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Underground world of anti-segregation forces in the South.
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Programming and human relations involved creating
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illegal meetings of black and white students
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to engage in intellectual programs
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deconstructing race and racial myths
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and to share from the heart, forging bonds
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that transcended racial barriers.
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Our project was designed specifically
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to create small, integrated race relations workshops
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for students across the Southeast.
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I was called a campus traveler.
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I flew around in little one prop puddle jumpers
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to black and white campuses, often in remote locations.
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On white campuses, the student Christian association
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our a wise staff person would secretly organize
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a small meeting of students.
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On black campuses, I was often asked to speak publicly
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to the student body and publicly welcomed
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as a white visitor, a very embarrassing deference.
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In both instances, I recruited students
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to our integrated workshops.
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SNCC's work overlapped with these workshops
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as many local campus leaders who attended
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were also local movement leaders.
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Human relations projects continued parallel to the movement
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or as an integral part of it,
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depending on your perspective, right on through.
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This work was undermining and defeating segregation
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on the personal level,
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as bringing down the legal barriers
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would defeat it politically.
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I remember Ella beginning our meetings
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when I got back from a trip
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by saying, "Let's see now, what are we doing here?"
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She really meant it.
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In all the areas in which I saw Ella operate,
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she always said just what she meant.
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It was as though she'd thought of everything.
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And she'd show her thoughts polished and smooth
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from all her years of mulling them over.
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She never pulled punches and after accurately nailing
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someone's foibles, she'd chuckle.
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Although capable of righteous indignation,
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Ella usually found humanity humorous
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and her approach to people was always fresh.
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She was interested in everyone
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and she always asked where they were from
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and about their family.
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She was deeply and consciously rooted in her family.
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Ella was politically above all, pragmatic.
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She seemed to know that however much we think and talk,
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and however important that is,
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it is action that makes social change happen.
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She was always directed toward action, thoughtful action.
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Her notion of the need to raise up new leaders
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to rotate leaders, for example, was pragmatic.
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Based on years of experience of seeing folks join
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the leaders club when they became leaders,
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leaving their constituents behind.
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Her broad vision saved SNCC from numerous potential splits.
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Her, both and replacing the tendency toward either or.
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Personally, Ella was perhaps the most
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secure, rooted and self-knowledgeable woman I've known.
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She was an elegant woman, elegant and homey and warm.
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Her diction was elegant and her mind.
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I never saw her flustered or without
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complete aplomb and self-possession.
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I think of Ella now when I comb my hair
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high above my face as she did hers,
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a flattering style for an older woman.
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This is when it gets hard to talk loud.
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I think of her when I hold my chin high.
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She's in me this way, a role model
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for the age I have achieved.
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Until I reached this age, I didn't know
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how deeply I had incorporated her into my self.
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When things were rough for me later,
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after the movement it was Ella to whom I turned
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with late night phone calls.
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And she was always right there for me.
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I really loved her.
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It was a great privilege to have worked with her so closely.
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Ella's presence defined SNCC in many ways.
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One was the value assigned to women in SNCC.
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She was a woman and invaluable in many ways.
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So that sense of the value of women
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translated into latitude for all of us.
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Another was the value given to hard work at all levels.
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Ella was a behind the scenes, supportive person
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and she was invaluable, so even though I was white
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and chose to work in supportive capacities,
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I considered race appropriate,
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I was valued for my hard work.
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And third, Ella's views on leadership
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and the need for mass organizing empowered us all.
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As well as those we organized
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by shining a light on ordinary people
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both in communities and in the ranks of the organization.
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This enabled us to give our best.
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Martha Norman asked me, in asking me to speak here,
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acknowledged all this about Ella's role
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and suggested I talk about what I was able to do
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in SNCC as exemplary of these points.
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So I'll do that briefly in closing.
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I worked in SNCC in many areas at many levels,
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always doing both the head work,
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and the hands on work in cooperation with others.
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I was able to see what was needed and initiate and move on,
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training others to take over what I started.
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That was what I could do, that was what I had to offer.
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And by doing that, doing what I could do best,
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both I and the organization profited.
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SNCC was smart that way.
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I came to SNCC as an activist at the University of Texas,
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a participant in sit-ins, picketing,
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theater stand-ins there in the spring of 1960.
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I worked as a campus affiliate over that year,
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before moving to Atlanta in 1961 to work for Ella.
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While in Atlanta, I went on the Albany Freedom ride
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and took minutes at SNCC staff meetings
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as well as speaking about SNCC's work nationally.
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I was a northern contact and fundraiser and publicist
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for part of the next year and then came on staff
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in early '63 in Atlanta, as the first Northern coordinator,
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working for Jim Foreman who led the way.
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I set up that program, concentrating on campuses
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and on establishing networks of information and support.
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In the fall of '63, I went to Mississippi
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to help establish a literacy project
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and became part of the Freedom votes
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and the building of the MFDP.
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I was part of the organizing for Freedom Summer,
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specifically charged with researching, training,
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and coordinating statewide of the challenge
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of the seating of the Mississippi Lily Whites
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at the '64 Democratic National Convention.
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After the summer, I was part of the paper,
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of the writing of a paper in SNCC.
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I was part of SNCC's discussions about structure
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and future direction
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and initiated a photo project designed to train
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young, black Mississippians to be photographers.
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That should be writing a paper in SNCC about women.
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In the winter of '64, '65, I began to shift back
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toward white organizing, moving to Chicago
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in the Spring, still as SNCC staff,
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now on loan to SDS to organize white
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Appalachian welfare mothers.
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A memorandum I wrote, largely out of that experience
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in Chicago, and mailed with Mary King
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to young women on the left formed the basis
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for much of the early organizing
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of the women's movement in the broader white world.
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So in this way, the women's movement
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traces back to Ella Baker.
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She is behind it, as she was always behind the scenes.
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Ella provided us with that example.
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She was always back there, willing to give
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with no expectation of reward or praise.
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That willingness, in the SNCC as I knew it,
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was the primary quality we shared, our very core.
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I have always loved us for that.
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(applause)
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Okay, good morning.
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Good morning.
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Hello, thank you.
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Okay, let me ask you something,
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how many people had ever heard,
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now this doesn't go for the scholars and the adults
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and all that stuff, how many young people here
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had every heard of SNCC or Ms. Baker
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before this conference happened?
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Aha, this is a knowledgeable group.
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You're a Falewell, you don't count.
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He's a scholar!
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He's a scholar, no besides the scholars.
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Okay, first of all, for those who have not seen,
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this is Ms. Baker, right the way we remember her.
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But there's another Ms. Baker,
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who was a little younger than this,
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which is this Ms. Baker, okay.
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Now this is the way a lot of us remembered her mostly.
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Now what's interesting is that Ms. Baker
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at that point was the age that I am now
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and she really seemed rather old, okay.
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But what's important about Ms. Baker,
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let me start from the beginning.
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First of all, I'm just gonna do a quick intro,
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which is that I came down to work for SNCC in 1963.
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And then when I left SNCC, I worked for a number
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of African-American organizations, a bookstore
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that was started by a lot of old SNCC people
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in Washington, D.C. that became
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the largest black bookstore in the country.
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Worked for the United Church of Christ
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Commission for racial justice.
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All of these by the way, because of the skills
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that I had learned in SNCC.
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Then I went up to Boston and worked on
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the 14 hour series called Eyes on the Prize
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which was an Academy Award nominated, we didn't get it.
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And lots of awards and historic,
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14 hour documentary PBS system series.
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Okay, but when I come into SNCC,
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I should say that SNCC formed me.
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It changed the way I saw myself.
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It changed the way I saw my world.
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It changed my entire worldview and it changed
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the direction of my life.
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And the way that Casey and Connie and Brenda Will
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and Muriel Will, are you gonna talk?
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I don't know.
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No you got to talk see,
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this woman was the project director
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in Greenville, Mississippi, one of three
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project directors, women project directors
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in, four, cause Selma, four in SNCC.
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But in any event, hopefully she will talk.
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But when I come in, it changes the whole way
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I see everything, so who I am at that point
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is coming out of Tarrytown, New York
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which is only 25 miles north of the city,
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I should take my watch,
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25 miles north of New York City,
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however, New Yorkers consider us Upstate
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because for New Yorkers, anything north of the Bronx
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is upstate, right?
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But we're only 25 miles north,
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had a wonderful childhood, it was Washington Irving,
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the author Washington Irving's territory.
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So I went to Washington Irving Junior High School,
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I went to Sleepy Hollow High School.
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The football team was the headless horsemen,
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go horsemen, go.
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Okay, but where I grew up, happy childhood that it was,
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there were no black people I saw
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with any economic or political power.
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And that is very important in terms
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of what draws me to SNCC.
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So I'm not coming out of communities like Brenda
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where she sees African-American leadership.
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I'm not seeing that in Tarrytown.
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So I go to Swarthmore college,
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esteemed Quaker College in Pennsylvania, right,
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full scholarship, one of eight students
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one of eight African-American students
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in that freshman class.
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There had been one black senior,
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one female, one black sophomore, female,
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and then eight of us coming in,
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the big push into Swarthmore.
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Four boys and four girls, so that we would not have to date
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outside the community, so while I'm there, though,
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there's and SDS chapter on campus
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and they're doing forays into Cambridge, Maryland
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on the Eastern Shore of Maryland
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and this is the first time I'm away from home,
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I figure who's gonna know.
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I'll get on the bus and see what's up.
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I get there and I get, I find first of all
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that it is a local organization
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00:12:58.825 --> 00:13:01.245
run by, among the community people,
263
00:13:01.245 --> 00:13:04.596
the main leader is a woman named Gloria Richardson
264
00:13:04.596 --> 00:13:06.956
who was a strong, I mean I always remember
265
00:13:06.956 --> 00:13:10.313
Gloria, with she always had jeans and a work shirt.
266
00:13:10.313 --> 00:13:12.774
And could just, it was ramrod straight.
267
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Just an amazing woman.
268
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I had never seen anybody like that in my life before.
269
00:13:17.492 --> 00:13:20.338
Pop Herb, who was the funeral director and her uncle.
270
00:13:20.338 --> 00:13:22.508
He was really supportive of the movement.
271
00:13:22.508 --> 00:13:25.298
The local SNCC person in that, though
272
00:13:25.298 --> 00:13:27.917
was Reggie Robinson and so this is my first
273
00:13:27.917 --> 00:13:30.418
real connection with SNCC at that point.
274
00:13:30.418 --> 00:13:33.050
And what I come into when I see SNCC
275
00:13:33.050 --> 00:13:36.119
is a primarily African-American organization
276
00:13:36.119 --> 00:13:40.456
with white staff members who have the politics
277
00:13:40.456 --> 00:13:42.578
that allows them to want to contribute
278
00:13:42.578 --> 00:13:45.428
to an organization that is black-led basically.
279
00:13:45.428 --> 00:13:48.119
I see young people who are the age
280
00:13:48.119 --> 00:13:51.938
of many of you here who at that point in their lives
281
00:13:51.938 --> 00:13:53.359
decided that they would lead
282
00:13:53.359 --> 00:13:57.039
what a friend of mine calls a purposeful life.
283
00:13:57.039 --> 00:14:00.766
They made that decision and it was a decision.
284
00:14:00.766 --> 00:14:04.538
Now what I come into, though, is not just
285
00:14:04.538 --> 00:14:08.548
a political organization, I come into a culture.
286
00:14:08.548 --> 00:14:12.828
And others have talked about this culture.
287
00:14:12.828 --> 00:14:15.580
It is very much a family.
288
00:14:15.580 --> 00:14:18.748
And so I didn't realize until reading
289
00:14:18.748 --> 00:14:20.559
Joanne's book on Ms. Baker,
290
00:14:20.559 --> 00:14:22.450
called Ella Baker Freedom Bound
291
00:14:22.450 --> 00:14:27.450
how much that culture was influenced by Ms. Baker.
292
00:14:27.450 --> 00:14:29.576
Now let me just say, Ms. Baker would not have known me
293
00:14:29.576 --> 00:14:31.616
from Eve, truly.
