INTERVIEWER: Edwin Barce, Chief Historian, Washington Office of the
National Parks Service

ALSO PRESENT: Blair Hubbard, Harpers Ferry Center; Barbara Tagger &
Blake Lambert, Southeast Regional Office

LOCATION: Office of the Regional Director of the Southeast Region,
Atlanta

**\[00:59\]**

**Q:** To start off, Reverend Vivian, would you give us a little
background about yourself, where you grew up and how you became
associated with Dr. King and the SCLC.

**\[01:13\]**

**A:** That word little, a little background. \[laughs\] Well, let\'s
put it this way. Is that I grew up in\-- well, I suppose the proper way
to start that would, since(?), and keep on the focus of our interview,
is that I was born in Missouri but I really grew up in Illinois. The
reason for that is that 1929, 1930, the Depression hit. Our family lost
three farms. And then because of another event that proved nonviolence
to me: my\-- our home was burned in Bloomville, Missouri, and that was
the last remaining thing we had. So my parents, my grandparents, decided
to move to Illinois so that I would not have to be in a segregated
school system. It was an attempt to escape from the racism. And part of
that going from South to North as a part of escaping from racism as the
dominant factor in your life.

**\[02:40\]**

And so I started to school in Macomb, Illinois. First grade I started a
couple of months late. The move had to be made after the decisions were
made. And started school in Macomb, Illinois and went through the school
system of Illinois.

Now, the reason my parents picked Macomb, Illinois, because it had a
college in it, Western Illinois University, which is now Western
Illinois University. It was then Western Illinois State Teachers
College. Because they figured with no money left but the thing that they
could do was to start me in first grade, and I could always go all the
way through college, because I could at least walk to school. It was a
small town.

**\[03:30\]**

And it was that kind of thinking that made the difference in my life at
every point. Had they not made that decision when they made it to leave
Missouri, which had the family place, then I may not have gotten through
college and the rest of what we are talking about may not have happened.

See, our family grew up\-- in fact, my great uncle was a valedictorian
at Lincoln University and my great-great-grandparents, and you\'ve got a
picture of five generations of them, before\-- when\-- in that picture
my mother is 12 years old, and there\'s five generations there. So that
they, in fact, they gave money for the founding of Lincoln University.
And on the other side of my family was a relative that was\-- my
grandfather was a principal of schools. They were always concerned about
education.

**\[04:27\]**

That drive led to the decision to move out of Missouri into Illinois. So
in a sense I was born in Missouri in a farm family and moved to Illinois
in order to survive thee depression and what might follow it. So that is
one way to look at it.

**\[04:50\]**

Now, let\'s deal with the rest of this in terms of meeting Martin and
the decisions that led to my coming to SCLC. You almost\-- you have to
really start with the first part of that question, because meeting
Martin was basically an outgrowth of what happened before that would
make me want to be a part of SCLC. You see, my first nonviolent direct
action campaign was in 1947, \'45, pardon me, not in \'55 or \'65 or
\'75.

**Q:** Ten years before Montgomery.

**\[05:37\]**

**A:** That\'s it. And that\'s what I think we have to see as very
important. In Peoria, Illinois, a group of us, about 20 of us, learned
from a CORE book put out as a result of Jim Farmer\'s activities in
Chicago of how to do nonviolent direct action, so that\-- and it was a
group, black and white together, largely students, and we opened the
lunch counters in the restaurants in Peoria, Illinois, as a result of
those actions, so that I had\--

**Q:** The lunch counters \...(inaudible)?

**\[06:19\]**

**A:** Oh yes, and just lunch\-- there was only one place we could eat
in downtown, only one place we could eat downtown Peoria, Illinois, and
it was Thompson\'s Restaurant, it was called. It was right across from
the courthouse, or from the city building or the courthouse, either way.
Right across the street. And we could eat there but we had to eat in the
back of it. Now, not back in the Southern tradition of in the kitchen or
in some place beyond the kitchen, but in the back several rows, tables.
So that gave you some idea of why we had to have nonviolent direct
actions there.

**\[07:11\]**

So, and you might say\-- see, the lead line that you have to see is that
my entire life has been involved in the eradication of racism, and the
only thing that I am deeply concerned about being involved in is the
eradication of racism. And that flows together with a deep religious
understanding given to me by my grandmother long before we ever left
Missouri. See, my earliest memories of activity have to do with
religious conviction, all right?

**\[07:43\]**

The two, then, went together quite well. By the time I met Martin I was
already a minister, in fact, was editing at the Sunday School Publishing
Board of the National Baptist Convention USA, Incorporated. Now, you
have to say all that because Nashville is the home of 17 different
publishing houses, four of them at the time\-- three of them at the time
were Baptist, Southern Baptist. The National Baptist Convention USA and
the National Baptist Convention USA, Incorporated, which is called the
Townsend Convention for you historians. All that becomes important,
tremendously important, as you deal with the black community and as you
consider the early involvement of those years.

So that\'s\-- now years is my problem, exact years, but I\'ll tell you
when it was so it\'ll make it easy for you. All right? When Martin led
the prayer pilgrimage, which was \'57\-- it was \'56, \'57\-- is that I
was editing Sunday School Publishing Board and material kept coming
across my desk about Martin. Well, but we were not publishing at the
National Baptist Convention USA, Incorporated, even though Martin was a
member of our convention.

**\[09:12\]**

Well I, because had already been involved in Nashville\-- in Peoria, was
deeply concerned about everything that Martin said. My concern that
Martin was going to be murdered. So I put out a 20-page piece on Martin
but was not\-- but we didn\'t publish it, the publishing house. I
published it personally. And by the way, I was a student at the same
time. I was at seminary. I edited a newspaper before. In fact, when I
was called to the ministry, everything about my life came together.
Everything I had ever done came together. Moved me right into Nashville.
I was editing Sunday School Publishing Board, I was director of
Boyswork(?), because I had done all that before with the YMCA and with
the \...(inaudible) Community Center in Peoria.

**\[09:57\]**

So everything I had done before came into focus. And as far as I was
concerned, I was sent to Nashville by the Lord. I did not have any
intention to go into\-- the only seminary I wanted to go to was
Colgate-Rochester in Rochester, New York. The Lord sent me to Nashville
to American Baptist Theological Seminary.

**\[10:21\]**

Shortly thereafter, I was working at The Sunday School Publishing Board.
People who I had met three or four years before and who still remembered
me and wanted me to edit at the publishing house.

Now, so I am there and I am putting together this piece. Martin goes to
Fisk to get an honorary degree from Fisk University as a result of
working with the government. Then I go out to meet him to interview him.

**\[10:51\]**

**Q:** Out at Fisk?

**A:** At Fisk. So I hear his speech and I interview him. It was his
standard speech of the time. And I interview him following, and that\'s
when I first met Martin. And I do an article in this piece that I put
out, this 20-page piece, a question and answer kind of thing between
Martin and I, right? And I have a picture in there of us.

**\[11:14\]**

So that\'s when I first met him. Then secondly, and very important to
you, is that in \'57, you see, and I think this happened in \'56 but you
can check when Fisk gave him an honorary degree. You see what I mean?
And \'57 is when the prayer pilgrimage\-- see, I consider it the first
March on Washington. You see what I mean? Because that\'s really what it
was. But it was called a prayer pilgrimage.

And so when I went in for the prayer pilgrimage, we were\-- we had a\--
there was a huge train that came through the south, was picking up
people all the way into Washington. So I was on the train and met he and
Abernathy together at that time on the train. And we talked for a while,
not a great time, but we talked for a while, and that was the end of
that.

**\[12:08\]**

**Q:** This was your second meeting with him?

**A:** That was my second meeting. And it takes both of those to make
sense out of really answering your question, you see. So that that gives
you some background, an understanding of my nonviolent involvement, my
concerns for being a part of SCLC.

**\[12:27\]**

Now, let me give you the final piece. So then the Nashville movement
starts. Now, the\-- I was Vice President of the Nashville movement. The
important person was Kelly Miller Smith, which was the pastor of First
Baptist Church there. And marvelous, marvelous personality, and the only
person I believe that could bring everybody together.

However, there were only about six ministers who gathered together on a
regular basis to deal with Martin\'s message. See, Martin had had a
meeting where he called a number of ministers in. I\'m not putting this
in\-- this is not organized, so you\'ll have to organize it.

**\[13:16\]**

But Martin had called a meeting where he had asked a number of
outstanding ministers from across the South to join has as a prelude to
beginning SCLC in the first place. So Kelly Miller Smith was one of
those people asked, because he was such an outstanding minister, such a
fine speaker and such a wonderful personality. Well, he comes back to
Nashville and organizes Nashville Christian Leadership Conference. Well,
we didn\'t\-- council is what we called it, because one of the councils
is part of the old things(?). Nashville Christian Leadership Council.

**\[13:51\]**

So I was one of the six people that joined him immediately, because when
he came back with the message, boom, I wanted to join. And I had
preached for him. I was at seminary and I was editing. I had preached
for First Baptist and\-- had preached once for First\-- I don\'t want
you to get the idea I was a regular preacher. Nobody had to be a regular
preacher First Baptist Church; Kelly Miller Smith was there. \[laughs\]

**\[14:16\]**

You were fortunate to ever step in that pulpit, it was\--

**Q:** \...(inaudible)

**A:** That\'s exactly right. It was the pulpit of black Nashville. And
so knowing Kelly and we liked each other right off the bat anyway, I
joined immediately, having this nonviolent background and being very,
very concerned.

So then that meeting, those activities led to our, Nashville Christian
Leadership Conference, being involved in the prayer pilgrimage and all
the rest of it. You see what I\'m saying? I think that\-- let me see,
there was another part of your question. It wasn\'t a part, but it was
something you said that would lead me to more information than I gave
you. Restate your question.

**\[15:08\]**

**Q:** Tell us a little about yourself and how you became associated
with Dr. King and SCLC.

**A:** The SCLC part. So Martin then knew me quite well. When we had the
Nashville movement, Martin came into Nashville and said we had the most
perfect nonviolent movement in the nation, and we did. And the proof of
that was not\-- was what happened afterwards.

**\[15:34\]**

More people came out of the Nashville movement to continue to be
leadership for the nonviolent movement than any place in the country.
Now, that was largely due to the fact that my own background and the
most important part was that Jim Lawson was in Nashville and Jim Lawson
had come in for the Fellowship for Reconciliation, which was really the
conservator of nonviolence prior to the movement years. And he was
Southern regional person for them and was a student at Vanderbilt. We
were both working on Master\'s in Divinity.

**\[16:16\]**

And he taught us more nonviolence, the whole group, he was able to bring
together through the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference and his
own contacts, especially his college students working in seminaries and
so forth, bring together a group of all black kids, with the exception
of one white kind in Vanderbilt. And I wish I could think of his name
right now; I can\'t. He ended up getting into all kinds of problems
because of it, but hey, true hero, you know what I mean? And it\'s
people like that that don\'t get mentioned much that need to get
mentioned and their stories told, because they were a part of it.

**\[16:55\]**

But anyway, we created more national leadership out of there. So when
Martin said we were the most perfect nonviolent movement in the South
he\-- I was in charge of that meeting and others like it. By the way, I
could give you some political history that goes with that, but that\'s
not important at the moment.

And so we then won our battle for Nashville, our march. We had the first
march of the movement. You see what I mean? See, it was interesting, the
movement had very few marches prior to Nashville, and we marched from
city limits to city hall and open\-- Ben Willis, Ben\-- his name is not
Willis. Ben\-- I\'m trying to think. The mayor, Ben\-- can\'t think of
the mayor of Nashville. Had to meet us on the steps of the courthouse,
and when he did, by the time I gave a speech to him\-- we had a
dialogue, it was a speech, right? And Diane Nash then followed up with
three questions. And he said, of course he wanted it open. And one week
from that time the city was open completely.

**\[18:18\]**

**Q:** Within one week?

**A:** Yeah, within one week of that march. Well, these kinds of things
Martin knew about, so then I moved from\-- I ran a newspaper there as
well. I started a\-- three of us started a newspaper there. I was the
writer, a fellow named White\-- black named White\-- was the money
behind it, and there was another young fellow there who understood
advertising. So the three of us started a newspaper called the
*Nashville News Star*.

**\[18:58\]**

Dave Aberstan(?) was a cub reporter at the *Nashville Banner* at the
time and\-- by the way, we had a reunion a couple years ago. Dave
came\-- about a year ago. Dave came back to it and just as\-- we don\'t
even know how he found out. Dave found out, he came back to it, because
he figured he was part of the Nashville movement, right? Because Dave
said he learned how there. He went straight from his reporting of our
work there to *The New York Times*. So he\'s always said that our\-- and
he often quoted our newspaper, which made me feel good. Always gave us
credit, right? He was very nice about it. Dave\'s great. And the rest of
it from Dave\'s point is history in terms of journalism.

