Category Archives: Alabama Civil Rights History

Boys in the Church

June 29, 1965 – Camden, AL

  • The morning after the youth and the church were attacked were felt overwhelmed, and defeated, worried about the injured boys and what would happen next

We were all in shock at the brutal attack on Antioch Baptist Church and office that left one of our local workers, Frank Connor, in the hospital for months and severely injured Emanuel Hardley. Roosevelt Wilson is one of the two local youth activists standing in the doorway next to the shotgun blast the next morning. Bob (Luke Block) sitting in doorway. Maria Gitin (Joyce Brians) in print dress. Please leave a comment if you can identify the young lady. The young men attacked were: Robert Powell, Emmanuel Hardley, Frank Connor, Grady Nettles, Henry Robinson, William Truss and possibly Charles Nettles. Youth who volunteered to stay overnight had to be able to run to nearby homes. Much more about this incident including the names of the attackers is in the words of survivors and witnesses is in my book, “This Bright Light of Ours: Stories from the Voting Rights Fight” www.thisbrightlightofours.com Photos by John Worcester 1965

  • Roosevelt Wilson and still to be identified young woman inspect shots after attack on the young in the church.
  • Civil rights youth inspect church damage prior to being escorted out of church at gunpoint by Sheriff Jenkins.

Return to Work: Wilcox County Alabama June 30-3, 1965

This is the second half of a lengthy letter I wrote to my friends, family and supporters while working with SCLC and SNCC in Wilcox County, Alabama during Voting Rights Summer 1965. I was a 19 yr old and my comments reflect my limited background as well as concern to respect the rules laid out for us by our county director Mr. Albert Turner. [See  parens and notes below the letter for additional explanations.]

Dan Harrell SCLC Field Director
Antioch Baptist Church 1966
copyright Bob Fitch Archives Stanford Libraries

“On Tuesday Sheriff Jenkins said we had to vacate the church which we had been using for an office. We refused until he moved us out at gunpoint. At this time he also told Charles Nettles, a local student leader, [and his father Sylvester] that [they] he couldn’t let the white civil rights workers who were living in his house stay any longer.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday things were a little quieter. We planned our strategy for the following week. On Sat. night I made it into Selma to the Chicken Shack for some dancing [drinking] and fun. Sunday was the 4thof July and the local crackers were in high spirits. Most of us spent the day with a family [Jesse and Margaret Brooks] out in Coy – wishing we were really independent.

Monday was a holiday so we all went to the Negro* playground. We swam, roasted hot dogs, and sang songs. It was hard to believe all the horror of life around us when I was in the pool teaching little kids to swim. The Negro pool is 1/4 the size of the white pool and there are 3 times as many Negroes and whites in the area.

Bessie Munden Playground aka “Negro Playground”

I got up at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday and headed out for Boiling Springs. We had to get the folks to register these next five days because we won’t be given any more days until August. I walked over 10 miles of cow pasture with a local Negro and spoke with people about voter registration. That evening we had a student mass meeting and organized the kids to canvass the area the next day. We were quite successful in Boiling Springs and sent 5 carloads of folks to Camden the next day.

On Wednesday, I worked in Pine Apple. It is a small area – most of the Negroes work in the white man’s sawmill. They were scared and lied to us. It was a very discouraging day. [In my letter I did not mention the warm reception I received at the end of the day at local activists Bob and Georgia Crawford’s home while visiting my boyfriend Bob who stayed there.]

Thursday I spent a good, long day in Arlington. We walked about 20 miles and visited about 30 homes. The people in this isolated community were apprehensive but anxious to learn more about registration. I recruited some local people to show me around and help me canvass. We’ve found our luck is usually better if neighbor speaks to a neighbor about the subject. The next day several carloads of people went to the courthouse [to register] from this area.

Thursday night Gov. Wallace spoke in Camden. No Negroes or civil rights workers were present because Wallace had hundreds of his “goon squad” protectors with him. After he left, two people in a car going out to Coy were shot at by city policemen for no reason. Incidentally, I was supposed to have been in that car, but I stayed at the Academy.

Today, Friday July 8th.  I went to the Arlington area again with a Negro boy [Robert Powell] and girl, and a white male SCOPE worker. We were walking along Highway 5 when we noticed a white man in a pickup truck with a shotgun on a rack slowing down. We kept on walking and he turned around and came up behind us. He tried to run over us but we jumped into a ditch. After he tried it a few more times we turned around and headed into a Negro café. We tried to call the Academy but that line was busy. The woman who owned the place was so excited and upset that she made us leave before we could get the call through. We ran and hid in the woods. Our friend had recruited his buddy by this time and was cruising back and forth in front of where we were hiding. The Negro boy changed shirts with the white boy and went to phone again. Almost everywhere he stopped people were too afraid to even let him in the house; obviously someone has been threatening and harassing the people. He finally got the call through and after about an hour a staff car came for us.

