\<CREW Talk\>

Q: So then... \<laughs\>

**Frederick Reese:** So then it was that uh.. after having experienced
this act across the bridge and now uh.. Dr. King has indicated uh.. that
those persons who want to come to Selma, and now we have people who are
comin' to Selma now, to- and to give the kind of assistance to the
people of Selma. As I said before, that Selma became that ecumenical
gathering of all races, nationalities, all religions, and now people who
came to Selma, the first thing they wanna do was a march. We had marches
all over Selma. Uh.. they wanted to come and be a part of whatever 'a
march' meant, for the right to vote. And so it was then, after having to
wait until the federal courts gave us permission to march across the
bridge, down Highway 80, uh.. east. Then uh.. the uh..- decree came,
that we had the right to march down Highway 80, and to be protected. And
I should imagine that some of those State Troopers, who really beat
heads that day, had to protect us on uh.. March the 21^st^, the
successful march, from Selma to Montgomery. And so, we left Selma, March
the 21^st^, and uh.. we.. reached Montgomery on Wednesday, Wednesday
evening. And when we got to Montgomery, there was a long flatbed truck
there, used as a stage. Entertainers from all-all over the world came to
entertain us, such as Harry Belafonte, uh.. Peter, Paul and Mary, and
Sammy Davis Junior, James Baldwin, and other entertainers- because on
that Thursday morning, we were to get up and to complete the march from
St. Jude, camping ground, to the capital, where Dr. King was supposed to
make that speech, Thursday, at noon. And so it was that uh.. Thursday
morning we got up and formed the line of march at uh.. St. Jude. And
that line- the front line of that march- to my left marched Jose
Williams holding his daughter. I marched next to him, Mrs. King marched
next to me, Dr. King marched next to her. To Dr. King's right marched
uhm.. the Nobel Prize Peace winner, Dr. Ralph Bunch. To his right,
marched Mrs. Abernathy. To her right marched her husband, Rav Abernathy.
To his right marched John Lewis, who today is a United States
congressman from Georgia. To his right marched uh.. A. Phillip Randall,
who was at-at that time the president of the Porter's Union, and of
course he was one of the organizer of the 1963 march on Washington,
where Dr. King made that famous speech, "I have a dream." And to his
right- all from the picture I have now, marched Rosa Parks. That's the
front line of that march, moving down Dexter Avenue, in Montgomery
Alabama, on the way to the capital. And everybody ask- estimate 50,000
people, a sea of humanity, moving down Dexter Avenue, to move toward the
capital steps to hear Dr. King make that speech that day. As I sat on..
the steps, lookin' out over that crowd, it was a feeling of great
triumph and victory for having gone through all of the indignities and
all the sacrifices that we had made prior to that time, and now we had
reached the capital of Alabama, but Dr. King would make that speech that
day. And from that particular day, we had the feeling that we had
overcome, many of the obstacles that had been placed in our path, and
then because of that march, congress, the United States Congress, then
proceeded to uh.. pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act and Lyndon Baines
Johnson signed in the Law, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, based on what
happened across that bridge and in Selma, Alabama. And now it is
history, that all men, of age and of color, would have their right
guaranteed by the constitution of the United States of American.

Q: It's been about 40 years since then.

**Frederick Reese:** 38 years since the march.

Q: What's going to happen here on the 40^th^ anniversary?

**Frederick Reese:** Well we-we want to look back and see and make
assessment of really, what type of real progress that we can really
point to as a result of this uh.. Voting Rights Act. And what we need to
do, in order to actually make it uh.. enforceable in a most uh.. dynamic
uh.. force in our communities to help upgrade and to actually give the
kind of uh.. impetence \[ph?\] is needed, in order to rise and to bring
to bear the rising of uh.. black uh.. power. When I say 'black power', I
mean people of color, who have been denied rights that now they would
have the opportunity to have uh.. the proper type of uh.. influence, as
a result of the right to vote and position in community, makin' a
difference, to make an assessment of where we are now and of what we
need to do, in order to make that Voting Rights Act more real and more
dynamic, in bringin' about a change, in our cities, in our state, in our
nation.

Q: Can you give us a preview of that assessment? What would you say to
young people?

