During the early spring of 1961 I rode the bus to Birmingham to visit Ella Kappes. She was working in the city and I was attending MS State College for Women (now MSU for Women). Sunday afternoon, after a delight weekend, Ella took me to the Greyhound Bus Depot to return to the "W."
The station was eerily empty with only thuggish men carrying paper bags. They paced, watched the activities on the street, walked around the building several times and finally gathered in the station when the ticket clerk announced the bus would soon arrive. We both thought it was my bus so we too stood to say our final good-byes. The bus circled the block to enter from the back where boarding and unloading occurred. There were large, aluminum, swinging doors at the base of a slight decline that opened to an incline to the outer bus stalls. We were at the top of the incline when the doors swung open and the passengers that disembarked from the bus entered the station. At that moment the thugs pulled lead pipes from the paper bags they were carrying and began to beat the passengers, all of whom were people of color. You can imagine the chaos that ensued with people screaming, crying for help and thugs cursing the passengers. Ella and I turned to the ticket clerk pleading for him to do something and his only comment was, "Miss, just go outside the front and get on your bus in the back." The bus headed for Columbus had arrived and ready for boarding.
My trip back to college was one spent in extreme pain, pain for the people who had endured the kind of violence I had never seen and certainly didn't understand. The crying, both audible and in my heart, would not stop and for days I couldn't concentrate on anything other than this horrific display of cruelty between men. Each day for the next 3 weeks I searched the "Birmingham News" for some report of the event with nothing forthcoming. Finally, on a back page of the paper, there was a small paragraph about "a confrontation between local men challenging the black bus riders who demanded using the facilities of the bus station. On the outskirts of the city the bus riders were again pelted with rocks that damaged the windshields of the bus."
For the next 25 years I often thought of that confrontation. Until a chance meeting with one of the bus riders, there had been no closure or understanding of the horror that we experienced in the bus station. One of the riders, actually the youngest one on board, as you had to be 17, was now married to a faculty member at Webster University. As adjunct faculty at the university I was invited to the President's annual Christmas party where light conversation with a gentleman turned to more indepth discussions about our backgrounds. It was one of those providential encounters that to this day leaves me breathless. He filled in the gaps of the Birmingham experience.
The Freedom Riders were on their famous trip from Montgomery, AL to Washington, D.C. to demand equal opportunities when they stopped to refill and take care of personal needs. Their stop had been exposed and the Ku Klux Klan were there waiting. After the highway assault their bus limped into D.C. in need of extensive repairs. He told me they didn't dare stop again; they had escaped death once but feared another encounter would be deadly.
We lived through an historic time, not really understanding the conflicting forces that were stirring in the hearts and lives of us all. I'm amazed that the part we played in that progress is only now being appreciated. The demands we made to have the musicians out of Memphis and New Orleans be an integral part of our lives surely impacted what was to come in our society.
In Celebration of MHS Class of 1958
Sunday, August 24, 2008
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10 comments:
Sorry for the delete. Typos infected it. And for the deleted second comment, too. How many times do I have to forget "Mr. Preview"? I'm an idiot.
Jin, Thanks for your unimpeachable testimony.
Why has this expat Meridianite eschewed visiting a place of which I have the fondest of memories? How about some names? Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, Tommie Tarrants, and three Roberts boys. I have a lot to say about this topic, but it took your post to create a forum. I hope others will provide dialogue.
A couple of classmates may know where I come down on the issues broached by your post. We've all come a long way from those troubling days.
August 24, 2008 4:20 PM
Odd how we view things from different perspectives. It seems that when the class of '56 had its reunion several years ago, our classmate who played a major part during this era, appeared at the reunion and was "treated like a celebrity". Go figure.
If this "celebrity" is who I think it was, I heard that he killed himself after years of some imprisonment and fear and paranoia. He had built a 10' tall fence around his house after his release.
I guess I know who the "celebrity" was, too. We all laughed at his antics, were impressed by his dancing skills and I admit to smiling when he took away his baton and drove the tall headdress of the Hattiesburg drum major down, past his ears and onto his shoulders. He was our MHS warrior and we all basked in the reflected glory of his beating the s*** out of those other high school gladiators.
But, I also saw our "valiant warrior" take a metal pipe and crush the skull of a cur dog and laugh about it.
In my opinion, looking back, he was an affable psychopath. Later on, he was simply used as a tool, manipulated into thinking he would become a hero by his action(s). And, sadly, to some, I'm sure he was.
Of course, if I'm thinking of the wrong guy...
The real issue I think Jinny's getting at is much larger. None of us could see things very clearly from ground level growing up. Many of us viewed the civil rights activities as an attack on Southern culture. In a way, it was. For me, it took getting out of Dodge to get a bird's eye view of what I think was the basic issue: one of fairness.
This comment is too long already, sorry.
Martha Ann: he died from the effects of acute diabetes. And whenever I happened to see him around Meridian through the years, he acted like just another "good ol' boy".
Jin, the only thing we disagree on is your last couple of sentences:
" I'm amazed that the part we played in that progress is only now being appreciated. The demands we made to have the musicians out of Memphis and New Orleans be an integral part of our lives surely impacted what was to come in our society."
I think we overstate our contribution here. We were entertained surely, but our liking the music really never touched on or recognized the issues the SCLC and others forced us to deal with in the mid-60s. Or let me say, I certainly didn't recognize them in 1958.
Clearly only a minuscule number of us resorted to violence to stymie change, but a lot of us sat on our hands while such things were going on. For a while I know I did. Meridian was a focal point for both racism and anti-semitism back then, in the mid-60s. Not our fault. Just a fact. I'll bet no one reading this had anything to do with any of it. But it happened. In Meridian. In my Meridian.
Everything government, at all levels, has done since those days of establishing fairness has been an abject failure. I think things have gotten worse, by almost every measure for the black community. The touted "War on Poverty"? Well, Poverty won! Most programs have been a cruel joke. I was glad fairness came about. After that? Things went out of control. But that doesn't indict the establishment of fairness. That's really my only issue. Fairness.
I don't write this to anger folks. If I have, I'm sorry. I'm even sorry for this loquaciousness.
I'm talking about Raymond.
When teaching at MHS in the late 60's, the black students asked for a holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They were denied. They didn't go to classes, though. Instead, they walked the wide halls hand in hand - hundreds of them as a group - singing "We Shall Overcome." We teachers were instructed to close and lock classroom doors, but I stood at the door to witness a spine-tingling sight as they neared my class. I realized I was seeing a peaceful yet strong movement that would not be stopped. I was witnessing history.
I'm a little late coming to the table, but I recall three things I read which really opened my eyes about unfairness, racism and anti-semitism as well as the civil rights movement in Mississippi. All were read in the 60's and 70's.
The first was Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, dealing with racism, anti-semitism and some of the greatest atrocities committed since the world began. The second book was required reading for law students at Ole Miss (I was married to one). The name of the book is Crisis in Black and White. It is about race relations and the effects of slavery and discrimination.
The third material which really brought the matter home were the Civil Rights files which I read while working in the United States Attorney's Office in Oxford. These files consisted of FBI reports from the 60's and 70's. I read about "the celebrity," about the Philadelphia murders, Meredith entering Ole Miss, bombings in Meridian, attacks against our Jewish families and friends in Meridian, the KKK, lots of stuff around Laurel and so on. I read about cruelty and hatred which would have been beyond belief except for the preparation given by the reading of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
Of all the books and material I have read in my life, these three plus the Bible, War and Peace, and a few others have been the ones which have most changed my perception of the our world. They took away my innocence and the protection my mother had wrapped me in against all things evil.
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