Captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2008 the convention in 1960 and there was a lady there named claire luper from i want to say Oklahoma City, and she spent all of her time talking about sitins that had been done by the naacp youth chapter in Oklahoma City and i remember going away from that saying, yeah, but no one knew about them other than claire luper and a couple other people. Thats again, that thing in history sometimes when you do something, when you have a context, that accords significance, rather than whether youve done it or not. I dont doubt that claire luper and her group had done sitins. But we know about the North Carolina people. They had an impact. We know about the friendship nine. I think they had an impact. Historically thats what we look for as we look at the social string that pushes this string that pushes that one that pushes that one. Thats the key point, i think i see it the way you do. You were able to set in motion very quickly, but turning the tension of rock hill and many things happened. Can you describe that . Youre on the chain gang, but you know that many of these but, you know, one of the things about being on the chain gang, we were coping with the situation of adjusting and being able to fit in and to do what we had to do to survive and to provide a witness on the chain gang. What we didnt realize and couldnt possibly realize was the impact that was going on out there. On sundays when there were 1,000 people coming to see us, the only people that we could see would be a line of perhaps 100 people that were coming straight into the dormitories where we were housed. We couldnt see all of those other people and we did not have Communications Network that enabled us to know that so that one of the things that has been tremendously gratifying to me is to read what was going on on the outside. You werent getting that information . Oh, no. We did not have an information flow that told us. I thought you would have gotten through no. If somebody told you i dont recall anybody saying im just one of about 1,000 people who are out here and it was deliberate on the part of the authorities to limit the number of people that we saw so as to not break us, but certainly not to encourage us. One of the times we wound up in solitary confinement was because they wanted us to erect a fence to sort of corral the people who were coming to see us, and so if youre looking only in a straight line, i see 25 people, i dont know how many people are along the laterals there. Again, i have to pull back just a bit. In december, probably, im guessing, just after the training at claflin was i think the 9th through the 11th, december 1960, very close on those dates, and then you were on a bus with gordon carey. Yes. You and he do some thinking and planning that will have just a very tremendous impact. So take me back to that ride and its purpose and what you talked about. Okay. We were going from South Carolina after a Training Session back to new york. I think gordon had a copy of louie fish achers book about gandhi and when they talked about gandhis famous march to the sea sort of thing, and i came up with the idea, broached the idea of a freedom ride and the freedom riders would copy some of the basic patterns of a 1947 journey that had been staged by the fellowship of reconciliation and corps jointly, thats the ride that joy was on the scout on. At some point in the journey, just chit chatting about one thing or another, the idea of a freedom ride comes up. What are we going to call this thing . I dont know if gordon said freedom rides ride or i said freedom ride. Its not critical to me in terms of who said what at the time. We went on to suggest that how are we going to do this thing in terms of the mechanics of the project. Were going to have to have people who are very well trained in nonviolence and were going to have to have somebody that will go down the route of the ride to send back very specific information about the town, the community, the bus schedules, the layout of the bus stations, the mass meetings and all of that sort of thing. Eventually i would become the person who would assume that particular function so that i could say that i was the scout for the freedom ride and the choice of places was determined by the location of historically black colleges and universities going southward that we had relationships with where we could house the riders and also where we could have meetings to inform the local community because we didnt want to just take a trip through a Community Without making some connections with the local people who would followup to make sure that whatever happened with us would be a springboard for them continuing to protest or taking advantage of any kinds of changes that would have occurred. This was, you just there described some of the close particulars, but this is audacious. Yeah. This is youre going to take you have this notion of pushing throughout deep south. Through the deep south. The original ride had not gone into the deep south because of the danger element, but we were going to go through mississippi we were going through alabama, mississippi and end up in louisiana and we knew that the resistance there would be considerable. In fact, i think my suggestion was that if we get through the state of alabama, were going to have to have federal protection because alabama was, along with mississippi, the most resistant places i thought we would encounter. The naacp had been outlawed in alabama, so thats how you got the southern christian Leadership Conference and dr. Kings Organizational Group going there because it was illegal to be a member of the naacp. Those three states we realized were going to be tough. We also realized there were places in South Carolina, like rock hill, where the possibility was imminent and, of course, in any of the small towns, in any one of those states, you could encounter all kinds of difficulties and you could lose your life. Tell me about the so you and carey