Q: So you were there on Bloody Sunday, where were you, how did you get
there, what did you see?

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** It was a Sunday, and on Sundays uh.. the two
local teen hangouts or young people hangouts were the Chicken Tree and
the Glasshouse, which were right over the river bridge in the vicinity
of where they march was gonna have to come through. Uh.. we\-- I had\--
I knew there was gonna be talk\-- talk about the\-- there was gonna be a
march and all but I didn\'t really, you know, understand exactly what
was going to transpire. And uh.. as the time started approaching uh..
for the march when the uh.. troopers and all started kinda congregating
out across the road I front of the businesses we were standing in front
of, watching from, uh.. a friend of mine and myself ran across the road
and got on top of a building called the Curb Market, it was a grocery
store like many shopped there, and it was right across the road from
where we were at, so we thought we'd just run across the road to get on
top of the building and we could watch good. And uh.. as we got on the
building the troopers saw us and they\'d just get back down because I
guess they\'re afraid there might be a sniper or something so they\--
they made us get off the top of the buildings but we couldn\'t get back
across the road to where we, you know, uh.. the rest of the people were,
so we were basically standing on the east side of the road, where most
people were on the left\-- uh.. the west side. Uh.. but t\-- I was
standing near the photographer that took the pictures that went in Life
Magazine, and as the\-- as the file of two by two came over the bridge
uh.. as they approached uh.. I was basically just standing there waiting
to see what was gonna transpire, and as I walked up to the line of
troopers and uh.. they stopped and the trooper uh.. I\-- I think it was
MacLeod or somebody told them that they were gonna have to disperse and
go back to the church. And it seemed to me that no sooner than he had
gotten it out of his mouth than here come the troopers kinda stampeding
over them with gas masks on, throwing tear gas and all that, and it just
kinda astonished me that the\-- the way they went about it uh.. they
really had no chance to turn around and go back as far as I could tell,
and uh.. they just tear gassed them and fortunately the tear gas was
blowing kind of uh.. north uh.. east uh.. kinda up the\-- up towards the
bridge but to the east of the bridge, and uh.. I\-- basically all I saw
right there of\-- of that particular uh.. part of it of course I didn\'t
go on to\-- on into town or anything, we just kinda mingled back over to
our cars after it was all over with. But uh.. that's where I was when
the\-- when it happened and.

Q: What did you and your friends talk about, what did you think?

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** Don't really remember uh.. what was even said
or anything, I\-- I think I was in such shock of what had just happened
that uh.. I didn\'t really know what to think. And uh.. just couldn\'t
understand it uh.. happening as quick as it did. Uh.. I\-- I get to read
the papers now of what happened during that period of time, what the
paper said happened. Uh.. the day before the uh.. Bloody Sunday they\--
they had a\-- a march that went into the residential area where Joe
Smitherman \[ph?\] and Wilson Baker lived, and that paper had some
articles in it and uh.. I read that and then uh.. when I started reading
the article to see the\-- the night before Bloody Sunday uh.. Wilson
Baker was the Public Safety Director and Cotton Nichols was his second
in command, uh.. they were summonsed to uh.. Joe Smitherman's office,
and Joe Smitherman told them that they were gonna have to participate in
uh.. what went on over the bridge the next day. And Wilson Baker told
Joe Smitherman that he would resign before he would part\-- participate
in that travesty. And uh.. uh.. Smitherman said well, you know, more or
less you\-- you work for me, you know. And so uh.. as it ended up he\--
he and Cotton Nichols turned in their badges and guns and they left, and
course Smitherman uh.. what we\'re gonna do now uh.. uh.. get the
council in, we gotta do something about it, we don't have a Public
Safety Director anymore. So when the council gets there they uh.. he
tells them "Look uh.. we\'re gonna have to uh.. hire another Public
Safety Director, uh.. Cot\-- uh.. Wilson Baker quit," and they said
"Well quit, what'd he quit for?" says uh.. "Well I told him that he was
gonna have to participate in over the bridge and all and he uh.. told me
he would resign before he\'d quit and he quit," and uh.. they said
"Well, uh.. that's," more or less they just said that\'s not city
property anyway over there, that uh.. there\'s no\-- no need for him to
be over there. Uh.. so uh.. they said "Well get him back and uh.. we\'ll
uh.. put him back in position," and uh.. uh.. he was told that he would
wait on this side of the bridge and when they came back over that he
would restore order uh.. and uh.. as they came back over. And when they
came over he stopped Clarke and told Clarke that uh.. he uh.. for his\--
his people to back off, that they were in charge on this side of the
bridge and that they would take care\-- take over the situation. And
Clarke told him that he\'d been waiting for three months to get their
blanks on the run and that he wasn't blowing his chance, and they chased
him on back down to George Washington Carver and then uh.. back where he
ended up in one down in uh.. uh.. restoring piece and trying to get
things straightened out. And uhm.. I didn\'t\-- I didn\'t know that uh..
I didn\'t know uh.. the way it happened over the bridge just didn\'t
seem like that it was something that uh.. that just was spontaneous, it
was more of a uh.. uh.. something that was planned because it happened
so fast that uh.. uh.. in other words it seemed to me it happened so
fast uh.. they were afraid they were gonna walk back so they had to get
started in a hurry, see. And uh.. I\-- I didn\'t know that it was all
planned 'til I read this paper and found out that\-- that uh.. something
was gonna go over that bridge, that uh.. Wilson Baker wasn't gonna have
anything to do with, so I\'m assuming what happened was planned and that
uh.. he uh.. turned\-- he tur\-- turned it down and was\-- was not gonna
participate. Uh.. I grew up with Wilson Baker, his son uh.. was one of
my best friends, well not best, but one of my good friends growing up,
they lived about a block and a half from me, uh.. I was over at his
house occasionally and uh.. I always thought the world of him, I thought
he was one of the most fair-minded pers\-- people that I\'d ever been
around, in law enforcement anyway. And I just, you know, like I said,
thought\-- thought the world of him and I\-- I felt like that he\-- he
was the key to keeping anything really drastic happening in Selma, kept
peace and kept uh.. order, more uh.. where Clarke, it would\'ve been a
whole different story if Clarke had been in his shoes.

