WEBVTT 1 00:01.000 --> 01:15.000 We could talk to him. And I asked him when he wanted me to type that letter, if he thought it was going to make a difference. He said, "I only hope it'll make a difference." And now the bus station, I haven't been in there lately. I haven't been to Camden lately, but the next time I go, I'm going by to see it. But they were making changes, because they could not do that anymore. And I'm sure that they either have gotten rid of that situation or they've made a better situation with that type of thing. I know the first time, this was after the Supreme Court made us decision about transportation. You could sit where you want to on the bus. We took a group of students from Cotton Valley and South Macon High School over to Atlanta for a field trip when we got to LaGrange—And you've heard of LaGrange, Georgia. 2 01:15.000 --> 02:28.000 That's one tough little places. When segregation was tough, we got to LaGrange. My son, Bernard—That's my son up there. My son, Bernard, was little then. He must have been—Joy must've been five years old at that time. And I took him on the trip because we were going to see, well, the zoo and the Cyclorama and some other things in Atlanta. And I just wanted him to go with me. So when we got to LaGrange, that was one of the stops. It's still a stop for the bus coming from Atlanta through here. And one teacher who worked with me used to live next door. She's dead now. She said, "Baldwin, we going in the front door." I said, "We are going straight in that front door." So I got Joy. I knew nobody would hurt him. I just figured nobody hurt him. He's so little. So I said, "Okay, kids, you have a 15-minute rest stop here." I said, "If you want anything, you got to come on now. Just follow me." 3 02:28.000 --> 03:43.000 So I went straight to the front door and swung it open, and I pushed Joy on in and the kids came on in behind me. Two of the teachers from South Macon on the bus went around to the back. That hurt me to the bottom of my heart. Those kids went in there and they put money in the jukebox and they ordered their little stuff, they were having a good time. And the people back there serving them, they were jittery too. But nobody bothered us. Soya asked me, she said, "You got a weapon?" I said, "Yes, I got my hat pinned. That's all I have." But anyway, we went in and they got what they wanted. They ate there and bus driver—I mean, they called for the bus to leave five minutes something. And those two teachers they had to be embarrassed. But I could have cried. I really could have cried. They were the only ones who went around there. So when we came back through LaGrange that afternoon, there must've been about eight White men sitting up on that bank. 4 03:43.000 --> 04:47.000 If you go into LaGrange, you know where the bus is. They were sitting up there. They had been dipping snuff and everything. And so sorry, I said, Mina, she said, "Look up on that bank." And I said, "Don't make any difference." Bring it here, please. I said, "We are going in the front door." I said, "Anybody who wants to go and get anything, we've got a little stop here." I said, "Just follow me." I didn't have Joy, but I had in that time, I opened the door and all of those who wanted to go in went in the front side. Those two teachers stayed on the bus. They didn't get off that time. But the kids came back and they wrote that up and presented all of that. Can you tell me who it is? The kids were just proud, and the teachers who did not go, "You mean to tell me y'all went in the main bus station at LaGrange." They said, "Yeah, Ms. Baldwin told us to follow her and we went on in." 5 04:47.000 --> 04:50.000 The kids wrote about that? 6 04:50.000 --> 05:11.000 Yes. I mean, they presented it. See, when we take them off like that, they'd have to make a full report to the whole school. So that next chapel program that Friday morning following that particular incident, all those kids who were on the bus had some report to make. 7 05:11.000 --> 05:15.000 Did they write about the experience of going in the front entrance? 8 05:15.000 --> 06:24.000 Yes, they did. The two girls who did—One of the girls lives in Connecticut now, and she calls once in a while, but she really put that into focus. They knew what happened. Because when things would happen in the media like that, we would bring it up and discuss it with them in class or in our chapel program. So they knew about the space program and all this, and some of them didn't believe that a man was on the moon or going to the moon. But we would try to keep our kids apprised of everything that was going on. So they knew that now they could ride on any seat, on any bus or in the train or anywhere they wanted to travel. They could sit anywhere they wanted to. They could go into any store and drink from any water fountain that was there, and that they could go into any restaurant anywhere and be served. 