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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview B-0059, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
In May 1978, Kojo Nantambu—who was originally named Roderick Kirby but who adopted his new name in 1972—sat down with Larry Thomas, a historian, jazz disc jockey and Wilmington native. During the interview, Nantambu describes what he remembers of the Wilmington racial violence of 1971, the inequities present in the trial of the Wilmington Ten, and the aftermath of the conflict. Because the tapes start midway through the interview and Nantambu frequently jumps between topics, additional information about the racial situation in Wilmington is provided here. Throughout the mid-twentieth century, racial tensions in Wilmington, North Carolina, ran high, and the greatest disagreements were over high school desegregation. Beginning in 1967, buses took volunteer African American students to the two white suburban high schools, but when the students arrived, they found themselves surrounded by hostility and resentment. Many of these youths—including Kojo Nantambu—became the leaders of the 1971 turmoil. After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, young African American mourners marched through town, and when white authorities attempted to stop them, the youths rioted, causing over two hundred thousand dollars in damage. Though the violence ended on April 10, conflict continued.
In the fall of 1968, white authorities announced that they would close the black Williston Senior High School and send all African American adolescents to the suburban institutions. Students of both races complained and fights between white and black pupils became commonplace. In May 1970, black high school students marched to protest student government election results; white teenagers responded and eventually the sheriff intervened. By the following fall, African American youths had organized the Black Youth Builders of the Black Community (BYBBC). On January 15, 1971, fifteen black high school students staged a sit-in because the school board prohibited a memorial service on King's birthday. On January 22, a large-scale fight erupted between white and black students, and one black female was injured. The next week, racial conflict continued. Police officers patrolled the schools, and school authorities suspended a large number of black students. The suspended pupils and the BYBBC established an alternative school at Gregory Congregational Church. When he learned of the school, Reverend Leon White, the director of the North Carolina-Virginia Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ, sent Benjamin Chavis Jr. to help. Shortly after Chavis's arrival, membership in the school reached five hundred, and arson attacks against white businesses began. Meanwhile, a local white supremacist group called the Rights of White People (ROWP) harassed African Americans, particularly targeting Wilmington's black neighborhood around the Gregory Congregational Church. These are the events described in the Nantambu interview.
Nantambu begins his narrative by describing the class conflicts within the white community and explaining to Thomas how that contributed to the 1971 violence. Working class whites, Nantambu says, reacted violently to integration because race gave them access to power they otherwise would not have had. Nantambu remembers Friday, February 5, 1971, as an important turning point. That night, several young black men were shot, and fear had so gripped the black community that the African American students at the Gregory Congregation Church established a makeshift medical clinic to deal with the injured rather than send them to the hospital. Guards were sent to the border of the black community, and barricades were erected to keep whites out. The next morning, a white sniper targeted the black neighborhood. Nantambu remembers carloads of whites roaming the city, attacking any blacks they encountered. That night, arsonists torched Mike's Grocery, a white-owned store in the black neighborhood. Chavis, Reginald Epps, Jerry Jacobs, James McKoy, Wayne Moore, Anne Shepard, Marvin "Chili" Patrick, Connie Tindall, Willie Earl Vereen, and William "Joe" Wright Jr.—nine black male youths and one white female social worker—were arrested, charged and convicted of the arson. These became known as the Wilmington Ten. Nantambu maintains that Chavis, McKoy, Patrick, Tindall, and Wright were among the contingent guarding the border of the black community, giving them an alibi for the arson attack. Nantambu hypothesizes on the motives for the arson and then reflects on the murder of Stevenson Gibb Mitchell, which happened concurrently. Nantambu remembers that Mitchell's death made the black teenagers realize that whites would not negotiate for peace. The next morning, cars full of whites broke through the barricades and wreaked further havoc in the neighborhood. On Monday, the National Guard took control of the area and searched the church for weapons. Nantambu claims that the dynamite and other weapons found there were planted to discredit the students. When asked to define the conflict, Nantambu says that the black neighborhood staged an insurrection rather than a rebellion because all they demanded were their rights. When the trial started, Nantambu and others picketed it, but neither this nor any of the injunctions filed by the Ten's lawyers halted the proceedings. Witnesses Allen Hall and Jerome Mitchell later recanted their testimonies against the Ten, and Nantambu closes the interview by reflecting on why they might have first spoken against the Ten.
