- Because my flash is (inaudible) - Yeah, they are light sensitive. It will probably get a little darker as we go on. January 16, 1988 Modjeska Simkins. (woman speaking faintly in background) Columbia, South Carolina. (man speaking faintly) No, I think, well they look fine from here. - Sound alright to you? - What? - Pardon? Pretty rough? - We would need bars? - Yeah, give me 30-second bars or so. - Young men, excuse me. Look across and see if I pulled the phone off that hook over in that bedroom, please - Straight across? - Straight across. Just throw it. Did I take it off? - Yes, ma'am. - Alright. (mumbling) - Well, probably going to install that? - Yeah. - Can you tell me about how you got involved, you were here in Columbia? - Yeah, I was going to my church. - Which one? I already received that I nursed the civil rights movement with my mother because my mother and father were famous people. When I was a little girl, when my father had worked (inaudible) (inaudible) that may have caused the Industrial Revolution in the South so that as a builder, a contractor, a brick contractor, he worked on (inaudible) as it was going from the agricultural era to the industrial era, and they were building enormous factories, cotton factories, mills, and of course the raw materials too and until I was old enough to go to school which was about five years (inaudible) I traveled with him sometimes and on one occasion because whites didn't want to work under his labor group, he was fired upon and our home was fired into and there would be an awkward (inaudible) but I'm trying to remember my father's parents, my mother's parents was just in my blood, so I didn't have to be indoctrinated about civil rights, and about how people should be free. More than that, I was never taught to hate white people so to speak because of what they did to my parents. as of now I can say that I don't hate anybody in the world (inaudible) But that's besides the point. But I came up in a fearless a fearless atmosphere so that working as I have in the-- I was state secretary of the NAACP during the very trying years of the always of course as always from the time even during slavery, even before the Declaration of Independence there were fearless Negros brought here enslaved but they were fearless and there were insurrections you don't hear much about them but there were slave insurrections So we can't say that all slaves were had been beaten down so that they had low spirits and lost the fighting-back because a number of the slaves were members of great fighting tribes in Africa, you see and so the blood was there, right, it was in the blood so the way the civil rights movement started up first became a high point with the authorization of the NAACP in 1909. History has a way of arising see we're in a low a low tide now in the civil rights movement in this country but so that whether it had been arised with the starting of the NACP in 1909 it quite accelerated towards race relations and concentrating on the lynching period. Concentrating on lynchings and other inequities inflicted upon Black people There was (inaudible) they didn't have the vote, there was no way to fight back all they could do was place themselves as (inaudible) and beggars for rights. And then beginning in the mid to late thirties moving into the early forties, there came another rise and the the great civil rights cases then, you'll find in several cases determining the civil rights, the fight for civil rights, for civil liberties and another rise and in ubiquitous southern South Carolina with the unnatural fact that we didn't have the vote, they had a time when my father always carried a registration certificate he voted at every election that he could, but it was only every four years in the general election but the South was governed by the white primary and at times shut out the black voter. So then, the fight came against what we call the white primary because it was governing the Solid South and one of the early cases was started in South Carolina In the early forties, I was state secretary of the NAACP at that time which I was for about eleven years and we carried up three cases from South Carolina. Principally the case against the white primary. Then there was a case, asking, or fighting for bus transportation because where white people had had transportation in buses for years, black children was still walking along the side of the road and even being, as the children said, (inaudible) fighting for people to have school buses. My mother was a teacher before I was born and she stopped when she started a family and she never went back to teaching after that. She gave birth to eight children, and my baby sister was old enough to go to school she was about seven or eight years of age and about then my mother would tell me that this fight was for the children, all that liberty running, not many of the shoulders of the roads were paved as they are now, they just had asphalt, you know, just running along in the middle and nobody dug a little. And then they just run off to a mud puddle and just bounce over there and douse some mud muddy water on the children and I mean things like that. Now the children themselves (inaudible) white bus guys they had gotten that from their parents. I mean, they were, you know it was (inaudible) the niggers just weren't any good The niggers ain't no good, whatever you tell them just like (inaudible). From the social system coming out of slavery where slaves were beasts of burden so to speak they weren't considered full human beings and they were when the census was taken their census was taken with the cows and the horses and the sheep and the