Reunion of Wilcox County field workers Robert Powell & Maria Gitin

I wasn’t particularly scared, just provoked. These kind of incidents are exactly what scare people out of registering. Today at the courthouse they [the registrar] were far too slow. Now they say they won’t give us tomorrow to file so we may have to demonstrate. I hope not. The whites are in a brutal mood. If we do demonstrate the SCOPE people will probably not be allowed to participate.

I wish could write more and more often, but I seldom get the chance. We move from house to house, day after day. I don’t stay at the Academy any more, but I can still get my mail here.

Once again I thank you for your prayers and letters.

From Camden with my prayers,

Joyce Brians (Maria Gitin)

www.thisbrightlightofours.com 

 

 

Negro: The preferred term of respect by African Americans at that time.

Lack of black names:We were expressly told not to identify any local blacks, particularly students, by name because they would suffer the consequences where we were gone. Although we were on a first name basis at the times, looking back I am very sorry now that I can only name a my brothers and sisters in courage who identified themselves to me years later. High school student Robert Powell more than once protected me and showed me how to survive in his community. I often wonder were we as kind and as open hearted as we thought we were or did we seem arrogant and ignorant of what they had endured before we arrived? Did they realize how much we did know about their heroic struggle?  Did they know we were considered the ‘Mop up crew’ of the civil rights voting struggle, as Andy Young referred to us at Orientation?  Did they expect us to stay and continue the fight? Dan Harrell asked us to stay but the SNCC students from Selma told us to leave.

Bob Crawford Jr. Freedom Fighter

 

We honor the memory of Bob Crawford Jr. who played a role in the Civil Rights Movement that few knew of at the time. Over the past ten years, he and his family have become my family too. I mourn with them, even as we celebrate his long and legendary life. He told me that his role in the Movement was to set an example by being a successful Black man in America: a veteran, a teacher and devoted father and husband. Then, he’d laugh and say, “Well, I couldn’t taken the nonviolent position; I was more of a Deacons for Defense kind of man,” and laugh his big laugh. I loved to talk with him, hear his stories and share in the joys and sorrows of his wife Jessie, and his grown children. Although his home going is this coming Saturday, we will never stop loving him and remembering just one more great “Bob Jr.” story. “Don’t call me Robert, I’m just Bob!” Crawford.

Luke (formerly Bob) Bock who stayed at the home of his parents Bob and Georgia Crawford, stalwart leaders in the Pine Apple area of the county, did not know that their school teacher son Bob Jr came over nights when Black and white civil rights workers were sleeping in his parents home. Bob Jr came to protect the young SNCC and SCLC workers, sitting up all night on a camp chair with a shotgun to make sure no one hurt his parents, their home or the field staff.

Bob Crawford Jr., taught high school in Monroe County for many years. Over many hours of animated conversation, one of the things Crawford stressed to me was education, “One of the best things about having a primarily African American school system is that now they can teach the whole story. I specialized in American History after I got my masters degree. One of my teachers told us ‘Don’t fool those kids and tell them what the Alabama history books say; it is strictly a white man’s history.’

“You had to go to a foreign county to get a true history. I got information from a friend, a retired military man who collected history from other countries. France and Spain wrote more competent histories that told the truth about US history. Negroes were involved in cattle drives, in the Gold Rush. I read some of these books and learned that Negroes were everything from outlaws to ministers, but that never was mentioned in the regular high school history books. So I inserted the information into my teaching. During the Revolutionary War they didn’t say that there were Black soldiers fighting on both sides, mostly for the North. In South Carolina you had Negro congressmen, but no Black leaders were ever mentioned, except maybe George W. Carver and Booker T. Washington. Negro engineers like Horace King built nearly every bridge that connected Georgia and Alabama—never told us anything about that, but I taught my students all of that. They [the administration] reprimanded me for teaching the truth, presenting the facts. But I didn’t get fired, I resigned to get a better paying job. I had two sweet little girls to put through college. Believe it or not, back then, driving truck paid better and had better benefits than teaching school.”[i]

Bob Crawford Jr’s sacrifice of a prestigious teaching job for trucking was well rewarded by all three of his “little girls” successes in life.  Bob Crawford’s oldest daughter, Debbie C. Porter, retired after teaching 28 years in the Baldwin County Alabama School System. Middle daughter, Joy Crawford-Washington, is currently the Associate Director of Public Relations at the University of South Alabama, and the youngest, Jessietta C.Thomas, is a principal at Hayneville Road Acceleration Academy in Montgomery, Alabama. All are active in community, church and service work.

More of the Crawfords’ family story and their  involvement in the Civil Rights Movement is included in my book, This Bright Light of Ours: Stories from the Wilcox County Freedom Fight, University of Alabama Press 2014 – www.thisbrightlightofours.com

In Memory of Grady Nettles

Mrs. Mattie Nettles in her flower garden

Mother of Grady, Charles, Larry, David, Loretta and four more.