In this May 1978 interview, Kojo Nantambu—one of the participants in the 1971 Wilmington, North Carolina, race conflicts—describes what he remembers of the 1971 strife, the inequities present in the trial of the Wilmington Ten, and the aftermath of the discord.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
… This is not the same Committee of 100 that was with the 1898 massacre. I used to feel like it was the same. I still feel like in some ways that they could be the same in their execution because they have the same powers, but right now the Committee of 100 serves the purpose of finding industry coming into Wilmington. You know, the city committee of 100 in 1898 was like the controlling families in Wilmington.
But aren't these the descendants, the same people that are in this now?
Yes. These are one hundred people who had the most authority, the most
money, the most property in Wilmington. They made all the decisions.
Like the Trask family, the Bellamy family … These people still exist and
they could have a profound effect on the total existence of Wilmington
then because they controlled Wilmington, the day-to-day life, the future
life, the overall life of Wilmington. Most of the city officials to me
just represent these people; these are their puppets. They are put out
there and say, "Look, you represent this particular group of the
committee, you represent this particular group of the committee." The
committee itself is broken up into groups, each one puts somebody out
there, and everybody who runs as a city official generally represents
the feelings and attitudes of the committee, the Committee of 100 or
They run this city?
Oh, yeah. Definitely. It's a known fact that Trask himself as an
individual has stopped a lot of industry from coming to Wilmington.
There's a known fact that the Sprunts and the Kings
You know what happened in 1898—the same thing I guess that happened in '71, too—poor whites were actually the initiators of the violence.
Definitely. Well, it's a known fact. It's been explained by many black educators, many aware black leaders, that poor whites hate us more than upper-class whites because of the fact that they're being treated the same way and they feel like their color gives them a superiority over us, and they hate to be treated the same way as us. So they feel like they have to lash out their hostilities and violence toward us rather than their own people. That's what that situation is. They did initiate the ROWP—which we'll get into later—that was one of the fine organizations there which was a vigilante organization of white people here, basically made up of nothing but poor white people.
Where were they from?
Basically from Sunset Park, a lot from Winter Park, some from around the
What do you think they considered their purpose was when they were …
Oh, to sustain the white order. To sustain the order of this community, the tradition of this society, and to keep the niggers in their place. They wasn't going to let things just transgress or transcend to a new era or a new level of understanding and development because we wanted it that way. They say, "The niggers might be demanding, but we're not going to let them have it." They fought to sustain things as they were.
Let's go back to Friday.
Oh, yeah, sure. Chili got shot in the chest. We had to fix him up, and we
didn't have any medical supplies. This was about seven o'clock Friday
night, February the fifth, 1971. We had to search around to find some
stuff to fix the brother up, so we had to go across the street to this
brother's house named Mr. Cannady. We got some alcohol from him and
Brother Templeton's wife happened to have some gauze and a bandage and
some hydrogen peroxide. We cleaned the brother's wound and fixed him up
because we didn't want to send him out to the hospital because some
brothers say they already gone to the hospital the night before and the
crackers tried to arrest them for getting shot. So we didn't want to
take a chance
Somebody got injured because of Caucasians going through there prior to …
… prior to when my man came out there? Oh, yeah. You know I told you that Thursday night some people had got shot already. A few people got shot: a brother and a sister got shot walking on Castle Street, some people got shot walking down Dock Street. There were a lot of isolated incidents. The white folks was just riding through the black neighborhood and they found a lone nigger or one or two lone niggers, and just fired on them. It wasn't that many. We found out about them—they never came to us because I guess they were too scared. There were just as many incidents at the church. We tried to handle our own casualties. We set it up like a military base almost, like a bivouac or something, headquarters or something …
At the church?
