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For Linda

By Marsha Rose Joyner

For: Linda
From: MarshaRose

“Child of pure unclouded brow
And dreaming eyes of wonder!
Though time be fleet, and I and thou
Are half a life asunder,
Thy loving smile will surely hail
The love gift of a fairy tale”.

by Lewis Carroll

Time and distance dims memories!
And we all edit our thoughts.
As the White Queen said, “What good is a memory, when it only works in one direction and that is backwards?” In this day of TV and make-believe we have become desensitized and some things are too beautiful to forget.
Thus was Linda!

“A tale begun in other days,
When summer suns were glowing--
A simple chime that served to time
The rhythm of our rowing--
When echoes live in memory yet,
Through envious years should say, “forget”

Linda lived a life of value undefined by property and prosperity.
She lived a life in pursuit of the beauty nestled in everyone and everything – a beauty that is unrecognized by most of us.

Linda led an ever-changing life exploring the unthinkable and the unknowable. Finding the magnificence that is buried deep beneath the surface.

Linda was compelled to give all that she had – a burden not generally appreciated nor understood.

I do not know the time nor the place when she came into my life – but today as I sit with the knowledge that I’ll not hear her happy voice or see her smiling face - I roam from room to room touching the material things that we shared, the precious items she willingly gave away; a set of 19th Century French classic books; a stack of Civil Rights era recordings, [“The Freedom Singers Sing of Freedom Now!” –Mercury Records –1964 – “The Freedom Movement Told by Coretta Scott King” – Caedmon –1969] and many more; her father’s sculptures and of course her love and wisdom.

Linda understood when we give away a small piece of ourselves we get an even greater reward.

And she did give –
I called her “The Modern Day Harriet Tubman”
This Jewish woman with all the gifts that upper middle class in New York can bestow – opened her household to anyone and everyone fleeing the south. Legends of the Civil Rights Movement, the people who most of us only read about and worshiped at their altar, were real to her – because they had stayed at her home.

Linda gave voice to students of other cultures where English was a second language. She opened them to the elements - a world of communications – gave them the courage to read, write and dream in English. She introduced them to poetry in French and Farsi as well as Mozart on the out of tune school piano.

“I have not seen they sunny face,
Nor heard thy silver laughter:
No thought of me shall find a place
In thy life’s hereafter-
Enough that now thou wilt not fail
To listen to my fairy-tale.”

"Love is grabbing hold of the great lion’s mane." The ancient, fiery, Persian poet Hafiz wrote. And she did!
Linda was a warrior: The struggle for equality and justice was never far from the surface. Linda was prepared to suffer for the greater goodness of the world without falling prey to the continued enticement of money and fame. Linda had to go her own way, embolden the weak, bringing light into darkness with a spirit unbroken by the heartbreak and false promises of a world that did not understand.

Playing Beethoven on her beautiful Baby Grand from her living room overlooking West Loch, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii – Linda told me “the ambient noise of your daily routine is about to increase.”
“That is not possible,” I replied.
Bang! Went the piano top. She stood up. The cats scattered.
“Oh yes, they want to build an incinerator in my back yard – we must stop it!”

I walked over to the Lanai doors - It was a clear, bright Sunday. The afternoon sun, moving toward the south facing shores was just beginning to cast shadows. The gentle winds and billowing soft clouds gave an imperceptible repose to the surrounding loch. The sheer beauty of the waves gently licking the shore belied the carnage, which took place here at West Loch- the site of one of the bloodiest events of WWII.

She was right. The noise did increase. We were back on the path again. This time against the modern day Klan dressed in three-piece suits – the corporations and the City & County of Honolulu government and we did stop the incinerator.

“Come; hearken then, ere voice of dread,
With bitter tidings laden,
Shall summon to unwelcome bed
A melancholy maiden!
We are but older children, dear
Who fret to find our bedtime near.”

Last October, Linda, ScottyB, my son, Christopher and I ventured down to Lowndes County. Me, complete with all of my fears and prejudices and Linda armed only with her camera – she so loved everything about the place. The people who'd been involved in the Lowndes County Movement; the overgrown cemetery with its many secrets; the rustic homes that had provided shelter from the rage; the smell of autumn; and the chill in the air. We should all be privy to her view of Lowndes County.

“Without, the frost, the blinding snow,
The storm-wind’s moody madness—
Within, the firelight’s ruddy glow,
And childhood’s nest of gladness
The magic words shall hold thee fast:
Thou shalt not heed the waving blast.”

Linda’s father told her “even if you do not practice being Jewish – always say you are Jewish so that Hitler will not have won”.

Linda lived and loved around the world – from New York, France, Iran, London, Hawaii, California, and “The Black Belt” being devoted to justice and equality - I think when her father welcomed her into the hereafter his first words to her “thanks to you – Hitler will not have won.”

“And, through the shadow of a sigh
May tremble through the story
For “happy summer days” gone by,
It shall not touch with breath of bale,
The pleasure of our fairy-tale”

Lewis Carroll
“Through the Looking-Glass
And what Alice found there”

MarshaRose

June 28, 2006

"[I]t wouldn't surprise me if we both got up to dance."

I wish I could show you one of Linda's photographs. I wrote to one of Linda's dearest friends, Marsha Joyner (who publishes on HungryBlues from time to time) that Linda had a genius for seeing the beauty in people. This was evident in many ways, but it was really striking in her photographs.

To what I wrote before, I want to add that Linda Dehnad and Scott B. Smith were married on June 26, 2002 and then moved back to Alabama where Scott B had been active in SNCC and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in the 1960s. In the 1960s, Linda lived in NYC and was a central cog in SNCC's New York office. At that time she was married to Danny Moses, who was also active in the Civil Rights and anti-war movements. They had a home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan which was a hub for many of the activists who came north from the South. From her first marriage, Linda is survived by three children, Jay, Julia and David.

Some of what I mean by Linda's genius for seeing the beauty in people is in these excerpts from an email she sent me on April 3 of this year.

I heard Taylor Branch talking in Lowndes County yesterday at the "Mother Church" at a book-signing, the best book signing I've ever seen, because all the people there who'd been involved in the Lowndes County Movement got up to talk and told stories and it was warm and tight and it felt historical. . . .

The first woman to introduce herself was Bernice Johnson, age 91, and I was thrilled because I've come across her name in books, and the name "Bernice" always stops me because of Freedom Singer Bernice (Reagon), and finally I see Bernice Johnson in the flesh. She was two rows ahead of me . . . and I crawled up and we shook hands and I told her, not too loud as to upset the meeting cause someone was speaking, I told her how I'd waited a long time to see her and meet her, and when she shook my hand it was like a clear message. I knew for sure that it meant something like "We are sisters, no doubt about that, and I'm as thrilled as you are." Second time I talked with her, was to ask if I could come over her house and take her picture because the lighting in the church made it hard, and her face is so beautiful I want to catch that beauty in a photo. We talked briefly about how I bet she had boys and men running all around her when she was young, and was she as beautiful then as she is now, and she just laughed and grinned and her eyes shone. Her daughter had to write the last two phone number digits cause she had forgotten them, and I also found out that her hearing aid had conked out and I couldn't figure out if it was fixable or her hearing was beyond help. That didn't seem to matter to her or to me. She squeezed my hand several times and it told me that it would be so much more fun to just get up and dance together and relate in some other way than with words. What struck me first was that it was exactly how I felt, and her message was clear and strong. . . .

Now I'm going to check out the pictures I took yesterday and I hope I have one I like of Bernice Johnson. I'll go visit her whether or not I do, and it wouldn't surprise me if we both got up to dance. Or might just sit in our chairs and do our dancing without standing. Lot's of the older women I was sitting with have an easier time walking than I do, but the doctor is going to put something that's not cortisone in my knees at 7:15 a.m. tomorrow and with luck I'll be standing up without groaning which would be good, because these women had all had a hell of a more difficult life than I have, and they have the right to groan before I do. I don't know. Maybe it makes me fit in more easily as we all laugh at each other's expression of pain.

Scott B. Smith and Linda Dehnad

DSCN0184.jpg, originally uploaded by BenTG.

I took this photo of Linda and Scott B when I was with them in Montgomery, AL last summer.

"Another SNCC warrior has died."

Those were the first words from Scott B. Smith, Jr when he reached me on the phone earlier this afternoon.

He wanted to inform me and all who knew her that Linda Dehnad, his wife, died this morning of undetermined causes at age 69.

Linda went to Jackson Hospital in Montgomery, AL last night because she was suffering from severe stomach pain. It happened to be her and Scott B's wedding anniversary. Exteremely frustrated and at her wits end after waiting for more than five hours to have her pain treated and her condition addressed, Linda asked Scott B to take her home around 9:30 PM. Scott B took care of Linda through the night; he fell asleep for a couple of hours at about 4 AM. When he woke up again at about 6 AM, Linda was dead.