294
00:14:31.616 --> 00:14:34.347
First of all, I was scared to death.
295
00:14:34.347 --> 00:14:38.067
Everybody I met in SNCC knew more than I did.
296
00:14:38.067 --> 00:14:39.736
They were coming from local communities
297
00:14:39.736 --> 00:14:43.755
where there had been some historic continuity of resistance.
298
00:14:43.755 --> 00:14:45.283
They're coming from Northern communities,
299
00:14:45.283 --> 00:14:48.521
Stokely's talking about Cottenhagle.
300
00:14:48.521 --> 00:14:51.785
There were people who had come out of New York organizations
301
00:14:51.785 --> 00:14:53.392
where they had worked with Bayard Rustin.
302
00:14:53.392 --> 00:14:56.595
There was a political consciousness North and South
303
00:14:56.595 --> 00:14:58.503
that I knew nothin' about.
304
00:14:58.503 --> 00:15:00.666
I did not say a word in SNCC staff meetings
305
00:15:00.666 --> 00:15:03.255
the entire four years I was there, okay.
306
00:15:03.255 --> 00:15:06.586
Now, however what was wonderful about SNCC
307
00:15:06.586 --> 00:15:09.669
was that with Ms. Baker, with Foreman
308
00:15:11.895 --> 00:15:14.614
you got sense that they somehow knew
309
00:15:14.614 --> 00:15:15.900
the kind of things that you would
310
00:15:15.900 --> 00:15:17.431
contribute to.
311
00:15:17.431 --> 00:15:19.059
So when I come down, supposedly,
312
00:15:19.059 --> 00:15:20.699
I'm with Reggie and we were coming back
313
00:15:20.699 --> 00:15:22.306
from, for SNCC people.
314
00:15:22.306 --> 00:15:26.299
It was marriage of Bill Hanson and Ruthie.
315
00:15:26.299 --> 00:15:27.979
Now, I didn't know either of these people, okay,
316
00:15:27.979 --> 00:15:31.599
but I get to Cincinnati where they're being married
317
00:15:31.599 --> 00:15:34.075
and for some reason her bridesmaid didn't show up
318
00:15:34.075 --> 00:15:37.668
and I get poured into this skin tight little dress
319
00:15:37.668 --> 00:15:38.818
and I become her bridesmaid.
320
00:15:38.818 --> 00:15:39.651
I had never seen her before in my life, okay.
321
00:15:39.651 --> 00:15:41.692
(audience laughing)
322
00:15:41.692 --> 00:15:44.621
On the way back, however, we come through Atlanta,
323
00:15:44.621 --> 00:15:48.437
and Foreman finds out that A I can type 90 words
324
00:15:48.437 --> 00:15:49.424
a minute and B I knew shorthand.
325
00:15:49.424 --> 00:15:53.877
I never made it back to Cambridge, I become his
326
00:15:53.877 --> 00:15:56.098
secretary in the Atlanta office.
327
00:15:56.098 --> 00:16:00.588
Now, I'm gonna do something, because what's interesting
328
00:16:00.588 --> 00:16:04.755
is that when the way I came out of SNCC is so different
329
00:16:05.780 --> 00:16:06.966
from the way I went in.
330
00:16:06.966 --> 00:16:10.138
Again, I was little mousey lady, never spoke
331
00:16:10.138 --> 00:16:13.088
I grew and became more than I ever imagined
332
00:16:13.088 --> 00:16:16.928
I could be because of the culture of SNCC.
333
00:16:16.928 --> 00:16:18.799
And it was a culture which continues,
334
00:16:18.799 --> 00:16:21.492
so that all of us, whatever we're doing
335
00:16:21.492 --> 00:16:23.736
we bring that culture into whatever
336
00:16:23.736 --> 00:16:26.399
the work environment is and you all know this.
337
00:16:26.399 --> 00:16:28.563
People say, "oh, isn't that interesting that you--",
338
00:16:28.563 --> 00:16:31.386
well, it's the SNCC way of doing that.
339
00:16:31.386 --> 00:16:34.699
And Ms. Baker absolutely influenced that environment.
340
00:16:34.699 --> 00:16:38.449
Now, when Joanne Grant who did Freedom Bound,
341
00:16:44.346 --> 00:16:48.513
was starting the book she found in the King archives
342
00:16:49.451 --> 00:16:52.103
which is where a lot of the SNCC papers are,
343
00:16:52.103 --> 00:16:55.007
she found some notes that I had done
344
00:16:55.007 --> 00:16:56.633
of SNCC committee meetings.
345
00:16:56.633 --> 00:16:59.650
Now they're in shorthand and, so, what she did was
346
00:16:59.650 --> 00:17:03.390
ask me if I would decipher the shorthand.
347
00:17:03.390 --> 00:17:06.062
And what's amazing to me is I had not realized
348
00:17:06.062 --> 00:17:09.066
how involved Ms. Baker could become,
349
00:17:09.066 --> 00:17:12.310
if she realized that there were some problems occurring.
350
00:17:12.310 --> 00:17:14.851
Otherwise, absolutely, she would sit on the sidelines,
351
00:17:14.851 --> 00:17:17.117
she would wait for you to get an answer,
352
00:17:17.117 --> 00:17:19.481
but if she thought that there was a problem,
353
00:17:19.481 --> 00:17:24.047
like what happened in 1960 at the founding between
354
00:17:24.047 --> 00:17:26.180
are we gonna be direct action or are we gonna do
355
00:17:26.180 --> 00:17:28.634
voter registration she would insert herself.
356
00:17:28.634 --> 00:17:33.222
So I'm looking at these, I just xeroxed these minute,
357
00:17:33.222 --> 00:17:36.830
and I'm looking at what is a staff meeting.
358
00:17:36.830 --> 00:17:40.711
And I see she said something about, first of all,
359
00:17:40.711 --> 00:17:44.639
there's some problem with a local leader
360
00:17:44.639 --> 00:17:49.300
and Ms. Baker says, "what machinery was set up last
361
00:17:49.300 --> 00:17:52.899
"summer to help so-and-so to prepare, knowing,"
362
00:17:52.899 --> 00:17:54.583
she says, "that some people just don't have
363
00:17:54.583 --> 00:17:56.287
"leadership ability."
364
00:17:56.287 --> 00:17:59.895
Ruby Doris Robinson, who was larger than life!
365
00:17:59.895 --> 00:18:02.042
I mean, when I went into SNCC Ruby Doris
366
00:18:02.042 --> 00:18:04.902
who had done 30 days jail, no bail
367
00:18:04.902 --> 00:18:06.329
in a South Carolina prison.
368
00:18:06.329 --> 00:18:09.784
When South Carolina was not the best place
369
00:18:09.784 --> 00:18:11.291
to be at that point.
370
00:18:11.291 --> 00:18:13.832
And so she did 30 days jail, no bail which is one
371
00:18:13.832 --> 00:18:16.725
of the reasons people say that she died so young
372
00:18:16.725 --> 00:18:19.828
and she got the cancer that she got.
373
00:18:19.828 --> 00:18:22.379
But when I first though about coming into SNCC
374
00:18:22.379 --> 00:18:24.062
Penny Patch as a matter of fact,
375
00:18:24.062 --> 00:18:26.084
who was at Swathmore then,
376
00:18:26.084 --> 00:18:28.846
said, "look if you want to get into SNCC
377
00:18:28.846 --> 00:18:31.503
"you got to go by Ruby Doris," and so I had to prepare
378
00:18:31.503 --> 00:18:33.164
an application stuff.
379
00:18:33.164 --> 00:18:37.807
Okay, so Ruby says in response to Ms. Baker's query about
380
00:18:37.807 --> 00:18:40.201
what kind of machinery was setup to prepare this guy.
381
00:18:40.201 --> 00:18:42.767
Ruby says, "no attempt to develop him and, in fact,
382
00:18:42.767 --> 00:18:45.000
"we antagonized him instead.
383
00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:47.663
"We threw lots of college graduates into this project
384
00:18:47.663 --> 00:18:50.678
"and made decisions with him," she says.
385
00:18:50.678 --> 00:18:54.845
And then later on, they're talking about, we're talking
386
00:18:58.034 --> 00:19:01.411
about some action within this local project and Ms. Baker
387
00:19:01.411 --> 00:19:03.722
says sometimes, because she's asking what kind
388
00:19:03.722 --> 00:19:05.966
of preparation have you done to prepare
389
00:19:05.966 --> 00:19:07.826
for what you're about to do?
390
00:19:07.826 --> 00:19:10.214
And she says, "sometimes we must,"
391
00:19:10.214 --> 00:19:12.292
I'm going through the brief forms in shorthand,
392
00:19:12.292 --> 00:19:16.042
" we must delay action one day in order to plan for it
393
00:19:16.042 --> 00:19:18.342
"unless we have organization we're simply
394
00:19:18.342 --> 00:19:21.465
"going to dissipate the anarchy with little result.
395
00:19:21.465 --> 00:19:24.426
"Comparative to the time and the trouble involved."
396
00:19:24.426 --> 00:19:26.620
She says, "we also have to consider that working
397
00:19:26.620 --> 00:19:29.369
"in this particular community is different from working
398
00:19:29.369 --> 00:19:31.433
"in the rural South."
399
00:19:31.433 --> 00:19:33.307
Now what's interesting is that, of course, for those
400
00:19:33.307 --> 00:19:37.474
who know, Ms. Baker is 1940s, she is the field secretary
401
00:19:38.531 --> 00:19:40.007
for the NAACP.
402
00:19:40.007 --> 00:19:44.134
A lone woman traveling Mississippi, rural Mississippi,
403
00:19:44.134 --> 00:19:48.051
Alabama, southwest Georgia, Louisiana at a time
404
00:19:49.116 --> 00:19:51.436
organizing chapters in the 1940s,
405
00:19:51.436 --> 00:19:54.540
at a time when you could be killed for having a
406
00:19:54.540 --> 00:19:56.539
NAACP card on you.
407
00:19:56.539 --> 00:19:58.462
So a lot of folks would hide it in their shoes
408
00:19:58.462 --> 00:20:00.104
in the back of their closets.
409
00:20:00.104 --> 00:20:03.854
This is a woman who in 1957 is the organizer,
410
00:20:05.056 --> 00:20:08.124
helps the black ministers along with Dr. King,
411
00:20:08.124 --> 00:20:10.509
to organize SCLC, the Southern Christian
412
00:20:10.509 --> 00:20:13.385
Leadership Conference, in 1957 and becomes its
413
00:20:13.385 --> 00:20:16.101
first temporary executive secretary.
414
00:20:16.101 --> 00:20:16.993
Temporary, why?
415
00:20:16.993 --> 00:20:19.973
Because A she's a woman and B she's not a minister
416
00:20:19.973 --> 00:20:20.841
and they don't play that.
417
00:20:20.841 --> 00:20:24.833
So and then it's in the capacity though that in 1960
418
00:20:24.833 --> 00:20:26.341
when this sit-ins jumped off she realizes
419
00:20:26.341 --> 00:20:28.497
that there's all these energy going on.
420
00:20:28.497 --> 00:20:29.575
That the kind of stuff that she had
421
00:20:29.575 --> 00:20:32.213
thought would happen maybe in the NAACP,
422
00:20:32.213 --> 00:20:34.402
maybe in the SCLC, but didn't
423
00:20:34.402 --> 00:20:35.911
because they were a little too rigid
424
00:20:35.911 --> 00:20:37.812
and they were adults, maybe it would work
425
00:20:37.812 --> 00:20:39.452
with these young people SNCC.
426
00:20:39.452 --> 00:20:41.056
So she calls all these folks together
427
00:20:41.056 --> 00:20:45.040
here to Shaw University in 1960 April 1st, right?
428
00:20:45.040 --> 00:20:47.325
So when Connie talks about this organizing meeting
429
00:20:47.325 --> 00:20:49.768
it was full of energy it was all these people
430
00:20:49.768 --> 00:20:51.464
coming out as local leaders.
