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

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

LOCATION: Home of Reverend Hosea Williams, 2055 Boulevard Street,
Atlanta

**\[01:11\]**

**Q:** Would you, Reverend Williams, tell us a little bit about yourself
and how you became associated with Dr. King and the SCLC?

**A:** Well I was born in what is known as Northwest Florida. It\'s just
like South Georgia. And reared in\-- I was born into an unwedded family
and raised on\-- that\'s plantation area down there\-- little town
called Attapulgus. It\'s in the far southwest corner of Georgia. It\'s
only six miles from the Florida line if you go south. If you go west,
it\'s about 8 or 9 miles from the Alabama line.

**\[01:58\]**

And I was reared up down there on a plantation. Lost my mother about 2
years old and my next mother, my grandmother. I went out in the world on
my own when I was about 12 years old. And South Florida, that\'s the
Everglades and so forth, and returned home with my grandfather to try to
help him out. That was in about 1944. I was about 16 years old. And I
became very ill with him as a rheumatic heart patient.

**\[02:33\]**

And I finally got into the army about two years later. I really lied
that I hadn\'t had this sickness. But the army is what really saved my
life because the doctor told my grandfather if I lived to get 21 years
old I\'d be very lucky. Well, when I went to the army I got some first
medical treatment, first-class, and was able to whoop that rheumatic
fever.

**\[02:56\]**

I came out of the army as quite a decorated soldier and just had some
very\-- well, in the army, that\'s where I learned the value of an
education. I lost a job, which was a master sergeant\'s job, because the
other fellow, I was much better than he was in almost every way, other
than the requirement was a high school diploma and I didn\'t have that
high school diploma. Had a few other things. And I said, if I ever get
out of the army is was going to get myself some education.

And I got out of the army after spending 13 months flat on my back in
Germany. I was wounded during the war. And came back home and had some
very, very unfortunate racial experiences. And I think that\'s what
always kind of got it in my mind. I was kind of torn between like the
struggle to be free and the middle class Negro lifestyle. I had some
very bad racial experiences.

**\[03:54\]**

But I ended up at Morris Brown College and Atlanta University and I
became a research chemist. The first\-- and I hate that word, first,
particularly when it\'s related to racial issues\-- but I was the first
black research chemist hired by the United States government south of
the Mason-Dixon line. I was hired 19\-- it was \'51, \'52\-- at the
Savannah, Georgia station working for the Department of Agriculture,
Bureau of Etymology and Plant Quarantine, the chemical division.

**\[04:38\]**

And when I first went there to this job, I was really treated like a
king. And I received all of these nice promotions, and I began to say to
black America, you can make it because I made it. You\'re not trying to
make it. You want somebody to give it to you. But if you work like I
work\-- not understanding that they were using me as what they would say
in slavery, a head house nigger. I didn\'t notice that. When you walk in
that chemistry lab, the first office you saw was Hosea Williams. I even
had a white secretary, which is the epitome of success. This was back
like about, oh, I went there in 1952, \'52.

**\[05:28\]**

And I didn\'t realize they were using me to keep all other blacks out,
and that\'s just what they were using me. It just so happened I was
blessed with a very bright brain and some good training at Morris Brown
and Atlanta University, so I was able to pull my load as a research
chemist. But they really was using me to keep any other blacks out.

Blacks used to come out there\-- well downtown where they had the
employment office, the employment office was segregated. Blacks go
upstairs and whites downstairs. So when a job was out there, they never
registered it upstairs with blacks, they only registered downstairs. I
would tell guys to go and apply for the job and they said no such job.
The white boys are coming out of there being interviewed all the same
time.

**\[06:22\]**

And then a black guy was just outright murdered by the police in
Savannah, so that kind of drive me into the NAACP and I became second in
command down there, which at that time was the most active chapter in
the country. And a guy named W.W. Law, who was a postman, who was the
youngest guy on NAACP national board. And I got involved and I began to
realize how they had used me all those years. There\'s a black doctor in
this town here today who finished Savannah State with all A\'s in
biology. He came out there and tried to get a job as a biological agent
and they didn\'t hire him. But they wasn\'t going to hire any more
blacks. They had their head house nigger, that was me. And that hurt me
very bad, you realize.

**\[07:06\]**

And so I began working for Mr. Law at the NAACP and it was really just a
mental tragedy to see all the like\-- where I worked for, this white
chemist, if you pushed him too hard, he\'d curse the head chemist out
and quit. And before night maybe he\'d go across town to Cyanamid(?) or
he\'d go over there to the sugary refinery and he\'d have another job.
Well I knew I was the only black chemist in the South. If I lost my job,
New York or California here I come. And they had me in a kind of
slave-like setting.

**\[07:49\]**

And I just was looking for some way out and it was very, very\-- it was
a very, very difficult life to live, because at one point\-- I loved my
job so, I used to wake up and it wasn\'t day and I would be kind of
harassed, got irritated, because I wanted day to hurry up and come so I
could go to the chemistry lab, I loved my work so. But after a few years
there, I came to the point that I used to wake up hating to see
daybreak, knowing I had to go out to that job.

**\[08:15\]**

And then I heard about this guy named Martin Luther King, Jr., and I
remember then I was\-- I was really\-- we had a lot going on in
Savannah, but I heard about this guy named Martin Luther King, Jr. in
Montgomery where the boycott was going on in Montgomery, and I just
couldn't believe what I was hearing, because all of my life I\'d been
taught, don\'t you be no black leader and stick your neck way out,
because these white folks will chop it off, the blacks will run off and
leave you and you\'ll be out there. Well this guy had stuck his neck way
out and the blacks hadn\'t run off and left him, the white folks hadn\'t
bothered.

**\[08:49\]**

So I was very, very influential. I got two young men\-- Law was head
of\-- W.W. Law was head of the NAACP chapter. I was head of the youth
council. So I got two\-- I was quite older than these kids, but I\'ve
always\-- I\'m 66 now, I look young and act young for my age. So I
meshed in well with these kids. So I got two young men and one young
girl and we went to Montgomery to observe this guy. We drove to
Montgomery.

And he fascinated me so much, I stayed there three days and never did
introduce myself to the guy. I watched him teach, I watched him preach.
I watched how the people got together. I just couldn't believe it. And I
said, \"If Martin Luther King, Jr. can do it in Montgomery, I can do it
in Savannah.\"

**\[09:32\]**

So I went back to Savannah and organized a nonviolent movement from
the\-- well I didn\'t understand the philosophy. It was just not
fighting back, the physical thing. And Dr. King spoke in Savannah in
1950, 1965, \'64, \'65. He spoke, came down there after we had our big
movement. The Birmingham movement was the biggest movement, then we went
to Savannah, then from Savannah next it was Saint Augustine, Florida.
But I remember Dr. King, the thrilling thing, he spoke there and said
that Savannah, Georgia at that moment was the most integrated city south
of the Mason-Dixon line.

**\[10:16\]**

But I became a King nut\-- King is not my god but he certainly is\--
there\'s no human being that lived on the face of this earth that I have
more respect than I have for Martin Luther King, Jr.

**Q:** Very good. Now the next question, what SCLC projects had you
worked on before the Selma campaign? Would you touch on some of them?

**\[10:41\]**

**A:** Well, see, they finally\-- they were going to fire me. They had
made their mind up to fire me in Savannah. I organized something,
introduce something to the civil rights movement known as the night
marches. So we\'d have huge night marches, and I got in jail down there
and they kept me in jail, kept me in confinement for 35 days. When I got
out, they were going to fire me. And I got a feeling of that and I got
in touch with Dr. King, and SCLC looked like they was not aggressive
enough in trying to help me, so I came to Atlanta.

**\[11:12\]**

And Dr. King called Bobby Kennedy and they sent me\-- told me to go to
Washington and we met there with the Security of Agriculture, who had
been appointed by the Kennedy brothers, and they\-- it was agreed that I
should take a leave of absence from my job. And you\'re supposed to only
get a leave of absence from a federal job\-- the only reason to get a
leave of absence, to better qualify yourself to carry out your duties as
a federal employee. So I was going to work in the Department of
Education, SCLC had that education, and I got one year\'s leave and\--
no. They actually fired me before I took the leave, but we went through
Washington, and Clarence Mitchell then was head of the NAACP in
Washington. And I appealed the firing and the Department of Agriculture
overruled the firing and sent me back to Savannah. That\'s when I
decided to go on a leave, and I went on a leave.

**\[12:11\]**

And first year I was on a leave, worked with Dr. King. And the second\--
after the first year, I went back and got another year\'s leave. Two
years at that time supposed to have been the maximum in the
circumstances, but we had the pull of the Kennedy brothers in there, and
I got a third\-- well they said, we\'re going to give you six months.

**Q:** You went back the third time.

**\[12:30\]**

**A:** I went a third time. And finally, you know, I would go to them
and they would believe me. I would say, you know, send me back to
Savannah, they\'re doing all right down there. Send me back in hell but
everybody else is going to be in hell because I\'m going to fight. So
you better find me another job. So they found me a job out here in
Atlanta in research and it just really wasn\'t research and I really
didn\'t want to leave the civil rights movement, so I finally just
admitted that I was happy and I resigned.

**\[12:53\]**

Okay, when Dr. King first brought me on, okay, I was a project leader.
Project leader meaning a specific, given program. So the first program
they sent me in was to Albany. The second movement in Albany. After the
Albany movement I hit a few other places like it, but the next major
assignment\-- and it really was to cool me off. See, because the way
SCLC usually operates, I was so\-- I\'m such an energetic person, I\'m
such an angry and impatient person, the way SCLC normally operates, SCLC
would get into a movement and they would be prepared for that movement
however long it took, three months, four months or five months. But once
that movement victory was reached, then they would come back home and
live with their families and study and recuperate and meditate for the
next three or four months. I stayed out there. Every time they turned
around I was in something.

**\[13:45\]**

So I\'m sure Dr. King sent me to Saint Augustine, Florida thinking I
couldn't pull it off there. And I went to Saint Augustine and I pulled
it off and we pulled it off big. And really, Birmingham was responsible
for the writing of the Civil Rights Bill, but Saint Augustine the one\--
it got bogged down in Congress. Even the president got scared that they
were going through. So Saint Augustine, Florida is really the one that
pushed the bill through Congress and made it law.

**\[14:13\]**

Now after then, before I came out of Saint Augustine, Florida, he had
already said\-- we had already agreed and sent Bevel into Selma. And
when I came out of Selma\--

**Q:** Who was the first one to go to Selma?

**A:** Bevel was the first one to go to Selma. And when I came out of
Saint Augustine, Bevel is in Selma and Dr. King said, \"Bevel needs some
help, you go down and help Bevel.\" So I went down there the first of
January and joined the\--

**\[14:41\]**

**Q:** First of January \...(inaudible)

**A:** Now I\'m still a project leader, I\'m still a project leader up
until the Selma movement is where I\-- but I was on the executive staff.
I was on the executive staff. It was about 11 or 12 of us on the
executive staff.

**Q:** Of SCLC?

**\[14:55\]**

**A:** SCLC. Those are the people in the inner circle with Dr. King.

**Q:** And then you were a project leader in addition to that?

**A:** No. Everyone on the executive staff had a title. You were
either\-- like Andrew was the Executive Director and someone else was
Director of Affiliates, someone else was Director of\-- Andrew first was
head of Adult (?) Education and then Direct Action and then Voter
Registration.

**\[15:20\]**

So when I went to the executive staff, I first was just a project
leader, and I was promoted from project leader to National Director of
Voter Registration and Political Education.

**Q:** That\'s when you went to Selma?

**A:** That\'s when I went to Selma.

**Q:** Would you explain the philosophy of nonviolence as practiced by
Dr. King and SCLC and how did this philosophy apply to Selma?

**\[15:48\]**

**A:** Well Dr. King, I don\'t believe I ever met but one person in my
life that accepted nonviolence as a philosophy of life, as a way of
life. Andy will fight if you get him in the right position. Abernathy,
Jesse, Hosea. I don\'t think I ever met but one person in my life that
truly accepted nonviolence as a way of life, a philosophy.

And what Dr. King used to teach us was that nonviolence was like the
power of God, the power of Christ, the most powerful thing on this
earth, that it doesn\'t take any intelligence to be violent. If you back
a lion up, he\'ll fight you. If you back an alligator up. But to take
the punishment that Jesus Christ took, that we were supposed to prepare
ourselves to take.

**\[16:47\]**

But nonviolence was the power of redemption, to redeem the soul of
opposition, to redeem the soul of evil to change their mind. And I saw
nonviolence work, everything he said it would do. I witnessed it during
the civil rights movement. But he felt like that our nation was a
violent nation, the western world, the ruling nations of the world were
violent, and in the end violence begets violence, and if we were going
to make\-- bring God\'s kingdom up on this earth, then we had to teach
and overcome violence with nonviolence. The strength, the willingness,
the patience to suffer, that suffering would overcome perpetration of
evil.

