Q: Selma \[ph?\] to Montgomery. Interviewee Dr. Mark Gilmore, take 17.
In your discussion as we were talking before you range pretty far afield
from uh... you know, folks in Selma \[ph?\], voter rides \[ph?\], and
these marches. And I picked up a lot of good and useful material for me
about Montgomery and your general- your general description of how bad
it was. I got that.

**Mark Gilmore**: Yeah.

Q: You know, uh... and I love it when you say I can remember you tell me
little stories, you know. Uhm... but I think I need you to focus if you
can help me and paint me some pictures about what it was like on that
march when you got to Montgomery and especially since you knew King, you
know. The speech that King gave after the Selma to Montgomery march
arrived in Montgomery where he says what, "Now is the time."

**Mark Gilmore**: Now is the time.

Q: That was -- that was a pretty...

**Mark Gilmore**: That was one of the most powerful speeches I've seen
the man make.

Q: Is that right?

**Mark Gilmore**: Yeah. He was -- he was great. Let me say this. When we
marched from here on that second round when uh... first time they put
the tear gas and stuff on us, we came back into Selma and regrouped and
we said we ain't gonna let --- no but we start saying we ain't gonna let
nobody turn us around. Some of the brothers that was with me then
they're deceased now. Some of them just passed on few months ago. We
went on down the highway. We would stop in churches, you know. I was one
of the gentlemen that, you know, could fire up. We ain't gonna take no
more. You know what I mean? I ain't gonna let nobody turn me around. Oh
freedom, fore I be astray that I'll be buried in my grave and go home. I
would fire them up. And they say, "Gilmore tonight you got to fire them
up. I says, "Tonight is my night. I have it." No -- no trouble. Being a
deacon in the church, I'm in the church; serve 3500 people, and each
time that we had a mass rally at my church it was packed. And we would
fire them. We has a gentleman, a reverend called Reverend Willie
William. He's deceased now, but he used to sing a song, I ain't gonna
let nobody turn me around. And then he had another song he'd come, but
I've waited for a long, long time. And I learn that song so good that I
didn't need a musician. I could sing it. And I would just
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_, and they would holler to me, Gilmore what's wrong with
you tonight? I say, "I feel good." I said, "My ticket has been stamped
to Glory Land and I'm ready to go home now." You know, we got tired of
being beaten and knocked and eggs throwed at and you couldn't go in a
lunch counter and eat nowhere. You just had to -- you had to move on.
But when we got to Montgomery, we went on to Montgomery. We stopped at
St. Jude. We camped at St. Jude on the ground out there, St. Jude
School. And there were so many high, I call them high \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_,
you know. Sammy Davis Jr., Sidney Poiter, \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_, all the
big timers was there. They had a -- we set up a stage out there on the
back of the ground. I wish you could see the school now. The school is
about to close. But each time we'd come into Montgomery, community march
and we would reenact the Civil Rights, we had to stop at St. Jude. And
uhm... St. Jude was a hospital. We didn't have a hospital, but at that
time St. Jude was just -- was there, and they made it a hospital that we
would have somewhere to go. You know, in Montgomery we couldn't even --
we didn't even have a hospital to go to. We had Free Town \[ph?\]
Hospital. We had Hail Informa \[ph?\], Oak Street John, Lake Street. We
had about five or six. I call them Black Institutions. Some Black
doctors was there. These was our hospitals. But you had St. Margaret.
You had Jackson and you -- later you got Baptist. But when we marched
from St. Jude down Oak Street over to Day Street, come into Day, on up
