Johnny Ford interview recording, 1994 July 13
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| Paul Ortiz | Mr. Ford, tell me a little bit about the area that you grew up in, and where you were born and so on and so forth. | 0:04 |
| Johnny Ford | I was born of sharecropper parents, deep in beautiful Bullock County. Mother was humble, hardworking sharecropper. Parents were not married, in a very, very humble southern, rural area. Then at the age of four, and uncle of mine came down to the Mount Andrews, Midway area and took me as a child and adopted me, and brought me to Tuskegee, Alabama. I began living with my uncle who adopted me as his son from the age of four, and I grew up in what is called the Lake community of our city. It's the low-income, very humble section of our city. My uncle and aunt, my uncle, who had became like a father to me, worked at the VA Medical Center as a nursing assistant. Served in the military, World War II. My aunt, who became like a mother to me, worked as a domestic in the homes of Whites and Blacks in our city, doing domestic work. | 0:13 |
| Johnny Ford | In this town of Tuskegee, there were four classes of people, so to speak. You had the aristocratic White landowners and merchants and farmers and business people in town, who were one class of people. Then you had the White low-income rural farmers who were from the humble background, Whites. Then you had the aristocratic African Americans or Blacks around the university and the college professors, who represented one class. Then you had the low-income, humble African Americans, which is the area that I was a part of, I am a part of, and grew up in that humble section. | 1:41 |
| Johnny Ford | There was as much of a dichotomy, if you will, or a chasm between the low-income Blacks as there was between low-income Whites and Blacks, and then there was some cross-socializing, if you will, because whereas, I got to know many of the young Whites, when I see a person like Andy Hornsby, who's now the Commissioner of Human Resources for the State of Alabama, he and I talk about how we grew up as kids, where the White kids sometimes relished the idea of being able to play ball or whatever with the Black kids without their parents' permission, down behind the park or somewhere like that. We became real good friends without the official blessing of our parents. | 2:43 |
| Johnny Ford | Same thing, like Sammy Young. My mother worked for their family. Sammy was from the aristocratic part of the community and I was from the humble, but he and I were very close friends, even though there was a chasm between our parents. My mother worked for them, but Sammy and I were buddies, Sammy Young, who later was the first African American college student to be killed in the Civil Rights Movement here in the city. | 3:37 |
| Johnny Ford | I grew up in that humble background. At the age of six years old, my parents enrolled me, adopted parents enrolled me at the Washington Public School. They had taught me well, even at early age, ABCs and many other things, the basics. And I excelled in the first grade and just went right on along through the Washington Public School and then on to the Tuskegee Institute High School, where I attended the high school there, and went along well. Then I graduated from the high school and went to Knoxville College, where I had an academic scholarship and a football scholarship. | 4:12 |
| Johnny Ford | I grew up in the rural segregated South, Tuskegee, Alabama. I can remember coming downtown once to the five-and-ten-cent store downtown on the square here, on the main street, and drinking out of a sign that had "for Colored". My daddy slapped my face, pulled me, and said, "Boy, what are you trying to do? Get us killed down here?" It was really a very tense situation, and then of course in 1955, I was still a kid, 12, 13 years old at the time of the gerrymandering case, when an African American woman who lived in that house across the street, which is closer to town, and Whites who lived in this very site, there was houses here then, this site, they were in the city limits, which is further away from town, so they gerrymandered the city limits. Blacks were all put out of the city limits, so they couldn't vote. You know the case, Gomillion versus Lightfoot, was filed. | 5:02 |
| Johnny Ford | During that period, my parents, along with most of the other African American people in the community, went to the mass rallies and the meetings, and our movement was led by Dr. C.G. Gomillion. I can remember going to those mass meetings in the back of my daddy's truck, who had a 1952 pickup truck, and he would pick up all the folks in our neighborhood, have a truck load of us, and we'd go out to the mass meeting. There'd be so many people you couldn't get in the church, and they'd have the speakers on the outside of Washington Chapel Church. | 6:20 |
| Johnny Ford | We'd listen to Dr. C.G. Gomillion and Reverend S.T. Martin, who was the pastor of the Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church, and my pastor, Reverend K.L. Buford, who became one of the first elected to the city council, and Dr. Stanley Smith, and even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who would come over from Montgomery to speak at the mass meetings here. They all worked together while the movement was going on in Montgomery, with the bus boycott. We had the economic boycott in the downtown area here. | 6:56 |