We had a perimeter, we had men watching with binoculars to make sure that we knew when anybody was coming. We had a code word, a signal, a password, so if somebody was coming, he'd use the right word—we'd know if it was a brother, that kind of thing.
Would you consider these survival techniques, or what?
Survival techniques, definitely. Because at that particular time we were definitely on the defensive. We were just defending the church and defending the rights of the students to be in the church. There wasn't nothing about us going out attacking anybody. We were just making sure that nobody was going to attack us or the people in that neighborhood. When Chili got shot, kinda knocked the doors of the church down getting in because everybody tried to get out of the way. All the girls in the church were hollering and screaming, and the brothers were running around. We calmed everybody down and tried to get some order. We told everybody to lay up under the bleachers, to stay down. We made sure the brothers got out a little bit further on the perimeter. We sent them out about two blocks apiece to make sure the white folks didn't come through there.
All that night was gun fire. I myself and a few of my friends slept on the sidewalk that night, watching out and stuff like that. It was because of this night—I know for a fact—that Connie Tindall as well as a few others who I'll get to wasn't involved in the incident at Mike's Grocery.
You know this for a fact?
Connie's birthday has got to be February 6th or 7th … because he told us
that Friday night, "I don't know about y'all but I ain't going to be
here tomorrow night. I'm going to be partying"—you know, celebrating his
birthday. He
He left and didn't come back?
Joe was a kind of scared brother. Joe always thought about some violence. He just didn't come back to the church until the funeral for Steve. Of all the people in the Wilmington Ten that I know of, Wayne Moore wasn't there that Saturday night, and I know that Reginald Eppes wasn't there. All the people that I know was at the church, at the Templeton house, that Saturday night was February sixth, the night of Mike's Grocery's burning, was Ben and Chili. We were all in the house …
Y'all were not in the church?
We were all in the house; nobody was in the church that Saturday night
because they had put us out.
… that Friday night … people slept outdoors that night to keep an eye on the church. One of the most important things that need to be brought up—the cops were trying to sneak up on the church. We're up there protecting the church. Instead of calling us and telling us, "Well, look, we know you're having problems. We want to come check out things and assist you or whatever," they come trying to sneak up on us, trying to shoot at us from behind the church. We like to blow their brains out.
The police were trying to off you?
Yeah, seriously. We had the whole block divided, but contrary to popular belief that we had a whole lot of guns—I know we didn't have over fifteen pieces. But we just spread the brothers out …
Were they students?
Everybody was a student or younger. The average age of the students there was eighteen or below. Most of them were like seventeen and below because of the time of the year.
Was Ben in there?
Where? Ben stayed in the house. Ben didn't do no fighting, man. Ben came down and organized. He was in the house. You know, the main thing he did was encourage us to be careful, to protect ourselves, but he didn't try to initiate anybody into doing anything, or nothing like that. Now the main thing he was concerned with was that nobody get hurt, to be careful about what we did. He stayed in the house to protect the Templetons. He'd walk in the church every now and then to see that everybody was all right, but as far as being outside on the street or in the yard doing anything, he wasn't out there.
On Saturday it started off with this white man on the corner of Fifth and
Nun Street sniping. Everybody moved on that block of the church, he
sniped them, tried to shoot them. So they kept calling the detectives,
the sheriff to check this house out on the corner. The police went up
there several
What did you think about the barricades? Do you think that was a good move?
It was a good move. If it hadn't been for the barricade, I'm quite sure that we'd have lost ten, twelve, or more brothers there at the church because white folks were coming through in caravans and in cars—carloads of people—up the street trying to turn, to come around the front of the church. They probably would have come to the front of the chruch and had a shoot-out with the brothers, but the barricades were there. They were concrete, those big five-feet conduits that the city has—the big ones. That's what we used as a blockade in the street—and some logs that we found. Like I was saying about that Saturday—the white man was shooting at us, and everybody was running and hiding and stuff like that. One of the members of the church came up there and told us to get out …
Saturday?
