American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with Clayborne Carson, 2 of 4

[Interviewer] --that he wanted was for CORE to be this national organization, so talk a little about Jim Farmer and what he wanted out of the freedom rides. Well, James Farmer came to CORE out of that pacifist tradition, Fellowship of Reconciliation, that goes back to World War I influenced by the Gandhian movement and all of these individuals, Farmer is one, Bayard Rustin is another, wanted to take these tactics and prove that they can work in the field of race relations and that had the goal since the founding of Corridor in the nineteen forties, to try to demonstrate that non- non-violent tactics could actually be effective in bringing about changes in race relations. But all that work had been in the North, except for that nineteen forty seven ride, whether it's a journey of reconciliation and um

so here we get to the nineteen fifties and we see Martin Luther King in Montgomery, becoming a major figure on the national scene because in Montgomery, ah some of these tactics and nonviolent tactics are used, particularly the boycott, and King advocates Gandhian principles, and he, he becomes a major figure. So I think from the point of view of James Farmer in court, said we are the organization that should have a corner on that because we came out of that pacifist, Gandhian tradition. We understand those tactics better than any other group. But yet we have not really had an impact in the South. So, so I think the freedom ride was a really necessary kind of approach for CORE to

demonstrate that it was the organization uniquely able to, to use non-violent tactics. And, and I think that that served its purpose, that the freedom ride really did bring CORE to the center of public attention, for at least a moment after the, well this is going forward again. [interviewer] That's fine. I wanna, wanna, I want you to kind of to stay, to stay again in that moment not, not too much background, cause I don't know how much we'll be able to go into you know the beginnings of corps and all that, but you, you actually mentioned before, but I just want to get it kind of separate, ah is that talking about CORE and where CORE was in this kind of hierarchy of civil rights organizations, you know. That CORE, you know, because a lot of times when you hear about this stuff, and if you don't know about it, you feel like, "Oh, well, I guess I should know about CORE." Do you know what I mean?

And but CORE was not this big household name but-- so talk about where CORE was in '61 as it relates to the other civil rights organizations. [Carson] Well the Congress of Racial Equality compared with the NAACP was just a pretty minor group. It had chapters in some cities in the north, a lot of those chapters were predominantly white, it didn't really have very much impact in the south, and CORE, on a national level, really hadn't done any significant initiatives on civil rights that had attracted any attention since 1947 so CORE needed to do something to demonstrate that it really deserved to be mentioned in the same sentence with the NAACP or SCLC or Martin Luther King and I think James

Farmer also, on a personal level, understood that he probably knew more about the the principles underlying the nonviolent campaign in the south than Martin Luther King did. He had a background that went back into the 1940s and even the 1930s when African Americans were learning more about the Gandhian ideas so for James Farmer, this was a way of saying "I need to be brought into the discussions at the national level about how the civil rights campaign was going to be conducted because my organization has a unique history that can bring a new perspective to those discussions." [Interviewer] And the freedom rides would prove this, or how would the freedom rides-- [Carson] And the the freedom rides, the freedom rides would be a

demonstration that CORE's ideas really were applicable to the problem in the south. That just as Martin Luther King and SCLC or the NAACP might mobilize a campaign, CORE could mobilize its own campaign in a very different way and actually surprise some of the larger groups by capturing the initiative on this key issue of the right to travel and interstate commerce. [Interviewer] I want to talk a little bit about, kinda jumping ahead here, when CORE gets to Atlanta, they have this dinner with Martin Luther King and they all talk about how [unintelligible] how wonderful it was that King was already becoming that thing, but he gives them this warning. He basically says, you know, Ray Arsenault in the Freedom Riders book, said they kind of hoped that King would jump on the ride with them, but King kind of says, you know. So talk a little bit about what King

