© This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.
MP3 file derived from WAV preservation master, which was derived from original analog cassettes.
The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.
An audio file with the interview complements this electronic edition.
The text has been entered using double-keying and verified against the original.
The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 4 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines.
Original grammar and spelling have been preserved.
All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity references.
All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as "
All em dashes are encoded as —
Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview A-0073, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
As the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966, future Georgia Congressman John Lewis was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement. Lewis begins the story of his involvement in the movement in 1957, when he left his family of tenant farmers in rural Pike County, Alabama, to attend the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee. While a seminary student in Nashville, Lewis began to participate in workshops on nonviolence and became an active and leading participant in the sit-in movement of 1960 in Nashville. For Lewis, the sit-in movement was substantial both for changing his personal views on the civil rights movement and for its ability to generate solidarity within the movement. Shortly after his introduction to civil rights activism, Lewis graduated and was ordained. Seeing the civil rights movement as "an extension of the Church," Lewis devoted his energy to the movement full-time thereafter. In 1961, Lewis participated in the Freedom Rides through Mississippi and Alabama, and he offers an extensive overview of their purpose, the violent opposition the Riders faced, and the support they received from civil rights leaders and the White House. After the Freedom Rides, Lewis returned to Nashville, where he headed the Nashville student movement as a graduate student at Fisk University until 1963. That year, Lewis became the chairman of SNCC, a position he held for three years. In vivid detail, Lewis describes the major activities of SNCC during those years, focusing particularly on the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, as well as on the voter registration drives in Selma and the subsequent march to Montgomery in 1965. Throughout the interview, Lewis situates the role of SNCC more broadly within the civil rights movement as a whole, speaking at length about the transition from religious to political leadership within the movement, the growing importance of voter registration and political participation, and the need for solidarity within the African American community, particularly at the local level. Additionally, Lewis offers his thoughts on the role of Martin Luther King Jr. as a leader of the movement, focusing on King's influence both on him personally and on the movement nationally. Lewis concludes the interview with an overview of the tensions that began to develop within SNCC during his chairmanship, leading to his decision to leave the organization following Stokely Carmichael's rise to power and the shift towards the politics of black power in 1966.
John Lewis served as the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966. In this interview, Lewis outlines his role within the civil rights movement through his participation in the sit-in movement of 1960 in Nashville, the Freedom Rides through Alabama and Mississippi in 1961, the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, the Selma voter registration drive in 1965, and the shift towards the politics of black power within SNCC by 1966. Throughout the interview, he situates the activities of SNCC within the civil rights movement more broadly, focusing on issues of leadership, religion, and politics.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
John Lewis played a very essential role in all of this, and I really just wanted to talk about this whole change and what are some of your experiences and what you have seen, what you feel is significant in what has come about. How did you actually begin, what was your first involvement in what is referred to as "the Movement"?
I grew up in rural Alabama on a farm in Pike County about forty or fifty
miles from Montgomery in a strictly segregated world. You had the white
world and the black world. Segregated school bus
Was this before Greensboro?
It was before the Greensboro sit-in of 1960. We came back after the
Christmas holidays and continued to have the workshops. Right after
February first, second, or third we received a telephone call from
What happened when you sat in?
Well, the first time we took a seat at a lunch counter and we were denied
service, they said, "We don't serve you; you can't be served." It was a
great feeling; it was my first real act of protesting against this
system of segregation. I sort of had this feeeling for some time that
you just wanted to strike a blow for freedom and this was a great sense
of pride to be able to sit down and at the same time become part of an
organized effort. We continued the sit-in efforts. We had what we called
What would happen when you were denied?
We would continue to sit and some days we would stay all day and take
turns. A shift of students would stay there until they were forced to
close the lunch counters completely. Or we would occupy all of the
Were there any arrests?
No. The first arrest in Nashville didn't occur until February 27. This was a day when we had been warned by a local white minister, Will Campbell, who had told us he had word from a reliable source that we would be arrested and that there would be some form of violence. A small group of us, on that day—it was a cold day in Nashville, we even had snow—on that particular day, went down and started sitting in at Woolworth's and later during the day there was some violence on the part of a young white teenager who pulled students off the seats or put lighted cigarettes down their backs, that type of thing. We continued to sit.
Was any of that done to you?
I was hit, but never a lighted cigarette or anything like that.
Was it painful?
Oh, yes. We refused to strike back. The night before we had prepared some
leaflets and I had written the leaflets myself. A series of do's and
don't's that we
Was that the first violent episode?
Yes, that was the first violence.
Do you remember how you felt then, both about the violence and the arrest?
Well, I think studying and attending the nonviolence workshops we had
been disciplined to understand, to be willing to adjust to the violence,
the pain and the hurt. At the same time we didn't concentrate on what
happened to us. But we were there for a purpose and the arrest. It just
sort of inspired us. I didn't have any bad feelings about it. I didn't
necessarily want to go to jail. But we knew, in a sense, using that
How do you see it now, thirteen years later? Do you feel the same way about it.
