEY: Was that when they took your car? LOWERY: This whole thing, they could find I owned in Mobile. Thank God they didn' ; t look in Huntsville. I had a little property my father had left in Huntsville, but they didn' ; t think about it. HUNTLEY: They didn' ; t do their homework? LOWERY: No, they did not. For what they found after they got the judgement, the three-million-dollar judgement, was found my car in my name and they took that. They Ralph' ; s car, took Fred' ; s car, took Solomon Seay' ; s car. They also found Ralph' ; s home property in Marengo County. They found that and they took that as well, but they got new cars. The Baptist churches raised money and bought a new car. So, when the old car was sold in auction, they didn' ; t worry about it. My folks being Methodist that they were went down to the auction and bought my old car, out bid everybody, for $800 and bought it back and gave it to my wife for a dollar and put in her name, do they couldn' ; t get it. So, when they came to get my car, the YMCA campus was back of the Y, but in front of my house across the street, and a lot of kids were out there, and they threw rocks at the sheriff when he came to haul my car away. HUNTLEY: Is that right? LOWERY: That libel suit incidentally is the classic case on libel. It sets the standard. Later we were vindicated by the Supreme Court and we had to give the money back.. HUNTLEY: Is that the Sullivan? LOWERY: That' ; s the Sullivan versus New York Times, and Abernathy, Lowery, Shuttlesworth, and Seay. Anthony Lewis called us and said his book " ; Make No Law" ; was built around that case, the first amendment. HUNTLEY: Okay. LOWERY: What the ruling was---and the ruling was by Judge Hugo Black from Alabama. He wrote to the majority opinion. You can' ; t libel a public figure unless you are malicious. They have to prove malice. And of course they couldn' ; t prove malice in most cases, so a public official is fair game. So we got our face back and Hugo Black from Alabama got these four Alabama preachers their money back. HUNTLEY: SCLC, how did you get organized? LOWERY: Well, the movements were going on in Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile, Tallahassee, Nashville, Baton Rouge, all these movements were going on. Most of them began with transportation, buses. Because transit--and I just completed 25 years on the board of the Transit Authority of Atlanta. In fact, I was chairman for three years during the Olympics. Because that was the closest, other than the police, that' ; s the closet institution to the people. You have to ride the bus and so everybody was attracted. The Montgomery bus boycott was effective, not only because of great leadership, but because everybody had a personal thing. HUNTLEY: Everybody. LOWERY: That' ; s right, if not you, your mama, your aunt, or your grandmother. So it was a personal thing. So that became the issue. We were fighting for voter registration and such. They had voter registration and so forth, but Martin and Ralph, Fred and I at the beginning, Susie Gevalia in Tuskegee, we would try to meet in Montgomery at least once a month. If nothing else to cry on each other' ; s shoulder about the terrible pain of oppression, and to plan strategies and so forth. It was at those meetings that we talked about a south-wide meeting. Five of us and others also agreed there ought to be a south-wide meeting. So a south-wide meeting was called at Ebenezer, toward the end of 1956. While we were there Ralph' ; s house was bombed and it broke up the meeting, but we met again in late January or early February in New Orleans, and organized SCLC. We called ourselves at first the Southern Leadership Conference for more transportation and voting, and we just kept changing until finally it evolved to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. HUNTLEY: After the SCLC was organized, SNCC was organized in 1960--. LOWERY: In 1957. HUNTLEY: In 1960, SNCC is organized, what was the relationship? LOWERY: SCLC people like Jim Lawson and others were involved in pulling SNCC together in North Carolina. They had a good relationship. The good relationship began to be disintegrated into a fair relationship because no matter what happened or where we went, Martin got the press, the media. So the young guys resented us, and they didn' ; t call us SCLC, they called us SLICK, and said these preachers can get all the media attention. And then some of them use to sing a little song. We talked about love and nonviolence, " ; too much love, too much love, nothing kill a nigga like too much love," ; and that was their way of ridiculing nonviolence. But we had a good relationship. As a matter of fact, we met here in Birmingham at the A.G. Gaston motel to plan a voting rights campaign. We had to get the vote...' ; 64 the bill had passed because of the Birmingham movement- the Public Accommodations Bill, but we still couldn' ; t vote. Martin met with President, Johnson, and said well we can' ; t have another bill so quick. Good God. Let this bill kinda sink in. But then we came here and decided to go to Selma. SNCC was already in Selma. Clay--and some other people were in Selma, but they weren' ; t doing well. They were beating him to the ground. So we decided to join SNCC in Selma, and--Martin went there, they were-- SCLC and moved the--and the rest is history. We just celebrated March 5th, the 35th anniversary of the Selma/Montgomery march, and Lewis, even though our staff was in charge of everything, John Wilkes went down there to join us, and he and Hosea decided to march that Sunday, even though Martin had told them not to march, but they did anyway, and the rest is history. HUNTLEY: Now back from 1960 to 1963 there were a number of things that took place. Of course, the organization of SNCC, the freedom ride took place in 1961, in Birmingham in 1962 there was a selective buying campaign, and in Albany, Georgia, took place in 1962. Birmingham then would come along in ' ; 63. Why did you leave Mobile? LOWERY: I left Mobile in ' ; 61 and went to Nashville. HUNTLEY: Alright. LOWERY: I will never forget the Mobile paper had a little headline, local agitator leaves town, and one of the members of my church came by that morning, she was upset about it. She said, " ; I knew you were going to be upset, but I want you to drive me home." ; I drove her home and she carried me down a long hall and in back of the house was a brand-new washing machine. She said, " ; you see that little red thing, that is an agitator, and without it ain' ; t nothing going to happen." ; HUNTLEY: She said that was an agitator. LOWERY: She said, " ; don' ; t be upset." ; She took me on back home. HUNTLEY: A compliment. LOWERY: She opened my eyes and taught me a good lesson in theology right there in her front door. But that was 11/61. I went to Nashville and got involved in the Nashville Movement. I was a part of the Nashville movement that desegregated public facilities in Nashville prior to the 1964 act. I remember we were sitting in and some of the Morrisons, Brittlings, and some of the other cafeterias, and two things happened. One fellow from the FOR, his name will come to me in a minute, joined us in the picket line, but we had been picking down there all day, and the thugs had been rolling eyes, but they hadn' ; t done anything. The minute the white guy got in the line, they knocked him down. They couldn' ; t stand for a white fella to be in there. But I remember sitting in the governor' ; s office, Governor of Tennessee, because Morrisons wouldn' ; t desegregate. They wouldn' ; t open to nobody, no matter what happen. They would not desegregate, and I went to the governor and said you can call the man who own it , he was in Mobile, and he did. He called him on the phone. He said you are causing disruption in our community. We want it over. We got everything else over except Morrison. And he told the governor, no, over his dead body, he wasn' ; t going to do it. Interestingly enough, the Act passed in the middle of the year in 1964. He died. Over his dead body? HUNTLEY: In 1963 where were you? LOWERY: Well, I was in Nashville. I was administrative assistant to the bishop, and I couldn' ; t spend as much time in Birmingham as I wanted to because I had these administrative responsibilities to North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama. And I would come in to join them, I had to go back. I wanted to be more involved, I just couldn' ; t leave my responsibilities. I didn' ; t have the freedom of a pastor. I wasn' ; t pastoring. If I had been pastoring as I was in Mobile, I would have had much more freedom. As God would have it I came to Birmingham to pastor in 1964 across the street at St. Paul United Methodist Church. Now while I was in Nashville, that bombing took place in Birmingham. HUNTLEY: Sixteenth Street? LOWERY: Yes. That was in ' ; 63. We were meeting in --before that, there was a bombing at A.G. Gaston [Motel]. HUNTLEY: Right. LOWERY: We were there that night planning. I was living in Nashville. Martin and all of us were in room 30. That was the biggest room they had. The next day on a Sunday I was to go to Athens, down from Nashville to do a commencement. I was late. I was going to catch the Pan America and go to Nashville and drive my family down. But that evening later on Martin said, " ; Joe I am going to Atlanta, why not stay here? You are as close to Athens here as you are in Nashville aren' ; t you?" ; I said, yes. Why don' ; t you stay here? The room is paid for, so don' ; t go. I said, okay I guess I will. So, they left and I stayed I got ready to go to bed, I said I told my wife I was going to drive her down there with me. I am going. I got up and went to Nashville, got up and drove there. And they bombed room 30, and the big hole was right by the bed where I would have been sleeping. So, God had something he was saving me for. But then I moved to Birmingham in 1964. Fred had gone to Cincinnati, and I became president of the Ministerial Alliance here. All the meetings about Selma took place in my church and in A.G. Gaston. I became a real part of it. But of course, the amazing thing had already been consummated, but there I became a part Birmingham movement. We had some demonstrations against the Liberty Supermarket. We had a big one. The boycott was 99.9% effective. Fred came down that night and we had a mass meeting out in Davis' ; Church, St. Paul A.M.E. Fred decided we were going to march that night, and I tried to get to him. I couldn' ; t before he announced, but when I got there he had already announced it, we were going on to the street. Well it was too late then. I said, Fred, this is totally unnecessary. We are taking too big a risk. I knew that we were halfway down there then, and that was the night when the fella shook the car and the fella got shot, and sued us, and cost us $90,000 bucks. But I left Birmingham in ' ; 68, and went to Atlanta. I was vice-president of SCLC then, and I was organizing up until ' ; 67. At the convention in Atlanta, Martin asked me if I would serve as chairman of the board. We didn' ; t have a chairman of the board. They asked me if I would be chairman of the board, and I agreed to do that. So, I could preside at the meetings, and take some of the weight off of his shoulders and I did that, but he always wanted me to come to Atlanta, and I said, no my place is here. The Birmingham News had just had an editorial about blacks will be elected to public office and other blacks will qualify, and they named a bunch of names and mine was one of them. I said, well maybe it' ; s time for me to leave Birmingham. They decided that I am qualified-- HUNTLEY: And the job is done, huh? LOWERY: Yeah, of course I must be doing something wrong because they were pleased with me. But I went on to Atlanta and I was chairman of the board then. Roger had tried to get me to come to Atlanta in the early sixties on up to run SCLC, and I didn' ; t go, and he died in April. I went in June. I hate that he didn' ; t live to see me come back to Atlanta. But even then I didn' ; t have any intention of running SCLC. Ralph was president. Even when they come to the office, I had an office and I would work with the fiscal responsibilities. He ran the program, and of course in 1977 Ralph decided to run for congress and resigned in February. The board elected me acting president. I was already chairman of the board, so I stayed there. I went with Carter after he got elected. Ralph ran for congress and lost, but by the time the convention came, the group had decided that I should stay as president and Ralph and I had several private discussions, and we persuaded Ralph that he would accept President Emeritus. I said you will have an office down there, and Walter Fauntroy would be chairman of the board. Ralph wanted to be chairman of the board if he couldn' ; t be the president. We had already talked to Walter and so Ralph took President Emeritus and that' ; s what happen. Hosea ran against me for president, but he was soundly defeated, and we are good friends, but that' ; s how I became president. I had no intention of becoming president. A Baptist pastor was more adaptive. He could be president with much more facility because he was rooted in the community, stayed longer, wasn' ; t accountable to a bureaucracy, and administrative structure, and sometimes white, as well as black. But I took it and held it longer than Martin and Ralph together, better than 21 years almost. February 1977 to January of 1998. I had some problem with the hierarchy of my church, but made it through, as a matter of fact, I met an interesting person, Bishop William Cannon, white. He was dean of Catholic School of Theology at Emory. He was my bishop. Before he was elected bishop he was the official apologist for segregation in the church. When I went somebody questioned the theology or doctrine, or the efficacy of segregation in the Christian community, they would call on Cannon to give a biblical, theological, doctrinal defense, and he became bishop. He was a bishop when I was about to be elected. I decided I would go to him and tell him what was about to happen, and he said, " ; no, no, you can' ; t leave central." ; I said, wait a minute I don' ; t leave central. I said remember Martin pastured at Ebenezer. I said I don' ; t have to be at central, I will just be the spokesman. I lied a little bit. I said I will just be spokesman. The staff will do most of the work, and so forth. He said, " ; oh, well that' ; s different. Yes, that will be great." ; He said as a Methodist preacher, you will be named as successor to Martin Luther King. That brings great honor to the church, and he gave the blessing and wrote an editorial in the church paper, the Christian Advocate, saying what I just related to you. It was a very, very startling and almost miraculous thing that happened then. He wished me well, and I stayed there 21 years. HUNTLEY: Did he change any after he saw how active you were? LOWERY: No, it was too late then. Every position that I took of the position, was in harmony with the position of the church, you know. And that was the power of our movement. Some called us communist, but that was a compliment to communism that they didn' ; t deserve. Our principals, our methodology, our protest, our philosophy was Christian, Democratic ; and then to give communism credit was blasphemy. So, a sincere churchman could not challenge our position. We stood on the grounds that God was made of one blood, and that God did not believe in oppression of his people, and that God was identified all through the Old Testament on the side of the oppressed. And that the Moses and Amos and Joshua and others throughout history were Christian statesmen and prophets. And we were in that endless line of splendor. And the church could not argue with that. HUNTLEY: They say the same thing about the labor movement as well, it was communist. But how did the labor movement and the civil rights movement interact? LOWERY: One of the reasons I was so honored to get the Walter Reuther award last December in Detroit from Wayne University and UAW, was that Walter Luther was probably the most prophetic labor leader, and the most activist in terms of civil rights, that we ever had in this country. And he marched with us. I have a picture at home, him marching with us in Charleston in 69 when we were fighting for the hospital workers. He and Martin were friends. The numeral progressive elements of the labor movement, particularly CIO joined with us in many instances because they recognized we were fighting for human rights, workers' ; rights, poor peoples' ; rights and that was in sync with what Reuther stood for. Now there were conservative labor folks like everything else who didn' ; t take that position, but we had a good coalescence with the labor movement and until this day. When I retired there were Bill Lucy, who heads the black coalition of Trade Union who' ; s on my board. Joe Davis headed UAW civil rights leader on my board, Clayola Brown with the Now Unite. Knight was on my board, we had a good relationship. When Walter Reuther passed we had a good relationship with everyone who succeeded him at UAW. So its been a good--. not that we didn' ; t have problems with Luther, and you have to understand that when I took positions against the labor movement, and I still do for that matter, but because I think there are pockets where they are still insensitive and discriminating. I think that John Swooney elected to secede, will get his name later, is much more sensitive than his predecessor. So it has gotten better. HUNTLEY: The book that, the controversy, the book that Reverend Abernathy wrote, and that was during the time you were in the fore front. How did that play? LOWERY: Sad, it was a very sad chapter in the history of the movement. Ralph was probably closer to Martin that any of us, they were in Montgomery together. Ralph played a very important role in Martin' ; s leadership capacity. Alabama State this past year just established the civil rights series in Ralph' ; s honor. I gave the first lecture and I commended them for taking that step. Ralph was not only an advocate for civil rights and justice, he also was an advocate for Martin' ; s leadership. He had more seniority in Montgomery than Martin did, he would stand up to some of the old timers when Martin couldn' ; t. It' ; s always good to have somebody else fight your battles, coming to your defense. Because who was that said, " ; that he who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client." ; But Ralph played a very important role. And Ralph worked hard as President. The book remains enigmatic and it remains a mystery. There are those that think Ralph had a very serious operation, you know. A doctor in Montgomery, whose father was President of Montgomery for a long time, who' ; s brother is an attorney here in Montgomery now, did the surgery, and it was a very delicate and very serious surgery. They are the ones who think that maybe Ralph had moments when he didn' ; t recall to clearly, and others think that the publisher who provided a writer to work with Ralph, influenced Ralph to include something sensational to be a catalyst for sales of the book. There are theories and other rumors of Ralph' ; s immediate family may have contributed something, we don' ; t know. Except, we do know that Bernard Lee was there, who has now passed himself, all the time. And Bernard vigorously denied Ralph' ; s recollection of the last evening. But it was sad because it put in peril the record that Ralph had made, all his achievements, all his contributions were imperiled by this dangerous voyage into scandalizing his friends name. HUNTLEY: Speaking on that, you were very much involved when the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, sent this material to King. LOWERY: I was pastor here then, at St. Paul. And living out on, I forgot the name of the street, the freeway was going right through where our house was, I believe it was on 10th street, I forgot. But anyway, Martin called me, and he said, " ; can you get over here in the morning." ; I said, " ; what you got?" ; He said, " ; you got to get over here in the morning." ; So, we went over there, the next day, and here to meet Andy, Ralph, myself, Martin, I don' ; t remember who else, but he told us about the tape, he played the tape, Coretta had already heard it, the tape was not clear. It was either two things, either the technology that they used record the conversation at the Wyndam Hotel, was not sufficient to get a clear picture, clear recording, a clear sound. Or we think they may have delivered it muffled, parts of it, because some of it we don' ; t believe were our voices. I was in the room, and some of it, it sounds like they may have had somebody impersonating some of us to say some nasty things, because nobody from there recalls anybody saying that. But at any rate, the note that came with it said that Martin said he should take his own life, or they were going to expose this tape. And we all decided, you know you not going to take your own life, number two its fabrication, that may have been part of the conversation was authentic. Whenever you get that many preachers in a room and they are going to tell lies about their sermons and all that stuff. But that was what that was, and we sent a message back to the FBI. A fellow named Sullivan was an important figure for the FBI, and we believed that it was taped by and distributed by the FBI. Coretta didn' ; t believe it, and none of us really believed it. I came back and told my wife what was said. It pretended to be an orgy, and later on a black writer, Collin, also used that book to say some nasty things about Martin and Ralph. But it was 90% fabrication. I am not saying that we were saints. I am not saying Martin was a saint. The only one I would have been called a saint was John Lewis. Time Magazine called him a saint, but I am not a saint. Martin is no saint. But Martin was not as promiscuous as Ralph' ; s book and other charges that were indicated. That simply is not true. HUNTLEY: Let me ask you a question about the women in the movement, the wives of the leaders. I know that there probably were times when you had to go someplace and your wife may say, well you know-- How did you handle that relationship, keep that relationship together and be successful? LOWERY: The most difficult time was in Mobile when the children were small and I had to go away. She had to stay through the telephone calls around the clock and the threats of bombing. Let me tell you something else. When I first moved to Mobile in 1952, and the house was next to the church and there was a restaurant right across the street called Big Mamas, and Big Mamas was Big Mamas. Big Mama had a jukebox that played all night long. We slept upstairs and the sound came right out of Big Mamas right across the street up into our bedrooms. We had a tough time, we came from Alexander City when we lived in a quiet community, and there was not a juke box within a mile or two miles of our house, and that contrast required a very difficult adjustment. I used to go and talk with Big Mama, and say, is there any way we could tone down the music a little bit, and she did. But it had no other competing sound, even to tone down the juke box, the sound traveled, oh, it traveled. But then when things broke and there was a green truck and a red truck that the Klan traveled around in. The word was out they were going to bomb my house, and they never did. And the reason they never did, was that they couldn' ; t find a time when somebody was not hanging around Big Mamas that could see them. At first it was an intrusive noise that became a comforting lullaby coming across from Big Mamas. That was very interesting. The Klan was active in Mobile, no question. HUNTLEY: I am sure that, this goes without saying that there was strength where your wife was concerned to keep the family together. LOWERY: They were strong women. Fortunately, all of us had strong wives. I hated for her to be alone, but then the church would take turns here in Birmingham, particularly following the ' ; 65 march when Martin named me to carry the demands of the march to Wallace. And he named me at the end of the speech to chair the group, A.G. Gaston, Billingsley, the president of Tuskegee and so forth. The troopers were guarding the steps of the capital. But the National Guard had been penalized. There was a general there in charge and we would take the demands up to the door of the capital. I went to the general and I said, what is going to happen here? He said, " ; I cleared it. I talked with him and they are going to let you come up and bring them to the governor." ; So, I carried my folks on up the steps. But when we got to the top of the steps the troopers closed in and would not let us pass. They formed a blue sea. We had already had the red sea and Joseph Myer had the blue sea. So I looked back at the general, as if to say, thought you said--and the general saw what was happening, and he stepped off the back of his truck where he was watching everything and yelled some commands, which I didn' ; t understand, but the National Guard did. They marched over and confronted the troopers and swarmed the bayonets around like that, and the blue sea, like the red sea opened up, and we marched through on dry steps and carried the petition to the capital. The governor' ; s secretary came. We wanted to see the governor. The secretary said give me the demands. Oh no, we don' ; t march 50 miles from Selma to Montgomery to give demands to a secretary, and if the governor won' ; t receive us, we will not submit the demands. So we didn' ; t get to meet that today. We came on back home. That' ; s when the threats were terrible over here in Birmingham with me because I had chaired the committee, and the governor had refused to see me. The Klan had killed Viola Liuzzo that night and so officers of the church would take turns watching the church and the parsonage. Because we didn' ; t want to have get away on Sunday and have to evacuate, so we watched the church around the clock so that they would know that we were clear. As you know, they didn' ; t bomb the house, they didn' ; t bomb us, and we did --but the women were wonderful. Later we did meet with the governor. The United Methodist Bishop here in Alabama persuaded Wallace who was a Methodist, to meet with us. So, then the governor' ; s secretary called me and said the governor has said he would meet with a part of the group. I said, oh! Out of curiosity I asked him what part? He said he would meet with A.G. Gaston, he will meet with the president of Tuskegee. He will meet with Tonya so and so, Fred Gray, who was from down at Wallace' ; s home. I said, well I' ; ll tell you what, as far as I am concerned the governor cannot tell us who represents us. I will poll the group and get back to you. So, I did, I polled the group, and to a man they said no, either we all go or none of us should go. So, I dutifully called the little governor' ; s office and said that word is that it is all or nothing or all. He said, " ; well I will call you back." ; So, he called me back, I guess, I don' ; t know whether it was next day or later that day, but anyway he said the governor will meet with you. We had a 90- minute meeting with the governor during which time I challenged him as a Methodist pastor to a Methodist layman, and said God was going to hold him accountable for what he was doing. I told him, you have a forum from which you can speak that the thugs don' ; t have, and they want to identify with you. So why you are raving and ranting, about your interposition and so forth, they are shooting Viola Liuzzo. They cracked the skull of Jonathan Daniels and so forth, James Reed, and that was a historic meeting with the governor. He called me to his bedside when I was in Montgomery not long before he died to pray for him. We had established a relationship that-- in fact he came to me in ' ; 95 where we conducted when we conducted the 30th anniversary of re-enactment of the Selma march. He came to meet me, and the marchers was out at St. Jude and apologized on the front page was of almost every paper in the country, apologized for his deeds in ' ; 65. HUNTLEY: In ' ; 95? LOWERY: In ' ; 95. He was sick in a wheelchair, couldn' ; t hardly talk above a whisper. As matter of fact in ' ; 85 the rascal was back in the governor' ; s house on the 20th anniversary, and we went by to see him, he was in his office, but he was in pain. We prayed with him there, and he gave us a kind of an apology, but not like the one he gave in ' ; 95. When we got word, we were coming into Montgomery the night before, we got word that Wallace wanted to meet us. Some of my people didn' ; t want it to happen. HUNTLEY: Oh? LOWERY: No. And I decided that as he stood in the schoolhouse door hindering education for young people, I was not going to stand in the door of his repentance. Because he had nothing to gain from coming out there, no way he could gain politically. He was in a wheelchair, could hardly talk above a whisper. And I guess that was his means of making sure he had to let God know and the public know that he had repented. So, I wasn' ; t about to --.as a matter of fact I used a little article from the New York Times. I said that was a message Wallace was sending to the demagogues of the day that you see where the roads of hate lead, and they have a chance to repent now as Wallace did much later. HUNTLEY: Reverend Lowery, you have had a tremendous career in life, but you obviously have not finished. LOWERY: I' ; m retired. What do you mean? I have been retired two years now. Nobody believes me. A group in Atlanta, Georgia, came to me and asked me if I would convene a coalition of representatives of various groups called the People' ; s Agenda, which I did. They seemed to think I could be successful in pulling more of a leadership together because I guess I had the black leadership forum nationally which includes all the groups. I am trying to retire from that. But, we are working to improve the quality of governance in Georgia. The farmers came to me, Chestnut and the black farmers around the country and said, will you help us with this suit we got. So, I pulled part of the civil rights community and the business community together to support the farmers, and the judge even let me speak to his court in a hearing they had, in which I appreciated very much. I had been in court, but they never let me address the court. We won the suit. The farmers won the suit. There is still a battle because I think they are rejecting too many applications, so we still got to fight. But the victory was marvelous. It was the closest thing--it' ; s the only thing for that matter that has happened to black folks that even smell like reparation. We think when the settlements are over and completed, that somewhere between one and two billion dollars would have gone from the Department of Agriculture into the hands of black farmers and their heirs in this country. So that got me out of retirement. Then the next I knew a group of automobile dealers, former automobile dealers, I won' ; t call the name of the automobile, but they were bankrupt. They had been abused and neglected by the manufacturer. They didn' ; t keep the promises they made to give them this and give them that and help them. And all of them went bankrupt. When a fella down in Tuskegee had lost his home, his wife' ; s home, another one in North Carolina, his wife' ; s mother' ; s property, and they and asked me if I would help them. I said only on one condition that you let me give the leadership, let me decide if and when we go public, if we can work it out and we negotiate across the table, let' ; s do it that way. They said whatever you want, we have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. We working, about seven or eight of them. I went to the head of General Motors, (gosh, can you take that out). But we went ahead to you know, and they were, not just General Motors, Ford done the same thing. I give General Motors credit that when I went to their leadership and explained what was going on, they worked with me, and for a year and a half we have been fighting that battle. Not a single press conference, but we have gotten settlements for six or seven former dealers, two in Alabama, North Carolina who otherwise may have been left penniless. I am very proud of that. It was a hard fight, but like Joe Lewis, I glad I win. So, they have kept me pretty busy. Then the black promoters came, and they say, will you help us? Did you know that no white artist has ever given a concert promoted by a black promoter? No major white artist. And when the black artist get major, the booking agent take them away from the black promoters. So, we are fighting that battle. We have a lawsuit filed now against Creative Artists and William Morris Agency and big booking talent in California that have control of everything. So, I have been--plus I am trying to write my book, and I would like a little more time if you could help me, I would appreciate it. But, I guess you' ; re right, I had a tremendously enriching career, and I had planned to title my book, but my opinion is I wouldn' ; t take nothing from the journey and I wouldn' ; t, so I don' ; t' ; know what I am going to call my book, but the Lord has blessed me so much. He let me live long enough to see some things come to pass, and that we would never have believed would come to pass. On March 5th last month we saw the President of the United States come to the Selma, Alabama. HUNTLEY: That' ; s right. LOWERY: In 1965 the president had to send troops to protect us. In 2000 he came to direct us. He led the march. In 1965 the governor of Alabama sent troopers to beat us. In 2000 he came to greet us. And the troopers to salute us as we crossed that bridge. I am pretty sure that Martin saw that. If he didn' ; t I certainly will tell him about it when I see him. That was a marvelous thing, and should demonstrate to those who are tending to sink into pits of lethargy about voting, the power of the ballot, you know Clinton would never have come down there, he wouldn' ; t even be president. Nor would have Jimmy Carter without the ballot, that was made possible by that Selma to Montgomery voting rights campaign. I hope they would see that. I could name so many things that have come to pass. The president called my name a couple of times in his speech. I spoke to the group as I did earlier, but this little old small-town, textile mill, colored boy from the North of Alabama has come a long, long way from that punch in the belly until this day, and I am grateful. I don' ; t care what my call is, I am going to take that bit of a journey. I wouldn' ; t take nothing for it. God has blessed me and maybe it isn' ; t completely over, maybe you know, God got some use for me. I hope he lets me write this book. I am 78, and still breathing well enough to get a good night' ; s rest. HUNTLEY: That' ; s a blessing. LOWERY: I am very grateful, but the movement has been a tremendous spiritual experience. I almost didn' ; t make it. I almost died in ' ; 79 about 24 miles from where I was born in Decatur, Alabama, when the Klan shot me, four young people in the head when I was leading a march on behalf of Tommy Lee Hines, a young retarded man who was accused of raping, he couldn' ; t even ride a bicycle, and they said he drove a car in the process of the rape. We saved his life and God spared me. I don' ; t know who was shooting, but I heard the bullets, too close, but God spared me, and I thank God for the richness of my experience. I wouldn' ; t' ; take nothing for it. HUNTLEY: I just want to say, you know that I really, not just myself, but everyone just really appreciate you, not just as a civil rights leader because you are honestly that, you are a giant among giants, but your person is what is so important you don' ; t meet strangers and you are genuine in talking about it. LOWERY: Well, thank you. I love people. My daughter works over at University of Alabama I was over there today, and when I drove up and she told the people where she was going, the whole place came out with her, and much to my regret because I was hungry. I was trying to get to, what is it, Jabo' ; s? HUNTLEY: Yeah. LOWERY: But I enjoyed meeting them, I love people and my work has been--I never separated my ministry, never fragmented it, and was a holistic minister. I never separated my pastoral duties. They not only included ministering to my flock but trying to spread the balm and giving it to the whole world. I enjoyed doing that. I think it is the preacher in me. When I am marching, I am preaching. I thank God he has empowered me to do it for a long, long time. HUNTLEY: We certainly appreciate you Reverend Dr. Lowery. LOWERY: Joseph or Joe, as long as you call me, I don' ; t care what you call me. HUNTLEY: That' ; s right. Thank you so much. LOWERY: You are quite welcome. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
bcri.org. 0 http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=JELowery2000.xml JELowery2000.xml
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Rev. Dr. Joseph E. Lowery (2000)
Description
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Rev. Dr. Joseph E. Lowery discusses his extensive involvement in the Movement in Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile, Nashville and Atlanta. He served in closely with Dr. King, lead the SCLC, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2009.
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20000411L
Subject
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
United States. Supreme Court
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968
Abernathy, Ralph, 1926-1990
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2000-04-11
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video
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Video
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Oral History
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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English
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bcriohp
Oral History
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Horace Huntley
Interviewee
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Sheyann Webb Christburg
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5.4 January 29, 1998 Sheyann Webb Christburg Interviewed on January 29, 1998 19980129C 01:07:19 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project Collection bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Raines Whittaker Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 Selma to Montgomery Rights March (1965 : Selma, Ala.) Tuskegee University Sheyann Webb Christburg Horace Huntley Video 1:|14(10)|40(3)|54(1)|76(3)|93(9)|107(5)|117(9)|129(11)|141(14)|152(10)|162(8)|171(8)|181(4)|200(11)|210(3)|223(4)|238(4)|249(11)|255(9)|264(1)|275(3)|285(1)|298(5)|307(6)|317(5)|327(12)|341(4)|349(6)|361(1)|370(1)|381(15)|393(10)|404(7)|412(14)|424(9)|434(14)|446(7)|462(4)|474(4)|485(13)|493(15)|501(8)|509(12)|518(4)|527(9)|539(4)|551(6)|559(10)|567(9)|577(17)|587(13)|602(10)|613(7)|626(11)|637(2)|645(3)|656(4)|663(5)|673(3)|680(12)|690(5)|702(12)|720(9)|731(12)|740(8)|749(6)|764(13) 0 https://youtu.be/VKQ8HRRESHU YouTube video English 3 Beginning of Interview This is an interview with Mrs. Sheyann Webb Christburg for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s Oral History Project. African American history ; Civil rights movement 33.516200, -86.813870 17 Birmingham Civil Rights Insitutute http://www.bcri.org BCRI website 42 Family Background Welcome to Birmingham. I just want to start by asking you some general questions about your family. She was born and raised in Selma in a large family that in now spread across the south. African American families ; African American history ; Selma (Ala.) 285 Education Background When you were growing up, your mother and your father were working. As a child in school, she was very involved and not afraid to talk to her teachers and adults, which led to her awareness of the Civil Rights Movement. African American children ; African American teachers and the community ; Civil rights movement 590 Influences Growing Up Even prior to getting involved in the movement, you sound as if you were outgoing and didn’t meet any strangers and you were one of those children who would demand in a child’s way that things would happen the way that you would want them to happen. She was influenced by her teachers as well as from Dr. King. African American children ; African American children--Education ; African American teachers and the community ; Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 781 Consciousness of Segregation You had mentioned as a young child you didn’t understand what was going on. She recognized and questioned segregation as a child. African Americans--Segregation ; African Americans--Social conditions ; United States--Race relations 921 Events Leading to Civil Rights Involvement What are the events that stand out in your mind, more than any other, that relates to your involvement? She was in the middle of the Bloody Sunday march that traumatized her but catalyzed her involvement. Civil rights movement ; Selma (Ala.) ; Selma to Montgomery Rights March (1965 : Selma, Ala.) 1259 Experience of the Bloody Sunday March What was that day like for a seven year old? She recounts details of the traumatic experiences at the Bloody Sunday march. African American churches ; Civil rights demonstrations--Alabama ; Civil rights movement ; Police brutality--United States ; Selma (Ala.) ; Selma to Montgomery Rights March (1965 : Selma, Ala.) 1556 Involvement of Youth Would you allow your children to be involved in the movement, if there was a movement going on of that nature today? Since she was involved as a child, she would let her children participate in a similar movement and sees importance in youth involvement. African American children ; African Americans--Civil rights ; Civil rights movement 1692 Relation to Dr. Martin Luther King The book Selma, Lord, Selma suggests that there was rather an intimate relationship between yourself, Rachel, and Dr. King. Meeting and talking to Dr. King as a child had a huge influence on her life. African American children ; African American churches ; African Americans--Civil rights--History ; Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Selma (Ala.) 2067 Growing Up near Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church How far was your home from the church? Growing up near Brown's Chapel allowed her to attend it frequently and hear Dr. King speak. African American children ; African American churches ; African Americans--Civil rights--Songs and music ; Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Selma (Ala.) 2230 Memories of Dr. King How many times do you remember seeing Dr. King or being in his presence? She recalls going to Brown's Chapel and hearing Dr. King's speeches. Southern Christian Leadership Conference African American churches ; African Americans--Education ; Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Selma (Ala.) 2320 Involvement without her Parents Did you ever question why your parents were not involved? She became involved in the Movement despite her parent's not being involved. African American children ; African American families ; Civil rights movement 2385 Dr. King's Assassination You were nine or ten when Dr. King was assassinated. She remembers when Dr. King was murdered and how she came to terms with the event and his lose. African Americans--Civil rights--History--20th century ; Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Political assassination 2639 Activities after 1968 After Dr. King was killed you keep saying you grew up, you were growing up in the movement. After Dr. King's murdered she started to focus on school desegregation. African American youth ; African Americans--Segregation ; Civil rights movement ; Segregation in education--United States 2732 Attending a White High School Were you one of the first to go into the White high school? She was one of the first to desegregate one of the white high schools and was able to participate in extracurricular activities. African American youth ; Civil rights movement ; Racism--United States--History--20th century ; Segregation in education--United States ; Selma (Ala.) ; United States--Race relations 2866 School Activities during Integration What was the process of becoming a cheerleader? She persisted at the white high school despite the racism and challenges she faced. African American high school students ; African American youth ; African Americans--Civil rights ; High school students--Political activity ; Racism in education--United States ; Segregation in education--United States ; Selma (Ala.) ; United States--Race relations 3232 Attending Tuskegee University After high school, why didn’t you decide to go to Alabama or Auburn? She appreciated attending Tuskegee, where she finally decided to go into social work. African American college students ; America's historically Black colleges and universities ; College student government ; Tuskegee University 3464 Working with Youth after College As I completed my college education I decided that I would return home with the possibility of still having some interest in politics. She started a program for helping youth, which was self-sufficiently funded. African American social workers ; African American women civic leaders ; African American youth ; Montgomery (Ala.) 3771 Employment at Alabama State University Now what do you do at Alabama State? She is now a student activities coordinator, where, among other places, she has spoken about her experiences in the Civil Rights Movement. African American women authors ; African American women college administrators ; African Americans--Civil rights--History ; Alabama State University ; College students ; Montgomery (Ala.) Oral History Sheyann Webb Christburg discusses marching on Bloody Sunday as a seven-year-old. She co-authored the book Selma, Lord, Selma and participated in desegregating her white high school. HUNTLEY: This is an interview with Mrs. Sheyann Webb Christburg for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute' ; s Oral History Project. I' ; m Dr. Horace Huntley. We' ; re presently at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Today is January 29, 1998. Mrs. Christburg, I would like to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule from Alabama State and driving all the way to Birmingham to come and sit and talk with me. CHRISTBURG: Thank you for giving me the opportunity. HUNTLEY: Welcome to Birmingham. I just want to start by asking you some general questions about your family. Your mother and father, were they originally from Selma? CHRISTBURG: Yes, both parents were from Selma. They were born and raised in Selma. There' ; s a little town outside of Selma called Tyler, Alabama and that' ; s basically where my father was born and raised. Then of course, my mom was in the area of Tyler and in between the town of Selma. So, primarily they were born and raised in the Selma area. HUNTLEY: How many brothers and sisters do you have? CHRISTBURG: I had eight brothers and sisters. I had a brother to pass and now there' ; s seven of us. HUNTLEY: Where do you fit in with that? Were you the youngest, the oldest? CHRISTBURG: I' ; m the knee baby. HUNTLEY: You' ; re the knee baby? CHRISTBURG: I' ; m the baby girl and I have a baby brother. HUNTLEY: So, there' ; s one younger than you? CHRISTBURG: Yes, my baby brother. HUNTLEY: Alright, I had to get that knee baby together. CHRISTBURG: (Laughing). HUNTLEY: What I' ; m attempting to do is to just get a picture of what it was like growing up in Selma. Let me ask you about your mother and father. What about their education? How much education did they have? CHRISTBURG: My parents were not as fortunate as some others to have had the opportunity to finish high school or even go to college. However, my father went as far as the tenth grade, I believe, and my mother progressed to the eleventh. My parents worked very hard raising us as children. They primarily went as far as they could from an educational standpoint and they had begun to work in the factory to support their family. HUNTLEY: Did both of them work in the factory? CHRISTBURG: They both worked in the factory. My father worked for a table company, which was Cleveland Table Company for so many years. My mother worked for a sewing company, which was Selma Apparel for so many years. Right now they are both retired and I guess trying to enjoy life. HUNTLEY: Do they still live in Selma? CHRISTBURG: They both still live in Selma. HUNTLEY: Where are your brothers and sisters? Do they still live in Selma? CHRISTBURG: I have a brother who' ; s living in Montgomery, well, two brothers that are living in Montgomery. I have a brother that is living out in El Paso, Texas. I have one brother that is presently living in Selma. However, I have a sister that is living in Detroit, Michigan and my oldest sister that is living in Atlanta, Georgia. HUNTLEY: So, you are somewhat scattered then? CHRISTBURG: Yes, we are scattered. HUNTLEY: Do you have family reunions? CHRISTBURG: We have family reunions, but not as often as we used to. As a matter of fact, we are in the process of planning a family reunion coming up [inaudible] of 1998, this year. HUNTLEY: Are you going to have it in Selma? CHRISTBURG: Yes, we will have it in Selma. HUNTLEY: That' ; s big business, lately. CHRISTBURG: It is. Family reunions are great, but the whole agony of the planning aspect of it can become complex sometimes ,but in spite of all that, it is a great thing to do, when you can bring the family together in joy rather than in sorrow, in which most families always come together. HUNTLEY: When you were growing up, your mother and your father were working. You started to school, and you were next to the baby, so all of your brothers and sisters have gone before you. What do you remember about starting first grade in Selma? What school did you attend? CHRISTBURG: I attended Clark Elementary School, which was a school a couple of blocks over from where we lived in the George Washington Carver Project Homes. I could vividly remember my childhood growing up at that time. First of all, me being in the first grade or even in kindergarten I was what you may call unique or active child. I just liked the fact of being involved. Even though I was poor I was the type of child who wanted to be a part of some of the other things that I saw. Some of the others were doing but perhaps couldn' ; t afford to do. HUNTLEY: Like what for instance? CHRISTBURG: For instance, programs that took place at school, I always wanted to be out front or part of it and even though I did not necessarily know that I had a particular talent at that particular time. I just wanted to be a part of whatever was going on at school. I would really try to execute my participation through my teachers. I can remember many times when I was to talk to my momma about me participating in a program. Of course, my parents always supported me with that, but there were a number of times when expenses had come into play. You know, everybody liked the idea of their children participating, but they always wanted them not only to do well, but to look good. Many times, when my mom and my dad expressed the idea of whatever my needs were or my discussing that with them, if they didn' ; t have it, I didn' ; t even hesitate to discuss this with my teachers. That really didn' ; t make a difference with me. As a child I always wanted to be out front and be active. HUNTLEY: And you were not bashful about asking people to assist you in whatever you needed to do? CHRISTBURG: Whatever, whether it was through my teachers and... primarily, I really can attribute a lot to my teachers, as well as my parents, because they had the opportunities to get to know me well as a student. Based upon my track record, with growing up in school from the first grade to the sixth grade it had become a thing that I didn' ; t have to ask, they asked me. Of course, as I grew up from the first grade on through the sixth grade I can vividly remember me participating in a number of programs that really enhanced my development and personal growth. It also made me become the person that I was, and I consider myself a very inquisitive type child. Many people often ask, " ; how did you become involved in the civil rights movement at such an early age?" ; Even though I didn' ; t quite understand what was happening at that time, at that particular age I was so inquisitive that I knew that something was happening unusual and I wanted to be there. As I grew in that movement I became more knowledgeable of what was happening. During that time with all of the turbulence and the confrontations and the challenges and the changes that took place and you being in the midst of it. You know, it wasn' ; t like you just volunteered to do this, it was high risk. It was high risk for adults and even more for children. Even in spite of all of that with what I saw and with what I heard during that time and being right in the midst of it, I wanted to still be a part of that. So oftentimes, even being told or threatened by my parents or even sometimes by my teachers that I shouldn' ; t have been there, or I shouldn' ; t go, I was determined to be there and I that I did. So, you might can call me a disobedient child at that time, but for that particular cause and based upon those circumstances at that time, I' ; m very appreciative and I feel very fortunate to have done what I did as a child and to be a part of that history. HUNTLEY: Even prior to getting involved in the movement, you sound as if you were outgoing and didn' ; t meet any strangers and you were one of those children who would demand in a child' ; s way that things would happen the way that you would want them to happen. Or you would be involved, say for instance, if there was a play at school you would want to be involved in that play. Are there individuals outside of the family that had an impact upon your involvement, teachers particular? CHRISTBURG: I think there were several people who contribute to, impact my life in a most profound way. Not only as to me progressing attitude wise, educational wise, but I think in a real sense...even prior to the movement being active or becoming active in Selma, I think there was something very unique about my personality. Where it derived from, I couldn' ; t really tell you. However, I do believe that the movement really elevated that particular element and I say that because Dr. King impacted my life in a very significant way. First of all, I knew that I was poor but even in spite of me being poor, Dr. King helped me to recognize that because I was poor, regardless of whether I was poor or not...not only me, but those others who were unfortunate in some incidents...that I still could do what I wanted to do as long as I could strive for that. An education was one of the things that Dr. King related to my best friend Rachel, who lived next door to me at that particular time. I didn' ; t know the true importance of it but as constantly as he uttered those words to us each time that he talked to us the more significant and the more I wanted, or the more that I was motivated to want to go to college and want to finish high school. However, as I progressed and as I learned more and experienced more through the movement, I was one of the kids who went back to my instructors to let them know what was going on because of course, as my parents and so many others along with my teachers, if they had become involved in the movement at that particular time they would lose their jobs. Even again in spite of me being disobedient, it was like I was the communicator between my families and my instructors as to what was going on, cause I was there. HUNTLEY: You had mentioned as a young child you didn' ; t understand what was going on. You knew that something was happening and that you needed to be involved in it. Prior to the movement, did you understand segregation, did you understand the condition that the Black community was in relative to the White community? CHRISTBURG: Well, in terms of understanding segregation to the 40s, I may not have prior to the movement, but I knew the difference. HUNTLEY: You knew what you should do and what you shouldn' ; t. CHRISTBURG: I knew the difference between Black and White. HUNTLEY: Did you ever question that? CHRISTBURG: I always questioned that many times. When I had gone to the doctor' ; s office with my parents and we had to sit on one side that always indicated Blacks and then of course, on the other side it indicated Whites. Even with the water fountain and so many other circumstances that we read about today with various restaurants ; even going to various stores in Selma. I can remember that vividly. I always questioned that and even though I was given different responses at different times I knew it was wrong. As I grew in the movement I have become very knowledgeable as to why that was happening. That' ; s one thing that really helped me to grow from an educational stand point, as well as a reality stand point, because being in the midst of it and meeting the challenges, as well as listening to Dr. Martin Luther King and so many other freedom fighters that had come to be a part of that movement and deal with the struggles of segregations and injustices and inequality at that particular time, being a child it was something that didn' ; t take overnight for you to really learn about it if you didn' ; t know it. You could just see it. Each time that I was in the midst of it of course, I had began to recognize and realize exactly what the movement was all about. HUNTLEY: What are the events that stand out in your mind, more than any other, that relates to your involvement? CHRISTBURG: I think the, let me just say this before I answer that. There were many experiences that I had that have stood out in my mind that will never leave me. One of the incidents that happened that I will never forget is the Bloody Sunday March. HUNTLEY: Where were you on that march, in relationship to the front of the march? CHRISTBURG: I was in the middle part of the march. HUNTLEY: Were you on the bridge at the time? CHRISTBURG: Yes, I was. I was actually, during that particular march, there were hundreds of people who marched on that particular day, but there were enough people who could cover the bottom of the bridge and still overlap almost down to the bottom and I was right in the middle, in the midst of the marchers. HUNTLEY: Were you with any members of your family at that particular time? Do you remember who was right there with you? What was your age at that time? CHRISTBURG: At that particular time, I was approximately seven years old. I was with the late Margaret Moore, who was one of the teachers who had the courage to participate at that particular time. Many threats had been made about the possibility of what would happen on that particular day. Even in spite of that, again I was still determined...with me being afraid and so many others who were a part of that movement. I was still determined to be a marcher. HUNTLEY: What were you afraid of? CHRISTBURG: I was afraid of what would happen. Prior to that time, with many instances, particularly at mass meetings, people spoke about how people would be beaten and there had been some on other marches that had previously taken place that had been beaten or abused in some form or fashion. I heard that on numerous occasions. However, this was the time that I knew in my mind that something would happen. I was afraid because first of all, I knew I wasn' ; t supposed to be there as a child and secondly, based upon the faith and the way that people prayed, the way that they sung and I' ; m not just saying just a prayer and they were finished with. There were many instances that took place prior to that march and it' ; s what you saw in the midst of the people who were part of that movement. On their faces, you saw fear on their faces, but yet at the same time you saw determination, dedication, commitment, and I think the people who were actually a part of that movement at that time it didn' ; t matter. You know Dr. King said that, well, first of all, being in the midst of that movement you had to have a certain commitment. You had to have a degree of a certain type of faith. You had to have a degree of willingness and to have something to sacrifice even if it was your life. That is what I saw and that' ; s what I saw people doing as a child. The expressions, the spirits, the determination those type attitudes, the attitude of readiness is really what taught me the most about the movement at that time. I felt that whatever I knew at that particular time as a child, I knew that first of all it was a struggle between something wrong that should be turned into right and I wanted to be a part of it, not just for myself but for my parents and for the people that lived in Selma. That attitude started exuberating within me just being in the midst of it, not understanding quite all of the ramifications that were involved. I knew the difference ; I knew the difference again between Black and White and I knew the difference between right and wrong. I actually saw it. I not only visualized it, I experienced it as a child every day. HUNTLEY: What was that day like for a seven-year-old? What did...what was the experience like? Can you explain what you saw? At the particular time that you had to turn around what did you do? CHRISTBURG: Well, it was scary. From the time that we were asked to mobilize ourselves in front of Brown' ; s Chapel Church. There was some communication between me and the late Margaret Moore. I had indicated to her that I wasn' ; t going to march. I told her I wanted to, but I didn' ; t have permission to. However, when the marchers had knelt down to pray, I remember standing on the sidelines being indecisive. Still with fear, not only for myself, but for them particularly. As they had gotten up and they had begun to march and start singing freedom songs. I remember running back up to her and joining here in the march, clutching her by her hand and I told her that I wanted to go. She took my hand and I marched with her. HUNTLEY: Was Rachel with you? CHRISTBURG: No, Rachel and I, my best friend, had discussed this and of course Rachel was not as, I guess, I was more disobedient in a sense than Rachel. Sometimes she wanted to do some things that we had talked about as friends and as children, but she listened to her parents more. I was basically the opposite. However, I could remember as we made our way to the Edmund Pettus Bridge on that particular day, the closer we got to the bridge the more frightened I was, as I had become as a child. I can remember when we had reached the Edmund Pettus Bridge and of course, we started praying and after we were asked to turn around all I can remember was tear gas that had begun to burst out into the air. I could see hundreds of state troopers and policemen with Billy clubs and tear gas masks and troopers on horses. When this tear gas had really been burst and flamed into the air, I could just see people running. Of course, I started running trying to make my way home. I could see the horses and at some point everybody was trying to run. Several people were running in different ways but there were several people who were running in my direction, as if they were trying to make their way back to Brown' ; s Chapel A.M.E. Church. As I had begun to run, trying to make my way back home I remember Rev. Williams picking me up and my feet was still galloping in his arms and I looked to him and told him in my own childish words to , " ; put me down because you' ; re not running fast enough." ; There were some people along with him who were still accompanying, not only me but those others who were frightened, trying to make their way home. I remember getting home that particular day and my parents were standing at the door along with so many other neighbors, because it was obvious, obviously that something was going to happen that day. When we were running trying to make our way back to Brown' ; s Chapel Church and myself trying to make my way back home, I could hear sirens, you know, the ambulance sounds and people crying. It was very frightening. I got home and my parents were standing in front of the door and I just ran up to my door and completely through them and making my way up the steps. My mom had come behind me trying to comfort me and I just cried. I was very frightened with what I saw and visualized on that particular day. I' ; ll never forget it. It will never leave my heart neither my mind. That was the most traumatic experience of my life, particularly being a child. HUNTLEY: Would you allow your children to be involved in the movement, if there was a movement going on of that nature today? CHRISTBURG: You know, I' ; ve been asked that question once before and I believe if there is a given cause that would require the commitment and the dedication and if they felt that it was something that they needed to do or wanted to do for that cause, even in spite of danger, I may do it reluctantly, but I believe I will let them go. HUNTLEY: At seven years old? CHRISTBURG: At seven years old. I say that because I' ; m hoping that a movement will come now that will give not only young people that type of spirit or attitude but people as a whole. We haven' ; t had a movement like that since that time when people were united and came together for a given cause. Even though it took the Bloody Sunday March for us to really mobilize people from all over the world, under most circumstances it takes crisis situations and circumstances for us sometimes to realize really what is happening. I' ; m very honest with you when I say that if at any point that I had children and there was a cause that came about that really would give them the attitude of wanting, or the attitude that I had in a sense, I would just be glad for that movement to come again for children and people to mobilize themselves. I think we have had so many reasons for that movement even after the civil rights movement. Right now, for us to have that type of attitude and based upon those circumstances, I will do that. HUNTLEY: The book Selma, Lord, Selma suggests that there was rather an intimate relationship between yourself, Rachel, and Dr. King. Can you just describe to us what that relationship...you know a seven-year-old child and you had the opportunity to sit on his lap and talk to him, what was that like? CHRISTBURG: As I mentioned to you earlier, there were so many experiences that I will never forget. One of those experiences was having the opportunity to meet Dr. Martin Luther King. As I look at it today, myself and Rachel at that time being kids, we had no idea of what type of man or what type of person or the history that would come behind our experiences of giving the opportunity to meet him. Obviously, it struck a chord with us even at that age meeting Dr. King, I mean anybody who has had the opportunity, adults or what have you, should feel very fortunate and grateful. We were even more fortunate. First of all, Dr. King saw people regardless of what background or what walk of life they had come from. He saw people or a person just as they were. That' ; s how he treated us as he met us on that particular day. I remember Rachel and I playing in front of Brown' ; s Chapel A.M.E. Church and there were these cars that had driven up and of course, it took our attention and as they had gotten out of the cars we went over towards them. One of the men that was with Dr. King said to us, " ; do you know who this man is?" ; We had no idea who none of them were. So, he said, " ; this Dr. King." ; Of course, we didn' ; t know who Dr. King was. As they proceeded to go into the back of Brown' ; s Chapel A.M.E. Church and they were about to have a meeting on that particular day, we followed them and as we followed them one of the men said to us, " ; you all can go on now cause we are about to have a meeting." ; Dr. King immediately said to him, " ; no, let them stay." ; So, we followed him on into the church and as we got into the church Dr. King had begun to give us some attention as children. He came over to where we were and he asked us our names and of course, we gave him our names. Then, he said, " ; what do you want?" ; Rachel and I looked at each other and hunching our childish shoulders, we didn' ; t know how to respond to that question. He asked us again, " ; what do you want?" ; We looked at each other again. He said, " ; when I ask you what do you want, your reply should be freedom." ; So, he asked us again, a third time, he said, " ; what do you want?" ; We said, " ; freedom" ; in our own childish voices. He said, " ; say it louder!" ; So, we said it louder. He asked us again, " ; when do you want it?" ; We didn' ; t quite know how to answer that question. He said, " ; when I ask you when do you want it, you say now." ; So, he asked us, " ; what do you want?" ; We said loudly, " ; freedom!" ; He said, " ; when do you want it?" ; We said, " ; now!" ; This was our first acquaintance with Dr. Martin Luther King. We sat there for a while and after he had gone into his meeting he told us he wanted to talk to us more. We left and we started playing like children would normally do and we came back because we wanted to talk with him more. When we had come back, Dr. King told us he was coming back to Selma and he wanted to see us. Now even though we didn' ; t quite know the significance of this man and really what he represented at this time, we knew he was someone very important and we couldn' ; t wait to get home to talk to our parents about this. I can remember talking to my parents about it and they didn' ; t have the expressions on their faces that I thought they should have had. Of course, I had become to realize why as I grew in the movement. At that particular time Dr. King was a profound leader that people didn' ; t necessarily dislike, but they didn' ; t like the idea of the disturbance that it could cause with them as a community or a people. Of course, Dr. King with the leadership that he provided not only in Selma, but all over the world, it intervened in so many ways with the agenda of people being concerned about their jobs. Yet he was fighting for them in so many instances from an economic standpoint, from a social stand point. Of course, after having met Dr. King on that particular day I couldn' ; t wait to see Dr. King when he came back to Selma. There were many pamphlets that had gone around in our community from SCLC announcing when Dr. King was going to be in Selma for the mass meeting. Of course, my parents didn' ; t want me to be there. I didn' ; t do a whole lot of discussion about it. I knew that I was going to be there. I recall slipping out of my house on that particular evening. I remember going into Brown' ; s Chapel A.M.E. Church and sitting on the front row and singing along with the people that were there the various freedom songs. HUNTLEY: How far was your home from the church? CHRISTBURG: My home was right in the back of Brown' ; s Chapel. Not far, it wasn' ; t a half a mile. I remember Dr. King making his way to the pulpit there. I remember the people who were gathered sitting and clapping their hands and singing the freedom songs. All of a sudden everybody had begun to stand on their feet and look in one direction. As they looked in that direction there was a crowd of people who were following Dr. King as Dr. King made his way to the pulpit. You could just see the gleam, not only in Dr. King' ; s eye as he made his way to the pulpit, but if you just looked around you could see a certain spirit that was exuberating all over the church. People had begun to clap their hands loud and even stomp their feet. They went from one freedom song to " ; My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." ; They sung that song and Dr. King just stood there and every now and then he would raise his hand. Then after everybody had quieted Dr. Martin Luther King took his seat, everybody was just waiting for him to make his speech. I' ; ll never forget the first time that I had the opportunity to hear him speak. I didn' ; t again quite understand all of the things that Dr. King talked about, but what I remember most about Dr. King was him talking about the difference between injustices, Black and White, and that in spite of people doing you wrong, you still have to turn the other cheek. At that particular time I couldn' ; t really analyze it as I did maybe six or seven months from that time. I knew that he had a righteous heart and that he was coming there to start a movement to help people in Selma rather they were Black or White. Based upon the way that Dr. King spoke, you knew he had a very Christian like attitude. I knew at that particular night that I then was a part of the movement. HUNTLEY: Were other members of your family involved? CHRISTBURG: No, they did not become involved until a later date when others had become more comfortable with joining the movement. HUNTLEY: How many times do you remember seeing Dr. King or being in his presence? Were there many other times after this time? CHRISTBURG: Sure, there were many other times. Dr. King had, you know during that time SCLC had of course played an intricate role and there had been several meetings at Brown' ; s Chapel Church with the absence of Dr. King and there have been many with his presence. HUNTLEY: Were you disappointed when they had something, and he was not there? CHRISTBURG: Very disappointed but I always asked when he was coming back. Those times that I knew he was going to be there I was always be there. There were many times that they had strategy meetings at Brown' ; s Chapel Church and those were the times that we had private time in a sense to really communicate with Dr. King. A number of times in the midst of him doing what he had to do he still took time to give us that attention. He talked about education, you know us getting an education, or he asked us questions about our families a lot but he always told us he will be back and he wanted to see us. Every time that Dr. King would make his way back to Selma for the mass meetings, we made it a point as children to make our way to the pulpit and sit on his lap. HUNTLEY: Did you ever question why your parents were not involved? CHRISTBURG: I questioned that particularly when I really didn' ; t quite understand a lot of things but, of course, as I grew in the movement I understood more about their reservations and so many other things. It didn' ; t take me long to recognize and realize, or even to be educated about the significance and the purpose of what the movement was all about. So, I grew up fast in the movement, which made me become very, more understanding as to the position, not only my family took, but others as well. In a real sense as I grew in that movement and as I had become a part of that movement it was like I was not only in that movement for myself and others but particularly for my parents. HUNTLEY: You were nine or ten when Dr. King was assassinated. Where were you when you heard the news? CHRISTBURG: I had come from a dancing class. I remember making my way into the door and my momma and my daddy and four other sisters and brothers were there. They had their attention on the TV as I made my way through the door. As soon as I walked in all of them turned their heads to me and I saw this unique expression on their faces, and it displayed that something was wrong. Before I could really ask the question about what was wrong there was a special bulletin that had come across the TV saying that Dr. King had died. At that particular time, I had so many different mixed emotions as a child. The first thing that I did of course was cry. I went to my room and I thought about all of my memories as a child with meeting Dr. King and some of the things that he taught me as a child. I started writing about my pal Dr. King. I guess in the midst of me dealing with my emotions at that particular time, of course, it was nothing that I really understood. I knew he was dead. I knew he was killed and I knew it was wrong. I' ; m not saying that I understood the death, but what I did understand was what Dr. King said. He would rather die for what he felt was right and I remember him saying on a number of occasions, you know, from the song " ; Oh Freedom, Oh Freedom, Before I' ; ll Be a Slave, I' ; ll Be Buried and My Grave Will Go Home to My Lord and Be Free." ; That' ; s what Dr. King' ; s commitment, that' ; s what his sacrifice was all about. He talked about it, but I had no idea that it would happen that fast ,because it was really like I was just getting to know somebody who had instantly been killed in the struggle for fighting for us as a people and for the rights of humanity. That was the type of commitment that Dr. King had and the sacrifices that were involved there. That helped me and as I continued to grow in the movement, as a result of his death, that helped me to even realize more the importance of me doing my part and me having the commitment to serve my community. I think that' ; s one of the things we as a people are lacking today. Based upon the commitment, the willingness, the visions that it takes to deal with some of the challenges that we' ; re faced with in our community. Even as a nation we' ; re not really willing to have that same type of genuine sacrifice and be willing to serve. One of the prime examples that I like to express to young people that I have the opportunity to speak with anywhere that I go is exercising the right to vote and looking forward to that. HUNTLEY: After Dr. King was killed you keep saying you grew up ; you were growing up in the movement. What kind of activities were you involved in after 1968? CHRISTBURG: After 1968, I was involved in various activities. One thing, desegregation had come into play, which had an impact still on young people, as well as adults in my community. My brothers and sisters they all went to predominate Black schools. At that particular time, as I continued to grow in the movement based upon what I had experienced, I was determined to go to a White school. I wanted to meet that challenge knowing that I had that right and that I could face it and I did that. In doing that, I was determined also not to just go to the school but to be active. At that particular time, it was very difficult if you were Black going into a segregated school and wanting to be a part of something. It just wasn' ; t anything that you possibly had the qualifications for, you had to battle with the Black and White issue. It was an unfair system. HUNTLEY: Were you one of the first to go into the White high school? CHRISTBURG: I was not the first, but I was among the few. Being among the few, there were a lot of hatred and so many other things that we had to contend with on a day to day basis. I can remember many times when my parents tried to support me in dealing with some of those problems. I was the only Black in five of my classes. Of course, being the only Black in five of my classes, I wasn' ; t the type of student that just sat there because I was Black. I was active and I tried to exemplify my character and my personality and showing them, I could be on the same level that they were. HUNTLEY: Were you active in extracurricular activities? CHRISTBURG: I sure was. I had the opportunity to be a cheerleader and I was among the few at that particular time who went out for cheerleader as a Black. That was quite difficult, but I made it. Even in spite of me making it, there were many times that I was spat on at different games, being called names, so many things as it relates to racial barriers. That still helped me to grow. I think that because of that movement it really contributed to me not only becoming more active but more understanding. I really didn' ; t, even though I experienced a lot of prejudice, I didn' ; t look at it from a hatred standpoint. I really just dealt with people just as they were. HUNTLEY: What was the process of becoming a cheerleader? CHRISTBURG: Well, being a cheerleader for the YMCA, as I again grew up, I was a cheerleader for the YMCA which was predominantly Black. Then, going to junior high school trying out for a predominantly Black team there were certain things you had to execute from a physical standpoint and in a real sense to make it all clear, Black folks had soul. I had to actually train myself to take form as to the type with the tryouts for getting through, making the cheerleader at that particular time. It took some extensive training to go from one transition to another. HUNTLEY: You had to mass some of your rhythm in other words? CHRISTBURG: Right. I did that and I did it well but even in spite of that part of the process, first of all was academics. You had to have a certain GPA, it was a screening process even before you did the practical part. They tried to give me a very difficult time on that, but I made it through that after my parents had to come over a number of times. I had all of the qualifications but there were many things that were put into place to keep me, to discourage me in a sense. I was still determined. When I even got to the practical part of course, when you try out for cheerleading you have an audience. During that time, each time that I would come on the floor to try out I was called names and there were many acts done to distract my attention, but I made it. HUNTLEY: You were taking the place of some other White girl, so that competition then created the division. What was your relationship with others on the team? CHRISTBURG: It was something that we had to grow through. Initially it was distasteful. Based upon my attitude with adjusting, not only adjusting to being a part of that type of system, but adjusting them because even though I knew that I was Black and they were White and I knew the difference I still had a cordial attitude and I still tried to blend. Initially there was one particular cheerleader that had more communication and interaction with me then it started trickling through the others. I think I was a contributing factor with all of that because if I had retaliated in any form or fashion it would have defeated my purpose totally. That is what the movement and Dr. King taught me. HUNTLEY: What were your teachers like? CHRISTBURG: Prejudice. HUNTLEY: You were the only Black student in five of your classes? CHRISTBURG: In five of my classes, they were basically prejudice. I knew what my objective was at that time and that was to really study hard and try to complete my courses in spite of what I was experiencing in the course of that. Many times, I did have problems with some of my courses. It wasn' ; t a thing where I could go to them perhaps and get the type of assistance that I needed. I had to go elsewhere. I kept in my mind that I needed to complete that course or those courses. It was difficult at times and the experience that had come from that really motivated me more. HUNTLEY: Did you ever consider going back to the Black high school? CHRISTBURG: No, it never crossed my mind. As a matter of fact, I wanted to become more active. I did, I became a member of the choir. I became a member of the basketball team, the volleyball team, I even became very interested in becoming a member of the debate team, but I couldn' ; t mix it in with the other extracurricular activities that I had. It really motivated me more. HUNTLEY: Did your younger brother go to the same high school? CHRISTBURG: Yes, he did but at a later time. During the time that I had gone to Parish High School there were other options for Blacks. At that particular time, he was at the predominantly Black school. However, when more Blacks had really started going to the school and when it had become a better situation of course he was one of those numbers. HUNTLEY: After high school, why didn' ; t you decide to go to Alabama or Auburn? CHRISTBURG: I had. My first choice was the University of Alabama, because I wanted to be a cheerleader, that was one of my pet peeves. I knew wherever I went I wanted to be a cheerleader. I had some difficulties with getting through that program. For some reason they just didn' ; t want a Black. Because of the difficulties that I had extracurricular wise and with me focusing on that with being a part of my academics, I chose to go to Tuskegee. HUNTLEY: What was that experience like? CHRISTBURG: It was a great experience. I think I had the opportunity with being a part of the movement, having the opportunity to go to be a part of a desegregated system. Then having the experience of going to a predominantly Black college. It taught me a lot. Being at Tuskegee, I tried to really take what I had because of what I experienced in the movement and growing up. I wanted to use every talent that I had and I did that which really enhanced my personal growth, mentally and socially. As a student at Tuskegee, my first year as a freshman I got involved in the student government. Not only my freshman year, from freshman year through my fourth year of college and graduating. Being a part of numerous activities there it helped my personal growth. I had mixed emotions in the process because for some reason I had the idea of coming back home getting into politics. When I had initially thought about my major, of course, it was political science. However, as I participated in various events and I was not only involved on the campus, I was also involved in the community as a student. HUNTLEY: What kind of involvement with the community did you have? CHRISTBURG: I was involved in.Well, first of all being a member of the student government there really gave me an opportunity to meet several people in the community on all levels. In the community there was the community action agency and they had different programs. I started off with a system of tutoring some of the kids. In city hall they had various programs. I had become a member of the NAACP chapter there. I started working with young people and it really became a pet peeve in a sense and ultimately I changed my major. I decided that I wanted to go into social work. As I completed my college education I decided that I would return home with the possibility of still having some interest in politics. However, as I had grown older and as I had become more involved in a sense with becoming more knowledgeable with politics, I decided I didn' ; t think that at that time that would be something that I would be interested in, but I did know that I was interested in youth. I was more of a youth advocate than anything else. So, I took that interest and with the talents and skills that I had, I decided that I wanted to develop a youth program. As I had come to Montgomery in 1980 to further my education I really started looking at that in my final Keep Production, which K-E-E-P is an acronym for Keep Entertainment Everyday People. My whole concept with that idea was to really focus and concentrate on the less fortunate youth and reach out to them to help build self- esteem and to use their talents, their God given talents that they had to help motivate them and building self-esteem. I had no inkling how I would really do that, but I mobilized a group of young people in Montgomery. The first event was a talent show. I organized that particular talent show and went out to several different projects or poor housing areas and I recruited some kids who had various talents and also in some other areas. As a result of that show, particularly being my first time doing it, it was very successful, and I decided that I would do another one. As a result of me continuing to do that, with the idea and vision that I had, [[people] were focusing on me, it really escalated quickly than I had anticipated. So, now after 17 years the worthiness of that program has been proven. I have had the opportunity to meet and work with hundreds of young people from all walks of life in building self-esteem, as well as providing various workshops, which has encouraged them to go on and finish high school, as well as college. Even today I still have that program. HUNTLEY: Was that a part of Alabama State? CHRISTBURG: No, it' ; s not a part of Alabama State. This is something I started doing prior to being a part of Alabama State. HUNTLEY: How is it funded? CHRISTBURG: Self-sufficient. There were many opportunities for me to become incorporated, but I decided that based upon the way in which the program was being handled I had the support of many businesses and parents through the years and I wasn' ; t quite stable in terms of me holding on to that program as long as I have. When the idea of becoming incorporated was being handed down to me, I just wasn' ; t comfortable with that idea at that time. The program has survived well-being self-sufficient. We have to...anything that we do we have to go and get the funds for it. However, we in many instances with various things that we wanted to do, particularly with workshops and bringing resources in or even putting on various shows, we' ; ve had a lot of support from the community. HUNTLEY: This program has been in force since 1980? CHRISTBURG: Since 1980. HUNTLEY: Did you work with that program full-time prior to getting, going on board with.... CHRISTBURG: I did. I was employed at Alabama State in 1991. Prior to that time, my attention was basically given to KEEP Production. HUNTLEY: Now what do you do at Alabama State? CHRISTBURG: I' ; m the coordinator of student activities. My job is basically to coordinate and manage various student activities for the student body. I work in conjunction, not only with the student government association, but also with various committees of the university and with Ms. Alabama State University. HUNTLEY: Have you had the opportunity to share your experiences growing up with students at Alabama State? If you have what has been the reception? CHRISTBURG: I' ; ve had many opportunities to share my experiences with students. As much as over the years you get new to students to come in and old ones to go out. Most of it has been a big surprise. There are students there now who come to me on a regular basis whenever they hear about the book cause I don' ; t make the point to advertise the success of my book. It' ; s not so much because I' ; m modest about it. It' ; s just that I feel that at some given point the students will recognize the fact that I was a part of that movement. That is being to happen more and more. I' ; ve had the opportunity to speak to the student body on three occasions. However, in various classroom settings with various instructors I get the opportunity to sit and talk with them. That alone helps spread the news as my experiences as a child. Sometimes it' ; s amazing to them. They want to sit down and really want me to go in depth with them. One of the things that I encourage them to do is to first read the book and then come ask me questions. Oftentimes when I have the time I will sit and entertain questions. Right now, with this book being 15 years old, the book is still alive. I' ; m very thankful for that. There have been many opportunities that have been prevailed for me to again speak to young people across the country. A lot of times when you' ; re doing that and then focusing on your personal life and your job a lot of emphasis is not placed in your own community. Even though I have had the opportunity to speak to a number of students at various elementary, junior high, and high schools in Montgomery, I' ; m still waiting for the opportunity to reach out more to other students. I do have other plans to speak to students at Alabama State University. As a matter of fact, I will be speaking in February on three occasions. HUNTLEY: Is the book in paperback yet? CHRISTBURG: Yes, it is. HUNTLEY: Have you had any opportunity to speak here at the Institute? CHRISTBURG: This is my first opportunity. HUNTLEY: We' ; ll have to get you back and have some program around what you' ; re doing. I want to thank you for taking the time out of your schedule, because this obviously is a piece of history that every child should know because what it does it gives other people the strength, cause even at the age of seven that you had the audacity to question the status quo. I think you should be commended for it. So again, thank you for coming. CHRISTBURG: Thank you so very much for inviting me. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
bcri.org. 0 http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=SWChristburg1998.xml SWChristburg1998.xml
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Sheyann Webb Christburg
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Sheyann Webb Christburg discusses marching on Bloody Sunday as a seven-year-old. She co-authored the book Selma, Lord, Selma and participated in desegregating her white high school.