said [unintelligible]. [Carson] Well, Martin Luther King was not eager to join the freedom rides. He was remarkably cautious during this time, he's getting described in the press as the American Gandhi, but he's actually never done any civil disobedience. You know, he's been arrested but not for the kind of self-conscious civil disobedience that say CORE is familiar with, where you actually go in with the intention of being arrested. So Martin Luther King is kind of put on the spot when the Freedom Riders come to town. You know, he sees himself as a major proponent of Gandhian nonviolence, but they want to actually practice it

in a way that he feels very reluctant to join despite - and this is true, well that goes forward... [Host] Let's cut. And this is the, the CORE riders get into Atlanta and they have this dinner with King and... Talk about what King's attitude was and what he said. [Carson] Well King was far more aware than most of the Freedom Riders of what they would face in Alabama. He, he had been in Montgomery. He understood the situation there. He understood the climate. His house had been bombed. He, he understood the level of violence in, in Montgomery and in Birmingham. So I think King was wary of doing things too fast. You know, the criticism from people around him is that he had just been too cautious after Montgomery. But he had good reason for being cautious. He understood what was at stake and he also understood, on a personal level, that he had

convictions on his record and one of the things that had caused him great problems in 1960 was the fact that violating his probation would get him a heavier sentence. So unlike the freedom riders who might come down and be facing certain charges because of trespass, he would face additional charges because he had these older charges that he was still on probation for. So King had personal reasons for not wanting to join them and but i but i think he he basically understood that they were going to face some pretty heavy violence in Alabama. [Interviewer] Let's cut. After the bus burning in the Birmingham riot, talk about how - you know 'cause this

now becomes big news and we want to stay here, but this now, it's a different freedom ride. Talk about how the nation and the world [pause] sees these pictures of that burning bus and the riot become kind of iconic and how that affects the nation. [Carson] Well I think the pictures of the burning bus did have a great impact, it brought the freedom ride to national attention, it of course got the attention of the federal government and the justice department but I think it's easy also to overestimate the reaction because nothing really happened in terms of federal intervention at that point. The idea was still that "we hope that we can contain this issue in the south and let the Alabama authorities take care of it,

that was certainly the perspective of the Kennedy administration. [Interviewer] Let me ask you that again, because I think that's really good and I want you to go there, that even after this massive violence in Birmingham and the bus burning that Kennedy's still wanting, hope that they didn't have to become involved. [Carson] Yeah, I think that one of the things that fed into the response after the bus burning was something that often happened in the struggle for civil rights and that is that there was a tendency not simply to blame the people responsible for the violence, the people who had tried to kill the people on the bus, but to blame the protestors for provoking it, "why did you provoke this violent response on the part of the segregationists?" as if exercising your rights was a provocation rather than

something that everyone should have the right to do. [Interviewer] So I think I want to get into that a little more because I was actually going to ask you that question because I think one of the things that happens is that the foreign press looks at it as this outrageous thing but that even the southern press obviously it's kind of-- but even the New York Times and I think Brinkley gives an editorial and it gives this-- [Carson] Troublemakers. [Interviewer] That these are troublemakers, so I want you to kind of start again, even after this violence although foreign media might have been saying this was outrageous, there still was this ambivalence in the national press. [Carson] Yes I think the general attitude among white Americans still in 1961 is "we wish this issue would just go away," it's an embarrassment to the

country, it's getting terrible press internationally, and of course there's the concern about the America's image abroad but there isn't an engagement in the sense that something wrong is happening to African-Americans in the south, that it is wrong to segregate people, particularly in interstate commerce, that this is not a matter of state law, this is a matter that the federal government has the right to intervene. So I think that the the bus burning needs to be seen as-- it was a terrible act to happen and it could have been much worse, it could have been much more deadly, but unfortunately it was not the the act that led to the kind of federal intervention which would have prevented the violence that happened subsequently. [Interviewer] So again, so even after the bus burning, if you can talk about that there is this northern press, it's not just the southern press, but there's this general feeling that

