Q: So you brought up the name of somebody I remember, you said that Miss
Baker was an inspiration to you, tell me how.

\<Crew Talk\>

**Annie Pearl Avery:** Miss Ellie Jo Baker was always around, wherever
we met, wherever we had a dispute, this lady would be up all night with
us, and she'd be right there, well I guess she was monitoring, I don\'t
know, I guess she was directing too, because uh.. she was responsible
for uh.. Snick, you know, Snick was part of uh.. an extension of the
SCOC Youth Program, and it became Snick. She was also inspirational in
organizing the SCOC, and all the years she put in with the NAACP, I
think she organized one of the first uh.. NAACP chapters. But anyway,
she was always tell us that we had to do these things for ourselves. And
when I think about it now I guess that\'s what I\'m saying uh.. in a
different way only but the young people need to get involved, and I\-- I
guess that's doing it for yourself, you have to get involved, if you get
involved it will be important to you and you\'ll understand what\-- what
uh.. what the political system is, how it works, you know, how to\-- how
important it is to vote, how important it is to march and protest, uh..
if it\'s something you disagree with or you feel like you\'re being
uhm.. uh.. let\'s see what\'s the word for it, uh.. if you feel like
you\'re being oppressed. So uh.. I\'m afraid if we don't at this time
within the next few years get our people involved in registering people
to vote, I think they've disbanded the voting r\-- uh.. uh.. the Voter
Education Project, which uh.. which probably was a very important uh..
uhm.. part in terms of getting people registered around\-- around\--
especially blacks around the country, uh.. it was even instrumental in
getting uhm.. Maynard Jackson elected, to the uhm.. to be the\-- be uh..
be mayor in Atlanta. And\-- and little do people know that uh.. Maynard
Jackson set a precedent when he got elected, especially when he uh.. got
Reginald\-- uh.. A. Reginald Eves to be his uh.. Commissioner of Public
Safety, he\'s\-- he was over all of the Public Safety Departments. They
had a problem with the Chief at that time, and they couldn\'t get him to
do what he\-- he uh.. what he needed to do, he was abusing the blacks
and stuff like that, and they had to have somebody, and they were able
to get uh.. he was able to get Reginald Eves appointed as a Super Chief,
which set a precedent I thought, uh.. it went uhm.. I guess he was
able\-- see we\-- it\'s still back to the voting there, because we had
the majority, and I was living in Atlanta at the time, we had\-- I\'d
just moved to Atlanta, they had the majority of uh.. city councilmen to
vote on his side, and that was important because without the city
council to back him up he wouldn\'t have been able to get Reginald Eves
in as a Super Chief. And that's what I\'m saying when I say he set a
precedent because all\-- a lot of\-- a lot of mayor\-- black mayors
beg\-- began to get elected after that, across society.

Q: So there\'s on in Selma now right.

**Annie Pearl Avery:** That's right. But uhm.. in order to be effective
you have to uhm.. have to be\-- have the people behind you, you need
to\-- you need the uh.. city council to\-- to help you and in order to
do that you have to have\-- have people registered to vote and voting
uh.. actively, they\-- you can\'t just be sit down voter or registered
voters and don't\-- don't vote. And so do they disagree, if you disagree
with the system you got to\-- you got to vote against it or for it,
whatever, and in order to do that you must be registered. No just be
quiet, don't say nothing, just\-- just go \<laughs\>, don't\-- uhm..

Q: So as you look back on all of this experience that you've had,
you\'re starting to draw some conclusions, what\'s it all meant, has it
tallied up to be what you wanted it to be in terms of your experience?
There\'s that whole thing about change and whether it really has
happened, what do you think?