9 06:24.000 --> 07:09.000 And if they didn't get served, all they had to do was let somebody know who could see about it. So they were looking forward to it, but we didn't know that they were looking forward to it. With children, if you tell them something, that may create a little apprehension. But I just decided with my neighbor next door that we're going to go whole hog and do this. It's supposed to be done. And that was the way it was supposed to be done. For some of them, that was the first trip out of town that they'd ever had. And as long as nobody said anything that bothered them. And all we wanted was that they would behave themselves appropriately. And we had no problem with that. 10 07:09.000 --> 07:12.000 And these were children from Cotton Valley School? 11 07:12.000 --> 07:20.000 That's right. These children from Cotton Valley School and in that area of the county. 12 07:20.000 --> 07:25.000 So that was a day that they received quite a bit of education about— 13 07:25.000 --> 07:32.000 Oh, definitely. This is right. They definitely did. 14 07:32.000 --> 07:43.000 Now, during the time, Mrs. Baldwin, when you moved into this area and began teaching at Cotton Valley, where were you living? 15 07:43.000 --> 07:44.000 Where was I living? 16 07:44.000 --> 07:47.000 Yeah. 17 07:47.000 --> 08:17.000 When I first came to Tuskegee, we lived on the corner of Bruce and Penny Street. We rented a room, my husband and I from a Mrs. Booker. Mrs. Booker married JD Reed. And JD Reed, you've seen this big house down here next to the post office? 18 08:17.000 --> 08:20.000 Yeah. 19 08:20.000 --> 09:14.000 This big brick house on the corner there. That was where the old JD Reed's house was. He was an entrepreneur when it came to property and all. This property, on which our house now is located was owned by the Culverts. And JD Reed married his first wife was a Culvert. So after years passed the property, got into JD Reed's hands. It was just, this was our property, Culvert Street over here, and then across the highway where Alabama and Reed Avenue are right across from us, the other subdivision over there. So he owned all that property. 20 09:14.000 --> 09:16.000 And he was a Black entrepreneurs. 21 09:16.000 --> 10:04.000 Yeah. And so they eventually tore down their old house, which was a green frame house, and built this big house down there on the corner. And that's where both of them lived until they died. But I lived on Bruce Street right up the street from that house up on the next two corners. That's where we were living, my husband and I. Then they opened up the veterans projects, which was located behind the middle school back in there. And these were old army barracks that didn't have very much glamour at all to them. So that's where I lived until we moved here in this house. 22 10:04.000 --> 10:28.000 At that time, did Tuskegee have—Now I've heard a little bit about there was different communities where different people who worked in different occupations lived. Were those existing when you moved here? I've heard about a Rockefeller and community of Lakewood—Or, I'm sorry, Green Lake. 23 10:28.000 --> 10:29.000 Greenwood, you mean? 24 10:29.000 --> 10:30.000 Greenwood? 25 10:30.000 --> 10:41.000 Yes. Okay. I think crystallized at. Do you know where Bib Street is? 26 10:41.000 --> 10:41.000 Yes. 27 10:41.000 --> 12:07.000 Okay. Bib Street was Fifth Avenue Tuskegee. If you lived on Bib Street, you were the elitist or the most elite. Not everybody lived on Bib Street. Culvert Street was built up in the fifties. And so they said some of the same thing about Culvert Street. Some of the people did, because we were right next to Bib Street, that said that we were VIPs and that type of thing, which we never did agree to. But from what I have heard before I came to Tuskegee, there was a definite split in communications and communities. The people who lived over on Church Street, and in that community, seemingly didn't get along with the people who lived over here in Greenwood. The people in Greenwood felt that they were closer to what was going on up to the history. 28 12:07.000 --> 12:42.000 Because Louis Adams, for whom this school over here was named, Louis Adams was the one who—You know the history? Who brought Booker Washington here? Well, his people lived over here in Greenwood. So they didn't get along with the people who lived—It wasn't across the tracks who lived over on Church Street where Butler Chapel is. Butler Chapel is the site where Tuskegee Institute was founded, the Big Stone. Have you been to Butler Chapel? 