that it was the freedom riders that were wrong. [Carson] Yes, the uh the idea of troublemakers, of outside agitators causing the problem is something that ran through all of the events of the '50s and early 1960s and this was particularly true when you have this group of of uh freedom riders coming into the south. And, and I think for most Americans there was a sense "why are they doing this, why um why are they provoking this violence?" as opposed to a strong sense of outrage against the perpetrators of the violence. Um-- That would have been, you know, a-- wonderful

result but it didn't happen, it just uh you know-- that would've been what was necessary to prevent this from happening again but instead you have this fairly muted response to a horrific event that could've been even worse. [Interviewer] It seems there is this feeling this, and that call, there was a call from this media and other people that they just stop now, just talk about this. [Carson] Yes, I think that was perhaps those predominant response. [Interviewer] Again, the question's not going to be there. So give it again. [Carson] One of the responses to this burning of the bus in Anniston was that should just call this off, this has gotten out of hand, that the violence was something this should not have happened but it would not have happened if it had not been provoked

by the demonstrators coming into this north. So I think that rather than getting the kind of outrage this Freedom Riders wanted and expected, that is something that shouldn't happen in America, instead there is I think a much more restrained response of basically saying that "now you've proven my point, let the justice system resolve this, maybe I get a ICC, a new Interstate Commerce Commission ruling this would guarantee these rights in the future, but you gotta stop that right now because it's causing violence." [Interviewer] Okay, let's cut. [Carson] Well It's the Nashville, Tennessee is good to be here in America and Around the world. student movement is a unique part of the sit-in because the Nashville students had been training for that sit-ins, they had gone through this workshops with James Lawson, they had introduced to Gandhian

ideas, they were primed, they were-- when the staged the sit-ins in Nashville they were the best organized sit-ins in the North and they were sustained, they are the first ones this achieved a major victory in achieving desegregation for many of the downtown lunch counters. So the Nasvhille students had a sense that they were doing something special and that they had created a movement that was very very strong and very very disciplined and very committed to the basic ideas of gandhian resistance. So for them the freedom rides was both an expression of the kinds of things that they had wanted to do, they had tried to do something similar in Rock Hill, South Carolina, the freedom rides was something that they saw they needed to sustain. That if

you allowed a segregationist to defeat the movement by showing that violence really does intimidate black demonstrators or pro-civil rights demonstrators, then violence would always win because that kind of violence was always you know ready to be used against demonstrations. They had found that out in Nashville but they had overcome that so I think for them it was a challenge and looking-- I was going to say looking back, but that's not good. [Interviewer] Let's cut for one-- [Carson] But there is something that maybe I could express in a different way. [Interviewer] We're rolling? [Carson] One of the things that is really crucial about what the Nashville students did, and at this crucial point in the movement, is that the violence against the

initial group of freedom riders as we all know now it could've been much worse. That they could have been killed, there could have been lots of killings and when we compare this to what was going on in South Africa at the same time, with the Sharpeville in 1960 and how that changed the course of a very similar movement to what was going on in the United States and the long term consequences of that, I think we can see that the freedom ride campaign, if it had gone in a different way, if it had been repressed by violence, it people have been killed, and that had caused the movement to change its basic strategy, that things could've been very very different in the United States and I think we're very very fortunate that the the freedom ride campaign was-- first of all that the violence was more limited, that people were not

killed, but secondly that ultimately they were sustained and they proved that nonviolence was an effective tactic to overcome the Jim Crow system because if that lesson haven't been delivered the movement would've taken a very different course. [Interviewer] Let's cut for a second. -- the movement with me. So talk about that, what could have happened? [Carson] Well I think that if the Nashville students hadn't decided to continue the rides it would have proven that violence works and that's an effective tool to repress the movement. And that would've been a setback in many ways, it would've undermined the credibility of nonviolent tactics first of all. It would've pushed the movement to the periphery of the south, and it's hard to see how you would have had a movement in the deep south, in the rural areas of the deep south,