**Frederick Reese:** Well I think that uh.. as we look back and-and try
to make that assessment from whence we have come, and then to assess
what type of influence that we have had on the young generation, or the
younger generation, and what might be their perspective. How do they see
uh.. the Voting Rights Act uh.. being a part of their daily uh.. lives,
and how can it impact upon their future? And I would think that as we
look at the educational system and we need to do a greater job in
educating our children, of the legacy that has uh.. been portrayed in
many different areas. Sometime we do not do a good job of actually uh..
teaching our children, their history, and to give them the proper
perspective, to get them involved in trying to make a difference. So
therefore they are not uh.. as in tune to try to make that difference
because we are not doin' the kind of job we should do in bringin' to
their uh.. remembrance all of the struggles that have gone on. So we
need to do a better job of that, in our schools, and to make sure that
the history books are written correctly and that they would be given the
opportunity to uh.. be uh.. involved in the kind of lives that blacks,
black leaders in the past, have portrayed and the kind of sacrifice they
have given that they might, at this point, be recipients of uh.. a
greater uh.. life, a greater quality of life, for the young people.

Q: Good.

\<CREW talk\>

Q: At what point do you start covering this movement here, in Selma?

**Alvin Benn:** Well I arrived in Birmingham on August 4^th^ of 1964.
That date's significant. That's the date that they found the bodies of
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_, Cheney \[ph?\] and Goodman in Mississippi. Uh.. I
then worked at uh.. UPI's office in Birmingham for 2\_ years and became
bureau manager during my last year. That's when the Selma to Montgomery
march was conducted, of course. Uh.. the day the march began, on March
21^st^, two weeks after Bloody Sunday, I uh.. was in Birmingham- I was
told to hold down the fort up there. Somebody planted locker boxes full
of dynamite all over Birmingham. The idea was to take the uh.. focus
away from Selma- not that that could happen- but uh.. I spent the
longest day of my career, from like 9 in the morning till 4 or 5 the
next morning, 'cause every time we went and- somewhere where where a
bom- a box was found, a locker box, well, they'd find another one- and
from one place to another.

Q: How many total?

**Alvin Benn:** There were- there were, I believe, six boxes, five or
six boxes, with 50 sticks of dynamite in each one. And a friend and I
stood over a couple of 'em and listened to it ticking- what a stupid
thing to do, right? But we're young, we didn't know what the hell we
were doing. So uh.. the last one was at the house of A.D. King, Dr.
King's brother.

\<CREW talk\>

**Alvin Benn:** Remind me to get you a special section that we had on
the movement. I think you'd really like it- a lot of stories in there.

Q: Yeah?

**Alvin Benn:** Uh hum. And unusual- a color photograph of the marchers
coming down the bridge. I'd never seen a color shot before.

Q: Is that right?

**Alvin Benn:** Yeah.

\<CREW talk\>

**Alvin Benn:** Boxes full of dynamite.

Q: 50 sticks a box, the dynamite, you're talking about...

**Alvin Benn:** Right.

Q: ... the diversionary boxes of dynamite at Birmingham. So what was the
attitude of most editors in the south, towards this movement for civil
rights?

**Alvin Benn:** That's a very good question and the main- the main thing
is that uh.. most of your editors and publishers were part of the
establishment. They were white. Uh.. those of us who came into the south
working for wire services didn't have any allegiance to these folks-
that's why we were detested by so many in the establishment. They knew
that the story was gonna get out, through Associated Press or United
Press International. We were the ones on the firing line. We were the
ones that they went after. Dick Valarianni \[ph?\], for instance, from
NBC, they put black paint on his camera lens, up in Marion, and they
did- they beat him, put him in the hospital. Uh.. so there were only a
handful of us, compared to the thousands of editors, reporters who were
raised in the south. Uh.. I was born and raised in the south too,
southern Pennsylvania. So.

Q: \<laughs\>

**Alvin Benn:** So uh.. they didn't care- they didn't cutch- care much
or they just couldn't understand what I was sayin', so uh.. we knew- we
knew we had a very important job to do. We didn't know we were writing
history, which was very important, uh.. a chance to cover events like
what happened on the bridge with Bob Mouts and John Lewis and those
heroes that went across the bridge- uh-uh.. those of us on the bridge
that day, caught the teargas- uh.. they came close to getting some billy
clubs on their skulls too, you know. But I was in Birmingham that day,
and it was very important that we covered the whole state. And that's
what happened.

