Reverend Wyatt T. Walker

One of the leaders of the civil rights movement in the south is the Reverend Wyatt T Walker administrative director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Reverend Martin Luther King here on Saturday May 25th for a whirlwind tour of the Bay Area. Reverend Walker spoke at a series of meetings under the combined sponsorship of the California Democratic council Corps and the end Sepi Burton White the KPFA public affairs staff spent Saturday afternoon and evening with Rev. Walker recording his discussions his responses to questions and his evening speech. For tonight's open our KPFA presents Wyatt T Walker in San Francisco at a cocktail party held to raise funds for the Birmingham movement. Terry friends WA former president of the San Francisco end ACP engaged Reverend Walker in a conversation which started with a discussion of the events when both men had been in Birmingham. The rocker on. When I left Birmingham on. Sunday.

After the bombings there were a large number of state troopers in the New York community. Is that situation still obtain was changed materially by noun in the wake of the different court orders that have returned the children to school and the advent of hard cadre of outside FBI men and Department of Justice investigators who have been around snapping pictures in lieu of all of the reports of police brutality we have recorded about three dozen different instances and we desire in that these state troopers and some of these conservation agents who were deputized to act as peace officers. Had the tape over their badge number so they cannot be identified. We've always been persuaded that the only reason they were in town of the express order of Governor Wallace was to terrorize the Negro community. And precipitate some retaliatory violence in order that the agreement that was reached prior to your coming would

be sabotaged. What did you have any personal difficulties with the troopers version remember you were an eyewitness to my wife being struck in the head by one of the state troopers and she was hospitalized and later released and later mother later Mother's Day Afternoon she complained of dizziness and headaches and I took her out to a private physician and I went out with a lawyer and upon returning trying to get back into the hotel they had the whole area cordoned off and they would let me drive in. And I offered to walk in and they told me to get the hell on the other side of the street as I turned to leave to go to the car I had arrived in this conservation agent struck me twice in the ribs and abdomen and then he was joined by two of the state troopers and they proceeded to. Beat me indiscriminately and I came out was bruised blood vessels in my leg and the shirt in the car door and cracked the wrist and injured shoulder so.

Hamstrung for a couple weeks. I guess the worst thing is I've just been sore. More than anything else was anything to be done about this. I have reports been made of the mistreatment you received. Yes both my wife and I filed complaints with the FBI and the Department of Justice. I have word from one of the agents that our two cases look like two likely cases that they will prosecute. I was fortunate enough to see the man who started the beating on me a couple days later and I understood that an FBI man was in the area and I sent for him and identified him by pointing him out so that even though we couldn't get his name or his number at the time at least somebody other than myself was able to visibly identify him. What's happened to Bill Connor since the court decision is he's still in control. Well Bull Connor's nanny ex bull the Alabama State Supreme Court on Thursday invented the decision that the new government had to be seated and he and art Haynes the mayor and the commission of public safety I believe it is

Wagner had to vacate their offices immediately and so Thursday they had to clear out a going back to the time of demonstration. We received newspaper reports on the Sunday when the demonstrators went down near the city hall as I understand it near the jail to pray. That book Conner changed his tactics and did not turn the hoses on them. I understand it wasn't exactly that way. What did happen. Well there were 2000 of us in the march in the new Pilgrim Church which is on 6th Avenue south of the same avenue on which the jail is located and we started out for the park across from the jail because that was the only land area that could accommodate them. People and it will stop one short block of ones should block short of the jail with a fire hose and the dogs and we just start a prayer meeting right there go down on our knees and start our service and we. While we were praying after we got up to start marching again and gave the order to turn the hoses on.

And evidently the firemen justs I guess we got through to his basic humanity and morality and he couldn't turn the lever and Captain Walker went over and conferred with Burlen ace decide to let us past so we walked right on over the hose and in the midst of the dogs and went on over to the park where we had originally started out and had our service there to encourage the 20 700 people who were in jail at that time. Our marabout well said that he would not deal with Reverend King what how can the disagreement be effectuated of the mayor refused to talk to Reverend King. Well there's really no need for him to talk to Dr. King at all. Opposition always is that we are in a sense professionals or consultants in the local community and. Have no desire to sit in on the go shooting sessions unless invited to do so sessions which resulted in the hammered out agreement. Dr. King had been invited in only as a consultant and he was not an official negotiator. And we have

sufficient confidence in Reverend Shuttlesworth and the local leadership of the Alabama Christian movement. That is really no need or desire on our part to Dr. King or any other official of the national organization really be involved. I'll get into another subject. The two negroes are supposed to be admitted to the inversed of Alabama. And. The other school in Huntsville. Within a few days and the governor said that he will prevent them from entering. What does he have two of the students at the schools about the desegregation of the universes in Alabama. Well one of the television networks did a sort of a documentary on interviewing students and the general opinion of most of the students at Tuscaloosa was that they didn't want any nitwit coming up to starting any business like they had in Oxford Mississippi. And one. Answer I remember very clearly they asked a student what did they