turkeys and (mumbles). So that was in the blood and there's an old saying that what's in the flesh you can't beat out of the flesh. So generations of inequities and training children fathers their sons and mother their daughters, that niggers weren't any good. You couldn't expect anything else out of the white children driving school buses or spitting on blacks from school buses, you see It was in the bone. Couldn't beat it out of the flesh. Nobody tried to beat it out, but the fact is, that's the reason I'm explaining to you how with all of this that I lived through and the lynchings almost every Saturday night, There's a book called 100 Years of Lynchings it tells about these various awful things that happened to the victims of the lynch mobs. Now my mother read all of those things to the children, the average parent doesn't want the child to know about the bad things as they see them. But after we were through and my father finally moved us the country--I was born in the city moved us to the country where he said he wanted his children to learn the value of work and the value of a dollar So we were moved to a farm although my parents were born in the city, we learned about farming. They moved us out there and then we did learn from it. But after the fieldwork we had the state paper the paper at this time (inaudible) And it's always in my memory we took the paper at night after farm work, got into bed, all that kind of thing. My mother read the paper to us and always she read about the lynchings and all the and the million things that these people do they were burnt and emaciated in these lynchings lynching things. There is a book as I said called 100 Years of Lynchings it tells absolutely about the lynchings in South Carolina and so that not only were my parents fearless but they taught us that nobody was better than you My father kept guns all the time. A Winchester Rifle, a 17 shooter. He had a shotgun, a (inaudible) shotgun and he had targets out in the back but (mumbles) it was a very fine shotgun and he packed his own shells. You all are too young to know about that when you see cartridges, they're already packed. My father and others in that time of the empty shells were piling into one end and the shots, you know the shots, and packed the shells, so I saw my father packing his shells one day in midwinter, I saw the buck shot and I saw the little bird shell, so, I asked him about that and he said "well you use the shells "to for the birds "and then you use these others if anybody's bothering you." He didn't tell me anymore than that. But later, I was asked that question, and to a woman that was here the other day, and I said that my father packed his shells like that and she said, I said he packed the bird shot for the birds and he packed the buck shots for for (laughing) I said who ever bothered him? But he was, he had those things so that if anybody came up to his house, they'd be loaded with some buck shots so we were in El Dorado as I said, El Do-ray-da as they called it in Arkansas. A mark came to the house because they didn't want to work under my father as the foreman on this job they were motor carriers. Carrying all them buckets of wheat bearers and (inaudible) like they do now. they didn't want to work on either side so my father sent the family back to South Carolina and he stayed there and worked under guard A guard on either side of him with a gun. That's the kind of stuff I came out of, I'm trying to explain, nobody had to tell me of these terrors I was born that way, I was taught. Taught that way. I don't mean to say there's not bigotry now It's just--we just don't take anything. Somebody sat in this house just 48 hours ago and told me how some teachers were hurt about how they were treated in this town, but they don't know whether they ought to say anything. Well I didn't tell them (inaudible) but anybody in this day and time that has the law on their side if they want to go on and fight it if they don't stand up and let somebody made out of meat just like they are and do them any kind of way I don't have respect for them (inaudible) you know? That gives you something about my philosophy (inaudible) The types of social action that Blacks had to do and of course in this country the power structure does not respect people who cannot make their way to protect themselves well. They aren't if you have been or if you go into the mountainous areas of Tennessee and Kentucky and West Virginia you'll find the very poor whites and there's nothing in the world as pitiful as a poor, hungry beaten, down po' (tag?) because he expects his skin to save him just because he's white. But the man in power, money power, and political power doesn't give a damn about a poor (tag?) anymore than he does about a black negro and I've seen them all horse and tail you read about them up in the mountains. So the power structure in this country is heartless. We have on our money, what's that thing they have on the money, "in God we trust." Dirty lie. (inaudible) (inaudible) they oughta erase everything, off every coin and every greenback. "In God we trust!" it's a lie. It's a damn lie. So now, coming down to the forties, I'm giving you a background. - Tell me about what you did in the fifties now or in the sixties during the movement itself. - Well coming down, I'm giving you the atmosphere. - Okay. - We'll be working here. - Yeah. - Now coming down to the we won the case for the white primary in '48 and then we - that's the time we got the movement started to make people get ready to vote. So then, even when we won the white primary case, there were different subterfuges set up by the power structure to cut the