I feel that what we did was necessary. It helped to start something. And
if I had to do it all over again, I would. To me, it gave the feeling of
being part of a crusade, sort of a movement. It was just not another
angle. It was part of a process and after that particular demonstration,
there was a series of other demonstrations in Nashville. There were
other arrests, other acts of violence, particularly during the month of
March and April. We had a bombing. One of the attorneys
[V. O. Key wrote in his book that] if you understood racial politics in the South, you understood southern politics. There are basically two periods—the fifties and the sixties. If you look at it in terms of civil rights, were much more gains made in one period than another?
Oh yes, there is no question in my mind.
How would you describe the period from 1948 to 1960?
In terms of progress, real progress. Of black people in the political arena in terms of civil rights, there is very little progress. You had very few organizations, very few groups. You had on the national level the NAACP fighting, for the most part involving a small segment of the black community. You had a few professionals here and there but it was not until the first real effort to involve the masses in the struggle came with the Montgomery boycott bus boycott in 1955. In my estimation, not until 1960, when the whole sit-in started, did you see a total community, every segment of the black community, get involved. I think today what is happening since 1955 and particularly since 1960, black people see their involvements an extension—see their involvement in the political movement as an extension of their involvement in the civil rights movement.
During the period of the sixties?
Yes.
So that the gains made between 1960 and 1973 are not more than any other period?
I would think so.
Could you personally visualize that 1960 when you were involved during your student days?
No.
Could you see what the gains might have been?
I think we had some idea. A great many of us thought that maybe just being able to go into a lunch counter and get a hamberger and a Coke, that would end certain forms of segregation, racial discrimination—being able to take a seat on a bus or in a waiting room. There were certain barriers, physical barriers, that we wanted to remove. I think that a great many of us thought that in a short period of time, maybe within a matter of a few months, certain things would happen in terms of removing some of the barriers, some of the legal barriers. But I don't think for the most part that in 1960 we see some of the changes that we see now.
There were more political barriers than social barriers?
There were physical barriers, removing some
Could you have foreseen that Governor Wallace would crown, just this past Sunday, the first black queen of the University and address a conference of black mayors?
No, I don't think so.
What do you think now?
I think that Wallace recognized that black people are registering and that they are voting. In a state like Alabama, when in the early sixties there was only about sixty-five to seventy thousand registered black voters and today there are over two hundred thousand registered black voters in the state. In many counties in Alabama, you didn't have any black voters in the sixties, and now they have black elected officials.
Do you think Wallace's action is symbolically important?
I think it is in a sense. I think the action of Governor Wallace is
saying that the politics have raised. The politics that we knew during
the fifties and sixties is gone. If it's not gone completely, it's on
Do you think that Wallace has changed because he recognized the political power involved in registration of blacks, or more fundamental changes? Is it a change in his attitudes toward blacks?
I'm not so sure that I am prepared to say that the governor has changed
his attitude. Wallace is apparently a very smart and clever politican.
At one time, when he first ran, he was much more progressive and he sort
of inverted to a, I guess you might call, conservative position code
after he became a sort of fighting
When Julian and I went on tour in Mississippi in '71, the same people came to welcome us to the city and that was only in Mississippi. In June of '71, the mayor of Belzoni—and this is the same place in Humphreys County when in the late fifties two NAACP people were shot there—came to welcome us to the city. These guys, I think, can count; they know that black people are registering and they are voting and they want to be reelected.
What does it mean in terms of public policies for blacks, and the way in which blacks are treated, and the way in which resources are distributed and the way government services are provided, what does it mean in those terms?
I think, without question, a growing number of white elected officials recognize that the black vote is a vote to be reckoned with and that they must be able to produce some type of services. They must be responsive to the needs. And on local levels in some communities they are doing just that. It may not be the same tune or the same scale that they are doing it to the white community.
Any specific examples come to mind, particular people, places you've been in the early '60s?
Well, we get reports here, registration
I want to go back to sort of recapture your career. After Nashville what did you do?
After Nashville?
Did you graduate?
I did in '61. But during '61 . . .
Were you ordained?
I was ordained, licensed and ordained. I never pastored a church or
anything like that. I guess you may call me a backslider, not really. I
saw the civil rights movement as an extension of the Church in a sense,
I guess as a real attempt to make organized religion relevant. The black
church has a strong influence on the black community by using the
church. The people in SNCC that went to organize people in some of the
small towns and rural areas many times worked through local church
groups, community organizations and the minister. When I left the
seminary in '61, I went on the Freedom
When we arrived at the Birmingham bus station they took us off, placed us
in protective custody and
It was only about a hundred miles between Birmingham to Montgomery. And
when we arrived about five or ten miles out, all signs of protection,
plane, the state troopers. I have gone this way many, many times before
riding the bus between Troy to Montgomery, Montgomery to Birmingham,
Birmingham to Nashville to school for four years. When you got near the
station you had this eerie feeling. It must have been about ten or
ten-thirty on a Saturday and you didn't see anything and all at once,
when the bus pulled up and we started out of the bus, an angry mob of
about a thousand people came toward the bus. And they first started
reporters and then they started attacking us. Several of us were beaten
and just left lying in the street. And there was one guy, that must have
been the chief officer for the Alabama state troopers. This guy, I can't
think of his name but Newsweek or Time did a big story on him, and he literally saved the day. He
kept people from literally being killed. He fired a gun to disperse the
mob. We went from there to different homes in the city of Montgomery.
