Tape 2, 2000 April / Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 40th anniversary conference videocassette tapes, 2000 / Duke Digital Repository

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Underground world of anti-segregation forces in the South.

0:00

Programming and human relations involved creating

0:06

illegal meetings of black and white students

0:08

to engage in intellectual programs

0:12

deconstructing race and racial myths

0:16

and to share from the heart, forging bonds

0:19

that transcended racial barriers.

0:23

Our project was designed specifically

0:26

to create small, integrated race relations workshops

0:29

for students across the Southeast.

0:34

I was called a campus traveler.

0:36

I flew around in little one prop puddle jumpers

0:39

to black and white campuses, often in remote locations.

0:42

On white campuses, the student Christian association

0:49

our a wise staff person would secretly organize

0:51

a small meeting of students.

0:54

On black campuses, I was often asked to speak publicly

0:57

to the student body and publicly welcomed

1:01

as a white visitor, a very embarrassing deference.

1:04

In both instances, I recruited students

1:09

to our integrated workshops.

1:11

SNCC's work overlapped with these workshops

1:14

as many local campus leaders who attended

1:17

were also local movement leaders.

1:21

Human relations projects continued parallel to the movement

1:24

or as an integral part of it,

1:28

depending on your perspective, right on through.

1:29

This work was undermining and defeating segregation

1:33

on the personal level,

1:37

as bringing down the legal barriers

1:38

would defeat it politically.

1:41

I remember Ella beginning our meetings

1:43

when I got back from a trip

1:45

by saying, "Let's see now, what are we doing here?"

1:47

She really meant it.

1:51

In all the areas in which I saw Ella operate,

1:54

she always said just what she meant.

1:57

It was as though she'd thought of everything.

2:00

And she'd show her thoughts polished and smooth

2:03

from all her years of mulling them over.

2:06

She never pulled punches and after accurately nailing

2:09

someone's foibles, she'd chuckle.

2:13

Although capable of righteous indignation,

2:16

Ella usually found humanity humorous

2:21

and her approach to people was always fresh.

2:24

She was interested in everyone

2:28

and she always asked where they were from

2:30

and about their family.

2:33

She was deeply and consciously rooted in her family.

2:36

Ella was politically above all, pragmatic.

2:40

She seemed to know that however much we think and talk,

2:43

and however important that is,

2:46

it is action that makes social change happen.

2:48

She was always directed toward action, thoughtful action.

2:51

Her notion of the need to raise up new leaders

2:55

to rotate leaders, for example, was pragmatic.

2:58

Based on years of experience of seeing folks join

3:01

the leaders club when they became leaders,

3:05

leaving their constituents behind.

3:08

Her broad vision saved SNCC from numerous potential splits.

3:10

Her, both and replacing the tendency toward either or.

3:15

Personally, Ella was perhaps the most

3:20

secure, rooted and self-knowledgeable woman I've known.

3:22

She was an elegant woman, elegant and homey and warm.

3:26

Her diction was elegant and her mind.

3:31

I never saw her flustered or without

3:34

complete aplomb and self-possession.

3:36

I think of Ella now when I comb my hair

3:40

high above my face as she did hers,

3:43

a flattering style for an older woman.

3:48

This is when it gets hard to talk loud.

3:52

I think of her when I hold my chin high.

4:00

She's in me this way, a role model

4:03

for the age I have achieved.

4:05

Until I reached this age, I didn't know

4:08

how deeply I had incorporated her into my self.

4:11

When things were rough for me later,

4:16

after the movement it was Ella to whom I turned

4:18

with late night phone calls.

4:23

And she was always right there for me.

4:25

I really loved her.

4:28

It was a great privilege to have worked with her so closely.

4:30

Ella's presence defined SNCC in many ways.

4:34

One was the value assigned to women in SNCC.

4:37

She was a woman and invaluable in many ways.

4:39

So that sense of the value of women

4:43

translated into latitude for all of us.

4:45

Another was the value given to hard work at all levels.

4:49

Ella was a behind the scenes, supportive person

4:53

and she was invaluable, so even though I was white

4:55

and chose to work in supportive capacities,

4:59

I considered race appropriate,

5:01

I was valued for my hard work.

5:03

And third, Ella's views on leadership

5:06

and the need for mass organizing empowered us all.

5:08

As well as those we organized

5:12

by shining a light on ordinary people

5:14

both in communities and in the ranks of the organization.

5:16

This enabled us to give our best.

5:21

Martha Norman asked me, in asking me to speak here,

5:24

acknowledged all this about Ella's role

5:30

and suggested I talk about what I was able to do

5:31

in SNCC as exemplary of these points.

5:34

So I'll do that briefly in closing.

5:38

I worked in SNCC in many areas at many levels,

5:40

always doing both the head work,

5:44

and the hands on work in cooperation with others.

5:46

I was able to see what was needed and initiate and move on,

5:50

training others to take over what I started.

5:54

That was what I could do, that was what I had to offer.

5:57

And by doing that, doing what I could do best,

6:01

both I and the organization profited.

6:03

SNCC was smart that way.

6:06

I came to SNCC as an activist at the University of Texas,

6:08

a participant in sit-ins, picketing,

6:12

theater stand-ins there in the spring of 1960.

6:14

I worked as a campus affiliate over that year,

6:17

before moving to Atlanta in 1961 to work for Ella.

6:20

While in Atlanta, I went on the Albany Freedom ride

6:24

and took minutes at SNCC staff meetings

6:27

as well as speaking about SNCC's work nationally.

6:30

I was a northern contact and fundraiser and publicist

6:32

for part of the next year and then came on staff

6:36

in early '63 in Atlanta, as the first Northern coordinator,

6:38

working for Jim Foreman who led the way.

6:42

I set up that program, concentrating on campuses

6:45

and on establishing networks of information and support.

6:48

In the fall of '63, I went to Mississippi

6:52

to help establish a literacy project

6:54

and became part of the Freedom votes

6:56

and the building of the MFDP.

6:58

I was part of the organizing for Freedom Summer,

7:00

specifically charged with researching, training,

7:03

and coordinating statewide of the challenge

7:05

of the seating of the Mississippi Lily Whites

7:08

at the '64 Democratic National Convention.

7:10

After the summer, I was part of the paper,

7:13

of the writing of a paper in SNCC.

7:16

I was part of SNCC's discussions about structure

7:19

and future direction

7:23

and initiated a photo project designed to train

7:27

young, black Mississippians to be photographers.

7:29

That should be writing a paper in SNCC about women.

7:33

In the winter of '64, '65, I began to shift back

7:37

toward white organizing, moving to Chicago

7:41

in the Spring, still as SNCC staff,

7:43

now on loan to SDS to organize white

7:45

Appalachian welfare mothers.

7:49

A memorandum I wrote, largely out of that experience

7:51

in Chicago, and mailed with Mary King

7:54

to young women on the left formed the basis

7:57

for much of the early organizing

7:59

of the women's movement in the broader white world.

8:01

So in this way, the women's movement

8:05

traces back to Ella Baker.

8:07

She is behind it, as she was always behind the scenes.

8:09

Ella provided us with that example.

