{"id":1651,"date":"2015-04-02T15:10:29","date_gmt":"2015-04-02T15:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journeytojustice.org.uk\/?page_id=1651"},"modified":"2019-09-09T11:59:44","modified_gmt":"2019-09-09T11:59:44","slug":"exhibition-resource-and-credits","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/journeytojustice.org.uk\/exhibition-resource-and-credits\/","title":{"rendered":"Exhibition: Resources and Credits"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"banner\"<\/h1>\n

With thanks to everyone who contributed: researchers, writers, curators, copyright searchers, artists, volunteers, musicians, students, singers, designers, advisers, contractors and our funders. View the foldout exhibition handout\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

THANK YOU EVERYONE<\/span><\/h3>\n

For the exhibition<\/b><\/p>\n

Co-ordinator<\/strong> Carrie Supple<\/p>\n

Researchers\/writers<\/strong> Mark Hutchinson, Michael Gillender, Pat Boyer, Carrie Supple, Laura Redfern, Steff Shepherd, Corinne Jones, Aminah Khan, Sarah Stewart, Shijia Yu, Dr. Emma Folwell, Sharon Walker, Martin Spafford, Desmond O\u2019Reilly, Faduma Elmi, Sophie Stewart-Bloch, Anneka Bhosle.<\/p>\n

For sharing their stories<\/strong> Janice Kelsey (n\u00e9e Wesley), Jean Stallings, Elmore and Peggy Nickleberry, Marcia Saunders, Ruby Bridges, Barbara Henry, Bayard Rustin (ove sholem), Jonathan Steele, Dr. Ira Gruper.<\/p>\n

Curator<\/strong> Katie Nairne<\/p>\n

Securing photo, newspaper, audio-visual resources copyright<\/strong> Jude Lancet, Alison Wood, Henry Worger.<\/p>\n

Audio-visuals editor<\/strong> Joel Frosh.<\/p>\n

Art and poetry<\/strong> by children from Michael Faraday Primary School, South London and George Mitchell School, Leyton.<\/p>\n

Design<\/strong> HKD – thanks to Scarlett Moloney, Glenn Mellor, Zara McKenzie, Rick Houghton.<\/p>\n

Contractors<\/strong> Keyboard Group.<\/p>\n

Advisers<\/strong> Professor Brian Ward, Bennett Singer, Dr Gabriella Treglia, Sue McAlpine, Jo Rosenthal, Sophie Herxheimer, Dareece James, Veena Vasista, Irena Ellis, Professor Ira Katznelson, Dr Madge Dresser, Professor Clayborne Carson, Dr. Karen Murphy, Hannah Ishmael, Imani Robinson, Reva Klein, Sean Snee, Professor Michael Honey, Leila Hamdan, Mary Spyrou, Parul Motin, Dr. George Lewis, Ralph Appelbaum Associates, Will Essilfie, Rosaleen Lyons, Janet Browne, Mark Galloway, Nicola Bell, Ian Wall of Film Space, Rachel Burns, Susie Morrow, Professor Barry Supple, Michael Norton, Michael Randle, Maria Lloyd.<\/p>\n

Website and publicity design<\/strong> Vanishing Point Creative – thanks to Bernie Donohoe and Andy Donald.<\/p>\n

For allowing us to include their photographs, programmes, interviews and films at no charge <\/strong>Mark and Dawn Brunner; Richard L. Copley; Adam Fowler, Overtone Productions; MAKERS; David Fankhauser; John Postiglione; Walter Naegel; Calvin Taylor; Eric Duncan, American Federation of Teachers International Affairs, Dept (Civic Voices); Bruce Harford, Civil Rights Movement Veterans; Tom Vague, Colville Community History; Glasgow Trades Council; Kevin Buchanan; Rutland Daily Herald; Joanna Stephenson\/James Ware;\u00a0 Alexandra and Gabriel Raeburn; Zephyr Press; Bethany Elen Coyle; Murphy Cobbing; Bennett Singer; NPR; ATD Fourth World USA; The Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library; Newcastle University;\u00a0 Jack Rottier collection, George Mason University Libraries; David Emeney, Bristol Evening Post; Kirsty Reid, BBC World Service, John \u2018Hoppy\u2019 Hopkins.<\/p>\n

Photo credits<\/strong> Bettmann\/Corbis; AP\/Press Association Images; Preservation and Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Memphis; WHYY, Inc.; BBC World Service; The Western Mail; National Geographic Image Collection \/ Alamy; Jack Moebes; Getty Images; Hulton-Deutsch Collection; The Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Centre, New York City;\u00a0 I Am A Man | The Movie<\/em> team.<\/p>\n

Our funders<\/b> Sigrid Rausing Trust; Trusthouse Charitable Foundation; By Box; Cultural Affairs Department, US Embassy, London; Heritage Lottery Fund; personal and anonymous donations.<\/p>\n

INTRODUCTION<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

\u202f\u2018We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.\u2019
\n– Dr. Martin Luther King<\/strong>, 1963<\/p>\n

Journey to Justice aims <\/b>to <\/b>inspire and empower people to take action for social justice though learning about human rights movements<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI must remind you that starving a child is violence.
\nNeglecting school children is violence.<\/p>\n

Punishing a mother and her family is violence.
\nDiscrimination against a working man is violence.<\/p>\n

Ghetto housing is violence.
\nIgnoring medical need is violence.<\/p>\n

Contempt for poverty is violence.\u201d
\n– Coretta Scott King<\/b><\/p>\n

In this exhibition, we tell the stories of a few of the thousands of people who took part in the US civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. Most are names you will never have heard of. They are people like us and their choices led, in many cases, to significant social and political change. The civil rights movement remains a symbol for people who struggle for freedom on every continent.<\/p>\n

What can we learn from them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

THE US CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT OF THE 1950s and 1960s<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

\u201cThere may be ways we can work for change.
\nWe don\u2019t have to do dramatic things or devote our entire lives to it.
\nWe can lead normal lives but at the same time try hard not to be bystanders\u201d
\n– Helen Bamber OBE<\/strong>, human rights activist<\/p>\n

Led by black Americans and building on resistance that began with slavery, the civil rights movement was made up of thousands of people and ymbolizedns, sometimes divided in their methods but united in their aim: to fight against the oppression, savage violence and attacks on black people that had persisted for hundreds of years.<\/p>\n

In August 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till came from Chicago to visit family in Mississippi. Supposedly, he whistled at a white woman in a store, saying \u2018Bye, baby\u2019 as he left\u2019.<\/p>\n

Her husband and brother-in-law went to where Till was staying and took him away. They beat him, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, tied him to a fan with barbed wire and threw him into the river. Despite admitting their crime they were found \u2018not guilty\u2019 by an all-white jury.<\/p>\n

Media coverage caused outrage across America after Till\u2019s mother Mamie insisted on an open casket funeral to show the world the brutality of his murder.\u00a0 For many, this was the tipping point: Mamie travelled across the USA telling her story and raising funds which were later used to pay legal fees during the Montgomery bus boycott. Rosa Parks said Emmett Till was on her mind when she refused to give up her seat.<\/p>\n

OUR STORIES<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Bayard Rustin
\nResearch by Mark Hutchinson
\n<\/span><\/h2>\n

\u201cWhen an individual is protesting society\u2019s refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.\u201d<\/i> \u2013 Bayard Rustin<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b>If there is one person whose life captures the civil rights struggle better than most then that person is Bayard Rustin<\/b>. However, he was often forced into the background and faced hostility, even from within the civil rights movement, and became increasingly forgotten and overlooked because he was not only a black man who believed in equality through integration, but one who was openly gay, a staunch pacifist and one-time member of the Communist party.<\/p>\n

Rustin advocated for the use of non-violence and civil disobedience<\/b>, deeply influencing Martin Luther King who had previously seen non-violence more as a convenience for the black community who did not have the firepower of their opponents: \u201cI think it is fair to say that Dr. King\u2019s view of nonviolent tactics were almost non-existent when the boycott began.\u201d Rustin began to tutor King in the civil disobedience theory of the thinker Henry David Thoreau and the non-violent tactics of Mahatma Gandhi.<\/p>\n

He was the key figure of the march on Washington<\/b>, August 28th<\/sup> 1963, making meticulous plans, drilling marshals and bus captains and scheduling podium speakers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe march will succeed if it gets 100,000 people \u2013 150,000 or 200,000 or more \u2013 to show up in Washington. It will be the biggest rally in history. It will show the Black community united as never before \u2013 united also with whites from labor and the churches, from all over the country.\u201d Rustin<\/p>\n

James Farmer, <\/b>one of Rustin\u2019s fiercest critics within the civil rights leadership, said in his autobiography in relation to Rustin\u2019s role in the March that, \u201cI have never seen such a difficult task of co-ordination performed with more skill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rustin had also been the organiser and leader, along with George Houser, of the April 1947 Journey of Reconciliation \u2018freedom rides\u2019<\/b> of 8 black and 8 white men.\u00a0 They travelled on interstate buses into the Deep South, following a federal law to ban segregated travel, which several states flouted by allowing the practice to continue. The 16 men were repeatedly beaten, arrested and jailed for sitting down next to each other.<\/p>\n

