\<Crew Talk\>

Q: What were we going to talk about?

**John Jackson:** We wanted to talk a little bit about people having
their own ideas.

Q: Grass roots stuff, go ahead.

**John Jackson:** Well, you know, uh.. people saw what was going on but
they were too afraid to do anything about it, but with the, you know,
with the Civil Right uh.. people coming in they encouraged them. But\--
but most of the ideas came from within, uh.. Snick never went into a
community and said "You need to do this and you need to do that," they
would say "Well, you need to come together so that you can decide your
own destiny and so that you won\'t have people killing you at night and
people go Klan rioting and burning your churches and all that kinda
thing." But most of the\-- the plans were done by local Lawrence
Countians, uh.. people who were actively involved in the movement, uh..
Snick didn\'t have to pull in anybody to say "Go over and integrate that
school," you had students who say "I want to go, I want to go to the
best school," those seven went, the rest of the four or five thousand
were afraid, but they went, and after they saw the National Guard
protected them that year, then everybody, you know, most of 'em got
involved and wanted to go and the next year that school flourished with
students, even though a few years later it burned down accidentally, Klu
Klux Klan accidentally burnt it down. But uh.. most of the ideas came
from local folks who\-- who had the\-- the religious background who
believed in God and believed in themselves and were willing to die for
what they believed in. The only thing Snick did was give them a little
gas, and said "Let\'s go," you know, "if they don't fund you this year
we\'ll find some organization to help you get funded as a sharecropper,
we\'ll find some organization to help you build a house, we\'ll find
somebody to help your child get a scholarship. Come on, let\'s do what
we gotta do, we can\'t let 'em get away, you\'re living like you are in
South Africa, you know, you\'re 80 percent black and you\'re controlled
by 20 percent of the people." So people got up and went to work and I
know that they all are proud and their children are proud of Lawrence
County and certainly it\'s true the Civil Rights trip is gonna be able
to let that history be known as it continues, as we continue to move on.

\<Crew Talk\>

Q: Start by telling me what pricked your interested in the Civil Rights
effort, and a little bit about yourself and Selma.

**Charles Mauldin:** Well I grew up in Selma, uhm.. a normal segregated
existence, basically a curious person, but not being able to really look
and really express my curiosity because of segregation, and I think if
you were to ask me what was worse about segregation it was not to be
inquisitive. So there was sort of a\-- a natural disturbance even as a
child about things being askew. And if you asked me what made me uhm..
get involved in the Civil Rights Movement it\-- it was that initially,
the discomfort of not being able to have a fully human expression, to be
myself, and although I did not have it well defined I knew that there
was something wrong, it was sort of like an itch, that, you know, that I
knew existed but I had no mechanism by which I could express that, there
was just nobody who'd ever question uhm.. the system or dare to question
because of the danger of that, you know.

Q: I think that's something that young men and women find very difficult
to fathom, that it was a felt thing, it was something you sensed.