Saturday, February sixth. By the name of Herb Butler. We told him, "Look,
Mr. Herbert, we're not doing anything to the church. We're up here to
protect the church." He said, "Damn it, let the white folks blow it up.
We got
What would cause him to say something like that?
A stupid nigger, that's what.
How old was the man?
Mr. Herbert was about fifty years old at that time, I imagine. At that
time, he had been a good friend of my father's, but
after that he wasn't no more.
Was this Saturday morning, brother?
He was standing right around the corner from y'all, man. Herbert Butler.
[Other voices indistinguishable]
What you're telling me is that there was constant firing
Ever since that Thursday night.
Ever since they got situated in the church?
They started Thursday night, February fifth.
What was Rose doing at this time?
Rose who?
The police.
Nothing. They say they arrested some people that night—that's what the newspaper said. But I didn't see no evidence of it, and I don't remember no white folks going to jail.
Y'all stayed in the church the whole while?
The majority of the kids were in the church
There was constant firing on the church?
Yes, day-time and night-time. So the white men they fired at the church.
We said that's why we're here, brother—to protect the church. And he
said, "We don't need to be protected." So we left and went over to our
headquarters, the BYBBC which I have spoken about before, on Eleventh
Street by the old Community Hospital. At that time a lot of people had
given up hope because being put out of the church… I'm trying to defend
you and you done kicked me in the behind—what am I going to do? Like it
killed a lot of brothers and sisters fear. So everybody went on home, I
guess to get something to eat. At that time, Ben didn't have no where to
stay because they didn't even want him to stay in the parish house. So I
went to find a cot because at that time my wife and I only had a
three-room apartment with one bedroom. I went to get a cot so he could
stay with us that night. By the time I came back, the rest of the board
of trustees had met at the church—in fact, my grandfather was one of the
members of the board of trustees—and they decided to let the students
back in. By
Robert
Robert's
At that particular time, a green pick-up truck pulled up behind this yellow cab at the corner of Seventh and Nun. And at the time this Reverend Bond Vaughan, who was the pastor of Central Baptist Church, was talking to these brothers … and the crackers blasted him … shot him. And he was trying to talk them brothers into putting down their guns. And those crackers wore his ass out.
Seriously?
Yeah, they shot him, shot him in the leg. Evidently they used bird-seed
because, from my understanding, some of the pellets are still inside, in
his leg. At that time, I thought, because the yellow cab was there, that
he got into the cab and went to the hospital, but I read in the
newspaper—somebody was doing a back
Were you scared, brother?
The only thing I was scared of was that I couldn't get the gun loaded
fast enough to get off another shot if I had to shoot. If I shot, I
didn't hit the first time, because the guns that we had—people tried to
say that we had an arsenal up there, but we had a lot of old guns that
the brothers had stole from their fathers out of the garage or something
that was all taped up. Now a few brothers had two or three. 22s up there
which were in better shape than
They'd been trying to burn that down the whole while?
Somebody had.
Was there a specific purpose behind burning him out?
I don't know whose purpose it was. I don't know who was trying to burn it
down. Now somebody said that there'd been some cocktails the day before
in front of Mike's that didn't go off. We don't know who put them there.
Now I do know some brothers tried to blow the door off; they were going
to go in there and take the food and use it for the students.
Were they saying let's get Mike for a certain reason?
No, people were talking about Mike was nasty, he treated little kids
nasty. He used to get the little kids
About 10 o'clock, between 10 and 10:30, June-Bug came out to the house
and—it was 10 o'clock a news bulletin came over and said that this Gibbs
Steve Corbett had been killed, and I said, "Damn, I just left there." I
hadn't been gone over thirty minutes. According to the news, it was
either between 9:30 and 10 o'clock or 10 o'clock and 10:30. Anyway, if
the the news was correct, according to the report that they got from the
police, this happened at 9:30, fifteen minutes after I left. They try to
impress now that there was a whole lot of shooting and a whole lot of
people there, but I know when I left there, I left seven people there. So it couldn't have been too damn much
shooting. It was only to my understanding three rifles there and maybe
one pistol.