Q: I think the history supports you on that, I think history reveals
Wilson Baker to have been someone who was a moderating force and
certainly fair-minded, and in fact being that he was a friend of the
whole movement. I\'m interested really in you, this whole experience,
you were startled, you were astounded by this, surprised.

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** And shocked.

Q: And shocked, what transpired next in your head in terms of your
relations not only with black people, who still came to your father's
store, the black people you knew on the street and also your friends
some of whom I suspect weren't all neutral about any of this?

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** I had a lot of friends uh.. you know, being
white I had a lot of white friends that\-- that uh.. were real uh..
racist, uh.. I guess they got it from the parents uh.. more or less.
Uhm.. I don't know if all of 'em were genuinely feeling that, or felt
like they had to feel that way, uh.. I felt like that was more of it
than anything, in other words uh.. uh.. you had to act like\-- act a
certain way to keep people from thinking you were the other way, see.
And I\-- I looked at it more that way, I\-- the friends that I had
really weren't uh.. we really never had much to do with, I had a lot of
black friends, uh.. being in the\-- in the position I was in growing up,
uh.. a lot o'\-- a lot o' black people that I knew real well where a lot
of people didn\'t know that many blacks that well, and uh.. so I\-- I
uh.. I learned to grow up\-- I grew up with 'em and\-- and learned to,
you know, see I\-- I didn\'t see a whole lot of difference in\-- other
than the fact that I knew that they couldn\'t go certain places that I
could, but it was not that much I could do about that, you know.

Q: So after Bloody Sunday there was a regrouping of a sort and the next
thing you know there was this big march and the protestors, the black
folk and other supporters are under National Guard protection. And
they\'re on their way from here to Selma, where were you?

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** I was there on\-- I didn\'t\-- I wasn't at
Turnaround Tuesday, because I was working that day, uh.. but when they
marched to Montgomery, went on to Montgomery I was o\-- over the bridge
that Sunday to see what was gonna happen then. And uh.. my attitude uh..
basically was uh.. you know, if they want to march let 'em march, I
didn\'t really understand what it was all about. See\-- see the first
march to Montgomery was technically uh.. as a protest for Jim\-- nothing
being done about Jimmy Lee Jackson's death, see Jimmy Lee Jackson got
killed in Marion in a night march and nothing\-- they\-- in fact the
troopers wouldn\'t admit to\-- that they even shot him at first, and
there was a\-- a\-- kind of a cover-up like deal had, you know, went on
there for a little bit. And uh.. uhm.. they were gonna uh.. symbolically
lay a casket on the Capital steps to\-- and in protest of nothing being
done about Jimmy Lee Jackson's death and when it\-- when they went over
the bridge Bloody Sunday happened and it kinda took the emphasis off of
why they were initially marching and put it on the brutality that
occurred that Sunday. And\-- and uh.. most people uh.. forget the fact
that Jimmy Lee Jackson's death is really what\-- what caused the
original march, uh.. Bloody Sunday.

Q: So this march to Montgomery takes place, it must have been a big
thing.