29 12:42.000 --> 12:43.000 Yeah. 30 12:43.000 --> 13:13.000 The big stone out there. That is the site on which Tuskegee Institute was founded. That's where that little shack sat. So the people who live over there feel that they have the history in their community. And it was just that type of thing that went on. And when I came to Tuskegee, there were a lot of people who felt that, "Well, you wouldn't know about that. You are an immigrant." 31 13:13.000 --> 14:38.000 And I found over the years that people who were born in Tuskegee feel that if an idea doesn't emanate from them, it's not a good idea. That, since you are an immigrant, you don't know about the history and the background and all the things we went through. And so you don't make a contribution. And they build up a dislike. I mean, it's a serious thing when they get that in their minds. I have had some experiences that were fast moving experiences with the Board of Education, and there are still some people out there who resent that, who resent my participation as I did. But they couldn't do anything about it. But they still resent that. And because of that, they resent me for no other reason than the fact that I was an immigrant into Tuskegee. And I haven't done anything to any of them, but try to help them. 32 14:38.000 --> 15:44.000 But it's a subtle little thing, but it only makes them feel bad. But I'll tell them in a minute, I don't have time to deal with things at that level. If you want to deal with something that's positive, come on up to this positive level, let's get it done. But there are some people who really resent—I know I was director of the career opportunities program among some others, and this is a program where teacher aides in the school system had an opportunity to go to school, go to college for five consecutive years. Get their college degree without any student teaching. They didn't need student teachers. They've been in the classroom every day as a teacher aid doing the same things the teachers do. So the student teaching was waived. Do you know that some of the teachers fought that program? Yes. They did not want those teacher aides to have release time to go to college on campus. 33 15:44.000 --> 16:40.000 They did not want them to have certain experiences that they had and whatnot. And they blamed me for that. And I told them, I had meetings with the teachers and I said, "Now whether you smile on this program or not, this program is good for these people. It's good for education. Is good for Macon County. And we are going to run it for five years. If we get funded again, we'll run it for 10. But we are going to run this program. These people are going to have this experience." And I had to go to bat for well, many teachers. I had to move some of the aides because the teachers were trying to take unfair advantage. They'd give a little kid who they didn't have much success with, they'd give them to the teacher aide. Teacher aide would get them whipped and they'd be performing at a level higher than the other students. 34 16:40.000 --> 17:31.000 Then she'd take that one back, they'd get mad, that type of thing. But that was a beautiful experience. There are some teachers who are retired, just as I am, and they still resent the fact that I was over that career opportunities program. And they have nothing good to say about those teacher aides who came through and became teachers in their own right and are doing a good job. They have nothing positive to say. That's a type of segregation I wish we could end. You don't put people down. I mean, you give them a hand up and help them to be the best that they can be. That's just one of my philosophies. 35 17:31.000 --> 18:55.000 Everybody has potential, and yours is different from mine, but if I can help you develop that, that's yours to the best of your ability. That, I think, is what education is all about. You don't have to do anything like I do, but do your best. And that's what I teach kids. If that's the best you can do and you came up with a C, that's the best you can do? Are you sure about that? If that's the best you can do, I'm proud of you. Because there's some things that if I were doing my very best, I'd make a D, in chemistry and physics and trigonometry, but that's just not my bad at all. But when you talk about segregation, now that we know about the Black/White segregation problem, you have to agree that there are so many more kinds of segregation. And until we learn to deal with all of them, we'll still have segregation. You going to have it. It's going to be there in some form or shape. 36 18:55.000 --> 19:17.000 But there was a sense in the forties and fifties that there was some kind of a division between Black people who had lived here for many years and Black people who are more recent. 37 19:17.000 --> 20:06.000 Yes, It doesn't exist anymore because the town and the county have become infiltrated with the immigrants. And so people just figure that you are—When you say, "I didn't grow up here." "Oh, you didn't. I thought you were here all your life." It's at that point now. But that doesn't seem to matter anymore. Because most of the people who have done anything that's outstanding in Tuskegee have been immigrants. Any of the people who made a difference on campus, they were not born in Tuskegee. 