**\[17:41\]**

And I lived to see all the things he said, examples and everything that
man said. That\'s why I said he\-- I believe\-- I don\'t think I met
anybody in my whole life that\-- and I\'ve been to India, I\'ve taught
at the Gandhi Institute there, but I don\'t believe I\'ve ever met
anyone\-- this man really believed, and it was in his soul, it was like
his religion, nonviolence.

**\[18:10\]**

**Q:** Very good. Next\-- you\'ve said when you got your marching orders
to go to Selma. Would you now say when you arrived in Selma, what did
you find? And what were your initial responsibilities to the Selma
campaign?

**A:** Well, one thing that Dr. King learned, developed about me in a
hurry, he believed that I was committed, he believed that I could
produce and that I was effective. He used to say like if I sent Hosea to
do something, Hosea I want you to go do something, okay, Doc, I\'ll do
it. He\'d know that was like it\'s been done. But at the same time, if
it was something I didn\'t know to do, I would tell him that.

**\[18:57\]**

The big difference in Bevel and I is that\-- see, one of the things
about King\'s leadership, he\'s the first leader and the only leader
that I\'m aware of that would tell the people, okay, you get behind me,
and I\'m going to lead you and I\'m going to show you how it\'s done.
All the other guys, Roy Wilkins sitting up in New York City in the NAACP
office writing me memorandums telling me how you do it. That\'s the same
thing for CORE and all the others. King was out there in front of that
line\--

**\[19:29\]**

**Q:** Instead of writing letters trying to tell you what to do.

**A:** Right. So I adopted that philosophy. And see, the other thing
that Dr. King, his real strength was in, he had a team. No other civil
rights leader had a team. They had very brilliant scholars, committed
scholars around them, but Dr. King chose us. He had some kind of
God-given ability. He chose us, not\-- we were young, we were bright, we
were committed, but we had a unique talent, every single one of us, like
Andy Young\'s job\-- Andy jumped on me physically one time. I called him
a white Uncle Tom. But Andy Young can do more with white people than any
black man lived during my time.

**\[20:15\]**

Old big Jesse Jackson. Jesse Jackson\'s job really was to work with the
bitterness(?) and middle class Negroes. Jesse, they\'d just start
swarming around him. The bitterness(?) community, educated people.
\...(inaudible) James Bevel, that\'s the one I was telling you about. We
used to call James the Socrates of the movement. And James would get up
at a college, youth, and I mean, he could spellbound them. Nobody on
earth, including King, could handle youth. Like we had an old preacher
named T.Y. Rogers from down there from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. A black
preaching job is to make folks shout. T.Y. Rogers could make preachers
shout in ten minutes. He just, you know\--

**\[20:56\]**

My job was with the masses, the street people, the poor people, working
people. Nobody could handle\-- could motivate them like Hosea Williams.
So like I went to jail a total of 12 times in Selma. Bevel didn\'t go to
jail. I knew he went to jail one time. He might have gone twice. But
that just wasn\'t his portfolio. He would preach in the church and tell
them kids to go sit in and march, but I would see all folk behind me.

**Q:** And you\'d go to jail?

**\[21:23\]**

**A:** And I\'d go to jail. And I started leading them night marches and
I just had made up my mind. See, I came out, I was probably the only guy
at SCLC who left a lucrative career, and I\-- you know, for what had
happened to me in the United States Army, the way they mistreated me
when I got back home and all my friends had died and then my
professional situation, I thought I was getting all them promotions,
because I was smart and worked hard. I was smart and worked hard, but
that wasn\'t why them white folks promoted me. They needed the head
nigger, because when a black person come out there and tried to get a
job and they don\'t get a job, the black person says, \"Y\'all
prejudiced.\" \"No, we not prejudiced. We have Hosea Williams,\" you
know? So they used me to keep my own people down, see.

**\[22:08\]**

All of that was in me. Then I\'m\-- you know, I was raised up without a
family in the streets, and I had this family, all these fine kids, which
meant more to me than anything God put on this earth. There\'s nothing I
wouldn\'t do for my kids. So I was out there, I was \...(inaudible), and
even though I was older than these guys, I\'m the oldest guy in the
history of SCLC. In the inner circle of Martin Luther King, Jr., I hold
it, I\'m older than Abernathy.

**\[22:33\]**

So I just had it, I had all these experiences, and I was just committed.
It was so intriguing to me to find a leader like King, because I had
tried these other guys and I didn\'t have\-- I had lost faith in Whitney
Young and Roy Wilkins as far as leading people.

Now, so when I went to Selma, Bevel was there, had things going on. We
hadn\'t gotten into the thick of things, but when I went there, then I
started all these marches and taking folks to jail and sitting-ins and
pickets and filling up the jail.

**\[23:08\]**

And Jim Clark was kind of like made for me. If you don\'t have a Jim
Clark, Martin Luther King, Jr. probably would have never got heard of.
\[laughs\]

**Q:** You wanted to create\-- if you were going to create something,
you would create Jim Clark.

**A:** Right. I\'d create Jim Clark, see. So when I went to Selma, and
then I started doing my thing. Bevel and I worked together pretty well,
but I started bringing in the preachers and I started bringing in the
adults and I started bringing in the thugs off the streets and the bums
and the prostitutes, pimps. My thing was to\-- my \...(inaudible) was to
move the masses, and that\'s what I\--

**\[23:46\]**

To be honest with you, and I kinda hate to say this, within a short
while I became the project leader, within a very short while. I really
became the project leader. Bevel and I\-- Bevel never worried about it
because Bevel, he\'s not the jail-going type. And I know we had to go to
jail to stimulate them. I couldn\'t tell somebody else to go down there
to face Jim Clark if I had not faced him. If I had been into the jail
and I had been done this and beaten and blah, blah, I can tell you you
oughta go. But had not I gone, had not I gone, then I had problems.

**\[24:16\]**

**Q:** But you, having gone, they\'re going to follow you.

**A:** Right, right. I go and they go back\-- yes, that\'s right. In
fact, it brings a lot of pressure on those in the audience. Remember
Williams went to jail the other night, they beat him the other night? He
went to jail, he going to jail again. So you just about got to go if you
for real.

**\[24:34\]**

**Q:** Would you discuss Clark, the different things that made him the
ideal spoil(?) for you?

**A:** Well, Jim Clark was a model, a road model racist. First he was
big and muscular and handsome, and he dressed immaculately, whether he
had on a coat, suit and tie, or whether he had on his uniform. But he
looked like a general out of Washington. So he was very\-- the physical
features were very attractive, Jim Clark.

**\[25:22\]**

The next thing, Jim Clark, I\'m sure he had a mental problem because his
mind was snapped, like that he hit C.T. Vivian. He could be talking with
you and just all at once he\'d go berserk, he\'d\--

**Q:** He\'d lose control.

**A:** He\'d lose control. He\'d be trying to\-- I\'m sure there were
days that he tried to play\-- act sane, because the press was right
there, but that\'s why Jim Clark, he\'d just go crazy and he\'d try to
kill everybody around him.

**\[25:50\]**

But one thing that in that\-- one of the ingredients in that Selma
movement, before we got there there was a very strenuous political
tension between the county controllers and the folks in the city. Now,
Mayor Smitherman was there but the guy who ran that city was a man, a
very well-educated man who had taught many years at the University of
Alabama. What was his name?

**Q:** Wilson Baker.

**\[26:25\]**

**A:** Wilson Baker, see. So I mean, one day they actually started\--
they were going to draw on one another in the streets.

**Q:** Baker and?

**A:** And Jim Clark. But Jim Clark was\-- I have to say Mr. Clark was a
very, very ignorant man, not only very, very racist but if he couldn\'t
see from the other movements that what he was doing to us was going
to\--

**Q:** Was playing into your hands.

**\[26:55\]**

**A:** Not only playing into our hands but going to bring the nation
down on him. He couldn\'t see that. And he was just so ultra-brutal,
there\'s no limit. He had a, I say, a brutal mentality \...(inaudible).
I remember once, there was a few times in the movement that I started to
die, and I remember one day this woman in Selma, she must have been 50
or 60 years old. She was one of our staunch supporters. And we marched
down there and they started beating us. Jim Clark\-- this lady is a very
prominent woman in this town\-- knocked that lady down, and he straddled
that lady\'s body with his two knees and he beat that lady with this
club like this.

**\[27:38\]**

Now you know I felt and Dr. King had taught us, he taught us one of the
most agonizing or severe punishments of nonviolence was\-- because you
don\'t watch yourself getting beat, but to see your wife or your
children or your friend, your partner without offering assistance. And
for me to stand there, that\'s one day I said, this is going too far.
But he actually knocked that lady down, she was quite heavy, and
straddled that lady, and he was beating that lady for all it was worth.

And he was just\-- that was not a\-- I don\'t think there was not a
racist in the South that was made more proper for Martin Luther King\'s
nonviolent movement than Jim Clark. But he was very, very like\-- it was
not just what Jim would do to you once he got angry in the public, but
behind closed doors. Like they used to arrest us, and the jail was on
about the fourth or fifth floor. And they would stop that elevator
between floors and they actually stuck cattle prods in women\'s vaginas
and cattle prods in our rectum, and they\'d beat us to within, you know,
on that elevator between floors.

**\[28:56\]**

So he was just\-- at the same time, he had a black mistress and three or
four children by this woman, but he was\-- you know, he lived in the
jail. His home, his family was in a section of the jail building. But
I\'ve never seen\-- that was one of the peculiar things about Selma; I
don\'t ever remember a time that the city government, the city authority
really physically opposed anything we did. We stopped up streets. But
once you crossed that line, that street over in that block the
courthouse was in, you could expect to get beat to death, trampled or
stomped, jailed or whatever they do. But we had to get down there.

And that was one of the tensions that came up down there. Jim Clark
began to say, \"I am the sheriff, I\'m chief law enforcement officer of
this county and everything within it,\" and Baker was saying, \"No, I am
head of Public Safety, you don\'t come into our territory until we
request your services.\"

**\[30:05\]**

But Jim Clark was\-- and Jim Clark\'s brutal hatred of blacks was not
something that was learned. It was like a lot of whites come out with an
environmental condition. It was like it was innate with that man. It was
like it was innate.

**Q:** The next question is how did the black community accept the
presence of SCLC and this effort? Was it overwhelming support or did you
get lukewarm responses from some elements of the blacks in Selma?

**\[30:51\]**

**A:** We got overwhelming support generally but lukewarm in some areas.
You have to understand, the civil rights movement, one of the fallacies
was that civil rights organizations had a tendency to claim areas, claim
territories, stake their rights to these territories. And SNCC had
claimed Selma. But in reality, Jim Clark beat SNCC out of Selma,
physically beat them out of there.

So we went there, SNCC had closed the office, it was no longer operating
office as organization. There was no public meetings. Jim Clark had it
so that I think it was something like four or more gathered, they better
be talking about God. And he\'d even send his men into the churches to
be sure blacks were in there talking about how to get to heaven rather
than how to get free.

**\[32:08\]**

So a lot of the masses in Selma had just been\-- because they had had
what I would say a good movement in Selma before Jim Clark crushed it.
Jim Clark crushed them and it just left a big vacuum there. So when we
went in, we did get from some areas cold shoulders, but the masses of
the people, King\'s name was like magic.

We met in what we used to call\-- that\'s where Jesus met with the
disciples, in the upper room. And we was on the second floor, room 13 at
the Gaston(?) Motel, where they had many of our strategy meetings there.

**\[32:56\]**

See, that\'s why I said, Dr. King used to have a movement, and when the
movement is over, then he\'d give people time to recuperate, then he\'d
pull us back together and the great question was asked where do we go
from here. So we met up there in room 13, what we called the upper room.
And we had gone round and round and round, and that\'s another thing
that Dr. King would always display his godliness. I don\'t think I ever
met a man in my life with his patience. His brilliance, certainly, as
brilliant as he was, but his patience. That\'s one of my major problems,
I don\'t have the ability to listen. And he was just unbelievable.

**\[33:45\]**

So we met up there, and all of us, there\'s no question about it, I
probably worked with the greatest group of men that has ever been
clustered since the history of mankind. You talk about men like Jesse
Jackson and Andrew Young. Abernathy looked kind of \...(inaudible).
Abernathy, one of the most brilliant men I ever met in my life. We had
our differences. But we met up there and everybody I guess expounding
from their hearts, but it\'s also a time to impress the leader. But
everybody expounded from their heart.

