The Wrong Side of Murder Creek

by Bob Zellner

  I stopped when I realized I was rambling; I didn’t want to run up a big phone bill for her.

  “Oh, we would never use the names in the paper. I’m from Alabama myself, and I know how much trouble people can get into. Why don’t you let me tell you what I have in mind, and then you can tell me what to do,” she said. I really liked her voice. She didn’t sound at all like a Yankee, and now she had told me she was from Alabama, but I thought MacDonald had said that none of the communists lived in Alabama.

  She sensed my hesitation. “If you’d rather not talk about this now, I’d understand. I could call you back later.”

  “No,” I said quickly, “it’s not that I don’t want to talk about it. It’s just that I’m not used to talking to the press, and I’m having trouble thinking this fast.”

  “Okay, I’ll slow down. I read that you and the other students have been asked to resign because you attended the workshop at Reverend Abernathy’s church. You must be under a lot of strain. I’m mentioning this because I’d really like to do a story on the Huntingdon Five for next month’s issue—the Patriot comes out only once a month, so you can see we’re not the Big Press. But, right now all I’m interested in is the story of the letter. What I want is a small sidebar using your letter and a comment from Abernathy or King, if I can reach him—he travels so much . . . on what it means to them, and the Negro community in Montgomery, to have even a little support from the white community.”

  She asked if I could poll the other signers for their consent to use the letter, which she said might inspire other Southerners to break their silence on civil rights. I replied that she didn’t sound like the typical “objective” reporter.

  “I’m not,” she said matter-of-factly. “That’s the beauty of working for the non-traditional press. We sometimes call it the alternative press. I’ll send you some copies of the paper and you can judge for yourself. We do take a stand, and it’s not with the Klan—despite our patriotic-sounding name.”

  “Great,” I said. “The only thing I’ve seen that takes a stand on social issues or politics is National Review; a friend gave me a subscription and I find that it takes the absolutely wrong stand on everything.”

  “You’ll like the Southern Patriot,” she said emphatically.

  “Are you really from Alabama?”

  “Yes,” she laughed, “I’m from Anniston, as a matter of fact. That’s one reason my ears perked up when Abernathy mentioned your letter.”

  “Our letter.”

  “Your letter,” she agreed, “Your collective letter. When you get out of Alabama, you tend to lose the habit of saying ‘y’all’ as the plural of ‘you.’ When I say ‘your letter’ I don’t mean just Bob Zellner’s letter. I mean the letter from all of you. Anyway, I was fascinated because you were all from Alabama, attending an Alabama school.”

  I agreed to ask the others if the paper could print the letter. They agreed as long as their names weren’t used. Anne asked if she could use my name, and I agreed after clearing it with the others. I cautioned Braden not to identify me as the leader. I told her we did things by consensus, and that we had no formal organization. “You’re going to love SNCC,” she said.

  The significance of her remark escaped me at the time. Anne later convinced me to join the SNCC staff.

  The second name to surface from Gallion’s list was that of Virginia Durr. The Virginia and Clifford Durr part of my life began innocently enough. When I received Anne’s phone call, I had no idea how important she was to be in my life. The same could be said of Virginia Durr.

  The card was deceptively simple; it was the first formal dinner invitation I had ever received. Simple and elegantly printed, it read:

  Mr. Robert Zellner: We desire the pleasure of your company for dinner at our house, 2 Felder Avenue, Montgomery, Alabama. Wed. evening, 8 p.m., December 1960.

  It was signed by Virginia and Clifford Durr. Their phone number was included, followed by a request that I please RSVP after conveying the invitation to “your four friends, Messrs. Thomas, Ellis, Hill and Head.”

  When I showed the card to Thomas and the others, Thomas exploded in his trademark nervous laugh, “Damn, isn’t that one of the main communists Gallion told you about?”

  “Two of ’em,” I replied. “Virginia and Clifford Durr.”

  “How’d they find out about us?” Townsend asked, looking at me somewhat suspiciously.