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19980129C
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968
Selma to Montgomery Rights March (1965 : Selma, Ala.)
Tuskegee University
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1998-01-29
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video
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acbafe58a23cfb337385b7381c44d440
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Video
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Oral History
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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English
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bcriohp
Oral History
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Horace Huntley
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Betty Bock
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http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=BBock1997.xml
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American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A
Food stamps--United States
Literacy--United States
Poverty--United States
Birmingham Public Schools (Birmingham, Ala.)
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5.4 January 31, 1997 Rev. Betty Bock Interviewed on January 31, 1997 19970131B 01:07:08 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Emily Reynolds Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham Wallace, George C. (George Corley), 1919-1998 Arrington, Richard Birmingham (Ala.) American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A Food stamps--United States Literacy--United States Poverty--United States Birmingham Public Schools (Birmingham, Ala.) Betty Bock Horace Huntley Video 1:|18(8)|47(7)|72(14)|86(3)|103(2)|124(12)|142(15)|158(8)|169(6)|183(12)|197(10)|211(1)|222(12)|236(3)|251(6)|261(11)|274(4)|286(11)|300(3)|317(15)|326(15)|344(6)|361(7)|371(3)|383(13)|396(1)|414(3)|421(12)|433(12)|448(5)|462(2)|478(10)|492(2)|501(6)|512(13)|523(11)|535(10)|550(2)|573(2)|586(4)|596(6)|609(10)|619(17)|631(5)|641(9)|651(6)|656(7)|667(5)|677(2)|688(9)|698(3)|708(12)|722(16)|734(3)|746(12)|759(1)|771(16)|781(17)|792(7)|802(5)|813(8)|824(4)|836(8)|846(6)|864(5)|874(4)|886(11) 0 https://youtu.be/_b_9vmsZpuk YouTube video English 0 Interview Introduction This is an interview with Reverend Betty Bock 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 January 31, 1997. 33.516200, -86.813870 17 The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute https://www.bcri.org/ BCRI Homepage 36 Family and Childhood Just want to start by asking you some background questions. Where are you originally from? Bock discusses her family history and her childhood on her family's farm. Agricultural education--United States ; Animals on the family farm ; Education--United States--History--20th century ; Missouri--History Farm life--United States 227 Education in Rural Missouri What was it like growing up on a farm in Missouri in the 50s and 60s? Bock describes her educational experiences in Missouri (elementary school through college). African Americans--Washington (D.C.) ; Central Missouri State University ; Farm life--United States ; Poverty--United States ; Racism--United States--History--20th century ; Rural schools--United States Education--History--20th century ; Education--Missouri 864 Travels through Southern States So you aspired to go into the classroom. After college what did you do? Bock describes her experiences traveling through Southern U.S. states during the 1960s. African Americans--Southern States ; American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. ; Civil rights movements--Southern States--History--20th century ; Segregation--United States African Americans--Civil rights--History--20th century ; Race relations in the United States 1338 Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas So you then finished up at your college in '64, what did you do after that? Bock discusses her Seminary education and work. Fort Worth (Tex.) ; Religious education--United States ; Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Religious education--Study and teaching 1484 Exposure to Urban Poverty How did this first experience with the inner city, how did that impact upon you? Bock describes her initial experiences with urban poverty in Ft. Worth, Texas. Fort Worth (Tex.) ; Social services Poverty--United States 1568 Move to Birmingham & ; Work with Women's Missionary Union So you were there in Ft. Worth for two years. After your two years, you were finishing up seminary then what? Bock describes moving to Birmingham, Alabama and her initial work in the city. African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States ; Baptist Women in Ministry ; Southern States--History--1951- ; Southern States--Religion America--Race relations ; Birmingham (Ala.) 1886 Birmingham Social Services Work You got here in Birmingham you didn't waste too much time you got involved in the community. Bock describes her ministry and social services work within the Birmingham community. African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States ; African Americans--Education--Southern States ; Baptist Women in Ministry ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Food stamps--United States ; Literacy--United States ; Poverty--United States ; Southern States--Race relations--History--20th century Race relations--Religious aspects ; Social services 2221 Efforts for Church Desegregation At this point in Birmingham, there had been efforts to desegregate churches or to integrate churches, what was First Baptists' role in that? Bock discusses divides within the church and community, and attempts to desegregate the church. African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States ; African Americans--Education ; African Americans--Segregation ; American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Birmingham Public Schools (Birmingham, Ala.) ; Southern States--Religion Race relations--Religious aspects--Christianity ; Segregation in education--United States ; Segregation--Religious aspects 2907 Community Backlash: Threats of Violence Twelve tutoring kids, but that propelled our situation into the John Burchers became involved, the Wallace people became involved, a little bit of Klan, we were never able really to document a lot of Klan involvement Bock describes threats of violence that she and others received following efforts to desegregate the church. Birmingham (Ala.). Police Department ; Bomb threats ; Civil rights movement ; Jefferson County (Ala.) ; Ku Klux Klan (1915- ) ; Police brutality--United States ; Wallace, George C. (George Corley), 1919-1998 African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States ; United States--Race relations 3163 Resignation, Walk-Out, and Formation of New Church After this motion had been made of being tabled whether Dr. Gilmore and I would be fired or not. He got back first of August and the church conference to decide if they were going to fire us or not. Bock describes events leading to her resignation, as well as a church walk-out and the formation of a new, desegregated church. African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States ; Baptists--United States ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Birmingham Baptist Association ; Civil rights movement ; Segregation--Religious aspects ; Southern States--Religion ; Synagogues as community centers African Americans--Civil rights--History--20th century ; Segregation--United States 3756 Reflection on Birmingham Community You have been active in the community participation movement. What were some of the highlights of your career with that group? I know your service, but are you still president? Bock reflects on her experiences and comments on Birmingham today. African Americans--Segregation ; African Americans--Southern States ; Arrington, Richard ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Healthy Start Program (U.S.) United States--Race relations 3999 Interview Conclusion Betty we've covered a lot of territory and we're going to have to stop here because I have another person who's coming in. Oral History Rev. Betty Bock discusses her path to helping create a desegregated ministry in Birmingham after growing up in Missouri. She worked with community and spiritual leaders to form a new church after lacking support through First Baptist Church. HUNTLEY: This is an interview with Reverend Betty Bock 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 January 31, 1997. Rev. Bock I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to come and sit and talk with me today. Since we' ; ve known each other for so long, you can refer to me as Horace and I' ; ll refer to you as Betty, the way we normally do. Just want to start by asking you some background questions. Where are you originally from? BOCK: I grew up in Missouri. I lived on a farm near the town Marshall, that was our mailing address. HUNTLEY: Marshall, Missouri. Where is that in relationship to St. Louis or Kansas City? BOCK: It' ; s about halfway between Kansas City and St. Louis closer to Kansas City but if you drew a straight line between the two cities you' ; d come pretty close to where I live. HUNTLEY: You had how many siblings? BOCK: I had one brother. HUNTLEY: Was he older or younger? BOCK: Four years older than I am. HUNTLEY: Your parents, were they from Missouri? BOCK: Yes, the farm that I grew up on my mother was born there and is now 82 and has lived there all but two years of her life. HUNTLEY: Do you go back often? BOCK: Oh yes, I use all my vacation time to go and see family. My brother lives in St. Louis and I have a niece there and a niece in Arizona and her husband and two boys. HUNTLEY: So only you decided to come this far South? BOCK: Yes. HUNTLEY: Your father, let me ask you this first of all, your mother and father what level of education did they have? BOCK: Mother had a high school education, and my father dropped out of school when he was in the fourth or fifth grade. His father was hurt in an accident and he was the oldest of the boys and it kind of fell to his responsibility to take over the farm. HUNTLEY: What kind of work did your mother do? Did she work outside of the home? BOCK: No, she was a homemaker. HUNTLEY: And your father is a farmer? BOCK: Yes. HUNTLEY: Family owned farm? BOCK: Yes. HUNTLEY: What did you farm? BOCK: Mixed farming, corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, like clover and [inaudible] for hay and usually. We always had some cattle and sometimes had pigs but always had cattle. HUNTLEY: I guess you had the opportunity to work on the farm as well. BOCK: You better believe it. I started milking when I was five years old. When I was seven or eight, I had my first bunch of chickens and saved money from my chickens to buy a cow and saved my money because I was going to go to college and be a schoolteacher. All the money from the calves from my cow went into savings to be able to go to college. I knew my parents couldn' ; t help me go to college if I was going to be able to go I would have to do it on my own. HUNTLEY: How young were you when you decided that, that was what you had to do? BOCK: In the third grade, I had a teacher that I was very, very fond of. I wanted to be like her. HUNTLEY: What was it like growing up on a farm in Missouri in the 50s and 60s? BOCK: We were examples of urban poverty, but I never rarely realized we were poor because pretty much everybody around me lived in the same circumstances and went to a one room country school the first three years. The largest year there was eight in the school. HUNTLEY: Eight in your class you mean. BOCK: No, eight in the school. I was in the third grade before I ever had anybody in the same grade with me. Really wasn' ; t sure whether I was going to like that or not. Little competition there. HUNTLEY: Were there any African Americans in the area that you grew up? BOCK: Well, after the one room school was closed there was a consolidated district, but it wasn' ; t until high school that I was in school with African American individuals. There were three in my high school class. HUNTLEY: Three in your class? BOCK: Right. HUNTLEY: A high school of what size? BOCK: There were 42 in the graduating class. HUNTLEY: A big school? BOCK: Right. HUNTLEY: What did you do after high school? BOCK: I was going to say just a word about the high school experience. One of the big things about high school was that we would go on a senior trip and my class decided to go to Washington D. C. While we were there, we went to a restaurant to eat that refused to seat the two Black students who were with us and the rest of us immediately got up and walked out. But that was probably my first exposure to racial prejudice because in the community they really were a part of the community and everything so that probably was my first sensitizing to the way life was for a large portion of our country. HUNTLEY: What year was this that you were in Washington D.C.? BOCK: 1960. HUNTLEY: So that was your first encounter with segregation because you had not experienced it, you had not seen that rear its head in your community. BOCK: Right. HUNTLEY: What about in St. Louis, did you ever go into St. Louis or Kansas City? BOCK: The only times we went to Kansas City was if my mother had some health problems and we would go to a specialist there. We might stop and shop for shoes or something, but it was 125 miles trip and back in those days 125 miles trip was a big deal. So by the time you got there and waited to see the doctor if you were going to be able to get home to be able to milk the cows and feed the chickens, I can' ; t remember for example of our ever going to a restaurant to eat. HUNTLEY: That' ; s about the size of it with me as well because I never went to a restaurant to eat. I worked in a restaurant, but I never went to a restaurant to eat before I was in the military I believe. BOCK: We would take our lunch along with us. HUNTLEY: We had a standing joke in our family that we would leave Birmingham going to Green County and before we would get to Bessemer my grandmother would always say bring out the bag and give me a chicken wing or something. Betty, how active were you in extracurricular activities in your high school? BOCK: Not all that active because they really weren' ; t that many things at the school because most of the.at least half the students were from farms and as soon as school was out you went home because you had responsibilities there. So, I really can' ; t recall any extracurricular school activities that I participated in. If you' ; re a boy you could play basketball or football, well I did play in the band, I guess that would be an extracurricular activity. HUNTLEY: Just a minute, when you and your class went to D.C. and you all left after your classmates were not served, what kind of discussion went on among you as a result of that? BOCK: Initially we were very incensed. We made some suggestions that we could go back to that restaurant and do in terms of kind of making a scene out of it. Once the anger kind of subsided the sponsors of the trip I think did a good job of bringing us together and kind of talking about it, let Birdie and J. J. talk about what it felt like for them and we spent several hours just kind of talking about the experience and I really credit the teachers for being that insightful to really turn something like that into a learning experience that most of us had first experience with this kind of thing and we just couldn' ; t believe. Birdie had been the star in the senior play, we couldn' ; t believe. HUNTLEY: That, that would happen to Birdie. BOCK: Yes, don' ; t they know who Birdie is. HUNTLEY: What did you do after high school? BOCK: Went to college at Central Missouri State University, it was about 70 miles from home. HUNTLEY: What was that transition like from high school to college? BOCK: Couldn' ; t believe where all of these people had come from. Initially my first year was a big adjustment to those kinds of surroundings. I really had led a very sheltered life in terms of being exposed to just the things about the world. Because finances were so tight for me the college had a house that had been converted into a cooperative living house where there were four kitchens and there were eight of us to a kitchen and we did our own cooking, cleaning and it made the cost of going to college less than half what it would have been had I stayed in a dormitory. With there being only three or two of us and our eating out meals together there was a real sense of community but that was also a smaller arena to move from more remote kind of thing into a college scene as if I had been at a dormitory that had several hundred students in it. HUNTLEY: This was in the early to mid 60s? BOCK: Right, 1960 was my freshman year, I graduated in 1964. HThis was also the period that the sit-ins had started. The Freedom Riders would make their journey here in Birmingham. And other places there would be selective buying campaigns and then in Birmingham the demonstrations in ' ; 63. How did that impact upon your environment at the time? BOCK: Not all that much. I really was not particularly sensitive to social issues. I guess you would term. The situation in Arkansas and Governor Falbus I remember that making an impression and again it was kind of one disbelief that people really did those kinds of things but remote enough. I remember the bombing of the church, but we didn' ; t subscribe to a newspaper, we didn' ; t have a television, generally when we listed to the radio it was more entertainment shows and we didn' ; t really listen to the radio that much. Up until I went to college. . . HUNTLEY: So, you were very isolated? BOCK: I mean our poverty wasn' ; t as bad as for example what you would have found in Appalachia, but we had many of the dynamics of rural poverty. HUNTLEY: When you arrived on campus and you saw all of these other people coming in with different kinds of ideas and cultures how did that impact upon this young woman whose coming from rural Missouri and probably meeting people from the city, the inner cities all around the country. How did that impact upon you? BOCK: You know I don' ; t think there were many from inner city situations. HUNTLEY: So, there were not many Black kids in other words? BOCK: There were a number, but they were very much academically achieving in terms of being in class. I don' ; t remember really what the percentage it was, it would have been a very small percentage because there was not a high ratio of African American individuals. I really don' ; t know what Kansas City was at that particular point. The two African American people that I knew best both came from Kansas City but that was kind of the extent of it. HUNTLEY: So, what was your major? BOCK: Elementary education. HUNTLEY: So, you aspired to go into the classroom. After college what did you do? BOCK: Well there were a couple of things that happened in college that we might want to make reference to. I' ; m Baptist and one of the things that our denomination had at that particular time, I' ; m not sure if they still do or not, was called better speakers tournament, where you were given a selected list of topics that you could develop I don' ; t remember how many minutes, 7 minutes, 8 minutes, 10 minutes, something like that. You could compete on the association level which was kind of the county and then there was a state competition and the winners of the state competition went to Ridgecrest, North Carolina, which is where one of the two national conference centers for the Southern Baptist denominations are located. I entered that speakers contest and went on to win the state contest which meant that I would go to Ridgecrest. I was working in Girls Auxiliary Camps, the girl' ; s organization in our denomination was called Girls Auxiliary. During my summers in college I worked in G. A. camps primarily ones that needed some outside help if there was going to be a camping experience for kids. So, I didn' ; t have to be back in Missouri for camp until Monday and I finished in North Carolina on Wednesday so I decided that this would be a chance to travel through the South and see what that was like. My main interest there being denomination, or the Baptist Home Mission Board is in Atlanta. Women' ; s Missionary Union is here in Birmingham, and I had met people from both of those, I was very active in the Baptist Student Union on campus. At that point I was thinking about seminary as possibly an option, so I was going to go to Atlanta and visit people I knew at the Women' ; s Missionary Union and come to Birmingham and visit Billy Peyton and Elaine Dixson and visit the seminary in New Orleans and head back. Again, I' ; m straight off the farm. So, I rode to Atlanta with a group from La Grange, Georgia and we got in, it was probably about 8 or 9 o' ; clock at night and I had assumed I would go find a hotel or motel and go down to the mission the next morning. Well here were all these homeless people and various people sitting around on the curb and I believed that I would just stay in the bus station all night because I was afraid to go out. The next morning as I asked where there was a restaurant or place to get some breakfast and they gave me directions and it was also the direction of Women' ; s Missionary Union. So, as I rounded the corner to go to the restaurant a group of Black people were being loaded onto this semi-trailer truck, mean it had a load thing. There had been at sit-in at this restaurant and they had been arrested and were being carted off. So, I believed I wasn' ; t hungry for breakfast and went on to the Home Mission Board to visit the people and came home to Birmingham and the Greyhound bus station was just by. The Women' ; s Missionary Union at that time was located at the corner of 20th Street and 6th Avenue North and so it was not long until 5 o' ; clock so I went ahead and left my luggage at the bus station to walk on up to the Women' ; s Missionary Union to see and meet Billie and Elaine. Well they invited me to spend the night with them. So, we couldn' ; t find a parking place, so Billie was going to drive around the block while I went in to get my suitcase. In front of me in line was a Black lady who had a child probably two and a half, three years old and one that she was carrying in her arms. The man at the bus, where you got the luggage, told her to step aside. HUNTLEY: Was this a White man or Black man? BOCK: A White man. I said but she was in front of me in line. He said, she' ; s a dirty nigger she can wait. I said no, she was in line. This I really didn' ; t see it as a racial situation. I had simply been taught when somebody was in front of you in line. . . HUNTLEY: This was not a demonstration? BOCK: No, I' ; m pure naivete off of the farm. So, it never occurred to me, I' ; m your college aged individual who obviously does not have a southern accent in a bus station in 1963. It turned out that guy had a button to push to notify police that something was going on at the bus station. The next thing we knew five carloads of police officer' ; s descent upon the bus station. HUNTLEY: What year was this? BOCK: Summer of 1963. It would have been in June. I' ; m not sure. . . HUNTLEY: Demonstrations just finished. BOCK: Fortunately Billie and Elaine had found a parking place by this time and couldn' ; t figure out why it was taking me so long to get my luggage and came in and identified that yes I was with them that I would be in their presence while I was in Birmingham so they had to sign a paper that they would be my caretakers. The next morning, I had to notify the police department that I was leaving town. There was a police officer standing there to see me get on the bus and head on my way. So, I just couldn' ; t believe this, it just blew my mind so to speak. So, then we stopped in Mississippi, I don' ; t remember the town, it was a small place and I had gone to the restroom first and when I came out to the lunch counter all the seats were filled except one. There were two seats at the end of the counter and a young Black man was sitting in one of them and then there was this vacant seat. So, I go sit down and the waitress says to me if you don' ; t move I' ; m going to have you arrested. HUNTLEY: Talking to you? Was this the Black counter or was it just because you were sitting next to him? BOCK: I said well I don' ; t know what I' ; m doing wrong. And she said well we may not be able to keep the niggers from sitting at the lunch counter so we passed an ordinance that Whites can' ; t sit by them when they' ; re at the lunch counter. So I got up and believed I wasn' ; t hungry for lunch. After Atlanta, Birmingham and Mississippi experience I believed that I was ready to head on back to Missouri. I rode to New Orleans got off the bus, got me a ticket to Missouri and headed to Missouri and said I' ; ll never come back to the South again. HUNTLEY: So that was it. What were the responses when you got back to Missouri to tell people about your experiences? BOCK: I didn' ; t talk about it. I didn' ; t want my parents to be aware that I had been in that kind of danger. That would not have gone over well. I had learned fairly early it was better that they knew some things and no other things, so I really didn' ; t talk to anybody about it. HUNTLEY: So, you then finished up at your college in ' ; 64, what did you do after that? BOCK: I went to seminary at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth. HUNTLEY: Ft. Worth, Texas. And you were there for what two years? BOCK: Yes. HUNTLEY: What was the atmosphere in Ft. Worth at that time? BOCK: We were pretty isolated. I was financially having a very hard time so I generally other than going to church did not go off the campus the first year. We had a cafeteria on campus and [inaudible] there were a I want to say two or three African American students that were not from overseas and then there were several from various countries in Africa, but they represented a pretty small group and were very well accepted on campus. Then my second year I took a social work class and part of the requirements for that class was that you had to do some practical experience kinds of things. Tarrant Baptist Association had a mission center in one of the public housing communities. So, I spent some time working. That was really my first introduction to inner city poverty. HUNTLEY: You had majored in elementary education, why did you determine that you would go to seminary rather than go to teach after graduate school? BOCK: I felt called by God to go into a church related vocation. My expectation was that, I think I made reference a while ago that the program in our denomination for young girls is called Girls Auxiliary and that I would become a Girls Auxiliary director of some state or some way working that way to take advantage of my elementary background. Elementary age kids were what I really enjoyed working with. So that' ; s kind of what I expected my vocation to evolve into. HUNTLEY: How did this first experience with the inner city, how did that impact upon you? BOCK: I don' ; t think I would have been able to verbalize what bothered me at that particular point but it was really an unsettling experience in that it was a very paternalistic program in which I felt like the staff people weren' ; t that they exactly looked down on people in the community but. . . HUNTLEY: You just got a feeling of that? BOCK: Yes, and I ended up not working more than was required for this particular class because there was just something about it that didn' ; t settle right with me and I hadn' ; t been exposed to any other models that might have helped me know, that yes there are other ways of doing these kinds of things. But that was my first experience, you know, the inner city poverty didn' ; t particularly bother me. Again I think I pretty much identified by this time I realized that I had been poor when I was growing up. So I think there was probably some identification there. HUNTLEY: So, you were there in Ft. Worth for two years. After your two years, you were finishing up seminary then what? BOCK: I mentioned a while ago that the national headquarters of the Women' ; s Missionary Union was here in Birmingham and in January before I graduated in May they offered me a position here as the National Director for the Young Women' ; s Auxiliary which was for individuals, young women 16 to 24 years of age and that meant coming to live in Birmingham. HUNTLEY: Is that young White women or young period? BOCK: No, White women. HUNTLEY: And when you got this offer to come to Birmingham, what were you thinking about? BOCK: The racial [inaudible] I just didn' ; t know if I wanted to live in Birmingham or not. They said well a lot of progress had been made. Actually, one of the leaders on the White adult side in Birmingham was a Ms. McMurry who was the executive director of Women' ; s Missionary Union. Prior to this time, I think in the 50s on into the 60s.. .she died unexpectedly of a heart attack I want to say two or three years before I came to Birmingham so I never had the chance to meet her but heard many stories of her going to some interracial meetings where she was spit upon as she would go in and come out by White individuals so Women' ; s Missionary Union saw itself to be primarily because of Ms. McMurray and her involvement in the Birmingham racial situation saw themselves to be very progressive in terms of those kinds of issues. HUNTLEY: When you arrived in Birmingham, and of course I' ; m sure you were thinking about what had taken place. How did you deal with that situation with making yourself comfortable with the decision that you had made to come to Birmingham? BOCK: It really wasn' ; t all that bad because in terms of Ms. McMurry' ; s leadership I felt that Women' ; s Missionary Union was an acceptable kind of thing. I was very excited and challenged by it. I mean to come straight out of seminary and be with the national director was certainly an honor to be, in fact I was the first person who they had hired who had not been a state level person before coming to the national office. Also, my job involved a lot of travel so I actually was in Birmingham very little. HUNTLEY: Around the state? BOCK: No, I traveled all through the United States. HUNTLEY: What community did you move into? BOCK: The summer, I moved here in June of 1966 and that summer I lived in a room in a house in Eastlake and a friend of mine from seminary had been in summer mission work in Washington state and we had planned while she was going to be teaching school at. . . A. G. Gaston Junior High? HUNTLEY: Yes, in Roosevelt City. BOCK: Yes, and once she got back from summer missions that we would get an apartment together and live together and we ended up living in Homewood close to where Lakeshore Drive and Green Springs come together. HUNTLEY: What church did you attend? BOCK: I joined First Baptist Church. The reason I joined First Baptist when I was in seminary I took a class in ministry in the metropolitan areas. Interestingly that would have been 1966 because it was the last semester I was there, and it was the first class that had been offered in the Southern Baptist Ministry on urban ministry which now just blows my mind. But this was the best class I ever took in seminary, the teacher was exciting we researched creative and innovative ministries and churches of all denominations throughout the United States and just really turned me onto the inner city. I mean it was kind of from that point on that the inner-city situation was where there was much more opportunity for creative things and new ideas and to try things out than traditional suburban situations. HUNTLEY: You got here in Birmingham you didn' ; t waste too much time you got involved in the community. BOCK: Right. HUNTLEY: What kind of activities were you initially involved in? BOCK: I guess the first and one of the most significant was one of the things that Women' ; s Missionary was producing Mission Action Guides and there was one on internationals, one on juvenile delinquency and one on nonreaders. First I worked on one for economically disadvantaged. Then I was assigned to work on the one for nonreaders and to make a long story short in the process of unloading those Mission Action guides off of the truck and into our storage area I realized that our janitor who was helping unload materials couldn' ; t not read anything that was on the side of the boxes. I thought here I am sitting behind my desk, writing materials, going all over the United States on nonreaders, and here is somebody in my own building. HUNTLEY: What made you realize he couldn' ; t read? BOCK: He asked me something, I don' ; t remember the exact question, but it was something about what was printed on the side of the box. It kind of took me a second to figure out why he didn' ; t know because it was right there in front of him and it actually was a little bit after that, that I realized that Mr. Gooden couldn' ; t read what was there. So, I talked to some of the people in my church and found four or five other people who were kind of interested in a literacy ministry. I contacted our whole mission board in Atlanta, and they identified a lady living in Birmingham who is trained to the Lawbook Literacy Method. So, I began then from the time I was in Birmingham during my lunch hours began teaching him to read and write. That led into a significant experience in that he had nine children and all but one got college educations even though he was a nonreader. He had prided himself that he had never used any form of public assistance, this was really a big thing to him. [inaudible] husband had a spell in which he suffered from amnesia and they ended up finding him in Mobile he didn' ; t know where he was or who he was, and she had three children. He was trying to financially support her and her family during Anthony' ; s illness and decided that he was going to have to apply for food stamps. So, I told him that I would be glad to go with him to apply for food stamps. At the food stamp center, you had to walk down this alley and go in a side door which gave you a great sense of dignity and respect, so it turned out that they were closed during lunch, so we waited until they came back. We were the first people in, three or four White applicants came in after we did and we sat there as the social worker would come pick up the file look out over the group, put the file down, pick up another one and all of the White people were called for service before we were. So finally, our name was called and I' ; m not sure how the case worker became aware that he was not able to write his name. At that point, if he saw his name written out, he could write it but he hadn' ; t completely learned to spell it. So, the worker pushed the paper around and said, okay go ahead and put your O X down here. And I said, he can write his name. I got a piece of paper out of the waste basket and wrote his name out and gave him the pen and he signed his name. This was just a tremendously emotional experience. One, it was the first time I had experienced the prejudice that he had experienced. I knew exactly what was happening with those folders. So, as we went out we were walking back, and I was to struggle with what do I say. Finally, I said, all I can say is I' ; m sorry and for the first time I understand. The bond which we felt together was just tremendous. The very next day, again, the W.M.U. Building was the corner of 20th street and 6th Avenue and the food stamp center would have been at 22nd between 8th and 9th Avenue North. The next day I heard some commotion around lunch time down on the street and looked out and a group of African American individuals were having a march on the food stamp center and tears just streamed down my face because for the first time again I knew, and again it was only one small experience for me where it was much of their experience, but that proved to be a very pivotal point in my life. HUNTLEY: At this point in Birmingham, there had been efforts to desegregate churches or to integrate churches, what was First Baptists' ; role in that? BOCK: Back in, I' ; m not sure of the year, but the pastor' ; s name was Earl Stallings and I' ; m not sure whether it was in the 50s or 60s, I almost want to say it was more like ' ; 58, ' ; 59, ' ; 60, somewhere in there. There were a group of African American individuals who came to the service and Dr. Stallings invited them in. They were seated and did participate in the service. There was a good bit of national publicity of Dr. Stallings standing at the door shaking hands and in a welcoming stance. But that had been sometime earlier. HUNTLEY: So, by the time that you got there, were there Black members of First Baptist? BOCK: No. HUNTLEY: Were there Blacks that attended periodically? BOCK: Well, not until the tutoring program came about. HUNTLEY: Were there every any difficulties between people within the church to accept Black visitors? BOCK: Well, there weren' ; t any. HUNTLEY: There were none? BOCK: There were not any until February of 1970. HUNTLEY: You were also involved with something in Central City, Metropolitan Garden. BOCK: Right, that' ; s all part of the same episode. HUNTLEY: At that point though, Metropolitan Garden was predominately White. BOCK: All White. HUNTLEY: How did that change take place, what was going on? BOCK: In 1968, the pastor who was Dr. James Landus announced his resignation and that he was going to Richardson, Texas, and he was the fifth pastor in twelve years to resign and the church panicked. HUNTLEY: This is First Baptist? BOCK: Right, and so a group of the male leadership went to Dr. Landus and said, if you will stay, we will give leadership to the church moving to the suburbs. To show their commitment to do this, they took an option on a piece of property that I think is where Brookwood Baptist Church is now, I' ; m not a hundred percent on that, that was the exact site but it was to be located in Mt. Brook and I' ; m pretty sure that it was that site. Well he went ahead and left anyway, they had the option on the land I want to say for three or four months before they had to put any money down, so the committee was appointed and one of the things that they did was to visit the Oak Hearst Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, who had saved money to build a new sanctuary and came to decide to make repairs on the sanctuary and to stay in the community and develop ministries with that community. They were so touched by this experience that the committee came back and worded what became known as the 68 commitments which were to stay downtown to welcome all who would come, learned or unlearned, rich or poor, it did not use the terminology Black and White. The committee felt like if those terms were used, it would not pass and they were wanting to buy time. They felt the statement was strong enough that it could be used to get a new pastor who was oriented to ministry in the community and kind of give some time to try to bring individuals along. So those commitments were passed and at this time I was still working at Women' ; s Missionary Union and served as Volunteer, what we called, Youth Coordinator. I couldn' ; t teach a Sunday School class because I was out of town too much so I could plan youth activities when I was going to be in town. We could have a retreat ; we could have Sunday night fellowships and stuff. So, the evening of the day that we voted the 68 commitments, we had a youth fellowship and the kids were all turned on and said is there something youth can do about this or is this another adult only. I said well why don' ; t a group of us go down and talk to the principal of Powell Elementary School and see. So, I took six of the young people down there, I' ; ve forgotten his first name, but Mr. Star was his last name. Of course, the first thing he suggested was a tutoring program, and the kids said yes, we can do that. And that fall was the time, I guess it was during the summer that the first Black families moved into what was then Central City, now Metropolitan Gardens. So, we began a tutoring program on Monday and Wednesday afternoons with kids from Central City. The new pastor Dr. Jeffery Gilmore arrived ; I want to say in September. It was almost exactly at the same time we started the tutoring program. The first Wednesday night that the tutoring kids came, some of the adult members of the church came for Wednesday night church activities and saw these Black children and became incensed and went to the new pastor and said you' ; re to stop this. One of the things that I had done and I didn' ; t really know why I did it but it was a wise move. I had actually presented it to the deacons to vote on and had it voted on at the church that we start this ministry. So, Dr. Gilmore' ; s response was that the church voted to do this, I can' ; t as a pastor change something that the church voted to do. So, things kind of leveled off. Interestingly enough that Sunday school class is called the Cosmopolitan Sunday School Class. In the second Sunday of February, 12 of our tutoring children showed up for Sunday School and 14 teachers resigned rather than teach those children. But we had them all, the teachers, all replaced by the next Sunday, so the children didn' ; t know that they had created a problem. Then in April of 1970, Winnifred Bryant and Twilla visited the church for the first time. At the time, not knowing what was ahead made special effort to keep her [inaudible] we know had recently I was going through some things and came across we have framed our new sanctuary. But they came. Then in May, they presented themselves for membership. Now the by-laws of the church stated if a prospective member was objected to it was to be referred to the deacons and pastor to determine if the objections were scriptural and valid. So, Dr. Gilmore ruled that it had to be a stated objection, it couldn' ; t just be x number of people raising their hands saying that they objected because in order to determine if it was scriptural and valid it had to be a stated objection. So finally, one of the men said, well, I will state my objection to the deacons. I won' ; t state it to this whole congregation. So Dr. Gilmore accepted that and the deacons meeting was the next night and his objection was that her motivation was wrong that she was coming just to make trouble. It ended up that the deacons voted 16 to 14 to recommend Ms. Bryant for membership and 17 to 13, one person changed their vote when they came to vote on the child. As it happened, the Baptist World Alliance was being held in Tokyo, Japan, and the church months before this had voted to send Dr. Gilmore and he was going to take a six-week tour of various countries on the way back. So, a decision was made that they not be present for membership until Dr. Gilmore got back from his trip. So then towards the end of June there was a church conference in which the segregationist had completely organized themselves this was the first time they began bringing in people from who were all segregationists people and the final motion was that Dr. Gilmore and I be fired immediately, that I have 24 hours to clean out my office and that when he got back from Japan he would have 24 hours to clean out his office. The vote, there was a two-vote margin. A motion was made by Judge H. H. Brooms who was the one who ruled in the Autherine Lucy case with George Wallace stood and recommended that the motion be tabled because it was not only un- Christian to fire somebody when they weren' ; t there to answer the charges against them it was also un-American. An un-American helped us, the un-Christian wouldn' ; t have gotten us anywhere. So, by a two-vote margin, I ended up not being fired that night. Let me back up, I forgot something significant. The day that the 12 tutoring children came to Sunday School and totally unconnected in terms of their time, the following Monday was a desegregation deadline for the Birmingham school system. There was a group of White citizens who organized themselves as Parents Concerned who were opposing the integration of the school. That Sunday afternoon there was a big Parents Concerned rally at Municipal Auditorium with George Wallace speaking. He wanted to make the point that if we let Blacks in, they would simply try to take over and said, why just this morning a group of Black people tried to take over a fine old Baptist church. Twelve tutoring kids, but that propelled our situation into the John Burchers became involved, the Wallace people became involved, a little bit of Klan, we were never able really to document a lot of Klan involvement. But it was at that particular point that threats began to be made much of it focused on Dr. Gilmore and myself particularly going on until after Ms. Bryant and Twilla presented themselves for membership. Probably the most creative threat that each of us got was a drawing of a gun but where the thing is that where you cock it the barrel was coming out there so if you pulled the trigger you shot yourself. At the church, bomb threats were called in twice that we had to vacate the church. HUNTLEY: On Sunday mornings? BOCK: No, they were both Wednesday night activities. The first time that I got a threat was the night that my car was going to have a bomb in it. I went out the next morning and the air had been let out about halfway on the tires of my car. The gas cap was missing, and the little flap thing was open, so it was enough to know that somebody had been messing with my car. I called the Homewood police and asked them if they would come and check my car for a bomb. So, the officers wanted to know what I was involved in that somebody might want to put a bomb in my car. I said, well, I' ; m involved in the First Baptist Church situation. To which the guy looked at me and just kind of put his face up against mine and said, if you' ; re a dirty nigger lover you deserve what you get. I hope you won' ; t bother us again. So I knew that I could not rely on the Homewood police to provide any protection or help for me. So that became a pretty significant dynamic there. They would do things such as make it obvious that they were following me home, the scariest one came one night, the parking lot was over to one side of the apartments and there were two or three men leaning against the trunk of their cars. There was a man on each side of my door just leaning up against the wall. They never laid a hand on me but to walk past them after, first of all knowing I was being followed and to walk past them to get to my apartment was a pretty scary thing particularly knowing that I could not count on the Homewood police for any help at that particular point. The thing I think that got to Dr. Gilmore and I upset the most, well for him, he had a nine-year-old daughter and the calls that his daughter would be harmed were the ones that gave him greatest pause. The threats to rape me were the ones that bothered me. I really didn' ; t think they would kill me, but there was a real degree to which I expected to be raped before the whole situation was over. So that was more of the fear that I lived with than being killed. HUNTLEY: Trying times. Did you ever have any physical difficulties with anyone as a result of that? BOCK: No, they never touched me. HUNTLEY: You had the opportunity to meet and hear President Pitts from Miles. BOCK: Yes, that comes a bit later. After this motion had been made of being tabled whether Dr. Gilmore and I would be fired or not. He got back first of August and the church conference to decide if they were going to fire us or not. It lasted eight hours, went until 2:30 in the morning and finally by a four-vote margin, we doubled over the last time, they voted not to fire us. So, then Ms. Bryant and Twilla were presented for membership on September 27, 1970. The by-laws state that if objection had been raised in regard to someone it then took a two-thirds vote not a simple majority for that person to be objected. So, when the vote was taken we had a majority vote, but we did not have the two-thirds vote. Interestingly Baptist prided themselves so much on abiding by the vote of the majority, in actuality both times a majority of the people voted to accept them but the first time objection was raised which threw out the majority vote and in the second case a two-thirds requirement was not reached as compared to a simple majority. So, Dr. Gilmore and I resigned immediately, and Dr. Burn Williamson stood and suggested that all who agreed with Dr. Gilmore and I the stance was un-Christian and unethical to go with him to the education building to close the service in prayer. At that point, approximately 300 people got up and walked out of the service in protest of that. This group had already had a few meetings with the name of the Company of the Committed. Elton Trueblood, about that time, had written a book by the name of The Company of the Committed, and Dr. Williamson had been touched by this book and that' ; s kind of how that name came about. As it happened there had been a covered dish lunch planned for the noon meal of the day that the walk out took place. So, we gathered in the basement of the dinner hall and Dr. Williams said, anybody who just wants to say anything at this point, the floor is open. The one that I remember the most was this lady who had to be in her 80s, Ms. Edny, stood and said, I just want to say I' ; ve been a member of this church for. . .I want to say 55 years, it was just incredible, and this is the greatest day in my life. Part of what have been wondrous about her was that she taught one of the elderly women' ; s Sunday school classes. And in one of the business meetings she had taken a very strong stance and quoted scripture in terms of the brotherhood and sisterhood of all people and her Sunday school class had gotten up and walked out on her that Sunday. In the meantime, I had left Women' ; s Missionary Union and come on the staff of First Baptist, I had forgotten to say that in there, we had one teacher in the youth division who was not open to the African American people coming in so she resigned. The 11th and 12th grade youth voted to have Ms. Edny to come be their Sunday school teacher, so that was just one of the really neat experiences in all of that. So finally, Dr. Williamson said we are going to have to see whether we are going to have the resources to form a church or where do we go from here. In terms of what kind of money, we can look at to operate with, I' ; d like for you to tear off a piece of your bulletin or somewhere and write down how much money you think you can commit to the formation of a new church. And so, people, you know it was no credit cards or things, you just tore off what you had. I forgot what the amount was I want to say it was in the range of $100,000 was committed that day and the feeling was that yes, we can move forward then with forming the church. Dr. Gilmore both offered our resignation as of November 1, feeling that 30 days is appropriate. It became an issue because it turned out that November 1 was a Sunday and were our resignations effect at 12:01 a.m. or 11:59 p.m. because it would determine whether we were going to be there for that service or not. So we made our resignations effective October 31. I specified in mine 11:59 p.m. because we had developed a coffee house ministry that was just going great and if it was 11:59 p.m. we could keep the coffee house open one more night. So, we began to search for a place to have our worship service. We contacted several churches, most of them in the downtown, Southside area and we were told by some that their church could split over whether or not to let us use their facility or not. So, we decided that we would discontinue approaching people. It was obvious from the news media that we were in need of a place to worship and finally on the Wednesday night before November 1, it was worked out for us to use the Birmingham Baptist Association, which at the time was at 20th Street and 8th Avenue South. We had our first service together on November 1, and the next couple of weeks we came up with the name and decided that we were going to incorporate and we wanted to put the executive director of the Alabama Baptist Convention in a stance of being supportive and we proposed a couple of dates to him and it was well known he already [inaudible] So finally Dr. Gilmore said, well you tell us a date that you' ; re free and we' ; ll set the thing for that. So, on the 21st of December 1970, we incorporated and were dedicated as a church. The gentleman from the Alabama Baptist Convention got up and went to great links saying now I can only represent one person. I' ; m not here to represent Alabama Baptist. I came to represent my wife. Dr. Lucid Pitts came right after Dr. Bagley and stood and said I just want to say what indeed an honor it is to stand here and represent the 300,000 Black individuals of our community. The contrast was just beautiful. I mean that' ; s one of the most wonderful moments of my whole life was when Dr. Pitts stood and said, you know I' ; ve jotted down some notes, but I want to speak from the heart at this particular point. There was not a dry eye in that place when he finished. HUNTLEY: What was his topic? What did he talk about? BOCK: He really didn' ; t have a title as such. He just spoke of the pilgrimage of the Black community and made reference to a few of his experiences as a Black person growing up and the call to be brothers and sisters it was somewhat general and then the sermon was delivered by a Dr. Bill Hull, who' ; s been at Samford University more recently. He used the same approach that Susan [inaudible] in her book The Witnessing Community in terms of the called out remnant that remained faithful to God throughout the history and blended the forming of covenant into that change of Biblical group, that remnant group, who were called out to be faithful to God. So that was a great day. Then some of the pastors in the association began circulating petitions that we would not be able to use the Baptist building. So, Rabbi Grafman who at that time who was a Rabbi at Temple Emmanuel called and said we understand that you all need a place to worship. The synagogue would love for you to share our facilities. So, for two and half years we worshiped at Temple Emmanuel. They had Hebrew school on Sunday mornings, so we had five different places in a several block area of Temple Emmanuel were we had Sunday School classes. The Dale Carnegie House was there. They let us use some space. Campfire girls was in the area, they let us use their space. We rented some space in an office building that was used as the nursery because in terms of trying to take down and put up nursery equipment we needed a place where we could keep stuff. So, your family might be having Sunday School in four different places on Sunday morning. HUNTLEY: You have been active in the community participation movement. What were some of the highlights of your career with that group? I know your service, but are you still president? BOCK: No, I gave up being president in 1987 or ' ; 88. I was asked to work with the Woodlawn area in a revitalization program and the time and the evening meeting of my own neighborhood association and the need to meet with folks at Woodlawn was just too much of a conflict because I really felt like they both had to be my first priority so I went ahead and did not run in ' ; 87 or ' ; 88 to continue as president. HUNTLEY: You were here when Mayor Arrington was first in office. BOCK: Right. HUNTLEY: How did your community respond to a Black man coming in to run the city? BOCK: My recollection is that he carried our neighborhood. A number of us who were very active in the neighborhood were very active in support of his campaign and that' ; s a long time ago, but my recollection is that we had a majority. HUNTLEY: Betty, how do you see the city changing over time from when you arrived in ' ; 66 to the present as far as racial issues are concerned? BOCK: Out really there has been progress. HUNTLEY: What do you mean? Explain this. BOCK: Racism is still alive and well. HUNTLEY: Why do you say that? BOCK: It' ; s seen in housing patterns. The transition is taking place in the Huffman and Roebuck area now. You know for a long-time folks could hide behind the economic thing. Well now if there were middle class Black people, we wouldn' ; t mind living next door to them. It' ; s the lower income Blacks that we don' ; t want to live next door to. But now you have African American middle-class families moving into previously White communities and you' ; ve got as much White flight as when it was the inner city. I would even put some of the difficulties with programs such as Healthy Start and some of the stuff with the Citizen Participation Program has some vestiges of those dynamics. HUNTLEY: How is that, those two? Just talk briefly about those two, Healthy Start and Citizens Participation. BOCK: In some ways I would say that the two groups of people in many situations can use the same works and think they were on the same pages, but the reality was that they were worlds apart. And I don' ; t put the whole Healthy Start situation on that. There was one woman who was apart from anything else was a primary factor in the things that happened but that wasn' ; t the sole problem going on. HUNTLEY: Betty we' ; ve covered a lot of territory and we' ; re going to have to stop here because I have another person who' ; s coming in. I' ; m sure though that we' ; ll probably like to get you back to talk more in detail about some of the things that have taken place in the last 10 or 12 years. But I want to thank you for taking time out today to talk with us. BOCK: Thank you. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
bcri.org. 0 http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=BBock1997.xml BBock1997.xml
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Rev. Betty Bock
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Rev. Betty Bock discusses her path to helping create a desegregated ministry in Birmingham after growing up in Missouri. She worked with community and spiritual leaders to form a new church after lacking support through First Baptist Church.
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19970131B
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
Wallace, George C. (George Corley), 1919-1998
Arrington, Richard
Birmingham (Ala.)
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1997-01-31
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video
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01ef62b9fb93591ea0ba0c09dca3ebe6
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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Interviews collected as part of the general mission of the Oral History Project
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Video
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Oral History
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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English
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bcriohp
Oral History
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Horace Huntley
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Cleopatra Goree
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Ullman High School (Birmingham, Ala.)