Dr. King and Rev. Abernathy happened to be out of the city, they were
speaking some place, and they heard about what had happened and they
came back to Montgomery and planned for a big mass meeting in
Montgomery
Why did they decide to continue the ride?
Well, we felt that it was important that the ride be continued and we
decided that it was important to travel through Alabama, through Selma,
Highway 80, on into Mississippi. The Freedom Ride served not only the
purpose of desegregating or dramatizing the fact that segregation still
existed in the area of public transportation, but also to arouse the
black community in the South. It was like taking the gospel of the civil
rights movement into different parts of the South and it was important
that it go into a state like Mississippi. Could have been very little
activity there, in terms of mass action, some around Jackson State and
So then you went on?
We arrived in Jackson at the Trailway Bus Station there and we were
arrested for refusing to move on, and disorderly conduct, and disturbing
the peace. When the city jail got too full, they transferred us to the
Hinds County jail and from Hinds County jail we were transferred to
Parchman. I will never forget the experience going from Hinds County
jail in Jackson to Parchman, the state penitentiary. The jailers came to
the cell and they did all of this late at night.
You were there for how long?
I was there for thirty-seven days.
And what was the charge?
Disorderly conduct. We were fined and sentenced. You had the choice, you could pay your fine, and I think the fine was something like two hundred dollars and the number of days must have been something like sixty-six days, but if you got out within forty days you had a right to appeal the case. And most of the people got out within the forty days. I left Mississippi after I got out and came back to Jackson and took a train to Jackson back to Nashville.
That was during the late summer of '61; got involved in some
demonstrations in Nashville to desegregate some of the restaurants that
were still segregated. The whole question of employment and some of the
chain food stores. That's when I first met Stokely for the first time,
during the Freedom Ride of '61, because he came down and joined the
Freedom Ride. A large group of students from Howard University came
down. In September of '61, I enrolled at Fisk to study philosophy and
religion. I studied at Fisk from '61 to '63 and became chairman, during
the school year '61, of the local student movement in Nashville. Dealing
primarily with some of the restaurants that were still segregated and
during the period we were able to desegregate several
How many times have you been arrested all together?
Forty times. I haven't been arrested since 1966. The last time I was arrested was part of a little demonstration we had at the South African Council, in New York. That was March of '66. The summer of '62, I spent my entire summer as a SNCC organizer in southern Illinois, Cairo, Illinois, Charleston, Missouri, that area. And it was very much like parts of Mississippi and Alabama.
What did you do after 1966?
After 1966, I left SNCC. Stokely was elected chairman of SNCC in May,
1966. I left SNCC in July 1966 and went to the Field Foundation. I
worked at the Field Foundation from August 1966 to October 1967. From
October '67 to March '70 I served as a community organizer, head of the
Community Organization Project, really for the Southern Regional
Council. That was primarily working with cooperatives, self-help groups
of
How would you describe the major activities of SNCC, especially when you were present?
The major effort of SNCC during the period of 1963 to the early part of
1966 are probably the most significant effort, I think, was probably the
Mississippi summer project of 1964, and the Selma effort. You see, SNCC
first went into Selma, for example, in 1962. The first SNCC organizer
went into Selma with just trying to make some contacts based on a
limited amount of research. In 1962, only 2.1% of the black people in
Selma were registered to vote. And it was at this point in the history
of SNCC, an attempt to organize the people around the right to vote.
SNCC was one of the organizations which received some support from the
first VEP. So, SNCC people working in Selma in 1962 and in Mississippi
and also in Albany and southwest Georgia, did receive some sort of
funding from Voter Education to try to help organize local voter
registration. I think the effort of SNCC to dramatize SNCC interest and
involvement in politics came with the March on Washington in 1963 in the
speech that I gave. We emphasized the whole question of the vote. Tried
to make the point that Kennedy opposed civil rights legislation, would
not make it possible
When was the confrontation in Selma?
March 7, 1965. We had what had been a series of . . .
You said that the Voting Rights Act resulted directly from this?
If there is any single event that gave birth to the Voter Rights Act, it was the Selma effort. March 7 was just sort of a combination of things. We had had a series of protests, organizing efforts in Selma in late '63 and some in '64 and '65. I will never forget when there was some attempt on the part of SNCC as an organization not to bring SCLC in. But the local people—Mrs. Boynton, head of Dallas County Voters' League, and Rev. Frederick Reese, who is now a member of the Selma City Council—these two emerging local leaders of Selma wanted to bring Dr. King in. Some of the people in SNCC felt that Martin King shouldn't come into Selma and some of us felt that he should. I was one of the ones that felt that he should, that he would bring some attention to the problem and help dramatize the problem.
