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Thank you.
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When I first met Charlie
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Sherrod and Lonnie and Tim,
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who would come.
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The crowd was in Europe I think that was.
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I had never been out of Ohio.
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I mean my only place I'd ever been from Ohio,
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outside of Ohio was Orangeburg, South Carolina,
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and I came here as a freshman.
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By the time I had gone home for Christmas,
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I had been arrested like five times.
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My jaw had been broken and my arm had been busted
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because it was the first time in this new world
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of South Carolina having come from Madison, Ohio.
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It was a strange world
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and so when I went to Sumter for Christmas,
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for, I'm sorry, for Thanksgiving,
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and the only reason I went to Sumter is because
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they closed the campus down
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and you had to go somewhere.
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You gotta get up outta here sort of thing.
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So I'd went to Sumter and it was the first time I'd been
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off campus since I'd been placed in South Carolina State
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and we went to a party
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and my friends drank
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and this time I didn't so I was the designated driver
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after going to this party.
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As we were driving home the police stopped me.
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I'd never been confronted by a police officer in my life
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at that time, 16 years old, Sumter, South Carolina,
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and we started talking and the officer said,
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finally said where you from boy?
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I said Ohio, why?
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He said they didn't teach you how,
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(laughing)
not only did I say why,
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I said I'm form Ohio.
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You got the license.
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Can't you read?
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(audience laughs)
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It was the beginning.
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(audience laughs)
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That's when he said what?
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They didn't even teach you how to say yes sir
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and no sir to white men up there?
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I said you gotta be jiving.
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(audience laughs)
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It was an auspicious meeting.
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That man hit me so hard,
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but in from the still mills in Ohio
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I had a few tricks of my own.
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I was hitting and kicking as I went down
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and before his fist slapped my face,
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I had struck him back,
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and his partner grabbed me
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and we just got it on
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down there on the side of the road
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in Sumter, South Carolina.
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They got the better of it.
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Broke my jaw, busted my arm and as they were beating me,
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I was saying to the guys in the car, I'm gonna get you,
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(audience laughs)
because where I came from
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you didn't let your partners be whipped
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and not help.
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That of course was long before I'd ever heard
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of nonviolence and I only knew of direct action.
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(audience laughs)
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So by, you know I got my jaw busted, went to jail
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and when I got out of jail and went to get on
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the train coming from Sumter back to Orangeburg,
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the conductor say all right get on back to the baggage car.
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I said I what?
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Not for $7.82 do I ride with a bunch
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of old cheap suitcases and mangy dogs.
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There are seats here I'm sitting in them.
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I look back now at times on say was I naive
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or just a fool and I think it was a combination.
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It was a combination but out of that combination of things
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I had that reputation of that nigger is crazy
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and so most of the students sort of passed me by,
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in Orangeburg, say hello
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and make wide circles around me.
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(audience laughs)
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So I finally got home and my father decided this little
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venture of meeting your brothers and sisters in the
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confines of a black college just wasn't going to be for you.
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I can't afford to have you there the way you put it
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and besides you going to be killed.
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So my year of penance was to end early with
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the understanding I'm taking you back to that campus
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you stay here there until I get there and come back
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and pick you up.
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I said fine.
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Well on February 1st 1960,
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there were sit-ins in Greensboro.
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Greensboro, Orangeburg is 80 miles from here
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and a group of students came to me
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and we're talking about did you hear
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what they did up in Greensboro.
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I say yes of course I did.
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They said what we want to do that here.
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I said go ahead and do it.
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(audience laughs)
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What's that got to do with me?
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They said we want you to be the spokesperson.
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I said y'all crazy.
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You all are out of your mind if you're going
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to put up with what those crackers
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going to do to you, you do that.
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It's not my place to interfere.
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I've got 24 days in this place and I'm gone
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and I will never see anything south of Cincinnati,
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(audience laughs)
again in life.
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Well I was reading the Talmud
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and you all know all about that part of my life.
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There's a section of the Talmud that
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says if I'm not for myself who will be for me.
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If I'm for myself only what am I?
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If not now when?
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And I thought about that
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and I spent the night thinking about it,
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the night thinking about my life.
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I was born the night Joe Louis knocked
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out Max Schmeling where in
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Madison, Ohio there was jubilation.
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I used to thank my father when he got older
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for several things, not naming me Joe Louis.
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(audience laughs)
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And for every one of my birthdays they
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tried out this old 8mm film of the fight.
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Within one minute and 28 seconds of the first
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round Joe Louis the Brown Bomber knocked out
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Max Schmeling the Great White Hope of the western world
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and what my father was say is look at the crowd,
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look at the crowd and it was full of men with Swastikas on.
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He said these are people you're gonna have to deal with.
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He used to call him pecker woods all the time.
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He said these pecker woods are going to make
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your life hell and I think and I'm four years old.
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(audience laughs)
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When we going to cut the cake?
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When we going to get the Kool-Aid?
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(audience laughs)
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And he's talking about you have to
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do something for the race.
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You are a race baby and that's the first time
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I've ever heard anything,
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a boy or girl,
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this man talking about you a race baby
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and I'm talking about when we going to get the Kool-Aid.
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(audience laughs)
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But that started very early for me which
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taught me something later with my own child
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of those early lessons come back and guide you.
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That night when I was thinking about these students
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from Claflin for most of them college who'd
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asked me to leave them,
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be the spokesman in these sit-ins,
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all of those things came back.
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The pictures of the fight,
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Yankee Stadium Field with Nazis screaming,
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discussions of my father about
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you know they killed three black people
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killed in Detroit after that fight.
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Four black people were killed in Cincinnati after that fight
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and Lord knows how many they killed down site South
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after that fight and don't you ever forget it.
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So that night after I thought about where I had
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come from and what I was supposed to do,
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I knew the next morning that I was supposed
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to be involved in this movement.
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So I went back to these people and apologized
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for my being flippant and said I will do
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whatever I can to help
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and joined the Orangeburg Movement
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for Civic Improvement and was chairman of the Orangeburg
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Movement for Civic Improvement
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and we would sit in by the 6th of February.
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The first one started on the 1st and on the 6th
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and I was leading demonstrations not knowing a thing
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about what was happening except they said if these
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white folks at you don't hit him back.
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Well that makes sense to me because the last time I--
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(audience laughs)
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We'll do that until we figure out
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something else, at least until I get enough
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of y'all to join me.
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(audience laughs)
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And we were having sit-ins
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and that first sit-in was on March 6th.
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I went to jail.
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That next week I was in jail
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and by March 12th lead a demonstration of 1500
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students in Orangeburg which
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1200 of them us went to jail.
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We were put into an outside enclosure
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and attacked with water hoses
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and then we got the call
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and as I think I mentioned this morning.
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The only thing I knew about Dr. King
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was what I read in newspapers and magazines
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but when they mentioned Miss Baker,
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when I mentioned to our advisors in Orangeburg
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that Miss Baker, a letter came asking us
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this meeting Miss Baker sent the letter
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and I remember Reverend Cullum telling me that
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Miss Ella Baker said that she wants you to do something.
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You can put your life in her hands
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and we talk on the phone after that
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and we were sort of ready and when I came here
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there was already a sense that we were like Charlie said,
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I know the names I knew the Charles Sherrod's,
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I knew the Diane Nash I knew the Lonnie Kings,
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I know that Charlie Joneses and what we had
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shared was I remember and we talked about them.
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The first thing is what do you remember about it
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and we talked about the Brown decision
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and just about everybody had a copy of the Jet
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with the picture of Emmett Till in it.
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We had a common sense of remembering what
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was happening to our people but that thing on it
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that picture which I have today
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of Emmett Till lying in his coffin.
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So we all started at a, sort of ground when we got here.
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I thought that compared with people like Charlie
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who it been a world traveler and Lonnie from Atlanta.
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I'd never been to Atlanta and these people from Nashville.
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I said great God of Zion I'm up here
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with all these hot city people,
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hot shots and the thing, the statement was Jim Lawson
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because Jim is from my hometown and I knew growing up that
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he had been in prison and he had
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been in prison as a pacifist.
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I knew what a pacifist was and I knew there been hours
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of discussion about going to jail for ideas,
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for beliefs because we had an example from
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our small little colored community of Madison, Ohio
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of someone who had a scholarship, courage, compassion
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and commitment and it was Jim
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who were going to school with my aunts and stuff
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and so the idea of going to jail
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for an idea was already acceptable to me
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and so when we came up here
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there were people who argued
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and discussed the whole nonviolent philosophy.
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Most of these people were from Nashville.
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Diane and Bernard and Bevel
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and the whole concept of discussion
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and a discussion of a beloved community was discussed
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and I felt that we were already in it because these people
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I saw already as kindred spirits
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and brothers as a sort of in a common sort of
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and sisters in a common sort of struggle.
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So we cleaved very quickly.
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We all came together very, very quickly and we talked.
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I met Tim and there was a feeling
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that we came from the same backgrounds
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wherever we came from for the most part.
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We were the sons and daughters of working
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class people, working people.