Some civil rights leaders (e.g. Thurgood Marshall) had misgivings about the law-breaking tactics the men employed. In response, Rustin wrote an article in the \u2018Louisiana Weekly\u2019 in which he stated why such action was needed: \u2018Unjust social laws and patterns do not change because supreme courts deliver just decisions. \u2026 Social progress comes from struggle; all freedom demands a price\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe principal factors which influence my life are 1) nonviolent tactics 2) constitutional means 3) democratic procedures 4) respect for human personality 5) a belief that all men are true<\/i>.\u201d \u2013 Rustin<\/p>\n

Links<\/b><\/p>\n

Clips from Brother Outsider \u2013 The Life of Bayard Rustin: <\/i>https:\/\/youtu.be\/BxhKgnyWcuw<\/a>; https:\/\/youtu.be\/nuWJB1RneGY<\/a><\/p>\n

Ruby Bridges and Barbara Henry
\nResearch by Pat Boyer
\n<\/span><\/h2>\n

Born on September 8th<\/sup>, 1954, Ruby Bridges,<\/b> at 6 years old, became the first African American child to integrate into a white Southern elementary school.<\/p>\n

Desegregation of New Orleans schools was bitterly opposed since the Supreme Court\u2019s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education <\/i>decision that all public schools should be desegregated. Louisiana and many Southern states passed laws to close schools facing racial integration. However in 1960, the Federal Court in New Orleans passed a law forcing two white public schools to admit black students. Only the first grade of the schools was to be integrated that first year.<\/p>\n

On Monday 14th<\/sup> November, 1960 Ruby set off for William Franz Public School for the first time. She was to be the first and only black child to attend.\u00a0 Ruby and her mother were escorted to the school by\u00a0 armed US federal marshals. As they approached the school, there were police everywhere; barricades and mobs of white people screaming, shouting, chanting, threatening those who supported integration.<\/p>\n

“I heard the words, bestial, filthy and degenerate”, – <\/i>John Steinbeck (Travels with Charley).<\/i><\/p>\n

White parents rushed to William Franz Public School to take their children out of the school (by the end of the week, only 3 white families remained at the school).<\/p>\n

All teachers except one refused to teach black children. Barbara Henry<\/b>, a young teacher from Boston, who had recently moved with her husband to New Orleans, was the only teacher happy to teach an integrated class. Barbara Henry taught Ruby alone in her classroom for a whole year before a few white children started coming back to the school. Every day, on approaching the school and leaving at the end of the day, Ruby was escorted by armed federal marshals and had to endure walking through mob of screaming, racist anti-segregationists threatening violence and death.<\/p>\n

“Leaving the school each day seemed even more frightening than arriving in the morning. On leaving school in the afternoon- even with a police escort- you were always fearful of how people gathered on the sidewalks might choose to protest that day as you drove past them. The New Orleans police were supposed to be there to help us, but they very much disliked being the ones to enforce integration, so you could never be confident of their support and cooperation.” <\/i>\u2013 Barbara Henry<\/p>\n

A few brave white families carried on attending William Franz School during this year but they were attacked and daily abused.\u00a0 They moved away to end the fear and daily ordeal their children had to endure. During that year, neither Ruby nor Mrs Henry ever had a single day off. Ruby never complained to Mrs Henry though she asked when the other children would come back. Finally, after a year, some white children returned to William Franz School and other black children attended, and the school became integrated.<\/p>\n

In 1999, Ruby Bridges set up the Ruby Bridges Foundation (www.rubybridgesfoundation.org<\/a>) with the mission of \u2018Empowering children to advance social justice and racial harmony\u2019, partly in response to her brother\u2019s death. Ruby\u2019s brother Milton was shot and killed in a drug-related incident in New Orleans. His children went to William Franz Public School. Ruby wanted to raise funds and campaign for better education and more equal opportunities for poor, children in inner-city schools e.g. William Franz School (which, according to school data 2014, now has 97% black students).<\/p>\n

Links:<\/b><\/p>\n

Video of Ruby meeting Obama in 2011 when Norman Rockwell painting was installed in the White House: www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BCsJ-24MdZc<\/a><\/p>\n

Links to the Ruby Bridges Foundation: www.rubybridges.com<\/a>; www.rubybridgesfoundation.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Robert Coles talks about Ruby Bridges: www.youtube.com\/watch?v=XPK3zQM2dHU<\/a><\/p>\n

Article featuring Ruby Bridges\u2019 comments on the US today. Civil rights figure: US divided by race again<\/i><\/p>\n

by\u00a0Associated Press: http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/wires\/ap\/article-2835422\/Civil-rights-figure\u2013US-divided-race-again.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Further reading:<\/b><\/p>\n

Bridges, R. and Lundell, M. (ed.) (1999) Through My Eyes<\/i>. Scholastic.<\/p>\n

Bridges, R. (2009) Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story<\/i> (Scholastic Reader). Cartwheel Books.<\/p>\n

Cole, R. (2010) The Story of Ruby Bridges.<\/i> Scholastic.<\/p>\n


\nJanice Wesley and the
\nBirmingham Children\u2019s Crusade, 1963
\n<\/span>Research by Laura Redfern<\/span><\/h2>\n

\u00a0<\/b>1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>What motivated you to become involved in the movement?<\/b><\/p>\n

ANS: I became involved in the Movement after I attended my first MASS meeting.\u00a0 Rev. James Bevel spoke to the teenagers in a separate room and provided some eye-opening examples of inequities that were put upon us.\u00a0 Some of what he said, I was not totally aware of and to hear it, I became determined to do what I could to change it.<\/i><\/p>\n

Some of what he told us was that we were getting second hand books from white schools \u2013 I knew that, but I didn\u2019t realize that our books were outdated.\u00a0 He told us that we pay the same price for the food that we buy at lunch counters that where could not sit. Our football uniforms were second hand<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\u00a02.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What did you hope to achieve?<\/b><\/p>\n

ANS:\u00a0 I wanted a level playing field; to be treated like everyone else; equal access.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a03.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How did you get involved? What were the tactics\/ training you used?<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0ANS: I attended some student non-violent workshops where we were prepared for being arrested.\u00a0 Non-violence was emphasized, we could not fight back or respond to name calling or even being hit.<\/i><\/p>\n

4.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What was the response to the march?<\/b><\/p>\n

ANS:\u00a0 The response of the students from all across the city was overwhelming! \u00a0It seemed to me, everybody that I knew was going to jail.\u00a0 We talked about it, the popular radio DJs talked about it in coded language and song.\u00a0 Being in the march was the thing to do!<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a05.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Were you aware of any wider support for the children\u2019s march? Was there any\u00a0\u00a0 white support?<\/b><\/p>\n

ANS:\u00a0 Although I was not aware of it at the time, but I learned later that there was white support; mostly financial and not public.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a06.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How did you feel during the movement? Was there any significant moments that still stand out to you?<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ANS:\u00a0 <\/b>I was very excited about participating.\u00a0 I realized the extent to which I had been unfairly treated and I wanted to do what I could to effect change in a positive way.\u00a0 One of the most significant memories I have is that of the music.\u00a0 \u201cWe Shall Overcome\u201d!\u00a0 Sometimes I cry when I hear it, even today!\u00a0 The music was such an important part of conveying the message.\u00a0 It was inspiring and encouraging.\u00a0 I felt that God was on our side.<\/i><\/p>\n

7.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How did your friends and family feel?<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ANS:\u00a0 <\/b>Most of my friends were right with me in jail.\u00a0 A few of my close friends had parents whose employers had threatened to terminate them if their children were arrested.\u00a0 So they either went to school or stayed home.\u00a0 They wanted to participate, but could not because of this.\u00a0 <\/i><\/p>\n

My mother had urged me to go to school, and not get myself in any trouble.\u00a0 So I did go to school, but I didn\u2019t stay.\u00a0 I feel that she was more afraid of possible consequences than lack of support.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t fear going because I didn\u2019t believe that anything could or would happen to me.<\/i><\/p>\n

8.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Has your involvement had a lasting impact on you?<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ANS:<\/b>\u00a0 It has indeed had a lasting effect on me.\u00a0 I am certainly more aware of legal matters that appear to reverse some of the gains that were made as a result of the demonstrations of the \u201860s.\u00a0 I am also very sensitive with regard to receiving respect and equal treatment as a citizen of the USA.\u00a0\u00a0 I am concerned about injustice anywhere and everywhere and I will speak out against it.\u00a0 <\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0 I did not realize it at the time, but we made a significant contribution to human rights around the world.\u00a0 It is something that I am VERY proud of today.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a09.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How do you feel about US society now?<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ANS:\u00a0 <\/b>It is a work in progress.\u00a0 We have come a long ways from where we were fifty years ago, but there is still work to do.\u00a0 <\/i><\/p>\n

As I reflect on <\/b>the overall state of society today, I see young black males representing the highest numbers in the penal system. America has the highest incarcerated population in the world compared to fifty years ago. Are we more or less being faced with a society where young black men are unjustly racially profiled, targeted and shot? Are we not in a society where the criminal justice system favors a guilty white, but rich person verses an innocent black, but poor person? We have NOT overcome yet.<\/i><\/p>\n

10.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Has there been a link\/ interest in the UK before now?<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ANS:\u00a0 <\/b>The link to the UK that I am aware of is that American slavery via Liverpool occurred and racial discrimination against people of color was prevalent.\u00a0 Similar bus boycotts also took place in the UK during the 1960\u2019s.<\/i><\/p>\n