**\[19:46\]**

So that when these activities, these kinds of activities, were all
Martin knew about all of this.

So then I moved from Nashville to Chattanooga, and we do the same thing
in Chattanooga. We open up the entire industrial, commercial industrial
complex of Chattanooga and end up through the Tennessee Voters League,
which we organized clear across the state in which I was head of the
Eastern region, took in Chattanooga and Knoxville and all that area up
there. Then we elected three fists(?) to city hall and changed the whole
political balance.

**\[20:28\]**

And all of these are individual stores in themselves, really. Now, as a
result of these activities, when the\--

**Q:** And these successes.

**\[20:34\]**

**A:** That\'s it, and these successes, right. Just not activities,
successes, right. Because the nonviolent movement, we really aren\'t
concerned about activity, we\'re concerned about successes.

So and then comes the March on Washington. Well, as we organized for the
March on Washington\--

**Q:** You\'re in Chattanooga?

**\[20:52\]**

**A:** Chattanooga, right. So they ask me then to organize Tennessee for
the March on Washington, and I did. We ended up with trainloads going
in, buses going in, airplanes going in, etc. And so in the midst of
that, Martin asked me to come to staff. So I came to staff in the midst
of the March on Washington\--

**Q:** The summer of \'63?

**\[21:16\]**

**A:** \'63, right. So I come back to Chattanooga after the march and
tell my church I\'m leaving, hand it over to another person, and I come
to Atlanta. So all of that is really a part of the institute in question
because it\'s\--

**Q:** Wonderful answer.

**A:** Yeah, well it\'s difficult to leave any of it out. You see what I
mean? I mean, it wasn\'t a matter of sending in a resume. \[laughs\]

**Q:** That\'s a wonderful story.

**\[21:46\]**

**A:** In fact, we might add to that and put in one of my favorite
people. See, what they were\-- I came to SCLC as National Director of
Affiliates. By this time, the organization had grown so much that they
needed somebody to be just a really\-- I call it a troubleshooter for
SCLC, with all of the organizations that carried its logo, to use
business terms, but in terms of all the organizations that were
organized to do nonviolent direct action under an SCLC logo.

**\[22:26\]**

So I then came in to do that kind of activity work for SCLC across the
country and be the person between all these little organizations and
Martin, you see what I mean? So that I was under Martin\'s direct
supervision\-- well, I came under the direct supervision of Wyatt T.
Walker, who was Executive Director, and Wyatt knew how to run the
organization. I just mention that in passing. And I think it was very,
very important.

**\[22:53\]**

So Dorothy Cotton, having heard me speak, brought my name up at the
meeting when they were trying to decide this. Martin, then, knowing
about my other activities, said yeah, let\'s bring him on. And Wyatt T.,
who had come out of Virginia with Dorothy Cotton, or Dorothy Cotton had
come out of Virginia with Wyatt T., because Wyatt T. was really a power
mover, and he liked to move things and it wasn\'t going to happen\-- if
you hadn\'t moved something, it didn\'t happen, right?

**\[23:27\]**

And so I was called on the staff, but it was based on those successes
again, having moved things. And I had not only moved one movement, I had
moved two, and that made the difference.

**\[23:37\]**

**Q:** Thank you so much. The next question is why did the SCLC go to
Selma?

**A:** Well, I think you have to have a little background there too.

**Q:** That\'s why you\'re such a wonderful person to chat with.

**A:** Okay. You see, you know, where we have to look at is that
Birmingham was over, right? Well let\'s go back even further.

**\[24:07\]**

You have to look at the fact that when Martin first started SCLC two
things were most important. Three things were most important. Is that
Martin\'s slogan was to redeem the soul of America. Method: nonviolent
direct action. Well, do you practically use that to do the process it
leads to? And if you read some of Martin\'s earliest material, it is
around voter registration. See what I\'m trying to say?

Now, but our earliest activities were not around that. Our earliest
activities were actually around opening\-- having public access to
accommodations\-- I knew what you were going to say, to accommodations,
which is right.

**\[24:57\]**

Now, we have moved to the time, then, that we could take that next step,
so we could go into political enfranchisement and make that struggle.
Now, there are a number of things about Selma that are most interesting.
Number one was that they had had a political struggle going on directly
related to voter enfranchisement over a period of years. Most people
don\'t see that, but oh, I know you heard about it doing your work down
there and I hope you talked with Dr.\-- the dentist\--

**Q:** Amelia Boynton\'s brother?

**\[25:41\]**

**A:** No, that's not who I\'m thinking about. I am pretty certain if
they\'re brother and sisters it\'s\--

**Q:** Marie Foster?

**A:** Marie Foster\'s brother, that\'s right, exactly right. They can
tell you about that they went in to Washington to witness about
disenfranchisement a long time ago. Right?

**\[26:00\]**

**Q:** With the little book.

**A:** That\'s it. Remember?

**Q:** \...(inaudible)

**A:** That\'s exactly right. Oh is that right?

**\[26:06\]**

**Q:** Yeah, she let us see the book.

**A:** Okay, good. Is that\-- now, so there had been a long struggle.
Plus the fact that because of that struggle they had more people
registered than any other county around. Plus, they had 3% I think
registered, right? And less than 1% in the counties surrounding. I have
to look at another thing that is\-- but, oh that last point is minor, in
terms of your real question. It\'s just information.

But that long history had gone on, and Mrs. Amelia Boynton and Reese,
and Reverend Reese\--

**\[26:46\]**

**Q:** \...(inaudible)

**A:** Was deeply concerned, and their organization was called Voter\--
what was it?

**Q:** Dallas County Voters League.

**A:** Dallas County Voters League. Now, also we have to look at it, is
half the population, I mean, almost exactly half, a little over half
actually, of the population was black. Right? So that when you look at
that basically\-- well half. Not exactly. But basically a half was
black.

**\[27:20\]**

All this is very important. I think that some of the things that we may
have learned later I did learn later, but maybe Martin already knew, was
that, you see, in many ways Dallas County or Selma was in fact a leader
for discrimination and racism and political disenfranchisement in many
places. In other words, Bull Connor came out of Selma. Bull Connor was
one of the, if not the first place, one of the\-- \...(inaudible)\-- one
of the very earliest places to have a White Citizens\' Council. So they
saw themselves as\--

**\[28:11\]**

**Q:** Leaders.

**A:** That\'s exactly right. Now, the only kind of halfway decent voice
in there, and we didn\'t know it at the time I\'m certain, I mean, I
didn't, was Wilson Baker. Everything else in that town was outright
racist, and the real difference is that Wilson Baker had taught at the
University of Alabama, he had to have a little bit more knowledge, and
yet he was still under the George Wallace, you understand. So I just say
a little more knowledge. But after all, he had some understanding of a
professional police person. But that was secondary, we didn\'t know
about Wilson Baker in the beginning.

**\[28:44\]**

We did know about Sheriff Clark. But what we really were counting on was
not just Sheriff Clark, which some of the sources give you, but the fact
that that place was truly racist. But what we counted on was the fact we
had a strong political group. Some of the sources will tell you that we
waited until everybody was together. We had a council of 15 or something
like that. I was Director of Affiliates; it was my job to go in and make
certain what was happening there and report back so these decisions
could be made. You see what I mean?

**\[29:29\]**

And I went in my final time of going in to really get the letter from
them was December.

**Q:** \'64?

**A:** Yeah, right\-- whatever\-- yeah, \'65 we went in, right? January
2nd, Martin comes in, because we really wanted him to come in January
1st. Truthfully you don\'t know that because the sources don\'t say
that, but we really wanted him to come January 1st, Emancipation
Proclamation day. And something happened and he couldn\'t, so he came
January 2nd, I think 2nd or 3rd.

**\[29:46\]**

**Q:** 2nd.

**A:** Okay. But the important thing was an organized group. And the
thing that made the difference for us was the Dallas County Voters
League, not the council of 15. That was nice, but the Dallas County
Voters League was going to make the difference. Because there you had
Mrs. Boynton and Reese, who were true leaders of the community,
long-time engagement. And one had the\-- to put it roughly but quote,
unquote, secular side, and the other one had the religious side. You see
what I mean? Let\'s put it instead of saying secular, the political
side. Boynton represented that. Reese represented the religious
community, in a sense represented.

**\[30:46\]**

We don\'t want to act as though everybody was totally together; that was
not true. In fact, SNCC had been there and had not been able to put them
totally together, had not done the job that they had come in to do. But
you see, totally different method, but they were very helpful. I\'m not
putting down anybody. Every activity that happened in that time was
helpful to the cause, all right?

**\[31:13\]**

**Q:** It was the whole objective.

**A:** That\'s exactly right, and that has to be understood. But see,
method makes a lot of difference in terms of how you succeed. The power
of a Martin King is very important. Now you see, Selma had already been
trying to keep us from coming in by asking federal government to
persuade us, asking Wallace to persuade us, all kinds of stuff. Wallace
of course would be\-- use his method and the federal government would
use theirs. See, but the idea was to keep King out of Selma, because
they felt they could deal with SNCC, and SNCC was not getting anywhere.

**\[31:55\]**

That\'s why when I went in to talk with Boynton and Reese and so forth,
that\'s who I really talked to, the rest of it was\-- and they\'re
committed, of the Dallas County Voters League, is when we went in to
really talk, they told me that they were very fond of SNCC\'s being
there but of Bernard LaFayette in particular. And Bernard and I are very
good friends, came out of where? Out of Nashville.

**\[32:30\]**

But they were not moving things fast enough and well enough and getting
enough effect, and they wanted Martin in. So we sat down and discussed
all that and what it would mean and ground rules for it and everything,
because that was my kind of job.

Then I asked them to do a letter. They did a letter, signed off. I took
it to Martin and we prepared then to go on in. See, we had had a couple
other meetings. I don\'t remember times, but we had been on the phone a
lot and stuff. But so when I got the December letter, we were halfway
ready anyway, so that by January, we decided to go in January 1st.

**\[33:11\]**

**Q:** Emancipation Day?

**A:** That\'s right, Emancipation. And see, that would be the right
time\--

**Q:** Symbolic.

**A:** That\'s it, symbolic. Martin would be the speaker for
Emancipation Day. You see, all of it would be perfect. And so it
happened, just happened different day. And that started the activity.

**\[33:34\]**

**Q:** Before we go on to the next question that you raised here, did
you consider the political\-- the vote probably more challenging, that
you went to that second\-- after the more demeaning of second-class
citizenship, back of the bus, Jim Crow? Because ultimately the vote
would address all problems.

**A:** Well, see the difference between logic and movement is that logic
generally fails where people are concerned. \[laughs\] Because there\'s
the psycho-logic as well as the logic, right? One is of the mind, the
other one there\'s the psyche. Is that you have to\-- when you have
movement, you have to move where people are willing to move, not where
you want them to move. See what I mean? So what you have to do is figure
what will people move around, right? See, that\'s why you have to figure
your steps where\--

**\[34:40\]**

**Q:** The drinking fountain, the restrooms will strike a person first.

**A:** Precisely, that\'s why the bus boycotts. Very important in
Montgomery. Of course, we\'d love to have the vote and Montgomery
secondary. People were daily being pushed around. In fact, if you really
think about it, the NAACP had legal cases already. All sorts of legal
cases \...(inaudible). But you see, people don\'t move behind that, so
they were stalled in the courts.

**\[35:05\]**

In fact, let\'s look at it. How did I used to put it speech-wise? Is
that\-- let me think back to those old speeches. Let me give it to you
another way. Is that, you see, for all practical purposes, we had it
legally. For all practical purposes we had it legally, had it legally
for a hundred years. Civil Rights Bill 100 years before \'63, right?

**\[35:32\]**

**Q:** \...(inaudible)

**A:** That\'s exactly right. So what? So we had been\-- so that there
was\-- the law had said that there would end the segregation in schools.
So what? \[laughs\] In fact, let me give it to you another way, all
right? As I started to say, I can bring in some political stuff around
the Nashville stuff. Let me give it to you another way. Marshall, later
to become Justice Marshall, came into Nashville to be a speaker for us
at one of our giant mass meetings. And so we\'re sitting around in the
back. It was at the Fisk Auditorium, I think it was the Fisk Auditorium
or the\-- no, Fisk Gymnasium, or the Tennessee \...(inaudible)
Gymnasium, either one.

