Interview with Virginia Durr (Birmingham, AL activist) by Larry Rubin
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Man | Virginia Deer 1-1588, Montgomery, Alabama. | 0:05 |
Woman | Here in Alabama now, in Mississippi, | 0:14 |
the law was changed in '73, but I do think thugh... | 0:17 | |
Man | I'm sorry, we ready to actually do this, | 0:27 |
so we're starting? | 0:39 | |
That's why I'd like to get it flowing. | 0:45 | |
But you're saying you've gotta be right... | 0:48 | |
Woman | Well I'll do the best I can, | 0:53 |
and I hope that she'll refute me | 0:54 | |
because she's a lot younger than I am, | 0:57 | |
and she knows a lot more than I do about | 0:59 | |
young Black women, because I don't. | 1:02 | |
I know about some of 'em, but I don't know about other... | 1:05 | |
Second Woman | Well we probably have to | 1:07 |
have that conversation another time. (laughs) | 1:10 | |
I'm interested in these issues at the same time, | 1:11 | |
but this is a documentary about women | 1:14 | |
in the Civil Rights Movement, so we're gonna go back | 1:16 | |
and talk about that, and should you wanna talk about... | 1:20 | |
(laughs) We can't talk about this whole thing. | 1:24 | |
Man | But what I'd like to do is in three sections | 1:31 |
talk about your involvement and how you got involved | 1:34 | |
in the Civil Rights Movement. | 1:37 | |
And the historical (inaudible). The second thing is | 1:43 | |
What do you see today that is an extension | 1:48 | |
of the Civil Rights Movement? | 1:51 | |
Your perceptions of where it's gone. | 1:54 | |
It's come forward, and how much you were doing | 1:58 | |
in the USA, and what is the legacy that is left | 2:01 | |
by the Civil Rights Movement? | 2:07 | |
And any conceptions you have now that- | 2:11 | |
Part of the documentary talks about | 2:14 | |
the Civil Rights Movement, in terms of desegregation, | 2:18 | |
voting rights, and things like that, and at some point, | 2:21 | |
because of the women in the movement and | 2:24 | |
because of the women's movement itself, | 2:27 | |
it moved into that more general human rights movement | 2:29 | |
with women at the forefront. | 2:34 | |
Woman | No it didn't do that then, not yet. | 2:37 |
Man | Well, the whole classic women's movement- | 2:41 |
Woman | Took off some. | 2:44 |
Man | Yeah, well that's where I'm going with that. | 2:46 |
And how far did you have to come, | 2:50 | |
and how much farther do we have to go? | 2:52 | |
Woman | Well you seem, okay, surprised, but I don't | 2:54 |
I would have to say that--I don't think the classic women's | 2:58 | |
movement has stressed gender so much | 3:02 | |
(inaudible) to really answer the question. | 3:06 | |
- | Then that's fine | 3:12 |
And you know, I think that what we're up against now | 3:18 | |
is a terrible economic crisis, and I think (inaudible) | 3:22 | |
And so I think | 3:29 | |
women have to be in the forefront, to make a living. | 3:32 | |
Men and women, God help us. | 3:40 | |
Well you start off. | 3:47 | |
Man | She's gonna ask you a question and... | 3:50 |
Second Woman | They have to make it stay on track | 3:53 |
because they're getting off on asking tangential questions. | 3:55 | |
(everyone speaking at once) | 4:04 | |
Durr | Well I got it--now, are you on or not? | 4:10 |
Rubin | Yes Ma'am, we are ready to go. | 4:13 |
Durr | Well let's go. | 4:15 |
Rubin | Go ahead. | 4:17 |
Durr | Well I went to Washington in 1933. | 4:18 |
My husband went up there | 4:24 | |
to work for the Reconstruction Finance Corporation | 4:26 | |
because all the banks were closed. | 4:28 | |
And I got interested in the Democratic Party | 4:33 | |
from Mr. Roosevelt and Mrs. Roosevelt. | 4:36 | |
And so I began to be a volunteer | 4:41 | |
for the Democratic National Committee Women's Division, | 4:43 | |
and oddly enough, it's hard for you all to remember | 4:47 | |
since you're so young. | 4:51 | |
The District of Columbia was as segregated then | 4:53 | |
as the governmental body. | 4:56 | |
President Roosevelt's (inaudible) was segregated. | 4:59 | |
I didn't know about anything, | 5:03 | |
at that time, but it was. | 5:07 | |
And every government building was segregated, | 5:08 | |
and everything down there was segregated, | 5:10 | |
and the whole of D.C. was segregated. | 5:13 | |
So one of the first things that the women did, | 5:18 | |
and one of the first things that Mrs. Roosevelt | 5:21 | |
got interested in was doing away with segregation. | 5:24 | |
And I have a friend named Paul Coleman from Atlanta | 5:26 | |
who's the head of the paper there. | 5:30 | |
And he had a black secretary. | 5:44 | |
And you know, you never saw such carrying on in your life | 5:48 | |
because he had a Black secretary | 5:51 | |
She was very ambitious and a very nice woman, | 5:54 | |
but he had to fight tooth and nail, you know, | 5:57 | |
to keep her. | 6:00 | |
And Washington was desegregated by a very fine woman | 6:05 | |
named Mrs. Mary Church Terrell. | 6:10 | |
She was an old lady that came from Memphis, Tennessee, | 6:13 | |
originally, and she was married to a federal judge. | 6:16 | |
And she went into some eating place with two men, | 6:20 | |
and they wouldn't serve her, and so they brought soup, | 6:25 | |
and that broke the segregation in D.C. | 6:29 | |
So you see, I had my first experience working | 6:34 | |
in the Civil Rights Movement | 6:37 | |
in the District of Columbia and under the New Deal | 6:39 | |
with Roosevelt, and having everybody on my side, | 6:42 | |
I mean, the Supreme Court was on my side, | 6:46 | |
and the White House was on our side. | 6:48 | |
Everybody was on our side except the Southern Congressmen... | 6:51 | |
(mumbles) | 6:57 | |
Getting rid of the segregation was just wonderful. | 7:07 | |
The difference was... | 7:11 | |
But anyway, that's how I got interested. | 7:13 | |
And then the next thing I got interested in- | 7:17 | |
This was also through the Women's Division of the | 7:19 | |
Democratic National Committee- | 7:22 | |
Was the fact that women of the South black and white, | 7:24 | |
were denied the right to vote. | 7:26 | |
You see, when the Northern law had passed. | 7:28 | |
- | How are you Mrs. Carl, Nikki Crawford, | 7:37 |
pleased to meet you. | 7:39 | |
- | I'm so glad to see ya. | 7:41 |
- | Oh this is a treat to have you two here together | 7:45 |
- | This is Frank Rosso. | 7:48 |
- | I'm producing a program for (inaudible) | 7:52 |
Durr | And how about if we go ahead and finish this off? | 8:04 |
When we get to the Civil Rights stuff- | 8:08 | |
And this is how I got into the Civil Rights Movement. | 8:19 | |
I was talking about what happened in Washington with Chuck. | 8:21 | |
How we had so many strengths on our side. | 8:26 | |
And Judge Hastings, he wrote the bills for us. | 8:30 | |
And Charlie Houston, do you know that man? | 8:36 | |
Second Woman | No. | 8:39 |
Durr | Goodness. (laughs) | 8:40 |
Now black history has really got to be taught. | 8:41 | |
Charlie Houston was probably one of the greatest | 8:44 | |
black men that ever lived in this country. | 8:46 | |
He was a great lawyer, he was the dean of the law school, | 8:48 | |
and he was the man that won all these big cases. | 8:50 | |
- | Howard Law School | 8:56 |
Well Charlie Houston was a really a brave man. | 9:01 | |
Well anyway we had all this power on our side, | 9:04 | |
so segregation was done away with, | 9:07 | |
and the next thing was the right to vote. | 9:09 | |
And the things was, when the Civil War was ended, | 9:12 | |
and the laws were enacted, he gave the black men | 9:17 | |
and the white men the right to vote, except of course | 9:21 | |
the white men couldn't vote if he had taken part | 9:24 | |
in the Civil War, but if he hadn't then- | 9:27 | |
but the women - neither black nor white women | 9:35 | |
had any right to vote at all | 9:37 | |
So down here in the South, they didn't even pass | 9:42 | |
the right to vote for women, you know | 9:49 | |
The Amendment, it was a movement to get the vote. | 9:52 | |
Started about 1917, but I was too young for that. | 9:59 | |
The thing was that neither the white women | 10:03 | |
or the black women of the South ever voted. | 10:06 | |
And neither did poor white folks either, cause you see | 10:09 | |
you had to pay a poll tax | 10:11 | |
which not only meant you paid a dollar and a half a year | 10:13 | |
but you had to pay back taxes, all the taxes you'd missed | 10:16 | |
so you'd pay 45 dollars, before you could start voting. | 10:18 | |
So the next thing that the Women's Division did | 10:24 | |
was begin to struggle for the right to vote. | 10:28 | |
And the man that carried the burden for us was | 10:31 | |
Claude Pepper of Florida, who came from Alabama. | 10:34 | |
He was a volunteer in Clay County | 10:39 | |
and he went and got elected | 10:41 | |
To the Senate from Florida, and he was the one | 10:43 | |
but he, you know, had got rid of the poll tax in Florida | 10:46 | |
and he was the one that fought for the right to vote | 10:50 | |
for everybody in the South. And over and over and over again | 10:52 | |
he would introduce the bill on the right to vote | 10:57 | |
and eliminate the poll taxes | 11:00 | |
And it took years and years and years | 11:05 | |
to get the right to vote, so I got interested in that. | 11:08 | |
And that was really occupied use of my time and energy | 11:12 | |
It just seemed so incredible that we had to fight against it | 11:19 | |
But they didn't want Blacks voting and they didn't want | 11:25 | |
the women voting either | 11:28 | |
And it wasn't until Lyndon Johnson came in, | 11:30 | |
and that was 1950... something | 11:34 | |
when he got the Civil Rights Bill passed. | 11:40 | |
Second Woman | 1965. | 11:42 |
Woman | Was that 1965? | 11:44 |
Second Woman | He did it. | 11:45 |
Woman | He got the bill passed, he got the poll tax | 11:46 |
removed and the right to vote, but not 'til '65. | 11:49 | |