The brother who was with him—this is what my brother told me when he
came—I didn't know who Gibbs Corbett was, but I knew Steve was Steve
Mitchell. So my brother came home and said Steve had been killed. I
said, "Steve who?" He
Your brother saw this?
No, this friend of ours saw it, who was with Steve. Steve was behind the church on post with another brother, and the brother came back and told everybody, "Hey, man, they got Steve." After the fire started—people in the house didn't even know the fire started till that brother came back. What happened was—he said Steve saw that fire and he was going to pull the fire alarm. He gave his gun, said hold my gun till I get back. I don't know whether he got shot on the way or the pigs called him and threw down on him on the way back. The first time we talked about it, I think he said Steve was on his way back from pulling the fire alarm. Anyway the pigs shot him—they gave him three buckshots right up in here. And they say he fired a gun, but the gun didn't go off …
Because he fired it then.
Did he die on the spot?
No, this is the other thing. The news bulletin said he was shot around 9:30, according to the police report, and the hospital report said he arrived at the hospital around 10 o'clock. I don't know exactly now—it said 10 o'clock or 10:30. Anyway, it was a half hour difference between the time that they said they shot him and the time they say he got to the hospital, and it's only five or ten minutes—five minutes to a policeman—from Gregory Church to the hospital, ten minutes at the most. If they'd have got him there in that ten minutes time or fifteen minutes time, he probably would have lived because they'd have had an extra fifteen minutes for them to work on him. But now the brother who was with him said Steve was alive. The people in that immediate neighborhood was looking out their windows and they saw it, and they said that he was still kicking when the police got him. They say when they got him, they were dragging him down the street and beating on him.
Thumping on him?
Yeah, when they threw him in the car, they said they were beating on him.
They said you could see him kicking and wiggling trying to get loose,
trying to get away from them. So that's why we claim murder. And
naturally the
Is he still on the force?
Yeah, he's still on the force. He's in charge of the traffic division and has been for a long time. But the people would never come out and testify that they saw Steve alive, so that we could …
They squashed their case?
Yeah.
How did you feel after that junk?
That was a real low blow. We knew then it was do or die, that they were serious, that they were out for blood—and that we'd better be out for blood.
The next morning it started off with a bang.
Broke through the barricade?
Full speed ahead. It knocked the barricade out of the way, pushed it out
of the way, and came right on through. It was a blue Camaro that had a
Jacksonville license plate on the front of it. Jacksonville's in North
Carolina, but you know the white folks. They evidently got some white
Marines to try to do something, but they didn't make it too far.
Sixth Street?
Yeah. He decided he was going to shoot at the brothers.
He parked it round on Sixth Street?
No, he parked it round on Nun Street, right at the corner of Sixth and
Nun. When he was getting out of the car with his gun, before he could
get a round off, somebody shot him—one of the brothers shot him. After
that, this is when they decided to call the curfew. Now they didn't call
the curfew after Steve got killed, but they called the curfew that day.
And the curfew was set for three o'clock. After that time, things kind
of cooled down for a few days in terms of actual activities, direct
confrontations and stuff like that—until Monday. But the next day the
National Guard invaded the church. They didn't find nobody in there
because after that night
What would you call this? Would you call it a rebellion?
No, I've just got to consider it an insurrection because it wasn't as though we were really rebelling. We were just defending ourselves. I think insurrection is the best way to depict what happened because there wasn't any way that the black community nor black people really rebelled. Now white folks rebelled.
In what sense?
They rebelled against our right to organize and demonstrate, to protest the things that we wanted.
Weren't you in a sense rebelling against the establishment when you first started out?