**Charles Mauldin:** Let me just give you an example, you know, like
uhm.. white insurance men would come to my house and say "Well is Artus
\[ph?\] there?" or "Is Thomas there?" and we were taught to respect your
elders and here was a complete violation and so therefore you knew
instinctively that there was something wrong, to that they could come
there and say "Is Artus and Thomas is there?" and you were, you know,
sworn to and raised to respect everybody, "Mr." and "Mrs." and, you
know. So that was one of the discrepancies, you knew things were wrong,
you know. Uhm.. you know, we worked\-- I\-- I was anxious to work as a
young kid, so we\'d go and caddy, we\'d make uh.. one guy who I raked
his yard gave me 50 cents, and I\'m not a laborer, I never was, and I
just knew there was something seriously wrong about not being able to
say anything about that. So I just\-- just kept to the 50 cents for just
a tremendous work in this yard and just left and said I\'d never go
again. But also caddying, you know, you\'d spend a whole day out there
and you\'d get at one point 75 cents for nine holes and \$1.25 for 18,
you basically spent an entire day trying to get that and if you were
lucky you got a quarter tip. And uh.. you know, I remember one time that
we went on strike for \$1.25 for a\-- the nine holes and \$1.75 for 18,
and Bud Burns, the local golf pro at the Selma Country Club threw a golf
ball at us like we rabbits, I mean we had to run all over the place, you
know. And so and then the reluctance to go back by there, you know. So
little things like that happened. And so in 1963 when John\-- when
Bernard Lafayette came to town with his wife uh.. we were down on the
block near Selma University, just hanging out as young kids, you know,
uh.. basically uhm.. not bad kids but not\-- not with any real
direction, and he came and began to ask questions like "Well, why can\'t
your mother and father vote?" or "Why do you have to drink out of the
"colored" fountain?" and uh.. "Why don't you come by my house and let\'s
have some conversations?" and this was pretty\-- these were pretty
simple and radical questions because uhm.. I was always a pretty smart
kid, I always had an answer for everything and I was really uh.. stunned
because I had no answers for those questions, you know, but I was a
little bit intimidated by what it would require to challenge\-- to be a
part of that challenge. So I didn\'t really, you know, associate with
uh.. Bernard too much but uh.. those questions stuck with me and they
sort of\-- I was impregnated by those questions for the next year and a
half, two years. And John Love came to town and uhm.. John Love was the
first person to come, he was a little short black guy with a big afro,
before that we\-- we got our hair cut once a week man, we would cut
that\-- keep that stuff down. And so uh.. John uh.. Love came and he had
this big afro and it was the first time we\'d ever seen anybody with
that much hair on his head. And John uh.. Love actually brought the afro
\<laughs\> to Selma, you know, and that's where the beginning of the
afro in\-- in Selma for us. And he was deeply involved in working with
us and talking to us and he was a very humane person, and began to get
us sort of ready for like a\-- answering and responding to those
questions that Bernard Lafayette had asked earlier. And in uhm.. early
1965 we got uhm.. we had a meeting at Brown Chapel and I was elected
uh.. student leader, and soon thereafter we l\-- lead our first
demonstration in 1965 that culminated in the 1965 Voting Rights Act,
from First Baptist Church uh.. and we went downtown and began to
protest. And from that protest uhm.. came all of the other events uh..
the Berlin Wall, uh.. the first march down uh.. in East Selma, uh.. the
uh.. the jailing out at the uh.. at the uhm.. I guess it was the uhm..
I\'ve forgotten\-- I\'ve forgotten the name of\-- of the place uh.. but,
you know, we were arrested out at the uh.. Highway Department on\-- on
Highway 80, and uh.. there was the armory jailing where like we were
forced to stand up against the wall and on our toes and, you know, uh..
and, you know, and sort of fingers and toes and sort of tried to
discourage us, tried to demoralize us, and uh.. and there was of course
uh.. the uhm.. Bloody Sunday March uhm.. and uh.. we s\-- Dr. King, A.D.
and Dee Jose Williams \[ph?\], uh.. Running Maurice, uhm.. and some
others were there uhm.. uhm.. James Bellow especially, you know, uhm..
and we decided to march to uhm.. Montgomery, uhm.. as a result of uh..
Jiminy Jackson being killed.

Q: So now you\'re blitzing through a lot of history.

**Charles Mauldin:** Yeah I\'m\-- I\'m sort of giving you a fast run
because uhm.. because I think that people will you those stories and
they\'re very significant stories but like uhm.. what\'s significant
about all of that is that you would\'ve thought that all happened in a
year but when I really sat down and thought, the most of that movement
occurred in about three months, between like January and March, March
8^th^ is when, you know, the march to Montgomery, and then it sort've\--
it sort've culminated there. And so really all of this occurred
primarily in a three month period of time, and uhm.. and most of this
uhm.. momentum was carried by the students, as a matter of fact my
mother is the first person who registered to vote under the 1965 Voting
Rights Act and she had a look\-- she had a uh.. uh.. a Jet Magazine
article, 1969 and one of the things she said\-- and she said that if it
had not been for the children we would not have gotten out to register
to vote, you know. So I think that two of the most unsung stories is
about the significance of the student movement and the significance of
the\-- the female participants in that movement in terms of providing
leadership.

Q: What did you do as a student leader and was this involvement of
students and young people strategic?