Q: FCLC, SNIC folk, were very knowledgeable of how useful the press was
to this whole movement. Did you guys ever feel like you were being used?
It was a symbiotic kind of a thing, wasn't it?

**Alvin Benn:** Well it was. I mean, they used us, we used them. I mean,
it was the biggest story in the world at that time. So they knew our
schedules, they knew our deadlines, they knew uh.. what time we had to
get our reports into Atlanta or New York. And we knew what time they
were going to march. So it was a relationship that uh.. worked well, or
bad, depending on how you looked at it uh....

Q: And television was coming in, full force.

**Alvin Benn:** That's what captured the movement. Bloody Sunday, as you
well know, uh.. when they interrupted Judgment at Nuremberg that night
on AB-ABC- uh.. it stunned people. Today, they probably wouldn't give it
a second thought because of what's happened over the last 40 years. But
uh.. back then that was significant.

Q: How did you feel being caught up in this swirl of emotion, of drama,
of violence?

**Alvin Benn:** It was exciting. Exciting. Wow, here I was, a
24-year-old kid, 25 at that time, and uh.. my stories were in the
Washington Post, the New York Times, the Okinawa Morning Star even, you
know. So, uh.. I had a ball- long, long hours, didn't make much money,
but I knew that history was being written and I knew that the Voting
Rights Movement was more important than the Civil Rights Movement. It
really was, because it changed the face of the nation, much more so than
being able to eat at a lunch counter- the fact that black folk could
elect folks of their own sk- uh.. color, uh.. it-it changed things,
it-it-it made black people equal, put them in office, uh.. very
important positions across the south. You can take a look at things
today and see. In some of these counties there are no white elected
officials.

Q: What are the kind of press reports you and others filed about Selma
and the other things? It was always the leadership gloss but there were
a lot of unsung heroes. Did you ever get to these kinds of people, like
Mrs. Mays? And there were so many stories. How did you deal with your
editors?

**Alvin Benn:** I think unfortunately they became faces in the crowd,
nameless, faceless people. They were there. Uh.. they were part of it.
They uh..- the movement could not have succeeded without the foot
soldiers, and that's why the Voting Rights Museum is so important here
in Selma, to be able to uh.. to recognize these folks who didn't get
their names in the paper or on television, but they were the ones that
were out getting their heads beaten in and tear-gassed and everything-
and being arrested and taken out to Camp Selma- uh.. they made the
movement a success, by being there. They didn't get anything in return.
They didn't become celebrities, dignitaries or anything like that.

Q: Another part of the story that was ignored or avoided is how young a
lot of the warriors were. Did you ever report on that?

**Alvin Benn:** Oh, we did, certainly. You-you know, you had school kids
uh.. children that came out of school. You could look in Birmingham and
see the-the kids on the street corners up there when the fire hoses and
the police dogs and everything. Same thing down here- a lot of students
were in the movement and they were picked up and sent out to Camp Selma.
Then they were released but it showed the commitment they had to the
movement and to uh.. to equality, and I think it was very important.

Q: I need a take from you about the significance of all of this. Folks
who come to this museum are going to be pretty much very young. What
does all this mean, what does it signify?

**Alvin Benn:** I think- it was the greatest social upheaval, I think,
of the 20^th^ century, and it-it proved that anybody in this country can
play a major role in making significant changes. In this case, in Selma,
the Voting Rights Movement, that uh.. a 10-year-old child could play an
important role in changing history for the good. And it proved that-
that you didn't have to be a Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, you could be
uh.. a 10-year-old or 11, whatever, from a junior high school, and go
out and march for what you feel was-was right, and help make that
change. No one will know who you were, any more than people would know
the names of those on the Arizona, for instance. But by being there at
that time in history, that made a great deal of uh.. of difference, had
a tremendous positive impact on history.

Q: I grew up in the south. Has the south changed?

**Alvin Benn:** Has south Boston changed?

Q: No, I'm talking about lower Alabama.

**Alvin Benn:** L.A., right? \<laughs\>

Q: L.A. Has lower Alabama changed, or is it still as racist a place as
it ever was? What do you say?