communicate this idea to the folks at the National Office when you arrive . This is about the time that james farmer became the executive secretary of corps. Thats exactly right. And forgive me, let me add one more thing to contextualize the setup. This is in the late 1960, 61 when Jimmy Roberts tenure was in question. Thats right. Yeah. And so jim farmer was looking for a project and this is one that had the potential to be very successful and i dont think that we estimated how big it would become because i think it ultimately was one of the signature protests of the entire Civil Rights Movement. I mean it involved all kinds of people. There were all kinds of inputs and all kinds of positive things that were brought together to address an issue that got national attention, and i dont think that we had that in mind and evidence to the fact that we didnt have it in mind is that we had just a dozen or so very well trained, nonviolent soldiers who were going to do this thing and you know, youre not going to get a dozen people, no matter how well trained they are, through alabama, mississippi and louisiana. I dont think that we had estimated the potential and i think its difficult to do that anyway. Did you think dr. King might join . Was that something that you were it was not something that i was anticipating and its something that, given the magnitude of dr. Kings contributions, i do not hold one reserve in terms of my respect for dr. King that he didnt become a freedom rider. He was on the advisory board, National Advisory board, for corps. He had been perhaps the primary influence in flushing out nonviolence as a strategy for promoting social change, and to me, thats enough of a contribution. I dont care that he did not become a freedom rider. Maybe the question is too obvious, but i dont know the answer, why werent you a freedom rider . Why wasnt i a freedom rider. Okay. You did all the scouting. I did all the scouting. And then after setting the whole thing up i drew the assignment of being the person in jackson who would take care of all of the riders when they were released. I had an assignment before that, though. My assignment right after the bus was burned in aniston was in montgomery, alabama, and in montgomery, i lived in the home of Ralph Abernathy. This is when, after the event in the church, montgomery was under mashl law. The church was thousands of angry whites outside the rally at the abernathy church. Okay. So the town is under martial law and freedom riders start to trickle in and i was training riders there. I would have to go to the trailways or the greyhound stations to pick up riders. We would know how many riders were coming in, but we we would know their names, but we didnt match names with people so the question was, you know, how are you going to get down there. First of all, right outside of Ralph Abernathys house about a half a block up there was a jeep with a National Guardsman driving and another National Guardsman in the back seat with a rifle across, so these guys would give us an escort to within a block of the bus station, railways or greyhound. They disappeared. We got to get with a local guy who was my driver, we got to get from there, past all of the red necks, to pick up riders. We know there are five, but we dont know them. This is what i would do. I would stand in an area near a telephone booth. I would know the gender of the people. As soon as i saw them dial Ralph Abernathys number i would go over and come on, come on. That worked for a number of times. We would go back with those people, past the mob incidentally, past the mob, we would get in our vehicle, the jeep would intercept us again, take us back to abernathys house. This is the protection that we are getting when we needed the national guard, it wasnt there. We were on our own. When we got back to a safe neighborhood, Ralph Abernathy lived in a black neighborhood. There was not a lot of chance that was going to be somebody be that was going to come in and do us harm there. Its from there that i was assigned to jackson. Thinking back, as best you can, to watch this whole ride unfold, especially from rock hill forward, rock hill on down, your vision unfold in the spectacular really fashion that it did in all of the tumult and violence and the federal government is involved, i mean youre not a very youre a young man. Youre in your early 20s. Thats right. Im interested in the response and your sense of whats happening . It was a sense of gratification, it was also a sense of responsibility for people who would be injured, who might carry those injuries the rest of their lives. Its one thing to ask me to do that as a person. Its another thing but i also thought that we were in this together and what happened to any one of us could have happened to any others of us, and i would have been willing to do and i was gratified that there were brothers and sisters, white, black, who were similarly minded. I think we had grown up to the point here of the level of sacrifice that might be expected. Always hoping that that would not be the case, but realizing that it certainly could be the case. Obviously the experience of violence by that point was not entirely new to the movement but it was pretty ferocious. Yes. And i wonder about your reaction to that . Did that change any part of your perspective in any way . No because i think that the idea was that we cant let violence intimidate us into doing any less than what we think we should be doing and that be we insisted being treated like any other citizens. How about perspective about the federal government, Kennedy Administration in particular, after what happened . Well, the federal government was not our ally. I think that they were sort of annoyed that there were all these Critical International issues and then you have this bunch of black and whites who want to ride through the south challenging the culture of segregation. I would be particularly critical of the fbi because there was no community that i worked in where i could talk