**\[34:17\]**

But that man could listen for three or four days and all he\'d say,
things like, \"well, well, well.\" Two things he said: \"Well, well,
well, do you believe?\" Another thing he said, \"Oh, you don\'t mean it?
Oh, hush!\" But that man would sit there, and I\'m sure others around
that table was as brilliant(?) as I was, and after two, three, four,
five days he would call us back together. We\'d think we were going back
in another one of them session. And he would say, \"What do y\'all think
of this? What do you think of this?\" And he would lay the program out.
And I would be so amazed that he had taken all the good I said, all the
good Andrew said, the good Bevel said, the good \...(inaudible). He\'d
have all the good of everybody and I\'d be saying, \"Hell, I said that.
I\'m the one that said that. You know what I said?\" But no one living I
think could have put that thing together. And you would just be like
spellbound, looking at him and say, \"God, almighty.\"

**\[35:20\]**

Because see, one of the problems we had, we would have to choose an
issue and expose that issue in some local community. But our objective
was the nation, not to make things better in Selma or to make things
better in Birmingham, but in the nation. We had to choose an issue and
go in this local community. We got\--

**Q:** Use it to build the nation.

**\[35:50\]**

**A:** Yeah, we got caught two or three times, things would happen and
we got these people all up in the air. We never \...(inaudible) we
sorry, we got to go know, everything is straight. But some folks think
we coming in to stay forever.

But we came up at the next item on America\'s mental agenda, the way we
used to put it, should be the disfranchisement of black people. So we
all finally agreed that is the issue. Now, where did we go to dramatize
that issue? And we brought up many, many places, particularly
Mississippi. So we kept talking, kept talking. And Selma was just
another suggestion, item on the agenda. But it came out at a meeting
that Jim Clark had outlawed mass rallies, and we had always taken the
position\-- that\'s how I went to jail a lot of times for traffic
violations.

**\[37:02\]**

At one point, if you led a march, them white folk would put you in jail.
That was just a given. So we went before the United States Supreme Court
and the United States Supreme Court ruled that peaceful demonstrating
was a matter of free speech, so they longer could arrest us for leading
a nonviolent march. But as soon as you got out the march and got in the
car, they got you. Eventually the same thing.

**\[37:26\]**

But here this man will not allow blacks to have a civil rights meeting,
any kind of rally. So Dr. King and we all agreed, okay, what we\'ll
do\-- because he always, and that\'s why SCLC and that\'s something he
never could figure out how to get out of, was named the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, because we just as interested in
Catholics, Mormons, you know, Muslims or anyone else. But Dr. King when
he organized SCLC took the position that the black church, the powers in
the black church, the influence \...(inaudible) was not utilized in the
struggle for human dignity. So he would always try to go\-- he was a
rather fanatic about his religion, about his preaching in particular,
understood black preachers. So he\'d always try to go through these
preachers.

**\[38:23\]**

So he said, okay, I\'m going to send Bevel in to meet with the black
preachers and tell them we act like we were asking or requesting to come
into Selma. That\'s how we really tried to say that, well, we could set
it up just about everywhere. But we\'d go in there and talk with the
people and enlighten the people, and then the people hold a press
conference and we call in Dr. King, blah, blah, blah.

**\[38:48\]**

But Bevel went in there to meet with the religious forces, the
preachers, and Jim Clark\-- Dr. King was supposed to make his first
speech there January the 1st, and Jim Clark got hold of it. Some of
those people went back and told Jim Clark, King is coming here. So King,
Dr. King worried that black folks had never been free, they never been
emancipated, they have no problem with them celebrating the force(?) of
emancipation. Said come on in.

Well I can\'t remember anything\-- well I can remember some things
probably, but nothing I know of got to King like that message. It really
irritated him. And I thought he was going to start cussing. But he said,
\"Bevel, you go back, and you go tell them Ralph Abernathy will be there
on the first. I\'ll be in on the second. Let Jim Clark know I\'m coming
and exercise my constitutional rights at my convenience.\"

**\[40:00\]**

So Ralph went down there and spoke the first and Martin went in on the
second. I believe it was the second, but we had\-- I\'d be in the
church. You couldn\'t get near the church, couldn\'t get in out of the
church. And we launched that movement there. And we really, we got\-- I
think I\'m right now\-- better and more participation from the local
community of Selma than any place I know we had a movement.

**\[40:32\]**

**Q:** Any other place you \...(inaudible)

**A:** Yeah. In fact, it was amazing that in my marches, my daily
marches and so forth, that\'s why I lost my booking agent, my speeches.
I could go out to Selma University anytime I needed 200 suitors. I could
call out, they would come together and leave those classes and teachers
didn\'t bother. And there was one high school there that we could always
if we call out there and talk to the right teacher, the kids come on
out. And in fact, it was a school teacher that ended up head of the
Selma movement, Reverend Reese.

**\[41:11\]**

**Q:** Yes, we interviewed him.

**A:** And it\'s the only town\-- I remember one day I kinda tricked
him. But there are only 22 preachers in that county, and I carried 18 of
them to jail one day. 18 of them went to jail.

**Q:** Of the 22 preachers?

**\[41:29\]**

**A:** Of the 22, see. So we really got\-- I don\'t know of a town that
we got the support, all over general support like we got in Selma,
Alabama.

**Q:** Now in the white community you have group emphasized by Clark,
you have the group emphasized more\-- they might be segregationists,
they\'re smarter segregationists, emphasized by Baker, and then you have
the White Citizens\' Council, probably represented by Clark, the KKK,
and then did you have a certain group of the whites that are empathetic?

**\[42:04\]**

**A:** Yeah. Baker and I fell out. I remember the movement got to a
point where Dr. King was\-- he was torn between the devil and the deep
blue sea, can we pull it? And they left me there kind of charge and
thinking I was holding it together. And I realized Baker was nice to me,
because we were\-- Baker was trying to get me to do things that would
kill the movement. See, I was too experienced, because there\'s no
action\-- like in Albany, Georgia, that\'s the smartest law enforcement
person we ever faced, and that was Chief Pritchard(?). And we were
marching and the white folks was beating us up and putting us in jail
and movement getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

**\[42:55\]**

And Pritchard said, wait just a minute, wait just a minute, we playing
right into King\'s hand. So he organized some racist, some of them, and
for every two marchers they had a white person on this side and a white
person on the other side, and nobody could get near us, and you marched
down the night, you have your little prayer, you march back to church.
Well after two or three nights they said, man, it ain\'t no excitement,
it ain't nothing happening. So a few people drop out.

And that\'s how he killed that movement. When King left Albany, he came
out there with a paper victory, and it was the finesse of the chief of
police to protect us and not arrest us. As long as they not bothering
anybody or violating the thing (?), which was just the opposite of Jim
Clark.

**\[43:38\]**

So we did have a small Southern town with\-- the Catholic influence is
very, very heavy in Selma, Alabama. And from the priests in the Catholic
church there, and I said from the college to there, but basically public
safety, Baker, was just as big a racist and segregationist as Jim Clark,
but it\'s the way he went about things. And we fell out, completely
stopped speaking to one another. Things he tried to get me to do was
going to kill the movement and we would have had nothing. He wanted me
to accept all promises, kill the movement but accept all promises. Now
once your movement dies, you\'re not going to revive it.

**\[44:28\]**

But and I\'ll tell you something else about Selma, and this was before
in the black and white community. There was a lot of fear there what
would happen to them if they were identified with us. So we got a lot of
behind-the-scenes support and we\'d talk with people that would never
come out front. Because Jim Clark was a powerful sheriff there. No
sheriff in the South probably had any more power in their county than
Jim Clark had in Dallas.

END OF #520

BEGINNING OF #521

**\[00:12\]**

**Q:** The next question about two incidents that took place about the
same time: the visit of Malcolm X to Selma and at the same time the
shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson over in Marion. What your view of that
is, a person on the scene.

**A:** Yeah, we went to Selma to dramatize the disenfranchisement of
black people, hoping that it would result in national legislation. Once
we got into Selma, Selma, the opposition, the law enforcement agencies,
was able to garner so much outside support, until they were just too
overwhelmingly powerful for us to seem to develop the type of movement
to get national attention.

**\[01:31\]**

First, they began to get support from surrounding counties. Every night
you see some policemens or some sheriffs or some somebody from this
county or that county or that county. So we were kind of offsetting
their blockades. But then Wallace began to allow state troopers and
state marshals and who was that in the Army, the under state, the
militia, state militia, National Guard. They\'d \...(inaudible) whatever
Selma needed they could get.

**\[02:17\]**

So then we\-- but before we decided we\'d challenge Wallace, we said
what we\'d do, these surrounding counties are sending law enforcement
agents in to help Jim Clark, so we\'ll take the fight to them but it\'ll
have to stay in their own county. So then we sent staff out and we began
to demonstrate in about six or seven surrounding counties. And that
was\-- they going to have demonstration in that county so they need
their law enforcement. That\'s when Wallace began to send in the state
guys.

**\[02:55\]**

And that\'s what happened with Jimmie Lee Jackson. We were down at
Marion, and I think James Orange was head of the project there, and you
could see the church from the courthouse, it wasn\'t very far, and that
was totally like a local situation, because Jimmie Lee Jackson was not
known a civil rights leader, person who opposed outright the power
structure. He wasn\'t known as a bad guy or a thug or criminal or
anything like that.

But when we marched down to the courthouse, and that\'s all we would do,
march and have prayer and somebody speak about the right to register to
vote and what it was all about, political education we used to call it.
Who going to get a political education. And we would turn back to the
place of assembly, that\'s where the police were just beating people at
random. And they were knocking Jimmie Lee\'s, the only mother he ever
knew, his grandmother, around. And Jimmie Lee basically said, you know,
you got to beat somebody, beat me, please don\'t beat my mother. It was
his grandmother really. And that\'s when they shot Jimmie Lee. It was
down in Marino.

**\[04:20\]**

And we brought Jimmie Lee back to\-- they would not accept him at that
hospital in Marion. In fact, we brought him back to the hospital in
Selma, the hospital that finally wouldn\'t even except Reverend Reeb,
put Jimmie Lee there. But Jimmie Lee\'s situation grew out of a local
situation where these cops just, they were following the leads of Jim
Clark, and they just went on a rampage. There was nothing\-- this woman,
they were beating this lady.

**\[04:53\]**

Who was the other one?

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

**A:** Oh, Malcolm X. Now, let me tell you something here that I never
told nobody. Nobody hardly knows but me. Malcolm liked King and King
liked Malcolm, but there was no association until Malcolm fell out with
Elijah Mohammed. They had some problems.

**\[05:19\]**

Malcolm then went to Africa, to Ghana, and Ontuman Otella (?)
accompanied Malcolm to Mecca. And I guess it\'s one of the great things
that happened, because on that march to Mecca with Malcolm, Ontuman
Otella convinced Malcolm if you are for real and if King is for real, if
this is not a personal, selfish thing with you \...(inaudible) King,
whatever it takes, you all will come together, because we don\'t see
very much possibility of victory with you all being divided, but you
come together.

**\[06:03\]**

Okay, because they told Malcolm, and I was told this by Otella, this is
after Malcolm dead, I was told he said to Malcolm, we are not sure of
Dr. King\'s program. We\'re not sure as far as gaining equality for
black people. He said, but at the same time, you don\'t have no people.
And he didn\'t. King could get more people in a country town than you
can get in New York. He said, so King got the people, we like your
program, this self-help thing, so y\'all need to come together.

**\[06:38\]**

So when Malcolm came back, I know when Malcolm came to Selma, and I
think I\'m right, I don\'t think I\'m lying, Abernathy didn\'t stay in
that meeting. King ain't never met with nobody without Abernathy being
by his side.

Now, we all\-- because I was quite a Malcolm X fan, and to classify me
as nonviolent was for me to be kind of overbearing, because I was bent
that other way. So I was\-- I\'ve never been more curious than what is
Malcolm and King saying in that room, if Malcolm killed and King (?)\--
what are they doing in that room? And they stayed in there a tremendous
time, and both guys came out just tickled to death and smiling and
everything, and that just blew my mind.

**\[07:33\]**

Now the thing that further worried me, King did not discuss with us the
details or intricacies of what he and Malcolm had discussed. Now he
might have told Abernathy. I\'m close to King now. I\'m in the inner
circle. But I never heard him. And you know, we\'d ask him and he\'d
start kind of talking off the wall like and laugh and things like that.
And I said, well my god, what\'s going on?

And Malcolm came and met with King, but he made a tremendous impression
on King. I could tell that. And in that meeting after King and Malcolm
came out and we all kind of got together like, and then Malcolm said,
you know, we were talking, and we were trying to get him to stay there
and speak, because everybody knew Malcolm X was in town. And he said,
\"I\'ll tell you what I\'ll do, I will agree to speak, but once I speak,
you should usher me in the car and let me leave. Because if one of these
crackers hit me, I\'m going to try to kill him, King. I cannot take no,
be no nonviolent. If somebody hit me, I\'m going to try to kill him.\"

**\[08:34\]**

So we followed Malcolm line. He spoke, they put him in the car and he
left. You know, he and King met a few weeks later on Auburn Avenue (?)
and then they scheduled another meeting in New York and then Malcolm was
killed. But Malcolm made a great impression on Dr. King.

**\[08:59\]**

They met\-- to my knowledge, they met twice and they had another meeting
scheduled just before Malcolm\'s death. And I used to think that that\'s
why Malcolm might have been set up, because\-- now I\'ll tell you the
truth, I do know this, that once Malcolm and King started meeting,
Elijah tried to meet with King, and King was having difficulty not
meeting with the old man, because he didn\'t want to embarrass the old
man and just outright say no, but he knew that the old man was trying to
meet with him because it had got out that he and Malcolm was meeting.