You see, that was a long time. | 11:53 | |
But intelligent people are mad at him still | 11:57 | |
on account of the war | 12:01 | |
And I think he was wrong about the Vietnamese War. | 12:04 | |
But still he got Southern people the right to vote. | 12:05 | |
And one of the things that happened when we came back South | 12:11 | |
and my husband opened his office here | 12:18 | |
was that the woman didn't, blacks didn't vote, | 12:23 | |
and very few of the white men voted. | 12:26 | |
Because, you know, the poll tax kept them from it | 12:29 | |
And in Alabama, when the time to vote would come, | 12:32 | |
and it wouldn't be more than 15 percent | 12:37 | |
of the voting population that would cast a ballot. | 12:40 | |
Isn't that right, John? | 12:43 | |
Man | That's right. | 12:44 |
- | A tiny, you know, minority ever cast a vote. | 12:45 |
Well, it meanth they had no power | 12:52 | |
and that everything was controlled completely | 12:55 | |
by white men, and it was always the same white men, | 12:57 | |
you know, they just had bigoted views, they called them | 13:04 | |
About everything. | 13:09 | |
So it really wasn't when they started | 13:12 | |
the fight for the right to vote here in Montgomery | 13:19 | |
had gone on before we ever came back here in 1951. | 13:23 | |
Now Johnny can tell you about that because that started | 13:26 | |
back before we got here in 1951. | 13:30 | |
Mr. Nixon I think it was started the, uh, | 13:34 | |
Did he start the voting club, or who did? | 13:38 | |
- | Cooper Lewis | 13:41 |
- | Cooper Lewis? | |
Well, you tell about it | 13:43 | |
Man | Okay, if we're gonna do that then, | 13:46 |
we'll get Charlie. | 13:48 | |
Second Woman | And I wanna hear about the Women's | 13:51 |
Political Council and how you started that | 13:53 | |
and the work that you did. | 13:57 | |
That's really important that we hear hear that. | 13:59 | |
- | (inaudible) that I started the women's political council? | 14:02 |
- | Well you and Joanne Robinson. | 14:04 |
- | Joanne Robinson. | 14:07 |
Joanne Robinson, Mrs. West, and some others. | 14:10 | |
But I did not start it, but I was part of it. | 14:14 | |
And as part of the community and because of | 14:18 | |
my work in the community, I was invited | 14:21 | |
- | And I'd like to know how you all met each other. | 14:26 |
(laughter) | 14:31 | |
- | We couldn't help it, it was inevitable. | 14:36 |
Well we belonged to something called the Churchwomen United. | 14:39 | |
And later, Mrs. Tilly, over in Atlanta Georgia, who was | 14:43 | |
a great Methodist lady, and who was head of | 14:49 | |
the Methodist women, she came over and she joined something | 14:52 | |
called the Fellowship of the Concerned. | 14:57 | |
And that was in (inaudible) | 15:00 | |
And somebody oughta write a book about Ms. Tilly. | 15:05 | |
She was a wonderful woman. But the first thing that started | 15:08 | |
was called the Churchwomen United | 15:11 | |
and that started here, and we used to have integrated | 15:15 | |
meetings in various churches and Mrs. Johnny | 15:19 | |
was one of the leaders, and then there was | 15:23 | |
Mrs. Olive Andrews | 15:29 | |
who was a white woman, and she was one of them. | 15:32 | |
And Mrs. Rutledge | 15:37 | |
And Mrs. Foster whose husband was president of Tuskegee | 15:41 | |
She used to come to meetings | 15:44 | |
And there was a Mrs. (inaudible) whose sister was named | 15:47 | |
(inaudible) the college, you know? Simpson? | 15:51 | |
And Ms. Campbell, Ms. Alexander | 15:58 | |
And we'd meet and we wouldn't do actually very much | 16:03 | |
but meet together. | 16:07 | |
- | Did you know Clarie Collins Harvey | 16:09 |
in Mississippi who was president of Church Women United? | 16:11 | |
She was a Black woman and (inaudible) | 16:15 | |
- | The national Church Women United? | 16:18 |
Clarie Collins Harvey, who became later, this was 1975, | 16:22 | |
became national president of Church Women United | 16:27 | |
Mississippi, from Jackson, she was the first Southerner | 16:33 | |
and the first black woman. | 16:36 | |
- | I'm trying to remember, I didn't know her at the time | 16:41 |
But I had met (inaudible) | 16:44 | |
I'm trying to remember her husband | 16:45 | |
Second Woman | Hmm-mm. | 16:49 |
- | I have one of his books, but I never, you know, met her | 16:54 |
Because I didn't get involved in the national until... | 17:00 | |
(inaudible) | 17:08 | |
'77. It was '77. | 17:11 | |
We really didn't do anything except meet together and pray. | 17:14 | |
And we usually met in black churches, 'cause no white church | 17:19 | |
would have us, but they did have us at the | 17:22 | |
Orthodox Greek Church. | 17:30 | |
Remember that one time? | 17:35 | |
(laughter) | 17:43 | |
And then the Catholics had us at St. Jude's. | 17:44 | |
That was the day that they attacked us. | 17:46 | |
There was a man here named John Collin | 17:51 | |
who had a group of people. | 17:54 | |
What was the name of his organization? | 17:56 | |
Anyway, it was extremely racist. | 17:58 | |
What was the name of it? | 18:00 | |
Anyway, he came that day and took our names, and addresses | 18:07 | |
and telephone numbers and got them | 18:12 | |
all on a license to pay. | 18:15 | |
Then he began a series of calling people up | 18:18 | |
and annoying them, threatening them | 18:22 | |
- | What did your husband say about you all women | 18:27 |
being in this situation? (laughs) | 18:30 | |
Did they go along with this idea? | 18:34 | |
Because certainly that was radical at such a time. | 18:36 | |
- | (laughs) It's funny you say it was radical. | 18:40 |
Second Woman | At that time! | 18:43 |
- | Well my husband thought it was my idea. | 18:46 |
(inaudible) | 18:51 | |
Man | Okay, we are just about ready to go. | 18:57 |
Mrs. Carr, would you say a couple things | 19:01 | |
so we can make sure of your sound. | 19:03 | |
Woman | Ms. Virginia, how you feelin' this morning? | 19:07 |
Man | Okay. | 19:12 |
Second Man | That mic might be too low. | 19:13 |
I think it might have slipped. | 19:15 | |
Man | Apparently so. | 19:26 |
How's that? | 19:31 | |
Testing one, two, three, four. | 19:32 | |
Mic check one, two, three four | 19:36 | |
Second Woman | That's gonna be low, I can tell | 19:43 |
by the way that mic is situated. | 19:46 | |
Man | Yeah. | 19:48 |
(group chatter) | 19:53 | |
Second Woman | Mrs. Carr, are you from Montgomery? | 20:05 |
Originally? | 20:08 | |
- | Mrs. Carr's a great friend of Mrs. (inaudible) | 20:13 |
they went to school together as young women, girls | 20:16 | |
and they've been very close friends for years and years | 20:21 | |
(inaudible) | 20:25 | |
(inaudible) | 21:01 | |
(inaudible) | 21:10 | |
- | What's the matter? | 21:16 |
Man | Well, we have just a little bit of a sound problem. | 21:18 |
Let me check one thing out. | 21:19 | |
Test one, two, three. | 21:22 | |
Second Man | Not bad. | 21:37 |
Man | Can you hear anything through the head set? | 21:39 |
One, two, three. | 21:47 | |
Second Man | There is a little hiss. | 21:48 |
Well we're gonna have to go with it. | 21:50 | |
We don't know what's wrong. | 21:52 | |
Second Woman | I'm gonna get my daughter (inaudible) | 21:56 |
(laughter) | 21:59 | |
Man | Okay, we're ready to go. | 22:00 |
Second Woman | Let me know when you get tired, | 22:02 |
and we can stop. | 22:04 | |
Cause they are editing this so we don't... | 22:06 | |
Woman | I just don't know how long it's gonna take. | 22:12 |
Man | Okay, please. | 22:21 |
- | Well, you have to realize, and this is the last thing | 22:22 |
I'm gonna say. You have to realize | 22:25 | |
That this is what makes T.V. very difficult. | 22:26 | |
Man | Absolutely. | 22:31 |
Woman | Because the thing is when she asks what you're | 22:32 |
saying or what you're doing- | 22:35 | |
I've been on T.V. a number of times, | 22:37 | |
and I've never known it yet not to break down. | 22:39 | |
So you really do- | 22:42 | |
It's just constant interruption. | 22:45 | |
And you do feel, you know, that what you have to say | 22:47 | |
is all rolled over the (inaudible) | 22:50 | |
Second Woman | And trying to get the story. | 22:52 |
Woman | When the damn thing breaks down all the time! | 22:55 |
Man | Ms. Dare, I've been in the business for 15 years, | 22:59 |
and I've had the exact same experiences you've had. | 23:00 | |
I have not been anywhere where the machinery hasn't | 23:03 | |
broken down. | 23:05 | |
Woman | Why does it break down? | 23:06 |
Man | Because you're dealing with 8,000 little tiny bitty | 23:07 |
parts that all have to work, you know? | 23:10 | |
And writers have it relatively easy. | 23:12 | |
They can take a pencil and an old piece of paper, | 23:14 | |
and write down a thought. | 23:16 | |
Second Woman | Well that's why I choose to write. | 23:19 |
(laughter) | 23:20 | |
Well because... and this was a problem. | 23:23 | |
When I went to Mississippi to (inaudible) | 23:26 | |
You know, these people didn't know me | 23:29 | |
I had to sit down with you for two hours | 23:31 | |
and tell you what I did with my story. | 23:33 | |
And I had to get to know people first before | 23:36 | |
I was even able to talk to them. | 23:38 | |
- | Well, we have been here now, you know nearly 45 minutes | 23:44 |
and we have had about 5 or 10 minutes of conversation | 23:47 | |
Man | Twenty. We've had twenty minutes of conversation. | 23:51 |
And actually 50 percent of the time being done on tape, | 23:55 | |
it's not a bad ratio. | 23:58 | |
So we're ready to go. | 24:00 | |
(laughter) | 24:01 | |
- | alright, we're rolling | 24:02 |
- | Why don't you, you were giving a talk about... | 24:07 |
I asked you about your husbands being | 24:11 | |
supportive of your work | 24:12 | |
about this inter-racial prayer group. | 24:15 | |
- | In the first place, inter-racial prayer group... | 24:19 |
The fact that everybody took exception to it showed that | 24:21 | |