What was the opposition's feeling?
Well, some people felt that, you know, SNCC had been there since 1962
working and organizing and we have a vital local movement going and why,
at this
In the meantime, it was not just a demonstration going on in the city of Selma. There were many SNCC people and SCLC people working out in the rural part of the country organizing a community group trying to get people to come down to the courthouse to register. After the violence in Selma, and the violence in Perry County and Marion, Alabama, where Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot, some people felt that we had to march on Montgomery. Made a decision to march. Some people opposed the march and some people supported it. We decided to march on March 7, '65, but when I look back I'm really not sure on that particular day when a group of us about six hundred of us decided to march, whether we were literally prepared to march from Selma to Montgomery that day. Because we hadn't really made any plans as to where to stop along the way. We did have bags and knapsacks and that type of thing, but we hadn't made any plans to have food and necessary supplies along the way. We gathered together at Brown Chapel A. M. E. Church that Sunday afternoon about two o'clock. Dr. King for some reason didn't come to Selma that day.
Andy Young, Hosea Williams, James Bevel from SCLC—they had to draw to
find out what person from their organization
How did you feel at that moment when you saw them coming?
I felt frightened. I felt that we had to stay there. I felt that we had to stand there. There was something that was said and you couldn't turn back. We had to stay there and I didn't believe that the troopers would do what they did, for some strange reason, but I felt that we had to stay there. And we stayed there. I remember, we were beaten.
You got a fractured skull in that?
Yes, I did.
Was that a single blow from a trooper?
A single blow apparently from a club, I guess, of a trooper, but I felt like when that whole thing from the gas that this is really the end. I guess the greatest concern was also for the people. Most of the march was made of young teenagers and women. A lot of the people had just left the church and came straight to Brown Chapel A. M. E. Church. It was a frightening moment, really terrifying.
Was that the most frightening moment you have ever had?
Yes, without question. I think we were literally lucky, all of us, for no
one to be seriously hurt or killed. You know, Sheriff Clark had a posse
that he had organized. He had people with bullwhips, with ropes, running
through the marchers on horses beating people. But people got together
and I think that helped to electrify the black community in Selma and
the whole area of Alabama. It had a tremendous impact on the country.
People couldn't believe that that could happen. And the response of
people, particularly people who had supported SNCC and SCLC all across
the country . . . a series of demonstrations took place, I think, by
that
That was eight years ago. Does it seem that long ago?
No it doesn't. On one hand it doesn't; on the other, it seems like it has been a long, long time.
Can you imagine anything like that occurring now?
Today? No. It's out of the question. I think it's out of the question. I think it would be hard for anything like that to occur in the South. People don't want to go back to that period.
Both black and whites?
Both blacks and whites.
I really thought the civil rights movement was an extension of the church
and I think you can see that in the leadership up through '68 with the
leadership of Martin Luther King. Basically you were attending a more
physical barrier than social barrier. Do you see
I think so. In the speech I made at the conference of black mayors on Friday night I tried to make the point that new leaders of the movement are the politicians, the elected officials, without question. On the other hand a great many of the people that you see being elected are people that came through the civil rights movement. Look at Andrew Young; he was a minister. Andy sort of stands out because he was assistant to Martin Luther King and was known. But on local levels, in many, many communities where you had a sheriff, a county commissioner, or a constable, some of these young mayors are some of the people who came through the civil rights movement. In a real sense, the new leaders in the black community are the elected officials and that's where people are giving their support.
Did this result in a lessening role of the church?
I don't think so because the church is still one of the base areas; something that is organized. It is visible. And the church does have a strong hold on the black community, particularly in the South.
But the rhetoric of the movement has changed. It used to be oriented in moralist and religious terms?
Yes.
Today I was thinking of the election of
But even there, I think that black politicians and I think church
people—not necessary as a church people but some of the old civil rights
people, including myself in the number—we would insist that the new
black politician, new leaders, be able to inject some of the ethics,
some of the morality, maybe that existed in the old civil rights
movement into the political arena, but not necessarily carry on the
rhetoric of the movement. I think some of these guys are trying to do
that; rather than just to talk about building buildings and new
I want to get back to the point of removing physical barriers than removing social barriers and try to think of where you might go in terms of the future. Your effort in this organization to register people and get them to vote, assuming you have reached the point where you have registered all of the blacks you can and urged them to vote—then what happens? Do you think of using the black community as a bloc vote to achieve power or to use it in a bargaining position? Or do you see it as coalition politics?
I see more and more black people being able to coalesce with other segments of the society. I think the recent elections here in this city, in Raleigh, in other communities, point to the fact that the black community is prepared to move in this direction. I think it must move in this direction.
Yet retaining its solidarity?
It must retain.
Based on color?
Not necessarily based on color, based on certain interests that rare peculiar to the black community that may not be peculiar to the larger community. But, hopefully we are moving beyond the politics of race.