Day Street to Mobil \[ph?\] Road, come back in Mobil Road and down that
hill, when you could see from the state capital, when you hit down and
coming down that hill and you made the bend coming down Montgomery
Street and you made that curve and -- and coming on in, you raise your
hand and say, "I ain't gonna let nobody turn me around." There you were
saying, "Oh, oh, freedom over me." And then after a while you would stop
and say, "Fired up." And then somebody holler, he say, "I ain't gonna
take no more." So when you want your freedom? I want it now. And, you
know, the Whites was lined along the streets and say, "Niggers you'll
get it when we give it to you." There was 15 deep. I mean, you know, I'm
talking about line, ready to fight. So we went on about our business.
Went on to the hill. We had a public safety director at that time named,
Floyd Mann \[ph?\] who always escort us in and out of the churches. And
we had to come out the churches three at a time when we get in the
church. You know what I mean? This was during the time that we marched
from Selma to Montgomery. We had went to Dexter. We stopped at Dexter
and we had prayer, and we proceed from Dexter on to the capital. And I
mean we strutted, cheering. We had to walk with \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ on,
with peg legs. Some of them didn't have a leg on tight ram \[ph?\], you
know, the little ties they had on them. You would see these people
marching and everybody was trying to get things right. And they still
ain't got them right. They're better, but they're not right. We got a
long way to go, but they're not right. When King would stand in
different churches and when he would come and he would go to Maggie
\[ph?\] Street. He would go to Lilly Baptist. He would go to Bethel. He
was at Hutchinson. But each time that they was gonna bomb his home he
was at the, I think, was Hudson Street, was in a mass rally and we come
back by Jackson Street. That's when all the bombs was set off. You know,
they bombed a lot of places here in Montgomery, churches and they didn't
care. The Red Taxes \[ph?\], the Yellow Taxes was doing the bombing. We
know who were doing the bombing. A gentleman named Sonny Kyle Livingston
\[ph?\] was one of the ones that was help doing the bombing, and he is
in a Bear Bond \[ph?\] now. And uhm... they would tell you, boy get in
jail so we could get you out. You know how they're taking us to jail, in
garbage trucks, into these roll up garbage trucks. Uh... then they
finally got hipped and got some busses and they would uh... wanna buss
us to the jailhouse. But they couldn't take all of us to jail. I never
get --- we was at uh... - in front of Hutchinson Street, church on Grove
Street. It was a Riggers \[ph?\] café. We sat there and uhm... they was
gonna put Dr. King in jail. And the word got spreaded \[ph?\] just like
this and everybody went to jail, preachers I'm talking about. They got
together. It was \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ now.
And I never get this -- this old man name was Mr. Moore, James Moore.
He's old man. He had on a pack of \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ and he took his
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ and he'd bust them. He went in there and he told them, he
said, "He wanted to get King." And they said, "What you doing down here
old man. You ain't got no -- enough money to bond nobody out of jail."
He said, "I'm gonna bond all of them out." He said, "And I want all of
them right now. You can get them ready cause they gonna be bond out."
And he bond them out. And they looked at that man like, you know, one of
the preachers in the back said to him, said, "He ain't got no money. He
can't help us." But he was the man that bond them out. They got a school
sitting on the corner now, ought to been named after him. He's a grass
root man. But he had enough money in his jumper, stuffed in here. He
truly went out and he --- whatever the bonds is I'll make them.