black vote as much as they could which meant that even up until the Johnson administration we were still fighting, coming up to the sixties, we were still fighting for an unobstructed voting process and of course for better educational advantages and also for the use of public facilities. The Greensboro, the movement up around Greensboro that largely started there, developed around lunch the use of the lunch counters you know and here ours was centered around political action and also the inequity of teachers' salaries. I taught, I was in the department of mathematics here in the city schools. I taught for six classes, for about nine years. I was in the in the line at the bank on payday getting paid up and somehow I got a mind to kind of go out and go around the corner and look, you know, women, they have short (inaudible), y'all don't know about women, you're too young but, there was a woman, a white woman about two people in front of me and I was just kind of looking at and I found that (inaudible) I taught sixth grade because (inaudible) over there in mathematics and I heard her say she was a sixth grade teacher and when she I kind of sidled around until I found that her check was twice as much as my check, yet if I wasn't short about a half (inaudible) and I know you can't pay what we get paid (inaudible) That didn't happen. I didn't expect it to happen. So then we went, and leading up to the sixties, late fifties to sixties. Beginning really with the vote fight, in the forties we moved into the Civil Rights Act of '60 and '65 Lyndon Johnson in that era of '60 those happened during the Johnson. - Can we stop (mumbling off the microphone). - The Johnson administration. So, it was then that the efforts of our voting, it use of the ballot would intensify. Just after the breaking of the white primary entity, it turned into. - We're going to hold you right there for a second. - Four, 18. Check. - What? Yup. (interviewer speaking off the microphone) - Am I getting what you want? - Yeah, yeah. We're getting to the movement itself. (paper ripping) I want to know what part you took in the movement and (tape peeling) what your feelings were about actually then in what is classically know as the civil rights movement itself in 1954, 1954 to 1961 or two leading up to the Voting Rights Act. Johnson 65 (inaudible) act (clattering) And some of the people that you worked with and did you participate in marches here in South Carolina or how did you function during that time. What did you personally do? And we want to work that in with what you think the young people learned from all that what did you get from it? In terms of the movement, did the only thing the movement really accomplish now is desegregation? Is there still a long way to go? I mean you can vote and my boss is a black woman Mary Hatwood Futrell president of the National Education Association and she is part of the legacy of what you all did. And then the younger kids, they don't have any recollection of this, I don't know if they're being taught, what I'm worried about is that we're going to end up having to repeat a lot of this stuff because the young kids. - But you see-- - Answer your call? - Should be coming back. - I worked hard. - Take the keys. - I worked hard as hell to desegregate the schools (clears throat) Sometimes I feel that have to make for new students, that we shouldn't have moved towards a tight (inaudible) of desegregation but should have moved for better improvement in schools with (door shutting) in keeping up with educated black teachers if we have them. As long as those people were trained by black teachers that had no reason if they wanted to to speak their mind about what happened, for instance, I told you I taught mathematics. If some awful thing went down overnight over the weekend for a black kid in these days, a Negro as we say, on Monday morning, I would (inaudible) And then I'd tell about these atrocities and tell how there they should be an example and there parents to be an example and embrace some of this. Now we got a class of say, (microphone adjusting cuts off speaker) my contribution largely was as I told you long ago, I was secretary of the state conference of the NAACP in this state for about 10 years and having had exposure in newspaper writing, feature writing, writing newspaper articles, all that, I did a lot of the publicity for the movement. And then I traveled over the state now. - What kind of publicity, what did you do travel what did you do? - Making talks and setting up the person we called in a branch of similar organizations in the NAACP and other civil rights groups you know and if they had a problem in the community, for instance somebody, well any kind of civil rights problem they might call and say "this is happening "come up there." and I'd travel all over the state day and night. From 1942 until 1954 when I went into the banking business here and of course it never stopped, but it just lessened because I was otherwise, I was occupied I mean I was getting paid a salary. But in those years, I freelanced, I did what I wanted to do. It was definitely altogether as it pertained to the civil rights movement here in (inaudible) and throughout South Carolina and the power structure There were some articles about that in (inaudible) and the atmosphere we had at that time, naturally anybody but the power structure was going to be talking about (bail?). but the fact is that the, in the time you are talking about one of the main things was to get the people registered to vote, we were telling them that your redemption is going to be at the ballot box. And so that registration drives were put on and just after the