Beyond the politics of race to what?
To a type of coalition politics where promising black candidates can run against white candidates and have the support of a total community, of both black and white supporting them. Promising white candidates running and the black community not feel obligated to support that man simply because he is black. We had a situation here, where a black incumbent, civic alderman, running against a white woman incumbent also, who was appointed, but the black community gave her the margin of victory because she happened to be the best candidate, the best member of the old board of aldermen.
Did she get a majority of the black vote?
She did not get a majority of the black vote.
But she got enough to be elected?
Right.
This situation is somewhat analgous of ethnic groups. In other words, when they first came to America—Dutch, Irish and so on—in order to have some kind of power base in the community as an ethnic group, and then after they were once assimilated in the political offices, then that tie disappeared. Do you see this happening with blacks?
Well, I think black people go into because of our history. I think we go
in for the most part . . .
In terms of what you said before about coalition politics, how significant do you see the election in Raleigh, the mayor's election in Raleigh and what is the significance of that?
I haven't been able to analyze the returns and I don't know very much
about Raleigh. But just looking at the few numbers, to me I think that
there's probably a lesson there that black politicians and white
politicians, the black community need to look at and the white community
need to take a look. In my estimation, it's probably much more
significant than what happened here in this city. Raleigh is over
seventy-seven percent white. The registration of blacks are about
fifteen percent or so. Apparently Clarence Lightner conducted an
issue-oriented campaign and the people laid race aside. They wanted to
see, apparently, a strong
I think so. I'm hopeful and optimistic that we will. There's going to be
more and greater registration. People are going to be voting. Some
people are becoming very cynical about the political process but in the
South, I just don't think that black people are going
As white registration and participation is going down can you see black registration and participation going up?
I think it will go up. It must go up because on the other hand if you have dramatic voter registration in the black community, highly publicized registration effort that will also inspire, sure to inspire white registration.
When do you think that you have reached optimum participation and registration levels?
We would like to see all of the people of voting age registered. In the
South, there's stil more than two and a half million blacks of voting
age that are unregistered. That may be probably impossible. Maybe it
will be almost impossible for an organization like VEP to get all of
those people registered. I think we can only do so much in terms of
registration. We get to a point and you have to have a sort of cutoff in
terms
By that you mean identifying the potential black leaders and getting them to run for office?
I don't think VEP can necessarily encourage people to run for office, as
an organization under our present tax status. But I do think that we can
create a climate, the situation where people feel that they should run.
I think we have an obligation to educate people to that pont where they
will go out and vote and not vote on the basis of race, but there are
issues involved and educate people to the duties and responsibilities of
a
Are there national organizations or statewide organizations or local groups of blacks that tend to identify other blacks to run and encourage them to run for office?
There is one group based in Atlanta, the Southern Election Fund, on a small scale it's trying to do some of that—to identify communities where the potential for blacks being elected and trying to identify some potential candidates.
Jack
But you don't have anything like that on any type of significant level.
There's some concern about that. Suppose if by encouraging a lot of
blacks to run for office or creating a climate for which they can do so,
you encourage people who are incompetent and then you have that judgment
to look at. My point is, when I came down South from Michigan and worked
in Louisiana and North Carolina and some other places, the white
politicians were sections of the black community—was just that.
I agree with that. That's why I think it's dangerous. It is a danger for
any organization, for any group and hopefully VEP will never get in a
position of trying to suggest who should run and who should not run. In
the final analysis that candidate or that person become elected must be
responsive to the people that elected him. In the state of Alabama, we
have various black political factions there. We've been trying to do
some things there to bring people together, the black leaders in a
particular city, state, or on a national level. Even here in this city,
the last election I think destroyed the whole idea of a group of black
people putting together a ticket. And I think too long in the South,
white politicians have placed some of their political future in the
hands of a few ministers, of a few name leaders. They give them five
hundred dollars, two thousand dollars to put their names on a ticket and
some of these guys—even in a city like Atlanta— live from one election,
to the so-called
Isn't this a reflection of what happens nationally since Dr. King? There really isn't anybody identified in any national black organization as the black leader. This fragmentation of power which really started in '68 is now continuing and I guess you suggest it's going to continue, and instead of going back to just one or two national prominent or statewide prominent leaders, you are going to continue to have more and more leaders of the local level.
I think we are going to see a continuation of indigenous leaders, whether
on a local level, countrywide, citywide. Local organizations will not be
necessarily a national plan or national strategy. It will not be any
type of national group coming together. In the state of Alabama for
example, you have the Conference of Black Mayors under the leadership of
Doesn't that seem to suggest that instead of solidifying the black movement by electing more and more black leaders, you might fragment it more?
I think more and more black people must be and will be elected in spite of the schisms and divisions. And in my estimation, it might be a helpful thing to have no one leader, no spokesman speaking out of Atlanta or New York. To have people dealing with their problems in their own communitites, in their own neighborhoods, in their own counties, in their own congressional districts in all the states. I think black people too often in the South during the days of the civil rights movement got the feeling that some Messiah is going to liberate them, going to free them. Some communitites in the South literally were left untouched by the the civil rights movement and they must start from scratch.