They were absolutely madly racist because we were as | 24:24 | |
respectable a group of women as you could find anywhere. | 24:28 | |
In the wide world. We were all church-goers, we all believed | 24:32 | |
in the Christian religion as far as I can remember. | 24:36 | |
We opened with prayer and closed with prayer. | 24:42 | |
And the thing was that I think we were carrying after | 24:47 | |
the very best that women could do | 24:51 | |
in the situation that we were in | 24:54 | |
This was the one place we could meet together | 24:57 | |
without being, you know, arrested | 25:00 | |
taken to jail | 25:05 | |
and you know it was so hard for you young people to realize | 25:07 | |
That just being together in the same place could cause | 25:11 | |
them to arrest you | 25:14 | |
That's just awfully difficult for you to imagine | 25:17 | |
- | You asked me if my husband | 25:26 |
went along with it. | 25:29 | |
My husband had been supportive of all of the work | 25:31 | |
that I had been doing, the civil rights work | 25:34 | |
even before the movement started in 1955. | 25:36 | |
Because Rosa Parks and I both worked with the NAACP | 25:40 | |
of which Mr. Nixon at one time was the president | 25:43 | |
And we worked together in the community | 25:46 | |
So we had a relationship with each other, Rosa and I, | 25:49 | |
and also my husband supported me, whatever I was doing | 25:55 | |
with Civil Rights, all the time. | 25:59 | |
So I had no problem with that. | 26:01 | |
Two things I had in my favor: my job and my home. | 26:03 | |
I worked for the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, | 26:07 | |
and I had no problem with it agreeing with my job. | 26:11 | |
'Course I had the support at home from my family. | 26:17 | |
- | Okay, can you all talk a bit about the Freedom Riders? | 26:21 |
That first came into town in 1961 | 26:24 | |
How you (inaudible) going in | 26:27 | |
What was your reaction? | 26:30 | |
- | Well, we'd been hearing about 'em comin', | 26:33 |
and my husband had an office right across | 26:36 | |
from the bus station, and there was this group of men | 26:38 | |
that were hangin' around the station all the time, | 26:42 | |
and everybody knew they were Ku Klux's. | 26:44 | |
You know, uh, what did you call them? | 26:47 | |
White Citizen's Councilmen. | 26:52 | |
So we knew that the Ku Klux was comin', | 26:56 | |
but the morning it came, I went down | 27:01 | |
to pick up the mail | 27:06 | |
and I had a friend with me, named Jessica (inaudible) | 27:08 | |
who was a writer, (inaudible) is her novel | 27:10 | |
and so we got to the office, | 27:15 | |
and she went down out of the car and | 27:20 | |
went into the bus station, because she saw there was a crowd | 27:22 | |
and I was left with the car, | 27:26 | |
so I finally parked it and went up to the office | 27:28 | |
so I could see what was goin' on, and there was a riot. | 27:32 | |
And the bus had come in and the people had gotten off | 27:36 | |
and they were being beaten up, and it was just a terrible | 27:40 | |
sight to see, and being hauled off, you know, in paddiwagons | 27:43 | |
And then some of 'em being put in (inaudible) | 27:51 | |
And then the next night, we drove by the, uh, | 27:59 | |
Grace Baptist Church | 28:06 | |
and they were having a Mass meeting, and that church | 28:11 | |
was just surrounded by a mob. | 28:14 | |
And Jessica (inaudible), the writer, said she was goin' in | 28:18 | |
and we told her she'd be in trouble, but she went anyway. | 28:22 | |
We took my car, and the car got banged up, and she got | 28:26 | |
caught in that church 'til four o'clock the next morning, | 28:30 | |
when the national guard got out | 28:33 | |
and it was just a terrifying picture. | 28:35 | |
Everybody was just terrified | 28:38 | |
you were scared people were gonna be dead | 28:39 | |
Because it was just a mob, and Dr. King came over. | 28:43 | |
And he tried to, you know | 28:48 | |
And then I do think that Bobby Kennedy said it was a mob. | 28:50 | |
- | I can remember very well that | 28:59 |
it was on a Saturday, and we had gone to Tuskegee | 29:03 | |
to take a group of boys out | 29:06 | |
on the tour, and I was incidentally carrying my little | 29:09 | |
small transistor radio with me | 29:13 | |
and I put the radio on and we heard all this commotion from | 29:16 | |
the police, saying "move over, move over. Cross over." | 29:20 | |
We got around the radio and began to listen | 29:26 | |
and that was when we heard them saying that there were | 29:29 | |
people being beaten, the ambulances couldn't get in | 29:31 | |
But we were in Tuskegee with these children | 29:37 | |
And we came home, and that night, they had a meeting | 29:39 | |
At one of the churches, the organizers were getting ready | 29:42 | |
for a mass meeting on Sunday night and a lot of people | 29:45 | |
were afraid to go out over there with all this commotion | 29:48 | |
At the bus station. But incidentally enough (inaudible) | 29:53 | |
I went to find out what was going on, and they were getting | 29:59 | |
ready to have this mass meeting at First Baptist Church | 30:02 | |
That Sunday night. | 30:05 | |
That Sunday night, when we went down to the church, | 30:07 | |
I never got in the church, because I got within a block | 30:11 | |
of the church, and it was so crowded. | 30:14 | |
But later my husband was sitting on the porch, | 30:17 | |
and he said, "You cannot get in that church," | 30:19 | |
and I said, "I bet I will." | 30:22 | |
But I had two persons with me, and they weren't ready | 30:23 | |
to go on, so we stopped at their house. | 30:26 | |
I saw Mrs. Durr's car when it was being robbed. | 30:27 | |
The guys got on the car and rocked the car, | 30:32 | |
and flipped it over, and the gas started running out. | 30:34 | |
It was a mess. | 30:37 | |
We were looking at that when it happened, right down | 30:38 | |
on the corner from the house where we were. | 30:41 | |
We stayed at this house until about 12 o'clock that night, | 30:43 | |
because we couldn't get down to the church. | 30:46 | |
And these people in the streets were a mob. | 30:49 | |
And that was the first time I had ever really seen a mob. | 30:53 | |
People were running up and down the streets, | 30:55 | |
and there was one white girl with long hair | 30:57 | |
like a horse mane | 31:00 | |
and she just kept doing a cat call. | 31:02 | |
That was all she would do was keep doin' a cat call. | 31:04 | |
But we stayed and watched inside this house where we were | 31:07 | |
The commotion that was going on | 31:10 | |
So when those trucks went down, with those marshalls | 31:13 | |
and it kind of quieted down | 31:15 | |
I told my husband and my nephew, I said, "We're going home." | 31:18 | |
I said let's walk right on out, go close together, | 31:22 | |
and don't stop. | 31:26 | |
Get to the car and we're going home, and we did. | 31:28 | |
We got home about one o'clock, | 31:30 | |
but the people stayed in First Baptist Church | 31:32 | |
all night that night, til about 4 o'clock that morning | 31:34 | |
Before they were allowed to go home | 31:36 | |
- | That was when they called out | 31:38 |
the National Guard. | 31:40 | |
- | Right, uh-huh. | 31:41 |
And they had the National Guard | 31:42 | |
and the Marshalls were there. To help people | 31:43 | |
Because what the city was doing, was nothing. | 31:46 | |
And so the National Guard had to come out | 31:49 | |
I guess because (inaudible) | 31:52 | |
But because of the leaders that were down in the church | 31:55 | |
And they had communications with national leadership | 31:57 | |
and that was what helped to get things (inaudible) | 32:01 | |
And the days after then, Ralph Abernathy, who lived | 32:05 | |
right down the street from me, on Hall St. | 32:08 | |
And the days after then | 32:11 | |
They were stationed around his house, to protect his house. | 32:14 | |
It was just really something else | 32:17 | |
We knew about the bus, I mean her car being burned | 32:21 | |
and abut the people that were beaten at the bus station. | 32:26 | |
- | Talk a bit about your personal involvement | 32:30 |
in the movement, okay, | 32:32 | |
what roles you both personally played? | 32:34 | |
Certainly (inaudible) | 32:36 | |
To participate in the Civil Rights Movement, | 32:38 | |
meant almost being judged as a pariah among (inaudible) | 32:42 | |
can you tell us about that? | 32:47 | |
- | Well you see, you gotta understand that my husband | 32:48 |
was a lawyer, and I was his secretary. | 32:50 | |
And he was always the one that did the big doings | 32:53 | |
He had all these people came to him as a lawyer | 32:57 | |
and his clients, and his nephew's name was (inaudible) | 33:02 | |
had begun taking Black clients | 33:07 | |
Civil Rights cases, and then when my husband | 33:10 | |
who was in the same office as (inaudible) he began | 33:15 | |
to inherit, and Mr. Nixon who was the head of the NAACP | 33:18 | |
was always bringing clients | 33:23 | |
And there were always cases my husband | 33:26 | |
thought were, you know, were really daring. | 33:31 | |
And I look back on my life, and always feel that what he did | 33:38 | |
He's the one that got Ms. Parks out of jail and he's the one | 33:41 | |
and he's the one that Mr. Nixon made | 33:45 | |
put up the bail money, who's dead now. | 33:51 | |
He put up the bail money, but my husband | 33:54 | |
did all the legal work to get them out of the jail | 33:57 | |
That was the night we took 'em home, and that was the night | 33:59 | |
that she decided she was going to carry | 34:02 | |
the case on through the Supreme Court. | 34:05 | |
And then that meant that Fred Gray who was the lawyer | 34:08 | |
for the NAACP took the case over because the law... | 34:13 | |
because the NAACP had to, you know, pay the bills | 34:17 | |
and carry the case on through. | 34:23 | |
But my husband worked with him. | 34:26 | |
You know it was (inaudible) | 34:33 | |