11.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What do you think a human rights movement needs to succeed?<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ANS:\u00a0 <\/b>The short answer for this is that you cannot legislate love.\u00a0 So writing laws won\u2019t make a human rights movement<\/i> <\/b>happen.\u00a0 Using the civil rights movement as a template, people have to be educated.\u00a0 The classroom would be a great place to begin implementation of an awareness of human rights and dignity.\u00a0 This applies to all indigenous people; women and children.<\/i><\/p>\n

12.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What do you think we can learn from your history and the history of the civil rights movement?<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0ANS:\u00a0 <\/b>The movement was Christian based; it was non violent and had effective leadership.\u00a0 Change happens slowly, but it takes persistence, perseverance and sacrifice.\u00a0 Some of the battles were won because innocent blood was shed.\u00a0 We paid a price for the freedoms that were obtained; some of us were bitten by dogs, some were hosed, many others were jailed.\u00a0 Six innocent young people died.\u00a0 Freedom was not free!<\/i><\/p>\n

Courtesy of American Federation of Teachers, International Department, Civic Voices<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Elmore and Peggy Nickleberry and the Memphis sanitation workers\u2019 strike, 1968
\nResearch by Carrie Supple
\n<\/span><\/h2>\n

\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0\u2018I would definitely march again. I would march again because we needed rights. I needed to feed my family and the only way to get it was to march. And the same things are happening today. \u2019<\/i> \u2013 Elmore Nickleberry<\/p>\n

Elmore Nickleberry<\/b> was part of the Memphis sanitation workers strike in 1968. His wife Peggy Nickleberry<\/b> supported him.<\/p>\n

Many sanitation workers (bin men) made so little that they qualified for welfare even after working a 40-hour week. Like many other white people in Memphis, some of these supervisors thought of black people as their personal servants and called them \u2018boy\u2019. Black sanitation workers were often called \u2018walking buzzards.\u2019<\/p>\n

The city hired and fired unskilled black workers at will, provided them with no showers or other sanitary facilities, no access to supervisory jobs, no rights and no respect, minimal health and accident insurance. The city did not provide them with gloves or uniforms. They did hard, heavy work, lifting leaky garbage tubs and carrying them on their shoulders or heads, or dumping the contents of pushcarts into outmoded decrepit trucks. City rules forbade black employees to seek shelter from rain anywhere but in the back of their compressor trucks, with the garbage. During foul weather, black workers were sent home without pay while the white workers were paid a full day.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s difficult to talk about it\u2026during the cold weather my hands would be freezing and we had nowhere to get warm or shower\u2026. Now it helps to talk about it but at first I wouldn\u2019t\u2026 I came back to Memphis and found we weren\u2019t getting treated right\u2026And I think anyone who goes to fight for his country should come back and get a good job,\u00a0 that\u2019s what I think.\u2019<\/i> \u2013 Elmore Nickelberry, I am a Man<\/i> film footage<\/p>\n

February 1, 1968:<\/b>\u00a0On a rainy February afternoon, two black sanitation workers sat inside the back of a garbage truck to stay dry. The walls inside the packer were caked with putrefying garbage of all sorts \u2013 yard waste, dead chickens and mouldy food. Old and poorly maintained, an electrical short in its wiring caused the compressor to start running, and Echol Cole and Robert Walker were crushed to death, chewed up like garbage. The deaths left the wives and children of the two men destitute. T. O. Jones, a union organizer, president of Local 1733 of the AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) knew both of the men. He called their deaths \u201ca disgrace and a sin.\u201d<\/p>\n

On February 11th<\/sup> <\/b>Jones held a meeting with sanitation workers to discuss the recent deaths, partial pay on rainy days and safety conditions. They decided that enough was enough and voted to strike.<\/p>\n

While reluctant to join the battle at first, the city\u2019s black community, some 40% of the city\u2019s population of half a million, saw the violent police response and the Mayor\u2019s hard line against the workers as a carryover of the \u201cplantation mentality\u201d of white racism that so many people had endured in the mid-South\u2019s history of slavery and segregation. When workers put up picket signs declaring \u201cI Am a Man,\u201d everyone knew exactly what they were talking about.<\/p>\n

March 18th<\/sup>: <\/b>The strike did not get much national attention until Dr. Martin Luther King gave an impassioned speech to 10,000 sanitation strikers and supporters in Charles Mason Temple, probably the largest indoor mass gathering in the South during the civil rights era. King declared, \u201call labour has dignity\u201d.<\/p>\n

Notably, even though the strikers were all male, women in both the black and the white communities played crucial roles through family, church, and community organizations in providing food, clothing and shelter for striking families and in spearheading a consumer boycott that devastated downtown merchants. The boycott is also an example of the solidarity between different groups as part of this protest, including the Black Power movement, churches and synagogues.<\/p>\n

On April 4th<\/sup> 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was shot dead as he stood on the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel. He was back in Memphis to lead a march in support of the striking workers. His murder caused nation-wide grief, rage and despair but the movement did not stop.<\/p>\n

The strike was settled April 16 <\/b>and most of the workers\u2019 demands were met.<\/p>\n

The legacy of the strike:<\/b><\/p>\n

The Memphis strike had widespread and historic repercussions, both negative and positive. King\u2019s assassination left his Poor People\u2019s Campaign to flounder; six weeks later, the murder of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy provided a crushing blow to the social change movements of the 1960s. However, the example of the strike\u2019s success activated municipal, hospital and service workers across the South; AFSCME, viewing the strike as a seminal moment, evolved into one of the largest unions in the United States, and a powerhouse in electoral politics. The success of the sanitation strike in Memphis inspired thousands of other city employees from around the Southern United States to stand up and demand dignity, respect and more importantly, collective bargaining in their workplace. The organizing drive in the South not only included sanitation workers but hospital and school employees, social workers and bus drivers. Despite right-to-work laws and anti-union sentiment in the South, new AFSCME locals were organized in Baltimore and Charlotte, North Carolina. Local 1733 became the largest union in Memphis, and in Miami, sanitation workers gained one of the best union contracts in the nation.<\/p>\n

Links <\/b><\/p>\n

Film about the strike: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=HBDgH435oaU&feature=related<\/a><\/p>\n

NBC interview with Lee Saunders: http:\/\/www.afscme.org\/video\/nbc-nightly-news-remembering-dr-king-and-the-memphis-sanitation-strike<\/a><\/p>\n

I Am A Man: The Movie<\/i> website: http:\/\/www.iamamanthemovie.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

NPR Fresh Air interview with Prof Michael Honey: http:\/\/www.npr.org\/player\/v2\/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=89372561&m=89372560<\/a><\/p>\n

Further reading<\/b><\/p>\n

Green, L. B. (2009) Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle. <\/i>Univ of North Carolina Press.<\/p>\n

Honey, Prof. M. K (2008) Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King\u2019s Last Campaign. <\/i>W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Marcia Heinemann Saunders
\n<\/span>Interview by Carrie Supple<\/span><\/h2>\n

When and how did you become aware of the Civil Rights Movement<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

I grew up in \u2018the cradle of liberalism\u2019 – Cambridge. Massachusetts ,\u00a0 one of the six New England states on the east coast of the USA – but a formative memory is of the local skating club when I was about eight.\u00a0 Although everyone else at school joined, my father refused to let us because it had a colour bar. I felt so left out, and pretty furious, but it prompted me to think about what it might be like to be excluded because of the colour of your skin.\u00a0 I remember reading Cry, the Beloved Country<\/u>, about apartheid South Africa when I was quite young, reading about the Holocaust and seeing the film The Boy With Green Hai<\/u>r.\u00a0 Years later at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, I became involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement and civil rights and civil liberties campaigns (my father\u2019d lost his job because of \u2018McCarthyism\u2019) and \u00a0I\u2019d gone to demonstrations in New York and Washington DC, including the March on Washington in 1963. \u00a0And I\u2019d heard Martin Luther King speak several times.<\/p>\n

Your background<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

My family is from Germany. My father\u2019s family was Jewish; his forbears emigrated to the US in the 1850s. He was a teacher who had been a communist and involved in labour movements, and his career had been stifled by McCarthyism. My mother\u2019s family was Quaker. The American Friends Service Committee brought her out of Germany in 1937 because she\u2019d taken part in demonstrations against Hitler and refused to sign a loyalty oath as a student teacher, placing herself in danger.<\/p>\n

The project\u2019s background<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

A couple of Cornell students were among the early Mississippi Freedom Riders and had followed that up with a visit to Fayette County Tennessee in 1963 where evicted black people had created a \u201cTent City\u201d, made famous by folk singer Pete Seeger #<\/span>. The Cornell\/Tompkins County voting rights project developed from that visit, and in the summer of 1964 I drove down south to Fayetteville with an old friend and fellow Cornell student. I was in graduate school at Chicago by that time, \u00a0but I knew some of the key people including an inspiring economics professor, Doug Dowd and I\u2019d gone back to Cornell a couple of times to take part in training sessions. Mostly these were about \u2018passive resistance,\u2019 how to respond to extreme violence without inviting further violence \u2013 e.g. going all floppy and allowing yourself to be picked up and carried away.<\/p>\n