think would happen if Governor Wallace stood in the doorway. He said well I just walked right over him. So the students themselves their attitude generally seems to be one of acceptance and they do not want a repeat of the dead Bickel of Oxford Mississippi. What do you think the administration would do if if Governor Wallace remains recalcitrant. Well I would hope that they put him in jail that's where it belongs you know Reagan. Federal law. And. As you know the most recent action the federal government is the surgeon with a show cause order as to why he should interfere with the exceptions of these Negroes students into the division into. Huntsville and the main university of Tuscaloosa. Has the governor explained how he intends to be in Tuscaloosa and Huntsville at the same time. Now we are watching with great interest to see how he's going to work it out. Well perhaps he'll send a lieutenant governor to Huntsville or he'll go to Tuscaloosa.

But I would hardly think so because Richmond flowers seems to be an entirely different kind of May and then Governor Wallace certainly could not describe it as integration is but certainly he's a man who is a realist and he knows what the federal fear means and he has been publicly critical of the governor's position of this massive resistance to the integration of the university. So on the night of the rioting the newspapers have given indications he's given us the impression that there was wholesale rioting from the Negro community and perhaps there was some justification. And the governor sending the troopers and what percentage of the negro or population was involved but he put it this way approximate how many negroes were involved in the rioting were just estimates.

Well they couldn't have been more than 30 or 40 individuals involved altogether because as you remember. Right after the motel office was bombed there were nearly 2000 people or more right in that one block area. And you remember the work of the ministers in the civilian defense police and they go civilian defense police and how we've finally managed to disperse them. You help with that yourself. And there are only 50 people left there in a motel and then with that when the fires were set two blocks away under the cover of darkness this disorganized group of negroes who with an understandable amount of bitterness and with a compound of frustration and a hell were just throwing rocks and bottles out of the dock. And they could have been more than 30 or 40 at the time. But of course on the cover of darkness and 30 40 people throwing bricks and bottles at. They try to overdraw the picture. I think the significant thing that was not reported was a dead angry crowd of 2000 was successfully dispersed by the negro ministers and the

civilian defense workers and the volunteers who were able to lay hands on it. Time we really averted a major race riot. It could have turned a town into. A really a terrible situation and sabotage all that had been done in the five weeks prior to Mother's Day. The last last time I saw you was in the office of the hotel and then you disappeared. You know that we were kept there all night. What happened to you. When I was in there my overhead so much concern about my wife being struck and hospitalized that I wasn't even aware until I guess the next day that you all were virtual prisoners in the office and couldn't leave and I couldn't understand why people were trying to restrain me physically from leaving the office. And of course I went and talked to Jamie more and he said he would that's the chief of police he said he would see if I could leave and I want to know what do you mean you see if I believe my wife's been hospitalized after being bludgeoned in the head with a state trooper rifle and I want to witness your town and he had to go get

permission from somebody in the state patrol and they let a carload of us leave and go to the hospital and. I was over there a couple of hours until she was released and. I got back to the hotel about daybreak. And I came back in with the civilian defense police. So that accounted for most of the time. After we separated about 4:30 in the morning I believe it was I saw your wife in the airport. That evening she was leaving Birmingham for a drive to and she told me that she couldn't go or clothing out of the motel. What to what happened there and why wasn't she able to get her clothing. Well you know they had they they were the rest of us who were there about 9000 people still in the motel and the bomb knocked out the water system and none of the people no people could get into the motel which meant the restaurant couldn't open so we were without food or water for 24 hours. Virtual prisoners there until late Sunday night when the civilian defense police took us out to get something eat. And I had come in as the abstention places when

I was beaten to get her clothing and the kids clothing so that she could get back to and we felt that there wasn't any need for her to remain there she was ambulatory and could get the planes of this was a story behind that. Are you going back to Birmingham when you leave the barrier or directly back to Birmingham. What are your plans. We are Dr. King and Dr. Abernathy myself on a fundraising tour. Most of the means have been set up prior to the Birmingham outbreak. And we're just kind of shut trying to respect these longstanding commitments we go from Los Angeles to Chicago Chicago to St. Louis and St. Louis to Louisville and I'll be going directly back to Birmingham from Louisville on Thursday. The incident a lot of people have asked us where were Should they send funds for use in the south. What is the address of your office. Well our Birmingham office is he could be sent to the Gaston Motel if they want