**Charles Mauldin:** Well it was on the part of the leadership of SCOC
because uh.. first we were less vulnerable to the powers that be, and
secondly, we were like young soldiers, we were\-- we were uh.. willing
fodder for whatever would happen, you know, and uhm.. third, we sort of
knew that uhm.. something had to change. And uhm.. back to the reaction
of my childhood, my daughter told me when she was about\-- I never
talked about most of this stuff, it\'s almost like uh.. veterans don't
talk about war for 20 years or so, and my daughter saw me on TV, the\--
the scene where they pushed us down all the time, you know, uh.. John
Lewis being hit. And uhm.. and uh.. she\-- she called me and she said
"Daddy, you\'re courageous," and, you know, I cried, you know, \'cause
I\'d never let that out before and I was like "Boy I think you\'re
right, you know," and I never had accepted any of that because those of
us who were veterans of the Civil Rights Movement knew there was sort of
a very spiritual experience and to somehow talk about it or to\-- to
benefit from it or to claim special status as a result of it, was
somehow demeaning what was really a truly people's movement. What was
most brilliant about\-- about Dr. King is he trusted us and Snick and
Stokely \[ph?\] and John, they trusted us, and when you trust people now
they\'re loyal to you. J.R. Chestnut once asked me, he said when he was
doing his book with Charles, you know, everywhere we looked it was like
Charles Mauldin said and uhm.. you know, a picture of Charles Mauldin's
here, and I said "Well J.R. that's because I was in the front all the
time. So the reason it was a successful movement is as a student leader
I lead from the front and then when uh.. there was no need to provide
leadership like that, when Dr. King and all of the national bigwigs came
I sort of pulled back from the front and didn\'t try to get up on the
stadium to get my picture taken like so many other people who had the
need to\-- to get credit for what they had done, you know, and uh.. I
uh.. have always sort of responded from a very human part of myself,
I\'ve always st\-- thought of myself to be active in Civil Rights but
never a Civil Rights activist, you know, sort of to try to keep
everything on a very humane level, and I still try to live like that.

Q: We want to try and capture for young people what it must have been
like on that particular day, I can see kids asking questions about when
you crested the bridge, when you looked down and saw all those troopers,
did you not feel that there would be some sort of conflict? Start at the
beginning of that day and paint me a picture of what it all was like.

**Charles Mauldin:** Well I had been in a staff meeting with Dr.\-- well
Dr. King wasn't there but I\'d been in a staff meeting with\--

\<Crew Talk\>

Q: Go for it.

**Charles Mauldin:** I\'d been in a staff meeting early that morning and
I knew that we would be stopped, and of course there was a strong burden
to me to go out and provide some leadership to a lot of folks who were
my friends and, you know, people from my home town I had grown up with
and uh.. one of my teachers Mrs. Parish had said "Well Charles I\'m
gonna let my daughters go, but like please take care of them." And I\'ll
never forget that because at that time a teacher was like, you know, on
the uh.. uh.. top of the hierarchy. And so for your teacher who you
respected, she'd been one of my home room teachers and a great woman,
you know, and for her to trust me with her daughters and say "I\'m gonna
let them go but please take care of them," you know. So I really took
that very seriously, so to be able to know that we weren't going to go
and not knowing what might happen, and knew that the state troopers
would be over at the end of the bridge, so what we did was practice
uhm.. some defense moves, like how to couch and protect yourself if you
were being beaten by a Billy club. Also uh.. how to basically stay as
low as possible if you uh.. if the tear gas came. And so that's about
the only preparation we had. It was uhm.. something the\-- the momentum
had built up so strong that uhm.. there was no turning back regardless,
you know, no matter what happened, and there was no sense of fear, uhm..
there was a sense of self-righteousness where you don't fear what\'s
gonna happen, you simply walk into it and that whatever happens happens.
So when we crest the bridge and looked down and saw the state troopers,
you know, uhm.. and if\-- if there\'s some pictures of me you\'ll see my
expression if you take a look at those pictures on the bridge. Uh.. and,
you know, it was just uh.. it\'s\-- it\'s you or us, who\'s gonna
concede, you know. And so we marched, and we marched down directly into
them and stopped, you know, and uh.. and you don't think if you let
yourself think about what will happen you\'ll blink. So there\'s a type
of coolness that you develop, you know, a sort of a\-- a stealing of the
nerves, so that you can accept, you know, whatever happens, and, you
know, because you\'re prepared, you know, and you uh.. you can\'t turn
around. And so you just use whatever you got and that was a sense of
like uh.. sense of self-righteousness, uhm.. a\-- a great sense of self,
uh.. seeing yourself as bigger than your opposition and uh.. deciding
that there\'s no option but to win, there was no going back, and so
you\'re willing to accept whatever it takes. And so that's what we were
equipped with, just a sense of moral indignity, you know.