Funds<\/strong> \u2013 In the preceding\u00a0 year there had been a major fundraising campaign in Ithaca, the county and among faculty and students.\u00a0 Project members, parents and friends all for rent and food.<\/p>\n

Localism and support<\/strong><\/p>\n

The heart of the project – in addition of course to the people and their leaders in Fayette County itself – was the community of Cornell, Ithaca and Tompkins county people. People were able to draw on networks and develop strength and trust from them.\u00a0 Unlike the Mississippi project, this wasn\u2019t a mass national campaign; although similar and allied, it was very locally based and organised.\u00a0 I think we\u2019ve had experience in this country too that successful campaigns may have gained special strength from being local, built on existing relationships and a shared sense of community and responsibility. It\u2019s particularly important, I think, \u00a0that we were invited<\/u> in by people who\u2019d been fighting there for their rights, unsuccessfully, for years \u2013 we didn\u2019t impose ourselves and we always saw ourselves as supporters not as leaders.<\/p>\n

My father was proud and supportive from the beginning. My friends\u2019 responses were \u2018I wish I could go too\u2019.\u00a0 They thought it was exciting.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think any of us really knew how dangerous it would be.<\/p>\n

What it was like: <\/strong>It was very serious. We arrived at about the time the bodies of three murdered civil rights workers (Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney) were discovered only 15 miles away.\u00a0 We had to be very disciplined about where we went. We didn\u2019t go to white areas or white stores, we didn’t fraternise with whites except Mr. Redfearn (the candidate for sheriff) because if one of us got into trouble it would hurt the project. As a whole group we met twice in 8 weeks \u2013 this wasn\u2019t a social event – and with hindsight maybe we should\u2019ve met together more often.\u00a0 We did of course have regular meetings with our leaders \u2013 the older graduate students \u2013 so there was still lots of sharing of ideas and information, and once one of the black leaders and his family had us all to a wonderful hog roast.<\/p>\n

The McFerren grocery shop and garage was very important. We were there most days to buy food or get a tire fixed (see below). Mr. John McFerren was the local civil rights leader. He\u2019d been in the Korean War and that was some of the genesis of this. Black men had been in integrated armed forces \u00a0– had been prepared to give their lives to the country, and many did just that \u00a0– then those who came home couldn\u2019t vote, their children went to bad schools, they lived in shacks, their choice was to work in the cotton fields and make a bit extra by sharecropping or head for the segregated city slums with all their poverty and violence in the northern states. A lot of the campaign energy came from a huge sense of injustice.<\/p>\n

Arriving in Tennessee<\/strong> \u2013 I lived with a single mother and her daughter. They were warm, welcoming\u00a0 and incredibly generous, and though the shack had no running water (we drew water from a communal well several times a day) everything was pristine. They wore beautifully ironed cotton dresses on Sundays, and I particularly remember a yellow candlewick bedspread, and eating grits, beans and rice. At first I thought grits were awful but I learned to like them. We were sort of family. There was no husband – \u00a0\u201cpeople like us can hardly afford to get married and we certainly can\u2019t afford to get divorced.\u2019\u00a0 It took a lot of courage, as well as work, to take us in.<\/p>\n

Church played a huge role in the life of the local community and in our campaign. Because most of our work was 1:1 or 2:2 – we’d go around to sharecroppers’ shacks and talk about voting, or schools or whatever and then invite people to come with us to town to register.\u00a0 Sundays were special; we saw the whole community then in church. Usually at the end of the service we\u2019d be asked to say why we were there, what we were doing and what we hoped they\u2019d do.\u00a0 It was important to avoid putting any pressure on people; even registering to vote was risky.<\/p>\n

Church in the deep south seemed to me like a celebration.\u00a0\u00a0 The way they sang \u2013 the emotion, perfect synchrony and harmony, dynamism \u2013 was so different from New England (or England for that matter).\u00a0 It reflected the way they tried to conduct their struggle and was a bulwark in it.<\/p>\n

When we went around the houses we always made it clear people could tell us to go away. Despite their poverty we were almost always offered tea or coffee or, more importantly water, it was so hot. On the whole men would talk with men and I\u2019d talk with women about voting and also about our lives. I think it was pretty even between numbers of men and women registering and women seemed to be the quiet backbone.\u00a0 Kids asked us loads of questions \u2013 why were so many of us were Jews (they\u2019d been taught that Jews killed Christ) and did we believe in evolution and if so could we explain it?\u00a0 We were the first post-world war II generation and perhaps that \u2013 the holocaust – \u00a0made us more open to understanding the persecution of black people.<\/p>\n

Did being involved in the summer of \u201964 influence your future work<\/strong>? Yes. I learned so much. I saw how people supported or didn\u2019t support each other and the importance of networks, trust and the ability to be frank about feelings and fears, and how to handle yourself under pressure or in crisis \u2013 this has been useful in my role as a health service and social services manager. I learned about managing myself, about the responsibility that comes from being part of a group or team, and I think I learned to listen and take seriously people who were less privileged and see them not just as victims but as people to respect.\u00a0 Most of all I learned what life was like for so many Americans and how lucky I was.\u00a0 I also learned a lot about handling or responding to anger \u2013 other people\u2019s and my own.<\/p>\n

The FBI was horrible. \u00a0Once I went with a group of local black people to see the FBI in Memphis, to complain about the harassment, and the questions they asked were about us, the volunteers, not about the threats and violence black people were enduring but about whether we\u2019d coerced them into trying to register to vote. \u00a0We saw that it was we who were being investigated so we cut it short and left pretty quickly. \u00a0I made a note of the questions they asked in a report of this visit and sent a copy to my father, who wrote to his congressman and senator about the FBI\u2019s behaviour and the lack of security this meant.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t come away feeling triumphant. We lost the election;\u00a0 I knew that I\u2019d got far more out of the experience than I\u2019d given; and I worried we\u2019d left the people we\u2019d supported in a perilous situation. In a deeply dreadful way the murder of Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner had probably protected us, because white people became a bit cautious about what they nonetheless still would have liked \u00a0to do to civil rights workers from the north.\u00a0 But their attitudes towards black people hadn\u2019t changed, though their behaviour became more inhibited at least for a while.<\/p>\n

How aware were you of all the movements within the movement?<\/strong> \u00a0While I was at Cornell, Martin Luther King and people from \u00a0the Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC) \u00a0and Congress of Racial Equality \u00a0(CORE) came to raise money and support.\u00a0 I went to listen to them all, was interested in all their perspectives didn\u2019t get caught up in the differences which it seemed to me were exaggerated by the opposition and much of the press, who always take advantage of a \u2018divide and rule\u2019 opportunity. \u00a0I particularly enjoyed the first time I heard Martin Luther King:\u00a0 he asked for a \u2018silent collection\u2019 – dollar bills, that is,\u00a0 not just the coins he\u2019d usually get.\u00a0 He\u2019d spotted lots of rich fraternity boys who mainly came to hear him because he was so famous; they really couldn\u2019t have cared less and used to harass us. Dr King was obviously used to that type on college campuses and knew how to get the best out of them.\u00a0 And a few of them joined us afterwards, which was great.<\/p>\n

What was key to the fact that the project went ahead and was a success?\u00a0 What did you learn, and what do you think others might learn from it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The leadership within Fayette County was the key. As for ourselves I think the fact that so many of us had already been involved in the civil rights movement and early anti-Vietnam stuff on campus was crucial. Had we just applied as individuals to the nationwide Mississippi Summer \u201964 project it might have taken at least a year even to get started.\u00a0 As it was we were all part of the planning and took responsibility for how<\/em> we worked together as well as for what<\/em> we did \u2013 these days we call it\u00a0 \u2018ownership.\u2019 I think what people can learn from this kind of experience in the past is quite practical. It\u2019s about networks of support and influence, relationships, values (equality), a willingness and indeed courage to take risks, and it\u2019s about building and keeping trust. The Fayette experience helped me appreciate in my subsequent career why it\u2019s so hard to transfer innovative projects – planning and implementation are parts of a whole created by a team, not a sequence of events undertaken by individuals. Even Nobel prize winners keep pointing that out.<\/p>\n

We were invited<\/em>; there was already a black network; Fayette\u2019s black leadership was skilled, smart and experienced.\u00a0 They realised that this part of Tennessee had a lot in common with notorious Mississippi, which of course attracted most of the voter registration attention.\u00a0 Locally there had been some fragmentation in the community , some divide and rule, and they had the vision to see that people from outside might help in such a situation.\u00a0 \u00a0They decided to bring in an external common friend<\/u> or ally – the opposite of the \u2018common enemy\u2019 against which people tend to unite.<\/p>\n

Such success as we had was not because we dreamed up a good project, had good values \u00a0or provided leadership (which we didn\u2019t) but because we went there explicitly and respectfully\u00a0 as a team of aides, not as leaders.\u00a0 It was not abstract \u2018benevolence\u2019 and we were careful not to step outside our boundaries.\u00a0 I always saw John McFerren as the real leader. The network he led was based in social networks and the Korean War.<\/p>\n