Sending condolences to friends and family of Grady Nettles on his passing. Grady was one of the active students, in fact his whole family was active in the Movement registering voters, protecting the church from the KKK, housing civil rights workers and registering their children to integrate the white schools – all at great risk to their family. In 2009 Grady told me: “They burned down my mother’s house while all them children were in it sleeping. They killed a lot of the farm animals, but we got out and she didn’t give up. She died peacefully with family at her side.” May he now rest with his mother and brothers, and be remembered as a hero among the Wilcox County Freedom Fighters.

I still remember the morning he and his brother rushed upstairs to tell me and Bob that the KKK had broken into the church and destroyed our mimeograph machines, cut the telephone wires and torn up the placards we had made for picketing white stores that would not hire African Americans. He was agitated, but not discouraged. He was right there with us when we were all arrested, yet went back to working in the Movement as soon as we were released.

The Nettles had ten children. All were active in some way, and all paid a heavy price for their courage. Local activists like Grady and the rest of the Nettles were the backbone of the Civil Rights Movement. It was an honor to know him. May he rest in blessed memory.

Letter Home July 26, 1965 Part II

Boiling Springs Methodist Church (AME)
Boiling Springs Methodist Church (AME)

 

Part II of a letter from 19 yr old civil rights worker Maria Gitin in Wilcox County AL July 1965:
I was invited to a Methodist (Boiling Springs AME Church) revival meeting on Thursday night and went in hopes of speaking to the people about registration as they came out. We don’t ever ask to talk about civil rights in a church service because many folks haven’t seen the correlation between Christianity and social action. At the conclusion of the preacher’s long and emotional sermon he asked me to speak. I was quite surprised and pleased. I tried to relate my talk to his sermon and I received a good response from the congregation.
The rural people are very serious about their religion. Partly, I suppose, it is an emotional outlet for their frustrations. These are an oppressed people. But, even more, I can sense that they are really aware of the grace of God. They know they are lucky when their children live to the age of twelve, when the crops are not ruined by rain, when a white man doesn’t shoot their children for helping me canvass. You see, God is the only one who can help them because no one else will. I don’t want to romanticize the Southern Negro, because there is nothing romantic about being hated, harassed and oppressed but these folks have a certain kind of pride and dignity that I have never seen before. And they are freer in a sense than those who try to keeping them down I think their freedom comes from knowing that they are right.
Now, not all the Negroes are with the Movement…obviously or we would have cleaned up the mess years ago. There are hundreds of Uncle Toms and Aunt Janes who say “Mister Charlie has been so good to me…I can’t turn agin him now.” Some people have been pushed so low that they just don’t care anymore. There are those who for a pack of cigarettes will give Mr. Charlie a list of everyone in the Movement so he can fire them, and whip them, and try to hold them back.
But I don’t think Mr. Charlie – symbol of the white man – is going to keep folks down. I don’t think Uncle Tom – symbol of the humble, scared Negro – is going to help them down. The people who are fighting for their freedom value it above their lives. And I’ll bet you the devotion you’ll find here to freedom exceeds any you’ll find among our troops in Viet Nam. We are a nonviolent army, marching steadily towards one goal – freedom NOW!

Read more in “This Bright Light of Ours: Stories from the Voting Rights Fight”
www.thisbrightlightofours.com

Historic NY Times Article on Wilcox County 1966 Elections

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Thanks Bruce Hartford for sending this terrific NY Times 1966 article by Gene Roberts. That month was the first opportunity for newly registered African American voters to elect their own candidates including sheriff. Military veteran Walter J Calhoun took on the challenge in deeply segregated Wilcox County, Alabama. Although he and the other Peoples Choice candidates did not prevail, they paved the way for future success. This in depth gives perspectives Black activists and the white establishment including fascinating quotes from Calhoun, Dan Harrell, former sheriff Lummie Jenkins, landowner Sam Hicks and others on both sides of a deep divide about race and politics.

April 17, 1966 Wilcox County strategy session with State Senate candidate Lonnie Brown, Walter J Calhoun, candidate for Sheriff and SCLC leader Daniel Harrell

April 17, 1966 Wilcox County strategy session with State Senate candidate Lonnie Brown, Walter J Calhoun, candidate for Sheriff and SCLC leader Daniel Harrell

To read and order article:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F0DE2D7113EE43BBC4F52DFB266838D679EDE&legacy=true

For more Wilcox County Voting Rights History: www.thisbrightlightofours.com 

Lonnie Brown, Wilcox County Voting Rights Hero

In the early 1960’s farmers and residents of Gees Bend and surrounding areas intensified their efforts to get African Americans registered to vote in Wilcox County. Although 78% of population, no one had been allowed to register or to vote.  In April 1963, twenty men from the Gees Bend region marched on the Wilcox County Courthouse.  Their primary objective was to be able to vote on the commissioners to the powerful county agricultural committee which allotted federal agricultural subsidies and loans previously denied to Black farmers. Rev Lonnie Brown and farmer Monroe Pettway led this historic march after visits from Martin Luther King Jr and participating in organizing training from SCLC staffer Bernard LaFayette. LaFayette accompanied the men to the courthouse and shared the risk of arrest with the entire group. Although the men were denied access to registration, they were not arrested and returned peacefully proud of their accomplishment in reaching the courthouse, the first documented organized voter registration effort in Wilcox County.