**\[36:23\]**

And so we\'re sitting in the back, waiting to go out, and I\'m MC\'ing
the program. So we\'re all sitting back there, about six of us, Kelly
Miller Smith, the whole works, everyone is sitting there. So we\'re
sitting back there and sitting around a table and everybody was just
chit-chatting and talking. And suddenly Marshall says to me, he points
his finger and says, \"You are a dangerous man.\" I mean, you know, and
everybody looks, but they\'re looking at him, not me, because this man
must be out of his mind. I mean, here I am leading demonstrations in
Nashville because\-- I\'m the Vice President, Kelly Miller is our real
symbol, but I\'m leading the demonstration, right?

**\[37:04\]**

**Q:** You\'re \...(inaudible)

**A:** I\'m the center of the activity, right? And so what is wrong with
this guy? So that helped me, right? You immediately say, hey, where is
the group taking this? You know what I mean? And he says, \"You are a
dangerous man.\"

**\[37:24\]**

Now, what this guy did not understand was the power of movement. And he
thought that all we were supposed to do is deliver him cases. We were
supposed to have demonstrations and then we could prove in the court
that we were right.

**Q:** And the courts move slow.

**A:** That's right. Not only move slow, had no intentions of moving.
All of that was conversation. But we already had integrated schools, all
right? Because they won that, so what? Nothing had happened.

**\[37:55\]**

**Q:** Brown \...(inaudible) 1955.

**A:** That\'s it, see? So we had gone through all of that and nothing
had happened. See, because the gentlemen\'s agreements, the Southern
Block, all of the kind of real stuff that plays around any political
decision they don\'t want to deal with. Custom and tradition was more
important than the law. See, we believed\-- I remember when the decision
of Brown versus came down\--

**\[38:27\]**

**Q:** May 1955.

**A:** May 1955. Man, what a time, we were so happy. Everything was\-- I
like to put it that we went home and got our Bibles and went to church
to pray and everybody else went to\--

END OF #516

BEGINNING OF #517

**\[00:03\]**

**A:** That\'s exactly right. And I like to put it that what we really
had to see was that Nixon comes as a republican to do the same thing
that Wilson had done in his era, is that\-- and what we began was a
whole line of stuff around the Southern strategy that was destructive to
everything the black people thought and wanted. By the time you get to
Regan, the guts had been taken out of the laws that we had from the
movement. Is that both had the same intent. Wilson was a Democrat who
did it back then. We had the Nixon-Regan bit that what-you-call-it had
been just flopped into that made the difference in modern times.

**\[00:54\]**

Both of them around the understanding of how do they win the average
white male based upon the racism, except one of them is far cleverer
because we\'re now into a new period so you have to call it the Southern
Strategy, but which are code words for the same mess. You see, and so it
never mattered to us as black people whether they\'re Republicans or
Democrats really.

**Q:** Jim Crow or Southern Strategy.

**A:** Well let\'s put it the other way. That\'s right. Whether it\'s
Jim Crow or shall we say put it the other way\-- how did I put that?
Years ago. You just brought something back to me. Is that just one of
those lines that get quoted. Ah. It\'s not coming, so we\'ll let it go.
It\'s not important. It has nothing to do historically, it\'s just
little flip lines.

**\[01:51\]**

Yeah, now, where were we when we had to change tape?

**Q:** You were mentioning that the courts wouldn't move.

**A:** That\'s right. See, the courts really didn\'t move, so here is
where SCLC comes really into the game. See, the legal thing really had
not been effective, so what was necessary was a new strategy. That\'s
where Martin comes in as with means and method and was the man for that.
All of those are necessary factors for creating what is necessary to
push the national agenda.

**\[02:31\]**

What has to be understood is that what we were doing was creating the
politics outside the political arena, right? See, we were\-- we made the
political decisions of our time, not by getting a vote in a ballot box
but by in fact having national outcry that united this nation in black,
white, yellow, pink and polka-dot, right? As a result of that kind of
thinking, we set the national agenda and passed the bills.

**\[03:04\]**

And the political\-- the political structure was secondary to our
activity. That\'s what we were about, because we had tried the whole
political structure and it had failed us.

**Q:** You forced the politics to react to you. You seized the
initiative highground(?).

**\[03:23\]**

**A:** That\'s the point, we did it. And that\'s the necessary thing to
understand. Selma was high point in that, because we changed the whole
political structure. I believe you\'ll find a quote from Johnson, I
think you\'ll find a quote from Johnson. I\'m not in that frame of
speech, but let me tell you about that I Selma too. But where he says
that the single most important piece of legislation in our time was the
Voting Rights Bill. I think he\-- some quotes from Johnson. And it was.
I mean, it changed everything.

It\-- the way I like to put it is it changed the very relationships
between North and South, changed the very relationships between black
and white, gave millions of us a chance to in fact live up to use the
First Amendment for our good, because the First Amendment was just out
there dangling, a good idea for speeches but nobody was really using it,
right?

**\[04:18\]**

We made it real for us and for millions of other people, because
following us came not only\-- came the brown movement, the youth
movement, the brown movement, even the Grey Panther movement. We all got
in the act following that, and based around what Martin had done with
the great concepts that make this a Democracy in the first place but for
all practical purposes were basically unused.

**\[04:48\]**

When I grew up, what I really thought as I grew up is that Supreme Court
decisions were only about the issue of race. I mean, I didn\'t even
understand that they did all these other things. I mean, I thought they
were sitting there for one thing. I mean, very truthfully. I was late in
life. I mean, I was going to college before I really understood what the
Supreme Court really did, is because to me it was only there for one
issue. But in a very real way it is the central issue of American
history, and that\'s what we do not normally think about, is that it is
the central issue of American history. And it is the central moral and
spiritual issue of this country\'s past and will be of its future. And
now that we have seen Workplace 2000, we well know nobody can dodge that
fact, that what we were saying in Selma in the 1960s has become a
reality for American business in the 1990s.

**\[06:03\]**

You see, I like to think of Martin as prophet. See, that was really the
American prophet that stood really at the crossroads of our history
telling us how we can really survive. See, I see Martin as the person
that was given\-- as the prophet that was giving us a decision of
whether this nation would truly become a Democracy and its struggle to
become not really as, of whether it will really become a Democracy or
whether it will become a fascist state.

**\[06:41\]**

As soon as one says fascist, we think of it as a language of communism,
all that kind of nonsense, right? I\'m talking about a truly fascist
state. I don\'t care what form it\'ll take. That becomes secondary and
we\'re going to have people who are stepping down the street and all
that nonsense. And the alternative to it is not going to be
\...(inaudible), right? Because they\'re not going to lose. You
understand what I mean? Either it\'s going to be a Democracy or we\'re
really going to have some sort of fascist state. And Martin was the
prophet giving us the choice to make. Because when we really see that
the American majority white becomes really an active minority, what
white males in particular have got to make up their minds around is
whether they really want a Democracy. Martin was trying to convince us
we better have it, right?

**\[07:30\]**

Because what we know about America\'s past is that white America will
murder anybody or anything. Now that may sound a little harsh, but it\'s
true. And all you have to do is look at Indians, look at blacks, look at
even the suppression of your own mothers and daughters and sisters. You
understand where I\'m going? So very realistically what Martin was
dealing with is do we really want to be a Democracy.

**\[07:58\]**

And it would really be\-- and I never thought of this part\-- but it
would really be paradoxical, it would really be paradoxical if we look
up 10, 15, 20 years from now and we are acting like Russia and Russia is
acting like us. Wouldn\'t that be really\-- you know, just like the
thing you\'re talking about, Democrat and Republican, right? You know
what I mean? Put that on the world stage\--

**Q:** 180 degrees.

**A:** \[laughs\] That would really be funny, wouldn\'t it?

**\[08:26\]**

**Q:** Now, Martin has gone in over there on the 2nd of January. Would
you follow through?

**A:** Oh yeah, that\'s right. I\'m up in 20/20 and we\'re back in\-- I
forgot, we\'re back in 19\-- but the\-- so Martin comes in and from
there\-- see, we have to understand that Martin believed that we\'re a
10-day world, that you have to make your case to the nation every 10
days to keep a movement going, at least every 10 days.

**\[09:10\]**

So then what do you do to in fact lift it to the\-- see, the great
nonviolent language, see, most of this is said in political talk, and
people miss two things: the great religious understandings behind what
we did and the great nonviolent concepts upon which we set. So you will
hear\-- is that\-- you\'ll hear it done in political language, like
Martin realized he had to trick these people into\-- that wasn\'t really
the issue. The issue was that we knew that if you do certain things,
certain results are going to come. And that as a result\-- and that\'s
what nonviolence is all about. It is a science. We\'re not simply
dealing with some, you know, speech-making. I mean, this is a science.

**Q:** You know what? They\'re going to react.

**\[10:01\]**

**A:** Precisely right, all right? And if they don\'t, fine, because you
get your message out. But our goal was to inform the nation and get it
behind us in our move to make these changes. That\'s what it was about.
And that\'s what this was all about, right? Toward that goal.

So the thing is, you\'ve got to make the nation, you\'ve got to educate
the nation to understand what\'s happening. The nation, which means that
you\'ve got to have the press. One of the great discussions in
journalism is\-- see, if you ask a person like Dave, Dave Aberstan, and
some other people, like we\'ve had at a conference one time\-- is that
we made national television and national television made us. You see
what I mean? We made national television. Television news was not a
bigtime factor until the \'60s, right? Is we made national television
news, we made it so that it\'s something that people wanted to see every
day. We sold probably more television sets than anybody else, you see?

**\[11:17\]**

You see, when we think of these factors, is that how do you get the
message out? You get the message out to the press. And then even more
so, television was made for us, because we\'re action-oriented. We
didn\'t become action-oriented for the sake of the TV set, we became
action-oriented because that\'s nonviolent direct action. We became\--
and we went into nonviolent direct action because of our religious
commitments and background, right? Or Jesus, who went about doing good,
right? Not just talking it. That\'s it. See what I mean?

**\[11:52\]**

So and that\'s the basis upon which we acted, and it continuously gets
interpreted out of political concepts and feelings and attitudes and by
political types, without\-- and very seldom gets interpreted out of the
great religious understandings and nonviolent concepts that flowed out
of that, all right? So very little of what we have done was understood
in depth.

**\[12:22\]**

The high point for me on that\-- the first high points for me on that
was when we were during the Freedom Rides, early, you see. I was on the
first bus, first Freedom Bus\--

**Q:** \...(inaudible)

**A:** That\'s right. To lead\-- see, I want to correct that. In one
sense, basically since we\'re sitting where we are, right across from
Martin Luther King, Jr. building, that John Lewis got them to make\--
change the name of it, is that John Lewis was on the first bus leaving
out of Washington, D.C., and the bus that was burned and beaten and
people beaten in Anniston, Alabama. Get my point?

**\[13:04\]**

Well remember, John was out of Nashville. Another one of those people
out of Nashville, still about eradication of racism. So John comes back
to Nashville with the plans for the whole thing. When Jim Forman\-- and
Jim and I were in jail together and Jim said\-- and Jim acted like he
didn\'t remember this. I remember very clearly, because I was sitting in
the office in Nashville when the news came out, and it\'s Jim Forman\'s
voice saying, \"We need not go further, we have proven out point,\" so
that as far as he was concerned in that statement at least, the Freedom
Rides were dead, that he had made his point, it was over\-- not dead,
over. Because they had made their point they were still going to be
viable.

**\[13:46\]**

To us in Nashville, we sat there and said nonviolent\-- that violence
can never destroy nonviolence. We will take it up if they do not. All
right? So we took it up to leave Nashville and that very night\-- and
let me tell you, when we had that meeting that night, remember this was
Nashville, we had been\-- we had seen it, we had been to jail, we had
been beaten, we had had all that stuff, right? But when we said we want
cadre ministers and students, because that\'s all SCLC was. I mean,
Nashville Christian Leadership Council was ministers and students, 99%.
We want a cadre of people to leave here to go into Mississippi, we had
to break up the meeting. We were\-- we had to adjourn for a half-hour or
so. Hey, that was\-- you\'re talking about going to Jackson, Mississippi
in 1960, you were talking about whether you wanted to live or die. I
mean, you were not talking about a campaign.

**\[14:48\]**

**Q:** Getting punished (?).

**A:** That\'s right. You were talking about being murdered. I mean,
this was not a matter of being arrested, this was not a matter of being
beaten, this was a matter of being murdered. And that was understood.
And anywhere in Mississippi.

**\[15:04\]**

And remember, that was a period where a popular song was entitled
\"Mississippi God Damn.\" I mean, we have to realize where we\'re
talking about. And these were students, young people largely, and
ministers, and those kind of commitments came to the fore. Either you
had it or you didn\'t. And that night after we came back together ten
students left. That night. And five ministers followed them the next
morning. We just had to go back and make\-- clear it up with our
families, because we had children and wives and stuff.