Q: So now let me ask you this. I ask everybody this.

**Mark Gilmore**: Sure.

Q: A lot of young people are gonna come to this museum to see you, to
see other people in this film. You know, what should young people today
understand about uhm... you know, these grass roots people, these
ordinary people who had the courage to stand up for themselves? I mean,
you know, cause it seems as if they've lost some sort of --- some of our
young people have lost some sort of sight of, you know, what it means to
be -- what it means to take your -- your life...

**Mark Gilmore**: You'd -- you'd be surprised today. Some of the older
people don't know what went on because they was afraid. But today you
don't have to be afraid. You can be educated today. But then you must
not let the education go to your head. That's not all of it. See
sometimes when we move up the ladder we turn our backs on those that are
less fortunate than we are. We must learn to be together. We must plan
our children; teach them what's right and what's wrong. Children will
understand. Uh... I was elected in 1978 and I served til 2000. I had a
program that I would go into school and teach these kids about different
things like this, civil right and voter rights and what it mean. And
you'd be surprised today how many kids come to my home to sit down and
talk with me about the civil rights and do papers and things and they
make A's and B's. And I'm proud of those kids, and I want more of them
to learn how to do that. They should know the history. I don't think
today that, you know, everything ought to be in history should be there.
But they don't put it in there. We should demand that they put it in
their books so we can learn about each other culture and what we got to
do. That's what we need. If we turn our young generation together today
they would do better than we ever did because they understand each
other. They can teach each other. I sat at my table when the Kennedy's
came through, when the Carter children came through, \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
kids came back and they questioned me when they come on these civil
right trails. They come back and they question you. And I go and sat and
just like I'm doing today and talk to them and let them know what it's
all about. Ms. Rosa Park got a -- I think a museum in Detroit. They come
this way every year, two or three different groups. Each group come we
have to train them, you know. Even when they uhm... the busboy cart ---
we started the busboy cart. I could remember Luis. He's a congressman
now, and one or two of those they got beat since that time. But uh... he
was Alabama boy. We worked together. I remember when they -- when the
busses came in to Montgomery how they beat them. We had to patch them
up, get them to the house. My mother's home was just like a hospital.
And we had some others in the city here that helped out and did some
good things too. But today it look like we -- we just scattered. We need
to come back together. We need to teach them voting eduction, what it
mean to be a voter. You know, voter participation, we got less than 1%
out just last -- few days ago. That's -- that's not enough. People died
that you can have this right. So why not exercise that right. That's
your power base, that vote. The man know what a vote mean. You know what
I mean?

Q: Uh-huh.

**Mark Gilmore**: You know what a vote mean when I come to you and ask
you to vote for me, and you say, "What are your plans, what are your
prepared -- what are you gonna do for this community? What are you gonna
do to help us here?" Some of them don't give you anything. They wanna
pay you a little money to work for them and when they get through it
they're through with you. But you should want -- you should want better
than that. You should want your schools upgraded. You should want your
streets improved. You should want your city to be what it ought to be.
Not one side look better than the other side. You want all of them to be
together. You gonna have some people gonna do and some ain't gonna do,
but 80% of those people gonna come together and work. When we march the
first mass rally was held at Holt \[ph?\] Street Missionary Baptist
Church, it was 7,000 people there. People on the street mine, all around
the street. They had to get Martin and bring him up the back way so he
come. Edie \[ph?\] Nixon was living, uhm... Mr. Nesry \[ph?\] was living
at that time. Uhm... Dr. Sams \[ph?\], Dr. Martin, Dr. Hubbard from
Belsa \[ph?\], Dr. Wilson. These guys \-- Dr. Say \[ph?\]--- these guys
are gone on now. So somebody got to pick up the ranks. We should be able
to stay in office for 40, 50 years and -- and then somebody got to come.
You should train these kids. You should have a training session for
them. Teach them the way.

Q: All right. Well you covered a lot of territory and you know, I think
we're through man.

**Mark Gilmore**: Okay.

Q: I think we've done very...

\<New Subject\>

Q: Selma to Montgomery. George Sr., and Wendel Paris, Tape 17.

\<Crew talk\>

Q: Well he's got lots to select from. It's your suggestion that we start
with a bit of background to all of this.

**George Sr.**: Uh-huh.

Q: Somebody start. Tell me what you're gonna say.

**George Sr**.: World War II.

Q: Now we gotta go all the way back to World War II. After World War II,
right.

**Wendel Paris**: Okay.

Q: Right after. Whatever you want to do. Go for it. I'm just teasing.