431
00:20:51.464 --> 00:20:54.347
Julian Bond, says he gets into a VW and
432
00:20:54.347 --> 00:20:56.380
with four other people in this little VW
433
00:20:56.380 --> 00:20:58.407
bug, travels up from Atlanta from the Atlanta student
434
00:20:58.407 --> 00:20:59.859
movement.
435
00:20:59.859 --> 00:21:03.091
How many folks were at-- 'cause I know
436
00:21:03.091 --> 00:21:04.725
Marshall is here too and Matthew.
437
00:21:04.725 --> 00:21:08.509
How many folks were at that original 1960 staff meeting?
438
00:21:08.509 --> 00:21:10.885
Okay, Debbie, Connie-- oh!
439
00:21:10.885 --> 00:21:11.718
Tell me your name.
440
00:21:11.718 --> 00:21:12.574
Hank. That's Hank Thomas.
441
00:21:12.574 --> 00:21:13.896
Oh my god!
442
00:21:13.896 --> 00:21:16.345
Yes, hello (laughs).
443
00:21:16.345 --> 00:21:18.545
Okay, and back there.
444
00:21:18.545 --> 00:21:19.609
Virginia Thorn.
445
00:21:19.609 --> 00:21:21.270
Virginia Thorn.
446
00:21:21.270 --> 00:21:23.588
Okay, so these folks were at that meeting.
447
00:21:23.588 --> 00:21:24.757
I'm missing somebody?
448
00:21:24.757 --> 00:21:26.485
Oh, no okay.
449
00:21:26.485 --> 00:21:28.233
And so there's all this energy going on,
450
00:21:28.233 --> 00:21:30.750
so what she says to these young people is,
451
00:21:30.750 --> 00:21:33.194
"don't associate with these adults."
452
00:21:33.194 --> 00:21:35.141
Not "don't associate", "don't link yourself,
453
00:21:35.141 --> 00:21:37.957
"do not become a wing of these adult organizations."
454
00:21:37.957 --> 00:21:40.206
'Cause she sees this hope this new burgeoning hope.
455
00:21:40.206 --> 00:21:43.626
Okay, this is the woman who is helping to guide us
456
00:21:43.626 --> 00:21:45.541
as we're going through.
457
00:21:45.541 --> 00:21:48.082
So when she's talking about this she knows
458
00:21:48.082 --> 00:21:50.422
where of she speaks and what was amazing to me,
459
00:21:50.422 --> 00:21:52.623
now being the age that she was then,
460
00:21:52.623 --> 00:21:54.661
is that she didn't talk more often.
461
00:21:54.661 --> 00:21:56.321
'Cause I get tired, you know you get impatient
462
00:21:56.321 --> 00:21:57.154
when you get this age.
463
00:21:57.154 --> 00:21:58.033
It's just like listen to me I know what
464
00:21:58.033 --> 00:21:58.987
I am talking about.
465
00:21:58.987 --> 00:22:00.570
She never did that.
466
00:22:01.949 --> 00:22:04.155
She says, another point in the same meeting,
467
00:22:04.155 --> 00:22:07.852
she said, "we must break through the pseudo-sophistication
468
00:22:07.852 --> 00:22:09.582
"of college students."
469
00:22:09.582 --> 00:22:10.415
Hello!
470
00:22:10.415 --> 00:22:11.550
(audience laughing)
471
00:22:11.550 --> 00:22:12.383
Yes, indeedy.
472
00:22:12.383 --> 00:22:16.962
"And we can't do it with overalls", she says.
473
00:22:16.962 --> 00:22:17.795
Okay, now.
474
00:22:22.844 --> 00:22:24.765
Okay, I won't go through that.
475
00:22:24.765 --> 00:22:26.252
At one point, she's also talking about
476
00:22:26.252 --> 00:22:28.437
the mailings because it's the manushya,
477
00:22:28.437 --> 00:22:30.980
that's what amazed me going through these minutes.
478
00:22:30.980 --> 00:22:33.342
That there was a level at which Ms. Baker,
479
00:22:33.342 --> 00:22:34.763
and this comes out in the book too,
480
00:22:34.763 --> 00:22:36.539
she is paying attention to the teeniest,
481
00:22:36.539 --> 00:22:38.202
tiniest little details.
482
00:22:38.202 --> 00:22:40.835
So one point somebody says something about we're
483
00:22:40.835 --> 00:22:42.468
having a problem in the print shop in Atlanta.
484
00:22:42.468 --> 00:22:44.735
We're not getting covering full time.
485
00:22:44.735 --> 00:22:47.197
She says, "well, is there any records of the mailings
486
00:22:47.197 --> 00:22:49.228
"that you've done?" And then she says, "no",
487
00:22:49.228 --> 00:22:50.260
"well, why not?"
488
00:22:50.260 --> 00:22:52.887
And then she says, "okay we need a shipping clerk."
489
00:22:52.887 --> 00:22:54.881
And somebody else says, "well, there's certain people
490
00:22:54.881 --> 00:22:56.614
" who want to do the menial work, but we don't also,
491
00:22:56.614 --> 00:22:58.531
"we're not clear about who could do what and what--."
492
00:22:58.531 --> 00:23:01.084
Ms. Baker says, "well, perhaps a high school student could
493
00:23:01.084 --> 00:23:02.249
"be the shipping clerk.
494
00:23:02.249 --> 00:23:04.700
"A part time job, but there must be an orderly
495
00:23:04.700 --> 00:23:07.946
"fashion for planning mailing orders."
496
00:23:07.946 --> 00:23:11.278
It is always about how do you organize
497
00:23:11.278 --> 00:23:13.170
administratively and so she's operating
498
00:23:13.170 --> 00:23:14.666
at all these different levels.
499
00:23:14.666 --> 00:23:18.681
At one point she says, "pamphlets can be written at home.
500
00:23:18.681 --> 00:23:21.422
"We don't plan enough," she says "before acting, we must
501
00:23:21.422 --> 00:23:24.877
"plan the pamphlets according to emphasis and the line
502
00:23:24.877 --> 00:23:26.109
"that we're taking."
503
00:23:26.109 --> 00:23:29.156
And then she says, "busy-ness doesn't necessarily
504
00:23:29.156 --> 00:23:30.988
mean productivity."
(audience chatters)
505
00:23:30.988 --> 00:23:35.062
Now, yes, there's another part where she's,
506
00:23:35.062 --> 00:23:37.953
and then I'm gonna move on, she saying,
507
00:23:37.953 --> 00:23:40.197
this another meeting.
508
00:23:40.197 --> 00:23:42.461
Oh, this is dark, how am I gonna read this?
509
00:23:42.461 --> 00:23:46.586
Oh because the office was not being opened as quickly
510
00:23:46.586 --> 00:23:49.248
as it should be in the national office at that point
511
00:23:49.248 --> 00:23:51.481
and she said in relationship
512
00:23:51.481 --> 00:23:53.336
to a rally that was being held, she said,
513
00:23:53.336 --> 00:23:54.596
"someone needs to answer
514
00:23:54.596 --> 00:23:56.728
"general information questions.
515
00:23:56.728 --> 00:23:58.171
"We can no longer function
516
00:23:58.171 --> 00:24:00.181
on a free wheeling basis", she says.
517
00:24:00.181 --> 00:24:04.348
And then another point, she says, "give detailed thought
518
00:24:05.924 --> 00:24:08.599
to even the smallest things."
519
00:24:08.599 --> 00:24:11.844
Now, let me just say, I didn't know that I was learning
520
00:24:11.844 --> 00:24:12.944
from her.
521
00:24:12.944 --> 00:24:14.789
I did not know that I was watching her.
522
00:24:14.789 --> 00:24:16.332
I don't remember these meetings even though
523
00:24:16.332 --> 00:24:19.268
I took the notes from them,
524
00:24:19.268 --> 00:24:21.820
but what happened was that it was almost like
525
00:24:21.820 --> 00:24:23.967
osmosis that there was the kind of leadership
526
00:24:23.967 --> 00:24:25.880
training that she always emphasized
527
00:24:25.880 --> 00:24:28.147
throughout her entire career.
528
00:24:28.147 --> 00:24:32.314
And what it meant was that I'm sitting at one point--.
529
00:24:35.074 --> 00:24:36.819
I'm sitting at an Eyes on the Prize
530
00:24:36.819 --> 00:24:38.351
production meeting, right?
531
00:24:38.351 --> 00:24:41.715
And I'm saying stuff that I didn't even know I knew
532
00:24:41.715 --> 00:24:43.411
about how we operated.
533
00:24:43.411 --> 00:24:47.291
So one point I said well you know, she would never
534
00:24:47.291 --> 00:24:49.192
direct us, she would always ask us questions
535
00:24:49.192 --> 00:24:52.052
and she would say, "okay, if you do this action now
536
00:24:52.052 --> 00:24:55.232
"what's gonna happen in that community six months from now?
537
00:24:55.232 --> 00:24:57.374
"What's gonna happen a year from now?"
538
00:24:57.374 --> 00:24:59.834
Because it was always about the sense that we were just
539
00:24:59.834 --> 00:25:02.454
the organizers we were not the leaders.
540
00:25:02.454 --> 00:25:04.860
The reason we were in those communities is to build
541
00:25:04.860 --> 00:25:09.066
local leadership that would survive even our deaths
542
00:25:09.066 --> 00:25:10.186
and that was important.
543
00:25:10.186 --> 00:25:12.694
So we weren't just coming in, doing rallies, and moving
544
00:25:12.694 --> 00:25:13.706
back out again.
545
00:25:13.706 --> 00:25:16.346
We were building organizers and leadership
546
00:25:16.346 --> 00:25:19.236
and what's interesting is that we were the age
547
00:25:19.236 --> 00:25:22.926
that some of you are now, so to get somebody,
548
00:25:22.926 --> 00:25:25.759
17, 18, 19 to think not just about
549
00:25:29.048 --> 00:25:30.457
next week.
550
00:25:30.457 --> 00:25:33.899
Yes, but next year, three years from now
551
00:25:33.899 --> 00:25:37.445
was an amazing feat and part of it was because she always
552
00:25:37.445 --> 00:25:41.095
reminded us of our responsibility to the local community.
553
00:25:41.095 --> 00:25:44.110
You know that in a lot of ways they were at a greater risk
554
00:25:44.110 --> 00:25:46.521
than we were all that can happen to us is that we can
555
00:25:46.521 --> 00:25:48.797
die, which at a young age you don't think will
556
00:25:48.797 --> 00:25:51.061
ever happen to you anyway, that what they were
557
00:25:51.061 --> 00:25:53.657
putting on their lines, on the lives with the lives
558
00:25:53.657 --> 00:25:56.693
and the lives and the livelihoods of not just themselves,
559
00:25:56.693 --> 00:25:58.817
but their entire community.
560
00:25:58.817 --> 00:26:01.369
So she was always talking about that
561
00:26:01.369 --> 00:26:05.227
and-- I think I'm going to stop now because
562
00:26:05.227 --> 00:26:09.081
I've gone into long, but the main point is that
563
00:26:09.081 --> 00:26:09.961
she made us--.
564
00:26:09.961 --> 00:26:11.126
You're okay.
565
00:26:11.126 --> 00:26:12.337
Oh, okay, okay.
566
00:26:12.337 --> 00:26:13.592
Oh if I'm okay do I have one more thing?
567
00:26:13.592 --> 00:26:15.153
You have about another three or four--.
568
00:26:15.153 --> 00:26:16.426
Oh, if I have another three minutes I want to say
569
00:26:16.426 --> 00:26:17.734
one more story and then I'm gonna end.
570
00:26:17.734 --> 00:26:18.988
Okay.
(audience laughing)
571
00:26:18.988 --> 00:26:19.821
Take your time!
572
00:26:19.821 --> 00:26:21.420
Take your time, thank you! (laughs)
573
00:26:21.420 --> 00:26:22.253
Hello sir!