I told you before, I had gone all through this in Washington | 34:38 | |
I'd gone through the whole struggle in Washington before | 34:44 | |
and so the one in Alabama | 34:47 | |
didn't have the support we had in Washingtn | 34:50 | |
But by that time I was thoroughly convinced | 34:53 | |
that, you know, we were right. | 34:57 | |
I spent 20 years in Washington, and I certainly | 35:02 | |
learned that segregation was wrong. | 35:05 | |
People had the right to vote. | 35:10 | |
(laughter) | 35:12 | |
She's a revolutionary. | 35:15 | |
For thinking people had a right to vote and | 35:17 | |
shouldn't be segregated | 35:21 | |
Segregation in the South was so blatant | 35:26 | |
If you know what I mean | 35:30 | |
If you were a librarian as a Black person in the South | 35:35 | |
(inaudible) very difficult | 35:40 | |
And I had a friend who was a librarian. | 35:44 | |
And, now they did take after her | 35:48 | |
She got so upset, she committed suicide | 35:50 | |
(inaudible) | 35:53 | |
But she got harassed a lot | 35:58 | |
- | Tell us about your personal involvement. | 36:01 |
- | My personal involvement in the movement | 36:03 |
began when the movement first started. | 36:05 | |
When Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1st, 1955 | 36:08 | |
That night Mr. Nixon called me | 36:12 | |
'course we had been working together, | 36:16 | |
and he said to me, "Mrs. Carr" | 36:17 | |
he said, "they have arrested the wrong woman." | 36:20 | |
I said, "Who have they arrested now?" | 36:23 | |
He said, "Rosa." | 36:24 | |
I said, "Not Rosa Parks?" | ||
He said yes they had arrested Rosa Parks. | 36:27 | |
And he told me he had been and got her out of jail that day | 36:29 | |
He said, "I don't know what the end result's gonna be | 36:32 | |
but they have arrested the wrong woman." | 36:34 | |
And that was the end of our conversation. | 36:37 | |
And on Saturday, when they were getting organized | 36:39 | |
to have the mass meeting that was | 36:42 | |
gonna be held that Monday night, they had some of those | 36:44 | |
scrips of paper where they had made the announcements | 36:47 | |
that they wanted to put out in the community. | 36:50 | |
And I was called and asked to help distribute those. | 36:53 | |
I was not able to do that because I had | 36:58 | |
to go to Birmingham for a board meeting. | 37:01 | |
And I could not help them do it. | 37:05 | |
But I did organize my section, and had some other | 37:08 | |
persons participate and put those things out. | 37:11 | |
Little pieces of paper, the little announcements that we had | 37:14 | |
And I've heard so many versions of this but | 37:21 | |
(inaudible) related | 37:23 | |
One said that a black woman got one and carried | 37:26 | |
it to the lady that she worked with. | 37:29 | |
And she notified the official that | 37:31 | |
the Blacks were fixing have an uprising | 37:34 | |
And some said that Mr. Nixon got a person who worked at | 37:36 | |
the chamber (cross talk) and told him about it | 37:39 | |
And he was the one that- | 37:42 | |
But anyway, whatever happened, the paper that Sunday | 37:44 | |
had a big spread about the Blacks that were going to | 37:48 | |
have this uprising and boycott and whatever | 37:52 | |
So then the ministers in the pulpit on Sunday | 37:55 | |
told us to go announce that we had | 37:58 | |
plus a spread in the paper | 38:02 | |
and it was on the radio and T.V., | 38:03 | |
but in spite of all of that, that Monday morning, | 38:07 | |
when we were asked to stay off the bus, | 38:10 | |
the city officials put two policemen behind each bus | 38:13 | |
that went on the run that morning | 38:17 | |
cause they said "goons," or Blacks | 38:19 | |
are gonna get people off the bus | 38:21 | |
and we had no idea of doing anything like that | 38:23 | |
But that's what they said. so those who didn't get | 38:27 | |
the announcement or go to church, didn't hear the radio | 38:29 | |
or see the newspaper, when they saw those two policemen | 38:32 | |
behind those buses, they didn't ride the bus. | 38:34 | |
It made it almost 100 percent effective, because people, | 38:39 | |
who didn't get any of the announcements, when they saw | 38:42 | |
those policemen, they knew there was something wrong | 38:45 | |
and they did not ride the bus, so that December 5th | 38:47 | |
When we were asked to stay off the buses | 38:50 | |
We found that it was really successful | 38:56 | |
Because the buses ran empty all day that day. | 38:58 | |
And then that night we had a mass meeting | 39:01 | |
and of course I was asked to serve in several committees | 39:03 | |
on the movement, because of being a person in the community | 39:06 | |
as I said, working for Atlanta Life Insurance | 39:10 | |
free to do as I please as far | 39:12 | |
as my job is concerned, and having support from my family, | 39:14 | |
I was not afraid to participate in what was going on, | 39:17 | |
and certainly I was involved in it. | 39:21 | |
In doing the process of the movement, | 39:23 | |
there were groups in different cities who wanted people | 39:26 | |
from the movement to come and appear to tell the story. | 39:30 | |
And I remember I had three engagements that I filled | 39:35 | |
for that (inaudible) | 39:38 | |
I went to speak to the NAACP state meeting. | 39:44 | |
And the next one I went was to Chicago, Illinois. | 39:47 | |
The Illinois Women's State Convention | 39:50 | |
was having their meeting and I went there. | 39:52 | |
And the next one was in Newark, New Jersey. | 39:55 | |
The Council of Negro Women was having their original meeting | 39:57 | |
and I was asked to go there and speak | 40:00 | |
And as we went to these various places to speak | 40:02 | |
They would send contributions back to help our movement here | 40:05 | |
And I was able to participate in going to some of the places | 40:07 | |
Rosa went to some, Dr. King, Dr. Abernathy | 40:13 | |
well many of the leaders went to some of those places too | 40:16 | |
To help tell the story and also to bring funds back | 40:20 | |
To help the organization | 40:23 | |
So I was involved in it from the very inception | 40:25 | |
And I had been involved in the community with the NAACP | 40:28 | |
- | What was the Women's Political Council? | 40:34 |
- | The Women's Political Council grew out of the fact that | 40:35 |
we have a League of Women Voters here | 40:38 | |
The League of Women Voters did not accept black women | 40:40 | |
in their organization. | 40:43 | |
Mrs. Robinson and Mary Fair Burks and some other women, | 40:47 | |
when they found that we could not join | 40:51 | |
the League of Women Voters here, locally, | 40:53 | |
they applied to the national that we would have | 40:55 | |
a Negro League of Women Voters for the Blacks | 40:58 | |
But they said they could not have two in the same city, | 41:01 | |
and so that's how the political council of women | 41:05 | |
or, Women's Political Council got organized. | 41:09 | |
They decided to have a political organization of black women | 41:11 | |
And this is what we were doing | 41:15 | |
- | Well you know that the Women's Political Council | 41:25 |
I was called over to New Orleans, you know, by Jim Eastland | 41:31 | |
And accused of trying to overthrow the government | 41:36 | |
by force and violence | 41:39 | |
So I got a Pell Grant | 41:43 | |
They said, "Hooray, we'll call you," you know | 41:45 | |
"We'll stand by you." | 41:53 | |
Women's Political Council. | 41:55 | |
And I got home, they invited me to a meeting, and I said, | 41:59 | |
"Why did you have them send me a telegram?" | 42:03 | |
They said, "Jim Eastland's against you, | 42:07 | |
we figured you were OK." | 42:09 | |
(laughter) | 42:12 | |
- | Why would Jim Eastland say that | 42:13 |
you tried to overthrow the government? | 42:16 | |
- | Well he said that about everybody that | 42:20 |
was trying to do away with segregation, and get the vote | 42:22 | |
because he claimed it meant you were a Communist | 42:27 | |
and you were trying to have a revolution | 42:32 | |
to overthrow the government by force of violence | 42:35 | |
And he thought everbody was trying to... | 42:37 | |
Fannie Lou Hamer, you know who she was | 42:41 | |
She was on his plantation, and she finally had to leave. | 42:43 | |
But he was probably one of the most racist men | 42:49 | |
in the South, wouldn't you say so? | 42:51 | |
(inaudible) | 42:55 | |
- | He just built a statue, a monument | 43:08 |
(inaudible) himself and his brothers. | 43:11 | |
- | The thing that was (inaudible) about the women is | 43:20 |
that there was a very natural | 43:25 | |
group of black women in Montgomery | 43:30 | |
who were already leaders like | 43:34 | |
(inaudible) and Jo Ann Robinson | 43:36 | |
and the thing is that they had leaders in their churches | 43:41 | |
(inaudible) | 43:46 | |
but there was a very large group in Montgomery already | 43:50 | |
of women who were already leaders | 43:55 | |
And so the thing is that the whole thing with the women | 44:01 | |
they were just such wonderful and remarkable leaders | 44:05 | |
And the women that worked as maids over in the white homes | 44:08 | |
they were so remarkable, because they would walk to work | 44:14 | |
And they would just show | 44:20 | |
so much bravery and so much good sense. | 44:25 | |
It was just marvelous, the control they showed. | 44:31 | |
It was really a remarkable group of women. | 44:39 | |
And Jo Ann has written about a few of them | 44:43 | |
Jo Ann Robinson, but | 44:46 | |
and Parks has been written about | 44:49 | |
I just feel like there ought to be a whole book | 44:52 | |
written about them. | 44:55 | |
And I don't say that the men didn't help too, but I think | 44:59 | |
that the women were the ones that won the battle. | 45:04 | |
- | Well, I feel like (inaudible) | 45:12 |
during the movement, in 1955, there was one time | 45:17 | |