**Annie Pearl Avery:** Well some if it, it was a begin\-- it was a
beginning of a change, \'cause we still have a long way to go, racism
have not disappeared, it is alive and well as we know uh.. with all of
the things that are happening uh.. around the country, uh.. we know that
racism is alive and well. Now we also know that a lot of our people have
become complacent, uh.. don't feel like it\'s important to vote. And I
think where we lost it was after we got the Voting Rights Bill and after
we got the uh.. Civil Rights Act we felt like everything was gonna be
all right, and if you go to sleep you lose \<laughs\>, you that old\--
old cliché about if you snooze you lose, well if you snooze you lose, we
get all these people elected, and they\'re not as effective as they
could be because our people are not ready to\-- not\-- not uh.. voting
as vigorously as they need to be. Voter registration is a ongoing thing,
and fighting discrimination is a ongoing thing.

Q: Somebody was telling me the whole lesson, Selma and the quest for
voter rights, a lot of that is still not sunk through, that it can be
the tip of the quest for power. Do you feel that way?

**Annie Pearl Avery:** In order to salute that we have to continue to
register to vote, because otherwise we just want to cross the bridge and
got the Voting Rights Act and the\-- and the Civil Rights Act and
everything went back the way it was, almost, after just\-- we got\-- got
black people elected in certain areas, but they\'re not as effective as
they could be because a lot of our people aren't\-- aren't registered,
uhm.. maybe they\'re uhm.. \<clears throat\> they\'re uh.. they have
misplaced uh.. the goal, or maybe misplaced values, I don\'t know, for
sure, but one thing for sure is that we\'ve gotta get these young people
involved and we gotta get 'em\-- get 'em out registering people to vote
and it\'s gotta be a ongoing thing from now on, from\-- for\-- from
henceforth we need to never stop getting people registered, and uh..
always inspire them to get registered because people didn\'t\-- didn\'t
just give up their lives, their lives were taken from them. Miss Loliso
\[ph?\] didn\'t give up her life, her life was taken uh.. we had uh..
Chaney, Swerner and Gootner \[ph?\], their lives were taken from them,
they didn\'t give up their lives. And Edgar Everest \[ph?\], he didn\'t
give up his life, somebody took his life. So we have to\-- we have to
salute the people who died by continuing to register to vote and keeping
Selma\-- that Selma to Montgomery march in mind, you know, that was just
a beginning and in a way it might not even have been the tip of the
iceberg, it was just\-- it was just a beginning because the\-- the uh..
the laws were already there, that were supposed to uh.. protect our
rights, so that should tell us something right there, they had to have a
Civil Rights Act and a Civil Rights Bill, I mean the Voting Rights Bill
\<laughs\> is what, you know, uh.. you know, if you got to have all o'
this and you got the 13^th^, 14^th^, 15^th^, 16^th^ Amendment, why?

\<Crew Talk\>

Q: You grew up in these environments, you were telling me earlier that
you remember some of what went on in '65 around the marches.

**James Perkins Jr.:** You know, I was 12 years old in 1965, uh.. by age
12 I was a seasoned protestor, many of the young kids around this area,
we had participated in many marches, we had been engaged in a lot of the
Civil Rights movement, we had participated in marches to the courthouse,
to the City Jail and to many other places and I was a part of all of
that. Uh.. we had participated in school walk-out movements and all of
that, and so by age 12, by the time uh.. uh.. Bloody Sunday rolled
around many of us were very seasoned in our participation in the
movement, yeah.

Q: I think few people realize that that's true for most of the
experience in the movement. Young people were the backbone of all of
this stuff weren't they?

**James Perkins Jr.:** Much of the case, uh.. you know, I did not go to
jail, but I can remember many nights uh.. sitting in the balcony of
Brown Chapel Church, or in the balcony of First Baptist listening to
uh.. the Baptist\-- the balcony of First Baptist listening to some of
those powerful orators that the great speakers and those who were
leading the movement. And uh.. we didn\'t know as children then the full
impact of what was going on, but we knew something extraordinary was
taking place and we knew we were right in the heart of it. Sometimes we
felt that we were actually in control of it. Uh.. as children I can
remember us walking out of our schools and\-- and uh.. engaging state
troopers as we marched down the street, and\-- and how we would join up
with marchers as they were, assembling at\-- at Brown Chapel NGWC homes,
it was just a very powerful time uh.. for a child. But you have to also
keep in mind that prior to age 12 I could also remember uh.. walking
uh.. downtown and having to cross the street for fear of\-- of
approaching a white woman, I can remember not being able to walk into a
uh.. a local uh.. fast food place to buy a hotdog, but having to go to
the back window. I can remember uh.. having to go to the basement to
purchase clothes and not be able to try them on in the process. So there
is\-- there are a lot of very vivid memories about growing up, I do
remember the "Colored Only" water fountain and I remember the first time
that I walked in the front door of a\-- of a white physician's doctor's
office, uh.. all the other times prior we had gone through the back
door. So just a lot of\-- just a lot of interesting uh.. memories.