Q: I understand. But I can imagine too, much in the same fashion as the
woman who asked you to take care of her daughters, there were middle
aged women in this march, there were some older cats in this march and
Lord knows no-one can really predict what these crackers were going to
do.

**Charles Mauldin:** Well, you know, we had a pretty good idea, but
uhm.. you know, uh.. that\-- that uhm..

\<Crew Talk\>

Q: The crest of the bridge, many of you were prepared for what might
happen, but the tempo picked up in terms of events while moving down
towards the flat area.

**Charles Mauldin:** Yeah we just simply went down slowly but uh..
consciously, you know, uh.. seeing this phalanx of uh.. state troopers
and we went down with the intent of either going through them or
stopping depending\-- depending on what the leadership decided to do, we
weren't sure what would happen. And uhm.. we were willing to do whatever
it took, you know, we d\-- decided it was going to Montgomery. So we\--
my mind was on Montgomery, you know, and uh.. so when we got down there,
you know, like they said, you know, "Halt, this is illegal," you know,
"you've got three minutes or so to disperse." Maybe after a minute and a
half uhm.. which is a lesson about leadership, what they did was simply
push the ones in the front down and they\'d be able to beat over the
b\-- over our heads, but except for John Lewis, you know, that's one of
the reasons I think Dr. King didn\'t march because they knew that there
were\-- there was this uhm.. plan to try to debilitate the leadership as
much as possible. I\'ll never forget uh.. hearing John Lewis' head crack
from a Billy club, he got a serious concussion, he almost died, you
know, but I\'ll never forget that sound. I had a chance to introduce
John once, and I mentioned that and he cried, you know, he just, you
know, uh.. that's a type of intimacy that was uh.. developed in that
line, you know. And uhm.. they pushed us down and uh.. piled us in then
lobbed tear gas into the crowds and one of the things that your lungs
implode when there\'s tear gas, you just can\'t stand it. But there was
a low area down near the river where the tear gas sort of hovered above
that, so many of us went down to the low area and noticed Mrs. Uh..
Boynton had been knocked down and a guy by the name of Techey \[ph?\],
I\'ve forgotten his name, there was a picture of him, a very famous
picture, well he\'s down covering and it\'s a very courageous picture,
and a very\-- a very courageous event. To let you know uh.. he was maybe
16, 17 at the time, and uh.. that's was, you know, one of the most
courageous things I saw that day. Uhm.. Phyllis says\-- Mrs. Parish's
daughter said that like uh.. they were trying to hit her and she
mentioned this at a\-- at a church meeting once and I\-- I didn\'t know
it happened and that I\'d taken a blow for her but, you know, I don't
remember doing that, you know, and, you know, it was just, you know.
Yeah. And so we went down and, you know, gathered our\-- our wits about
us for a while and then began to retreat back across the bridge with
horses coming and cattle prods and, you know, Billy clubs and dispersing
us, you know, back across the bridge. And we sort of went down Water
Avenue and other different directions back to the uh.. church uh.. Andy
Young and C.T. Vivien \[ph?\] were out there running around like m\--
wild men trying to make sure that people didn\'t go and get guns and
stuff like that because it was really close to a riotous situation, I
mean uh.. And uh.. so the state troopers are now coming into the Brown
Chapel area, uh.. into the projects and uhm.. C.T. Vivien uh..
confronted one of the state troopers, a man was pointing in his face
like that, he gave one of the most eloquent, you know, uh.. uh..
speeches to this guy about how in-just that was and how we would not
concede security and things like that, I mean like, as a matter of fact
I stopped and listened \<laughs\>, it was so brilliant. And one of the
great things about the movement is that it had given uhm.. black men and
women who had only the black church theretofore an opportunity to
express their brilliance and uh.. outside of uh.. of that in a secular
context, a quasi sec\-- uh.. religious uh.. context, uh.. you know, and
uh.. and that is when you really saw great things to respect your folks
about, we had always been so uh.. decapitated, you know, just wouldn\'t
let us use our head above in any meaningful way except in a church, that
to have uh.. just very common people show their natural brilliance was
like one of the things that inspired me uh.. then and\-- and inspired\--
and\-- and reminds me now of like what simple people can do, uh.. and to
respect the need of intelligence of those who don't\-- don't have
obvious credentials. And that's what Dr. King again did, that's what the
Snick workers did, they really did trust uh.. us and that's why we moved
and uhm..