**\[15:45\]**

So that when you\-- you have to see the time, and often we forget that.
See what I mean? Don\'t forget the time, you see. See, the earliest
murders in the civil rights movement were in Mississippi, not in
Alabama. Reverend Lee, Belzoni\--

**Q:** That was right before I went to Mississippi in \'55.

**A:** You see what I mean? Is that\-- and then the famous one that was
head of the SCLC\-- I mean, NAACP, Medgar Evers. You see? I mean, these
people were murdered and they were murdered, one of them right out in
the county courthouse, shot down the steps of the county courthouse in
Belzoni. And the other one was murdered in the middle of the night
coming home\--

**\[16:33\]**

**Q:** From a meeting.

**\[16:34\]**

**A:** That\'s it. See what I mean? So they would murder you in any
fashion. So that had to be understood, that they could not be too low or
too open, and that nothing would be done about it.

So when we talked about going to Mississippi in those years, you\'re
talking about something real. But we left and did it. In other words, we
took that movement on. Nashville had that kind of guts, that kind of
understanding. See, I don\'t want to even say guts again. That\'s normal
talk. We had that understanding of nonviolence that we laid our lives on
the line for, that understanding. In fact, when I came back from prison
to a mass meeting, my interpretation was that I was beaten bloodless
\...(inaudible) newspapers filled up.

**\[17:14\]**

But point is is that I told them, you know, I bear the marks of the Lord
Jesus on my body. This is not some, you know, I got beat. Bear the marks
of the Lord Jesus. I mean, that\'s when the\-- and the whole auditorium
went wild. They didn\'t say, eh, you know, I mean, because that\'s where
we were, that\'s who we were. All right? The whole auditorium. Because
that\'s who we were. We were meeting in churches; we were church people.
That\'s who made the movement; church people made the movement.

**\[17:46\]**

And students largely\-- in fact, we have to give this a couple ways.
Students, you see, who had deep religious background, maybe who were far
more religious than they thought they were, because at that age you were
rebelling again. But you know, that doesn't mean you\'re outside up. You
see what I mean?

And the other thing we have to see is that\-- the thing that stood out
for me when I was in jail in Jackson, Mississippi, that a good deal of
all the white students actually believed in their faith. I mean, they
really believed in it, not by custom and tradition and playing games in
the little political plane of American politics, American political
environment. But they actually believed in their faith. Jewish kids and
white kids who were Christian. See what I mean? That has to be deeply
understood and we never talk about it and yet there is no way that you
can understand the movement without understanding those two things.
Well, pardon me, no, I don\'t mean pardon me, because that\'s basic an
understanding.

**\[19:01\]**

And so often as you\'re talking, or as we often od interviews like this,
we\'re talking from two different bases without understanding that. You
see what I mean? And so it\'s very, very important.

**\[19:15\]**

**Q:** When you went to\-- did you go back with Martin when he went back
there on January 2nd?

**A:** Oh yeah, oh yeah, I was there. In fact, that\'s right, we\'re
getting back to your question again. Is that, yeah, in fact, oh, I was
there. In fact, we were there so much that we had to change off to take
weekends back home, because we were there for four and five and six
weeks at a time. See what I mean? We were there from two to six weeks at
a time, one time we were there six weeks\' time. Is that we were there
over a period of time.

**\[19:45\]**

Remember, we really didn\'t get out of there until nearly summer. See,
and we started in January. And important activity was happening in
February, in March and in April. There\'s still, I mean, very, very
important confrontations. I don\'t remember when I had the one with
Clark personally, but as Andrew Young said, had I not\--

**Q:** Do you recollect your confrontation with Clark? We can put the
date in later.

**\[20:18\]**

**A:** Yeah. I\'ve said it so many times that I can almost say it in my
sleep, but it\'s kind of boresome to repeat it anymore. You know, 20
years of repeating it, or 25, whatever it is. But Andrew Young said, had
I not remained nonviolent we may not have had the Voting Rights Bill,
and that\'s what it was really all about in my mind, in one way. In
another way, we\'ll deal with that.

**\[20:46\]**

You see, I had\-- I collected a group of people, about 25, 30 people, to
go down to city hall to demand that we be allowed to register to vote.
It was one of a series of like happenings, right? And so\-- and we got
down there and of course Clark\'s people were there, and they
immediately came out and stopped us on the steps and told us we could
not go, the voting registration table was closed, etc., etc. I said,
\"Well then we\'ll remain until it opens.\" Because it\'s supposed to be
open in two and a half \...(inaudible) something, whatever, I don\'t
remember details. Details aren\'t important. We both know we\'re lying
to each other. You know what I mean.

The point being is that he\-- what he was saying was no matter what he
said, you\'re not going to register. And what I was saying, no matter
what I said, is yes we will. All right? And the point is, and he was
saying\--

**\[21:44\]**

**Q:** You had two\--

**A:** Yeah. What he was saying was, I\'ll be damned if you will, and
what I was saying is, well you\'re going to have to prove it. You know
what I mean? That\'s what we were saying, is that I\'m not going to take
your word for it, and we\'re going to prove right out here on the steps
one way or the other what it\'s all about. Right? So for the next hour
or so we were back and forth on this thing, and you always see on TV,
you see a couple, three minutes, four or five minutes of it, but we were
at it for an hour or so.

**\[22:14\]**

And so after he told us, he went back in and locked the door. So I led
my people right up the steps. Well, people start coming to join us by
that time, too, so there\'s a lot more of us than when we started. So
then he would come out and push us down the steps and we would go at
each other while we were doing this, he\'d push us down the steps. But
he got us back down the steps on the sidewalk, and we\'d demonstrate on
the sidewalk, and he\'d run back in. When he ran back in, we ran right
back up the steps. \[laughs\] So he had to keep coming out to try to put
us down.

**\[22:56\]**

Then the part that most people know about, the thing is, but this thing
was happening for a period of time, and we would keep making the
exchanges. So but the top part was that we were at the top of the steps
and Clark comes out with just a couple of his people behind him at
first, but they\'re all back at the doors. There\'s doors to the side
entrance to the county courthouse. And so he acts like he\'s going to
talk to me and he sort of lower his\-- I\'m standing right on the top
step. This is a whole series of steps. I\'m standing right on the top
step. And he comes to the door and he says, well, you know\-- and he was
sort of speaking. He drops his head, and when he drops his head, he
takes his billy club and- whom! - hits me right in the solar plexus.

**\[23:50\]**

Well, he\'s a big man too, and I never\--

**Q:** He\'s a lot bigger than you.

**A:** Oh, much. I never was a large man, right? And down the steps I
go, but running backwards. I was always able to run backwards. I had run
backwards all my life. I did not miss a step, right?

**\[24:06\]**

**Q:** It\'s a technique \...(inaudible)

**A:** That\'s exactly right. And of course I\'m standing on the
sidewalk. But what I don\'t realize, I\'ve got his billy club in my
hand.

**Q:** Some way you got his billy club out of his hand.

**\[24:20\]**

**A:** I tell you, it\'s not a someways, and that\'s what it\'s all
about, all right? I\'ll tell you what happened, is I stood there on that
sidewalk, I started to run up the steps and it seemed like the sky
opened. And a whole thing came to me, just like that. And when the
Mississippi summer, the voting registration summer, Martin and I and a
couple other people had gone across Mississippi together making speeches
on behalf of SNCC\'s drive in Mississippi as a part of our inner
organizational coordination kind of stuff, because Martin could bring
the people. A couple great stories, but anyway.

**\[25:02\]**

So but there was a policeman from Philadelphia or Baltimore, I think it
was Philadelphia, who was in the car with us on one of those trips and
he said\-- we had come down just to be a part of the movement\-- and he
was in the car with us and he said one of the tricks is that you\-- if
you hit a person in the stomach with your billy club, he said, anytime a
person is hit in the solar plexus they grab, and then you let go of the
billy club and they\'ve got it, and then when they\'ve got your club,
you can do anything to them you want to, because you\'re in
self-defense, as a policeman.

**\[25:39\]**

So the idea was is that now I had the club. If I had started running up
the steps, he could have blown me away.

**Q:** Yeah, because he would have had a gun.

**A:** That\'s the point. See, he had the gun, I had the club. But hey,
that\'s all he needed, right?

**Q:** \...(inaudible)

**\[25:58\]**

**A:** That would have been so destructive to our nonviolent movement.
Here I am\--

**\_\_:** \...(inaudible)

**A:** At the last second, as I say, I stood there and I started back up
the steps because you know, nobody moved either way. The steps were open
and I was going to take\-- well, that\'s when I realize, oh yeah! See,
that\'s what the trick was about.

Boom. He had this leather strap, the whole thing. I mean, if he had
wanted to hold it, he could have held it. He didn\'t want to hold it.

**\[26:25\]**

**Q:** He wanted you to have it so he had an excuse to shoot you.

**A:** That\'s the point. So I find myself down on the sidewalk getting
ready to run up when it seems like the sky opens and this whole
conversation comes to me just like that. Right? And so I say, so\-- and
I see his eyes, too, and that\'s the first time I mention that. But I
saw his eyes, his eyes did that, as if to say\-- as if to say\--

**Q:** He\'s got you.

**\[26:51\]**

**A:** That\'s right, Doc. As if to say, you know, hey this is it, or I
got him, or words\-- you know how that\-- and you know it when you see
it, you know it.

**Q:** \...(inaudible) you\'ve made your mistake \...(inaudible)

**A:** That\'s exactly right. See, and that whole conversation came to
me right there in that\--

**\[27:08\]**

**Q:** Because you \...(inaudible)

**A:** That\'s right. And that\'s the conversation coming to me again
and the same thing, I\'ll tell you about. And so realizing what\'s going
down, because I said, \"We will put these in the gutter where they
belong. We don\'t need these, we\'ll put it in the gutter where it
belongs,\" and I laid it down in the gutter and started up the steps.
And he started down, because he realized it wasn\'t working now. So he
started down.

So we meet halfway, because you come down halfway and there\'s a little
level off and then you come down the rest of it. And so we meet halfway
and we\'re there on these steps. So my people move up behind me and
his\-- as his troops move down behind him, my people move up behind me.
It all happens same time. It\'s according to who\'s talking and who\'s
going to say it, right? I say that he moved and then we moved; he\'s
going to say we moved and he moved. Anyway.

**\[28:06\]**

The important thing is everybody moved, because everybody understood
what the game was. Didn\'t matter whether you had uniforms on or whether
you didn\'t, because you had to back up your men. So down the steps they
come, up the steps my troops(?) come. So there we are and we\'re facing
each other again.

**\[28:29\]**

So there was another incident there right before this happened that I
should tell you about \...(inaudible). Anyway, so then we have this
thing back and forth and these troops started slowly moving us down
because as nonviolent people we can\'t really force it. See what I mean?
We can\'t be shoving an pushing.

**\[28:48\]**

**Q:** Forcing \...(inaudible).

**\[28:48\]**

**A:** That\'s right. See what I mean? They can, all right? So we\'re
slowly going down the steps with holding ground as best we can with the
nonviolent understandings. And Clark and I are having it, right?

END OF #517

BEGINNING OF #518

**\_\_:** I was going to ask you, who were the 30 people that started
\...(inaudible)?

**\[00:10\]**

**A:** Oh, I don\'t know. They were just people that were around the
church.

**Q:** Trying to register?

**A:** Well not necessarily, truthfully. They were people that were at
the church, at the Brown Chapel. You see what I mean? That was
headquarters kind of place. So they were around Brown Chapel and I
collected them to go on downtown, whoever wanted to go. Now, they were
probably, I don\'t know, about how many of them were unregistered, how
many of them were registered. I don\'t even know how many were from
Selma and how many weren\'t.

**\[00:40\]**

**Q:** Your troops.

**A:** Yeah, that\'s right. That was the idea. And so if one of them
wanted to register, that was enough for me. You see what I mean?

**Q:** \...(inaudible)

**\[00:48\]**

**A:** That\'s exactly right. See, that\'s the truth of the matter. It
was not selected 30 people who had tried five times to register and
didn\'t. That was unimportant. The important thing was to go down and
challenge this thing. If none of us could vote, it\'s a matter of
challenging the right to. See what I mean?

But there were a number of people from Selma. I mean, most of the people
from Selma\-- that were in it, were from Selma. That doesn\'t mean all
the people were. I don\'t even know. In fact, I\'d like to know myself.
I\'d like to know who it was so we could all get together and have a
great time sometime.