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** Yeah, uh.. event-wise it was a real big thing
but uh.. I\-- I, not being too involved in it, it wasn't that big a deal
to me, it was more of a uh.. what\'s the big deal, let 'em march, you
know. Uh.. now that I look back on it I see that\-- that it was a big
deal and uh.. it really needed to be done to protest what is\-- what was
going on to help that cause out and I realize that now. See I\-- I\--
when I look at the\-- at the Civil Rights Movement I don't look at it as
a uh.. a black issue, I was not uh.. courted to vote until you or\-- or
black\-- the blacks wanted to vote, then my number became more
important, my\-- my number was not important. Uh.. in fact uh.. being a
young uh.. non-conformist as I was uh.. they didn\'t really want me on
there if they'd have knew my true feelings, but they had to overlook 'em
to get somebody in that number spot on that\-- in that courthouse, and
therefore I would do for that. And uh.. now whether or not I would\'ve
been uh.. welcomed at the polls by some of 'em if\-- if it all hadn\'t
transpired and the Voting Rights that passed. See I\-- I feel like they
won my right to vote, even though I didn\'t even realize it at the time,
I didn\'t have the understanding that\-- that I didn\'t have the right
to vote if somebody else didn\'t want me to vote and there was a uh.. a
hierarchy uh.. in the white uh.. establishment that said they would uh..
they would uh.. uh.. I don't know how to say it, they would establish
the situation the way they wanted it and if uh.. if I\-- if the black
and white situation hadn\'t come\-- become involved I might not even
been allowed to register myself. So I look at it a little differently
as\-- as uh.. the marches uh.. accomplished something for me that I
didn\'t even realize they were accomplishing at the time but I look back
now and say that's the reason I have the right to vote because you have
the right to vote, otherwise I didn\'t have the right to vote if you
didn\'t because I could\-- could be treated the same way you did.

Q: So then time passes, the march takes place, Liola Liozo \[ph?\] was
killed and years go by, from being a young hotrodder you grow up, time
passes and now you\'re in an area where most of the political power has
shifted to black folk, you have a black mayor, the first black mayor.

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** The first\-- first mayor other than Smitherman
since '64. Well I take it back, he resigned and Carl Morgan filled his
position but they had a run\-- the runout\-- to run the next time and
Morgan lost, but uh.. Joe resigned for a few months there.

Q: You've seen a lot of change and from some perspectives there\'s a lot
of change for the better. How do you feel about all the changes? And
what change are we talking about too?

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** You know, being in the black community so
heavily when I was growing up uh.. I knew there\'s a lot of things they
couldn\'t do and a lot of places they couldn\'t go. In fact we had a
Dairy Queen and I\-- I remember it had a black window on the side and
uh.. even though I didn\'t understand exactly why the black window was
around there, I knew it was around there and I knew that anybody black
come up they had to go around there or they would be uh.. dealt with.
And uh.. uh.. now that I\-- I look around I\-- I eat with black people,
uh.. I, you know, socialize with black people, uh.. Selma's
predominantly black, if you don't you\'re not gonna have a whole lot o'
socializing, you know, going on, not that we go out to uh.. events
together, but I have to uh.. have to associate with 'em in the places I
go to and all. And I, you know, I don't look at 'em any different from a
white person, uh.. they\-- they\'re people just like me and I\-- I do
the best I can to be uh.. a\-- a fair person and uh.. friendly to
anybody.

\<Crew Talk\>

Q: You had started saying about when you were growing up.

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** When I was growing up uhm.. you didn\'t really
uh.. associate surnames to black men, uh.. they were usually called by
their first name, and that's the way it was done and that's the way you
normally did it and uh.. I\'ve noticed, you know, after\-- after years
have passed and all, when I greet a\-- a b lack person now I say uh..
"Yes Sir," and "No Sir," and uh.. whatever to 'em. Uh.. I kinda feel
that uh.. they\'re one\-- at one time I couldn\'t really do that, and
not uh.. uh.. people look at me a certain way, you know. Uhm.. now my
Daddy always taught me to be real respectful for any adult, now he
would've uh.. preferred me to say "Yes Sir" and "No Sir" to anybody, but
uh.. but call 'em "Mister this" or "Mister that," just wasn't
appropriate, not that he would've objected, but somebody else might've
looked down their nose, and uh.. thought, you know, I shouldn\'t be
doing that, call 'em "Miss Mary" or\-- or something like that, you
wouldn\'t call 'em "Miss\-- Miss Johnson," it was "Miss Mary," or
"Mister so and so." Uh.. I notice, you know, now it\'s different and
when I call uh.. a black person by uh.. uh.. "Mister" or something it\--
it kinda makes me feel I\-- I reflect back in my memory to I\-- I
couldn\'t do that at one time comfortably, and uhm..

Q: So a man of your age, you\'re at least what?

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** 60, uh-huh.

Q: A lot of friends still around of your age.

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** Sure.

Q: What do they make of all these changes, just give me a general idea?