**Alvin Benn:** Oh I-you gonna have racism no matter what- no matter
what the uh.. federal legislation might be, you're gonna have people who
don't want to associate with black people, or vice versa, with white
people. And you can look at the country clubs, you can look at a lot of
places. Uh.. look at Selma. You've got a white Masonic Lodge and a black
Masonic Lodge. You've got uh-uh.. many uh.. segregated- I'll give you a
good example. Our son uh.. is a member of the uh.. Prince Hall Chapter
of the Mason. He came back from college, they wouldn't let him come to a
meeting 'cause he was white. Now you tell me, hum? It works both ways.
He's a member of kappa alpha si, you've heard of that- he was president
of his- the first white president of this black fraternity at Troy State
University. Uh.. so there's been tremendous positive changes through the
years, and yet you can look at it and see, there's still a long way to
go. And it will be, maybe a hundred years from now. You don't change
history in a hundred years- it may take you two, three hundred.

Q: It seems that black folks are making great strides politically here.
Does it translate into economic benefits for black folks?

**Alvin Benn:** It has, I think, for those with education. For those who
don't have it and they work in cut and sew factories or chop heads off
chickens and things like that, they're not gonna go anywhere. They're
not gonna make much more than minimum wage. That's why education is so
important. And I think you- we've seen that happen.

Q: I run across a lot of reluctance in some white characters whom I'd
really like to speak to who are integral to this story. They don't want
to talk to me here. There's still a lot of residual memory of the pain
of this experience, or am I exaggerating?

**Alvin Benn:** Well you gotta remember that in Selma, uh.. the white
population is decreasing, but the white people still control this town
uh.. economically. They run the banks or the lawyers and the doctors.
The last thing they wanna see is themselves being pictured as some kind
of a wild-eyed liberal. Uh.. that's the way it is. You know, 150 years
ago, they'd be out in the field with maybe a white Panama suit on. Uh..
but times have changed and you have people who really wanna get along.
One Selma- I'm not sure if you're familiar with that group or not, here
in town- Austin Fits is uh.. one of our local historians- he'd be a good
one for you to talk to. Uh.. this is a biracial group that came together
to try to solve some of the problems in Selma, which is great.

Q: Over the next couple of days I've got a couple of guys I really want
to talk to.

**Alvin Benn:** Dick Morthland \[ph?\]- I don't know if that name has
been mentioned to you. He was a former bank- the largest bank in the
area and he was president and he's one of our two resident liberals, I
think- he and Austin kind of share that.

Q: At any time in your career, had you thought of leaving the south and
going to do your reportorial work elsewhere? Why do you stay here and do
this?

**Alvin Benn:** We love Selma, and we love the south. There's just no
other way around it. Our children were born uh.. in Alabama and uh-uh..
I'm comfortable here- and so's my wife. We have good friends, white and
black. We're one of the few white families left in the black
neighborhood. But I didn't buy that house, you know, for racial reasons,
I bought it because it was a nice house and we wound up with very nice
neighbors. Uh.. we're the only white family in our whole street, you
know. Big deal.

Q: They're good people here. I've interviewed a number of very good
people. Who am I missing? Is there somebody really special? Especially
white folk. Jean Martin, I had a wonderful interview with her. I think
she just cancel me out.

**Alvin Benn:** We're the only two here who know what that means, right?

Q: \<laughs\> Probably, probably. I give away my age at every turn. I
don't know about you.

**Alvin Benn:** And you say 23 skidoo.

Q: Now you're giving away your age. I didn't go back that far. Who am I
missing?

**Alvin Benn:** Well I mentioned Austin Fits, uh.. he was born and
raised in Tuscaloosa, a native southerner, Dick Morthland, form
president of People's Bank and Trust. Those two. Talk to them. You can
contact Austin- this week they're doing a documentary, I believe, on the
uh.. the nuns who came into Selma uhm.. and they're making a-a T.V.
production out of that, I think. He's involved in it. But you can reach
Austin, he lives on Church Street.

Q: Let me loop back. You covered the march that ultimately resulted in
people walking from Selma to Montgomery.

**Alvin Benn:** Well, like from a distance. Like I said, it was from
Birmingham.

Q: Birmingham.

**Alvin Benn:** And uh-uh.. the day they- when they tried to- when they
planted those locker boxes all over Birmingham, it was to take the
attention away from Selma. But I would come down to Selma and cover
court hearings involved in the march and the subsequent events that
occurred, you know.

