Some Stories from the Black Experience in Alabama 1965

When I was about 15 – maybe younger – my cousin headed the NAACP in New Orleans. Walking picket lines, having doors slammed in my face and being followed by thugs in really nice looking muscle cars….  It was a seminal time in my life. In Greenville, Alabama, some (white) guys in a pick-up truck offered me and my brother a ride as were walking down the highway: “Y’all wanna ride? Hop in the back.” We declined and ran back to the motel PDQ.  My mother told us never to do that again. -Duane deJoie, Berkeley, CA March 26, 2012 in an e-mail

Duane deJoie and Samuel Torres Jr Celebrate 30+ years of friendship

I would have been 31 that year you were there. I had been teaching in Barbour County earlier but back then they fired all teachers who became pregnant, even if you were married which I was. But something good happened in Barbour County, too. They came and asked teachers to register to vote, the local white people, not civil rights workers. That knocked me off my feet! Because in Wilcox County where I was born and Monroe where I moved with Bob, we couldn’t vote until long, long after that. - Jessie Crawford, Beatrice, AL March 29, 2010 – telephone conversation with Maria Gitin

Maria Gitin and Jessie Crawford – Selma Jubilee 2010

It was my Junior or Senior year when my parents were fired so they sent me over there to Selma to protect me.  Daddy was torn because he really wanted me to integrate Wilcox High but Mommy was fearful. We had gotten threatening phone calls, so it was decided that I should go over there.  Mother and Daddy both sued to get their teaching jobs and back pay. They both won eventually. He got to go back to teaching and got back pay. She had to stay out a number of years but eventually got some of her back pay, too.  But both were fired really because of he was active in The Movement. -Alicia Parrish Foster, Camden, AL, June 8, 2009 telephone conversation

Camden Academy teachers were fired and the buildings destroyed because of student and teacher civil rights action in the 60′s and 70′s

Rev Frank & Mrs Etta Pearl Smith Family

Smith Family 1950
Children L-R Geraldine, Carolyn, Frank Milton, and Jesse

During the Wilcox County AL SCOPE-SCLC voter registration drive of summer 1965, my boyfriend, Bob (Luke) Block often stayed with the Rev & Mrs. Frank Smith family in Lower Peachtree. Jesse Smith, then a sixteen year old student leader recalls: ”I remember Bob real well. We were sort of like brothers then. One day I was cutting Larry’s hair and Bob asked me to cut his. He had great faith in me; I had never cut white hair before, but I went ahead. It looked real bad on the sides. He looked at it in the mirror for a long while and then he said,”It’ll grow back.”

Bob (Luke) Block 1965

“I admired Bob for his ‘never give up’ attitude.  Somewhere in Pine Hill he asked this man was he a registered voter. He said, ‘Son, that ain’t none of your business.’ We made a U turn – no use talking to him- but we kept on goin.  In Lower Peachtree we had been trying to get the people to go over to sign up for commodities. Bob got Mr. Campbell and his wife to sign up after they wouldn’t listen to me or other black students. They needed that food for their family. After Mr. Campbell signed up, a bunch of other folks went over and got signed up. That was a big help. One night Daddy wrote out the complaints of the students at the high school: No running water, no library, gym or science lab. The student body signed it. Someone from the Board of Education came and we gave the letter to him.” – Rev Jesse Smith, Montgomery AL interview with Maria Gitin June 8, 2009

Rev Frank Smith was fired from his teaching position at Pine Apple High School immediately upon passage of the Voting Rights Act, August of 1965. The official reason provided by the Superintendent of Schools, as was the case with all of the activist teacher terminations, was low attendance in Smith’s classes. The real reason he was fired was because he had allowed white civil rights workers to stay at his home, SNCC and SCLC to meet at his church and because his children were active in the Movement. It took fifteen years of legal filing, but in 1980 Smith won a back pay settlement and was elected to the same Wilcox County Board of Education that terminated him — victorious at last.

Carolyn Smith Taylor represents the Smith Family
2010 Selma Jubilee

The Smith family, Frank Smith Jr, (may he rest in blessed memory), Geraldine Gwendolyn Smith, Carolyn Smith Taylor, Jesse Smith and Larry Smith keep their parents’ memory alive by living up to their ideals.

