Given the events going on now and our feelings of disempowerment, maybe now turning to motivation, I recall a period and place in America where a similar “law of the land” denied people’s very humanity. Where power and violence were used to keep people oppressed, there came a breaking point, and it woke up the country, including me.
In the spring of ’63 Rev Fred Shuttleworth perhaps started it all, and then the “Big 6” including the NAACP, Martin Luther King and the SCLC, (look this stuff up) created a movement that the corrupt law and order of racist segregation could not stop.
This is framed by the Cuban Missile Crisis the fall before, and then in Birmingham the progression of demonstrations and particularly the “Children’s Crusade” that brought about at least some desegregation. Then later that summer, the March of Washington for Jobs and Justice, and MLK’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech. Then the bombing of the Birmingham church, a few weeks later the assassination of President Kennedy, and a few weeks later the arrival of the Beatles.
The popularity of Motown and Black musicians singing their own songs and getting as famous as white artists that “covered” them gave way to the “British Invasion.” And there was also the emergence of the young Bob Dylan. But that will have to be another post. I focus on Birmingham here. I hope you find it relevant. Roll video…
Hi Friends!
This is my first post on Substack. Not what I intended to do, but as the occupier of the White House has sent National Guard and Marines, - I'm not going to talk about that.
I'm old enough to remember some parallel events, more than 60 years ago. This is not my primary area of expertise, and there are certainly other subjects I could be on these days, but I want to read you a bit from this great book by Pete Seeger and Bob Reiser, with some reflections added and a little music before we're done.
Maybe to set it up, let me say, in 1963, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth leads a movement in Birmingham, Alabama against racism - segregation. He's arrested trying to register his children at a white school; he's done a lot of other things, too. His house was bombed all the way back in 1956. So, this is nothing new.
There's not a movement with a famous leader yet, as is recalled in this book, in fact. It isn't like MLK, Stokely Carmichael, Fannie Lou Hamer just call for a demonstration, a march, an uprising, and it happens. The people whose names we remember are rising up, just keeping up with everybody else in this leaderless, growing, exploding, consciousness of morality and equality.
Black people boycotted the businesses of Birmingham. And the business owners were ready to take down the “Whites-Only” signs. But the KKK and a tyrant who would sound familiar - his character would sound familiar these days - Bull Connor, stops them. So I want to read from here now.
(From the book, “Everybody Says Freedom” by Pete Seeger and Bob Reiser)
The temperature hit 90 degrees. Everyone was sweating. “Freedom, freedom” a roar rose up from the church. Outside, officers unleashed clubs from their belts. The faces of those I could see, white men, had turned crimson.
Jeremiah X, a Muslim minister standing near me, commented, “At any moment they expect 300 years of hate to spew forth from this church.” Well, that's not what happened. Sixty demonstrators were on their way, marching two abreast. Dick Gregory, the nightclub comedian, was leading the group. At a signal, forty policemen converged, sticks in hand.
“Do you have a permit to parade?” asked the police captain.
“No,' replied Gregory. 'No what?” asked the captain, in what seemed to be a reminder to Gregory he had not used the word, “Sir.”
“No, a thousand times no.” Gregory replied. The captain said, “I hereby place you under arrest.” For the next two hours, the scene was repeated over and over as one group of students strutted out of the church to the cheers of the spectators, the freedom chants of those being carried away a cacophony of freedom.
One thousand students went to jail that day. Day after day. Now this is April 3rd, I believe, something like that. 1,000 students went to jail that day. So the march continued. More people got arrested, and more people got arrested, and more people got arrested, day after day,
So this doesn't have the whole history of it here, but there were something like 45 people the first day. There were 65 the next day. There were 85 the next day. 130 the next day. The jail's got 1,000 people in it. And the march continued. But then the children got arrested. This is sometimes known as the Children's March (“Children’s Crusade.”)
Connor and his men ran about the streets grabbing 11 and 12 year old demonstrators. The children were even using decoy tactics, a small group leading the police astray while the main column of marchers went down another street to the downtown. A policeman ran up to an eight year old child walking with her mother and screamed, “What do you want?” The little girl looked at the policeman. “Freedom,” she said.
An unidentified police captain said, “10 - 15 years from now, we'll look back on this and say, “How stupid could we have been?” Within days, Bull Connor's prisons were full of children. By Tuesday, May 7th, before 10 a.m., police lines and fire hoses went into place. The students set up pickets in front of eight department stores, what students were still out of jail.
Len holt says, “I was standing near a police motorcycle, i could hear the pandemonium at police headquarters over the police radio. I heard Bull Connor's voice, he was mad. He'd been betrayed never before had the students demonstrated before 1 p.m. Nearly four thousand persons returned to the church from their victory march, while they joyously sang inside preparations were being made outside. Cars with dogs drove up, three hundred police officers surrounded the church and park area, fire hoses were set up. As soon as the people emerged from the church, they found themselves surrounded by Connor's police. Squad cars pulled up in front of the church, blocking any chance to retreat to safety.