**\[09:32\]**

**Q:** Okay. The next one is describe the events of Sunday, March 7th,
Bloody Sunday.

**A:** Well let me say this, just something, that when we went into
Selma, now, when I came out of the chemistry lab, I had to make a choice
whether I would go with SNCC or whether I would go with SCLC, because
the young people, my right arms and left arms and everything were SNCC
type, so I had to make\-- that was a serious choice I had to make.

**\[10:10\]**

I was respected and accepted in both camps. Well John Lewis was still in
charge of SNCC then. The powers to be, Stokely was certainly present(?),
but they were going along with John Lewis and Forman, and I finally
chose SCLC as where I want to be. But I had relationships with both
sides.

But once we entered Selma, I was truly amazed at the riff, at the split,
at the viciousness. Selma, SNCC kind of felt like we had just invaded
their territory.

**\[11:09\]**

**Q:** Very territorial.

**A:** Right. And we had taken away from them something they built, and
they did build it, but it was totally neutral when we went there.

**Q:** Clark had\--

**A:** Because Clark had actually beat those kids. Clark beat them
people, \...(inaudible) beat them. At the time there was no meetings, no
nothing, no office, no telephone or nothing.

**\[11:28\]**

But really SNCC just began to do everything possible to undercut King,
undercut SCLC, which was King. And so, as I said, when we went in these
other counties and began to develop movements around Selma, in support
of Selma, and Jim Clark began to send in state support, and Bevel came
to the idea, why don\'t we take the movement to\-- not Jim Clark, George
Wallace was sending the state lawmen in. And Bevel first came to the
idea, why don\'t we\-- you know, he comes way down here, involves
himself, let\'s take it to him, right there in Montgomery.

**\[12:16\]**

So we had a meeting and discussed that thing and Dr. King went along
with him and we all said, yeah, that\'s pretty much the thing.

So we began SCLC in Selma and surrounding Selma, all those counties we
were in, developing D Day. Because now we refer to it as the holocaust,
the black holocaust of American history. But we began to develop for D
Day.

**\[12:51\]**

And SNCC then had returned to Selma and had to set up office, but we
were strictly in charge. I was pretty much running things, and I never
did have a lot of tension. Some of them wanted to speak, wanted to
march, let\'s go.

But then it came to lead the march. John Lewis gets much more credit
than he deserves. John didn\'t come into Selma until that Friday.

**Q:** Before the Sunday.

**\[13:24\]**

**A:** Before the Sunday. But Andy and I\-- see, in SCLC there were two
factions always: the Andy Young faction, Andy\'s extreme conservative,
and Hosea Williams, I was extreme militant.

So I got everything lovely(?), everything lovely that Saturday. So I
gets in my car and I drive, I\'m an ex-infantryman out of the United
States Army. Ex-infantryman. So I get in my car and drive to Selma. And
I check the mileage and where we could stop for lunch and where we could
sleep at night and what bushes would make a good bathroom area\--

**\[14:06\]**

**Q:** \...(inaudible) the route between Selma and Montgomery.

**A:** Right. So I spent about\-- normally, because I\'m a fast driver,
normally I drive from Selma to Montgomery in 35, 40 minutes. I spent
four hours on that\-- four or five hours on that highway between Selma
and Montgomery. But I got my little map, I got everything.

I get in Montgomery and get there to the Montgomery \...(inaudible)
Association, they say, but Dr. King is just looking everywhere for you,
everywhere. I said, \...(inaudible), what he want? So I call Dr. King
and he kind of \...(inaudible) and got everybody on the phone: Andy, Bob
Rustin(?), Abernathy, C.T.\-- we find everybody we wanted to find except
Bevel. Now we can\'t find Bevel. So Dr. King says let\'s go with it(?).

**\[14:57\]**

So get on the phone and \...(inaudible) here he come with that sad
story. And Dr. King did, he was\-- I\'m going to use that term, a sissy,
for preaching. That man loved the pulpit. The only way I could tolerate
him in the pulpit, when that rascal came out of that pulpit, he went in
the streets, he tried to make that sermon become a living reality.
That\'s why I could tolerate it. He just loved to preach.

**\[15:22\]**

And get on the phone and Dr. King start like a crybaby, \"Well now,\" he
said, which I question even today, \"Dad is not feeling too well and Dad
asked me to preach tomorrow.\" Well there\'s a thousand preachers in
Atlanta. He had to preach? Bring your butt down here and let\'s lead
this march. So he said, \"Dad is not feeling too well and Dad asked me
to preach, and you know how it is when your father asks you to do
something,\" you know, whining and going on. And said, \"I just
think\--\"

**\[15:53\]**

Now Dr. King really was not aware of the amount of work and the tension
and the dynamics of tomorrow\'s march. We had brought a lot of folks in
going to march Sunday, had to be back home Monday, had to go back home
Sunday night. He was not aware of a lot of this, see. So I couldn't
believe I heard my ears\-- what I heard.

\"Okay,\" he says, \"I\'m going to call the role and if y\'all think I
ought to go down there, I\'ll go down there, but if you think I should
stay here and help the church I\'ll stay and help the church, whatever
y\'all say.\" So he starts calling the role, and he left me for last.
Everybody says, yes, I support you. I said, \"No, Dr. King, I do not
support you.\" He said very firm and vibrant, I remember he said,
\"Hosea\--\" he said very stern, he said, \"Hosea, you\'re not with me.
Son, you need to pray. You need to get with me, Hosea.\"

**\[16:49\]**

And I was just destroyed. I\'m really raging. He don\'t know I\'m
raging. So he said, \"Okay,\" he said, \"Postpone the march until Monday
and I\'ll be there Monday and lead the march.\" And I jumped in the car.
Now I\'m really angry. I\'m raging. And I\'m trying to think how I can
outsmart him, how I can trick him, what I can do. I said, the only
person on earth now that could get to Dr. King is James Bevel.

**\[17:19\]**

So I go back to Selma\--

**Q:** Because you didn't drive back and forth?

**A:** Brother, I drove back in about 20 minutes \...(inaudible). So I
go back to Selma and I found Bevel and I told Bevel. Bevel was very much
on my side, he was. And he got Dr. King on the phone. And they kind of
battled and firmly talked back. So finally Bevel says, \"Okay, Doc, I
really thank you, I really thank you,\" and he hung up. Bevel said\-- it
had been agreed that I would lead the march, because we never get all
our troops out at once, see. On any activity like that, a number of us
stayed behind so if everybody got arrested, those behind could mobilize
the community. So we never carried all the troops out at once.

**\[18:09\]**

So Bevel looked at me and said, \"You got it, go ahead.\" And boy did my
heart shout with joy. It wasn\'t Dr. King had agreed with Bevel, said
all right, Bevel told him how disappointed people going to be, how it\'s
going to kill the enthusiasm. Dr. King told Bevel he agreed to tell
Hosea take 50 people and march them over the bridge, and when they
confront him, turn around and come back. That\'s not what Bevel told me.
Bevel said go all the way.

**\[18:40\]**

So now I\'m around there with my staff, and I did have a hell of a
staff. I had one of the best staffs. I believe that I was part, that the
inner circle of King, there\'s been no greater group of guys together in
all of history of mankind, but I believe I had the best field staff of
anybody in the history of the world in the social struggle.

**\[19:01\]**

So I get the staff, and I really get the staff, boy they in high gear.
So we worked all night, we worked all them people in from these
counties. The next morning the preacher, he was in on that conversation
with Dr. King of that Methodist church there.

**Q:** Brown?

**A:** Brown Chapel AME, the preacher. But he going to let me\-- I ain't
no preacher, but I was so popular they were going to let me speak the
next morning in church.

**\[19:31\]**

And I got up there and just really went wild. I mean, people jumping all
upside the wall. And I\'m telling the people we\'re leaving at three
o\'clock. Well the preacher can\'t believe I\'m saying this. No one
had\-- we agreed yesterday not to march. So he goes back while I\'m
preaching, he goes back and calls Dr. King. He says, \"You know Hosea is
fixing to march these people?\" Dr. King in the pulpit, get Dr. King out
of the pulpit. Dr. King can\'t believe it. He gets Ralph on the phone,
then they got Andy, and chartered Andy a plane.

**\[20:01\]**

Now all of them think I\'m just outright ignoring or overruling, just
outright rebelling. They don\'t know Bevel done told me that Dr. King
said go. \[laughs\] Andy comes out of the charter plane and he told me
\...(inaudible). So I meet Andy at the airport and think Andy going to
be happy today and he is angry as he can be. And I said, \"Now what\'s
wrong with you?\" He said, \"We going to deal with this. You aren\'t
going to get away with this.\" I said, \"Andy, what\'s wrong?\" So Andy
tells me, and I want to kill Bevel. I wants to beat Bevel\'s butt, and
will beat him if I can get my hands on him. So I said, \"Lord, Bevel
tricked me.\"

**\[20:42\]**

So we go back to the church, Andy said, \"I got to go back and stop
these people.\" So Andy tells me. I said, \"Andy, I didn\'t. Bevel told
me.\" He said, \"No, Bevel didn\'t tell you. You just go on and do what
you want to do and ignore Dr. King.\"

So Andy goes in to speak to the people in the church. They on fire. Andy
was scared to tell those folks they couldn't march.

**Q:** Andy couldn't just sway the troops.

**\[21:04\]**

**A:** No, he was afraid. So Andy finally \...(inaudible) Dr. King, went
\...(inaudible) call Dr. King, \...(inaudible) ain't no way to stop
them. Well now SNCC wanted us to try to stop them because SNCC going to
take them and march.

**Q:** The march is going by with SNCC leading if you don\'t.

**A:** Right. And this, the continuation of the fight between SCLC and
SNCC. So SNCC hoping we won\'t march. So I know this. I\'m round there
with everybody, see. But Andy called Dr. King back and said, \"There
ain\'t no way, they\'re going with us or without us, Doc, Hosea got them
so fired up. Oh boy, \...(inaudible).\"

**\[21:41\]**

So Andy and I really\-- I really wants to fight Andy, to tell you the
truth. I want to punch him out. So Andy go writes this little news
release and we left the church, Andy said, well we\'ll read the news
release to the press outside. Andy gave John the news release, he
wouldn't let me read it. So John read the news release.

So then we\-- the way we agreed we\'d line up, with John and Hosea
Williams, and for about eight or ten behind us SCLC and SNCC, SCLC and
SNCC\--

**Q:** He\'s partnered off.

**\[22:22\]**

**A:** Yeah. So when we got over the bridge\-- well I\'ll tell you, it
was one of the most gratifying and most memorable moments of my whole
life. I don\'t think I\'ve ever seen black folks\-- we had a lot of
white people too. There was about 700 of us. We had a lot of whites.
I\'d say out of the 700 we had at least 15 or 20% whites. I don\'t think
I ever seen Americans more ready and willing to suffer and sacrifice for
dignity, for human dignity, in my whole life. I can\'t remember nothing
else \...(inaudible). And I was just like crying inside, laughing, I\'m
just so happy to see all of those people just, let\'s go, let\'s go.

**\[23:13\]**

So we got down to the bridge and there was Jim Clark and his possemen,
part of his possemen, and the way we had old Jim Clark, and they finally
got him too, once we crossed that bridge we was out of his territory,
because before we get to the bridge, everything back is in Jim Clark\'s
federal district, the trial takes place in Mobile. Which they was with
Jim Clark, we had been told, no jury down there, but once you cross that
bridge it threw us into Montgomery and Frank\--

**Q:** Johnson.

**\[23:47\]**

**A:** Johnson, who is retired now, who is probably considered one of
the better judges, one of the fairest judges of all times. No one is
fairer than Johnson.

And we got there, all of Jim\'s possemen. And we really weren\'t ready
for that march. If Jim Clark had been smart and just opened\-- Jim Clark
said, \"Let them march.\" Because the march came up on us so fast, the
time, I had one truck\-- I had two trucks, and I had about ten sleeping
bags or fifteen sleeping bags\--

**Q:** For 700 people?

**\[24:25\]**

**A:** Yeah. And I got about\-- boiled, I had lady boil, a few people
with boilers out there, I had about four cases of boiled eggs. I really
had nothing. We really\-- if they had told us to march to Selma we
couldn\'t have marched, because \...(inaudible). But the one
\...(inaudible) told me, said, \"Don\'t say nothing, don\'t say nothing,
just go on, go on.\"

So we was marching on there, and as we crossed that bridge I remember
one black man, he was a one-legged man, and they were all up on the
sidewalk of the bridge as we marched. And we got to these white men and
they start knocking him around. He had his wife and his children with
him. He said, \"I\'m not with them. I\'m not with them.\" And that just
made them beat him more. Just, \"Yeah, but you still a god dam nigger.\"

**\[25:17\]**

And that guy jumped off of that sidewalk into that march, and left his
wife\-- they was beating him so bad, left his wife and his children. And
I just looked at him because, you know, we was like helping him, saving
him. So we go ahead across the bridge, then we come to the confrontation
after we cross the bridge.