Civil Rights Activists in Boiling Springs, Alabama

Although nearly abandoned today, in 1965 the tiny primarily Black community of Boiling Springs in remote northwestern Wilcox County was the center of a vibrant voting rights movement with leaders like the Lawsons, Burrells and Robinsons.

Mattie & James Burrell were parents of Boiling Springs leader Eddie Burrell and in-laws to his wife, Virginia Boykin Burrell. Their abandoned home was once a vibrant political, religious and social center.

Sometimes I stayed with the Robinsons who had 12 children yet made room for me, a white teenage civil rights worker. I shared a bed with their teen daughter and several small children. When I rolled over, I had to be careful not to kick the little ones stacked at the end of the bedstead. Some evenings, we’d walk through the woods with kerosene lanterns to take meals at the Lawsons. After I returned to California, my letters to Robinsons and Lawsons were returned undeliverable. I searched for them for decades without success.

Forty-seven years later, Deborah Burrell Tucker, whose mother Virginia Boykin Burrell was a leader and voter literacy teacher in Boiling Springs, contacted me.

Voncille Burrell canvassed for voters from age 13. Her mother Virginia Boykin Burrell taught literacy classes for new voters.

Her sister, Voncille Burrell Spencer, recalls canvassing for voters with me when she was just 13 years old.  Her Cousin Betty Lawson Henderson told me that her family maintained a civil rights safe house for years. After many years of searching, I discovered some of the Robinsons who housed me. Sadly, some still fear white retribution for their involvement in the Movement. While the Burrells and Lawsons, and another Robinson clan proudly claim their place in history, some of “my” Robinsons believe that the racial climate hasn’t changed a bit and asked me to omit their names from my book. It makes me sad but also helps explain why more progress hasn’t been made. The Robinsons and all civil rights activists who risked their lives and property to be active in the Movement, deserve to live in peace and comfort and to be honored for their contribution to the progress that has been made, most especially the right to vote.

Unsung Heroine of Boiling Springs is Recognized Posthumously

Recent unprovoked white on black murders tragically give credence to lingering fears. A new Civil Rights Movement calls for massive economic, social policy and educational change. We cannot give up, cannot rest, until everyone in this country can go to sleep without fear of being targeted for the color of their skin or for their commitment to racial justice. All of us must vote in every election until we change policies and politicians to secure these rights for all. The courageous heroes of Boiling Springs,both living and deceased, known and anonymous, continue to call us to action.

My Aunt Ruth

My Aunt Ruth was so beautiful that the Miss California pageant wanted her to be a contestant but my Grandmother wouldn’t hear of it.  Ruth Brookover was as intelligent and compassionate as she was beautiful. When she heard that I had cried when I saw a dark-skinned nurse’s aide leaning over my hospital crib when I had eye surgery in San Francisco at age two and a half she gave me a little Black doll because she said I had hurt the lady’s feelings and she wanted to make sure I didn’t grow up prejudiced.

My Aunt Ruth and me age 5 months

When I was seven, Aunt Ruth took me to my first political demonstration. I was scared but proud as we stood outside the San Francisco Market Street Macy’s store at Christmastime with signs that said No War Toys. The protest was organized by Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in an effort to make parents stop and think before they purchased gifts of guns and toy soldiers for their young children. As I stood in the cold fog in my thin coat my older Cousin Bob took my hand when people yelled at us “Communist!”  It was then that I learned that you might suffer for doing the right thing, but you also got the rewards of belonging. Aunt Ruth took us out for Chinese food afterwards so my first political protest left a good taste. Sometimes it is the small as much as large events in life that leave a lasting impression.

A student in a Gender Studies class I spoke to at University of South Alabama wrote:

I am not overly interested in the history of the South, yet Maria’s story had my full attention from beginning to end. She told it in such a personal way, from having lived through it. It made it seem so much more real than the history you read about in books. – Lindsey Bozeman

A student in Ms. Williams “Women in the Civil Rights Class” at University of Colorado Pueblo wrote:

I really appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to talk our class! You are really good at storytelling –  you brought your stories to life. I will keep you updated on whats going on with me Thanks! – Jibrail D.

Stories from a Teenage Civil Rights Worker

Wilcox County Freedom Fighters in Mobile

Wilcox County Freedom Fighters James Anderson, Sim Pettway, Rosetta Anderson, Maria Gitin and Joy Crawford-Washington after Maria’s presentation at University of South Alabama Tuesday evening. Living history was enjoyed by students, faculty and community members. Thank you Dr. Martha Jane Brazy and Joy Crawford-Washington!