In the sense of rebellion, I would say that the rebellion was on a non-violent basis where the protest and the boycott took place. Now as far as the shooting and stuff like that, I would say that was more of an insurrection and rebellion on their part. We were just defending ourselves because we had made no effort to go out and say, "We ain't going to have this" and "We'll kill to get this done" because that's not what we were doing and that's really what a rebellion is all about. And they were rebelling against us, against our rights, to do what was done. We were just defending ourselves.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
That's why I wouldn't say that this was another rebellion. When there be
a rebellion, there's going to be a whole lot worse than that there.
[Laughter].
Do you think it had any effect at all on the attitudes of black people in Wilmington?
Yeah, an effect on the total community. It had a demonstrable effect on the black community, especially in terms of political activity …
Positive effect?
No, man, negative effect. The effect was totally negative and purely psychological more so than physical, but naturally the psychological affects the physical because one is synonymous with the other. After that, we lost total support of the parish because …
Do you think the elder population was with y'all, behind y'all?
They were behind us a hundred percent in the beginning, when the white folks started it; while the children were protesting, they were behind us one hundred percent. That was one time that I saw the community totally behind us. And they stayed behind us until that damn Golden Frinks came here. Up until that time, we were still organizing. We still were trying to get the students together. This is where we really got our church together. We were still having regular meetings at a few of the churches. Central Baptist was one of the churches that let us have them in. But all the other churches closed their doors, man.
When was this?
Between February and April, May, '71 … We still tried to get together and we had the parish with us then. We tried to get together and have some …
After this had dropped off?
We weren't going to let it die, man. We weren't going to let the movement
die. We wanted things to stay active and we had a lot of the parish
still with us. But we would never get a place to meet. Every time we
tried to get a church, they closed the door. If we got a church, about
the time we got there and got the meeting going, we'd get put out.
Reverend Vaughan even put us out of his church. He'd got shot
[Laughter].
This incident happened at Molly's house. This brother named Eugene Wright was shot and at the time they lied—now when I say they, I'm talking about the brothers who did it. It was Donald Reddick, Don Nixon, and this brother named Jerome McClain
They were in there gambling, man.
Don got time for that?
Hell, no. They tried to give Ben time for that. They let the brothers go.
The brothers turned into
Was this the trial for the Wilmington Ten, too?
This was something else. This was the Wilmington Three: Ben, Molly,
Peanut, Molly's daughter. We even paid their bond and got them out of
jail and stuff like that, so they decided later on that year that they
were going to say that Ben had told them to lie, and that Molly [Laughter]
After that when the funeral occurred …
Tell me about the funeral. Was it beautiful?
It was big, man. But the brother's mother told us that she didn't want to have anything to do with us and didn't want nobody to have nothing to do with her.
Oh, that funeral was big. He stayed with his
grandmother and grandfather. It was beautiful, man. We couldn't find a
church to have the funeral in. Nobody wanted to hold it, even Gregory,
the church we were standing up for. They wouldn't let them have it
there.
Was he a young man?
No, he was in his forties then.
Wonder why he made that move?
I guess he felt it was all right. She was reprimanded after that by her congregation, though. Anyway John's Funeral Home—we couldn't raise enough money—they donated the casket and carried out the funeral services without charging. All the brothers and sisters wore African garb. Reverend Leon White officiated at the eulogy and everything. It was heavy. It was beautiful.
You had the liberation flag over the casket?
Definitely. The liberation flag was draped over the casket and then the
liberation flag was marching
Yeah, the police were watching.
Was it a peaceful march?
Yeah, it was peaceful. There were no incidents.
You know, like I was saying about Eugene's killing, some group of niggers
here asked Golden Frinks to come down here. Black folks are always
trying to find a scapegoat. They don't want to deal with their physical
confrontations. The Bible says you got to talk that man's language to
deal with him the way he deals with you. The black community were
together until Golden came—I'll get into this later—but Golden is the
prime element in the arrest and conviction of the Wilmington Ten. There
wouldn't have been no arrest if it hadn't been for Golden. When he came
here, he split the community in half. We were dealing with the schools,
we were dealing with solidarity of the community, the involvement of the
people in the community, and we had some clear direction because schools
are very primary if you think in terms of your children and your future.