Q: So now it\'s years later, I had a gentleman here yesterday who talked
at length about the courage and how special people were, he was a Snick
worker, he had come here and he stayed to work because he said those
folk in Dallas and Lawrence County, especially Lawrence County, he said
where they drew their strength from. What is it about folks in this
area, when I was growing up we always thought that if there was a
struggle for a movement, there was a struggle for equality and justice
it would come out of the South, it wouldn\'t have come out of the North.
So what is it about southern black folk, give me your impression?

**James Perkins Jr.:** Well I\-- I think it really is the\-- the
spiritual foundation upon which we uh.. have\-- have grown up. Uh.. you
know, we\-- we were in churches then with hardwood floors and the stump
and it meant something. And there was this core value system that exists
within the people and within the community that kind of radiated around
the neighborhoods and throughout our society and it was small, but it
was very focused, very intense. And you could really feel and see uh..
the anxiety in people, uh.. and yet there was this sense of happiness
and joy and peace, I\'ve always felt that you can find peace in the
midst of a storm if you have the right spirit, and I think that's what
you find in those of us who were born and reared and have experienced
the\-- the true South.

Q: Folks that recollect this for me will reach back, is there anything
particular you remember about anyone in particular, you don't have to
name somebody?

**James Perkins Jr.:** Well let me a story about my mother. Uh.. my
mother uh.. was uh.. the emergency\-- one\-- one of the emergency room
nurses at Good Samaritan Hospital in the 60s. She was out on maternity
leave on the Sunday, uh.. of the march Bloody Sunday. Uh.. and when the
call rang out that people had been injured uh.. she got out of her bed,
went to the hospital to administer to the sick and to the injured. Uh..
the hospital was filled and so she went to Burwell Hospital, which was
an older hospital here in town, owned by African Americans, and she
administered to those who were on the floor because the places were
overflowing with the injured. That\'s the kinda spirit that I\'m talking
about, and that's the kinda spirit that I followed throughout my life,
yeah.

\<Crew Talk\>

Q: This museum is going to be in your neck of the woods, and these films
are going to be seen by thousands and thousands of people and mostly
young people, if you were to talk to them what would you want to say to
them that was special about this Selma experience, the Voting Rights
experience and all of what you and people in this area went through?

**James Perkins Jr.:** I\'d say the\-- the sacrifices and the
contributions that people made in this movement are very personal. Uh..
I personalize them in my comments and in my behavior, I oftentimes say
thank you for\-- because you did something for me. I recognized that
people really died for me, they died so that the right to vote could be
afforded to people of color, and through that right to vote I\'m able
to\-- to sit here today as mayor of the city of Selma and represent this
community, that's personal, uh.. and that\'s something that I should
never forget and it\'s something that I feel an obligation to share with
others.

\<Crew Talk\>

Q: We see a lot of young men and women who are coming out who are really
enamored with this entertainment business, and I tell them if they go to
school don't study film, it\'s the last thing you should study, I say
study the arts, literature and whatever.

**James Perkins Jr.:** Tell 'em to study English \<laughs\>. Yes, these
communications are so important, yes.

Q: What should our kids be paying attention to these days, what should
they be taking in to prepare them to be leaders of the future?