**\[25:32\]**

And I don\'t know where I\'ve seen that many cops and state troopers and
militia men. They got on the army clothes and so forth. And I remember
it was not Jim Clark, it was Al Lingo. We finally had a guy come with us
named Al Lingo. Al Lingo was head of Public Safety, he was the Public
Safety Commissioner. He said, \"Halt!\" So we stopped. And he said,
\"Take them niggers back home.\"

**\[26:14\]**

And I kept waiting for John Lewis to say something, because he was the
spokesman back at the church. John in the pictures with him, did not
open his mouth. Now, I\'m really trying to come up with enough grit and
grime and grain in old tough Hosea to open my mouth. So finally I said,
he said, \"Take them niggers back to the church\-- back home. Take them
niggers back home. Take them back home now.\"

Well I noticed one thing \...(inaudible) military. I can\'t understand
now why they began to move down around the line. On this side of us
there\'s a deep\-- was a vacuum, I mean, a sink, like hole\--

**Q:** On the right?

**\[26:57\]**

**A:** On the left. Because they\-- and the wind was blowing this way.
So they began to move around and said, \"Take them back home.\" So I
said\-- I finally mustered up, and boy, you can never imagine what it
took out of me to muster these words up. I said, \"Sir, may we have a
word with you?\" And all eyes focused right on me. And he said, \"There
will be no talking today. I said take them niggers back to the church.
You got one minute.\" I looked at my watch, and 15 seconds he said,
\"Charge.\"

**\[27:32\]**

Well, when he said charge, about six of them came after me, because I
had opened my mouth. They knocked\--

**Q:** You\'re the prime target.

**A:** Yeah, I\'m the prime target. So they knocked me right down. Well,
you know, we\'d been trained to keep your head, you lock your hand like
this and \...(inaudible) no way to hit you. You lock your head and, you
know, so lock your head. And their sticks was rattling \...(inaudible),
you know, \...(inaudible) nobody \...(inaudible) some kind of beating.
And they had driven John and those about 15 or 20 feet, they just drove
them back down to the ground, drove them back down to the ground.

**\[28:07\]**

Now here\'s me out here with these six guys by myself. Now he had John
and those back here down to the ground. I\'m here with these six guys
and there\'s a crowd of people up there, about 50 or 60 feet away. But
they\'re all white. So when they knocked me down, I start trying to
protect myself, and they wasn\'t having no fun with me at all, all six
of them. So I look about four of them was having so much fun whooping
John and those, four of them jumped up and just left me with two.

**\[28:35\]**

And I kept rolling. I\'d roll over this way, roll over that way. So
finally them two ran off and left me. And I jumped up and my first
inkling was to run for safety. And I started\-- remember the crowd?
\...(inaudible) said, \"Don\'t you know them white people are going to
kill you?\" So now I turned around, now John and those, they got them
surrounded now, and gas, the gas is projecting or putting out the gas
\...(inaudible). So I have to get me a little speed and run and jump
over the state troopers. I didn\'t know who I was falling on, but I run
and jump over the state troopers to get into the line.

**\[29:07\]**

So what they did, they gassed us from where we were, back down to that
bridge. They gassed us. You couldn't see your hand before you like that.
They first beat us down with billy clubs, then they gassed us. It was a
military attack. And I didn\'t realize they was trying to get us in that
ravine. That\'s where they was trying to drive us to, down in that
ravine. But when the gas halfway came(?), they beat us again and
re-gassed us. I kept telling everybody, \"Hold tight, hold tight, don\'t
move, get down, stay down.\" The wind, it was a brisk wind.

**\[29:52\]**

And then I saw those horses, it was Jim Clark\'s possemen coming on
those horses. I was raised up with horses and mules and things. They\'re
very highly intelligent. But they came, those men had a walking stick,
walking cane, with a big iron knob on that end, and they were going like
this, boom!, with that big iron knob.

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

**A:** Yeah. But I didn\'t see heads busting \...(inaudible) intelligent
horses, because haw! And the horses, the horses going on(?). But horses
mighty intelligent. And I was there, I said, Oh my god, how many people
did I lead to their death today? And I could see everybody saying, they
tried to get you to kill this march, they tried to get you\-- I just
said, Oh my god, this is the end of the world for me. And I got a lot of
people killed.

**\[30:42\]**

Horses went back(?). Man, it was like\-- and I\'m talking about that was
just like the children(?) in the Red Sea, to see all those people stand
up and start backing up and getting up and backing up. We was like,
\"Get together, get together.\" And I had this little girl, she wrote a
book on Selma. What\'s her name?

**Q:** Cheyenne(?).

**\[31:04\]**

**A:** Cheyenne. Cheyenne and her two sisters was like mascots. They
must have been about six or seven years old, and you wouldn\'t believe
they\-- see, we were sleeping in the church, and them things would be
there all\-- their momma just trusted us so. They would be in that
church all night long some nights, Cheyenne and them two sisters. Just
like mascots.

Now my right-arm man was a guy, had a voice like loud(?), but he weighed
about 130 pounds and Ben Clark, about five feet two or three. Highly
intelligent \...(inaudible). And Ben Clark had this little girl,
Joanne(?). But Ben, you know, Joanne almost as big as Ben. So I said,
when we try to get back now, and the way they were carrying us back, Jim
Clark had the major part of his possemen at the other end of that bridge
as you enter back into Selma.

**\[32:01\]**

**Q:** On the Selma side.

**A:** On the Selma side. And every time about 40 or 50 of those people,
they would unleash three or four of those men with billy clubs, and they
was whooping the hell out of everybody, child(?). So I had Joanne\--
now, Ben had Joanne, scuffling with her(?). She\'d hang around me all
the time like a little puppy. I said, \"Ben, let me have Joanne.\" And I
took her and going on back, we was walking down the path.

**\[32:25\]**

I never will forget that little girl looked up at me. I think this is in
her book. She said, \"Mister, put me down.\" And I said, \"Why?\" She
said, \"You just ain\'t going fast enough.\" \[laughter\] I put that
little girl down and I never will forget. You know how you see
somebody\'s feet on a bicycle? That little girl took off.

And when I got to that bridge, that part of that bridge where they were
letting those people loose, a woman was running around looking for me
and she threw this\-- there\'s a house right\-- when we got to the
corner and turn, there\'s a house right there. And she\-- Jim Clark beat
up that so bad that they threw this quilt over my head. I said,
\"What\'s the\--\" that angered me. I was already angry and scared and
everything else. And she said, \"He has put the word out, find Hosea
Williams and kill him.\"

**\[33:21\]**

So she put this quilt, it was a country quilt, on my head, and threw\--
and I just folded up on the porch there. And boy, they went crazy
looking for me. They never found me. I laid under that thing, I couldn't
hear anybody. Everybody had gone. And I came out from under that thing.

**\[33:40\]**

But that was\-- it was amazing how the people really stuck together. And
as a result, within 48 hours, there was 7,000 people in Selma, Alabama.
It was unbelievable. One of the stories I tell like, I got up that
Tuesday morning, and it was a very distinguished man in the low-end
housing project in his bare feet eating\-- mother, eating some chicken
about seven o\'clock in the morning. That was the lieutenant governor of
Massachusetts, had slept on the floor in a low-end housing project all
night long. Probably never been in a low-end housing project. And he got
up that morning, was eating some cold fried chicken fried the day
before.

**\[34:34\]**

There was just so many people from \...(inaudible). People came all the
way from far away as Hawaii and Canada within 48 hours. We grew from 700
to 7,000. And it wasn\'t no folk was sleeping, just in cars, on porches.
And I mean, they were people of means.

So that Monday, SNCC launched a campaign. I mean, it was the most
vicious campaign, that Dr. King was scared and deserted the marchers.
And I kept trying to tell everybody and boy SNCC, I mean, they just
threw it in high gear. Their job was to break the back of that march,
break the back of that movement, and they were able to encourage several
hundred priests and people to Montgomery, trying to do something
\...(inaudible) the march. And they were in Montgomery having meetings
everywhere. I went to Montgomery to talk some sense into these people.

**\[35:47\]**

And they beat them in Montgomery as bad as they beat us on that. They
beat them, those police beat them so bad, it was pitiful the way\-- I
was standing up on this lady\'s porch, the police were beating priests
and nuns and everybody. But SNCC had came to try to\-- said they were
going to have a march on the capitol to try to anti-climax (?) anything
King was going to do.

**\[36:06\]**

So that afternoon we picked up King, and boy he was a sick man.

**Q:** You picked him up?

**A:** At the airport. And all he could look at me like he was going to
cry and he said, \"You was right. I was wrong.\" Kept telling me, \"You
was right. I didn\'t listen to you.\" Because man, that thing was raging
and King had sold the people out and got all them people out there
marching, he was scared and\--

**\[36:30\]**

So we went on to a meeting place in Selma, which is to a dentist\'s
home, and Dr. King\--

**Q:** Mr. Jackson?

**A:** Mr. Jackson\'s home. We had the head of Urban League there, had
the head of SNCC there, one or two people. We had the head of CORE
there, had the head of\--

END OF #521

BEGINNING OF #522

**\[00:05\]**

**A:** \--regretted anything in his whole life like he regretted not
showing up that Sunday. Because I\'m going to tell you one thing, see
one thing you have to understand about me, in the movement I say we all
had our uniqueness, but I was supposed to have been the tough guy. I
developed one name, was called\-- one time they used to call me the
Castro of the movement. Another time in the movement they used to call
me\-- a lot of them called me at night(?) Little David who faced
Goliath. Another name I had in the movement several years was the
Unstoppable Force.

**\[00:41\]**

But I swear to god, Martin Luther King, Jr. was the bravest man I ever
met in this world. That man had done things\-- me with all my nerve and
everything, I just could not understand it. I would be just trembling,
my whole body, flesh\-- I could feel my guts shaking. Man, that guy had
some nerve. He did\-- King did two things that I don\'t know but two
other people on the face of earth in the history of man, and that was
Jesus Christ and Gandhi. King conquered, without a shadow of a doubt,
the fear of death, and he conquered \...(inaudible). That man was
something. He had to be something.

**\[01:20\]**

But we went on to Dr. Jackson\'s house, and I\'m sitting there. Now,
I\'m really upset. I\'m just torn apart. Andy and all of them around
there, just listening to me. So where do we go from here? What do we do
right now? And everybody was kind of\-- we had this lawyer from
Montgomery. He\'s in Tuskegee now. I forget the boy\'s name. He\'s a
judge in Tuskegee now. We had everybody sitting around that table, SNCC
and everybody. And everybody \...(inaudible) and saying, well NAACP
Legal Education Defense Fund, which is Thurgood Marshall at that time,
we\'ve got it now.

**\[02:14\]**

Judge Johnson had told his lawyer from Montgomery unofficially, \"Tell
King to hold up. I\'ve been wanting Jim Clark and now I got him.\" But
man, they talked. We discussed it. I got so disgusted, I got high(?),
went out and find me a good drink and I came back that sober
\...(inaudible) still talking.

**\[02:34\]**

And Dr. King tried to manipulate everybody. He wants to face Jim Clark
on that bridge. But everybody else was saying, King, take it easy, let
the law take its course. And everybody. And so finally that night that
lawyer went to Montgomery twice to talk to Johnson. Drove all the way to
Montgomery and came back. And Roy Wilkins and with everybody talking to
Dr. King, and finally Dr. King said, whoa boy, it\'s like seeing Jesus
get up from the grave, \"The choice is not mine to make. I don\'t have a
choice. I have to do it. I have to face him. I have to lead the
people.\"

And boy, that was\-- because he and I are probably the only two in that
room, he and I and Abernathy, because Abernathy wasn\'t going to ever
speak for King. And then that guy went and saw Johnson the second time.
Johnson sent King\-- when that lawyer went to see Johnson, that was the
second time, whatever you do legally, legally, he forbid Dr. King to
march. What is it called? An injunction. Issued an injunction. Legally
Johnson did. And people said, now, okay, you just going \...(inaudible)
for everybody with you. But to open\-- for a man of your stature, to
openly violate a federal injunction is bad. Sets a bad precedent. Dr.
King said, \"I don\'t have a choice.\"

**\[04:08\]**

Now at that time, almost daybreak, this guy, the ex-governor of Florida,
LeRoy Collins, had entered the picture. He was \...(inaudible) and he
was head of, what, the\-- LeRoy Collins.