574
00:26:22.253 --> 00:26:26.732
Okay, so and this has to do with the environment
575
00:26:26.732 --> 00:26:29.164
that existed within SNCC which made you feel
576
00:26:29.164 --> 00:26:32.927
that you could do just about most anything
577
00:26:32.927 --> 00:26:35.227
which is very heady for somebody who's 17, 18
578
00:26:35.227 --> 00:26:36.931
years-old at the point, at that time.
579
00:26:36.931 --> 00:26:41.375
Now there was a lot of people in the Atlanta SNCC office
580
00:26:41.375 --> 00:26:43.806
at that point and so I was form and secretary.
581
00:26:43.806 --> 00:26:46.829
Okay, so I got this bird's eye view of the organization
582
00:26:46.829 --> 00:26:48.062
when I first came in.
583
00:26:48.062 --> 00:26:49.312
So I knew LC--.
584
00:26:50.727 --> 00:26:52.945
Lawyers Constitutional--.
585
00:26:52.945 --> 00:26:53.778
What was the LCDC?
586
00:26:53.778 --> 00:26:55.685
Lawyers Constitutional Defense
587
00:26:55.685 --> 00:26:56.652
Committee.
588
00:26:56.652 --> 00:26:57.974
Defense committee, thank you.
589
00:26:57.974 --> 00:27:00.886
Which was this group of progressive lawyers out of New York
590
00:27:00.886 --> 00:27:02.448
Rabinowitz & Whodean, Mike Standard.
591
00:27:02.448 --> 00:27:04.701
So I would have these conversations with them
592
00:27:04.701 --> 00:27:06.440
and then I would know the folks in the field.
593
00:27:06.440 --> 00:27:11.244
So MacArthur is over here, everybody's over there,
594
00:27:11.244 --> 00:27:12.782
all these people are over here.
595
00:27:12.782 --> 00:27:16.949
Okay, so I got the sense of what was going on in the support
596
00:27:18.010 --> 00:27:22.045
groups I got a sense of the southern community organizers,
597
00:27:22.045 --> 00:27:25.533
but I wanted to go to the field 'cause, romantically,
598
00:27:25.533 --> 00:27:27.325
that's where the action is, right?
599
00:27:27.325 --> 00:27:28.711
So I kept saying, "Foreman, I want to go to the field,
600
00:27:28.711 --> 00:27:29.745
" I want to go to the field!"
601
00:27:29.745 --> 00:27:31.889
And he said, of course you know he needed somebody who
602
00:27:31.889 --> 00:27:33.473
was going to type the 90 words a minute.
603
00:27:33.473 --> 00:27:35.905
Okay, so he never let me do this,
604
00:27:35.905 --> 00:27:40.072
well at one point he comes back from a fund raising trip
605
00:27:40.974 --> 00:27:44.974
and I and other people in the office, Mary King,
606
00:27:48.015 --> 00:27:49.564
Nancy Sterling, I remember.
607
00:27:49.564 --> 00:27:52.328
Anyway, he comes in from this trip, probably rather tired,
608
00:27:52.328 --> 00:27:56.232
and we are sitting in front of his office with plackers
609
00:27:56.232 --> 00:27:59.346
saying, "no more minutes, we shall not be moved!"
610
00:27:59.346 --> 00:28:00.179
(audience laughing)
611
00:28:00.179 --> 00:28:02.291
And we're sitting down in front of his office, you know.
612
00:28:02.291 --> 00:28:05.520
Now what was interesting about that is that even
613
00:28:05.520 --> 00:28:08.070
within, you know I mean, certainly there was sexism
614
00:28:08.070 --> 00:28:10.062
within the organization it was you know-- hello it was
615
00:28:10.062 --> 00:28:10.895
1962, '63.
616
00:28:12.360 --> 00:28:15.848
I mean 1999, 2000, has anything changed?
617
00:28:15.848 --> 00:28:17.899
But still at that point within SNCC
618
00:28:17.899 --> 00:28:19.528
because we were the cutting edge
619
00:28:19.528 --> 00:28:21.830
you can, as we say, call the question.
620
00:28:21.830 --> 00:28:24.270
So when we said we're not gonna do minutes anymore,
621
00:28:24.270 --> 00:28:25.579
we didn't do the minutes anymore.
622
00:28:25.579 --> 00:28:27.768
The men started taking the minutes.
623
00:28:27.768 --> 00:28:30.950
There were a lot of places like that where you could
624
00:28:30.950 --> 00:28:34.339
make folks realize the dissonance between what we said
625
00:28:34.339 --> 00:28:37.638
and what was supposed to really happen and they would do
626
00:28:37.638 --> 00:28:40.958
the right thing and I never, I have got to say that
627
00:28:40.958 --> 00:28:43.650
I was as nurtured by the men, as much by the men
628
00:28:43.650 --> 00:28:45.318
as I was by the women.
629
00:28:45.318 --> 00:28:48.173
And the unfortunate part of that was that when I get out
630
00:28:48.173 --> 00:28:51.703
into the world I expect that same kind of nurturing
631
00:28:51.703 --> 00:28:54.224
and don't always find it, but that gave me the sense
632
00:28:54.224 --> 00:28:55.246
that it could happen.
633
00:28:55.246 --> 00:28:56.417
So thank you very much, okay.
634
00:28:56.417 --> 00:28:59.417
(audience clapping)
635
00:29:06.064 --> 00:29:09.196
Oh, wow Judy is going to be a tough act to follow.
636
00:29:09.196 --> 00:29:13.196
(audience and speaker laughing)
637
00:29:15.457 --> 00:29:18.785
But she has all the history behind her with her
638
00:29:18.785 --> 00:29:22.785
notes and stuff and I have to rely on my memory.
639
00:29:23.705 --> 00:29:25.802
And, you know, once you reach a certain age (laughs)
640
00:29:25.802 --> 00:29:27.302
Come on!
641
00:29:28.314 --> 00:29:31.522
Your memory has a tendency to fail you.
642
00:29:31.522 --> 00:29:33.303
As a matter of fact, I'm at that age where sometimes
643
00:29:33.303 --> 00:29:36.272
in the middle of saying something I say "ah."
644
00:29:36.272 --> 00:29:38.513
(audience and Brenda laugh)
645
00:29:38.513 --> 00:29:39.346
Got you.
646
00:29:40.962 --> 00:29:44.263
Anyway, my name is Brenda Travis and I was going to try
647
00:29:44.263 --> 00:29:45.930
and remember-- "ah".
648
00:29:48.162 --> 00:29:50.400
(audience and Brenda laugh)
649
00:29:50.400 --> 00:29:53.817
Yeah, no, I was going to try and remember
650
00:29:55.093 --> 00:30:00.093
the character in Freedom Songs, the 16 year-old girl,
651
00:30:00.093 --> 00:30:01.593
what was her name?
652
00:30:02.933 --> 00:30:04.813
I can't remember her name.
653
00:30:04.813 --> 00:30:05.646
See.
654
00:30:05.646 --> 00:30:07.612
They may not know Freedom Song either.
655
00:30:07.612 --> 00:30:08.933
Oh, yeah the movie, Freedom Songs,
656
00:30:08.933 --> 00:30:10.850
did anybody watch that?
657
00:30:11.792 --> 00:30:12.984
They may not know it.
658
00:30:12.984 --> 00:30:16.224
Okay, so this won't go off too successfully (laughs).
659
00:30:16.224 --> 00:30:19.213
(audience laughs)
660
00:30:19.213 --> 00:30:20.380
Huh? Oh, okay.
661
00:30:21.843 --> 00:30:25.343
Anyway, first I would like to really thank
662
00:30:26.563 --> 00:30:30.944
and show my appreciation to Ella Baker for being the founder
663
00:30:30.944 --> 00:30:33.893
of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
664
00:30:33.893 --> 00:30:35.563
from whence I got my start.
665
00:30:35.563 --> 00:30:39.384
I was born in Mississippi, in Mccomb, Mississippi
666
00:30:39.384 --> 00:30:44.163
and I became involved in the Civil Rights Movement
667
00:30:44.163 --> 00:30:45.580
at the age of 16.
668
00:30:48.485 --> 00:30:52.652
I was arrested for testing the interstate commerce law
669
00:30:54.275 --> 00:30:57.775
in Mississippi and I spent a month in jail
670
00:30:59.576 --> 00:31:03.326
and then later, I spent six and a half months
671
00:31:04.504 --> 00:31:07.256
in reformatory school as a result of my civil rights
672
00:31:07.256 --> 00:31:10.831
activities and there was guy from Talladega College
673
00:31:10.831 --> 00:31:14.998
who came along and he liberated me from the reformatory
674
00:31:16.070 --> 00:31:18.993
school, but that union didn't work out
675
00:31:18.993 --> 00:31:21.993
and that was when I met, Ella Baker.
676
00:31:23.793 --> 00:31:28.572
She became my legal guardian and having never ventured
677
00:31:28.572 --> 00:31:32.739
from my hometown of Mccomb I didn't know how well,
678
00:31:36.193 --> 00:31:39.404
during that time, I belong to the brown paper
679
00:31:39.404 --> 00:31:40.237
bag era.
680
00:31:40.237 --> 00:31:41.400
You know, where you didn't have a enough clothes
681
00:31:41.400 --> 00:31:44.458
to own a luggage, so you put your clothes in a brown
682
00:31:44.458 --> 00:31:45.291
paper bag.
683
00:31:47.328 --> 00:31:51.514
But after Ella became my legal guardian she bought me a few
684
00:31:51.514 --> 00:31:56.424
things and she decided that I should go to Palmer Memorial
685
00:31:56.424 --> 00:31:59.424
Institute here in North Carolina.
686
00:31:59.424 --> 00:32:02.131
Sedalia, North Carolina just out of Greensboro,
687
00:32:02.131 --> 00:32:04.680
I don't know if you're familiar with that,
688
00:32:04.680 --> 00:32:07.763
but I attended there for one semester
689
00:32:09.360 --> 00:32:13.230
and I called Ella and told her, you know,
690
00:32:13.230 --> 00:32:15.409
I said this is so difficult for me I said
691
00:32:15.409 --> 00:32:19.576
because it's almost like being incarcerated again.
692
00:32:21.854 --> 00:32:25.187
And, so, it was at the time we decided--
693
00:32:26.096 --> 00:32:27.755
I had other friends that I had met
694
00:32:27.755 --> 00:32:31.657
and she said, "well, what do you want to do?"
695
00:32:31.657 --> 00:32:33.486
I said, well, I don't know, I have no idea
696
00:32:33.486 --> 00:32:36.035
what I want to do, I have no idea what I'm going to do,
697
00:32:36.035 --> 00:32:40.215
but I know that I can't stay here (laughs).
698
00:32:40.215 --> 00:32:43.882
So there were friends that decided or agreed
699
00:32:45.675 --> 00:32:49.587
to have me live with them in Illinois,
700
00:32:49.587 --> 00:32:53.670
but I did keep in contact with her over the years
701
00:32:56.017 --> 00:32:57.937
and then finally we lost contact.
702
00:32:57.937 --> 00:33:01.059
And I was so hurt when I didn't realize she was dead until
703
00:33:01.059 --> 00:33:04.142
a year or two after her death, but--.
704
00:33:11.041 --> 00:33:14.541
It's just difficult to express what I felt
705
00:33:17.569 --> 00:33:21.486
and how I felt because I felt that she actually
706
00:33:23.809 --> 00:33:28.431
taught me things that a young woman should know
707
00:33:28.431 --> 00:33:29.572
and things that I had not been taught
708
00:33:29.572 --> 00:33:31.655
even with my own parents.
709
00:33:34.010 --> 00:33:37.281
And it was kind of cute because, as I said after,
710
00:33:37.281 --> 00:33:40.698
her purchasing me clothes and a suitcase,
711
00:33:42.382 --> 00:33:44.102
she told me, she said, "well, the way you get
712
00:33:44.102 --> 00:33:46.833
"a lot of things into suitcase is you fold
713
00:33:46.833 --> 00:33:50.593
"them like this and then you take you roll it
714
00:33:50.593 --> 00:33:54.372
"real tight" (laughs).