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I remember and if you had any sense of shame
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from where you came I remember when Tim claimed
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told me he was raised in his first crib
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was the bottom drawer of the bureau
264
00:16:17.419 --> 00:16:20.757
in his parents' bedroom and then said
265
00:16:20.757 --> 00:16:22.646
and I moved up to the third drawer.
266
00:16:22.646 --> 00:16:25.057
I said well,
(audience laughs)
267
00:16:25.057 --> 00:16:27.806
now if that isn't upward mobility.
268
00:16:27.806 --> 00:16:31.188
(audience laughs)
269
00:16:31.188 --> 00:16:33.771
And we all had an appreciation,
270
00:16:34.977 --> 00:16:38.977
a thirst for knowledge and a commitment to doing
271
00:16:41.926 --> 00:16:46.093
something as Sherrod mentioned earlier we didn't know
272
00:16:49.203 --> 00:16:52.833
what it was going to be but we knew it was going to be
273
00:16:52.833 --> 00:16:57.000
something and you came to trust in each other by spending
274
00:17:00.566 --> 00:17:04.733
time talking together, learning together, planning together.
275
00:17:07.006 --> 00:17:11.173
I remember with pride when Jim got kicked out of Vanderbilt.
276
00:17:13.642 --> 00:17:15.094
He was in graduate school.
277
00:17:15.094 --> 00:17:16.923
The School of Theology there,
278
00:17:16.923 --> 00:17:19.756
and you know my thing was you see
279
00:17:21.485 --> 00:17:23.677
in the Christian School of Theology
280
00:17:23.677 --> 00:17:25.760
they done kicked him out.
281
00:17:26.855 --> 00:17:29.730
They're not serious about nothing them Christians.
282
00:17:29.730 --> 00:17:33.897
And you know I was continuing with my other rebellion.
283
00:17:36.671 --> 00:17:39.049
(laughing)
284
00:17:39.049 --> 00:17:42.089
But that was, I hadn't seen him since
285
00:17:42.089 --> 00:17:45.339
I was a kid but I had this feeling that
286
00:17:46.945 --> 00:17:50.309
we were kindred souls and then there were all these
287
00:17:50.309 --> 00:17:52.222
others and we started in the early discussions
288
00:17:52.222 --> 00:17:57.010
when we talked about the Student Coordinating Committee,
289
00:17:57.010 --> 00:18:01.177
the Coordinating Committee, non-violence was kept out of it
290
00:18:03.014 --> 00:18:07.181
and it was then in a concession where Lonnie talked about
291
00:18:09.910 --> 00:18:14.077
those purists, the nonviolent purists that kept us together,
292
00:18:18.594 --> 00:18:21.791
kept us on the road and so it became a thing
293
00:18:21.791 --> 00:18:24.762
that after a mantra that we must have this
294
00:18:24.762 --> 00:18:28.012
in the spirit of non-violence and love.
295
00:18:29.517 --> 00:18:32.361
I never told a man that I loved him in my life.
296
00:18:32.361 --> 00:18:35.122
Wasn't too many girls I said more than I liked you.
297
00:18:35.122 --> 00:18:37.654
(audience laughs)
298
00:18:37.654 --> 00:18:41.237
And here we were talking about love, a word
299
00:18:43.032 --> 00:18:45.844
and a concept I use all the time now because
300
00:18:45.844 --> 00:18:50.308
it was through the movement that I came to understand
301
00:18:50.308 --> 00:18:54.475
the deeper meanings of agape and loving my fellow man,
302
00:18:57.483 --> 00:19:01.632
my brothers and my sisters and there came a time
303
00:19:01.632 --> 00:19:05.215
that I understood how you can love somebody
304
00:19:09.252 --> 00:19:13.716
and an idea so much that you would die for it
305
00:19:13.716 --> 00:19:17.417
and that became the case with all of you all.
306
00:19:17.417 --> 00:19:21.250
I remember when we first went me, Tim Jenkins,
307
00:19:25.036 --> 00:19:29.203
Josh Rod, Charlie Jones, when we decided that we were
308
00:19:30.671 --> 00:19:35.514
going to drop out of school and spend full time helping
309
00:19:35.514 --> 00:19:38.342
to build the movement at whatever cost that was going to
310
00:19:38.342 --> 00:19:43.099
take and we found out about that cause very quickly when
311
00:19:43.099 --> 00:19:47.239
Charlie Jones hit a little back dog owned
312
00:19:47.239 --> 00:19:50.739
by big white lady driving through Alabama.
313
00:19:52.973 --> 00:19:57.140
It became the first ideologicals with the ministerial
314
00:19:59.331 --> 00:20:03.305
students Jones and Sherrod was saying,
315
00:20:03.305 --> 00:20:05.281
the lady came, the mean white lady came out and said
316
00:20:05.281 --> 00:20:08.781
oh my God my baby is gone and he got polio
317
00:20:10.106 --> 00:20:13.876
and if y'all could just give me a few dollars
318
00:20:13.876 --> 00:20:17.293
to make him happy so I can buy a new dog.
319
00:20:20.249 --> 00:20:23.162
Jenkins, dog ran in the street.
320
00:20:23.162 --> 00:20:25.127
(audience laughs)
321
00:20:25.127 --> 00:20:29.468
We don't have extra money to pay for this woman's dog.
322
00:20:29.468 --> 00:20:31.301
Let's get out of here.
323
00:20:34.812 --> 00:20:39.198
We're standing out there debating and in the spirit
324
00:20:39.198 --> 00:20:42.781
of non-violence we should pay for this dog.
325
00:20:45.528 --> 00:20:47.652
Should have had a dog on a leash.
326
00:20:47.652 --> 00:20:50.893
(audience laughs)
327
00:20:50.893 --> 00:20:53.988
The big white lady got tired of our discussion.
328
00:20:53.988 --> 00:20:56.344
(audience laughs)
329
00:20:56.344 --> 00:20:59.972
And told us if you don't pay for this dog you
330
00:20:59.972 --> 00:21:03.183
will never make it out of Alabama alive.
331
00:21:03.183 --> 00:21:06.016
(audience laughs)
332
00:21:07.253 --> 00:21:08.881
White folks have a way
333
00:21:08.881 --> 00:21:11.657
(audience laughs)
334
00:21:11.657 --> 00:21:13.240
of defining issues.
335
00:21:14.655 --> 00:21:17.405
So we moved to a different level.
336
00:21:18.968 --> 00:21:22.385
It became no longer matter of compassion.
337
00:21:24.367 --> 00:21:28.534
It became Sherrod, no let's go we ain't going dog.
338
00:21:30.684 --> 00:21:32.684
Let's go.
339
00:21:33.653 --> 00:21:36.520
Like how dare she threaten us.
340
00:21:36.520 --> 00:21:38.825
The Christian brothers had stopped talking about
341
00:21:38.825 --> 00:21:41.054
paying for the woman's dog which
342
00:21:41.054 --> 00:21:45.118
Nathan and I said all along we shouldn't do and we prepared,
343
00:21:45.118 --> 00:21:47.203
but we wouldn't have left there alive.
344
00:21:47.203 --> 00:21:48.036
The woman was right.
345
00:21:48.036 --> 00:21:49.355
There was a white man,
346
00:21:49.355 --> 00:21:52.053
a man who looked like an old Colonel Sanders.
347
00:21:52.053 --> 00:21:53.496
He had a white linen suit.
348
00:21:53.496 --> 00:21:54.924
I remember that.
349
00:21:54.924 --> 00:21:58.551
Had a white linen suit on and he came out as this crowd
350
00:21:58.551 --> 00:22:02.731
was gathering around us in Pell City, Alabama
351
00:22:02.731 --> 00:22:04.712
and he told us, he was sort of like
352
00:22:04.712 --> 00:22:07.462
the local head white man in town.
353
00:22:09.840 --> 00:22:11.779
(audience laughs)
354
00:22:11.779 --> 00:22:15.939
And he told these boys didn't do nothing wrong.
355
00:22:15.939 --> 00:22:18.124
I saw the whole thing.
356
00:22:18.124 --> 00:22:19.567
The dog ran out now in the street
357
00:22:19.567 --> 00:22:21.412
and they couldn't help hit him.
358
00:22:21.412 --> 00:22:24.584
So y'all just let him alone and told us y'all
359
00:22:24.584 --> 00:22:28.167
better get out of town quick and I remember
360
00:22:30.416 --> 00:22:34.499
we started driving towards, turned to the highway
361
00:22:37.960 --> 00:22:41.280
driving towards Mississippi outrunning
362
00:22:41.280 --> 00:22:44.264
because people were getting the cars coming behind us.
363
00:22:44.264 --> 00:22:47.132
I never forget this but when we got to Mississippi
364
00:22:47.132 --> 00:22:50.189
the border of Mississippi we stopped,
365
00:22:50.189 --> 00:22:54.152
scared, running from a mob from Alabama
366
00:22:54.152 --> 00:22:56.517
but still scared go to go into Mississippi.
367
00:22:56.517 --> 00:22:59.350
(audience laughs)
368
00:23:01.834 --> 00:23:02.859
I swear.
