American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with E.L. "Lanny" Crane, 1 of 2

[Interviewer]: Okay, so, uh, you grew up in the South, in, in what we'll call the deep South, um ,you had a great quote, I think that the ?news? made a note of about day yeah i know it was b that's one of those areas that i know what it but that at this point in time, looking backward, what i thought at the time may have changed. But in my life there, there were no race relations. relations. I grew up in a, I didn't think of it as a segregated community. It was just a separated community. There was some invisible line and I didn't go to school with blacks, I didn't go to church with them. I really seldom came in contact with black people, and that was the south that I grew up in in the nineteen fifties. [Interviewer] What were the expectations, [unintelligible]

expectations for you as, you grew up middle class, a middle class white guy as opposed to the expectations for somebody your age black, what were the expectations that people look forward to in their lives? [Crane] Well, I thought I grew up just in a normal childhood and I realize there is probably no such thing as normal. And I'm not even certain what my expectations were but I know that coming out of college as a educated white male, I probably had a lot easier than many people. But I also look back and know that educated white females, educated black males, educated black females, we all had a leg up. [Interviewer, unintelligible] [Interviewer] on one side of the tracks, black kids on the other, what are the opportunities, what are

the, you know, better word than expectations, what, in that Montgomery that you were born into? Talk about that. [Crane The neighborhood where I lived, there were no tracks, but if there were I didn't know what the expectations or the dreams of the opportunities were for a black person born on the same day that I was born. It was just a separated world my world I knew I had aspirations going to college, I went to college at duke but certain i knew what i was going to do when i went to college but I came out with a degree and it was more doors open for me, I had more opportunities because I was an educated white male in the deep south. That I know [Interviewer] One of the things that we talked about people is that

at this point you know, you said there were no moderates in the deep south that people either didn't think about it you know or... [Crane] I don't think I said there were no moderates in the deep south. Moderates were probably out numbered, but like when the freedom riders came through, or Rosa Parks with on the buses before that my thought was, especially with the freedom riders, why are these outsiders coming in here and causing trouble? Things are going peacefully in my community. These outsiders are just down here stirring things up. That was that was the attitude that that people of my age had. [Interviewer] Sure. I just want to hear a little more about that. So you saw it was kind of what was called the outside agitators common as the front as the freedom riders approached my memory and i'm having to go back

fifty years and memory now i really didn't understand what it was all about I said I didn't understand what was all about i knew they were outsiders and we have been warned there's likely to be violence don't go don't go close to the bus station will i wasn't ago close to the bus station anyway but we will warn that was going to be violence and sadly there was violence but i did not really understand why these people were so involved in wanting to come to montgomery alabama and prove something and change something from my perspective everything was all right nothing needed change. [Interviewer] Great. You said you were warned...civilization. Do you remember how did you heard that word... [Crane] No [Interviewer] ... people [Crane] No, no, it was probably radio or maybe even the news paper or just word of mouth but I can't remember so long time ago [Interviewer] If you could, again you know because my question is going to be in here but you just say you know that that and that's fine with you that in some ways

you know we got a warning, we knew could be in radio, we knew not to go down there [Interviewer] so talk about the warning. [Crane] We were warned by the radio maybe television the newspaper that there would likely be violence when the freedom riders got to Montgomery and we were told not to go down there and they didn't have to worry about me i wasn't going to go down there anyway but sure enough there was violence that day. [Interviewer] Had you kind of heard that that freedom rides going to make this way down from using down because you did they get people in general in Montgomery don't know whether the excitement they were or what their select at west point and a following the trail of the freedom rides as [Crane] I think as they approached Montgomery we knew of the cities they had been in, and I really don't know where they came, where they had been, before they came to Montgomery, in Birmingham

Anniston, those were the Alabama cities. And we knew that there were, that there had been violence in each of those communities, and that's why we were very afraid of what was going to happen that day. [Interviewer] Was there a sense that, because you say there were warnings, was there a sense that you know this violence was inevitable or that it could have been stopped by the police, or that there was not going to be enough effort to stop it or that the federal government was not going to stop it? You know I mean do you know what I mean? [Crane] I do. I was about twenty-three years old at day, when the Freedom Riders arrived in Montomgery, had a six week old son at home. I didn't really know who was involved in this, or who was going to keep order, or if there was order to be kept. I just knew "better to stay away from it" because there could likely be violence. [Interviewer] Let's stop for a moment.

