by Bob Zellner
Jim Zwerg wanted us to find the others. “William Barbee is hurt real bad, but I bet you that he and Bernard Lafayette and the others are all planning to continue.”
John Lewis, we learned, was patched up by a local black doctor and then went to the Reverend Solomon Seay’s house. William Barbee was badly injured and suffered from it for the rest of his life. Freddy Leonard, Bernard Lafayette, and a few others jumped over a retaining wall and escaped through the adjacent post office. Other riders managed to find safety in the black community.
I had expected to see John Lewis at the hospital. He had been badly beaten at the bus station. I hadn’t yet met John, but I knew he was an Alabama homeboy, who, like me, grew up experiencing the bittersweet and very slow life of the farm and small-town South. We share the name John Robert, and we both mumbled badly, tending to mangle the language in a pronounced rural dialect. John was short and stocky, dark and muscular—“built low to the ground for hard work,” as my uncle Harvey, who lived not far from the Lewis farm, used to say of a good cotton chopper.
John is now a powerful Congressman from Georgia, high up in the Democratic leadership. But back then, I was embarrassed and humiliated and very sad that my fellow white Southerners had battered him and the others like they were dangerous snakes. I would learn later that there were some small heroic actions by some white Southerners that day. When he learned that the Montgomery police were not stopping the mayhem, State Trooper head Floyd Mann rushed to the Greyhound station. He drew his gun and stood over William Barbee saying, “There will be no killing here today!” Tennessean John Seigenthaler Sr., on the scene as Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s personal representative, also risked his life trying to save Susan Wilbur and other women Freedom Riders.
Once we came back to campus we tried to concentrate on classes. By now everybody considered our little group to be “movement headquarters” at Huntingdon. All day rumors flew that mobs were continuing to gather at various locations around town vowing to hunt down the Freedom Riders and stop them for good. Radio and TV broadcasts kept repeating the promises of the riders to continue all the way to New Orleans, or die trying.
The next night, crowds of Montgomery’s black citizens converged for a mass meeting at the Reverend Ralph Abernathy’s First Baptist Church. Dr. King had arrived from Atlanta and was there. This was the same sanctuary the Huntingdon Five had visited for the MIA workshops some months earlier. As soon as I got wind of the gathering I planned to go, so when Mrs. Durr insisted that I stay with her and Cliff at their Felder Avenue house I was somewhat crestfallen but maybe a little relieved at the same time. That church would be a dangerous place to try getting into and out of, especially, I thought, for a white person. Virginia explained that the Durr home was becoming a center for progressives from around the country, who were hurrying to Montgomery to continue the rides. The Durrs needed me there to help with any emergencies that might come up. I wondered what kind of emergencies she had in mind. I had not yet put my feet clearly in the activist camp and I was feeling the pressure from home, especially from Mom. She and Dad promised that if I would stick it out at Huntingdon and graduate, then they would both support me in anything I wanted to do in the burgeoning civil rights movement. In retrospect, that was pretty good advice because I probably never would have gotten my bachelor’s degree if I had followed my inclination to drop out and join the Freedom Riders. I would have ended up in Mississippi’s Parchman Prison with the others.
With mixed feelings then, I waved goodbye to Jessica Mitford and Peter Ackerburg as they departed for the church in Virginia’s old Plymouth. Decca had tapped Peter to accompany her to the church in her role as reporter. The next twelve hours were filled with a mixture of heroism, terror, and craven Southern cowardice. Decca had Peter park near the front of the church so they would not have to encounter too many members of the mob outside.
As more Montgomery Negroes packed into the church, more heat was generated, both literally and figuratively. The local and state police apparently decided that a church full of dead blacks and their few white supporters would not look good for Alabama. Governor Patterson had promised Bobby Kennedy he would maintain order, though he didn’t prevent the Montgomery police complicity in the Klan massacre of the Freedom Riders at the bus station. Now began some feeble attempts to protect the people inside the church. However, tear gas intended to ward off the racists outside began to waft through the open windows to the already sweltering people inside. Closing the windows only made the heat soar.
Early in the evening, as Reverends Abernathy, Seay, and Fred Shuttlesworth, along with attorney Fred Gray, tried to keep up the people’s hopes with spirited oratory, Dr. King was on the phone with Bobby Kennedy in Washington. King demanded that President Kennedy nationalize the Alabama National Guard as the only force large and strong enough to deal with the enraged racists of Alabama. The Kennedys were reluctant to do so because Governor Patterson had always been a Kennedy man and they did not want to lose what little support the administration had in the South. Eventually, however, the Guard was mobilized and came to the church, restored order, and escorted the trapped people to safety.
Later, Jessica and Peter were exhausted and still jittery from the night’s ordeal, but they said a cheery “good night” to the soldiers who dropped them off at the Durr home. “And a good morning to you,” the young Guardsmen shouted as their jeep hurtled off into the gathering light, presumably to ferry another anxious group safely home. Jessica then told Virginia how terribly sorry she was that the Durrs’ car had been burned up by the mob. Virginia asked Decca if the hoodlums had known it was her car and Decca said they didn’t need to know that that particular one belonged to the Durrs. They were burning all the cars.