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** Most people my age uh.. they don't like\--
they\-- they get all caught up in the politics end of it, uh.. uh.. the
welfare giveaway programs, they try to associate that with that's the
problem. And I don't really see it that way so much, I\-- I uhm.. I
think that\-- that they think they got to be that way to be accepted,
and I\-- I normally never say anything to anybody about their views,
uh.. they'll make remarks and all and I\'ll\-- and I\'ll think to
myself, you know, that, you know, they ought not have said that, but
that's their view and it would do me no good to sit there and argue with
'em, I would lo\-- might even lose a friend or something just because of
the fact I didn\'t agree with 'em on certain issues like that. And uh..
but it does kinda uh.. it\'s kinda like a little pinch when somebody
uh.. says something that you don't really understand, you know, they
don't understand even why they\'re saying it, they\'re just saying it
because they think that's what they need to say. And I\'ve\-- I\'ve
noticed that a good bit in my\-- my thinking because I\-- like I said, I
look at it a little differently than most people because I\'ve been able
to read and\-- and find out exactly what went on during that period o'
time, and uh.. I\'ve learned from it I hope.

Q: All of these newspapers that you found cleaning out this house, was
this stuff not in the morgue of any of these newspapers here in the
area? Or they were missing pieces of it?

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** The Times Journal went to microfilm, so they
put everything on microfilm and threw all the originals away. I uhm..
when I found 'em I dis\-- as uh.. my\-- one of my best friends growing
up, Daddy passed away, he was a pack rat, and Johnny gave me everything
in his Daddy's house to clean it out, and I found all these old
newspapers in the attic, thousands of 'em, and as I got 'em out uh..
they had my\-- that was '61, '62, somewhere along in there, '65, and I
got to realizing these\-- uh.. when I started to throw 'em away I
realized these are my high school years, man these have our sports pages
in 'em, so I said I ought to keep these and just see what\'s in 'em. So
uh.. as I get 'em out and start looking through 'em uh.. I got to look
at the front page first before I can go to the sports page and I\-- I
pull it out and I look at the front page, "Oh look at him, Selma Dale
fire, oh man, look at that, that's Willoughby fire, hmm.. that's neat,
uh.. uh.. Hammermille \[ph?\] comes to town," you know, "Wow, I didn\'t
remember that," you know, uh.. "Trade School comes to town," and I get
to seeing these real unique front pages, and then all of a sudden I come
up on one that says "King Allotted 14 Miles For March Today," I said
"King Allotted 14," I\-- and I looked down at the date and it\'s the
20\-- uh.. 1^st^, uh.. 22^nd^ I think it was, uh.. March the 22^nd^, I
said "Okay, these is old Civil Rights paper, this is a Civil Rights
activity, now this is neat," a chill just went all over me when I
realized, you know, this is really neat, these other sports pages are
pretty neat and the front pages of the fire is neat, but this Civil
Rights history is ultra neat. And uh.. so I\-- I immediately started
going through my papers to find out exactly what I had of that period of
time and uh.. I come to find out I had all but about nine days from
January the 1^st^ to the end of March to Montgomery, which is the end\--
the end of March. And uh.. I\-- I was so uh.. uh.. excited about being
able to read what happened back then, even though I didn\'t really
remember any of it, uh.. but I did, I\-- I got to read it and uh..
refresh my memory on then\-- on what happened and all, and uh.. as I\'m
doing it I\'m of course uh.. sharing it with other people and showing
'em to 'em and some of the uh.. black ministers in town got word that I
had 'em so they would contact me and want to get certain days that they
were, you know, something happened they were interested in. So I would
uh.. at that time I would have to go to Montgomery and uh.. have a uh..
a copy or copy the whole page and, you know, it was kinda expensive,
cost me \$10 a page to copy 'em. And uh.. but they were, you know,
willing to pay for it so I would go over and make copies for 'em and
uh.. as they\-- as things went on the interest grew and people were\--
were really interested in it and I saw where the future was gonna be in
that direction too as far as the interest, uh.. and I decided that what
I needed to do was take 'em and print all six days of one week in a
little six page paper, page one and page two of each day, and have a
little six page paper, and the visitors or anybody else that was
interested could buy The Selma Times Journal account of that period of
time. And uh.. so that's when I went to The Times Journal and\-- and
uh.. saw to about having them print\-- reprint these little six page
weekly papers for me.

Q: I think the neatest story is the story about the coins though.