Their educational well-being, their
This was after the insurrection?
Yeah. Golden came in and he divided the community. He started talking about us, about "them old gun-toting militants." Now this here was a black man—a colored boy, rather. "Now they're going to ruin me. We don't need them old gun-toting militants, running around here." He gave the old folks an out, a scapegoat. They didn't have to deal with that man directly. They could deal with that bull-shit when he started talking about what we need is an economic base, talking about building a poor people's co-op and everybody ran doing that.
Split the movement?
Yeah, split the movement in half and then started talking about us as
gun-toting militants, so we had people who were with us start talking
against us.
In the name of who?
SCSE.
Who were they fighting for? Wilmington?
That's what they said—the Wilmington movement. That's what they called
themselves [Laughter]
Yeah, well, you know how that is. He was going with Wanda then and
Wanda's mama was the
Believe me, we definitely
Anyway, that's what messed up the black
So at the same time, just before school closed, let me tell you what happened. This dummy, Allen Hall, went out to the school house—see, I didn't know him then. I might have met him by that time …
He wasn't at the church with y'all?
He says he was, but—see, I didn't know him then. I didn't meet Allen
until afterwards. We went to Raleigh one Saturday to the Justice
Department, the Federal Building. The Department of Civil Rights had a
hearing on all the activities going on in North Carolina. It was like a
public tribunal with people participating and testifying to the
conditions in the schools. That's the first time I saw Allen Hall to
know him because he went with us. After that, Allen went out to Hanover
one day—he had no damned business out there—and got in a fight with a
white teacher, hit the teacher in the head with a bottle. So he took off
to D. C. His brother named Tom—he's the one I told you about moved to D.
C. and took Allen with him. Allen was up there, had a job. Golden was
going to get on national television—you know how he did with Joanne
Little—got on television down here and
He went and got Allen Hall?
He went and got Allen Hall and told him to come back. So when they
arrested Allen, they put him in jail
He was in jail for what?
For what?
Just protesting. [OTHER VOICES INDISTINGUISHABLE IN BACKGROUND GIVING DETAILS]
He had to be working with somebody, man. FBI …
Of all that happened, the only people that was arrested was two people in
our organization who weren't no where around. Because we were getting
ready to have—I don't know whether it was a conference or a church
meeting or what—but we were in our office all that day scrubbing and
waxing. Hell, the next night, grandmamma came up to us and
Who said this, man?
Judge Burnett. I told you he's a racist dog, man. So the brother, he was one of my best organizers. They told him he'd have to leave town. They fixed it up to send him out of town to school …
A restraining action?
Golden wouldn't testify. I grabbed and knocked his ass on one of them
tables in the courtroom and they didn't even say nothing, because you
know the judge wanted to see us fight anyhow. But I told him, "Man, I
ought to kill you." My cousin was right along with him. George Kirby
You're opening my head, brother.
That was one of the main things that made us realize that there was a
conspiracy. Then the federal court took out an injunction against us and
said that nobody—just Algernon Butler issued the injunction—nowhere in
New Hanover County could go anywhere near the schools during school
hours or commit a statement concerning the schools. [Laughter].
Was he jealous of y'all basically, do you think?
He was sent here to create that dissension and diversion. The first week
of school the ROWP was on the elementary
How
They showed their pictures. It was sixteen. That brother that was in
here, he was one of them. They charged him and Ben with conspiracy to
commit murder and murder of Harvey Cumber. Tom Atwood—we call him
Why do you think they wanted Ben so bad?
To cease his activities in North Carolina and around the country. You
know how that is—shut up all the activists and the militants and put
them in jail and that'll discourage all the other people from getting
involved. And it has in Wilmington. Ain't nobody want to do
nothing—they're scared of going to jail. But I don't give a damn. After
Golden and them did that, he put all that stuff in Allen's head. It made
Allen hate Ben, and Ben hadn't done nothing
Were you one of the sixteen?
Naw,
Both of them was in jail two weeks before they let the other one go, to decide that Jerry Jacobs …
Yeah.
