Freedom's Children (14 page)

I think my very first recollection of what was going on was at a church meeting. I was about seven. They were going to have a small demonstration. I remember leaving the church and walking out to watch the first demonstrators. There was an elderly black man watching, and a dog attacked him. I was in shock. I just couldn't believe that the police would turn the dog loose on an old man.

I remember it being warm the morning I marched. The night before at a meeting, they told us we'd be arrested. I went home and told my mother that I wanted to go. She just said, “Okay.” I was in third grade. My teacher knew that I was going, and she cried. She thought, I guess, it was admirable that I would go. Teachers had the threat of losing their jobs.

I did not go to school the day that I went on the march. I wasn't nervous or scared. We started from Sixteenth Street Church. We always sang when we left the church. The singing was like a jubilance. It was a release. And it also gave you calmness and reassurance.

We went down a little side street by Kelly Ingram Park and marched about half a block. Then the police put us in paddy wagons, and we went to Juvenile Hall. There were lots of kids, but I think I may have been the youngest child in there. I was nine. My girlfriend was a year older than me.

Later on they took me to a room where there were some men who asked me questions about the mass meetings. I was nervous when they first called me in. I didn't know what they were going to do to me. The worst thing I thought was that they might kill me. After they started asking me questions, I calmed down a little and thought maybe they're not going to do anything. But it crossed my mind. It was a room of five or six men. All white. And I was little.

I got the impression that they were trying to find out if there were some communistic kinds of things going on. They asked me if they forced us to march, and what was said in the meetings. I told them pretty much what they were doing. That there would be singing and talking about freedom, that kind of thing. They said nothing. I was in there about fifteen minutes. After that they let me go back.

I was in jail seven days. We slept in little rooms with bunk beds. There were about twelve of us in a room. I was in a room with my friends. We called ourselves Freedom Fighters, Freedom Riders. There were only one or two kids in jail who were delinquents. Everybody else was there because of the movement. We ate in a cafeteria. The food wasn't home cooking. I remember some grits, and they weren't too good. My parents could not get word to me for seven days.

We would get some news, like there was no more room in Juvenile Hall. They were taking the rest of the people to the fairgrounds because that was the only place to house them now. The jails were all full. I felt like I was helping to gain what we were trying to get, and that was freedom.

At the end of seven days, they told me my parents were there to get me. I was real glad. They were just smiling and hugging me. I knew they had been nervous ‘cause I heard them on the phone talking to friends and saying, “Oh, I'm glad she's back!” I could tell they were proud of me.

I didn't know when I left home for school that day that I was going to participate. Some people weren't going, and some were trying to decide. I was ready to go. We felt in sympathy with all the students in Birmingham. They were just filling up the jails. We hadn't taken our place in the movement yet, and we felt that we should get involved.

We left school after lunch. We joined up with Miles College students, but most of the group was high school kids. When we started out, we didn't think we might be arrested. I thought we would get to the shopping center and be able to parade and demonstrate.

I guess the principal called the Fairfield police, who in turn called the Birmingham police. We were out on this divided highway with grass down the center. We probably didn't walk more than a mile past Miles College before we were arrested. We were walking on the side of the road when the police cars came behind us. They told us to stop, but we just kept walking. We were singing “We Shall Overcome.” We started running because it looked like they were going to run us down. They came on the grass with their cars and chased us. Then they went to get school buses, and they hauled us to the jail in Birmingham.

I never went inside that jail. Those who were eighteen had to go in and be fingerprinted. I was seventeen. Reverend King came by and he talked with us outside the fence. We felt better after that. We stood outdoors maybe two to three hours. Then they took us to juvenile detention by bus. By then it started to rain. We stood in the rain for a long time. I was in my white dress. Every senior girl started wearing white dresses the first of May, and wore them for a month until graduation. So there we were in our muddy white resses.

Finally we got inside. This must have been about eight or nine o‘clock at night. We had left school at around one o'clock. They had prepared some peanut butter sandwiches and milk. This was the first thing we had eaten since noon.

The jails were full, so they loaded us on the bus again and took us to Fair Park. This was the same fairgrounds amusement park I couldn't go to as a kid because they didn't allow black people in there. It was pretty ironic.

They took us to the top floor of a two-story barracks building, which was nothing but a large empty room with mattresses on the floor. They had some policewomen assigned to the girls. They searched everybody, and then told us to fall in.

There were no sheets on the mattresses. Some of the people were turning up their noses. The policewomen said, “This is no picnic. This is no pajama party.” We hadn't thought about what we were going to be facing.

They turned out the lights, and we went to sleep. That whole room was full. The boys must have been downstairs. I was fortunate. I was there just one night. It was a Friday when we left school, and that Saturday we were let out about twelve or one o‘clock.

I was glad to get out. My parents didn't know when I left home that Friday that I was going to participate. Once we were arrested, we couldn't call our families. One of my friends called, I think, so they knew. When I got out, they said that they didn't want to tell me to go, but they were glad that I went. They were proud of me.

We went to school the next week. Some of the boys that were eighteen stayed in jail for a week. In classes we didn't have any difficulties. The teachers didn't criticize any of us for going. The kids that didn't go, I think, felt ashamed that they hadn't.

Our class celebrated our twenty-fifth class reunion in 1988. Our class motto was “No gains without pains.” At the reunion we were saying that we were the class that went to jail.

It was Easter, and nobody went shopping. We wouldn't spend money with the white man. That's how we could get to him. He owned all the businesses. So we had no new Easter clothes for two or three Easters. In fact, if you went to church on Easter Sunday and had on something new, you looked out of place.