John Patterson and George Wallace. Race was a very political issue in the South, in Alabama. [Crane] Race certainly became an important political issue. As people, my contemporaries, grew up we began to realize that race, and a lot of injustice had been done to black people. Again I guess in the early years I thought well that's not my problem. Fortunately I'm a white male and I haven't suffered this injustice, and it's not my problem to straighten out. Later, many white people, white southerners, began to realize this was our problem and we had responsibility to straighten it out. It's taken a long time to do so, and it is not done yet, but the Montgomery, Alabama I live in today is a lot different city than the Montgomery, Alabama

that I knew in 1961. [Interviewer] One of things I think that the Freedom Riders did, that they were trying to do, was that I think one of the main things that they were trying to do was to force people like you to confront segregation and to confront race. [Crane] I understand that. It probably took us a long time for us to hear the message of the Freedom Riders, and certainly that day and for years after that they continued to be thought of as just outside agitators. But I now know that a lot of the change that we have seen would not have happened had we not had people willing to risk their lives as the Freedom Riders did. [Interviewer] One of the ways that you know, as you said, you able to not even ignore it,

it wasn't even part of your existence. Can you respond to that? Does that make sense to you? Tell me if I'm wrong. [Crane] For just a second, we're just talking now. I think there's a lot of truth to what you just said, it was a slow process. It was not like the Freedom Riders were here on Saturday and Sunday, and on Monday and Tuesday we all saw things differently. It took a long time, forced white southerners to realize that things had to change and they should change. That it was just wrong for black people to have been denied the things that they had been denied for so long. [Interviewer] I don't want this film is not about the Freedom Riders being the Be-all and End-all of what happened. That would be ridiculous, but I think that it's part of this thing that

starting to crack. That's one of the things that Brent Harris said was that it was as if the ship of the south was taking on water, and had been taking on water for a long time. And as he put it, this civilization that had been there a kind of sank and a new civilization, a better civilization, arises, but that this was part of, one of the holes in the ship that helped the ship to take on water. You said something about that it felt like everything was coming undone, and so that's what i'm talking about, not that it being but the next day. Even though you're saying these are outside agitators, and a part of you, definitely a big part of you, but also part of you is saying, What the heck is going on? [Crane] Yes, I did, and I'm certain even the next day I was ashamed of what had gone on. The

violence, you know even though we were warned there may be violence, when it happened on your watch, on your street, and you know that it wasn't justified. I was embarrassed then and I'm still embarrassed today. the poems [Interviewer] Did it make you at any point getting sworn home Talk about the fact that they made you think about the system, even if you thought Our system is great, great for you. What you said before was, you didn't think about it at all. So did it make you in some ways, even if you thought they wrong, did it make you think about, in some ways, a little bit about We do have this system? [Crane] We're off camera now.

I really don't remember. As I say, it was a slow process of realizing it was a bad system that needed to be, there was going to be, change. I did't know what the change would be, but I knew it was not a just system that we had in the Deep South. he wants the lenses [Interviewer] Talk to me about that, what for you were race relations like in your life? I grew up in a family where there was, I can't say never, but there were very few if any racial attitudes ever displayed, so my problem was, I never thought of myself as a racist, but my problem was I had no race relations. I didn't have good race relations, I really didn't have a bad race relations. I had no race relations, and that was part of my ignorance.

[Interviewer] One of the things that black people want to talk to us about is when they would go downtown, they would have to move off the sidewalk. Was that your experience? [Crane] No, it may have happened [Interviewer] You have to say what happened. [Crane] OK. As I would go downtown in my youth, let me start over. [Clearing throat] As I would go downtown in my youth, to go to a movie or whatever I was doing, certainly there were as many black people downtown as there were white people. If a black person ever moved over to let me through on the sidewalk, I don't remember it. I certainly didn't expect it. I don't think it ever happened to me. I'm not certain it happened to anyone, but certainly there are people who believe that that was the way things were in the South.

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