Henry Hampton - Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s

VOICES OF FREEDOM

A Bantam Book
Bantam hardcover edition / February 1990
Bantam trade paperback edition / February 1991

Grateful acknowledgment is made to reprint photographs appearing at the opening of , UPI/Bettmann; 2, Don Cravens; 3, Thomas McAvoy, Life MagazineTime Inc.; 5, UPI/Bettmann; 6, UPI/Bettmann; 7, UPI/Bettmann; 8, 1963 Charles Moore/Black Star; 9, 1989 Mary Lee Moore; 10, A. Philip Randolph Institute; 11, AP/Wide World Photos; 12, UPI/Bettmann; 13, 1989 Flip Schulke; 14, 1984 Robert L. Haggins; 15, 1975 Flip Schulke; 16, UPI/Bettmann; 17, UPI/Bettmann; 18, Michael Sullivan/Black Star; 20, 1989 Stephen Shames/Visions; 21, UPI/Bettmann; 22, AP/Wide World Photos; 23, Washington Post/Matthew Lewis; 24, UPI/Bettmann; 25, Jill Freedman 1968/Old News: Resurrection City; 26, 1989 Fred W. McDarrah; 27, UPI/Bettmann; 28, New York State Police; 29, Chester Higgins Jr./Photo Researchers, Inc.; 30, The Boston Globe/Charles B. Carey.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to quote from Malcolm by Sonia Sanchez in Homecoming (Detroit: Broadside Press, 1969), , and for permission to quote from The Drum Major Instinct and I See the Promised Land by Martin Luther King, Jr., in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Harper & Row, 1986), 1986 by Coretta Scott King, executrix of the estate of Martin Luther King, Jr. Reprinted by permission of Joan Daves.

All rights reserved.
Copyright1990 by Blackside, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 89-18297.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-57418-3

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words Bantam Books and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103.

RRH 20 19

v3.1

People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have become. And they pay for it simply: by the lives they lead.

James Baldwin

C ONTENTS

1. Emmett Till, 1955
I Wanted the Whole World to See

2. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 19551956
Like a Revival Starting

3. The Little Rock Crisis, 19571958
I Had Cracked the Wall

4. Student Sit-ins in Nashville, 1960
A Badge of Honor

5. Freedom Rides, 1961
Sticks and Bricks

6. Albany, Georgia, 19611962
The Mother Lode

7. James Meredith Enters Ole Miss, 1962
Things Would Never Be the Same

8. Birmingham, 1963
Something Has Got to Change

9. Organizing in Mississippi, 19611963
The Reality of What We Were Doing Hit Me

10. The March on Washington, 1963
They Voted with Their Feet

11. The Sixteenth Street Church Bombing, 1963
You Realized How Intense the Opposition Was

12. Mississippi Freedom Summer, 1964
Representation and the Right to Participate

13. Selma, 1965
Troopers, Advance

14. Malcolm X (19251965)
Our Own Black Shining Prince!

15. The Lowndes County Freedom Organization, 19651966
Vote for the Panther, Then Go Home

16. The Meredith March, 1966
Hit Them Now

17. Chicago, 1966
Chicago Was a Symbol

18. Muhammad Ali, 19641967
I Am the Greatest

19. King and Vietnam, 19651967
His Philosophy Made It Impossible Not to Take a Stand

20. Birth of the Black Panthers, 19661967
We Wanted Control

21. Detroit, 1967
Inside of Most Black People There Was a Time Bomb

22. The Election of Carl Stokes, 1967
We Had to Be Organized

23. Howard University, 19671968
You Saw the Silhouette of Her Afro

24. Kings Last Crusade, 19671968
Weve Got Some Difficult Days Ahead

25. Resurrection City, 1968
The End of a Major Battle

26. Ocean Hill-Brownsville, 19671968
Everything Became More Political

27. The Black Panthers, 19681969
How Serious and Deadly the Game

28. Attica and Prisoners Rights, 1971
Theres Always Time to Die

29. The Gary Convention, 1972
Unity Without Uniformity

30. Busing in Boston, 19741976
As if Some Alien Was Coming into the School

31. Atlanta and Affirmative Action, 19731980
The Politics of Inclusion

P REFACE

T OWARD A M ORE P ERFECT U NION

I have a good, though complex, friendRutledge Adam Waker, black in every sense, South Carolina smart. I have watched him solve Rubiks Cubes and Boston politics by first sitting and watching and then, seemingly from nowhere, bursting into full and complete action. He has spent thirty years of his life buying land for himself and trying to create affordable housing for the poor, mostly the black poor. He inspires, confuses, and sometimes frightens whites, elevating them with his passion, putting them off with his anger. But he is as likely to take me on, poking fun at the black middle class, attacking our unreadiness for the revolution. He has taught me much about being black in America.

He called me early one bright, crisp fall day and with his peculiar urgency demanded of me, How much would it cost to rent a helicopter? He knows I am a pilot. Playing along, certain that he will get to it eventually, I tell him four hundred dollars an hour. There is this game between us in which he will not say why. I must ask. Finally, I can stand it no longer. I concede. Rudy, what do you need with a helicopter? I can feel his grin over the phone at his small victory. To surrender, he says. He has me now.