There was quite a lot of publicity about the project; for example a co-worker and friend, who later became a well known journalist for the New York Times, had an article published while we were there in the New York Herald Tribune and David Halberstam from the Times came down. Donald Street, a local Ithaca (Cornell\u2019s location) journalist and declared sceptic came down, changed his mind and wrote favourably about what young people were doing that summer<\/p>\n

I think we all became both more mutually reliant and also more self-reliant. You can\u2019t drive along a road pursued by people trying to force you into a ditch without developing resilience – you have to be fiercely calm, \u00a0keep it together and be able to say, \u2018take a right here\u2026Hang on\u2026.\u2019 We would throw tacks (nails with big flat heads) out the window to puncture their tires but those same tacks would still be there on the road next day so we\u2018d get the flat tires and limp along to McFerren\u2019s garage. That was always quite nice, to tell you the truth, because you got to sit around chatting for a while, or help out in the store, or learn to change tires. \u00a0I only came face to face with our attackers when they passed us in cars swearing at us, or on rare occasions when we were in town, in Somerville, walking along the boardwalk. Then somebody might mutter or stop and stare at you or crowd you off the walk. You just let them.<\/p>\n

Once a week we did a round of picking people up and driving them into town to register, watching and waiting and driving them home. They were usually worried and often silent. It was scary. It wasn\u2019t just that they might be beaten up;\u00a0 people had been evicted, lost their jobs (Tent City) – anything could happen to a southern black person in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

On voting day, Aug. 6th<\/sup> black voters were made to stand in line for hours\u00a0 and then only let in to vote when there were no white people in the room or waiting. In the event more people \u2018voted\u2019 than were listed \u2013 a lot of dead people voted – and although black people voted in very large numbers they lost the election as we\u2019d originally expected, though of course our hopes had risen over the weeks of such strong engagement.\u00a0 The next day we went home.<\/p>\n

Afterwards<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

I returned to Chicago and adjusted back to academic life. I became involved in a literacy project with black people: many of the black people there, or \u00a0their parents were,originally from the south so there seemed to be a connection. Martin Luther King began to speak out about the Vietnam War and black people began wondering what they were doing there. Malcolm X set up his HQ in Chicago and I used to walk by his office every day on my way to teach downtown.<\/p>\n

I left the US in 1967 –\u00a0 I married a Norwegian, and with hindsight I guess the experience of the civil rights movement and Vietnam war wrecked my pride in my country and made it easier to leave.\u00a0 I know however that my life in the USA was very privileged, and I go back regularly to see friends and family, and enjoy the space. I\u2019m a dual national.\u00a0 After my father\u2019s death I found he\u2019d kept copies of my letters, and of his own to politicians. Now I have them and they\u2019ve helped me remember.<\/p>\n

The civil rights movement itself didn\u2019t transform American society, but was a step forward.\u00a0 Probably the thing that has had the greatest impact since is Barack Obama’s election and its powerful symbolism.<\/p>\n

Do you think the CRM can teach us today about how to respond to social injustice<\/strong>? I think so, provided it\u2019s not just theoretical stuff. It’s important to see the continuity of effort.\u00a0 What kind of person do you want to be, how do you relate to other people, what should they be able to expect from you? It\u2019s about collective action, persistence, resilience, trust, mutuality, all those things.\u00a0 I think there were some important links between the civil rights and anti-apartheid movements. I guess I can also link it to women\u2019s rights and a career in the NHS; \u00a0they too have the values of fairness and equality at heart and are persistently under attack.<\/p>\n

I hope that something comes through to the effect that the civil rights movement was hard, tough and dangerous work. It wasn\u2019t about wonderful chats or the great songs, though we had both, or sitting round planning the revolution. It was quiet conversations, risk, other people\u2019s courage and absolute determination.<\/p>\n

Marcia Heinemann Saunders 02.01.2015 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

#<\/a> Pete Seeger was a famous folk musician who brought attention to oppression in the USA.\u00a0 Here is an excerpt from \u201cFayette County\u201d\u00a0 in the\u00a0 \u201cPete Seeger Story Songs\u201d (1960):<\/p>\n

\u201cThey kept us from voting for nearly a hundred years<\/p>\n

All because our color is not the same as theirs.<\/p>\n

But now we\u2019ve gone and voted and we live in tents today<\/p>\n

Our families cold and hungry but here is what we say:<\/p>\n

We were born in Fayette County \u2013 here we will stay,<\/p>\n

It will take more than hunger to drive us away.\u201d<\/p>\n

“They kept us from voting for nearly a hundred years,<\/p>\n

And all because our color is not the same as theirs.<\/p>\n

But now we’ve gone and voted and we live in tents today.<\/p>\n

Our families cold and hungry but here is what we say:<\/p>\n

We were born in Fayette County here we will stay.<\/p>\n

It will take more than hunger to drive us away.”<\/p>\n

Interview with Jonathan Steele
\n<\/span>by Michael Gillender<\/span><\/h2>\n

On 28\/01\/2015<\/p>\n

So, you were studying at Yale at the time of Freedom Summer. How aware were you of what was going on around you at the time of the US Civil Rights Movement?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, six months before the Freedom Summer, some friends from Yale and I made a mini trip down to Mississippi for a few days.\u00a0\u00a0 We went because they were holding an election for the governorship of Mississippi and the local black organisations decided they would hold their own parallel election to dramatise the fact that most blacks couldn\u2019t vote because so many were not allowed to register.\u00a0 The idea of the parallel election was to pretend they were registered and show they wanted to vote.\u00a0\u00a0 It was partly a publicity thing, but also a way of mobilising ordinary black people.\u00a0 It was the same thing that they were to do later next year in \u201964 for the Freedom Summer.\u00a0 They invited a few white students to come down and people from Yale went, people from Stanford in California\u2026 so, that was my first experience of the South, not the Freedom Summer but November 1963.\u00a0 Before I went, of course I knew broadly, like anybody might, that there was a problem with Civil Rights in the southern states of the United States. And that black people couldn\u2019t sit in restaurants, go to the same hotels and certainly not go to the same schools as whites\u2026 and I knew there was a voting problem.<\/p>\n

We saw quite a lot of violence in the four days we were down in Mississippi in November \u201963. Fire marshals came in and broke up one of the mass meetings we were at.\u00a0\u00a0 They claimed there was a fire hazard and we all had to get out and to the street and pack up.\u00a0 O another occasion we were in a black church, a relatively modern building in a town called Biloxi, a crowd developed outside and started throwing rocks and stones into the church, smashing the windows and we were all cowering inside behind the pillars of the aisle trying to avoid being hurt. So it was just a very very tense, brutal sort of atmosphere.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what made me decide to take part when they decided to have a whole, big project going on for the whole summer next year with about 800 students down there.<\/p>\n

How similar was Freedom Summer the next year to what you\u2019d experienced the year before? What drove you to go south again?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, it was pretty much the same thing. There was quite a bit of violence. Obviously you would know of the famous case of the three young people who were murdered.\u00a0 One of them had gone down there just as we had from the orientation session that we had in Oxford, Ohio where we trained for a week before we went down.\u00a0 Nobody was allowed to go to Mississippi unless they\u2019d had some training, which we hadn\u2019t of course had the first time the previous year.<\/p>\n

When we got to Mississippi we came across a lot of violence and suspicion but we made a lot of progress. Most of my time was spent talking to black people, canvassing, going door-to-door like you do in a British election.\u00a0\u00a0 Just going round to people\u2019s houses explaining to them\u2026 not so much the issues of policies between parties but simply why it was important to register to vote because blacks could make a difference if they voted.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We would draw up lists of people who said they were willing to go down to the courthouse to register.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You had to do it physically in person.\u00a0\u00a0 There was no postal registration so that was a huge psychological barrier to black people.\u00a0 The courthouse was considered a \u2018white man\u2019s building\u2019,\u00a0 you know, and to have to go down there and not know how you were going to be treated or whether you\u2019d be beaten up.\u00a0\u00a0 Some people who were in jobs were often threatened that they would lose their job if they registered or if their wife registered. So there was a lot of fear and pressure that you had to overcome and that\u2019s what canvassing was all about.\u00a0\u00a0 It was much more intense than British elections you see because you were really dealing with huge historical issues of fear and anxiety and even a sense of inferiority. I mean one of the things we had to keep telling these people was \u201cdon\u2019t call us Sir\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 Some would say \u201cwe\u2019ll go down and register Sir\u201d and we\u2019d say \u201cyou know don\u2019t call us Sir.\u00a0\u00a0 We\u2019re not in charge of anything, we\u2019re not the bosses, we\u2019re not the plantation owners, we\u2019re just trying to help.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then we would make a date with people.\u00a0 First we would check out whether they were willing to get registered and again you had to be careful, sensitive because we were white, we were better spoken, better educated than many of these people and we didn\u2019t want to just kind of bully them as it were into registering.\u00a0\u00a0 That would be using a sort of equal pressure to what they were suffering from in the past when they were told not to register.\u00a0\u00a0 Now suddenly they were being told they must register so you had to be very sensitive about it.<\/p>\n

Then we would draw up lists of people who were willing to register and we\u2019d try and organise transport because it was an awful long way to the courthouse for people. And make arrangements for who would go in the morning of what day, and who would go in the afternoon.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t want a great crowd to come to cause a big incident so maybe just five or six people would go in the morning and five or six in the afternoon. We would stand in the back and just monitor it.\u00a0\u00a0 Obviously, we weren\u2019t registering ourselves.<\/p>\n