**\[04:23\]**

**Q:** He was kind of Johnson\'s troubleshooter.

**A:** No, it\'s the\-- what was he? Human rights or civil rights?

**Q:** Human rights.

**A:** He had the department?

**\[04:33\]**

**Q:** Yeah.

**A:** A colleague was head of that for Johnson. So he came in, the
White House had sent him in to try to make deals with King and talk King
out of marching. And that guy said, no, I have to do it. Well SNCC had
put so much pressure all over the news that he had gotten all these
other folks to march and then he had chickened out and he had gotten
scared and got these people all beat to death. And he said, we gotta
let\-- because our remark(?) toward the movement unfortunately was, \"I
ain\'t going to let nobody turn us around,\" and we really played that
to the hilt. We\'d go downtown and march downtown and they\'d beat us so
bad we\'d have to go back to the church to wipe the blood off, but we
coming back this night. You ain\'t going to bed until you beat us out,
we come back this very night or this very day.

**\[05:24\]**

So Dr. King lined everybody up. I guess that\'s one of the most
frustrating or one of the most down moments of his whole life. Because
we agreed that he would lead the people but he would not try to march
through. Because Wallace and the militia and everybody could have
definitely blocked us, the way they blocked us yesterday, that\'s it.

**\[05:50\]**

Okay if he does. They won\'t beat us up. I imagine that\'s what King
wanted to prove his willingness or his ability to suffer. So he marched
them right there. He wouldn't let me go. That\'s another thing that hurt
me. He definitely told me not to go.

**Q:** Stay in Selma.

**\[06:05\]**

**A:** I would stay in Selma. And if anything happened to them, then I
was to mobilize the community and come in second. But he went over and
what got him(?), when they got there and met the troops. Now certainly
we don\'t have nothing to march nowhere with now. Which they do. When he
got there, the troopers just\-- he got and pray, Abernathy prayed. When
they got up and prayed, the troopers just disappeared. They had the
whole highway. Now he got to turn around, because that\'s the agreement
we made.

**\[06:45\]**

That man was very frustrated when he came back to Selma. He just\-- that
was a terrible moment in his life, because he didn\'t want the people to
feel like he had deserted them. But then we began going to court and we
were mobilizing fast\-- we had had marchers before but never a march of
that magnitude, and it was amazing the help that we got across this
nation. Like the little white boy came in and he just was a nuisance.
Come to find out his father own a manufacturing\-- I mean, they must
have brought, I mean, thousands of dollars of walkie-talkies and radios
and the whole communication system his father owned the factory and
built that kind of stuff, and that\'s the kind of help that we got, from
all over the nation.

**\[07:40\]**

But we came back and began mobilizing, and the other thing was that one
of the things that helped us out a lot was President Johnson, that I
think was probably for the black struggle was concerned, probably one of
the greatest presidents ever lived. You know, he federalized the\--

**Q:** Dixie Division.

**A:** Yeah. The same guys that were beating us Sunday\--

**\[08:04\]**

**Q:** Have to guard you.

**A:** Have to guard us. Same guys. And they sent this guy down there
who was attorney general, Ramsey Clark. I tell folks, I really began to
enjoy it then because Ramsey Clark had a plane, he had a helicopter, and
we\'d fly\-- the same work I did in my car, Ramsey Clark and I did that
in the plane later on, where we would stop at night\--

**Q:** Were in charge of logistics for the big march?

**\[08:32\]**

**A:** Yes.

**Q:** Would you discuss that? Which you\'re starting to do right now.
Going around in Clark\'s plane.

**A:** Okay. We had agreed with the court order that the march would not
exceed 300. And I can tell you, it never fell under 500. \[laughs\] It
never, there was just no way. But we began organizing staff plus
volunteer supporters in the various departments. And one of the
departments we had was food that we would eat each morning before we
left the tent and we\'d have lunch and we\'d have a snack that afternoon
before the rally. We\'d have a rally each night. So one department was
the food department.

**\[09:28\]**

Another department was the health department, medical department. We did
have a full\-- a couple of full-fledged ambulances and with doctors,
nurses and dentists in that department. Another department we had was
the program department. That is, like we would be marching and we\'d
stop at a certain place and someone was to lecture on some aspect of
what this movement was all about, the right to vote, the right to
govern, the right to participate in government.

**\[10:07\]**

And at night we had celebrities from all around the country would come
in at night. One night like we had Sammy Davis, Jr. We had him that last
night. Had a bit of fun (?). These guys would come in at night.

The other department we had was the mobilization department. That means
we would go in the area that we were going to spend the night and we\'d
mobilize citizens in that area to come out and join us and be with us
that night in that meeting, but also get some official representative
that would represent them on the march. Then we had naturally(?), which
is always the legal redress department, had more lawyers than we ever
needed.

**\[10:55\]**

And then we had the housing, which was the group\-- and I used to get a
big kick out of telling everybody this. I guess I\'ve always been kind
of anti-middle class antisocial, because I got a lot of kick out of
putting doctors and lawyers and Ph.D.\'s and so forth on the garbage
truck. You know, we had these huge tents, and we had a guy there who
knew the tent business but he was just one. We rented them back in
Atlanta that time. So that was the housing department. We\'d have to
take these tents up, place them on the truck, and believe it or not
they\'d drive to the next place where we\'re going to sleep the next
night, and they\'re all day putting up these tents. So we had that.

**\[11:38\]**

Then we had the group, the other group that wasn\'t\-- where we had
transportation too. That was taking people back to Montgomery or back to
Selma and back before we had the transportation department. But we had
the other, the celebrity department, that we had all these celebrities
calling, and some of them would know when this is coming to the airport
and when to bring them out and where to get them a room and so forth.

**\[12:02\]**

So we divided up in divisions like that. We had the communication
department, that\'s the department that we were really catching hell
communicating until this boy got his daddy to give us\-- well they
loaned us, half the stuff they never got back, and paid for a chartered
flight to bring it into Selma. Then we had\-- well under the
mobilization was all these different people coming in from all over the
country.

**\[12:28\]**

But we broke down in departments and we would always have some staff
member that\-- okay, the entertainment department, those are the people,
we brought gospel singers in and white, black, Hollywood, all kind of
entertainers. A lot of that stuff my wife got in her thesis. But I had
to organize all these departments, and then we had the food departments
and this. We had this huge 40-foot trailer and that\'s where all the
eggs and the hot dogs and the wieners and everything on this huge
trailer. Ice cream and stuff. And we had like a staff member would have
a certain number of staff members working with them, and then the
volunteer, the chief volunteer, would have so many volunteers working
with them, and that\'s the way we got that\-- we had it planned out, we
knew exactly what time we\'d leave that morning, we knew exactly where
we\'d stop for the ten o\'clock break, we knew exactly where we\'d stop
for lunch, we knew exactly where we\'d stop for the evening break, we
knew exactly where we\'d stop for housing in the afternoon and what
time.

**\[13:34\]**

We ran a real tight agenda. You know, a book came out about a lot of sex
habits and all like that, which was very untrue, because we worked
people very, very hard and kept them very, very busy.

**Q:** They didn\'t have time.

**\[13:46\]**

**A:** No, they didn\'t have the time. And people didn\'t do too much
straying away after that. So we went on into Selma\-- went from Selma, a
very military style like, very, very military style like, from Selma to
Montgomery. I remember the night when we hit Montgomery, this is that
Friday night, that\'s when they had Sammy Davis, Jr., two or three, I
mean, top Hollywood movie people, the stage caved in, broke in.
\[laughs\] Everybody thought it was the Ku Klux Klan. Man, you never
seen so much hollering. These guys are really running. I was trying to
tell them not to run because anytime like that people get excited and
start running\--

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

**\[14:31\]**

**A:** Yeah, more people get hurt. But the stage fell in that night. I
think Harry Belafonte was there, Sammy Davis, Jr. We had some top
Hollywood person. And the next day I was as nervous as I could be,
because being in charge of logistics, and I just know that we were
poorly organized to handle the number of people that would be there. But
that had been so what\-- the only thing that gave me confidence in so
many cases in the civil rights movement, we had faced conditions similar
to that and how nobody knew that things worked out. How, nobody knows.
We were not that greatly organized.

**\[15:27\]**

So that morning we pull out to head for the capitol. And I never will
forget we were using Dr. King\'s old church there, which is right across
from the capitol, s our downtown headquarters, our final headquarters.
And I remember when Dr. King, the whole crowd came up and I mean, just
thousands and thousands of people. And we had certain areas or places in
Montgomery where all those buses coming in all from across the country
would stage those buses there and the people would walk down or they\'d
come in on flights and they had buses that would bring them to certain
places and they\'d walk down.

**\[16:06\]**

And we had organized to the best of our ability. I can\'t think of
another time in the civil rights movement when the staff was so
committed and worked so hard, and there was no playing around. I never
will forget when the program ended and I guess about 45 minutes I walked
out on those grounds and I was really crying and everybody had gone. And
just a lot of people and just the wind blowing. It just looked like\--
it was really a miracle. \...(inaudible) it was like a miracle.

**\[16:50\]**

Then I went back inside the church. The girl came out screaming, saying
I had a telephone call. And there was a guy named LeRoy Molton(?), was
riding with Mrs. Liuzzo, who had been down there about three or four
days, and they killed her. And so that threw us back in gear.

But I don\'t think anything has happened in America that shook the
conscious of this nation. I don\'t think there\'s anything that\'s ever
happened in the history of America that has more awakened America and
developed as much support. I don\'t think anything in the history of
this nation than that Selma to Montgomery march.

**\[17:47\]**

**Q:** A couple of things on the march here before I go onto a couple
other questions here. You mentioned your staff, that you had a wonderful
staff. Would you identify some of the members and some of the
responsibilities?

**A:** Well that was the first time and the only time\-- there was a lot
of tension on the staff of SCLC. When I left Savannah and went to King,
I didn\'t know my Savannah staff was going to follow me. I said goodbye.
The next day I looked up and there was about 30 of them, with bags and
everything. \"You ain\'t leaving us.\" So you had the Hosea Williams
crowd.

**\[18:31\]**

**Q:** Came all the way from Savannah?

**A:** Yeah. And people I picked up, like Tom Hawk here, people I had
picked up and committed to my type of leadership from the Albany
movement, some from the Saint Augustine movement. But before I came to
SCLC there was James Bevel. So you had the Bevel crowd, which was
assisted by James Orange and another guy named Boone. Boone is more
popular than James Orange. Boone is from Montgomery.

**\[19:02\]**

And then you had others that were more or less conservative like on the
Andy crowd. But the two major competitors in SCLC, two distinct groups,
were that Hosea Williams crowd and that James Bevel crowd. But it\'s
unbelievable how we\-- it was only one crowd on that march.
Unquestionably. Everybody pitched in together. Hosea is in charge of
logistics.

And like we had a guy like, okay, James Orange, James Orange\-- let me
see now, all that shouldn't\-- my wife. I can\'t remember. I\'d have to
get for you, but each of those activities that I described had a staff
member, had some staff, and they were offset by a volunteer. We had some
volunteers. I can\'t think right off who was just head of what. But
every\--

**\[20:04\]**

**Q:** But that\'s available.

**A:** Yeah, that\'s available.

**Q:** That\'s in his wife\'s \...(inaudible).

**\[20:09\]**

**A:** That\'s available. Every\-- let me tell you all another thing
\...(inaudible). When we launched that big march out of Selma\-- because
I was a workhorse, that\'s why you see me in none of the pictures\-- I
had my wife, told my wife to bring all the children over there, my wife
and five children. And I\'m so busy getting the march off, I forgot I
got my wife and the five children there. So we downtown, we left Brown
Chapel and got on the main street there to the bridge. And I got my wife
and five children, and here come about five white guys after me. And
they really were going to beat us up.

**\[20:47\]**

Now I\'m thinking, what the hell I could do. So I reach in and say,
\"God dammit, come on!\" like I was getting a pistol. \[laughs\]
\...(inaudible) Y\'all run, y\'all run. Because I think I could, you
know, endure the beating. And my family took over, my wife only about
five feet high, but that little short woman that day was
\...(inaudible). They were trying to catch the crowd now. When I look
around, because I used to could run real fast. I was a track star. And I
looked around and saw my family was so far, I took off. \[laughs\] Well
I backed them up there for at least two or three minutes. I was cussing
him, going on, I had my hand under my coat. But I likely got my family
killed.

**\[21:27\]**

**Q:** Then on the march itself, you were wearing the hat of being
logistic chief, did you march much or\-- you both marched and then you
said you weren't\--

**A:** That was one of the\--

**Q:** Then running around doing all your\--

**\[21:47\]**

**A:** That was one of the punishments. Only time I got a chance to
march, and I guess that was on the front, one of the magazines, a
picture with me with my baby girl, who is a lawyer now, around my neck.
But I didn\'t get a chance to march at all. When you feeding that many
people\-- I know this, you see. I knew this. And that\'s what made me
such a good, valuable staff member. I was not the leader. Martin Luther
King, Jr. was the leader.

**Q:** You were staff.

**A:** So my job was to do whatever it take. I do whatever it takes\--
and my staff don\'t understand\-- to make my leader and to release Dr.
King of these worries that he can speak to the nation, that he can
articulate this to the nation. And I did it, mister.