369
00:23:02.859 --> 00:23:06.692
I know each one of us was in that car remember
370
00:23:09.112 --> 00:23:12.295
that day because Sherrod too was trying
371
00:23:12.295 --> 00:23:15.128
to use the bathroom along the way.
372
00:23:16.289 --> 00:23:19.622
Man said one drop, blow your brains out.
373
00:23:20.556 --> 00:23:22.473
It was a terrible time.
374
00:23:23.308 --> 00:23:25.237
Speaking of time.
375
00:23:25.237 --> 00:23:26.642
(audience laughs)
376
00:23:26.642 --> 00:23:28.154
Thank you Martha.
377
00:23:28.154 --> 00:23:31.338
They'll be time to continue this later.
378
00:23:31.338 --> 00:23:34.290
We're trying to keep a rather close schedule
379
00:23:34.290 --> 00:23:37.873
and so and I realize that I had drifted off
380
00:23:40.017 --> 00:23:43.267
of it but it was here 40 years ago that
381
00:23:45.325 --> 00:23:49.492
I learned the deeper meanings of comradeship and love
382
00:23:53.337 --> 00:23:57.504
and trust and a willingness to do anything to help bring
383
00:24:00.119 --> 00:24:03.869
about a change and I knew at different points
384
00:24:07.247 --> 00:24:11.414
along this journey that we wouldn't all get there together.
385
00:24:13.065 --> 00:24:17.232
So I'm happy proud to be able to celebrate with you
386
00:24:18.840 --> 00:24:22.516
and those of us who made it on thus far, thanks.
387
00:24:22.516 --> 00:24:24.849
(applause)
388
00:24:34.497 --> 00:24:36.489
I really want to apologize for the time.
389
00:24:36.489 --> 00:24:38.036
I just want to make sure that we all get
390
00:24:38.036 --> 00:24:40.536
some lunch a little bit later.
391
00:24:41.748 --> 00:24:45.915
I think they were hearing in these talks a different
392
00:24:47.182 --> 00:24:51.349
sense than the traditional of what leadership can be of
393
00:24:53.266 --> 00:24:56.516
something that can be created by people
394
00:24:58.048 --> 00:25:00.714
themselves when they decide to act
395
00:25:00.714 --> 00:25:04.464
or they can be quiet unassuming kind of thing
396
00:25:05.377 --> 00:25:09.460
that really makes pivotal and important decisions
397
00:25:11.709 --> 00:25:14.052
that can change the course of history
398
00:25:14.052 --> 00:25:17.635
and right now we'll hear from Joyce Ladner.
399
00:25:18.712 --> 00:25:20.907
I'll say this when we're doing the program as
400
00:25:20.907 --> 00:25:23.393
you know we're doing all of this last minute and everything.
401
00:25:23.393 --> 00:25:28.029
So we were trying to put in people before their
402
00:25:28.029 --> 00:25:32.196
SNCC accomplishments and their present-day accomplishments
403
00:25:33.156 --> 00:25:36.366
and one of the reasons that we just totally gave
404
00:25:36.366 --> 00:25:37.609
up on the whole project.
405
00:25:37.609 --> 00:25:39.532
We just say we're going to put people's names
406
00:25:39.532 --> 00:25:41.687
in is that when we came to Joyce's name there
407
00:25:41.687 --> 00:25:44.924
were so many accomplishments on both sides we said
408
00:25:44.924 --> 00:25:46.903
it'll take up half a page.
409
00:25:46.903 --> 00:25:50.360
So I won't say anything else and let her to come
410
00:25:50.360 --> 00:25:54.772
and talk to you about the spirit of Miss Baker
411
00:25:54.772 --> 00:25:57.920
and organizing in Mississippi.
412
00:25:57.920 --> 00:26:00.253
(applause)
413
00:26:05.367 --> 00:26:09.812
I was about to say good morning but it's good afternoon.
414
00:26:09.812 --> 00:26:13.979
The war stories remind me, that I've heard from the three
415
00:26:17.281 --> 00:26:21.279
previous speakers, reminds me of a time back in the sixties
416
00:26:21.279 --> 00:26:26.152
when we used to hear people who came out in the 30s
417
00:26:26.152 --> 00:26:30.218
movement and we used to say God I'm so sick
418
00:26:30.218 --> 00:26:34.385
of the thirties and I could imagine that some of you may
419
00:26:38.593 --> 00:26:41.510
well feel like my son and my niece.
420
00:26:42.985 --> 00:26:45.818
My sister Dories daughter, when we
421
00:26:46.982 --> 00:26:49.895
tell them watch this program.
422
00:26:49.895 --> 00:26:52.496
Recently I told my son watch freedom songs.
423
00:26:52.496 --> 00:26:54.396
It's coming on (mumbling).
424
00:26:54.396 --> 00:26:56.469
He said what is it about, SNCC?
425
00:26:56.469 --> 00:26:58.719
(laughing)
426
00:26:59.775 --> 00:27:00.959
I say yes.
427
00:27:00.959 --> 00:27:04.593
He said I already know all about SNCC.
428
00:27:04.593 --> 00:27:06.229
Mom you taught,
429
00:27:06.229 --> 00:27:08.441
I said you don't, you got to see the real SNCC.
430
00:27:08.441 --> 00:27:10.166
He said well what is this you been
431
00:27:10.166 --> 00:27:12.053
telling me all my life then?
432
00:27:12.053 --> 00:27:13.996
That wasn't a real SNCC?
433
00:27:13.996 --> 00:27:17.995
But I think that first I want to thank the organizers
434
00:27:17.995 --> 00:27:20.390
for bringing us together so that we can tell
435
00:27:20.390 --> 00:27:24.131
the war stories because they're deeper meanings hidden
436
00:27:24.131 --> 00:27:28.038
within all of them and the second is that
437
00:27:28.038 --> 00:27:32.483
in remembering Miss Baker I think she would want us
438
00:27:32.483 --> 00:27:35.066
to remember the legacy of doing
439
00:27:37.864 --> 00:27:39.794
because she was indeed a doer.
440
00:27:39.794 --> 00:27:43.321
She was quite an elegant speaker but you can probably
441
00:27:43.321 --> 00:27:47.488
count the number of times that she was the keynote speaker
442
00:27:49.120 --> 00:27:53.287
on or she tended to one to shy away from that role.
443
00:27:54.933 --> 00:27:58.120
I'm going to make two points one is that to describe
444
00:27:58.120 --> 00:28:02.287
what Mississippi was like when Miss Baker's philosophy
445
00:28:03.662 --> 00:28:07.428
began to resonate in the state
446
00:28:07.428 --> 00:28:10.428
and why did it resonate
447
00:28:13.854 --> 00:28:16.162
and then to say a few things about
448
00:28:16.162 --> 00:28:19.008
the lessons she taught us.
449
00:28:19.008 --> 00:28:21.997
All of us necessarily have to be autobiographical
450
00:28:21.997 --> 00:28:26.332
in making our comments and so I was was a high school
451
00:28:26.332 --> 00:28:30.220
senior at 16 years old in 1961 on Easter weekend
452
00:28:30.220 --> 00:28:32.053
when SNCC was founded.
453
00:28:33.916 --> 00:28:37.403
Probably don't remember having read about it
454
00:28:37.403 --> 00:28:40.496
in the Hattiesburg Mississippi American Newspaper
455
00:28:40.496 --> 00:28:42.840
because it censored everything.
456
00:28:42.840 --> 00:28:44.803
I do remember it did carry some information
457
00:28:44.803 --> 00:28:47.970
about the sit-ins that were occurring.
458
00:28:49.606 --> 00:28:52.273
Nevertheless we were, all of us,
459
00:28:53.261 --> 00:28:56.880
not all of us but I was particularly blessed
460
00:28:56.880 --> 00:29:01.344
because have a sister Dorie who was coming later today
461
00:29:01.344 --> 00:29:04.603
who was only 15 months older than I and I could not
462
00:29:04.603 --> 00:29:07.699
remember a time in our lives when race was not the
463
00:29:07.699 --> 00:29:12.163
central most important thing that we focused on.
464
00:29:12.163 --> 00:29:16.330
I have always been and I've always carried both of burden
465
00:29:18.029 --> 00:29:22.196
and the blessing of the strong racial consciousness
466
00:29:24.600 --> 00:29:28.767
and perhaps it came from my mother who taught us that
467
00:29:32.715 --> 00:29:36.882
you look white people dead in the eye and don't blink.
468
00:29:38.405 --> 00:29:41.905
I remember when Dorie and all the salesman
469
00:29:44.184 --> 00:29:48.351
and the insurance collector came around our house deferred
470
00:29:50.107 --> 00:29:54.029
to her and she always calls it a certain way you carry
471
00:29:54.029 --> 00:29:57.182
yourself in order to keep your dignity so
472
00:29:57.182 --> 00:30:00.418
that white people don't walk over you.