Didn't the death of Dr. King sort of frighten-up that illusion?
I think it destroyed it to a certain degree. The leadership and the
symbolic leadership of Dr. King, no question about it, played a very
important role. It
On the part of the leadership, isn't their move more pragmatic now?
More pragmatic, more realistic. People are more issue-oriented: 1,2,3; a, b, c. People looking at congressional districts, looking at state senatorial districts—it's more planning.
John, how important, or how do you assess the importance of the Voting Rights Act itself?
I think the Voting Rights Act, no question about it, was a turning point and probably one of the most significant points in this whole struggle for black people to become truly free and liberated in the American society, particularly in the South. It made it possible for hundreds and thousands of people to become registered.
How important is it for it to be renewed in 1975?
Only on one occasion, in 1971, have we had federal registrars sent into any parts of the South and that was in Mississippi in June of 1971.
John, this paragraph in your speech reminds
Yes, I think so. We've got a history in spite of all the problems, in
spite of all of the difficulties in the South during the past years,
there's been a type of "I know you" type that did not exist in the
North. Black people said, in effect, that we know white people in
So the difference is that the North is yet to go through the cleansing period that the South has already covered?
I think that's part of it. But in the South, and I may sound a little provincial here as a southerner, but people have the element of hope and optimism that we have here because of the changes that we have been able to bring about in a short time knowing that we have a short distance to go. And probably a lot of the problems and mistakes that the people in the North have made that we are prepared not to make those mistakes, not to make those blunders, or maybe we will make a great leap someplace down the way. That's one of the reasons you have this interest in the South on the part of young blacks. That's why you have this black migration, this return to the South. And they're not just coming to cities like Atlanta.
Well then, V. O. Key in a sense—maybe the opposite is true—was still right that the differences in the North and South may be based on racial relations.
Well, I just think . . .
Race is still the key, It's just now, it's changed around.
Yes.
Another thesis or another book—and I think what you just said supports this —but the basic structural change is taking place. The laws have been changed. There aren't going to be too many civil rights laws; that blacks are participating. And what is happening now after this twenty-five year period is a period of consolidation. Would you basically assess that?
Yes, I would. I think we have something to build on. And I think in the South you're going to see in days, months, and years to come, a coalition of that within us—black and white in terms of the leadership that's going to emerge. Maybe we won't have any national or regional leader but local leaders are going to emerge. Progressive white elected officials, and at the same time, progressive black officials will be elected.
John, it's interesting about some people. Even though you have well over
a thousand elected black officials now out of seventy-seven thousand
officials, it's really only tokenism. The number of blacks vote where
compared to what it was ten years ago, it's still not that influential.
And blacks still aren't voting in as large percentages as whites.
Specifically on the question of the role of apathy versus the role of
fear in why blacks don't register, or when they do register, don't
I think a great many of blacks became registered in the early sixties. It was out of, sort of, the civil rights; what would you would call it, not necessarily a protest, but someone literally taking people down to a county courthouse. It was an obligation that you go down and literally put your name on the book. In many parts of the South, and particularly in some of these rural communities, you do have blacks' names on registration rolls that have never voted. They went out of a sense of obligation, that somebody organized an effort, literally took them down without any understanding of the process. I think you have some of that. You have a situation where people say, "Why should I vote, there's no one to vote for. I'm not going to vote for this man. I don't care what the issue is; I'm not going to vote." And I think that element of fear still exists in some parts of the South.
And the apathy out of the feeling, "Well, I voted but nothing has changed. It didn't do any good."
I think you have that, particularly in the lower
What do you think will be the effect in Atlanta's mayor's race and Raleigh's mayor's race with blacks throughout the South?
I think that the election here and in Raleigh without question is going to inspire more blacks to look toward city elections and they're probably going to signal the interest of a great many blacks—thinking about it, making up their mind to run for office. I think it's going to affect would-be elected officials about the type of campaign they should conduct.
How do you assess the role of Martin Luther King—both his effect on you and on the South as a whole, not blacks particularly?
Martin Luther King had a tremendous impact on my life, without question. Growing up in rural Alabama in Pike County—it was fifty miles from Montgomery—during the bus boycott, you had to listen to the man.
How old were you at the time of the bus boycott?
Fifteen years old, so I heard him. I heard him some Sunday mornings. It was a local radio station in Montgomery; that station was WRMA, a black sort of soul station. Eleven o'clock on Sunday mornings they would have different ministers to preach. The church we attended in rural Pike County, you didn't go to until around one-thirty or two, but you could hear certain ministers from Montgomery, and every so often Dr. King would be preaching from his church, the Dexter Avenue Church. One sermon that I recall him preaching was Paul's letter to American Christians. He made the whole question of religion very valuable. In most of his sermons he injected the whole element of the struggle and the condition of black people. In the sermon he compared the children of Israel with the struggle of blacks. And all of that had some impact.