to the same extent that we did, so the voting rights issue wouldn't have been confronted the way it was. So all of this indicates that this was a turning point for the movement. That in terms of nonviolence and in terms of the ability to confront segregation at its strongest point, things would've been quite different. [Interviewer] Okay. And let's cut. -- Reverend King and Bobby Kennedy. Does he-- they're on the phone, so Bobby Kennedy and King are on the phone during the church siege, so what's happening? [Carson] Well Martin Luther King is trying to convince Bobby Kennedy that this is a real crisis, that people are going to get killed, that they're trapped inside a church, there's a mob outside, unless the federal government acts, he's going to be responsible for the

deaths of many people. And Martin Luther King during this time is, he's trying to keep the people calm in the church and at one point he actually walks through the mob. So he understands that it is his responsibility to show bravery, to show that he's not going to be intimidated, but he knows that this is a situation that could very rapidly deteriorate and if somebody had thrown a fire bomb into the church, that we \would have had a massacre. So this was something that he had to convey to Robert Kennedy who I think at this state still does not understand what he's up against, still does not understand that this is a part of the country that is in the grip of terrorism, segregationist terrorism,

and he still thinks of it as something that "well, you know, that these are-- the southern people are--" these politicians who helped get his brother elected, he had to work with them and so he still has the sense that southerners are like the senators that he deals with, but he doesn't understand the extent to which all of these people are complicit in a kind of racial terrorism that was endemic to the entire region, that once you allowed the violent groups to dominate the situation as they did in Birmingham and Montgomery, then you've really lost control as a government and I think that in Alabama there was a feeling among many whites, and it was

expressed in the statements of the governor, that "even though we personally did not participate in this violence we kind of understood what was going on and if it hadn't been for these outside agitators, they're the ones responsible for the violence." So there was that tendency to just put all the blame on the demonstrators and kind of give a wink of the eye to the white segregationists who were causing the violence. [Interviewer] I just want you to little bit more about, tell me what you just did, but you gave a really good feeling for the real tensions that existed in that church, I just want you to talk again about the fact that, like you mentioned earlier, we're looking back, we don't know what happened. But in that

situation, it was an incredibly dangerous and tense situation, so if you can, give me a sense of that feeling for the danger that existed for those people in the church during that night. [Carson] I think when you look at the footage of King and Fred Shuttlesworth and the other people in that church, you can't help but understand that they understood that this was a potentially disastrous-- [Interviewer] I don't want you to start again. We'll show the footage, but just talk about the tensions.[unclear sentence]. [Carson] I think that both Fred Shuttlesworth and King understood that this was a situation that could deteriorate with disastrous consequences and they probably more than any other period of their lives understood that all these people in the church were, their lives were at stake, and they needed to

convince the Kennedy administration that something needed to be done, they needed help. There was just no way they could resolve this situation on their own. So this was a, I think a crucial turning point for the movement because they had to show that their leadership meant something, they had to show that their sense of faith in nonviolent tactics could have an impact, could actually succeed in saving these people in the church. They had to convince these people that there was a federal government that was capable of supporting them in their cause, and that was still in doubt, I mean it was not at all clear that the Kennedy administration would take the risk of intervening in Montgomery. [Interviewer] Great, one of the amazing pieces of footage is when they announced, and Martin Luther King announces, that the national guard is called out,

and everybody starts clapping and hugging. Why are they so happy that the federal government is intervening, that the national guard is called? [Carson] Well you can imagine the sense of relief of these people in the church. They've been in there for most of the night, they have understood that there is this mob outside, they haven't ventured out to see it but they can hear it, they can smell the tear gas that is being used in the streets. They understand that they are not likely to get home anytime soon unless something is done. It's hard to capture the intensity of a moment when hundreds of American citizens are trapped in a church.

When has that happened in our history? When you can have a situation where hundreds of American citizens don't know whether they can get home from church because there's a mob outside and there's a fear that they will all be killed.