by Bob Zellner
On the way to breakfast Monday morning I passed a burned cross on the green, a large expanse of lawn and trees in the center of campus. I was surprised to see it and wondered what or who it was for. I didn’t connect the hideous symbol with myself at all.
I was soon joined by Townsend, who told me there were three other crosses outside the dorm. “Are you happy now?” he said.
“Happy about what?”
“They’re meant for you, you know.”
“Why just for me? There’s five of us involved, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Townsend said bitterly as we continued across the green toward the dining hall. “Bob, everybody is blaming you. They say you put us up to it and Thomas implied that Dean Turner hinted you called the press so it would be a big story.”
I told Townsend I was crushed that he and the others would fall for such divide-and-rule tactics, especially without even talking to me about it. We hushed when we joined the line picking up breakfast trays; everybody had stopped talking to listen to us. I guess we were the number one topic of discussion anyway.
Townsend and I found our way to the table where Joe Thomas, Bill Head, and John Hill sat. They were sticking together, they told us, since hearing that some of the basketball team were planning to beat them up. Joe, the smallest of the five of us, looked at Townsend sadly and said, “You and Bob don’t have anything to worry about. Nobody in his right mind would mess with either of you.”
Townsend exploded, “Who has threatened you, Joe? I’ll just go right now and break every bone in his body.” Tee was big on breaking every single bone.
“Hold on, Townsend,” Joe said, “nobody has actually threatened me. We just heard there were threats.”
I put my hand on Tee’s shoulder, “Yes, and Townsend, what about nonviolence? Aren’t we trying to be nonviolent? You know, in the spirit of the movement?”
“It’s okay for a demonstration,” Townsend shot back, “But, Bob, these Mississippi plowboys don’t play no nonviolence. It’d be wasted on them. I’m going to tell Doc and Henry Marcus and the rest of that yahoo bunch that if Joe so much as slips down and hurts himself, I’m holding them responsible.”
The strain was showing. Since the mass meetings, the workshop on Saturday, and the newspaper articles, events were piling up.
The night after our breakfast meeting, I was settling in for some much-neglected study, when George Waldron from next door ran into my room out of breath. Waldron, a nephew of grocery tycoon Alfred Delchamps, the Huntingdon board chairman, spoke rapidly, “The Klan is gathering down at the corner. They’re burning a big cross and Townsend thinks they’re going to come on to the campus to get you.”
Thinking he was kidding, I said, “Who told you this? Where is Townsend? I thought he was at the library.”
“He was,” George gasped, “but, he’s coming up the stairs now with Thomas and John Hill. Nobody knows where Head is.”
The door burst open. Joe and John propelled Townsend into the room. They had helped him run up the stairs. Tee had a wild look in his eyes, “Don’t you think you’d better hide someplace?”
“I’m not going to hide,” I said. “There’s nothing to hide from. These are just rumors. I think you guys are panicking over nothing. What have you heard exactly, what’s this about Head being missing?”
“Bob,” Thomas said solemnly, “these are not rumors. They shouted into the library that a cross was burning down the street from campus. We ran to the front arch and looked down Fairview Avenue. There’s a hell of a big fire down there, and noise from what looks like a lot of people.”
Just then a strange and wonderful thing happened. We looked up to see a small crowd gathering around our door. When Townsend saw John Ed Mathison and big Henry Marcus from the basketball team, he said under his breath, “Oh, hell!”
John Ed looked in and said, “Zellner, can we come in?”
“Yeah, John Ed, y’all come in,” I said.
“Bob, they’re burning a thirty-eight-foot cross down there on the corner of Court Street, and there’s talk of coming on campus to get you.”
“How do you feel about that, John Ed?” I asked.
“Well,” John Ed drawled, looking at Marcus and the other jocks, “the way we feel about it is that you are a first class son-of-a-bitch, but you’re our son-of-a-bitch and no two-bit bunch of Klansmen from off this campus is going to lay a hand on you.”
