While the World Watched

by Carolyn McKinstry

  I felt privileged to be allowed in an area that was typically off-limits to other students. Sometimes, however, I got so sick of spelling and spelling books that I cried. When that happened, one of my teachers would tell Miss Pullum—the lady who supervised our school cafeteria—to give me some ice cream. The choices were chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry. I always chose my favorite—chocolate. The ice cream came with a small wooden spoon wrapped in thin white paper. Other times one of the teachers would give me a quarter to buy a Coca-Cola. In those days, buying a Coke was a big treat—we seldom had Coke at home.

  When I was a seventh grade student at Finley Avenue Elementary School, Mr. A. G. Gaston held a spelling bee for Birmingham’s black students. I entered the contest, and with more than four hundred other students participating, I won first place—out of my city, county, and state. While I was there, I met a fellow contestant, Mary Kate Bush, who later became a great source of strength to me, as well as a lifelong friend. In fact, Mary Kate became my roommate at Fisk University.

  I was given a trophy with my name and my school’s name on it, and my photo appeared in the Birmingham News on May 7, 1961, with the caption “Birmingham Girl Winner of Gaston Spelling Bee.” Somewhere in a Birmingham school, a Gaston Spelling Bee trophy with the words Carolyn Jean Maull engraved on the front sits entombed in a glass cabinet. I still wonder if I could have won the National Spelling Bee competition if black students had been allowed to compete.

  My parents were proud of me. But one omission in the local newspaper article upset my father. The reporter had listed me as the daughter of Mrs. Ernestine Maull and made no mention of my dad. It upset him because so many black children at that time had no fathers in their homes, and he wanted everyone to know I had a father.

  * * *

  I have often wondered what I might have become in life had society’s doors been more open to me—a child and youth of color—in the 1950s and 1960s. What path might I have walked if more opportunities had been available to me in Birmingham? What exciting turns would my life have taken if I had been as unhindered in my decision making as Alabama’s white children and youth?

  “Carolyn,” Mama and Daddy suggested when I started thinking about my options for college, “please consider Fisk University in Nashville. Fisk is an all-black school. That’ll be easier. You certainly don’t want to go through what Vivian Malone or James Hood endured to go to college! You will face enough challenges at Fisk University, but the color of your skin won’t be one of them.”

  Fisk University had been founded barely six months after the end of the Civil War and just two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, primarily to educate freedmen and the biracial, light-skinned children born to white slave owners who had impregnated their female slaves. These children, half-white and half-black, fit into neither white nor black society in the South.

  * * *

  * * *

  From Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Where Do We Go from Here?” Speech

  In assault after assault, we caused the sagging walls of segregation to come tumbling down. During this era the entire edifice of segregation was profoundly shaken. This is an accomplishment whose consequences are deeply felt by every southern Negro in his daily life. It is no longer possible to count the number of public establishments that are open to Negroes. Ten years ago, Negroes seemed almost invisible to the larger society, and the facts of their harsh lives were unknown to the majority of the nation. But today, civil rights is a dominating issue in every state, crowding the pages of the press and the daily conversation of white Americans. In this decade of change, the Negro stood up and confronted his oppressor. He faced the bullies and the guns, and the dogs and the tear gas. He put himself squarely before the vicious mobs and moved with strength and dignity toward them and decisively defeated them. And the courage with which he confronted enraged mobs dissolved the stereotype of the grinning, submissive Uncle Tom. He came out of his struggle integrated only slightly in the external society, but powerfully integrated within. This was a victory that had to precede all other gains.

  In short, over the last ten years the Negro decided to straighten his back up, realizing that a man cannot ride your back unless it is bent. We made our government write new laws to alter some of the cruelest injustices that affected us. We made an indifferent and unconcerned nation rise from lethargy and subpoenaed its conscience to appear before the judgment seat of morality on the whole question of civil rights. We gained manhood in the nation that had always called us “boy.” . . . But in spite of a decade of significant progress, the problem is far from solved. The deep rumbling of discontent in our cities is indicative of the fact that the plant of freedom has grown only a bud and not yet a flower. . . .

  With all the struggle and all the achievements, we must face the fact, however, that the Negro still lives in the basement of the Great Society. He is still at the bottom, despite the few who have penetrated to slightly higher levels. Even where the door has been forced partially open, mobility for the Negro is still sharply restricted. There is often no bottom at which to start, and when there is there’s almost no room at the top. In consequence, Negroes are still impoverished aliens in an affluent society. They are too poor even to rise with the society, too impoverished by the ages to be able to ascend by using their own resources. And the Negro did not do this himself; it was done to him. For more than half of his American history, he was enslaved. Yet, he built the spanning bridges and the grand mansions, the sturdy docks and stout factories of the South. His unpaid labor made cotton “King” and established America as a significant nation in international commerce. Even after his release from chattel slavery, the nation grew over him, submerging him. It became the richest, most powerful society in the history of man, but it left the Negro far behind.