Scott B said, "Linda came back to Montgomery with me to work with the people of Lowndes County. Though she was treated badly, she loved Lowndes County. Linda was a warrior. She never stopped trying to work with people. Anything she could do: she was doing it. She was concerned about the children. When she was teaching and was asked to use corporal punishment, Linda said, 'I am not a slave owner. I am a teacher.'"

In her last years, Linda had ongoing pain from fibromyalgia. Linda remained a gifted writer, teacher and photographer and a committed activist. She taught and mentored many, many people, including me (Ben).

Linda has requested that she be cremated. There will be a memorial service on Sunday, July 2, at the Unity Baptist Church in White Hall, Lowndes, County, AL. Church service begins at 11:00 a.m. Memorial service begins at 12:30 p.m.

Scott B welcomes phone calls, email and postal mail with condolences or memories of Linda. He would also welcome financial assistance to pay for Linda's autopsy. You can reach Scott B by phone at 334-262-7547. His mailing address is 2010 McKinley Avenue, Montogmery, AL 36107. His email address is scottbsmith_jr at yahoo dot com.


UPDATE#1 (6/28): I made a mistake on Scott B's phone number. Area code is 334, not what I had before. The number, above, is now correct.

UPDATE#2 (6/28): There is now a time for the memorial service, added above.

~
Read an interview/conversation with Linda Dehnad and her fellow Civil Rights Movement veterans, Jimmy Rogers and Bruce Hartford.

The Bus

By Donnie Williams

Because of Rosa Parks and many of the unknown Montgomery residents that were involved in the bus boycott and a lot more, Montgomery is a better place but we need to be better.

The Rosa Parks bus, the real one, is in Detroit at the Henry Ford Museum. It used to be here in Montgomery, but not anymore.

The owners wanted the bus scrapped after it quit running because it was THE bus. They lived in Chicago and owned most of the bus stations in the south in the 1950s.

Roy Hubert Summerford (my father-in-law) was a friend with the station manager and the dispatcher; they told him the Rosa Parks bus was about to forever be gone.

At the bus station, after 3 times being turned down to buy the bus, the owner finally agreed to sell the bus to Hubert. They said the bus would not ever run again without a new motor, but Hubert was very good with cars and trucks and I guess with buses too. After he paid for the bus he worked on it for about 30 minutes and cranked it up and droved it to his 10 acres of land outside the city limits of Montgomery. The bus went dead 3 times on the way to Hubert's land but it cranked back up and kept going. It was in the winter and Vivian and I were waiting on him to bring the bus to the land. We couldn't wait to see The Rosa Parks Bus; we couldn't believe they let that bus go.

Hubert said that the time for America to know about the bus was far from now (1970). The KKK was still very much active in Montgomery. He took on the job of taking care of the bus. He concealed the bus and kept its identity quiet. He feared that they would bomb it. Notice the Cleveland Ave. at the top of the bus. That is the name of the street route that the bus took everyday. As this driver got to a certain place he could roll a bar inside the bus over his head and change the street marker. In 1971 Hubert took it out of the bus and wrapped it in a blanket, then placed it in the closet to keep it safe. We only took it out when we took pictures of the bus. He also said that we would know when the time was right to tell about the bus.

Right away without telling anyone what was on his mind Hubert knew that bus was as important as the Liberty Bell. Hubert knew its proper place was in a museum.

The owner [of the bus station] was still upset with Rosa Parks and did not want that bus in a museum in Montgomery or anywhere. In 1970 the owner was still mad about the bus boycott of 1955 and 56. The boycott had cost the company $3,000 a day.

In 1985 Hubert passed away leaving the bus to his only child, my wife, Vivian Summerford Williams. I began to take care of the bus.

In the 1990s the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper found out about the bus and called me to do a story on the bus, but the time was not right and I said no. They sent a reporter out to the land; I don't know how they found out where the bus was, but they did. The reporter went to the bus without my permission and took pictures of the bus and put it on the front page of the paper and told America what the bus was and where it was. After that I had to check the bus everyday and had to run people away from it a lot. The KKK tried to catch it afire and shot holes in it. After that I had to rent a warehouse and store it inside under lock and key. This time they couldn't find it.

In 2000, the decision was made to sell the bus, so that the world could enjoy it. However selling was difficult because of proper identification. Everyone in Montgomery knew it was "The Bus." At the time Hubert purchased "The Bus," the employees informally passed on the information about the bus.

Robert Lifson, President of Mastronet, Inc., an Internet auction house, decided he wanted to auction the bus for Vivian and me. He began a search for documents authenticating the bus. And he found them.

Mr. Lifson contacted retired employees of the bus company, including Mrs. Margaret Cummings, widow of the former bus station manager, Charles Homer Cummings. Mrs. Cummings provided a scrapbook of newspaper clippings that her husband had kept during and after the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56.

National City Lines (which was the parent company of the Montgomery City Bus Lines) had employed a clipping service to clip and save any newspaper articles about the company’s bus service. Charles Cummings had kept the scrapbook of newspaper articles from the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott. Next to articles describing the arrest of Rosa Parks, he wrote "#2857" and "Blake/#2857." James Blake was the bus driver who had Rosa Parks arrested. Mr. Cummings’ relatives confirm that he jotted down the bus number because he felt the events were so important.

In September 2001, an article in the Wall Street Journal announced that the Rosa Parks bus would be available in an Internet auction in October.

Museum staff began researching this opportunity. They spoke to people involved in the original 1955 events, to those who planned other museum exhibits, and to historians. A forensic document examiner was hired to see if the scrapbook was authentic. A museum conservator went to Montgomery to personally examine the bus. Convinced that this was the Rosa Parks bus, the Museum's leadership decided to bid on the bus in the Internet auction.

The Henry Ford museum entered the auction of October 25, 2001, and was the high bidder at $427,919. The other final bidders for the bus, both of whom were convinced of its authenticity, were the Smithsonian Institution and the city of Denver, Colorado.

At the same time, the Museum successfully bid on the Montgomery City Bus Lines scrapbook of newspaper articles with the Rosa Parks bus identified in two places. With additional grants the Henry Ford Museum has completely restored "The Bus."

My mother, Louise Williams had to ride the buses to and from work in the 1950s and knew other women who rode the bus and witnessed how the Blacks were treated and she chose to boycott the buses during the boycott also. She walked or rode a cab, but mostly walked.

I can't explain the feeling that I got everytime I got on that bus. It made me feel great; sometimes I even cried. Now everyone who gets to see and touch the bus at the museum can get to feel that too.

I wrote about the bus and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The book is The Thunder of Angels. I did this for the people who were involved in the boycott and never got their story told. I believe God put this on me to do because of the bus and my mother’s bad experiences on the buses in the 50s. I got to meet a lot of the boycott soldiers who became my friends and they told their stories to me to tell.

Look up The Thunder of Angels: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People Who Broke the Back of Jim Crow by Donnie Williams and you will see a little about the book and myself. Beware I am a new author. I own a grocery store here in Montgomery. It took me 20 years to write this book.

Thanks, Donnie

Photos
All photos courtesy of Donnie Williams, except the final photo of the restored bus. Photo of restored bus by Erica Chappuis. Click on photos to enlarge (except the first one, at top).

~
[Editor's note: It is an honor to publish this article by Donnie Williams for the 50th anniversary of the day when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on the Cleveland Avenue bus in Montgomery, Alabama. This article grew out of the correspondence between Mr. Williams and Marsha Joyner, after he found her latest piece on HungryBlues early in November. In that piece, Marsha was pictured in front of what she and many others had been led to believe was the original bus where Rosa Parks performed her momentous act of civil disobedience on Dec. 1, 1955. Fortunately, Mr. Williams has set the record straight with this teaser for his new book.

Marsha Joyner has posted an MS Word version of this article on the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Coalition-Hawaii website. --BG]

Workers In The Vineyard

By Marsha Joyner

Former President of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Coalition-Hawaii, Marsha Joyner, has name inscribed on the “Wall of Tolerance” at the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama

10-2005

We came in road-weary VW Buses, with backpacks and sleeping bags, willing to sleep on any floor, withstand certain adversity, every abuse and encounter death, to add another face to the struggle for equality and dignity in America during the 1950’s and 60’s. There had been protests against the American evil system of Jim Crow, in the courts and in the streets, but after Montgomery the protests swelled to a collective force.

Now in October 2005, we arrived in Montgomery, Alabama “The Cradle of the Confederacy” on jets, sports sedans and air conditioned SUV’s with matching luggage and stayed at the Embassy Suites, showing evidence of years of wear and tear.