that we found that all people came together. | 45:22 | |
We had a lot of passion and we had a lot (inaudible) | 45:26 | |
But we had people who had been afraid | 45:31 | |
to come out and participate in anything | 45:33 | |
but when this came about they just lost their fear | 45:36 | |
or whatever it was and they came and got together | 45:38 | |
and Dr. King used to say that we had youths, (inaudible) | 45:41 | |
PhDs and Northerners all working together. | 45:47 | |
And incidentally this week I was in the archives | 45:52 | |
And I saw that (inaudible) | 45:56 | |
where in eighteen sixty... sixty something | 46:02 | |
that there were no women voting, only white men | 46:08 | |
and they had to have a certain standard | 46:13 | |
if they were able to vote | 46:16 | |
And black men were able to vote at that time because | 46:18 | |
if you remember, we did at one time have Black senators and | 46:20 | |
representatives and that type of persons before they | 46:24 | |
came along and set up the poll tax and all of the barriers | 46:27 | |
that came up and destroyed their right to vote. | 46:31 | |
And that's why we had to go back and fight so hard | 46:35 | |
for the right to vote and that's why | 46:37 | |
1965 was so significant | 46:39 | |
That everybody was given the right to vote | 46:44 | |
and the League of Women Voters here, I am a member | 46:46 | |
And I work with the League of Women Voters here | 46:48 | |
but at one time, we were not privileged to be members | 46:52 | |
of the League of Women Voters | 46:55 | |
And I don't ever let them forget it | 46:57 | |
but I will continue to talk about what we have done, | 46:59 | |
that we realize that we have come a long way, | 47:02 | |
because now we have a black woman president. | 47:05 | |
Of the local League of Women Voters | 47:08 |
- | Because my flash is (inaudible) | 0:03 |
- | Yeah, they are light sensitive. | 0:04 |
It will probably get a little darker as we go on. | 0:07 | |
January 16, 1988 Modjeska Simkins. | 0:12 | |
(woman speaking faintly in background) | 0:15 | |
Columbia, South Carolina. | 0:16 | |
(man speaking faintly) | 0:18 | |
No, I think, well they look fine from here. | 0:19 | |
- | Sound alright to you? | 0:35 |
- | What? | 0:36 |
- | Pardon? | |
Pretty rough? | 0:38 | |
- | We would need bars? | 0:41 |
- | Yeah, give me 30-second bars or so. | 0:42 |
- | Young men, excuse me. | 0:46 |
Look across and see if I pulled the phone off that hook | 0:48 | |
over in that bedroom, please | 0:50 | |
- | Straight across? | 0:52 |
- | Straight across. | 0:53 |
Just throw it. | 0:58 | |
Did I take it off? | 1:00 | |
- | Yes, ma'am. | 1:01 |
- | Alright. | |
(mumbling) | 1:06 | |
- | Well, | 1:17 |
probably going to install that? | 1:21 | |
- | Yeah. | 1:22 |
- | Can you tell me about how you got involved, | 1:30 |
you were here in Columbia? | 1:36 | |
- | Yeah, I was going to my church. | 1:38 |
- | Which one? | 1:41 |
I already received that | 1:46 | |
I nursed the civil rights movement with my mother | 1:51 | |
because my mother and father were famous people. | 1:53 | |
When I was a little girl, | 1:58 | |
when my father had worked (inaudible) | 2:00 | |
(inaudible) that may have caused the Industrial Revolution | 2:06 | |
in the South so that as a builder, a contractor, | 2:10 | |
a brick contractor, he worked on | 2:13 | |
(inaudible) as it was going from the agricultural era | 2:20 | |
to the industrial era, | 2:23 | |
and they were building enormous factories, | 2:26 | |
cotton factories, mills, and of course the raw materials too | 2:28 | |
and until I was old enough to go to school | 2:35 | |
which was about five years (inaudible) | 2:40 | |
I traveled with him sometimes | 2:42 | |
and on one occasion because whites didn't want to work | 2:45 | |
under his labor group, he was fired upon | 2:50 | |
and our home was fired into | 2:53 | |
and there would be an awkward (inaudible) | 2:55 | |
but | 2:58 | |
I'm trying to remember | 3:01 | |
my father's parents, my mother's parents | 3:03 | |
was just in my blood, so I didn't have to be | 3:05 | |
indoctrinated | 3:10 | |
about civil rights, and about how people should be free. | 3:11 | |
More than that, I was never taught to hate | 3:16 | |
white people so to speak because of what they did | 3:21 | |
to my parents. | 3:23 | |
as of now I can say that I don't hate anybody in the world | 3:26 | |
(inaudible) | 3:29 | |
But that's besides the point. | 3:33 | |
But I came up in a fearless | 3:35 | |
a fearless atmosphere | 3:37 | |
so that working as I have in the-- | 3:40 | |
I was state secretary of the NAACP | 3:43 | |
during the very trying years | 3:47 | |
of the | 3:50 | |
always of course as always from the time | 3:52 | |
even during slavery, even before | 3:54 | |
the Declaration of Independence | 3:57 | |
there were fearless Negros brought here enslaved | 3:59 | |
but they were fearless and there were insurrections | 4:01 | |
you don't hear much about them | 4:03 | |
but there were slave insurrections | 4:04 | |
So we can't say that all slaves were | 4:07 | |
had been beaten down so that they had | 4:12 | |
low spirits and lost the fighting-back | 4:13 | |
because a number of the slaves were members | 4:17 | |
of great fighting tribes in Africa, you see | 4:20 | |
and so the blood was there, right, | 4:24 | |
it was in the blood | 4:26 | |
so the way the civil rights movement started up first | 4:29 | |
became a high point with the authorization of the NAACP | 4:33 | |
in 1909. | 4:38 | |
History has a way of arising | 4:41 | |
see we're in a low | 4:46 | |
a low tide now in the civil rights movement in this country | 4:48 | |
but so that whether it had been arised with the starting | 4:52 | |
of the NACP in 1909 it quite accelerated | 4:56 | |
towards race relations and concentrating on | 5:01 | |
the lynching period. | 5:04 | |
Concentrating on lynchings and other inequities | 5:06 | |
inflicted upon Black people | 5:10 | |
There was (inaudible) | 5:13 | |
they didn't have the vote, | 5:17 | |
there was no way to fight back | 5:18 | |
all they could do was place themselves | 5:20 | |
as (inaudible) and beggars for rights. | 5:22 | |
And then beginning in the mid to late thirties | 5:25 | |
moving into the early forties, there came another rise | 5:30 | |
and the | 5:36 | |
the great civil rights cases then, you'll find | 5:39 | |
in several cases determining | 5:45 | |
the civil rights, the fight for civil rights, | 5:48 | |
for civil liberties and another rise | 5:52 | |
and in ubiquitous southern South Carolina | 5:55 | |
with the | 5:59 | |
unnatural fact that we didn't have the vote, | 6:02 | |
they had a time when my father always carried | 6:04 | |
a registration certificate he voted at every | 6:07 | |
election that he could, | 6:10 | |
but it was only every four years in the general election | 6:11 | |
but the South was governed by the white primary | 6:15 | |
and at times shut out the black voter. | 6:19 | |
So then, | 6:22 | |
the fight came against what we call the white primary | 6:24 | |
because it was governing the Solid South | 6:27 | |
and one of the | 6:32 | |
early cases was started in South Carolina | 6:34 | |
In the early forties, | 6:38 | |
I was state secretary of the NAACP at that time | 6:42 | |
which I was for about eleven years | 6:44 | |
and we carried up three cases from South Carolina. | 6:47 | |
Principally the case against the white primary. | 6:51 | |
Then there was a case, | 6:54 | |
asking, or fighting for bus transportation | 6:59 | |
because where white people had had transportation | 7:02 | |
in buses for years, | 7:06 | |
black children was still walking along | 7:08 | |
the side of the road | 7:10 | |
and even being, as the children said, | 7:11 | |
(inaudible) | 7:14 | |
fighting for people to have school buses. | 7:18 | |
My mother was a teacher before I was born | 7:21 | |
and she stopped when she started a family | 7:24 | |
and she never went back to teaching after that. | 7:27 | |
She gave birth to eight children, and | 7:30 | |
my baby sister was old enough to go to school | 7:33 | |
she was about seven or eight years of age | 7:35 | |
and about then my mother would tell me that this fight | 7:39 | |
was for the children, | 7:42 | |
all that liberty running, | 7:43 | |
not many of the shoulders of the roads were | 7:45 | |
paved as they are now, they just had asphalt, | 7:49 | |
you know, just running along in the middle | 7:53 | |
and nobody dug a little. | 7:54 | |
And then they just run off to a mud puddle | 7:56 | |
and just bounce over there and douse some mud | 7:58 | |
muddy water on the children | 8:00 | |
and I mean things like that. | 8:02 | |
Now the children themselves (inaudible) | 8:04 | |
white bus guys | 8:07 | |
they had gotten that from their parents. | 8:11 | |
I mean, they were, you know | 8:13 | |
it was (inaudible) | 8:15 | |
the niggers just weren't any good | 8:18 | |
The niggers ain't no good, whatever you tell them | 8:20 | |
just like (inaudible). | 8:23 | |
From the social system coming out of slavery | 8:26 | |
where slaves were beasts of burden so to speak | 8:31 | |
they weren't considered full human beings | 8:36 | |
and they were | 8:39 | |
when the census was taken their census was taken | 8:42 | |
with the cows and the horses and the sheep | 8:45 | |
and the turkeys and (mumbles). | 8:47 | |
So that was in the blood | 8:52 | |
and there's an old saying that | 8:56 | |
what's in the flesh you can't beat out of the flesh. | 9:01 | |
So generations of inequities and training children | 9:06 | |
fathers their sons and mother their daughters, | 9:11 | |
that niggers weren't any good. | 9:15 | |
You couldn't expect anything else out of the white children | 9:17 | |
driving school buses or spitting on blacks | 9:19 | |
from school buses, you see | 9:22 | |
It was in the bone. | 9:24 | |
Couldn't beat it out of the flesh. | 9:25 | |
Nobody tried to beat it out, | 9:27 | |