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** Thank you, uh.. would you like to hear about
the coins. Uh.. uh.. as I was growing up uh.. I had a friend, his Daddy
was a coin collector, and this is in like '74, maybe, '75. I was over at
his house one day and his Daddy had\-- had his coins out and he was
checking things out and all, he says "Hey you have to see one of these,"
and he handed me one of these Civil Rights coins, or\-- or Freedom March
coins and uh.. I kinda looked at it and thought it was really neat and
all but it didn\'t, you know, really ring a bell. And uhm.. uh.. it\--
around 8\-- uh.. 1990 uh.. there was a black friend of mine named George
Brackstone, and George uh.. had a museum in his living room of Civil
Rights artifacts and all, and I took a set of my papers over, I wanted
to give him a set of my papers to go in his museum. And as we\'re
looking around uh.. at his\-- all this memorabilia and all, uh.. I see
this coin, and I said "Look here George," I said "Where'd you get this
coin?" and he said "Oh so and so, uh.. I bought it from so and so," uh..
"Well you got any more of 'em?" uh.. "No, that\'s the only one I got,"
and I said "Well dang, I\'d like to have one of them if I could find
one," he said "Well check so and so out, see I got mine from him." So
I\-- I called him up and uh.. he doesn\'t have any anymore but he gives
me a lead and uh.. I get a few leads and then uh.. one day I get uh..
this uh.. lead from\-- for Ted Osborne, uh.. who is uh.. a bit\-- a coin
collecting businessman in town, and uhm.. I end up over at Ted's house
and uh.. as I knock on the door he uh.. well I rang the doorbell and he
comes to door and I knew he knew me but I didn\'t know how well but I
just asked him, I said uh.. "Ted," uh.. I said\-- oh well at first I
said uh.. "I\'m Zanni Murphy and uh.. somebody told me that you had some
old Civil Rights coins," and uh.. he\-- he looked hard back at me and he
said "Who told you that?" and I said "Well uh.. your name come up in a
conversation as having some at one time and I\'m just interested in
one," he said "Well what do you want to know for?" I said "Well I
collect stuff like that and I\'d like to have one if I could find one,"
and he\-- he kinda paused for a second, he said "If I sell you one are
you gonna tell anybody where you got it?" and I said "No Sir, all I
want's a coin," and uh.. he said "Well come on in," so as I come in he
motioned me to sit down at his dining room table and he comes back with
a shoebox full of 'em, and I said "Look at him" to myself, I said "Well
can I buy more than one?" and he says "You can buy many as you got money
for," and I said "Well I can\'t afford many but I\'d like to get about
10 if you don't mind," and he said "Like I said." So I get 10 and uh..
one of my buddies that was wanting one of 'em, if I could find 'em, was
my banker. So I go to his uh.. office one day and I take it and slide it
across his desk to him and he picks it up and looks at it and he says
uh.. he says uh.. "All right, you found 'em," he said "Where\'s mine
at?" and I said "That's yours there," he said well uh.. you know, "I
appreciate it and all." So I get to tell him the story and all and he
says uh.. "You buy all of 'em?" and I got to there was a shoebox full,
he says "You buy all of 'em?" and I said "No, I couldn\'t afford all of
'em," but I got a\-- I got a few of 'em for\-- for me and you and so and
so and all our buddies we was talking about, and uh.. he said\-- he\'s
"Well I appreciate it," he says "You ought to go back and buy the rest
of 'em," and I said "Well I's\-- we haven\'t got that kind of money to
tie up in something like that right now," and he said "Well at least go
back over there and find out how many he\'s got and what he\'ll sell 'em
for," you know. So I went eventually, it was a couple o' months before I
even made up my mind to do it, so finally I went back and uh.. uh..
approached him about buying\-- well for finding out how many he had left
and what I could get 'em for and it was affordable to me, so uh.. my
banker helped me finance the deal and I got 'em in my hands. I\-- I
don't know what would've happened to 'em if I hadn\'t have got a hold to
'em, uh.. I\'m kinda suspecting they might've got dis\-- discarded and
thrown away, because they uh.. had been sitting around 20 years at this
time, you know. So uh.. I ended up buying what was left of 'em.

Q: Were there very many?

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** Yeah.

Q: Any final thoughts about all of this, the 40^th^ anniversary of all
of this is coming up, are you looking forward to it?

**Zanni Lee Murphy Jr.:** I see all the\-- being involved as I am I
see\-- I pay more attention to the activity and all that's going on and
uh.. I notice each year things are getting a little more active, uh..
the trail has uh.. started up and I see that that's gonna really uh..
create a big interest uh.. nationally and not only nationally but
worldwide for uh.. the\-- uh.. the people, you know, tourists to come
back through and see these sites and see the uh.. places where all of
this stuff happened at and uh.. I\-- uh.. I personally feel like Selma
gets a uh.. a really a little more bad flak than it really should,
because uh.. uhm.. other than Bloody Sunday, which was a travesty in
itself, uh.. and Reed getting killed in Selma, uh.. Selma was very uh..
low key as far as the uh.. uhm.. you know, riots and all that kinda
stuff that was happening in other cities and all, and uh.. but uh.. I do
see where uh.. Selma it will always be stigmatized with Bloody Sunday,
which they should be, uh.. I don't say so much Selma but the state of
Alabama, and uh.. being the fact that it happened really outside of
Selma uh.. still it was in the vicinity of Selma so we gonna always be
uh.. the one that the finger's pointed at. And uhm.. I\-- I just feel
like that the\-- the community itself pretty much basically the black
and white community get along great, uh.. there're a few on the top side
and bottom side that are just\-- were not gonna get along with anybody
and we\'ll just have to deal with them in the\-- in the ways we have to.
Uh.. but I just feel like that uh.. the whole community is\-- is really
a lot more together than uh.. than most people think. Uh.. I just uh.. I
got some really sweet black friends and some really sweet white friends
and I\-- I love 'em all.