| Johnny Ford | I can remember as a kid, riding 10 miles up the road to go shop at CarMax, a grocery store, rather than shop here in town. The economic boycott dried up the downtown of Tuskegee. As matter of fact, it's never recovered, quite frankly, from the boycotts, but it worked very well, that boycott. I grew up in the movement, and then finally went away to Knoxville College, I guess, was probably my first integrated experience, where the school was integrated with students from all over. And we had a number of White students there too. | 7:30 |
| Johnny Ford | And we got along well with them, I learned, because growing up in an all, predominant majority Black area, you're taught by your parents— I was taught that, my daddy used to tell me, "Boy, no White folks are any good. I mean, all White folks are bad." It's just that kind of thinking, and so you grow up thinking that, and I can imagine White kids, growing up the same thing, saying that there are no Blacks who are any good or whatever. Just, so your environment has a lot to do with that, it was a wonderful awakening for me to go to Knoxville and experience the situation, a Presbyterian college. Kind of, it was a sheltered situation, but I got a chance to meet Whites and Blacks and say, "Gee, they're really all right. I mean, it's really okay." I mean, it was a maturing process. | 8:18 |
| Johnny Ford | I was involved in the Civil Rights Movement while in Knoxville. Robert Booker was a student, leader of the student nonviolent movement. When I went to Knoxville College, it was totally segregated. The bus station, the movie theaters, the public accommodations, everything, but that's interesting. By the time I graduated in 1964 from Knoxville College, we had our senior dance downtown at the Andrew Johnson Hotel, downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, and we had Black and White couples, integrated couples, and this is 1964. | 9:17 |
| Johnny Ford | Really, I think then later on, 1966, one of the most hurtful experiences was when I learned that Sammy Young, my boyhood friend, had been shot, in 1966. I grew up always wanting to— At the age of 13, I often tell the story, and they remind me, they'll tell you about these things. Two people are still here in the community, and Lonnie Smith, [indistinct 00:10:35], they tell me the public park downtown was segregated, and on the big stone bronze, on the stone gates, was a big bronze plaque, and it said, "Mayor Frank Carr," the entrance to the gate. | 10:06 |
| Johnny Ford | We would have to watch the games from a tree, climb up in the tree and look over and watch the little White boys and girls playing in the park, playing ball. I used to hear my parents complain about that, and they said, "We are paying for these parks just like everybody else, yet we can't get in." I had read about Al Clayton Power and heard about him being elected and all of this. I said, then I remember saying to the guys, we would have to peep through the fence, and I said, "The mayor of this town must be a powerful dude, if he can keep us out of this park. One day I think I'd like to be mayor of this town." I was 13, now, shooting off the mouth, "So that I can open up this park and make sure everybody can play," because we had seen integration in New York and places like that. | 10:53 |
| Johnny Ford | Well, I'm sure I was just talking, but as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a leader, and I've always wanted to do something in this town, and so the quest never left me. I went away to New York, worked, and was asked by Bobby Kennedy to work in his campaign with Earl Graves in 1968, and worked in that campaign, and we worked, and we were all in California when Bobby was shot. I began to reflect on that, and earlier, Dr. King had been shot earlier, and we had been involved in that effort, arranging for the funeral and sending the Kennedy plane and being involved in that effort. On that flight back across America, on the Kennedy plane from California, I began thinking— You need to change the tape? | 11:46 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh no, it's fine. | 12:48 |
| Johnny Ford | I said, "Well, Dr. King's gone. Now Bobby's gone." Earl had sent me back the day earlier to start preparing for the funeral, because we knew Bobby was not going to make it, so he sent me back to start calling the Black leaders from across the country, Reverend Abernathy, Mrs. King and everybody, to come into New York for the funeral and for the mass and everything. At any rate, I began, I said, "Dr. King's gone now. Bobby's gone. I can't depend on anybody else. If I really want to do something with my life, I need to go back to my roots, back to the South, to my native land." | 12:51 |
| Johnny Ford | I made the decision then that I wanted to really come back home to Alabama. I was coming home. I can remember Earl Graves and I riding in the back of a limousine down Madison Avenue after we'd done a reception at the Kennedys' back in New York, we'd gone to something, and Earl pointed to the skyscrapers of New York. He said, "That's where I'm going." He said, "By that time I'm 40, I'll be a millionaire. You going with me? I said, "No, Earl, I'm going home. I'm going back to my roots, to the South. See, things are changing in the South and I want to go back and help be a part of that change. I want to go back to my roots. I want to become mayor of my city." | 13:35 |
| Johnny Ford | Now, mind you, this was 1968, and of course no one here knew I had an idea of running for mayor. I just, it's what I wanted to do, and I made the decision to not go in business with Earl Graves, and instead to come home, and I accepted the position as Model Cities Director for the city. It's a HUD funded program. I came back and I worked for the city administration, and as I said, about 70 people interviewed for the job. They selected me because they figured I had no political ambitions, particularly the mayor, who was the one who brought me back at that time. He's the one I ended up running against and defeating. | 14:26 |