715
00:33:54.372 --> 00:33:56.741
You take and you roll it real tight
716
00:33:56.741 --> 00:33:58.092
and that way you can get a lot of things
717
00:33:58.092 --> 00:34:02.092
into the suitcase, but after conferring with her
718
00:34:03.174 --> 00:34:05.674
after leaving Palmer, you know,
719
00:34:06.793 --> 00:34:09.376
she always had words of wisdom.
720
00:34:11.363 --> 00:34:14.323
She would always encourage me to stay strong
721
00:34:14.323 --> 00:34:17.991
and she told me the road to freedom was a long,
722
00:34:17.991 --> 00:34:22.193
tough, tedious, and hard road and she always told me
723
00:34:22.193 --> 00:34:23.526
to stay focused.
724
00:34:25.233 --> 00:34:28.563
And those are the things that I never forgot
725
00:34:28.563 --> 00:34:31.846
and, you know, I just wanted to say that I appreciate her
726
00:34:31.846 --> 00:34:35.587
and I appreciate this university and this state, I guess,
727
00:34:35.587 --> 00:34:39.767
for recognizing such a great lady and that's-- okay.
728
00:34:39.767 --> 00:34:40.600
Thank you.
729
00:34:40.600 --> 00:34:43.600
(audience clapping)
730
00:34:49.416 --> 00:34:51.259
We're at the Q and A section,
731
00:34:51.259 --> 00:34:52.092
if anybody wants to--.
732
00:34:52.092 --> 00:34:53.379
You got to say something!
733
00:34:53.379 --> 00:34:54.212
I've gotta say something?
734
00:34:54.212 --> 00:34:55.244
Yes! You do your piece 'cause
735
00:34:55.244 --> 00:34:56.077
you were gonna say something before.
736
00:34:56.077 --> 00:34:56.910
Yes!
737
00:34:56.910 --> 00:34:57.743
(audience chatter)
738
00:34:57.743 --> 00:35:00.027
Well this is really extemporaneous.
739
00:35:00.027 --> 00:35:03.726
Okay, well I met Ms. Baker in one of those
740
00:35:03.726 --> 00:35:05.406
interminable meetings.
741
00:35:05.406 --> 00:35:09.055
I remember meeting her in Waveland and somewhere along
742
00:35:09.055 --> 00:35:12.375
the line saying to my friend Cynthia Washington,
743
00:35:12.375 --> 00:35:14.817
"I'm gonna go out and get some crawfish and beer,
744
00:35:14.817 --> 00:35:15.795
"I'll be back."
745
00:35:15.795 --> 00:35:17.894
And six hours later, I came back and they were still
746
00:35:17.894 --> 00:35:20.462
talking (laughs).
(audience laughing)
747
00:35:20.462 --> 00:35:25.081
And Ms. Baker and William Porter, I have this picture
748
00:35:25.081 --> 00:35:27.987
that's why I'm remembering this and several other people,
749
00:35:27.987 --> 00:35:30.306
and I sort of walked away and we had our own
750
00:35:30.306 --> 00:35:34.616
huddle outside in that first Waveland meeting
751
00:35:34.616 --> 00:35:36.237
so we can develop a position.
752
00:35:36.237 --> 00:35:39.174
Because we always talked about the profound things.
753
00:35:39.174 --> 00:35:41.907
I mean really saw ourselves as moving the earth.
754
00:35:41.907 --> 00:35:45.478
You know, and that we were the catalytic agents for that
755
00:35:45.478 --> 00:35:48.598
and if it cost our lives we, and I don't say this lightly,
756
00:35:48.598 --> 00:35:50.616
we were prepared to put it out there.
757
00:35:50.616 --> 00:35:54.766
You know and that regard, people made decisions about how
758
00:35:54.766 --> 00:35:56.966
they were going to go and some of us went
759
00:35:56.966 --> 00:35:57.926
unexpectedly.
760
00:35:57.926 --> 00:36:01.227
We paid a very high price, a very high price,
761
00:36:01.227 --> 00:36:02.310
for our work.
762
00:36:05.067 --> 00:36:09.217
I can't say that I met her on the road when I was doing PD
763
00:36:09.217 --> 00:36:11.846
work, Project Director work.
764
00:36:11.846 --> 00:36:15.763
I was pretty tough and I ran a very tight ship,
765
00:36:16.966 --> 00:36:19.507
had to, didn't lose any people.
766
00:36:19.507 --> 00:36:21.936
That's how you counted your successes
767
00:36:21.936 --> 00:36:23.846
and we were able to deal with,
768
00:36:23.846 --> 00:36:27.419
I mean, because Greenville was the liberal
769
00:36:27.419 --> 00:36:30.459
area of Mississippi although I ran two counties
770
00:36:30.459 --> 00:36:35.067
that were not too liberal, so that when we had to do
771
00:36:35.067 --> 00:36:37.708
the mock election campaign, etcetera, to show that if
772
00:36:37.708 --> 00:36:40.191
Blacks could vote they would vote.
773
00:36:40.191 --> 00:36:42.407
Greenville had to carry the weight for other parts
774
00:36:42.407 --> 00:36:45.067
of the state where even participating in the mock election
775
00:36:45.067 --> 00:36:46.817
would get you killed.
776
00:36:47.979 --> 00:36:52.099
Even when we were there in 1960, I can tell you that
777
00:36:52.099 --> 00:36:56.361
in the fall was the NAACP recruitment drive
778
00:36:56.361 --> 00:36:58.651
for their membership and that was a very dangerous time,
779
00:36:58.651 --> 00:37:01.881
it also happen to be at the same time hunting season.
780
00:37:01.881 --> 00:37:04.710
And so on the back of all the pickup trucks you saw
781
00:37:04.710 --> 00:37:08.921
the rifles and, of course, there were lots of accidents
782
00:37:08.921 --> 00:37:09.908
during that period.
783
00:37:09.908 --> 00:37:13.369
So you can imagine what Ms. Baker's life must have been
784
00:37:13.369 --> 00:37:17.536
like in 1940 traveling the back roads of the South
785
00:37:19.059 --> 00:37:23.478
as a field secretary had they known that in this woman
786
00:37:23.478 --> 00:37:26.094
dressed in a suit with her hat on.
787
00:37:26.094 --> 00:37:29.262
The epitome of lady hood carried
788
00:37:29.262 --> 00:37:30.992
the baggage of the movement.
789
00:37:30.992 --> 00:37:34.242
I mean it was really quite, what is it?
790
00:37:35.571 --> 00:37:36.902
Ingenuous.
791
00:37:36.902 --> 00:37:40.022
I don't know if any of you have seen the movie
792
00:37:40.022 --> 00:37:43.036
The Battle of Algiers, but that's a movie you should
793
00:37:43.036 --> 00:37:45.682
try to see in your lifetime and one of the scenes
794
00:37:45.682 --> 00:37:47.853
I'll never forget in that movie is the usage
795
00:37:47.853 --> 00:37:50.813
of women and children actually to carry the message
796
00:37:50.813 --> 00:37:52.171
of the movement.
797
00:37:52.171 --> 00:37:55.412
When the French were looking for men and as you know
798
00:37:55.412 --> 00:37:58.643
the French battled for Algiers vociferously,
799
00:37:58.643 --> 00:38:00.785
I mean, they lost, they took no prisoners.
800
00:38:00.785 --> 00:38:04.086
And I might say the South took no prisoners as well.
801
00:38:04.086 --> 00:38:06.263
I had the experience, and maybe at some point during the
802
00:38:06.263 --> 00:38:08.618
conference I will tell you where I ran the statewide COFO
803
00:38:08.618 --> 00:38:11.108
office and as part of my work.
804
00:38:11.108 --> 00:38:15.275
I had the responsibility of doing a statewide call
805
00:38:17.457 --> 00:38:19.526
twice a day in the state of Mississippi we used
806
00:38:19.526 --> 00:38:22.222
what was called the wide area telephone system
807
00:38:22.222 --> 00:38:25.177
which allowed us to rather cheaply call our various
808
00:38:25.177 --> 00:38:27.876
projects and sometimes we had as many as
809
00:38:27.876 --> 00:38:31.377
15, 16, excuse me, as few as 15 or 16,
810
00:38:31.377 --> 00:38:33.345
sometimes we had as many as 50,
811
00:38:33.345 --> 00:38:35.686
depending on the proliferation of projects
812
00:38:35.686 --> 00:38:37.516
from a center.
813
00:38:37.516 --> 00:38:41.683
We used, annexed on part of Core, Southern Core, which was
814
00:38:43.479 --> 00:38:44.961
a little different and a little bit more radical
815
00:38:44.961 --> 00:38:48.903
than Northern Core function with us and we actually,
816
00:38:48.903 --> 00:38:50.433
the Core people fed us.
817
00:38:50.433 --> 00:38:54.993
When we were in the COFO office we had no money.
818
00:38:54.993 --> 00:38:56.254
None.
819
00:38:56.254 --> 00:38:59.763
We ate when somebody came by to feed us.
820
00:38:59.763 --> 00:39:03.044
Somebody came by, the guy from the Southern Core office
821
00:39:03.044 --> 00:39:05.700
promise to come by at least once a week.
822
00:39:05.700 --> 00:39:09.867
So we can eat once a week, we worked 18 hours a day
823
00:39:11.033 --> 00:39:12.884
and at some point I closed the office
824
00:39:12.884 --> 00:39:17.742
because I said we can't run this, just can't run it.
825
00:39:17.742 --> 00:39:21.909
We had the FBI, we had the State Sovereignty Commission,
826
00:39:25.950 --> 00:39:27.783
a very difficult time.
827
00:39:29.331 --> 00:39:32.076
This is a real sign that you're getting old because I use
828
00:39:32.076 --> 00:39:33.951
to be able to tell this story without tears.
829
00:39:33.951 --> 00:39:37.722
(audience and speaker laughing)
830
00:39:37.722 --> 00:39:41.015
Ms. Baker, rejoined my life when I got married
831
00:39:41.015 --> 00:39:43.524
and had my first child, in fact, she's the godmother
832
00:39:43.524 --> 00:39:46.594
of my daughter Bio and I have to tell you we had
833
00:39:46.594 --> 00:39:50.761
this African naming ceremony and Babo Latunji came
834
00:39:52.051 --> 00:39:56.011
and beat the drums and called on the ancestors and Ms. Baker
835
00:39:56.011 --> 00:39:58.147
was there and you know she still had the suit
836
00:39:58.147 --> 00:39:59.138
and hat (laughing).
837
00:39:59.138 --> 00:39:59.971
(audience laughing)
838
00:39:59.971 --> 00:40:01.891
She was real cute.
839
00:40:01.891 --> 00:40:03.251
I don't know what's going on, but it's okay (laughing).
840
00:40:03.251 --> 00:40:06.547
(audience laughing)
841
00:40:06.547 --> 00:40:10.347
And from that point on, we remained very close friends,
842
00:40:10.347 --> 00:40:11.757
and in fact, we became confidants
843
00:40:11.757 --> 00:40:13.859
and I spent most of her last years
844
00:40:13.859 --> 00:40:16.038
we spent together sitting on the couch
845
00:40:16.038 --> 00:40:18.838
sharing a beer, eating boiled egg
846
00:40:18.838 --> 00:40:20.608
and talking about the movement
847
00:40:20.608 --> 00:40:22.590
and she was a wonderful, wonderful, woman.
848
00:40:22.590 --> 00:40:25.459
So with having said all that extemporaneously
849
00:40:25.459 --> 00:40:30.324
I'll go into questions or comments anybody might like to.
850
00:40:30.324 --> 00:40:32.814
Yes, go right ahead.
851
00:40:32.814 --> 00:40:35.198
I'd just want to say that I think a lot of you all
852
00:40:35.198 --> 00:40:38.297
haven't seen Freedom Song the movie that was made
853
00:40:38.297 --> 00:40:40.918
for television and it's gonna be shown here at the
854
00:40:40.918 --> 00:40:44.276
conference and I really wanna recommend it and
855
00:40:44.276 --> 00:40:47.686
I want you all to look at that and know that that,
856
00:40:47.686 --> 00:40:49.673
who you recognize immediately that that 16 year-old
857
00:40:49.673 --> 00:40:51.457
is Brenda Travis.