an address it would be five or five and a half north 17th Street. Home Office is in Atlanta Georgia. And if you just send it to SC LC 334 Auburn like Auburn University A U B U R an organ ave you'll get it. Most of Dr. King's mail if you send in his name if you put Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Birmingham Alabama will receive it. So that's S C L C that's the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. But they wouldn't just put their CRC at three thirty four Auburn Avenue Atlanta and what you'd still need money. Well the operation in Birmingham has run us about three hundred thousand dollars and of course still expense because in the wake of any nonviolent campaign there are always a lot of welfare considerations people who will inevitably lose jobs out of economic reprisals. Things like this will inevitably come up. Of course there's the matter of the continued litigation every time a case is tried and there are still

appeal bonds to be posted so it still seems to us we're facing a real financial dilemma in order to finish the job of mopping up the Birmingham situation. We'll probably be in there through the end of July until the lunch counters actually desegregated and then. Do you have plans to move into some other area in the south. I'm not asking exactly where but I suppose there are plans to go into other communities. Are not desegregated. Yes we will be going into some city in the South I don't know which city just yet we haven't decided but we've had a half a dozen invitations. Columbus Georgia is a likely place we might go back to Albany. We may go to Jackson in Meridian Mississippi we may go to Montgomery. I just haven't been decided yet but we're going to continue in our. Chosen field of nonviolent direct action and

we pick a city which. Can in some ways be a symbol to the other localities in the Deep South. I suppose it would be. Very helpful if you had funds anticipating these moves so that you wouldn't have the situation that arose in Birmingham where you had people in jail and no money to get them out. Yes well Birmingham was a phenomenal situation in that I'm sure we never anticipated getting thousands of people in jail. We tried to we plan to fill the jail but we never expected the response that we got. And I guess a lot of people in the Bay Area would not understand it we still had five to seven thousand people who were ready to go to jail. But city jail was filled the county jail was filled we had filled up the fairgrounds had filled up the city auditorium to just about any place to put people. And this is when they resorted to the water hoses and dogs trying to break up the demonstrations because there was literally no place to put it. People who would be arrested on that Coles quote others having

said that Dick Gregory going to Birmingham accomplish one thing only and that was to give. Gregory more publicity. Is that a fact was this a published a gimmick on the part. First I'd like to say necking goal is in no position to make an assessment of how much value Dick Gregory was moving in Birmingham since he income himself. I think Babs Dr. King a revenue Abernathy or Shuttleworth or myself. Might be able to make a clearer judgment and it is my opinion that Dick Gregory had a tremendous impact on the community. He has a big name he didn't have to come. He's a negro and he has an identity with all of the negroes in America. I understand Mr. Cole said he would do benefits well Dick Barry has been doing benefits ever since he hit the big time. He's raised more than a million dollars when WCP the Legal Defense Education Fund the students and corps and for us. But yet he has freedom fever bad enough to actually present himself on the scene. And when he came to

town young people particularly were glad to see him the Birmingham community was glad to see him and his presence in Birmingham. Naturally had an impact on the news media and as far as we're concerned he served that tremendous purpose and in whatever city we go next I'd like to make a person invitation mystic Nat King Cole to come down and see what it's like. Well that's not done about this for. Forever King. Not to my knowledge. Well maybe I should ask him because he said that he would be one of the benefits and you know at least he can make that contribution. I would like to certainly echo what you said about Dick Gregory. I consider Dick a truly great American. He is really that and I have the utmost respect for him because of his courage and involvement in the struggle that's going on in the south near the end of the afternoon affair. Reverend Walker addressed the group which consisted of such CDC and civil rights leaders as William Porter Donald McCollum Philip Burton Terry Francoise

Alan merriment and Percy Moore. Reverend Walker's brief talk was an outline of the major remarks he was to make that evening and when he had finished he addressed himself to questions from the audience in the south. Yes I think generally I would say I'm absolutely convinced that the nigger community will remain nonviolent and I say this because the Negro community in the south is generally the titular church and Minister has an unusual place in the nigger community have respect for their leadership

and the community generally is disciplined to respect its leadership. And many in Albany Monroe North Carolina and Birmingham more recently in Montgomery where certain community justifiably could resort to defensive violence. They have respected discipline of the movement not to retaliate and so on the basis of a catalogue of events that have happened before. Even though there is an impatience It is my judgment that they discipline to the nonviolent method. Right. Well I think to give a fair judgment you would have to include not only people who are

actual demonstrated but hundreds of people who made up the volunteer teams of the Distribution Committee in Birmingham alone in this six week period we distributed by hand over a half a million pieces of boycott literature. So yeah you would have to include these people you would have to include all of the people who attended the mass meetings we had mass meetings for forty five straight days with an average attendance of a thousand people per mass meeting so you would have to include these people. You would have to include the many hundreds literally thousands of who respected the boycott and who would not shop downtown. It was 95 percent effective so I would imagine you had pretty nearly a 50 percent participation in some respect in the community. And when you consider that there are two hundred and ten thousand negroes in the greater Birmingham area this is a tremendous amount of involvement. And