| Johnny Ford | But at any rate, I came back and got involved in the elections of 1970, helped to elect Thomas Reed and Fred Gray, the first two African Americans, to the Alabama legislature. Then Lucius Amerson, reelection as sheriff, first African American sheriff. Got involved in all of that, and finally, 1972— Well, even so, a short while, I worked for the US Department of Justice, and I was responsible for community relations service for the State of Alabama, CRS. If you know something about the struggle in the South, you know CRS is that arm of justice that comes in and ameliorates whenever there's racial strife, pulls the two sides together, and they work with the other federal agencies and law enforcement officials. | 15:11 |
| Johnny Ford | Anyway, I was responsible for the State of Alabama, and I can tell you it was during the desegregation period. I had the responsibility of trying to keep peace in the State, and can remember being called at four o'clock in the morning by the mayor of Anniston, saying, "Get up here, our town's on fire," and getting up and driving up to Anniston and meeting with the city officials, and then going out and meeting with Reverend John Nettles, who's president of SCLC, and Q. Reynolds in Anniston, and getting the biracial committee together and dealing with that situation. | 16:14 |
| Johnny Ford | I can remember the situation so vividly. The federal governments had refused to send in federal officials, marshals, anybody, to protect Reverend Nettles, whose house had been fire-bombed and shot into by vigilantes because he was leading a movement to the desegregate the schools. I remember saying to the people doing the violence, "If you want to shoot somebody, shoot me. I'm a federal official. If I'm shot, I know they have to come in and send somebody." I remember shielding him with my body, putting him in the center of the backseat, and I was right on the outside. | 16:53 |
| Johnny Ford | At any rate, we got through that. The same thing, Wilcox County. I can remember a White man driving up, shooting into a crowd, with a rifle, of Black children. Shot a little girl, and there was a White officer there, right there, deputy, whatever, was about to let him drive off. I flashed my badge and said, "You arrest this man right now," and they did, but in Wilcox County, Birmingham, Anniston, Alabama, all over the State, the desegregation effort— This was 1971 and first of '72. | 17:41 |
| Johnny Ford | Then on April 15th, I resigned from the Department of Justice to announce my candidacy to run for mayor. All while this was going on, of course, I never— I was campaigning unofficially for mayor, I guess, working back and forth. I ran and was elected. It was a coalition of Blacks, of mostly African Americans, church people, business people, community people, grassroots people. Then I had a group of young Whites who— Some fellows who were young businessmen who wanted to see progress. They didn't care if the mayor was Black or White. They wanted business to grow and prosper, so they joined with us, so we put together a little coalition. | 18:27 |
| Johnny Ford | Then of course, the students at the university who really made a difference in the election. We challenged the rules. The Gomillion versus Lightfoot case was the real foundation for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act. During that election in '72, we got football courts. It was my fraternity brother, went up on campus and we loaded up the whole football team, and we brought them down to get them registered to vote. The team was out in their uniforms and cleats and everything, and they weren't excited about coming down and registering, anyway. The coach just told them to do it, so they were mad, and when those big 250 pound tacklers got off that bus headed for the courthouse, those conservatives members of the Board of Registrars, which was all White, it just scared them to death, really. I mean, I can't imagine how they felt, seeing those big football players come to register. | 19:16 |
| Johnny Ford | See, because they were still in— They just got them off the practice field and brought them down, and so they locked the door up, but it was before closing time. There was about 50, 60 of them, the whole team, so they wouldn't register them. We filed a lawsuit, got Chestnut, Fred Gray and Chestnut hooked up, and we filed a lawsuit, federal district court. Judge Varner, and a lawsuit ordering, protesting, because they refused to register people. | 20:23 |
| Johnny Ford | The Board, the judge, Varner, you've heard of him, he's a federal judge, Robert Varner. He ruled in our favor. Incidentally, he's from Tuskegee, the Varner family. Matter of fact, that's who my mother, one of the folks who my mother used to work for. It's ironic. I don't guess anybody knew that at the time. My mother worked for him as a domestic person, but he's the one that ruled and ordered the Board of Registrars to open up on Monday to re-register, I mean, to register those people on Monday. We got our buses again and brought the football team down, the band, cheerleaders, cafeteria, everybody would come earlier. | 20:58 |
| Johnny Ford | See, what the Board of Registrars had done is they had purposely placed all the voter registration days during the summertime when the students in the university were away. It's 3000 students up there, enough to— The football team came back early for practice, and we had one more day, so that's how we got them. Anyway, he ordered them to register everybody. We registered about 150 students, 151, something like that. The next day, election day, we only won that election by 127 votes, so those 150 students helped to make the difference in our election. | 21:37 |