858
00:40:51.457 --> 00:40:55.624
And I wanted to say that I remember back in Atlanta,
859
00:40:56.846 --> 00:41:01.217
Ella saying to me, do you know they put that
860
00:41:01.217 --> 00:41:03.966
child in reform school?
861
00:41:03.966 --> 00:41:06.369
And I'm just really glad because I don't know if
862
00:41:06.369 --> 00:41:09.926
we've ever met, but I'm just glad that Brenda Travis
863
00:41:09.926 --> 00:41:13.049
is here because I remember feeling the pain
864
00:41:13.049 --> 00:41:15.667
for that 16 year-old in reform school
865
00:41:15.667 --> 00:41:20.497
for sitting-in and I want you to see her in that movie.
866
00:41:20.497 --> 00:41:23.497
(audience clapping)
867
00:41:27.535 --> 00:41:30.588
Any questions, any comments, any thoughts,
868
00:41:30.588 --> 00:41:31.577
any ramblings?
869
00:41:31.577 --> 00:41:32.814
(audience laughing)
Yes.
870
00:41:32.814 --> 00:41:33.647
(audience member drowned out by distance)
871
00:41:33.647 --> 00:41:37.230
Okay.
(audience laughing)
872
00:41:40.728 --> 00:41:44.895
Which one of you can speak for (mumbles)
873
00:41:47.486 --> 00:41:50.936
40 years later to give an assessment
874
00:41:50.936 --> 00:41:53.269
of what we have accomplished
875
00:41:55.146 --> 00:41:59.789
on the state on the African American community today,
876
00:41:59.789 --> 00:42:01.039
40 years later?
877
00:42:02.240 --> 00:42:03.323
Don't be shy.
878
00:42:04.811 --> 00:42:08.857
I never was shy, so I'll try to at least start the ball
879
00:42:08.857 --> 00:42:12.774
going and then maybe somebody else can pick up.
880
00:42:13.651 --> 00:42:15.811
I have to say in the context of what we tried
881
00:42:15.811 --> 00:42:20.269
to do SNCC became, SNCC was a very small organization,
882
00:42:20.269 --> 00:42:23.309
but it had dedicated membership and when you have
883
00:42:23.309 --> 00:42:27.091
a dedicated membership you can move all kinds of mountains.
884
00:42:27.091 --> 00:42:30.731
What we didn't realize was that when you crawl across one
885
00:42:30.731 --> 00:42:34.869
mountain there's another mountain and it's even bigger,
886
00:42:34.869 --> 00:42:39.568
you know, and nor did we think that all of the forces
887
00:42:39.568 --> 00:42:42.360
would finally gather to our detriment
888
00:42:42.360 --> 00:42:45.851
and in many ways, we did-- let's talk about what we did do.
889
00:42:45.851 --> 00:42:50.301
And then we can talk about the roll back in many ways.
890
00:42:50.301 --> 00:42:53.320
SNCC brought denims to the fashion world.
891
00:42:53.320 --> 00:42:57.320
(audience and speaker laughing)
892
00:42:58.469 --> 00:43:01.969
Before SNCC only farmers wore denim, okay.
893
00:43:04.347 --> 00:43:07.869
We opened up Mississippi, I mean Mississippi was like a big
894
00:43:07.869 --> 00:43:10.587
prison as far as I'm concerned.
895
00:43:10.587 --> 00:43:13.611
It was a state that had even in slavery had said
896
00:43:13.611 --> 00:43:15.267
if you can't deal with your slaves up there
897
00:43:15.267 --> 00:43:17.240
where you are send them to Mississippi
898
00:43:17.240 --> 00:43:18.988
we know how to take care of 'em.
899
00:43:18.988 --> 00:43:22.071
So we showed that Mississippi was not
900
00:43:23.469 --> 00:43:27.557
an insurmountable, but I will tell you from those calls
901
00:43:27.557 --> 00:43:28.390
around.
902
00:43:28.390 --> 00:43:32.139
My calls to the SNCC offices daily became
903
00:43:32.139 --> 00:43:35.387
from that COFO office came a death count.
904
00:43:35.387 --> 00:43:37.640
That was what I was getting.
905
00:43:37.640 --> 00:43:41.661
I was getting the names of young, particularly,
906
00:43:41.661 --> 00:43:43.611
young black men who had disappeared,
907
00:43:43.611 --> 00:43:45.501
who had been found.
908
00:43:45.501 --> 00:43:48.586
You may remember that when Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman
909
00:43:48.586 --> 00:43:52.437
were located finally, when the government finally
910
00:43:52.437 --> 00:43:55.325
decided that $10,000 was not gonna buy information,
911
00:43:55.325 --> 00:43:58.110
but they had to go at least $100,000 to pull that kind
912
00:43:58.110 --> 00:44:02.209
of information and they started dredging the rivers,
913
00:44:02.209 --> 00:44:05.710
the state of Mississippi they found so many headless
914
00:44:05.710 --> 00:44:08.680
people, they stopped dredging.
915
00:44:08.680 --> 00:44:13.017
It was even phenomenal for them and the Army Corps.
916
00:44:13.017 --> 00:44:15.850
Of Engineers does not move easily.
917
00:44:18.489 --> 00:44:21.757
We were able to raise the issue as Casey mentioned
918
00:44:21.757 --> 00:44:24.827
the beginnings of the feminist movement actually
919
00:44:24.827 --> 00:44:28.891
had very clearly their tentacles in SNCC.
920
00:44:28.891 --> 00:44:32.619
We worked very hard, in fact, I remember sending
921
00:44:32.619 --> 00:44:36.510
two organizers to work with Caesar Chavez in California.
922
00:44:36.510 --> 00:44:38.768
At the time, I don't remember if you know there
923
00:44:38.768 --> 00:44:42.935
still is a strike against grapes and that that was an effort
924
00:44:43.870 --> 00:44:48.312
at that point Chicanos were laying down before the trucks
925
00:44:48.312 --> 00:44:52.632
coming out of, off a little town I can't think of it,
926
00:44:52.632 --> 00:44:54.575
it begins with a "B", but it will come to mind.
927
00:44:54.575 --> 00:44:56.104
Bakersfield!
928
00:44:56.104 --> 00:44:58.064
Bah, Bakersfield, right!
929
00:44:58.064 --> 00:44:59.793
And they were losing their lives
930
00:44:59.793 --> 00:45:02.844
Chicanos don't count so we don't report that information.
931
00:45:02.844 --> 00:45:05.336
In any case, we send two field workers to work
932
00:45:05.336 --> 00:45:08.016
on that behalf, so we began to forge alliances
933
00:45:08.016 --> 00:45:09.913
which was one of the interesting things about SNCC.
934
00:45:09.913 --> 00:45:12.616
We were not territorial, we were quite prepared
935
00:45:12.616 --> 00:45:16.456
to help anybody going down the same road we were going.
936
00:45:16.456 --> 00:45:19.656
We developed local leadership.
937
00:45:19.656 --> 00:45:23.238
Unfortunately, what happens in this country is
938
00:45:23.238 --> 00:45:25.497
when we got to the development of leadership
939
00:45:25.497 --> 00:45:27.568
we had both the democratic or the republican party
940
00:45:27.568 --> 00:45:30.298
to look at and neither one of them was look at us.
941
00:45:30.298 --> 00:45:32.898
So we were, in many ways, back to what do you do
942
00:45:32.898 --> 00:45:36.058
with a national and an implacable local leadership
943
00:45:36.058 --> 00:45:40.225
that just won't yield any of the real substantive gains?
944
00:45:41.328 --> 00:45:43.878
What else do you think we did before we start talking about
945
00:45:43.878 --> 00:45:45.379
what they did to us?
946
00:45:45.379 --> 00:45:46.212
We changed us.
947
00:45:46.212 --> 00:45:47.339
We changed us.
948
00:45:47.339 --> 00:45:48.681
Yes, we certainly did.
949
00:45:48.681 --> 00:45:51.320
All of us are quite different from just everybody else
950
00:45:51.320 --> 00:45:52.820
I know.
951
00:45:52.820 --> 00:45:54.806
Oh, yes, go ahead.
952
00:45:54.806 --> 00:45:57.257
Calling on you, yes sister, go ahead.
953
00:45:57.257 --> 00:45:58.889
(distance drowns out the speaker)
954
00:45:58.889 --> 00:46:00.118
Yes.
955
00:46:00.118 --> 00:46:02.183
Can you stand up, Gwen?
956
00:46:02.183 --> 00:46:06.350
(distance drowns out the speaker)
957
00:46:08.834 --> 00:46:11.154
(audience laughing)
958
00:46:11.154 --> 00:46:13.442
Gave rise, I think Mississippi gave rise
959
00:46:13.442 --> 00:46:16.157
to a very strong and viable and fiercely
960
00:46:16.157 --> 00:46:18.666
independent Alabama movement.
961
00:46:18.666 --> 00:46:19.499
Okay.
962
00:46:19.499 --> 00:46:20.603
Yeah.
963
00:46:20.603 --> 00:46:23.557
I think we did something about culture in our hair
964
00:46:23.557 --> 00:46:27.724
and who we are as a people and that sense of equality
965
00:46:29.775 --> 00:46:31.926
what we see through the legal system, but within
966
00:46:31.926 --> 00:46:36.093
ourselves and when our interactions will be with people.
967
00:46:38.702 --> 00:46:42.832
On the business about African awareness SNCC--
968
00:46:42.832 --> 00:46:45.664
oh, Forman, sorry, go ahead Forman.
969
00:46:45.664 --> 00:46:47.801
I just want to reinforce something that you said about
970
00:46:47.801 --> 00:46:51.053
opening up Mississippi a lot, we did a lot of other things
971
00:46:51.053 --> 00:46:54.135
because I was at a meeting with civil project in 1964
972
00:46:54.135 --> 00:46:56.367
at Senator Javits' house if anyone has permission
973
00:46:56.367 --> 00:47:00.085
to quote me on this and Roy Wilkins was there
974
00:47:00.085 --> 00:47:03.215
and we were discussing the civil project in Mississippi
975
00:47:03.215 --> 00:47:07.004
and as you recall and he was NAACP with
976
00:47:07.004 --> 00:47:08.345
one of the correspondence.
977
00:47:08.345 --> 00:47:13.144
(static drowns out the speaker)
978
00:47:13.144 --> 00:47:15.523
So Roy and I were discussing Mississippi and he said
979
00:47:15.523 --> 00:47:17.973
it would be foolish to be in Mississippi.
980
00:47:17.973 --> 00:47:21.232
Now this is the director of NAACP, national director,
981
00:47:21.232 --> 00:47:22.882
not just the local chapter.
982
00:47:22.882 --> 00:47:26.152
So because, I said, well he felt that
983
00:47:26.152 --> 00:47:28.571
we were wasting our time because Mississippi
984
00:47:28.571 --> 00:47:31.229
should be changed from the outside
985
00:47:31.229 --> 00:47:33.600
and my discussion, I said, well while we're working there
986
00:47:33.600 --> 00:47:36.349
that the change doesn't necessarily come from the outside.
987
00:47:36.349 --> 00:47:40.797
We had a long discussion and I said, well look after--
988
00:47:40.797 --> 00:47:45.027
your organization is a part of one of the four organizations
989
00:47:45.027 --> 00:47:47.968
sponsoring Mississippi's civil project
990
00:47:47.968 --> 00:47:50.018
and I said well, how is it that you take this position
991
00:47:50.018 --> 00:47:51.637
and yet you still want to squash it.
992
00:47:51.637 --> 00:47:53.648
Well, so that's the way it is.