**James Perkins Jr.:** Well it\'s\-- it really is uhm.. an age of
change, uhm.. I really\-- I\-- I think that we really need to focus on
uh.. encouraging our young people to become agents of constructive and
positive change, agents of\-- of progressive change and progressive
leadership. There\'s yet so much to be done, we\-- we\'ve come a long
ways but there\'s\-- there\'s still uh.. some rivers to cross and we\--
we have not arrived uh.. to speak. And I\-- I think our young people\--
I think I have a lot more faith in our young than I think uh.. many
others uh.. may have, I\-- I\-- sometimes I wonder about some of those
who are\-- who are getting older uh.. whether or not we have really
forgotten, but it\'s really our responsibility to share the story with
our young people so that they can understand it and appreciate it, if
we\'re not telling them, if we\'re not sharing the message then how and
why should we expect them to\-- to understand and appreciate it. And so
I would simply say to the young folks uh.. you know, to\-- to catch the
vision, to become a part of the vision, to join the vision, uh.. the
message and the mission of the advancement of all people uh.. and to do
that uh.. in a spirit of humility and a spirit of service and\-- and if
we do that the world will be better. You can\'t control what people say
about you, you can\'t control what people do to you, you can\'t control
how people think, but what you can control is how you respond, and when
you allow that good spirit, that good voice to dictate your response
then you are reconciled and when you are into visually reconcile i.e.
your spirit and your walk are consistent, when you reach that level of
maturity at that point you can relate to and work with anybody. And
that's where I think we need to start focusing on, where we need to
start moving uh.. and directing our energies toward. Oftentimes we spend
so much time trying to figure out how to make my relationship better
with you, when our relationships with ourselves are so out of sync,
our\-- our value system, our spiritual value system is out of sync with
what we do, uh.. my value system says I ought to treat you right but I
talk ugly about you, that's inconsistent, that's schizophrenic, that's
dual personality, that's crazy. But when you get past that and you can
align your\-- your value system and your behavior, then I think you, you
know, you\'re reconciled and I think that's the reconciliation that man
should seek, and that's the reconciliation we should be teaching our
children.

\<Crew Talk\>

Q: You said you were in school when all of this really got cranked up
and started.

**M. Leah Lawson:** No not really. I graduated from Tusky \[ph?\]
University, and uhm.. in May, uh.. of 1955, uh.. then in November, I
believe it was, if my mind recalls, it\'s when Mrs. Parkes would not get
up and give a white gentleman her seat on a city bus. I was pregnant at
the time \<laughs\>, with my first child, and uh.. but I attended every
meeting, I didn\'t miss a meeting, uhm..

Q: When we talk about attending meetings, these were meetings in
Montgomery?

