Nine Days
Page 31
The glow of the crackling fireplace: Clemmons, Rich’s, 78–79.
“Which of these organizations”: This and the exchange that follows come from “Negroes Sit-In at 8 Stores.”
“1–2–3–4 don’t shop”: Ibid.
“Now I’m handling this”: Ibid.
two elegant roommates embodied: Blondean Orbert, interview by Jeff Clemmons, shared with the authors.
“If you’re going to participate”: Lefever, Undaunted by the Fight, 66.
“It was time for Jim Crow”: Weaver, “Auburn University Student Recalls Being One of MLK Jr.’s Foot Soldiers.”
“sit at a little old nasty counter”: Lefever, Undaunted by the Fight, 66.
had a Rich’s card: Orbert, interview by Clemmons.
Pryce could observe ladies: Hoytt, interview by Bohannon, Atlanta Student Movement Project, KSU.
Rich started to cry: Raines, My Soul Is Rested, 90.
work with the older Black leaders: Sally Rich, interview by the authors, June 28, 2017.
“We are sorry”: This and the exchange that follows come from the King trial transcript, DHP.
“Dear God, please don’t let”: Constance Curry unpublished memoir chapter, “Circle of Trust,” provided to the authors.
“could have done her in”: Lonnie King, interview.
“We want to sit down”: “Negroes Sit-In at 8 Stores.”
“A house divided cannot stand”: “14 Negroes Jailed in Atlanta Sit-Ins.”
Lonnie felt that Little could barely contain: Lonnie King, interview.
Other sit-in groups: Richard Ramsay, “Atlanta Report,” Oct. 19, 1960, Southern Regional Council Papers, series 4, reel 142.
“The tin body of the wagon”: Ibid.
“I can’t go to jail”: Ibid.
Judge James Webb was not: Galphin and McCartney, “King, 51 Others Arrested Here in New Sit-In Push.”
Hollowell had been a buffalo soldier: Daniels, Saving the Soul of Georgia, 16. Hollowell’s background comes from ibid., as well as Hollowell and Lehfeldt, Sacred Call.
“I was treated with less dignity”: Daniels, Saving the Soul of Georgia, 19.
He arrived in Atlanta: Ibid., 30–31.
He endured judges who turned: Ibid., 6.
getting a Black man, Willie Nash: Ibid., 35–43; Hollowell and Lehfeldt, Sacred Call, 100–103.
foremost civil rights lawyer: Daniels, Saving the Soul of Georgia, 8, 94.
“King is our leader”: Ibid., 87.
a chart on yellow notepad: DHP.
“What kind of trouble”: Women of the Atlanta Student Movement, 2017 Women’s History Month Finale Panel, March 31, 2017, KSU, soar.kennesaw.edu/bitstream/handle/11360/2407/WHM2017-transcription.pdf.
“‘Not guilty,’ you damn fool”: Raines, My Soul Is Rested, 86.
getting them out of jail: Daniels, Saving the Soul of Georgia, 87, 94.
Lonnie’s high school classmate: Jordan, interview by the authors, June 23, 2017.
“Man, have you lost your mind?”: Lonnie King, interview.
Hollowell had not known Dr. King long: Hollowell and Lehfeldt, Sacred Call, 132–33.
Judge Webb ruled that he must begin: “Sit-Ins Begin Here October 19.”
Hollowell had gathered enough information: Galphin and McCartney, “King, 51 Others Arrested Here in New Sit-In Push.”
some of Hollowell’s clients did not: Orbert, interview by Clemmons.
King drafted in a blue-lined notebook: Carson et al., Papers of Martin Luther King Jr., 5:522. The lender’s name is not recorded, but in another person’s handwriting is the title “Great Issues,” a Morris Brown College class that fall.
“I will stay in jail”: “Martin Luther King in Jail Over Sit-Ins,” York Dispatch, Oct. 20, 1960.
“a moral issue that needs”: Galphin and McCartney, “King, 51 Others Arrested Here in New Sit-In Push.”