Alabama State College for Negroes
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5.4 April 29, 1998 Cleopatra Goree Interviewed on April 29, 1998 19980429G 01:02:24 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Jess Holdnak Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Parks, Rosa, 1913-2005 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 Ullman High School (Birmingham, Ala.) Alabama State College for Negroes Cleopatra Goree Horace Huntley Video 1:|9(9)|36(5)|57(6)|74(1)|88(12)|104(13)|129(9)|151(11)|182(4)|216(14)|231(3)|247(12)|263(3)|289(9)|312(13)|327(6)|341(15)|351(2)|374(6)|388(1)|401(6)|421(11)|442(6)|463(6)|474(3)|488(3)|506(8)|513(4)|546(12)|565(9)|591(5)|606(9)|616(12)|634(10)|645(11)|662(6)|692(14)|706(8)|715(8)|726(12)|742(12)|752(17)|766(10)|775(6)|785(12)|796(7)|809(13)|825(6)|843(5)|854(8)|866(11)|882(12)|910(11)|925(1)|936(10)|956(8)|972(1)|990(2)|1005(8)|1017(11)|1029(14)|1044(4) 0 https://youtu.be/__FgZzIUM78 YouTube video English 0 Introduction H: This is an interview with Mrs. Cleopatra Goree for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s Oral History Project. I’m Dr. Horace Huntley. We’re presently at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Today is April 29, 1998. Mrs. Goree, I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule. I know as a lady of leisure you have plenty of other things to do then come and sit and talk with me. I just want to start by asking you a general question about your family. Your mother and father, were they originally from Birmingham? Introduction to interview with Cleopatra Goree by Dr. Horace Huntley. Goree, Cleopatra Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, Ala.) 33.516200, -86.813870 17 Birmingham Civil Rights Institute https://www.bcri.org/ BCRI Homepage 48 Early Life and Family H: I just want to start by asking you a general question about your family. Your mother and father, were they originally from Birmingham? G: No, my mother and father were both from South Alabama, the Black Belt area. H: What county? Goree talks about growing up in East Birmingham. She also talks about her parents, mentioning where they were born, their education, and their work. African American families ; African American life ; Birmingham (Ala.) 205 Shields Elementary School H: What school did you start first grade? G: I started first grade at Shields Elementary School but it didn’t go any further than the third grade. Then we had an option of going to Kingston School or Thomas School. I choose to have gone to Thomas School. So, my elementary education would be third grade at Shields and then from fourth grade to eighth grade Thomas. Goree talks about her elementary school. Shields Elementary School African American life ; African American school children ; African Americans--Segregation ; De facto school segregation 378 Thomas School H: When you left Shields and went to Thomas, did you still walk to school? G: Walked to school. Everybody walked to school, either from that area, between 10th Avenue North and Vanderbilt you either walked to Thomas School or you walked to Hudson School in Collegeville. So everybody was walking to school. Goree talks about going to Thomas School from fourth to eight grade. Thomas School (Birmingham, Ala.) African American life ; African American school children ; Birmingham (Ala.) 495 Ullman High School H: Well, after Thomas School then where did you go to school? G: I went to Ullman High School. H: Went to Ullman, ok. Now Ullman is quite a distance. You couldn’t walk to Ullman. Goree talks about attending Ullman High School. She describes walking to school after taking a trolly part of the way and meeting children from other communities on the way. She also mentions avoid a community known as Cracker Town to avoid rock fights with those children. Ullman High School (Birmingham, Ala.) African American high school students ; African Americans--Education (Secondary) ; African Americans--Segregation ; Birmingham (Ala.) 791 Parker High School H: Now Parker of course being the only school in the Birmingham system must have been a huge school. G: It was. H: Did you look forward to going to Parker? Goree talks about her experience at Parker High School from eleventh grade through graduation. She mentions very large class sizes, and participating in both choir and drama club. Parker High School (Birmingham, Ala.) African American high school students ; African Americans--Education (Secondary) ; African Americans--Segregation ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; De facto school segregation ; Segregation in education ; Segregation in education--United States 1144 Alabama State Scholarship H: Oh, I see. What did you do after Parker? G: After Parker I went to Alabama State. H: Why Alabama State? Goree talks about taking a test and earning a scholarship to attend Alabama State. African Americans--Education (Higher) ; Alabama State College ; Alabama State College for Negroes 1458 College Life H: What was that transition like from high school to college? G: First time away from home. It was very different. Had to adjust to dormitory life. They were very strict at that time too. Lights out, on campus and all of that stuff. I took it in stride because I really wanted to go to college. I didn’t have a hard time adjusting. I was fortunate enough to get a job. Work-scholarship in the high school office because I had worked in high school offices previously. So, they just placed me in a high school office. Goree talks bout life as a college student. She mentions double majoring in History or English and Secondary Education. African Americans--Education (Higher) ; Alabama State College ; Alabama State College for Negroes 1677 Teaching at Ullman H: So after State did you come back home? G: I came back home. Started looking for a job. H: Did you find one immediately? G: No, I had to go to a smaller town where one of my good friends lived. In fact, I just didn’t wait long enough. First come, first serve. I’m a little girl looking for a job in a hurry. So, I taught two years out of town. Goree talks about getting a teaching job at Ullman High School. She also talks about Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. Ullman High School (Birmingham, Ala.) African American educators ; Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka ; Fayette (Ala.) ; Segregation in education--United States 1841 Voting and the NAACP H: Were you a voter then, at that time? G: I was a voter. H: Do you remember when you took your voting test? Goree talks about voter tests and the outlawing of the NAACP in Alabama. Birmingham (Ala.) ; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 1956 Civic League H: After it was outlawed from operating in the state and the Alabama Christian Movement was organized, were you at all involved with that phase of the movement. I know you would be involved later on but in those initial days? G: No, I was not involved, not a member. As you know the Alabama Christian Movement was almost church based. Goree talks about being involved in a Civic League in East Birmingham. The League was focused on helping African Americans pass voting tests. Civic League Parks, Rosa, 1913-2005 ; Voting--United States 2189 Martin Luther King Jr. H: Is that right? Did Martin Luther King come to your church in those early days? G: No, he never came to my church. H: But you heard him speak? G: New Pilgrim Baptist Church. Goree talka bakut going to hear Martinezes Luther King Jr. speak at Birmingham mass meetings. New Pilgrim Baptist Church ; Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Ala.) King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 2525 Mass Meetings Goree describes how it felt to attend mass meetings were King would speak. Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 2806 Demonstrating as a Teacher H: Now, I’ve interviewed many people and found out that many of the teachers or professional people were really not involved because they were afraid of losing their jobs. You were a teacher, why were you involved at the level that you were? G: I’ll tell you after 3:00 my time was my own. I had no fear of the job. The younger people [inaudible]. Some people walked off the job but they had to be younger people. H: Oh, some did walk off the job? Goree talks about demonstrating while still a teacher. She also talks about her students participating in the Movement. Goree theorizes that class was involved with those that did not participate in the Movement . African American educators ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Civil rights movement 3186 Bombings in Birmingham H: The night that A. D. King’s home was bombed first and then the A. G. Gaston motel was bombed. Do you remember that? G: Very well, I jumped in the car and came down. Wouldn’t miss it for nothing. H: So, what did you see when you came down? Goree talks about the bombing of A.D. King's home, the A. G. Gaston Hotel, and the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, Birmingham, Ala., 1963 ; A.G. Gaston Motel (Birmingham, Ala.) 3465 Dynamite Hill G: They would come through my community. I’m not far from the Shores’ home. H: Right, you are right on top of Dynamite Hill. G: Yeah. The police would come and tell us to go back in the house. So, I did have them holler at you, Get back in that house. Shoot through the shrubberies on our street. Goree talks about living on Dynamite Hill and seeing when the Shores house was bombed. She remembers viewing the Police Department as dangerous. Dynamite Hill Birmingham (Ala.) ; Birmingham (Ala.). Police Department ; Racism--United States ; Shores, Arthur D. (Arthur Davis), 1904-1996 3554 Conclusion " ; Everybody had a Role" ; H: Right. Now we’ve covered an awful lot of territory. Is there anything else that you would like to include before we conclude? G: Lest we forget that too much credit can not be given to Fred Shuttlesworth because his house was leveled. Goree remembers Rev. Shuttlesworth and talks about what it was like o have a first had experience of the Civil Rights Movement. She states " ; It didn’t make any difference if you marched or not. If you had something to offer. I think that’s where we should be now. It’s not the person who got out there and walked in the street. You played your part." ; Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, Ala.) ; Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 Oral History Cleopatra Goree discusses being born and raised in Birmingham before getting involved with the Movement as a teacher. She lived in Dynamite Hill, attended mass meetings and experienced many bombings firsthand. HUNTLEY: This is an interview with Mrs. Cleopatra Goree for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute' ; s Oral History Project. I' ; m Dr. Horace Huntley. We' ; re presently at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Today is April 29, 1998. Mrs. Goree, I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule. I know as a lady of leisure you have plenty of other things to do then come and sit and talk with me. I just want to start by asking you a general question about your family. Your mother and father, were they originally from Birmingham? GOREE: No, my mother and father were both from South Alabama, the Black Belt area. HUNTLEY: What county? GOREE: My mother was from Perry County. My father was from Bullock County. HUNTLEY: Did they meet here or did they meet there and then come here? GOREE: They met here. HUNTLEY: Ok, so you were born here in Birmingham? GOREE: I was born in Birmingham. HUNTLEY: Oh, a Birmingham girl. GOREE: All the way. HUNTLEY: All the way, ok. What community did you grow up in? GOREE: I grew up in East Birmingham. HUNTLEY: East Birmingham, ok. Your parents what were their education levels? How much schooling? GOREE: Unfortunately, I didn' ; t live with my father that long, but his education was very limited for the time that I did know him. He worked for the L & ; N Railroad Company. My mother had perhaps, maybe a fourth-grade education. HUNTLEY: In East Birmingham, what community was it in East Birmingham that you grew up? GOREE: Well, East Birmingham included kind of the Northeast, not quite Northeast but going Northeast in the city limits. It' ; s an industrial area between 1st Avenue North and Vanderbilt Road. HUNTLEY: Oh, ok. GOREE: We were a Black community stuck within an industrial area. [inaudible], pipe shops, Stockham Valve Fitting Company, and so on. HUNTLEY: Oh, yeah, I know that. GOREE: Then you had a Black community. HUNTLEY: So, your father worked for the railroad. Did your mother work outside the home? GOREE: My mother worked for White people ; you call it domestic work. HUNTLEY: In that area? Did she work in that area? GOREE: No, you go into Inglenook then, you' ; re going up towards Tarrant City. HUNTLEY: Right. GOREE: Inglenook and Tarrant City, going in that direction and the Whites that lived in that area were probably employed at the L & ; N Railroad. HUNTLEY: What school did you start first grade? GOREE: I started first grade at Shields Elementary School but it didn' ; t go any further than the third grade. Then we had an option of going to Kingston School or Thomas School. I choose to have gone to Thomas School. So, my elementary education would be third grade at Shields and then from fourth grade to eighth grade Thomas. HUNTLEY: What do you remember about Shields? GOREE: Typical classrooms that you read about now. Two rooms, pot belly stove, sink in the back, two teachers on each side of the double tented house, so to speak. HUNTLEY: How far did you live from Shields? In walking distance? GOREE: Walking distance. HUNTLEY: How would you describe your neighborhood at that time? GOREE: The neighborhood would be described as one big family. Typical of all of the neighborhoods before. You kind of look at during the Depression Era. Everything is by, transportation is by trolley, very few cars. One telephone service, maybe two at the most serving a five or six block area. Everybody went to that particular home to use the telephone. HUNTLEY: Right. GOREE: Church, school and home were all located within walking distance of the street. HUNTLEY: So, it was a pretty compact community, then? GOREE: Compact, very compact. HUNTLEY: What about the occupations of the people that lived in the community? What was the range of occupations? GOREE: Most of the range of the occupations were, ranges were industrial work. HUNTLEY: Caused you lived right there in the industrial area, so most people would be working class people. GOREE: Industrial, plant workers for the men. The ladies didn' ; t go into the plants until WWII. HUNTLEY: Right. GOREE: Few professional people in between. HUNTLEY: When you left Shields and went to Thomas, did you still walk to school? GOREE: Walked to school. Everybody walked to school, either from that area, between 10th Avenue North and Vanderbilt you either walked to Thomas School or you walked to Hudson School in Collegeville. So, everybody was walking to school. HUNTLEY: How was Thomas different from Shields? GOREE: Well, Shields being so small, remember it' ; s just first thru third grade so it' ; s no comparison. HUNTLEY: Right. GOREE: We were going to the big school then. HUNTLEY: What was the transition like going from a smaller school to the big school, as you say? GOREE: It was quite an experience. First of all, you got a long walk and then you are walking down a railroad track. All my fear was a trestle that you had to cross. HUNTLEY: You had to cross a trestle every day? GOREE: You had to cross the trestle to get across and I was always frightened. HUNTLEY: Now, on that trestle could you actually see the water? GOREE: You could see the water. HUNTLEY: I remember those, yeah. GOREE: You' ; ve got to be there at a certain time regardless of the weather. Then when you got to Thomas School you had to stand in line until the bell rang. Everybody lined up to go in school when the bell rang. So, you don' ; t have anyone entering the school until you are going into class. Then you line up. Regardless of the weather, that' ; s the interesting thing. You look back now, a cold rain... HUNTLEY: It didn' ; t matter, you had to line up. GOREE: You lined up then you would go into the school. HUNTLEY: I remember when I was in school we would line up and when the bell rang is when you would go into the school and not before. Well, after Thomas School then where did you go to school? GOREE: I went to Ullman High School. HUNTLEY: Went to Ullman, ok. Now Ullman is quite a distance. You couldn' ; t walk to Ullman. GOREE: Couldn' ; t walk to Ullman. They had a special that ran from maybe Tarrant City to near Parker High School. We called it the special. All kids going to Ullman got off downtown so you would walk from downtown to Southside. HUNTLEY: That' ; s still a pretty good distance now. Did you walk, what from 14th Street? GOREE: We walked from downtown to where Ullman is located today. HUNTLEY: Where abouts downtown? GOREE: 19th Street. HUNTLEY: 19th Street? GOREE: 19th Street. HUNTLEY: That' ; s the heart of downtown. GOREE: Heart of downtown. HUNTLEY: And you walked that every day? I thought the special would take you... GOREE: No. HUNTLEY: Tell me a little about that special. I' ; ve heard so many people talk about it. What was the special like? GOREE: It was, by time I came along it was just a straight streetcar especially for the children. HUNTLEY: Only school children... GOREE: Only school children rode it. HUNTLEY: This was an actual streetcar? GOREE: An actual streetcar. HUNTLEY: Before the buses? GOREE: Before the buses, that' ; s right. Actually, a trolley car. HUNTLEY: Ok. GOREE: I understand earlier before I was born that they had a trailer that they would hook up to another trolley, I believe, I' ; m not sure. My aunts talked about it. Ours was actually a trolley especially for the children. HUNTLEY: So, you got to sit in front of the trolley or anywhere? GOREE: You sat where you could or stood up the rest of the way. (Laughing) You' ; re packed in there like sardines. HUNTLEY: Yeah, yeah. Now, what was that transition like from Thomas School to Ullman? GOREE: It wasn' ; t too hard. We were used to the walk. Only thing you looked forward to you met a cross section of children. You started meeting more from... HUNTLEY: From different communities? GOREE: Yeah. Especially in my area, you' ; re looking at you' ; re going toward what we call Hudson City, Collegeville. You' ; re picking up those kids from Kingston. And sometime Kingston children would ride the special coming out 1st Avenue coming from the Avondale community. You' ; re coming from towards Tarrant City direction back down to East Birmingham, then you got a lot of ghettos you pick up in between, once you left the industrial area going down toward the terminal station in that area, you had massive Black communities there. HUNTLEY: That' ; s right. Birmingham at that time of course was strictly segregated. GOREE: Sure. HUNTLEY: Did you ever encounter any difficulties that you remember as a child growing up in Birmingham, a Black child growing up in Birmingham? Many cases we may have encountered something on the streetcars or downtown. Do you ever remember personally encountering any situations? GOREE: No, I only encountered, of course I didn' ; t encounter it because I wouldn' ; t go in that direction. But going to Thomas School, if you didn' ; t go down the tracks you could walk around in another direction going toward Grayson Lumber Company, a paved street that lead to 1st Avenue North. But if you went in that direction you had to go through what we call Cracker Town. That was company houses occupied by White workers, the people that worked at the cotton mills there. They lived in these small houses and the company furnished them homes. So, they were White cotton mill workers. We had to go through their community if you didn' ; t take the track and went around the other way. So, it was always a rock battle between the children who went through Cracker Town and going back to East Birmingham. Most of us took the railroad. HUNTLEY: So, you would attempt to avoid? GOREE: We avoided what we called Cracker Town. HUNTLEY: Now, in the mills there was only Whites working those mills, right? GOREE: Some Blacks worked in the mills, but they would not furnish the homes. HUNTLEY: Right. Now, you went to Ullman through what grade? GOREE: Ullman, ninth thru tenth. HUNTLEY: Then on to... GOREE: To Parker. HUNTLEY: Now Parker of course being the only school in the Birmingham system must have been a huge school. GOREE: It was. HUNTLEY: Did you look forward to going to Parker? GOREE: I guess that was the dream of all of the children. Now if you lived in the Titusville area, you stayed at Ullman till the eleventh grade if you wanted to. HUNTLEY: Ok, so Ullman did go to the eleventh grade? GOREE: To the eleventh grade but those of us that didn' ; t live on the Southside, we could choose to leave and go to Parker after we finished the tenth grade. HUNTLEY: Oh, I see. GOREE: Of course, you had the annex as a feeder also. You had two feeders going to Parker at the time. Ullman was a feeder of that school and Parker annex was a feeder school. HUNTLEY: Why did you go to Ullman rather than go to the annex? GOREE: I was zoned to Ullman. Thomas School children were zoned to Ullman. HUNTLEY: Oh, I see. GOREE: So, that' ; s why I went to Ullman. HUNTLEY: How would you describe Parker at the time that you were there? GOREE: Fascinating. HUNTLEY: In what ways? GOREE: First of all, I guess if you look at it there was a certain amount of pride that was instilled in all students there. The pride now that, I guess exists in most Black high schools during that time. We are talking about the 1940s. HUNTLEY: How did they instill that pride into you? GOREE: Just by word of mouth but certain things were expected. Teachers were role models, in a term they use today, they were always well-dressed, very articulate. They were very conscience of being teachers, they saw it as a profession. It kind of makes you look up to them. The next thing, I' ; m always appalled by the number of students that were in the classroom, each classroom. There would be as many as 40 children in the class. HUNTLEY: Is that right? 40 in each class? GOREE: We were all required to learn. HUNTLEY: And all did learn. GOREE: Yes, this was not the problem as it is today. It always amazes me that the thousands of children they had at Parker at that time cause you had [inaudible] to every Black community then eleventh thru twelfth grade by then. We' ; re supposed to have been the largest Black school in the United States, all that. But the school sat right there on the sidewalk and there never was a kid in front of the school. You never saw one student in front of... HUNTLEY: No one hung out on the... GOREE: No one hung out on the front of the building. Everybody was on the inside. The only way you saw someone on the front of that building they were leaving the school going home. HUNTLEY: Were you involved in any extracurricular activities? GOREE: Yes, I was, I enjoyed my high school career at Parker. I sang in the choir. I had to get to college before I realized that I really couldn' ; t sing but I sang in the choir. I always regret that I missed William Henry he was in the service, Mary Allen Stollenwerck was in charge of the choir at the time. She was an excellent musician. She tried to make a second soprano out of me. I took typing and I guess the highlight of my stay at Parker was when I was chosen to be in the dramatic club [inaudible]. That was just like a dream come true to have been chosen to be a part of the dramatic club. So, I had a little choir, had dramatic experience and I had typing. Of course, my typing and choir were not extracurricular it was counted as a course. HUNTLEY: Right. GOREE: I took choir and typing rather than going to the required domestic work, you know. You had to go to laundry, and I didn' ; t like that idea, so I tried to find a way out. HUNTLEY: You had no brothers and sisters, right? GOREE: I' ; m an only child, no brothers or sisters. HUNTLEY: So, you are more or less paving your own way? GOREE: That' ; s true. HUNTLEY: Many times, I' ; ve talked with people who had brothers and sisters that have gone ahead. GOREE: I was the only one. I was always around a lot of children who were from large families, but I was the only one. No half-brothers, no half-sisters, no half nothing. Amazingly my husband was an only child too. HUNTLEY: Was he at Parker? GOREE: No, he was originally from Tuscaloosa. HUNTLEY: Oh, I see. What did you do after Parker? GOREE: After Parker I went to Alabama State. HUNTLEY: Why Alabama State? GOREE: Oh, that' ; s the story of my life. (Laughing) I had all dreams. I had only a mother working, remember that. This is war years. Just at the end of the war because I' ; m talking about ' ; 45. War World II was over in June of ' ; 45. So, I' ; m looking real hard to try to get in somebody' ; s college. I had written Tuskegee, they had a five year plan where you worked and went to Tuskegee on a five year plan. I said, I was going to be a dietician, that sounded like a good word, you know. That was the first year Alabama State offered us statewide scholarship testing to find out who was the best scholar in the state of Alabama. So, President [inaudible] launched a testing program to test every senior in high school in Alabama. All of the students who took the test if they scored high they had scholarships and they could go to Alabama State. HUNTLEY: Full scholarships? GOREE: Full scholarships, part scholarships, depending on your rank. HUNTLEY: Right. GOREE: So, when they came to Parker, they chose the seniors in the top ten bracket in the graduating class. So, I was chosen, and I only remember my math teacher tried to keep me out, he said I wasn' ; t smart enough and my grades weren' ; t good enough in geometry and so I shouldn' ; t be qualified to take the test. HUNTLEY: Oh, is that right? So, he tried to keep you from taking the test? GOREE: Yes. He was head of the testing. [inaudible], I' ; m saying this because most people in Birmingham know the teacher [inaudible]. [inaudible] insisted on my being there. HUNTLEY: Oh, ok. GOREE: So, did my History teacher and my English teacher. I got a chance to take the statewide test and I scored high enough to get a scholarship to Alabama State. All of my dreams to Tuskegee went to the wind then because I had a scholarship. HUNTLEY: And you were probably very excited about that. GOREE: I was. HUNTLEY: How many from your high school went to Alabama State at that time on a scholarship? GOREE: On that scholarship program, I can' ; t remember off hand. HUNTLEY: But there were several... GOREE: The smaller children in that upper ten. Many of them didn' ; t choose Alabama State because most of them were from professional families. They went on to Tuskegee, Talladega, Morehouse, private colleges. I can' ; t remember off hand who... HUNTLEY: How many went in that time range? GOREE: I can' ; t think of anybody, maybe one girl, I can think of and myself in that testing program. HUNTLEY: That test then was not necessarily administered by Alabama State? GOREE: Oh, yes. HUNTLEY: It was by Alabama State? GOREE: Yes, by Alabama State people. They came up on certain Saturdays. And out of that class came the smartest student in the state of Alabama. HUNTLEY: Out of Parker? GOREE: Out of my class, yes. HUNTLEY: Do you remember that person' ; s name? GOREE: Yes, that person passed this year, last year. Noel Wills, Jr. You might' ; ve heard the name. HUNTLEY: Noel Wills, Jr.? GOREE: Yes, he became a medical doctor. His father was principal here in the city. He made the high score throughout the state of Alabama. It became a competitive thing. Later on, we always accused Rosedale, Rosedale High School, Mr. E. J. Oliver, had the highest number of students scoring on the test after that. HUNTLEY: Rosedale or Fairfield? GOREE: Fairfield, I' ; m sorry, yeah, Fairfield. Fairfield started walking away. Fairfield had it and won. So, we started saying E. J. Oliver had the test. (Laughing). It was amazing. HUNTLEY: What was that transition like from high school to college? GOREE: First time away from home. It was very different. Had to adjust to dormitory life. They were very strict at that time too. Lights out, on campus and all of that stuff. I took it in stride because I really wanted to go to college. I didn' ; t have a hard time adjusting. I was fortunate enough to get a job. Work-scholarship in the high school office because I had worked in high school offices previously. So, they just placed me in a high school office. HUNTLEY: What was your major? GOREE: I came out with a double major, I guess. I need to look at my transcript sometime. I don' ; t know if I have more hours in History or English, but I was a History/English Major, Secondary Education. HUNTLEY: Did you enjoy that time at Alabama State? GOREE: It was a learning experience and I came out very excited, very confident. I felt like we had one of the best curriculums that any college could have offered. I' ; ve always admired my president. [inaudible] was a brilliant man. He worked night hours, 12:00, 1:00 you could see [inaudible] office lights burning. But he was a lover of academics. HUNTLEY: That' ; s right. GOREE: I' ; ve always felt so grateful to him especially for the course that was a requirement to freshmen. We took what was a called a [inaudible] Socials Class and an Integrated Arts Class, required of all freshmen. We had 21 hours in one and 18 hours in the other. It was kind of like a survey of all of the sciences and survey of all of the arts. And of course... HUNTLEY: And all of that was required? GOREE: That was required, and it most certainly exposed you at an early age to various facets of education. HUNTLEY: Right. GOREE: Even today I fall back on some of the knowledge I acquired from those classes. So, I came out of Alabama State a little bit cocky. HUNTLEY: It was known for it' ; s music as well. GOREE: A lot of teachers. It was a teacher college. I didn' ; t pursue the music, I told you I found out that I couldn' ; t sing. I didn' ; t go to Dr. Hall. HUNTLEY: So, after State did you come back home? GOREE: I came back home. Started looking for a job. HUNTLEY: Did you find one immediately? GOREE: No, I had to go to a smaller town where one of my good friends lived. In fact, I just didn' ; t wait long enough. First come, first serve. I' ; m a little girl looking for a job in a hurry. So, I taught two years out of town. HUNTLEY: Where? GOREE: Fayette, Alabama. HUNTLEY: Fayette, ok. This was just before the Brown versus Board of Education decision? GOREE: Yes. HUNTLEY: And when you came back here where did you teach first? GOREE: Ullman High School. HUNTLEY: Oh, you taught at Ullman? GOREE: Yes. HUNTLEY: What was that like? That' ; s your alma mater, now you' ; re going back. GOREE: It was like heaven. I knew Dr. Bell so well. See, I had worked in his office as a student. HUNTLEY: Right. GOREE: Then when I went to college I had classes under him. He was a marvelous teacher. He taught me geography and I learned so much. Not only geographically but he was very philosophical. So, many things I learned. HUNTLEY: So, he taught at Alabama State? GOREE: He taught at Alabama State, summer classes. HUNTLEY: So, you returned here to teach at Ullman, was that, had that been a dream of yours to come back and be able to... GOREE: I was just so glad, I was happy. I really was. Especially to be at Ullman with Dr. Bell because he had been my principal and I just felt like I knew him, you know as a high school student. HUNTLEY: So, were you there at Ullman then in ' ; 54 when Brown versus Board took place? GOREE: Yes, I was. HUNTLEY: What was, did that have any impact upon what was taking place at Ullman? Were there any discussions about what that meant to Black education in Birmingham? GOREE: It really didn' ; t hit home to hard. We talked about it and we read about it. Maybe they had news articles on it, but it didn' ; t have any definite impact. HUNTLEY: Right. GOREE: We didn' ; t really see the fore coming. Yet I think once Parker [inaudible] went to Alabama that brought it closer. HUNTLEY: Right. GOREE: It became rather a fascinating subject then. HUNTLEY: Were you a voter then, at that time? GOREE: I was a voter. HUNTLEY: Do you remember when you took your voting test? GOREE: Yes, I do. HUNTLEY: What was that like? GOREE: I didn' ; t go through all of the silly questions that some of the people were asked. It was strictly Constitutional questions. Of course, the most interesting thing about it is Dr. Patton always managed to get the exam. And he had it Xeroxed and you just studied and studied. After I became a registered voter I conducted voter registration classes where we taught other people how to vote. HUNTLEY: Were you a member of the NAACP? GOREE: I was a member to the NAACP, I sure was. HUNTLEY: In ' ; 56 when the organization was outlawed from operating in this state. GOREE: I was not as active, but I was a card-carrying member. HUNTLEY: Right. I' ; m sure there were many teachers that were card carrying members. My aunt was a card-carrying member but she didn' ; t attend any of the meetings, but she paid her dues every year and was supportive that way. It was rather dangerous to be a member of the NAACP in terms of I guess the powers that be knowing that. Was that true or not? GOREE: No, no fear or threat even at Alabama State. I was surrounded by persons who were active members of the NAACP. HUNTLEY: After it was outlawed from operating in the state and the Alabama Christian Movement was organized, were you at all involved with that phase of the movement. I know you would be involved later on but in those initial days?GOREE: No, I was not involved, not a member. As you know the Alabama Christian Movement was almost church based. HUNTLEY: Right. GOREE: Throughout the ministers and my minister was not a part of it. So, being a [inaudible], lead more or less by his church philosophy I didn' ; t join or become a part of it. HUNTLEY: Were you still living in the same neighborhood? GOREE: Living in East Birmingham. The impact was so great from the Alabama Christian Movement people started setting up smaller groups. Now in East Birmingham under Dr. Patton and some more ministers that' ; s where we started this voting clinic. We called it a Civic League. HUNTLEY: Right. GOREE: We became very civic minded. Because of the impact of the Christian Movement. Since we were not in that big circle or that mainstream we had our own little Civic League. HUNTLEY: How did the Civic Leagues operate? GOREE: It operated primarily for improving the community if necessary. We were basically interested in getting people to vote. We held voting clinics every Wednesday night throughout the neighborhood. We found those people and that was an experience because I was never aware, maybe I should say, I had no awareness of how many people that I had grown up under that could not read and write. These were the people that were pretty much neighborhood role models, homeowners, nice dressers and money paying people in the church. HUNTLEY: But they could not read and write? GOREE: But they couldn' ; t read and write and I was astounded. Because I was not aware of their limitations. They would come and then also those who were interested the older people we would sit down and go over it just like we would with a child. We got them ready for all of the tricky questions. That question about how old is your oldest child and you would answer and especially for the men or the ladies. Then they would ask you when did you marry. You would tell them when you married. If that child was born out of wedlock they would not qualify you. HUNTLEY: That would actually disqualify you? GOREE: That would disqualify you. So, we had to keep pounding that in their heads about those persons. The highlight of that Civic League in East Birmingham was Rosa Parks spoke and I introduced her. HUNTLEY: Oh, is that right? GOREE: Yes, we had a church field and we were all outside and she was the lady of the hour. HUNTLEY: What church? GOREE: That St. Luke' ; s [inaudible] church in East Birmingham. That' ; s where we had our anniversary program and we invited Rosa Parks as a guest speaker, and she came. HUNTLEY: Is that right? Did Martin Luther King come to your church in those early days? GOREE: No, he never came to my church. HUNTLEY: But you heard him speak? GOREE: New Pilgrim Baptist Church. HUNTLEY: At New Pilgrim? GOREE: I think it might be in that introduction I gave Lola. HUNTLEY: It says in ' ; 55. GOREE: I heard him speak the first time he came to Birmingham. That was ' ; 55 right after the bus boycott. At Sixteenth Baptist Church. The rest of the time I heard him at the mass meetings and that' ; s wherever he was. Two times he spoke [inaudible] New Pilgrim Baptist Church. That was a special occasion I heard him there. Many times, at the mass meetings because I went to all of the mass meetings. The last time he spoke was at the city auditorium and that was when he was, had declared war on, not war, but spoke out against the Vietnam War. HUNTLEY: That was in ' ; 66 or ' ; 67. GOREE: The last speech. He made it in Birmingham. He was [inaudible] to tell the federal government that they were wrong. HUNTLEY: Sounds as if every time King was in town you were there. GOREE: Never missed the opportunity, never missed it. HUNTLEY: What kind of feeling did you have as you listened to Martin Luther King? GOREE: I was drawn to him, I guess, psychologically drawn to him because of his charisma then the depths of his speeches. I was always fascinated by him and still am whenever I hear him or read his work. You cannot argue with him. You find it very hard to debate with him. You' ; ve got to be a real philosopher to debate with Dr. King. I' ; m always fascinated with that. He' ; s one person that I just can' ; t, with my limited knowledge I cannot [inaudible]. It' ; s very difficult to disagree with him. The next thing he was a very warm person. I found that out twice I had encountered to just really touch him so to speak. We were at the Smith & ; Gaston' ; s Lounge, that' ; s when all of the children were in jail. He came in and all of us went down there. I would always leave Ullman High School headed for a movement meeting. I would never go home. HUNTLEY: Was that every day? GOREE: Every day, when there was a mass meeting I was going. So, we were down in the lounge having, not alcohol but cokes, coffee, sandwiches. The lounge was just like this with people. All of a sudden he came through and I' ; ve never seen people just run up and pull on a person. Dr. King, my daughter, Dr. King, my son and he was just as nice, just as warm. He didn' ; t pull away. He didn' ; t seem [inaudible]. He would say, " ; Yes, ma' ; am, I understand we' ; re working on that." ; No frustration. Then a friend of mine knew him personally so she said, " ; Goree, come on let' ; s make the pictures." ; I said, " ; No, give me the video." ; So, I videoed the girls with him. We weren' ; t girls but the young ladies with him. I videoed them while they were standing up there with Dr. King. HUNTLEY: You mean you took motion pictures? GOREE: Yes. HUNTLEY: Do you have any of those? GOREE: I guess Doris still has them. [inaudible]. She said, " ; Come on." ; And I was just too excited. Then that last night when he was at the auditorium that was the last time I saw him. She went up to...I was always with two or three certain people. She went up to the counter to speak to him. He said, " ; Hey girl, where' ; s your pastor at?" ; She said, " ; I don' ; t know I thought he was here." ; About that time, she was shorter than I was, and I just reached in there and shook his hand, you know. (Laughing) I tease her about it, I said, " ; Girl, I almost knocked you in that car trying to shake Dr. King' ; s hand." ; So, I shook his hand. Then when he was at 6th Avenue one night he was autographing his books and I bought a book and he autographed it. So, I never missed an opportunity wherever Dr. King was. I regret that...I have two regrets ; I didn' ; t go to Selma and I didn' ; t go to the march in Washington. Two regrets I have now, I wish I was a part of it. HUNTLEY: Right. You attended the mass meetings on a regular basis? GOREE: Regular basis. HUNTLEY: How would you describe a mass meeting? GOREE: I think it' ; s one of those phases in history that you read about, but you can' ; t believe it until you encounter it. First of all, all fears are gone. I' ; ve never felt that death...if we had died in a church I don' ; t think I would have cared. If a bomb had gone off, we were just that happy, we were just that elated. So, it' ; s not often you get that kind of a feeling. Where you step on a policeman' ; s foot if it' ; s in the way. Or you know the church is being guarded or you know people are out there. We just don' ; t care. I think the removal of fear is something that I had not experienced, and I don' ; t know if I will ever have that kind of emotional feeling again. Another thing that amazes me about the movement now, you know in retrospectively, is that there was something there for everybody. You would go in and the first thing in the afternoon and if you hadn' ; t eaten in the basement of the church or the annex or wherever it was. You had fish fry, you had hot dogs, hamburgers and so on that' ; s the atmosphere right there. Then after that you go upstairs for the meeting and you had an old fashion pray meeting. So, for all of us that love old-fashioned prayer meetings where folks actually say your prayers, you know. So that satisfied that element. After that you had the Alabama Christian Movement Choir taking the stand. So, if you' ; re a person who likes gospel, we had gospel at its best. HUNTLEY: That' ; s the place to be? GOREE: That' ; s the place to be. Collection time, you got Gardner, Rev. Gardner, who was a comedian by nature. So, when he got ready to take up a collection it was almost like you had Eddie Murphy up there. He would just keep you laughing, always some kind of joke. He would take up collection and it was...especially jokes on the White folks. So, he just tickled me. After that nothing is never the same. Each personality, Ralph Abernathy would take the podium, tell this little hickey all those teasickers, talking about the people who got along with White people, he would call them teasickers. He would come along and tell them I bath in White ivory soap and I don' ; t stink and all that. Well, you know that kind of down home [inaudible] talk really got the people involved. HUNTLEY: Right. GOREE: Finally, when Dr. King came out you' ; re already happy and that' ; s like putting the icing on the cake. He comes in with all the intellectual and all the...You know, not only the intellectual but the charisma he had and the power to speak. HUNTLEY: By that time, you could put it all together? GOREE: Yeah, you could pull it all together. [inaudible]. You just had such a variety and you leave out singing, " ; We Shall Overcome." ; It was an [inaudible]. Maybe I should say, a spiritual explosion or a spiritual high. That kept people coming, as many as three churches would fill with people, especially when the kids were in jail. HUNTLEY: Now, I' ; ve interviewed many people and found out that many of the teachers or professional people were really not involved because they were afraid of losing their jobs. You were a teacher, why were you involved at the level that you were? GOREE: I' ; ll tell you after 3:00 my time was my own. I had no fear of the job. The younger people [inaudible]. Some people walked off the job, but they had to be younger people. HUNTLEY: Oh, some did walk off the job? GOREE: Some, especially in Montgomery, you had that type of people to walk off. Then you had a few teachers that went to jail. At least I know one, ... [end of side one] HUNTLEY: Were you involved in any demonstrations? GOREE: One, that was that Easter Sunday when they marched out of St. Carl' ; s, I marched. HUNTLEY: What was that like? I mean that was a big demonstration. GOREE: That was a big demonstration. Well, there were so many people that you just felt hypocritical if you just didn' ; t get out there and walk with them. HUNTLEY: Were you arrested? GOREE: No, I wasn' ; t arrested, sure wasn' ; t. HUNTLEY: What did it feel like being, you know after the speeches and all and then you hit the pavement. What was that experience like? GOREE: I think it showed you the power of the movement. You just didn' ; t care. You were just ready for whatever. I can see why the young people went, really. It was motivational. HUNTLEY: Many of the students would leave school or they wouldn' ; t come to school, they would come right down to this part of downtown and demonstrate. You as a teacher, did you attempt to discourage them from being involved? Or did you encourage them to get involved? Or were you neutral in that aspect? GOREE: Neutral, but always wanting to know what happened. Never blocked anybody at my door. I had a lot of respect for George Bell at the time. I never stood in anybody' ; s way. I didn' ; t want them to tell him that Ms. Goree told me to go. So, I was neutral. I didn' ; t say don' ; t go but I never held my hand across the door. I never threatened anybody with a grade. HUNTLEY: Did any of your students ever leave from your class? GOREE: Emptied the classroom and came back telling me the news. We hugged. HUNTLEY: So, in effect you were...you really aided and abetted? GOREE: Yeah, I was their confidant lady. We would talk about it, close the door, no class today. We would talk about last night. Never stood up and blocked the door or at no point did I say go because I didn' ; t want it to get to the principal that I encouraged them to leave. They needed no encouragement because they just walked out. HUNTLEY: As a result of your involvement, your participation in the mass meetings. Were there ever any threats toward you as far as your job was concerned? GOREE: No threats at all. HUNTLEY: Then did many people, many people that were teachers, simply assume that there would have been some retaliation if they had gotten involved. Were there actual retaliations toward some of the teachers? GOREE: I think retaliation is a word they used. I think they left it to those people. You know how we separate ourselves. HUNTLEY: I see. GOREE: I can' ; t believe they feared their jobs to that extent. Then again, I [inaudible] especially when I' ; m playing bridge or when I' ; m in a sorority meeting. Or if I' ; m at Ullman the next day talking about it. It' ; s almost a turn up your nose attitude, y' ; all go ahead on. HUNTLEY: Oh, is that right? GOREE: Yeah. HUNTLEY: So, people were making determinations based upon... GOREE: You people, yeah. That belongs to the other people, that' ; s not for us. HUNTLEY: So, was it a class thing? GOREE: Kind of a class thing. Even their children, for their children, it was a class thing. HUNTLEY: That' ; s interesting. GOREE: I think that worry when people were telling you that they were frightened about their job. I think that really was class. I always felt it was sort of a class thing. HUNTLEY: That' ; s very interesting. I' ; ve heard that before. GOREE: You hide behind the word retaliation but no. HUNTLEY: It was a decision that you made? GOREE: A decision you made. They just didn' ; t see the effort ; I mean they didn' ; t see the purpose. HUNTLEY: The night that A. D. King' ; s home was bombed first and then the A. G. Gaston motel was bombed. Do you remember that? GOREE: Very well, I jumped in the car and came down. Wouldn' ; t miss it for nothing. HUNTLEY: So, what did you see when you came down? GOREE: Well, first of all it was mass confusion, especially for the Blacks. [inaudible] fire started. When we got in the motel it was just jammed pack and James Labor was up on the table trying to quite people down. He was a security guard and he could wear a uniform. So, he kind of represented a police vision for us. Not a policeman but just a security guard. He had on his security uniform and he was trying to quite the people down. Especially the light skin people. We laughed about that. Some light skin people came through and they had to holler out, I' ; m a Negro, I' ; m a Negro. They thought everybody looked White. There were policemen everywhere. The tank was rolling. Bull Conner' ; s tank was rolling. It was just chaos, it really was. HUNTLEY: Was your husband involved? GOREE: My husband never was involved. He always left it up to me. (Laughing) He said, there was no need for both of us to be crazy. HUNTLEY: Why did you not attend the march on Washington? GOREE: I really didn' ; t have. I don' ; t think I had, my associates, the girls that I would be with, they didn' ; t particularly want to go. I don' ; t know if I had an idea of transportation, rather to fly or try to catch a bus. I didn' ; t get in with who was leaving Birmingham to go. I got lost in that part of the movement. That' ; s why I didn' ; t go. HUNTLEY: Well, just a month after that, in fact less than a month after that the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was bombed. Where were you that Sunday morning? GOREE: I was at my church in East Birmingham. Of course, you know I lived next door to one of the girls that was killed. HUNTLEY: I didn' ; t know that. Which girl? GOREE: Cynthia Wesley was my next door neighbor. HUNTLEY: When did you find out she had been killed? GOREE: Well, my husband came and got me when he heard the news. He came to church and told me to come home, Cynthia had been killed. HUNTLEY: This is while you were actually in church? GOREE: Yeah, he came. We had just left out of Sunday School and getting ready for our 11:00 services. HUNTLEY: How did that impact your community? GOREE: Well, everybody was saddened by it and shocked. If you would notice even in the community where you live today, you don' ; t have that community cohesiveness that you had growing up. How many people on your street that you really know personally that...HUNTLEY: It' ; s a difference. GOREE: It' ; s a difference. Everybody knew Cynthia. It brought the neighbors together. They came in and out of the Wesley' ; s home. Then they had their friends. It was just a busy time. I would go in and out and offer my assistance in anything I could do. HUNTLEY: Did you attend the funeral? GOREE: I attended the funeral. Sure did. It was at 6th Avenue South, Rev. Porter was the pastor there. So, I attended their funeral. Of course, you know, Dr. King spoke, so, I remember I was standing in the window, sure was. We experienced quite a bit living there on the hill because every time the Shores' ; home was bombed. HUNTLEY: That' ; s right, yes. GOREE: They would come through my community. I' ; m not far from the Shores' ; home. HUNTLEY: Right, you are right on top of Dynamite Hill. GOREE: Yeah. The police would come and tell us to go back in the house. So, I did have them holler at you, Get back in that house. Shoot through the shrubberies on our street. HUNTLEY: Oh, is that right? GOREE: They would shoot through the hedges and stuff like that. Then they would order us back in the house. Weren' ; t even down there at Shores' ; house just standing on our porch. HUNTLEY: How many of them? Were there many policemen or just a car? GOREE: Just, maybe about two cars. HUNTLEY: So, you didn' ; t look at the Birmingham Police Department as being there in the community to protect and serve you? GOREE: No protection, no not at all. I never felt that they were there to protect, sure didn' ; t. HUNTLEY: Right. Now we' ; ve covered an awful lot of territory. Is there anything else that you would like to include before we conclude? GOREE: Lest we forget that too much credit cannot be given to Fred Shuttlesworth because his house was leveled. I did go to see that bombing. He paved the way before Dr. King got here. I was with those kids that integrated riding that bus before Dr. King came. I knew all about those who dared to sit. I knew the kids by name. They worked with Fred and Rev. [inaudible] on southside. So, maybe I should describe myself in one [inaudible]. I have no regrets and it' ; s an experience that I wouldn' ; t take anything for. It' ; s different than secondary. Secondary experience and primary experience. HUNTLEY: That' ; s right. GOREE: That first-hand experience in being there is something that you really can' ; t explain. I just hope somehow people who were involved in Birmingham, especially should have written a book because they were right in the middle of it. It was a price to pay. But the price that was paid I know why it was paid because there was no fear. It was such a conviction that people were just willing to die for it. You look at it now and you feel sorry, but it was such a strong conviction. Only thing I would like to close with is where do we stand now. HUNTLEY: Where do we stand now? GOREE: You think we made progress and you can turn it off now, you and I are just talking now. Rather we really appreciate it. I don' ; t think...there was one thing about Dr. King, he didn' ; t advocate divisions. It didn' ; t make any difference if you marched or not. If you had something to offer. I think that' ; s where we should be now. It' ; s not the person who got out there and walked in the street. You played your part. HUNTLEY: Everybody had a role. GOREE: Right, everybody had a role to play. Only thing I' ; m saying is the persons who are now serving should have the same type of commitment to do a good job. HUNTLEY: That' ; s right. I want to thank you for taking your time. GOREE: Oh, ok. HUNTLEY: You' ; ve been very helpful. GOREE: Just bubbling over what I think about it. HUNTLEY: I can tell. Thank you. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
bcri.org. 0 http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=CGoree1998.xml CGoree1998.xml
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Cleopatra Goree
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Cleopatra Goree discusses being born and raised in Birmingham before getting involved with the Movement as a teacher. She lived in Dynamite Hill, attended mass meetings and experienced many bombings firsthand.
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19980429G
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Parks, Rosa, 1913-2005
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968
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1998-04-29
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video
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85ed12e5f3fc17c8a28c851ebc31a2f7
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Video
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Oral History
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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English
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bcriohp
Oral History
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Horace Huntley
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John Cross
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http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=JCross1997.xml
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Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee
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5.4 July 24, 1997 Rev. John Cross Interviewed on July 24, 1997 19970724C 01:14:26 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project Collection bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Jess Holdnak Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, Birmingham, Ala., 1963 American Veterans of World War II Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee John Cross Horace Huntley Video 1:|13(7)|36(11)|57(1)|83(2)|103(4)|116(1)|126(12)|142(8)|158(2)|167(15)|195(8)|207(9)|221(14)|247(5)|263(14)|272(9)|285(13)|310(5)|323(1)|334(14)|342(9)|346(5)|363(14)|379(13)|388(2)|397(11)|404(8)|415(3)|421(10)|428(7)|439(6)|454(9)|462(4)|470(12)|489(3)|502(9)|510(6)|526(6)|546(2)|552(6)|566(4)|580(2)|587(6)|604(7)|615(9)|626(18)|639(12)|655(9)|670(2)|678(9)|685(8)|693(9)|704(9)|720(11)|732(16)|744(6)|755(6)|768(14)|782(6)|788(5)|795(11)|806(12)|820(6)|835(3)|847(5)|855(4)|864(7)|875(1)|881(12)|889(1)|902(2)|908(5)|915(9) 0 https://youtu.be/IPVl71Sjlvw YouTube video English 0 Introduction H: This is an interview with Rev. John Cross for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institutes Oral History Project. I’m Dr. Horace Huntley. We are presently at the Civil Rights Institute. Today is July 24, 1997. I want to thank you first of all for taking time out of your schedule and coming all the way from Atlanta to sit and talk to us today about the movement and about you. Introduction for interview with Rev. John Cross by Dr. Horace Huntley. Cross, John 1925-2007 Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, Ala.) 33.516200, -86.813870 17 Birmingham Civil Rights Institute https://www.bcri.org/ BCRI Homepage 46 Early Life H: I would just like to start by asking you some general questions about your background. Where were you from Rev. Cross? C: I was born in Haynes, Arkansas. H: How many siblings did you have? C: I had four brothers and two sisters. Rev. Cross talks about his family, and growing up. His parents worked as sharecroppers on a plantation in Arkansas. African American children--Education ; Blacks--Segregation ; Haynes (Ark.) ; Plantation life--Southern States ; Sharecropping 162 Education H: I see. What kind of town was Haynes, Arkansas as you grew up? Do you remember when you started first grade? C: Oh, yeah. I started school before I was even old enough to be in there. My oldest sisters would take me to school sometime on special occasions and I got to know the principal and several of the teachers. So, that broke me in so when I did enter I was, it wasn’t strange for me. Rev. Cross discusses his education since going to school with his sisters before he was old enough, though graduating from Lincoln High. HE mentions the assistant super intendant, Dr. Charlie Stewart. Forest City (Ark.) ; Lincoln High School (Forest City, Ark.) African American high school students ; African American school children ; African Americans--Segregation ; Blacks--Segregation ; Haynes (Ark.) ; Segregation in education 630 Joining the Army in World War II C: After high school, I was called into the army. I spent just about 2 years less, 20 days. H: What was that experience like, going from Lincoln High School to the U.S. Army? Where did you go when you left Arkansas? Rev. Cross discusses joining the U.S. Army during World War II and becoming and army Chaplin. Fort Robinson (Ark,) African American religious leaders ; African American soldiers ; American Veterans of World War II ; Armed Forces--African American troops ; Camp Kilmer (N.J.) ; United States Army in World War II ; United States. Army ; World War II 1099 France and Okinawa H: How long did you stay in France? C: I was there for about 8 to 10 months. H: After you left France, where did you go? C: I left France because of the breakdown in the organizational structure. Our organization was being deactivated and I was being assigned to another outfit. Then, shipped to the Southwest Pacific. Rev. Cross talks about serving in both France and Okinawa (Pacific Theater). He discuses what it was like as a black solider, especially in Europe. American Veterans of World War II ; Armed Forces--African American troops ; United States Army in World War II ; United States Army in World War II. European theater of operations ; United States Army in World War II. War in the Pacific ; World War II ; World War, 1939-1945--Blacks ; World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Japan--Okinawa Island 1841 University and Teaching H: When you then left the military, you went back to Arkansas. What did you do? You were offered a job, teaching? C: Right. H: Tell me about that experience. Rev. Cross talks about attending college at Virginia Union University, and teaching in an all white high school. He talks about his University experience as well as his experience as a black teach and the pay gap he face compared to his white colleagues. African American educators ; African American religious leaders ; African Americans--Education (Higher) ; Union Theological Seminary in Virginia ; Virginia Union University (Richmond, Va.) 2298 Pastoring in Richmond and SNCC H: Did you pastor in Richmond while you were there? C: I accepted a church in my senior year in school. It was some 60 or 70 miles from Richmond, closer to the marine base. H: You were not married at this point? C: No. Rev. Cross talks about pastoring in Richmond, Virginia while at Virginia Union. He discusses demonstrating as a part of SNCC, including local boycotts and sit-ins in Richmond. Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee African Americans--Segregation ; Richmond (Va.) ; Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Ala.) 2813 Coming to Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Birmingham H: So, when you...then, this I’m assuming is in 1961 or so. So, when you get the call to come to Sixteenth Street, you are already familiar with, you’re sort of a veteran of, demonstrations? C: I had quite a number of hours credit in that department. Rev. Cross talks about staring his pastorship at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Cross was hired as a full-time pastor, but had to work a second full-time job as a cardiac assistant until church leadership agreed to provide full-time wages and benefits. Birmingham (Ala.) ; Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Ala.) 3286 Moving to Birmingham and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights H: So, you arrived here in Birmingham in 1962? C: Correct. H: What month did you come? C: It was May. H: May of 1962. Ok. This is just sort of preceding the....well, there are things that are sort of happening in Birmingham at the time. The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights has been very active. Rogers talks about his arrival in Birmingham in 1962 to serve at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) ; Birmingham, Ala. ; Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Ala.) 3584 Issues with Police and Bomb Threats to the Church H: What’s your most memorable occurrences during that first year, or so, with your involvement with Sixteenth Street and the movement? C: Well, first thing I saw was that we were in a meeting one day and this is when Dr. King decided to start inviting the children in. So, the building was packed and the police, fire department and several higher representatives of the police department came and wanted to speak to me. So, I was in the study and they came in and was asking if I could dismiss the meeting, cause they were breaking fire regulations. Rev. Cross talks about issues with the Birmingham Police and Fire Departments during large meetings. He describes being asked to call off meetings and refusing to do so. He also mentions receiving bomb threats to the church. Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Birmingham (Ala.). Police Department ; Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Ala.) 3789 Bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church H: The day of the bombing where the four children lost their lives, did you have a threat at all? C: Not that I know about receiving. H: Were you in the building that morning? Rev. Cross talks about the day the Sixteenth Street Church was bombed. He describes finding the bodies of the four little girls. 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, Birmingham, Ala., 1963 ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Racism--United States ; Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Ala.) 4308 Justice for Bombing H: Well, we’ve covered an awful lot of territory today. Is there anything else that you would like to say before we conclude? C: I’m just happy after 14 years of waiting for justice to be done, it broke through and one individual was arrested, Robert Chambliss and found guilty of being the perpetrator of that bombing. Rev. Cross talks about the conviction of the Sixteenth Street Church bomber and the fight to convict the others involved. 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, Birmingham, Ala., 1963 4455 Conclusion H: I want again to thank you for taking time out of your schedule to come to sit and talk with me. You’ve been very, very helpful. C: Thank you for the invitation to come. H: Thankyou. Conclusion of interview. Cross, John Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, Ala.) Oral History Rev. John Cross discusses serving as an Army Chaplin during World War II in France and Okinowa, then pastoring in Virginia before leading Sixteenth Baptist Church in the early 1960's. He was the pastor when Sixteenth Street Church was bombed in 1963. HUNTLEY: This is an interview with Rev. John Cross for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institutes Oral History Project. I' ; m Dr. Horace Huntley. We are presently at the Civil Rights Institute. Today is July 24, 1997. I want to thank you first of all for taking time out of your schedule and coming all the way from Atlanta to sit and talk to us today about the movement and about you. CROSS: You haven' ; t gotten my bill yet. (Laughing) HUNTLEY: So, that will be coming in the mail? I would just like to start by asking you some general questions about your background. Where were you from Rev. Cross? CROSS: I was born in Haynes, Arkansas. HUNTLEY: How many siblings did you have? CROSS: I had four brothers and two sisters. HUNTLEY: There were seven of you? CROSS: Seven of us. HUNTLEY: Where do you fit in? CROSS: I' ; m the baby. HUNTLEY: You' ; re the baby. Ok. Were your parents both from Haynes, Arkansas? CROSS: From the general area. HUNTLEY: What type of work did they do? CROSS: Well, my father was a riding boss, that was the title they gave him for his job. He was a supervisor for the day hands that worked for the plantation owner. Their assignments...he would have to go out and do different things on the plantation. That was not a part of the sharecroppers' ; responsibility. HUNTLEY: So, he was sort of the manager of the workers on the plantation? CROSS: Right, of the day hands. HUNTLEY: What did your mother do? What type of work did she do? CROSS: She did laundry for the plantation owner and whatever else she could find the time to do. HUNTLEY: What about their educational backgrounds? Did either of them attend formal schooling? CROSS: I think high school was about as far as either of them went. HUNTLEY: I see. What kind of town was Haynes, Arkansas as you grew up? Do you remember when you started first grade? CROSS: Oh, yeah. I started school before I was even old enough to be in there. My oldest sisters would take me to school sometime on special occasions and I got to know the principal and several of the teachers. So, that broke me in so when I did enter I was, it wasn' ; t strange for me. HUNTLEY: So, you were sort of ahead of the game? CROSS: Right. HUNTLEY: An old timer almost when you started. What was school like in Haynes? Those first days of your schooling. CROSS: It was about the same routine as it is now. Getting your assignments out and going to another. You can imagine a one room school in a church building with eight grades. The teacher had to listen to your assignments. HUNTLEY: You had one teacher teaching eight grades? CROSS: One teacher. HUNTLEY: How many students, approximately? CROSS: About 75 to 100. HUNTLEY: In one room? CROSS: In one room. HUNTLEY: That must have been an experience. CROSS: I was giving some instruction by a predecessor who had taught. He was giving it up for a better paying job, teaching in another school district. So, he had asked me...I had just gotten out of the army and he talked me into accepting. I said, " ; I hadn' ; t been to college" ; and he said, " ; we can get you an emergency certificate." ; HUNTLEY: Well, did you then...after you had gone through Haynes, you went to high school? Did you go to high school in Haynes? CROSS: No, they only had a White high school. HUNTLEY: So, where did you go to high school? CROSS: I went to high school in Forest City, 8 miles north of Haynes. HUNTLEY: What was that transition like going from a small, one room elementary school? Was your high school larger? CROSS: Oh, much larger. HUNTLEY: How did that feel? Now, it' ; s really like going to town to go to school, right? What was that like? CROSS: It was quite a change. It brought about some fears that you had to over succumb by space and room. A room for almost any needs you had. I quickly made the transition satisfactorily, making friends with the students. HUNTLEY: Did you participate in any extracurricular activities? CROSS: I tried to participate in one. It was a glee club. I wanted to become a member because they would get engagements to go out and sing for some of these organizations. I just wanted to try out for that, but I didn' ; t make the tryouts. They assigned me to being a tenor and I ended up singing baritone. They would give me a baritone assignment and I would end up singing tenor. So, the director said, " ; you won' ; t keep your voice in the same assignment we give you so we can' ; t use you." ; HUNTLEY: Was that a real disappointment? CROSS: It was a very big disappointment for me, cause I had looked forward to being in that group and enjoying some of the things they enjoyed. When I was turned down, it was just like somebody had just shocked me. I soon overcame it. HUNTLEY: Yes, as we normally do with disappointments. Well, are there any individuals or teachers that you remember that stand out in your mind that had an impact upon you at that point? That time in your career you were sort of laying foundation. Is there anybody that stands out in your mind? CROSS: Yeah, several of the teachers. The principal, who had dual capacities of being principal and assistant superintendent throughout the county. I don' ; t know how he did his other job, cause I never missed him at our school. Dr. Charlie Stewart. HUNTLEY: Dr. Charlie Stewart. Now you say that he was assistant superintendent over the Black schools? CROSS: Yes. HUNTLEY: How many schools were in the area? CROSS: Well, there were several. I' ; m not sure how many. HUNTLEY: There were several, but you never missed him from the classroom? CROSS: Never missed him from Lincoln High. He was always there. He organized and grouped male students into a class called the common sense class. That was one of the things I can remember him by. He always said to us, " ; when you go seeking a job ; when you have an interview, look the interviewer directly in the eye. Don' ; t be looking up or down, but eyeball to eyeball contact." ; He said, " ; try to do that" ; and he would have us experiment with him, to talk with him and look him eyeball to eyeball. HUNTLEY: These were all males? CROSS: All males. One of the teachers said one day with the group I was talking with...it was kind of uncut. He said, " ; whoever heard of somebody organizing a common sense class? You can' ; t teach a person common sense you are born with that." ; I said, " ; Professor Stewart can." ; HUNTLEY: So, you think it was a successful venture? CROSS: Oh, yeah. It helped me in later years when I went out seeking employment, to look the person right in the eye that I was talking to. He taught us how to get dressed, to put on your best clothes...shirt tail in, not hanging out ; hair combed. HUNTLEY: Well, did all of the boys that went to Lincoln High School go through that course? CROSS: No, it was on a volunteer basis. HUNTLEY: A volunteer basis. CROSS: We had probably 25 to 30 boys who had volunteered for that. This was after class assignments. HUNTLEY: I see. CROSS: I don' ; t think there was any credit put on your record. HUNTLEY: Strictly volunteer? CROSS: Strictly volunteer. HUNTLEY: For self-improvement what did you do after high school? CROSS: After high school, I was called into the army. I spent just about 2 years less, 20 days. HUNTLEY: What was that experience like, going from Lincoln High School to the U.S. Army? Where did you go when you left Arkansas? CROSS: When I left Arkansas, I was inducted at Fort Robinson, Arkansas. I left the induction station and went to Louisiana for basic training. After being there for several months, I was shipped to Camp Kitermer, New Jersey, for an overseas assignment. I guess I was in Camp Kitermer for a week or two and we were having different training programs going on there. It surprised me when we got in Camp Kitermer, the ground was covered with snow. I said to myself, " ; this is going to give us an opportunity to stay indoors and get some good sleeping hours in," ; so I thought. HUNTLEY: Did that happen? CROSS: Oh, no. I found out you don' ; t lay up in the army barracks because of the weather. You go rain or shine, sleet or snow for whatever assignment we have for that day. HUNTLEY: Were there other friends, classmates other persons that you knew from Arkansas that were inducted the same time you were? CROSS: I had a classmate and he and I went for examination at the same time. Our class gave us a going away party and I told them, " ; you don' ; t know whether we' ; re going to pass the examination or not." ; HUNTLEY: You mean your class in high school? CROSS: In high school. I said, " ; wait until we get examined and then" ; ...but they wanted to give it before we went to the examination. Both of us failed the examination. My classmate failed cause he had a ligament cut in his left foot and I failed cause I was under weight. They said we will call you back in about 10 months. HUNTLEY: This is after you finished high school? CROSS: This is in the senior year when they called me back. HUNTLEY: They did call you in your senior year. Did you finish though? CROSS: Oh, yeah, I finished. They gave me, what you call that? HUNTLEY: A GED? CROSS: No, delayed process exemption for a few months. HUNTLEY: Oh, I see, so that you could...and after graduation you reported. CROSS: Right. HUNTLEY: Then, you went to New Jersey and you eventually went overseas, I assume. CROSS: Right. HUNTLEY: Where did you go? CROSS: We boarded ship there in New York. I forget how many days we were on that ship, but it felt like the journey would never end...and we went to the heart of France. So, when we got there, there was no trucks to meet us at the docks. So, we had to pick up our duffel bag and trucked it on by foot. HUNTLEY: And you walked. CROSS: We walked for several miles and then a truck met us at a certain point and then we got on the truck. HUNTLEY: What kind of outfit were you in? CROSS: I was in a general service engineer. HUNTLEY: What were your duties? What were you trained to do? CROSS: I was trained to be a company clerk. I never had too much field work. So, after I was in the army for several months, I introduced myself to the Chaplin and I told him, " ; I had been ordained as a minister and I would be happy to help you." ; He said well, " ; I need an assistant. Would you like to be my assistant?" ; " ; Well, I' ; ve just been assigned down at the regiment headquarters as a regimental assistant clerk." ; I said, " ; if there is any way you can get me, I would be happy to make a change." ; " ; Well, nobody turns a Chaplin down and I' ; ll come by your place tomorrow and we' ; ll see what happens from there." ; HUNTLEY: Now when were you called to the ministry? CROSS: I was called when I was 16 years old. So, this was...I went in the army and that was 1944. HUNTLEY: So, that is during the second world war. CROSS: Right. I was born in 1925 and in 1944 I was 19, when I was inducted. HUNTLEY: So, what was your experience like in France? I assume, then, when you made the request, you then became his assistant. CROSS: Well, I had to complete my basic training before I could go into his service. I was told to report to the Chaplin' ; s office that next morning, which I did. I worked for him for several months and then they started checking records and found out that I hadn' ; t completed my basic training. Then, I had to go back, leave the Chaplin' ; s office and go back on the field for basic training. HUNTLEY: In France? CROSS: Yes. HUNTLEY: Is that right? CROSS: Right. So, the Chaplin thought it was an underhand cut against him. I said, " ; no, if anything I' ; m supposed to have, I want to take it. I can come down to the chapel and do the work after hours." ; HUNTLEY: What were your duties? CROSS: Just clerical work. Typing and assisting him at different times. HUNTLEY: Was the Chaplin Black or White? CROSS: He was Black. HUNTLEY: Where was he from? CROSS: He was from a little town in South Carolina, just before you cross over in North Carolina. I forget the name of the town he was from, but he was a Shore graduate. A real nice young man. HUNTLEY: How long did you stay in France? CROSS: I was there for about 8 to 10 months. HUNTLEY: After you left France, where did you go? CROSS: I left France because of the breakdown in the organizational structure. Our organization was being deactivated and I was being assigned to another outfit. Then, shipped to the Southwest Pacific. Some left the general service engineer and became an aviation engineer. Instead of building roads and bridges, we were building airstrips. I never left... HUNTLEY: You were still in the clerical area? CROSS: I was still in the clerical area. HUNTLEY: How did you compare your experiences in France with that of the South Pacific? CROSS: Well, the experience in France was real unique. I was part of H & ; S Company, headquarters service and company. I was asked if I could get a three day pass to go...this is before I got out of Louisiana...to go from camp, to a place where our state convention was being held. My pastor told me that if I could show up there, he would have an exam for my ordination. So, when I explained this to my first sergeant, he told me to check with the captain of the company. I checked with him and told him the situation and he said, " ; have you talked with Sergeant Smith," ; who was the first sergeant. I said, " ; yeah, he told me to talk to you." ; He said, " ; are you sure it won' ; t be but three days?" ; I said, " ; it will be three, or less." ; So, he approved the pass and I left camp and went to the place in Arkansas, to meet with the convention. They catechized me for my ordination. I passed. There was one question I missed. I knew the answer they wanted me to give, but I gave the answer I felt comfortable giving, which was wrong. HUNTLEY: So, when you then arrived in France, because you had gone through this process, that, then, sort of opened another door for you? CROSS: Sure. HUNTLEY: Then, when you left France and went to the South Pacific, were you still in that same capacity? Did you work with the Chaplin? CROSS: I was still with the Chaplin. HUNTLEY: How was the South Pacific different from France? CROSS: Well, the South Pacific, where we landed, was nicknamed as " ; God Forsaken Island." ; HUNTLEY: What island was it? CROSS: Okinawa. It' ; s a big barren place. I had to go to the general hospital once when I was there, and it felt like it took me a week to get there. It' ; s such a huge island. HUNTLEY: Did you see any action in any of the fields? CROSS: I never saw any action, but I was in the action zone. So, I had one battle star, cause of location...of being near the fighting area. I never got to go near the direct action. HUNTLEY: Did you have the opportunity to meet any of the native people that lived either in the area you were in, in France, or the South Pacific? CROSS: Oh, yes. HUNTLEY: What was that experience like? CROSS: Just like changing from night to day. The people on Okinawa were kind of an outgoing kind of people. Some of them would come around the mess hall and...I was on KP duty one Sunday and they were standing in line at the garbage cans, collecting whatever we threw out. Rather than throwing it in the garbage cans, I had put it in a bag and hand it to them like that. The officer of the day saw me and told me, " ; no, don' ; t do that. You will get court-martialed for that." ; He said, " ; you throw it in the garbage can. If they get it out of the garbage can, it' ; s not your responsibility, but if you hand it to them and something happens to them, they can sue us." ; I thanked him for telling me and I never had liberality again. HUNTLEY: What about the people in France? Did you find the same situation there? CROSS: The people in France revealed some things to us that...to me and a lot of the soldiers, that it' ; s kind of a dark spot on some of the characters of some of our superior officers. I met a gentleman there in a cafe once one day and he asked me if he could join me at my table. I said, " ; sure." ; I could speak very little French and he could speak very little English, but we were able to communicate. He asked me, " ; you seem to be a very intelligent young man." ; He said, " ; you' ; re altogether different from what your officers are saying about you." ; I said, " ; what are they saying about me." ; He said, " ; not you personally, but about the Black soldiers. He said ya' ; ll were ignorant, you were diseased, and you had tails and for all of our people to avoid you." ; " ; Well, so what?" ; I told that to some of the troops in our company later on. They just got excited and said, " ; oh these so and so people." ; That' ; s our biggest problem, was these officers. If they would keep their mouths shut, things would be a lot better than they are. I didn' ; t let it upset me and try to get revenge or anything. I just made sure I kept my head high and stayed out of difficult situations, so I wouldn' ; t be accused of any violations of any kind. HUNTLEY: What was the reception that Black soldiers usually received from the French people as well as people from Okinawa? Were they pleasant? Did they seem to accept what they had been hearing from the White soldiers and White officers? How did they receive you? CROSS: Well, this particular gentleman told me. He said, " ; you are just the opposite of what your White officers have been portraying. I know then why they were making those kinds of arguments, because they didn' ; t want any intermingling with Black soldiers and with the native people in our villages." ; As long as they could keep that separation line, it was better for them. I don' ; t know what makes that person take that patriotical approach, but they got to keep everything divided one side or the other. In France and Belgium, places I visited, they didn' ; t listen to any of those clichés that they heard, because I have a friend that ran a restaurant in Belgium, that' ; s where one of our companies that I was stationed in was. This person that ran the restaurant...on my off day I would spend, more or less, most of the day there. They had a daughter that was about my age and she would be keeping the store, during the hours when traffic wasn' ; t heavy. She said to me one day...I was just beginning to grow whiskers...she said, " ; you have a hair in a bump. Come on and let me pick it out." ; She came from behind the counter and got a stool and sat next to me and she said, " ; you turn around and lay your head back, so I can pick that hair out of that bump." ; So, I did. While I was laying with my head back, I heard the door slam and I raised my head in a horizontal position and saw three White soldiers leaving the door. Her response was, " ; blond soldiers no good." ; HUNTLEY: Blond soldiers no good. When you then left the military, you went back to Arkansas. What did you do? You were offered a job, teaching? CROSS: Right. HUNTLEY: Tell me about that experience. CROSS: I felt that I was unprepared to teach, but when they told me they could give me two years credit from the army experience...which would be helpful in me getting an emergency certificate...I was happy to accept the position. I didn' ; t even ask them how much it paid. It was only after a week or two of working that it was only 90 dollars a month. That' ; s a lot of work for 90 dollars. HUNTLEY: How long did you remain there? CROSS: Just for two months. July and August. HUNTLEY: What did you do after that? CROSS: I was already seeking admission to college in the fall. I thought about going to the University of Lincoln, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and had been accepted. A friend of mine, who was a pastor...a pastor' ; s son, who had been to college, Bishop College in Dallas, Texas. He found out I was going to Lincoln and he almost...we were driving along the highway, he just stopped the car and said, " ; Lincoln? Do you know anybody in Lincoln?" ; I said, " ; no, just the name." ; He said, " ; well, that' ; s not a co-educational school. Anybody that' ; s been in the army for two years, you don' ; t need to get involved in the same sex kind of thing. You need to do a little sexual experience. Another thing about Lincoln, it' ; s isolated from the city, 30 or 40 miles from the city and you will be separated from city churches. It' ; s been my experience that when you get involved in the ministry, you need churches to give you that kind of experience." ; So, I kind of thought through what he was saying and the next day I sent off an application to Virginia Union University. I explained to them that my transcript would be sent, so they wouldn' ; t have to write for it. I had talked to the principal, asked if he could forward it to the school. So, in two week' ; s time, they had sent me a letter accepting my, saying they got the transcript accepting me as a student, but they didn' ; t have any accommodations on the campus. If I prefer to have a city dwelling, they could find me a room in the city and when I show up on campus, I would get the information on where I lived. So, that' ; s how I went to school. HUNTLEY: That' ; s in Richmond? CROSS: Richmond, Virginia. HUNTLEY: Why did you decided on Virginia Union? CROSS: Well, this friend of mine had mentioned if he was going to school again, he would choose Virginia Union University, because he had met so many inanities and it would give them a good count of themselves. It attracted him. He said if he had a chance, he would go to Union. He said, " ; this is what I recommend for you to do." ; I said, " ; well, that' ; s what I' ; ll do." ; So, I did and ended up going to Virginia Union University. HUNTLEY: What did you major in? CROSS: Sociology and a minor in history. HUNTLEY: How was that experience? You are now a man of the world. You' ; ve been in Europe. You' ; ve been in the Pacific. I' ; m assuming that most of the students were younger than you? CROSS: They were. HUNTLEY: What kind of experience was that for you? CROSS: It was a good experience, I guess, cause I have always been the kind of kid that played with all the children in the neighborhood. I have been where they were. Whatever I said, I had to mean it and see that it was carried out. When assignments were given, I expected them to be given back at the time they were requested to be delivered back. So, you can be fair without being over considerate. I really enjoyed the teaching. The superintendent asked me several times if I wanted to stay. He could get me a permanent position with the school system. He kept on asking and I knew how to get him off my back. So, I asked him, I said, " ; tell you what. You' ; ve been begging me to stay on." ; I said, " ; if I stay on, will you equal out my salary with all the other teachers in the system?" ; Where he made his mistake was to send me over to Wright High School to pick up my check one month. While I was there, the other principal was looking for it in the box with the checks in it and I was looking over his shoulder and reading everyone he picked up until he got to mine. They were all several hundred dollars, you know, and he finally got to mine and it was 90 dollars. So, I said to the superintendent, " ; you equalize my salary with the other teachers, I might give some consideration to staying." ; That was the end of the subject. HUNTLEY: You didn' ; t have anymore difficulty? CROSS: He didn' ; t ask me anymore. Whether he could do it or could try to do it. HUNTLEY: Was your salary equal to the Black teachers in the district? CROSS: Well, this was an all-White high school, so I don' ; t even know what the Blacks were making. HUNTLEY: The checks that you saw... CROSS: They were from that particular school. HUNTLEY: You were asking for equalization in Black and White salaries? CROSS: Right. HUNTLEY: So, that would end the questions. CROSS: That just cut the conversation off right there. HUNTLEY: Now, in Virginia Union, you are now living in Richmond, which is a large city. This is probably the first time that you have lived in a city this size. What was that experience like? I' ; m assuming that by you' ; re living in the city, you are an ordained minister. Did you have a relationship with churches in the area? What was that experience like being a college student, as well as.... CROSS: It was a good experience. In fact, the army experience helped to prepare me for my college days. I' ; m glad I did have that army training before I went to college, because I was a little more mature and was able to accept things more readily than if I had been much younger. I was given a lot of opportunities in college. Extracurricular activities...I joined an intercollegiate college group and the Union Theological Seminary and the girls school there at the seminar. We formed this mutual alliance to meet on a monthly basis and interact with each other, to see how well we adjusted to college life and meeting the needs. HUNTLEY: Did you pastor in Richmond while you were there? CROSS: I accepted a church in my senior year in school. It was some 60 or 70 miles from Richmond, closer to the marine base. HUNTLEY: You were not married at this point? CROSS: No. HUNTLEY: Did you meet your wife in college? CROSS: I met her in my junior year at college. HUNTLEY: And your children were born in Richmond? CROSS: In Richmond, right. HUNTLEY: What point did you come to Birmingham? How did Birmingham come into this mix? CROSS: When I was a pastor in this small church, in this residential area there in Richmond, part of Chesterfield County, I had done what I felt I could do with that. You don' ; t want to give up your ministry, so the best thing I could do was find a church that could be, more or less, acceptable to my style and leadership. So, I made all fortitudes that I could, to see what was vacant in certain cities. I met a friend that had submitted my name to one of the members of the [inaudible] committee for Sixteenth Street. They met at a convention. This person just happened to ask my friend if he knew anybody that was looking for a church. He said, " ; yeah, I know a man I can recommend to you" ; and he gave him my name. They wrote to me and they had received my name as a person who was interested in making a pastoral move and asked me if I was still interested and to send them a resume. So, I mailed them that information and gave them two dates that I could come preach. They asked for two dates, cause if one didn' ; t please them, they could choose the other. They gave me a date to come, so I went down and spoke. I delivered what I thought was the best sermon in my portfolio. HUNTLEY: You had attended Union Theological Seminary? CROSS: Virginia Union. HUNTLEY: What year were you called here then? CROSS: In 1962. HUNTLEY: Were you coming here as pastor or assistant pastor? CROSS: As pastor. HUNTLEY: Now coming from Virginia to Birmingham...now Birmingham having the reputation that it has as far as race is concerned, did you have any doubts in your mind about accepting this position? CROSS: None whatsoever, cause Richmond was just about as bad. Schools were segregated there, just like they were here. I had worked with the SNCC organization there. HUNTLEY: You had worked with SNCC in Richmond? CROSS: In Richmond. We had students that had tried to open up the downtown shopping center. They had gone to lunch counters to sit down and requests service and the waitress would refuse to wait on them. They sat there patiently. Finally, the manager told them they wouldn' ; t be served and they had to leave. They refused to leave and he suggested that if they didn' ; t leave, then he would have to call the police. They still refused to leave and the police was called and came and arrested them. So, this kind of created, kind of [inaudible] Virginia Union students being arrested downtown. Then, the organization got informed to come to their support. With the money to bail them out... HUNTLEY: Were you part of that organization at the time, or were you one of those that were demonstrating? CROSS: I was one of those that was demonstrating. I was a pastor of a church to so.. HUNTLEY: Were you ever arrested? CROSS: No, I was never arrested. I never did get involved in direct action movement. Such as, if a truck was being driven, you are going to stay in the way of a truck or bus. HUNTLEY: But you did demonstrate, but the groups you demonstrated with were never arrested? CROSS: No, never arrested. HUNTLEY: So, when you...then, this I' ; m assuming is in 1961 or so. So, when you get the call to come to Sixteenth Street, you are already familiar with, you' ; re sort of a veteran of, demonstrations? CROSS: I had quite a number of hours credit in that department. HUNTLEY: What was it like in making that move from Richmond to Birmingham, to Sixteenth Baptist Church? CROSS: It was a move that was hard for me to make. I had a good church and was getting along well with them. They were not one of those do-nothing groups, they were ready to take action in whatever I recommended. So, I had left a rural church to accept this church in Richmond. HUNTLEY: How large was your church? CROSS: It had a membership of 300. That was large considering that the church I had had a membership of about 150 in the rural area. So, I was looking forward to the challenge of giving myself to full time ministry. I felt Sixteenth Street would give me that opportunity and provide a house for me and my family to live in and a reasonable salary. Those are some of the considerations. HUNTLEY: So, in Richmond you were not full time. CROSS: No. HUNTLEY: What kind of work did you do? CROSS: It was a full time pastorship, as such, but what people expect from a pastor. Services every Sunday and visiting the sick and shut-ins, attending meetings, that kind of thing. I was still full time just they had a part time pay period. I never will forget once we had a deacons meeting at that church and the chairman of the board opened up the meeting that night on me. I was the agenda that night. After the opening prayer and everything, he said, " ; well pastor we' ; ve been getting a lot of complaints that you are not visiting the sick members in our congregation." ; I said, " ; I don' ; t know where you' ; re getting your information from, but anybody that' ; s sick in this congregation, that I give priority to my sick members. I don' ; t go around making it a habit to go and visit people in their home, unless I know their husband or children will be there during the day." ; I just feel he had something...that somebody said to him that I hadn' ; t been by to visit them. So, I just happened to mention it to him. Now, we have on our bulletin each Sunday my phone number, address and a statement in there saying if anybody is sick please call the pastor or call the deacon. I said, " ; now I haven' ; t gotten a call from anybody that I happen to know is sick now, other than our regular shut-ins. If you know of anybody, who is the one that said I wasn' ; t visiting the sick." ; He never would give me that information. It' ; s a good thing he brought it up, cause it gave me a chance to bring up a lot of things to the deacons that they hadn' ; t even considered. I said to them, " ; you know I have limited time that I can give to the church, cause I work a full time job just like you do." ; So, one of the deacons said, " ; but we called you as full time pastor." ; " ; Yes, you did too, but you' ; re giving me part time pay." ; Then, he asked the question that I couldn' ; t have answered any better. He said, " ; what is a full time pastor supposed to receive?." ; I said, " ; I' ; m glad you asked that question, so I laid the book out." ; One, two, three. I said, " ; I don' ; t get this, I don' ; t get this, and I don' ; t get this." ; The chairman said, " ; well, pastor these are some things that you have to stay here and earn. You can' ; t just expect to receive those just coming in." ; I said, " ; no, these are things the church is supposed to have for the pastor as soon as he signs up to come." ; I said, " ; I don' ; t get any of this. I can' ; t live on and support my family on what ya' ; ll are paying me. So, I have to work another job." ; HUNTLEY: What job did you work? CROSS: I was a cardiac assistant. I was working with a cardiac surgeon there at the hospital in Richmond. We did open heart surgery and my job was to prepare the pump and get it ready for the operation and be on the floor around the table to see that the supply to the pump when it was requested. I also took samples that were taken and carried them to the lab for examination and then cleaned the pump up after surgery. That was my job. So, the days that we would have surgery, I would have to report to work at 5:00 that morning, cause the machine we used had to be sterilized. HUNTLEY: So, you arrived here in Birmingham in 1962? CROSS: Correct. HUNTLEY: What month did you come? CROSS: It was May. HUNTLEY: May of 1962. Ok. This is just sort of preceding the....well, there are things that are sort of happening in Birmingham at the time. The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights has been very active. CROSS: Still very active. HUNTLEY: The students of Miles College in 1962 developed a selective buying campaign in downtown Birmingham. So, you were coming into a situation that was rather active. What was your role? Did you get involved at that particular point? CROSS: Well, the church elected me in January of 1962. The night I received the call...I got a telephone call from the chairman of the pulpit committee letting me know that the church had called me as pastor. They had just had a moment of the Freedom Riders' ; bus in Anniston a day or two before that. He was saying to me, " ; don' ; t let that stop you from coming to Birmingham, because Birmingham wasn' ; t as bad as it was in Anniston." ; " ; No, that' ; s more of an indication to make me want to come more. It hasn' ; t dampened my spirits one bit." ; HUNTLEY: So, that in fact was upper most in your mind as you decided to come to Birmingham? CROSS: I came to one of the meetings the first week I was here. From that initial meeting, I was given a position on the strategy committee, that made all the plans for the.... HUNTLEY: Movement, the Alabama Christian Movement. CROSS: Of course, at that time Dr. King was, had been invited to bring SCLC in to give leadership to the local movement. So, this was a week or so after I was here that Dr. King came here with his stand. He had a cross section meeting with the leaders here in the Black community, teachers, doctors, lawyers, schoolteachers. HUNTLEY: What was your relationship with Fred Shuttlesworth? CROSS: Other than working in the movement we had no relationship. Of course, I was, didn' ; t know I was going to get involved so soon. The first night I came to the meeting they were telling me the difficulty they were having in getting places to meet and were wondering if they could meet at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church some. I just felt that every church would voluntarily give them that permission. I said, " ; sure, I would be happy to have you." ; So, they scheduled the next meeting there. HUNTLEY: What did your deacon board say when they scheduled the meeting for the Sixteenth Street? CROSS: I could have gotten in a little bit of trouble at that point, but they let me know they had a committee at the church that supervised the lending of the church out to an organization to keep down any conflict. I said well, they needed to know that night. I felt being pastor, I had the authority to give them permission to meet. That was the way we dealt with it at the time. HUNTLEY: So, you did have the authority and you took the authority to allow the movement to have meetings at Sixteenth Street. Prior to then, meetings were not held at Sixteenth Street. CROSS: That' ; s what I soon found out. I felt that there were a lot of churches that would allow them to meet there but were not large enough to accommodate the crowd. In fact, Sixteenth Street was too large for a while, until momentum built up to a peek. Then, the balcony was overflowing at times. HUNTLEY: What' ; s your most memorable occurrences during that first year, or so, with your involvement with Sixteenth Street and the movement? CROSS: Well, first thing I saw was that we were in a meeting one day and this is when Dr. King decided to start inviting the children in. So, the building was packed and the police, fire department and several higher representatives of the police department came and wanted to speak to me. So, I was in the study and they came in and was asking if I could dismiss the meeting, cause they were breaking fire regulations. That created some problems. I said, " ; what regulations? We can make sure we won' ; t break anymore regulations." ; Well now, this is not my business. I' ; m just giving them permission to meet here. I said, " ; if there are regulations that are being ignored we need to know so we can announce to stay away from certain areas." ; So, this captain pleaded with me and said, " ; you' ; re the pastor and you can call this meeting off right now." ; I said, " ; no, it' ; s not my meeting and I can' ; t call it off. Dr. King is the only one that can call this meeting off." ; I refused to do it. We got a lot of calls from the police, that they had received calls that bombs had been planted in the church and they wanted us to dismiss our group so they could search the church. This was on Sundays. HUNTLEY: Did that happen? Did they...there were bomb threats prior to the actual bombing on September 1963, where you actually had to let people...I mean vacate the building and the police come in to check the building. CROSS: That' ; s correct. We had a couple of those. On each of those occasions, nothing was found. By getting people upset like that, we didn' ; t even ask them to come back. We left out, that was it for that day. The offering had been taken and it happened just before time to preach. I don' ; t know whether it was just one of those situations to harass us and make us get a little jittery, or what it was. HUNTLEY: The day of the bombing where the four children lost their lives, did you have a threat at all? CROSS: Not that I know about receiving. HUNTLEY: Were you in the building that morning? CROSS: Yes, I was in the building. I left the study about 15 minutes before this happened. I went and sat in on the women' ; s bible study class that met on the Sixteenth Street side of the building. I sat in their class that morning. It was a wonderful lesson too, " ; a love that forgives." ; People seem to have love, but they don' ; t know how to forgive. HUNTLEY: So, you were in that class when the bomb actually went off? CROSS: Correct. HUNTLEY: Can you explain what that was like? CROSS: Well, it was an experience that I couldn' ; t believe it was a bomb at first. We' ; d been having a little difficulty with our hot water heater in the kitchen area and I thought it was the tank that had exploded down there. Then, in a few seconds, I didn' ; t smell gas fumes, I smelled powder fumes. Immediately, I recognized that the hot water heater didn' ; t blow up, it was a bomb or something that went off. I jumped up and said, " ; let' ; s clear the building right away! Let' ; s get out!" ; Then, I started to run downstairs to check on the children below, to see if they had gotten trapped in a room or anything. I criss-crossed from one side to another, going from one room to another and I didn' ; t see a single person in any of the rooms. Then, I left out going outside and when I got outside, I saw what happened. There were some people that were injured, and they were being taken to the hospital. Then, one of the civil defense workers came up to me and told me there was a big hole down on the east side of the church and wanted me to go look at it. I said, " ; let me go alone." ; I wanted to calm the crowd down, cause they were getting unruly. Some began picking up bricks and throwing them at the police. HUNTLEY: A large crowd had gathered? CROSS: Yeah, and it was making it almost impossible to do anything constructive, because of the crowd jamming in, you know...making threats against the police and if not threats, then verbally abusing them, accusing them. Saying, " ; yeah they know who did it! We' ; ll get even with them." ; I said, " ; you don' ; t know who did it." ; So, I got on the bull horn and started telling people the best thing that they could do was to vacate the premises and give the police and the persons working to clear things up room to work. I said, " ; whoever did this, they will be brought to justice." ; So, then, I went around to look at the hole in the east side of the church. All I had to do was just bend over slightly and could walk right in. One of the defense workers said to me, " ; don' ; t go in there Rev. Maybe another bomb will go off!" ; This was the standard procedure, that they would have a blast to try to draw a crowd and another blast would go off, once the crowd got there. That kept ringing in my head that, that maybe what they had expected to happen that day...that they were setting one to draw you and another one to damage you. When they told me not to go in there cause there might be...I said, " ; no, I must go in, cause if there are bodies in here, we want to find them." ; So, my bravery gave them more courage to come in. We saw this bunch of debris there and they started digging down in there and less then two feet down we saw a body. We took that one out. They brought a stretcher in and dug down a little bit more and saw another one. So, they were all on top of each other, as if they had hugged each other. I didn' ; t know any of them at the time, cause of the way that explosion had... HUNTLEY: You couldn' ; t recognize them? CROSS: They looked much older than they were and when we got to the morgue, a lot of them had to identify them by their clothes, or if they were wearing a ring or watch or something of that kind. As soon as we got those four bodies out, the first body was taken out through the crater, but the crowd was so massive down there, we realized that the others needed to be taken out on the opposite side. So, we took them out on the west side of the church building and put them in the ambulance on that side. Just as we got the last body out, we heard what appeared to be moaning and groaning back in the toilet stalls and we went back there and that was Sarah Collins. I didn' ; t recognize who she was at the time, blood was streaming down her cheeks and she did seem incoherent. She said she wasn' ; t groaning, she was calling her sister, Addie Mae. I said, " ; it sounded like you were groaning" ; and she said, " ; I wasn' ; t groaning, I was calling Addie. Where are you Addie?" ; So, we got her out and took her down to the hospital. They hospitalized her and kept her there for several weeks. They gave her an artificial eye and kept close treatment on her and she was in the hospital for several weeks. There were other people that were injured, mildly injured. Another passerby was injured. He was walking along that side of the church...wasn' ; t even coming to the church, when the blast occurred. It just broke his right arm. He was traveling south on Sixteenth Street. He was lucky that his head wasn' ; t blown off. HUNTLEY: He was right there near, where the blast took place? CROSS: I think he had passed that blast area. He was up there near the front of the church, where the bulletin board is. It was quite a day. A day that will never be forgotten by this church, or by the nation. HUNTLEY: Well, we' ; ve covered an awful lot of territory today. Is there anything else that you would like to say before we conclude? CROSS: I' ; m just happy after 14 years of waiting for justice to be done, it broke through and one individual was arrested, Robert Chambliss and found guilty of being the perpetrator of that bombing. He was only charged for the murder of one of the children. I guess that was designed so that it would get him on one and they could charge him for the others. He was giving a life in prison sentence. I was told at that time, there were others sitting in the courtroom that were even as guilty as Robert Chambliss and they would be brought to trial as soon as they could find proper evidence to convict them. Many years have gone by since 1963 and 1974 and finally there' ; s a redoing, a reopening of the case to try others. I' ; ve been called by several reporters, on what is my feeling about this, since it' ; s been so long, how could this make us feel any better. I said, " ; as long as we know that there are persons out there who are guilty of committing this atrocity, we can never sleep comfortably at night until they are brought to trial." ; I said, ' ; I am never one to try to cut off justice from being beated out." ; So, I just hope that others can be convicted of this hideous crime. HUNTLEY: I want again to thank you for taking time out of your schedule to come to sit and talk with me. You' ; ve been very, very helpful. CROSS: Thank you for the invitation to come. HUNTLEY: Thank you. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
bcri.org. 0 http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=JCross1997.xml JCross1997.xml
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Rev. John Cross
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Rev. John Cross discusses serving as an Army Chaplin during World War II in France and Okinowa, then pastoring in Virginia before leading Sixteenth Baptist Church in the early 1960's. He was the pastor when Sixteenth Street Church was bombed in 1963.
