Effort to use NAACP as a relief organization
Simkins describes an event that was particularly formative in leading to her decision to leave her post as state secretary of the NAACP. Shortly after the Orangeburg boycott, Simkins describes how South Carolina witnessed a rise of White Citizens' Councils that sought to terrorize and undermine civil rights activists in the state. In response, Simkins helped to organize a relief fund to help those who were suffering. Her actions generated disapproval from Roy Wilkins, who firmly reminded her that the NAACP was not a relief organization. Out of concern of the people, however, Simkins defied his orders and used the relief funds she had raised to throw a Christmas party for disadvantaged African American children. As she explains later in the interview, this was one event in a longer chain of circumstances that led to Simkins' disillusionment with the aims of the NAACP.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Modjeska Simkins, July 28, 1976. Interview G-0056-2. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JACQUELYN HALL:
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Were you working mainly in your capacity as secretary of the NAACP, or
through the Richland County Citizens' Committee?
- MODJESKA SIMKINS:
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Mainly through NAACP. But now I had a clash, and it was also in the mind
of the man who was the executive director at that time. NAACP through
the national office had asked us to get these petitions signed for
school desegregation. Then when the power structure stepped down on the
necks of the signers and on Negroes generally in those areas, denying
them of certain opportunities and privileges and conveniences, any
kindnesses, for instance, like liens and lending money on short term and
all like that, then we entered into a situation where we actually
needed some relief for these people. So about that
time the church of DeLaine, J.A. DeLaine who had, you know, left the
state (he was in exile from this day until his death), his church was
burned in Lake City. In fact, because he was one of them initiating the
spearhead movement of the school segregation, the move against
segregation he became the target in the area around Lake City, which has
always been a volatile spot. And they rode by his house, shot into his
house, indignified him in several ways. So one night they came by his
house riding up and down and firing, and he fired back and hit one of
the cars. And so they took out warrants for him and it became dangerous
for him. He left town and went to New York and stayed for years, and
then eventually got as far back towards South Carolina as North
Carolina, where he died.
And Simeon Booker of Jet and another fellow (I've
forgotten the second fellow, another fellow from Jet
or Ebony, I don't know which—they're all in
the same company) and our executive director Albert Redd (R-e-d-d) and
Mr. L.A. Blackman (who was NAACP president in Elloree where this fight
was also hot—that's in Orangeburg County—and where
the Klan threatened him and ordered him out of town, but he never left),
Mr. Blackman and I don't remember who else, but at least five men went
into the area. They disguised themselves in poor farming area attire and
went into the area after DeLaine's church was burned to investigate, and
happened to get out just in time to protect their lives from attack.
They didn't finally end until about sunset; it was a winter evening. So
they came back to Columbia and they were staying at the motel that I was
running at that time. And we were sitting around talking when Simeon
Booker said, "I just wish there was something we could do about
this thing, how we could help these people better being pressured this
way." And then he said, "Maybe
we could put a little box in Jet, just a little
enclosure and tell people to send assistance into this area."
He said, "Now, you would have to have a place if goods come in
to store them until you could get them distributed." I said,
"Well, I have a vacant store, a good-sized place that we could
use, and my brother has a vacant space in one of his buildings. And I
believe the space would not be a problem." So he put this
little box in Jet magazine, and in the course of a
week or ten days money, canned foods by the ton and clothing started
coming in. At the same time Adam Clayton Powell saw this little thing in
Jet, and he invited me up to talk at Abyssinian
Church. And his church sent scads of relief materials.
One Sunday I had a telephone call. My mother and I had been to some kind
of thing, and we were sitting eating dinner that one Sunday once I had
gotten home. And I went to the phone; it was Roy Wilkins. Wilkins said
he heard of this program we had down here, that money was being sent in
and other parts of this program that we had, and that "NAACP
was not a relief organization." Those were his words:
"NAACP is not a relief organization, and we just won't have it.
And any money that you have, you send it back, every penny of it, to
whoever sent it."
- BOB HALL:
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How was it named in the box? Was it NAACP?
- MODJESKA SIMKINS:
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No. It just asked for relief for NAACP pressured people, you see. No, it
didn't go out under an appeal for NAACP.
- BOB HALL:
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How did people make their checks out, though, when they sent money?