473
00:30:00.418 --> 00:30:04.709
So when Dorie and I were at the grocery store,
474
00:30:04.709 --> 00:30:07.858
Hudson's grocery a block from our house
475
00:30:07.858 --> 00:30:10.987
and we're looking at magazines,
476
00:30:10.987 --> 00:30:15.154
the magazine rack and Dorie had bought some donuts
477
00:30:16.171 --> 00:30:19.896
and she, I remember clearly because she probably
478
00:30:19.896 --> 00:30:23.315
just gotten her first bra but we were entering puberty
479
00:30:23.315 --> 00:30:25.442
and I was the younger and certainly
480
00:30:25.442 --> 00:30:28.109
had not yet but mine 28 AAA bra.
481
00:30:29.493 --> 00:30:30.933
(audience laughs)
482
00:30:30.933 --> 00:30:35.100
That was the size I remember clearly the first one.
483
00:30:36.310 --> 00:30:37.588
There's this man.
484
00:30:37.588 --> 00:30:39.655
A cashier, white cashier in the store
485
00:30:39.655 --> 00:30:42.754
who all four of his fingers on the right
486
00:30:42.754 --> 00:30:45.616
hand haven't cut off for some reason
487
00:30:45.616 --> 00:30:49.667
and he walked up behind her and try to touch bra
488
00:30:49.667 --> 00:30:51.590
and she turned and took the bag of donuts
489
00:30:51.590 --> 00:30:53.862
and began beating him on the head
490
00:30:53.862 --> 00:30:56.291
and we ran all the way home and we can told Mother.
491
00:30:56.291 --> 00:30:58.235
Mother guess what happened?
492
00:30:58.235 --> 00:31:01.365
And we told her and she said you should have killed them.
493
00:31:01.365 --> 00:31:04.198
(audience laughs)
494
00:31:05.258 --> 00:31:06.983
So that we were taught to stand up
495
00:31:06.983 --> 00:31:10.926
for our beliefs and another thing she taught us
496
00:31:10.926 --> 00:31:14.018
she becomes the plural because we learned
497
00:31:14.018 --> 00:31:17.138
this within this all black community called
498
00:31:17.138 --> 00:31:21.419
Palmers Crossing outside, 4 miles from Downtown Hattiesburg.
499
00:31:21.419 --> 00:31:24.712
We were taught to stand up for my beliefs
500
00:31:24.712 --> 00:31:26.930
and if you couldn't stand up for them
501
00:31:26.930 --> 00:31:30.314
that Mother used to say that they're not worth very much
502
00:31:30.314 --> 00:31:31.694
if you can't stand up for what you believe in.
503
00:31:31.694 --> 00:31:34.214
Beliefs can't be worth much to start with
504
00:31:34.214 --> 00:31:38.136
but they taught us how to survive with dignity
505
00:31:38.136 --> 00:31:40.531
and I was walking a tightrope.
506
00:31:40.531 --> 00:31:44.400
They told us that we could indeed stand tall
507
00:31:44.400 --> 00:31:46.310
and have the courage of these convictions
508
00:31:46.310 --> 00:31:49.869
and carry ourselves in such a way that if a white
509
00:31:49.869 --> 00:31:52.630
man makes a pass at you and they did
510
00:31:52.630 --> 00:31:54.591
and they were quite plentiful,
511
00:31:54.591 --> 00:31:58.411
you stand proudly and don't even respond
512
00:31:58.411 --> 00:32:02.746
and just walk away like a lady and it worked.
513
00:32:02.746 --> 00:32:06.494
We knew we couldn't turn around and beat too
514
00:32:06.494 --> 00:32:10.219
many people over the head with donuts for fear
515
00:32:10.219 --> 00:32:13.386
that we could have been killed but we,
516
00:32:18.139 --> 00:32:20.961
I remember some things that had an impact on
517
00:32:20.961 --> 00:32:23.501
us that became threads throughout the larger,
518
00:32:23.501 --> 00:32:26.476
that were threads throughout the larger society
519
00:32:26.476 --> 00:32:30.798
but they followed us as well from the time of childhood.
520
00:32:30.798 --> 00:32:33.946
The Brown decision I remember very very clear clearly
521
00:32:33.946 --> 00:32:36.015
and how the local newspaper covered it.
522
00:32:36.015 --> 00:32:40.604
I read the newspaper from the time I was very little.
523
00:32:40.604 --> 00:32:44.437
I used to spend a dime a day to buy this paper
524
00:32:46.432 --> 00:32:50.599
and know that it was referred to the day the decision
525
00:32:51.484 --> 00:32:56.145
was handed down what's was referred to as Black Monday
526
00:32:56.145 --> 00:32:59.995
but we didn't get, there was no rush integrate,
527
00:32:59.995 --> 00:33:04.182
no attempt at all to desegregate that Hattiesburg schools
528
00:33:04.182 --> 00:33:05.843
or the schools anywhere Mississippi.
529
00:33:05.843 --> 00:33:08.990
What we got were new public schools.
530
00:33:08.990 --> 00:33:12.035
They built the county built us a new school
531
00:33:12.035 --> 00:33:15.732
that we had always needed and that was their
532
00:33:15.732 --> 00:33:19.315
way of staving off any attempts to say that
533
00:33:21.025 --> 00:33:24.807
we were unequal or that we have unequal facilities.
534
00:33:24.807 --> 00:33:27.084
We lived in a very, very closed society
535
00:33:27.084 --> 00:33:31.688
but it was possible to get in certain information.
536
00:33:31.688 --> 00:33:35.455
I don't even remember maybe I heard national news
537
00:33:35.455 --> 00:33:39.089
on the radio but we got a new television,
538
00:33:39.089 --> 00:33:43.015
we got a televisions station WDAM in Hattiesburg
539
00:33:43.015 --> 00:33:46.568
in about 19, it was about was the late fifties
540
00:33:46.568 --> 00:33:50.735
and they were very, very racist but I do remember seeing,
541
00:33:53.495 --> 00:33:56.216
oh wait it was an NBC affiliate so David Brinkley,
542
00:33:56.216 --> 00:33:57.494
(mumbles) and David Brinkley.
543
00:33:57.494 --> 00:33:59.916
That was the one window of national news
544
00:33:59.916 --> 00:34:04.083
that we saw but was most important was that we had this
545
00:34:05.521 --> 00:34:09.321
friend an older man who came by our house all the time.
546
00:34:09.321 --> 00:34:11.922
We called him Cuz for cousin.
547
00:34:11.922 --> 00:34:15.345
He really wasn't our cousin but others referred
548
00:34:15.345 --> 00:34:18.517
to him as Dr. McLeod and he was a race man.
549
00:34:18.517 --> 00:34:20.408
He sold herbal medicine.
550
00:34:20.408 --> 00:34:21.357
Today he'd be in vogue.
551
00:34:21.357 --> 00:34:23.470
Back then my mother said I wouldn't take anything
552
00:34:23.470 --> 00:34:25.786
that Cuz gave you, it might poison you.
553
00:34:25.786 --> 00:34:26.722
(audience laughs)
554
00:34:26.722 --> 00:34:29.882
She said that those roots that he's boiling
555
00:34:29.882 --> 00:34:33.406
I don't know what's in them, but Cuz was a race man.
556
00:34:33.406 --> 00:34:35.457
He was a member of the local NAACP.
557
00:34:35.457 --> 00:34:38.624
I was 10, 11, 12 maybe a little older.
558
00:34:39.866 --> 00:34:43.377
But probably not 10 but 11, 12, 13
559
00:34:43.377 --> 00:34:46.326
and he brought us weekly the Chicago Defender,
560
00:34:46.326 --> 00:34:49.496
the Pittsburgh Courier and we got
561
00:34:49.496 --> 00:34:51.996
the monthly Ebony and the Jet.
562
00:34:53.278 --> 00:34:57.458
It was funny I think Charles referred to it as the Jet.
563
00:34:57.458 --> 00:34:59.954
Black people in the south always called Jet magazine
564
00:34:59.954 --> 00:35:04.427
the Jet and that is where we got information.
565
00:35:04.427 --> 00:35:06.260
He also brought books.
566
00:35:07.391 --> 00:35:11.383
I read the first biographies about black people
567
00:35:11.383 --> 00:35:14.327
because I don't know where he got the books
568
00:35:14.327 --> 00:35:18.808
from but I guess he ordered them but he brought them,
569
00:35:18.808 --> 00:35:21.207
he introduced us to literature on black people
570
00:35:21.207 --> 00:35:22.991
and he used to tell us you girls are
571
00:35:22.991 --> 00:35:24.567
going to have to change things.
572
00:35:24.567 --> 00:35:27.095
It'll be your generation that's going
573
00:35:27.095 --> 00:35:29.846
to change things when you get older.
574
00:35:29.846 --> 00:35:33.846
We, several references were made to the veterans
575
00:35:35.204 --> 00:35:38.122
of World War II and I would add World War I.
576
00:35:38.122 --> 00:35:40.627
My Uncle Archie went to France
577
00:35:40.627 --> 00:35:44.128
and the French asked him if you would pull down his pants
578
00:35:44.128 --> 00:35:47.378
according to him and show them his tail
579
00:35:48.291 --> 00:35:49.979
because they had been told that
580
00:35:49.979 --> 00:35:54.041
black people were kin to monkeys and had tails.