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19970724C
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, Birmingham, Ala., 1963
American Veterans of World War II
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1997-07-24
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video
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https://bcriohp.org/files/original/fa7c4fa02c40f6e5976caf17f71898da.jpg
a950f8126a2121bdacfadb4e9ba6e4e5
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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Interviews collected as part of the general mission of the Oral History Project
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Video
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Oral History
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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English
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bcriohp
Oral History
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Horace Huntley
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Joseph Lewis Rogers
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http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=JLRogers1995.xml
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Republic Steel Corporation
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5.4 March 2, 1995 Rev. Joseph Lewis Rogers Interviewed on March 2, 1995 1995032R 0:33:44 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project Collection bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Jess Holdnak Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham United States. National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights Miles College Republic Steel Corporation Joseph Lewis Rogers Horace Huntley Video 1:|16(2)|48(3)|87(3)|117(12)|139(1)|165(5)|190(4)|214(10)|239(14)|263(6)|291(10)|312(5)|336(5)|350(15)|377(3)|402(3)|425(4)|450(10)|461(6)|476(12)|506(5)|536(5)|558(11)|570(9)|598(8)|618(17)|643(5)|652(11)|675(9)|698(9)|721(3)|731(11)|746(6) 0 https://youtu.be/ZeqP628bN0Q YouTube video English 0 Introduction H: Good morning, my name is Dr. Horace Huntley and I am here this morning with Rev. Joseph Lewis Rogers and we are doing this interview for the Civil Rights Institute. Today is March 2, 1995 and I would like to say thank you Rev. Rogers for coming out to sit with us today to talk about your life in Birmingham and the Civil Rights Movement. Introduction of interview with Rev. Joseph Lewis Rogers by Dr. Horace Huntley. Rogers, Joseph Lewis Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, Ala.) 33.516200, -86.813870 17 The Civil Rights Institute https://www.bcri.org/ BCRI Homepage 37 Moving to Birmingham Let me just start by asking you what part of the state are your parents from? R: My parents are from Montgomery, Alabama. H: Were you born in Montgomery? R: Montgomery. Rev. Rogers discusses growing up and moving to Birmingham at age 16. Birmingham (Ala.) ; Montgomery (Ala.) 125 Early Career H: I see. Well what .... did you work when you came to Birmingham? R: Yes sir. H: What was your job? R: My job was keeping the furnace heated up. H: And, for what company did you work for? R: Gimmicks Pipe Shop. Rev. Rogers talks about his first jobs in Birmingham. He also mentions being an only child. American Red Eagle ; Gimmicks Pipe Shope Birmingham (Ala.) 265 Lewisburg Coal Mine and Union R: Yes, I went to the coal mine. H: What was your job in the coal mine? R: In the coal mine I was loading coal. Rev. Rogers talks about working at the coal mine, working as the first black check weighman, and becoming Vice President of the local union. Lewisburg Coal Mine African American coal miners ; United Mine Workers of America ; United States. National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 437 Republic Steel R: After that, I left Lewisburg and went to Republic Steel. Rev. Rogers describes his time at Republic Steel. Republic Steel Corporation 505 North Birmingham Community H: Tell me a little about your community. What was your community like? R: I had a very nice community. H: What community did you live in? R: North Birmingham. Rev. Rogers talks about living in North Birmingham with his family. U.S. Pipe African American families ; African American life 623 The Alabama Christian Movement H: The Alabama Christian Movement? R: Un huh. H: How did you get involved with the Civil Rights Movement? R: Well, Shuttlesworth was my friend, and through him, we worked together in the churches and then we worked together in the movement. Rev. Rogers discusses becoming involved with he Civil Right Movement through the Alabama Christian Movement and his friend Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. He talks about his role as a pastor and as president of the Movement's finance committee. He also mentions police watching meetings, being stoped by police, and his wife involvement in the Movement. Shady Grove Baptist Church African American churches ; African American civic leaders ; Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights ; Civil rights movement ; Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 763 Mass Meetings H: Well tell me, what was a mass meeting like? R: Well, it would seem like a church mostly because all of them were looking like religious people, the way we operate was just like a church. We would have a meeting, singing, praying and lifting an offering and speakers. Rev. Rogers talks about what it was like to go to mass meetings. He also discusses his wife's support and involvement in the Movement. African American religious leaders ; Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights ; Civil rights movement 960 Reasons for and Benefits of the Civil Rights Movement H: What benefits do you think your family, the community realized as a result of the Movement? R: Well, we have a lot of benefits and changes in lots of things. Places you couldn't go, well we have to ________ we could go there. A lot of things that we thought was wrong, it was right. Rev. Rogers talks about why he thinks the Civil Rights Movement was necessary and what changes he saw as a result of the Movement. He mentions personally being stoped by the police, and finding bodies on the railroad. Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Civil rights movement 1220 Church Involvement H: Were members of your church active in the Movement? R: Yes, they were very active. H: What did they say when you got involved as a minister? Did you get involved first or did your church get involved? Rev. Rogers talks about North Birmingham churches' involvement in the Movement. He also mentions his carpentry work including building four churches. He briefly mentions his work on the finance committee. Primitive Baptist African American churches ; African American religious leaders ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Civil rights movement 1532 Shuttlesworth and Selective Buying H: Is there anything else that you would like to just share with people, because I know that you have a lot of information about the Movement? What was your relationship for instance with Shuttlesworth? R: Shuttlesworth and I worked together in our churches. He just like a brother, any time I need him, he'd come and any time he needed me, I would come to the rescue. If he had to go somewhere, needed some money and didn't have enough, he'd call me and he'd go. Rev. Rogers talks about his friend Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth as well as the selective buying/ boycott campaign in Birmingham. He mentions the involvement of students from Miles College. Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights ; Civil rights movement ; Miles College ; Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 1913 Church Membership H: So you have then, been with your church since 1943? R: I've been there 57 years, but that's my membership church. Rev. Rogers ends the interview by talking about his membership and leadership in his church. African American churches ; African American religious leaders 1972 Conclusion Well, I want to thank you for coming and spending the time with me today and I am going to take these materials here that you've given me, and go through them and write some things out as well, but it is very obvious that we are glad that we had the opportunity to sit down with you and talk with you about your life and times in Birmingham. Rogers, Joseph Lewis Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, Ala.) Oral History Rev. J. L. Rogers discusses being an early organizer of the Movement through his friend, Fred Shuttlesworth. Rogers worked in coal, iron and steel before becoming a pastoring Shady Grove Baptist church and serving on the board of the ACMHR. HUNTLEY: Good morning, my name is Dr. Horace Huntley and I am here this morning with Rev. Joseph Lewis Rogers and we are doing this interview for the Civil Rights Institute. Today is March 2, 1995 and I would like to say thank you Rev. Rogers for coming out to sit with us today to talk about your life in Birmingham and the Civil Rights Movement. Let me just start by asking you what part of the state are your parents from? ROGERS: My parents are from Montgomery, Alabama. HUNTLEY: Were you born in Montgomery? ROGERS: Montgomery. HUNTLEY: How long did you live in Montgomery before you moved to Birmingham? ROGERS: About 15 years. HUNTLEY: Did you ever visit Birmingham before you moved to Birmingham? ROGERS: When I was a kid. HUNTLEY: Who did you visit? ROGERS: My aunt. HUNTLEY: Okay, did you...how old were you? Did you remember coming up to visit Birmingham several times? ROGERS: I was four years old. HUNTLEY: Four years old, and you stayed with her maybe during the summer? ROGERS: For about six weeks. HUNTLEY: Okay, and then you went back to Montgomery? ROGERS: Yes. HUNTLEY: And then, how old were you when you came to Birmingham to live? ROGERS: I came to Birmingham to live ; I was 16 years old. HUNTLEY: And how long did you stay when you came the first time? ROGERS: The first time, I stayed about three months and went back to Montgomery. HUNTLEY: And you went back to Montgomery and what did you do in Montgomery when you went back? ROGERS: I went back to Montgomery and finished elementary school. HUNTLEY: I see. Well whatdid you work when you came to Birmingham? ROGERS: Yes sir. HUNTLEY: What was your job? ROGERS: My job was keeping the furnace heated up. HUNTLEY: And, for what company did you work for? ROGERS: Gimmicks Pipe Shop. HUNTLEY: Gimmicks Pipe Shop. Where was that located? ROGERS: North Birmingham. HUNTLEY: Okay. How many brothers and sisters did you have? ROGERS: No brothers, no sisters. HUNTLEY: You' ; re the only child? ROGERS: The only child. HUNTLEY: Were you spoiled? ROGERS: Yes, with a treetop. HUNTLEY: How much education did you have? ROGERS: When I came to Birmingham I had finished elementary school. HUNTLEY: Okay, and when you came back to Birmingham, did you then go back and work for a pipe shop, the second time, when you came to live in Birmingham permanently? ROGERS: When I came back I didn' ; t go to the pipe shop ; I went to the icehouse. HUNTLEY: Tell me about the icehouse. ROGERS: The icehouse, I rolled coal there to keep the furnace rolling. HUNTLEY: Can you try to describe that job? ROGERS: Well, it was a big furnace there and I had to roll enough coal in the day for the night fireman to fire it during that night. HUNTLEY: So, you fire during the day? ROGERS: No, I just put the coal there. HUNTLEY: Oh, you just made sure the coal was there. How long did you do that, how long did you work there? ROGERS: I stayed there for about four months. HUNTLEY: And then, what did you do afterwards? ROGERS: After that, I went to the American Red Eagle. HUNTLEY: Okay, and what did you do out there? ROGERS: I was an assistant to the foreman. HUNTLEY: Did you make radiators? ROGERS: The company made radiator heaters, I was assistant to the foreman and would have to take in new and take out old ones ; keep the sand clean formed the mold with. HUNTLEY: After that, you then went to the coal mines, is that right? ROGERS: Yes, I went to the coal mine. HUNTLEY: What was your job in the coal mine? ROGERS: In the coal mine I was loading coal. HUNTLEY: Loading coal. For how long, how long did you work there? ROGERS: Oh, I worked in the coal mines 20 years. HUNTLEY: Were you a member of the union? ROGERS: I was a member of the union when they got organized. They got organized in ' ; 33. HUNTLEY: ' ; 33. The NIRA, National Industrial Recovery Act. Well, how active were you with the union? Were you ever an official in the union itself? Did you work on any committees? ROGERS: I was on the committee and I was vice president of the local. HUNTLEY: Vice president of the local, so you were very active. You mean there were Black vice presidents at that time of the local unions? ROGERS: Yes. White president and a Black vice. HUNTLEY: Oh, there was always a White president and a Black vice president? ROGERS: Yes. HUNTLEY: Oh, why was that? ROGERS: Well, they were trying to...whatsoever a man was qualified to do, they were trying to get him to do that job. HUNTLEY: I see. I noticed also you were elected to be check weighmen. The first in the State of Alabama in 1937. ROGERS: The first Black, in 1937. HUNTLEY: What is the job of a check weighmen? ROGERS: Sit up on the top house where the coal come out and weigh it when it goes across the scale. HUNTLEY: How was that job? Did you enjoy that job? ROGERS: Well, I enjoyed partly and partly I didn' ; t. HUNTLEY: What did you enjoy about it? ROGERS: I enjoyed seeing the coal roll across the scales and giving them just weight, but I didn' ; t like it so well, that strife when I come down off the truck. HUNTLEY: What kind of strife did you get when you came down? ROGERS: Well, they threaten me and all that type of stuff. HUNTLEY: Why did they threaten you? ROGERS: They didn' ; t want a Black man to have that job because number one, they had never had one in the State of Alabama. HUNTLEY: Oh, that was a White man' ; s job and so therefore you were threatened by other Whites. Well, what did Black workers say about your being a check weighmen? ROGERS: Well, the Blacks, we had a few of them. They didn' ; t like it, they were with the other fellows, but it was just a few of them. HUNTLEY: Well, were you supported by the union? ROGERS: Supported by the union. HUNTLEY: How long did you remain as check weighmen? ROGERS: Well, one year. HUNTLEY: One year, and then what did you do after that? ROGERS: After that, I left Lewisburg and went to Republic Steel. HUNTLEY: How long were you at Republic Steel? ROGERS: I was at Republic Steel from the latter part of 37 until 43. HUNTLEY: What was your job at Republic Steel? ROGERS: My job at Republic Steel was the coke roller, loading coal and a committeeman. HUNTLEY: What was your pay like? ROGERS: We were working by the ton. Making around about $200 a month. HUNTLEY: Was that pretty good money for that time? ROGERS: Yes, that was pretty good. HUNTLEY: Is that why the White workers didn' ; t want a Black worker on that job because it made more money? ROGERS: Well, the Constitution give a person a right to a job regardless as to what it was, if they were qualified for it. HUNTLEY: Tell me a little about your community. What was your community like? ROGERS: I had a very nice community. HUNTLEY: What community did you live in? ROGERS: North Birmingham. HUNTLEY: Tell me about the make-up. Were there people with different kinds of occupations, people with different kinds of occupations? What kind of work did the people do that lived around you? ROGERS: Well, there were several plants. There were several stove foundries and there was U S Pipe, what is Jim Walter now, it was Dimmicks then. It Dimmicks and went to U S Pipe, left U S Pipe and Jim Walter now. Now, that was a great place to work and they had several foundries there where you make stoves. HUNTLEY: Who were your neighbors? ROGERS: Well, I had so many neighbors. HUNTLEY: What kind of work did they do? ROGERS: Well, some mined, some worked in the foundries and others in factories, things like that. HUNTLEY: You were married? ROGERS: Yes. HUNTLEY: You have children? ROGERS: Two. HUNTLEY: Two children. Were your children real young when you were working in the mines. ROGERS: No, they weren' ; t with me, they were in school. HUNTLEY: I see, they were in school at the time. Were you a member of any community organizations? ROGERS: None but the United Mine Workers. HUNTLEY: Okay, so that kept you pretty busy. ROGERS: Until the organization came in. HUNTLEY: The Alabama Christian Movement? ROGERS: Un huh. HUNTLEY: How did you get involved with the Civil Rights Movement? ROGERS: Well, Shuttles worth was my friend, and through him, we worked together in the churches and then we worked together in the movement. HUNTLEY: How did you get to know Shuttlesworth? ROGERS: Well, he pastored one of my neighborhood churches. HUNTLEY: In North Birmingham? ROGERS: Un huh. HUNTLEY: You are a pastor as well. When did you become a pastor? ROGERS: I became a pastor in ' ; 43. HUNTLEY: In 1943. What church were you a member of at the time? ROGERS: Shady Grove Baptist Church. The same church I' ; m pastoring now. HUNTLEY: Did you become pastor of the church in 1943. ROGERS: Yes. That was my membership church when the pastor died and I had been preaching about two years and they made a choice of me and I been there ever since. HUNTLEY: Okay, so from 1943 you' ; ve been at Shady Grove and the movement...the Alabama Christian Movement of Human Rights would be organized in 1956. Were you one of those initial people that helped to organize the movement? ROGERS: Yes. HUNTLEY: Were you there at the first meetings? ROGERS: No, I wasn' ; t at the first one. HUNTLEY: But you were there sometime in the early period? ROGERS: Yes sir. HUNTLEY: What role did you play in the Movement? ROGERS: I was president of the Finance Committee. HUNTLEY: What did that entail, what did you do? ROGERS: I would take the money to the bank. HUNTLEY: So, you handled the money. You must have been one of those that was very well trusted then. Did you attend all of the mass meetings? ROGERS: Just about all of them. The only reason I didn' ; t attend would be if I was out of town. HUNTLEY: Well tell me, what was a mass meeting like? ROGERS: Well, it would seem like a church mostly because all of them were looking like religious people, the way we operate was just like a church. We would have a meeting, singing, praying and lifting an offering and speakers. HUNTLEY: Why were the meetings so popular? ROGERS: To me, the reason they were so popular it was set up on a Christian base. Most of the people were Christian people. HUNTLEY: So, did most people feel that there was a need for some kind of change? ROGERS: Oh yes. HUNTLEY: What kind of changes were necessary? ROGERS: Well they wanted to change many things, where other people could get jobs and where they should have them, such as changing at the depot, changing bathrooms. HUNTLEY: During the time of the Movement, you were very active and in attending those mass meetings, were police there? ROGERS: Yes. HUNTLEY: Why were they there? ROGERS: They were there to take notes of what we were doing. HUNTLEY: So, in other words, they were there to spy on you? Did you go to jail? ROGERS: No, I never went to jail. I don' ; t know why I didn' ; t. Folks all around me, but I never did go to jail. HUNTLEY: Well, you had to take care of the money. If you had gone to jail.... ROGERS: Yeah, I got them out of jail when they got in jail. HUNTLEY: That' ; s right. So, if the man with the money is in jail, the movement would have been in trouble. Did others in your family participate? ROGERS: Yes. HUNTLEY: Who participated? ROGERS: My wife. HUNTLEY: Was she ever arrested? ROGERS: No, she wasn' ; t ever arrested. HUNTLEY: How did your wife react? Did she go to the meetings with you? ROGERS: Well, sometimes. She didn' ; t go real regular. HUNTLEY: Well, what was her reaction to your being involved in the Movement? ROGERS: My action in the movement was to help straighten it out, help righting the wrongs. HUNTLEY: Well did your wife go along with you? ROGERS: Oh, yes. HUNTLEY: Was she supportive of you? ROGERS: Yes. HUNTLEY: Did she ever say don' ; t go tonight? ROGERS: Never did. HUNTLEY: That' ; s quite an accomplishment there then, if your wife never discouraged you. What benefits do you think your family, the community realized as a result of the Movement? ROGERS: Well, we have a lot of benefits and changes in lots of things. Places you couldn' ; t go, well we have to we could go there. A lot of things that we thought was wrong, it was right. HUNTLEY: Are there any incidences that you may have been involved with during the struggle that you would like to share with us? Were you ever stopped by the police, for instance? ROGERS: Oh, yes, I was stopped by the police. HUNTLEY: Tell me about that. ROGERS: Well, if he didn' ; t do anything but stop me and ask me where was I going, and I told them and they told me well you can' ; t go there you have to go this way. HUNTLEY: So, did that upset you? ROGERS: No, never did. HUNTLEY: Is that the only time that you were stopped by the police? ROGERS: No, I was stopped several times. They would stop me and questioned me. HUNTLEY: You were never roughed up or anything by the police? The police never beat you? ROGERS: No, and never was arrested. HUNTLEY: Did they ever harass you? Did you ever get telephone calls at your house? People harassing you about being involved in the Movement? ROGERS: Well, several times they could call but they wouldn' ; t give no names. They were people against the movement. HUNTLEY: What would they say when they call you? ROGERS: Well " ; y' ; all think you gonna win, but you ain' ; t gonna win." ; HUNTLEY: So, the Movement then, in your opinion, was very necessary? ROGERS: It was necessary. HUNTLEY: Why do you think it started, when it did? Why do you think that in 1956, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights organized? ROGERS: Well, I got interested in it after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Then Martin Luther King and Shuttles worth got together, and it was necessary. HUNTLEY: We do know that the Movement was very, very necessary. What do you think, if there were any, were there any failures within the Movement? ROGERS: Well, lots of things failed, but it wasn' ; t too much. HUNTLEY: So, you think that it was basically successful? ROGERS: Yes. HUNTLEY: Can you briefly talk about some of the changes that you' ; ve seen over the time when you first came to Birmingham and today? How has Birmingham changed over time? ROGERS: It has changed considerably. When I first came to Birmingham, you find a dead man on the street or on a railroad most any day. But it doesn' ; t happen like that now. HUNTLEY: Did you ever determine who those people were and why they were dead? ROGERS: Well, some were chalked up like the train rolled over them and some threw in water and some in bushes and like that but mostly somebody would get killed every night. HUNTLEY: You said this was part of the harassment and intimidation of Black people? ROGERS: Well, that was before this organization was and I think this organization helped to curb a lot of that. HUNTLEY: Were members of your church active in the Movement? ROGERS: Yes, they were very active. HUNTLEY: What did they say when you got involved as a minister? Did you get involved first or did your church get involved? ROGERS: Me. HUNTLEY: What did your members say when you first got involved? ROGERS: The lined up, took part and went to jail, just like the other people did. HUNTLEY: Did you ever have meetings at your church? ROGERS: That' ; s right. HUNTLEY: Many of those meetings were led by members of your church, I assume? ROGERS: Yes, and members of different churches. HUNTLEY: Because you would go from different churches all over the city? Was yours on the regular circuit? ROGERS: Yes sir, that' ; s right. HUNTLEY: How many churches in North Birmingham were involved? ROGERS: Oh, just about everyone. HUNTLEY: Did all the ministers supported what was happening with the Movement in North Birmingham? ROGERS: It was supported real nicely. HUNTLEY: Were there any churches in Birmingham that didn' ; t support the Movement? ROGERS: Oh, yes. HUNTLEY: There were. But in North Birmingham, you basically had most of the churches in support and you could use all of those churches for meetings? ROGERS: Well, a lot of them you couldn' ; t use because they couldn' ; t hold the people. The crowds...now they didn' ; t come to our church regular because our church would hold only about 500-600 men. HUNTLEY: You are a carpenter also, right? ROGERS: That' ; s right. HUNTLEY: Didn' ; t you build your church? ROGERS: I built four churches. I built the one I' ; m pastoring and three others. HUNTLEY: What are the others that you built? ROGERS: I built Primitive Baptist and three Baptist churches. HUNTLEY: All in Birmingham? ROGERS: Have you built homes as well? ROGERS: I got burned out in l946, that' ; s when I started to build, and I built my own house. HUNTLEY: Built your own house, built your own church? ROGERS: Built the church and the house. HUNTLEY: You are not building any now are you? ROGERS: No, I couldn' ; t do it, now. HUNTLEY: I was going to get you to build me one if you were still building. Do you remember any other occurrences, anything that happened during the movement that would be of interest, that people would like to know about? ROGERS: Well, a lot of things they would like to know about. Some would like to know that places they couldn' ; t go, restrooms they couldn' ; t use, and the Movement opened a lot of doors that was closed. HUNTLEY: What about the internal workings of the Movement? You know, we see all of the films, people marching. We see people on the church steps, but what about the business meetings within the Movement, how did those meetings usually go? ROGERS: Well, when you had real business meetings, we didn' ; t want anybody else in on it, why it was just the officers. HUNTLEY: Did you do any fund raising? Did you raise any money for the Movement? ROGERS: Oh, yes. I was Chairman of the Finance Committee, I had to raise it. HUNTLEY: How did you raise money? ROGERS: Well, I would go from church to church and people would, you know, give me donations and like that. HUNTLEY: Did you ever do any speaking? ROGERS: Yes, sir. HUNTLEY: Around Birmingham? Did you ever go outside of Birmingham? ROGERS: Yes. HUNTLEY: Where did you go? ROGERS: I went to Montgomery, down to Jasper, Carbonhill. HUNTLEY: So, you were pretty well known. When you went in, did you normally come out with money? ROGERS: Oh, yes, they would give me donations. HUNTLEY: When the demonstrations were going on and people were being arrested, then you were not arrested because you had to sign the checks? ROGERS: Well, I don' ; t know why they didn' ; t arrest me. They arrested them all around me, but they never did arrest me. HUNTLEY: That' ; s interesting. So, you could have been arrested, but they would never arrest you? ROGERS: Right. HUNTLEY: You were a pretty big man, right? ROGERS: I was as little as I am now. HUNTLEY: Is there anything else that you would like to just share with people, because I know that you have a lot of information about the Movement? What was your relationship for instance with Shuttlesworth? ROGERS: Shuttlesworth and I worked together in our churches. He just like a brother, any time I need him, he' ; d come and any time he needed me, I would come to the rescue. If he had to go somewhere, needed some money and didn' ; t have enough, he' ; d call me and he' ; d go. HUNTLEY: So, how far was your church from his church? ROGERS: About three blocks. HUNTLEY: So, the two of you then, worked very closely together? ROGERS: Yes. HUNTLEY: When he first started in developing the Movement, were you one of the first that he called to participate? ROGERS: Well, I wasn' ; t first, but I was in the first crowd. I was one of the first ones. HUNTLEY: I see. The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights then would probably have your stamp on it? ROGERS: Yes, I have a plaque from the Alabama Christian Movement. HUNTLEY: You have a plaque for the service that you rendered to them? ROGERS: Yes. HUNTLEY: If you were to had the ability to change anything in the Movement, what would you change? ROGERS: Well, if I did have the ability to change one thing, that' ; s on the annual days such as Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and change it and have the people know that there was no such thing as Black man and White man. I would have them quit going to the stores, not after I selected bargains come through, so that' ; s one of my ideas. Don' ; t buy them. Teach your dollars some sense. HUNTLEY: Teach your dollars some sense. Why would you do that? ROGERS: Well, because the people was they were against us. HUNTLEY: So, you were trying to put pressure on those... ROGERS: On their livelihood. HUNTLEY: Did that work? ROGERS: Yeah, it worked. HUNTLEY: How did you do that? ROGERS: Well, we just made the announcement and Miles College and the people in other churches and mostly schools couldn' ; t participate like Miles College. Dr. Kitt would turn them loose and let them march. HUNTLEY: So, Miles was very active? ROGERS: Oh, Miles played a great part. HUNTLEY: So, you then, were one of those that sort of enticed Miles to get involved in the selective buying? Was that your strategy? ROGERS: Shuttlesworth. HUNTLEY: Shuttlesworth. But you would carry it out? ROGERS: And we would carry it out together. We worked together on committee work we would work together. HUNTLEY: How active were the students from Miles College? ROGERS: Oh, they were active. They were ready to go anytime you' ; d say go. HUNTLEY: Well, how did they keep people from going into the stores? ROGERS: Marching, marching. We had some regular people, you know marching on the street. But, when we got ready for that march, well they were there. HUNTLEY: Well, what about selective buying? Did everybody just agree not to go into the stores? Was there ever anybody that wanted to go in? ROGERS: Now that was my idea on that. That was one thing that I shared with him, told me that would kind of slow them down. Because, no money, nothing to eat. HUNTLEY: So, money speaks. ROGERS: Yeah. HUNTLEY: How did you select the store to boycott or did you just boycott all the stores? ROGERS: Didn' ; t select them, just any of them. HUNTLEY: So, any of the stores downtown. Were there ever anybody, any Black people that went on in and bought anyway? ROGERS: Well, some slipped in and they quit slipping and went ordering it by mail. HUNTLEY: What would happen if students were standing there boycotting the store or picketing the store and someone would try to go in? ROGERS: Well, I would ask them not to go in, but if he went on in, we wouldn' ; t bother them. HUNTLEY: So, no one ever bothered because they went in? ROGERS: No, we were peaceful. HUNTLEY: So that strategy then was used here in Birmingham and was used in other places as well. Had you seen it used before or was that your idea? ROGERS: My idea. I started it on our church. The members were spending a lot of money unnecessary money and I told them " ; I don' ; t want no body on Easter with a new outfit and the people saw how much money they were saving on Easter and they said they were glad that I insisted that. One man told me, I saved him about $300. HUNTLEY: So, you have then, been with your church since 1943? ROGERS: I' ; ve been there 57 years, but that' ; s my membership church. HUNTLEY: But you have been the leader of the church since 1943? That is quite an accomplishment. ROGERS: I served all the way through on every auxiliary in the church. HUNTLEY: So, people must have a lot of confidence in you as a result of that. I see that you celebrated your 50th anniversary in 1993? ROGERS: Yes, this year would be what, 50? HUNTLEY: 52. That' ; s okay. You' ; ve done your time. Well, I want to thank you for coming and spending the time with me today and I am going to take these materials here that you' ; ve given me, and go through them and write some things out as well, but it is very obvious that we are glad that we had the opportunity to sit down with you and talk with you about your life and times in Birmingham. ROGERS: Thank you. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
bcri.org. 0 http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=JLRogers1995.xml JLRogers1995.xml
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Rev. Joseph Lewis Rogers
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Rev. J. L. Rogers discusses being an early organizer of the Movement through his friend, Fred Shuttlesworth. Rogers worked in coal, iron and steel before becoming a pastoring Shady Grove Baptist church and serving on the board of the ACMHR.
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1995032R
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
United States. National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933
Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011
Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
Miles College
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1995-03-02
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video
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1e512f9a51ab11d04070bc415d5ae324
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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Interviews collected as part of the general mission of the Oral History Project
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Video
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Oral History
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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English
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bcriohp
Oral History
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Horace Huntley
Interviewee
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Catherine Burks Brooks
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http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=CBBrooks1996.xml
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Parchman Farm
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5.4 April 29, 1996 Catherine Burks Brooks Interviewed on April 29, 1996 19960429B 0:55:08 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Lessie Dingler Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 Freedom Rides, 1961 The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (Atlanta,GA.) Southern Christian Leadership Conference Parchman Farm Catherine Burks Brooks Horace Huntley Video 1:|18(7)|49(7)|73(9)|92(2)|115(3)|138(6)|167(12)|185(18)|201(3)|226(9)|239(1)|258(6)|281(1)|302(7)|320(2)|340(16)|370(10)|398(11)|423(11)|441(2)|466(10)|477(10)|490(6)|510(15)|525(12)|539(5)|559(3)|580(4)|594(1)|611(15)|622(11)|641(15)|653(8)|665(11)|683(13)|693(4)|709(5)|724(5)|748(6)|764(6)|779(15)|791(14)|809(1)|822(10)|842(16)|860(13)|870(16)|892(2)|922(2)|937(9)|944(8)|959(4)|970(4)|987(7) 0 https://youtu.be/xIlxoSxsfm4 YouTube video English 0 Introduction of Interview This is an interview with Catherine Brooks for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's Oral History Project. I am Horace Huntley. We are at Miles College on April 29, 1996. 33.4810,-86.9089 17 Miles College, Fairfield, Alabama 33.5161, -86.8145 17 Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Birmingham Alabama https://www.bcri.org/ BCRI Homepage 30 Family and Early Education I would just like to start by asking you some general questions about your background. Were your parents from Birmingham? Catherine Burks Brooks talks about where her parents are from and growing up in Birmingham school systems. Sardis ; Sardis City (Ala.) Birmingham (Ala.) ; Birmingham family ; Birmingham Public Schools (Birmingham, Ala.) 165 Community Background Then, as you grew up, what do you remember about your neighborhood when you were in elementary school? Catherine Burks Brooks discusses growing up in Birmingham community. Alabama By-Products ; Parker High School (Birmingham, Ala.) ; Stockham Valve ; Tarrant City Birmingham Public Schools (Birmingham, Ala.) 255 Blackness and High School Little school? I think at that time we were the largest Black school in the country. That's right. The Thundering Herd. She talks about her experience at Parker High School about being the first black majorettes, discussions about the difference between black, brown, and white, as well going to 3 elementary schools. Black ; Brown ; Lincoln ; Parker High School (Birmingham, Ala.) ; White Birmingham Public Schools (Birmingham, Ala.) 708 Getting Involved in The Movement at Tennessee State After you finished high school, what did you do? She talks about participating in The Movement, learning how to protest in peaceful demonstrations at Tennessee State University. Demonstrating ; Non-Violent Protest ; School ; Sit-in African Americans--Civil rights--History--20th century ; Civil rights demonstrations--Tennessee ; Freedom Rides, 1961 ; Tennessee State University 1056 The Freedom Ride This was during the Freedom Ride. Catherine Burks Brooks explains her Freedom Ride with seven of her friends from Nashville to Birmingham. American Baptist Theological Seminary ; Birmingham (Ala.). Police Department ; Fisk University ; Tennessee State Univerisity Anniston (Ala.) ; Birmingham (Ala.)--Maps ; Birmingham--Jail ; Bus Burning (Anniston,Ala.) ; Freedom Rides, 1961 ; Nashville (Tenn.)--Maps 36.1627, 86.7816. 33.5186, 86.8104 17 Nashville, Tennessee Birmingham, Alabama 1231 The Freedom Ride-Arrival in Birmingham, AL When you arrived in Birmingham, what was the reception? Her first trip with the Freedom Ride from Nashville to Birmingham, where they encountered Bull Connor who picked them up and took them up to the Tennessee/ Alabama border. Birmingham (Ala.). Police Department ; Birmingham Jail ; Birmingham News ; Black family ; Bus driver ; Bus Station ; Train Station Ardmore (Ala) ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Bull Connor ; Cullman (Ala.) ; Freedom Rides, 1961 1567 The Freedom Ride- Return to Birmingham After Encounter With Bull Connor So you came back to Birmingham? Her second trip down to Birmingham where they lost their bus driver and waited 18 hours to find a new one. Bus Driver ; Jackson (Miss.) ; Kennedy, Robert F., 1925-1968 ; Montgomery (Ala.) Birmingham, Ala. ; Bull Connor ; Freedom Rides, 1961 ; Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 1686 The Freedom Ride-Arrival in Montgomery What was the reception in Montgomery? After their group arrived in Montgomery they were swarmed by an angry mob and had to leave the bus to seek shelter and protection. angry mob ; black community ; black taxi cabs ; church ; police protection Bull Connor--Commissioner of Public Safety--Birmingham--Alabama ; Montgomery (Ala.) ; Segregation in transportation 1985 The Freedom Ride-Arrival in Jackson, MS and onto Parchman Farm (Mississippi State Penitentiary) So, from the church did you go back and eventually get to Jackson, Mississippi? After arriving in Jackson, Mississippi, Catherine Burks Brooks and her friends were arrested, sent to Hines County Jail, and onto Parchment Penitentiary for 26-27 days. Mississippi jail ; Parchman farms ; Prison living conditions Freedom Rides, 1961 ; Hines County Jail (Miss.) ; Jackson (Miss.) ; Mississippi State Penitentiary ; Parchman (Miss.) 2319 Involvement and Formation of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Were you a member of SNCC? Catherine Burks Brooks involvement SNCC and help from organizations like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Raleigh (N.C.) ; Southern Christian Leadership Conference ; The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (Atlanta,GA.) 2637 Involvement With Robert Williams, Head of NCAACP Monroe, NC Chapter Well, I was not with SNCC at that time. I was working at that time in the north. Catherine Burks Brooks talks about being involved with the President of the NAACP North Carolina branch, Robert Williams, and how he got in trouble with the organizations due to using less non-violent protesting practices. Kidnapping ; Marriage ; North ; Violent Protest King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Robert Williams, President of NAACP--Monroe, North Carolina 2817 Violence and Fear During Demonstrations Yes. But, backing up some. Before that, there were non-violent demonstrations. His group was protecting the non-violent demonstrators. Catherine Burks Brooks discusses the times during the movement where she felt most afraid. Fear ; Non-violent demonstrations ; Riot ; Shooting ; Sit-in Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights ; Ardmore (Ala.) ; Bull Connor ; Nashville (Tenn.) ; Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 2960 Moving On From Movement, Start of New Life I think we have talked about probably up to 1963-64 or so. What happens after that period when you were so actively involved with SNCC and SCLC? How does that period of your life end? Do you simply drop out of the Movement? Or, now that you're living up north, you simply go back and you get a job? Catherine Burks Brooks talks about moving on from the movement and her Husband starting a business in Afro-Pick afterwards. Business method patents ; Combs ; Family business ; Make a living ; Race--Marriage Records Afro-Pick ; Detroit (Mich.) ; Lancaster (S.C.) ; Ottawa (Mich.) 3248 Recognition of Involvement in Movement from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Okay. Well, I just want to thank you for taking time out of your schedule to come and sit and talk with us because you have really enlightened us in relationship to the freedom rides and your activity. Catherine Burks Brooks receives recognition from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for her Freedom Ride she was on. recognition ; scholarship ; students Freedom Rides, 1961 ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Tennessee State University ; The Grand Opry (Nashville, Tenn.) 3249 Interview Conclusion Okay. Well, I just want to thank you for taking time out of your schedule to come and sit and talk with us because you have really enlightened us in relationship to the freedom rides and your activity. At some later date, we may want to sit down and talk with you again. Oral History Catherine Burks Brooks discusses getting involved with Movement after attending Tennessee State University. She participated in the Freedom Rides and spent almost 30 days in Parchman Farm (Mississippi State Penitentiary). She received recognition from Dr. King for her activism. HUNTLEY: This is an interview with Catherine Brooks for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute' ; s Oral History Project. I am Horace Huntley. We are at Miles College on April 29, 1996. Thank you Ms. Brooks for taking time out of your schedule to come and sit with us today. BROOKS: You' ; re welcome. HUNTLEY: I would just like to start by asking you some general questions about your background. Were your parents from Birmingham? BROOKS: Yes, and that' ; s Catherine Burks Brooks. HUNTLEY: Okay. That' ; s important, because your classmates will say " ; Catherine Brooks? Who is that?" ; So, both of your parents were from Birmingham? BROOKS: No. They were originally from Alabama. They came out of Sardis, Alabama. HUNTLEY: Both were from Sardis? BROOKS: That' ; s right. HUNTLEY: How many brothers and sisters do you have? BROOKS: One brother and four sisters. HUNTLEY: You must have had a time? BROOKS: Oh, yes. And I was kind of like on the end. The youngest girl. HUNTLEY: You' ; re the youngest girl? BROOKS: That' ; s right. So, I had to really fight. HUNTLEY: Well, that may have something to do with your activities in the Movement that we' ; ll get to talk about a little bit later. BROOKS: It could have. I never really thought about that, but that could happen. Because the one that I was next to was something like 8 or 9 years older. And, so they were just going to push me around. But, that didn' ; t happen. HUNTLEY: I can tell. Were you born in Birmingham? BROOKS: Yes. HUNTLEY: Where did you start elementary school? BROOKS: Shields, Alberta Shields in East Birmingham. HUNTLEY: Tell me just a bit about your parents. Where did they go to school and how much schooling did they have? BROOKS: Well, my father had virtually no schooling. They came, as I said, out of Sardis and my mother went to the 3rd grade. HUNTLEY: What kind of work did they do? BROOKS: My father worked for the Alabama By-Product. He was a machine operator. My mother was a wool and silk presser. HUNTLEY: So, she worked inside and outside the house? BROOKS: Yes. HUNTLEY: So, you had a hard-working family? BROOKS: Yes. HUNTLEY: Then, as you grew up, what do you remember about your neighborhood when you were in elementary school? BROOKS: I remember it seems as if we all cared about each other. It was a working, poor community, but it was a working community. If my parents were not home, I knew where to go. Just a couple of doors down or next door to wait until my mother got off, if I was afraid to go into the house. That was one thing that really kind of stuck with me. That we were seeing after each other. HUNTLEY: What kind of occupations did people have in the community? BROOKS: Most of the men, as I can remember, either worked for the Alabama By-Product, Stockham Valve, and this is on Tallapoosa Street in East Birmingham, L& ; N, I think. HUNTLEY: The railroad? BROOKS: Yes. Or McClouds. HUNTLEY: What' ; s McClouds? BROOKS: Well, that was a factory. I think they made pipes or something at McClouds in Tarrant City. HUNTLEY: You had a lot of pipe factories in that area so that' ; s probably what that was. Where did you go to high school? BROOKS: I went to Parker. HUNTLEY: Parker High School. Where is that? I' ; ve heard of that little school someplace. BROOKS: Little school? I think at that time we were the largest Black school in the country. That' ; s right. The Thundering Herd. HUNTLEY: I think I' ; ve heard something about that. But, over at Wenonah, we didn' ; t pay much attention to you people at Parker. Were you active in extra-curricular activities at Parker? BROOKS: Yes. I was in the band and a number of other clubs. As a matter of fact, I never will forget Mr. Caswell use to call us his " ; three Blackies." ; I was a majorette. HUNTLEY: Is that right? BROOKS: Yes. And, even at our Black high school, at that time you know we were just letting Black girls become majorettes and I was one of the first Black majorettes at Parker. HUNTLEY: You were one of the first phenotypically Black majorettes at a Black school? BROOKS: Yes. Color black is what I mean. Dark. HUNTLEY: That' ; s interesting. What was that like? Did you have any difficulty as a result of having dark skin? BROOKS: Yes. HUNTLEY: Tell me how did that operate in that Black setting? BROOKS: Well, you know it' ; s been years since I' ; ve thought about that. It was always a challenge. It was always a fight. I was always willing to fight the fight and kept my head high even though we were dark. It was a little saying, what was that? HUNTLEY: " ; If you' ; re Brown, stick around..." ; BROOKS: Yes. " ; If you' ; re Brown, stick around, if you' ; re Black, get back." ; It was something like that. And, so I was determined not to get back. HUNTLEY: " ; If you' ; re White, you' ; re right." ; BROOKS: That' ; s right. " ; If you' ; re Brown, stick around. If you' ; re Black, get back." ; And, so I was determined not to get back. HUNTLEY: So, you put up a defense against that whole idea? BROOKS: That' ; s right. I did. And, I built a wall, which is a mess too, because you eventually have to tear it down. HUNTLEY: What do you mean? " ; You built a wall and, then, you eventually have to tear it down." ; BROOKS: Because you become hard, you become tough. You' ; re always waiting for something. You' ; re always waiting for a fight. HUNTLEY: You said that as a result of this attitude of people looking at Black as being negative, you put up a defense? BROOKS: Right. HUNTLEY: And, then you solidified that defense by fighting, when necessary? BROOKS: That' ; s right. And, then sometimes it may not have been necessary to fight. But, because of that you think it is necessary to fight. HUNTLEY: So, in effect, it becomes necessary all the time to fight, in your mind? BROOKS: That' ; s right. As one example I think of right now. I think we were in Cleveland or some parts of Ohio and we went to this restaurant and they told us to go upstairs. You know right away we' ; re thinking they want us to go upstairs because we' ; re Black. So, we' ; re going to put up a fight. No, it was just no seats downstairs. It' ; s that type of a thing. HUNTLEY: So that creates difficulties from both sides? BROOKS: Right. HUNTLEY: What was it like being one of the first " ; Black" ; majorettes? What kind of impact did that have on the rest of the school? Didn' ; t you say there were three of you? BROOKS: Yes, it was three of us. HUNTLEY: Out of how many? Maybe 8 or 10? BROOKS: Oh, no. It was more than that. We had three lines. I believe we had three lines and we may have had six in a line. So, that would give us 18. We either had two or three lines, something like that. HUNTLEY: What did your parents say about this kind of activity? Did they have any idea that this was happening at your school? As a result of your being dark-skinned that you had to put up with the kinds of things that you' ; re talking about?BROOKS: No. I don' ; t think they really had. If they did, they never expressed it. HUNTLEY: But it was well known in the school? BROOKS: Yes, of course. It was well known in the school and it could have been in the community, but as far as my parents talking about it or me talking to them about it, no, I just couldn' ; t remember. My mother was always willing to work from almost kin to kane to get me the things to measure up to be in these types of activities. She used to tell me I came feet first and I just been moving ever since. HUNTLEY: How did the teachers treat you in that regard? Were there any differences between the way the teachers actually treated light-skinned children versus dark-skinned children? BROOKS: I can' ; t pinpoint any particular teacher. But it seems as if the lighter skinned children received the better breaks or privileges. HUNTLEY: What instrument did you play? BROOKS: I was a majorette, I didn' ; t play an instrument. HUNTLEY: That' ; s right. BROOKS: I was also in the elementary school band. I went to Lincoln also for a short period. HUNTLEY: So that was your area for a while, Lincoln to Parker Annex. Did you go to Parker Annex? BROOKS: Yes. HUNTLEY: And, then on to Parker? BROOKS: No. Well, let' ; s back up a little bit. Our little school went from the 1st to the 4th. And, then from the 5th grade we had to go to another school. HUNTLEY: What other school was that? BROOKS: I went to Lincoln then. Then I went to Hudson, which was not that far from my house. It may have taken us 30 minutes to walk it. That' ; s how I was at Lincoln. Then, they built a new school in my area, Shields. Named after the original small school. So, you can say that I went to three elementary schools. HUNTLEY: What do you remember most about Parker? BROOKS: Well, we would say the band. I enjoyed the band. I remember my government teacher and I can' ; t remember her name, but I had a lot of respect for her. Of course, that was in the 12th junior and the 12th senior. One thing stopped with me. We did have Black History and I learned here recently that we no longer have that in our school, which I think is a shame. That was really helpful. I remember Major Brown. He also taught me history. He was very tough, and he was also the Football Coach. I remember once he threatened to pull the top of my hair out if I skipped a class once. I never skipped another class. You know I actually believed he was going to do that. HUNTLEY: Most people believed what Major Brown said at that time. BROOKS: Yes, he made a believer out of me. HUNTLEY: After you finished high school, what did you do? BROOKS: I went to Tennessee State in Nashville, Tennessee. HUNTLEY: Why did you decide to go to Tennessee State? BROOKS: Well, I had a girlfriend in the neighborhood, Joyce Parker, and Joyce was going to Tennessee State at that time. I was thinking about a number of other schools, but I think that was probably one of my main reasons for deciding Tennessee State, because she seemed to have loved it and was having a nice time. I wanted to get away from home, too. I wanted to go off. HUNTLEY: You wanted to be independent? BROOKS: That' ; s right. HUNTLEY: At Tennessee State were you involved with the band? BROOKS: Well, you wouldn' ; t believe it. At Tennessee State, I was too dark. But, of course, things have changed. I was not a majorette at Tennessee State. They were, what we called at that time, " ; high yellow." ; HUNTLEY: There were no dark majorettes at the time at Tennessee State? BROOKS: No. HUNTLEY: Did someone verbalize that to you or was that just something that was understood? BROOKS: It was understood, but someone did later. One of my close girl friends who was involved in the Freedom Ride with me, Lucretia Collins, who was a majorette also, but she was lighter. We talk about it now. HUNTLEY: The majorettes actually selected the people who would come aboard? BROOKS: No. That was the band teacher. HUNTLEY: The band teacher decided? BROOKS: Yes. And as a matter of fact, I even had a letter from Mr. Caswell to the band instructor there. HUNTLEY: We' ; ll have to pursue that discuss some other time because that' ; s a very interesting one. BROOKS: I had no idea we would get into this. HUNTLEY: What about other activities at Tennessee State? How did you get involved with the Movement? BROOKS: Well, my boyfriend was involved with the Movement. Curtis Murphy. He had been trained to participate in the sit-in movement. And, so they were holding their meetings down, near Fisk and we always had a run-in with the girls at Fisk and, so I said, " ; Hum, I just better go down here and see what' ; s going on." ; So that' ; s how I got involved. HUNTLEY: So, you become involved as a result of protecting your turf? BROOKS: I don' ; t know if I' ; d put it that strongly, but... HUNTLEY: Tell me what was your first involvement? BROOKS: My first involvement must have been a sit-in there at one of the lunch counters. I think it was some hamburger place, White Castle. I think it was a White Castle or something like that. HUNTLEY: How did that get started? What precipitated your desire to do and sit-in at White Castle? BROOKS: Well, of course, we could not eat there. They had been learning the non-violent way of doing this. I had been talking with him and they were recruiting students to go. HUNTLEY: So, he recruited you to come? BROOKS: Yes. HUNTLEY: Were you trained, or did you simply go and sit-in? BROOKS: I think I must have gotten my training later. I think I was just trained by him as to what... HUNTLEY: What you should do and what you should not do? BROOKS: Yes. HUNTLEY: Do you actually remember that first time that you went to sit-in? How did it feel? What was going through your mind? BROOKS: Well, I don' ; t know if I actually remember the very first time. But, I do recall some of the times just saying, " ; Okay, am I going to be able to not do anything if someone spits on me?" ; HUNTLEY: How did you answer that? BROOKS: I think that was my constant thing, just being cool if someone...but it never happened though. HUNTLEY: No one ever accosted you? BROOKS: No. HUNTLEY: Were you ever arrested there? BROOKS: Yes, I was arrested in Nashville. HUNTLEY: What were the circumstances of the arrest? How did it happen? BROOKS: This was at one of the lunch counters. I don' ; t remember which one, but it was at one of the lunch counters. Of course, the policemen came in and asked us to leave. If you don' ; t leave, you' ; re under arrest. And, so, of course, we didn' ; t leave, and we were taken to jail. HUNTLEY: How long were you in jail? BROOKS: I believe it was just overnight. HUNTLEY: So, you were still in school at the time, right? BROOKS: Yes, I was still in school at the time. HUNTLEY: Did your parents know that you were demonstrating? BROOKS: I don' ; t believe they did. HUNTLEY: Did you ever tell them that during the time you were in school, that you were demonstrating? BROOKS: I' ; m almost sure I had to have told them after that. HUNTLEY: After you finished school maybe? BROOKS: Oh, no. During the time, because I was even put out of Tennessee State. HUNTLEY: You were? BROOKS: Yes. So, this was kind of over a stretch over period of time. HUNTLEY: What were the circumstances of you being put out of Tennessee State? BROOKS: This was during the Freedom Ride. HUNTLEY: What happened? Why were you put out? BROOKS: I don' ; t know what was the charge. I don' ; t recall. But, when we came down here on the Freedom Ride. HUNTLEY: You were one of the Freedom Riders that left Nashville coming to Birmingham? BROOKS: Yes. When the bus was burned in Anniston, when CORE gave up the ride, and so, a number of us, that was kind of like the " ; Diehard Seven," ; I think we called ourselves, we said the ride must go on. And, so, then we took up the Freedom Ride. HUNTLEY: Okay. So, you picked it up as a result of the individuals being attacked in Anniston? BROOKS: That' ; s right. HUNTLEY: Students at Tennessee State decided that they were going to do the same thing and pick up the ride so that it would not die? BROOKS: That' ; s right. HUNTLEY: So, you rode from Nashville to Birmingham? BROOKS: That' ; s right. It was Fisk and ABT, the American Baptist Theological Seminary. HUNTLEY: Tell me about that ride? What do you remember about it? BROOKS: Oh, I remember almost everything about that ride. HUNTLEY: You boarded the bus in Nashville. Were there any problems in Nashville? BROOKS: No, there were no problems in Nashville. A lot of photographers. We had a fantastic send off. It must have been early, early morning. The fellow I eventually married came on that ride with us. I think it was about 11 of us. HUNTLEY: All Black? BROOKS: No. There were, I believe there were three Whites. One White fellow and two White girls. They were attending Fisk, I believe. HUNTLEY: They were attending Fisk at the time? BROOKS: Yes. And, the fellow, I' ; m not sure whether he was at Fisk or at Vanderbilt. He could have been at Peabody, one of those schools there. HUNTLEY: Were there any stops between Nashville and Birmingham? BROOKS: Yes. At the time, the police stopped us just before we got into Birmingham. My husband, which was Paul Brooks, was taken off of the bus and also the White fellow, because they were sitting together. They were taken to jail. HUNTLEY: They were arrested? BROOKS: They were arrested. HUNTLEY: Was this by a Birmingham policeman or state troopers? BROOKS: I don' ; t remember if it was state troopers or Birmingham. HUNTLEY: But this was before you got to Birmingham? BROOKS: Right. HUNTLEY: When you arrived in Birmingham, what was the reception? BROOKS: Well, we had all the policemen there and we were trying to go on to Montgomery and, then on into Jackson and these bus drivers refused to drive us. He refused to drive us any further. HUNTLEY: From Birmingham? BROOKS: That' ; s right. So, this was the time where we couldn' ; t find the bus driver. So, I think we were here for about 18...no, let me back up some. We were eventually taken off of the bus and, then taken to jail. Oh, Bull Conner said, " ; for our protection." ; Then, we were taken out of jail. It was around midnight. I' ; ll never forget that. Lucretia was with me. They came for us. The matron told us to get ready. they were going to take us back to Nashville. And, so we got up, put our clothes on and so, we weren' ; t putting our clothes on fast enough. I' ; ll never forget that. She came back and she said, " ; Didn' ; t I tell you all to get your clothes on?" ; So we said, " ; We didn' ; t ask to come in here, so we don' ; t have to rush." ; We didn' ; t rush. We took our time because we weren' ; t really interested in leaving. HUNTLEY: This was approximately nine of you at that time? BROOKS: Yes. HUNTLEY: How were you transported from the Birmingham jail back to Tennessee? BROOKS: When they came to pick us up, one of the White girls, I understand that Bull Connor had called her father, and her father had picked her up. I don' ; t know what happened to the other White girl. Whether they had sent her back home or what. And, so, Lucretia and I were refusing to leave. In our training we were taught to just go limp. And, so I refused to walk out. One of the guards picked me up and carried me out of the jail and put me in a car. It was a White fellow from the Birmingham News, I believe, and Bull Connor, and it seems as if we stopped in Cullman and picked up a man at the time that I assumed was a priest or a minister or something because he had a collar on. And, then they carried us and the fellows to the state line. The name of that little town was Atmore or Ardmore, Alabama, between Tennessee and Alabama. HUNTLEY: I know Atmore is south. BROOKS: So, it must be Ardmore. HUNTLEY: I' ; m not familiar with that town. BROOKS: Well, there' ; s a little town there right on the border. HUNTLEY: They put you out there? BROOKS: That' ; s right. HUNTLEY: Did the Tennessee officials pick you up? BROOKS: No. Bull Connor told us that there was a train station and we could go back to Nashville. I told him, " ; We' ; ll see you back in Birmingham by high noon." ; So, you know, through being Black, and I guess I' ; m a little older than you, so I don' ; t know if you were taught this down the road, you' ; re kind of always taught how to survive and where to find the Black people. And it seems as it we were always told to go across the track. Some of the fellows left to find some Black families. And, they did. Now, understand there were only six Black families in that town, and, so the Lord was really with us. We did find one of those Black families. HUNTLEY: So, there were 5 or 6 of you? BROOKS: At that time, it had to have been. It had to have been 6, 7 or 8, something like that. HUNTLEY: Well, what did the Black family do? BROOKS: The man came to the door, and I could understand that now, and I understood it then, he was afraid to let us in. You know it had been on the news and everything. At that time, of course, we thought the Klan was coming once we found out that was not a bus station. Why would they put us out right there? And, so, I had always been taught to wake up the lady and, that she would probably, her mother instincts would probably take over. So, I figured if we talked loud enough and long enough and wake up his wife, that we were going to get in, so we did. They let us in, we called back to Nashville and Diane Nash, I' ; m quite sure you know of her. HUNTLEY: Sure. BROOKS: She was coordinating the Freedom Ride from Nashville, so we called her. They were wondering what had happened to us. She sent a car down. Leo Little was driving to pick us up and to bring us back to Birmingham. And, so we almost made it by high noon. HUNTLEY: So, you came back to Birmingham? BROOKS: Oh, no we didn' ; t go back to Nashville. HUNTLEY: So, when you came back to Birmingham you attempted to get on the bus again, right? BROOKS: We went to Rev. Shuttlesworth house and they called my mother to let her know that we were all right. They fed us and, then we went back to the bus station. I think that was when we were there for about 18 hours, waiting, trying to get a bus driver. And, I understand that was when Bobby Kennedy called down here and told them to give us protection and give us a driver. HUNTLEY: So, your mother didn' ; t know you were in Birmingham, the night before then? You didn' ; t call home? BROOKS: Yes, she knew that we were coming, but she didn' ; t know what had happened to us. Because in order to leave school, you know school was still going on at the time. HUNTLEY: Right. BROOKS: And, so, backing up some, we had to go to the Dean of Women to get permission. HUNTLEY: So, you actually got permission to participate? BROOKS: To leave school. But we were told her we weren' ; t coming for permission, that we were coming to tell her what we were going to do. And, so then, since we were going to tell her, she figured out a way how we could do it, and so, my mother had invited Lucretia, who was from Georgia, to come and visit me. HUNTLEY: So you were headed home and Bull Connor met you and decided that you were better suited to be back in Tennessee? BROOKS: Yes. HUNTLEY: So, upon your arrival back in Birmingham, you were here for 18 hours. Did you eventually get a bus driver to take you from Birmingham to Montgomery and on to Jackson? BROOKS: Yes. HUNTLEY: What was the reception in Montgomery? BROOKS: All hell broke loose. On our way down, it seemed to have been peaceful. We had police protection, we had helicopters flying over, but when we got to Montgomery, all the protection left. And it seems as if there were just a few White people standing around at the time. All of a sudden it looked like hell just broke loose. I don' ; t know where all of them came from. They were angry. They started in on the news photographers first. They started beating them. And, then, after that they started after us and that' ; s when Jim Swerd, I' ; m quite sure you' ; ve seen those pictures throughout the ages, was beaten, blood running everywhere. One of our congressmen, now, was on that bus, John Louis, who is Congressman John Louis, now. They were trying to put the girls in a cab, and I remember seeing some of the fellows jump over, which at that time to me look like it was a cliff, but it was a wall at the bus station. HUNTLEY: Is this the footage that is shown on the Eyes On The Prize series? BROOKS: It could be. HUNTLEY: There was a bus that was met in Montgomery and they suggest the same thing, that the police were there and all of a sudden they disappeared. BROOKS: Yes, that' ; s it. HUNTLEY: But, I know that you then were able to get the bus from Montgomery to Mississippi, right? BROOKS: Oh, no. That was a lot of action going on in between that time. HUNTLEY: Tell me about that action? What happened to the girls? BROOKS: Interesting question. Okay. There were 2 or 3 White girls. Now, one, her father had picked her up. We got this cab. At that time Blacks and Whites could not ride in the same cab. Blacks would go in a Black cab and Whites go in a White cab. So, the cab driver was afraid. He was saying that he could not carry us together. And, the mob was just there then. HUNTLEY: Were these the same girls that had been with you in Birmingham? That there parents had disappeared and you didn' ; t know where they were when you were going back to Tennessee? Did they meet you back in Birmingham? BROOKS: Now, there had been some people who joined us in Birmingham. Now, I think these were some Whites that came down to join us. Now, it may have been one of them may have been with us that left from Nashville. But, when Bull Conner carried us back to this little town on the state line, he did not take any of the White girls back, so they could have been just left there. But, at any rate, when we got to Montgomery and this cab driver was refusing to let these two Whites in. HUNTLEY: This was a Black cab driver? BROOKS: Yes. He was afraid. As a matter of fact, when he did get in, he was going to get out. I told him to get out, I' ; ll drive. But, then, when I looked down it was stick shift and I could not drive a stick shift. HUNTLEY: He got out? BROOKS: No, he would not. I told him to get out that I would drive, but, then I could not drive a stick shift. So, we pleaded with him to stay in and to just take us to a Black community, any Black community and we would get out. And, so he did. HUNTLEY: What did you do when you went to the Black community? BROOKS: We went to the Black community and we made some phone calls to let them know. I think we called back to Nashville to let them know where we were and that we were safe. We stayed with the people in the area that we were in. The people fed us and eventually someone picked us up and carried us and we ended up there at the church. I don' ; t know if that was the same night or the next night when they had to call in the reserves. When they was going to attack the church. HUNTLEY: So, from the church did you go back and eventually get to Jackson, Mississippi? BROOKS: From the church a number of us had some tests to take back at Tennessee State. So, I was one of the ones. You know we was still in school and it was toward the end of May. I went back to Tennessee State to take some final exams. HUNTLEY: This is in ' ; 61? BROOKS: Yes. Some of the group went on to Jackson. As a matter of fact, Lucretia went on to Jackson because she had finished her tests. As a matter of fact, she was graduating that next month. After I finished my test, then that' ; s when I went on the second Freedom Ride, straight on into Jackson. HUNTLEY: What was your reception when you arrived in Jackson? BROOKS: Captain Ray. I never will forget his name. Captain Ray arrested all of us on the spot. And, then we went on to the Hines County Jail. And, then from Hines County Jail we went to Parchment Penitentiary. HUNTLEY: Oh, you spent time at Parchment? BROOKS: I never will forget that. I can' ; t stand bugs today because of Parchment Penitentary. HUNTLEY: Tell me about Parchment. I' ; ve heard of Parchment. What was it like to be incarcerated? How long were you there? BROOKS: I' ; m thinking, it seems as if we had to stay in. We couldn' ; t stay in pass 30 days or we wouldn' ; t have been able to appeal our case. So, I' ; m thinking we stayed in right up to 25, 26, or 27 days, something like that. HUNTLEY: What was it like in Hines County? Do you remember how long you stayed there? How was that different from Parchment' ; s Farms? BROOKS: Well, in Hines County we were in a large room. It must have been 5 or 6 of us in that room. At least four. The fellows was upstairs. They used to sing to us at night, we would sing to them. There were bars around the whole cell. But, now in the penitentiary, it was two of us in a room, bunk beds, in a cell. We were locked down in both places, but the penitentiary was a little different, a little colder too. HUNTLEY: I' ; ve heard that during the summer they would turn the heat up and during the winter, they would turn the heat off? BROOKS: Well, this was summer. And, my memories of the Parchment, well first leaving Hines County, going to Parchment, we were in the back of an old truck and I can remember that terrible ride. I don' ; t know how far it was at the time, but it seems as if we were never going to get there. We were packed in like cattle, it was so many of us in this truck. Some were standing and some of us were trying to root in together. HUNTLEY: So, it was more than just the Freedom Riders? BROOKS: It must have been. It must have been other Blacks on there too. Of course, there were no Whites in there with us. So, when we got there, I don' ; t know why we had flip flops on, I didn' ; t leave Nashville with flip flops on. But, they took those. HUNTLEY: So, you had no shoes? BROOKS: That' ; s right. And I remember having to walk on the concrete and they kept the lights on at night. I remember that and the little bugs. In Nassau, Bahamas, we call them sand flies. It could have been some type of sand fly or just some type of little bug that can come through the screen. HUNTLEY: But, that was your most vivid memory? BROOKS: Yes, and, then, we hadn' ; t washed our hair in a long time. And, we used to cover up at night with the sheet and it seems as if the bugs would still get in the sheet with us. One thing I remember. It looks like it was the governor' ; s birthday or something and they gave us cake and it was real salty. I hadn' ; t thought about that in years. HUNTLEY: So, they added salt to the cake? BROOKS: Yes. HUNTLEY: Did you do any work? BROOKS: No. We didn' ; t do any work. Now, some of those later, that went on the farm, did work. HUNTLEY: You were finishing up your senior or junior year? BROOKS: That was my senior year. HUNTLEY: Were you a member of SNCC? BROOKS: Yes, I helped to form SNCC. HUNTLEY: Tell me about that. You helped to form SNCC, that' ; s important. Initially they had a meeting in North Carolina. BROOKS: And, we had another in Atlanta, so I was with that one in Atlanta. HUNTLEY: Tell me about that experience. What was it like starting an organization that would become world renowned? BROOKS: What I remember about SNCC was just being so excited to see all of the students from look like around the world, I guess it might have been just around the south. HUNTLEY: Black and White students? BROOKS: Yes, Black and White students. And the changes that we were going to make. Our philosophy and the philosophy of the adult group then, at that time. There was an adult group with the SCLC, Dr. King' ; s organization. It was just how we were going to change the situation for the Blacks. HUNTLEY: So, there was a real urgency for change? BROOKS: Oh, yes. HUNTLEY: And, being young at that time, you felt you could change the world? BROOKS: Oh, yes, we could change it overnight. HUNTLEY: How was the chemistry between the younger people of SNCC and those older folk in SCLC? BROOKS: Well, we had more contact at that time with the Nashville adult, that was Dr. Calley Miller Smith. This SCLC at that time was not, they were just getting started so we didn' ; t really have that much contact at that early part with them. Our strong contact was with the Nashville Movement, adult movement that became a part of SCLC. And, so, they didn' ; t want us to get hurt and they wanted us to just move a little slower. Of course, we were ready to go then because we were going to do it overnight. We used to call a meeting and meet early in the morning because we knew a lot of them was not going to get up and come to a meeting and we would have passed things. But, I can remember looked like C. T. Vivian, of course, was there at the time and he was just going to change right with us overnight. HUNTLEY: Did James Foreman have any involvement in that part of the struggle that you were involved in? BROOKS: You' ; re talking about with CORE? No. He was not involved at that time. Now, he came on maybe a year or so later. How we met him was in Chicago. And, this was after I got out of jail in Mississippi. I went through Nashville and picked up some of my things and sent the rest of them on back to my mother here in Birmingham. We went to Chicago to raise money. He was involved then with the Fayetteville, Tennessee or Arkansas. HUNTLEY: North Carolina. BROOKS: He was involved with that. And, so then some of us thought that he would do well with SNCC at that time. HUNTLEY: So, you all sort of recruited him? BROOKS: Yes, to come with SNCC. HUNTLEY: Well, how long did you work with SNCC? BROOKS: Now, I got married also during that time. So we were with SNCC and Dr. King' ; s movement because SNCC didn' ; t have any money. The adult group had the money. Not that we were with the adult group because they had the money, but they could support the programs. We were with both. I guess it must have been about three years. Maybe 2 to 3 years. HUNTLEY: SNCC was organized in 1960 and, then in ' ; 61 the Freedom Rides came through and SNCC had recruited students to go into Mississippi and in ' ; 62, ' ; 63 and ' ; 64 particularly with the Summer Project? BROOKS: Yes, the summer project and the voter registration? HUNTLEY: Right. BROOKS: Well, I was not with SNCC at that time. I was working at that time in the north. HUNTLEY: Where in the north? BROOKS: A number of us felt that we needed to have been involved in the economic side of it. And, then, there was some that felt, you know that was working over on this end. And, so, I was in Ohio, in Detroit, in Chicago. And, then, even down with Robert Williams. HUNTLEY: In North Carolina? BROOKS: In North Carolina. We went down to see... HUNTLEY: Robert Williams, being the president of the Monroe, North Carolina branch of the NAACP believed in the necessity to defend oneself? BROOKS: That' ; s right. HUNTLEY: He got in trouble with the national NAACP as a result of that. Were you involved with him at that particular time? BROOKS: When you say involved with him at that particular time, we were down there. HUNTLEY: So, you were going to different places assisting people with different kinds of things that they were doing? BROOKS: That' ; s right. He asked for help. HUNTLEY: Okay. BROOKS: Dr. King, at that time, and Paul Brooks, which we got married out of Robert' ; s house. They was asked for help. Paul went to Dr. King and asked him if he could go down and see what was going on down there. And, so that' ; s how a number of us then went down there to help Robert. As a matter of fact, we were down there when he had to leave the country. When he was accused of kidnaping a couple. HUNTLEY: That' ; s very interesting because, of course, at that particular time, the Movement is sort of escalating. It' ; s becoming more aggressive. BROOKS: That' ; s right. And, we are really skipping here now, too. HUNTLEY: Yes. In terms of how that whole process was going, in 1960 was non-violent, direct action...he had made a decision that he was going to defend himself and the community. That created a problem in that organization anyway. And, then he had to leave North Carolina. Were you guys there when he actually left? BROOKS: Yes. But, backing up some. Before that, there were non-violent demonstrations. His group was protecting the non-violent demonstrators. We were there during that riot. As a matter of fact, I think that was my second time of being afraid, when I called Dr. Kelly Miller Smith to tell him at that time what was going on and that they need to get someone in there because we were down under the bed. There was a lot of shooting going on. HUNTLEY: What was the first time that you were afraid? BROOKS: Well, I think I was a little afraid when Bull Connor put us out at a building on the state line, in Ardmore, AL, and told us it was a train station, and we could go back to Nashville, TN. We found out that the building was not a train station but a warehouse. HUNTLEY: Where they dropped you off? BROOKS: Yes. HUNTLEY: Were you involved in any of the demonstrations in Birmingham? BROOKS: Yes. HUNTLEY: During the April-May, 1963, were you here then? BROOKS: No. My time was before that. This had to have been, as a matter of fact, I called my brother the other day to ask him because I was talking to a lady and she couldn' ; t pinpoint the year I was talking about. This was before we came in here on the freedom ride. So, this had to be ' ; 59 or ' ; 60. I was arrested at Loveman' ; s. My brother, Louis Burks was the look-out. HUNTLEY: What were you arrested for? BROOKS: Sitting in at the lunch counter. HUNTLEY: You and a number of others? BROOKS: No. HUNTLEY: Were you alone? BROOKS: I don' ; t know if there were a number of others at that lunch counter. But, then I' ; m thinking that there was a number of places that we were going into that particular day. I think I was just sent into Loveman' ; s. HUNTLEY: Was this as a result of the Alabama Christian Movement? BROOKS: Yes. HUNTLEY: Rev. Shuttlesworth? BROOKS: Yes. HUNTLEY: And, you were arrested? BROOKS: Right. And, we went to trial. HUNTLEY: Do you remember how long you were in jail at that time? BROOKS: I' ; m thinking it was overnight. HUNTLEY: I think we have talked about probably up to 1963-64 or so. What happens after that period when you were so actively involved with SNCC and SCLC? How does that period of your life end? Do you simply drop out of the Movement? Or, now that you' ; re living up north, you simply go back, and you get a job? BROOKS: Well, we don' ; t drop out, we move on. My husband, at that time, we got married in a little town called Lancaster, South Carolina. As a matter of fact, they have on my marriage certificate " ; White." ; They had to cross it out and put " ; Colored" ; on there because when he called in he had been out at East St. Louis, I guess he sounded like he was White. But, we felt that we needed a financial base. Then, we went looking into ways that we could make and raise money. He invented the Afro-pick and, then, he went into business. We moved onto that and try to get the business off the ground, training Blacks, attending meetings and reprogramming. HUNTLEY: You had mentioned earlier that some people continued in the direction they were going but you saw that as a necessity for developing something economic? BROOKS: Right. HUNTLEY: Were you successful in doing that, in terms of developing something that would be long lasting? I know if you developed the Afro-pick, that meant something pretty substantial. BROOKS: It was at the time. It is not, of course, we' ; re not producing it now. As a matter of fact, it was virtually taken. But we made money from it. We put a number of people to work. A number of people worked with us developed things to do on their own. At one time we had three shifts going. But, we eventually manufactured it in Ottawa, Michigan. We started in Detroit and he received a patent on it. Any comb that was made at that time, the Afro-pick with the cover on it. If it was not ours, it was violating our patent, and you had a lot of them who did and who made good money from it. Now, we made money also, but not the type of money that should have been made from it, and not the type of things that we thought that we was able to do with it and we was fighting the big boys. It was a hard fight and it was a long fight, too. HUNTLEY: I know as a result of your activities in the Movement, you received a placard of some sort from Dr. King, is that correct? BROOKS: Yes. HUNTLEY: Would you tell me just a bit about that? BROOKS: This was received after the Freedom Ride. Dr. King had a meeting for us, and these were the students who participated in the freedom ride. I think it was all of us throughout the south. I don' ; t remember. But, this was in Nashville, and it looks like it was at the Grand Old Opry. As a matter of fact, Mary Makeba was there. We all received a $500 scholarship. So that' ; s what I ended up finishing Tennessee State on. HUNTLEY: Well, you' ; ve had quite an eventful life in relationship to the Movement. Is there anything that we have not covered that you would just like to mention or talk about? People will view this from time to time. BROOKS: I can' ; t come up with anything, right off hand. I think we just about hit all of it. HUNTLEY: Okay. Well, I just want to thank you for taking time out of your schedule to come and sit and talk with us because you have really enlightened us in relationship to the freedom rides and your activity. At some later date, we may want to sit down and talk with you again. BROOKS: All right. HUNTLEY: Thank you very much. BROOKS: You' ; re welcome. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
bcri.org. 0 http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=CBBrooks1996.xml CBBrooks1996.xml
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Catherine Burks Brooks
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Catherine Burks Brooks discusses getting involved with Movement after attending Tennessee State University. She participated in the Freedom Rides and spent almost 30 days in Parchman Farm (Mississippi State Penitentiary). She received recognition from Dr. King for her activism.