I was moved beyond words to see my name and that of my mother among the 300+ names on the Wall of Tolerance. However, I was more impressed and honored to be with the thousands of allies, veterans of the movement, who were in the crowd and whose names did not appear. Black, white, red, yellow & brown, Uncles & Cousins, Mothers & Sisters, Christian & Jews, Gay & straight; some with walkers and in wheel chairs accompanied by children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, proud to share a moment, that for most, if not all of us, never dreamed would come.

Yes, I had a pittance in the Civil Rights Movement, I was the first “colored girl” to graduate (1956) from an integrated school in Baltimore MD after the Brown vs. BOE (1954), walked many picket lines, participated in sit-in demonstrations, gone to jail for having the audacity to ask to be served a 10 cent hamburger at the White Castle, faced death at the hands of an angry white mob when I had the impudence to attempt to register people to vote and walked the ever moving line of Jim Crow. But today I was in the company of real heroes, people who had practiced non-violence here in the overtly violent south.

It was here in Montgomery that a young Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was selected to lead a congregation and began his march toward fame. Here, he preached nonviolence in the face of Jim Crow. Rosa Parks sat down and refused to get up here, and thousands of unnamed “workers in the vineyard” walked to work for more than a year because of her. The bus boycott started here. Heroes whose names are lost to history took a stand for freedom here. People from Hawaii joined the thousands more who walked in the rain and mud for five days from from Selma to Montgomery, seeking the right to vote.

This magnificent day was the dedication of the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, which includes the Wall of Tolerance. The wall incorporates the names of people who have dedicated themselves to fighting intolerance in their daily lives. Using digital technology to spectacular effect, the names flow down a curved 20 by 40 foot wall. The names on the wall include Civil Rights workers from all fifty states and Japan.

Patiently, we stood in line to touch, to feel, to smell and take pictures of the bus in which Rosa Parks had refused to give up her seat to a white man, as if it were the Holy Grail and to gently touch the waters of the black granite memorial which flow over the names of 40 martyrs who lost their lives during the Civil Rights Movement, a period framed by the momentous Brown v. Board decision in 1954 and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968.

The memorial sits only a few blocks west of the first capitol of the Confederacy, the spot where Jefferson Davis took the oath of office to become President of the Confederate States. From Court Square, the order was sent in 1861 to "reduce" Fort Sumter, beginning the Civil War. Ninety-four years later, on a December evening, Mrs. Rosa Parks began a historic bus ride from Court Square. East is the Dexter Avenue (King Memorial) Baptist Church, where a young pastor named Martin Luther King, Jr., led the movement Mrs. Parks began.

"Fifty years ago, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat just a few blocks away from where we are today," said Center co-founder Morris Dees in his welcoming remarks. "You've come from throughout the United States to be a part of the march that she started. "The placement of your name on the Wall of Tolerance shows the march for justice continues," he said.

"This event is about honoring heroes," said U. S. Congressman Artur Davis (D-Ala,), who was the dedication's keynote speaker. "It has been the lot of our country that the bravest of us have laid down their lives, some anonymously, some in full view of the world," Davis said. "All share courage and are heroes. That's what we honor today."

He urged everyone to consider "the enduring power of people who are willing to take a stand." Davis continued, “Standing here, five minutes away from where George Wallace declared that men and women could not be equal, there is a new ground rising. There is a new Alabama in sight. There is a new country in sight. But only if we keep believing in each other, in the power of right."

NAACP chairman Julian Bond, greeted with a standing ovation as he was introduced, served as host for the dedication ceremony.

"Each of us is a ripple, and together we are all a mighty stream," said Bond in his closing remark.

Monday, October 24, 2005 sitting in the airport as we said our goodbyes, the overhead TV monitors flashed an alert, “Civil Rights Giant Rosa Parks dies”. We hugged each other, as it seemed she, the woman whose name was on the invitation to the movement, had waited until the conclusion of the tribute to the other unsung heroes to take her final bow.

She left us physically but her legacy will never fade away.

She is at peace!

Marsha Joyner
October 25, 2005

Photos, courtesy of Marsha Joyner (click to enlarge):
Marsha Joyner with her son Chris German (L.) and with Cedrick Ashe (R.), standing in front of the bus on which Rosa Parks made history.
Marsha Joyner and Julian Bond at Southern Poverty Law Center

Correction:
First photo is taken in front of a replica of the Cleveland Avenue bus, on which Rosa Parks made history. The original bus is on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit, Michigan. For more information see "The Bus," by Donnie Williams.

Montgomery, Alabama — 1956

(Via Marsha Joyner.)

Ted Poston, "They Are No Longer Afraid." The New York Post
June 19, 1956.

You'd been living with [the bus boycott] daily for nearly three weeks in Montgomery, but you couldn't quite put your finger on it. Only through the words of others were you finally able to articulate a feeling, which had been with you from the beginning.

Mrs. Jo Ann Robinson, dynamic president of the Women's Political Council, had been one of the first to pinpoint it for you.

"Pass the lowliest, the most ignorant one, on the street and you'll see it," she said. "He walks a little straighter, his head is a little higher... They no longer lack courage; they're no longer afraid. They're free for the first time in their lives and they know they've won their own freedom. This goes not only for the lowest domestic but for the highest Negro professional also."

J. E. Pierce, Alabama-born economist whom you'd known a decade ago in your native Kentucky, expanded it:

"What you're seeing here is probably the closest approach to a classless society that has ever been created in any community in America. The whites have forced the Montgomery Negro to recognize one thing—that they are Negroes first and then domestics, doctors' wives, scholars or lawyers second.

"But for the first time the Negro is accepting with pride, not shame, the fact that all Negroes look alike to white people. Through their unity, their car pools, their determination to share and share alike, they have found each other—as Negroes... Walk a little straighter... head a little higher.

"This new dignity is not accidental. And it is no accident that they call each other 'ladies' and 'gentlemen' on every possible occasion. For the first time in their lives they feel like ladies and gentlemen from the bottom to the top."

Copyright © 1956 The New York Post. Selected from the Library of America anthology. See Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1941-1963.

She Was Much More Than That

I don't have a TV, so it was Brandon who tipped me off that Julian Bond was one of the speakers at the Capital Rotunda, while Rosa Parks was lying in state. As usual, Bond is excellent—giving a nuanced treatment of Parks' life and exploding the myth that the nonviolent movement and those who advocated self-defense were somehow separate, in binary opposition. Democracy Now! has Bond's eulogy, as well as the remarks from Reverend Grainger Browning Jr., Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Dorothy Height, Johnnie Carr, Oprah Winfrey, Cicely Tyson, and Bruce Gordon, all of which are worth reading. Here is Julian Bond's tribute to Rosa Parks:

We are gathered here to say goodbye and well done to Rosa Louise McCauley Parks. She leaves us as she lived her life with honor and dignity. She was daughter, sister, wife, aunt and mother to the Movement. But she was more than that. She leaves us just short of the 50th anniversary of the day she showed the world you can stand up for your rights by sitting down. Her actions produced a movement and introduced America to a new leader. Dr. King said she was anchored to that seat by the accumulated indignities of days gone by and the boundless aspirations of generations yet to come.

Now, she wasn't the first to refuse to surrender to Montgomery's apartheid. There had been Claudette Colvin, there had been Mary Louise Smith and countless others before her, those who believed they had rights just like any other citizen. But Rosa Parks was the first person to plead not guilty; for her, breaking Alabama law was obeying the Constitution. It was defending justice. She was tired, alright. She was tired of mistreatment. She was tired of second class citizenship. But, you know, she didn't want to be known as the bus woman. She was much, much more than that.

A historian writes, “Although Martin Luther King played crucial role in transforming a local boycott into a social justice movement, he was, himself, transformed by a movement he did not initiate.” In Montgomery, the boycott owed its success to what a historian calls the self-reliant NAACP stalwarts who acted on their own before King could lead. Rosa Parks was first among those NAACP stalwarts. She had been active with the NAACP for more than a decade before the boycott began. When it began, she was secretary to the Alabama NAACP state conference. She was secretary to the Montgomery branch of the NAACP. She was advisor to the youth council of the NAACP. She was secretary to the Alabama Voters League. But she was more than that.

She was secretary to the Montgomery branch of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the pioneering black union, led nationally by A. Philip Randolph and locally by ED Nixon. She writes in her biography that Mr. Nixon once told her, “Women don't belong nowhere but in the kitchen.” She said, “Mr. Nixon, what about me?” He said, “You're a good secretary, and I need one.” But she was more than that.