Q: Well they knew more than anybody else what they were dealing with,
they knew the kinds of people that were there. There was consummate
respect and knowledge for the intelligence of black fellows.

**Charles Mauldin:** One of the things about the\-- the passing of the
1965 Voting Rights Act that most people don't focus on is that uh.. it
really freed southern whites to be themselves, they in fact were uhm..

\<Crew Talk\>

Q: You were about to say about the one thing about the Civil Rights Act
it let white people be white people.

**Charles Mauldin:** I was saying that like uh.. southern whites were
natural Republicans anyway, they were sort of captured, you know, like
we\-- they were\-- they had a type of uh.. ceiling over their heads just
like they had put ceilings over our heads. And uh.. so they were really
fighting against their own self interest, you know, if you\'ll look at
the South now, uhm.. there couldn\'t\-- it couldn\'t have developed
economically at\-- as it has, uh.. it could not have uh.. developed uh..
naturally as it has, so where you have uhm.. agricultural based culture,
various religiously based culture, very conservative culture, uhm.. yeah
they were natural Republicans, and although I\'m not sure that's in my
benefit, you know, the fact the Civil Rights Movement is what the
passing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act sort of actually allowed them to
be freer than they were. A white southerner from the Deep South could
not have been President or have the powerful positions they have in\--
in the\-- in the government now, uh.. and they have really in a way
become\-- and they\'re still transitioning and I think that's why we
have all this rightwing, you know, sort of uh.. sociological stuff
happening in their culture, you know, they need to be studied
anthropologically to try to understand that better so that we can
understand what\'s happening with them, there\'s such a uhm.. five
hundred p\-- pound gorilla and nobody, you know, really got a lease on
what\'s happening with them, you know. But uhm.. it\'s uhm.. they are
becoming freer and freer and I think that as they become freer and freer
uh.. they\'re gonna become more and more comfortable themselves and
therefore they become more comfortable with us, you know, I see that
happening. And that is all attributable back to the 1965 Voting Rights
Act, you know. Uh.. as, you know, uhm.. one of the most significant
contribution to that, you know, most contri\-- most significant legal
contribution to that, you know. And uh.. so in sense uhm.. you know, you
know, again, you know, that movement was the liberating force for so
many different people, you know.

\<Crew Talk\>

Q: What I gathered what happened is people started to become
knowledgeable that they could vote, and there was power in that.

**Charles Mauldin:** After the march uh.. to Montgomery and one of the
things that\-- that Dr. King said about having been on the mountaintop,
you know, and like in a way many of us uhm.. much further down the
ladder in leadership and some just participants, sort of got on our
level an understanding of what he meant by that, because as we went up
Goat Hill to the capital and you got up to the top of the hill and you
looked back behind you and saw thousands and thousands of people coming
up Dextra \[ph?\] Avenue and lining around the corner you realized your
power and like uh.. it was almost like uhm.. a peak experience, a
mountaintop experience and, you know, many of us felt that\-- that if
we'd died at that moment, I mean that would\'ve been fun \<laughs\>, you
know, I mean it was just such a\-- a glorious triumph, you know, and so
it was a\-- it was a mountaintop experience. But after that uhm.. the
movement after the march on Montgomery, uh.. much of the leadership
began to move out to other places and do other things, the war was
getting started uhm.. you know, the riots were occurring in different
cities and uhm.. Dr. King and his staff were trying to\-- to address
many of those things and uh.. Snick instead of going into uh.. the
countryside and uh.. you know, and so it had been basically left on
local leadership and it\-- it did a great job, Dr. Rees and, you know,
Miss Marie Foster and Mrs. Boynton and other people like that uh.. did a
great job. Uhm.. and uhm.. but the city was still controlled by the same
power structure who were uh.. stubborn about giving up power, and so
between their stubbornness and our sort of uhm.. having gone up and
completely down I guess it may have had a psychological effect on the
movement \'cause there wasn't a lot of activity for a while, there was
sort of quiet work but there wasn't a lot of strong work, and a lot of
people felt abandoned. And so I think that for maybe about 10 years or
so uh.. there were no obvious\-- real obvious gains, you know, and uh..
but the processes slowly began to\-- to go from Civil Rights power to
political power began to occur. But still Joe Smitherman \[ph?\] being
the brilliant politician he was, you know, I didn\'t agree with anything
he did hardly but I\-- I recognized his brilliance in terms of being
able to co-op, you know, uh.. things, you know, that's why he survived
so long. Uhm.. and uhm.. it took a long time for us and just what uh..
35, 36 years it took to get a mayor with Joe Smitherman winning time
after time, and uh.. still only at this point beginning to reap the real
political benefits of like having a James Perkins in the mayor's office,
uh.. or being able to begin that process of really securing uh.. the
real political power here, the transition from a Civil Rights based
power in Selma to a political based power in Selma and in fact uh.. you
know, uh.. the perished state, a perished organization of\-- of power
where you can use the resources of the city now to help get things done
in terms of Civil Rights or human rights or the right thing to do, you
know. And so uhm.. and what\'s significant about that is that the\--
that\-- that movement was spearheaded between the ages of 9 and 21 years
old, you know, uhm.. they were the students, the young people were the
ones who changed the nation primarily. Uh.. we were the\-- we were the
spearhead that uhm.. that broke down the walls of segregation in this
era and uhm.. were responsible for helping to liberate uhm.. ourselves
and with us everybody along the line.