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19960429B
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968
Freedom Rides, 1961
The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (Atlanta,GA.)
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
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1996-04-29
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video
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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Interviews collected as part of the general mission of the Oral History Project
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Video
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Oral History
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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English
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bcriohp
Oral History
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Horace Huntley
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Carolyn McKinstry
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http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=CMcKinstry1998.xml
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Parker High School (Birmingham, Ala.)
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5.4 April 23, 1998 Carolyn McKinstry Interviewed on April 23, 1998 19980423M 1:23:56 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project Collection bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Lessie Dingler Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, Birmingham, Ala., 1963 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 Abernathy, Ralph, 1926-1990 Fisk University Parker High School (Birmingham, Ala.) Carolyn McKinstry Horace Huntley Video 1:|11(10)|29(4)|58(5)|70(6)|86(2)|103(1)|116(9)|131(11)|144(14)|163(6)|174(12)|190(12)|209(14)|220(15)|235(4)|248(16)|264(15)|287(10)|303(1)|329(4)|361(11)|373(12)|387(17)|414(8)|426(15)|447(12)|459(4)|478(6)|494(8)|508(4)|519(18)|541(7)|553(14)|572(3)|585(11)|599(7)|610(5)|628(1)|641(4)|654(7)|672(17)|687(1)|707(4)|721(16)|734(8)|747(17)|767(1)|778(4)|797(4)|811(6)|826(13)|840(10)|852(6)|865(1)|877(3)|890(6)|903(5)|915(7)|931(7)|941(10)|955(12)|970(8)|981(5)|998(6)|1013(2)|1023(11)|1038(3)|1049(14)|1062(6)|1077(16)|1089(8)|1102(9)|1114(3)|1123(4)|1137(14)|1156(6)|1169(4)|1181(9)|1190(5) 0 https://youtu.be/aJ0Z77M_PAA YouTube video English 13 Introduction to Interview This is an interview with Ms. Carolyn McKinstry for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s Oral History Project. I’m Dr. Horace Huntley, we’re presently at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Today is April 23, 1998. I want to thank you for taking time out of your schedule, in fact, you’ve just driven back from Atlanta to come and sit and talk to me today about Birmingham and the movement. Welcome to the Institute. 33.5161, -86.8145 17 Birmingham Civil Rights Institute https://www.bcri.org/ BCRI Homepage 59 Family Background That’s right and you’ve been so generous with that for all kinds of people from all over the world. Let me just ask you about your parents. Were your parents from Birmingham? First of all, were you born in Birmingham? Carolyn McKinstry talks about her family background being born in Clanton, Alabama then moving to Birmingham shortly there after. education ; family ; teacher American Cast Iron Pipe Company ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Chilton County (Ala.) ; Clanton (Ala.) ; Hooper City Elementary (Birmingham, Ala.) ; Huffman High School (Huffman, Ala.) ; Lewis Elementary (Birmingham, Ala.) ; Parker High School (Birmingham, Ala.) ; Pratt Elementary School (Birmingham, Ala.) 206 Community Background Growing up in ACIPCO what kind of community was ACIPCO at the time? Carolyn McKinstry explains what it was like to grow up in the ACIPCO community. African American neighborhoods ; Family ; Friends ; Industrial Work ; Teacher American Cast Iron Pipe Company ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Lewis, Jessie ; Stockham Valves and Fittings (Firm) ; Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company 568 Early Education - Finley Avenue Elementary What elementary school did you attend? Carolyn McKinstry discusses her memories from Finley Avenue Elementary school in Birmingham, Alabama. Contest ; Spelling bees ; Teacher-student relationships Finley Avenue Elementary (Birmingham, Ala.) 751 Early Education - Parker High School Where did you go when you left Finley Avenue? Carolyn McKinstry explains about her having a great time at Parker High School. African American schools ; Extracurricular activities Parker High School (Birmingham, Ala.) 982 Being Inspired by the Freedom Riders Now, 1961 was the year the Freedom Riders came through. 1962 was the year the Miles College students developed the selective buying campaign downtown. Of course 1963 was the year of the demonstrations. Were you at all active in the demonstrations in 1963? Carolyn McKinstry talks about seeing the Freedom Riders on TV and deciding on wanting to participate on her own freedom ride. African Americans--Civil rights ; Bus ; Civil rights demonstrations--Alabama ; Segregation in transportation Freedom Rides, 1961 ; Miles Community College 1391 Clerical Work at 16th Street Baptist Church What then was the first time you remember being involved in the movement. You know in April and May of ‘63 was when the demonstrations took place. Were you actively involved prior to then? By attending the mass meetings or . . . When did you get involved? Carolyn McKinstry discusses her time as a clerical worker for the 16th Street Baptist church, and having people such as Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy come out to speak. Church ; Clerical work ; Inspirational moments 16th Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Ala.) ; 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, Birmingham, Ala., 1963 ; Abernathy, Ralph, 1926-1990 ; Jackson, Jesse, 1941- ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 1725 Parker High School Demonstration Do you remember the first demonstration that you took part in? The first mass demonstration. Carolyn McKinstry discusses the first demonstration she was involved in with Parker High School. African Americans--Civil rights ; Civil rights demonstrations ; Protest movements ; Teacher-student relationships Clanton (Ala.) ; Kelly Ingram Park (Birmingham, Ala.) ; Parker High School (Birmingham, Ala.) 2040 Kelly Ingram Park Demonstration Tell me a little about the occurrence of the demonstration downtown in Kelly Ingram Park. Carolyn McKinstry speaks about her time marching through Kelly Ingram Park in protest and how she was hit with the water hose, as well as her parents explaining not to go back. African Americans--Civil rights ; Civil rights demonstrations--Alabama ; Fire hose ; Police brutality--United States ; Police dogs ; Protest movements ; Student demonstration Kelly Ingram Park (Birmingham, Ala.) 2434 Reception at School After Kelly Ingram Park Demonstration When you returned to school what was the reception like? Carolyn McKinstry explains the reactions of students and teachers after the Kelly Ingram demonstration. finger printed ; jail ; police mistreatment ; student demostrations Parker High School (Birmingham, Ala.) 2578 Recollection of March on Washington Do you remember what you were doing when the march on Washington took place? Carolyn McKinstry recounts her watching the March on Washington in her parents living room live. Cable television ; Live broadcast King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968. I have a dream ; March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963 : Washington, D.C.) 2668 Recollection of 16th Street Church Bombing September 15, 1963. Tell me what that morning was like. You’re at home and getting ready to go to church. Tell me what do you remember about what took place just prior to the fiasco. Carolyn McKinstry recollects the morning of the 16th Street Church Bombing from her point of view. Bomb threats ; Dead ; Explosion zone ; Hysteria ; Missing children ; Traumatic shock 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, Birmingham, Ala., 1963 ; Mountain Brook (Ala.) ; United States. Act to Award Posthumously a Congressional Gold Medal to Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley to Commemorate the Lives They Lost 50 Years Ago in the Bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where These 4 Little Black Girls' Ultimate Sacrifice Served as a Catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement 17 Carolyn Mckinstry recollects the morning of the 16th Street Church Bombing from her point of view. 3351 Returning to Church after Bombing You being the secretary in the church, how did this event impact upon you going back into the church? Not just for services but for whatever else you may have been doing. Carolyn McKinstry recounts going back to church fearful after bombing. Church ; Fear ; Funerals ; Terrorism ; Traumatic shock 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, Birmingham, Ala., 1963 ; Bombings--Alabama 3596 Returning to School After Church Bombing Do you remember when you went back to school? What was the atmosphere like? Carolyn McKinstry speaks about going back to school in a somber environment and losing a bit of her confidence. Publishing ; school ; Therapeutic schools ; Writing 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, Birmingham, Ala., 1963 ; Parker High School (Birmingham, Ala.) ; Presidents--Assassination--United States--History 3894 College at Fisk University Did you enjoy Fisk as much as you did Parker? Carolyn McKinstry discusses her time at Fisk University, experiencing visitors from famous black artist to dealing with the death of Martin Luther King Jr. African American artists ; African American businesspeople ; African culture ; College ; Contemporary Black history Assassination ; Belafonte, Harry, 1927- ; Bevel, Nash Diane ; Black Panther Party ; Black Power Conferences ; Fisk University ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Nashville (Tenn.) ; Poitier, Sydney, 1927- 4150 Life After Fisk University What did you do after Fisk? Carolyn McKinstry talks about her life after Fisk University, getting married, having children and moving around a lot. AS-PTA (Organization) ; Changing times in education ; Children ; Family ; Financial Education ; Growing up ; Parenthood Atlanta (Ga.) ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Birmingham-Southern College ; Fisk University ; Nashville (Tenn.) ; North Birmingham (Ala.) ; Orlando (Fla.) ; United States Air Force ; Walt Disney World (Fla.) ; Warner Robins (Ga.) 5022 Interview Conclusion I want to thank you for all your time and all your wisdom because you obviously really set a tone that is really going to be important for the 21st Century. Thank you for coming. Oral History Carolyn McKinstry discusses getting involved in the Movement as early as eighth grade by doing clerical work at 16th Street Baptist Church where she saw Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy speak. She was the secretary there through the church bombing. McKinstry participated in various demonstrations before attending Fisk University. HUNTLEY: This is an interview with Ms. Carolyn McKinstry for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute' ; s Oral History Project. I' ; m Dr. Horace Huntley, we' ; re presently at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Today is April 23, 1998. I want to thank you for taking time out of your schedule, in fact, you' ; ve just driven back from Atlanta to come and sit and talk to me today about Birmingham and the movement. Welcome to the Institute. MCKINSTRY: Thank you, I appreciate the invitation. It' ; s always good to share the historical aspects of things that we lived through and are still living through. HUNTLEY: That' ; s right and you' ; ve been so generous with that for all kinds of people from all over the world. Let me just ask you about your parents. Were your parents from Birmingham? First of all, were you born in Birmingham? MCKINSTRY: I was born in Clanton, Alabama which is about 56 miles from here in Chilton County. I lived there until I was two years old and then my parents moved to Birmingham. HUNTLEY: How many siblings do you have? MCKINSTRY: I have four brothers and one sister. I' ; m in the middle, two boys older, two boys younger and then my sister is the baby. HUNTLEY: When your family moved to Birmingham what neighborhood did they move to? MCKINSTRY: We moved to, it' ; s called Aylesbury Community but it' ; s ACIPCO. It' ; s 16th Street and Finley Avenue but also known as Aylesbury Park, also known as ACIPCO. HUNTLEY: Then were you raised up in ACIPCO? MCKINSTRY: Yes. HUNTLEY: What about your parents' ; educational backgrounds? How much education did they have? MCKINSTRY: Both my parents taught school. My dad taught physics and chemistry. He had a master' ; s degree in that. He waited tables at night but taught school during the day. My mom had a Degree in elementary education. HUNTLEY: Where did they teach? MCKINSTRY: My father retired from Huffman High School. However, he was part of Parker when it still had the name Industrial High School. He taught there for many years under that name and then under the Parker name. Then under the Carver High School name and was subsequently moved to Huffman when the integration order came. HUNTLEY: So, he was one of the first teachers that went out to Huffman. MCKINSTRY: Right. HUNTLEY: I' ; m sure he had some interesting stories to tell about that. MCKINSTRY: He did, he did. HUNTLEY: And your mother, where did she teach? MCKINSTRY: My mom retired from Pratt Elementary School. Some of the schools that she taught, when she first came to Birmingham she was at Hooper City Elementary School which is not there anymore. She taught at Northside which is not there anymore. Actually Pratt is not there anymore either. She taught at Lewis Elementary and there is one other one in there somewhere, but she retired from Pratt. HUNTLEY: Growing up in ACIPCO what kind of community was ACIPCO at the time? MCKINSTRY: Well, I probably wouldn' ; t have seen it this way at that time, but it was probably a fairly middle-class neighborhood. We had quite a few professional people there. There were any number of teachers that lived on our street. In fact, my eighth-grade teacher lived on my street and my seventh grade teacher lived two streets behind me. So, you know it was quite common then to have your teachers or principal living close by. Also, one of probably two if I' ; ve got that right. During that time, we had two maybe Black CPA' ; s in the city of Birmingham and one of those lived directly across the street. Maurice Rouse one of our bondsmen during that time. We knew him because he owned the vending company too and we could sometime get old records from him. In fact, one of my brothers worked with him for a long time and when he would travel to the different little cities stocking the record machines, [inaudible] or whatever then he paid him to travel with him. So, we knew all these people quite well and they took quite an interest in what you did, particularly if you were doing well in things. HUNTLEY: Were there people that worked at ACIPCO, at the mill or the plant that lived in your general area? Now you were in Aylesbury. MCKINSTRY: Aylesbury Park. HUNTLEY: So, was that sort of an enclave of [inaudible]? MCKINSTRY: You know some of the people in my neighborhood during that time. Dr. Jessie Lewis lived directly behind me. Let' ; s see if I can think of some of them. Mr. Shortridge who they had a funeral home at that time was right on the corner. HUNTLEY: Very active in the movement. MCKINSTRY: Yes. Let' ; s see, Mr. Cromwell whose husband was the CPA and of course she was an art instructor. She had two boys that went on that American France program. On the back street there were a couple of other people that I' ; m trying to remember that you would know. But Jessie Lewis is who stands out. Let' ; s see if I can think a little bit further down. Most of the people in that immediate three or four block area were in fairly professional jobs. Now, probably about three blocks down Finley toward the Farmer' ; s Market where my elementary school was, where a lot of my classmates and friends lived. A lot of those children their parents worked at places like ACIPCO or TCI and I remember Stockham, several parents working at Stockham. During that time, I don' ; t know if you ever saw there were army barracks that lined. HUNTLEY: Yes, I vaguely remember that because I had some relatives that lived in that general area. MCKINSTRY: From the school to the Farmer' ; s Market there were these rows of army barracks. A lot of my friends lived in those and I had a couple of occasions where I went by after school and got a chance to see the inside. For the most part my mom didn' ; t let us visit or go inside anyone else' ; s home. It was just an interesting phenomenon. We thought the army barracks being there. You know there was a very strong sense in the school and the classroom of everybody in sync toward the same goal. There really was never. I' ; m not aware of any distinctions being made as far as where anybody worked. Whose parents did what? A couple of kids at the school their parents actually taught at the school. Each teacher, I guess the teachers at that time really understood that it really didn' ; t matter who your parents were to the real world. In the grand scope of things, you know we were all pretty much in the same boat and they understood that. HUNTLEY: You don' ; t think there were any advantages because one was middle class and one was from a working-class family in the school situation? Were there any distinctions between lighter skin children and dark skin children? MCKINSTRY: You know I honestly don' ; t think, I didn' ; t see that. I' ; m not saying that, that concept didn' ; t exist that there were . . . there may have been at some point a little preferential treatment. I honestly didn' ; t see it. We had children in my classes that were on welfare, but we didn' ; t know it. They received free lunches, but we didn' ; t know it because the teachers never made you aware of who was doing what. It just seemed to me that they made, the teachers I had, made a very fair attempt sometimes it might be the fairer skinned children that needed extra help or it might be a child who' ; s parent was a teacher or it might be one of those children living in the army barracks. We had during that time we had rows. Row number one obviously was the smarter row and if you were in that row and everybody finished their work then you were obliged to help the children in say row number six or seven until they came along. So, in that sense you felt helpful, you felt useful, you felt smart. I know I did, but I was permitted to work in the office. I did, in elementary school, I did a lot of things that probably would have been things that other children would have done at a later age. I think that' ; s why I ended up working at the church as the clerk. I started doing that in the eighth grade and all the way through high school I was the person who kept the attendance records and the money and so forth. HUNTLEY: What elementary school did you attend? MCKINSTRY: Finley Avenue Elementary School. HUNTLEY: Now Finley Avenue was . . . how near was that to your home? MCKINSTRY: I walked to school every day. It was probably in terms of blocks, city blocks, three blocks. I could walk home just average pace about seven minutes. HUNTLEY: What stands out in your mind most about Finley Avenue? The school, I mean. MCKINSTRY: Well, a couple of things. I started, when I started school it was in January. We were still doing the half years. I was in the last class to start in January. I was six years old but I was always a very bright student, so I didn' ; t have to complete the first grade. They just sent me right onto the second grade. That' ; s kind of how I got caught up with the rest of the kids. Claude Wesley, no, James Goodson, Dr. Goodson, was my principal grades one through six. Grades seven and eight was Claude Wesley. When I was in the eighth grade there, you know I participated in Dr. A. G. Gaston' ; s annual spelling contest. That contest was held locally as a city contest. Then a county wide and then the winners from the counties competed on a state level. I of course went on to win on the state level. So, probably during the time that I was at Finley that was, I was an honor student but that was probably my most outstanding accomplishment I guess. HUNTLEY: So, you had some real good vibes about your experiences in elementary school? MCKINSTRY: I really did. My teachers made me feel that I was capable. They didn' ; t spoil you. You know there were many times when we would be practicing for the spelling contest. They would rehearse me sometimes from lunch time 12:00 to 4:00. As a child you know I just really got sick of it. There would be days I cried and didn' ; t want to do it anymore. They would just sort of ignore it. They wouldn' ; t pamper me, and they wouldn' ; t say, " ; We understand." ; They would say, " ; Why don' ; t you go down to the cafeteria and get a coke." ; I thought that was really special because we didn' ; t have machines when I was in elementary school. A coke was real treat. You couldn' ; t even bring money and buy a coke. So, they would do little things like that for me. I felt very grounded. I felt very capable and very comfortable with their direction. I felt that no matter whatever else that I may have seen in their personalities that ultimately my best interest was being served by what they were trying to do. Somehow we all felt that I think. They gave us a strong sense of pride. I had teachers that would send students back home. When they came in, in the morning and it appeared that you had not combed your hair or that shirt looked wrinkled or whatever. They would send them back home and tell your mom that I said, " ; To give you a clean shirt," ; or whatever. Those types of things we need to do for children, you know. HUNTLEY: Where did you go when you left Finley Avenue? MCKINSTRY: I went to Parker High School. A. H. Parker High School. HUNTLEY: What was that like? Parker has been titled as being the largest Negro school in the world. You leave little Finley Elementary School and go to Parker High School. What was that transition like? MCKINSTRY: Well, I loved it. I have to say, you know I don' ; t find to many environments that I don' ; t enjoy but I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was a great source of inspiration to be there. There were so many students there and some of them were very accomplished students. The instructors there were just as caring and appeared to what me to be as capable as Finley Avenue did. So, in fact I was invited to participate in a lot of things that I chose not to. Oratorical, they tried for four years to get me to do that and I just had personal reasons why I didn' ; t want to. When I came in the ninth grade one of the first things I remember with in the first two months they had this honor society induction. I remember I was so moved by it because we were in the auditorium and they had darkened the lights and it was very quite. Then there was this very light precession and students marched in holding a candle. It was a very humble, spiritual type ceremony. They went up on the stage and they stood holding the candles. Then at some point somebody came out and read this announcement about how you qualify to be in it, and they said we are about to tap new students to be inducted. And those students may have had some idea who they were, but I don' ; t know for sure. So, it was really great to watch them to go out in the audience and find a sister or a brother and take their hands, come on you' ; ve earned this, come go with me and they would hand them a candle. So, one of my first determinations when I entered Parker in the first two months, I decided that next year I would be one of those students being led up to the stage. There were a lot of things to aspire to that the environment was really wholesome. We had a lot of extracurricular activities, business club, teachers club, science club. Of course, there' ; s the athletic things, the majorettes. I think I may have been among one of the first female students to take the mechanical drawing class from Mr. Hawkins. At that time, you know girls couldn' ; t go over to the building where the men were but I convinced Mr. Hawkins that I needed to be in that class. He went to bat on our behalf. HUNTLEY: So, you then . . . you really enjoyed your experience at Parker? MCKINSTRY: I loved the school. Our principal, R. C. Johnson who we all called " ; Big Red" ; was . . . looked big and mean, you know. He would see you in the hall, Little Maull, that was my maiden name, what are you doing in this hall and do you have a pass. I can remember a couple of times when I didn' ; t have a pass but was allowed to escape. So that my have been some of the preferential treatment you were talking about. But I did, I loved the school. I can' ; t think of very many teachers at all. There were a couple of teachers that were light less and we tended to play tricks on them, but it wasn' ; t a malicious type of thing, you know. It wasn' ; t an obvious show of dislike for them. We just sort of played a few tricks on them. It was a wonderful environment. HUNTLEY: Now, 1961 was the year the Freedom Riders came through. 1962 was the year the Miles College students developed the selective buying campaign downtown. Of course, 1963 was the year of the demonstrations. Were you at all active in the demonstrations in 1963? MCKINSTRY: Yes. HUNTLEY: How did you get involved? What precipitated your involvement? MCKINSTRY: Something I saw on television. I was sitting at home one day and you know we had never, my parents had never really allowed us to ride the bus. There were a lot of things my parents didn' ; t tell us. Rather than saying you can' ; t they conveniently dropped us off or picked us up rather than have us get on a bus and have someone tell us that we could sit up front. So, this particular day I was watching something on TV and it was when some of these people had first come to town. That' ; s when I became aware of the signs that were on the seats that you moved around. HUNTLEY: You said some of these people had just come to town. Who were you referring to? MCKINSTRY: Freedom Riders, I guess. People that had come to town to assist in the integration efforts. HUNTLEY: Right. MCKINSTRY: So, I just sort of sat there and decided within myself, I didn' ; t discuss it with anybody. I said, " ; I' ; m going to ride this bus. I' ; m going to find out and see. I' ; m not moving that sign. If I sit down, I' ; m going to stay there." ; I just started thinking these things in my head. So, I had to have an excuse to go downtown. I had to have permission. I told my mom one day, I said, " ; You know, I need to learn how to start taking care of bills and taking care of things. Don' ; t you need me to pay this bill for you?" ; She had an account at Parisians. So, I said, " ; Let me go by and pay it." ; I made it appear to be an educational experience. So, she said, " ; Ok, but you come right home." ; I said, " ; I' ; m just going to pay the bill and then I' ; ll come right home." ; I did pay the bill but when I got on the bus, probably, fortunately, there wasn' ; t enough people riding the bus that day for it to be an issue where I was sitting. Actually, the bus driver seemed somewhat tolerant of us because I think I probably got on the bus with a little bit of a chip on my shoulder and a look at him that sort of dared him to say anything about where I sat. HUNTLEY: Were the boards still on the bus at that time? MCKINSTRY: The boards were there. In fact, there were people when I was sitting there that came up to the front of the bus and paid their money and then went around to the second door to get on the bus, to board the bus. I was trying to figure that out too. That was one of those things where my parents didn' ; t sit down and say well, this is the way it is. So, that was something that was a little bit surprising to me that they would pay their money in the front and then walk around to the back door to get on the bus. HUNTLEY: Although the bus was not crowded? MCKINSTRY: No. If there were White people sitting in the front. This is the way it appeared. If there was nobody in the front, White, they could pay their money and walk on board the bus. If there were White sitting in the front they paid their money and then walked back around to the second door and entered and went straight to the back. HUNTLEY: So, you sat in front of the board? MCKINSTRY: Yes. HUNTLEY: Were there any reactions? MCKINSTRY: No. HUNTLEY: No one reacted? MCKINSTRY: No one reacted. The bus driver had a look. That' ; s why I think he was somewhat tolerant. I think he suspected what was going on in my mind. I probably had a look. He did not say anything. Where I lived from downtown the number of bus stops between there and my home was probably about six. So, we' ; re not talking about a lot of time, maybe about ten minutes. HUNTLEY: No one in back said anything? MCKINSTRY: No. HUNTLEY: So, you just defied the whole custom. How did that make you feel? MCKINSTRY: Well, actually I was a little nervous, a little frightened when I first boarded the bus. You know as I sat there I was trying to understand. I didn' ; t have a good understanding of why it was this way. HUNTLEY: You didn' ; t ride the bus a lot in other words? MCKINSTRY: No, I' ; m trying to think. The only other bus I really had ridden, we had a school bus that picked us up every morning to go to Parker High School, but it was called a " ; special." ; HUNTLEY: The " ; special," ; right. MCKINSTRY: It was ten cents to ride. HUNTLEY: And you sat any place that you want. MCKINSTRY: Right and it was just children like me, other school children. So, I didn' ; t have a real sense of what the social background and the history, the historical aspects of why this was the way it was. HUNTLEY: Do you remember what grade you were in? MCKINSTRY: Ninth grade. HUNTLEY: You were in ninth grade. So, this was around 1961. Did you ever have any discussion with anybody about that experience? I mean during that particular time. With your friends, or did you ever tell your mother about it? MCKINSTRY: I didn' ; t discuss . . . my father said no to everything. I didn' ; t give him an opportunity to tell me no for any of this. They found out about most of what I had done after the fact. My mother pretty much let my dad take the lead with the yes or the no' ; s. They were, I understood later why they were . . . both of them taught school, they had four boys that they wanted to live to be a male adult. So, a lot of what they did was done with the idea of protecting us. I rarely discussed . . . my dad was very stern, very strict. I rarely discussed . . . I was sort of one of those people that I would think about it and weigh it and would make my own decision. I' ; m pretty much that way today. If I decided to do it, it didn' ; t matter if I was the only one doing it. I had just made that decision so that particular experience along with hearing a lot of the motivational speeches at the church and just things that started happening during that time. I think it sort of propelled me toward the movement. I personally felt very, very inspired and motivated when I would listen to the speeches at the church. Some of the things that they would say about why we were doing the marching . . . what we were trying to accomplish. It just seemed like for a certain select group of Black people there was a higher goal. Maybe it was the same higher goal for my parents, but they couldn' ; t accomplish it in the same way as these people. So, I wanted to be part of that. It just felt exciting, it felt good, it felt right, and I wanted to be part of that. So, I felt like pretty much if I had discussed it at home that they were going to tell me no, so I didn' ; t. HUNTLEY: Were you all members of Sixteenth Street? MCKINSTRY: Yes, we' ; ve been at Sixteenth Street since I was two. We moved to Birmingham and my mom joined that church immediately. HUNTLEY: What then was the first time you remember being involved in the movement. You know in April and May of ' ; 63 was when the demonstrations took place. Were you actively involved prior to then? By attending the mass meetings or . . . When did you get involved? MCKINSTRY: I attended as many mass meetings as I could. I just loved the atmosphere. HUNTLEY: Starting when though? MCKINSTRY: Starting probably in terms of what year or . . . HUNTLEY: Right, was it during the demonstrations or before the demonstrations of ' ; 63? MCKINSTRY: Well, I think what happened with me doing the clerical work since grade eight. HUNTLEY: Oh, ok. MCKINSTRY: I was there, and I was aware a lot of times of things that would be going on. Plus, I worked in the summer. When school was out I would go there and stay all day in the summer, answer the phones and do different things. So, I became aware of people coming in and out of our church. I became aware of things that were being planned, the meetings, the speeches. It was commonplace to see some of these people come through. So, I became very accustomed and very comfortable with talking with these people. I just found it inspiring. You know I really liked being around them. Again, it appeared that they had a message, a higher goal. My dad' ; s message was education which was the same message we got in school. Of course, most students don' ; t see the importance of that quite the way they should at that age. Maybe it was because of what we could feel when you went to these meetings and they sang the songs and they gave the speeches and even gave you the opportunity to stand and say or ask questions if you needed to. It made you feel part of it. The singing was just motivational. It just made you ready to do something. HUNTLEY: So, you were there. Were your brothers involved at the same level that you were or any of your siblings? What about your parents, were they involved? MCKINSTRY: My two younger brothers were in the church when it was bombed and aside from that I may have been the lone ranger as far as . . . I was always told that I was the stubborn one in the house. I was the one that had a mind of their own. HUNTLEY: You attended the mass meetings? MCKINSTRY: Yes. HUNTLEY: How would you describe a mass meeting? MCKINSTRY: Well, they were always very crowded, always a lot of people there. I don' ; t remember, when I say people more people adults than students, but I just remember that there were always a lot of people. I remember quite a few students, but I don' ; t remember numbers. I remember that they would start with usually a song of some sort. Then we would get a prayer. I had an occasion to hear Dr. King speak many times. I had an occasion to hear Jessie Jackson to speak. Bevil out of Nashville, I think. And a couple of other people that I can' ; t put a name with their face right now. Rev. Abernathy, I remember him being present. Dr. King was usually saved for last. The younger speakers, Bevil and Jackson, sort of helped kind of get people in and grouped. Them along with some of the females that really had nice voices would start the singing and kind of get people revved up and ready to receive whatever he had to say. Then we kind of got an instructional pep talk. I remember hearing things like if you have anything on your person, even a finger nail file, a pencil, they would pass these huge wastebaskets and tell you to drop anything like that in so that there would be no perception that you were attempting to take anyone. HUNTLEY: This is prior to . . . MCKINSTRY: Prior to the marches. When they were convinced and they would even come back a second time and say, now we have to trust you on your honor but now make sure that you' ; ve given us anything that you have in your pocket. At that time it was common for the high school boys to have a little pocket knife. So, usually on the second go around you would still pick up a few more things in that big wastebasket. HUNTLEY: How did you get back and forth between the church and the meetings in the evenings? MCKINSTRY: Now where I lived, where my mom still lives, the church is probably seven or eight minutes. My mom dropped me off a lot. Primarily again because I was working at the church. There were also several people from my church, Rev. Oden who was the assistant pastor for a long time, Rev. Milton Stollenwerck who was over there in that neighborhood for different occasions, so I was always kind of hauling around with somebody too. On the street behind me deacon Finch, Mr. Lowe came by a couple of times and got me. I would find rides with people when she wasn' ; t available to take me. We had initially just one car in my family. When my dad worked a second job at night she was there without a car. As long as I told her that Rev. Oden or one of these people were picking me up she didn' ; t have a problem with it. So, if she wasn' ; t dropping me off, I was riding with someone like that. HUNTLEY: Do you remember the first demonstration that you took part in? The first mass demonstration. MCKINSTRY: I remember the first one where we walked from Parker High School and we didn' ; t get very far. We got to 8th Avenue, there used to be an Atlantic Mill' ; s Thrift Center there and we were stopped at that point and told that we could not go any further. We were ordered to disperse. They had the fog horns. We sort of scattered. We all ended up at the church, but we sort of scattered. The goal was city hall. There were a couple of times when the goal was for everybody to end up at city hall to have a mass rally but I know there were at least two occasions where we didn' ; t. I don' ; t ever remember getting to city hall. The point, I guess what I call the climax or the ultimate march for me was the one that ended in Kelly Ingram Park on the occasion where we got as far as the park. They had brought out the little White tanks . . . HUNTLEY: Before you talk about that though, tell me how did you amass the people, I mean the students at Parker. When you left Parker, how did all of that transpire? MCKINSTRY: We were giving instruction, or it was agreed at the rallies that were held at the church that someone would come to the school when it was time for the students to leave. They gave us an approximate time and it seems to me that they may have said 11:00, roughly 11:00-11:30. It seems that the point where we did see someone out waiting saying it' ; s time to go was around 11:00 or 11:15 or so. Parker had a gate entrance to the street and the gate had a chain, but it was enough of a gap in between that gate that you could squeeze through it with no problem. So, when we got the single that it was time to go most of us just squeezed through the gate. However, there were a lot of students that walked out the front doors and many teachers just did not see them. I don' ; t know if Mr. Johnson saw them but he didn' ; t indicate that he had seen them. So, we were ready. We were waiting for a sign or a person to let us know when it was time and we got the single. HUNTLEY: Now you were a sophomore or a junior? MCKINSTRY: I was a sophomore. HUNTLEY: You were a good student. MCKINSTRY: Yes. HUNTLEY: Were there any questions about, by anybody, about you being involved because that could in fact impact upon your studies? Did that ever come up? Was that ever an issue? MCKINSTRY: As far as the school? HUNTLEY: As far as the school was concerned, teachers or your parents? MCKINSTRY: I was pretty much a straight " ; A" ; student. When I graduated from Parker High School there were 437 children in my graduating class, and I was number seven out of 437. I loved school, loved to study, loved to read and actually found this, I guess this was . . . I always had, I can' ; t exactly describe it, but I always had some type of inner calling. I was just a person who responded to unkindness, not necessarily on this scale, but anytime I saw things that I didn' ; t think were all right or were unkind I would say something. So, this type of movement appealed to something that was already there. I think I had . . . When I was a young girl I used to spend summers with my grandfather who was a minister in Clanton. He and my grandmother traveled around all summer two weeks at every church there to do vacation bible school. I sort of helped assisting in organizing the programs and the bible school and I think I already had a sense of a missionary type attitude. I had a lot of confidence because they allowed me to speak for myself and to just represent myself and to represent them. When I was at the church having been the secretary that long I was also allowed to put in positions of authority, you know at the church. I represented us on many occasions on trips away from the church. In Oklahoma, New York and different Baptist conventions. There was just a type of confidence that came from talking publicly to the church people. I' ; m sure there were occasions that what I said may not have been the best, but they never told you. They always made you feel that it was very special what you had done. I think my grandfather was one of the first people that convinced me, probably that was his job as a grandfather, but he just always made me feel that I was special. That I always needed to speak up if I didn' ; t agree with something. They gave me freedom to do that. My parents actually gave us the freedom if we didn' ; t agree with what they said. It didn' ; t mean that they would change. HUNTLEY: So, you were the most outgoing of your siblings? MCKINSTRY: I think so. HUNTLEY: Tell me a little about the occurrence of the demonstration downtown in Kelly Ingram Park. MCKINSTRY: That was my last demonstration. On the day that we marched to the park that was the . . . I think we still came ; we always took that 8th Avenue route. I' ; m trying to remember ; I think it was 14th Street where we turned right. We had a route. They had mapped out a route for us. We, of all the things that they had told us in the church, these motivational speeches and do this and don' ; t do this. They had not told us about water hoses, but they had told us about dogs. If the policeman attempts to do this with the dogs, what are you going to do. They would even have little role plays where you could see what to do and what not to do. They said if a policeman spits on you or if he slaps you. This is how you respond to that. They didn' ; t talk about the tanks. They didn' ; t talk about the water hoses. I suspect that maybe those things were a surprise on the day that we marched. That' ; s what I was thinking, later, well, they didn' ; t tell us about this maybe they didn' ; t know. The water hoses hurt a lot. HUNTLEY: You were actually hit with one? MCKINSTRY: I was hit with the water hose on this side running from the water. I had a sweater, a navy-blue sweater on. I never will forget ; it tore a big hole in my sweater and sort of just swiped part of my hair off on that side. I just remember the sting and the pain on my face. I had never been hit with a whip but somehow I [inaudible]. It was very painful, and you couldn' ; t escape. There were a few points where we were trying to stand up and hold on to a wall, those buildings that were there at the time. It was just a terrific pain from the force which I later learned it was something like 100 pounds of force per minute. That was the point at which I started rethinking do I really want to be a part of this or can I . . . do I have what it takes to continue on this level. I think I made the decision then perhaps that I would offer my contributions in another way. That I would assist in some other ways. I honestly was afraid of the dogs. Did not like being wet up. I felt very disrespected when I was wet up with the water and my hair. We were just marching you know. HUNTLEY: Did you go back to the church after that happened? Were you arrested? MCKINSTRY: I was not arrested, no. I was not one of those that was arrested. I went back to the church briefly. I remember going in the lady' ; s room to just sort of try to dry off a little bit. I ended up getting a ride with someone to get home. When my mom walked in the door she knew something was different, but she didn' ; t know what I had done. I explained to her where I had been and what I had done. At that point I was actually proud of what I had done but I had some question marks there about the tactics that they were using because I think I felt that you could actually be hurt. Serious things could happen with what they were doing. HUNTLEY: You had not thought about that prior to then? MCKINSTRY: Right and she made my daddy aware of it and he was very angry that I had done this. HUNTLEY: With you? MCKINSTRY: He was angry with me. He instructed me not to go back. He just talked about these people were crazy. You might expect anything to happen. They would stop at nothing to keep things the way they were. Just felt like that if there was going to be change, you know, let somebody else make the change, you stay out of it. That' ; s never been my way. HUNTLEY: Were you ever involved in demonstrations again after that? MCKINSTRY: Not marching, no. HUNTLEY: This of course what had happened, they had given out of bodies in effect and the children were really the saving grace of the movement. Did you have any concept of that at the time? That the children were actually saving the movement and the whole idea of filling up jails. What that meant? Did you ever have a real concept of that at that particular point? MCKINSTRY: I don' ; t think I understood the real significance of why they were using the students. I like to refer to us as bearable commodities for them at that time. I came to know later the rationale behind why they used us. I have to say in terms of my participation I felt very much a part of what was going on. I felt that I was needed. I felt when I heard what they had to say, I responded to that spiritually. I agreed spiritually with what they were trying to do and was glad that I could be a part of it. So, I think most of the children felt that this was a worthy cause. This was something that we needed to do, that we wanted to part of, and we had confidence in the leadership. We had confidence in Dr. King and James Bevil and the ones that spoke. They were very charismatic, but they were also very articulate. They were very specific. When you would see them, they would shake your hand, young man, young lady, give you a hug, we appreciate the fact that you are here. And we felt very much included. I did and I think most of the students did. I think most of us probably didn' ; t have the real sense of how valuable we were. We felt good that we could make a contribution in this small way. They needed numbers and we helped them with the numbers. HUNTLEY: You were never arrested, right? MCKINSTRY: No. HUNTLEY: When you returned to school what was the reception like? MCKINSTRY: There was a lot of hugging and laughing and talking about what had happened. Describing and jokes about how someone' ; s hair looked after they had gotten wet. And who they saw running in this direction. There were a couple of students that I knew that went to jail that were out the next day. There were others that stayed in jail for four or five days. So, like the next day or two we heard accounts from those students of what it was like. For the most part it was funny. Yeah, they served us these peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They were fingerprinted and they went on to tell they were carried away in a wagon and being fingerprinted and so forth. The accounts that came from the students that stayed four or five days were not quite as comical. The ladies had a lot of stories of being mistreated. Not abused necessarily but just mistreated. I think they were taken out to Fair Park and crowded into this area. I remember several of the ladies. In fact, one lady gave this account when the Institute first opened and we did this program across the street. One lady gave this account of needing personal articles, she was there four or five days, and no one attended to her needs. She felt very deprived, disrespected. I mean you know. She cried when she gave this account, and this is like 20 to 25 years later. So, I know it must have really affected her. But, I think the guys were able to tough it out a little better than the girls and ladies were. HUNTLEY: Were there any discussions of this in classrooms after you returned to school? MCKINSTRY: The discussions that we had were about the food, there were jokes about the food. HUNTLEY: In the classroom? With the teacher? MCKINSTRY: Not with the teacher just talking among the students. I don' ; t remember us actually having any discussions with our teachers about what went on. I think the teachers kind of had to know and not know. I think they were proud of us, but they had a business as usual type attitude. We did a lot of talking at lunch time or sometime we had them at study periods when the teacher was not in the room. We would discuss it among ourselves in the library and just sort of compare notes on what had happened to different people. HUNTLEY: Do you remember what you were doing when the march on Washington took place? MCKINSTRY: Watching it on television. HUNTLEY: Did you have any desire to go? Or was that an option at the time? MCKINSTRY: I don' ; t know of any way that I could have gotten permission or whatever to go to Washington. I really don' ; t. I would have loved to have gone. I sat glued to my set. Of course, like everyone else thought that Dr. King' ; s speech was marvelous and wonderful. It was just moving. I was so proud of us as a group of people when I saw how we assembled there. I looked at the people that were representing us, representing me. I listened to them and I was just very, very proud. You know I guess I' ; ve always had that sense of pride because all of the teachers I had in elementary school were wonderful and all of my high school teachers were wonderful. So, where was this inferiority that I kept hearing about. That we couldn' ; t make the grade. That we couldn' ; t perform as well as they could. I could never find what they were talking about. I kept searching for what they were talking about. I was just extremely proud. I remember that. Still felt very committed even though I was in front of the television set. HUNTLEY: September 15, 1963. Tell me what that morning was like. You' ; re at home and getting ready to go to church. Tell me what do you remember about what took place just prior to the fiasco. MCKINSTRY: Ok, I always left home very early. My dad worked his second job on Sunday so he would drop us off as he went to work. My sister, normally I took my sister to Sunday School with me and my two younger brothers. She wouldn' ; t let me comb her hair that morning. I kind of didn' ; t feel like I didn' ; t want to take her anyway. So, I told my mother, " ; She won' ; t let me comb her hair." ; She said, " ; Ok, just go on without her." ; So, I took my brothers and my dad dropped us off. He was headed toward Mountain Brook. I assumed my duties as secretary. I was actually, I had come through the downstairs area to pass out the cards, the attendance cards and the little envelopes where you record your money. I had done that and was heading back up the stairs, saw the girls in the bathroom sort of laughing and talking and putting on their robes. They were excited. Actually, everybody was in Sunday School class, which is probably where they should have been, but they were excited. So, I walked up the steps. We had two sets of steps, well, we still do. Then walked up the second set of steps and had stepped out before I stepped out into the sanctuary. We used to have the church office right there on the right. You know it used to be Rev. Hamlin' ; s study but at that time it was the actual church office. The phone rang and I answered the phone, and someone said, " ; Two minutes." ; Rev. Cross had not made us aware, maybe he made some of the adults aware, but he had not made a general announcement to the church that we had bomb threats. I didn' ; t know, didn' ; t even think about what this might mean. HUNTLEY: What was your response when he said two minutes? MCKINSTRY: Well, he hung up. They said that and then click. HUNTLEY: Then what did you do? MCKINSTRY: I was just standing there and kind of thought about it. Hung the phone up and stepped out into the sanctuary because I had three or four more classes that I needed to give these cards to. As soon as I stepped out in the sanctuary, it wasn' ; t two minutes it was probably more like five seconds. The time it takes to walk from that office, maybe five or six seconds. Something happened at that time, I didn' ; t know that the church had been bombed. I felt, what I heard at first sounded like a rumble, like thunder. I remember thinking rain, it immediately came to my mind. As soon as I thought rain all of the windows started shattering, glass came pouring in and when that happened I heard screams all upstairs, screams. Then somebody said, " ; Get on the floor." ; We all got on the floor and was very quiet for what seems like several minutes, but it was probably on twenty or thirty seconds. Then we heard footsteps at that point somebody had gotten up and started running. Whoever it was everybody else followed. So, I came out of the church through the back. HUNTLEY: So, you came out of the church after getting up off of the floor? MCKINSTRY: Yes. HUNTLEY: Did you walk? Did you run? MCKINSTRY: I ran. HUNTLEY: To the back? MCKINSTRY: To the back of the church and we went out through those doors where you normally enter on Sunday for the 11:00 service. Came down the steps and my first thoughts immediately were to find my two younger brothers. I could see that something had happened. I think I learned in that first minute or two that I was out there that our church had been bombed. Everybody was looking for somebody, I think. I was looking for my two younger brothers and couldn' ; t find them. They were in the Sunday School classes downstairs. So, I went back downstairs, and I remember going into the boy' ; s bathroom first. Because I looked in all of the classrooms and I couldn' ; t find them. I went in the boy' ; s bathroom and I didn' ; t see them in there. Then I started in the girl' ; s bathroom and I said, " ; Well, if they went to the bathroom they probably wouldn' ; t be in here." ; But then they might because they were little boys. They were like seven and five. So maybe they ran this way or maybe they just didn' ; t know where to go. So, I spent, this is the part I don' ; t like talking about too much, but I spent a lot of time in the basement looking for them. HUNTLEY: There were other people looking for other folks as well? MCKINSTRY: Yes. I never found them. I can tell you I spent a lot of time in that basement, but my baby brother was found on 8th Avenue. He had jumped out one of those side windows when it broke and just started running. I guess with no real sense of where he was running just knowing that he needed to get out of there. He just ran. My mom, someone called her at home to tell her that they had bombed the church. When she was heading to the church to check on us was when she encountered my baby brother. She was coming and he was coming and that' ; s when she found him. My dad found my oldest brother downtown. I guess a lot of kids just ran, they just scattered. HUNTLEY: Now your father was headed to . . . MCKINSTRY: To Mountain Brook. He worked at the Birmingham Country Club which was a club you can still attend today. I have a membership in but he was a waiter there. He heard the explosion. He said, he had the radio on, my dad was a great listener of talk shows even back then. Whoever he was listening to announced within the next minute or two that the church had been bombed. He said he turned around. He never got to work, he turned around and came right back. He was also looking for us. He encountered my seven-year-old brother somewhere . . . by the time my dad had gotten there they had blocked off a big portion of the area that surrounded the church. So, somewhere on the boundaries of trying to get pass those boundaries my dad encountered my brother. He took his hand and came within the boundaries looking for my other brother and myself. He found me but my mom found my other brother at another point. HUNTLEY: At what point did you know that the children had died? MCKINSTRY: I knew that there were people hurt. I didn' ; t at first because there was a guy outside saying that there were people hurt inside. I had been in there looking for my brothers, but I didn' ; t see anybody. So, I remember thinking that he was just trying to create a little more excitement or something. I was angry because I felt like, why is he saying this. Then I got upset because I thought, well, did he see my brothers and I didn' ; t. So, I kept going back. At that point I still didn' ; t know where they were. You know, I spent a lot of times going back to that girl' ; s bathroom cause I just kept thinking. Maybe because the boy' ; s bathroom was not shattered. You could actually go in there. You could tell that there was damage, but you could actually walk around and see that. Ok, here is the hand bowl and here is the toilet and whatever and obviously no one is here. But in the case of the girl' ; s bathroom you couldn' ; t see that. You didn' ; t know what you were looking at, but you couldn' ; t see that they were there or that they weren' ; t there or that no one was hurt. I was at home. By the time that I was home I remember I had been home about an hour and [inaudible] Robinson called our house. She asked me did I see Carol. I said, " ; No." ; She asked to speak with my mom and just asked if she had seen her. She said, " ; No." ; She said, " ; Well, maybe my Carol is alright. Your Carol is at home so maybe my Carol is alright too." ; HUNTLEY: Did you know all four girls? MCKINSTRY: Yes. Cynthia Westin and were in a book social club together, the Cavalettes. There was a male social club called the Cavaliers. We, they adopted us or something and we came up with the name Cavalettes. It was just something where we had parties at each other' ; s homes. We had purchased Tee-Shirts with our names and the club, a big " ; C" ; on it. We had purchased hats and so forth. In fact, we made those purchases, we ordered those things, John Singletons when it was still opened, right before the church was bombed. Those items that she had ordered we took to her mother' ; s house after, probably about two weeks after the church was bombed. Denise I knew well, didn' ; t spend a lot of time with her, she was a lot younger than I was, but I knew her. I always thought she was a happy delightful child ; you know around the church. She was very pleasant to be around. Addie was very quiet. Addie was in my Sunday School class. I think, I always think of them. Earlier you asked a question about preferential treatment. I think a lot of how a person feels or what they think they see is how they feel about themselves. I always felt like Addie was one of those persons. She was one that didn' ; t feel very good about herself. She was not a very attractive girl, but she was very quiet, very manner able. In our Sunday School class, she didn' ; t have a lot to say. We knew that there was a large family of them, but they would come in and we all talked and played together but I think there was probably more trouble in her than we knew at that time. I say that based on conversations I had with her sister, her oldest sister, June. I think with a lot of people that weren' ; t totally comfortable with themselves that there may have been a perception and I think there was definitely that perception with them. HUNTLEY: You being the secretary in the church, how did this event impact upon you going back into the church? Not just for services but for whatever else you may have been doing. MCKINSTRY: Initially I was very hurt. I was shocked. I was afraid. HUNTLEY: Were you actually afraid to go to the church? MCKINSTRY: I was afraid and the reason I was afraid was earlier that year the Cruel' ; s house had been bombed. That house had destroyed the front, pretty much the foundation in front of our house. I had two, I had four brothers, we had two sets of bunkbeds. The boys that were sleeping on the top were actually thrown out of those beds when that house was bombed. This was a bomb that went off at about 3:00 in the morning. I can' ; t explain to you what it does to you to be awaken that time of morning. We heard this terrible, terrible noise. There was a building, a big cement building, J. M. Tull on the street behind us. My mother said, the policeman said, that the bomb exploded hit the building and bounced back which is why we had so much damage. When the bomb exploded it was like everything lit up. It was like daylight for what seemed like thirty seconds. It was probably about five seconds. Then it went Black again and then you heard screaming. People coming out of their homes. I could hear Ms. Cruel inside my home. I could hear her screaming coming out of her home. Mr. Cruel didn' ; t wake up. He wasn' ; t hurt but he didn' ; t wake up. She was trying to wake him up from the outside, hollering his name. My younger brother just developed a tremendous nervous condition having been thrown out of his bed like that. So when this church explosion occurred I think I decided it was probably just a matter of time, you know. That had such an impact both of those and I think I decided that I was probably going, sooner or later I was going to be killed with one of these bombs. I think it had a lot of effects on me. I was afraid, I was frightened. Not afraid to be part of things or for what I had done but it seemed there was no control. There was no way to stop what they were doing. There was no way to protect yourself. HUNTLEY: You felt helpless in other words? MCKINSTRY: Yes. HUNTLEY: Just in your everyday life this is what you viewed. What you' ; re describing is really a helplessness that you had no control even over yourself because of the exterior forces. MCKINSTRY: Exactly. That' ; s exactly what I felt. I was so withdrawn after that church bombing I did not attend the funeral of the four girls. I remember Ms. Robinson calling. They were asking for some of us to be flower bearers at the funerals. I told my mom, " ; Please, don' ; t make me go." ; I thought that I would probably, I' ; m not sure what I would see. I knew I was really hurting inside and grieving that my friends were gone. I just did not want to be, I didn' ; t want to see them, I didn' ; t want to be there, part of that. She kept trying to encourage me to go. Finally, the day of the funeral she called and said, " ; Well, I think I' ; ll let her stay here." ; I didn' ; t attend the funerals. I just didn' ; t. HUNTLEY: Do you remember when you went back to school? What was the atmosphere like? MCKINSTRY: Very somber. We had teachers that did allow us. You asked that question earlier and I said no. I thought about Ralph Joseph who was a math teacher at that time that I had. I remember that he allowed us and Mr. Winston, can' ; t think of his first name. I remember that they asked a few questions and listened to what we had to say. It was good, it felt good to hear. HUNTLEY: Very therapeutic? MCKINSTRY: Right, very therapeutic. I remember even when the President was killed that year that Mr. Joseph was the one, I was in his class when he made the announcement that it was official that the school had gotten the word that the President had been shot. He walked around the classroom for a little bit [inaudible] and then he came back up front and closed the textbook. A few students were crying, and he allowed us to talk then, just to say what was on our mind. It was difficult. That was another one of those situations where you felt that you had no control over what might happen tomorrow, or did it already happen today. We didn' ; t even have a sense of two things, today when things like this happen you bring in all the therapists and psychologists and students get a chance to talk and really get it out of their system. There was no sense of that nor was there any sense of justice. These things have happened it was accepted, and it may happen to you tomorrow. No one was in jail and nobody even mentioned that no one was in jail. So, it was almost as if it was just a type of predestination that you couldn' ; t do anything about. I think that may have worried me more than a lot of other things. HUNTLEY: You seem to have been a person that was always in control of yourself. And you had lost that and of course that would be traumatic particularly on the circumstances. MCKINSTRY: It shook my coincidence. I was always a very confident person. When I graduated from Parker and went to school, it was like a refreshing change. A wonderful college in [inaudible]. Among the students and professors and we got a chance to talk and occasionally I would have flashbacks and would have troubling moments. I took those opportunities to write. I have a big book of stuff that I would write periodically. I think the writing was therapeutic too. I think it was a way to put on paper some of the pain that I felt. When I read some of that stuff now I almost can' ; t stand to read it because I can see that it was really painful what I was feeling. I would like to read those things now about myself. HUNTLEY: Have you ever thought of publishing them? MCKINSTRY: No. I' ; ve been asked to. HUNTLEY: Will you ever? MCKINSTRY: You know, I don' ; t know. Even as recently as a couple of weeks ago I was approached about putting some of this information in a book form. There are a lot of things that I haven' ; t shared with you that happened during my childhood that don' ; t necessarily relate to this, but they are things that helped or shaped me into what I am today. Whatever that is. Poetry was a big portion of it. Poetry, writings, whatever it was just my way of getting out of my system. We didn' ; t have . . . You know I had people that I could talk to but if they weren' ; t people that had been part of that they really didn' ; t understand what you were trying to say. I mean they couldn' ; t relate to it. A lot of the students that I went to school with lived in California and New York. Judge Wade McKree had daughters there. So, a lot of them either lived in a very protective environment or they lived in big cities where the racism wasn' ; t quite as. HUNTLEY: The northern cities. MCKINSTRY: Northern cities were racism wasn' ; t quite as blatant as it was down South. A lot of it I think I sorted out in my head and tossed it around and came up with my own deductions and theories. Eventually I was able to, I think to put it in perspective. I think once I was really able to grab hold of it and straighten myself up it was like, ok, now I see what' ; s what. HUNTLEY: Did you enjoy Fisk as much as you did Parker? MCKINSTRY: I loved Fisk. Yes, I told you there' ; s not many environments that I don' ; t enjoy but the wonderful environment of [inaudible]. We had, it' ; s my first experience with White instructors, and they were very congenial, just part of the campus. You know everybody was in jeans and sweatshirts or whatever. There were occasions when we dressed differently but most part there was a lot of learning about different cultures and what Blacks in other cities were doing. A lot of Black history taught during that time. Dante and John [inaudible] were some of the artists in residents during the time that I was there. I think there were a couple of other names you would probably recognize. Regular visitors to my campus were people like Sydney Poiter, Harry Belafonte, the guy that was married to [inaudible]. We had an African group that came over that brought African dancers that actually danced in their native outfits. HUNTLEY: [inaudible] MCKINSTRY: This was a constant part of the life there. Everybody that came had a very positive message, a very motivational message and it was like hey, I know you guys are here learning and getting ready to step out in the world and we' ; re waiting on you. We need some more help out here. They were very, very motivational. That' ; s the one thing, I think, I didn' ; t see during that era Blacks bickering among themselves. I didn' ; t see Blacks pointing fingers or disagreeing as much with methodologies or your way or mine. HUNTLEY: That period from ' ; 65 to ' ; 69 was probably full of the most volatile years of the 20th century because there were a lot of things that were happening. Of course, the civil rights movement had escalated to become more aggressive. The development of the Black Panther Party. You had the various rebellion streets of various cities, Detroit. You had the Black Power Conferences. How did all of that play on your campus at Fisk? MCKINSTRY: All of that was very [inaudible]. When he came around he was well received. I remember there were sit-ins going on downtown in Nashville and I believe if I remember right Diane Nash Bevel was part of that. By the time that I came to Fisk as a freshman and sophomore not knowing much about Nashville and about . . . I was a little bit more reserved in terms of stepping out in that manner. During the time I was at Fisk was also when Dr. King was killed. So, I remember that day was real quite over the campus but pretty much we always knew any new person that was involved with the movement or if there was another spoke person or any messages that were out there pretty much came to our campus. We were all very much apart of whatever we could do. If we didn' ; t march we assisted by making signs. I' ; m trying to think, it seems we donated money even in some cases the little change we had. It wasn' ; t a lot but sometimes we would take up money and send what we had. I remember also across the street from Fisk there were several Black businesses, a bookstore, an oldies quickmart, a cleaners. And those people we did volunteer work during the summer the demonstrations that were going on in Nashville we came in and assisted as far as helping them stay open if they needed to leave or to just be there to protect, kind of protect things. We were a fairly protective area anyway just because we were a college campus. HUNTLEY: What did you do after Fisk? MCKINSTRY: When I left Fisk, I came back to Birmingham. I married my junior year at Fisk. My husband . . . HUNTLEY: He was at Fisk? MCKINSTRY: He had graduated from Fisk. He came back, he was in the air force, he came back during the month of January and we married. Then he went back to the air force. By the time I graduated from Fisk we had been married exactly a year and nine months. I was pregnant with my daughter when I graduated. So, she was born, I graduated in May. She stayed with my mother, she was born in September and a couple of months after that he was shipped out to Korea. So, I spent the next year and a half with my mother. I taught school at Carl High School in North Birmingham. I took care of my daughter. When he came back from Korea, he accepted a position, a management position, at Sears and we moved to Florida. We lived in Orlando for about three years. In fact when I moved to Orlando, Walt Disney World had been open two weeks. I have some of the original maps and the $3.50 ticket they used to sell when they first opened and all of the memorabilia there. We used to make a lot of trips to Walt Disney World, we were about 15 minutes from there. We lived there three years. I taught school there, Old Ridge High School. My second daughter was born there. After three years there he was transferred to Atlanta. So, I spent about two and a half years in Atlanta, and I didn' ; t work. In fact I went out and applied for a job and received a job offer with the Atlanta Board of Education and the day that I came home to tell him about that he was waiting to tell me that he had been transferred again to a little place called Winner Robbins, Georgia. We spent, at that time it had the reputation for being the safest city in the United States. So, we spent about two years there. While we were there they attempted to transfer him to Chicago. He said, " ; No, I' ; m not moving to Chicago. I' ; ll just look for another job." ; So, they decided to give him another option and the other option ended up being Birmingham. So, we ended up moving back to Birmingham, that' ; s how we got back here. When we moved back [inaudible]. HUNTLEY: If there was a movement going on today and your children were the age that you were when you participated in the demonstrations. Would you allow them to participate? MCKINSTRY: I would very much like for my children to be part of any movement that affects us as a race of people. However, I would like to make sure that they have the right perspective on what they' ; re doing, why they' ; re doing it. You know since that time while I do believe that there are very basic freedoms that many of our people are denied or just don' ; t have access to. I have sensed developed just some philosophies of my own. I watch our people in life in their daily activities. There are a lot of things that we used to be very conscientious about that we are not now. We used to be very prudent with our money and our property and so forth. We became very casual about that and have lost a lot of it. We used to be very conscientious about teaching our children, not just right from wrong, integrity and character. We insisted that they perform at school and we insisted that they represent us in a certain way and a certain manner while they are in public. We have, we somewhere have dropped the ball. We don' ; t insist on a lot of things that we used to. I also have sort of developed the perspective that a lot of the war we fight right now is an economic war. That we can' ; t just do it with marching. A lot of what we do has to be from the perspective that we understand that people don' ; t just treat you right because it' ; s the right thing to do. Or people don' ; t just respect you because it' ; s the right thing to do. We first got to respect ourselves and there' ; s a lot of tapes that we can make on that, but we first have to fully respect ourselves and our families. One of the ways that I respect my family is that I make sure that my family has a roof over their head and food and clothing, and they go to school and understand what it' ; s about. I attend their meetings. I don' ; t have children this age anymore, but I attend the PTA meetings and I' ; m part of what' ; s going on and part of the decisions that affect my children. I show my support, my responsibility, I set the right example by doing these things. There are a lot of things that we can do that no one else can control. Whites don' ; t control how much time you spent with your son. If you play ball with him, take him to the library or just have the father and son walks and talks. Those are things that are within your control. I suspect that, that' ; s where the real confidence and real integrity and character is built. We don' ; t do much of that anymore. I' ; ve talked with a lot of children. For example, when we give the town hall meeting over at Birmingham Southern, remember the students that kept asking questions from Homewood? HUNTLEY: Yes. MCKINSTRY: Those students have been in contact with me since that program. They wanted someone to talk to. First of all, just to acknowledge that they understood the types of problems that they were having in Homewood. I certainly understood because my children had followed in similar footsteps while they were in school. So, I certainly understood what they were talking about. Now, where do we draw the line. Your child, sort of your student but you' ; re considered a child, and these are adults that are playing these games with you. So, without going against the wishes of your parents if the parents are involved to that extent. In a lot of cases they appear not to be. So, what kind of advice can I give to young people to keep them motivated to not make them feel that there is something wrong with them, because they recognize the differences being made. They recognize the rights and wrongs of the issues. So, how do we continue to fight and stayed focus but not lose it to emotion while this stuff is going on. I like to take on those types of struggles. I think the most important investment that we can make is with our children. Whether that be teaching them, I like to teach. I did corporate income taxes for ten years so I . . . all of my two daughters' ; friends would come around and say, " ; Mrs. McKinstry, will you do my income tax?" ; I did income taxes for years and never charged them anything. Then I thought how much better it would be if you can do your own. How good do we feel, the more we can do for ourself the more better we feel, right. So, I started just teaching them and sharing information about finances and stocks and investments. You know, this is your ultimate weapon. To position yourself in a certain way that you are not beholding to anyone. So, that when you are on this job later, or wherever you are later you don' ; t have to accept less than what you think is due you or less than what your character dictates because you need a check or you have allowed yourself to get in a position where this man is controlling how you eat, buy, etc. So, I like to have those kinds of conversations. I like to take us to an economically and I think that may have been more what Jesse Jackson was focusing on during Martin Luther King' ; s era which probably was a little bit ahead of his time. It' ; s something that I think is very much needed, you know, our children graduate now, and they can' ; t balance a checkbook, have no concept of money and so forth. All of its important. I mean that part of is important. Hopefully the character and integrity and the stride for academic excellence had been, that foundation has been laid hopefully in grades 1-12. Then somewhere in there those last senior years we focus on the real energy zones. You really have to think about that. So, I have a special interest in finding answers and I try to pass that along. What I also see working in a corporate environment is a new trend now where companies are sourcing or contracting out a lot of employees. So, students will not, employees will not be able to be on the 10, 20, 30-year tenures like our parents did. Which means they also will not be able to give that automatic retirement anymore. HUNTLEY: I want to thank you for all your time and all your wisdom because you obviously really set a tone that is really going to be important for the 21st Century. Thank you for coming. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
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Title
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Carolyn McKinstry (1998)
Description
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Carolyn McKinstry discusses getting involved in the Movement as early as eighth grade by doing clerical work at 16th Street Baptist Church where she saw Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy speak. She was the secretary there through the church bombing. McKinstry participated in various demonstrations before attending Fisk University.