I learned more about the car-burning about 1995 when I picked up the ringing phone and heard a vaguely recognizable voice, or was it just the Alabama accent? “You may not remember me,” the voice said, “but we were school buddies at Huntingdon. I’m Jim Bishop.”
I told him I was delighted to hear from him and of course I remembered him—he was rich, from a local construction family. Bishop told me that he had seen my picture in the New Yorker magazine and it made him think of me and he had decided to look me up. I said I was glad but I thought he was mistaken about the New Yorker.
“That magazine,” I assured him, “does not carry photographs—never has, never will, I suppose.”
“That shows how much you know, Bob Zellner, because it certainly does now and you are in there, and looking pretty good if I do say so myself—it’s a picture of you and Julian Bond, your wife Dottie, and some other SNCC people.”
He explained that “Yes, your picture is in the New Yorker. It’s a photo essay on Camelot, by Richard Avedon. He’s a famous person, you know.” Then, of course, I knew what Bishop was talking about because Avedon had taught a lot of the SNCC photographers how to take pictures, me included. Between lessons, he took pictures of us. While he took photos of us, because we understood that he was famous, we took pictures of him taking pictures of us. But I had no idea his pictures of us had ever made it into print except in his own books.
I told Jimmy Bishop teasingly that this was all very interesting, but I didn’t know until now that Klansmen read the New Yorker. After a lengthy silence, Jimmy said, “Well, look, Bob, about that church that night, and burning up all those cars, I want you to know that I never threw that brick I was charged with throwing . . . I know I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that is why I was arrested. I always wanted you to know that I personally never set fire to anything and I did not throw that brick.”
He went on to say that he now knew he should have been inside the church with me but he did not know any better at the time. He was relieved when I told him I was not in the church either, but I thanked him for thinking I was.
“Well, the important thing is that you knew what was right at the time and we were just too dumb
to know it.”
I believe that was about the best compliment I ever got for my work in the movement.
A fitting ending to the story of the Freedom Riders coming to my town of Montgomery was what happened when the first bus pulled out of the battered station for Mississippi. All week Bobby Kennedy and President Kennedy and other parts of the federal government had negotiated with the bus company and city, county, and state officials to provide buses and protection for interracial interstate travelers. Our friend Peter Ackerburg became more and more fascinated and challenged by the raw courage and quiet commitment of the young movement people. Peter kept repeating, sometimes to us, sometimes under his breath, that the Freedom Riders were the most courageous people on earth and that he himself would never be able to do what they are doing.
As their elders in various organizations maneuvered and jockeyed for position and credit for the “success” of the ride, Diane Nash, John Lewis, and the other youth leaders went quietly about the business of calling home to say good-bye and writing their wills. A few of us from Huntingdon were invited to attend, as observers, some intense sessions of preparation. The Reverend James Lawson of Nashville trained the group using role playing and led philosophical and spiritual discussions which provided a forum for the young Freedom Riders who were preparing themselves for possible death.
We stood against the wall in awe as these young people prepared to penetrate the impenetrable and immovable state of resistance called Mississippi. On the morning of their departure, the local newspaper carried an alphabetical list of the Freedom Riders who had boarded the bus for the one-way trip to the Magnolia state. The first name on the list was “Peter Ackerburg.”
7
The Highs of Highlander
I first heard about Highlander Folk School in the spring of my senior year at Huntingdon College, from Anne Braden of the Southern Patriot newspaper. Anne was also affiliated with the Southern Conference Education Fund, or SCEF. During a telephone conversation with her about the “Huntingdon Five” being restricted to campus “for our own safety,” I told her that my dad was willing to go with me to an integrated meeting to test the college’s policies, and she told me about an upcoming meeting at Highlander in Monteagle, Tennessee.
“You and your father might want to come,” she said. “Dr. King and Rosa Parks have both been to Highlander.”
When Dad and I decided to go to Highlander that spring before I graduated, I wanted to learn as much as possible about the folk school. In 1932, seven years before I was born, Myles Horton and Don West founded Highlander School near Monteagle, in west Tennessee. I learned that over the years, Highlander had sparked or assisted a number of important social movements. In college, I had learned a little about one of them—the labor movement. Books on race and civil rights had touched on the importance of labor organizing, especially the difficulty of getting white and black workers in the South to unite.
I thought of Tut Edwards in East Brewton and my early indoctrination in the efficacy of populism. Malcolm “Tut” Edwards used to say with wonderment, “There are so many poor white and colored people, and so few rich people—how can the few rule the many?” Would Highlander help me understand how populism could be successful after so many failed attempts? I was already beginning to wonder how blacks could trust populist leaders who could, if they chose, double cross their black allies and go back to being “good white people.”
Highlander Folk School had worked at the Southern grassroots in the mines, the cotton mills, in the forests with timber and lumber workers, and in the 1950s and 1960s it was taking on segregation. You had to admire their guts and determination to believe that education could provide the necessary cutting edge for social change in the South.