581
00:35:54.041 --> 00:35:56.533
He told us this and I remember this as a little girl
582
00:35:56.533 --> 00:35:59.321
sitting on his back porch when he talked about
583
00:35:59.321 --> 00:36:03.261
how disappointing it was to come back home
584
00:36:03.261 --> 00:36:07.428
and see how terrible conditions were but he going to France
585
00:36:08.332 --> 00:36:11.070
had given him a perspective that was very different.
586
00:36:11.070 --> 00:36:14.682
The veterans of World War II especially were very,
587
00:36:14.682 --> 00:36:18.346
very important because they were sent abroad to fight
588
00:36:18.346 --> 00:36:22.394
for freedom with the expectation that they
589
00:36:22.394 --> 00:36:25.013
were also going to reap some benefits.
590
00:36:25.013 --> 00:36:28.432
They came home and saw the white soldiers reaping
591
00:36:28.432 --> 00:36:31.494
the benefits but they did not and many of these
592
00:36:31.494 --> 00:36:34.942
people were the founders of the then underground
593
00:36:34.942 --> 00:36:38.703
NAACP in Mississippi, throughout the state.
594
00:36:38.703 --> 00:36:41.953
I cannot emphasize enough how important
595
00:36:46.911 --> 00:36:49.493
the role of these men were.
596
00:36:49.493 --> 00:36:53.660
They were the ones who, I always felt that my generation
597
00:36:54.647 --> 00:36:58.235
was the one that they felt would be,
598
00:36:58.235 --> 00:37:01.867
ours was a generation that would change things
599
00:37:01.867 --> 00:37:06.139
that the environment was pregnant with possibilities
600
00:37:06.139 --> 00:37:08.778
of all kinds of change but it was almost as if
601
00:37:08.778 --> 00:37:12.945
they were on the precipice of it but knew it was to come.
602
00:37:13.906 --> 00:37:16.714
I refer to ours as the Emmett Till generation
603
00:37:16.714 --> 00:37:19.050
because I cannot think of a single thing that
604
00:37:19.050 --> 00:37:22.738
had a more profound impact on some of the people
605
00:37:22.738 --> 00:37:25.488
who came into SNCC who had seen the cover
606
00:37:25.488 --> 00:37:28.988
of the Jet Magazine cover of Emmett Till's
607
00:37:30.694 --> 00:37:33.954
body where he,
608
00:37:33.954 --> 00:37:36.730
they didn't do any cosmetic
609
00:37:36.730 --> 00:37:38.990
surgery or whatever to the face of him
610
00:37:38.990 --> 00:37:42.990
and in the 1980s I asked Mrs. Mobley, his mother
611
00:37:44.082 --> 00:37:48.249
why did you have him buried open casket without them,
612
00:37:51.798 --> 00:37:54.510
they pulled him out the river so he was
613
00:37:54.510 --> 00:37:57.357
not, he didn't look like her, anyone's son.
614
00:37:57.357 --> 00:37:59.754
It was just an awful picture.
615
00:37:59.754 --> 00:38:01.612
And she said I wanted the world to see what
616
00:38:01.612 --> 00:38:04.945
they did to my baby and we were his age.
617
00:38:06.311 --> 00:38:09.561
We were in terms of psychosocial theory
618
00:38:12.274 --> 00:38:15.191
or whatever we identified with him.
619
00:38:16.293 --> 00:38:20.126
I felt personally if they killed a 14 year old
620
00:38:21.024 --> 00:38:24.692
they could also kill me, they could come my brothers.
621
00:38:24.692 --> 00:38:28.631
We knew that men were lynched but we'd never
622
00:38:28.631 --> 00:38:32.992
known a child being lynched before and I believe that
623
00:38:32.992 --> 00:38:36.551
on a deeply profoundly personal level
624
00:38:36.551 --> 00:38:40.718
that had a strong galvanizing effect on all of us.
625
00:38:44.643 --> 00:38:46.391
That image is with me still.
626
00:38:46.391 --> 00:38:49.527
It became etched in our consciousness.
627
00:38:49.527 --> 00:38:53.423
We were also very, very fortunate to have mentors.
628
00:38:53.423 --> 00:38:57.423
Eileen Beard a woman was a member of our church.
629
00:38:58.535 --> 00:39:02.095
Eileen Beard was the sister of Vernon Dahmer.
630
00:39:02.095 --> 00:39:04.512
Mr. Dahmer and Clyde Kennard,
631
00:39:07.878 --> 00:39:10.545
who lived in that same community
632
00:39:12.695 --> 00:39:15.551
and Medgar Evers were the three
633
00:39:15.551 --> 00:39:18.384
mentors that I had who were killed
634
00:39:19.579 --> 00:39:22.412
and I thought about this recently.
635
00:39:24.230 --> 00:39:26.875
That is so ironic that these three men who
636
00:39:26.875 --> 00:39:30.133
had such a profound influence on my life we're all,
637
00:39:30.133 --> 00:39:32.050
died for their beliefs.
638
00:39:33.051 --> 00:39:35.598
Mr. Dahmer and Mrs. Dahmer,
639
00:39:35.598 --> 00:39:38.083
Brother Beard and Sister Beard as we called them
640
00:39:38.083 --> 00:39:39.756
in our church and Clyde Kennard used
641
00:39:39.756 --> 00:39:43.788
to take Dorie and me with them to Jackson to the state
642
00:39:43.788 --> 00:39:47.955
NAACP meetings in the 50s when we were in high school.
643
00:39:48.957 --> 00:39:51.784
I don't know mentors, I think mentors,
644
00:39:51.784 --> 00:39:53.896
you seek mentors out as much as they,
645
00:39:53.896 --> 00:39:57.252
and this is a message I like to give to the young people
646
00:39:57.252 --> 00:40:00.952
here today that is not just a matter of older
647
00:40:00.952 --> 00:40:03.004
people saying we want to mentor young people
648
00:40:03.004 --> 00:40:06.464
but young people also have to seek out the older people.
649
00:40:06.464 --> 00:40:09.979
It's possible that the reason that they took us
650
00:40:09.979 --> 00:40:12.681
likely is because they knew we had this interest and race.
651
00:40:12.681 --> 00:40:16.848
We talked about it you know and it was then that we saw
652
00:40:18.497 --> 00:40:22.171
people like Ruby Hurley who was the first black woman
653
00:40:22.171 --> 00:40:24.863
lawyer I ever saw and probably didn't know one existed.
654
00:40:24.863 --> 00:40:28.167
She was the southeastern regional director Of the NAACP.
655
00:40:28.167 --> 00:40:30.007
So she would come and speak.
656
00:40:30.007 --> 00:40:33.157
Then Gloucester Current director of branches spoke.
657
00:40:33.157 --> 00:40:37.142
So we saw these outside people coming in to this late
658
00:40:37.142 --> 00:40:39.119
and all the meetings we held at the Masonic Temple
659
00:40:39.119 --> 00:40:42.536
up the street from Jackson State College.
660
00:40:43.590 --> 00:40:47.507
We also organized, the same mentors especially
661
00:40:48.786 --> 00:40:52.953
Clyde Kennard and Mr. Dahmer helped us to organize and NAACP
662
00:40:54.705 --> 00:40:58.372
youth chapter in the very late 50s and Clyde
663
00:40:59.817 --> 00:41:02.567
was a very, how many of you know,
664
00:41:03.757 --> 00:41:05.601
have heard of Clyde Kennard?
665
00:41:05.601 --> 00:41:08.463
All older people but the younger people don't know him.
666
00:41:08.463 --> 00:41:11.578
He came back home after having been in the military,
667
00:41:11.578 --> 00:41:13.791
having been a student at the University of Chicago,
668
00:41:13.791 --> 00:41:16.369
his father died, came back to Hattiesburg
669
00:41:16.369 --> 00:41:19.333
to help his mom run the farm.
670
00:41:19.333 --> 00:41:22.684
Wanted to finish, go back to college so he applied
671
00:41:22.684 --> 00:41:25.466
to Mississippi Southern College now the University
672
00:41:25.466 --> 00:41:27.966
of Southern Mississippi twice,
673
00:41:29.123 --> 00:41:31.655
I believe it was two times maybe three.
674
00:41:31.655 --> 00:41:33.405
But any at any rate it was in the late 50s
675
00:41:33.405 --> 00:41:37.572
and they planted some, they arrested him for having $3.50
676
00:41:41.126 --> 00:41:44.329
worth of stolen chicken feed in his car.
677
00:41:44.329 --> 00:41:46.530
Sent him to the Forrest County Jail.
678
00:41:46.530 --> 00:41:49.698
Then sent him to Parchman State Penitentiary.
679
00:41:49.698 --> 00:41:52.418
He got cancer and was literally dying
680
00:41:52.418 --> 00:41:54.719
by the time Governor Ross Barnett gave him
681
00:41:54.719 --> 00:41:58.886
a pardon for something he never, I mean it was awful.
682
00:42:00.412 --> 00:42:03.436
I have never cried yet I still feel the tears
683
00:42:03.436 --> 00:42:06.369
that one day will come over how terrible they
684
00:42:06.369 --> 00:42:09.946
treated him but he got out after the pardon,
685
00:42:09.946 --> 00:42:12.738
went to the University of Chicago.