Identifier
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19980423M
Subject
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, Birmingham, Ala., 1963
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968
Abernathy, Ralph, 1926-1990
Fisk University
Date
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1998-04-23
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video
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Video
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Oral History
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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bcriohp
Oral History
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Horace Huntley
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Rev. Erskine Faush
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5.4 November 18, 1998 Rev. Erskine Faush Interviewed on November 18, 1998 19981118F 1:32:42 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project Collection bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Lessie Dingler Civil rights movements--Alabama--Birmingham Rev. Erskine Faush Horace Huntley Oral History 1:|14(4)|37(7)|56(3)|77(6)|90(12)|104(7)|116(7)|124(14)|138(17)|147(10)|159(7)|168(17)|182(1)|203(10)|216(7)|227(1)|239(7)|254(2)|271(4)|284(6)|301(13)|308(14)|320(6)|331(10)|346(9)|362(5)|382(4)|409(12)|423(4)|433(7)|449(14)|459(12)|475(14)|489(7)|504(4)|521(16)|530(8)|539(2)|549(3)|558(10)|569(11)|585(15)|599(11)|612(4)|628(2)|642(2)|658(1)|673(10)|680(7)|686(5)|700(5)|714(13)|724(4)|733(8)|746(7)|762(1)|769(9)|782(6)|791(9)|800(8)|811(8)|819(12)|838(1)|848(16)|857(13)|877(5)|892(9)|900(8)|910(9)|920(11)|934(1)|957(8)|975(8)|981(5)|992(14)|1004(9)|1018(11)|1030(1)|1042(5)|1049(3)|1060(4)|1071(14)|1084(17)|1094(7)|1102(4)|1112(6)|1130(6)|1144(5) 0 https://youtu.be/Iyf3aMixHRo YouTube video English 0 Introduction of Interview This is an interview with Rev. Erskine Faush for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s Oral History Project. I'm Dr. Horace Huntley. We're presently at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Today is November 18, 1998. I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to come and sit and talk with me today and welcome to the Institute. 33.5161, -86.8145 17 Birmingham Civil Rights Institute https://www.bcri.org/ BCRI Homepage 53 Family Background I would like to start by just asking you some general questions about your background. Were you born in Birmingham? Rev. Erskine Faush talks about his family and where he grew up. African American Presbyterian churches ; Neighborhoods Birmingham (Ala.)--Maps ; Enon Ridge--Birmingham (Ala.) ; Fountain Heights--Birmingham (Ala.) ; Montgomery (Ala.)--Maps ; Selma (Ala.) ; Smithfield--Birmingham (Ala.) 196 Family Background-Mothers Side In that area. . .oh, let me ask you this about your parents education. How much education did they have? Rev. Erskine Faush talks about his mothers educations and her family of business people. black cleaners ; cattle farming ; entrepreneurs ; Family business ; Funeral homes ; Grocery trade--United States Alabama A & ; amp ; Beloit (Ala.) ; Edmund Pettus Bridge--Selma (Ala.) ; Huntsville (Ala.) ; M University ; Maxwell Air Force Base (Ala.) ; Snowhill Normal and Industrial Institute (Ala.) 521 Family Background-Fathers Side By contrast my father that side of the family was from Montgomery. Rev. Erskine Faush talks about his fathers jobs, falling ill, and his mother becoming the major bread winner of the family. African American single mothers ; Automobile dealers ; Blanche Department Store-Birmingham (Ala.) ; bread winner ; Drennen Motor Company-Birmingham (Ala.) ; family illness ; ironing ; Janitor ; painter African American families 814 Early Education That’s right. Now, you grew up in that Enon Ridge, Smithfield area. What school did you start first grade? Rev. Erksine Faush discusses his Tuggle elementary, and who he grew up around in his community while attending primary school. Cemeteries (Jewish law) ; Communities, contexts, and cultures ; doctors ; glass eye ; Middle class--United States ; Neighborhoods ; primary school Black Physicians ; Erskine Hawkins--Laura Washinton--Blues Singer ; Sardis Baptist Church--Birmingham (Ala.) ; Tuggle Elementary School--Birmimgham (Ala.) 1136 Community Background What did most people do? What kind of work did most people do that lived in that community? Do you remember? Rev. Erskine Faush briefly talks about the black business in his community being self sufficient. Businesses ; Jewish Cemetery ; Odd Job ; Self-Sufficient Black Community ; Business enterprises, Black 1230 Early Education-Tuggle Elementary What do you remember about Tuggle School? Rev. Erskine Faush talks of his time at Tuggle Elementary and his good relationship with the faculty there. community ; family ; neighbor ; student-teacher relationship Tuggle Elementary--Birmingham (Ala.) 1620 Early Education-Parker High School When you left Tuggle, where did you go? Rev. Erskine Faush discusses his time at Parker High School and being involved in the band. high school ; High school band ; jazz band ; music Parker High School (Birmingham, Ala.) 1837 Parker High School-The Elks Band So, that was an intricate part of your development. Rev. Erskine Faush talks about joining traveling with the Elks band during his time at Parker High School and barely losing an academic competition against another student. Academic achievement--Competitions ; Conventions ; High School Band ; High School Choir Asheville (N.C.) ; Clarks (Musical group) ; Elks (Fraternal order) ; Hampton, Lionel ; Parker High School (Bimingham, Ala.) ; Talladega College ; Whatley, Fess 2195 Alabama A& ; M University This was the principal? Rev. Erskine Faush talks about getting a scholarship to Talladega College, attending Alabama A & ; M University, being recognized as an honorary citizen of Huntsville, Alabama and being paid to sing for the Bradford Singers on the weekends. campus ; Experience of illness ; Honorary citizenship ; Musical performance ; singer ; swindel Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes (Normal, Ala.) ; Alabama A & ; amp ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Bradford Singers ; Elks (Fraternal order) ; Huntsville (Ala.)--Maps ; Lawson State Community College (Birmingham, Ala.) ; M University ; Talladega College ; Tuxedo Junction (Birmingham, Ala.) ; Von Braun Center (Huntsville, Ala.) ; Wenonah Trade School (Birmingham, Ala.) 2918 Starting at Radio Station WBCO What happened after that? Rev. Erskine Faush talks about starting at radio station WBCO. African American radio stations ; Black broadcasting ; broadcast Bessemer (Ala.) ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Jess Lainer (Mayor of Bessemer, Ala.) ; Louisville (Ky.) ; Stephens, Elton B. 3073 Starting at LOU Radio Yes. He was at LOK, I think it was or LOU. In the meantime they invested in promotional pieces and so on with the name Faush. Rec. Erkine Faush talks of his journey with his brother to LOU radio in Lousiville Kentucky, then getting training in Denver in order to be a promoter of music in Birmingham, Alabama. African American radio stations ; band ; broadcasting ; Gospel music ; Music--Performance ; orchestra ; promotion ; record companies Birmingham (Ala.) ; Louisville (Ky.) ; University of Alabama ; University of Denver ; University of Denver. Center for Mass Communications Research and Policy 3375 Entering Into Ministry At what point did you get into the ministry? Rev. Erskine Faush explains his journey into Ministry. A Higher Power ; Black amusement park ; grocery business ; Ministry ; Music Promotion Faith College 3678 Faith College Where was that? Rev. Erskine Faush goes back to school to study theology. Black community ; Theology Faith College ; Miles Community College 3800 Involvement In the Movement So, how do you fit all of this together in the particularly how you eventually relate to your activities during the early and mid-60's? Rev. Erskine Faush describes the historical moments and periods of time that have lead to the civil rights movement. Divine Force ; Human rights ; Politics African Americans--Civil rights--History--20th century ; Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka ; Emancipation Proclamation ; Ku Klux Klan ; Montgomery Bus Boycott, Montgomery, Ala., 1955-1956 4409 Meeting and Partnering with Shelley Stewart Tell me how did you and Shelley come together eventually as partners? I know you were together at WENN. Is that right? Rev. Erskine Faush mentions about meeting Shelley Stewart and getting together on the radio station WENN, but also in general the business of black broadcasting, the trials and tribulations of it. African American radio broadcasters ; African American radio stations ; Stewart, Shelley ; Television Birmingham (Ala.) ; McLendon Group--Mississippi ; United States. Federal Communications Commission ; Winfrey, Oprah 5523 Interview Conclusion I really appreciate you taking the time out, but I know I really need to sit down with you again. Video Rev. Erskine Faush discusses being involved in music and ministry throughout his early years before starting with broadcast radio. His voice, along with Shelley Stewart's, was a hallmark of Black broadcasting during the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham. HUNTLEY: This is an interview with Rev. Erskine Faush for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute' ; s Oral History Project. I' ; m Dr. Horace Huntley. We' ; re presently at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Today is November 18, 1998. I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to come and sit and talk with me today and welcome to the Institute. FAUSH: Thank you, it' ; s a pleasure. HUNTLEY: I would like to start by just asking you some general questions about your background. Were you born in Birmingham? FAUSH: Oh, yes, born in Birmingham. HUNTLEY: Were your parents originally from Birmingham? FAUSH: No, it' ; s my understanding that my mother was born in Selma, Alabama and my father in Montgomery. HUNTLEY: Ok, how many siblings? FAUSH: Three. HUNTLEY: Were you the oldest? FAUSH: No, the youngest of three. HUNTLEY: Oh, the baby. FAUSH: Yes, one sister and one brother. HUNTLEY: What part of town did you live in, did you grow up in? FAUSH: Grew up primarily, my earliest recollection is Enon Ridge. However, I was told that I was born in a double tenant house that was on a place called Kirkland Avenue. I don' ; t think it exists today. It' ; s in that border area that was taken by the freeway that came through 11th Avenue that sort of bordered between Smithfield and Enon Ridge. The border of Fountain Heights because if you had gone two blocks further you would have gone into that section then occupied by Whites in Birmingham and then down into the area that Black occupied. HUNTLEY: I had relatives that lived up in Enon Ridge up on 5th Place. FAUSH: Yes, yes, right. HUNTLEY: In fact, we can still see 5th Place from the freeway pass that' ; s where it was cut off. FAUSH: Right, those streets had names at the time. The one adjacent to the one that you mentioned was called as I remember Mortimer Street. HUNTLEY: That takes you way back then. FAUSH: And 11th Avenue and that was before the [inaudible] Presbyterian Church moved to its present location. All were displaced. I also remember there was a Mecca for business too. I remember it as a child, a candy kitchen, a Black owned candy factory that was on 11th Avenue North. HUNTLEY: Is that right? FAUSH: Yes. HUNTLEY: That it was something that we lost. FAUSH: Absolutely. You could smell it of course halfway through town. HUNTLEY: It was a tracking point? FAUSH: Yes. HUNTLEY: In that area. . .oh, let me ask you this about your parents' ; education. How much education did they have? FAUSH: As near as I can recall from conversation my mother went to Snowhill Institute. She referred to it often. Just how far she went I don' ; t know. Her side of the family came out of the Selma area was very much a part of the history of that area. I remember my grandfather Peter, that' ; s the Thomas family. Her maiden name was Alberta Thomas. The Thomas family was quite well known in that area. In fact she was the only girl and three brothers. One was Willie Thomas, who owned at the time the only Black cleaners. That was on the main street. I think it was, I can' ; t recall, it will come to me later. It' ; s the main street when you come through Edmund Pettus Bridge downtown. HUNTLEY: That would be Highway 80. FAUSH: Yes, but there' ; s another name for it. It escapes me for the moment. Then there was her brother George who owned a small grocery store and was also a preacher. The most prominent of the Thomas family at the time was Mark Thomas. He owned most of the land around Range Street and 1st Avenue. In fact, if you visit the area now the building still stands because his widow still lives. She' ; s 106 or 107 years old or something like that. HUNTLEY: Is that right? FAUSH: Yes, she' ; s still living. That is the name engraved in the stone at the top of that building now that says Thomas Grocery. They also leased a lot of land. He was a cattle trader and raised a lot of cattle out in a place outside of Selma called Beloit. The family, I' ; ve been there to the family cemetery and there are Thomas' ; that date back into the early 1800' ; s. At the time of Mark' ; s death, I think he would not let him tell and it was told at his funeral. I have the funeral program somewhere at home. Most of the civil rights leaders were there at his funeral because as you know during the height of the civil rights struggle in the area they tried to cut off the food supply. Mark had gone into retirement. He came out of retirement and started what is called the co-op grocery. They knew what they wanted to do but they didn' ; t have the expertise, so they got Mark. Mark was a person also who paid the fines for a lot of the demonstrators that were in jail at the time. However, he would not let it be told. At the funeral all of this came out. It was quite a story. His son is still in the area now, a lot of Thomas' ; . HUNTLEY: Are the businesses? FAUSH: No, most of the things on 1st Avenue. They' ; re still a part of their property but being leased. Service stations and other things are still leasing land off of the Thomas' ; even today. As I mentioned Aunt Laura still lives, until her demise the other generations there will come into play. However, the two well-known persons in the area that are still there, the Moss' ; , one of the Thomas daughters married one of the Moss, [inaudible] Moss, was an outstanding educator in the area, she just demised this last year. She was the daughter of the ruler of the Elks in the state of Alabama in addition to her educational involvement. The other two are twins, Malcolm and Maniard Thomas, my first cousins. Malcolm owns a high-tech industry in Huntsville, Alabama at the moment. His wife is Dr. Maddie Thomas who' ; s on the faculty at A & ; M. The other one Maniard who ran PX' ; s and so forth and Maniard serviced at Maxwell Air force Base in Selma. All of them were involved in business enterprises and things of this kind on that side of the family. HUNTLEY: So, you come from a long line of entrepreneurs? FAUSH: Yes, yes, in fact there is a funeral home in Selma today connected also with a hotel that [inaudible] and her husband Moss, operate in the city of Selma today. So, it' ; s been a long life. HUNTLEY: Yes. FAUSH: By contrast my father that side of the family was from Montgomery. My father would tell me the story of what he did, you know in work and so forth. I remember him telling me the story of the Drennen Motor Company, the Cadillac dealer and so forth for many years on the southside of Birmingham. They sold buggies, horses, and carriages before the oncoming of the automobile. He was a painter that did the special painting on carriages and things of that kind. I remember finding a case once as a child with all kind of small jars of speciality listing paints and things of this kind with a lot of thin brushes. I asked him about it and he told me the story. A man would come in, of course, and order a new carriage and that sort of thing and he would design what he wanted on it. Whether it was a family crest or whatever and he was the first one to do that. In later years, he became, when he worked as a janitor at school, in fact when I was going through school, he worked as a janitor. He also worked as they refer to them, I don' ; t know how they got the title calling them that because when you say porter you think of the railroad but they called them porters. They cleaned up the floors and he worked at Blanche Department Store. HUNTLEY: Did your mother work outside of the home? FAUSH: No, only when it became absolutely necessary. By being the youngest of the three children and so forth my father in my early years became ill. He was ill a long time before his death. So, that necessitated my mother doing whatever she could to supplement and keep the family going. I know she took in ironing. She ironed shirts and things of that kind. She worked, I heard her say once she worked at a laundry someplace. It used to be over on the southside of Birmingham. No, she was more or less a housewife and did these jobs when necessitated or demanded that somebody do something. She became the major bread winner of the family. It was always amazing that my mother, that again with such limited resources seem to be able. . . As I look back now I see a lot of human involvement as well too. She was always frugle, to say the lest. Quite thrifty and instilled in the children. If mother only made a dime she saved a penny of it. She was never broke but never had much. HUNTLEY: Right. FAUSH: She was never broke. She knew where she could go to that jar inside the closet somewhere and get a few nickels when necessary. She was an amazing cook, an outstanding cook. I told some people in recent times, humorously of course that my mother could make the best gravy in the world. I was twelve years old before I knew that a chicken had anything but feet. I thought that was all that was to it. She would bring in these big bags of chicken feet. She would make the best gravy for rice. HUNTLEY: What do they do with chicken feet now? I haven' ; t seen a chicken foot in I don' ; t know when. FAUSH: I think that today perhaps, the younger generation today perhaps, I don' ; t think many of them today have even seen a live chicken. HUNTLEY: Not many of them, your right. FAUSH: Perhaps they have the same notion as I had about the feet that, that was all to them. That perhaps they come in the world that way. They' ; re all in the cellophane packed in the butcher' ; s case. HUNTLEY: (laughing) That' ; s right. Now, you grew up in that Enon Ridge, Smithfield area. What school did you start first grade? FAUSH: First grade, Tuggle but I went to Beulah Moore Day Nursery. She was quite a figure. Mrs. Beluh Moore. The building, I don' ; t know if it' ; s still there because it' ; s been a long time since I was in the area. As you know, Tuggle school, Ms. Tuggle of course, her grave site is in the yard of the school and it remains that today. Sardis Baptist Church is on the corner. Well, there is a building, it finally moved from wherever it was prior. The Beulah Moore Day Nursery sat on that western most end of Tuggle School. Right across the street from old Sardis Baptist Church. There was a grocery store that was across the street also called Bell Grocery. That' ; s where we used to go and by candy and stuff like that after school. I went to day nursery first. HUNTLEY: Oh, ok. FAUSH: Which propelled me to getting out of school more quickly then would be normal. Because having not waiting to age six to get in I was not quite five. Having gone to Ms. Beulah Moore' ; s Day Nursery there was almost a sort of automatic movement on into the first grade. So, I got in before being six years of age. HUNTLEY: So, you were ahead of yourself? FAUSH: Yes, I was ahead of the times more or less and so forth. We lived on a, I can remember after moving from, my earliest recollection of a house was, we lived next, at the end of the ball field at Tuggle School. Which was right down the. . .and so much is coming to my mind right now because across the fence was the family and relatives of Erskine Hawkins. The Hendersons, Sneads and those persons but they were sisters. I' ; m trying to remember the famous blues singer, Laura Washington? HUNTLEY: Laura Washington, yes. FAUSH: Laura' ; s family was in that area as well. We lived at the end at the house next to the grocery store which was at the end of the playing field or ball field that was on the campus at Tuggle School. In fact, my father got his eye knocked out from a ball game. The two of us were walking and he was holding my hand as a child, walking past the ball field. The catcher missed the ball, my daddy wore glasses and it hit his glasses and he lost one of his eyes. He had a glass eye after that. From there I can remember living on 4th Street which was called College Street. There' ; s a Jewish cemetery down near the bottom of the hill. Across the street lived Dr. E. W. Haggard. We were right up the hill in an old huge double tenant house. Sometimes we only occupied the lower floor and on the weekends a church would come in upstairs. HUNTLEY: Is that right? FAUSH: Yes. There are a lot of people, well known people of that time that lived in that area. HUNTLEY: Who was the Dr? FAUSH: Dr. E. W. Haggard was a well-known Black dentist. Up the hill across the street from us lived Dr. Hutchinson. In fact, he was a Black physician and his family lived one or two doors down from Sardis Baptist Church. In fact, his son, Edward Hutchinson was in my class in elementary school at Tuggle. Around from us, right around the corner, living on the next street was the early Harris family. HUNTLEY: So, that community then was basically a middle-class community or was it mixed? FAUSH: Some were mixed. You had have these one or two houses, like Dr. Haggard' ; s was perhaps the most outstanding and the other one would have been Dr. Hutchinson' ; s. Directly across the street I forgot I had a cousin who lived directly across the street, the Howards. They lived next to Bell Store. Between that you would have double tenant houses. HUNTLEY: So, it was a mix? FAUSH: Yes. HUNTLEY: What did most people do? What kind of work did most people do that lived in that community? Do you remember? FAUSH: Various odd jobs, whatever was available during the time. HUNTLEY: Did you have any. . . FAUSH: You' ; ve got to remember also that as you start up 3rd Street North and this was all in that some general geographic configuration. There was that Mecca of Black business enterprise that also bordered the Black community. Part, right down the street from what they refer to later as Sugar Hill. As you know, Center Street was a dividing line of demarcation if you please. It became Dynamite Hill and Center Street. Over on 3rd Street on the other side which has been the southern most side of the Jewish Cemetery where the railroad would come through right beside that was the icehouse and the coal yard owned by the Commons family. HUNTLEY: Sounds as if the community basically is self-sufficient. FAUSH: Almost self-contained, yes. HUNTLEY: That' ; s interesting because I guess at that particular time it was almost necessary. FAUSH: Oh, absolutely necessary. HUNTLEY: What do you remember about Tuggle School? FAUSH: There are a lot of things of course that come to mind. HUNTLEY: Is there anything that stands out? FAUSH: Yeah, the again the community feeling. The extended family feeling and association. That was perhaps for the word of a better term an emotional and psychological connection. Everybody knew everybody. There was a what I like to refer to again as to what community really means. You can transfer that to mean a caring, sharing responsibility. You knew your neighbor ; your neighbor knew you. You knew all the children. Their history. There was a sharing of not only resource but information again of caring and concern to the extent in what has been described as a weeping with those who weep and of laughing with those who laugh and so forth. You shared each others' ; tragedies, each other' ; s joys, the hopes and fulfillment. If there was somebody in the neighborhood who made good, there was some rejoicing. Not only when your kid walked across to get his diploma, but they all made it. HUNTLEY: It was the epitome of the extended family. FAUSH: Absolutely. I was, I mentioned about 11th Avenue and the Candy Kitchen. I remember on the next corner the principal of Tuggle lived there. His name was Burt Hudson. Mr. Hudson always taught his seniors. He had some of us, it was a great thrill if you were selected as one of the persons who worked in the office. He would select different students to work in the office. I was fortunate enough to be selected as one of those who worked in Mr. Hudson' ; s office. We would have assignments, as carrying notes around the school and different things and so forth. But you had some exposure over and above the student-teacher relationship. HUNTLEY: Right. FAUSH: Mr. Hudson always taught his seniors. This stands out to me perhaps more than any single thing in my elementary school career. He was a lover of literature. He always taught his seniors one hour a day and it was all about literature. HUNTLEY: So, not only did he select you to work in the office, he actually instructed you? FAUSH: Yes. HUNTLEY: He selected these individuals that he instructed? FAUSH: What I' ; m saying, these are two things. The persons who worked in the office were people that he selected, of course, either you were good students, your attitude and what other criteria he put in his selection process. It also meant that you were missing some of your recreational time because you still had to do your classes. Nothing replaced your classes, you had to do your work. The one perk that you got was that whenever they had a movie, instead of an assembly person time there was a movie that they had in the auditorium. If so, you at least got a chance to go to the movie free, you didn' ; t pay the nickel to go to the movie. That was really the only perk that you got for working. You got to remember though we didn' ; t have intercom systems and all that communication. The campus, it' ; s a hilly area up there and it was a long way when you had to go down to the shops area or the two-story building as we would call it or some other part of the campus. HUNTLEY: Right. FAUSH: If you needed to and if there was a meeting or faculty, or if he wanted to see somebody or needed them in the office or whatever. If there was an emergency at a home for instance, that a call had been made to the school. You had to find a student or whatever the case may be. Somebody had to do that running and go find those people and get them to the office or transmit that information. So, you were a courier as well as other things that you did around the office. On that period, instead of a study period, when you got to be a senior Mr. Hudson taught that class. You had to go to Mr. Hudson' ; s class. He taught literature. I never shall forget that when I got to high school and started literature classes and so forth. Those of us who came out of Tuggle were so much further advanced because Mr. Hudson had already exposed us to American Literature and some English Literature. HUNTLEY: Wow. FAUSH: At the time we would watch other kids out playing ball, you know, we could see the ball field and we were sitting in there learning literature. I couldn' ; t appreciate it at the time. And those long nights of trying to memorize [inaudible] and many other things that come to my mind. When we got to high school. . . HUNTLEY: Then you understood? FAUSH: I understood and appreciated the fact that hey we were so much further ahead that it was a breeze to get through that. HUNTLEY: When you left Tuggle, where did you go? FAUSH: Parker. HUNTLEY: To Parker? FAUSH: Yes. They had the annex then. HUNTLEY: Ok, you went to Parker Annex first. FAUSH: Parker Annex first. HUNTLEY: Ninth grade? FAUSH: Yes. I had, I started my musical experience and training very, very early as well too. My first band teacher at Tuggle was Amos Gordon. HUNTLEY: Is that right? FAUSH: Yes. Of course, he' ; s made such a mark himself, a hall of famer and all of that. To be under his tutorage was a great advantage at that time. Of course, I didn' ; t even appreciate that at the time but later on I appreciated it. He developed me and of course at the time I went to high school. Of course, you know Parker was the only high school, the largest high school in the world. HUNTLEY: In the world. FAUSH: You have the annex of course. Because of Mr. Gordon' ; s influence, and I had private classes with him and so forth which put me ahead [inaudible] in the music. HUNTLEY: What was your instrument? FAUSH: I started with percussions and then moved on to the winds and had a brief time with the strings. Primarily I was a percussionist and the winds, reeds and brass were my specialties at the time. Later I got into keyboards, as I got into choral music and so forth. But his teaching opened the way for me because when I got to the annex the band was so large at Parker at the time that they had a junior band and a senior band. No ninth graders, it was just too full, you just didn' ; t get in and so forth. But would you believe because that he had made contacts, Mr. Hudson, had went down and audition and I got in the Parker band as a ninth grader. So, I spent four years in the band. Along about the middle ways, again because of that foundational training that I had gotten earlier. Mr. Hudson took private students on Tuesdays and Fridays. I was one of his teachers. I taught his private students along with him on Tuesdays and Fridays. Which was very helpful because we had no money and I got 50 cents for staying after school to help teach the private students in band. That exposed me to a world of things because then I got to play with a jazz band and Fess Whatley was there at the time and so forth. Mr. Hudson would select about ten students that he would call the auditorium band. The school was so large that you would have to have alternate days for auditorium or assembly period. You had a junior and senior. You were either in ninth junior or ninth senior. You just weren' ; t in the ninth grade. HUNTLEY: Right. FAUSH: So, all the junior classes would come on Monday and Tuesday it would be the senior section of those classes and it would alternate that way. I got a chance to play in the auditorium band. Also, they had the outstanding variety shows and I got a chance to play in the orchestra. In later years this was the only thing to help me to make money and to keep going. I played in jazz bands and other things and so forth. HUNTLEY: So, that was an intricate part of your development. FAUSH: Oh, no question about it, yes. I became, Mr. Henry, I was in the choir. I became the student director of the choir. I was one of the few students ever in high school that would travel each year with the Elks Band. The Elks were the organization, the fraternal organization for Blacks. They had the big conventions and parades. The trains would come through the whole state of Alabama and the bands would go and compete in Chicago, Cincinnati, and other places. I had a chance to be exposed to all that and play in those bands. I got to play with such people as Fess Whatley, the Clarks. I got a chance, I remember once, Lyle Hampton came to town and of course the only way you could, or the best mechanism to get information about. You know, where could you get a captive audience of thousands of students except at Parker High School. So, when a celebrity would come to town at your senior period they would bring them to Parker High School. I saw many play. Just all kinds of names come to mind that I was able to see. HUNTLEY: Right there at Parker High School? FAUSH: Right there at Parker High School, you see. Of course, the choir was just famous all over the world. I got a chance to meet [inaudible]. We went all kinds of places. They just had to hear that choir. As a senior each year that would have something known as the academic meet. You would meet and have this academic contest and of course you would win scholarships to various schools and so forth. Well, I took the academic meet, also one of my very strong subjects was chemistry. My chemistry teacher was Carlton Wells. He was also in addition to teaching chemistry he was one of the coaches in athletics. HUNTLEY: That' ; s right. FAUSH: It got to the point that we had [inaudible]. So, he was pushing me and I appreciate so much those teachers who took an interest in me. When the academic week came Mr. Hudson and Mr. Henry wanted me to take it in music and Mr. Wells wanted me to take it in chemistry. So, I took both. While I did not win the top prize. And here forty years later I can remember the girl' ; s name that beat me. It was a girl named Mary Elizabeth Weaver from Asheville, North Carolina. She had a score of 99.8 and I had a score of 99.5. She beat me by three tenths. HUNTLEY: Where was this held? FAUSH: We were at, now that you asked me that, I think that we did it at the school, at Parker, I believe. Or did we go somewhere else? That escapes me. I can almost visualize being in the room with the test sheets. HUNTLEY: So, this was a national test? FAUSH: I don' ; t really know how far it extended beyond the boundaries of Alabama. That part eludes me at the moment. HUNTLEY: You said that she was from Asheville, North Carolina. FAUSH: This girl was from Asheville, North Carolina and I don' ; t know if it was administered. . . What I think happened is that they administered the academic meet in various sections of the country but not all come together. They probably held it in the state of Alabama and this is what I' ; m surmising because this girl was from Asheville, North Carolina. I remember getting a letter from then Dean Cater from Talladega College. Mr. R. C. Johnson was Principal of Parker High School at the time. Dean Cater' ; s letter came to me and said, we know that you' ; re disappointed in not being the winner. You' ; re score was so high so we want to offer you a 250-300 dollar scholarship to attend Talladega College next year. They sent a copy to Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson' ; s alma mater was Talladega. He came from--he came in the class. I never said anything to him about it. He came into the class and called me out. HUNTLEY: This was the principal? FAUSH: Yes, and he said that he had gotten this letter from Dean Cater and so forth and he was excited because it was the first time a Parker student had won something from his school, Talladega. HUNTLEY: Is that right? FAUSH: He was excited. He went to marching me around the school, you know and all this kind of stuff. But a strange thing happened. They said to me. I was excited too. I was excited because he thought it was such a big deal, you know. So, I attentively said that I was going to go to Talladega in the fall. I sent off the application and all this sort of stuff. That was the year that I had gone off also that summer to another Elks Convention to play in the marching band which won first place. I know we got off the train in Tuxedo Junction. Anyway, it won first place in the national parade. When I got back home and incidentally I have to add because it' ; s connected to some other things. They would pay us like five dollars a day or something like that. It wasn' ; t much but it was something. It was important to me because I didn' ; t have anything. The guys being out of town would have fun and all this kind of stuff. I passed a shop on a corner and that was the first time the lapel-less jackets came out. It was a brown corduroy lapel-less jacket. I took my money except four dollars and bought this jacket. It was the only new jacket. I knew I was going off in the fall and my only chance to get a jacket was to get this one. I took it as a prize possession. Anyway, when I got back off the trip and so forth the letter was there approving my application for attendance at Talladega College. But, and I don' ; t remember the figure, but I needed to send $40.00 or $25.00 whatever the amount was for lab fees or something that it stated. That was it man, I didn' ; t have it, alright. But I was too proud to tell anybody. My daddy was sick. There wasn' ; t any way to get any money from him. So, time is getting close to school and so forth. I went back down to Parker by the school and so forth. I finally told Mr. Hudson. He asked where I was going and so forth. I just kind of [inaudible]. He kept pushing me and so I finally told him that I was going to go to Talladega, but I got this letter when I got back and I don' ; t have the money it takes so I' ; m going to have to sit out. He said, what? You can' ; t do that. He said, wait a minute. So, he called his friend, Jonathon Ford, who was the newly appointed band master there at A & ; M. He talked to Ford. He was in town. So, he said that this is one of my best students. Do something. They were looking for musicians and I was one of the best that he had ever produced. Do something. So, he said, you get your stuff together and he said, I' ; m going on back. You just get your stuff together and come on up. I said, look I can' ; t buy nothing. I don' ; t have nothing. He said, I' ; ll take care of it, you just show up. You get there. So, in the meantime I said ok. Everything I had in the world was in a footlocker. An old one that my daddy had. I got my stuff together and got on a Trail ways bus. Got off in Huntsville, Alabama. The school is four miles outside of Huntsville in Normal, Alabama. It wasn' ; t developed like it is today, brother. HUNTLEY: Yes. FAUSH: That four miles was woods. It was a country, ok. There were four guys on the bus with me. When I got off with my footlocker and so forth and got down there. They saw me coming. They asked me about if I was going to school and so forth. I said, yeah. Later I found out that they were upper class men. One guy a tall guy, I remember because I saw him months later there on the campus. He was a senior. Anyway, they said that they were supposed to meet a guy with a car and so forth and all that and I could go with them, but I would have to help to buy gas. Anyway, to make a long story short they swindled me out of my four dollars. I' ; m just 16, 17 years old. HUNTLEY: Four dollars would have bought a whole lot of gas at that time. FAUSH: It was the first time being away from home and so forth. They could tell I was young. Had the powder still on my cheek. (Laughing) Anyway, I stood around that bus station looking for them and I was left there. HUNTLEY: Is that right? FAUSH: I had to get out on the road and do one of these numbers. After I had almost walked to the school with that footlocker someone had pity and picked me up and took me on up to the school. Ok, but when I got there I couldn' ; t find Mr. Ford. The folks down in the registrar' ; s office didn' ; t know nothing about me. HUNTLEY: They never heard of you? FAUSH: Never heard my name. So, here I was with that footlocker and didn' ; t even have my four dollars. HUNTLEY: All you had was a footlocker and some clothes and no money. FAUSH: Nothing and up there. Fortunately, at that time probably 60% or maybe even more of the students at A & ; M' ; s campus came out of Birmingham. All of them I played in the band with. Thomas Rossi was up there. It was just a bunch of folk. I mentioned him because he was a well-known musician. People that I had known, you know. Somebody, I don' ; t know if it was Tom but they let me stay in their room that night. The next day I did find Mr. Ford. You talking about hungry. Let me tell you this before I leave this. A few years ago there' ; s a big plaque sitting in the middle of my office wall down there and it says: The Mayor, City Council all signed by these people and so forth were making me an honorary citizen of Huntsville, Alabama. HUNTLEY: Is that right? FAUSH: This was presented just a few years back at the Von Braun' ; s Center in Huntsville where I spoke to physicists and engineers and so forth that were there and brought the faculty from A & ; M. It was a special occasion there at the city of Huntsville. That night I said, if there was ever any doubt in anybody' ; s mind that there is an eternal force that has control of our destiny. I want to remove that speculation from your mind now. I told them this story that the first time I saw Huntsville, Alabama with that footlocker with everything I had in it. And to have you invite me here to this Von Braun Center and to speak to you on such an occasion as this. You could never understand the significance. So, anyway I wanted to share that with you because to me that was quite an impact on my life. HUNTLEY: How long were you at A & ; M? FAUSH: Stayed at A & ; M most of that first year. During that year what was happening is that I was coming home on weekends. I was singing. They payed $15.00 dollars to sing on the early Bradford program. It used to come from Bradford Funeral Home on Sunday morning. I came back when I got a spot with them. I was singing with a group called [inaudible] Mr. John Banks who was the director of music at Lawson State and in the group with them. It became an alternate thing on Sunday mornings on the Bradford Program. We were known as the Bradford Singers and so forth. John gave me $15.00 so I would come home on the weekends to get those $15.00. HUNTLEY: You said Lawson State. FAUSH: Well, it wasn' ; t Lawson State. HUNTLEY: Wenonah Trade School. FAUSH: That' ; s right, that is right. HUNTLEY: That was part of, I know in Birmingham the tradition of quartets. FAUSH: Yes, but this was hymns of the church as opposed to gospel music as such. HUNTLEY: I see. FAUSH: I was in everything but gospel as such. I became the pastor of the church that I was born in for 20 and a half years. I was the first person to [inaudible] to ever pastor that one little church. HUNTLEY: What church? FAUSH: Metropolitan. But I was a child at the church. HUNTLEY: Is that right? FAUSH: I stayed there and pastored longer then anybody else. Anyway, I said that information because when I talk about music now because I came out of the early Methodist tradition. Most of the things we did in church were musical. HUNTLEY: At A & ; M, you came here then you started to make the $15.00. That was big money. FAUSH: Oh, yes sir. HUNTLEY: That was big money. So, did that then change the direction you were going? FAUSH: Yes. HUNTLEY: What happened after that? FAUSH: Alright, one of the things that happened. My brother, William, had opened his radio station in Bessemer called WBCO. WBCO was owned and I mention some of this along the way because he has connection with the continuing story. William was there for about a year at the station. The three people that owned the radio station at the time was, one later became the mayor of the city of Bessemer, which was Jess Lanier. He served many years until his death. The second person was Elton B. Stevens, the Elton B. Stevens, [inaudible]. The third person was the late, fellow Judge Ewing. The three of them. My brother, who was different from what was common for Black broadcasters at the time to take an assumed name and a name that may be applied to him by somebody else. Like, Jeffery Jazz or Daddy O or Sugar Poppa or some other name. My brother used his own name, Faush. In the short period over time and being in early broadcasting and exposure for, it was something new for Blacks at the time. He became known by his name. So, with the promotional pieces, it [inaudible]. Well, my brother left, decided to leave Birmingham and go to greener pastures. HUNTLEY: Where did he go? FAUSH: He went to Louisville at the time, I think. HUNTLEY: In radio? FAUSH: Yes. He was at LOK, I think it was or LOU. In the meantime, they invested in promotional pieces and so on with the name Faush. Well, Faush was our name. It wasn' ; t something they dreamed up, you know as a handle or [inaudible] for entertainment purposes. So, somebody said, well, he' ; s got a brother. A guy by the name of Hal Faulkner was then the assistant manager, they sent him to ask me if I would come out and do it. HUNTLEY: And that' ; s the way you got in it. . . FAUSH: So, I very reluctantly agreed to go because I wanted to do something else. Any way I made a deal with them that I would try if they would permit me to continue to go to school or whatever it is that I wanted to do. Well, I early perceived that the advantage was with me at the moment, you know. Even though they were White I started bargaining early. To say that, hey, you' ; re asking me now. HUNTLEY: I' ; m in the driver' ; s seat, you need me. FAUSH: It didn' ; t take a Rhodes Scholar to figure out that they were seeking me at the moment and that I better seize this moment. While, salary wise, it was a big deal to make $25. I think I started with $25.00 a week, whatever the case may be. I also played at night with orchestras and things like that and so on. I had a little band and so forth and we played little gigs. Also, then I got involved in this gospel music and stuff and so forth. I got into the music and the music started getting into me. Also, I started looking at this thing and saying that I saw some potential even though it was nothing at the moment. It was in its embryonic stage at the moment. I also thought, I' ; ve got to learn something about this, you know. So, this summer I stopped in because they were having this first big seminar that was going on at the University of Denver. I made a deal with them to go. The thing was at the time because I couldn' ; t go in Birmingham, Alabama. They didn' ; t have a broadcasting/journalism school at the University of Alabama and other places and so forth. We couldn' ; t go. They do have these things that I need and if I' ; m going to be good for you and help you make money. You' ; ve got to fix me where I know what I' ; m doing. So, it became a good argument, you know. I never let it be perceived by them that it' ; s going to enrich me but it' ; s going to enrich them and they better make the investment and so forth. So, this is how I got off and got some broadcast training and so forth. So, I had to put my general studies on hold for a moment to do this because it meant work. So, then they got this investment and all this kind of thing. Then I also started then, with the music to promote it and that sort of thing. I also saw the fact that if it' ; s going to be a commodity that you' ; ve got to, it' ; s got to be a vehicle rather it' ; s sold as entertainment on a radio station, for whatever purposes this is the commodity. HUNTLEY: Right. FAUSH: That you' ; ve got to be involved in and so forth. So, it' ; s in the interest that also you' ; ve got to promote it and stimulate it and otherwise. So, I started bringing the artist in and that sort of thing. So, for more than 18-20 years it became exploded and so forth. I did all the promotions here in Birmingham as well as the entire southeast, musically for about 18-20 years. Nothing moved without having some connection with it. Plus, I became A & ; R [inaudible] director for several record companies and so forth. I even got into recording myself and made about four or five. I' ; ll show you some of the books and things and so forth that reached the top ten in the country back then during that time. HUNTLEY: At what point did you get into the ministry? FAUSH: This was in the, the ministry came. I' ; m sure you' ; ve heard reference to the ordained ministry. HUNTLEY: Yes, yes. FAUSH: I had perceived ministry in an overall sense in all the things that I' ; ve done. Even prior to that I started to get into the promotions and so forth. I also felt the need to be able to somewhat have control of your own destiny to the extent that whether or not it made money there had to be some kind of self-gratification and to be able to step outside of someone else always determining the direction of your career or anything else. I wanted to be in charge. I guess that' ; s from, if I was in the percussion section I wanted to be first drummer. If I' ; m in the brass section I wanted to be first trumpet. At least make the attempt and make the effort to do it. So, and several things developed from a social standpoint and I guess I' ; ve always been a rebel riser to a certain extent. Perhaps not as vocal as some others but in my own way moving hopefully as growth does. It' ; s very silent, you don' ; t hear much from it. HUNTLEY: Sure. FAUSH: But that very force will crack concrete and a plant will come up through its roots if it gets the right nurturing and so forth. That force can come up even sometimes with more impact than it can if they void the significant or advanced notice that' ; s coming. I thought that the preparation and other things. My own corn field definition of luck is when preparation and opportunity meet each other. You can be prepared and never get the opportunity and it won' ; t work or you can have the opportunity and you' ; re not prepared and it' ; s going down the drain and so forth. So, trying to hopefully that one day one of these things is going to happen. So, I started off at a grocery business. I saw the need. I opened the first Black amusement park. I went through all kinds of trauma with these things. Each was an outgrowth of the other. It was almost like steps coming on top of each other. You mentioned the ministry. In promotion of the music and other things and so forth. There came times of public presentation and so forth. I think perhaps always that' ; s been that innate desire and awe. Sometimes preparing for a meeting and you know not what. I think perhaps that became the highest expression. To perhaps to put all of these formulating entities that come together and sort of jail to say in this. The impact of the music, the business, entertainment, all of this can come together and perhaps have its highest form of expression in this setting. I felt the energy in the movement. Then of course when I got into what is called the ministry and so forth. Then again like the broadcast and so forth I recognized that one has to also prepare himself. If you' ; re going to do something you owe it to that discipline. To at least make the preparation or it will never achieve its finest potential. I heard somewhere, sometime [inaudible] it' ; s not the people that know how to get the job but the people who know why become their boss. So, I wanted to know some of the whys of things. So, again I find myself back in school. Of course, when Faith opened up I went back to get my undergraduate courses and so forth. HUNTLEY: Where was that? FAUSH: Faith, Faith College. I finished up the undergraduate courses but at the same time I was at theological training with ITC [inaudible] who then had their extension at Miles and so forth. I was in all of this all at the same time. Aside from that I was involved in all kinds of community things because I always felt that you owed something to the community. If something is going to nurture you, you owe something in whatever it is you' ; re involved in, you know to move it along. Of course, we were then in the early stages of the thrust for human rights and all of this stuff was burning in all of us. I suppose all were waiting for some kind of direction or some kind of glue as such. A cohesive force to come together, you know. Like a magnet to pull it together to give it direction. We were always fighting our own wars and so forth. Even in broadcasting, that' ; s a whole story in itself and other things being White only. And the many fights and battles we fought with advertisers. Many incidences you feel they were taking advantage of the Black community. They were just taking from it and not giving anything back to it. As I said, that is a whole. . . we could write a whole other book about all that. HUNTLEY: Right, it needs to be written. FAUSH: So, here I' ; ve got all these hats going. HUNTLEY: So, how do you fit all of this together in the particularly how you eventually relate to your activities during the early and mid-60' ; s? FAUSH: In the thrust of human rights and all that? HUNTLEY: Yes. FAUSH: As I said, I think all of us. It was like a sleeping giant, or an animal if you please. Whose laying there and just waiting. It' ; s almost and you didn' ; t have to hear thunder. If you can imagine a sleeping bear laying in the woods and a hunter steps on a dry twig. That' ; s really all it took, you know. Or you got escaping gas and all it needs is the pilot light and such, you know. Once you light that pilot you can light the whole oven, or the whole stove, they say. All of these things, the pressures had been there. The restlessness, all of it, just waiting for direction. HUNTLEY: What gave it this direction? FAUSH: I think a lot of things. I don' ; t know if I could identify any single situation. It sort of like, if one is to identify your personality. To know me now or to know you or any individual at this point in life and development. There' ; s no way you can understand them because at any given point in time all of us become the cumulative total of life' ; s experiences that brings us to where we are. To understand the way, I think without knowing something of my cultural background and heritage and those things that had an impact to make me think the way I think today, you cannot really understand that thought process. Which is why history is so vital and so important. Those things that bring us to that point and time. One would have to had experienced some of the indignities. HUNTLEY: I assume that I understand some of those indignities. FAUSH: Alright. HUNTLEY: And try to explain to me why at this particular time is Birmingham ready for what would take place in the 60' ; s? FAUSH: Alright. One must understand though, like I said, you know, sometimes we focus in on a certain given point in time. HUNTLEY: Right. FAUSH: To say, boom, it started, ok. That would not be correct in my way of thinking. HUNTLEY: Absolutely. FAUSH: Again, there were many things. It was like the leaven in bread. When we see the demonstrations with outward expressions. This is only that point perhaps where it all came together but the leaven had been working, you know. For instance, when the demonstrations started. We often forget about the Alabama Christian Movement and the other organizations and the meetings. When one says, if one would take the point to the Emancipation Proclamation for instance and decide hey, this is the time, boom, they' ; re free. One would have to go down long before that. You' ; ve got to go back to the ships. You' ; ve got to go back to those that slaved down there and those who had hopes in their heart and those that nurtured and carried that desire for freedom and so forth. When all of the environmental things got to the point where, it' ; s like a boil. If that boil gets to the point where that bacterial information comes and collects all in one place something has to give at that moment, you see. HUNTLEY: Right. FAUSH: It just so happened and I think that there is divine handling and you can call it what you want to but I think that and many have postulated why do you think by the divine hand or whatever name you what to refer to the deity and the one that' ; s the creative force behind this universe. To say why is it always or why is that force seem to be identified on the side of the oppressed. I don' ; t give an answer to that. This is one of those things conceptually, like love. Love is not defined it' ; s evident. Whether we trace the course of history as far back as we are able to do so there have been times when one would have to contribute to a divine force if no more for the reason or the lack of being able to explain it otherwise. It all comes together and there is a point in time and if the universe operates by order and certainly it does. Whether you want to give a name to that force that created the order. The order is there the intelligence is there. Nothing just happens. Something or somebody makes it happen. That force by whatever name you want to give it. I call it God but if you want to call it something else and so forth by any other name still that creative force I think brings in the season just as the bud becomes a rose. I think all the other things that make up the universe and society come to a [inaudible] when something takes place. That creative energy has to have expression. I think all the things in our history that was coming together all of these times. I have no explanation why you take a Texas born Senator and a vowed segregationist and all the things that would constitute even the side issues that one of that discipline would think. His geographical background, his political background, and nurturing everything else coming up under [inaudible] and would also that at a certain given point in time that even, you know never would have been elected to the high office of President of the United States except for the quirk of history that removed a liberal person. Who would have ever thought that a Kennedy and a Johnson from these two opposite political polls would ever come together to form the leadership of this nation at that given point in time? Why would all that happen and then his subsequent assassination and then this Texas born person with all of this background would be the very person to be in the seat to push [inaudible]. Who can explain that? HUNTLEY: Right. FAUSH: Anybody who is a serious student I think would conclude that if Kennedy would have stayed there, that is a serious question as to whether or not he would have had the power and would it would take to get it through the legislature no matter what he thought. Who could explain a Hugo Black? A Ku Klux Klan was sitting on the Supreme Court and that would be the person, the instrument by which some things are done. Who can explain things like this? It defies logic. So, I' ; m saying this creative force brought all of these things to a point. It' ; s never been without suffering. I don' ; t understand why there' ; s no redemption without the shedding of the blood. I only know it' ; s a fact. HUNTLEY: Some place [inaudible] as we have said, God helps those who helps themselves. FAUSH: Of course. HUNTLEY: He' ; s always prepared to do whatever is necessary. FAUSH: Absolutely. HUNTLEY: As long as we are doing what is necessary. FAUSH: Absolutely. HUNTLEY: It appears that if you look at that period from, well many times we talk about the civil rights movement. We normally start at 1954. Of course, you' ; ve got to go further than that. FAUSH: Absolutely, right. HUNTLEY: If we talk about the marches in the civil rights movement. The 1954 Brown vs Board and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Then we start to see activities starting to take place although much has taken place prior to that. FAUSH: Absolutely. HUNTLEY: It' ; s just not publicized. FAUSH: It' ; s like a farmer preparing the soil. HUNTLEY: Right. It all then comes into play. And we' ; re not through yet. FAUSH: Oh, no, no sir, by no means. We' ; ve only seen a little crack. We have yet to push it fully open and to walk through it. HUNTLEY: Tell me how did you and Shelley come together eventually as partners? I know you were together at WENN. Is that right? FAUSH: Yes. Well, there was a time that we were on other stations. We go back to those early years and from each vantage point. Each head was engaged in various actions and involvements from different points. It' ; s like the guy I suppose who builds a fire over there and he doesn' ; t have a stove but owns some wood in the backyard. This other man may have a match and the other a lighter. In some way you know that a fire needs to be started. So, in the meantime, there have been few. This is the casualties in the broadcast industry. The causality rate is high. There are very few that last a long period of time. That in itself is somewhat an accomplishment, to simply last. That' ; s also even by design because it like gaining a foot hold and those who have the control of the strings in the first place don' ; t want anybody to get enough clout of any kind that they may even have notions of self-reliance. Forget about the resource but even the notion. So, all of these things. The same things you would find in any other discipline were certainly prominent. It was as simple as someone coming in and you' ; re gone and someone is in your seat tomorrow morning. It' ; s just that fast, you see. (snapping fingers) There' ; s a lot of movement even today, if you noticed. You might see a face on television tonight and so forth but there' ; s no explanation to what happened to them. They' ; re just gone. You see a new crew in there the next week and how do you want the ratings and what someone else says is popular. We just saw a thing in the newspaper the other day as being the impact that Oprah has today. The local outlets talking about it. HUNTLEY: Tell us, say something about that so that people will know what you are referring to. FAUSH: Well, the local outlet that airs the Oprah Winfrey show has reported that they have decided not to renew carrying that show, to pass the term to expire the present contract. I think it ends in ' ; 99. It has been supposedly picked up by someone else, but that' ; s almost unthinkable at this point and time. If that can happen to a top-rated show. HUNTLEY: The top-rated show. FAUSH:I don' ; t mean to elaborate just saying Oprah is enough. To elaborate on her status as an entertainer, entrepreneur and everything else that you could possibly name. The number one female performer in the history of television. If they could do that to Oprah what do you think they could do to the kid that' ; s fresh out of journalism school, you know, waving the diploma waiting to be an anchor. HUNTLEY: That' ; s right. FAUSH: Anyway but getting to the matter of Shelley and myself. It did not come together in terms of partnership and ownership only that the both of us had the same notion and how to best get into ownership. You see it' ; s different with the broadcast industry perhaps. I think it' ; s probably the most regulated industry in the world. You can' ; t just decide that you' ; re going to open another grocery store or department store or mechanic shop or automobile dealership or anything else. It' ; s a long hard process. First of all, you' ; ve got to find an existing frequency or the possibility that once the ban is full no more frequencies are available. You' ; ve got to either buy an existing one or you know, you can' ; t just decide to open one. There are all the technical things involved. That' ; s much too broad a subject to even to explore in these brief moments. Aside from all the regular things that any other business enterprise must meet in terms of taxes and regulations. In terms of local, state, government taxes and all the usual things. An investment, you know. There' ; s also the FCC to deal with as well, along with the other agencies that get into the picture. Like the EEOC, the labor department, and the list goes on and on. The technical things. Once you got past all of that then of course there is the money. It has to be a viable and practical situation. It so happened that some years back that we wound up on the same station. I was on WENN, you know the story of that and that' ; s a whole other discussion too. HUNTLEY: It is. FAUSH: But just for the sake of subsequential explanation, I guess. The WBCO, I mentioned earlier after it was sold to the McLendon group which came out of Mississippi. One of the first group operators or attempted group operators. They wanted to increase the power and move to Birmingham into the larger market arena. In being restricted on 1450, which was the frequency it was on at the time. It also had a CP from the federal [inaudible]. It expanded in power. It could not be done on that particular frequency. There were limitations whether your pattern initial broadcast coverage area is know as directional or non-directional. If it' ; s directional it goes in not in a completely circular configuration of emissions from the tower but what it does it has sort of a shaped type. Which means it may go fifty miles this way or hundred or so forth. And that is done and regulated by the FCC so we would not have overlapping signals. In some instances, like for instance know as an example we' ; re broadcasting on what is known as the Mexican Clear which is 900 in the center of the dial. There is a treaty between the United States and Mexico that exists that keeps one from overlapping the other and so forth. So, that power of stations located on that frequency in Mexico has the control by the Mexican government and the United States government by treaty controls from that frequency on this way so that you would not have them collided or a jumble mess of emissions that would confuse the signal and so forth. HUNTLEY: Let me ask this, 900, this 900 frequency it is the middle of the dial, right? FAUSH: Yeah, in the center, yes. It is known because of that treaty that exists. That' ; s not true for some other frequencies. There is one other that is called Canadian Clear. There are two treaties that are now in existence that are on the AM band that the treaty controlled. 900 happens to be one of them. The advantage is and so forth that there is a non-directional single. It' ; s sort of like squeezing, if you had to have a conduit or a pipe that you were going to get water through and so forth. Depending on the diameter of that pipe, so matter what the lead in comes to it depends on a certain extent what is going to come out figuring pressure, resistance, and the other factors that go in to control it, as to how much you' ; re going to get on the other end as it comes out this end. Which means in some [inaudible] it is considered a very good dial position. If you' ; ll notice all around the country most of the lower frequencies were taken by those who were in broadcasting earlier. HUNTLEY: Right. FAUSH: Most of your Black stations or Black program stations are higher on the dial. Anywhere from 12 to 13 to 14 and on up to 16 some of them. None down at the lower end and that' ; s because those are considered the better frequencies. Our does not have to be as high. You can get more non-directional signals which means that you can take, if you were using an automobile engine for instance as a yard stick to measure by in later years they can get as much thrust and horse power out of a four to six cylinder engine which uses less gas to propel that car as you used to get out of a big straight eight that burned a whole lot more gas. So, efficiency and other things are related to what I' ; m saying. Anyway we wound up, as I said, to simplify it or somewhat complicated situation. We wound up on the same station. Without going into some of the other side stories and here we are. I' ; ve made an attempt to buy another station earlier and so forth and that' ; s a real story and I won' ; t get into that. At the time, I will say this about the earlier situation. I was in a position at the time that fortunately that northern Blacks in the stations were in. I was assistant general manager of the station. It gave me access to a lot of the financial information and so forth about the operation of the station. It was because of that information that I carried that information to some people to say that this is the time to strike. We need to do this and so forth. HUNTLEY: That was your position then? FAUSH: Yes. One of these days I would like to show you some of my personal files at home. It' ; s related to a lot of things you wouldn' ; t even think to ask me. Anyway, when I carried it to them, and they looked at it. They said, God, persons were in other enterprises. When I showed them on people it exceeded anything [inaudible] they just didn' ; t know there was that much in broadcasting. They don' ; t want you to know. The only way I could get my hands on that was because of the position, I had at the station at the time. Well, it went on from there. I wound up on the short end of the stick. So, but the desire for ownership is still there. HUNTLEY: You had learned that and of course I' ; m sure your appetite had been whet prior to then. FAUSH: Oh, yes. HUNTLEY: With that kind of information that of course would leave you to say this has to happen. FAUSH: Oh, yes. You' ; ve got to keep going because you know the old story. They say Colonel Sanders was turned down 300 times. HUNTLEY: That' ; s right. FAUSH: That' ; s what the story says. On time 301 its history now. HUNTLEY: That' ; s the only one that counted. I know we have a long story to tell and we don' ; t have time to do that today. FAUSH: Yes. HUNTLEY: I really appreciate you taking the time out, but I know I really need to sit down with you again. FAUSH:Yes, there' ; s some other things that, you know, internal, social things that the involvement from the church and other struggles and so forth. You know, I' ; ve served on the advisory board of the governor' ; s economic advisory board. I learned some things from inside there, very, very few if any know anything about that I built a housing development, but I wound back up in graduate school back to A & ; M in 1977 in graduate school. In order to be able to compete and to provide homes for people who were not able to have them. There' ; s one out in Woodlawn that bears my name. There are a few people who know that I chair the central committee [inaudible]. HUNTLEY: I think they will do that based on what you are doing and have done because that will become. . . This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
bcri.org. 0 http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=EFaush1998.xml EFaush1998.xml
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Rev. Erskine Faush
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Rev. Erskine Faush discusses being involved in music and ministry throughout his early years before starting with broadcast radio. His voice, along with Shelley Stewart's, was a hallmark of Black broadcasting during the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham.
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Civil rights movements--Alabama--Birmingham
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1998-11-18
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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bcriohp
Oral History
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Betty Hanson
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James Head
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Ku Klux Klan (1915- )
Gaston, A.G.