She became such an icon in American history and popular culture that the Neville Brothers immortalized her. They sang, "Thank you, Ms. Rosa. You were the spark that started our freedom movement. Thank you, Sister Rosa Parks." She was a long-time fighter for justice in Alabama. She and her husbands were strong defenders of the Scottsboro Boys. She fought for their freedom. She was active in the NAACP. But she was more than that.

Nine years ago she delivered the eulogy at the funeral for Robert Williams, much as we are eulogizing her today. For those of you who don't remember, Williams was the NAACP president in Monroe, North Carolina. He answered Klan attacks bullet for bullet. For his courage, the NAACP expelled him. The State of North Carolina made him a criminal. And he found safety and sanctuary in Cuba and China. He became an all but forgotten man. In 1996, an elderly Rosa Parks, the exemplar of nonviolence, stood in a church pulpit in Monroe, North Carolina. She was glad, she said, to finally attend the funeral of a heroic black leader who had escaped the assassin's bullet and lived a long and happy life. The work that he did, she said, should go down in history and never be forgotten.

It was my great pleasure to have known her over the years, giving me precious memories of the time we were together. I was once speaking in Detroit. And when the event was over, my host asked me if I would like to go out for a drink with Rosa Parks. Of course, I said yes. Ms. Parks had Coca-Cola. She turned to me, and she said, “Julian, what are you doing now? Where are you living?” I said, “Mrs. Parks, I've moved to Washington, D.C. I just saw you on TV. You and Jesse Jackson were picketing the Greyhound bus station in support of the striking bus drivers.” And I said, “You know, Mrs. Parks, I've just taken a job at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. It's too close and too expensive to fly there. The train isn't convenient. The best way to get there from D.C. is by bus.” And in her sweet, calm, quiet, respectful, gentle manner Ms. Parks said, “Don't you ride that bus!”

Now, Ms. Parks was much, much more than the bus woman. She was much, much more than that. Eldridge Cleaver famously remarked that when she sat down that December day in Montgomery 50 years ago, somewhere in the universe a gear in the machinery had shifted. Rosa Parks shifted the gears of the universe all her life. Now she belongs to the universe . Thank you, Sister Rosa. Thank you, Rosa Parks.

DeRoyal Carter, January 1, 1975 - August 13-2004

In The Blogosphere
One year ago today, on August 13, 2004, Winston "DeRoyal" Carter was found hanging from a tree on County Road 65 in Tuskegee, AL. DeRoyal was 29 years old. DeRoyal was an African American man.

The story wasn't going to get outside of Tuskegee, except a brave individual got the matter to the attention of Scott B. Smith, Jr., who conducted his own investigation. By chance, I ended up in touch with Scott B. and blogged his account of what happened to DeRoyal.

Carter's body was found at 6:15 a.m. last Friday, August 13. Before the police arrived on the scene, the news got out to the community and a substantial crowd gathered and saw Carter's body, still hanging from the tree. Observers noticed that Carter's shoelaces had been tied together and used to hold his pants up instead of his belt, which was used to hang him from the tree. Community members also saw that there was no available surface for Carter to step off of in order to hang himself. Rather, he would have had to have climbed up the tree with no laces in his shoes and straddle the branch, in order to attach himself to it by his belt, and then lower himself down with his own arms from that position. As a method of suicide this seems highly improbable if not physically impossible.

Before there had been an autopsy or any substantive investigation, the Tuskegee Chief of Police, Lester Patrick, was "leaning toward suicide." I was determined to make sure the story would spread, so I enlisted a number of higher traffic bloggers to join me in posting on DeRoyal's mysterious death. For about a week, the story flew around the blogosphere. About ten days after my initial post, on August 31, DeRoyal Carter's aunt found my blog and left a comment:

My name is Kathy Fetterman and I live in Northern Virginia. Winston Carter, "DeRoyal" as we lovingly called him, was my nephew - more like my little brother since he was raised by my parents (his paternal grandparents). I have major concerns about the nature of DeRoyal's death. People want to say he committed suicide, but I have trouble believing that. The officers in Tuskegee are so quick to rule it a suicide because it's easy. They never allowed us, his family, to see the crime scene pictures as they promised and these pictures were taken with a digital camera supposedly. I don't know how thoroughly they investigated the crime scene or anything. There are so many unanswered questions. I just don't believe my nephew would have done that to himself.

A lot of other deaths have been covered right away - why has it taken so long for this to make the news, especially when there were so many people at the scene? I don't understand that either.

On September 7, Scott B. returned to Tuskegee and spoke with other members of DeRoyal's family, who confirmed Kathy Fetterman's statement. Furthermore, they

raised some concerns about the police investigation of his death. Mr. Carter's family reports that the crime scene was never sealed off. The scene, where Mr.Carter was found hanging from a tree by County Road 65 in Tuskegee, was contaminated by passers through, making it impossible for anyone to cull proper evidence from the area. It has been distressing to Winston Carter's family that the Tuskegee Police does not seem interested in a true investigation.

A number of people, including Kevin Hayden, contacted the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC's response was deeply disappointing.

Another affecting moment was when it turned out that Jeff had known DeRoyal.

Learning More
Over time I learned about further problems with the police investigation and some more things about the circumstances surrounding DeRoyal's death. I'm not at liberty to write about these things at present. What I can say, however, is that last fall I obtained a copy of the coroner's report on DeRoyal Carter. The coroner's report is publicly available, under Alabama's Public Records Act . I think it is time I mentioned some troubling details in the report:

• I received an initial letter, dated Oct. 27, 2004, acknowledging receipt of my request for the report. In the letter it stated, "As of this date, the report(s) has not been completed. Upon completion, a certified copy of the report will be forwarded to you." In the third week of November I received the report with a cover letter from the Legal Custodian of Records , dated Nov. 15, certifying that the attached report is "true and complete." The report itself has a cover letter, from the State Medical Examiner, dated Sept. 21, 2004. It was strange that the letter dated Oct. 27 said the report was not complete, though the report itself was dated Sept. 21.
• On page 4 of the report, on the line for Toxicology, it reads: "Specimen collected, but not submitted." I would wonder about this in any case, but I was particularly struck by it because Scott B. had said he heard that, at first, the police were insinuating that DeRoyal's death was drug related. Even if the police backed away from this assertion, why wouldn't they want a toxicology report if they had suspicion of this?
• Also on page 4, on the line for Clothing, it reads: "One of the sneaker laces has been removed and is used as a belt on the pants." Scott B. had told me about the laces having been taken out of DeRoyal's shoes for use as a belt, and how this made his climbing up the tree even less probable. What I find odd now is that they say it was only one of his shoe laces. I don't know what kind of shoes DeRoyal wore, but that would have to be a pretty long shoe lace to go around his waist. I read that he was not a large man (5' 9", 140 lbs), but I still had to wonder about this.

I wish, for the sake of DeRoyal Carter's family, I had something conclusive to say.

May his soul find rest.

Timothy Mays, 1944-2005

Timothy Mays was a former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) worker and member of the Black Panthers in Lowndes County, Alabama. He became famous to the world on March 7, 1965 in Selma, Alabama. Mays was among the civil rights marchers who set out that day to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge and were beaten and tear gassed by Alabama State Troopers. News cameras were there when a State Trooper clubbed and knocked down Mays, who was carrying an American flag, which he kept aloft throughout the entire violent episode of the attempted march. "A trooper knocked me down, but I wouldn't drop the flag," he said. "I held on to it. My intention was to keep that flag until I died." Despite offers to buy the American flag for as much as $50,000, Mays would not sell it for any price. Instead, he promised to donate the flag to the Selma-Montgomery Historic Trail Interpretive Center now being built in Lowndes County.

Timothy Mays died on Wednesday, July 8, at 8:00 a.m. from complications relating to his injuries in a car crash two years ago. He was sixty-one years old.

Timothy Mays was born in White Hall, in Lowndes County, Alabama. His mother, Mary Francis Mays, was a pillar of the Civil Rights Movement in Lowndes County. Timothy Mays was a SNCC worker in Mississippi and then went on to work in Pike, County in Troy, Alabama, where US Representative and former SNCC Chairman John Lewis is from. Mays worked in the Tuskegee Institute Community Education Project (TICEP) while a student there. Mays was also a member of the Black Panthers community self defense unit, where he served as co-chairman of security operations, formulating plans concerning the defense of homes in case of attack by the Ku Klux Klan.

Targeted by Klansmen to be murdered, Mays was shot at on a number of occasions. Mays' mother was one of the people who lived in Tent City, a settlement on Black-owned property, near Route 80 in Lowndes County, formed in 1965 for sharecroppers who were kicked off their land for voter registration activity. Timothy Mays worked to make sure Tent City inhabitants got fed and helped them find new housing. He also worked on other, similar projects to help Blacks who were evicted from their land.