but the fact is, that's the reason I'm explaining to you | 9:29 | |
how with all of this that I lived through | 9:33 | |
and the lynchings almost every Saturday night, | 9:36 | |
There's a book called 100 Years of Lynchings it tells about | 9:39 | |
these various awful things that happened | 9:42 | |
to the victims of the lynch mobs. | 9:46 | |
Now my mother read all of those things to the children, | 9:48 | |
the average parent doesn't want the child to know about | 9:53 | |
the bad things as they see them. | 9:56 | |
But after we were through and my father finally | 9:58 | |
moved us the country--I was born in the city | 10:00 | |
moved us to the country where he said | 10:03 | |
he wanted his children to learn the value of work | 10:05 | |
and the value of a dollar | 10:07 | |
So we were moved to a farm although my parents | 10:10 | |
were born in the city, we learned about farming. | 10:12 | |
They moved us out there and then we did learn from it. | 10:15 | |
But after the fieldwork we had the state paper | 10:19 | |
the paper at this time (inaudible) | 10:23 | |
And it's always in my memory we took the paper at night | 10:26 | |
after farm work, got into bed, all that kind of thing. | 10:29 | |
My mother read the paper to us | 10:33 | |
and always she read about the lynchings and all the | 10:35 | |
and the million things that these people do | 10:38 | |
they were burnt and emaciated in these lynchings | 10:40 | |
lynching things. | 10:44 | |
There is a book as I said called 100 Years of Lynchings | 10:46 | |
it tells absolutely about the lynchings in South Carolina | 10:49 | |
and so that | 10:53 | |
not only were my parents fearless | 10:55 | |
but they taught us that nobody was better than you | 11:00 | |
My father kept guns all the time. | 11:07 | |
A Winchester Rifle, a 17 shooter. | 11:12 | |
He had a shotgun, a (inaudible) shotgun | 11:16 | |
and he had targets out in the back | 11:21 | |
but (mumbles) it was a very fine shotgun | 11:23 | |
and he packed his own shells. | 11:28 | |
You all are too young to know about that | 11:30 | |
when you see cartridges, they're already packed. | 11:32 | |
My father and others in that time of the empty shells | 11:35 | |
were piling into one end | 11:40 | |
and the shots, you know the shots, | 11:42 | |
and packed the shells, so I saw my father packing his shells | 11:46 | |
one day in midwinter, I saw the buck shot | 11:51 | |
and I saw the little bird shell, | 11:55 | |
so, | 11:57 | |
I asked him about that and he said "well you use the shells | 12:00 | |
"to for the birds | 12:03 | |
"and then you use these others if anybody's bothering you." | 12:05 | |
He didn't tell me anymore than that. | 12:07 | |
But later, I was asked that question, | 12:10 | |
and to a woman that was here the other day, | 12:14 | |
and I said that my father packed his shells like that | 12:19 | |
and she said, | 12:22 | |
I said he packed the bird shot for the birds | 12:24 | |
and he packed the buck shots for | 12:27 | |
for (laughing) | 12:31 | |
I said who ever bothered him? | 12:34 | |
But he was, he had those things so that if anybody | 12:36 | |
came up to his house, they'd be loaded with some buck shots | 12:40 | |
so we were in El Dorado as I said, El Do-ray-da | 12:44 | |
as they called it in Arkansas. | 12:47 | |
A mark came to the house | 12:49 | |
because they didn't want to work under my father | 12:51 | |
as the foreman on this job | 12:54 | |
they were motor carriers. | 12:56 | |
Carrying all them buckets of wheat bearers | 12:58 | |
and (inaudible) like they do now. | 13:00 | |
they didn't want to work on either side | 13:04 | |
so my father sent the family back to South Carolina | 13:06 | |
and he stayed there and worked under guard | 13:09 | |
A guard on either side of him with a gun. | 13:11 | |
That's the kind of stuff I came out of, | 13:14 | |
I'm trying to explain, | 13:15 | |
nobody had to tell me of these terrors | 13:17 | |
I was born that way, I was taught. | 13:20 | |
Taught that way. I don't mean to say there's not bigotry now | 13:22 | |
It's just--we just don't take anything. | 13:25 | |
Somebody sat in this house just 48 hours ago | 13:28 | |
and told me how some teachers were hurt about how | 13:32 | |
they were treated in this town, but they don't | 13:35 | |
know whether they ought to say anything. | 13:37 | |
Well I didn't tell them (inaudible) but | 13:40 | |
anybody in this day and time that has the law on their side | 13:44 | |
if they want to go on and fight it | 13:48 | |
if they don't stand up and let somebody made out of meat | 13:50 | |
just like they are and do them any kind of way | 13:52 | |
I don't have respect for them | 13:55 | |
(inaudible) you know? | 13:56 | |
That gives you something about my philosophy (inaudible) | 14:02 | |
The types of social action that Blacks had to do | 14:08 | |
and of course in this country | 14:13 | |
the power structure does not respect people | 14:16 | |
who cannot make their way | 14:20 | |
to protect themselves well. | 14:22 | |
They aren't | 14:24 | |
if you have been or if you go into the mountainous areas | 14:27 | |
of Tennessee and Kentucky and West Virginia | 14:31 | |
you'll find the very poor whites | 14:35 | |
and there's nothing in the world as pitiful | 14:38 | |
as a poor, hungry beaten, down po' (tag?) | 14:40 | |
because he expects his skin to save him | 14:46 | |
just because he's white. | 14:48 | |
But the man in power, money power, and political power | 14:51 | |
doesn't give a damn about a poor (tag?) anymore | 14:54 | |
than he does about a black negro | 14:56 | |
and I've seen them all horse and tail | 15:00 | |
you read about them up in the mountains. | 15:01 | |
So the power structure in this country is heartless. | 15:04 | |
We have on our money, | 15:11 | |
what's that thing they have on the money, | 15:14 | |
"in God we trust." | 15:16 | |
Dirty lie. | 15:18 | |
(inaudible) | 15:20 | |
(inaudible) they oughta erase everything, | 15:21 | |
off every coin and every greenback. "In God we trust!" | 15:24 | |
it's a lie. | 15:26 | |
It's a damn lie. | 15:27 | |
So now, coming down to the forties, | 15:30 | |
I'm giving you a background. | 15:34 | |
- | Tell me about what you did in the fifties now | 15:36 |
or in the sixties during the movement itself. | 15:39 | |
- | Well coming down, I'm giving you the atmosphere. | 15:41 |
- | Okay. | 15:44 |
- | We'll be working here. | 15:45 |
- | Yeah. | 15:46 |
- | Now coming down to the | 15:47 |
we won the case for the white primary in '48 | 15:49 | |
and then we - that's the time we got the movement started | 15:54 | |
to make people get ready to vote. | 15:57 | |
So then, even when we won the white primary case, | 15:59 | |
there were different subterfuges set up | 16:04 | |
by the power structure to cut the black vote | 16:06 | |
as much as they could | 16:09 | |
which meant that even up until the Johnson administration | 16:11 | |
we were still fighting, coming up to the sixties, | 16:16 | |
we were still fighting for | 16:19 | |
an unobstructed voting process | 16:22 | |
and of course for better educational advantages | 16:25 | |
and also for the use of public facilities. | 16:30 | |
The Greensboro, the movement up around Greensboro | 16:35 | |
that largely started there, developed around lunch | 16:37 | |
the use of the lunch counters you know | 16:40 | |
and here ours was centered around political action | 16:42 | |
and also the inequity of teachers' salaries. | 16:46 | |
I taught, I was in the department of mathematics | 16:50 | |
here in the city schools. | 16:52 | |
I taught for six classes, for about nine years. | 16:53 | |
I was in the | 16:58 | |
in the line at the bank on payday | 17:01 | |
getting paid up and somehow I got a mind to kind of | 17:05 | |
go out and go around the corner and look, you know, | 17:09 | |
women, they have short (inaudible), | 17:10 | |
y'all don't know about women, you're too young | 17:12 | |
but, | 17:14 | |
there was a woman, a white woman | 17:16 | |
about two people in front of me | 17:17 | |
and I was just kind of looking at and I found that | 17:20 | |
(inaudible) I taught sixth grade | 17:23 | |
because (inaudible) over there in mathematics | 17:25 | |
and I heard her say she was a sixth grade teacher | 17:28 | |
and when she | 17:32 | |
I kind of sidled around until I found that her | 17:34 | |
check was twice as much as my check, | 17:36 | |
yet if I wasn't short about a half | 17:40 | |
(inaudible) | 17:42 | |
and I know you can't pay what we get paid | 17:44 | |
(inaudible) | 17:45 | |
That didn't happen. | 17:48 | |
I didn't expect it to happen. | 17:50 | |
So then we went, and leading up to the sixties, | 17:52 | |
late fifties to sixties. | 17:55 | |
Beginning really with the vote fight, | 17:57 | |
in the forties | 18:02 | |
we moved into | 18:05 | |
the Civil Rights Act of '60 and '65 | 18:08 | |
Lyndon Johnson in that era | 18:12 | |
of '60 | 18:14 | |
those happened during the Johnson. | 18:16 | |
- | Can we stop (mumbling off the microphone). | 18:19 |
- | The Johnson administration. | 18:23 |
So, | 18:25 | |
it was then that | 18:27 | |
the efforts of our voting, | 18:30 | |
it use of the ballot would intensify. | 18:34 | |
Just after the breaking of the white primary entity, | 18:37 | |
it turned into. | 18:41 | |
- | We're going to hold you right there for a second. | 18:44 |
- | Four, 18. | 18:47 |
Check. | 18:48 | |
- | What? | |
Yup. | 18:50 | |
(interviewer speaking off the microphone) | 18:51 | |
- | Am I getting what you want? | 18:56 |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 18:57 |
We're getting to the movement itself. | 18:59 | |
(paper ripping) | 19:02 | |
I want to know what part you took in the movement | 19:03 | |
and | 19:05 | |
(tape peeling) | ||
what your feelings were about | 19:06 | |
actually then in | 19:11 | |
what is classically know as the civil rights movement itself | 19:14 | |