**George Sr**.: \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_. Okay. Well I was drafted from my
job in Livingston Alabama, and when I came back I applied to the Probate
Judges Office. I wanted to register to vote. But he told me, he says,
"Ain't no niggers gonna register here." I said, "Well uhm... maybe it's
gonna be a high hill to climb to get onboard here." So after I went to
the army and came back with my uniform on. I thought maybe that would
give me some prestige, you know, some help that I needed. So I decided
to go back to the register, to this same man. And he told he the second
time. He said, "George I thought I told you that uhm... ain't no niggers
gonna register here. Well he became a little bit hostile. And I decided
that I didn't have Dr. Martin Luther King or anybody else to help me,
but I was determined to register. So I went back and prayed. The Lord
told me to go back to this same man. And I did, and he -- he, you know,
they usually have a receptionist. And when I -- the receptionist saw me.
She said, "We have George pass back again." He said, "Send him on in."
So I went on in shaking my head. I wasn't scratching. If you know
anything about the Southern aristocracy, you know, when you're
scratching your head they think you're scared of them. So uhm... I was
shaking my head and I just kept shaking my head. And he said, "What's it
gonna do for you George?" I said, "Judge I'm in trouble." And uhm... I
made him ask me that question some four or five time before I told him
what my trouble was. I told him, I said that uhm..., "Judge, your honor,
that I am -- I, as any decent citizen would like to support the most
important issue that's taking place here in Macon \[ph?\] County or
Sumpter \[ph?\] County at the time." And at that time we were trying to
vote on Amendment number one, which would increase teacher's salaries.
And I said, "Everybody would like to support that." I said, "Every
decent citizen, Judge your honor, would like to support this amendment."
I said, "But I'm not a citizen, Jude, and I've come for you to make me a
citizen." So he looked at me and finally he decided that maybe it was
time to do something. And uhm... he got up and took me by the hand and
led me before the Board of Registrar, three of them. Two of them could
hardly read or write their name, and they wanted me to accept it,
constitution of the United States of America and the constitution for
the state of Alabama before I could become a registered voter. At that
time they had what was known as the Boswell \[ph?\] Amendment that...

Q: Was it the interpret - or did they ask you to actually recite the...?

**George Sr**.: You recite it. Thank you son. They asked me to recite
it. They wanted me to recite the...

Q: The whole constitution.

**George Sr**.: The whole constitution.

Q: Cause you know the preamble.

**George Sr.**: So uhm... I had impressed him to the point where he was
uhm... still wanted to question whether he gonna let me become a
registered voter. So uhm... he said, "George I thought I told you \--
maybe repeating a little bit here \-- I thought I told you that ain't no
niggers gonna register here." I says -- I says, "Judge, Your Honor, I
asked him why didn't wanna have any Negros - niggers to register." He
said, "We have Tom, Dicks, and Harrys electing our officials and we
ain't gonna have that here." So I looked at him again and said, "Judge,
Your Honor, have you ever been to Winfield \[ph?\] Alabama up in Walker
County and seen the White women on the street nursing their babies?" I
said, "Unfortunately we find the same thing among my people." I said,
"But those are the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys that you were talking about
that wouldn't vote if you put the pole box in their lap. I said, "But
what about 210 teachers in this kind of Blacks? Would you call us Tom,
Dick, and Harry?" So he dropped his head and got up, took me by the
hand, took me before this board. And these fellows were past busy. See
had to fill out the application. I took the application, filled it out,
and \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ getting ready to move out, move out. I thought
I had it made. But one of them asked me, said, "Wait a minute fellow we
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ to recite the constitution or the state of
Alabama or the constitution of this nation." And so one of them by the
name of Mr. Jim Nixon, I never forget him, he said, "Yes \_\_\_\_, you
don't know the constitution," talking to -- one of -- one of them was a
lawyer over there. Said, "You don't know it and I don't know it and
George is a British Maude \[ph?\] fellow, and uhm... if you ask him he
gonna show us all up," and started laughing. I walked
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_.

**Wendel Paris**: Didn't he say, George knows that thing and we don't?

**George Sr**.: Yeah. He said, "George will recite this thing." Said,
"We don't know a thing about that." Said, "You don't know Jim," or
whatever. But they just had a big laugh and I walked on out.

**Wendel Paris**: But that really was kind of the...

**George Sr**.: \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_.

**Wendel Paris**: The situations in Alabama prior to passage of the
Voting Rights Act. They had all types of extra legal measures to hinder
the Blacks from voting. I'm sure someone has told you about the -- the
questions on the literacy test, how many bubbles in a bar of soap, how
many feathers on a chicken. One went out one and making -- and uh...
Sumpter County Alabama was recite the whole constitution. Recite the
whole --- it was impossible situation. And that kind of was what lead up
to I think more than anything uh... the situation that -- that brought
about the Voting Rights Act in Alabama, uh... excuse me, in the -- in
the country. But Alabama played a uniquely significant role because of
what had taken place in Perry County prior to -- probably in 1963. They
had -- they had gone through the system and actually gotten a federal
court order that all the Black people in Perry County should be
registered. But even with the federal court order the local White folks
still wouldn't register Black folks to vote. And that's what led up to
the marches that took place in Perry County where Jimmy Lee Jackson was
killed. And it was the death of Jimmy Lee Jackson, the folks said,
"Well, the federal government has responsibility. Lets take a -- a
casket to the federal courthouse in Selma and put -- place it on the
doorsteps of the federal courthouse to let them know that the federal
government had as much responsibility in folks not getting registered to
vote as did the state government. And uh... that was kind of what uh...
led to the marches that uh... well -- the demonstrations that took place
in Selma. It was folks, not just Selma, but folks that came from --
throughout the Black Belt and really throughout the country.