Q: Right. I'm looking for pictures you could paint for me. Were you
there in Montgomery for King's speech.

**Alvin Benn:** No, uh-uh. But I got to know him pretty well up in
Birmingham when he would come in.

Q: Did you?

**Alvin Benn:** Yeah.

Q: Last question. Are there unsung black heroes in this area? Paint me a
picture of somebody who's truly impressed you in terms of their
commitment, their stalwartness, the breadth of their activities?

**Alvin Benn:** During the time that I've been here or...

Q: During the time that you've been here.

**Alvin Benn:** Uh.. Jim Stallings uh.. was a former department head
with the city, uh.. Sanitation- would be a good one to talk to. Uh-uh..

Q: I'm going to try and talk to Smitherman too. Tell me something about
him. He seems to be something of a masterful politician. Am I wrong
about that?

**Alvin Benn:** He's one of the best I've ever been around. You know, he
comes across uh.. as someone who uhm.. maybe lacks some of the social
graces and everything, but he is shrewd. He's a small-town Dick Daily
uh.. or uh.. Wallace. He's a populist. He copied Wallace's uh.., you
know, style of-of politics. Uh.. he was elected and served 40 years,
first as a council member and then as a- as a mayor. And uh.. he knew
how to fill the pot-holes. He knew what it took to stay in office. Uh..
he had- he was brilliant in terms of knowing that times were changing.
So he began to appoint blacks to department head positions, knowing
full-well that, hey, they have wives and children- if you keep them in
office and their money coming in, they continue to vote for Smitherman,
which stunned so many. I remember when he- when he ran against Reverend
Reece, back in the mid-eighties, they-they said, "Well, of course.
There's no way Smitherman could win." Well, he did win, because all the
people he had appointed and made uh-uh..- and helped create this
middle-class- you know, whether you were uh.. working in sanitation or
public works or whatever, you wanted to keep that job. And they- and you
knew that if Smitherman stayed in office and you minded your P's and
Q's, you would keep that job. But at one point- he knew with the
demographics, the population, that his time would come to an end- he
could see that back in the early eighties and that's what happened three
years ago.

Q: Good. We're done. We can cut.

\<CREW talk\>

Q: I noticed when Scotty was here the other day, that he too work a set
of coveralls like this. Is it true that this was like the SNIC uniform
when you guys was out here?

**Bob Mouts:** Well, not just here but uhm.. throughout the south, uh..
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, wherever we worked, it basically was.

Q: Can you take a piece of my question and put it in your answer? Tell
me about what you're wearing.

**Bob Mouts:** Uh.. basically these coveralls were used uh.. not-not
only by SNIC workers who worked in rural areas, uhm.. but also people in
the- that we worked with w-wore, overalls. So it was a part of a way of
identifying with them, and also as a means of blendin' in with-with the
community.

Q: When did you join SNIC and what was your motivation for doing so?