| Johnny Ford | I was elected mayor. My signal to the nation was, I think I challenged my city and the South, people everywhere— It was a first-time, history making election to them. I was humbled, too. I didn't run for history, me. I just ran, but at any rate, the message went out that, I said to people of the South whose roots are in the South, I said, "Come home, the South is free. Tuskegee is open now for all Blacks and Whites to return to the South and invest, and cast down—." I think I quoted Booker T. Washington, who said, "Cast down your buckets and come back home, young Blacks." I sent out a challenge across the South. The South is the new frontier, and challenged a lot of people to come back. | 22:15 |
| Johnny Ford | They began to come and stay, and we shaped a government that was biracial. We made a sincere effort to not run the Whites out of town or run them off, but we kept the Whites, in most instances, who— We had a biracial government, and as a matter of fact, the first test came in February of 1973. An African American escaped from prison, the Gould case. He escaped and he viciously attacked and murdered. Two of those women died eventually, elderly White women, brutally murdered. Not sure if they were raped or not, but it was a very serious crime. | 23:14 |
| Johnny Ford | I can remember going into that mob of Whites who had gathered outside of the scene. The next morning, threats, saying, "You're the one that they should have killed or we should kill," or whatever. It was a very intense situation, but anyway, it was my first test because what we had was the White Ku Klux Klan, White citizens' council, and vigilantes who wanted to come in, take over the town and over the police department. They didn't think the police department would react or whatever, so the town was under siege by Whites, primarily from across, from outside. | 24:12 |
| Johnny Ford | I called Governor Wallace, who incidentally, as you know, we're good friends. The Governor, when I was elected, was one of the first ones to write and say if I needed any help, call him. I didn't believe him really, but I had a problem, so I guess he and I had become friends earlier because when I became mayor, I had a problem with a daycare program with some White racist department head, was holding up 400,000 for our children. I called the Governor. He said call him. I called him. The next day we had our $400,000 for our children, so from that moment on, Governor Wallace and I were straight, we became good friends. | 24:51 |
| Johnny Ford | At any rate, I called the Governor about this crisis I had about the vigilantes, and he got General Taylor Harden on the phone and sent the General down. I told him what the problem was. The Governor nationalized the Guard and put them under my supervision. In Alabama, when you nationalize the National Guard, they come in, but they're under the supervision of the mayor of the city. I used a National Guard, who were primarily White youngsters who were in the Guard, to patrol and to keep White vigilantes, for the most part, at bay and under control. | 25:34 |
| Johnny Ford | To make a long story short, we worked with White State investigators in the city and Black investigators as a team, and we saw that we caught the fellow who was charged with it, and arrested, and that sent a signal that we were not going to tolerate crime, crime against Blacks or Whites in our city. It sent out a very positive message as a young mayor, African American mayor in the deep South, and gained a lot of respect from both races because that was our first crisis and we came through it, and just stayed on until we brought him to trial and justice. At any rate, it's been interesting growing up in the South and serving as mayor of this city. I've seen a lot of changes. Just had a chance to run statewide for State auditor, and while we did not win the race, we won the hearts of many people across this State. 215,000, approximately 214,000 votes, and probably would've won this race if we'd had a greater turnout by people of goodwill of both races, many who felt that, well, we had a major lead. | 26:17 |
| Johnny Ford | Then, to the other factor, the opponent began to use racial ads where he would simply just put his picture and my picture together and put his qualifications, and no qualifications for mine, but used my picture as a way to show the Whites in the State, particularly in those rural areas, that he was Black and I was White. It worked because we didn't have time to really counteract it in the last days of the campaign. | 27:48 |
| Johnny Ford | We really thought the State had moved further along, but on the other hand, because of the kinds of letters and the support I've gotten from across the State from many Whites who were just outraged at that kind of tactic and who said, who regret that they didn't come forward and speak out and make a greater effort and to join with me in this effort, because it would've sent a very positive message to ourselves and to the nation that Alabama has matured. He got more votes than we did this time, but we still won overall because of the kind of positive race. We never got negative at all in the campaign, and for that, we won. | 28:25 |