8:13

She was always back there, willing to give

8:16

with no expectation of reward or praise.

8:19

That willingness, in the SNCC as I knew it,

8:24

was the primary quality we shared, our very core.

8:27

I have always loved us for that.

8:31

(applause)

8:34

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Okay, good morning.

8:57

Audience

Good morning.

8:58

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Hello, thank you.

8:59

Okay, let me ask you something,

9:00

how many people had ever heard,

9:02

now this doesn't go for the scholars and the adults

9:03

and all that stuff, how many young people here

9:05

had every heard of SNCC or Ms. Baker

9:07

before this conference happened?

9:10

Aha, this is a knowledgeable group.

9:12

You're a Falewell, you don't count.

9:14

Woman

He's a scholar!

9:17

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He's a scholar, no besides the scholars.

9:18

Okay, first of all, for those who have not seen,

9:20

this is Ms. Baker, right the way we remember her.

9:24

But there's another Ms. Baker,

9:28

who was a little younger than this,

9:29

which is this Ms. Baker, okay.

9:31

Now this is the way a lot of us remembered her mostly.

9:36

Now what's interesting is that Ms. Baker

9:40

at that point was the age that I am now

9:43

and she really seemed rather old, okay.

9:46

But what's important about Ms. Baker,

9:48

let me start from the beginning.

9:53

First of all, I'm just gonna do a quick intro,

9:55

which is that I came down to work for SNCC in 1963.

9:57

And then when I left SNCC, I worked for a number

10:02

of African-American organizations, a bookstore

10:04

that was started by a lot of old SNCC people

10:08

in Washington, D.C. that became

10:10

the largest black bookstore in the country.

10:12

Worked for the United Church of Christ

10:14

Commission for racial justice.

10:15

All of these by the way, because of the skills

10:17

that I had learned in SNCC.

10:19

Then I went up to Boston and worked on

10:22

the 14 hour series called Eyes on the Prize

10:23

which was an Academy Award nominated, we didn't get it.

10:27

And lots of awards and historic,

10:31

14 hour documentary PBS system series.

10:34

Okay, but when I come into SNCC,

10:37

I should say that SNCC formed me.

10:40

It changed the way I saw myself.

10:44

It changed the way I saw my world.

10:46

It changed my entire worldview and it changed

10:48

the direction of my life.

10:50

And the way that Casey and Connie and Brenda Will

10:52

and Muriel Will, are you gonna talk?

10:56

Woman

I don't know.

10:58

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No you got to talk see,

10:59

this woman was the project director

11:00

in Greenville, Mississippi, one of three

11:02

project directors, women project directors

11:04

in, four, cause Selma, four in SNCC.

11:06

But in any event, hopefully she will talk.

11:10

But when I come in, it changes the whole way

11:12

I see everything, so who I am at that point

11:15

is coming out of Tarrytown, New York

11:18

which is only 25 miles north of the city,

11:20

I should take my watch,

11:23

25 miles north of New York City,

11:25

however, New Yorkers consider us Upstate

11:27

because for New Yorkers, anything north of the Bronx

11:31

is upstate, right?

11:33

But we're only 25 miles north,

11:34

had a wonderful childhood, it was Washington Irving,

11:37

the author Washington Irving's territory.

11:40

So I went to Washington Irving Junior High School,

11:42

I went to Sleepy Hollow High School.

11:45

The football team was the headless horsemen,

11:47

go horsemen, go.

11:51

Okay, but where I grew up, happy childhood that it was,

11:52

there were no black people I saw

11:56

with any economic or political power.

11:58

And that is very important in terms

12:02

of what draws me to SNCC.

12:03

So I'm not coming out of communities like Brenda

12:05

where she sees African-American leadership.

12:08

I'm not seeing that in Tarrytown.

12:10

So I go to Swarthmore college,

12:12

esteemed Quaker College in Pennsylvania, right,

12:15

full scholarship, one of eight students

12:17

one of eight African-American students

12:19

in that freshman class.

12:21

There had been one black senior,

12:23

one female, one black sophomore, female,

12:24

and then eight of us coming in,

12:27

the big push into Swarthmore.

12:28

Four boys and four girls, so that we would not have to date

12:30

outside the community, so while I'm there, though,

12:33

there's and SDS chapter on campus

12:38

and they're doing forays into Cambridge, Maryland

12:40

on the Eastern Shore of Maryland

12:43

and this is the first time I'm away from home,

12:44

I figure who's gonna know.

12:47

I'll get on the bus and see what's up.

12:49

I get there and I get, I find first of all

12:51

that it is a local organization

12:55

run by, among the community people,

12:58

the main leader is a woman named Gloria Richardson

13:01

who was a strong, I mean I always remember

13:04

Gloria, with she always had jeans and a work shirt.

13:06

And could just, it was ramrod straight.

13:10

Just an amazing woman.

13:12

I had never seen anybody like that in my life before.

13:14

Pop Herb, who was the funeral director and her uncle.

13:17

He was really supportive of the movement.

13:20

The local SNCC person in that, though

13:22

was Reggie Robinson and so this is my first

13:25

real connection with SNCC at that point.

13:27

And what I come into when I see SNCC

13:30

is a primarily African-American organization

13:33

with white staff members who have the politics

13:36

that allows them to want to contribute

13:40

to an organization that is black-led basically.

13:42

I see young people who are the age

13:45

of many of you here who at that point in their lives

13:48

decided that they would lead

13:51

what a friend of mine calls a purposeful life.

13:53

They made that decision and it was a decision.

13:57

Now what I come into, though, is not just

14:00

a political organization, I come into a culture.

14:04

And others have talked about this culture.

14:08

It is very much a family.

14:12

And so I didn't realize until reading

14:15

Joanne's book on Ms. Baker,

14:18

called Ella Baker Freedom Bound

14:20

how much that culture was influenced by Ms. Baker.

14:22

Now let me just say, Ms. Baker would not have known me

14:27

from Eve, truly.

14:29

First of all, I was scared to death.

14:31

Everybody I met in SNCC knew more than I did.

14:34

They were coming from local communities

14:38

where there had been some historic continuity of resistance.

14:39

They're coming from Northern communities,

14:43

Stokely's talking about Cottenhagle.

14:45

There were people who had come out of New York organizations

14:48

where they had worked with Bayard Rustin.

14:51

There was a political consciousness North and South

14:53

that I knew nothin' about.

14:56

I did not say a word in SNCC staff meetings

14:58

the entire four years I was there, okay.

15:00

Now, however what was wonderful about SNCC

15:03

was that with Ms. Baker, with Foreman

15:06

you got sense that they somehow knew

15:11

the kind of things that you would

15:14

contribute to.

15:15

So when I come down, supposedly,

15:17

I'm with Reggie and we were coming back

15:19

from, for SNCC people.

15:20

It was marriage of Bill Hanson and Ruthie.

15:22

Now, I didn't know either of these people, okay,

15:26

but I get to Cincinnati where they're being married

15:27

and for some reason her bridesmaid didn't show up

15:31

and I get poured into this skin tight little dress

15:34

and I become her bridesmaid.