Timothy Mays was a close and trusted friend of Stokely Carmichael. Between the time that Carmichael left SNCC in 1967 and when he moved to Africa in 1969, he made secret return trips to Lowndes County. When he came into town, Carmichael always traveled with Mays. While they were both in SNCC together, Carmichael regularly deposited copies of his papers with Mays for safekeeping.

Timothy Mays represented himself in civil rights lawsuits on a number of occasions and won each time. During the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965, there were student demonstrations at Alabama State University in Montgomery. Governor Wallace ordered Mays expelled from Alabama State for his participation in the demonstrations. Timothy Mays won a suit on his own behalf to be readmitted into the university, where he subsequently finished his Bachelors degree. More recently Timothy Mays represented himself in a discrimination suit after he was fired from Department of Transportation. Mays won, getting his job back and was awarded back pay, which he had not received before his death. After he won his job back, Mays was transferred to the Alabama Bureau of Tourism and Travel, where he was working until this week.

Former Lowndes County, Alabama SNCC worker Scott B. Smith said, "Timothy was a man before his time in Montgomery." Mays did not believe that the Black church establishment in Montgomery had the interests of the people at heart. He frequently came up with his own ideas for civil rights work, which he pursued independently. When Hyundai was looking for a factory location in the South, it was Mays who spoke with the company's president and convinced him to put the plant in Montgomery. The state of Alabama held a banquet honoring Mays for his contribution to improving its economy.

"Timothy was a walking historical dictionary who pursued civil rights even until his death," Smith said.

FUNERAL INFORMATION (UPDATE):

• Funeral services will be held on Wednesday, July 13, 2005 at Bell's Funeral Home in dowtown Haynesville, AL (near the post office). Viewing of the body will be from 10-11 a.m.
• After the fueral there will be mixing and some food (prepared by Timothy Mays' mother, Mary Francis Mays), at the White Hall City Hall and Community Center.

~
This obituary was based on interviews with Scott B. Smith and Linda Dehnad and the following news reports:

• Civil rights activist Mays dies at age 61 (Montgomery Advertiser)
• Timothy Mays: Civil Rights Activist Dies at Age 61 (National Park Service)

View recent video of Timothy Mays speaking about Bloody Sunday here.

UPDATE 7/14: Additional details about Tent City (general location and year of formation) added in paragraph four.

Selma, Alabama - June 21, 2005

Scott B. Smith looks out at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, site of Bloody Sunday and early point on the Selma to
Montgomery March (photo by Benjamin T. Greenberg).

For more about Scott B., see:

• Cleophus Hobbs Day
• Sitting across from a black panther, watching him eat octopus

Cleophus Hobbs Day

Cleophus Hobbs Day
Saturday, June 10, 2006
David Hall Campsite 1 on the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail
Sponsored by the White Hall Village Educational Association

Here's the story:

After my trip to Mississippi for the 41st Annual Chaney Goodman Schwerner Memorial, I spent some time in Montgomery, Alabama with Scott B. Smith and Linda Dehnad, both from SNCC. ScottB was a SNCC worker in Alabama, with Stokely Carmichael, Bob Mants and Jimmy Rogers. They helped organize the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, which was the local political organization. The symbol of the organization was the black panther, which was its origin as a symbol for Black militant groups. Lowndes County is the county situated between Montgomery County and Dallas County (which includes Selma).

ScottB was known as the Bone Man because he wore a bone around his neck to urge everyone to get together like Ezekiel's dry bones, to register to vote at the Lowndes County jail house. Whites placed voter registration at the jail house as a means to intimidate African American voters out of registering. The jail house was a place where African American men went in, frequently "disappearing," never to be heard from again. When family members came to inquire after their incarcerated loved one, they were told that the prisoner had been released and law enforcement officials did not know where the prisoner had gone.

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, ScottB took me around Lowndes, Montgomery, and Dallas Counties to familiarize me with the work that he did with local communities and with some of the current conditions of African American life in those same communities today.

On Tuesday one of our stops was at the home of Johnny and Betty Hall, members of the family of Mr. David Hall, who owned the property that was the first campsite on the Selma to Montgomery March. David Hall was an African American landowner on Highway 67, off Route 80, which runs east-west through Alabama, making the major route between Montgomery and Selma (and further west to Perry County, which was where Jimmie Lee Jackson was murdered by police, leading to the Selma to Montgomery March). David Hall had not been particularly involved in the Civil Rights Movement, but when he observed the beatings of marchers on Bloody Sunday, he drove his truck the eight miles into Selma, to the Brown Chapel AME Church to offer his land as a campsite for the civil rights marchers. Johnny and Betty Hall presently live on the land David Hall offered for the marchers' use.

When we arrived at the Halls' home, we were met by some of Mr. and Mrs. Hall's grandchildren, who explained that their grandfather was on his way home from the hospital, where he had recently had heart surgery. They called him on his cell phone, and when he heard it was ScottB, Mr. Hall asked that we wait for them to get home. There were chairs set up in front of the garage, so we sat down and watched two of the grandchildren, an adorably pudgy twenty-two month old boy with cornrows and a pretty, slender girl of seven or eight, play out in the driveway, he on his big wheel and she on her bicycle with training wheels.

While we sat there, ScottB started to tell me about Cleophus Hobbs, who lives just down the road in Sunshine Village. Mr. Hobbs was a SNCC worker who was well respected in Lowndes and Dallas Counties. He wore a cowboy hat and carried a gun. He was shot at a number of times by whites and shot back in self-defense. The non-violent philosophy was not dominant in rural areas of Alabama, like Lowndes County, where Klan violence was such that fighting back was often a necessity. Cleophus Hobbs was an organizer in Selma before the famous march: he worked on demonstrations around education and voter registration. Children's education continued to be a concern of Mr. Hobbs throughout the years.

Before long, the Halls' car rolled in with Mr. and Mrs. Hall and a few more of their grandchildren. Though Mr. Hall was just out of the hospital, he sat down, out in front of the garage with us to talk for a few minutes before going inside to rest. One thing led to another in our conversation, and ScottB mentioned something about visiting Mr. Hobbs since he was just down the road. Mr. Hall then told us the news: Cleophus Hobbs had died the Friday before last, on June 10. He died peacefully, in his sleep. The funeral had already come and gone.

ScottB had known Cleophus Hobbs well and worked closely with him and was devastated not to have heard about his death in time to attend the funeral. In trying figure out something constructive he could do with his grief, ScottB came up with an idea:

Next year, June 10, 2006 will be the first celebration of Cleophus Hobbs Day.

Johnny and Betty Hall have offered Campsite 1, which is still on their family land, for the event. Campsite 1 is one of the stops on the National Park Service Historic Trail, following the route of the Selma to Montgomery March, and it is on the same road Mr. Hobbs lived on. The event will be sponsored by the White Hall Village Educational Association, which was founded by ScottB and Linda.

The event on June 10, 2006 will be a celebration of Cleophus Hobbs and it will be an opportunity for people in the area to talk about the things they are currently dealing with and to strategize and organize around their concerns. The first Cleophus Hobbs Day will also be a fundraiser for a commemorative plaque to be placed in Campsite 1, in memory of Mr. Hobbs. ScottB is encouraging other SNCC members to have celebrations for others who have passed and to use these occasions similarly for recognizing deceased civil rights workers' contributions and for addressing the problems people are facing now.

Let there be a James Forman Day, an Ella Baker Day, a Fannie Lou Hamer Day, an Emmett Till Day, and so on.

ScottB points out that these events could also be used as fundraisers to do things like giving money to families who could not afford the funeral costs for their loved ones.

For more information, contact ScottB, scottbsmithjr[at]yahoo[dot]com or Linda Dehnad, lindadehnad[at]hotmail[dot]com.

Last Week Was An Interesting Week

Two Fridays ago (4/8), my mother called to tell me she had just talked with a retired journalist, named Jeff Prugh. Apparently Jeff had come across my posts on the Roosevelt Tatum story, and he wanted to talk with me. Between my father's name and the mentions of Delmar, NY in the Tatum series (I called it "From Delmar to Bombingham"), Jeff figured out how to reach my mother.

Jeff called because he had researched this same story, starting three decades ago, interviewing many of the principle figures who were involved, including the likes of Macon Weaver, the US Attorney who drummed up the case against Tatum in the first place. If you haven't followed the links, or read the posts before, Roosevelt Tatum claimed to have witnessed two Birmingham Police officers planting the bombs that destroyed AD and Naomi King's home on the night of May 11, 1963. The Kings and their five children were in the house when the bombs went off and escaped alive only by good luck. After Tatum made his allegations and made several official statements to this effect, he abruptly retracted his testimony and was then prosecuted for false testimony. Tatum was convicted swiftly and sentenced to a year and a day in prison.