**\[22:43\]**

I was like an army general. I was like Castro. I would kick your butt if
it took kicking your butt. But we was going to have that food ready, we
was going to have those tents up, we were going to have those ambulances
available, we was going to have that water there, because people on that
march, you know, even though it was in the cool part of the year, the
doctors \...(inaudible).

**\[23:08\]**

But my job, and I did it, I guarantee you I slept like two hours a day.
I\'m a person that don\'t take\-- you know, in 35 years I haven\'t slept
maybe only four hours a day, and I might have slept like two hours a
day. But I did my job and my staff did their job. I had guys under me.
And I picked up a lot of good people, I mean, really good people, to do
the technical things. But I never had a chance to enjoy the preacher at
the rallies. I like to speak. I never had a chance to do any of those
things like that, or to march. I was considered SCLC\'s army, I was the
Harry Belafonte. I was the top singer leading freedom songs. I was the
top singer in the civil rights movement in SCLC. I didn\'t get a chance
to hardly do any of what I loved to do, but I did\--

**\[23:58\]**

**Q:** You had to do the nuts and bolts \...(inaudible).

**A:** That\'s right, that\'s right.

**Q:** \--hadn\'t eaten, the tents hadn\'t been there, \...(inaudible)

**A:** That\'s right. And security was another thing, see, because even
there, not only\-- and I\'m telling you the truth, I\'m not lying, SNCC
would try to manipulate confrontations between the people and the
police. They were doing everything to- they were just fanatical about
destroying King\'s image on that march. So we had to have security
everywhere, everywhere.

**\[24:31\]**

But I never worked so hard in my life. But I didn\'t get\-- I\'m not on
any of the pictures, singing, I like to sing, lead freedom songs and
speaking, like I like to preach. I didn\'t get a chance to do any of
that. It was the nuts and the bolts.

**\_\_:** During that march, do you remember a person called Willie
Riggs?

**\[24:51\]**

**A:** Yeah.

**\_\_:** Okay, what was his role?

**A:** Well Willie and I have always been good friends. Willie was the
right arm to Stokely Carmichael. I have never seen an individual that
could stir up people and start riots better than Willie Riggs. But he
and I was\-- he got the greatest respect\-- I\'m probably the one guy in
the SCLC today, he has the greatest respect for me and I have the
greatest respect, although I differed in his philosophy. But it was\--
in the SCLC it was Hosea Williams, in SNCC it was Willie Riggs.

**\[25:33\]**

**\_\_:** So what was his role in the march?

**A:** To start trouble. Start trouble. And I tell you, baby, he was the
best\-- where we really fought\-- where I really beat him, we never
fought\-- we fought on that march, but we never did. Our confrontation
came to its pinnacle on the march between Memphis and Jackson. Willie
Riggs launched the black\-- when they talk about black power all over,
that was Willie Riggs. He was Stokely Carmichael, but he\'s a most
effective person.

**\[26:06\]**

He got an African name and he is(?). That guy can move people. He can
move. That boy can move mountains. He\'s one of the best baby in the
business. He was young\-- huh?

**Q:** Like Hitler was very good at rallying \...(inaudible)

**A:** Right, that\'s right. You had\--

**Q:** I don\'t understand German but Hitler\'s voice could stir people
up.

**\[26:27\]**

**A:** Right. But I had that Willie Riggs, I tricked him in a\-- I used
to talk with him, and I tricked him on that Meredith march. I went and
bought about 5000 American flags, and this is the last day, and I said,
what I\'ll do, we\'ll give out flags from one end of that march, let\'s
give out about 100 flags. So I know what Willie Riggs is going to do. So
Willie Riggs went in and took the 100 flags, was over there burning the
flags. So as they were burning the flags, we gave everybody else a flag
and Willie looked around at damn 5,000 flags. \[laughs\] \"You son of a
bitch, you tricked me!\"

**\[27:03\]**

**Q:** We have about two more questions.

**A:** Yes, sir. But I got the greatest respect. And I\'ll tell you
something else, like Hosea Williams, that guy never wavered. He stuck
with what he believed in and what he told. That\'s right. I got a lot of
respect for that man.

**Q:** The next question is how did the Voting Rights Act change the
South and how did it affect your own political career?

**\[27:29\]**

**A:** Well that\'s a tough one. That\'s a tough one. And I feel very
alone. I am very alone. Very lonely. Dr. King in mobilizing us for the
Selma Montgomery march or the Selma movement, he used to go to the
extreme to teach us the sweetest walk you\'ll ever take is the one to
that ballot box, but that will be the most sacrificial, bloodiest. And
we did.

On the Selma Montgomery march, about five or six people died. I never
will forget the morning they killed Reverend Reeb, the Unitarian
minister. That was very hurting to see the way that man hit Reverend
Reeb and busted his brains out. You could look at his head and his
brains were stopping like a heart.

**\[28:39\]**

Jimmie Lee Jackson died, Mrs. Liuzzo died. They killed this young guy
with the march from Tuskegee to\-- a lot of people died. And I was in
infantry in World War II, and I don\'t know a time I saw more blood than
I saw on that Edmund Pettus Bridge that day.

**\[29:16\]**

So we got that vote, and we taught black people, now if you really want
equality, and that\'s all you\'re entitled to, is equal access to
opportunities, there\'s nothing else you\'re entitled to, but you\'re
entitled to equal access to opportunity, which starts in the mother\'s
womb and goes to the grave. We taught black people to go out and to make
whatever sacrifice was necessary, register, vote, run for office, and
elect someone that is sensitive to your needs and is going to be fair.
And black people went out and made a\-- I\'m out there in the field. I
could tell you, talk to you five days about the little Selmas, the way
blacks went out and the way families would burst up, the kids gave up
their college scholarship, their fathers and sons fell out, but they
went out and they got their vote.

**\[30:27\]**

And once they got that vote, in a very sophisticated way we said, now
what you must do now is vote white out and vote black in. And the vast
majorities of instances, that\'s the most demandable(?) thing they\'ve
ever done. Because we gave the people more hope, we inspired them, and
when they voted white out and voted black in, they thought, now we
really going to have equal access to opportunity. In most cases, black
has become more repressive, less sensitive than his white predecessor.
And the white power structure have used elected black officials. All
they have done is substituted them for the white puppets that they
previously manipulated.

**\[31:32\]**

Now one of the glaring examples, and I can name you many, it just so
happened the craziest mayor I\'ve ever known just died the other day,
Mayor Rizzo in Philadelphia. And blacks suffered so hard to sacrifice,
worked so hard to get rid of that man and to elect good. But you can say
one thing about that man: he never dropped that bomb in the black
community \...(inaudible). In front of that whole black community,
killed all those people. Rizzo never did do that.

And I can go from just story after story after story, like right here in
Atlanta, Georgia, see. Because there is definitely an extermination of
the young black males taking place in this country. That\'s
unquestionable. So role models\-- and that\'s why I remain in this
community. I don\'t have to stay here.

END OF #522

BEGINNING OF #523

**\[00:15\]**

**A:** Yeah, it\'s like you take Mayor Jackson. He lives\-- the black
politician basically have become a part of the problem that they were
developed to solve. They have become a part of that problem.

**\[00:51\]**

I learned that from Dr. King, too. I remember one time Dr. King moved
from fourth ward, that\'s over there where the SCLC office is, over to
Vine City, one of the most celebrated slums in America. And god bless
they had Q.V. Williamson, some black realtors, and you got some of the
most successful black realtors in Atlanta in the country.

They came to Dr. King and said, \"Dr. King\--\" and they were serious\--
\"You have never been properly\--\" They came to Dr. King and said,
\"You have never been properly rewarded for the contribution you made to
our people. We\'re going to give you a home.\"

**\[01:42\]**

And boy, that was some ceremony(?) they did that day. \"We\'re going to
give you a home. We want you and Mrs. King to come out and pick a home;
it\'s yours free.\" And Dr. King said, \"Well I have a home,
gentlemen.\" They said, \"We understand you have a home. We\'re going to
pay you market value for your home and then give y\'all another free
home.\" And that's when the guard came out. He said, \"Okay, go tell the
guys I thank them, but a true leader must always live among the people
that they profess to love and to lead.\" Soon as these black leaders get
a little money or a few education.

**\[02:14\]**

Now, Malcolm X taught me that long ago. Malcolm and I got in a big fight
one time in New York up there, and Malcolm said, \"You are teaching
self-hatred.\" Said, \"Hosea, you are violating the code set down by
Frederick Douglas a hundred years ago, cast your bucket down where you
are.\" But these black leaders now, they don\'t want to associate with
the people that elected them. Maynard (?) is just one example. And you
go across this country, the repressor, the greatest repressor today are
those blacks being elected to public office. I see them all around me.
And that\'s what makes me such hardball(?).

**\[02:54\]**

But another thing, I\'m an example of truth. I won five times for the
Georgia State House. I got so frustrated up there with the blacks
holding things back and down, one day I just resigned, I quit. Then out
here, our district, a guy by the name of Morris Fittus (?), some old
women came with me saying, \"Can\'t nobody beat Morris but you, Hosea.
He just selling us out right and left.\" I ran against Morris. Maynard
was for him, Andy(?) was for him, Georgia Power, everybody, and I beat
his socks off, with hardly no money. That was the truth. If a black
leader stands up, the people will support him.

**\[03:37\]**

And I went down there and I saw Maynard \...(inaudible) walk in City
Hall. I said, \"Oh Maynard shouldn\'t just walk in City Hall. He ought
to have to discuss the issues, he ought to have to make promises to
these people.\" So I ran him for mayor and I forced him to discuss these
issues.

So I told my wife, I\'m out of politics forever now, good. So when the
women came, old women came right here and said we are being robbed in
this county, can\'t nobody beat him but you, Hosea, and I let them sway.
My wife said, I know when they said nobody but you, I know they had you.

**\[04:09\]**

So I ran against this guy named Morris. Maynard Jackson sent every voter
out here a letter condemning me. Manuel Maloof(?) sent everybody a
letter. But I beat the socks off them, proving if a black leader stands
up, the people will support them. You don\'t have to sell out.

**\[04:28\]**

Well it\'s a pitiful thing what has happened. King\'s dream of the
fruits of the political system, King\'s dream has turned into a
nightmare. It\'s really, really pitiful and it infuriates me. I\'ll
probably end up\-- see, because, like when Maynard was mayor, I remember
when we tried to organize the city workers, and I started to call a
strike. Maynard says, \"You can\'t call no strike on me, man, I\'m
black.\" Now if it had been a white man, been no problem calling the
strike, and we would have won.

But what it has come to now really, the black elected officials,
they\'re just pitiful. It\'s a negative, it\'s an atrocity around the
back or the throat of the struggle, and particularly the Martin Luther
King, Jr. struggle.

**\[05:30\]**

I have proved\-- I got 85% of the vote in the last election out here. If
you stand up and speak out, the people will support you. It used to be
the people, but now it\'s the leadership that have deserted the struggle
for black people to be free. Every time a black\-- these black
politicians, I just can\'t hardly stomach them. I really can\'t. They
get in office, and I\'ll tell you the truth, because I remember one day
Dr. King, and one of the biggest problems I ever had with King when he
called all of us together one day, this was in Frogmo(?), South
Carolina, and King said\-- I used to listen to this man. He said, do
that old biblical hand, \"We\'ve gone around the mountain long enough.
Now we must come in and enhance the land.\" What he told us, he said,
\"The struggle that we wage, we\'ll never win.\"

**\[06:24\]**

Why in the hell you been taking me out there getting me beat to death
and jailed and people dying? Now you telling me the struggle we waged,
he said, \"We\'ll never win it. The struggle black people wage, because
the problem is not a black and white problem, it\'s an economic problem.
Now Hosea, what we must do\--\" and then he began to explain to me, the
reason I had you in the Birmingham, you got to take people where they
are with their mind, their conscience, and you have to work from there.

**\[06:52\]**

That was Malcolm X\'s problem. Malcolm X tried to work up here in the
mind of the people. That\'s why he couldn't amass a crowd. King worked
the people with their consciousness. Understand? So he said now we ready
to cross over, and he said\-- and that\'s why they killed King. If King
had been dumb enough to still run around here talking about integrate
this and integrate that, that man would be living today. Because when
that man told us, and I never will forget the words, he said, \"We must
now go to California\--\" he said these words\-- \"and get the poor
Mexican-Americans.\" Then he said, \"We must go to the Carolina and get
the poor Indians.\" And he said, \"We must go up north and get the poor
Puerto Ricans, and we must go to the Appalachia and get the poor whites,
but the poor blacks, we must go to the seat of poverty and demand
economic justice.\" That\'s why they killed that man, you see?

**\[07:44\]**

And it hurts me, like I tell me(?), I been offered the world right out
here. \...(inaudible) It\'s economics. They have offered me the world
since I got out here. And I say this, \"I like what you offer me, I want
it and I need it. But as long as blacks are 40% of the population and
getting 4% of the money, I\'m going to raise hell.\" And they know I
know where to hit where it hurts. That\'s why they after me. They killed
King. They killed Nat Turner. It\'s about economics.