\<Crew Talk\>

Q: Talk to me about getting involved in the movement, what motivated
you?

**Willie Segal Evanthal:** I think uh.. there were a number of factors
that\-- that got me interested and involved. As a child uh.. I loved
baseball, I was interested in sports, and the story of Jackie Robinson,
and they\-- they didn\'t make a very good movie, "The Jackie Robinson
Story" uh.. doesn\'t hold up as a\-- as a great movie, but as a child it
was very dramatic to see something a little bit about baseball and about
how that change of Jackie Robinson breaking what was called the "Color
Line" uhm.. came about. And uhm.. and he was from Southern California, I
was from Southern California, he went to UCLA, I knew people who went to
UCLA. So that was really my first awareness about race and that there
was a problem about race, in our country and\-- and that might relate to
me. Uhm.. and I had black heroes who were baseball players, Willie Mayes
and, you know, I used to make the diagrams of the great catchers, and it
didn\'t matter if that little picture in the paper was a white guy with
a uniform or a black guy with a uniform making this great play, hitting
a home run, he was my hero. So that was very important for me number
one, and I played a lot of baseball and have played a summer against
uh.. minority Mex\-- I had some Mexican uh.. guys that I played with on
my team and I played against black teams. I didn\'t have any\-- I always
lived in a neighborhood where\-- where black guys were on my team. Uhm..
but I had black heroes in sports. Then fast forward to the march on
Washington which I remembered just a little bit as a high school junior,
uhm.. and then being at UCLA when Selma uh.. really put the Voting
Rights problem into the national consciousness in a way it could not be
ignored. Uhm.. I was already interested, I had written an article, my
high school paper about fair housing, they had the Proposition 13 in
California, the Fair Housing Act, and I had uhm.. written something
about that. Uhm.. and uh.. so I had an awareness, my parents were
members of the NAACP, I\-- I was progressive, Jewish, liberal kind of
upbringing, uhm.. my father became very nervous about me doing these
kinds of things in Los Angeles, I\-- it was fine to do it in the South
when I went there, but not so much when I brought it back home later on.
Uh.. but Selma, I remember the first news reports of Dr. King coming to
Selma on January 2^nd^, uh.. it was almost impossible not to follow it,
because it was so dramatic and the news media did such a good job of
getting to the core of substance, rather than many of what we see now,
the reality\-- this was reality that was dramatic, that was changing the
world, and that people around the world, the emerging countries in
Africa and Asia uh.. were\-- were watching and that when you\'re relate
it to what President Kennedy said of the struggle between freedom and\--
and uh.. another system that didn\'t have freedom how could we even
present ourselves as having freedom in this country if our own citizens
couldn\'t vote, particularly veterans, that made a big impact me\-- upon
me. Medgar Evers \[ph?\], I\-- I\'m not sure if I knew then for sure
that he was a veteran, I now know that he was a veteran, but I knew that
some uh.. black men who had served in the war couldn\'t vote, and that
was a ter\-- terrible contradiction to me, about what I\'d been taught
in school. So then Dr. King came to UCLA, and he announced the Summer
Community Organization and Political Education Project, which was called
the SCOPE project \'cause of an acronym, and asked for people to come,
and he just uh.. people have said "Well what was that like?" or "Why\--
why did that matter?" Uhm.. he was a very uh.. tremendous speaker in
person, showed a sense of humor, I remember he told a joke about uh..
you know, he could stop halfway through telling this story but he was a
black preacher, Baptist preacher and a Baptist preacher didn\'t tell
short sermons, so he was gonna keep going on plus there was more to
tell. So he was very likable, a lot of people don't uh.. I did a show
with Jose Williams on his cable show once, a number of us people who'd
worked on the staff, he asked us about Dr. King, and he knew that I had
not known Dr. King well, I\'d met Dr. King, the other people in the
staff James Orange and uh.. uhm.. Tyrone Brooks and Terry Randolf, they
all could tell personal stories, but I was mostly out in LA after my
summer in the South, by the time I did meet him I said "Well Dr. King
just seemed like a nice guy," and they all agreed, and Jose kind of uh..
"We didn\'t even know what Willie was gonna say" because he knew I
didn\'t know Dr. King and I didn\'t, uh.. but I could tell even from
that small meeting when we met at Ralph Abernathy's Church, he was just
a nice guy, you know, and that was a side to him that didn\'t always
come through in the public, you didn\'t always tell that about\-- and
his\-- his staff loved him because he was a great leader but also he was
just a nice guy to be around, a funny guy apparently. Uhm.. so I was
very impressed with that original speech, he asked for volunteers, and
that connected to me, he said he wanted college students to come. Uh..
in my case I was uh.. more afraid than committed, but one of my friends
was going and he asked me personally and\-- and all the excuses that I
had put in my mind, "Oh I\'m too young," I was only 18, and this and
that, when my friends said "Why don't you come, I\'m going," I\-- my
heart wanted to go uhm.. and uh.. I would\'ve had to say I was too
afraid to follow what I knew was right. And so I said I would go and
uh.. that's how I ended up on uh.. you know, going down\-- down to
Georgia.