really the answer to how we were able to so massively beat down the opposition and get an agreement that was satisfactory. The most effective boycott in my experience. By saying I think I've been in the Civil Rights Wars we call it since it began and there were days. In downtown Birmingham we ran surveys four times a day on the seven stores which were the object of our boycott. And there were days when we got the average down per store per day to one point five Negroes in the store at all where they were buying and we didn't know. Well this is an ancillary result of demonstrations when there are

demonstrations in the downtown area. Traditionally I guess south as well as the North. The white male does most of the shopping much to the chagrin of the husband I guess. There is the potential of demonstrations they don't want to be around confusion and so they stay out so you have not only impact of the withdrawal but you also have the impact of the white community withdrawing. On Easter Monday I rode through downtown Birmingham and of course Easter Monday is a traditional shopping day and you could ride in one thousand feet and look to the right or left and see all the way up and down the aisles of any store. Like a ghost town really. It was possible for me to go for sure. Well I don't know I couldn't document that exactly but where this strong

feeling that all the Palo anti-Semitic feeling and if the complexion of the racist posture followed that line of thought and reasoning. Demonstrations started well on the general question of timing itself off we were 100 years too late. Being any different result. Well as I did with the new government opposition is that this is a

war of a sort and we cannot let the opposition for us. And since we were focusing our attention on the economic community best moment to move to the Christmas shopping period or to the east the shopping period and runoff was on April the 2nd. Easter was around April the 13th or 14th. On April the 3rd we got busy and launched a campaign. Well I am glad they did what they did. But as it always is. FAIR's civil rights matters integration matters. It seems to us it's too little too late. We have a steel crisis a Cuban

crisis the Kennedy brothers act with power. But then when it has to do that is they question our methods of fighting a battle in the street as they describe it. They want a cooling off period without receiving any concessions. Put it very aptly in the current issue they say that in a sense the chad Kennedy administration is that they are never around at the takeoff they only arrive for the crashes and we would hope that the federal government that this is a national problem and it is got some problems in San Francisco and Oakland. We need to we need them to be participants in straightening out this problem rather than just spectators. And a major

disappointment is that the Kennedy administration being fully aware that this is a national problem has not hammered out any real national policy to grapple seriously with the problem the race and color prejudice in America. And that's my candid opinion about it. They have done more than other administrations but then that isn't saying much. How long had this effort going on before. The federal presence other than in words was manifested to white leadership of Birmingham in Alabama. Talk of coincidence or not but there was no talk of federal troops until some white people got hurt. I don't know whether that had any influence. I mean it's doing the entire campaign.

We contend that generally suffers from an abridgement of First Amendment privileges. And then the first person was arrested the federal government had a stake in it but for some reason they didn't NEC they didn't act in Albany and they did not act in Birmingham. They didn't act when dogs were certainly seems to me an abridgement of the Constitution of the people who are participating in peaceful demonstrations. They didn't act with many reported instances of brutality within the jails. They crowded conditions to solitary confinement which is NSA. So I would say that generally it's still the question of being too little and too late. And I was just.

Education whatever it is. Have you any idea how. Such a small represents. There was a small group of representatives from the business committee but the 70 business leaders committed themselves to the agreement. I don't know what you mean by composition they were mostly businessmen. Good many of them from the Jewish community. Some of them from the industrial community but they were people who represented the economic power structure of the Birmingham community. Some city Birmingham is going to company town for years I mean this Tennessee coal and iron this well I mean Tennessee is going to

be a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. I mean what is the management of Tennessee coal and iron represented on this group that chose to speak for the economic community. I do not know personally. I would imagine that they were because on the agreement that was reached on employment there was an agreement made that Negroes would be provided with new job opportunities in the industrial community also. I couldn't say anymore on that because I was naturally not a part of any of the negotiating sessions and do not really know the people by names or what their connections were. But I would imagine so since it is one of the major industries of Birmingham. I understand it represents 40 percent of the economy of Birmingham. So I'm sure they where it was in the evening at a rally held at the ILWU hall that the major address was given by Reverend

Walker. Here now is that address delivered on the eve of Human Rights Day. I bring to you the sincere Greetings from the two hundred and ten thousand citizens of color. In Birmingham Alabama. And the courage and the heroism that they have shown. A large part of it is due to the fact that they had the sense of companionship of many spirited people like you around the nation who through your prayers and your gifts of money. And your expressions of concern your telegrams to the Justice Department to the president of this nation let them know that you felt a sense of involvement. With them. You have certainly been very patient and it has been a kind of a grueling two days for me here on the West Coast. They have been just a couple of moments when I wished I was back in Birmingham and only working 20 hours a day.

Birmingham Alabama. In many ways is symptomatic of what's wrong all over this country. And it is but by the grace of God that. Birmingham Alabama has not happened to San Francisco California. Because many of the problems that we face in an overt and blatant form in the south has. In many ways a present here in subtle and covert phones. And it is only right and proper that you have a concern about us. Well I'm sure just repeating what you already know when I say you can't be free here in the Bay Area until we are free down in Birmingham Alabama perhaps. It is unfortunate that most of the.