in 1954, 1954 to 1961 or two | 19:17 | |
leading up to the Voting Rights Act. | 19:22 | |
Johnson 65 (inaudible) act | 19:24 | |
(clattering) | 19:26 | |
And some of the people that you worked with | 19:27 | |
and | 19:30 | |
did you participate in marches here in South Carolina | 19:32 | |
or how did you function during that time. | 19:36 | |
What did you personally do? | 19:39 | |
And | 19:45 | |
we want to work that in with | 19:46 | |
what you think the young people learned from all that | 19:50 | |
what did you get from it? | 19:51 | |
In terms of the movement, | 19:53 | |
did the only thing the movement really accomplish now is | 19:56 | |
desegregation? | 20:00 | |
Is there still a long way to go? | 20:03 | |
I mean you can vote and my boss is a black woman | 20:05 | |
Mary Hatwood Futrell | 20:08 | |
president of the National Education Association | 20:09 | |
and she is part of the legacy of what you all did. | 20:11 | |
And | 20:17 | |
then the younger kids, they don't have any recollection | 20:18 | |
of this, I don't know if they're being taught, | 20:21 | |
what I'm worried about is that we're going to end up | 20:23 | |
having to repeat a lot of this stuff because the young kids. | 20:26 | |
- | But you see-- | 20:30 |
- | Answer your call? | 20:31 |
- | Should be coming back. | 20:33 |
- | I worked hard. | 20:36 |
- | Take the keys. | 20:38 |
- | I worked hard as hell to desegregate the schools | 20:40 |
(clears throat) | 20:44 | |
Sometimes I feel that | 20:45 | |
have to make for new students, | 20:49 | |
that we shouldn't have moved towards | 20:52 | |
a tight (inaudible) of desegregation | 20:56 | |
but should have moved for better improvement in schools | 21:00 | |
with | 21:05 | |
(door shutting) | ||
in keeping up with educated black teachers if we have them. | 21:08 | |
As long as those | 21:11 | |
people were trained by black teachers that had | 21:13 | |
no reason if they wanted to | 21:17 | |
to | 21:20 | |
speak their mind about what happened, for instance, | 21:22 | |
I told you I taught mathematics. | 21:24 | |
If some awful thing went down overnight over the weekend | 21:28 | |
for a black kid in these days, a Negro as we say, | 21:33 | |
on Monday morning, I would | 21:35 | |
(inaudible) | 21:39 | |
And then I'd tell about these atrocities | 21:42 | |
and tell how there | 21:44 | |
they should be an example and there parents to be an example | 21:47 | |
and embrace some of this. | 21:51 | |
Now we got a class of say, | 21:53 | |
(microphone adjusting cuts off speaker) | 21:54 | |
my contribution largely was as I told you long ago, | 21:56 | |
I was secretary of the state conference of the NAACP | 22:00 | |
in this state for about 10 years | 22:04 | |
and having had exposure in | 22:06 | |
newspaper writing, feature writing, | 22:10 | |
writing newspaper articles, | 22:13 | |
all that, | 22:17 | |
I did a lot of the publicity | 22:18 | |
for the movement. | 22:22 | |
And then I traveled over the state now. | 22:24 | |
- | What kind of publicity, what did you do travel | 22:27 |
what did you do? | 22:29 | |
- | Making talks | 22:31 |
and setting up the person we called in | 22:34 | |
a branch of similar organizations | 22:37 | |
in the NAACP | 22:42 | |
and other civil rights groups you know | 22:44 | |
and if they had a problem in the community, | 22:46 | |
for instance somebody, well any kind of civil rights problem | 22:49 | |
they might call and say "this is happening | 22:52 | |
"come up there." | 22:54 | |
and I'd travel all over the state day and night. | 22:56 | |
From 1942 | 23:00 | |
until 1954 | 23:03 | |
when I went into the banking business here | 23:06 | |
and of course it never stopped, but it just lessened | 23:10 | |
because I was otherwise, I was occupied | 23:14 | |
I mean I was getting paid a salary. | 23:16 | |
But in those years, I freelanced, I did what I wanted to do. | 23:17 | |
It was definitely altogether as it pertained | 23:22 | |
to the civil rights movement | 23:25 | |
here in (inaudible) and throughout South Carolina | 23:27 | |
and the power structure | 23:32 | |
There were some articles about that in (inaudible) | 23:34 | |
and the atmosphere we had at that time, | 23:37 | |
naturally anybody but the power structure | 23:42 | |
was going to be talking about (bail?). | 23:44 | |
but the fact is that the, in the time you are talking about | 23:48 | |
one of the main things was to get the people registered | 23:55 | |
to vote, we were telling them that your redemption | 23:59 | |
is going to be at the ballot box. | 24:02 | |
And so that registration drives were put on | 24:05 | |
and | 24:09 | |
just after the white primary was struck down | 24:11 | |
the drive was put on for voter registration | 24:15 | |
and in a reasonably short time, | 24:18 | |
there were a quarter million black votes. | 24:21 | |
People registered 200,000 in the first spurt | 24:23 | |
and we had a black press here | 24:28 | |
Black weekly here, | 24:32 | |
that was in the movement. | 24:34 | |
And of course I gave my time, I have no more of it | 24:35 | |
than anyone for anything. | 24:38 | |
But I gave my time, I was taught that way. | 24:40 | |
And so the | 24:42 | |
there were times when | 24:47 | |
the agencies that is the | 24:49 | |
the Country registration boards that had | 24:53 | |
even after we beat the white primary in the federal courts, | 24:58 | |
would use all types of subterfuge, | 25:03 | |
to see that Negroes didn't register. | 25:05 | |
For instance, it was "registration will take place | 25:08 | |
"at such and such a place," and you may go there, | 25:11 | |
and then you got the books in the car and you're going | 25:14 | |
somewhere else. | 25:15 | |
But they were due to have those at the courthouses | 25:17 | |
and we had 46 counties and state and the registration books | 25:20 | |
were supposed to be at the courthouse and I was certainly | 25:23 | |
the first Monday and Tuesday | 25:25 | |
and Wednesdays in voting years, the first Monday | 25:27 | |
in off years, which would be odd years, | 25:30 | |
but they would haul the books, | 25:34 | |
somebodies, any kind of lie to keep somebody | 25:37 | |
from getting their names on the books. | 25:40 | |
So, as state secretary of the NAACP on one occasion, | 25:41 | |
I sent out letters to all of our contacts | 25:45 | |
and we had at that time about 110 branches | 25:50 | |
and all of them were virtually ordered | 25:54 | |
because our oath was set up so that if you were | 25:59 | |
if you were with the movement or if you were not with it | 26:00 | |
if you weren't with, you better keep your mouth shut. | 26:04 | |
That's just about the way we had to set up. | 26:06 | |
And | 26:08 | |
so I sent out the directives | 26:10 | |
that | 26:13 | |
that everybody then went up to register to vote | 26:15 | |
would you take at least two people with you | 26:18 | |
so that if anything happened, they would have | 26:20 | |
their witnesses already set up, you know. | 26:22 | |
Now, it wasn't enough in my opinion to send those letters | 26:25 | |
just to our workers. | 26:29 | |
We sent them to every one of the boards, registration boards | 26:32 | |
so that they, that struck up a fear | 26:36 | |
in some of those people that just made up their mind, | 26:40 | |
they weren't told that (inaudible) | 26:42 | |
But you see we already carried them up to the | 26:45 | |
United States Supreme Court | 26:47 | |
and every one of those people were kind of skittish | 26:50 | |
about whether we'd carry them | 26:52 | |
because you see they'd run a | 26:55 | |
kind of psychological war you know | 26:57 | |
there may be a better word for that, but | 26:59 | |
it just kept waging and it's still being waged | 27:02 | |
I mean not as much because we are having a kind of lull | 27:04 | |
we are riding upon the ebb tide now, so to speak. | 27:07 | |
In that time we were at high-tide. | 27:11 | |
- | Were you at the '63 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City | 27:14 |
did you go to that? | 27:18 | |
- | No. | 27:18 |
- | Fanny Lou Hamer made her speech. | 27:19 |
- | No I know about it, but I wasn't there, you see, | 27:21 |
I was occupied back at that time. | 27:23 | |
But I went to the | 27:25 | |
I went to | 27:27 | |
I know what you're talking about, | 27:29 | |
you know but I wasn't there. | 27:31 | |
Now I worked | 27:32 | |
for a long time | 27:34 | |
I was connected with the Republican Party because | 27:37 | |
my aim was always to try and see that we had a two-pronged | 27:40 | |
avenue for expressing our political views | 27:45 | |
When Adlai Stevenson was running for governor--for president | 27:50 | |
I came out for it directly, I don't mean by that | 27:54 | |
that I was ever of the white Democratic Party philosophy | 27:57 | |
but I knew that | 28:00 | |
I believed, I know we need balancing in this thing, | 28:02 | |
even now we need balancing from the federal government down, | 28:05 | |
but, | 28:08 | |
but then when Adlai Stevenson's campaign was on | 28:10 | |
I went over to the Democratic Party, | 28:12 | |
but I don't vote straight ticket anytime | 28:14 | |
I vote according to the strategy (inaudible) | 28:16 | |
- | Where do you think we're going, | 28:20 |
where do you think we're going | 28:21 | |
(coughing) | ||
from here? | 28:23 | |
What do you think needs? | 28:25 | |
(mumbling off the microphone) | 28:26 | |
What do you need? | 28:28 | |
- | What was it now? | 28:31 |
- | What do you need, | 28:33 |
what do you think, where do you think, this will be | 28:34 | |
the last question. | 28:36 | |
Where do you think we're going from here? | 28:37 | |
What should the younger generation, now, | 28:38 | |
look forward to now that they're, | 28:40 | |
they're benefiting from the work that you all did. | 28:43 | |
What, | 28:47 | |
do you think the young people are getting complacent, | 28:48 | |
that they're not paying attention to history? | 28:51 | |