Q: When you say that today to young people what does it mean to them? Is
there some message in all of this for young folk today, many of whom
might come and see this film?

**Charles Mauldin:** Yes my daughter asked me last Friday or Saturday,
she said "Daddy," uh.. said uh.. "How do you feel about having done what
you've done to try to get the right to vote and all the other people
who\'ve done other things too and people don't really register to vote?"
and I said "Well, you know, uhm.. Dr. King taught us not to blame uh..
the people for not following uh.. you because it\'s uh.. the onus is on
the leadership to provide a\-- provide an example for people to follow,
it\'s sort of like you don't blame the customer \<laughs\>, you know.
And so uhm.. I believe that if you give uh.. people a good political
product then they will pay attention, you know." And I let her know that
like I don't feel\-- I don't blame anybody for not participating because
it\'s obvious that they haven\'t been given the type of necessary need
and so uhm.. until\-- because I didn\'t respond like that, you know,
until uh.. I really felt that uh.. I had some buy-in, you know, I
didn\'t talk for two years after, you know, talking to Bernard
Lafayette, but at a point\-- and when I got buy-in, you know, all of a
sudden books became important, uh.. be\-- uh.. non-violence became
important, respect for your community became important, uh.. respect for
your elders became important, uhm.. you know, I\-- I actually picked up
the dictionary and began to learn how to learn English and reading in
the dictionary, because it uh.. I could see my life had a significance
then when I found something that was significant for me to be a part of,
you know. And so uh.. I think that our young people need to be told
these stories but like need to uhm.. be dealt with on where they are now
and not what happened then and not to blame but to try to touch and
inspire.

\<Crew Talk\>

Q: Give me a feeling from your perspective, a white youngster growing up
in those times in Selma, Alabama, what was it like for you?

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** Well growing up, my\-- my father run a shoe
shop on uh.. Washington Street, uh.. the\-- the center of commerce for
the blacks uh.. during that period of time, this is uh.. late 40s, early
50s, was the intersection where the St. James Hotel is, the old bridge
used to be there so they still congregated there even though the new
bridge was in uh.. in at that time in the 40s, but they would uh.. bring
all the wagons and uh.. horses, just uh.. old trucks, just anything they
could get to town in would be packed loaded with people coming in every
Saturday morning, and uh.. they would uh.. do their shopping and
whatever they needed to do for the next week while they were in town.
And my father run a shoe shop and predominantly black clientele uh..
specially on the uh.. uh.. Saturdays, because they were all in town and
it would be so busy that you couldn\'t get in and out the door hardly.
Uh.. so I grew up in a black environment, uh.. that shop was my
babysitter, uh.. I was there when I wasn't at school, I would be at that
shop. My mother worked across the street at the Hills Supermarket, uh..
which was directly across the street, so basically uh.. I stayed around
that shoe shop all my life and some of my fondest memories uh.. I had
uh.. the black shine boy and he also did other things, but he was the
shine boy too, was young, about 18 and he was the strongest man in the
world I thought, he could hold me up with one hand. So uh.. I was uh.. I
was, you know, in a vi\-- environment that most uh.. whites don't get
to\-- wasn\'t\-- wasn't able to grow up in, and I looked at things a
little differently from other people. My father was uh.. he was a very
fair man and he thought, you know, everybody deserved, you know,
whatever and uh.. but uh.. at that period of time and in a\-- in a
southern town like Selma you didn\'t uh.. you didn\'t necessarily voice
your opinion, you just kept quiet and\-- and uh.. cr\-- tried to cr\--
not create a uh.. backlag or anything on\-- on you. So uh.. I basically
grew up that way just uh.. uh.. looking at things but uh.. keeping my
mouth shut and uh.. uh.. as time\-- as things uh.. went on uh.. I\-- I
noticed there was such a difference but uh.. I wasn't really uh..
comfortable even saying anything about it \'cause uh.. the people that
pulled the strings uh.. didn\'t like people saying certain things, and
so therefore you just more or less uh.. tried to uh.. keep from making
any waves.