15:37

I had never seen her before in my life, okay.

15:38

(audience laughing)

15:39

On the way back, however, we come through Atlanta,

15:41

and Foreman finds out that A I can type 90 words

15:44

a minute and B I knew shorthand.

15:48

I never made it back to Cambridge, I become his

15:49

secretary in the Atlanta office.

15:53

Now, I'm gonna do something, because what's interesting

15:56

is that when the way I came out of SNCC is so different

16:00

from the way I went in.

16:05

Again, I was little mousey lady, never spoke

16:06

I grew and became more than I ever imagined

16:10

I could be because of the culture of SNCC.

16:13

And it was a culture which continues,

16:16

so that all of us, whatever we're doing

16:18

we bring that culture into whatever

16:21

the work environment is and you all know this.

16:23

People say, "oh, isn't that interesting that you--",

16:26

well, it's the SNCC way of doing that.

16:28

And Ms. Baker absolutely influenced that environment.

16:31

Now, when Joanne Grant who did Freedom Bound,

16:34

was starting the book she found in the King archives

16:44

which is where a lot of the SNCC papers are,

16:49

she found some notes that I had done

16:52

of SNCC committee meetings.

16:55

Now they're in shorthand and, so, what she did was

16:56

ask me if I would decipher the shorthand.

16:59

And what's amazing to me is I had not realized

17:03

how involved Ms. Baker could become,

17:06

if she realized that there were some problems occurring.

17:09

Otherwise, absolutely, she would sit on the sidelines,

17:12

she would wait for you to get an answer,

17:14

but if she thought that there was a problem,

17:17

like what happened in 1960 at the founding between

17:19

are we gonna be direct action or are we gonna do

17:24

voter registration she would insert herself.

17:26

So I'm looking at these, I just xeroxed these minute,

17:28

and I'm looking at what is a staff meeting.

17:33

And I see she said something about, first of all,

17:36

there's some problem with a local leader

17:40

and Ms. Baker says, "what machinery was set up last

17:44

"summer to help so-and-so to prepare, knowing,"

17:49

she says, "that some people just don't have

17:52

"leadership ability."

17:54

Ruby Doris Robinson, who was larger than life!

17:56

I mean, when I went into SNCC Ruby Doris

17:59

who had done 30 days jail, no bail

18:02

in a South Carolina prison.

18:04

When South Carolina was not the best place

18:06

to be at that point.

18:09

And so she did 30 days jail, no bail which is one

18:11

of the reasons people say that she died so young

18:13

and she got the cancer that she got.

18:16

But when I first though about coming into SNCC

18:19

Penny Patch as a matter of fact,

18:22

who was at Swathmore then,

18:24

said, "look if you want to get into SNCC

18:26

"you got to go by Ruby Doris," and so I had to prepare

18:28

an application stuff.

18:31

Okay, so Ruby says in response to Ms. Baker's query about

18:33

what kind of machinery was setup to prepare this guy.

18:37

Ruby says, "no attempt to develop him and, in fact,

18:40

"we antagonized him instead.

18:42

"We threw lots of college graduates into this project

18:45

"and made decisions with him," she says.

18:47

And then later on, they're talking about, we're talking

18:50

about some action within this local project and Ms. Baker

18:58

says sometimes, because she's asking what kind

19:01

of preparation have you done to prepare

19:03

for what you're about to do?

19:05

And she says, "sometimes we must,"

19:07

I'm going through the brief forms in shorthand,

19:10

" we must delay action one day in order to plan for it

19:12

"unless we have organization we're simply

19:16

"going to dissipate the anarchy with little result.

19:18

"Comparative to the time and the trouble involved."

19:21

She says, "we also have to consider that working

19:24

"in this particular community is different from working

19:26

"in the rural South."

19:29

Now what's interesting is that, of course, for those

19:31

who know, Ms. Baker is 1940s, she is the field secretary

19:33

for the NAACP.

19:38

A lone woman traveling Mississippi, rural Mississippi,

19:40

Alabama, southwest Georgia, Louisiana at a time

19:44

organizing chapters in the 1940s,

19:49

at a time when you could be killed for having a

19:51

NAACP card on you.

19:54

So a lot of folks would hide it in their shoes

19:56

in the back of their closets.

19:58

This is a woman who in 1957 is the organizer,

20:00

helps the black ministers along with Dr. King,

20:05

to organize SCLC, the Southern Christian

20:08

Leadership Conference, in 1957 and becomes its

20:10

first temporary executive secretary.

20:13

Temporary, why?

20:16

Because A she's a woman and B she's not a minister

20:16

and they don't play that.

20:19

So and then it's in the capacity though that in 1960

20:20

when this sit-ins jumped off she realizes

20:24

that there's all these energy going on.

20:26

That the kind of stuff that she had

20:28

thought would happen maybe in the NAACP,

20:29

maybe in the SCLC, but didn't

20:32

because they were a little too rigid

20:34

and they were adults, maybe it would work

20:35

with these young people SNCC.

20:37

So she calls all these folks together

20:39

here to Shaw University in 1960 April 1st, right?

20:41

So when Connie talks about this organizing meeting

20:45

it was full of energy it was all these people

20:47

coming out as local leaders.

20:49

Julian Bond, says he gets into a VW and

20:51

with four other people in this little VW

20:54

bug, travels up from Atlanta from the Atlanta student

20:56

movement.

20:58

How many folks were at-- 'cause I know

20:59

Marshall is here too and Matthew.

21:03

How many folks were at that original 1960 staff meeting?

21:04

Okay, Debbie, Connie-- oh!

21:08

Tell me your name.

21:10

Woman

Hank. That's Hank Thomas.

21:11

-

Oh my god!

21:12

Yes, hello (laughs).

21:13

Okay, and back there.

21:16

Woman

Virginia Thorn.

21:18

-

Virginia Thorn.

21:19

Okay, so these folks were at that meeting.

21:21

I'm missing somebody?

21:23

Oh, no okay.

21:24

And so there's all this energy going on,

21:26

so what she says to these young people is,

21:28

"don't associate with these adults."

21:30

Not "don't associate", "don't link yourself,

21:33

"do not become a wing of these adult organizations."

21:35

'Cause she sees this hope this new burgeoning hope.

21:37

Okay, this is the woman who is helping to guide us

21:40

as we're going through.

21:43

So when she's talking about this she knows

21:45

where of she speaks and what was amazing to me,

21:48

now being the age that she was then,

21:50

is that she didn't talk more often.

21:52

'Cause I get tired, you know you get impatient

21:54

when you get this age.

21:56

It's just like listen to me I know what

21:57

I am talking about.

21:58

She never did that.

21:58

She says, another point in the same meeting,

22:01

she said, "we must break through the pseudo-sophistication

22:04

"of college students."

22:07

Hello!

22:09

(audience laughing)

22:10

Yes, indeedy.

22:11

"And we can't do it with overalls", she says.

22:12

Okay, now.

22:16

Okay, I won't go through that.

22:22

At one point, she's also talking about

22:24

the mailings because it's the manushya,

22:26

that's what amazed me going through these minutes.