686
00:42:12.738 --> 00:42:15.439
It was Billings Hospital and died within I believe
687
00:42:15.439 --> 00:42:18.689
it was a month or 6 weeks from cancer.
688
00:42:20.417 --> 00:42:24.000
He was a very quiet person who moved easily
689
00:42:25.778 --> 00:42:29.361
without you're noticing his presence except
690
00:42:30.221 --> 00:42:32.721
there was a profundity to the,
691
00:42:39.169 --> 00:42:41.432
I must confess also that I had
692
00:42:41.432 --> 00:42:43.865
a crush on him for some reason
693
00:42:43.865 --> 00:42:46.221
even though he was an older man.
694
00:42:46.221 --> 00:42:49.459
He was early 30s I don't know.
695
00:42:49.459 --> 00:42:50.869
But he was an older man.
696
00:42:50.869 --> 00:42:53.786
I was maybe 14, 15 and up to 16 but
697
00:43:02.225 --> 00:43:04.219
there was also a network of students
698
00:43:04.219 --> 00:43:06.201
in the high schools around.
699
00:43:06.201 --> 00:43:09.384
I knew Leslie Mclemore who stood up
700
00:43:09.384 --> 00:43:13.551
to criticize us, the organizing of this conference
701
00:43:16.075 --> 00:43:20.665
from high school because he lived in northern Mississippi
702
00:43:20.665 --> 00:43:22.969
and I lived in Southern Mississippi but what
703
00:43:22.969 --> 00:43:26.137
facilitated a lot of the people was joining
704
00:43:26.137 --> 00:43:29.514
the younger people my age joining the movement
705
00:43:29.514 --> 00:43:31.132
or getting active in the movement was that
706
00:43:31.132 --> 00:43:34.355
we were also active in certain high school organizations.
707
00:43:34.355 --> 00:43:37.112
Like I believe you were state president
708
00:43:37.112 --> 00:43:38.568
when I was state president.
709
00:43:38.568 --> 00:43:40.838
Tri HAWA, you were state president of HAWA.
710
00:43:40.838 --> 00:43:42.671
So we traveled around.
711
00:43:43.675 --> 00:43:46.196
A lot of us, I have been out of Mississippi
712
00:43:46.196 --> 00:43:50.031
once maybe twice to go up to New Orleans
713
00:43:50.031 --> 00:43:53.948
but most of us travel within that close circle.
714
00:43:54.841 --> 00:43:58.058
I often wonder how did I high school teachers
715
00:43:58.058 --> 00:43:59.839
and especially music teachers teach.
716
00:43:59.839 --> 00:44:03.214
Where do they learn opera when they taught Dorie
717
00:44:03.214 --> 00:44:06.742
who had a great voice, taught her how to sing opera
718
00:44:06.742 --> 00:44:09.909
or where did they get their books from
719
00:44:11.105 --> 00:44:14.188
because our librarian had $150 a year
720
00:44:15.655 --> 00:44:18.155
to replenish the, to buy books
721
00:44:22.172 --> 00:44:23.633
and we got the hand me down,
722
00:44:23.633 --> 00:44:25.970
used textbooks from the white schools
723
00:44:25.970 --> 00:44:28.416
after they use them 5 years, we got them
724
00:44:28.416 --> 00:44:32.503
and I bristle even today when I walk past
725
00:44:32.503 --> 00:44:36.172
the public library that was for a whites-only
726
00:44:36.172 --> 00:44:40.245
because as a child I wanted more books to read than
727
00:44:40.245 --> 00:44:43.673
there were available and they didn't give them to us.
728
00:44:43.673 --> 00:44:47.173
Anyway we went to college to Jackson State
729
00:44:48.393 --> 00:44:51.643
in the fall Of 61, the following 60 and
730
00:44:53.094 --> 00:44:57.261
this again I began to see some of those same freshman
731
00:44:58.701 --> 00:45:02.287
in my class as some older upperclassmen
732
00:45:02.287 --> 00:45:06.454
that I've seen it the Masonic Temple at the state wide
733
00:45:07.433 --> 00:45:08.683
NAACP meeting.
734
00:45:11.873 --> 00:45:15.075
One of the students an older student was James Meredith.
735
00:45:15.075 --> 00:45:19.340
We used to sit before he well he's very strange now
736
00:45:19.340 --> 00:45:21.573
but back then he was very,
737
00:45:21.573 --> 00:45:25.573
very strange.
(audience laughs)
738
00:45:26.653 --> 00:45:28.419
And because this is all on tape
739
00:45:28.419 --> 00:45:31.079
I won't say how strange he is.
740
00:45:31.079 --> 00:45:32.830
(audience laughs)
741
00:45:32.830 --> 00:45:34.323
But he wasn't strange then
742
00:45:34.323 --> 00:45:38.283
and we knew absolutely nothing about the fact
743
00:45:38.283 --> 00:45:40.999
that he applied to go to Ole Miss, nothing
744
00:45:40.999 --> 00:45:43.666
and I was as close to him as the
745
00:45:44.671 --> 00:45:46.601
other small group around him.
746
00:45:46.601 --> 00:45:49.227
He was an upperclassman, been in the military,
747
00:45:49.227 --> 00:45:52.394
was married and but we could recognize
748
00:45:55.779 --> 00:45:58.803
who each other was in a way.
749
00:45:58.803 --> 00:46:03.017
I don't know if I'm getting through to you.
750
00:46:03.017 --> 00:46:07.184
As a freshman every Wednesday afternoon was free time.
751
00:46:08.057 --> 00:46:11.557
So you could sign up always to go downtown
752
00:46:12.718 --> 00:46:14.609
and that meant to shopping.
753
00:46:14.609 --> 00:46:18.190
Dorie are we go up to see Medgar whose
754
00:46:18.190 --> 00:46:21.953
office was on the second floor of the Masonic Temple
755
00:46:21.953 --> 00:46:25.731
and I remember because of that said we have met him
756
00:46:25.731 --> 00:46:29.898
and when we were in high school and one time we went
757
00:46:30.819 --> 00:46:33.775
to talk to him and he would always tell us what
758
00:46:33.775 --> 00:46:37.942
was going on and the NAACP chapters around the state
759
00:46:39.123 --> 00:46:43.260
and one time he told us that there was going
760
00:46:43.260 --> 00:46:45.598
to be a sit-in and we said really can we join?
761
00:46:45.598 --> 00:46:48.247
We didn't know what they were going to sit in what
762
00:46:48.247 --> 00:46:50.580
or where or what and he said
763
00:46:53.667 --> 00:46:55.447
well yeah you can.
764
00:46:55.447 --> 00:46:57.430
And we said all that's great.
765
00:46:57.430 --> 00:46:58.327
Tell us when.
766
00:46:58.327 --> 00:47:00.310
And he said I'll let you know letter
767
00:47:00.310 --> 00:47:03.603
and each time we went by his office he would say something.
768
00:47:03.603 --> 00:47:08.040
It was vague and you do not to ask too many questions
769
00:47:08.040 --> 00:47:12.599
because having information could be dangerous to you
770
00:47:12.599 --> 00:47:16.199
if you were ever pressured enough to give it up
771
00:47:16.199 --> 00:47:19.449
so finally he told us you really can't,
772
00:47:20.480 --> 00:47:24.028
he said I would never be able to explain
773
00:47:24.028 --> 00:47:27.446
to your parents why you were arrested.
774
00:47:27.446 --> 00:47:29.841
That would be important to me because one time
775
00:47:29.841 --> 00:47:31.516
he has seen my mother in a grocery store
776
00:47:31.516 --> 00:47:34.756
in Palmers Crossing and she'd given him some money
777
00:47:34.756 --> 00:47:37.398
and said will you give them give this to Joyce.
778
00:47:37.398 --> 00:47:39.029
He just ran into her accidentally.
779
00:47:39.029 --> 00:47:40.596
He came on campus and found me
780
00:47:40.596 --> 00:47:44.306
and gave me this money Mother sent me but finally
781
00:47:44.306 --> 00:47:48.473
he told us that the sit-in was going to be on such a date
782
00:47:51.055 --> 00:47:53.973
and it was within a short period of time.
783
00:47:53.973 --> 00:47:57.665
My memory is not very good but maybe a week or two
784
00:47:57.665 --> 00:48:01.589
or so and he said what you can do is try to organize
785
00:48:01.589 --> 00:48:04.545
the students on Jackson State's campus
786
00:48:04.545 --> 00:48:08.128
and that was a, talk about being ingenious.
787
00:48:09.053 --> 00:48:11.982
So we began to do things like
788
00:48:11.982 --> 00:48:14.168
Dorie was present dorm counselor
789
00:48:14.168 --> 00:48:17.091
so we had a meeting one night and the dormitory,
790
00:48:17.091 --> 00:48:18.838
regularly scheduled meeting.
791
00:48:18.838 --> 00:48:21.499
She (mumbling).