Q: I think, you know, Bob Mance \[ph?\] whom I interviewed this morning,
you know, was very particular in mentioning that, you know, it just
wasn't the names and known faces and leaders and people from all over
the Black Belt came to participate in that march, which I think a lot of
folks, you know, kind of forget, huh.

**Wendel Paris**: Yeah. You know, there were -- there were some
atrocity. I mean there's some crazy situations in Selma. Selma was --
being a larger town, so folks would congregate here. Folks bought
groceries, bought uh... you know, food stuffs and uh... I mean uhm...
clothing and all that kind of stuff here. But uh... Selma was a place
that you needed to kind of stay away from, wasn't it dad?

**George Sr**.: Oh yes, indeed. After I came back and it's gone back so
much \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ passing through and stop right here in
Selma Alabama to get some gas. The \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ living down
there in Livingston. I stopped and got filled up with gas right down
here, Self filling station. And uhm... I was a little bit sleepy and so
I asked the gentleman in charge of the station if a place round there I
could watch my face to kind of wake me up now. They wasn't gonna sell me
any coffee. So uhm... - so he says, "Well come on in here, say, we got a
place." And then he took me and showed me the commode. So said, "You
wash your face in here." I said, "Thank you sir." I said, "Better get
out of this place." That's kind of a situation.

**Wendel Paris**: So Selma was a hellhole really. I mean you didn't
really wanna stop here. I don't ever remember us stopping when we were
traveling back and forth from Macon County Tuskegee over to Sumpter
County in Livingston. Daddy just refused to stop in Selma. It was just
that much prejudice going on. So when we say that there's a whole
territory to Alabama Black Belt. Was a kind of a hot bed for civil
rights activity. Then know that it -- it went from one end, say from the
Mississippi line all the way to the Georgia line, and it was a real
hellhole. Uhm...

**George Sr**.: And that included Macon County, Tuskegee.

**Wendel Paris**: Yeah. But throughout there, but back to your main
question on just what this voting rights thing was all about. When folks
came into Selma uhm... George Wallace has issued the order to kill
somebody in Perry County. He actually told the state troopers to kill
somebody, and that's what they did. They killed Jimmy Lee Jackson. They
shot him there and he -- they say he died here in the hospital, at Good
Samaritan Hospital here in Selma. But uh... when Jimmy Lee Jackson was
killed that's when SCLC and Snick and the local civil rights
organization sent out the call to bring people from all over the country
to deal with what was going on here. But uhm... as living in Mississippi
and being able to get some of that local history we know that it also,
the Voting Rights Act was tied to what had taken place in Mississippi in
1960 -- well I guess in uh... - in 1963 when the three civil rights
workers were killed. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_.
Uhm... one of the congressmen out of New York had challenged the seating
of the southern delegation uh... at the opening of the congress in 1965.
And when he took the \_\_\_\_ and said, "Mr. speaker," two thirds of the
congress stood up with him. So they had recognize him. And he was
saying, "Listen, we need to uh... - I want you to know that uh... one of
my constituents has been killed down in Mississippi in a state that
won't allow the majority population to --- at that time Blacks were the
majority in the population of Mississippi to get registered to vote. So
then uh... when they stood up in the congress it really put the whole
country on edge because here were these same southerners whose grand
daddies had succeeded from the union. So they were thinking about, so
maybe it's the time for us to pull out again. So it was some serious
stuff going on. So they had to figure out how to appease us who were
demanding from the inside, from the congress, uh... from Mississippi,
and Alabama from the outside, kind of a one-two punch inside and outside
what was gonna take place here in terms of this Voting Rights Act
because they already had given us the Civil Rights Act a year earlier.
So uhm... well that -- that was the situation in Selma. Uhm... we had
had the opportunity to go into Lawrence \[ph?\] County in 1965 when
uhm... Blacks there had tried to get registered to vote and were uhm...
and uhm... were evicted from the plantation. Uhm...