22:28

That there was a level at which Ms. Baker,

22:30

and this comes out in the book too,

22:33

she is paying attention to the teeniest,

22:34

tiniest little details.

22:36

So one point somebody says something about we're

22:38

having a problem in the print shop in Atlanta.

22:40

We're not getting covering full time.

22:42

She says, "well, is there any records of the mailings

22:44

"that you've done?" And then she says, "no",

22:47

"well, why not?"

22:49

And then she says, "okay we need a shipping clerk."

22:50

And somebody else says, "well, there's certain people

22:52

" who want to do the menial work, but we don't also,

22:54

"we're not clear about who could do what and what--."

22:56

Ms. Baker says, "well, perhaps a high school student could

22:58

"be the shipping clerk.

23:01

"A part time job, but there must be an orderly

23:02

"fashion for planning mailing orders."

23:04

It is always about how do you organize

23:07

administratively and so she's operating

23:11

at all these different levels.

23:13

At one point she says, "pamphlets can be written at home.

23:14

"We don't plan enough," she says "before acting, we must

23:18

"plan the pamphlets according to emphasis and the line

23:21

"that we're taking."

23:24

And then she says, "busy-ness doesn't necessarily

23:26

mean productivity."

23:29

(audience chatters)

Now, yes, there's another part where she's,

23:30

and then I'm gonna move on, she saying,

23:35

this another meeting.

23:37

Oh, this is dark, how am I gonna read this?

23:40

Oh because the office was not being opened as quickly

23:42

as it should be in the national office at that point

23:46

and she said in relationship

23:49

to a rally that was being held, she said,

23:51

"someone needs to answer

23:53

"general information questions.

23:54

"We can no longer function

23:56

on a free wheeling basis", she says.

23:58

And then another point, she says, "give detailed thought

24:00

to even the smallest things."

24:05

Now, let me just say, I didn't know that I was learning

24:08

from her.

24:11

I did not know that I was watching her.

24:12

I don't remember these meetings even though

24:14

I took the notes from them,

24:16

but what happened was that it was almost like

24:19

osmosis that there was the kind of leadership

24:21

training that she always emphasized

24:23

throughout her entire career.

24:25

And what it meant was that I'm sitting at one point--.

24:28

I'm sitting at an Eyes on the Prize

24:35

production meeting, right?

24:36

And I'm saying stuff that I didn't even know I knew

24:38

about how we operated.

24:41

So one point I said well you know, she would never

24:43

direct us, she would always ask us questions

24:47

and she would say, "okay, if you do this action now

24:49

"what's gonna happen in that community six months from now?

24:52

"What's gonna happen a year from now?"

24:55

Because it was always about the sense that we were just

24:57

the organizers we were not the leaders.

24:59

The reason we were in those communities is to build

25:02

local leadership that would survive even our deaths

25:04

and that was important.

25:09

So we weren't just coming in, doing rallies, and moving

25:10

back out again.

25:12

We were building organizers and leadership

25:13

and what's interesting is that we were the age

25:16

that some of you are now, so to get somebody,

25:19

17, 18, 19 to think not just about

25:22

next week.

25:29

Yes, but next year, three years from now

25:30

was an amazing feat and part of it was because she always

25:33

reminded us of our responsibility to the local community.

25:37

You know that in a lot of ways they were at a greater risk

25:41

than we were all that can happen to us is that we can

25:44

die, which at a young age you don't think will

25:46

ever happen to you anyway, that what they were

25:48

putting on their lines, on the lives with the lives

25:51

and the lives and the livelihoods of not just themselves,

25:53

but their entire community.

25:56

So she was always talking about that

25:58

and-- I think I'm going to stop now because

26:01

I've gone into long, but the main point is that

26:05

she made us--.

26:09

Woman

You're okay.

26:09

-

Oh, okay, okay.

26:11

Oh if I'm okay do I have one more thing?

26:12

Woman

You have about another three or four--.

26:13

-

Oh, if I have another three minutes I want to say

26:15

one more story and then I'm gonna end.

26:16

Okay.

26:17

(audience laughing)

Audience Member

Take your time!

26:18

-

Take your time, thank you! (laughs)

26:19

Hello sir!

26:21

Okay, so and this has to do with the environment

26:22

that existed within SNCC which made you feel

26:26

that you could do just about most anything

26:29

which is very heady for somebody who's 17, 18

26:32

years-old at the point, at that time.

26:35

Now there was a lot of people in the Atlanta SNCC office

26:36

at that point and so I was form and secretary.

26:41

Okay, so I got this bird's eye view of the organization

26:43

when I first came in.

26:46

So I knew LC--.

26:48

Lawyers Constitutional--.

26:50

What was the LCDC?

26:52

Lawyers Constitutional Defense

26:53

Audience Member

Committee.

26:55

-

Defense committee, thank you.

26:56

Which was this group of progressive lawyers out of New York

26:57

Rabinowitz & Whodean, Mike Standard.

27:00

So I would have these conversations with them

27:02

and then I would know the folks in the field.

27:04

So MacArthur is over here, everybody's over there,

27:06

all these people are over here.

27:11

Okay, so I got the sense of what was going on in the support

27:12

groups I got a sense of the southern community organizers,

27:18

but I wanted to go to the field 'cause, romantically,

27:22

that's where the action is, right?

27:25

So I kept saying, "Foreman, I want to go to the field,

27:27

" I want to go to the field!"

27:28

And he said, of course you know he needed somebody who

27:29

was going to type the 90 words a minute.

27:31

Okay, so he never let me do this,

27:33

well at one point he comes back from a fund raising trip

27:35

and I and other people in the office, Mary King,

27:40

Nancy Sterling, I remember.

27:48

Anyway, he comes in from this trip, probably rather tired,

27:49

and we are sitting in front of his office with plackers

27:52

saying, "no more minutes, we shall not be moved!"

27:56

(audience laughing)

27:59

And we're sitting down in front of his office, you know.

28:00

Now what was interesting about that is that even

28:02

within, you know I mean, certainly there was sexism

28:05

within the organization it was you know-- hello it was

28:08

1962, '63.

28:10

I mean 1999, 2000, has anything changed?

28:12

But still at that point within SNCC

28:15

because we were the cutting edge

28:17

you can, as we say, call the question.

28:19

So when we said we're not gonna do minutes anymore,

28:21

we didn't do the minutes anymore.

28:24

The men started taking the minutes.

28:25

There were a lot of places like that where you could

28:27

make folks realize the dissonance between what we said

28:30

and what was supposed to really happen and they would do

28:34

the right thing and I never, I have got to say that

28:37

I was as nurtured by the men, as much by the men

28:40

as I was by the women.

28:43

And the unfortunate part of that was that when I get out

28:45

into the world I expect that same kind of nurturing

28:48

and don't always find it, but that gave me the sense

28:51

that it could happen.

28:54

So thank you very much, okay.

28:55

(audience clapping)

28:56

-

Oh, wow Judy is going to be a tough act to follow.

29:06

(audience and speaker laughing)

29:09

But she has all the history behind her with her

29:15

notes and stuff and I have to rely on my memory.

