The Grace of Silence

by Michele Norris

  At the same time, the power base in Birmingham—the elected officials, who ruled by the ballot, and the segregationists, who ruled by terror—were hell-bent on maintaining the status quo. The postwar years thrust Birmingham into uncertain political waters. On the very day of my father’s confrontation with police, the city’s two main papers, the Birmingham Age-Herald and the Birmingham News, carried stories about a sudden swell of new voters. Jefferson County was bracing for ten thousand new registrants, and veterans accounted for about 75 percent of that figure.

  The editorial page of the Birmingham News applauded the veterans for doing their civic duty in its February 7 afternoon edition: “This was to be expected, but it is highly gratifying to see them responding to this responsibility of civilian citizenship. It means that these men have come back from the Army eager to take part in community life. While only a few veterans have as yet jumped into the battle for office, one may feel reasonably sure that, in this large new portion of voters, there are many potential office seekers.”

  What the Birmingham News and other mainstream newspapers failed to acknowledge was the large pool of black veterans who were also eager to embrace their civic duty to vote—in the newspaper’s words, “this responsibility of civilian citizenship.”

  Throughout January and February that winter, black men who had just returned from duty were descending on city hall, trying to register. My father was released from the navy on January 21, and the very week he returned to Birmingham, black veterans were defiantly parading through the downtown business district. On January 23, a group of black men made their way to the County Board of Registrar’s office.

  The postwar months were a season of parades, and the black veterans’ march took place eleven days after the most memorable of the postwar processions. On January 12, the 82nd Airborne Division had led thirteen thousand men through a blinding blizzard of swirling ticker tape in downtown New York to celebrate America’s victory in World War II. An estimated four million people had lined New York’s “Canyon of Heroes” for the largest parade since General John Pershing had led the 1st Division along the same route in 1919.

  Also on January 12, a group of men in a smoke-filled chamber in Montgomery, Alabama, reluctantly announced that “qualified Negroes” would be allowed to vote in what had previously been an all-white primary.1 The members of the Alabama Democratic Executive Committee had been given little choice in the matter. In 1944, in Smith v. Allwright, the U.S. Supreme Court had determined that all-white primaries were unconstitutional. Black voters—long locked out of the voting process—saw a grand opportunity to exercise their right, especially black veterans who had fought for democracy overseas.

  The Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC) held city-wide registration clinics for veterans. Officially, there were two main requirements: (1) the ability to read and write any portion of the United States Constitution; and (2) ownership of three hundred dollars’ worth of taxable property. SNYC, needless to say, focused on the first at their clinics, conducting classes about the Constitution and the history of the United States government.

  On that Wednesday morning, January 23, eleven days after the 82nd Airborne’s victory parade down Fifth Avenue, black veterans in Birmingham held their own. Instead of thousands marching, there were dozens. But while the size of their gathering was minuscule in comparison, they nonetheless made a large and loud statement by stepping out of the roles prescribed for them by Alabama segregation. Henry O. Mayfield, the chairman of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, was among those who led the group, carrying a large white sign that read, JOIN US TO REGISTER—BRING YOUR DISCHARGE PAPERS!2

  There it was. Discharge papers. Just like the folded document my father had on his person the night of his confrontation with the police. The sign calling for discharge papers is clearly visible in a photograph of the black veterans. Before going into the courthouse, the men had stopped to pose for a picture. There are about sixty in the picture, almost all of them dressed in overcoats and fedoras. Most are smiling broadly. Some have their hands tucked into trousers with knife-edge pleats. A few are wearing work clothes and floppy hats of the kind that protect farmers from the sun. They, too, are smiling. All are radiant with possibility, staring at the camera as if tilting against the weight of history.

  I yearn to know if my father was among those men who marched to that plaza in front of the courthouse. The boldest among them assembled for a photo. Others hung back on the street, concerned that the photo might appear on the front page of newspapers and invite the ire of their bosses, their families, the city police, or even the Klan. Those who posed that day stood on the steps beneath these words of Thomas Jefferson’s, inscribed in stone atop the courthouse door: EQUAL AND EXACT JUSTICE TO ALL MEN OF WHATEVER PERSUASION. Years later and thousands of miles away from Birmingham, my father used to carry a pocket-sized version of the U.S. Constitution in his back pocket, along with his wallet and an Afro pick. I am ashamed to say that I teased him about that when I was a teenager. It was one of his little eccentricities, and though I ribbed him about it, he always got the last word by hitting me with some specific constitutional question about section this from article that. And when I tried to laugh away the fact that I could not provide an answer, I’d get his standard retort: “Listen, girl: ignorance is no laughing matter.”