“This was a planned demonstration”: Ibid.
“We prefer jail to life”: John Britton and Paul Delaney, “36 Bound Over to Criminal Court Following Downtown ‘Counter’ Demonstrations,” ADW, Oct. 20, 1960.
“If there is anywhere in the world”: Galphin and McCartney, “King, 51 Others Arrested Here in New Sit-In Push.”
“If you persist in such vile”: Ibid.
“There was no question”: Ramsay, “Atlanta Report,” Oct. 19, 1960.
Fifty-two protesters had appeared: Galphin and McCartney, “King, 51 Others Arrested Here in New Sit-In Push”; Margaret Shannon, “25 Negroes, White Lectured, Jailed,” AJ, Oct. 21, 1960.
Lonnie was proud of the number: “Jail, No Bail Group in Jail, Cheerful, Confident,” AI, Oct. 24, 1960.
dirt crusted so deep: Person, interview by the authors.
“You got a chance to bail out”: Ibid.
“smallest, dirtiest, dankest jail”: Orbert, interview by Clemmons.
Lonnie could not believe: Lonnie King, interview.
“They’re too young”: Raleigh Bryans, “Negroes Count on Atlanta as Moderate, Dr. King Says,” AJ, Oct. 20, 1960.
from an unlikely source: “Did a Phone Call Elect Kennedy President?,” Negro Digest, Nov. 1961.
he was struck by the testy rivalry: Martin memoir draft, LMP.
New England private schools and summers: Marjorie McKenzie Lawson, interview by Ronald J. Grele, Oct. 25, 1965, JFKL; Belford V. Lawson, interview by Ronald J. Grele, Jan. 11, 1966, JFKL.
“look silly”: Wofford, interview by Anthony K. Shriver, JFKL.
arrange a meeting with King: Marjorie Lawson, interview by Grele, #2, JFKL; Wofford, interview by Bernhard, #1, JFKL.
she felt doubly marginalized: Marjorie Lawson, interview by Grele, #2, JFKL.
“the heart organizing and directing”: Wofford, interview by Hackman, #2, JFKL.
“more and more the strong man”: Frank Reeves, interview by John F. Stewart, March 29, 1967, JFKL.
The circumstances under which Reeves: “Did a Phone Call Elect Kennedy President?”
Abernathy, who had been arrested: “Attempt Made on Life of SCLC Exec,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis), Oct. 28, 1960; “Police, Gunmen Harass Vote Denial Witness, FBI Told,” Baltimore Afro-American, Oct. 22, 1960; “Police Arrest ‘Rights’ Leader,” Los Angeles Sentinel, Oct. 20, 1960.
secure an endorsement from King: “Did a Phone Call Elect Kennedy President?”; Reeves, interview by Stewart, JFKL.
Reeves phoned Wofford to tell him: Martin, interview by Grele, #1, JFKL.
“How many votes will this”: Martin notebook, LMP.
“You don’t know that sonofabitch”: Ibid.
“Instead of answering directly”: Martin, interview by Grele, #1, JFKL.
“Now you see why he’s a leader”: Martin notebook, LMP.
On the first day of King’s: Reeves, interview by Stewart, JFKL; Martin, interview by Grele, #2, JFKL.
Reeves phoned the SCLC’s Wyatt: “Did a Phone Call Elect Kennedy President?”; Reeves, interview by Stewart, JFKL.
“What, if anything, could”: Reeves, interview by Stewart, JFKL.
Speaking to Wofford that evening: Ibid.
“the only lawyer who would help”: Harris Wofford, interview by Carol Quirke, Dec. 19, 2011, SUNY Old Westbury Oral History.
“I’ve had this nightmare”: Wofford, interview.
Coretta had a great-uncle: King, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr., 23.
“they will do anything”: Wofford, Of Kennedys and Kings, 12.
“Corrie, I told you”: Wofford, interview.