Both Jeff and I—as well as Diane McWhorter—have concluded that Tatum was bullied out of his original testimony through a rigged polygraph test, administered by the FBI in Birmingham. Jeff was astonished to find my work in part because until he read this post, he'd made the same mistake that Macon Weaver had in assuming that the Greenberg mentioned in FBI documents was the famous Civil Rights Movement attorney, Jack Greenberg.

When my mother called two Fridays ago, I was lying in bed, trying to recover from a bad cold in time for a job interview on Monday the 11th. I was still under the weather all weekend, and I wanted to use my spare time to prepare for the interview, so I didn't end up calling Jeff back until Tuesday night (4/12).

It was exciting to compare notes with Jeff because we'd reached so many of the same conclusions from our separate research and because we had each learned things that the other hadn't. While Jeff had spoken to many of the people involved—a number of whom are now dead—I had succeeded in getting additional FBI documents on the case declassified. His research led him more deeply into corruption in Alabama regarding Tatum's case; mine had revealed new details about what happened while Tatum was in Washington, DC with my father and AD King (the next part in the Delmar to Bombingham series, still in the works).

Jeff has done some very interesting work on Dan Moore, a federal marshall who tried to expose the rigging of the grand jury that convicted Tatum. In 1999 Jeff published his research in the Marin Independent Journal , the last paper he worked at before he retired (before that Jeff was a LA Times reporter for twenty-one years, including six as Atlanta Bureau Chief). In 2004, he published an expanded version as part of the King family memoir by Alveda King, AD and Naomi's oldest daughter, who was twelve at the time of the bombing. Here's an excerpt from the version in Marin Indpendent Journal:

In June [1963] while Rooselvelt Tatum is being questioned in Washington, Moore becomes incensed when [sic] learns that his boss, U.S. Marshal Peyton Norville, and Judge Allgood participate in selecting the federal grand jury that would indict Tatum.

In sworn testimony, Moore would say that he told a Washington-based official of the U.S. Marshals Service that his boss had bragged to him about putting his son-in-law on the grand jury.

A Justice Department examiner's report in 1964 would say that "...the jury box was one name short. The then Marshal, Mr. Norville, knowing his son-in-law to be a qualified voter, wrote his name on a piece of paper and put into the box. When the Marshal returned to his office he passed this information to the Chief [Moore] in an informal conversation . . . ."

In 1964, Moore would be subpoenaed by an attorney who represented eight white supremacists and who had been tipped about Moore's allegations that U.S. Marshal Norville had told him he had placed his son-in-law on the grand jury. The eight members of the militant National States Rights Party had been indicted by the Tatum grand jury for disrupting efforts to desegregate some of Birmingham's schools.

After the attorney takes Moore's deposition alleging that the grand jury had been improperly impaneled, Moore is called to Judge Allgood's chambers, and, according to Moore, the judge tells him: "You've got me backed against the wall now. What the hell am I supposed to do?

Moore to Judge Allgood: "Throw 'em all out! Dismiss all the indictments [including Tatum's]!

Amid allegations that the grand jury was tainted, the judge drops charges against the whites—publicly citing "fundamental deficiencies" in the indictment—but the judge doesn't let Moore's testimony impugning the grand jury get in the way of the case the feds had built against Roosevelt Tatum.

Dan Moore continues to press for propriety in the federal courthouse in Birmingham. However, he becomes persona non grata. He refuses an offer of a lifetime pension of $3,971 a year ($331 monthly) if he would retire on the spot, after nearly 20 years with the U.S. Marshals Service, and claim what he says would be a bogus disability. He would describe the offer as "a crooked scheme designed to steal public money and to cover up what I knew about obstruction of justice in the Tatum grand jury."

            ***         ***         ***
Earlier the same Tuesday evening that I spoke with Jeff Prugh (4/12), I found a voicemail on my cell phone after I got out of yoga class. The call was from Bob Adamenko, an old friend of my dad's. Back in October, Bob stumbled on Hungry Blues posts from July about Ray Charles and the 1963 concert he played in Birmingham, organized by my father, as a benefit to send Birmingham residents to the March on Washington. In the comments to one post, Bob wrote:

ben, I was a friend of your wondeful father. your mom would rebember me and my wife elaine. please call me at home. after your dad moved up to albany with the family we stayed in touch and eventually lost contact. I was on line doing some research on the liberal party and i came upon hungry blues. please call me any time. I would love to talk to you. Bob Adamenko-[phone # deleted for commentor's privacy] ps. I have the negatives of that show in birminham (emphasis added)

I called Bob immediately, of course, and we had a great, wide ranging conversation—Birmingham, Ray Charles, Nina Simone, Liberal Party, CORE, James Farmer, the Lower East Side . . .

Bob had been in charge of security for the concert and had taken pictures. Bob was emphatic that I should have the negatives. "If anyone should have them, you should. They belong to you . . ."

Until last week, that was the last I'd heard from Bob. But then there he was on my voicemail, saying he'd been in the hospital again but he is doing better now and he needs my address so he can send my the pictures. I called Bob as soon as I got home from class. I couldn't catch everything he told me about the negatives because my son Aaron (who is now two, by the way) was resisting bed time, and exuberantly showing off his command of two word phrases and multi-syllabic words as he climbed into his high chair to join me and Ruth in our ritual, post-yoga class take out.
            ***         ***         ***
Last Friday (4/15), I received some interesting mail: 1 oversized, padded envelope, from Jeff Prugh; 1 9 x 12 manilla envelop, from Bob Adamenko; 1 flat, cardboard mailer, 6 x 8 1/2, from Jonathan David Jackson.

Jeff sent me a copy of Alveda King's book and a photocopy of the Marin Independent Journal article (not archived on the paper's website). Bob sent me several contact sheets from the Birmingham negatives, a contact sheet of negatives of scenes from Washington, DC in 1963, the day before the March on Washington, two large prints, and a letter of recommendation that my dad wrote for him in 1976, while Dad was Secretary to the New York State Tax Commission. Jonathan sent me his new chapbook of poems (also see this post).

I spoke with Bob on Saturday, to tell him his envelope arrived. He told me he's sending the negatives next.

One of the prints from Bob was a press photo (at right) from John Lindsay's first appearance after he won the New York City Mayor's race in 1965. Lindsay was a Liberal Republican, with a capital "L" and a capital "R." That is, he ran in 1965 on a joint Liberal/GOP ticket. In 1965, my father was Assistant to Executive Director and Legislative Representative for the Liberal Party of New York, and he was one of the driving forces behind Lindsay's mayoral campaign. In this victory photo, you can see the Liberal Party banner overhead. In front, from left to right, it's Robert Adamenko, Paul Greenberg, and John Lindsay.

I'm not at all certain, but I think that might be my mother, very partially visible behind Bob's left shoulder, standing next to Dad.

Update 7/9/05: Jonathan David Jackson's website is down; links to it removed for now.

Exhibit No. 43

Langston Hughes wrote this poem for Robert F. Williams as a New Years greeting and published it in The Panther and the Lash (1967). Nina Simone set it to music and recorded it [mp3] on 'Nuff Said (1968).

Though it ruins the poetry, change "Vietnam" to "Iraq," and the line about taxes, and you've got a song for Winston Carter and the United States in 2004.

I try to follow the little bits of discussion on blogs, live journals, and discussion boards about this story. I can't say I'm surprised, but still it's bothers me when I see some people say it couldn't be a lynching, that such things don't really happen anymore.

But what really bothers me is that this is what the Southern Poverty Law Center has to say about it, too. It's what they said to one of my contacts in Montgomery, who called them the first day Winston Carter's death came to light, and it's what Mark Potok, Director of the SPLC Intelligence Project, said to The American Street's Kevin Hayden when he emailed them about the incident.

From: Mark Potok
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2004 8:29 AM

Kevin,

We don't have any independent information about this death, although if it begins to look particularly suspicious, we will start to gather some.