Townsend breathed a sigh of relief, and I joined Thomas and Hill in a big cheer. We were far too gallant to ask these newfound friends how they knew the cross was exactly thirty-eight feet tall.
5
Under the Influence
The day after the Klan scare, I received an ominous envelope bearing the state seal and the address of the Attorney General of the State of Alabama and containing a terse message: “Meet me in my office at the State Capitol at 10:30 a.m. on Wed., Dec 12th. I have a matter of importance to discuss with you.” It was signed by Attorney General MacDonald Gallion.
The others had received the same letter. Townsend was beside himself, “Well, ol’ buddy, ol’ roomy, the feces have contacted the rotary blade. What the hell are we going to do now?”
“I guess we are about to go see the attorney general,” I said, trying to sound calmer than I felt. “Why should this be worse than what we’ve already been through? What can he do? We haven’t really broken any laws you know.”
Townsend accused me of having a grin on my face proving that I was enjoying the whole situation. And when I replied that Gallion was probably just trying to scare us, Joe Thomas piped up and said, “Well, he’s already got me scared. I don’t want to go. In fact, I don’t intend to go. It’s not like it’s a subpoena or something. You go, and let us know what happens, Zellner.”
“I intend to,” I said. “Y’all can come if you want to. I’ve already called Daddy, and he is raring to meet with the attorney general.”
My father, in fact, was convinced that Gallion was keeping files on him and other Methodist preachers of the Alabama-West Florida Conference who were suspected of not being strict segregationists. Dad had the notion that he might somehow confirm such spying during the meeting with Gallion.
Dad drove up from Fort Walton Beach, Florida, where the family was living at the time, to join me for the meeting with Gallion. Before going to the capitol, we stopped for breakfast so we could discuss our strategy. Daddy was big on strategies. Over grits and eggs, biscuits and gravy, he laid out his plan for my approval. I was pleased that Dad was treating me with respect, consulting with me, more or less, as an equal. Under the circumstances, he probably felt more comfortable with me as a co-conspirator than as his son.
“Look,” Dad said, not paying much attention to his breakfast, “Fletcher McLeod [one of Dad’s close minister friends] and the rest of us have known for some time that Gallion has some of his henchmen investigating us. We think the attorney general pulls out his files to impress visitors or to intimidate people he wants to be his stool pigeons. The [Governor John] Patterson administration has been on a witch hunt and red-baiting our liberal and radical ministers of the conference and many of our congressmen who are for a more enlightened racial policy in Alabama. I’m sure my name has been in the ‘Red’ files of the state ever since I went to Boston in 1948 to help defend Bishop Oxnam when they called him a Red for serving on the American-Soviet Friendship Committee. That committee was fine in ’45 when we were allies; but what was patriotic during the war suddenly became communistic as soon as the Cold War started. But that’s ancient history, so if Gallion says anything about Reds, you just play dumb, and see what he does. He’s just trying to intimidate you and Townsend and them. I’m sure he just thinks y’all are a bunch of school kids he can scare. He doesn’t realize that Huntingdon is a Methodist church school. Some of us crazy preachers have something to say about the way it is run
. Searcy and them don’t have any guts; we know that. The preachers in our core group do.”
Dad took a deep breath and looked at me sheepishly, “Sorry, I guess that was a long speech. I guess I was working on it all the way up here in the car. Anyway, Bob, what do you think? How do you think we should play this?”
I grinned with happiness at the very idea that Dad would ask what I thought. I said, “I think that we should really stick it to them while we have the chance. I haven’t had a chance to tell you about the meeting the five of us had last night with Glenn Smiley from a group called the Fellowship of Reconciliation. It was a short meeting; we didn’t have much time to talk. Smiley found us in the Tea Room, and we went for a walk on the green. It was very conspiratorial. He said people in the North had read about us being told to leave school, so it made us feel better that the word is getting beyond the South. Smiley told us not to worry if we are expelled by Huntingdon—that he will guarantee that we can transfer, with scholarships, to any school in the country. That’s why I say to push ahead on this question of academic freedom. If we get expelled, we’ll just transfer and finish up somewhere else.”