During that period, the school was one of the rare places that black and white Southerners could even meet together. Realizing that I had learned more at Huntingdon through participation and “getting into trouble,” I was intensely interested in the Highlander theory of education, “experiential learning.” The folk school featured learning in the round, with everyone literally sitting in a circle. There were no teachers and no students. All in the circle were both teachers and learners. Director Horton was fond of chortling, “There are no experts here.” Highlander had a reputation of being passionately committed to social justice and racial and gender equality, and its analysis of the South and the nation demanded economic and political justice. An earnest young reporter once asked Myles how he got black and white Southerners to sit down together to eat. Myles told him that the famous adult educational center had a very scientific approach that had worked wonderfully over the years.
“What’s that?” the reporter asked.
“Well,” said Myles, “We use the two-step process, especially on the first day. First, we prepare really delicious food for our hungry folk, and second, we ring the dinner bell. It never fails to work.”
At that spring 1961 gathering of movement folk, I was introduced to more of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee freedom fighters. And I learned from Myles Horton that the school was planning a summer program for Southern high school students who would be entering integrated classrooms that fall. Horton asked if I’d be interested in working at Highlander for the summer as a counselor and lifeguard. I had not had time to think much about what I would do for the summer. Heretofore I had worked summers to earn enough money for the next year’s college expenses. But now, with luck, I’d be a college graduate—grown! I’d be “free, white, and twenty-one.” The world would be my oyster and I was ready to wail. What better way to prepare myself for a life of crime than a summer at Highlander—a hothouse of subversion, known all over the South as a “Communist Training School.” A common billboard seen in the South that summer, besides the one that said “See Rock City,” was one with a photograph of Martin Luther King Jr., Aubrey Williams, and Myles Horton in a Highlander workshop. The caption was simply “communist training school.” I still wasn’t sure what a communist was but it was clear they weren’t segregationists, and they seemed to be a hell of a lot more exciting than the folks I’d grown up with. Besides, any enemy of George Wallace and MacDonald Gallion couldn’t be all bad.
That summer on the Cumberland Plateau was the most exciting in my young life. It was the perfect bridge between two major sections of my existence—before SNCC and after SNCC. Part of the transition from Alabama life to political life was the fact that my little brother, Malcolm, was among the campers. More importantly, SNCC was looking for a white Southerner to join its staff as a campus traveler to interpret the student movement to other young Southerners.
It is ironic that my first extended up-close look at gracious living should be at Highlander, a place that took pride in its identification with the plain people—the poor and the working class. The whole Horton entourage—Myles Horton; his wife Aimee; Charis and Thorsten, Myles’s children with his first wife, Zilphia—was glamorous to my south Alabama eyes. The family lived in a rambling old red split-level farm house they had renovated some years before. Along one side of the large house a spacious patio nestled under an ancient wisteria vine, its trunk as large as a small tree. Next to it a pair of sliding glass doors and a row of picture windows revealed a cool interior where a huge living room was centered around an old-fashioned fieldstone fireplace. The patio, with comfortable wooden lounge chairs covered with brightly colored cushions, was surrounded by a low moss-covered stone wall. A desk and straight-backed chair occupied the back corner of the patio under the eaves of the house. There Aimee was writing a dissertation for the University of Chicago, and I was told that Myles sometimes did some of his writing there.
The patio and the living room, dining room, and den area were serviced by a large country kitchen. Guest rooms ranged down a series of halls fanning out from the patio, the den, and the nearby dining room, which held a table matched in size only by the one I had seen and admired at Virginia Durr’s house
in Montgomery. Family rooms were upstairs. Myles and family held court in this gracious “mansion.” At least in my mind it was quite grand.
The house was in shouting distance of the main meeting hall, kitchen, and dining hall but it was isolated enough to give the family some privacy, which they needed because of the constant flood of people who came through Highlander. Having met Clifford and Virginia Durr in Montgomery before coming to Highlander, I was a recent initiate to the Southern salon, the point of which seemed to be to get interesting people together in comfortable surroundings, fortified with food and drink, for the purpose of talking. That’s what happened on the Hortons’ patio and in their dining room all that spring and summer of 1961. It was a wonderful time to be alive. The Highlander family made me feel part of something special—in a place where I belonged. Virginia Durr had once asked me if I was kin to “anybody.” I said no but she accepted me anyway. Highlander people only wanted to know what you had done and what you planned to do about the condition of the world. Talking, apparently, was how these things were discovered. I had thought that preachers, their wives, families, and friends could talk. That was before I met the radicals—the political people. Now, they could talk.
It took a while for me to realize that when Highlander people mentioned Eleanor Roosevelt, Reinhold Niebuhr, Mary McLeod Bethune, or Jane Addams they actually knew these people—they were friends or colleagues! Myles and Aimee talked about the visit of John Dewey and the merits of Hull House and the Danish folk schools. I learned that Myles had been there and knew whereof he spoke. By example, Myles and the folk school staff taught the value of Mao’s admonition, “no investigation, no right to speak.”