38 20:06.000 --> 20:23.000 Mrs. Baldwin. I also wanted to ask you about questions about political involvement that you might've had here. Such as voting, maybe involvement in political organizations from the forties or fifties? 39 20:23.000 --> 21:18.000 I was interested in the matter of voting. I think my dad firmly convinced all of us that we should be politically active if we could. And he made us aware of the fact that more and more opportunities would present themselves for us to do this. Well, Ms. Johnson, being the sociologist that she was at Cotton Valley, she was interested in that. She join the Tuskegee Civic Association. So did I join the AACP and whatnot? So did I. But voting—He'll get it. 40 21:18.000 --> 22:08.000 We had to register to vote, and at that time, we couldn't just go down and fill out—We had to fill out a series of pages. This was the application to become a registered voter. And what they did was—Let's see, did I fill—Yeah, I filled it out. Ms. Johnson, there were eight of us who were teachers out there. So she told us in our faculty meeting that the push for registration was on and she wanted all of us to become registered voter. So she let four of us stay in here and get registered one morning and the other four went on and they double up on our classes. And then they came in the afternoon, no problem. 41 22:08.000 --> 22:57.000 We filled out the forms and read the portion of the Constitution that they wanted us to read. They knew we could read because we were teachers, but we still had to read it. And we got our voter registration slip. I kept after Bernard, my husband. I said, "You should go on and get registers. No problem. You just fill out the form and read the portion of the Constitution and you'll be straight." Well, you see, after that push, the Civic Association was trying to get as many people registered as possible. So the board of registrars got jittery and nervous, and they decided that too many Blacks were getting registered. So it was about six weeks after I became registered. 42 22:57.000 --> 22:57.000 That was 19— 43 22:57.000 --> 23:46.000 That had to be—Let's see, '44. I was here. That was in the fifties. That was about '51 or '52 because we were living in this house and we moved in here in August of 1950. It had to be '51, '52, somewhere in there. And so Bernard said, "Well, I guess I'll go down here today and get registered to vote." So he went down and he had to fill out a few more pages. What is it? 44 23:46.000 --> 23:47.000 What's Julia's work number? 45 23:47.000 --> 23:50.000 27. 46 23:50.000 --> 24:51.000 8480. But he went down and he filled out what I told him I had to fill out, plus about three more pages. And he read the portion of the constitution that they gave him to read. And when they told him that he could find out the next week whether he had passed this test. So he went back down there. Find out, and they said, "No, you got your birthday wrong." He said, "I got my birthday wrong." "That's right." He said, "Well, may I see it?" He said, 'Well, when we find anything wrong, we just throw that away. You have to do it again." So he took the test again and the next week he went to find out there was something else that was wrong. The time that he had been in this precinct or whatever in the state was wrong. 47 24:51.000 --> 25:34.000 But my husband used profanity fairly freely when he got upset. So he used quite a bit of profanity. And that made him realize what was beginning to happen. And I didn't want to tell him, I told you so, you should have gone on. But he had to go back five times before he passed. He had to go five times. Then he was a veteran too, and he wasn't supposed to pay any poll tax. We were still paying a dollar poll tax. So his name did not appear on the list. And I thought about him just the day before yesterday when I put that voter registration list over that. 48 25:34.000 --> 26:32.000 His name was not on the list. He came up to vote and we were voting for something. I don't remember what, but we were going to the polls. We went and they said, "Your name is not on the list." And he pulled out his certificate. So he had to go around from the polling place to the probate judge's office and get some kind of verification. Because the registrars weren't open that day. And he had to get some verification that he was indeed a veteran, and that he did not have to pay the poll tax. So they had to look it up. It took him almost an hour and a half to get whatever he needed from them to go back around to the polling place. And the line had gotten long then. He was so mad. 