It sounds quite painstaking actually<\/b><\/p>\n

It was very painstaking because we had to be very sensitive, I mean people would warn us \u2013 blacks were called Negroes, that was the current terminology \u2013\u00a0 they would say Negroes are very, very slow because they\u2019ve lived in this situation for a century and \u2018Don\u2019t get impatient, just take your time\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes we would talk about voter registration in churches and some churches were no good; that was another thing.\u00a0 First you\u2019d go to see the pastor of the church and say \u201ccould we hold a meeting in your church at the end of the Sunday service?\u201d \u2013 \u201chave ten minutes or fifteen minutes to talk to the congregation about voting and why we\u2019ve come down here\u201d. There was a lot of curiosity what all these young white were kids doing in Mississippi.<\/p>\n

Absolutely, they must have never seen anything like it?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah they hadn\u2019t, so we had to explain what we were doing, why we\u2019d come and then explain why voting was important. Some churches would let us in and some wouldn\u2019t and then we would start making lists as they came out of church and say \u2018who is willing to go down on Thursday week or whatever it is, to the courthouse.\u2019<\/p>\n

That was another question I was going to ask.\u00a0 What sort of response did you get from them, not necessarily from the white citizens but the people you went to talk to, were they hostile or were they..<\/b><\/p>\n

No no, nobody was \u2013 you mean the Negroes, the black people? Nobody was hostile.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But there was a lot of apathy and of course we were fired up, we were very idealistic, impatient, eager to get on, so sometimes you got sort of angry.\u00a0 You had to hold back your anger at people\u2019s apathy.\u00a0\u00a0 You thought \u2018why on earth can\u2019t they see the point?\u2019.\u00a0 You felt if they could combine and get together it would be so much better but people would say to us \u201cYou know it\u2019s been like this for centuries, it\u2019s ancient. The white folks are too strong and they won\u2019t allow it\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 Or they\u2019d tell us the whites will fire us from our jobs \u2013 so we had to be quite sensitive.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But people did respect us.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They would say you\u00a0 \u2018we really respect your coming down here you\u2019re trying to do something for black people, you don\u2019t have to be here, we admire you for that but you must understand we can\u2019t do it\u2019.<\/p>\n

Going back to Oxford, Ohio\u2026 what sort of experience did you have there, was it a week-long orientation is that right?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah it was a week-long thing, a combination of briefings about Mississippi, just basic education about what the state is like, the history, the reasons for the prejudice and discrimination, how the voting obstacles are put in place for black people; a certain amount about the local economy, many blacks in the rural areas obviously were sharecroppers on these huge cotton plantations. Some of it was about the legal arrangements:\u00a0 if you get arrested what you should do, how you should behave if you\u2019re beaten up or if people come towards you threatening to beat you up, what your response should be. You know, not to be provocative, to be very submissive, polite and not try and use violence back.<\/p>\n

Then there was a lot of what was meant to be morale raising stuff about how important the work was, and then almost the opposite of that, a kind of psychological testing. We were told in no uncertain terms that there was a great risk there, and, if you didn\u2019t want to go then you shouldn\u2019t. They didn\u2019t want people who were going to have crises when they were down there.<\/p>\n

In fact I was just looking at my notes before this interview.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve still got the little notebook that I had in Mississippi and I\u2019ll just see if I can find some of these quotes…<\/p>\n

Is that for \u2013 you wrote an article?<\/b><\/p>\n

Just basic notes \u2013 here is a great quote from somebody saying \u201cyou laugh\u201d (this is from a black person) \u201cyou laugh to keep from crying, the black man has been laughing for a long time, and I feel sorry for America if he ever stops laughing\u201d<\/p>\n

We were told that there were three attitudes that we must avoid having when we got down to Mississippi: one was to be condescending, another was to be missionaries, and the third was to pretend that we were Negroes ourselves. We can\u2019t get into people\u2019s shoes, we come from a different background, we have a white skin, and we\u2019re protected to some extent\u2026<\/p>\n

There\u2019s the famous pictures as well you see these pictures from these orientation sessions, they\u2019re getting trained in non-violence, shouting abuse at each other, things like that \u2013 did you have to go through \u2013<\/b><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a quote from one of the black SNCC people \u2013 I haven\u2019t got it written down who it was.\u00a0 He\u2019d been working in Mississippi, now this was in Oxford, Ohio, that he was talking to us.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cMan, I\u2019m scared to death, but I go back, I drink, I have to, \u2018cos I\u2019m scared. Like some people have nightmares but they go back. Our guts are all fucked up. We love you, we love you all, or else we wouldn\u2019t have you down to Mississippi\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So you\u2019ve got stuff like that which made you feel \u2018God if they can take the risk \u2013 and it\u2019s much worse for them, we should be able to go and help them\u2019.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another quote, maybe from the same person, it\u2019s on the same page of my notebook: \u201cWe\u2019re proud of all of you white people coming down to join us, you\u2019ve had the pluck to do it.\u00a0\u00a0 As for the Negroes, they have to be in Mississippi, they belong there\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 I wrote my reaction to that session: \u201cThis was an extremely valuable session.\u00a0 For the first time I began to realise just how scared these SNCC workers are, what constant tension they are under. If they appear aloof and resentful of us white students, it\u2019s because of a kind of justified feeling, we whites are just kids who know nothing, but they do know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another quote:\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m swamping you with stuff here. Here was somebody who\u2019d served as a GI conscript in the Korean War: \u201cMan, I was in Korea, I learnt to kill people, and all my life I\u2019ve been taught to hate white people, but I love you people and I\u2019m proud you\u2019re coming down. And when I think of some of the things that are going to happen to you, I\u2019m sick inside, man.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ….\u00a0 He was saying that to us the day before those three volunteers were killed.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

Okay, moving on to that, I\u2019ve read that you were questioned by the FBI\u2026<\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah, you\u2019ve got the dates not quite right there.\u00a0 What happened was this. \u2013 I had a car which had actually been provided by the people who\u2019d paid for my fellowship, I won a fellowship to go to the United States to do graduate studies. It was a very generous fellowship, they actually rented you a car! But it had New York license plates and I felt I had to tell the Harkness people \u2013 it was called the Harkness fellowship \u2013 that I was going to go to Mississippi. They weren\u2019t very keen.\u00a0 They said \u2018do you really have to go?\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I said \u2018I feel I want to go and it\u2019s important for me to see what goes on in different parts of the United States.\u2019 That was actually one of the requirements of the fellowship, to learn about the United States, not just to be head down and studying for a Masters degree, but you were meant to learn about the US.\u00a0 So I said \u2018look, this is a learning experience.\u00a0 I feel I want to go\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They tried to dissuade me but they said finally \u2018well we can\u2019t stop you going but don\u2019t take the car!\u2018\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So I agreed that I wouldn\u2019t use the in Mississippi.\u00a0\u00a0 I drove to Ohio for this orientation thing and then we piled in with three other guys to give them a ride down to Mississippi. We\u2019d been delegated to go to Vicksburg \u2013 so I dropped the other three off in Vicksburg and carried on and took the car to Louisiana, because I thought it would be safer to leave the car in a different state.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I went to some long-stay, open air car park in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and just left the car there.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I mean the man who I had to pay asked \u2018\u201dwhen are you coming back?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I said \u201cI\u2019m not sure, it might be several weeks.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I paid some kind of deposit but he obviously thought it was a bit suspicious; some young white person speaking with an English accent, New York license plate car suddenly being abandoned in a long-stay car park with an indefinite date.\u00a0\u00a0 At some point he got in touch with the FBI, who traced the car, that it was a rented car from the Harkness people and they found my name through it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Eventually,\u00a0\u00a0 —\u00a0 it took them about three weeks\u00a0 –\u00a0 I got a phone call from them, saying would I come down and be interviewed in New Orleans which was where the FBI head office for Louisiana was.<\/p>\n

What were they like?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well they were alright, I mean they were very curt, but at that stage the bodies of these three fellow workers of ours had not yet been discovered, and there was a sort of prevailing argument among the white community that it was a stunt, the disappearance of these boys was a stunt organised to try and discredit Mississippi and the whole of the white community in Mississippi.\u00a0 They claimed they were just hiding and gone off somewhere.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In other words, that these three boys were still alive and had faked their disappearance.\u00a0 Maybe they were in Havana because we were all assumed to be Communists of course.\u00a0\u00a0 Basically the main thrust of the questioning from the FBI was in line with this theory.\u00a0 Had I taken these people away somewhere, had I brought the car down on my own to Louisiana, did I know anything about these three young men.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They seemed to be satisfied when I told them I had nothing to do with it, I didn\u2019t know anything about it, I didn\u2019t know where the young men were; that I had no clue. The interview ended and that was the end of it.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s better than \u2013 I suppose you\u2019ve read the \u2013 Marcia Saunders? Her account of it? That\u2019s more pleasant than I expected, to be honest with you. Okay, we\u2019ll move on a little bit. Our focus is on ordinary people making progress with social justice. What was it like during Freedom Summer, was it driven by people like yourself, the \u2018rank-and-file\u2019 or \u2013 because there is always a lot of talk about leaders, people like Stokely[2]<\/b><\/a> and Fannie Lou Hamer, people like that. But what about, in your opinion was it driven by the \u2018rank-and-file\u2019? or by leaders and leadership?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well the key strategic decisions were driven by the leadership but you know we were all spread out all over the state. There were about a dozen of us in Vicksburg and in other small towns there were similar numbers. In the sharecropping area of the so-called Delta, the Mississippi Delta, there might be just two or three people in small communities.\u00a0\u00a0 So it was all very fragmented and basically we took our own decisions.\u00a0 We decided every morning which part of town we were going to canvass in, whether we were going to go out to some churches in the evening, what we were going to do on the Sunday. So it was quite autonomous and fragmented. The leader of our group was a local black Mississippian guy called Andy, and there were a dozen of us, boys and girls, who were white. Most of us came from these Ivy League universities, more affluent universities so they were middle-class kids and well, frankly they were staggered by what they saw in their own country.\u00a0\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t believe this was part of the United States of America.<\/p>\n