I would caution you very strongly about leaping to the conclusion that this was a "lynching," or even a murder. In the last three years or so, there have been a very large number of rumors, which have been passed about as fact on a very wide basis, that black men (often after supposedly dating white women) were "lynched," and that their murders were covered up by law enforcement. To date, I know of no case where this has proven to be the truth. Despite the fact that Jesse Jackson has widely publicized one of these cases (Kokomo, Miss.), in each case all the solid evidence has pointed to suicide (in the Kokomo case, the family was convinced to have THREE autopsies, each one of which indicated suicide, Jackson's opinions notwithstanding). I even heard the maker of one of the two recent documentaries about Emmett Till saying on national radio that he knew for a fact that 81 men had been lynched in Mississippi in the last three years, and the cops had covered up each one. Eighty-one! That WOULD be a lot. Again, I know the blog you directed me to claimed to have information about the shoelaces and so on, but this is precisely the kind of information that circulated about some of the other recent cases (in Mississippi and Florida) and in each case I know about, it has proved in the end to be false. I'm not saying that that's the case in Tuskegee, but again, I would warn you against assuming these are murders simply because they occurred in the Deep South. In a large number of the cases that are flatly described by some as proven "lynchings," the local sheriff or police chief has been black -- which immediately casts some doubt on the theory that they're involved in some massive conspiracy to cover up a spate of supposed lynchings.

I don't dismiss any possibility in the Tuskegee case, but I think it's prudent to have a lot more FACTS before going public with allegations of lynchings, murders, or anything of that sort.

I hope this explains our thinking on this. Thanks for writing, and thanks for your interest in these matters. We appreciate them!

To rehash some of what I wrote to Kevin, we wouldn't know that Winston Carter's death had any particularly suspicious appearance if there hadn't been some immediate information gathering by Scott B. I went on to say that Mark Potok is operating on two fallacies. From my email:

The first fallacy involves not allowing for just how profoundly deep seated and how pervasive racist violence was in the "old" south. I think when you read enough about just how bad it was (ever read about a place called Monroe, North Carolina?) and about how total the collusion was among local, state and federal law enforcement (i.e. FBI) . . . it's hard to imagine that all that stuff went away just because some white business owners agreed to let black folks eat lunch and work at their places of business. The second fallacy is that the presence of black person in a position of power, say as Sheriff, like in Tuskegee, "immediately casts some doubt on the theory that they're involved in some massive conspiracy to cover up a spate of supposed lynchings." That's some pretty simple minded analysis if you ask me.

Monroe, North Carolina was where Robert F. Williams had been President of a local NAACP chapter in the 1950s. Read about his struggle there, and you'll see Monroe was a place where non-violent resistance was not an option.

In the aftermath of the 1963 protests in Birmingham, where the Southern Christian Leadership Conference staged one of its most famous victories,

the police department attempted to return to the status quo of race relations. Police chief Jamie Moore responded to the civil disorders by purchasing "100 riot type (military) 12 gauge pump shotguns" . . . During June and July of 1963, officers reexerted their control over the black community. Yet the brutal response to the protest marches compromised the authority of the police. Through force, policemen kept the poor and desperate elements of the community in line. For black people in Birmingham this force often meant "justifiable homicide." On June 28, a policeman killed Blaine Gordon Jr., a seventeen-year-old black male. On July 6, a detective shot, but did not kill, thirty-three-year-old Johnny Patterson, also black. On August 4, an officer killed James Scott Jr., age thirty-five, another black male. The ease with which policemen shot and killed black men reflected a pathology within Birmingham's law enforcement that contributed to future racial crises. (Glenn T. Eskew, But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle, 313-14)

Without specific intervention to remedy the pathological racism amongst police, how can anyone expect there to have been real change? Just because the manifestation of a pathology changes doesn't mean it's gone away.

I don't know enough about the other cases Potok mentions to argue about them one way or another, but to insinuate, as he does, that eyewitnesses who viewed the terrible spectacle of Winston Carter's death fell prey to some sort of group psychosis is insensitive and condescending. I would like to know when exactly this death will begin to look "particularly suspicious."

In Highways to Nowhere, Wallace Roberts recalls:

Forty years ago, at the first memorial service for the three civil rights workers [Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner], held just a few days after the Gulf of Tonkin incident that marked the beginning of the Vietnam War, Bob Moses, the head of the summer project, said simply, "The same kind of racism that killed these three young men is going to kill thousands of Vietnamese."

Make your substitutions, as above, in "Backlash Blues." Here is, indeed, a strange and bitter crop.

------------
"Backlash Blues" manuscript image from: Congress. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws. Testimony of Robert F. Williams. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1970. See African American Involvement in the Vietnam War.

Tuskegee Lynching Update: Family Members Don't Believe Carter's Death Was Suicide

Earlier today, on Tuesday, September 7, Scott B went back to Tuskegee, Alabama and talked with members of Winston Carter's family. The family is very upset by the public statement of the Tuskegee Police concerning Mr. Carter's death. Family members in Tuskegee whom Scott B spoke with supported the statement of Winston Carter's aunt, who wrote in to HungryBlues last week: the family does not believe Winston Carter would have committed suicide. Winston Carter's family has further stated that they will take any legal measure necessary to contest the coroner's report if the coroner declares Mr. Carter's death a suicide.

Winston Carter's family has also raised some concerns about the police investigation of his death. Mr. Carter's family reports that the crime scene was never sealed off. The scene, where Mr.Carter was found hanging from a tree by County Road 65 in Tuskegee, was contaminated by passers through, making it impossible for anyone to cull proper evidence from the area. It has been distressing to Winston Carter's family that the Tuskegee Police does not seem interested in a true investigation.

As I have noted before, outside of blogs that have picked up my coverage of the event, the only news report of Winston Carter's death was one article that appeared in the Montgomery Advertiser six days after Mr. Carter's body was found. Scott B reports that this news black out extends to the Tuskegee News, the local weekly that covers the events of Macon County, Alabama. It is hard not to wonder why the local paper that covers community affairs in Tuskegee has not made any mention at all of the hanging death of a Tuskegee resident.

Scott B also inquired at the office of Hal E. Bentley, Macon County Coroner in Tuskegee. Mr. Bentley replied that he cannot make any comment because all details concerning Winston Carter's death are part of an "ongoing investigation." When asked by Scott B to name a date when the information in the coroner's report will be available, Mr Bentley replied that he could not do so.

Political Autobiography

by Paul Greenberg, circa 1991

Maybe it was 1937 when my oldest brother and I were in a local WPA theater production of Waiting For Lefty. I remember thinking that a union organizer was the noblest of all jobs even better than playing right field like Mel Ott. I also thought that Jewishsocialist was one word and that Jews who were not socialists were the exceptions even though my mother's family was among the exceptions.

We were a decidedly secular family. Judaism was some old fashioned thing that my paternal grandmother held onto and it was sort of embarrassing. I did love seders at my Aunt Beck's house because my Uncle Sam made Exodus come alive. To me Moses was a union organizer and socialist revolutionary and John L. Lewis all rolled into one.

When I was 10 we moved back to New York from Taunton, Mass. I don't remember who lent me a copy of Michael Gold's Jews Without Money. I am still in debt to him because I never returned the book and because I better understood where my father came from. Several years later and back in Boston I was suspended from Brighton High School for circulating this "dirty" book.

It was at Brighton H.S. that I joined the American Student Union and was part of the most left faction. I had two competing dreams. One was to be a great Jazz clarinetist and the other was to be a union organizer.

My love for Jazz made me acutely aware of racial injustice. I tried to be a professional musician but gave it up for the sound reason of not enough talent. My association with Jazz musicians in general and Frankie Newton in particular shaped my view of human possibility and what suffering was about. Buzzy Drutin and Ruby Braff both wonderful Jewish Jazz Men from Boston taught me the similarity between the blues and some aspects of Jewish music. May they both create for many more years.

Both Frankie Newton and Rex Stewart, who was a marvelous trumpet player in the Duke Ellington band, gave me a vision of socialism and art as important components of the human spirit. Frank taught me how to look at Picasso and Evergood and to read poetry ranging from John Donne to Langston Hughes. Rex turned me on to Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and Jack London's The Iron Heel.

In 1946 realizing that I wasn't going to make a living at music I got a job for 15 dollars a week with the CIO and went to Winston Salem North Carolina to help organize the Winston Salem Tobacco Company. It was a massive effort that failed. The company is still not union. It was here that I first saw and heard Pete Seeger. It was at the end of road when the National Guard had broken the Union that those who held the line were taught the adaptation of the spiritual I Will Overcome with the new words We Shall Overcome. It was Zilphia Horton of the Highlander Folk School who came and taught it to us. I can still hear her slightly shrill soprano with a tear drop in its sound and I can still feel the sense of power in defeat as we joined hands for our last walk on the picket line.

When I returned to New York I worked at odd jobs including a record store in Greenwich Village that was a hang out for Bohemia and the emerging Beats. I was the record salesman for Jazz friends like Peewee Russell and Cozy Cole and various artists and poets. It was fun and I learned a great deal but I was restless and soon found a Job with the United Textile Workers in Boston. I worked with a Black organizer named Jack Lee. He was an extraordinary man. He was light enough to "pass" and often did in order to organize in areas that would not welcome a Black man. He was steeped in Black history and introduced me to the work of W.E.B. Dubois. He was also something of a Jewophile and spoke a considerable amount of Yiddish and knew all about Jewish labor and socialist history.