Smyre, Sid
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5.4 June 30, 1995 James Head Interviewed on June 30, 1995 19950630H 0:58:11 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project Collection bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Laura Benton Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham Small business--Public relations Korean War, 1950-1953 Connor, Theophilus Eugene (Bull) Ku Klux Klan (1915- ) Gaston, A.G. Smyre, Sid James Head Betty Hanson Video 1:|4(5)|17(2)|25(7)|37(5)|49(2)|57(4)|72(3)|82(6)|89(11)|100(9)|110(3)|119(9)|129(7)|144(1)|157(3)|169(15)|182(7)|190(7)|201(15)|213(10)|221(4)|234(4)|242(8)|252(16)|262(17)|271(12)|281(4)|289(5)|300(6)|320(6)|330(7)|341(13)|353(14)|368(7)|382(10)|390(7)|415(5)|425(9)|436(6)|444(8)|455(3)|465(14)|477(13)|493(4)|504(7)|517(12)|529(1)|542(3)|550(7)|564(5)|575(8)|585(4)|596(14)|610(12)|623(3)|634(6)|643(1) 0 https://youtu.be/vK6_O2kpaM8 YouTube video English 0 Introduction of Interview Mr. Head as we record this, this is June 30, 1995, the Southern Baptist just this past week passed a resolution that in effect apologized for the social sins of the past - segregation, slavery. You have been a very active member and participant in Southern Baptist affairs. You're still a Southern Baptist. Betty Hanson begins interviewing James Head at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. 33.516200, -86.813870 17 The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute https://www.bcri.org/ BCRI Homepage 37 The Southern Baptist Church Resolution of 1995 Mr. Head as we record this, this is June 30, 1995, the Southern Baptist just this past week passed a resolution that in effect apologized for the social sins of the past - segregation, slavery. Mr. Head talks about the Southern Baptist Convention's resolution to apologize for social sins of the past including segregation and slavery. He discusses the Birmingham Baptist college, Samford University, and its decision to admit the first black girl. He talks about the Southern Baptist Conventions plans to improve upon black and white relations within the Baptist church. He discusses integration beyond the church ; in housing, health matters, educational opportunities, and in the athletic arena. African Americans--Segregation ; Blacks--Segregation ; Samford University ; Slavery and the church--Baptists, [Catholic Church, etc.] Southern Baptist Convention 33.465009, -86.793223 17 Samford University https://www.bcri.org/ The Homepage for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute 420 Family Upbringing and Thoughts about Race Relations Now let ask you, let's go back to the beginning. Why were you different than some of the people that you worked with? Head discusses how he grew up in a southern, white household. His mother was prejudiced toward the black people and he rejected that mindset. Some of his life experiences gave him perspective on race relations. Gaston, A. G. (Arthur George), 1892- ; Pickens County (Ala.) ; Young, Whitney M. Race relations 626 The Ku Klux Klan " ; ...I was taking on a new job in 1923, and a couple of years after I had started out working I tried to cross 1st Avenue and 20th street at noon one day." ; Mr. Head remembers seeing a Ku Klux Klan parade. He knew of a case with the Jefferson County health inspector, Mr. Dowling, in which the man was tarred and feathered because he threatened to shut down dairy farms due to a suspicion of contaminant in the milk. It was not known, but was suggested that many dairy farmers were members of the Ku Klux Klan. Mr. Head also talks about an horrific act that took place in Eastlake in which two white men castrated a young black man in order to be granted initiation into that Klan Chapter. Dairy farmers ; Eastlake ; Initiation ; Jefferson County (Ala.) ; Jefferson County (Ala.). Department of Health ; Pinson Valley ; Typhoid fever Ku Klux Klan (1915- ) 33.688766, -86.677823 17 Pinson Valley, Alabama 33.549655, -86.730113 17 Eastlake, Birmingham, Alabama 854 Whites Fear Opposing the KKK I want to tell you something, Ms. Hanson, many young men would be influenced by those kind of episodes in their young life. Head discusses how many white people were afraid to stand up against the Ku Klux Klan for fear of losing their jobs. Many white people knew that the acts that were being done toward blacks in the community were inhumane, but they did nothing about it out of fear. Mr. Head talks about what made him different from many white people during the time of the Civil Rights Movement. Race relations ; Small business--Public relations 985 Unsuccessful Attempts to Editorialize the Climate of Prejudice Okay, let's talk about the climate. You are part of that time Mr. Head, that's the beauty of it and yes indeed you are a man of courage you might just as well live with that accolade because it's going to hang with you to eternity. Mr. Head tried to influence his friend to publish an editorial about the injustices being done through the KKK and to the African American community. Newspapers would not publish the content for fear of losing subscriptions and money. He tried to talk to ministers who were also afraid of losing membership if they spoke about racial injustice. Lawyers did not want to speak out for fear of losing clients, as well. Many people were aware of racial injustice and segregation, but were afraid to speak out. Mr. Head experienced boycotts and loss of clientele in his own business because of his stand for equality. African Americans--Segregation ; Blacks--Segregation ; Gaston, A.G. ; Hanson, Sr., Victor ; News in print Editorials ; Public relations and law ; Small business--Public relations 1396 Race Relations in Korean War vs. Race Relations in the United States That's an interesting thing because I spoke at their invitation to a group of young Black people who were interested in getting Whitney Young to come to Birmingham to help reorganize the Urban League that had been eliminated because certain people threatened to withhold their support from the community chest if the Urban League was a part of it. Mr. Head describes a conversation he had with a young African American veteran. The veteran was surprised to see how badly race relations had gotten in Birmingham after he returned from the Korean War. He described his company comprised of black and white soldiers and how they were friends. He was appalled to come back to the States and find so much fear between races. Miles College ; National Urban League ; Young, Whitney M. America--Race relations ; Korean War, 1950-1953 1557 Senator Sid Smyre Confronted about Segregation Issues ; Smyre Takes Positive Action So I went to one of the downtown churches and I went in to talk to the bishop. Mr. Head and A.G. Gaston met with state senator Sid Smyre to discuss segregation issues in Birmingham. Senator Smyre made positive changes two days later, integrating elevators, drinking fountains, court house restrooms, and enforcing better behavior toward blacks registering to vote. Sid Smyre tried to use his influence to persuade business to make positive changes toward desegregation. Birmingham (Ala.) ; Freedom Riders ; Gaston, A. G. ; Rotary International. Convention ; Smyre, Sid ; White Citizen Council Desegregation 2215 The Birth and Evolution of Birmingham, Alabama & ; the Steel Industry You see, I think Mr. Head, in doing an oral history of our town, we have to look a little bit at the climate that we all were part of and that climate produced change. Mr. Head describes how Birmingham became a hub for the steel industry. The railroad as well as the iron ore and coal resources brought the steel industry to Alabama. U.S. Steel invested interest. Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railway Company was important to the steel industry in Birmingham. Many of the top officials of the steel industry became leaders and builders of the city, including the construction of Lloyd Nolan Hospital. Crawford, George Gordon ; Lloyd Nolan Hospital ; Steel industry and trade ; Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company ; U.S. Steel ; Vulcan Materials Company Birmingham (Ala.) 2584 Bull Connor ...They owned the sheriff, there never would have been a Bull Connor except for TCI. Mr. Head talks about Bull Connor, the police commissioner for Birmingham, and how he got his position through his connection to the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railway Corporation (TCI). Many of the leaders and elected officials spurred from TCI. Mr. Head describes what is was like being state chairman of the Democratic party supporting John F. Kennedy for President. Democratic Party (Ala.) ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company Connor, Theophilus Eugene (Bull) 3353 Close of Interview Mr. Head, thank you. You've led a wonderful life. Mr. Head closes by commenting about the Baptist church's resolution to put away the prejudices of the past. He states that he believes it will take actions more than words to prove a change of attitude and relationship between races. Baptist Resolution Oral History James Head discusses his experience as a white businessman trying to combat racial injustice in 1960's Birmingham. He worked with journalists, politicians and Movement leaders try to change the social climate of injustice. HANSON: Mr. Head as we record this, this is June 30, 1995, the Southern Baptist just this past week passed a resolution that in effect apologized for the social sins of the past - segregation, slavery. You have been a very active member and participant in Southern Baptist affairs. You' ; re still a Southern Baptist. HEAD: Yes, I had not been as active in the Southern Baptist affairs as I have local Baptist affairs. I' ; m still a member of the Southside Baptist Church, have been for 55 years or something like that and I' ; ve tried to have some effect on the things that I believed were improper for Christian religious body to be engaged in segregation. HANSON: Using that word - improper - segregation, slavery, how do you feel about this resolution that' ; s just been passed? HEAD: It wasn' ; t as big as of surprise to me as it might have been to some people. I' ; d been on the board of trustees at Samford University for thirty-five, forty years. I was chairman of moving the college from Eastlake to Lakeshore Drive. We had an application shortly after we started building that nice, beautiful campus now from a Black woman who wanted to enter the school, and everybody was extremely nervous about it. We finally after much deliberation and several meetings of different groups, executive committee and academic committee and so forth, the amazing thing was that the trustees met and a peanut farmer from Enterprise, Alabama, red-headed, freckled face said, " ; Well does her grades meet the academic qualification?" ; They said, " ; Yes." ; He said, " ; Then what are we talking about? Why don' ; t you admit her?" ; Now that happened forty years ago. HANSON: But now with the Southern Baptist forty years later passing this resolution, it took forty years for them to pass a resolution, and yet they had such turmoil to admit the first Black into Samford. How do you feel about it now? And then we' ; ll go back. HEAD: Well, I feel good but that isn' ; t really the answer to your question. The question was that that particular incident of admitting a Black girl who later became a - well, I' ; ll identify her - she' ; s now been elected director of the American Red Cross Nationally. That' ; s the kind of person that we were debating about admitting to Samford University. The point is that we have gradually, far to slow and to gradually, we' ; ve changed. Some people get impatient with change. I do. I' ; m terribly impatient with change. But I' ; ve had to realize that I can' ; t move everyone' ; s conscience at once. I just do the best I can as an ambassador, I try to have a little influence here, whatever I can do. So, the answer to your question is - I think they were very slow, maybe hundred years slow in their resolution but I' ; m grateful that they passed it. I hope that some of the things that were said by pastors and leaders of the Baptist Southern Convention about what that means for the future will hold true. Because there' ; s a tremendous amount of work yet to be done. HANSON: For example? HEAD: Example - housing. We Southern Baptist are the largest Protestant population in the country. And Southern Baptist in Alabama, is a large percentage of the population of this state. We should see to it that we merge our churches where there is an opportunity to merge churches - Black and White - not to eliminate Black churches - not to eliminate White churches, but to make it possible to have interconnection of congregations and exchange of Christian fellowship on a regular basis. Then we should also at the same time see to it about housing. Then at the same time, we should see to it about health conditions. Then we should also at the same time see to it that children in school have the finest opportunities to acquire an education so that they can be self-respecting and receive respect from everyone else regardless of their color or station in life and that they have something else to look forward to in this technical age rather than just playing basketball and football and some of the other great athletic sports in which they excel. That is not the only opportunity that I want to see. I want to see them take a part in everything that goes on in this country. HANSON: Mr. Head, you' ; ve had a full rich life, that has given you numerous awards here in Birmingham... HEAD: I' ; ve been blessed. HANSON: But you' ; ve also been a very courageous man in the environment in which you lived. Now let ask you, let' ; s go back to the beginning. Why were you different than some of the people that you worked with? You ran a business, but you weren' ; t afraid to tie up with someone like A.G. Gaston, you weren' ; t afraid to bring in a Whitney Young. Why not? Certainly, you didn' ; t get applause for that. HEAD: I learned from my dear mother who lived to be 103 years old and was born and raised in Pickens County, Alabama, which is one of the poorest counties in the entire United States, she was born and raised on a plantation. Well, she was the typical Southern lady, she loved Lucy or Josephine or any Black person that she became personally associated with. She loved them, she thought, and I' ; ve heard her say it many times, handed down from the good Lord. But as a group, she hated them. Now what in the Heaven' ; s name can cause a thing like that to exist in a human mind. I don' ; t know. It may have been fear. I' ; m afraid that a great deal of what we' ; ve suffered from was just fear. She lived to be 103, and I worshiped her. She lost her husband when she was young, she had four children. She moved back to Alabama, that' ; s why I' ; m here, in 1914 with four children under 15 years old and on her own with a little bit of insurance. Not much they didn' ; t have much in those days and she raised those four children. So I say I' ; m blessed, okay, but I was subjected or I learned from her how easy it was to be prejudice, I hate to use the term bigotry, I learned at her knee how this could happen in an individual. Love those that she knew and was associated with came in contact with frequently, loved them. But hated - that may be too severe, feared may not be adequate, but somewhere along the line she was a typical southern person that wanted to have really nothing to do with those that she wasn' ; t closely associated with. HANSON: How did you get up to be different? Were your siblings different, or just you? HEAD: I had some early experiences. I had to go to work because of the war, took my brothers off to the war. So, I had to go carrying papers and cutting grass - that' ; s fine, it was a great thing for me. I met a lot of people that I still know but I was taking on a new job in 1923, and a couple of years after I had started out working I tried to cross 1st Avenue and 20th street at noon one day. Someone said, " ; There' ; s a parade coming." ; So, I stopped. Well the Ku Klux Klan had a parade that day. They claimed that they had 7000 people in the parade, I don' ; t doubt it. They also claimed that they had seven judges off of the city and county court benches, I had no way of disputing that. It horrified me because I looked upon the Ku Klux Klan as an alien organization in this country and it made a tremendous impression on me as a young man that this city could literally stop and watch 7000 people parade in white sheets and hoods. They claimed that they had every judge on the bench of the city and county in that parade. Well, as I read history and I read books about Hugo Black and others it' ; s pretty well confirmed that what they said in that parade was true. Then a little bit later I remember that the Ku Klux Klan or those who they influenced out in Pinson Valley, when that was nothing but a dairy farm, all big dairies and Dr. Dowling who was the health officer of Jefferson County was struggling with Typhoid Fever that was killing babies by the dozens every summer. He finally said, " ; The problem is the milk. Our milk is contaminated. I am going to inspect all the dairy farms." ; He did. He told them they would have to clean up the dairy farms if they were going to sell milk in this county. He as the health officer would not permit it - them operating- until they cleaned up the dairy farms. Ms. Hanson, they took him out one night tied him to a tree stripped his clothes off tarred and feathered him and gave him twenty-four hours to get out of town. HANSON: Because he called for cleaner milk? HEAD: Because he threatened to close their dairies if they didn' ; t clean up their barns. HANSON: Were the members of the Klan dairy farmers? HEAD: We don' ; t know it positively that it was members of the Klan. I say it was people that the Klan influenced because I had no proof of that but that' ; s a fact. Later on, it is a fact that historically two young men in Eastlake wanted to become members of the Klan. In order to prove that they were deserving of being a member of the Klan. They had to perform some kind of an act that would impress the Klan Chapter that they were worthy of being members. So, they went out and the first Black man that they saw was a young man. They hit him in the head, they castrated him and they went back to the Klan headquarters to prove that they were worthy of being a member. I want to tell you something, Ms. Hanson, many young men would be influenced by those kind of episodes in their young life. HANSON: Why? HEAD: Well, I think they would consider it inhuman. They would consider it anything but Christian. They would consider it something that they didn' ; t want to be a party of and I' ; m convinced that a great many rebelled against that but they were afraid to say something about it for fear they' ; d lose their job. They' ; d become one of those agitators that was stirring up things or whatever. They were afraid and from that point on I began to recognize that fear was a real important ingredient to cause people to act as they did towards their fellow citizens. HANSON: Why weren' ; t you afraid Mr. Head? HEAD: I' ; m not sure about that. I' ; d had a lot of people call it courage, who use that term. I don' ; t believe that, I don' ; t believe it was that. I believe it was something that I inherited that told me that there are certain things that are wrong that you aren' ; t going to have anything to do with and if you can prevent it you must do it. I don' ; t know whether that is religious influence, I' ; m not sure about that. All I know is that I' ; m grateful that I have it and whoever gave it to me, my mother or the good Lord, I' ; m very grateful for it. Because I enjoy life I enjoy people, I haven' ; t missed a meal. Oh, I' ; ve had employers tell their employees, " ; Don' ; t do business with that fellow." ; I' ; ve had boycotts. I want to get off the subject of me. HANSON: Okay, let' ; s talk about the climate. You are part of that time Mr. Head, that' ; s the beauty of it and yes indeed you are a man of courage you might just as well live with that accolade because it' ; s going to hang with you to eternity. But let' ; s talk a little bit about that time that the Klan marched, and of course, it was when Hugo Black marched with that, I think he even said he did, and you saw it. It changed you. Did the newspapers talk about it? Was there any editorials against it? Who did you find that you could talk to that agreed with you? HEAD: I think that' ; s a very important point. Victor Hanson, Sr., had no sympathy for any of that kind of doings in that community. I went to one of my very good friends and I' ; m not going to deal with individuals now because I don' ; t want their family to think that I' ; m criticizing a good friend - deceased - that was a good friend of mine. When I went to one of these important newspaper people who we considered ourselves close friends, I said, " ; Look, we can' ; t tolerate this. For Heaven' ; s sake, come out with an editorial, change your news copy do anything that you can to expose to this population and its readers, how horrible you think this is, you know it is. You have an obligation to do that." ; He said, " ; What a minute Jim. You' ; re going to have to quit being idealistic and become realistic." ; I said, " ; What in the hell are you talking about." ; He said, " ; We' ; ve tried something like this a number of years ago when Mr. Victor Hanson was here. We lost 40,000 subscribers in the first two months. We resolved then that we were never going to be a damn fool about that subject again. We are not going to get involved in that. We' ; ll report the incident, but we are not going to editorialize, and we' ; re not going to preach to the population and our subscribers as to what they ought to do." ; Now that sounds strange now because that wouldn' ; t happen today. I went to some of my good friends that were in the retail business. I said, " ; Look this is going to kill this city. It' ; s going to kill your business." ; " ; No, now wait a minute Jim, you' ; re off on the wrong foot. We cannot take a part of this. We cannot change what you say we should change about trying on clothes or lunch counters." ; Even a grand friend of mine that was, again I' ; m not going to mention his name, I don' ; t want to embarrass his family, head of one of the largest department stores, he and I were golfing buddies, we went off on trips together, he said, " ; Jim, it' ; s true we have a lunch counter and we don' ; t allow Blacks to eat there." ; But he said, " ; Look for Heaven' ; s sake don' ; t bring this thing up anymore. I value our friendship, but we can' ; t afford to lose 20,000 customers and that' ; s what would happen." ; It was fear. I went to another one, same thing, fear of what they were going to lose, what would happen if they took a stand and buddy I want to tell you, if I had any gumption that reinforced it because it became realizing that this thing became a cancer in the whole community. The ministers, I went to one of the most beloved ministers and I said, " ; Doctor, look, you head one of the most prestigious churches in the state. You have more real estate and everything, in Heaven' ; s name, why don' ; t you say something about this ugly thing that is happening in our community. That our members want to hear from you." ; " ; Jim, I don' ; t dare do that. I understand what you' ; re saying but I don' ; t dare do that. If I do, I' ; ll lose half of our membership." ; Betty, this may sound ridiculous to you, but it was a fact. The lawyers didn' ; t want to speak out for fear they would lose clients, they knew what the law was, they knew what was going to happen, they knew that school segregation and all other segregation were absolutely contrary to this country' ; s concept. But they didn' ; t want to be the ones to speak out for fear that they' ; d lose their clients. HANSON: My question to you is, you during all of this were very outspoken, seeing people, working behind the scenes as well as taking a few public stands, still ran a business. Did you lose clients? HEAD: I have wondered about that myself. I' ; ve almost taken a poll. Why was this customer loyal to me in spite of that? They didn' ; t have that fear. I didn' ; t lose a single retail department store customer or friend. They lost their business, but I didn' ; t lose their friendship. Finally, most of them died off, I lost them. I did have some boycotts ; I did have some handouts on the streets but I' ; m making a mistake I want to quit talking about my experiences. Look, we' ; re beyond that now. HANSON: I know we are, but this is a oral history and it' ; s necessary. I know it makes you uncomfortable, I won' ; t dwell on all of those things right now or your role necessarily, but we must understand a little bit the climate in which I first knew you for example in Birmingham. How did you get to know A. G. Gaston and why? HEAD: That' ; s an interesting thing because I spoke at their invitation to a group of young Black people who were interested in getting Whitney Young to come to Birmingham to help reorganize the Urban League that had been eliminated because certain people threatened to withhold their support from the community chest if the Urban League was a part of it. So, I agreed to meet with them. One of the young men that I met, I' ; m sorry I can' ; t recall his name, I wish I could, he was a student, I' ; ve forgotten at Miles College or where, one day after the Korean War, this was in the 50s, he stopped me on 20th Street and said, " ; Mr. Head, can I speak to you a minute?" ; I said, " ; Sure." ; And I recognized him, and I said, " ; How in the world are you?" ; He said, " ; Well, I' ; m fine. I' ; ve been off to Korea." ; " ; Oh, I' ; m glad you' ; re back. You look fine." ; He said, " ; I feel good." ; But he said, " ; Let me ask you a question." ; He said, " ; Over in Korea, I was in a company of a bunch of Alabama boys, White and Black. We exchanged cigarettes and cups of coffee and everything else in the fox holes and some of us got wounded, some of us got killed but we were buddies. Real sure enough buddies." ; I listened to him standing there on 20th street and he told me about his experiences for a while then he said, " ; But when I got back home, I see some of those on the street and they don' ; t want to stop and even say ' ; Hi' ; . They don' ; t want to be seen with me." ; I said, " ; Why?" ; " ; I don' ; t know unless they' ; re just afraid that somebody will see them talking to a nigger." ; Well, that touched me. I thought what in the devil, we' ; re sending a boy over to fight in Korea. He got along fine with his contemporary soldiers in the fox holes, they swapped and everything and he comes back home and they want even stop to say, " ; Hello, how are you getting along buddy?" ; - for fear. So, I went to one of the downtown churches and I went in to talk to the bishop. The bishop says, " ; Mr. Head, I don' ; t want to get involved. You' ; re asking me if we can hold a meeting in our church to invite some people to come down and discuss this. I' ; m sorry, I don' ; t want to get involve." ; I was successful, however, in contacting one of his younger rectors and through him I got permission - he got permission - to use the bishop' ; s study to invite some people for a discussion of what was wrong, and what could be done about it. I approached one of the life insurance company executives and he said, " ; Jim, I love you. You and I are good friends but our company operates under the laws of the state legislature and I don' ; t dare, they could put me out of business. I' ; m not going to get involved." ; I said, " ; I understand. I' ; m sorry, I wish you would." ; I went to others, pretty much same story. " ; Look Jim, I' ; m not saying you' ; re wrong, but count me out. My board (now we' ; re talking about his board of directors) would say " ; what' ; s the matter with you have you lost your mind? You' ; re getting involved in this thing.' ; " ; So, I finally found out that Sid Smyre and his wife (and he was a fellow Rotarian) had gone to Tokyo, Japan, for the International Rotary Convention. He walked out of his hotel that morning and there was a paper with headlines being sold on the steps of the hotel that buses bearing freedom riders had been raided in Birmingham on Mother' ; s Day and they had been brutally... HANSON: Beaten and the bus was later burned. HEAD: And that so embarrassed him, so the newspapers said because they published that in the Birmingham paper. It embarrassed him. I heard about it the next Wednesday at the Rotary Meeting that he had been embarrassed in Tokyo by a newspaper. They were blaming a newspaper, they don' ; t blame anybody else, just blaming the newspaper for publishing that and making a big to do about it. But I knew that he was probably embarrassed, truthfully. Though I knew Sid Smyre was a very powerful state senator and that he was raised out in Milton and he was undoubtedly a member of the White Citizen Council... HANSON: I was going to say that, yes. HEAD: Or some organization that' ; d say, " ; We' ; ll put up $600 a piece and send them back to Africa, if that' ; s okay." ; So I called Sid Smyre, and again I was trading a little bit unfairly on my affiliation as a fellow Rotarian. I' ; m surprise they didn' ; t kick me out. HANSON: I was going to ask you that. You ended up being president. HEAD: But they hadn' ; t. They' ; ve changed too Betty. HANSON: They have. HEAD: They wouldn' ; t have a woman member. Now we have a number of outstanding women. They wouldn' ; t have anyone but a White Caucasian male. That' ; s all changed now. HANSON: Go back to trading on you. HEAD: Now to get back to Sid Smyre. So, I went to Dr. Gaston and I told him what was going on in the church and that we had these people and they had stories that we could hardly believe. Stories like a young Black woman, 18 years old, or 19, went up to register at the courthouse and the registrar said, " ; What' ; s your name? Okay. What' ; s you address? Are you married?" ; " ; No." ; " ; Do you have any children?" ; An insulting sort of a record asking a person on voter registration, " ; Are you married?" ; " ; No." ; Do you have any children?" ; So, I told Dr. Gaston about this and he didn' ; t know that. He said, " ; Well, Jim, I didn' ; t know that. I know an awful lot of things that are bad, but I didn' ; t know about that." ; I said, " ; Did you know that a Black man or women cannot even go up in the upper floors of any of the office building in downtown Birmingham to call on their attorney or to pay a payment at the bankruptcy court [which was then up in the Greg Nelson Building]? For any reason whatsoever, they cannot ride a passenger elevator. And if the freight elevator is hauling trash or furniture or whatever, they' ; re going to have to wait until it' ; s all done before they can get upstairs." ; He kind of bristled, he said, " ; Yes, I did know that, but I had forgotten it." ; I said, " ; If I make an appointment with Sid Symre would you go with me?" ; " ; Sure." ; So, I made the appointment. I called him, I said, " ; Sid I want to come see you." ; " ; Alright when." ; I said, " ; You name it." ; He did. Dr. Gaston, I picked him up, we wouldn' ; t go in the front door, we went up the alley and went in the back door because we didn' ; t want to embarrass Sid with any of his friend or customers or employees. We sat down and we told him these things. I reminded him he was embarrassed in Tokyo, I said, " ; I think Sid you might be embarrassed to learn something I honestly believe you don' ; t know about." ; I told him about this. He said, " ; Are you telling me the straight dope or are you just putting on a show? You mean that they can' ; t ride an elevator except the freight elevator in the Brown Marx Building or the Empire Building the Woodward Building, the John A. Hand Building, the Frank Nelson Building?" ; I said, " ; That' ; s correct. And you the president of the Birmingham Realty Company and you own the Frank Nelson Building and maybe some of the others." ; He wrote it down on a pad. I told him about the restrooms and the drinking fountains at the courthouse and I said, " ; You are the state senator from this county." ; It took about 30 or 40 minutes I guess. He said, " ; Give me two days." ; I said, " ; Whatever you want. You were nice enough to see us, thank you. You gave us an opportunity to bring you something. It maybe astonishing." ; He said, " ; It is." ; In two days, it had all been wiped out. HANSON: Not the drinking fountain, however. HEAD: What' ; s that? HANSON: Not the drinking fountains, just the elevators, you mean. HEAD: Just the elevators, the drinking fountains, the restrooms at the county courthouse and instructions to the people who interviewed people at the voter registration thing, " ; Don' ; t you dare ask any insulting questions of anyone." ; HANSON: Mr. Head, how did Sid Symre, aside from embarrassment, manage the group that got together to meet with King after the marches? Were you part of that group? HEAD: No. HANSON: Why? HEAD: Because Sid Symre didn' ; t want an activist. Unfortunately, that was the term that was applied to me by a lot of people. He wanted to talk from his level to his compatriots of people of like kind who had been fighting this thing. He wanted to appeal to them on a strictly economic basis that we cannot to afford a continuation of this thing. If it does, it' ; s going to get worse. It' ; s gonna get cancerous. We' ; re going to be the laughingstock of this country. We - remember now he was the president of the Birmingham Realty Company - and I' ; m not saying he did anything from a monetary standpoint alone. I honestly believe, I' ; m convinced of it, that he had a change of heart and it may have been in Tokyo not in Birmingham but he was committed from that point on to try and persuade businessmen as I had tried to influence him by saying, " ; This is wrong and it' ; s all going to slap us in the face in business and if we ever try to get into Heaven it' ; s going to clobber us." ; Well, I don' ; t know whether he took to that but anyway in 48 hours he said, " ; You give me two days." ; And in 48 hours, he delivered. Which shows and confirms the fact that just a few people could run the town and had been running the town for generations. HANSON: Yes, someone said was what Birmingham needed was 12 good funerals and maybe we could start over again. Did you hear that? HEAD: Yes, of course. They would have to be selective but about 12 would be that right number. HANSON: Twelve people actually controlled this town, how things happened, who got where... HEAD: Maybe fewer than that but be generous and say twelve. HANSON: Why didn' ; t they come down on your neck? HEAD: They did. HANSON: Tell me about that. HEAD: I don' ; t want to get into that. That' ; s too darn personal. That doesn' ; t really have any bearing on anything... HANSON: You see, I think Mr. Head, in doing an oral history of our town, we have to look a little bit at the climate that we all were part of and that climate produced change. HEAD: Look Betty, Birmingham - remember this now - was a young city. By comparison with Memphis or Nashville or Atlanta or Jacksonville or New Orleans, it was a young, young city. Remember also that it would not have existed except that two railroads crossed, and they wouldn' ; t have crossed except for the fact that we had iron ore, coal and limestone. The only place on the face of the God' ; s green Earth where you find the three essentials for manufacturing steel in one spot. Okay, because that happened, who was going to develop that. The farmers [inaudible] and up and down the various valleys? They had no more ideas than the man on the moon, they didn' ; t even know that that was iron ore. They didn' ; t know that there was coal down there or limestone or anything, they were interested in crops. So, people from elsewhere, Tennessee, Montgomery, Pittsburgh, New York, Chicago, Cleveland, heard about this and said hey wait a minute. You mean to tell me that there are minerals and all in the South, in the cotton land? The first thing you know, Birmingham was booming. Booming with what? Those ingredients. Who caused it to boom? People from elsewhere. And what few investors from Tennessee and Montgomery and around the South that put up a few dollars, they couldn' ; t sustain their needs so they sold out to the big money interests of Pittsburgh, U.S. Steel, so on so forth all over the country and look I' ; m not begrudging all of that because some of that brought some great blessings, the Irelands, they were not natives here, they came from Ohio and you couldn' ; t find finer people. They created Vulcan Materials out of nothing. They created Kirkwood on the river, they were generous people. But the curse that we inherited was this. Finally, U.S. Steel was the owner of the principle industrial development and they had plants in Gary, Indiana and Pittsburgh and elsewhere and they only bought this down here for protection against any competitive thing against their other investments. So, they inaugurated Pittsburgh Plus, which meant if you sold steel out of Birmingham to Texas or California or any place, they had to be the price of Pittsburgh plus the freight from Pittsburgh to that destination. They sent men down here said, " ; Look go down there an run that mill and be sure that it makes money." ; Most of the people that they sent down were only in interested in staying here until they retired and could move to California or Martha' ; s Vineyard or Florida or someplace. They had no roots down in the soil. We didn' ; t have any families back in those days that had any deep roots into the soil of this community. Later we acquired just a few like Crawford Johnson, who stumbled onto Coca Cola and made a lot of money. He was originally a Baptist, he helped save Samford University that was bankrupt. They couldn' ; t pay their faculty salaries, they couldn' ; t buy the coal to run the furnace, they couldn' ; t do anything. He said, " ; I' ; ll bail it out if you' ; ll let me get Howell Davis to be president." ; HANSON: It was tit for tat. HEAD: There was one exception to the people that came down here from U.S. Steel and that was George Gordon Crawford. He came down and he was horrified. He said, " ; These shanties out here are a disgrace to human beings." ; So he said, " ; Build me some homes. The company will own them, we' ; ll rent them, we' ; ll take the rent out of the paychecks. Build me a commissary. Build me a hospital." ; And he built Lloyd Nolan Hospital right over the hill there. Build me a school. It' ; s too bad that he couldn' ; t stay here. Sixty-five caught up and he had to move, but he was a great humanitarian as well as the president of Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railway Company. But he was the exception to the rule, the majority of them you couldn' ; t remember their names. HANSON: But they controlled the town. Someone has written about Birmingham, that it was a city of overseers. HEAD: It was run just like a plantation. They owned the company store, you bought from the company store, they owned the sheriff, there never would have been a Bull Conner except for TCI. HANSON: You think so? You really believe that? That they supported Bull, they threw money at him, they got him elected. HEAD: I' ; m not the only one that said that. HANSON: Oh, of course not, I' ; ve read it. I just want it on the record. HEAD: Of course, I believe it because I ran into it. I was appointed chairman of the victory bonds drive for Jefferson County at the end of the war, 1945. I went to Bull Conner who was then city police commissioner at city hall and I said, Bull I' ; ve been appointed so forth. I said it' ; s important that we not allow our citizens to squander their savings because they couldn' ; t buy anything. They couldn' ; t buy a radio, etc. I said, " ; They have fortunately been forced to save some money. Now we don' ; t want to make a bunch of monkeys out of ourselves by beating up the price of the first radio that comes along, the first automobile, and so forth. We' ; re going to put this in the victory bonds savings, it' ; ll earn interest, better interest, until production gets the price down sensibly. Now I said. " ; In order to do that I' ; ve got to put on some kind of a gimmick, and I' ; ve come up with an idea that I' ; m going to have them roll out the barrel and for everyone that buys a bond. We' ; ll give them a stub and we put the other stub into the barrel, and we roll it down 20th Street. We' ; ll make a big hoopla every day at noon and people will know what this is all about and we' ; ll draw them at the Alabama Theatre, and blah, blah, blah. He said, " ; Uh-hu, you know, Head (he always called me Head) that' ; s a raffle and that' ; s against the law. But I' ; ll tell you something, if they arrest you, just let me know, because damn sure I' ; ll get you out right quick or I' ; ll get in the jail with you." ; You can say, oh well, he was trying to be nice to you and he was trying to do something for the war effort blah, blah, blah. No, what he was doing was showing me that whatever in the hell needed to be done that he wanted to get done, he didn' ; t have to ask anybody, he just go ahead and do it. HANSON: There were a lot people in this town, however, I can remember from my first arrival here that supported Bull Conner either privately or publicly not just TCI. HEAD: That isn' ; t any mystery Betty. They supported him for three reasons, not because they were proud of him, not because they thought he was a great commissioner or police chief or anything like that, but first, they either worked for TCI or they sold or they sold them insurance or they sold them supplies, blah, blah, blah. Or some of their relatives worked for TCI and they weren' ; t about to do anything that would cause anybody to say, " ; Don' ; t do business with that fellow. He' ; s not one of us." ; That' ; s why I say it was a plantation operation. HANSON: Bull was the overseer, the one that cracked the whip. HEAD: Sure. They could say to Bull, " ; Look buddy, we' ; ve got 38,000 employees. You run for commissioner we guarantee your election." ; I' ; m going to prove that to you. I was state chairman for the Democratic party for the John Kennedy campaign. Me, a Baptist, finance not the campaign, financial campaign, a Baptist supporting a Catholic candidate for president in the state of Alabama and chairman of the finance committee asking people to put up money. What' ; s the matter with you have you lost your bearings? No. That didn' ; t enter the picture with the people that appointed me the executive committee of the Democratic party. Well sir, I learned something. We raised the largest sum of money in the state of Alabama that' ; s ever been raised for a Democratic candidate for president. In spite of why. HANSON: Exactly, why? HEAD: Simply because the personality of that man and what he said to the Baptist and other preachers in a convention meeting in Dallas or Houston, I' ; ve forgotten which, about religion and the presidency and this country plus the fact that this country was ready, youth wise, returned from the war. Here was a war veteran, youth, everything fell into place, and the religious prejudice had to take a sidestep. So, he carried the state of Alabama. We raised the largest sum of money that' ; s ever been raised in Alabama for a Democratic candidate and people were behind that but here' ; s the reason, and I' ; ll get off of it right quick. I went up to the inauguration and one of my close friends was running a company that was a tenant of the city of Birmingham and he and I were close, and our wives went with us... HANSON: Go ahead. HEAD: I' ; m talking too much. HANSON: No, you' ; re not, your saying exactly what I want to say. I should have turned this over. I can' ; t get this in. Go ahead the tape is rolling. So, you and your wife went up to the inauguration. HEAD: We weren' ; t flying back in those days you know ; we went up on the train a federal judge was on the train with us, we stopped at the [inaudible] hotel. It snowed, it was a blizzard, now I' ; m back on the story. HANSON: Okay. HEAD: Bull Conner called this friend of mine who as I say was a tenant of the city of Birmingham, in other words, he was renting, well, he rented the Hayes Aircraft Hangers, which the city owns. In other words, the city got them from the government after the war. He called this friend of mine and said, " ; I want to talk to you." ; He said, " ; Well okay Bull, come on up. Jim Head is here." ; I said, I' ; ll get out. He said, " ; No, you stay here." ; Bull came in and said, " ; I want to talk you about one of your employees." ; " ; What about him?" ; " ; We want to run him for mayor." ; He said, " ; What are you talking about?" ; He [Bull] said, " ; We' ; re talking about Art Hayes. Art Hayes is a son of a minister - Methodist minister - he' ; s a former veteran and he' ; s been on the FBI and we want to run him for mayor." ; Lou Jeffries said, " ; Wait a minute. He' ; s in charge of our labor relations." ; " ; I know we know all about what he does but we want to run him for mayor, and I have a guarantee that he will be elected." ; Now in my opinion the guarantee was, TCI said if that' ; s who you want go get him. We' ; ll guarantee you that you' ; ll be elected. After all, they had 38,000 employees and those employees had friends and customers and bought insurance from people and automobiles from others, and groceries from others and all that. So, the influence was that it' ; s a plantation operation. We kind of poo-pooed the idea for about 30 minutes and they wouldn' ; t take any poo-pooing at all. He said, " ; Look, let' ; s don' ; t waste time. We want him to run for mayor." ; Well, the conclusion was okay. " ; Have you talked to him? " ; No, but I want you to talk to him right now. You call him up and tell him that it' ; s okay for us to talk to him about running for mayor. So, he did right then, and you could tell that the fellow on the other side was dumb founded surprised and didn' ; t know anything about it. He said, " ; Well, let Bull talk to you." ; So, Bull said, " ; It' ; s all set. We' ; re going to run you for mayor." ; He did and he was elected without any problem. HANSON: I remember when they tried to get rid of that triumph very well. I remember when they put up Tom King. HEAD: That' ; s right. Do you remember what they did to Tom King? HANSON: Let' ; s talk about that. HEAD: Well, I don' ; t.they sort of, I hate to use the term, but they brutalized him. They set him up. Tom King was a good dependable deeply religious deeply concerned citizen and would have made a great administrator of the city. But that wasn' ; t what they wanted, and it was simple. It was so simple that it could be done in 30 minutes in Washington, D.C. over the telephone line and that was it. There wasn' ; t nothing else to it. One minute he was working for a company, the next minute he was candidate for mayor of the city of Birmingham, guaranteed that he' ; d be elected. Now how much more do you want in the way of a plantation operation than that. HANSON: So, all of this fit together didn' ; t it? It was to the segregation issue, the labor strike that took place in the city, the city owned by 8 good men, not even good men, so it was owned. So, Mr. Head, you were sort of fighting wind mills in a way and yet they named you man of the year. HEAD: Well, I' ; ll tell you, there' ; s always been something like that, there' ; s always been something like that Betty. I don' ; t want to be quoting paraphrased things but honestly all that is necessary for evil to exist is for some good people to just not do a damn thing about it and evil will take care of it without any trouble quickly. And yet if the good people who ever they are ever decide look I' ; ve had enough of this I don' ; t sleep well, I think about this it disturbs me, I don' ; t won' ; t my children to look back and say what in the hell did you do about that daddy or granddaddy? And I' ; m not going to be able to say anything about it. So it does eventually change. The only thing is I don' ; t know why the good Lord puts up with it for so long waiting for it to change. I really don' ; t understand that. HANSON: Mr. Head, thank you. You' ; ve led a wonderful life. HEAD: I have, I' ; ve been blessed. What more could an individual want than a fine family, good health, and know Betty, I have a world of friends you know who unfortunately most of my good friends that I had back in the 40s and 50s and 30s, have passed away. They' ; re no longer here. But let me tell you something. The greatest thing that' ; s ever happened to me is that their sons and daughters who have been off to college have come back and they are entirely different people. They don' ; t have that fear. They are not going to be handcuffed and shackled by those kinds of thoughts and those kinds of prejudices. They have learnt something differently because they' ; ve lived with other people under different circumstances and they don' ; t believe that the things were ever necessary. Maybe that' ; s why the Baptists said look we' ; re really apologetic for what' ; s happened. I don' ; t make any big to do about that. They' ; re going to have to demonstrate to satisfy me that they mean exactly what their words. That' ; s what the pastor who presented the resolution said, that words are not sufficient. It will depend on our actions. Well I agree. They' ; re going to have to show actions and I' ; m sure they will. HANSON: Thanks Mr. Head. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
bcri.org. 0 http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=JHead1995.xml JHead1995.xml
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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James Head
Description
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James Head discusses his experience as a white businessman trying to combat racial injustice in 1960's Birmingham. He worked with journalists, politicians and Movement leaders try to change the social climate of injustice.
Identifier
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19950630H
Subject
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
Small business--Public relations
Korean War, 1950-1953
Connor, Theophilus Eugene (Bull)
Date
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1995-06-30
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video
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https://bcriohp.org/files/original/1b5db019f4d6ec8749c60f264a24067a.jpg
3774977930800a3231983800c5ae9344
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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An account of the resource
Interviews collected as part of the general mission of the Oral History Project
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
Format
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Video
Type
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Oral History
Subject
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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English
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bcriohp
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
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Horace Huntley
Interviewee
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Milton Stollenwerck
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National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
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5.4 June 4, 1997 Rev. Milton Stollenwerck Interviewed on June 4, 1997 19970604S 1:01:19 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project Collection bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Emily Reynolds Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham Alabama A & ; M University Literacy tests (Election law) Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Ala.) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Milton Stollenwerck Horace Huntley Video 1:|25(4)|41(2)|46(15)|60(17)|75(4)|91(4)|103(11)|124(15)|144(12)|156(12)|173(10)|185(13)|200(5)|206(4)|217(11)|226(5)|231(9)|251(7)|270(3)|298(10)|315(2)|337(5)|345(14)|356(9)|366(10)|385(14)|394(5)|407(11)|425(15)|439(8)|467(4)|475(2)|479(12)|494(4)|506(5)|524(4)|545(10)|552(10)|560(7)|578(10)|597(7)|610(1)|625(4)|634(10)|650(9)|660(4)|667(4)|680(11)|691(5)|704(15)|721(5)|733(10)|753(10)|764(7)|770(11)|780(2)|789(7)|801(5)|811(1)|819(8)|831(10) 0 https://youtu.be/j5oinhCIwqo YouTube video English 0 Interview Introduction This is an interview with Reverend Milton Stollenwerck for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s Oral History Project. I’m Dr. Horace Huntley presently at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Today is June 4, 1997. Interview Introduction 33.516200, -86.813870 17 The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute https://www.bcri.org/ BCRI Homepage 36 Childhood, Family, & ; Early Education I just want to talk initially, ask you a couple of questions about your background, your family, your mother and father. You were born in Birmingham? Rev. Stollenwerck discusses growing up in Birmingham, his early education, his family, and his family's education/employment. African American families ; African Americans--Education ; African Americans--Education (Secondary) ; Birmingham (Ala.) African Americans--Education--Southern States 685 Extracurricular Activities in Adolescence When you arrived at Parker, were you involved in any extracurricular activities? Rev. Stollenwerck discusses his participation in extracurricular activities while in school, including studying music with John Tuggle " ; Fess" ; Whatley. African Americans--Music ; African Americans--Southern States ; Elks (Fraternal order) African Americans--Education (Secondary) ; African Americans--Social life and customs 912 College/Master's Education & ; Early Career What did you do after high school? Rev. Stollenwerck discusses earning his bachelor's and master's degrees, his early career, and beginning his career as a teacher. African American teachers ; Alabama A & ; M University ; Alabama State University ; Miles College ; Upholstery trade African Americans--Education (Higher) ; African Americans--Employment 1145 Voter Registration & ; Literacy Test Of course, 1954 being the Brown decision, I’m sure you have memories of that. Were you a voter prior to the Brown decision? Rev. Stollenwerck describes registering to vote and being required to take a voter literacy test. African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States ; African Americans--Politics and government--20th century ; Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka African Americans--Civil rights--History--20th century ; Literacy tests (Election law) ; Voting--United States 1305 Involvement in the Alabama Christian Movement This then led, of course, to something that you are very familiar with, the Alabama Christian Movement. Rev. Stollenwerck describes his experience as a charter member of the Alabama Christian Movement. African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States ; African Americans--Religion ; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ; Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 African Americans--Civil rights ; Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights 1658 Experience as a Teacher What was your role as a young man at the time? Were you teaching at that point? Rev. Stollenwerck discusses his work as a teacher, and how his job intersected with the Civil Rights Movement. African American teachers and the community ; African Americans--Civil rights--History--20th century ; African Americans--Employment ; Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights ; Racism--United States--History--20th century African American teachers ; African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States 1801 Civil Rights Demonstrations and Youth Movement Dr. Huntley: But you also demonstrated. Rev. Stollenwerck: Yes, yes definitely, right there in the crowd. I would get with fellows like John Drew. Do you know John Drew? Rev. Stollenwerck discusses his involvement in Civil Rights Movement demonstrations, as well as his experience as a teacher during his students' involvement in the Movement. A. D. King ; African American youth ; African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Civil rights movement African Americans--Civil rights ; Black Youth Movement 2191 Bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church You were a member of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Rev. Stollenwerck describes his and his family's experience with the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. African American parents ; African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States ; African Americans--Crimes against ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Domestic terrorism Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Ala.) 2816 Birmingham Community Reaction to Bombing What was Birmingham like after that? Rev. Stollenwerck discusses the Birmingham community reaction to the bombing at the Sixteenth Street Church as well as the church's membership and engagement in the time period following. African Americans--Religion ; Race relations in the United States ; Race relations--Religious aspects African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Ala.) 3202 Reflection on Movement & ; African American Community We’ve covered a lot of territory and we’ve talked a lot about a lot of subjects. When we initially started we talked about schools and the way school systems were in the period of segregation verses where we are today. From your perspective, what has been the difference? Rev. Stollenwerck reflects on the long-term impact of the Civil Rights Movement, and African American identity and community in present-day. African American families ; African Americans--Civil rights ; African Americans--Segregation African American history ; African Americans--Race identity 3644 Interview Conclusion Reverend Stollenwerck you’ve been great. I appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to come and sit and talk with me. Oral History Rev. Milton Stollenwerck discusses being involved with the Alabama Christian Movement as a teacher in Birmingham. He was a member of 16th Street Baptist Church when it was bombed in 1963. HUNTLEY: This is an interview with Reverend Milton Stollenwerck for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute' ; s Oral History Project. I' ; m Dr. Horace Huntley presently at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Today is June 4, 1997. Thank you Reverend Stollenwerck for taking time out of your schedule to come and sit and talk with me today about Birmingham and the movement. I just want to talk initially, ask you a couple of questions about your background, your family, your mother and father. You were born in Birmingham? STOLLENWERCK: Yes. HUNTLEY: Were your mother and father from Birmingham? STOLLENWERCK: Yes. HUNTLEY: Originally? STOLLENWERCK: Yes. HUNTLEY: Is that right? STOLLENWERCK: Yes. HUNTLEY: Well, where were their folks from? STOLLENWERCK: Selma and Greensboro. My mother' ; s mother came from Selma. My mother' ; s father came from Greensboro. Now on my daddy' ; s side both of them came from down around Greensboro. That' ; s Alabama. HUNTLEY: Right, ok, not North Carolina. So, you are Birmingham born, you' ; ve been here all your life. STOLLENWERCK: Yes sir. HUNTLEY: What community to did you grow up in? STOLLENWERCK: I was born and reared in the Smithfield community. HUNTLEY: Smithfield. Now, Smithfield of course is an old community and a very noted community. What was it like growing up in Smithfield? STOLLENWERCK: Well, Smithfield was a harsh part of unpaved roads, the railroad tracks, the Italian grocery stores on every corner. I suspect about the best thing we had in Smithfield was Parker High School. Of course, during that time for Blacks there was only one high school in the city of Birmingham. Now there, I don' ; t want to get ahead of you, but there we believed in academic excellence as opposed to what appears to be the situation now. Not at Parker High School, in the educational system period. Or systems. Somehow it seemed to have gotten removed from... HUNTLEY: Yeah, we want to talk about that in a little bit because I think that' ; s significant. That' ; s very significant to look at what Parker was like at one period in our history and then what our school system happens to look like now. Where did you start school? Where did you start first grade? STOLLENWERCK: At Lincoln, Lincoln Elementary School. HUNTLEY: Is there anything that stands out in your mind about your days at Lincoln? STOLLENWERCK: Well, we were disciplined, well-disciplined and it was none of this yeah and nah, you had to do it correctly ; yes ma' ; am, yes sir or no ma' ; am, no sir. And then you were prompted to excel. We couldn' ; t do less than to be our very best at Lincoln School. Of course I stayed there I think through the sixth grade and I was living in the middle of two school areas and I chose to go to Tuggle. I graduated from Tuggle. HUNTLEY: Why did you choose Tuggle versus the other school? Did Lincoln go to the 8th grade at that time? STOLLENWERCK: Yes. HUNTLEY: Ok, why did you choose Tuggle over Lincoln? STOLLENWERCK: Personal problems. When I got there I found things to my liking. HUNTLEY: Were these personal problems, problems in the school with other students or with teachers? STOLLENWERCK: Problems with the other students, more than anything else. HUNTLEY: Oh, ok. STOLLENWERCK: I didn' ; t particularly care for the environment and being reared by my grandmother she allowed me to change. I got up there and found out... you know believe it or not, all of the administration were, to borrow a [inaudible], they were gung ho on excellence and respect. HUNTLEY: At both schools? STOLLENWERCK: Yes, Yes. And responsibility, they believed if you said you were going to do something at 9:00, you did that at 9:00. My grandmother said if you have an appointment for 1:30, for example, you oughta be there at least by 1:15. Don' ; t be late. You don' ; t have a reason to be late. That' ; s in my bones. HUNTLEY: That promptness being a virtue. Let me ask you, just a minute about your mother and father. They were born here in Birmingham. Tell me about there educational background. STOLLENWERCK: They were high school graduates. HUNTLEY: Did they go to Parker, to Industrial High? STOLLENWERCK: Yes, yes. They, and I don' ; t know how to put this, my dad... now times were hard. My dad left and went to Cleveland, Ohio. He said that when he was established he would come back after his family ; two children, a boy and a girl and our mother. Something intervened there, he never got back. HUNTLEY: How old were you when he left? STOLLENWERCK: Very young. HUNTLEY: In elementary school? STOLLENWERCK: No, I hadn' ; t started school. HUNTLEY: Oh, I see. STOLLENWERCK: Ok, my mother died when I was nine and that' ; s where my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, came into the picture. She really took care of us. HUNTLEY: What kind of work did your mother and father do, as well as your grandmother? STOLLENWERCK: Well, I don' ; t know that my mother ever did any work. I' ; m almost sure she must have, but you understand now that I was just nine years old. My daddy was a mechanic for General Motors out in Cleveland. HUNTLEY: Did your grandmother work? STOLLENWERCK: She was a domestic, a domestic over on Highland or Southside. HUNTLEY: So, there were two of you, a boy and a girl. STOLLENWERCK: Yes. HUNTLEY: Was your sister older or younger than you? STOLLENWERCK: She was younger. HUNTLEY: And, your grandmother allowed you to go to Tuggle to finish elementary school. Is there anything that stands out in your mind about your experiences at Tuggle? STOLLENWERCK: (Laughing) For one reason or another I almost fell through the cracks. This is something I have not publicized really, for no particular reason. I started from time to time going to the Grand Theater, going to the Frollie Theater. HUNTLEY: In elementary school? STOLLENWERCK: Yes, when I should have been in school. There was a woman by the name of Carrie Bell McQueen, C.B. McQueen. She was an attendance officer and any time you were in there looking at the vaudeville in the Frollie and somebody caught sight of Ms. McQueen, all you had to do was say Ms. McQueen and they cleared that thing out. So, I began to loose to many days and Buddy Hudson, who was the principal at that time, sent me home. He wanted my grandmother to know what I was doing. When I got home she said well, I can' ; t go up there with you now I gotta work. So, we went to the neighbors house and used the telephone and Buddy Hudson said come to my house when you get off of work Mrs. Parker, you come to my house. HUNTLEY: Did he live in the community? STOLLENWERCK: Yes, he lived between my house and the school. We went up there that evening. Buddy Hudson said to me, " ; young man I don' ; t believe you want to go to school." ; At that time I don' ; t think it made much difference, to tell you the truth, but I said, " ; yes sir, yes sir I want to go to school." ; I' ; m gonna give you one more chance, the very next time you get involved in any kind of thing, you are out for good. And I looked at momma and she dropped her head and I could see a tear. I said I' ; m gonna do better than this. HUNTLEY: Made a decision right there. STOLLENWERCK: Made the decision right there, because it was hurting her too much and she had gone way out of the way to look out for me. I finished Tuggle. HUNTLEY: What grade were you in when that happened? Were you in sixth or seventh? STOLLENWERCK: Probably the seventh, hadn' ; t been up there I think too long. Then I began to get a hold of the situation and myself. HUNTLEY: When you arrived at Parker, were you involved in any extracurricular activities? STOLLENWERCK: I sang in the choir, I played in the band, I participated in several contests as they were sponsored by the, let me see, what is that, the Independent Benevolent Organization of Elks, I believe they call it. They still have their house down on 8th Avenue and 12th Street North. I went to several states with the Elks for their conventions, playing in the band. Under the direction of Fess Whatley. HUNTLEY: Oh, ok, so you studied under Fess Whatley. STOLLENWERCK: Yeah, but I played in the band under George Hudson, but for this special occasion, or these special occasions, we were under Fess Whatley. HUNTLEY: What do you remember about Fess Whatley? Him personally? STOLLENWERCK: I thought the world of him. I got close to him because when I entered high school... well first of all, when I went to high school, instead of going to the main building there was a situation adjacent to the Lincoln Elementary School that they called the annex. The 9th grade students always went to the annex and then to the main building. When I was in the 10th grade at the main building, Fess had... he was John Tuggle Whatley, he had a brother who was Peter Bradford Whatley. They assigned me to Peter' ; s upholstery class. I was going in rather tattered. My clothes, and at one point Peter said I have a bunch of suits that I' ; ve discarded, you may have them if you want them. Now Melvin Caswell was the tailoring teacher and their rooms were next door to each other. So, Peter Whatley went to Melvin and told him my situation and gave those clothes to him and told him to alter them, since he was teaching tailoring. For one reason or another, it seemed to me that John Whatley took a liking to me. In fact we were so close that many folks on the staff thought that we were family. He was liberal ; we' ; re talking about Fess Whatley now, liberal, but forward and direct. And, everybody in fact on the campus was his children. When he spoke... HUNTLEY: Everybody listened. STOLLENWERCK: Every rat went in his hole. (Laughing) HUNTLEY: That' ; s very interesting. Of course Fess Whatley stands out as far as music is concerned and you having the opportunity to actually study with him is quite an accomplishment What did you do after high school? STOLLENWERCK: Well, I had learned upholstery. My grandmother was a domestic, as I told you. She did the laundry for those high powered Jews on Highland. On weekends I would go to their houses and rake leaves and wash windows and these kinds of things. After 3 years in Whatley' ; s upholstery class I thought I had learned enough to use that as my vocation. This lady called for me to come do some work around her house and I told my grandmother you tell her I' ; m not coming because I have a trade and I' ; m going into my trade. I went into business. In fact, when I graduated from high school I had five scholarships, music scholarships, but my financial circumstances wouldn' ; t allow me to participate in them. However, I did go out to Miles College. I stayed out there two quarters. I left Miles and went into business. Two years later I was hired by the Jefferson County Board of Education, under special circumstances, in the Veterans program. It was then that I started working on my college education. HUNTLEY: And did you do that at Miles? STOLLENWERCK: No. I stayed at Miles, as I said before, about two quarters and then I went to Alabama A & ; M. There I acquired service and earned the B.S. degree. HUNTLEY: While in the service? STOLLENWERCK: Yes. HUNTLEY: So, where did .... STOLLENWERCK: See I was hired under an emergency teaching certificate. HUNTLEY: That' ; s right. STOLLENWERCK: And then, when I finished that some two years later I went to Alabama State. There I earned the M.A.E. degree. That' ; s the Master' ; s in education degree. HUNTLEY: Did you, after the 2 semesters at Miles, did you go to the military? STOLLENWERCK: No, no, I never went to the service. HUNTLEY: Oh, you never went to the service. I see. STOLLENWERCK: Well, see I got married at an early age. Well, WWII ended before, it ended in ' ; 45. HUNTLEY: That' ; s right. STOLLENWERCK: I graduated from high school in ' ; 47. But, they kept me on the list for a long time, and every time they would call me to go to the service, I had another child. Finally they just left me alone. HUNTLEY: This is a period that they were supposedly integrating the armed forces at that time. STOLLENWERCK: Yeah, they started that under Truman. HUNTLEY: Yeah, of course 1954 being the Brown decision, I' ; m sure you have memories of that. Were you a voter prior to the Brown decision? STOLLENWERCK: No. HUNTLEY: When did you become a voter? STOLLENWERCK: What a minute, that decision came down in ' ; 54? HUNTLEY: ' ; 54. STOLLENWERCK: Yes, I was a voter. HUNTLEY: Do you remember going and taking the test? STOLLENWERCK: Yes. HUNTLEY: To become a voter? STOLLENWERCK: Yes. HUNTLEY: What was that like? STOLLENWERCK: Like going before the Supreme Court. You have, you have to forgive me, tobacco chewer, sitting behind a desk and he would put those papers up there and tell you to fill them out and he would spit across the room into a golden spittoon, I guess that' ; s what they call that thing, and he would say something when you were through with that, something like this: Ok, boy, you can go, we' ; ll be in touch with you. I remember my barber ; I think my barber gave me two dollars, cause that was the poll tax. You had to pay to vote. HUNTLEY: Did you pass the test the first time? STOLLENWERCK: Yes. HUNTLEY: So you received a notice in the mail that you had passed. STOLLENWERCK: Yes. HUNTLEY: What do you remember about the Brown vs. Board of Education decision? Do you remember what was happening in your life at that time? Cause that would just precede the Montgomery bus boycott. STOLLENWERCK: I vaguely remember specifics in that connection. HUNTLEY: Yeah, this was a time. STOLLENWERCK: It' ; s been a while you know. HUNTLEY: Yeah, a long time. Right after of course the Brown decision, the movement started. Although I' ; m one of those that suggest that we talk about civil rights movement, the Martin movement starts with Brown. There was much taking place prior to then. The NAACP registering people to vote and the fact that as a result of this activity in 1956 it was outlawed from the state of Alabama. This then lead of course to something that you are very familiar with, the Alabama Christian Movement. STOLLENWERCK: I' ; m a charter member. HUNTLEY: You were at the first meeting? STOLLENWERCK: Yes sir. HUNTLEY: Tell me about that. We know that the NAACP was outlawed from operating within that week. Some of you got together and decided that there was a necessity to fill this void. How did that come about? STOLLENWERCK: If memory serves me correctly, Shuttlesworth called that meeting. He had fellows like Abraham Woods, Phifer, I don' ; t remember all of the participants but there was a group that had come together on his behalf. And they decided they were going to have a meeting to see if they couldn' ; t circumvent the ruling of the outlawing of the NAACP. And we bet that everybody there presumably.You got to understand that there were some main line pastors at that meeting who if anything, were not with the movement, who did not want to fight. Well, they were eating at the King' ; s table and so I could understand that, but I didn' ; t. HUNTLEY: Were these usually older ministers and from the ministers that were along with you guys, were all of you younger? STOLLENWERCK: Yeah, for the most part. Of course that' ; s a peculiar case cause that' ; s all I had heard all of my life, is wait the time is not yet. You know, wait. Of course, you always have that group that is still ready to wait. Who had contact or contacts in city hall, that kind of thing. We were aware of it, but there was nothing we could do about it except to further promote our program, promote our efforts and just let them hang on the outside. HUNTLEY: What do you remember about the first meeting? STOLLENWERCK: Well, we had singing, hymn singing. We had prayer, and we had speeches and then we called for a vote as to our position on forming a new organization. It went out overwhelmingly and at that meeting we elected president, vice-president, all of the officers and began having meetings. HUNTLEY: Did you serve in an official capacity at that time? STOLLENWERCK: No, no. HUNTLEY: Approximately how many people were at the first meeting? STOLLENWERCK: Well, I don' ; t know what old Sardis Church holds. HUNTLEY: But it was full? STOLLENWERCK: Yes sir. Hanging in rafters and outside. There were a lot of folks outside there who were guards. You have to be careful about trying to determine how many folks were there because once you got in you couldn' ; t get out, all you could do was assess what the inside looked like. HUNTLEY: How would you characterize a mass meeting? Mass meetings were held every Monday night in various churches around the city. For younger people who have no concept of what a mass meeting was like. How would you describe it so they would understand what it was like to attend one of those meetings? STOLLENWERCK: I think the mass meeting was more ; it was spiritual in its development. You always had your services. You know, your prayers and your hymn singing and your speeches. Folks were being motivated. Of course you understand that you have to keep motivating folks, every meeting you got to motivate them some more. That' ; s basically what happened, because as it turned out there was a sort of hierarchy of folk who set policy, you know at the head. And of course if any organization is gonna function effectively it had to have the leaders ; the heads of so much of what took place. For example, in the meeting we dealt with things common to the masses but the hierarchy dealt with the how to or when to or where to. They developed the strategy and then disseminated it to us. HUNTLEY: Yeah, I understand that. What was your role as a young man of the time? Were you teaching at that point? STOLLENWERCK: Yes. HUNTLEY: Were you at Carver? STOLLENWERCK: Wenonah. HUNTLEY: At Wenonah. There were many teachers who of course did not participate cause they were afraid of losing there jobs. Why did you decide otherwise? STOLLENWERCK: I was afraid to get... I didn' ; t want to lose my job and I don' ; t think you... you said many teachers well yeah, there were quite a few teachers who refused to participate overtly, but we were support for those folks who... for example, John Porter could not lose his job. HUNTLEY: Right. STOLLENWERCK: Luke Bill at Sixteenth could not lose his job. The many leaders could not lose their jobs but we could. HUNTLEY: Never the less you attended meetings. STOLLENWERCK: Yes, Yes. HUNTLEY: There were some that would not attend meetings. That didn' ; t want to be seen there because they were afraid, but you were one of those that did attend. STOLLENWERCK: There were... I don' ; t know if we had many Lucinda B. Rollings. She put her all on the line and they didn' ; t bother her. She was at every meeting, but there were those of us who would send our money to support the effort, but I went. HUNTLEY: Why, why did you decide to go? You know if.... STOLLENWERCK: I wanted to see what was going on and I wanted to be a part of it so that.... HUNTLEY: But you still could have lost your job just by being there. STOLLENWERCK: Well, I guess I was naive I didn' ; t think that they would do that to me. Simply because I was there. Yes I did go. HUNTLEY: But you also demonstrated. STOLLENWERCK: Yes, yes definitely, right there in the crowd. I would get with fellows like John Drew. Do you know John Drew? HUNTLEY: Sure. STOLLENWERCK: I would make it to fellows like him and hang on to them and wherever they went that' ; s where I would go. I was never out front to the extent that I would confront those dogs or the fire hoses. HUNTLEY: Were you ever arrested? STOLLENWERCK: No. Somehow I avoided it, I guess I wasn' ; t in that place to get arrested. HUNTLEY: You weren' ; t in the right place at the right time. STOLLENWERCK: Yeah, yeah. HUNTLEY: Or the wrong place at the right time. STOLLENWERCK: Whatever. HUNTLEY: Yes. 1960 of course ; the year that students started to get involved. I mean Miles College students, college students all over the southeast. Sit ins in ' ; 61 the freedom rides, ' ; 62 selective buying campaign, ' ; 63 of course is when it all culminates with the demonstrations here and with the children from the city schools. You were still teaching in one of the city schools and you knew that children were being attracted. How did that play with you and what was your stance on the issue of using the children in the movement at that particular juncture? STOLLENWERCK: At the very beginning I thought that it was using the children as pawns. I came to realize that in numbers there is strength. I never shall forget there was a women in Collegeville who was up around the hood and she had 8 or 9 children, all of them went to Carver High School. One morning after the mass meeting A. D. King, Martin' ; s brother, came to Carver High School, and at that time we had chain linked fences around the building, but the gates were not locked. I don' ; t know how they came to that decision but, the students were in the halls talking about lets go, lets go. I wanted to know what was going on so I went up around the office and the principal stepped out of his office and he said: I' ; ll not try to stop you, if you' ; re going go ahead, if you' ; re not going let' ; s go in the classes and have school. He turned around and went back in. HUNTLEY: Who was the principal at the time? STOLLENWERCK: Dr. Goodsen. Do you know him? HUNTLEY: No, I do not. STOLLENWERCK: Not a finer man in the town, but anyway, that' ; s but one Black man' ; s opinion. A. D. King was seen, something had happened that precluded him coming on the grounds. I think the law said he couldn' ; t come on the grounds or he couldn' ; t come on the grounds of the school. HUNTLEY: So, he stood out... STOLLENWERCK: Across the street, he stood there and raised his arms and said: Ya' ; ll come. And they all followed out there. Of course, you understand, the authorities placed the kids out at Rickwood field. They didn' ; t have any space and they put them out there. Then there was something about taking some of their credits or something after they were identified. I don' ; t think anything came of that. I think the movement went to court and got that set aside. But I came to realize as I said before, if you want some strength you gotta get some numbers. I think that... that was, well I started to say the greatest turning point, but then it played a tremendous role in the turning point. HUNTLEY: Some suggest that that was the turning point in it. If it hadn' ; t been for the children the movement probably would have lost just as it did in some cities. It did in Albany, I believe. STOLLENWERCK: But you know, let me share this peculiar experience with you. When those students left the grounds of Carver High School they left three in the school. HUNTLEY: Three? STOLLENWERCK: Three. HUNTLEY: Everybody left, except those three. STOLLENWERCK: Everybody left, I don' ; t know how many were on the staff at that time but they were all there naturally, but we had three students. And these were a preacher' ; s children. HUNTLEY: They were siblings. STOLLENWERCK: Yeah. He dared them to leave and they stayed there that whole week. Of course the teachers were there, they didn' ; t have anybody to teach. But those three students stayed there the whole week while the rest of the folks were in the demonstration. HUNTLEY: That' ; s interesting. That' ; s the first time I' ; ve heard that. STOLLENWERCK: Off camera I' ; ll tell you a name. (Laughing) HUNTLEY: You were a member of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. STOLLENWERCK: Bred, born, reared, whatever, yeah. HUNTLEY: And of course in ' ; 63 in September was when the Sixteenth Street bombing took place. You had children that were attending church as well. Were you all in attendance at church that morning? STOLLENWERCK: Well, that' ; s kinda tricky. Let me share with you. Those girls who died, Luke Bill, who was the Pastor was sick and he asked me to perform the right of baptism. That particular Sunday morning I don' ; t know why but I dropped 3 children off for Sunday school and I went to and went around to Smith and Gaston Funeral Home, it' ; s where it is now. I don' ; t know why I went there, but I heard this blast and I was standing in the back door of the funeral home and I looked over to Sixteenth Street and there was a gray plume of smoke and I took off and ran across the lot. When I got there I could see on the side of the building it had been blown out, by this time I believe James Layton, was a reserve officer of some kind, he was there trying to, cause traffic had begun to back up and he had his megaphone trying to get the folks, cause the police hadn' ; t arrived yet. At the front entrance of the church, that downstairs entrance, folk were beginning to come out and I said, " ; has anybody seen Marsha?" ; that was my daughter, " ; anybody seen my children?" ; They were first or second to come out of the building. The boy had a stream of blood running out of his scalp, down his face. By this time Willie Buey, who was an ambulance driver with the Gaston, had come and they were starting to get the folks that were injured transported. Since my son had an injury and we didn' ; t know where it was I told my two girls to go to Smith and Gaston Funeral Home and your mom' ; s gonna come get you. Then they wanted somebody to go to the hospital. Buey said: come on Rev. your son' ; s going and I got in the ambulance with them and went to the emergency room. Then the folks from the church began to rush in. HUNTLEY: Did you go to Hillman? STOLLENWERCK: No. HUNTLEY: What hospital did you go to? STOLLENWERCK: What is that thing there? HUNTLEY: UAB Hospital? STOLLENWERCK: Yeah, right there on what is that 6th Avenue? HUNTLEY: 8th Avenue, yeah, actually 6th Avenue and 20th Street. STOLLENWERCK: Well, wherever the emergency room was at that time. HUNTLEY: Oh yeah, ok. STOLLENWERCK: It was at the UAB complex. It was not the Hillman Hospital because I think it' ; s up on 7th Avenue on 20th Street and 7th Avenue. That one red building over there. HUNTLEY: Right. STOLLENWERCK: But somebody said to me, ' ; cause they had roped it off, the emergency room said we need somebody who can give out information ' ; cause these folks will be coming looking for persons who may have been injured or whatever. Somebody said here' ; s Rev. Stollenwerck, maybe he' ; ll do it. Then they put me inside of that rope and I stood there. Sad thing about it was I recognized the children when they brought their bodies in. I didn' ; t see the bodies I saw their clothing and I saw one of my friend' ; s daughter' ; s shoes and I knew who that was. When the family came to me they knew me well enough, " ; Milton, Milton have you seen so and so?" ; I said... I lied ' ; cause I couldn' ; t find it in my heart to tell them that their girl was one of those bodies that they had brought in. Now this is the second time I' ; ll mention that. I told Lola and now I' ; m telling you, I never told them. HUNTLEY: Is that right? To this day? STOLLENWERCK: To this day. HUNTLEY: That must have been a heart wrenching situation. You seeing them and knowing but not being able to divulge that kind of information. STOLLENWERCK: Not at that point, they couldn' ; t handle it. In fact they had not been officially declared dead anyway. HUNTLEY: How did your children react? STOLLENWERCK: I don' ; t really recall, I really don' ; t. I have a daughter who' ; s rather rambunctious in her nature she probably... HUNTLEY: She was there at the church? STOLLENWERCK: Yeah, she was one of my children who came out of the basement. HUNTLEY: I know there were some trying times and all of the people I' ; ve talked with have talked about that incident. Most of them... you think about that and you wonder what goes through peoples minds. Like you said you ran from the funeral home down to the church around to the church immediately seeking to find where your children are and you found that they were basically safe. Your instinct then was to help other people at that point. STOLLENWERCK: Yeah, yeah. That' ; s what it was all about. I would have stayed, I would have remained on the scene except that I was one of the first persons on the scene. There was nobody else willing to take the time. I suppose most of the folks were running around trying to see what had happened, you know. But, since I got the first load in the ambulance and went on to the hospital I didn' ; t get back to... HUNTLEY: You didn' ; t get to see when the people came and they were really upset. All the masses of people and then the police. In fact you were gone before the police got there I assume. STOLLENWERCK: Yeah. HUNTLEY: And the firemen. STOLLENWERCK: Yeah. I' ; m trying to recall because I spoke at one point to UPI and I recall the person on the phone, but I' ; m trying to remember, but I' ; m losing some continuity here. I' ; m trying to remember exactly when it was that I spoke to the folks, but I recall talking to the person on the phone. She wanted to know what' ; s going on, what are the police doing. And my response was they are marching up and down the street in Gestapo type fashion with their guns drawn and this kind of thing. There was the chairman of the board of deacons. In fact he had called me to the phone cause the pastor John Cross was not there. And Charles Brown said Reverend don' ; t be so hard on them. Well, you told me to tell them what was going on from there. So, I don' ; t know at which interval I got a chance to speak to them maybe it was before I went to the hospital. HUNTLEY: Well, if the police were out front maybe it had been a little bit later cause the police were not there when you left. Probably in mass it would have been somewhat later anyway. STOLLENWERCK: Well, that had been a long time. HUNTLEY: Absolutely. And then if you... Many times I find if you... over a period of time things seem to move into that particular day that was not there and other things move out. So its understandable, very much so. What was Birmingham like after that? STOLLENWERCK: Very tense. After the bombing, very tense. Everybody was watching everybody else. Even those, those other folk who claim that they were friends of these folk. HUNTLEY: What folk are you referring to? STOLLENWERCK: I' ; m talking about the religious units between the Black and White communities. Just a little bit of a community was able to come together and try to stabilize the situation, but it was my opinion that there was mass destruction among those folk who had claimed to trust and respect each other. HUNTLEY: What was it like being a member of that church? And going back to the church? STOLLENWERCK: Well, as you must understand by now, several families left because of the church' ; s involvement. There were those... you see Sixteenth Street has always been noted as a class church, not a mass church, and many of those folk didn' ; t want to be involved with the struggle anyway. I suspect mainly because they were refusing to be of the upper crust. You know and they didn' ; t have any reason to create any problems of deceit or whatever, cause they were living on the mountain so to speak. HUNTLEY: So, as a result of the church being so active, many of those people, I mean some of those people left the congregation. STOLLENWERCK: Yes, they did. Of course, those families who lost family members in the bombing situation, were the main folk who took leave of the Sixteenth Street Church. Now there were others, but for the most part they were the people who lost family. HUNTLEY: There were those who would not attend Sixteenth Street because they feared that it would happen again. STOLLENWERCK: Yeah. HUNTLEY: Did the membership then start to diminish as a result? I know over time there had been difficulty in the church with membership. Was that one of the reasons? STOLLENWERCK: I' ; m not so sure. Sixteenth Street never had, no, that' ; s not true. I started to say they never had an overflowing attendance but, they had, it seemed to me that they had started to decline, even before the bombing. I suspect some of that was because of the involvement of the church in the movement. HUNTLEY: Your pastor was involved? STOLLENWERCK: Yeah, originally. The pastor was rather passive, but when he died and they called another pastor, he saw no problems in being involved. HUNTLEY: What pastor was that? STOLLENWERCK: Which one? HUNTLEY: The one that came here that didn' ; t have a problem? STOLLENWERCK: That was John Cross. The bombing took place under his administration. I remember one Sunday, and I don' ; t know many folk who remember this, but one Sunday the pastor spoke ; Luke Bill, I' ; ll tell you who he was, he spoke and said something to the Sixteenth Street membership. He said, " ; you' ; re little more than a social club" ; . That was in his 11:00 message. He said it may not happen in my life time but you' ; re headed in a direction that you' ; ll find yourself nothing but a museum. This had to be in the early 50s. HUNTLEY: Oh, that early. STOLLENWERCK: Yes. HUNTLEY: Why was he making that statement at that point? STOLLENWERCK: Well, apparently the membership was declining. HUNTLEY: Oh, I see. STOLLENWERCK: That' ; s all I can see. HUNTLEY: He was predicting the future based upon what was taking place at that point. STOLLENWERCK: Yeah, but now, how far wrong was he? HUNTLEY: Well, some say in the past ten years anyway they have seen the membership start to increase again. STOLLENWERCK: Now, you' ; ve got to understand. I don' ; t know if it' ; s increasing or not. HUNTLEY: Are you still a member there? STOLLENWERCK: No. I was there 50 years but circumstances developed and I thought it best to leave. I have a social studies major and I tribute my ability to recall certain things because of that social studies background. I don' ; t know if that has anything to do with it, I just dropped that in for whatever it may be worth. HUNTLEY: Well, that could very well be. It means that you are trained in that manner. We' ; ve covered a lot of territory and we' ; ve talked a lot about a lot of subjects. When we initially started we talked about schools and the way school systems were in the period of segregation verses where we are today. From your perspective, what has been the difference? What has made for the change in the ways in which we are educated now verses when we were under the throws of segregation? STOLLENWERCK: I don' ; t know who it was who articulated that too much freedom is just as dangerous as not having any at all. Early on this kid was sitting in my classroom and she was doing nothing just sitting there, and I asked her, " ; baby what are you going to do for your grade?" ; and she giggled and dropped her head. I said I asked you a question, what are you going to do about your grade? She said, " ; what you mean?" ; Well, you aren' ; t doing anything. She says, " ; you can' ; t make me do anything, I' ; m free." ; My response to her was, " ; well, free to do what ; to be dumb?" ; In my day I never would have said anything like that to not only the teachers, but the neighbors. So, I' ; m thinking that it' ; s... we have too much freedom, we can' ; t make folks be responsible. They were talking about child brutality. My remark was that if they charged my grandmother with brutality she would be in jail now. But, it didn' ; t hurt me. HUNTLEY: You think that' ; s a result of the movement? The gaining of the freedom. STOLLENWERCK: It is a result of misguided folk and that may be the same thing you said, but students just don' ; t do. I think it begins at home, because I further believe that kids now are rearing themselves. HUNTLEY: When does that change? STOLLENWERCK: It changed in the time frame of a demonstration. The courts rendering these kinds of decisions. I told somebody just the other day I said the leaders in this society have us locked in. They know what they are going to allow us to do for the next 200 years and we' ; re sitting on our laurels and just forgetting about the forces that threaten us. HUNTLEY: Some say that we were better off before integration and after integration we seemed to start to lose what we had actually gained. What is your opinion of that? STOLLENWERCK: I agree to some great extent. For example, I don' ; t think we had as many students coming out of even high school who could not read as we have now. HUNTLEY: The question is though, why? Why now? STOLLENWERCK: Well, we had the home, what is this thing it takes a whole village to raise a child. We' ; ve forgotten that. When I came home, even if the neighbor lied on me I was chastised for it. Consequently, if she chastised me I would always hope that she wouldn' ; t tell my grandmother because I got chastised again. And they' ; ll tell you quick, I don' ; t believe in chastising, I don' ; t believe in telling mine no or don' ; t. There' ; s something wrong there. HUNTLEY: So, the family and the community we had during those days were somehow disappeared and that has created havoc. STOLLENWERCK: Well, if you really look at the thing, you don' ; t have any families anymore. You don' ; t have any communities anymore. Yeah, you have a bunch of houses and the folk going in and going to bed. There' ; s been a breakdown. For example, when... I hate to keep doing this but it' ; s the only way I know how to do it. When it was time to eat breakfast everybody knew what time that was and everybody was at that table. When it' ; s time to eat supper or dinner, whatever you call it, everybody knew what time that was and they were at that table. Moreover they said grace, or they said a bible verse after the old man had said grace. You don' ; t have any of that now. Some folk have the audacity to say it' ; s old fashion but that' ; s where the breakdown started. When the parents lost control of these homes. Yeah, the homes, not houses. (Laughing). That' ; s where the breakdown started. And strangely enough what transpires in the former generation is passed on to the later and that' ; s why folks are talking about our losing generations because these later generations don' ; t have anything to build on. HUNTLEY: So, now we' ; re wondering what the next generation is going to be like. STOLLENWERCK: Right, there' ; s no telling. HUNTLEY: Reverend Stollenwerck you' ; ve been great. I appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to come and sit and talk with me. Maybe after I view this and look at the transcript maybe you' ; d like to do something in addition to this. So, I appreciate your time and if there is anything else that you' ; d like to leave with us feel free to, if not we' ; ll save it till next time and we' ; ll do it again. STOLLENWERCK: Save it till the next time. (Laughing). HUNTLEY: Thank you so much. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
bcri.org. 0 http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=MStollenwerck1997.xml MStollenwerck1997.xml
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Rev. Milton Stollenwerck
Description
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Rev. Milton Stollenwerck discusses being involved with the Alabama Christian Movement as a teacher in Birmingham. He was a member of 16th Street Baptist Church when it was bombed in 1963.