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Lonnie Brown, Gees Bend organizer and leader. Ran for AL State Senate District 19 in 1966. Photo courtesy Bob Fitch Photo Archives Stanford University Libraries

Rev Lonnie Brown was a pastor at Pleasant View Baptist Church who worked as an insurance agent who visited his customers and potential customers on the tenant farms and plantations where they lived and worked. When he began recruiting potential voters along with insurance customers, white Wilcox County landowners organized and filed a trespassing complaint. Two of of the 28 white landowners who signed the complaint were George Findley and James Strother. At a recent presentation in Selma, AL a white gentleman told me that he was proud that his father refused to sign the 1963 complaint.

On behalf of Rev. Brown and local leaders, the U.S. Attorney General’s office brought an action against the landowners (US v Bruce: 353 F .2d 474;1965 US App. LEXIS 3942) and eventually dismissed the complaint, which allowed Brown and others who had prior permission, to once again organize on property where he had been permitted to sell insurance. In 1965, the Federal Court of Appeals found that the federal government made a “strong case” and that the property owners did in fact “intimidate and coerce” the black citizens of Wilcox County for “ the purpose of interfering with their right to vote.”

During the two years this case took place, Rev Brown was forced to sell insurance in adjacent counties, included Dallas County, as he was barred from entering the properties of his clients. His family continues to be active in Wilcox County politics.

Source: U.S. Court of Appeals, (1965), U.S. v Bruce, 353 F2d 474.

This Bright Light of Ours: Stories from the Voting Rights Fight www.thisbrightlightofours.com 

Speaking about Wilcox County Freedom Fighters at the Foot of the Bridge in Selma

Thank you to Park Ranger Theresa Hall, the rest of the staff and friends of Selma Interpretive Center for a great reception Monday June 6th. I so appreciate the attentive, interactive community members, friends who traveled from Camden and South Carolina and for the Montessori school children from Illinois who asked such great questions. Always a treat to see my canvassing partner, Robert Powell, friends Alma Moton-King and Anne Matthews, Rosetta Anderson and more from Wilcox.  You made this a very special day for all of us. It was an honor to be invited by the National Park Service to share the long lost history of the Wilcox County Alabama Voting Rights Fight. http://www.thisbrightlightofours.comFullSizeRender-3 Gitin Selma flyer FullSizeRender-2 FullSizeRenderFullSizeRender-1IMG_2565 (1)IMG_2566 (1)

National Park Service: Selma to Montgomery Trail Talk

We are looking forward to joining old friends and meeting new Monday June 6th in Selma Alabama for a dynamic afternoon of sharing stories, photos and experiences from the Wilcox County Voting Rights struggle. This presentation is suitable for tourists, seniors, high school and older students and the general public. Please spread the word and bring your friends. Thank you, Park Ranger Theresa Hall for your warm invitation to add to the history of Selma and Wilcox.

Gitin Selma flyer

Linking the Generations

Willie H Parker 1965 FullSizeRender 2

Last week, Ms. Cassandra Vee Rodgers wrote to me on Face Book that she wanted to surprise her fiance, Mr Tyrone Bryant, by coming to meet me and having me sign a copy of “This Bright Light of Ours” for him because his father, Willie H Parker of Coy is featured on the book jacket. We had a wonderful visit yesterday.  Growing up, Bryant did not get to know his father well so he was surprised and happy to meet someone who knows about his father’s courageous Camden Academy Class of 1965.

Camden Academy students, including Willie Parker, Sim Pettway, Ralph Eggleston, and many others, participated in almost daily demonstrations from February-May of their senior year. They were tear gassed, beaten, cattle prodded, ridiculed and threatened with suspension, but they kept on with the encouragement and support of Camden Academy Chaplain TL Threadgill, and teachers Mr Parrish and Mr. Foster.

Learn more about the Camden Academy student movement in these books:TBLO book jacket_low res

“This Bright Light of Ours: Stories from the Voting Rights Fight” by Maria Gitin www.thisbrightlightofours.com

“In the Shadow of Selma: The Continuing Struggle for Civil Rights in the Rural South by Cynthia Griggs Fleming