**M. Leah Lawson:** In Montgomery, Selma, yes, every meeting, I
attended. My brother was a minister and of course where he went I went.
And uhm.. maybe I should back up, I first spoke with my Mom about uhm..
me participating, she said "Go, because I know you've already made up
your mind, because I know how you feel, I know how you have always felt
about the treatment of you all." So I\-- I went, and\-- and I know
you\'re gonna laugh when I tell you this, I had my baby in March,
didn\'t miss a beat. I had my son on a Friday morning, I was back in the
meeting on Monday night \<laughs\>. And I never stopped going, uhm.. But
my Mom en\-- and Father encouraged me to go back to college, because
they knew that's what I wanted to do, they said in order to help your
people you must go further. So I did, I left and I was\-- I enrolled in
Morgan State in Baltimore in John Hopkins. And but when things got
really, really hot and I knew they needed me back here I came back. Uh..
I participated in the marches, I participated in the sit-in, and of
course I am\-- my picture is in the "Black History" book where I was
participating in a sit-in at H.L. Green in Montgomery. Uhm.. I will tell
you how I felt, I was angry, because we were\-- I were reared in the
country, and when my parents would bring us to the city the white men
would have gone and they would push us off the sidewalk, they would say
"Get off the sidewalk nigger," these streets belonged to the whites. And
of course we had to walk out on the street, we couldn\'t eat in the
places that they ate at, they would have the holes cut in the back of
the place, you could go around to the back and order, stand outside and
eat. If they had a place inside for you to eat they had a little camera,
they only served you hotdogs and hamburger, and they had a big
restaurant for the whites to eat, which was not fair, and I intended to
stop it, if I had to do it alone. And if I had to do it dying. And I
almost did \<laughs\>. Uhm.. my brother and I, we both we uhm.. we had a
parking lot, it was\-- the name of it was Posy Parking Lot on MacDonald
Street, his wife had a beauty shop upstairs, and of course he had a
parking lot for her customers to park. So we decided to use that as a
pickup point to take\-- this was during the boycott, to take the people
back and forward to work. And uhm.. this policeman walked up to me and I
was pregnant with my second child then \<laughs\>, and because my
husband would stay home to help take care of the children, I was
pregnant with my second child at that time, yeah. And he walked up to
me, and he said "What you doing down here with your big belly self, you
should be at home trying to have that baby," what he didn\'t know that I
had taken marching up, and he drew back with his, what you call the
little stick, Billy stick, as if he was gonna hit me, and my brother was
standing over there, a lot of other guys, and they said they weren't
gonna do anything because they knew I could handle him \<laughs\>. And
when he drew his stick back to hit me I started coming up with this
right foot, I was gonna kick him where \<laughs\> he had never been
kicked before, and he saw it, and he left, he walked off and called me
names, that was okay, that was okay, because you could call me names all
you want to, just don't hit me. We won\-- I feel like we won the battle,
uhm.. it was\-- it was hard, it was a hard time, it was hard, during
that time, you know, I\-- I just wanted to do things and I know Dr. King
said no, no, but there was so much anger in me and\-- and of course I
had my father and my brother and my Mom to talk to also, and I tell you
that wasn't all, my sisters and brother, there was 13 of us, nine girls,
four boys \<laughs\>. And I tell you, nobody was gonna do anything to
any\-- any one of us without the other ones jumping in. Uhm.. there\'s a
lot that I know that I have a gun, because it has been so long, and uh..
this started back in '55 and I believe it went through 1968, 1968 or
1969, but so much happened, I would come back and forward, go to school,
and make up, come back \<laughs\> and forward. I was a very good
student, so I was\-- I wasn't really worried about school because I
was\-- I\'m not bragging but I was a A student, and uh.. they would let
me get by uh.. stay a night and come back. They knew what I was doing
because I explained to my Dean and they understood. But uhm.. I always
tell my mother when I would leave to participate and uh.. go to one of
the meetings, that uhm.. "Mother, you may have to come to the morgue to
identify me," she said "Go, do what you believe in doing." She said "If
I have to the morgue to identify you I know where you are, you will be
with God." And uhm.. my father believed in what I was doing too, he
pushed me and pushed me, you know, because we as black women could do
things that black men couldn\'t do, we could say things and get away
with it, you know. I\-- I believed that the white were\-- were more
afraid of us, the black woman, they were not afraid of the black man. I
believe if you could\-- if you could\-- if you had died and they would
die in Alabama and Mississippi River, the bottom of those rivers will be
filled with black bones, because that's where they\-- they would hang
them and they would throw them in the river, or they\-- they would just
kill them and throw them in the river. And I was tired of that. And, you
know, if I told you exactly how I felt I don't think you would put it on
film, because I really don't think you would, uh.. and I don't think\--