white primary was struck down the drive was put on for voter registration and in a reasonably short time, there were a quarter million black votes. People registered 200,000 in the first spurt and we had a black press here Black weekly here, that was in the movement. And of course I gave my time, I have no more of it than anyone for anything. But I gave my time, I was taught that way. And so the there were times when the agencies that is the the Country registration boards that had even after we beat the white primary in the federal courts, would use all types of subterfuge, to see that Negroes didn't register. For instance, it was "registration will take place "at such and such a place," and you may go there, and then you got the books in the car and you're going somewhere else. But they were due to have those at the courthouses and we had 46 counties and state and the registration books were supposed to be at the courthouse and I was certainly the first Monday and Tuesday and Wednesdays in voting years, the first Monday in off years, which would be odd years, but they would haul the books, somebodies, any kind of lie to keep somebody from getting their names on the books. So, as state secretary of the NAACP on one occasion, I sent out letters to all of our contacts and we had at that time about 110 branches and all of them were virtually ordered because our oath was set up so that if you were if you were with the movement or if you were not with it if you weren't with, you better keep your mouth shut. That's just about the way we had to set up. And so I sent out the directives that that everybody then went up to register to vote would you take at least two people with you so that if anything happened, they would have their witnesses already set up, you know. Now, it wasn't enough in my opinion to send those letters just to our workers. We sent them to every one of the boards, registration boards so that they, that struck up a fear in some of those people that just made up their mind, they weren't told that (inaudible) But you see we already carried them up to the United States Supreme Court and every one of those people were kind of skittish about whether we'd carry them because you see they'd run a kind of psychological war you know there may be a better word for that, but it just kept waging and it's still being waged I mean not as much because we are having a kind of lull we are riding upon the ebb tide now, so to speak. In that time we were at high-tide. - Were you at the '63 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City did you go to that? - No. - Fanny Lou Hamer made her speech. - No I know about it, but I wasn't there, you see, I was occupied back at that time. But I went to the I went to I know what you're talking about, you know but I wasn't there. Now I worked for a long time I was connected with the Republican Party because my aim was always to try and see that we had a two-pronged avenue for expressing our political views When Adlai Stevenson was running for governor--for president I came out for it directly, I don't mean by that that I was ever of the white Democratic Party philosophy but I knew that I believed, I know we need balancing in this thing, even now we need balancing from the federal government down, but, but then when Adlai Stevenson's campaign was on I went over to the Democratic Party, but I don't vote straight ticket anytime I vote according to the strategy (inaudible) - Where do you think we're going, where do you think we're going (coughing) from here? What do you think needs? (mumbling off the microphone) What do you need? - What was it now? - What do you need, what do you think, where do you think, this will be the last question. Where do you think we're going from here? What should the younger generation, now, look forward to now that they're, they're benefiting from the work that you all did. What, do you think the young people are getting complacent, that they're not paying attention to history? - I think that leadership is involved. You see when you have a positive leadership. For instance, I think I've been as the old folks say, preaching in hell because I think the black churches need to (inaudible). They, and I hold that in every church, there should be a political action committee for every one, I don't mean (inaudible) that tries to see not only that people register to vote and do vote, but they should have brought to them and explained to them so that they can be sensitized to what is absolutely being done. You see, where this thing used to be open and obvious now it's subtle and unless you have an eagle's eye, sometimes you don't see it. I see it. I see every move that the opposition makes, the power structure makes, but that's because, I've been taught to eat and drink and sleep this thing. But I greatly fault. the Black ministry and leadership, church leadership in this country, that don't put before these conventions and conferences, the problems that are actually faced by the people who are disadvantaged. Now I recollect our Baptist state convention met about three years ago, we were having quite a problem in this day I don't remember what it was, but I asked them if they wouldn't, issue a statement, a press statement, during that convention, that state convention of actors, a press statement concerning this problem I've forgotten now what it was. And they told me that if I would write it, that they would put it before the group. Now all them old big fat-footed creatures, you know they could've done something about that thing. But on the whole, our churches failed us because-- and they'll say well they're preparing people for heaven. Well I'll have