  I looked at my roommate and laughed hysterically, “Oh, how? I guess we’re some well kept secret or something. Get your party duds together fellers,” I said. “It looks like we’re going to dinner.”

  We went and it was fabulous. I was glad the others came to the Durrs’ dinner, because they had a chance to hear sane, reasonable, and erudite people discuss what we had done. Moreover, our hosts and the other guests approved what practically everyone else found reprehensible.

  When the five of us walked up the drive to the Durrs’ house on Felder Avenue, we bunched together for protection against the Klan and against our nervousness at this “social” occasion. We all wore suits and we had no idea what to expect. I had spoken only briefly to Mrs. Durr when I called to accept the invitation, but it was long enough to recognize the aristocracy in her voice. Most of us were small town or country boys except Bill Head. Though Townsend and Joe Thomas had grown up in Mobile, none of us were long on etiquette.

  I was impressed with the home. Occupying a strategic corner in the upper-crust part of town on the corner of Felder and Court, the old house was across the street from Montgomery’s society bastion—Sidney Lanier High School, the counterpart to Robert E. Lee High School on the working class side of town. The Durr daughters, Tilla and Lula, I learned later, took a lot of knocks behind Lanier’s ivied walls from the city’s young blue-blood elite.

  As we approached, the gravel on the drive crunched loudly. The lights were off on the long wrap-around old porch, accentuating the brightness from inside. Laughter and the tinkle of ice and glasses came from open windows; a white-aproned black cook approached a long table with a steaming plate of food. Couples faced each other holding long-stemmed glasses, like in the movies, I thought.

  We ascended the broad steps, crossed a large expanse of porch and approached the tall screen door. I was about to knock when a rosy-faced woman of somewhat ample proportions, hair tied in a bun, detached herself from a small knot of people to open the door.

  “Why, Mr. Zellner, I’m so glad you all could come. Come in. I’ve been longing to meet you, and I’m delighted all of you came. I’m Mrs. Durr.”

  She swept the five of us into the room; I wondered how she knew I was Zellner. I didn’t ask because she immediately began showing us off like we had won a gold medal at the Olympics.

  She asked me to name my companions, then she introduced the people in the room. Mrs. Durr was obviously in her element. We weren’t, but I managed to introduce each of us and his place of origin: Joe Thomas, Mobile; Townsend Ellis, Mobile; John Hill, Camden; and Bill Head, Union Springs. At the mention of Union Springs, Virginia brightened. She took Head’s arm and asked about his mother and his uncle so-and-so. The names she fired at the three of us from Mobile and poor John from Camden didn’t ring many bells with us. I began to suspect that Head’s family might be more prominent than he had let on.

  “And you, Mr. Zellner, I understand your folks live on the beach in Florida. Valparaiso, I believe.”

  “Yes, they do, ma’am, but I never lived in Florida, except I was born in Jay, Florida, about fifteen miles from Brewton, Alabama. I graduated high school in Mobile but I guess I’m more or less from East Brewton.”

  “I know,” she said. “Your father’s a Methodist minister and you’ve moved a lot.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “How did you know?”

  “Mrs. McLeod told me all about your family. But just let me introduce you.”

  Eve
rybody gathered around us; we huddled together in the middle of the room.

  “This is Mr. Durr,” Mrs. Durr said as I shook hands with a tall, stoop-shouldered man. “His name is Clifford.”

  Clifford Durr looked like he’d just stepped out of the pages of To Kill a Mockingbird. Silver hair lapped modishly over gold, wire-rimmed glasses. Mr. Durr’s seersucker suit was rumpled but expensive, and his startlingly blue eyes shone through the smoke curling up from a non-filtered Pall Mall cigarette held loosely between his lips. “Looks like you may have stirred things up there at the college—first time in years. Do the place good,” he said.

  I liked the Durrs immediately, not realizing then that Clifford would almost a second father while Virginia metamorphosed into a sort of mom-away-from-home; their house, especially during the SNCC years, would serve as a safe home port.