49 26:32.000 --> 27:30.000 So he went on up to the front and he said, "I was here earlier and I had to go back around there. And I just want to be sure that when I do come up here, I have what you need." So they told him he had what he needed and said, since you were here early, we are going to let you go. Let him go on and then vote. And we were working, both of us then were working. Well, we were working in Montgomery then? I think we were. This was years after he had tried to vote, but that was one of the things that happened. I also tried to help work in one or two campaigns. One was for Charlie Hardy, who is the metropolitan insurance agent in the county. He was running for the Board of Education. That was a lot of fun to put that together. 50 27:30.000 --> 28:23.000 We developed our own machine. But it worked. It really worked. It was a thrilling experience to see how people try to infiltrate your organization. They'd come in, we came in, we want to help. What they came in, some of them came in for information. So after our first two meetings, we realized that somebody who had come in our first meeting wasn't there for the second meeting, and there was some new people who had come in the second meeting and whatnot, and they were not there at this third meeting that we were having. So we put on breaks and decided who would attend our meetings, our planning meetings. But we had a real nice machine set up and he won. 51 28:23.000 --> 28:24.000 That was during the sixties? 52 28:24.000 --> 29:03.000 Yes. That was during the late sixties, almost that the early seventies. But after they cut out the poll tax, we didn't have any problems. It was interesting, before my husband died, he worked at the VA hospital. And the first place he worked at, that was in the cafeteria, he didn't like that at all. Then he moved into the inactive file room. And then he moved into ward administration. Then he left Ward administration. 53 29:03.000 --> 29:47.000 This was after the Kennedys got in office, and he went to VA Regional in Montgomery and whatnot. But while he was in the inactive file room over at the Veteran's Hospital, Pat Evans, who was the sheriff of Macon County, and everybody knew Pat Evans, he was the sheriff and the kids out in the country calling the sheriff. He's the sheriff of Macon County, and he will beat you, Ms. Baldwin, he'll sure beat you. And there had been a lot of incidents in which people had been beaten or they died in jail and whatnot. Nothing was done about it. 54 29:47.000 --> 30:59.000 So our move that year was to get Pat Evans out of office and whatnot. See, Blacks were just beginning to vote, just beginning to be interested in voting. There was a tremendous teaching process that the Tuskegee Civic Association did. Because the few of us who were registered to vote, we had to go to these meetings in order to find out who we should vote for. Nobody told us. They would tell us the characteristics and the qualifications of everybody who was running. We made up our own minds. But for the masses out there, out at Cotton Valley and Armstrong and Fort Davis, they did not know any of these people. And they didn't know who to vote for when they went. And we had to tell them how to vote and tell them why. We tell them why. 55 30:59.000 --> 31:55.000 But there was no interest generated. Like the interest we had last month when David Warren ran for Sheriff in Tuskegee and won. That masses of people, just the grassroots people were excited about their vote. I helped put David Warren in there. That didn't exist back then. It was a secretive type of thing that we learned who was running and what they stood for and what their history politically had been. And I know my husband and I sat down and talked about several people. He said, "Well, Mina, you know this and you know that and whatnot." He said, "But I don't know all I need to know about this guy." So he said, "I'm going to find out." But anyway, he learned a lot about Pat Evans. 56 31:55.000 --> 32:48.000 But one thing that my husband said when he came home one day, he said, "You know, things are changing." He said, "Guess who came to the office today to speak to Dan Beasley." Dan Beasley was over something. I can't remember now, but he was very important man politically. And he said, "Pat Evans came to get Dan Beasley to support him, to endorse him." And He said, "He was begging at me. He told Beasley, he said, I'll get on my knees. I really want you to help me." He said, "Well, Pat, what is your platform?" He said, "I can't vote for you or support you if you don't have a platform." See, he never had a platform. He just wanted to be sheriff of Macon County. 