Inside Story of Birmingham is never told than the wire reports. Nor in the news reports squibs that appear on the television shows such as Walter Cronkite and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. But I would like to share with you perhaps some little tidbits of. What made Birmingham Alabama perhaps one of the most heroic and unusual civil rights stories perhaps in the history of the nonviolent movement. I suppose many of you wondered as others have wondered why was it that we picked Birmingham. Birmingham has been known to us in the civil rights movement in the sow's. And very literally as the Janice Byrd of America. We have said many times it was the last stop before you got to the Union of South Africa. When you review the tragic history of Birmingham Alabama. It is but a

catalogue of man's inhumanity to man. In the last 24 months there have been twenty two bombings none of which has ever been solved by the police authorities there. It is not an uncommon occurrence for a negro woman to be accosted after dark in her automobile by police officers and taken off to some secluded spot. Criminally assaulted and then under the threat of death. Her lips are sealed so that she would never see anything about what happened. The into citizens committee of Birmingham has a record during the last year of fifty six documented cases of police brutality. Within the last several months it was still possible for a negro to be maintained or killed in Birmingham Alabama without anything ever happening to the people who were responsible for. It is really and it is in a very real sense. The last stop before Johannesburg South Africa. We would not want you to think that

Birmingham just happened as some spontaneous sociological phenomena that occurred in the spring of 1963 before more than a year the executive committee and the administrative staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had been concerning themselves with what could be done about Birmingham Alabama because it was the bastion of segregation in the Deep South. And Mississippi and Louisiana and Alabama and South Carolina remain as the four hard core States. And of all of these perhaps as far as cities are concerned Birmingham Alabama is the worst of the lot and so we felt that there ought to be a confrontation in Birmingham with the negro demands for self-respect and human dignity for the right of peaceful protests as guaranteed under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. And yet when we finally decided in late summer that Birmingham would be our next target city.

We knew full well and had resigned ourselves to the fact that some of us would never come out of Birmingham alive. And I assure you with all sincerity that it is by the grace of God that Binod Lee and Wyatt Walker and Ralph Abernathy and settles with and king and the others are alive today. Out of the Birmingham circumstance. We moved into Birmingham shortly after our new convention in September planning then to lay the groundwork for a nonviolent campaign. Between then April 3rd when we finally did launch our campaign I suppose the other members of my staff and myself were in Birmingham 13 of 14 different occasions laying the groundwork for the necessary mobilization of the community. Because you know we have not only opposition from the opposite side of the color spectrum but there are also some people in the Negro community that segregation is

unfortunately. And so we felt that this task had to be done. We suffered four postponements there was the governor's race and of course there are always the calmer and wiser voices in quotation marks who say that this is not quite the time maybe we ought to let the heat of the governor's race get over with before we launch a nonviolent campaign. And so we did. We waited. And then there were some little negotiations that took place in the business community said that they would do certain things one two three fall. And two weeks before Christmas nothing had been done about implementation and we learned then that we had been deceived. And then following Christmas we began to organize toward the Easter buying season for all the nonviolent movement with its power our method of an economic withdrawal must use these two seasons of the year. We're going to have our greatest impact. And they somehow engineered a change of city government referendum and they said well let's get this out of the way and we postpone the

second time. And then book comma threw his hat into the morality rings and they say well we don't want to cloud the issues. Let's let Bull be excluded from the primary election and then move. Then we postpone the third time. And bless my bones it girl didn't get into the runoff and we had to postpone the fourth time. And so it was the runoff was scheduled for April 2nd and burra khana lost America's race by a scant ten thousand votes which is exactly the number of new go registered voters. And on April the 3rd. I. Mean. Me. No neighbor the third we launched our nonviolent campaign. Prior to that week we had Nate relayed what we thought was a necessary groundwork prepared for an inductive proceeding which we knew would inevitably come. We had three hundred fifty persons two hundred and forty adults and some

hundred and ten youngsters who had signed up and we had names addresses and phone numbers who had committed themselves to stay in jail 10 days. But there was something else that occurred that we had not anticipated. They began after the arrest to have the trials the next morning or that afternoon or that night. And if they were going to be an appeal bond posted it had to be posted in five days so that shot holes in our program to keep people in jail 10 days of ML And of course this curtailed the opportunity to build up over a period of time and the national climate of pit of opinion that we saw. But of course somehow there's always the genius of the nonviolent movement that at the very moment that we have expended our resources and strategized to the limit of our human resources that somehow the opposition always does exactly the thing that is calculated to give new life and dynamism to the mood. And this is when all bull brought out the dogs and the world since. We were enjoying it after about two weeks and three days of