Fox News 10 Mobile & Montgomery news anchor Eric Reynolds interviewed Maria and shared part of her story March 8, 2102

http://www.fox10tv.com/dpp/news/alabama/the-interview-maria-gitin

“Great interview Maria. You were wonderful!” – Charles Bonner, SNCC

Making News, Causing Trouble

Reading Peter Buck’s [peterlbuck.wordpress.com/] memory of seeing a cross-burning put in mind the time I visited the site of a cross-burning in Camden, Alabama while working on the Summer Conference on Community Organizing and Political Education (SCOPE) project in the summer of 1965.

Making News, Causing Trouble

They told me that Rev. Ralph Abernathy, VP of SCLC and Treasurer of SCOPE wanted to speak with me. In a firm, resonant voice barely constraining fury he demanded to know how I expected they could let me stay when I kept breaking the rules. He recounted my expensive medical bills that cost precious dollars that were needed for bail and other expenses. Then, like a bolt of lighting from a dry sky, he read, nearly shouted this paragraph from an article published in the Washington Post on July 12^th: “Nineteen year old Joyce Brians from San Francisco State College sleeps at night in Negro homes. By day, she goes out canvassing alone on rural red clay roads with local Negro boys who point out homes of potential voters.”

He droned on but I couldn’t hear anything else he said, knowing that this was just the type of sensationalism about “race mixing” that we had been warned about. I begged to stay, pleaded that I didn’t know how the reporter got those words from me and told the truth; I was tricked. But I didn’t give any details about how I was tricked. I told him that I would never cause a problem again and begged to be allowed to stay until the end of the project in August. After a while he relented but he told me that if he heard one more word, even one more word about me for anything at all, I could just pack my bags.

Paul Good, a Washington Post reporter had stopped by the Academy when only Connie and I were there. He asked if we wanted to walk up to Hangman’s Hill to see where the KKK had burned a cross during the student spring demonstrations. I remember thinking it must have scared the kids half to death and how brave they were to keep on protesting.

When we got to where I saw the burnt cross with a big circle of dark soot all around, I collapsed on a log. How could people use a symbol of Christian love and sacrifice as a symbol of hate and fear? Good, pulled out a six-pack and said, “Have a beer; it will calm you down.”  I had never taken a sip of alcohol on Camden Academy grounds before, picturing Rev. Threadgill and hearing his stern warnings.

Good began asking questions, lots of questions. At first, I told him flat out that we were not allowed to speak with reporters, that all questions should be addressed to the SCOPE project leaders. He said not to worry, that I wouldn’t be quoted, that this was just “deep background.” My doubts were clouded by the shock of seeing that burnt cross, the hated symbol of the KKK I had come to fight, the beer and most of all, the need to talk to someone outside the Movement.

Years later when I found both The San Francisco Chronicle and The Washington Post articles, I was even more grateful to Rev. Abernathy for letting me stay when I read the rest of my statement: “‘My happiest days are working out there,’ she says, ‘But there is a lot of frustration with SCOPE. They spend too much time talking about organizing and there isn’t enough action. I mean, the people here want to demonstration (sic) against police brutality but SCOPE leaders hold them back.’”

- from This Bright Light of Ours 1965 all rights reserved by author

© 2012

Selma SNCC and SCLC’s Summer Community Organizing and Political Education Project Summer 1965

Charles Bonner was my first SNCC friend and co-worker. He and Eric Jones were in charge of voter registration for SNCC in Wilcox County where I was working with SCLC’s summer voter registration project. He immediately inducted me into SNCC. For the rest of the summer, he and his girlfriend Jan, my boyfriend Bob Block and I spent time together in Selma, as well as doing some canvassing in Wilcox. Freedom Summer 1965 was one of the last truly cooperative projects with SNCC, SCLC, NAACP and dozens of local improvement associations working together on one goal: voter registration. For information on why this work was so essential and my orientation to SCOPE please visit the Civil Rights Veteran’s website http://www.crmvet.org/info/scope1.htm

Excerpt from 1965 This Little Light of Mine, This Bright Light of Ours: stories of the Wilcox County Freedom Fight © 2011

Nonviolence as a Strategy versus a Philosophy   

The next day we had breakfast with Chuck and Jan somewhere nearby. Over coffee with a still muddled brain, I tried to explain my understanding of nonviolence is that it boils down to being like a spiritual martial art.