57 32:48.000 --> 33:22.000 So he said, "If you bring me a platform, then I'll decide and I'll let you know whether I can endorse you or not." I don't think he did ever take a platform as he didn't know how to do one. And that's the year that Pat Evans lost, and that was just genocide to his career. That's all the career he had ever had. That's all he wanted to be. Just sheriff of Macon County. He died of a broken heart, not too long after. 58 33:22.000 --> 33:29.000 Late fifties or early sixties? 59 33:29.000 --> 33:47.000 I can't remember. That had to be early sixties. I would say that he died. It had to be somewhere late. Yeah, late fifties, early sixties. 60 33:47.000 --> 34:04.000 Now, Mrs. Baldwin, from what you have told me and from what other people told me, I've read that the Tuskegee Civic Association was a critical, important organization. It was really one of the most important— 61 34:04.000 --> 34:04.000 Political. 62 34:04.000 --> 34:31.000 Political organizations in the state, in fact. But were there Black people in Tuskegee or even perhaps people within the organization who at times disagreed with tactics that were used or may have disagreed with decisions that the association was involved in? 63 34:31.000 --> 35:36.000 Yeah, there was quite a bit of that. I don't vividly remember. I know there was some bone of contention there for a while. And at that time I was doing articles too at Montgomery Advertiser once a week. And it was just a matter of two personalities focusing on the same thing, but at different levels of understanding communication. And the Civic Association itself was having problems dealing with these two people. One was a man and one was a woman, and I think the woman was Biller Johnson. I believe she was the woman. And I can't remember whether it was Mr. Web or I don't remember the man. I guess I'm getting old. I just can't remember his name, but I can see him very clearly. 64 35:36.000 --> 35:48.000 Oh, I see. Now, I was talking to Mr. Randolph, who used to be the principal. He mentioned a man by the name—I asked a similar question by the name of Detroit Lee or something? 65 35:48.000 --> 36:34.000 Oh, Detroit Lee. Now Detroit Lee used to live down at the end of Hagan Street, which is the next street over. Detroit Lee. Yeah, he was involved. Was that before I came here? Detroit Lee. I tell you who could really tell you about Detroit Lee? I know of Mr. Lee and I know he was involved in something, but I'm thinking I'm going to get it confused with someone else. Did he have a son to go to Auburn? 66 36:34.000 --> 36:38.000 Yeah, he was involved in the early segregation [indistinct 00:36:38]. 67 36:38.000 --> 36:50.000 That's right. And he was also involved in something else politically. Have you met Dan Beasley yet? 68 36:50.000 --> 36:55.000 We have him on our list to talk to. Do you know him? 69 36:55.000 --> 36:56.000 Yes. 70 36:56.000 --> 37:00.000 Oh, okay. I'm sure he's on our list to talk to. 71 37:00.000 --> 38:29.000 Okay. He lives out at Shehow. He's a prime person you should talk to. Anything about the civic association and the political arena? If Dan Beasley can't fill you here, and I can't. Dan Beasley, Della Sullins. Some people would say Fred Gray, but I don't know. That's represents too much power. That's what's wrong with Tuskegee, is if you wanted to know my opinion about what's wrong with Tuskegee, there's too much power in one place. Fred Gray is, in my opinion, the Godfather. He has this town in his hip pocket. He is the legal representative for the university. He's legal representative for the city, and he's legal representative for the county. And there's no way in the world that some major change will happen in Tuskegee until something happens to that balance of power. He is the one who keeps Johnny Ford in office. 72 38:29.000 --> 38:57.000 It is politically incorrect, and when you try to delve into it to straighten it out, he pays the people off. I worked in the campaign with Arvon Thigpen two summers ago. She was running for mayor. She won that election. We know she won it. 73 38:57.000 --> 38:59.000 Oh, really? 74 38:59.000 --> 39:44.000 But Fred Gray himself came in with a stack of absentee ballots on the day of the voting, and he demanded a recount. And the recount put Johnny Ford in a runoff with Arvon Thigpen. And it was because of those absentee ballots. And then there's evidence that votes were bought and not paid for that type of thing and whatnot. You don't have to be a Harvard graduate to know that. But the point is, what do you do about it? And that's the part that bothers me. How would you handle a problem like that? 75 39:44.000 --> 40:47.000 See, as I said, he has the whole place, the county, the city, the university, the three largest things we have going. He's got them in his pocket. They do. And he will win cases for them when they have them. And his legal firm is good. He is the one who won the case about the syphilis study. You know about that. Okay. And I know a young man that I worked with when I was at the Board of Education, George Williams did a whole lot of the footwork for Fred Gray. He found these people because he grew up as a little boy knowing these people. And he went out into the boondocks and gathered up these people and presented their names to Fred Gray and all like that. And so some of the people were so grateful after it was over, they gave George a token. One man gave him $500. 