- | I think that leadership is involved. | 28:53 |
You see when you have a positive leadership. | 28:57 | |
For instance, I think I've been | 29:00 | |
as the old folks say, preaching in hell | 29:04 | |
because I think the black churches need to (inaudible). | 29:06 | |
They, and I hold that in every church, | 29:09 | |
there should be a political action committee | 29:13 | |
for every one, I don't mean (inaudible) | 29:17 | |
that tries to see | 29:19 | |
not only that people register to vote and do vote, | 29:22 | |
but they should have brought to them | 29:26 | |
and explained to them so that they can be sensitized | 29:28 | |
to what is absolutely being done. | 29:31 | |
You see, | 29:34 | |
where this thing used to be open and obvious | 29:36 | |
now it's subtle | 29:39 | |
and unless you have an eagle's eye, | 29:41 | |
sometimes you don't see it. | 29:43 | |
I see it. | 29:45 | |
I see every move that the opposition makes, | 29:46 | |
the power structure makes, | 29:49 | |
but that's because, I've been taught to eat and drink | 29:51 | |
and sleep this thing. | 29:54 | |
But | 29:56 | |
I greatly fault. | 29:57 | |
the Black ministry and leadership, church leadership | 30:00 | |
in this country, | 30:03 | |
that don't put before these conventions and conferences, | 30:05 | |
the problems that are actually faced | 30:08 | |
by the people who are disadvantaged. | 30:11 | |
Now I recollect | 30:14 | |
our Baptist state convention met | 30:17 | |
about three years ago, | 30:19 | |
we were having quite a problem in this day | 30:22 | |
I don't remember what it was, | 30:24 | |
but I asked them if they wouldn't, | 30:25 | |
issue a statement, a press statement, | 30:28 | |
during that convention, that state convention of actors, | 30:31 | |
a press statement concerning this problem | 30:35 | |
I've forgotten now what it was. | 30:37 | |
And they told me that if I would write it, | 30:39 | |
that they would put it before the group. | 30:42 | |
Now all them old big fat-footed creatures, | 30:44 | |
you know they could've done something about that thing. | 30:46 | |
But on the whole, | 30:50 | |
our churches failed us because-- | 30:53 | |
and they'll say well they're preparing people for heaven. | 30:56 | |
Well I'll have my fight that way. | 30:58 | |
You see, Christ fought the power structure | 31:01 | |
or he would've lived and married | 31:03 | |
Mary and had children cause he loved her, | 31:05 | |
just like you might love a girl that you know. | 31:07 | |
But all that jiving under the Bible | 31:10 | |
about Christ saying nothing | 31:13 | |
and I will be dying and all like that | 31:15 | |
that's some stuff somebody wrote | 31:17 | |
I don't know who wrote it and don't care who wrote it | 31:19 | |
but the fact remains, that he flew into the power structure. | 31:21 | |
And that's why he was crucified. | 31:24 | |
And if he hadn't done that he would've lived a full lifetime | 31:27 | |
Now, | 31:32 | |
the, | 31:33 | |
the thing we need now, people who will, | 31:35 | |
who will soak again in the movement, perhaps indoctrinate | 31:40 | |
these, you know these children need a shot in the arm. | 31:43 | |
And we are bereft of that type of leadership. | 31:46 | |
Now I'm talking about Martin Luther King. | 31:50 | |
I don't think that the Lord or whoever it is, | 31:54 | |
I know the great spirit in this universe, | 31:57 | |
I don't say it's the Lord that the white people gave us | 31:59 | |
when they brought us here as slaves and then whipped us | 32:01 | |
and got in bed with our black women and had yellow babies | 32:03 | |
and sold them all back into slavery, but | 32:05 | |
somewhere in this universe lives, | 32:09 | |
in this universe, | 32:11 | |
there's a greater power than we are. | 32:12 | |
Now whatever that power is, is what we should have within us | 32:15 | |
to see that our brother who's disadvantaged | 32:20 | |
has as good as bad as we can ever get. | 32:24 | |
And | 32:29 | |
when you find that the so-called Christian church | 32:31 | |
is preaching a heavenbound gospel | 32:34 | |
but you don't know a damn plain thing about Heaven. | 32:37 | |
And after a while the great period after a while | 32:42 | |
and everything beyond | 32:45 | |
that's the thing that has hurt the black movement | 32:46 | |
more than anything else is this heaven-bound gospel | 32:48 | |
and if you just pray, I've been hitting on that this morning | 32:50 | |
if you just pray and ask God | 32:54 | |
will if you go and read about Christ | 32:56 | |
or recall what they recordedin the gospels, | 33:00 | |
when Christ | 33:02 | |
found a miracle, I know I'm talking (?) all this, | 33:03 | |
cause y'all don't read the Bible | 33:07 | |
but when Christ performed a miracle what did he do? | 33:09 | |
He told them they had to do something. | 33:12 | |
When he made water to wine, he could've just said, | 33:14 | |
he could've just said "water jump into the wine bottle." | 33:17 | |
"And turn to wine." No, he said "fill them." | 33:21 | |
They had to do that and in every miracle | 33:25 | |
there had to be human assistance | 33:28 | |
and so this isn't something that we should expect | 33:31 | |
somebody else to do, but we've been preached | 33:34 | |
the black people had all that crap that you hear | 33:36 | |
about old Falwell and all of them | 33:39 | |
they using that, that ain't nothing but conjure preaching | 33:41 | |
fooling you and getting your money you know. | 33:43 | |
And of course these preachers they come by | 33:46 | |
and they can be preaching me into hell already | 33:48 | |
which I don't expect to have them do | 33:50 | |
I ain't going to let one of them preach on me | 33:51 | |
because I'm going to give my body to science | 33:52 | |
and if I'm too old for that they can let the buzzards eat me | 33:54 | |
as far as I'm concerned | 33:57 | |
(laughs) | ||
The fact is that we are weak now on the whole | 34:01 | |
of Black leadership. | 34:05 | |
And a lot of them are not doing what they oughta do | 34:06 | |
because they're mad at Jesse, because he stepped out there | 34:09 | |
in front. | 34:10 | |
A lot of them that would be doing something, they're silent | 34:12 | |
but you know just shut up all of them from talking | 34:14 | |
about Jesse, you know what I mean? | 34:16 | |
So, | 34:18 | |
the, | 34:20 | |
so far as the black segment of the population is concerned, | 34:22 | |
the black leadership | 34:26 | |
may not realize it | 34:28 | |
but they have a (inaudible) | 34:30 | |
they never realize it | 34:32 | |
and this heaven bound gospel, | 34:34 | |
is a narcotizing agent, | 34:36 | |
that's what religion is, | 34:39 | |
for any people. | 34:41 | |
A narcotic. | 34:42 | |
Tells if you don't do it somebody else is going to do, | 34:45 | |
but God ain't never, as a friend of mine used to say, | 34:48 | |
He ain't never dropped down out of a sack of clouds | 34:51 | |
and signed a paper | 34:53 | |
because you asked him to drop it down here | 34:54 | |
and you said "I ain't never seen him sign a paper | 34:56 | |
"that dropped down." | 34:58 | |
Just cause you asked God for something you need | 34:59 | |
So the solution, | 35:02 | |
the solution is going to have to be the right kind of | 35:05 | |
of leadership, honest leadership. | 35:08 | |
We haven't been awake for coming to determine | 35:12 | |
the national government's gone rotten | 35:13 | |
Through, | 35:16 | |
borrowing everyday. | 35:17 | |
So now, | 35:19 | |
there's a whole lot that (inaudible) | 35:20 | |
I'm 88 years old, but I'm not hunting for death | 35:23 | |
I'll tell you that I ain't carrying no coffin under my arm | 35:27 | |
(chuckles) | 35:29 | |
But the fact is a great note is going to fall | 35:30 | |
on the young people in this country | 35:32 | |
and | 35:35 | |
there are elements in the country that are determined | 35:37 | |
that there shall not be a liaison or a connection | 35:40 | |
or a sympathetic relationship | 35:44 | |
of the various population groups, you see. | 35:47 | |
And | 35:51 | |
I predict that over the course of 25 or 30 years, | 35:52 | |
a composite of foreign groups like there are millions of | 35:57 | |
whoever comes in this here muddled country | 36:02 | |
that happen not to be blacks. | 36:05 | |
The white man is going to, | 36:07 | |
the American white man is going to let them become | 36:09 | |
(inaudible) | 36:11 | |
and the Negros are going to look up to the morning | 36:12 | |
and some of them are going to pass by and they're going | 36:15 | |
say "what the devil went by here?" | 36:15 | |
We are the larger population now, you know. | 36:18 | |
Though called the minority | 36:21 | |
but there is going to be a combination of minorities, | 36:25 | |
other minorities, you can ask up and down, | 36:29 | |
you have away over in the West certain of the Mexican | 36:32 | |
of the people of Mexican or Spanish-American background | 36:35 | |
getting into office, a Negro couldn't get that office, | 36:37 | |
right in the same territory. | 36:40 | |
So there's a great poison in America. | 36:42 | |
We are poisoned with race hatred. | 36:45 | |
And pass it. | 36:49 | |
And it's | 36:51 | |
unless we have a great turn in the road | 36:55 | |
we are going to sink further into | 36:59 | |
the degradation, political degradation. | 37:01 | |
It's just bad. | 37:04 | |
I can't help it. | 37:06 | |
(man mumbling off microphone) | 37:08 | |
- | 10 minutes? | 37:14 |
- | We'll need to play it for | 37:16 |
15 minutes only. | 37:21 | |
- | Okay. | 37:23 |
- | We're good. | 37:23 |
(mumbling) | 37:25 | |
- | It's good. | 37:27 |
- | Well I don't know whether I helped you out today. | 37:29 |
- | You helped us a lot! | 37:31 |
- | I don't know, | 37:32 |
cause I got some crazy ideas you know | 37:33 | |
(laughing) | 37:35 | |
- | But you deserve them and you, you. | 37:36 |
Item Info
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