  That little brown book takes on a whole new meaning now, as does the collection of I VOTED stickers I found in his dresser drawer after he died. He got those oval stickers whenever he went to Eugene Field Elementary School in South Minneapolis to cast his ballot. A former neighbor once reminisced about how he and my father used to ride the bus to and from their jobs in downtown Minneapolis, both toting lunch in brown paper bags. Though Dad kept a series of simple yet beautifully maintained cars, he would not dream of driving downtown to pay for parking when he could spend a fraction of the money on bus fare. While people on the bus were reading paperbacks or the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, Mr. Johnson said, my father would sometimes reach inside his back pocket, pull out his little brown copy of the Constitution, and lose himself in its pages until the bus pulled up to Forty-ninth and Chicago.

  I wonder if he was drawn to Amendment 15, Section 1: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Or perhaps the 24th Amendment: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.”

  I imagine a young Belvin Norris in the weeks after he arrived in Birmingham from serving his country. In my mind’s eye I can see him busying himself with study of the laws of this great land, assiduously preparing to assert his right to vote. For this was a grand obsession in black Birmingham, the subject of sermons, talk at the dinner table, and chatter in barbershops, the background noise wherever blacks spoke freely about their ambitions. Whites in Birmingham might have sensed a shift in attitude had they been privy to the goings-on in black Birmingham’s inner sanctums. They would have heard talk of a new day coming; they would have heard men and women reciting the Constitution or quizzing each other on the formation of government. In the restrooms or phone booths in the black business district along Fourth Avenue, they would have seen posters trumpeting a single word spelled out in heavy letters: VOTE!

  Readers of the Birmingham World, which touted itself as “Alabama’s largest Negro newspaper,” were reminded of their civic responsibility with every new edition. A small box appeared in each issue, just under the masthead, alongside the subscription rates and a message from the managing editor, Emory O. Jackson. Inside that box readers would spy a message from President Franklin D. Roosevelt:

  THE RIGHT TO VOTE.

  “The right to vote must
be open to all citizens irrespective of race, color or creed—without tax or artificial restriction of any kind. The sooner we get to that basis of political equality, the better it will be for the country as a whole.”

  The authoritative eloquence of the president ran smack into a white wall of resistance in the South, particularly in Birmingham, where considerable energy had been spent to ensure that the voting booth was closed to people of color.

  In Alabama at that time, fewer than four thousand blacks had the right to vote, a tiny fraction of the state’s black population. If blacks were suddenly allowed to rush to the ballot box, it would likely upset the state’s power structure. State lawmakers moved quickly to slam that door by proposing the Boswell Amendment in 1945. The measure, named for State Senator E. C. “Bud” Boswell, was crafted “as a device for eliminating negro applicants.” It gave local registrars broad powers to screen prospective voters with a test, under which citizens would have to prove that they understood and could explain any randomly selected section of the U.S. Constitution.

  Using the slogan “Vote white, vote right,” Alabama’s Democratic Party stoked racial fears by warning that blacks would “take over if the amendment loses.” Boswell Amendment supporters said it was “the only means short of intimidation” for white people in Alabama to preserve their political dominion. Dixiecrat demagogue Horace Wilkinson was unapologetic in explaining his unwavering support: “No Negro is good enough, and no Negro will ever be good enough to participate in making the laws under which the white people in Alabama have to live.”3

  On January 23, 1946, Birmingham’s black veterans must have caused quite a scene as they assembled to register to vote. These black men proudly approached the courthouse, marching up the walkway and into the building in lockstep formation, four abreast. Inside, amid the bustle of other citizens paying their poll tax or registering, white and Negro registrants formed separate queues outside room 102.

  According to news accounts, after waiting in line for hours, a substantial number of black veterans were turned away. Some were told that they had failed to fill out their paperwork properly. Others were denied because they could not “interpret” excerpts from the U.S. Constitution or provide correct answers to questions ranging from “What is meant by veto power in the U.N.?” to “How many suds are in a bar of soap?” Captain H. C. Terrell, an army chaplain who’d led the delegation, was taken into custody by military police for “using his Army uniform for political activities,” but other than that, the voters’ rights demonstration was peaceful and without incident.

  The bold ambition of the black veterans inflamed local politicians and newspaper columnists, and the voting efforts were of grave concern to the Birmingham police—the force that Alabama power brokers relied on to keep black aspirations in check.

  Decades before the glare of television cameras would make Birmingham police chief Eugene “Bull” Connor the bogeyman of the city’s civil rights protests for turning dogs and hoses on youthful demonstrators, Connor had already built a national reputation as a fierce segregationist. In the 1940s he had been a particularly fierce opponent of the federal government’s meddling with a state’s right to determine and enforce its laws and customs. The police commissioner’s passionate concern for states’ rights and his prodigious ego are both on display in a letter he wrote to President Roosevelt, dated August 7, 1942. On city-issued stationery hailing Birmingham as the “Industrial Center of the South,” Connor wrote:

  My dear Mr. President

  Re: RACIAL POLICIES

  As Commissioner of Public Safety of the largest city in the State of Alabama, I feel that it is my patriotic duty to call to your attention a problem which is going to cause serious trouble unless abated by you, for there is no doubt that federal agencies have adopted policies to break down and destroy the segregation laws of this State and the entire South. Unless something is done quickly by you, we are going to face a crisis in the South, witness the annihilation of the Democratic Party in this section of the Nation, and see a revival of organizations which will usher in an era that will tend to destroy the progress made by law abiding white people, who have conscientiously labored to aid and help negroes to become better citizens.