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19970604S
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
Alabama A & M University
Literacy tests (Election law)
Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Ala.)
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1997-06-04
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video
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59bfa5291a64c779a4530e3effbd1f3a
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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Interviews collected as part of the general mission of the Oral History Project
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Video
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Oral History
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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English
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bcriohp
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Binnie Myles
Interviewee
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Ruby Odom Cotton
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http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=ROCotton1996.xml
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Lunch Counter Protest
Children's Crusade
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5.4 May 15, 1996 Ruby Odom Cotton Interviewed on May 15, 1996 19960515C 1:04:32 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Madeline Jenkins Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Ala.) Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 Lunch Counter Protest Children's Crusade Ruby Odom Cotton Binnie Myles Video 1:|27(6)|52(5)|71(14)|105(4)|121(13)|137(10)|152(10)|171(10)|187(3)|201(8)|215(1)|228(8)|241(13)|266(16)|279(13)|295(1)|308(14)|333(8)|346(3)|364(6)|375(11)|390(10)|404(1)|430(9)|441(1)|460(2)|475(1)|491(13)|505(12)|520(10)|534(8)|546(11)|568(5)|581(5)|593(3)|611(11)|627(6)|642(13)|659(10)|675(2)|687(8)|700(6)|718(14)|731(14)|747(8)|759(11)|777(2)|791(5)|803(3)|827(5)|850(12)|863(11)|880(15)|896(4)|913(17)|928(11)|940(8)|953(6)|965(15)|980(11)|994(4)|1006(11)|1019(7)|1032(14) 0 https://youtu.be/57YupelrUpk YouTube video English 0 Introduction of Interview This is an interview with Ruby Odom Cotton for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's Oral History Project by Binnie Myles, at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute on May 15, 1996 at 1:00 p.m. Beginning of interview. 33.516200, -86.813870 17 The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute https://www.bcri.org/ The homepage of the BCRI 17 Biographical Background and Farm Life We want to talk a little bit about your background. Are you from Birmingham or from Alabama? Cotton describes her childhood in Alabama on her family's farm. African American families ; African American farmers ; Cotton picking ; Rural Alabama African American youth ; Agriculture--Southern States 326 Segregation in Dallas County What do you recall about community and people? Was it an all Black community? Did you interface and interact with other cultures or White people when you were down where you lived? Cotton discusses everyday life on her family's farm in rural Alabama. African Americans--Southern States ; Selma (Ala.) ; Southern States--Rural conditions African Americans--Segregation ; Agriculture--Southern States 805 Life in Birmingham vs. Life in Dallas County So then your family came to Birmingham-- where did you live? Cotton talked about where she lived in Birmingham and how she was a bit sheltered from the realities of segregation as a child. Carver High School ; Evergreen Baptist ; Evergreen Bottom ; Lewis Elementary School African Americans--Segregation ; Birmingham 1161 Experiencing Struggle: Older Generation vs. Younger Generation We want to talk about high school a bit and some of the things that you got involved with. Your family was religious, you went to church like you said, Sunday School was a given and going to church. That was the way it was and that you learned so much from that, how to cope with things. Cotton discusses the importance of a child attending church when they are growing up and how it helped her cope with things. Church ; Non-Violent ; Sunday School African Americans--Segregation ; Religion 1366 Being Inspired by Mother's Experiences As a student in high school, when you look back, what did you think or what did you say to your mom and dad when maybe some of the work that they did -- did your mom work outside of the home, by the way? Cotton discusses how seeing her mom clean houses everyday motivated her to get an education so she didn't have to perform such menial tasks for a white person. " ; Over-the-Mountain" ; ; Cleaning houses ; Special bus African Americans--Segregation ; Service for Whites 1779 Participation in the Civil Rights Movement in High School So you are a high school student and you attended the meetings because your parents attended. Now, let's talk about when you were a high school student at Carver. You were arrested on two occasions, what happened? Cotton recalls how she was arrested for protesting in front of Newberry's and how she walked off school grounds and was arrested. 16th Street ; Carver High School ; Lunch Counter Protest ; Newberry's Civil rights movement 1970 Leading a Class Walkout to the Children's Crusade And, of course, after she left, and, then of course, everybody was still a little hesitant because with me, I think they kind of looked up to me since I had already gone before, like I was the one who knew what to do. Cotton tells how she took on a leadership role and led her classmates in a walkout during the Children's Crusade. 16th Street ; Children's Crusade ; Class Walkout Civil rights movement 2113 Working and Experiencing Colorism Back then people paid attention to color and skin complexion. Do you think that you got a good job as a 'salad girl' because of your complexion? Cotton discusses how she experienced colorism in the workplace and the resentment she felt from other Blacks towards her. Eastwood ; Resentment ; Treatment by Whites African Americans--Segregation ; Colorism 2225 Brother's Involvement in the Movement What about your brother, was he involved in the Movement? Cotton tells about her brother's involvement in the Movement. Claude Odom ; School Walkout Children's Crusade ; Civil rights movement 2289 Two Arrests and Jail Time How long were you in jail? I was in there five long days. How was it, were you scared? Cotton recalls her experiences in jail and how she was stuck in there for five days. Juvenile Court ; Violation of Females in Jail Arrest--United States ; Fair Park 2564 Visit to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute When you look back and talking with your youngsters, and I don't know if you've had an opportunity to visit the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute or not, have you had an opportunity to? Cotton recalls the first time she visited the Institute and how overcome with memories and emotions she was. Birmingham Police Department ; Black History Month Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, Ala.) 2762 Thoughts on the Civil Rights Movement What do you think about the Movement? The Movement then and you growing up and knowing about it and being involved, and " ; The Movement" ; today? Cotton tells her thoughts on the Movement and recalls the moment she was on stage with Dr. King while he was preaching. 16th Street ; Chicago ; Spiegel Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement ; Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Ala.) 2944 Educational Journey After High School Let's back up a little bit and, then we're going to go back forward. You went to Booker T. Washington Business College? Cotton recalls the places she went to college ad how she got involved in banking. Banking ; Booker T. Washington ; Gastons ; Jefferson State ; Lawson State Education 3012 Discrimination in the Workplace It's been okay. I've been in banking now for 20 years. And, at first it was a slow start for me because they didn't particularly promote women, Black women in banking and that was one of the reasons I left the first bank. Cotton discusses discrimination in the workplace and how several of her white coworkers treated her poorly. Alabama Federal ; Banking ; Central Bank Race discrimination 3428 Need for the Movement in Late 1990s ; Visiting Dr. Shuttlesworth's Church in Cincinnati What about the Movement today, do you think there's a need? I mean, some people say " ; We don't need SCLC, we don't need the NAACP, we have arrived." ; Cotton discusses how there is still a need for the Movement in the late 1990's and her visit to Dr. Shuttlesworth's church in Cincinnati. Cincinnati ; Ku Klux Klan ; NAACP ; SCLC Civil rights movement ; Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011 3658 Preserving Personal Memories of the Movement Two things before we close. During your time of incarceration and being in the Movement as a teenager, were there any mementos, if you will, or anything that you kept or had that you still have? Cotton recalls two items that she had with her in jail but has lost over the years as well as her gratefulness for her experiences during the Movement. Incarceration ; Mementos Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement 3862 Conclusion of Interview And, I've enjoyed the opportunity here for sharing this and it's nice meeting you. Interview is ended. Oral History Ruby Odom Cotton discusses her leadership as young lady in the Movement, including the Children's Crusade and two arrests. She went on to become a banker in Birmingham and continues to spread her experience of the Movement. MYLES: This is an interview with Ruby Odom Cotton for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute' ; s Oral History Project by Binnie Myles, at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute on May 15, 1996 at 1:00 p.m. How are you Mrs. Cotton? COTTON: I' ; m doing fine, how are you? MYLES: I' ; m good. I' ; m good. We want to talk a little bit about your background. Are you from Birmingham or from Alabama? COTTON: I am from Alabama. I was born in Vredenburgh, Alabama. MYLES: In where? COTTON: In Vredenburgh, in a town below Selma, Alabama. I moved to Birmingham when I was six years old. MYLES: Do you remember anything about Vredenburgh. COTTON: Right. It' ; s spelled V-R-E-D-E-N-B-U-R-G-H. MYLES: Where did they get that name? Do you know? COTTON: Good question. No, I don' ; t know. But there was a family whose last name was Vredenburgh and they named the town after them, but I don' ; t know where it originated from. MYLES: They probably were rich people, that' ; s why they named it after them. Do you remember anything about that town? COTTON: Sure, because even after we moved to Birmingham, my grandparents were still in that area and we would go every summer to visit. It was a very small town, a farming town. MYLES: Were your parents farmers? COTTON: Yes, they were. MYLES: So, did you have different types of animals? COTTON: Right. We mostly had chickens, cows and horses. They grew their own vegetables. And, when we moved to Birmingham my grandparents still had a lot of land so we would go during the summer and help them with the fields and in the garden, help them pick cotton and that kind of thing. MYLES: You' ; ve picked cotton? COTTON: I picked cotton, yes. MYLES: Did you like it? COTTON: It was fun because the cotton you picked they would weigh it and you would get so much money for the amount that you picked. Of course, my problem came in when they stopped at the little store on the way back home. I would go in and spend everything that I earned. So, it wasn' ; t very profitable for me because I was so young. But, for my family, it was. And, I enjoyed it. MYLES: Do you have brothers and sisters? COTTON: Yes. I have four brothers. My sister died in ' ; 66. I have two brothers that' ; s living here and the other is in Chicago. MYLES: When you were little and you talked about the cotton and you had chickens and cows, did your chickens lay eggs? COTTON: Sure. MYLES: Did you go out there and get the eggs? COTTON: That was one of the chores that was for me every morning. I had to go out and feed the chickens in the chicken coop and collect the eggs and bring them in the house. We had to do that before we went to school. MYLES: You must have gotten up real early? COTTON: Oh, yes, very early. MYLES: What time did you get up? COTTON: 4:00 o' ; clock, 5:00 o' ; clock, something like that in the mornings. Not only was that my chore, but we had other things to do before we left for school. There were so many chores you did in the morning and so many you did in the afternoon. MYLES: And you were just a little girl? COTTON: Exactly. They start you at an early age. MYLES: Did you milk cows, too? COTTON: Well, I didn' ; t do that, but I watched my parents and my brothers when they milked the cows. MYLES: Did you drink the milk? COTTON: Sure, we drank the milk and we churned and made butter. It' ; s really nice to have the homemade butter. It' ; s so much different than what you buy in the store now. MYLES: How was the taste different? COTTON: It' ; s not as much sweetness in it. It' ; s more of a pure taste. MYLES: What about the milk? COTTON: The milk, then we had milk that came from the cows and also milk that came from the goat. I didn' ; t particularly like the goat milk, but I did drink the milk from the cows because you had the regular, what we called sweet milk, and, then you had buttermilk. MYLES: How did you make the buttermilk? COTTON: Now, that I can hardly remember. I remember them putting it in a churn when they got ready to make the butter and I think the longer you churn it with your hand, up and down, the longer you go, at the end is when you get the butter. I think middle ways through the process they might stop it and that would make it thick and you would have buttermilk from it. MYLES: Well, what about the goat milk? How did that taste? COTTON: To me, I never did really like the goat milk. Maybe because to me there was a little odor from the goats. So, you automatically assume that the milk is going to be that way. So, I kind of shied away from it, but it is my understanding that it is very tasty. MYLES: And you remember that and you' ; re still such a young lady. COTTON: Well, not too young. I' ; ll celebrate a birthday tomorrow. I' ; ll be 48 years old. But, yes, I guess because we kept going down during the summer, even as a teenager so a lot of that I remember as a child I continued to do as a teenager. MYLES: What do you recall about community and people? Was it an all-Black community? Did you interface and interact with other cultures or White people when you were down where you lived? COTTON: No. Basically the area that we lived in was an all-Black area. You had a Black area ; you had a White area. The houses were quite a distance apart, so it wasn' ; t like you had an immediate neighbor. You didn' ; t have any phones or anything like that, so when you needed to contact somebody you would either blow the horn on the car, if you had a car, or if someone was passing by on a wagon, you would tell them and the next house they would get to and they would tell them. It kind of traveled that way. Or, sometimes in the afternoon, if you needed something you would holler to the next house and that house would holler to the next house. Eventually you would get the person you needed and that' ; s how they contacted each other. Usually, if it was an emergency or something, if you needed a doctor -- we didn' ; t have doctors that we could go to. MYLES: " ; We" ; meaning Black people? COTTON: Black people. So, you had a lot of home remedies that our grandparents gave. Now, my grandmother was a midwife, so she had a lot of knowledge on medical things that when we got the little ailments then a lot of things that she knew she would pass on to us to help us out. But, the closest hospital was in Selma, Alabama and it was quite a distance. So, you didn' ; t go to a hospital unless it was a life and death situation. MYLES: You mentioned the wagons going by. Were these wagons with horses? COTTON: Right. That' ; s how we got back and forth to the churches. And, for those families who didn' ; t have a wagon, what you would do is you would get dressed in the mornings and you would head out for church and the church was miles away. But, as you walked, someone would come along with a wagon and they would let you ride in the wagon and take you on to church. MYLES: You talked about talking to people next door, that you just hollered out just like, " ; Hey, Miss Mary." ; What did you do? COTTON: Right. The houses were so far apart, you just had to holler as loud as you possibly could and mostly you would use somebody who had a heavy voice, like my brothers or my father or something like that, if they were available. And, then they would keep hollering until eventually when they think that person hears them, they would holler back and, then once they knew that they had that person' ; s attention, then they would tell them what they want. Because sometimes if you holler, the person might be in the house and they don' ; t hear you. So, you keep calling the name like, " ; Mary, Mary." ; And, eventually Mary will answer. Then you would tell her what you want. Of course, if you didn' ; t want Mary, if you wanted the person who lived down the road from Mary, then Mary would keep hollering to them until they get the message and that' ; s how you sent your messages back and forth. And, then a lot of times, sometimes you see in the African movies you see where they played the drums and made sounds. Well, they had these old tin tubs and sometimes if you hollered and couldn' ; t get anyone' ; s attention, you beat on the tub. And, then that would get their attention. If they hear you, then they would beat back and, then you holler and tell them what you want. But, I know it sounds kind of wild now, but back then if you didn' ; t have telephones, if you didn' ; t have cars to drive over to that person' ; s house, and it' ; s not like the neighborhoods today where you have neighbors immediately in the next block or something like that. It was miles before you would see a house. And, sometimes in the summer, with the trees out, you couldn' ; t even see the house. In the wintertime, when the trees were not in bloom, you could sometimes see the top of the house and, then the voice would carry a little better. MYLES: So that was a way of life for you and your family, but there was a sense of community? COTTON: Back then I think that as far as caring, people were closer to each other. They cared more for each other. If you were in need or needed something, people were willing to come to your aid. They do that now, but I think it was more sincere back then. If you got burned out, for instance, everyone would just band together. Before you know it they have built your house back. They' ; ve helped you replace all your belongings. If someone got ill, all the neighbors was there to help you to care for that person. And, the children, my parents didn' ; t have to worry about us getting in trouble or anything because everybody looked out for each other. Even after we came to Birmingham, your neighbors looked out for you. My parents worked. They didn' ; t have to worry about a babysitter for us, because our neighbors were babysitters. MYLES: We' ; re going to talk about Birmingham a little bit in just a moment. Let me ask you this, when you lived there in Dallas County, did you ever see any White people and, if so, what kind of interaction did your family have with them that you can remember? COTTON: The only time that I really saw the White people was when you go to what you call the commissary. The commissary was the store there that you would go and get your goods that you needed. In the commissary it had everything, some groceries and feed and everything that you would need. So you would go to that part of the little town and you would see a few White people there, but you really didn' ; t see that many, because like policemen, you only had maybe one person who controlled the whole area and you had some plants there where the foremen were White, but with me being so small I never did really have to come in contact with them. I' ; ve heard stories that my father told about working in the mill and how he was treated by the Whites. MYLES: What are some of the things that you recall your dad saying? COTTON: Well, it' ; s kind of like the way it is now with the Blacks. They got all the hard work and they were paid less. The breaks and stuff they should have gotten, they couldn' ; t get. The hours was unreal. If something happened in the mill and their production wasn' ; t up to par, they would make the Blacks stay and do whatever the quota was for the day. But, then they would let the White people go home. Things like that. And sometime the hours. Although he would work these long hours, the pay didn' ; t justify it. It wasn' ; t like he was getting paid so much per hour. They gave you so much per day. But, in that day it might run anywhere from 8 hours to 15 hours and you get the same amount of money. And, that sometimes back then there weren' ; t anything like promotions -- if you do a good job you could move up. It wasn' ; t anything like that. And, as far as eating, they had their little area that they had to eat in and White people had their little area. The Whites had nice bathrooms and they, of course, had little out houses that they had to go through. And, most of the area then all they used was out houses anyway, but for some reason, the Whites had gotten bathroom facilities to bring in for them. So, little things like that. It was many years later before all that changed. Of course, when it did change, we had already moved away. MYLES: So, even then for you as a child remembering back, and by this time it was close to 1948, I mean that' ; s when you lived there and you moved to Birmingham. But, your parents experienced discrimination, that is your father, even then. COTTON: Oh yes. MYLES: So, then your family came to Birmingham -- where did you live? COTTON: In Birmingham we moved on the north side on 22nd Avenue North. It was known as Evergreen Bottom. MYLES: Do you know why it was called " ; Evergreen Bottom?" ; Was it always green over there or something? COTTON: Well, no there was a church. The church there, when they brought it to that side of town, they named it Evergreen Baptist Church. And, because of that they named the neighborhood Evergreen. But, as kids we called it " ; The Bottom." ; MYLES: Do you know why the kids called it " ; The Bottom?" ; COTTON: I think kind of because the way it' ; s set. It was kind of like part of Evergreen was a little slope, a little hill that went down, and because of that we started calling it the bottom. MYLES: What was that neighborhood like for you? What do you remember? How different was it from where you came from Dallas County? COTTON: Well, for one thing, I was amazed because in Dallas County with the houses being so far apart and, then coming to Birmingham where everything was so close together, all the houses and apartments, and, that even the people, the Black people were close, not like Dallas County, but they were caring people. The block up from me were White people. White people lived in that area and it' ; s kind of interesting that we played with the White children that were in the next block. And, it wasn' ; t until I got much older that I really realized about racism, because we went to an all Black school. We walked to school. We didn' ; t have to worry about a bus. I went to Lewis Elementary School, so we walked there. There were no Whites. And, of course, when I started high school, I went to Carver High School and it was all Black, so it wasn' ; t until then that I realized what the problem was because my parents kind of kept me isolated. I didn' ; t go to town and see all that was going on. MYLES: So, when you were smaller and you played with your friends that were White in the neighborhood, did you ever wonder why they didn' ; t go to your school? Or do you ever remember your parents saying anything? COTTON: At the time, no we didn' ; t. We knew that we were zoned. You went to the school that you were zoned in. And, in our minds the ones that lived in the next block was in a different zone than we were -- the reason they didn' ; t go to our school. Of course, I realize that wasn' ; t true, but at the time, that' ; s what you thought. You didn' ; t think anything about it. MYLES: What about police when you moved to Evergreen Bottom and other White people, did anything ever happen or were there any police or the Klan or anything like that ever in your neighborhood? COTTON: No, not that I can remember. I just know that sometimes when the cars would drive through that sometime the White police officers would say something harsh or smart to us if we were playing in the street. Back then that was the only area we had to play. We didn' ; t have parks or anything, especially during Christmas time. We would get in the street and skate and stuff like that. Every now and then one would come by and maybe call us names or something of that nature. But, I never experienced seeing them beat up anyone, not in the neighborhood. MYLES: You said sometimes they would come by in the car. What were some of the things they would say to you kids? COTTON: Well, you know they would always use the ' ; n' ; word, as you put it. " ; Get out of the street." ; MYLES: They would say, " ; Get out of the street, Nigger" ; or something like that? COTTON: Right. Right. Back then you were Nigger anyway. If they just pass by and you' ; re not doing anything, if you' ; re just standing on a corner, just talking with your friends, they might come by and just say, " ; Nigger, what are you doing? or " ; Nigger, get off the street." ; Or something of that nature. We would leave and go in the house until we think they' ; re gone and, then we would go back out. MYLES: I imagine there were boys and girls playing together? COTTON: Right. MYLES: Did your parents ever say anything to any of you like, " ; Don' ; t sass them. Don' ; t say anything back" ; ? Do you ever recall saying anything to your parents, " ; Why do they call us this? Why do they do that, we didn' ; t do anything?" ; COTTON: Well, yes. Our parents always cautioned us to not say anything back because they realized that would only intimidate them and make them do maybe some harm to us. They always taught us to just walk away. But, yes, as I grew older then they began to sit down and tell me about how things were. If not my parents, my older brothers. We were always taught to not to provoke anything, even if something happened to you. If someone hit you, you turn around and walk away. So, we knew at an early age if they said something ugly that we didn' ; t like, you don' ; t say anything back. You just accepted that and went on your way. And, of course it wasn' ; t a good feeling, but, then you realized they' ; re the ones who had the guns and they' ; re the ones who had the power, and if you tried to provoke them, then you knew what would happen. That, in the end you would be the one who was getting hurt. And, then, at an early age I realized there was a better way to accomplish something than fighting or being ugly. My family was very religious. MYLES: Where did you go to church? COTTON: We went to Evergreen Baptist. I was raised in that church, so it was a given, you always got up and went to Sunday School and church every Sunday. And, in church there was a lot of training for us that kind of help us cope with the pressures of everyday life. MYLES: We want to talk about high school a bit and some of the things that you got involved with. Your family was religious, you went to church like you said, Sunday School was a given and going to church. That was the way it was and that you learned so much from that, how to cope with things. When you look then as a teenager, and you look at now, what do you see as some of the concerns relative to teens? Do you think they' ; re not in the church enough, or families are not together enough? COTTON: I think that today the parents let the child make a choice on whether or not they want to attend church. When I was growing up, we didn' ; t have a choice, you go and that' ; s it. And, I think now, as parents, we don' ; t insist that our children attend church every Sunday. It' ; s kind of like you get them up on Sunday morning, " ; Do you want to go to church?" ; If they say yes, they go. If they say no, " ; Okay, you stay home." ; And I think that because of that a lot of our children is not getting the training that they should get. That the church is willing to offer them. And, I think a lot of the problem with the youth is the parent, and I can say that because I' ; m a parent myself. I know it' ; s hard to raise children, but, then I try to remember to raise my children the way my parents raised me. I made them go to church and I always said that as children they would be in church. As they become adults, if they don' ; t want to go, that' ; s their choice. But, now since they are adults, they still like church and it has motivated them, and I think that' ; s why their life is better today. MYLES: When you look at your children and being a mom, I would imagine that you shared with them some of the things that you said to me about picking cotton and the cows and that. What do they say? And, do they really believe it, especially perhaps if they see one of the old movies and say that, " ; Man, I wouldn' ; t do that, or Mom, you didn' ; t really do that. That happened in the olden days or something." ; What did they say? COTTON: It' ; s unbelievable to them. They cannot in their wildest dream imagine some of the things that I' ; ve talked to them about that happened to me as a child and in the 60s as a teenager. They can' ; t imagine us riding in the back of the bus. They can' ; t imagine us paying our money at the front door but walking in the back to get on. And all Blacks sat in the back of the bus and, if it got full, you had to get up and give the White person your seat. And, they can' ; t understand if you paid the same amount of money as a White person, why did you have to get up? Why didn' ; t you have a choice when you got on the bus? They can' ; t imagine going into a department store buying an item of clothes and needing to try it on and you can' ; t try it on because of the color of your skin. And, having water fountains saying ' ; Colored' ; and ' ; White' ; and you wouldn' ; t dare use the one that says ' ; White' ; . In their wildest dream they don' ; t think that ever happen. How could we allow it to happen? How could you just sit back and let them do you that way? Because the younger generation now, I don' ; t think they' ; re as non-violent as we were coming up. They' ; re willing to fight back. They' ; re not willing to just turn the other cheek the way we did. MYLES: When you talk about that, let me interrupt you for just a moment. As a student in high school, when you look back, what did you think or what did you say to your mom and dad when maybe some of the work that they did -- did your mom work outside of the home, by the way? COTTON: Yes, she did. MYLES: What kind of work did your mom do? COTTON: My mother worked " ; over-the-mountain." ; She worked in White people' ; s homes, cleaning their homes. MYLES: Did she work for any particular family that you can recall? COTTON: Yes, she worked, up until recently with a doctor by the name of Spink, Dr. Spink. She worked for them for years. And, my mother, even when she was sick and couldn' ; t go to work, she would send me in her place to go and clean house. MYLES: So, you know what it was like? COTTON: Oh, yes. MYLES: Do you remember anything that your mom said that you may have said, " ; Mom, why do you do this? You don' ; t have to go over there? Can' ; t you find something else?" ; And, also, share with us how that was when you said, " ; Oh, yes." ; You could remember. Talk about your day working when your mom was sick. COTTON: Well, actually I couldn' ; t understand as a child my mother getting up every single morning and she would go to work feeling sick, couldn' ; t hardly make it. And the only time she really stayed home was when she really just couldn' ; t go anymore because my mother suffered with asthma real bad. But, I used to question why did she go and clean up other people' ; s houses. Why couldn' ; t she work in a department store or why couldn' ; t she work at a bank or something of that nature. Of course, back then you didn' ; t find any Blacks working in a bank or even a department store. So, she would just sit down and explain to us that, " ; They' ; re not ready yet." ; I couldn' ; t understand what she meant when she said, " ; They' ; re not ready." ; But, she knew that she didn' ; t have the training and she felt that was a handicap for her and the only thing she knew how to do was to clean houses. But, she always motivated us that she wanted better for us. " ; This is what I have to do to take care of you, but I want you to do better for yourself." ; But, there were times when she just could not go to work to keep from calling in and telling the person she couldn' ; t come, because back then you didn' ; t have sick days. If you didn' ; t go to work, you didn' ; t get paid and we needed the money. MYLES: How much did she get paid, do you remember? COTTON: No, I don' ; t. But, it wasn' ; t very much. It was very little. But, I would go in her place and I would clean houses and I would take care of the little White kids until their parents came home. And, I think during that time is when I really realized how the situation was on the bus because up until that point I didn' ; t ride the bus. We had specials going to school. MYLES: What' ; s a special? COTTON: A special is a bus just for the school kids to take you to your school. And, of course, we were all Black, so all Blacks were on the bus, so I never really did ride the public bus until I got into high school and started doing volunteer work at the Red Cross and, then going to work in my mom' ; s place. MYLES: What was the day like when you went over there to clean for your mom? Did you say, " ; Man, oh man, I' ; m going to stay in school because I don' ; t want to do this." ; COTTON: Exactly. That really motivated me to go on and get my education because it' ; s one thing having to clean your own house, but it' ; s something else to go and clean someone' ; s else, because they just leave everything there because they know they got somebody coming in. So, you find yourself not only mopping floors and washing windows, but cleaning people' ; s bathrooms and sometimes even moping the floor they don' ; t want you to use a mop, they want you to get on your knees and scrub and that kind of thing. And, then sometimes you figure " ; Well, they' ; re not here, so they don' ; t know how you clean it." ; But, some of the women didn' ; t work and they were there, and they would watch you. And, then if they had to go shopping or something like that, you had to keep the kids while they were gone, plus get through with your chores. And, then usually you had a deadline to finish. It wasn' ; t like you could go in and say, " ; Okay, I' ; m going to work 8 to 5." ; Usually they give you a time. They tell you, " ; I want you to do this, this and this and I want you to be through at this time." ; So, then you couldn' ; t just goof off. But, it was because of that that motivated me to go on and make something better for myself. MYLES: Did this make you angry because you were there, and you did what your mom had to do? Not angry with your mom, but the situation, so that when you came home you could appreciate your mother even more, not that you didn' ; t, but the fact that she had to do this, and this is so unfair? COTTON: In a sense. There was a little anger there, but the family that she worked for the most, the Spinks, they were very nice. They were a very nice family and a caring family so that didn' ; t make it so hard. Myself, as a child, some of the things they expected my mom to do, they really didn' ; t put it on me, but prior to her working for this family, the other families were not as nice as they were, so they expected everything done. They didn' ; t care whether or not you were a child. But, I think because of her connecting with the Spinks, although in a sense I wanted more for my mother, but, it wasn' ; t as bad as some of the other houses could have been. MYLES: So, you experienced that and, then you experienced seeing that green board on that bus that said, ' ; Colored to the back' ; and you had worked all day and you were tired. You get on the bus and, then what happen? COTTON: You get on the bus, you sit there, going to relax until you get to downtown to change again. And, you' ; re there minding your own business and all of a sudden the bus fills up and you' ; re asked to get up. And, of course back then, when you' ; re young you don' ; t question why, you just get up. You get up and, then you have to stand until you get to town to change another bus. And, if you' ; re lucky, when you change that bus, you can sit down. It depends on what time you get in town because you have all these housewives going home and if the bus is full, you stand up until you get to your destination. It was just one of those things. As I grew older, I questioned it and I knew it wasn' ; t right. And, at that point, I had become interested in the Movement and I knew we had to do something about it. MYLES: So, you are a high school student and you attended the meetings because your parents attended. Now, let' ; s talk about when you were a high school student at Carver. You were arrested on two occasions, what happened? COTTON: The very first time I was arrested I was marching in front of Newberry' ; s because we were protesting the fact that we couldn' ; t sit at the lunch counter. And, we managed to get out of the car, maybe about five minutes and, then we were arrested. So we really didn' ; t get a chance to protest long. The second time I went was when all of us walked off the school ground. That was to me very interesting because my father had sat me down the night before, me and my brother and explained to us that his job had told him that if he participated, or if his family participated in the Movement, that he would be fired. MYLES: Where did your dad work? COTTON: He worked for a company called Tractor and Trailer Company. But, my father never did tell me don' ; t you march. So, at that point I had a decision to make whether or not I was going to or whether or not I was not. I definitely didn' ; t want my father to lose his job. But, the more I thought about it, I realized that something better would come later even if he did, that somehow we would make it. So, the next day I decided that I had to do it. If not for me, if I didn' ; t see any benefits from it or my father or my mother, that somebody would later on in the years. So, I was among the first to walk out and it was really a great feeling. Once we started walking and I guess we got about a couple of blocks from school, and we looked back and saw all the children coming behind us. Because at first there was a little hesitation. And, as we started marching from Carver High School then we had cars and parents to come pick us up and, then take us on to 16th Street because they were afraid that the police would come and get us and arrest us before we got downtown. MYLES: Now, you said that you left school. Did the principal say it was alright, or the teachers? Did they just kind of say, " ; Well, we can' ; t get involved, because we' ; ll lose our jobs, so we' ; ll just turn our heads?" ; How did that happen? COTTON: Well, the class that I was in, my teacher at the given time (Inaudible) gave us a time to walk off the school. She stood up and said, " ; I have to be excused for a few minutes." ; And, when I looked at my watch I realized why she was excusing herself, because, right, as a teacher she could not say, " ; Okay, students it' ; s time now, you all go on and walk off the school." ; But, when she excused herself then we knew she was giving us permission to leave. MYLES: Do you remember the teacher' ; s name? COTTON: Her name was Ms. Bracy. I was in her English class. MYLES: What was her first name? COTTON: I don' ; t remember her first name. MYLES: That took a lot of courage for Mrs. Bracy to do that? COTTON: It did. And, of course, after she left, and, then of course, everybody was still a little hesitant because with me, I think they kind of looked up to me since I had already gone before, like I was the one who knew what to do. And, then I realized at that point that I had to take a leadership role, and, then once I started walking out and the other classes, for some reason on that day all the doors were opened. So, as we walked down the hallway, the students saw us going by and, then they walked out and just kept going. Before you knew it the crowd just multiplied. Like I said, as we walked off the school ground and got a couple of blocks, then cars picked us up and took us on to 16th Street. But with me, during that time they had the dogs and the fire hoses and all that. Luckily I was already in jail when that happened, so I didn' ; t get the dogs, nor the fire hoses. MYLES: But, do you think, when you look back that part of the reason that you were such a go- getter and took a leadership role, along with your parents being involved with that, you got a little taste when you went ' ; over-the-mountain' ; to work for your mom one day, and, then having to stand up on that bus and just thinking through all of this and saying " ; Un- un, I' ; m going to do something." ; Do you think that also had something to do with you becoming involved? COTTON: I think so, because the times that I had to go work in my mom' ; s place, that was one thing that motivated me that I needed to do better. Not only that, but as children, we had to work side jobs once we got old enough to get out and ride the bus by ourselves. So, I started out working in private homes myself. On Saturdays, when I' ; m out of school, and, then I did get a job in a restaurant when I was maybe in the 9th or 10th grade. And, back then they were paying 70 cents an hour. You took your little 70 cents and back then we had to buy our own books and that kind of thing. So anything we could do to help our parents out. But, then when you think about it 70 cents an hour, but you did it. MYLES: What did you do at the restaurant? COTTON: I was what they called a " ; salad girl" ; , I made salads. It was a Chinese restaurant that was over in the Eastwood area. MYLES: Back then people paid attention to color and skin complexion. Do you think that you got a good job as a ' ; salad girl' ; because of your complexion? COTTON: I think so. It' ; s sad to say that. MYLES: But you were fair, you were light-skinned and they didn' ; t mind people seeing you, but maybe the others who were darker-skinned, and that' ; s no reflection on you or them, but that' ; s the way the times were. COTTON: That' ; s true. And, then, even as a child I resented my skin color. I used to eat chocolate and drink Black coffee because I wanted to get darker. MYLES: Did you think that the coffee would make you Black? COTTON: Right. For some reason that black coffee would make me Black and the chocolate would make me Black. But the chocolate only broke me out. MYLES: Was it because you wanted people to like you because some of them didn' ; t. They blamed you for being the color that you were?COTTON: Well, you know it' ; s kind of interesting because in a sense the Whites treated you a little better because of your skin color, not a whole lot, but a little better than the normal, like my brothers for instance because my brothers were darker than I was. But, then as a Black race I got a lot of resentment from them because of my color. So, I was taking it from both sides. And, when I got older I was able to deal with it, but as a child it' ; s hard to deal with it when you' ; re getting it from both sides. Your own race and also from the other side. The Whites treated me a little better, but I didn' ; t want them to. I wanted my whole race to be treated better, not myself. MYLES: What about your brother, was he involved in the Movement? COTTON: He was. Well, he didn' ; t go to as many meetings. I got involved in the Movement through my uncle Claude Odom, who was very active in the Movement. And, because of that I went to meetings with him. My brother never did attend any meetings and I was really surprised when he walked off the school grounds. But, when I got to jail that day, I called home with the intention of talking to my brother to tell my brother to tell my parents that I was in jail. But, when I called home my mother answered the phone and I asked to speak to my brother, Willie. And, then she says, " ; Well, he' ; s in jail. Haven' ; t you seen him?" ; And, then I realized that he had gone to jail too and that she knew. She said that she knew the night before that I was going and I asked her how my father was and she said that he' ; s fine, he' ; s just worried about you. And I assured them that I would be fine. But, in my mind I' ; m thinking that I would be in there a couple of days. MYLES: How long were you in jail? COTTON: I was in there five long days. MYLES: How was it, were you scared? COTTON: Well, see the first time I went, I went to juvenile -- to juvenile court because of my age. So, they had some small children there. We played with the children and it was fine. The second time I went they took us to juvenile just to get us processed. We left juvenile and went to, I don' ; t know if it was city jail or county jail. We went to one of the jails. And, then from there to Fair Park where they housed all of us. And, it wasn' ; t as fun as the first time because as the days went by I knew my parents could not get me out. I knew that from the get-go. But, I thought for a while that maybe the Movement don' ; t know I' ; m in here because I was among the last that they got out. And, then in my mind I' ; m thinking, " ; Well, I' ; ve gone before so they think I' ; m strong enough to stay and handle it." ; So, toward the fifth day though I was getting a little worried. MYLES: What was the treatment and the food like? COTTON: It wasn' ; t good. I think maybe the first day I didn' ; t eat anything. And, then towards the second day, you know we all got together and talked about it and realized that we had to eat something because we had to stay strong. We couldn' ; t get ill in there, but it wasn' ; t the best of food, but it was okay. MYLES: But that did take a lot of courage on your part to take that stand. When you look back now and you talk to your youngsters and tell them about it, do they say " ; Really, mom" ; or " ; You didn' ; t really do that." ; COTTON: Right. It' ; s hard for them to believe. My younger son who is 16 years old now. I was talking about when I went to the jail house and there were so many of us packed into this jail cell. And, for some reason I was the last one to go in. And, they started closing the door before I could get in and the door was beginning to squeeze me so I started hollering and some of the other women and girls started hollering and finally they opened the door so I could get in. But, he asked me, " ; Well, mom didn' ; t you get hurt?" ; And I said, " ; Well, yes, I was sore." ; He said, " ; Did they take you to the doctor?" ; I said, " ; No, they didn' ; t take me to the doctor." ; He said, " ; Well, did you tell them?" ; I said, " ; Well, no, because I didn' ; t want them to separate me from the other people. I didn' ; t know what they were going to do to me. So, yes, I was sore a few days, but then you just dealt with it." ; But other than that, that was the only bad experience I had. It was just at the fair grounds they had so many beds set up there that you had a lot of company and you got a chance to talk about a lot of things and kind of reminisce on what you are going to do with your life and why and that kind of thing. But, it was an experience and I realize even then at that age, I still say, and I heard a woman say this, that it may not benefit me, but it might benefit my children and my grandchildren and I think that was the kind of motivation that I had. MYLES: So now you' ; ve been to jail, you' ; ve realized what this was all about and you' ; ve made your contribution in more ways than one, but did you get scared at all? Did you think, " ; Well, my goodness." ; And, looking at all the different people that were in jail with you and that many of us have read and we' ; ve been told about women being violated in jail, were you afraid? Especially, here' ; s this young girl, light skinned, attractive, " ; I' ; m in this jail, are they going to bother me? Is somebody going to take me out and do something to me? Were you afraid of that? COTTON: Well, actually we got into a group. I was with my next-door neighbor and my cousin. We had gotten together and talked and decided that we wouldn' ; t go anywhere by ourselves. If we went to the bathroom, we went as a group. When it was time to take a shower, we made sure we were in there together, because yes, there were rumors and there were instances where there was fighting, and girls were messing with the other girls. But, it worked out pretty good for us because we stayed together and kind of got a plan together and that kind of helped us. MYLES: When you look back and talking with your youngsters, and I don' ; t know if you' ; ve had an opportunity to visit the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute or not, have you had an opportunity to? COTTON: Yes, I have. MYLES: Have you brought your children and looked at it and walked them through and have they looked at it and made comments? Did you have any flashbacks to be so overcome with " ; Here I am today and that happened then, look where we' ; ve come." ; It must be really hard sometimes. COTTON: It is, and when I came, the first time I came, I came alone and, as I walked through and looked at the different exhibits I was really amazed and got teary eyed because a lot of it brought back a lot of memories. And, I guess through the years you kind of forget some of the bad things that happened, but it kind of brought back some of the rough moments that were there. And, then, I did bring my children because I wanted them to see and they had a lot of questions, even after talking to them, because I wanted them to know the story. I want them to pass it on to their children and their grandchildren. So, when they came and looked at the exhibit I think it really, really touched home with them. It' ; s like when I was telling them, it' ; s like a story, she' ; s just saying this. But, I think at that point they realized this really happened. MYLES: And, then, they said, " ; Well, mom that was really true because that' ; s the real sign and the real bus and whatever, whatever?" ; COTTON: Right. And, when they were in school, my two oldest boys, now they' ; re out of high school. But, when they were in high school and they were talking about, especially during February, Black History Month, when they talked about the Civil Rights, they would also get in the conversation, " ; Because my mother did this. My mother was there." ; When they read some of the stuff in the history books, it comes to them because of stuff that I' ; ve told them about it. But, I think because of that, it' ; s made them better children because when I was marching and, when I was participating in the Movement, I didn' ; t in my wildest dream think that I would have children, and, then they would benefit from some of the things that I went through. Like my oldest son, for instance is on the Birmingham Police Department. And, back then I never would have thought any of my children, or even Blacks would even be on the police department. And, then, my middle son, he' ; s with the FBI and, they, because of that, they' ; re motivated to help their race to kind of prosper and they reach back and try to help the younger generation and try to let them know that fighting and gangs and drugs is not what it' ; s all about. They try to teach them to have a little compassion and try to unite themselves to make the world better. So, even with that, and they know that because of what I went through is the reason they are where they are today. And, sometimes in sitting down talking to them, and they acknowledge that, it kind of brings tears to my eyes, because in a sense it does. What I did and what a million other people did is to benefit a lot of the people today. MYLES: What do you think about the Movement? The Movement then and you growing up and knowing about it and being involved, and " ; The Movement" ; today? COTTON: Back then I was very motivated with the Movement and especially with Dr. King. Whenever he opened his mouth to say anything it was just in awe to me. And one of my fondest memories is as a child, I went to 16th Street and Dr. King was there, and the church was packed. MYLES: What did you think? COTTON: People were everywhere. And, somehow, when I got there it was late so I had to stand in the aisle way. And as people came in we had to keep going down the aisle way and I ended up almost to the very front of the church. And they had this Rabbi on stage. And, this Rabbi begged for me to come on stage to sit with him. And, I was just dumbfounded because Dr. King was on the stage. Although he was on the other end, still I' ; m on stage with Dr. King. MYLES: Do you remember what age you were then? COTTON: I was about 14 or 15. And, that in itself was just -- oh, that memory, I would never forget. Today I' ; m sad to say that I' ; m not as active in the Movement as I was back then. I can' ; t even remember the last time I' ; ve gone to a meeting. But, I think that the ones that are participating in it I still think they' ; re doing a good job. MYLES: When you look at strides and you are a part of history because of the things that you did as a child and your profession, now you' ; re in banking, did you ever in your wildest dreams think that you, this African-American female would be in the position that you are now? COTTON: Never, in my wildest dream. Even as I finished high school, I really went to school to be a dental nurse and I left here, went to Chicago. I stayed there working at Spiegel as a proofreader. I never thought I would have gotten that job either. But, a proofreader at Spiegel during the day and, at night I would go to school. After I had gone for a while I realized that wasn' ; t for me, so I dropped out. I came back to Birmingham, but still I didn' ; t think that I would go in banking, because I started out working in department stores as a cashier and that kind of thing. What happened was, my husband was in school at Miles College and they had a recruiter saying they needed more females in banking. They were trying to get the college students to go out and apply. My husband came home and told me about it. I went and they hired me. MYLES: Let' ; s back up a little bit and, then we' ; re going to go back forward. You went to Booker T. Washington Business College? COTTON: Briefly. MYLES: But you did attend? COTTON: I did attend. MYLES: So that, in itself that was a time when a lot of Black women really could not go to school and because of the Gastons you had an opportunity even though it was a brief time? COTTON: Right. Exactly. And, back then my parents could not afford to send me to college so what I did after high school that summer, I worked and earned enough money for my first tuition. I knew that in order to continue I had to work and, then go to school. But, I did go there briefly before I left going to Chicago. MYLES: How was that for you? COTTON: It was an experience. I enjoyed the time that I was there. MYLES: So now you went back to school. You went to Lawson State and UAB? COTTON: I went to Lawson State and Jefferson State. MYLES: Oh, Jeff State, I' ; m sorry. COTTON: Right. MYLES: And, you got involved in banking? COTTON: Right. MYLES: How has it been for you? COTTON: It' ; s been okay. I' ; ve been in banking now for 20 years. And, at first it was a slow start for me because they didn' ; t particularly promote women, Black women in banking and that was one of the reasons I left the first bank. I had been there ten years and whenever I tried to advance, I was told I was either overqualified or under qualified. I saw others that did make it, of course, they weren' ; t Black, they were White. It' ; s kind of interesting that myself as a Black person would always train the White people that come in on these different jobs, but yet I wasn' ; t qualified to work them. MYLES: How did that make you feel and the ones that got the positions that you may have been interested in, what kind of educational background or what were there qualifications, versus yours? COTTON: Well, they mostly was young girls right out of high school. And, there were occasions when they hadn' ; t even finished high school and I guess that' ; s what made it so awful and bad because you knew you had the qualifications and you knew that all you needed was someone to give you a chance and that you could do the job, but because of that I kept telling myself I can do better, I' ; m going to leave. But, then you never really take the time to go other places, so I was there one day, just minding my own business, the phone rung and it was somebody that I' ; d worked for at Central Bank when I first started there. They had left the company. He knew of this bank, at the time it was Alabama Federal that needed a savings manager and he said he thought about me because he remembered my attitude and how willing I was to work. So, he asked me to go and put in an application and I did, and they hired me the same day. And, of course I went over and still there was resentment there because I was the first Black manager for that particular bank, and naturally a lot of the Whites that was there felt like they should have gotten the job. And, me being Black I could not handle the responsibilities. MYLES: So they thought? COTTON: So they thought. So, it was a challenge because they were to train me and I know that and I knew then that they weren' ; t going to show me everything there was to know about the job. MYLES: How did that make you feel? COTTON: It wasn' ; t a good feeling because you go there and you know you have to supervise these people, but they are not willing to listen to what you have to say or they don' ; t want your supervision. So, for me I had to stay there a lot of long hours, reading manuals and learning things that I knew they weren' ; t going to teach me. But, because of that, I think it made me a better person and a better manager because a lot of the stuff I' ; ve learned. And, then as a reward, they did give me a plaque for being the best supervisor for that company. And, also my department had an award for the best department. MYLES: So, did that kind of turn them around? COTTON: It did. After they got to know me and they knew that I was a fair person, knew that the company didn' ; t hire me just because I was Black. A lot of them felt like they had to get a Black person in there so they just brought me, and I couldn' ; t do the job. I was determined to prove them wrong, but in the end they became one of the best employees. MYLES: Did any of them ever come back and say, " ; Well, you know I thought this and I thought that, and I' ; m sorry." ; COTTON: I did. MYLES: Did they do that? COTTON: I did. I had a few to come to me and apologize for misjudging me, for not giving me the benefit of the doubt, that a lot of the resentment and feeling they had was from what they were taught by their parents and that once they got to know me, they realized that their parents were wrong. They asked me to forgive them and it was interesting because I really didn' ; t have any ill feelings toward them. You know, I' ; m being brought up in the church, I just prayed for them and asked the Lord to take away the ill feelings and give me the strength to endure to do the job, and He did. MYLES: So, it' ; s been rewarding for you now with where you are in the banking industry. When you look at work across the board, when you look at youngsters, some who are very eager to move up and don' ; t want to start at entry level and wherever the job is, what would you say to them? COTTON: Well, it' ; s kind of interesting because you have a lot of that happening. When I have someone coming in, for instance, to fill out an application or apply for a job that' ; s in my area, immediately they want to start from the top. I have to sit down and tell them that you got to start somewhere, but it' ; s not at the top. You know, you' ; re going to have to work your way up there, and, then, to those who are already there, I try to sit down with them and talk to them and try to motivate them that you don' ; t just learn your job, learn somebody else' ; s job. When you finish with what you' ; re doing, sit with somebody else, look over somebody else' ; s shoulder, because it would benefit you in the long run. And, it got so that even in the area that I supervise, I worked all the jobs, so I knew how long it took to do this, this and this. So, you couldn' ; t just sit there and twiddle your thumb and make me think you' ; re busy because I knew how long it took to do the job. So, I would talk with them and try to encourage them to learn other things and most of them would listen. They would listen. And, I' ; d tell them when you finish with your job, let me know and, then I' ; ll go over somebody else' ; s job with you so you' ; ll know how to work that job. It might not benefit you here at this company, but it might benefit you at another company. The more you learn then the better off you are. And, I think because of that, is the reason I like management so well, because I get a chance to touch other people' ; s lives and try to motivate them, but, at first, I have to say that I was a little prejudice about it because I would focus more on the Blacks than I did the Whites. But now, I' ; ve grown, and I' ; ve learned now to try to treat them equally. I don' ; t try to spend more time with the Blacks than I would the Whites. But, in motivating the person, I' ; m willing to -- anyone that' ; s willing to learn-- I' ; m willing to work with you whether or not you' ; re Black or White or red or blue. So, I get a lot of joy out of that. MYLES: What about the Movement today, do you think there' ; s a need? I mean, some people say, " ; We don' ; t need SCLC, we don' ; t need the NAACP, we have arrived." ; COTTON: No. We have not arrived. There' ; s been changes but we have a long way to go. There' ; s still a lot of hatred out there. We' ; ve made some gains, but things could be a lot better than it is today. I think if the Movement was not still active, things would be worse than what it is. But, I think that as a people, a lot of the hatred that' ; s there, I realize is taught by the parents and as the teenagers and our generation now, as they grow older, I think they' ; re learning to reason and read for themselves, but it' ; s still a lot of hate groups out there. You hear them talking about the skinheads and you' ; d be surprised how the Ku Klux Klan is still active. They might not be wearing the white robes as much as they did back in the 50s and 60s, but they' ; re still there. And, we still need to work toward that. I think the Movement is a good thing and I' ; m going to try to be more active in it myself. That was one of the things I promised myself. I had a good experience happen to me last year. I was at the airport getting ready to go to Cincinnati on a trip for my job, a training session and Dr. Shuttlesworth was at the airport. I went over and introduced myself and told him that I was one of those that worked in the Movement and participated in some of the activities when he was in Birmingham and that kind of thing. So, we talked and he told me he lived in Cincinnati and on the plane we got a chance to know each other. And, once I got there, he invited me to his church. That was on a Saturday. That Sunday I went to his church and at the church service, he got up and introduced me and he was saying how proud he was to have someone in his company that was active in the Movement, that marched, that it was a honor for me to be there. And I' ; m just thinking, " ; No, the honor is all mine, because I' ; m here in your presence." ; So, although 30 years later, it was interesting talking to him. His wife' ; s name was Ruby, and my name is Ruby and my mother now lives on Shuttlesworth Drive. MYLES: So it' ; s still there. COTTON: Right, it' ; s still there, but that was a good motivational experience for me because we got a chance to talk about some things in the 90s that need changing. MYLES: What are some of the things in the 90s that you feel need to be changed? COTTON: I think we need to get the youth more involved in activities. I think that if we talk to them more and share more with them, they' ; ll realize the importance of unity and looking out for each other. In today' ; s society there' ; s so much now, hatred with the gangs and drugs is a problem. I know they like to put it on the parents, but I don' ; t think it' ; s all the parents' ; fault. I think as a parent we do the best we can with our children, but I think as parents we need help from the church, we need help from the community, and if we all band together, I think that we can make things better. But, until we do that I don' ; t think things are going to change as rapidly as we would like for them to change. MYLES: Two things before we close. During your time of incarceration and being in the Movement as a teenager, were there any mementos, if you will, or anything that you kept or had that you still have? COTTON: No, I don' ; t. When I went the second time, I had on a white skirt and, when I left the jail it was black. I saved that skirt for a long time. But, then eventually, not that I tried to, but in my moving back and forth from different locations, it got misplaced, so I don' ; t have that. And, then there was a candy bar wrapper that I had because they were selling candy and some of us had money, so I saved the candy bar wrapper for years and finally it got away from me, but I don' ; t have any mementos, just memories of what happened. MYLES: And, finally, is there something that I didn' ; t ask you that, in closing you' ; d like to share with us? COTTON: No, not really. I just liked the opportunity for sharing some of the memories I have from the 60s and I hope that something I' ; ve said will help someone and make their life a little better. I' ; m glad I had the experience. I know my children ask me now, " ; Mom, if you had to do it over again, would you do it?" ; And I said, " ; Yes, in a heartbeat. Only this time around, instead of going two times, I' ; d probably go more than two times." ; How many times it would take to make the world better, I' ; d be willing to give that sacrifice because it was something that Dr. King said in one of his speeches that, " ; If a man didn' ; t have something worth dying for, then it' ; s not worth living, or he shouldn' ; t want to live." ; And, then to me the Movement is so sincere to me that it' ; s worth dying for if that' ; s to help somebody else and I' ; ll be willing to give up my life if that' ; s what it took to make things better for my children, my grandchildren or your children, your grandchildren. I truly and strongly believe in that. If they had to do some of the things today in the 90s as they did back in the 60s, then I' ; ll be willing to participate. MYLES: I know I said that was last question, but I' ; ll make sure this one is. Have you thought about or have you already documented, in writing form, in a pamphlet or book, all of the things and more that you could say that you could have here in a book form that others can continue to read over and over? COTTON: No, I haven' ; t. It' ; s one of those things that I say that I' ; m going to do because they are so many experiences, but I' ; ve kind of kept pushing it aside. I did have a tape at one time of some of the instances and one of my children took it to school as a project and it got misplaced, so I need to do that tape over again. But, that' ; s one of my goals to put something in writing so that my grandchildren could know the story or even do a tape of it, a video tape to have it for later years. MYLES: Well, we certainly look forward to it. COTTON: And, I' ; ve enjoyed the opportunity here for sharing this and it' ; s nice meeting you. MYLES: Thank you. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
bcri.org. 0 http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=ROCotton1996.xml ROCotton1996.xml
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Title
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Ruby Odom Cotton
Description
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Ruby Odom Cotton discusses her leadership as young lady in the Movement, including the Children's Crusade and two arrests. She went on to become a banker in Birmingham and continues to spread her experience of the Movement.
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19960515C
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Ala.)
Shuttlesworth, Fred L., 1922-2011
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1996-05-15
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video
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b445ac47fbf90be6aa418adcf358f68d
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BCRI Oral History Project Collection
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Interviews collected as part of the general mission of the Oral History Project
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Video
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Oral History
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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English
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bcriohp
Oral History
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Horace Huntley
Interviewee
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Dorothy Cotton
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http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=DCotton1999.xml
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Voter Education Project (Southern Regional Council)
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5.4 April 22, 1999 Dorothy Cotton Interviewed on April 22, 1999 19990422C 1:34:57 BCRIOHP Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Oral History Project Collection bcriohp BCRI Oral History Project BCRI Oral History Collection Indexer: Raines Whittaker Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (U.S.) Southern Christian Leadership Conference Voter Education Project (Southern Regional Council) Dorothy Cotton Horace Huntley Video 1:|13(13)|28(11)|38(10)|53(11)|69(2)|85(3)|96(5)|117(6)|132(6)|143(14)|156(13)|169(15)|183(5)|196(3)|208(6)|218(6)|234(12)|244(5)|260(3)|276(7)|294(4)|309(3)|326(16)|345(8)|363(15)|377(12)|391(8)|404(12)|418(16)|430(12)|446(6)|462(12)|474(14)|489(9)|500(4)|512(6)|534(10)|546(7)|558(11)|579(13)|592(13)|609(7)|624(1)|638(5)|652(10)|667(13)|684(8)|691(12)|705(13)|717(10)|730(12)|744(5)|761(1)|773(1)|786(11)|799(9)|812(3)|825(5)|836(1)|846(4)|862(5)|873(13)|885(9)|896(3)|907(11)|918(2)|931(9)|942(10)|960(4)|977(12)|989(2)|1006(2)|1018(10)|1035(11)|1049(2)|1060(15)|1081(10)|1089(5)|1101(10)|1115(11)|1128(3)|1138(11)|1163(14)|1173(10)|1181(13)|1192(13)|1206(9)|1218(17)|1234(15)|1248(5)|1262(9)|1273(16)|1286(6)|1297(13) 0 https://youtu.be/msUCSbW0ysw YouTube video English 12 Beginning of Interview This is an interview with Ms. Dorothy Cotton for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s Oral History Project. 33.516200, -86.813870 17 Birmingham Civil Rights Institute http://www.bcri.org BCRI website 49 Biographical Information So, I would just like to know were you born in Alabama? Cotton grew up in North Carolina with four other siblings. African American families ; African American women ; Goldsboro (N.C.) ; Southern States--History 35.385145, -77.994577 12 Goldsboro, North Carolina 187 Parents' Background What was the education level of your mother and father? Cotton's mother died when she was very young and was raised with her siblings by her father who worked in a tobacco factory. Tobacco workers--North Carolina African American children ; African American families ; North Carolina--History ; Single-parent families 348 Elementary School What do you remember about your elementary school days? Elementary school was a particularly difficult time for Cotton. African American children ; African American families ; African Americans--Education (Elementary) 481 High School Education Was your high school in that vicinity in the same area? Cotton enjoyed high school thanks to the efforts of one of her teachers. African American high school students ; High school teachers ; Teacher-student relationships 651 Lack of Family Support That is obviously part of your support network. Cotton grew up without the support of her extended family. African American children ; African American families ; Single-parent families 814 Segregation Growing Up Growing up in a southern town, a small town, what was that like for young girls your age. Cotton grew up isolated but still witnessed the effects of segregation. African Americans--Segregation ; Poverty--United States ; Southern States--Race relations--History 1104 Interests in Pursuing Education As you approached your senior year in high school, you must have been thinking about, what do I do next? Cotton was influenced by her teachers to attend college, making her the first and only one to go in her family. Shaw University African American families ; African American history ; African American women ; First-generation college students ; Teacher-student relationships 1397 Influence of Teachers Did you ever get to go to the teacher that you referred to? Cotton's teachers helped her see options to change her life. African Americans--Alcohol use African American students ; African American women ; Teacher-student relationships 1505 Transition to College Why Shaw University? Cotton attended Shaw University and worked her way through without aid. Raleigh (N.C.) ; Shaw University African American college students ; African American women ; African students ; College students--Employment ; First-generation college students 1759 College Experiences Were there any highlights at Shaw? Cotton studied hard and worked her way through college. Shaw University ; Virginia State College African American college students ; African American women ; College students--Economic conditions ; College students--Employment 1916 Transfer to College in Virginia So you transferred? Cotton transferred to college in Virginia to keep working for the president who had transferred. Petersburg (Va.) ; Virginia State College African American college students ; Christian college students ; College students--Employment 2193 African Students What ever happened to the Liberian woman that you had met? There was a presence of African students at Shaw University which didn't exist at Virginia State College. Liberia African American college students ; African American women ; African students 2305 Marriage and Work What did you do after Virginia State? Cotton got married after college and began working in the college library. Petersburg (Va.) ; Virginia State College African American women librarians ; African Americans--Marriage ; Walker, Wyatt Tee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillfield_Baptist_Church_(Petersburg%2C_Virginia) Gillfield Baptist Church information 2441 Changes Made by a New Reverend 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. Cotton was involved with the church as they began to focus on civil rights and also went to graduate school at this time. Boston University ; Petersburg (Va.) African American women college students ; African Americans--Segregation ; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ; Walker, Wyatt Tee 2695 Development of Southern Christian Leadership Conference Had he developed SCLC at that point? Cotton recalls Rev. Walker meeting with Dr. King to develop SCLC. Petersburg (Va.) ; Walker, Wyatt Tee African Americans--Civil rights--History ; Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Southern Christian Leadership Conference 2814 Life in Atlanta What are some of the first issues that you encountered once you arrived in Atlanta? When Cotton moved to Atlanta she began working with Dr. King. Atlanta (Ga.) ; Baker, Ella, 1903-1986 African American civil rights workers ; African American women ; Citizenship Education Program ; Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Southern Christian Leadership Conference 3024 Highlander Folk School and Citizenship Education Program They were fighting for their very lives because their state of Tennessee was trying to take that property, and ultimately did. While there were difficulties at the Highlander Folk School, the Citizenship Education Program transferred to SCLC. Horton, Myles, 1905-1990 African American women civil rights workers ; African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States ; Citizenship Education Program ; Civil rights movement ; Highlander Folk School (Monteagle, Tenn.) ; Southern Christian Leadership Conference 3214 Voter Registration Work Would that have any relationship with the voter education project that would eventually be thought up? Cotton helped with voter registration through the Citizenship Education Program. Voter Education Project (Southern Regional Council) African American women civil rights workers ; Citizenship Education Program ; Civil rights movement ; Clark, Septima Poinsette, 1898-1987 ; Southern Christian Leadership Conference ; Voter registration 3373 Dangers of Voter Registration Registering people to vote during that time could be very dangerous. Cotton recalls dangers faced, for example, by Fannie Lou Hamer, who was threatened for her work registering voters. African American women civil rights workers ; African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States ; Civil rights movement ; Hamer, Fannie Lou ; Racism--United States--History ; Voter registration 3511 Organization of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee The SNCC organization would be organized in 1960, and I think both Dr. King, as well as Ella Baker were instantly involved in that. Cotton recalls the dynamics of SNCC and the activities of the Citizenship Education Program. African American civil rights workers ; Carmichael, Stokely ; Citizenship Education Program ; Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (U.S.) ; Voter registration 3881 The Movement in Albany and Alabama But in those earlier days, there were several campaigns that normally stand out. Cotton reflects on ways the Albany Movement was not a failure and the importance of the movement in Birmingham. Albany (Ga.) ; Birmingham (Ala.) African American civil rights workers ; African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States ; Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights ; Albany Movement (Albany, Ga.) ; Civil rights movement ; Southern Christian Leadership Conference 4140 Issues in Organizing And so there were, you know, a few hard places when folk did not agree on what the strategy would be. There were disagreements in organizing, such as how youth were seen as involved or being used. Birmingham (Ala.) African American civil rights workers ; African American youth ; Civil rights demonstrations ; Civil rights movement 4395 Getting Students Involved Did you personally visit schools and enlist the aid of students? Cotton worked to get students involved in the movement despite there not being explicit support for it. African American civil rights workers ; African American students ; African American youth ; Civil rights movement ; United States--Race relations 4595 Significance of Birmingham What was the meaning of Birmingham for the movement? The visibility of the movement in Birmingham helped propel its importance. African Americans--Civil rights--History ; Birmingham (Ala.) ; Civil rights movement ; Documentary photography ; Racism--United States--History 4794 Traveling with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I know that you also traveled with Dr. King internationally. Cotton traveled with Dr. King internationally. African American civil rights workers ; African American women ; International travel ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 4886 Reflecting Dr. King's Stance Against the Vietnam War 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 decision for Dr. King to come out against the Vietnam War was challenging. Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Vietnam War, 1961-1975 5161 Mediating Challenges to Dr. King Some suggest that Dr. King became more threatened after he had made the speech against the war... A critique came from a preacher in Appalachia that Dr. King was leaving them out. Appalachian Region ; Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 5329 Expanding into Appalachia Was this when Dr. King expanded? The Black civil rights movement began recruiting white people from Appalachia to join. Appalachian Region ; Citizenship Education Program ; Civil rights movement ; United States--Race relations 5426 The Movement After Dr. King's Assassination Of course, his assassination. All kinds of questions that are raised. Did the movement die with Dr. King in 1968? Cotton sees the movement as necessarily evolving after Dr. King's assassination. African Americans--Civil rights--History ; Civil rights movement ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Landmarks in civil rights history 5642 Interview Conclusion You know, you have been very gracious with your time, and I certainly appreciate it. African American women ; Civil rights in a new era Oral History Dorothy Cotton discusses working with Dr. King to establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta. She continued to work and travel with Dr. King, including organizing with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, until his assassination. 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 Eastern 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 sister 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 know 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 in 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. He 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 Greenleaf 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 call 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 poem 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, your 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 think 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 my 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 this 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 I 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. He 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 had 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 just 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. And 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 school, 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 in 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 different 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 school, 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 just 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 from 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 her 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 because 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. But, 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 happened 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, and 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 a 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 again 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 Student 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 I 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 Angie 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 related, 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 became 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 courting, 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 those 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 could 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 also 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 also 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 organization, 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. But 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 preachers 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 will 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. The 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 training 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 voter 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 about 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 1961. 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 husband 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. Ella 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 tension, 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 died, 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 went 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 for 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 coalition 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 solidify 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 that 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 wanted 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 get 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 stores. 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 all 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 country, 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, the 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 rather 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 Europe 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 that 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 war. 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 white 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 my 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 training, 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 democracy. 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 where 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 been 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. This material is property of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. video This material is available for educational and research purposes only. Permission for commercial use will not be granted. For publication information, please contact archives
bcri.org. 0 http://bcriohp.org/ohms-viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=DCotton1999.xml DCotton1999.xml
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Dorothy Cotton
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Dorothy Cotton discusses working with Dr. King to establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta. She continued to work and travel with Dr. King, including organizing with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, until his assassination.
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19990422C
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Civil rights movements--Alabama—Birmingham
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (U.S.)
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
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1999-04-22
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video