“Let them have it!” cried Connor. With TV cameras and newsmen watching, the firemen turned on their hoses. Columns of water crashed into children and adults, knocking them down, ripping their clothes, smashing them into the sides of buildings. From the other side of the park, Connor unmuzzled the German shepherds, dogs lunged into the ranks, biting, running children.
Len Holt says, “On one side, students were confronted by clubs, on the other, by powerful streams of water. The firemen used hoses to knock down the students. As the streams hit the trees, the bark was ripped off, bricks were torn loose from the walls the streams of water slammed Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth against the church causing him internal injuries. Mrs Colea Lafayette, 25 year old SNCC (Snick - the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) Field Secretary from Selma, was knocked down. Two hoses brought to bear on her to pushed her along the sidewalk. At that moment where Commissioner Connor laughed, “Look at them _ (N-word) run!”
A.G. Gaston, a black businessman who had been among some of those who opposed the demonstrations, looked from his window. “My God!” he cried to the person on the other end of his phone, “They've turned the fire hoses on a black girl. They're rolling that little girl right down the middle of the street! I can't talk to you now.” The black community was now one.
Glenn Evans, Birmingham police officer, said, “I was standing there by the fire hose when they put the hose right on Shuttlesworth. His feet were knocked out from under him. I had the thought at the time, “What's the purpose of this? What does it accomplish? What do we hope to do by doing these things?”
The nation woke up at this moment. Dorothy Cotton said, “If it hadn't been for television, nobody would have ever believed they turned the dogs on us, turned the fire hoses on our children.”
Danny Lyon said, “That's when the press discovered the movement. Until then, maybe you'd get one story a year about civil rights. A burning bus in alabama on the cover of life magazine then nothing for a year. Martin Luther King and hundreds thousands of people getting arrested in Albany and then nothing. Nobody covered the movement, but now the press was really excited, decided fire hoses and dogs made good newsreels, they realized this was good material>”
May 10th, with 3,000 people in jail and with what King called “The boil of segregation, opened to the air and light,” black citizens of Birmingham and the white Businessmen's Association reached an accord, to make the end of the demonstrations and boycott. The merchants agreed to take down the whites only signs to desegregate the lunch counters and hire blacks for clerical and sales positions.
But the drama was not over. Late Saturday night, May 12th, bombs exploded at SCLC, (Southern Christian Leadership Council) headquarters, and at the home of Reverend A.D. King, Martin Luther King's brother. The black citizens who had not been goaded to anger by police dogs and fire hoses so far, were finally driven too far. They milled about downtown, there was some throwing of bricks, 2,500 people. A taxicab was set on fire.
Movement leaders circulated through a mob urging restraint, and the crowds began to quiet. Suddenly, Colonel Al Lingo and his state troopers arrived. Despite pleas by the Birmingham police to let the situation alone, the troopers began to clear the streets with shotguns, rifles, and clubs. Hundreds were jailed, including Guy and Candy Carawan, (who I'd like to speak about later - great musician and gatherer of peace songs) who were arrested for trying to join a mass meeting at a black church.
Guy said, “The jails were really crowded by now. Fairgrounds (a jail) were full of youngsters. They put Candy upstairs and me downstairs. They told me that upstairs the prisoners were beating up Candy, and they told Candy that downstairs the prisoners were roughing me up. Nobody got hit. We were all squeezed into one cell, drunks and pickpockets and me. I slept on a plain spring that night. I tried to sleep, but more and more people kept getting shoved into the cell. I remember hearing one drunk come in swearing, “Looking for that damn freedom rider.”
Really late, I heard this remarkable sound from outside the jail window. I could hear hundreds and hundreds of voices singing freedom songs. People had marched over from the mass meeting to the jailhouse to let all those in jail know that everyone was thinking of them.” (End of reading from the book.)
Then, let me jump to, in August, is the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” and Martin Luther King's “I Have a Dream speech.”
But in September 15th, 1963, the last and most horrible act in opposition to the Birmingham movement. It was Sunday, at the 16th Street Baptist Church, Sunday school was just over. Four little girls stood in the back of the church putting on their choir robes. A stick of dynamite exploded. Debris, plaster, glass, wood flew about, with the tattered remains of the children's Bible lessons. Sixteen others were injured. The four girls were killed.
(From the book): Awaiting what they were sure would be the most horrible black retribution, the town called in troops and marshals. Pat Waters said, “Police and press alike in the strange quiet of the afternoon as grief-stricken people walked numbly about what was called the ‘Negro Section’ expected God knows what kind of retributive horror that night.” As the hot afternoon wore on, violence like a mad dog loose continued - White violence. White youth shot to death a Negro boy on a bicycle. Police shot a black youth to death, claiming that he ran when ordered to halt. But the black retribution, the black uprising, never happened. Did not come.
Still America waited. The expectation of violence hung like a still unfulfilled prophecy over the whites, especially in the South. The drama was done. At terrible cost, the movement had breached Birmingham, segregation's fortress.
The rest of the South lay ahead. (end of the book reading).
That is not attributed to either, but Pete Seeger and Bob Reiser wrote this book, and together, they write these stories, recollections. A lot of it is, no doubt, Pete Seeger recalling these things. So, at this point, we should remember the... movement that rose up through the summer, and I'm going to speak a little bit more about that.
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