993
00:47:53.648 --> 00:47:57.156
I just think the change comes from the outside
994
00:47:57.156 --> 00:48:00.107
you shouldn't be inside of Mississippi and I said
995
00:48:00.107 --> 00:48:02.459
that I'm not gonna withdraw from the sponsorship
996
00:48:02.459 --> 00:48:05.699
of civil project and that may help you to reinforce it
997
00:48:05.699 --> 00:48:08.237
because we did do that and opening up Mississippi
998
00:48:08.237 --> 00:48:11.507
helped to open up the end of segregation
999
00:48:11.507 --> 00:48:13.029
in the United States.
1000
00:48:13.029 --> 00:48:15.014
And another little point, but I want to make later
1001
00:48:15.014 --> 00:48:17.464
on is Julie and I had some disagreements
1002
00:48:17.464 --> 00:48:18.784
about the city of--.
1003
00:48:18.784 --> 00:48:22.232
(laughing drowns out speaker)
1004
00:48:22.232 --> 00:48:24.393
And that was typical.
1005
00:48:24.393 --> 00:48:25.226
Yes?
1006
00:48:25.226 --> 00:48:28.026
Yeah, another point since you're on this point about
1007
00:48:28.026 --> 00:48:29.376
the political parties.
1008
00:48:29.376 --> 00:48:33.405
One of the things that started sharpening the politics,
1009
00:48:33.405 --> 00:48:36.655
but also breaking down the movement in Alabama
1010
00:48:36.655 --> 00:48:40.155
was in the summer of '65 SCLC got a grant,
1011
00:48:41.506 --> 00:48:44.685
I think from the Ford Foundation to do organizing
1012
00:48:44.685 --> 00:48:48.852
in Alabama and they were, the whole training staff
1013
00:48:50.026 --> 00:48:53.496
was trained to go down and register black people
1014
00:48:53.496 --> 00:48:56.120
into the Alabama democratic party.
1015
00:48:56.120 --> 00:48:59.890
Which had a slogan, said "white supremacy for the right"
1016
00:48:59.890 --> 00:49:02.978
and SNCC was trying in five or six counties,
1017
00:49:02.978 --> 00:49:06.645
Wilcox, Green, Lowndes, Sumter, yes, several
1018
00:49:07.629 --> 00:49:11.338
to freedom organizations some of them survived,
1019
00:49:11.338 --> 00:49:13.938
some of them didn't last county, but came a national symbol
1020
00:49:13.938 --> 00:49:17.480
because it's such a wonderful success.
1021
00:49:17.480 --> 00:49:22.398
That summer I was trying to build some consciousness
1022
00:49:22.398 --> 00:49:26.640
within this scope group, summer community organizing
1023
00:49:26.640 --> 00:49:28.674
political education project.
1024
00:49:28.674 --> 00:49:31.245
And I couldn't get any hearing, actually one of the few
1025
00:49:31.245 --> 00:49:35.404
people in the SCLC who would listen and talk about this was
1026
00:49:35.404 --> 00:49:38.964
Martin Luther King himself and I got stranded
1027
00:49:38.964 --> 00:49:43.306
by their people leading a recruiting project up north
1028
00:49:43.306 --> 00:49:45.927
and head to walk my way back down to Washington
1029
00:49:45.927 --> 00:49:50.066
and Walter Fontroy called Martin and Martin told me
1030
00:49:50.066 --> 00:49:54.087
to meet him at the airport gave me $25 and a plan ticket
1031
00:49:54.087 --> 00:49:56.715
to Atlanta said give 'em hell Arkansas go back there and try
1032
00:49:56.715 --> 00:49:59.148
to deal with it and I tried to reopen
1033
00:49:59.148 --> 00:50:01.588
communications with SNCC
1034
00:50:01.588 --> 00:50:05.517
and to kind of shake up some of this scope thing
1035
00:50:05.517 --> 00:50:09.260
to be aware and supportive of SNCC's independent work,
1036
00:50:09.260 --> 00:50:11.328
but I couldn't communicate with SNCC 'cause things
1037
00:50:11.328 --> 00:50:13.768
were breaking down and then I got thrown in jail
1038
00:50:13.768 --> 00:50:17.086
for the rest of the year and when I came back
1039
00:50:17.086 --> 00:50:21.787
in the beginning of '66 almost everything was totally.
1040
00:50:21.787 --> 00:50:22.620
Chaotic.
1041
00:50:22.620 --> 00:50:23.453
It was a different world in '66
1042
00:50:23.453 --> 00:50:26.248
then it was in '65 and it was hard to,
1043
00:50:26.248 --> 00:50:28.248
it was hard to start over again,
1044
00:50:28.248 --> 00:50:31.698
but the Lowndes county which I guess people
1045
00:50:31.698 --> 00:50:35.038
will be speaking about this week was an absolute symbol
1046
00:50:35.038 --> 00:50:36.918
of what it was all about.
1047
00:50:36.918 --> 00:50:41.466
It was like COFO in spades, but concentrated in one area
1048
00:50:41.466 --> 00:50:45.678
where the people really developed and it's still survives,
1049
00:50:45.678 --> 00:50:49.859
I mean, the name of the organization changed, but the same
1050
00:50:49.859 --> 00:50:53.426
people still run the county now that began the organization
1051
00:50:53.426 --> 00:50:55.213
back in '65.
1052
00:50:55.213 --> 00:50:56.064
Okay, thank you.
1053
00:50:56.064 --> 00:50:56.897
(audience member drowned out by distance)
1054
00:50:56.897 --> 00:50:57.730
I just want--.
1055
00:50:57.730 --> 00:50:58.831
Okay, yes, go ahead.
1056
00:50:58.831 --> 00:51:00.660
It's important thing that SNCC did.
1057
00:51:00.660 --> 00:51:02.764
We broke down HUAC--.
1058
00:51:02.764 --> 00:51:03.839
What was that?
1059
00:51:03.839 --> 00:51:04.672
HUAC.
1060
00:51:04.672 --> 00:51:06.919
House Un-American Activities Committee.
1061
00:51:06.919 --> 00:51:08.375
And what was HUAC?
1062
00:51:08.375 --> 00:51:10.988
House Un-American Activities.
1063
00:51:10.988 --> 00:51:11.879
But what was it?
1064
00:51:11.879 --> 00:51:14.519
It was a McCarthy type committee
1065
00:51:14.519 --> 00:51:16.668
that called everybody communist if you did anything
1066
00:51:16.668 --> 00:51:19.628
that was for the good of the world,
1067
00:51:19.628 --> 00:51:21.295
for the good of the order if you will.
1068
00:51:21.295 --> 00:51:22.377
For, you know--.
1069
00:51:22.377 --> 00:51:27.292
And we just refused, I mean I can see Forman right now
1070
00:51:27.292 --> 00:51:30.121
and we're 18 years-old, Judy, right?
1071
00:51:30.121 --> 00:51:33.132
We're young and this is a carry over
1072
00:51:33.132 --> 00:51:34.281
from McCarthy if you know about
1073
00:51:34.281 --> 00:51:37.161
the 50s and the Cold War and all of that
1074
00:51:37.161 --> 00:51:38.341
and we had consciousness.
1075
00:51:38.341 --> 00:51:40.761
I mean I can never ever finish talking about what
1076
00:51:40.761 --> 00:51:44.553
SNCC did for us and for this nation as young people.
1077
00:51:44.553 --> 00:51:48.681
And so we're grappling and understanding profoundly
1078
00:51:48.681 --> 00:51:50.772
what anti-communism is and how people being
1079
00:51:50.772 --> 00:51:54.069
wet-baited and we had some understanding of those
1080
00:51:54.069 --> 00:51:56.489
who were blacklisted, who went to prison in the 50s
1081
00:51:56.489 --> 00:51:57.322
and so forth.
1082
00:51:57.322 --> 00:51:59.824
We made alliances with those kinds of folks.
1083
00:51:59.824 --> 00:52:02.746
In other words, we probably as young people
1084
00:52:02.746 --> 00:52:06.163
the first of the anti-communist, foreign,
1085
00:52:08.404 --> 00:52:09.530
to go and fight this.
1086
00:52:09.530 --> 00:52:12.277
And so that was tremendous, HUAC.
1087
00:52:12.277 --> 00:52:15.091
The anti-Vietnam movement.
1088
00:52:15.091 --> 00:52:17.372
Yeah, SNCC had the first demonstration
1089
00:52:17.372 --> 00:52:18.972
against the war in Vietnam.
1090
00:52:18.972 --> 00:52:21.500
A busload of people from Mississippi came to the justice
1091
00:52:21.500 --> 00:52:24.350
department and put it on the map that there was this war
1092
00:52:24.350 --> 00:52:26.570
going on and we didn't like it and didn't want
1093
00:52:26.570 --> 00:52:28.252
any parts of it.
1094
00:52:28.252 --> 00:52:30.022
Hell no we won't go Freedom Singers
1095
00:52:30.022 --> 00:52:31.902
and I'm gonna sit down.
1096
00:52:31.902 --> 00:52:33.491
I'm going to sit down in a minute, Marvin.
1097
00:52:33.491 --> 00:52:35.731
(audience laughing)
1098
00:52:35.731 --> 00:52:39.468
It's like a SNCC meeting.
1099
00:52:39.468 --> 00:52:41.190
Use your ears for two seconds,
1100
00:52:41.190 --> 00:52:46.021
on Vietnam what got (coughing drowns out speaker).
1101
00:52:46.021 --> 00:52:48.576
No, sit up, Mike all seven feet of you.
1102
00:52:48.576 --> 00:52:49.847
Just a minute.
1103
00:52:49.847 --> 00:52:52.535
It was the FDP office in Mccomb that got upset
1104
00:52:52.535 --> 00:52:54.829
because of a young local guy who had been working.
1105
00:52:54.829 --> 00:52:55.698
Got drafted.
1106
00:52:55.698 --> 00:52:57.149
Had got sent to Vietnam.
1107
00:52:57.149 --> 00:52:57.982
Right.
1108
00:52:57.982 --> 00:53:00.196
Got killed there when he came back and they tried to bury
1109
00:53:00.196 --> 00:53:04.281
him in the official cemetery, the white cemetery
1110
00:53:04.281 --> 00:53:06.342
if you will, the people of color wouldn't
1111
00:53:06.342 --> 00:53:08.720
allow him to buried and at that point people
1112
00:53:08.720 --> 00:53:11.231
got provoked and said to hell with this war in Vietnam.
1113
00:53:11.231 --> 00:53:12.064
Okay.
1114
00:53:12.064 --> 00:53:13.113
And concentrate on what's going on in Mississippi.
1115
00:53:13.113 --> 00:53:15.692
That's all that happened.
1116
00:53:15.692 --> 00:53:17.158
I just wanted to say that in terms of some
1117
00:53:17.158 --> 00:53:19.558
of the other things that SNCC did, we began to make
1118
00:53:19.558 --> 00:53:22.838
forays internationally which may have been one of the things
1119
00:53:22.838 --> 00:53:25.889
that put us on the map on Washington, D.C.
1120
00:53:25.889 --> 00:53:29.441
on a very long desk by people with lots of uniforms
1121
00:53:29.441 --> 00:53:34.120
who made some decisions about, "oh no you won't!"
1122
00:53:34.120 --> 00:53:36.203
But SNCC had a trip that,
1123
00:53:38.797 --> 00:53:41.277
remember the name Oginga Odinga?
1124
00:53:41.277 --> 00:53:45.444
Okay, African revolutionary went into various anti-colonial,
1125
00:53:48.576 --> 00:53:52.301
had a visitation on the continent basically hosted
1126
00:53:52.301 --> 00:53:54.634
by anti-colonial personages.
1127
00:53:55.682 --> 00:53:59.904
In 1963, several of us got invited to other oversees
1128
00:53:59.904 --> 00:54:02.853
operations, obviously dealing with student movements.
1129
00:54:02.853 --> 00:54:07.020
I got invited through a mechanism that shall go nameless
1130
00:54:08.216 --> 00:54:12.383
to Southeast Asia where anti-colonial activities were
1131
00:54:13.593 --> 00:54:16.194
occurring and you know that anti-colonialism activities
1132
00:54:16.194 --> 00:54:19.013
were equated with communism and you do realize that that's
1133
00:54:19.013 --> 00:54:20.874
how they, you know, so anyway.