“You take the negative energy, the hate rushing towards you and turn it back on the perpetrator in the form of love. That should melt down his defenses or at least make him stop and think. I believe that if you hate or hit back, you become no better than the oppressor. “

Then Chuck explained that SNCC uses the word nonviolent in their name, but nonviolence is just a strategy, not a philosophy or belief.

“We use it when it’s convenient, when it will get press, prevent a mass murder and recruit more people to be active. When necessary, we use any weapon: rocks, knives, even guns, especially in isolated situations where you are outnumbered or outrun. There’s no political advantage from taking a beating or getting shot if no one is there to cover it. “

Bob said he absolutely agreed with that, which made my stomach queasy, not only from last night’s liquor. “But, I don’t mind getting beat or even dying for The Movement, but I sure as hell don’t want to die if these guys don’t even want me here,” Bob added.

“Well I want you here, that’s for damn sure. Ya’ll been damn straight with us. But it is gettin’ time to go. Fact is, me and Jan are thinkin’ of heading out there to San Francisco with you all, in a few weeks.” Chuck went on to explain that getting an education is a form of activism, too.

Luke (Bob) Block, Maria Gitin and Charles (Chuck) Bonner 2005

Jan said that she thought, “Black power will come through independence that comes with achieving affluence and influence in the tradition of the often-maligned Booker T. Washington founder of Tuskegee Institute.” We groaned in self-mockery at our intellectual talk and the giddy guilt that we could, all four of us, drive away from Selma, alive.

Remember the Sacrifices Made for the right to Vote

W Kate Charley, Maria Gitin, Jessie Crawford, Iris Judson pray for those who gave their lives to the Wilcox County successful struggle for Voting Rights

1965 Voting Rights Act Challenged Again

Mrs Rosetta Angion of Coy - Proud Voting Rights Activist

Challenges to the 1965 Voting Rights Act are soon expected to be heard by the Supreme Court. While I will leave it to my readers to comment and the lawyers to argue the merits of the cases, I personally witnessed voting discrimination that the VRA helped overcome in Wilcox County, Alabama. During my summer as a civil rights worker with SNCC and SCLC, we walked door to door in integrated teams informing black residents of their right to vote and to run their own candidates. Our leaders directed us to arrange rides to the polls and provide political education and literacy training. We used to pick up and drop off literature at Mrs. Angion’s home. Local folks waited on her porch for drivers to carry them in to Camden to stand in line only to be turned away by the voting registrar, but they kept on coming, kept on marching. In June, the local Ku Klux Klan broke into our church headquarters and beat three young men while five others escaped to safety the evening after I was released from jail along with most of the other eighteen workers cited in this press release from Ralph D. Abernathy

On July 1, 1965, SCLC VP and Treasurer Rev Ralph D. Abernathy sent us a copy of a press release that called on Congress and President Johnson to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act, citing mistreatment of our SCLC group in Wilcox.

“Field workers of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and local Negro citizens engaged in voter registration projects throughout The South are being subjected to sinister harassments and brutal intimidations….Wilcox County is one of the most infamous of the state’s Black Belt counties, where until recently, not a single Negro was registered to vote.

            In Camden, the county seat, local whites Tuesday night broke into a house of God, Antioch Baptist Church, fired a shot gun blast against the wall and brutally beat seven Negro teenagers, two of them so badly they had to be hospitalized.

            Earlier Tuesday, an 18-year old white SCOPE worker was released from jail so badly beaten that he had to be hospitalized. The brutally beaten youth was one of 18 persons arrested by the Camden Mayor, Sheriff and posse men when SCOPE workers protested against local merchants by distributing boycott materials….

            We firmly believe that the vicious treatment of the local Negroes and our voter registration workers is symptomatic of a sick society in which Negro citizens are denied the right to vote for elected officials.”

Letter from Wilcox County June 1965

In 1065 I worked with SCLC and SNCC on a summer voter registration project in Wilcox County. This is an original letter from that time, reflecting the typical naivete of a young white girl from the North. Negro was a term of respect at that time. Here is a photo of me with two of my three sisters Cindy and Alberta in our family side yard the month before I went South. We were a rural working class family.