Q: Was this your first time in the South?

**Willie Segal Evanthal:** First time, 18 years old and knew nothing
about the South and we were all terrified, driving down because all we
really knew was that they killed white people who came to help black
people and so we were very paranoid. Uhm.. had a few kind of funny
experiences driving, we were in Mississippi, one guy who\'s now a doctor
and was obviously very smart, he\'s an MD but he could not drive, had no
spatial direction, he may have been nervous \'cause we were going South.
And we were in Mississippi in a little town and we\'re driving down the
street and we let him drive and everybody's looking at us, we\'re going
"God then they know, they see the California license plates, we\'re
gonna get a hiding, you know, assaulted on the highway," and then
somebody pointed, we were going the wrong way down a one-way street,
that\'s why they were looking at us. I mean they weren't\-- it wasn't
nearly as immediately scary as we thought it would be, I mean if we had
seen the wrong people at the wrong place it could\'ve been, but not just
the average people weren't gonna kill us because they didn\'t know what
we were driving for. But in our mind it was all built up, that the first
time they saw a California license plate they\'d shoot us.

Q: What discoveries did you make once you got to the South, especially
about the people, and talking to others about Lawrence County, about
Selma, and what makes Southern black people special?

**Willie Segal Evanthal:** Well, you know, uhm.. uh.. a number of things
come to mind. Uhm.. I ended up\-- my first contact was in Atlanta at
Moores Brown College, we had the orientation there, and there was a
great spirit, the\-- the spirit among the activists, the SCOC staff
members and others, uhm.. the singing, I mean if you\'re white you don't
use the\-- the responsiveness in church situations, the Amens, the, you
know, the\-- the interchange between the congregation and that doesn\'t
happen in white churches that I\'ve been in or in\-- in synagogues. But
so there was a spontaneity and a\-- and a connection, there was such
closeness, such emotional closeness among the people in the movement,
the black people in the movement, that you were drawn to it, you know,
some white people sometimes I think tried to quickly make that
transition from the middle class white thing into the black experience
and it didn\'t always fit because you don't, at least for me, I didn\'t
make it immediately, later on I think I felt more comfortable around
black\-- I\'ve told the story to my class that I teach now, Introductory
Sociology, that when I first got there having not been around black
people very much they did kind of all look the same to me, but when I
got past that, which was very quickly, then I noticed all the features
were different, their color gradations and they all became individuals
who happened to have dark skin. And later on, the white people who were
almost universally hostile to me and threatening during that summer,
they kinda all looked the same to me, because I did\-- I only saw their
white skin and that was uh.. a danger at uh.. at the\-- as the summer
went on. So uhm.. and there was tremendous warmth from most all the
black people that we came in touch with, uhm.. they had not had the
opportunity to know a lot of white people, I\-- and I think that's one
of the things that SCOPE did, we lived with black families and we went
out and socialized and we\-- we integrated some restaurants, and some
places uhm.. the law had been changed but nobody was really practicing
any integration. That\'s true sometimes even now in the South, there\'s
still un-comfortableness, although you see\-- you see white and black
people do socialize. Uhm.. but we showed that nothing would happen if
black and white people sat at the same counter, it sounds ridiculous
now, and I\'ve always said, and I\'ve written that it was for my freedom
too, because if\-- if I had a black friend and I wanted to go out to
lunch with that black friend, and I couldn\'t previously to the Civil
Rights Movement, then how free was I, I was not free. And uh.. so that
was pretty clear and I wasn't doing it for anybody, I mean in a sense I
was asked by Dr. King, but it was my country that I lived in that I had
been brought up to be proud of and i\-- and idealistic about through
President Kennedy and Martin Luther King are probably those biggest
figures. And I was not free, uh.. yet, uh.. until those changes could
happen. And uhm.. but there was a great warmth, and a great spirit in
the black community that\-- and a great courage. Uhm.. I certainly did
things that as a part of the movement that I could not have conceived
that I would have probably been comfortable doing, similar probably to
people that go in the military, you\'re around other people who have
more experience than you, you have people that\-- that have uhm.. uh..
been able to confront their frear\-- fears and move on, and that was
Jose Williams who was an\-- who was a\-- a veteran of the military and
Willie Bolden who was an ex-marine. These people that had been\-- been
in the military ran it something like that, indoctrinated us, socialized
us, into uh.. confronting our fears and moving on, and they were with
us. So we did things, at least for myself I did things I would not have
been able to do uh.. to be in front of a march or near the front of a
march uh.. where people could have killed you, or go to jail, which I
did, uhm.. because there were other people.