Q: So there was a real strong imperative towards maintaining the status
quo.

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** There were certain people in town uh.. I
didn\'t necessarily know 'em myself, but I know my Daddy probably did
and uh.. you didn\'t want to aggravate 'em more or less, uh.. you tried
to, you know, just uh.. stay in your right place and uh.. uh.. that\'s
the reason I\-- I\-- when I look at back at the\-- when the uh.. marches
started coming in or the agitators as they were called, uh.. I didn\'t
really understand why then that they were coming in here and uh.. but as
I look back at it now I realize that uh.. uh.. I couldn\'t have said the
wrong thing, or I would\'ve been retaliated against being white.
Therefore if a black person in Selma was to say a certain thing or buck
up to the wrong person uh.. he could be retaliated against to, uh.. even
more severely or, you know, a little more harshly than me, uh.. even
though they might've went to my Daddy the first time and said "Hey your
son, you know, he don't need to be doing things like he\'s doing." So I
realize now that uh.. the\-- the reason the agitators had to, as they
called them, had to come in, was because the locals couldn\'t say
anything, because uh.. if they uh.. they'd lose their job, uh.. they'd
lose the house they was living in or\-- or uh.. they wouldn\'t be
working for Mr. so and so no more uh.. it is a farm or whatever. So\--

Q: I get a strong sense from people here too that yeah there were some
folks who came from the outside but a lot of the agitation or need to
agitate was really kind of indigenous, but that wasn't the way it was
portrayed at the time right?

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** The more uh.. publicity that was aroused the
more uh.. effect you got, and Ben\-- Benzi \[ph?\] Clarke was\-- had his
attitude and a lot of the people\--

\<Crew Talk\>

Q: You were talking about Jim Clarke, start by telling us who Jim Clarke
was.

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** Jim Clarke was the sheriff during that period
of time and uh.. very uh.. racial type person, uh.. after\-- after King
got his response boy he\-- he started acting as soon as people started
uhm.. uh.. demonstrating around Selma he knew that was the place he
needed to be to get the publicity that he wanted, and uh.. to own the
situation that he wanted. So uh.. I personally didn\'t really realize
what was going on uh.. being a worker, you know, worked all day and uh..
had my hotrods at night, fooling with them, really never got uh.. into
the situation of knowing a whole lot, if you didn\'t go around down by
Sullivan you really wouldn\'t know what was going on to amount to
anything and uh.. uh.. being, you know, at work all day uh.. I wouldn\'t
really come in contact with any of the marches or anything like that. So
I didn\'t really pay a lot of uh.. attention to it uh.. probably I
should have but didn\'t, and\--

Q: What were most people like, were most people paying attention?