| Johnny Ford | Now, there's so many who are encouraging us to not give up and to run again, and to say that we are on our way. We got, as I said, 200 and— Of course, we led in the first primary with 215,000 votes to 166,000, and we just made— The State made a giant step forward, not quite enough. We picked up about 46, 47% of the vote, which is a good step. There'll probably be a congressional race at '95, or another statewide. We're not worried about it. I'm still mayor of the— I told him, I can't lose either way. If I win, fine. If not, I still win because I'm still the mayor of the greatest city in the world. I've got two more years in this term, two and a half more years, so it's fine. | 29:19 |
| Johnny Ford | It's just an example. I ran for Congress in '89, and I could see the difference in terms of how the South had matured and Alabama had matured. We went into some very intense situations then, but this time the reception was very good. I mean, it was open. I mean, everyone was cautious. See, in my case, every time I had a chance to talk to Whites, I don't care how conservative or how rural a back area, every time I had a chance to talk to them and they see what my platform was issuing, I was able to win most of them over. | 30:21 |
| Johnny Ford | I can remember going into Athens, Alabama, North Alabama, in an audience that was 99%, there were only three or four brothers in 300 people, in the whole crowd. The other opponents were there ahead of time, signs. They talked to people that campaigned. I got there late from another meeting, but when I got a chance to speak with them and to meet them, then they did a straw poll and I won the straw poll. We were able to change people all over the State, but I just did not have time and the money and the resources to reach enough people. That's all that happened in the election. We would've won the election. I mean, we just didn't have time, and I was running against a fellow who had been campaigning for a year already, ahead of me, so it's just one of those things. | 31:00 |
| Johnny Ford | Anyways, but the South, this is my land, the South. I'm a Southerner, proud of it, glad to be back to my roots. I'm determined to continue to try to bring about more change in the State. There's light at the end of the tunnel. I feel real good about Alabama. I'm not discouraged. We know now what we have to do next time to counter these kind of tactics, which ends up making this guy the bad guy, in this case, which is fine, but I'm fine. The South is, I'm proud of it. We still have a long ways to go, but you can't give up on it. | 31:53 |
| Johnny Ford | I cannot afford to give up on the South. We've got some good people, Black and White, and then, the change is not just by Whites. As I said, I grew up in a racist Black situation where my folks said, "All White folks are devils, they're no good." Didn't push it. It's just how my daddy felt, and so there are many African Americans who, in the South, are maturing and who are changing just as Whites are. Begin to accept one another, vote for each other and give each other a chance. | 32:46 |
| Johnny Ford | I'm one of the ones who, I became— I was the first African American elected official to endorse Governor Wallace for public office, and I did that because, as I told you, when I ran and won, he said, "If I can help you, fine." When I asked him, he helped me, and when he ran in 1974, again, he came and he asked for my help and my support. The other guy, Eugene McClain from Huntsville, was running, didn't even ask. He'd come to town and he campaigned with the White people. | 33:32 |
| Johnny Ford | I guess he felt, because he was running against Governor Wallace, no Black person— He didn't have to ask Black folk. Governor Wallace said, "I'm sorry, I made a mistake. I shouldn't have did what I did." I can respect a man for that. He asked, and then recently when I ran, I guess the greatest gratification, when I was running for office recently, the Governor in the rotunda, when I was making my announcement, he came by in a wheelchair and said, whispered, "I support you. I'm going to support you for State auditor. You've got my support." | 34:10 |
| Johnny Ford | Then one day in the campaign, I was campaigning on the corner of Southern Boulevard and 431. One of the things we used to do is work the corners, traffic. You want to see folk, man, you get your busy intersection, they like to see out there sweating and working. A young White nurse stopped the car, stopped traffic, whatever her name was, "I'm Governor Wallace's nurse, and I just wanted to tell you that I just voted for you and he did too, by absentee ballot." I know we're on our way in the South. It just takes time. | 34:50 |
| Paul Ortiz | A couple more questions about your childhood. | 35:30 |
| Johnny Ford | Oh, yeah. | 35:32 |
| Paul Ortiz | You said you grew up in the Lake community. | 35:32 |
| Johnny Ford | Right. | 35:35 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was there an institution in that community that brought people together? | 35:36 |
| Johnny Ford | Right. Yeah. Well, the Lake community's over here, and the institution that really brought everybody, that brought the Black community together, the White and Black? | 35:42 |
| Paul Ortiz | Black. | 35:51 |
| Johnny Ford | Yeah. The church, of course, and the church was the Mount Zion Baptist church on White Street and St. James AME church on White Street. Everybody got together there for church or revival or Bible school, whatever. Then, grew up in the Lake, but then I went to school at Washington Public, which is the institution that really brought everybody together. Washington Public School, at the school, where we went to school, played ball, et cetera. Then right up the street was Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church, which is the church that I belong to now and the church that I really grew up in, which is Booker T. Washington's home church. It was the school and the church, and then of course we all played neighborhood baseball and basketball. | 35:52 |