activity. We had 400 people in jail. They enjoined ounce cited us for contempt of caught tried us and convicted us and sentence us for the sentences to start sometime three weeks prior and the next day we had 45 people arrested and visited 38 churches the following Sunday. And since that time we haven't heard a single word about content so I guess we have just about beaten down the illegal use of the judicial process to bog down the civil rights trust of the new go in the state of Alabama. And so it is you have I'm sure kept track that by last weekend more than 20 700 people had submitted to arrest. Old people young people men women children people from 8 to 80 some crippled some halt some lame and even one blind man Al Hilal. And so it was that we were able to cut across the entire cross-section of the community of Birmingham

and have an impact that was felt around this nation. Now I suppose the first thing would come to your mind how is it that in a city that traditionally had been absolutely segregated from top to bottom and from center DISA conference where you had all kinds of diverse strains of the Negro community where there were 41 different geographical pockets of Negro residential neighborhoods. How on earth was it that you were able to mobilize of movement that had such dynamism and vitality that it caught the fancy of not only the nation but also the entire world. And I say this is no exaggeration we've caused the day that the settlement was announced. We had a hundred and seventy eight car sponsors from all over this world. We had one man interestingly enough who had come from where do you suppose Moscow Russia. And another from Stockholm Sweden and the TV crew from West Germany and five or six men from France two reporters from a TV outfit in Tokyo Japan.

Somehow what was going on in Birmingham was symptomatic of a cancerous disease that is a part of the body politic of America which has not yet been resolved. How does this come to be. Well I would say it has been a part of the leavening process that began with Montgomery Alabama. Which later involved into the sit ins of 1960 and then the Freedom Ride of 1961. And then the eruption of the entire community of Albany Georgia in the summer of 1962 and then here in 1963 Birmingham Alabama. And to a very large degree up certain part of it must be attributed to the fact of the new sense of self-respect and dignity that the Negro has of himself. You know in the midst of all of our anguished moments and the precarious circumstances that the negro suffers out of his compound the frustration dealt to him by a two hundred and forty four years of chattel

slavery and a hundred years of class I feed him in the midst of all of this somehow the Negro community has maintained the ability and the stands to laugh at himself in the midst of the most trying circumstances. And in the civil rights field we had there is a whole repertoire you know of integration jokes that go to go the round of the movement which illustrates that even in our lighter moments we can laughed at some of our angry circumstance I suppose the most recent one. That has come to me is the one about a negro who went up to heaven as I remember after he died and knocked on the door and. St. Peter came to the door and designed it he was a brother of color and. Motion to him that he would have to go around to the side entrance. And he drew himself up to his four height with his shoulders square and said What the hell do you mean a side entrance. And he said well that's the color tensions. He said well wait a minute said you don't know what's going on down in the United States of America. Say don't you know the Supreme Court unanimously decreed that segregation in

public school is illegal and they had the sit ins in 1960 and in 210 cities across the southeast the barriers are down at the lunch counters and ahead the Freedom Rides in 61 new girls a ride almost anywhere they want all over the south interstate an interesting. And John Kennedy just signed into law a executive order outlawing discrimination unfairly finance found. Why are we making progress. Man I was a Mississippian I just moved into integrated neighborhoods. I joined a white church and I got a white pastor he took me down to the river the other day. That's funny that's the last thing our. Thanks. Why you have it as stated by your response. That even in the

midsts. Of the moment by moment of the day by day anguish and burden and the onus of being a Negro in America and particularly in the south of. It we can look back at some of these moments and in light of moments laugh at them and this is a thing that has given the negro the sense of balance which has kept him his cup of indolence from running over into bitterness and into vengeance and turning out only himself and on nation into a more terrible state than that which we find ourselves. And then the negro man has looked at himself and discovered a new sense of somebody in this as Dr. King describes. For over a hundred years we have been shackled by the plantation psychologies. Which perhaps is demonstrated by the plantation song we used to sing you know I'm coming I'm coming and my head is bending low I hear good gentle voices calling Old Black Joe. The image of the negro who hung around the

courthouse and in the presence of a white person was snatched off his hat and started scratching where he would reach in and grinning when he wasn't tickled has passed from the scene. There's a new Negro in the south now who stands tall with his shoulders square in his eyes clear demanding all of his rights right now and he has paraphrased the meaning of the old plantation song and he's saying I'm coming I'm coming in my head and bending low I'm walking hot I'm talking loud I'm America's new Black Joe. Was Thank you. Thanks. And then I suppose the second thing which has contributed to the dynamism and the vitality of the Birmingham movement. And other moments is that the neg oakum in it has lain hold upon this new word that is a household word now. Nonviolence. A nonviolent discipline that was spawned in the Montgomery