I remember one girl writing home to her parents,\u00a0\u00a0 putting Philadelphia on the address then starting to write \u2018USA\u2019 as though she was writing from a foreign country back home to Philadelphia, USA!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And she suddenly said \u2018God no this is part of the USA I don\u2019t need to put USA on the envelope!\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 So they were pretty staggered by what they saw; and you know one or two people did drop out. Either they came under pressure, particularly it was discovered these three people had been killed.\u00a0 There was some pressure from parents to leave and others individually decided they\u2019d had enough.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But most people carried on because they felt the work was essential, they saw the courage of people around them, they didn\u2019t want to let the side down.<\/p>\n

The problem really was our relationship with this chap Andy.\u00a0 We had no leader amongst ourselves.\u00a0 We were all individualistic people.\u00a0 Nobody wanted to accept leadership from somebody else. Andy was the one who was supposed to be a leader, obviously he was less articulate, less confident verbally, and we had to defer to him sometimes. There were rows and always this little bit of white\/black, sort of<\/p>\n

Tension?<\/b><\/p>\n

Not tension so much as sort of awkward embarrassment, awkwardness because we\u2019d never really had much dealings with black people, he\u2019d had not much dealings with white people except in a sort of confrontational or hostile, resentful sort of environment.<\/p>\n

Stokely Carmichael was at the Oxford, Ohio sessions but I don\u2019t really recall anything particular he said. The key person was Bob Moses, you\u2019ve heard of Bob Moses? He\u2019s going to be 80. He\u2019s having his 80th<\/sup> birthday party quite soon I think somewhere in New York City. He was very soft spoken, absolutely committed to non-violence. You know he was really inspiring \u2013 it was inspirational leadership, soft spoken leadership not the thumping, arm-waving sort of person, shouting from a platform. It was much more intense and convincing.<\/p>\n

Okay, do you think, what sort of progress do you think was made, that summer anyway? Do you think you did a good job?<\/b><\/p>\n

Oh I think a lot of progress was made because it produced this split at the Atlantic City Democratic Party Convention later that summer, when there was a great argument over seating an integrated delegation from Mississippi.\u00a0\u00a0 Fannie Lou Hamer you know was the famous black delegate.\u00a0\u00a0 It really paved the way for Martin Luther King.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t really involved in voter registration.\u00a0 It was much more of a SNCC thing but King then took up voter registration in a big way, it led to the Selma events of February and March the following year, 1965; and Lyndon Johnson came in convinced that he had to support a Voter Registration Bill.<\/p>\n

We did make a lot of progress and, of course the Civil Rights Act was passed while we were down there in July \u201964 which integrated public facilities.\u00a0 But that was on the back of \u2013 not what we\u2019d done but on the back of the Freedom Rides and the sit-ins that started in 1961 and \u201962.<\/p>\n

So, what did you take away from it all? From the whole Summer Project?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, I was completely radicalised. You know I was planning on \u2013 well I wasn\u2019t sure what career I was planning on you know but it would have been a fairly sort of middle-class career! And in the end of course I did end up with a middle class career but I wrote an article for The Guardian from Mississippi which they published and then when the Selma events happened the next year they asked me to cover Selma so I wrote another article for them from Selma.\u00a0\u00a0 So it actually both made me much more radical in my political opinions and more committed to bring about change from the grassroots, bottom-up change; but it also fortuitously, completely unplanned, gave me an opening into a career in journalism.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s been pretty successful I\u2019d say\u2026<\/b><\/p>\n

Very lucky! But I must stress it wasn\u2019t planned.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I mean everybody was asked to write something, this is perhaps quite a good point perhaps to mention; you know I explained how this girl was writing to her parents about what was going on but everybody was asked to write articles for their local newspapers to get the word out.\u00a0 If we\u2019d have been in the social media age no doubt everybody would have been putting stuff up on Twitter and Face book.\u00a0\u00a0 But in those days your local newspaper was the place. Or a student newspaper if you were still a student, on a campus somewhere.\u00a0 Everybody was writing articles so when I decided to write an article for an English paper it wasn\u2019t because I suddenly saw this as an opportunity to get into journalism.\u00a0 It was more \u2018we must get the word out\u2019, \u2018we\u2019re bearing witness\u2019\u00a0 \u2018we\u2019re telling the world about horrible things that are happening, the world needs to know\u2019 We happen to be here in Mississippi and one of our jobs is to tell other people about it.<\/p>\n

Non-violence was something I wanted to focus on, it\u2019s a key, central theme for us as well. What was your attitude towards this tactic in general?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well it worked.\u00a0\u00a0 There was this contrast between the violence of\u00a0 those whites who were resisting and the completely peaceful nature of the black protests and the people queuing up to register to vote.\u00a0\u00a0 That was a dramatic contrast.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So I was very much in favour of the non-violence thing.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There was an argument as you know.\u00a0 People like Stokely Carmichael later came round to the use of violence and the whole thing got more polarised.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We hadn\u2019t had any race riots, everything was peaceful, and the blacks were completely peaceful.\u00a0 You couldn\u2019t blame them or accuse them of anything.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When the race riots started I think it was the one in Watts, a suburb of Los Angeles in 1965 that was the first big one.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It muddied the waters because people said well why are they burning stuff down and what\u2019s the point and its madness.\u00a0\u00a0 They lost some of their moral purity by turning to riots; and then turning to the actual use of guns, you know the Black Panthers.<\/p>\n

Okay, I want to go back a little bit, you were saying about the Harkness people not approving of going down to Mississippi, what about family, people at home, did you tell them?<\/b><\/p>\n

I told them in advance and I did write the occasional letter to them and they were very supportive — that\u2019s the wrong word \u2013 they were very accepting of it.\u00a0\u00a0 They weren\u2019t encouraging me to do it, they weren\u2019t telling me that I was mad and I should stop doing it.\u00a0\u00a0 They kind of accepted it. It was really good to have that.\u00a0 If they had put me under pressure not to go,\u00a0\u00a0 it would have been more difficult.<\/p>\n

Okay that\u2019s great, I\u2019d like to think that my own mother would do that too! Now, there is also a big push for the music and its role in the Movement, I have the John Lewis quote here: \u201cWithout music and song, the non-violent movement would be like a bird without wings\u201d. Was that noticeable?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes, it was a real morale-booster.\u00a0\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing like choral singing to create a group dynamic and group solidarity.\u00a0\u00a0 At all these sessions at Oxford, most of them would end with some kind of singing,\u00a0\u00a0 either \u2018We Shall Overcome\u2019 or \u2018This Little Light Of Mine, I\u2019m Going To Let It Shine\u2019 or any other of those songs.\u00a0\u00a0 And of course in the churches, as I said we used to go to these churches and take part in the services and in these black churches the responses were wonderful.\u00a0 You\u2019d talk and they\u2019d say \u201cOh yeah!\u201d \u201cYes Sir! You tell it like it is!\u201d all that kind of stuff, and some people would get almost carried away in a kind of trance of responding to the preacher.\u00a0\u00a0 I mean we didn\u2019t get anything quite that dramatic but the hymn singing and the gospel singing was incredible, so it was really a morale booster\u2026 very important.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

[1]<\/a> Three American civil rights’ workers, James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael “Mickey” Schwerner, were shot at close range on the night of June 21\u201322, 1964 by members of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Neshoba County Sheriff’s Office and the Philadelphia Police Department located in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The three had been working on the “Freedom Summer” campaign,<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[2]<\/a> Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture) \u2013 former SNCC chairman, honorary chairman of the Black Panther Party, and prominent Civil Rights\/Black Power activist<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


\nThe Greensboro sit-ins
\n<\/span>Research by Katie Nairne<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/h2>\n

\u201cI had the most wonderful feeling. I had a feeling of liberation, restored manhood. I had a natural high. And I truly felt almost invincible. Mind you, [I was] just sitting on a dumb stool and not having asked for service yet,\u201d<\/i> \u2013 Franklin McCain.<\/p>\n

On February 1st<\/sup>, 1960, four black students sat at a lunch counter in a \u2018whites-only\u2019 restaurant at a Woolworth\u2019s store in Greensboro, North Carolina. They were asked to leave but refused, sitting at the counter until the shop closed.<\/p>\n