I met Dr. King for the first time in 1958. I tried to enter Troy State
College in '58, after spending one year in Nashville at the American
Baptist Seminary, and I
I think the average black person in the South . . . it was not hard for
black people in the South to identify with Martin Luther King. The guy
was well-trained, well-educated, all of that. And in spite of his
education, black people in the South, the masses of black people whether
it was in the large urban centers or small towns or rural
John, it is more important that the South than the rest of the country, this is, because of the role of the organized black church?
Yes.
You do agree that the black church remains the major source of institutional strength in the black community?
I would say so.
Even in urban . . . ?
Even in a city like Atlanta. The church is a highly visible institution and it's a great source of power. The ministers of those churches may not be able to produce or deliver the vote, and they cannot. It's the leading ministers in the city, whether it's Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. or people like Rev. William Holmes Borders, pastor of one of the large Baptist churches here. They cannot deliver the black vote; there's no question about that. But the church as a body, the church as an institution, as an organized effort, is a source of great power, great strength.
What is the story of your leaving SNCC? I'm not a real student of SNCC
literature; what I've read are
Well, before the SNCC election in May of '66 . . . let me go back a few
weeks or a few months. SNCC came through some very difficult periods,
the Mississippi Summer Project in 1964, and that created a lot of
problems. That was a well-integrated attempt to literally integrate the
movement by bringing in both black and white, young people and students,
teachers, lawyers, into Mississippi. It created a lot of problems for
SNCC through organization. We had many, many staff people become very
disturbed. Some of the communities they had been working in, some of the
local people became disturbed that all of the attention had been geared
toward the white students that were coming from New York and California.
They had been working in these low communities for the past three years
and they had no attention. You may have a—giving just sort of a
simplified example—say, in Greenwood, Mississippi, in an office there
had been a young local girl who had been typing twenty-five words a
Did you expect them to seat them at that time?
No, not really. I was hoping, I was literally hoping that it would be
done, but not really. I didn't think the party was prepared to go that
far. I didn't think Lyndon Johnson was prepared to see the regular
Democratic Party of Mississippi ousted. And that created a fantastic
amount of frustration on the part of SNCC people—saying we played by the
rules. We organized this process and later we went into Alabama when
some people felt that the period of demonstration, nonviolent protest
After SCLC came into Selma, there had been a great deal of debate and
discussion about the SNCC role, our role, SCLC. I was in a very strange
position because I had been serving on SCLC's board since 1962, before I
became chairman of SNCC. I had mixed or confused loyalty because I was
loyal to SNCC and at the same time Martin Luther King was a friend of
mine and somebody that I admired and we had worked together. I didn't
have any problems of the whole question of working with SCLC and working
with Dr. King. When it came time to march on March 7, 1965, the night
before the march we had a meeting here in Atlanta at a restaurant on
Hunter Street. The SNCC executive committee and several people said that
we shouldn't march; we shouldn't march from Selma to Montgomery; we
shouldn't be a part. A lot of people would get hurt. I took the position
that the people in Selma that we had been working with since 1962 wanted
to march and that we should march with them. So the executive committee
said, in effect, that we could march as individuals and not as
representatives of SNCC. I went to Selma late that night, that Saturday
night, and marched on that Sunday. Then the other effort of violence,
the
These are some things leading up to really what happened in 1966. I had
been appointed in late '65 to this conference that President Johnson
held, "To fulfill these rights." We had this big White House Conference
on Civil Rights and people became very critical, some of the people,
with my relationship with Dr. King and also my attendance at the White
House meeting. So in May of 1966, when it was time for the new election,
Stokely had said to me that he would be a candidate for the chairmanship
of SNCC. I said, "That's good." And at the time I had not planned I
would not be a candidate because we never really campaigned. It's not
like a student governement. You never went out and literally campaigned.
I had been elected each year since '63 and when it was time for the
The Meredith march occured only about three weeks later, I think. It must have been like the first week in June or the second week where Stokley chanted "Black Power" in Greenwood, Mississippi, on a march. I felt at the time that to advocate a philosophy of black power . . . I think that the words that are used has frightened too many people, scared too many people. And it was just a chant; it was just rhetoric. It was no program and it was doing more to destroy the movement and to destroy the coalition that I thought we had built. Because in 1965 during the Selma march in my estimation, I thought it was the finest hour for the civil rights movement to what happened in Selma. From the religious community to organized labor, to academic community, just black and white people from throughout this country responding not just through moral and political support but through financial support. The people gave all across the country to SNCC and SCLC in particular and I felt to espouse a philosophy of black power at that particular time destroyed a great deal or that it would destroy a great deal of that. Shortly thereafter I left.
Do you think that overespousal of black
Well, I think so. Many people in both the black community and the white community did not understand the philosophy, for I'm not so sure at that particular time whether there was even a philosophy. It was just words in my estimation, it was rhetoric and there was no program. There was no one, two, threes to be responsive to some of the needs of the people that we were trying to help during the period. I do think it widened the gulf between blacks and whites in this country.