Q: That was well after the marches though, is it?

**Wendel Paris**: Well that was uh... immediate. Well, understand that
civil rights workers were in here I guess all the way from late 1963 or
early 1964 as the movement as it reached uhm... a sizable number of
people in Mississippi. Then a lot of those folks started to come over
into the Black Belt, and largely because of the population that the
percentages of Blacks in the population. Maringo \[ph?\] County probably
was what the uh... property laws want in the Black Belt Counties and you
were probably in the sixties looking at what, 48, 49%, something like
that.

**George Sr**.: Yeah.

**Wendel Paris**: So Blacks range from 48 or 49% of the population of
Maringo County to as high as 87% of the population in Macon County, and
Lawrence probably was 83 or 84% or something like that.

Q: That much?

**Wendel Paris**: Yeah. Yeah. I mean there may have been one or two
counties in about a 20 county span that comes from the west Mississippi
all the way to east to uh... Columbus Georgia I guess. Where was
that...?

**George Sr**.: Through Macon County.

**Wendel Paris**: Yeah, you go, but -- but Russell County and...

**George Sr**.: Russell County, Bullock \[ph?\].

**Wendel Paris**: And Bullock and Bobble \[ph?\] were all part of the
what we call the Eastern Black Belt.

**George Sr**.: Eastern Black Belt.

**Wendel Paris**: Yeah. And -- and there was a coin by Dr. Booker T.
Washington because of the -- the soil. It's a very fertile, very rich
soil that's a part of the same soil that we see in the Mississippi
Delta, but uh... - uhm... some of the same characteristics, all of it
being good cotton growing territory. Mississippi you could grow
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ acre and not even fertilize, but if you got a bell
and a half in Alabama with fertilizer you still was growing a pretty
good crop. So here were all of these farmers and here were these folks
who were tied to uh... land owners really. They were landowners because
they -- they recognized the necessity of -- of owning land. And so folks
in Alabama, the Mississippi Delta and Alabama Black Belt although
there's object poverty, folks had the good sense to know that they
needed to own some property. And as a result of that, that meant that
uh... the measures that were put in place to keep folk from becoming
registered to vote was much more stringent in these communities where
you had majority Black population and -- and you know, be -- would miss,
if we didn't miss the complicity on the part of the federal government
to keep us from getting registered to vote. Now I paid poll tax in 1966
when I registered, and it supposed to been outlawed with the Voting
Rights Act of 1965, but they were still collecting the poll tax in most
of these counties around here. The Justice Department knew it. The
federal mediators knew it. I had showed them my vote, me receipt, the
way I paid the poll tax, and they still wouldn't do anything about it.
And uhm... that more than anything else is what disturbed us about it,
that the federal government did not come in and take the measures that
it should've taken to remedy the situation. All of the money basically
was coming from the federal government. All of the agriculture, the
transportation department, as well as the uhm... at that time it was HEW
I think, Health Education and Welfare that uhm... that had the
resources, that if they, if the federal government had made some demands
and held to them then we wouldn't had nearly the problems that we had in
trying to get registered.

Q: Well so, okay you want to talk a little bit about Tuskegee? We'll
look back if you want and talk some more about voting rights of it. What
do you want to say about Tuskegee Sir?