  And so we still have a long, long way to go before we reach the promised land of freedom. Yes, we have left the dusty soils of Egypt, and we have crossed a Red Sea that had for years been hardened by a long and piercing winter of massive resistance, but before we reach the majestic shores of the promised land, there will still be gigantic mountains of opposition ahead and prodigious hilltops of injustice. We still need some Paul Revere of conscience to alert every hamlet and every village of America that revolution is still at hand. Yes, we need a chart; we need a compass; indeed, we need some North Star to guide us into a future shrouded with impenetrable uncertainties.

  Now, in order to answer the question, “Where do we go from here?” which is our theme, we must first honestly recognize where we are now. When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the Negro was sixty percent of a person. Today another curious formula seems to declare he is fifty percent of a person. Of the good things in life, the Negro has approximately one half those of whites. Of the bad things of life, he has twice those of whites. Thus, half of all Negroes live in substandard housing. And Negroes have half the income of whites. When we turn to the negative experiences of life, the Negro has a double share: There are twice as many unemployed; the rate of infant mortality among Negroes is double that of whites; and there are twice as many Negroes dying in Vietnam as whites in proportion to their size in the population.

  In other spheres, the figures are equally alarming. In elementary schools, Negroes lag one to three years behind whites, and their segregated schools receive substantially less money per student than the white schools. One-twentieth as many Negroes as whites attend college. Of employed Negroes, seventy-five percent hold menial jobs. This is where we are.

  Where do we go from here? First, we must massively assert our dignity and worth. We must stand up amid a system that still oppresses us and develop an unassailable and majestic sense of values. We must no longer be ashamed of being black. The job of arousing manhood within a people that have been taught for so many centuries that they are nobody is not easy.[54]

  * * *

  * * *

  Our society still had a lon
g way to go, of course, but in the early days of September 1963, I felt a genuine hope about the future—about things improving between the races in Alabama. I was smart, talented, and I loved my school and church. I had my family and lots of good friends. I missed Mama Lessie, but I still had my wonderful granddaddy. I had matured listening to the words of my pastor, of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and of others that year. I was proud that I had participated in the Civil Rights movement, singing freedom songs and marching peacefully with my friends. Life was good. And I felt certain that things in Birmingham were finally changing for the better.

  * * *

  That sense of well-being was shattered the instant the bomb went off that Sunday morning in September 1963—the day I grew up. I’ve learned in the years since that some moments in history and in our lives go away. The issues we understand easily and the fears we resolve quickly fade into the past. They get filed away into a memory cabinet marked “closed.”

  Other events, however, refuse to go away. They become a part of our “forever” thoughts, and they surface unexpectedly at the most unpredictable times. These memories can be painful, but perhaps some things should never go away—they should be kept in the forefront of our minds to provide continuing lessons for daily life.

  Whatever excitement and girlish joy I felt before the bombing simply died for a long period after the bombing. My heart built a barrier that sealed off my hope, my happiness, and my very soul, just like the wall the church had built to seal off the restroom where the four girls perished. A dark cloud formed above my head and became my constant, unwanted companion. It followed me everywhere I went. It was like my life-changing baptism two years before—only a different kind of baptism. “Dead and buried,” but seemingly with no hope for a future “resurrection.” I had lost hope in my white fellow human beings.

  Chapter 14

  Servant, Heal Thyself

  * * *

  I have seen us come so far, but we have so much farther to go.

  Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth, at his eightieth birthday celebration with Civil Rights leaders, 2002[55]

  Life is hard, at times as hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and difficult moments. Like the ever-flowing waters of the river, life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood. Like the ever-changing cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of its summers and the piercing chill of its winters. And if one will hold on, he will discover that God walks with him, and that God is able to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace.

  Martin Luther King Jr., funeral service for Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, and Cynthia Diane Wesley[56]

  In the days that followed September 15, 1963, sadness consumed me. The smile left my face. Joy faded from my heart. I felt depressed all the time, plagued by a general hopelessness. Even though it seemed a logical conclusion, I never connected my newfound sadness and depression with my friends’ violent deaths. At the time, I had no knowledge of the grief process, clinical depression, or survivor’s guilt syndrome. Those were not the days of trauma teams and school grief counseling—especially not for black people.

  The dark cloud tormented me day and night. I had trouble sleeping, yet that is all I wanted to do. When I did fall asleep at night, it hurt to wake up in the mornings. The excitement I had once felt about school and learning simply went away. Deep down I was afraid for my safety—terrified of getting my head blown off, like Cynthia had, in a Klan explosion.