“And the Lord came by”: Harris Wofford, interview by Voices of the Civil Rights Movement, “Participating with Dr. King,” Dec. 4, 2015.
liver and onions, creamed potatoes: “Jailed Sit-downers Denied Text Books,” Baltimore Afro-American, Oct. 29, 1960.
“fasting today in a spiritual act”: Ibid.
“It’s the first food”: Bryans, “Negroes Count on Atlanta as Moderate, Dr. King Says.”
On the women’s
side of jail: Hoytt, interview by Bohannon, Atlanta Student Movement Project, KSU; Challenor, interview by Bohannon, Atlanta Student Movement Project, KSU.
women were served fresh milk: Challenor, interview by Crawford, King Collection, Morehouse College.
interview with Atlanta’s NBC affiliate: WSB-TV newsfilm clip of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Oct. 19, 1960, Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, University of Georgia (UGA) Libraries, Athens, as presented in the Digital Library of Georgia.
“Maybe it takes some degree”: Bryans, “Negroes Count on Atlanta as Moderate, Dr. King Says.”
“As Negroes, we must bear”: “Jailed Sit-Downers Denied Text Books.”
“I did not initiate the thing”: Bryans, “Negroes Count on Atlanta as Moderate, Dr. King Says.”
“war on sleep”: Young, Easy Burden, 176.
how “convivial” King was: Lonnie King, interview.
“It is a means of showing”: AI, Oct. 24, 1960.
There were rumors in the Black community: “Mayor Seeks Sit-In Truce but Picketing Continues,” AJ, Oct. 21, 1960.
Some two hundred college students: Douglas Kiker, “Protest Drive Losing Steam?,” AJ, Oct. 20, 1960.
Judge Oscar Mitchell sent word: “Rich’s Declines to Prosecute Pastor King on Sit-In Count.” The Journal records King as saying he found out about the suspended sentence on Wednesday evening after his arrest. King later stated in his JFK interview that he did not understand the looming problem of probation until he was kept from leaving jail on Sunday. We defer to the contemporaneous account, but based on Lonnie King’s description to us of how King seemed unfazed in their time in Fulton jail, making no mention of the threat of prison until he was held back on Sunday, King might not have felt DeKalb County had the power to arrest him in Fulton County, and thus saw Wednesday’s news as more of an irritant.
DAY 2: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20
Hundreds of students assembled: Estimates were as high as two thousand students. Bruce Galphin and Keeler McCartney, “26 More Arrested in Sit-Ins; Many Counters Closed Here,” AC, Oct. 21, 1960.
A.D. and twenty-four students: Ibid.; Shannon, “25 Negroes, White Lectured, Jailed.”
As A.D. and the rest of the students: Shannon, “25 Negroes, White Lectured, Jailed.”
“had no intentions of creating”: Shannon, “25 Negroes, White Lectured, Jailed.”
despite being busy representing: Charles Moore, “2 Negroes Refused Entry to University,” AC, Oct. 22, 1960.
Twenty-five more Black protesters: Shannon, “25 Negroes, White Lectured, Jailed.”
“modern slave quarters”: Fleming, Soon We Will Not Cry, 66.
More than half of the students: Shannon, “25 Negroes, White Lectured, Jailed,” and jailed list in AC, Oct. 20, 1960.
Sullivan and other leaders set up: Challenor, interview by Crawford, King Collection, Morehouse College.
Norma June Wilson listened: Atlanta Prison Farm rape story told in June Wilson Davis, interview by Jeanne Law Bohannon, May 19, 2017, Atlanta Student Movement, KSU, Stories from the Trenches: Women on the Move(ments), 1940s–2018, 2018 Women’s History Month Finale Panel, March 28, 2018, Atlanta Student Movement, KSU. For farm details, see also Lefever, Undaunted by the Fight, 70. The civil rights movement from 1955 to 1968 forms a kind of modern American Iliad, a story based on true events but told and retold to mythic effect, a tale we tell ourselves to know ourselves by. It has become, with King its central hero, our most resonant civic story. Therefore, it takes an unusual new insight to reorder the way we have decided the civil rights saga unfolded. One such moment in understanding women as drivers of the movement and what they courageously endured in that role was provided by Danielle McGuire’s book At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance. The movement looks very different when these women’s experiences are recovered and told with the horrors they faced in jail cells while daring to protest.