76 40:47.000 --> 41:53.000 Another said, I'm going to give you a hundred dollars every year and whatnot. Fred Gray heard about this. He had the FBI to go down to Armstrong and investigate George Williams saying he was charging those people for helping them to be presented. And he did not do that. And so I helped him. I said, well, let's put a stop to this. We were going to send Fred Gray a bill. Fred Gray never gave George Williams anything for helping him to find these people. And then he sends the FBI down there. So I asked him, we sat down and he told me how many people he had carried up to Fred Gray, and he used his own transportation, his own time. And we put that down in terms of money, dollars and cents. And we came up with the bill of $5,000 to present for services rendered. 77 41:53.000 --> 42:38.000 He never heard from Fred Gray anymore. He never heard from the FBI anymore. But I mean, what do you do with a person like that? And I think the only way we can begin to solve some of our problems, our internal problems, is to get some media attention. National media attention at the time of voting fraud. And we were about to do it last time, but he bought off the lawyer. Definitely bought her off because she was seen coming out of his office and he had his arms around her and they were talking there. 78 42:38.000 --> 42:42.000 And which lawyer was she? 79 42:42.000 --> 42:44.000 Linda Henderson. 80 42:44.000 --> 42:45.000 She sas working for the city? 81 42:45.000 --> 42:48.000 No, no, no. She's independent lawyer. 82 42:48.000 --> 42:51.000 She was in charge of overseeing. 83 42:51.000 --> 44:12.000 No, what happened was there was a question about one of the seats on the council, the city council. And the man who lost to Bentley. And everybody knew Mr. Bentley needed to go home because he's old now. And beginning to slow down and whatnot. And Bentley won that seat by something like 14 votes. And the man who was opposing him contested it. So he got Linda Henderson to be the lawyer, take it to court. And the judge knew. He knew that something was wrong and Linda didn't have—She wasn't prepared. All you needed to contest that was three people whose names had been used on absentee ballots, but who did not fill them out. And we had five genuine living people who had sent in for applications, sent the applications in for absentee ballots. Two were in California, one was right down there on Penny Street, and the other two were at Sojourner. 84 44:12.000 --> 45:04.000 And they had sent for applications. Never did get them, but their names appeared on the absentee voting list. And this was the information that Linda had and she had at her disposal. But she was so disorganized. And the judge told her, he said, "You're not ready for this." He said, "Get yourself together and come back in two weeks and have everything you need. I know that you can do better than this." In two weeks, she went back. But within those two weeks, Fred Gray got to her. And when she came back in those two weeks, she was 30 minutes late. And she wasn't a bit more organized than she was the first time. Just fumbling and whatnot. And the judge dismissed the case. 85 45:04.000 --> 45:46.000 So that's the type of thing that's happening. That's the type of thing that's crippling our community. You cannot experience any growth. You cannot experience any—You see, the chief of police is under the city council. If that chief of police is going to be, quote, "His own man" or a real man and operate, then he's going to be opposed to the mayor, if the mayor doesn't agree with what goes on. 86 45:46.000 --> 47:00.000 And it all comes right back to that element of power being in one place. And if people in Tuskegee cannot see this—And this is the thing that hurts me the most. I know from the way that we ran that campaign and the way that the people took on to this campaign, this was an opportunity to get new government, even if they felt that Arvon could not have handled it. She was smart enough to surround herself with people who could handle it. And that was my prayer, and that was what I was working for. I know that some of the ideas that she had will have been greatly beneficial to this community as far as industry and that type of thing is concerned. No industry's coming in here. If we don't have a viable police force who's on top of drugs and crime, if we don't have the police force working with the Sheriff's department to see that it's not—