**George Sr**.: Well I uhm... happen to know that uhm... that this young
man was the movement among the students and that uhm... we were under a
president who was afraid that the Klu Klux Klan was gonna mass murder
his students. And this young man had already organized --- he is Sammy
Young. You've heard of Sammy Young. Had already organized these kids and
they're gonna march uptown so they could meet their governor who was
gonna come to town on a certain date. And this was a time when they were
gonna -- gonna mass murder the kids. So uhm... they invited me in as
much as some -- I wanna visit uptown. This young mand had had a ricochet
thrown by one of the Klan men with a bottle. Just slashed him cross here
a little bit. And I'm coming in town or I been out on my job and -- and
his friend met me at the stop light. He said, "How is Wendy?" I think
you knew about it. Said, "How is --." I said, "What you mean, how is
Wendy?" He said, "You didn't know that Clair \[ph?\] hit Wendy today?"
And I said, "Where is he?" He said, "He over there at the hospital." So
I jumped, but already -- already in the car, went over to hospital and
this boy lying on the bed. He looked at me and winked his eye and says
-- says, "Daddy, don't you get into this." Maybe had in mind that I was
gonna feed them all. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_.

**Wendel Paris**: You better explain what feed them all means.

**George Sr**.: All of these 100, almost 100 kids coming and got to feed
them, you know. So I'm gonna -- he gonna keep me out of it because I got
to take care of -- - and some of them gonna get in jail and I got to
bond them out and all that kind of stuff. But anyway, uhm... he was in
movement, and uhm... well I don't know it was the dynamics of the
time\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_.

**Wendel Paris**: Yeah. You know, my daddy is responsible for me being
in the movement more than any other person because uh... I can remember
us traveling through the Black Belt and he had a Shell \[ph?\] credit
card. And uh... his sentence was, fill it up. Where are your restrooms?
And if they said, "Around back." He said, "Stop it." I can remember us
putting a nickel on his credit card, and folks would say around the
back. One time one of the White gas station's attendants whistle at my
mother to tell her don't go into this White restroom. That's, hold it.
Stop it right there. So throughout our history our daddy fought to -- to
-- in his own way to make sure that we understood what was happening to
Black people in the area and \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ that we had a
responsibility to correct these atrocities here. So all I was doing was
basically uh... living out what I had been taught from a very small
child. You know, my mother had said to me that the German prisoners had
more freedom at Fort Bennin \[ph?\] than my daddy did, and he was, you
know, he's a veteran and was a part of the whole World War II effort. So
that's the background that led me really to become involved in the
movement there. He even want you to think that I did it in and of
myself. But that's how we got into Lawrence County. First Sammy Young
and I had come into Lawrence County to help with uh... - to build Ten
\[ph?\] City and uhm... we just found some atrocities there. We'd also
gone into uh... Mississippi into Sunflower County Mississippi, and uh...
there they had a --- and this was common throughout. But there was a --
there was a hospital there where a dentist was the surgeon. And we
stayed with Miss Fannie Lou Hayma \[ph?\] in her home there and in the
home of Mrs., I can't think of -- Johnson, June Johnson's mother who
lives in DC and is very active in the movement there. Uhm... but they
showed us this hospital where a dentist was the surgeon, and any young
lady that went in there childbearing years came back unable to have any
children, Black young lady needs to say. So folks would die in route to
the hospital in Mount Vaya \[ph?\]. so this was a -- I'm saying, you
know, now that we look back on it we forget a lot of these things, but
it was -- it was rough living uh... in these areas at that time, and we
felt -- we were kind of insulated from it. Daddy had moved us to
Tuskegee where uhm... you know, you had this enclave of -- of Black
professionals and uh... - and folks thought that they could peaceably
integrate Tuskegee. And so that was brought to an abrupt end when Sammy
Young got killed after trying to get 200 people registered to vote in
uhm... Macon County on the first day of -- on the first Monday in
January of 1966, January 3^rd^ of 1966. Uhm... - uhm... the middle class
community felt that no more than 12 Blacks a day should get registered.
And here were we up start students coming down there with 200 Black
folks. So we had angered the Black community just about as much we had
the White folks, but that was the night that Sammy got killed after
folks recognized that we were going to get registered. And the things
were so bad that uh... we were able to draw some correlations between
those communities that had a political reaction to the deaths that did
occur. Uhm... those were the communities that came forward first to get
Black folks elected. Uh... as a direct result of the death of Sammy
Young we were able to elect Sheriff Lucius \[ph?\] Amos. This was the
first Black sheriff elected since the reconstruction era in the whole
country that came about because the continuous voter registration
efforts that took place following the first day when Sammy as Chair of
the Voter Registration and Education Campaign for the Tuskegee Institute
Advancement League had uh... brought people in from all over Macon
County, uhm... not just Tuskegee proper. See Macon County is part of the
Black Belt. The folks who live in Macon County, my dad included, don't
like to be associated with the Black Belt. I'm kidding bout daddy
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_. But folks don't like to be associated with the Black
Belt because it -- it's synonymous with a -- a huge number of people
that live in poverty and a very poor economic as well -- all of the
socio economic conditions. So here was the Black Belt of Macon County,
folks within say, two miles outside of Tuskegee that we were brining in
to get registered to vote. So there were not only the racial issues but
also the class issues in terms of who needed to get registered to vote
and uh... and we were as -- as students just -- just counterfeiting all
that stuff and said, "Look, everybody is gonna get registered. Everybody
is gonna participate because we believed in majority rules. We're the
majority. That means we are the rule. So that -- that was another fight
that we had with the federal government. They never wanted us to really
take control of the Black Belt. They wanted us to vote for the better of
the White candidates. But when we started to make the moves to uh... get
Black folk elected, I mean and in key positions --- so you have to
understand now at the local level the sheriff's position is the most
important political officer holder there is. And uh... here we were the
first time out at the first election in 19 -- after the passage of the
Voting Rights Act electing a Black sheriff in Macon County even though
it was uh... 87% Black community. Nobody felt that uh... Lucious Amoson
\[ph?\] should've been elected Sheriff. But it was largely the efforts
of these students that were there and that -- and that effort came as a
result -- directly as result of Sammy Young. But the same thing was true
in uh... Green County where you had all Black folks elected to office
maybe around 1970 and 1972. Wilcox County, I know you got some stories
to tell about Wilcox. Gees Bend \[ph?\] Alabama, that's where they had
that sign. What that sign say down there? Read -- read niggers...