29:18

And, you know, once you reach a certain age (laughs)

29:23

Woman

Come on!

29:25

-

Your memory has a tendency to fail you.

29:28

As a matter of fact, I'm at that age where sometimes

29:31

in the middle of saying something I say "ah."

29:33

(audience and Brenda laugh)

29:36

Got you.

29:38

Anyway, my name is Brenda Travis and I was going to try

29:40

and remember-- "ah".

29:44

(audience and Brenda laugh)

29:48

Yeah, no, I was going to try and remember

29:50

the character in Freedom Songs, the 16 year-old girl,

29:55

what was her name?

30:00

Woman

I can't remember her name.

30:02

-

See.

30:04

Woman

They may not know Freedom Song either.

30:05

-

Oh, yeah the movie, Freedom Songs,

30:07

did anybody watch that?

30:08

Woman

They may not know it.

30:11

-

Okay, so this won't go off too successfully (laughs).

30:12

(audience laughs)

30:16

Huh? Oh, okay.

30:19

Anyway, first I would like to really thank

30:21

and show my appreciation to Ella Baker for being the founder

30:26

of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

30:30

from whence I got my start.

30:33

I was born in Mississippi, in Mccomb, Mississippi

30:35

and I became involved in the Civil Rights Movement

30:39

at the age of 16.

30:44

I was arrested for testing the interstate commerce law

30:48

in Mississippi and I spent a month in jail

30:54

and then later, I spent six and a half months

30:59

in reformatory school as a result of my civil rights

31:04

activities and there was guy from Talladega College

31:07

who came along and he liberated me from the reformatory

31:10

school, but that union didn't work out

31:16

and that was when I met, Ella Baker.

31:18

She became my legal guardian and having never ventured

31:23

from my hometown of Mccomb I didn't know how well,

31:28

during that time, I belong to the brown paper

31:36

bag era.

31:39

You know, where you didn't have a enough clothes

31:40

to own a luggage, so you put your clothes in a brown

31:41

paper bag.

31:44

But after Ella became my legal guardian she bought me a few

31:47

things and she decided that I should go to Palmer Memorial

31:51

Institute here in North Carolina.

31:56

Sedalia, North Carolina just out of Greensboro,

31:59

I don't know if you're familiar with that,

32:02

but I attended there for one semester

32:04

and I called Ella and told her, you know,

32:09

I said this is so difficult for me I said

32:13

because it's almost like being incarcerated again.

32:15

And, so, it was at the time we decided--

32:21

I had other friends that I had met

32:26

and she said, "well, what do you want to do?"

32:27

I said, well, I don't know, I have no idea

32:31

what I want to do, I have no idea what I'm going to do,

32:33

but I know that I can't stay here (laughs).

32:36

So there were friends that decided or agreed

32:40

to have me live with them in Illinois,

32:45

but I did keep in contact with her over the years

32:49

and then finally we lost contact.

32:56

And I was so hurt when I didn't realize she was dead until

32:57

a year or two after her death, but--.

33:01

It's just difficult to express what I felt

33:11

and how I felt because I felt that she actually

33:17

taught me things that a young woman should know

33:23

and things that I had not been taught

33:28

even with my own parents.

33:29

And it was kind of cute because, as I said after,

33:34

her purchasing me clothes and a suitcase,

33:37

she told me, she said, "well, the way you get

33:42

"a lot of things into suitcase is you fold

33:44

"them like this and then you take you roll it

33:46

"real tight" (laughs).

33:50

You take and you roll it real tight

33:54

and that way you can get a lot of things

33:56

into the suitcase, but after conferring with her

33:58

after leaving Palmer, you know,

34:03

she always had words of wisdom.

34:06

She would always encourage me to stay strong

34:11

and she told me the road to freedom was a long,

34:14

tough, tedious, and hard road and she always told me

34:17

to stay focused.

34:22

And those are the things that I never forgot

34:25

and, you know, I just wanted to say that I appreciate her

34:28

and I appreciate this university and this state, I guess,

34:31

for recognizing such a great lady and that's-- okay.

34:35

Woman

Thank you.

34:39

(audience clapping)

34:40

-

We're at the Q and A section,

34:49

if anybody wants to--.

34:51

Woman

You got to say something!

34:52

-

I've gotta say something?

34:53

Woman

Yes! You do your piece 'cause

34:54

you were gonna say something before.

34:55

Yes!

34:56

(audience chatter)

34:56

Well this is really extemporaneous.

34:57

Okay, well I met Ms. Baker in one of those

35:00

interminable meetings.

35:03

I remember meeting her in Waveland and somewhere along

35:05

the line saying to my friend Cynthia Washington,

35:09

"I'm gonna go out and get some crawfish and beer,

35:12

"I'll be back."

35:14

And six hours later, I came back and they were still

35:15

talking (laughs).

35:17

(audience laughing)

And Ms. Baker and William Porter, I have this picture

35:20

that's why I'm remembering this and several other people,

35:25

and I sort of walked away and we had our own

35:27

huddle outside in that first Waveland meeting

35:30

so we can develop a position.

35:34

Because we always talked about the profound things.

35:36

I mean really saw ourselves as moving the earth.

35:39

You know, and that we were the catalytic agents for that

35:41

and if it cost our lives we, and I don't say this lightly,

35:45

we were prepared to put it out there.

35:48

You know and that regard, people made decisions about how

35:50

they were going to go and some of us went

35:54

unexpectedly.

35:56

We paid a very high price, a very high price,

35:57

for our work.

36:01

I can't say that I met her on the road when I was doing PD

36:05

work, Project Director work.

36:09

I was pretty tough and I ran a very tight ship,

36:11

had to, didn't lose any people.

36:16

That's how you counted your successes

36:19

and we were able to deal with,

36:21

I mean, because Greenville was the liberal

36:23

area of Mississippi although I ran two counties

36:27

that were not too liberal, so that when we had to do

36:30

the mock election campaign, etcetera, to show that if

36:35

Blacks could vote they would vote.

36:37

Greenville had to carry the weight for other parts

36:40

of the state where even participating in the mock election

36:42

would get you killed.

36:45

Even when we were there in 1960, I can tell you that

36:47

in the fall was the NAACP recruitment drive

36:52

for their membership and that was a very dangerous time,

36:56

it also happen to be at the same time hunting season.

36:58

And so on the back of all the pickup trucks you saw

37:01

the rifles and, of course, there were lots of accidents

37:04

during that period.

37:08

So you can imagine what Ms. Baker's life must have been

37:09

like in 1940 traveling the back roads of the South

37:13

as a field secretary had they known that in this woman

37:19

dressed in a suit with her hat on.

37:23

The epitome of lady hood carried

37:26

the baggage of the movement.

37:29

I mean it was really quite, what is it?

37:30

Ingenuous.

37:35

I don't know if any of you have seen the movie

37:36

The Battle of Algiers, but that's a movie you should

37:40

try to see in your lifetime and one of the scenes

37:43

I'll never forget in that movie is the usage

37:45

of women and children actually to carry the message

37:47

of the movement.

37:50

When the French were looking for men and as you know

37:52

the French battled for Algiers vociferously,

37:55

I mean, they lost, they took no prisoners.