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** Not a hundred percent I don't think uh.. some
of the older people maybe, but younger people like myself uh.. we were
into a different uh.. type, you know, environment and just really just
didn\'t pay a whole lot of attention to it. Uh.. I didn\'t really uh..
get involved in it until uh.. the uh.. in the latter part of uh.. '64, I
worked for uh.. a car refurbishing, motor refurbishing place, run a
crankshaft grinder and the boss man uh.. was a very racial type person,
uh.. he uh.. I imagine was probably in the Klan, I don't know that but I
kinda\-- by his attitude I kinda figured he would lean in that
direction. And at the first part of uh.. or latter part of '64 he got to
agitating me and my buddy who were both young, we were both young, the
only two young people working there, wanting to know if we had uh..
joined the\-- the Citizen's Council. And uh.. I told him no I didn\'t
and didn\'t really know what the Citizen's Council, what he was talking
about. Uh.. and he kept persistently uh.. you know, bringing it up and
uh.. more or less aggravating us about the fact that we needed to be
joined to it and it wasn't but a dollar, I gave him his dollar to shut
his mouth, you know. And so we\-- we did that and uh.. uh.. about the\--
right after the 1^st^ of the year he got to wanting to know if we
registered to vote yet, and uh.. we hadn\'t and hadn\'t even thought
about registering, didn\'t even cross our mind. Uh.. and uh.. on
February the 1^st^ morning we came into work and hit the clock and
started back at our workstations and he uh.. stopped us, says "Hey, you
all punched in yet?" and uh.. "Yes Sir," uh.. "Well you all's job today
is to go to the courthouse and register to vote." And uh.. I thought
"Well, you know, better than \<laughs\> than working down here," you
know, so uh.. I say yes and he says "Well you all go to the uh.. back
door of the courthouse and somebody'll let you in." And uh.. so we uh..
this is about 7 o\'clock, so we go down to the courthouse and uh.. go in
and get our number and sit in the, you know, chairs waiting on our
number to come up, uh.. you know, at that time you had to get a\-- a
number and when the numbers the\-- I think it was 50 numbers or so were
given out then nobody else could get a number so therefore they
couldn\'t uh.. be in line to register that particular day. So uh.. I
look at it now uh.. they wasn't no much interested in me voting, as me
having a\-- a number. And uh.. I\-- I didn\'t know this until I\-- I
found all the newspapers from the Civil Rights Movement in an attic of a
house I cleaned out and as I\'m reading through the newspapers I get to
finding out about uh.. the different uh.. things that were going on that
I didn\'t really realize was going on that led up to me being
registering to vote that day. And as I read uh.. February the 1^st^, I
found out that while I\'m registering, being paid to register to vote
there were other people, uh.. 200 and something of 'em got arrested for
it, for marching to the courthouse, now\-- or\-- or marching to get to
the courthouse and never made it. And uh.. I\-- I see\-- I saw then
where they used me as a pawn in their little scheme of things and I
didn\'t really realize it at the time but I do now. And I\'ve uh.. the
reason I know I registered to vote February\-- February the 1^st^ of
uh.. 1965 is I had my poll tax receipt, uh.. I paid my poll tax receipt
February the 1^st^ of '65, a dollar and a half when I registered to
vote, so therefore I know exactly when I registered to vote, and I have
the paper that told me exactly what went on the day that I did register
to vote. And as I look back on it I see, you know, how I was used even
though uh.. I might have, should have been wanting to vote to begin
with, it wasn't my idea to begin with and it took another person to uh..
if I hadn\'t uh.. went to register to vote I\'d have probably been
fired, \'cause I know that man's frame o' mind, he\-- he was just uh..
he didn\'t like young people to begin with and I was young, you know,
and uh.. I just more or less uh.. had\-- uh.. did whatever he, you know,
saw fit for me to do \<laughs\> to uh.. stay in favor or to keep from
being arrested, whatever.

Q: So as the tempo of events started to increase there were lots of
young people who were on the streets marching and protesting, what did
you make of all that?

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** I couldn\'t understand why\-- why the
establishment was so against 'em voting. Well the main thing it was the
teachers that were wanting to register to vote, it was the teachers and
they were educated and they, you know, could probably do a better job
than me I figured, and uh.. why they weren't uh.. uh.. wanting them to
register to vote I didn\'t understand so much now as\-- as I do now
that\-- that politics and the head count and all that, I just, you know,
didn\'t understand it was two different groups fighting each other,
and\--

Q: Do you think most of your friends were similarly\--

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** In a daze about the whole thing.

Q: In a daze yeah, that\'s a good way of putting it.

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** Yeah just didn\'t\-- didn\'t comprehend so
much what was going on, there were some of 'em that were pretty vocal
about it and\-- and uh.. wanted to, you know, go down there and do
something about it more or less and all and wanted to be on the
aggravating end of it, where I couldn\'t see the problem with, you know,
if they wanted to march to the courthouse let 'em march, you know, it\'s
a free street, you know. But uh.. I\-- I didn\'t\-- I didn\'t
necessarily want to participate in anything, I had no intention, didn\'t
really know that much was going on until I read about it later.

\<Crew Talk\>

\#### End of CD 7 \####