**\[08:16\]**

So what hurts me about these black politicians, I\'m at the point now,
here\'s what\'s hurting. Blacks now are losing faith in the\-- what you
call this when you know you\'re going to be saved\-- the messiah. The
political messiah. And blacks are turning their backs on politics.
\...(inaudible) What damn difference it makes if I vote or not? It
ain\'t helping me none. So they\'re losing faith in the political
messiah. And that really, really hurts me.

**\[08:53\]**

Give you a typical example. You could put Andy on the radio this
afternoon and the masses of blacks would never call. They don\'t feel
like it\'s a program for us. You know, put Hosea on there and everybody
calls me nigger and cuss me out. But they relating, you understand?

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

**A:** So right now it\'s really in the best interest of black people to
look elsewhere for that equal access to opportunity other than the
political arena, because those guys that get in office, they betrayed
our people. And I\'m an outcast. That\'s why I have to write that book.
I\'m an outcast.

**\[09:34\]**

One other thing I want to say, this is about John Lewis. One thing that
hurt me about John Lewis, I\'ve never read in history or talked or seen
where two men were closer than King and Abernathy. That\'s what hurt me
about Abernathy\'s book so bad. But I ain\'t never talked about two
young people. And Julian and John went to lunch \...(inaudible) but they
never betrayed one another. And John Lewis betrayed Julian. He calls
Julian to fold up(?), for a damn political (?).

**\[10:06\]**

But if you go out here now and ask the masses what difference\-- because
I\'ll be frank with you. I would rather have whites in office, because
it\'s so much easier to organize against them.

**Q:** As you say, you could call up and call your strike.

**A:** Right. So it\'s been a pitiful result in relationship to what Dr.
King expected us to gain from the political arena.

**Q:** One more question from me and then I\'ll ask my colleagues if
they have any. I think we\'ve covered most on the list. The National
Historic Trail is to recognize sites associated with the Selma movement
and the Selma march. Now as one who is a proactivist(?), spent a great
deal of time in Selma, what would you say are the key sites that you
would want remembered after all of us are long gone to be associated
with where key events took place in Selma and along the road
\...(inaudible)?

**\[11:16\]**

**A:** Well I doubt if Brown Chapel had not opened her doors to us, I\'m
not sure anyone else in that town would have. The AME\'s have had a
history that kind of participation, so after Brown Chapel and they
didn\'t burn it down and many others, so Brown Chapel is where it all
really got started.

**\[11:45\]**

Another spot in Selma would be down there where they hit\-- busted
Reverend Reeb\'s head on the\-- the Unitarian minister. The other
certainly would be on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Let me tell you\-- you may figure this out. The first time I seen Dr.
King do something that only Jesus or Gandhi could have done, the way
they beat us up there around that courthouse, that courthouse, boy that
was the\-- I have to tell you all this and then we have to go. Only one
time in the history of Selma Montgomery movement did we face a mob in
the city, and that was one Monday morning we had about at least a
thousand people ready to register to vote and Dr. King and Ralph flew
in. And just before we left Brown Chapel the FBI came in and said, they
said three places they got guns stashed to kill King, and we found two
of them. I believe they was lying. We didn\'t find another one.

**\[13:15\]**

So we hung around that church and we hung around that church. So finally
Dr. King said, \"I\'m sorry, but I have to go.\" And he lined the people
up and left Andy in the church with the FBI. See, Andy\'s job and
Bernard Lee\'s job was to walk flank, like here\'s Ralph in the line,
Abernathy. My job, trouble always, if it\'s going to break out, it\'s
going to break out at the back of that line. That\'s why they had that
stuff in Memphis, he didn\'t have us with him.

**\[13:43\]**

They put me up there that morning and you know, fear is a hell of a
thing. I doubt you ever been really scared. Fear. Every one I looked in
I saw Ralph\-- he\'s over there looking \...(inaudible). But that fear
had me, you know? And that morning as we marched along the people was
cussing Dr. King. I mean, from the church, spitting on him, throwing
things at them, saying all kind of nasty things.

**\[14:06\]**

And we got down to the courthouse, we finally made it down there, and
the mob was across the street. Here the street, here the courthouse. And
Jim Clark had said\-- Jim Clark wanted the marchers beat, because he
tried to provoke Dr. King to get arrested and go but he didn\'t. And I
remember a guy went inside and told me, he said, \"Hosea, there\'s 500
white men inside that courthouse and they got every imaginable weapon.\"
And I started trying to figure this thing out.

Jim Clark came out all dressed up, got in his car and drove off. Jim
Clark had never missed a chance of facing King. And I figured that shit
out. They tried to get King arrested. The jailhouse three blocks from
here, and the press go with King, and them white men come out here and
kill all of us, you know what I mean?

**\[14:54\]**

So then Dr. King was just shaking folks\' hand, and there\'s a long line
way around the corner. And finally one of Jim Clark\'s deputies came up
and said, \"Get back, King, you just blocking up the street. Get back.\"
So sure enough Dr. King got back to the edge of the street, and he was
just speaking to the people. And finally that man came out and he said,
\"Get on back, you just blocking. Dr. King, \...(inaudible).\" Well that
guy turned. So he walked up to me. Now that boy done told me about all
the men in the courthouse. The boy walked up to me and said,
\"Hosea\--\". Oh, Dr. King walked up to me and said, \"Hosea?\" I said,
\"Yes, sir?\" He said, \"I want 12 people. We going inside that
courthouse.\"

**\[15:34\]**

See, as you go in, they just ask you your name, phone and address, and
they tell you they going to call you when they come back and take the
test. They ain\'t going to call nobody. \...(inaudible) So I said, oh my
god. I said, \"Dr. King,\" I said\--now we did have a whole full day\'s
itinerary with him. I said, \"You ain\'t supposed to go in that
courthouse.\" I said, \"We got a whole itinerary.\" He said, \"I said
get me 12 people. We\'re going inside the courthouse.\" I said, \"Doc,
we got a program. Why you going to disrespect us?\"

**\[15:58\]**

God would have it, Andy drives up. I said, \"Oh Andy,\" I said, I went
and told Andy what happened. I said, \"Andy please.\" So Andy came over
and said, Andy said, \"Dr. King, don\'t treat the staff like that. We
ought to show some respect for the staff. So we gotta hold it.\" So we
embarrassed him.

Now the mob across the street, and I mean, I ain\'t never seen that
Chicago mob wasn\'t no more vicious than that mob across the street. And
he said, \"Okay,\" he said\-- old Jimmie Lee Jackson was at the
hospital, shot the night before, and he was going to go pray with Jimmie
Lee. So we used that, \"Jimmie Lee is about expired, Dr., you ought to
go pray with him.\" You know, anything to get him to not go into that
courthouse.

**\[16:36\]**

So he said, \"Okay, I\'ll go to the hospital.\" And Andy said, \"Get in
the car.\" He said, \"No, I\'m going to walk.\" And I said, \"What?\" He
said, \"I\'m walking.\" I said, \"Oh, Doc, you don\'t mean that.\" And
he said, \"Yes, let\'s go.\" That man turned, honest to god, he walked
right up that howling mob and that little man said, \"Will y\'all please
excuse me?\" They got so quiet, you could hear him breathing. Swear to
god. That man walked up on that side there, they just parted, and they
got up there on the sidewalk and said, \"Excuse me\" and they just
parted right on through.

**\[17:13\]**

You know what I seen? Now, I\'ve seen Moses walk through that Red Sea.

**Q:** I figured that\'s what you were going to say.

**A:** \...(inaudible) But I tell you, that fear, you ain't never been
scared. That fear \...(inaudible). I gotta tell you this. We went over
to the hospital and every nun and priest I could see, I could see the
print of the gun. I said, \"That ain't no priest, that\'s an imposter.
They\'re going to kill us.\" \[laughs\] I could see that print.

**\[17:38\]**

We went around the Holiday Inn, that\'s the first time we ever
integrated Holiday Inn there. And I saw this old big white mans up in
there and he did have a big pistol. I said, oh my god. Guess who it was?
The FBI. \[laughs\]

**Q:** The FBI.

**\[17:51\]**

**A:** That fear is a mess, man. That fear is a mess. But I think that
courthouse, because brother, I\'m telling you, a lot of blood was
spilled there. But Brown\'s Chapel, the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the spot
where Mrs. Liuzzo was shot\--

**Q:** The spot where Reverend Reeb was beat.

**A:** The spot where Reverend Reeb was hit in the head, killed. You
know he died a few hours later, Reverend Reeb, Unitarian minister.

**\[18:35\]**

I need to look at my wife\'s notes on something like this and see\--
because another thing, I can\'t place it, but the time\-- I tell you
what helped that movement a lot in Selma. That movement might have
folded up on us. We organized \...(inaudible) all these preachers to go
down to the courthouse, they were supposed to just go down and try to
have pride(?) and talk with Jim Clark.

So I got all these preachers, we got to the courthouse, Jim met us\-- it
was one of these crazy mornings. And we walked in and one of the
preachers \...(inaudible), Jim grabbed that preacher and snatched that
preacher around and punched the preacher. And I said, oh my god. So
everybody looked like\-- I thought everybody fixing to break in(?). I
said, \"Hold it, everybody, hold it. Don\'t nobody move. Don\'t nobody
move. Let\'s just look at Jim Clark right now. Nobody move. Don\'t
nobody move.\"

**\[19:29\]**

And he says, \"God dammit, you got one minute.\" The guy said, \"Don\'t
nobody move.\" He put all us in jail. Them preachers in jail that day,
that night. Them preachers ain\'t never been in jail in they life.
Brother, you talking about some jokers. Preachers, when they left that
jail. \[laughs\] When they went back to them churches, it was amazing
the effect that that had on that movement. Every one\--

**\[19:48\]**

**Q:** Spent a night in jail.

**A:** Oh yeah. And it was cold that night and\-- I mean, it was cold.
And they gave us some peas. I know they just let them peas soak in
water. And the bread was just some stuff mixed up, hadn\'t even cooked.
But boy, them preachers preached and prayed that night. I tell you the
truth.

**\[20:06\]**

But I need to look on\-- this is very significant. Because I\'ll tell
you another thing I didn\'t tell you about, that we staged a sit-in in
them streets that lasted 48 hours, right down from Brown\'s Chapel. But
I really need to look and see\--

**Q:** Berlin Wall, they called it?

**A:** Right, that\'s right. We just got there, we had no idea that that
thing, that we went out there that night and they blocked us. And
normally they had been blocking us and we\'d been turning around. That
night we said we wasn\'t going to turn around and it just got bigger and
bigger and bigger. Got so big, finally they gave in and let us march.
\...(inaudible) the Berlin Wall.

**\[20:53\]**

That\'s why I need to look at my wife\'s notes, because making this what
you all are\-- will do, or possibly will do, we really need to get those
real\--

**Q:** Get the key sites.

**A:** Yeah, those key, key sites.

**Q:** I gave Ms. Williams, she has our address. So if there are things,
you can write them down and send them to us.

**\[21:13\]**

**A:** Okay, I sure will. My wife, she\'s supposed to be looking
herself, because see, she got a lot of notes that didn\'t go in the
thesis, but she kept notes. That woman worked so hard, day after day.

And I asked you about that book. I\'ll have to start looking for that.
The book was written by\-- I\'m sure it\'s the University of Wisconsin.
They did a followup on the various factions of that march, about a
five-year followup. It was the University of Wisconsin. I\'d have to
find that book. I just moved my library over downstairs.

**\[21:49\]**

**Q:** That would be great. We need to try to find that.

**A:** Yeah. It was really amazing. They, too\-- I forgot the name, but
it was a book. They had a lot of research people there from the
University of Wisconsin. So five years after that march, they went and
found out what all those various\-- the doctor\'s group, the lawyer\'s
groups and all those various aspects, what they had done had resulted
from their visit on the march.

**Q:** Do you have any questions, Blake or Barbara, that we haven\'t
nudged on? Mr. Williams, considerably longer, but he\'s, as I say,
he\'s\--

**\[22:34\]**

**A:** Well, you know, we call that the holocaust of black America. I
tell you, that thing certainly changed souls. It proved the heart. And
then people started flying in the next day, I mean, from\-- in 48 hours
it was 7,000 people in that little town, all the way from Canada to
Hawaii. Senators, Congressmen. I mean, you name it. Judges. It was
amazing that people that thing brought down here. It really touched the
heart of America. It really brought out the true heart in this country.

**\[23:13\]**

**Q:** Well hopefully our project will help people always remember.

**A:** Well I hope so, because you know that thing, among the many
things people get tired of me quoting, is Malcolm said too, Dr. King
said, \"The greatest problem\-- one of the greatest problems particular
of our people, it seems every ten days we forget what went on ten days
before.\" He said it like that.

And Malcolm used to talk about it\'s almost impossible to plan a
desirable future when we are not knowledgeable of the past. Malcolm used
to say that. Malcolm said that all the time.

**Q:** Thank you.

## END OF INTERVIEW