**Bob Mouts:** Well, let me give you some background. Uh.. my
involvement uhm.. in the civil rights movement came about when I was
16-years-old, in the 11^th^ grade. In Atlanta, there was the Atlanta
Student Movement whose former name was the Committee on Appeal for Human
Rights. Their headquarters was located in the block uh.. from my house.
And I used to see these college students coming by the house with picket
signs, going downtown Atlanta, to Richies, to Walgreens, to Kresges, and
other places of public accommodations. I became curious, and went to
Rush Memorial Church uh.. where the headquarters was, in the Atlanta
University Center. Uhm.. I was the youngest member of the Atlanta
Student Movement. Uh.. the leader uh.. of the- of the- of the group,
Lanna King, would not let me go to demonstrations because students were
being arrested. And I was the youngest one, which meant that I would go
to juvenile detention, as opposed to jail, with the rest of 'em. My uh..
first responsibility there was what I call, captain of the picket signs.
The Atlanta Student Movement had these very well-made uhm.. picket signs
and my job was to make sure that they were clean, they were properly
stacked and issued when students went uh.. downtown Atlanta to
demonstrate at pl-places of public accommodations. I was also the
janitor, to keep the place clean. They paid me \$3.00 a week for doing
that. But one of the other things that the Altanta Student Movement did,
as a fundraiser, we would have these uhm.. dances called freedom hops.
And my job was to- I would do the design to draw up the posters for the
freedom hops uhm.. where Gladys Knight and the Pips used to do these
fundraisers for the Atlanta Student Movement. During the same time, the
SNIC office was three blocks in the other direction from my house, and I
would go to the SNIC office and sit around there and helps answer the
phone, uh.. stuff envelopes- this is early- this is early 1960 to 1963-
uhm.. answer the phones, stuff envelopes- got to know some of the first
people who were involved with SNIC. Uh.. from that uhm.. I- at the same
time, in 1961, I was at Morehouse College, uhm.. I dropped out of school
uhm.. to go work full-time in the movement in southwest Georgia. I
distinctly remember Sunday morning, one Sunday morning, sitting on the
porch talking with my dad, about uh.. dropping out of Morehouse. We're
the first generation college students and that means a lot to your
parents. I am the only male, the youngest of four siblings. And I told
my dad that uh.. I wanted to drop out of school, to go work full-time in
the movement. The first thing he said, he say, "You been studying too
hard." Uhm.. "Maybe you need- just need to take off a semester, get a
job or somethin', but you're probably studying too hard." I persisted in
my uhm.. conversation with him to drop out of school. But I remembered
that the last thing he said, he said uh.., he say, "You can't help it,
because you got it in your blood." It would be years later, I was
married in south Georgia, and my dad came down to Albany to help me
paint the house before I full- before I fully understood what he meant.
During the course of our working around the house and painting, he told
me a lot about his fore-parents. One of the things he told me was his
great aunt- uncle, rather- Matthew, who had been brought a slave uh..
from West Africa to Brazil- and after the emancipation, came up through
Florida. My dad was 85- when he died at 85, he described Matthew, this
uncle Matthew, as a tall, dark man with furrows across his brow, who
always talked about going back to Africa. And if you wanted a fight out
of him, you talked with him about being a slave. So it took uh.. several
years for me to understand what my dad meant when he said, "You have it
in your blood."

Q: I left the south about the same age as you started getting involved
in the movement. I try to get kids today to understand the motivation.
What was moving you?

**Bob Mouts:** Let-let me uh.. try to explain it to you this way. It has
been my experience in many instances where you uh..- where you be asked-
won't be asked, "Why do you do what you do? What was the motivation in
your- for your uh.. participating in the Civil Rights Movement? Well,
usually- the classic answer is because we demand our constitutional
rights through first-class citizenship. That's the classic answer. But
there is usually something below the surface that really motivates you.
The thing- and I didn't know this for many years- it was not until 1990
when I met Emmett Teal's mother, in Detroit, and she was talking about
how.. she had to examine.. her son's mutilated body. Emmett Teal was
14-years-old, I was 12-years-old, but... I remember when she started
talking about that, I started to cry, because there was this flashback
when I was 12-years-old in Atlanta, I would ask my parents and I would
ask my teachers, what is a wolf whistle?- because Emmett Teal had
allegedly been killed for wolf whistling at this white woman in Money,
Mississippi. There was all these flashbacks, when she started talking.
And I did not really fully realize, until 1990- this is 30 years later-
what had been the motivating force, behind my involvement. Not only
that, in talking with other people of my age- most of the people in the
Movement was two or three years older than mine- it was not the
Montgomery bus cot-boycott, it was not the demonstrations in-in Albany,
Georgia. For people of my generation, it was Emmett Teal's death that
motivated us more than anything else. It was 30 years before I fully
understood what had been driving me. We give the classic answer of being
first- want to be first class citizens now- but it was Emmett Teal's
death uhm.. that really was the driving force in my life that has- that
uh.. made me more determined and more resolved in being able to bove
\[ph?\] toward uh-uh.. justice.

Q: Yes. I'm with you. I was in Birmingham at the time and I remember
that. It was catalytic for a lot of people getting in the movement, and
it was transformative for understanding the nature of this thing over
here.

**Bob Mouts:** Uh hum.

Q: It was the first thing we dealt with in Eyes on the Prize.