\<Crew Talk\>

Q: You were in school in '65, '64?

**Willie Segal Evanthal:** '64 I went to UCLA as a freshman, all of '64.

Q: I remember being in school at that time, and folks coming around
recruiting college students to go South. A lot of my colleagues, white
colleagues at Washington State decided to go down there, what were you
guys thinking?

**Willie Segal Evanthal:** Well as I said uhm.. earlier, Dr. King coming
to UCLA was a big\-- big thing. Uhm.. there had been actually groups
from UCLA in 1963 that went on the Freedom Rides and Rick Tuttle, who I
mentioned who was City Controller for 16 years and now is the Executive
Director of the Dational\-- International Center for Students and
Scholars at UCLA. Uhm.. he had been on the Freedom Ride and worked with
Snick and SCOC and been in jail in Savannah. So there were some uhm..
people, you know, veterans of the movement at UCLA but I had not known
then at that point, uhm.. it was really Dr. King coming and then a swirl
of activity after that, uhm.. recruiting for this SCOPE project, SCOC
SCOPE project. And uh..

Q: Was this the first time that SCOC had recruited young college
students?

**Willie Segal Evanthal:** I think this was, in fact there was a little
rivalry at that point, Snick had had the project the summer before, the
Mississippi Freedom Project, and they apparently in looking at through
the Snick Archives which I have wanted to do a South-wide project, but
uhm.. for a lot o' reasons they did not, uhm.. I\-- I think th\-- there
was a lot of uh.. losses, in fact John Lewis has told me this, there was
a lot of suffering they had been throughout and they were kind of worn
out, they were getting kinda worn out. I think that was played out in
Selma with some of the disputes they had with SCOC, part of it was just
battle fatigue, that's my interpretation and I think C.T. Vivien and
others have said that, people can only be on the front line so long
without faltering a little bit, and they've been\-- the Snick people had
been on the front of the front lines, particularly in Mississippi that
summer before and had seen their\-- their colleagues die and\-- and so
on. So they were wearing down a little bit and for whatever reason they
did not get that South-wide project, and Jose Williams had wanted to, he
had uhm.. brought down some white uh.. religious affiliated students to
some of his movements in Savannah, I know that uh.. from his history,
and I don't know exactly who brought the idea first, but at some point
the idea came up around the Selma aftermath and the voting rights, Jose
was put in charge of it, and they picked the name, the SCOPE project was
basically Jose's thing and uhm.. uh.. that was I think the first one. So
the answer to the question is yeah I think that was the first large
scale one, there had already been a few whites but not many.

Q: So where do we go next?

**Willie Segal Evanthal:** We\'re asking maybe about uhm.. how I
represented some of the group, and also the friendships of the staff.

Q: Go for it.

**Willie Segal Evanthal:** You know, my involvement uh.. I think a lot
more white people supported the movement than came down, but it was to
get out o' your\-- what they usually call your comfort zone and go 2500,
3,000 miles away, uh.. you've gotta deal with your parents' reaction,
you've got to deal with your own sense of\-- of uh.. how much risk it is
to you personally, and, you know, I was 18, unattached, my parents
ideologically had raised me to do this, uhm.. I didn\'t even ask them, I
told them, that way it took their worry out of them and it was end of
discussion. And they couldn\'t have said too much uh.. because they had
raised me to believe in these things, uhm.. and it was one of the few
times in my life my father said he was proud of me. Uh.. a year later
when I was in jail in LA for 112 days he was not as happy with me. But
going South was something fine with him, and my mother, there was\--
they had no problem with that but they were worried for my safety but\--
but none\-- nothing ideologically they opposed, like in\-- back in LA a
different thing doing it at home. And I think a lot of the people in the
North saw\-- they didn\'t have those problems in the North, the South
had the problems, and when the movement moved\-- moved North that
alienated a lot of people, and in my family and\-- and a lot of us had
problems when we took that back home. Uhm.. and so a sense is that
myself and the others who stayed involved uhm.. for things really I
think in some ways we couldn\'t control, we got asked to be on the
staff, that was\-- they only asked about 40 of the 400 to go on the
SCOC's staff, and some of us ended up staying more and, you know, in my
mind it wasn't so much choices, it was I always felt that I had a role
that so few of us who may have wanted to be involved were involved, and
then SCOC asked me to be on the staff and that uhm.. uh.. was something
in a sense I had to live up to, that was an honor that I had\-- that was
more important almost than anything in my life uh.. as it went on. I ran
for State Senate in California and I got offered to make a political
deal and somebody to be my mentor, but it would've been going against
all the things I believed in that I had learned from Jose Williams and
being around the people that were around Dr. King, I was not around him
personally except that one\-- one time, and they were far more important
to me than some\--

\#### End of CD 8 \####