But at that Dad reminded me that my mother was upset by all the controversy and was insisting that I finish up at Huntingdon this year.
I admitted I had promised her I would. “I will stay here and graduate, but I don’t intend to obey these ridiculous Mickey Mouse rules that Searcy has laid down by fiat. So, it may not be up to me whether I graduate or not this spring,” I said firmly. “Your eggs are getting cold,” I added, pointing to his plate.
“Never mind the eggs,” he said.
I told Dad that Dean Turner had said we’d be killed if we ventured off campus, but that weekend I had gone as usual to my job at Floyd Enfinger’s church in Chisholm and didn’t have a moment’s trouble. Dad replied that he knew we were being restricted to campus because school officials wanted to keep us quiet.
“That doesn’t mean there are not real dangers out there,” he said. “Remember, Sonny Kyle and those other yahoos are still out there with their baseball bats. Anyway, we’d better go. We can’t keep the attorney general waiting, can we?
MacDonald Gallion started out immediately trying to intimidate me. Sitting behind his huge desk stacked with papers, flanked with the U.S. and Confederate flags and backed with a portrait of Governor Patterson, he leaned toward me and boomed, “What made you go out and join those marches and take part in those sit-ins? Don’t you know that those types of activities are against the law in Alabama? What do you have to say for yourself, young man?”
Gallion had barely looked at Dad and had shaken hands only reluctantly. When Dad told the attorney general that he was here only to see that his son was treated fairly, Gallion had shot back, “Why wouldn’t he be?”
When Gallion asked what I had to say for myself I realized that I really didn’t have much stomach for playing dumb, so I looked him in the eye and said, “Mr. Attorney General, I’m sure you are aware, if your informants are giving you accurate information, that I have done none of the things you seem to be accusing me of. What marches? What sit-ins are you talking about?”
“Now, Mr. Zellner, I’m not saying you’ve done anything illegal. I’m just saying you’ve fallen in with the wrong crowd. You’ve fallen under the communist influence,” Gallion blurted.
“You mean there’s communists in Alabama?” I asked incredulously.
“No, they don’t live here,” he said, “but they come through here, and it’s obvious you’ve fallen under their influence.”
Before I could think of anything to say, Gallion leaned back in his chair, swiveled to his right, and pulled out a file drawer, which revealed a row of 3x5 cards about twelve or fourteen inches deep. Plucking out the first inch of the cards, he began to thumb through them, picking out a half dozen cards.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Dad home in on that file drawer full of cards. He almost got out of his chair to look. I know he was thinking that his card would be at the very back. “Z” was always easy to find.
Gallion was saying, “If any of these people contact you, young man, please call me immediately. I’ll have my secretary provide you with a special number you can call night and day. There will always be someone you can talk to. Here’s one. Be on the lookout for an Anne Braden or Carl Braden. B-R-A-D-E-N. Also be careful you don’t get contacted by Virginia Durr or Clifford Durr. And there’s Aubrey Williams . . . there’s lots of them.”
I had never heard of any of these people, but I was struck that he put the ladies first—Anne before Carl, Virginia before Clifford. Later, I learned why.
Before I could say anything, Dad spoke up. Very innocently he said, “Mr. Attorney General, would it be possible for you to provide us with a list of those names. I don’t seem to have a pen and paper on me.”
“Reverend Zellner, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t possibly put these names in writing for you, but you are free to use this paper and pencil if you want to get them down.” Gallion handed Dad a small pad and pencil and then repeated the names, spelling out the surnames. “As I said,” he continued, “if any of these people get in touch with you, you are to let me know immediately. Is that understood?”
As fate would have it, before the week was out, I was contacted by two people on the attorney general’s list—first Anne Braden and then Virginia Durr. I didn’t know whether to be more amazed at the prescience of the attorney general or that of Anne and Virginia. Anyway, I remembered thinking, “Ah, these are the communists; they must be the good guys.”