bus protests of 1955 and 56 when it grows 50000 strong banded themselves together and rather than to ride in disgrace and humility decided they would walk with dignity and with self-respect. And then it's on of course as I indicated the sit ins and the freedom ride in Albany and now in Birmingham. It was interesting to note that sociologists and some prophets of doom said of Montgomery Well this is just one of those sociological freaks of phenomena that will never happen again. Nonviolence can. Have its effect in America because we have to westernize. Our chromium plated pushbutton society won't take it for this discipline comes out of the Eastern culture where people are meditative and reflective and we're too busy ripping and running trying to make a living instead of trying to make a life. And yet we've had a catalogue of the last four five years and very handy if it does nothing else. It mocks perhaps the

nonviolent revolution in the South finally coming into maturity. I have said so many times that there was a revolution afoot in the south but it was an infant trying to make its first feeble steps in the transition from the crawling stage of the walking stings and bashed Birmingham indicates to us that now nonviolent revolution can really be mounted. And it's a strong young athlete now ready to stand and run the race to the promised land of freedom. And yet in the midst of all of this the Negro community and I would be the first to admit to you not everyone is committed to nonviolence as a way of life. But at least the tenor of the movement in the south is one which respects the discipline of nonviolence. And if you could have been in Birmingham during the hours in the days of Terry Francoise has described to you where these state troopers who are literally maniacs edgy with their trigger fingers chasing for trouble

trying to precipitate any kind of incident by which then they go community would retaliate with some kind of violence and then sabotage all that had been done in the four or five weeks prior to them. And this is against the backdrop of all of the experiences of the community has had in Birmingham and in the south. Where the symbol of a police uniform on a white face has always been one that he associates with brutality and may hang then it is a modernist thing to see that the nigger community has practiced as much restraint as in his practice. And it is a marvelous thing that somehow the message of loving your enemies has gotten through to the poolrooms and the skin houses and up and down the avenues of our Southern cities so that Negroes who admit to bitterness yet say that well I'm not with this nonviolent bit but I'll go along for the sake of the movement. This is commendable in itself. For I suppose there are many of you who do not face the trying circumstances that a Negro

faces in the south. They want someone suggest to you that you are to love your enemies that you have to be understanding to people who oppose you. That you say this is the best most difficult. Because I suppose if you experiences like mine some friends it's difficult to like. But we're saying Love your enemy. Understand your opposition. But it's something like what happens in the natural realm it is a progressive development. Last winter the scientists tell us that the winter solstice passed December 21st. And when the winter solstice passes two minutes of daylight is added to each day's round of 24 hours each which doesn't really seem like very much. But these two minutes with a shower successively and persistently and progressively applied. But after a while what happens. The earth's crust began to thaw and little blades of grass began to push their way up through the sod in the trees and the flowers took on the

green of springtime and we heard the voice of the turtle throughout the land. And someone said to us without our scarcely perceiving it that spring has come again at the lunch counters in the city jail that those two minutes of love the persistently and consistently and successively applied. And after a while it is our hope and faith that little blades of grass of freedom will one day begin to sprout. In the trees and flowers will begin to take on the green virtue of the American ideal of democracy. And we shall one day see the springtime of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man and we shall see the prophetic meaning of every valley being exalted in every hill and mountain brought low in the rough places made plain and the crooked made straight and see the day when every man shall sit down on the on the rezoning vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid because the mouth of the Lord has said it. And all because of two minutes of love in your life.

And in mine and then a final saying for which as a religionists I would make no apology. That in the nonviolent movement in the south has understandably it is religiously oriented. It follows in the Hebraic Christian tradition of church and the church community for the Negro church is the only thing that the negro really owns and operates without anybody having anything to do with it. It has been his only forum. It is the site of his protest meetings the new gold minister is the titular leader of the civil rights protests. It is the one place where they can go on family by any controls whatsoever. And I have been persuaded in the years that I have been a participant. That is so very many critical moments of the struggle there is no way to rationally explain what happens to give the movement continued life. Or to find another want to shed by which the movement

makes another progressive step. I've seen it happen over and over again. I saw it in the contagion of the sit in movement of 1960. I saw it with what was the apparent demise of the Freedom Ride at the Mother's Day Massacre in Birmingham in 1961. I saw her pick up a gang in Montgomery Alabama. I saw it continue itself in the freedom ride at the end of the line in Jackson Mississippi when in the jail they tried to dehumanize us. And I've seen it over and over again in Birmingham Alabama in the last six weeks. But perhaps the most pardon memory that I have of how this sense of cosmic companionship love what we call the presence of God what I would describe as the mystique of the movement which you somehow cannot explain which gives new life to the thrust. Happened a few Sundays ago two Sundays to be exact. When after we had twenty four hundred people in jail and the police had decided that the break up the demonstrations they would use these pressure hoses and put the