**Bob Mouts:** Uh hum. I remember- I remember very distinctly in
Atlanta- the uh.. Atlanta World and papers and the-the radio station was
full of news about Emmett Teal's death, and I remember his mother, Miss
Mammy Teal, at the time, said, "I want the world to see what they did to
my son." And that has b-been written indelibly in my mind and my heart
all these years. And I was fortunate enough to meet her, and we
established a friendship, and I thanked her, for what she had done,
because it's-it-it was the catalyst- it moved my generation more than
anything else.

Q: How did you get to Selma? Or am I leaping over some stuff?

**Bob Mouts:** Well-well, I-I spent uh.. some time in southwest Georgia,
working for SNIC, uh-uh.. Americus Georgia, Lee County Georgia, Sumter
Counties Georgia, Tyrrell Counties Georgia. Uhm.. and I had gone back to
school, to Morehouse, uhm.. studying again- I considered myself a good
student. Uhm.. and my buddy, Frank Smith, who was from Newland, Georgia,
was also involved in the Atlanta uh-uh.. Student Movement had-had spent
some time in Mississippi. We were at Frank's apartment- Frank wanted to
be a lawyer, I wanted to be a doctor, and we thought that we had made
our hit, for the movement. Jim Bellville comes to Frank Smith's house
and says there is before the United States Congress, a Voting Rights
bill. We told Be-Bellville to get lost, uhm.. that we had uh-uhm.. did
our stinch \[ph?\] in the movement and that we wanted to uh.. go get our
degrees. It was not long after that that I found myself uh.. in Alabama,
\<laughs\> uh.. back on the front line again. The first time I came to
Alabama- with-with uh-uh.. SNIC people, uh.. Ivanhoe Donaldson and some
students at the University of Michigan had raised uh-uh..- had done uh..
this thing to raise- to get books to bring to Miles College, in
Birmingham, in its effort to seek accreditation. So some of 'em, when
they came from Michigan, stopped in at Atlanta- Julian Barnes, John
Lewis, uhm.. and some other SNIC people came to Alabama to deliver these
truckloads of books to the university- to the sch-college there. Uhm..
the second time I came to Alabama was with Dr. King and his entourage,
and John Lewis and myself, from SNIC, because we had read in the Atlanta
papers that the various offices of registrars would be open throughout
Alabama. And we came on a-a- to see whether they w-were open or not. We
came to Selma, uh.. Greene County, Wilcox County and Lowndes County. The
third time I came to Alabama was to participate in the Selma to
Montgomery March. Uhm.. the position of SNIC- the Student Non-Violent
Coordinating Committee, was they were not going to participate in it.
And a lot of people don't understand why SNIC uh.. took that position.
You must remember that right before that, the year before that, was the
Mississippi Freedom Summer and the Mississ- and the- and the- the
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, that had these challenges uh-uh..
in Atlantic City. And I think a lot of people were despondent and
dismayed to- and- it was an eye-opener in terms of just how the
electoral politics worked in this country. So many of them with
this-this despondence said they weren't going to participate in it. My
position was that I wanted to go. And I came in with John Lewis- as a
matter of fact, I drove a car uhm.. in for us to come to participate in
the- uh.. in the Selma to Montgomery March.

Q: This march was precipitated by a specific event. What happened?

**Bob Mouts:** Uh huh. Yeah. It was \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ for Jimmy Lee
Jackson, primarily over in Marion County because a demonstration had
taken place and uh-uhm.. the real- the first thought was to take Jimmy
Lee Jackson's body- to put it at the State capital at the foot.. of the-
of the capital, and at the feet of George Wallace- and he had been
killed by a State Trooper. Then it was sort of amended so that we would
go uh-uh..- that uhm.. we would march from Selma to Montgomery, around
the whole issue of-of the right to vote. Because at the same time,
remember, there was before the United States Congress, this Voting
Rights bill.

Q: You were at the head of the two-by-two aggregation of folk who made
this march.

**Bob Mounts:** Uh hum.

Q: What do you remember?

**Bob Mouts:** Well, uh.. what I remember is that people from all over
the black belt, had come to Brown Chapel Church, to march, from Selma to
Montgomery. Uhm.. Dr. King was not there that Sunday, but people had-had
come with knapsacks and shopping bags and uh-uh.. sleeping bags, to go-
to march to Selma to Montgomery, again. Dr. King again was not present.
Jose Williams ...

\#### End of CD 14 \####