37:58

And I might say the South took no prisoners as well.

38:00

I had the experience, and maybe at some point during the

38:04

conference I will tell you where I ran the statewide COFO

38:06

office and as part of my work.

38:08

I had the responsibility of doing a statewide call

38:11

twice a day in the state of Mississippi we used

38:17

what was called the wide area telephone system

38:19

which allowed us to rather cheaply call our various

38:22

projects and sometimes we had as many as

38:25

15, 16, excuse me, as few as 15 or 16,

38:27

sometimes we had as many as 50,

38:31

depending on the proliferation of projects

38:33

from a center.

38:35

We used, annexed on part of Core, Southern Core, which was

38:37

a little different and a little bit more radical

38:43

than Northern Core function with us and we actually,

38:44

the Core people fed us.

38:48

When we were in the COFO office we had no money.

38:50

None.

38:54

We ate when somebody came by to feed us.

38:56

Somebody came by, the guy from the Southern Core office

38:59

promise to come by at least once a week.

39:03

So we can eat once a week, we worked 18 hours a day

39:05

and at some point I closed the office

39:11

because I said we can't run this, just can't run it.

39:12

We had the FBI, we had the State Sovereignty Commission,

39:17

a very difficult time.

39:25

This is a real sign that you're getting old because I use

39:29

to be able to tell this story without tears.

39:32

(audience and speaker laughing)

39:33

Ms. Baker, rejoined my life when I got married

39:37

and had my first child, in fact, she's the godmother

39:41

of my daughter Bio and I have to tell you we had

39:43

this African naming ceremony and Babo Latunji came

39:46

and beat the drums and called on the ancestors and Ms. Baker

39:52

was there and you know she still had the suit

39:56

and hat (laughing).

39:58

(audience laughing)

39:59

She was real cute.

39:59

I don't know what's going on, but it's okay (laughing).

40:01

(audience laughing)

40:03

And from that point on, we remained very close friends,

40:06

and in fact, we became confidants

40:10

and I spent most of her last years

40:11

we spent together sitting on the couch

40:13

sharing a beer, eating boiled egg

40:16

and talking about the movement

40:18

and she was a wonderful, wonderful, woman.

40:20

So with having said all that extemporaneously

40:22

I'll go into questions or comments anybody might like to.

40:25

Yes, go right ahead.

40:30

-

I'd just want to say that I think a lot of you all

40:32

haven't seen Freedom Song the movie that was made

40:35

for television and it's gonna be shown here at the

40:38

conference and I really wanna recommend it and

40:40

I want you all to look at that and know that that,

40:44

who you recognize immediately that that 16 year-old

40:47

is Brenda Travis.

40:49

And I wanted to say that I remember back in Atlanta,

40:51

Ella saying to me, do you know they put that

40:56

child in reform school?

41:01

And I'm just really glad because I don't know if

41:03

we've ever met, but I'm just glad that Brenda Travis

41:06

is here because I remember feeling the pain

41:09

for that 16 year-old in reform school

41:13

for sitting-in and I want you to see her in that movie.

41:15

(audience clapping)

41:20

-

Any questions, any comments, any thoughts,

41:27

any ramblings?

41:30

(audience laughing)

41:31

Yes.

(audience member drowned out by distance)

41:32

Okay.

41:33

(audience laughing)

-

Which one of you can speak for (mumbles)

41:40

40 years later to give an assessment

41:47

of what we have accomplished

41:50

on the state on the African American community today,

41:55

40 years later?

41:59

Don't be shy.

42:02

-

I never was shy, so I'll try to at least start the ball

42:04

going and then maybe somebody else can pick up.

42:08

I have to say in the context of what we tried

42:13

to do SNCC became, SNCC was a very small organization,

42:15

but it had dedicated membership and when you have

42:20

a dedicated membership you can move all kinds of mountains.

42:23

What we didn't realize was that when you crawl across one

42:27

mountain there's another mountain and it's even bigger,

42:30

you know, and nor did we think that all of the forces

42:34

would finally gather to our detriment

42:39

and in many ways, we did-- let's talk about what we did do.

42:42

And then we can talk about the roll back in many ways.

42:45

SNCC brought denims to the fashion world.

42:50

(audience and speaker laughing)

42:53

Before SNCC only farmers wore denim, okay.

42:58

We opened up Mississippi, I mean Mississippi was like a big

43:04

prison as far as I'm concerned.

43:07

It was a state that had even in slavery had said

43:10

if you can't deal with your slaves up there

43:13

where you are send them to Mississippi

43:15

we know how to take care of 'em.

43:17

So we showed that Mississippi was not

43:18

an insurmountable, but I will tell you from those calls

43:23

around.

43:27

My calls to the SNCC offices daily became

43:28

from that COFO office came a death count.

43:32

That was what I was getting.

43:35

I was getting the names of young, particularly,

43:37

young black men who had disappeared,

43:41

who had been found.

43:43

You may remember that when Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman

43:45

were located finally, when the government finally

43:48

decided that $10,000 was not gonna buy information,

43:52

but they had to go at least $100,000 to pull that kind

43:55

of information and they started dredging the rivers,

43:58

the state of Mississippi they found so many headless

44:02

people, they stopped dredging.

44:05

It was even phenomenal for them and the Army Corps.

44:08

Of Engineers does not move easily.

44:13

We were able to raise the issue as Casey mentioned

44:18

the beginnings of the feminist movement actually

44:21

had very clearly their tentacles in SNCC.

44:24

We worked very hard, in fact, I remember sending

44:28

two organizers to work with Caesar Chavez in California.

44:32

At the time, I don't remember if you know there

44:36

still is a strike against grapes and that that was an effort

44:38

at that point Chicanos were laying down before the trucks

44:43

coming out of, off a little town I can't think of it,

44:48

it begins with a "B", but it will come to mind.

44:52

Bakersfield!

44:54

Bah, Bakersfield, right!

44:56

And they were losing their lives

44:58

Chicanos don't count so we don't report that information.

44:59

In any case, we send two field workers to work

45:02

on that behalf, so we began to forge alliances

45:05

which was one of the interesting things about SNCC.

45:08

We were not territorial, we were quite prepared

45:09

to help anybody going down the same road we were going.

45:12

We developed local leadership.

45:16

Unfortunately, what happens in this country is

45:19

when we got to the development of leadership

45:23

we had both the democratic or the republican party

45:25

to look at and neither one of them was look at us.

45:27

So we were, in many ways, back to what do you do

45:30

with a national and an implacable local leadership

45:32

that just won't yield any of the real substantive gains?

45:36

What else do you think we did before we start talking about

45:41

what they did to us?

45:43

Woman

We changed us.

45:45

-

We changed us.

45:46

Yes, we certainly did.

45:47

All of us are quite different from just everybody else

45:48

I know.

45:51

Oh, yes, go ahead.

45:52

Calling on you, yes sister, go ahead.

45:54

(distance drowns out the speaker)

45:57

Yes.

45:58

Woman

Can you stand up, Gwen?