792
00:48:21.499 --> 00:48:23.189
Everything in Mississippi at the
793
00:48:23.189 --> 00:48:24.069
time was opened with a prayer.
794
00:48:24.069 --> 00:48:27.033
So I to give, she said you give the prayer
795
00:48:27.033 --> 00:48:29.193
and I'm talking about oh dear Lord there are
796
00:48:29.193 --> 00:48:31.137
perilous times ahead.
797
00:48:31.137 --> 00:48:35.304
Please protect us as we go into this danger and so on.
798
00:48:36.627 --> 00:48:40.536
The next morning we were called before the dean of students,
799
00:48:40.536 --> 00:48:41.369
Dean Rogers.
800
00:48:41.369 --> 00:48:45.266
He asked what did I mean about the prayer and perilous times
801
00:48:45.266 --> 00:48:48.099
and Dorie, most of you know Dorie,
802
00:48:50.269 --> 00:48:54.916
she's, well she's a hell raiser and the guys in SNCC were
803
00:48:54.916 --> 00:48:57.878
scared of her and that's why I say the thesis
804
00:48:57.878 --> 00:49:00.398
about men dominating women in SNCC,
805
00:49:00.398 --> 00:49:02.716
well they never dominated Dorie.
806
00:49:02.716 --> 00:49:04.932
She dominated them if anything (laughs),
807
00:49:04.932 --> 00:49:06.498
but anyway that's an aside,
808
00:49:06.498 --> 00:49:10.415
but we, I said what do you mean asking me about
809
00:49:12.330 --> 00:49:14.942
what I said to my god.
810
00:49:14.942 --> 00:49:19.315
You have no right to question me about my relationship
811
00:49:19.315 --> 00:49:22.986
with Jesus and Dorie jumped in and said
812
00:49:22.986 --> 00:49:25.559
as a man of the cloth how could you
813
00:49:25.559 --> 00:49:28.454
because he was also an ordained minister.
814
00:49:28.454 --> 00:49:32.204
So we went off on him and walked out of there
815
00:49:33.767 --> 00:49:36.037
and he said well you're right, you're right
816
00:49:36.037 --> 00:49:38.990
and we walked out of there laughing you know.
817
00:49:38.990 --> 00:49:41.823
(audience laughs)
818
00:49:43.032 --> 00:49:46.032
but what we began to talk about the,
819
00:49:49.228 --> 00:49:52.145
well what we actually did was told,
820
00:49:54.971 --> 00:49:58.457
you spread rumors so they could never get back to you
821
00:49:58.457 --> 00:50:01.031
but something is gonna happen and we gotta be ready
822
00:50:01.031 --> 00:50:04.698
as students to support it when it goes down.
823
00:50:05.821 --> 00:50:08.905
At Tougaloo what happened was 8 Tougaloo students
824
00:50:08.905 --> 00:50:11.888
or 9 Tougaloo students sat in at the public library,
825
00:50:11.888 --> 00:50:16.424
the Jackson Public Library sponsored by the NAACP chapter
826
00:50:16.424 --> 00:50:20.872
on the campus and supported by Medgar and he organized it
827
00:50:20.872 --> 00:50:25.515
actually and what happened was that because they didn't go
828
00:50:25.515 --> 00:50:29.885
to Woolworth's or the Crest store because they wanted
829
00:50:29.885 --> 00:50:33.218
to attack a facility that was taxpayers,
830
00:50:34.080 --> 00:50:36.330
black people pay taxes too.
831
00:50:37.169 --> 00:50:39.158
Tax supported by blacks.
832
00:50:39.158 --> 00:50:43.325
What we did was a number of us at that point got together
833
00:50:45.403 --> 00:50:49.709
and said start spreading the rumor again that couldn't be
834
00:50:49.709 --> 00:50:51.986
traced back to the one person that there was going to be a
835
00:50:51.986 --> 00:50:56.153
prayer-meeting in front of the library at 7 that night.
836
00:50:58.952 --> 00:51:02.035
So what happened is that the guys got
837
00:51:02.876 --> 00:51:05.537
it first because they had free range.
838
00:51:05.537 --> 00:51:08.707
They didn't have curfews like girls and so on.
839
00:51:08.707 --> 00:51:13.646
So we are the women decided to go to the library so by the
840
00:51:13.646 --> 00:51:17.198
time we got out there it was seven o'clock.
841
00:51:17.198 --> 00:51:20.781
Here's Emmett Burns who was also a minister
842
00:51:21.941 --> 00:51:25.069
and a student was in the middle
843
00:51:25.069 --> 00:51:29.236
of his prayer, when out of the blue, we heard this noise.
844
00:51:30.197 --> 00:51:34.305
Stop it, stop it, shut up and everybody was looking.
845
00:51:34.305 --> 00:51:36.321
Where is this coming from
846
00:51:36.321 --> 00:51:39.110
and it was Jacob Reddicks the president of the college.
847
00:51:39.110 --> 00:51:41.089
He ran through.
848
00:51:41.089 --> 00:51:42.579
He was absolutely out of control.
849
00:51:42.579 --> 00:51:45.087
He was in a frenzy and like what is this?
850
00:51:45.087 --> 00:51:46.613
What's going on?
851
00:51:46.613 --> 00:51:48.471
Stop it and his arms was flailing
852
00:51:48.471 --> 00:51:52.556
and one of my two roommates, Margaret and Eunice,
853
00:51:52.556 --> 00:51:55.724
he took Eunice by the shoulder and pushed her
854
00:51:55.724 --> 00:51:59.593
like that on the ground and then we turned on him
855
00:51:59.593 --> 00:52:03.760
and the rest, they brought a lot of police on the campus
856
00:52:07.441 --> 00:52:12.436
that night and the next day we tried to march down
857
00:52:12.436 --> 00:52:15.141
to the courthouse when the Tougaloo students were
858
00:52:15.141 --> 00:52:18.669
being arraigned and they shot, all I remember
859
00:52:18.669 --> 00:52:20.901
is saying oh lord they're killing us.
860
00:52:20.901 --> 00:52:24.462
It was tear gas canisters being shot
861
00:52:24.462 --> 00:52:27.295
and it sounded like guns and I hid
862
00:52:28.324 --> 00:52:31.741
and we ran into different people's homes.
863
00:52:33.190 --> 00:52:36.915
I never forget there was this older black lady
864
00:52:36.915 --> 00:52:38.768
and we were just knocking on her front door.
865
00:52:38.768 --> 00:52:42.935
I heard the radio I reached I had through the the hole
866
00:52:44.024 --> 00:52:47.234
in the screen and unlatched and ran in the house
867
00:52:47.234 --> 00:52:49.345
and told her what happened.
868
00:52:49.345 --> 00:52:52.945
And she said come on and nobody's coming to my house.
869
00:52:52.945 --> 00:52:54.993
At the funeral home some of the kids were
870
00:52:54.993 --> 00:52:56.272
hidden in the embalming room.
871
00:52:56.272 --> 00:53:00.439
It was bedlam but I never forget this lady kept ironing
872
00:53:02.156 --> 00:53:04.171
and it was on the radio and she kept
873
00:53:04.171 --> 00:53:06.815
saying it's a low down dirty shame.
874
00:53:06.815 --> 00:53:09.424
These white folks are treating these children like dogs
875
00:53:09.424 --> 00:53:11.824
and she, I mean she was quiet and soft-spoken.
876
00:53:11.824 --> 00:53:14.056
And she was talking to herself you know.
877
00:53:14.056 --> 00:53:16.428
Eventually they got back to campus.
878
00:53:16.428 --> 00:53:18.869
They closed school early the next day.
879
00:53:18.869 --> 00:53:22.039
Sent us home for spring break and when we came back
880
00:53:22.039 --> 00:53:23.173
it was quieted down.
881
00:53:23.173 --> 00:53:26.811
They expelled the president of student government.
882
00:53:26.811 --> 00:53:29.894
Now we kept going to Medgar's office.
883
00:53:30.987 --> 00:53:35.154
One day he said I want your girls to meet Tom Gaither.
884
00:53:37.681 --> 00:53:41.444
Tom has come to help us get our freedom
885
00:53:41.444 --> 00:53:44.737
and we said oh that's good, how are you?
886
00:53:44.737 --> 00:53:45.957
You didn't ask any question questions.
887
00:53:45.957 --> 00:53:47.866
I didn't ask him what is it going to do.
888
00:53:47.866 --> 00:53:51.774
He was core organizer who was had come to organize
889
00:53:51.774 --> 00:53:55.691
Mississippi to get ready for the freedom rides.
890
00:53:56.545 --> 00:53:58.561
That's what Mississippi was like before
891
00:53:58.561 --> 00:54:02.051
Miss Baker's philosophy entered.
892
00:54:02.051 --> 00:54:06.030
There were a lot of people who carried
893
00:54:06.030 --> 00:54:09.697
on that work underground less than be killed
894
00:54:10.599 --> 00:54:13.766
and many were killed even without it.