dogs on the demonstrators. And what an inspiring sight it is to see old men and young women and old women and young men going to face the dogs without any apparent fear. Yes with tremblings within but going nevertheless displaying a courage that was operative in spite of their fear of facing the water hoses being knocked down. Clothes torn from their body by the pressure their bodies driven up and down the concrete pavements by the force of the water hose regrouping themselves tattered and torn soaked to the skin and grief grouping in going back to face the water hoses and the dogs again. And on this Sunday two thousand strong we decided that the two thousand or more people in jail should hear some word from the community. We left the new Pilgrim Church on 6th Avenue South and started the six block trek to a park that was just across the street from the city jail we knew this would be an ear shot. One block short of our

destination Bull Connor threw up his police lines with his water hose and with his dogs. We went as far as we could and then stopped. We knelt and we prayed. Then Reverend Billups the leader of the line stood up and decided we would move on. OCONNOR Bull Connor yelled out in his raspy voice turn the water on Billups. And I saw with my own eyes the fireman in charge of the lever they would turn on the power hose reach for it and then freeze and then drop his head in his hands and shake his head he couldn't do it. Somehow the discipline of the nonviolent movement had gotten through to his basic morality and basic humanity and he could not turn the water turn a clamp on it will release the water pressure. And I heard Captain Walker say the captain never let them pass. And two thousand of us walked over the very want to hoses that had been put at a stop this. Walk within touching distance of the dogs who were to maim and injure our bodies. How else can you explain it except to say

somehow that the presence of the Divine Spirit in the hearts and minds of determined and dedicated people that they want their freedom and they want it now. And so I could say to you. A few words as far as the sentiment of the people of Birmingham Alabama. And the many other points south of us. That there is this groundswell of determination and activity in the Negro community that we hope is going to spread all over the Southland. And one of the things that you do here in the Bay Area can did is to needle your city officials your county officials your state officials your congressman your senators yes even the federal government the Kennedy brothers. To somehow make them realize. That this problem cannot be resolved until the nation begins to seriously grapple with this problem which is a national dilemma. It is always a sad sorry tale of the federal government

arriving with too little debts to legs. There are ways there to crash but they're never there to take off. Somehow I thank you. Do not be mistaken and think that the demonstrations here in San Francisco and in Buffalo New York and Los Angeles and New York and. A thousand other places does not have its effect on the federal government in Washington D.C. It helps us so very much in the Deep South to let them know that attention is focused on what is a national problem. And some amount of the federal government must be needled into the position that they will work out a hot headed program that will deal with the problem and come to grips with that thing which threatens to embarrass and humiliate our great nation and the world community of nations. How could we extend them economic aid and Lend Lease and a thousand other kind of helping hands hoping that they will line up with the

so called free world and we've got a non-free Mississippi Alabama Louisiana. Thank you. Thank. God time is long since past when the federal government can stand on the sidelines and be a spectator to what's going on. They must come down out of the stands and become participants in this struggle to make this nation what it ought to being. Was. I say to you that the sincere sentiment of the Negro community by and large in the south of us. Is one of dogged determination and many moments a couple of indorse is tempted to run over. But we have converted committed to the nonviolent method and despite the dynamiting rules of our homes the bombing of our houses of worship service the physical and economic intimidations that they place upon us. The Negro community in the South has made up in its mind it's going to be free

and in the moments the subtle moments when we would feel like giving up and wonder what's the use. Perhaps there is a strain of the message of Langston Hughes poem mother to son which somehow gives us the tenacity to to keep on with our dogged and determination to see this things through to the ending. He portrays an old negro woman who has taken in washing as it were to see that our son had a chance better than she had Hague and he gets into trouble with some of the studies and comes home one a week and wants to give up because he's going to punch out. She takes a kerchief from her head and betrays that her brow has been kissed by the snow of many winters. She looks at her now hands and thinks of the hours and sacrifices she has made for this boy and now he wants to throw it all down the drain. And then Langston Hughes words she says to him Well son. I'll tell you. Life for me ain't been no crystal. It's had tax in it.

Boards torn up. Places with no cars on the flaw but all the time Sun has been climbing and reaching landings and turning corners and sometimes go on in the dark with every been no light. So don't you sit down now of course things are kind of hard. Because all the time son has been climbing and life for me ain't been no crystal staying deep in our hearts we have made the solemn resolve that if we can't get reservations on the Jets side to freedom we're going to go by train. We can go by train going to get in a car pull the rod if we can run. I'm going to wrong. If we can't run we're going to walk it with care we're all going to try all we can talk we're going to drag if we can drag we're going keep inching along. We're going to be free by and by. This program this from the Pacific on radio time. For more information. Or to get a copy of the sifaka area code 8 1 8

5 0 6 1 0 7 5. 0 right to the. Post Office Box 8 ohm 9 to Universal City California 9 1 6 0 8 0 0 9 2. Thank you have just heard Reverend Wyatt T Walker in San Francisco and LA.