Their prayers were not so much: “Jail, No Bail Group in Jail, Cheerful, Confident.”
To pass the time: Lefever, Undaunted by the Fight, 68; Hoytt, interview by Bohannon, Atlanta Student Movement Project, KSU.
A few had textbooks: “Jailed Sit-Downers Denied Text Books.”
“19 girls skipping”: Lefever, Undaunted by the Fight, 68.
Spelman students in particular: Lonnie King interview; Lefever, Undaunted by the Fight, 63. In this sit-in arrest, at least twenty-one students were from Spelman, the rest divided among the other AUC schools.
“You can always tell a Spelman girl”: Zinn, Southern Mystique, 115.
“Hello girls”: Carson et al., Papers of Martin Luther King Jr., 5:528.
“Get out, King”: Carson, Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr., 73–74.
“dark and dingy street”: Ibid., 74.
“Fellows, before I can assist”: Ibid., 75.
Bernard Lee, slept in the bunk: Branch, Parting the Waters, 352. This imprisonment changed many lives, perhaps none more than that of Bernard Lee, who became King’s body man. Lee, almost invisible in King biographies (like A.D., he died young, leaving no memoir behind), followed King all the way to Memphis. Calling Lee a body man was literal: his speech patterns, mannerisms, and clothes made him an almost indistinguishable decoy for King.
Lonnie’s perspective was different: Lonnie King, interview.
“I was born looking up”: Lonnie C. King, interview by Crosby, Library of Congress.
he was assigned to clean: Lonnie King, oral history interview by Ashley Burke, Georgia State University.
He sensed a revolution coming: Lonnie King, interview by Voices Across the Color Line Oral History Project, Atlanta History Center.
Lonnie appreciated the fact: Lonnie King, interview.
“I am conscious of two Martin”: Frady, Martin Luther King Jr., 65.
“an intensely guilt-ridden man”: Fairclough, Martin Luther King Jr., 49.
felt like a movement retreat: Ibid., 74.
Lonnie saw a lighthearted King: Lonnie King, interview.
“modernistic substitute for the dungeons”: “Jail, No Bail Group in Jail, Cheerful, Confident.”
“Have you seen this?”: This and the exchange that follows come from “Julian Bond Discusses History of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,” Feb. 2, 2010, University of Virginia School of Law.
“You take this side of the café”: Williamson, “Julian Bond.” Lonnie’s fear that sit-ins would peter out without more students joining was well-grounded, because this had been the fate of some NAACP student sit-ins in Oklahoma and Kansas two years before. Julian Bond’s scholarly father had sat in a Pennsylvania theater in 1947 to protest discriminatory seating.
not about waiting for NAACP lawyers: Fort, “Atlanta Sit-In Movement, 1960–1961.”
Bond’s experience of jail revived: Alexander, “New Footage: Julian Bond’s Final Atlanta Interview.”
“Good for you”: Julian Bond, interview by Bob Short, Feb. 27, 2012, Georgia Politics Oral History Collection, Russell Library, University of Georgia.
“freedom high”: Andrew Young, interview by the authors, Aug. 29, 2017.
Bond was reassured to find: “Jail, No Bail Group in Jail, Cheerful, Confident.”
“extremely happy when I heard”: Ibid.
Lonnie cherished his hushed, late-night: Lonnie King, interview.
“There is something inherently depressing”: Carson, Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr., 157–58. King wrote in a press release during this Atlanta imprisonment, “Sixteen hours is a long time to spend within a few square feet with nothing creative to do.” Carson et al., Papers of Martin Luther King Jr., 5:527.
visits from his family: King, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr., 179.