I don't remember when the mass meetings started, but I think my father was one of the first who was a part of it in Reverend Shuttlesworth's church. You would hear about everything that was going on, and you soon get it in your mind that you want to be a part of it. So every Monday night I went with my father.

I have two brothers. My father had talked with all three of us, particularly me, and said that he did not want us to march. Generally I was a good child. I usually didn't disobey. It was the Thursday before Good Friday, and my mother and father and I were in church. Dr. King made the call for people to join him, and all these people said they'd go to jail with him. You had other people who had been to jail telling their experiences. A friend of mine said, “Let's go!” I felt like a spirit was telling me to get out there. So I went down and volunteered and said that the next morning I would be a part of it.

As you walked down, people clapped, and you got the sense that all these people were behind you. So many had been before. It was like rotating. Now it's your turn, and you have to go. My father was an usher. When he saw me get up and go, I think he felt okay. My mother was upset. She thought I was a bit young. I was fourteen and very small. She had all the people in the church praying for me that I wouldn't get hurt.

I woke up in the morning, and my family had family prayer with me. We started out from Sixteenth Street Church. We held hands and just walked. Dr. King was leading. Most people were older than me. My father stood on the sidelines.

The police stopped us about a block from the church. They gave us a chance to disperse, but I knew what I was going to have to do. When they put us under arrest, we stepped up into the paddy wagons. I looked back at my daddy. He kind of smiled in support because he knew that somebody from the family was going. And it was the baby child.

They carried us to the county jail. All of us were in the same cell. There may have been about fifty people. Then they started taking out the younger ones to move us to Juvenile. As we went out, Martin King was at the door of the cell because he was in jail also. He hugged us and shook all of our hands as we passed him.

I was not afraid. I felt good that I could make a difference. I was determined to make a difference. I did not want to be intimidated by whites.

I was in jail four days.

 

In my family growing up, James, my older brother, got involved. My other brother was not that involved. I have real serious beliefs, and I'm more opinionated than the others. I guess I got it from my dad, who saw oppression. He was so angry about it that he would never ride the buses. He could never participate in any of this because his anger was so violent. He didn't do it, so I did it for him.

When I got involved in the demonstrations in 1963, I was in high school. My parents supported my decision to get involved, but they were not involved.

I went to a lot of mass meetings. We didn't have transportation, so we walked to them. We knew about them from two radio disk jockeys, Shelley Stewart and Paul White. Paul White used to call the meetings “a party.” On the broadcast he'd say, “There's going to be a party Monday night at six at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, and everybody's invited.” We good old Baptists knew there wasn't going to be any dance.

With Shelley back then there was no telling what he'd say. You knew it was coded for the protection of their jobs. The morning
after
a meeting he'd get on the broadcast and he'd say, “Last night there was a mass meeting over at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, and it appears there were sixteen hundred people there.” Then it's news, and he's covered himself. He might add something in a real quick and sly way—“I wonder how many are going to be there Wednesday night?” and then he'd go into a rap.

I was sixteen in 1963, and I expected to be arrested. I wanted to be arrested. I went to jail June 9, 1963. I won't forget it.

Jail was a totally different experience. I'd never been on the other side of the big wall before. They took us in to be fingerprinted. Once the gate closed, we were treated like common criminals. We weren't treated like kids. They didn't want the jails filled. They wanted to make it uncomfortable for us, so we'd call our parents to come and bail us out.

But our intent was not to be bailed out. Matter of fact, with the one phone call they gave me, the first thing I did was to call my mother. “Don't worry about me,” I told her. “I'll be okay. We've been arrested and I'm in the city jail. I'm doing fine. There are a bunch of us here. Whatever you do, don't come and get me out.”

She was concerned. She sounded tearful on the other end. I said, “Please, this is what I want to do.” She said, “Okay.”

I was in for ten days.

I was not what you call a hero. I was very quiet, and I was really surprised that I was taking part in this. But I think the arrest of my sister Claudette [Chapter Two] had a lot to do with it. I felt a sense of doing right. I thought one day I want to have kids, and I don't want them to go through what I did.

During those days, our parents were basically afraid. I think they would have kept us from doing a lot of things, if they had known about it. My mother didn't know I was going to Sixteenth Street Church. She thought I was going to school, but then I'd shoot a hookey from school to go to Sixteenth Street. She worked for the white folks. They were constantly asking parents, “Is your child involved in this stuff? I hope she isn't.” So we couldn't tell.

I'd get to school and then go over the fence. We had listened to Shelley on the radio that morning, so we knew what time to meet. Sometimes if the meeting was at ten o‘clock, we would go to our first classes, and then be out for the rest of the day.

I had just a few friends who didn't participate. They were kind of envious. But you have to remember, the majority of the boys who did not participate had parents who were professionals. There were very few of them. Samuel Ullman High School had over twelve hundred kids at that time, and eleven hundred of us were over the fence. We were gone!

At the meetings, we did a lot of singing and talking. “Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round” was like an incentive. We also sang a lot of the old spirituals like “Go Down, Moses.” We considered Birmingham was Egypt.

One demonstration I remember well. We were in a group that was supposed to march downtown, but we never made it because the police stopped us. Bull Connor was right out here on Sixth Avenue. He had the dogs out there, and he said if we marched, he was going to turn the dogs on us. They had the fire hoses also. That water was strong. It could knock you down. And he let ‘em go and sprayed us. I got wet, and I almost got bitten. There were hundreds of us.