**\[01:22\]**

**\_\_:** The reason why I ask is that because I know that the teachers
formed an organization and marched to the courthouse and I thought maybe
that was \...(inaudible)

**A:** No, it wasn\'t. Reese led a group of ministers after that, or
before that. I don\'t remember when\--

**Q:** He said it was on about the 16th or 17th day of January when they
marched down the teachers.

**\[01:45\]**

**A:** Oh yeah, that was earlier. See, in fact, you\'re right, because I
know it was early, and I\'ll tell you the reason it was early, is
because one of the things we continuously said, that here are teachers
in this community had been denied. It is not just common people, these
are people that anybody knows would have the right to vote and all that
kind of stuff. No records, no this, no that, you know, but all the stuff
you had to go through. You had to repeat part of the Constitution and
write this and do the other. And all that meant one thing: you\'re not
going to register to vote. Isn\'t that the standard joke of the time?
Says, what does this mean? It means you\'re not going to vote.

**\[02:25\]**

**Q:** You mentioned then that you went to Mississippi in the summer of
\'63 and \'64 with SNCC. What type of relationships did you have with
SNCC?

**A:** We had a very good relationship based upon\-- see, what you have
to understand is this, and so I know the background that you\'re
thinking about in all this because it\'s very important too. Is that
remember that we were two different organizations, number one. Number
two, we had two different philosophies of how to get it done.

**\[03:06\]**

The other thing you have to see, so that we see where this starts in a
very real way, is had Martin not wanted SNCC to exist it never would
have existed. Because we could have played political games with the
whole thing at the rally meeting and made certain that SNCC wasn\'t even
organized, or at least wasn\'t organized in such a way they could have
been full-blown or gotten anywhere.

**\[03:31\]**

**Q:** Just a paper organization (?).

**A:** That\'s exactly right. And that\'s the way I feel about it. Of
course, there are other opinions about that, but that it has to be seen
that we did not\-- we meaning SCLC\'s people, meaning Martin in
particular\-- did not move against or try to stop students from moving
away for their own organization. At the same time, it didn\'t mean that
all students moved out of SCLC.

**\[04:00\]**

And when we think of students, too, we have to really think\-- and this
is the kind of stuff that\'s never brought up in the studies\-- that
there was a difference between undergraduate students and graduate
students in that whole thing. Some went one way and some went the other.
But you\'ve got to see, for instance, seminary students, we ended up
with practically\-- with half the seminary students before\--

**Q:** \...(inaudible)

**A:** Before the movement was over. Now get that. Right? Because you\--

**Q:** Before the movement was over \...(inaudible).

**\[04:27\]**

**A:** That\'s it. You see what I mean? See, all of this becomes
important kinds of stuff that\'s generally left out and just done with a
broad stroke. Because in the beginning, both graduate students and
undergrad students were in SNCC, and some of SNCC\'s best people were
graduate students, right? Like the last mayor of Washington, DC. Marion
Berry. But see, Marion started with us in Nashville, but he was
second-line leadership with us. He was second-line leadership, he
wasn\'t top leadership with us. We were all in jail when he came to the
fore.

**\[05:11\]**

Then he went\-- he was with us and then he went to SNCC, and when SNCC
was formed in what-you-call-it, and later became national president.
Came out of Nashville. John Lewis was seminary, went to SNCC, and
remained of course because he became a national president. But as was
always with Martin, we always considered Martin, we always considered
John an honorary member of our staff. He was the person in SNCC that
continued to talk about the loving community grew out of seminary.

What\'s his name, who is now in Georgia, down in Albany, Georgia, who
was the natural leader down in Albany\-- oh well, the natural leader was
Reverend\-- was Reverend So-and-so and then Attorney So-and-so. But the
SNCC leader, still there, did the cooperative, has the cooperative farm
out there. Came out of Virginia, came out of seminary in Virginia. His
name doesn\'t come to me, right? SNCC person that remains so.

**\[06:13\]**

But by largely, the religious end of it came to SCLC, by and large. But
we see acceptance and all that. But I just mentioned it in passing
because I don\'t think enough detail is done on it, because it tells us
something if we really look at it closely. But no, I\'m off your
question again.

**\[06:37\]**

**Q:** On the relationship.

**A:** Oh, relationship. So what you have to see is that we, in the
beginning, we had no problems with the students forming SNCC. No
problem. And just that the main difference was two things, in my
thinking. Was James Forman seemed that to rebel against Martin was a way
of raising money, and using student rebellion as a way of getting white
students out of schools across the country to join them and get support.
And that that created an ongoing kind of nonsense thing that shouldn't
have existed, but that Martin never fed into.

**\[07:32\]**

It was a way of trying to also blackmail Martin into doing things that
SNCC wanted to do, and it was more Jim Forman and the group around Jim
than it was anything else. But from SCLC\'s side, we never had any
problem with SNCC. Let SNCC do what it wanted to do, and thank God
somebody is doing something. And that they were courageous young people
that would go into the heart of Mississippi, see?

**Q:** Where they could lose their lives.

**\[08:03\]**

**A:** That\'s exactly right, and challenge and challenge and challenge.
We put a lot more organization in what we did, a lot more pre-planning
in what we did, and we were not there to stay forever. We were not there
to build a people\'s base out of the raw materials that over a period of
years would in fact develop to do a certain thing. We were there, in
fact, to break the most important thing of all, and this was most
important, is that\-- what\'s the term? It just doesn\'t come to me now.
But is to break that relationship between the South and the Supreme
Court that allowed the South to get by with doing whatever it wanted to
to black people.

**\[08:51\]**

**Q:** Which it had since Plessy versus Ferguson.

**A:** That\'s right. See what I mean? That\'s it. That\'s what we were
really about doing, right? See, is to break that, to force the Supreme
Court to in fact live up to what it was supposed to live up to.

**Q:** Separate and equal. Get off the separate and equal.

**\[09:08\]**

**A:** That\'s exactly right, which never was, you see what I mean?
Which was in the beginning, it was separate but not equal. Is that that
was what we were really about, from my thinking, from the time we walked
in there. That\'s what we were about. And if we could pull that, we
would pull the rest of the chain. See what I mean?

For instance, to give it proof of that from my standpoint, see, Selma
doesn\'t start or stop with me with the signing of the Civil Rights
Bill\-- I mean, yeah, the Civil Rights Bill. See, what\-- I knew we had
won when we had won that, when we won Selma. I then organized what is
now Upward Bound. I called it Vision and put it in the field and put 700
kids in college who couldn't pass college entrance exams ten minutes
before.

**\[09:58\]**

But what was behind that in my thinking was not to just educate
everybody. My idea was how do we create the new leadership for the
South? We had won it. We had won then, as far as I\'m concerned. We had
won. When we won Selma, we had won.

**Q:** \...(inaudible)

**\[10:10\]**

**A:** That\'s right, see. In other words, we had made the law affirm
the moral and spiritual. You get my point? And had proven beyond doubt
the method of nonviolence. See what I mean? So that the political then
was in its proper place as an adjunct to the moral and spiritual, and
with a method to keep it that way. All right?

So now, my concern was how do we create the new leadership for the new
period. And it happened, is\-- I\'m way ahead of you in one sense. I
mean, you\'ve got 15 questions between where I am now and where we were
a minute ago, but I\'ll give it to you, is the\--

**\[10:56\]**

So after we went at Selma and there was a whole contingent of
religious\-- I was in charge of the religious, etc., during the whole
period there, the in period, the \...(inaudible). And there was a whole
group of nuns and priests from Saint Louis. Now they were\-- if you
looked at the pictures, I set up the whole platform, the meeting for
the\-- remember when the Greek Orthodox, what do they call them?

**Q:** Patriarch.

**\[11:32\]**

**A:** The patriarch of the Greek Orthodox church came, remember that
cover of *Life* Magazine? Well, I set up that whole meeting. I mean, I
didn\'t\-- Martin decided the patriarch would be there. What I mean is I
set up the meeting, right? The whole\-- the worship service and
everything that was part of that and who was to read what and all that
and the Great New Testament people there, the Greek Orthodox people. So
that was their role, the Old Testament Role, and I decided all that
based upon our theological understandings.

**\[12:04\]**

Anyway, so no, I\'ve almost forgotten the part I was going to tell you,
and it was a good story too. But I had to put so much setting into it. I
had to put so much setting into it. What did I say right before that?
Because it\'s a story you ought to have.

**Q:** We\'re moving through the organization. The question was about
you folks at SCLC and\--

**A:** Yeah, I know, but I had skipped there and, oh yeah, I got to the
thing.

**\[12:34\]**

So if you were to there, you would have seen that that whole audience\--
half of that audience, almost half of that church at one point, about a
fourth of it really, was the nuns and priests. Well, so when they go
back to Saint Louis, they\'re excited about the fact that we\'d won a
major battle, so they asked me to come in to give a speech. So I came in
and I gave the speech and they\-- and then said, well what do we do now?
Well, I said, never at a loss for an answer, and so I gave\-- I spun out
this idea that I\'d been holding about creating the new leadership for
the South, and they said, Let\'s do it.

**\[13:16\]**

We put 703 kids in college before the summer was over. I went back with
a 13-state program and the administration would not fund it. And then
they came out the next following year with Upward Bound, which was my
program that I had put I the thing and proven. But what I was about was
creating the new leadership. With the winning of Selma, I knew that we
were on our way. Now what we had to do was make certain that these
people that had been involved in that struggle and had been cheated all
along now got to make up for what had happened so they could come back
into the South and be the new leadership, educated for the task and
already educated spiritually and with character and struggle, now
educated mentally to do a particular kind of task in the South.

**\[14:11\]**

To me, Selma was the point at which now everything would change, and
that instead of thinking about the old in its normal ways we had to
think about the new.

**Q:** That\'s part of the legacy of Selma.

**A:** That\'s my point. See, since we\'re talking about Selma. I left
Selma then, I left SCLC right after Selma to go to the Urban Training
Center in Chicago. See, the summer following, I did Upward Bound. I\'d
go back to the office afterwards and I\'m still thinking about one
thing, how do we deal. Now here again, how do we use this for its
maximum.

**\[14:50\]**

**Q:** Success.

**A:** That\'s it, see, because we have succeeded, as far as I\'m
concerned. And to have just more direct action demonstrations would be
nice and fine and good but it would be a cleanup operation. What are we
going to do now to make certain of that greater action that was
necessary?

**\[15:13\]**

So then I get a call from Jim Morton, who is now Dean of the Chapel at
the largest cathedral in\-- some people have said in the world. It\'s
larger than Saint Pete, the cathedral itself, Saint John the Divine. And
Jim says, \"Join us.\" And I said, \"You know, there\'s so much to be
done here.\" So we dialogue about it for about 15 or 20 minutes and then
giving\-- doing the speech thing across Indiana, and I decide I\'m going
to Urban Training Center.

But the really was because in my mind what I wanted to do was to train
ministers for the new thing. And if I could\-- and if he would give me
the right with that Ford(?) budget I had to organize it like I wanted
to, then I could bring the best ministers from across the nation into
training for urban work behind nonviolent direct action and the
Christian imperatives that went with it in my mind. Not only in my mind,
in SCLC\'s mind really, all right? Because remember, Martin said to
redeem the soul of America. That\'s what we were about. The rest of this
is conversation.

**\[16:19\]**

So I ended up leaving SCLC, going to the Urban Training Center and
bringing in ministers from all over the nation, see what I mean? To
train them for urban work, so they could go back home and do any number
of things, which many of them did. Half a dozen or so didn\'t do
nothing, but\--

**\[16:36\]**

**Q:** But the great majority of them\--

**A:** The great majority of them did. Nine of them are now bishops.

**Q:** And that\'s part of the legacy.

**\[16:40\]**

**A:** That\'s right, and that\'s part of the legacy, this whole thing.
I think we have to see that, you see what I mean?

**Q:** As well as the political\-- going a step beyond the vote.

**A:** That\'s precisely right. Because you see, politics never is more
than an affirmation of the moral and spiritual, right? Because if people
don\'t believe in what you\'re talking about, I don\'t care what you
pass. That\'s why the Civil Rights Bill of 1863 or 1865, whatever it
was, didn\'t make any difference, because people didn\'t believe it
anyway. The racism was greater then.

**\[17:18\]**

So a hundred years later we have to do the same thing, and here comes
administrations that try to take the guts out of it as a part of the
Southern strategy, because they\'re saying \"we\'ve got to have a white
man\'s party in the South since we\'re losing to the Democrats up here,
hey, we\'ll make a run down here.\"

See, I mean, racism is so destructive to our nation. Now, good thing
about it, it\'s of lesser import politically than it was a number of
years ago.

