March

Growing Up in Segregated America

The thing is, when I was young, there wasn’t much of a civil rights movement. I wanted to work at something, but I grew up in rural Alabama. My parents knew it would be dangerous to make any waves. “Stay out of trouble. Don’t get in white people’s way.”

Arriving in Buffalo after seventeen hours of travel was an otherworldly experience. It was so bust, almost frantic. When we reached my uncle O.C.’s and Dink’s house, I couldn’t believe it – they had white people living next door to them. On both sides.

The county didn’t bother paving roads into “colored” communities unless it was necessary for white traffic to pass through. Our bus itself was an old hand-me-down, just like our school books. I realized how old it was when we finally climbed onto the paved highway, the main road running east from Troy, and passed the white children’s buses. We passed their schoolhouses as well, with nice playground equipment outside – nothing like our cluster of small cinderblock buildings with a dirt field out back for recess. We drove past prison gangs almost every day. The prisoners were always black. As were the folks working in the fields beyond them. You couldn’t help but notice. Despite everything that confronted me on the way to school, I was in heaven once I stepped inside it.

The doctrine of “separate but equal” – upon which the entire institution of segregation was based – had been ruled unconstitutional. I was so excited – surely everything was going to change. I thought come fall, I’d be riding a state-of-the-art bus into a state-of-the-art school. An integrated school. Not everyone was excited. But my parents' attitude didn’t bother me nearly as much as those among the ministers at the church who never mentioned the injustices in their sermons. It did not escape my notice that our minister always departed church in a very nice automobile.

A black farmer named Mose Wright witnessed the two white men dragging Emmett Till from his relatives' home, and had the courage to testify against them in open court. The all-white jury found those two white defendants not guilty. A few months later, they even confessed to the murder in Look magazine, but there was nothing to be done – they had already been tried.

My mother had a part-time job working at the white baptist offering home in downtown Troy, Alabama. One day at work, she saw a little paper published by the Alabama Baptist Convention (which was all-white). It mentioned a school in Nashville called American Baptist Theological Seminary that was jointly supported by the white southern baptists and black national baptists.

Non-Violence

Lawson taught us how to protect ourselves, how to disarm our attackers by connecting with their humanity, “Maintain eye contact, John!” How to protect each other, how to survive. But the hardest part to learn – to truly understand, deep in your heart – was how to find love for your attacker. “Do not let them shake your faith in nonviolence – love them!

Do not:

• Strike back or curse if abused.
• Laugh out.
• Hold conversations with floor walker.
• Leave your seat until your leader has given you permission to do so.
• Block entrances to stores outside or the aisles inside.

Do:

• Show yourself friendly and courteous at all times.
• Sit straight; always face the counter.
• Report all serious incidents to your leader.
• Refer information seekers to your leader in a polite manner.
• Remember the teachings of Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. Love and nonviolence is the way. May God bless each of you.

“Your honor – we feel that by paying these fines, we would be contributing to, and supporting the injustices and immoral practices that have been performed in the arrest and conviction of the defendants. Thank you.” “Jail, no bail!” “Jail, no bail!” “Jail, no bail!”

Quietly – almost invisibly – within the local churches, a black community boycott of all downtown stores began – what some people called a “selective buying campaign.”

MAYOR WEST. Look, you all have the power to destroy this city, so let’s not have any mobs. I will do everything I can to enforce the laws without prejudice – but I have no power to force restaurant owners to serve people they don’t want to… Little Lady, I stopped segregation seven years ago at the airport when I first took office, and there has been no trouble since.
Then, Mayor – do you recommend that the lunch counters be desegregated?
MAYOR WEST. Yes… That’s up to the store managers, of course.

But what we found, as we pushed our protests deeper into the heart of segregated society, was that our nonviolent actions were met with increasingly more violent responses.

BUS DRIVER. I’m supposed to drive this bus to Dothan, Alabama, through Montgomery, but I understand there’s a big convoy down the road. I only have one life to give, and I’m not going to give it to CORE or the NAACP.
It may sound strange, but at the time I was more shocked that the bus driver knew enough about us to reference CORE by name. People were starting to notice us, even if we didn’t change their minds.

Direct Antagonism

The Superintendent himself, Fred Jones, greeted us.
JONES. We have some bad niggers here. We have niggers on death row that’ll beat you up and cut you as look at you. Go ahead and sing your goddamn freedom songs now.