  The N.Y.A. has preached social equality and stirred up strife. The United States Employment Service and the Fair Employment Practices Committee are causing plenty of trouble when there ought to be unity. I can’t see for the life of me why anyone should desire to start civil strife in the South when there is a war to be won, and the South is doing its part, as the record will disclose.

  A large portion of our negroes have venereal disease, which, I think, is the number one problem of the negro race today, not Social Equality, as the agitators and some federal agencies are advocating. I believe in curing them, and we are making notable progress in this city. When the downfall of the doctrine of white supremacy is advocated and taught by agitators and federal officials, who know absolutely nothing about the negro problem in the South, what happens? Negroes become impudent, unruly, arrogant, law breaking, violent, and insolent. Any effort now by any person connected with the federal government officially or socially, to destroy segregation and bring about amalgamation of the races will hinder the Southland in its war efforts, revive organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, which I never joined, and result in lawlessness, disunity and probably bloodshed.

  You have made us a fine president. I am co operating [sic] with you one hundred percent. I have always voted for you, and I shall use all my energy, time and whatever influence I have to speedily carry out any plans you have for this district which will aid in winning the war. Don’t you think one war in the South, however, is enough? Undoubtedly, this is no time for the federal government to meddle with racial problems, which every year, under the leadership of local authorities, improves and is being rapidly solved as satisfactorily as it [sic] can be settled.

  Mr. President won’t you help us before it is too late.

  With kindest regards for you always, I am

  Respectfully yours,

  Eugene “Bull” Connor

  Commissioner of Public Safety4

  The “racial problems” Connor spoke of most certainly applied to the rising tide of black veterans now eager to flex their muscles at the ballot box. Black men who had spent their lives being called “boys” returned to Birmingham from the war with a gust of pride that most certainly would have registered several degrees beyond uppity in Jim Crow’s curious calculus of acceptable “negro behavior.” Their status in the military had been stunted, but when they stepped off trains and buses upon their return home they were wearing the same uniforms as the white soldiers and sailors. (This fact underscored an equality of manhood, hinted at but not fully realized when black and white men donned business suits.) Those uniforms and a shared experience allowed the men a strut in their steps and a swell in their chests.

  The black veterans posed a significant threat to the white power structure represented by Bull Connor—not only because of their numbers, but also because of their new willingness to challenge the Jim Crow system. The veterans and their service to country tugged at the heart of southerners worried that harsh segregation and Klan-led violence were tarnishing Alabama’s reputation in the United States as well as abroad. White servicemen who’d traveled throughout Europe and the Pacific during the war had been dismayed to find that people an ocean away had come to view Alabama as a cauldron of racial hatred.

  Meanwhile, the city’s business community had its own set of worries. The defense contracts that had kept Birmingham’s factories buzzing were one by one coming to an end. Attracting new business and new investors would prove difficult if groups like SNYC or the NAACP were successful in turning Birmingham into the principal battleground in the veterans’ fight for voting rights.

  To protect white power and preserve the southern way of life, Bull Connor’s Birmingham Police Department reportedly tried to blunt the registration campaign by waging a priva
te war against returning veterans. In the first two months of 1946, as many as half a dozen black veterans were reportedly killed by police officers from Birmingham and the surrounding communities.5

  Though many have tried to unearth official evidence of police involvement in the killings, it has proved difficult, but the journalist–turned–civil rights activist Anne Braden has evoked the mood among police officers at the time in her memoir The Wall Between. In 1946, Braden was working as a newspaper reporter in Birmingham, covering the courthouse. There, she discovered “two kinds of justice, one for whites and one for Negroes.” She explains, “If a Negro killed a white man, that was a capital crime. If a white man killed a Negro, there were usually extenuating circumstances.”

  Braden said she began to look the other way when she entered the courthouse on her way to work, so as not to see the phrase EQUAL AND EXACT JUSTICE carved in stone atop the building’s door, which made a mockery of the proceedings inside. One particularly unsettling incident in the sheriff’s office, she recalled, “almost tipped the scales of my sanity”:

  The sheriff’s office prided itself on its record of crime solution. I don’t think it is as good as they said but they often boasted about it. One day, while I was killing time talking to some of the deputies, one of them said: “You know there’s only been one murder in this county in the last two years that has never been solved.”

  “And what was that?” I asked.

  “Come on, I’ll show you,” he said. He took me back into another room, opened a cabinet and took out a skull.

  “There it is,” he said, setting the skull on the table. “And it never will be solved—that man was a nigger and he was killed by a white man.”

  Braden said she looked at the deputy and saw his eyes “twinkling not because he was joking but because he was talking of a conspiracy that pleased him, and of which he was a part, and which he evidently expected would please me too.” She left without comment, terror-stricken.6