| Johnny Ford | One of the greatest things, on Sunday evening, a brother would come up on the top of the hill. We had an outdoor basketball court, and we'd always tell— All a brother had to do was, the thing that really brought the community together was, bounce the ball, basketball one time, and brothers would come out of the woods and bushes. We used to call it, say that basketball was like a [indistinct 00:37:18]. When the basketball, when they started beating, when they heard the basketball up on the hill, boy, the brothers would drop whatever they were doing and we'd all gather, play basketball up on the hill. Brought the whole neighborhood, everybody, but seriously, the church and the school were the institutions. | 36:48 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was there any kind of relationship between people in the Lake community with people in Tuskegee? | 37:40 |
| Johnny Ford | Greenwood? Yeah, Tuskegee University and Greenwood. Well, as I grew up, there was myself and another fellow by the name of James Washington Alexander. He and I, we excelled academically, and so when you excel academically, we would go to school— Each year they have summer school at Children's House, which is in the Greenwood area, so we'd go over there to go to summer school and have a chance to link up with the kids in the other neighborhood. Then, there were certain things like dramatics, arts club, honor society, et cetera, and those things were open to whoever excelled. The poor kids, as I said, there is classism among Blacks. It's just like there is among Whites, okay, so I mean, that's real. Everybody knows that. Everybody's not willing to face it like I am, but there was a lot of class separation between the well-to-do Blacks and the well-to-do Whites, just as— Alex and I would shatter all of that. | 37:47 |
| Johnny Ford | First of all, because we were Black, our skin complexion. We're African Americans, but our color is Black, so first of all, the light-skinned kids, they had this class section about being high yellow or classy. You don't know anything about this, but you'll read about it. You should read something. | 39:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | I've heard about it. | 39:30 |
| Johnny Ford | Yeah, well, but we would shatter all of that because the teacher would say, "Well, anybody can be in this or join whatever." We didn't know about the invisible thing, that kids from this side of town are not supposed to do this. Matter of fact, in this town, they even had, when they built the African American swimming pool, somebody had audacity say that kids from this side of town would swim one day and the elite kids would swim another day so they wouldn't be mixed. I mean, all that kind foolishness. | 39:30 |
| Paul Ortiz | Who would say that? | 40:08 |
| Johnny Ford | This was the elite Black folk in the town. I can talk about it because I'm Black, I'm African American, so I can tell you like it is. I mean, you asked for an interview, so you're getting one. Everybody knows that's the way I am. First of all, see, when I ran for mayor, many of the elite Blacks didn't support me because I was not from the elite section of town, from part of the class. I was low-income, uneducated parents, humble, hardworking, precious parents, but uneducated, and not a part of the elite. Plus, I was dark-skinned. They would rather— Matter of fact, Kiva got as many Black votes as I did. Where I made the difference was, is I got those students. You know what I mean? | 40:08 |
| Johnny Ford | The traditional things, because he was just a good White man, and one of those, quote-unquote, kind of fellows who was able to— The point is, your question was, was there a linkage between? There were certain things. If you could play football, then everybody played football regardless of what side of town you came, or basketball. If they wanted to win, they had to let everybody, whoever play, or the dramatics club. Alex and I, sometimes we would go to a ball or something over at Children's House, and literally we'd be the only two Black people there. When I say that, we were all African Americans, but all the others were light-skinned. | 41:00 |
| Johnny Ford | We'd go because we excelled. Either I was the king of the class or Alex was, academically, all through elementary school. When you excel, that means you're a member of the dramatic— You could be a member of the dramatics club, honor society, and whatever. All my life, I guess I've been shattering barriers and rules, and I just, doesn't make any difference. I don't go by anybody's rules. When I was elected, there, the city, we shattered the rules, I mean, by Blacks and Whites. | 41:53 |
| Johnny Ford | They supported Tolan, who was the bourgeoisie background, no reflection. Frank Tolan. He was their candidate. He was the elite people's candidate, no reflection. Then of course William Peterson also ran, Pete Peterson, who was— Those were the two other. There were four of us who ran in. George Parish, he got in a race too. There were three other Blacks and myself, and then Kiva, who was the White. It ended up with a runoff between Kiva and myself, and then we were able to win. | 42:29 |
| Johnny Ford | Then scouting, just like they told me, that anybody could be a Boy Scout. I didn't know it was supposed to be a private deal, so I became a Boy Scout. These institutions, organizations helped link. Scouting, school, sports, church, summer school. There were these things which linked everybody together. | 43:09 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did Tuskegee Institute run a summer school? | 43:38 |