1134
00:54:20.874 --> 00:54:23.341
So I had an interesting debriefing at the state department
1135
00:54:23.341 --> 00:54:25.930
and we shall talk about that at another time.
1136
00:54:25.930 --> 00:54:29.263
And there were people who went to Japan,
1137
00:54:30.328 --> 00:54:33.980
so we began to make those kinds of correspondences,
1138
00:54:33.980 --> 00:54:36.712
just give you this aside though in terms of impact,
1139
00:54:36.712 --> 00:54:39.082
I was driving down the street in a chauffeured car
1140
00:54:39.082 --> 00:54:41.101
in the middle of Manilla, Philippines with this man
1141
00:54:41.101 --> 00:54:45.010
whom I did not like and we were driving,
1142
00:54:45.010 --> 00:54:46.597
his driver was driving I should say,
1143
00:54:46.597 --> 00:54:49.309
and we were in the back and he,
1144
00:54:49.309 --> 00:54:51.349
we had been together several times and I had seen
1145
00:54:51.349 --> 00:54:53.515
his house which was quite some house
1146
00:54:53.515 --> 00:54:57.515
and he rolled the window up between the chauffer
1147
00:54:58.557 --> 00:55:00.967
and us and he turned around, and me rather,
1148
00:55:00.967 --> 00:55:02.740
and he turned and he said something that was
1149
00:55:02.740 --> 00:55:05.551
really very peculiar, but it always stuck with me.
1150
00:55:05.551 --> 00:55:09.551
He says, "we are watching you" he says,
1151
00:55:09.551 --> 00:55:13.198
"I represent a group of people who are trying
1152
00:55:13.198 --> 00:55:16.025
"to get the Taino language"-- no excuse me,
1153
00:55:16.025 --> 00:55:19.731
"the Tagalog language back into our usage."
1154
00:55:19.731 --> 00:55:21.811
In the Philippines, Filipinos are not allows to use
1155
00:55:21.811 --> 00:55:23.912
their own native language, they had to speak Spanish
1156
00:55:23.912 --> 00:55:27.672
and that was one of the steps towards self-awareness,
1157
00:55:27.672 --> 00:55:30.301
self-determination, he says, "we have been watching
1158
00:55:30.301 --> 00:55:32.953
"the student movement and you are a part of the student
1159
00:55:32.953 --> 00:55:34.523
"movement in the United States," he says,
1160
00:55:34.523 --> 00:55:35.904
"I'm really proud to have met you
1161
00:55:35.904 --> 00:55:36.995
"and I want you to know that
1162
00:55:36.995 --> 00:55:39.544
you are part of our combustion."
1163
00:55:39.544 --> 00:55:42.555
And I really felt really good about that because, boy,
1164
00:55:42.555 --> 00:55:44.933
did the state department want to know about that later.
1165
00:55:44.933 --> 00:55:46.602
(audience laughing)
1166
00:55:46.602 --> 00:55:47.603
Okay, anybody else?
1167
00:55:47.603 --> 00:55:48.693
Any other comments, in other--.
1168
00:55:48.693 --> 00:55:50.642
Yes, go ahead.
1169
00:55:50.642 --> 00:55:51.621
Go 'head.
1170
00:55:51.621 --> 00:55:55.788
(distance drowns out the speaker)
1171
00:55:59.732 --> 00:56:01.420
Can you talk up?
1172
00:56:01.420 --> 00:56:04.168
We didn't go to the movies, we had no desire
1173
00:56:04.168 --> 00:56:06.705
to go to a movie or to do any
1174
00:56:06.705 --> 00:56:09.455
of those entrainment type things.
1175
00:56:10.448 --> 00:56:14.128
Now our social outlet, thanks to people like Forman,
1176
00:56:14.128 --> 00:56:16.919
(static and distance drowns out the speaker)
1177
00:56:16.919 --> 00:56:20.944
We studied, we read a lot, we entered new concepts
1178
00:56:20.944 --> 00:56:24.328
in our vocabulary called consciousness.
1179
00:56:24.328 --> 00:56:28.994
(static and distance drowns out the speaker)
1180
00:56:28.994 --> 00:56:33.010
It was just a whole different transition in our thinking.
1181
00:56:33.010 --> 00:56:36.043
I can still hear Forman talking about control,
1182
00:56:36.043 --> 00:56:39.434
conflict, and change and how we got enjoyment
1183
00:56:39.434 --> 00:56:41.217
out of reading these kinds of books
1184
00:56:41.217 --> 00:56:42.050
(static and distance drowns out the speaker)
1185
00:56:42.050 --> 00:56:42.883
Instead of these--.
1186
00:56:42.883 --> 00:56:47.050
(static and distance drowns out the speaker)
1187
00:56:50.141 --> 00:56:52.988
So, I don't want to belabor the point, but the concept
1188
00:56:52.988 --> 00:56:56.259
I'm saying in terms of what we saw as entertaining
1189
00:56:56.259 --> 00:57:00.317
we transformed what was the real meaning of education.
1190
00:57:00.317 --> 00:57:03.516
You know H. Rap Brown has a wonderful speech on that
1191
00:57:03.516 --> 00:57:06.575
that you should hear training or education what are we,
1192
00:57:06.575 --> 00:57:11.396
so making it relevant these are choice words that SNCC
1193
00:57:11.396 --> 00:57:14.866
introduced into the vocabulary and I will sit down
1194
00:57:14.866 --> 00:57:18.785
and close that even in the women's movement
1195
00:57:18.785 --> 00:57:22.952
the whole concept of choice came from the black SNCC women
1196
00:57:23.954 --> 00:57:25.932
because it was really about the pill.
1197
00:57:25.932 --> 00:57:28.754
I think the slogan was the pill and a lot of us
1198
00:57:28.754 --> 00:57:32.004
in SNCC were kind of toying with the whole
1199
00:57:32.004 --> 00:57:34.922
concept of abortion so we came up with
1200
00:57:34.922 --> 00:57:37.583
that to tell people to take the pill
1201
00:57:37.583 --> 00:57:41.132
was imperialistic, autocratic, something that
1202
00:57:41.132 --> 00:57:44.212
we had been taught in SNCC to fight against
1203
00:57:44.212 --> 00:57:47.412
and that the word choice, I think I have minutes
1204
00:57:47.412 --> 00:57:49.570
of the notes of that and that people
1205
00:57:49.570 --> 00:57:52.280
ought to have the right to choose.
1206
00:57:52.280 --> 00:57:55.018
That was the whole concept that came from blasted women
1207
00:57:55.018 --> 00:57:57.680
particularly women like Fran Mill and some other
1208
00:57:57.680 --> 00:57:58.990
women that I can name.
1209
00:57:58.990 --> 00:58:01.099
So, if I can put it in nutshell
1210
00:58:01.099 --> 00:58:05.280
and add all of the others what's most important is that SNCC
1211
00:58:05.280 --> 00:58:08.780
is what all of that risk, black and white,
1212
00:58:10.938 --> 00:58:15.105
transform the whole thought process as far as I am concerned
1213
00:58:16.068 --> 00:58:19.028
of this country and of the alliances
1214
00:58:19.028 --> 00:58:20.317
that we have made with others
1215
00:58:20.317 --> 00:58:23.879
we have transformed Dr. King around Vietnam,
1216
00:58:23.879 --> 00:58:26.296
we transformed NAACP in terms
1217
00:58:27.220 --> 00:58:28.721
of what it's agenda ought to be.
1218
00:58:28.721 --> 00:58:32.951
So SNCC to me was truly the revolutionaries
1219
00:58:32.951 --> 00:58:36.182
of this modern period and I mean on the same par
1220
00:58:36.182 --> 00:58:40.349
as 1776 revolution, "give me liberty or give me death."
1221
00:58:42.231 --> 00:58:45.231
(audience applause)
1222
00:58:47.303 --> 00:58:50.028
I would just like to build on the educational aspect
1223
00:58:50.028 --> 00:58:54.999
that has just arisen because basically our whole environment
1224
00:58:54.999 --> 00:58:59.315
is educational and it was not just the reading of books.
1225
00:58:59.315 --> 00:59:03.315
I remember many, many sessions in our apartment.
1226
00:59:05.247 --> 00:59:09.819
Sitting on the floor with all the staff that was in Atlanta
1227
00:59:09.819 --> 00:59:13.986
and we parsed and analyzed every political, social,
1228
00:59:18.080 --> 00:59:19.663
and personal event.
1229
00:59:21.440 --> 00:59:22.670
Of the day.
1230
00:59:22.670 --> 00:59:25.670
For as long as we could stay awake
1231
00:59:27.419 --> 00:59:31.086
and these discussions went on into the night
1232
00:59:32.328 --> 00:59:36.206
and one little vignette in this fabulous, famous
1233
00:59:36.206 --> 00:59:40.676
apartment that we shared was we were all gathered
1234
00:59:40.676 --> 00:59:44.843
there and we heard the rap on the door and it was the police
1235
00:59:46.321 --> 00:59:49.302
and here we had this integrated group.
1236
00:59:49.302 --> 00:59:53.630
And I remember Stokely and a couple of old men,
1237
00:59:53.630 --> 00:59:55.011
I think, went for the window.
1238
00:59:55.011 --> 00:59:56.200
Went out the window.
1239
00:59:56.200 --> 00:59:57.033
Ivanhoe.
1240
00:59:57.033 --> 00:59:58.609
I we were (laughs) five o'clock in the morning
1241
00:59:58.609 --> 01:00:02.467
I remember the hour, but it was one of those evenings
1242
01:00:02.467 --> 01:00:03.867
where we were talking about,
1243
01:00:03.867 --> 01:00:06.838
I think that particular evening, we were talking about
1244
01:00:06.838 --> 01:00:09.838
colonialism and religion in Jamaica.
1245
01:00:12.849 --> 01:00:14.067
Yes, Judy.
1246
01:00:14.067 --> 01:00:15.358
Let me just mention to,
1247
01:00:15.358 --> 01:00:17.276
we also actually had a research department.
1248
01:00:17.276 --> 01:00:18.109
Yes, we did.
1249
01:00:18.109 --> 01:00:20.100
Headed by this old, crusty, I think, former communist
1250
01:00:20.100 --> 01:00:22.620
part person named, Jack Minnis.
1251
01:00:22.620 --> 01:00:25.483
And what would happen was that Jack Minnis,
1252
01:00:25.483 --> 01:00:26.858
first of all, you walk in his room it would be
1253
01:00:26.858 --> 01:00:30.317
totally smokeville, but he would have all of these
1254
01:00:30.317 --> 01:00:33.508
census figures, I mean, there's a whole thing
1255
01:00:33.508 --> 01:00:36.758
around the way you got things factually correct,
1256
01:00:36.758 --> 01:00:38.702
the way you interpreted the pieces
1257
01:00:38.702 --> 01:00:40.962
so when student voice for example
1258
01:00:40.962 --> 01:00:43.618
and Donnie and Julian will- Julian Bond is now the
1259
01:00:43.618 --> 01:00:45.346
chair of NAACP, but who was then
1260
01:00:45.346 --> 01:00:47.008
our communications director.
1261
01:00:47.008 --> 01:00:50.090
They will have a session and you might want to go to that,
1262
01:00:50.090 --> 01:00:53.418
I think it's on Friday where they talk about how they were
1263
01:00:53.418 --> 01:00:57.671
the media arm of that, but the main thing was that we never
1264
01:00:57.671 --> 01:01:00.311
over sold, we never, in other words you would say
1265
01:01:00.311 --> 01:01:03.309
in a student voice report or WATTS line report
1266
01:01:03.309 --> 01:01:05.772
three people beaten, church burned, so-and-so.
1267
01:01:05.772 --> 01:01:08.831
It was never the so-and-so and the lumping proletariat
1268
01:01:08.831 --> 01:01:10.331
and the so-and-so.