46:00

(distance drowns out the speaker)

46:02

(audience laughing)

46:08

-

Gave rise, I think Mississippi gave rise

46:11

to a very strong and viable and fiercely

46:13

independent Alabama movement.

46:16

Audience Member

Okay.

46:18

Audience Member

Yeah.

46:19

-

I think we did something about culture in our hair

46:20

and who we are as a people and that sense of equality

46:23

what we see through the legal system, but within

46:29

ourselves and when our interactions will be with people.

46:31

-

On the business about African awareness SNCC--

46:38

oh, Forman, sorry, go ahead Forman.

46:42

-

I just want to reinforce something that you said about

46:45

opening up Mississippi a lot, we did a lot of other things

46:47

because I was at a meeting with civil project in 1964

46:51

at Senator Javits' house if anyone has permission

46:54

to quote me on this and Roy Wilkins was there

46:56

and we were discussing the civil project in Mississippi

47:00

and as you recall and he was NAACP with

47:03

one of the correspondence.

47:07

(static drowns out the speaker)

47:08

So Roy and I were discussing Mississippi and he said

47:13

it would be foolish to be in Mississippi.

47:15

Now this is the director of NAACP, national director,

47:17

not just the local chapter.

47:21

So because, I said, well he felt that

47:22

we were wasting our time because Mississippi

47:26

should be changed from the outside

47:28

and my discussion, I said, well while we're working there

47:31

that the change doesn't necessarily come from the outside.

47:33

We had a long discussion and I said, well look after--

47:36

your organization is a part of one of the four organizations

47:40

sponsoring Mississippi's civil project

47:45

and I said well, how is it that you take this position

47:47

and yet you still want to squash it.

47:50

Well, so that's the way it is.

47:51

I just think the change comes from the outside

47:53

you shouldn't be inside of Mississippi and I said

47:57

that I'm not gonna withdraw from the sponsorship

48:00

of civil project and that may help you to reinforce it

48:02

because we did do that and opening up Mississippi

48:05

helped to open up the end of segregation

48:08

in the United States.

48:11

And another little point, but I want to make later

48:13

on is Julie and I had some disagreements

48:15

about the city of--.

48:17

(laughing drowns out speaker)

48:18

-

And that was typical.

48:22

Yes?

48:24

-

Yeah, another point since you're on this point about

48:25

the political parties.

48:28

One of the things that started sharpening the politics,

48:29

but also breaking down the movement in Alabama

48:33

was in the summer of '65 SCLC got a grant,

48:36

I think from the Ford Foundation to do organizing

48:41

in Alabama and they were, the whole training staff

48:44

was trained to go down and register black people

48:50

into the Alabama democratic party.

48:53

Which had a slogan, said "white supremacy for the right"

48:56

and SNCC was trying in five or six counties,

48:59

Wilcox, Green, Lowndes, Sumter, yes, several

49:02

to freedom organizations some of them survived,

49:07

some of them didn't last county, but came a national symbol

49:11

because it's such a wonderful success.

49:13

That summer I was trying to build some consciousness

49:17

within this scope group, summer community organizing

49:22

political education project.

49:26

And I couldn't get any hearing, actually one of the few

49:28

people in the SCLC who would listen and talk about this was

49:31

Martin Luther King himself and I got stranded

49:35

by their people leading a recruiting project up north

49:38

and head to walk my way back down to Washington

49:43

and Walter Fontroy called Martin and Martin told me

49:45

to meet him at the airport gave me $25 and a plan ticket

49:50

to Atlanta said give 'em hell Arkansas go back there and try

49:54

to deal with it and I tried to reopen

49:56

communications with SNCC

49:59

and to kind of shake up some of this scope thing

50:01

to be aware and supportive of SNCC's independent work,

50:05

but I couldn't communicate with SNCC 'cause things

50:09

were breaking down and then I got thrown in jail

50:11

for the rest of the year and when I came back

50:13

in the beginning of '66 almost everything was totally.

50:17

Woman

Chaotic.

50:21

-

It was a different world in '66

50:22

then it was in '65 and it was hard to,

50:23

it was hard to start over again,

50:26

but the Lowndes county which I guess people

50:28

will be speaking about this week was an absolute symbol

50:31

of what it was all about.

50:35

It was like COFO in spades, but concentrated in one area

50:36

where the people really developed and it's still survives,

50:41

I mean, the name of the organization changed, but the same

50:45

people still run the county now that began the organization

50:49

back in '65.

50:53

Woman

Okay, thank you.

50:55

(audience member drowned out by distance)

50:56

I just want--.

50:56

Okay, yes, go ahead.

50:57

-

It's important thing that SNCC did.

50:58

We broke down HUAC--.

51:00

Man

What was that?

51:02

Both

HUAC.

51:03

Woman

House Un-American Activities Committee.

51:04

Woman

And what was HUAC?

51:06

-

House Un-American Activities.

51:08

Woman

But what was it?

51:10

-

It was a McCarthy type committee

51:11

that called everybody communist if you did anything

51:14

that was for the good of the world,

51:16

for the good of the order if you will.

51:19

For, you know--.

51:21

And we just refused, I mean I can see Forman right now

51:22

and we're 18 years-old, Judy, right?

51:27

We're young and this is a carry over

51:30

from McCarthy if you know about

51:33

the 50s and the Cold War and all of that

51:34

and we had consciousness.

51:37

I mean I can never ever finish talking about what

51:38

SNCC did for us and for this nation as young people.

51:40

And so we're grappling and understanding profoundly

51:44

what anti-communism is and how people being

51:48

wet-baited and we had some understanding of those

51:50

who were blacklisted, who went to prison in the 50s

51:54

and so forth.

51:56

We made alliances with those kinds of folks.

51:57

In other words, we probably as young people

51:59

the first of the anti-communist, foreign,

52:02

to go and fight this.

52:08

And so that was tremendous, HUAC.

52:09

The anti-Vietnam movement.

52:12

Woman

Yeah, SNCC had the first demonstration

52:15

against the war in Vietnam.

52:17

A busload of people from Mississippi came to the justice

52:18

department and put it on the map that there was this war

52:21

going on and we didn't like it and didn't want

52:24

any parts of it.

52:26

Woman

Hell no we won't go Freedom Singers

52:28

and I'm gonna sit down.

52:30

I'm going to sit down in a minute, Marvin.

52:31

(audience laughing)

52:33

Woman

It's like a SNCC meeting.

52:35

-

Use your ears for two seconds,

52:39

on Vietnam what got (coughing drowns out speaker).

52:41

Woman

No, sit up, Mike all seven feet of you.

52:46

-

Just a minute.

52:48

It was the FDP office in Mccomb that got upset

52:49

because of a young local guy who had been working.

52:52

Woman

Got drafted.

52:54

-

Had got sent to Vietnam.

52:55

Woman

Right.

52:57

-

Got killed there when he came back and they tried to bury

52:57

him in the official cemetery, the white cemetery

53:00

if you will, the people of color wouldn't

53:04

allow him to buried and at that point people

53:06

got provoked and said to hell with this war in Vietnam.

53:08

Woman

Okay.

53:11

-

And concentrate on what's going on in Mississippi.

53:12

That's all that happened.