“It could be that your example”: Wilkins to King, Oct. 21, 1960, NAACP Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
“highly organized, well-trained group”: “Bible-Carrying Negroes Picket Atlanta Stores,” Lub
bock Avalanche-Journal, Oct. 20, 1960.
Many, like the readers of The Kansas City Times: “Jail Choice Made by Minister and 35,” Kansas City Times, Oct. 20, 1960.
it made only page thirty-nine: “14 Negroes Jailed in Atlanta Sit-Ins.” NYT, Oct. 20, 1960.
“There are less provocative ways”: “There Are Better Ways,” AJ, Oct. 20, 1960.
“can only breed resentment”: “We Urge an End to Atlanta Sit-Ins,” AC, Oct. 20, 1960.
“a further strengthening of the position”: Kiker, “Protest Drive Losing Steam?”
“Our decision to stay in jail”: “Jail, No Bail Group in Jail, Cheerful, Confident.”
“It is difficult to prophesize”: King to “friend,” Oct. 20, 1960, NAACP Papers.
“performance and not campaign promises”: Richard Nixon, Remarks of Vice President Nixon, Television Program, Channel 4, New York, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/274056.
“Mr. Civil Rights”: Farrington, Black Republicans and the Transformation of the GOP, 59; Booker, Shocking the Conscience, 164.
“Segregation, discrimination and prejudice”: Farrell, Richard Nixon, 252.
“most of us here will live”: Farrington, Black Republicans and the Transformation of the GOP, 60.
“one of the saddest days”: Nichols, Matter of Justice, 161.
“I am convinced that the future”: Carl Rowan, “Who Will Get the Negro Vote?,” Ebony, Nov. 1960.
“Our God-given rights”: “Intensification of Sit-In Campaign Is Seen in Atlanta,” Rome News-Tribune, Oct. 21, 1960.
Vandiver announced state troops: “Atlanta Calls ‘Sit-In’ Truce,” Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 24, 1960.
DAY 3: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21
Student protesters were back at Rich’s: “Mayor Seeks Sit-In Truce but Picketing Continues”; Bruce Galphin and Keeler McCartney, “Negro Picketing Continues but Sit-Ins Decline Sharply,” AC, Oct. 22, 1960. Two students were arrested on Friday and sent to Fulton County Jail (John Britton, “Mayor Suggests ‘Truce’ in Demonstrations Here,” ADW, Oct. 22, 1960; John Britton, “Mayor Hartsfield Orders Release from Jail of 22 Students Arrested Here,” ADW, Oct. 23, 1960). The total for the week was seventy-nine arrests of seventy-three movement protesters, because six individuals who were released on Wednesday were arrested again on Thursday. Sixty-three total went to jail. Fifty-two including King had been arrested Wednesday, with thirty-six going to jail and sixteen having charges dismissed. Twenty-five Black protesters were arrested Thursday (not including an additional white counterprotester). The twenty-two students at the prison farm were let out Saturday. Thirty-nine of the forty-one held under state anti-trespassing charges had resisted taking bail by Sunday, with only exceptions like the Reverend Otis Blackshear doing so on Saturday to explain to his congregation on Sunday morning why he was arrested (“Negroes Agree to Halt Sit-ins for 30 Days Here,” AJC, Oct. 23, 1960). Thirty-eight got out late Sunday while King was held, as is made clear in “Rich’s Declines to Prosecute Pastor King on Sit-In Count.” The Constitution’s “King Held on Old Count as Sit-Inners Leave Jail” missed the two students arrested on Friday in its count of sixty-one instead of sixty-three demonstrators who went to jail, and mistakenly said the students in Fulton County Jail were released Saturday, when that happened Sunday, as the Daily World and Journal reported. The AP’s story, “Revive Traffic Charge to Jail Negro Leader” (New York Daily News, Oct. 26, 1960), had the correct total number of arrests of seventy-nine.