| Johnny Ford | At Children's House. Well, the University. Chandler's Children's House is closed now. It's the Chandler's Business School, it's that building right across from the business school, is right across from [indistinct 00:43:56] James Center. That was an elementary school called Chandler's Children's House. Chandler's Children's House. It was a school set aside primarily for the children of the faculty and staff of the university, for the elite people. Chandler's Children's House, and of course St. Joseph's Catholic School, the other was. These were kind of the two elite schools. We went to summer school on campus, university, which was— It's been great growing up in the South. Oh, did you have any— You go ahead with your questions. I'm sorry. You got me started here. | 43:41 |
| Paul Ortiz | No, it's been very interesting. Now, your father, you said, told you as a young boy, he had very negative feelings towards White people. Did you see this among other adults in the White community? | 44:38 |
| Johnny Ford | Yeah, he was, quite frankly, he was really all right. He just, White— They grew up sharecropper. My dad grew up in the Midway area where he sharecropped, and White folks, he'd been the result of White brutality and all of that all his life, but he really had some good White friends as well. He just kind of resented Whites. Yeah, and he'd just tell, "You can't trust them." Yeah. He used to tell me about how bad White folks were, but then on the other hand, he had to deal with them, had to borrow money from them and buy groceries from them. | 44:57 |
| Johnny Ford | Yet, he had some good, really good White people friends. He was just kind of like that. Then there were other people, it was a total segregated community, and so there were others who felt that way, but they weren't really serious about it. The Blacks, really, on campus, the elite bourgeoisie, some of them probably felt that they were better than the Whites, because the Whites were White trash as far as they were concerned, quote-unquote, because they were Whites who some of the— There were Blacks who some of the Whites actually catered to. | 45:43 |
| Johnny Ford | —grocery store downtown. I forget his name. But anyway, this guy, you could see him carrying the bags out, [indistinct 00:00:10] put in the cars of the professors who came downtown and bagged meat. He specialized in meat. But they kind of looked up to— Booker T. Washington was a highly respected man, that bourgeoisie. And there were many Whites who catered to the doctors and the professors on campus and looked up to them, quite frankly. There were certain things on campus that would be held, like the annual concert. You'd have more Whites there than Blacks, who would come and come from miles around to hear the singing. | 0:01 |
| Paul Ortiz | Would your family attend those events? | 0:54 |
| Johnny Ford | No, my daddy and my family, they're very humble people, uneducated people who very seldom went to anything like that. Because everybody used to go to commencement, and they called it 'mencement. Commencement was a holiday in the town. Well, matter of fact, they closed school, elementary school and everybody would go to campus. Because Dr. Patterson and then Foster welcomed the community. Everybody bring their syrup buckets with food and blankets and quilts. And graduation was just a big festive occasion. | 0:56 |
| Johnny Ford | But the highly cultured things, my family, getting my daddy to come to my graduation and mother was a great event, and class night things. But they supported me though in both scouting and baseball and everything. They did, they just were not highly cultured people. Good people. Solid, humble people. | 1:44 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were you able, were your parents [indistinct 00:02:16] then able to maintain contact with the family in Bullock County? | 2:13 |
| Johnny Ford | Yeah. Yes, they did. Of course. I was born, eight of us in family. My mother's name was Bertha Snipes. My father's name was Willie Patterson. And they were not married at the time that I was born. But my mother's name was Bertha Snipes Patterson, and my father's name was Willie Patterson. | 2:20 |
| Johnny Ford | And then my uncle, who adopted me, his name was Charlie Ford. And my aunt's name was Tennessee Ford. But they adopted me and said, "This is my boy." And so, he changed my name to Ford, so that's how I became Ford. But we always maintained our family very close, so my roots are Bullock County, Macon County. We visit back and forth and I'd go down and still spend the summers and back and forth, and my sisters and brothers come back and forth. Come on. Oh, I'm sorry. | 2:51 |
| Paul Ortiz | So you were able to maintain quite a good contact with family in Bullock? | 3:34 |
| Johnny Ford | Oh yeah. Right. Yeah, I loved, that's what my roots, going back. But my daddy kept me, boy. First, when he adopted me, he said he just going keep me for, I think he said to my mama, he said, "I like that little nappy headed, snotty nose boy. The one that's so bad." Said, "I want that boy." Called my mother, said, "Get him ready, I'm coming to get him." | 3:37 |
| Johnny Ford | I never will forget that night. I was about three or four. I could hear the Greyhound bus or the Trailway bus stop up at Mount Andrews. Hear the brakes on the bus. Hear the door open, slam, then hear the bus take off, come on by and pass. And then I could hear walking on the highway, clip clap clip. There was the heels of my aunt and my uncle coming to get me. I was excited. All had my little rags packed. And they came and got me. | 4:04 |