Maria (Joyce) with sisters Spring 1965

June 24, 1965                                                                                                Camden Academy  Camden, Alabama
Dear Family,

            I am sorry I haven’t been able to get in touch sooner. It was good to hear your voices Sunday nite. Do you mind if I call occasionally? I just sent off my first detailed report today so you should receive it in a week or so. I’ll try not to repeat myself.

I have only received one letter since I got here & that was from Mom. No other mail has reached me. Has anything else been sent yet? While I’m thinking of it – let me know if this letter appears to have been opened. I will tape it shut.

I was in Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma for a few days with a touch of pneumonia. Don’t worry about it. I am fine now & they have me doing secretarial work indoors until I get my strength back.

Please send vitamin pills. We are having a boycott on all white stores that won’t hire Negroes & there isn’t a drugstore between here and Montgomery that will serve us. I am doing the cooking here at the Academy. I could use some recipes. Maybe Dolores could copy down some inexpensive, good-size group recipes for me.

I don’t feel badly about accepting gifts & I wish you wouldn’t assume responsibility of refusing them for me. I’m trying to get $ for a scholarship fund for civil rights workers, too. If you are embarrassed to have people involved in my financial affairs, please have them write directly to me & then you needn’t be concerned about it.

It’s difficult to tell you the truth about things around here without scaring you unnecessarily. The whites are really trying to scare us off & they are doing everything they can to keep us from registering voters. But, they aren’t going to kill us. If we refuse to be scared then they will just have to give in.

They’ve jailed 7 people so far but all were treated well & released promptly. One boy has been beaten and that was by a white man (not police).

We got 150 people registered Monday so I think it’s well worth our efforts.

There is a lot of tension among people here – trying to be brave when they are living in constant fear. I refuse to be afraid all the time. If I am, then the enemy wins. If I am not afraid – then I win the victory. After all, what can they do to me?

Thank God things aren’t this bad in the rest of the South. Alabama is the most racist state in the union – I don’t care what you read in the papers. Before we got here, Sheriff Jenkins distributed firearms to all the white folks and told them not to hesitate to use them. This is a backwards county. There are no industries or big businesses or healthy farms. The irony of it is that the land is beautiful & fertile. If black & white would just work together, I know they could make Wilcox a rich county.

My main function right now has been that of mother  – even though most of the people here are years older than me. I just try to make them more comfortable – physically & mentally.

I’m getting a [black] Southern accent even though I fight it. It sounds funny.

I think of you all & pray for you. When I was in the hospital, I kept dreaming I saw little Cindy [my youngest sister] walking in my room with a bouquet of flowers. She was so beautiful it made me cry.

Please don’t be alarmed at how or what I write. Things are so different here & I’m just trying to tell you.

Love, Joyce

Notes to Family Letter #1

First arrests: We had stepped into a pattern of entrenched racial tension that had been going on for over a century and had increased dramatically in the five months before we arrived ever since Martin Luther King Jr. appeared in person to lead a march to the courthouse in Camden right before Bloody Sunday in March 1965. If some voters managed to get registered, those who helped them would be arrested, shot at, beaten immediately. They wanted it to be crystal clear that every move African-Americans made towards equal rights put all our lives in danger. My comment “they were treated well and released promptly” was uninformed and part of early instruction that we should try to downplay reports of violence. When I was arrested myself, I got to witness this “good treatment”.

My family & Money issues

For all except the wealthy in those days, long distance was considered a real luxury and most people only called out of state on Sunday evenings when rates were lower. My particular family was proud of being poor but independent and was aghast at their fundraising daughter. I saw myself as part of a larger collective, something much bigger than my family and had no problem raising money for a good cause. They were embarrassed by my appeals for funds to various individuals and church groups who had helped me pay for my trip. Other white civil rights workers didn’t know what I meant when I talked about raising money for my trip so I imagine they had jobs or parents who helped. I had big ideas for getting scholarships for our local high school graduate activists so that they could go to Selma or Montgomery for college, but I didn’t get far with that concept when all around me were dire daily needs. Still, I did collect and re-distribute money all summer, either by buying food and feeding people or by giving black and white students small loans that they never needed to pay back. I wrote to people in California and they sent me more money. That was really the beginning of my later career as a nonprofit organization fundraiser.