53:13

-

I just wanted to say that in terms of some

53:15

of the other things that SNCC did, we began to make

53:17

forays internationally which may have been one of the things

53:19

that put us on the map on Washington, D.C.

53:22

on a very long desk by people with lots of uniforms

53:25

who made some decisions about, "oh no you won't!"

53:29

But SNCC had a trip that,

53:34

remember the name Oginga Odinga?

53:38

Okay, African revolutionary went into various anti-colonial,

53:41

had a visitation on the continent basically hosted

53:48

by anti-colonial personages.

53:52

In 1963, several of us got invited to other oversees

53:55

operations, obviously dealing with student movements.

53:59

I got invited through a mechanism that shall go nameless

54:02

to Southeast Asia where anti-colonial activities were

54:08

occurring and you know that anti-colonialism activities

54:13

were equated with communism and you do realize that that's

54:16

how they, you know, so anyway.

54:19

So I had an interesting debriefing at the state department

54:20

and we shall talk about that at another time.

54:23

And there were people who went to Japan,

54:25

so we began to make those kinds of correspondences,

54:30

just give you this aside though in terms of impact,

54:33

I was driving down the street in a chauffeured car

54:36

in the middle of Manilla, Philippines with this man

54:39

whom I did not like and we were driving,

54:41

his driver was driving I should say,

54:45

and we were in the back and he,

54:46

we had been together several times and I had seen

54:49

his house which was quite some house

54:51

and he rolled the window up between the chauffer

54:53

and us and he turned around, and me rather,

54:58

and he turned and he said something that was

55:00

really very peculiar, but it always stuck with me.

55:02

He says, "we are watching you" he says,

55:05

"I represent a group of people who are trying

55:09

"to get the Taino language"-- no excuse me,

55:13

"the Tagalog language back into our usage."

55:16

In the Philippines, Filipinos are not allows to use

55:19

their own native language, they had to speak Spanish

55:21

and that was one of the steps towards self-awareness,

55:23

self-determination, he says, "we have been watching

55:27

"the student movement and you are a part of the student

55:30

"movement in the United States," he says,

55:32

"I'm really proud to have met you

55:34

"and I want you to know that

55:35

you are part of our combustion."

55:36

And I really felt really good about that because, boy,

55:39

did the state department want to know about that later.

55:42

(audience laughing)

55:44

Okay, anybody else?

55:46

Any other comments, in other--.

55:47

Yes, go ahead.

55:48

Go 'head.

55:50

(distance drowns out the speaker)

55:51

-

Can you talk up?

55:59

We didn't go to the movies, we had no desire

56:01

to go to a movie or to do any

56:04

of those entrainment type things.

56:06

Now our social outlet, thanks to people like Forman,

56:10

(static and distance drowns out the speaker)

56:14

We studied, we read a lot, we entered new concepts

56:16

in our vocabulary called consciousness.

56:20

(static and distance drowns out the speaker)

56:24

It was just a whole different transition in our thinking.

56:28

I can still hear Forman talking about control,

56:33

conflict, and change and how we got enjoyment

56:36

out of reading these kinds of books

56:39

(static and distance drowns out the speaker)

56:41

Instead of these--.

56:42

(static and distance drowns out the speaker)

56:42

So, I don't want to belabor the point, but the concept

56:50

I'm saying in terms of what we saw as entertaining

56:52

we transformed what was the real meaning of education.

56:56

You know H. Rap Brown has a wonderful speech on that

57:00

that you should hear training or education what are we,

57:03

so making it relevant these are choice words that SNCC

57:06

introduced into the vocabulary and I will sit down

57:11

and close that even in the women's movement

57:14

the whole concept of choice came from the black SNCC women

57:18

because it was really about the pill.

57:23

I think the slogan was the pill and a lot of us

57:25

in SNCC were kind of toying with the whole

57:28

concept of abortion so we came up with

57:32

that to tell people to take the pill

57:34

was imperialistic, autocratic, something that

57:37

we had been taught in SNCC to fight against

57:41

and that the word choice, I think I have minutes

57:44

of the notes of that and that people

57:47

ought to have the right to choose.

57:49

That was the whole concept that came from blasted women

57:52

particularly women like Fran Mill and some other

57:55

women that I can name.

57:57

So, if I can put it in nutshell

57:58

and add all of the others what's most important is that SNCC

58:01

is what all of that risk, black and white,

58:05

transform the whole thought process as far as I am concerned

58:10

of this country and of the alliances

58:16

that we have made with others

58:19

we have transformed Dr. King around Vietnam,

58:20

we transformed NAACP in terms

58:23

of what it's agenda ought to be.

58:27

So SNCC to me was truly the revolutionaries

58:28

of this modern period and I mean on the same par

58:32

as 1776 revolution, "give me liberty or give me death."

58:36

(audience applause)

58:42

-

I would just like to build on the educational aspect

58:47

that has just arisen because basically our whole environment

58:50

is educational and it was not just the reading of books.

58:54

I remember many, many sessions in our apartment.

58:59

Sitting on the floor with all the staff that was in Atlanta

59:05

and we parsed and analyzed every political, social,

59:09

and personal event.

59:18

Woman

Of the day.

59:21

-

For as long as we could stay awake

59:22

and these discussions went on into the night

59:27

and one little vignette in this fabulous, famous

59:32

apartment that we shared was we were all gathered

59:36

there and we heard the rap on the door and it was the police

59:40

and here we had this integrated group.

59:46

And I remember Stokely and a couple of old men,

59:49

I think, went for the window.

59:53

Went out the window.

59:55

Woman

Ivanhoe.

59:56

-

I we were (laughs) five o'clock in the morning

59:57

I remember the hour, but it was one of those evenings

59:58

where we were talking about,

1:00:02

I think that particular evening, we were talking about

1:00:03

colonialism and religion in Jamaica.

1:00:06

Woman

Yes, Judy.

1:00:12

-

Let me just mention to,

1:00:14

we also actually had a research department.

1:00:15

Woman

Yes, we did.

1:00:17

-

Headed by this old, crusty, I think, former communist

1:00:18

part person named, Jack Minnis.

1:00:20

And what would happen was that Jack Minnis,

1:00:22

first of all, you walk in his room it would be

1:00:25

totally smokeville, but he would have all of these

1:00:26

census figures, I mean, there's a whole thing

1:00:30

around the way you got things factually correct,

1:00:33

the way you interpreted the pieces

1:00:36

so when student voice for example

1:00:38

and Donnie and Julian will- Julian Bond is now the

1:00:40

chair of NAACP, but who was then

1:00:43

our communications director.

1:00:45

They will have a session and you might want to go to that,

1:00:47

I think it's on Friday where they talk about how they were

1:00:50

the media arm of that, but the main thing was that we never

1:00:53

over sold, we never, in other words you would say

1:00:57

in a student voice report or WATTS line report

1:01:00

three people beaten, church burned, so-and-so.

1:01:03

It was never the so-and-so and the lumping proletariat

1:01:05

and the so-and-so.

1:01:08

Tape 2, 2000 April

Transcript

Item Info

John Hope Franklin Research Center