After a short introduction, Carol Rogoff Hallstrom started the program and welcomed everyone, but especially the young people. She said that SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Council) was founded at Shaw University in 1960. It was a student-led, black-led movement – a band of student radicals. Harry Belafonte asked what are radicals doing today at the 50th anniversary reunion. They also talked about a “time to heal” from the pain. Carol shared that Stokey Carmichael said to tell your story because if someone else tells it, they will get it wrong.
In the SNCC movement, some died, some went mad due to violence, pain and pressure – which was intense.
Carol talked about her family history. Her parents were immigrants who were dedicated to this country. Part of her inspiration was JFK’s leadership and his statement that Americans should ask what they can do for their country. The four students at the Greensboro lunch counter also inspired her actions. She talked about going to lunch counters had being yelled at and cursed at. She said organizing is not glamorous, it is things like going to churches to find people and talk to them.
A man she knew – Herbert Lee – was a farmer in Mississippi and he went to register to vote and was shot and killed.
Another man – Lewis Allen – was afraid to testify, and he was shot and killed in the driveway of his home the night before he was going to testify about Herbert Lee.
These are just two individuals who lost their lives in the struggle for civil rights and the right to vote and have a voice. There were many, many more – unknowns who were killed and suffered greatly in the civil rights struggle in the USA.
Carol also worked to get blacks elected to the Agricultural Board. This Board controlled who grew what in the county. She told her story of being run off a dirt road in a rural county. She was with two other women who were black. They felt that they had to get to the paved road, but as they were walking, the man who ran them off the road was walking behind them and poking them in the head with a rifle and saying “how’s that Martin Luther coon going to help you now” to them. It was a very frightening time. They finally made it to the paved road and they were picked up by a black logger. They then followed SNCC protocol, which meant they were required to report to the local Sheriff’s office – the same Sheriff who was suspected in the murder of Lewis Allen.
Carol said she often questioned if she really helped people when she was also putting them in very serious danger. She said she has enormous pride in what she did, and a great deal of pain. She talked about the movie “Mississippi Burning” which was about the killing of the three civil rights workers: Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. In that movie, Carol said the FBI were NOT heroic at all. She then went on to talk about the DNC in 1964 in Atlantic City. Part of the Freedom Summer program was to change institutions, such as the DNC, with some success and lots of failure. Fanny Lou Hamer went to the rules committee at the DNC to ask to be seated at the convention. DNC offered Mississippi two delegate seats that were symbolic. The delegates said no. Carol pointed out how even when you do the right thing, you do not necessarily get the right results.
After her time with SNCC, they did move in another direction, towards a black nationalist organization. The tactic of nonviolence established moral superiority making it easier for fence sitters to join them in their struggle.
Isaac Coleman spoke second. He said he grew up in segregated schools, but was offered the opportunity to go to an integrated school for his senior year of high school. He turned this down. He knew that blacks would not be welcomed at the school, and he felt that he wanted to finish his senior year in the high school where he had been attending. He wanted to enjoy his senior year. He then went to Knoxville College (a black college). He started demonstrating around public accommodations via SNCC, and he went to jail a lot. His mother was not happy with his decision to demonstrate rather than focus on college. After one arrest, he was sentenced to the county farm. Towards the end of the school year, the college president asked them to stop. Marion Berry asked him to go to Mississippi for Freedom Summer to register voters. He went to Ohio for orientation.
Isaac first went to Jackson Mississippi, then to Columbus (better than the Delta). He went door to door to register voters. They called their homes “Freedom House” and one of the houses was blown up in the Delta. He also went to West Point, Mississippi to register voters and do political organizing. African Americans were excited about getting politically organized. He was away at training when his house in Tupelo was set on fire. They had difficulty finding another place, since the locals were very scared. At one point, he was in a car with two white women and one white man and they were stopped by the police. They all went to jail, and a mob showed up. The deputy at the jail, grabbed him and asked him “which one of these women are you fucking” with in the cell. In court, the deputy snuck up to Isaac and yelled ‘wake up nigger” in his ear and then smacked him. The women called SNCC who called the Justice Department who called the police. The police were forced to let them go and give them an escort to the edges of the county, with the mob following behind. Then the police turned around and left them, so they quickly went to the black part of town, and the locals there started throwing rocks at the mob.
Isaac said that his experiences opened a lot of doors, but he had friends who did not survive. One friend was shot in a grocery store and nothing was done. Isaac spent a lot of time in jail at West Point. A man named Billy Busbee said he was going to kill him at one point. One day, there was a care parked on the street, and the men in it said they were FBI. Billy Busbee was sitting in the back seat. The FBI was not their friend.
Isaac said that he felt it was important to know the history of our country. He spent five years in Mississippi before going to NYC for 1 ½ years and then back to Mississippi for economic development efforts. He helped start Freedom Schools. He said he learned a lot in Mississippi, and he is still involved politically with the Democratic Party and running campaigns, and working on reading program for local students. He also works with Clean Water for NC and Progressive Democrats. Someone asked a question about non-violent tactics, and Isaac said that it was foolish to go up against the US government or any form of government in the USA with violence – they have way more weapons and know exactly how to respond to violence. He felt that non-violent tactics were the only ones that could possible succeed.
Isaac also recounted the story of a river being dredged while looking for the missing three civil rights workers. They found a body while doing this, and the hands and feet were tied together, and yet the local sheriff said that it was a case of suicide. There are so many sad stories from this time in American history.
We finished the evening by singing “Sit at the Welcome Table”.
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I am so impressed by Carol and Isaac. They were very brave, and they certainly helped to improve America.
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