Freedom's Children (22 page)

When we were marching, some people said doing this and going to jail was going to follow us the rest of our lives. I've had interviews for jobs and they say, “Have you ever been to jail?”

I say, “Yes, I've been to jail a lot of times.” They look at me real funny. And I say, “I went to jail for marching with the movement.”

“Oh, don't even worry about that,” they say.

 

I think if I hadn't marched, if I hadn't witnessed what I've seen for myself, I wouldn't have the strength I have today. There are a lot of drugs today in Selma. If I hadn't been in the movement, there's a possibility I could be on drugs. It was rough in those days, much rougher than it is now. It made me strong. It gave me encouragement. When I see things now that are going wrong, I can speak out about it and let them know I don't like it.

When I reached voting age, the first place I went was the courthouse. I walked in there with pride, you hear me? I was so proud to say I want to register to vote. I'm a deputy registrar now. I can register people that's out in the community. And I work at the voting place when elections come around. When a person comes in to vote, I know what we went through to become registered voters.

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At the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. He had gone there to help the garbage workers, who were striking for a pay increase. He had planned to lead a nonviolent march with them. The night before he was killed, he gave a speech in which he talked about the death threats he had received.

That was to be Dr. King's last speech.

His murder the next day stunned the nation and the world. In some communities there were riots; in others, simply deep grieving. Young southern blacks felt they had lost a leader, a colleague, a friend.

When we heard he was shot, everybody was devastated. We felt we had lost probably the only black man who had guts enough to be as brave as he was. We felt a big loss. We felt there was not going to be another King, not like him. We felt angry, but we knew that he would eventually get killed. Anybody who stepped out during that bad time when whites could get away with anything, southern whites, oh, we knew he was going to get killed. We had accepted it. We just didn't know when.

We had just finished supper. During those years, everyone got the news at the dinner hour. That's how you knew how many people died in Vietnam that day. We were getting up from the table and the sign “Special Report” flashed. And for some reason my mother said, “Martin's dead.” This was in the second between the news flash sign coming on and the commentator talking. It was uncanny. The next words he said were, “We have gotten a confirmed report that Martin Luther King, Jr. has been assassinated in Memphis.”

The three of us just looked at each other. That was the hardest night we ever spent in the house. We just walked around and didn't talk to each other. The next day we got a telegram from Coretta, confirming that it had happened and that she'd be in touch about a formal private wake.

I felt shock. Uncle Martin? Dead? In the next couple of days, we came to Atlanta. Looking at that man in the casket was unbelievable. To see someone that I had known, who had had as much life as he had, to be lifeless. He was just no more. I didn't know who to be angry at. I just knew he was dead, and it was over.

The day Martin Luther King was killed, I didn't see the flag at half-staff at school. I walked into the auditorium and in anger threw my books down. Then I walked to the principal's office and I said, “Why isn't the flag at half-staff?” He said that flag-raising was the responsibility of the ROTC program. So I turned right around and walked down the hall to the ROTC room.

Normally when you wanted to see the major, you had to say, “Sergeant Carr requests permission to see Major such and such.” I just walked past the sergeant, right into the major's office. I said, “Why is the flag at full-staff? It's supposed to be flown at half-staff. The president of the United States said all flags are supposed to be flown at half-staff.”

He said, “Okay, Arlam, we will get it taken care of.” I walked out front and waited with this other guy who was also a senior. I had made up my mind that if it was not at half-staff by the time the first bell rang, we were going to take it completely down.

I felt that they weren't giving Dr. King the respect that he was due. Hey, you know, here in Montgomery, Alabama, is where he started. This is the place where every flag should have been at half-staff without having to be asked. Oh, I was very angry!

The funeral was on a school day. I wanted to go. My mother wrote a note to the school saying there was a death in the family. I remember we were at a church in Atlanta across the street from where the funeral was. The horse and wagon went by. You could see the coffin and people walking behind it.

When I got back to school the next day, a lot of kids said, “I heard so-and-so came to school.” I said, “I'm not worried about who came to school. If they came, that's fine. If they can't give up a day out of school for a man who's given his life for the things that we have gotten, that's their problem. They have to live with that, I don't.”

I began to get a whole lot of mixed emotions about what I was taught by him. I was very angry. I was feeling violent. I had the feeling that I hated all whites after he was killed. It was like killing a person that was really holding us together.

I came out of it. I began to really get involved in me. It made me want to be somebody. It was a slow process, but I began to see and realize more what he was trying to say. Then as I grew older, I got into a competitive thing with whites. I didn't go to an all-black school like my brothers and sisters. I went to a predominately white school. This is junior high and high school. I was willing to stay in that struggle. I was the only black in most of my classes. I was spat on and called “nigger,” but Dr. King had taught me how to deal with that.

One thing that stuck in me that Dr. King used to always say: If he couldn't risk his life to fight for his people, then there wasn't no reason for him to live. That just kept coming to mind. I knew what he had done. I knew what I had seen, what I had heard from him. It was like he was fighting a battle for us and he died for it.

This is a selected chronology of the major events that are referred to in this book.

 

 

1954 MAY 17. The United States Supreme Court declares school segregation to be unconstitutional in the case
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

1955 MARCH 2. Claudette Colvin, a teenager, is arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white person.

1956 MARCH 12. Nearly a hundred Congressional Representatives and Senators sign the “Southern Manifesto,” vowing to fight the Supreme Court school desegregation decision.

1957 JANUARY. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC, originally with another name) is founded. Martin Luther King, Jr. becomes its president.

1958 MAY. Ernest Green becomes the first black student to graduate from Little Rock's Central High School. The following school year, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus closes all public schools in Little Rock to prevent further integration.

 

1960 FEBRUARY. Sit-ins by black students at segregated facilities begin in Greensboro, North Carolina. Similar protests take place all over the South and in some northern communities.

1961 MAY. Freedom Riders organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) travel on buses from Washington D.C. headed for Alabama and Mississippi to challenge local segregated travel rules. The buses are attacked on May 14 outside of Anniston, Alabama, and in Birmingham in what becomes known as the “Mother's Day Massacre.” Six days later the Freedom Riders are beaten at the Montgomery bus station. The next evening First Baptist Church in Montgomery is besieged by a white mob. President Kennedy is forced to send U.S. marshals to disperse the mob.