and I don't think that would do justice to Dr. King cause, I don't
believe so, and I wouldn\'t want to hurt what he wanted us to do, and I
wouldn\'t want to hurt Mrs. King. You know, before Dr. King came here we
didn\'t have anybody to lead us or tell us what to do, uhm.. I feel
like\-- I feel like I could have made a good leader. I still feel like I
could make a good leader today if you would only choose me. I would not
be afraid to speak my piece, I would lead\-- I would lead\-- because
right now we have regressed, we progressed when Dr. King was here but
after his death we have not had a good leader, we have regressed and I
hate to see that. You see, I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren,
well maybe I should say I have grandchildren and one grandchild, in
February I will have two grand\-- great-children. So I will like to see
my youngest grandchildren two, I got two young ones, the others are in
college, one in the Marines, two in college, one has graduated from
college, I got one great-granddaughter, in February I will have a
great-grandson. I would like to see my grandchildren and my
great-grandchildren grow up in a better world. It is getting worse,
it\'s not getting any better. And, you know, every time I think about
that's Sunday when we tried to march from here, it brings tears to my
eyes to know that people hated a set of people so badly that they want
to run us over, they want to beat us with Billy sticks. We as black, we
are the most forgiving people in the world, just what people don't
understand is that America belonged to that Native Indian, America does
not belong to the white man. God put all us in a country, he put the
white man in England, he put us in Africa, he put the Chinese in China,
he put the Japanese in Japan, he put the Indian here, they came here
because the Indian wouldn\'t work for them, they went to Africa and got
my forebear, they threw half of 'em in the ocean when they got sick and
died, then when my forebear, and I\'m talking about the girls, when they
became 13 and 14 they raped them, that's the reason I\'m this color,
that's the reason I\'m this color, I shouldn\'t be this color, I should
be the color of those guys. My sisters and brothers in Africa, they\'re
not this color. So every race that come here, the Chinese pour in, every
race get treated better than the blacks, we still don't have any rights,
we don't, you may think we do, but we don't. And I wish people would
wake up, I just wish they would wake up and see. What that old saying
is, wake up and smell the roses, you see. I don't like to brag, but I\'m
a physician, I\'m a psychiatrist, nobody gave that to me, I worked, I
studied hard, that's what my parents told me, study, you know, as I
stated before, I was reared in the country, we had to walk 15 or 16, 17
miles back and forward to school, until my parents, all the black
parents got together and bought a bus and paid the driver to take us
back and forward to school, the whites had a bus, now hey, this has to
be years and years ago, I\'m 69 years old, so you tell me how long that
has been, years ago. The whites have uh.. tried to spit on us, tried
to\-- they would throw stuff at us, and we\'d go home and tell my
parents, they say "Don't do it." At that time we had a fireplace, they
would sit us around then, hold the baby in their lap and they would talk
to us and tell us what not to do or to do, they would pray with us, they
would read the Bible to us. You see, my parents were very special
people, and they didn\'t believe in doing the eye for eye, they believed
they wanted you to treat people right, they always said if you do to
them what they\'re doing to you you\'re no better than they are, and
we\-- we tried to follow that instruction, they don't know how angry it
made me. I think I\-- I think I was the only one in that family that
felt that way, my other sis\-- my other sister and her brother, they are
so easy to get along with \<laughs\>. I think\-- I don\'t know if God
made me different, from my sisters and brother, I don\'t know, but I
know I am so different from them, I am very much different from them.
You know, I would tell you in a minute where to go, if I feel like
you\'re wrong I would tell you, but I\'m never too big to come back and
apologize if I found out I was wrong, and I think that's what it\'s all
about, you know. I don\'t know what is, I remember we were marching from
here to Montgomery and I don\'t know if you was born at that particular
time, and those black people wanted to participate with us, the whites
put them off their property, and they had to set up tents to live in.
And I thought that was\-- I thought that was\-- I just thought that was
so wrong, these people had worked for them all their life, but still
when they wanted to do something for themselves they treated them as if
they was animals. And I guess that's where they get the name "Tent
City," uhm.. As I said, the first time when we tried they wouldn\'t let
us, my, but the next time God was on our side, we made it. And, you
know, when President Clinton came here he had you assimilated that
march, I wanted to come but I was ill, I wanted to come so bad, but I
was ill, I said "Lord if you just let me go," but I guess it was not in
the stars for me to come, because I really wanted to come. I think that
would have uhm.. made me feel so much better if I had been able to come.
I think they would\'ve\-- what should I say\--

\#### End of CD 5 \####