895
00:54:14.900 --> 00:54:18.659
Miss Baker came into a state that was no longer totally
896
00:54:18.659 --> 00:54:23.359
closed but a wedge had been put in and it was being pried
897
00:54:23.359 --> 00:54:27.526
open because they're were the Vernon Dahmers, Amzie Moores,
898
00:54:28.817 --> 00:54:32.984
Sister Steptoe, Clyde Kennard, I could go on and on of the
899
00:54:34.034 --> 00:54:35.155
local men and women
900
00:54:35.155 --> 00:54:38.655
Miss Haymer, my dear cousin Victoria Gray.
901
00:54:41.669 --> 00:54:44.783
These are people who have taken the stands.
902
00:54:44.783 --> 00:54:48.950
So by the time the SNCC people came in, direct action
903
00:54:49.997 --> 00:54:54.164
couldn't be carried out in Mississippi but we also matured
904
00:54:57.524 --> 00:55:00.961
to a point but we realized that eating in lunch counters,
905
00:55:00.961 --> 00:55:04.021
eating at a lunch center was not as important as having the
906
00:55:04.021 --> 00:55:07.385
right to vote and we thought naively
907
00:55:07.385 --> 00:55:09.655
that if you get some political power,
908
00:55:09.655 --> 00:55:11.905
then you can change things.
909
00:55:13.346 --> 00:55:15.571
We hadn't really progressed yet to the point
910
00:55:15.571 --> 00:55:18.253
where we understood that economic power was
911
00:55:18.253 --> 00:55:20.003
very, very important.
912
00:55:21.270 --> 00:55:23.952
Miss Baker taught of several things.
913
00:55:23.952 --> 00:55:26.515
First of all I saw her as a kind of mother figure.
914
00:55:26.515 --> 00:55:29.041
She reminded me quite frankly of my momma.
915
00:55:29.041 --> 00:55:32.458
I never ever thought of calling her Ella.
916
00:55:33.303 --> 00:55:35.266
Even today if she was still alive I mean
917
00:55:35.266 --> 00:55:37.090
she would be Miss Baker.
918
00:55:37.090 --> 00:55:39.180
Miss Baker was kind of secretive.
919
00:55:39.180 --> 00:55:40.256
No one has said that but I remember asking her
920
00:55:40.256 --> 00:55:42.225
over and over and when I lived
921
00:55:42.225 --> 00:55:44.769
in New York and the 70's when I used to
922
00:55:44.769 --> 00:55:46.591
go over and visit her,
923
00:55:46.591 --> 00:55:48.823
Miss Baker tell me about your husband.
924
00:55:48.823 --> 00:55:50.356
(mumbling)
925
00:55:50.356 --> 00:55:51.292
(audience laughs)
926
00:55:51.292 --> 00:55:53.407
It was not until I read Joanne's book that I
927
00:55:53.407 --> 00:55:56.344
got to know who Miss Baker's husband was and she
928
00:55:56.344 --> 00:55:59.820
didn't really talk very much about herself or was she
929
00:55:59.820 --> 00:56:03.903
believed personally and it would have been hard,
930
00:56:05.944 --> 00:56:08.752
she wasn't a talker about the philosophy
931
00:56:08.752 --> 00:56:11.812
of things to me as much as she was a doer.
932
00:56:11.812 --> 00:56:15.395
I understand who she was from her actions.
933
00:56:16.473 --> 00:56:21.427
I think she felt that we should it was important for all of
934
00:56:21.427 --> 00:56:25.276
us to have a very, to be firmly grounded, have a strong
935
00:56:25.276 --> 00:56:29.774
sense of identity because it was a source of our strength
936
00:56:29.774 --> 00:56:32.634
knowing who we, I think she believed
937
00:56:32.634 --> 00:56:34.815
that we needed to know we were
938
00:56:34.815 --> 00:56:38.052
because we were going to some turbulent times and whatever
939
00:56:38.052 --> 00:56:42.246
strength to you could derive from your roots
940
00:56:42.246 --> 00:56:46.060
and that's why I believe in part the kind of circle
941
00:56:46.060 --> 00:56:50.489
and embracing of each other in SNCC as brothers and sisters
942
00:56:50.489 --> 00:56:51.989
came out of that.
943
00:56:53.009 --> 00:56:56.890
She believed family and a democratic ethos.
944
00:56:56.890 --> 00:57:01.265
The concept we saw always say that the people decide
945
00:57:01.265 --> 00:57:04.104
was very very much Ella Baker.
946
00:57:04.104 --> 00:57:07.427
She also was anti-hierarchical
947
00:57:07.427 --> 00:57:12.251
and don't get her talking about black baptist preachers.
948
00:57:12.251 --> 00:57:15.954
Now that's one that you would go off on.
949
00:57:15.954 --> 00:57:18.954
She also taught me that courage was,
950
00:57:20.318 --> 00:57:22.281
and my mother taught the same thing is that
951
00:57:22.281 --> 00:57:25.148
courage is not the answer to fear.
952
00:57:25.148 --> 00:57:27.418
It is not the absence of fear,
953
00:57:27.418 --> 00:57:31.954
but the you keep on even in the face of understanding,
954
00:57:31.954 --> 00:57:36.338
recognizing and accept that fear is a natural reaction to
955
00:57:36.338 --> 00:57:39.255
dangerous situations but despite it
956
00:57:41.290 --> 00:57:45.457
and it goes back again to the strength of your beliefs
957
00:57:46.385 --> 00:57:49.718
have to be such that you risk something.
958
00:57:50.914 --> 00:57:53.889
A lot of us probably didn't think that we and I
959
00:57:53.889 --> 00:57:58.349
heard this more from SNCC guys then from women, that we live
960
00:57:58.349 --> 00:58:02.689
to see 30 years old or I didn't even think about the next
961
00:58:02.689 --> 00:58:06.356
month not to consider a long term life span.
962
00:58:08.346 --> 00:58:12.700
She taught me that she did the others of us that
963
00:58:12.700 --> 00:58:15.959
we had to work with what we had,
964
00:58:15.959 --> 00:58:18.893
that we had to be resourceful,
965
00:58:18.893 --> 00:58:23.142
that whatever was available in the environment you used as
966
00:58:23.142 --> 00:58:27.309
prudently as possible and that you don't stop your work
967
00:58:28.340 --> 00:58:30.574
because you don't have a lot.
968
00:58:30.574 --> 00:58:34.078
I mean the $10 a week check this SNCC sent out
969
00:58:34.078 --> 00:58:36.661
was actually $9.54 after taxes.
970
00:58:38.308 --> 00:58:41.039
People like Sam Block slept for the first
971
00:58:41.039 --> 00:58:44.073
several weeks in his car in Greenwood
972
00:58:44.073 --> 00:58:47.420
before he found someone who would take him in
973
00:58:47.420 --> 00:58:51.503
but that was what was meant by being resourceful.
974
00:58:53.022 --> 00:58:55.452
She very, very much taught us that we had to start
975
00:58:55.452 --> 00:58:57.619
with where the people are.
976
00:58:59.124 --> 00:59:02.076
That you don't go in and tell people
977
00:59:02.076 --> 00:59:03.838
that you're to do this your to do that
978
00:59:03.838 --> 00:59:07.063
but to get a sense of the lay of the land where the people
979
00:59:07.063 --> 00:59:11.230
are and then try to begin to build, help to work with
980
00:59:12.194 --> 00:59:15.897
them to build the consensus and she felt that leadership
981
00:59:15.897 --> 00:59:20.064
emerged out of the local people, that they already had it
982
00:59:21.679 --> 00:59:25.137
there but you had to be able as facilitators to
983
00:59:25.137 --> 00:59:27.570
help to bring it about.
984
00:59:27.570 --> 00:59:31.996
She also told us that we had to be resilient
985
00:59:31.996 --> 00:59:35.396
and I learned this at the feet of my parents
986
00:59:35.396 --> 00:59:37.631
that just because you fall down doesn't mean
987
00:59:37.631 --> 00:59:41.227
that you don't keep getting up so I think that one of the
988
00:59:41.227 --> 00:59:45.404
reasons that the nonviolent philosophy was able to prevail
989
00:59:45.404 --> 00:59:49.571
for as long as it did was because we were taught to be tough
990
00:59:50.713 --> 00:59:54.905
and to understand that times will get rough, that you'd get
991
00:59:54.905 --> 00:59:58.057
beaten up, I was never beaten common ever in the situation
992
00:59:58.057 --> 01:00:01.619
but I spent spent a week in jail and it wasn't easy but we
993
01:00:01.619 --> 01:00:03.952
also knew that this was just
994
01:00:07.752 --> 01:00:10.669
part of what being involved in this
995
01:00:11.768 --> 01:00:15.240
kind of very dangerous social change work meant.
996
01:00:15.240 --> 01:00:17.763
She told us we have to think on her own.
997
01:00:17.763 --> 01:00:20.316
I can't think of anything more important than her
998
01:00:20.316 --> 01:00:25.051
empowering us to be free thinkers and to be critical
999
01:00:25.051 --> 01:00:28.536
thinkers and that's why I some of those,
1000
01:00:28.536 --> 01:00:31.248
you remember that SNCC meeting
1001
01:00:31.248 --> 01:00:34.331
I believe in the spring of 63 or 64--