Needless to say, I didn’t “immediately” contact the Attorney General.
Thursday night, following the meeting with Gallion, I was trying to study in my room when George Waldron arrived with a message: “There’s a lady on the phone who says she’s from some newspaper, and she wants to talk to you. Her name’s Miz Braden, or somethin’ like that. It’s a Southern newspaper and sounds very patriotic. I don’t know what side they’re on. Do you want to talk to them?”
I said I would talk to them—her—and find out what it was about. I wasn’t accustomed to calls from ladies representing newspapers, patriotic or not.
Waldron followed me down and stood near the folding door as I said “hello” into the old pay phone. When I put the earpiece to my ear, static made the caller sound far away—Louisville, Kentucky, it turned out.
Mrs. Braden came right to the point, “I got your name from Reverend Abernathy. I hope you don’t mind me calling you at your dorm.”
“It’s the only phone I’ve got,” I said. “I don’t mind.” I held the earpiece tight against my ear and leaned as close as I could to the mouth piece on the box on the wall. “I can’t hear you very well. This is an old phone,” I shouted.
“I could call back and try for a better connection,” she shouted back, “but before I risk losing you, let me ask about the letter you wrote to Dr. King and Reverend Abernathy. I’d like to get your permission to use it in our paper—the Southern Patriot.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Before you decide,” she shouted, “let me tell you more about it.”
“Okay,” I said, “but wait a minute, someone’s calling me.”
George Waldron was tugging at my sleeve with a suggestion that she call me back on his phone. I gave Mrs. Braden George’s number and I thanked George for the use of his phone as we walked to his room. Even though George was an underclassman, he was a handy man to know. His uncle, Alfred Delchamps, was chairman of the Huntingdon College trustees. George thought we “trouble makers” were hot stuff, and more importantly, he had the only private phone in the dorm, one that actually worked. When his phone rang, we started all over.
“Oh, that’s much better,” Mrs. Braden said.
“Yes, it is, thanks to my friend George. What’s the name of your paper again, Mrs. Braden, the Southern Patriot? Is tha
t a conservative or, excuse my language, a right-wing paper?”
“Oh, heavens no, and please call me Anne, Mr. Zellner.”
“Okay, then you can call me Bob,” I said. “Anne Braden. I know I’ve heard your name recently. Do you mind if I ask if you are famous?”
“Not that I know of,” she said, sounding amused.
Then I remembered. “Oh,” I blurted, “the attorney general knows you. Is your husband named Carl?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Is that with a C or a K,” I asked, and we both laughed. Then, as if to say enough of this small talk, Mrs. Braden, Anne, got down to business again.
“Reverend Abernathy was impressed with your letter to Dr. King and the MIA. He showed it to me with the understanding that I would keep it confidential unless I got your permission to use it. One reason I could tell he liked the letter was that when he took it out of his shirt pocket to unfold it, it nearly fell apart. It looked like he had shown it to lots of people. Anyway, I was interviewing Abernathy here in Louisville for a story on the anniversary celebration of the boycott, and he used your letter to illustrate that the movement has support from some whites in Montgomery. Do you mind if we quote your letter in the next issue of the Southern Patriot?”
“It’s not exactly my letter,” I said. “I did draft it, but we all discussed its contents and then approved it. About twenty-three students here on campus signed it and contributed money to help Dr. King and Reverend Abernathy and them.”
It seemed months ago, but it must have been only weeks since we had sent the meager collection to the black ministers expressing outrage at the City of Montgomery for confiscating their cars and homes.
“We didn’t even collect much, about fifty dollars, I think. I tried to tell Reverend Abernathy that we realized it wouldn’t even make a dent in the millions of dollars they’ve been fined. We just meant it as a sympathetic gesture. We wanted them to know that all the white people in Alabama are not against them. That’s all. But I couldn’t give you permission to use the letter. All those names. We didn’t mean for it to be a public letter.”