  The only guest I remember from the dinner was Mrs. Francis McLeod. Virginia’s choice of Mrs. McLeod as a dinner companion was inspired: Francis McLeod was the grande dame of the famous Methodist McLeods. Because she was present, I felt quite at home as did the other Huntingdon men. All of us were Methodists and more or less active in the church. Mrs. McLeod’s sons were longtime friends and political allies of my father. Her son Fletcher was my father’s best friend; everyone assumed that her oldest, Powers McLeod, would someday be bishop. Francis had two other sons in the Alabama-West Florida Conference of the church, and her forebears, too numerous to mention, had grown old and honored in the church.

  Townsend seemed nervous; I saw him looking at the food cooling on the table. In our shyness, we had unconsciously gravitated to his bulk, so when he edged closer to the table, we followed. Just then, the cook arrived with the last dish of food. Virginia assumed her place at one end of the table—Clifford at the other. Mrs. Durr directed me to the chair on her right, and Townsend to sit near the end at Clifford’s left, sensing he would need room for his large right arm. It’s a good thing Southerners always make too much food because we were all starved for home-cooked food. We found that Virginia kept a legendary pantry and retained the services of an excellent cook.

  The food was simply outrageous. Townsend and I had a habit of remembering memorable meals, and this one joined our pantheon of greats! Fried chicken was followed by the most delicate pink roast beef that has ever melted in my mouth. Red meat of any kind was a delicacy in our house, and rare roast beef was a new experience for me. Everyone clamored for more corn bread sticks as a huge basket of them quickly disappeared and was refilled. Every few minutes the cook came back with more hot ones.

  A plate piled high with deviled eggs, which had passed John Hill, then Head, almost disappeared as it went by Townsend, arriving in Clifford’s hand with just three halves. Clifford gave Townsend a “growing-boys-must-eat look,” quietly asking the cook if she had any more eggs. “We’re making some more now,” she said. “In the meanwhile why don’t y’all try some of that delicious English pea salad.”

  I don’t know how they did it in December, but there were plates of okra, sliced tomatoes, and a large bowl of butter beans. A huge mold of tomato aspic decorated the center of the table, and, as usual, nobody ate any. I have always wondered what people did with tomato aspic when the party was over.

  The conversation was so good it kept interfering with the eating. I asked Mr. Durr if it was legal for Huntingdon to restrict us to the campus, and what to do if one is casually identified by the attorney general as subversive or communistic. Since I sat at the opposite end of the table, everybody had to listen.

  Clifford explained that we had fewer rights at a private school than students at a state school. No institution could, however, without good reason, abridge any of the rights guaranteed under state and federal constitutions such as freedom of assembly, speech, religion, and so forth.

  I told Mr. Durr that Dr. Searcy had restricted us to campus supposedly for our own safety. “Searcy maintains the administration is acting in the place of parents while we’re away from home and they are responsible for our life and limbs. They say they can’t guarantee our safety off campus.”

  “I’m not sure they can guarantee it on campus,” Head interjected.

  “That may be true,” Clifford said. “What Dr. Searcy is enunciating is the theory, ‘in loco parentis.’ That’s just Latin for—”

  “In the place of the parents,” Bill Head broke in.

  Clifford looked approvingly at Head and continued, “Right, but in the final analysis, according to what Bob said, their position rests on the old segregationist view that people don’t have the right to do anything the Ku Klux Klan doesn’t want them to do.”

  Joe Thomas told of the conversation with Dr. Arlie B. Davidson, our sociology professor, who said we’d be arrested if we sat down with Negroes to discuss the bus boycott. Everybody laughed when John Hill explained standing-up, and sitting-down integration. Then Townsend described Searcy’s face when I added “horizontal” as a third type of integration that seemed to be accepted in Montgomery, as evidenced by the number of light-skinned Negroes.

  “It is ironic, isn’t it, Mr. Zellner,” Mrs. Durr was still being formal with me, “that segregationists will tolerate standing-up integration and even support lying-down integration but will kill over sitting-down integration, don’t you think?”