The next day, the \u2018Greensboro Four\u2019 \u2013\u00a0Joseph McNeil,\u00a0Franklin McCain,\u00a0Ezell Blair, Jr. and\u00a0David Richmond\u00a0\u2013 were joined by more than twenty other black students from other campus groups. They were heckled by white customers and even a black woman working there as a dishwasher, who called them \u201cstupid, ignorant\u2026 rabble-rousers, troublemakers\u201d.<\/p>\n

By day 3 there were 60 students, both black and white. By day 4 there were 300. The sit-ins spread across the country, and students began boycotting stores with segregated lunch counters. The majority of the protests were peaceful, and served as examples of Martin Luther King\u2019s idea of non-violent protest, but there were some instances of violence where fights broke out.<\/p>\n

The sit-ins were covered in newspapers and on television and received government attention when President Eisenhower expressed sympathy for the protestors, saying he was, \u201cdeeply sympathetic with the efforts of any group to enjoy the rights of equality that they are guaranteed by the Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Women played a vital part in these demonstrations, and in fact a sit-in had been carefully planned by female students of Bennett College for a later date. This has been somewhat overlooked by history, but without the hundreds of women protesters the sit-in movement might never have been successful.<\/p>\n

Sales in segregated stores dropped by a third and owners were forced to abandon segregation policies. On July 25th<\/sup>, 1960, black employees of Greensboro\u2019s Woolworth\u2019s store were served at the lunch counter. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 mandated desegregation in public places.<\/p>\n

Links <\/b><\/p>\n

Interviews with Dr Willa B. Player: http:\/\/www.sitins.com\/willabplayer.shtml<\/a><\/p>\n

Interviews about sit-ins in Nashville: http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/amex\/partners\/breakthroughs\/b_resistance.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Audio<\/b>: The Woolworth Sit-in That Launched a Movement, from \u2018All Things Considered\u2019, courtesy of NPR: http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=18615556<\/a><\/p>\n

Further reading\u00a0 <\/b><\/p>\n

Brown, L. B. (2013) Belles of Liberty: Gender, Bennett College and the Civil Rights Movement<\/i>. Women and Wisdom Foundation Inc.<\/p>\n

Jean Stallings and the
\nNational Welfare Rights Organisation
\n<\/span>Interview by Sarah Stewart<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/h2>\n

Jean has been an activist with ATD Fourth World for nearly 15 years. On behalf of Fourth World, she\u2019s participated in the UN\u2019s human rights committee and the subcommittee on the eradication of poverty.<\/p>\n

With ATD Fourth World, she spoke recently at a conference at the UN on poverty and shame.<\/p>\n

Interview<\/b><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t consider myself part of the civil rights movement, although reflecting back I can see that we were. We were a group of mothers, some single, some married, most on benefits. As women on welfare, we were humiliated \u2013 we felt talked at, as though we had no part in the decisions in our lives.<\/p>\n

So, in 1966, when I was in my 20s, I got involved with the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). It was started by George Wiley, who taught at Syracuse University. He galvanized different chapter sin the US \u2013 all over the country \u2013 encouraging people to lead. But the most important person in the NWRO was Johnny Tilman, a great activist in California. She was a leader of the mothers.<\/p>\n

I got involved early on. I had three children, and it was a struggle. How did it happen? I was always looking for a place to buy things at a discount\u2026 so one day I walked with my kids, one of them in a stroller, to a sale at the Five Towns community center in Inwood, Long Island, which was being run for the NWRO. The director, John Kearse, ran a chapter of the NWRO there. I walked in, and that was it \u2013 forget the bargains! I listened to the speakers. It seemed to me that it was a place of safety, where mothers\u2019 voices could be heard.\u00a0 Someone asked me to sit in on a meeting. It changed my life.<\/p>\n

At the time, in the 1960s, there was great shame in being unmarried and having children. Some of the other women were in the same predicament, and they understood. In those days there was so much shame.\u00a0 Poverty and shame went together. And intimidation. The social service authorities would just come, unannounced, and look under your bed, in your belongings, searching for a sign that you had a man in the house. They checked your food, they checked everything. It was terrible. They were disrespectful \u2013 as though your welfare payment was coming out of their pocket. They would say, you\u2019re going to do what I tell you, or else; they would threatened you. Some women had children placed in shelters.<\/p>\n

So these meetings gave us all a great sense of safety. I felt so good going there. During that time, the mid-1960s, I got involved in local campaigns, we talked to politicians about childcare \u2013 because there was no Head Start then \u2013 and it gave me confidence to speak. You have a voice, Jean! That\u2019s how I felt.<\/p>\n

The organization wanted me to go to Albany to the national meeting. They asked me to be a delegate alone with two women, Adie and Mabel, both from Chicago. And we met Dr King and expressed our desire to be recognized by his movement.<\/p>\n

At that time, women were not at the forefront of these movements. We were called \u201cwarrior mothers\u201d \u2013 we were single mothers, vocal, demanding, not pleading, saying we have a right. Sometimes people were taken aback. Even Dr King\u2019s movement wasn\u2019t always pleased with us. People today don\u2019t realize what we were up against.<\/p>\n

They called us \u201cwarrior mothers\u201d because we didn\u2019t plead \u2013 we told. Some people thought we were too aggressive, but it was what we had to do. At the 1968 National Democratic Committee we shouted our way in \u2013 open the doors, open the doors for us mothers! And they did. I was invited to the caucus for childcare, and they listened to us.\u00a0 We got the funding for childcare that we needed. That kind of success forpoor women was pretty rare in those days. We were women from all over \u2013 Baltimore, Roxbury in Boston, California, all across the US.<\/p>\n

At the meeting with Dr King, the only time I ever saw him, I asked, why isn\u2019t Coretta talking to us as a mother? \u201cSister,\u201d he replied, \u201cCoretta\u2019s not feeling well, but I will relay the message to her.\u201d I never found out if he did; he was killed a few months later. But his poor people\u2019s movement was branding out \u2013 he was starting to oppose the war in Vietnam and include women.<\/p>\n

I got involved in the Voting Rights Act, walking the streets to register voters. I was asked by John Kearse to advocate for funding for Head Start. I spoke to a congressman and said we needed a Head Start program for the community center.\u00a0 And we got the funding!\u00a0 One of my children was in one of the very first Head Start programs. We spoke to Dick Gregory of Illinois; we went to the Democratic Committee to the caucus for childcare. We had dignity.<\/p>\n

I had felt I couldn\u2019t do anything, I had three children and no high school degree. The War on Poverty in the early 1970s helped us women. We got jobs, they put us in training programs for people on welfare, they provided childcare and a community center.\u00a0 People on welfare were trained to be managers and assistant managers of food pantries. I was chosen to be a manager for a food pantry in a poor community in Elmont, Long Island. Along with distributing cheese, butter, beans and dried milk, I put up a bulletin board with notices to the community telling them what their rights were. For that reason, it was great \u2013 until the Republicans closed it down. I managed\u00a0 the National Welfare Rights Organization propelled me to go on to other things \u2013 I got my education and volunteers in different things. That voice for change was in me and I went on.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s so important to feel part of something. It doesn\u2019t have to be big \u2013 you don\u2019t have to be famous. You just have to give a part of yourself, and have a voice for change.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t a leader but a little seed \u2013 I had a voice.<\/p>\n

Because I got involved with the NWRO, I learned how to speak with all kinds of people. I learned that I could be part of something bigger. It gave me a voice \u2013 it helped me find my voice. It\u2019s now who you meet, whether they\u2019re famous, or your title, but that you participate and speak out without fear. That\u2019s what\u2019s important.<\/p>\n

These days, young people don\u2019t feel they can do anything. You just have to plant a seed of hope. And listen to them. Listen to their pain. Their experience means more than anything.\u00a0 Once they start talking to others, once they meet others and listen, they see people who are suffering more or less than them, and begin to feel the safety net opening up.<\/p>\n

Things are stacked against young people today. Wars, division, political struggle. The man in New York who was shot in his own building. The 12-year-old shot in the playground.<\/p>\n

I hope young people know there are things they can do. In my day, it wasn\u2019t just the Freedom Riders or the leaders. Everyone played a part. Maybe it\u2019s a small part today, but what matters is that they change their lives and someone else\u2019s life, too.<\/p>\n

\u00a0US-UK stories
\n<\/span>Research by Aminah Khan, Jude Lancet and Steff Shepherd<\/span><\/h2>\n

We tell some of the stories linking the US civil rights movement and the UK including the Bristol bus boycott of 1963 inspired by Montgomery and in opposition to the Bristol Omnibus Company\u2019s racist employment policy. We also tell the stories of the window from \u2018the people of Wales\u2019 for the bombed 16th<\/sup> Street Baptist Church and of Martin Luther King\u2019s honorary degree from Newcastle.<\/p>\n

\u00a0UK History
\nResearch by Martin Spafford
\n<\/span><\/h2>\n

We include a map of the UK showing a few of the lesser- known struggles for freedom and equality over centuries in the UK. We want to elevate the histories of non-violent campaigns for human rights and show how \u2018people like us\u2019 chose to dedicate their energy to working for social justice. We stand on their shoulders and we aim to inspire and empower participants now, to get involved.<\/p>\n

Some songs of the civil rights movement<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Clip from At the River I Stand: <\/i>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xzRUwwRQzVc<\/a><\/p>\n