to an fbi agent. I did once think on a sort of intuitive perk, that there was an fbi guy i could Say Something to. This is when i was working in jackson. About two months later i wound up in federal court. The agent had hoped that he could implicate me on a conspiracy. Well, it turns out i had been tactful enough that when i testified it really didnt help their case, so the Justice Department presence with people like john door was often welcomed and was sincere. John door did a lot of very good work, i think, in mississippi and Voter Registration protections and so forth, but the sincere involvement and the by the federal bureaucracy in protecting rights and so forth was grossly negligent. I think to the kennedys this was all about politics. It wasnt about a moral commitment to protect citizens who were being disenfranchised by the local political culture. It must have been and you yourself would get on a bus later in the course of this, and it must have been very interesting to watch everything turn towards jackson towards parchman and it became really a national event. It did, yes. It did. Yeah, we had people coming in from various parts of the country. We had various religious groups. I remember the episcopalians, the church of latter day saints groups. Yeah, it was a good Cross Section of america, and thats the situation where the freedom rides started out as a specific protest involving a very small group and they wound up being a National Movement essentially. I dont think we could have predicted that. What was your broad sense of the prospects of the movement as that summer of 61 wound down and the Civil Rights Community is looking for the best choices about how to move forward . What was your sense of what the freedom rides at that point meant and what opportunities seemed ahead of you . Well, i saw nonviolent direct action as being a possible root to promoting some of the kinds of changes that we wanted to promote, but at the same time, i was aware of the impatience of people who had been tactically nonviolent who is starting to listen to what is a dominant cultural theme which is violence. There was a kind of innocence, kind of a moral focus to the early part of the movement, but to be a nonviolent movement, if you go back to gandhi, it requires a lot of discipline, a lot of training, and to ask people in a society that is predominantly violent through its core to continue to maintain that, i think that that is the sad thing about what happened with the death of dr. King. I think that dr. King, by the time he was assassinated, had really started to wane because the violent elements were so ever present until they were becoming considerable in terms of how we go about promoting the change that we want to promote. You would move from the freedom ride into the experience in mississippi . Yes. Now i didnt do a lot with the experience. I was there when it was founded. Exactly. Can you and it seemed to be a natural kind of thing. To the segregationists and the culture of segregation in mississippi, there would be no difference between core naacp, sncc, sclc. To the segregationists, those were all the same. We had different strengsz in terms of what organizations could contribute to the struggle, so i have always ascribed to the notion that there were some people who would be active in the naacp who would never be active in core, who would never be active in sclc, but we need their push as a thrust for this movement forward, and so i dont go back and belabor any negative points about the organizations that were involved because i think there were enough niches for all of us to put our shoulders to the plow to move this retched animal of segregation out of the way. Tell us about moses . You worked with him briefly. Bob moses was a brilliant guy, a visionary. When we were focused on taking care of freedom riders in jackson, which is when i first met bob moses, bob moses was involved in managing the campaigns of some of the local ministers who were running for congress. He was a looking ahead to the potential for political status, sew lid fig some of the gains that we were trying to get to happen or to occur. His book is on that the algebra project. He and dave dennis worked together. I have high respect for bob moses. One of the things i respect about bob moses is that there were people involved in this movement who in my opinion were quite a bit centered around themselves and their significance. I think bob moses saw the larger picture and i think his very lowkey manner is to push the issues and the important things, as opposed to pushing the individual. In 62 i guess you reached the point because of reasons related to your deferment status, you will certain choices are very stark in front of you. Can you talk about what they were and how you okay. After college i had received a number of deferments and i had gotten to the point of being classified, i think it was 1a, and so actually i received, when i was still right in the midst of working in jackson, i received a notice that i had to report to fort jackson for induction into the army. Now i had been negligent to make the argument that i would object to military service on the basis of conscience, because that philosophy of nonviolence had convinced me that i would not be a very good soldier, but i would be willing to serve my country in an ultimate capacity. Not being a c. O. , i get to fort jackson. We take all of these preliminary tests the first day. The sergeant says, looks good, the next day he says, well, i see you have an arrest record here. I said indeed i do. Youre not morally fit to serve in the military, except well think about this, and when he said that, he said were going to let you go for a few days, and i went very quickly to resurrect the interest that i had shown in a couple graduate schools. One was Atlanta University in atlanta, georgia. The other one that i had been admitted to was university of washington on the west coast, and university of illinois, champagne urbana. I checked to see