- MODJESKA SIMKINS:
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We asked them to send them to some kind of relief fund; I've forgotten
what we had down, because, you see, we didn't intend for
them to go into NAACP general funds. So we worked on that
technicality for tax purposes. So this was just a general relief fund. I
mean, these people were in trying circumstances. Many of them couldn't
get milk for their children, you know. Some of the places, particularly
in the Orangeburg area, stopped deliveries of milk—like
they'd drop them by the door, on the porch. So I said, "Now
Roy, I am not going to send back a damned cent to anybody." I
said, "These people are under pressure. You all asked us to get
these petitions signed, and that's what we're doing. We have an
obligation to these people." I said, "Now, you all sit
up there and drink all the Bloody Marys and eat all your big sirloin
steaks and drink your scotch and milk, but we are down here under the
pressure. And we've got the load on us, and we're going to handle
it." So I raised so much hell on the telephone, I got back in
the dining room and my mother said, "What in the world was
wrong with you? Who was that talking to you?" And I told her it
was Roy. Well, my mother was just a firey as she could be, and she told
me, "Well, I don't blame you." She said,
"Don't you do it. I don't blame you. He's sitting up there out
of the fire. Let him stay up there and stew in his own juice."
So we went on with that program. And it was not well thought of even by
Hinton, who was president of this conference here. He said that we
shouldn't do this program. But I just took it on myself. And we had,
even at that time, to maneuver the restrictive buying campaign in a way
that it appeared that it wasn't directly NAACP, because NAACP was in a
very dangerous spot at that time—I say dangerous to the
effect that they said they weren't chartered in the state. And they once
under Governor James Byrnes's administration threatened to put a
$7200. a day fine on the organization. I
don't remember now how they got out from under that pressure. But
anyway, this is the same Christmas that I'm telling you about that we
got the people to go to different places. And in Elloree, where L.A.
Blackman was chairman of NAACP, they had had a Christmas program for
children every year—I mean all children—just had
it out in some city square, I guess. I never was there. But Mr. Blackman
called me one morning terribly upset. He said, "You know,
they've been having this Christmas program every year, and we were told
this week that there's not going to be any Santa Claus for the Negroes
this year." That's what the folks down there told him:
"There ain't going to be no Santa Claus for the
niggers." I said, "Well, Mr. Blackman, we'll have to
work on that. We can't have our children being indignified that
way." I said, "We'll just have to work out of
it." We had some of those relief funds then that I was telling
you about. And so I called in Mr. Redd and told him to go to the market
and get some oranges and apples—small ones, I said, but nice
ones (they were small so we could get as many as possible with the
money). And Mr. Blackman told me in the telephone conversation that he
did have two hundred pounds of hard candy.
One of the churches up North sent this two hundred pounds of hard candy.
So, we got the oranges and the apples and some tangerines, and I told
him to go down by a liquor store we had and get some two pound bags. I
told Blackman to call back, and I told him to get three or four women
and have them prepared so that when Mr. Redd got there with these
materials they could just bag this stuff. And so the children had their
party. So Mr. Blackman told me that one of the Negro mothers was working
in a white home. And after school her little boy would go by where his
mother was to stay until she got off. So when he
went by that day he had his Christmas bag, and she said the little white
boy ran to his mother and said, "Momma, the colored people had
a better Christmas than we had."
[laughter]
But now that's just how low-down this thing was. But Mr. Hinton
called me and told me he was displeased about it; it shouldn't be done,
that NAACP money wasn't to be … handled that way, spent that
way. Now he was president of the state conference now, and he demanded
something—I've forgotten what (it's been some years now). But
anyway, I said, "Mr. Hinton, your children are going to have a
nice Christmas, aren't they?" He said, "That's beside
the point."
Now I could go on and tell you other experiences I've had with NAACP that
have alienated me, especially since the program has ground
down—it's milk and water now from the national office down. I
pay my member-ship every year, as I told you the other day, under
protest. And I send them a little note: "I'm paying this under
protest, but I want my member-ship in because when I get ready to raise
hell, I don't want to raise it free of charge", see.
- BOB HALL:
-
What were their explanations to you about why NAACP couldn't be involved
in that kind of program? How did they see their position?
- MODJESKA SIMKINS:
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Well, in the first place, they weren't a relief program. They didn't have
a relief department in the set-up. "It wasn't a relief
program": now those were his words. Now what he meant by that I
don't know.
- BOB HALL:
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Did it involve how they raised money them-selves, or what kind of
friction it would stir up, or who their
benefactors were?
- MODJESKA SIMKINS:
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I don't know. I don't know that. I didn't go into it. I thought only of
the feelings of the children.