  With the passage of time, as well as a somewhat closed-off memory, I managed to live a perfunctory life. I have little recollection of the days that followed September 15, 1963. I guess everyone settled into the regular tasks of autumn. Children went to their schools. Adults went to their jobs. Sixteenth Street Baptist Church underwent renovations, and most of our members met weekly for worship at the nearby L. R. Hall Auditorium. Some people felt too afraid to come back and left our congregation for good. Either they stopped going to church altogether or they joined other churches in the city. Church records placed membership numbers over eight hundred before the bombing; after the bombing, that number shrank by 50 percent.

  Tension and fear continued to stalk our city. We knew the rules had changed. Our neighborhoods had been bombed before, but no one had ever been killed. Until now. The message gnawed away at the corners of our hearts: “You can kill black people. It’s okay, because even if someone is arrested, no one goes to jail for it.” Black life was cheap.

  Ten days after the church bombing, on September 25 at 2:31 a.m., another bomb exploded in a nearby black neighborhood. The blast brought a number of police officers to the area to search for the bomb site. Fortunately, they failed to find it. Thirteen minutes after the first bomb exploded, another bomb went off at the same spot. A shrapnel bomb, they called it—several sticks of dynamite in a rusty five-gallon paint can crammed full of nails, bolts, and sharp pieces of metal.

  Birmingham residents had once believed Klan bombs were meant only to intimidate people, not kill people. The shrapnel bomb changed all that.[57]

  I noticed with fresh awareness the real powerlessness of the black community. Some people became unusually quiet and accommodating, not daring to rock the boat. Others became the opposite—outspoken and militant against the inhumane treatment of the city’s (and nation’s) black citizens.

  That autumn and winter, I just wanted to be alone. I often found a lonely corner in my house, sat down, and wrapped my arms tightly around my body. Then, in an effort to bring myself some comfort, I rocked back and forth, hugging myself, trying to make the deep pain go away.

  I don’t remember having a preoccupation with death and dying before the bombing. I’d always been a carefree kid—I loved to skate and play marbles. Very few girls I knew played marbles, let alone had a special marble collection like I did. But after the church bombing, nothing seemed the same anymore, including the way I viewed myself, others, and the world.

  But hope wasn’t completely lost. The black people in Birmingham still had two “saviors” who continued to share our dreams for a more promising future: President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Our hope was kept alive through their championing efforts. As a community, we placed our trust in their ability to somehow keep Klan bombs from killing our loved ones and destroying our homes and churches.

  Back in 1960, I had felt a surge of hope when John F. Kennedy became president of the United States. I watched him on TV as he addressed the nation and Jackie Kennedy as she gave a White House tour. I laughed when I saw little Caroline run on the beach in a tiny swimsuit and when John John paraded around his father’s Oval Office in his sailor suit. I just wished Mama Lessie had lived to see these things.

  I was filled with eager anticipation when a pregnant Jackie left for the hospital to deliver her third child. And I remember crying when, on August 10, 1963, three-day-old Patrick Bouvier Kennedy died. I watched the Kennedys grieve over their dead child just as anybody else would.

  Even though the Kennedys reigned like a king and queen in our country, I saw something in them that appeared normal and everyday. They seemed like a down-to-earth family who, in spite of wealth and fame, really cared about people. They weren’t preoccupied, as part of our nation seemed to be, with race and skin color.

  John F. Kennedy gave me tremendous hope for a different future for black people in Alabama. I remember something my father said after hearing Kennedy’s speech on TV following the children’s march: “I think he [Kennedy] is a good man.” We saw that our president wanted to do the right thing for black people, and it gave us faith. Sometimes people don’t know what justice and freedom look like. It took the president’s going on national television to give people a vision for a better future.

  I greatly admired the president when he gave his televised Civil Rights speech on the night of June 11, 1963, and aligned himself solidly with the Civil Rights movement. Even then I knew it was a co
urageous—and dangerous—thing for him to do.

  * * *

  On November 22, 1963, a few days before Thanksgiving, my high school math teacher, a short man named Mr. Ralph Joseph, walked into my classroom with his head lowered.

  “It’s official,” he announced. “The president has been shot.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears! John F. Kennedy? Shot?

  * * *

  * * *

  From Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Where Do We Go from Here?” Speech

  Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds.

  Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.

  Let us be dissatisfied until those who live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security.

  Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family will live in a decent, sanitary home.

  Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality integrated education.

  Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity.

  Let us be dissatisfied until men and women, however black they may be, will be judged on the basis of the content of their character, not on the basis of the color of their skin. Let us be dissatisfied.