**\[17:48\]**

**Q:** But it still \...(inaudible)

**A:** That\'s exactly right, and we have to understand that as we make
these moves toward the new direction. Have to understand that in
everything we do, every step we take. In fact, Bill Moyer. Bill Moyer
was giving a speech before one of the conventions not too long ago and I
happened to hear it on there, because we keep tuned to CSPAN and that
sort of stuff all the time. CNN and CSPAN, CNN and CSPAN. And PBS in the
middle.

**\[18:21\]**

But Bill Moyer said, you know\-- and I never heard of it before, but it
was so good\-- he says Congress for 40 years refused to discuss the
issues of slavery and racism on the floor, and it ended in the Civil
War. See what I mean? There\'s no way until America deals with the
issues of racism that we can become the nation we want to be, and we
will end in one Civil War or the other. And the battle in the streets,
the battle in the streets was another Civil War. It was just done
without guns, but because of the genius of Martin King. It was going to
be done, right? Whether it was going to be done with or without guns
came to Martin King\'s genius, his background and training and his
understanding, his ability to bring people together and to take it at a
higher level and a higher ground.

**\[19:21\]**

And the ultimate proof of that action was Selma, not Birmingham. Now,
see, I say that. Remember, Wyatt T. Walker says the high-water mark was
Birmingham because he was there. \[laughs\] We all have a tendency to do
that sort of thing.

**Q:** Yeah, where you were.

**\[19:38\]**

**A:** That\'s right, we all have a tendency to do that sort of thing.
And he was Executive Director at that time. You understand what I\'m
saying. But the high-water mark of it all, to me, for a number of
reasons, you see, and maybe Wyatt is right into the proof of nonviolence
as a method that we could continue to depend upon, but the high-water
mark of all was Selma. See, that was the point at which the political
was forced to affirm the moral and spiritual. That\'s what has to be
said, that the rightness of America was suddenly coming in and Democracy
could become a reality. It wasn\'t a single struggle in a town for a
Civil Rights Bill that would give access to public accommodation, but
the real power to have the right to vote and to bring the people
together and to stop\--

**\[20:26\]**

You know, every time I pass a state capitol and I see those statues out
on the line, every one of those guys got arrested by\-- got elected by,
quote, out-niggering each other. Can you imagine what that meant for
black people when every time there was an election they went around over
the country\--

**Q:** Did it because \...(inaudible)

**\[20:49\]**

**A:** That\'s right. And during the whole campaign, all they were doing
was putting down black people. Think what if\-- if every time you
turned\-- think if three months out of every two years you turned on the
TV set and all you could hear was putting down somebody, that somebody
or those somebodies would be nothing in the eyes of the people that saw
it for three months. And that wasn\'t stopped when the elections
stopped, that was going to carry over. Plus the fact that people who
elected them were going to come up to the state house making demands on
the governor based upon their racism. See, you had to stop that whole
process, and that\'s what Selma did again.

**\[21:34\]**

Pardon me, I know, your time, because you want to go to lunch
eventually.

**Q:** Then the next question\-- no, you\'ve answered a couple of our
questions down the line on the legacy. Now, your recollections of the
killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson.

**A:** Well that\'s very important because I was there. I mean, I was
basic to it. Is in fact\-- well, I\'ll just tell it to you all because I
thought people were going to dislike me for it. The greatness and wonder
of the people. Great respect for them for that.

**\[22:07\]**

Anyway, the staff is gone for the weekend. Remember how that would
happen. That\'s why when Mrs. Boynton was beaten and all that, remember
Hosea was given orders not to do anything, and he decided\-- because he
was the only one there, because the rest was gone. Remember, by this
time we were having to leave because we were away from our home places
for so long at a time.

So this is my week, so I\'m there\--

**\[22:38\]**

**Q:** To be in Selma?

**A:** That\'s right, to be in charge at Selma. Everybody is gone. I\'m
just supposed to hold it together until everybody gets back again. You
see what I mean? No important things are to be done.

So they asked me in Marion, they called over and asked could I come over
and give a speech, because they wanted to give a march because Jim
Orange and a couple other people were in jail. It\'s right across the
street. But they wanted me to give this speech to send them out of the
place.

**\[23:13\]**

So I tell them I can\'t leave, and if you\'re going over, I\'m likely to
be arrested, and if I\'m arrested, I can\'t do that because I have been
told I got to be here and that\'s my orders. I mean, that's my
commitment to the group, that I am here keeping things together.

So they said, \"Well Reverend Vivian, if you\'ll just come over and make
this speech and you can leave out the back door, and we\'ll take the
march on. It\'s just that we need you to fire us up to go out and meet
these people.\"

**\[23:52\]**

So you know, I didn\'t say no \...(inaudible). So I say, \"Okay, anyway,
since you\'ve figured out a way that I can get right back here.\" So I
go over and I give this speech. I remember the night very, very well.
And I give the speech and the place was crowded. I mean, it is crowded.
It\'s a little church, but it seemed bigger that night and after I\'ve
gone back years later and looked at it two or three times. You know what
I mean?

**Q:** Just how small.

**\[24:17\]**

**A:** That\'s exactly right, exactly right. The church in Boston in
which Frederick Douglas had often spoken, all the great abolitionists
spoke, Garrison and all of them, is that going back there today you
wonder how could they have taken a little place like this and had a
movement? I mean, it was as small as any church in\-- the smallest
churches of this town. How could they have anything in there, right? Had
a little balcony. It was about this long. Well that\'s the kind of\--
after going back you say, how could we?

**\[24:51\]**

But it was crowded. People were packed in there, standing around the
wall and everything. It was a great time, had a great meeting.

So as they took over to organize to leave, I go out the back door. And
they have the car waiting for me because the funeral home is not too
far, and one of the cars from the funeral home picked me up. And so the
people\-- and the people are preparing to go out as I\'m going back to
Selma.

**\[25:21\]**

Well, there\'s a long road, and at a certain point you turn and you go
into Selma. Well, before we got there, state police cars were just
passing us, voom, voom, voom. When we got to that corner, there was a
state policeman standing there with a\-- this was night\-- was standing
there with a flashlight telling cars where to turn. And they would come,
they would come. And he was standing there telling them where to turn.

Well I knew something was really\-- I knew\--

**Q:** Had gone bad.

**\[25:56\]**

**A:** Really gone bad. So I have the guy drive me back towards Marion,
but I really can\'t do that, because I\'ve got to be in Selma. I know
something is up. So I have him take me on back to Selma so I can find
out really what happened. Because you couldn't step\-- even if something
was really\-- you couldn't step in the midst of it anyway, and I
couldn't take a chance on being arrested because I had to be in Selma.

So I go back and the message comes in that the people are beaten. The
state police, name starts with an L.

**Q:** Lingo, Al Lingo.

**\[26:42\]**

**A:** Lingo, Al Lingo. Al Lingo, one of the few psychopathic people
I\'ve looked in the face. I mean, if you ever wanted to see a
murderer-psychopath, you had to look at Al Lingo. The other one was the
sheriff in Saint Augustine.

**Q:** He was \...(inaudible).

**\[27:01\]**

**A:** Oh god, Brown was his name. I mean, you knew that you were
looking at a psychopathic personality, and that once set off that there
would be just murder. I mean, you just knew it, and there would be no
conscience behind it, there would be no\-- no conscience behind it. In
fact, there would be a will to do it psychopathic.

But anyway, so Al Lingo, that\'s why all these state policemen, had met
the people when they came out and beat people bloody. People got down on
their knees to pray as they met the state troopers, and they beat them
bloody on their knees. The women even covered men that were at the
front, and they beat the women, but not like they did the men. They
stopped beating them.

**\[27:49\]**

And so but\-- and the people believe, and that\'s why I have to say to
you, that the state troopers went through the town looking for me. And
they did not know I had gone, and they were\-- when they didn\'t find me
there, they went looking for me. And they believe that one of the
reasons that they beat people bloody at the front of the line\--

**Q:** They thought you\'d be up there.

**\[28:13\]**

**A:** That\'s exactly right. So they went through the town looking and
they came into\-- and they were voom, voom, voom. And they came into
this restaurant where Jimmie Lee Jackson and his mother were, and they
said something to his mother and they were pushing people around sort of
thing. The details of this you\'re going to have to get from somebody,
the details, very truthfully. Because all this was so second-hand from
my hearing it, I was never quite certain actually what happened in that
restaurant, and somebody needs to find out anyway. And I haven\'t read
any reports on it.

**\[29:02\]**

But so whatever it was, his mother was insulted and he took up for her.
And when he took up for her, policeman just shot him and killed him.
Now, we came back for the funeral. I had not been there for a matter of
a couple of weeks, or a week, whatever it was. We came back for the
funeral. Because right after the staff came back, I got to go home. See
what I mean? So I was home then for a few days.

And then I don\'t know exactly what happened between then. The next
thing that I know is that we\'re at the funeral. We\'re at the funeral
and Martin comes in to do it. And so when I come back, I think these
people are going to think, you know, that Vivian is a no-good so-and-so
because he left and\-- because, after all, the people on the phone
making that decision were not the people in the audience. You get my
point? So you don\'t know how the story gets told and you don\'t know
how they\'re going to think of you. And here somebody is murdered. You
see what I mean. It\'s not like even if somebody was beaten; I mean,
somebody was murdered.

**\[30:19\]**

**Q:** \...(inaudible)

**A:** That\'s right. And not only that, the people believe that the
policemen were looking for me at that. And here I had left.

**\[30:30\]**

So I figured that they were going to really be down on me, and it was
really difficult for me to go, I mean, really it was. I mean, I didn\'t
say anything to anybody, I was going to go, but I mean, you know, there
are some things difficult to do, whether you ever mention it or not.

So I go and the people keep coming over to me, \"Reverend Vivian, we\'re
so glad nothing happened to you.\"

**Q:** Just the opposite.

**\[30:52\]**

**A:** Exactly right. And Reverend Vivian, we\'re so glad that you came
to help us out that night, as hard as it was. And Reverend Vivian,
we\'re so glad, Reverend Vivian this, Reverend Vivian that, and all of
it just the niceness and lovingness of people.

And see, I mean, people like that worth living and dying for. I mean,
that\'s real people. I mean, see, that\'s what the salt of the earth is
all about when Jesus is talking. It is not about folk like us. I mean
that. It\'s not like folks sitting up in windows like this. He\'s
talking about folk, all right? Not just people, folk. We miss that
\...(inaudible). That\'s what it\'s really all about. That\'s what it\'s
really all about. These are just folks, kind, loving, decent folk who
all they wanted was just to be treated like human beings and wanted
their children to just have a chance to live. That\'s all they want. I
mean, they didn\'t have all the terms we had. They loved all of it,
understood what we were talking about, knew we were putting it in a
language that people upstairs could understand. But hey, they understood
it at the source, the very soul, all the rest of that conversation. And
these are the people worth\-- that\'s what the movement is about. People
worth living and dying for. That\'s the salt of the earth.

**\[32:14\]**

Well, anyway, that\'s\-- well, we went out to the\-- we went out to
cemetary. I\'ve been there since and weeds growing up around it. I have
the picture. But the\-- that\'s what it was really about.

**Q:** Moving on. Were you a participant in Bloody Sunday?

**A:** No. I wasn\'t in town. That was one of the times that I\-- see,
Hosea was the only staff member there.

**Q:** At the time of Bloody Sunday?

**\[32:44\]**

**A:** That\'s right. See, because\--

**Q:** Would you describe that day and what\-- you\'re in Atlanta, and
then the call for Dr. King.

**A:** See, I can\'t, because I don\'t know. See what I mean? I am home,
period. Right? I am home, period. I am just with my wife and kids. I
don\'t even know what happened, what the gentleman said.

**\[33:08\]**

And by the way, see, what we don\'t understand is the role our wives
play. My wife is doing a book now on the women of the movement. But for
instance, my wife did the first book on Mrs. King, called *Coretta*. I
think I know why she did it. She did the book on\-- she did *Coretta*
because it was\-- I think it was a way of her explaining what it meant
to be a wife, and she was doing it through Coretta rather than through
herself. You understand my point? You know what I mean.

**Q:** Rather than writing about herself, she wrote about herself
through Coretta.

**\[33:49\]**

**A:** That\'s right. See, our wives\-- for instance, let me give it to
you. You know, see, our wives have to take care of our children and take
care of a whole lot of attention and problems that are going on in the
time. You know, my kids never saw\-- my wife never saw six o\'clock
television, because the kids were up and she was not going to have
something burst in that she didn\'t understand, and that she wasn\'t
going to have those kids see any of us shot or killed, or particularly
their father beaten.