LEWIS. What they’re trying to do is take your soul away. It’s not the mattresses, it’s your soul – Satan put us here for forty days and forty nights to tempt us with the flesh. He’s saying to us, “If you’ll just stop your singin' and bail outta here, I’ll give you anything you want – soft, thick mattresses. Down pillows. Everything. “Be good boys and I’ll let you keep your mattresses.”

There were beatings. There were shootings. Four homes of Albany-area voter registration organizers were riddled with bullets. A few nights later, three shotgun blasts were fired into a home where Charles Sherrod was sleeping.

GOV. WALLACE, JR. Today I have stood where once Jefferson Davis stood and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then, that from this cradle of the confederacy, the very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon southland, that today we should sound the drum for freedom, as have our generations of forebears before us have done, time and time again throughout history. Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us, and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the south. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust, and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny. And I say, segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.

Nearly a thousand of Birmingham’s black children were arrested that day. It was an embarrassment to the city.
[…]
BULL CONNOR. Do not cross. If you come any further, we will turn the fire hoses on you! […] Bring the dogs.
I watched the images of television that night and like the rest of America, I was absolutely stunned by what I saw. […] In Nashville, we made sure they were seen, and our ranks grew immediately because of it.

Points of Differences in Civil Rights Activists

THURGOOD MARSHALL. Look, once you’ve been arrested, you’ve made your point. If someone offers you to get you out, main – get out!
Thurgood Marshall was a good man, but listening to him speak convinced me, more than ever, that our revolt was as much against the traditional black leadership structure as it was against segregation and discrimination.

Another issue was Dr. King’s participation in the rides.
DIANE. Martin, are you going to join us? Will you ride with us?
KING. I can’t go, Diane. I’m still on probation from my arrest in Atlanta.
MEMBERS. I’m on probation, too! Me too! Same here. Yeah, we’re all on probation, Dr. King.
KING. I think I should choose the time and place of my GOLGOTHA.

When he found out that all of the riders had refused to post bail, he called Dr. King to see if any of us would be willing to reconsider.
ROBERT KENNEDY. That is not going to have the slightest effect on what the government is going to do in this field, or any other. The fact that they stay in jail is not going to have the slightest effect on me, Dr. King.

In June of 1961, Robert Kennedy suggested to Diane Nash and others that it would be a better decision for us, in the long run, to focus on registering Black voters. I believed our direct action campaigns were working, and many were upset at the mere suggestion. But by the end of 1961, Dr. King gave the idea his full endorsement.

In April 1962, SNCC held a conference in Atlanta to observe its second anniversary. It was incredible to see how drastically the organization had changed in such a short time. […] More than a few of the 250 SNCC representatives in Atlanta that weekend argued that it should be acceptable to strike back if you’re hit.

By the end of 1962, you heard people questioning whether SNCC should even be a multi-racial organization.

Among the SNCC members, there wasn’t much interest in the march or President Kennedy’s bill. Many thought the march would be a lame event staged by conservative Black leaders that was probably, in some way, controlled by the federal government. As for the Civil Rights Bill – we could not support it. The Kennedy Bill did not guarantee the right of all African-Americans to vote. The administration too the position that, if you had a 6th grade education, you should be considered literate and able to vote. SNCC’s position – and mine – was that the only qualification for being able to vote should be that of age and residence.

There was one person deliberately not invited that day. Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam. I knew Malcolm. I respected him. I shared his belief that our struggle was not simply in the courts, but in the streets. Still, I never felt like he was part of the movement. Our movement was about creating an open, integrated society. And, violence, no matter how justified, was not something I could accept. But I could understand his appeal, and the feeling of restlessness that drove it.

ROY WILKINS. I’m telling you, people are going to use him against us. He’s a conscientious objector, he’s been linked to the communist party, and, of course, there’s the “morals” charge.
Rustin was gay, though no one said it directly. It made him a strategic liability.

In the end, my speech no longer called the President’s bill “too little, too late” nor called for a “march through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did.” It no longer asked, “Which side is the government on?”, nor described some political leaders as “cheap.” But when we were finished, I was still satisfied with the speech, as were Forman and Cox. We all agreed that our message was not compromised.

References

1. March: Book One. John Lewis; Andrew Aydin; Nate Powell. www.hoopladigital.com .
2. Kids these days: Why the youth of today seem lacking. Joh Protzko; Jonathan Schooler. doi.org . Oct 16, 2019. Accessed Jan 13, 2024.
3. March: Book Two. John Lewis; Andrew Aydin; Nate Powell. www.hoopladigital.com .