**George Sr**.: \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ and run.

**Wendel Paris**: Read nigger and run.

**George Sr**.: And that's the same place where I was stopping to get
overnight accommodation and walked up to this hotel, and I looked
around. The sheriff had his pistol pointed in my back. He said, "What
you -- you don't go -- you can't stay here." That was in Wilcox County,
yeah.

**Wendel Paris**: Dad, where was it where that little girl was grabbing
her mother's dress tail?

**George Sr**.: And of course I wanna get this across because to me this
is a basic reason why we have the Klu Klux Klan. After I came back from
the army, on my job I was looking for a fellow for whom we were to make
a loan. And I was asking this lady who had come out on the fort. This
was a White lady. And the little child about three or maybe four or five
years old hold on her dress, pulling \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_, and I was
turning around about to leave. And the little child said, "Mama, Mama
there's a nigger with a new car." Said, "Mama thought you told me that
niggers didn't have nothing pretty." Said, "That's a pretty car that
nigger got." And uhm... it dawned upon me that the children are not born
with this kind of a thinking about human being. It's taught to them. And
I think that something should happen somewhere among us to prove this,
where these kids are getting this information from, and the same thing
about the young man who was killed in Mobira \[ph?\]. Uhm... two skin
head fellows, young men decided they gonna kill a Black whatever, and
the first one they saw they stopped the truck and threw the gun on him
and hit the chain around his neck. Well they executed -- this was in a
tree, and of course running across here we had this other case that
happened in Texas. So it's being taught to these young folks and they
feel that they must do what their parents are telling them, and it's
gonna cause a war. I'm looking for a revolution and I hope that I'm
wrong, but something needs to happen, Sir, somewhere among somebody with
a authority to get these fathers and mothers together by teaching this
stuff about who is who and the color of the skin.

**Wendel Paris**: And that really was uhm... - that brings us to why --
what took place in uhm... - uhm... the Black Belt, Selma, and Lawrence
County and all of these other counties during that era was the fact that
in spite of all the influence of the Klu Klux Klan which to today the
Klan has done more to shape the political thinking of this country than
any other group, all of the church groups put together. The Klan is the
one, and I mean when you look at the recent election in uh...
Mississippi in November of 2003, this month, he was able to use the
race. He played the race card to win. So...

\#### End of Tape CD 17 \####