So she only saw the 11 o\'clock news after she put the kids to sleep.
And friends would call her after the news\--

**\[34:33\]**

**Q:** And say if you had been on it?

**A:** That\'s right. Or that if any of us\-- in other words, had there
been any real emergency that was reported on the six o\'clock news they
would call her afterwards. You see what I mean? So she could get
prepared for it, or do whatever she had to do as soon as possible. You
see? In fact, my wife led a movement for the desegregation of a school
in Decatur. School was supposed to be desegregated but the principal,
the white racist woman, was refusing to let the kids be in the same
classes together, put the black kids over in classes by themselves. So
they moved in the hallway but\--

**\[53:11\]**

**Q:** White kids in there.

**A:** That\'s exactly right. And my wife led a whole movement that they
organized the parents in that whole area. See, we don\'t realize all the
other things that were happening. You see what I mean?

**\[35:24\]**

For instance, the Klan had a march to Stone Mountain. They came right by
our house when we were living in Decatur. Our kids had to\-- my wife had
to deal with that, the kids. But as early as Nashville she was dealing
with all these same kinds of problems.

In fact, I wish you would interview my wife sometime and really think
through all the things that, you know, these kinds of\--

**Q:** The women had to do.

**\[35:56\]**

**A:** Yeah. See what I mean? Because we don\'t think about it, and they
get left out of the picture, and should not be. See, without our
families, see, without our wives, I mean, we would have had five worries
on our minds, like the soldiers with Washington, had to go back and do
some planting, had to go back and worry about this and worry about that
and couldn\'t keep their mind on the war because they were running back
home every now and then. Is that our wives were doing all these kinds of
things for us and taking care of our children so we didn\'t have to
worry.

**\[36:32\]**

**Q:** So you could be soldiers \...(inaudible).

**A:** Precisely right, so we could\-- that\'s exactly, that\'s what it
was all about. To create the beloved community. And see, ultimately, you
see, what I caught from Martin was basic for me, was that we would find
a method for social change that would solve problems, not create them.
Because violence and the\-- which is the ultimate piece of trying to
decide social change, creates more problems themselves, which is
Martin\'s line.

**\[37:16\]**

Is that how would we\-- see the idea is could we perfect a method for
social change that the only suffering that would go on would be by those
that were committed to a higher cause, or to what they believed to be a
higher cause, and let the populace decide whether it was a higher cause
by the lifting of all the issues and by a process they could get by all
the tricks and so forth that were in the political process. How did we
create a message to do that? See, that was the ultimate kind of thing.
That was the ultimate kind of thing. See, there were ultimates involved
always that made the difference here, and that they were outside of what
we normally talk about in political talk and all that.

**\[38:14\]**

Oh, I knew where I was going at one point and never got you there. I was
talking about\-- and got off talking about it. But I was talking about
the magazines and newspapers and so forth, and even at the best and
highest, never understood that this was a religious movement. And I was
telling you about that I was on the first Freedom bus to go into
Jackson, Mississippi. Well, they stopped us at the state line\-- this is
where I was going to go with that story. They stopped us at the state
line as the Alabama troops got off. See, because what they did was they
took all the civil people off, all the common people off, white people,
and left nothing but the Freedom Riders on. And then filled the bus with
troops and us. Drove to the state line, and then the Mississippi troops
took the place of the Alabama troops.

**\[39:06\]**

And so at that break, the press was demanding we talked to them. So we
asked Jim Lawson, who was on our bus, on that first Freedom bus, and was
our guru in nonviolence, to talk to them. He explained it all, analyzed
the whole movement for them, and the *Life* Magazine came out with a bus
across the cover, and the article being, \"Asking for Trouble and
Getting It.\" Had no understanding what\--

**Q:** Missed the whole point.

**\[39:34\]**

**A:** That\'s right. Now, I just happened to think that I never got to
that. Because you\'re cleaning up here.

**Q:** Then you went to\-- you were not here on Bloody Sunday. How quick
did you get back over here after Bloody Sunday?

**A:** Oh, immediately afterwards. Everybody had to get back immediately
afterwards.

**\[39:49\]**

**Q:** You came back with Dr. King?

**A:** Oh yeah. No, I don\'t know whether I was on the same plane or
bus, I don\'t remember. But we were immediately back, everybody was
back. We were getting there every way we could. I mean, that was it.
\[laughs\] We had not been out of town.

**Q:** How about your recollections of Turnabout Tuesday?

**\[40:10\]**

**A:** That\'s right. That was the next one, and I knew that was your
next question. Is that we had gotten\-- see, Martin realized that we
were caught in the thing with Judge Johnson. Martin never wanted to
break a federal edict, and he wanted always to be in line with what the
federal court was saying. Didn\'t care about the rest of those courts\--

**Q:** The state, the federal.

**\[40:40\]**

**A:** That\'s right, federal. We wanted as much as possible, right?
Now, but Martin also was very clear that we would not make a butchery of
our conscience, and that expression actually comes from the first
nonviolent action in the nation, as what\'s his name goes to jail and
Emerson comes and\-- who am I talking?

**Q:** Henry David Thoreau.

**A:** Thoreau. Thoreau is in jail, Emerson comes and it\'s Thoreau\'s
line, right? The butchery of conscience. But Martin was very clear that
he would not make a butchery of his conscience just because of the
federal court, or any other reason. But he was going to give that far
more time to operate.

**\[41:32\]**

So and we were being pushed by the events of the first Sunday to have
to, because another week had passed, to have to move. Plus people had
come in to join us on that action, of all levels and kinds, numbers of
ministers but well-known figures, political as well. We had to act, and
we were action people. I mean, there wasn\'t any doubt any that.

**\[41:58\]**

But at the same time, Judge Johnson had not acted. So how to do it well
was really what I think was going on in my mind. I know it was going on
in my mind. I don\'t have to say a thing. How do we get a way out of
this and yet be in it, so we can give more time for those other kinds of
decisions to be made? Then if they did not make them, then we would go
on and move.

So when we were met on the bridge, we were ready to turn around. I mean,
in Martin\'s mind. That didn\'t mind people there\--

**Q:** The troops.

**\[42:34\]**

**A:** That\'s right, the troops wasn\'t ready to turn around. We were.
Because the issue was not to have another confrontation at the bridge.
The issue was to be able to go across that bridge and do what we needed
to do, and to force the hand of the federal government to have to act.
See, that was really\-- the main importance of that was to make the
federal government, to create an urgency, see, so that the federal
government could not take long, knowing what was going down.

**\[43:08\]**

Well, we always knew that Johnson was a decent human being. You see what
I mean? So we was willing to play that against and\-- see, it\'s quite
different if you had had a whole different type of administration, a
whole different kind of judgeship, a whole different type of\-- see what
I mean?

**Q:** If some other federal judges had been in.

**A:** It would have been quite different, see what I mean? But after
all, it was only right and decent to give Johnson that chance,
regardless of\-- and what we always\-- what we\'ve learned always in the
movement is that a number of people want to do the right thing, but if
you don\'t create an emergency for them, they just don\'t do it. They
take the easiest way out. But if you create the emergency, they\'ll use
that as an excuse for doing what should have been done in the first
place and which they knew should be done.

**\[43:56\]**

So that was a part of creating an emergency, in our mind. And it was
also, I mean, part of this thing with SNCC, by the way, because we
didn\'t want SNCC to mess up this play with something that was
unnecessary. See, and we can see it. You can make a contrast to it by
seeing what happened when SNCC marched in Montgomery. I mean, they were
just beaten, and they would have beaten us that way. They may not have
beaten Martin that way but they would have beat the rest of us that way.
You see what I mean? See, and we gotta think about that.

**\[44:33\]**

This was proof to me that Martin was correct. What happened in
Montgomery with SNCC was proof to me that Martin was correct.

**Q:** Was correct on the strategy and turnaround.

**\[44:43\]**

**A:** That\'s right. And see, that strategy was based upon moral and
spiritual understandings of the issue and problems in the human
condition that give this decent man a chance\--

**Q:** Chance that he is going to resolve\--

**A:** Precisely right. This wasn\'t just giving the government a break.
It wasn\'t not wanting to confront. It wasn\'t\-- because we had
proved\-- our whole history has proved we didn\'t mind confronting
anybody, right? Far more psychopaths, much less decent folk.

**\[45:14\]**

But the idea was, is how do we whole time give a decent man a chance to
make\-- but create an emergency, had to act, which is good nonviolence.
You always create an emergency in nonviolence so that\-- you know,
because that becomes necessary, it becomes necessary in order for people
to have to deal with the moral and spiritual issues. Otherwise they
won\'t. The hardest thing to do is deal with moral and spiritual
understandings.

**Q:** Much easier to procrastinate. \...(inaudible) hope they go away.

**\[45:44\]**

**A:** That\'s right, and just go along baby. That\'s the easiest way to
deal with everything. And most of us live our lives that way, much less.
\[laughs\]

**Q:** \...(inaudible) no decision is worse than the wrong one.

**A:** Exactly right. In fact, most of the time it is the wrong
decision, but I know what you\'re saying.

END OF #518

BEGINNING OF #519

**\[00:10\]**

**Q:** Since we\'re taking most of your day and we\'re going to have to
see Dr. Williams shortly, we\'re limited to about three more. Did you
participate in the full march when it came?

**A:** Yeah, crossing the bridge and all that, just the first day. But
you see, my role as National Director of Affiliates then was not to be a
troop but to get troops in. So\--

**\[00:38\]**

**Q:** All right, so go into your role, then, for the march when it
finally takes place.

**A:** Okay, so you see, at the time that it happens, then I join
everybody, and in fact I join everybody as we go across the bridge and
we march down the other side, because the order has been given now.
Judge Johnson says we have the right to march, and we go across and
they\'re not going to stop us, and we go and then we can see that long
line. Because before I got into the line, I was at the office doing all
sorts of things, and I walked out and I was in a place where I could
see, and it was beautiful. It was beautiful.

**\[01:11\]**

**Q:** See them going across?

**A:** That\'s exactly, that\'s right. And then when I got to the\--
see, I was in the crowd, I wasn\'t really at the front, because I was
late because I had a lot of PR stuff to do and I had to send out
statements to the press and we were answering radio stuff out over the
phone, and like I said, that was my kind of stuff.

**\[01:34\]**

So I get in the line. By the time I get to the top of the bridge where
you can see everything, that long line, so wide and big and beautiful.
It\'s way, way, way down there, making it out of sight because they made
a turn. And you could see it, and boy it was beautiful. I mean it\'s\--
hey, it\'s one of the most\-- I never crossed that bridge without seeing
it all. Today, if I was driving down\--

**Q:** You\'d see it today when you go across.

**\[01:58\]**

**A:** That\'s exactly right, exactly right. Never miss any of it. And
we\'d done it before since. You know what I mean.

**\_\_:** Was it \...(inaudible)

**A:** No, no, just festive, joyful, celebration, to use the great
religious term. It was celebration. And a great time. And then my
particular task was to go out and bring troops back. I had to be on that
telephone. I had to be going on the telephone to our organizations
across the country, asking them to come on in and join, bring a carload,
a planeload or whatever, but get as many people. If it\'s one person,
get them in there, if it\'s carloads, get them in there. Get as many
people in to join the march as we go to Montgomery as possible.

**\[02:52\]**

The other thing was me (?) was to get in a car and move around Alabama
and doing this call-in (?), getting as many people, local people, who
could come in for a day or could join us at certain points. See what I
mean? All that sort of thing. Anything to swell the size of the crowd
and show the volume presentation. So that that\'s what I was
continuously about during the march, and I ended up of course at the end
of the march like everybody else.

**\[03:22\]**

**Q:** You joined them on the grounds of Saint Judge the night before?

**A:** That\'s exactly, the night before when all the actors and so
forth were coming in, the entertainers and the singers and so forth.

**Q:** Did you make arrangements for them or did they volunteer?

**A:** Oh no, that was all coordinated out of the office. But I didn\'t
do that. See, my job was this other thing.

**\[03:38\]**

**Q:** Getting the troops in.

**A:** It was probably Andy that was doing that kind of thing. Mine was
to get the troops in. We were probably seeing Andy and Martin and a
couple people like that, Andy in particular. As I was seeing it. You\'d
have to ask Andy. Because I wasn\'t even concerned about that.