  Before I could answer, Clifford said, “I don’t think it’s ironic at all, Virginia, if you understand the Southern mind . . .”

  “I believe I do, Cliff. Why I’ve got one myself,” she replied. “Indeed I do understand the Southern mind, but why do otherwise sane, hardworking, God-fearing people insist on continuing to believe these Southern myths and fantasies that have no other purpose than to prop up—”

  “They prop up the Southern way of life which has always been damned good business for those who own the South, a lot of whom now are Yankees,” he replied, getting in the last word for once.

  That memorable December dinner was a welcome respite from the intensity that faced us on campus. Four of us were due to graduate in a few weeks, while Hill had another year to go. I was becoming more and more aware of the difference between the other four students and me in that I had the support of my family and they didn’t. They were devastated by the pressure we faced that spring of 1961. Joe Thomas took an overdose of some medicine and was found wandering around campus in a state of incoherence. My roommate, Townsend Ellis, who struggled with obesity and diabetes all his life, went on a drinking and eating binge. John Hill, youngest of the five who were asked to leave Huntingdon, was relatively unscathed. He simply withdrew from school and left for home.

  Most affected was William Head from Union Springs, the intellectual leader of our small group. A poet and the most sophisticated of our five, Bill was seen by the rest of us as highly bohemian. We believed he had actually read On the Road while we had only heard about Jack Kerouac and other avant-garde writers. If you hung around with “the Head,” people thought you were a heavy-duty brain. Before Head and I were revealed as misfits, we had been selected for Sigma, Sigma, Sigma—the college’s highest honor. I was sure I had been included out of benevolence or maybe because of my outgoing personality. The power of society was revealed by what happened to William Head when President Searcy demanded that we resign.

  Bill did resign from Huntingdon and returned to Union Springs. Normally at college we learned little of each others’ families, but, while discussing the importance of parental support when one is rebelling against society, it was hinted that Bill’s family in Black Belt Union Springs was on the prominent side—a planter family with political aspirations. Needless to say, his descent into heresy didn’t play well back home. Later there was a rumor that Head had become Catholic and enlisted in the Marines. The significance of this rumor was that such behavior was at the very sad end of the spectrum for Brainy Bill—the personification of the questioning mind and the unfettered spirit. I learned years later that Willi
am Head had become mentally ill and died an early death.

  Townsend tried to explain to me why the four of them were resigning and going home. “You have support, and that makes all the difference in the world. We not only don’t have the support of our families, we’ll be lucky to stay alive when we go back home.”

  I told Townsend I didn’t see how it could be that bad. He turned red and shouted, “What are you talking about, Zellner? Head has to go back to Union Springs and that’s a hell of a lot more dangerous than Mobile. If you get in trouble with the college or the Klan, your father will be up here with twenty preachers to bail your little ass out. Our parents will help the goddamn Klan hang us to a tree.”

  I pleaded with them not to resign. “Searcy is not going to expel us,” I said. “If the administration intended to throw us out, they would already have done it. They’re scared to kick us out because of academic freedom. Don’t you remember what Glenn Smiley told us?”

  I reminded them of the Fellowship of Reconciliation field secretary’s offer. He had told us that if we were expelled for attending an integrated meeting with Dr. King, he could guarantee that we would be admitted to any college or university of our choice, including Harvard or Yale. Townsend got mad all over again and hollered that it was well and good for Bill Head and me, but the others were average and could never go to school outside the South much less to Harvard or Yale. He pronounced the names like they were just too precious for words.

  I continued doggedly, “They want y’all to voluntarily resign, Townsend; it lets them off the hook. They’ll tell the politicians, the police, and the Klan that we are all gone—no more problem. Huntingdon won’t have to take a stand either way and everybody will be happy, except us, out on our ear, with no place to go. If we fight them, though, and get expelled, we’ll have somewhere to go. There will still be the cause.”