He seems like he's all right now.
Yeah, he's straight now, thank God. I hope he stays that way.
He was talking right, too.
This is how we know. See, Allen didn't know Jerry. They just showed him
the pictures and let him pick people and he picked people he knew. See,
Allen didn't know me, at all, not
When was this?
Y'all were picketing the trial? Who were the other guys? You said there were sixteen?
It was this brother named Michael Peterson. I told you about Tommy. They had George Kirby. There was a brother named Connell Flowers. And the other Jerry Jacobs I told you about. And then this brother named James Bunting.
What happened to James Bunting?
They dropped all the charges.
There was insufficient evidence?
Yeah. The charge that they got on all of them is insufficient, but they just narrowed it down to ten to deal with immediately.
What do you think about that trial, that whole fiasco?
That's what I was going to say—that's what it was, a fiasco. A charade, man. That was the greatest miscarriage of justice I ever witnessed in my life or ever read about.
Why?
Because of the fact that all the evidence was circumstantial. The only thing they had was pictures.
What kind of pictures?
Pictures taken a year later. Like, "This is a picture of Sixth and Nun,"
this is a so-and-so, you know. Showing these pictures to Allen Hall and
letting him describe something. Then they used a man who had been
committed to a sanatorium three times …
Who?
Yeah. Allen Hall tried to kill himself three times before and during the
trial. He was not a creditable witness at all because he was unstable.
His whole character was unstable. Allen was—you've seen people that like
out-grow their senses, you know, young, wild, and then he wasn't too
bright in the first place. He was cunning, but he wasn't bright. The
first trial—they went to trial, they picked their jury—it had ten blacks
and two whites, even though they hadn't finalized the jury. Then the
district attorney, the assistant D. A.,
Tell me about Stroud. What do you think …?
Stroud was very arrogant, very ambitious, very racist—I'm trying to find another word for that cracker. He was just …
Sick?
He was a sick cracker, man. He was very ambitious. He wanted to get a big
job and wanted to make a name for himself. He thought he was the
smartest cracker that came along. I don't know what kind of district
attorney he thought he was, but he thought he was God's gift to the
courtroom in his attitude, manner, everything he said, because me and
him had a
They're sick, no question. It's
But Stroud's vicious, he's shrewd. I don't think anything is beyond him.
He's capable of doing anything. I wouldn't doubt him committing murder,
man. And as far as all the hearings and the things that have happened
since the Wilmington Ten have been in prison—the writs being filed, the
other hearing they had last May 9th through whatever—the only thing
that's happened is that it's reinforced my already understanding that
white folks is going to support white folks, white folks is going to
stand behind white folks whether what they're doing is right or wrong.
To them, they're saying, "We're brothers, this is our country, this is
our government, this is our law, we're going to uphold it to the end."
And they've got to uphold it to the end because … It was so evident,
man. Like last May, Judge Fountain was supposed to rule on whether or
not it was enough sufficient evidence to warrant another trial; whether
there was enough evidence to warrant a trial was all he was supposed to
rule on—this cracker he tell Ferguson after the trial that in lieu of
all the evidence, he didn't see where the brothers' constitutional
rights had been abused. He can't rule on nobody's constitutional rights.
That's a supreme court responsibility. He couldn't do that. That wasn't
his function no way. It makes you question: do he know his function or
was he avoiding his
What was this judge doing when people was telling him all this?
He was ignoring it. He wasn't paying no attention. He was just sitting up
there like this, thinking, "Well, I'll be glad when this shit is over."
That's the expression that he had on his face. He couldn't have been
listening because all that stuff that he heard, he couldn't have took it
in. He made his decision the next morning. It was early the next morning
or the same day. The next morning, the first thing the
next morning. First he had told the press that it might be a couple of
weeks. He had to cogitate over all this stuff, you know. And he came
back the next morning and made his decision. I mean, immediately, and
this man had heard two weeks of intense examination of evidence, man,
all kinds of evidence,
END OF INTERVIEW