Again I was involved in a losing battle. The post war recession was a full fledged depression in the mill towns of Lawrence and Lowell and Haverill. The sight of workingmen out on the streets looking at the shut down mills still haunts me. Every time I hear Woody Guthrie's "I don't want your millions mister... I just want my old job back again," I see those towns and those men and remember that even the movie theaters were closed except on weekends. We also worked on the Walter O'Brien for Mayor of Boston election campaign. This was the campaign that produced the song "Charley And The MTA" that had a resurrection in the sixties.

Soon I went back to New York and went to work for the UOPWA [United Office and Professional Workers of America]. I was organizing in the direct mail industry and got my first taste of gangster unions. The Senior organizer had been a seaman and organizer for the National Maritime Union. He greeted me on the staff by saying, "It's good to see a young buck like you. You ain't married and you ain't got no kids and you will take chances that old guys like me won't take." My chance time came soon enough. Every time we organized a shop a gangster union showed up with a "contract." It was of course a sweetheart contract and if we struck this tall skinny guy would lead some scabs in past our picket line. One morning around six A. M. there was Skinny ready to lead his scabs when they arrived. The Senior organizer said, "Paul go get him before the cops arrive." I crossed the street and was playing head on sidewalk with him when the cops arrived and arrested us both. At the trial our lawyer claimed I was minding my own business when Skinny insulted my mother and the next thing any one knew he had me on the sidewalk. His lawyer was arguing from somewhat nearer the facts. There being no other witnesses the judge dismissed the case with a lecture about unions getting together instead of fighting. Twenty years later, while moving, I was going through old papers and I found a clipping from a New York paper about that arrest. It stated that Paul Greenberg and John Dioguardi were arrested in a labor dispute. It was only then that I realized that Skinny was the later famous mobster Johnny Dio.

It was about this time that I met Esther Novogrodsky. This was a momentous event. She is of course my wife and aside from being my best and most constant friend she introduced me to her family who are the models of Jewish religious concern that began my wrestle with tradition.

By now the McCarthy period was upon us. The CIO was split and the traditional antagonisms on the left had taken a turn toward suicidal meanness. Then real disaster hit in the form of the Korean War. I got drafted, got married and had all my previous assumptions challenged. War was indeed hell. I was constantly one step away from a court martial. A full Colonel once told me that in his twenty five years in the Army he had never seen a man who was less of a soldier than I was. I thanked him and told him that I was only a civilian with a uniform on. I found myself in Japan after several small wounds and a massive case of dysentery that was written up in the Army Medical Journal. It was in Hiroshima that I had a profound religious experience. In the Hiroshima Museum there is a wall, all that is left of a building destroyed by the bomb. On that wall is etched the shadow of human beings which is all that is left of them. It was there that I came to understand that the distinction between just and unjust wars was blurred and that human existence was at great risk and that only a spiritual revolution would be sufficient if humanity was going to survive.

When I came home neither I or the left was the same. It was the time of the toad. There were no labor jobs open for me and I was sorting out my own thoughts. I did participate in electoral politics and the peace and civil rights movements but establishing myself in the role of husband and father took priority. I went to Columbia University School of General Studies and after a couple of years realized that I was too restless for academic life. As the fifties came to a close and the first stirrings of a new left emerged I was involved with CORE and the organizing of the Committee For A Sane Nuclear Policy. After several years of mundane earn a living jobs I went to work for the United Furniture Workers. I was Assistant President and functioned as the "staff intellectual" and as director of organization. I headed the research bureau, edited the newspaper and directed field organizing. I was often in the South and trying to organize integrated unions. The President of the Union Morris Pizer was one of the last of a vanishing breed of Jewish working class intellectuals. He was as comfortable in Carnegie Hall as in the union hall. After a couple of years the business union element pushed Pizer into a kind of corner and complained that I spent too much on organizing the South. Meanwhile SANE had grown and I was asked to become Executive Director of the Greater New York Council. Here we had some success. We lobbied for a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and got it. We established Hiroshima Day by organizing the first large peace march in America. It went from Princeton, New Jersey to the United Nations and 100,000 people assembled under the words from Isaiah "and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and neither shall they study war any more."

My relationship to the Torah was developing. I met and was awed by Rabbi Heschel. I read Mordecai Kaplan and began to hear rumblings of what was to become the Jewish Renewal Movement. I tried unsuccessfully to create an alliance between Sane and the emerging Civil Rights Movement. Greater New York Sane had grown from 3 or 4 chapters to 40 chapters. Success seems to bring competition and soon there was a power struggle in the organization. I moved on to work for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. We were organizing the March on Washington and again I found myself in the South. This time in Birmingham, Alabama sometimes referred to as Bombingham. I was able to run the first large scale integrated show in the history of Alabama. We were first told we could use the civic center auditorium and then Bull Connor got the permit revoked. Instead we used the football field of a small Black college. We had to build a stage from scratch and we advertised "Bring A Chair For Freedom." I will never forget the sight of thousands of people in orderly array filing down the hill chair in hand to hear Ray Charles, Joey Adams and a score of other entertainers. We raised enough money to send anyone who wanted to go on to Washington. I also got to know Rabbi Heschel through my boss Dr. King. May their memories be for a blessing.

After the great march it was time to put my family life back in order. By now Esther and I were augmented by Francine and Jessica. I got a job as director of the Labor Committee for the Liberal Party. Among my responsibilities was lobbying for a group of progressive Union locals including the Auto Workers, the Garment Workers and District 65. I also was privileged to work with Alex Rose and David Dubinsky, two of the most legendary Jewish Labor Leaders.

I also became involved in many good government causes. We succeeded in ending, for the most part, Capital Punishment in New York State. We also opened up the political process by creating state wide primaries and at the State Constitutional Convention established the groundwork for the 18 year old vote. In these endeavors I became good friends with Dr. George Hallet who was the dean of good government activists. George became a pivotal influence on me. We were instrumental in bringing school decentralization to New York City. I had long been interested in Proportional Representation as a democratic method of election. George was considered by many as the world's leading authority and enthusiast. When PR was designated as the system of election for the 32 decentralized school boards they hired George and me to organize the system and implement the elections. In the course of these events Albert Shanker became frantic and went on a terrible power trip. He did more damage to Black-Jewish relationships than can ever be measured. He also threatened to make me the "Jewish devil of New York." I stood up to him despite much advice to the effect that he would destroy me. I am still here and he is still there so I guess it was a stalemate.

Families grow and by now Benjamin joined the family and I began to be concerned with the cost of college and other things that teenagers need. I found out that there were some people willing to pay real wages for my skills. First I helped establish the New York Health and Hospitals Corp. I was instrumental in establishing abortion by choice in the city hospital system and enjoyed working with Dr. Joe English who had been the medical director of the Peace Corp and was the President of the Hospital Corporation. After a couple of years we moved to Albany where I work for the state as an Affirmative Action Officer. It was early in this period that I met Gerry Serotta at the National Havurah Conference and he engaged me in the development of [New Jewish] Agenda. That involvement has completed my circle of development from Jewish Progressive to Progressive Jew. In short I now know that Tikkun Olam is the Tikkun of my life. What a joy.

Nothing New In Tuskegee, Alabama

I was hoping yesterday or today to post more developments in Tuskegee. There is not yet much more to report. Tuskegee had its mayoral election today (Tuesday), after which it may become easier for some people to speak to the situation more than they're willing to right now.

One of the people whom I've been talking to from that part of Alabama said, "it is a myth that the Civil Rights Movement changed the South." That there is so little press, so little information available is, in fact, one of the resemblances between this "New" South murder and "Old" South racist violence.

Note that the Montgomery Advertiser article I quoted in my original post says

Carter's body was sent to the state crime lab to determine the cause of death. However, [Sheriff] Patrick said that from information his department has gathered about the case, he is leaning toward suicide.

The Sheriff does not have the results back from the state crime lab, yet he is "leaning towards suicide." Why? Based on what evidence? This doesn't sound a whole lot different than stuff like this:

George [Green] was telling me that one time he was with the FBI and they went around and talked to some sheriffs down there in Neshoba County[, Mississippi]. They found this guy, pulled a guy out of the water. He had been shot 69 times in the back. The FBI asked the sheriff, what did he think happened. The sheriff shook his head and said, "This is the damnedest case of suicide I ever saw in my life."

40 years ago in the South, the Klan, local and sate police and the FBI all worked hand in hand. Sometimes law enforcement made a point of simply looking the other way or