my fight that way. You see, Christ fought the power structure or he would've lived and married Mary and had children cause he loved her, just like you might love a girl that you know. But all that jiving under the Bible about Christ saying nothing and I will be dying and all like that that's some stuff somebody wrote I don't know who wrote it and don't care who wrote it but the fact remains, that he flew into the power structure. And that's why he was crucified. And if he hadn't done that he would've lived a full lifetime Now, the, the thing we need now, people who will, who will soak again in the movement, perhaps indoctrinate these, you know these children need a shot in the arm. And we are bereft of that type of leadership. Now I'm talking about Martin Luther King. I don't think that the Lord or whoever it is, I know the great spirit in this universe, I don't say it's the Lord that the white people gave us when they brought us here as slaves and then whipped us and got in bed with our black women and had yellow babies and sold them all back into slavery, but somewhere in this universe lives, in this universe, there's a greater power than we are. Now whatever that power is, is what we should have within us to see that our brother who's disadvantaged has as good as bad as we can ever get. And when you find that the so-called Christian church is preaching a heavenbound gospel but you don't know a damn plain thing about Heaven. And after a while the great period after a while and everything beyond that's the thing that has hurt the black movement more than anything else is this heaven-bound gospel and if you just pray, I've been hitting on that this morning if you just pray and ask God will if you go and read about Christ or recall what they recordedin the gospels, when Christ found a miracle, I know I'm talking (?) all this, cause y'all don't read the Bible but when Christ performed a miracle what did he do? He told them they had to do something. When he made water to wine, he could've just said, he could've just said "water jump into the wine bottle." "And turn to wine." No, he said "fill them." They had to do that and in every miracle there had to be human assistance and so this isn't something that we should expect somebody else to do, but we've been preached the black people had all that crap that you hear about old Falwell and all of them they using that, that ain't nothing but conjure preaching fooling you and getting your money you know. And of course these preachers they come by and they can be preaching me into hell already which I don't expect to have them do I ain't going to let one of them preach on me because I'm going to give my body to science and if I'm too old for that they can let the buzzards eat me as far as I'm concerned (laughs) The fact is that we are weak now on the whole of Black leadership. And a lot of them are not doing what they oughta do because they're mad at Jesse, because he stepped out there in front. A lot of them that would be doing something, they're silent but you know just shut up all of them from talking about Jesse, you know what I mean? So, the, so far as the black segment of the population is concerned, the black leadership may not realize it but they have a (inaudible) they never realize it and this heaven bound gospel, is a narcotizing agent, that's what religion is, for any people. A narcotic. Tells if you don't do it somebody else is going to do, but God ain't never, as a friend of mine used to say, He ain't never dropped down out of a sack of clouds and signed a paper because you asked him to drop it down here and you said "I ain't never seen him sign a paper "that dropped down." Just cause you asked God for something you need So the solution, the solution is going to have to be the right kind of of leadership, honest leadership. We haven't been awake for coming to determine the national government's gone rotten Through, borrowing everyday. So now, there's a whole lot that (inaudible) I'm 88 years old, but I'm not hunting for death I'll tell you that I ain't carrying no coffin under my arm (chuckles) But the fact is a great note is going to fall on the young people in this country and there are elements in the country that are determined that there shall not be a liaison or a connection or a sympathetic relationship of the various population groups, you see. And I predict that over the course of 25 or 30 years, a composite of foreign groups like there are millions of whoever comes in this here muddled country that happen not to be blacks. The white man is going to, the American white man is going to let them become (inaudible) and the Negros are going to look up to the morning and some of them are going to pass by and they're going say "what the devil went by here?" We are the larger population now, you know. Though called the minority but there is going to be a combination of minorities, other minorities, you can ask up and down, you have away over in the West certain of the Mexican of the people of Mexican or Spanish-American background getting into office, a Negro couldn't get that office, right in the same territory. So there's a great poison in America. We are poisoned with race hatred. And pass it. And it's unless we have a great turn in the road we are going to sink further into the degradation, political degradation. It's just bad. I can't help it. (man mumbling off microphone) - 10 minutes? - We'll need to play it for 15 minutes only. - Okay. - We're good. (mumbling) - It's good. - Well I don't know whether I helped you out today. - You helped us a lot! - I don't know, cause I got some crazy ideas you know (laughing) - But you deserve them and you, you.