| Johnny Ford | And they brought me. I owe so much to them because I guess I was the first in my family who had a chance to go to college. And that would not have happened had they had not adopted me and brought me to Tuskegee and gave me the exposure and the experience to go on and go to school and college. But would've not probably been able to make it. | 4:39 |
| Johnny Ford | But they loved me very dearly. And that's one of the reasons why I was wanting to come back, so I could spend that time with them while they were alive. And they got a chance to see me become mayor of a city, and my mama was so happy to see her boy become mayor of the town. And they were very supportive when I ran for mayor. My dad used to run into a grocery store. I told him, I said, "Dad, I'm going to quit my job with the Justice Department." And I said, "I need you to give me a hundred dollars a week and let me," I was recently married at that time, "and we need to be able to eat out of the store." He said, "You got it." So with that, I launched my campaign. | 5:09 |
| Paul Ortiz | What was the name of the store your father was running? | 6:04 |
| Johnny Ford | Ford's Superette. Was right down next to Bird's Funeral Home. Ford's Superette. I helped get my dad in the business, helped him get the business loan from SBA and set him up in business, and he was real proud of that. | 6:09 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did you have childhood heroes? | 6:27 |
| Johnny Ford | Yeah. As I said, I'd read about Adam Clayton Powell and think he's about the most visible politician at that time, and I'll say that one. But I guess my Reverend S.T. Martin. Of course, my dad and I were great pals to Charlie Ford. My uncle, because he did so much for me. And I got sick one time, got hurt, had internal bleeding, and I had to have transfusions. He gave me blood and got his friends to give me blood. So my dad was really great. I admired him very much and loved him very much. | 6:30 |
| Johnny Ford | But in addition to them, my minister, Reverend S.T. Martin, who was pastor of the church. And he was probably my biggest hero and he would inspire me to go on to, encouraged me to go on to college and become a fraternity brother. But then others right around here, Dr. King was in Montgomery and Dr. C.G. Gomillion was here. And Reverend S.T. Martin and other leaders, K.L. Beaufort, they were. So we had a bunch of heroes right along here. | 7:16 |
| Johnny Ford | But Booker T. Washington has always been, his philosophy is what I'm best characterized as being a disciple of his philosophy, of working within the system. I'm a strong believer of working the system from within. Although I've done it both ways, from without and from within. I'm chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Alabama because I've been in many marches and protests, going back to the college days when we, student non-violent movement in Knoxville, we marched. | 7:54 |
| Johnny Ford | But Booker T. Washington, I think, is probably greatest hero. Example of how two good friends get together. Marshall Cabiness, who's Booker T. Washington's great grandson, I guess, whatever. But Marshall and I were talking about how this side of town, that side of town gets together. Marshall was getting his Star Scout badge and I was getting mine, and we came together at the same time. Marshall Cabiness, Luther Foster, who's the president of Tuskegee University, his son was getting his badge. But we all brought the whole town together. Here I was, in the low-income area, but I was right with those guys. And we became good friends, Marshall Cabiness and I. Still best of friends today. But scouting brought us together. So we just kind of forgot about the barriers, the social barriers. | 8:36 |
| Paul Ortiz | One more question now. You mentioned earlier the Montgomery bus boycott. | 9:43 |
| Johnny Ford | Right. | 9:48 |
| Paul Ortiz | And was there a relationship between the emerging Civil Rights organization struggles in Montgomery? | 9:49 |
| Johnny Ford | In Tuskegee. Yeah. Yeah, it was. As a matter of fact, when they organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was organized a little bit later, but you had the religious leaders from here and Montgomery. In Tuskegee, we had Reverend K.L. Beaufort, Reverend S.T. Martin. In Montgomery, you had, and of course C.G. Gomillion. He was not a minister, but the relationship was still there. You had the Montgomery Improvement Association in Montgomery. In Tuskegee, you had the Tuskegee Civic Association. | 10:00 |
| Johnny Ford | And one would support the other. As I said, their leaders would come up here and speak for our mass meetings. And sometimes, I'm sure our people would go down there. But Reverend S.T. Martin was from Montgomery, so he had a very close working— He was a leader. And Dr. King would come here. | 10:37 |
| Johnny Ford | And then, for example, when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was organized, the leaders from here were involved in that original organization. When the Alabama Democratic Conference was organized, which is the largest Black political organization, I think it was organized 1960 or '64. In one of those years. | 10:58 |
| Johnny Ford | But C.G. Gomillion was involved in that, along with the leaders in Montgomery. So there was a relationship between the two, Montgomery and Tuskegee. And eventually Birmingham. Shuttlesworth in Birmingham, and Martin and Ralph in Montgomery. And Gomillion, Beaufort, Martin, W.P. Mitchell, all those folks here. Fred Gray. See, because Fred is from Montgomery, came here and then they got him to be the lawyer. So that was a direct tie between. But in Montgomery, Rufus Lewis, and E.D. Nixon, all those folks. So it was a real tie-in. | 11:25 |
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