**Q:** \...(inaudible) the VIPs.

**\[03:57\]**

**A:** That\'s it. That was my concern, I had to get troops in. And you
know, it\'s strange, the two things I remember from all of that night at
that Saint Jude\'s, the two things I remember was Tony Bennett and the
gal who sang \"Mississippi God Damn\". \[laughs\]

**\_\_:** Nina Simone?

**A:** Nina Simone. I mean, it\'s strange, all that stuff\--

**\[04:27\]**

**Q:** Of all the-

**A:** That\'s the two things I remember. It sounds strange to me if I
think about it. That\'s why I laugh about it. It\'s strange to me,
because basically I was running around the grounds. I was dead tired
anyway. I wasn\'t all that concerned. But those two things stuck out for
me.

**Q:** Then your office. Where was your office located in Selma?

**\[04:49\]**

**A:** In Selma? I don\'t know where it was. If I had to really go to
the place, I couldn\'t do it.

**Q:** It is across the street from the jail?

**A:** I don\'t remember\-- the only office\-- no, I wasn\'t across the
street from the jail. We may have had\-- we may have had an office
across the street from the jail, but the main space out of which we
worked was out the church, was around the church.

**Q:** In the church?

**\[05:18\]**

**A:** See, and there was another church down the street from First
Baptist. Now, those two churches we did more work in and did more
administrating out of.

**Q:** Where you had your telephone banks.

**A:** Yeah, well, yeah. See, the other thing is, though, see, we moved
all over that place. Remember, that\'s a small town, and there\'s not
many real facilities. So I could see us breaking up all over the place.
I mean, so it\'s not too much to think that we didn\'t have\--

**\[05:46\]**

See, in Birmingham we had a set set of offices where everything that
happened\--

**Q:** But you did not have a set set?

**A:** Well, not as such. We were running all over the place.

**\_\_:** Now did you stay with people in the neighborhood around the
churches?

**\[06:00\]**

**A:** Largely I didn\'t. Largely, actually, I stayed in motels. But the
Jacksons were the family that I stayed with more than any other family.

**\_\_:** From Selma?

**A:** Yeah, from Selma.

**Q:** Dr. Jackson?

**\[06:12\]**

**A:** Yeah, I stayed with Dr. Jackson more than I did any other family.

**Q:** That was Mrs. Foster\'s brother.

**A:** Yeah, and his\-- and you really gotta think about his wife. She
was just tremendous and could cook and was a jolly person and kept
spirits up and was a teacher in the school system and still they put it
all on the line on an ongoing basis. And plus the fact\-- you know,
their daughter is now working at the King Center.

**\[06:39\]**

**\_\_:** Oh really?

**A:** Yeah. She\'s got the long name that never comes to me. Starts
with a J, doesn\'t it? Oh my god, I can\'t get her name right. But I
just said that for you because of the King Center, and I think you ought
to look her up and talk to her.

**Q:** Was the FBI and the Justice Department\'s role in Selma hopeful,
passive?

**\[07:07\]**

**A:** Destructive.

**Q:** I\'ll give you the three. Passive, helpful, or destructive?

**A:** It was not in any way helpful, nor meant to be. It was no way
helpful nor was it meant to be. Although it seemed to be passive, it was
not passive. It was destructive.

**Q:** Would you comment how?

**\[07:29\]**

**A:** Well, let me give you an example. Is in the first place the head
of the FBI was not with us, was against us. And everybody in the world
knew that he controlled every action of the FBI, and there weren\'t any
deputies or there weren\'t any\-- what do they call them? Agents. Agents
who acted differently than what he wanted and stayed. And agents were
selected from the states which they were about, and the regions in
particular but the states specifically. So that they were part of the
good old boy groups of the very people there.

**\[08:16\]**

They also worked very closely together with the local police to, proving
by their entire behavior, was destructive to everything that we wanted.
In fact, I believe you\'ll find that the FBI was a part of trying to
convince the administration to help keep Martin out of Selma in the
first place. Now, all of these are very real reasons. Now let me give
you an example on the street.

When I was being beaten, what we talked about, when I was being beaten
in Selma\-- and by the way, we didn\'t finish that, but you\'re can see
the rest of it on the film. It tells you a little more anyway. Is the
FBI was standing across the street taking notes.

**\[09:06\]**

**Q:** Not intervening?

**A:** Not doing a thing. And you knew they were not going to do
anything. And you knew that the way it was going to be done was not
going to be to help us at all, and we knew it wasn\'t going to be
objected, period. Whether for or against us, it wasn\'t going to be
objected.

**\[09:22\]**

So and we\-- in fact, we use to talk to the bug. We figured our rooms
were bugged three-fourths of the time, not just in Selma.

**Q:** Anywhere.

**A:** Anywhere we went, right? And so we used to talk to the bug and
say \"Now, tell Hoover that the route we\'re going to take is\-- so we
want you to get it down right now.\" Just talking to the bug, just
having fun. Because we understood their role and their relationship. The
community relations role is the one that sometimes we had questions
about, but worked together with them anyway, regardless, because we
thought that they\-- and as a nonviolent movement, we were never
secretive anyway. So I mean, nonviolent movements aren\'t secretive. But
of course the Justice Department couldn\'t take that for granted.

**\[10:22\]**

But I\'ll tell you what. The FBI guy I remember, though, just as a side
kind of, the FBI guy I remember, who came up to me one Friday and he
said, \"Are you going to be here all weekend?\" I said, \"Yeah.\" But I
wonder who he is and why he\'s asking. So he tells me he\'s with the
FBI. So I says, \"Yeah, I\'m going to be here all weekend.\" And he
says, \"You sure?\" And I said, \"Yeah.\" I said, \"This is my
assignment. I\'m going to be here all weekend.\" And he said, \"I just
wanted to know because I didn\'t want to stay here all weekend. I\'m
supposed to keep up with you.\" \[laughs\] And I liked him.

**\[11:05\]**

**Q:** He was truthful.

**A:** That\'s right. So it was ten years before I told the story
because I didn\'t know if they would remember who, come back on him, you
know what I mean.

**Q:** Come back on him.

**\[11:14\]**

**A:** That\'s right. A guy that honest and that direct, and he didn\'t
look like a regular bigot anyway. I just figured it was a guy that just
wanted to have a weekend with his girlfriend or his wife. \[laughs\]

**Q:** Do you have any questions?

**\_\_:** \...(inaudible)

**\[11:49\]**

**A:** I think we have to see it a couple ways. Is that in a real sense
he had no impact. See, where you have\-- what people are looking for is
meaning, not message. Message just happens to carry meaning, all right?
If they don\'t\-- if the message doesn\'t have enough meaning to get you
where you want to go, it doesn\'t have any effect.

When you have an alternative that is doing something for you, all the
talk and think, you\'re going with what gests you where you want to go,
I don\'t care who you are, black, white, yellow, pink polka-dot. I
don\'t care if you\'re North, South, East, West. I don\'t care who you
are. That\'s what you\'re looking for, right?

**\[12:31\]**

Well, Malcolm coming in and making the speech he made\-- and it wasn\'t
all that bad, from what I understand. I was in jail at the time.
Remember, I was beaten. So I should tell you all that story too. I got
all kinds of stories to tell you. But the\-- but I never think of them.
I was arrested right after that, beaten, put in jail, all that stuff. I
was beaten on the elevator, the\-- anyway. They had to close up\--
\...(inaudible).

**\[13:03\]**

Malcolm, however, made it very clear to Mrs. King that he was not there
to hurt Martin\-- Martin wasn\'t in town. He was not there to hurt to
Martin, but to show that there were alternatives that would be harder
for the nation to take than Martin. Well now, let\'s look at that two
ways. Number one, I don\'t believe it. Well, I believe that he meant
what he said, but I don\'t think that he understood the depth of the
human spirit.

See, that\'s what we have to see, is that what nonviolence does is reach
the human spirit. See, it is reaching that which is so deep in mine (?).
See, let\'s put it another way. It puts conscience in conflict with
itself. Because what people say they believe suddenly comes in conflict
with how they acting. All right? People can\'t live like that.

**\[14:05\]**

So when you are\-- see, how I learned my nonviolence was when I was in
fourth grade and a kid named Eugene Lee sent me a colored postcard,
Valentine Card. So I\'m going to beat his behind, that\'s what it comes
down to. So after school I catch him as he\'s going off the
schoolground, I catch him over by the sheet metal factory. And I mention
that because the sheet metal factory made out of sheet metal as well,
the buildings were.

**\[14:41\]**

And I kept trying to make him fight. He wouldn't fight. Eugene Lee. Kept
pushing him up against the fence, pushing him. But I couldn't hit him.

**Q:** You wouldn\'t hit the first?

**A:** I wasn\'t going to really hit him until\--

**Q:** Unless he hit you first.

**\[14:56\]**

**A:** That\'s right, until he raised his hand. No, I wasn\'t going to
let him hit me first. \[laughter\]

**Q:** \...(inaudible)

**A:** That\'s right. That\'s right. But he was going to have to get in
the fighting posture, right? And as soon as he did that, I intended to
rock him all over the place, right? But the point is, I just could not
fight him.

**\[15:12\]**

**Q:** Because he would not make \...(inaudible).

**A:** That\'s right. And I pushed him up against there and I called him
names and I belittled him. But he just look at me as if he didn\'t
really understand what I was talking about, because he probably didn\'t
understand the depth of his hurt to me. And what I was really doing was
educating, but not knowing I was educating. See what I\'m trying to say?
He probably didn\'t even know what he had done. See what I mean? He
probably just saw this picaninny card and I was the only black kid in
the room and he was, to him it was light stuff, it didn\'t have any
meaning, and he thought maybe I would laugh about it, maybe. You get my
point?

**\[15:49\]**

**Q:** Yeah.

**A:** So he couldn't even understand the depth of my resentment.

**Q:** Why you were angry.

**A:** That\'s right. See what I mean? And I learned something from all
of that. It was very basic to me for the rest of my life. It was very
basic to me for the rest of my life. By the time I left sixth grade and
went to junior high school, I got all my kids together. Got all my guys
together. I mean, I was\-- I ran with\-- it was my school, right? Mine
and Ms. Horney\'s (?). She wasn\'t the principal but she was the sixth
grade teacher who nobody played with, right?

**\[16:27\]**

And I was going to junior high school. And so I told all my guys, from
now on, we don\'t fight. When we leave here, we\'re not fighting. We\'re
too old for that stuff. And when we fought, my gang, was only to keep
order on the campus\-- at the schoolground. That\'s right. We did not
allow big kids to pick on little kids.

**\[16:47\]**

I remember a kid who later became one of my group who ran home at
recess, because I caught him picking on a little kid, and at recess, you
don\'t go home at recess. \[laughs\] He saw me coming around the
building and he knew I saw him.

**Q:** He went home.

**\[17:03\]**

**A:** He went home, right? Because we didn\'t allow it. But we created
that kind of thing on the schoolground. Now, the thing is that when I
went there, I said, we don\'t fight anymore, period. And I had one fight
all the way through junior high school and high school, and I didn\'t
fight then. I started to push the kid off the\-- because he really
was\-- he was really racist, and he made some remarks and tried to get
all up in everybody, and he was on the top of the, what do you call it?
What you sit on, the seats you sit on in the football game.

**Q:** The stands?

**\[17:41\]**

**A:** Yeah, but it wasn\'t a stadium, it was the bleachers. The
bleachers. He was on top of the\-- all I did was push him off. And hey,
could have done it and would have done it, but hey, I was resolved that
you don\'t do that. And I don\'t care what the reason is. You\'re not
going to fight if you can avoid it. And so I did.

My point being, however, is that I had learned early, and that all of
this was a part of the learning. And pardon me, now what was your real
question?

**\[18:14\]**

**\_\_:** Okay, I was asking about Malcolm X.

**A:** Yeah, so the point is what Malcolm didn\'t understand was the
depth of the human spirit. See, Malcolm thought America didn\'t have
another alternative but violence, and that he was going to create that,
and that America would be afraid of that. See, he didn\'t understand
what I think Martin understood and what I knew I understood, is that
America wanted us to be violent. They could handle that in a minute, all
right? All right? And feel good about it and have an excuse for their
behavior. That\'s what they wanted. And they\'d always been good at
that.

**\[18:59\]**

We thought we knew something about violence? We didn\'t know anything
about violence. All right? We\'re too religious to know anything about
violence. And when I say it that way, what I mean is that the method by
which we have survived has been religious, so that has been basic to our
understanding of life. That\'s it. That\'s\--

**Q:** \...(inaudible)

**\[19:02\]**

**A:** There we go. So already knew that. See, Malcolm did not
understand the depth of the human spirit. That to me is the case. Martin
did. The great difference between the two. You see? And that I think is
basic.

**Q:** This has been a wonderful two hours\-- three hours. Thank you so
much.

**A:** Thank you.

## END OF INTERVIEW