You think the whole question of black awareness movement grew out of that?
Oh yes. That's probably the most positive thing that came out of that
period of black consciousness, of black awareness—the sense of pride.
Apparently that was a necessary period for black people to vote,
hopefully most of the people coming through. Maybe now we are ready to
build this type of coalition, this type of community as a country we
were seeking in 1965. Also, it was not just that effort. It was not just
that black power period, but at the same time we were getting more and
more involved in the war in Vietnam. I think that created, helped to
enhance, the frustration that existed in the black community and in the
liberal community as a
John, when you were growing up you said you grew up on a farm. How many were in your family?
Ten.
Ten children?
Ten children and I am the third child. In 1944, my father bought a farm. I was born on a tenant farm that we rented but in 1944 my father bought a big farm—a hundred and ten acres of land for three hundred dollars in southeast Alabama. We raised cotton, peanuts, corn and a few hogs, cattle. I go back there a great deal. As a matter of fact, I'm going there tomorrow.
Your father still runs the same farm?
Yes.
Your mother, did she stay at the farm or did she work elsewhere?
She stayed at the farm. She did some work, some day work, domestic work, but for the most part stayed at home.
At the time when you say you first met Dr. King, when you were interested in enrolling in Troy State, of course Alabama was still at that time completely or one hundred percent segregated, wasn't it?
Yes.
Why did you want to do that?
I had gone over to this school in Nashville and I didn't have any money and my family didn't have any. It would have just been cheaper to remain at home being able to study at Troy State College.
How far was is Troy State from where you lived?
About eight miles.
What's the distance from Selma to Montgomery?
About forty-five, or forty-six miles. I guess the right thing to say would be fifty miles because we called it a fifty-mile march.
What did your parents, relatives, and friends think of what you'd been doing?
When I first got involved in the sit-in movement, my mother thought I was
just literally crazy, frightened, "Get out of the movement, get out of
that mess, what are you doing in that?" Because in the South, black
people grew up with a fear and they referred to the sheriff or the
policeman as the "law." They had this tremendous fear of the law and I
can recall growing up in Alabama, if we saw a car with the high arrow in
the back, we said, "There goes the law." This was a fear that you just
don't play around or mess with the law. So they referred to any law
enforcement officer as being the "law" and to go to jail, well, that's
bad. That's just a sin. It's
John, what has happened to all of the former SNCC workers? One fellow told me that they have all gone back to their former communities and have remained active. They are now active politically, not so much as candidates but doing work in registration, campaign managers, and a few of them run for office.
I think that's right. You go to Mississippi and parts of Alabama, south
Georgia—people are working in some political campaigns. Some are working
with community organizing around economic development cooperatives. Some
people are very much involved with the Federation of the Southern
Cooperatives, organizing credit unions, self-help groups. Others, like
Marion Barry, the first chairman
Do you think most of them are still there?
I would say the great majority of the people are.
How many people are you talking about?
You know SNCC didn't have a membership. It consisted of field workers, friends of SNCC and that period between 1960 and 1966 or 1967, in '67 when SNCC ceased to exist or went out of business—we are talking about several hundred people. In my estimation, I wouldn't say that—SNCC, the organization, is dead, it doesn't exist anymore—but SNCC, the movement, still exists whether its in Greene County, or Thomas Gilmore who worked with SNCC, or John Huglin who was a SNCC worker, or Fannie Lou Hamer for a while was on the SNCC payroll as a field secretary in Mississippi. The movement and the spirit of SNCC still lives in many parts of the South.
How many people would you say, just rough guess, had some exposure to SNCC and are now active throughout the South?
That would be hard.
Would it be as many as a hundred people?
I think it would be more than that because
We are going to be traveling in all the eleven states of the Old Confederacy, two or three weeks in each state and I would like very much if you could just give us the names of three or four or five people that you think probably know more about black political role in that state than anybody else. Before we get to that did you have anything else that you wanted to add?
Not really. During the past ten years certain things happened, getting
back to SNCC. The week before President Kennedy was assassinated, we had
planned to have a conference, a leadership training institute in
Washington at Howard University, bringing all of the SNCC people
together and community people. We had Bayard Rustin and some people from
the New Labor Organization, people from SCLC there . . . and the whole
question after President Kennedy had been assassinated. Some people
wanted to have a sort of silent memeorial march in memory of President
Kennedy and SNCC people objected. A large
Does anybody you see fill that role today? That you feel that way about?
I really don't. I just don't see that particular person that can do that.
You don't see that in Ted Kennedy?
Senator Kennedy is a different person. He is not Robert Kennedy. There was something about Robert Kennedy that was very, very similar to Martin Luther King, I think. I'm not so sure what. It was something. Well, you can tell today, while you are traveling around you can probably see some of it. You can go into a black community; you can go into the homes. It can be a shack in rural Alabam or the Delta in Mississippi and you will see a picture of Martin King, of Robert Kennedy or John Kennedy and there's something about that. I don't know how you explain it. I really don't.
END OF INTERVIEW